"If it wasn't for the mist we could see your home across the bay," said Gatsby. "You always have a green light that burns all night at the end of your dock."
Daisy put her arm through his abruptly, but he seemed absorbed in what he had just said. Possibly it had occurred to him that the colossal significance of that light had now vanished forever. Compared to the great distance that had separated him from Daisy it had seemed very near to her, almost touching her. It had seemed as close as a star to the moon. Now it was again a green light on a dock. His count of enchanted objects had diminished by one.

.................................................

"I wouldn't ask too much of her," I ventured. "You can't repeat the past."
"Can't repeat the past?" he cried incredulously. "Why of course you can!"
He looked around him wildly, as if the past were lurking here in the shadow of his house, just out of reach of his hand.
"I'm going to fix everything just the way it was before," he said, nodding determinedly. "She'll see."
He talked a lot about the past, and I gathered that he wanted to recover something, some idea of himself perhaps, that had gone into loving Daisy. His life had been confused and disordered since then, but if he could once return to a certain starting place and go over it all slowly, he could find out what that thing was...

These excerpts come from F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. As you can see from the quotes the main character Gatsby is in love with a girl he once dated years ago. His life is consumed by the idea of her loving him once again. I understand Gatsby's grief but I also feel sorry for him because of the extent to which he has taken his infatuation. On that note I will leave you part of the ending, when Gatsby realizes Daisy isn't going to be his.

No telephone message arrived, but the butler went without his sleep and waited for it until four o'clock--until long after there was anyone to give it to if it came. I have an idea that Gatsby himself didn't believe it would come, perhaps he no longer cared. If that was true he must have felt that he had lost the old warm world, paid a high price for living too long with a single dream. He must have looked up at an unfamiliar sky through frightening leaves and shivered as he found what a grotesque thing a rose is and how raw the sunlight was upon the scarcely created grass. A new world, material without being real, where poor ghosts, breathing dreams like air, drifted fortuitously about..

so my boyfriend and I broke up today. And my computer was just pissing me off because my iTunes was on random and it kept going to these sad break-up songs. oh the humanity!

I wanted so badly somebody other than me

staring back at me em ta kcab gnirats

but you were gone gone gone

I wanted to see you

walking backwards

to get the sensation of you coming home

I wanted to see you

w a l k i n g away from me

without the sensation you're leaving me

alone

a melody softly floating through my atmosphere...Death Cab

I was thinking that "we all want something beautiful" and it made me sad that people have given up on what they believe. I wrote a comment about mythical love and afterwards I just felt like a pessimist. I wanted to tell him that I still believe in that perfect person but I don't. I have a list too..and there's only ever been one person to meet that list but the thing about lists is that they don't account for human circumstance. I guess what I'm trying to say...oh so eloquently is...Shit Happens. I can't go back to who I was, to who he was or to who we were. Sometimes I want to reverse my life but with new experience comes a new set of qualities that are desired, a new "list". As Blue Merle said.."years pass and people change, the bluest skies can turn to gray." I like to think that there might be an inner core to everyone that when you meet someone else with the same core that you two can always be together in some way, it eases the pain of thinking my friends now might not be my friends forever...I would like to write more about all the things swirling in my mind but I have to take a shower and then watch.....the SUPER BOWL!! Yes, we convinced an english bar to stay open late for the Super Bowl, sweet.

The old woman to Past:
"Please leave I don't need you to sleep on my pillow every night, weighing down my mind."

The young woman to Past:
"Please never leave, I don't know who I am without you."

I hated a whole country yesterday

I am reminded of the incident by the faded mark of a black X on my right hand, the mark of the Sugar House. Last night was...uneventful. I danced a lot with my girls and posed for pictures to remember the night. It was after the we left the club to go to the Chippy that things really started getting interested (a Chippy is a Chip Shop, a place that sells french fries, burgers, pizza, and kebabs). We got the usual, cheesy chips with extra vinegar and as we waited for our order these three drunk english guys realized that some of us were American. They proceeded to ask us if we were from America to which I reponded, no I'm from Canada. My friend Lisa said she was from Mexico and Elizabeth was from Argentina. Our joke seemed to rile the guys more as they them proceeded to harass us about Bush and about being stupid Americans. Of course this is my favorite when loud drunk British people tell me they hate Americans because we're loud and stupid. Then to add insult to injury we were asked to leave by the chippy owners because they didn't want anything to happen. I've been living in England since October and sometimes I just don't want to be a foreigner. I just want to go out, have some fun with my friends, and eat cheesy chips. When I came back to Texas for Christmas break it was such a relief to be able to go about my business without drawing attention that I might in anyway be considered abnormal. Though then a strange thing happened and I felt abnormal in America anyway because I had adapted to Britian. Will I ever have a home again?

I, Being Born a Woman and Distressed

I, being born a woman and distressed
By all the needs and notions of my kind
Am urged by your propinquity to find
Your person fair, and feel a certain zest
To bear your body's weight upon my breast:
So subtly is the fume of life designed,
To clarify the pulse and cloud the mind,
And leave me once again undone, possessed.
Think not of this, however, the poor treason
Of my stout blood against my staggering brain,
I shall remember you with love, or season
My scorn with pity, --let me make it plain:
I find this frenzy insufficient reason
for conversation when we meet again.

oh no she didn't! haha, I love this sonnet for so many reasons. Like I've said before our culture is saturated with the "love sonnet" and that is what makes me like this one so much. Here is a woman that understands herself and is also strong. The title mocks men's idea of women as weak and unreliable. Men fall for women, they take their love and then walk away. Here Edna St. Vincent Millay is saying that she will be the one walking away, "insufficient reason for conversation" is classic. I'm not in women's lib. or anything I just admire people who break out of the mold.

Today I was going to write about Christina Rosetti. I enjoy her sonnets because as a female writer she immediately takes on the mantel of being the anti-sonnet writer. Sonnets are a way for men to lift their loves beyond their reach. Usually though, the effect is more about showing how good they can write about a mythical woman than a true love that can actually be seen or touched. We read shakespeare because we want to feel that about another person but the poem isn't real and that's what we should keep in mind. Alas, I had a conversation with my boyfriend Michael this before I began writing that changed my mind on what to write.
I've said on my myspace blog that Michael showed me what true love is. I don't mean to discredit those who have come before and their love for me. I don't mean to cheapen their feelings. What Michael has shown me is how I can give him love. My ability to show others my feelings has been broken a long time. I can think of specific events in my life that have most likely led me to always hide my heart. If someone comes to close I try to break away and make them hate me. I show others why they really shouldn't love me. This tactic never worked on Michael. I would do stupid things, say stupid things and he would understand that it wasn't about him at all, it was my own fear that kept pushing him away. Someone immature and insecure would have left me long ago. With his perseverence something strange happened. I came to England for 9 months and even though I'm an ocean away and everyone is telling me that its normal to mess around with other people when you're so far away for so long, I lost all desire. I finally had a real reason to push him away and I didn't want to. Because Michael gets me more than I do. Now we are talking about getting engaged, something that scares the hell out of me (I have a track record). Michael asked why I was scared and I told him it was because i was sure that one day he would wake up and realize that he really didn't love me like he thought he did. He would realize that I'm not perfect. He said he knew I wasn't perfect and he loved me anyway. This is why I don't like sonnets, they are about a perfect woman that doesn't exist. Michael knows who I am and he loves me. And because of that, I love him.

I knew nothing at seventeen,
accepted a promise I didn’t believe.
Took hold of your hand
to follow where you lead
I know so much at nineteen.
You look down at me, you say
you can’t reconcile my past
to a perfect image in your head.
I have been tainted and changed.
So high above you can’t see
the truth you left behind
It’s not your place to judge me.
I am at peace with my world.
My God has forgiven me.
You hide behind your fake acceptance
of me, your tainted bride.
I knew nothing at seventeen.
You made me grow-up and I am thankful,
thankful to see past you,
thankful to know I owe you nothing.

forgiveness hard, especially when someone else won't forgive you. But i am trying to let this go everyday.

Everyone is complicated. I remind myself of this whenever I feel torn and confused between my conflicting identities. On one hand, I love people. Just the other day I was invited to a party where I only barely knew the person who invited me but no one else. It was my last weekend in college station so I decided to throw caution to the wind and go to the party. I ended up staying there till 5am and becoming good friends with a couple of people. In fact, the next night we all watched a movie together and stayed up all night again. In this situation, and many others, I appear to have nerves of steel. I really like meeting new people, it's like an adrenaline rush. I am a communication major and have no qualms talking in front of my class. I recently took argumentation and debate and made an A without breaking a sweat.
But on the other hand there's an extremely private and vulnerable side to me that makes it so hard for me to move past good friends to intimate companions. My truly close friends I could count on one hand. Ask my old roommate, I'm a hard nut to crack. Whenever I finally let someone into my confidence I will hold on to their friendship like my own life. There's Suzie the wonderful eccentric that I have known for four years. We have always lived a good distance apart but we always visit one another once a year. We can go for months without talking and when we start again it's like we never stopped. I can write her a few lines and she always knows exactly what I mean. Then there's Melissa my old roommate. I found her name in an ad, we met once and decided to be roommates. She first met me at a very trying time in my life but soon we became closer than I could ever imagine. We could stay up all night swapping stories of love and heartbreak. Next comes Josh, my ex-boyfriend. We dated for two years and were friends a year before that. We don't talk a whole lot but I see our connection in the fact that we have both changed so much since we broke up yet we seem to still have so much in common. Though we are both growing it seems to be in the same direction. I'm so eccentric sometimes that I find it hard to find someone else who can be so much like me. We shared a lot of passions (art, nature, music) and a passion for each other.
This private side of me is the one that after I conquer a crowd, meeting everyone there, I am forced to retreat into myself and refuse to let others past the usual details of my life. You always hear about actors growing up in difficult homes. Acting to them becomes a chance to be whoever they want to be. I guess this is why I love meeting new people, they don't know the real me and I can pick and choose who I want to be to them. This is why my insides twist when I am being asked a lot of questions, the control is out of my hands. I am always ready to defend myself. At the slightest hint of rejection I curl inside myself and refuse to come out, this is something Mike is still learning. Speaking of him, I don't want it to sound we don't have a wonderful relationship. We laugh at everything, even when we are fighting it always ends up in a joke some way. This same joking is the thing that keeps us from getting too close. I can predict Michael but I can't tell you the way he thinks. We haven't been able to share that side of ourselves.
so what prompted this entry? I don't even know. I wanted to say something about how hard it is to wait for rejection when I'm pretty sure it is coming. Which is hard for anyone I think. Somewhere I got turned around to talking about my insecurities. This is why I love this blog so much. It fulfills my exhibitionist desire to shed my insecurities. Also, I don't know you, the reader, so I can show you who I really am. I'm just a girl trying to figure everything out, becoming more confused each day.

"...the dice was loaded from the start
and I bet and you exploded into my heart
and I forget I forget the movie song
when you gonna realize it was just that the time was wrong...?"--Romeo and Juliet, covered by Edwin Mccain

There is a communication scholar named Sternberg who decided to study love. His studies led him to believe that love is made up of three things; passion, intimacy, and commitment. Passion is the "spark" in a relationship. Intimacy is the emotional connection you feel and commitment, well we all know what commitment is.
When you look at love this way you can begin to understand the complications that love can cause. When I was younger I asked my mom whom , among the men she had ever loved, was number one in her heart. My mom has been married 4 times but my young mind thought for sure there must be one that shone above the rest. She was quiet for a moment and then she said, "I loved them all differently and they were all the 'one' at that time in my life." I didn't understand her answer and pressed her for more. "Surely there must be one person you consider your soul mate", I pressed. "It's more complicated than that", was her simple answer. A couple of months ago she told me that my father, whom she has known since she was in elementary school, was the one that lingered in her heart over the years.
But it wasn't until this past summer in Interpersonal Communication that I began to really understand what it meant to love someone without giving them your whole heart. Sternberg's love triangle represents many different types of love. Infatuation is passion without intimacy and commitment. Empty love is high in commitment and low in intimacy and passion. Fatuous Love is high in passion and commitment but low in intimacy, this is rare and mostly found in societies that allow multiple wifes. The woman are close to each other instead of the husband but are still committed and passionate towards him. Companionate love is high commitment and intimacy with low or no passion.
In an earlier entry I wrote the lyrics to Ani DiFranco's School Night. When I first played this song for my boyfriend and showed him the lyrics he commented that the song was perfect for my situation. I knew what he meant but I asked him to explain. He was talking about the fact that I love him very much but my heart still belongs to a love I had before him. "And You'll never know, dear just how much I loved you. You'll probably think this was just my big excuse but I stand committed to a love that came before you and the fact that I adore you is but one of my truths." My heart broke for the man that understood more than I could explain. Also the fact that he wanted to be with me enough that he would take whatever he could get. Relational love is high in passion and intimacy but low in commitment. I love him I really do but that assurance that lies deep within your soul that lets you know that you are going to be with someone else forever can't be manufactured. Consummate love is high in all three components; love, intimacy, and passion. The Greeks called this love agape and it is the love told by Paul to the Corinthians.
There are other scholarly beliefs on love, that is based on the giver instead of the receiver. I choose to believe this version because I myself have felt differently about each person I loved.
Like my mom said, it's complicated.

The seasons make life appear disjointed. Years don't bring back memories, seasons do. Think about it, does 311's Amber sound like summer or does it sound like 2002? This summer I am reminded of my last. Three months of running head-first into self-destruction. A fall, winter, and spring have changed me into a woman.
Last summer my class was asked by my teacher (who was doing research on PSAs) why anorexia is more popular of a subject than bulimia. I told him it was because bulimia is choosing a coward's death. anorexics seems strong in a sense, their willpower is killing them. Anorexics will often feel proud of their behavior. There were times I hoped that one more purge would send my body into shock, that I would kill myself by eating oreos. bulimia is filling the soul while you empty the heart. Instead of death I found redemption and a way to help others. Don't congratulate me though, its the only thing you can do after living through your own circle of hell. The only way to understand an eating disorder is to go through one yourself. It's hard to explain the insanity that grips your mind. There is no way you can have willpower to beat a disease that has a basis in your self-control. One day at a time, praying constantly, is the only way. I tell my group I am a non-practing bulimic. I will always have that part of me but each day I choose life. Because bulimia is choosing a coward's death.

I am attracted to men who snore. I mean men who really snore, sleep apnea to be exact. Believe me I don't do this on purpose and yet I find myself again playing freecell aware of the man fighting for breath every few seconds beside me. I guess this is fate's way of making a joke. Every time I think I've got one who is perfect I hear him sleep. I think I might start putting this on a pamphlet I can hand out to potential suitors. I'll also put all the reasons i'm a vegetarian, since its always the same questions that get asked. I'll save all of those for a letter entry.

Someday someone will ask, though I'm sure others have wondered, why I know so many quotes and lyrics. Why do I use them so freely instead of writing my own thoughts? Quotes are beautiful you see. By definition they are short sayings or sentences that can emcompass paragraphs of feelings and knowledge. What do you think about capital punishment? "An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind"--Ghandi. Are you pro-choice? "Abortion is supported by those already born"--unknown. How do you know it's true love? "Every times she sneezes I believe it's love"--Counting Crows. What does life mean to you? "Life is a thousand small deaths"--Barbara Kingsolver. Maybe you don't understand exactly what I am saying by all of these quotes but that is where the true beauty lies. You will take my response and mold it in your own way to mean what you believe it to mean. Quotes say it in ways that I cannot. I could rant for many more entries about lost love or I could simply type; "Undo it, take it back, make every day the one before. Until I am returned to the day before the one that made you gone."-Rapoport. Simple, poetic. If only life could be the same.

I remember my first secret. The slight gasp as I realized that at that moment I knew the whole story. I remember you pressing for answers and me slowly, painfully unfolding my hidden treasures of truth. I never told you everything. All I have is my own life you see. I am the only one who knows the whole story, who knows the long road of betrayal I carefully navigated. Some nights I awake suddenly with the knowledge of my deceits weighing down on my mind. I write you feverish letters of forgiveness to sooth my grief. If others knew what lived inside of me; might they stop to stare? I have let my pain get the best of me and actually sent you a letter. You will most likely respond firmly, with sympathy, that this friendship thing really isn't working out. When I try to get close you accuse me of manipulation. You say my ways are cold and calculating, measuring every step until you are close enough to be watched from a distance, you won't touch lepers. What you fail to grasp is that every step I take is a tenth of what I want. I would run if I could but my legs command me to stay still. Are my steps for the sole purpose of bringing you closer? Yes. Where is the manipulation, where is the wrong in that?
I love you, this is just one of my truths.

Today I saw heaven in the sunrise. The skies were covered by a soft quilt of clouds. After my morning run the clouds broke slightly and light from heaven shone through. At that moment I knew that the world was still beautiful. Though I embrace my youth I do long for the patience that only comes with age. It's such a hard thing to know so clearly what you want and not be able to do anything about it. Life becomes a little harder when others find the time to point out your failure and ask repeatedly when you will ever make amends. I have made amends with myself, though I want more than that, and that's really all I can control. It makes me sad to think that life is more than who we are. Because who I am is all I have. I can't make someone else love me again and I can't make this world make sense. And though staying true to myself seems like my only resort I sometimes lay awake frustrated by my own lack of action. The human heart is not made to heal in haste. Sometimes I wonder if I will ever receive the only thing I truly want. And if I don't will this love fade also to where you are just another friend to me? Though I'm secure in my youth I long for the patience that only comes with age.

This is the straw, final straw in the roof of my mouth as I lie to you. Just because I'm sorry doesn't mean I didn't enjoy it at the time. You're the only thing that I love,it scares me more every day. On my knees I think clearer. Goodness knows I saw it coming or at least I'll claim I did but in truth I'm lost for words. What have I done? It's too late for that. What have I become? Truth is nothing yet. A simple mistake starts the hardest time, I promise I'll do anything you ask...this time. ---Snow Patrol, Cholate.

The most powerful lyrics I've ever heard:
she went over to his apartment clutching her decision and he said, "did you come here to tell me goodbye?" so she built a skyscraper of procrastination and then she leaned out the twenty-fifth floor window of her reply and she felt like an actress just reading her lines when she finally said "yes, it's really goodbye this time" and far below was the blacktop and the tiny toy cars and it all fell so fast and it all fell so far and she said: "you are a miracle but that is not all you are also a stiff drink and i am on call, you are a party and i am a school night and i'm lookin' for my door key but you are my porch light and you'll never know, dear just how much i loved you. You'll probably think this was just my big excuse but i stand committed to a love that came before you and the fact that i adore you is but one of my truths". what of the mother whose house is in flames and both of her children are in their beds crying and she loves them both with the whole of her heart but she knows she can only carry one at a time? she's choking on the smoke of unthinkable choices she is haunted by the voices of so many desires. she's bent over from the business of begging forgiveness while frantically running around putting out fires but then what kind of scale compares the weight of two beauties, the gravity of duties or the ground speed of joy? Tell me what kind of gauge can quantify elation? What kind of equation could i possibly employ? and you'll never know, dear just how much i loved you. you probably think this was just my big excuse but i stand committed to a love that came before you and the fact that i adore you is just one of my truths so i'm goin' home to please the one i so love pleasing and i don't expect he'll have much sympathy for my grieving but i guess that this is the price that we pay for the privilege of living for even a day in a world with so many things worth believing in. --Ani DiFranco, School Night

My last post was made after I was talking to an old friend who was telling me that he had changed. It was also inspired by something I once heard, probably at a graduation speech, "I knew everything at 18." It seems to me that I too knew everything when I graduated high school and as time gets by I know less and less. My level of information on subjects has increased, my beliefs are still in tact, but the deep seated assurance you get when you know something without a doubt is fading. In some ways I might even becoming cynical. There's a postal service song I love called Clark Gable. A line from the song reads; "I want so badly to believe that there is truth, that love is real." This is the way I feel. I hear songs by Bryan Adams and Edwin McCain that proclaim their undying love and I wonder if love like that is real. This blog for me is just an online journal basically. I don't claim to have any groundbreaking ideas, I'm just a young adult trying to figure things out in life.
I've read the comments on my posts and I appreciate the support and exchange of ideas. On this paticular post I am asking for someone else's thoughts.

It's funny how the older you get the less you deal in absolutes.

This is a picture of my friend Travis' kid.