I am so happy. Even now, when I can feel my freak outs in the back of my mind, I can keep them at bay. Every once and a while it bubbles up and I feel a taste of the out of control and lost person I was for such a long time, but really I'm happy. My friends, my family, and everything in my life now makes me happy instead of sad. I feel like I did first semester freshman year. I AM.
And that's enough for me. If anyone has ever read the book Bloomability, there is a character who just yells "Viva! Viva!" whenever he feels really alive and happy. And I feel like yelling it to. I am finally, finally starting to be okay just BEING. It's weird, and sounds really trippy, but it's getting there.

I'm so excited for the rest of my life.

I seriously miss my friends. All of them. My friends from home are at school and my friends from school are at home. I suppose I'm not too far away from CP to go out, but I'm just way too lazy. (Especially in this cold.) I really don't mind sticking at home on a Friday night, but it's pretty lonely, especially cause most of my family is out. Now that Katie can drive she's always gone, Sarah is always out, and even Joe is hanging out with his girlfriend tonight. My parents might watch a movie with me, but who knows, they might just go to bed at 9:00pm and call it a night.

Oh well. Maybe I'll just play myself in chess. Again.

Winter Break = Posting Everyday.

I like music. And you are going to deal with me explaining a few of my current favorite songs. Enjoy.

• "Best for Last" by Adele. This was recently shared with me from my uncle. This artist has a beautiful voice and the lyrics to this song are just so me. It's like she looked into my brain and wrote down how I feel towards any ambiguous relationship I've ever "been" in. And it's not really slow and sad, it's kind of peppy in it's own way.
• "Limousine (MS Rebridge)" by Brand New. The lyrics don't have as much to do with the song as just the feel of it. He sounds so hurt and done. If I'm in a crying mood, I'll put on this song on simply because of the fact that he's blaming himself and not someone else, like most other songs.
• "Not the Sun" by Brand New. I rock out to this song. You know the freak in the car next to you singing at the top of their lungs? Yeah, that's me. It's loud and awesome and has some of my favorite lyrics ever which have almost turned into a weird mantra for me.
• "1812 Overture" Tchaikovsky. One word: EPIC. (I know, I know we played it in band and I'm a super nerd. Shoot me in the face.)
  
• "Tiny Vessels." by Death Cab for Cutie. Dear Death Cab, STOP LIVING MY LIFE. I feel like this song is basically what happens to me all the time. And how I feel about myself. "I wanted to believe in all the words that I was speaking..."
  
• "HTML Rulez D00d." by The Devil Wears Prada. I freaking love this band. I can't understand most of the lyrics while they're screamed, which is okay by me. But it's epic. and I love epic.
  
• "Heartless" by Kanye West. I don't know. It's a weird thing I have, but I freaking adore Kanye.
  
• "Take a Bow." by Muse. Hello, my name is Beth and Muse is the best thing that has ever happened to my life. And it's so super hot. I love it.
• And last, but certainly not least: "Don't Trust Me." by 3Oh!3. Do the Helen Keller and talk with your hips.

I have so many songs that I freaking adore, but I think I will occasionally write down what I have had on repeat for the past few days. If you have any suggestions for music AT ALL, please tell me! I lurve to listen to each and every type of music.

Death Cab does this to me.

I'm not going to whine. Just ponder a few things. It's been a while since I've felt very passionately about someone consistently. I mean in all possible emotions, from love to hate. I feel strongly towards people, but I am still missing that burning, almost achy feeling in your chest when you feel passionately about someone or something. I can still kind of remember what it was like, since that feeling ruled my high school career.
I don't feel as if I've lost my passion, I feel as if I may have put it aside to focus on other things. I think it began when I was torn apart the spring of my senior year. One day, I might actually have the courage to write down what happened to me in my mind, but let me assure you, it wasn't just due to my psuedo-breakup deal with Kevin. Anywho, I think the events of those few weeks sent my body and mind into a kind of shock. I suppressed my feelings. I learned not to feel anything to hide from being hurt. I suppose after years and years of wearing on my psyche, a teenage mind with a mild psychological disorder can only take so much. So I shut down. I stopped feeling. Passion was now last on my list of priorities and I threw myself into school and band and TBS and my friends. And slowly, all of these things healed me. It was like I put myself under anesthesia and my friends and family were the surgeons who put me back together, even if it was unintentional. Now, I'm awake. I know I can feel, and I know it's just around the corner. I'm waking up from my self induced emotional coma.
It's kind of scary, but I want it here. To keep going with the surgical analogies, I think it's like waking up after a surgery, still a bit numb, but miraculously, during that time you were asleep, everything that was wrong was fixed. Now I've had time to heal from those wounds, and I'm ready to test myself again.
I feel those vestiges of passion in me. Especially when I listen to music. You know that little pull right by your heart, kind of close to your throat? Like your breath is catching in a really stiff wind? It's there. I know I can feel more, I know I can. I'm kind of scared to though, even the whisperings in my chest of past feelings freak me out. I want to feel passion, but am so completely and utterly terrified of what that will do to me. I'm always on the defensive, and that hinders my ability to really feel when I open up. It's like there's one little bit of my mind that's screaming at me "Don't do this! You haven't been hurt like you used to be in almost two solid years! Isn't it best just to be numb? Don't let them hurt you again!" It's terrifying.

So what brought this on, you may ask? As usual, I was listening to Death Cab for Cutie. (Side Note: I thought I lost the entire album of "Transatlanticism" when I transferred my files from my old computer to my new computer. I went a whole month without listening. But then, in my complete and utter genius with a little [or a lot] of help from Google, I realized that my files were just being trixy little hobbitses and hiding. So I pulled them out of their comfortable hold of ComputerShire and sent them forth to save the world from destruction. AKA Return to iTunes and thus, my life.) SO I was listening to my favorite album from Death Cab, you guessed it, Transatlanticism. And the song "We Looked Like Giants" came on. And it made me realize, I wish I had someone to sing about. Corntastic, right? But it's true. When I was a young emo kid of about 15 I used to write poetry and song lyrics. Granted, they were shitty 15 year old emo kid poems and song lyrics, but I felt. I really, really meant what I wrote and felt it with my entire being. Listening to that song brought back echoes of those feelings. Of the passion that I used to feel. Of the fact that I used to be able to care for someone so deeply, I would stay up at night writing about how they made me feel. Or that I could hate someone so passionately, I would waste more time on them than necessary to write how I felt. But I was alive. I'm tired of being an emotional zombie. I'm pulling aside this mental curtain I've hung in front of myself and am ready to face the world. I'll need sunglasses for awhile, and my friends are going to help me more than they know. But I'm ready. To put it delicately, fuck this shit. I'm going out and I'm doing it right this time.




Oh and P.S. to all you nosy bastards that read this from the link in my profile and scoff at what I've written. I can hear your thoughts now, "Oh puh-lease Beth has just felt sorry for herself her entire life. She should just get over it." What bullshit. Ask me about what really went down those few weeks, especially those bitches from high school who have their own version of my collapse in their minds. Maybe before making judgements you should look a little deeper. It would only be too easy to discover that I wasn't just some jealous girl who felt sorry for herself, if only I was then maybe I wouldn't be writing this right now. I'm pretty messed up in the head. And it's from a long line of things I had no control over, both that occured throughout my life and chemically in my brain. So fuck you if you think I'm faking this because I look happy all the goddamn time. I've developed an ability to lie to others about how I really feel without them questioning it. So really, please, if you want to say something about anything I've written here, post a comment. Anonomously even. Just please, take into consideration that there are multiple factors at work here, and I'm working on figuring them all out.

and P.P.S. to everyone who is a little shocked at my rant. Shit went down in high school. There is a reason I'm only close to three people in my graduating class. I may write about it sometime, but I just had to get that off my chest. It's been stirring in my mind for a while. However, please ask me if you have any questions or anything else. I'm trying to open up again, that's what this whole entry was about.

"All I can do is be me, whoever that is."

I'm deciding a few things about myself. I'm usually pretty all over the place in terms of who I think I am and who I want to be. So I'm just going to try to write the things I am.

• I'm mean. Get over it. My humor is sarcastic and I am cynical towards most things in my life. I've probably judged you at some point in time, and i love to gossip. I'm probably a bad person for all of those things, but at least I can admit it.
• I LIKE being that way. I mean, I know girls are supposed to be all nice and demure and/or slutty and dumb or something like that. But I think I'm hysterical. Most people can't seem to wrap their heads around the idea that I find toilet humor funny, I think the penis game should be played more often, yet I still really enjoy doing my hair and makeup. Ah well.
• Sometimes, I feel like my life would be easier if I was a guy. I wouldn't get ragged on as much. And I feel like guys don't have nearly as much pressure to stay in shape.
• On that note, I am finally starting to come to terms with my body. I need to start focusing on the things that I like about myself. Like my boobs. Or my long legs that are still miraculously in shape from marching season. Or my RED hair. (YES it's red. NOT. BROWN.) I even like my long fingers and the fact that my nails look really long even when they're cut short.
  
• HOWEVER I still have raging insecurities. I am so afraid that I am the "fat friend". Whenever I express these worries, they always get squashed. Usually by my friends and family. But what kind of person would tell their friend, "Yup. You're the fat friend that some poor dude's wingman is distracting right now."
  
• I'm loud. And probably obnoxious. It's the whole raging insecurities bit I think. If people don't want me that way, then I can at least try to be funny, right? It's pretty pathetic.
• I really want to let people in. But half the time I think they won't care. Or that they don't want to hear my petty problems. Like "Boo-hoo I think I'm fat." Seriously, I need a life.
• I like to mend relationships. This (school) year, I feel like I've repaired a lot of things that used to be broken. Not just between myself and another person, but the issues that I had that caused those fissures in the first place. It's quite nice. I'm still pretty mean (at least in my sense of humor), but I do love having friends, and hopefully, being a good friend to them too.

There are a lot of other things about myself I need to decide upon. I need to figure out who I am before I can really make any other big decisions about my life. We'll see how things go from here.

Oh, and P.S. The title is a Bob Dylan quote. I stole it from a high school friends facebook. Sadly, I am not as creative as I would like to think I am.

I really, really love being home. Sometimes, it gets frustrating, but I feel so, so safe here. My parents are so amazing, as well are my siblings. My relationship with my uncle gets better everyday. I love few things more than sitting around on the couch, with all six of us and the dog piled on and watching a movie. It's great.

I envy my sister sometimes. Not in a real, angry sibling rivalry way, but in the fact that I feel like she's so much more together than I am and she's only 16. She is comfortable with herself in a way which I have never been (or for that matter, never will be.) She seems really nervous about college, but I know she'll figure it out, she always does.

So, fun story. I broke my glasses. Right in half, just like Harry Potter a la Sorcerer's Stone. And when I taped them, they drooped down so I looked like Wall-E. I was Wall-E Potter. So now I have to buy now glasses. And by "I", I mean my parents. Which I feel bad about. I'm nineteen, jobless, and mooch from them constantly. One day, I will get a job. (And it will NOT be in retail. I still fume when I think about retail.)

Liz is leaving for UNC tomorrow. It makes me so sad that my three best girlfriends have already left for school and I have another two weeks here. Lindsey, Klem, and Liz have saved me more times than I think they know. I love them like family.

This is super rambly. I apologize. Hopefully, in the future, these posts will be written more coherently. But I'm still learning.

BITCHBITCHBITCH

I don't know who reads this. I had one corny post about why I love being an anthropology major, but that's it. I think I need this. A release perhaps? I like this better than my journal, because I feel like if someone cared enough, they would read what I had to say.

So I've been re-reading the Twilight series. They're absolutely terrible books, but I enjoy a good mindless read once in awhile. Anyway, they make me super lonely. I try to put on a front of "Oh, I don't care. I don't need a guy anyway." But really, I am so lonely. I feel like every time I even open myself up the slightest bit, there's simply no point. Either we were drunk, so it doesn't matter, or they they already have someone else, or any number of reasons for me to always, always be "just friends."

I hate how in the media and movies and books it's always the boys who seemed to get scorned my malicious girls who have only the worst intentions. Or it's about a girl who is just so utterly gorgeous and someone eventually falls in love with her, and she has to decide between two guys. Or something along those lines. It's all bullshit if you ask me. There's no romance and no chivalry, everything is really just an act. Sometimes, I'll pretend that it's not, and those are the times I end up realizing how much better it is to just be a cynic.

I used to always blame myself. I'm too fat, too tall, too ugly. Or it's my personality, I'm too loud, too self awkward, or just plain annoying. Most of the time, I still do find that the blame falls on me. But other times, I realize that as much as I love the guys in my life, they're all the same. I have yet to be proven wrong. No one, not even my dearest friends have ever demonstrated to me that guys can save someone. A guy has never saved me, I've always had to pull my own sorry ass up with the help of my girlfriends, who have also sat around and watched as the same act happens again and again and again.

My friend Chris said it best, "College guys just like to get drunk and fuck things." It's so completely and utterly true. It's almost funny how often I have seen this play out in my life. It's Tiny Vessels, again and again.

It would be so nice, so, so nice to be proven wrong. That's why I have the song "Not the Sun" pretty much on repeat. "Tell me you know what I mean. (Prove me wrong.)" It hasn't happened yet, and I am so tired of waiting. I don't want to hide again, but I think I have to. I am going to try to learn to still feel while feeling nothing at all.

I'm going to try to make this one of my few whiny and bitchy posts. I like to laugh and being fun is the best. However, I am way cynical and sarcastic. So if you don't like it, then you can just eat it, bitch!