Lost In the Fear of Never Finding

From one anuptaphobic to another,

In my stream of consciousness there’s a place that I know the lonely are meek and the meek are insufferable. They’re left twisted in the torment of their own company; a fate I would not wish on my closest friend or worst foe.

But sometimes, when the lights dim and the tender twinkle of starlight cannot strain beyond the darkened clouds, my thoughts stray to a place of exile. In this space the sound of my own heartbeat is deafening. Thumping in a cadence of ethereal design, it reaches out for a counterpoint to match its rhythm. It longs for a melody to make it whole.

I surge onward in fear that I may come off cliché, but in the unforgiving world of reckless abandon I believe there is a common thread that makes us all the same. A basic need, more necessary than food or water combined.

In the end we all fear that eventually this need will be unfulfilled and our hearts will shatter beneath the paws of our cat companions. Cats and I have never gotten along and so I find this future unacceptable. Shall it happen, I would find myself unconsolable, unsettled, undesired.

Wasting away in the turmoil of my own personal nightmare, I know that this fear is one that haunts my nights and my days. To me there is no greater punishment than the inhumane isolation of solitary confinement. So to think of solitary confinement of the heart is unimaginable.

Instead of drowning in fear, I pine and I long to one day release my heart from the cavity that incases it. I long for a time when my racing thoughts can be replaced by whispered promises and advances. I long for a time when the twinkle of stars will break through the heavy blanket of sky and beam down through the thinly pained glass of my life. But mostly, I long for a time when my heart, open and unafraid, will finally find a melody to match its own. I long to love and to be loved in return.

I’d like to think I have time, but then again, I fear I don’t.

The Decision of Indecision

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

~Robert Frost, The Road Not Taken

 
Indecision can be a decision and sometimes it’s actually a quite brilliant choice. When every option you have has a negative side to it, a negative facet, sometimes the only thing you can do is choose to not decide on either choice.

Sometimes it seems as if my life is one permanent fork in the road, both signs seeming to point me in completely different directions. And stubborn as I am, instead of making a gut decision, I stick my feet it. I barrel down and remain stationary in an attempt to collect my thoughts and weigh out the pros and cons of both decisions. In the end, however, I eventually am forced to make a decision. I mean, no one ever got anywhere by standing still did they?

So, I choose. Left or right. In or out. Here or there. There’s always a choice and always a decision to be made. But, no matter my decision, I’m always left feeling a sense of buyers remorse. Did I make the wrong decision? Would I have been better off taken the other path? I never know the answers to these questions, but I wish it did. If I knew the outcome life would run a smoother course and I could breathe easier.

Life is not easy though. Life is loss and love and every emotion wrapped into one perplexing bit. It’s everything and it’s nothing at the same time. So why should one choice seem to the potential to change it completely? I mean, why should we let it? Why do decisions have to run our lives? Why can’t I come to a fork in the road and, instead of picking one, simply sit down in the center of that fork for a little while. Why can’t I decide to not decide? Or even better, why can’t I decide something completely different instead. In the end, why can’t I chose to ignore both paths and create an entirely new path of my own design? Better yet, I think I will.

Dreaming the Impossible Possible

“Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”
~ Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

I’m ashamed to say I’ve never read Carroll’s novel, though I’ve seen almost every version of the movie or television adaptation. Though I can’t be positive, I tend to think this shame stems from fear. Whether that is a fear of never having the opportunity to read everything I desire or a fear of being found incompetent as an English major, I will never know. But, even though my eyes have never skimmed or even read between the lines of this book, I’d like to think I understand what Carroll means in this line. It means, believing the impossible is possible; or I guess you could just say it means dreaming in general.

Every day when my alarm clock spring to life with music from my past, my eyelashes cling to each other to escape the realities of the day and nestle safely back with my nightly splendor. When they eventually untangle and my eyelids are forced open by 7 am registration or 8 am class I cling to my one real life safe haven; the dreams that exist in my conscious life. You know the ones I’m talking about. The dreams that make you believe in magic as a child or true love as a hormone ridden teen. The dreams that exist for anyone who has ever truly gotten lost in a book. Literature. I, for one, know that when my dreams are abandoned for day to day monotony, fiction is the only thing left behind to comfort me.

I never leave my house without a book. I guess I should clarify that statement though. What I mean is, I never leave anywhere without at least five books. I have four book reading apps on my phone. Four, count em, four. Even though it seems like I seldom have the opportunity these days to launch myself in a novel completely, having the possibility gives me security. Having a book so close that I can picture it beneath my fingertips is my safety blanket. It is my savior when times get hard.

So, in the end, when it comes down to it, I’d like to think another way of reading Carroll’s line is: “Why, sometimes I’ve read as many as six remarkable stories before the world tries to distract me.”

Noncommittal and Overcommitted

If you were to look at the title of this post quickly you might think I’ve made some hideous error because it seems like the title contains two opposing adjectives and that is where you would be mistaken. Now to set things straight even further, I’d like to explain that when I say that I am noncommittal I do not mean some beautiful man has proposed to me and I cannot seem to say yes. The same going, when I say I am overcommitted I do not mean I have been committed to a mental institution one to many times (if you thought this you can just stop reading now and never return to my blog again because you are probably an idiot).

Webster defines noncommittal as ,”giving no clear indication of attitude or feeling” while it defines overcommitted as, “to obligate (as oneself) beyond the ability for fulfillment”. Now I happen to be one of those blessed people who is a combination of both. I am noncommittal in the fact that I cannot make a distinct decision to save my life.

I’m that person who orders a fillet mignon at dinner and then stares enviously at the chicken marsala my dinner companion ordered. I’m that person who can tell you I definitely don’t want chinese for dinner, but that I can’t decide between Indian, sushi, Italian, or Mexican because as soon as I get to the restaurant I’ll wish I had have picked something else. It’s frustrating for those who are around me, but believe me it’s no picnic for me either.

Don’t even get me started on shopping, because that is what I’d like to call a disaster. I’m the person who prefers to shop online because my online shopping cart doesn’t yell at me to hurry up and process my order like the sales clerk at Neimans does. When I’m faced with the decision of what I want to do with my life I know I want to be a book publisher, but I also think I could dabble in party planning, baking, a hookah bar business, and maybe a little music production (just to name I few). What can I tell you? I’ve got problems, I realize this, and I’ve come to accept it.

Here is where my second problem comes in and it tends to be an even bigger doozy. I am overcommitted to the extreme. I think the two tie together because my inability to be decisive tends to make me say yes to doing everything. I can’t just write for the student newspaper, instead I end up becoming some sort of editor. I can’t just be a member of M.S.A., I end up becoming the External Social Chair. It’s physically impossible for me to not become deeply involved in 20 things at a time, because I can’t say no.

No matter how hard I try I feel the need to be involved  in 400 things at once and what’s weird is I seem to thrive on the pressure. When I’m involved in too many things to count I end doing better in school and in life in general for some strange reason. The fuller my calender, the happier I’ll be.

 

 

 

 

The Insanity that We Now Call Middle English

Oh Chaucer! Let me counteth the ways in which I am not sure if you were really the literary genius some argue you were, or you were just an inventive character who really didn’t give a shit. I understand that poets tend to use artistic license when writing as it can be difficult to write a line that has to end in let’s say “orange”. Now I realize it is impossible to find a word to rhyme with orange – I  also understand that half of the people reading this probably just tried to list off words that could possibly rhyme with orange (If you think of one, get back to me  – and no Blorenge, the hill in Whales does not count), but Chaucer changing “no more” to namo does not count as actual rhyming in my book. It seems to me in fact, that he was just making stuff up.

Parts of his writing just sound like some weird language identical twins made up when they were toddlers so they could communicate. And chew on this one for a little while, the dude spelled the same word bright four different ways: bright, bryght, brighte, and bryghte. To make it even more ridiculous, these four versions of bright were all pronounced the SAME WAY. Now in my opinion, if you are gonna go through that much trouble to spell a word differently, at least make it sound kinda different for poetic affect. Now as I continue to rant, I will admit that I have not read Chaucer’s CTs yet and I will think about it more when I’m reading the stories. As of now however the outcome is actually looking pretty up there; if I can’t appreciate the plot of the stories at least I’ll know that this creative mastermind was able to make up a bunch of gibberish words and those very words ended up making him one of the most known authors of his time. Props to Chaucer on that one! If only we all could be that lucky!

 

I think Eminem and Chaucer would have gotten along great!

 

Small Worlds Collide

Escaping the unsettling boredom that sets in around the ending days of August, I left the rural river valley college community, I grew up in, to bask in the new experiences college was supposed to provide me with. End result: I ended up in Lexington, Virginia. Population, 7,000. Setting, rural river valley college community. For some reason that last description sounds vaguely familiar, but I digress. I realize the strain the UMass world have put on my psyche. The jump from a school of 280 students (7-12th grade) to twenty-thousand would have been enough to throw me off track completely and the proverbial rug would have been completely pulled out from under me.

Every now and again however I find myself asking the simple question: why? Why did I end up in another rural town with less of a night life to speak of then the college town I left behind? Why did I end up going to a school with only 2,000, a number so small that its nearly impossible to walk through campus without seeing at least fifteen people you know? And finally, why did I end up in a little rinky-dink town, surrounded by mountains, instead of the cities I dreamed about in my younger years?

After running through this dialog through my head, for what seems like the four-thousandth time, it finally hit me. And I don’t just mean figuratively hit me, I mean literally walked up to me, tapped me on the shoulder, and asked me to help him with something. Here I am, just casually pondering the reasoning behind why I’m sitting at work study in Lexington, instead of drinking coffee on the streets of Manhattan or Boston, when a little piece of Western Massachusetts comes over and introduces himself. Coincidence? I think not. For privacy purposes let’s call this little slice of Hadley, “Matt”. Turns out Matt grew up in Massachusetts and went to UMass, only to find his way here as well. Now I don’t know if the gods were trying to tell me I’m here for a reason, or if this is me just reading to far into things like normal, but I choose to take the former option, because let’s face it; we all want to believe in fate.

It may be that I have an 8 am class Monday through Friday and five classes (including a 3 hour lab) every Thursday. My room may look like a hot pink atomic bomb went off in it, and it might be questionable as to whether an Asian man has moved in unannounced into my suite. There might be times when I get homesick and wish I could do things over again, but I’ve decided to believe in something greater than me. I believe that one day I’ll graduate from this school and kick some ass in a big city. I believe that that 8 am Italian class will help me find a bathroom or stop me from being kidnapped when I go to Italy in the spring. I believe that for some reason its a good thing that I have classes from 8am-6pm every Thursday because for some reason I shouldn’t be in my room at all that day of the week (maybe that has something to do with the questionable Asian man who is living in my suite). Screw it, maybe the Asian man in my suite makes the best sushi this side of the Mississippi. And finally, I believe that this blog entry needs to end soon, because I’ve got a new hot co-worker from my part of the country to think about, and he needs my help with something.

Play on Playas

~ Pooks

Disc Jockey?? Really I had no Clue!

With local radio stations constantly playing the same top 10 songs every week, I’ve grown slightly bored, and that’s an understatement, with listening to the radio itself. I just can’t do it anymore. If I have to listen to “Like a G6” or “Forget You” one more time I will personally punt the DJ and good luck to him because I have bad aim. There’s no telling where my foots apt to end up. Sorry it had to come out eventually. There’s no talent involved in playing the top songs over and over again.

What ever happened to the great disc jockeys of the world. You know who I’m talking about. The guys or girls that thrived of their passion for music. The people who made it their responsibility to put a new twist on the music scene each and every week. The people who went out and found new bands to put on the radio, or who gave us a few flashbacks into the groovin’ 70’s or the rock anthem 80’s. Bring me back the people who introduced us to the bands we’ve come to love. Now, the actual DJ’s, the one’s who are actually able to surprise me with what they decide to play, the ones who make me want to get out of my car and start dancing, where are they? Are their any left, or have they all fallen with the rise of the 21st century? To my surprise, no they have not!

Their are still a few talented people left in this world. You know the Friday night radio stations, the ones where your guaranteed to hear a new mix? Well that’s where they’ve gone. They’ve found their tiny slot in the radio world. You know what I say though, why do we only get to listen to good music on Friday nights? Why can’t the radio put these guys on the radio any other time? They need to put these people, who we want to hear, on the air and stop trying to maximize their profit by prerecording all of their shows. I went to a concert the other night and had more fun listening to the random songs the DJ played before the show then I did listening to one of the opening acts. That’s sad seeing as I love live music. Give me a flashback please!! I want to go back to the days where the music scene was full of people who wanted to put amazing music out into the public. Is that really too much to ask? Do I really have to get all of my good music from the Tuesday night airing of GLEE??

Things Worth Listening To:

1) Adele (anything by this amazing Brit is worth listening to)

2) Glee Cast Music (they put a spin on popular songs in the media by actually having talent)

3) Anything that touches your soul…It’s not worth listening to if it doesn’t evoke some emotion

My pick of the week “Somewhere Only We Know” Glee Cast (The Warblers).

Double Standards

1) When a girl talks about sex she’s a whore or a “horndog”, but if a guy doesn’t talk about sex he’s weird (or gay).

2) If a girl knows what she wants and has a high power job she’s a bitch, but guys are just considered powerful and respected.

3) When a sixteen year old girl gets knocked up in high school she’s promiscuous, yet no one ever looks down at the boy, he just had sex.

4) Girls can’t dress promiscuously or show too much cleavage, but guys wear their pants down to their ankles.

5) A girl sleeps with 10 guys she’s a slut, but a guy sleeps with 15 girls and he gets a high five for it or a pat on the back for his triumph.

6) Mom’s that work outside the home are thought to be neglecting their children, but most fathers throughout time have left their kids during the day to go to work.

7) Women who marry for money are gold diggers, but you don’t hear about a lot of men who are frowned at for marrying rich women.

8) Women are expected to take on most of the responsibilities of the household even though most women work outside of the home now.

9) It’s the 21st century and women still make less money for doing the same job as men.

10) When women ask their spouse or boyfriend where they are or what they are doing they are clingy, but when a man does it he is just being protective.

Senioritis!!!

Senioritis- a serious condition in which high school students, seniors in particular, become crazed with spring fever awaiting the arrival of graduation (warning: some may develop this condition at the beginning of senior year or even the end of junior year).

I have three more months to go before graduation and I’m not sure if I can take it anymore. Senioritis has kicked in hard core and I can’t even think about doing work at this point. All I can think about is May 27th, my last day of high school ever. I wish it was here already so I could be done with high school drama (senior year = too much drama) and move on to bigger and greener pastures. College can’t come soon enough!

P.S. To all of the colleges who still haven’t sent me acceptance letters (you know who you are, all 5 of you), can you please get on that so I know where I’m going next year, because that would be great. Thanks I’m still waiting!

 

Europe!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I leave for Europe in 3 days, count them three days and I still can’t believe it. I leave on Thursday and will spend ten amazing days in London, Paris, and Barcelona. Two years ago when I signed up for this school affiliated trip I never envisioned what it would actually be like. Now that my departure date is fast approaching I’m filled will anticipation. I feel like a little kid waiting for Christmas morning to finally arrive. I can’t wait to travel through Europe with some of my closest friends. I know this will be a trip I’ll never forget for the rest of my life.

Now this blog wouldn’t be mine unless I told you that I was also freaking out about the trip. You know how I told you it was three days away? Well, I still haven’t packed (note to self: might wanna get on that) and I have a million other things to do before I leave. My mom has it in her head that I need to get a prom dress before I leave because quote, “The dress won’t come in on time if you order it to late”, late being in a week or two. Along with worrying what I have to do before the trip, I’m also freaking out about the trip itself. I hate, let me say it again HATE flying. It freaks me out no matter what anyone tells me. I know that flying is safer then driving in a car, but I also know that I’m normally the one driving the car and if the weathers bad outside it won’t feel like I’m on a roller-coaster. Turbulence…my biggest nightmare. I hate the feeling of my stomach lurching into my chest, in case anyone forgot that is not where your stomach is supposed to be. And finally I just found out that the plane we’re taking, the plane that I will be on for 8 long hours, got a D- rating on the website I just viewed. I’m truly scared.

Now I understand that we couldn’t get the most luxurious plane, but I am very particular while flying and I don’t feel like being miserable the whole time. I like to stay hydrated, so those flight attendants better be ready and I like a little leg room. I also cannot get overheated so the fan has to be blowing on me the whole time. I’ve gotten prepared I have my yoga pants, a comfortable shirt, and my Uggs. I’m prepared to fall fast asleep on the plane. For Christmas my mom got me a blanket, eye cover, blow up pillow set for the plane and I am ready to go.

Now, the other problem, the hotel. What are the hotels like in Europe? I guess I’m just scared about the unexpected. The unknown. I’ve seen pictures of two of the three hotels. The hotel in London is brand spanking new and looks great. I can’t wait to sleep in the comfortable looking bed. On the other hand the hotel in Paris looked, “quaint, and by quaint I mean dumpy”. I haven’t seen the third hotel and I’m nervous. Even though I’m nervous about the trip I know I’ll have a great time. I can’t wait to go! Eiffel Tower here I come!