A Fine Day of Fine Things

A couple incredibly wonderful things about my day:

— Today I sat down in a Starbucks, listened to the song “Yer Spring” by Hey Rosetta! for five hours on repeat, and finish my screenplay that I’ve been working on for two years now. I mean, it’s far from being done. I need to go back and write those three or four scenes that I said “Meh, I’ll come back and write these later” because I was too lazy at the time. After that, I’m gonna have a friend take a look at the whole thing, and once I get her feedback I’m gonna delve in. There are over 200 pages, which is far too long for a movie (or, at least, this kind of movie) so many cuts are going to have to be made, probably a plot point or two as well. Shitty dialogue is going to have to be rewritten, shitty characters are going to have to be reconfigured, and shitty plot lines are either going to have to be rethoughtout or dropped entirely. Even still, keeping all this mind, I still could not stop myself from shaking as I stared at my computer screen after I had typed the last words of my screenplay. It’s so close, guys. My baby’s almost complete.

— Martin and I watched last week’s and then this week’s episode of Breaking Bad while eating pizza and cookie dough. It was kind of perfect and an accumulation of everything summer should be (all we were missing was alcohol).

— I went on a 10:30pm run. After my run, I wrote this email to Tom Wilson (Biff of Back to the Future fame):

So, I hate running, but for some reason I agreed to do a 5K with a friend at the end of this upcoming September (I’m certain I agreed under the pretense of thinking how cool it would be to say I had run a 5K). Precisely ten minutes after agreeing to do said 5K I realized “Oh hell, this means I actually have to start running to prep” which is basically what I’ve been doing ever since. Let me tell you, I don’t think running would be half as bearable if it weren’t for your podcast, good sir. Your stories and interviews keep a smile on my face the entire time I run. The longer episodes are perfect because not only do they last through my entire run, but by the time I get home I still have some podcast left over to listen to as I lie sprawled out on the floor feeling like a truck ran over my legs. So thank you. I honestly never thought I’d be running at midnight contemplating how the pepper spray my roommate forced me to take looks a lot like a tiny dildo as a homeless man waves at me on a bike whilst listening to you serenade me about homonyms, but life is full of funny scenarios like that. Your podcast is a delight. Keep up the amazing work!

Yup. A great day. Here’s what the next couple days have in store:

• Monday: Early morning breakfast with Valerie and her family and then photo shoots with Kaylyn and company
• Tuesday: Writing group meeting! At last!
• Wednesday: Muppet viewing party with Beckah

surrogate siblings.

It’s silly to get so overtly excited about someone telling me that I’m like a little sister to him. It really is, but at the same time it’s something I’ve always longed to hear. I love the idea of two people feeling as though they are related; that they feel comfortable enough to adopt the roles a normal pair of relatives would take on. I find it positively charming.

I’m glad I finally have an older brother-type figure in my life. I think I could use one.

Thankful for Friends, Muppets, and a Huge Pile of Socks

In the past I’ve gone on and on and on and on about my love of Muppet fans, so by now it should be well known that my love for this fan community is ginormous. Muppet fans surpass all other fans, which I doubt the world will ever truly recognize. They are considerate, loving, silly, hilarious, understanding, and wonderful. Because the source of their obsession (Muppets/Sesame/Fraggles) promotes love and compassion and unity, it is in turn what the fans practice on a day-to-day basis, making them some of the most genuine people you will ever meet. They are, indeed, all around wonderful.

But today, let’s cut the schmaltz and just say it.

I fucking love my Muppet friends.

I’m not a speechless person. Well, okay, in person I tend to be tongue tied and quiet and incredibly awkward, but in writing I never have any problem expressing my thoughts and feelings; however, when it comes to my friends from Tough Pigs, along with my several Muppety friends from Muppet Central and Tumblr… I’m just speechless. I truly don’t even know how to begin to express my gratitude and love for this amazing group of people.

This last month’s been kind of rough on me. I moved into a new apartment for the first time without my roommate of the last four years, I sent my cat 200+  miles away to go live with my dad (don’t laugh, I miss her), I got to deal with my first ever issue of identity fraud, and I had to say goodbye to many a graduated friend. Most of all, my best friend on this planet moved away to Spain, which has brought me incredibly down in mood as of late. I’ve gone through a lot of change, and change is always a really scary thing for me, so I’ve been, frankly, very sad recently. Sad and lonely. I keep most of that in, but it’s been something that’s been persistently there. It’ll get better soon, this I know, but for the time being it’s hard to not be consistently bummed out.

Then you guys swoop in a pull a stunt like this.

When the first package came in the mail several weeks back, I was bewildered. It resulted in me screaming “HOW DID JUSTIN GET MY NEW MAILING ADDRESS???” and flailing about my apartment in confusion. It wasn’t until I got Carolyn’s package next that I began to understand what was going on and how this was all possible, and instantly began to cry. No group of friends has ever done something like this for me, which is why it so truly touched my heart. While the rest of the world may see this whole process as me receiving packages of socks, I see it as a gesture of great kindness and friendship. Of course, upon receiving these packages I remembered making an off hand comment once a couple months ago about how I never get socks for Christmas or birthdays, and when I wrote it on the forums I really thought nothing of it. Then one of you (you know who you are, you amazing, wonderful person) put this together for me, and it just… honestly, I’m teary just writing this. I feel absurd getting overtly emotional, but I truly cannot help myself. This is the nicest thing a group of people has ever done for me.

Here’s a picture of me sitting with all my booty while trying to convey my immense amount of gratitude in my facial region:

I was talking to Justin (Tonglet) over IM when this all first started happening, and I wrote to him, “Ugh. You all are such stellar people. I can’t even handle it.” I really can’t begin to describe how truly lucky I feel having you all in my life.

I was on Muppet Central for about a year, and while I did take away some friends from the site (whom I adore very much), MC Forums was, to me, lacking in the camaraderie department and seemed to spark one too many arguments amongst the users for my personal liking. So I took a deep breath and made the switch to Tough Pigs. When I first joined up with Tough Pigs back in December I was beyond intimidated. I mean, it took me forever to understand the format of Delphi (curse you, Delphi!!!), and secondly, here was this amazing group of people with all these inside jokes who had known each other for years. How was I gonna fit in? Me, who’s not witty or punny. Who isn’t brave or outgoing. How was I gonna remember all these names and keep up? How was anyone ever gonna notice shy, awkward me? And yet, somehow, you invited me into the family with open arms and made me one of your own. I remember in the first week someone told me “You’re gonna fit in just fine” and how I swelled with pride at this notion. I’ve always felt out of place in this world. I haven’t felt part of an actual group since middle school. Since then, while I’ve always had my closes friends and been part of quiet a few groups, I’ve just felt like I’ve been drifting from group to group, never having one to truly plant my feet in. You guys, though. With you guys I feel like I’m one of you. You guys have taken this year and turned it on its head. I can’t even fathom not being on Tough Pigs eight months ago; that’s such a foreign concept to me now.

And what a year its been. I’ve met up with Carolyn twice (for Muppets and puppets!), I’ve had many a pleasant chat with the majority of you, I’ve gained a drunk texting bud (Dosierrrr), plans of visiting one of you for a Disneyland trip were discussed a while back (and should be discussed again sometime in the near future), I’ve geeked out over TV and movies with you all, I’ve been introduced to new bands and music, and I even got to write a Tough Pigs article of my very own (with another on the way). And then there were the socks. All thirty-one pairs of them. Not to mention some other fabulous gifts… Gah. You guys.

The most frustrating part of all this is that I can’t come up with any way for you all to know the depths of my gratitude. All I can really do is say thank you. So.

Thank you.

Thank you from the bottom of my heart. Thank you all for being so wonderful, so ingenious, so insightful, so amazing. Thank you for giving me a reason to smile pretty much everyday. Thank you for being silly, crazy, funny, random, witty, punny, and fucking incredible. Thank you all for being such wonderful friends and such stellar people. Thank you to everyone who sent me something in the mail. Thank you to everyone who sent me something in the mail that never reached me (I’m still greatly moved). Special thanks to Martha, who I know is the true master mind behind all of this. And not just thank you to the people who participated in my birthday surprise. Thank you to all my wonderful friends that I’ve made through our similar Muppet adoration; whether we met through Tough Pigs, Tumblr, MC Forums, Twitter, Facebook, whatever. What started as a mutual love for a fandom has grown into something far more precious and much more important. I so look forward to the many years to come with you all in my life, hopefully getting the chance to meet up with most of you, and please always know just how much I treasure you as people, comrades, and friends. Thank you, thank you, thank you all.

And trust me when I say, from now on, I’ll be careful what I wish for.

a life without you is no life at all.

Four o’clock in the morning.
Right hand grasping
a bottle of Crown Royal Whiskey.
Left hand grasping
yours.
Mouths left grasping
for something of substance to speak upon
to cease the silence that fills your old car
like a plague overtaking a village.

The air is filled with meaningless banter
about blood on ceilings
and sister’s new apartments,
all the while subtext
clings to our words like our grasped hands
cling to one another.

Don’t leave me.
I’m scared.
Don’t you know what you’ve come to mean?
Don’t you know what you are to me?
How am I to cope without you?

It’s scary to realize someone’s become your world
only once you’ve had to let them go.

No more midnight trips to Shari’s,
or drunken Thursdays walking hard.
No more delicately deliberating where to eat,
because I no longer have to see wheat as an issue.
Road trips, bar hopping, spring breaks,
all must come to an end,
just like everything else in life.

Change is a scary beast,
and this change we face is a motherfucking monster.

And as we hugged one final time,
until who knows when or where,
upon green carpets and surrounded by hundreds of people,
I whispered words of encouragement into your ear.
A part of me took pleasure in knowing
I was the last goodbye.
I promised you friendships and adventures
and memories,
so many memories,
all waiting for you once your final plane lands.
I would always be there for you,
I told you through a choked back cry,
even if I wasn’t present.

Then you cried.
You’ve never cried.
Not in front of me.
That scared me more than it should.

And then we waved and walked
and you were gone.
Vanished.
Just another memory.
One of the most important memories I’ll ever hold.

What now?
What now?
What now?

Jesus. I miss you already.

the four year roommate.

Walking through the unfamiliar terrain
that I will soon call home
drives a knife of fear into my feeble heart.
I have never been without you,
and by never I mean since we first
arrived in this tiny land.
A land of ash.
A land of Bards and fairy wings.
A land of delicious possibilities.

How am I supposed to inhabit this new place
without your curious sense of humor?
How am I supposed to survive
without the chore of nagging you
to buy more milk?
How am I supposed to cope
without my panda?

We’ve grown distant,
what with your life taken over by the Boy
and progress in your craft of building tables and stairs,
and my life taken over by the sheer lack of boys
and abundance of homework and life and stress and whatnot,
but that changes nothing.

I still count you as one of the greats.

You made me strong.
You held my hand as we departed,
merely children,
some odd years ago,
and now you, my source of strength, is
flying away to find a new home.
A bigger and brighter home.
A home you truly deserve.

I wish you the most extravagant happiness
that anyone could ever possibly gain,
because even though I’ll miss you
with all of my heart’s strength,
that is all I want for you.

To be happy.
To be healthy.

To flourish.

To live.

Remembering Past Friendships

Today this quote graced my tumblr dash and it got me to thinking:

“I never had any friends later on like the ones I had when I was twelve. Jesus, does anyone?”

It’s from the movie Stand By Me, which happened to be a constant in my life when I was twelve (and is probably the sole reason I started using profanity in the eighth grade). My friends and I watched that film repeatedly, each of us claiming which boy we were in love with, which caused a bit of squabbling. This quote, however, bears so much truth with it. In my current place in life I’ve got some really great friends. Best friends. Friends I wouldn’t replace for anything in the world… but I can’t help but to compare my friendships at twenty-one to the friendships I had when I was twelve. Back then I was literally inseparable from my closest friends. The five of us did everything together. Every other weekend was a sleepover. We went to the mall, we went and saw movies, we went roller skating, we made (shitty) home films, we hung out together at recess, and so on. All four of them were there for me when my mom died, and they kept me strong in my toughest hours. I told every little thing to these girls. Nothing was kept secret; nothing kept inside. Nowadays I find that there are certain things I don’t share with even my best of friends, but back then? It was never an issue. Maybe it’s because I didn’t really have much to hide back then, but I was so much more open and carefree about everything, probably because I knew there was no one I could trust more than those four girls.

I have so many memories. Trudging through the park filming Survival Pair 2: What If? Reading smutty fanfiction on my parent’s computer while they were out running errands. Hour long phone conversations. Playing the card game War all afternoon. Squabbling over which Sailor Moon characters we’d be. Coming up with code names for the boys we liked. Playing dress up and ponies. Putting movies on mute and talking for the characters (Agent Toast lives on). Trying to learn how to properly apply make up. Writing terrible, horrible fanfiction we were convinced was fantastic. Playing Barbies, even though we were at an age when we should have outgrown Barbies. Getting lost in sleeping bags. That game we played at recess with the rings. Seeing Return of the King opening day. Tickle Monster. Outlaw Star. Huggy tag. Wild Woman. Prank phone calls. Mad libs.

Those were some really fucking good times.

And it’s not to say that I don’t have good times now. The relationships and friendships I hold nowadays are much more mature, not to mention wonderful. My friends are the most important thing to me on this planet, each and everyone one of them.

And maybe I’m just getting old, which is making me – in turn – sentimental. All I know is nothing will replace swapping the eleven page roleplay with Jenna Saadeh during classes, freaking out when a bear started to charge in the deer hunting game Laura Bond owned, killing time during races at swim competitions with Stella Cheng, or staying up till the wee hours in the morning playing Nancy Drew video games with Aileen Sheedy.

These were the four girls that shaped my childhood; who made me who I am today. It’s sad to say that times change and people drift. I’m still friends with all of them, for certain, but it has been a while. While I’m still in touch with some more than others (Aileen and I still have sleepovers and play Nancy Drew video games), it’s been a long while since the gang’s reunited.

Which is a shame, because there are so many wonderful memories we have together:

Laura (top far left), Stella (third from top far left), Jenna (below Stella), and myself (the kid who is SO WHITE that it looks like her hair and her face are one… actually it doesn’t even look like I have a face)

Goddamn. Jacob Haas was tall.

We all have grown up and gone our separate ways, but I’ll never forget and I will always cherish the summers, weekends, trips, recesses, and sleepovers I shared with these four amazing girls from the fourth to the eighth grade.

Goddamn.

Those were the days.

“People say friends don’t destroy one another; what do they know about friends?”

Last week a friend expressed to me how I don’t really seem to open up around her. This is something I’ve noticed about myself quite a lot in the last couple years. Compared to how I was in high school, and middle school even, I never really seem to open up and express my inner workings with my friends. This has baffled me for a while as to why this is the case when it comes to me, but more recently, after putting a lot of thought into the problem, I think I’ve come up with the root of why I’ve been withdrawing so much of my emotion over the years and only being able to truly express my feelings through the internet/poetry.

It’s my friends.

No, okay, let me restate that. It’s not all of my friends, and I don’t want to go pointing any fingers. It’s just… I’ve noticed, lately, that most of the people I claim to be closest with are the ones I don’t open up to, and I know the reasons why. Today I had lunch with a friend who always goes on and on about things going on in her, but when I opened up about one thing that I’ve been holding onto she changed the subject back to herself within a minute. I have another friend who, quite literally, never asks me how my day is going, even though I always ask her about her day. One of my closest friends throughout my college life, whenever I try to engage her in talk, constantly changes the subject and acts like she doesn’t care. Another friend doesn’t seem interested in talking with me unless she’s in desperate need to talk to someone. And the list goes on.

Now, I love all these people and I’m glad I have them in my life, but I’m so confused. Why does it seem that I’m the only good listener that I know? How come my friends are allowed to continuously talk about themselves, but never inquire about me? Is that selfish to ask? Is it wrong to want someone to ask me how my day is going or about developments in my life? And when I do decide to share, why does everyone suddenly act as if they don’t care?

There’s a guy I like, who I’ve alluded to in the past on my wordpress, and the whole situation is complicated and I haven’t told many people about him. I’ve opened up three times to three of my closest friends. I went in hoping for advice, and all of them shut the conversation down right away. It had nothing to do with the guy or the goings on between us; they just changed the subject.

I think this is a big factor into why I have such a hard time opening up nowadays. I feel like people don’t care when I do. I find myself opening up to people to be this big, huge gesture, but whenever I do the person on the receiving end acts as if they couldn’t care less. And this hurts. This hurts a goddamn lot, and it’s why I’ve turned to writing up blog entries on my tumblr and wordpress, because there’s a much more likely chance of reaching out to someone who cares on there then anyone I talk to in person.

And obviously this it not directed at all of my friends. I can think of a good number of people who do give a shit about what I have to say, and I honestly don’t know why I don’t’ reach out to them more often. And maybe this is a sign that I should start sticking up for myself more often. Maybe make it more known to friends that it is important that one sided relationships don’t exist.

I just feel tired of being treated like a waste basket, with people constantly dumping their problems and worries on me. I would like to have human connections, repeatedly and as often as possible with everyone I know.

Is that too much to ask for?