here’s to summer.

Sometimes the simplest things can make a day complete. Sleeping in until ten o’clock. Lazing around with a friend and discussing the importance of strong fictional women. Eating part of a pint of vanilla and then swapping for a pint of Rocky Road with said friend. Watching countless hours of television surrounding frogs and dogs and bears and chickens and a whatever and a whole slew of musical numbers from the 70’s. An email of wonderful possibilities. A letter from a best friend in a foreign land. Blasting Tenacious D and dancing around in nothing but underwear.

This is what summer’s all about, folks. This is what being twentysomething should always be like. These are the days I live for. Friendship, food, Muppets, and fun. What more can a girl ask for?

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.

lonely in a land of ash.

My best friend is on the other side of the planet. My ex-roommate and a handful of other friends are now moved away. My current roommate never comes out of her room. My cat’s gone to live in Portland. I’ve fallen out of contact with the majority of friends who still are here. It suddenly feels like everyone in my life has slipped away and left me.

This tiny town has never felt so big.

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.

a trying twelve hours.

I’ve had a real shit week. It started out on a stressful note, what with finals and all, and I spent the last couple days reflecting heavily on all my past relationships, so needless to say, I’ve been feeling really down. But finals ended yesterday and I started watching Breaking Bad, and finally all seemed right with the world. I neglected, however, to realize that the two most stressful things happening in my life are far from over.

1. Moving into a new apartment

2. Saying goodbye to graduating friends

I got plenty emotional last night about the latter, seeing as my best friend gave a speech at our improv party about how much he was going to miss us all and I, quite literally, ran out of the room crying. I cried two other times in that same night as well, while still at the party. I’m fairly convinced I’m the reason the party took such a depressing turn because, shit, it seemed like no one had a good time last night… well, maybe that’s because I was sad, so my sad goggles made it seem like everyone was one the same playing field as me. (Also, fuck, deciding to rewatch the jail scene from Clerks II was an awful life decision. Tears.)

Then this morning I dealt with the prior reason. Moving has taught me an important lesson: always mark your boxes. I spent fifteen minutes this morning trying to find my hairbrush in my millions of boxes, and I eventually gave up and started sobbing because, fuck, I still have no idea where I put it. I then took a shower, in which these words were spoken to my new shower head: “Oh man. We are so not going to be friends.” After my shower, I fixed myself a bowl of Fruity Pebbles cereal, sat on my mattress in the middle of my room, surrounded by my millions of boxes, and cried. I felt so alone at that particular moment, and it’s not because I’m not excited to be living with Rachel, because I am, it’s just… I’ve never lived anywhere in college without Amanda. And I miss having Ryan across the hall, randomly making up songs about his day and doing Batman impressions. And I miss my cat, the bitch that she is.

The day got considerably better, seeing as Nick and I got to hang out for a bit and I had a fun afternoon babysitting Warren again. And now I’m at work watching more Breaking Bad. So, for the time being, peace has been restored.

The moving stress should go away within the next couple days. Once I get settled down in the new place and actually get my junk unpacked, the apartment will feel much more like a home… but goddamn, there are so many goodbyes coming up soon. I foresee many more tears in the next two weeks. So I’m apologizing, right now, to everyone who’ll be in my close vicinity for the rest of June. Hopefully I won’t be too much of an emotional wreck.

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.

lack of motivation.

The last half of spring term is the time of year where I am notoriously at my laziest. I’m at that point in the school year where I can almost taste the freedom summer brings about, and I become lazy in every aspect of my life. This is why I’ve been lacking in updates recently. I just can’t seem to find the motivation to write.

My goal of summer is to try to update once a day, so hopefully that endeavor will go well.

In other news.

Lessons learned from today:

• It’s good to be supportive of friends, even when it seems difficult
• Always back up your files before you bring your laptop in to get fixed. ALWAYS.
• Pinterest = where I shall plan out my future wedding and find all my future recipes from here on out
• Having amazing, awesome, wonderful friends makes life so much better (that means you, Beth, and your silly boyfriend too)
• I should always have my phone on me, because when I don’t I miss text messages from certain people and get all sad
• Homework is impossible to accomplish while Arrested Development exists on Netflix instant watch
• Not living close to work really sucks when I am bike-less and can’t get a hold of my roomamte

el fin.

finding hope in a shaken day.

Some people might’ve noticed a trend in my Facebook statuses and tweets today. Here are a couple examples of what they entailed:

–*-

“I can’t reiterate how beautiful and wonderful life is, & I hope that a friend of mine realizes that today instead of doing something drastic”

“If anyone ever needs a shoulder to lean on or someone to talk to, please, never hesitate. I am a great listener and am always here for you”

“I am so goddamn relieved. Still shaken from the events of today, but very relieved”

–*-

Today a friend of mine posted on his tumblr that he was going to end his life. He had posted his phone number a couple weeks ago, so I dug through his old entries to find it. I called him up, but there was no response, so I left him a message pleading not to do what he said he was going to do. I cried and was at a loss for words, consistently apologizing to him for not knowing what to say, but still hoping I was getting the point across to him. I’ve known for a while how unhappy he is, but sometimes we’re not truly aware until something like this happens, which is extremely unfortunate.

I spent the majority of my day keeping myself busy with homework (which didn’t really work) and staying in contact with another friend of mine. Neither she nor I have ever met our troubled friend, and I’ve never met her either, but they’re both a part of my Muppet family so they matter a great deal to me.

People committing suicide is a foreign concept to me. I’ve never known anyone to actually go through with it, and I’ve never really been confronted with a person who’s expressed great interest in taking their life. I’ve gleaned things from television, books, and movies, but those aren’t real life; this was. The only real experience I have with suicide is with… well, myself. Now I’ve never done any harm to myself, readers, and I’m obviously still here, so put your mind at ease, but there was a point in my life where the thought of suicide weighed heavily on me. I was very young and had lost my mother, something no thirteen year old should ever have to go through. I never voiced this to my father or my closest friends at the time, because I was afraid of how they’d react.

That was almost nine years ago. I’ve never had a single suicidal thought since that time, but the memory of how abhorrently depressed I was still lingers in the back of my mind. It’s a scary thing to remember. Nowadays I can’t even imagine wanting to end my life. It’s not a perfect life and I do spend quite a lot of time moping/being sad/whatever, but this is my life and I only get one shot.

I found out about an hour ago that my friend is okay. He’s gonna see someone to help him through this depression, and I’m relieved beyond relieved.

After I found out his status I went on a run. I wanted to give myself a chance to work off the stress of the day, clear my head, and move on from this event. On my run I contemplated a lot of things about my life. I’ve been doing that a lot this school year. Last September I rewatched the movie Ferris Bueller, and it’s really stuck with me. Today reinforced a lot of thoughts I’ve been having since I rewatched that film last September, and it just made me ask myself the same questions I’ve been asking myself for months. Why don’t I ever skip school to have fabulous days of adventure? Why do I care so much about what others think? Why don’t I just tell the boy I like that I like him? Why do I let myself get bogged down with things that don’t matter?

Life is a beautiful, wonderful, amazing thing. It’s cliché, but it’s true. We only get one, and we should live it how we want to live it. I want to be the friend people can come to when they’re depressed. I want to write and read and love and laugh and eat and be happy. I want to find joy in everything. I want to breathe. I want to feel my heart race, but only out of excitement, not like today when I was on the phone and I felt my heart banging in my ribcage because my friend wasn’t picking up.

Life can be extraordinary, but only when we let the things that don’t matter go and start living each day as if it’s something not to be taken lightly.

Only then can life be wonderful.