i have to write a 15 page screenplay this semester. my 3 acts are due tomorrow morning. i waited for this class for so long and now i have no idea what to write.

my professor is the sweetest man i've ever met. it's his last year of teaching and i can tell he wants to pull some Dead Poets Society shit. he sends us e-mails everyday, telling us that creativity is not as easy as math. get rest, life is more enjoyable. be patient with yourself. he gets tears in his eyes every week because he tells us all about his past and his loneliness as he grows older. it's sobering and it's weird because i want to make him proud but know i will probably throw together an alien B-movie horror script so i can scrape by with a C.

i've been living nervously, but happily. it's almost a year with my boyfriend. he wouldn't mind me writing about him but keeping with my old paranoid songmeanings tradition, i'll call him J.

we live together, we do almost everything together. split the rent right down the middle. go to fort fisher in the morning and stare down sand crab holes. take shot for shot til we fall asleep on the floor with all the lights on.

we've been through a lot together, he's been through more alone. i've had to deal with police knocks on my door, trips to the courthouse, giving him rides to weekly meetings. i don't know if he's getting better, but if he does i'll be there. everyone tells me i'm so good for helping him, for standing by him and that i'll make him a better man. that's not what i'm trying to do, i'm not one for fixing. i get off track a lot but i'm happy, i'm happy waiting for it all to pass. 

I don't see my friends much anymore, i moved to the other beach, but they still keep my heart full. I'm still inspired by the same things--the east coast sunrise, broken windowed neon lights, long walks at night where i probably shouldn't be walking. smoke from cigarettes I shouldn't be smoking. eccentric gibberish from my dad who can't really talk anymore. the first burn of coffee on my tongue because I'm always too impatient to wait. I still romanticize everything and like K says, it will be my downfall. it has been since I was young.

i'm scared that as i'm getting older i'm getting more dependent on medication, on chemicals. i don't see my family as much as i want to, and when i do i wonder if i should even be there. i want to take trips, but i'm scared i'm wasting my time at a restaurant job so i can pay bills. letting older men speak down to me because i didn't bring their bread out fast enough, letting people who pay me take advantage of me because i'm a broke student. i haven't read vonnegut in a while but still i know, so it goes.

even this post is a form of procrastination, but i know that i need to write my consciousness to clear my head. a bunch of superficial lines about my life, like i'm talking to the former me sitting in my room blowing smoke out the window after school. two years later my mom admitted to me that she always knew what i was doing up there and just wanted to leave me be.

i'm excited to get out of this town after 5 years here, but J is on probation for 2. i can wait. but everyday i feel the itch of where i'm gonna end up, much like the high school me dreaming about the beach. and i wonder if my whole life will be spent trying to be somewhere else, getting tired, and going. I'm ok with it.

i'll post an update on my screenplay. it'll probably be about aliens.

i still get high and think things like

the death of me will probably start early and melodramatically, probably too much coffee and cigarettes. like the title of some emo song i'd probably listen to in 2006. holy shit. i'm trying to forget my tendency to start every sentence with "and" and instead i'm puking "probablys." like i probably fell in love but then i'm probably trippin over kind eyes and long spent nights. i'm heating up thinking about you but not the way you move more like the way you always know what to say and how it's getting kinda creepy kinda like the way i want you to need me

probably the bong hit but thinking too much about you i'm gonna be sick

((hot ass beat clap))

drinking from plastic cups

in the backyard tall grass

noon or half past dusk.

back against the kitchen wall

counting the exits:

only the kitchen door

and his arm is across it.

he thinks you fuck him

because you miss your dad

he blows vapor and tells his brothers

trust, its the best issue a girl could have.

this week i found out my grandfather was dying while i was buying adderall from a boy with an air mattress in his living room. i said “just one more,” to cope with the stress. to cope with the morning. my family says pray, pray, pray, for more days but i only ever kneeled on the pew with one eye open. i never learned to let faith manifest.

when i was 15 i never thought i’d make it to 20. but here i am, my heart not an ounce as heavy. while he lays in a Boston hospital bed with nowhere left to go, i am laying under the southern October sun, full of possibility.

so far, i’ve only cried for minutes until i forced my eyes shut. i’m scared because i don’t know if i feel numb or if it’s a sense of relief that he knows where he’s going. 88 years old with a wife who left you years behind- if what he believes is right, he’s going to Paradise. a legion in the sky with war buddies and a wife who never stops dancing. a wife who remembers his name again.

i can’t imagine loving someone so much. so much that you look forward to the dark for another chance. i can’t imagine going out cold and easy. but i’m 20 with a chemical heart beating beating beating at least until i feel the desert heat again.

your inability to achieve solitude makes you settle for substandard relationships.

you don't believe magic is possible in lives lived within traditional boundaries.

you pretend to be more eccentric than you actually are because you worry you are an interchangeable cog.

you mistake motion for growth and are lured into vexing situations.

you still don't know what you do well.

you willfully ignore the small, gentle observations in life which you know are the most important.

your fear of change is too clearly visible in your eyes.

you are wasting your youth, your time, and your money because you won't acknowledge your shortcomings.

you worry that if you lower your guard, even for one second, your whole world will disintegrate into chaos.

you are dazed by the ease with which obliteration can be obtained.

you feel you have more memories than you have energy to process those memories.

'where are you?' calls when i’m 20 minutes out the sun is orange no red burning into my arm out the window and I just got done shaking in a mcdonalds bathroom splashing water trying to remember where I’m going and why and I tend to forget I’m young I have soft bones and milk skin but I think i know what your mother means when she says it’s been too long when she says time passes when she shakes her head and smiles to ward off the reaper. take your time you have tomorrow they all say but my heart beats too fast for me to sleep. it works harder than it needs to I think to make up for my lack of productivity reminding me that I’m here with soft bones and milk skin and a shiny new throb inside of me. I know some people get more done before I even wake up more than I get done in a day but at dawn I smell the firesmoke and remember I have places places places to go it’s all okay because I have time and even if I don’t if it runs out - it’s okay so I start being brave and stop staring at the ceiling until I’m seeing my future in the plaster and start telling people what they mean to me faster before I gracefully remove myself because it’s exhausting to be anything but a phone call whispering sweet words and memories of dusk in the dunes drinking tacate and building people out of sand until the tide comes in and pulls them back to sea

don’t worry about me

i'm reading Big Sur to remember you and maybe a piece of who i used to be. you asked me to turn around, but the summer already has its noises in my ears and the sun already made her mark on my back. i know i stayed a little too long.

i smoke brick weed and feel so high school. you hit the bong in your rich aunt's beach house. i got kicked out of my summer classes and you're going up the mountain for yours. six short months and i'll be back with friends, midnight on the atlantic with our 40s and no shoes. waking up to go to class with a headache for the commute. and you'll be in another continent reading Big Sur in the tall grass, for the second time. you'll meet a girl on a sailboat, tattoo for every border she crossed and freckled by the sun. you'll tell her all about how you think Kerouac would be really boring to talk to but agree with whatever she thinks in the end. i'll be happy and i won't miss it.

the sea has its waves, the man has his fireside, period

sunrise, sunset. like a bright eyes song that hasn't left my mind since middle school. you smoke a cigarette on the back porch, i stare at the sun.

we rode our bikes to the end of the island and jumped the "no trespassing" sign into the dunes to drink our beers. i laughed because there were only two birds on Bird Island.

the sun was high and so were we. we kissed in the ocean. i got nervous about what the water held and let the waves crash over me to separate us.

i could've stayed longer. i miss the house, i miss the town, i miss the beach. i miss your stories and your laugh but i don't miss your kisses, the hesitant intimacy.

i keep wondering how i can love someone, but never unconditionally.

i logged into my old songmeanings account, and oh my god. i'm half drunk and on the verge of tears. i was so much better at writing about my life back then. i was so naive. i was so excited for the future. i wrote about my dad when my mother had a protective order against him, about how he came over and cried every night, begging to come back. he eventually did and things got better. this stuff seems so small now, but back when i was 14 i was doing exactly what i am now: sitting at the computer, trembling. i would have never expected that my dad would be how he is now, barely able to talk after a major stroke. those problems are long gone but replaced. things change, so fast, but you gotta adapt adapt adapt. i guess.

i don't have many of the friends i used to write about anymore. but as i read on, i realized that i have become the person i want to be for the most part. i used to dream of an exciting life, having the courage to do what i want, and that's what i have now. it's just so fucking bizarre, reading my old thoughts like that. i was so fucking young and full of passion. i still have my love of adventure and now i'm wild eyed and almost fearless, but where is my passion? 

i'm just in a really weird place right now. it's not bad, but everything around me feels so surreal. i'm in the house i grew up in, the room i spent my childhood in, but i'm such a different person. i have so many more experiences but right now i just feel like that same dumb kid, dreaming of something more. but what even? i don't know. i'm listening to weatherbox and i've got all the love in the world.

i'm falling for him. hard. and it scares me because he's not like any boy i've ever been with. he treats me better than anyone has and i always want to see him. i'm scared of giving my all to someone because all i've ever been is hurt, and i know it's foolish to sway from what you want in fear of what's happened in the past, but i'm just scared. when it comes to love i'm a child. i don't know, i just hope he stays because i plan on hanging around for a long time.

this website is a lot different from 2008. i was a pretty avid member back then, but i'm five years older and needed a less embarrassing username and clean slate. i always used this website as a way to write and remain fairly anonymous from people in my life. tonight i got a weird motivation to go back at it and start writing about my life again, somewhere i can safely look back on it and cringe. this entry will be pretty scattered because this is overdue. my mind is scattered, and not necessarily in a bad way. i just want to remember how i'm feeling now, i guess. you know, i apologize for the lack of artistry in this post. it's all biographical and boring, but i guess i can't yet expect much from this long lost drive i've finally found.

i'm listening to twiabp and feeling pretty bizarre, tweaked out on coffee at 2 am. sorry. i stopped smoking weed and i feel great. i don't even miss it. i honestly loved it, and sometimes i'll smell it and feel a little nostalgic but not too much. i think i just miss the novelty. fat smokes and funny jokes with my friends, driving around, getting stoned alone in my room and listening to music. every once in a while it made me feel perfect; but as for everyday use, it's not for me. i learned the hard way and now i just need it out of my life for a while. i'm staying away from it for now, away from anxiety medication, and adderall. i go back to school in august and it'll probably get hard, but i have other vices to get me through.

 i have a boyfriend now, and it's funny, because he is almost exactly what the 9th grade me writing in a songmeanings journal in 2008 would have wanted (except with a better music taste). he's tall, long hair, a great musician. he plays me neutral milk hotel songs and sings me the bayside cover of "megan". how perfectly cliché is that? he's not like any boy i've ever had. he doesn't leave the morning after with just a little meaningless conversation. he kisses me with my sleepy eyes and morning breath, leaves for work, but comes back to me in the same way. he's so talented, definitely too good for me and i'm sure someday he'll realize that, but i'm happy now. he understands me because he has the same troubles and more, and i just want to make him feel good.

i start my second year of college next month. in the middle of august, i go back to that beach town i've always loved. i go back to the roommates i love and hate, the awful parties we always find ourselves at, and lots of bad, cheap food. my boy will be able to visit me more and i can't wait. i've probably fucked myself over in the film major, and i have no idea what else i want to do with my life, but i'm sure i can figure it out. i won't let the pillars in my mind crumble like last year. i'm rebuilt, strong sturdy and clear headed. i'll get my shit together someday, right? 

maybe