Updates, Always These Days.

I don't post enough.

I've totally gotten away from the little things, the day-to-day. Now it's: "Oh, wow, I just turned 29 and only posted a few times last year! So much has happened to catch my non-existent reader base up on!"

Luckily, a non-existent reader base could care less what you write about. There is freedom in a lack of numbers.

So. Then. Today I'll write about... me. Just like always.

I moved in with El Boyfriend. And it is, in short, wonderful. Like we've always been living together, but it's all still new. (The long version shows that my commitment phobias still spring up every now and again, and that grad school keeps me so busy that sometimes I get very lonely for a bigger life that has more friends in it, and that I still freak out about money all the time, despite spending quite a bit of it on pointless things. But that's the long version.)

I hope, I think, I'll be together with him for the long run, whatever that means. It feels good. Like insert cheesy metaphor good. Something pure and epic and meaningful and fun.

I should end the post here, since we all know that short posts are the most interesting. But since 'we' is 'me', I'll let the power go to my head and scoot on.

Grad school is half over, and I am officially An Intern. I work at an elementary school and with senior citizens. I am sort of a real therapist now. Weird.

When I started this blog, I was so much less, well... settled. It was trying to cram fun in all the cracks, so as not to let anything get by. And now? I guess it's waiting to see what happens in a life already created; what spontaneity comes when it's actually spontaneous.

This morning I ate a mango over the sink. Just really went at it, with juice on my hands, no spoon. And now I'm procrastinating on starting my homework and doing paperwork. Urgh. And I have such a pining for winter to be over. I miss long, hot summer days. Mmm. And flip-flops.

Okay, fine. Time to go back to Serious Stuff.

...And sometimes they're not so bad.

So, fear & elation. The boyfriend & I are moving in together.

All these girls in my program who are engaged or married say: "You know when it's the one, without question. If you have doubts, then it's never going to be right." Who are these people? I have a million doubts. What about? That things won't work out. That this isn't the Best Life I could be affording myself, with a musician boyfriend who has delusions that he'll either get famous or I'll be the breadwinner (me with a bajillion school loans.) That I'll get hurt, or possibly worse, that I'll hurt him. That he'll cheat on or betray me. That we'll have weird, fucked up kids because both of us tend to be anxious people.

I think for me commitment is just saying that I want to try. And I'll want to keep trying until something goes wrong that can't be fixed and we'll cross that bridge if we come to it. Because the truth is that I don't have control over a lot of things. Most things. Him, for example. I trust him implicitly, but I don't know what's going to happen.

Example: he could die. Talk to any girl who lost her father at an impressionable age, as I did, and she'll probably have my same issues. It is hard to love people because people you love can die.

Plus, my boyfriend lied about smoking. He is capable of that. Lying to me.

But he is also my best friend. When stuff happens in my day, he's the one I want to tell. He believes in me without question, and dorks out with me over little stuff. He likes eating out. He talks too much and then gets all embarassed about it. He makes me awesome mix CDs. He bought me a silkscreen because I'm always talking about how I want to start making my own t-shirts. He tells me that I am beautiful, while pushing back my hair with one hand and cupping my waist with the other. Over and over again. And every thing that has ever started bad between us has only made us closer.

And at least today, I am the luckiest girl I know.

Relationships. Are. Hard. Sometimes.

So. Tonight I'm at the boy's house after a weekend with my girls. Not just any girls, but the girls... the ones I have known for most of my life and who, through everything, have been there. One's married, another getting married in a month. And I'm talking to them about the boy, whom they both adore, and somewhere in there a little of the fear drops away. Know what I mean? Whatever. In talking about how great this guy is, I realize, wow, this guy is great.

And then I'm at his house, and I look over and there's a broken cigarette sitting on the shelf. And I'm just like, "Um, what's that?" And he goes pale. And I have busted him.

We quit together. About two months ago he caved, but didn't tell me. And then I caught him accidently. And he quit again, with many promises to boot. And then it happened again today.

See, it's not just the smoking, but what goes along with hiding the smoking, which I know well. I lied to my parents about it for years. It's making excuses to go run errands so you can have one. It's climbing out your window in the middle of the night to have one. It's not telling the person you love that you don't want to spend the night at their house so that you can have one. Trust me. I've been there.

He didn't tell me because he knows how hard it is for me to stay quit. True. Aaaaand, he's kind of a chicken. Oof, though, it smarts to find out either way, doesn't it?

At least it's a pure pain I'm in. I know where it's coming from. I love this person, and yet, some of my trust is gone. And it won't come back for a while. And that sucks.

Honestly, I don't know if we'll stay together. I want to, but it's not just this. I want to keep fighting for it, but trust is pretty big with me and all of a sudden, I'm fighting not just for me, but for a future that I can grow and expand and be myself in. And I want it to be him, but... well, I hope it winds up being him, but tonight I'm not sure.

Yeah. Bedtime.

Countdown to finals...

I am so tired. This will be my complaining post.

I don't even know if I want to be in this program anymore. I will be so in debt when I'm done, and it is so exhausting to think that I'm doing all this just so I can get the job that I *should* have -- e.g. helping people -- rather that the job that will allow me to make money and take a vacation every once and a while.

My boyfriend will never make a lot of money. If I stay with him, we will be happy, I think, but never really financially stable.

And I am tired of fighting for everything. I am tired of working on my relationship and myself and my homework. And I am tired of the fact that wen I get tired it all starts unravelling. And I just start feeling sorry for myself which I don't ever never want to do. But I am. I am frustrated to the point of tears all the time these days.

One more month of school. But then I have summer school and volunteering and work and work and work. UGH.

I am going to kidnap myself and throw myself in a car and drive to some remote location and stay there for three weeks and go for hikes and drink pina coladas and get tan and take pretty pictures of stuff.

Haaappy New Year!!

Gracious. So much has happened in the past year.

I have a boyfriend again. Ah, to be in love. One year ago, this same lovely person stood around while I made out with a near stranger at midnight. This year it was him.

It's weird and hard and wonderful to fall for a friend. I didn't fall for something mysterious... though it was new and strange all the same.

Ugh, I'm sleepy. Enough for tonight. Sometimes, blogs feel just so narcissistic.

New Things That I Learned This Weekend!

1. I cannot mix alcoholic beverages anymore. Not even a little tiny itty bit.
2. Even if your oldest friendships get dysfunctional every once in a while, there is nothing more important sometimes than talking about your life and experiences with someone who has been there for all of it.
3. Said friends are also very useful in recounting nights that ended with you throwing up on yourself. Thanks, guys.

Hm. It was true.

I am a little embarrassed by my last post. But whatever. It is true. I like it here. I like that I'm living away from my home town. I felt watched in Colorado, knowing so many people. It (and my own insecurities) made exhausted & cranky. Here I just blend in. I am just me, anonymous.

Finals. Grad school for psych is wonderful and hard. I'm finally doing what I want, but I find myself constantly too busy and consistantly egocentric. Am I this way? That way? Is there something wrong with me that I have no idea is there? If I have a personality disorder, I probably won't know it... so what if I do?

I don't really think that I have a personality disorder. But I am insecure about what people think about me, and now I have all this information on "curing myself" without time or energy with which to do so. But plenty of excuses. Yee.

I am also three weeks without a cigarette, mourning smoking as if I had lost a best friend. I don't NEED to have a cigarette, but I MISS having them. It was my excuse for breaks, for feeling melodramatic, for being alone, for liking being alone. Mmm. But there are worse things. Lung cancer, for example. Or being all wrinkly at age 35. Or just being a smoker. It's not what I want to be anymore -- constantly craving something all the time.