mco86's Journal

:: 2006 9 May :: 9.48pm

So. Obligatory end of year post?

Sure. I'll do that. I have to do something to give this year some closure, after all.

I've spent another year at Butler and found that some things never change.

One, I will never ever have enough money. I will be perpetually screwed financially, and the best I can hope for is to survive up to the point where being screwed by Butler is irrelevant in any immediate sense. This is a result of the fact that my parents are changing their legal residence to New Hampshire, where they live. Up until then, we've taken advantage of various military loopholes that allow me to be an in-state student. My senior year I lose at least four thousand dollars in state funding. However, I won't have to register for classes again, and maybe I can save up to help defray that. I won't know until the time comes.

Two. People are the same no matter how old you are or where you find them. Many people are worth talking to, spending time with, even loving. Others are petty, greedy, and generally not worth any of the above. The people I've found are often variations on the same theme. These don't beg for respect. They take it. They simply are to be respected, without any need for them to cry out, "I told you so." I've met a few of these this year. Some people are distractions, but these new friendships... they are the diamond in the ashes, which I take in spite of you.

Some things have changed, though.

One. I'm becoming both more selfish and less self-centered if that makes any sense. I consider what I want instead of what is expected of me. I will not be guilted, manipulated, bullied, or abandoned when another more useful commodity comes along. My autonomy is coming along a bit. However, with this growing freedom is coming the realization that I don't have to need people to be around them. I don't have to be using them as a means to any end. It's okay for me to value the company of another person. It's safe to value the needs of others if I keep my head about me and remain conscious that their needs are not my needs. I don't need to mortgage my identity to anyone else to be relevant, but I can lend the identity I've chosen to the causes I value. The distinction may seem small, but it's a step in the right direction.

Two. Summer vacation isn't looming on the horizon as a three-months span in which life simply.... stops. I can spend that time with a young man I love very much, knowing that he loves me and is glad to have me around. I can go to my parents' house just long enough to see my cat. I can go to India. I can go to Ohio and get a job so that I can stay with Brian. Small sacrifices in order to gain everything worth working for.

Three. As I become more expressive of healthy emotion, I'm learning the difference between what's helpful and what isn't. I'm becoming a little easier to be around, very slowly and very gradually... but I'm getting there. I figure it's the least I can do for the people who stayed. They deserve that at least. The others? Let them remember me as they wish. I do not regret anything I have done. I was not unjustified in my scorn or dismissals all these years. I still have not been proven wrong. I simply intend to treat the people who love me with more gentleness than I've previously been capable of.

How are those for some changes? I am the same as I was, but greater in many ways. I will make different choices in the future than I have in the past, but the past is still there where it always was. I do not regret a moment of it.

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:: 2006 30 April :: 2.34am

Blue Roses!

For my own record, but I really thought someone else might think this is nifty, too.

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:: 2006 28 April :: 6.16pm

You know what?

I've been away for a very long time, and now that I've come back, the things that were bothering me seem to have gotten a bit better.

The people I'm watching are writing entries that are more specific. They were always personal, but people are actually saying what's going on now instead of merely telling me why everything is pain and suffering when you're fourteen years old and damn doesn't it suck.

The grammar's gotten better. Even in journals I'm not watching. People are using English, and it gives me hope for the internet.

I'll still be on livejournal, but for those of you I used to know: I may be around more, trying to get to know you again.

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:: 2006 28 April :: 6.16pm

New GM Struggles with Existing Paradigms!
Read more..

:: 2006 28 April :: 6.12pm

An update some few of you will be able to understand.
I just had an odd request from a high school speech friend of mine. I said hi and the first thing he did was ask me for the whereabouts of Caleb. Now, I realize that in high school I was the only one who knew half the time where the boy was or why. I realize that I stuck by him for nearly two years even though that junkie wasn't exactly the best thing to have in my life. He didn't have anyone else, because no one else would have been able to handle being with him. No one else deserved it, so I stayed instead and everyone knew it.

But two years after the fact... apparently people still expect it to be true. Joe seemed... sad that he hadn't spoken to Caleb in two years, and that he'd never probably see him again. I told Joe that I cut ties with him after graduation. This was largely due to certain actions on Caleb's part after graduation that really don't need to be hashed over again.

It's just strange to have that reminder again. Even weirder is that it comes after a very.... odd dream that I had last night. Something about Caleb and a non-descript friend of his waiting for me in a men's room to rape me. Then I tried to get a cop to go with me and he asked me if it could wait because he was taking a break. Odd behavior for a policeman.

Maybe I'll try to think more about what that dream means, especially when you factor in the introduction of the topic into a totally unrelated conversation. I'm either superstitious, fatalistic, or simply don't believe in coincedence. However you want to see it, this is strange to me.

If nothing else, it reminds me of how much better off I am now than I was in high school. I don't regret anything that I did. I don't regret the (arguably undeserved) devotion to someone like Caleb. I forget who explained it to me this way, but she was right when she told me, "You're the most important person in his life. I just don't think that you're the most important thing." For a while that was enough. It never will be enough again, though. I had never been with anyone who told me I was beautiful without the obvious motive of squirming his way into my pants, or anyone who sincerely told me that he loved me. Most of the boys I've known have loved me the way a smoker loves nicotine gum. A pale substitute for what they really want, but for now it's better than what they've lost.

I won't say that they didn't have their reasons. Caleb's first love died of a drug overdose. He watched her die. Link...well, there was Tara. I shouldn't have to explain it that much further. I can't blame them, but I can say that I'll never sacrifice myself to people like them again.

:: 2005 25 November :: 2.13pm

There used to be a girl on this site who used the handle "Porcelain."

I miss her. She was cool. Every time I log on and think about how much respect I had for her. Unfortunately, her mother found her blog and she had to leave us. Then her journal was wiped out in the Great Deletion of Unpaid Journals.

Well, Porcelain. Here's to you, wherever you are. I haven't forgotten.

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:: 2005 25 November :: 1.59pm

Proof that I'm becoming an elitist condescending adult:

Every time I see an entry on a weblog that looks like this:

"oh man why cant i just have love but no one will love me becaus i suck and there's no way anyone can love a thing like me because i suck and everything i do cuz i have no worth and i should just die becaues n oone cares and ill never ever be loved and i'm so alone and theres no hope for me cuz no one understands"

...The first thing I want to do is look for the person's age. It could be the bad grammar. It could be the lack of capitalization or punctuation. It could be the lack of specific explanations or thought of any kind. But the main thing is, I doubt the maturity of entries like this. The people I've kept on my friends list use proper English, and sometimes proper French or Japanese as well.

The other reason I doubt the maturity of these bloggers is that, yes. I'm like everyone else. If I'm supposed to believe that someone who's never worried about the cost of food or where they'll be living in a few months' time has problems worth reading, I want to read some kind of actual justification. Just because this is the internet doesn't mean you're excused from actual communication.

In conclusion: Quit your bitching or at least start bitching in a way that makes people believe your problems have some relevance.

This time of year I'm thankful for a lot of things. I'm thankful that no matter what has happened to me or is likely to happen, my problems will still never be that bad. I look at victims of wars, diseases and natural disasters all over the world and see that it can always be worse. I have it pretty damn good, and so do most people who live in an area where computer access makes blogging possible.

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:: 2005 25 November :: 1.57pm

I'm getting my WIS teeth out over winter break. As a result, my mother wants me to plan to be totally incapacitated for two weeks. This is the royal edict. This means I cannot plan to go to Brian's house over break. Why can't we just see what happens and maybe I'll be able to do it? Fantastic question! Because! My mother is buying me plane tickets. She will be doing this within the next day or two. This means that she'll be buying me a ticket back to Indianapolis. This means that the Fords couldn't drive me home to Indy without wasting a perfectly good plane ticket.

This all has one grand implication. I stay with my parents and endure not only oral surgery but four weeks around them, or else be a selfish ungrateful bitch for not wanting to be away from Brian for that long. That's what it means. And there's nothing I or anyone else can do about it.

:: 2005 30 October :: 1.02am

I return for a quick post.

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:: 2005 2 September :: 8.04pm

I'm not dead. To the max.

I can be reached more reliably on AIM with the SNs:

Lithaladhwen
alias pending
Mekta Satak Kai

That is, you know. If someone needs something.

:: 2005 2 September :: 8.04pm

I'm not dead. To the max.

I can be reached more reliably on AIM with the SNs:

Lithaladhwen
alias pending
Mekta Satak Kai

That is, you know. If someone needs something.

:: 2005 6 August :: 1.12am

Arch mage144: Women are just full of very strange ideas.
Lithaladhwen: They are. Quite often.
Ganon fro: Strange, and to their minds "logical"
Lithaladhwen: Sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.
Smartzvn85: ....Such as, Ashley?
Lithaladhwen: Well, this morning I was angry at the English because I had a dream that I was in William Wallace's militia. I thought they were going to sleep with my wife.
Arch mage144: That is impossible in at least three ways.
Smartzvn85: I am sure that the wife thing is one of them.
Arch mage144: William Wallace is dead and has no militia, the English are not at war with the Scottish, and you aren't married.

:: 2005 5 August :: 10.47pm

June 30th Entry
You know, I'm always amazed at the things people have no opinions about. I can write an entry in which I basically admit that I'm out to get all of you. And that has absolutely no impact? It's totally irrelevant to you.

You don't have to respond. I don't really know whether I expect you to answer. However, to have an opinion and not share it when invited to do so... not my game. It actually baffles me a little.

Of course I was worried that people would post to tell me that I'm a good person and they don't know me very well but they can tell by the way I write that I'm a nice girl and I shouldn't worry about that because everybody feels that way sometimes so I should just know that I have people to talk to if I need to *less-than-three*.

Or something.

Maybe that's why no one said anything. Because that's the only acceptable response to an entry like that. But really... do blog communities exist to reinforce one's sense of humanity? If that's true, people need to clean out the angst like old earwax and get to loving harmony and shit.

However, if you have anything else to say in the future, feel free. It's why I post here. Because the truth does hurt and sometimes I want to hurt you like only I can.