We had been fucking around, no other way to say that really. It's funny because when I met you I wasn't attracted to you at all. In fact I feel as though I just completely scanned over you & then my eyes moved on to something(one) else. Over time though, your laugh & touch began to mean something more to me. I just wanted to be around you. We had a good time together. We laughed a lot, had a keen eye for art (yours was much keener since it was what you were going to school for), you made me want to read & write more, & I admired you. You had everything together, you had plans. I felt like a distraction in all this and I guess I was, because one night you walked me home from a party where I had too many beers and I wouldn't let you leave my room until you kissed me. Well, not really....we both just kissed each other. I almost wanted it to be a bad kiss because I knew you were "unavailable." You didn't have a girlfriend, but you happened to be very responsible and busy (I was not) & you were the roommate of a friend who was deeply invested in making me his girlfriend (I was not). But it wasn't a bad kiss. It was an alarmingly good kiss actually. I felt it, really felt it- like when you pause the passion & look at each other knowing it's not always that you meet such similar moves as yours. There was a pulling of desire, touch and taste grabbing at each other and from the inside, deep & exploring. It was a most wonderful interruption of thoughts. So of course I was smitten, of course I wanted more. I thought about you & I a lot, but you only remembered there was a you & and I when we kissed. You would walk me home and I would pull you in, and further and further in, but then you would have to leave and I would have to watch you leave. I was already lonely at the time so I just made it harder on myself by allowing this to happen. I didn't think about how I was doing the same thing to someone else (room mate friend). Although we would slide together with such natural ease, it began to wear thin. I wanted more. So one night when you walked me home & it seemed as though you would not be coming inside the door you asked me, "What do you want Laura?"
and I very vulnerably said, "I want you."
You sighed & said you had to focus on school, you were very busy..."I just don't wan't a relationship right now."
       "No, you just don't want a relationship with me."
and you looked at me with one of those painfully sympathetic half smiles that people have because they're not quite sure how to make an "I just disappointed you face," and I knew I was right.
The next month you were with someone else, someone you would be with for a long time. Whenever I hear a girl start to tell me her love interest is being aloof or saying one thing & translating it from the hopeful perspective of her ego, I share this story, because I, girls, people, don't need an aloof relationship. Maybe for awhile it's fun, but arms you know that are going to ultimately wrap around you at the end of the day are the arms I want to be in. Not arms that do this just when we have sex, or maybe every other week, or whenever his school/work schedule is flexible enough. The right person will make you change your mind. If you feel it, you want it, you'll just do it, you'll make it work. You'll call, you'll kiss and you'll stay afterwards. You'll find a way. Now I just have to follow my own advice.

I wrote those last two entries when I was drunk. Go me!

Why? Why have emotions? animals have a perfectly good system. They work together, they follow a cycle. Sustainable. What are the purpose of emotions? They make us feel, think...but why? Why have literature? Why feel empathetic? for us. for the universe?

Those fragile moments I have to myself
I feel a pang
I feel open to the universe
I feel in a moment
with myself
I translate feelings into thoughts
and I am caught
in my own creations
I am lost in what I think and what I thought
I am feeling everything at once
I let my emotions speak
and they leak
onto my cheeks
they pull at the air
for something there
of what I'm not sure
but they ask and they reach
for
something
I'm looking
looking.
maybe one day found will slap me in the face
it could already be here !
but I'm just oblivious to what I choose to be so towards

Aurora, Colorado

He dressed like a character from the movie- bulging with weapons and a gas mask over his face. Probably seemed normal amongst others parading in their costumes. Probably seemed normal before that too. One of my coworkers said, "I just don't get it. He was so smart. Why would someone who had so much going for them do that?" I'm sure it was an isolating intelligence. He was studying behavior and created a study of himself. He shaped himself into a question mark. Why? Why would someone do this? "I am the joker" he said. Crazed, intelligent, possessed, misunderstood, working alone. A boy recalled being on a sports team with him, but that's all he recalled. He didn't say he had a menacing presence or quirky habits, just he was on the team, a loner, kept to himself. No facebook, no emerging ex girlfriends or friends, no trace left behind personally or technologically. When his mother was spoken to she was not in disbelief, she said, "You have the right person." Something at the seed of her thoughts always knew the chemicals reacting in his brain were not making elements of sense. Suppose it made sense to him, sense that most everyone does not interpret. A mind like that could be tortured or could have been looking to torture to brandish any kind of feeling that was lacking for so long. A building disgust for other people or maybe not feeling any connection to them at all or both exploded into a massacre.  There's a debate over the death penalty. Maybe he wants that? When a boy from his sports team couldn't tell you anything about him before, now he is known by all. 

"Are you with someone you feel safe with?" she asked me
"Yeah."
"Yeah, or Yes?"
"Yes."
"Okay, good."
I was sitting in a chair at planned parenthood looking at an impressive jar full of condoms and feeling surprisingly calm for my anxious 15 year old self. I was with somebody I felt safe with.
I told you at the beginning that I wanted to be in love before I had sex. You respected this, you didn't try and rush love. You weren't like those terrible Lifetime movies where the guy says "Come on baby, I love you." or "I'll only put it in for a minute"- I can actually hear my mom chiming in over those words saying to me as a younger girl, "Don't believe him if he ever says that!" and not really knowing what she meant. It's true, my shyness was more than frustrating some times. I wouldn't let you see my boobs for a really long time not because I didn't want to but I was very insecure. One day though, I really did start to feel safe. Here's my boobs! You can see them now. We talked everyday, you picked me up from school, took me to work, shared the weekend with me. I knew inside something was changing, that when I felt you next to me it wasn't just sexual urges but protective and caring urges. I wanted to be there for you through it all. So I told you one day,

"I think I'm ready."
"But I thought you said you had to be in love to be ready?"
"Yeah..ummm..."
"Wait, wait, what're you trying to say?" (I knew you knew already, you were just trying to get me to say it).
"Ummmm...."

The conversation would go on like this in different variations of the same words for awhile until I finally just blurted it out

"Ummmmm....I think I LOVE YOU!"

you caught your breath, I caught my breath. I felt sparks in my skin and we were quiet for a moment but could feel it between us.

I wanted to make you feel as good physically as I did mentally. You were my first, I was your first. We fell in love, we shared a part of our youth.

Write your goals down on paper (online)

Before this month ends I will:

Get my Cicerone certification.
Make this apartment feel even more spacious and like home.
Get my mom a great birthday present.
Sell at least $1,000 in one day/ or night at work.
Become a better server.
Better my attitude.
Make Tali something and...tell her how much she means to me.
Find more time to work out.
Make at least 3 new recipes.
Do something nice for my brother.
Write in my blog at least four more times.


Before this year ends I will:

Have something published.
Figure out if I'm going back to school.
Learn to let go of worry a little more.
Love more openly.
Finish a piece of artwork.
Write more poems than I did last year.
Be proud of who I'm becoming.
Be better about communicating with the ones I love.
Be on top of my bills and finances.
Be more responsible.

I should be, but I dont want to be

alone

I want so badly to provide love and affection and endless ease for you
but I dont even know what I want in return
not even just from you, but from life, my choices
im not sure which inner voice I should let be the loudest
there are some ugly ones that I would like to keep from being let out in public or on a date with anyone else
there are some that could be right or could be telling me what I want to hear
there are some that just say relax, all in good time you will find answers
but how can I relax
when another voice says life is short

meat

This is my remote pocket of the internet universe. I can talk about whatever random thoughts ive had/been having. I was sitting and talking to amy about animals. "I think animals do have emotions like humans but maybe they're just more raw. Elephants mourn their dead. Certain animals seem to be smarter than others, like dolphins and pigs. What if what we interpret to be a wild and aggressive reaction from an animal is actually an animal knowing that humans are wasteful and might even kill them and eat them given the opportunity. or what we interpret to be the opposite reaction of this violence- to cooperate with humans & to be docile as a means to negotiate with humans out of fear like the masses with a tyrant. cats domesticated themselves. maybe thats why the eygptians worshipped them-they seem pretty smart in that way. they receive affection and food from humans while roaming and sleeping where they please as our pets so we don't kill them. maybe animals that flee from us are just more aware that people can be cruel. cows always seem so spooked by us. we eat them with fries & a coke here. cows are holy in india...are they spooked there? dogs can be devastated by violent pasts-they will attack people for what seems to be no reason at all because they have been so scarred before. just like a person with a violent upbringing can become violent themselves.
penguins are monogamous & I wouldn't even consider humans monogamous. we have a lot to learn from penguins. even two male penguins select a rock and take care of it as if it were an egg. they adopt a rock and make it a part of their family.
it's easy to say animals arent as evolved because we see them participate in what we call savage behavior but maybe we also say that because we eat and abuse them & it doesnt seem to make us feel as guilty if we deem them to be subordinate.
its true, ive never seen a dog write a symphony
but sometimes a dog can have more compassion than a person can
an insect can create a more sustainable universe than we can
a tiger can snap after being subjected to years of humiliating performance tricks because maybe inside the beast knows what is being done to it is not right. it can be trained as a slave of entertainment, and some remain trained, but others know that they were meant for sunlight and not spotlight.
& to creatures of the sea we are aliens. we put on a special suit so we can breathe in their atmosphere and then we either admire them or abduct them and study them or eat them or keep them as pets to display. aquariums. earthriums with humanriums exhibits.
there's nobility in a lion pouncing on an antelope or a cat capturing a mouse, someone using their polished skills and tools to hunt their dinner, rather than when I stand in the frozen meat section and pick out a cold slab of whatever I please to cook later based on price and fat content.
I say all this and let my thoughts tumble out and ramble for awhile, but you know I had a cheeseburger yesterday.

It's interesting how as people have evolved....their problems have too. People can create their own problems based on where they live & what they perceive to be accepted around them. There are no eating disorders in third world countries. How do you explain anorexia to a person who is starving not by choice? How do you tell a woman who is forced to be subordinate that there are women who actually choose to be that way?

I was looking down at a hang nail I had on my pinky finger, a nasty one. I had it for awhile and it would snag on whatever it brushed against. I was picking at it when I was sitting down and talking to you & you told me she looked through my phone when I left it at her house. What did she read? What does she know now? It made me feel awful in many different ways. It made me feel sick. I can only imagine her feelings. I looked down at my pinky and noticed I had completely ripped off the hangnail and it was replaced with a small pool of blood. Ouch. Fuck. but over with I guess.

a less beautiful way to put that:

Sometimes I have so much love that I'm just a giant pussy about sharing it for fear that it won't be accepted.