Little J

I've been trying to journal more. Mostly to record past events and memories, of which I have many. I'm still using the same journal I used in college and on my mission, so if I ever have kids this book is going to be a trip to read, hella roller coaster.

But today's entry was more present-tense.

The last thing I wrote was: Maybe it's time to start making good choices.

We'll see.

Long

Looking at it now all this stuff I wrote seems pretty pathetic and self serving and just bitchy, but I guess it made sense when I wrote it so I'll stick it out there uncensored:


There are points in life where there's a group of people, all starting something together. A high school graduation. My district in the MTC. Everyone is looking into the future and seeing something bright and seeing the road there and how it's all going to work. And for some people maybe it works because they think "I'm going to go to college and study and party and have fun and good grades and it will be a good experience." And that's manageable and it's great and it happens. Or maybe "I'm going to go out and teach the gospel, and it's gonna be really hard sometimes but I know that I'm going to help some people and I'm going to be a better, stronger person when it's over." And for some people that happens.

I want to say that I can't make plans, but that's not true. I can dream up as happy a future as the next guy. A world where I'm doing something real with someone I love in my life and I'm not alone and not stuck and blank. I can imagine those places. But I can't see those roads anymore. Where are those things? They're abstract. Some 'thing' that's out there but not here, not in reality. I think about how different things are for those people, who started out in those groups. Maybe I wallow in self pity. Maybe it's not deserved, because nobody is probably where they thought they would be and no ones road has been as easy as they'd liked.

But what I really think about. I saw someone today, that I hadn't seen or thought about in a long time. But once upon a time we were on pretty level playing field. Some ups and downs and just getting by. And now that person is still fine. Better than fine, doing pretty skippy. And then I thought back to another person I was close to once, and we were both happy or sad or whatever I don't remember with our lives and fast forward to now and it's the same. They have a life. They have love, and fulfillment, and people to be with or even joke with. Of course now the examples are piling on pretty hard. People are okay. People are okay and I am not. And we used to be equal, and somehow my road has taken me down down down and I look around and there is nothing. By any objective scale my life is a gigantic fuck up. And I am fucking nowhere, and not going anywhere anytime soon. Living with an aunt. After living with a sister, after living in a car after living in a fucking parking garage elevator and fucking hotel bathrooms and fucking wherever I could sleep for 5 fucking minutes before I had to move, after a fucking homeless shelter where I overdosed some 17 year old girl and had to leave because I wouldn't let them search my bags and they took my meds that could have been so much money and I think it was really because they found that stupid needle in the fucking bathroom. After living in a hotel with all that spice that was the worst thing I ever did and I watched these seasons of tru blood in that hotel room and when I watched an episode the other day and the opening song came on I could taste that spice in my mouth and my brain remembered what it felt like and I was sick and couldn't watch it. After living with another sister and her family that I loved and I fucked it up by just doing nothing. After living with another aunt where I fucked it up by, that's right, doing absolutely nothing.

Not many more places to run away to. Maybe not any. And the only thing I'm more of than the fact that the way I'm doing life isn't working is the fact that I'll never do it a bit different.

So I don't know. Those people that I was once on equal ground with, that have moved on. That might not be somewhere great but they're somewhere better than they were. Maybe it's just a fuck you to people who took all those better roads than me.

But of course. That's all selfish. It's easy to say blah blah blah I fucked my life up over and over. But what probably matters more in the end is those gosh darned sins of omission. Those people I could have helped on my mission. People in high school who could have been brought up instead of down. Meg. Maybe Sarah. Maybe Danielle, this summer, where maybe I could have saved her. Could have been that guy who gave good advice that she would love and agree with and then break as soon as she wanted something more. Maybe I could have helped her instead of standing behind those bathrooms at valley of the moon park with tin foil and a lighter and a dismantled Zebra mechanical pencil and saying maybe you should try it. Maybe she wouldn't have lost her daughter and car and apartment and in all honesty I probably put a bullet in her head. It would have been more merciful and smoking her out for those first few days.

It's a long night. Internet's fucked, maybe I'll get around to posting this in the morning.

What to say?

The life is pretty empty these days. Just sort of hanging out. Could theoretically start working at Wendy's this week. Which is about the most depressing thing since Auschwitz. But, money is a thing.

Planning on going back to school I guess. Seems like the thing to do. Not really digging doing this for the rest of my life. No idea what to study.

Really miss drugs, obviously. But I guess it's worth it to trade day-to-day unhappiness for a shot at something real later on. Or at least that's what I tell myself. I'll always have mike and ikes, anyways.

There's a severe lack of adventure in my life. Could use some surprises or something. But I guess we'll see.


The End.

Dear,

You told me I was cute and asked for my number, which is not a good start in the 'me respecting you category'. I took you out because your name was Sarah, but I'm afraid it was downhill from there. When you finally offered to give me a blowjob, perhaps in an attempt to cure of my detached indifference to everything about you, I was almost tempted. Not because I found you in any way attractive, but because you were so pathetic and embarrassing that it seemed like it really would have sealed the deal in my quest to become a horrible person. Fortunately, even that tantalizing reward was not enough for me to give in. Also, you have a stupid face. Stop texting me.

It's really hard to watch 'The Other Boleyn Girl', because I can't decide whether I'd rather make out with Scarlett Johansen, Natalie Portman or Eric Bana.

Title

I dreamt of you on the night of my grandmother’s funeral.

It had felt strange that day, to say your name, after so long. It was inevitable, though.

“This is only the second funeral I’ve ever been to.”

“Who was the first?”

“Her name was Meg.”

That is the simplest explanation. I remembered you, therefore, I dreamt of you.

 But you were so beautiful. Your face was, at the risk of sounding cliché, radiant.

Not like a Proactiv commercial radiant. But in the classical sense of the word. A glow. And your hair was red still.

At one point, you tucked it behind your ear. Or at least, I think I remember that. It’s hard with dreams, like any memories, to keep them pure, unadulterated by imaginations, exaggerations, colored perceptions. What you wanted to have happened, what should have happened.

But still. I think you tucked your hair behind your ear. At any rate. Red.

You weren’t dead, obviously. But never had been. We were at a crowded stadium, the kind that probably neither of us have ever been to. We talked. You can’t know how much I wish I could remember what we talked about. But anything I conjure up at this point is sure to be a lie. I don’t remember.

It was strange, to have this experience on that particular night, just a dozen or so hours before I would begin to contemplate my own death. Sit back, make a hard analysis of my life, my past and current choices, and what choices I’m willing to make in the future, and realize that the road I’m on inevitably leads to you. I’ve got a good while yet, but a road is a road is a road.

You were happy. So happy. When I woke, I had to think so hard about what was true or not. I had these two images in my head. One was you, as I had just seen you, and the other was a sort of x-ray. A stop-motion film of a head being torn apart by a bullet from beneath. What do you call that soft part, between your chin and your neck? I don’t know. But I had these two images, and my mind was desperately trying to reconcile them. One, or the other, but certainly not both.

 I don’t know. Maybe I’ll see you again. I have a lot of sleepless nights ahead of me. Consider this an open invitation.

David touches my feet alot

I know this sentence has been uttered about a million times by now, but: I got a Kindle. I didn't think I would like reading on it, but I really do.

It's tough being so mainstream.

I also like the Hunger Games series now. How's that for a corporate sellout? Also, I've run myself into the ground with debt, mostly for brand name clothes and TV seasons on DVD.

Also, I'm thinking of having several children out of wedlock and getting a Snooki-related tramp stamp.

Finally, society will validate my existence!


And, in conclusion, I'm writing this to take a break from my Sea World application. I'm wondering if I can design a show where Shamu tries to eat me and I fight him off my rippling biceps and boyish charm. (Full disclosure, it's not the biceps themselves that ripple...)

I want to marry this girl:



And have this baby:



I'm not a scientist, but I'm pretty sure if we conceive in the Bamboo Panda bathroom, it's totally possible. (Fuller disclosure: yes, this is a picture I found after Googling "cute baby". Don't judge. I'm not picky.)

But really, she's amazingly talented. I listen to her CD's approximately all of my life and eternity. I got  a D on the approximation unit of my 8th grade math class, so you'd think I'd know my best subject a little better. BOOM GOES THE DYNAMITE.

Today my acupuncturist (I spelled that wrong once on my iPhone a month ago and it continues to haunt me by autocorrecting even when I spell it right) tried something new, since it's been a rough week. She hooked up little electrical things to two of my needles, one in my left hand and one in my right ear. She turned the machine thing up and told me to say when I felt it. I didn't say it fast enough, so my ear and arm went crazy and I felt like I was going to throw up my brain, but luckily she turned it down again. In the end, I fell asleep while resting for the first time, and she decided to just let me electro-sleep in there for like an hour and a half. The whole thing had some Kevorkian fan-fic potential, but she didn't even make a move. In case you're wondering, my acupuncturist is super hot and has both a nose ring and a doctorate of medicine. I'm not sure which came first. Either way, I can finally fulfill my having-women-stab-me-with-needles fetish. It's a relief to be able to stop dating heroin addicts.

I'm listening to Tina Fey's "Bossypants" on audiobook. It's quite humorous, though I haven't heard the word "vagina" spoken more times in a day since I told a girlfriend my theory about the word itself. I explained that it was a word created by the Catholic church in the early 1600s to scare young boys away from them. (I fully support them in this endeavor, as the only thing more hideous than the word itself is the orifice it describes.) The girl then proceeded to litter our conversation with "the V word" until I finally snapped and broke her pelvis with a baseball bat. One part of that story is not true, can you guess which? (You win, it was actually invented by the Greek Orthodox's.)

For a very brief time in high school I had the nickname of "the Bear Jew" or "BJ", and I have the birthday card to prove it. I was well known for giving painfully exuberant bear hugs, and when a large group of us went to see Inglourious Basterds, which features a Bear Jew that beats Nazis to death with a baseball bat, the name just seemed to fit. It didn't stick, though, so I eventually ended the post abruptly.