Confusion

e once said she wished there was a map for the post college world. i always shared the sentiment, and now moreso than ever.

i'm not sure what to do with myself anymore. i think i've settled on the idea of going to graduate school for architecture. fine. cool. apply by february. got it. but beyond that, i have no clue.

where do i want to go to school? i wanted to go in new york. but new york is expensive, and it would eat up every last bit of money i have.

so, why do i want to go to new york? yes, i like the city. but mostly, my friends are there, and i want to be with them. lovely sentiment.

i am so convinced that i'll never be able to make friends again... that college was some strange fluke of a perfect universe, and there is no way i can manage to set up a life for myself anywhere else in the world. part of me is not sure that i can do it again. and i also feel like, if i did, i'd be cheating on my current friends. i'd be an unloyal faux friend.

mom suggested that maybe i go to school in austin. i suppose that would be all right. austin is a nice place. but i'm afraid it won't be good enough. i feel like i need to get further away, and escape the curse of texas. but that's money. and i just don't know.

i really have never been so confused in my life. i have no idea what to do. or where to go. i'm not sure of my motivations, or what i'm trying to accomplish. i only choose grad school because at least when i'm in school, i feel like my life has a purpose, and that i'm accomplishing something.

i'm just lost.

i am very lost, and i don't like the feeling.

Times is Rough

its so late, so i apologize in advance if i cut this short. its 2 a.m. central daylight time. god i love doing that... its so nice to orient myself (and everyone reading this) in time. set the stage. get the mood right. i spent the evening with an old high school friend, and then came home to check on katrina's slow progress towards new orleans.

i'm filled with foreboding. things are not going to be good for new orleans in the coming hours. the entire friggin' city is below sea-level as it is... has been for centuries. as my dad said, "its shaped like a bowl!" and alas, he's right. they are expecting sea swells close to thirty feet high. it will be swamped. there's something terrifying about natural disasters like this. cities aren't typically destroyed these days. at least, not by nature, and not all in one go. its biblical, on a level unmatched in normal, day to day, modern life.

of course, perhaps i'm just projecting. the recent tsunami destroyed countless cities and villages. i haven't been to thailand, but i have been to the french quarter... its all a matter of positioning. still, it makes me sad. i don't like to watch the endless news reports; they're like pornography. they remind me that there is a part of me that would like to watch the disaster and be entertained. and i am ashamed of that. there is also a part of me that feels vaguely guilty that there is nothing i can do. which is ridiculous. but there it is. i'm am the world's biggest closet narcissist.

and i do like new orleans. sure, it got kind of overhyped after all the anne rice novels hit big, and it's touristed out and silly, but its still mad cool. its muggy and hazy, and more magical than most cities i can think of. and it was dangerous and seductive before all that was "cool" and "stuff". and its held on so goddamned tenaciously to its little patch of river mud for so long, fighting nature and the mississippi to exist its broken down creole existence. maybe this is just karma finally catching up. but its still sad. and i'm sad.

on another sad note, i spent this evening with estevan, my old high school chum. we used to be really close. but as the years have gone by, we've drifted. he actually has a girlfriend now, and she seems as insecure and depressed as he is from what he tells me. together, they're going to write a twelve step guide on how to commit inner suicide. you kill yourself inside, and all the worrying and sadness and depression go away, and you are reborn. the first step is to stop caring about shit. personally, i do not think this sounds healthy.

this is the reason i find myself unable to tolerate prolonged exposure to estevan. i think he is a really great guy in a lot of respects, and he deserves more than he's willing to demand or even desire. but he thinks that everything is shitty, and he's shitty, and its just the state of things and he should get over it and get on with life. i want him to feel like a good person who deserves good things, because maybe that will help him act in ways that will help him be happier. and i say this. and he looks at me like i'm from mars. my "help" is not appreciated.

and lets face it, not everyone is looking for my help. josh, you are not the world's encyclopedia. its nice that you like helping to fix things and people, but it is not the only way to relate to people. estevan is an interesting lesson in not judging and evaluating others on my terms and telling them what they need to do differently, but simply letting them exist, and being happy that they are happy. even though i can't believe that he's really happy. my shit. not his.

so that's my old friend. and it was nice to see him. and it was nice to have someone, anyone, to talk to, and that's why we stayed out until one in the morning. i'm lonely, and times is rough, and sometimes the best you can do is twelve steps to inner suicide. though he thinks that i'm going about it all wrong. to which i say a silent "thank god!"

Repeat ad nauseum

you know that feeling, when you find a song that you just want to listen to over and over and over again. you never want it to end. you wish it lasted forever. you listen to it on instant replay until you feel a little bit of the specialness fade away. so you stop and listen to something else. you want to save that little bit of water for the miles of desert ahead. but before long, you're listening to it again, and its still the most beautiful thing you've ever heard.

a long time ago, there was a boy who decided that the epitome of being strong was to be weak. strong and weak are foolish concepts to begin with. but this boy had bought into them because we all do, because that is what we are all taught to believe. and all of us believing in some version of the same things, this is called society. but i digress.

this boy couldn't shake his belief that being emotionally dependent upon someone was somehow weak. interdependence was dangerous, and besides that an unknown concept at the time. the boy couldn't reconcile his emotional ties to people with a need to be strong; a need he equated with being self-sufficient and independent. but he needed those ties, so he invented a philosophy to save himself.

"the strength it takes to own up to and claim one's feelings," the boy philosophized, "far outstrips any weakness those feelings belie." one needs an indomitable strength of spirit to allow themself to be so weak and vulnerable, is what the boy reasoned. thus justified, the boy set out to have his heart bent and twisted, perhaps broken. but in a way, things were how they were supposed to be.

i don't like that these days, i don't even know what i'm feeling anymore. i won't let myself probe and press and find out, and i don't really have anyone to talk to about things. i begin to doubt myself, and look for justification. and the feelings i do know about, i feel helpless to do anything about. i don't know where to go with any of them. all i can chant is "Escape!", over and over again.

i'm vaguely ill recently. probably just allergies, but i feel yucky and congested, full of phlegm and choking on the physical manifestation of my psychic distress. i'm really a wuss about being unwell. i become completely non-functional. i'm not used to chronic snot and headaches, sinus pressure and all those fun things. so when illness hits, i go down fast (like a drunken prom queen). i want sleep, and quiet, and the death of all beings unessential to my physical and emotional well-being.

i am not moving fast enough on this whole "moving" thing. i need to do more, more efficiently, and with a smile in my heart and a swing in my step. i actually felt excited today, and looked up some apartments. i drafted a letter of introduction to send to all those brokers and real estate dealers. tomorrow, i have to call cousins in the city and ask them about the process of procuring an apartment. time to take out a steno pad and pen and take some notes.

i just need to run far enough away so that none of this life can touch me. i need to run so far that i'll be hidden, safe from what surrounds and cloaks me in shadow right now. i want to run until i feel lighter, free-er. i want to run until my steps become leaps, and i can bound forward with more and more ease. i want to point myself towards the sun and run towards it until it blinds my eyes and cleanses every part of me. i want to run until i feel like me again.

i think i need to run really, really far.

Out of Control

fast, cheap, and out of control. actually, no. fast is subjective i suppose, but paying to be a diabetic is not cheap. and my sugars are completely out of control.

and do you know the best part? its for no reason that i can see. i don't eat as healthily as i should (meaning i still eat more healthily than, oh, 85 percent of american males my age) but i take what should be enough insulin to cover things. but then there are these nagging doubts... am i eating more sugar than i think? is my compulsive eating (the current manifestation of my anxiety and addictive traits) more insane than i thought? am i grossly miscalculating how much insulin i need? basically, is this somehow my fault?

because, i think, regardless of doubts, my daily habits have not changed overly much. i think something is wrong. i changed out all my insulin, ALL OF IT, with new shipments fresh from the refrigerator. every evening, when i'm invariably high, i take enough insulin to knock me back down to normal, plus my regular night-time insulin, i still wake up high in the morning. even the day i went to the gym AND yoga, and ate nothing but salad and protein, i didn't drop below 160 all day.


something is definitely wrong with me.

and i can't control it. i'm not drinking. i'm not smoking. i'm exercising. i'm trying to get my shit together and move to new york. and my blood sugar, my body, is out of whack. do you know what it feels like to be doing everything right and still have things go wrong, have your own body engaged in rebellion against your efforts? i thought i was starting to get things under control. i thought i was getting back on track. but my body has other plans of some sort. plans that involve having my extremities amputated in my later years, it seems.

i don't know what to do. but i'm really quite upset about it all. and having constantly high blood sugar makes me feel ill and moody, and tired. i snap at people. i crave constant naps. and people make fun of me for it. my brother gets home after his piss-ant job at the bagel shop (they don't even make their own bagels...) and says "hey, i'm home! don't worry josh, go back to sleep." or "did i wake you from your first nap?" or "is this your second nap of the day?"

i should not have to justify myself to anyone, and i deny your request, nay, demand that i do so.

go FUCK yourself.

i could rant more, but i think i'm not going to right now.

but suffice it to say, i'm not happy.

She Cut My Hair With a Razor!

i'm having trouble getting over a growing fascination with imogen heap. she was half of froufrou, the vocal half, though she also plays multiple instruments and is a production and studio whiz. (the other half was butch vig) but i keep listening to the froufrou album, and a few tracks off her upcoming solo release. "hide and seek" is absolutely addictive. it feels otherworldly. and i'm so worried i'm just falling back into my little "all female singer-songwriters are great!" rut. but i suppose so long as it makes me happy... nothing to complain about.

i keep trying to add extra letters to the words in this posting. not in my british way, but just random extra letters at the ends of words; and not the first letter of the next word, but just shit. like a "w" wherever i apparently feel like there needs to be one. i guess i think "w" is an underused letter. or perhaps i'm just becoming a sloppy typist in my old age. hah.

i have to call friends and cousins in new york today, and ask them about living there. and look for apartments and a job. and it all feels rather overwhelming, and makes me want to go to bed. bad josh! no bed! but i at least seem to have a roommate. so that's a step. i'm just... i had my faux birthday party last night. dad's taken to throwing summer birthdays for us, his grown up autumn children, because we're never there for our real birthdays. so it was all cute and happy (except my siblings feel all right about walking out in the middle of my birthday party... miffed about that...) and i think, whenever i have a happy moment here, it makes leaving that much harder. buggerall!

rachel had an excuse for an early departure from my party, since she takes the mcat on saturday (tomorrow). but zach just had to go party hearty since school starts on monday. a) its embarassing that i actually depend on them for emotional support to some degree, and that it shows by my really wanting them to be there for my party. b) zach was like, "i'm gonna watch five minutes of the movie (kung fu hustle) and then leave. and i'm like, "yeah, sure, whatever." so he asks if i'm mad, and i say, "yes, i am, but whatever, do what you need to do, i'll get over it." which is true, but i don't want to "get over it." i want my family (siblings) to feel like my birthday party is an event they should be at. and i also want to not feel that way, since it leads to hurt. ah fuck. what a fucking mess. in my head...

and zach really did time those five minutes and then up and go. and when his phone kept ringing during the evening, i asked him to please turn it off. and he got all huffy. i just want to beat the crap out of him. he bitches about us all not being emotionally sensitive enough around him (bullshit), but he can do as he pleases and we all have to tip-toe around his emotionally-blackmailing ass. god forbid i make a demand of him.

just because i am quiet does not mean i am some form of robot with no desires wishes and feelings of my own. i just act like one to try and null the pain of daily life. because of people like him. and its easier than constant confrontation. both our faults, really.

at least the movie itself still makes me really happy.

and yes, i recently got a haircut, and its too short, and makes me feel like my head looks blocky, and its too short to show signs of bed-head upon waking. but its pretty cool nonetheless, and she did use a razor, for ultra-texture, and that pretty much rocks. i've never had my hair cut with a razor before. it was neat.

i think that will be all for now. there's a boy in austin who i think is starting to have a rather large degree of feeling for me. i'm not sure what to do about this situation. and i'm not sure if he still reads the blog. so i'm not sure what to say. so i will keep my secrets. strong enough for a man, made for a woman. i will listen to imogen heap, and start my day.

goodbye.

pot and kettle

first and foremost: who thought up the disturbingly freudian show "date my mom" on mtv. shouldn't that be an insult? "yeah, well why don't you go date my mom!" its sick, and strange, and just a seeming expansion on the old one about, "if you wanna know what your dame's gonna look like in twenty-five years, take a gander at her mother!" its bad from the outset.

also disturbing: the competitive nature of it all. "we're gonna win him, right mom!?" "right sweetie! he's ours!" all actual consideration of whether this is a good person, whether this is a good match, whether these people are compatible, goes right out the window. "hunt down that piece of meat! shoot it with the tranq dart! aim for the left buttock!"

and the gay episodes... i hate gay people. i hate people who unironically use the word "mantastic." i just... aargh. i dunno. people are boring. maybe that's all i'm trying to say. and gay people overly wrapped up in their sexuality as a substitute for having a real personality are just boring gay people. and i'm a hypercritical bastard.

i am cooking a novel in my head. i'm trying to set up a plot and story arc first. i'm not sure how it's going. i like many of the characters, and the ideas behind the structure. i'm just not sure if i can pull it off... we'll see. i'm returning to the idea of a child protagonist. because i like children. frightening that i'm able to say that. but i have this constant desire to shoot back in time and rescue the little child that i was from all the situations that screwed me up. i suppose i only get to do it in bookform.

in other creative news, i MUST find a way to get over my guilt at writing so blatantly about the people in my real life. like, when all my paternal male figures are abusive and dangerous, which is how i perceive my father in many ways. and what if he ends up reading this stuff? i love him. he has a lot of good qualities too. they're just not what i end up needing to purge and sort through. a lovely image; vomiting, and then picking through it for recognizable objects...

i have written a letter of introduction to silo, my potential roommate in the big bad city that i love. he hasn't written back yet. i'm a little worried. i tried hard to give a pleasant taste of what i'm like, keeping it light, honest, and unfrightening. lord knows i'm SO good with subtlety...