You used to captivate me By your resonating light Now I'm bound by the life you left behind Your face it haunts my ones pleasant dreams Your voice it chased away all the sanity in me

I can’t believe it’s been four years since he died. I wanted to go to the cemetery today, but I just couldn’t make myself. I’ve been there a few times since his death, but I’ve only been to his actual grave once since the burial. It was a year after he’d died, and I went and met his family there, along with a few other people. How can everyone forget so easily? Is a life that quickly discarded, that quickly erased from one’s memory? I remember everything about him, it seems. Like how we used to hang out together, the four of us, and we went and saw Urban Legends together and went back to Mindy’s house after that, and played hide and seek outside in the dark , and he kept trying to scare me and Grace. I remember how he went to Alabama with us, and him and Nathan went outside and washed their hair in the rain. That’s the memory I like to think about the most, because he looked so achingly alive then. He was so tall, and so skinny, and to be funny he used to suck in his stomach and you could count every single rib he had. His stomach was concave when he did that, and he used to say that he was an African refugee, and we would all laugh because we didn’t have the sense to realize that it wasn’t funny.
Sometimes I wonder if they were all lying about how he died. A heart condition that no one knew about, one that never gave him any problems at all until one morning he woke up and his heart just stopped working. Sometimes I think his parents just said that was his cause of death. I think his depression was probably a more likely cause of death. He used to talk about how he felt so alone, about how no one understood him, about how he hated everyone and everything. At the funeral, Mindy and Andy and I talked about he would probably be so disgusted with the whole thing that he would get up and walk out.
He was the first boy I ever loved.
He lived right behind my high school, and he was neighbors with one of my friends, and we used to talk about him all the time. He was home schooled and a lot of times I would try to see if I could spot him outside when I was in class. He used to ride his bike around the perimeter of our school all the time, and the sun would shine off of his blonde hair and I’d be sunk.
When he died, everyone watched me like they thought I was going to break. And I didn’t. Not until I saw his mom at the wake. I went up to her and she gave me a hug, and I went to tell her how sorry I was, and I just lost it. Tears were pouring down my face and instead of me trying to comfort her, it was like the tables were switched, and she squeezed my hand and said, “He was a great guy, wasn’t he?” And I just nodded, and walked over to where he was lying. I can’t even remember what he looked like in there, I think I blocked it out of my mind, but I leaned down and I kissed him and I whispered that I loved him, and then I went into the bathroom and threw up. Afterwards I went home and ripped up every single picture I had of him, trying to get him out of my veins. I wish I wouldn’t’ve done that.
All I could think about was how on easter, a few months before then, he’d come and sat next to me, even though there were a million other places he could have sat, and now, here he was, with a lid closing over his face, a lid that was never going to open again.
I hate everyone acts like it didn’t even happen. After he died, me and Mindy and Andy quit hanging out. It was like I lost three of my best friends instead of just one. He used to sit in the car and sing to himself, even if the radio wasn’t on, he would just close his eyes and sing in a voice that wasn’t even over a whisper. Once, we went to a movie, the four of us, and he was trying to hit on this girl who was sitting in the row in front of us, and she shot him down worse than I’ve ever seen anyone rejected. I think about her sometimes, and I wish that I could tell her that he was dead. I wish that I could tell her that just days before he’d died, she’d been a nasty little bitch to him, just because it would make me feel better.
When he was buried, they had a tent set up, I don’t really know why, maybe because it was really hot out, or maybe because there was a chance of rain. Or maybe that’s just what they do these days. And we all crowded under it, and there were buckets placed in intervals around the perimeter of the gravesite, and as they lowered the casket into the ground, we were supposed to take a handful of dirt and throw it in. How could they do that? I wanted to scream, and fight and insist that he wasn’t dead and that they couldn’t throw dirt on him because he’d get mad and come up with a great plan for extracting revenge on them. But I couldn’t. I couldn’t even move, and people kept coming up to me and asking me if I was okay. How could I be okay? He loved the Princess Bride, he loved tootsie roll pops, and rollerblading, and fishing, and he always crossed the street without looking.
A lot of times, I hate life. It’s so overwhelming, so unfair and callous and cold. People die, and everyone else forgets about them. It’s suffocating. It’s pointless and painful, and useless, and nothing matters, nothing that happens matters because it all gets washed away anyway.
Except sometimes, there are secret smiles during church, the look on someone’s face as they play in the rain, and the simplicity of sitting on a warm rock next to someone you care about.
And I feel so hollow. I can’t even cry anymore, instead there is just one more empty aching spot that nothing else can fill up.
February 8th, 1985- June 30th, 2001.
That is not a long enough span of time.
I will never forget. Never.
I’ll never stop hurting every time I think of him, either.

I am feeling very, very out of sorts today, like everything is just spinning out of my control, and if I held my breath and closed my eyes, everything would fade away, I could just disappear into the woodwork, and no one would even notice. Ugh. More later, maybe.

I thought I'd do things in list form today.
-> I had to babysit my sisters
     -> I got 40 bucks and free pizza out of the deal
     -> They thought it would be funny to attack me
         with squirt guns
     -> I got retribution by throwing them in the
         shower with the water on cold and fully clothed
        while I held the door shut. Har.
-> I have re-discovered my obsession with country music.
     -> All the songs are horribly sad and make me cry
     -> One came on about suicide today, right after
         I'd put on my makeup, and I oozed all over 
         myself.
-> I've managed to watch Smallville every day I've been home.
    Yay for addictions!
     ->Last night, Tori Amos played on letterman, and I fell
        in love with her all over again. She is absolutely
        stunning.
-> I'm still in the process of cleaning my room. It will never be finished.
     -> In the process of cleaning, I've become
         extremely nostalgic, and have started missing
         my old high school friends, which is fine, and
        Tim, which is not fine.
     -> I found 100 dollars. Woohoo!
-> I need a job.
     -> I applied at Borders today
     -> I was watching the Cosby show, and someone said
         "I'm looking in the classifieds for help
         wanted ads, and if I don't find anything there,
         I'm going to search the obitituaries. Those
         people aren't coming to work on Monday."
     -> To restate...I really need a job.
->I'm thinking about starting to work out again
     -> I called the gym to set up a consulatation
         appointment
     -> I still don't know why I have to go because
         they're just going to tell me I'm fat. Well.
         DUH. I love junk food and I hate excercise, of
         course I'm fat. And skinny people already
         belong to the gym. Thanks for the newsflash.
-> I got another phone call from my drunken aunt today
     -> Our conversation started with her yelling at me
         for taking a quarter off of school. I think
         people should stay out of business that isn't
         their own.
     -> Our conversation ended with her telling me that
         we had to do lunch once she got the new batch
        of interns at her work, then we could 'find me
         a suitable man (see point above for why that is
         not a feasible option) and then figure out what
         I should do with my life. Gee thanks for making
         me feel like a loser.
-> I'm going to the university church tomorrow morning
     -> I am going to see the boy that I kept calling
         'Hot Boy' when I was drunk the other night. (sidenote, yes, I did exhibit some bad judgement on St Patrick's Day, but God's forgiven me, I don't need a lecture, thanks in advance.) 
     -> This is bad.
-> They keep playing God commercials on TV 
     ->they make me happy.

Overall, my day was okay, I suppose. How're you?

Currently Watching Donnie Darko - The Director's Cut By Jake Gyllenhaal see related

Ya know, it’s funny, I only update this thing when I’m completely frustrated with myself, or when I have big news. I guess this is one of the latter times. To those of you who don’t know, I won’t be returning after spring break. I'm still going to Chicago with Crusade, but I'll have all my stuff out of the dorms, and back in my home sweet home of Cincinnati.

Ha. That one caught you off guard didn’t it?

Well, there’s several reasons for this abrupt decision—and it was abrupt. It didn’t even come into question until this past Sunday night, and now everything is just sort of moving quicker than I can even keep up with.

I guess you want to know why, huh? Well aren’t you all nosy? Just kidding. Haha, my sense of obnoxious humor doesn’t fail, even in the face of this sort of thing. Most of you know that I pay for fall quarter alone, and my mom pays for half of winter and spring and I pay for the other half. Spring quarter, my student loans and the money I made from my job wasn’t enough to pay tuition, let alone for my meal plan, or my books. Plus, there have been a lot of things going on at home lately, personal issues that I don’t really want to get into, but I know that my mom and sisters need the money more than I do. Then there’s the whole fact that this quarter I have been completely unmotivated to do anything school related. I don’t know if I’m just burnt out, or if it has to do with the fact that I have no idea what I want to do with my life once I get out of here. I need to put it all together, find what’s right for me, and then I can go back to being all about class and stuff.

I think it also has a lot to do with the fact that I’ve been working a lot this quarter too, and it was a hard struggle between my classes, work, and everything else I do that vies for my time. And then there is the whole issue of Crusade. Don’t get me wrong, I love it more than anything, but I think that I’m letting it take over, I’m confusing it with church, entangling it with God, so that it’s like I can’t have one without the other. I need to prove to myself that my faith isn’t going to take a dive just because I’m not in THIS particular community. I have friends at home that I went to church with before I came to school here, and I’m going to start going to UC’s FOCUS group, even though I don’t go to school there. I just think that this time is something that I need to do for myself.

Don’t get me wrong, please, this was not an easy decision for me to make. I love Ohio State, I love my friends, the girls in my suite, my floor in Morrill, my bible study, all the people from Crusade that I know.  I love my freedom, my independence, and being away from home. It’s just right now that I don’t have the money or the strength to keep pouring myself out like I did this quarter. I don’t have the will or drive for class, and I’m not going to kill myself just so that I can get bad grades, because that’s not who I am. I miss my friends at home, and I feel the need to be close to my family. It’s not the ideal situation, but it’s the only one that I have at this point.

Please remember that I love all of you, and I’ll be up here to visit a lot, and back again for fall quarter. I’ll even try to keep this stupid thing updated, and we all know how addicted to AIM I am, so anytime you want me, I’ll be around. Just don’t forget about me...I know I sound really flippant about this whole thing, but really, I'm not.

I hate myself.

I need God to come put all these shattered pieces back together, but I don't even know if He can hear me anymore.

I'm lost.