i have had a rotten day.

there's stupid high-school-esque bs going down and it sucks. i've learned to keep my damn mouth shut. apparently i'm the only one.

i finished my military law paper and it's embarassingly bad and i hate that, because i could have written an amazing passionate paper but i'm a lazy fuck.

i feel very uncool and uninvited and unliked for a myriad of unhappy reasons.

i lost my digital camera a week and a half ago and i fucking WANT IT BACK. had all of the pics of tiff's birthday, an awesome night out, and of the BOY I SWEAR TO GOD HE DOES EXIST AND HE CAME OUT AND ACTED LIKE A CHAMP AND TOOK PICTURES WITH US AND WAS GREAT. then i left the camera in the back of the cab. FUCK. grrr.

my new digital camera has too many megapixels and i look unforgivably fat and ugly in every picture.

i'm feeling fat and ugly.

all my JMLS people have left town and i miss them.

oh, aforementioned boy and i haven't spoken in over a week. super! i wish it got less devastating each time. i wish he wasn't able to break my heart on a several-times-a-week basis. it's pretty fucking stupid.

i miss LC.

the only things i find new and fun are horribly destructive and insane. and we do it anyway.

also, it's pouring rain and freezing out, and it's may.

the end.

love her, hate her, i don't really care, i enjoy the many varied and stylized artistic offerings of kat von d. from what i understand, she's a bit of a famewhore, but i don't know her so i don't care.

she's recently gotten into photography, and i think this is beautiful, and i think the subject is beautiful, i think her technique is beautiful, and it makes me feel mushy and stupid and sad and wistful and wishful and wanting. something more. something at all. enjoy.

i had but two very distinct but very calming thoughts on the way home tonight.

as anyone who has ridden in pete in the past month knows, i am going through the ridiculous process of cleaning out all of my CDs i've EVER made. And anyone who has known me, well, EVER, knows that i love to make a serious mix CD. So, it's been a hilarious, oft embarassing, sometimes great endeavour that has left my car covered in shiny plastic discs and vividly unearthed memories i'd assumed gone.

tonight i popped in a cd that i was sure would be Thrown Away: NYE 2K6. Like, what? We were like nine back then. I think it was made in the era where New Years Eve plans meant drinking an unhealthy amount of 6 dollar a bottle champagne at chris falta's house. not that i didn't love those days, but we are far, far past them.

ANYWAY, so a song came on that literally made me burst out laughing while cruising at 70mph on the kennedy. OutKast's "We Love Deez Hoez" was track 6 on the cd. instantly, i was reminded of being a stupid 19 year old, smoking and drinking and hanging out with Kyle and Travis in their old Urbana apartment. Or the following year, riding with Kyle in the two-door hyundai accent (or the apostrophe, if you knew what was up), rounding up all of our friends and defying actual time-space-matter limitations to jam three thousand people into a 3ft x 3ft space. It was such an amazing, carefree, fantastic time in my life and it makes me profoundly sad to juxtapose that against the stressful grind i'm rockin now.

But even more importantly, i realized that absolutely any time I think about Kyle, I feel so incredibly happy and grateful. Of course we fought, and of course there were dark times, but during our almost-four-years together, i grew so much, i learned how to care about someone, what love was and wasn't, when it was right to be strong enough for both of us and when it was okay to let my guard completely down. Even a stupid OutKast song reminded me that we never failed to have fun, something that can be difficult in long relationships.

Kyle and I have grown almost completely apart. He is in Japan now and living his life how he wants, and it is very different from how I would have wanted him to live it with me. And I'm sure the same is true for him. But regardless of where we are now, as I drove along I realized I am incredibly lucky just to have had the experience. I don't think many people are lucky enough to feel this way about a failed relationship. So for such an absolutely ridiculous, stupid song (seriously, if you don't know it, don't download it, you aren't missing a thing) it actually evoked some great memories.

Interestingly, as I was driving back to the city tonight, I was going there with the mindset that i have to stop putting so much pressure on myself, and on the boy, to make this something more. It's not getting me anywhere, in fact it's making me more miserable, and let's be real, i'm running out of depressing facebook statuses to post every time he crushes my hopes. It helped that I was in a great mood to begin with on the ride to his place - midterm over, leaving school in daylight, had no homework to get done tonight - but even despite all that, I thought it would be much more difficult to just let go.

But it wasn't. It was just fun. And I hate being this girl, I HATE it, but there are so many little things about him that make me happy that I had been ignoring. I love the way the skin around his eyes crinkle when he smiles. he remembers the stories i tell and the people in them (by NAME). how he always looks like he wants to kiss me when he looks at me. the way he lies and says i always look good, or he likes my hair up, or i don't seem tired when i always end up seeing him looking my absolute worst. Why have i been ignoring all the good to focus on the bad? Yeah, hell yeah, there is a lot of bad. But dwelling makes us tense and weird. Tonight was just the opposite. I loved it. And even though I know I (and my heart) am in a very scary, tenuous, fragile place when it comes to him, I'm slowly becoming more willing to take the chance. I think, I hope, I can coax the funny, normal, happy person I see glints of in him to surface more often. While any girl likes a serious, sweet, sensual guy who is clearly a writer because he always says the best, serious one-liners, I fall in love with the funny, frank, sarcastic challenge. Eh, scratch that. Fell. Already fallen. Blah. Terrifying.

So while I usually detest admitting that my thoughts are consumed with emotions and even worse, boys, tonight I don't mind. My thoughts filled by two wildly different yet strikingly similar individuals who I respect and can both, somehow, invoke some sort of serious emotional catharsis? I can handle that.

Of course.

Of course, Rocky Horror Picture Show and of course Tori Amos was playing when I needed him most and of course the room was filled with the scent of the candle I gave him for valentine's day, because I'd bought it when things were perfect and then things fell apart and I was too weak. i'm always too weak and godDAMN do i have good taste in candles, but not in attainable hearts because we all see how this is ending, with me in pieces, so many pieces of weird likes and dislikes that we share but somehow can't share a mutual affection. respect. ability to respond to a motherfucking, cocksucking text message. and speaking of which, i need my self respect back. sex and love are painfully distinct. i should know that. i do know that. but i don't want to. i feel like the girl trapped in the confines of the yellow wallpaper. i'm not crazy. i'm NOT crazy. this isolated situation is making me crazy. and i'm hiding it well but i can't keep this all inside forever. i can't remember the last time i felt like this. i think because people you love generally don't do this. sometimes you just need a text back for that body behind the wallpaper to just go away. i am a student and an employee and a fraternity president and a daughter and a friend but i am only insane when i am yours.

This is too much, this charming funny bright writer who loves the things i love, but doesn't love me. will never love me. i don't know how to stop sinking. what's past sinking? crashing? crashing. into a wall. of lead. fast.

and aflame.

with a chemical fire.

napalm, specifically.

i'm stopping.

My whole life I have lived in the same condo in the same suburb of the same city. And I have loved it. Because I hate, hate, hate change.

I took a four year leave of Willowbrook to go to college. Two hours south of Chicago in a town called Champaign. I loved every moment of it. And in some way, I loved that despite any freedom I had, home was not far away. I did what everyone from the western suburbs did: went directly to college, came directly home. I even went the extra mile and acted like a true Hinsdale Central alum, moving in with a college roommate to an apartment in Lincoln Park. As fun as it was, it didn't last, because of varying reasons, but mostly because he was moving on to live with his fiancee. Key words, moving on. Moving upward. Moving out.

I'm now, pathetically, back in Willowbrook, too terrified in this economy to get another apartment, too unsure where I want to be, too concerned about the length of the commute. The commute back. Back to the suburbs. Always moving back.

It hit me like a ton of bricks the other night that my hatred of change has paralyzed every element of my life. If I keep going at this rate, I will be a coordinator with a law degree, a 20something permanently living at home, and a desperate girl still fucking the guy who will never, ever fall in love with me. My whole life will be innocuous. Copacetic. Uninteresting. And sad.

Why have I been so terrified to leave Illinois? What is keeping me here but fear? Why do I throw away options, opportunities, and people that don't meet my stringent comfort level? Why can't I just dare not to know?

I made a huge decision last night and acted on it in a professional sense this morning. This is still at the earliest of stages and may not pan out at all, but it is what I need, I think, to finally taste the intellectual and emotional shakeup that I crave.at least I can say that I tried to do something new and interesting.

I can only keep thinking for so long that I'm meant for greater things without acting on that thought, without realizing it. If not, all I've done is watch my crippling stagnancy prove myself correct.

and I forgot
to tell you
I love you
and the night's
too long
and cold here
without you
I grieve in my condition
for I cannot find the strength to say I need you so

oh and every time I'm close to you
there's too much I can't say
and you just walk away

and I forgot
to tell you
I love you
and the night's
too long
and cold here
without you

somehow, somewhere, someday, i want to be the girl one buys flowers for. calls before midnight. makes time when i'm upset. wants me to text to say i got home. i don't want to say every one of my friends got some indication that someone cares about them this year, but dammit... SOME sort of indication... everyone.

a friend told me a horror story at dinner tonight, of some boy with whom she works who bought an extravagant, ridiculously priced bouquet of flowers for a girl he has a crush on this valentine's day. he had them delivered to her house on saturday, but never heard a word. monday, he called her to get her opinion, and she said she hadn't received anything. horrified, the boy called the florist, who apologized profusely for their error and sent another delivery to her. when they delivered the flowers, the florist noted the original bouquet, sitting on her table inside. when they informed the guy of this deceptive act, he called her again, mortified, asking if she got the flowers. "yeah, I got them." she told him. "I got them twice." the next day he learned she was with someone else.

all i want is a sign that it's possible for someone, anyone to see some sort of potential. this girl laughs at hundreds of dollars worth of flowers.

i hope i enjoyed my past life as some sort of renegade-serial-killing-orphanage-arsonist, because i was reincarnated into a horribly pathetic existence.

i know, i know, i KNOW i use this livejournal. i abuse it. i bitch and moan about my life all the fucking time and it's like the little girl who cried WORLD OF SHIT because man i swear to god, i didn't know how bad it could. i swear.

a lot i can't discuss here, which should let you know exactly which element of my life it's about. All i can say is FUCK, i have always stood by my friends, but I never knew loyalty could potentially cost me so much. like say, my job. in this fucking economy, too.

this year, for those of you keeping score, my rib broke. my car broke. my laptop broke. and saturday some drunken antics caused a valentine's day massacre to the old blackberry. vodka related drowning, i think. FUCK. i know it's pathetic but my whole LIFE was in that phone... reminders about phi delta phi and herzog, all of my numbers and contacts, important emails... let ALONE the stupid shit like the very first pics of my newest tattoo (complete with disgusting bruises indicating the war wounds i went through for it), or saved text messages that said 'i love you' that i can't imagine i will ever get again. fuck. FUCK. i want my phone back.

sprint categorized it as: damaged. beyond. repair. my replacement comes sometime this week. in the interim, i am unreachable. in some ways, it's great. in others, it's HORRIBLE. freedom is an interesting experiment, but i need it BACK NOW.

enough of that.

valentine's day came and went and was a glorious and exciting event, per usual. i hate, HATE that there is a stigma about "going out with your girlfriends" on valentine's day. WHY?! it doesn't necessarily mean you're bitter and alone. This year, i went out with an enormous group of single (and NOT single) guys and girls and it was a disasterously drunken blast.

friday night a friend finally updated my computer with windows, which i desperately needed. emotionally, it was kind of rough. i had convinced myself that i wasn't actually in love, that maybe, somehow, i'd fallen in love with the idea of love, and that i didn't really love anyone at all.

that couldn't be further from the truth. and hours of talk of marxism, taxes, work, general life, specific life, even needling about musical choices... made me realize it IS fucking love. i am totally, helplessly in love. with the eerie luminescence that radiates from his personality and his smile and everything else. when he finally opens up and shows me a glimmer of the charm and shroud of secrets that i know are in there, i can't help how i feel. and sure, it makes me more miserable and the next day being valentine's day, i was even more conscious of that misery, but it's not something i can control or maybe that i even want to. this dull empty ache could actually be better than losing everything altogether.

tomorrow night, issue #2 is due for herzog. i don't know how or when i'm going to write it, or how i'm going to pass my commercial law test on saturday, or how i'm going to manage phi delta phi this semester. but i do know that at this juncture things ACTUALLY cannot get much worse (though no promises, because I swear i've said that before...) so i will have to somehow, someway, ride it out.

this morning i woke up at 3am and had been, in my sleep, making a to-do list. when i was jolted awake by a noise on tv, the list just continued into conscious thought. i turned over and stared at the clock until 5am.

i feel like i'm watching someone else's life fall apart. but then i realize i'm already awake.

So, 2009.

It started, quite literally at the moment of its dawning, quite amazingly.

I confess. I confessed. I told a person I thought I'd never SPEAK to again exactly how I felt. To the most encouraging result possible. I did it completely wasted, but alas. My words spilled out of me, like some sort of torn aorta gushing truths like sloppily poured champagne.

I woke up in excruciating pain in my side. If it'd only been in my chest, then how life would imitate art.

I have fractured a rib. I have no idea how or when. i assume some time during the course of the events of NYE, perhaps sleeping next to Aaron and Tiff, perhaps during my drunken A.M. tumble in a desperate attempt to get water. The world will never know. But it hurts.

Then my two month old car tried to take on a pothole eighty times its size. And it lost. I get it back tomorrow, but 1500 dollars is a lot of money to shell out until insurance pays me back. And driving this horrible rental is like a tangible, awkward reminder of how ill fitting my life has felt.

The happiness with which I welcomed 2009 was fleeting. That sort of happiness always is. It's the unwrapping of the last christmas present, the smoke billowing away from birthday candles. What I'd hoped and wanted for so very long, gone essentially as soon as it was there. I don't know why, and I don't think I ever will. Another girl, another life, general lack of interest. attraction. love. it's beginning to sound like a grocery list in the story of my life, but this one, i'll admit, it stung.

i relished finding something as fragile and fucked up as me, till i learned even the weak can muster the strength needed to break someone else. I have never tried so hard to be unbreakable. but everything shatters. just need to know where to hit.

I have cried and drank and driven myself into a place I don't know that I will get out of. Or that I want to. maybe pain is tare - i need it to be myself. its only when i feel it that i can move forward.

i slipped and fell walking to a friend's apartment sunday night. it was one of those awful falls where you are completely cognizant the entire time you're going down, but the ice is so thick and slippery that there's nothing you can do but prepare for the hurt. i had to stop the rush of tears and the bleeding from my knee right there, alone, cold, in the middle of an empty chicago street in the middle of the night. this entry is awful and i'm sorry. i need to stop slipping before i can write anything else. i can feel the pain, i see the reflection of the streetlights in this ice. if only i could get my feet under me, i swear i would try to stand it all.

half sleeve is finished. it's beautiful. it makes me hate a part of my appearance less. success.


i may have sort of kind of paused. for a moment. unalone. i like the feeling of his arms around me.


winter break is wonderful, relaxing, lovely. NYE was exciting and fun, and the holidays were that kind of wholesome bliss you only feel at that time of year.


is it wrong for me to be in love with kevin smith for the following: "I think about my wife when I jerk off."? I mean really, at the end of the day when we're old and wrinkled and ugly and awful, isn't that all we can hope for? I sort of think it's a modern day, isolation-driven society's confession of true love. it's something i wouldn 't be ashamed to hear from a man who chose to spend the rest of his life with me. weird, blunt, and gross. but kind of tender. perhaps in that medium rare sense.


then again, maybe i'm only able to see the silver lining right now. when reality seeps back in and pulls me back to the surface, i'll just think it's creepy and gross.

I need to study. I have an exam at 6. Something is wrong with me.

I hate that I seethe whore. and desperate. to everyone i meet.

i am overwhelmed by a friend's relationship problems. they're consuming me. i feel like a goddamn party to the situation. minus the sex. of course.

i can't make myself care about school anymore and that scares the shit out of me.

i got a half-sleeve. of a japanese print called 'the great wave.' i love it. my mother burst into tears and said 'what would that look like in a wedding dress!' then remembered, and reminded me, that she'll never see me in a wedding dress, anyway. so tender, she is.

i lay in bed at night but never fall asleep. i just turn off my thoughts when i turn off my alarm.

i hate facebook i hate being nosy i hate hate hate learning things i don't want to know.

what is it about me that makes strangers want to tell me bold, wildly blatant untruths?

i did a very stupid thing yesterday and just learned now it was actually much, much more stupid than originally anticipated.

i know this is the most vague, obnoxious post ever but know this: i. am. mortified.

time to stop focusing on me and my ridiculous loneliness that makes me bonafide crazy. school, work, friends. nothing else. ever again. seriously.

i just realized that I, Amy, the queen of all theme parties, have never been to a tacky christmas sweater party. EVER. i need to remedy that.

It's thanksgiving again. it's been a rough, rough year. I lost a lot of direction and passion this year, and I've felt really lost and lonely for a majority of it. Still, my life is amazing in ways that I choose to ignore a lot of the time, but given that today is that day where we express our gratitude, I'd like to highlight just a few things for which I am eternally giving thanks:

-my beautiful, pristine, amazing friends.
-the ability to be great at my job.
-the guilty rush i admittedly love when i buy something i can't afford.
-strangers who smile.
-the few precious minutes when a crush is going well...
-espresso.
-despite everything, my mother.
-tattoos. or should i say, the ability to make your body much more of YOUR version of beautiful than you were born with.
-terrifying decisions made sitting in traffic on the eisenhower, and the belief that follows with a change of mind.
-the devastation that comes with a failed love, because it implies an undying hope for it.
-my ugliness, which forced me to have the type of personality people always want to be around.
-my weakness, which is a daily reminder that i need to step back. breathe. and remember i'm only human.

happy thanksgiving.

i keep interest for exactly one week
even in those who can see past all of the ugly
one. whole. week.
and then gone. without explanation or apology.
it's all i'm worth. especially when she won't give it up.
what good is insecurity if it doesn't give you head?

i appreciate your happiness
but the shelf life
their shelf life
is so much longer.
and it's so easy to be jealous
when you're always the one that's one-week a' gone.

this one
i swear it
was seriously. actually. perfect.
i say it every time;
maybe i do it because it makes the pain
even more severe
and we all know i'm a drama queen.

getting over it destroys but
like my mother always says
in her slurred toxic whisper
your hair, your nails, they're already black.
you. like. this.
you like this! and i wanted grandchildren.
did you need so big a portion? at this hour?
then stumble off to sleep, crying tears for
herself, her drunken dreams of having anything
but a poor fat girl who will end up alone.

the mascara in my eyes burns
and it's only day one: getting over.
and there's no solace in it -

in not being under.
because being filled with that one-week-cruelty
guarantees 45 seconds of being filled at all. but really,
no whore is allowed to feel that kind of loneliness, anyway.
get used to it! your black nails are chipped.
when you wear sex in your eyes, you shouldn't be allowed to cry.

i wanted it.
just like i wanted that pain and the
smears of black across the blue
of my eyes.
at least i can't see
the embarassment of one week
STILL tricking me. into thinking.
this one will last. he says what no one has ever said.

i blink and my hips are wide and my hair is night.
mascara moves from pupil to cheeks.
and you girls finding love, then love on the side. then more.
and me turning over again
pretending to sleep.

it has been 441,796,964 seconds since my father died.

i feel like this is the most appropriate way to express the time that's passed. it's mere seconds and it's an eternity. i have grown into a woman since he left. i don't even think he'd recognize me, unless he got to see my temper or my drunk driving or my nicotine addiction. those, i'm sure, he'd realize came straight from him.

i'm forgetting his voice. and his wrinkles. his receding hairline. the way he called me am-ah.

i have no recollection of his laugh. or how he held his cigarette. i don't know if he called my mother by petnames, in the good times.

i will never know what his favorite color was. or what sort of music he cranked up in the car. or if he did a whole crapload of illegal drugs when he was struggling with growing up. or who his first love was.

i know there will come a time when all i know of my father is what he did to us when things were bad, but i'm holding out hope that those faint, good memories will remain for awhile longer. and even if they don't, well then i hope i am convincing enough to believe the ones i invent. and maybe, eventually, his only memory will be in me. in how i become friends with everyone i meet, and how i smack authority in the face. he lives on in the little girl he left, maybe.

so many seconds have passed since november 7th, 1994. it's not easier, but it's not harder. it is what it is, and i am who i am as a result. and whoever i am is far too tired to continue this atrociously written prose, but i needed to make a note of how i feel. how i feel in this, the 441,796,964th second of who i've been without my dad.

"if her pillow could talk,
it would whisper to you,
of the wet-mascara war wounds,
that mark its seams,
like scars,
of tears and screams,
and bad dreams,
coming true.

if you only knew
what her sheets have been through.
the sweat, blood and sex
and drunken bodies out of breath.
her lovers,
tired and tangled in the covers,
worn on the back of the bed
that carries her weight."
(cassandra church)

Today I was in the car driving to class and bored with all of my CDs. I turned on Q101 just for some white noise, and the Primitive Radio Gods one-hit, "Standing Outside a Broken Phone Booth with Money in My Hand," was on. That song instantly took me soooo far back, back to halloween one year when we went to the old haunted house at the odeon in villa park. Maybe 6th grade. And I remember how much I hate, hate, HATED my life then. Being fatherless was new, I was an awkward pre-teen, I was extremely ugly and beginning to become a little overweight (HA!), and life just felt angsty and terrible. I wanted to grow up, move away, move on, move forward.

And yet, when that song came on, I didn't feel ANY of that. I remembered, vividly, a time before cars, and boys, and ending friendships, and higher education. A time before the boldness it takes to tell off a parent, a friend, a professor. Way before full time jobs, or part time jobs, or responsibilities at all. A time before caffeine addiction, nicotine addiction, affection addiction. Before knowing how it felt to have your heart broken. And rebroken. And then stepped on. Before I'd mastered the art of lying, of smiling, of faking. orgasms. emotions. everything. Far, far before I became who I am.

How strange that a song I loved at such a miserable time in my young life makes me reflect now on how very great I had it.

hold on tight - i'm gonna post a happy blog!

i do this about once a year. i should do it more. i'll try.

i love this time of year because there are so many totally self-centered reasons to be excited.

my birthday is in one week. i will be 25. i am leaving the 18-24/college/MTV/youth demographic. I think i'm starting to be okay with it. I've been using wrinkle cream since I was 17, so i'll panic in a few years. 30 will not be so pleasant.

I am having a fabulous birthday party at a prohibition-era themed speakeasy that just opened in Wrigleyville called 1914. I am SO excited. Many, many of my favorite people are attending. I have a fun outfit. It will, WILL be fun.

Halloween is less than two weeks away. I am going to go as a ringmaster (think like, in a circus). I'm pretty excited because I have a baller red velvet jacket, a top hat, red knee-high vinyl platform heel boots, and... a WHIP. yesssss. A bunch of us girls are going to go out downtown somewhere and tear up the town. Looking moderately but forgivably slutty. I cannot wait.

Lots of stuff on the horizon is not so fun... work is crazy, remedies test wednesday, employment discrimination paper coming up, and really, only a month till finals panic. but for right now, i just want to embrace all the awesomeness that is very soon heading my way.