Strange Sea, Plus Bonus Cute Things

When I was younger, before my parents got divorced, I used to travel to South Carolina every summer and vacation at Edisto Beach for a week. We never took big, lavish international vacations like a lot of my rich white kid peers, which is weird because I am also totally a rich white kid, but I am extremely thankful for the memories I had at that humble little island anyway. It was a beautiful place.

I used to spend hours out on the beach. Sometimes I'd make fake pasta with seaweed and bits of pool toys in holes I dug in the sand with my cousins because grown up shit was somehow always really cool*. Little did I know that was the universe foreshadowing my future as a young adult shrouded in misery and darkness, making nothing but pasta all the time because I was not fortunate enough to be one of the few to which cooking brings joy. Damn you, universe. I thought making food was going to be fun and not a task which would cause me to become existential on a routine basis!




I digress.

When I wasn't playing in the sand I was out in the waves. I was bragging to this to a guy the other day who seemed super impressed, so I'll repeat it now: I was an amazing boogie boarder. In fact, I might have to add that to my dating profile. Because seriously guys, I was friggin' awesome at it. My 8 year old self got such an adrenaline high from catching those 3 foot Atlantic waves. That is what I'd look forward to most of all during summer vacation. Well, that and the giant plastic containers of cheese puffs my aunt and uncle would bring on the trip.

But when I wasn't catching mad redonk surf with my board, I'd sometimes turn around and launch myself off the wave as it rolled past. I'd pretend I was Pocahontas when she jumped off the waterfall into the canoe and then get to go meet hunky dunky John Smith with his sexy 90s boy band hair. Sometimes, I'd let the boogie board drift to the side while I let the waves lift me up and I'd twirl around and pretend I was a ballerina. I never would have admitted to fantasizing about being a ballerina, it was way too girly for me at the time, but it's true, I wanted to dance. I always have.

And then other times, I'd just sit there, cling to my boogie board, look at the ocean, and think about things. I'd often wonder what would happen if I got caught by the riptide and it took me out to sea. What it might be like to sit all alone in the ocean by yourself with nothing but a cheap styrofoam boogie board to hold on to. How it would be to not be able to see land at all. Would I get cold? Would I get tired? Hungry? Thirsty? Would I get eaten by sharks? Could I swim back to land? Would anyone come save me? Would they be able to find me? Would I be afraid?

How long would it before I would give up hope completely?

It's funny, the universe had once again foreshadowed to my future. These days I let my mind drift a lot. I can't focus on anything and I constantly feel like I'm floating in some massive strange sea. I legitimately get dizzy and images sort of get fuzzy if I don't concentrate hard enough frequently. I keep thinking about the things I want to do, what the next steps are, and it's like I am walking on jell-o, except it's way less cool and for some reason I'm not allowed to stuff my face with it. Meanwhile, I have to keep doing the things I am supposed to do, like taxes and laundry and math homework.

Then I get these bizarre moments of solidity. I feel like I can do whatever I want if I just believe in myself and work hard enough, that I am amazing and nothing is going to stop me, this is just the part of the movie where the going gets tough. You know, where I'm all like "I am woman, hear me roar," and all that jazz. The world gets all amazing and inspiring and I can feel dance inside of me to beats in the music I'm listening to and every emotion I have is teeming, yes teeming, out of my fingers and the color of the sky makes me want to weep. I'm so artsy and everything is so meaningful. It's deep, yo.

Of course, then something frustrating happens. Sometimes it is when my homework is hard, or if I think about any one of my failed relationships, or I have too many boogers in my nose. Suddenly my world comes crashing down again and I'm floating in my quarter-life crisis ocean once more.

It's been a very unforgiving cycle.

I haven't written in awhile because not only am I beyond stressed out by the pressure of performing thrice in one month has put on me, but also because I haven't been able to think many positive thoughts about my life or life in general, and it gets very difficult sometimes, because that isn't who I want to be, at least not to other people. So I am going to remain not writing anything, because I can only do so much, I only have so much energy (in other news I wonder if I am anemic?), and mustering the amount of energy it takes to be positive to an internet full of strangers is a hell of a lot for me right now. So when things get a little better, I promise, you will be the first to know.


I'm not going to draw anything because I have a bunch of homework to go do, so here is a collection of cute animal things I totally stole off tumblr.

I hope they improve your day as much as they improved mine.


*I used to play "jobs" with my friends all the time. We'd just sit there for hours and pretend type on fake laptops and be endlessly entertained. We never did play "taxes" or "student loan debt" though.

Everything Feels Shitty

Not to be a downer or anything but.

I'm going to be a downer.

For the one hundred millionth time. I know I seem like I have a mental breakdown every month, but the truth is, it is just an ongoing thing.

I have sad news.  My last post wasn't my 100th post. I apparently have made 100 posts + drafts, but only 84 of those have actually made it out to you.

Ok but really.

Yes. My shit is purple. 

This is the only picture I could bring myself to draw, and honestly, it's just so there is something attached to my Facebook link. I'm sorry. I just don't have the heart for anything more.

I don't have the heart for anything lately. If I could, I'd melt into my bed and become a sullen little Meri monster that exists in the abstract time and space between the rusting springs of the mattress I've owned since I was three years old. I'd only come out to mingle with dust bunnies and pretend to the boogeyman for small and vulnerable children.

Or maybe I could just be nothing.

I think I might prefer that, actually.



It all started with community college.

When I was in high school, I always thought of community college as the dumping ground for students who failed to live up to basic academic standards. Since I was always reassured I was smart by every grown-up who was relatively familiar with my writing and reading comprehension scores, I scoffed at the thought of ever going to such a place. I was in mother-fucking Gifted and Talented when I was 13, yo, community college had no place in my life. I would much rather expand my horizons by going to an out of state college where everything was so miserable that I would never leave my apartment. That was definitely a better life path.

I mean, being as insanely intelligent as I was, I knew community college really was more than just that. It is also an economically logical school for attending and useful for people who want a new or different start, not just a place where all those kids who smoked cigarettes by the road in front of my high school went once they finally realized the horrible life choices they'd made. But it still had that stigma in my mind when I stepped foot inside for the beginning of the spring 2014 semester one month ago.

I felt like a failure and it did not help that everyone around me in the hallways looked like kids I used to know in high school, AKA not weird looking art students. Oh and the fact that there were actually people in the hallways. Like a normal school. Haven't seen that in awhile. On my first day I passed two people talking seriously in the hallway and this is the actual conversation I overheard:

Boy: Well, what can you do?
Girl: Die.
Boy: ...Yea. True.

It was like they were speaking to me. It was a sign. Because I wanted to die right then very much.

I did not feel right about being in the whole place until a series of other shitty events made me dead in the eyes just enough to fit in with everyone else. Now I can walk with my head lowered in defeat like the rest of the student population. I even bombed my first math exam like a real high school failure.

The first math exam of the semester should be the easiest, since in theory it mostly covers review material, but it was not so easy for me. I spent the entire 2 hours and 15 minutes to work on it and bullshitted at least 8 out of the 42 questions because I ran out of time, writing down equations and random answers hoping I'd get some partial credit for "showing my work" (I did). By some miracle I managed an 80%, which is the very bottom rung of "acceptable" in my universe, but that did not mean I didn't want to burst into tears during the test because I could remember anything about the difference quotient. Which I first learned about when I was 15. Eight whole years ago.

I know I can be a good student. I've done it before. So why am I seriously fucking things up so much for the first time ever?

It's not that I didn't study. I studied for hours. I studied my little anxiety-ridden student heart out, the way a girl who always haughtily thought she was above community college would. In theory I should have nailed it. I am chalking it up to the fact that last week, a day before the exam, I was dumped for the first time ever.*

As it turns out studying through a literal veil of tears isn't quite so effective.

Well alright, that is not 100% accurate. I've been dumped before. But I've never been dumped by someone I didn't already want to break up with. Hey, I wasn't very mature about communication in high school, alright?

This time around it really stung however, and on top of watching another dream job fall into pieces in front of me during the same week, I haven't been doing so well ever since. I don't even know what I want to say in words-- my precious words that I usually have so many of-- because I feel so hurt. There simply aren't any words for it, just memories in my head that I run through over and over again wondering where I could have done better and stupid pointless hopes lingering in the back of my head like hungry stray dogs waiting outside of a restaurant that already know there aren't any scraps to spare. And the desire to melt into my bedsheets of course, of which my face is working very hard to achieve.

On the whole, I am unsure of how I am processing. This is what I do know:

1. My feelings towards the universe change every six seconds, with the default being my standard "I hate everything" and at best things are "Maybe one day somehow things will get sort of kind of ok. Maybe." 

2. I almost got through a whole day yesterday without crying (almost).

3. When I hit a mood of "I want to go out in my badass ponytail and yoga pants and fuck some shit up," I felt like I was making a breakthrough. 

4. I can't tell if I am overreacting or not. I probably am. I overreact to my whole life. In a very quiet, unassuming way. Somehow. 

5.Other than that I have thus far resisted the temptation to surprise my family with a new dog. I've been missing my ex-boyfriend's previous male friend with whom I spent most of my free time and went out on dates on a regular basis and was intimate with's** dog and I realize I can no longer stand to live vicariously though other people's pets. So it's probably only a matter of time. 

6. I went on a date on Sunday hoping it would help me deal with things or at least distract me. It was alright until the guy kissed me goodnight and I nearly lost my shit. He hasn't contacted me since. Yup. Definitely way too soon. 

7. My only consolation prizes are that I am saving a fuck-load on gas money not driving to Denver multiple times a week and I no longer have to sleep on the world's shittiest bed.

8. I made a tiramisu for a date night awhile back (think Superbowl time) and brought it back home with me after things ended thinking it might still be ok and maybe someone in my family would want it. It has sat untouched in my fridge for a week but I refuse to throw it out until I feel more emotionally capable of letting go… I am pretty certain it will rot in there. 


It was a lucky coincidence that the day after shit hitting the fan I started therapy, something I have long avoided. Everyone kept telling me to do it and feeling trapped in a corner, I foresaw a shitty future, so for once in my life I was on the ball about my emotional health.

And then I went and wrote this super personal post and we can all see I'm turning into a train wreck. So that undid all the good steps I've made so far.

Anyway. Take me setting foot in community college, losing a job I've been working to have for months, getting dumped by the first person that made me feel genuine happiness and gave me chronic nausea at the same time, having a severe reaction to that, therapy, and well... All of these events have made me begin to face the fact that I ended up in community college not because I am an academic failure but because I have mental health issues.

There. I said it.

A lot of things in my life are because I just don't know how to deal with people or with my own emotions. It is not because I am not smart or good at the things I do. There is just some bridge in my brain that got knocked out somewhere down the line…. y'know, the whole "social intelligence" bridge.

So here I am. Everything feels shitty. Nothing anyone has said to me in the past two weeks has made me feel even remotely better. When I turn off my lights and lay down at night I feel like I'm being strangled in the chest, if that makes any sense, which is why is almost 1 AM and I persist onwards in writing.


I dunno. "Everything feels shitty." That is just all there is right now. And that is probably all there will be for awhile. Maybe hopefully one day it kind of sort will be ok. If I'm lucky. I don't have any choice but to wait and see, do I?


I'm going to try to write a lighter take on this next week that will hopefully make the both of us laugh.



*Not to mention two days before valentines day and two weeks before my pole competition, of which the latter makes me more upset because now I have no focus and seriously decreased motivation to care. 
**Because apparently that doesn't make someone your boyfriend. Also sorry if I don't know how to properly use "whom" in a sentence. I can never remember the rule. And frankly, I don't give a fuck because you know what I meant. So actually no. I'm not sorry. 
***Hooray for passive aggressive footnotes! 

Walls (100th Post Go Me!)

Sometimes in life, we decide we want to do things and stuff.

But while going down the merry path of things and stuff,

we run into walls.

The walls, being walls, stand in our way from going down the merry things and stuff path.

They're not usually very nice about it, either.

That is when we come to a point where we have to make a decision.

We can try and do something about this wall, or we can turn around and go back down the merry path of things and stuff and find a different things and different stuff path.

Often this is a difficult decision. I've chosen both before.

I once ran into a wall I've so aptly named "getting rejected to my dream school."

It made me sad.

But I decided to sit at the wall and work on my foundational art skills for a year. Then I turned back to the wall and tried to hurl myself over it.

I ran into it again. I was rejected the second time.

So I decided to get creative, since art school taught me about that shit.

I went to a different art school. And so I was back skipping down the merry path of becoming an artist.

Then I encountered another big wall. This wall was called "competence crisis."

It was a bitch of a wall.

I contemplated for awhile. I could try to overcome this wall, but because it was so big, I had no idea what would be on the other side. Perhaps even bigger walls.

And so I considered what would happen if I turned away.

This can be difficult, especially when you've put so much effort and time into going over the previous walls. It can be heart-breaking, too. However sometimes, you just have to be realistic about the outcomes. If I climbed this wall and became "the artist," or "the animator," I may be broke and forever in debt with no job security for the rest of my life, which could obstruct my abilities to explore other paths I wanted to see, like world travel, having a nice home, or having a family. I may be able to find great success on the other side, but with this I knew, again, I would also sacrifice my entire life.

And so I turned around and found other paths for myself.

It was a really, really difficult thing to do.

Maybe one day, I'll be able to find a new way around this wall. When I undoubtedly approach it in other realms, I will learn new tactics to deal with it.

Walls are just problems for us to solve. They challenge and test us, and our responsibility is to learn and grow from them.

But sometimes when we run into walls, they just topple right over us.

And crush us underneath their weight. We are trapped inside of them.

It just gets darker and darker as time goes on.

OR YOU COULD JUST BE LIKE THIS MOTHER-FUCKING BUNNY AND GIVE NO FUCKS.

The end.


PS Sorry I can be so dramatic sometimes.

20 Something Girls vs. 30 Something Girls

First off, I am a wizard.

Check out this article about a woman who got drunk six weeks back and broke into the elephant enclosure in the Denver zoo.

Sound familiar?

I wrote about it in a blog last November. Sure, maybe not exactly the elephant enclosure, but pachyderms are pretty close. They're both grey and leathery and gigantic and can totally rip your head off very easily.

This post was made November 9, just a little over a month before someone stole my glory.

I can't decide if I was beaten to the punch or if I possibly inspired and changed the life of an individual.  I like to think the latter, leaving out of my conscience the probable ailments and court date she was assigned.

Just another days work for us at Sexless and Cynical!

Second, today I am taking a break to talk about my meaningless personal life to rant about television again. Yay! I bet you are excited. It is a long overdue post I outlined awhile ago before school hit me like a brick. I've been trying very hard to stay on top of it and prove my worth as an intelligent human being, all while trying to fight the feeling of mediocrity via community college, so blogging hasn't been a priority. You'll hear more about it later. But please excuse the fact that this blog will mostly be other peoples images, because I simply don't have time to draw anything. I'm trying to stay stretchy and also sane right now.

Here is what I'm going to be ranting giving an analytical and open to debate discussion on:
(because that sounds way more intellectual)

Girls vs. Sex and the City

Once upon a time I made a status update on Facebook, as per my usual boring life behavior. This post was about my guilty pleasure and undeniable love for Sex and the City. Someone commented back saying I should just watch Girls, because it is the same thing except with younger women. I scoffed. I didn't care that Sex and the City was an outdated 90s show that applied to literally nothing in my life. It held a special place in my heart.

I started watching Sex and the City on TBS in high school when my mom finally put a TV in my room, mostly because there was nowhere else to put it and it was about 12x12 inches and no one else wanted it. It came on for an hour every night at 10, and I was soon a devotee to the sage-like words of Carrie Bradshaw. It taught me what being a woman was truly all about. Kind of.

The basis of the show is four women with inexplicably endless piles of money* to spend on designer brands of everything and bitch about how men don't like how whiny and needy they are. They search for happiness and true love through sex and marriage all while upholding the true, untouchable "BFF" bond.

I justified my watching of it by claiming that every woman, no matter how "down to earth" she was, had a secret inner need for fabulousness. I'm not the "fabulous" type myself, despite my stunning grace and beauty, but there was a little part of me that always sighed in desire while viewing the show. It filled that tiny space in me that ached for expensive shoes, cosmopolitans, and rich boyfriends in New York City.

Ok. I know. It's basically a complete and total fantasy world. Maybe that is why I liked it. It is not exactly an…empowering show for women. The four main characters, despite what careers they have chosen, act more or less like airheads at least half the time, more for Charlotte, who is more marriage obsessed than the rest. Strangely enough though, she is the only one who ever dresses in relatively normal looking outfits? Their focus on men is a headache at best and screaming at the television screen at worst, along with some really sub-par moments of acting that make even me embarassed. The only character that is bearable is the nymph-o, Samantha, and only because she is crazy. So that is at least fun.

Despite this, I still enjoyed it. It was a romp, I suppose, in a world I'll probably never know. (Unless I get super internet famous and earn piles of money, move to NYC, and can pay people to be my friends).

But the years did pass and eventually I decided it was time to give in and watch Girls, because it clearly wasn't going away and I needed something new to watch. I got over my laziness and scrounged up the links online and sat through all 20 episodes, which was peanuts compared to the nine? seasons of Sex and the City, plus two movies, that I had seen all of which multiple times before. So this might not be the most thorough of comparisons.

Everyone makes this comparison though, right? Girls and Sex and the City. OooOoOh the controversy. I'm sure I'm breaking new ground here.

As stated on the Girls wikipedia page, which I looked up because I'm such a legit writer I do my research. On wikipedia. Apparently Girls was inspired by Sex and the City, mainly by the women striking out and trying to "make it" in NYC thing. Girls aimed to fill the gap in between being the rich teenagers of Gossip Girl and the rich 30 something women of Sex and the City by being broke 20 year olds. How that works, I'm not sure. The point is, the show is aware of the ties. In the very first episode there is a little nod to SatC, both highlighting the comparison but also blatantly trying to separate itself as a production. What it said to me was "We know about Sex and the City. And we know we are similar. But in fact, we are different."

That seems to be a central theme surrounding the main character, Hannah, in fact. How different she is. She's overweight and weird and so artsy and writer-y that it makes my head want to explode. She is basically like every illustration major I've ever met. As the show progressed I couldn't help but get that little itch in the back of my mind that there was something I did not like about it. It wasn't the writing. At times it could be very poignant and beautiful, which was a deep contrast to Sex and the City, where the writing was more or less an afterthought between sexual innuendos. The stories were fine, and the characters were complex enough I suppose. And then I hit episode 5 of season 2, where Hannah shacks up with this stranger she randomly meets for a couple of days, and well, obviously it doesn't end in happily ever after. Mainly due to the fact that she gives this long speech that makes the guy think twice about her. I don't blame him, either. It made me pretty irritated.

Here is more or less the transcript, because I couldn't find the scene on youtube: 

"Please don't tell anyone this, but...I want to be happy. ... I didn't think that I did. I made a promise such a long time ago that I was gonna take in experiences, all of those, that I could tell people about them and maybe save them but it gets so. tiring. Trying to take in all the experiences for everybody, letting anyone say anything to me. 

I realize I'm not different. You know. I want what everyone wants, I want what they all want. I want all the things. I just want to be happy. 

...

Something is broken inside of me. 

You know what I think I didn't realize before I met you that I was like, lonely. In such a deep, deep way. You know and I was reaching for all this stuff but all I really needed was to be able to look at a person and be like "oh that person wants to be there after I'm dead," you know?

You think I'm a crazy girl? 

If anything I just think I'm like, too smart and too sensitive and too like, not crazy. So that I'm feeling all these big feelings and containing all this stuff for everybody else and it's like... Ok I read this article about Fiona Apple in New York Magazine and where she said, "Oh everybody acts like I'm nuts. I'm not nuts, I just want to feel it all." It's like that is what I'm like, I just want to feel it all. You know? "

These people, the main character especially, are so wrapped up in themselves. It's all about them. And their needs. Every time they have to be supportive for someone else they complain and say "People just need me all the time and I can't do everything for everyone all the time! Blahblahblah."

This show is clearly aiming to give a more realistic portrayal of the young woman of New York City. I suppose women with less money is honest, sure. And maybe they aren't quite as sex and relationship obsessed, by you know, having conversations not about men once in awhile. But christ! These characters aren't airheads, no, but their heads are still up their asses. "I'm too smart and too sensitive" Please. Just stop. You have people looking to this show and this quote like it's actually a good thing to feel that way. At the end of season one/beginning of season two, Hannah dumps the guy she's been chasing for an entire season because she's "afraid." When he tells her "We're all afraid," she responds, "Yea, but I am more afraid than everyone else."

At least when Sex and the City has it's earnest moments, they have a sort of purity to them. That makes us not want to completely slap characters upside the head. The acting isn't great, but at least she isn't ignorant about other peoples feelings.

THIS is why I don't like the show. The characters are all selfish and unrealistic as human beings. Just LOOK at Shoshanna for goodness sakes, and tell me real people act like that.

Ok but I do kind of love her just like I love Samantha.

Maybe there is a rawness to the lives they live, but that doesn't make it real. Maybe there is some very eloquent and poetic scripting at times, but it all still exists in the magical fantasy land of NYC, where people only move to so that they can be broke and wish for their dreams to come true their whole lives. IF they do, their heads just go right up their asses because somehow they've "made it" in NYC and can afford an apartment bigger than a toenail and that makes them better than the rest of us, who prefer to not follow our dreams and live in homes with room to do cool stuff like make pillow forts and have crazy dance parties to 90s pop.

…

Or perhaps I don't like the selfishness and dysfunction of the characters because it is so realistic, and I don't like facing the truth of reality. The truth that people are self absorbed and sad all the time. Maybe I don't want to admit it displays a reflection of who I am and I just don't like who I am.

Or maybe I just think these 20 something Girls are kind of stupid, just like the 30 something girls of Sex and the City, but with less exciting and romantic plot lines.

So, in conclusion, my overall assertion is that both shows exist is magical fantasy lands where women have inflated heads and are full of shit and care too much about men and wear really weird fucking clothes. Like what the fuck? People don't dress like that.

I prefer the over the top, sickly sweet shows about women and lives so far out of reach we don't have to despise them, but that is just me.

And now this, because I think it's funny:

*Not counting those few episodes where a writer realized that the main character, Carrie, writes a single column in a newspaper for a living in one of the most expensive cities in the world and still manages to live a high end lifestyle, so they put "money problems" in as a plot device, but then forgot about it after a few episodes when the conflict had run its course just like every other relationship Carrie has. 

There's a Stranger in my House

The other night I sat down, opened a new blog entry page, and wrote this list in an attempt to brainstorm a new post:

Getting a new cat

Picking my nose

Public urination

Helping an assault victim 

So now, I will somehow string these things together in order to make a coherent and poignant observation about life. Because it's not like I had any other plans tonight.

Or maybe I'll just talk about some random stuff until I feel satisfied and call it a day so I can eat more 3 month old graham crackers from my nightstand drawer.

Oh who am I kidding. I already ate them all while writing this.

Totally not guilty. 

---
About 4 months ago, our lovable mitten-pawed cat went missing. We've waited a proper mourning period and a week ago my Father told me it was time we go get a new one. He told me if I wanted to come help pick one out, I should be free Saturday afternoon. I had no real plans that day, so I had every intention to come along. Picking out a cat is like picking out a new family member, and somehow I have always missed almost every trek to pick up a new feline with my family in my entire life. Plus, I wanted to go be surrounded by cat fuzzy little beings of love.

We miss him quite a lot. 

…But instead, I got drunk at this party the night before and woke up with a massive hangover and missed the whole thing.

It was one hell of a hangover, although I fortunately did not get sick-sick. I was fine as long as I didn't move, which is why it took me so long to get up off the potato chip encrusted couch I passed out on and missed cat picking. Turns out the call of a greasy breakfast burrito was the only true lure. As soon as I got into a moving vehicle, however, I regretted my decision to ever be a human being.

"Remember when we were young?" I said to my friend in the backseat while I tried to close my eyes and pretend I wasn't moving, "And we could drink all we wanted and pop up in the morning like fresh daisies? What happened to that?" It was only three or four years ago, after all.

Neither of us could solve the mystery.

My ability to binge drink is only going to get worse with age. I guess the moral of that story is that I should probably stop doing that sooner rather than later, and you know, become a responsible adult. Because that morning instead of working, or training, or picking out an adorable cat like I said I was going to, I got stupid drunk and couldn't move my legs and hated myself for it. Just like two weeks earlier and two weeks before that. As I watched my friend's uber-athletic roommate eat cereal in between an early morning of intense climbing and going for a long bike ride in serious bike riding spandex, I knew that if I'm going to be a legit athlete like him, something has got to give.

According to my friend we had fun though, which is also an important experience in life or something. I'm not sure if fun is what I would call it, but I guess considering the fact that I went to giant house party where I knew no one, which is usually awful for me, it wasn't bad. It was one of those nights were I have instagram memories, meaning I have a couple of still frames and maybe a few 14 second clips in my head of what happened. I remember standing on an armchair with a girl named Sasquatch in a room that was all blue. I remember way more Svedka than I ever want to remember again. I remember peeing on a tree on the CU campus by the Koelbel building, which I like to think was my way of sticking it to Mad Greens, but truthfully I just really needed to pee, didn't want to wait, and get a weird kick out of public urination when I'm drunk.

Unable to move all Saturday for this? Worth it? I think so. 

Anyway, the night took a dramatic turn when I was suddenly standing in a foreign apartment with a girl who was crying hysterically. I mean hysterically. I had no idea how I or she had come to be there, as the last thing I remembered was tree-peeing. I was confused as to why we brought such an upset person back from the party. It was a huge buzz kill. But slowly I came to the realization, through her sobbing explanations and the conversation between the four guys with me, that this girl has evidently been sexually assaulted right outside on the street by a random man who jumped into a Jetta and drove away as soon as other people showed up. Lucky for her the people I was staying with were not quite as hazy and useless as I was, and actually ran outside when they heard her screaming for help. Unlike me. Who heard absolutely nothing in the first place. It's good to know I was with decent and responsible human beings that night.

As I finally got a grasp on the situation, I took her in my arms, stroked her hair, and tried to help everyone else calm her down by the time the police arrived. They questioned all of us and finally took her home. I felt deeply for that girl and wished I could have gotten her name so I could check in on her later, but as it was, it was just something that passed in the night and will forever remain that way.

So of course, in the somber and heavy atmosphere, we drunkenly broke out the N64 and potato chips and I did a mediocre to decent job of proving myself a worthy Super Smash Brothers player. You know, for a girl. I fell asleep cradling a piece of pizza in my hand.

I woke up feeling floaty, which is never a good sign and, as stated, it only got worse. Soon a few other of my party-goers emerged and sat on the couch with me and commiserated in our hangovers. For a few brief minutes, it was as if I had friends who were actually my age, peers who could bask in the glory of being idiotic and 21 with me. It was kind of nice. Until I stood up, of course.

Despite having gotten up at 10 AM, I got home by 2 in the afternoon. I took a long hot shower where I sat on the concrete floor and let the water make my skin all dry and gross, and then I came out of the bathroom to find a stranger meowing at my door. I opened it up and an unfamiliar orange and white cat came barging in to sniff absolutely everything in my room. I watched him make his way around, feeling very odd about the whole thing. It is not like when you get a kitten, whose personality you can shape and mold through various forms of cat torture. This cat already had a personality, and I was completely unfamiliar with it. He purred weird. He looked at me weird. He was nine years old. Who knows what kind of emotional baggage he comes with? Oh god, will he pee on things?

Ohpleasedontohpleasedont.

It felt like a very awkward first date.

If you had to worry about your date peeing on things. Which you might.

I've had lots of new cats come in to my life, but I'd never felt this strange about it before. I think it speaks for the level of discomfort I currently have with my life as a whole currently. Absolutely nothing feels right or natural. For example, I've been thinking a lot of deep thoughts about my boogers lately, because I swear I've had increased booger production and feel the need to pick my nose constantly. The same goes for earwax, actually, but that is unrelated. Boogers serve a better metaphor for my life. One might say that they have completely thrown of the balance of my existence.

Whenever people aren't looking at me, this is pretty much what I fixate on. 

I think what it comes down to is love. Maybe that is a cop out way of connecting all this random shit together, and maybe that sounds stupid or whatever, but hey, it is kind of true. Besides, I am on a roll with sounding stupid these days anyway.

We all just want to be loved. That is the endgame. Even if it means we want to be loved in a really fucked up way. I've been thinking about this in regards to my romantic life a lot lately, but seeing this cat, hanging out with normal college students/friends, and helping a screaming girl, they all amount to the same thing, which is giving and receiving love and how necessary that is in our daily lives.

This weekend has been a weird stepping stone in my life in regards to that and I am happy to say I've learned how to give and receive love at the very least to the weird stranger cat. Turns out all I had to do was give him some chicken and then he found underneath my bed, which every cat ever absolutely loves for some reason, and I swear he hasn't stopped purring and following me around for the past 24 hours in appreciation and what I like to think is adoration.

Under bed. Cat likes box. Happy cat.

I just got rejected to a pole competition for the first time ever on Sunday and the weight of every major failure from the past couple years has been raging down on me, from getting rejected to Calarts twice in row, being passed over for my dream internship with Blizzard Entertainment, to dropping out of art school. Somehow this cat makes it slightly more bearable. Even if it is just because I was kind of embarrassed to cry in front of him so I decided not to cry at all.

I mean. We're not that close yet.