Loneliness

I don't like how long it's been since I wrote a blog post. Nope, not at all. I also don't like being swamped with school work and studying and tests and papers and all that crap. I wish we didn't have to have all this institutionalized garbage. I wanna go back to togas and the School of Athens, where we all just sit around and talk, and then bam ... one day you're just legit and that's the end of it. I really need to take fewer classes next semester.

Anyways, I've been thinking a lot lately about being lonely. I've had a few times recently where I've felt that way, and I'm sure that there will be many more in the coming months. I mean, I'm at this point where the summer months don't really have anything for me. I've got nothing for me here in Provo, and nothing really for me in MO either, except a job and my family. But even still, there's no progress to be had anywhere it seems like. Just me, waiting around for things to happen. Hopefully that's not how terrible it is. But getting back to what I was getting at ...

Sometimes we get lonely. And not just a little lonely. I'm talking all-consuming aloneness, deep and bitter feelings of abandonment. Whether or not we are actually as alone as we feel or not, the fact remains that those feelings are there, and therefore they are real, and we are lonely.

The funny thing is that we can't just feel lonely and function normally, even act normally. We do things to either cope with or indulge our feelings (and sometimes both).

Sometimes the things we do are stupid.

I don't necessarily mean stupid-dangerous, or stupid-illegal, or stupid-big-consequences. Just stupid. Stupid-little-consequences, or stupid-insensitive, or stupid-selfish, or a whole host of other things. Only, when we do these things, we're stuck in lonely-land ... the one inside our heads. It's like temporary, mild insanity, and what I want to know is are we responsible for acts borne out of loneliness?

I know it's kind of a weird question ... but are we? I mean sure, you can control your feelings to some extent. But sometimes you let your guard down for a little bit, and suddenly you realize you've completely given yourself over to these unhappy feelings, and you're not in the driver's seat anymore. And that's when you do the stupid things.

But is it really your fault? I mean, your head is swimming with unhappiness, and you are legitimately (at least slightly) completely nuts. Can you really be held responsible for anything you do in such a condition?

I don't know. I want to say no.

I also want to tell my inner immature self to grow up. Hah.

Should Have Knocked On Wood

I am going to have to write this quick because I absolutely HAVE to study for my French midterm which I have to take this afternoon and therefore can only write for the next 17 minutes (aka until 11:45).

I just had the most bizarre experience. Well, that's not quite accurate. What I'm experiencing is like emotional contractions. (Which I guess suggests that I'm in emotional labor and am about to pass an emotional baby, none of which is true or really relevant or even metaphorically applicable, so let's ignore that.) And what I really mean by that is that I'm having really intense bursts of really intense emotions, with downtime in between.

For example, starting about 15 minutes ago, I had an explosive blast of homesickness which had me crying for 5 minutes. About 8 minutes ago (3 minutes after the 5 minute crying jag stopped) I had another burst, which lasted for about 2 minutes. I suspect that in a little while, I will have another burst, and will cry about something else (or the same thing, or nothing at all) for some amount of time and then it'll subside, and come back, and subside for a while longer, and come back again ... and on and on and on.

Now what's causing this? Well, there are a few culprits, and who knows how equally these are contributing, but here's a little list:

• School stress, which is huge because I've got so much to do and so little time to do it, and I really don't want to fail all my classes. Like really, really badly.
• Emotional stress, which is also huge because I just don't have any idea what's going on anywhere and everything else that is stressing me out is making me emotional and then I can't do the things that I need to do.
• Homesickness, because let's face it: I love my fambam and I'm not so keen on taking that Classical Civilizations class during spring term.
• Confusion stress, which means I just don't know what I am doing with my life right now and I feel like I have all these decisions I need to make and I can't make them because I'm so confused and emotional and stressed out and I can't give anything the time that it needs.
• Medical stuff, a.k.a. I didn't get my blood tested in October, and I still didn't get it in November, or December, or January, or February ... and I probably won't have it done in March. I didn't do anything because I felt fine. Also, don't have a car and it's just hard to get stuff like that done when you've got so much else on your plate. But now it's starting to seem like maybe that's causing a problem, since I'm starting to recognize those symptoms that I was having 2+ years ago. Isn't that just great?

The stupid thing is that about a week ago, we were talking about hormones in Marriage and Family, and I was like "Haha. I'm on very particular and specific and steady daily doses of hormones, so I don't really get affected by them. Mood swings? Crying and not being exactly sure why you're crying? Who even has to experience that? Not me!"

Hah. Hah. Hah. I am not amused.

Don't You Hate It When ...

It can happen to anyone, anytime. You slide your feet further under your seat, you clasp your hands together, you try to adjust your desk or move your chair, your stomach makes the gurglies....

And you just know that someone in the near vicinity is going to think you ripped one.

What do you do? This depends on who you're with. If you're with friends, you can laugh it off and explain what happened. If you're with family, you don't even need to say anything. But if you're with strangers ... Well, let me just tell you what happened to me this week.

I just so happened to be sitting in my Biology 100 class, absorbed in Facebook and StumbleUpon, as I am wont to be in the middle of the world's most brain-mushing GE. In the midst of this absorption, it became apparent that it was time to participate in an in-class assignment. We had to write down whether or not we should try to save endangered species, or something dumb like that. I don't really care what it was, because it's not really important. What IS important is that while I was waiting for the TA's to tell us what to do with our papers, my fingers were not occupied with my keyboard. So, as so-called "nervous" people tend to be, I needed something to do with my hands. I often struggle, especially when I'm extremely bored, to keep my hands still. They've got to be doing something. So I was clasping my palms together, squeezing my joints about, which led to my palms squeezing together. This was not a problem, as I had exceptionally dry hands that day. Except something went wrong, and there it went ... the flatulent noise that boys have perfected by the age of seven.

Only it wasn't a perfect one. Not one of the loud, obvious, fake ones that we all know so well. No. This was a terrible one because it was just loud enough to be heard, but quiet enough to sound like I'd tried to sneak a real one. There were people right in front of me ... I knew that they had heard. And I was sitting all by myself, which meant there was no way I could even pretend that the guy next to me was responsible. No. I was trapped.

I had to let them know that it was an accident! That it was the pure product of unfortunate circumstances, the result of the tragic laws of science and vacuums and whatnot!! So what do I do?

I start squeezing my hands together with furious speed.

But they, of course, were unusually dry, and I couldn't get the slightest hint of a sound to eject from my hands. So I lift my hands up a little higher, so that maybe if I can't repeat the sound I just created, then maybe they'd catch a glimpse of my hands and therefore understand that the mystery sound was not a legitimate Bronx cheer, but just the result of air rushing between my palms.

Some time after this, I just gave up.

But don't you hate that moment when you know that people around you think that that sound they just heard could have been the warning bell that their air is about to be befouled? Then, of course, you're in this losing battle with time trying to make the same sound again so people realize that you haven't tried to cropdust them.

Whether it's frantically rubbing your shoes against the floor, tromping all across the wood trying to find the squeaky board again, or squeezing your hands together with enough ferocity to permanently attach them to each other, we'll all do anything to keep people from thinking that we are guilty. And I think it's hilarious.

Rejection

(Just so you know, I've been on a blogging frenzy today, so, if you so desire, browse about and see some of the new posts, including "Craigslist" and "Facebook Fads." Those might be the only other new ones, but whatever.)

Some time ago, Katie had a film due in her film class. Natalie and I were fortunate enough to be actresses in this film and we had a GREAT time doing it, and I'm so excited to do the real version tomorrow! Anyways, as she showed this "rough draft" to her class a couple of weeks ago, the other students were asked to fill out comment cards. One of the cards said, "I asked one of those girls out twice and got rejected hardcore :("

Now, let's just be honest here: Natalie is the dating machine of the apartment. I've never heard of someone getting asked out on so many dates. It sometimes literally blows my mind (not because there's any reason for her not to get asked out, it's just the ratio between her dating and that of like every other girl on the planet). I, of course, haven't really had much opportunity to reject people this semester, and I feel like I've been very open to blind dates and pretty much whoever whenever.

The point is, it obviously was not me.

So Katie shoots me a text, asking if I or Natalie knew this guy, I didn't recognize the name, and Natalie didn't either, but she knew that she had turned down a guy in her tap class a couple of times and she couldn't remember his name. Sad, but sometimes this happens.

Last night, at our cocoa party, Rachel brought over a gift from Katie--the stack of comment cards. They were all really nice, saying we were good actors and stuff, and complimenting Katie's choice of shots and her great idea and the funny scene where Natalie shoves me back into "my" room. We finally get to the infamous rejection card, and we decide to look the guy up on Facebook. Natalie looks at him and says, "That's not the guy in my tap class." So I start looking at him ...

... And he's looking pretty familiar.

But I'm thinking to myself, This isn't possible. This guy can't have asked me out twice. It's just impossible. I certainly haven't met him this year, and I know he wasn't in my ward, but I didn't know anyone in any of my classes LAST year that would have asked me out ... So how can this be?

Only that's where we hit the reason for the rejection, and the reason I barely even recognize him: I didn't know him. And he still asked me out. Twice. We were in a freshman film seminar my first semester, and he was an R.M., and I was not yet or just barely 19, and I was totally freaked out that he was asking me out.

In hindsight, this was silly and kind of rude of me, but that's how I felt at that time. Added to the fact that I HATED going to International Cinema for that class (we were expected to see two of the three films each week), I just wasn't happy about any of his offer. I preferred to stream the movies while I was alone in my room and laying on my bed or the floor. Of course, that semester was like the worst 4 months of my life, and at the end of it, I was sitting in a lodge halfway up a mountain in Winter Park, Colorado, sucking down a tall mug of cocoa and crying my eyes out, telling my mom that I didn't want to come back to college. I was emotionally unstable because my entire life was feeling unstable at that point, but who hasn't gone through a period of emotional instability before?

Anyways, long-story-short, I now feel super bad. I mean, I can't believe the guy even remembers that he asked me out in the first place, but the fact that he wrote that down on the comment card with a frowny face makes me feel like a terrible person. Whatever. Nothing I can do about it now, I suppose.

While we're in the subject of rejection ... I've had a funny thought today. I mean, we all know that the person who cares the least in a relationship has the most control over it. This is a truth that we've all accepted it, and many of us have striven to care less so that we can maintain control over the relationship. (Hopefully I'm not the only one who does this ... Awkward.) But have you ever let someone think that they were rejecting you because you just don't even care enough to want them to know that it's you rejecting them, and not the other way around?

I was thinking about this, about certain events in my past (how recent or not recent is irrelevant). But I think maybe sometimes you just care so little that you don't even care to bother rejecting someone. You just let them do the work and let them think that they've turned you down, when really it's just your indifference that's making them want to reject you in the first place. There's a part of me thinks, You can be angry about this. This is an absolutely valid reason to be totally pissed off. You may have been somewhat at fault, but he's definitely in the wrong here. I try to be angry. I try to care.

But 99.999% of me just doesn't.

Am I emotionally disturbed? Do I have a dysfunctional heart? (Hola, Cheesy Kayla!) Was the timing off? (Let me answer that one: YES. Big, fat, heinous YESness.) What's my deal? Am I going to be like this forever? (Heck, I hope not.)

I guess my point is this: Dating, love, whatever all this junk is, is complicated, and no matter how annoying it is, or how differently each of us handles it and ourselves... Well, people say it's worth it. Too many, in fact, for it to be disregarded. Sometimes, majority shouldn't rule, but maybe sometimes it should. And rejection, no matter how much it sucks, is a part of life. Sometimes you're the rejecter, sometimes you're the rejectee, and sometimes you're some kind of mixture of both. It's just life.

Ultimately, I'd like to sum up my thoughts by quoting myself, "Whate'er."

The Jane Austen Book Club

I just finished watching the movie The Jane Austen Book Club. And I loved it. I guess I had pretty low expectations, since I'd heard that it wasn't really all that good. But I really loved it. It was amazing how watching it made me fall more in love with Jane Austen's novels, with literature in general, with French, with the world, with the vast variety of people there are, with love, with libraries, with travel, with staying up late to read a good book ... with so many things. After such a sucky day (you remember, the one that started with the super-depressing cyberbullying suicide video?) it's remarkable how much that movie excited me about life, about what I'm doing with life. Granted, it also made me hope for a time when it'll be just me, alone in my house and holed up with a good book, staying up until who knows how late doing something that just makes me happy. But I suppose at the same time that's not really what I'm supposed to want ... aloneness, endless recreation, not ever having to work, etc. It's glamorous, idealized, and for the number of problems those characters have, it's remarkable that I don't really attend to them. It's wonderful to get caught up in a movie like that, to just depart from reality and, for at least a few moments, enjoy another world.

I don't really know how to feel right now. I know what I feel, but I also feel like I shouldn't be feeling what I feel, that I shouldn't be wanting what I want, that I'm some kind of lousy slug for wanting what I want, that what I want isn't really what I want because I've made it into a whole other creature in my head so I'm wanting something that's completely unattainable, that what I perceive as what I want is really just a glamorized illusion of a means to get what I really want, and that, tragically, I can never have what I want because it doesn't exist, and all of these realities are going to come crashing down on me like a cold bucket of water on my head on a frosty February morning.

Is everything I'm feeling an illusion? Am I stuck in a movie? Am I exaggerating how good I feel right now because this has been a Monday that has fully fulfilled its reputation? Am I experiencing a minor chemical imbalance? Am I crazy? Can I have what I want? Do I want what I want because it's the easy way out since the past few days have been a spiraling misery pit wherein I've started to fear that many of the big things I want from life are going to be snatched from out around me without me being able to control any of it? What is my problem? Am I trying to eat away this ebbing tide of unhappiness that is ever so slightly tainting my life? Am I becoming a bitter cynic whose expectations for life have been inflated to the point that they can never be fulfilled? What do I want in the short-run?

Too many questions. I'm losing the glow of my movie delight, and that's annoying. Time for bed.