So.
Here it is.
These four years, summed up of a piece of  paper.
I've learned so much over these four years. It's... it's hard to explain, really. I've never felt so much pride for a school before. I mean, straight up, my high school kinda sucked. I took some friends there wednesday and treated like a criminal. I would never be treated like that at Arcadia. Nothing has made me stronger and more aware than my time at Arcadia.

Today... was interesting. It really feels like a mix of "...already?" and "about damn time!" There's a whole lot of what next, there's even more what's after that.

All of my friends support me, and you have no idea how much all of you mean to me.

I was really upset today, actually, by the behavior of my family. Unfortunately, the way my mother acted will affect how I remember this day for a long time.
My mom and dad fought at my fall orientation so badly that mom went home early crying.
Now, at graduation, mom thought it would be great to embarrass me in front of my friends, and worse yet, Norah Schultz.
While Norah was busy telling my mother what a wonderful person I am and how much pleasure she's had working with me over the years and that I'm going to go far, my mother simply says, "yeah, well you should see his room." I immediately called her on it. I said "Really, mom? I'm graduating today, and all you care about is my messy room? Thanks." Luckily Norah made a couple jokes and fixed the situation, but it was still really awkward. Then on the way to oak, she kept saying that my friends don't know the real me. "...yes, we do," they tried to explain. "Well has he ever asked you for money?" My mother quipps. "...Yes, actually," Jenn responded. "Well, you didn't have to deal with him. Screaming things like 'I hate my family' and wishing we would die." "Mom!" I yelled. "I haven't been like that since elementary school!" My dad finally got her to stop.
I really just wish that for once, my family could be proud of me. Honestly, I've turned out a lot better than the other three kids my dad's had. But all the family asks is "well what are you doing next" - not in the happy "ooh, what's next?" kind of a way, but in the "we assume you're doing nothing. Why did you even bother with psychology? What a useless degree," kind of way. Trust me on this one. Nothing I do is good enough. I told my dad that I got a 3.43 this semester. "Cool," he calmly replied. "Dad," I said, "that's the best I've ever gotten." He just said "well, I'm glad you're not coasting." ...and left it at that.

So yeah. Sadly, this isn't a very happy day for me. Coupled with my parents behavior, I'm terribly depressed leaving this institution. Arcadia is my everything. All of my friends are there, everything I care about is there.
There's not much for me in Lansdale. Ali's coming home, but we all know she's going to change her name to Butterfly Biscuit and move to Peru to become an Alpaca farmer. Christie's staying in center city, and.... I'm not sure what Abe's doing. Hey Abe, wanna hang out? April's still in Lansdale, and I've got Amy Stewart for the summer. Trust me, I'm going to be making the best of my time here... but there's not even any job opportunities around here, not without me having a car at least. I'm not going to work at a goddamn Wawa or CVS - I probably won't be getting a psych job, but I still want to enjoy what I'm doing.  Basically, I've got to wing it. There's about 400 friends that I'm leaving at Arcadia.

Please, everyone, keep in touch with me. I'm going to need it more than anything. Even if it's the middle of the night in November, a simple "hey, I totally miss you" is always appropriate.

I miss everyone already.

A few people are paying attention to these, and y'all have been

Okay, so everyone knows that I love psychology to a ridiculous point.

Something that interests me most is relationships. When I finally have
enough money for grad school, I want to go into relationship
counseling. But I'm curious. What about the stuff they can't teach you
in grad school? What about real people, in real situations?



So here's the thing. I want you guys to answer some questions. I'm
probably going to put up a bunch of questions like every couple of days
or so.



So the questions this week are, of course, about breakups!!!



1. Has a guy/gal broke up with you... because of you? what were you doing wrong?

2. Would/have you taken back a guy/gal that cheated on you?

3. Any dealbreakers? What would make you dump a guy/girl flat on his/her ass?

4. Do you still talk to them afterwards, or are do you cut them off? What works best?

5. Is breakup sex worth it? Or does it make it worse?

6. How did you break up with them? How did they break up with you? Was
it a fade out? Did (s)he make you break up with them by being a dick?
Vice Versa? Text Message???



-Anything else you wanna get off your chest??-

-If there's one thing you could say to your last ex, what would it be??-


-----------------------


Today's Theme: Unrequited Love.

So here's the question:



Have you ever been in a situation where your best friends didn't like the person you were totally into/dating?



Have you ever been in a situation where the person you've fallen for a friend and it's ruined your friendship?



Have you ever had a secret admirer?



Have any of these ever happened at the same time?



Any other experiences?


===============================

Please leave me comments with your stories, and stay tuned for the next set of questions!! PLEASE AND THANK YOU!!!

Okay, so I'm usually not a fan of being deep - I do it really well though.
But I'm not going to be very deep.

Almost two years ago was the last time I had a boyfriend.
Yeah, I've been single for two years now.

He was a guy that I was head over heels in love with.
And he dumped me out of nowhere in late September 2006, because whereas absence is supposed to make your heart grow fonder, his fire dwindled to nothing.

This was also the semester I started commuting, so I was walking over a half hour a day, being outside in my favorite season, the fall. When I was a kid, I always really loved the fall, even though that's when school started. I used to rake up the leaves and spend the entire day in them, building forts that I wouldn't let go until they were full of slugs. I would go camping with the boyscouts, and my favorite trip every year was Lucien Maxwell, a cute little camp where we got together and played amazing games of manhunt. There was a beautiful stream, and large rocks everywhere perfect for climbing. I have some amazing memories from that campsite.

Well, when I got dumped almost two years, my heart was broken. I could have spent all that time crying and listening to sad or angry music, but instead I decided to listen to music that didn't really evoke emotions, just stuff to keep me calm and away from thinking about it. I know how girly it is, but I started listening to Frou Frou / Imogen Heap, which was really good at keeping my mind from wandering. I was listening to her for over two hours a day, which kept any emotions at bay, which was what I really needed at the time. We all know that men are raised to be emotionally sterile, so I felt it was important for me to keep it that way.

I now associate that music with Autumn, a season that's always been full of amazing memories. I also associate it with the movie Garden State, because the song Let Go appears on the soundtrack. That movie takes place in the fall, and I also have awesome high school memories from that movie.

I'll always remember, there's one scene in the movie where they stand in the rain wearing garbage bags, and they just scream. As loud as they can. We tried so hard to emulate that after my senior year of high school.

I know it's all very six degrees of separation, but I swear there's a point.

I was trying to relax today, just because I've had a very long week, so I drank some chamomile tea and listened to Imogen Heap. This caused me to watch Garden State.

This also caused me miss fall. And because my apartment is really cold, my body and brain now thinks it's fall... which is causing me to be in a nice, happy, mellow mood. It's also making me want to be creative and write, which is something I haven't done (well) in a long time. I'm going to be miserable if I go outside tomorrow...

but I can't wait for the leaves to start changing...

So I've been reading a lot of Chuck Palahniuk lately (the author of fight club,) and there's so many amazing quotes about human nature and life that it's making me more introspective than ever before.

In the novel Survivor, about someone that survived the mass suicide of an obscure religion, the main character says "What people forget is a journey to nowhere starts with a single step too." Even people going nowhere with life have to get a head start. We're all climbing our "Stairmaster to Heaven."

I'm in the middle of the novel Rant, which is set up to be an oral biography of Buster "Rant" Casey, a fictional redneck with a dangerous addiction. For someone with so little smarts, the boy really understood human nature.
"You're a different human being to everyone you meet. ...
You only ever is in the eye's of other folks." He says. It's true. We are only as others see us. Some philosopher once said something like "When left completely up to their own devices, their own free will, all humans will do is imitate each other." I think Rant knew exactly what this philosopher meant.
One of the other characters in the novel noted something interested about names - "Everyone gave a different name to everybody else... How folks lay claim to a loved on is they give you a name of their own. They figure to label you as their property."
We all do this. Whereas My grandmother calls her daughter Susie, on paper she's susan. To my dad she's Suze. To her friends from home, she's Susie. To her friends here, she's Sue. To me, she's Mom or Ma, and to my brother she's Mommy.
It's all our different ways of laying claim to something that's not ours. Letting the world know that they can't have it. Saying "This here? This is mine. Go ahead, try and f**k with me."

Diary, a novel about an artist with a deathly destiny, contains possibly the most poignant quote about Love that modern literature will ever produce. Misty, the main character, speaks to her coma-bound husband about their daughter.
"Just for the record, she still loves you. She wouldn't bother to torture you if she didn't."
I'll let you think that one out on your own.

When a Model gets in a horribly disfiguring accident, her whole world changes, and leaves her with a whole new outlook on life in Invisible Monsters.
"The murderer, the victim, the witness, each of us thinks our role is the lead. Probably goes for anybody in the world.
It's all Mirror, Mirror on the Wall.
Because Beauty is Power.
The same way Money is Power.
The same way a Gun is Power."
We all have our own invisible audience, watching every move we make. For many of us, our invisible audience is more like invisible monsters, criticizing every move we make, the same way our parents did, the same way our teachers did, the same way our friends did - we've taught ourselves that nothing is ever good enough.

In Haunted, writers are given an opportunity to leave their lives behind, and create their masterpiece. Their supervisor and captor, Mr. Whittier, has this to say;
"What stops you here is what stops your entire life. The air will always be too filled with something. Your body too sore or tired. Your father too drunk. Your wife too cold. You will always have some excuse not to live your life."
I think this one's self explanatory.


Chuck Palahniuk's novels give us main characters that we aren't supposed to like. We aren't supposed to care about them. We're supposed to detest them. Loathe them. Seethe.
Whether we love them or hate them...
we know them.
We know who they are.
But most importantly
We know why they are.

So far, I've read Survivor, Diary, Lullaby, Choke, Invisible Monsters, Haunted and Snuff. I'm in the middle of Rant. There's not a single one of those books I wouldn't recommend reading.

Hopefully at least one person reads this, and goes out to get one of these books from their local library or bookstore.

I want to leave you with a passage from Haunted.

::
Looking back, it was always Mr. Whittiers stance that we're always right.
"It's not a matter of right and wrong," Mr. Whittier would say. Really, there is no wrong. Not in our own minds. Our own reality.
You can never set off to do the wrong thing.
You can never say the wrong thing.
In your own mind, you are always right. Every action you take - what you do or say or how you choose to appear - is automatically correct the moment you act.

His hand shaking as he lifts his cup, Mr Whittier says, "Even if you were to tell yourself, 'Today, I'm going to drink coffee the wrong way... from a dirty boot.' Even that would be right, because you chose to drink coffee from that boot."
Because you can do nothing wrong. You are always right. Even when you say, "I'm such an idiot, I'm so wrong..." you're right. You're right about being wrong. You're right even when you're an idiot.
"No matter how stupid your idea," Mr. Whittier would say, "You're doomed to be right because it's yours."
...
We're all condemned to be right. About everything we can consider.
In this shifting liquid world, where everyone is right and any idea is right the moment you act on it, Mr. Whittier would say, the only sure thing is what you promised.
::

I need someone.
I need someone who's pretty, but not out of my league.
I need someone who wants to have meaningful conversation...
...but has a libido as strong as mine.
I need someone who's not only funny, but finds me funny, too.
I need someone with big, strong arms for better cuddling.
I need someone who gets me, my sense of humor, the way I interact with people, & my past - and I want him to love me for it.
I want someone that will get trashed with me, but take care of me even if he's sick too.

I want a guy who, when I walk in the room, you can tell that I'm the center of his attention, that I'm the one notices - cuz you know that's how I'll be with him.
I want someone who will better me as a person, while I better him as well.

I know it all seems selfish, right? But isn't that what we want in a partner - someone who completes us and makes us better? Boosts our ego? Is great in the sack?
Whoever I end up with I'll easily be able to supply all of the same ego-boosting benefits. I personally think I'm pretty good at making a partner feel loved and wanted - I wouldn't have it any other way.

I don't think my specifications are too picky - I just want someone who wants me for me, & no other reason. I thought I had that in my last ex, but everyone knows I was wrong there. The last guy I dated had real potential, but he let go too soon, & let other people influence his decisions. The only person that comes close to my description is Jenna, but I'm not dating her for obvious reasons.
It's cuz she's short :-P

I guess I just have to wait it out - Someone will come eventually. I suppose it's just not my time yet.

I'm excited for when it is time though, because I've got big, big plans for the next guy. I wanna go places, do things, and spend a lot of quality time together. I want to lay on the soccer field with him, talking about hopes, dreams, fears, and what's on the menu at the dining hall that day. We'll take walks holding hands, either telling stories or just enjoying the silence in each other's company. I want no drama with the next guy I'm with... meaning there's certain people I just can't introduce him to; but that's okay, because I want the next one to last - chances are he'll mean a lot to me.

So I think that I dream differently than other people. For starters, I dream in color. I know a lot of people do, but a lot of people report dreaming in only black and white. Secondly, sometimes, when I'm dreaming, it's not first-person, I'm definitely watching myself from a short distance. Sometimes, I'm not me, but a completely different person with different thoughts, feelings, beliefs, backgrounds, and sometimes gender. I can feel pain - there was this one dream where I guess I somehow hit the back of my head in it, and it hurt so bad that I woke up clutching the back of my head. The pain subsided as I woke up more. I can taste in dreams - I had a dream today where I was trying water-ice flavors (i know, strange.) Now granted, they had strange flavors - one was a Britney Spears song (not named after one, it was one.) It had an autumny taste, and I didn't like it. Kinda pumpkiny if you will. I had another flavor I can't remember, but I really, really liked it. It was a more tropical flavor, but it was calmed down by the strong taste of raspberries. I remember it was kind of a maroon-ish purple. I wanted to mix it with another flavor that I was about to try, Cranberry Banana, but jenna called me and woke me up.

In conclusion, I think dreaming is fascinating. Feel free to comment with a favorite dream you had.

so I can't sleep, and it's really bothering me because I'm really exhausted... and I have to get up early tomorrow to pack and go home!!!


why am I not asleep?

I guess I can reflect on my semester.

It started out absolutely perfect with Orientation. I've never felt more at home with a group of people in my life. The orientation leaders made my life amazing, and I was proud to be one of them. Orientation itself was a blast, and mel and I had the best group ever.

The beginning of school was a little rough. A little bit of dating drama + stress + being a junior threw things into a wicked spiral. I was barely spending any time at my apartment, because I was having so much fun on campus with people; unfortunately, I wasn't putting full effort into my classes.

I really got into my cable tv practicum class a little hardcore, realizing that if Psychology doesn't work out, I would be happy being a comm major. I did really well in that class, scoring an A-.

My psych classes this semester went really well - i really haven't ever felt so happy and confident in a class. I got a B in Forensic, but I haven't gotten my Social Psych grade back yet - I'm sure it's also a B.

My English class and Acting class were a little rough, because even though I always came to class, I didn't do very much of the written homework, which could potentially kill my grades. I'm nervous to see how those grades come back.

There was a lot of friend and dating drama this semester. It's all going to be okay though. I'm just really bummed about losing my roommate to england - i've spent the last month or so truly bonding with this girl, and she's leaving me for a semester. I'm happy for her though, because I know she's going to have the best time in the world, and my missing her is just going to be overcome by jealousy anyway haha. I just wish i'd seen more of my other roommate the past couple of weeks, now that it's just going to be the two of us I wish we'd bonded more.

It's hard with friends though, because I feel like there are some groups that I'm really losing. My primary group of friends has changed a lot in this semester, but I think I know the group that I'm going to end up with, because in the end they care about me more. I know that I don't have to make a decision, but I feel as though the decision has been made without me.

I'm very much excited to go home for break. I'm planning on really enjoying christie's last couple weeks in the country, as well as just being with my friends. Next semester is going to be amazing, with jenna and scott and ash coming back. And hopefully I'll be a bit less stressed next semester, since i'm taking classes I'll enjoy with people I'll enjoy them with. I have my core psych class, a class called adolescence, video 1, and science in civilization. I don't think science in civ is going to be fun, but video 1 is going to rock my socks, and personality psychology fascinates me, so the material is really going to sink in.
Also, it'll be spring. April is coming up, and good things tend to happen to me in April, so I guess we'll see how it goes. I have high hopes.

So a majority of the messages i've been recieving lately have said something along the lines of

"hi babe... we dont know each other or anything but.. my friend and I are actually moving near u next week and I dont know ANYONE there at all.. so im just trying to make some new friends who can show me around once I move... If you dont have a girlfriend I mean heheh.. My M S N and A I M are right on my page..email addy also so hit me up... MWA chat ya soon hunnie"

or

"Hey, remember me???
Hey. You look a little familiar. Did you know Amy Carter? Anyways, I joined True Singles. It's kinda like MySpace 100% Free And all Real people. I am there if you wanna talk. My name is jim7TXJWSMQOM there. Add me as a friend once you get there.I prolly won't log back in for a while, so let me know over at TS :-) Talk to ya soon!"


These things make me sad. I wish they would stop :'(