All I ever wanted was to know that you were dreaming

To quote Bright Eyes, “I’m wide awake, it’s morning.” Four-fifteen in the morning, to be precise.

I cannot sleep. I had such an awful dream, I don’t even know where to begin. Excuse the stream-of-consciousness this post is likely to take– despite the fact I’m wide awake, I’m still a bit out of sorts.

It was about my miscarriage. It’s not so much the dream that’s keeping me awake, it’s the notions and thoughts that it gave me. That it was somehow my fault.

I remember when I first found out I was pregnant, I wasn’t sure what to think. Was I scared? Yes. Was I unsure of everything? Yes. But I never thought that it would end up like this. This is not the path I chose. It chose me, for whatever reason.

If I hadn’t miscarried, I would be due towards the end of next month; about a month and a half after I graduate highschool. I can’t help but wonder where my life would be if I were pregnant right now.

I know for sure, I wouldn’t be living with my mother –she’d have kicked me out a long time ago. I wonder if I’d have an apartment somewhere, if I’d be living alone or if the boyfriend would have moved in; would I be living with an aunt instead? Would I have gotten my diploma through Adult Ed, or would I still be going to marching practice this week?

Would I still be waitressing? There are two women that I work with right now that are pregnant. One is due a month after I would have been, the other is due a month after that. They both look as though they’re ready to give birth any day now. I wonder how pregnant I would look? Would I look silly where I’m such a small person, or would I look the same as any pregnant woman?

There’s a girl that I used to be really good friends with in late elementary, early middle-school. She moved, and we lost touch. Coincidentally, she moved to boyfriend’s school (before I knew him) and became really good friends with him, too. They’re still friends. She’s pregnant; I don’t know when her baby is due, but from what I’ve heard from boyfriend, she looks very pregnant, and slightly goofy because she’s such a small person.

The miscarriage hit him pretty hard. Mostly, I think, because I kept it from him  until after it had happened. I was afraid to tell him, we weren’t together at the time, and things were very strained between us. I wonder, sometimes, if he blames me for it.

I wonder if my depression would be better or worse if I were still pregnant. I wonder if I’m sufering from a little post-partum right now. I wonder if it’s only going to get worse.

When my grandmother gave birth to a stillborn baby, she suffered from horrible post-partum depression. I don’t even want to think about how terrible it would be to lose your baby after carrying it for almost nine months. The doctor told her that she would never get over the loss until she had another child.

The first time my favorite aunt got pregnant, she was eighteen. She gave birth to a stillborn baby. I know that she was incredibly depressed by it. I don’t know how she got over it, or if she even did until she gave birth to my cousin a few years later. It’s not exactly something you can just ask someone out of the blue.

These things that we keep swept under the rug, keep stuffed in our closets to collect dust; it seems that these are the things that we need to talk about the most.

Song title from Sara by Fleetwood Mac

 

Quicksand’s got no sense of humor

Again, it’s been a while. I could say that I’ve been too busy to update… That would be partially true, I suppose.

Honestly? I’ve been too depressed to make the time to update.

Marching practice for graduation starts tomorrow, and I’m going to (continue to) try to get my shit together.

I’ve been letting my depression get the better of me for far too long. Yes, my antidepressants don’t seem to be all-that effective anymore, but that’s not an excuse. Or at least I’m not letting it be an excuse anymore. I’m going to get to bed at a decent hour, I’m going to actually eat when I’m hungry. I’m going to throw out all of the crap I keep just because it has sentimental value.  I’m going to stop focusing on everyone else. I’m going to wake up in the morning instead of hitting the snooze button five trillion times.

I miss me. The old me. The me who laughed more than she cried. The me who knew where her life was going, what she wanted, and how she was going to get it. It’s time to find her again.

Title from “Sound of Madness” by Shinedown

 

Huzzah April Vacation!

Here in Maine, it’s April Vacation. Aaahhhh, so nice to have a break from school.

I’ll try to get back into updating regularly.

 

This problem’s gonna last more than the weekend

So the friend that I drove up to see this weekend has feelings for me. Unreciprocated, romantic feelings. I knew that he had feelings for me before but I didn’t think that he still did. This makes our friendship four whole new flavors of awkward.

I know what I have to do: I have to be straight with him. Which, unfortunately, didn’t really work the first time. Arrghh. I have to be clearer with him. Fuck. I hate those conversations. I HATE TALKING ABOUT MY FEELINGS, GODDAMMIT!

So that was the first part of my weekend.

The second part included my exboyfriend returning to work at the same restaurant as me. I was waitressing that day, he’s a dishwasher. This should require minimal contact. Unfortunately whenever I brought a bus-pan into the kitchen, or had to ask for him to refill the soda fountain, etc. (nothing out of the ordinary for a waitress to ask a dishwasher) I had the pleasure of being called a bitch. Super-fun. When I checked my email at the end of the day, I had an email for him more or less trying to explain his behavior.

It consisted largely of: “I still love you. It hurts to see you. It hurts to see you being happy. It hurts to see you in a skirt. It hurts to talk to you. It hurts that you’ve changed. It hurts that you’re not mine anymore. I’m sorry for everything I did. I’m sorry I ruined everything between us. Blah, blah, blah.”

WTF?

Title from “Jesus Christ” by Brand New

 

He left his number on the table

So last Sunday afternoon was a fairly boring one as I had counter duty. At one point during the afternoon, two guys came in: one older, one about my age (maybe a few years older.) They were nice, the right amount of chatty (they didn’t sit in stone silence, which is always awkward on counter, but they knew when to stop talking because I had to wait on other customers), and they managed to rack up a $45 bill between the two of them (I work at a diner-type restaurant, the only expensive entrees are the seafood ones. On counter, the orders tend to be burgers, coffee, and desserts.) I flirted a bit back and forth with the guy my age, he was fairly cute, kind of had that “nice guy” look going for him. (I’m also pretty sure that he had just gotten out of church.)

When I went to clear their spot on counter, to my surprise, I found a five dollar bill and a phone number. WTF?  Not only do you leave me a shitty tip, but then you have the nerve to think I’d want your number after that? I was pretty irked by it, if you couldn’t tell.

So tonight was pretty dead at work.

The fifth table I had was a party of three, two guys and a girl, one of the guys was clearly dating the girl, the other one was pretty easy on the eyes. The restaurant picked up a bit after I ordered their food to the kitchen so I didn’t have much time to talk to them other than taking a dessert order and the occasional check-in to see how everything was. But still, he was damn good looking. Tan, dark hair, muscular, I could see a tattoo poking out from his tshirt sleeve. And really nice eyes. Really nice eyes.

I brought them their check ($35, not bad for a party of three), they left, and I thought nothing more of it. Until I went to clean their table. I picked up the tip off of the table, five ones folded over a five. (Ten dollar tip, booyah!) Underneath the tip, was his phone number and a pen. (I’ll take a free pen anyday, so that was another automatic plus in my book.)

I figured, hey, he was good looking, a good tipper, and he left me his number. Why the hell not? So I sent him a text telling him that I thought he might have forgotten something on his table. We’ve been texting back and forth for the past two hours.

We’re supposed to hang out sometime next week, so we’ll see how it goes.

 

So put me on a plane and fly me to anywhere

I need to get away.

I’m getting restless, and depressed, and all-around moody.

So, I’m driving up North to visit some friends at their school for a couple of days. It’ll be a short visit — driving up Thursday night, I’ll be home in time for work on Saturday.

Should be a good time, though.

Title from Coffee and Cigarettes by Augustana

 

Lily Allen wrote the soundtrack to my life

So I recently purchased Lily Allen’s newest album It’s Not Me, It’s You. The more I listen to it, the more I relate it to my own life. I love it when that happens

Song-by-song analysis after the jump.

 

I’d rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints

I got a text from my Dad a couple of days ago, it asked how being eighteen was.

“Eighteen?” I started, “Eighteen is… Eighteen is interesting.”

It got me thinking. What has eighteen been like?

• I’ve gotten my tongue pierced.
• I’ve had alcohol for the first time (excluding family parties).
• I’ve had three men tell me they have feelings for me. (Two of them used the L word.)
• I’ve been offered money to kiss a female co-worker.
• I’ve criminally sped.
• I’ve gotten carded.
• I’ve given a pack of cigarettes to a homeless man.
• I’ve been given a phone number by a customer.
• I’ve taken my best friend to get a tattoo.
• I’ve worked at least twenty-five hours a week.
• I’ve cut seven inches off my hair.
• I’ve stayed at the pool hall until midnight (twice.)
• I’ve spent large amounts of time with people my parents would not approve of.
• I’ve informed my ex-boyfriend that I miscarried his child.
• I’ve been lonely and depressed.
• I’ve been happily single and independent.

Oh well, I always did like Mary Magdalene best.

(Title comes from “Only the Good Die Young” by Billy Joel)

 

Learning to understand my mother

If anyone can hold a grudge, it’s my mother.

My mother has been holding a grudge against me for the past seventeen years.

Yes, I am eighteen.

Allow me to explain.

 

I’m baaack… Well, sorta.

So it’s been a while. Long enough that I doubt I have any readers left. But that’s fine by me. Honestly, I missed the writing. The self-centered, no-real-direction, pointless, shallow writing that is my blog.

My birthday’s tomorrow. The big eighteen. In a half-hour, I’ll be old enough to buy cigarettes, porn, rifles, spray-paint, lighters, mail-order-brides, etc.

I’ve been looking forward to this, counting down the days since I was a freshman in highschool and had to move into my mom’s. I remember when the countdown was 1,200 days and longing for it. Now the countdown is less than a half hour away and I’m barely enthused. My hours at work have been cut back to the point where I can no longer afford to move out. The semi that rear-ended me has yet to settle. My parents and I are barely on speaking terms. (Ok, that’s not new.) And my boyfriend and I broke up.

Yeah, it was a difficult break-up to say the least. Although we’ve broken up before this, we were never really out of eachother’s lives. His mother was like a mother to me, his house felt like home when nowhere else did, he was the one person I could really open up to. I’d never, in my eighteen years of living, found someone who I could talk to as honestly and openly as I could with him. Being me, there were things that I still held back, but compared to what I usually tell people, especially people that I’m romantically involved/interested in, I told him everything. This time, it’s a lot different. We speak once a week, if that, where we used to talk multiple times a day and hang out multiple times a week.

What happened? I let my depression get the better of me. I let myself get stuck. Instead of pushing thoughts from my head, thoughts about college, the economy, not being able to move out, my family, work, school, etc, I let myself dwell on them. I let myself go in the worst way. Even I barely recognize myself. The antidepressants were helping for a while but sometimes you get so depressed that it’s hard to remember to take them on a regular schedule. He couldn’t fix me. He tried, even thought it wasn’t his job and I tried to tell him that. I wish I hadn’t held so much back. I wish I had talked to him about it, let him know that all I really needed was a hug, a kiss, and a shoulder to cry on. I wish I had told him that he was my best friend.

Live and learn, right? Another year older, maybe a little bit wiser?

 

A few small repairs

So yeah, I’m not really in love with the direction this blog seems to be going.

Therefore I’ll be making a few small repairs, probably deleting some below-par posts, adding some pages, you get the idea.

Anyhoo, I’d love for some suggestions, whether you’re a regular reader (ha! yeah right!) or just casually passing through (probably to learn how to disconnect your phone, eh?) give me some ideas, hints, tips, suggestions, random knock-knock jokes, advice, fortune-cookie quotes, etc.

Muchas gracias. :]

Title comes from “Sunny Came Home” by Shawn Colvin

 

Booyah!

I just got my SAT scores back. Yeah, I’m quite pleased with them.

Verbal: 700 Math: 710 Writing: 680

Yeah!!!!!! I then found this awesome thing on blogthings.com

Your SAT Score of 1410 Means:

You Scored Higher Than Howard Stern You Scored Higher Than George W. Bush You Scored Higher Than Al Gore You Scored Higher Than David Duchovny You Scored Higher Than Natalie Portman You Scored Lower Than Bill Gates Your IQ is most likely in the 130-140 range Equivalent ACT score: 32 Schools that Fit Your SAT Score: Amherst College Dartmouth College Williams College University of Pennsylvania Columbia University

What Does Your SAT Score Mean?

 

Ouch.

#367,652,319) Ashley has just taken the SATs. Is she:

a) dead

b) tired

c) souless/heartless/brainless (the SATs ate them.)

d) sore

e) all of the above