But I kinda miss my writing.

Although I have had friends that get drunk every weekend or get high more days than not, I myself have chosen not to. It wasn’t a matter of availability– I had plenty of opportunities to smoke, or drink, or party. It was a conscious choice not to. I have drank at family parties; at family dinners I might have a glass of wine or a flute of champagne for a celebration of a special occasion, at cookouts I might have a few sips of beer, but that’s it. I have never been drunk. I have never been high. These are things that I am proud of.

A year and a half ago, bf went to a party and got drunk. Or at least that’s what he told me at the time. Now he claims to have just gotten buzzed. I don’t believe him. He was too hungover to go to school the next day; I had to pick him up from his friend’s house after school.

Seven months ago, when his best friend turned eighteen, he started smoking cigars with him. This irked me, but not severely. It was a bit of a bonding activity for them, and the thought of them wearing monocles and sitting around in bathrobes and bunny slippers was to silly of a visual to pass-up.

Six months ago, while we were broken up and he was seeing someone else, he started smoking cigarettes. I wasn’t impressed, but I wasn’t too shocked or horrified– I myself had smoked a few clove cigarettes in celebration of my eighteenth birthday. I had since then become a bit of a “bitterette” smoker, only smoking when I was pissed off about something and needed to clear my mind.

Three months ago, I noticed that his smoking had increased. He was no longer having the occasional cigarette because it was “fun” and gave him a nicotine high. This had turned into a cigarette to wake up, a cigarette on the drive to work, at least two cigarettes while at work, a cigarette or two on the drive home depending on if he made any stops along the way, possibly another cigarette upon arriving home, and a cigarette before going to bed. I was beginning to lose tolerance with his smoking: he smelled like smoke, the second-hand smoke in the car gave me headaches, and he couldn’t afford it.

Now, he still smokes just as much. He’s stopped trying to say that he’s not addicted, because he has tried (and failed) to quit twice. He smokes as much as half a pack per day depending on whether or not he’s working. His immune system has decreased. His teeth have started to yellow from nicotine stains. His hands smell constantly of cigarettes, his skin reeks the smell of tobacco. His mouth tastes stale and burnt. It is disgusting.

On Saturday, I found out that he has started smoking marijuana. He hid it from me for two weeks, until I asked him point blank on Saturday morning. I found out that he had smoked it five times in the past week and a half. I am so unspeakably disappointed. I’m torn in every direction. Part of me hates him for sinking to that level. Part of me feels like a hypocrite because I’ve been tempted by curiosity before. Part of me wants to slap him across the face. Part of me wants to smoke it with him to see what it’d be like. But I can’t. I refuse to compromise my morals simply because he chose to.

He laughs about it. Like it’s something to be proud of. As if I am missing out on something.

That night I told him exactly how I feel about it. I told him how I’m angry, how I’m disappointed, how I’m hurt. I thought that our talk had some meaning to him.

Yesterday I ended up crying in front of him because I was still so upset about it. He seemed to care. He held me in his arms.

Today, he smoked pot again.

I am furious at him for pretending to care. I am angry at myself for thinking it would matter. I’m hurt that he is choosing pot over me. I’m disappointed in his choices. I’m embarrassed to be dating him.

I am embarrassed to be with him. Embarrassed.

I’m still in love with the man I fell in love with. The problem is, he is no longer there. The man that has taken his place disgusts me.

Title from Passive by A Perfect Circle

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

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

I’ll try to get back into updating regularly.

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

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.

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

Song-by-song analysis after the jump.

1. “Everyone’s At It” This song doesn’t have to do much with my life at the moment, but I definitely share her scorn at the way we now seem to have a pill to pop for every problem in the book. I do, however, relate to the line “Why can’t we all, all just be honest?” My life would be much easier if everyone around me could be honest with each other instead of hiding behind their problems.

2. “The Fear” In this song, Lily satirizes typical hollywood with lines like “I’ll take my clothes off, and it will be shameless/’Cause everyone knows that’s how you get famous” I heard this song on my local indie station a few months ago and loved not only the lyrics but the sound of the song as well.

3. “Not Fair” A song about not being sexually attracted to the man of her dreams. This describes a situation in my life so well. When one of my bestfriends confessed that he not only has feelings for me, but that he has been in love with me for quite some time, it threw me for a loop. While I care for him deeply, and he has many qualities that I want in a boyfriend, I’m just not attracted to him like that. Needlesss to say, our friendship is fairly awkward at the moment.

4. “22″ This song is one that I hope doesn’t relate to me in four years. At eighteen, I’m already freaked about the economy, covering tuition costs, rent, insurance, finding another job, etc. There are days when I wonder if I can even afford to go to college. Whenever I get anxious about waiting for a letter of acceptance, I end up reminding myself of the fact that the state school which used to be my fallback option is the only college I applied to. It’s a weird feeling to go from an academic resume of a 2090 on the SATs and 4s and 5s on AP tests to hoping to get into the local state university.

5. “I Could Say” In this song, Allen sings to a former lover, telling him all the comforting things she could say but won’t because they’re not true. In this difficult break-up, I try to keep telling myself that it’s just like all of the others– someday, he won’t matter, soon I’ll be on the other side of it.It’s a lot harder to tell yourself when your ex-boyfriend was also your best friend.

6. “Back to the Start” Last year, my former best friend and I started drifting away from each other. While my life began to fall apart, her’s seemed all-too-perfect; she didn’t have to work, was able to devote as much time to schoolwork as necessary, had a beautiful house, loving and caring parents — I was picking up extra shifts whenever I could to help pay the bills, letting my schoolwork go by the wayside, and getting bounced back-and-forth between parents depending on their respective moods. I started to resent her, we spent less time together, we found different groups of friends, our respective experiences pushed us further away from each other as we grew in opposite directions; soon, the girl with whom I used to share everything had become my greatest annoyance.

7.”Never Gonna Happen” Sometimes people just need to take a hint. ‘Nuff said.

8. “Fuck You” I LOVE THIS SONG. How can you not love a song that sings “Fuck you/Fuck you very, very much/’Cause we hate what you do/And we hate your whole crew/So please don’t stay in touch” All I’m going to say about this is that there are some people that I never want to see again after I graduate.

9&10. “Who’d Have Known”  and “Chinese” These are those songs that I sometimes have to skip because they remind me so much of my life. My life with him. Before the breakup. When I more or less just lived at his house because mine wasn’t a home. When there were days that I beat him home and walked his dogs so he didn’t have to brave the cold. When we’d go grocery shopping on friday nights before curling up in bed with a Disney movie. When I’d go house-hunting with his mom. Sigh.

11. “Him” The lyrics in this song are interesting, rather than criticizing the notion of God or of religion, Allen critiques the common stereotypes of fundamental religion. I love the chorus “Ever since He can remember/People have died in His good name/Long before that September/Long before hijacking planes”

12.”He wasn’t There” To me, this song reminds me of my Dad. I love my Dad. I always have, I always will. We don’t always get along, he hasn’t always been there for me, he has been far from the perfect father. But as Allen sings, “It didn’t matter if he let me down/I didn’t care about the lies/But all I knew was that he loved me very much/He was my hero in disguise” Frustrating, disappointing, infuriating, and hurtful as he may be, I will never stop loving my father.

“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)