kind of a melancholy morning. i awoke with a two and a half year itch on the brain and i've been obsessing over it all morning, dragging myself across the coals that should have gone out a long time ago, but they're still hot as ever, if not more so. i don't have many regrets -- just a couple that i can think of. i regret not visiting my grandmother more during her brief stint in the nursing home (meant only to be a post-surgery rehab) before she died. and then this, which is probably the more painful and all the more maddening because of its vagueness even to me. and no, i'm not going to talk about it any more than that. it's just where i am right now. it hurts. well, it always does, but some times more than others.

       fortunately, though, most of the other physical hurts from the accident are fading. there's still some stiffness in my neck and some pain in my left shoulder if i sleep on it wrong. i'm going to try to run a little today and see how that goes. i haven't been able to do that for two weeks and i'm starting to feel fat. i've calmed down considerably since my last post, thanks to some sense-talking friends and a lot of really deep breaths. a lot of those. but i wouldn't say that i'm calm yet, either. i haven't made any progress on getting a replacement vehicle, but i did test drive one this week. i was really excited for it until i took it to a mechanic who told me that i definitely should not buy it. too many things about to go very wrong. so trevor and i have worked out a way to carpool to work, which we probably should have been doing all along, and we've made a trip to the grocery store, but other than that i have to rely on the lackluster public transit in raleigh. still freaking out a little that i recently had to start repaying student loans and now i'm going to have a car payment too. i've put my gym membership on hold and was able to work something out with the student loans so i'm not paying so much, so it shouldn't be too bad. but i'm very ready for the whole thing to be settled so my stomach won't be in so many knots.

       on the plus side, i haven't been eating as much, so maybe that will help to balance the lack of gym attendance. my breakfast has been sitting in front of me for about an hour and i can't work out a way to eat it yet.

       i'm a little relieved that 2011 is about done. it was kind of a crazy year. more tomorrow, i'm sure. i hope you're all well.

       so. heh. having trouble starting. still ok, at least physically. the soreness is working its way out, the bruises and scrapes are healing. faster than i expected, actually. the car was totaled, but i knew it would be. trevor is taking me in on monday to pick up the check. it's not a lot, but it'll be a decent down payment. but that's where the other stuff comes in.

       just a bit overwhelmed. i don't know if it was the sort of reevaluation that comes with a close call or simply that i caught sight of an escape hatch -- but my mind won't stop. and now i have a choice. i can plug that insurance check back into a new car, take out a new loan on a new (to me) car and work for the next couple years to pay that off (probably to repeat the same thing over again). or i can take the money and run. the latter is infinitely more appealing. really, infinitely. and there's so much possibility. but it's scary as hell. and it's before the year mark that i was aiming for. keeping my current job and sitting on the cash isn't an option when the area public transit trip planner from my apartment to my current job suggests either a departure time of 11pm the previous evening or a 4-mile walk beginning at 4am to get to the appropriate bus stop. i didn't even try looking at return times. putting that check on the back burner for a bit and getting a new job at a public transit accessible location here in raleigh is somewhat attractive, but then i'm otherwise carless. no, a car isn't necessary, but certainly handy. and it helps with the whole getting a boyfriend thing when not having a car in a smallish city is kinda lame. but, really, i don't want to stay here. i don't. part of me does, sure -- the part that doesn't like change and is at least grudgingly willing to settle, the part that is scared to death of trying to forge a new life. lord knows that was a semi-private little hell i wouldn't mind waiting to experience again. but it might mean going somewhere big where i don't need a car to get around. maybe another shot at finding a place i belong. anyone in a big city know where a guy with an english degree and not much else can get a job?

       any way you crack it, my life was changed on tuesday night. and i wasn't ready for it. whatever i do, i have to decide soon. trevor's help with rides won't last forever. and the end of a year is one of the better times to get a car if i give in and decide to do that. oy. just oy. i've been obsessing about this all day. really, i've thought of nothing else except during dinner when i watched half an episode of torchwood, and i'm no closer to a solution. what do you guys think?

       send happy thoughts. please. i was in a bad car accident on the way home from work tonight. head on. i'm ok. i think. but i'm really sore. i feel like a big bruise. my car is dead, though. i'm sure it'll be totaled. good ol' daisy. just had the oil changed too. synthetic. great gas mileage. $30 to fill up the tank, once a week, and it's just shy of 30 miles one way to work. i don't really remember the accident very well. i was turning left and i thought i had a green arrow. i was just following the guy in front of me. then all of a sudden i was being plowed across the highway. apparently it wasn't an arrow. i was about 20 minutes from raleigh, but a friend came and brought me home. took some ibuprofen. took a hot bath. about to go to bed. tomorrow the insurance adjustor will call to tell me how much shit i'm in. after a bath and a shower (i washed my hair twice) i can still smell that nasty airbag smell and it's making me sick. i want to go to sleep and dream about being someone else.

       when the cop asked me if i had someone to call to come get me i almost started crying. all the people i could think of were thousands of miles away. it was a little awkward with the friend who came. i wasn't sure that i could ask him for that favor.

       i want to go home. but i don't know where that is.

       days like this make me wonder what it's going to feel like when i'm actually old.

       that is all.

       so today i've officially rebooted my toilet training attempts with hermes after the unexpected move about a year and a half ago forced me to abandon them. over the last couple weeks i've been slowly getting him accustomed to the insert again, and today we finally moved it up to the big boy potty. it really is gross. i probably won't be able to have boys over for a while. but it's so going to be worth it to be litter-free. i really hate kitty litter.

       then yesterday i was at the (insanely crowded) post office mailing a package for a merchandise exchange (because all my christmas shopping was done weeks ago) and i overheard the lady behind me saying "i'd wear those pants, too, if i had a body like that." at least in my mind she was talking about me. i had just washed my jeans and they were particularly skin-tight. so that's fun.

       i got presents at work friday, so that made for a fun day. the doctors gave me a bottle of wine, which i thought rather appropriate. and we had a secret santa gift exchange and my santa (who knows me too well) got me an amazon.com card, chocolate, and some wicked recipes i'm excited to try out. then when i got home there was a package waiting from dan. he gave me "plato's symposium" -- in greek. haha. so i'd better get on with those greek lessons. i'm 'cited.

       uuummmm. not much else to report. recently finished the book "wicked" and have added "the help" to my currently reading pile. really loved "wicked," and yes i know i'm about fifteen years behind. but i get tired of stories where it's all so black and white. granted, there was a polarity in the novel, but it was unexpected and still left some things blurry. oh, and the roommate went home today, so it will be nice to have the place to myself for a bit. i think. at any rate it's 5pm and i'm still in my underwear. so that's fun.

       hello. yes, i'm still alive. technically.

       not much to update. i've been scaling back on the dating thing. if you can call it dating. i've been seeing one guy for not quite a month now. but it's too soon to talk about it. haven't been writing, really. a little brainstorming here and there. but my heart isn't in it. my solace has been the gym, when i go. the mindless pounding, physical exertion. i don't really feel like i'm getting anywhere, but it wears me out and it makes me feel like i'm doing something.

       i've been shopping a lot. ha. they raised my credit limit. (eek!). my boss said that for every two presents you buy other people you're supposed to buy one for yourself, but i think i've been doing it the other way around. i'm reacting strangely to christmas this year. it's the first one ever that i won't be home for. in fact i'll be the only one here. so... yeah. half of me wants to pretend it's just another day, keep moving, nothing to see here. the other half loves the season and wants to jump in head first. so i'm kinda flopping all over the place instead.

       i keep meaning to live and i keep getting sidetracked. can't really remember what i was doing, though.

       i wrote my therapist the other night and cancelled our appointments for the rest of the year. i can't afford them. and it feels like the rest of the world's so fucked up it doesn't really matter if i am too. at least now i'll get to buy people christmas presents so they'll know that i'm thinking of them and then they'll like me. i have no idea what to get anyone yet. if you don't get one it's probably because i couldn't find one perfect enough. i'm going to try to start again after the new year.

       i just watched the chumscrubber. very interesting movie. i can't decide whether it's a new favorite. it might be. then i stumbled on jay brannan's cover of "someone like you." that's when i decided to write a xanga post.

       i finished a story last week. dan made me. kinda not really. i had been working on it and he asked for one so i just sped it up a bit. i sent it to him a week ago now and i still haven't heard his response and i'm going a little crazy. great job, dan. make the crazy person even more crazy. yes, i'm mostly joking. but not entirely. i think i'm about to delete the story and pretend i never wrote it.

       the last three nights i've had the best sleep since i've been in raleigh. i've been slightly ill for the last month or so, and it kinda came to a climax this last week. i'm fine during the day, but for some reason when i try to sleep i start trying to cough up my testicles. so i took some nyquil. uh-maze-ing. i may or may not need it tonight, but i'm planning on taking it anyway. i really miss sleep. it has even made work a little more bearable. but not quite.

       well, until today when i found out that i didn't make the cut for either the bonus or the "wage adjustment." it's not a raise because apparently i got a job at a place that's on a pay freeze. no, no one told me this when i was hired. they're just giving people who have been there since january a small percentage increase in salary to compensate for inflation. just another nail in the coffin of that job. and another excuse for me to say "fuck my life."  

       my shoulder really hurts. mandatory flu shot. and i'm breaking out. i think i'm pms-ing.

       the medicine's starting to kick in. bed time. nighty night.

       i woke up to people running down the dorm hallways, then someone knocked on my door. they asked me to turn on my tv. i saw the second plane hit live. in a daze i went to my first class and it was the only thing people were talking about. i knew what had happened, but i still asked. it didn't feel real. a few of the others hadn't heard yet and voiced their confusion with mine. the teacher dismissed the class early, the rest of the classes were canceled for the day. i sat huddled with strangers, new friends that i had met only a few weeks before, staring at the television, watching the planes fly into the towers over and over again. then they cut to them as they crumbled, as people ran from the dust clouds. we sat silent, occasionally paralyzed by fear or shock or anger. when the conversation started, it was of war, and suddenly my fear wasn't for the people in the towers -- it was that i had just turned 18 and was now eligible for the draft. i wasn't a very warlike individual.

       my friend dan wrote an excellent post today. you should go read his because he's always been better with words and ideas than me. i wish i shared his optimism about our country catching up, though. yesterday, on npr, i heard an author talking about how he thinks we've gone in exactly the wrong direction. in some ways we've changed for the better. (i got an email this morning from a meetup.com co-founder about how 9/11 was part of the impetus for creating a site that would organize people to meet up in person and create a community, much like the little communities that were formed and bonds that were made when people were forced to come out of their apartments and help their neighbors ten years ago.) but we're a mess. economically, socially. the emergence and especially the continuation of the tea party is to me very alarming. people are scared, panicked by change. we took risks. they were bad ones. the world is still trying not to collapse.

       only on the precipice do we evolve. i've written about that line before. when looking for that link i was surprised that it was only last october when i wrote that. it seems like it could have been as long ago as the attacks. just looking back at that old post has changed my mind about this one a little. it's not optimism so much, but a small hope at least. i've been talking about hope with my therapist. i've been losing mine lately. again. for me it's become very difficult to tell the difference between hope and delusion. i, like the rest of the world, have been very close to the edge. i hope we'll be able to see it as an opportunity. i've been fighting, though. still not warlike, no. or at least not in that sense. but something has changed. i've signed those petitions just like dan. i've been trying to stay better informed. internally, too, i'm fighting. i'm getting help. maybe this time..... who knows? i'm slightly terrified to see where we'll be in another ten years. but there's some hope there, too, if only because there always is.

       where were you?

       a lot has been happening, yes, but i just haven't had all that much to say. not a lot has changed in my emotional state since my last post of early july, which was quickly set to private, but i suppose there have been some moves to make changes. i guess we'll see if anything happens there. otherwise i've been trying to meet people, which is exhausting. i have a feeling many of them will turn out to be single-serving friends. and many of my old friends seem to be... moving on. aided, i'm sure, by my stellar communication skills. meantime i've discovered that i don't have to be alone if i don't want to be. but in the end i usually wind up feeling more so. like tonight. the more people i meet the more convinced i become that i will end up alone. and my proclivity for ice cream sandwiches when in such a mood just about guarantees that. at least hermes loves me still.

       i got to play piano a bit for the first time since being here. i was at a small party of sorts with some new friends and someone blabbed to the host couple that i played. so they made me sit and play. i was pretty drunk by that point and couldn't remember half of the notes, but it still felt good. i miss it terribly. also went to a club for the first time since being here, later that night. hadn't planned on going but one of the guys wanted to go out and he needed a chaperone. i reluctantly agreed. it was all right, but it kinda heightened my loneliness for some reason.

       oh, and for my birthday we had an earthquake and a hurricane. both were underwhelming.

       k, i'm going back to my reading now.

       so this is the first time since being in north carolina that i'm sitting down properly to write. and of course i have to write a xanga post first. my roommate is having someone over, so i'm sitting in a starbucks a couple miles down the road from my apartment and there's a small group of young, rather loud and obnoxious college guys that are kind of annoying me. i think one is a 'mo, but he's far too young for me. i want them to leave.

       lessee... updates. yeah, not much. with work and (barely) keeping up at the gym i don't have a lot of time to do much else. or money. i was kind of spoiled while living with the 'rents. things are much cheaper there. and they take a shit-ton out in taxes. i'm just barely squeaking by. i don't like the feeling. i'm hardly saving anything. the shopping spree at express in the first few weeks of being here didn't help. but i needed clothes to wear to work!

       as far as the gym goes, i've only recently bumped it up to the four times a week that i was maintaining in kc. i was spoiled there, too, having the gym so close to work. it's still kind of on the way home, but it's a little bit of a detour that's easy to bypass. and work drains me. i'm making progress, though. i sent a friend from kc a picture and he said so straight away. so that's good.

       dating in the south is not going well. i've met a lot of guys here, but only two of those were out. one was from new york city and i wasn't really interested, the other is my boss's boss's boss. yeah. two. gay rights here is about a decade behind the rest of the world. at least. everyone is deeply religious and really messed up. kinda like i was. no thanks. oh, wait, no, there was another one. but he was way too young and i wasn't interested either. fortunately many of the guys here aren't actually from here. i don't really like the north carolina accent. it's somewhat endearing on the women, but there was only one guy that i found it attractive on. he was a patient at the clinic and lives about an hour away. and i couldn't tell if he was flirting or just being friendly. i'm kind of in a phase where i don't really want to date anyone right now, though, so maybe i'll actually get some writing done. ha. we'll see how far that goes.

       north carolina drivers suck, too. definitely in the bad way. no one quite understands the purpose of a passing lane. and they drive like old people. and they like to look where they're going after they're already merging or changing lanes. there is always at least one accident on the highway every day, and traffic gets backed up for decades. and their dmv is a nightmare. i mentioned getting my license, but i still haven't had a chance to get my car registered and licensed yet. i have to have it registered before i can even get it inspected. so i have to make three separate trips to the nightmare dmv instead of the one stop shop that i was used to in missouri. and i haven't been able to get a day off work to do anything and of course they aren't open on any saturdays. i couldn't even get the harry potter premier off. and i might not be able to get my birthday. oh, i'm still going to the movie at midnight. i haven't missed any of them and i'm not about to miss the last. i'll only have two hours of sleep that night, but it'll so be worth it.

       no, i don't plan to be here long. i'm already planning my escape. it involves getting rich through my writing so i can afford to gtfo. i'll go to edinburgh and meet some tall, muscly scotsman and we'll get married and live happily ever after.

       oh yeah, and i'm kinda giving up on the whole writing thing.

       i dream too much.