More letters to people in my life

I keep more inside then I tend to believe or think about when I am moving through daily life. I don’t realize it until I get so built up that I have to say something and end up here, because even I judge myself for some of these thoughts, and others I just don’t want to beleaguer with my passions. This is a true journal, and I wonder why I don’t just type these entries up as text documents, where others won’t be so unfortunate as to read them.

I probably like the idea that one day someone will figure out who I am. I don’t know why I would like that, but there I am: weird as fuck.

–

As for you, Dave, I just don’t know what to say. When I first met you at the Gargoyle, I thought you were cool. You are, in a way; high school cool. You wear fuckin vests and chucks. You talk quickly and make fun of everything and everyone at every opportunity, and you like to tell amusing stories. I admit, you do it well, and I appreciate your anecdotes anytime.

But you’re an asshole, Dave, everyone knows it. You’re also a good friend; you drive people around and you hold various events at your house. You’re somehow both a good friend and an asshole at the same time, perhaps that’s the reason you’re such a nexus in my social web. You are memorable, and people are drawn to that “power”. I saw it, after a while, though, and I resisted.

I guess it’s a credit to my character (not to sound my own horn) that I resisted so well that you noticed. I wish I had recorded exactly how it all went down, though, because it would help me, now that I wish to save this bridge before I lose all my friends to your fountain of social events. After Jenny’s gone, I’ll only have Liz to invite me after you’ve sent out the primary invites.

I’m sure that that is part of it: jealousy. How is it that I can introduce friends I’ve known for years, those who are as close to me as I seem to allow, and suddenly they’re spending countless nights at your house? Why did I never get impromptu sleepovers? I don’t entirely understand.

And then, not only were my friends suddenly more often at your house than I was, not only did they seem to socialize with you and get closer faster than with me, but I was no longer randomly asked to attend your little events. Was this before or after New Orleans? I for sure know that that whole fiasco, not to mention your sordid affair with Liz, did not help my opinion of you in the slightest, even though Liz’s involvement with you was perfectly under her control and helped me to see that you aren’t invincible when it comes to women and your self-aware relationship ADD.

I remember walking up Division with Liz one day. Not sure where we were going, but you cam up in the conversation, and we both noted about how you seem to get bored with females after a certain amount of time has passed. Perhaps that is where it started. Liz had the level head to not care, to hold you emotionally at arm’s length and put up with your assholery for your good-friend-traits and the network you provide. I, on the other hand, up and mind-bailed. When one is not trying to accept you as less than considerate and warm, but rather not interested in keeping you in perspective, it’s far too easy to see you as a complete asshole, with no “good friend” in the mix.

I let that go on for too long, Dave. Holding on to a deep disdain for you and your behavior is easy enough, but when it interferes with my social life to the point where I miss seeing my friends of years and make everyone present extra uncomfortable just by walking into a  sparsely populated room including yourself, the situation is no longer okay. Something has to give.

And here it is. Now that you seem to have noticed my frosty attitude towards you and taken offense, I miss my friends even more often and feel a billion times more awkward in rooms with you. Simply put, someone’s gotta give. I used to be the girl who’d say, “not me! I am immobile, I will stay this course no matter how long it takes.”

Now I have seen that this course is, of course, retarded and dangerous. So I will give, because you are far too stubborn to give yourself.

Let the record show that I gave a little last night. I talked to sick Dave as though I had only met him at the last party. it was like pulling teeth. Dave, you better not have been too sick to appreciate my effort.

I would love a good time right now.

Moved two days ago, different co-op, same stuff. It’s awesome, by the way. SO organized, so much food, so much partying, woo!

SO yes, the guy who I knew and sort of liked in high school is now in the same house as myself. And I find I still have an interest in him. Potentially not good.

I don’t know, first off, if I can trust myself not to make advances on him, noticeable or not, while I’m not sober. I don’t even know if I want to be able to trust myself with it.

Then there’s the thing where he’s not single anymore. Or, hey, maybe he and his lady friend have an open relationship. I dunno, I don’t think I’ve met her enough to fairly judge the girl. Of course, I feel like if I don’t like her, I’m giving in to an incredibly vain and greedy bias. :/ Either way, my impression of her so far doesn’t even tell me if, if anything ever happened, she’d kick someone’s ass or jump right in.

Then there’s the thing where the apparent fact that he smells (just as childish as it may sound) was brought up multiple times during the evening of house togetherness. If he does, that will sure be a help for avoiding potentially bad situations. And help me decide that I’m secure in my choice of boys. :]

You are inept

Dear Cathy,

What the hell. What the fuck. I thought we were cool.

This already sounds awfully high-school-angsty, but that’s because the whole incident has been as such, and besides, this bolg is both anonymous and devoid of traffic.

Basically, Cathy, you snubbed me, and you snubbed me hard. I don’t think I deserved that, Cathy, I really don’t. I have been faithful as I can be to the Gargoyle, your precious link to a social life, and I have talked with you one-on-one plenty.

I know I’m not your best friend, dear, or even a close friend, but I do consider myself to hold a certain status in the Gargoyle, and I thought with yourself. I would have been fine with your reason for firmly excluding me from your activities, if you had given me a reason you could have upheld. But you told me you wanted to keep it small? This suggests that you wanted no more than, say, ten people at your house, not that you had a set guest list. I heard a few people tell you they couldn’t make it, or wouldn’t be able to stay long at all. By my calculations, you could have invited myself without much trouble to your set event capacity.

What really got me was that you called Stu and Nikita over to have a very exclusionary conversation about this event. Not only that, but you were begging Nikita to come when she said she had previous engagements. This is what really ticked me off.

First: What did I do, that I am less desireable to have at a get-together than Stu or Nikita? I am baffled on this point.

Second: I don’t contribute buckets to the gargoyle, but I have been coming to meetings for a year and a half and I think that gives me the right to be respected, at least a little bit. You did not respect me, Cathy, and that really pisses me off.

Third: I am not the only person at that meeting that you excluded. I cannot be the only one who noticed that you, the Gargoyle editor-in-chief, were holding an exclusive event, communication for which you were pursuing while all Gargoyle members were still present, practically mid-meeting. This is not a good thing.

Cathy, the Gargoyle is having some tough times. Tougher than last year. I know that this sin’t your fault. I know that you are doing your best to hold it together, do what you have to to get submissions, please the StuPub gods, keep the Garg from disappearing again. But you’re slipping. You need to be a diplomat to rally people.

I know you’re not Max. I know you don’t like huge parties and you can’t deal with thigs the way he did. But you can’t just reduce your contact zone to exclude some garg members. Or, if you insist, you can’t do so, and then allow eveyone who is not one of your hand-chosen special ones to realize your shortcomings. If you do, people have less and less incentive to write for you.

And they are writing for you, just as we wrote for Max. You are supposed to invite the labor, the creativity, the offerings, and we are supposed to be interested in helping you to get the magazine done on time, to appease the pulication gods. But I don’t have that desire. I don’t have any compelling reasons why I should pour out my hard work or spend any time on producing something for someone who excludes me without sufficient explanation.

I considered removing myself from the Gargoyle. I don’t do a whole lot, and every time I show up at meetings, now, I will have to deal with the resentful feelings I hold for you. I have no loyalty for you anymore. I do, however, hold a loyalty to the Gargoyle, so I think I will stay. I will try to come up with content, although I don’t know if that wil work out, and I will contribute to the magazine in any way I can. But I will stop showing interest in you. I will start showing interest in everyone else, and I will try to leave meetings before everyone else. A drunken Natalie informed me that I am cool, and I will live up to that.

If you ever care to offer me anything, an explanation, an apology, a personal invitation, or even just showin an interest in my self, perhaps I will be proved wrong in my conclusion, but I have my doubts. You confess that you are not much for social competence, but I just never realized how inept you are.

Please, Cathy, learn some respect and tact, for the sake of the Gargoyle, if not for your personal life’s well-being.

Society.

I would give a whole lot to be able to just jump onto the couch with Nat or even Ben right now, and just snuggle right up. Sure I miss Ian, sure I wouldn’t cheat on him, but I do catch myself  wishing that cheating on someone was more mental and less physical.

Ah well. I just have to close my eyes and make due with creating a satisfying scenario in my head.

Hook a loop, hook a loop

For my own ease of access, I have some crocheting patterns I want to start. In the hopes of saving myself from having to tout my laptop everywhere…

• http://naidascrochet.tripod.com/patterns/bunny.html
• http://naidascrochet.tripod.com/patterns/octopus.html
• http://www.quamut.com/quamut/crochet_project_amigurumi_bird_and_nest
• http://jessicasuzanne.com/craftypants/2007/09/13/pretty-puffs-slouchy-hat-with-pattern/
• http://www-personal.umich.edu/~msibylk/misc/Retro_rings_Tam.pdf    

Plus, look through here for other silly things.

 

Print some shit, whydoncha.

Some of those ‘wishful thinking’ letters

Hey, Andrew,

I still think you’re an interesting person, I really do. And I wish you could get over whatever paranoid, mentally-conjured shroud in which you’ve clad me in your own little world. You sure talked up a dismal little storm in that one phone call I made, but the gist I got from it was that the combination of my double-all-nighter and my proclamation of my dissatisfaction with Emily as a housemate offended you in a way that the other members of this house who occasionally pull all-nighters and dislike Emily have failed to manage.

What.

Apparently those two traits, possibly combined with other little details about my person, somehow caused you to liken myself to someone you used to see yourself as. This is my crime? Being myself, and accidentally reminding you of yourself? I realize that you might feel that who you were at that time led you to a bad place, but, if anything, that would motivate me, in such a situation, to give advice to avoid following a similar path, or perhaps simply to inform the other person of how I felt, a warning or simply a statement that it was a little weird.

Instead, you scorn me. At first without warning, and without explanation, the way I absolutely hate. Then after agreeing to at least act civil towards myself, you slipped in a matter of weeks, back to the point where you expend real effort to ignore me, even as I stop to say hello in the dining room, to show interest in your well-being.

I would understand if you acted this way with most people. However, the slap in my face is that, backward-opinionated boy that he is, you choose to confide in Ali, and give me accusing glances when I occupy a PULIC room in which you decide to discuss “sensitive” topics with him.

What. Did. I. Do.

You frustrate me to the point of wanting to chew your head off (verbally) every time you walk into a room. Particularly when you enter a room or a conversation while effectively ignoring my very existence. I should have had the perception to discuss this with James while he was still here, and without you participating in the discussion. With him gone, my only hope (besides an unlikely gmail encounter) is that Elin might see how this whole affair upsets me, and perhaps bring up the topic with you sometime. I doubt that either of these things will happen, and I am not going to bother confronting you directly again.

I give up. That’s it. As far as I can see, Harrison, I’ve initiated my last conversation with you. Happy New Year!

—–

Emily, dear,

Please give up. Please discard the friendly facade you wear around the house, as its only purposes are manipulative in nature. I don’t wish for you to stomp around the house, and by no means regard this request as an invitation to voice your opinions about your fellow house members, neither to their faces nor behind their backs. In fact, the next time you refer to me as “prickly,” I will ask you not to do so.

What I wish for in this house is honesty where possible and silence where honesty would do more harm than help. I realize that, had the house continued to adhere to such a policy regarding yourself, you would not be on referral right now, and Aaron would be long gone, but I believe that if you had adhered to this policy in the first place, you would not be the hot-button issue at this house today.

Of course, my dream is that you miraculously receive the message which the referral is supposed to send, and that you accept that a complaint about your actions is not necessarily an attack on your person. But you have proven, on multiple occasions and in multiple ways, that you will not stray from your role as the bratty child who never understands the reason why an apology is demanded. Worse, you are the manipulative child, with a routine worked out that rarely includes even a fake apology.

I couldn’t have begun this pseudo-letter with “Please leave,” but only because that would have worked best sans eloquence. But Emily, please leave us in peace. You have forced your way with our house one too many times, and we are finished with taking it quietly.

I only hope that we can find evidence of the parking crimes you might have committed before too long, so that we can shoehorn you out of your room sometime before the ground thaws.

(Signed, a concerned housemate)

—–

And a short one for you, Ryan,

You little bitch. I could go through a little list of times where you pissed me off, but there is a particular escalation that culminates in an offense, the magnitude of which makes up for any shortcomings in list length.

There was no reason for you to treat me the way you did, in fact I believe that the actions I took regarding yourself normally yield the opposite results. I extended my hand in friendship, multiple times, in fact. I put effort into your sorry ass. Not too much, though, thankfully, since I came to know you slowly and quickly learned what sort of person you are. I got insult and injury for my troubles when the easier, smarter, fairer, and more logical path was a simple acceptance.

So hey, fuck you for singling me out. Fuck you for making it plain that you hold me in lower regard than any random unattached female, and for causing me to burst into tears at my own party. Fuck you for having the gall to view my photos on facebook and request a tag on yourself after what you said.

I am done humoring you at parties, and I am done with giving you any sort of attention whatsoever. You are the only person to which I believe the term “bitch” can acceptably be applied.

[insert rude gesture here]

- – -

 - -

And so, immature as some of them may sound, I have some of my New Year’s resolutions, all because of the bitch, the brat, and Andrew;

First, I will not speak ill of Emily in excess, without good reason, nor around Andrew.

Second, I will tell Emily when I feel that she is out of line. I will not try to force her to change, and I will not stand to listen to her spewing slander or preaching the view from her self-centered world. Once I inform her of my dissatisfaction with her locution, if she continues, I will leave the room.

Third, I will not make another effort to converse with Andrew. I will leave a room if he begins to offend me, and I will not waste my nerves on inquiring after his business, health, or other amusements.

Fourth, I will not smile at, speak with, or outwardly appreciate the efforts of Ryan. If possible, I will spend the maximum amount of time in rooms where he is not present, and times when I am in the same room as him I will spend doing whatever I came in to do, conversing with other people directly, or locomotoring in, out, or through the room. There is on exception for this resolution; if Liz asks me to relent, I will give a small amount, only for the party at which the request was made.

Fifth, I will wear cool hats all over. This has nothing to to do with anything.

Loose

There are two rats running around my room, making me feel a little less alone. It’s sad, when classes are over in the winter, it’s too cold outside for me to want to go out and do anything, so I sit at home and rot. At least my rats are getting some attention.

I’ve been attempting to clean up my room, but I always end up stopping just beyond making a path through the squalor. I need to return bottles, and I still haven’t put together a pile of crap I want to take to Salvation Army.

I got the idea of crocheting something about an hour ago, but I still haven’t started anything. Of course, I still have to do some research to figure out whether I can actually make something even half-useful. And easy. Or cool enough to hold my attention.

The excitement is killing us all, I know.

“No search engines have sent you traffic yet.”

WHO ARE YOU PEOPLE

Other relevant questions include:

Why don’t iPod Touches have cameras?

Why is Adult Swim picking up King of the Hill at the end of the month?

How did Emily ever make it this far in life without getting smacked upside the head?

When will my new job start?

What would be an engaging minicourse to take next semester?

and

Why am I sitting here drinking wine and writing an entry when I have a gigantic python assignment to start work on?

Perhaps it’s my inner awesome. Perhaps I’m just living life on the edge. Like I always do. Woo.

Pf. Boys.

Is it me, or is it his own paranoia or ADD that is causing a rift? All I know is that a few days ago it occurred to me that he doesn’t talk directly with me anymore. Not without my own prompting, and then it’s like pulling teeth. I really don’t like it, whatever it is.

I though we hit it off when we met. I enjoyed hearing his thoughts and knowledge on all things computer. I had fun hearing about his business, and I was happy to help him out when he didn’t have access to the Python lecture materials. I don’t think I performed in some way that would have offended.

And yet now I can’t be in a room with Andrew without feeling uncomfortable. He doesn’t act friendly and does not respond to attempts at conversation in kind. It seems like he’s formed a guy-bond with Ali and Aaron, and that that’s all the friendship he needs…? I’m just rather ticked off by the whole situation. It’s just like any other time in my life when someone who I considered my friend dropped it all and turned their back on me without warning nor reason.

It’s not right, and I am going to demand an answer at the next possible, appropriate moment. I would have tried to talk with him about it tonight, but by the time I got up the nerve, he had slipped off to bed. Next time I wont give him that chance.

Resolutions and indulgences

Three things.

First, I certainly poured my heart into complaining about Emily. It felt good, and it was almost all true, save for the part where Emily is actually, well, probably, going to be in a non-ICC house next year. Whoever agreed to live with her must be saints. I almost want her to move out of Owen early, so I can experience this place with at least half the drama removed. :/

Second, I had a wonderful time at Mich House, and, as I had actually all but officially made up my mind before I visited, I changed my homestead form to Mich/Minnies first as soon as I got back on the internet. I after talking with a couple other Owenites, it seems that we aren’t as happy a family as I had previously believed, even without counting Emily. At this point, all I can really do is hope that things get better next year. That, and try to keep this place on a good track over the next semester (getting the new constitution up and running, ousting Emily from her position of power, etc.). Sometimes I feel like it’s all up to me.

And third, my little indulgence-crush on Andy is still going strong. The boy actually hugs me (in a friendly way, of course), and he regards me as a person and not as his friend’s girlfriend. Perhaps there’s something wrong with me. Perhaps I should bring back polyandry. Or maybe I should just try to cultivate our relationship into a close and comfortable friendship? … But that would make sense. There was that week where I had a dream about Patrick. But that didn’t last long. Now he’s just a friend. Maybe that will happen with Andy once I see him on a regular basis. Except that I don’t really want that to happen.

But regardless, I am already looking hella forward to next year. Note to self, pick out things to sell off on the internet. Preferably things I don’t want/need anymore; books, CDs, Perhaps clothes, make donation piles, and so on. My goal is to not have cram shit in behind my futon.

Now. If I can only make it to my birthday, life will be wonderful.