He used multiple explanation points at the end of the poem.

Maybe not that amateur.

On with it.

I'm a cynical, insensitive bitch.

At the computer beside me- as I'm in the library right now- there is a kid who is not going to graduate with his- who I've known since grade school, who is a good person, if endlessly fucking annoying and way too...unjustifiably confident who is almost in tears. A mutual friend...or at least acquantance of ours came over and asked him what was wrong. "I don't want to see my senior friends leave."

My initial thought in response: "You have friends?"

Maybe it's simply that this kid has been annoying the crap out of me for way to long- not to say I don't like him- or maybe I'm trying to numb myself to all that's happening around me: I'm leaving high school. I'm leaving my class. We're all going to become seperate people and lead seperate lives. Forever.

When I was in fifth grade, I remember very clearly having moments that I just suddenly looked around me in class, saw all these people I'd grown up with, and knew, and felt- the way their all just coming to feel now- that this was my class, this was my family. This grew stronger for me in Sugg, especially eighth grade, the most class-spirited year of my life- god, I miss it. (He's crying now and wiping his tears, and I have the audacity to be annoyed, thinking that he might be doing it to get my attention. I suck.) I miss our little class- we had the same twenty-something kids for every period, just different teachers- and I miss Dud amusing us all, or stealing the remote from Mrs. Bianchi, or saying "Let's get back to the sheep!" in Mrs. Gerlek's, or any number of things that are the exact same things I always talk about when I reminisce about that year- I wish I could remember something new. Giving those reports in Mrs. Gerlek's room- we had to cover certain things about a country, and while we stood up and presented, the other kids in the classes would have check lists to see if we covered everything. We got extra-credit for asking intelligent questions, so I would always write questions for Steenson and Justin to ask- especially on my presentations, because I'd get extra credit if I could answer them. However it was that Mrs. Gerlek didn't catch on to that, I'll never know. And I remember writing Mike long notes every day, and talking on the phone to Sandra about him every night, and Jeremey and Jesse behind me in math and science, scratching on those damn book covers and smiling up at me....I remember a lot. More about eighth grade than any other year.

I could go over my four years of high school, but I've done that a thousand times...or else I'm scared to. Scared, perhaps, to acknowledge how I really feel about these people that I knew were family always- when my parents were offering to send me anywhere else in the world to high school, France if I wanted, because they hated LHS so much- and these people who I've managed to loose that feeling for slowly, like a deflating the balloon in the course of my high school career, and all that remains is that shrivelled red rubber notion of it, and a bit of the ribbon tied to the end.

But that's there. I want to blow it up. I'm just afraid of bursting it...maybe that's all it is.

He was writing a poem on the computer beside me called "To All My Friends", and I was thinking that it must have been amateur crap, as it seems everyone writes around here- I gotta get, out, their cramping my style. And I feel guilty for thinking that, and I'm trying to tell myself that once upon a time, my shit was that bad, and that somebody readinng this- if anyone bothered to- probably thinks this shit is that bad. (except that since it's a blog, I have no pretentions about it being good.) I feel evil and mean, and I want Chad here assuring me that I'm a nice person, that I'm better than I give myself credit for, that it bothers him to see how little love I have of myself. I want Chad here with me, and I want to be laying against him, pitifully making my argument and feeling his complements in a way I can't really feel anything good about me anymore, seems I can only make sense of the bad. I want Chad here, or rather I want us both to be elsewhere, and I miss him.

Which leads me, without a clear segway, to the fact that all this shit happening privately to me is distracting me from feeling the crisis of my high school life ending. Maybe my subconscious is doing this on purpose- it seems everytime something that would really emotionally kill me happens, something else happens that's just bad enough to distract me, and perhaps it's because I sabotage it without knowing. The things I can't control get blocked out by the things that I do, except that I've convinced myself don't, I've convinced myself that they're just happening to me, too.

I'll have to run that theory by Mr. Ladd.


"Just do me a favor
It's the least you can do
Don't treat me like I am
Something that
Happened to you."


I do that to people too often...it's the worst insult I can think of. I need to stop.

And I need to start feeling what needs to be felt. I need buy a yearbook and have every senior sign it, and stop and talk to as many of them as I can. I need to cry about it. I need to write really really bad poetry about it.

I need to be an amateur.

On with it.

:-) My auburn boys are the most pathetic people on the face of the earth.

Whenever I put on an away message, there's one of two objectives I'm going for to communicate something that I desperately want them to know, but won't tell them, either because I want them to think it wasn't intended for them, or I want them to wonder if it was intended for them, but not know, because I don't have urge to just tell them whatever it is I want them to know, whether it's just my extreme affection for them, or something all deep and dark like the fact that my relationship with whoever isn't working out, or I miss them, or, worse, I don't miss them anymore at all.

The meaningful ones normally come in the way of song lyrics, and while there are occasionally the instances where I just post song lyrics because they're in my head, if you see any up, look for hidden meaning- they might be for you!

The second basic objective is just to get people to leave me messages- which they never seem to. I put a lot of effort into trying to craft the perfect away message that will make people want to respond to it like crazy. Normally, I SUCK at this, but tonight I hit a bit of a jackpot with "Leave a message or you'll never have sex again."

Four of my Auburn boys- only three of which I can really claim to be one of "mine", as Labrack and I aren't really that close- responded, and they were the only ones. Why they're such colossal losers? First of all, three out of four of them responded with indignance alluding to the fact that they'd never had sex in the first place, so the "again" thing didn't work out (the other commented that he didn't ever want to have sex) and secondly, despite the way they chose to get around admitting it, you gotta know that they left these messages basically because they thought there was just the slightest possibility that it was true, and they didn't want to jinx it.

Pathetic.....Losers. God, I love them.

On with it.

HAHAHAHAHAHA!

Oh, the cynical delight. I love it.

On with it.

Hung out with Mark tonight- that was fun. That's one good thing about EX's- not self-conscious around them at all. At least not with him. We were discussing tonight- albeit, briefly- how we've been closer as friends in the years since the breakup then we were before, how incredibly rare that is, and how I doubt I'd ever be able to do that with anyone else.

EL's prom is saturday and I'm battling one very frustrating zit at the end of my nose- I want to look good for this. It has the potential to be a very emotional night, but with luck Chad and I will be able to just kick back, have fun. Far less stressful than my prom in that I've already bought everything I could need for it. Hurrah. Jenn's gonna do my hair again...she's thinking about trying something different this time, hopefully it comes out as good as it did originally. Don't know if I'll opt to wear makeup again...it was kinda stressful last time. We'll find out.
For prom my freshmen year, Mark and I got a few pictures taken in front of my apple tree- the flowers bloom on it for like a week or so every year, maybe less, but when they do, it's the most gorgeous thing in creation. Happily, it seems as though Sunday should be perfect timing to take prom pictures in front of it again- hurrah! Hopefully, Cathy has that day off from work. *knock on wood* If not...gaaah, I really hope she does.

Ben e-mailed me this weekend in response to #17, simply to say "Linda, you're brilliant. :-)" That made me feel really good- when was the last time I mentioned my unparalleled love for Ben? He's sensational.

Flippin' practice for the memorial day parade- which I'm going to be very exhausted for, as it's the day after the prom- tomorrow morning, so I should probably be on my way out....not that I wasn't technically out of subject matter anyway, but WHO ARE YOU TO JUDGE ME?

(humor tip: getting freaked out and accusing people of judging you in capitol letters is funny...at least, I like to think so....shaddup.)

On with it.

Issue 17 is out...sorta a new style- I wanted at least one issue with some intelligent humor (comparitively speaking)- but it's opened to good reviews. From now on, it'll probably be a hybrid of my old, insane, tasteless style and this.

I can please all of the people all of the time if I really want to.

There's still that subscriber thing over there on the side. You know what to do.

On with it.

"I need you so
That I could die
I want you so
And that is why
Whenever I want you,
All I have to do
Is dream."


I used to have dreams about my father and me acting like a father and daughter. I used to have dreams that he loved me and I loved him back, and we had a beautiful relationship involving all the wonder and ideals of old family sitcoms on ABC. I told Mr. Ladd about them, and he said that he thought dreams were a big deal- that they're part of ourselves trying to tell us what we really want most in life.

What I really wanted most in life was my father back.

The first time I saw the movie I watched tonight- Riding In Cars With Boys- I was stunned by it's beauty and truth. I watched myself, I watched my sister, I watched my pain dance over the screen like a mortal ballet, and I was transfixed. And I cried, there in the theater: loud, undeniable sobs with tears that ran down my face like thin red paint. I cried as I was leaving, and calmed down as Ricky, Jenn and I all got into the car and drove to a late-night Wal*Mart trip. On the way, I was explaining to them about this one time in the car with my father and my family, driving home from Florida: it was late, and everyone was frustrated because we couldn't get to a hotel. I thought out loud to myself that I would like to have chocolate milk, and my father mistook it for a request and was indignant that I would dare ask for something like that when everyone was so on edge. He started screaming that I was stupid, that I was horrible, that my saying stupid things like that were what was ruining the whole vacation. He went on for probably three minutes, and we all sat there in the truck and had to listen to it. My mother couldn't calm him down. My sister and I were too shocked to say anything. When he finally stopped, I couldn't control my tears, but I didn't want him to hear me cry- I pretended to listen to Boys II Men, turning the volume up loud enough so that even coming from my headphones it would help to cover the noise, then I put the headphones around the back of my head and stifled my crying into a blanket.

That was the worst thing my father ever did to me.

The car ride was silent for the rest of the ride, until we pulled into a hotel, and I can still remember driving up to it and parking, and being alone with my sister. She turned to me and told me that she never realized how much she hated him until that moment, and I cried more. After we got settled into our rooms, I was hungry, so my father took me down to the restaurant to eat, and I had to be alone with him until my sister came down. I was terrified.

My father and I had always had a horrible relationship, not often as bad as that, but certainly nothing to combat it with goodness: he never apologized or said anything about it, beyond my sister and I, it was never even acknowledged.

When we pulled into Wal*Mart, I was crying again. Jenn calmed me down and Ricky put my arm around me is we walked in. While we were in Wal*Mart, we ran into Mark, shopping with his family. His father and his brother were standing near him, behind his mother. She seemed to lead them all, leaning over the cart and pushing it forward. I hadn't seen her, or any of them, for a while, and I don't remember if I smiled in acknowledgement or actually said hello to anyone but Mark, but I took note of all of them, and of her.

A few weeks later, she died suddenly of a heart attack.

It was a hard time for Mark, it still is, and I did try, and have tried, to be there for him as much as I possibly can. He, in turned, talked to me several times about making peace with my father, telling me that he'd learned you never know how much time you have, you never know when something may happen. His talking to me about it was only an affirmation of something that I had been thinking about a lot, and I knew it was important that I start fixing things. This was one of the many reasons that I went back to seeing Mr. Ladd, as I hadn't in years: It was time to start making things right in my life.

Mr. Ladd and I devoted a lot of time to talking about how important it was that I change things with my father. I traced with him, as well as on my own, a lot of my problems back to my dad, and I knew that future problems were just going to continue to develop. But I didn't have the courage to change anything.

It was probably about a month ago now that I woke up to screaming- my father and my sister, more intense than it normally was. There's only so many times I can go back and describe the events of that morning, maybe one day I'll post some of what I wrote to Mitch about it on here, but to make a long story short, I got up instinctively to protect my sister, more fragile than I, from what seemed to be developing into a more emotionally deep argument than normal, but when I got to the top of the stairs, I froze, hearing something that I had never heard once in my entire life: my father told my sister he loved her.

No, he screamed it. And she screamed back. I remember some of what they said, but I wasn't listening: I was standing, dumbfounded at the top of the stairs. I went back into the room, this room, and I turned on the computer, intending to post on this, of all things to do. But before I could, I fell into the sobs, and down, and sat on the chair as a ball, and I cried, I cried.

My sister came up eventually, and held me to her. I looked up at her, and I said the only thing either of us was thinking: "He told you." She began to cry, too, not for the first time that morning, and we stayed there like that until my father walked in. He asked why were crying and we didn't replied. He sat down on the bed across the room and stared at us. He asked again. My sister, this time, left me to walk over and touch him. She began to talk to him like the little girl she truly was in that moment, to tell him how long we'd been waiting for him to tell us that he loved us. She called him "Daddy" and burroughed herself into his arms- I had never seen her so young. He sat there and held her, telling her of course he loved us, of course, and after a moment they both looked up, and held their arms out to me. I couldn't go- I couldn't even make eye contact with them. I got up and left the room.

I went outside, barefoot, and I walked through the wet grass and the cold morning aimlessly, wondering what parallel dimension had just taken over my life. I walked through the grass, then to the driveway, than slid down against the side of my sister's car and cried again. Eventually I got up, went inside to get a coat and some money, and ignoring my mother's demands for an explanation, I went to Kitty Korner.

From the payphone there I called Mr. Ladd, but I got his voicemail, as I expected, and lost the nerve to speak. I hung up the phone, stood for a moment, then immediately looked for two more quarters to call again. I couldn't find them and had to go in and buy a soda to break a dollar. I came back out and left a message on his machine, completely incoherent through my choking sobs. He told me later that he didn't undrstand a word, except that at the end I told him to call back and check up on my later.

I went home, into the house, and my sister asked me if I was okay, and told me that I was stupid for leaving- she wasn't angry, she just couldn't understand. I went into my room and my father tried to talk to me, to apologize for yelling, and I told him that it was okay, that that wasn't it. He didn't know what to say and left. My mother came in and layed down next to me in my bed, and asked me what was wrong, and tried to tell me that my father did love me, that he didn't know how to say it. She was stroking my hair and crying a little, and swearing to me that he would do anything for me. Anything at all. I told her the one thing I knew for sure- that I didn't know that. That he had never told me.

After a while, she left, and then I was alone for a time before my father came in again. This time he made more of an effort to say what he needed to. He rambled about things, about not minding that I dyed my hair, and about things had done wrong. He told me that most of the time he had only stayed away from me because he thought that was what I had wanted, because he was afraid of messing me up. I was crying, and he was trying not to- he kept asking me for tissues. He said that he thought I was alright, wasn't I alright? I said no, and he asked what I had needed. I told him I needed a father. He kept rambling, almost senselessly, saying over and over again that he of course he loved me, that he wasn't perfect, that I shouldn't allow him to mess me up. He said of course he loved me and Cathy. He would die for us.

It felt like a long time, or too short of time, I don't know. After a while, he ran out of things to say and began to realize that he was repeating himself. He asked if I wanted to hug or something, told me he didn't know what to do, and I said he could go.

You should see Riding in Cars with Boys, so I don't want to give away too much, and perhaps you shouldn't read the next sentence if you don't know what happens already, but in the end there is a scene where the song her and her father used to call theirs, before so many things happened to them, before they were emotionally seperated- the song, "Dream", comes on, when they are in the car together- she is an adult now, and he has grown older, and there's so much there that they've done wrong. But the song comes on, and they start singing it, softly. And he holds out his arm for her, and she scoots closer to him, and leans into him, and they're both still singing. Nothing is said, but when the line comes "I need you so", they both look at each other in such a way...you know that they're telling each other what they need to. Maybe not outright, but it's there.

"I need you so
That I could die.
I love you so,
And that is why
Whenever I want you
All I have to do
Is dream
Dream dream dream
Dream."

I haven't had a dream about me and my father since that day. Nothing's been said to acknowledge it, either, but he forwards me e-mails of jokes people send him online, and he'll ask me how I am every now and then, make a little conversation, show me that he knows I'm there. I never told him I loved him back, and I mean to. It's important.

But life just keeps going on and on. Stories are just little parts of it.

On with it.

I am 33% CANADIAN!!! (Take the Canadian-ness test)

Well, that's a relief. Don't want to be too Canadian.

I think I'll make one of those tests once I launch my newsletter's homepage- those tests get a lot of motherfucking attention! Subscribers- cha-ching!

Not that I'm, uh, in it for the fame. It's about the art. Yeah. That's it.

"Another goodnight kiss is robbed of all it's passion...
Please tell me your just feeling tired,
Because if it's more than that, I feel that I might break."
~DB

On with it.