think i'd better knock on wood

it's felt like a long evening. even on a school night. i guess it's cuz i went out and did something after work and then came home, all before it was even dark. i didn't even move quickly, really. i went over to the other end of the neighborhood where there are stores (we're more of a restaurant area... just so many restaurants) to try to do some shopping before this wedding i'm going to this weekend. i'm gonna be my friend's plus 1! i've never been a plus 1! i was supposed to be KW's plus 1 this past december for his old work partner, but we had the flu and had to cancel 😢. but i'm gonna go visit my friend MM! and see a bunch of other people who live in the area, hopefully! i'm excited! and getting over a cold, so also hopefully my plans do indeed go through.

anyway, i was unsuccessful. i do have a backup dress to wear but after re-gaining the meager weight i lost last year, it's a bit of a tight fit in the torso. were i to attempt to dance, my range of motion would be very limited. but i suppose it'll have to do, i'm unwilling to really drop dollars on a dress that i intend not to fit in for long.

seriously, i need to lose the weight. i'm also going to be my friend OV's bridesmaid in september, so... i really wanna be looking better for that, before all the photos go in albums, digital and otherwise. ...do people actually do physical albums anymore, for anything? never mind. point is, my body will be immortalized against my will by participating in this event. i'd like it to be thinner then.

this is all very besides the point. not that there's ever much point here other than my absolute rambling.

but, i came home from shopping, watched a little TV, and then let netflix steer me into rewatching easy A. man, i really feel like it holds up on most fronts. adorably quaint tech usage though. funny, really, what a short time frame it was that we texted on flip phones and sidekicks in high school. and i was there!

anyway, it got me thinking about a couple things. one, how gorgeous emma stone is. it's not fair. and that hair color works beautifully on her, i wonder if i could pull off anything like that. two, how gorgeous penn badgley is. it is also very unfair.

and yet, there's something about his facial structure that actually really really reminds me of KW. sort of always has. and i always thought a lot of that was from the old gossip girl days when he played a hipster writer living in brooklyn. like, come on. that was KW's bit in high school, so of course that description rang a bell. totally different coloring, but the bone structure in adulthood is actually very very similar. i wonder if other people see it. then again, given penn badgley's current infamous role, maybe i don't want people thinking KW looks like him.

so i was browsing through pics i have of KW on my phone, trying to assess how real the similarity is, and i found a picture — a picture of a picture, actually, since KW never did forward the pics along to me — of me, KW, his sister, and his two young nieces (who were about 3 and just about a year old at the time) up at a vacation house his sister had rented and invited us to visit. and i love it. it's objectively unflattering of me but it's one of those cases where i don't care? everyone looks so happy, and i just... love that i'm involved. i love that i'm included.

i really felt that this year, over the holidays, how much i love feeling like i'm part of KW's family. i've been trying to figure out (not actively, just kind of passively) for a while if i really do want to marry KW or if i just feel like it's The Thing To Do At This Stage Of Dating, and... i honestly don't have an answer to that. do i want to get married, or am i just attending a wedding this year? do i want to get married, or am i just watching my friends get engaged? do i want to get married, or am i just 30 and insecure about my progression in life?

i don't know, i really don't. but i do think a major weight on the pro-marriage scale is wanting the legitimacy of ceremony to lend stability to the feeling of belonging in KW's family. i don't want to feel like a visitor. i've been given a temporary role in someone's family before, and i know i'm the one that ended it. but this feels different, and i'm not sure why. i don't think it's that i'm more comfortable in KW's family, because i felt absolutely comfortable in being myself with ZM's family. maybe part of the difference is that i actually really like KW's sister and want to feel close with her, whereas i always felt (and still do) that ZM's brother is kind of... an ass? like, not meanspirited, just... not someone i would particularly voluntarily choose to spend time with. not that ZM's brother ever made me feel unwelcome, but i was also never concerned with impressing him. but KW's sister really seems to want me to feel welcome. and i absolutely treasure it.

i also think about the girls, and i remember my cousin B, who's i think 12 years older than me, i remember her boyfriends when i was young, i remember them appearing at a christmas or two or three or even four, and then disappearing, and then there'd be a new one later. i know that's part of life, but... something about that has really stuck with me. i always think, "will i be a Brad to this kid?" if i'm not a permanent fixture, what will they remember about me years later, when i'm gone? will i be a faint memory of someone their uncle KW used to date? and he is Uncle K to them... will i ever be Aunt A? or just A? i suppose it doesn't matter, but i do wonder what the line is there. if KW and i get married, will i be permanent enough to get a familial title?

i keep being intentional about phrasing it as feeling like a part of KW's family, not as being a part of KW's family, in part i guess because i don't want to... get ahead of myself, or let myself trust in something and then lose it later. or i don't know. i don't want to be presumptuous. but i'd really like to trust in it. i'd really like a family. even with the family politics and drama that everyone's got to some extent, which i've been a third party observer to for years now, getting closer and closer looks... i'd willingly shoulder that, for a chance to feel at home.

apathy's a tragedy and boredom is a crime

it's been over a month since my last post, and i feel oddly guilty about that even though this blog doesn't have an audience? nor do i particularly want or need it to because it's only my own thoughts written down somewhere that isn't a material object i have to maintain or fill. and because sometimes the detachment of a keyboard makes honesty easier. even if i have always liked the way a pen moves on paper. i remember back in the day (high school) having a diary in the form of email drafts in a yahoo inbox, because that was the only place i felt i could handle talking about my friends growing up and starting to deal with sex and drugs. not so much rock and roll. what is this blog but an expanded yahoo email inbox, with perhaps less spam in it.

things haven't been all that great here. KW's in a full depressive episode and it's frustrating that i don't know how to support him. when a depressed person wants to be left alone, is that the depression talking, or them? how do you make someone smile when they don't want to? when they think they can't do something because they're not up to it, do you let that stand or do you push them into it because you know that they really can? and then i know his depression has nothing to do with me, but it drags me along with it sometimes. it's a fucking bummer, to feel so useless and unhelpful when the person you love is in crisis. but in the moments i've been unable to stop myself from being down on myself and giving the negative thoughts a voice, KW has attempted to be there for me, sometimes successfully, but at other times telling me he can't deal with the same conversations again and again, or that he can't really give me the support i'm looking for because he's unequipped, also depressed. so... i try to tamp it down.

it's one of those days. KW's been in the bedroom all day, i've been out in the living room listening to the songs from the most recent bo burnham special, inside -- a musical depressive episode played out in quarantine, and watching his old performances. just a big bo burnham kick today. i tried to go get KW to do dinner with me, but then raised the idea of maybe going out either to pick something up or eat at a restaurant, and then... things just collapsed, until he basically stared at a menu on his computer for 5 minutes straight, and the plans for the evening ended. i can't get him to have dinner. maybe if i'm lucky at midnight he'll decide he actually is hungry and will sort something out then. i microwaved the remaining 40% of last night's leftover burrito and ate it at my computer. we were going to watch the new in the heights movie; he's been excited about it coming out, and this is actually a night where we're both at home without other real obligations. oh well.

i don't want to be egocentric, what's going on in his head is about him and his brain chemistry. but he seemed to be doing okay, until i tried to make dinner plans. he told me he was a little down, and then i just watched him decline.

anyway, i'm still at my computer, where i've spent the better part of the day. i probably shouldn't, given that i learned at the end of the last month that i actually need glasses now for the computer. i have hyperopia - ironically for my life, i'm farsighted. she who fears thinking of the future because that's how hopes are made, and hopes are how disappointment comes to fruition, is farsighted. excellent distance vision, is what i was told, but having to focus on the screen in front of my face all day is straining my eyes and worsening my vision overall. anyway, i got a pair of glasses but then immediately decided i hated the frames on my face and went back (with my mom's assistance) to pick out new ones, but i had to give up my old ones and haven't gotten the replacement yet. so... here i am. spending the entirety of a day i'm not required to be on the computer, on the computer.

one thing that's become clear - or had its clarity reinforced, rather - is that KW vastly prefers when i actually engage with the world. that's been a theme for a while, as was bravery in our first relationship. and i think the definition of that's pretty flexible - to do more than be carried through life by the relentless passage of time, to be conscious in how i spend my days. it can be playing video games and watching netflix, as long as i do it with intention and find a form of joy in it. and growth. if i find it fulfilling, and not just treat it as a way to make the day end. this comes back to being interesting. passivity isn't interesting, action is. intent is. purpose is. thinking is. i still say creativity is but i don't have that. i find myself, right now, at 11:50 PM (and earlier when i started this post) wanting a way to improve myself, right now. to learn something, to practice a talent somehow. i'm watching bo burnham and i'm watching him express himself and perform with piano, with guitar, with words, with cinematography and lighting. what is my... any of that? on a smaller scale of course, since i neither expect nor have a desire to be famous or renowned or particularly widely appreciated. i'd just like to do something for myself that KW can see me do and be proud of me for. for whatever it is, it would be a thing i did with purpose and found something in it for myself, even better if also for other people. i want to make him proud. i want to be worthy of him. i don't want to be sitting here trying not to fall apart alongside him, i want to show him that i am and/or still can be the person he's fallen in love with. although a part of that has always been a potential, not an actualization. part of what i strive for is to realize that potential, lest i let him down. i can't grasp what he sees in me, but he hates not seeing me be it, or be working toward it.

can i do art? can i paint? can i draw? can i find a class online and actually stick to it? can i put effort in without immediately feeling it's too hard and giving up? can i do more photography? can i take pictures and like what i see and enhance them in lightroom and photoshop, rather than looking through my shots for the day and feeling disappointed that nothing in there is spectacular? can i study code to advance my craft and my career, or dedicate myself to learning for its own sake, as long as i stick with it and retain it? can i practice languages and not be afraid to use them?

i want to be more confident. i know, i'm sure i've said that before. my self-image is at quite possibly an all time low. and yes, i used to have anorexia. i still feel worse about my body than i did then. at least then i had discipline. my skin's gone to shit and i can barely take care of myself for more than three days at a time. i've gained weight because not only did i stop going to the gym, but i picked up baking. i don't get dressed in the mornings because there's no reason to, and i don't want to wrinkle my clothes and be uncomfortable just in order to spend all day in my living room, or bedroom as the case may be. it's hard to dress up for KW either because he's never really been clear about what he likes to see me in, other than not skinny jeans. even when i try to ask, he just says confidence. he thinks i'm sexiest when i feel sexiest. what a fucking ouroboros of sex appeal. i guess that should make it simple, but it doesn't.

so... what? what'll it be?

steeped in the words of others

when i was younger i used to write out the lyrics to songs that moved me, or stuck with me. all the time. i'd have a notebook just for writing out songs by other people. is that weird? i find myself missing it. maybe it's part of my mental efforts to put myself back into a place where words used to flow through me. how many teenage habits can i adopt without reverting? i'm blogging, i'm writing out song lyrics... shit, i'm even dating my high school-era boyfriend. have i gone too far in the pursuit of poetry? in recapturing youthful habits in the hopes of rediscovering youthful words?

i think there's some drive to echo beauty. you know how when people - particularly kids, at least that's when i remember this - hear something funny, part of their appreciation of it is repeating it? i wonder if that's a similar instinct. i don't remember particularly feeling this desire in my baltimore era. or maybe call it my ZM era. if i had to hypothesize, i'd guess that back then i could sing more. we had more space, more privacy, more places to ourselves - our own building, a store i was frequently alone in, our enclosed car. i used to sing. all the time. i loved it. i miss that tremendously, too. i used to be able to sing along to songs i liked, if not at the top of my lungs then still passionately and frequently. that was my channeling the beauty, expressing that it moved me. and it really did (and does) feel cathartic on a soulful level. i think even in my new apartment i won't feel free to sing as much as i'd like. i learned how noise-permeable the walls of my childhood apartment were after hearing a first floor neighbor sing loudly one day, and instantly being horrified that my whole building could hear much more than i thought. sorry, neighbors.

so maybe now that i've been a few years without regular private car access and in a very non-soundproofed apartment, it's all pent up in me. if i can't use my voice and my lungs, i'll use my pen. ..and hope that KW doesn't think i'm super weird. there will be fewer habits i can hide from him, now.