URSELAPATCH

outside people are taking walks all around the neighborhood through the snow and kids are sliding down the hill on flat discs. why dont they use trash can lids instead of buying those dumb discs? what happened to that idea? i remember sliding down a hill near my old house in durham when i was a kid. the way the wind would cut at your face and sting tears into your eyes and choke your lungs with ice. the way you would be completely out of control, your trashcan lid sliding toward the edge of the road until bam, you ran into the drifts at the curb and flipped onto your side and lay there laughing with the snow eating away the warmth from your cheeks. you lay there as long as you could, because you knew that when you got up you would have to climb all the way back up that hill, feet slipping futilely against the slick surface of the world. and then you would fly back down.

i wish there was someone around here that would fly down this hill with me but no one in the family is interested and i dont really hang out with any of the kids in this neighborhood. besides, there is no time to get out there in the snow and feel it like i want to. my suitcase is packed and we are heading down to florida, trading in the snow for seventy-degree weather and the option of going swimming. ah, well, i guess it doesnt really matter much anyway.

last night i finished, completely, every single one of my college applications. three of them are submitted electronically. two of them are in sealed envelopes by the front door. there is no going back; what is done is done; what will be will be; i feel sick to my stomach. most likely i will end up near home, no big surprises, etc etc. there is very little hope that anything else will occur. but it will all be okay anyway. i dont have any big plans for college.

from my family for christmas/hanukkah i got hand lotion, a whole stack of money, a shirt, and a digital camera. from my friends i got a lot of awesome things that would take too long to post here. but maybe i will post some pictures soon. like of my four year old cousin showing off her brand new hot pink leopard print high heeled shoes that she got from santa...

daniel is home but sick. he is outside wiping snow off the car anyway. my mother is sick too. my father is worried that we wont get to florida with all the snow and ice on the roads. the dog is even more worried, because she doesnt know what the hell is going on (we are bringing her with us). im up here avoiding it all, considering getting in the shower just to warm myself up, but not really interested in doing much else. blahblahblah i dont much like car trips. happy new year, in case i dont get back online before then.

the failure to control who reads this and who doesnt leaves no room for me to tell you about all the ways we were and all the people i didnt think about. suffice it to say that i watched the cracks between the boards in the barn roof shift from black to gray to pink to pale glowing blue. suffice it to say that the air was cold but i wasnt.

My house really stands out in this neighborhood. It's the one without any lights up and you can spot it (or, rather, unspot it) from a mile away. Still, I'm not sure it's worth the effort climbing around on ladders when everyone else is going to light the neighborhood up for us anyway. So we strung a few lights around a potted plant in our kitchen and lit a couple candles along the bar and we've got something nice to look at even if we aren't sharing with the neighbors.

Everything has seemed just slightly out of perspective lately. When I talk to people, I'll suddenly feel like they're standing too close to me, breathing up all of my air, suffocating me with their heat. Then I'll blink a few times and realize that they're actually at a pretty respectable distance. And next thing I know they're creeping back in again. It gives me a headache.

I think it's just the cold and the stress and the monotony of life. Hopefully that will all be going away soon, with the end of exams and the various parties and the trip to Florida all approaching faster than I can even take it in.

On a final and utterly separate note, everyone writing all of these notes to anonymous people through their blogs is driving me a little crazy. Not that it's all that bad of an idea, and it's certainly intriguing, but I can't for the life of me figure out if any of them are addressed to me or not. I don't think any of them are, but then again I'm really awful at fill-in-the-blanks. I'd kind of like to write some back to you all, but I'm afraid of what the repurcussions might be. Anyway, if anyone did address any to me and you'd like to tell me, feel free. If you did and you don't want to tell me, feel free. If you didn't, cool.

Except here's a note for Angela about this afternoon:

Dear Angela,
My bad.
~Rachel

angela, i think you would like this song:
"existentialism on prom night" by Straylight Run.
not all of their songs are that good
but this one is.

It would appear that two days of rest failed to produce the desired effects, and the remainder of the week left no room for continued recovery. It's been two weeks since this began but there is still a jolt the instant food hits my stomach and there's nothing to do but close my eyes against it and sit here alone in the darkness with everyone away except the dog, Daniel to his own life and my mother in Virginia and my father at work and the fish dead and gone (I'm sorry).

Ah, wellll...

The best thing to do when home alone is watch the television. It cuts you off from reality and leaves you distant enough from yourself not to get caught in the sort of thoughts that are best kept buried. This is the problem with new beginnings: the past is too tenacious to ever rid yourself of completely, unless you want to cut out a chunk or two of your brain. So here is my advice for not getting trapped in the sort of thinking that drags you back into a past that you never wanted to be associated with: never make mistakes.

Whoever decided that mistakes are beneficial in the long run was surely a fool. If I could give up the memories of all of my mistakes, I would gladly give up any knowledge I've gained from them as well.

This song is good though, and I've got it playing pretty loud to fill up the house with something other than the darkness of the air. I've got the heat turned up pretty high and the dog in my lap and it's like I'm not alone at all. It's like I don't have to think at all.

Last night was fun, okay? Almost everything has been fun or good or at least neutral lately. Lately is not the problem.

Would it really be worth it to start over? It would mean risking another seventeen years of mistakes. Oh Jesus Christ I don't want that.

So you reason it out with yourself. Your certainties bounce back and forth like the game we played with the tennis ball in basketball, and you laugh at your own clumsiness until your stomach aches and your breath comes short but you still can't catch the damned ball. It's a great game, and you will enjoy it while it lasts. It just won't come to anything in the end.

I'm not coming to anything in the end. Go ahead and get rid of those expectations.

Hey,
I don't feel anything right now.

Oh god that winter sun was making it look like summer today with the reflections of sunbeams curling off the windowpanes and pooling on the few remaining leaves, streaking the asphalt with slices of light and burning a halo over the cat's fur as it sat statue-still on the sidewalk and watched me with its eyes like cameras while I sat inside and let the time slide past unnoticed.

yesterday at my doctors appointment, my doctor asked me, "if you could have any three wishes, what would they be?" i answered without pause: to have already been accepted to college, to have no work to do over break, to sleep more. why couldnt i have given world peace a passing glance? how about curing hiv/aids in africa? what about utter brilliance for myself, wealth and happiness for those around me, and a whole bunch of second chances at things for everybody who wants them? this is where school gets you these days - worried and selfish and stressed out. i hope that one day everything will be worthwhile. for now, i dont know why im doing the things im doing. at least everything is going okay.

when i came back to school on wednesday after two days of sleeping off the sickness (which still isnt entirely gone but what the hell, ive got exams, right?) it was wonderful. i dont know if ive ever had so many people happy to see me. that felt really great. really. even better than the ~24 hours of sleep i got during that two day period of being home. it kind of made me want to be sick more often.

blah blah blah. now i must go look up the effects of various neurotransmitters. such is life, life is such, life sucks sometimes.

(actually, can i tell you a secret? i find this whole psychology business rather... interesting...!)

last night i stood breathless in my white jersey with everything orange and loud and crazy around me and watched the scoreboard timer creep towards zero. and then the ball was streaming away towards the other end of the floor under another girls hand and i sprinted after it, legs burning, breath coming short, and together we leaped into the air and then she was on the ground crying and i was standing over her panicking and the referee shoving me backwards with the palm of his hand in my stomach. megan says do i know im deathly pale and i feel like crying throwing up running out of the gym and everyone saying its not my fault but sure its my fault and the other girl on the ground crying jesus christ. and the worst part is when you have to finish out the game that way because everyone is fouled out but you dont want to play anymore because its not a game anymore. and the best part is when you finally get the chance to talk to the girl after the game and she is okay and not angry and everything will be okay, okay. and in that state of reassurance all of a sudden everything spiralled upwards and the lost game was forgotten in the face of friends home from college, dinner at moes, watching the next game, going home and sleeping for what felt like the first time in weeks and staying in bed until one o'clock this afternoon. i think things will slow down next semester and maybe then i will actually get to take people up on offers to hang out, i will actually sleep, i will stop worrying about how to get everything done in time, i will stop filling out college applications, i will be getting closer and closer to graduation and i wont have three basketball games every week to torment my body with bruises (some of them in places i could never show you). and thats how its going.

back so soon, and it feels strange. everything feels strange. the weather is unpredictable, people are unpredictable, and i am unpredictable. i dont even know why im here, dont know what i want to write. i feel good and bad at the same time and it leaves me feeling kind of empty and undecided. an indeterminate form of life? flip me upside down so you can deal with me. ive got to do some of those math homeworks ive been putting off. ive really got to do that. and yet... i wont. thats life. i dislike and like people at the same time, because it strikes me over and over again how mean we all are; how often we put other people down and make them feel worthless. and i say "we" because i do it and you do it and we are all guilty together. dont pretend like you are innocent, because you know its a lie. but its fun to do that, it feels good to talk shit about someone else in a disgusting sort of way, and its only afterwards that you realize, "oh shit, that was really fucking dumb." thats the problem with humor these days: its all putting people down, and its funny; i dont deny its funny. i just dont think its particularly nice. oh well... ill keep laughing anyway. thats life. this stupid house is colder than the air outside. i wish the walls themselves had heaters right inside of them so that everything i touch would be warm. the dog is warm but shes downstairs and im up here above everything where nothing can reach me except that horrible recurring thought that i havent finished my homework yet. its hard to motivate yourself to do work when all you can do is look right through it and realize the grades mean nothing and the knowledge is all its about, but you only do it for the grades and you skip over the knowledge in pursuit of the grade. thats how i do it at least and i know thats not changing until i can set the stupid grades on fire and watch them burn away into nothing. only then will i ever bother to focus on the important part, which is the knowledge. i wonder if that will ever come. tonight is the kind of night when i dont really care much. i dont really feel much except cold and indeterminate and bored and dreading homework and the grades that will come of it. so i suppose i will go work although really i just want to turn off all the lights and slip back into the insanepattern of dreams that has been capturing my nights lately.

its nice to come back here after a few days and see the comments you left. sometimes i wish i still had time to update every day but i dont and i wont unless something changes, because school cuts straight to basketball cuts straight to homework cuts straight to bed. its strange how timing works because there was such a long time when i just wanted to graduate already and leave every single fucking person from rchs behind. i dont want to do that anymore. i dont want to leave you all behind. but i am no good at long distance communication and we are all going to spread out and away, and i am not so naive as to think that we will all get together over christmas break for a happy little holiday party. lets do that, okay? lets all come back and get together over a break and have a party. it could happen, right? whatever. i wish i had figured out who my real friends were a little earlier than i did, but hell, thats life, and better late than never, right? there is still time to have our conversations, to lie on the couch eating fruit snacks and pulling truth or dare questions off an internet site, to make fun of chris and slattery, to just sit around and do nothing. i watched that stupid show laguna beach while i was doing some homework earlier and it just about killed the sentimentality that had been creeping up on me, and thats good because i dont want to get sentimental about anything. i want to keep going and just deal with it, because thats all that can be done anyway. ah, well. shit happens. laguna beach is a piece of shit. laguna beach happens. anyway, my dad and i went to the unc vs kentucky game today and watched unc kick ass and that was pretty fun despite the idiots sitting around us. isnt it funny how so many people in the world are idiots? isnt it funny to think about how many people in the world must think you and i are idiots? i think about that a lot. i think that most of the school thinks im an idiot and a lot of the time i consider myself an idiot but damn, those people sitting near us at the game were idiots. maybe its all just one big joke anyway. life, that is. and we die and this voice comes out of nowhere and says, "GOTCHA!" oh yeah, i got that AP Scholars award (with distinction). i finally have something decent to put on my college applications under that heading, "Honors and Awards." the heading that always scared me the most thinking, "oh shit, i cant just leave that blank!" so now it wont be blank. and now this blog isnt quite as blank and i think ive fulfilled my duty as a blogger so now im leaving again. peace out, kids.