I know I'm pretty singular, quirky--irreplaceable. It's a good feeling, when I can remember it.

Silliness with Meghan and Kara as well as nighttime Darjeeling Limited viewing with Harmony have saved my night I think.

If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all, right? It might be slightly immature to ignore a message that contains unwanted questions and brings up undesirable insecurities, but at the same time it can't be worse than responding in all-out Lauren-Passion. Pondered answers range from viciously cynical to gut-wrenchingly punctuated and precise. The mature thing to do, I feel like, is to wait until my existential crisis is over. I am being very conscious about every decision I make and what it says about me right now. My decision to postpone a fb reply may seem childish, but it seems the lesser of all the possible evils. In any case, I feel like I deserve to be sought out in person or at the very least via telephone.

Harmony and I have bright ideas and aspirations for the near future, including early morning WAC ventures and a sex-zine and

"to say yes to everything, even if it's shocking and painful."

So, I don't really work as a person. I've got to change something and it has to be me, all me, completely internal, done myself out of pure will.

Gavin once told me over the break that my only real, serious flaw is my dependence on others. I can see more clearly than ever what he means. Obvious example being Alex.

Alex stays 3-5 nights a week, generally. The sex is pretty good, the snuggling seems sincere, and before the sex the dialogue is almost always fabulous. But I need to stop feeling like I need him (/just anyone?) to be in my bed at night (not even for sex, but just for holding). I don't need it. Alex is my best friend and sex+snuggling=bonus points. I am going to have to teach myself to enjoy spending time alone again. I used to love alone-time for reading and writing and listening to music purposes. Now I feel like I tend to consider this alone time more of a failure on my part to attract people to my side. Obviously this is not the case--I have several great friends here at Hendrix and of course back in Austin and all over the place. I see a lot of Meghan and Kara and Lily and Zach and Joseph. Harmony and I chill a lot at the House, and I know I could always call Katie and Anna. I've even hung out with Gavin a handful of times, and I never eat lunch in the caf alone. So really it just boils down to Alex, and that is just unhealthy.

Mostly I came to this realization very suddenly last night while listening to a new Decemberists song from Gavin and sitting with all my stuffed animals. I just sort-of burst into tears and started thinking terrible thoughts, and even sought out housemate Zach for sleeping pills. Of course, he wasn't home so I mostly just cried until I told myself to snap out of it and just fucking deal.

Alex most likely does not want to date me, has no romantic feelings for me. It doesn't matter what other people think about it, it doesn't matter what my English major nature wants me to reveal. He's my best friend and I have to TRUST the things he says to me, and I am going to TRUST his October words and his words from Saturday night when he said "we're friends and if you wanted to date someone we would have to stop sleeping together" which I feel like means "all I want from you is your friendship although the sex is a nice bonus." So I am going to have to stop focusing so much energy on it. Guh. Read more and do other things, think about something else.

Anyway, that's my only real epiphany for the moment.

Harmony moved in today, so my existence in this house is infinitely less awkward. We cleaned up the kitchen, gossiped with John Drew, bought dish soap and then cooked pasta with yellow bell pepper for dinner and John Drew made a good salad with feta cheese in it. It felt like a real house finally, and just in time, too. People start arriving tomorrow. Elliott is moving in in the morning. I'm picking Gavin up at the airport around 8 in the evening and Alex is arriving, too. I told him I'm at his disposal, he said he would call me around 2:30 and that he hopes I enjoy running errands and moving boxes.

I am scared.

The last time I saw Gavin was when he came to visit me in Austin, and we said goodbye in the Austin airport tearfully and with kisses and I pleaded with him not to forget me. It is going to be so odd to see him and not be automatically just... touching him. I mean we'll hug and everything but the context is so different, I feel so displaced already. It's easy for us to talk on facebook and gmail chats and to text each other as friends, although the conversations sound exactly the same, Muffin and Schmoo and all. I wonder if that's healthy.

And Alex? He'll call me to say he's here. I guess I'll invite him to stop by the Brick House so we're only in one car and so he can see it. But that will take us upstairs to be alone in my room. And when he steps out of his car, we'll hug but am I going to tug his hair, is he going to feel my curves, and importantly are we going to just kiss? When we said goodbye at the Goodge St station I hugged him and he kissed me, the kiss was all his doing, I didn't know if he would want to leave it on that note but he did, and then I cried when I turned back at the lift to see him still standing there, watching me.

So my question is, what the hell do I wear on the day I am going to see both my most recent ex who still calls me Muffin and the boy I slept with in 6 different countries who is my best friend and may or may not want to continue to sleep with me? I don't know if I can ever look good enough to step outside my house on a day like that. I don't own the right clothes or the right body! I'm not sure anyone does.

I'm sitting here in my huge room in the Brick House and laughing at myself. Because we're not sick of hearing about Alex yet, let me say something on the subject:

I actually just spent 5 minutes trying to think of how I could refer to him. OU lost the championship and I sent him a message that originally said "I'm sorry, hon," and then realized it might be a little to affectionate and familiar and so changed it to "I'm sorry, friend."

Friend? Really? Oh, dear. I am actually ridiculous.

In other news, I'm sitting in my huge room in the Brick House. Oh my god. Hendrix better not really try to take this away from me. I love this room. It's huge. And I have my own bathroom and a door that opens to a wooden staircase outside so I don't ever actually have to go into the rest of the house (I'm not saying I don't want to, it's just cool that I could). There's a recliner a previous resident left and I'm sitting in it right now. Serious bonus points. I have a mini fridge and a microwave and a sink with cabinets and hooks above it that I dangled some mugs from. I have a desk I don't need because I always write papers lying on my tummy in a bed, but whatever it looks more professional. The only problem is that the house was already lived in when I got here... by 4 boys. It is a mess. It is trashy. It's huge and has potential to be beautiful and amazing. The kitchen is a real kitchen but a complete mess. And it smells. The fridge was not cleaned out before break and is full of bad things. Dishes were not washed before the break and are scattered across the countertops. Most of the cookware is going to be gone with Drew who is dropping out, so hopefully the mess will be cleaned but I don't know who is going to empty the fridge so we can start anew. The living room is trashed with loose magazines and papers and clothes and old beer cans. Stuff is just everywhere. It's kind of disappointing--everything needs to be vacuumed and mopped and Windexed and everything needs to be sprayed with Febreeze and the cat just kinda poops wherever it wants (Harmony's soon-to-be-room whenever she gets here, the one next to mine, has cat poop in it so I don't envy her and I would like to thank Blake from the bottom of my heart for keeping our door CLOSED to the cat unless he was supervising. Although Blake also did not take out the trash and I desperately want to vacuum my room and windex all the mirrors and clean the bathtub.

I will have pictures eventually once Gavin gives me the rest of my posters back so I decorate completely. Right now I've only put up one concert poster because a screw was already in the wall perfectly above the mini-fridge.

I don't know where everyone is--Drew's out and Zach was here earlier in a towel but I guess he put clothes on and left, and Harmony was supposed to come this evening but hasn't, so it's just me and the cat. The pooping cat. It's name is Hobbes but it isn't orange so I'm not feelin' it. Also I'm a dog person but we'll see how that goes.

I'm playing that silly game again. I'm getting up at 6:30 in the morning to make 9 hour drive and I still find the time to play this stupid game. Oh dear.

so this is the new year

Official Score

Frisbee: 1
Me: 0






















...Okay, I know I shouldn't be looking at it that way. I should be mature, self-confident, and not feel threatened. But he knows I'm driving up to Conway on Tuesday. He chooses Monday to go up and then changes his mind to going on SUNDAY in order to "play Ultimate" and he "is so excited."

It's difficult not to feel slighted.

And I can see where this is going. This means he has friends in Conway already. This means when he moves in before classes start, it's them he's going to call to help him move and to hang out with and to go shopping for furniture.

I honestly feel like I should just say good-bye to Alex now and get it over with. Because our last good-bye involved a kiss I'm not sure it really counted, and the long messages and skype conversations since were also kind of a hitch in it. But now, now that I had begun to convince myself that continuing a close friendship was possible... it's time. He said he was glad he talked to me at midnight on new year's as well, but I was tipsy so he probably just didn't want to upset me. Oh well.

I really need to get back to Hendrix so I can find some other things to think about.