In a minute there is time

Well. It's been a long while since I've posted anything. And I hate beginning blogs with that, but oh well. T. S. Eliot has been on my mind quite a bit of late; that I've chosen to study his Waste Land for my AP Lit final project might have something to do with this. Also we read two of his other poems in class. I've felt rather Prufrockian recently... I didn't know it was a word until we read the poem and Simonson told us.

I've felt uninspired. I can't write at present. At least not fiction. I had been working on a new incarnation of the same old Starlight plotline and characters, but around mid-January, Venitus decided to stop answering my increasingly-frantic calls... He still is, blast him... and I can't write poetry - I've never been able to write good poetry, except that one. Everything keeps coming out like really bad teenage girl emo poetry, like the kind of stuff I would've written in junior high. And I should've moved beyond that as a writer, no matter how not-good I am. It's mildly frustrating.

Spring is coming late this year... and April always brings me back to Eliot anyway; it is indeed "the cruellest month..."

I've been getting headaches fairly frequently. This past weekend I decided to try not wearing a headband, and instead pinned my hair back for the first time since I had to for synchronized swimming in third grade. It's interesting, I like how it looks and feels, but it's fairly labor-intensive.

My sleep patterns are shot all to blazes. Sunday night I couldn't sleep at all; I think I fell asleep around one in the morning, woke up at about three, fell back asleep, and then woke up a bit after five after dreaming about spiders the size of my two closed fists. I HATE spiders. And then last night I fell asleep at about ten and could not, for the life of me, get up this morning. I'm toying with the idea of deliberate sleep deprivation tonight... probably not worth it, hmm?

Looking back... I am so much further now than I ever thought I would be, this time last year. This time last year I was moody, desperately unhappy (not fanciful language; I was unhappy in the active sense. I can't describe it any other way. There was a constant cold sucking hole just below my solar plexus - it was almost a physical sensation), borderline suicidal, and looking for any help I could possibly get. I tried not to lash out at my friends and family, although I know I did, and when I did I cut off contact with everyone and tried to drown myself in this awful self-loathing. I only know all this because I left evidence of it: posts on Facebook, a journal that I've not used since then, stories I started and abandoned, even a handful of CDs I burned to try to express my mood tangibly somehow.

That being said, I'm not as far as I would've liked to be now, a year after this started. But, I'm willing to accept this milestone and be satisfied with how far I've come, and keep pushing forward.

There have been times when it hasn't seemed like I've made any progress. There are still days when I get that horrible, cold emptiness just above my stomach, and when I wish that there was some way I could justify asking someone to hold me until it passes. But there are also days when I can't explain why I'm smiling, and when I start dancing a little bit while playing badminton in gym class. And, remembering where I was and how far I've come, I will say that it. Is. Worth. It. Those days where I laugh for no reason or start humming while walking to class - those days make every SECOND of the last year worth it. I would do it all over again in a heartbeat.

Yes, this time last year I realized that the Gutterflower album by the Goo Goo Dolls fit my mindset almost scarily well - scarily due to tracks like What A Scene, which I still can't listen to without feeling myself start losing what I've worked for. And I still feel that way, to an extent. There are songs that describe moods I have, better than I could ever hope to do so myself. But it's not just What A Scene or Truth Is A Whisper or What Do You Need? or those songs.

I am no longer that girl. I am who she never thought she could be. Granted, I'm still not who she wanted to be, but I'm closer than she ever thought she'd get.

And that, that hope, is why I laugh.