Merry Christmas!

It's Christmas time. It didn't feel like it for such a long stretch of December, partly because I have not seen family yet this year and there has been no snow. I think, this year, I spent so much time worrying about getting good presents for everyone else that I didn't even think of what to ask for. I love that feeling.

I didn't realize until James' birthday how amazing it feels to do nice things for others. It's so uplifting. And I am such a selfish, sad person most of the time that it's so refreshing to just be able to do something selflessly for someone I care so deeply about.

Tomorrow, I leave for Arkansas. I am both excited and uncertain. The thing I am looking forward to most is seeing Matt. I am so psyched to see my big brother I can hardly even contain myself. He has treated me not-so-nice for most of my life, but I have that sibling complex, where I look up to him anyway. A word to the wise: be nice to your siblings. Treat them well. When your parents are dead and your friends are gone, your siblings will be there for you.

It worries me that I just cannot fit into the environment that I grew up in. I lived in Arkansas with my father from the time I was 6 to the time I was 14. That is a very, very long period of my life. I feel like I have changed so much over the past few years that I can't do anything to fit back into that mold.

I am vegetarian. I am a proud atheist. I am bisexual. I am withdrawn. I am musically centered. I am a writer. I am a nerd. I am all of these things that I was not last time I lived there.

I got the news recently that my cat passed away. I didn't know how to react at first - I didn't react at first. I cried a little, my friend Eddy held me, I wiped my eyes and moved on, and my dad told me that, of everyone in the cat's life, I was the closest to him. What? I haven't seen him in years. I haven't thought of him in months. I have a new cat, a new home, a new life. I couldn't even find his picture when I looked for it after the call. My dad told me that I should make a tombstone for his grave. I don't want that. I want my cat to be alive. I want him to have been loved while he was alive. I want him to have been able to come with me when I moved here.

We pick and choose our battles. I chose not to fight for him, and I made a mistake. Tommy, I'm sorry.

Tomorrow, I'm getting out of this town. I'm seeing my family. I'm forgetting about the internet for a while. I'm going to have fun and be happy, which is something I've been doing less and less of lately. Deep breaths, deep breaths.

Don't I Know Who I Think I Am?

This is just a very prominent reminder of how quickly things can change. More and more lately, I'm finding that I am such an indecisive extremist that I can change my mind, my ideals, and my life in mere days. Essentially, right now, I can look back and read something I wrote a month ago, wondering who that person is and why she intimidates me so much. I know for sure that she is better than I am, and I am trying so hard to get back to that place.

Since I was thirteen, I've been very addicted to the idea of escaping my life to be someone else. I think of it like a plane with numerical points. When I'm at 1 I'm very aware, very active, happy, social. When I'm at 10, I'm alone, scared, an entirely different person. When I think of the time I've been farthest away from myself, I always remember sitting in my room, wearing the same clothes from the day before, no sheets on my bed, roaches in my room because I piled up old dishes, rotten capri sun taste in my mouth from not brushing my teeth, computer on 24 hours a day, even while I slept, pulled up next to my bed so I only got out of bed to go to the bathroom. I dropped out of school to be homebound because I wanted to live life inside of a computer screen. That was the lowest point of my life and I was an 8 on the scale.

Today, I am a 6. I have so much trouble talking about that point in my life. I told everyone that I had health problems and used it as a crutch, costing my mom thousands of dollars for MRI scans and medicines that I didn't need. Mom, if you're reading this, I'm sorry I'm not brave enough to tell you yet.

The sad truth is I was terrified of who I was. And right now I am getting close to that point again. I do not see my friends on a regular basis. I am addicted to cigarettes. I am lying to keep from having to go out of the house. And I know that this, too, shall pass, and when it does, I will miss it. I am at a place where I'm wondering how long I can keep this charade up.

I think what bothers me most is that no one will ever say "Hey, do you remember that post Aly made?" because no one cares.

I love you so much it hurts. Fuck, it hurts.

I will probably regret making this post, but everyone has their down moments, right? It makes the up moments so much more enjoyable. I'm just glad my life is not fully consistent of only down moments like it used to be. I was so much closer then, though. I wonder if I'll ever be that close again. Ever. Maybe not. Will your life ever be normal enough for me to touch you with my bare fingertips and make you smile? I care so much, and I'm so sorry.

I will regret this post, but I won't delete it. All I can do is wipe the tears away and say I'm sorry. I'm sorry for being cryptic and I'm sorry that I don't matter to anyone. I'm sorry you can't be normal, guys. I'm sorry that I am. But you don't care.

What. Is. Wrong. With. Me?

I'm a selfish fuck. :] Sorry. Down moment.

Why don't you like me without making me try?

"Do I attract you? Do I repulse you with my queasy smile?
Am I too dirty? Am I too flirty? Do I like what you like?
Yeah, I could be wholesome, I could be loathsome.
I guess I'm a little bit shy. Why don't you like me?
Why don't you like me without making me try?
I could be brown, I could be blue, I could be violet sky.
I could be hurtful, I could be purple, I could be anything you like.
How can I help it, how can I help what you think?"

I've noticed recently that a lot of people's mothers don't like me. Really, really, don't like me.

I'm really not sure what to think about this, other than to wonder what exactly I've done to these women or their children to rub them the wrong way. For me, a lot of social norms don't make sense because they don't exist in my life. My mother doesn't dislike any of my friends, even when they send me into tears, crying like a baby and hating myself for who I am because they went out of their way to hurt me. My mother still likes those people after the fact, after I've forgiven them, even when I do it knowing that they are hurtful people. My mother knows this. The simple fact is, she does not care.

Let's talk, moms.

So, maybe it's normal to dislike your child's friends. You're protective. I get it. The funny thing is this: I do not act disrespectfully. I do not speak rudely, I do not swear in front of parents (usually). I don't break laws. I don't drink. I don't steal. I don't dress sexily in front of parents. I don't dress dumpy, either. I try to hold conversations with my friends' parents and be kind whenever possible. I don't ignore parents' wishes for their child or ignore their rules when in their home. In fact, I'm the kid who will tell your child to listen to you if I'm their friend. I'm the kid who will sit by and watch everyone else drink, kindly refuse the alcohol, and make sure they don't end up driving or doing something they'd regret. I'm the person who stands up for my friends, even if it means losing everything else I have. So this raises the question: why don't parents like me?

I can only come to a few conclusions on this, and they all sound conceited and over-thought. Maybe I show a bit of disconnect. I don't usually speak and act enthusiastically and I'm usually not fully alert because I'm such an introvert. Maybe my friends talk shit about me to their parents. But then that raises the question: why would they do that? In general, I try hard not to have trust issues. I try so hard, in fact, that oftentimes I end up trusting anything and anyone, and I end up getting hurt. Badly.

So to all you moms who hate me: I am the person who will believe anything your child tells me without hesitation because I'm their friend. I'm the person who will easily jump to your kid's defense just to help them save a little face, even when they're wrong. I am the person who honestly adores all of my friends and would unflinchingly take a bullet for those I hold close, so give me a chance.

I just want to know why you don't like me. Especially some of you who I think are absolutely great parents, so much that I'm jealous for my mom's parenting abilities! C'mon. What can I do?

Dream: Documented.

I had this crazy dream last night, and it feels right to document it, like perhaps I'll miss it later.

It started out on an old street, very Harry Potter-esque, with brick roads and shady shops. One of the shops, I believe, was a fishing supply store, and a sign on the door said "Criminals may enter, but only if you seduce the door keeper in your worst possible fashion." In any case, I think there was no door keeper, but I dressed in chains and walked in - it seemed logical in the dream. Once I got inside, I noticed that they sold only nets, and one side of the fishing supply store was a bar, where old fishermen were drinking beers in silence.

I walked through the store, and at the back was a brightly lit tan-colored room with a woman and her son in it. The son was about my age, and I was far too shy to speak to him, so I opted for talking to the woman, who was in her mid-thirties, instead. She had a large aquarium with no water in it, but several varying sizes of conch shells, as if she were about to buy a pet hermit crab.

Instead, she brought out a muscular human-creature with wings and scales that was blue-tinted all over and about one foot in height. She told me this was a dragon as she put him into the aquarium.

"What do dragons eat?" I asked, and she laughed. She told me some imaginary word that made perfect sense - "goobers", maybe? - and held out her hand to expose a clump of neon green and neon blue mushy worm-looking substances.

"But," she added, "They were out of those." The "goobers" in her hand instantly turned to dried, dark maroon strings, which she told me was "Poop, actually!" in an amused tone.

I watched the dragon for several more minutes and, as I got bored, the scene began to change. I was in a room shared with my little brother, where our mattresses sat on the floor and the entire room was actually a garage. (Apparently, we were very poor?) He noticed behind the mattress that was my bed that a large, large spider was crawling up the wall. It was yellow and purple, the size of a fucking hand, and looked like something to stay away from, but I immediately grabbed a can of hairspray and sprayed it. It didn't fall from the wall; instead, it scurried out of my reach and out of my line of vision.

I pushed the mattress back against the wall, only for another one to crawl up the wall and another to scurry across the floor. (This entire sequence may have stemmed from the real-life occurrence that we once saw a spider in the kitchen, and I smushed it, only for it to errupt into thousands of baby spiders. Very terrifying. Never smush a pregnant bug.) We spent what seemed like close to thirty minutes putting towels in the crack of the door, moving furniture, and spraying hairspray in a vain attempt to kill them all.

Finally, one got out of the room somehow, and I ran after it (the little fuckers were fast!), chasing it down the hall and into a room of which the layout mirrored that of my dad's room in my old house. I kept my eye on the spider and, as I did, it began to morph into something else the same size but furry, and only after reaching the closet, where it curled up against an old keyboard and some clothes, did I realize that it was now a baby kitten. I sprayed it once with hairspray, thinking it was a trick, and immediately felt bad, picking it up and cradling it. As I ran from the room with it, I noticed one of the cats we have now, Tiger, curled up by the door with another baby kitten.

My mom was in the kitchen, and I asked her if the cat had somehow had babies. She didn't answer my question, but she did yell at me for spraying hairspray on the cat and told me it could die if I did that too much. As she took the cat, I asked her if Tiger had somehow had kittens. She said "No, but --- did." The --- blurs out of my memory of the dream, but it was the name of some other animal we had, a ferret or something, that couldn't have had kittens.

I then returned to my room, where there was a futon-bed, which had several people on it now. One 0f them was Matt, an old friend whom I no longer speak to. (On the phone two nights ago, I had a conversation with my friend Chris, who talked about his broken futon-bed and Matt - How strangely reality morphs with dreams!) He tried to kill one of the spiders, but instead ripped a Pokémon poster off of the wall (I don't even have a Pokémon poster, but I did about five years ago. Also, Eddie broke my shelf yesterday; this may have effected the dream.)

He apologized, grudgingly, and as the poster was beyond repair, I crumpled it up. We did, eventually, kill all of the spiders. However, someone thought it a good idea to open the garage door, and the futon went up with it, falling and breaking once it hit the ground. I think my mother, Matt (the old friend, not my brother), my grandma (Meemaw), one of Matt's friends, my little brother, and I were all there, but the people seem nearly interchangeable at this point.

When the garage door was open, we all left. Somehow, we came to a train track. It was a circular train-track, though, the kind you see in toys, but the train and tracks were proportional to the real thing, so it wasn't a toy. This was in the outside corner of some building, or perhaps just next to a building. At some point in our journey, the people changed - I know near the end, two of them were Ryan Ross and Brendon Urie - and my brother was not with us at this point.

We all jumped onto the train, near the front, and took up sitting in different box cars. I, however, knew something was wrong. From this point on, the dream seems very much like déjà vu. The train was powered by some power force - magnets or nuclear power, perhaps - and the power source was on one side of the tracks, and something was very wrong. Not only that, but unknowingly, several boxcars near the back of the train were on fire, and something had gotten between the wheel of the train and the track to cause all of this. (Perhaps it threw off the magnetic energy? I really don't know. It's one of those things that makes perfect sense in a dream, though.)

In my dreams, I am often one person (one entity), and I walk into another room, and upon seeing another person, I take their consciousness instead, and the previous person (entity) is objective again.

I walked into another box car, and a woman was there, probably in her early twenties, with blonde hair and pale skin. I took her consciousness, and knew I had to get everyone off of the train. I couldn't stay on the train, though. I felt like it would blow up and kill us all at any instant. I jumped off and ran to the middle of the track, yelling "Get off of the train! Everyone! You're going to die!"

Two girls jumped off first, landing on the tracks. The train was coming back around towards them by the time I pulled them off of the tracks, going faster, and I told them to stand in the middle, frantically running after the train and screaming for everyone to jump off. The fire was spreading, and urgency was high. I told them "Don't get anything on the tracks - even one morsel of food could kill your friends. Brush all the food morsels off of your clothes!" (Hah! It made sense in the dream, okay?)

Eventually, I got everyone off of the train. At one point, one of them brought computer cords, scarves, and miscellaneous objects onto the track, and I had to pick them up as the train rushed to me. I yelled at everyone to go around the corner, and, once they did, the train slowed and stopped, the fire went out, and my consciousness shifted back into being one of the group, rather than being the heroine.

She remained in the middle of the tracks as we hid around the corner of the building, afraid of being hurt by the malfunctioning power source. She was full of adrenaline, laughing and yelling at Ryan and Brendon to "twitter something to show me that the Ryden picture from earlier isn't real!" No clue about that one...

The front of the train had stopped right next to the power source, which was roughly on the other side of the tracks from us, and she walked over to it. For some reason, there were dumbbells on the front of the train (or perhaps something that looked a lot like dumbbells), and she leaned against them, posing with victory.

As she did, the dumbbells slipped, shifting something, falling, and the power source released white-hot steam all over her. I hid and covered my eyes, but I could still see her even then, enveloped in steam, screaming. The steam stopped, and her skin was dripping off of her body. She was dead, but her brain still functioned well enough for her to robotically walk over to us and pat each of us. She then began to pat herself as her skin came off in large chunks, revealing patches of deep red and purple.

I woke up, then, terrified to move, scared of the imagery of a person's skin melting off, and it took me a while to fully calm down. I played Portal before I went to sleep, and I don't remember having a dream when I woke up at noon for about five minutes. it was only after I went back to sleep and slept for about two more hours that I had this dream.

Certainly something to think about, at the least.

We Set Ourselves Up.

So often in life, we set ourselves up. We set ourselves up for failure, for success, for disappointment, for happiness. Whatever the case may be, we set ourselves up. Not someone else, but ourselves. What we do in our life, what others do to us, with us, for us, has about 10% to do with our overall happiness. How we choose to react is the bigger picture. A man can have all the money in the world, the biggest house, the prettiest wife, the most talented and wonderful children, but if he tells himself that he is not successful until he owns his own country, he will still never be happy. Just the same, a man can live in a two-bedroom fixer-upper with no wife and just one child to raise and if he tells himself that as long as he can make that child happy, his life is complete, then he will be successful.

I thought about this as I started to think about Christmas. So often, I set myself up for disappointment, and that may be what I'm doing now. I want to have enough money to buy everyone on my list a Christmas present, as well as buy myself a laptop. A good laptop. I may be a bit over-the-top here, but I am setting myself up, because I want to know I can do it. I also want a car for Christmas. See, my dad got me a broken-down hunk of junk that I was so excited about owning. That is, until I got into an accident and totaled it. He's been talking about getting me a new car, and I'm going to see him for Christmas, so WHO KNOWS? It's a definite possibility.

And, to be honest, I don't deserve a new car. I was reckless with the first one - granted, I've learned my lesson tenfold - but somehow I feel like the cosmos can work with me or against me on this one. I am always trying to be the best version of myself. I feel like that should get me places, and a lot of the time it doesn't. Maybe it's a silly, selfish notion. I'll be the first to admit that. Innocent, wonderful people die every day. I don't deserve anything. But I'd like to think that if there's any bit of luck in my fingertips this year, things will be okay.

Surrounded By Love.

I find that having loved ones around you can make any day one hundred percent better. It does not matter if your house has burnt down and your pet has died, one person holding you and reassuring you will make your day better to a bearable degree. Today, I was lucky enough to spend the day with five different people that I love.

My sister, Kristen. She and I don't share the same opinions and beliefs, but I respect her so much more than anyone else in my life. A large part of that respect is because she respects me. You get what you give! My niece, Emilee. She is not even two years old yet, but she is so smart and such an amazing little girl. My brother, James. He is honestly the best brother I could ask for. He would probably be surprised if he heard me say that, but it's true. He's caring and thoughtful and witty, and to be honest, he's my best friend. Vivian, the little girl I babysit. Her older sister is a year older than me and just moved to college this past year, and her parents just split. I think sometimes she needs someone to look up to. Finally, Eddie. He is the only friend who has stuck by me through everything I've been through since we met. I think we don't understand each other on a lot of levels, but on other levels, we understand each other completely. And he's a really great, funny, smart, amazing, wonderful person, no matter what anyone says.

To those who doesn't know these people personally, this may not mean much of anything. But to me, these people keep my world spinning fully and completely. They are the yin to my yang.

I could say more, but really, I'm tired from a great day. Happy Friday 13th!

Perception.

How many flowers? Now cross your eyes. Now slowly uncross them and focus on the flower in the middle until it is the only one there. It's still the same image as before, but you can change the way your brain reads it. Neat, huh?

Perception is a funny thing, because while the dictionary definition is commonly accepted by most people, the personal definition is an entirely different item. My perception of you and your perception of me and our perception of "that" is entirely different from someone else's perception of us and someone else's perception of themselves. Accepting your perception of anything as static is such a limiting thing, I think. And I did it for so long. A change in perception happens more often than we notice. A double-take, for example. You see something, glance back, and realize you were mistaken. That is a change in your perception. If you say a word over and over again, it begins to lose its meaning and sound abstract. Try it. Say 'and' over and over again. "Andandandandand." It's hard to remember if you're saying it correctly and you wonder when this change happened, because you know you were saying a solid, correctly formed word when you began. This is a change in your perception.

I have always been intrigued and a bit terrified of lucid dreaming. I'm so drawn in by things like yoga, meditation, dreaming, as well as mental illnesses like schizophrenia or even OCD and ADHD. What makes you react to things differently than I do? What makes something important in your world - a certain tree in your back yard that you planted when you were three, which, to me, is just a tree like any other - so unimportant to me and so different to you? It all comes back to perception. The way we relate to things, each other, and ourselves. It can be such a tricky thing because I am always worried about how others are perceiving me and if I am perceiving them correctly.

Lucid dreaming, however, is something solely a part of yourself. Imagine going to sleep at night after a long day, and then you can control your dream world, too. Not only that, but it is better than the real world. You can fly. You can dance. You can yell at that girl who gives you mean looks. You can meet someone new and have a conversation about your deepest secrets. You can jump off of a building and land on your feet. You can make your own story with your own characters and be there, living it. And the best part of all of this is no one else has to know. I've had times between sleep and waking when I think "No, I was just asleep. I'm going back to sleep. Okay, I'm asleep. Now where was I? Oh yeah, this happened, let's pick up there," and that's the closest I've ever been to a lucid dream. Can I do it? Who knows.

Tomorrow is going to be a busy, busy day. I'm going to see all the people I care about, do something good for myself, as well as earn a bit of money. And that, my friends, is the definition of a good day.

If you really want to,
you can hear me say,
"Only if you want to
will you find a way."
If you really want to,
you can seize the day.
Only if you want to
will you fly away.

When your heart beats under your skin, this time don't be so afraid of losing it!

Today was one of those days where I woke up feeling good. The type of day where no matter if the world stomps on you and then sends a little black raincloud your way (and it did), you can still say "Hey. This is okay. I'm okay." You can still look the world in the eye and say "Stop. I need a minute," so you can pour a bubble bath, turn out the lights, and listen to Enya for fifteen minutes and just remind yourself that it is okay.

Things I am going to do:
- exercise for one hour, five days a week
- play with Audrey every day (if I can't take time out of my life to play with my cat, then what can I make time for, right?)
- do oneword.com every day
- read more
- eat less
- brush my teeth regularly (I know! Blech at not doing that... but I was never taught to as a kid, and I may not be anyone's role model right now, but one day I will be. Humans are habitual creatures, and all of life is about forming habits. It's your choice whether they are good ones or not.)
- stop fighting with my mom

By far, the hardest one to maintain is going to be the last one. Sometimes I feel like my entire life would be absolutely okay if it weren't for my mom, and the fact of the matter is we just don't see eye to eye. I think I am a rarity in that I grew up completely different mentally than my parents. You see that so often: children or teens who are just the mental equivalent of one or both of their parents. There are so many phrases catered to it: "Like father like son," "you sound just like your mother," etc. I have never been a lot like either of my parents, and it is a blessing to truly feel like I have created my own personality and ideals. At the same time, it is so, so much harder to relate to either of them. My father is an emotionally disconnected, womanizing, hard-working man who drinks, builds cars, and hits things when he gets upset. My mother is a smart, stubborn woman who believes that all men are pigs and can take a computer apart screw by screw and put it back together again. I have grown up going back and forth between homes in such a way that I really have had to learn who I am all on my own. It may be true that my mother is the raincloud in my life, but until I have the option of making her a less important part in my life, I am going to try, and I think that is the best first step.

Today was a great first day. Tomorrow is a new first day. I am feeling very, very smiley.

I can't stop listening to this song!

Welcome To The New Déjà Vu

Today was one of those fix your hair twenty times, examine every flaw in the mirror, pick apart your appearance and go through an entire can of hairspray days. Sometimes I feel that a large part of my life is imitation, and it is a learning process. Everything stems from imitation; it is how we learn to do things. We do not create the English language from our own minds when we are babies. We are taught by listening and imitating, and then we learn concepts and ideas with which we create our own words, sentences, and stories. I struggle every day in breaking away from imitation and learning to create my own self.


My mom always gets me the strangest Christmas presents. Things like air-drumsticks and Pokémon erasers. A few years ago, she got me a bath set (I have never been big on lotions and perfumes; give me cheap soap and I'm good to go) that I neglected for several months. When I finally did use it, though, I fell in love with the smell. It's Far Away by Avon, and the site's description says: "Let it transport you to a place within yourself and your own imagination. This modern oriental scent blends jasmine, freesia, orange flower, and peach." If I could choose any scent to represent who I want to be, this would be it.

It's very easy, especially at a young age, to latch onto something and give it meaning in your life. I've found that it's also equally hard to let go of said thing. The more time, money, and effort you put into something, the harder it is to accept when it's gone. As a kid, I never really had friends, and my family rarely put any kind of effort into loving me. This left me alone with a lot of time to myself to think and grow on my own, but not very much time to develop socially or learn to love others (and accept the love of others). For this reason, I latch on. It's a bad, bad habit.

Here's to learning to let go.



I am so intrigued by how I can be inspired by such a large range of different things. I can listen to a song that says the word fuck in it twenty times and it makes me want to do something big. Alternatively, I can watch a beautiful dance routine and it makes me want to drink a big mug of tea and sit and listen to Enya. I want to be a million things at once and tomorrow is day one. Go.

Change.

In the past, this blog was something I was ashamed of: a place to let out only my worst thoughts and only in the most cryptic way possible, and most of it boiled down to "help me, I am hurting." I want to change that. Those thoughts are still inside of me. I do still want to marry Ryan Ross and I do still feel like scum on the bottom of someone's shoe when my mother yells at me and I have done nothing wrong, but now I know that these are the ways of life. I wear dark colors, I cry sometimes when things go wrong, and I still care more deeply about people I have never met than I do about those closest to me. I am still bad at saving money and I do not understand some simple motivations and mechanisms that most people possess, but I am learning.

I have shaved my head, I have wrecked a car, I have lost every single friend I ever had and gained some of them back. I have hurt people on purpose, I have manipulated others, I have lied. I have also done things just for the sake of making someone else feel good. I have been inspired in a way that makes me giddy and excited with the desire to run around and clap my hands. I have stopped dying my hair every week and learned to live without purple or blue strands in it. I have learned to dress more appropriately. I am walking on thin ice constantly, but I am also relishing in knowing that when I get to thicker ice I will skate and skate and skate and let nothing pull me back once I am ready to take that leap.

I have not gone to college. I'm not sure I ever will. I also haven't found a boyfriend or learned to stop making perverted jokes in front of people. I still write stories about boys in bands. I still lie. I haven't lost weight, but I have learned that there are other things in life more important. I am vegetarian and I don't think I will look back from that.

I could go on and on. The main point is that I have not found my niche yet, and I am still one of those people who steals their inspiration from others, but I am so much more optimistic. I am so inclined to rush down the street and yell "ARE YOU LIVING?!" to every single person I see, because I want that for everyone, most of all myself.