just wanted to put up a happy post

because i am,

so much

and so luckily.

Ahhhhh the Zdechlich.... walking out of the auditorium was walking on air, the swish of my skirt in the cold night and a low harvest moon and the clacking sound of feet and singing, and i knew irreversibly that i wanted to stay a musician.

i don't need to qualify that; the huge grin on my face and the unstoppable tap of my feet and my unconscious moving to the strings of sound, the busting happiness of crescendoing. Band sounded amazing. I can't even talk. I hope the judges heard our love for that piece; i think it came through......

Fucik was whatever, the best thing about that piece is the composer's name. (I am not at all biased because it is 95% offbeats.)

And then my mom's text, (she knows how to text, probably better than i do)-- and jumping around and hugging julia and sergio and everyone who knew what a huge envelope meant to me (love love love)

God.

What a night.

What a week.

What a life.

and now i go cram for the sat iis until i'm actually vaguely possibly tired.

every 15 minutes; feeling what they wanted me to feel

the worst part wasn't the students walking around school, faces macabre with white paint, or the in class plays or the fake-sounding myspace-profile obituaries. that didn't sink in. no, the worst part was the parents. voices breaking, pure grief. that wasn't simulated, that was real, and the whole audience felt it. suddenly i felt like i understood parental worrying, understood the incredible ties when you give part of yourself to someone. i thought about what john muir said about nature, about how if you pull on any one thing you find it is connected to the rest of the universe, and malina and i grabbed sweaty hands and wiped off our tears with my jacket. "remember that dying is selfish," said the dad of the kid who almost died, who had to tell his kid his best friend was gone forever.

i went to the library today, huddled in my favorite corner studying for some test, and my dad called saying he was going to walk me home, and i got almost hysterical after i hung up. imagining all the ways to be dead. we hurl ourselves into these stupid hunks of metal and forget that we aren't machines. then he walked in and i breathed and remembered none of it had happened.

i never want to go to a funeral. forget congruence. forget endings. all of us are the biologically immortal jellyfish, who grow up just enough to be infants again.

why do i even try anymore?

it all comes off wrong

the plunked-down phoniness,

my wolfly jokes are out of nervousness, not humor

i smile with my teeth but it's lies.

i hate who i am around you.

this isn't love or like or anything it's

closer to hate or want or just

whatever was good back then-- corrupted.

addiction?

you can see it in my eyes, i feel it there

too much intensity, too much everything,

they're leaking now, just thoughts, half-formed,

because

everyone's face reflects a studied, perfect

calm and indifference.

and i wish i could say they were performing but

how do i know?

my mask is chipped in a thousand places, held on by willpower and the good days--

because

all i really want to say is

when are things going to go back to how they used to be?

No--

all i really want to say is

i am counting down the days

please get out of my life.

Only you already have, and you'd have to

switch schools to ignore me harder

than you do.

No

that's not fair either.....

things get better, then they get worse, and all the while

i self-consciously stamp out any natural instinct

and smile as i self-destruct.

Is it thirty nine days now? Less?

i'll peel them off like sunburned skin.

only now there's nothing else

to hold me up.

i poured it out to you,

do you remember? but time

changed everything, until

the contents of those conversations were toxic waste

weighing you down just like

their absence makes me hollow.

maybe one day you'll visit and

i'll tuck my head into the curve of my spine and

pretend things into existence, pretend there is a

fascinating new dot on the ceiling tiles

that might well be a galaxy if i stare hard enough

i'm nearsighted and farheaded and

and now i'm on the lows again.

staying away works so well

until it doesn't.