Saturday, September 08, 2007
5:29 PM

Backposting


There would have to be a lot of copy-and-pasting for me to prove that I never actually stopped writing, I just relocated. For the maybe three of you who used to read this, and weren't aware of the switch.

Allons-y!


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Thursday, June 07, 2007
9:15 PM

Summuhhhhh


Goals. Because it's tradition.

-Run everyday. This worked well last time and I actually look forward to it.

-Not spend all my money from my job. I've been bad at this.

-Learn all or most of the flute repertoire I just got. Including the DAMN CHAMINADE CONCERTINO ARGGGG.

-Practice Spanish, so I won't have forgotten everything by day 1 of AP.

-Go to church. I've been skipping a lot lately and I shouldn't. I'm making Baby Jesus cry.

-Start learning mallets. No idea how far I actually want to carry this, but I should start.

-Reading list to include: A Clockwork Orange, My Friend Leonard, Catcher again, Screwtape Letters, Metamorphosis, at least the next three books in Wheel of Time

ALLONS-Y.


1 comments

9:15 PM

Summuhhhhh


Goals. Because it's tradition.

-Run everyday. This worked well last time and I actually look forward to it.

-Not spend all my money from my job. I've been bad at this.

-Learn all or most of the flute repertoire I just got. Including the DAMN CHAMINADE CONCERTINO ARGGGG.

-Practice Spanish, so I won't have forgotten everything by day 1 of AP.

-Go to church. I've been skipping a lot lately and I shouldn't. I'm making Baby Jesus cry.

-Start learning mallets. No idea how far I actually want to carry this, but I should start.

-Reading list to include: A Clockwork Orange, My Friend Leonard, Catcher again, Screwtape Letters, Metamorphosis, at least the next three books in Wheel of Time

ALLONS-Y.

mood:
music:


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Wednesday, June 06, 2007
3:01 PM

*brushes dust off*


-Didn't make drum major. Boooo.

-Didn't make snare either. Stuck on bass. Again.

-Made leadership though, so that's cool.

-Made Wind Ensemble as well, and Symphony Orchestra, so yaaay for me being in the top 2 instrumental ensembles and making MB leadership too.

-Finally learned Syrinx and it's sounding good!

-Going out with Ben. Probably happier in this relationship than any of the others I've been in. If nothing else, it's infinitely more stable and non-psychotic. And he isn't a jerk to me like everyone else has been.

-School's almost over.

-I made an 86 on the precal final which was still enough to get me an A for the year overall (I only needed an 83 on the exam, haha).

-Made a 101 on the theory final. Just like I made a 101 on the midterm. Yeah, so much for Hough and Payne thinking I couldn't have handled AP, Trotter knows I could've.

-Mama V gave my name to the rest of the English department so I may still keep my copy editing job for next year. And I got a IV, but that probably didn't surprise anyone.

-I find out next month if I placed in the Ayn Rand essay contest and I have a good feeling about it.

-I start as a shift manager at my job as soon as school's over.

-I need to think up some summer goals to stick to this year, being that summer starts in like one day.


1 comments
Sunday, April 29, 2007
1:10 PM

You're so pretty when you're faithful to me


The glass wall cracked pretty badly. My overt playfulness did lead to my downfall indeed. Things most certainly had not "leveled off with Ryan." I was naive and stupid to think that. We aren't speaking anymore. It hurts. I don't think I want to write about this here.

I'm going out with the guy from the GSA now. His name is Ben and he's really, really sweet. I don't really know what else to say because I kind of am not in the mood to write right now so I don't really know what I'm doing.

In the past month I have learned a whole lot about who my real friends are, and I feel bad about how badly I've been taking them for granted. I love them all and I swear on the cross I will never let myself concentrate more on a screwed-up relationship than on them again.


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Wednesday, April 11, 2007
10:12 PM

And you may say to yourself, "MY GOD! What have I done!?"


So. Life is happening pretty fast. It has been two days since spring break ended and I feel like a week and a half's worth of stuff has been thrown into motion.

Sarah and I have been acting really different around one another and the whole thing is reminding me of how things felt with Paulina last year. It scares me slightly because Paulina and I weren't as close as Sarah and I are, and I feel like this has the potential to screw a lot more up. At the same time, it is oddly thrilling. It's like, I know nothing should ever happen here and I should make that very clear, but I don't really want to.

I probably will make its potential screwed-up-ness clear though, regardless of what the selfish nonsense part of me wants. I've been growing into resolution lately. I can't write about the biggest example of that, but trust me. I am proud of myself for saying no when I needed to.

Shayna, on the other hand, is now my Jimney Cricket and is trying to talk me out of all the stuff I still really need to be talked out of and I know I need to be talked out of but don't care enough to actually pay attention. God bless her for trying.

I think things have finally levelled off with Ryan. Finally. I mean, God, they definitely should have after some of the things that've been taking place here. He's just not coming back. I get it. And after a week of not talking to him while he was gone on spring break, I think I got it all out of my system. When we talk it is markedly more chill and what drama occurs at all is usually on my end and it finally doesn't really involve him, I just tell him about it because I still tell him everything. He's my best friend and I think I am okay with that.

Patrick is standing by with a bucket of popcorn whenever anything happens involving anyone.

I met another guy who seems pretty nice. At the GSA. Because only someone as insane as me could think that this would possibly be a good idea. But my inner cynic has been developing and I pretty much know nothing is ever going to come of it. Oh well. He visited me at work and it was really nice.

I am in the sort of mood where I am just being overt and playful with just about everyone. I have no doubt it will lead to my downfall.

I may be getting back into the show?

Everyone likes my new hair and it makes me very happy.

I've come to the conclusion that I drive very, very well, I just have no sense of direction.

On Monday night, I went out, bought spraypaint, and did a Jackson Pollock imitation on the rock in front of Providence. I should not have cared. I should not now. But I did and I do. I'm just trying to be realistic about it. The resolve thing is stemming largely from this. I don't think anyone who saw the rock got it. It's already gone but I still have pictures that I haven't put up. I don't think anyone will get it anyway. Trying to imitate his style on an upright stone with spraypaint didn't work so well anyway, but at least it felt good.

The glass wall is still intact and I am becoming less afraid of it. I have cried though. Twice. But only when talking to people I felt like I was really justified crying with, and then when the conversations are done, I move on. No more sitting around in class and just having it come over me, and no more overthinking everything and causing myself more pain. And when I feel myself getting upset or wanting to tap into what's behind the glass wall, I've been doing this Buddhist breathing meditation stuff. It's hard to explain but it calms me down.

mood: relaxed
music: Death Cab - "TV Trays"


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Monday, April 09, 2007
2:11 AM

Part One


(I wrote this a few days ago when I was pissed about having to go back to therapy and decided not to post it until it was over and I saw how it went. There's a "Part Two" that I don't know if it's worth putting up. How the hell I went without writing for two months is beyond me now.)

We go to the counter and my mom says I'm here. The lady behind the counter tells us to go through the double-doors. But they're not really doors to anything, they're just decorative and they lead in to the waiting room where they herd anyone under 18 and their parents. The magazines are all several weeks out-of-date so I don't read them. I don't generally talk either because I'm usually pissed off about being there, or embarassed about being there, or ashamed about being there, or just not in the mood to talk. If anyone else is in the waiting room, I surreptitiously observe them and wonder what they're there for. Most of them seem completely normal. I wonder if they think that about me.

Sitting there always seems to take twenty minutes. I don't know if it's the fact that my mom thinks tardiness is the worst thing in the universe and always shows up way too early for everything, or if the doctors are always late because they have way too many damn patients at the place (which they do). Maybe it's not that much time. Maybe it just feels that way because there's nothing to do and there's nothing I want more than to be out of the place. But no matter how much time it actually is, or why, the waste always bothers me.

--

First Doctor was nicer. She had an extremely soft voice and a very open, expressive face and she always seemed to me like someone who would've made a really good elementary school teacher, or at least a school therapist for young kids. I never really felt condescended though. We just went to her little back room, through the halls that were covered in movie posters for decoration. I always smiled at the one for Garden State and wondered if they'd really thought that through when they decided to put it up in a psychiatry center.

Mostly, she listened to whatever it is I wanted to talk about. She never really looked at my thought logs for more than a few minutes. She'd sometimes inquire about what happened on a specific day to make me jot something down and I'd recount some stuff. When she talked with her soft, kindergarten teacher voice, she always had a sort of detachment, like she'd seen people like me a thousand times (and she probably had) and gone over the same advice a thousand times more (and she probably had) and it was nothing particularly stirring or meaningful anymore. I can't blame her.

One of the things First Doctor made me do was come up with a list of my "core beliefs," negative things I think about myself that are the root of my negative thoughts. They were only allowed to be negative though. I could've just as easily said stuff like "I am pretty happy with the way I look" or "I'm really, really smart" but that's apparently not the root of anything; good stuff doesn't count as much when you sit on the little couch. So I had a couple of weeks to do it, and it was supposed to be based on what were usually my first throuhgts I wrote whenever I got upset at something and did a thought log.

I boiled them down and chopped them up and I came up with three. Things I could've pointed out the first time I walked in, without having to waste the time and money of several weeks' worth of visits and thought logs and self-help books. But that would've been weird. "Hi, my name's Mandy, and before you say anything, here's exactly what's wrong with me because I already know, so let's get started." She read them without saying anything when I gave them to her. She looked at me for a second and gave them back, with a pencil. She was going to make me write. I hate when she makes me write. I love writing, but I hate writing anything there. She told me to challenge the beliefs. Each of them. Think of a counterexample or disproving evidence and write it down, even if I don't believe it outweighs the original core belief.

A writing assignment where I was told what to think, even if I didn't actually think it.

I sat there. I looked at her. I looked at the paper. I wanted to scream. What was the point of this? What part of this was worth the ninety dollars a week, exactly? If I could think of convincing counterexamples to negative thoughts, wouldn't I already feel better? Why would I be on the couch in the first place? Could I not be done with thought logs and these stupid appointments and having everyone think I'm fucked up?

I told her I couldn't think of any, and I couldn't. Hence, core belief. Not random, fleeting put-down. Core belief. It was her name for it anyway. She told me to pretend I was one of my friends reading these and write down what I would say, as Mandy's friend, to make Mandy feel better. Your friends make you feel better. Take comfort in them. I DO. Why the hell am I being told to say what my friends say? I could've just talked to them and skipped this. My friends don't need appointments. They don't make me sit in the awkward waiting room with the old magazines and the normal people. They don't cost ninety dollars a week.

She wound up telling me pretty much everything to put down as my counterexamples to my core beliefs. I think maybe one of them actually came from me, and I told her I didn't believe it even as I was writing it.

I never quite understood the purpose of this exercise. Being asked what I think, of thinking it, and then being told to think something else even though I don't think it. I came home with the list of thoughts that weren't mine and wondered what exactly I was supposed to do with it. Was I supposed to trot it out every time I felt down? Was that the secret all along, to look at things I admittedly don't believe, as told to me by a "friend" who was actually a therapist who didn't know me? Was this supposed to be my Prozac on paper?

I don't remember going back to Doctor One after that, and I don't remember the core belief exercise ever helping in any way.


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1:19 AM

I'm wide awake, it's morning!


I think for the first time, I understand Jackson Pollock. Or, I at least have an interpretation of what he was doing, or a feeling to attach to some of his work. Which is odd, because previously, I have always hated him.

When I went to the Museum of Modern Art last summer, it was the first I'd ever seen or heard of him. I'm just uncultured like that; I've never been that into visual art. He struck me as a talentless hack. He took paint and he splashed it all over a canvas and it sells for millions and it takes up a whole wall at the MoMA. What the hell? I drew better pictures when I was too young to know what I was even doing. It's just so random and ugly and stupid. People who appreciate "art" like this are just pretentious and they secretly probably think is makes about as much sense as I do.

I don't know. I don't know. I don't know.

Something about trying to write today just struck me as extremely Jackson Pollock. I don't like it at all but I think I understand it. I'm frustrated. I just want to say "FUCK IT!" and throw words around, and ignore any semblence of grammar or punctuation and probably not run spell check either (I normally don't anyway). I hate having a million things to say and either not know how to say them or not be able to say them, out of conventions or fear or agreements or knowing who would read them and what they'd say and think.

I think if Jackson Pollock had tried to paint the Mona Lisa, he would've felt like me. It's not him. It's not how he is or how he feels. He can start, he can take a stab at it, but then he'll hit a wall and decide none of it is right and try something else and eventually just put the canvas on the floor and drip greys and blacks and whites all over it and it's not the Mona Lisa. It doesn't need to be. It's what he felt.

I look at his work, and maybe it's the fact that it's 1:30 in the morning, but I feel something. There is anger there, and extreme confusion, and a sort of tongue-in-cheek joy, like he knows he's thumbing his nose at the whole world and he loves it, maybe even some indifference or apathy from the same reason. I can't imagine the physical feeling of dripping the paint down, of throwing it, and not knowing what was going to come of it but knowing you'd know when it's exactly the right amount of insanity and chaos that nobody is ever going to get the precise way you mean it.

To literally throw all of your emotion out and not caring that it won't make a pretty picture or a coherent piece of writing with clarity or plot. Not everything is picturesque and sensical. Sometimes it is nonsense and sometimes it looks like you don't know what you're doing because sometimes you don't.

Serious art critics probably think I have no idea what the hell I'm talking about. And I don't. That's the point. THIS IS POLLOCK.

It's 1 AM and I can't sleep because I took a really long nap in the daytime because I was expecting to be up late talking to someone who ended up not calling me. I don't think I am surprised but I really, really wish it'd occurred. Possibly more than I have previously wished for things to occur that I am not surprised about when they don't happen.

I tragically, romantically, quixotically, unfortunately care.

Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck.

Nothing hurts. Normally I would cry and get hysterical or destroying something or helplessly calling any of the various people I call and I want to do all of those things at once and I dont know why but I can't. I seriously cannot. I feel like I've drugged all those behaviors into submission but I'm not on any drugs at all. It's all behind a big glass wall right now. I can feel it but not act out. I'm not on anything. What the hell.

I don't want to call people this late. I don't feel that selfish right now. I have nothing to break and I don't want to hurt myself. And I can't cry. Not to say so in a sort of way to pump myself up and push out feelings of wanting to cry, I seriously can't, not even thinking about all the worst things that could possibly happen to me. I don't get it because I fucking care.

Out of anger and confusion and apathy and chaos, this is me channelling Jackson Pollock without paint and saying "fuck" a lot.

Maybe it is good. Maybe it is good because nothing hurts and maybe it is good because one day I will win a Pulitzer.

mood: POLLOCK
music: Death Cab


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Sunday, April 08, 2007
5:15 PM

Wishlist


-In a bizarre sort of way, if it were at all possible, I wish I could perpetually be stuck in band camp from the beginning of this year. Sort of like in Groundhog Day where you wake up and it's always the same. I've decided those were probably some of the happiest days I've ever had. I wasn't sick of band, drumline was fucking incredible, and everything with Ryan was really fun in the beginning. There was so much fun and hope.

-I swear I've rewritten this paragraph twenty times trying to get the right mix of what I think I want to say and what I can say. I wish, that night that we talked and you said all that stuff, that I'd just said something back other than whatever I said, because at that moment there was just a lot going on. I wish I weren't screwing things up for you. I wish there were no secrets and doubt and that I could just tell you without feeling dumb how stupidly, insanely happy you make me.

-I wish you had called me. I wish you had called me every night in eighth grade instead of covering up your issues and letting everyone convince you your visits to the guidance counselor were pointless and your mom was just paranoid. We had no idea. I wish you had called me last year whenever something happened. I wish you had called me instead of overdosing. I wish you had called 911, or called me and then I would've whether you wanted me to or not. You still could have died, and I don't want to lose you. I worry about the fact you still never call because I never know if you're okay. I worry about you more than you have any idea. If anything ever happens to you, I will blame myself. I wish your life at home was better. I wish the people you love were better to you. I wish you'd let me be better to you than I currently am.

-I wish you hadn't sneaked out that night to come see me. Not that I wish your parents hadn't caught you. I wish you'd never done it at all. It was so fucking stupid. It was so goddamn cold, and there was no way you could've been able to see in that darkness, and we both knew there was no way you were going to be back before them, and I was so, so scared you were going to get hurt on the way. I will probably regret for the rest of my life that I didn't tell you to just stay home. It could have changed everything. It would have changed everything.
But when that happened I wish you had made it fucking clear how it was. You said things that gave only one impression, and then you took them back. You did things that gave only one impression, and then you talked at length about regretting them. Talking in the stairwell and making up stupid analogies and every second of New Year's Eve and failing at Lent together. If you wanted it to be that way, I wish you could have just let it happen and put away your distorted senses of reality and morality. If you never wanted anything to be fixed, I wish you had run like hell the minute this started instead of walking away slowly and looking back the whole damn time. I am finally mad at you! But it is done.

-I would never say this to you, but I really, really wish you believed in God. I always feel slightly awkward whenever Lucy and I talk about church in front of you because I am afraid of making you feel ostracized like I always used to feel. Remembering that feeling is exactly why I am not the sort of Christian who will preach at you and coerce you into coming to youth group. There's nobody I ever really talk to about this, but I so often feel like the biggest hypocrite in the universe for becoming Christian after being so into Paganism for so long. I hope you are not secretly thinking I am stupid for believing, because I know just as I'd never actually say this to you, I know you'd never say so to me. It is neither of our respective businesses, in the end.

-I wish this chocolate bunny had more damn rice krispies in it. It's not nearly crunchy enough.

mood: I wrote this over the course of a few hours; it changed often
music: Ani - "Providence", the words to which I am in love with


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Remain in Light

Who is she?



Mandy. Sixteen. NC.

I'm a sophomore at Providence. Pretty much everything in my life revolves around music and my friends and that's about it.

The Tea Party


Mandy Plante
As Herself

Cindy
As Her Sister

Case
As You know, that one

Ryan
As I don't know anymore

Tyler
As The Fabulous Clarinetist

Sarah
As La Reina

Lucy
As The Forever Friend

Shayna
As The Amish Ballerina

Sequential
As The Oboe Obsession Girl

Kelly
As Miss Positivity

The Drumline
As Her section

Random Band/School People
As The Interesting Background Characters
When Jesus spoke again to the people, he said, "I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life."
John 8:12