we fixed it!!!

So Dale's PS2 was pulled off its table and fell to the ground. After that the disc tray would not close properly, and he was very, very upset, as it makes up much of his day. But we got together, took it apart, and figured out what was wrong. I had a lot to do with it. Dale hugged me and hugged me afterwards, and Ben thanked me for making sure his roommate stayed sane. All in all, it was a nice evening.

We also took Maggi out for coffee for her birthday. I'm working on knitting her a scarf.

Someone said, "No, she doesn't like HIM (some guy who thinks that I like him), she likes S." I protested... which makes me wonder exactly what I'm doing. I do need to have the "You realize that anything we do is going to be a rebound for me, right?" conversation with him, now that I've had the "give me some space this week, yo" conversation with him. He's very sweet, but he's not really my type... too... I don't know, typical-gender-roles for me? I feel pampered, and while that's nice, it makes me nervous after a while. I like having someone a bit more submissive... not entirely submissive, but someone who I feel more on equal terms with. It's not that he's expecting me to be submissive, it's just... *shrugs* Maybe it's like Adam said, and I'm an emotional lesbian. I go more for people with feminine qualities. But that wouldn't explain my attraction to butcher-looking girls. *sighs* Maybe I'm just after androgynous.

Who the hell knows. After all, it's only five and a half weeks until break... and then he goes abroad. Anything can happen between then and now... and, if anything bad happens, it's not THAT long a time.

If only things could be different.

Ways to stress out:

1. Break up with someone you love
2. Have a long set of genetics problems
3. Have a big test on Thursday
4. Be uncertain about what you want from someone who is OBVIOUSLY interested in you
5. Feel like a bad person because of 4.
6. Run around trying not to make eye contact with them
7. Agree to go to a formal dance with them
8. Procrastinate
9. Don't eat enough at meals (unintentionally) so that you are very hungry shortly after dinner
10. Don't sleep more than 6 hours a night for a week.

ALL IN THE SAME WEEK

and see where that leads you.

It's like the tension you feel when your knee needs to pop... the discomfort and pressure grows and grows until you finally wrench it the right way and it pops back into place.

I know I'm going to understand soon what way I need to move to release the pressure, but I don't know yet, and I know that when I do figure it out, it's probably not going to be an easy path.

*sighs* My friend just told me to listen to my heart, and that it's a reliable organ, and I laughed and said "Yeah, it certainly pumps a lot of blood." She sort of half smiled, and then said, "Seriously, though. You'll know what to do soon. It will come to you in your dreams, maybe, or it will just come to you."

I certainly hope so, if only for the sake of my schoolwork. I'd like to maintain SOME of my so-far good grades...

Stupid everything. But then, life's never easy for long, is it?

(LONG) A story dedicated to today's weather and yesterday's letter

This was inspired both by a story spoken about in a letter I read last night, and the strange weather today. It started out warm enough for only a long-sleeved shirt and a light jacket, then turned to cold rain, and finally snow that blew past in the 30 mph wind. The sun came out at 2:30. Now it's dark outside, and I have no idea how cold it is. Anyway...

Drift

The snow fell faster and faster, horizontally now in the wind, then swirling confusedly around in small circles as the wind changed direction. She staggered around looking for a door to somewhere inside, away from the menacing snow, but there was nothing. It was getting harder to breathe. Each time a flake landed on her it felt heavier and heavier, until she was drowning in snow, unable to see anything but white. She opened her mouth to scream, but the snow filled it before she could cry out. She cursed her stupidity. After all these years of fighting the slowly accumulating flakes, she was going to die today simply for losing control for a split second. Suffocation was the single most frightening way to die, in her mind. The dull feeling of old air in your lungs, the sharp panic of being unable to draw a breath, the growing feeling of a vacuum inside your chest– the very idea made her eyes widen on a good day. She tried to pull air through the thick layer of frost, but to no avail. Black crept in around the edges of her vision, striking against the otherwise white cast to the world. She vaguely felt her legs collapse under her from somewhere far away, but it was warm where she was going now.

She wasn’t found for at least a day. It was a neighbor looking for flour who found her. He found the door open and walked inside, calling out for her. He kicked her hand before realizing what it was. It took him a few seconds to swallow the bile that rose at the sight of her on the carpet, unmoving. Fortunately, he had the presence of mind to call an ambulance, and they came for her. Her neighbor watched as the red lights dyed everything a dull red in her driveway, feeling helpless and lost. He wandered back to his house in the slight summer rain, dazed and wondering when he would see her again. It wasn’t that they spoke much, or even saw each other often, but finding her like that had shaken his idea of normality and he wanted his regular life back as soon as possible. The ambulance cried out once, uncertainly, and then made a steady wailing as it drove away down the street.

All they could find wrong with her was slight dehydration and a bump on her head where they assumed she’d hit it in the fall to the floor. She wasn’t comatose; she responded to regular stimuli, and she opened her eyes and seemed to be staring at something only she could see. They hooked her up to machines, contacted her parents, and then sat back helplessly, labeling her catatonic. Sometimes she cried out, but mostly she lay silently, staring at a point just beyond the wall.

The snowstorm raged on and on, and she could see her body lying there in the drifts. She assumed that she was dead, but why wasn’t her soul going somewhere else? There was nothing she could do to stop seeing herself; her eyes wouldn’t shut, and she couldn’t get away from the place where her eyes stared up at her, unseeing. She endured it for days; the frightening glare of the seeming corpse below her, the paralyzing cold, and the strange inability to breathe. That was how she really knew she was dead. If there was any doubt, being aware without drawing air into her lungs killed it. As days passed, her mind bore the pressure of being caught in such a bizarre state, until finally it snapped. She heard her own howls as everything went black a second time.

The heart monitor made a low wail as the blood exploded inside her chest and her body flailed uncontrollably for a few seconds before lying still. They slowly unhooked the machines, shaking their heads. It was a shame that this young woman had died after her week of catatonia, but really, there was nothing else they could have done. It was simply an anomaly.

The snow blew on, regardless of the empty landscape. It would always fall, no matter where she went. It could always find a new victim. The world was white and grey, with just a hint of red to mark where her mind had been.