002.

As cheesy as it may sound, there is a big part of me that feels like everything that's happened the past few years was leading up to Asheville. Every new friendship I made, every new band I found, every new fact that drew me closer and closer to the community I identify with now helped change me a litle day after day to turn me into the person I am now and finally find what I was looking for when it was finally the right time.

I have my own little punk house. My own little punk house where my housemates and I walk to the store, buy all the ingredients for vegan chili, come home and cook together and watch Xfiles and Hey Arnold on netflix, and drink tea all night.

I need a job more than anything, a few days this week left me feeling way too stressed out. I think we're all JUST BARELY going to be able to scrape by with February's rent and will have jobs for sure by March (since I've been told my anyone that March starts tourist season and then suddenly everyone's hiring). I also have a tough text message conversation with Stacy that just added to the stress. I don't know what I want to do about that friendship, or if I want to do anything at all. For now I'm just focusing on Asheville and if I feel really strongly about it again, maybe I'll finish the letter I started writing to her. But right now it's not a priority, unfortunately.

Yesterday was one of the greatest days I've had yet down here. Wednesday night a bunch of people were over, and Sascha and I were sitting on the couch (after deciding to go to Boston in March! Since Joey is going too! Seriously so excited to see so many people.) and decided to wake up super early and go get things to make for breakfast. Our pancakes were an absolutely disaster, I think because gluten-free cooking isn't so easy- the flour doesn't really stick together. They were ugly and more like pancake pieces (we even baked some of the batter and had a pancake cookie) but still tasted great; which I think is what really counts! We're going to perfect vegan gluten-free EVERYTHING. By the time everything was said and done we caught the 3:15 bus to downtown and hung out at Firestorm for awhile. Ron sat with us and invited us to dubstep night tonight- I'm not even going to go into detail about that. We all split up after awhile and I went grocery shopping (which might be one of my favorite things in the world) and came home alone for awhile and tried to take the bus 3 times to meet back up with Sascha to go to a house show in Montford. The third time I got to the bus stop, it was already almost ten and a taxi was just leaving my street. He stopped and asked if I was headed downtown and I said I had no money and he said "It's fine! No charge!" Of course I was a little skeptical, and Melissa was on the phone saying "TESLA. NO. DO NOT GET IN." But he was a little old man and was kind of insistent and said he did this about once a night. He told me where not to go to get stabbed and told me he used to drive trucks; but hey it was a free cab ride! He dropped me off by the transit center and I walked to the Green House just in time to hear a band that sounded like Green Day. I hung out with Sascha and saw Big Eyes AND THEY WERE SO FUCKING GOOD. We left after their set because we found a ride home from Maryn but she was leaving then. I'm so glad I went to the show, it was nice going out for the first time other than over to Houston House or having folks over here.

I'm still the new girl and it's strange that Sascha really is my closest friend here and I haven't even know them for two months yet. A few years ago I couldn't have handled being this "on my own" but it's almost second nature now- I'm glad I've thrown myself into situations alone so many times before; especially this past summer. It's also easier when people, for some reason, have actually been making an effort to at least be nice to me. Before Joey left on Wednesday night he asked for my number and then called me so I had his and told me to call him if I ever wanted to do something and then Eva asked for my number too. We're going over to Houston House on Monday night to make a big vegan dinner with all of them too!

As much as sometimes I think there's flaws and negative points to how much I focus things around how they feel and feelings- I knew heading South felt right, I knew the people here felt like people worth knowing, and I knew there was something right about how they just feel like better people; And they just keep proving me right. Even if I'm never close with anyone, I think they're still more worth knowing distantly than a lot of people I used to call close back "home".