For Sure.

Tonight I was given a tattoo on the top of my left hand thumb. It's three lines, all different sizes, done by all different people. The tattoo is also a symbol for traveling. There's a select few good friends around Asheville that have the same tattoo and Sascha kept bringing up wanting to give it to me. Tonight Claire and Cam were here too and okayed the idea and each of them gave me a line. I know I'm still not as close to any of them as they are to each other, but this felt like a way of telling me 'this is your home, we like having you here'. They like me enough to tell me in the form of accepting me into their tight knit circle that it's okay I'm around. No matter what happens, Asheville is always going to have been a part of my life and I'm okay with that fact.

I literally have the life I've wanted and dreamed about for so long in so many ways, I'm just not living it out as fully as I could be. I'm working on changing that.
But the truth is: yesterday I rode my bike to the store with Sascha, yesterday I planted seeds working on our garden in the back, last night we got fortys and walked the tracks for awhile eventually just sitting on them talking watching the Asheville sky burn away colors, tonight we made tempeh and ate in our front yard, i sat in the front yard thinking about how strange it is to be used to being around people you're still getting to know constantly and how used to it I truly am, tonight a boy that gives me butterflies is sleeping on the couch in my living room and I can't say anyones done that in a long time. I'm still reserved, I still don't know how to make small talk and become close with people- but I'm getting used to my life here. My life here is becoming my life, and no longer feels temporary. What I'm saying is I have all these things I've wanted, they're all mine.

And for the most part, I'm okay with that. I don't know where else I'd be or go anyways, and all the signs point to everything I've loved the past few years coming together in the forms of my life here. Sometimes so much it's eerie.

Things could be better, but they could be a lot worse too. They can also only get better with time, or so I can hope, and I have no reason not to try.

5%

Screaming Nana Grizol lyrics and wrestling on my queen size mattress with Sascha, Claire and Judah. Drunkenly riding my bike to the gas station at 11 pm for more beer. Driving to West Asheville at 1 am and picking up more people than should ever fit into a car and smoking secret cigarettes. Looking at the Asheville show calendar and seeing them refer to us as the South AVL house. Realizing we're leaving very, very soon.

Last night Sascha and Claire were talking about how they could see themselves wanting to re-new the lease when it's up in January. I didn't say anything, but obviously that is the most interesting thing to see for me when the time comes- am I going to stay here? Where else would I go? My best friends won't be in Philadelphia anymore and anywhere else would be a new beginning too and am I going to want to try that all again? It's a very long time away and summer is going to change so much. Only time will tell but it's a little intriguing and a little scary to not even remotely know where my life will be headed when that time comes.

Day by day, I guess. That's all I can do right now. And I while I'm waiting to see what happens, it's even more strange to not know what I'd even want to outcome to be.

I can feel myself changing but I don't feel in control over it at all- does that make it more or less natural?

"Reach out and the love returned will be stunning."
Lose all reservations.

dirty

One day maybe I'll stop feeling so fucking weird all of the time. Or maybe I'll just finally have control over my own emotions and actions. Maybe one day I'll have things that are interesting to say. Last week I felt so in friendship love with you and now it's like we're back to weeks and weeks ago where I never know what's okay or how you feel that day.

I jumped on my first moving train today, playing around the yard with Sascha and Claire. It feels so right and so wrong all at once. Where did the person I liked to be go?

fingers

Last night was weird. I can't think of a better or different way to describe it because it wasn't good and it and wasn't bad. I came home with presents- stolen gardeing books and new cookbooks with Edamame recipes (because our freezer is still full of them), and came home to dinner already done. It's really cute living with good people all the time; people I cook dinner for and people who cook vegan meals when I'm not even home so that I can eat when I am, people who call to see where I am when they don't know what I'm up to. A little later Sascha road their bike (in the snow! why was it snowing and why is there now snow stuck to the ground in the backyard out my window?!) to the liquor store and came home with whiskey. Claire, Aaron and Sascha sat around playing Johnny Hobo songs and other things on the guitar, ukulele and banjo for awhile while I sat there reading a zine. I keep buying Doris zines and they keep ending up too strangely relevant. Eventually Claire and I SORT of made Hot Toddies and eventually friends showed up; First Dave and Mica, then Judah, Dan, Bender and Evan. We all sat around for awhile and I was a little drunk but not drunk enough and then we piled into two cars and went to see Jesse and Will's band play in West Asheville. They're called Young Mountain and I'm pretty sure they also played Pearson House the first night I went out/over there/to a house show in Asheville. They're super, super good and exactly my taste when it comes to experimental indie music- the remind me of a band that'd play in Newark though and once again I'm going to repeat that I shouldn't drink whiskey, it just makes me sad. I got in a sort of bad mood and met a girl named Paris and felt uncomfortable because she was wearing a mink around her neck. Eventually we left and Sascha knew I was unhappy and wrote "I <3 Tes" on the snow accumulated on the back of Dave's car. It helped a little but I couldn't help but think about the friends far away that actually call me Tes on the drive home while I starred out the window at the old buildings on my favorite street and drive through Asheville. We got home and Sascha tackled me onto the chair and wouldn't let me get up til I cheered up, he told everyone that I was his girlfriend and Claire told him he was a shameless flirt- honey, you have no idea. I walked in the kitchen and asked if there was enough whiskey left for me to have any because unfortunately I knew the only way to cheer myself up was to get more drunk, and Sascha told me the rest was mine. I finished it and then had 5 shots of Judah's tequila. I got super drunk and Sascha got naked and I had a conversation with Sinclaire and Judah about identifying as queer and after telling them how much I don't identify as straight it was basically decided that queer would and does define how I feel, I'm glad that talk happened.

Now it's 10 am and I'm still a little tipsy. With shaky hands I need to send a few text messages and get ready for work. It's funny, I can kiss one person last night and wake up and turn on mix made by someone I wish was by my side right now. Everything is so backwards from the way I always thought it would be. I never know how I feel but I always know I feel so much. There's money in my bank account and tonight I'll buy some beer and try and fit in here, but tomorrow I'll use that same money to buy a few bus tickets to places where people I actually fit with live and wonder if that boy I kissed last night will be enough to make me want to come back when I leave.

it's been awhile

I don't want to say I need to find myself. I don't want to be a cliche early twenty-something searching for my identity. Even if I did feel that way, I think I'm a lot better off than some people who don't know who they are, what they like, what they want, etc. I feel like I know, for the most part, what I'm about; What's important to me, what I like, what I want to hold close, what I want to surround and involve myself with. But I don't entirely know how to get there. So it's not finding myself really, it's finding a way to be that person- how to fully feel like the person I think I am. Well, maybe that is finding yourself. I think I just feel like I've already covered half of the steps to getting there. I know who I am, I just have to find out how to be that person. I don't have to figure out who the person I'm looking for is first. I know what I care about and what I want to learn more about. I know how I want to feel, I just don't know how to feel it.

What I do know is that I want to feel comfortable, I want to feel fun, I want to not be confused when he doesn't give me as much attention as he did they day before- and more than not being confused, I don't want it to even faze me, don't want to be capable of even noticing or being aware of any difference. I want to feel free and I want to feel like I make a difference in the people's lives who I'm around, whether by their choice or by association. I want to be incapable of feeling jealousy or longing, I want to be completely okay with being just myself, just me, whatever my life is going to consist of that day and not what I'm missing out on or what other people are doing that I wish I could be too.

I feel like I could want a whole lot more. My dreams and goals and wants could be a lot more difficult to grasp (mentally and physically). As always, everything I think about and reach for is based around how it feels; everything with me is always a feeling (my goals consist of wanting to feel a certain way, to be completely and utterly happy [and to be that happy, I need to feel all of these things at once, that is the definition of happiness for the person I am] rather than goals like becoming a lawyer or owning a house- in fact I don't think they could be further from that). I could have high set standards for myself and life that seem ridiculous, but I don't think I do. I think everything I want is relatively simple, I just don't know how to get to the place they are- or even back to the place that was closer than where I am now. I don't know where to start, but I am going to start to look a lot harder. I guess that's really all there is to do, especially now when I need it more than ever.


- - - - - - - - - -
I woke up naked next to you this morning thinking two things, whether we had found waldo on the last page of Wheres Waldo? the night before drunk on the couch at a house show after the last band played, and wanting to listen to the Taxpayers. I don't know what changed, but I'm feeling better again. My thoughts aren't consumed by what our situation and relationship is, or how at home I don't feel here so much anymore. I'm a little happy, a little content. I can go out and buy myself a forty and talk to some strangers, I can dance around work only thinking about my life at that present moment and nothing else. Maybe I just have no control over my emotions changing from day to day, or maybe it really helped hearing you tell me you loved me and all your friends love me as I laid in your arms a few nights ago. I'm still figuring out my relationship with you (my first polyamorous partner), I'm still figuring out how to talk to my co workers and how small talk even works, I'm still figuring out how to feel comfortable in my own body and I'm still figuring out where I fit here. But at least Im figuring it out, or have the motivation to do so again- and it helps knowing you're there if I need someone to hold my hand; whether it be able to walk into the store, to have the courage to dance to a band in some smoky basement or under the covers when we come home at night just to feel you there. I can't thank you enough for being the best garlic loving, purple haired sweetie in my life.

empty bottles in the corner

I moved to the South and found out I'm not a whiskey drinker. I always heard about people who became sad when they drank, saw other friends get drunk and end up in tears and always wondered how it was possible; I was thankful I never got upset from intoxication intensifying negative feelings. But then one January night, just this past January, I drank a few beers and followed it with whiskey and soon enough found myself in my room leaving a long message on my best friend's voicemail in tears. Last weekend I had a pretty good night at a few parties, drunk of course; but unfortunately on beer and whiskey. It was a fun night but eventually things died down and a lot of close friends started dancing around the living room and I stood to the side and watched. Marissa tried to invite me in but I just wasn't quite drunk enough anymore to not feel like an awkward, weird mess if I tried moving my body to any music other than a foot tap or head nod to some shitty bands playing in a basement (my social anxieties have taken ahold of my life more than they have in years lately). However I was still drunk enough to almost end up in tears from that moment on- through the dancing, goodbyes and the car ride home; Because all I could think about was missing my best friends, how out of place I realized I felt. Every time I swallow some Kentucky Gentlemen I feel more alone than ever. How am I supposed to be a Southerner now if I can't drink whiskey without thinking about the North?