(which is not to indicate that everything has been come to but which is to suggest crossing with penchants intact and the face advertising that.)*

January. My first real winter. I dealt with New York to be done with it. I reminded myself often to be patient. I liked a girl without really understanding why it didn't make me feel good. I started defying my own insecurities and started growing my hair out. I went on a bad date, and then was a silent partner in a conversation that involved gin and surprise when it shouldn't have.
February. I got drunk for the first time and spent the evening with humans I intuitively trusted. I was undecided and not worried about it. I hit a wall regarding being away from home and pushed through it. I wrote often and well, and I understood why I felt good about the vodka and not about the gin.

March. I did my best to uncross my arms and be hesitantly, not reluctantly, vulnerable. The alcohol helped. Speaking up was nerve-wracking but I was never afraid; I was only ever wary of myself. I wanted the snow to melt. Philosophy was the worst. I had to tell a boy more than once my body does not belong to him. Audra visited and I missed it. I missed fall. I decided on feminism, for sure. Conchordance wanted me after all.
April. It was still snowing. I was still writing a lot. Andrea Gibson hugged me and told me to never stop. I realized the extent of my damage and sometimes couldn't say how I felt for long minutes. I stopped feeling guilty about that and realized that people will wait for me to figure out what I need to say. I stopped keeping track of my almost list. I stopped myself from leaning in, but didn't stop thinking about it. The War Requiem made me a different human in ways I couldn't explain.
May. I sat down to talk about something I thought was important, and when I realized it apparently was not, I stood up and walked away. The snow melted. Most nights, I walked under the sky and felt unbelievably alive. I loved my body. The Let Everything solo was a matter of course. One night, I walked through town in the wee hours with a human who trusts me in way I didn't know I deserved to be trusted. It was sense that prevailed over daring and perhaps reckless emotion, but I would be lying through my teeth if I said I never thought it was something wrong with me, that if I was hotter or thinner or more clever. I lost my necklace. I saw Gatsby with a friend and no one believed me when I said that's all it was.
June. I walked with a woman in the warm evenings and kept my hands in my pockets, saving the emotional faltering for intermission bathroom breaks and the darkness of performance halls. I realized how important Cantala is to me. Tenth week whooped my ass. My card was declined three times. I spent the last night curled into the couch, feeling completely devastated by the way time passes, close to tears without understanding why. I left Wisconsin not knowing if I'd be back.
July. I decided on more tattoos. Early mornings found me swimming for the sole purpose of feeling my body move. My family encouraged me to turn off my feminism. I started submitting my writing, and I was published. It was a letdown. I slept naked every night and loved myself more every day. No one wanted seasonal work, and I didn't want to admit that I might be stuck in California past the summer. I am nothing like Arizona, I finally realized.
August. I grew to resent the prospect of being stuck at home. Being hired for another orchestra reminded me what it felt like to feel awful about music. I was proud of myself for trying. Anger was something I felt more and more often. I wasn't over it and I felt awful about that, too. I lived in a state of low-level disappointment in the system and in myself. Most days, I felt financial worry like a physical weight. My kid brother proved himself to be a real person. I threw the word 'love' around in my head and told myself I was stupid more often than I'd like to admit. Teresita healed a lot of wounds I didn't know I had.
September. I went to Chicago and saw humans I love, and I started the term missing them. The Thing reared its ugly head and I all but ignored it. I rewrote myself a little and realized that I could stop feeling bad about the gin. I let myself be distracted by charming women.
October. I drank a lot. I worried a lot. My grandmother died, and I didn't cry. I felt bad because that's not what I wanted to cry about. The party was less than exciting, but I felt more at home drunkenly explaining my short temper than I had in weeks of not being questioned at all. I got my ear pierced again. The Flaubert made me want to give up the academic struggle, and my very late racial identity crisis began in view of twenty-odd women who have always had to know themselves. I felt like I had been done a disservice. I had. Someone hit a nerve about money one night and I wanted to shout at her about her privilege, but I almost cried instead. I drank my way through reading period. I almost let myself be talked out of a new-old friendship and then realized I think I can tell the wrong sort for myself, thanks.
November. I thought I could write a novel. I realized my classes were going to be a battle yet again. I was bold with people I wanted to know. One night, we gave blanket consent and did nothing with it. I pulled all-nighters with reckless abandon that by four in the morning were less about the work and more about the color of the night sky and the devastating nature of passing time. I understood June much better. And I understood myself much better. The Thing slinked away quietly, without a fight. I filled my language with feminism and spoke with professors candidly. I ran out of money more than once and ignored the dread of having to miss winter term. My writing dried up. An endearing woman charmed me to a surprising extent. I stopped feeling guilty about asking personal questions and taking my time with my own answers. I sang well. I stopped caring that my feelings write themselves into my physical presence. I flew home and felt unimportant, but not unwelcome.
December. I resented being in a place where I was all but told to shut up on a regular basis. I dipped out for my birthday because I wanted no expectations and no disappointment. I planned a recital and gave a recital and made myself  both proud and a little closer to Wisconsin. I snuck out one night and didn't feel guilty at all. My resentment toward being at home grew little by little. Christmas day was unremarkable at best. I told my dad his presumptuousness was not only unreasonable but harmful to the family. My church eagerly scrambled to help me get back to Lawrence.
....................................
1. Swim more often.
2. Swear less often.
3. Listen to my body when it doesn't like something or someone.
4. Work on being bold (subtitle: kiss a human).
5. Work on sincerity.
6. Make time to read more.
7. Plus one piercing, plus one tattoo.
*Fever, C.S. Giscombe

1. I have the body ache of realizing I want her to sink in.
2. Not everyone you know is sad. Everyone knows you only communicate in sad, and no one wants to be that asshole who points that out and walks away.
3. There is more than one 'her' on my mind and I don't feel bad about that.
4. I'm going to be twenty next week.
5. Maybe I'm bitter that I'm going to be twenty next week and I still haven't been kissed by someone who doesn't think my feelings are a joke.
6. I sometimes think everyone thinks my feelings are a joke.
7. I sometimes think my own feelings are a joke. 

Nothing

If I had the chance,
I'd have kissed you exactly twenty-three times.

As it is I woke up in someone else's bed and didn't feel awful about it.

I don't
want to make this an issue.
But I am in love with this woman and
I just don't know.

I said I wouldn't talk about it anymore. But I also said I would be
getting over it and look what happened
to that.

The effing eff is this

1. I will not run away to Vermont if my financial aid doesn't come through. I will not do that. I will take some online classes and work as many jobs as possible and write all the time and work out and grow out my hair and work on publishing with my cousin and get my license and read about feminism and plan a trip to visit school/ the Chicago area to see two of my good friends and I will not run away to Vermont and maybe I'll open a coffee/book shop and maybe I won't ever change the world but right now I need to prepare myself to be completely okay with that possibility. Because if I'm not and I can't get back to Lawrence, it might break me a little and I'm not in the mood. Not at all.

2. I need to believe people when they say I sound good after a show. I have no issue accepting audience compliments, mostly because they compliment the whole pit or just the violinist because she's fantastic and loud, but when other musicians casually say I sound good, my first thought is Are you even listening? I don't believe them. I am not a cellist. I am a clarinetist and a vocalist, but I have never been a cellist. My high school pit director used to get really frustrated with me, especially during Fiddler, because he'd say something like "Sounds good!" and I would say something like "Okay." And I knew he wouldn't say it if he didn't mean it (he told me so anyway, more than once) and he's a brilliant musician, but I just. I am not good at the cello. I am a good musician, and I can play the notes and rhythms. But I am not good at the cello. Part of that is because in previous pits, I've had another cellist to cover me, but now I just don't understand that a professional instrumentalist can honestly say to my face that I am playing well and mean it. And I need to get over that.
(The violinist knows exactly how mediocre I am.)

3. What the fuck do I do if I can't go back to Lawrence what the fuck do I do

4. In other news, there is a woman in Chicago and I love her and I'm seventy percent sure that on the side I'm also in love with her and that is something that is probably not good at all. There is one part of me that is absolutely against making assumptions, but there is another part of me, which I am listening to, the part of me that always decided I should leave her room before she could see my feelings all over my face (I have no idea if that was ever successful), that says I should proceed on the rather hefty assumption that the In Love part is 100% not mutual, and justifies this assumption with the safety it provides, which is a huge amount of safety, because let's be real, telling someone you're in love with them is a fucking dangerous thing to do, and also a huge thing to just drop on someone who cares about you but not that way, and complicates everything when it's not mutual. And this friendship means so much to me that I can't justify risking it because I probably feel some certain way. And I feel frustrated with myself because this was done, we agreed twice to leave it alone and I haven't managed to do that and that isn't fair to her and I feel like an asshole, and I'm pretty sure that this feeling is me being nineteen and naive and full of shit and I'm going to keep my fingers crossed that it will fade (fade being relative because it's pretty little and snug among my other thoughts and feelings, not distracting or hurting me) once school resumes (once I'm not just sitting in my house all day four days a week). Or that it's mutual, but let's be real.
(A little shitty/cowardly piece of me wants her to call me drunk and slur 'I love you' through the phone so that we have to talk about it and I could ask how she meant it and just know without it being about, I mean. Without it being my fault.)
(I'm an awful human.)
(I'm not going to talk about it anymore.)

About Body Image

I realize that in this I say some things about my body that could very easily translate into fat-shaming. That is absolutely not my intention. I’m just trying to work through why I felt and feel what I felt and feel about my body. The ways I judge my own body are different from the way I see other bodies. So every time I say I worried about looking fat, it isn’t that I thought/think fat is bad, I’m just a self-obsessed, insecure wreck sometimes and that’s how I judged myself.
I also want to briefly touch on the fact that I’m working out about five hours a week and that isn’t because I want to be thin. I do want to lose weight, but that is only because I know that I’m above my natural weight because of the way I handled taking care of myself the past four or five months (i.e. not sleeping like a normal human, skipping meals to do work/save money, rarely exercising my body at all). I’m being very healthy about this (working out early in the morning and then eating a full breakfast, drinking lots of water, eating only when I’m hungry, not when I feel like it or need something to do) and I’m tracking how much energy I have, how well I sleep, and how well I swim, rather than my actual weight.

SO. The way I think about my body now versus the way I thought about it last summer is different, obviously. Physically, I gained not a whole lot of weight at school (I don’t keep track of the actual number), but enough for me to notice and enough that other people would if they were paying attention. But that’s the thing, no else is really paying attention, and that is a mostly comforting thought. In high school, most noticeably in the spring of senior year, I  gained a confidence that stemmed from me being beautiful enough for myself and screw everyone else. Which is really wonderful, it is, but it created this situation where even if someone held a positive opinion of my physical appearance, I wouldn’t listen. I was afraid that hearing good things from other people about what I viewed as good enough for me and no one else would make me less independent, more eager to be complimented and validated from outside sources, and up until then, my searches for outside validation in any area of life had been not only unsuccessful, but also mildly devastating, and I just. Didn’t need any of that. So I loved my body mostly, still made myself wear sleeves even in ninety-degree heat because I was self-conscious of my scars, and went about my business.
Fast forward to fall. I had a roommate, meaning I needed to be okay with someone else seeing my scars and my chub and that was difficult to accept, but I had no choice. Also I have a great roommate so it’s really okay. I began to realize that when I see people, I don’t see them as the “ideal" weight they could be, I just see them as them, you know? I never question anyone else’s body, so why should I question my own? And that lead to a few weeks in the fall in which I would  wear things more revealing or form-fitting than I was generally comfortable to see if I was the only one who thought that way. (I literally believed that there was a definite line that I could cross and that someone or everyone would have the right to tell me I needed to wear something different. (So of course I pushed it a little bit.)) Obviously, that never happened. So I began examining more closely the bodies around me and how everyone dressed and realized that 1. There is a fashion standard at Lawrence, but it’s barely discernable and it’s set by what people choose to wear, not by what people think other people should wear. We create the standard rather than all trying to fit the media standard of fashion and beauty. I wanted to be able to wear what everyone else was wearing, but I realized everyone else wears whatever the fuck they want. But just as I was really feeling comfortable applying that to myself, winter break came and I returned to sunny Southern California and to the media-based standards that I’d just gotten away from. It turns out that I slipped back into it a little too easily, the thought of no one but me liking my body and that being enough for me but not exactly encouraging either? I was in touch with maybe three or four people from school, and though I realize now that I already had a community of friends there, I didn’t let myself believe it? I didn’t acknowledge that there were other people who like. Thought I was cool and wanted to hang out with me because I was thinking a lot about how I didn’t gain any weight at school but I had the opportunity to lose some and didn’t take it and I was sure everyone at home noticed and everyone at school thought I was lazy.

I’m going to take a hot second to talk about my hair. At this point, it was short. I’d cut it off in the summer for the wrong reasons (my mom wouldn’t leave me alone about it and certain people I wanted to spite told me I wouldn’t like it) and for a few weeks it was nice and cute and easy to care for. But then I started looking mirrors more critically and realized that it made my head look really round but too small to balance out the roundness of my body and I didn’t like that. Most of all, I didn’t feel feminine enough. And while I was aware of the clear social standard that femininity is everything for a woman, blahblahblah, and I knew that I might have internalized that and I knew that someone else might take this opportunity to fight the patriarchy in that way, I conceded the point and decided to grow it out again. I realized that it was my own decision and I felt no pressure to change how I looked except from myself. I just plain didn’t like it.

Anyway. Over the break, my hair got long enough that I could pull it back in a somewhat loose bun and that did a lot for my level of comfort in my own skin. And then it was winter. Real winter. And I was allowed to be cozy-looking all the time and wear big sweaters and boots and warm things and I really liked that. The actual weather wasn’t the most fun (ha. hahaha.) but I handled it well and wasn’t touched by the seasonal disorders I was warned about. Also I realized my immense love for leggings and because they’re generally inexpensive, I ended up with four or five pair and it was the best. It’s because I am short and they sit just above my belly button (all but erasing the fat roll below it) and they make my butt look good and are very comfortable to move in and sit in (unlike jeans, which are great as long as you don’t have to sit for more than like forty minutes and which on my body tend to sit right under that fat roll and make me really uncomfortable and self-conscious of it, so much so that I have to sit with my back perfectly straight, a little bit for a comfortable but mostly so I don’t  feel really fat). Anyway. Leggings = good Body Feelings.

Okay so a thing happened in the winter that technically qualifies as outside validation and I hate that it has influenced me, but it was important in my process of letting go of my fear of outside opinion. I found a handful of people who are now good friends who on a regular basis made sure I felt like an emotionally acceptable human. Also in that time, I discovered (that’s not really the right word for this but) I discovered that there are people at Lawrence (and at home) who find me legitimately physically attractive. Like, enough to say so. In a few cases, enough to have feelings about it. And yes, I had encountered that before, but not from people whose opinions really mattered to me. Lawrence is place where beautiful is something that nearly everyone can see and people don’t have Skinny Blonde lenses they have to take off to see it because not everyone is striving for that? Anyway, I realized that I don’t have to be sarcastic or self-deprecating around these people when I talked about self-image because they just get it. (This is basically a shout-out to Sam and Anna, if you’re reading this.) I didn’t have that so much at home. Anyway, I made a point of being friends with these people who also didn’t fit the Skinny Blonde mold but who are, generally speaking, stupidly beautiful. And through them and also a generally supportive environment (and also le Hannah, who will probably get her own paragraph or two in one of these things later) I was able to let go of my closed-off attitude about my body and appearance and kind of just let other people have opinions about it and let myself be alright with that. And because of that shift in attitude, I’ve now achieved an even stronger sense of Fuck You This Is My Body, because I let myself accept the positive feedback instead of listening only to myself (which was also a generally positive voice but? Do you get what I’m saying?)
Anyway, spring rolled around and I felt a little worried because I couldn’t look cute and cozy all the time anymore, but I realized upon close examination of myself that yes, I’d gained weight, but I was (duh!) physically different than I was at fifteen and that the weight settled well into my figure because I was done with the general roundness and awkwardness of fifteen and had generally grown into a woman’s body. And I realized that I really like that, both in myself and in the people I tend to find attractive. So I embraced lace and a semi-bare midriff and tight pants and well-fitted dresses and literally felt good almost all the time. And that was wonderful. I worried that when I came home, it would be harder to do that, but I’m pretty much succeeding so far.

I also want to acknowledge how big an influence tumblr has had on how I view my body. When I first joined tumblr, I was semi-immersed in the self-harm and thinspiration wings of it. And that was just not healthy for me. ( I don’t think it’s healthy for anyone.) But over the course of the past year and a half, I’ve moved over into the feminism, body positivity wing and that literally has made such a huge impact on how I view myself and the people around me and how I filter through the media regarding body and the beauty standard I see on a regular basis. And that’s a big deal, that a website/ group of blogs can do that. That’s powerful.

So in conclusion, I’m still insecure about my body sometimes, and I still worry about what other people think of it, but today I realized that own a black bra facilitates the wearing of a black lace shirt without a black half-shirt beneath it and I look hot and I kind of feel like that every day, which is great, and this is obviously still a process, but this is something that I’m really happy with right now, and I really believe that this is a good fight and right now it’s going really well for me.

July Fourth

Kay tonight is good. I feel at home for the first time since I arrived.

ANYway.

Working out at seven every morning doesn't actually leave you more energy the rest of the day if you stay up until three every night. In case anyone was wondering.

Fireworks, man. Fireworks.

My parents have handled our disposition toward school so brilliantly. I started struggling in fourth grade to understand why I just couldn't make myself do what everyone else seemed to find so simple, and I started struggling with really fully deeply hating myself because of that around seventh grade. I came through that with the ability to understand how I learn and how people learn and the ability to view the system critically and think of ways to change it because my siblings and I have had such an immense amount of trouble succeeding within that system. And throughout this ongoing twenty+ year ordeal, my mother in particular has been so strong in her belief in our worth as humans and in her own critical view of the school system, and the fact that we two can now have these important conversations about this is something that makes me feel sure that the whole struggle has been absolutely worth it. And I'm going to be able to give my kids that much more support and perspective if they are thrust into this same system.

I cannot write anything at all. I've written maybe one good piece of work since I've been home, and that is because I'm subconsciously emotionally prepping for a massive (and obviously super profound and poignant and significant (sorry, I'm reading Dave Eggers)) outpouring of self-reflection about my year at Lawrence and my place in the feminism and writing worlds (they're still separate worlds for me and that feels weird as hell) and how I view myself in the context of romantic relationships and close friendships and how I see the line between those two things (also love vs. in love) and how I'm just now coming into my own and how I've been saying that since last March and how I know what I want to do after college and where I want to start and how I'm prepared to slap myself into shape (in regard to organization and planning and self-management and motivation) and how I'm sure I want kids now and how my relationship with my body and my voice and music in general has changed and how my sexuality is rather fluid but also pretty fixed at the moment and how I feel about my family and why we learn the way we learn and our place in our community financially and academically and racially and how I've started reading again and. Yeah. It'll be big and cathartic and insanely invigorating.

Summer is good. I still don't have a job or money for another year at Lawrence. But I feel good. I feel really good.

This was accidentally a little bit of a novel but literally just wait until I actually write about these things.
Also, I'm listening to fucking Yellowcard's new album and I haven't decided how I feel about it, but for real. Yellowcard is secretly not-so-secretly my longest-standing guilty (not guilty at all oops) pleasure.

In Tremendous Ease

Tomorrow is June.
I feel so good here. At peace.
I am not  all ready for this to end.

How do I leave? How have I been so far from home? Where is home anyway?
How can humans live away from people they love? How can they even breathe?