tolerant snails

no matter how hard you try, or how much time passes, there are some people that you will not be able to stand. or tolerate, if you will.

this does not make you a bad person. it simply means that you don’t have enough in common to be able to be around them or hear news about them.

it doesn’t make them a bad person either. it just means they’re annoying. and that’s fine. you might be annoying to someone. you probably are. life goes on, though. we wake up, we try not to focus on the bad, and we indulge in things we are passionate about, no matter how ridiculous those passions might be.

for me, it’s tacos, wizard rock, good fanfiction, poetry, good books, and drawing pictures of sexy women or my friends. those are all simple things that can take my mind so far from one annoying person that i’m clear for the rest of the night. and that’s all i really ever need. just to be okay for the night. because tomorrow, regardless of chores and things i have to do, i force room for past time activities. i am a snail.

sometimes i’ve felt bad about my snail-like existence. not everyone gets the chance to do their favorite past time activities, so stress piles up on them and before they know it they’re tossing themselves off mount doom. but i know how important these past times are for me. some call it lazy, but i call it taking my mind off of the people and things i can’t stand.

and it’s working.

snail-like, but it is.

Family Photos

“nans, i went to both ladies
at target
you’re saving the photos to the
camera, not the card.”

“hm.”

mom adds her 2 cents.
“she can put the card
in her computer
and tell you more than they did.”

i dash away, beckon the internet -
oh look,
all 18 shining photos
i never wanted to see
hello, sister.

“it’s a close-up! doesn’t she look nice?”
no, she doesn’t.
she’s just a big-toothed stranger.
and there you are, dad,

smiling next to her like there’s no tomorrow.
but when you’re shoved into my vicinity,
the camera melts. you are plastic.

i wonder what someone would say
if they ever tied us down long enough
to see our family photo.

"the christmas thing" warning: sad

my mom noted the other day, "i don't think tianna's much into the christmas thing."

and i'm really not. for me, christmas is 50% about the snow, 35% about food, 5% about family time, and 10% about sleeping. i really hope that added up.

the whole thing just makes me so sad. buying presents, expecting a lot, giving more than you need to, feeling like your gifts and money are inadequate, people giving and getting shitty gifts, people ignoring their families on the holidays, it just comes back to haunt me every year. the rushing last-minute crowds, the screaming children, the pleading parents - it makes me want to break down and cry.

i like thanksgiving a lot more. i can't put my finger on it, but i think it's mostly because there's no pressure. in my house, thanksgiving has always equaled food, fatness, and football. and absolutely nothing else. christmas is different. it's things like christmas where gifts are a tradition - expected - that makes me miss people (or more accurately, the way they used to be) - my sister, my dad, my family as a whole, myself. this holiday makes me feel like i need to be perfect. it makes me feel like i should be richer. its consumerism makes me feel like i am stuck in an age of cheesy commercials and if-you-don't-have-a-normal-family-at-least-a-normal-holiday-dinner-then-you-dont-know-what-christmas-is. and that consumerist state is where i'm living. and every christmas, there's no way out.

so i'm sorry, mom, if i don't seem too into the christmas thing. i guess 2 hours in a car to wait for a crappy ten minute light show in the pouring rain is not my thing. i'm sorry you get so excited to the point of squealing and i look like a deadbeat in the backseat. i'm truly, truly sorry, because i know it's your thing. i know your parents told you you wouldn't get presents if you didn't believe in santa clause. i know they were different. and i know you're the only one in the family i have left, and i'm sorry we can't even connect on this level while i'm home from school.

The Square Root of Facebook and my Ex

The tips of my hair breach the icy water as I bend over the sink, back throbbing. Toothpaste (zahnpasta) slugs toward the drain. I shuffle back to my cave, clenching my hands around your curly hair fresh out of the shower. My laptop glows, greeting me like a lover.
First picture. Look, it’s us as strangers. It won’t be until months later that I scrape my knees – and my elbows and my calves – falling for you. Each morning is the kinetic energy of a looping rollercoaster, halving me over the toilet with a twisted grin.
Next picture. Look, it’s you immersed with your laptop. The way you concentrate on the screen, eyes wide (as opposed to the familiar squint) – I know your whole being is focused on it. I still wish you could’ve saved some of that energy for me.
Next picture. Look, there’s your family. Arms enveloping. Eyes sparkling. Smiles glittering. So unlike my clump of relatives. The two of us left surround the dining room table set for Thanksgiving, stabbing at our segregated foods – somewhere between the fake turkey and the real turkey is your Sprite and bacon.
Damn it, you’re in my dining room too.
And here’s this Word document, sinking under the adolescence anchor. And I’m done with your photo albums, done with your sapiosexuality, so my brain crawls through the plain white hallways back to senior year. Ten sweaty fingers grasped my Samsung Reality, attempting to spell out my seizing heart.
None of the frantic Forensics class texts sent under the Green River Killer’s watchful gaze from the TV ever mattered. My thoughts jogged laps around themselves – empty calories. Mr. Zoldak wasn’t stupid, he knew my cell phone was propped up against my bag with the lowest light setting just like everyone else’s.
“We’re on lockdown. There was some campus shooting. How appropriate that we’re learning about this shit.” My immaculate anti chat speak messages were bred from your politically correct tongue, while my mind was a slur of “will you just get in my bed already?” and “oh, my mom’s gonna love you”.
You didn’t buzz my Samsung back until late that night.
You gravitated toward my love, but I never saw the red creeping up your cheekbones.
That was the last time I’ll ever look through your tagged photos, I swear.

City Girl

A gust of oven-like July air whips my face, gathering my pink dress behind one knee. I step into the Monongahela Incline station with my mother and Danny. Around us, potential passengers await the chariot that will take them down the hill. Hills – one of the most comforting aspects about growing up in Pittsburgh. Ever since I was pea-sized my dad would remind me that the chances of a tornado rolling through our city were slim to none: there were so many big, bad hills to scare the measly storm away.

The Monongahela (“Mon”) Incline, the nation’s oldest cable car, brings travelers from the bottom of the hill to the top of the hill. Since 1870, it has transported twenty-three people at a time at six miles per hour up and down the hill. A decade earlier, the city’s industrialization was booming, magnetizing mainly German immigrants. The crowded industry pushed them to the top of “Coal Hill” (Mt. Washington). Transportation up and down the hill was difficult, so the Germans instinctively decided to bring their seilbahns (cable cars) to the city.

Taking a step back from the outlook binoculars, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania is the City of [446] Bridges, the Steel City, and home of the Steelers. We bleed black and yellow, the hues blending together to form the dirty brown gunk that settles at the bottom of the three rivers: the Monongahela and the Allegheny, which merge into the Ohio.

Above the Allegheny, the Three Sisters were the first self-anchored suspension bridges in the United States. Their top cables attach to the actual road as opposed to in the ground. Built during the Great Depression, these bridges loom over Pittsburghers, filling them with a strong sense of pride. The steel Three Sisters are the only trio of identical bridges, unusual for being built with cantilever methods, or having a beam of support at only one end. In other places, you might have to choose either precarious or sturdy to describe a structure: in Pittsburgh, we want – and get – the best of both worlds. Danny sees the Incline as dangerous, but I think of it as extremely durable, and maybe that’s the beauty of the contraption as well as the city. It’s spontaneous and unexpected, yet wholesome. Every glimpse of the Pittsburgh skyline is somehow different from the glance stolen previously.

Because the Incline gives such a great view of downtown as it snakes down the hill, it’s often the first place that pops into my mind along with a mental Post-It note of “you need to see this!” when my Internet friends tell me they’re coming to visit my city.

This is the nature of my meeting Danny: I accepted his MySpace friend request – he was a fellow Harry Potter fan and musician – and shortly after learned he was dating a mutual friend of ours, Liz. After that, we both attended Terminus, a Harry Potter convention in Chicago. After returning to the online world and joining a yearlong YouTube collaboration channel together, we decided a reunion was in order.

***

While we reunite we wait for a pink jumper clad child to crawl into an Incline seat and then we settle for the upmost bench. I’m squished between my mom and Danny.
Danny’s knuckles whiten around the wooden bench beneath us. A lumpy graffiti heart reads “A&L Forever!” The skyscrapers beyond the musty glass panes of the Incline barely catch my eye; the sights have become like next-door neighbors. My mother giggles at the way Danny wildly cranes his neck out the window to spot the Carnegie Science Center, the PPG (Pittsburgh Plate Glass Company) Building, which has a 60-foot Christmas tree in the center of its ice skating rink, and Heinz Field, the Steelers’ playground.

In the distance, the yellow Three Sisters bridges arch and bend under the humidity. I think of how sturdy they are, how they’ve been stretched across the Allegheny for almost a century. It reminds me of how my best friend Bobby has always been ever-present in my life.

***

I frantically stuffed clothes into a suitcase the night before I left for college. I put off most of my packing until several hours before I left to distract myself from how much I’d miss home. My mom and I planned to leave at six a.m. On top of the hole that would be left in my heart from the lack of familiar cats to greet me at the college entrance, I knew my bones would be aching with exhaustion once I got there.

Blinking back tears, trying to attach myself to numbness, I stumbled down the darkened stairwell to my kitchen, hoping to find solace somewhere in the empty cabinets. I wasn’t searching long through stale Triscuits before I got a text from Bobby saying, “I’m on my way with Taco Bell.” It’s something we’d always joked about, since neither of us could drive, that one day he would randomly show up at my house and together we would rid our problems with guacamole and mild sauce.

I didn’t reply, just awaited his arrival with anticipation: to eat, but more importantly to wrap my arms around my best friend one last time before separating for three months. We chowed down on our burritos, laughing at Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince on the TV and acting like nothing was about to change.
I can’t help but draw connections between the Three Sisters bridges and the people I associate with this city. It would take a lot to crush their impulsive spirits.

***

“What if this thing falls off the tracks?” Danny panics, his voice rising with fear. The women across from us look at him affectionately, as if he’s a child who’s lost his mother.
Danny is nineteen. He’s from Buffalo, New York, where the plains stretch for miles and the hills hide under a cloak of invisibility. They have grass; we have strong, square-grounded buildings. They grow shaky people like Danny, who can’t even picture the bottom of the hill; we grow sturdy and comforting people like my mother, who knows exactly where to look when I misplace my glasses. To Danny, this fit-for-the-elderly Incline ride is just as scary as the Phantom’s Revenge, Kennywood’s most dangerously thrilling rollercoaster. In actuality, we’re moving along at turtle speed.

“We won’t fall off, sweetheart. This thing has been running for hundreds of years,” my mom tells him, and one of the women nods in agreement.

“Oh my God, oh my God,” Danny grabs around for my hand as we roll down the hill. His big brown doe eyes are focused on the clouds, far, far away.

I let him latch onto me. Glossy buildings ahead reflect the setting sun, whose rays bounce off my glasses and back onto the Incline’s windows. The Monongahela River glistens, every few feet of her segmented by golden lights. Every Internet friend that comes to visit me makes my perspective on this city shift.

Pittsburgh has been voted “America’s Most Livable City” numerous times by business leaders like Forbes.com and The Economist. The “Livability” flows from a diverse cultural community, the fact that job opportunities aren’t completely invisible, highly available education, affordable housing, and accessible transportation. The language of Pittsburghese is an eccentric one, featuring words such as chipped ham and hoagies, yinz and jaggerbushes. “Keep a babushka around your little head to keep ahht the cold!” my father would warn before I’d head off to school in the mornings. “Hun, will you help me warsh the car when you get home?”

But the memories I have of the ‘Burgh go deeper than dialect.

***

It was my eighth birthday – August 7th, so hot that the skin on my arms could’ve peeled over my fingernails and ended up a boneless puddle on the concrete.

“I hope you know I’m gonna splash you with water, birthday girl!” my friend Jessica teased. I frowned and refrained from giggling: I wasn’t a girly girl.

Our floral Target bathing suits hugged our bellies, scrunchies clasped our ponytails tight, and excitement prodded us in the back, urging us into the backseat. When we arrived at the wave pool, however, a large brown sign announced its closure because of storms earlier in the day.
“I want to go in!” I grumbled, crossing my arms. That stupid sign wasn’t holding me back from my cool, beloved waves – not on my birthday!

“We’ll figure something out, sweetheart,” my mom took me by the shoulder and spun me in the direction of our Subaru.

When we got home, there was no need to take our bathing suits off – my sister and brother were already ready with a full bucket of water balloons to pelt us with! Within five minutes of having launched I had forgotten all about the wave pool’s closure: all that mattered was seeing how many of my friends I could get soaking wet. There was something about that day, something I found at home that I couldn’t find at my favorite place to swim, and that something planted an impulsive instinct within me.

***

“Thanks so much for helping us out, Tianna.”

As a high school senior I volunteered at the East End Food Co-Op (“Open to everyone, everyday”), home of local produce and sustainable groceries. The aroma of Jambalaya rice and curried tofu wriggled their way through the air into my nostrils. I checked in on my last day before an employee grabbed me by the arm and led me to the storage room for a secret vegetarian Thanksgiving feast. And I thought my last day volunteering would be just another day of stocking beans!

I sat on a plastic bench and stuffed my face full of Tofurky and potatoes before venturing back out into the organic chaos.

“Aisle five for the vegan lip balm,” I told the pretty white-haired girl with plugs in her ears who approached me while I stocked boxes of chai tea. At the end of my third hour, I would hurry back to the “Produce Pit” and take peppers and potatoes that were perfectly fine but deemed too damaged to be sold. With the unprocessed, natural food came an unprocessed, natural atmosphere where everyone spoke in a tone that left me feeling warm despite the winter winds.

Across the neighboring Liberty Bridge and east down 71B, you’ll find the Cathedral of Learning, which is the centerpiece of the University of Pittsburgh. This forty-two-floor building has served as a hang out for my friends and I on numerous occasions. Sometimes we’ll film Harry Potter-themed music videos; other times we’ll just stroll around the old, pictorial building.
During the making of the Cathedral in 1926, the Great Depression-struck builders found themselves in debt. An international fundraiser was created where various countries sent money to fund this Gothic Revival building. As a result, there are twenty-seven nationality rooms dedicated to each contributor. In the words of the tenth University of Pittsburgh Chancellor John Gabbert Bowman, “The building was to be more than a schoolhouse; it was to be a symbol of the life that Pittsburgh through the years had wanted to live.” This rings very true, and I can’t help but agree that Pittsburgh has its own wants: the high arches and Indiana limestone under my feet makes me feel as if I’m in a postcard. Each time I visit, it’s hard not to dig for my digital camera and capture the aged nooks and crannies, sure that so many before me have done the same.

In times such as these, I feel like a tourist in my own city. From the “Mon” Incline to this magnificent education palace, Pittsburgh houses my every whimsical want. If I were to say, “Let’s go look at dead birds with their eyes stuffed full of cotton!” the sentence wouldn’t have to be fully out of my mouth before we’d be in the car on our way to the Carnegie Museum of Natural History. Other times, such as when my online friends visit my city, it feels as if I am sucked into the city itself, as if the city built me and parts of my heritage are ground into the steel mills.

Since the months leading up to the Harry Potter convention Terminus in 2008, I’ve made connections with people who, before the convention, were only Internet friends – friends I had strong relationships with, yet only existed online. A select few came to Pittsburgh to visit me, however. They slept on my bedroom floor, let me cook vegan food for them, and whipped out their cameras at all the ‘Burgh sights.

Ivy, a girl from southwest Virginia with a triangular smile, was my first Internet friend. We bonded on MySpace over our mutual Harry Potter addiction, and she visited me for the whole month of July before Terminus. We decided to make this happen spur-of-the-online-moment a couple weeks before she showed up at my house on the hill with a hug tight enough to crack my back.
I ended up taking her to Mt. Washington, where she held back squeals of fear on the Incline, but the skyline wasn’t as memorable as she was. She had a southern way of speaking that tugged at the corners of my lips, daring them to curve into a smile.

“Do you want to go to the pool sometime?” I asked Ivy in an attempt at taking her mind off the apparently horrid screeching of the Incline’s breaks down the 370-foot hill.

Her blonde brows knitted together. “What’s that?”

“Like, a swimming pool?” I clarified, not sure what I said wrong.

“Ohhh, the po-ell!”

I erupted in laughter, wondering if maybe my accent was the confusing one.

In the midst of dying each other’s hair red one night, we decided to make a quick Wal-Mart trip to pick up iron-on letters for the T-shirts we wanted to make in celebration of Ivy’s first wizard rock concert in the ‘Burgh.

“This is ridiculous. When are we going back?” Ivy groaned with a blue plastic bag on her head, retaining heat while her hair turned a deep burgundy color.

“I don’t know,” I laughed. “When we find the right letters!” my mouth ached from smiling as I arched off the dirty Wal-Mart floor, lunging for a “G” or a “Y” – how many people wanted to spell “Ginny”, really?

When Ivy left Pittsburgh, she took a piece of me with her, but she gave me something as well. She revived within me an unstructured courage to say whatever I wanted, how I wanted it, whenever I wanted to – after all, everyone has different accents.

***

After a Paramore and No Doubt concert in the summer of 2009 I got lost in Squirrel Hill at two a.m. with another Internet friend, Alex, and his Cinderella license – we were out three hours past the underage drivers’ curfew limitation.

“Guys, where do I turn?” Alex steered away from a swerving car.

“Up here… No, here. No, maybe try right there.” Bobby tried his best not to sound clueless from the backseat. I chewed on my chocolate chip cookie from the East End Food Co-Op and tried to summon the homey smells that would drag reassuring comfort along with them.

“Yeah, that’s Boulevard of the Allies!” I, for once, felt totally in control of my navigational skills. And then… “It’s not? Shit...”

As we flew around the curbs I felt weightless, like I was running for my life while still sitting shotgun. The heated night air tangled my hair in its claws, tempting me, whistling and chanting, “why aren’t you worried, child?” I didn’t know the answer, and I didn’t care for it. Freedom is as freedom does.

Beechwood Boulevard had us buried in its tentacles, yet I felt no discomfort at becoming its prey. Take me for what I am, we belted carelessly during a miserably off-key RENT sing along. The blackened street could’ve swallowed up the Jeep right then and we would have kept singing.

***

Pittsburgh is where I attended my first wizard rock concert, twenty-eight minutes from my bedroom walls plastered left and right with beloved Harry Potter actors. I logged onto MySpace one day, found out The Remus Lupins were coming to town on July 31st, and did everything I could to find myself a ride down to Schenley Park. Eventually, Bobby and I were piled in a car on the road to pure bliss.

Bobby and I had always talked about how we wanted out so bad: out of our bedrooms, out of our high school, out of our circle of friends, out of our families, out of our relationships, out of our lives, but most of all, out of our city. Pittsburgh never really provided much for us, and for years we would stroll past magnificent skyscrapers and not bat an eyelash. Then came handfuls of wizard rock shows where we clasped our sweaty hands together whilst belting out lyrics that showcased our love for the boy who lived. After socializing with the bands that produced the songs we held so dear (“I freaking love your music. Can I give you a hug?” “Of course! I love you!”), our connection to the music pinned us against our city, leaving us unable to fly free even if we wanted to.

***

“Pittsburgh is one of my favorite places to play,” Matt of The Whomping Willows admits in the middle of one of his local sets, “because we don’t have to tell you to dance. You just feel it in your souls and you act upon it.”

Matt got it spot on, and it’s shocking to discover that not every city he stops to play at on his States-wide tours is this energetic. Does this make us better fans? Probably not. More memorable ones, however? Possibly. And if that’s all we can muster, I’ll be satisfied. We Pittsburghers don’t have to try hard to be remembered, and that knowledge seeps into my bloodstream and injects me with a woozy feeling that hardens into strength.

At Matt’s appreciative words there is a loud applause from the audience of twenty. It is this that makes every other concert's crowds seem abnormally lifeless. In mainstream mosh pits, it doesn’t feel as if there are hearts beating as one - or even two.

“Dude, stop fuckin’ spazzin out!” a tall burly guy in plaid yelled from behind me at The Used’s Pittsburgh show in 2009. The guy took a swig of beer and calmly surveyed the mosh pit a few feet away.

“Aight, lumberjack…” I muttered, jumping to the beat. My short stature meant a wide array of heads, hats, and hands obscured my favorite mainstream band. I was spazzing out? Did he see that flock of preteen girls fleeing the mosh pit screaming at the top of their lungs seconds ago?
I’m not sure whether it was him or not, but by the end of the night I was bruised in places I wasn’t used to feeling. Lazy trails of sweat slithered from my ponytail down the back of my shirt as I tried to ignore the craze of fans slapping each other’s faces to get closest to the stage.

“Just ignore him…” Bobby rolled his eyes, grabbing my hand and jumping alongside me. I recognized the playful opening chords of “All That I’ve Got” immediately and was thrust into the present, focusing on what really mattered – the music. That is, until a guy spilled beer all over his girlfriend outside the bathroom and laughed about it.

This wasn’t normal concert behavior. It couldn’t be. After so many wizard rock shows where love was preached and hugs were given out like elbows in the side in a mosh pit, I wasn’t used to this. It wasn’t right. This was normality, and I was hooked on the sturdy spontaneity of introducing myself to anyone at wizard rock shows just because I knew we automatically had a love for books in common. At The Used’s show, something didn’t settle right. I left empty – dazzled by their talent, but empty.

After seeing wizard rock bands play and being the catalyst for dance lines in so many audiences, I was inspired to start my own band, I Speak Tree.

Between my city’s bridges and its impressive glassy skyline lies the strength to make a stranger smile. And through my music, I wanted to be sturdy enough to be a cause, no matter how small, of that smile.

Freya, from the local Harry Potter group, and I will go months without communication, yet she handed me the opportunity to play my first show.

Tianna! Her email read one day. You need to do this!

Underneath was a forwarded message from Steph, the girl from Tonks and the Aurors, requesting an opening act at her Pittsburgh show. My cheeks flushed at the thought of Freya’s mind connecting that searching email with my amateur songs on MySpace.

At that first performance on the South Side, people clapped along and waved their cell phones high above their heads. Although the audience didn’t recognize the lyrics, the music was central to Harry Potter. As they clapped along to the beat, I saw the ‘Burgh truly acting without precedence.

A tweet from Freya after the show read, “I Speak Tree is amazing.”

Maybe I did cause a smile or two.

***

It is a few months back and I am standing atop the Carnegie Science Center’s lookout tower. I gaze through a telescope and spot Venus. Night air wraps around my waist, a sash concealing my fear of heights. I am in the “Most Livable City”. The “Mon” Incline across the river beams its fluorescent lights toward me. As they reflect through my glasses, I am pulled back in the moment with my Internet-friend-made-real-best-friend.

We reach “dahntahn” and the incline’s wheels judder and halt. Danny lets loose his breath. Station Square rattles my restless mind awake: the clinking of cutlery and wine glasses from the Hard Rock Café surrounds me on one side, set against the square Bar Louie with a consistently out-of-order photo booth separating the two.

The sun has set by the time we reach the Square. A fountain glows with colors, the water tails whipping and cascading toward the Hard Rock patio seats, spraying the bricks beneath. They go off every twenty minutes, soaring forty feet in the air to different musical themes several times a day.

The fountain sways along to everything from Disney to Christina Aguilera (who hails from the ‘Burgh itself). Danny, Mom, and I have arrived just in time for the Elvis Presley selection. It’s August in the city, and the thought of dancing in the damp breeze is devilishly tempting.

“You look like an angel…” From the loudspeakers, Elvis’s “Devil in Disguise” lassoes my hips toward the flamboyant fountain. I am momentarily airborne, my feet propelling toward the lights. Regardless of the fact that there are families, elderly couples, and tiny children watching, I dance. Without looking twice at the camera my giggling mother switched to record mode, I flail my arms to the beat. There is nothing more important than living this, here, now.
Whatever you call it – the City of Bridges, the Smoky City, or Steeler Country – is irrelevant.

To me, it will remain the place where I can gaze at the skyscraper neighbors, saying, “That’s the pavilion where I went to my first wizard rock show!” and “I used to be terrified of the Omnimax at that Science Center!” In one Incline ride, the three rivers below swallow my pride whole. From there it’ll flow out again, wiggling through the water cycle. A part of nature. Something I should have but didn’t see coming.

The rush of a train rumbles in my chest like a bass, just like the train that runs directly behind my house. I am home with Danny, whose mouth spreads wide with joy. His chipped front tooth is flawless and his fear is still seated on the Incline. His Buffalo heart has been claimed by the sturdy Steel City.

A few feet behind the fountain, I grip the gate lining the Monongahela. Mist drifts languidly up around the cool metal bars. I arch backward, relishing an upside down view of Station Square, and shimmy, clasping the gate with one hand – totally gracefully, too – until I topple toward the concrete.

Danny’s arms latch onto my shoulders. “Tianna!” he gives a huge open-mouthed laugh.

“Shut up!” I push him off, spin around, and gyrate my butt against the bars, swinging my hips to my heart’s content. I will look good dancing even if it means a near-fatal accident in the midst of it.

Date whoever the fuck you want.

This is my response to the ever so popular “Date a girl who reads”/”Date an illiterate girl” articles.

Date whoever the fuck you want. You can find them anywhere. They will either be sipping from a wide range of beverages, or not drinking at all. Find them in the nightclub, in the library, at school, at your next door neighbor’s house. Realize that even if she doesn’t know who the hell James Joyce is, it doesn’t make her stupid. And if she does pretend, it doesn’t make her pretentious.

Date whoever the fuck you want, because chances are, they’re not going to call you out on having a type. Search for him or her in the low shadow of the concert hall or in the fluorescent lighting backstage. Understand that just because someone doesn’t read regularly doesn’t mean they’re illiterate. Whoever the fuck you choose will be grateful, because you, my friend, are a paragon of integrity. Don’t know what that means? Well, clearly, you aren’t a girl who reads.

Whoever the fuck you choose will not have a type to comply with, because they will be their own person. They will not be filed under any superficial category, for contrary to popular belief, there is a plethora of people out there who do not strictly fit under either “bookworm” or “partygoer.” She or he might be wearing a short skirt or a full tuxedo. They might be a stripper. They might be a librarian. They might be both.

You will propose to them by doing whatever the fuck you want. Whenever the fuck you want. However the fuck you want. But don’t do it over Skype. (What the fuck? Why would a girl who reads want to be proposed to over Skype? No.) Also, if your girl is reciting Keats under her breath like some sort of psycho I’m worried.

Understand that if you choose a girl who reads, it doesn’t mean that she automatically understands people. If you find whoever the fuck you want, keep them close. Hopefully, they will cherish the fact that you chose them for who they are and not what they do. Whoever the fuck you choose will understand that people develop, as well, and they will be proud of you for getting past the utterly judgmental state of “I’m solely looking for someone who does/does not read.”

Date whoever the fuck you want, because you deserve it. After all this time of reading all these blogs about what kind of attitude the girl you date should possess, you get a break. Go choose on your own. Don’t subscribe to bullshit. Date whoever the fuck you want, because your mind wants what it fucking wants.

Or better yet, don’t date anyone at all.

STRESSBLOG

Now that my first true college finals (as opposed to the fake college finals I took at community college?) are approaching, my writing proficiency portfolio is due by Saturday, the DC Yule Ball is Friday, my last art class is tomorrow and I'll be putting that portfolio all night, and this is a run on sentence...

Well, NOW I've decided that amidst the procrastination, it is a good time to STRESSBLOG. STRESSBLOG is in ALL CAPS because STRESSBLOG insinuates that I am stressed and blogging. Which I am. I know I need to stop this instant. My memoir for nonfiction class is calling my name. This girl in the library needs to stop talking so loud. I got very excited at the idea of the "quiet zone" when finals time came along, but this is not a quiet zone. It is a war zone. It is a STRESSBLOG war zone of little soldiers at their carbon copy computers, shoved in their carbon copy carrels (is that how you spell the computer desk object thing that traps you inside like a cell?)

The soldiers who are marching on the thesis line are hunched over their keyboards, tapping away bullshit to store for later use. It could help them become a doctor. It could help them become a publisher. Or it could just help them graduate and therefore be in debt. Then there's the c.) all of the above option, but no one thinks of that come crunch time.

The lazier fighters, the ones who will probably get executed by the time they stomp forward to the thesis line, are too busy on Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter, Etsy, refreshing their mail accounts, and STRESSBLOGing. People want to know about their lives SO much that they curl into little balls in their faded, mysteriously dirty orange womb chairs and try to escape the pressure. Why do work when they can focus on their own life and talk about the things that have been affecting them as if they're #1 on everyone's list?

Since my last blog post, I've been elected co-president of Prism, the gay club here, with my friend Carina. I'm pretty excited, but also kind of nervous. Prism presidents lead the discussion each week with the group, and once the actual president was absent so Carina and I did it. And it was kind of scary cause people have opinions and opinions are scary. Especially when they're WRONG. Just kidding. Kind of. We're submitting our club budget soon (yeah, yeah, we're late as hell), and gearing up for a Drag Ball in Gaypril. Yaaay!

Here I am, comfortably situated in middle of the soldiers, not quite to the thesis line but not at the stumbling end. I know where I'm going, I've just got to get there. And I guess that's a lot better than a lot of people come finals time. Before I end this blog I also need to stress how proud I am of my college for having four Twitters dedicated to 3 buildings and a road on campus.

I'm living the awesome life.

This turned out to be less of a STRESSBLOG than a MAYBEIMNOTSOSTRESSEDIMJUSTCOMPLAINING blog. But I hope you liked it anyway.

Metal smiles and Hagrid hugs,
Tianna

giving thanks and tofurky, and being content

hello friends! or just empty virtual air space. it is thanksgiving eve and i haven't updated in a while. honestly, i think the title of this blog is quite redundant. tofurky should just be a synonym for "giving thanks". because that's how i feel when i eat it. it feels like a deep, fresh breath of thanks.

lately i've been very content. i still speak and think stubbornly, which i'm working on - okay not really, maybe, sort of - but i'm not upset 24/7 anymore. i don't know if "leveling" is the right word to use, but i guess i've come to terms with the inexplicable sadness in my life. and there are little things, little dreams i have had for years that have recently come true, or started to blossom and turn into truths. like how i know i'm awesome, like how i know i'm talented, and creative, and worth something. and i've come to terms with more difficult things too, like how i may never speak to my sister again, like how i have a crummy relationship with my dad and brother, like how my cat insists on lying on my printer and violently swishing her tail through the blue plastic beads hanging nearby.

as much as i don't like to admit it for the cheesiness factor alone, this time of year makes me very sentimental. not that i'm not always sort of sentimental, but this time of year especially makes me reflect on the past year more than christmas or the actual new year does. and this year, i'm very content. maybe it's the fact that i have overcome so many things that i never thought i could: go to college, live with a roommate, get a job, get a girlfriend, be happy for an extended period of time, etc. i'm not even sure where these things all came from. it seems as if i was dropped into some weird crater of adulthood and i came out morphed as a human being worth the "being".

i often think like this, and then the negatives all hit me at once: thousands of my nonexistant dollars are still due in january for next semester, i need to get on things like internships and volunteer work, i need to stop being so awkward, i need to stop being so ugly/incompetent/stupid. and then something happens, and i straighten my spine and say "fuck it". and i think the something that happens is i think of someone. and that someone i think is really two people. and those two people are the women who led my early immersion program at college, cynthia and yona.

sitting at my squeaky cloth computer chair four or so months back, i groaned at the idea of an early immersion program. they all sounded so lame. i wasn't that interested in baltimore city, i didn't really have an urge to do community service, and i wasn't religious enough for the one called "inspire".. although yes, it had a cool name, i had to admit. plus, the fee of $75 made my bank card, my mother, and my mind shrink in fear. anything over $15 pushed our buttons regardless of the value. but to my mother (and it's catching on to me), knowledge is priceless. that's why we'll struggle with the thousands of dollars due each year for school. and it's paid off already. in inspire and after, yona and cynthia taught me that i'm good enough, and that my best doesn't always need to be exerted, as long as i try. and for that, i couldn't thank them enough. they are two of the most calming people i have ever, ever met.

another one of those calming people is mrs. krett, who was my senior english teacher. i would end up crying to her in the chair next to hers behind her desk about the various mundane aspects of my life, such as "he won't take me to prom" or "i feel so overwhelmed..." "by what?" "nothing. no seriously, nothing." after she handed me the tissue box, she would give me this motherly look with her brow raised. it wasn't a pitying look, but it could have passed for one.

i know mrs. krett just wanted me to be brave. earlier in the year she had commented on how i really had my "shit together" and how she wished she could've done so when she was my age. she saw me get rejected from my top 9 (out of 10) colleges within a 2 week span. she hugged me after each one and let me attempt to disguise my tears of disgust with myself.

i think i'll always remember one thing she told me during a cry session. "you don't have to be happy. it's enough to just be content." and i don't know if she knew how much she impacted me when she told me that. it's my goal to let her know someday, without her laughing, without my voice breaking, and without seeming insincere. i want her to know how much she's changed me, to this day, for me to be able to sit down and extensively blog - something i never ever got the motivation to do - about my life, and about being content. because that's what i am. and i've been working to get to this point ever since she told me that. and i will never stop working.

"how's the 4.0 coming?"

well, at first it slipped and slid way up the junior year slope,
took some tumbles, twists, and turns of a senior,
got stowed away in my suitcases,
all packed up for college,
tucked away soundly in between cotton,
pink, gray, yellow, blue, fabric far from new,
stuffed in the trunk along with my guitar and other junk,
propelled forward with the air from thin, pursed lips,
set free into the air, wings flapping inside a chilly dorm room,
bouncing off walls of a mind aspiring to be a mind,
stuck in the sometimes scalding, sometimes soothing showers,
lazing in the dining hall, its fork dripping from its bottom lip,
and now
at a standstill
safe along my mattress
so mom, when you ask how my 4.0 is coming
i'll tell you
"i'm not sure,
but i'm enjoying myself."
it's got to be up there somewhere, hasn't it?
just a quick cry and the ring of a dinner bell
it'll run through the forest,
up the back yard,
and scale the walls to the kitchen in no time.

Without poems and deep thoughts...

I find myself being unsure what to write about. I see people blogging about Halloween and candy, how their day went and their new hair color. Meanwhile I'm sitting over here on the fence with my notepad watching the game play out, wondering where to start with each entry. It's sort of the same problem I have with vlogging. There seems to be no point to it, like I'm not getting anywhere and no one really wants to watch me ramble about my mundane life anyway. But there are hundreds of subscribers on my YouTube channel and only 25 followers here who probably haven't stuck around since I created this thing however many years ago. So... here goes nothing. I'm gonna dive right in and blog about my life.

So I've been in college in Maryland for two and a half months now. It feels incredible typing that, almost unreal. It honestly feels like it's been so much longer, like I've been here for half my life or something. It just feels like home. Which is why my financial situation is so frustrating: I want to stay here, I need to be with the people I love, but I don't know if my bank account can handle it.

I love that I can talk about love so freely here. I can tell people I love them and mean it. I don't have to worry about it or think twice. I was very lucky for the harsh experiences I had leading up to college because it prepared me to be honest and brave and say what's on my mind. I don't know where I would be without those qualities.

So each semester we get 500 printer points. For both my English and Creative Nonfiction classes we have to print drafts of everyone's work and give them feedback, as well as printing out letters to the author. For english the minimum page number is 3, for Nonfiction it's 5. There's 15 people in one class, 17 in the other. I'm just gonna let you do the math on the amount of printer points that is. I'm at 230 right now and I'm about to have to steal some from someone else. Honestly, it's mostly frustrating because it's such a waste of friggin trees. Jeez.

My German teacher seems to think I'm some kind of language prodigy because I've taken three years of German and know more than most people in my class. Which isn't really saying much because I'm in the first level of German and if you've taken three years of it you should probably be more advanced.... just sayin'. She keeps cornering me and telling me that I need to go to Berlin this summer. and I'm like teach, my bank account don't bend that way. She seems to think otherwise. And lets me know often that my girlfriend is thinking about going. Which I know she's not because she's my girlfriend. Which is another improvement in my life. I'm not letting fear of relationships get to me. I'm far from home, and I've neatly shoved the past into a mason jar. It's not going to find me here.

I'm going to a wizard rock show this Wednesday in Springfield, Virginia with my friend Alex. This whole time I've been at college I've been yearning to attend a wizard rock show and take my mind off things. Even when I'm happy, extra weight gets lifted off my shoulders when I sit in a circle up front and listen to music about the Boy Who Lived. It's more than refreshing, it's more exciting than the most accurate metaphor, and I'm simply bouncing in my comfy blue library chair. I love the fact that I've been going to wizard rock shows since 2007 and each one feels as fresh and brand new as the one before. It just gets my bones so jumpy and happy and nothing else matters.

Last Friday, a girl named Mal Blum came to play in Baltimore. I found this adorable musician through my friend Liz who knew of my love of "Ampersand" by Amanda Palmer and sent me a link to Mal's cover of the song. I then found her other videos and became just a little bit infatuated with her. This was over a year ago. A month or so ago I shared her "Baltimore" music video with my college friends and they fell in love with her too. That's why we were all freaking out (okay, it was mainly just me freaking out) when we found out she was playing so close to us.

The collegetown shuttle ended up never coming and so we took Jimmy's taxi-van-thing down to the 2640 Space, where I hid from Mal's gorgeousness until after she and an amazingly talented Zoe Boekbinder sang their gorgeous melodies into the mic. I Hagrid-hugged Mal and explained the concept of Hagrid hugs, my friend Elisabeth's earthworm face, and told her of Liz's obsession with her, to which she replied, "I'm obsessed with her too!" and then wrote her a note. She was just so freaking nice and friendly and she gave me her contact info to book her at our school and eeeeee I freaked out forever because she's just such a sweetheart and I'm so glad I got to see her and got the lady balls to talk to her. It was such a nice intimate venue and I'd love to go back sometime soon.

Well, my hands are aching now and I need to go back to revising English papers. This talking about my life thing is kind of nice. Maybe I'll do it more often and eventually vlogging might even come naturally.

Metal smiles and Hagrid hugs,
Tianna

clean

fuchsia and lime.
wrap me up and take your time.
until morning, we walk the quad.
arm in arm, golden silence.
you won't ask me how i'm doing.
it's ingrained in your brain:
"okay."
our ghosts are with us everywhere we go.
we strangle them, fight with death.
we're not as weak as we thought.

Sleep is calling me

and I'm sitting awake, learning King of Anything on my ukulele that is far too out of tune. Just had a minor panic attack because I thought I left my laptop charger in the library and I am in no fit state to go and get it. But alas, it's in my bag. Okay. Anyway. It's hot. I've noticed that I get irrationally cold or hot depending on my mood. But most of the time I'm hot. If I'm not sweating, I'm about to. (Exhibit A that there's something wrong with Tianna.)

Classes have been stressing me out this past week. What jumps to mind first is my literary journalism assignment for Creative Nonfiction class. I usually enjoy going to this class but I'm honestly dreading going this Wednesday. This is going to sound horrible, but I'm really not that interested in most people. My topic is broad. My interviewees are nonexistent. My people skills are horrible. The fucks I give for this class are dwindling. I still haven't revised the piece I wrote to get published 3 weeks ago. I'm just kind of slacking and making up for it by making closer friendships. I need to find the healthy balance between the two again soon.

But now I need Katie's blanket that feels like a cloud, my Hogwarts blanket that feels like my cat Cheshire, and an empty mind. Okay, maybe thoughts of the cinnamon apple candle in my living room back home are welcome. It's gonna be okay, I'm registering for next semester, and I'm applying for more jobs. I'm gonna get better even if this one essay sucks Buckbeak balls. My excitement to let the bed swallow me whole is even more enticing than the anticipation to eat. Which, knowing me, is saying something, cause I really like food.

eating while alone

One of the saddest things I witness is people eating alone.

Young, old... okay, especially old... but really, anyone eating alone just tears my heart right out and allows me to bid adieu to my appetite. I feel so bad that I want to stroll right up and sit across from the person, but I won't because society tells me that's creepy.

I might ask about the wispy haired man in the corner's favorite grandchild and hear how she got top marks on her latest Economics exam. But this would be wishful thinking on his part: in actuality, he won't have spoken to his granddaughter in years because of a fault line in the family tree that had nothing to do with him.

Maybe Grandpa missed her so much he started fabricating stories about her, like I am right now about a man I've never met. But I'm sure I've seen him. He's one of the souls that eats alone, appearing genuine and kind yet with the potential to be a sociopath or some other form of deviant. For me, eating alone sets my nerves on fire and injects angry bubbles into my tummy. I get so worked up wondering what people think of me that I can't really enjoy my food. Oh my god, she's adorable. Look at her cute friends. I better stare at my food or else she'll think I'm a creeper. There's no way I can speak.

And even when I'm not by myself, I find myself tuning out of the conversation of my table-mates so I can observe what others are up to. What are they eating? Do they look happy? Why did they choose this school? Where are they going after they're done with dinner?

In a way I suppose these questions are exciting. It's wondrous knowing that I could actually ask these things and not be looked at as a total weirdo - or at least that's what I think. I tell some people I think this and they go, "You're such a writer!" but I think it just makes me a thinker. I think, I think, I think. Sometimes too much. Take, for instance, this blog. I started out my entry yesterday about kettle chips and ended up talking about the time I drove eight hours to meet someone off Myspace.

But that's what I love about blogs, college, and life. It's so spontaneous. Sometimes it's only that way if we make it so, but the ability is fleeting. When we catch it, maybe we won't all end up eating alone.

The toothpaste was disgusting

I just opened blogger.com with a few cloudy ideas of what I was going to write about, and then I clicked the link to my profile. What did I spy in my Interests section? Kettle chips.

I used to have a bit of an infatuation with kettle chips. It was partially because they tasted so fabulously salty, but mostly because my friend Ivy and I used to have a certain fascination with "Oh! Christmas Tree" by The Whomping Willows. Back in our fangirl days of 2008, we used to rap this song in public like it was our national anthem.

"Dumbledore just got here and he brought some appetizers
He's got kettle chips, some onion dip, and a plate of cocktail wieners"

Ivy and I would peruse the aisles of Giant Eagle on a safari hunt, sniffing out just these ingredients. Well, besides the plate of cocktail wieners because I'm a vegan and Ivy was vegetarian. We're too cool for that, obviously. There's even a picture of this exciting event somewhere on my Myspace... ah, and yes, I have found it.

To be honest, I forgot how much something as simple as kettle chips meant to me. I think they were more of a symbol of my friendship with Ivy than anything. Yeah, they're super tasty, but a girl with braces that got tightened once a month and sore three times as often isn't too prone to snacking on kettle chips when she's bored. So what's so great about them besides our partiality to that wizard rap?

Out of the blue one day in 2007, Ivy and I started talking about Harry Potter on Myspace. The first conversation we held in each other's Comments section was about how unrighteous Hot Topic was for not stocking Remus Lupin T-shirts. A year later I drove 7 hours and 42 minutes to her house in Middle of Nowhere, Virginia, where "Food Shitty"s are abundant, Ma and Pa's serves the best ice cream, and it's not a "pool", it's a "poe-ell."

Sometimes we'd mention the miracle of how I drove to southwest Virginia for the first time to meet a girl I'd befriended off Myspace. But what we'd truly focus on was how I jumped out of the white rental Nissan before my mom pulled it to a complete stop, how I jumped into Ivy's arms that smelled rich and floral, and how we peed in the Walmart bathroom with the creepy cold drains below our feet.

"Silly strawberry or mint?" my mom asked, pointing to the shelves of organic toothpaste without peeling her attention from Ivy's mom Debra. Who knows what they were talking about: what time their daughters usually go to bed? Where the nearest store with vegan options was?

"Strawberry," I shrugged, deciding to be spontaneous. I always chose mint. Maybe my time in Virginia would be punctuated with happy and delicious memories of Silly Strawberry toothpaste.

I think Ivy was the one who taught me that the little things like this matter. These memories do make an impact on my life. And they definitely, definitely prove that I changed while I was so close to her... even if the Silly Strawberry ended up disgusting.

"Is that Golden Girls?" Ivy's brother Isaac, who was my age, would interrogate from the computer room.

"Yep," I'd reply, a grin twisting my thin mouth. I was waiting for Ivy to get out of the shower, what else would I occupy my time with than old bickering women on a new flat screen?

Ivy and I fell out of touch for a little while, maybe six months or so. But she's one of those people that I've been confident since day one of our friendship. She'll always be hidden behind the cupboard door, maybe even under the stairs with the Dursley's spiders crawling around her Harry Potter DVDs. Wait, who am I kidding? She would never let those get anything with more than four legs near them.

Just looking at the words "kettle chips", a whole scrapbook seems to have knocked into my head like a meteor. Along with kettle chips comes this whole anthology of a rusty friendship. And now I'm hungry.

Of Wagner and Beacons

Three washers, sisters of the trade, hum against one another. A few feet down the hallway, I snuggle up to a turquoise washboard of a chair and carpet that reminds me of the brown shag from my childhood basement. Since then my basement has been remodeled, but something tells me this room won't change anytime soon. Maybe the flip flops, sneakers, and Converse strewn across the floor will make a few invisible steps. Maybe the swirling wall art will unstick from the cinder blocks. Maybe they will cascade to the ground and swallow the soft Febreze scent. Maybe they already have, for today it smells of pumpkin pie and cinnamon apple.

It is fall and my friends are raving. Spice has snuck its way into every imaginable nook and cranny. For the first hour it smells intoxicating, but soon it leaves a sick feeling in my stomach. I close my woozy eyes as Alison Sudol coos sweet words through my earbuds. I focus on breathing in and out, my raincoat crinkling against my ribcage. This room, where my head laid on her warm lap, where I extracted my soul onto the table, has no remnants of the beetle we caught in here weeks ago. It's clean despite the open boxes, tossed blankets, and forgotten, fuzzy pink socks under the bed. It's empty: the box of kitchen appliances I'm using as an elbow rest is irrelevant.

They say there's a first for everything, and that's no exception in here.

"How was school?" "Okay." "What did you learn?" "Nothing."

"How are you?" "Good." "What do you want for dinner?" "I don't care."

"You look tired." "Yep."

These pathetic excuses for conversation from my Monroeville life creep up on me sometimes, brushing against the thin hair on my arms just enough to tickle. I swat at them, telling myself that I've improved. I've gotten past small talk just like I told myself I would, or at least I'm getting at it. I never thought about cutting more than a slice or two of my soul out at a time. There wasn't anyone who had enough of an appetite for it, anyway.

Now, the I regurgitate the whole pie. All of me is out there, every piece, no matter how fragile or intricate. I've shrugged the snow and dandruff from last year from my shoulders, and it's bare. It's cold. It's fall, and you're ready.

I can be too. I sit and wait for the warm to embrace me, but it won't do any good. I need the cold, the whipping winter winds of Mother Nature. Maybe the beacons of a distant white mountain will dial me, leave me a flickering voicemail. Maybe this heartache is for good - maybe I only miss home for my eager to please mother and my furry, purry cats - but where's the fault in that?

As I rise to pass the washers, I will be pulled forth by their synchronization. My legs will do high kicks in my mind and I won't have to watch her hurt anymore. Everything will turn cold and dry soon, and I won't hide my arms inside my polyester.

liar, liar

both of us, caught in the act,

one of noble deceit, thinly veiled honesty -

where were you when my stomach

ate itself

from the inside out?

your gaze, so shallow, so shy,

your grin, so rare, so earned,

so secretive, lax, controlled, punish me.

a game of empty threats, a house of wax.

one blow from the hunt,

I spilled; and when you listened, crumbled.

“good job, I’m proud of you, you can do better.”

but could you ever know, how can you, you never will,

the speed with which my fingers,

the feelers of a bookworm,

ached to shake your knees, reach for the wheel,

wave in your face, I’m right here.

breathless, as you hit me through his eyes,

full force, to your gaze I bid adieu

a dozen times a day.

baby, bliss wasn’t cut out for liars.

July 13th: A.M. Ramblings.

Well, it's 4:36 a.m. It's any old Wednesday. It's another sleepless night. It's nothing new.

Except I'm seeing Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 tomorrow at midnight.
Except this is the second time this summer I've pulled an all nighter whilst awaiting the arrival of a friend.
Except I wouldn't do this for anyone else, and so I can't take this for granted.
Except this is my last summer here before I'm college bound.

My pile of emotions is stacked so precariously high that if one more feeling was added on top, the tower would crumble and my brain would become mush. I can actually already feel it leaking. Okay, that's gross.

I can't imagine what my life would be without Harry Potter. Not even that though - just the revisiting of my love for the series. I heard it read to me and I read it myself countless times, but I became slightly disenchanted when I began hanging out with a friend who didn't really "get it." Because our friendship ended and because I got into the fandom, my life is a completely different story than it would have been.

I'm trying to prepare myself not to be disappointed, and also not to be too utterly depressed after the movie is over. It's hard. I remember when the Deathly Hallows book came out, people were saying "Don't worry! We still have the movies!" and now we don't have those. It seems our resources are dwindling, but in reality, I believe our creative outlets in which to showcase our love for this series are only growing.

All I have to say is that 1.) My tissues are already packed, 2.) My friends had better be ready to be groped when I need a hand during the movie, and 3.) My Winky the House Elf costume better win first prize at the Barnes & Noble party. Boo yah.

In other news, I just signed my best friend Bobby and I up to be extras in The Dark Knight Rises which they're filming in Pittsburgh this summer. BTW, that's where I live. They apparently need to fill a stadium with the fervor of Steeler pride. Which I don't have. But whatever. I mean, it's cool that we get to be in the same general vicinity as Gary Oldman, Anne Hathaway, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Christian Bale, and Marion Cotillard, I guess. But like, all day free food? Come on. You know I'm there! Also, it's the day before my eighteenth birthday. What more could I want? (Well, a lot, but shut up.)

So, now that my emotions are in danger of teetering over the edge with copious amounts of anxiety, excitement, and a dash of nausea, I must embark for the retrieval of my friend Daniel who has experienced yet another trauma in his life this morning. In case you're curious, his bus driver got arrested at the airport and then the bus broke down about an hour later. Also, I feel terrible for recommending the MegaBus to him. Somehow, it was a lot classier when I rode it in New York last summer.

Weasley girl, out.
PS: Yes, it's possible to be a Weasley and a Slytherin.

The Sociology of Internet Haters

From the moment I copied the definition for “tabula rasa” into my notebook for my Psych class, I knew it was what I believed about the way humankind is born. According to Wikipedia, tabula rasa is “the epistemological theory that individuals are born without built-in mental content and that their knowledge comes from experience and perception.” Or, in other words, nurture influences us far greater than nature. Our experiences make us who we are.

I can definitely make the claim that this is true for me. There are many factors that influence who I am today: my dad walking out on my family when I was ten years old, my sister making bad decisions that has led to years of excommunication, and my best friend of five years declaring I simply wasn’t good enough one day. My brain tells me that I would never have become the person I am today if it weren’t for those situations. The level of trauma they induced, the amount of tampering they did with my feeling of self worth, the flooding memories that accompany even the ringing of an alarm clock - those things prove that occurrences in my life shaped who I am.

Who I am is strong. I am a young woman who values perseverance above all other things. Ambition, creativity, and passion are three characteristics that I would say define me. But there’s no way the intensity of those traits would exist or that I’d be as proud of them as I am if it were not for the negative events that have happened to me or that I have witnessed.

I am aware that not everyone is like me. There are those who would disagree that nurture has the biggest impact on us, and to them, I say: how is living a delusional life treating you? Honestly, I can’t think of one person who hasn’t been affected by their experiences. Which is why it troubles me so much to write about what I’m about to share with you.
When I started writing this, I was extremely infuriated. It was five in the morning. My blood was boiling and there was no comprehension in my mind regarding the logic of this specific human being’s statements. And yes, they’re human. They’re not just “Internet trolls.” Yeah, they’re total assholes. But they’re people just like us, and they are how they are for a reason. By now, 6 pm the next day, I am more contemplative about how this even happened and why something I can’t change angers me so much. I don’t believe that things happen for a reason, and maybe that’s why I’m a bit more on the pessimist side most of the time - and what bothers me is that clearly, haters don’t think that way either.

Since 2007, I have been making “fandom friends.” These people live anywhere from four hours away to across the country – and sometimes, not even within the USA. It’s become clearer to me now that they are just average people like the rest of us. However, back when I first started making close friends with people who lived as far as they do, I didn’t think that anyone who lived close could compare. Not a single soul. There would never be anyone who understood me and my passion for Harry Potter like these fantastic “foreigners” did.

Little did I know, there were people just like that in my own city. In July 2010, I was introduced to a very close friend of mine, Erika. I had to think for a while about when we actually met, because it seems like it’s been so much longer than it has. When I talk to her, I feel as if she has known me since birth – since toddlerhood, at least. The first time we hung out was with a mutual friend at her house about fifteen minutes away. We had a Lord of the Rings marathon and sat in her basement from 10am until almostmidnight, watching all three extended editions of the films, making jokes, and generally having a great time.

At the time, I had literally forgotten it was possible to be that happy. Erika taught me that not everything that happens to us must be taken seriously – and sometimes, it works out in our favor to not care too much. That way, we don’t worry. From that movie marathon on, whenever I hung out with Erika, I felt carefree, like nothing else mattered. Maybe it’s because she’s a Hufflepuff – she has this light in her eyes that doesn’t really go out, ever. This is why it was so shocking to learn, several months later, that she was a suicide survivor. I could not imagine Erika having any relation with depression; she was just a big ball of light that never stopped giggling or pointing out things that appealed to my sense of humor like no one else could.

Only a month later, Erika was headed to college downtown and I was a senior in high school thirty minutes away. We only managed to see each other a couple times while on break, and times were stressful. I got wrapped up in drama and I gave my heart away too easily. It hurt. I can still feel it hurting. Sometimes I couldn’t even find a reason to get out of bed. I skipped school because I felt too worthless to carry on. I confided in her when I needed someone, and she would share with me personal stories that made my jaw drop. How anyone could think of her as anything but an angel was far beyond my comprehension. She’s just too sweet to ever have been hurting the way I was hurting. But still, it gave me strength to persevere – if she could move past dark times, maybe, just maybe I could as well.

Yesterday, one of my favorite YouTubers, Tyler Oakley, reblogged a post from another Tumblr user. The topic was how much this guy hated Pride parades. Apparently he’s gay as well, because he stated something along the lines of “I am the only good gay.” I would return to his page and retrieve the exact quotation, but simply thinking about the amount of hatred on his blog makes me sick. It fills my veins with venom. Not only does this statement breed misrepresentation toward the entire gay community, but this guy was completely unopened to discussion. He would not accept any of the rebuttals he got, which made me wonder – why post it in the first place? Is the point of a blog not to share your ideas? Why, then, would you block others’ out in the process if you simultaneously want your voice heard?

Erika, being her funny, opinionated self, went to go write in this jerk’s ask box. Granted, I wouldn’t have done this, but I admire her courage, or as some would say, ~lady balls~. She didn’t explode and definitely didn’t waste her time on a three page rant about how wrong this guy was for hating pride parades. She simply wrote a parody of Cee Lo Green and said “I see you postin’ dumb shit / Bout the gay pride parades / And I’m like / Fuck youuuu.”

Within minutes I believe, she got a response in the form of a graphic that told her to go kill herself, calling her “a giant faggot to some intellegent gays” – exact spelling. Minutes later, another graphic was produced reading “Suicide – you’re doing it wrong.” Of course, this was meant to enrage not only Erika, but her close friends and the rest of the Internet in possession of a functioning brain that feels rational emotions. Whether the likes and reblogs were mostly people who agreed or disagreed with this sentiment, it still made me sick to my stomach. How could anyone, anyone, think that they had the right to tell someone so sweet, so dear, someone who had helped light the truth for me over and over again, to kill herself? After all she’d been through? Just because she is a suicide surviver doesn’t mean that it’s all peachy now. She carries those scars like the rest of us carry our past, and it’s simply not humane to humiliate and degrade what once hurt us beyond reason, or what still may continue to haunt us.

You never know how someone may be affected by what you said.

As John Green stated, “What a treacherous thing to believe a person is more than a person.” Sure, Erika is strong, and that’s what I admire about her – but she’s not a Superwoman. She’s not a goddess. She is just a girl, who feels and reacts and loves and hurts just like the rest of us. And the same goes for everyone else who is a victim of cyber bullying. Whether they’re strong and mighty is irrelevant.

My close friends – and even those not so close – can attest to the fact that I am rather fierce, fiery, and sometimes mean when I get angry and riled up. But even someone like me, who has a complete lack of regard for others’ feelings at times, would never order someone to end their own life. It’s sick. It’s wrong. It’s not something that would even pop into my mind. And it gets me to wondering…

What has happened to this tortured soul, this random blogger, this member of the gay community, thishuman, to make them so hostile? How detached, how disenchanted do you have to be before you begin making demands on the Internet for a total stranger to end their life? It happens every day. How can you be so pompous, so arrogant, that you take pride in being a total asshole? Does it make you feel important? Do you think you have a badass “dark sense of humor”? Is there power in dehumanizing someone just because they exist on a blog and not in front of your face? Would you say that to someone in real life?Because if you would, man, let me tell you something. You’re the one who will end up forever alone.

Throughout this blog entry, I have written and backspaced on the following question: “What if she did?” What if Erika wasn’t here for me, for her family, for her friends, for the Internet to appreciate and laugh with, but most importantly, for herself? All the time I see her sticking up for suicide survivors and people struggling with depression – myself being one of them. There is no one alive today and no one who ever lived who deserved to be told to end their lives. No matter how rich, poor, evil, horrible, or cruel of a person they are or were – everyone alive deserves a shot at life. Life is for the alive, and I’ll be damned if during that time I’m going to sit here and watch my very best friend be ridiculed by someone who’s never even laid eyes on her shining face.

What was this person thinking? Did he grow up in an abusive childhood? Did he have bullies in elementary school? Did he get sharp objects thrown at him one too many times in a past relationship? Really, who broke his heart? I’d like to know. I’ve been harassed online too – from hateful anonymous messages to spam on my Dailybooth pictures telling me I resembled a man. From Myspace and Youtube comments telling me I was ugly and a slut to Facebook messages telling me my chin was too big. It’s degrading, no matter how much we like to claim otherwise, but it’s even worse when it’s directed at friends we truly care about and hate, hate, to see upset.

In retrospect, I realize that some people may look at this post and think “What the hell? Internet hate is not that serious. Who cares if some random jerk said that? Shrug it the hell off.” And yeah, maybe that’s the argument that pops into your head first. But sometimes, I find it fascinating to crawl inside the demented head of Internet villains and just wonder what they were thinking. Because cyber bullying is not something to shrug off, it’s a serious issue, I’m going to keep wondering. And keep making people aware that yes, it is happening to innocent people, to children, to adults, and to my best friend and I.

In August, I’ll be headed to college four hours away and Erika will still be here. Thinking about how much I’ll miss her hurts too much, so I normally don’t do it. But when my mind strays to thoughts of the future, I know that she’ll always have a place with me. For her courage, her never-ending, fantastic sense of humor, and her strength, I thank her for showing me that you can make life what you want to make it. As much as it feels like it, I was not born with this girl in my contact list or my address book. Because I was introduced to Erika, I know that nature is important, but nurture wins out in the end.

Something that utterly confuses me

is people that are scared of love. They refuse to let themselves care about another person so strongly. They think that if they make themselves vulnerable to another human being, then they’ll get hurt. It just makes me wonder what “risk” means to them. If we consult Webster, “love” is “to have a profoundly tender, passionate affection for.” Obviously, love cannot be summed up as a simple definition in a book of countless words, but if it had to be, this would be the closest thing to it.

What buries itself inside your mind that makes you afraid to be passionate about something? If you can love books, music, fashion, and sports, why can’t you love people? What makes it so difficult or different about them? Is it because they can have a reaction? Because “music can’t let you down”, or “books will always be there”? Personally I’d rather rely on a real living being. Even though so often my refuge lies in smelly old pages or my iTunes or whatnot, my immediate stress relievers are my friends.

Maybe this is where I’ve gone wrong. Maybe I shouldn’t rely so much on people who a) live far away, b) have realistic human tempers, and c) have hurt me in the past. But I know I can’t control where the people who care about me live, I accept that people get a little feisty with their words sometimes, and on occasion, my heart tells me to forgive even though it may be an irrational decision.

Maybe I shouldn’t, but I do. There’s always going to be the question of “should I?”. Because when you love someone, you give them your whole heart. That’s what love is, it’s not a whimsical feeling that strolls by hand in hand with a compliment every now and then. To quote Paramore, “Maybe I know somewhere deep in my soul that love never lasts.” It’s ridiculous to believe in everlasting love or love at first sight or ~ever ever after~, as Carrie Underwood would have you believe. Seriously, it’s not realistic at all. Of course your mom might have a story of how your neighbor’s grandmother married her high school sweetheart. But it doesn’t happen for everyone, and that’s what’s so fantastic about love.

Love prepares you for the worst. Some may scoff at this and say that it only is licensed to bring you joy and happiness or else it’s not real, but that’s not the case. If you don’t want to be afraid of love, then you need to treat it like an overly opinionated yet relentlessly passionate friend. It’s always going to be there for you, not always visible, but if you don’t believe in it then it’ll never jump out at you.

It’s like Santa Clause. Every Christmas my mom reminds me that when she was a kid, her parents wouldn’t buy her anything if she said she didn’t believe in Santa Clause. It’s something so simple, but if you don’t allow yourself to have faith in anything else but material items like books, music, sports, religion, or fashion, then you’re going to end up even more depressed than I am. And then I would pity you more than I pity myself. So don’t do that, guys.

Like Sara Quin called herself, I am an “emotional slut”. I fall very easily for all kinds of people and it doesn’t take very much for me to form an attachment to them. In no way, shape, or form would I ever suggest that everyone be accustomed to this. However, I take pride in knowing that even though I’ve been hurt in the past, I’m still open to love. If my mother, friends, and endless novels have taught me anything, it’s that love cradles you. Oh, and the Beatles. Thanks guys.

It’s just really astounding that so many of my friends admit to being terrified of something so many people chase. It makes them appear to be the bad guys because they’ll begin relationships with people and then suddenly bring them to a halt because of their fears. It makes me scratch my head, because so many of these people are involved in the Harry Potter Alliance or are just generally intense about geekdom or putting your whole heart into something… but they can’t put that much effort into caring for a person.

Stop being scared of love. Don’t be a Voldemort, be a Lily Potter.

Television.

It's getting worse and worse. Why does my mom think it's even appropriate to yell at me to come watch Dancing With the Stars with her while I'm doing homework? Whaaat? I told her I got wait listed at Mount Holyoke and she was like "okay, come watch this with me." It's just kind of disappointing because she used to be so different. I remember an almost word for word quote of hers years ago, "Television rots your soul." She always stuck up for me when I argued with my friends and tried to convince them that books were better than TV. Even as a kid my mom influenced me to believe that, and now she's totally backwards and it's just weird. Because she's unemployed and doing less and watching more television, it sort of makes me lazy in turn. I have stacks of books that need read but I glue myself to the computer instead, which can't be much healthier than TV. But the fact that I'm not watching people with Cheez Nip colored skin sort of comforts me. I think now I'll just shut my door, stick my face in a book, and read about Atticus Finch. I really don't need the real world anyway.

Incoherent and Pointless

But I figured I'd share this anyway.

I feel like one of the scariest things I've dealt with over the course of my existence (which obviously isn't that long of a time, so bear with me) is realizing everything you do is pointless. Whether it be an epiphany or just a short term idea that gets you down in the doldrums, feeling like your actions amount to nothing is one of the most depressing things ever. It could just be because I've been ruthlessly accepting classmates' friend requests on Facebook that I deleted a while ago, but more and more often I'm seeing people complain about how every move they make seems to go nowhere.

I'm surely empathetic with these people, but it just makes me so sad. Why can't they see that a change will come? Granted, it won't get here very quickly if they don't put some effort into making their dreams come true, but it'll come in the end. Things will change. Maybe the most we can do as human beings is just to fill ourselves with an overwhelming sense of hope.

There's no surefire way of going about not only creating hope, but keeping it for yourself as well. At least not one that I can think of. But there's steps that everyone can take to make it that way. This is coming from someone whose entire purpose in making this blog is to give herself hope, so listen to me. For the better part of my life I've avoided social situations and anything that could have potentially made me happy because of a few bad experiences. I've always been one of those people who will go out of her way to make herself miserable without even realizing it. That's when it's most difficult to recognize and stop - when you don't even notice you're doing it.

Even though all of these people on Facebook have people commenting and saying "I like you!", "You're gorgeous!", or "Of course your life is worth something!" they're just saying it because they were attracted to the reel of pity. Sometimes it's hard to decide whether the person is just fishing for compliments or if they just need someone to talk to, because oftentimes it's the same thing and then others the line is ridiculously fine.

I think the first step we can take in giving ourselves hope is to open ourselves up to people and not only complain about what we need to complain about, but let them vent back to you. Without that basic foundation of trust, you'll continually reach out to people who won't listen to you twice if you don't give them a shred of respect.

I'm really just rambling here. Maybe hope is what we make of it and our actions are only meaningful if we twist our minds into thinking they are. I guess that's what I'll have to start doing. Brain transplant, maybe?

it's all in your mind

forgiveness. it's something i've never been able to accomplish very well. and while i can't tell myself that adding someone back on facebook or responding to their texts every once in a while is forgiveness, it's starting to hold a different meaning for me. i'm starting to accept the fact that it sometimes takes months to be able to say "it's okay." sometimes the things people do are so horrid and hurtful that we may never understand why they chose to do something so crappy. in the end, though, if we keep our anger inside it will only destroy us. as a teen, i've begun to realize i don't want that to be my future. at the same time, however, it's tremendously difficult to just make up your mind on something so trivial. you really have to walk the walk and not just say, "i forgive you." because if you do that and you still kind of hate the person, it's even worse than it was before. i'd rather get the cold shoulder for ten years than have to deal with someone who i hated.

it's extremely difficult to be ignored, but it's harder to not even understand why. sometimes, though, you need to keep in mind that it might not be your fault. and while this may seem like a cop out, it's proven to be true more often than not in my life. my dad leaving wasn't my fault. my sister walking out wasn't either. the boy i like ignoring me isn't my fault. sometimes people have mental blocks that keep them from doing things that they really want to do. maybe my dad and my sister want to ask for forgiveness, but don't because they're worried it may be futile (and it is). maybe the boy who's ignoring me wants to ask me out and he's too scared of commitment to do so. everyone has boundaries whether they choose to see them or not, and you do too.

so the next time someone says something mean to you, ignores you for a ridiculous period of time, or you just keep thinking of someone who you don't think is thinking of you back, just keep in mind that they're going through struggles too. even if you can't see them, even if they live very far away, even if you see them every day, even if they're your family. struggles can be internal, and those are the worst kind. as far as forgiveness goes, i'm still learning. but i feel like this could be the first great step toward it.

Our Truth Is Not Better

For some reason, even though I only have two acquaintances who are vegan, I hear one argument cropping up a lot - online and in the real world. Stereotypically, people who are vegan are thought of as thinking they're superior to every vegetarian and meat eater out there. This isn't entirely true, and I'm living proof of it. But I'm not just that, I'm also living confusion as to why anyone DOES think that way.

Why would eating meat make you a lesser person? Why would the fact that I abstain from consuming flesh make me a goddess? It wouldn't, and it doesn't. I am not more evolved than anyone just because I don't consume meat or dairy. Before I became vegan, I thought that this kind of person never got off their high horse. But trust me, after the first year or so of being a vegetarian or vegan, it starts to hit you that you're not really a superhero after all.

There's nothing wrong with having pride in yourself for being a vegan. I have lots of it. But there's no reason to place people below you on the chain of cool or right/wrong. You can eat my friends, you can vote against my right to marry, and you can chop my trees down, but I'm not going to think I'm a stronger human being than you are. I have weaknesses and faults as well as you do, and I have made mistakes and will continue to make mistakes. It is inevitable.

Even if you don't eat meat, even if you recycle, even if you're a model student - you're still a human being. To say that any one member of our species is better than another is blasphemy. I'm not going to stand for something like that just because I'm a vegan. I think that's ridiculous, and I hope more of my fellow vegans will be able to see that.

I'm not taking your last name if you can't take my independence seriously.

In Poetry class, my fellow students always manage to pry into my teacher's life in the lulls between assignments - because yes, my school has those, be jealous. He handles it with good humor and they never really ask anything too rude, but sometimes I can't help but feel as if he should be doing some of the questioning.

Today, the topic was his wife - as it oftentimes is since she's the mother of the allegedly cutest three-year-old on the planet. My teacher mentioned that his wife kept her last name when she married him, and for some reason this set my class alight with indignation. "That's messed up." "...Why?" "I'm sorry, that just goes against tradition." "But a woman is her husband's once she's married."

My teacher looked equally as enraged as I did at the last comment, which was unnecessarily provocative and weirdly specific and just uncalled for. In the past I may have sat there and simply shaken my head at this boy's prejudice, but today I said something. "That's irrelevant and offensive and not even true, so keep your big mouth shut." My class was shocked since I almost never open my mouth unless I'm called upon.

Eventually this guy left the classroom because he became infuriated that someone with a vagina tried to prove him wrong. I walked out thirty minutes later, unscathed, but overall disappointed in humanity. The same girl that said a woman changing her last name when she got married was tradition also claimed that "the 1800s would have been my thing! I would have loved to do anything my husband asked me to." Oh, right, like to back off while he pulls a Henry VIII and slaps you around. You like turkey sandwiches? Good thing I coincidentally just started making ten of them just a few minutes ago!

I had no idea people in my school, not to mention the elective of Poetry class, thought such ridiculous things like this. I don't even understand them. But I know one thing: I don't care who you are, I'm not taking your last name and your skewed prejudices if you can't accept my independence. It's not gonna happen.

my definition of friendship

is, somehow, quite different from most people's who i interact with. to some people i know, a "friend" is anyone who will listen to them. i think this is rather ridiculous, yet somehow admirable. it means you're willing to let anyone know what's going on with you and what might be bothering you, but on the other hand, what happens when you're not upset and don't want to speak to this person? personally, i wouldn't want a near stranger labelled as my friend just so i could complain to them - i do that to people who aren't even my friends on a daily basis and feel no emotional connection with them.

then there are the people who think that because it's long distance and you've met once, you are friends. maybe it was a harry potter convention, a journey abroad, or a concert downtown, but no matter where, people are everywhere. it's really great when you meet someone randomly and you have this great connection, but if you can't tell that the other person is as pleased as you to be momentarily hanging out, then... you're not really friends. granted, the person who isn't enjoying it should probably let you know, but sometimes they just wait until you go away. and if you don't, holy gods, you should be able to realize you're not friends.

there are people who sort of like your talents, your blog, your hair, your style, or think you're funny. they might go to your school, be on tumblr, even talk to you on skype occasionally, but they're just not friends to me. i don't know what it is with me and my extreme hardcore view on what friendship be. but one thing i know that it's not is silent. this sort of thing happens a lot in the harry potter fandom. even if i've hung out with said person more than once IRL, if we only speak to each other after the fact every few months or so, i'm not going to consider them friends. we could have been in a musical together, we could have met in 2008 and resolved some of the worst drama ever together, but ...they're not my friend.

a friend, to me, is definitely not someone who doesn't make the effort to visit you at all over a break. it's not someone who every once in a while facebook IMs you and it's definitely not the creeper from school blowing up your phone. it's not someone who doesn't reply to your texts and it's definitely not someone who doesn't text you at all. i need constant communication if we're going to be friends, and if that means you have to live near me, i guess that's my own problem. i do have long distance friends, but they just tend to not understand what it truly means to live 7 hours away and not see a person day to day. it means that you're probably not going to be on their mind constantly, and should therefore make more of an effort to speak to them. how hard is it, really?

people often act like i'm gonna crack down on people who say we're friends when we're not - i won't. it doesn't affect me, so if you honestly believe we're friends, go ahead. eventually, your 365+ days of not speaking to me while erase me from your brain and we'll be equal. sometimes, it feels like i have no friends at all because no one fits this criteria. no one is that willing to keep in touch with me in more than a youtube comment. i used to be an intense best friend person, like, i needed as close as you could get to a romantic relationship without dating. that hasn't happened since early 2009, and i've dealt accordingly. now, it seems more and more like i don't get or require human interaction hardly at all.

i really hope my picky requirements for friendship don't follow me to college, because i'm hoping to not be a loner there, and one of the important things about the schools i've applied to is that they'll all be people that i want to take initiative and introduce myself to. it's easier said than done. but around here, with my only "friends" living 34908 hours away and not truly being there at all, i get sort of hopeless. rant, over.