rubbish

Hey! I'm feeling good again. The snow is melting and I lost my voice from talking so much to friends and friends and friends over the past week. Seriously, every afternoon it's lunch with friends and every night it's dinner with friends and then it's friends in class and friends in the library. I need them right now. I need spring right now. I need homemade burritos and good music. I need bike rides. All of these things - thank you.

God, though, it's weird being single and flirting (?) with boys. How unstable this kind of life is, where you're not sure from one day to the next whether you'll feel wanted or rejected. I've been relying a lot on the constant support, appreciation and admiration of a stable (and wonderful) boyfriend. Now, building that same kind of self confidence has to come more from within - I have to make it for myself rather than receiving it. Otherwise I end up gauging myself by how much others want me and, goodness, that's no way to be. Do people really stay single for, like, years? I find this constant uncertain back and forth stressful. But I also have very little desire to get back together with my boyfriend? There's something really good here that I can't articulate yet.

It's midnight in the library - everyone's heading home. That's the good thing about having no one at home waiting to fall into bed with you! I can stay out late and do what I want without any guilty pangs. Hell! Maybe I'll go eat nachos! Maybe I'll start drinking! Maybe I'll write my history paper! It's a wild wild wild world.

Three nights from now, I'll be in New York City! Five nights from now, I'll be at my grandparents' house on the Maine coastline! Moving quickly between spaces always blows my mind.

Here's the thing about my grandparents and my very conscious (?contrived?) desire to create some sort of relationship with them:

Over winter break, I was home for seven days. I spent the first night home rummaging through the closet in what was once my bedroom and is now the day room. Shoebox full of letters from my dad to my mom, written while they were dating and worked long hours away from one another. Reading through those notes on the bed made the realization collapse on me that there's so much I don't say to my parents. I feel like our relationship is full of awkward, private holes where we all three don't talk about certain subjects for no other reason than we're cowards and it's out of character. Individually, as humans, we are all cool and candid discussing sex and big decisions like marriage and kids and big mistakes like things we regret. But together that dialogue stagnates before it even gets started. It's less tiptoeing around the conversation than breathing in and out during car rides, staring out the windows and talking about dogs and weather and politics. I have never ever talked to my grandparents, really, more than "Happy Birthday" but they're all over those letters. In my dad's handwriting, they have opinions, ideas and influence that I've always ignored out of tradition.

I want to get casual with my family. I've never before felt like I need my extended family in any way at all and I still don't. ... . ... . ... . ... but I do need to understand that feeling some more and figure out whether my family's absence from my life is ... . I don't know. A deficit. Some people get so much joy and identity from their family's and what I get from mine is a sense of independence, more than anything.

... . ... . ... ... . . . . .. . ...

Anand and I ended it on facebook today. That was rough. I've had a lot to say about everything recently. Melt, snow.