Shopping Spree!

I went clothes shopping today to use some of the gift cards I got for Christmas from the fam. I got a Happy Bunny tshirt that says 'you bite it big time' and I got an Emily Strange tshirt that says 'problem child.' They are so cute.

(Hey, thespian! They have a Torrid store at the mall near my parentals now! WOW!)

I also got three sweaters - one of which my brother desperately wants. It's orange and it r0xx0rs. And I got this other one that rocks if only because I got it with the money I got when I returned the ridiculously icky girlypoo bracelet my cousin gave me. Bleh!

They had a Happy Bunny hooded cardigan sweatshirt that said, 'hi, loser' and I really wanted that but I am saving the rest of my money for a GPS.

How will I pack all this stuff?? I also have to pack the Palm that The Girl^TM passed on to me and my Smurf in Shining Armor and my new squishy pen. And kungfoogirl gave me a book and a Superman toboggan hat that is totally cool. (But those are easier to pack than new sweaters!)

Anyway, I should sleep. Yes. I'm fighting a cold that I hope I didn't catch from gala.

TIMsters - I miss you all, and love you with everything I am.

Happi Birthday!!

Happy birthday to you!
Happy birthday to you!
Happy birthday dear happy2beso!
Happy birthday to you!

Please let me take you out to dinner or something when we get back. Please. :)

And now it's time for the breakdown.

I don't want to go back to Columbus.

It's not because of the people there (well, most of them). After all, I have binkiegirl and dietbubba and happy2beso and hopemcg. And then there's Megan and Bucky and Cary and Velma and Stephanie and Rob. And I wouldn't mind seeing the OSU people again, especially Christa and Sonal and Nick and Christen. And it would be cool if I had a class with Jonathan this quarter. There are some cool people in Klumbis and I like them very much.

And it's not because there's nothing to do. I love the seats at the Lennox, and I love going to weird restaurants with Cary. I absolutely love seeing The Reaganomics. January brings GLBT Awareness Weeks at work, and we have lots of cool stuff planned, like Michelle Malone (mmm) and Denise Uyehara and Lani Ka'ahumanu. Ani is supposedly coming this spring and I want to find out the details on that. And there are other things, like volunteering at Kaleidoscope and the internship at Children's. And there's geocaching, of course.

It's going to be very hard for me to go back there. Columbus is a place of incredible accomplishment for me academically and career-wise, but it is also a place of formidable tragedy and perceived failure. Columbus is where I will formally end my marriage, which is both a necessity and a loathesome chore. Columbus equals monotony in a lot of ways - stale air, confining spaces, restriction. Columbus = Levensailor.

There's no ocean in Columbus (duh) and that means more to me than most other things. It's not so bad to be in a landlocked area, except that the ocean is quite possibly the most important physical thing in the world to me. People were making fun of me in Delaware, but it really did physically recharge me to walk along the shore, to hear the crashing of waves and to smell the salt spray. When my plane was landing in Providence, I was elated by the sight of seagulls. ("No limits, Jonathan?") The ocean is in me, and it /is/ me. It is with a heavy heart that I remember the vast expanse of shore... and the sun rising from its salty depths.

So I don't want to go back. I don't want to be here in my Dad's apartment, either, but I would rather be here than there. I don't want to go back to living with A. I don't want to go back to missing nearly every single person that I love. I don't want to go back to the frantic running around of two jobs and a full course load and the need to work out legal issues and resumes. I want to go back to the beach. The beach wasn't real, not in the sense that my job and my internship and my classes are real. But it is real in me. And I want it back. Now.

~//~

Two of my dearest friends are hurting right now, and it is tearing me apart. I hate feeling useless. There's nothing more depressing than a useless superhero.

For posterity

I just want it on record that Wednesday morning, 2 January 2002, I removed Di's pillow case from the pillow I cuddle when I sleep.

It is no longer the Pillow of Angsty Love. And I am so proud of that.