I can't think inside my head as well as I can think on paper...or on a screen. It goes in circles.

Suppose I do want to put an effort into this. That's so scary. It's like all these chapters in my life that I only ever thought about being in the distant future are all happening at once. Losing a parent. Being independent more than ever before. All of a sudden having the possibility of a proper relationship standing at the door.

That's the scariest part. Well, no, it's not, but I've already gotten through the worst, which was losing one parent.

So suppose I do go with the option of renting from him for two months. What would that mean? Nothing is set in stone...it doesn't have to be. Relationships end. I'm afraid of being hurt again or hurting him this time if it ends. Would it even start? Why am I being ridiculous? Of course it would. That's why he wants me to come there in the first place. And he's afraid of long distance. Which....I'm not going to say I get, because I don't, but whatever. Some people can't handle certain things. And we already did the long distance sort of half-relationship thing and it crashed and burned. Why go back to it?

I'm trying to figure out what counts? What is drawing me to him? Butterflies? Giddy smiles when I talk to him? The fact that he GETS me more than any other male species on the face of the planet? He has stability, which probably should be something I care about but I don't, and he's the type of person that I can be all aspects of myself around. Quiet and moody, giddy and childish, adventurous and explorative... all these things.

So is that what counts? What counts? Is there a moral absolute to what counts or matters in a relationship? Or is it what matters to me? It must be what matters to me, because different things matter to different people. But at the same time there are moral absolutes.

He agreed to the compromise of me renting from him for two months...my brain made a leap in intuition just now. Okay. I'll do it.

Sh*t.

I'm going to try. I'll...what do I have to do?

It's almost like, nothing to lose. Don't date while living in his house, but I will be able to save money to move out...and my dad wants to move to Ohio anyway...so it's like a win-win thing. If we are still compatible after two months of being strictly roommates, then I move out and get my own place, work, be independent, and we start to actually date. And I don't really know what happens after that lol.

What's supposed to happen after that? What really happens in a dating relationship? I don't freaking know. My longest official relationship was three months. Kinda pathetic.

So....save money to go to norway, save money to move to ohio, how much do I need for the room, need to make contacts over there, need to research neighborhoods, find out what the market for tutoring and postmates and uber and stuff is like, goal is.....move there by next fall.

WOW.

Okay. Might as well try, right? The failsafe is going to norway before that happens. So.....it's doable.

Okay.

OKAY.

What to do if you feel like talking to him?

But that would be unfair to him....because I'm never going back to him. Would that make him sad? If I called? Would I like it if someone did that to me? Would that be playing with his emotions? He deserves better than that.

I should not call him.

Otherwise I'd be sending mixed signals. I don't mean to do that. Would it be sending mixed signals? He said he didn't call on purpose because he knew I'd never pick up.

The aquarius part of me wants to call just to be unpredictable. But it's not nice to be unpredictable with someone's emotions. I don't want karma to screw me over even more. But I feel like talking to him.

I have to leave for work in 25 minutes anyway. So there's no point, right?

Right.

(I wish I could feel as convinced as I sound)

Am I getting my period soon? Is this hormones? I don't like WANTING to talk to people. It's an unpleasant feeling. Somewhere in the chest region. A sort of craving. I don't like it one bit.

Nope.

NOPE.

NOOOPE.

Body woes

This is bugging me, so I feel like I have to write about it.

I'm skinny.

But I'm also fat.

I know that makes no sense, but hear me out. Ever since my mother died, my appetite has been all out of whack...more like non-existent. I've dropped from 173 lbs to 152 the last time I was weighed, and that happened in about three months. I've lost even more weight since then, and here's the catch. I like being "skinny." My thighs are finally at a size I'm pleased with, and I had practically no gut. The downside? Practically no boobs. I mean, they weren't big to begin with, but now they're so small they barely fill half of my B cup bras. I was so pleased back in the beginning of the year that I finally could fill a B cup. Welp. That's gone.

Anyway, the thing is, with the lack of boobage, my self esteem is kind of plummeting. And also my butt has gotten extremely flat. Size ten jeans that I used to have to squeeze into are falling off of me. I don't have any womanly curves anymore. And that bugs me.

Now to top it off, I'm annoyed with myself that I've been eating unhealthy once I started eating again. Fast food and fast food and fast food. KFC and burgers. And the first place I put on weight is my belly. So now I'm flat chested, flat butted, and big bellified. I might be looking at it out of proportion - I mean, maybe it doesn't look as bad as I think it does, but I'm fed up. The other day a friend of the family bought me lunch (burgers and fries from Checkers, and the meal had the sodium warning on it that it exceeds the daily recommended level) and then dinner (fried chicken wings and french fries) and I mean, that's not my life.

I'm used to eating organic foods and whole grain rice and pasta and vegetables and stuff like that. The last time I went to the doctor for a physical the doctor was extremely impressed with my blood work and commented that it was "excellent." I want to stay that way.

I'm annoyed with myself that I caved in and ate the bad food. Now I'm noticing my stomach getting bigger. I just..........want to be perfect?

I'm being dumb, I know, but at the same time I also want to be healthy.

My dad made a comment a few weeks ago that I looked really thin, and it's been bugging me since then. I don't want to be ugly. I don't want to be grotesquely thin. I'm not....but my clothes are too big for me now and it's weird. I look nineteen instead of twenty seven.

I can't even find the better portion of my clothes since we moved.

I just want to be pretty.

I want to have two shelves over the head of my bed, so that I can put novels and hanging vine plants on them...

And I really hope I find the screw set to assemble my bed and desk soon. :) I'm actually getting excited about my room now...and I got blinds for my window yesterday! And they're fancy. You just touch the bottom and push up, rather than dealing with that pesky string that you used to have to pull.

Anyway.

Yeah.

I miss Cody.

Not okay.

I was standing in the middle of my room, looking around at the photos I've decorated the walls with, and my eyes fell on the one from 2011 where I'm posing with my college mascot. I'm smiling in the photo, but I recall that I was incredibly unhappy at the time.

Why? Because I'd recently made a stupid decision.

And then it struck me: All of the times in my life where I've been unhappy with myself, where I've been terribly depressed and miserable, are times of my own making. They're the result of me making stupid decision after stupid decision. Generally involving the male half of the species.

When there are external circumstances, such as when my mom was ill, I find ways to be happy in the midst of it, because the sadness is not coming from within. It's not me being disappointed in myself and tearing myself apart from the inside.

So....DUH. Stop making stupid decisions. I know enough by now to make smart choices. I know what I should do, and when I really, really probably shouldn't do something, there's a little voice inside of me that tells me that. When I ignore it and go to do it anyway, an escape or distraction will present itself. When I ignore THAT, I suffer the consequences later on.

So from today onward, I'm going to stop with the stupid decisions. Because I know better. Because I'm 27 years old and it's about time I started behaving in a mature manner. Took care of what I need to. All that jazz.

I'm completely equipped. (And I need to stop caring what people think. I will not be rude, or cruel, or stupid, but I will stand up for myself and my worth and my beliefs and my principles and not worry about how it will make someone else uncomfortable. Because I need to be comfortable with myself. And those same people would have no problem letting me know how they feel, or cutting me off if the opportunity or reason presented itself.)

So there.

Off to edit the rest of my video.

It's a Sunday morning, our first in this new home, and I sit cross legged on the mattress that lies pressed up against the wall with the window. Neither my father nor I can find the screws that should put together our bed frames, so for now, this is how it is.

There is a cup of coffee on the floor next to me. It's my official coffee mug; the one I bought as a souvenir when I went with my journalism class to visit Al Jazeera America in the city. The same day the Ukrainian plane blew up.

It's a bittersweet moment. There is comfort in finally being in a home, no longer having to stress and worry about high rent or cruel, uncaring landlords. Yet it's incomplete because my mother isn't here. I realize she's "in a better place," but those words seem like a bandaid - something that people say when they don't understand how to face your pain.

Most days, I'm alright. I'm never truly happy, but neither am I in the depths of despair. It's more of a baseline existence. Something I've noticed is that when a situation presents itself that should cause me to truly laugh, or genuinely smile, or perhaps do my signature hop-skip-I'm-not-ever-growing-up-so-screw-you-I'm-excited jig, I can't. I look down inside myself and the small bottle of joy fizzles out before it ever gets the chance to bubble up.

Being sad forever is definitely not an option. But as long as I continue to live my life, and work to better myself and accomplish my goals, can I be allowed to grieve? It's only been five months. Her birthday is next month. And we haven't even hit the holidays and Christmas yet.

Autumn worries me. This is the first year that I find myself almost dreading it. It's always been such a comfort - the warm mugs of tea, the cool, crisp breeze and the crunching leaves, the decorations that my mother and I would put up together....do you see where I'm going with this?

But autumn hasn't arrived yet. We'll face that hurdle when it comes.

Off to church.

I tried writing this out by hand...

...but for now, my brain is faster than my wrist.

My fingers can keep up.

I went to lunch with Meeks today and she honestly made me see the light where so many others have failed.

I have my big break.

1. My mother is no longer sick. She will never be sick again. She is happy. I don't have to worry about her anymore.

2. We are no longer looking for an apartment and stressing about a landlord that wants us out. We have a place. A perfect place. It's cozy. It's cat-friendly.

3. I'm no longer in a relationship. I'm single. He doesn't value me in the way that I require, and therefore there isn't anything tying me to him. For what? Comfort? What is he giving me? Doing for me? But what am I doing for him? I'm not a child anymore. I need to act like an adult. That's what makes this time around different. I AM WORTH SO MUCH MORE THAN THAT.

4. I no longer have to work at the school that stressed me out and caused me so much grief and couldn't pay me on time and told me I couldn't go back to school.

I have a car. I have a place to live. I have my dad. I have a degree, and I'm working on another one. I am self-employed. I have so many more hours in my day to myself now to accomplish everything that I put on hold to do my duty.

And am I going to, as Meeks put it, miss my rainbow because I'm too busy looking at the raindrops? It's all past. I am demanding more of myself. I am demanding that I be strong and stick to my guns. That means a schedule. That means a budget. That means Cody is being cut off again, and Cali is about to get schooled on what I am really worth. Not by me telling him. Oh no. By me showing him.

He's a great guy, sure. He was there for me when it counted. But he is actually flaky. Can't make up your mind about which girl you want? You desperately want your ex who broke up with you but you want to keep me in your back pocket as an option? NOPE. You work with me and promise to give me half of the money we earned and never do? NOPE. (Lesson learned) I sell your friend my turtle tank and it's not important enough to you demand he give you the money because you're the middle man and it's someone else's property sale we're talking about (saw that one coming)...NOPE. You complain that you're unhappy with your life and can't pay your bills yet you're too lazy to go out there and work? So I help you by driving when I realize you have no money for a metrocard? NOPE.

I'm starting to see all the ways in which I'm expending myself, and getting nothing in return but stress.

And Meeks had a point. The moment he gets either his ex back or another girl in his life, he has no use for me anymore. That's not an option. I am not an option.

What am I keeping him around for? Does he make me happy? No. He makes me comfortable. Or rather, he did. Now, when he's texting, even though we're not together, I stress over whether maybe it's some new girl, or if it's his ex texting him.

So. Like I said in my previous post, it's going to hurt, but I'm okay with that. Because I'm done. Time's up. Time to grow up.

Be mature. Be responsible. Do me, for me.

I want my master's by the time I'm 30. To do that, I need to start school full-time next August. To do THAT, I need six thousand dollars for the first semester. To do THAAATTTT....I need a little over $1500 to pay off my outstanding tuition that's been sent to collections.

So, budgeting.

I'm going to do freelance for a little while. However, I am also going to apply to jobs that are in my field because really, it can't hurt. And if I don't, then what were my six years spent in undergrad for? Stress and exhaustion? Bags under my eyes and a practically unshakeable coffee addiction?

I think not.

Monday write novel/nerdystuff
Tuesday write novel
Wednesday 7:30 tutoring   daytime nerdystuff
Thursday Postmates evening/night   daytime nerdystuff
Friday Postmates evening/night
Saturday 12:00/2:00 tutoring  and Postmates
Sunday 1:30 tutoring   and Postmates

Facts. Time to grow up.