Meet Mr. & Mrs. Pistachio, Boy, and Pizzafatboy.

The stories my mother tells from her childhood should be fake. The plot lines are too neat, too hallmark channel. The names are too cartoonish, as if fate tried extra hard to make her experiences unrelatable and surreal... like her old neighbors the Pistachio family. "What's going on at the Pistachio nut house??!" My grandmother would screech into the phone. Ha, ha, grandma. Or the park ranger my mother used to work with- the one who lived in a teepee and named his son Boy. Or the man on the wharf that both my mother and father were acquainted with, known simply as Pizzafatboy.


***

My mother is in a chatty mood tonight because I opened up to her and told her how I was feeling. It was a big step for me, and it was difficult to do. Of course, she reacted in her typical way. Deny, deny, deny. Push away blame from herself. Then tell me in a pained voice that she feels my pain every day- my burden is her burden. Say maybe all my problems are her fault, then get quiet and stare at the wall.
My best tactic at that point is to stand up and get busy doing some household chore- in this case taking down all the ornaments off the christmas tree. After a half hour or so she brightens up and becomes talkative. I don't know if it is because she wants to smooth over the seriousness of our last conversation with sugary talk and overly nostalgic recollections, or if it is her last-ditch effort to be that kind of mom- the one that has an open, healthy relationship with her daughter.
Sometimes I wish she would just listen, not try to analyze but just accept my life situation and my thoughts and feelings regarding it. I feel guilty after talking to her. This is why it's hard for me to talk to her- I don't want to let her know about the pain I do feel because I know on some level she blames herself, which is not right. But as long as I keep talking, keep working, keep doing the hardest thing, our relationship will improve. Worst case scenario is that I can console myself with the fact that I really did try to be open and honest and loving.


I am working to teach myself, step by step, how to love. One little thing at a time, so I can love my family, myself, my life.

To those that are wondering: I am alive and well.

How do you decide if something you own will be meaningful or significant to you in later years? I am packing up and leaving home, and I am just now realizing just how many keepsakes I have collected. Most of my things are already moved out; the practical things are gone. Everyday clothes, my books, my tools, my toothbrush have already left. Now I am left with the mishmash and confusion of all the little tokens I have accrued. I find it hard to be sentimental about many of the things that are left. The awards, the graduation cap, the pictures on the wall. Those things will not be a part of my future life and are barely a part of my present. They didn't really make me happy even when I first got them.

So why am I hesitating to throw out all of my souvenirs of the past? My possessions are not my memories, not my experiences after all. Could it possibly be an unconscious resistance to moving out and to change? Is moving to Washington what I really want? It's certainly not the future that I had picked out and gift-wrapped, ready to be delivered from the store only a few months ago. My life has made a radical shift in direction, and it is a bit disorienting.

I like where it's going, though. I feel happy and excited to work and love and live. My present is wonderful and my future is bright... I guess I won't be needing any of my old things, those reminders of my past self after all.

P.S. I am deeply sorry to the people in my life who love me. I know I scared all of you by leaving so suddenly. It was not a premeditated act, but I suppose that is no real excuse. The only thing I ask now is forgiveness.

17 is the loneliest number

It's midnight now and I am nowhere near ready to sleep.

I feel that familiar restless late-night feeling- a feeling that I am just now realizing is nothing but loneliness and a nostalgia for happy memories that will never be actualized.

I was used to this feeling before meeting him, so much so that I didn't even know what it was. It was there- I could feel that something was off- but I couldn't see what. Since meeting him, meeting Cory, that feeling disappeared. Even when I am not falling asleep next to him, I feel protected and warm and content just knowing he is alive and safe.

But after all the fighting and hurt today, that feeling has crept back in.

He and my mother were engaged in a yelling match out on the street, with all the neighbors looking in. She dragged in her best friend who threatened to call the cops and who called Cory a child molester. "Don't go with him!" she blubbered at me, her eyes welling up with fake tears. His truck pealed as he backed up out of the dirt lot, spraying bits of organic matter and dust over me.

"You made the right choice," she says. "I'm proud of you. Now give me a hug!"

She was shocked when I pulled away.

I don't know what to do. It feels like there is a choice that needs to be made, and it is certainly not an easy one. I love my parents and sister, and I love Cory. I thought it would be possible to have all of them in my life, but it seems that is not going to be the case.

I don't know who my parents are. I don't know what drives them, what their dreams are, what their dirty secrets are. Maybe it is not my place to know, but it seems that the people I think I love are simply facades for something much deeper- something that as their daughter I am not privy to know. It was in their house and under their care where I felt so alone for so many years.

Then again, I don't know Cory either. I've known him a better part of a month now and even though we have spent almost all of that time together, I am still a long way off of really understanding him at his most basic level.

I do know that there is no moving forward with my parents. They have been the same way all through my childhood, and they are unwilling to change for me now. I will never be an adult in their eyes, not as long as I let them make my decisions for me. With Cory, however, I would be going forward. We are getting to know each other, getting to feel each other out. There is discovery and interest and deep care in every one of his actions, even his occasional anger.

My choice is to remain in comfortable and secure stagnation at home or to risk all that for someone who wants to be part of my life, not just live alongside me.

What kind of person am I? Am I really the kind of person that will turn my back on all that my parents have given me (financially, mostly) for someone else? I am starting to think that maybe I am.

I will be 18 in nine days, twenty three hours, and thirty two minutes. Hopefully I can find a way to keep the people I love in my life until that point. I don't want to be alone.

my brain has obviously liquefied... and that's okay!

I want to live with him inside of the UCSC Arboretum! I want to spend three hours staring intently at a bush; analyzing the flowers and leaves, noting colors and textures and growth patterns and other oddities.

God, I am so inspired. I am so idiotically happy!

I want to break everyone else's rules and then I want to break my own rules.

My brain soared as he explained horticultural mysteries to me and as we both agreed that all the plants are "Beautiful and awesome and cool!"

I want to drive up a steep hill covered in lupin to stare at the waves and wave at the sail boats.

I want to be a part of his world and I want him to be a part of mine.

I shuddered slightly with the happiness, the utter joy of holding his hand.

I want to make him idiotically happy!

Oh boy, this probably makes you gag... unless you remember being my age and being at the start of something wonderful. Something scary and terrifying and beautiful and oh god i am so so so happy.

miss me?

It's been quite a few months since my last entry, you know. Around the time of my last post was when I had my first surgery- I guess I was preoccupied with other things: learning to walk again, finishing my school work so I can finally graduate high school, trying to find a place for myself in the world and figure out where exactly I will live next year. And then repeating that whole process; the second surgery, the red tape and confusion at school, and the rejection call from City Year Louisiana.

I never did go to Shasta, or Santa Barbara. I stayed home and limped around the house.

I have some pretty crazy scars now. My ankle, calf, and knee are all marked up. Maybe that makes me look scary. The scars are fresh and red like I got in to a fight just yesterday, though in reality they represent months of my life. But in another month or so I should be able to walk normally again... I'll finally be able to walk without pain, something I have never been able to do before.

This summer, my plans are to spend as much time as I possibly can exploring this area. I want to document everything I love about this town for my memories and so I can share with people I might meet in the life I have ahead of me.

What I am going to do after this summer is still in question. I don't really know what I want to do. My plan was to move to Louisiana and work in middle and high schools there. I wasn't sure if that was what I wanted to do either, but everyone I talked to about it acted like it was the best thing in the world to be doing. When I would tell them their eyes would open wider, maybe I got a small gasp, then an emphatic "Good for you!".

My mind was made up for me about that, though. So now I am searching for a place to be after this summer. Three months... I have three months to make up my mind.

Of course, I have a chorus of people telling me what I should want. Christopher Sunshine is rooting for the home team. He wants me to stay here and go to school, maybe get a job. He warns of the dangers of the real world without a degree, telling me stories about ruin and death. A certain someone wants me to visit him in Ethiopia. He says I should at least leave home- now is the time to travel and college will always be there when I am ready.

For now I am listening to both of them because both options appeal to me for very different reasons. I've signed up for college classes and I am looking for families to stay with abroad. At some point I will need to make a decision, I guess. I hate making decisions and as this seems like a very big life decision I am worrying more than usual.

Wish me luck.

can i apologize now for my awful writing? i just have too much else to think about right now.

my one, over-arching life goal since age ten (when i first read the book Postcards from No-Man's Land- more about that later) has been to live away from my home, the only home i have ever known. my wanderlust has been trying to push me out the door for nearly eight years now. maps cover my wall and after the aforementioned book, my favorite book is my ancient atlas.

all these years, fate has mocked my inability to roam. in almost every year of my life, someone left me for a far-off new home. Canada, South Dakota, Oregon, Hawaii, Singapore, and Ethiopia, among others.

in a few months now, i will be 18. i can go anywhere, money and time permitting. and i have made plans to leave! i will move thousands of miles from my home to live near the faulty levees of new orleans. that's only seven months away, but it feels a long way off. it doesn't feel real yet.

my mother is completely against me moving away, or so i thought. yesterday she informed me that since i did not get in to our over-full community college, she would be sending me to live eight hours away, as far north as you can get in california, on top of shasta mountain. i'll be moving out of my house! but... now that it is real, now that it is happening, i have been getting sadder and sadder. i really do love my family, and it kind of hurt to hear my mother telling me she wanted me out.

she said shasta or santa barbara, really. eight hours in both directions. i don't know anyone in either town, so it doesn't really matter, i guess.

wish me luck?