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So on Sunday afternoon I started itching. Dry skin, I thought, no big deal. Boatloads of lotion. Then the itching turned into a rash, the rash turned into hives that decided to go viral and cover every available inch of skin I had, and I was more worried. But hey, I decided, I’ll just sleep on it; the last time this happened, they went away.
Next morning, five very fitful hours of sleep later: Wake up. Hives are back with reinforcements and long-lost relatives. My upper lip is swelling. Oh bollocks, thinks I, time to go to the university student health center. My roommate offers to walk me there on the way to running errands, and I agree. We head out.
I don’t make it past the front door of my building. Read the rest of this entry »
Time keeps tumbling past my window. There’s a rose-and-salmon sunset outside and it’s 4:45 and I don’t understand that it’s there.
I’ve never enjoyed a Thanksgiving Day quite so much in recent memory. One of the closest friends I’ve met online invited me over to her home since she lives nearby when she’s not at college; as it would so happen, the first time I would meet her in real life, she tackle-hugged me from behind. She’s five feet tall and was born with a rare genetic disorder that left her with an almost nonexistent jawline, sloping eyes, a lack of soft palate and subsequent speech impediment, and no opposable thumbs (though she loves to cook– eighteen years of living with four working fingers means her index finger’s practically opposable) but she’s one of the luckier ones, to be honest, and I’m very grateful for it. Other common symptoms mean she could’ve been mentally handicapped, or deaf. Appearance means nothing when the person is this damn awesome. She’s now a religion studies major at Syracuse University and is quite possibly the world’s most well-informed agnostic in those regards. Don’t judge a book by its cover? Don’t judge, period.
Somehow, I have gained an international family over the last years. I have the Internet to thank for much of this, and I am grateful to it, but I’m also very glad that we’re all close outside of the communities and places we met on the ‘nets.
Either way– I have a cheeky older sister in Australia, a spiritual twin in Vietnam, a pretty-much-everything-except-for-height twin in New York, an obnoxious little brother in Connecticut, a batshit insane twin brother in Florida, and an abusive older-by-one-month sister who lives…in my room.
Oh, and my actual older brother.
On Sunday evening (morning, 3:30) my roommate and I leaned back in our chairs in the common room and started cataloguing all of the pair-ups that’d occurred in our hallway, and orchestrated some more in the making. And came up with some crack pairings that made me twitch and slide haphazardly out of my chair.
Who needs romance when you can stick everyone else into it unknowingly?
at times like this, all one can do is break out the archives of well-written fanfiction and be totally unproductive.
This will pass with time. This will pass with time. This will– damn it, I don’t want it to, and that’s a very bad sentiment especially since there is no chance– why does hope spring eternal?!
Life is falling into place. Doors are opening. My confidence is steadying. Outlooks are brightening.
And yet, at two in the morning, at the end of a week where I was elected to the board of our pre-law society and promoted to staff on our newspaper, I sat down in the centermost circle of one of our breathtaking courtyards, and flopped over to stare at the stars, hoping for some clarity and peace of mind, hoping for something to purge the hopes flash-flying through my head.
I am setting myself up for the worst sort of disappointment.
…
In other news, I want to be a hip-hop dancer now. What?
There are interesting places in the world.
Also, Christian allegory and influence notwithstanding, I like Tolkien’s explanation of death the best out of, well, anything.
—
As if to tempt religion even more, I went pendant shopping online for the first time in a year. Wicca and the rest of the ‘modern’ nature religions still seem farcical to me– spell-casting? are you kidding me? it’s a ‘religion’ that rebellious teens join to feel cool.– but the symbolism appeals to every bit of aesthetic appreciation within me. And my own nature-loving. And, despite my little persimmon bracelet, my love of pendants.
As I walked down the main off-campus street with two of my hallmates, I moved to toss an empty bubble tea cup into the trash can on the street corner. I failed to notice the man standing with a sign next to the can, who asked me with a wide smile, “Would you like one?” and handed me a small pamphlet. His companion nodded enthusiastically, and started, “Have you accepted–”
I looked up at the sign. “Are you going to HEAVEN or HELL??” it asked brightly.
I looked down at the pamphlet. “HEAVEN or HELL: Which One Will You Choose?”
My friends, according to the content of that life-changing piece of paper, I am apparently going to hell. Again.
—
The heart-shaped stress ball that a hallmate of mine and my roommate have pummeled many times today on account of Y-chromosome-related dumbassery is, for some reason, still unblemished and glossy.
Bits of writing and words that come to me during the day. As always fiction and non-fiction.
—
It was only until today, when the stone glowed up at me next to the orange hem of my black shirt, that I realized the bracelet I absently threw on last Thursday while packing and haven’t taken off since save for showering wasn’t black and red but black and orange.
Funny how irony works.
The stone really is persimmon-colored, flanked by black beads. It looks more like colored art glass than a real stone, but it doesn’t matter. To think I spent the entire summer looking for a pendant to supplant the one I wore every day for six months until it broke, and failed in finding one– and suddenly my token piece of jewelry is a bracelet from our trip to China that I didn’t even buy intentionally or initially like. My brother won it in a shooting game and he, my grandmother, and I looked at the bracelet a little skeptically.
