This girl's journey

2009-12-14T00:03:00.001-05:00

Buying a camera on boxing day and starting a new blog as soon as I figure the thing out =P

Another list.

2009-12-02T12:21:00.002-05:00

1. Bold the names of guys you'd definitely shag.
2. Italicize the names of guys you might shag after a little persuasion.
3. Leave the guys who don't do anything for you alone.
4. Put a question mark after the guys you've never heard of.
~~5. Strike the guys you wouldn't touch with a ten-foot pole.~~
6. ADD THREE OF YOUR OWN AT THE END.

01. Stephen Dorff?
~~02. Wesley Snipes~~
03. Denzel Washington
04. Samuel L Jackson
05. Hayden Christensen
06. Ian Somerhaulder
07. James Van Der Beek
08. Ashton Kutcher
09. Sean William Scott
10. The Rock
11. Brendan Fraser
12. Oded Fehr?
13. John Hannah?
14. Hugh Grant
15. Colin Firth
16. Liam Neeson
17. Daniel Day-Lewis
18. Leonardo Di Caprio
19. Billy Zane
20. Harry Connick Jr.
21. Sean Astin
22. Dominic Monaghan
23. Karl Urban
24. Vin Diesel
25. Paul Walker
26. Joshua Jackson
27. James Marsden
28. Shawn Ashmore
29. Hugh Jackman
30. Will Kemp ?
31. David Wenham?
32. Viggo Mortensen
33. Elijah Wood
34. Tobey Maguire
35. James Franco
36. Alfred Molina
37. Harrison Ford
38. Sean Connery
39. Shane West
40. Stuart Townsend
41. Richard Roxburgh?
42. Ewan McGregor
43. Jonathan Rhys Meyers
44. Christian Bale
45. Jared Leto
46. Colin Farrell
47. Ben Affleck
48. Josh Hartnett
49. Bruce Willis
~~50. Billy Bob Thornton~~
51. Dennis Quaid
52. Jake Gyllenhaal
53. Patrick Swayze *
~~54. Keanu Reeves~~
55. Gary Oldman
56. Tim Roth
~~57. Steve Buscemi~~
58. Michael Madsen?
59. Rick Yune?
60. Pierce Brosnan
61. Robert Carlyle
62. Jonny Lee Miller?
63. Jude Law
64. Matt Damon
65. Clive Owen
66. Ryan Phillippe
67. Benicio Del Toro
~~68. Johnny Depp~~
69. Orlando Bloom
70. Sean Bean?
71. Eric Bana
72. Brad Pitt
73. George Clooney
74. Mark Wahlberg
75. Jason Statham
76. Edward Norton
77. Ben Stiller
70. Owen Wilson
79. Vince Vaughn
80. Joaquin Phoenix
81. Russell Crowe
82. Billy Boyd?
83. Paul Bettany?
84. Heath Ledger *
~~85. Mel Gibson~~
86. Jason Isaacs?
87. Alan Rickman
88. Kevin Costner
89. Christian Slater
90. Antonio Banderas
~~91. Tom Cruise~~
92. Ving Rhames?
93. John Cusack
~~94. John Malkovich~~
95. Charlie Sheen
96. Kiefer Sutherland
97. Emilio Estevez
98. Rob Lowe
99. Matt Dillon
~~100. Kevin Bacon~~
101. Adam Brody
~~102. Andy Serkis~~
103. Alan Cumming
104. Josh Groban
105. Sean Biggerstaff
106. Zach Braff
107. Harry Sinclair?
108. Gerard Butler
109. Marton Csokas?
110. Jeremy Sumpter?
111. Sean Patrick Flanery
112. Cillian Murphy
113. Hugh Dancy?
114. Ioan Gruffudd
115. Mads Mikkelsen?
116. Enrique Murciano?
117. Jamie Bamber?
118. Craig Parker?
~~119. Dean Cain~~
120. James Marsters
121. David Boreanaz
122. James Spader
~~123. Kevin Spacey~~
124. Al Pacino
125. Jim Caviezel
126. Josh Holloway
127. Will Smith
128. Matthew McConaughey
129. Patrick Wilson?
130. Milo Ventimiglia
131. Jason Dohring?
132. Brandon Boyd?
133. Tom Welling
134. Sean Maher
135. Tré Cool
~~136. Billie Joe Armstrong~~
137. Mike Dirnt
138. Adrienne Armstrong?
139. Jason White?
140. Matthew Fox
141. Peter Sarsgaard
142. Derek Jeter
143. Travis Fimmel?
144. Michael Vartan
145. Rob Thomas
146. James Purefoy?
147. Michael Rosenbaum?
148. Jensen Ackles?
149. William Fichtner?
150. Patrick Dempsey
151. Ace Young?
152. Francis Capra
153. Ryan Hansen
~~154. Robert Pattinson~~
155. William Moseley?
156. Ryan Gosling
~~157. Nicolas Cage~~
158. Leigh Whannell?
159. Wentworth Miller
160. Jack Davenport?
~~161. Michael J. Fox~~
~~162. Kevin Federline~~
163. Liam Cunningham?
164. John Barrowman
165. John Rzeznik?
166. Sendhil Ramamurthy
167. Stephen Colbert
168. Jon Stewart
169. Brandon Flowers
170. Henry Ian Cusick
171. John Krasinski?
172. Michael Trucco?
173. Benjamin McKenzie
174. Adrian Pasdar
175. Jeremy Piven
176. Justin Timberlake **
177. Naveen Andrews
178. Vincent Cassel?
179. Adrian Paul?
180. Gabriel Byrne?
181. Adrian Grenier?
182. Daniel Craig
183. Nathan Fillion
184. Adam Baldwin
185. Ed Quinn?
186. Eric Szmanda ***
187. George Eads
188. Omar Epps
189. Jared Padalecki
190. Christian Kane?
191. Jeffrey Dean Morgan?
192. Geoffrey Rush?
193. Brandon Routh?
194. Chris Lowell?
195. James Callis?
196. Justin Chambers
197. Michael Muhney?
198. Matthew Goode
199. Bradley Cooper?
200. Burn Gorman?
201. Christopher Eccleston
202. David Tennant
203. Tom Felton?
204. Daniel Radcliffe
205. Rupert Grint
206. Kevin McKidd?
207. Gaspard Ulliel?
208. James McAvoy
209. Zac Efron
210. Jonas Armstrong?
211. Ed Speelers?
212. Penn Badgley?
213. James Lafferty
214. Bryan Greenberg?
215. Chace Crawford?
216. Joe Jonas
217. Toby Hemingway?
218. Dane Cook
219. Travis Wall?
220. Brad Paisley?
221. John Mayer
222. Blake Lewis ?
223. TR Knight
224. Hugh Laurie
225. David Duchovny
226. Damien Rice?
~~227. Ozzy Osbourne~~
228. Tim Daly?
229. Matthew Rhys ?
230. Robert Downey Jr.
231. Goran Visnjic?
232. John Corbett?
233. Michael Emerson ****
234. David Hewlett?
235. Robert Knepper
236. Nestor Carbonell
237. Robert Sean Leonard?
238. Zach Gilford?
239. Zachery Levi
240. Ryan McPartlin?
241. Penn Badgley? repeat
242. Zachary Quinto
243. Robbie Williams
244. Declan Donnelly ?
245. John Simm ?
246. Steven Strait?
247. Taylor Kitsch
248. Lee Pace?
249. Rufus Wainwright
250. Justin Chatwin
251. Chris Noth
252. Jack White
253. Matthew McFadyen?
254. Seth Green
255. Seth Rogan
256. Josh Beckett?
257. Damon Lindelof
258. JJ Abrams
259. Chris Pine

Notes:

* - I'm not into necro.
** - Pretty sure he's hit Britney Spears, so that would be a lot of persuasion.
*** - Good chunk of my teen years were spent drooling over him every Thursday night.
**** - I respect him way too much. He's a brilliant man, and I adore him.

Hopped off the plane at LAX with a dream and my cardigan♥;;

2009-08-14T23:54:00.005-04:00

"The Big Read reckons that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they've printed."
1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Underline the books you LOVE.
4) ~~Strike~~ out the books you have no intention of ever reading, or were forced to read at school and hated.
5) Reprint this list in your own LJ so we can try and track down these people who've read 6 and force books upon them

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
~~2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien~~ - I got half way through the 2nd book and couldnt go on .. ugghhh torture
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 The Harry Potter Series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible - a good chunk of it for university lit. anyway
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell - I was actually thinking about this today. Maybe I'll go pick up a copy or .. go to a library? .. eek.
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
~~16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien~~
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
~~18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger~~
19 The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
~~22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald~~
~~23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens~~ - sounds depressing. lol
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
~~41 Animal Farm - George Orwell~~ - i have hate for talking animals. thank you, disney.
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - L.M. Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood - I can't remember if I've actually read this one or not
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
~~52 Dune - Frank Herbert~~
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens - another one, I think I may have read parts of it when I was 8 but obviously too young to understand it all
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte's Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
~~91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad~~
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
~~94 Watership Down - Richard Adams~~
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare - there aren't enough underlines for this!!
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
~~100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo~~

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So this obviously isn't LJ. I think I'm gonna use this as a base or starting point for my reading list. Which I haven't made. But will.

Blog Challenge: Stories of Unrequited Love./Breaking Hearts and Making Boys Cry

2009-07-01T01:42:00.005-04:00

There's only one time in my life when I (admittedly half-heartedly) threw myself at someone and didn't receive open affection in return. A little rejection is good for the ego.

But we're not going to delve into that one tonight...

More than once, however, I've been on the other side of unrequited love - the unrequitor, I suppose (as my spell-check informs me that is in fact, not a word.) I could name names and point fingers, but I think I'll refrain. Most people who read this will already have some idea as to whom the individuals were. Twice I was pressured into so-called 'going out' with someone when I did not feel the same way they did about me.

Unfortunately both their names start with the same initial, so I'm going to have to get creative with the aliases ... T - wrote me love letters for a year (or more, I can't remember). I moved away, he cried. We lost touch for a bit, and then spent a few days together one summer, which re-opened his can of Justinelove (that's what I'm calling it. lol), and hardly a day went by that we did not IM or email each other. Then he got a girlfriend.
Notoriously, girlfriends do not like me. As Sarah and I used to say, we form the Whores Who Everyone Hates Club, we don't steal boyfriends, we just give them something better to choose from.
This girlfriend read his IM's and emails. Oh joy. Needless to say, he had to stop talking to me if he wanted to keep getting laid. The last time we 'talked', and I say that lightly, it was because the girlfriend messaged me over facebook to stop requesting to be his friend. I messaged him, told him to get his bitch a muzzle. We amicably agreed that what she was so upset about wasn't a big deal to either of us, and that she really just needed to move on. But we still don't talk. He says it's because of my 'shenanigans' - drinking, having fun ... yeah. Those shenanigans. (He was probably referencing the night I found out my unrequited love was dating another girl, and I got drunk and made out with Red Shirt Guy [still don't know his name]. But he wouldn't admit to it, because it overlapped with when he was dating the girlfriend, and it would mean admitting he had feelings for me at the time.)

G's story took place over a much shorter period of time. I was dating his best friend, J, and everyday he would walk home with us. He saw how badly I was being treated by J, but stood by and watched, and when J and I finally broke up (after I had cheated on him with W - God rest his soul - and avoided him for half a summer), he saw it as his opportunity. He was a great friend, and I never wanted anything more than that from him. It was very picturesque - perfect setting for a scene in a movie - when I made him cry.
He asked me out. I said no.
I felt really, really, really bad about it too so when he got teary eyed I caved and said fine. It lasted about 12 hours, until the next morning, when I - having gone home knowing what I'd done was wrong (I didn't like him! Why should I play with his feelings like this?), and thinking about it all night - told him I couldn't go out with him. I don't remember the exact details but our friendship didn't recover from that. Last thing I heard was his brother (whom I adored) went crazy and tried to kill his family by unhooking the gas. But it was probably just a rumour.

There are others - ones I don't have defining moments of and I'm still friends with - so writing about it would be kind of, maybe, very, very awkward at this time. One day their stories will see the light of day. But they're not over yet.

;)

A note/QOTB on making people cry: One time in 12th grade, I made a list of all the people I could remember that I had made cry. It wasn't a short list, and it was depressing. Does that make me a bad person?

Share it fairly, but don't take a slice of my pie.

2009-06-25T21:03:00.003-04:00

How is a person supposed to even afford to go to school when tuition goes up nearly $1,000 from one year to the next?

Niagara College Board of Governors voted an increase to tuition fees in February of this year, despite Student Governor Dan Tweyman's objections - he tried to declare it a conflict of interest, and was overruled by the Board's Chair, Michael Scott. Here's a link to the meeting's minutes, and the Board's website.

Plainly, this is outrageous. They have, of course, raised them well below the percentage caps set by the province, and that will be their selling point. That does not make it any less unreasonable, especially with the economy in its current situation. If anything, fees should be brought down as much as reasonably possible.

2009-06-16T23:05:00.002-04:00

I was inadvertently tagged to do a six word memoir blog, but I really don't think I could ever sum up anything in my life in just six words.

In case anyone wants to do it ....

Here are the rules:

1. Write your own six word memoir

2. Post it on your blog and include a visual illustration if you’d like

3. Link to the person that tagged you in your post and to the original post if possible, so we can track it as it travels across the blogosphere

4. Tag five more blogs with links

5. And don’t forget to leave a comment on the tagged blogs with an invitation to play.

Because I tag anyone who reads this. =)

We got everything we need right here, and everything we need is enough.

2009-05-27T21:27:00.002-04:00

I think I'm done dicking around. I wouldn't say that I've wasted the past two years since graduation, but I sure haven't done a lot. Didn't like Brock, didn't have money for term 2 at Niagara, I've had 4 different jobs, and then there's all that invaluable personal growth and development in between.

As soon as my account with Ontario Colleges is reset, I'm applying to Print Journalism at Niagara. I'm done applying and trying to do things because other people think I would be good at it or it will get me a good job. I don't care how much money I make. Life is about more than the paycheck every two weeks.

I want to enjoy what I do for a living.

Baby, we were born to run.

2009-05-12T22:21:00.003-04:00

I have a very strong need for freedom and independence. I hate when I'm put in positions that don't allow me to express and fulfill those desires so necessary to my being. For almost a year, I've been fighting the urge to take off running - get on a greyhound, disappear. Just run. Leave everyone and everything behind. I have no plan, no idea what I would do when I got where I was going or when I ran out of money. I think about how far I'd get with just what I have in the bank, what little town in northern ontario I'd end up in, taking a job as a waitress or a cashier at some little place to buy my next bus ticket, get to the next town.

And then I remember all those big dreams I had not so long ago. I still want to do those things. I think I just can't do them the same way everyone else does.

There's always gonna be another mountain, I'm always gonna wanna make it move, always gonna be an uphill battle, sometimes I'm gonna have to lose. Ain't about how fast I get there, ain't about what's on the other side, it's the climb.

Why's everything gotta be so intense with me?

2009-04-07T01:12:00.003-04:00

I'm not invulnerable. One day, I'm going to die. One day, everyone I know, will be dead.

I don't know why, but tonight that really hit me hard and all I could think was that I was wasting my time. That I don't have infinite amounts of it, and I'm wasting the little I have. And that hurts so deep down, I just want to numb it out. Want to do a few things I haven't done in a very long time.

Fuck it.

Operation: Husky Trusty Love

2009-03-06T03:08:00.004-05:00

I'm incredibly tired, heading to bed, and I was going to leave this until tomorrow (aka after I sleep) but I might as well do it now.

I failed 'no facebook for three days', and to avoid boycott from Ryan, I am 2 hours and 10 minutes into a 36 hour, no facebook punishment. (The title of this post is what Ryan called it.)

Unconditionally.

2009-03-03T03:44:00.002-05:00

Love never dies. Why do I relish heartache?

----------------------------

On a separate note, I am currently going cold-turkey with Facebook for 3 days with Ryan. It's been pretty tough so far, and it's only been 12 hours.

Here she comes.

2009-02-26T16:24:00.004-05:00

Student loans do not cover textbooks. The naive student, freshman, is lured into debt by attractive government student loans that tell them they can go to school for free now, and just have to pay the money back later. You can even get interest relief!

As my husband was still not working (it took in excess of six months for him to receive his teacher's license from the Nova Scotia Department of Education), he once again applied for interest relief. He was denied, based on my income - apparently, they base their entitlement eligibility guidelines on HOUSEHOLD INCOME (i.e. I should pay my husband's student loan payments), but do not factor in HOUSEHOLD STUDENT LOAN DEBT (i.e. they did not take into account that, out of my $38,000 a year income, student loan payments of close to $400 a month were already being taken out). At the time, his rate of loan repayment was $525 per month. If his individual loans were $915 per month and he earned
$38,000 a year he would qualify for interest relief - but they refused to factor in my student loans when calculating his rate of repayment, despite the fact that they were more than ready to factor in my income. With no alternative, his loan went into default.

[http://members.shaw.ca/frasie/bad.htm]

For two years, I have been underfunded by OSAP, and forced to withdraw from my programs at both a university and college level.

Today, we received our statement of student loan interest for income tax purposes. We could cry - after three years of paying these peopole between $360 and $390 per month (depending upon interest rates), I owe them exactly $641 less than I did when I graduated. After two and a half years of paying $270 per month, my husband owes them close to $4000 more than he did when he graduated (since his federal loan is in default, it continues to accumulate interest, and the interest builds at a greater rate than the principal on his provincial loans decreases). We had a long hard look at our situation today - every month, over $600 goes out of our meagre $2400 per month income for student loans, but we
are no closer to paying them off. My god - we've paid them over $17,000 over the past several years, and we actually owe them more today than when we graduated.

Someone asked the question - if you could go back in time, and choose not go to university, would you? To that, we both answer a resounding yes. I was making $38,000 a year in a job that required a Grade 12 education. Now I make $55,000 a year in a job that requires a Grade 12 education. We look at the people we graduated high school with, who are making $12 or $15 an hour, and enjoying a higher standard of living than
we are. And I look at colleauges in the federal government who were hired with a high school diploma, only to be granted Education Leave to attend university (last year a friend of mine was given full tuition and books, plus 70% of her $48,000 salary, to go back to school and get an undergraduate degree).

[^Source]

I currently owe somewhere between $4,000 and $7,000 in student loans, maybe more. If I had continued in university, I would have owed at least $25,000 by the end of my four years. And what would I do with a BA in Political Science anyway? Between finding a job, and paying back my student loan, I would have been in debt for the next ten to fifteen years after graduating.

I have friends who started post-secondary school, and had other opportunities, great opportunities for employment where they are making much more than they would have with their degrees.

Universities are sinkholes. Colleges are only better if you're footing the bill yourself.

Students, ESPECIALLY first generation students and those from low-income families, should be made more aware of the realities of government student loans before they are put into greater debt than their parents.

A long, long time ago, I can still remember how the music used to make me smile.

2009-02-25T22:38:00.004-05:00

When do you let go?

And, whatever it is that leads you to the conclusion that you must let something go, how do you do it?

How do you let best friends go?

Years of silence, of feud. There are deep roots, and deeper scars. But none of it matters now.

I have let him go.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

I'm very tempted to erase this, and not post it.

Engines stop running, but I have no fear. London is drowning and I, I live by the river.

2009-02-20T13:00:00.003-05:00

Yesterday, I sent my resume and a cover letter to the RCMP for a position in Yellowknife. This morning, I had an email back from them saying they could not open my resume and could I resend it. Needless to say, I have just spent the past half hour reformatting my resume in gmail, and sent it two minutes ago. Most employers wouldn't write back requesting your resume if they couldn't open it, so I'm taking this as a good sign. Also freaking out a little bit.

Immaculate Destruction

2009-01-30T00:14:00.003-05:00

Once upon a time, there was a girl. She laughed a lot, and did things - whatever she cared to do - impulsively and on a whim. And she hurt a lot of people who were close to her. "Do you not think about what you do?" they would ask. "Don't you see how your actions affect everyone else?"

Seeing the error in her ways, she tried to be more calm, to make everyone else happy, and do the things she was told a girl should.

Over time, she became unhappy. "I'm doing everything I'm supposed to," she would think to herself. "Why am I not happy?"

She realized she was trapped.

Trying to be someone she truthfully, deep down, was not.

"I have betrayed you," she said. But by now, there was only a dying flicker, and a wisp of smoke, of the boisterous, fearless, unruly girl she once was in her heart.

"Be free, live again!" she urged the dull glow. "What do I do to give you life once more?"

They all knew at a glance, when he took up his Stance, that he sailed in the Irish Rover.

2009-01-27T23:08:00.003-05:00

Every time I turn around, it seems like someone I know is getting engaged, having a baby, or getting married. Shouldn't I be too? Or is everyone else just in too much of a rush?

You're not Ulysses, baby.

2009-01-24T11:06:00.006-05:00

This is my first blog on blogger.com. I've had blogs on other blogging sites, but they've all fallen to the wayside. I'm going to try and keep this one.

I guess I should lay down the ground rules.

I'm going through some really confusing times right now. My birthday is on Monday, and I will be twenty-one. Two weeks ago, I had an emotional breakdown while in my program coordinator's office. It was stress, PMS ... Either way, she called the school health office, and the nurse there had me book an appointment with the counsellor. That appointment is on Monday, at 12:30.

I've been debating whether to go. I've been debating a lot of things lately. Am I crazy, did I finally break? Should I keep going in my school work, when half the time I can't bring myself to leave my house to go to school, or I leave and purposely miss the bus - always self-sabotage.

It boils down to ... either I am depressed, have a dissociative disorder, or am severely sleep deprived. The last one, I know, is confusing, because I sleep every night. But it's possible, they say, that a person can sleep but never get into the all-important deep sleep that regenerates, repairs, and rests a person. They say not getting enough deep sleep can lead to symptoms of both depression and dissociative disorders. I'm hoping that's true. I'm hoping I'm just sleep deprived. It will make treatment a lot easier.

Treatment for what? Well, my dreams are very realistic. So realistic, in fact, and so mundane, that when I remember them during the day, I remember them as memories - as if they had actually happened. On more than one occasion, I have done something, or talked to someone about something - a conversation we had in my memory, and had them tell me it never happened. In my memory, I had a conversation with my friend over msn, about what her doctor had recommended for treatment of her SHS (snapping hip). She told me that he suggested she join a yoga class. I also have problems with my hip, and my doctor had suggested physiotherapy, but yoga seemed like a good alternative. So a few days later, I found a posting for a yoga class in our neighbourhood that was just starting up. I messaged her about it, and she told me her doctor didn't tell her to do yoga, and that our conversation had never happened. I was so adamant that it had, I combed through our chat log. Sure enough, there was no previous conversation between us about yoga.

If that had been just a one-time thing, I would have been able to forget about it. During this last week, I woke up and remembered that my sister had told me there was a letter on the kitchen table for me. I checked the table for the letter, but couldn't find it. Thinking to myself, I remembered the stuff on the table being different, arranged differently, and came to the realization that it was probably a dream.

When I was younger, for the longest time, I had terrifying nightmares. Probably from the time I was two or three, until I was six or older. They never really stopped, I just learned to deal with them. Last year, I had recurring nightmares about zombies because of the movie, I Am Legend.

I don't pretend to know what it all means, what it means for my health.

I just know, I can't continue like this.