a burning rain

i'm thinking about getting out of bed.

i think it's time to start living in ALL CAPS.

don't think twice

someday i will be filled with an inherent rightness regarding my existence. but that isn't today yet.

someday. and i hope soon.

i want so much but all i can think is

LET ME GET AT YOU.

like truth, like ice, like fire

i've been thinking about things i am going to change a lot lately.

my major is one of them.

i've been spending a lot of time trying to "self-improve" this summer.

i have become genuinely happier, with a little help. i've been trying to take better care of my hair and skin and nails.  the weather is not helping with this, but i'm giving it my best shot. need to remember to work hard, both at my research and with sticking to goals. kind of important.

i'm going to be less scared and less jumpy, that is the plan. i am going to be comfortable in my own skin and do what needs to be done.

i am going to take new risks. i am going to be honest. i am going to do what makes me happy and satisfied instead of doing what is expected of me. i am going to be okay with not knowing.

i know i don't hold all the cards. i am going to stop grasping for them.

have myself a home-life

due to unforeseen complications in what ended up being a failed plan, i was at my most upset and frustrated and even angry (something i don't express very often) earlier today. i was blue and lonely.

i haven't really seen people in over a week, and things were just feeling like i had made a huge mistake in deciding to come back to madison for the summer and in a lot of other ways, too. but then my mom staged an intervention (because as previously mentioned, she always knows), and i was whisked out to have dinner at the home of some very close family friends.

even though i am still disappointed and sad and angry, being with people who know me so well and love me and genuinely want to be with me is such a lovely feeling. i hadn't realized how very lonely i have been the last week until i wasn't lonely. i like not being lonely.

i love being loved and being with those i love.

dear shadow, alive and well

i'm not sure whether i want to be more or less like my mother. i'm sure that inevitably i will end up being more like her than i will ever fully realize, but if i had the choice, i'm not sure which i would choose.

i think my issue here is that i that i am able to see in myself the negative qualities that she possesses but not the positive ones. it's hard to say whether this is because i focus on faults more than i should (a quality that we share in different ways) or that because we are mother and daughter, i am not able to see the positive traits we share, since we don't always interact in a capacity that reveals them to me.

i will admit that an irrationality and impulsiveness of mood, which i can hardly tolerate in her, is something i unquestionably share. she is a harder worker than me and is able to take pride in a job well done in a way that i do not. i also wish i had more of her "joie de vivre," per se, as i love those times in which our family becomes effortlessly fun - kevin has inherited for sure, but that is also partially because i sometimes think he and my mother are nearly one and the same. mimi is like her in a different way, but i think this is because it is so easy to see my grandma haha in her. and of course my mother and maternal grandmother are going to have at least a cursory resemblance of disposition.

the reason i write this here is because i find it difficult to accept how well my mom knows me and can read me. i have such a need to be independent, even though i am not very good at it. honestly, she knows what mistakes i am going to make before i make them and what i'm going to succeed in before i do. i have such a drive to please her because somehow when she is happy with me, i know i can be happy with myself.

when i was a baby, so the story goes, someone told my mom that there had never been a mother and child so bonded. in a way, i think we still are - i think i might kind of be her shadow, the parts of me that come from her change and fluctuate all the time and in different settings.

i want to belong completely to myself, but i know i will always, at least a little, be a part of her.

i may not always love you

the people who play music that i can hear have terrible taste.

I CAN ONLY HANDLE SO MUCH BLASTING OF TAYLOR SWIFT and ASHER ROTH.

OH GOD.

think it might be time to get some huge speakers in retaliation.

big mouths need big, big ears

i am beginning to think that the recent streak of broken possessions is the physical manifestation of my inability to keep my life together.

need to keep it together.