letter of intent.

you know, I have been very vulnerable lately.
vulnerable in a good way.
vulnerable in the kind of way that makes me feel overwhelmingly human.
I wish I always had a tape recorder on me.

I wrote six love letters to a person that is slowly fading from my life for an art project. an art project I had to put on display in the greenroom. I was trying to illustrate "unrequited love".
I got an A.
the seventh letter was a new letter. not a love letter but a letter full of fondness and intention.

yeah. I'm good right now.
great even.

Mayonnaise legs!

today it was sunny and joyous and I wore shorts.
the problem is my legs look like that time Benjamin put mayonnaise on my legs. maybe it wasn't Ben that did it....someone else did....but it was Ben that made up that annoying song, "Mayonnaise legs! Mayonnaise legs! Sarah Mitchell has Mayonnaise legs!"

In any case, my legs are white.

In any case, my legs are white? is that really what I just wrote? thats the most interesting thing going on in my life?

Well, no actually.
I am still happy.
I still want to shave my head.
I still like a boy a lot.

Today I was thinking about how weird it will be going home for the summer. it will be rad being home but in the same way I want to talk to my friends from home all the time it'll now be the opposite and I'll want to talk to everyone from here all the time. Its really beginning to feel like two completely different worlds. Oregon Sarah and Los Angeles Sarah.
Not that they're two different people but i have such a foundation here now. and in a month I'm going to go home and hope that my foundation is still there.

I can only assume I didn't win the New York Times essay contest. I bet some douche from an Ivy got it.
fucking douches that go to Ivy leagues.

ANYWAY.

dear bitch in the tutu,

If only we could write letters to ourselves from the future.

Dear eighteen year old Sarah this time last year,

Hey. Heres the thing, I know everything sucks right now. I know you didn’t get what you want. I know you didn’t finish out on that high note that you dreamed about for so long. Last night I watched Mira Costa High school’s current musical. I watched a boy I stopped myself from loving shake his hips knowing that most of his cast mates hate him for something stupid high schoolish thing he did. I watched another boy I broke steal the show.

I kept having flashbacks of my nasty, bitter attitude in my purple tutu. The naps I took during the show, going on stage half asleep, not giving a fuck, that was stupid. That was awful. I hate watching people I love having that same attitude. Not just the bitterness but not enjoying each other while they’re there.

Your senior speech didn’t say all you should have said, all you should have said. You said that High School was disappointing. You talked about how you wish it had been different.

You didn’t warn them.

You should have told them to enjoy each other, to love each other. You should have said High School isn’t the be-all end-all. There’s so much more.

I’m the same.

We’re the same.

But I’m different. I grew up and realized these things. I'm being that annoying friend who's only a year older but thinks they know a lot. Well, just between you and me, I do know more than you so I don't mind so much telling you.

I realized to appreciate everything and to not let anything stop me from achieving what I want to succeed.

Apologize to boys for messing them up. Especially buckethead.

Its good you didn’t peak in High School.

Always,

Future Sarah

Wonder I do.

last night I overcooked a fried egg.
[i like fried eggs now]

but heres the thing.

a brown fried egg still tastes really good.

I am so happy.
thought I knew what being happy was before but this, this is what it is, or at least, this is what it is right now.
after that conversation I realized that what it all is. feelings mean different things depending on when you feel them.

"its never anything until its something"

moral of the story: nightcaps are good.

It felt like one of those times when I was in a movie about a girl in college last night. I've had a lot of those lately.
three of us sat in my room drinking poorly made manhattans and my perpetually drunk friend in a sweater talked about an accidental date he went on. I kept sharing looks with a boy I like as this man in a sweater that was too tight on him asked for relationship advice from us as if we were some seasoned couple.
but it felt like that.
not in a monotonous way, not in a serious way just in a nice way.
I feel like this is what dating is suppose to be. what I've always wanted it to be. not this boyfriend girlfriend shit. not yet.
i like it.
it works for me.

We watched the man in the sweater call the girl and invite her over for a nightcap. [he actually used the word nightcap which is why the night seemed so cinematic.]
then we watched from my window across the courtyard as he made her a drink.

sick or something.

my body is fighting against me.
something isn't right.
I wish I knew what.

there will always be parties.

my wise friend told me that. second hand advice but its true. there will always be parties. there will always be something else.


I felt like I was taking a vacation this weekend from myself. after receiving a disturbing, revolting, self-indulgent email, I wanted to just curl up. not in a depressed way but in a relaxed satisfied way. because I am relaxed and satisfied. I felt bad for having an adverse reaction to it. I shouldn't feel awkward about being happy.

I need to write the scene that happened Saturday morning.

Everything use to seem like the end of the world. a year ago, this week and more specifically this weekend would have taken a toll on me.
I liked making my friend laugh in the hospital. I liked how easy it was to be there with them, even though there were machines beeping and buzzing and they still don't know whats wrong with her. it was easy.

it was easy to walk home with him holding hands. I actually enjoyed it.

Sierra thinks I'm Obama. People just want me to fix things but its a process. it takes awhile.
shes Joe Biden.

today was excellent.

that really pretty thing I've been listening to over and over

empathy is the capacity to recognize and, to some extent, share feelings (such as sadness or happiness) that are being experienced by another semi-sentient being.


I always knew I was empathetic but today was the first day I realized the stress my body feels is that. People's energy has been rockin' my world lately. in good ways and in bad ways. I found myself not capable of speech today around and post negative energy. I physically hurt after having a conversation with a depressed boy. I felt like burying my face in my hands being around someone I normally can always be around.
I just want my person.
I hate feeling like I'm always being stood up.
I have been itching at rehearsal to be the one acting.
I want some one to adore me as much as I adore them.
I want to sleep.
I want to figure out why I am always tired and why I keep forgetting things right after they happen.

courage ravioli mothafucka.

The past week has felt like a month. I've learned so much.
I do not resent watching.
I crave it.

I actually do know what I'm talking about. What a supremely good feeling. I now know, without a doubt that I will be successful here.

I want to shave my head. I'm not going to but I want to. or I want to cut my hair and wear it in a straight bob. I'm sick of the extra weight it adds.

I made ravioli, stood up for myself and shared a twin bed for the first time without minding it. in fact, I rather enjoyed it.

moral of the story,
RAVIOLI GIVES ME COURAGE.

dear new york times,

I wrote this for the New York Times annual "Modern Love" writing contest.

He was wearing a red plaid shirt. I was wearing red lipstick. I glanced at him as he sat down next to me on the busy promenade. I was reading an obscure book of short plays and he fumbled with the buckle of his bag. A homeless man with a banjo played a delicate tune near us.

“Whatcha reading?” he said in a surprising British accent.

I showed him the cover and continued to read.

It was the perfect beginning to some generic indie movie. The girl with the red lipstick would pretend to be uninterested for a few minutes as the British boy attempted to start a conversation. He would flash a dashing smile and suddenly the girl with the red lips would drop her feminist frown and spend the rest of the day talking about nothing and everything with the boy. The girl would resist for a while but after a montage of them spending time together she would soon be throwing her arms around him. Then there would be conflict, maybe he was from a lower class family and didn’t think he was good enough for the girl. Perhaps the girl had commitment issues and couldn’t shake her anti-love act. They would break up and look out their windows as it rained, longing for the other, but too stubborn to admit it. Inevitably they would find their way back to each other after the boy found the obscure play the girl with the red lips was reading the day they met.

This was not the first scene in an indie movie.

“Okay, come on. Lets go,” My sister said as she exited the store.

I smiled and said “see you later” as I stood up. I would not see him later, or ever again for that matter but it was more hopeful than saying “see you never.”

This new hopeful attitude was odd for me. I had never been a romantic optimist. In high school I seemed to always find myself in a relationship without knowing how I got there. I was one of the boys, the girl who refused to celebrate Valentines Day, and a reluctant hand holder who resented red roses.

My decision to take a full year off from being someone’s “person” happened in a swift moment at the beginning of my senior year of high school. I quickly explained that I didn’t have feelings for my current victim and delicately admitted I thought that I probably never had feelings for him at all. He stared at me blankly and told me that he fell in love with my wit and honesty. I returned his blank stare and replied, “You were in love with me?”

After a year of actively insuring my single status I moved away from home, and began my college education. I spent the first few weeks of school going to parties, having mediocre conversations with moderately attractive guys and going back to my dorm room alone feeling utterly unfulfilled.

I decided to observe my new friend, my first real “girl” friend and the way she carried herself at parties. She stood tall, wearing sassy boots and a vacant expression on her face. She somehow achieved looking interested and uninterested at the same time. Her eyes remained wide and curious and her body language was welcoming.

I turned to a boy leaning against a wall with a red cup in his hand. Glancing over at her again, I copied her body language perfectly and started up a conversation. He replied with one-word responses to everything I asked and I finally gave up. As we stumbled home I realized that imitating my friend would get me nowhere.

I decided to not pursue love, like or anywhere in between in a direct way. I was not desperate. I merely wanted to continue my studies as a self-proclaimed “Relationship Anthropologist.” I learned to carefully place myself at a table directly next to “happy couples” and take down their conversations word for word. Though creepy, I learned more from those afternoons eavesdropping than in any of my classes. Through this fieldwork I made the alarming discovery that most college couples did not talk. They looked at each other for a while, would occasionally kiss, and then drink coffee in silence. I am a total fan of comfortable silence, but in most cases I felt the awkwardness all the way from my table. I became terrified for my generation. Did people not have decent conversations anymore?

In the dining hall I sat opposite a boy who was nearly a man and he made me laugh. Really laugh. It had been just over a year since I decided to swear off relationships when the boy-man asked me to be his girlfriend. The idea of being a girlfriend usually made me want to vomit but his timing seemed so poetically fitting that, against my better judgment, I agreed. He was the most popular RA in a different building and I was all too suddenly his girlfriend. I had my own identity with my friends but when he was there it was like a disappearing act. I found myself fading into the wall as he gestured wildly in front of his friends. It was if I was an outsider examining my own relationship from the next table. Most nights I bundled myself in his rare full size dorm bed and read my Biology textbook as he sat at his drafting table and sketched. I found myself studying him more than my textbook. My heart jumped into my throat when I came to the shocking conclusion that he was a perfect combination of three of my high school boyfriends. That was when I realized; I was only in it for the bed.

I headed back in the dangerously wonderful direction of recklessness. Desperate to figure out the secret of the seemingly boring, comfortable and for me, somewhat illusive college relationship my fieldwork became much more hands on. I devised a goal: Three weekends, three guys. I was not necessarily seeking a sexual misadventure, just a decent conversation and answers. Much to my surprise, it happened. They all seemed moderately interested in me and I shared the same nonchalant desire to continue our conversation. I made the same jokes, told the same stories, scientifically; all the variables were the same. The X variable, or the experimental variable, was the particular dude I was going to bring back to my room to have said conversation. I would position myself in a chair by the window; nowhere near the bed to make it clear what was going to happen, or I suppose what wouldn’t happen. They were three very different guys, with three very different majors, and yet they all had the same response at the end of the night. When I decided it was time for them to leave, they stood, and pulled me in for three of the most passionate kisses I have ever had. When each of them reached the door, they looked back momentarily and said something along the lines of “see you later” but it was their faces that told the real truth. Their faces said “see you never.”

College has become so sexually charged the scariest form of intimacy had now become having a conversation with someone. This brings a whole new meaning to the term “one night stand.” For all intents and purposes I had the equivalent of three one-night stands.

We pass each other like strangers around campus now.

I hypothesized that our conversation was more mortifying to acknowledge than a one-night stand for the simple reason that after a couple hours of talking to someone that you’re attracted to, feelings begin to develop.

One more weekend, one more guy, one more experiment except this time, completely different variables.

I split a bottle of rum with a cleanly shaven boy, attempting a different tactic. Strategically, I placed myself on the bed in a comfortable way. This time, he occupied the seat by the window and we began to have a decent conversation. We both knew where the night was heading but pretended as though we didn’t. I excused myself to use the bathroom and when I returned he sat, perched on my bed looking intently at the photos on my wall pretending to be interested in them. We faced each other and stared.

Genuine human connection is terrifying and fleeting. College relationships are superficial at best, a placeholder for the next thing to come along. It becomes hard to distinguish truth, and turns into a competition. Which of us can be the most aloof? Which of us play the most hard to get? No more vulnerability allowed. This leads me to wonder if a genuine relationship is even possible, or an even more frightening thought, has it ever even existed? The line between reality and illusion has become blurry.

I was about to walk away with my sister when the British boy cleared his throat. I turned hopefully and smiled.

He looked at me, and said, “Your shoe.”

“My shoe?”

“It’s untied.”

“Oh. Thanks.”