and while you were growing older, they were busy growing older too.

2011

January.

I found myself still in love with someone that I thought I wasn’t in love with at all. At midnight I looked around wanting someone to kiss, wanting him to kiss but he was with another girl in a different part of town kissing her. There was a small part of me that ended things with the boy I was dating up at school so I could be with the boy waiting at home. The only problem was, he wasn’t waiting. For the first time in a long time I began to actually consider someone else. As in, allowing myself to be in a relationship. This was when the ‘sick’ first happened. I remember staying in my room for over 48 hours because my phone was broken and because I couldn’t move. I was glued to my bed in a pile of snot and my head was throbbing and aching. This was when I met my swollen lymph node. I wanted to go on a date, a real date. I wanted to have a decent conversation.

February.

After the disappointment of Winter Break, I made pancakes with the boy I broke up with for the other boy. We sat in the kitchen of the dorm and ate nutella and pancakes and I remembered how good it was to laugh with you. I noticed a boy with glasses that I met on the first night of school shuffle by on the way to his dorm. The Vagina Monologues and the book CUNT. I found myself more open about talking about things. I stopped hanging out with the pancake boy and focused my energy on talking to the boy with the glasses. He was resistant and standoffish. I judged with cigarette smoking. But he intrigued me. He kept blowing me off and I kept blowing him off until finally we got coffee. I wasn’t that interested. I just wanted to have a decent conversation. One day after class I took matters into my own hands. “We should drink this weekend.” We stayed up most of the night talking and drinking until finally, he kissed me. The next morning I noticed he left his phone drunkenly on my floor and we awkwardly met at the library. As I gave him back his phone I remember distinctly thinking, “Well, never going to hang out with him again.” But I did. First callback. I held my own.

March.

I began to allow people to depend on me too much, in the bad kind of way. I hated one of my friendships more than I could even describe. Maybe it was because my actual friend didn’t eat in the dining hall anymore and I didn’t want to eat alone. We left for spring break. We had “the talk” before we left but I didn’t really believe you. I didn’t think you actually wanted to be with me. But we were together whether I understood it or not. You made me laugh so, that worked. When I came back and you were flaky again I almost gave up. Then you decided you like laying at the foot of the bed with me. And I agreed. There was even a mixed CD involved that you slid over to me in a shy way as we sat tangled in my bed.

April.

You stayed the whole night for the first time. I didn’t mind sharing the tiny bed with you. I watched the rehearsal process. I was enthralled and frustrated at the same time. I wanted to be up there. But I was also finally ‘cool’. People who I had known the names of for months finally recognized me as a functioning member of the department. Which was exciting and incredibly lame. They had to know I was good enough to be an understudy before I could be ‘cool’. When you wouldn’t flake on me I would recount the night’s rehearsal to you. I began to get more and more annoyed with your tardiness and began to think I deserved better. It was clear I was no longer friends with one of my first friends here. That was obvious when I received a hate email detailing how awful I was for not loving him back. After all the flakiness you started to pull through. The nights we spent alone in my room began the construction of our island together.

May.

I hated listening to everyone talk about Acting II auditions because I knew I should be auditioning. WE should have been auditioning. I talked to my acting professor about it and he said if he were in the room for auditions for Acting I things would be very, very different. I was floored, flattered and furious. I was so jealous all the time and just wanted to burst every time anyone said something about the acting program or class or their audition pieces. But I was your girlfriend. And I liked that. Smoothie night…. I began to love our friendship and ignore the ones at home. I began to consider the most abstract form of art and found the first tears in a long time rolling down my cheeks in the art history lecture hall. I decided to chop off all my hair… but not yet. Noticed the lump in my neck.

June.

My heart began to sink. I felt more and more like Penny Lane with her uncertainty and mixed feelings. I knew if we had just a little longer things could really begin. But I was leaving the circus, and returning to something that I knew would be unfulfilling. We said goodbye in front of the airport and it felt like I would be seeing you in an hour. More goodbyes. Decisions and plans for next year set. I watched Ashland disappear in the cold rain and didn’t feel like I was leaving. When we got to the bay it hit me. I chopped most of my hair off. Only one person didn’t like it but I realized I stopped caring about that person’s opinion about me. We improved again and DESTROYED the seniors. We still had it and it was the only thing I really missed. I didn’t want to be needy but you never called. I didn’t feel like I was in a relationship.

July.

Anywhere but here. I was bored out of my mind, sad and lonely. My friends were different. But I made money and slept. Saw movies by myself. Fourth of July grossed me out. I began to slyly question my friends about relationships. They all shocked me with their answers. I realized the amount of weight I had gained in a month. The sickness began to eat away at me. I hated not knowing what was wrong. The best part of my day became my Oceanography class, which shocked me more than anyone could realize. My friends began to show glimmers of their old selves. But I just wanted to be alone.

August.

Stuck in a strange in between. My body ached and I didn’t know how to explain it to anyone. I found myself embarrassed, mortified even that I was thinking certain thoughts. But we had an apartment and I imagined moving in and being free and cooking my own food and that idea made me too happy. People that I was never very close to or honest with became the people that I wanted to spend all my time with. I looked at him sitting in the drivers seat, proud, with a year to do whatever he pleased and I envied him. All I wanted to do was pack a bag and leave. Babysitting. A woman at the coffee shop told me my children were beautiful. I looked at her, laughed and didn’t even correct her because the thought of me being a mother now was such a ridiculous notion. I looked out the window of the spa and thought about all the things I wanted to do. We drove and sat at the diner for hours talking about things I hadn’t thought about since the last time we were there. I liked talking.

September.

My shirt clung to my body as I walked up the street to his house. It was hot and I grew nervous as I approached. When I saw him it was different. Not bad different. My dad helped me move into the apartment and quietly left. Before he did I noticed his unhappiness and it began to bug me. I couldn’t believe I lived in an apartment with my best friend with my boyfriend a block away and with two weeks to do nothing before school started. He came up behind me as I did dishes and pulled me in close to dance. We danced in the kitchen and I thought, perhaps I was falling in love with him. Then that night... I couldn’t deal with it anymore and we ended things. I couldn’t believe it was over. I felt empty and awful. It was a hasty decision but he wasn’t treating me the way I should be treated. I went underground for a week and couldn’t get out of bed. I called him over the night before school started in hopes to calmly discuss our friendship and where we were leaving things. I ended up yelling at him. Auditions. Best audition of my life. Then callbacks. Then my name on the list. I stood there, mouth gaping open and out of the corner of my eye I saw him and wanted him to kiss me and tell me I deserved it. He didn’t. We went to that party, the gross party with our neighbors and I realized I was doing this all wrong. I wasn’t the silly noncommittal person I use to be. He came over and he stayed.

October.

We got back together after five seconds apart. Dog Sees God. Feeling like I had shit to prove. Then I realized I didn’t. I weighed myself for the first time in a month and realized I had lost fifteen pounds…doing nothing. I hated going to house parties. I felt uncomfortable there. I loved Sierra, Stephanie and Sazi. We had that date and your mind was somewhere else. Tech. Dog. Tots.

November.

I turned twenty. The show came and went in a shockingly fast way. I missed it before we even closed. I lost five more pounds. It was as if this weight was just falling off. I auditioned for Midsummer and it went well. Way better than I imagined. At callbacks I got jealous. Its where it began. Cast list, my name was there but hers wasn’t and I felt like someone had fed me rocks. I needed to get away. Thanksgiving was interesting. Reminded more and more of the two people in my life that should not be together. I slept and babysat and didn’t eat. When I came back things made more sense.

December.

Jealously ate away at me for no good reason. I couldn’t believe that I was still thinking about how badly I wanted to be in the sequence. I couldn’t handle things, I felt as though I was losing grip on everything I use to understand. It all became so scary. Feeling things. Feeling everything. Allowing myself to depend on someone even though ever fiber of my being was telling me not to. I waited for him to fuck it up. Then somehow I began to believe him, probably because I started believing myself.

I want to be a better person this year.

I want to only be happy because being upset is a waste of time.

I want to follow through.

I want to be hopeful again.