There are bridges you cross...

[...]I couldn't be happier
No, I couldn't be happier
Though it is, I admit
The tiniest bit
Unlike I anticipated
But I couldn't be happier
Simply couldn't be happier
Well - not "simply":
'Cause getting your dreams
It's strange, but it seems
A little - well - complicated
There's a kind of a sort of : cost
There's a couple of things get: lost
There are bridges you cross
You didn't know you crossed
Until you've crossed
And if that joy, that thrill
Doesn't thrill you like you think it will[...]
-Excerpt from Wicked's “Thank Goodness.”


I'm lonely.


I'm not sure why but I'm just lonely. Usually I thrive in my alone time. Usually it makes me feel revitalized. Usually it breathes life into my creativity. Like a breath of wind in my sails. Usually being alone gives me a feeling of homeostasis and the discombobulated feeling of belonging. But I guess usually isn't always because lately I feel every lonesome moment weighing heavily on my shoulders.

I wake up in the morning, every morning, with purpose. But neither going to work nor going to class is much like leaving the house at all. I've mastered the art of invisibility. I can go whole days without making eye contact, laughing, speaking a single word. It's my way, I suppose, of controlling my surroundings. But as a child adults are always warning you that sometimes there can be “too much of a good thing.”

I haven't talked to anyone in days. That is to say-- I've spoken to a few errant friends but not actually talked. The pleasantries were exchanged and as if following the beat of the same drum faded out into quietness. I can't explain it. A few weeks ago there were too may draws for my time and attention. Now it's like none at all.

So I'm left here to sit quietly and wonder. When will the silence be broken?

Silence, like so many other things in life, is only ever a good think when you can convince yourself that you want it. Nobody likes being forced to read a book. Nobody likes being forced to eat healthily. Nobody likes being forced to go to work every morning. But if we can give ourselves the impression that we want to read that book, eat that carrot, do our job then all of a sudden it becomes a source of pleasure instead of becoming irksome. But when you don't want it... or aren't trying to create it silence can be rather disheartening.

This time next week I won't feel lonely. I'll feel glad from the solace from humanity. I almost always do. I usually do. I wonder why though. Why is it that I've always enjoyed being on my own so much more than being with another person? Why is it that all of a sudden I'm not sure that's what I want at all?

I suppose I'll just have to be content to wonder.

-LLK

As a child I grew up in an abusive home. Unlike “traditional” abusive homes (I use quotes because it's not something that should ever be considered a norm) it was my mother that was the abuser and my father was the victim in most cases (though my brother and I did receive our share of the punishment). My mother was heavily alcoholic and abused the substance in her everyday life. After my father died when I was eleven the abuse moved on to me, bypassing my older brother who was more like my mother while I was more similar to our father. After a year of heavy abuse (including an incident with a knife that resulted in a nasty scar the size of a tube of lipstick on my knee that I still have today) my mother killed herself in a drunken tirade.

It's been ten years since my mother's passing and I've managed to get my life on track. I'm a senior at a University. I have a great job. I have an amazing support system. Friends. A dog and a cat. A home I'm proud of. And I can even look into the mirror on most days and think that I'm beautiful. It's like a whole new world and a whole new life from the one I lived as a child. But... I worry sometimes that I'm not going to be able to escape it forever.

Sometimes I'm afraid I'm going to become my mother.

My brother is in prison right now. He's a substance abuser. Hasn't kept a job or a driver's license for more than six months in his life. He has a temper and flies off the handle at the smallest things. I've seen him kick his own dog. Now.... I love my brother, that's not the issue. He's one of the best friends I've ever had. It's just that I'm worried his actions are making me naïve. I tell myself that he's like our mother and I'm like our father. I don't have much of a temper to speak of. Though I do drink socially, I never lose control of my alcohol. I have an incredible work ethic—if I do say so myself. And, I'm a very caring person.

But, I do lose control from time to time. That is... I do have a temper. Though it's very rare that I ever even come close to angry, when I'm there I've frightened myself. I tend to yell (and I mean long yelling tangents sometimes...) at my dog when she spills the trash. Or, sometimes I'll storm out of the house when my friends are teasing me. I slam doors. I kick things sometimes. So... what kind of mother am I going to become? I want to be a parent. I want children. And now that I'm older what happens when I find the man I want these things with?

What if I end up like her?

I am of the firm belief that some women simply shouldn't have children. My mother shouldn't have. Since I am her daughter does that mean I shouldn't either? How will I know before it's too late? I don't think I could ever forgive myself if I ever caught myself hitting my child. And how do I tell my future husband that I'm afraid to give him a child because I'm scared that it won't be safe with me as a parent?

Also on the issue of my mother... I have a friend that isn't fond of her, even in memory. She refers to her as “the b****” in conversation. She's been known to say that she “hates the woman.” Things like that. Now this is my very closest friend in the whole world. And no... she's never met my mother. Sadistic as it is I take no issue with her making comments about my mother. As a matter of a fact it brings me comfort because I know that my friend feels secure enough in our friendship to speak freely around me. I know she only says these things because she loves me and wishes she could have protected me from it. The problem is that I'm not ready for a lot of my friends (and other people I socialize with like coworkers and classmates) to know what kind of home I grew up in. People treat you differently when they know your mother beat you up all the time as a child.

I'm not sure how to handle this... uh... problem?

Well... I guess that's enough.

I guess I'm not the average adult...

Nor was I the average teen. Nor, the average 5th grader. I'd read at least six of these before I even started middle school.


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. (no underline that I could find on blogspot, so I b/i these)
4) Reprint this list in your own blog 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
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee (One of my favorite books ever).
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
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 (In the top five of my favorite books)
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald (Also in the top five.)
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy (I've actually only read half of it.)
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 (Half again)
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy (Half...)
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis (First two books...)
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 (Another amazing novel.)
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
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 (Don't know why I loved it so much... I did though.)
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
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
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

If I've counted correctly that means that I have read 47 of these books. That's not bad I guess. I was really happy to see Time Traveler's Wife on the list. I loved, looks like 4 or 5. And, I intend to read all of them at some point or another in my life. :-D

This was fun.

My Quiz from QuizYourFriends.com

I made a quizzy thing about me.
I thought I'd post it for fun!

Linkity

Let's see how you do!

I think I've lost focus...

"You're Beautiful"
My life is brilliant.
My life is brilliant.
My love is pure.
I saw an angel.
Of that I'm sure.
She smiled at me on the subway.
She was with another man.
But I won't lose no sleep on that,
'Cause I've got a plan.
You're beautiful.
You're beautiful.
You're beautiful, it's true.
I saw your face in a crowded place,
And I don't know what to do,
'Cause I'll never be with you.
Yeah, she caught my eye,
As we walked on by.
She could see from my face that I was,
Flying high,
And I don't think that I'll see her again,
But we shared a moment
that will last till the end.
You're beautiful.
You're beautiful.
You're beautiful,
it's true.
I saw your face in a crowded place,
And I don't know what to do,
'Cause I'll never be with you.
You're beautiful.
You're beautiful.
You're beautiful,
it's true.
There must be an angel
with a smile on her face,
When she thought up
that I should be with you.
But it's time to face the truth,
I will never be with you.
-James Blunt


Music has an effect on people that I've never seen before. Different songs have different effects on people, the combinations are more endless than the number of stars in the sky. The many elements of music all lend to this phenomenon. There's the music itself, the very patterns, beats, rhythms, melodies. How each part meshes together. Guitar, drums, piano, vocals, accordion, saxophone, flute, spoons, each note lends to the bigger picture and the entire feel of the song. And there's the lyrics, not exactly the same as the vocals, which paint an even more vivid picture.

And then there's taste, which will always vary. It's as unique as each person who possesses it. I myself prefer slow, melodic, music with matching vocals and eloquent lyrics. A dear friend of mine likes rough, coarse, metallic music, with high pitched vocals. My brother likes synthetic rhythmic music with little vocal or lyrical interference. Does that mean that I'm making bad choices or that my brother is? Absolutely not. Each of us likes our music for what it gives us, for the effect it has.

I presume my friend prefers hers because it makes her feel numbed. Because it overpowers her emotions, her thoughts, and lets he get lost in the rhythm and the very essence of what it is. Some people, like my brother, like the total inebriation that can come with a night out. When all the senses become jumbled and mixed, and they need music to stimulate them. It's like... their only way of sending information to their brains. At least, that's how it is for him. And I like it because I feel like it's a fuel for emotion. The music I listen to makes my every emotion raw, makes them peak with sensitivity and feel so much more real.

Sometimes music tends to have another effect though, one that we wouldn't imagine it would. A few months ago when I'd finally decided to officially end it, completely, with Alex he played me the song I pasted above. It gave me a funny feeling in the pit of my stomach, even then. Well, now like seven months later I heard it out of the blue while I was at work and was overcome with thoughts, emotions, and had to excuse myself for a minute. I think I was actually crying over it. I never knew that any piece of music could have such a profound effect. I always knew it was powerful, but like that?

Then that reminded me of a lot of things... feeling that way again. Jodie prompted me to post a piece of poetry on my fiction press account which also reminded me of things. I was in a very low point as a teen, lower than I ever wanted to believe. I don't want to go back there... but I guess it feels like things keep trying to pull me back down. Fan fiction, music, fate, it's all drawing me downward. Jodie inadvertently reminded me how far I've come, which scared me. Now I feel like I'm falling again... do I take the raw realization as a sign that I should fight to climb back up? Or is it supposed to torture me even more on the way down?

I've got two things weighing heavily on my mind. One's heartache and the other's another kind of ache, one I can't name. Who knew that I really loved him? I've never let myself love anyone before. Is that the other ache? The way I lock things in and never open back up?

Damn... this is nonsensical and depressing.
-LLK

Am I still what I am?

I'm deleting my livejournal post by post so I can turn it into a fanfiction journal. This post, however, struck me and I thought I'd repost it here. I believe it was written about two years ago. Just thought I'd share.

Do you guys think I've changed much since then? What do you think of this as a portreyal of me?

---

I am a musician (in my soul). I can't play any instruments. I've composed several songs for piano, some of which are decent. Music is my life. I have a hole in my heart where the ability to play the flute, cello, guitar and piano would be if I'd ever had the chance to learn. I don't like conventional music. I think rap is a waste of time. I don't like any music without good vocals or skilled musicians. It's just not good enough for me without. My favorite band is from 30 years ago, and my favorite singer from 40. I like Idina Menzel despite her musical flaws, which are plenty, because it makes her real. More like me. I would sell a kidney to learn and instrument. I don't listen to music that often, because I have no headphones and I don't like to bother people with my eccentric tastes. When I am listening to music, I'm in my own world, and I like it. I listen to songs that fit my mood, and sometimes they fit so well I cry.

I am a writer. I am a poet. I love creating worlds and stories, places anew. I have a thousand characters in my head, and a million scenarios for them. I want to be taught in an english class someday. (as the classic literary author). I am envious of Mary Shelly. I wish I could write just like Gregory Maguire. I want Gregory Maguire to read my stories someday. I talk like I write. Including saying things like "anew" and "indeed" or even "aye." People don't understand things I write. Sometimes they don't understand how I talk. My friends have been know to say "you're so freaking weird" because of the way I talk.

I am a yankee. I say "dowg" and "wouder" I like it. I am not innocent. But I am by far not a devil. I have never smoked pot, or done any other drugs. I don't eat eggs. I feel guilty when I eat meat.

I am Christian. I love God and Jesus. I believe in divinity and of the holy trinity. I pray every night. I pray during the day. I pray for things all the time. I know god listens. I don't understand how people can go through life not believing in god. I don't judge those who don't. I believe marriage is a sanctuary that any person should be allowed to indulge in. I believe that everyone should be allowed to love. I believe everyone has a soul mate. I believe I don't.
I love animals. I prefer their company to the company of people, in almost all cases. I like to be alone. I don't like clingy people.

I have been spurned by love enough times not to hold my breath for a knight in shining armor.
I watched both of my parents die. I am afraid of blood. I don't like guns. I don't like violence. I cower away from gory movies, and I can't stand seeing anyone in pain. No matter what kind of pain.

I love New York. I have always wanted to go to London. I speak Spanish decently. I want to speak French. I travel. I never want to come home. I want to go to LA, to Chicago, to Egypt, to Ireland, and I'd like to visit Boston again. I wish I had someone to travel with. I want to meet Idina Menzel.

I've never had a boyfriend, that wasn't pity. Nobody has ever called me beautiful and meant it. Nobody has ever called me beautiful period. I have only ever kissed 3 boys. Both were from people who only wanted sex. Nobody has ever had a crush on me. Nobody likes my smile.
I would give anything to make my friends happy. One of my best friends is 5 years younger than me. I don't care. The only time I ever have a chance to really talk to someone, is online. I wish for more wishes.

I love nature. I hate suburbia. Yet I love the city. I like that it's easy to get lost in the city. And in the forest. I skip class, alot. I want to leave the country. For good.
I am afraid of dying alone. I will. I want love. I will never have it. I am an adult, but nobody treats me as one.

I love.
I hurt.
I feel.
I cry.
I am.
I don't want to be.

"I'm just a girl..."

"... standing in front of a boy; asking him to love her."