"Wha– sorry. Could you say it again? I jus-I wasn't listening. …. I see. Well…heh, well, who's to say? I mean – I suppose I just don't understand denial.
     "I mean, how do you stand before someone and just tell them that the effort that they're putting in isn't good enough? Yeah, I get there is a certain level of permormance that's expected for individual fields of requirement but – even in daily activities, it seems like we're constantly expecting. You know? I mean…am I making sense? Ummm, hmm…
     Maybe, maybe it's simply because I'm coming from a perspective of depression that, for me, emotional pain was enough to count as evidence. Like, I'm howling in pain here, doesn't that count for something? And it's like others decidingly don't.
     "I sometimes just wind up feeling like our society continually looks at things from their own perspective. Like -for example, take how we react to another's complaints. What's the usual response? You're being melodramatic, you're being over-the-top. You're being selfish, you're making a scene, even. Maybe I'm insane; I don't know. My first reaction is Dear God, what could possibly be bothering you? Even if it's small, it's like, they're not okay. Doesn't that mean anything?
     It just becomes…sufficating, at times. Like every action isn't enough. Like I'm continually under this expectation to match every single internal and external action with the right response. Because when you respond incorrectly, that sends the wrong message. Which I'd hate to do. Because, genuinely, I would want to treat others the best that I could. But it gets tiring. Because it's not unreasonable! It's really basic, really. Remember a birthday, remember fucking Mother's Day, look happy to see someone when you say hello, go see the play your friend has been working on for God knows how long, attend the speech they have to give check in on them when they're sick keep in mind when they had an interview talk during the conversation respond make eye contactnodarcheyebrowsblinkbreathe
     "I spent the entire last weekend in my room. Haha, yeah, the entire thing. I just…didn't see the point in leaving. It took much effort to get out the bed. And I was tired. So I tried to make sense of my computer screen for 36 hours. And it was…nice, because I didn't have to put any effort into anythin- no, I – I got lonely. I jus-
     I just needed to breathe.

     "Would you slow down? You can't swallow all of it at once!"
     I grinned before my throat decided that a gag reflex might be the most appropriate way of ensuring that I didn't slide the greasy noodles I was attempting to devour down into my trachea. I took a decisive bite and let the strands that had been hanging out of my mouth to drop back into the bowl. The greasy sauce ensured a pleasant plop-ing sound from bowl to noodle contact at 9.8m/s²; she watched the noodles slide down the sides of the metallic yellow bowl back to the agape bottom, still quite full to the bowl's very depths, though most likely so she could avoid looking at me.
     "Didn't I tell you this was a great place?" I asked, taking a swig of my root beer, ramming in another mouthful, and beating out with my index and middle finger on the table the rythm of the song they were currently playing on the loudspeaker as simultaneously as was possible.
     "It's crummy Thai food at best," she informed me. With a wary eye, she casted a glance around my glorious hang out retreat. The floor was as similarly distinctive a metallic as the bowl, in lively green and yellow octagon patterns with small orange triangles sparingly intermixed. I had demanded we take a booth seat, of course; we had immediately staked our claim on the one in the way back of the restaurant, as soon as you walk in. Of course, such directions could hardly be confusing – the restaurant was a simple rectangle, with the entrance and our booth on the two shorter sides and the counter for ordering on the left side once you enter (closer to the entrance than to the back).
     Along the walls was authentic Thailand art. Seriously. Possibly the only remotely authentic aspect of the restaurant was the paintings, photography, and hang-able sculptures that littered the mustard yellow wall (the obsession with yellow I couldn't begin to explain to you; however, that'd be like trying to explain the beauty of a sunrise, so I wouldn't desecrate the moment by trying). The entrance door was on the left side of it's wall with the rest of the empty space graciously taken up by a giant viewing window that presented the store's name in a neon sign.
     "Shitty Thai food," I corrected her, "and it's exactly what I needed at this moment." My leg was starting to get tired from bouncing it the ball of my foot. "Are you honestly going to let that go to waste?" I asked her incredulously, my own bowl still half full; the portion sizes are wonderful here. "Gimme, gimme here," I said delightedly, taking another sip of my root beer for washing some noodles down while rapidly waving my fingers in my direction.
     She laughed, threw up her hands, and handed me her bowl. "Have you held up any of this food? Literally, any of it. You could say that it was raining grease."
     I cocked my eyebrows as I took a deep bite into the meat. "I think that the point that you are missing here is that you ordered the relatively chicken-looking thing and then decided to give it up," I told her, watching some pieces fall off onto the flower-oriented plastic table clothe.
     "It's fatty and unhealthy for you," she said, apparently assuming that such well-known information would make a difference to me.
     "Well, we are the nation of the obese, are we not?" I asked her, raising my glass. "I say we toast, to my patriotism and American exceptionalism!" I exclaimed to the empty restaurant. Jeremy, the guy who works the cash register, knowingly ignored me. "Besides," I started, picking out a piece of meat stuck between some back teeth with my tongue, "it's a stupid argument anyway. Honestly, why you gonna crucify a guy for wanting a girl with a little meat on her. Don't you roll your eyes at me, missy – this is the philosophical debate of our generation. Let me ask you this – and answer me honestly – what sounds better to you? A skinny carrot or a plump, succulent chicken thigh with soft and tender flesh?" She eyed me questioningly. "Don't tell me you'd think twice about that one," I murmured, thoughtfully picking up the pieces of "chicken" that had fallen onto the table and dropping them into my mouth.
     She was clearly getting used to me. She'd've left the table and the restaurant by now when I had first met her.
     "So you're hedonistic?" Not interested in eating, she had picked up the napkin wrapped around the plasticware they had put on the table for us at the beginning, undoing the band that held the utensils hidden.
    Done with the meat, I had gone back to my noodles. I quickly tried to shovel the dangling bits into my mouth and swallowed audibly. "Naw, I'm a glutton." You'd expect the napkins for this place to be some shade of yellow, I'd think. Hell, a hazy purple would make just about as much sense as any other interior design decision. Instead, they were a coarse, plain white. There weren't even designs or patterns on the things of any sort. She was slowly shredding them as we talked.
     She laughed increduously: "There's a difference?"
     "Honey," I respired, channeling Jim the Slave, "you're generation Y, and you don't even know the difference between gluttony and hedonism?" She motioned toward her chin, suddenly, murmuring, "You have some...in your beard." I softly waved her away, letting her know that I knew; "Saving it for latter," I equally murmured.

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

Damn it, I'm so close, and I can't figure out how to finish this off right. I'll mull it over dinner and homework.

I make it 6 years without anti-depressants and now I think I might need something for anxiety. This procrastination bit is getting out of control...

Becuase I like it, really:

The Only Thing We Have
She had hair on her arms,
an earthly shading to her deep red in the summer.
Slender and airy;
What pre-WWII German expansion was to France!(?)
I miss your nuzzling from when I held you
and can never forgive the austerity you settled for.

The Only Thing We Have

She had hair on her arms,
an earthly shading to her deep red in the summer.
Slender and airy;
What pre-WWII German expansion was to France!(?)
I miss your nuzzling from when I held you
and can never forgive the austerity you settled for.

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

I wasn't sure what to make of this when I first wrote it, but now I absolutely love it (if you'll forgive my brief narcissism).

     For the record, no one should ever have to routinely go through the process of carrying two boxes of packing up several flights of apartment stairs. By the second time, I was already regretting my promise to get the work done that day.
     Yes, I wasn't entirely moved in quite yet. It was up and down over and over again through a spiralling tunnel both upwards and downwards of cracked yellow paint surrounding me every painful step. And, of course, those boxes were far from light. Whatever paint had loosely managed to cling to the sides of the walls were quickly dislodged as I ended up attempting to use the walls to hold me up during my rests. Towards the fifth trip up I just tried sliding along the walls all the way up. Seeing how much more yellow the steps got each time I went back downstairs was an amusing game, though.
    Of course, I also chose to do this task when it was boiling summer. It almost made me wish I was younger again, back when I actually kept my hair short. As it was now, it ran down a little past half my back. I could only thank God it doesn't frizz all that much.
    With continual distractions like that, the work just got more and more fun to dwell upon. There was just so much stuff. I had forgotten that I had actually planned on moving in here, as in permanently. And then I had to actually unpack the boxes! I had decided to negate dwelling on that fun little fact by stacking the boxes into a corner. It was neat and technically organized that way. Yet, of course, all that would have to come out. In my rush, I hadn't bothered to question whether all of it would actually be able to fit nice and neatly in the room. I could put my socks and under garments in a drawer together, the rest of my shirts I'd likely hang, put the usual pens and such on the desk with my scissors, and then lamb for the corner, my sheets in another drawer,
    food
    plates
    general kitchen cleaning stuff
    my laptop
    my chair
    table covers
    blinds that actually matched the room
    my eraser holders
    -my thoughts were jolted from organizing as I was sort of barreling down my hall as quickly as I could before my arms decided to give out from the boxes I was holding. It took me a second to realize that it was actually singing. That is, someone was singing. "Veronica..." it immediately dawned on me, my legs quickly coming upon her room on the way to mine.
    As I was starting to pass by, I glanced in through her open door. The minefield of a mess that littered her floor made me stop; honestly, there was several rooms all uniformly littered with random clothes and miscellaneous items (at first glance, I caught a brush and a bowl of chips towards one of the sofas with her Northface jacket just happily strewn over the lamp nearby).
    Veronica herself was sort of dancing amongst all the items, ringing her hair into a towel. From the looks of it, she had just gotten out of the shower, though she didn't feel the need to make sure both her hair and body was dry seeing as she was already in her usual sweats despite her wet hair.
    I stopped and stared for too long, in part from the mess and in part from fatigue. Regardless, she didn't look up. She just kept up that slow dance around the items, her hips swaying beneath the lumpy sweatpants and shirt. As she was finishing up wringing the hair out, passing the dark blue towel a few times through just for good measure, her voice hit a fervored pitch before going down again softly, her eyes tracing the floor.
    "He took me to his parlor, and coo-oo-ooled me with his fan"—her voice ever so lightly fluctuated in her soft and breathy cadence—"whispered low in his mamma's ear, I luh-uhvvv that gamblin' gal..."

     "Would you fuck her, if you got her back?" he asked with a lucid smile so wide it made him look clownish, haunting in its plastered emotion.
     He glanced up forlornly, listless in his drawn out movements. "No," he murmured, gazing blankly onto the other's eyes. "I'd hug her, kiss her, hold her midsection just to feel the radiating warmth. I want to nuzzle her neck, whisper sweet-nothings around her ear, play with her hair, listen to her heart through her back. I'd make her laugh, engage in debate, listen for hours to her life. I wish I'd- I wish..."
    At the very least the mirror felt cool against his raging headache.

     Good God, it felt so much more full and fulfilling when it was empty.
     Kerianna stumbled down the stairs, partially due to the fact that it was 2 in the morning and she hadn't slept much the night before anyway, partially because of the impending crash she knew would come from downing 3 or 4 cans of Coke, and partially because the empty subway ensured that she didn't need to concern herself with possible embarrassment.
     Righting herself at the bottom, she curtly nodded to the sprawling graffiti that snaked and winded itself over the tiled couch it lay on. For whatever reason, it was always on the other side of the tracks. Scuffling her shoes on the concrete, she wondering why no one had bothered to paint on the immediate surface that made up the waiting station. But she supposed that authority had a way of making people do dangerous things. Lazily, she tottered over to the tracks for a closer look.
     Her parents never used to let her close to the edge that prefaced the rail when she was younger. Even at seven, she always thought the bigass yellow line would be evidence enough to stay away, but, apparently, they figured their daughter willing to throw herself onto the rail even then. Sitting down so that her legs dangled over, a bit of empathy for their situation crept up on her. Kerianna had always been small-statured; at the current moment, at 5 feet, she weighed 130 pounds, likely an easy task for the currents that cascaded through the thick steel below her.
     "Shit, motherfucker..." she muttered softly, rolling her fists into her eyes in an attempt to gouge them out. With any luck, she figured, she might be able to reach the source of her surging and ebbing headache through that entrance. At any rate, all it was reminding her of now was the pounding pop music in that dark and stuffy room she was at just 15 minutes ago. That and how she wished she had another can of Coke with her at the moment, even if it just fought back the grief for only so long.
     She glanced down at her favorite plaid (unbuttoned) button-up over the simple purple shirt she was wearing and regretted being too lazy to bother getting up from the dirty concrete, ruing already the musty smell they'd soak up. The jeans she could take, even if they were that rare dark, mellow blue that she could spend all day staring at. She sighed bitterly: she wasn't tired enough yet to forget that the button-up had been nicely ironed straight before she left for the party.
     She didn't blame the concrete, anyway. She liked the thick, rectangular pillars that enclosed her so familiarly. Or that dull reflection that fought to shine on the metal in a train, despite the flickering the bulb insisted on anyway. Happily she thought of the groggy struggle from a late trip that reminds you that this sack of flesh, bones, fat, and muscle is beating and that the smell of the gum, dirt, dust, and other miscillanious objects shoved in that crevice between the wall and where the window slides has a smell so acute that you can vividly have it invade your nostrils, if you want. Without even looking, she could run her hand along that metal wall and feel where others had attempted to cut some coherent message in, even there. And, of course, that satisfying hum and vibration of the train beating along the track, going forward in a determined and steady race, leaving behind the parents at the counter buying more pills for her persistent "head cold".
     She sighed in abject disgust as her hand fell into something wet and sticky that soaked a good portion of the couch cushion Kerianna had been planning to sit on. Rapidly wiping her left hand on her pants, she headed over to the cooler again for another Coke. Cramps and an unrelated mood swing was not the idea she had of a good time when she had decided to come. Not that staying home was a better option; all that was guarenteed from staying home was looking at pictures and icons that could hopefully provide an excuse for her being single and blasting Atreyu or Slipknot in an attempt to try to explain her current aggitation. She cut back a hiss after she jabbed her knee into the table, jostling the bowl of chips toward the edge slightly. Why make out on the floor when there was a perfectly good couch? The dull lights in the relatively small basement room along with the blaring Miley Cyrus was starting to get to her. She thought about going upstairs, for a change of scenery if for nothing else.
     Then again, on second thought, upstairs probably wouldn't have this boy next to the cooler, Kerianna noted, fishing out a can while attempting to descreetly look out of the corner of her eyes from time to time. He looks bored too, she nagged; she ripped out a can from the bottom of the cooler.
     Doing a 360°, she plopped down on the arm of the couch he sat on, working to open her can. "Great party, huh?" she asked, glancing down with a smirk. He chuckled, looking briefly around before glancing back at Kerianna.
     Her can open, she took a quick swig, wincing slightly from the sharp stap at the back of her throat as her leg stopped twitching. She glanced down at him again, and then crouched down to his ear, breathlessly staggering,
     "C'mon, let's get the fuck out of here. There are better places to breath."

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

     "Why do you write?"
     "Why do I breath?"
     "To live?"
     "To not go insane."

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

On a completely unrelated note, Orla sounds so much better when she sings in a lower pitch, using (for her) an almost husky voice. Just listen to that emotion there:

EDIT: Orla has, without notice or given reason, made the video private. I'm going to take her not responding to my question of why and if I could get an mp3 of the track as tacit approval to upload an mp3 here myself. 

     She cried, when Dumbledore died.
     The entire damn theatre was empty, too; the movie had been playing for weeks now, and she was the only one who kept showing up, the sound of her sobbing filling the room.
     If I could go back a year and attend high school again, I might've tried to actually talk to her. Not to say I didn't know her; well, as much as everyone knew her. She was always the one to pull out notebooks that had pages falling out by the end of the first week of school. She didn't seem to use them for school, anyway. God only knows what she wrote, but there was plenty scribbled all over the front of each one. From what papers fell out, we could see doodles and other trailing paragraphs of what we figured probably weren't notes from class; we hadn't been taught the amount of writing that was on all those pages by the end of the first week.
     Some of the lifeguards said they'd seen her on the weekends driving her siblings for swimming lessons in the family van. She always wore the same getup: hair back in a ponytail with some My Chemical Romance or other band t-shirt and the usual jeans. She didn't take lessons, herself. She just watched them from the side until it was time to take them home again.
     Another friend of mine had said he spotted her at Jewel one time. She had been alone, pushing a cart filled with groceries.
     Her dad didn't live with them anymore. Leastwise, not for the past 10 years, as the rumor flies. He just got tired of the extra weight and skipped town when he got the chance. Perhaps she missed him. A question I might've asked had I talked to her.
     But she had the dishes to do when she got home, as well as the yardwork, and usually the youngest had to have her diaper changed if her mom didn't get home quick enough, and then there was always the homework so that she could get to sleep, as well as the clubs she was involved with after school, since her mom said they'd help with colleges eventually
     And that damn Harry Potter movie, before they decided to take it out of theatres; two times a week, or so she hoped usually. Like a fucking duty, she took the time out to cry for Dumbledore.

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

Jeez, that was painful to write. I've had the worst writer's block for the past month. I hope it clears up soon. I've got 3 or 4 different things all started, all seemingly not being written at a reasonably quick pace.

Now sleep (seeing as it's 5:41 in the morning at the moment)...

     "Do you think it's true, what they say?" I asked, leaning on one elbow.
     She looked back towards me, away from the mirror, a joyful smile shot towards me simply because it matched the evening. "What do you mean?"
     "That we just take a portion of a greater work, truncating it to fit our want. Like an avatar or quotes or the many tales of fan fiction. Or that dang rap music," I finished, laughing at my own sarcasm. "Borrowing and minimizes to that which we want, leaving away the rest."
     She picked up her brush from the vanity, stroking it through her hair and then back again. "Perhaps. Or is it just reflective of a greater human need? We're not interested in the rest clearly. We chose what we wanted. God forbid we desire no more from art than an actual emotional response from it."
     I shook my head at her smirk. "Have you gotten to know me so well so quickly?"
     She just smirked again as she shrugged, looking over her shoulder back at me again. "Oh, I like to think so."
     I couldn't help smiling.
     "If you do actually desire me to be serious," she continued, shaking her head and rolling her eyes at the ridiculousness of such a request, "it's not like all former constructions have been thrown out the window. The same expectations applied to a song played by live musicians are applied – roughly, that is – to a song constructed of samples. Fan fiction is still a story, which can be judged like any other story; they've just decided to build off of someone else's world and characters. It's flattery, really." She just smiled at my own bemused look. "A quote doesn't mean that the rest of the work is forgotten. It just wants to focus on that particular part of the work. Often times those parts which aren't shown in the quote are the subtle implications, you know."
     I shrugged, shifting the sheets of the bed around. "Perhaps."
     I jumped as she sighed melodramatically, jerking my attention back to her and my eyes up from where I sat. "To be honest, I get bored quickly. Dialogue moves me more, and I don't need to be told of what is basic routine by now. Why bother with the unnecessary?"

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

I know exactly where I want to go with it this time around but I have no interest in writing right now. Whatever, I'm going to bed.

     I sighed as I picked up the glass, rubbing the smooth, glass surface with my index finger and thumb. "Wanna know the funny thing?" I told her, watching her back move up and down in the closet as she tried to find her work clothes.
     I comfortably rolled my head back and forth on the painted motel walls, the ends of my hair touching the bed board.
     "I used to hate unhappy endings. I wouldn't bother with them, you know?" I eyed her keys to the left of me as she scurried around the room, sitting on the table by the window with the God-awful lamp shade that had been splatter painted in shades of green; I was going to hazard a guess that they hadn't ordered it that way. "I suppose, on some level, I was always terrified that that ending said something about the possibilities of my life. I didn't want to end up like that."
     I scratched my right elbow, staring off towards the blank T. V. with the pensive, withdrawn face I used to appear deep. If I had bothered to get up, I might notice the smiley face with its tongue out written by her in the dust on the top, back of the T. V. as she had giggled that same way she had just minutes ago at the bar.
     I smiled to myself slightly. "Now I'm facinated by the twisted and desperate situation. How do you get anything when that dreams turns out to be impossible and the result never satisfying enough? And - oh, how do we salvage it? How do we put together the fragmented edges?" I scoffed. "I'm 20 years old, and I write about the death of dreams."