Asking for beautiful

Maybe this kind of vulnerable post should better be left to my spontaneous journal, but I don’t feel like writing by hand. Yet again laziness fuels me to take an alternative route. Oh well.

I can’t write, and yet I’m making myself. It’s just been kind of a one eighty from earlier. Lucy hasn’t been back in all that time. I took a quick nap and gave myself a weird headache, I daydreamed. I read some stories online because my daydreams just aren’t good enough lately. Or maybe they’re good enough, they’re just NOT enough. I don’t know, but I feel a little sick. I just sat there wishing for something more than what I have.

A better body, a more charming personality? A boyfriend? They all crossed my mind. But I don’t know if that really is what I want. It’s absolutely completely stupid because I know who I am, for the most part, and I like her. She’s fine, she’s okay. Occasionally creative and brilliant and lovely.

And I know– I know I’m going to have to wait until probably after college before any of that romance business gets to me. The kind that’s closer to being real. I could probably sleep with a few people between now and then, but the likelihood of it meaning anything is highly unlikely. I’ve had enough of that shit. I don’t want just the physical. It’s a little unpleasant, actually, and that’s probably why I feel ill.

I want the simple, and the romantic. The beautiful and the elegant and the lovely, without the filthied meaninglessness the world today tends to put on it. I know it can all be ugly. I’ve experienced that firsthand.

I’ve decided that I don’t want any of it if I cannot have the beautiful.

In the first spinning place

I’m sick today.

But it’s okay, because it’s just a head cold. Praise Jesus. Although granted it feels like a hippopotamus is sitting inside my brain, chillin’. But it’s okay! I only have two exams to freak out for this week, and I’m singing in studio tomorrow with Orlando accompanying me and no Joong-Han and crappy Italian and OH I feel like crap.

But it’s okay. I get to sit out of Women’s Choir tonight, by order of my Professor (who basically runs my life, and it’s great). I’ll go to River Campus and get some food and do some work and take Robitussin and decongestants.

The flat-out worst dream I think I’ve ever had

The dream interpreter website says that I am trying to achieve inner growth and development. It says that I may be headed in the direction of a new idea, direction, project or goal.

It obviously does not realize that dreaming I was pregnant with a dead baby at school is probably the most disgusting fucking thing I could dream. I didn’t know who the father was. I didn’t know if the baby lived. I only knew that it was a boy, no one would help me, and I was alone. Except for those who scalded me with looks for shook their heads in pity.

I’m so scared. I feel like I’m sick. I feel like I’m alive and sick and like the dream is true. I know it’s not– how could it be!?– but I feel the way I did in the dream. From the thick band of weird all around my stomach to the horrified sadness. That dream represented everything that could go wrong. Everything. And I lived it. I lived the terror and the shame of it, felt the life inside me and then the death touch it. The rank touch of failure swiped nasty claws across my heart last night.

But, according to the dream website, apparently some aspect of my personal life is trying to grow or develop?

It’s going to stop. I know what my inner romantic thinks is going to happen in my “personal life,” and I won’t let it. I’m not ready for or craving a relationship. And that’s what I want when I decide to get close to a boy again. Although something in me tells me I should go for whatever opportunities present themselves, my actual brain, that has my future in mind, is adamantly screaming, no fucking way. Just stop. You’re so stupid.

I’ve never full-out denied myself something and meant it. So it’s strange when another side of me is straight up rebelling at what my logical mind is telling it.

I’m pegging it down as the fact that I’m just really pathetic and feel wrung out and sour and down and will leave it at that. With any luck this sickening feeling will be gone by the end of the day.

Hope it’s just a bug

It’s like nausea rising in my throat,

accompanied by that same sickening staccato of

foreboding

like, oh shit

a punch in the belly

the giddiness kicks right up

up and out and forward

It’s making me ill, I

feel so so sick to my stomach

this is not how I’m supposed to feel, I’m

supposed to be productive

Just like this poem was

supposed to make sense

But instead I’m just kind of chopping

up phrases since I

can’t think

in a straight line

Crap, man

I didn’t ask for this.

Musings on the probability of success

Today has been long and exhausting so far.

I had my choral ensemble placement audition today. I sound like crap, by the way. The humidifier I bought at Target was only on for about a half hour before I had to leave. My throat hurts. My head hurts. I’m not “sick,” yet, per se, but I sound terrible.

Being in that room made me want to cry. I know sol fege. But I sang do-re-mi-fa-sol-fa: and the ending note ascended. It should have been la. I wouldn’t be surprised, honestly, if the grad students and professors in the room (there were five) simply noted down that I should go back home. It was so not my best, but it was all I could do at the time. Competing with stupidly paralyzing nerves and my own lack of knowledge just exhausts me. That’s why I’m glad this isn’t a cutthroat place. If people were outright mean in addition to outstandingly talented, I would be screwed.

Apparently they told Rachael (who auditioned after me) that she sounds like a voice who will really succeed at Eastman. I (obviously) was told no such thing.

That’s really cool they told her that, and as I was talking to John and Tong I heard her and got distracted because it was so pretty. And it was only vocalizing.

But now I’m wondering what it would be like to fail. The parasitic leeching doubt’s just there, and, well… two years of previous classical study might not cut it. It wasn’t intensive study, either. I was part-timing it previously to this week.

Shouldn’t giving it everything matter, though? I know I’m practically infantile in my knowledge of classical music and opera. I get it, okay? But I want to learn. The desperate nerd in me is trying to drag classes closer so I can go and get some homework. The obsessive musician is clamoring for my lesson tomorrow so I can get feedback and have a concrete reason to work in a practice room for the maximum hours allotted a day like I really, really want to.

But on the other hand, what if I’m not qualified to be here? I’ve been telling myself, they’ll teach me. They’ll teach me. They won’t judge me for what I don’t know, they won’t hate me because I’m ignorant. Students or faculty, anyone I respect and/or admire for who they are or what they do, won’t think I shouldn’t be here because I’m still learning what they were proficient at years ago.

I don’t want to be considered out of the running for success simply because right now I don’t know anything. If I am willing to learn, isn’t that important? If I crave the knowledge I’ve seen in action here, if I want it and will reach for it with all that I am, won’t that factor in?

If the thought of failing is breaking my heart, shouldn’t that mean something?

This doesn't really lighten the mood for me, but he is my new humidifier/penguin

Anxiousitis

I’ve been distracting myself lately.

If I don’t, that deep cold clutch of fear in the belly gives a yank and tugs me under.

It woke me at five this morning, nauseating me. Rippled, acidly, through my nerves until I couldn’t breathe. Dizzy, I stumbled upstairs to drown in coffee. Necessary, but the caffeine just jittered an already faltering system.

I need distraction. Otherwise I just make myself sick.

I’m excited, right? I keep telling myself that. I need this change. It’s a vital step, a crucial part of my life.

But oh God, I’m so scared, so freaking SICK of waiting. The anxiety is wrecking my nerves. Just get me to school and living, already.

Ужь ты нива моя (The harvest of sorrow)

The day I memorized my Russian (a poem)

My buddy Sergei.

The day I memorized my Russian
I decided to take a new tack
It was the day of a master class and
I was sick of being told not to slack*

It was a humid and muggy and watery day
(Meaning I drank lots of water while I paced and I prayed)

The day I memorized my Russian
I wrote it all down in Cyrillic twice
It was muttered and scribbled and screamed and
Sung and I realized laziness was my worst vice

It was a hurried and stressed and embarrassing day
(Since, well, I came to terms with myself, in a way)

The day I memorized my Russian
Well, I thought about Eastman a lot
Will I make it if I can’t pull this off for today
Maybe my chances at succeeding are shot

It was a reflection, realization, come-to-Jesus at best
(I don’t need to relax, overthink, or to rest)

The day I memorized my Russian
It clinched something in my soul
Cliche and think whatever but
Music’s going to play its role

It was a long and trying afternoon when I learned my Рахманиновь
(But I’m motivated, here and now, and still will be when push comes to shove.)

*For the record, it’s been since, like, last October when anyone’s told me seriously to take practicing seriously. Since then, I’ve been the one telling myself not to slack. I just don’t listen.