You gave me hyacinths first a year ago. They called me the hyacinth girl.

currently listening to: "coal mine fall" by the builders and the butchers

i'm going to be all right. constantly adjusting gets you sore. but you have to do it. it'd be worse if you didn't.

i think i'm like this because i haven't written for myself in a very VERY long time. also i've established expectations and fixed ideas about people, which is natural and nothing to be ashamed of. i think i feel so disappointed because i imagine and remember more than i see these days. if i'm constantly confronted with the reality of a situation, i tend to not be disappointed. i am an accepting person. until you hit my imagination.

i cast my friends in insurmountably lofty lights and get practically hostile when they don't, when they act like human beings and criminally undervalue themselves sometimes. it gets worse, i realize - understandably - when one of them drops the ball to depths unheard of (melody).

being able to drop somebody and move on is wildly liberating to someone who's inherited the post-quake tremors of a martyr complex no cross wants anything to do with (mom). i love to have friends. i have kept myself in the services of people who barely even like me to be able to say they're my friends. i have "done everything" for someone. i'm not bitter or disillusioned or some shit now. i know how to be a better friend. and i know some people aren't worth my time. and i am a better person for it.

i wish it was different in 99% of those cases but they're better off without my neuroses too. a lot of them know it now, the rest will eventually when they realize they're fine. i'm fine. everybody's going to be fine.

one of my closest friends wildly offended me yesterday by taking a dig at my dignity for the second time about the same insanely sensitive situation. now, my dignity, we're tight. i was raised to foresake it and ignore it, but i learned that wasn't the thing to do. i am a very happy and together person for having it close to me, for being proud of myself and knowing my worth as a person and not accepting anything less than what i deserve. the melody episode tore the skin off a load of old wounds. this summer was a rough one for my dignity. jimmy and jeremy. i didn't stop hurting from clare until essentially the end of this summer. i was in convalescence. i could have doubled back and gone out of my mind. i was really committed and really worked hard on not doing that.

i had to pick up and walk out on someone i cared about because it wasn't right by me to put up with the way i was being treated. i accept that things would not be the way they were. what we had once was nice. i want to keep that. i take that away with me. the tarnish is minimal. she will be fine.

but that doesn't mean it doesn't hurt. it hurt. i am still wrapping up a lot. i am still reconciling with the events of last year which her abandonment to go be an asshole majorly complicated. it is one of a long line of incidents i don't verbalize because the way i have to deal with it is application. there are things i need to DO. i talk a lot and enough certainly to know what isn't worth talking about. i've talked myself in circles over stuff like this and it just made me sick.

to hear you try and tell me how my place in someone's heart is, the condition i subscribe to by the descisions i've made - i want to tear you up. i want to shut you out. i am at once upset that you haven't been paying attention, that you don't understand even though you've been there, you've seen everything. well, so did melody. that obviously isn't the thing to rely on (and unreasonable, anyway, i know that and that's okay - you need to spell everything out and the faster you get that the better). i am also offended you are so in my space you feel you can make judgement calls about the things closest to me.

i can't fathom what a friend feels when they love. i can't fathom love, even though i feel it all the time. i figure it puts everyone in a different way. i know i love differently than you do and that's ALL i know.

and to hear you say that has anything to do with refuting my STRENGTH AS A WOMAN.

BITCH.

but you don't know that i have spent every night for the past year and a half starting to cry, stopping myself, pacing, forcing sober decisions, shedding baggage, listening to myself and how i sound, the way things are coming out, learning to trust myself. getting unafraid. getting okay. getting away from bad habits. i've stopped worrying. things still aren't like i'd like them to be, but i'm not worried. i'll be okay.

i'll be okay if we aren't friends anymore, even though it isn't what i'd like to see happen.

i'd like to see you grow as a person without worming your critical tendrils into the problems of your friends and the people who love you and those critical tendrils of yours. that doesn't mean following anyone's advice, but that certainly means keeping the fuck out of my business. yes i've been in the same situation as you, but not only did i react very differently, the ramifications of the events that followed still hurt me and affect me day to day.

i am more isolated right now than i have ever been because of the decisions i've made. i have sunk back into an emotional fall-out cellar because i went along with things i was not prepared for. circumstances imploded on me i now work to undo in private. those things will take a while, but it'll happen. people grossly overestimate the persistence of feeling. i rely on that like i rely on no other fact of life: feelings don't last. memories do, and i have brilliant memories.

i'm dealing with shit and i'm proud of how i've dealt so cleanly and undramatically and unstupidly and so-far-so-good and i feel like you've hit a rough turn and now you are holding up this awful turn of events of MINE and saying "see how badly you did this because YOU WANTED TO DO THIS".

WHAT I WANT-

fuck you. it's none of your business.

don't you ever fucking mention my heart again. it will climb to the top of my rib cage and brain you with a folding chair. my heart is cold steel. my heart is a BAD MOTHERFUCKER. and it gets the job done. it loves as well as any in its own way. i accept it. i love it. i use it to excess. my innards are bruised to hell from loving. i am in pieces from loving.

a weak person couldn't stand that.

now to subject myself to a rotten situation time and again...a weak person would do that. no relationship i have right now with anyone i'm close to in any way resembles the one i had with them a year ago. they are all, in their own ways, for the better. and of each one, i am considerate. i am more considerate than ever.

i am taking major steps.

i am going places.

people are a huge deal to me. "my friends are important to me" is a vast understatement. but i really wouldn't want you - the you who happens to read this - to get the picture of me as toiling all day over others and how they relate to me. i spend most of the day writing fiction. some of it i spend watching movies and riffing and having an incredible time alone and with friends. this sort of shit really bugs me at night, and i've had a lot of night and a lot of time to think lately.

everything'll be fine. someone who's been monumental in my life, who has manually diminished his role in my life and is sometimes a serious dick but who has made me a better person in certain important respects (particularly the self- part) says to me often when we speak, which now is very rarely but still we do speak and he says: "KARI YOU'RE ALL RIGHT!"

if anybody should ask i'm going to a seminar
pieces of the moon
JOBJOBJOB
interviewinterviewinterview
sensitive heart, you're doomed from the start
(& etc)