I will tear right into you
with the hands that I have used
to hold myself upright.
I held myself alone together
for what felt just like forever
but I will fall apart tonight.

When my body stitched the holes in my skin,
you were there to dig right in.
I will fight the dark within me,
I will bleed it into you.
I'll be heavy on your shoulders
Force your strength out, make it true.
The only time that I felt fed
was with your hands over my mouth
To shield me from the poison lead
Once forged in Hell, the deepest south.

Slide a mile six inches at a time

Underneath the skin and jewelry,
hidden in her words and eyes
is a wall that's cold and ugly
and she's scared as hell.
Trembling at the thought of feeling.
Wide awake and keeping distance.
Nothing seems to penetrate her.
cause she's scared as hell.

I am frightened too.
I am scared like you.

- cold and ugly - tool

Offering my heart to God.

I know you better than I know myself.

I will choke until I swallow.

I'm starting to fear that I have no idea what or who I really am. Some guys at work joke around when they see my hair and piercings and ask if I'm a metal head or punk rocker. But I'm neither. I wouldn't fit in with either crowd. I don't really listen to metal and I'm a capitalist at heart. I get asked if I'm a lesbian probably more often than most girls do, and I don't think I am. Somehow, I portray a lot of different characteristics for a lot of different boxes but I hardly fit any single one. 

Then there's just my face and my figure that I can't quite accept. I feel like I'm made of all these big features, my nose, my chin, my neck and shoulders. I've always felt like I'm physically built too big and like I don't fit anywhere in the world, as if I take up too much space. I used to have a real problem dealing with this thought but I've grown to mostly be relaxed about the idea. The old me used to hide behind over-sized shirts and eat like a bird everyday to try to seem smaller. Now, I hardly give a fuck. I wear a bikini to the beach and tight blouses to work. I'm trying to keep less emphasis in my mind on my physique but the nagging is always there. I could always be ten pounds thinner. I believe I have a very distorted view of what I look like and I fear it will always be that way. It's hardwired into me to hate my body, as long as the numbers are too high. 

I wonder if one day I'll see a low enough number on the scale and I can actually be happy. Normally, I feel confident and attractive when I go out. I did my makeup as perfect as I could and I felt really pretty today. But later on, I started to sense the tightness of my clothes and how much my stomach is pushing out my shirt. And I start to believe this is all people see when they see me. How just plain big I am. I want to get a tattoo on my ribs but they're too wide. I want one on my thigh but the stretch marks make me want to cry. 

But I know by the numbers that I'm not fat at all. I try to compare myself to people I see to try to get a real impression of how I must look when others see me. I compare my body to girls who I believe are the same size as me. But it doesn't help. The part of me that thinks I'm big propels forward and makes comparisons with girls who are what I truly believe to be bigger than me. I know I'm not big but my soul doesn't believe it. I stopped starving myself to be small but the insatiable desire is still there and it's permanent. I will never, ever understand what I truly look like to people and it's one of the worst things I've come to know.

You are the voice that's been calling me back home.

Lately I've been reading a lot about investing and making a budget for the next five years of my life. It's really made me feel like an adult for the first time ever and I feel like I really do have some control over the path my life will lead. I'm finding that a lot of other things in life are analogous to the methods of investing.

Like relationships. Having a significant other would be a volatile investment. There's high risk (they could cheat, could leave you at anytime, could steal everything you have, has real potential to be harmful) and more often then not, offers a low rate of return (potential for feeling loved  vs. losing time/money/energy.) This i basically how I've always felt but never had a way of describing it. These are the things I think about when someone asks "Why don't you have a boyfriend?" often accompanied by it's follow-up, "You'll find someone someday." To me, being in a relationship right now would be like putting all of my money in RIM stock.


In other thoughts, I've wondered how I exist as a person who mostly despises the company of other people but somehow ends up in jobs that involve being face-to-face with large groups of new people on a constant basis. I think it's on the way my personality seems to split itself. For a long time, I've believed that I had two sides to me but I'm finding that there's several. I function in multiple personalities and I'm discovering the characteristics of each one as I encounter them. There's the part of me that goes to work, and is bright and chatty. Generally a happy girl. I think this is most of what I am because I can't really describe it as a separate entity, the way I can with the others. There's my alter ego, her name's a secret. That's the part of me that scowls, with fierce eyes looking downwards, hood up and infuriated by crowds. People recoil at the sight of her. All those piercings... why would she do that to her face? The natural beauty ruined. She mostly comes out at night.

I'm also an android. Completely without feelings though understands the reality and concept of human emotions. Perfect sense of time and an unwavering gait. Little regard for outside influences but acknowledges  entirety of surroundings. Mainly concerned with current environment, as opposed to past and future events.

There's a good part of me that I would consider male. The way I interact with my brother seems close to what is mostly regarded as male bonding. My independence and not typically being annoyed by things that most women constantly moan about. The moments when there are no fucks given about my appearance. Drinking with my dad, watching football, cursing beyond what is necessary, protective of female friends.

I'm planning on cutting my hair short enough to see if I really can be passable as a male. To live as both genders, in two-spirits, on alternate days. When I'm in the mood to be a guy that day, that's what I'll be. Clothes, gait, all the typical behaviours reserved for men. I've thought about getting a cosmetic mastectomy, since my chest is so small anyway it might as well not even be there. But my risk assessment has come through and I'm not really into wasting the money, the scars and risking infection when I could probably diet it mostly away.

This probably all sounds really insane, but it's my explanation for how I function on this earth as an adult human, which I'm not even sure that I am. In functioning through several personalities, I let all parts of my true self live in the open without being regarded as hypocritical or characteristically incongruent.

Suicide Tuesday

Eye on what I'm after
I don't need another friend
Nod and watch your lips move
If you need me to pretend

Because clever got me this far
Then tricky got me in
I'll take just what I came for
Then I'm out the door again

Lie to get what I came for
Lie to get what I need now
Lie to get what I'm craving
Lie and smile to get what's mine

Give this to me
Take what's mine


- The Package - A Perfect Circle

Forty six and two is just ahead of me.

So I'm in the home stretch of supporting myself in the most expensive city ever, and I'm elated to be coming back home. I'm much too young to be this worried about money, but that's me. It sounds kind of wrong in my head when I think "I'm coming home" because Calgary just doesn't feel that way to me. Most of my family is not really there anymore so the only thing home-y about it will be living with my mum and brother again. And I think we could live anywhere together, and that place would feel like home to me. It sounds pretty gay, but living on my own and being independent, never really made me feel like an adult. I can support myself just fine, it's not difficult and I think I expected it to be a lot harder. Like being an adult means your smothered on a daily basis with responsibilities and worries but I've never personally felt that. So I still feel like a baby. It's not even a money thing (outside of the fact I need money for school and fuck loans), I just know I'll be happier living with my mum again.

I applied late to ACAD so I probably won't be starting my first year until January. Which is hugely irritating because the program I want to get into for my second year only starts in the Fall. This basically tacks on an entire year onto when I was hoping to finish the degree. I figured I could take credit courses starting this September and try to finish the requirements for my first year by June. I can't register as a non degree student because I won't be in the city when that registration becomes available. So I emailed the Extended Studies department in hopes of learning what courses they might have, and see if there was a possibility that I might not need to take an extra year for my degree. For some reason, the thought just terrified the shit out of me. I didn't want to be 26 and still in school, I want to be working! I've been panicking about this all last week. Fuck, why didn't I just apply sooner, why didn't I just figure out what I wanted to do, why didn't I just go to school here in BC. I made a schedule for what classes I needed and could possibly take in the Fall, Winter and Spring semesters. I would go to school six days a week, just please let me finish in four years.

I'm freaking out over this, and not hearing back from Extended Studies. Then a few nights ago, I'm on Facebook and a whole album of sonogram photos is posted by a friend of mine. A guy who turned 21 two weeks before I did. And I'm clicking around and see another 3 or 4 people I went to this same junior high with, same age and everything and they have kids too.

I suddenly felt more relaxed about everything in my life and didn't care if it was going to take me four, five or six years to finish my degree. As long as I don't have a baby before I'm 26, I think I can be pretty pleased with whatever it is I do with my life. I called ACAD today after not getting a reply to my email and they said the credit courses would no longer be offered in Extended Studies. I had an entire plan for next year that depended on the possibility of taking these courses and it was just smashed to pieces right then. But it didn't even matter. Now I can take the months between September and January to work, save more money for school. For a motorcycle and to get lessons for both driving and riding. To maybe travel some, see India. See more of the States. To do fucking anything I want to because I don't have a kid on the way, or a mortgage or a husband. I think I'll apply to work on a cruise again, now that I'm old enough to do so.

I know it's terrible to compare the transitions of my life to those in others', and to evaluate my success based on what I see other people doing, but it has really opened my eyes to what my life could be if I make good or bad decisions. I'm learning to relax and not to stress about how short or long my life might end up being I learn from my own mistakes plenty, and I will learn through others' as well.

Evolve.

I've been crawling on my belly
Clearing out what could've been.
I've been wallowing in my own chaotic
and insecure delusions.

I wanna feel the change consume me,
Feel the outside turning in.
I wanna feel the metamorphosis and
cleansing I've endured within

My shadow
Change is coming.
Now is my time.
Listen to my muscle memory.
Contemplate what I've been clinging to.
Forty-six and two ahead of me.



I choose to live and to
lie, kill and give and to
die, learn and love and to
do what it takes to step through.



- forty six and two - tool

You're the one I had to meet.

Where I've been
I was bound to leave behind.


I never wanted to go home
There was nothing there for me


I don't know where to go
now I got nowhere to hide.


Wanderlust will carry us on. 
Will there ever be a place for you and me?


- The Wanderlust - Metric

"I have been made to learn that the doom and burden of our life is bound forever on man's shoulders, and when the attempt is made to cast it off, it but returns upon us with more unfamiliar and more awful pressure."

-Robert Louis Stevenson, The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde 

Days go by and we all start again.

So I figured, being my birthday and all, I might relay the things I've done with myself this past year and the things I will be pursuing in the next. Just to keep my mind happy and to remind myself that I have a great life.

Did

• Fed a massive stingray
• Swam in the Caribbean
• Lived independently
• Figured out what I want to do with my life
• Visited the site of the worst school shooting before Virginia Tech happened

Will do

• Move back to Cowtown
• Start my degree
• Learn to drive
• Buy a motorcycle

Can't remember what they said.

Overwhelmed as one would be placed in my position.

Such a heavy burden now to be the One.

Born to bear and bring to all the details of our ending;

to write it down for all the world to see.

But I forgot my pen.

Shit the bed again.

Typical.


Rosetta Stoned - tool

Cut and divide it all right in two.

I left on vacation on May 31st. The customs agent held me up at the airport and I missed my 6 hour non-stop flight to Houston from Vancouver. Apparently not having a printed copy of my return flight warrants this kind of action. I eventually get passed through and get thrown on a flight to San Francisco then connected three hours later to a flight to Houston. I finally land at 12am. The drive to my Mum's house is about an hour and a half from the airport. You speed all the way there down this long stretch of highway. The roads look brand new. Its not like in Canada where the roads are in a constant state of construction. These paved trails are traversed by thousands upon thousands of cars, in a constant flow of life. You can't even tell how fast you're going on these freeways until the vehicle in front of you starts to slow and you need to stop before smashing your front end into their fender. It's 2am on Friday, and even now, there's late night drivers all around. The cars are sparse, but there's an oddly abundant amount for this time of night. Still, we're all barreling down the four lane highway, full speed without a worry of rear-ending the car in front. Suddenly, there's brake lights. The four lanes flood with slowing vehicles into a complete bottleneck. Two of the lanes are blocked by a white pickup parked at an angle. "Oh that's nice, the cops just stop traffic without warning now," my mother proclaims. But it's not the police. It's a civilian vehicle and its headlights are shining on the road ahead. We're passing the truck on the left side and I hear a shuddered gasp out of my mother as she says "don't look" and she goes as fast as she can past the block. In those blocked lanes, under the lights of the pickup, is a body. A human lying face down, arms at the sides, legs straight and relaxed. I resist the temptation to look for a moment but as we pass, I turn my eyes to take in what happened. I know it will be traumatic to see but I've always had a curiosity for these things. I've seen countless images of gore on the Internet, read and researched multitudes of serial killers and terrorists. At first I followed my Mum's suggestion to not take in any of this garish image but this is my first opportunity to see it first hand, in real life. I want to see if I can be truly frightened by something like this, if the Internet really does fail at translating the entire emotional experience of witnessing a dead or dying person. As we drive past, and I'm taking in the scene, I can feel my heart racing and my brain is trying to get me to look away. It knows there is something here that could be traumatic but my morbid curiosity is too strong. We're as close to the body as can be and I see it's a woman. The long hair and small frame give it away. There was either little or no blood, but my brain is blocking this part out and I can't remember for sure. Cars are stopping on the side of the road, like the tourists in the Rockies when there's a moose or a bear visible. They don't look like people aiming to help. There's a few things that felt exceptionally strange in this occurrence. There were no emergency vehicles. The accident must have happened just before we had arrived and it made it feel even more eerie. Then, the woman was lying in a perfectly aligned position. No limbs splayed about. Her head wasn't even turned to the side; she was nose to asphalt. Looking at her position, I can tell immediately that she is not alive. Of course, I won't know this for sure until I inevitably look up the accident in the next day's papers. In my belief, she is dead, but there is no gore anywhere and her lifeless body is in such a calm position that it's dissonant in my mind. A person dead on a highway like this could have been missing limbs, splattered, blood all over the incriminating car. But it's not like any of the pictures or videos from the Internet or Hollywood films. There's nobody even standing anywhere near the woman. Nobody performing first aid, or holding her as she passes. I can't imagine that this woman has been hit by a speeding car on this highway without splattering everywhere but that's what I found in the article I read the next day. She was trying to cross the highway, misjudged the speed of the headlights coming towards her and she was hit. The car must have slowed down before she got hit which explains why there wasn't any blood. It's a strange thing to know that I've now actually seen a dead person in real life, and the fact that it's so possible and almost normal to die utterly alone has been a little hard to swallow.

Ugly Goddess

Who am I?
Jekyll and Hyde.
You looked into my mind's eye
and saw that I was blind.

My ear to the ground,
I never heard the sound
when you told me one more time
how I seem completely fine
but in the looking glass,
I look half full of hell.

Sweet Revelation

Love is not enough.

I try to donate blood as often as I am able to. You have to wait 56 days between each donation and I mostly make an appointment within a week of being eligible again. I went yesterday and I was at the clinic for an hour and a half. This shit is supposed to take 20 minutes. The clinic I went to was pretty busy and full of old people, but the issue was more in the fact that every single test I had to take barely met the minimum to donate. To start, I had my hemoglobin checked three times. First two times it was 124 then lucky number 125 finally showed and she let me through. I've been taking iron capsules for four days so I don't know how that's possible.

I moved on to the questions, and went in the little cubicle to get my blood pressure and temperature checked. Temp shows barely minimum. Blood pressure shows incredibly low. Nurse says go eat and drink and I'll get you in 15 minutes. Fuck.

So now I've been here almost half an hour and the nurse checks everything again and everything shows I'm good to go. Then she asks how much I weigh. I tell her and ask what the minimum is and she says 110. I cannot understand how someone could think I weigh less than that but given the fact I barely met everything else, I'm not surprised she asked.

I wait a bit more and I get put in the chair. Needle's in, blood's coming out at a good pace. I'm done in fewer than seven minutes. What the fuck? I always take hardly any time to fill the blood bag but my vital signs show that I'm barely alive every time I donate.

I've basically become a gym rat with a number of supplements I can just barely keep track of and I eat a healthy diet. I'm 20. I should be fit as a fucking fiddle. It's like my negative attitude, my nihilistic philosophy, my constant state of irritability, and overall spiteful consideration of people manifest themselves in my physical state. My blood is black and hardly moves. I wonder about the people who get my blood transfused into them. If it even works. If they get it injected and the doctor says "Well, looks like you might still die." I wonder if their moods swing suddenly into a dark realm of bad intentions or if all at once, they feel like they're 30 years older than they really are.

It's kind of funny how before I donate, I usually feel like I could pass out if I stand up too fast or like I can't get a good grip of the earth below my feet. But I get the needle in and the blood pumps out and I feel revitalized and feel so much more alive than before. It's like my blood is bad and toxic and getting it out makes my body better. It blows the smoke out of my brain.

Most people donate blood to be good people and perform their human duties. I do it for the entirely selfish reason that I like the needle and the euphoria from getting the blood removed. And this makes it almost evil.

Hiding backwards inside of me.

I beat my machine
It's a part of me it's inside of me
I'm stuck in this dream
It's changing me
I am becoming

The me that you know had some second thoughts 
He's covered with scabs and he is broken and sore
The me that you know doesn't come around much 
That part of me isn't here anymore 

All pain disappears
It's the nature of my circuitry
Drowns out all I hear
There's no escape from this
My new consciousness

That me that you know used to have feelings
but the blood has stopped pumping and he's left to decay
The me that you know is now made up of wires
and even when I'm right with you I'm so far away

I can try to get away but I’ve strapped myself in
I can try to scratch away the sound in my ears
I can see it killing away all my bad parts
I don't want to listen but it's all too clear

- The Becoming - Nine Inch Nails

I need a touch-up.

I often put lists of goals and things I want to do in the near future on m blog but I never really get around to doing them. So this is a list of things I'm actually either currently doing or are certain to do within the next three months. Real talk.

• Complete portfolio application for ACAD by Friday, hopefully Thursday.
• Gather images for tattoo. Find artist. Make appointment for first two weeks in May.
• Get another septum hole.
• Go to Grand Fucking Cayman on June 1st.
• Get scuba certification. Do online course before last week of May.
• Acquire beach body by May 31st. Tell sugar to go fuck itself continuously. 

Suck it in

We barely remember who or what came before this precious moment.
We are choosing to be here right now.
Hold on, stay inside
This holy reality, this holy experience.
Choosing to be here in this body.
This body holding me.
It's my reminder here that I am not alone.

Twirling round with this familiar parabole.
Spinning, weaving round each new experience.
Recognize this as a holy gift and celebrate
this chance to be alive and breathing.
This body holding me reminds me of my own mortality.
Embrace this moment. Remember.
We are eternal. All this pain is an illusion.

Parabola - Tool