13 July 2000

Ok. This is free-writing. This means that I have fifteen minutes of non-stop writing of whatever comes to my head. So I guess that means when the clock says 8:45 fifteen minutes will have passed. This clock is wrong though. If you wanted to know the time write now it is 9:30 not 8:30. I don’t know why Marty didn’t set the right time when he installed the computer.

Then again, we are talking about the same guy who thinks it’s “10,000 Leagues Under the Sea”. I don’t know what to write about. I am sitting at this desk that once was in the spare room and is now in the living room. It used to be in Josh and Brian’s room and then when I moved out my mom gave it to me. How sweet. And then James had to nail it together to make it stand. I don’t know how Amber and Marty got it out here.

I was in Tennessee when they moved in. That was an interesting trip. There was a tornado and we had to run into the Walmart Supercenter. Afterwards the sky was beautiful and there were multiple rainbows across the blackness of the sky.

I really have to pee, but I still have about thirteen minutes so I am just going to have to hold it. What else should I talk about? Ok, back to Tennessee I guess. What else did we do? We went to Gattlinburg for a day and saw all of the sites there. I bought a bunch of glow sticks since they are a third of the price. We went to some kind of river and historic place and I found a butterfly friend. The butterfly stayed on my hand until I handed him over to Scott. Angie and I were heading upstream in our bare feet and I feel on slippery rock and got soaked. The water was so cold but it felt so good. So clean. I collected river rocks. I should have gathered more. I only brought back five or six. I haven’t named them yet, and yes I thanked the Earth for her gift.

What else…Josh and Angie both got speeding tickets on the way home. I haven’t gotten a speeding ticket yet, but I know my time is coming, especially the way I drive. If I was driving. This is the third weekend I have been without my car. Shaun is taking too long to fix it. I have to ride to work with Amber and Marty still.

Here I am at home bored, and writing about nothing. Let’s pick an interesting topic to talk about. I went ice-skating a couple of weeks ago. James works at Sunblades now. It was really uncomfortable. Why? Because –duh- I still care, and this was the first time I had seen him in a long time. It was really akward…I know I didn’t spell that right and I am not going to stop and use spell check. I am on a roll. I wish that James had the decency to tell me why he doesn’t want to talk to me anymore. That pathetic little note he left in my house when he took his tv back and left my key just isn’t cutting it. It was very cowardly of him. And I am not giving him back any of his other stuff unless he comes to me like a man and gets it.

I don’t even want to get back together with him (of course if I was faced with the situation I might think about it a little longer before I just screamed no! at the top of my lungs). I just want answers. That is all. Is that too much to ask? I think it’s only fair.

Poor, tragic, little boy. Will he ever grow up? Will he ever realize that it’s ok to let people love you? I probably won’t ever get to see it, but for his sake I hope that he does and I have no ill feelings towards him. I am quite sure that I will have some sort of love for him locked away in the back of my heart and mind somewhere.

Ok…I don’t know where to go from this. Butterflies…Tori Amos…the moon…the stars…the sky…silence…echoes…music…pain…life…where am I going with this? I don’t know…but I still have to pee.

I remember doing this for Honors Composition 1. It was somewhat easier then because at least then I had a subject I was supposed to be free-writing about. I guess it wasn’t really free writing then, was it? It’s not like I stuck to the subject anyway.

I loved that class. Kristen and Cathy were in that class with me. They both worked at Victoria’s Secret. Kristen went to Seminole High School and was involved in the drama department. She used to talk about Alan Mohney and sometimes Ellen. I gave her a bunch of my costumes and my bindhis. I wish that I hadn’t. Not because I didn’t want her to have them…but because I kind of miss all of my drama junk now.

Cathy went to school with Angie. Osceola High School. She had a silver bracelet that I loved. I think that I have one like it now. I remember she used to wear jean short overalls to school with a white top underneath. She kind of reminds me of Martin Riggs wife- Michelle. For her comparative essay she wrote about the similarities and differences between men and golden retrievers.

I think for a while Kristen was going out with some bum or criminal who would sneak in her window sometimes…and for a while he was sleeping in her car. Maybe it was Cathy. I don’t remember. There was also a gypsy girl in that class who I liked…and there was a psycho boy, but he was pretty cool.

School…we seem to be on a roll here. Is it disturbing that I refer to myself as we? Does that mean anything? Oh well. Back to the subject.

I loved school. I want to go back to college. I want to get my PhD. I don’t know in what, I just want to get it. And then I want to go back and get another one. I love school. I love knowledge. Does that make me sick?

I’d like to try to go back this coming semester. But I have to go register and make sure that I have enough money for classes. I will probably only be able to take one or two classes at the most. I wish that I had stayed a little more focused instead of accumulating a mass of credits all headed in different directions. I still have no idea what I want to be when I grow up.

James…why does every subject go back to him? Like I said I really don’t want him back (at least I don’t think so) but I am living with his memories and they haunt me more than any ghost I have ever met. And I have met a few.

As Marlena says, a year right now seems like a really long time, but later on in life it will just seem like a few minutes. I spent time with James for longer than a year and there is always something that reminds me of him:

“I was born to love you and I will never be free. You’ll always be a part of me. There is always something there to remind me.”

I don’t know who sings that…it comes on the radio every once in a while and gets in my head and there is nothing that I can do to make it stop.

Once when I was supposed to be sleeping…I was talking to James and I had this song in my head (“I got 16 speakers across my back dash and a little bobbing dog watching everybody pass, two antennas whipping in the wind and their ain’t a country station that I can’t tune in. Well she ain’t a Cadilac and she ain’t a Rolls, but their ain’t nothing wrong with the radio”) and I told him and he started singing it to me. It was funny. I miss the way we used to talk so much. We used to talk a lot. He would page me at night and I would call him on my cell phone (it was free at night – and my mom still didn’t know we were together) and we would sometimes talk for a couple hours. And then we saw each other on campus everyday. I think after my mom found out everything went down hill. I don’t know why that point sticks out in my mind. Or maybe after he cheated on me with Sonia for the first time. And then that other girl. I hated him for that. That hurt me more than anything I think I have ever experienced before.

I don’t want to talk about this anymore. I’m still swimming with some memories that I can’t drown.