So I went up to UCONN Storrs with Jen, Rob, and Todd on Friday. Todd and Jen picked me up, we ate at Deli On The Green (Stratford), picked up Rob, and listened to Brand New on the way up. For those of you who've been keeping up with my life, I've been feeling extremely lonely lately (I have occasional complexes about how very single I am), and Todd's behavior has been feeding into it. He invited me over his house a few times, without anybody else there, and slept over on one occasion... Like anyone would, he tried to get me to make out with him, but I refused to do it. I tried to explain to him that I don't do that with people I barely know, and I can't just kiss my guys friends and consider it okay. Girls are another story because I don't have an attraction to them - when you introduce an element of intimacy such as this, it changes my relationships with others, especially when there's dating potential. He said I was the first person that wouldn't kiss a boy they weren't dating. I'm unique. I know this. He further confused me by fighting with his friends because they were hitting on me (and were a lot older - I never would have went for them because of that, in addition to that fact that they were TODD'S FRIENDS; I can't hurt people by turning them down for their friends). And yet, when I approached him about where we stand relationshipwise at UCONN, he said he would never give up smoking or drinking for me, and that he wouldn't be willing to do a long-distance relationship. I must say, I was in a long-distance relationship once before, and it fucking sucked (and killed my concept of "trust"). But still, he said I was the "total package," and yet, if that were the case, why am I still not worth dropping bad habits, or a little hardship? I don't understand it.

After that conversation, I interrupted Jen and Louis and cried to her for at least half an hour about how Todd pretty much built me up to shut me down, and how screwed I am when it comes to relationships. The way I see it, boys just love to hurt me... I think most people would agree that I'm a pretty innocent person - I've never had sex without love, I've never smoked or done drugs, I've never purposefully hurt someone unless they hurt me - my morals are just too strong for that, I guess.

Meanwhile, I got bored and decided to get the party a little more exciting by getting completely naked and doing laps around the house. When I announced my endeavor, a girl came up to me and asked if she could help me take my clothes off. I was a little shocked, but I said "okay, sure..." After I got back from my lap, the girl went up to me and started kissing me. I jumped back immediately - she caught me completely off guard, and I was disgusted by it. I really don't like women that way. Later on, she and her boyfriend invited me to a threesome in his car - THAT was when I decided to leave (and ironically, she had a lipring).

But the best part -the very best part- about this situation? While we were all partying (Dave, John, etc., etc.), I walked-in on Todd making out with some girl he'd JUST met. So in essence, he dropped me for someone who WOULD be willing to have a summer fling (which I clearly am not looking for - I want a relationship, not a "good time"). How is that supposed to make me feel? And to make me feel even worse, he ended up inviting the girl he ditched me for to MY party! I was so pissed off that I asked Louis for the keys and slept in his car for the night so I wouldn't have to be in the same room as Todd. Rob came and visited me at various points in the night to comfort me. To my surprise, when I woke up, I walked into the apartment to find Todd sleeping (that's right, SLEEPING) with both the girl from the night before and ANOTHER girl, who's known to be promiscuous. The room smelled like sex. Everyone agreed about that, and Rob and John tried to play it off (jokingly, of course) that they were having butt sex. Since I know for a fact that Rob and John are both straight, and there were TWO girls in the bed with Todd, well... you do the math.

That pissed me off to the point where the ride home was almost completely silent, and in order to avoid a longer car ride with him, I just jumped out of the car when Rob got out, and spent time with him until Jen could come get me after work. And the night before, he had the nerve to ask me if he's my best friend. Just who the fuck does he think he is

So then, we move to my party. I must say, it was definately the most fun I've had in a VERY long time. I saw a lot of people from high school, everyone was in togas, bathrobes, or lingerie, Mike and I DOMINATED in Beirut, people were doing naked sprints around my house... It was an overall amazing time =] I'm very pleased with how it turned out. Mike and I also got married by a registered priest, and we made out. I NEVER saw that happening. Mike was clearly trashed, but I'd date him if I could. He'd be an amazing boyfriend - he's already an amazing Beirut partner.



Unfortunately, two cellphones, 3 paperweights (cute diamond-shaped ones), a bottle of Malibu, and my freezer shelf disappeared. No one knows who took the stuff, but it's fairly obvious that the stuff didn't walk out on it's own. I'm really pissed that people would steal shit from my house, ESPECIALLY when I was kind enough to allow open invites to it. That's just downright disrespectful. Hopefully, the missing items will be recovered, but I doubt it.

In other news, I'm very conflicted at the moment. I'm really interested in somebody, but he already has a girlfriend, and I'm not a homewrecker. I refuse to break them up so I can have him. I hate it when girls do that, and I never want to be one of those who do. But at the same time, he wants to hang out with me, and I want to see him, but I don't want to make him cheat on his girlfriend, or tempt myself with someone I can't have. He's a cool friend, but alas, what's a girl to do when she can't control her feelings?

I've been questioning a lot of "facts" about life, lately.

Let me start of with the last few days:
Jon nominated me for the "historian" position in Choir. I love Jon (in a friendship sense), but I always wonder about why he holds me so highly... Just because I do well in school doesn't mean I have strengths in everything, because I don't. I'm perhaps the LEAST well-rounded person in existence. Although I appreciate everything he does for me, his perceptions of me don't align with my own... And how can that be?

At Elizabeth's urging, I'm considering joining the Thalian Society on campus, next year. Whitney Cane: a sorority girl. Hah. Ellie, Liz, Haven, and my other friends have been trying to get me to pledge Palmer, but they're just not my crowd - the Suzie Homemaker title just never fit me. The Thalians seem more eclectic and accepting; they're the group who will take just about anyone who's not a social catastrophe. Their laid back attitude is highly attractive to me... But at the same time, I'm wondering about the pledging process, and the stripping of one's identity in order to join a community. How can I ever be an individual if I'm constantly associated with a certain group of people? But then again, don't people automatically make associations like that, all their lives? Have I not been thought of in the context of the company I keep? Have I EVER been an individual??

But more disturbing than this is the conclusion I reached with my friend, Kevin. I was annoyed by the fact that during the Winter, I had the opportunity to be with someone who was (and still is) really attractive to me, both mentally and physically. But, instead of being with this person, I chose to try and work things out with my asshole ex-boyfriend, who I was in love with. I picked love over lust, and now, this person is happy in a new relationship of his own, and I'm left with no one.

Kevin told me, "sometimes, things come at us that we can't control or know about, but all you can do right now is take what you've learned and go from there." But what exactly have I learned? I've learned that I should forget about love because it simply cannot exist mutually (at least, in my life), so the next time I have the option to be with someone I like, I should pick him over the person I love. But that explanation did not seem correct to me. How does that make sense - choosing someone of a lesser value to you in place of someone of a greater value? Kevin's explanation: "You seem to keep getting hurt by the people you love, so you think that if you go with people you like, you would be happier. It seems the pain from someone you like would not be as great as if from someone you love." This analysis makes perfect sense. If I chose someone I LIKE, their effects on me would be minimal, in comparison. But can I really live that way? I recognize that I've only gone a month without talking to my ex-boyfriend (hey, that's a long time, for me!), but I'm discouraged by the fact that I'm single, and all the people I'm interested in are in relationships or constantly give me mixed signals, so I never know WHAT they're thinking.

I'm also annoyed by my morals. It would be SO easy to give in, do drugs and smoke and drink (which, hey, "everybody does"), help a boy to cheat on his girlfriend, have sex with any guy I want... Yet they always stop me. I have too much respect for relationships (sometimes, I don't even respect the people IN them - I just respect their bond) to ever be the "other girl." So now, when posed with the opportunities to hang out with these taken boys, without their girlfriends present, I know I could never have full interest in them, or allow myself the happiness I think I'd feel if I let them in my life. Instead of saying, "sure, let's hang out," I come up with excuses to avoid it - and why? Because I don't feel like torturing myself by being around people I can't have.

When you start something off in a not-just-friends, relationship-type of way with somebody, that scars the relationship in such a way that if you try to REVERT to being friends, it just never works out, and 99.9% of the time, even if these people are good people, it's best to cut them out of your life. You just can't change what's happened, and you can't control your attraction for them. Perhaps, Taylor (who I haven't spoken to in OVER a month because of this very reason) was right - the grounds with which you establish a relationship with someone are the grounds you keep them on.

I've been crying non-stop for four and a half hours, with my roommate walking in and out, and I don't even give a shit that I've been crying in front of her.

I was talking to my friend back in Stratford, today, and she shared something with me. She'd stumbled upon the MySpace of this young girl whose boyfriend was killed. He himself was only 16-years-old (my little sister's age). It's apparently been four months since he's been gone, and she and their friends still leave him comments on his MySpace, as though he were still alive. She wrote one recently that said she hasn't been able to sleep or eat, since he's been gone. She still can't believe that he's not coming back.

It's clear from both sides that they were in love - real love - where they would have probably gotten married and had children and been happy together, despite the hard times, for the rest of their lives.

But what caused him to die? I could easily appear to be apathetic, and just state that he died of an overdose, but that wouldn't help you grasp the full effect of it. The girl herself wrote, "I STILL D0NT EVEN UNDERSTAND WHY Y0U DID THIS. Y0U HAD BEEN CLEAN F0R S0 L0NG & Y0U WERE D0ING S0 G00D BABY." Now, she's left alone... Because of his stupid mistake, he's gone, and left her behind. And all of his friends behind. And his family behind.

In my Ethics class, we've been discussing the difference between how men and women think:
men like to think of problems mathematically, and think of themselves as separate from others.
Women, on the other hand, think of problems with relation to their effects on other people, and think of themselves in terms of their connections with others. One women in the study said, "Although you may not like someone else, you have to love someone else, because you are inseparable from them." It's like loving your right hand; it is part of you. That other person is part of that giant collection of everybody."

I never knew the boy who died. I don't know his girlfriend, so why am I so affected by this? I guess it's because I have pure sympathy for the girl and everyone who loved him because I see the effects of his death. I see the pain and the anguish and the misery left in his wake. As a result, I wish he was still alive and happy.

Last week marked the day of the largest slaughter of students in United States' history. And two days ago was the anniversary of Columbine (it's pretty upsetting that more people know it as the notorious "Pot Day," or more commonly, "4/20"). I'm sick of seeing the killing. I'm sick of people making stupid choices, and making other people miserable because of them. I'm sick of hearing Seung-Hui Cho's rationale for killing his Virginia Tech schoolmates... and himself. I'm sick of Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold. I'm sick over the fact that after these boys killed so many people, they didn't even stay and take responsibility for their actions. They took the easy way out. But what I'm even more sick over is the fact that they didn't think about how their actions and deaths would affect anybody else. CJ didn't think about how getting high that one night was going to affect himself, his girlfriend, his friends, and his family. It ended up costing him his life, after he'd come so far, and stayed clean for "so long."

I don't even know all the details behind his death, and I probably never will, but I know the story. I've known the story all along. My former best friend's older sister died (she was only 20-years-old). I'd grown up with her. And the worst part was we were fighting over a boy who wasn't even worth it. I never got the chance to reconcile with her. She died, and I was here, in California. I wasn't even able to attend the funeral. And the fact that she died while we were on bad terms is something I have to live (and have been living) with, every day.

But mostly, from this experience, I've realized that I'm not afraid of my own death. I'm afraid that everyone I become close to will die. My ex-boyfriend told me the same thing, early on in our relationship. He told me that everyone he ever gets close to ends up dying. My thoughts on it aren't quite that extreme - I don't think EVERYONE I ever get close to will die (well, before me, anyway) - but I see his point. You never know when someone is going to die, but by getting involved in gangs and drugs, as most of my friends are, you're pretty much asking for it. My friends are automatically putting themselves in bad situations, and endangering their lives. Is a few hundred dollars worth going to jail? Is one night of "getting crunk" worth having your body shut down? Is proving a point really important enough to risk getting shot?

Once you die, you don't come back. I'm an Atheist. I don't believe there's any "higher power" up there, and I don't believe that once you're gone, you get to watch over the people you care about. Once you die, your body decomposes, and all that's left of you are your memories and belongings, and maybe the small pieces of yourself that you left behind in your friends and family. That's it. So just ask yourself - is it really worth hurting all the people you care about?