The Dreaming v6.3 || Serve the Ego

Name: Julia
Age: 18 in two months
Sex: Female
Residence: Cleveland
Email: TrekPhile47@hotmail.com
AIM: TrekPhile47
Websites

The Empty Bed

-TBA-
Reading

Photography Books
Thinking

Satisfaction
Favorite Shampoo

Willow Lake
Favorite Soap

Rose, Triple Milled Veggie Soap
Favorite Lotion

Bath and Body Works

"Eucalyptus and Spearmint"
Admired Scents

Rosy, or anything deep

musky and earthy
Current Project(s)

Control

Semi-Engagement

Perfection

School Work

Trip to Buffalo

Birthday Party
To Do List

Clean My Room

Call Ms. Taylor for PR

Burn Jewel

Burn "The Saint"

Burn "K-PAX"

5.30p; Saturday, February 23, 2002
Listening to: Taxi Ride," Edward Shearmur

I'm feeling very self-pitying right now. Not so much to be sappily, drippily, whinily, "Woe is I" sort of self-ptying. I have accepted my shitty moods for what they are.

I hvae been accepted to five out of the six universities that I have applied to. But I mean, I don't really care, and I resent my parents telling me that I should be "proud of myself" for my accomplishments. As if the brow-beating in some way was purely my sheer determination to get into a good college. Well, it wasn't, it was an escape from them bitching and brow-beating me.

It's all sivkly-sweet the way I should be "proud of myself" because one of the colleges is giving money to me (a lot of money to me). Why should I be happy? That you can keep reminding me every three days that I really should get a job (as if I didn't already know), and that we don't have enough money when I need more warmer clothes, but we do have enough money to get stupid things that make no sense.

According to my parents, we have "come into a spot of money"...which is trite. Because, obviously, they "don't have the money" to help me get warm clothes, buy personal hygiene products, shampoo conditioner, and go grocvery shopping for normal food at normal intervals. Hell no, that would make sense, that would be too easy, and rational and normal.

Instead, they decide to buy things for decorating the house...which I guess is all fine and good, because it isn't cool to live in a dump (let's look at my room, here -- it isn't cool); but do you have to skimp on grocery shopping to pay for the painter!! Especially when I would do it for half the price just to earn som fucking money?!

And I know that it is only going to get worse. I am going to have to get a job to buy clothes, and food when I go to college. And I know that when I am in college, my parents are going to try to teach me "the value of a dollar" and how to "live on limited means" on my own (because they are indeed kicking me out after this schoolyear). When in all honesty, I kinda know what it is like to live poor.

This is not me trying to say that I know what it's like to live on the streets, or suffer malnutiriton, or know what it is like to be homeless. Not at all. I truly do have it better off than a lot of people, and it makes me sad that I still, in spite of knowing how poor people live, complain about not having some spending money.

I'm just saying, I know what it is like trying to stretch $20 over four weeks, and occasionally, having a friend who gives me a most gregarious five dollars to fill my gastank, or two dolars to help me buy baby oil, or someone who'll give me a couple of dimes for soda so that I might possibly be able to stay awake that day....

And I know that I could get a job...I'm well aware of that fact, thank you very much. As if I weren't ashamed of myself enough, I know that on top of it, I just don't have the balls to go get a job and make an effort of balancing my life to do it. I'm sure that I could if I tried, but I haven't...and dammit, yes, I am ashamed of myself for it!!

But to feel guilty when I run out of conditioner, for chrissakes, and have my mom tell me to use stuff that would wreck my hair.... Come on, it's a terrbile thing for me to be ashamed of asking my parents to go shopping for conditioner. Shouldn't I be able to do well enough without?

MY mom yells at me for not taking my meds everyday, and then she yells at me about how much it costs. What am I supposed to do about that? Not take my medicine everyday like she yells at me to. She claims that it's for me to be aware of how much it costs...but why? I mean, it's not like the cheaper brand helped much, and she gets all bent out of shape when I don't. Why complain about money for things that you have deemed a "necessity".

I have two dollars in my pocket, and that's all I have to my name. My brother just earned $10 for bunny-hopping a fucking laundry basket on a stair.

So tell me; what good does it do me to have saved them money? So that they can buy another car that I can't take to college, that they'll tell me I don't own; to tell me that I don't really matter; to buy decorations for the house...?

* * *

I'm getting more headaches: nearly-debillitating ones. I'm also very tired all the time, even after getting hours and hours of sleep. I know that I should do more things that keep me busy, but everything I do depresses me.

When I began high school, I declared an art major, over my writing. I mean, I kinda liked writing, I had done some; but I loved being creative with my hands moreso than with my mind. I began Andrews and started witht he Studio Art I program. I soon needed something to fill my lethargy that was occurring because of school, or more aptly put, the lack of acedemics that I felt I was recieving at Andrews.

Which is where writing became huge in my life, where I began a novel to end all novels to bide my time. A novel that ended up carrying me through the rest of freshman and all of sophomore year.

I was taking Studio Art II at Beaumont, and I was okay; but I was behind everyone else who had taken it freshman year at Beaumont. At Beaumont, they started you out with the basics of how to draw, and getting cofortable with the quintessential beginnings of art...all forms of art. Andrews just kinda shoved a...a.... Actually, I don't know what I did freshman year in art.... Well, they shoved a tool into my hand, and sent me about my merry way. No instruction, no guidance, no basics, no nothing.

Needless to say, I was screwed from the start.

I made something of a recovery by the end of the year, and I was ready to continue my art work...hoping that I could still salvage something of my declared art major.

I got my schedule for junior year, and instead of getting into Studio Art III, I was in Ceramics instead.

I got screwed freshman year, only to recover feebly, only to be stuck in a stupid ASHTRAY class?!

There was something rotten in the State of Denmark, but I didn't really see it coming, seeing as I thought that I could get the credit for art and just keep going up.

It didn't happen that way, I got screwed out of my studio art major with one fell swoop of a scheduling "error." I was out for good, doomed to run along side of the track while the stars were running inside, winning the glory, the education, the portfolio, the reputation.

I guess I earned something in the way of a reputation: I consoled myself that year by immersing myself within my writing, within HTML, within graphic arts, within digital media...because I couldn't do the real things. I couldn't be a "real" artist. And I've become good at working with digital media, I mean, I have gotten a good base of doing a lot of things that are digital and media...and I don't think that you could give me anything, really, to take away the technological advancement that I gave myself as a consolation prize for getting screwed out of an art education.

I mean, I am in photography now, and I will be taking Ceramics II this year...but I feel kinda screwed over even though I have that base in other forms of art.

In the end, I thought that I could get by with writing, that it was what I really wanted to do: I'm good at it, and I enjoy literature so much -- I would die without my books. But I think that in retrospect, my writing was a phase that lent itself to me so that I could get through some of the issues that I needed to get though...a self-therapy that I needed to stay in touch with who I was.

It just faded away, the spark, the life, the vigor that I had for writing faded when I "finished" my novella, when I didn't have the time to do it, when I got a boyfriend. When I didn't need to fill a lot of the gaps in my life with the writing that I was doing.

And the art part of me has been rejecting the writing within me like a donor organ. The art part of me, the want in me to create by my hand is reasserting myself in the most persistent of ways. And my writing had fallen away from me.

Which makes me being in Literary Magazine somewhat of a joke...seeing as I can't read any more poetry and tell myself that I know how to edit it anymore. I couldn't edit anything with any amount of precision anymore, not like I used to. And my business skills are pitifully lacking, I can't remember to do anything to save my life. So me being the Editor-In-Chief of the Literary Magazine is turning into a joke. If I am nominated by the senior class as "Class Writer", I think that I am going to cry...really. IF anyone should get it, it should be Cassandra [name changed] -- at this point, where we were neck and neck last year, she has passed me in leaps and bounds...all becuase I dropped out of the race. I "hit a wall" as it were.

But secretly, I am glad that I got screwed out of art at BEaumont...because I know that I could not be as artistic as people like Marti, and Mickie and Stephanie...I couldn't be like them.

I couldn't be like them because I didn't get as good of a start as they did. Because I cannot find the creativity in myself anymore, because I think that my parents would have complained about the cost. The only reason why my father and mother haven't complained about photography is because my dad used to be a photographer, and he is trying to relive the moments through me.

And I hate to dissapoint him, but my creativity there, too, is nothing... I was supposed to have Gulich and Boyfriend model for me, but, lets face it, that isn't going to happen anytime soon. If ever.

Mrs. Carreras says that she was dissapointed that I didn't persue my art, but I think it's more of a sympathetic gesture than it is a true desire. I couldn't draw, I didn't do an assignment, I fucked up one of my projects. I'm sure that she was happy to wash her hands of me...I mean, she still considers me a writer, for chrissakes!

So secretly, I don't think being screwed out of it is as bad as being exposed as a sham would have been.