Three incredible days in Paris. Five trains during the last day. Sitting next to a loud greek man, and was thankful when he took out a book, only to have him read mine over my shoulder for fifteen minutes until he worked up the words to say he too studies philosophy, in a tone that implied I'd start a conversation. I did not.

I balled up my scarf and pretended to sleep. Trains are special places to me. I've spent quite a lot of time on them, from place to place, thinking about people I care about. Boys, girls, parents, teachers. Trains are where I do my best reminiscing, and this man wanted to stop it. Couldn't he tell that I just wanted to let my mind wander all over you on my way home?

CRAP

Lately it's been as though my brain is split into two completely different directions. Neither of these directions is worried about my five exams that are all worth 100% and three of which are oral.

One of these halves is just trying to keep cool. Or forget about it. But neither of which is succeeding. My mental screensaver keeps coming back to these tableaus in my mind of times over the past five years. It's really distracting and keeping me from thinking about more nagging things that exist in my present. I've got to deal with a lot of things before I leave, which, by the way, is Monday.

The problem is, when I want something to fade away, to just drift of until I can't see it anymore, usually I ignore it. I have this misconception that by directly addressing something it means there'll be a sharp break, which is exactly what I don't want. I want this to dissolve, so I turned my back on it. And instead it spent that whole time charging at me. So now, when I finally turned around assuming it would be too far away, it's staring me right in the face.

So many metaphors. So little clarity.

I just want to curl up in memories of one person, but the present with another won't let me rest.
And my room's a sty.

...but really don't feel bad cause you do to me all the thing I do to you, I do to you...

What good is a poker face when you've got an open hand?
I was supposed to be cool at this, yeah
I remember cool was the plan.

I have so many things to think about. Now more than ever. Exams are lurking, rent needs to be paid. I should get on top of the job search for next year. I need to figure out where to stay in Siena for New Years. Two people very near and dear to me are going through very stressful realizations. Owen's in the hospital. My room is filthy and I haven't read anything academic in easily two weeks.

What am I thinking about?
Cory's cottage two years ago, the night before the eve of the new school year.
The sun rose around us and we didn't even notice.


the world is too good for me
I am such an ugly girl
but when we're together,
we're too good for this world...

I've always been a fighter.
I put my back into things.
I wear out the knees, not the seat of my pants.
I hit an irishman in the face on his birthday.

But I don't know if I can be strong for both of us.
And I'll never tell you that.

So maybe I'll just be strong for you, and not for me.

It's a miserable rainy gray day outside. I know for a fact I'm the only one in the building who's awake, as I was the first person by a bunch to go to sleep last night. We drank absinthe for most of the night, and when I was falling asleep the rest of them went out for food. No one will be up for hours still. I'm so hyper and bored and anxious I'll probably run and jump on Morna when I'm finished this, so I might as well keep going for as long as I can.

Absinthe. Damn. Green and tastes like black licorice, but damn.

So it Goes by Billy Joel is one of those songs that inexplicably makes me cry every time I hear it. Once, driving home from Kathy's house in the Gatineaus in a great mood because...well, of the first part of that sentence, it came on and by the time I pulled into my driveway I was balling. When I walked into my kitchen my father assumed Kathy and I had had a huge falling out. He held me until I was lucid enough to explain that Billy Joel just speaks to me. He laughed rightly.

Today all the people I care about in this town are going to come over. Also, other people who I care about from other towns are coming. This entire weekend has been dedicated to the art of the portable party. It started last night (absinthe bender) and will carry into Monday when Alex has to leave. The eight of us who are in town currently all have assigned tasks to accomplish during the day and we meet up here at 6 to feast and decorate before the surge of people start pounding on our door.

I'm in charge of making breakfast tomorrow morning. It's gonna be BOSS because none of us have had breakfast in, how long's it been? Three months Tuesday. I'm seeing visions of pancakes and french toast and omelets and orange juice and milk and fruit salad...and TOAST. and TEA! Food has turned into what I fantasize about lately. I get these big drooly grins on my face picturing fresh apples and pastry.

Starting Wednesday there's a big Christmas market two blocks from my house. It's a beautiful outdoor market taking up three city blocks filled with tented kiosks selling crafts and jewelry and chocolate and really tacky battery-powered Santa Hats. Yesterday I walked through it with Morna and Sandra and we drank Gluvijn (warm wine with sugar added, tastes like mulled cider and red wine) and snacked on Sneewballen (balls of dough covered in icing sugar, softer fresher timbits) while watching kids run around with their parents and dogs in sweaters get carried around by their owners. This town is so rich it can afford to host this, plus decorate each and every street with Christmas trees and lights. There's music playing everywhere and the whole place is infused with Christmas Cheer. The woman who works at the hair parlor that I walk past every day stopped me to say hi. She's the only middle aged woman I know here, as everyone else is a student or a stodgy old male professor.

I wanted to hug her so badly. But I didn't. Belgians wouldn't understand that. But I'm trying to build a relationship by smiling and waving every day, so maybe one day I'll get up to the hugging stage.

Its really nice to have a hand to hold this time of year. All I could ask for is snow. And, to a greater extent, my family.
Man, do I ever miss my mother.

...and then I listen to White Wedding by Billy Idol and watch the Windows Media graphic thing dance and remember that I take joy in almost everything.

I will not be reduced to your terms.

If you send me a package with chocolate in it, I will however, eat it all in one day, regardless of how much you sent.

Gah. Lead us not into Reese's Peanut Butter Cups, but deliver us from Crispy Crunch.

He called at four and asked if he could come over and talk. What was I going to say, no?

He arrived smelling of cigarettes and looking like shit. I saved us both the dance and dove right in.
"So?"

I assumed he'd come over to discuss why a few hours before he'd told me he didn't want to see me for the next little while. Why he'd told me that not only that, but he didn't think he could see Morna either because of association. He actually planned to avoid me at all costs, which meant not going out for Luke's birthday or to the formal. I thought that's what we were here to talk about. Him.

Turns out he'd come over on my behalf. This whole thing, his despression which had me weeping a few days before was not what he'd come to discuss. He was there to intervene in my life, as I'd obviously been living it the wrong way. I was faking. Putting up walls. Lying to myself about being a happy person. He knew tons of people just like me, who thought they had friends, but really weren't allowing people to get close. I wasn't trusting. I was holding back. I was going to destroy myself this way. I was going to get hurt, and he couldn't bear to watch me do this. In short, I was lying to my friends and myself and I was going to have a breakdown because of it.

I know, Whoa. All this at four in the morning. I thought we were going to talk about him. I hadn't prepared anything for this. I didn't have notes ready. I felt like I had been attacked, and all I could say was 'okay.'

He said he hoped this didn't offend me, but he really sees something in me and doesn't want it destroyed.

He left at 6 and I pounded on Morna's door. We talked, I settled down out of upset and shocked and into a healthy boiling case of anger, though it was mostly defensive.

Yeah, sure I think I'm a happy person. Cause I AM a happy person. I like laughing, running around and telling stories about times I've done something stupid because its ENJOYABLE to me. I like who I am, who's around me and how I live.
To be quite honest the main reason why you don't know much about me is because when we talk its generally about you.
And yes, maybe I'm keeping my distance emotionally, but this is a very strange place to live. Everything is transient. Nothing is permanent, there's an expiry date on every new friendship I make, not to say I'll lose them entirely, but that kind of deep emotional bond will get tried and will fade. I hate to offend you, but I'm not too keen on exposing my skeletons to someone who'll leave me. And one day I might, but not after only knowing you for 2 months.
The people who I'll carry around forever know me. The people who I come home to know me. The people who I choose to allow to know me, know me.

So you know what? Fuck you a little. Don't impose your style of living on me. I can't pour it all out on command. And if this is your way to force my hand its not going to work. I'm going to continue to love how I love.

This is a great way to send me spiralling into an identity crisis.
What the hell is going on?
I oscillate between thinking he's totally right, and knowing he isn't.

Meanwhile I'm watching one of my best friends count down the days before his girlfriend flies home to Stockholm for good on the 19th, watching the pain in their eyes as they decide to end it to save inevitable hurt and I wonder which side of the argument this works in favor of.

I do not suffer from depression.


What I am, is a depressed person magnet.
They are wonderful, hyper intelligent and creative.
And they suck my heart right out through my pores.
I don't think I knew how much I could love someone regardless of the abuse they threw at me until now.

I just want everyone to be okay.

Note from the Editor: The original issue of this had the glaring, yet hilarious typo of 'magnate' instead of magnet. Just when I think my sense of humour has failed me forever...I ha'd at that.

Just because I understand your reasoning doesn't make it right, fair, or in your best interest.

Please, please. Don't shut me out. I think we both know you need me.

What you don't know is that I need you.

MARIA!! I love you. You know I love you. Right? You're comfortable in the fact I consider you one of my favorite people right? Right? Because I do. I love you. So much. THIS MUCH.

But for the life of me I can't remember when your birthday is. 14th? I don't know. This makes me feel stupid. Because I'm not a bad friend. I'm just bad with numbers, so here I am making my ignorance known and rendering myself vulnerable to others to see how awful I am as a person, pleading with you.

When's your birthday? I hope to God its not the 4th, because i'm afraid might be. I had a dream I missed it.

I don't know why this isn't an email.

There are two stores in this town I can't walk past without checking out the window display. One is a lingerie shop that always has the most beautiful in undergarments on hilariously perfect mannequins and the other is the knife store. I think this says a lot about who I am as a person.

Sound advice scratched on the back of a Hougaredse Das coaster, beside a likeness of John Lennon drawn in a water stain.

"It only rains indoors on boy bands"
Life's not hard. I'm going to Paris in two weeks and spending New Years in Florence.

And finally, the anticlimactic conclusion

So we had a really nice big family dinner with several bottles of wine, then hit the Irish Bar where we proceeded to be met up with by every single person I know in Leuven and drank some more. The weaker kids left after a few hours and then the four of us with Sandro and Dan headed to…some other bar in the OudeMarkt and drank way more. We arrived home at four and I was ready to get some rest so I could spend the following afternoon waiting for my elusive sweater package to finally make its entrance.

Knock Knock.

Morna entered, looking sheepish and pleading. “So, how attached are you to sleeping alone tonight?” The answer was ‘fairly’ but of course, a friend in need... Turns out neither of the boys had sleeping bags with them as they’d been hostelling the whole time. One was sleeping with Morna in her bed and the other was setting out to fall asleep on the floor with a towel, which neither of us was going to allow. To my surprise she sends over Kenny, the taller, girlfriended, prettier member of the duo. He, with no self-consciousness due to being both a guy and having traveled for the past 7 weeks proceeds to strip down to his boxers and crawls into my bed.

I get dressed as if I’m heading for the North Pole. Long sleeved shirt and doctor pants and then gingerly crawl over him and press myself up as close as possible to the wall.

“You know, it’ll be virtually impossible not to spoon.” He says wisely.
“Mmmmph” I say, with face smooshed into wall.

So we spoon. The ensuing 8 hours of ‘rest’ was a well-choreographed dance of cuddling that was at both times really comforting and sweet and…bizarre. This naked-someone-else’s-boyfriend type person sharing my single bed heating the whole place up like crazy, destroying the homeostasis that I’d perfected with the amount of blankets and temperature of my room a mere week before.

He’d been well trained too, hands absently stroking my arm, back or hair as he fell asleep. No doubt the minute he left consciousness his body assumed I was Jesse, the girlfriend and I was enveloped warmly in big man arms. The top of my head was kissed, he reached to move my hand onto his chest. This guy loved me while he slept.

My eyes didn’t close for more than 4 minutes the whole time. I’d move an inch and he’d ask if I was comfortable, to which I repeatedly lie ‘sure…mmmph’. I stretched out my neck and all of a sudden he was rubbing my shoulders. Despite all of his attempts at making me relax I stayed pretty well rigid. And sweltering. Finally I got up to us the washroom and changed into a tank top, and upon my return to bed he rubbed my back until I drifted off.

I woke up with my head on his shoulder and my hand on his stomach, his fingers interlaced in mine. I could feel his heartbeat and the rhythmic ebb and flow of his breathing was soothing and regular. All I could think was ‘this is so nice…but, so very weird.’

And what’s more? I get to do it again tonight…
I don’t know how I feel about this

Sidenote: As we lay side by side this morning, chatting about the plan for the day, Renaat knocked on my door, and I, assuming it was Morna told him to come in. So he sees tank-topped Desiree and naked man in bed.

Cue one flustered Flemish boy backing away in horror all the while muttering ‘I…I’m done with the…hoover…if you…want….it…bye’ and then he fled.

Who: Joe
When: At a Spanish party
Why: Because so much tension had been building up it was either kiss him or have my eyes burst out of my head
How: A bunch of gin drinks
What now: We talked as we went for a walk through Heverlee where a castle and the most beautiful church in the history of churches reside. It was nighttime an foggy and you couldn't see ducks; but you could hear ducks. I put my foot down. I was firm. He surrendered a lot of honesty and made himself vulnerable. I just shut him out.
Then, two nights later we talked again. He called me on my bullshit. We've decided not to decide anything just yet, so we'll see how this plays out.

If this seems like a shock to you, imagine the kind of shock I'm going through right now.
Stranger things have happened, but not to me.