The ups and downs of being home. And Goodbye Abe.

Hello everyone.

Wow, a lot has happened. I haven't had my computer because it broke down, and currently it's sitting fixed in the K Valley shop in Ellensburg. Right now I'm sitting at the kitchen table on my Mom's laptop eating microwaved peaches with sugar, it's delicious-- tastes just like a peach cobbler filling. I haven't eaten much good food since I got here, which is one of the major downsides of coming home. For dinner I had to practically beg my sister to give me some of the fried chicken and rice she was making. It was good, but extremely rich.

I did buy a loaf of black bread that I can make french toast with in the morning. I hate cooking anything here because cleanup is certainly NOT a breeze. The lack of organzation and abundance of dishes in our kitchen makes preparing food a challenge for me. I definately miss my kitchen in my apartment already as well as eating my normal diet.

I might be on break but I've still got a lot to think about. Tomorrow is Saturday and it's extremely important for me to get up early tomorrow to start doing laundry. I'm going to do laundry, play guitar and stay here in Benton city tomorrow unless Allie contacts me about partying. If so I will pack up my stuff again and go to Ellensburg.

I need to buy some stuff tomorrow, get stoked up for Spring quarter. My mom is going to buy me some of that Russian Rhodiolla stuff from Jimmy. I also got my prozac perscription renewed on  Wednesday.

So I had my party! I really want to talk all about it with you guys but I don't have a way of getting the pictures right now. I'm using my Mom's computer and I saved the pictures on my sister's harddrive.

 

Hey look!! It's 2011 Weeaboo Emily, hello!!

Finds on my Mom's computer....

Me and Eddie Schmann. Needless to say I did not upload his on facebook. Taken the weekend of Kuro Neko con at Golden Corral.

 

 

 

There's a lot of stuff on this computer that I've saved as far back as 2008 that I'd like to get rid of. Thanks to facebook there's about 6 of this same picture with slightly different smirks on my face. 

So I will talk about the party another time, maybe tomorrow, who knows. I don't have anything going on tonight and I'm sure there's raging parties all over Ellensburg. I bet Abe is having a GRANDDDD time. Blugh, so frustrating. We're done, he wants nothing to do with me. I probably did freak out on him a little bit after not seeing him for four weeks but all of my friends say it was reasonable.

I'm not looking back. I know that Abe is attracted to me physically but he doesn't want what I want.  He has other things on his mind being 20 years old than having a girlfriend. I wasn't expecting him to be my boyfriend but I like consistancy. My love life is very interesting because I don't seem to ever consistantly interact withone person. Guys tend to like me initially for one reason or another but the circumstances in our  lives are always wrong.

Maybe if I went after guys that had more similar backgrounds as I do I would have better luck. I don't really understand why my choice in men has always not gotten me very far dating wise. I am aware that I have a very strong personality that not many people can fully understand or cope with on a day to day basis, I believe. It's not that I turn people off, actually people tend to gravitate toward me because my problems with relationships are relateable and not many are willing to vocalize on it.

But my own relationships don't go very well. Granted, 2012 was much better than 2011, in every way shape and form and it all boils down to having a higher self esteem thanks to the guitar and having something to funnel my time and energy into. I'm now in my twelveth month playing and I will now be able to tell people I've been playing "1 year ___ months" etc instead of just "5 months" or whatever. I can say that my life has gotten a lot better over the past year, including in my dating life because I've stopped settling for garbage.

However not settling for what I'm not totally attracted to has left me sort of lonely this last year. Of course we're now coming to the end of the first quarter of 2013. 2012 ended hard with stress and anxiety but most of that has alleviated itself by now. That alone is all I can ask for. Prayer has helped me a lot over the past few months too. I've also been trying to meditate more often which can be very challenging.

I need to play more guitar. Jacob gave me an entire hour and a half lesson yesterday which was awesome because he was really able to help me with Invention. It's a brilliant piece, I'm super excited to have it learned. Jake told me that if I get this down my playing will improve immensely. He's such an incredible teacher I really hope give my own students the same quality Jake has given me.

peace.

Consistency with John Petrucci and my shotgun friendship.

C17

The reason why John Petrucci is the greatest guitar player is not because he's got the most complex note patterns necessarily, even if some of his riffs are incredible and WAY out of my reach right now. It's actually because of his lack of patterns in the way that he mutes. The guitar comes in and out, leading and muting with other elements like the bass, other guitar parts, sometimes a random piano, etc, etc... He's the master of alternate picking  and everything that he plays comes together so fluently because of it.

I've been wanting to play Dream Theater music for months but it's taken a ton of work. One of the first songs I ever tried to play by them was Under a Glass Moon but it was so difficult after the first... I don't know, 40 seconds of it, I just "retired" it until I could learn more from my teacher.

Dream Theater is a relatively new band (there first album was released in 1992). I'm sure they'll continue to release albums far after my progressive metal phase. How long will this go until I burn out? I don't know. 

I've practiced a pretty good deal this week, I'm pretty sure I got 20 hours so I'm giving my hands a rest today. I'm sad because I'm missing lessons tomorrow because I've got orientation for Central tonight. Blah I get nervous that I'm not gonna find my way around. When I was there last time my Junior year of highschool I literally followed Heather around the whole time. 

Maybe my sense of direction has gotten better since then. I'm sure it has... I know my confidence has improved since then so that's a major plus. Finding music has really given me my center.

___________________________________________

I had... a very interesting situation with Trisha and Dylan at their house recently. I don't know if I want to go into all the great details now but because I'm waiting for my Mom to come home from a meeting I can tell you all I can. 

Tensions were high walking into Trisha and Dylan's house from the get go. They'd invited me there for a third time after this facebook situation where Trisha was mad and thought I was "calling her out." 

I never mentioned Trisha on any of my statuses, however I did post one after she acted accusatory about stealing her Alice doll. I was like, "Like this if you think I would never steal from you. Comment if I've been to your house." and it got like 40 + hits. I guess I posted it so she'd see how many people do trust me and that I wouldn't steal her doll. Needless to say, plan backfired, and she ended up posting a comment saying that she never accused me of stealing anything. The whole thing was really weird. 

I sat down in the living room as we were waiting for this guy to come over and fix the dishwasher. A skinny, red skinned, high cheekboned man walked in past me and I jokingly asked if I could help him with anything and he said "No." I'm cracked up and said I couldn't help anyway. I was trying to make light of things as Trisha was frantically running around tidying up for her probably drug addicted neighbor. 

Okay, maybe not. He could just be a random blue collar guy, but all I'm saying is he does not look like someone that would care if their neighbors made a tiny bit of noise after 9:00. Their neighbor's yard is pretty shabby, indicating a more relaxed atmosphere than the one I dealt with at Trisha and Dylan's.

While he was working I was sitting there messing with my guitar in the hot living room, trying to get my hours in because there really wasn't much else to do at this point. We had the plan of watching movies that night so me and Trisha were making plans to go to Hastings together. 

One of the first conversations I struck up turned into Dylan bashing me. I was cracking up a bit after I took out my phone to go on facebook and saw some responses to my "Kirsten Stewart is a whore" post. Dylan started saying, "WHO really cares about celebrity gossip? I mean seriously get a life.." and then Trisha started saying how lame it is that ANYONE would care about that sort of thing too, of course always backed by ". . . But that's just my opinion! Don't take it offensively or anything, gosh!!" 

I just responded, "Alright." 


Around 6:00 PM, we took my car over to Hastings where we were strolling around the aisles trying to look for movies. I told her I'm not a big movie watcher and I didn't really know what to suggest. Trisha wanted to find something that Dylan would like, yet was pressuring me to pick something. All I could do was pull out the movies that I'd seen and gone, "OH! -insert title-! That's a good one!" which she would ignore completely. She asked me, "Well what genre do you like?"

I seriously only watch documentaries at home, guys. I felt lame saying that so I said, "Comedies I guess.."

"WELL do you want Intelligent comedy or Stupid comedy?! You know there's a difference!" I'm standing here sort of stun silent like, "Uh. Intelligent, I guess..."

So she starts picking up things and came across 50/50 and how it was the greatest movie. I LOVE Joseph Gordon Levitt, which I mentioned when we saw batman. 50/50 is a movie where Joseph Gordon Levitt has cancer... I didn't really want to see that. It made me sad to watch him sort of disintegrate in the movie. But it was still a good movie, regardless. A better choice then what I chose-- "Some Days are better than others," This stupid movie with the lady from Portlandia being very hipsterish.

Trisha and I also went to Albertsons after Hastings, and because I've been on a tight budget I bought myself a couple $1.00 lunchables and some popcorn by Orvile Reddenbocker for the movie. I didn't think of the fact I'd been eating junk all day because I didn't eat breakfast and worked all day. 

When Trisha and I are alone together our conversations got a little better, I mean they were pretty general because at this point I was already feeling awkward and uncomfortable. I was thinking, "Why would they so graciously invite me over here if they were mad at me?" I brushed her gestures under the rug, even if at times they were insulting to me.

It's hard to believe I'm talking about the same people that I'd met a few days earlier that I thought were so cool. I thought their house was cool, Trisha's job, her and Dylan's mature living style.. But as I got to know them I just realized they're very dowdy and structured in the way they do things. It's certainly not as "chill" of an environment as I thought it was.

When we got back from bringing movies the guy was still in the dining room working on the dishwasher. Dylan was cranking Queens of a Stoneage and I was sitting next to his friend. I proposed we put one of the movies in and Dylan said, "No, we're playing music for him.." as in their next door neighbor. Again, over thinking everything. Trisha is in there making awkward small talk, and I overheard her say, "If you EVER want us to turn the music down just let us know, I know you can probably hear Dylan in the basement on the guitar.." and he responded, "I've never heard guitar from your house." 

That sort of cracked me up. Trisha must have mentioned it three times throughout the night, "I can't believe he never heard Dylan playing once..." When I've been over at their house there's been a bit of guitar playing, but at the time I had a real struggle improvising anything (I still do) so we didn't really play together. I did, however, have the guitar with me quite a bit because I thought Dylan would understand my addiction to it. 

1980's prom music.. I imagine some of the stuff I hear at Rite Aid would be on that playlist.

Dylan had his guitar with him a bit, he showed me a lot of his nice equipment and some of the nice reverbing techniques you could do with it. He often criticized my music taste, as did his friend Eric that we had hung out with a day couple days earlier. I cracked up about this that evening though when Dylan had told me he likes to play his own music inspired by 80's proms. 

Trisha would snap at me for every little thing I did or touched. I mean I can understand their problem with my noise levels, that's rational. But there were irrational things too. 

I walked into the bathroom to wash my makeup off. I figured I'd be spending the night there that night as I had other nights. I walked in and reached around the side of the shower to open the curtain. Trisha walks in "OH! Don't open the curtain from that side! The wall isn't sealed properly there!"
Okay Trisha, sorry. 
I got a squirt of facewash that I had used previously. Trisha snapped, "Go easy on the facewash." I imagine my eyes grew very wide here. 

We went to go get some cash at the bank and when I pulled on Dylan's car handle it was locked. "The door is ALWAYS locked here. Don't pull on it! You could break it!"
Oh, okay, thanks for letting me know.
We sat in the car and turned on the music. I mentioned that I'd liked something and Dylan changes it immediately to some very bizarre jazz music. Trisha was in the passenger seat like, jamming out to it. I was like, allllrighty then. At this point just biting my tongue with a new purpose in mind. 

As pissed off as she seemed with me she never really had a reason to be, so she kept looking for one. That's what I think it was. She acted so envious and transparent throughout the day, and the more I put up with it and tried brushing it aside the harder it became to keep my cover. 

At around 9:00 after we'd watched the movie Trisha started pacing back and forth in front of me and suddenly blurted out, "Are you like MAD at me or something?" My eyes got a little wide. I'm like, "No, why?" She responded nervously, "Because you seem mad!"

"Why would you say that?" Okay, I'm sure I did seem pretty mad. I was mad, they were pissing me off when they were arguing with every tiny point that I made. After awhile I was just wondering why they had invited me over and what their intentions were, why did they want to hang out with me again if they were pissed off at me in the first place? 

OH! And on top of that, they'd invited me to go with them to Some Bagels and the antique stores the next day. This was a little earlier in the evening but it was still late enough that I thought for sure Trisha would have cracked, but instead she invites me to continue to spend time with them. It was all very bizarre, I didn't get it. I couldn't think of any reason that I would want to spend time with these people again at this point, and even if I did antiques has always been my Dad's thing. I'm not enticed by them because they've been around my whole life. 

I think my real breaking point was that night when it was about 100 degrees in the living room. I mean it was hot. I'd asked to sleep there after I'd taken some Dramamine just to knock out until morning. There was nothing I could do right in that house, and I didn't want to drive with the drunk drivers coming back from the boat races and partying. I just wanted to sleep but that living room was so stanking hot I couldn't take it. I quietly stepped to Trisha's room to see if it was any cooler in their, it had been the last night I'd slept there.

She came charging up the stairs and rushes in, "What were you doing in my room?" And I responded, "It's really hot out here and I wanted to see if it was any cooler in there.." She starts throwing loads of laundry out into the hallway as well as a bunch of other things. I'm like, "That's it, I gotta get out of here."

"What? Oh Emily, No!" Like in such shock that I of all people would want to suddenly leave this lovely engagement. I remember laughing. Laughing, shaking, and throwing all my stuff together, including my guitar into it's case. "You guys are f*cking crazy. I can't take this anymore. I tried to be you guy's friends but that was simply unbearable." 

Dylan had came up the stairs in about a minute, and he was like rolling his eyes and crossing his arms, offering to help me with my stuff. Trisha was doing this too."NO. I do not want your help, Trisha." I had left that nasty popcorn bag out on the table and she's like, "Do you want this popcorn?" I said, "No, I don't." 

Of course Trisha was going, "Shh!" throughout this and I mocked back, "SHH! Shh, Trisha! You criticize every little f*cking thing I do in this house! I mean I can understand the noise thing but the door handle? What the Hell?!"

"If I'm not careful I could never go to college!" Ha ha, okay on a side note, if you're going to live together as a couple playing house you're not necessarily doing the most proactive living situation to afford college. I just rolled my eyes, "Oh God, Trisha, do you think your neighbors care that much? That guy earlier looked like a meth head, you guys are way over the top."

"Don't you make assumptions like this!"

By now I had stormed out. I rushed my stuff into my car, I didn't care if I'd forgotten anything. I'm sure I did, maybe one of my sister's cups. Who knows. She stood there in the doorway staring out as I drove off. I couldn't get out of there fast enough, the dramamine was kicking in and when that stuff hits you fall asleep like a rock. The clock was ticking, I had 15 minutes to get home. 

I cranked Symphony X and flew down the highway that night. I couldn't let that dramamine kick in on the highway, and it did start to as I went through Benton City. Luckily I got home just in time, I explained the situation briefly to my parents, and went to bed. My Dad got paranoid that night because I hadn't checked in. He thought I'd been at Katelynn's house and when he'd heard that the people I was spending time with were acting a little crazy, he acted sort of freaked out. 


I just couldn't do it anymore. I ended up making friends with their friend Connor though, which was a plus. :o) Sometimes you just don't know who you're going to meet in these situations. I thought Connor was cool from the get go, so maybe that's why I decided to give them a second chance. The second chance with Dylan and Trisha though was a fail, their character is like oil and water to mine. 

peace. 

Today really should be an exciting day.

Man, graduation day started out extremely shitty and it's barely 10:00 am. I got up at 7:30, knowing that I'd be blowing about a third of my savings to pay for Spring quarter. I tried to find some sort of proof that we actually had paid for some of my Spring tuition, but it looks like I unknowingly blew the entire thing. There was no proof of checks written to CBC from my Dad in April.

I posted a status about this. Another status about my distaste with how the financial aid system works and how minorities are "spoonfed" the money they need when the caucasions are expected to pay it in full. When I say "minorities" I was of course implying Hispanics. African Americans get financial aid as well, but not nearly as much. Asians and Indians (of India) of course get no easy aid because the school system knows that their culture knows the importance of a good education and would be willing to pay anything to get their kids ahead.

I feel that this is wrong, the way financial aid segregates people based on their race. I feel financial aid should be based on a students grades and how hard they work. Shouldn't that be who the state invests in? The students that get the best grades and therefore deserve to not have to live in this constant fear of their own family's finances? No. Because in order for our country to prosper, we have to supplement the education of the people that can't afford it because if the lower income households don't get that money, their kids won't go to college, then they could potentially cost our country more money in the long run. But because all the financial money is going to young welfare Moms, Hispanic people, and other low income households, where does this leave the caucasion middle ground? Fucked. Paying out thousands just to get by and forcing their parents to live paycheck to paycheck just to get their kids a decent education.

And these are families that did the "right" thing. Got married (no money for married couples). Got some sort of degree-- whether it be their bachelors or even some vocational degree. Maybe they don't have a degree at all but they make enough money to make it appear that they could support the thousands it takes to ge their kids through school. The amount that people make per year isn't nessasarily the most accurate indicator of how much money they have available to them. We've been getting by alright, but I'm certainly not going to be doing anything too fun like take any road trips or do any major splurges. Nope, gotta save up.

I had to give them $500 right out of pocket this morning. I got paid yesterday, so I had $600 in my checking and $1300 in my savings after this guitar expense that my Mom still hasn't helped me out with. I had told my Dad that because I knew he didn't want to pay for any more Japanese, I'd pay for half of it.That'd be $250, which was doable, just like my guitar was. Of course had I knew that I needed to pay for this I would have waited a couple weeks on the guitar.

..No, I couldn't of, that's a lie. I love that guitar like a baby now, seriously it's like my lifesaver right now because without it I'm pretty sure I would have gone stir crazy.

My mind is almost entirely off men again, Jack never made an effort to get ahold of me after my text message that essentially told him that he's dead to me. Wait, did I write about this? I've told almost all of my closest friends about this but I'm not sure if I mentioned it in my blog. This is definately significant enough to talk about though. I'm waiting for Katelynn to get back at me so I have a little time. We're going to run into town together. I really shouldn't be spending the gas money because I'm going to be as cheap as possible for the next two weeks but I have to buy it.

Anyway, yes, I finally told Jack that I'm completely done with his games and that I never want to talk to him again. It took me nearly a week of courage and waiting for any sort of contact with him before I actually did this, but when he didn't initiate anything I decided enough was enough and I was tired of waiting.

"....I've been like a book that you pick up again every time you break up with your girlfriends and don't even have the balls to admit it and that's whats driven me nuts. I am serious when I say I never want to talk to you again, you are dead to me now. Have a nice life."

This was the end of it. And I think that's the end of it, period. I mean four years of this, four years of him unknowingly torturing my emotions and playing with my head. Making me think that he ACTUALLY found me appealing, liked who I was as a person, thought I was beautiful.. etc etc. Nope, because if he found me beautiful, interesting and someone that he'd actually want to be with he would not play me like this. He's always treated me like I was second best to all these other bitches.

Katelynn was right when she said I would feel a lot better about it once it was over and I do. I feel numb again, repressed, alone. But I feel this is the way it's meant to be, and could be for a long time and I have to be patient. Katharine and Katelynn BOTH told me that I need to not let this happen again; not let some guy dick me around again and again and fall for it.

I just can't believe I somehow fell for it a third time. My mom had a lot to do with it because she was egging me on and asking me a lot of questions about it. She didn't tell me at all, "Emily, no, Jack's just doing this same bullshit that he always does... Stay away." I think Katharine tried, having questioned it IMMEDIATELY when I said that me and Jack were spending time together that day two weeks ago.



Man, it's already been two weeks, hasn't it? I guess time does ease the pain of this because I'm getting closer and closer to where I was before he started talking to me emotionally. I'd say it'll take another week of drowning out my emotions with guitar playing and spending time with people that I care about to not care anymore entirely, and he'll barely cross my mind if at all. I don't know how long it would take to get over someone, but I try to quantitate everything to ease my mind that No, even if this was the first time ever really having feelings for anyone, it won't be forever. In fact I like to think I'm fickle enough to be totally immune to most of these feelings, which is true....

I've just been so drained. The graduation ceremony is today but I don't have any enthusiasm about it at all anymore because of the money I had to spend. That and I'm practically starving because I didn't eat breakfast but I don't want to spend any money on food. I've got $90 in my checking account right now after the $500 deduction. I've got $1,200 in my savings account, which I feel is money I don't even really own because it's only for future expenses in college. $40 of that $90 is going to go to my safety blanket today, and the other$50 I am going to try to stretch as far as humanly possible for the next couple weeks until my Dad pays that money back.

shit, I'm too hungry to fast until I get home. I really don't want to spend any money at all but I have to or I'm afraid I'll get dizzy on the road or something. My mom doesn't understand why I do the things I do to save money but it's because I am 100% dedicated to making it so I don't have to rely on anyone in my future. I want to be 100% financially reliant on myself. I'm not going to be like the Hispanics and have the government pay for my school. I'm going to get a loan and have to suffer the consequences later. I'm not going to be like the entitlement culture that gets welfare money from the government or food stamps or reduced lunch for my kids or anything like that. The whole process makes me sick, so I will bust my ass so that I never have to deal with it. The first half of my college is done, that means I'm halfway to making my own decent money.

This is a huge step in the right direction for me, yet I don't feel very excited because I feel it's very insignificant and it's much too early to celebrate. It took me forever to get my AA... 3 years feels like way too long for CBC, and I almost feel humiliated about it.

But I'm DONE. That $500 is going to buy my degree today, my parents will pay some of it back eventually. My mom is now saying that she doesn't "owe" me any money even though she still promissed she'd give me $100 to help pay for my guitar plus the $40 to help pay for my lessons. I'm having a feeling she's not going to actually pay me for either now that the guitar's been paid for. Whatever, she doesn't have too. She needs to save her own damn money so my Dad will stop yelling.

peace.