I have a new site specifically for writing so that all of my blogging stuff doesn’t get bogged down by it for people who don’t read my original writing; I have a journal specifically for fan fiction and early drafts of my original stuff. I deleted my old LiveJournal because I use my Tumblr way more now, and the only reason I was keeping it was for contiguity of my usernames between various sites. Now, everywhere but here, my username is cantsaythursday. I kind of like it, actually.

Now that November is here, I have to kick up my writing another notch because it’s National Novel Writing Month. I’m pretty happy, though, because I am already a fifth of the way through the word count and one section down. I am so very glad to have an English major as a best friend, to talk me through the rough spots and to monitor me so I don’t do anything too crazy. I have a very good feeling about the product as a whole so far. Yeah, I haven’t gotten a lot of writing done today, but I’m kind of on vacation this week until I get all my real-lifey stuff taken care of.

I have to do all kinds of real-lifey stuff now. I need to find a job, I need to finish the paperwork that allows me to withdraw from college, and I need to figure out about a million other things before I can seriously commit to trying to get published. I thought about using one of those publish-it-yourself sites, but it looks like those cost money so I will not look at those anymore until I figure out my financial situation a little more.

Being an adult is hard.

My mom keeps pressuring me to do all this stuff before I’m ready, which just makes me not want to do it even more. I feel like she’s treating me like a kid still, even though I’ve made it clear to her that I’m going to be an adult about this. I mean, I understand that it’s a parent’s job to worry, but I really haven’t given her anything to worry about yet! I have a plan, I have money. She needs to give me some time and space to get through this part of my life. It’s only been a week and she’s expecting instant results. Life doesn’t work that way.

I stood up to my mother. She has always been this impenetrable, almost god-like presence in my life – I love her, but I also fear her more than most anyone. For nineteen years, I tried my best to make her proud of me. I wanted her to admire me – to admire the things I’ve done – but finally, I realized that it is never going to happen for me. And what’s more, I realized that a lot of the things I did when I was trying to make her proud of me didn’t make me very proud to be myself. Being proud of myself is more important, in my opinion. So with the knowledge that I really didn’t like myself very much and haven’t for some time now, I started thinking about what I needed to do to get happy.

The conclusion is this: I’m dropping out of college to become a writer. It took me this long to realize that I didn’t need anyone’s permission to become one, because that’s what I already am. As of next week, I will be a writer full-time. Of course, I’m still going to need to work in order to pay rent, et cetera, but it’s kind of a thrilling, terrifying concept to think that I’m accomplishing my childhood dream. Most people never get this close to it their entire lives. Somewhere along the line, something or someone comes up and they… settle. They settle for more money, a bigger office, a better house, more glory… The list goes on and on.

I’m proud to say that I’m not one of the people who’s willing to settle. I will follow my heart to the ends of the earth, if need be, and I will follow it back again if that’s what it takes to realize my dream. I’m a writer; I don’t know how to do anything else. So maybe I’m a little terrified, but I also feel so incredibly liberated. I’m free. This means that I am free of the expectations society has of me, the limitations that school has set upon us all, and ultimately, of responsibility to anyone besides myself.

… Yeah, I’d say I’m pretty awesome.

National Novel Writing Month starts on Monday, so I picked a good time to become a full-time writer.

This song means everything to me. It is my go-to song whenever something goes wrong in my life. I have so much respect and love for this band and this man.

You broke my heart. I’ll never forgive you for that.

And even as I love you with everything I’ve got, I’ll still scorn you at every opportunity and pray that you know what this feels like one day. Thirteen days, Markus. Three hundred and fifty-two days ago, we were engaged. You shouldn’t have said yes – or let me believe you did – if your heart wasn’t in it. My heart would’ve been okay, then. But the way you ended things was really shitty, and it still stings like fire on my soul. It’s not fair.

Three days ago. It happened, then. Do you remember? I cried afterward, after you left, because it hurt so badly. And I bled – faint pink blood that would’ve gone unnoticed. You didn’t kiss me, you didn’t hold me; you took what you wanted and left. That wasn’t fair, either – you stole something from me that I’ll never get back. Take what you want from this, I really don’t care. I want the world to know what happened between us; I don’t want to forget. You know, I still write stupid poetry about you. Do you get that? I’ve been blaming myself for almost a year. Only now, I realize that it wasn’t my fault at all. You were the one without a heart.

I’m never going to forget you, and I’m never going to get over you. Something changed on both of those days. Maybe it was for the worse, but either way it happened. So stop trying to pretend that I never existed; stop pretending that you didn’t take a nine month sojourn across the country to be with me. It’s not a failure on your part. That’s all on me. I’m the one that couldn’t keep you. And that? It really kills me sometimes.

We used to be so invincible. In high school, we were the friends you couldn’t separate. Our differences were what separated us from the rest of the pack. So where’d you go? At the end of the road, when our lives took divergent paths, where did your life take you? Are you where you want to be, or where you’re expected to be? I’m not judging anyone. Sometimes I just wonder, late at night, whether we’ve all forged our own paths or taken the ones mapped out for us.

Do you follow maps, yeah? Am I the friend you won’t bring home to Mama because you’re not sure what she’ll think of me? Am I the boy you’re so afraid to kiss because you’re afraid of what it means to you, because kissing me means throwing your own sexuality into question? You want someone with an uncomplicated sexuality and a life history that you don’t have to edit every time we touch. You want someone with impenetrable defences, a puppet to cater to your every whim. You want someone exciting, and delicate; someone with morals like pipe-cleaners that will bend over when you ask her to.

And so I follow the lines of my body, marking the maps you’ve made of me, wondering what’s become of us. Our lives are so connected – with all these messages telling us to reconnect, recommit and recompense, I wonder how many of you actually care. Popularity is not marked by how many people write on your wall on your birthday; it’s the number of people that care enough to show up in person. It’s easy to be brave from behind your keyboard, to say things you’d never tell me in person. The difference between you and I is that I wear my weirdness as a waistcoat, strung out on a wire for the world to see. You wear your words backwards, tucked safely behind the seams so no one sees that you’re not the same.

Sit behind your specious wisdom and forget that I exist.

We are all wolves; we are all sheep. We are all friends that we’d like to keep. Do you follow maps, yeah? Get back on track or walk out of my life. Stop painting your lives with a million shades of grey. Throw out your colours with the flags of youth and mark your maps with the places you’ll forget I exist. Recycle me; I can be anyone’s friend but my own. “I do not agree with a word you say, but I will fight to the death for your right to say it.” Remember that, and me, as the horizon fades when you look back on the pictures of our lives. Don’t look to the sky and say you’re sorry, because baby, I’m going down.

Do you follow maps? Here’s mine.

Especially when it’s rejection disguised as “Let’s stay friends, awkwardly, while I attempt to not tell you about Boy I Love With All My Heart.” The only up-side to this whole thing is that teenage girls are totally capitalizing on my misery as I write a large abundance of fan fiction in order to quell my crushing feelings of depression. So I guess I’m getting kind of Internet famous, since this site hit sixty page views yesterday, and I don’t think that any of them are from A. reading my poetry over and over again maniacally.

A. is kind of a poetry whore that way. I haven’t actually written any poetry in a couple of days – slow fade and everything are the last two I’ve written. The Beef and I have been talking neurotically, as we do, and I’m starting to feel a bit better, but still crappy. I’ve no idea what I’m going to do about school on Monday and getting caught up on all the work. Honestly, I’d rather stay in my apartment and write fan fiction in my underwear than go to school – not, as Beef so often says, write porn. Most of my characters remain mostly clothed.

I feel like I learn a lot more doing the research for my fan fiction than I do at school, though. Today I learned about the various treatments for H.I.V. and brain tumours. People who read my stuff get to learn about that, as well as transgenderism. So if you look at it that way, technically I’m doing a public service in easy-to-read, accessible little packages. Oh, and the cute boys really help to take all the information in.

Life-Defining Event: Believers Never Die, Part Deux.

I’m taking a page out of a dear friend’s book and starting over. This is a no-holds-barred analysis of the world around me, I guess; my heart is in this space. Obviously, I’m not going to start naming people left, right and center, because that’s a really crappy thing to do – but, with a little thought, you should be able to figure out if I’ve mentioned you. And if I haven’t, then I guess it’s up to you to figure out why the hell you’re not important enough to be in my blog.

I’ll start making more meaningful posts tomorrow; in the meantime, I just wanted to put up a few things to give you an idea of what goes on inside my head.

Life is all about finding out who you really are. First of all, know that you’re not alone. I don’t think there’s a person on this planet who has not, at one point or another, worn a mask to protect who they really are from a potentially difficult experience. The pressure of believing you’re the only one with this problem is half of what makes it seem so impossible to fix. The second step is figuring out what you’re so afraid of by revealing who you really are. It isn’t that you’re wearing a mask all the time, its that you’re putting it on in attempt to keep your therapist out. What you need to understand is that by letting that person in, they can get to the core of whatever else is bothering you. Just be straight up. Its hard, but once you break through that wall, the pressure you feel inside will lift, and you’ll probably cry out every single one of those tears ‘til all you can do is laugh to make up for it. That’s when you know you’ve done it. Be real, because a mask only fools people on the outside. Pretending to be someone you’re not takes a toll on the real you, and the real you is more important than anyone else.

- Alex Gaskarth, lead singer of All Time Low