It is strange to think about how much a friendship can change in a week.

Two weeks ago Rachel and I were constantly together, she escaped to my room and spent hour upon hour in here with me, smoking, laughing, crying, talking about how I was the only constant in her life, and that if I left next semester, she would be devastated. Two weeks ago, we were discussing transferring to UGA together, getting an apartment together, and being happy. We were friends. We called each other best friends. We knew each other inside and out.

But this past week, she has stopped visiting; I have only seen her once or twice, and that is only when she comes to borrow movies, or my cinnamon, like everybody else on the floor. Two weeks ago, she just opened the door and let herself in whenever she wanted to. It was almost as if she lived here, and not in her own room. A minute ago, she knocked for almost the first time in a month, refused to enter because of the smoke, and left aggain. I was supposed to go with her to Hampden Sydney, the boys college around here, this weekend, but she "forgot" that she had already filled up her car and would not be taking me. I rented movies for her two weeks ago, took care of her while she was sick, and laughed, a lot. And it seems that with a few simple rumors, a few mixed confessions about a weekend, everything has gone asunder and all of a sudden I am not worthy of her friendship.

If I wander into a place where she is, without knowing she was there, she gives me the look of death, as if to say, you are following me, you are trashy, you should not even think yourself lucky enough to be in my presence.

Jen and Charli hardly ever come down to my room either - the only reason they come anymore is to buy a pack of cigarettes off me, maybe smoke one with me, and leave a gain.

One weekend changed so much up here, one weekend changed everything. Do I regret the weekend? I don't. I had a good time, and yes, I regret some of the things I did, that some of the things became so public and so trampled it was as if Sweet Briar had a tabloid that printed up all of our truths. But I don't regret the weekend.

I'm sad that it has made me lose my friends, but in the end, I would have been leaving them anyway. I don't feel connected to anything at Sweet Briar anymore - definitely not my classes, my job, my friends, nothing. It is as if whatever was holding me here slipped away, and what would be the point in chasing after it? My parents payment is the only thing that keeps me here. And maybe with the lack of friends, the lack of immediate distraction, I'll get my head back on track and go to class and do my homework. Maybe that has been the problem all along.

I'll be home in less than a week. Hallelujah.

Tear drop 3:52 PM of Sarah

I haven't been sleeping well lately. Sleeping well, or sleeping much at all. And when I do sleep, I pass out, completely, no one can wake me. This is becoming a problem.

I haven't really been to class since I started getting the migraines - having a medical excuse at your every beck and call really helps you out, because no one's going to tell you that you have to come to class if you have a migraine. But I've been using it as a crutch, and the crutch isn't really supporting me anymore. I might get kicked out of school. I don't care.

I've been doing a lot of thinking lately, about why I'm in college. Or why really, anyone's in college. Think about it: if you had the choice to be anywhere in the world right now, doing whatever you wanted, no one's expectations or beliefs pressed upon you but your own wants and dreams, where would you be? I know that I certainly wouldn't be here. And maybe it's just because it's Sweet Briar. And maybe it's because my dad had a hard time adjusting to college, and he dropped out for a year, and he still turned out fine, so that's why I'm so confused, too.

But it seems that there have been so many dreams and wants and expectations pushed upon me that I have to be here, and I don't know how to combat that. It was always expected that I would go to college. That I would be smart. That I would make my parents proud and not be the fuck-up child. But I guess I am the fuck-up child, because my parents don't even know who I am anymore. And maybe that's because they didn't really know me in the first place, maybe they just knew their dream of me that I tried to fit into, constantly squirming and struggling to fit that mold. But I can't. I don't care that I'm not going to class. I don't care that I might get kicked out of school, or that I might get fired, or that I can't seem to finish anything that I write, or that nothing in my life really has a point or is going anywhere. Maybe I'm just depressed. Maybe I'm just becoming confessional because I feel like this blog is the only safe thing I have left. Because when I write on it, I edit myself, hoping for the best. Maybe that's why I can't write anything else anymore, I don't edit, and it becomes too tangled up and too garbled with what I want and what I don't want that I don't ever pause to try and think about what the world wants.

And maybe it's because I can't seem to work anything out for myself anymore - I'm entirely co-dependent, and while I love and enjoy helping other people, and bitching with other people, I'm not really willing to do anything about my own state. I made a last-ditch effort to reach Chandler earlier, but he was non-responsive. I was hoping the pictures would help. I don't know what to do with that anymore, and my natural response is to fuck it, but I can't. Maybe it's because he has been a really good friend to me in the past year. That's probably it. I don't like giving things up without a fight, I don't like changing. But it's been a month, and he won't talk to me. So Chandler, I guess this is my last-ditch effort to reach you. I'm putting it out in a public forum. I don't even know if you read this anymore, but it's not the point. Maybe it will make things worse. I hope not. I was trying to make them better.

I have decided that going AWOL is a really good thing for me, it helps me clear my head. I disappeared for three hours earlier, and when I came back, I felt better. I also fell down the stairs and busted my knee, and now I can't really walk, but it's okay. I hobbled anyway. Maybe absurdists have a point - if you laugh at everything, and view your life as some kind of tragic comedy, maybe you won't get hurt. Maybe you won't have anxiety attacks. Maybe everything will be okay.

I don't know. I've been waking up every afternoon thinking, "this is not my life," because I can't believe I've let things spiral so much out of my control. It's nihilists who don't care about anything, right? Maybe I'm developing a nihilistic point of view about my future. I just want to sleep. And write something decent. And be happy. But about everything else, I'm not sure what I think/want. I wake up and wonder why I'm in Sweet Briar, why I'm in college, why I'm not in Europe or Albuquerque or New York trying to make a small living for myself by waitressing during the day and writing at night, or backpacking around Europe and sleeping in youth hostels.

Maybe I shouldn't stay up so late at night anymore. Then the world seems really dark and lonely, and there's no one to save you from your own thoughts. For almost five years I've talked to someone right before I went to sleep at night - it hasn't been the same person for five years, but just, for five years, there's always been someone on the phone as I curl up in my bed next to my nineteen year old teddy-bear, scrunching up my pillows and falling into the folds of sleep. And all of a sudden, that just stopped, and maybe that's why I can't sleep. I can't get my thoughts out. I can't take someone else's in. I don't know. Maybe it's not it at all.

Shazzer was right. Men are emotional fuckwits. But I think I'm going to expand that to mean, the world is an emotional fuckwit. Pashmina. Pashminster. Whatever.

Tear drop 3:16 AM of Sarah

The car is screaming down the highway at 80 miles per hour; it is flashing by the other cars in a neon blur of headlights at one o’clock in the morning in the middle of summer. The windows are all rolled down, cigarettes and flashy fingernails are draping themselves outside the window, fluttering ashes and flecks of nail polish onto the black top of the highway.
It is a new summer night for the five teenagers jammed inside the car – the girls are screaming, giggling, throwing themselves at the boys. They are pushing their chests up and out of their shirts as they gyrate against the leather of the seats in the car. They are wearing jeans and tiny tank-tops that reveal more than they were ever supposed to hide. The girls paint a pretty pastel picture of normalcy, inside a grocery store or in a school hallway they would never be mistaken for rabble-rousers or late-night partiers. That is the mask they wear during the day, but tonight, when the heat radiates off the highway and the night glitters like an undiscovered jewel, they have stripped off their goody-two shoes, and strapped on their stilettos.
The cd player in the brand new blue Ford Explorer is blaring Dandy Warhols at a volume that competes with the girls screaming and the wind shoving itself into the ears and eyes of the occupants. The boys grin as they take drags off their cigarettes and toss them carelessly out the window. They are eighteen, they are free to do whatever society has always told them not to, and they are taking full advantage of the world and their newfound freedom in the middle of the summer before college begins.
They are heading downtown, to the action, to the life of the city and its night crawlers, to a world that they have never been allowed to explore. They are excited but they are scared of what they might find, and are hiding their fears inside Coke bottles of rum and soda, lipstick tubes, and pocket flasks. As they look outside their windows, they take in the view of magnificent buildings dirtied by the soot and the debauchery that is found there. They breathe in stale popcorn and cigarette smoke, smog from the daytime city, and the promises of alcohol and midnight revelry.
At this time of night, everything is aglow with midnight magic and neon glitter. The tan faces of the girls look darker and more exotic as the lights pass over them and they get closer to the heart of the city, to the heart of their party. The tan interior looks white-washed in the lights, popping up dark and sticky where something has been spilled and not cleaned up. CD’s litter the floor of the car, along with road maps, ticket stubs, receipts, and assorted trash.
Where they are headed they will find more light and more dark, more shadows than can ever be passed inside the safety of a car screaming down the highway in the middle of the night. They are entering a world of sticky situations and litter; they are leaving behind their clean and quiet lives, waiting for the world to absorb them into its dark side.


Tear drop 10:44 PM of Sarah

So. This weekend. One of the weirdest weekends of my life.

Huh.

Tear drop 7:08 PM of Sarah

I need a happy medium....

So, most nights I can't fall asleep. Just can't. Started with the migraine thing, and continued.

Last night I went to bed at 1 something and slept until 2:30. Something tells me that's unhealthy.

Tonight, however, I can't sleep, I talked to Joel for the first time in ages, I want to go to Albuquerque, it's 4 o'clock in the morning, everyone in my dorm is fucking sick as hell, Rachel has mono, my stomach hurts, and Ian's coming this weekend.

Oh yeah, and I opened up a credit card today. This could be bad.

This is not my life. I wake up and say that every fucking day. Does anyone else?

Tear drop 4:20 AM of Sarah

I hate it when the establishment wins.

So yeah, the thing with my paper sucked, and it still sucks, and yes, I'm upset about it. But I realize that I was being a bit more than a whiny baby about it in the past blog, and just plain feeling sorry for myself. I still am, but that's too much.

In other news, my Intro to Film History professor finally got me kicked out of her class, so now I'm taking how many hours of classes this semester? A grand total of 12. I'm such an over-achiever. I won't complain though, the woman was a demon who didn't understand film at all, and assigned too much work. I'm glad to be rid of her and her nagging. Plus it's one less class to deal with on Tuesdays and Thursdays, which is always good.

Wednesday, I woke up at 1:30 after recovering from being knocked out by the migraine meds. I had a bunch of homework to do, and stayed up all night editing and reworking things with and for people. At around 5 am Thursday, Rachel and I popped an Adirol, and forced ourselves back awake. Then the essay thing happened. Interesting. Then I came back to the dorm, where Rachel and I screamed about CB for a while, and discussed other issues, and then we did dinner. At 7 pm, I got in bed because I was so cold my hands looked dead, and I was shaking. Slept until 11:30. Woke up for some reason unbeknownst to me, and haven't been able to go back to sleep yet.

Yeah, it's nine o'clock in the morning. Go figure. The internet gets lonely at three, four, and five in the morning.

Now, however, I think I'll crash.

Tear drop 8:49 AM of Sarah

Want to know how to practically crush someone's ego and their one desire in life in one fell swoop?

Critique and rip to shreds what they seem to be their best work in front of a class that has given you nothing but praise. Tell them their writing is too ambitious for them. Tell them that they are too vague, too wordy, to specific, and not personal enough all at the same time. Crititcize their word choices and their ability to understand the flow of an essay. Tell them they do not have enough knowledge to back up what they're talking about, and that their thesis and philosophy of parent-child interactions is more than just wrong, it's incredibly wrong and underdeveloped.

Do all of this after they've spent three days working on nothing but this. Do all of this after you originally praised their concept. Do all of this after they wrote an essay at two o'clock in the morning, didn't edit it, and turned it in for an A+ last semester.

And then give them one of the worst grades they've ever received on anything in their life, as well as a public beating, and the hint at in everything you say or write phrases like "you will never be able to surmount this task." or "you are not cut out for this."

That's how you do it.

Tear drop 6:27 PM of Sarah

Wow the world is fun on no sleep and adirol.

Tear drop 10:09 AM of Sarah

Keeping secrets. Children keep secrets from their parents, and parents keep secrets from their children. Friends are the people you're supposed to be able to tell secrets to, but I've been wondering lately if the reason I've been more honest about myself with my "friends" at college instead of my friends at home is because high school was about appearances; you had to "appear" to be healthy, or at least dealing with it. In coming to college, I did not care one way or the other what these people thought about me - in the beginning, I hated all of them, wasn't really trying to make friendships because these girls seemed so stupid and self-absorbed there was no point to it anyway. But a few people have actually stuck out and become friends of mine, and we have been so honest with each other it scares me to think that they know more about me in 6 months than my friends of years do.

I wrote a paper this weekend about the practice of keeping secrets in terms of family relations - I'm really proud of it, even if it didn't garner the grade that I feel it should have gotten. But that was because it was personal, and one of my first forays into the world of more objective essay writing. A lot of secrets that come out can hurt, but they can also mend things. My mother and I have been sharing a lot of our secrets over the past few weeks since I've been at school, and I must say that we're getting along far more famously than we have for the past four years. Maybe it's part of college. Maybe it's part of growing up. Either way, it's happening, and I'm enjoying it.

In other ways, I'm realizing that the people here who pay attention - stick around and actually voice thoughts about your minor, insignificant traumas, can be better for you than the ones who let you spill and then cut you off with an "I've got to go." We've all been discussing that lately, my SBC friends and I. Finding ourselves more disconnected from a bunch of our high school friends, but even closer to some others. Even though I'm beginning to see this is true, even in my tightest relationships, I still love what I have to look forward to at home, and I love all of the conversations I have with people in the times when we are not together.

With the advent of Daniel's and my Breakfast Club discussion - the best and the worst in the year that followed - I've been thinking a lot about friendships, how they have changed, and how people have changed sometimes for the better, and sometimes for the worse. But looking back, I guess I'm glad that things have changed because otherwise life would be stagnant, and people would never become who they truly are. Everyone would be caught in a rut, and where's the fun in that? I'm not going to mince words and feelings and say that this past year has been great - a lot of it has been awful. But the good times were great times, and they far outnumber and outlast the bad. In memory of Sara's blog that was accidentally deleted (I saw it! I swear!) I'll be posting my five best and worst moments of The Year Since Breakfast Club, and copying Drew and taking something out of the candle.

The Top Five WORST Moments - My nervous breakdown, the day I found out Ian had kissed Tara, the night everything went to hell, the racing incident, and the most recent apocalypse, in general.

The Top Five BEST Moments - The last candle, the post prom puke session and the toothpaste cake that followed (Ian, you do it! He trusts you...), Rocky Horror, my Moulin Rouge party, Taste of Alpharetta/season finale of Friends

I'm not sure about why that last best moment is in there, but it just really sticks out in my mind as a night that I really had fun. Probably because it was completely juxtaposed to the night of hell that came before it.

In closing, I'd like to take out of the candle New Year's Eve, when everything was okay, and the crazy awesome collages I have of us up on my walls. Every time I get anxious or lonely or worried or anything remotely connected to a bad feeling, I can look at those collages and feel better looking at our great, happy moments. And when I'm not upset, I look up there and know that my friends are incredible, and that even if we're not totally honest with each other, our problems and our pasts don't count. It's what we make of each day, week, and month that we have as friends together. I've never felt closer to anyone than I have with the cast and friends of the Breakfast Club. And looking at those pictures, I see our happiness, and I see the immortality that we feel as teenagers. Plus, you know, that we're all just damned good-looking kids.

Tear drop 12:27 AM of Sarah

I feel like I should write in this. God knows I've been writing everything goddamn else down for the past three days, so why not play with ye old blog?

Does writing take all the energy out of anyone else, or is it just me? I write and I write, and I pour my soul into the paper, and then, of course, I must find the energy for revision. Blech. And of course, revisions always add two to three pages more than I've previously written, so I have to edit that. So much not fun. So much...

In good and bad news, I've been given the go-ahead from the dean to not go to class if I have a migraine, and they will take care of it. So much for my ability and willingness to not skip class. Oh no. Last night I had trouble sleeping, and though it was 4:30 in the morning, I took two sleeping pills and passed out. I woke up at 1:30, after my meeting with the dean, after my appointment with the shrink, and WAY after the class that I haven't been to in two weeks, and have a test in on Friday. Apparently at some point in my sleep I got up and threw my alarm clock at the wall, shattering it into a zillion pieces. Pent up rage? Frustration? Depression? Lack of sleep? One can only guess what the motive behind that was.

I think I'm going to get a noise violation. It's fucking 2:30 in the morning, and already both RA's and the PC's and my resident life coordinator have come to my room and told me to turn my music down. It's fucking college. Get over it. It's not that loud anyway. Standing outside my closed door, you can't even hear it, and let me assure you, the doors are not so well made that they block noise. People can hear me typing in the middle of the day, when there's outside noise. So yeah. Not so much insulation.

Tonight's a stay up until four and edit and revise Rachel's and my essays night. It's fun. We're on our second pot of coffee, and third pack of cigarettes. Neurotic? Nah.

Having dinner tomorrow night with Ken Wiwa, son of Ken Saro-Wiwa, who was martyred in 1995 for standing up to the Nigerian military government and Shell Oil. Twill be intersting, maybe, but his book was NOT that interesting (a 230 page read that took bloody forever). Have to skip the screening for the devil that wanted to kick me out of her class. She's soooo not going to like that news.

On the upside, it's icing outside, so maybe since she lives off campus, she won't try to battle the ice, or maybe she will try to battle the ice and end up in a near fatal car accident. So un-PC to hope for something like that. Rachel's been making me very un-PC. Good or bad?

2:30 in the morning, and I'm not tired... goooo figure. 10:30's going to come around so quickly. I have to print 16 copies of my 9 page essay for workshop in my creative writing class. UUUUUUUGHHHHHHH.

"Hey Sarah, you need to be on this road, but in the opposite direction. Can you rotate your car 180 degrees?"

Tear drop 2:35 AM of Sarah