You know... It never ceases to amaze me how much yelling my sister manages to fit in one day. i literally do not comprehend how she can even yell as much as she does... like, she will fucking yell about pretty much anything if it is even remotely upsetting.

I don't even yell when i am at my most furious. I am not even sure if i've raised my voice at someone since my first ex.

The kicker is that when she starts yelling, pretty much right away, she will start to tell the other person not to yell, EVEN IF THEY AREN'T YELLING. This just happened. She was yelling at her boyfriend (i am amazed they are still together) and he got frustrated and *sort of* started raising his voice defensively and she goes nuts telling him to stop yelling.

how inobservant do you have to be?

This all probably comes of as judgmental. I am just so tired of hearing her yell at her boyfriend, our mother, our father, our sister, her friends... it's always someone. Never seems to be me, but maybe one day she'll flip on me, haha...

It's just that i don't see what yelling solves, it just makes a tense situation more tense, and then everything gets out of control. Why can't you just listen to each other? Why is everything a screaming match? I really don't get it.

Last time i got yelled at, i was running around at work trying to get this specialty boozy latte made and i was the last server in the building with one manager and one bartender... and we were all in separate corners of the building (if you've seen the buffalo club, you know it is fucking enormous), so my manager couldn't find me... and when i finally got it done, she started to go ballistic, and i just shut her down immediately. i can't handle being yelled at at all. i can't think, i can't talk, i can't have any logical thoughts. my vision closes in and i see spots, and my back gets really hot. it's not for lack of being yelled at, it's just that as time goes on, i seem to have less and less of an ability to handle it. I said "please stop yelling at me, the drink had to get made, no one was around, so i did it, it's done, stop yelling, it doesn't help" and served my drink/desserts...

well, that was a pointless story.

the point is, everyone should yell a little less and actual progress in solving disagreements might actually be made. the end.

we went down to Valentine flats. it was amazing. it was my first time to zoar valley.

we got lost at first and went hiking on private propert, but ended up finding our way. i can't believe i've never done this before. I can't wait to go again, and to find some more places.

driving to zoar with James Dean and Tanya. happyrobert.

I know some of you are sigur rós fans... Has anyone else seen this yet? I really really love it.



They've dropped a member, and their sound has changed a bit (they seem to have gotten a bit harder), but it is still unmistakably them. The sounds are more metalic, and the drums have gotten more intense.

here's a better example of the range of difference in their change

Some way or another, I happened on old music from my very first ex, mikey. it's so weird... a lot of the time it doesn't affect me much, but it turned a calm introspective evening into a bit of a nostalgia fest.

sometimes we tend to whitewash our memories, but i remember plenty of things that make me unhappy. i wouldn't say i was nostalgic for the relationship, but more the period of time in general. spring time does this to me also... i get so nostalgic and wistful in this weather.

I guess it brings me back to that time where all i could really deal with was living in my imagination, and how good everything was gonna be in the future, how it'd get better. I envisioned every future moment with him. I had a hard time dealing with the reality of the now, but i really tried my hardest to just deal and live with it. I still find it hard to believe at one point i was working 12 - 14 hours a day, 5 days a week, and 5 - 6 hours a day on weekends just to support it all, while he did next to nothing. and we still never had enough money. I dropped out of college and lost contact with most all of my friends because of it all.

I think back on all that music he made, and it amazes me. He was really good. not the best, but he had something.

it's all gone now. almost every trace, except these digital files, and perhaps 1 photo. It's better that way, but at times it makes me a bit sad. It's hard when you invest so much in a person, your first person, and it doesn't work. It changed my perspective forever. I lost something permanently, and i'm talking about more than my virginity. I lost an outlook, a certainty, an innocence. It nearly never comes up, but there's points here and there that i still grapple with that.

Even the apartment we lived in is completely redone and different. my old neighbor told me about it when it happened. I wonder if even our skin cells are still somewhere in that place. Our dog is still around, but she isn't our dog anymore. My friend has her now, and she's doing well. She still remembers me, sweet jubilee. He calls her Ms. Judy.

Thinking about all of it, it feels like a totally different life time. We met days or weeks before i turned 20. I remember lying in bed, simultaneously entertaining the option of relationship with him, and mourning the end of my teens. I was so sad and upset to turn 20. He released an album on my 20th birthday and i thought it was secretly some kind of gift. he said it wasn't.

It really was a strange two years. I learned what most people learn dating around in their teens/middle school/high school over the course of 6 - 4 years, in 2 years. He was such a tortured artist complete with self-destructive tendencies, melancholy, physical/emotional distance, abusive behavior, and mental illness. It was partially what i was asking for. i'd always romanticized emotional torment as a younger person, and wanted someone with those intense feelings... well, i got him, and it was hell. No, i could not fix him. No, he did not want to be fixed. No, my every need was not fulfilled.

for having been told all my life i am wise beyond my years, I made a lot of unwise choices with him.

however, to quote a wonderfully cheesy j-pop song, "The toughness gained from my damage is unbelievable."

I am amazed I still think of all this and feel this nostalgia about it. It really was one of the most changing experiences. The amount i morphed, ignored, supported, let go of, learned, and gained still baffles me. Make no mistakes, i am thoroughly over him, there's no going back. There will never be a going back. I would never want to be with him again or anyone like him, but that time in my life was an incredibly emotionally charged time, and so it is hard to think of it without having something well up.