Day Forty-Four: Untitled

I wish I could think of something profound to say right now...but to be honest I'm more lost than ever. For a little while I felt like I was getting out of the woods. I felt like I was starting a new life and it was wonderful. But I realized that the source of my happiness was because I thought Jude and I were going to get back together. It wasn't like I was truly happy being single or being on my own two feet. It was only a temporary thing, still using Jude as a crutch. And now, as I sit at rock bottom grasping for memories of him, I can't help but feel that this very well might be where I'll be for the rest of my life.
How does one forget the most important love they've ever had? How do you really wash that slate clean? I doesn't happen. And all my friends who are in serious relationships are saying, "Just get over him", but I can't help but want to shout back, "What if HE left YOU?" Would it be so easy? My friends that are in year long relationships with their men...would it be so easy for you to forget him? No. The answer is no because the heart doesn't forget the memories. And the longer you spend with someone and the more memories you make the worse it is. The harder it gets to forget.
I'm tired all the time. That's the only thing this situation has given me in the last 5 months...sleep. Lots of it. The more depressed I am the more I want it and the more my body cries out for it. I could not keep myself awake in Statistics yesterday. I put my head down on Jude's sweatshirt and fell asleep for five minutes. I woke up only to see my Statistics professor glaring at me as he lectured. If only he knew. Professors are so insensitive and ridiculous. They act like us students are invincible. They make us do inhuman things. They expect us to be robots that do whatever they say. But when someone is grieving or hurting so badly on the inside it's not easy to perform. It's not even ok to be physically sick anymore! My biology lab professor cut my balls off because I had a cold one morning. But how do you get excused from class because you're depressed? They're just going to look at you and tell you to go to hell. For instance, I went up to my Stat professor after class to get him to check my homework and a girl came up to him and told him that she missed two days of class last week because her father had a heart attack. He went into cardiac arrest and was in the hospital. First of all I don't think he understood what she was talking about because his English is limited to the subject that he teaches. But he basically told her "too bad" she was still going to get points off her grade. It's like....omg....what if he had DIED? She's not supposed to go see her father because she has STAT CLASS? No fuck that. That's so stupid. If I were her I would take it to the dean. That's so unfair. I hate how universities pull that shit.
Like tomorrow. I have French class bright and early. I HATE French class. I hate it so much it makes me want to throw up walking into that class. It's not that I hate learning French. But the language professors at this university are retards. They are so rude and mean. My professor expects us to pick up the concepts she is teaching us and apply them perfectly in speech in the matter of 5 minutes. Like..last class she taught Expressions of Emotion. She literally wrote them on the board, taught us how to use them an then expected us to start using it in speech like three minutes later. People were confused. And then she gets mad when we don't say it right and she does this number...."Vite vite!" which means "Fast fast!" Like she wants us to speak it fast and with precision and it's like "Woman, I hate to tell you this but we are not going to use French in our lives unless we move to France or some other Francophone country." If I do use French after this class it'll be completely recreational. The only reason anyone is taking that class is because they HAVE to, to graduate. She's acting like we're all going to be airlifted to France any second now and will have to fend for ourselves in French. Which isn't that hard I've done it before. Sadly, in America...we speak English and ONLY English. Fuck this Spanish shit they're trying to integrate into our country. Now, one day I might want to move to Europe. If that's the case then I will use my French when appropriate. But honestly, I have more appropriate things to deal with in my life than learning how to say "I like to make crepes" in French the correct way. They also like to humiliate you in front of everyone. It's like they get off on that. If they're having a bad day...they'll pull out the worksheets and start making you fill them out. They give you like two minutes to do the whole thing and then expect you to go down the row and answer the questions. They don't even give us enough time to read the fucking directions! It's all in French and I'm not a native speaker so by the time I get a grasp on the directions she's calling on people! That's not how people learn. If they really wanted you to learn then they wouldn't take their emotional problems out on students. That's how I failed French 102 the first time. My professor was an emotional wreck and that's how he got his kicks. Making people feel like shit. There's one girl in my class majoring in French Education and she isn't even keeping up because of my professor. It's nuts.
It's passed my bedtime right now. This entry has really no purpose to it. I'm so depressed and numb that I can't even feel anything right now. I feel like I need pills. Like....to make me feel nothing. Jude and I spoke briefly on MSN tonight. He wanted to show me some stuff that he was looking up on the Internet. That is Jude's FAVORITE recreation. Showing me links to websites and videos and pictures and things that he thinks I will like. Maybe that's his way of trying to relate to me. Either way....it has made me feel a little better for the time being. I would be stupid to say that I didn't care about him. I would be a liar if I said that he wasn't important to me. The thing about me and Jude is...I didn't just lose my boyfriend..my lover...I lost my best friend in the world. And that somehow makes it 80 times worse.
I took a two hour nap today and my body is STILL crying out for sleep. Even though I slept 9 hours last night. This grief is really getting to me. I made a tiny egg salad sandwich out of polymer clay and silicon tonight. I will use that as today's picture.
God bless.

End Day 44

Day Forty-Three: Coping with Grief

I feel like I’ve digressed about 3 months. After spending 24 hours in my sane place back at college where I’m not exposed to the hyper-emotional atmosphere of my family’s household, I’ve been able to think rationally and realize that’s where I am right now. Three months ago I still could not stand on my own two feet comfortably and three months ago I was still stuck on the idea of him. Except now the feeling is layered with a thin sheet of resentment and hate. I should know better than to talk to Jude when I’m at my parents’ house. I had a rough weekend starting with a death and ending with my father being pissed at the world. Jude just needs to understand that when I go home you really can’t take anything I say seriously or to heart. Not that I said anything ugly to him. I’m just hyperemotional. I’m already emotional but when I go home it’s like my family gives me depression injections hourly.
Every second it’s something else why I should be upset or why I should hate something or how someone said this to someone else and it made them upset. My father and mother are signing this divorce papers this week. My mother is pissed to the max that my father won’t file sooner and she thinks he’s “putting off the divorce so that she won’t be able to buy her new house”. So every ten minutes all I hear about is how horrible her life is because her husband won’t divorce her. My father is pissed to the max all the time because he’s depressed that his wife doesn’t love him anymore and that he’s lost his job and that he has no money. He got drunk Friday night seriously just to numb the pain. My sister’s friend just died on Friday and that’s pretty much ALL I heard about in between my mother’s complaints and my father’s foul mood swings.
I spent the first 24 hours in Covington at a memorial service watching everyone blubber. NOT that there wasn’t reason for it. Death is NEVER a good thing and it’s contagious. What I mean by that is, one person dies and suddenly everyone else thinks it’s a good idea to die with them so you got people committing suicide. No one’s done that yet but apparently my high school is preparing for the worst. I mean….800 hormonal female teenagers just lost one of their own…it doesn’t take SCIENCE to figure out what might happen. So I mean…this whole controversy with Jude over the weekend was a direct product of my family. And he should know that by now. He knows my family like he was a part of it.
But in the process of being overly emotional I’ve found out a few things about Jude that I didn’t want to find out. And that’s basically that he cheated on me in his mind for our entire relationship. He relayed that to me by saying “Remember all the times when you thought something was going on with me and Shelby? Well there was.” Now. I don’t want to believe that. Because Shelby and I USED to be friends. Shelby is Jude’s long time best friend. And I’d love to believe that Shelby is in love with Jordan, her long time boyfriend. I would love to believe that Jude was just being angry and tired at the time and said things he doesn’t mean. I also CANNOT believe that Jude is IN LOVE with Shelby. Jude has no idea what it would be like to be in a relationship with her. And again, I’d like to believe that he was just mad and was lashing out. EITHER WAY, I realized what a hateful person he really is. And that makes me sad. Because this truly seems to be a recent development. When Jude and I were together we had a lot of fun. There were a lot of rough times but he was never hateful to me. He would get angry and impatient but never hateful. This is something new that he developed and I’m not sure if that’s grounds for extermination from my life completely or not.
Basically, I’m still under the impression that I need him. Now, my logic tells me this is not so. I am a very attractive person. I have some wear and tear on me, I am a little overweight but I am NOT hideous. And to say that I am is just FALSE. I am very smart. Last week I stood up in front of my psychology class and presented an argument to my psychology professor that NO ONE else in my group could do. I am straight up intelligent. Jude is too. I think that’s why we got along in the first place. We both are good in school and make good grades when we apply ourselves. Jude just uses 75% of his brain for storage of useless facts and trivia. Which is…whatever. Everyone to his own I suppose. But I’m saying that as I sit in this library typing this entry, I look over the rows of people sitting around me and I realize that I have about 80% more potential to succeed in life than everyone sitting around me. That’s not cocky it’s just who I am. My major, my competence level, and my unwillingness to think ONLY of recreational activities widely contribute to this. I am also a very kind person. Today in biology class a boy failed to write down 25% of the slideshow, and wandered up to me and asked me if he could copy my notes. I didn’t have anywhere to be so I sat there for an extra 20 minutes letting him copy my notes. If I had had somewhere to be I would have asked for his email so that I could send them to him. I’m very generous and kind and selfless. And those are very attractive qualities to the RIGHT kind of people.
People who like mean, hateful, smart aleck, rude, bossy, or excessively tan women have PROBLEMS. Jude falls under this category by the way. He seems to find friendship in the most hateful, rude people. I think that’s where he’s getting it from. It’s a shame he has to be exposed to that kind of behavior. It’s only making him a terrible person. Anyway. Bottom line is…I’m an extremely competent person. So why have I resorted to carrying around his jacket all day. Like this piece of material is going to transform into him any minute. It’s a crutch. I don’t need people to tell it to me. I am in love with the idea of him. Basically that’s what it boils down to. I am not in love with Jude anymore. I am in love with who he used to be, with the idea of him, and with the way he looks. That is all. I seriously CANNOT find the ability to love him like I used to. And who would? I mean after what he has done to me. I think there would be something seriously wrong with me if I could say in all seriousness that I am still truly in love with Jude as a person. I think that pretty much changed finally on Friday.
Here’s the part I fail to understand. Jude tells me he hated being with me because it was emotional and scary. Now. The girl that apparently he is IN LOVE with is JUST as emotionally unstable as me if not more. And he HIMSELF even admitted that to me that we are “very alike” and “act the same”. Awhile ago before Jude and I split, Shelby and I ran into some kind of confrontation because apparently she thought I was using her. Which was not the case but everyone sees things in their own light. Even AFTER I apologized to her, up and down the street she continued to shout at me and tell me how fucking ridiculous I am and how shitty of a person I am every time I would go to speak with her after that she would fly off the handle at me over something stupid. Now. If that is not emotionally unstable then I don’t know what is. She even told me, “I have a lot of stuff I’m dealing with in my life that makes me emotional.” I think that’s pretty much the definition of why I behave the way that I do. I have SO much shit in my life right now, mostly coming from my family and before it was them and Jude’s problems combined. So pretty much….he’s leaving me in the dust because I’m EMOTIONAL and SCARY for someone who is equally EMOTIONAL and SCARY. It really REALLY does not make sense to me at all. I feel like I’m in “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”! It’s like…if everyone else around you is completely mad…and completely off their rocker….and you are the only sane person….then you are going to be the insane one because you’re the odd person out.
Frankly, I’m sick of feeling like I’m taking crazy pills. I’ve completely resigned myself to the fact that I’m not insane. I am not the one with problems. I might be emotional and I might be going through a lot right now but I am so strong. If anything, I have exemplified strength in my life while people like Jude have only showed cowardice because they run away from their problems. I know this is completely contrary to my future profession and major, but right now I need to stay away from the crazy people. At least until I have a certificate that says I can medicate them. Jude and I have decided to take a week to not speak to each other. And I think this is a good practice. I don’t really want to speak to him because for once in my life I am actually ANGRY with him. I used to call it, “Being sad with him”. I am not sad with him at all. I am pissed fucking off. I hear that is the last stage of grief before the world starts to get better. Right now, I AM grieving. Grieving for wasted time, grieving because I am still sexually attracted to Jude, grieving because I miss the person he used to be, grieving because right now I am alone, grieving for those memories with him that I just found out meant nothing to him, grieving because I have to. It’s only the natural thing to do. And how am I dealing with that grief? Well so far I’ve been sleeping a lot. I’ve resigned completely from eating. I am literally shaking I am so hungry right now but I cannot eat. I packed some leftover potatoes from my dad’s dinner last night for lunch and I only sat there picking small pieces off and touching them to my mouth. I remember this. This is how I lost 20 pounds over the summer. Grieving.
Where Jude’s picture used to be on my phone, I have put a picture of Jesus. I don’t think it’s because I am trying to be super religious in my time of pain…I don’t think that’s it. It’s a visual of someone who was completely selfless. You don’t find those kinds of people anymore. It’s good to know that once there was one, and that possibly he loves me.
End Day 43

Day Forty-Two: The Butterfly

Spending time with my father is one of those pastimes that never gets old. In the wake of what happened last night I expected today to be hard. But it wasn’t. Leaving the house this morning I felt light as air. It was beautiful outside. A perfect morning for a Sunday. Dad and I went to church. It was something I was wary about. I don’t go to church when I’m at school. It started off as a being shy thing and not wanting to branch out and find somewhere else to attend church. Now it’s a “I don’t know what I believe” thing. Over the last year my life has gone to the shitter. And honestly, I cannot find it in myself to believe in God. Maybe that’s because I was too romantic about Jude and I from the very start. There was a time that I remember very well when I thought Jude and I were going to get married. I thought that after ALL THOSE YEARS of being alone and praying to God for my soulmate that he had answered my prayers in Jude. I viewed him as such a blessing and I was completely in awe of our relationship. I with all my heart believed that Jude was my answered prayers. And then…he took him away. And not only did God take him away but he turned him into one of the cruelest people I’ve ever met. And so far I’ve been sitting here at rock bottom praying like a fool to a God that has gone silent. To a God that does NOT want to hear me anymore or maybe never did. And I’ve been asking for strength and for this hurt to go away and it only gets worse. And I pretty much resigned myself from going to church ever again because I was not going to get up and sing praises to a God that didn’t exist or if he did, didn’t deserve them. That was my mindset. And maybe that’s a horrible mindset. Maybe all you Christians out there are condemning me to hell right now but that was what I had resorted to in my mind.
Last night when my world was crashing down for the millionth time in the last 5 months I was closing my eyes to sleep and I thought of Jesus. I don’t know why I thought about Jesus. I was trying to find something to make this hurt go away and my mind transported back to those times when I was in Sunday school and they used to tell me how Jesus loved me so much that he died for me. Now. I don’t give a fuck if you’re reading this and you don’t believe in Jesus. That’s fine. That’s completely fine. I have no problem with other people not believing in Jesus because I would not want someone telling me that my ideas and my beliefs weren’t true or not real. But if you have something ugly to say about what I’m saying right now, shut your fucking mouth or I’ll do it for you. This is my blog and I’m going to talk about what I want.
For some reason thinking about Jesus helped me fall asleep. I said a few words to him in my moment of half awake delirium and then I was out cold. The thing was that I awoke the next morning feeling better than I had in days. Which was odd. Because judging on last night…I was expecting to wake up feeling like my guts were coming out. But I got ready for church. Dad MAKES me go to church. It’s one of those things you just don’t fight because it’s not worth expelling the energy. I didn’t expect to enjoy church. On the way over to church I listened to angry songs about women who got left by their men and now they’re pissed. Some examples of this would be P!nk’s “So What” and Miranda Lambert’s “White Liar” and Taylor Swift’s “Tell Me Why”. I was enjoying thoughts of getting hot one day and showing Jude up and getting a sexier boyfriend. All of things that won’t happen because I’m not a mean spiteful bitch that writes these kind of songs.
When I got to church for some reason I wanted to participate in the service. I went and got communion this time, I did sing and I wrote notes down about the pastor’s sermon. What was very odd to me was that the sermon was about marriage. And that’s a sore spot for both my dad and me. My dad is losing the person he was married to for 35 years and I am losing the person I thought I was going to marry. But I kept an open mind about it and I realized that the pastor was talking about all the things that a husband and a marriage should entail. And it made me realize that with Jude those things were never going to happen. It wasn’t like….a sermon about “CHRISTIAN” marriages but a sermon about GOOD marriages. And that’s what struck me was that with Jude I wouldn’t have a good marriage. Not unless Jude was heavily medicated to maintain ONE personality and not eleven. Which if he was interested in that I could indeed supply that kind of medication after I graduate. Heh. Anyway, the pastor told a story about a little boy that went on the Johnny Carson show and was asked, “Do you go to Sunday School?” The boy told him yes and he asked the boy what he learned in Sunday school this past week. The boy told him that he learned about how Jesus turned the water into wine at the wedding. And the man asked him, “what do you think this means?” The boy said, “It means don’t forget to invite Jesus to the wedding” And of course the congregation laughed because the little boy was referring to the literal act of Jesus turning water into wine and how cool that is.
But it made sense to me in another way. I didn’t take it like “You must go to church every Sunday and you and your husband need to be fire and brimstone Christians and pop out little fire and brimstone Christians” but more like….we need to exemplify what Jesus taught in our marriage. Whether or not you believe in Jesus as the son of God he WAS a real person and he did teach lessons. And the Ten Commandments really, give or take one or two really apply to EVERYONE no matter what faith. And you need to bring that into your marriage to be able to be happy. If one member is a complete selfish asshole and only thinks of themselves, well then you’re not going to have a good marriage because that’s not the right thing to do! And from my point of view, I want a man that exemplifies Jesus’ teachings of being a good person and giving to others. That’s what I WANT and what I NEED. And that sermon helped me understand that. I need to invite Jesus to my wedding.
After church dad and I went to the football game. Dad has been a Saints season ticket holder since their conception as a team. Yes. My dad IS that old and OLDER. Haha! And I took interest in going to the games with him and now when I am in town, my dad and I go to the game. That’s our ritual and happy fun time with each other. As we were driving down the Causeway, Louisiana’s pride, The Longest Bridge IN THE WORLD, there were THOUSANDS of Monarch butterflies! I was completely in awe of them and there were SO many. My dad kept trying not to hit them. And it reminded me of something. A long time ago when I was still in high school I used to frequent PJ’s Coffeehouse because my family didn’t have internet at the house and I needed to do my homework. Well there in the Hwy. 190 PJ’s Coffeehouse in Covington there is a rack of inspirational greeting cards. They really are beautiful cards and have such nice and unique sayings on them. Well the summer after my first year of college I went home and I got a bunch of these cards. I sent them to my friends but, there was one that I kept for myself. It was a plain card, just dark blue with white writing that had the quote:

“And just when the caterpillar thought the world was over, it became a butterfly.”
I thought that quote was so much like me. I have always been a butterfly. I have always been an ever-changing person, constantly getting stronger and improving. And while other people are becoming worse, I have gotten better. I think that’s because I was born on rock bottom. Well I kept that card on my bulletin board for a LONG time and pretty much forgot about it.
Well after this whole thing happened with Jude, I really thought the world was over. A lot of times I resorted to the idea of killing myself and ending my life. To this day I still think about it and it takes every bit of strength in me to not act on it. But as we were driving and I was seeing ALL these butterflies I couldn’t help but think about that quote. I’m thinking about getting that tattooed on me somewhere. It also made me cry a little because a few days ago Lanie had likened Angelle, the girl who died, to a monarch butterfly. She told me that after Angelle had died and everyone had learned the news, she said there had been one lone monarch circling the school courtyard as if it was protecting the girls and the perimeter. Lanie said she thought that was Angelle looking over them. So I got very emotional seeing that.
The game was another heart-stopper. The Saints really know how to send you into cardiac arrest. The whole second half I think I cried, cursed and jumped up in extreme elation all in 1 hour. My dad and I were physically clinging to each other the last 10 minutes of the game. I was being petty and wanted the Saints to win because they were playing the Carolina Panthers and anyone who knows anything about my life knows that Jude is from South Carolina. AND I know that they are based out of NORTH Carolina but they are still related! They share a name and thus to me it is the same thing. It felt good to beat them even if only by a few points.
It was a very emotionally draining day. And although I was very depressed I fell asleep quick. I find that I have gained comfort in the whispering community on YouTube. When I was going through the whole ordeal over the summer they kept me sane. And now in this time they are keeping me sane again. I think the whole thing with Jude was much more complex and hurtful than it should have been because he drug it out so long. It was the “never knowing what was going on or what was coming next”. It was very hard. And now it’s very clear to me what is going on and what needs to be done. I won’t wait for something else insane and worse to happen to me. Somehow some way I will become a butterfly and fly away from all this destruction.
End Day 42

Day Forty-One: End of the Line

Today my world came crashing down. I won’t write very much. These are the basics.
1. For two years Jude was cheating on me.
2. For two years I believed Jude loved me.
3. For 5 months I’ve been waiting for him to come back.
4. Now I never want him to set foot back in my life.
5. Jude is now in love with someone else and has been for a long time and has been hiding it from me.
6. She’s disgusting and in love with someone else.
7. Jude hates me. I hate him.

End of story.

End Day 41

Day Forty: Rest in Peace, Angelle

I woke up my first day of Fall Break at home to a text message from my long time best friend Nicole. We went to high school together and still remained connected to the school when we went to college. The text message was informing me that an SSA (that’s my high school) girl had died. St. Scholastica Academy is an all-girls Catholic high school and we are very small and very close knit. The school was founded in 1901 and has had many many graduates and most of us remain very close to the school after we graduate. So losing one of our own, even if I didn’t know her was very upsetting. She was in the 8th grade class when I was a senior, which means she was in my Little Sis class. Little Sis Big Sis is a program that the school puts on for the seniors and 8th graders. They assign an 8th grader to each senior to mentor them and care for them as they acclimate themselves to the school. So it was very upsetting to hear that someone from my Little Sis class had died. Too young. And another reason that I was so upset is because my REAL little sister, Lanie, is a senior and was close to the girl and her friends. She was more close to the girl’s friends rather than the girl who died but it still hit very close to home.
To be honest I wasn’t very emotional about it at first. I felt like there was something wrong with me but I couldn’t be SUPER depressed. But I was depressed that my sister was very upset. And here’s what the story was. Apparently, she was coming home from swim practice. She had been fighting with her boyfriend and he was going to be playing in the St. Paul’s football game that night and she wanted to get home and get ready quickly so that she could tell him she was sorry before he got on the field. So she was passing a car in front of her and she misjudged the distance and clipped the back of the car in front of her and spun out of control into the oncoming lane. A car in the other lane t-boned her and she broke her neck and died on impact. The paramedics brought her back to life but she was a vegetable. The next morning (today) she was taken off of life support. Her name was Angelle. And she was very important to her friends and the girls around her at SSA.
This is the news report:
http://www.wwltv.com/news/northshore/St-Scholastica-student-dies-in-Covington-auto-crash-104153879.html
There’s a video that pretty much explains everything.
That night there was a prayer service at the school for her. I went with my sister and Nicole and everyone wore purple because that was her favorite color. It was very sad and very emotional and I got very teary-eyed. My sister was completely beside herself. She was bawling and completely red faced and distorted over this. I cried mostly because she was so sad. The ceremony was very beautiful and it is such a shame and such a loss. 16 is much too young to die.
This was the song they played for her at the prayer service.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7NJqUN9TClM&ob=av3e

After the prayer service I went to dinner with my sister and Nicole and my father at my father’s friend’s new restaurant. The food was free and we ate and drank and spent a lot of time with each other and appreciated being near our family and friends. I really cherished spending that time with them because you never know when they will be gone.
Please keep Angelle Ulfers and her family in your prayers and my sister and her friends as well. Angelle will be sorely missed.

Day Thirty-Nine: Going Home

Today my daddy is coming to get me from school. We’re going to go home and I’m going to be able to see my family. I’m getting my hair dyed and cut again. It really needs it. I might not be able to write very much for the next couple of days because I’ll be very busy but I will make up for it definitely. This entry is going to be near non-existent because I am going to be very busy today. I will write at another date.

End Day 39

Day Thirty-Eight: Commence Fall Break

Finally. Finally Fall Break is here. It is a much needed break from school. I walked home from class today so happy that I would not have to go again for another four days. I am literally going to do nothing tonight. I will write no more. It is too pretty outside to be blogging.

End Day 38