It's so strange how life works out. It will convince you that everything's going to be okay, and then you find yourself dropping out of college your senior year because the Wellbutrin and Prozac don't help enough to fight off that depression you've been pushing out of your mind for 22 years. You find yourself barely able to get yourself out of bed, much less out of your apartment on Main Street in the worst part of Worcester, Massachusetts. You find yourself wondering what the fuck you're going to do with your life now that you've royally screwed up your college career at Clark University, a wonderful school that you were lucky to attend. You just find yourself wondering what could possibly happen from this point forward in your life that could even come remotely close to all those great things you expected. This is what I wonder. Shit.

oh, college. so, i'm 21 now. november 10th, that glorious day, has passed, and i can get my drank on. i am still yet to go to the bar (legally). i keep making plans to, but then get too drunk off whatever i've bought at state liquors before i get the chance to actually go. but oh well. i've had too much god damn work to really find a proper time anyhow. plus, few of my friends are 21, so there's a limited group of people with which i can/ would like to go. recently discovered juicy campus. it's a terrible thing, but beautiful at the same time. i searched myself and was sufficiently pleased to find me listed under "most intriguing individual" and "nice people." makes me feel good. but then i see where other people are getting ripped apart for this and that, and that sucks. because if and when they find that, it's going to make them feel really, really bad. i've decided never to look at it again; i'm happy with the current "juicy status" etched into my mind. i can't wait for thanksgiving break. i really do love my family. i really need to clean my room. it's completely trashed right now. smells a little funky. blech. last night kara and i got high and drove around worcester as we so often do, and we listened to frank sinatra, as i'd just gotten a new sinatra album and it's all i've been able to listen to. kara brought up an interesting point. "if you were frank sinatra, would you ever have thought that in sixty years, college girls would be driving around smoking pot and listening to your music?" no. no, i never would have thought that. oh, the mysteries of the world.

so i've recently joined good ol' clark university in the ONE campus challenge, and i feel good about it. clark's motto is "challenge convention, change our world", so i feel like i'm helping with that. going through with our motto. it's nice. it's a pretty dope way to take action. also, clark is #1 on the leaderboard right now for the whole thing, which is fairly motivating. i'm good with helping out my school and, in turn, helping out the world. i do what i can. if you also want to check out the ONE campus challenge and help out YOUR school, do so. check out ONE.org for general stuff, or go to http://www.one.org/campus/thechallenge.html for the campus challenge. go ahead. make my day.

another summer of camp is completed. it's life. junior year of college is starting. that's life. found 8" x 10" canvases at ocean state job lot for $1.99 a piece. love life. at awkward part where camp is over and school hasn't started yet. get a life. quit smoking, started running. live life. french is still improving. la vie en rose. boop boop bop beep a doop. lately i've been having a repetitive epiphany. and i know that's a contradicting statement because an epiphany is a grand realization that comes to you once, but i keep having the same grand realization over and over again, each time as monumental to me as the last. it happens most when i'm driving. i realize that all the other cars on the road aren't just cars moving around, but that there're actual people inside them. and those people aren't just driving their cars aimlessly, but they're real people with their own thoughts and own destinations. they're going somewhere and thinking about something else and maybe even talking to another individual entity within their car, just like i am. they're going to go to their own home afterwards, just like i am. and they're going to live an entirely separate life from me. and to those people, my car is just another car in the road, and i am just another person playing an extra in the movie they know as life. to every person, the world is a backdrop, a green screen, a shot that never fully pans out. i can't imagine being able to fully understand the expanse of the world in which i live. my mind buzzes with the monotonous hum of what everyone's thoughts at this very moment would sound like, combined. no swells, no lulls. just constant. i wonder how many people are wondering how many people are having this same exact thought, and how many people are wondering how many people are wondering, and the fractals of my inquiry are infinite and i get lost. too lost, and overwhelmed. and the buzz fades out until once more, i'm driving or sitting in an airport or watching the news, and it hits me that i'm not the only person that thinks or has a real life. and there it is again: epiphany.

updates, updates, updates. my grandmother died four days before christmas, while i was on the plane from albany to florida trying to see her one last time. the weather was beautiful and so was the eulogy. i brought my grades back up, which is fantastic. i'm now a head of the radio station here, i'm playing lots of squash again, and i just bought tickets for a tilly & the wall show march 22nd at the middle east. in a few months, i get to hang out with kimya dawson and probably play with her baby, who's named PANDA, by the way. we thought we should book Panda Bear for a show and then just have Panda the baby sit on stage for a while, but we decided it was exploiting the baby a bit. we were only kidding anyway. i'm getting continuously better at guitar. i've recently discovered that crooked teeth is incredibly simple to play. my piano is also improving. i've started to feel very smart in my film classes. i know everything that's being discussed. i can say, "ah yes, truffaut WAS a cinephile, and that is clearly a reference to a lumiere brothers film" or "you know, man with a movie camera is rather similar to ballet mecanique." i feel like i'm finally starting to fit into the knowledge part of my major, not just the hands-on aspect. i was invited to be one of twelve students in the school to work on a permanent sculpture on campus. it's exciting, but the task is daunting. we have this huge aerial space to fill, but we can't hang anything from the skylight...so we're going to have to create cross cables and attach a motor to that and from that hang our sculpture and...oh, it will be lots of work. but it counts as a class, which is spectacular. i'm living in an off-campus apartment next year, and couldn't be happier. we can have pets there! i want a pug. a little pug puppy named something absolutely ridiculous, like "floral pattern" or "buttons mcsnazzy." i need to clean my room. there's clothes and sand all over the place. i'm going to florida for spring break so that my grandfather can go back down there. he's in connecticut since my grandmother died and he can't be down there by himself. sam and i will go down there march 2 or something like that, and we'll take care of grampa. we will fish with him and drive him to the american legion for lunch and regulate how many snifters he has. he can see moose and tess and all of his other yacht club friends, and it'll be good for him. i've recently become addicted to the wicked soundtrack and voxtrot. ALSO, the gauntlet is back on. i know it's terrible to be so excited about something like that, but oh well...i am ECSTATIC. okay, i have to go to a screening and shoot a music video. au revoir. reminder: i should get back into french.

thank you thank you thank you for finally snowing. now if you can just not snow in one tiny little area so that i may comfortably smoke there, it'd be much appreciated.

you realize that you've grown up when you turn twenty. you realize that you've grown up when myspace tells you that your best friend from sixth grade just got married to some guy from south carolina. you realize that you've grown up when almost all of your grandparents are dead, or close to it. you realize that you've grown up when you don't really pose for pictures. you realize that you've grown up when you overlook a shoddy city from the window of the porch of your own apartment. you realize you've grown up when all you can do is wish you'd never grown up. i have grown up.

School starts again in two weeks and I just had the greatest summer of my life. I got a job working at Camp Jordan, a summer camp in Ellsworth. I was the Arts & Crafts director, meaning I made lesson plans and had a staff. I sat outside of my own building every day, making cool stuff with amazing kids. We did abstract art, we wrote songs, and best of all I would get a cast of amazing kids each week for movie class. The movies were hilarious and adorable, starring kids ranging in age from 8-14. They loved coming up with the scripts, choosing the perfect music, having starring roles, setting up the shots. As a Screen Studies major, I could not have asked for a more rewarding job. I made amazing people from all over, including the Czech Republic, Colombia and the U.K. My camp name was Gonzo (no counselors use their real names) and I now respond to that more quickly than I do to Gretchen. I've always had trouble becoming close to people, and I had campers for a week that I absolutely fell in love with. The first week of the summer was the most incredible, because that was Camp Rainbow, a camp for kids and the families of kids who have or had cancer. I met the most inspiring people of my life there, and will surely never forget them. I had three girls from Quebec, all 14, in my cabin for a few weeks (kids can choose how many weeks they'd like to stay out of the six we offer). I absolutely adored the three of them and (not to sound full of myself) they in turn adored me. I never predicted that I'd cry when any of my campers left, but on the day they did the entire cabin was in shambles. Not a single dry eye. I got a letter a week or so later from one of them, saying I was the only counselor she'd ever left crying and that I was like her mom for the three weeks I'd had her. I instantly teared up, with a good combination of sadness and happiness. The other two sent me a joint letter that I received a few weeks later, with a pillow case on which they'd decorated for me and written messages to me. It's strange how the smallest things can mean so much to you. I'll certainly be working there again next summer, and will see all the kids again, which will be wonderful. I see campers around every now and then, and ask to see how their summer's been after camp. It's always the same: "Summer's good, but I miss camp." I constantly ridiculed my roommate last year for being obsessed with camp, but now I understand why. I can honestly say it was the single most rewarding experience of my life, and I'm now a life-long camper. Now that it's over, I have no idea what to do with myself. I sit at home waiting for bells to tell me when to go to meals or change classes. I want to sing the closing song of each night, but no one knows it. So I suppose I'll just leave it here. My friends, I will remember you, think of you, and I'll pray for you. And when another day is through, I'll still be friends with you.

My grandmother has uteran and colon cancer. My aunt is in a mental institute. I rarely talk to my parents. I quit smoking. I broke three knuckles on my right hand. With these things, my attention has once more been pulled from my school work. Fuck. I just want to feel the taste of the meal and not the routine of dining here.

We've gotten to the last week of my first semester of college, and I've achieved stereotypical college panic mode, in which finals are brutal and there are all these books I haven't read and all these tests I haven't studied for and all of these papers I haven't even begun to write until now. And now I realize wow, I just did the normal thing in screwing up my first try. Scholarships aren't assessed until the end of the year, so I'll be fine. It's just time to change a few things around. So that's what I must do. Clark University, here I come...again.

so...tilly & the wall show last night at the middle east? AMAZING. i'm still in awe over it. which is good because i got out of a wheelchair early for it and when i talked to them after the show i told them that and they called me babe and signed my tickets and carried on normal conversation with me and yes, it was absolutely incredible, as they are indeed my band of choice. and live, they sound exactly the same as on their albums, except better. it's really just incredible. i also went to the harry and the potters show before that but that was different because i know joe he is my friend we go to school together he put baby food in my mailbox because he knows i like it that's why i went to the harry and the potters show that's why it's different even if they are nationally known and such. it was so weird to see joe with girls all over him at the end begging for autographs and pictures with him when i see him most days and he sits in my room and plays weezer on my keyboard and he & brenna write songs about burping and burp together and gross me out.

Went to the hossssssssssspital last night. Woohooooo. I shredded the muscle in my right leg from just above the pelvis down to the knee. It sucksss. I'm on crutches now but get my wheelchair tomorrow. Thanks soccer. Da end.

So, I love Clark. I'm having an amazing time. I've made so many new friends and I'm pretty much just always having fun here. I've run for Freshman Class Rep. I lost by three votes, but it's not final yet because my opponent broke three campaign rules...so I still have a good chance. A three vote loss is awfully harsh though...148 to 151, with two invalids. And I've been approached by more than three people saying they wanted to vote for me, but they just didn't get to the polls...so that kind of sucks. But hey, them's the breaks. Even if I officially lose freshman rep, I still want to be a part of student council, and student council wants me to be a part as well. After the election results a few of the student council heads came up to me and told me they still really wanted me to be on, so that was nice to hear. I still came back to my room and cried a bit (lame, I know) but soon there was a horde of people at my door. A bunch of my friends had gone to Store 24 and gotten Ben & Jerry's, Dr. Pepper, and Sun Chips and decided it was time to cheer me up. We pretty much all ended up spooning and watching Hook. So good. I'm playing soccer here, which feels so good. I love it. I have some awfully nice battlewounds too, from the turf field. I've also picked up playing squash...I finally bought my own racket a few weeks ago and Jacob and I, pictured below, have been playing almost every day since the first week here or so. We're both getting pretty good...although Jacob's better than I am. I've beat him a few times though...which was cool. I started here August 23rd, and it's now October 2nd...it's gone by so quickly. I'm really just having such a good time. I was just interrupted by a knock at the door. Turns out someone drew me a picture and wanted to give it to me. See? I know all of the words are backwards because of silly Photo Booth, but oh well. You get the gist of it. I loved high school because everyone knew me and the majority of people liked me. I'm not saying it because I'm full of myself...everyone knew me because my mom taught there, and I could get along with anyone. I love college because already a lot of people know me, and so far, the majority of people still like me. But it's to this whole new level. It's like it lets you prove yourself to yourself. It feels good. I don't miss being in my house, but I do miss my friends back home. I mostly just miss Lily and Sam, but Lily's at Gordon, just outside of Boston about 40 minutes away, so it's easier for me to visit her than Sam. I went home this weekend for homecoming at HA, so I got to hang out with Sam again then, which was good for me. Being best friends since 4th grade...it's hard to just leave. He said he has nothing to do anymore now that I'm gone...it just makes me feel so bad. Agh. Oh well. Yayyyy collegggge. Oh yeah, classes are going well too. Factual Film and Television is a sweet class. We watch documentaries and then talk about them. But History of the Soviet Union sucks...it's so hard to pay attention in that class and the professor gets some weird thing on his lip when he gets excited about the discussion. Eck. This is good enough for now...bye sitDiary. It's nice to be back.

so...college? ahhhhhhh. i'm having fun though. woohooooo!

Today's my last day at work, which actually kind of bums me out because I oddly enjoy my job. I'd have kept it if I could, but the commute from Worcester back to the middle of Maine every day would be a bit taxing. I start college in 2 weeks. Uhm, yikes. I still haven't done my summer reading because I'm an oaf. My grandmother died about a week ago. Well technically, she was my step-grandmother. But she still died, and I'm leaving for New York tomorrow for her funeral. Or the first funeral anyway. They're having two services for her; one where she lived most of her life in New York and one where she was born I guess. It seems awfully strange to me, but oh well. My mother called me last night from an ocean somewhere, drunk on a large boat. She wanted her friends to be able to tell me how much they liked my video portfolio. Her friend Lauren knows a lot of big people in the film industry, and said it'd be extremely easy for her to get me internships in the summer and such. Then again, she was also extremely drunk, so...who knows. In conclusion, I love Target because it's the only place in Maine that I can find Jones soda. I mean Starbucks has it, but just the root beer, and I think it's the sugar free kind. Gross and a half.

So I have to be at work in twenty minutes and I'm still in my pajamas, writing this. College starts in exactly one month, and I have not sent in my writing sample yet, nor have I done my interview for my Stafford Loan. I got a letter a few days ago telling me who my roommate will be, and I keep meaning to e-mail her to seem friendly and such but I get to "Hey Heather," and have no idea what else to write without sounding like a fifth-grade pen-pal from Ohio. I still have thank you notes from graduation and still have to buy new twin extra long sheets. I still have to sign up for all but one of my classes. I still have many people to see before I leave. I want to go to college. I just don't. ?

So...high school's over. How very terrifying for me. I think that out of my class, I'm probably the least ready to leave. Which sucks. But I obviously can't just stay in one phase of my life forever. Then I'd never grow up, and this is just life, not Neverland. Graduation was yesterday afternoon. I marched with Lukas and the people in front of us weren't stepping right at all and it threw us off and sucked but it's cool. I received a $500 art scholarship and my diploma and my aunt wore sunglasses with blinking lights. Speeches were given and the chorus sang "For Good" from Wicked and "Bridge Over Troubled Water" and we marched outside to leave and wait for our families. I do not know why I didn't cry, because I was certainly ready to. After pictures and searching for my parents (whom I never found there), I rushed home to change and get money for Project Graduation. So, of course, I changed and got money and then drove back to school even faster, stopping at Subway for food. The senior class met in the old gym, got breathalized, and then everyone hopped on one of three buses heading to the Boston harbor for our little cruise thing. We watched Tommy Boy and Forrest Gump on the way there and attempted to watch Edward Scissorhands on the way back but that was tough since we got back at 8 this morning. The cruise itself though was much more fun than expected and I'm glad I went. The weather was beautiful for it. The only sad part was when the hypnotist convinced the chinese exchange student that she had eleven fingers and she started to cry. Boo hypnotist with speech impedement, boooo. I missed work this morning because I was so damn tired. I'll put pictures up sometime maybe. Bye high school.

I never ever ever expected to be prom queen. It certainly came out of nowhere for me. I thought it would be Annaliese, of course. Prom was amazing. Pictures soon, and I actually mean it this time. :D

ANYWAY, that's my friend Jon. If you look 2 entries down, you'll see where I attempted (and failed miserably) to put his picture before. NOW, IF YOU CAN HONESTLY TELL ME THAT HE IS NOT BASICALLY THE SAME PERSON AS THE KID FROM THE GIRL NEXT DOOR, I WILL GIVE YOU AN AWARD FOR BEING ABLE TO BE HONEST WHILE TELLING AN ABSOLUTE LIE. KTHNXBAI.

I don't even know what's going on with my entries right now so if they look all ehffed up ignore it because it won't let me fix it. CONFUSING.