The Don'ts And Really Really Don'ts Of Breaking Up With Someone

"Too Young For Him They Told Her, Waitin For The Love Of A Travelin' Soldier"...

For some reason in the past couple of years I have accumulated an immense amount of friends in the military, two of which I've had some degree of a relationship with.  And in the past six months, one in particular has been sent back and forth to Iraq and a bunch of other places.  I used to swear I was falling for this kid but now we're just friends and I am 100% ok with that, but I still care a great deal for him.  So now he's going away for quite a bit and, quite frankly, it sucks.  We went to lunch today and I knew that it would be the last time I would see him before he leaves in a couple days.  When we were getting back into his car he asked me if I was ok.  "You're mood just changed." he told me.

The truth is, every time he leaves, I cry.  I cry and I worry and I think about what a good person he is and how even though there were times where he didn't exactly treat me like gold, he is the kind of person who only wants to help people.  And then I think about all the people who have friends or family members over there fighting, military people who are gone for years on end, and I can't think of any other way to describe it except that it sucks.  It sucks so bad and I know that this is their job, but I just- I don't know.  It just kills me that these guys I know that are so carefree and wonderful hanging out on the weekends could potentially one day go away and never come back.  

Just come home safe, ok?

Real Life Gives Me Cramps

So this right here is the only 2 minute block of time where I was sublimely happy about graduating college (I'm sensing an I-miss-college strand throughout these blogs of mine).  It was right after the ceremony ended and all the graduates walked a little procession type deal past all our families.  It was raining and miserable and everything that could have gone wrong that weekend did.  But this picture was taken right after I ran towards Rach and grabbed her in a hug and said something completely stereotypical like "We did it!" or "We graduated!"  We then walked down the procession holding hands in a glee induced haze.  Then we got to the end and realized we were soaking wet and never going to live on a campus with all our friends again.  So we cried.  Or I cried.  Someone cried.

So here I am, halfway through summer and still without a job.  A couple prospects, but it is actually pathetic the lack of effort I have put forth in finding any sense of employment.  Rach and I wanted to be moved out into an apartment by August.  I'll be surprised if we get there by December.  I'm about to turn 22 and on one hand I still feel like a baby, but slapping me in the face with the other hand is this persistent idea of "Grow up Alexis.  Just grow up."

So what exactly are the boundaries of age 22?  Am I still allowed to go out and get drunk and (carefully) slut myself out?  Am I allowed to have old dorm-room posters on my bedroom walls and am I still allowed to buy every single ounce of my clothing at Target?

Or do I have to buy a business suit and only stop by bars for happy hour on my way home from work?  Do I have to find a serious boyfriend and buy a fish together and spend Christmas at his parents' house in Connecticut with their little white fluffball of a dog that has never peed on the carpet....ever?

I'm caught between feeling too old to play beer pong but too young to settle down and buy a nice 4 door sedan.  

In that picture, I was both terrified and excited that I had my whole life ahead of me.  So why does it feel like my life has all of a sudden flown past in a big, maturity-drive whooooosh?

How To Be A Yuppie In 21 Years Or Less

It's getting to the point where I get a migraine if I don't have a cup of coffee in the morning and I'm starting to crave cigarettes.  I think this means I'm finally becoming a real writer.

La La La Love Me Some Music

My friend Bill and I make music.  (Not like, 'we make beautiful music together', but actual chords and words and music.  I can already tell he's going to kill me for writing this entry...).  He comes up with the part on the guitar and then I write the lyrics.  The whole thing started as kind of a joke when we first met and I found out he played every instrument known to man and he found out I sang.  We were at his apartment downtown and just on the spot wrote this song called "Brown" (brown's my favorite color and I always thought it got a bad rep so I just started rhyming any word I could with 'brown'.  The result was a 5 minute homage to the color and if I can say so myself, it's startlingly  fabulous).  It was at this point that we realized we could actually go somewhere with this.  So we started having our little "jams", which for me was a big deal because I had barely even sung in front of anyone before, let alone wrote personal lyrics.  I'm pretty sure Bill believes in me more than I believe in myself when it comes to the whole music thing.  But that's why he's the best person I know.  Bill is as musically talented as he is attractive- the answer to both being unbelievably.  I have never met anyone who could just pick up an instrument and on the spot create such a beautiful sound.  It drives me crazy that he's not famous.

Music numbs me.  It is why I have notes permanently tattooed on my back.  It is why I cannot get into my car or get dressed or put on make up or clean my room without turning on a song.  The feeling I get when I listen to music is the same feeling you get when you, I dunno, pop an Adderol for the first time, or when you drink three beers and then chain smoke half a pack of cigarettes.  Music to me is the same feeling I get when I fall into a deep kiss with someone- something warm and tingly shoots through every pore of my body and I melt.

Bill gets very calm and still when he writes music.  I get very fidgety.  Bill gets this serious look right across his eyebrows and looks up, then bows down his head.  I scratch my knees and bite my nails and switch positions on the floor or couch every fifteen seconds.  Watching Bill play is what calms me down.  It's so easy to get lost concentrating on how his fingers pluck through the strings, and he comes up with a beautiful, heart-wrenching song and then I feel like a jerk for ruining it with my I-hate-boys lyrics.  But I guess thats just my way of dealing.  Like every time I have to drive that road that leads past The Ex's house.  I get really quiet and my body physically reacts.  I get angry and sad and regretful and fuzzy.

So I try to write a song.  But I can't because it feels too vulnerable.  Even though Bill knows everything about me and everything about The Ex, I can't bring myself to allow me or anyone else inside my head.  And then all of a sudden He calls and wants to see me and while he's explaining to me why he and his girlfriend didn't work out, he says to me, "See Lex, the only reason you and I didn't work is because we didn't work."  And then I feel stupid for spending the last year and a half agonizing over my broken heart when apparently it was as simple as "we didn't work".

So again, I try to write a song.  And I do.  But I'll never show it to Bill because I know that when we try to put it to music, much like that screwy little relationship of mine, it just won't work.

We're JUST Pretty Enough To Be This Stupid: Vol. 2

"You can touch my ovaries." -Rach

"When I'm drunk I'm like 'Cunt this!  Cunt that!'" -Claud

"Hookers are idiots." -Rach

"Any cute Abington alum you can set me up with?" -Bill

"Nope, they're all bitches and hoes." -Alexis

"Show me to the hoes!" - Bill

"I'm so sick of sex, it's the same thing.  A lot of in, a lot of out..." -Rach

"Tonsil hockey's my favorite sport.  I play goalie." -Hiss

"That was a tasty shot." -Elyse

"What was it?" -Jil

"I don't know.  It's burning though." -Elyse

LehChew...a big old house where a big old mess of things happened

This was my house at school.  I lived there my last two years of college and it was more of a home then my parent's place ever was.  Now here's the kicker- they're tearing it down.  Well, that's the rumor, but at the very least they are for sure adding on to it.  Bottom line is that it won't look like this for long.

They say that home is where the heart is, but this house is not only where I keep my heart, but where I keep all the memories that have made me, well, me.  I was in love in this house.  I was heartbroken in this house.  I was frustrated and hopeful and determined in this house.  I was also lazy and spent hours upon hours sitting on the couch with my roommates watching TV.  This house got a lot of ass and a lot of booze.  And a LOT of Dunkin Donuts.

We call the house LehChew because it's on the corner of Leh St. and Chew St.  But it's also down the street from Ott St.  So in our dirty little minds, we say I Ott to Leh Chew.  Like, I ought to lay you.  It's disturbingly cheesy, I'm aware.  But it's us.

It's sad to know that a place that you care so much about, a place that has so much sentiment that it's overwhelming, will soon be gone.  My three roommates and I, we grew up in that house.  Not to mention that it is without a doubt the biggest and most stunning place any of us will ever live in.  I used to climb out the upstairs hallway window onto the roof out back.  There was an amazing view of the mountains and I would just sit and read or do homework or lay out in the sun.  Rach and I would go out and watch people play tennis on the courts behind our house, and then run down to yard if there was a hot shirtless guy playing.  It was the perfect house and the perfect two years, and I'm going to miss it.