New Years?

Yes. Yes, please.

It's been a good week :D

Here's to hoping that lasts the rest of the year!

Here are some little piggies from el Mangu, a town in the rural northern mountains of the Dominican Republic. Gosh, I wish I could go back.

Better day.

Excited for the boy to come home tomorrow night and to only have two more days of work left! I can get out of this house and maybe even be able to sleep...so excited.

Is it time to go back to school yet?

Well, madam therapist lady says I need to start writing more as it will help to disperse the anxiety and stress I encounter on a daily basis. As the only person who reads this is someone who deserves a better understanding of this shit, I may as well do it here. I will preface the following with a warning: these are merely my ramblings on my own perceptions of life...

So, a large portion of this nation clamors constantly for a woman's right to control what happens with her own body; I am in completely agreement with this. I believe, though, that it should apply to everything. If I want to employ a razor to calm me down that should be my choice, right? You disagree? Let's consider what is currently 'socially acceptable': piercings, tattoos, circumcisions, nip/tucks, etc. So it's okay for someone to cut holes in their skin so long as some form of jewelry is placed in it. It's okay for someone to penetrate their skin thousands of times so long as ink is injected permanently. It's okay for skin to be severed permanently as long as it is for spiritual purposes. It's okay for skin to be sliced, removed, and stitched back together as long as it's for beauty purposes. But no, it's not okay for me to drag a blade across my own skin to calm down and get rid of stress and anxiety. 

Self-mutilaton has been called disgusting, mysterious, incomprehensable, and a host of other negative adjectives. Most people who do not self-mutilate abhor the thought of pain, and cannot imagine purposefully hurting oneself. While there are exceptions, the majority of our society sees self-mutilation as a very deviant behavior. Part of this negativity stems from the fact that self-mutilation is poorly understood. Human beings fear what they do not understand, be it homosexuality, mental illness, or self-mutilation. Therefore, most self-injurers feel very alone and unable to share their pain with others. Many wear long sleeves and pants at all times and are careful to cover their scars while in public. If they reveal the scars or explain the behavior, they risk rejection and social ostracism. Most self-mutilators share the same goals as the rest of society. The methods they employ are upsetting to those of us who try to achieve our goals in a more tranquil manner, but self mutilators seek what we all seek: an ordered life, spiritual peace, and a healthy mind in a healthy body.

Oh well...

"Fate is like a strange, unpopular restaurant filled with odd little waiters who bring you things you never asked for and don't always like."  --Lemony Snicket

‎"Look to the sky, look to yourself and remember: we are only god’s echoes and god is Narcissus"

 - House of Leaves

Christmas Eve

Our tree [with gifts for dad & I]

Left my new journal at mom's, so this will have to do for now...This Christmas Eve has, of course, ended up just like every other one. Dad has passed out in his chair after smoking a pack of cigarettes, drinking half a keg, and downing his pain meds. I'm stealing internet from the neighbors and decorating the tree. I already went out and bought us some food as I refuse to eat the crap he has in the freezer. I'm glad he didn't forget, though! Tomorrow morning should be better; mornings are always the best. Then it will be off to the mother's for her side of the family's Christmas. That is always interesting. I'm hoping to get my scarf done so I can wear it soon :D

Yes. Just collecting them. That's all. #sarcasm #idiots

A few days of mindless gaming have done me well. :]

“Passion has little to do with euphoria and everything to do with patience. It is not about feeling good. It is about endurance. Like patience, passion comes from the same Latin root: pati. It does not mean to flow with exuberance. It means to suffer.”

—	Mark Z. Danielewski, House of Leaves

Who has never killed an hour? Not casually or without thought, but carefully: a premeditated murder of minutes. The violence comes from a combination of giving up, not caring, and a resignation that getting past it is all you can hope to accomplish. So you kill the hour. You do not work, you do not read, you do not daydream. If you sleep it is not because you need to sleep. And when at last it is over, there is no evidence: no weapon, no blood, and no body. The only clue might be the shadows beneath your eyes or a terribly thin line near the corner of your mouth indicating something has been suffered, that in the privacy of your life you have lost something and the loss is too empty to share.

“You’ll likely notice that the real world does have this interesting mix of, like, crushing monotony and paralyzing terror. There’s the crushing monotony of waking up at the same time, sitting in the same traffic, going to the same job, and then coming home to pay the same bills with your only distractions being, like, television and video games and YouTube. But there’s also the constant paralyzing terror of knowing that if you somehow screw up sitting in traffic or working at your job or paying your rent, you will be homeless and hungry and alone.”

—	John Green

My thoughts about my upcoming History and Structure final:

Beyond that...it's now well over a week past my birthday. My father has officially forgot. Again. I know this isn't a surprise to me anymore, but it's still a little disappointing. I had a professor ask me today if I would've preferred to have brothers/sisters and I almost selfishly said yes. Then I sort of thought about it and decided I would never want anyone else to have had to go through the shit I did. And of course, then I said that. Meh.

Come home soon, Tessa? Now?

Language describes, but description tends to emerge precisely when nomenclature falters or when the names assigned to objects fail to render them adequately. The world almost never resembles its linguistic mugshot. Exposing the inadequacy of the world to compass the thing, description is allotted the thankless task of representing the misfit things that cannot be immediately assimilated to the world as we already know it. It thus serves as a heuristic device, as a virtual perspective that reveals something about out relationship to objects, or about the relationship between words and objects, that we cannot perceive in our everyday experience of them.

Monkey: me.

Finals Week: Elephant.

 

Why is it that if some dude walked up to me on the subway platform
and said these things, I’d think he was a mentally ill asshole,
but if the vampire inside my head says it,
It’s the voice of reason.