I think I am figuring little things out in quick succession that add up to a happier psyche!

In the summer I often get a distinct feeling that I am very alone, kind of off the the side while other people are sharing in this miraculous atmosphere of friendship I forgot to foster all school year. I get depressed and aimless and anxious really easily and start being a grump around boys I'm dating because I feel like I'm a pitstop as they have a more exciting life than me. So... just. in general very isolated and confused and sad and irritated with myself.

Hey guyz
I'm gonna write a blog while in class. Cause. It'll be rambly.

Sometimes I feel like a huge twat. One time in the summer I had half a head of stub and half a head of hair and a two headed cat shirt and american apparel shorts and ripped up keds and I was smoking and complaining and then realized that I was a gigantic twat. It's real rough when it hits you in the face.
Sometimes, it's real fun to be a twat. But mostly in the summer. The time of ultimate decadence and scariness! You don't need to plan your clothing to be warm or nothing and everyone's just lazing around, super duper poor. It excites me but it's almost awful because it's like how my life could be all the time if I was almost a hobo in california in some tiny nowhere town. So much freedom but also very little to fall back on. I can eat candy until I puke and my teeth fall out and then go to the food bank or mooch off my friends. Scary things indeed
Koval just said the first word of her sentence with a british accent after someone with a british accent answered a question

I am allergic to my roommates cat atilla. It's making our relationship strained. I can't pet him. Now I can't even let him out cause Amanda doesn't want him out- he fights. So all I can do now is tell him to stop meowing. It's rough. I want to cradle him like a big fluff baby and smoosh my face into him.
I hope I get a job this summer that doesn't involve getting snarked at/ making food. That is unlikely. I can't even get excited about my sister inviting me to spain, because I'm supposed to have money for this that I don't have...

I'm so weird because I mostly worry about getting my heart broken/ breaking someone else's heart/ missing art opportunities/ being poor/ working minimum wage/ getting sick (that happens to me a lot)- I guess because this point in my life feels very vulnerable and ready for all of these things
And all these things happened last summer.
Merp. I worry too much.

My roommate's rat had seven rat babies. They look like tiny puppies!!! They squeak when ophelia accidentally steps on then. She breastfeeds them! It's crazy! Tiny mammals!
Rats are so cute and squishy and crawly and smart and they never poop on you. They like you to put them on your shoulder and give them little bits of your food- then they chatter with happiness near your ear.
I really want a female rat in my roooooom to be my buddy

If I get worried when I'm poor, I shouldn't be in art school should I? hhhhhhh

If not a little chocolate coloured rat, a little chocolate coloured poodly doodly should do. :D

I have too many emotions. I woke up in a random hour and a half state of anger about nothing last morning, and then last night when I showered, I felt a lot of guilt. I feel great right now. When I have emotions that are strange, there is a voice in my head that goes "TYPICAL WOMAN!" and I'm like "yesus chist, shush you. everyone's ridiculous." I used to have a worse voice in my head than that. It'd be like "you're such a ridiculous girl. you are a ridiculous friend and girlfriend. You talk too much." That voice is no longer there. I feel like I internalized stupid self talk I'm now getting rid of. Maybe from like middle school or high school or something. I wonder what voices chastise other people- how those politically incorrect chastisers sometimes nag them.

I love toast + pb + banana + honey + cinnamon! with a cup of dark dark french roast coffee. <3 yessssss
I love sharing food with friends
I don't like when people hover when I'm making things so I have to give them some though. That's weird. They should just ask for a taste after and see if I'm feeling wealthy enough to give them more. My favorite meals are breakfast and lunch. Dinner is too much. Dinner is just redonk. Why is the nicest meal right at the end of the day when you're tired? Lunch should be most intense. :D

I'd like to do en plein air painting this summer :D
I'm gonna miss the sunporch. It was such a nice addiction to the awesome house I was just in.

My life is really good guys. I can't complain at all. I'm scared about what I'll do for money, but I'll do something. I have to be braaaaaave
nyeh

Man
I have a crazy capacity for guilt.
But I have every right to date someone, it's been long enough I think. I just feel like I'm somehow being pretty inappropriate. Every little thing makes me guilty.
I worry about if I'm being a good person all the time.
I feel like I spend too much money
I feel like I'm too confident
I feel like I'm simultaneously too fragile and durable
I find my conception that I am not a fully formed version of myself unless I'm single interesting
Since I date anyways
I'm trying hard to do the best job right now and I don't even know what that means.
I feel like I don't have enough time.
Vaaaaaague
I don't feel able to connect with many people right now
I don't know if I'm a nice person at heart. I think it's really dumb I'm worrying about this. I wish I could just tattoo sorry on my head, but obviously it wouldn't be sincere enough.
My brain is juggling lots of thoughts.
But at the same time I am proud of how many thoughts and worries I could juggle, I am not accepting. I hope I can just improve from here
Often my mental space is either blank or frenzied.
I feel best when I'm being creative.
Summer is scary. So unstructured.

Words don't work as well as they used to. I don't think that there are as many useful things I can contribute to a situation by talking as I used to. Talking is fun I guess... sometimes it works. Sometimes when I talk it feels like I'm filling up a clean space with something that stains. I musta just talked myself raw. I'm still chatty as eff, it's just... I'm realizing sometimes there's nothing you can say that will fit what you think.
uhhhh
nutella!
I have a blackhead on my lip??? ;-;
I can make latte's!
I want to hike and do exercise!
I'm happy!
I'm feeling like I'm making sense of things
Today I ran to the bathroom and I did the most efficient bolt without really paying attention and realized I knew the contours of my house perfectly and that it felt like home. More than either of my parents homes do. It feels like home the way houses used to feel. I'm going to miss this house! I love the kitchen and the tea cabinet in my room.
Mew

2010 summed

- started actually getting into dancing, not being shy and uncomfortable about jovial thingies
- freaked out i couldn't go to bellingham
- job at tims, first job ever, first time totally supporting self in sackville over summer
- living with someone I was in a relationship with for the first time ever- realizing what a glue that makes
- depression
- 3 months of obsession and embarrassment and sad frustrating confusion
- working on being less of a bleeding heart/ dramatic type. Working on making do with what is given and being happy for it and trying to have the best perspective possible
- considering that being single isn't just a period between relationships and that i should only really rely on myself and shouldn't assume i'd live with someone for the rest of my life or that that would always be the best choice
- trying to be more strong than i got taught
- feeling like a traveler still
- strange increase in confidence and bravery
- got the balls to switch to fine arts from sciences
- "you can't sit around waiting to be wounded"
- so for now, i feel a little like i dislike sitting around. caught up in school work.
- pretty good grades!
- shifted from seeing myself as a lost child to more of an older mentor type for myself, which is very good
- sometimes i think i make myself be too tough, but it's better than the alternative
- lost a lot of fear
- need to avoid cynicism, fatalism, bitterness
- still feel more isolated than i should
- perspective is key
- and doing work
yup.

I've been reading about the virgin Mary. She always was the most interesting part of Catholicism to me.

In the Middle Ages, plays would be done at Christmas to demonstrate the nativity. In them, Mary would painlessly give birth to Jesus, filled with joy. Part of this was to show that she remained a virgin in CHILDBIRTH. Because Jesus is magical.

Since the Qur'an doesn't believe Jesus is magical, etc, the chapter about Mary (yes, there is more about the virgin Mary in the Qur'an than in the Bible...) describes her childbirth as horrifically painful. She goes through it alone. Joseph doesn't even exist in Mary's life in the Qur'an.

People have also debated a bunch about if Mary stayed a virgin her whole life. It's a conflict of the duties of a woman to matrimony and subservience and the duties of mankind to purity and spiritual devotion. Joseph gets drawn a lot in art looking really old and harmless, sleeping and things. See? Why would she have sex with a very un-verile man? But that wasn't very impressive to some Catholics, so they drew Joseph being more useful and sexy so it was a challenge for Mary! Such lengths are gone to to prove Mary is a virgin. The bible talks about Jesus' bretherin, and scholars claim they are just Jesus' cousins from Mary's mom. But Mary's mom is supposed to be almost barren and really excited she even got to birth Mary. I think a big part of the insistence on Mary's virginity was: why would she have sex for babies if she already got to have the most incredible baby/God ever? Because she wouldn't just have sex for pleasure. It seems to be a conflict that Mary goes between stories of her leading a usual matrimonial life and the part of her that is supposed to be sheer divine purity.

Another interesting thing about Mary is the fixation on her as the partial antidote to Eve. Since people claim Eve introduced sin into the world and cursed women to be treated like subservient beings with evil tempt-y wiles, Mary somehow was supposed to have done everything the opposite of Eve. Eve introduces sex, Mary introduces celibate birth. Eve disobeys God, Mary obeys God. Women were told to look up to Mary as their guiding figure- as a woman, wife, mother, etc. At the same time, they were told they could never ever attain any of her qualities and should sulk to show repentance for Eve's sins and being related to Eve. Why did they gain strength from an ideal that served as the framework to make them feel like they were sin filled? And yet she is quite the attractive mentor and martyr.

It's interesting that she accepts God's word in the Bible with no consideration otherwise. She just obeys, like Abraham or Moses or whoever have you from the old testament. She's a feminine ideal of unattainability with qualities of old male followers of God. She is so passive and strong at the same time in her obedience, like them. She's just a tool of things, not a person.

That's why the Madonna and Child portraits full of loving touching are such an interesting contradiction- we see Mary's humanity. But she is supposed to be so inhuman in her rejection of sin. While appreciating the pleasures of motherhood, which are earthly pleasures as well.

I thought I would paint her and the christ child with the christ child sticking a finger up her nose and her laughing for my project. I'll upload that if it doesn't suck really hard. I want to twist the maternal joy into a very earthly version of itself.

It's an interesting concept, that Mary and Christ make each other into pseudo gods and pseudo humans when together on earth. She gives him this fleshy, vulnerable body- he's painted nursing with her often even- and he gives her this transcendent peaceful gaze and glow. They live in a pseudo state in those paintings together, tainted and enriched by the heavenly and the earthly. SO weird.

I remember when I was a kid, being so confused by the feminine ideal of Mary. I was maybe 9, crying to my mom about how all the church wanted out of me was that I laid around passive for men and popping out babies and keeping quiet and never doing anything... somehow chaste in my lack of personal opinions.

Maybe some women worshipped Mary as they did just because she created without needing an earthly man and seemed to raise the child on her own.

Merp. Good night. Religion is a strange thing. It shifts a lot. It's strange how it can affect your life so much too, before you can back up and even think about it, it can teach you some fundamental beliefs and feelings about things you may not even know you have.

Even though I don't logically believe in christianity anymore, I feel like it would be really comforting for me to pray to her or for her, on a rosary, whatever. I have a little statue of her in my room. I have conflicts with my current agnosticism and my appreciation of Catholic art. And it's so beautiful and peaceful, I guess sometimes. It roots me to my childhood and my family and friends and town from another time.
The way Mary just watches. She does things silently, as seem wise to do. And so often just watches. An expression, witnessing an event, loving a person, looking at you. And others paint her into different contexts and roles. She's even been painted as a warrior figure in chainmail. There's something pretty and eerie about it all. Sad too.