So I said I would try and keep this place more updated. Heres me holding good on that. (for once. How many other times have I said that and it hasnt happened?)

I had something deep and rather interesting, but it fell out of my head. Kinda sucks, but oh well. If you want deep, go read Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand. THAT will give you a mental mind fuck. It ain't my job. I'm just a blogger, not a novellist. Though I did write a short story I'm proud of, and some of you know the one I mean. Anyway. Great book.. Y'all should read it.

As for whats going on in my life, some major changes are about to take place. I'm getting ready to leave my current boyfriend for the guy in St. Louis- Shaun. I'm excited about what we'll have (and are already lucky enough to have). But I'm sad for my current boy... I don't want to kill him or his emotions, just... not be with him anymore. I won't tell him about my pending relationship, in interest of that, unless he asks. I won't lie to him. It DOES feel like I'm with a good friend, which is a weird feeling.  We get along well enough... it just lacks that intensity and that bond that Shaun and I have. I also won't cheat on my current boy, which includes saying certain phrases. (Of course, some argue that if you want to say them, then you've already betrayed him in your heart. Which I can see... But the overt ACT of willingly disreguarding his feelings and what we currently have... I just can't do it. It doesnt feel right or good. No matter HOW MUCH I want too...)

I'm preparing for my first go-round of college finals. Eep! I'm kinda nervous, but I'm confidant I can pull it off with flying colors. Blargh. Whatever. I'll deal with it in stride, like I always have done and always will do.

That is all. Engage! (yay Star Trek: TNG... Yes, I am the Queen of the Dorks) 

For those of you stumbling onto my blog, please scroll down a few posts, back to this April, and read the posts there. It will help you understand this post.

 Tonight, my dad and I got talking about one of his brothers, Galand, who died about 20+ years ago. My dad made some kind of comment about how he died too young, much like my friend, Olivia. That lead to he and I talking about her. I still can't speak of her, without people who knew her very well near by, without crying a little. I miss her terriably. After he walked out of my room, I had myself a small little cry and was starting to feel better- if bittersweet, when he came back in. And he insisted on talking about her more- which only made it worse for me and hurt so much worse. I know he only meant well, but now I can't stop thinking of her. WHen this happens, I ususally am up til about 5 with insomnia. My mind won't shut down, or quit going in circles. So, I gave up a pretense at sleeping and decided to blog.

How do I tell you what I'm feeling? How can I put that kind of inescapable hurt into words? If I were Homer, or Lord Tennyson, or Mia Angelou, I'm sure I could find a suitably dark and hauntingly beautiful poem somewhere in the back of my mind, under the hurt. But, I'm none of those and a lousy poet to boot. So, I'll settle with a "If I could do it over again" situation.

When it came the Saturday they were holding her memorial on, I was in peices. But, I got a call from friends saying that Lisa, Olivia's mother, wanted us to write something for the euology. A little elegy written by friends, to be read by the preacher. I'm not sure how or why, but at 11 AM, they elected me to write something for everyone, or I volenteered, I don't remember. So, at noon with the wake to begin at 3:30 and the memorial at 4:30, I sat down to pour all my heartache and love for Olivia into an elegy, in prose form. I couldn't be too wordy and ramble on, nor did I want to be too concise and deny a part of her. And I wanted to remember her as she lived when I knew her: happy and bright.  After 45 minutes of struggling, I found a sitable compostion that I felt summed up everything I loved about her and somehow captured the unimaginable tragedy of her death. I have since deleted the file from my computer, as I was becoming obcessed with reading it and I don't recall it exactly. However, it used an extended metaphor of a performance stage and its bright lights for her life, but it was also personal and captured her in all her sweet, funny, splendor. It was sweet and made me cry, because it was so true. I composed what is probably one of the best works I will probably ever write in about 25 minutes of actual write time. I wanted to read it before everyone in the little ceramony they had planned. But, when I gave the finished paper to Lisa, she thanked me and said the preacher would read it. I didn't say a word different, because I as hurting so much.

But, if I had read it, this is what would have happened (in my head, anyway).  The preacher would have introduced me, and I'd have walked up there and introduced myself like this. "For those who do not know me, I'm Nicole and have known Olivia since I was 7. I wrote this, from all of her (small smile here) old school friends." .. Then the elegy I wrote, followed by a pause then, "On a personal side note, I know Olivia is laughing at us somewhere, for all our silly tears. Shes happy now, and we should try to be happy with that- Laugh for her, even as we have tears on our cheeks for missing her."  Something like that, anyway. Thats how it would have gone in my head...

God, I miss her so much.

For the life of me, it still doesn't seem like shes actually dead. It still feels like I could call her up and have a good laugh at me foolishly thinking that she was anything other than perfectly healthy.

What else can I say? I can't sleep because I'm thinking of her. I won't sleep til at least 4 or 5. In the morning, I'll be exhusted and unable to function properly. Its a sad, vicious cycle that I'll break in a few days, once I get my sleep schedule back on track. But till then, Olivia may have been the saddest little girl in the whole world, but I'm the second saddest.

... thanks for listening to me rattle on. Theres more doubts and uncertiaties ratteling around in my head, but none that need to be aired here. Just silly little boy troulbles and hopes. Blah. If you want that crap, go read any LiveJournal. Oh well. Till later. <3.

So. here I am on wednesday, and I leave on Monday. The thought of moving away from home scares, excites, thrills, saddenes, and enthralls me. Basically, it turns me into a giant emotional ooze. I think I'm ready, but who the hell knows. I could get home sick and miss everything here (Thats a probabilty, since I'll miss my friends and cats). I may start to think of Miami as "home", and St. Louis as the place I visit in the summer. I could die in the drive down there- I dunno. But I know I won't miss my mothers nagging at me, or getting volenteered to organize float trips that everyone bows out of at the last moment. (gr.)

So... I sit here, Wednesday night, with about 15 things that need doing, 5 of which I could be doing right now, and I find myself without the will to do any of it. I just want to sit here and type to this stupid little blog that no one cares about and pretend that I'm ready. Its not that I don't want to do them. I do, and I know I need to get moving on them. Its just... blarg. I'm tired and sad. I feel like a whole huge section of my life is ending (and it is), but that the one thats opening is so big, I simply cannot understand, or antipate it. But I dont want to let go of this part of my life because its safe- I know it intimatly. But this part coming up- I have no fuckin idea about. But I'm ready. And I'm excited. Reguardless of my doubts. I'm excited. :)

On the up side of things, Indy is currently sleeping in my lap. Awww.  

So, I've been waiting for a long time for anyone I know to stop reading this, and I think I've hit that point. That makes me sad, somehow. I had hoped that this would bring me closer to my friends, or at least help keep in touch with other people. But, now that no one I know reads it, I can say whatever I'm really thinking. Like, I could tell Daniel that I still care for him much more that I should, after nearly a year of being broken up. But he'll never read that, so its ok to leave up there.  Thats a relief, but I still wish my friends read this still.

So this whole night has sucked. A lot. For starts, I wanted to hang out with Dave Cornejo because I don't get to see him a lot any more. So, I called him to see if it was ok if I came over, and he said yeah. So I get changed and go over there.. He says he wants to "take a nap" and I'm free to hang out if I want til 10 or so when everyone else got back. Already feeling like second rate shit since I, apparently, wasn't good enough to wake up for, I played around on the computer for half an hour or so, before I heard Dave and his girlfriend having sex in the other room. ... Fuck. Just, fuck. This is why I fucking CALLED. (can you sense my exasperation?) So I left, feeling like just a bother. At about 10:30, I called Dave to see if he was done yet, cause I'm a bitch for punishment apparently. So I go back over there, and Joe is drunk as shit. Now mind you, I've had an on-again-off-again trist going on with Joe for the last month or so. Only lately, he hasn't called me, and the one time I called him, he said he didn't have time. So I gave up. No wait, I gave up after he went back to his girlfriend. So, yeah. I'm a whore, leave me alone, I don't need YOUR grief over it too.. Don't rub it in. Anyway, he was drunk off his ass and wanted to patch things up between us, and I am just .... done with it, I guess. I don't want a relationship right now, much less TWO! (my boyfriend David K, and then Joe.) So.. It was a very annoying two hours. He just would not let it go. Wouldn't take no for an answer. Wouldn't leave me the fuck alone. I hate clingy people. If theres one way to chase me out of a relationship, its to be clingy and needy. I need space and time to be by myself and do my own thing. Joe was doing anything but giving me space. I wanted to just give up in exaspertion. I did leave early, though, just to get away from Joe, and David. Grr, both of you.

So Then, when I get home, I decide that its been about a bad enough day, it would take effort to make it worse. I chose to make it worse, by telling my mother I was considering a tattoo. She told me that it was a stupid, sleezy, slutty and trashy (her words) thing to do. She said it was a multilation of my body. Pissed, I disagreed. Now, mind you this may not sound like a lot, but in my family, thats like calling her a bitch and then pimpsmacking her. With her, you have to play her game, and be what she wants in order to get anything. I havn't ever played her game, and so I've never gotten any of her rewards, or approval. In the last two years of my life, some pretty major changes have happened. Not a SINGLE ONE of which she has supported me in. Shes always been against it, against me, or just downright surly about the whole idea. Example, Modeling school. Breaking up with David. Going to college. With Model school, my dad and step-mom offered to pay for the whole thing, and mom wanted absolutly nothing to do with it. Didn't want to see what I had learned, how I liked it, or whatever. She pretended it didn't exist. With David, she thinks hes the best thing that has ever, or will ever, happen to me. She says hes stable, kind, and dependable. All true, and all good points. But hes also un-ambitious (No idea of career, or college, or ANYTHING beyond factory work), not intelligent (and thats the most important thing to me), and not even terriably interesting. He is not a bad person to be with, but just not for me. And as to college, she thinks I'm going to fail out within the first year. Let me repeat that for emphasis: My MOTHER believes me incapable of college. My MOTHER thinks I will FAIL COLLEGE before I've ever set foot in a class room. Thats not support, thats petty and silly... I don't even know what it is! SHE went to college, and she failed out because she partied to much. Because of that, she thinks I will too. If its outside of what she has done, or would do herself, she thinks its an awful idea. She would love nothing better for me that to cancel all my plans and stay here, meek as a kitten, marry David and settle into a boring midwestern life.

 I can't tell you how much it hurts me, knowing that she wants me to fail.

It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. All I want, is for one sentence to leave her mouth that doesnt start with "Please tell me that you're not..." or "Thats an awful idea!". Just once, I want her to find good in what I'm doing, even if she wouldn't do it herself. Even if its only well-wishing for college, or a compliment to the tattoo desgin I picked out. I just want to know she doesn't consider me a complete fuck up. She really seems to think that. And all it does is drive me father away. All it does is make me want to do it more, all the while considering myself worthless and a terriable person. Thats no way for a mother to make her only daughter feel, is it? 

I'm not asking for a lot. Just... a little approval. Just a sentence that isn't negative. Surely I deserve that? I'm not really an awful person, am I? ...No really, I'm asking. Anyone who knows me, who reads this: I ask you- Am I an awful person for wanting to live my own life, for doing my own thing? Am I a bad person? Am I, really? ... Dont answer that. Sometimes, its better not to know what you're friends think.

Lately, things have been going fairly well. I'm getting an outstanding creative opertunity that I'm very excited for. I mean, very excited. In just a few days, I'll be graduating High School, finally. I've got my college all lined up, even been accepted and my financal aid all done. I should be flying high and singing. But for some reason, I can't sleep at night. I feel sad right now, and I don't know why. I have about 30 things I should have done today, and all I wanted to do was forget that I had anything at all outside this house. Maybe this is depression? But why, I've never been depressed before.

Maybe its cause is Randi. Her mom has been fighting an aggressive form of cervical cancer for the last year and a half. Lately, the prognosis has been very bad. Linda, her mom, was put on hospice over the weekend, with the message that there was nothing more they could do for her. Linda is too weak for anymore treatments, and she has a myarid of other issues that prevent her from being strong enough to accept therapy. I want to help Randi so badly, but theres nothing I can do, beside be there for her and try to make her laugh. I really don't want Randi to loose Olivia, then her mom within the space of three months.

Olivia. There is a reason in and of herself.  I think about her every day. I miss her every day. Maybe shes the cause of this... whatever it is, depression, I guess.

I... (sigh) I just want to talk to someone, but I can't. They would understand, but I just can't. I hurt so much, and I never let anyone see. I try to be strong for them, especially Randi. She needs me to be strong the most of all, and for her, I will be. I'll just save my hurt for private moments of greif like these. ... Yay, self-sacrifice.  

My dearest friend for a very long time died on April third of this year. She was eighteen years old. Her name is Olivia Janon.

I've resisted blogging on this subject til now because it still hurt too much. My mind was too full of her. Who she used to be. Who she became, and all that we had shared. Olivia was a person so strong and vivacious that it rubbed off on me. When I met her in second grade, I was the quiet timid dorky girl in the back of class with HUGE glasses. She was the one with her hand waving wildly in mid-air in class- only to be called on and BURP instead of answer. (yes that happened). She gave me self-confidence, the strength to be my own person. She led by example and for that, I will be forever grateful.

But, for all her strength, she had demons. Many demons. Rather severe bipolar disorder, and several drug addictions, and the worst of all- insecurity. When I first met her, my love was enough. But soon, she didn't feel that she was a good person anymore. So, she gathered more friends who loved her. They became my friends, and we all held her dear to us. It was us four- Mike, Chet, Olivia and I. By the start of sixth grade, we four weren't enough- she still didn't feel loved enough. So, she tried to gather more friends. For awhile, others accepted her, only to reject her a few months later. Hurt and sad-hearted, she would come back to us five (by then, we had Randi too). And we would always be there to help her become strong again. This happened every few months. But, by the start of high school, Olivia was going places we could not follow. She was falling into crowds of "friends" who got her hooked on drugs and booze.

They provided what looked like, to Olivia, all the love she would ever need- in a single injection or a few puffs. All they did was give her more problems. Already unhappy with herself, she fell farther into depression. She became dependant on them. At the end of Sophmore year of high school, Olivia dropped out. I saw her maybe 6 times in the following two years.

She was in rehab, several times, and always relapsed. She was the saddest little girl in the world, I could not help her. Nothing I could say, or do, or provide, would make her okay again. Nothing I could have done would have brought my Olivia back to me.

Lately, she seemed to be doing okay. She was clean again and had a job. She was in a sort of half-way house, but wanted her own apartment. Her suicide came out of the clear blue. We will never know exactly why. Maybe she was angry at someone and didn't think it would actually kill her. Maybe she had been planning it and just hid it well.

On April Third, Olivia hanged herself in the half-way house she was staying at. The horror of that image will never leave me.The real tregedy of her death is not that shes gone, and its not that those left behind are sad, its that she will never have a 19th birthday. Or have a child. So, Olivia, from all of us, here are the things you'll never hear.: Happy 21. Congrats on your marriage, first career job, first child....

We had grown up together, she and I. Hardly any memory in my childhood is complete without her in some way. Her strange facial expressions, fantastic 39 second burps (That was her standing record to my knowledge), high pitched "squeek"- You know what I mean, Randi. Olivia was my sister, if not by blood than by tears. If not by tears, than by memories.

Her memory gives me strength to go on where I may have been too scared. Its her thats allowing me to go to college in Flordia and leave everything I have known here. Where she failed and could not continue, I will. Her earthly body may have died, but the idea and breath that was Olivia lives on in me. In Randi. In her mother, Lisa. In everyone who knew and loved her and was changed by her. She hasn't died at all, but became more intangable. I still love her, and always will.

[Editted because the former post made no sense]

I am being driven batty by thoughts I cannot stop. Really kinda sucks.  I dunno what Im gonna do. Ignore it, I guess. Thats about all I can do. Or get a labotomy, but that seems a tad extreme. Yah... Oh well, I'll survive. 

God I love this town! I am here, in Miami FL, for a week on spring break. No, its nothing crazy, as I'm with my dad. But still. I am having an amazing time. I spent all of yesterday on Fort Lauderdale beach, and got nice and crispy burnt. No seriously. You could fry an egg and some bacon on my chest right now. (AND NO ALOE! sob)

Oh well. I am having a great time, and can't wait to move down here in the fall for school. Yeah FIU! ^___^ (Yes, I am pleased with myself. Don't mind me.)

    As I seem prone to do, I have one again fallen off with keeping up a blog. Not that anyone actually reads this, right? Since my last (real) post, a lot has happened. Funny thing, everytime i think "Damn, that would make a great blog post!" I never get around to actually writing it. I am strange. Anyway, to make this feel like less of a "Come back" post, I'll focus on my job. And whatever else I feel like ranting on.

    My job. Ugh, I am really starting to hate it. Not because of what I do, I still like that, but simply because everyone in the office seems to look down at me and they give me absolutly no respect. Its enough to make me want to start breaking shit. Or quitting. Either would be extremely satisfying. They don't dislike me, but just think I am retarded or something. No, seriously. Four months up in Customer Serivice and they are still asking me "Do you know how to do this?". Gr. But what really burned me lately was my bitchy co-worker Lori telling everyone in the office that I didn't have a clue as to what I was doing,a nd that they should take an extra long time closing with me and make sure I knew what I was up to. Bitch! God, I know all of that. I may screw up once in a while but who doesn't? Damnit, I hope she gets promoted to Co-Manager, and moved to a new store. Someplace far, far away from me.

    On that note, it seems like we are going to have a pretty high turn over rate in the office in the next six months or so. Lauren (whom I love) and Lori (discussed above) both applied for Co-Manager positions, and both will probably get it. Angie is probably going to transfer to a store closer to Arnold or Fenton, because she lives down that way. I am leaving for college in August, and maybe quitting sooner then that. And Meghan already quit, because her full-time job and Shop N Save's hours just didn't jive. So, we're probably going to need some new office checkers. yay. And if they bring Jody (this annoying as all hell guy) up to office, I swear to you, the Blogosphere, I will quit at the end of the school year. There are a few people who I think would make a great addition up front, but who are not "ready" yet. Like Cindy. I love this woman. She is sweet, intelligent, and level headed. But, she just started working in Shop N Save in the last few months, so apparently, she needs to "train as a checker". Bah, crap on that. I went straight from Video to the Office, with no time as a checker. -sigh- But oh well. I'm not a manager, and have no control over these situations. I just gotta deal with them. Typical.

    Well that turned into a big blob of text... Oh well. I have more I want to blog about, but I'll type that fun little event up later. Til then, Take care!!

Normally, I am above crude humor that makes no sense. But this is just too damn good to resist. Today on the way back from lunch, Anne Marie was pissed about some slut that was hanging all over everyone (She was really just jealous that she isn't allowed to do such things. But anyway) And was spouting off the phrase "Smelly whore" every few moments. So I told her to smack the slut. Smack a Smelly Whore day was born.

So, my dear brethern, take your open palm and take vengence upon the foul debauchery that offends your senses and SMACK THAT SMELLY WHORE!! Haha, I've been laughing about that all day. +2 for humor in my day.