Advice for Your College-Age Bullies.

Don't fight back when mean girls punch you at parties.
No, no one said your name miss, especially not me.
But since when do drunk ears hear what was actually said?
Logic be damned when pride is at play.
In the same vein, don't yell back when sad girls blame you for their boyfriends being shitty.
Whether or not you knew matters not when the accuser's just so desperate.
She's a doe attacking a Grizzly, and you have to admire that sort of feigned courage, at least.
Maybe no one's ever talked her through handling these things?
But be ready for later, when truth of your genuine concern and attempted consolation are relayed out as straight bitchiness.
Stay proud of the fact you didn't ask her if she knew who else he'd been sleeping with.

Just know, it's not your job to make karma happen.
It's not your job to flawlessly navigate every social situation.
All that can be done is to make your life fun,
The very thing fighting back isn't.

Don't yell at cops as they write you fascist tickets.
Point two after a twelve hour shift was well earned.
But since when has the law stood to reason?
Apparently a uniform makes one inherently more moral than others.
But vocalizing that won't get you home to your bowl any faster.
A month and a half, per tenth of a gram is more than a ridiculous probation.
It genuinely hurts loosing your green best friend, but take to civil action.
It gets more done than calling judges assholes.
While you're in court, the pig will pull your parents outside and tell them how you work at The Gold Club,
Attempt to not loathe his guts.
When he blackmails you to quit, just spend all your new time reassuring your mom you didn't strip.
Instead of acting on the entirely warranted desire to punch him in the dick.

Because It's not your job to make karma happen.
It's not your job to flawlessly navigate every legal situation.
All that can be done is to make your life fun,
The very thing fighting back isn't.

If it took twenty years to admit insecurity's hold on your life, maybe it takes someone longer?
Assuming you're the last to learn everything makes your temper towards ignorance shorter.
There's nothing wrong with giving yourself credit for growth, it's wrong to not help other's find it in themselves.
Punching Lacy back won't teach her the futility of violence.
Nor will losing your patience with Megan teach her some girls are level-headed.
Sergeant Hoyt will enforce laws even if he sees them harmful.
And he'll hang on to his power over the public only as long as we allow him to.
Because all hurtful acts are grasping at straws, by people who've needed help all along.
It's this weird, deep-seeded need for validation through a response to a punch or a phone call or a ticket.
Any reciprocation of hostility shows, that theirs might have been acceptable all along.
And you become not a person, but their proof humanity's all wrong.

It's not your job to make karma happen.
It's not your job to flawlessly navigate every fucking situation.
All that can be done is to make your life fun,
The very thing fighting back isn't.

All that can be done is to make yourself one,
With the people who want the division.

-Grizabella

An Uncomfortable Whiskey Wednesday.

  I'm weird cause of the nostalgic drugs. I'm weird cause of your overly ecstatic hugs, and how pumped you were about lunch. I sulked in the other room, became releived by tragic news aka a new reason to excuse how uncomfortable this Whiskey Wednesday was.

-Griz

Fred, You're in a Technology Loop.

I don't wanna think the way I talk.
Today's supposed to be about help,
And I'll I've done is play on my phone, get stoned and wish you'd come home to me.
Cause I've missed you for days, about 87 or so, and it's doing no good not letting this go.
But the Instabitch holds memories meant for the world.
So I'll reflect, reassess, and try to reconnect what those moments really meant,
Without the eyes of my admirers not solving puzzles no one wanted them to get.
But technology's dull comfort is laughably present in a girl's life who resents it's existence.
You just think you're some type of Renaissance Queen.
You think you're fucking rad and the means to your ends will always be clean
So long as they're bathed in justifications for a disgusting lifestyle.
Take a shower every now and again.
The future isn't your downfall.

-Alyssa Anne

On the Self-Hatred Which Accompanies Literary Melancholy.

  I haven't written anything of consequence publicly since 2009. The shame a writer feels when silent is unconquerable. Though, amusing, since one who believes in the importance of writing does so because it's despondency's antithesis. Yet the type prone to prose parrots their parents failings, through projecting only onto art, as their only children, only negligence.

  You see, the clock is not circular but constantly stretching it's hands, always close to reaching the pen from which it could start documenting time and therefore validating it. But to dissect your ability to affect change from the lazy river in which you're cyclically floating would rile up the water a little and I'm pretty sure your hair is the most important part of today. So don't worry about it.

  Well, until you find yourself with no tether to any former you. If you happen to be someone you hate (which I'm not) then you might hate reading about yourself (which I don't think I would.) But also, if you're a person you hate (which I think I'm becoming) then maybe you should have read more about yourself as a villain (which I still won't.) From there, it's only learning to take down an adversary, and that's basically all I can do (though I really don't.)

  And when self-betterment is ruled out as enough motivation, what's left is just art. It's the desire to see beauty and point it out. I googled poetry and it spoke exclusively of intensity. And of intensity, I have no shortage. But if that intensity is satisfyingly internalized, or expressed to be consumed, which is nobler? As the tree falls in the woods, is a poetic mind within itself heard? Or is duty, to use a word that makes me laugh, to a hypothetical listener enough reason to speak?

  Recognition is a dirty word that drains us. It fuels the saddest amongst us: our celebrities, our politicians, our reality show chefs and our louder acquaintances. And recognition, our expletive, suffocates the saddest author I've ever been. Approval is not friendship as well as respect does not equal love. Documenting the things I know to show the people I love means that I want their money or their admiration, which I do. So where then, is any honor in the life of one who wants to live by helping people live as themselves?

  I can't (but I can) make myself write every day. I want someone to listen but not everyone and my head's been too globalized to grasp less. This has been the most satisfying typing I've had in forever, so there must be something here. I feel like I stumbled on a small spot of grass I used to lay on in the woods. I can lay around and sing, maybe some birds or hikers will hear a bit, but no one's being forced to. This is all I want.

  I smoke to die.

-Grizzly Goldman

To watch the sun grow old and fade away.

  So this weekend i went to the beach. Some parts of the beach weren't fun at all. Such as my friend whom i went with, ignoring me for her boyfriend the whole time. But that doesn't matter to me. Some of the best times I've ever had were by myself. I do pretty well on my own. But that doesn't mean i didn't want some friends with me.

  Sometimes i honestly worry about myself. I dream too much. I convince myself that every impossibility in the world is not a problem, but just a minor setback. 

   

  I sat on the beach in the morning by myself, and watched the sun rise. I got angry at the horizon for being where it was and strained my eyes to see over that place where the water meets the sky. I wondered what i would see if i could make a split between the two. If the water and the sky were to break apart at the horizon, which i made myself believe was not an optical illusion, i might see some sort of other world. Or heaven. Or hell. Whatever may lie beyond what is here and now.

  I sat on the beach in the afternoon by myself, in the blazing sunlight, and was completely conscious of the lack of interest this held for my skin. The sun doesn't affect my skin. It's paleness has always been, and probably will always be, my constant color. Even though i didn't use any sunblock the entire weekend. 

  I watched everyone on the beach playing volleyball, or laying out, or splashing each other in the waves and i felt very disconnected. I sat on the edge of the water and made a drip castle with the sand onto my leg so that it wouldn't be washed away by the waves that just barely reached me. I thought about how cute that little drip castle was and how it looked like the castle in "The Little Mermaid." I kept wishing that being a mermaid were possible, because the ocean is so beautiful, and that small drip castle was so lovely that it deserved to be real. 

  I laid in the dry sand and felt its millions of tiny grains coating my hair, as the sun was nearly set. I was absentmindedly doodling something in the sand next to me while i quietly sang "New Year" by Death Cab for Cutie. Only upon looking at the actual sand in which i was writing, did i notice i had been tracing Simon's name. I continued singing Ben Gibbard's lyrics to myself and stumbled upon a few lines that went "I wish the world was flat like the old days, when i could travel just by folding the map. There'd be no airplanes or speed trains or freeways, there'd be no distance that could hold us back," and laughed about how appropriate those words are. I imagined to myself that if i could just wish hard enough, then i wouldn't be watching the most beautiful sunset of my lifetime, alone.

  Then it was nighttime. It was much past midnight and the sun was dead and gone, not to be resurrected till morning and the moon and the stars in its place. The heat of the day was forgotten as a wind blew over my face, and made the sand just barely dance up in acknowledgement of its presence. I thought about where i was, and who i was with, and my friendships, and my family, and my relationship, and who i am as a person, and i thought about the things that would last, and the things that i wish would last, and the things that won't. 

  

  The night ended and i eventually left the beach. Because a night can't last forever. Just like my friend and I got in a fight and have drifted since, as not all friendships last forever. 

  But the sun came up on that next day, and i saw my family again. The night was beautiful without the sun, and my trip away from home was a pleasant one, but i was happy to see the sun, and my parents, again. They won't always be there, bearing down on me, but neither the sun nor my family are ever truly gone, i just won't always see them. 

  The night and the day both past, and always i had my love. So far away from me but still so constant, until one day when the space between disappears, and every hour and every day and every night will creep on and mean nothing to me, because i won't have anything to lose to that steady procession of days. Because i won't be alone to watch them.

  

  And as for who i am as a person? I suppose i don't fully know yet. But i hope I'll have time to find out.

  And until then, I'm perfectly content to spend my time contemplating all the impossibilities. 

-Alyssa

  

I smoke to die

  You blog to get out your thoughts and have them public. I blog to get my thoughts out and have them ignored.

  So excuse the way I write. I don't use big words or a silly style of writing to sound smart. Actually, it's quite the opposite. 

  I happen to NOT be smart and I'd prefer if my writing reflected that.

kthxbai

-Alyssa

  P.S. nobody brought this up. I was just thinking it.

  P.P.S. I TOTALLY split the infinitive in the sixth sentence. Get over it.

Late-night blogging takes me in some weird places

So as i lay here in a strangers bed, having just watched "A Walk to Remember" and sobbing my eyes out, i have two thoughts.

First, i desperately miss my boyfriend. And secondly, why do old people work out?



You are probably wondering how on earth i came to these two realizations. Well I'll start from the beginning.


I live in Florida, as many of you know. But my extended family all live in South Carolina. I'm on spring break right now so my mother decided to go pay my family a visit.

I have other friends that live in South Carolina, though. So whenever i come up here to visit i make sure that i see all my friends here. Which puts me, in this very *insert adjective here* of nights, in one Erin Greene's house. It's her aunts house and so i have absolutely no idea where i am.


The night started late, as i was out to dinner with my family and had no plans to see Erin. But i got a call from her halfway through dinner asking if i could sleep over tonight. Given that i had the word of my cousin, promising he would drive me, i promptly agreed.

Although, unfortunately, we got lost on the way to her house. So she met me in a "Kangaroo Express," a gas station only a short drive from her current residence. As i waited for her to come get me, i ventured into said gas station and purchased my favorite: a gigantic blue slushie and three different packs of skittles. I add this, not for continuity's sake, or in the hopes that you will read this and perhaps buy me some of my favorite gas station snacks, but because of sheer need for documentation; as it happened to be a lovely night and i enjoyed every bit of the aforementioned skittles and slushie.



Back to the story. Erin then picked me up and informed me that we would need to go to her local walmart to get a sippy cup for her young sister (who is adorable by the way.) We also decided on a two liter bottle of voltage mountain dew and a cosmopolitan magazine.

After being (quite creepily) followed around the store by an older man, we got the security guards to watch us as we ran to the car and made sure that this older man was not anywhere in our vicinity. Then we went back to her house for a fun-filled night of watching "A Walk to Remember," playing little kid board games, babysitting her younger sister, and eating lots of junkfood.

But now Erin is asleep. And I'm left to contemplate the sadness that consumes me everytime i remind myself of how far away my love is. For those of you who don't now, my boyfriend is incredible. And he lives many many thousands of miles away :( i miss him more than you could know.
Of course "A Walk to Remember" would make me want to be near him. But sadly that's impossible right now. But to quote him "aw love, I don't want you to be sad. Okay I'm also sad sometimes but the fact that I know you love me and I know I love you, that's enough to make my day." I hope he doesn't mind that i used what he said.

About my second thought though, why do old people work out? I always see them coming in and out of weight watchers meetings and working out by walking around town or all sorts of other things. I asked a nice old woman (who i know very well) why she did this. And she told me that it was because she wanted to skinny and look good.
.....I'm sorry, but i work out and eat healthy because it makes me look good in my bikini. I don't care how fit you are, if you're over 60 you aren't going to look good in that. I'm not trying to be rude or insensitive but those are just my thoughts.

Ok, time for bed. Love you all!

-Alyssa


P.S. ughh. my intternet quit last night but luckily blogspot is a wonderful thing that totally saved everything i wrote. thats why its going up now and not last night.