Hurt

i hurt myself today
to see if I still feel
i focus on the pain
the only thing that's real
the needle tears a hole
the old familiar sting
try to kill it all away
but i remember everything...

I have a feeling this is going to get quoted into the ground today but nevertheless, I include it here. Hey, if something works, go with it.

So apparently today is Self-Injury Awareness Day. I didn't know this until I read a post from blueraccoon earlier this morning, and as I hurried into Seelye Hall ten minutes late for class there was a tiny postal box full of lurid orange ribbons and a note in the entryway.

Generally my reaction to this sort of thing is a fairly flip "Oh boy! Another awareness day/week/month! Bet Smith's having a vigil/dinner/panel/dinging/moment of silence/moment of zen/chalking/rave/orgy/ani difranco concert/bake sale about it somewhere, so where and when?" (the ghosts of smithies past best be rolling.) That's just me whistling in the dark, though. Every so often one of these things resonates. This one did.

( And here's where Andee overshares about why. )

I did wind up taking an orange ribbon. It's pinned to my backpack, the traditional place of honor for pride/awareness ribbons and militant ideology buttons. But its there today, for me, and for everybody else out there. And y'alls better appreciate it too - you would not believe how much that ribbon clashes with my purple backpack. Yargh! :)

PS I hate web updating LJ. Luckily I had the foresight to copy and paste this entry into word before I tried to post it, as the browser promptly ate the entry. I don’t think I would have been able to write this again.

head space...

All the personal growth head work I'm sort of doing these days isn't all that effective if no one knows about it.

March is a brand new month with no real mistakes in it yet (though ha, I know myself, give me three more hours). Considering how fantastically wrong February went, I'm now sort of stuck with the very daunting task of fixing what went wrong. I'm catching up in class, but what's starting to stress me even more is the fact that I haven't dealt at all with my financial stupidity and thus haven't talked to my parents in nearly three weeks over it.

I hate this tendency in myself, hate the fact that I have not managed to get beyond it, hate the fact that I find myself in basically the same patterns I was in this time four years ago when I was trying to finish the school thing the first time around. And this time, I'm caught in the middle of something on the side that is holding up a very harsh mirror to myself, showing exactly how much harm you not only do to yourself but to everyone around you when you cut and run instead of dealing head on with whatever shit is going down.

The problem is that after a while it's so much easier to keep running than it is to stop, turn around, go back, and make amends. But it's infinitely better to go back on your own than it is to run until whatever it is catches you. And it always does. And it's always bad.

I think my goal for this month is to work on this. It's got to stop somewhere, somehow.

On another note - I rediscovered the original Jeff Buckley version of "Hallelujah" recently and have been listening to it incessantly. I think I may like it even better than the Rufus Wainwright version, which was beautiful, but this one, just a light, mournful tenor against a single electric guitar with an almost harp like sound to it, recorded with a ton of reverb... it's positively haunting... heartbreaking.

You know...

Here I sit, watching a copy of the video for NIN's We're In This Together and thinking that even though Trent's barreling down on 40 and looking it, he is still majorly t3h hawt for me - I liked how his face was maturing back when this video came out. And damn, but no one else on this earth can scream a love ballad like he can.

There are those that say that Closer is the greatest love song ever written... I don't know about all that, personally, though I love that song. But in terms of actual love songs that rip your heart out of your nose and shove it back into you ear, I definitely prefer We're In This Together.

( lyrics )