Your Smile On Fire

...from the song Xavia

on the move

I often seperate my life, if I haven't told you before, into the BEFORE and AFTER. Before the move. After the move. The move is the defining event though. So it makes sense that many of the quotes I have would relate to that.

 

And here they are. The moving quotes:

 

I vaguely hoped that someone would come up and talk to me. I imagined the conversation:

     "Hey. Is this your first year?"

     "Yeah. Yeah. I'm from Florida."

     "That's cool. So you're used to the heat."

     "I wouldn't be used to this heat if I were from Hades," I'd joke. I'd make a good first impression. Oh, he's funny. That guy Miles is a riot.

      That didn't happen of course. Things never happened like I imagined them.

from LOOKING FOR ALASKA

 

Jamie giggled, "Yeah, I guess homesickness is like sucking your thumb. It's what happens when you're not very sure of yourself."

from FROM THE MIXED-UP FILES OF MRS. BASIL E. FRANKWEILER

 

They looked shallow, self-absorbed. And a small, strangled part of me envied them.

from SCRIBBLER OF DREAMS

 

It acted as a kind of pacifier in moments like these. A reminder that wherever I went, I was still me.

from I WAS A NON-BLONDE CHEERLEADER

 

It didn't feel like my world. It felt more like a dream. Something temporary.

from BRUNETTES STRIKE BACK

 

Carmen didn't like change and she certainly didn't like endings.

from THE SECOND SUMMER OF THE SISTERHOOD

 

The memories have become fuzzy around the edged, as all of them do, glorified in a process that began the moment we stepped onto the plane, away from the messy success of finding ourselves.

from RED

 

I've wrote a lot about the move. In emails to friends, in my journal, in word documents printed up and folded and hidden. I always think - like with a few other things in my life - that I'm done writing about it. That this is it. I'm really done this time. But there are some things, things like the move for me, parents' divorce for others, the breakup of a relationship for some, that are so huge and so defining and so momentous that as much as you go over it... it never really seems over.

     When I moved I would have thought it would be the first year that would be difficult. Getting settled. New school, new group of people, new neighborhood. But it didn't happen like that. Three years (or close enough) later and I still feel "in transition" in some ways. Except now the slate isn't quite so blank. I've gone through friends, forging new friendships that deflated like a balloon when you let it go before tying it. It's gotten to the point where I look around and I don't see anyone that I haven't tried (and failed) at being friends with. Some of the friendships never got off the ground, some briefly (very briefly) soared, some sort of faltered all along. And now I have all these histories with people. Guys I used to like, girls I remember hanging out with once or twice, social events where I didn't exactly make the best impression. And on and on.

    

Don't mistake this for a pity post, because it's not. It's just me, musing about the move. (Which, for some odd reason, I keep spelling MOVIE. Weirdness.) But I have thought maybe there's something wrong with me? Like something in me incapable of keeping friendships alive, incapable of actually making friends?

     But that can't be it, can it? Because I'm capable of making friends. Really I am. Why not here though? Is it because I am inherently un-socal? Is it because I have nothing to contribute to conversations of hair dye and makeup? It's not because the first time I heard someone say they wanted to work at the Mac counter I DIDN'T EVEN KNOW WHAT THEY MEANT... is it? I mean, seriously. Those are pretty weak and pathetic reasons. And I KNOW not everyone here is the same. So why does it seem like it? Why does it seem like there's one mold for everyone else in my geographic location and then another mold for me? And worst of all, what if it's not about where I live? What if I'm just a cynical, uggy, WEIRD girl who will never fit in anywhere ever again?

 

Ash's townie idea is looking pretty good right about now. (haha)

Comments

 

jocelynp said:

1) Not being a social butterfly is not a bad thing. 2) Just because you are no social butterfly and not like everyone else doesn't make you unable to make friends! You are totally capable of making friends, and interesting, and unique. I'd much rather talk to you any day than someone to whom makeup or hair dye or clothes or boy bands constitute a great part of brain activity.

Don't feel pressured to conform. Just be you, and that's enough.

March 14, 2008 7:07 PM
 

erikak said:

Okay.

1) THE FIRST PARAGRAPH OF YOUR BLOG MADE ME THINK, HEY, LOOKING FOR ALASKA!!!!!!! (and then I saw your first quote and I was like YESS)

2) Could the Love, Love, Love title of your blog possibly be referring to the Matt White song I was talking about?  Cause that would make me really excited?!!

3) I have formed a hypothesis: if you want to make great art, you have to sacrifice something.  And so, since you're a great writer, maybe extreme social happening-ness is being sacrificed.

Maybe that's just me, but sometimes I feel alienated in my group of friends too.  Like, I'm just really different and not social like they are.  Those writers.  Weird.  Not that I can officially cast myself in that catagory yet.  I think.

That made no sense and I just realized that I copied Jocelynp's format of a list.  Cause she's so supercool!

March 15, 2008 5:33 PM
 

erikak said:

By the way, can you tell I'm majorly procrastinating?

March 15, 2008 5:33 PM
 

jordynt said:

What was the Matt White song again, Erika? I've been meaning to look it up...

And no, the title of my blog is in reference to that Beatles song, All You Need Is Love.

And ick. I don't actually MIND non-social-happeningness sometimes. It's just that sometimes I do. And then other times I don't but I think I SHOULD.

March 15, 2008 5:50 PM
 

erikak said:

Booooo.

Haha.  The song is called "Love" by Matt White. I LURRVE IT!  And I don't have any good recommendations for you book-wise but have you heard Gavin Degraw's new song "In Love With a Girl" or something like that? THAT'S MY NEW FAVORITE SONG!

March 18, 2008 10:20 PM

News

Oct. 15 [going to work soon] [two school essays due; majorly nervous about both] [remember when i wrote that short story where the girl said "majorly" every other WORD practically? ha]