a well thought-out poem

dear side window on facebook
that tells me who's online and who's not
you're a douchebag
love, lau

catch 22

if you're gonna die at some point, why do it now? 
if you're gonna die anyway, why not do it now? 


end it all because you're not worth it. you're not worth it because you want to end it all. 


work to get money to pay for anti-depressants. be depressed because of shitty job. 


study to get better job that pays more. be in endless debt because of school. 


take pill to kill anxiety. have anxiety because you take too many pills. 




is that what catch 22 means? i never really understood the concept. 




i wrote a letter no one will receive. it talks friendship and family and poison and acid. that's it. i think that's all i wanted to say. goodbye now. the story has no beginning so this is in the middle. it serves no purpose it has no grammar. tonight i woke up my mother because i was crying too hard. she made a point to say that *her* mother never came to soothe her. it's all about me. i took four pills one two three four. my ego and wrists hurt from last night. there are just different levels of sadness between you two. she will never understand. i opened the window and debated with my mother about the possibility of me dying or of me breaking my back. we didn't reach a consensus. the scissors are hidden somewhere in the bed and only one person in the world could find them. she lives in paris. i vomited some chocolate pudding. i closed facebook. i need the attention. i opened facebook i need the attention. my toes curl in worry. no new messages, no new emails no new calls no new. no oxford comma, i said no grammar. can you please not show up in my dreams anymore? it makes being alive exhausting. It needs to be a solid block just a bit mor. it's too hot under this sweater. tears work better than makeup remover. just grow the fuck up laura these are teenager problems. get the fuck on with it. are you actually kidding me? it's been 10 fucking years let it go. i have an alcohol problem. a man i just met told me i should go to a a. i have a food problem. a man i just met told me i am anorexic. i have a drug problem. the man i just met didn't say anything because when he asked if i did any drugs i lied. i also lied that i came that day, i didn't but i was tired and honestly you were not doing such a good job. i am 10 kilos lighter than a year ago. eating makes me want to throw up and punch people in the face. food is medicine. how do you say that in swedish? her poems are better than mine. i mean  i get it how could you love all this crazy ^^? clonazepam dries tears <3 

10:50

The past couple of nights I have done something really stupid. I take this drug, Ambien, to get to bed. It used to make me giddy and write really amazing psychedelic stuff. Now it makes me go online and talk to people. About things no one should ever hear. In the morning (more like mid-afternoon amirite?) I hardly remember saying any of the things I said. I read over my conversations and I am horrified. 


Two nights ago I confessed to the boy that I was feeling a little suicidal. Ugh, no one should ever deal with that crap except the blog and the therapist. But I was indeed thinking about my scarves, and where I could hang them from. You know, logistics. But there are no poles in my house. 7 stories, blood on the carpet. Everyone knows I do it for the attention everyone knows I don't really mean it, right?


I also shared an idea I had for a video essay, which at that moment sounded like the most ground-breaking idea ever. It was something about writing fake suicide notes every night and recording the process for about a week and taking drugs, or some shit. How self-centered is THAT? Says the girl writing a personal blog.


I got two job interviews in the next two days. I have friends. I'm not pregnant. My belly is not full of hot air and sadness like those children's from those dusty countries. I conserve all my teeth and there are two computers in the house. Still today all I ever did was restrain myself from carving my heart out with rusty scissors. I stopped once it started stinging. 


Tomorrow I am going to wake up early and feel better. Tomorrow I am going to wake up early and feel better. Tomorrow I am going to wake up early and feel better. Tomorrow I am going to wake up early and feel better. Tomorrow I am going to feel better. Tomorrow I am going to feel better. Tomorrow I am going to feel better. 

pretty much the exact opposite of this:

crime scene


at first, when i am full, through my salty eyelashes
there is promise of a big finish
and our bodies found inside a black, charred room
but then i am a coward
and my skin won't break
and i don't say a word
my body isn't mine any more
the firemen and police won't know
that i dug and you buckled
but the blood never came
no autopsy will show the scars
my legs flicker while you turn back

Giving up... not! (WUI: Written Under the Influence)

It's hard to give up on something you weren't really trying to get in the first place. I have been in Uruguay for a year and I still have the shitty job I got when I first got here, the one I don't really enjoy, I'm not particularly good at, and, most of all, does not pay good at all. And why? Because I didn't try. If I am to be honest with myself, I didn't try in the States, either. I didn't try to stay. I knew it would be incredibly difficult, and, I just... don't like to work hard. 

This was not a problem during college and high school because I had no responsibilities, and homework is not hard. But I lack drive. I am one of those in the I generation, I guess, the ones who think everything will be handed to them.

via

But no one is going to give me a job. Not if I don't try. But, what if I try and still no one gives me a job? I feel like in Uruguay no one is willing to let you in based on your potential talent. Which is all I have, potential. I have nothing to show, nothing created, just bits and pieces that might indicate that one day I'll be an ok writer.

he's the character from The Simpsons I relate to the most

And my blog doesn't help shit. First off, it's in English. Also, the blog is about things that happen (or happened) in my life, and, let's face it, I am 24! There's only, like, five 24-year-olds in the world who have important lives. The rest of us don't have “stuff” in our lives yet. I have no great advice, because nothing has ever happened to me. I have no great stories because I am mostly too drunk to remember them.

So, do I just give up? It's frightening the frequency with which you think about throwing yourself out the window, even if they wouldn't call you “depressed” per se. I am not absolutely depressed. I am not staring at the scissors trying to decide if someone will notice the scars there or not. But the thoughts are still real. I'm chucking it to the disease, that slimy brown rat whose rotten teeth are stuck somewhere in my brain.

The drugs make it better, of course, but nothing, I am sadly realizing, will ever take the rat and extract its teeth.

Between the height of my building and my fragile bones, I would definitely die, but only if I jump head first. I have calculated this, just in case, to make things easier to myself, in case...

But no, you don't do that, not to your mother and your best friend. Not when you at least know that you want to be a writer. You want to be a writer! HI, epiphany, where have you been!

happy dreams!

First part: start writing stories, because, as we have established before, nothing has ever happened to you, ever, and no one is interested in your comfortable non-poor, not-under-a-terrible-dictator life. So, stories, about Gene and Carla and Jenni and Maria, about the things that you wish would happen to you because your soul is so twisty and dark that you actually wish for the drama and when your boyfriend cheats on you, you plan the dialogue and he's going to be so sorry he did it and feel guilty you're not even crying because you want to be strong. So, these blueprints for a perfect breakup or meeting a celebrity can be used with a higher purpose: stories not about you. 

Who will ever read them? Who knows, but, fanfiction is proof that people will literally read ANYTHING.

So, give up after? After you have spent 10,000 hours writing. Clock them. Start with one or two a day. Get a job that lets you write. Go to school were you write scholarly papers about Lacan and The Avengers.Write until it becomes your full-time job and the keys of your mac no longer show letters because of the acid in your finger sweat. 

emo is cool

MEN I WOULD GO STRAIGHT FOR: IT'S ALL ABOUT HEATH

In honor of my recent foray into straight world, I thought I would start a regular thing: a list of dudes that make my lady parts happy and would drag me deeper into the underbelly of non-gayness. It's pretty fucked up.

THE DUDE:

At the very top of my list there is one. There has always been one, ever since my poor, confused hormones starting cart-wheeling up and down my body. And that dude is Heath Ledger.

Pretty much, all captions for his pictures should be: "kjhszmq;lmubecojihlkdjsh, ow my ovaries".

Ever since I randomly caught 10 Things I Hate About You on cable, my heart flips every time I see his beautiful, beautiful face. This was the beginning of my bad boy (and girl) syndrome. Fret not, I also fantasized plenty about Julia Stiles. I printed tens of pictures of the both of them and covered my closet door with them (sign number 768 for my mother of my budding bisexualism).

But Heath was special. He was so hot and devilish. This was also the time I began to understand and speak English in ernest; I began to distinguish accents. And holy crap, his accent! His voice! Uggggghhhhhhhhh.

Yes, yes I have. 

Then, I watched every Heath Ledger movie I could get my hands on: I scoured the TV guide and the internet. I watched Two Hands, an Australian crime movie he did before he was famous in the States (I actually highly recommend it, it's really good). I watched A Knight's Tale, which I kind of recommend, if only to watch two of the most beautiful people in the world together (Hello, Shannyn Sossamon). 

(Also, fun fact, that movie introduced me to David Bowie. No joke. Also, Paul Bethanny and Whedonite Alan Tudyk are in it).

I watched Candy, with Geoffrey Rush and Abbie Cornish, a depressing story about a once-lovely heroin-addicted couple. I watched Brokeback Mountain. No explanation needed. If you haven't watched that film, you should. Now. Like, literally, stop reading and go watch it. It's gorgeous. And it's also the film with which I realized the Academy Awards are full of shit – it lost best picture to fucking Crash.

Jack Fucking Twist, you sonofabitch.

I watched I'm Not There and The Something or Another of Doctor Parnassus (I cannot be bothered to look up the name – the movie was ruined by the other actors who tried to act like him).

And I watched The Motherfucking Dark Knight. FACKEN WHATTTTTT. He was a genius. Homie literally never picked a lame project. I read that his first job was in an Australian soap opera (bear with me) playing an openly gay teen. He was 16 at the time.

lol

Still fuckable.

And then he up and died. I remember I was on vacation from my first year in college, watching TV at home when the news came up that he had died. I actually cried. And I cried again when his father accepted his Oscar the following year. I honestly think about his death regularly, and get legitimately bummed out. What a fucking loss.

THE LESBIAN APPEAL:

Well, when I first saw him he had longish hair, so there's that. He kind of dressed like a boi would. His name is really cool, albeit a little fake-sounding. Dimples. He also was pro-gay (I'm assuming, given his choices in characters), which is a turn-on. He liked strong, intelligent, awesome ladies (Naomi Watts and Michelle Williams are living proof... I am hoping the Mary-Kate Olsen rumors are not true). And this:

WHAT I WOULD LIKE TO DO WITH (TO?) HIM:

Provided he weren't dead, I would like to go camping with him to Montana in the summer. He could be the Ennis to my Jack. We would make love and I'd make him eggs in the morning. We could wear matching plaid shirts. Then we would get back to the city cause I can't take that shit for long. We would live in a swanky loft apartment in the LES and be friends with Vivianne Westwood and Michael Stipe.

FAVORITE INCARNATION:

Heath, I wish I knew how to quit you.   

exercise in drunk writing -- excuse the spelling and grammar errors

Hey, you know what Hemingway said about drunk writing? Something like “Write drunk, edit sober”?

Well, I'm skipping that last part, yo.

Today I had DEEP conversations about FEAR and the FEELS with two of my best friends in the world. We talked about me, mostly, which is uncomfortable, but sometimes, it needs to happen. I am most happy when I talk about someone else, when I try to fix someone else's life. But seeing as my life was the most fucked up of the three, it was my turn.

We talked about Sweden and how scared I am. And how I “totally shouldn't be because you're awesome”. My friends are great, but their validation, though extremely nice, does nothing to inflate my ego, currently resembling the deflated plastic bags bag-ladies carry around when asking for money in the street.

also, choosing pictures while drunk may result in lots of "pic unrelated" captions. 

I need to, you know, believe in myself and shit. Which is hard. And I don't like hard things. And thus I leave you with a stream-of-consciousness poem, written drunk (and high off Ambien) and NOT to be revised in the sober future because fuck that. Editorial responsibility is for print.

A late-night text: “Asleep?”

No verb, no subject, no me

“No”, but I was expecting more

I never catch you staring at me

and it's actually annoying when you're not touching my skin

like right now

a thousand almost-liquid fabrics: sheets, clothes, blankets

that t-shirt you forgot last night

(or maybe it was last week)

but no fingers lifting up my shirt

strategically worn so you would feel there was

nothing between us

But I know we could:

osmosis through our skin

water and perfume and the smoke of an incense stick

held by a white Buddha

this is a schiele drawing, and the gif i made by myself. talent.

april in 1000 words or less.

There have been many changes and things that have happened or I have done since the last time I wrote anything. They are so intertwined that it's hard to start somewhere, so I'm just going to start with one throughout and explain EVERYTHING in between. 

There are some people in this world that are just not designed to learn a language. I very recently started a new job. Well, a new side of the teaching thing. Last week the institute that I work for offered me a deal where I would travel to Paysandu, a small city in the countryside of Uruguay and teach there. I would travel Sunday night and come back Thursday night. I would be teaching students from two different private companies. I would stay in either a company house or a hotel. The money was good, so I said yes. Not without reservations, mind you. Several things kept me from making a decision faster. For example, I have started dating someone new with exciting body parts (i.e., he's a boy. I will come back to this "detail" later) and it kind of sucks to be apart from the person that you like for so many days a week. But, money. Also, Paysandu is pretty far from Montevideo and I didn't know anyone there (still don't, no one worthwhile, at least). 

                    




                   But the main reason I didn't want to go is because I am very depressed. Despite the relative ease of my life, how little I have to worry about starving and/or my family dying because of suicide bombers or mass murderers, despite the fact that I am not terribly deformed, starving, or stupid, I feel like shit. Despite the people who say love me/like me/miss me, I am a worthless piece of crap with poopie on top. Why I feel this way will be the eternal mystery till the end of my days. Anyway, I mostly feel scared and very extremely astonishingly not ready to: 

                                           move to Sweden in a couple of months. I was awarded a place in the University of Stockholm's Master Film program. Pretty fancy, eh? Well, I am unprepared and fooling everyone. I so don't feel ready to live in a country where I don't know anybody, learn a new language from scratch, study in GRAD SCHOOL (when, let's face it, I barely made it through college), find an apartment, and get a job that pays me enough to support myself entirely. This is not high school or college, children. This is real life. Yes, I would love to study film in Sweden and be independent, but, will I love that more than sleeping and food? Who knows. My money (?? haha money) is on "not so much". Will I be able to wake up on time, go to work for 8 hours, go to class, study, write, cook, eat, have a social life? eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee is the only sound my brain makes when I think about all of this too hard. 

HOWEVER, money. Because Sweden. So, I said yes to the job. And right now, I am on a bus on my way *back* from my first week as a small-town English teacher. And let me tell you, there are people who cannot possibly ever learn a new language. I have this one group, right, comprised mostly of mechanics and field workers. All men.

                      I, as a 24-year-old girl (woman?) who spent three years of her life surrounded only by women and loving it, feel kind of uncomfortable in a room full of men. But I do NOT let it show. In fact, it kind of fuels a strong sense of power, and I am much more domineering and strict with the men than with the women. HAHALOL. Now, in the last, like, month, my views on male/female relationships have changed drastically. To be more exact, the relationship of me, Lau, a womangirl, vis a vis the MENFOLK have changed a lot because I

                                           


                                              started having sexy (and other) times with a member of the penis-having party. Yes, omfg, giggle snort, this is ridiculous. I found a boy I like and I am keeping him. I have sex with him and I like it. Don't tell my Smith friends. I still consider myself a lesbian, my identity and political self have not changed. I just happen to now like *A* weener. I really cannot say much more about it, because the whole deal is semi hush hush, semi not. 

                      But obviously this fact has had an impact on my views of men. It's weird now kind of thinking: "Oh, you are a guy, I touch one of you." I don't know, it's all very teenagery and weird, but real nonetheless. And it definitely changed something in me that I cannot pinpoint. More on this later. 

me and the people I'm attracted to. 

Back to the people incapable of learning a language. I supposed I'm being an extreme bitch when I say this, but it's true. And, unfortunately, (and even bitchier of me), the people in this below-zero level of English course are all, as I mentioned, mechanics or field workers. Some of them haven't finished highschool. Some of them haven't even reached 10th grade. Why is it so hard for them to understand? Is it them? Is it their fault? Is it because they decided to drop out of school? Did they even make that decision themseles or was it something bigger? Is it society's fault? Is it the fault of a flawed education system designed during the Uruguayan dictatorship in the 70s? Is it my fault?

                       Fuck no, I'm a great teacher. 

Who knows but the issue remains that in the past three days I have witnessed some truly incredible lack of synapses. Only language teachers know how frustrating it is to repeat a word, in one case, "give", so many times, and I am talking literally 40 or 50 times, and getting "bep" in return. Over and over and over again. And again. I highly doubt some of these people will be able to learn *anything* if they cannot even emulate sounds. When I asked them where the verb of a sentence was (in Spanish, of course, we are not into such sophisticated language as "what" or "is" yet), I was answered with blank stares and a bit of corner-mouth drool. 

I remember when I was in high school or middle school here, in Spanish class, the teacher could  not make the rest of the students understand what a verb was. And like, she was trying. So what the fuck can you do with that? People in Uruguay often say we are one of the better educated countries in Latin America or whatever, but the level of stupidity in this country says otherwise. And it's not sheer ignorance, either, it's the lack of will to learn. I remember middle school man. My classmates went out of their way NOT to learn. Our teachers were smart. We had text books. The assholes even showed up for class. It's like they were proving something by showing up and not learning. When did knowing things become so devaluated? 

But there is one thing I noticed about my stupid (Is that too harsh? Eh, whatever, it's not like they're ever going to read this) students. They laugh a lot more than my other students, and a hell of a lot more than myself. So maybe they have something there.