I'm frustrated. sexually. emotionally. monetarily. intellectually. to varying degrees, but nutshelled - adverb anything, and I'm probably frustrated in its field. which isn't to say I'm not happy, or that I'm not moving forward, only that I'm frustrated. see, I wouldn't zoom forward to the end of summer or anything, because I feel it's more interesting to live through it. still, there's no denying the frustration.

frustration point uno - what I choose versus what I do, in my parents' eyes. well, moreso my dad's. what I mean: whenever he talks to me, or asks me anything, it's invariably about one of two things: the job I've made up, or the apartment I don't have for next term. he knows I don't have anywhere to live, but the job thing is annoying me. that'll be another whole journal, but for now, let's re-cap: he has never, in living memory, asked about my writing or how that's going or what I'm doing. the only interest he takes in that is the monetary aspect of theoretical grad school, which I suppose is something, albeit a frustrating something. since we had the gay talk many months ago, he's never asked if I'm seeing or dating or sleeping with anyone (okay, the last is excusable, since I probably wouldn't want him to anyway). this is another source of frustration, the least of which is based in the fact that I'm fairly certain I'm seen as a layabout who doesn't do anything useful. then, I tried incorporating those aspects of my life of which he never asks, and I realized, of course! to him, I am an asexual layabout. harsher than his real view, I'm sure, but still a source of frustration. my mom doesn't really get it, either, but I think that's more because she's given up on most everything besides getting through the day, seeing those (*urk*) babies on her job, and finishing the day's sudoku. in a way, my parents *are* good role models: I don't want to end up like them.
my family, as a whole, is even more frustrating. my brothers, when dom isn't working, do exactly two things (seems to be a recurring summer number here): play world of warcraft, and play ping pong. oh, and they eat. honestly, though, they alternate between those two (three) activities from the time they wake up until the time they go to bed. dom does work, but when he comes home, it's time to eat, play warcraft, and then play ping pong. no chance of change. isn't this how the stepfords started?

I suspect this summer that this, in the main, will become a journal of frustrations. there are some happy things, though. for example:

about two weeks (a week and a half? whatever) ago, I "got with" this guy (man) (dude) I'd been interested in for a while, and had (have) talked with since september. it was ... great. I mean, really, best, ever. I wrote a bunch about it, including three poems. I've been workshopping those poems, and I included melyssa in the last batch because, as a person who doesn't write poetry, I thought she'd look at the content rather than the craft, which is what I was hoping for. and lo, she said:
"TONY! Those were gorgeous, I knew you liked him but I had no idea it was that intense."
followed by
"I loved seeing them but I wouldn't send them to him, 'cause it might be kind of creeperish."
too late. I've used him as part of my workshop board on most everything else this year, so why not those? besides, I didn't know they were that intense, either. but now I look at them, and I think, "desire poetry." "infatuation poetry." "obsession poetry." "love poetry." I don't usually get what I'm going for, but in this case, I wasn't going for anything, just for harnessing the emotions that the whole thing caused. so, what? is that love? I certainly like this guy, a lot, but I've learned (am learning) not to project any aspirations onto him. he's a city kid, he's more a cynic than I am, he's leaving around the same time I am, he goes to a different school 100+ miles from both my flag-school and prescott-home, so so so what? but here's the kicker: I know these things, and still I want to try. but try for what? see, that's the problem: I feel like I've learned/been told/have assimilated that there has to be some kind of GOAL. I have to try and groom him (and myself) for boyfriendship or a lifelong committment or whatnot. but why? why can't I just get to know him? I *want* to get to know him, more than I already do. I'd like to see him (which isn't particularly feasible anyway, more than a couple times a month, anyway), talk to him on the phone, discuss any- and everything.
but, if melyssa's intimation is right, and the poems do something to change his mind about me, then that's just foolish. because, really, there isn't a person I would give up writing for, and I know that. hemingway's the one, I think (maybe frost?), who said that if you write well in whatever genre, you're going to lose friends over it, because you have to write them (at least their tics, their idiosyncracies, their whatevers) to make it believable.
so. do I regret talking to him, at whatever time? no. seeing him? no. writing the poems, and letting him see them? no. if I regret anything, it's only that ... no, I guess it's not anything. I would regret not talking/spending time with him again, but I can't regret something that hasn't happened yet, and even if it doesn't, I experienced it, saw what it influenced me for, and would go for doing it again. there are worse things than that, definitely.

I'm coming to think it's better to be gullible.
think about it:
if you call out everything someone says-
'o you don't really like me'
'o you couldn't have done that'
'o you're not that talented'
what reason do they have to tell the truth,
and if they do, what reason do I have to believe it?
but if there's not disbelief, perhaps to gullible,
and even if it's not true, you can just answer
'I believed you'
and unless you're dealing with some hardened ass
or a pathological liar or something
I think it'll do something.
'I believed you.'
and not funny. true.
try.

I remember having all kinds of good thoughts. the having, not the thought. the journalness of the thought, but not its content. and writing this doesn't seem the same.

my dad confirmed it: he wants me to do medical rather than english (in all its esotericity). or, as he put it, "it's not too late to change and do emergency medicine." nice. I mean, maybe it took finding a non-writing interest I expressed actual attraction to to make him say how he really felt. of course, my mum's been against it from the start, but she's only just come around to tell me, "you need to write, and you need to teach, so you need to do this." I'm not sure how much of this is vicarious living, but there it is.

so I'm tooling along on the great grad school search.
I click on a faculty page of a uni that shall remain nameless.
(but is affiliated with the 'och.)
it won't load.
the message it gives me? verbatim?
"too many pages."
meaning is really in everything.

I've been trying to diagnose this weird thing I have/do.

it's like I'm agoraphobic and anti-agoraphobic at the same time. I get stuck with my family and think it's all right because, hey, they're all right and my house is cool and whatnot. I don't need to see people, which is cool because there's not really anyone to see here anyway anymore except melyssa, and I see her when I need to (yesterday for hours, today on the phone for the same [okay, less, I'm not that good of a phone-runner-up]). not much choice in prescott. but, see, I get to this point when I don't see anyone for a couple days when I start to almost-panic because I don't have anyone and, yet, feel afraid of going out to find anyone. how much sense does that make? not a lot to me not a lot to me. but I feel, when it happens, this either clarity or extreme confusion that throws out feelings and thoughts that don't otherwise come. tonight

I made a mistake leaving antioch. I made a mistake coming back to arizona. I mean, I always say that I don't regret it and everything happens for a reason and yada blah whatever, but I'm voicing it now: it was a mistake. two mistakes, actually: leaving antioch, and coming to nau. if I had to leave antioch, and I may have had to, then I should have used the time to find another school that I felt strongly about. do you want to know what my thought process was in coming back? "well, why not? it'll be easy." see, 'cause even then I was thinking about grad school. I mean, I was between sixty and seventy credits by that point, so I figured it would be an easy way to finish. easy. see, that's the key. it would be easy. I wouldn't have to send myself to another school, I wouldn't have to find the money, I wouldn't have to go through recommendations and notes from the dean and whatever the hell else they'd ask for this time. easy, see.

I'm not going all self-effacing now or anything. I don't deny that good things have happened at nau, especially in this last term and (to a lesser degree) the one before it. I mean, when I talk about the a/a-a (agoraphobia/anti-agoraphobia), I think of the posse and parties and whatnot. but is that only because it's been so long since beer train? how many times did I try and start such things out here? three times, I think.

something jeremy said yesterday just struck me, really. something about being twenty-one and having everything open to you. I think the reason it struck me is because I said more or less the same thing to melyssa our last night in mexico. we were walking in the breakers and the moon was mostly full so we could actually see under the water and I was saying something along the lines of while I didn't regret what we did down there, we were all legal and there were clubs and whatnot. why not try? and, see, melyssa and I have had this discussion before, and we've decided (or concluded, I guess) that we don't have fun like most people. wallflowers, maybe. but then I've gone to parties and stuff that have been more *popular*, and I keep remembering that rave [industrial part] of kat's I went to and how much fun I had. I don't think I know myself completely. but there are parts I think I knew, and that was one of them. anyway, in mexico, I put to myself and melyssa, why not do some of those things? why not go to the whatevers in phoenix? the idea scares me, but I never thought I could have fun at the industrial thing either, or the posse parties or the assorted whatevers. I did. so why not something else? being open-minded is a good thing. I still feel like I've just turned 21, because what have I used it for? buying alcohol for the posse. going out with sunny-kristin exactly once. getting a beer at dinner a couple times. the world is open to me, and I haven't used it. I mean, it always has been, but now it is legally. this is rambling. where was I going? oh, right. how am I supposed to make use of it? in prescott? there's nothing. and as sick as I am of saying that, as sick as you are of reading it, I'm sick of it being true. there are bars for old cowboys. period. period, period, period. even in flag, there are bars for the straight college crowd. and this may be explained away through gay nights or I know them all anyway or something, but maybe I'm just determined to dislike flagstaff, too. maybe as much as I enjoy arizona, I need to go somewhere else. where? how, now? I mean, no matter how I slice it, I'm here for a while. I have no money. I have no degree. this is my doing. I chose to stay. I don't regret that, I don't, I don't. okay, new paragraph about regret.

it's a loaded word, no doubt. and I say that I regret leaving antioch. explanation try: accepting the leaving of antioch and coming to nau as neither positive nor negative for the sake of beginning arguments, I don't regret not applying to grad school last fall because I don't think I was ready. I think I've grown a hell of a lot in a short time, and I would be leaps better applying now (and later) than I would've before. but I also feel like I could apply now, but I have no choice but to wait another year. and no matter how I look at it, there's that year. spent at school (which means undergrad, which means nau), spent working, spent at home ... I don't really want any of it. I've overeducated, privileged, pampered, easily reneged upon, and, at the end of the day, a home to nobody but myself. and what will I choose? will it be easy?

as I was driving back from flag for the last time with all my stuff in the back of serenity and my parents driving behind, I was listening and singing to r.e.m. and crying along. damn. I may have been singing to my parents or a thousand different friends or myself or all of the above. anyway, the lines that got me -
"This decision is mine. I have lived a full life
And these are the eyes that I want you to remember.
...
I will try not to burden you.
I can hold these inside. I will hold my breath
Until all these shivers subside,
Just look in my eyes.
I will try not to worry you.
I have seen things that you will never see.
Leave it to memory me. I shudder to breathe."
I don't care what they meant it to be. to me, it was this damn surrender of feeling to what's easy. I'd rather sleep in my old room and its high schoolity because it's beautiful and spacious and the food's paid for and I don't have to go anywhere because, really, where is there to go?

what I really wanted to do was find somewhere I fell in love with. not a rah-rah thing, but something I cared about. something separate from me. I mean, everything that's really core to me is a part of me, even though it can be detached (writing). everything's started in me. I don't get very very close to people or places or things because, at the end, I think, "well, that can be replaced." well, guess what, self? they can't. look at this. look at the antioch thing. I've spent a year and a half trying to make nau replace it, and in the end, it's only succeeded it. antioch wasn't great, but it was a start. I wouldn't be who I was now if I hadn't gone to antioch and then nau, but isn't that stupidly obvious? say I'd gone to antioch and then grinnell or antioch and then sarah lawrence. I hate what ifs, but what if? internally, maybe I'd have missed kathryn and kal and jarin and all of 'em. externally, I certainly wouldn't have met kat and lauren and aly and kyle and sunny-kristin or had the anderson or brooke wonders or dr. gruber or jay or even dan crawley. so. so. SO WHAT? where do I get with all this? I regret but I don't? I regret but I enjoy what I've done anyway? because I do. I DO. so what's the problem? it feels like I've stopped again. even during last semester, when I didn't have enough money to buy food even, I felt like I was moving forward but here in this house in this town if feels like time's stopped and I even forget to take pages off my calendar. that's it, isn't it? it feels like there's no forward motion here, no matter what I do or what I write and I'm not going for anything. but there is. I mean, I think I should live in the moment and all that, but the moment has to lead to another.

I hate having to use money for anything. even, at this point, doing nothing costs money, thanks to my distance from everyone/melyssa and the price of gas. this is also a problem.

so what am I going to get from this? that I haven't gotten already, I mean. keep going forward, because even if the feeling's the same, the circumstances aren't. difference grows.

further to my journal yesterday:

I talked to him about it. evidently, yesterday's status debate is a status of convenience. it is easier, says he, to let this other guy have the in-a-relationship status because it both placates him and also beats off other potential one-night-lookers-for. it makes sense to me, since both juliana and I have done this on satan's website (facebook), both independently and, once, together.

damn it. this kind of makes me like him more.

okay is relative.

see, I've known this guy for close on a year now (nine months?). problem is, he goes to school in phoenix and lives in louisiana. I see him sporadically, at best. and tuesday night, when I was down there seeing my cousin, I got to do everything I've ever wanted to do with him. sexual. nonsexual. postcoital naked talk debate about hemingway. as I told kristin-sunny, such people aren't usual, in my experience. I liked him a lot before. I liked him the first time I saw him. I liked him through words, when I couldn't see him. here's the problem: facebook informs me that, as of about a week ago, he's in a relationship.

once again, okay is relative. but I'm certain this is not okay.

I'm not going to be the other man. his mouth says he likes me a lot, as do his fingers (and I'm talking about words here as well as various sexual opportunances). whilst in the friend stage, he went through a relationship, and I went through whatever the hell those deals were. this is past the friend stage. I like him, if you hadn't gotten that. but what does this say? about him, about me? he sure didn't say anything. am I just one of those people who is utterly iceberged, and that he just wanted to say he slept with me because I'm attractive (he says), no matter what relationship point he was at? does that connote "scummy"?

I usually assume the worst of people. I wish they would stop reinforcing said worst.