smileyjess

i write stupid short entries because then i don't have to think about what i really want to write. because it would never be good enough anyway. as a rule, nothing's ever good enough. the words would mix themselves up and phrases manifest themselves as nothing but meaningless entities. slysdexia would kick in and everything would get misconstrued. i can't write to save my life and the mere thought of the improper selection of terms is enough to freeze my fingers above the black keys with white letters of my laptop. entirely paralysing me, disconnecting my brain, rendering me utterly functionless. worthless. not good enough, as a rule.

this is just further proof that - try as i may - i never properly appreciate the people in my life until they leave me. i'm sorry, i'm trying. really. i just want for you to be happy, and if that involves me in the picture, wonderful. if not, it's just as wonderful because all that matters is your smile.

i keep thinking i'll wake up and things will go back to normal. it takes me about 10 seconds to fully open my eyes and see that things never have been normal.

i have these dreams where i'm trying to find something i've lost. i'm rummaging around, moving furniture, shuffling papers, unpacking and repacking mislabeled boxes, growing frustrated with each failed search and desperate to locate whatever it is that i so carelessly misplaced. i spin around and around in circles going through duplicate motions to no avail.

i sleep to avoid thinking and look where it gets me.

today i slept until 130p, showered, and attempted to ignore the shit-tastic weather by losing myself in the rainy-saturday hustling and bustling rush of the providence place mall. my card grew warm with each swipe and after a while i just stopped adding altogether.

i justified this excursion with the recent unexpected a i earned in calc three this semester. that, and also i just needed to cheer myself up.

i got home dropped the bags and slumped back into my bed without modeling them for anyone or even taking pleasure in adding them to my closet with accompanying pretty wooden hangers. my neck/head/back/shoulders hurt intensely. my eyes were sore. is it possible for hair follicles to ache? and i swear i could feel individual muscles contract and retract with each fetal position twitch before i drifted off to dreamland.

i woke up to an empty house and the full bags, articles tissued wrapped and carefully folded, pretty colours calling my name, but i just pretended that i hadn't opened my eyes in the first place and leave once again. back to the inescapable dreams full of the problems i adamantly refuse to acknowledge during the daytime. it stings and i wish i could cry but i refuse to - i have nothing to be sad about. so the pain stays inside and slowly but surely grows, bits and pieces being added here and there, tacked/glued/taped on - oh so easy to attach yet nearly impossible to remove.

the pain settles in between my bones and muscles and cartilage and tendons and organs and nestles itself into unreachable crevices and depths that i never knew possible. so tiny, yet so insurmountable.

the pain worsens with each motion; it is so much easier to just do nothing... at all... but sleep

at jasmine sola:

marlow skinny jeans because they were ridiculously inexpensive for such a great new style and i couldn't resist

jim morrison t shirt (black, very retro)

at j. crew:

silver flax linen pedal pushers

washed gauze empire dress (white)

at nordstrom:

seven for all mankind jeans: because who doesn't want a pair of rock star jeans?

diesel bebel bootcut because i've wanted diesels forever and i worked nine hours straight on wednesday for them.

to: jon wall, president
from: smileyjess

someone visited this site over 25 times yesterday and 40+ times over the weekend. their ip address is: 158.123.198.#

your mission: find them and add them to the my super stalker club. i might have been flattered if i weren't so alarmed.

should i get a nose piercing? nothing gaudy, obviously no ring! just one of those barely there surface lying gems.

advice, please.

i scold myself each day for missing people. it's not right of me to so selfishly want them here, with me, when very clearly they need to move on and take the next step, or steps, no matter how far away from me they may lie.

i'm at this odd point right now where i'm just trying to focus all of my energy on maintaining balance. it's going well. i don't feel off kilter so much anymore and that is good. it would be nice to have you by my side to help steady me once in a while but i am a big girl and i need to not depend on another to help keep me in place so much anymore. i'll get used to the swaying in time and pretty soon things will stop spinning. i keep having to remind myself that it is now entirely up to me to keep things par for the course.

steady as we go. i mean, steady as i go.

i've successfully bitten off all my nails in my adamant refusal to face my worry. additionally, constantly gnawing at their tips provides a legit excuse to not have to talk to anyone.

at work there is a cute boy who says hello to me and i nod in response before hiding behind my cubicle wall. i sit all day avoiding conversation of any sort. i would much rather sit for minutes at a time working on a problem than have to approach a higher-up for help and risk making a fool of myself after three summers of working there.

i go in absurdly early - 630 - so that i may leave at 230. i take lunch at my desk, naturally. much quieter. i race home and try to catch the last pieces of the day's rays as i nap in the sun for an hour or so.

all day i punch imaginary numbers into a cheap texas instruments plastic calculator with differeny shades of greys and whites and blacks. i type on a near-silent keyboard and toggle many screens with a quietasamouse mouse.

what i hate most though is the fingernail polish. it is blue. it is over three weeks old. it is chipped and worn away, so much so that only trace speckles remain in the centers of each haphazardly bitten, painfully short tip, a sad reminder of the way they matched my dress, the one i've worn twice in as many years. nothing else i own is this same sharp tone of electric blue. a source of embarassment, i fold my fingers into a fist all too often and hope i dont have to shake anyone's hand.

it would be so much easier to just bust out the bottle of remover and a few cotton swabs and remove the little specks from their centripital centers until the cotton bunches up and looks as though it has been tortured for information, at which point i would simply toss them into the yellow basket in the bathroom without so much as a glance. thirty seconds. forty, tops. the left index finger is already completely devoid of any trace of blue.

and the funny part is i never paint my nails. ever. but it was a special occasion.

In a haze, a stormy haze
I'll be around, I'll be loving you always
Here I am and I'll take my time
Here I am and I'll wait in line
parachutes by coldplay

jaime got into brown med school as a sophomore. i nearly cried i'm so happy for her. this means NO mcats and NO worries. life is so good for her right now and she deserves it all. i can't even fathom the extent of just how amazing this must be. she said it hasn't even hit her yet. when it does... oh man. god.

i'm living vicariously through her because, for me, that goal gets farther away every day and i just can't chase after it anymore. i know it's so bad, but i think i'm just going to have to settle for standing by the sidelines and cheering her on as she crosses the finish line.

i am seriously ridiculously proud of her. like can't stop thinking about how it must feel to wake up in the morning and be like: dude. i'm not even 20 and i'm in med school. i = the best. ever.

i figure putting myself in her shoes is the closest i'll come to ever achieving the dream.

i'm NOT looking for sympathy here. i'm seriously just coming to terms with the fact that these things are one in a million and if i can't have it, i want my friend to have it.

he asked me to lunch today and i was so relieved to be able to say i had to leave at 11 for my other job. i told him i work in a neurobiology lab researching axon guidance and netrin-1 mediated attraction/repulsion to neuron growth cones due to expressed amount of dcc and unc5a.

i really hope that scared him away for good.

and i really hope that this scares all of you away for good.

god.

what it feels like is...

you know when you're standing on the wet part of the beach sand while the high tide is receding? and the sun has basically set, it's that dimensionless time before light and dark and there are goosebumps lining your skin and you knew you shouldn't have lef that college sweatshirt in the car but it's not cold enough that you want to go home just yet and your long-ish sweat pants are rolled up capri style and the water rushes up up up over your toes, feet, ankles, just barely grazes the bottom most part of the cloth and if you close your eyes eversolightly as the moon's pull sucks the salt water back up up up under the next incoming wave....

it feels like you're moving backwards when really you're standing still with your eyes shut and the world around you empty and you shake and your teeth chatter so you hug your arms to your chest in a weak effort to make yourself warm (it doesn't work but the car is so far away) and so you let wave after wave after wave splash against the skin of your calves and pray that maybe the next one or the one after that will take you out to sea with it....

it feels like nothing else. drained, emptied shell of a void infinite abyss.

your very own infinite abyss not even worth exploring.

going back and not going anywhere at the same time

is it healthy that, even when someone lies to me, i still come up with multiple ways to blame no one but myself?

ryan: you know, i've always wanted to do that.
jess: carpe diem, ryan!!
ryan: eh, maybe tomorrow.

kate spade sunglasses

vera bradley pocket wallet in sherbet

built-for-speed red stripe bc footwear flats

smoothie mix skittles

gap tunic that makes me think of fro's medieval/tie dye combo and smile

mean girls

the torn skirt by rebecca godfrey
in the drink by kate christensen
big mouth & ugly girl by joyce carol oates





funny how i only managed to temporarily distract myself.

mornings were getting to be a struggle there for awhile. now i either stay up all night watching stephen colbert (i catch the late late show, usually on at 1 or 2 in the morning), some friends/seinfeld repeats, catch up on my u.s. news and world reports and economists, read and reread old favourites - alice in wonderland, dancing on the edge, wasted, on the road, smoething very sorry.

the little prince. that's always the best. usually after that one i can catch a little bit of shut eye. as soon as the slightest trace of sun sneaks past my practically boarded-up windows - or, these days, superwhite rainclouds that emanate their own light - i'm awake and about.

i have bags under my eyes. they are gorgeous, let me tell you. hence, me finally breaking down and purchasing aforementioned oversized kate spades. which, p.s. - i'm in love with. yet another reason why it had better stop raining soon!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

my days are all the same, but it's good. i'm not complaining. routine is nice. i try to cleanly bracket my schedule into neat, half hour blocks. i will do this from this time to this time and that from that time to that time. i write it down, to make sure that i get it done exactly when i am supposed to.

i need to keep busy. otherwise, if it's daytime, i nap in the sun to catch up on the sleep lost the night before to awful infomercials and mindless reruns, and if it's nighttime, i write in my journal and get pissed off because it's total shit.

not to be completely random, but today i remembered that i was once hired by kb toys. this is something rather easy to forget - you see - i took all the right steps - i applied, i smiled through my interview, i strategically planned a follow-up phone call, i agreed to wake up at the crack of dawn on "black friday" (the day after thanksgiving and the unofficial start of the christmas season; please see also: buy nothing day and celebrate!). i envisioned the old smileyjess of the future - me, a grandmother proudly exhibiting a curio cabinet full of collector's edition mint condition Barbie dolls purchased at quite-the-steal due in thanks to my absurdly applicable to every item (even sale items!) employee discount. i pictured getting caught in the game aisle and having to restack some candy land boxes, could hear the tinkling of loosely scuttling and sliding plastic pieces and the flutter of shiny, coated, wordless, brightly cloured cards. why can't i remember the names of the cheery characters on the board that looked so edible i swear it practically made my mouth water (i was very fat.)

there's the candy cane forest... gumdrop land... the beautiful snow quen's palace, a mean green and purple short guy who cleverly captures you on any square marked with an adamantly undeniable and nearly ingratiatingly smiling black dotted square and refused further travel until doubles were drawn from the towering stack of slim cards. there's mr. gumdrop person and the grandmotherly character who holds a tray of cookies or muffins or some deliciously fresh-baked breakfast/dessert item (towards the middle of the board) and the king of ice cream at the end (mint chocolate chip is by far my favourite, followed closely by strawberry.)

anyways, i know working there would have just depressed me, because only i could somehow manage to get depressed in a bustling brightly decorated toy shop, shelves lined to shiny plastic-protected dolls and 'action figures' and freshly wrapped games, titles gleaming in the fluorescent lights and squeaky clean linoleum floors waxed nightly to scrape up tire tread marks as ecstatic kids wove their new two wheeler huffys in and out of the boastful rows upon rows of soon-to-be surprise birthday-christmas-hannukah-arbor day presents. (you know what i mean.) or just rewards for jobs well done in school, on the playing field/running track, in the orchestra pit, under the stage lights, etc.

i just know i would not have been able to stomach all the crying kids with parents firmly standing their ground despite footstomps, pulling of the hair, rivers of tears, blue-in-the-face screams, and tensed muscles, jaw clenches, screeches and hollers and nasty nasty nasty words that parents should never have to hear if they love their child enough to bring him/her into a toy store for a treat.

i quit before my first shift out of fear.

i would have probably been fired for offering my employee discount to everyone at my register, willing to even sell things at less than unit price, simply to satisfy the child and make him/her shower his parent with the love they deserved. i would have fucking paid for the shit myself if only to see the kid's entire face light up with a smile and eyes that shined through crocodile tears.

this is why i quit kb before i started.
this is also why i can never ever have a kid.

wish you were here (pink floyd)

So, so you think you can tell Heaven from Hell,
blue skies from pain.
Can you tell a green field from a cold steel rail?
A smile from a veil?
Do you think you can tell?
And did they get you to trade your heroes for ghosts?
Hot ashes for trees?
Hot air for a cool breeze?
Cold comfort for change?
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage?
How I wish, how I wish you were here.
We're just two lost souls swimming in a fish bowl, year after year,
Running over the same old ground.
What have we found? The same old fears.
Wish you were here.

let's give a big tuch "yayyyyy!" for a very much needed (i swear!) new phone: motorola razr in pinkkkkk. stoked. maybe now i'll actually check my voicemail once in awhile instead of being deathly afraid to call everyone back! i also promise to actually, you know, not leave it in my room or on its charger as often as i do. so expect me to actually answer!

it was christmas. my mother was crying.

it was christmas, and my mother was crying.

this - this - is the first time i remember thinking: i want to die. i don't deserve to live. please. now.

when you have thoughts like that, they don't usually come out in complete sentences. the way the first two and the way the last two were constructed hints at the increasing turmoil of the bad-to-worse situation and its effect on my ability to think coherently. i couldn't. think. or move for that matter.

you really should have been there for it.

no, really. you should have. because then she wouldn't be able to deny it as fiercely as she does. if there had been more witnesses to the show, she'd have to face up to what really happened the first time her older daughter had wished herself dead.

i was nine.

you know how when you flip the lenses on a pair of binoculars, instead of being able to see things close up they only seem an entirely unreachable distance away? so far away, in fact, you'd need a telescope to closely examine them?

it was kind of like that. something three feet away from me suddenly appeared as distant as the planet pluto. totally unable to be attained, understood.

i was nine.

i was helpless to stop the trickle that she attempted to conceal behind the palms of her hands. at first i thought maybe it was only my imagination playing tricks on me - mom's do not cry, after all - or maybe it was just an odd reflection on her thin, silver-rimmed frames of the twinkling white lights nestled stunningly between the still-fresh green needles of the pine's boughs. we had picked it out together, the four of us, at the tree farm.

she left the sitting room suddenly. shelby was racing to tear the shimmery and festive paper from yet another gift under the carefully selected very aesthetic two week plant that graced the front of the bay window in typical christmas splendor. the wrap depicted an old-fashioned scene of bundled-up, blond and brunette children with blue eyes, clutching mittened hands and figure skating on a freshly frozen pond, sporting santa hats and oversized smiles, nary a care in the world.

their mom's never cried, i thought to myself, as i heard the familiar whisper of a tissue torn from its cardboard container. muffled sniffles.

i knew she would not be satisfied with the gorgeous gold and gemstone necklace we had purcahsed months ago for her while viewing the mary cassatt exhibit at boston's museum of fine arts. i knew the cd wasn't the newest release, but i had thought it was the one containing a favourite song of hers that she turned up every time it played on the radio. i knew i should have saved my school art project christmas gift despite its numerous imperfections (i swear, they positively glared at me even from the bottom of the trash can) and grossly glued glitter, messy marker mistakes because i had forgotten to start with an easily erasable pencil first.

shelby, oblivious, continued to tear at the picture-perfect scene on the thoughtfully chosen paper of her next present and dad had another sip of his coffee with a sigh.

a piece of me died. just as i had wanted. deserved.

metl*fe deems this site "inappropriate for viewing."

i find this hilarious!!!!

this is what you shall do:

love the earth and the sun and the animals

despise riches

give alms to every one that asks

stand up for the supid and crazy

devote your income and labour to others

hate tyrants

argue not concerning god

have patience and indulgence toward the people

take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men

go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families

read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life

re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book

dismiss whatever insults your own soul

and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body...

((walt whitman))

js: "yeah, well, you were too busy kissing [chris] beaver!"
jk: "i was blowing kisses to [chris] beaver!"
js: "at least i'm not blowing [chris] beaver!"

we are so mature. and you love it.

p.s. who could resist him? is it the blond locks? the charming smile? the.... safety goggles? you tell me

p.p.s. - beaver, darling, whyyyyy are you wearing safety goggles on what must have been two separate occasions? good thing all the chicks dig 'em.

my mind is all over the place, per usual.

1.
you know what i hate? when someone lies to me. i don't hate the actual liar, per se, but rather the fact that the liar thinks i'm stupid enough to believe them. give me some fucking credit.

2.
i own nothing lime green. for most people, this would not be a problem. i, however, am not most people.

i wish someone would come along and take me away. i want to disappear, vanish into thin air.

if i were to leave, routines would pick up where they were left off. life would just go on without batting its eye.

i used to worry that i'd be missed but now i worry that i wouldn't be.

my memories become embellished and tweaked and enhanced to the point where i've fabricated an entirely dreamlike "recollection." it's hard to remind myself that it's my fault when i feel let down. i have to remember that i have no one to blame but myself when people or things arent as perfect as my imagination would have preferred.

"everywhere you go, there you are." i fucking hate that adage. i wish i could go somewhere and not be me. i could invent someone new and improved and entirely different. someone not so impatient, needy, bossy, talkative. someone with a much better laugh. someone who isnt so fucking paranoid that she can't return voicemails.

being someone new would enable me to wipe away all memories and build new ones from scratch, ones so positive i don't need to imagine anything better. ones where i never set myself up only to be crushed like an insignificant ant.

what's the use of keeping any memory (happy or sad) around? dusting them off daily, reserving their place in the forefront of my hipocampus ("someone who isn't such a loser"), revisiting them all too often? a memory is just that: a memory. it is from the past, it is over, it cannot be recreated or re-enacted or repeated in real living colour, so why bother thinking them so often?

no. i need to leave and start over completely. i don't want to find me, this awful me, there, though. i don't want to recognize myself anymore.

it would be so much easier if i weren't everywhere i went.

off.

you see, you have feelings. you can appreciate the inner me. like right now i feel a closeness between us that i've never felt with anyone before - anyone. yeah i know what you mean. that's how i feel. i dont know if i can put it into words either, but --- that's just it, it doesn't need words. that's the whole point. like what's the use of all those words when the feelings aren't behind them? they're just words. like i can look at a painting and tell it, you're beautiful. but what does it mean to the painting? but i'm not a painting. i'm not two dimensional. i'm a person. even a botticelli doesn't breathe and have feelings. it's beautiful, but it's still a painting. no matter how beautiful the outside may be, the inside still has feelings and needs that just words don't fulfill.

she nestled into his chest and he put an arm around her and held her hand, yeah you're right. it's not just the outside that's beautiful, but they don't know. it's hopeless. that's why you can't be worried about the world. they'll just do you in anyway. you can't depend on them because sooner or later they'll turn on you or just disappear and leave you there alone.

marion frowned for a moment. but you can't shut everyone out. i mean you ave to have someone to love. someone to hold on to. someone....

no, no, i dont mean that, harry pulled her back to his chest. i just mean that there are a bunch of lames out there. someone like you could really make it alright for me. with you with me i could really do something.

marion almost sighed, do you really mean that, harry?

harry lookedinto her eyes, then at her face, and gently glided the tip of a finger over her cheek and traced the outline of her nose, his face and eyes in a soft and tender smile, you could really make my life worthwhile.

oh, harry, there's something in me that's crying to come out but it needs the right person to open the lock. you can unlock it, harry, i know it.

copyright 1978 hubert selby

for being passive aggressive
for being aggressive aggressive
for being annoying
for needing
for wanting
for making myself alone, then complaining about being alone
for talking too much
for not talking enough
for thinking i can solve every problem
for not being able to solve every problem
for being selfish
for being me

this is good. i am gone. bye.

i'll be sure to regale you with tales of the world cup, the von trapps, and communists once i return from germany, austria, and the czech republic.

i miss you beautifuls already.