---diaries---mistress---STARFIRE---bwayguy---lisa---gnr---

11/25
11/25/03

I had to give a performance today. It's hard even knowing where to start to talk about this. First of all, I had tormented dreams all last night. I was in bed for about nine hours but I maybe slept five. I kept having dreams about the performance, that I either woke up late and had to run onstage and wasn't warmed up at all or that she decided she wanted me to sing different songs and I had never heard them before. So from the second I woke up I was nervous. I thought maybe I should be creative so I wrote kind of a poem thing about how I was feeling.

------
Palms are sweaty, heart is racing, breathing shallow.
Words running through my head. What if I screw them up?
More drainage than usual. Butterflies in stomach. 56
minutes till stage time.

I forgot my makeup. I need to get through this. I have to
get through this. I should be expressive. I'm not wearing
my glasses in there, then I can't see people. 53 minutes
till stage time.

Maybe nobody will show up, went home early for
Thanksgiving break. My shoulders are tense. I'm
hungry...or am I? 52 minutes till stage time.
-----------

(Yeah, I'm melodramatic, I'm a musician, fuck off!!)

Performance time came and I really didn't feel nervous. My high notes weren't coming out great but that's normal lol. I did mess up my words in the Schubert though, dammit LOL but I covered really well and that's the most important thing. My throat felt a little dry but overall I was pleased.

However, even though I felt relatively calm when I went up there, my ankles shook like crazy. I'm so weird; my knees don't tremble, it's my ankles. And I can't fight it!! I sit there and try to tell my ankles NOT to shake, that I'm fine, I can do this...it only makes it worse. It's a reflex almost like how your teeth chatter when you get cold.

So here is my question: why am I like this?? I never used to get this way. This is the same girl who used to compete in regional competitions and place, the same girl who was asked to sing the national anthem at every basketball game for a year, the same girl who has routinely had between five and twenty concerts in one week. Battling stage fright. I know I can sing, I LIVE to sing. So why do I let nervousness get in the way of what I have to express?

8/24/03

Ugh, school starts tomorrow. I am so not ready. All I am ready for is to get it over with and have my degree so I can continue to work at the mall...

I went to the weirdest party last night. I wasn't much in the mood to drink so I said I would drive a few people there. Everyone that I had given a ride to starting drinking, and I just drifted from room to room to see what was going on. First of all, they took a baby pool and filled it with Crisco and chocolate syrup, and two girls wrestled in it. (For anyone who has seen the movie Old School, it was like that except the girls were not naked.) Then a guy got in, and it became a big joke for the ones who had been wrestling to run around and get everyone else dirty with the Crisco, and try to drag people into the pool who did not want to wrestle. They did manage to pull one girl in who was dressed up really cute. I felt so bad for her. After a while the whole backyard smelled like brownies!

After that, I went back inside and found myself a chair in the keg room. I was so tired from work and just really not in the mood to be at a party, but I felt bad making the people I had driven leave earlier than they wanted to. There was a guy sitting in the floor beside my chair and he had a really cool tattoo, so we started talking. He told me he was majoring in chemistry so he could figure out how to make synthetic weed. I guess everyone has to have a goal, right? He went on to tell me that he's in rehab because he got a DUI, and that he has been in jail 14 times. A real winner! If he wasn't about 3 years younger than me, he would have sounded like he could have been a rockstar in the 80's.

By this time I was totally ready to go home, but one more interesting thing happened. A group of three or four guys decided they wanted to make a beer bong. One guy went upstairs to look for a hose or some kind of tubing, and he came back down with a huge PVC pipe about 6 feet long, and large enough to stick your arm inside of. They cut the top half off of a bottle of water and taped it onto one end of the pipe. The first guy was about to test out the new bong when they decided maybe they should clean out the inside first. One guy held it up to the light to look up inside it, and not only were there spiderwebs all up in it, there were also what looked like spider eggs and tiny cocoons. So they went outside and flushed it out with Pine Sol, which I didn't think was the smartest move. We all relocated to the back porch to watch the first victim bong a beer. One guy stood up on a chair and poured a beer into the pipe, while another guy standing on the ground put his mouth on the bottle end of the pipe and chugged the beer. Well, tried to. He did it for about five seconds, then he let go, spilling beer all over everyone, and threw up all over the porch. He said it tasted like Pine Sol. Imagine that! I think I'm getting too old for stupid college party antics, lol.

6/4/03

A month ago, my neighbor backed up into my car in the parking lot and did $2000 worth of damage. Yesterday (yes, just yesterday!) I got the car to the shop. It will take about a week to fix, and they gave me a rental car, which is absolutely brand new, it has 588 miles on it (well maybe like 593 now because I went to the grocery store). I'm sure most people would be giddy over driving it around for a week, but I'm scared to death. The woman told me not to worry about it; she said the only difference as far as insurance between driving it and driving my own car is that any accidents which would happen (no matter if it's my fault or not!) I would have to pay my deductible, which she assumed was $250 but no, not mine...mine is $1000. So I'm driving this car around like a scared 15 year old behind the wheel for the first time. But other than that, the thing rocks. Except it only has a cassette player, that sucks. (A 2003 car with a cassette player? What kind of crap is that?) Anyway, I only own three cassettes that aren't mixed tapes of songs I taped off the radio when I was in middle school: Chicago's greatest hits, Toto IV (both yard sale purchases), and a live Skid Row show from '91 (no, I didn't bootleg it myself). Those are all getting old pretty fast, so, soon it may be a journey back to 1994 pop songs with radio jingles and DJ's talking in between.

Diary: 3/03/03

On Friday, I was so fed up with school that I drove around in my car for two hours, contemplating whether or not to withdraw and drop out altogether. Then I had to go to work, six hours on Friday and seven on Saturday. I had yesterday off though, and I'm feeling much better about the whole thing now. My stress level has gone down from ten to about three. I can handle three.

Two more weeks until spring break! Course all it's going to be is a week of working, but hey at least I won't have class! You better believe I'll be sleeping late every day I can. I'm 21 now, LOOK OUT WORLD! My birthday was spent at a bar (of course) and then my boyfriend had the bright idea to go to Taco Bell at 2 am, so my chicken quesadilla ended up in the toilet! In fact, I think the majority of what I ate last week ended up in the toilet, that night! But I digress...

This is a silly rant, but it's really been bugging me. Maybe it's just where *I* live, but the new fad around here is putting those little stickers that look like bulletholes on your car. There are two kinds: ones designed to look like a bullet hit the paint and the paint is now peeling, and ones designed to look like a bullethole in the glass. What's up with that?!? I guarantee that if someone *actually* shot a bullethole in their car, they'd be pissed! But yet they'll spend money making their car *look* like someone shot at it! Give me a gun, I'll save ya the 3 bucks!!!

Keepin' the dream alive,
Starfire

12/15/02

I don't usually write about topics this serious but this has been on my mind all week. I found out Monday that one of my good friends from high school is HIV positive. He has had the virus for about 2 years now. I had a huge crush on this boy in high school, but it was one of those deals where I liked him, and he liked my best friend. I hate that! Anyway, he graduated a year before me, and he went off to college at the same college that I now go to. His freshman year of college, he decided to let everyone know that he is gay. (I have seriously had crushes on so many gay men that it's disturbing.) There were always rumors in high school that he was gay, but I thought they were just rumors. Well by the end of his second year in college, he was living with his boyfriend whom he had been with for a while. They were pretty serious, and then his boyfriend dumped him sometime that year, and it crushed him. From what I hear, after that he just started doing drugs and sleeping around! because he was so hurt and confused. I'm assuming that's when he got HIV. He dropped out of school, and he has lost about 50 pounds. He just looks sick, and it breaks my heart. I've never known anyone with HIV before. They always taught us about it in school, but I thought it was something that happened to people far away, not my friends. That's a stupid attitude to have, but it just never hit home before now.

On a much lighter note, SCHOOL IS OUT!! Yea! Finals ended Friday. I honestly feel like I did worse this semester than I ever have before. I know of at least one C I have...hopefully my grades will still be good enough to keep my scholarship.

My parting words today will be a note of advice. Christmas shoppers: PLEASE be KIND to the employees of retail stores this time of the year. We are people too! If we don't have a certain shoe in a size 7, just kindly walk away. Do not throw a fit. If you try something (or 20 things) on, please put them back where you got them. Chances are, your mother doesn't work in the store you're shopping in. Take my advice and the world will be a much happier place.

8/19/02

Well, it's more than likely going to happen again. I feel like no matter how hard I try, life screws me over. My now ex-boyfriend moved out over a month ago, even though his name was still on the lease, so I've been stuck here paying all the rent in an expensive apartment which is really meant for two or more people. Now I'm completely out of money, and he still owes me about $400.

I had found a girl who wanted to move in with me, but she called after I held the apartment for two weeks for her, and said she decided to go to a different college instead. I've had an ad in the paper all week for a roommate, to the tune of $45 for the ad, and I've gotten one call: a 40-year old man. The two weeks I held it for her were the prime time everyone was looking for a place.

So now that both of them have dicked me over, it looks like I'm going to have to move again. I hope I can even get out of my lease here. I know I'll have to forfeit my deposit, but I guess that's just the way it is. I have an appointment this afternoon to look at a one-bedroom place near where I work. It's a little more than what I wanted to pay, but I looked at a place in my ideal price range today and it was a total shithole.

This is really depressing. I work my ass off at school to maintain a 4.0 AND hold a part-time job, and yet Mom still seems to think I am greedy and underappreciative of everything. It's not my fault that my dad's a loser who hasn't worked since 1986 and owes us about $80,000. It wasn't my fault that she married him, but she seems to blame it on me. And because of that, I can't have a nice apartment.

7/25/02

My boss called me and woke me up this morning to tell me that the store's register was $50 short. I closed by myself last night, so of course he has reason to believe that it's short either because of something I did, or that I stole it. Let me just say this: I have never stolen anything in my entire life. Ever. And I think if I ever did, I'd feel so guilty that I'd have to go put it back.

I suppose it's possible that I somehow counted a customer's change wrong, but he said there were only two fifties in the register last night and they were both there, he said it looked more like two 20's and a 10 were gone. And I don't think that could have been done by accident.

I know I didn't take the money, but it's gone. My boss says that from now on, we have to have a policy that if that ever happens again to that degree, it's instant dismissal. He's being fairly nice about it, I mean he didn't fire me, or even accuse me of taking it, but I'm just sick because I have no clue what's going on.

7/18/02
My boyfriend and I are broken up, and he has moved out. I'm taking it pretty hard, but I don't feel like writing about it so I'm going to write about something completely off the wall. What's up with the whole visor thing? I think this whole trend started right before I graduated high school. I'm talking about teenage guys wearing those visors like athletes wear to keep the sun out of their eyes. If you don't know what I'm talking about, it's a headband that goes around your head, but doesn't cover it, and a part like the bill of a cap that goes over your eyes. I guess it's some big thing, I figured it would have died out by now. Personally I think it looks dumb. All these guys walk around the mall looking like damn golfers with those damn visors, khaki shorts, and tennis shoes that you can tell are way too big. (Personal note: guys, wearing your shoes too big does NOT make us think your penis is any bigger. Neither does driving a huge truck, or beefing up your Honda, Metro,!
or Cavalier with rims and a spoiler...but I digress.) Even worse are the guys who wear the visor sideways. Dudes, are you trying to be Vanilla Ice? I don't understand it.

Keepin' the dream alive (or at least trying to),
Starfire

7/10/02
I definitely am holding to my statement that boys/men/males/guys are the dumbest creatures on the planet. 90% of them were obviously born with no intelligence whatsoever, and a large majority never gain any at all. My boyfriend and I had a big fight a few days ago, so he went in his room and tore up everything he had that reminded him of me, including a stuffed animal he had had since he was little, and an autographed poster from a concert we saw together. Things like that are not replaceable. And true, it’s just stuff, but sometimes stuff means more than just the object that it is. Then today, he said he wanted to go to the music store to see what kind of offer they’d make him on his electric guitar, since he has two and doesn’t really play that one anymore. Now, I was thrilled, because I thought he was going to sell it to get money toward insurance on the car I bought him three months ago that he hasn’t yet driven because he can’t afford insurance. Stupid me, I thought that for once he was being mature. So we get there, and I was looking around and not paying too much attention, then I see him at the counter holding a different guitar, talking about payments! He was going to trade it on a more expensive guitar, while that car just sits there, kind of like his bills do. So naturally, I was pissed. He took his old guitar back and we left and got in the car, him driving. I tried to explain to him my opinion, but he wouldn’t even let me talk, he just got all pissed off, so I told him that we should just break up. It’s just something that you say when you’re mad! Then guess what he did? He put the car in park while we’re sitting at a red light, turned it off, said “see ya” and walked off into the bad part of downtown in the pouring rain. I’m sure he expected me to drive after him, but I drove home and haven’t seen him since.

7/4/02
I have some advice for all you college-age women out there. Don't move in with your boyfriend! I thought this was going to be the best thing ever, well it isn't by a long shot. In fact, I was MUCH happier single.
Besides the normal bickering and the not having much/any money for bills or food, my boyfriend acts like a 4-year old. Today he was supposed to have a sort of "audition" with some guys who were looking to put together a band. Yesterday they all made plans to get together today at noon at one of the guys' houses to jam and see how it went. My boyfriend KNEW I have to work today at 3, and since he has no money for car insurance, he can't drive his car so I'm his ride. Well, we still figured that would give him at least two hours to play with these guys. I set the alarm for 10 this morning and I got out of bed. He didn't. In fact, 11:15 rolled around and he was still asleep so I went in there to wake his ass up. Then I hear him on the phone calling these guys saying he can't come today because he didn't know that I had to work so early, and I'm his ride. He blamed it all on me that he can't get his lazy ass out of bed! GRRR I was furious. Then to make it worse, he screamed some!
obscenities and slammed the door in my face, saying that I have problems I need to work out.
So of course it turned into this huge fight, and he's just laying in there in his bed all pissed off at the world. Well, nobody makes a fool out of me and they should know that by now. We even had plans to go to the fireworks tonight, and for us to have plans is rare because he never wakes up early enough to do anything except go to work. He just told me to leave him alone...well, I'll be leaving him alone forever if he doesn't straighten up because I can't take this anymore.

Keepin the dream alive,
Starfire

~6-22-02~
I've figured out that I can compare myself to the carpet in my apartment. Now before you go, "huh?" let me explain.
My carpet is this dark forest green color, so anything and everything you drop on it shows up, from crumbs to fuzz. I'm not used to vacuuming often, so the carpet gets pretty nasty looking before I get around to sweeping it. Then it looks absolutely wonderful for a period of maybe 24 hours until the whole process starts over.
Now how that compares to me is that you can take one look at me and tell what kind of day it's been. I show everything; every emotion, every problem, every joy. I've been accused of being bipolar. If I'm having any problem that's even remotely serious, I'm depressed or even suicidal. But on the opposite end of the spectrum, if everything is going well I'm hyper and giddy, almost like I'm drunk.
With the recent occurrences in my life causing me to lose one of my best friends and even getting involved with the cops, I was absolutely torn up for days. I felt the way my carpet would look after a tornado hit.
But you know what? I'm tired of it. So I "vacuumed" myself and I'm now at the starting over point. I feel fresh, and for now I am actually in a normal mood. I'm finally again finding pleasure in the small things in life, like my favorite music, the friends who are still standing by me, and even something as small as the wind blowing in my windows when I drive my car. So for now, I'm renewed. I hope it lasts.
Keepin' the dream alive,
Starfire