So it's pre-finals week. I should be studying for history. But I'm not. I'm avoiding that. I really really don't WANT to think about the Panic of 1819 or the effects of slavery on the United States as a whole. Why would I want to do that when I can sit here and kavetch? ...Pre-cisely.

Yesterday was our dorm's literary magazine's Coming-Out party. It's called Purple. I have something published in it... I'll post that eventually. I was really scared. I read my thingy (with EMOTION) in front of a live audience of people I mostly didn't know at the Cherry St. Artisan (what a cool place). I was soo nervous, because I've never done that before; read something I wrote for the first time in front of a live audience of people I don't know. Weird, but I think I managed to use my fear, syphoned through my narrative, to make my narrative more ...amazing. I hope that worked.

Spent last night with Eric. That was really splendid. I love being all cuddly with him...*sigh*.

All right, this is what I had published in Purple. It's not about me...except in the general way it is about everyone...
**************************************************************************
Hello?? Can you see me now?
By: Megan Kinkade
Written as everyone, as no one

Hello?
Is anyone there? Is….anyone….there?

Oh, good. You came. Thank you. I know this doesn’t make sense, and I don’t really expect it to, and I know we aren’t exactly “friends,” but…I just needed someone, anyone, to listen to me. I had to get this out.

I’m dying on the inside. No, not from anything like cancer or heart disease or even the flu. I’m dying from invisibility. No one knows who I am, and I guess no one really cares to find out. I mean, people know my name, they force a smile when I walk by, but I don’t think anyone really cares about who I am, about what I think.

Sure, they say it’s my fault no one can see me. Take off your masks, reveal yourself to us, we’ll pay attention, they say. But it isn’t that easy. It isn’t like that at all. So I wanted to talk to you, talk to you without my masks, because I feel like I can trust you…even if I don’t know you at all.

I don’t feel like a whole person here. It’s like no one can reach me because I’ve fallen in a dark, dank well. And I don’t even have a Lassie to tell people I need help…I’m trapped I the well.

People don’t really notice what I say, so I follow them around, hoping one day they’ll look up and realize I’m there. Wow! - they’ll say - what an amazing person you are! How did we not notice this before?? And I’ll be thrust into the spotlight of their lives and they will love me.

I guess that’s what it really is. I don’t feel like I’m loved at all. Not even my body, which is just the easiest part to see.

But my body can work for me. Sometimes, when I’m feeling my most invisible, I’ll draw attention to myself using my figure. Wear something I’ll look ‘good’ in.

Heh. But that’s really ironic, because most of the time, I don’t even feel like I fit in my own skin. I both love and hate that I have to use my body to encourage people to see my mind, my soul. Most days I feel like something is wrong with me - my hair is a complete mess, my legs are too short, my chin is too long. I am like the liquid in a barometer -- with any slight change in temperature and my surroundings from moment to moment I will change shape, fit a little differently.

This is why I feel like I’m ambiguous. Ambiguous shape, ambiguous mentality, ambiguous age. Ambiguous and invisible. Like Play-doh, I’m morphing to my surroundings. Pinch me, pull me, I’m never the same.

The thing about Play-doh, though, is it’s always the same ‘stuff’ no matter what form it is in. No matter if you make a zebra, a ball, or a fort, it will always be Play-doh, and it will harden and crack, but it will still be Play-doh. No matter how to contort me, no matter how your eyes strip me down, I will always be me, the person inside, beyond, the form I’ve taken for the day.

I watch a lot of movies. I feel like I’m accepted when I’m sitting there in a dark theater, sunk deep into a padded chair, hearing the whirr of the images as they hit the screen. Movies draw us in, and the whole time I’m watching I am not myself, invisible and unknown, I am FABULOUS! I am a watcher to a private scandal. I am Julia Roberts, walking down the street and turning heads of every guy I meet. I am Keanu Reeves, shooting bullets into the faces of robotic agents determined to take me down.

I am anyone but me.

I swear to you…I didn’t do this on purpose. I want people to know who I am. I want people to know that I am bright, funny, intriguing, and capable of being happy, even if I can’t be now. I want people to see my soul, and accept me, even when I don’t act like I appreciate it. I do. I swear I do. I’m just trying to squirm my way into your life. Please let me in.

It’s like what they say in that one movie…that one where Nicole Kidman is so beautiful? (Where I can be so beautiful watching her?) “The greatest thing you’ll ever learn is just to love, and be loved in return.”

Man. I wish I could be loved. Maybe then I could express my love…

But that’s not possible. Not possible until people start to notice me. So I ask you, please. Notice those that maybe sometimes irritate you, those little kids and confused teens. We all deserve love; at least that’s what they tell us in Sunday School.

I just want a little piece.

Did you hear that, too? Someone’s here. I have to go.

No! I have to go right now. I can’t meet them like this. I have to put on my masks and face them as they want to see me. I can’t handle them seeing me like this. That’s not how it needs to work.

I have to go now. Really.

Thank you. Thank you for showing me people can listen - even if you didn’t hear anything I had to say, thank you for … making me feel like I existed.

Avoidance, finals, Winter, chocoate, and Rape

So...I'm avoiding reading John Mill's "Utilitarianism" for Philosophy, even though I really really really need to because my last class is tomorrow and then I have my final next Friday. But I just can't get excited about it. I mean, how important can he be if we are only spending one week on him?

I made a pile of "sellback" books, which means most of them. I'll be keeping Frederick Douglass and my myth textbook, because freddy was good, enlightening, and my myth book is really interesting and that is one of my favorite subjects. May I make lots and lots of cash off of the others!

I'm pre-finals week now. I actually have my first final on Friday, but it's just psychology, sooo not too worried about that. Then monday is History, Tuesday is Myth,and philospophy and microeconomics are on Friday...I'll be leaving sometime Friday night, because I have to, and I'll probably stay with Angie until Saturday night, then take the eternal night train back to Dallas and get there Sunday morning. Yikes again!

Um. lessee. Tonight was the "Winter Celebration" at the dining halls, so they had a nice feast planned out for us, and it was rather delightful, even though the apple pie was freezing cold. I had Chicken Cordonbleu (sp?), potato bits, "winter vegetables (which turned out to be broccoli and cauliflower)," and French Onion soup. Yum. I tried the eggnog, it was gross. And I had cheesecake for dessert, because the apple pie was cold and icky. I've decided I really like French Onion soup, but it is now ruined for me because of Panera...their French Onion soup in a sourdough bread-bowl is sooo amazing, I don't know if I can ever happily eat French Onion soup again.

Uh...still wasting time here. Eric bought me a "just because" present. It was really sweet, a card, a chocolate rose, and a golden box of chocolates (goodness, does he know me well). I'm afraid I didn't react well to it, however. I just felt like I didn't deserve it and tried to give it back, kinda (half-heartedly). I just didn't think I deserved a nice thing like that, since I feel like I've been mean to him...but I shouldn't have said those things to him. That's not nice at all. Bad Megan.

So I read this really interesting/captivating article yesterday in one of Stephanie's many magazines. It was about the writer's rape when she was 25, ten years before. It was called "Betrayed by the Angel," where the "Angel" is based off something from Virginia Woolf who basically represents the voice in a woman's head telling her to be passive and calm and quiet and demure. And the writer was circumstantially blaming the "Angel" within her for letting her be raped, because she hadn't really fought her attacker, who just knocked at her front door and forced his way in, taped her arms behind her back, and raped her in her bedroom.

It scared me. Mostly because I know I have the same "Angel" living in me, perhaps to a different degree...

All right, all right, already. I'll stop babbling and wasting time. Fine. I'll read my Mr. Mill.

Candy days and snow dusted nights

I just ate the first chocolate square out of the advent calendar my aunt gave me, which means, yes, it is the first day of December. Isn't it amazing how time can move both so fast and yet crawl so slowly?
I apologize for being so terrible about updating my blog. I just...didn't want to write...because, like I said, writing these things down might make them real--and that's scary. But I'll try to update all the facets of my life.
First, I love you all. Please never forget that.

Let's go by topic:
ERIC (the boyfriend-figure)--
Eric broke up with me about two weeks before Thanksgiving break. This had been foreseeable, so it was a relatively painless breakup, as breakups go. I stoically avoided him for four days (challenging when you live together and are used to seeing each other every day), when he finally caught up with me and we had a "talk." It was sad, and he was so pathetic. He really wanted to get back together. He told me he "realized how amazing (I) was", and how every minute he had managed to see me, he always felt so sad and wanted to run to me and hold me and... you get the idea. Basically, it was a series of the sweetest things people had ever said to me, and he was completely sincere. BUT...I didn't want to make a snap decision...so I told him I just didn't know. This is kinda where things still are. I would say we are more than friends, but I'm not ready to commit and be "girlfriend" again, though I must act like it. ...yea, I still kiss him and all that, but I don't know if there is enough there to make an actual "relationship." It's hard, and I feel so bad for hurting him in this slight way all the time, but I honestly don't know what to do. I don't even know if I want a relationship right now, or if I want to "play the field" and by now, with less than 3 weeks of school, I wonder if it is even worth it.

CLASSES (basic update)--
Classes are still good. I like them all almost all of the time. They aren't hard, and I only have to work just hard enough to maintain my A's. Nice. I like Philosophy , mostly because it is my most challenging class, in that we are actually reading the philosophers and trying to figure out what the heck they are saying. I have to write a 5 page paper on Kant and Hume by the 7th. Wish me luck. I still have to figure that all out.

ROOMMATE (Meaghan from Texas)--
Meaghan and I get along, I suppose. We don't hate each other, but we aren't friends or anything. We just cohabitate. Basic survival. We talk on occasion, but most of the time we aren't even in the room at the same time. She thinks she'll probbaly go to Texas, UNT, for school next year, so I don't know what I'll do about a roommate next year anyway. I need to work on that.

FRIENDS (at Mizzou)--
Even this has to be complicated. Everyone seems to be sickly, in some manner, and/or have extreme problems with the opposite sex (self included, see above). Stephanie, who is perhaps my closest friend here, (my next-door neighbor, half-Japanese friend) has been going through an especially hard time, on both counts. The sicklyness is being medicated, but the guy problems only seem to escalate. I try to watch out for her, after all, that's what a good friend does, but ...whew.
People here, in general, are all splendid and nice people. Being that I live in the Fine Arts dorm, we are all also slightly on the crazy side. It's really refreshing to get to hang out with so many creative people. However, because the dorm is on the edge of campus, we are a little ...isolated. I don't really have any friends outside of my dorm (but I have quite a few in the dorm). I don't even know how I would go about trying to make friends out of the dorm...

HOME, FRIENDS, ETC. (Texas)--
I keep saying Thanksgiving break was both too long and too short. It was too long because I missed all my friends here at Mizzou, who I see every day and whose lives are intertwined with my own. It was too short because I didn't really get a chance to do anything much with my friends at home. I'm also having a semi-serious problem figuring out where "home" is. I feel like home is both places; Carrollton, and Columbia. I think I really hurt my mom's feelings, because I kept saying "when I go home..." but I didn't mean to, and it was completely unconscious, because I have been calling my dorm room "home" for the past four months!
It was great seeing everybody (or nearly everyone) but I wished we could have done more. I was actually quite happy just to "be" with the guys in their apartment...we should do that more. Y'all don't know how good you have it. I also loved seeing Morgan and Scott at the movie...I missed Morgan and her music! Nothing will ever replace that...
But it struck me, incredibly, how different my Mizzou friends are from all y'all. It's strange, isn't it? It was also pretty amazing how the guys hadn't so much changed as...continued on the same path they had been on in high school...just an extension of themselves, whereas I feel like I've grown and changed in a lot of subtle ways--like I'm Play-doh, and everyone here and everything I've encountered has made a slight impression, overall changing the shape of me as a whole.

Well, I've been writing for nearly an hour (on and off-ish...poor attention here) so I guess I'll wrap up. I love Mizzou, but feel like I need to make more friends outside of the dorm. I have a strange and strained relationship with Eric, and don't know where that is going. I feel like I'm split between two homes, and I feel like I am Play-doh, whereas my "high school" friends are just...baby animals that are just growing into the next stage.

I love you all. Hugs and Kisses:
~Megan