cool to see me still capable of meltdowns, bad nights and worse mornings. shuang started the night saying it felt like we'd arrived, like that was the moment when we realized where we were, and how far we'd come, and it did. nights when your cohort is like: full-time job and college professor (engaged), preparing to move to the states for a job, just bought a new car and a dog, "marketing director," etc. but red wine is like feelings in liquid form, and that house, and that girl. so we escaped, feeling too old, and i, too everything. and i am no good at cranium when i'm down, apparently. should have just fallen asleep on the floor like the puppy, instead went home and ate smartfood popcorn and chatted with all the wrong girls on facebook (just two, but at 2 am talking to two girls simultaneously feels almost overwhelming, especially when they were the two girls you'd wanted and not wanted to see at the reading later that night across town that you bailed on).

i feel like i'm blogging too much but also whatever.

1) had a job interview today, for the job. like we all interviewed: me, corey, colin, riley, laura; kalina from the other side. julia's got one of her own coming up too i hear. feels like everyone on a certain level was picked which is a nice feeling but also daunting cause everyone in that group runs their shit. and i feel like i probably fucked myself in the interview maybe. i mean i didn't, coming out of it, but the more i thought about it the more it seemed like a routine full of unstuck landings. i don't know what they are looking for, what they were looking for. i didn't go in with a clear sense of what i wanted to sell about myself. which they said was fine and was the point but it feels like you can't take them at face value when they say that. you can say you don't want anything for your birthday but you always kind of do. the main takeaway from a personal perspective (i realized this way later, hours and hours later) was that maybe job interview stress is scalable. i don't think i was that much more stressed than i've been for other interviews, like the multimags one or the maisonneuve one. like, i was stressed and off my game, but seven hundo a week for copy editing at a major city newspaper is so different from fact-checking for free at a hip niche arts & opinions quarterly or ringing up smokes and magazines for minimum wage in n.d.g. so maybe i'm just going to be experiencing the same stress levels at every stage, and i'll adapt to the changes? that would be interesting, and, while maybe not ideal, certainly better than what i expected.

2) described the loneliness i was feeling while at work in a fb message to sruti, because when you're feeling emotionally out of control you get to turn on your 3G. "there's this scene in the movie never let me go / where the carey mulligan character is like / freaking out" "i've heard of this scene" "about how she sometimes feels overwhelmed by sexual urges and feels totally helpless to her libido" "yeah" "and she thinks there's something wrong with her / and keira knightley is like / no everyone is like that sometimes / i'm carey mulligan right now / i just feel crushingly alone and desperate" which was beautiful in a way, but also fitting in that it contained within itself (as i realized midway through the texting sequence) the antidote: everyone gets like this. [not sexually; at least not fully sexually, but emotionally, anyway]

3) and then that girl i've been getting antsy about these past weeks followed up our two-and-a-half-hour conversation monday night that led into a vast, crushing expanse of no dialogue tuesday or wednesday into a fast-paced 20-minute conversation just then, just now, which made everything feel okay again. as if i could even feel the same thing for a few consecutive hours without accidentally then jumping on a train going in the opposite direction. christ. (that's another thing i forgot about myself: the flip-flopping).

okay. bedtime. class tomorrow morning.

incredible how lonely you can feel, though. i forgot about this entirely. i know a lot of it's because i've been sick and staying at home on the internet or trying to get to sleep and either succeeding or failing but i forgot, just forgot, about the brutal loneliness you can have, the way it pushes up against your skull and you forget everything else. like how you'll be happy again at some point, how you'll feel wanted again at some point, how you'll feel safe and comforted at some point. all this in time.

successfully made it through nash. what a fucking week. thrilling to watch myself in action, surrounded by friends and strangers, constantly interacting with people. still not sure how i made it with so little alone time, or without self-destructing and skipping out on everything (i did miss like... four blocks to stay in the hotel room and either sleep or laptop, but still) and i managed to push myself and get drunk with the crew every night without going massively too far (saturday night excepted) or making any big mistakes (returned home w/ body, possessions, finances intact [minus the $750 attendance fee and somehow managing to blow through the $130 i had in my wallet in five days. main costs were alcohol, chipotle burritos, and a belt after mine broke before the sheezer concert]). oh yeah, thursday night there was an all-female weezer cover band who played exclusively from the blue album and pinkerton. that was a fun pit. there were two girls having a little romance moment with each other through the whole show around me, which was adorable, and the whole link crew was in the same general vicinity just going nuts. during the blue album songs i was in pure ecstasy. corey and julia and this girl i had a crush on, a copy editor from waterloo, all crowd surfed, and i coolly outmanoeuvred the urge to drunk text you-know-who. it was a sensation-fuelled week. during the final keynote speech before the gala saturday i tried to count all the people i'd developed mini crushes on over the course of the conference and it was something crazy like 12. after the gala i was drunk and, sitting down at a table near the bar, drinking to get over the pre-award ceremony nervousness and the not-winning-an-award comedown (and post going at it a bit on the dance floor), i kept calling over members of the 12 as they passed by to tell them that they'd won the award for best this or best that. it turned into three legitimately interesting, drunken conversations, with said copy editor (who had a boyfriend) and a senior news writer from ubc (who left when the copy editor came back to talk to me and i was too drunk to talk to both of them at the same time) and there was also the cute guy i told was the best-looking at the conference who, after promptly going, "even better than [name redacted in case he self-googles]?" and i was like "yes" even though it was a close call (but this guy had more flair), turned the conversation into a discourse about bryant "big country" reeves, ex- of the vancouver grizzlies, whose jersey he was wearing under his blazer, which was adorable. then we were all leaving (me sans award but too drunk to brood anymore) and clem stole a pylon from the library and that's as surefire sign of the impending doom of a night as any, i think. when we got back to the hotel he made us all kiss the pylon. then security cleared everyone out of the hallway and it was maybe 20 seconds before i started puking in the bathroom. erin took care of me; stayed with me for probably an hour just talking me through it and distracting me and being my friend and it was really nice to feel cared for in a powerful, platonic way. i guess kind of the way i felt about vivien through the week, leaving early to walk her to her bus stop and stuff like that. then crawled into bed next to hilary (who also puked a lot that night; it was her birthday) and fell asleep. it was weird sleeping in a bed with a girl all week, too, of course; every accidental brush was weirdly thrilling, and every turn from one side to the other felt political. but that was it. which is probably best.

been having talks with friends. talks with friends are good. weird to combat the feeling of being utterly alone with the feeling of being not. the feeling of not being sure where you fit or whether you fit anywhere not as quite as inviting as the feeling of being sure you don't fit, you don't fit anywhere. but i think i'm responsible enough by now to be honest with myself. i'm going to miss human physical contact for a while, i think. remember kat and shu telling me back in cegep: it's worse when you know what you're missing. almost lost it last night after prod was done, waiting to leave with everyone, when i remembered that there's no one i can spoon with anymore. who knows how long til i spoon again. i'm gonna try not to rush it, though. i think that's the important thing.

to 2013, a year of being alone. more thoughts to come.