no vacancy

it has been almost two weeks since i stood in the madrid airport, exhausted from spending the night there to catch my early flight home, loaded with two suitcases and a backpack of all my remaining possessions that didn't go home with my parents when they visited me in the spring. during the middle of that night i had awkwardly weighed the two bags on the unattended scales and rearranged their contents before it was time to check in, but i still was afraid that for some reason they would exceed the weight limit. after all, it had been a year since i had to pack up my life into these same exact vessels, and i tried to reason that i really hadn't accumulated all that much more since they seemed to weigh just as they did when they were carted from los angeles to spain. however, i kept having to remind myself that there were two more suitcases worth of crap waiting for me at home, which my parents had generously taken with them at the end of their stay. even the man at the counter noticed that i had an awfully large amount of luggage for one person.

"do you speak spanish?" he asked. i hesitated for a second before saying yes, and he lazily said something along the lines of, "you have certainly spent your time well here in spain," referring to the supposed amount of merchandise he imagined i had stuffed into the suitcases. "it's been a year..." i responded, my voice trailing off as i saw the two twin bags, tagged and hurled along on the conveyer belt beyond the check-in counter, like packaged meat freshly priced and ready for purchase. i didn't know how i had let it happen. how the hell did i have so much shit?

the fact that i left spain with so much stuff mystifies me to this day. in fact, during my tenure abroad i had somehow transformed into an obsessive compulsive anti-clutter freak that drove me and my boyfriend insane. it might have been the fact that i had so little, or the fact that he had so much, or the fact that we shared a tiny apartment with no storage space, but for whatever reason, i was constantly on a rampage to get rid of our belongings. constantly. whether it was recycling his old issues of tabloids and fashion magazines or donating bags of our clothes, i was never content and constantly felt smothered by the sheer volume of shit that crowded our living space. i monitored djali's spending habits and writhed in agony when he came home with a new book or gadget or anything that would take up space and forced him to clear out our lone bookshelf once every few weeks. months before i even had to leave, i would obsess about the fact that my stuff would not fit into the 2 suitcases i had kept under my bed and that i just had to keep getting rid of everything until it would. on top of that, i had no idea how my room at home would look with all of this crap crammed into it, along with the stuff my parents carried away in april.

when i came home, i had found that my mother had emptied the two suitcases onto my bedroom floor, as she had needed them sometime before my homecoming and couldn't wait for me to do it myself. along with the bags i brought home myself, it took around 4 or 5 days to get everything redistributed in my room, at which point i once again began the process of getting rid of things. a terry cloth polo shirt, hoodies silk screened with obsolete labels, stuffed animals, old sheet music, and more were seriously suffocating me and needed to be gone immediately. i toiled for another week or so until i decided to take a break and see exactly what was left. to my amusement, i discovered a lava lamp, incense, a microscope kit and other weird things among the crowded contents of my closet.

one afternoon, i looked towards one of my shelves where there once stood an army of AP exam and SAT review books, now happily resting in the recycling bin, when i noticed a large photo album of my trip to japan when i was 16. as i turned the pages, laughing at the photographs and happy to have them in my hands, i looked to my laptop on my desk, which neatly houses the hundreds of pictures from my year in spain in one 15 inch device. my japan album is big, bulky, and doesn't always hold the pictures in tightly. it isn't only jammed full of images, but also wristbands, maps of gardens and shopping malls, greeting cards from my host family and other useless souvenirs from japan. basically, it's a complete mess, but i have always loved it that way and have never tried to fix it. clutching the album to my chest, i wondered when exactly i became frightened by the tangibility of things.

i am not going to sit here and blame technology for the way i feel. i love the internet, i love my laptop, and i love my ipod. but at a certain point, the convenience of all this compact, miniature, and space-saving nonsense has taken away my love for the big, the non-streamlined, and the awkward, which is probably why i don't have more photo albums like the one i have of my japanese adventures. technology has made me, and i'm assuming most of western civilization, incredibly lazy, but for me it's gotten so bad that i can't even laugh about it anymore. there are the small things that only affect me materialistically, such as my neglect towards making hard copies of the countless aforementioned pictures of my year in spain, but that's just the surface of my computer-induced lethargy. last year, for example, instead of crafting real life relationships, i let myself succumb to the convenience of myspace and facebook for companionship, only to feel completely stupid and empty afterwards. in fact, instead of feeling the connectedness that such social networking websites promise, a few months ago i felt more alone than ever and one night deleted my myspace account, which i blamed for my insecurities. not only have i let my physical possessions overwhelm me with their volume, i have let my digital possessions threaten me with their ephemeral and unreliable nature.

again, i have no grudge against the technological revolution, but i have to say that i have heard the expression "lose everything" more within the past 2 or 3 years than i have in my entire life. for example: "she lost everything when her computer crashed", "i need to back up my files so i don't lose everything if something happens", etc. when i was younger, i only heard this phrase when people were talking about houses burning down or the stock market crashing. i'm not criticizing its application, though, because i can relate to the feeling of having "everything" saved on a hard drive. we have gotten to the point where we have entrusted our lives to generally trustworthy but extremely fickle machines, capable of destroying us emotionally with their insolence. not only am i dependent on this machine, however, but also another one that i recently purchased: another compact, stylish apparatus that promises to store 320 GB of crap that will probably get lost should my laptop give up one day, which, according to what i've heard, is a completely feasible possibility. everything is now stored in megabytes on chips that most of us don't even comprehend, so it shouldn't be that surprising to us that we can literally "lose everything" at any given point. to put it another way, the greeks, etruscans, romans, and egyptians spent countless years carving their legacies into marble, granite, and limestone, while the legacy of modern man is created by twittering on silicon, aluminum, and PVC.

as of now, all of my possessions fit under one roof in my room, which can only comfort me until i have to move out once again at the end of the month, when i assume i will turn into my old self. i keep going through my belongings, making executive decisions on whether or not to keep my puka shell necklaces, my sticker and keychain collections, my soccer trophies, and my old cassette tapes. i've concluded that it's impossible and unnecessary to get rid of it all, and i should probably just enjoy my stuff instead of waging a war against it. although i still keep looking for that next thing to go, recently i've made a habit of closing my door, plugging in my lava lamp, lying on my floor, and enjoying this emptiness, which lately i've found has never felt so full.

just some thoughts

thoughts from my last few months in spain:

i left the butane on

2000 words on spanish foreign policy by next week

that fresh puddle of piss is probably not from an animal

i need a hostel for rome

i'm meeting carlos the porn director in chueca tonight

tomorrow it's eugenio the canario in callao

i need to make a budget

the exchange rate sucks

it is 4:00 AM and there are drunk french girls singing on the street

my opera singer neighbor needs to put a lid on it

same thing with the ray charles enthusiast upstairs

the girl at the chinese restaurant asks why she hasn't seen me in so long

the kebap people always hate me

getting through la latina on sunday is next to impossible

i have to walk through a crowded plaza with my recycling when i go running

in spandex and a tank top

i could have sworn i turned the butane off

there is no light in my apartment unless i open a window

madrid needs a bath, thank god for rain

i go home to california soon

the butane is off, i just know it

menú del día shouldn't be more than 10€

i can't open the front door to the building

neither can the neighbors, and they ring our room to open it for them

tinto de verano has alcohol in it?

i just found out that the only window in my apartment is next to a sewage drain

all spanish men sound the same (or at least a lot of them do)

my clothes are falling apart, that's what i get for shopping at h&m

why does everyone always sound like they're yelling?

i went to morocco?

i knew i left the butane on

oh shit, the water-meter-reader is here, better hide

i hate getting off crowded buses

if you're going to beg for money in the metro, at least play the violin or something, god

that blind guy has probably been selling lottery tickets since 1812

the african prostitutes in casa de campo know who i am by now

enough with the obras already, that was a perfectly good sidewalk, leave it alone!

the time between the extreme heat and extreme cold was unforgivingly short

sol has a cercanías station now?

just how bad for you is second-hand smoke again?

after 11 months, i should probably stop treating 1€ as $1

where the fuck has this year gone?

why it's time

i guess it occurred to me about two weeks ago, when i woke up on my couch at 2 PM for the third day in a row, and thought that maybe my experience in spain needed to hurry up and just end. the month of july has basically been spent the way i always think summer is supposed to be spent: late nights, early afternoons, and mornings that don't even exist. however, at this time i probably left my apartment an average of one and a half times per day and spent the time inside drowning myself in american TV, music, and instant messaging with friends 5,000 miles away. i had voluntarily extended my stay here for an entire month, thinking that with an extra 30 days i'd get to travel! see stuff! do things! meet people! of course, this all would have happened if i hadn't been so fucking exhausted from the previous 10 months.

it is impossible to explain everything that i've experienced here, and i've often felt so overwhelmed by it all that many times i convinced myself that it was just too much for me to write down. i think i officially gave up journaling when i wasn't sure if my traumatic experience with losing my backpack in a grocery store storage locker was worth reading later on. i felt the same way when a neighbor yelled at me (first in spanish and then in broken english) for throwing my trash in a garbage can that was empty, and made me remove it and put it in the garbage can outside, which was also empty. when the immigrants in my old neighborhood repeatedly asked me to buy hashish from them, when the first time it rained in january was the day i just happened to be moving out, when i had 6 papers and 4 final exams and 3 weeks and no internet, when i had no central heating or hot water in the dead of winter, and when i thought i had been abandoned by everyone back home, i didn't want to remember any of it. i just wanted it to stop.

it shouldn't be any surprise that yes, life did improve after this seemingly hellish phase. the weather warmed up, my parents visited me, school ended, and i did what i considered to be "heavy traveling": three trips to three different countries in one month. people, let's just be honest: traveling, at least like this, just doesn't do it for me. i get that it's important to see other cultures, and see the world, and broaden my horizons, blah blah blah, but give me a fucking break. i don't take much pleasure in crowds of chinese proportions trying to snap a picture of the eiffel tower by itself. these are precisely the kinds of people that later go and post these solo snapshots of internationally recognized monuments on their facebook albums. if you are guilty of this, and if we were in high school, i would say that you were wasting perfectly good yearbook space. but even though my travel record is pitiful compared to others, right now i don't find myself more or less interesting based on the fact that i have traveled at all. in fact, i find myself most annoyed with people who i meet on trips who brag about the amount of stamps in their passport while going on about how many more stops they have on their cliché-sodden excursion. here's a tip: if that's you in the hostel in rome going on about how great you are, please shut the hell up. i've spent all afternoon shopping for shoes and i need a nap.

with my traveling "out of the way", i decided to dedicate july to doing "whatever i felt like doing", which turned into late nights online and early afternoons wiping the drool off the sofa's armrest. there was a week where djali went home and i was left alone to sulk in my own freedom, which is when i really hit a low. why wasn't i going out and "having fun"? what does that even mean anymore? why was i alone? where were my friends? tinto de verano has alcohol in it? the smattering of self-doubt and questioning seemed like déjà vu, but when did i ever experience craziness like this? and then it hit me: the loneliness, the eager anticipation, and the anxiety i was feeling were all from last summer, when i was about to come here. what i needed was an escape for a few days, so i booked a short and sweet trip to barcelona. i spent two days with a good friend talking and lounging on the beach, walking the streets, seeing things that i wanted to see, and not being tied to a schedule, email or social networking bullshit for an amazing 60 hours or so. for the first time, i felt completely at ease in spain. for the first time, i completely enjoyed traveling.

after all was said and done, my last trip was exactly what i needed to jumpstart my attitude towards my life, especially the life i've lived in spain. there have been trials and errors, tears and fears, good times and bad, but overall, it has been pretty complete, and well worth remembering it all.

however.

the straw broke the camel's back at approximately 4 PM last friday. i was leafing through a spanish tabloid at a rest stop halfway between barcelona and madrid when, all of a sudden, the sales clerk barked, "you can't read that before buying it, sir." i wanted to explain to him that this was an abomination, that everyone should be able to aimlessly browse through celebrity gossip free of charge, that the entire rest stop/grocery store/barnes and noble experience is not complete without a glimpse of a panty-less lindsay lohan or a tweaked-out amy winehouse. i wanted to tell him that i couldn't just buy the tabloid, because there was a chance that it had just old stuff i had already seen before. i wanted to tell him that this was an injustice. instead, i realized where i was, put down the magazine, and knew that it was time.

"california, here we come, right back where we started from."

-phantom planet

cuentos bajo la lluvia: ___ing in the rain

it has rained a lot these past few months in spain. i remember when it started in may, when i was writing my final papers on spanish foreign policy and the significance of transsexualism in spanish film, when all of a sudden, madrid was being drenched with what seemed like buckets emptying themselves out onto the patio right outside my window. i looked and saw the other neighbors, whose apartments faced the interior courtyard of the building, and they were equally mesmerized by the rain, reaching their hands out and finding them instantly wet from the abnormally huge droplets. i positioned myself on my couch so that my head hung off the edge, allowing me to look upwards at the sky while technically i looked down. as it came pouring up, i realized that the rain has played a significant role in my life abroad, not just in the past few months, but from the first storm to the most recent. for me, living in spain has been defined by an entire gamut of meteorological phenomena, but the rain and its usual accompaniments of thunder and lightning have been the most recurrent.

i don't remember everything that happened that night in november. djali and i went to see a movie, which had become something we did a few times a month. always an american film dubbed in spanish, always his choice. i never really cared nor had any desire to see any particular movie over another. in fact, i'd been having a standoff with the cinematographic industry for the past few years, avoiding movie theaters and their crowds of rude cell-phone users and the much-loathed movie-talkers with the exception of a few times a year. spanish movie theaters are a little different, in that seating is assigned and i find that people are generally more respectful when the lights are dimmed and the previews start (which, by the way, don't last nearly as long as their american counterparts). the standard popcorn, candy, and soda are still part of the picture, but the white trash, texting-during-the-movie-morons are not.

although these were all perfectly good reasons to go see movies in spain, the reality of the fact was i just wanted to spend time with djali alone. we had already been casually "dating" for a few months when, on this particular night, i chose the movie for the first time. another difference i find between the american and spanish movie-going experiences is that in the US, seeing a movie is a sort of a process, initiated by a desire to see a certain film. once this is decided, the movie section of the newspaper or internet is consulted, along with suggesting a time to arrive at the location of the showing in case of long lines, ticket availability, etc. in spain, every time djali and i have seen a movie, the "process" has generally followed the format of djali having a vague idea of want he wants to see, us walking to any random theater, and choosing the next showing relative to the time of our arrival. i knew this night was going to be different based on the fact that he suggested that we see a movie i had brought up a few days before, which, like all hollywood films, had arrived to spain around 2 months after its premiere in the states, complete with its spanish soundtrack.

we arrived at the theater just in time to get tickets for the last showing, and still being new in madrid, i had no idea how we were going to get home after it was over. we were in a neighborhood that was within walking distance from our own, but i wasn't familiar with that fact, and all i could think about was being stranded at the theater until the metro opened at 6:00 AM. of course i completely ruled out the possibility of a very cheap cab ride, because getting into a cab would require me to speak to a stranger, and i just didn't do that. once out in the street, the sky was heavy with storm clouds and was already beginning to drizzle. djali powered forward as i followed, not asking how we were going to get home and only assuming that he knew what he was doing. the rain came down on our hooded jackets, soaking our clothes and shoes as we waited to cross gran vía, one of the main commercial streets of madrid. at this point i knew where we were, and i felt strangely calm, and even arguably happy. i looked at djali as we waited under the awning of a building near the crosswalk, the glow of the lights spilling in the wet street. i wondered how exactly i got myself into this relationship, a relationship in which i clearly had no desire to make decisions, movie-related or otherwise, and in which for the first time, at this point, i could follow without having major doubts. hand in hand, shivering and waiting for the sign to cross, i turned to djali and made my second pseudo-suggestion of the night: "i've never kissed anyone in the rain before."

i don't remember everything that happened that night, but i do remember seeing the first good movie i had seen in a long time, and walking with my head bowed in vain to avoid the overhead torrents of rain. i remember finally feeling a sense of belonging to a city i had only lived it for a few months, and with a guy with whom i was in way over my head. and, for the first time, i kissed someone in the rain, the midnight residents of gran vía seemingly frozen in time as the world around us continued its nocturnal shower.

notes from rome

straight from the diary of kasey lewallen:

10 june 2009
i don't do pub crawls.
i showered twice today. i don't understand why people leave their shampoo and soap in the hostel's common bathroom. i always just assume that they were left behind and it's fair game for anyone to grab, so i used the shampoo that was on the shelf. it was the brand aussie, and it reminded me of the time that i was in a fantastic sam's as a kid and the hairdresser washing my hair commented that it smelled nice. "like strawberries," she said. i told her it was the aussie brand shampoo that we used at home, and she said that i was lucky to have parents that would buy me that kind of hair care product. i never saw the connection between the two, but years later i guess i can see what she meant.

tonight, after a fit of self-consciousness (i hated my outfit), i tried to make my way to the across the river to meet greg and kat and the canadians. i ended up getting lost and it was getting dark, so i walked around and found a small park by a monastery that overlooked the city and took pictures. i finally found the river. i was on the other side of town but i decided to go on foot towards the hostel because i didn't want to pay 1€ to get on the metro. so i walked and walked and began to sweat. and i wanted gelato. i walked and sweated and craved gelato. of course the one time i wanted gelato that badly was the time i couldn't find any. it just made me sweat more. finally after several blocks i found some. tiramisu and nutella. and then i just stopped walking so fast. i ate my gelato and walked slowly up via nazionale. i was still sweating but i didn't mind. i knew i was going to need another shower.

11 june
every time i go to a flea market i see old photographs for sale. not pictures of celebrities, not paintings, but snapshots of people, normal and everyday people, frozen in time in a basket marked "2 for $4". today i saw something similar, but instead of pictures they were postcards, written out and addressed and stamped years ago. photos or postcards, this bothers me. that a person would willingly allow their personal memories to end up in a wicker container with a "for sale" sign taped to in makes me uneasy. after flipping through the antique cards with their salutations and messages written in italian, i wondered what kind of person would let this happen. and then, without even trying, i thought of several.

in the new dorm i met a guy (ben?) from denver. he's one of those people who has probably not been exposed to much in life and whose sarcasm detector is nonexistent. he was debating whether or not to do the highly-publicized "roma city pub crawl" for tonight, and when i ironically suggested the benefit of receiving a free t-shirt with participation, he frowned and said he probably didn't need another one, thanks. we talked some more until he started to angrily and awkwardly search for his electric shaver in his large traveler's backpack. i left for dinner and had caprese salad and lemon talionatellaghettioli, or whatever it's called. ben from denver had told me to go back to the trevi fountain, because 1) it's better at night and 2) you have to throw two coins into the fountain instead of one (like i did): one so you'll come back to rome, the other so you'll fall in love. i needed to throw that second coin in, dammit. i bought postcards before arriving for .50€ a pop, only to arrive at the fountain and see the guy selling them 20 for 1€, which i had been looking for all day. i threw the second coin in and struggled past the avalanche of tourists and vendors. all this while wearing my new italian leather shoes.

12 june
i was afraid i wouldn't hear my alarm this morning, but luckily i woke up to someone else's, which went off at 5:30. the girl in the bed across from mine groggily reached to turn it off and said, "where the fuck is this guy?" before going back to sleep. she was referring to ben, whose bed was empty. i got ready to catch the bus for the airport but i suddenly became worried. ben was not there, which meant he probably did the pub crawl, which meant he would probably not get to see the vatican like he wanted to. he is that type of person who people like to see get drunk but will not take care of afterwards. i have been obsessively googling "benjamin rome denver death tourist" since i came back. luckily, no results.

one of those daze

8 months has passed since i arrived in madrid, and 8 months have been filled with activities, some that were eye-opening, some that were moving, and some that were completely pointless. i've concluded that living abroad has redefined what i consider to be a love-hate relationship. i will never understand spain, regardless of how well i communicate in spanish or study its history and culture, but i'm not quite sure that spain will ever understand me, either, so i'm stuck in a frustrating place. i'll admit it takes a lot for me to give people a chance, much less an entire country a year's worth of my time, but i've gotten to the point where i don't need the gratification of having "adapted" to the way of life here, because i haven't. and i won't. it has nothing to do with my effort, because i have given everything to this experience and have done everything i said i would do when i first made plans to come to spain 19 months ago. i am who i am, and i am not spanish.

just as with people learning a language, i feel there is a very well-defined hierarchy that people inevitably fall into when they're in a foreign place. the first type i fortunately don't know personally, but happened to briefly meet on a bus to granada in february. this girl was an american, studying with other americans for a semester, taking all of her classes in english with american professors, and leaving the country every weekend to even more foreign places, probably to spread american stereotypes that she is, in her own mind, not at all perpetuating. the second type are not as bad, are somewhat more immersed, but somehow get around the linguistic and cultural barriers by going to english-speaking places, hanging around their american friends, going to popular clubs in which there will be yet more americans studying abroad, and later complaining that they are "barely speaking [insert language they are supposed to be studying]". the third type are the die-hard, serious study abroad students, dedicating themselves to every cultural phenomenon they can get their hands, ears, eyes, and taste buds on, and strictly restricting their communication to the native language. to me, all three study abroad student types are equally obnoxious, and only amplifies the contempt in my aforementioned love-hate relationship.

all of these ridiculous people make me question what category i fall into, if any. i didn't come here for a drunken european semester like the losers in group 1, nor do i go out to cheesy, touristy places like those in group 2. as for group 3, i suppose i'm a little uptight about learning the language, but i feel i divide my usage of english and spanish appropriately while keeping in mind that i should always be finding ways to improve my abilities in my second language. as far as cultural experiences go, i'm definitely not at all up to speed: i've never had tapas. i didn't go to carnaval in cádiz, nor to las fallas in valencia, and i don't plan on going to the ferias in sevilla or la tomatina in buñol. i've never seen a fútbol match or a corrida de toros. i've never eaten jamón, callos, or cocido. i've never done any of these things, and honestly, i don't ever plan on doing them. i've been told that i'm "missing out", "living the experience the wrong way", and "being too judgmental/cynical", but again, i am who i am, and believe it or not, you can have a meaningful experience abroad without having your life be a reenactment of the movie eurotrip.

for me, living in a foreign place has been the biggest challenge of my life (for further reference, you can place anyone who says that it is not difficult with the nitwits in groups 1 and 2). i still find myself struggling with the overwhelming inconvenience of life here, but after a period of time, i've found that things start to not matter so much. the broken shower head, the streets reeking of human feces, the african prostitutes in the park, the unnecessarily stressful process of shopping for groceries: all things that once made me rethink my decision to come here have slowly become mundane, and i will probably miss them when i come back to california in august. my biggest and most profound realizations i have had while abroad have nothing to do with flamenco or siesta, but the fact that the frappuccinos® taste exactly the same in spain and germany as they do in the US and seeing twilight dubbed in spanish unfortunately didn't take away from its awkwardness and insignificance. a place where people don't aspire to be rich and settle for whatever job they can get, where students graffiti their own university and smoke in the hallways and later complain about the state of their campus, where public defecation is not necessarily frowned upon, and where having a single dreadlock is preferred to having a whole head full of them, i could never call home. i call it an adventure, a headache, a whim: i call it spain.

i had a dream a few weeks ago about my hairdryer, which is an american brand equipped with an american plug fixture. as i went to turn it on, i realized that the european adapter that is usually attached had fallen off, rendering the appliance useless in spain. as it has been 8 months, i feel it is appropriate for my own personal adapter to have become somewhat loose and worn out, often seeking refuge or a time-out after a long day. i then think about the others, though, especially the girl on the bus, who just translocated her entire world at home instead of wasting any time with adaptation. then the second group, whose efforts, although pitiful, to them seem more than enough to get through. those in group 3 have their personal adapters glued on, and will suffer great pains to remove them when they go home, when they realize that no one really cares how many things they did while abroad.

and then there's me. i woke up from the hairdryer dream and went to the bathroom, curious to see if the adapter was actually missing. although present, the small apparatus was dangling from the prongs on the dryer's plug, as if it it was trying to escape yet another use. i took the appliance in hand, forced the adapter on tightly, then got ready to live yet another day in this place, a place i could never call home, but for now, will do just fine.

blog wars

about a year ago i added an application on facebook called the honesty box, in which people can write you anonymous comments and you can do the same to others who also have added this useless feature. at first i went crazy, writing everyone from high school things that i always wanted to tell them, and then i realized what i was doing was kind of lame. i never wrote anything really mean, just exactly how i felt about them, which sometimes was less than positive. okay, negative. meanwhile i was equally frustrated and delighted with my own honesty inbox, full of truths from sometimes obvious and most the time unknown authors. i was usually good at guessing who they were, though, and i even ended up dating someone who i provoked to keep writing me, until which point i asked him out.

to my knowledge there is no way to find out who writes the messages unless you are like me and have a knack for discovering people through their syntactical idiosyncrasies. thus i was dismayed when someone posted a blog saying that my best friend wrote something hurtful to her on her box of honesty, even though they were "best friends", and they had kissed, even though he's gay, blah blah blah. i want to say it is impossible for him to have written that message because it was in fact me who did it. as it was posted in all its glory on her site, i won't repeat it, but after re-reading it i don't remember what i meant by it. i had never even heard this person complete a sentence when we were in high school together, much less had enough of an opinion of her to write something kind of harsh. for this i want to apologize, i repeat that i went kind of crazy when i first added the application, writing things without fully thinking about them. even though this person wasn't "my cup of tea", and i felt that neither she "brought out the best" in, well, anyone, it's not my position to say it in such a juvenile manner.

that being said, don't believe everything you read. come to think of it, don't believe anything you see, hear, or even think, either, unless you have hardcore proof to back it up. that way, when you go publishing your blog accusing people of doing things that they didn't do, maybe people will be able to take you seriously.

but don't bet on it.