magicbeans. nothing if not awkward.

and so begins week two. i made a list yesterday of things i need to get done. don't think i actually accomplished much of it. quite a bit of the day was spent with my dp seminar readings. still haven't set up my studio space. still feeling rather disconnected. i told someone the other day that i really don't feel as if i have any obligation to what i'm doing. i'm hoping that as things pick up i'll get caught up in them.

concrete today. i can't remember anything from my previous structures classes. it's been fifteen months or something. we haven't actually had any homework due yet or anything, but just the act of trying to dredge up old information makes my head hurt. i found myself wanting a cigarette when class got out. but didn't light one up right away. it occurred to me that, for me, the act of smoking would actually take an incredible amount of will to overcome my strength of will against smoking. and in my currently somewhat deranged logic, that was almost a reason for doing it. there was an article in the new york times magazine last sunday about an internet community that has grown up around the premise of embracing eating disorders as a lifestyle choice. something about that, about being self-destructive intentionally, putting your heart completely behind it, appealed to me in a very disturbing way. right now, at this very moment, the prospect of smoking is a little like that. knocking myself down a peg as a way of taking control.

i would have said that smoking, that sort of self-destruction, is something that's just not a part of me. i've said the same thing about casual sex (not necessarily that it's destructive, although maybe in a corresponding emotional way) but that it's not in me. i've gone through two phases of convincing myself that i should just spend some time as a slut. when i left texas and first came to risd, and more recently, when i came back to providence two weeks ago. but i wouldn't know where to start (or so i tell myself). on the few occasions over the last couple of years where i've found myself in a situation that could have led, without much effort at all on my part, to a potential one night stand sort of encounter, i've shied away from it before even realizing that the opportunity had presented itself. (with the possible exception of the first night with stef, but that led to so much more.)

i have to admit, that there is a small voice in my head pointing out that these self-destructive aspirations are for traits that stef possesses. that my subconscious reasoning behind wanting to acquire them (or at least temporarily try them on) is to be more like her. either out of some desire to replace part of what i lost with her by filling it with bits of myself, or, even more unhealthily, by trying to bridge some of the gap between our divergent life experiences so that her argument about our incompatibility will not hold as much weight.

now, i'm psychoanalyzing myself and here which is a little dangerous. it is a small voice, as i said, and probably represents a correspondingly small part of my motivations. i am not going to seek, consciously or subconsciously, to fundamentally change who am in some misguided attempt to 'win her back'. on the other hand, it is no secret that i haven't completely let go.

earlier, i was thinking back to this time last year, i had been in italy for a week, and was feeling this incredible emptiness where she had just recently been in my life, but at that point there was a conciliation that i had left a similar emptiness in hers. and i started crying, for only the first or second time since coming back to providence two weeks ago. i went for a walk in the park, in the fog. i had a pack of cigarettes with me, but forgot me keys, locking myself out of my apartment.