It's official.

I love Fridays. Lawless, lax. The rest of the week I think I should pretend to be productive, but Friday is beyond saving.

Moments:
1) Having dodged that bullet.
2) Two words: Retail. Therapy.
3) Bananas: the never-ending inside joke.
4) Road rage.
5) Packing up an apartment in 24 hours. Go.
6) Applying How I Met Your Mother to every angle of life.
7) Living in a sitcom.
8) Tipsy-apartment-cleaning.
9) Driving into the Duke forest at 2 a.m. and forgetting a flashlight and turning back.
10) Settling next to the Chapel, taking auto-timed pictures, listening to slam poetry, dreaming of school school school, being existentially and undeniably alive.
11) Right now.
12) "We're having a bondage moment right now."
13) Everyone. Everything. Ever.

The Archive.

Had dinner at my co-editor's apartment last night. I just let it sink in that I'm going to be running the show for this literary magazine next year. I haven't had this much responsibility in a while -- especially not with something I care about this much. And in high school, it was so easy to be merely nominal about things (-- especially when you're in charge of five other things and have your eyes set on Yale. Ugh okay admitting it yuck).

But I have high hopes for myself and for The Archive next year. I think we're going to make a few structural changes (walking that fine line between setting up useful positions and creating bureaucracy) in addition to working harder on fostering creative writing on campus. Idealistic, but possible?

Junior year is a year during which good things are going to happen. I can just feel it. And no amount of accidental sleeping-in (today) or rookie real-world mistakes (being really scared by the UPS man banging at the door whoops) is going to make me feel ill-prepared to meet the challenges of my near-future life.

And so.

Someone pointed out to me that I only write when I'm pissed, which is . . . true. But in my defense, when happy things are happening, what would you rather do: sit down and write about it? To twist a famous saying, isn't that like dancing about architecture?

To me, words are a heavy medium. They can be made lightweight and fluffy only through an extraordinary amount of effort -- and there's still always the risk of sounding cheesy, inauthentic, strained. I'd rather consume my happiness through music, movies, t.v. shows.

Plus (and maybe this won't make much sense), I think happiness is much more private than sadness. Everyone has insecurities and doubts, and most people wear these on their sleeves. But to really know what makes someone happy is something intimate.

(Also: A small part of me doesn't believe in happiness. It seems like bragging. Stagnancy. Complacency. It seems like not knowing that you should actually be sad. Possibly I'm just infatuated with struggling. My favorite images are those of suffering: Sisyphus rolling his boulder up the hill, Ophelia submerging herself in water (the same image, except replace Ophelia with Virgina Woolf), Zach Braff and Natalie Portman screaming in the pouring rain in the classic scene from Garden State.)

Nevertheless, this is my attempt at writing down happy thoughts: my mother is hands-down the wisest advice-giver I will ever know. And yesterday my roommate and I laughed until four in the morning about things that forced her to clear her browser history. And I keep getting to know amazing people. And I'm getting stronger, better (hearing the first beats of Daft Punk in my head now), more mature -- I've discovered so much about myself this summer. And I'm looking forward to the next few months of my life.

Unbearably gushy. Going to go wash the taste of cheesy sentiments out of my mouth by listening to some Radical Face.

What makes you think I enjoy being led to the flood?

(Apologies in advance for length and lack of structure. In other words, this is a self-indulgent, three-a.m. ramble.)

Wow. Became incoherent for a while, so must backtrack. Think again. I reached the clarity of having found conclusions during my run today, so I think I’ve made at least some sense of all of this.

First of all, the title of this post is a lyric from a song by The National. It doesn’t exactly sum up what I mean, but in a way it captures the resignation I feel about much of this topic. And I just find myself playing it over and over again, the way I do with new song obsessions.

I would be lying if I said I didn’t spend the majority of this weekend with my soul curled up in a fetal position, bawling my eyes out. I’ve needed it for a while, but the imperative to stay strong has always kept my guard up. But around certain people . . .

This is complicated. I had an ex-boyfriend visit this weekend. I guess this can be viewed as unwise, but we’d talked about it for weeks, and we’re both in between relationships, so under the rules of modern social conduct, it was as allowable as anything else.

I know that I should probably choose my company more wisely – inviting exes back into one’s life is generally frowned upon. But he’s never really left my life, and I don’t want him to. Terrible, terrible things have happened between us, and at times I thought I’d never speak to him again.

But. I’ve honestly never been as vulnerable around anyone else, and I doubt I will ever be. It’s a byproduct of having spent so much time growing together. So much of us is relatable, instantly understandable. And I wanted more than anything else not to have to explain.

In any case. In any case, what I needed was to spend a weekend with someone familiar, to remember at least a little of my previous confidence. What I needed was to drink and to cry, and then to drink some more, and then to feel sick in the middle of the night, and then to wake up completely disoriented and unable to remember what was so sad the night before – call it a twenty-first-century catharsis?

When people drink, their worst fears end up manifesting themselves in garbled clichés. I’m convinced everyone at their core has one of many generic insecurities. Which makes mine boring as hell, but also completely true for the time being – I was told that while whimpering pathetically on Friday night, I asked questions to the tune of “Am I actually a good person?” and “How do I know my life is worth living?”

Such age-old anxieties, I know, but I confess that they’re painfully accurate. Other people worry about being alone, about failure, about talent. Right now, my problem with my existence is so fundamental that I can say only this: I can’t understand how I became this person that I am. I can’t comprehend or support my own decisions. I feel conflicted about every choice I make.

This weekend, while we watched countless episodes of How I Met Your Mother, I tried so hard to adopt the emotional physics of the sitcom. And when we watched Rushmore, I fell in love (as I always do) with Wes Anderson’s understanding of life: so shitty, yet so uplifting by the end of every one of his movies.

I want to see existence the way Anderson does. I want to believe what he believes.

It’s such a struggle right now for me to make my mind up about even small aspects of my day. I’ve been grappling with this since last winter and I just don’t. know. what’s. wrong. I refuse to believe it’s just another bout of teenage-like angst. I want to think that it’s my real coming-of-age, when I learn to appreciate everything about my existence after all.

Was it a mistake to have him over? At first I felt a sort of bombastic shame about the whole ordeal, but I don’t anymore. Instead, I seriously think that nostalgia can be revitalizing, that maybe Lawrence was right about sex after all, that the transition between serious and casual isn’t quite so difficult to navigate.

Plus (and maybe this is what is the most important realization to me), I’m just sick of wondering what is expected of me in these situations. I’m so good at obligation, at should and ought – such a Thinking type that I try to squash what I’m Feeling. I’ve gotten in so much trouble for that, jumping into any romantic opportunity I think should work out despite my hesitations. And then staying in because I think the sort of person I want to be would be capable of dealing with it.

God, I should just listen to my instincts. Isn’t that the entire problem in the first place!?

In high school, one of my close friends decided to write me a series of puppy love letters, even though I was already in a relationship. And instead of doing what I felt – which would have involved being creeped out, getting the fuck out, and letting this inconvenience go – I was so overwhelmed by how nice and kind and earnest this boy was that I thought I owed him something. And I couldn’t extricate myself.

Yesterday I got a late-night phone call from a close friend that was so similar in sentiment that the phrase “eternal recurrence” flashed through my mind as I sat in the parking lot of my apartment complex, flabbergasted. Same nice, earnest, completely deserving guy. Same nothingness from me.

Later, I realized the situation wasn’t as dire as I thought. But it’s still not the best. What in me invites declarations of love from my closest friends? (Especially when I'm in the middle of considering myself so irredeemably foolish?) For a few minutes I actually thought it was my duty to love him. As though anything like this could be forced.

I’ve obviously not fully learned my lesson. I can’t feel bad about this. But even now the guilt is creeping up on me. And I think I should want what I don’t.

Ugh. This weekend I learned about myself that I can handle casual encounters relatively well (minus the crying jags, which are probably not permanent). Except what I think I should do is throw myself into a relationship the way I have for the past five years. Great.

Not now. Not now. Not when I actually literally have no idea what I’m doing with myself. Not when I really feel like using this period of my life to get myself together. I'm not scared of being unsure. I'm scared of not making my own choices.

I’m going to borrow a line from Jake & Amir, which I’ve also overindulged in this weekend. Instead of stressing about what I ought to do in situations like these, I’m going to go to bed and wake up tomorrow and make myself a big, nice helping of NOT GIVIN’ A SHIT.

Shoot me.

Option 1: I should start respecting views that are not my own, even when I think they're fucking ridiculous.
Option 2: These people are seriously fucking ridiculous.

Forms of communication.

I sat down today to write a few letters I'd been meaning to mail out for a while. I've never been a big letter-writer, mainly because I always selfishly wanted to keep all my documentable thoughts in my own personal journal, away from the prying eyes of someone who wouldn't appreciate them. Sending a handwritten letter out into the world means releasing a piece of yourself to float into someone else's hands -- someone else who probably didn't understand as well, who probably wouldn't respond in a way that would really make problems clearer.

I remember (it's shamefully funny now) keeping a journal for a high-school boyfriend, which basically consisted of reflecting every few days in a spiral-bound notebook about life, worries, progress until I could present it as a birthday gift. Basically just a series of more personal, more revealing letters -- but I was so stingy in what I wrote, would always make sure my best insights had been doubled in my personal journal, would still not even reveal the most honest sentiments despite the entire premise of the gift journal.

Words have the insidious quality of seeming more truthful than they actually are. I've been told that I write "earnestly," even though I'm often convincing myself as I go along. We should not assume that written language is more honest just because it's tangible.

Nowadays, like the rest of the industrialized world, I'm always typing up emails of various lengths, making Skype dates, texting notable life details, frivolously passing time on chat platforms, posting on Facebook walls. Everyone's more immediate -- accessible in case I find myself lonely at any given point during the day. For this, I am grateful. But (except for the occasional email ramble) these are all such short conversations full of nonexistent laughter-out-loud and trite slang, half-thoughts that amount to less than their summation.

In the middle of a letter to my best friend from middle school, I realized what I miss most of all: real phone conversations. Wandering around my bedroom cradling my phone between my neck and my shoulder. Lying on my bed aimlessly throwing a stuffed animal at the ceiling. Slowly shifting on a couch until my feet somehow end up on the headrest. Nearly falling asleep under the covers with a comforting voice as my only reminder of the outside world. Taking simultaneous breaks to go to the bathroom. Watching a thunderstorm together from the opposite side of town. Talking until someone's battery dies.

In a way, all close friends are the same on the phone: endlessly funny, sympathetic, full of one silly, debatable notion or another. And I miss them the way I would miss a confidante that quietly slipped out of my life without notice until it was too late.

I think I will make a greater effort to have these conversations in the future. It already makes me happy to anticipate them.

Zadie Smith is kicking my ass.

-- & other super summer success stories.

. . . Right.

In other news, I am underwhelmed by the amount of productivity that has occurred in my recent past. Do not understand post-structuralism -- so much academic gibberish. Compartmentalization of existence is going well, however. Also I think I have stumbled upon my next near-obsessive, almost-compulsive fix. It (ideally) involves the $15+ four-in-one avocado tool I saw at Williams-Sonoma last weekend. And I am planning something wicked, which is severely not in my best interest. I find my current locale charming, though I am paying through the nose for decent tomatoes at the farmer's market and Jell-O cups that remind me of kindergarten. My brother sends me two-line emails, ends with "please write back!", and takes a week to respond himself.

Courses for this fall currently include: magazine journalism, audio documentary, creative writing. On top of a column gig. Which means I need to cut something unless I want to run out of creative stamina two weeks into the semester.

My friend just sent me the line: "life in the fast lane." Sarcastically, I think, for her. But looking around, I wonder -- maybe not?