The Beach House

As soon as my mother backed out of the driveway I ran upstairs and hot boxed my bedroom. I’m completely alone, two blocks away from the beach. I have to look for a job tomorrow and my family’s arriving this weekend, but today is all mine. I think I favor the solitude…in some ways. Without any distractions I can think more clearly. I think I’m going to smoke a cigarette on the balcony then go take pictures of the ocean. It’s not quite raining outside, so it’s misty and gray and beautiful. Maybe I’ll play the guitar later. There’s no internet connection. I want to read so many books. At the moment I’m listening to Beach House and I’m a little pissed because I forgot the cord that connects my computer to my speakers. Oh and now I’m smoking a cigarette on the balcony. It feels so weird living, even just temporarily, on my own. My mom is coming to get a job here in a few weeks, but I don’t want to think about that right now. At school I’m always surrounded by people, and at home I have parental authority in the form of my dad, but here I’m just alone. It’s kind of profoundly relaxing. I really needed this. I’m excited to see my mom’s side of the family more often. This house really brings us all together, and means so much to everyone. And in two months I’ll go back to the Balkans for a whole month! First is the Hope House in Fuzine, Croatia, where I’ll be reunited with so many people I love. Then I’m returning with Minela to her home in Sarajevo, Bosnia. She is such an astounding person and friend and I’m so grateful that we will once again be able to spend time together. Last year at Renewing Our Minds, the peace conference at which my grandfather spoke for eleven years, Minela and I became as close as sisters in just two days. This year I’m returning without my grandfather. Even though the prospect of traveling alone is exhilarating, I’ll miss his comforting presence and words of wisdom. I think this summer I’m going to become more independent, hopefully. I feel nervous about being on my own in this way for three whole months, but I think it’ll change my life in great ways. And a fun summer will help pass the time until I’m reunited with my family of friends at University of Mary Washington. I miss them a lot, but our friendships are time and distance resistant. I know that when I see them again it will be as if no time passed since the last time we were at school together.

Haha, a big truck and a small car just passed each other on the street and stopped. The man in the truck leaned out and said “Drive on your own side of the road, why don’t you, you short little fuck!” It was obvious that they were really good friends though, because they started chatting about Cape May. I’m glad I was a part of the moment, as a balcony witness. Balconies are always where I feel most at home.

You know, you know, we belong by the stream, to the dawn

yesterday i stood on the top of a mountain in the alps with a boy i had met less than a week before. we thought the world was ending that night, right as that day slipped into the next. we had no obligations, no fears, no regrets, no worries, no pasts. as we sat on rocks overlooking valleys and peaks, snapping pictures, he asked me what song was stuck in my head. it hailed. we barely spoke on the first half of our journey home and then at some point shared a bottle of wine and talked about existence while and italian woman glared at us and two brits dove into their own debate. we floated around venice, our home, eventually bumping into people we knew.

i can feel this experience changing me. if for absolutely nothing else at some point i'll run into this guy who i spent the best day of my life with.

so here i am. on this cusp of a journey that i should be madly excited about but im just not. im not excitd to go to italy. i have to deal with so much bullshit while im there and all i want to do is be home and chill the fuck out for i while. i got so overwhelmed at school towards the end i just desperately needed to come home and have no obligations or stresses for a long time. i couldnt deal with the person i was needing to become so i acted out irrationally to it by smoking a ton of weed and not functioning. i never went to one of my classes except for the final. i almost just fucking failed without even trying at all. and i was ok with it. i laughed about it with people. i just fucked up so hard i need to regroup. i need to have some time where im not stressing. i have a million more things to do and each and everyday i do nothing and they just pile up until their deadlines pass and i just accept that i never did them.

i feel like im growing up and just letting everything slip away for a while. im in that moment of zero gravity right before you fall. you know youre going down but youre just blissed out for a while, enjoying the view, then theres the crash of reconnecting. i know my crash is coming and theres nothing i can do about it. things are starting to go wrong rapidly. i think im making a huge mistake running around this summer and beyond. im not ready for this kind of responsibility and life changes. im so fucking sick of change. i havent stayed in the same place for 6 years. i just want to chill out and get used to things and comfortable in them before im ripped away from them and thrown into whole new situations.

i think the fact that i have this random, scattered life contributes to the face that i think about life as a very momentary thing. i dont think about the past or the future because i cant, i always just have to be adapting to the way things are in the moment.

the other day i was driving around with claire and we were talking about really deep things and just driving down the perfect road for thinking and that ed sharpe song home was playing and for some reason it just felt like the most perfect vision of home i ever could have imagined. i was just exactly where i wanted to be.

i dont want to leave home for a while. i want to settle in. i want to have everything i want at my disposal. im sick of travelling. im full of trepidation. i just cant switch anymore. i dont feel like a whole person. im really really in over my head right now.