how_i_got_here Anna_Began It was just about one year ago that I started playing games at pogo.com. "Pop-It," "Bingo," that candy matching game... and then came Push. We'd considered searching for houses, working up in Aberdeen, living in Delaware. Nothing fit. The green book had been finished and the only thing that lay ahead of me was filling up empty days with the things that are meaningful to everyone but me. I'd lost a family, a best friend, an identity and my name. Gazing into my crystal ball, I hurled it to the floor and shattered it. My first thought, "Maybe I will give that man my phone number," led to my typing numbers and answering phones and falling for several lines only because I needed to fall for something just then. And it led to ideas. It led to possibilities. It led to searching out favorite bands and between then and now, here I am. For the past week, I've been driven around an unfamiliar city. Repeatedly I'd ask myself, observing the meandering speed at which everyone travelled, the inability to park on the street after a certain time, the missing mirror removing the ability to see my own reflection; could this be home? At first I curled my lip up, similar to the way in which Enid curls hers in the first scenes of Ghost World. This place is slow, not too welcoming, a little bizarre but not bizarre enough. As if someone slipped something into my drink, days passed and by the time I left, I had fallen into some sort of role in a new family. And that's just weird. My new definition of freaking out: Being so alarmed by people having all of these visions about your future that your muscles actually constrict to the point of paralysis so as to keep your brain occupied until the storm blows over. Who am I kidding though? The pictures haven't even been developed yet. Right there, in front of the Weiner Mobile, I fell into a dozen different fantasies and I have no idea how that makes me feel. Really, this isn't about how I got here. None of these words has any connection to the original intent I had for this piece; sister to where_i_am_right_now, intended to be written from where I was at that moment. Pare down. Write outlines. Continue searching the classifieds. Picture the girl I want to be and where in the world she may land. Wash out the red sheets, buy curtains. Miss him like crazy. More than any other human being on earth. This is what happens the summer after all the other stuff happened. 030801 ... nomme where i am going the speed of life 030802 ... guitar_freak good grades good test scores good teachers now the question is: What the FUCK am I doing here!?!?! Big words Huge assignments Hours of study for one class Expectations $34,000 yeah... now what 030824 ... unhinged anna began.... still around milwaukee? i wonder sometimes. the other skites that lived around here that i never really got close to. and what about mahayana? yeah, i wonder sometimes. 080901 ... unhinged i've always been a overly sensitive caring type. it runs in my mom's family to be hyper emotional and loyal even to your own detriment. i think finding out who i really was in youngstown of all fucking places didn't help either. caring for and worrying about selfish junkies took a toll on me i am only now beginning to realize. now it's hard for me to tell people how i feel (well i guess it always has been) but i don't even send letters, cards, emails anymore. it never got me anywhere before, besides on the shit end of everyone else's problems. and unfortunately for everyone else, i don't believe i deserve to be on the shit end anymore. i would do anything to make the people i love happy. i have done anything. and i am empty from it. i need someone to grab my hand. i need someone to hold me when i sleep. i need something to plug up the hole that lets all my love run out of me. sex, drugs, 'friends' only widen the hole. being ripped and wrenched and distanced from the people i love only widens the hole. people keep telling me i need to be strong. but really they have no idea how strong i have been, what i have resisted. even stone crumbles under stress. 081002 ... auburn I think that is the most I have ever connected with you unhinged. 081002 ... raze i think i fell. or maybe i was tripped, or shot out of a cannon. 240316 what's it to you? who go blather from