Jessica Smith

Pictures of Success

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 01:40:19 GMT

Sometimes I wonder if you're afraid of me. Afraid of getting to actually know me and open up like you did that first night. Afraid that you might actually like what you see, afraid to leave yourself vulnerable.

And I'm afraid I'm making that up in my head to feel better about it all. I want to give up so badly, but for some reason I can't and it kills me. Please just give me a hint if you want in or out of my head.

When

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 22:18:30 GMT

When did I become not so jersey?
When did I become different?
I find it mind boggling that the more I study people and their behavior and the reasons behind what they do/feel...the more I don't understand them. The opposite sex will continue to boggle my mind, synapses feeling as if they could burst every single time I think about how they work or what they're thinking.

Despite this I feel a lot of clarity in life lately. That there's not much involved in just floating along and going with the flow, and letting go really does get you farther in life than being so worried all of the time.
I was sitting in traffic last night and for the first time didn't really care. I realized that I wound up getting to my destination exactly on time, without weaving in and out of traffic like a madwoman (I learned this from my mother). I actually got there on time, and enjoyed listening to my very scratched copies of The Get Up Kids discography.
The last week I've been letting good things affect my life more, and bad things affect my life less. Today I decided to be unproductive for the entirety of the morning and lay in bed reading Bridget Jones while consuming substances and carbohydrates. And because of this, I will no doubt finish my term paper this afternoon, go to 8 PM yoga and have a fabulously productive day.

I can't wait to go home and learn something new from this trip. To get my googley eyed owl pipe that my mom bought for me in Honduras. Get stupid with some friends, maybe sneak into the park at 3 am like old times. I want to get back in touch with who's actually inside of this body I own. I feel like there's a part inside of my brain that I got too scared of breaking one day and decided to seal it up in bubble wrap and steel. I want to break that part back open and let it pour out, if it gets broken, at least it got good use.

I could copy yours and put it for mine

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 08:36:41 GMT

Brings back memories

Better than Expected

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 10:01:13 GMT

This encompasses a lot of things I've been thinking lately. It also goes with my wonderful stack of cds I've been listening to in my rental car this week, just so happens to be that I grabbed the Spring-Summer 06 collection.

My have things changed, and life has turned out much different than I ever could have expected. Good different, of course.

Ready

Sat, 31 Oct 2009 20:44:16 GMT

I'm seriously ready for some things to change. I feel like there's so much more I need to be doing. I know there's things I want to work on, to change, and I feel like maybe I'm so overwhelmed by them all that I tend to get scared into submission.

I don't know where to begin on half of these things. Where do I even start? I need to maybe just sit down and organize things one by one, come up with a plan of action, figure out what I want the end result to look like and tackle them one by one.

There lies the problem. I can't just do things one thing at a time, it's not how I work, and I really wish it was.

Cold Chinese Leftovers in Bed

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 01:19:11 GMT

I miss this so much. I fear that as the days go by I loose the memories more and more. I had a dream last night that I was in London with my friends, and that Nanny had come back for one day, she said that she couldn't stay, so I stayed up all night talking to her on the phone. I woke up crying, knowing that I had to say goodbye- even in my dreams.

I miss these people and things so much, and I fear that everyday my memories grow more faint. Then all of the sudden I'll remember something small and happy from my childhood that I had forgotten about for years. I'm scared that I'll loose these small, insignificant memories, and the bigger ones that mean so much. That they'll grow hazier and hazier every year, loosing sight to minute details that made all of the difference. The super-soaker battles in the Hamptons, the walks with Poppy, Nanny giving me lollipops to make me feel better when I was sick, us laying on the day-bed with the windows open-her reading The Wizard of Oz to Donna and I all curled up in the crocheted blankets from the 70's. I never want to forget how it smelled, how it felt, how the colors looked. I'm so sad that I can't bottle these memories forever, in their perfection. I know my snyapses are pruning and making room for new memories, but I'd rather keep the old ones.

I just tend to get so caught up in my current life that I feel like I don't give the past enough chance to let myself relive these amazing memories. I try so hard to make new ones, to get as much out of life as possible that I fail to see what I've already gotten.

I even get scared that I'll forget about my cancer. I am happy for the most part that I've forgotten most of the details, the horrible days of feeling sick and weak have meshed into a hazy picture of three years-a bad dream. I remember very little of that time. Sometimes I'll just sit in bed and try to remember specific days or memories or spinal taps, and it gets harder and harder. This is good, I don't want to live with these horrible memories in the forefront of my mind, I just don't want to loose them forever so that I can't remember where I've come from and be able to look back and see how far I've come.

Insufficient Funds

Fri, 23 Oct 2009 07:56:18 GMT

I just feel so upside down. There's so much that I want out of life, more than I'm getting right now, and to be honest it's completely irrational. And to be even more honest, I don't even know how I feel about irrational.

I just try to go so fast, get so much done. Set such high standards, expect so much out of life and myself. It's like making up for lost time never stopped. I have so many goals and things I want to accomplish in such a short time, it's not all possible. I need to let go of the fact that it's not possible and start to concentrate on one thing at a time. I have my life ahead of me to do these things, so I need to slow down on the plan making. I get these insane ideas and make lists upon lists of hobbies I want to take up, things I want to learn, books I want to read, places I want to go, projects I want to take upon myself, things I want to cook, degrees I plan to get. It's absolutely insane to think that I'm going to do all of these things, let alone do them all in an entire year.

I need to slow down. I need to fill whatever hole it is that is causing me to do these things and make these plans in the first place. I have a lot of working on me that needs to happen, and I'm just so overwhelmed I don't know where to start, where it will bring me and how to even go about solving anything I bump into along the way.

I wish I had a map, or at least some idea where I'd wind up on the end. It's so scary having absolutely no idea where the next month will take you, not even an inkling of what to expect. But in reality, it'd be really shitty to have a predictable life, so I suppose I wouldn't trade it for the world.

I realized this week I need to just shut my mouth and listen more. My voice isn't going to go away if I don't use it.

I was a lid, on a house we never spoke of

Thu, 01 Oct 2009 06:45:00 GMT

The longer I stay put, I feel myself going slowly insane. I was not meant for a sedentary or static life, and if I was then someone made a mistake. I've only been in school for three weeks and I already feel like I'm trapped somewhere, because I don't have the ability to hop on a plane tomorrow, or drive somewhere tonight-just for shits and giggles.

I feel like the only place that I never felt trapped was at home in Jersey, which honestly I find ironic as all get up. In a perfect world when I decided that all was said and done, that I was finished with traveling for a living, I would settle down and buy the house I grew up in. I would move into 10 Foal Trail and everything would fall into a perfect equilibrium. The house that my mother felt so trapped in, that she had to flee to get away from the bad memories, only to have new ones of cancer and loss in the new one. Yep that's the one, the one I always felt free and safe in. I miss it so much.

Dollar Bowling Night, sky like violet velvet

Tue, 29 Sep 2009 06:24:21 GMT

I'm 16 again, the transformation has come to an end.

Laying in bed with the lights out and the window open, under about 5 pounds worth of blankets with Deja Entendu playing (this only happens at either 11 at night or mid-day Sunday). Destructive and free. Small things intrigue me and I have a funny arrangement of priorities.

Questioning mortality in the weirdest of ways, completely apathetic, treating it with apathy. Things on me hurt, but I've just stopped caring about the pain this way it's instead of letting myself be let down. Completely seeing through my mom, not quite knowing how to handle what is given to me. High highs and low lows, heart being torn for family and their health, marriages, sanity. Completely questioning my future, hoping that I can make up for lost time, or at least now bank myself extra years of living. I'm a machine set only to live life and ponder the ever-loving fuck out of it. There's no stopping what is happening, but by letting it happen something good may come.

Here we go again in a cycle, get ready for the ride.

A Lesson in Psychology

Mon, 28 Sep 2009 21:21:51 GMT

A good cup of tea makes a really bad day feel a lot better, it’s like drinking liquid love since it’s what my parents always gave me to feel better (physically and mentally).

Coping mechanisms, what we use to deal with stress. Displacement, it’s your way of dealing with things. (v) Diverting emotional feelings (usually anger) from the original source to a substitute target. I’m a walking bulls-eye, being conditioned to do it myself when times get rough. I desensitized myself and now I’m left with nothing, not knowing how to deal anymore. It may just be a mid-life crisis.

Let’s see where all of this is going.

I recently realized that I'm not normal, there's nothing actually wrong with me, just I'm not of the norm. I'm perfectly ok with this and I don't think I'd change my idiosyncrisies (sp?) because they make me feel the way I feel and I don't want to change that one bit.

Oh the places you'll go.

Wed, 23 Sep 2009 19:27:46 GMT

Next time I travel the country I want to get cupcakes in every state: Starting with this one- Peace O' Cake Cupcakes 3412 34th Street Lubbock, Texas Sometimes I worry that my aspirations are a bit too much, I expect too much out of the future. Meh, I guess either way it's going to go somewhere nice so I might as well just go with the flow in hopes it all turns out to be fun. Sometimes I wonder if I'm a raving lunatic. Here is how a really cool future life for me sounds: I want to get my masters, and I think I figured out a way. In the meantime I'll get my degree in Psych, work for good organizations, do lots of yoga and learn some cool new things about life. I want to live in London for at least a year (I'm thinking 2) after graduation, in this time I want to see a lot of Europe. (maybe go on tour once?) I want to open up a cupcake bakery in Portland (or some other cool city) and once it's running smoothly work towards my doctorates. Have kids, settle somewhere-no idea where? I want to have a room in my future house (when I settle somewhere) that I will wallpaper an entire wall with all of my concert tickets, the rest grey and chartruese. I'll have a big comfy couch and my grandma's desk (including the parrot lamp) on the empty wall. This will be heaven in a bedroom. I'd figure out the whole having kids thing, get some body parts fixed in the process (knees, shoulders, etc. etc.) Somewhere by now I want to have published a book, which is practically already written itself. Then open up a wellness center for families with terminally ill children. Have art classes, massage therapy, hypnosis, yoga classes, support groups for parents, siblings and the patients, have counseling sessions, a pool, occupational therapy, dietician and all that jazz. Maybe when I start to get old and this slows down I'll teach a class or two at a local college. Last- retire and spend all the money I made traveling absolutely everywhere, hopefully be physically able to surf, get really into cooking (and drinking wine) and of course read hundreds and hundreds of books.

In my future house I want a soundproof room with my instruments I don't know how to play, 100s of records, a really comfortable chair, and all my books. It'll have the softest carpet ever. This will be called the sane room.

Now that I think of it

Sat, 19 Sep 2009 03:16:38 GMT

almost all of my most content moments of my life have come either from the passenger's seat of an old pick up truck, or in the back seat of a car that was as old (if not older) than I was, squished between two best friends (and obviously listening to saves the day).

Get Rad

Sat, 19 Sep 2009 03:13:22 GMT

Hanging around Scottie really puts life into reality for me, I see so much of myself in him, but more than that I see what I want of myself.

But here is why I admire him so much (and this is a very small portion of why). He is fearless, he isn't afraid to die, he lives everyday like it's 2 and just enjoys what he has. He's getting the most out of every second he has on earth, and if he keeps continuing to get seconds, he'll make the most of those too. He wants to make his mark and do as much as he can. Being sick doesn't get him down, he just adapts to it, ignores it and moves on, all with a genuine smile on his face and inside of his heart.
He loves everyone and can see the good in each and every one. He understands the reality of people, and of what life has to offer.

This reality is coming at a very important time, a time that I feel I will probably need it most. I have had this really awful ideas about what could happen in the future that I started to fear it. After last night I made a large list of high aspirations I have. Things I want to do in my life, the list only lasted til about my mid thirties. I can make a new list when I hit that. I need to stop being scared and just plan to do so much in the future. Who cares if I get cancer again? I can't sit around and wait for it to happen or set benchmarks for myself that I'll only make it to a certain age-because that's when I'll stop living.

I'm so happy to have the people I do in my life. I really feel like God has this path for me that I have no idea of, and I had no idea what it would bring. I think a lot of it had to do with what I did with what he gave me, but a lot of it had to do with this vocation-this stamp of what he put on me. Everyone keeps talking about how "God is supposed to use you" at my school, and I feel that now more than ever...maybe the rumors are true.

On My Mind

Sat, 29 Aug 2009 07:45:41 GMT

I hate feeling like an asshole, especially when I've done nothing wrong and the other person is too stubborn to admit that they did.

I sometimes wonder if it's really morbid that I have this awful feeling in the pit of my stomach that I will have cancer again someday. And I wonder if it's morbid that it doesn't really bother me that much (unless it's midnight on my birthday, I'm inebriated after one drink and driving around my old hometown with my best friend with an impending sense of doom that I may never make it to being an old lady).
Hell, maybe I already hit my midlife crisis at 18, and the whole crocheting blankets/hip replacement thing was appropriate timing at 16, who the fuck knows. I can tell you, I try hard not to care, and it works for the most part.

I wish there were thunder storms in California, it'd make this place closer to perfect.

I just got my acceptance letter from PSU, the day I come back from Portland, and a week to the date before I start school at APU, how fucking appropriate.

Sometimes, well actually a lot of the time, I feel like I'm a year behind everyone else. Then I realize that I am in fact a year younger, if not more than all of the people I'm looking at. I guess this is good, because I can see myself catching up over time, in hopes that I'll eventually get there...only to realize I have a new place to go with new goals in mind just like my predecessors.

Isn't it funny

Thu, 20 Aug 2009 07:48:38 GMT

It's crazy to me how I can go so long without stopping to find out anything about the person I am. Then in one day I learn more than ever. And then these days start repeating into weeks, and who knows these weeks may even become months.

Cha Cha Changes

Wed, 19 Aug 2009 07:42:45 GMT

I fought the war

Tue, 18 Aug 2009 08:39:29 GMT

I think the transformation into what was has finally been completed, without me even realizing.

Oh and by the way, I miss these nights, but then again not as much as I could.

I'm just glad the previous ones are hopefully on their way back, after being resurrected this trip to Jersey.

Swallow Your Words

Tue, 18 Aug 2009 06:02:43 GMT

I've been back in Orange County for less than a day and I already feel hallow and empty.
Why am I all of the sudden numb? Is it for fear of loosing, because that's not me. I guess it's just this feeling of discouragement, and not knowing when it's ever going to let up. Of constantly trying, yet coming up short.

Chug on, start school, get wrapped back up in life and maybe the emotions will settle, or maybe there'll continue to be none.
I came back here with too many remnants of feelings, some of the following:
Being alive
Feeling absolutely comfortable
Loving every single person around me, and knowing they love me back
Completeness
Comfort
Contentment
Happiness almost to the point of tears

Is this place jaded or is it just me?
I feel like I'm not good enough for a lot of things right now. Why all of this disappointment in myself, when just a day ago I felt so good about everything? Maybe it was all the time to think and overanalyze things on the plane.

I need to do my normal routine of laying around and thinking it all out, only I don't have the tools. Maybe next week, Portland soul searching? I think that is going to be quite necessary under the circumstances.

Recluse

Sat, 15 Aug 2009 04:08:58 GMT

I've been back from London, home to California, and now back to New Jersey/Del.

Before leaving for this trip I had a feeling that it would be absolutely epic. I was completely right (I got shingles, saw Slayer, gambled, reminisced), and besides sending me home with a new Rebel and a new piece of plastic saying I'm legal to consume alcohol, I'm going home with a new understanding on the following:
My family structure, and where I belong in it as opposed to where I currently stand
Music-it's all different now, kind of how it used to be when things were so complicated that they were simple
Friendship- dynamics, who counts, and who mine have become
Who I am, who I pretend to be, and some things I can work on- I'm seeing this more and more (also seeing that my flaws aren't necessarily bad at all)
Alcohol and how I'm seriously not that much of a fan (this isn't a new view, just a strengthened one)
How wrong I have been about some things, and how right I have been about others

There's so much this has taught me in just 12 days, things I could try to explain, but hopefully while looking back on this list I will understand each and everyone without having to be reminded. I realize how naive I've been about certain situations, while I've seen other ones a bit too clearly.

I've started to concentrate a little bit more on my have done lists rather than my to-do ones. There's a certain art to the balance of paying homage to each.
No matter where I go, what I do, how much I change or stay the same. I'm one of them, I'm me, I'm part of us, and us will always be around...no matter what each of us do.

I think I want a little bit more alone time in the coming months, not complete hermit time, just some more quiet time to sit and think these moments and memories through. To make each as tangible in my memory as they were in real life. I want to be able to taste them, feel them and smell them forever. I don't ever want to loose touch with how these things feel ever again, and I want to learn from the parts that made me feel vulnerable, sub-par and disappointed.

72 hours in heaven

Fri, 24 Jul 2009 18:05:03 GMT

Why is it that all of the sudden everybody else has a somebody else.
I usually don't like this time of year. And the worst part is, I only have a few days left in London, then I have to go back to the real world, and I'm nowhere near ready.

We're all going to hell...

Fri, 26 Jun 2009 04:37:25 GMT

I am thankful for you every second of every day.

Wed, 24 Jun 2009 10:51:08 GMT

This reminds me of me and my mom's relationship

If I could cheat, I'd skip to the end

Mon, 22 Jun 2009 18:05:17 GMT

So my head is spinning because I got into UDEL and I have no idea what I want to do about that.

But I thought these were really interesting, someone made modern day versions of the princesses we loved growing up.

Wow

Sun, 21 Jun 2009 00:10:54 GMT

Just finished my PSU letter of why I want to enter their program, it brought back a lot of memories.

I can't believe how long ago this was. Sometimes I'm nothing like this girl, but for the most part not much has changed. I'm so happy about this.

I just got Causecakes on it's way. I have A LOT to do to even be anywhere near starting, but my friends this time next year it'll be on its way. That's a promise.

How I am going to fund my education

Sat, 20 Jun 2009 06:56:54 GMT

By making a series of educational videos on how to pack your bags and prepare for a trip. From booking a flight and choosing your seat, to how to pack, to carry on items, to security tips and even to what to wear to fly. Maybe I can do a weekend trip series, a long vacation series, an out of the country series and one for family vacations.

I think this could be lucrative.