Failure

The past two weeks have been really hard, and I have no idea why. My life is good. I enjoy it, seriously, I do. But I don't feel like myself. I feel like someone lost. Like I'm supposed to be somewhere else, someone else. My mind's foggy. I keep losing things and finding them hours later, exactly where I thought I'd left them in the first place. I can't think. I can't even write.

I keep crying. If I see or read or hear anything remotely sad or sweet, I'm fighting back the tears. And if I'm alone, I don't even try to fight them.

I look at myself and I don't know what I see.

I feel like such a failure. I don't know why. I can't put it into words. I just feel like I could be so much better than I am. I could be a better writer. I could be nicer. I could be more worthwhile. I could be a person who deserves to be where I am.

I'm stressed over school, too. That's new to me. I usually never worry about that, even when I procrastinate. And that usually works for me. I got straight As last semester. But this semester I feel like I'm just going to fail everything. And then when I graduate, I'm going to go straight home and never do anything with my life. Never go anywhere, never become anything. Honestly, I'm absolutely terrified of the future.

On the bright side, I did make a pretty cool dress out of newspaper. I guess if I fail at everything else, I can always go into newspaper fashion design.

When I wake up in the morning, I want to wake up as myself, again.

What I did this semester (when I had my camera with me)

For one thing, I got a new claddagh ring! Not from Ireland, but it's still pretty. Though, that happened yesterday, and for now I'm only talking about this semester. (During which, two more rings fell off my finger and got lost. Seriously, if I ever get married I'll have to glue that bitch to my finger).

ANYWAY. Things that happened:

We went to Emily's Bridge at midnight, and didn't die! Yay!

It's a pretty creepy place.


Had lots of girls' nights.





Visited Meg and Ryan's homeland in the Northeast Kingdom.

Celebrated 3 nights of Halloween (5 if you count the low-key candy and horror movie nights).

Night One!

Night Two!

Night Three!

Had more girls' nights.

Celebrated Christmas, tastefully.

And took everything very, very seriously, at all times.

ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh

Okay, you guys. I haven't posted in a million, billion infinity whatever years, for a lot of reasons that I'm pretty sure aren't actually interesting, even to me.

But I promise to post something tomorrow!

(Or maybe the next day.)

Cheers!

The Post Where I Break Things and Get Confused

This semester I discovered I have this really amazing talent.

I can break things without touching them.

Awesome, right?

The first thing I broke was a bracelet from Icing. It was made out of old fashioned looking keys and was completely gorgeous. I'd only had it a day and I was in love with it enough to wear it on the first day of classes.

I was sitting on a patch of grass, catching up with some friends when I noticed my bracelet wasn't on my wrist. I quickly searched for it on the ground, hoping it hadn't gone the way of my dearly departed claddagh ring. It hadn't, but it was snapped in two, not a foot away from my hand.

I was a bit confused, because how did it break like that without me noticing? It was a pretty thick bracelet.

I decided not be bothered by it, and put its pieces in my purse to superglue later. Except when I took out the two shards to fix them, there were three of them. It had broke even more. At which point I was like, "fuck it," and tossed the bracelet pieces onto my dresser where they remain to this day.

Unless they've broken into four without me noticing.

Because I also managed to break this awesome clock keychain. Or it broke itself. Whatever really happened I might never know, but about a week ago, I was reaching around for my keys when I noticed that, oh hey, I had the clock bit but not the key bit. I freaked out for a second, but luckily I found them because I wouldn't want to owe my school the eighty million qruadrillion dollars I know they'd charge me. (Just kidding, it'd probably be something like 400 dollars. You know, something reasonable.)

Anyway, that's when I noticed that the keychainy thing that held the key part of the keychain (you can tell I'm a writer) and the mini clock was completely missing. As opposed to sort of missing. And I was confused again.

But I managed to fix it, by screwing the keyring with keys to the watch bit. Except then that broke like a day later, and I can't even figure out how that happened, but apparently I give up easily because after that I was just like, "whatever, I never figured out how to set you, anyway," to the mini clock, and now I don't even bother with it.

(I don't really give up easily. PS.)

the pages of their minds went missing

the pages of their minds went missing today
and wouldn't answer when they tried to call them back.

they went in circles trying to find them
looking in dark closets and under-the-bed spaces.
they thought they found them at first
in cardboard photo boxes
but the pictures were all too yellow
and the laughing faces inside were just as closed
as the glossy shuttered houses they’d never remember
no matter how hard they squinted.

still
until their fingerprints were full of dust,
they traced the shadows
huddled at dusktime with blurry hands plunged deep into jean pockets
and children playing hockey in an empty street and yelling
mouths wide open in some forgotten outrage.

in other pictures they thought they found
themselves
drinking around beach bonfires and holding lost newborns.
but the sand was always too dark
the hallways always too long
the faces all too narrow
and they couldn't remember any of it.

so they pulled away,
threw the photographs down
and opened their front doors to run.

when they looked outside
the houses were all shuttered shut
the pavement was too black
and they saw
everything real was gone.

Still alive, I promise

I swear I haven't abandoned you guys.

I'm just lazy.

Sometimes.

Anyway.

Hi, let's reunite. I'm Ashley and I want to go back to Ireland wicked bad and not much else is new, except for the stuff that is.

Oh! And I turned 21! Awesome, right? Finally a birthday I can be stoked about, except now that it's over, all the others will be a little sad. I mean, who wants to turn 22? I actually may have said something like that on my birthday, and I may have accidentally offended someone, but I can't completely remember.

Oh, and another, sadder thing? I lost the claddagh ring I got in Galway. SAD. Especially considering how I lost it. I was at work, at the cash register, and my ring was a bit loose. At some point, it must have fallen off my hand into some customer's bag. When I noticed, I was absolutely, a million percent heart broken. I almost cried. I started picturing the customer. I imagined that they must be the worst kind of customer. One of the old, Floridian retirees with summer homes, who stop at absolutely nothing to get their bahhhgains. And my ring must have been the ultimate bargain to them, the kind they would brag about to all their other Floridian retiree friends with summer homes, about how they got this ring for free, and their friends would all be speechless because they were about to brag about how they got this ugly pink visor for 20 percent off because there was a string hanging from it, but they know they've got nothing on a free ring from Ireland. So they suggest a game of Yahtzee instead to hide their shame.

I was devastated.

Other things happened, too, but that was definitely the saddest part of my summer.

I had another story, but I've already forgotten what it was supposed to be.

Anyway, I'm back now, and I'm definitely going to be blogging more.

Cobh

Here's a bit of old writing I did in Ireland, in Cork when I couldn't get my camera working. Hope you like it, but if you don't (or if you do!) totally comment with any advice or criticism you have!

***

I took the train station down the hill from my hostel, and right away things started changing. Right away there were signs of the sea, and a different sort of sea than I was used to. Instead of white sand stranded in the middle of the road or long, pale beach grass swaying by the curb, it looked like the land itself might have once been part of the ocean floor. There were brown sandbars stretched out on either side of the train, all of it reminiscent of a wave. They were made up of eternal ripples, glistening under a sheen of millimeter deep saltwater, etched with thin, deep tide pool streams, curving and rippling this way and that like a brown snake. Or a wave. Even the sea-foam green railings of the bridge we passed over rolled up and down. And then I got to Cobh and it was obvious that the little town, too, was a wave.

The roads, the couple there were, winded gently, and the buildings followed. The houses and pubs and shops traveled in connected, multicolored rows: sky blue, goldenrod, white, salmon, peach, cream, black, brick red, turquoise. They formed the streets, and went up and down, back and forth in little fluttering hills, sometimes even nearly going through each other, like they themselves were made of water.

I went up and down the hill-waves, breathing in the salt and wind and sun and rocks until I got to these dunes that were made out of earth and short grass instead of sand. On one side of the dunes was a make shift door made from tin or some sort of rusty metal, and I thought, here you can live inside the beach.