Remember, their flowers are so gonna die tomorrow! AND I love you! (Probably.)
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Tag Archives: feelings
Be Kind or Shut Up, Hey Infinity #36
1. How to not make friends: refer to someone as “ethically flexible”. Oops.
2. There are a lot of terrible things happening in the world. People are allowed to talk about/mention/feel sad about different things, even if you feel like those things are not as important/tragic/terrible as the things you think are terrible/tragic/important. Just like people are allowed to be happy, even though there are terrible things happening. No one has to wallow in all of the misery at once. You are not the director of the world’s actions. You don’t get to proclaim what’s important and what’s not. Basically, shut up!
3. sometimes it is forever; other times it is nothing at all.
4. Do some people just enjoy being cynical? I can’t understand it. How can you even have the energy to be so mean-spirited, hateful, angry, blunt, wrong, foolish? Does it give you some kind of pride? Does it make you happy? Does it feel like you’re doing the right thing? Are you lashing out at some unknown attacker? What are you doing?! What. Are. You. Doing. Just stop! Good grief. Do you need a hug?
5. At some point, no matter how nice/funny/smart/good-looking someone is, the little things they’ve done or said that you’ve disliked in a deep-down sort of way add up. And it’s sad, heart-breaking, whatever. But it happens. And they just aren’t the person you thought they were/you didn’t know who they were to begin with.
6. good things from the past month of my life: sparklers in the middle of the road at midnight, polite strangers, tiny presents of tiny stickers from tiny children, mail from Panama and America, learning possessives in French (but please don’t ask me to actually prove it!).
7. You can do it all differently tomorrow.
8. Orange Is the New Black is a great show! I never believe it. It’s always true.
9. It’s real fun living in the middle of a giant city, especially at night, when you hear murderous screams/manic laughter from outside your window and you’re never sure if it’s either or both or just a crazy alley cat.
10. We’re more than halfway through the year, World, and I’m not really sure if we’re being any kinder to each other. Let’s try harder. Let’s all keep going.
He Was Beautiful But Not Kind. Hey Infinity #34
1. Musical festivals are not your friend.
2. “I accidentally read a wiki page on it today.”
3. Oh, god, is it Summer already?! I forgot what hot, humid weather felt like! WHY did we want this?!
4. “If not now, when? If not now, never.” was something I told myself/fought with myself about last week. I was so so so scared to do something, something simple, even though I really wanted to! So then I did it. And it was great! SO JUST DO IT, OK, SHEESH. Whatever it is. Do it. You’ll be afraid but you’ll also be ok.
5. I’m beginning to like K-Pop. …SOMEONE SAVE ME FROM KOREA!
6. He was beautiful but not kind. So, technically, not beautiful.
7. I’m getting very tired of having to tell you to GET THE FUCK OUT. Leave. GO. Do something! Go somewhere! Be someone you want to be! People like you fade from my heart. Please don’t.
8. Write a letter to yourself in the future. Say anything. Tell them what you want to be doing in a year. Tell your future self what you had for breakfast today. Anything. Put it in an envelope. Wait six months or more to read it.
9. It’s not gonna be easy but it will be okay. HASHTAGlife.
10. Wanna write something for heyinfinity.com?! Of COURSE you do! And we want to hear from you! Send an email with your idea to: heyinfinityjenni@gmail.com
Be Who You Are, Hey Infinity #23
1. Excuse me, did you just say moreover during our out-loud conversation? I don’t think I can talk to you anymore. Either you’re too smart for me, or you’re trying to be.
2. There are a lot of really good days/nights that happen, but sometimes there are really fantastic days. The days that make you think to yourself, “Was that the best day of my life?” and then you think about it for awhile and come to the conclusion that it probably was and then you fall asleep ’cause you are really freaking tired after such a day.
3. The next time a parent/relative/friend/stranger makes you feel that you’re not contributing much to society, write a really bad short story, or draw a picture on some cement somewhere with sidewalk chalk, or save a baby bird that fell from its nest, or perform CPR on a person you just pulled from a swimming pool, or smile at a stranger you walk past on the street.
4. You know you need to go to the grocery store when you’re eating watery oatmeal for breakfast. Or dinner.
5. If you’re aware that the thing you’re waiting for is never going to happen, but you keep waiting anyway, well, you’re probably insane. But, while you’re waiting, for whatever it is, you could take up knitting or some other useful activity to fill up all that time you’re wasting. You could start a blog!
6. Lesson of the week: Flip flops are poor walking shoes.
7. Umbrellas are for the weak. I’m looking at you, city-folk.
8. I think the most useful thing about going to grad school is being able to say to people you meet, “Hey, yeah, I went to grad school.”
9. You may not be treating them like a real person — like they have thoughts and dreams and emotions — and that’s not going to end well, if anything even begins at all.
10. I feel like when people say, “Just be yourself!” What they are really saying, or what they should be saying, is “Don’t act like someone you’re not.” It’s not be yourself don’t be nervous, it’s be who you are.
the silence of endings
I don’t want it to be over. But it might be. I didn’t want it to be over before, but I thought it should be, so I let it end. But leaving early to avoid awkward silences doesn’t leave you, in the end, with anything more than what you’d have otherwise. I should’ve stayed. I should’ve asked questions. I should have been less afraid of awkward silences, because silence was all I was left with in the end.
I learned my lesson, though. I didn’t want that to happen again. I wouldn’t let it happen again. Sometimes you think you know what’ll happen in a given situation, but you never know. It’ll never be like that, like the way you saw it happen in your head. I know that now, although sometimes I forget. But I didn’t let it happen again, not really. It ended, but I refused that ending; I ended it again, and then again, like re-doing takes on a film set.
The first time, I walked out to my car and didn’t say goodbye. I got in my car, closed the door, and stopped. It could’ve ended there. I didn’t let it.
I went back, said goodbye. Then I went to leave again, I walked half-way to my car, but then I turned around and walked right back because I wasn’t happy with that take, either. It wasn’t going to end like that.
I walked back again, said hello, and refused the previous ending. I fixed it, I made it better. Everything has to end, but you can guide the ending. You don’t have to accept everything that happens to you without doing something about it. And while you can’t stop endings, you can make them be ok. You can make the silence that you’re left with in the end be ok.
too much time
Of course the one person I want to be around is always nowhere to be found. Of course we can’t be together. Of course there’s never any time to say anything. It’s never been like this before. These new experiences are fun and interesting and overwhelming. And I can’t even say that; there’s no time. There’s never enough time. It’s never been like this before. There’s always been silences, breathing room, space to think. No longer. Days move by, solid chunks of time filled with work, with doing things, with emails, with phone calls, with brisk walks across bricked streets. Days blur together: is it still Wednesday? Isn’t this what a Saturday feels like? How many days has been since we were in that room together? How many days since we last spoke? Too many. Too many days altogether. Too much living. Too much life.
And yet at other times there’s entirely too much emptiness. You sit across the table from me but that space between us might as well be stretched across an entire continent. It doesn’t matter how much time there is if there’s nothing to say, if no one is willing to say it. It’s never been like this before. It’s always been easy or it’s always been nothing. This is a combination of something and nothing and difficulty. I’m struggling against something I can’t quite see and there’s too much time to wage this war. It never ends. Nothing changes. It’s always you and me and silence. And no one wins.
grinning in the dark
It’s always the same thoughts in different situations:
“He’s so close, yet so far away.”
“It’s going to happen.”
“It’s never going to happen.”
I hate feeling this way, this deep-down bubbly terrified feeling that seems to be a product of either evolution or of thinking too much. Maybe both.
I wish it were easy. I wish you could know me, without the awkward pauses or silliness, without the socially-agreed-upon acquaintance behavior.
I wish words worked better for me, wish I could tell you about how a few nights ago I sat in the dark grinning to myself, thinking about how wonderful and horrible it all is. I wish that would flow out smoothly from my mouth, make you understand that I’m a creature just like you, with dreams and plans and more than just an empty swivel chair figure taking up too much elbow space.
“It’s going to happen.”
“It’s never going to happen.”
But it’s always the same: always too much bravery or not enough at all the wrong times. Always too much contact or not enough; You’re either always there or never there and it doesn’t matter which because nothing ever happens anyway.
“It’s never going to happen.”
Always the same: a lot of laughing and smiling and refusing to cry over something so silly, over something so nothing.
“It’s never going to happen.”
And it ends the same, too: me, alone, grinning in the dark at how horrible and wonderful it all is.
Hey Infinity 
