5.31 2
mom texting “what are you doing today emma?” as i am laying topless on the beach. lol

smoking on the roof of the apartment tonight. we booked one that had no ratings yet so we got an insanely good deal on a beautiful apartment right in the city center 2 streets away from the beach. i’ve bought the same combination of beer twice today from the same convenience store (1 peroni and 1 cherry kriek) and i’m going back for my third round later. im the luckiest girl in the world and i’ve almost always felt that way

the first thing i do when i get in a body of water is deadleg freestyle as fast & far as i can go. i love the freestyle, it feels so desperate and real

i think dating me is like having homework every single day

5.31
current plot: 3 girls who love to plan go on a trip together and keep having an amazing time & muttering “we are vacation geniuses”

going to ireland tomorrow which i think will be a vibe

best places to have sex in the city museum reddit

5.30 2
one of the most important lessons of european vacation is accepting that you are chopped. if you can learn this with grace you are actually quietly sloughing off your uncoolness and thus return to your life with a new baller mindset

5.30
french people move out of the way challenge. level: nonexistent

hitting the relax part of the trip now which is swag. it’s nice to be with my friends, i get why people do this. it’s different from solo traveling, i don’t have to be so alert. the other day on the way back from the beach i went no glasses on the bus, just blindly following after them and it was nice. i knew it was going to be an emotional grind to fit impromptu detroit visit in the middle of baltimore/ann arbor and europe and i remember thinking “i deeply need to catch a vibe on vacation or i’ll freak out” last week but i needn’t have worried about that. i’m kinda so relaxed that i don’t have much to say. we’ve been going to the grocery store multiple times a day for wine recently. you can get good stuff for 1.50-3€, it’s remarkable. last night i stayed in the apartment during the second wine run and tried to send an audio message and it was under 4 minutes long. which is so uncharacteristic it almost freaked me out. i like traveling with these friends too, they’re extremely chill and we communicate well. i’m only in charge of a couple details which allows for me to be surprised about a lot of things. i didn’t know what the boat tour entailed yesterday so i found myself swimming in a cave in the mediterranean at one point.. remarkable. my biggest concern right now is finishing my joint before the flight to ireland on sunday which is not the worst problem to have. on the train to nice now and listening to the new sufjan album #yuh

5.29
all the homies on the boat dressed like patrick zweig let’s go

my reddit account got permanently deleted today for some reason even though i never post and i’m totally okay with that. and maybe it will be good to have a fresh start lowkey idk. i rarely go on but i followed r/whatisthis at some point and now when i open the app i see the most grotesque stomach churning substances i have ever laid eyes on. and then i use the app less. so this is good

5.28
going to the beach with my friends in marseille. you’re living the life you wanted as if you’d known what that was but of course you didn’t so you’d groped toward it feeling for what you couldn’t imagine, what your hands couldn’t tell you, for what that shape could be. type feeling

5.27
survived the worlds most psycho-est and the lord is rewarding me lavishly in paris, france

airbnb host is letting me smoke weed on the balcony before peel dream and i let him use the bathroom before me #ilovemyroommate

=>guillaume.jpg

at the show i was like “i can’t wait for this to end so i can get mcdonalds” and its like ok girl you saw them two days ago you can just leave. then i put in perhaps the greediest order this mcdonalds location has ever seen

5.26
met an awesome girl at the show last night so now i can stay with her next time and break up with my amsterdam boyfriend foreverrrr i can’t wait

i need to get the fuck out of here for real. it was a vibe but the time has come

we sat on separate floors of the train last night on the way home because i needed to be alone and i thought about how i’m glad i experienced this. now i know that i do have discernment and i’m not just obsessed with whoever i stay with on vacation (lol). dating is mainly just finding who you love to talk to. at breakfast this morning i described half the plot of stoner by john williams before getting interrupted (…) and he described anna karenina (by leo tolstoy) (in full) 
i love a break up conversation because you get to say your critiques of them and you get to hear yours. mine recently has been one single note: i talk too much #yeah
as my train to paris pulled away i gave him heart hands through the window and he blew me kisses. i’m considering the weekend a success. clearer heads may dispute

let me say what i want to say about it so i can not talk about it again
i thought it was fun to play silent dutch girlfriend for the weekend. he said if i didn’t open my mouth i could seem dutch so he would speak to people for me and when they directed their attention to me i would nod like i understood. it’s funny to be at a restaurant and quietly be like “can you help me with this, i can’t read” because dutch is like. super unreadable
his house was cool, it was built in 1540 but i don’t really like delft it’s boring
the scariest part of kamp vught was that it was a beautiful warm day outside but the barracks were frigid. it’s difficult to think about how much thought went into designing the most miserable experience a human can have. 
the surroundings are beautiful and prisoners wrote about the cruelty of being situated within nature but not being free to enjoy it. the bike ride in was eerie, it’s perfectly idyllic until you see the guard towers. as i walked on the paths inside i paid special attention to my feet so as to not crush even an ant. i thought about how anne frank grew 13 cm inside the annex and i cried, it always makes me cry. even though A and i don’t always see eye to eye i’m glad i had someone to experience that with

5.25
dog moment: listening to my daily 25 minute audio message next to A on the train

5.24
it’s good vibes in amsterdam :D

today:
i cried at the anne frank house
we both cried at dinner (positive)
we looked at our reflection together on the train
he said whoever gets to marry you is lucky
i said i feel the same way
and for the first time in my life i felt no shred of jealousy saying that
good night

5.23
good morning everyone
punkreflex is going to amsterdam after work today
i am getting the same sick stomach feeling about leaving fran that i got in detroit. taking note of this
i’ve decided i’m going to go see peel dream magazine in amsterdam too because 1. what else do i have going on 2. it’s free 3. i can freaking smoke weed beforehand 4. my friends will be there. i can’t believe i didn’t think of this before

and i realized this morning that i don’t have to be in love with everyone i stay with when i travel and it’s actually best if i’m not. so we’re chillen!

5.22
some things i'm worried about:

-i'm doing the dutch holocaust tour primarily as a way to understand the genocide in palestine on a deeper level and i worry that friend in amsterdam is too conservative to be on the same wavelength. there's a particular flavor of conservative european men that makes my stomach turn and i think that might be what i'm getting into this weekend. rolling up to schiphol like renounce israel or you're out. you were always out. you've been out since the day you were born ladybird sucked kill yourself

-i have to drive a car on the opposite side of the road in ireland and i'm scared

5.21
byron is officially coming to st louis for a whole week in july......what's the matter with me!!!!!! what's the matter with you!!!!!!!

but i think it will be good :) i'm enjoying planning the Ideal St. Louis Week. when i was in detroit i was like "byron if you come to st louis you will have so much fun you'll die." which i wholeheartedly believe

if anyone is feeling intense positive vibrations or drastic world brightening it is because @foreverdirt and i are in the office together again for the first time in two weeks. btw

bought 2 string bikinis at target and i’ve decided i’m going beast mode on this trip. flounderers please avoid the south of france next week if you can help it

and by going beast mode i mean bringing the chimney sweep hat mind you

5.20
almost done with my jar of honey. i was not playing about honey for medicinal reasons this month

booked all my trains for europe today which highkey puts me in ice soup territory but i've been good at being that way recently. eating at home is so cheap it's crazy. and if you make enough food for your friends sometimes then they will also invite you to dinner at their house which is free! last night gabe and alex made us dinner and it took an hour longer than expected so they brought me chips and salsa in bed without me even asking :) love them love them love them

something that made me smile was at the show on friday alexis and i got split up for awhile and when we walked back to the car she said "oh i paid for both of us!" and i said "no i paid for both of us..." so i hope the goodbye house enjoys their extra spoils lol. and then someone from across the street asked if we had a lighter and we said no and he said "if you're lame just say that" which is awesome

i can tell i'm stressed about this trip because my dreams are all logistical right now. getting in ubers and what we're doing next, etc. but i'm always this way before a trip so it's fine. it's hitting me that i'm fr doing a concentration camp tour this weekend which is daunting. i'm still feeling a bit emotionally raw so i'm nervous that it will be really hard for me but that's better than not being affected at all

5.19 2
can't stop listening to july by mamalarkey- what's the matter with me, what's the matter with you? is so good

goated album
=>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HYXsYNcAXqk Другое за другим

5.19
i can tell when my life feels crazy bc i start reading costar every single day. and taking screenshots

a good one from today is "separate your own yearning from what you have been conditioned to desire". i was just talking about this on the phone last night, about how i grew up deeply evangelical and getting married young is pretty much the expectation. and i always thought i wanted this too but now i feel sad for someone when they get married at my age.  it's different for everyone of course but i need to listen to this feeling i have because it's my real impulse, not what's been taught to me. my parents have treated every single person i've dated as my future spouse and it's actually really not normal. i need to divorce myself from this mindset and then i think things will get a lot easier for me

i predict i will speak on this several more times in the future. so get ready for that

have been thinking about this excerpt from On Love: Aspects of a single theme by Jose Ortega y Gasset recently: 

"Desiring something is, without doubt, a move toward possession of that something ("possession" meaning that in some way or other the object should enter our orbit and become part of us). For this reason, desire automatically dies when it is fulfilled; it ends with satisfaction. Love, on the other hand, is eternally unsatisfied. Desire has a passive character; when I desire something, what I actually desire is that the object come to me. Being the center of gravity, I await things to fall down before me. Love, as we shall see, is the exact reverse of desire, for love is all activity. Instead of the object coming to me, it is I who go to the object and become a part of it. In the act of love, the person goes out of himself. Love is perhaps the supreme activity which nature affords anyone for going out of himself toward something else. It does not gravitate toward me, but I toward it."

and from my notes app last week: "if i don't uncouple affection with need for possession then i will swiftly be dead"

basically i feel like i'll be chilling and having fun and then i get worried about who i'm going to end up with and then i feel bad feelings and think weird thoughts. so i'm just going to pretend that doesn't exist until i've phased out this useless need for possession. so that's what's up

5.18
lit ass swimming day yesterday. we took 168 pictures because we are middle school girls. but that was what was necessary to fully capture the nuances of the vibe

discovered in the car that body like a backroad is actually an amazing song. maybe just because we were in the country. but i don’t think so

it’s @foreverdirt’s birthday today so if you experience euphoria, profoundly lucky instances, etc. you can attribute it to her and her benevolence. i know this bc this has been the case since the day we met. happy birthday best friend and distinguished colleague, you are an STL celebrity by virtue of how much i talk about you

5.16
it's amazing how much better i feel about something after speaking about it on here. thanks everyone

today for breakfast i'm having mango black tea with vanilla coconut + almond creamer and a toasted sesame bagel with peaches & cream cream cheese. does anyone else feel like i've lowkey figured out life or is it just me..

home+office show rocked in a whole new way

5.15 3
i’m getting fomo about st louis things i’ll miss when i’m gone and it’s like okay girl this is a birthday party for a hand pie restaurant you’ve never been to

but the pavement movie is screening for 2 days only while i’m gone which is genuinely fuck my life vibes

walked to the post office after work for the goodnight moon stamps and cut through tilles park on the way and it was 80 degrees and everyone was out and my liked songs on shuffle was flames today and i watched an adult softball game on a bench from afar on the way back. i just can’t stop feasting

5.15 2
hey it's me again

since gabe can't pet fran due to her allergies i'm the only one she gets affection from and therefore she is scary attached to me...she's been sleeping cuddled up to my face every night since i got back and she naps in my dirty clothes all day when she's not sitting on my lap. every morning she wakes me up at 5:30am by meowing and scratching my face, biting any skin that's exposed. i had to get up and put in my lawnmower earplugs this morning so i could keep sleeping. i'm getting really scared about leaving for two weeks, i think she won't handle it well and she'll terrorize me like never before when i come back. thinking of sourcing people to come hang out with her, please text me if you would be interested in keeping fran company, even briefly! deadass

5.15 
file too freakin large for journal25..flounder can't handle this truth bomb 
last night at dinner alexis and i were trying to figure out what is going on in my freaking life..i met someone in amsterdam last year who was teaaa so in september i planned to go see him again this may and alexis recalled me saying "that'll probably be fine right?". meanwhile i've basically had 3 boyfriends since then and lowkey do not care about seeing him that much anymore. but once i get there maybe it will change bc lord knows i can get caught up in a damn moment

but yesterday i was thinking about what i said about visiting my little out of town boyfriends in may and then packing it up monk style afterwards and i realized that that doesn't have to be the case. i feel like what has been done cannot be undone for better or worse. and sometimes i think i'm afraid of things changing in a real material way, especially because i was so at peace in march-april. on the train to detroit i had a lot of time to think about what tf i was doing and i had some moments of low-grade panic. i didn't even really fully understand the reasons behind my urgency to go, i just knew i had to. but i was aware of how much emotion could come from things going well and that intimidated me. but i was working off of a previous schema of mine, this idea that if you're dating someone long distance then it's entirely exclusive and you can't fully enjoy your current life because you miss this other person. my long distance relationship of two years was sparse in all senses of the word #celibate! and it doesn't have to be like that. 

i've been doing a lot of reflecting recently about how indecisive i used to be vs now. it was really debilitating, which i do think was exacerbated by undiagnosed ocd. i literally never knew that that was what was going on with me until @idi noticed that from a journal entry on here and i'm lowkey forever grateful for that.. @foreverdirt is also really helpful with that too. it's hard for me to see my own ocd behaviors which scares me, i mostly only notice when it's pointed out to me. but i think that's connected to the black and white thinking. i return to what i know which is reasonable in theory but i need not be so rigid about it. i feel like i've made a huge leap in trusting myself over this past year and it's kind of changed my life. i was dating a really scary & severe russian man and it eventually made my life miserable but i questioned my choice to break up with him even though in hindsight it was the most obvious thing in the world. and i realized i don't want to go through things like that again, my instincts are trustworthy and i know what feels good. and if something sounds good and there are no real reasons why i shouldn't do it then i should just do it. and that has put my life on the freakin fast track

alexis and i drove around through sunset hills last night after the zine release and we had an illuminating conversation. on monday after she picked me up from the train station i cried in her car and she said "i'm scared for you emma, you love people hard and you're so in it, it could get you hurt" which is the damn truth..so last night she was telling me that i need to be careful about who i extend myself to. i'm very much a go getter, if i want to do something then it's gonna get done. and then i have so much fun because i'm always having fun and then i get attached to this other person as if they are the reason for my fun. but i need to hang back and see if people will do the same for me before i pour myself into something. alexis said that she thinks i volunteer to go to people (metaphorically and physically) because i know it's actually going to happen if i'm doing it, but not so certain if i'm relying on someone else. so that is the practice i'm trying to adopt and it's difficult! i am not one to sit on my hands. but if someone isn't willing to make a real effort for me then they're outta here. and thankfully i will have a visitor in july which is swag. it was a joke at first but listening to heavy metal by cameron winter becoming a legitimate prereq to $mash is a hilarious reality i have created #haha