Shall we try this again...

My life is full of ideas I begin and never follow through with. Blogging has no immunity to that. It's nearly seven months after I had written the previous post and nearly nothing and everything has changed in my life. I'm still journalism student at the University of Iowa awaiting my own impending doom of graduating, but I've made little to no plans for anything beyond that. And the people in my life, Jesus, they've changed dramatically. The reasons for keeping this blog have altered a bit, as well, but re-reading what I had written before and, well, I like those reasons too.

Let's take care of business, first, and then we'll get into the personal nitty-gritty of the roadkill that is my life (at the moment).

I'm graduating in six months with just as much of an idea about what I want to do with my life as I has seven months ago. I had plans in the middle and those didn't work out so well. I'll explain that in the "Roadkill" section. I would like to study abroad for a semester before I get kicked out of the perks of the UI, but I haven't talked to anyone of any sort of power on the matter yet. I plan to document my schooling/interning/traveling/job seeking using the blog as a tool to keep me accountable to follow through with the things that I want to do in life. I'll be honest though, I don't think I have any idea what that is. When people ask me "Kristen, what do you want to do with your life?" I say "I want to live in Chicago and write for a magazine, of course." But I don't really see myself living in Chicago for very long, despite it being the city I've been obsessing about since I was a little girl going on roadtrips with my mother to Michigan Ave. I don't know what I want to do with my life, but I know there's something out there and I have full faith I'll fall into the lap of something great, given I work hard toward some direction of sort. I can do it, I'm Kristen Peters and I can do anything.

That brings us to the other part of my life: My life. The last post in mid-April sets me in a relationship with Nate and with best friends Maggie and D and the likes. Well, I haven't talked to Maggie since and D is busy doing whatever it is that D does. I think she goes by Dee now, too, and I don't get it. Nate broke up with me two weeks later with the second phone call from Afghanistan. Some bullshit about wanting me to really experience my Senior year of college and how, although we got along great, we probably weren't too compatible and he frankly didn't want to marry me. Which is all candy canes and lollipops but I assume the real reason was something called Tara. Can't win them all. I held on for dear life, though, I don't think I let myself realize it was really over for a couple of weeks after that phone call and I didn't let myself breathe again for over a month. I heard I was heartbroken, but now I just can't see how.

Then I met Nick. And he was everything I was. We were so alike and just beginning this sentence makes my body go hot and I'm not sure if I'm fighting back tears or vomit. We fell in love fast, really fast. That was followed by plans to stick around Iowa City for another year to be with him while he finished up college and I could get my teaching certificate and have that to fall back on if the journalism industry really did continue to plummet. We were going to live together and we were happy. One drunken night in Chicago, he got down on one knee and proposed. I said "yes, yes, yes" but assumed he'd forget by morning. He didn't and I wore a string around my left ring-finger. We talked family and dogs and places we'd live, the wedding we'd have or the documents we signed. We had it all, no one was in love like we were.

But with the good came the awful. When we would fight he would get mean. Really mean. I was slowly allowing myself believe I was the "stupid cunt" he'd told me I was so many times before, that I was the idiot bitch not worth his time. He held me on a pedestal I couldn't reach and didn't want to. He wanted me to erase the people I'd loved in the past but I couldn't understand why. I loved them, they had made me who I was today, why should I have to erase them and throw away their pictures and delete them from my past? My memories don't live on in my head, I have a shitty memory, they live on in the pictures I have saved on my computer and lying around my room. I wasn't perfect, either, though. Nick needed his space when he got angry and I wanted to fix everything right then and there. I wanted to be around him so much so that I wouldn't leave his house when he would ask. When things got extreme, that's when he got physical. Twice now I've left place with bruises ringing my arms where he had grabbed me and thrown me around and with blood on my back where I hit the metal safe on the floor when he flung me around the room. I've watched him pull off mirrors from the ceiling and throw them across the room only to watch them shatter. He's looked at me with such hatred and convoluted his hands in front of my face as though he'd love to snap my neck.

It was bad, and we both knew we shouldn't have been together, but when the dust settled we were in love. We knew each other in and out and knew the right answer to "Will you hold me?" I wish with everything that things had been different, that we had been different people. I wanted Nick to be the father of my children, to be my future. We broke up last week after he had hacked into my email and emailed the girlfriend of a friend of mine. I'm not sure what he had said but it resulted in a text from Andrew telling me that "It would probably be the best for all parties if we didn't talk for a while. And I'd appreciate it if he didn't email her again." How embarrassing. I went to the police for the bruises (the worst of them yet) on my arms and for the hacking into my email. I regret doing that now, but I didn't know what else to do with how scared, angry and sad I was. Needless to say, he hates me immensely and I should hate him too, but I can't breathe without him. My days are a constant battle against tears and the wish that I'll come home one day and he'll be sitting in my bedroom saying "Now let's make this work." I know that day will never come. I know I'll get beyond this. Right now I know mornings are hard, nights are harder, but drives by myself are the hardest. It's scary to be alone to think. I ask my mom if she's ever seen me like this and she says "Oh honey, it's been worse."

I'm tired of feeling like this, I want to be alone, why won't you people just let me be alone?

Speaking of Andrew, we met at the Wig and Pen and he went on with his band to finish their tour. Somewhere along the line, we became fast friends and enjoyed seeing what else it was we had in common. There was nothing romantic, no flirting, just the reminder that there are people out there who are good. I don't have to settle for one who makes me feel so inferior. His girlfriend is a lucky girl. I don't think about him much, considering we're no longer speaking because I have an awful exboyfriend, but he was in my dream last night. It was the first time in my life I've known that I was dreaming during the entire thing. We were all (all includes some people who were around but whom I didn't know) hanging out in a city I didn't know, but he did, and I looked at him and I said, "You know, I'm really glad I get to hang out with you in my dreams." His faced turned red and he smiled, "Me too." Then we walked into a pet store.

My mom is giving me Lady for a while to hang out with me in Iowa City. She said one reason we got Lady 13 years ago was because of her divorce. She needed a reason to stay at home and needed someone to spend it with, she says Lady will help me learn to be by myself too. And I want to spend as much time with her as possible before the cancer takes her away for good.

She also gave me a book called "Fearless." I'm sure you can figure out what it's about but it's full of bible verses and and Godspeak and I don't know how I feel about that. I do know how I feel about that. I don't. I don't know that I believe in God let alone have a relationship with him. ("Nate," my mom said last night, "was calm because he was a Christian.")

I have a lot of fixing to do. I hope writing about it helps me along the way.