mental coffee shop

have escaped to the MCS, which is warm and bright and plays not screamo nor new age bubbles but 10,000 maniacs AND ella fitzgerald. yes, i like a little norah jones with my too-hot chai. and if i want to wash it down with gin blossoms, sue. me. the MCS loves natalie merchant and natalie cole, and the half and half is always full. still not sure if i will permit death cab for cutie on the playlist. i'm leaning toward no.

dress code for the MCS is always a gray sweatshirt. since high school, it's been a gray sweatshirt. i came here to think about kanekoa, but back then the MCS was looping "dreamlover" and i was "drinking" an oreo shake. no wonder - there wasn't all that much to think about anyway.

have you ever resolved to care less about something? you'd think the subtraction of effort would make for an easy task, but it's one of the hardest things you can do. you're basically forcing yourself to take away the importance you assigned that thing in the first place. i still think the only way you can do this is to fill that hole with something else. shamisen lessons. start watching "24" and/or "lost." call someone you know you should. write about it. write about writing about it.

i am not good at giving or asking for second chances. i don't even like repeating myself in casual conversation over the phone. i don't think a lot of things deserve, or are worth, a second chance. but follow through is my downfall - sometimes people think they have been given another chance, and because i'm preoccupied or tired or just a little less than positive, i let them think so. and then one day i'm gone ... suddenly, according to them. all along, according to me.

i think someone did this to me once. earliest twenties. on paper he was quite a jerk. i loved him because i could see past it. i loved him because he showed me and no one else what else he could be. i just loved him. i messed up and he left me, but not before he let me think for a solid two months that we were on our way back up. with no warning he kicked me (most gently!) out of the world i was all set to take over with love and determination. and when i say gently, i mean so gently that it took me two-plus years to truly see, to truly believe.

well, that void filled itself. but all these years later i'm still no closer. to what? i guess that's what i'm trying to figure out. yesterday, in front of my mom i said (we were watching lifetime) "fuck marriage!" - but that was tongue-in-cheek, more or less. i like getting a rise out of her. the difference between me in the MCS today and me there 10 years ago is that 10 years ago i liked standing still. ten years ago i knew, though it stung, that kanekoa was nothing and that in my universe i had the keys.

i still have the keys, but where's the freaking door?