Ellipsis updated; NaNoWriMo begins at midnight; “Wrath of the Lich King” is coming out in less than two weeks; parents are out of town; received a really sweet text from Mark last night; gonna see Amanda and Diana today; gonna watch the Memory World arc of Yu-Gi-Oh! with Jess this weekend; gonna go to work dressed up as a flight attendant.

Life is good. Happy Halloween!

Mark says it’s bad to suppress bad feelings, but… Sometimes you can’t go on living your life if you don’t do it.

They still don’t understand.

They’re done, but I still get sad, and mad, and I still cry in frustration.

The story’s ended, but I can’t put the damn book down.

I dreamt that college was hell.

Monday, September 15th was the last time that we all got to hang out together before everyone left for college. In the afternoon after class, I met up with Di and Jayne at the market, where we got some goodies for everyone. Then, we joined everyone else back at Di’s house, yay. Pigged out and listened to music and played Apples to Apples, which is always fun. Also, the salami and dip were really good, LOL. After a long time, we decided we were starving despite all of our snacking and went to see if Guppy House was open, but it wasn’t, so we just went to District. Jayne and I got Panera and everyone else got Red Brick Pizza. Dinner was fun, and we took a lot of random pics. Decided to do a Secret Santa type of care-package thingy, in which we’d send each other anonymous little gifts each month. I’m excited to get going on it. Di said Nina would do the assignments for us, but I dunno if she’s gonna get on that, so I might ask Jess or something.

Afterwards, Jayne, Di, and I went to rent Bratz, the live action movie, LOL. So frickin funny. The guy at the counter was apparently cute (I didn’t really think so, but Jayne and Diana were super into him) and made fun of us. Anyway, we watched it downstairs in the guest suite, and it was hilarious as expected. There were sure a lot of “WTF?!”s all around the room, hahaha. After the movie, we all said goodbye to Diana, a lot of us for the last time. But not me! Yay! …LOL.

Because the next day, Jayne and I went with her to the DMV, where she took her driver’s license test. She passed–barely, though, LOL, but that’s irrelevant–so yay! We got Pinkberry as celebration, LOL. Yum. For dinner, we put a frozen CPK pizza in the oven and chilled on the couch. After dinner, we helped Di pack and decide what clothes to wear and stuff. Okay, fine, we didn’t really do anything but lounge on her bed, attempting to convince her to take her Batman plushie with her, hahaha. But it was fun nonetheless. We took stupid pictures and laughed at stupid things and then got all teary when we had to say goodbye. :’( It was weird saying goodbye. It’s weird that Di’s going to a different school than me, after ten years of being joined at the hip.

Wednesday morning, I drove Jayne to the doctor, except that she forgot where it was and I ended up being half an hour late to class, whoops. At least it was the class in which the teacher never takes attendance and is really cool about people coming in late. After class, I picked Jayne up and had a really fast Sushi Boy lunch with her before dropping her off at her house. Then, I went to work. After work, she urged me to pick her up for an emergency and we drove to Kelly’s house to use the fax machine for some tuition thing. She freaked the shit out while I got to talk to Kell and watch her practice viola, which was cool. After the freak-out, we went to Lee’s Sandwiches, which was yummy, of course. Yay!

On Thursday, we all got together for the last time. Jayne, Erin, Mag, and Kell came over, and we just millled around and talked and laughed and stuff, which was fun. I made food for everyone, and Mag expressed her shock at the idea of mashed potato flakes, LOL. She was telling us about how militant her mother is regarding anything with preservatives, and I felt super unhealthy because I was like…the total opposite of her. Like everything I eat has preservatives in it, LOL, because my mom doesn’t have the time to cook every meal all the time for us. Whoops! Haha. Anyway, then we played Wii, which was fun. Kell brought Super Mario Kart, and I discovered that yup, I royally suck at any kind of video game. Dammit.

Eventually, Jayne and Erin left to go help out at the football game, and Amanda joined us. Since I had class, we decided to scatter for a few hours and then meet up to go to BJ’s for dinner around 9:30. So I went to Astronomy and found a new friend who I like a lot (his name is Matt; he’s a friendly UCLA graduate who’s really easy to talk to) and took an open-book pop quiz and looked at Jupiter and its Galilean moons through a telescope. After class, I picked up Jayne, and we joined everyone at BJ’s, yay! Dinner was a lot of fun, as expected. We engulfed a bunch of food, plus two pizookies! Mmm. Leaving everyone was really sad, though. But somehow, it just felt so like… Unfinal, I guess? And that felt good, you know? Like, we were all just saying goodbye as a formality but we all knew that we weren’t going to drift apart, not really. Other people might, but not us. We’re damn tight, and we’re going to stay that way for a long time. Thank god.

The next day, went to the library with Jayne to do super-late research for my history paper, but it closed like fifteen minutes after I got there, boo. So then I drove Jayne to Spectrum to go to H&M and see if we could spend her giftcard, but we didn’t really find anything, so we went back to my house and said our goodbyes (I got all teary again) and then she biked home.

And then all of my goodbyes were completed, and my reign of independence began… Rawr.

I have spent the past two months writing, writing, writing. I’ve been having the time of my life. Before high school, it was easy to write chapters for five different stories at the same time, but once high school began, it was near impossible to get any writing done during the school year. Thank god for the summers, during which I went crazy writing CATCF and Cars–both of which were a delight to be completely immersed in. Ever since school started and especially after everyone left for college, though, the part of me that craves reading/writing has been deliciously sated. I write in class, I write at work, I read at home; it’s a fantastic life, really.

This year, I decided that I would give NaNoWriMo a try. Ever since 2002, two different epic plots have been spinning around in my head–one original and the other fanfiction (Yu-Gi-Oh!), affectionately dubbed “Epic Novel Thingy” and “3D”, respectively. I’ve written many parts of both, but as some of them came into being when I was twelve, a lot of them aren’t exactly the best, most well-thought-out things. So this year, I read the NaNoWriMo website and found out that their purpose is to get authors to get off their asses and write those damn ideas that have been floating around in their heads. And I thought–”Well, why the hell not?” So I decided that this year, I’m going to give my epic YGO! fic a try. It’s not super plausible. It doesn’t make total sense. It doesn’t really fit into the timeline anywhere. It features way too many pairings and original characters. It’s a little too…”I-came-up-with-this-when-I-was-12″… But… Well, why the hell not?! So I’m going to do it. I’m going to attempt to write 50k+ words of action, adventure, romance, and drama. AND I’M GOING TO LIKE IT.

For the past few weeks, I’ve been doing a lot of pre-writing and planning for this epic story, and it’s been a lot of fun. I’m really excited to get started. Even if I don’t win (read: finish all 50k words), I’ll at least have gotten off my butt and started on the damn thing, right? And, well, the story is so shitty (to an outsider, anyway; to me, it’s fucking brilliant, LOL) that it won’t matter if I have to write it under a time constraint! Yay!

So yeah. Don’t bother me when the next month rolls around. But do cheer me on!

I’m just glad that I’m finally getting a chance to do this, after years and years of being too stressed out by school to get involved.

Don’t take this away from me! This lovely in-between world, where no stress exists, where I come home and read five stories a day and publish a chapter a week. This lovely in-between world, where I go buy sashimi or gelato because I damn well feel like it. this lovely in-between world, where I pick Jess up and take her shopping and then drive her home so we can watch Yu-Gi-Oh! together. This lovely in-between world, where I eat four and a half meals a day–and they’re all real meals, nutritious and delicious. This lovely in-between world, where I feel so free and independent and good. This lovely in-between world, where I don’t have to make friends but just remember to call back my old ones. This lovely in-between world, where I don’t have to see anyone but can talk to them all the time online or via texting. This lovely in-between world, where I am SLEEPING the correct amount of hours (or close enough!) and feeling FRIGGIN’ FANTASTIC throughout the day. This lovely in-between world, where I only cry once every 2.5 weeks.

This lovely in-between world, where for the first time, everything is SO DAMN HAPPY.

I AM NOT STRESSED OUT.

I FEEL ON TOP OF THE WORLD.

I TALK TO MYSELF, BUT THAT’S OKAY.

I WRITE. I WRITE. I WRITE.

I. AM. PRODUCTIVE.

Don’t take this away from me. Please don’t take this away from me.

I need this.

I’ve needed this for years.