jefromnj

[jefromnj]

The Receptionist

Today feels like my last day in purgatory and I will miss this place. Tomorrow is the day he'll tell me he loves me. Or, well I think he will. Tomorrow I will go either to heaven or hell, or maybe I'll stay here in this waiting room where I've memorized the layout in between my daydreams. There's a receptionist that lives here with me. We both see men, women, mothers and daughters passing in and out. But in the empty days of the month, it's just me and her playing scrabble. She beats me every time but I don't care because I like her company. I think I'm secretly her favorite because I've been here in this room forever. During the busy days, she doesn't like me. I am a bit of a burden, just sitting here, doing nothing with my hands folded. These days I think she wants me to leave like everyone else. But I stay here because it's familiar. Recently, I've been going out for a couple of hours and when I come back my heart beats so loud that the receptionist can't help but let a chuckle slip through. She says my heartbeat sounds like a Minnie Ripperton song and we both laugh. I know she wants the best for me and that is why she is so cold.

But one day I will walk in with a bouquet of scorpion grasses and I'll skip to the front desk to tell her, "He loves me!" And I won't be lying. She will think I am in the moment and try to reassure me with one of her soft smiles, the ones she knew from her childhood. I'll say goodbye and she'll never see me again. She'll believe me then.

Happy Christmas eve eve!

[jefromnj]

Love Poem Draft

[jefromnj]

Stuck In Love

10/28/12

I think I will make this document a home for all my afterthoughts of situations and circumstances that either make me question love or believe in it. I’m going to lay out the map of my heart as of today. Tomorrow is the day of reckoning: it is Halloweekend Saturday. Friday’s are usually for the parties you’re less excited about and Sundays are either for hungover brunches or getting belligerently high laughing with your girlfriends about the events that conspired on Saturday. 

I think I might start a fight with my boyfriend tomorrow. I don’t think I’m going crazy. What’s truly crazy is that the man I’m dating has made me question what used to be a fortress of intuition. No, scratch that. My fortress is still there but I’m so enraptured in my relationship that I can see it along with my beliefs start to unravel and the only thing I can do is watch it happen. At least until the big break. I was telling my friend this just an hour ago, that I almost want that big break to happen tomorrow so that I can be rid of this mental torment. The torment of knowing I deserve better but still standing in the same position as I watch everyone walk past me. 

I picture myself in a mall, standing in the center of the crowd stuck to the ground, nailed down by love. Mothers and daughters walk past as they try to keep their trivial argument hushed about how she wanted the pink mini skirt even though it was a little racy because Kaylee has it and all the boys like her. Women walk past me striding in their chunky brown boots and their outward facing 70's curls and I can smell their vanilla perfume, the sweetest of all perfumes. I used to wear vanilla perfume when I was still living off of short-lived subway romances and eye contact. Couples walk past with their hands in each other’s pockets and her sweater sleeve embroidered with his initials. Strangers walk past and sometimes one will catch my eye because of the pants he's wearing and I’ll imagine our life together. I try to move but remember I can’t go anywhere because I’m still in love. So I just watch the love of my life pass me by. 

Deep down I want him to turn around and look at me, knowing exactly what I am to him. I fantasize him walking towards me and taking me away because I don’t have the strength to. I shiver a little. I struggle at first but he doesn’t take no for an answer and confesses his profound sickening love for me. Come with me because if you don’t I’ll die, he says in my head. But he just keeps walking. He’ll probably meet someone on his way, someone who will make his insides feel like atomic resonance. And all I can do, all my body and heart is capable of doing, is watching it happen. 

I daydream of the girls who were strong enough to step out of love and directly into heartbreak. But I am weak. 

*written in a pages document titled "Stages of Love"*

[jefromnj]

Dramatics

10/14/23

I was writing in my diary about how my love for him is like being stuck in purgatory and how each day could either be heaven or hell. I’m stuck waiting for something to bring me out. The point at which either place sounds better than what purgatory feels like. Even Persephone learned to find some beauty in hell. Or so the myth says.

Anyway, the analogy was going swimmingly until a wave of sadness hit me. So I found myself on my laptop because my thoughts were moving faster than I could write. And all I can believe now is that I should give up. I want to believe that he’ll remember the small stuff and that my little faith in him is just a projection of my trust issues. But I was always told to trust my body. Eat when you’re hungry and don’t when you’re not. Listen to your body. If your stomach growls, eat and if it doesn’t don’t partake in vices. So what if my body is telling me that of course he wouldn’t remember the minutiae? My body tells me that I would be an idiot to expect that. It tells me that I’m too ambitious. And she sounds like him too. Like when he tells me my rose-colored perception of romance is unrealistic and harmful. I’ve been fed lies from the media of my childhood and now it would be cruel of me to wish for something better than a man. And yet I need that. I could settle for a man who compliments me on his good days and humbles me on the bad ones. I could live through that but I would not be alive. I would not be the breathing version of myself that needs poetry and orange trees and the fear of falling. I could be in purgatory forever and convince myself that the room isn’t slowly being consumed by flames. It even sounds romantic to burn slowly in the smoke clouds of my own delusions. 

The thing that stops me is my brain, my beautiful brain. She fights for me everyday and tells me that my body knows nothing, that I can keep my dreams, that they should be bigger. In my brain I can picture him, giving me half of his clementine. In my brain, he sends me chapters from his favorite books. He loves my annotations. I love his. It makes me laugh how different they look on the same page. I love us and how we walk downtown with the same pulse. But when I picture him in daydreams, it’s not my partner that I see. That’s what shatters my reality. It’s something that hangs over my head like a glass jar. And tomorrow is another day of purgatory but I feel that glass jar vibrating above me. It craves its first crack just like my body craves the satisfaction of being right. Because most of the time my body is right. And once again, I give in. 

I’m going to leave him one day, but not today because today I love him. 

>.<

[jefromnj]

Going Around The Circle

9/9/23

"There's no one like you."

That's what my friends told me last night while going around in a circle to say one thing we appreciated about each other (Side note: Kevin just told me I remind him of the girl from Because of Winn Dixie and my mind is blown). What they said was traditionally sweet and it's getting to me now. I imagine in this exact moment, this is what it feels like to love yourself wholly and unconditionally. To have the healthiest relationship with your self image seems something far away and mythical but I swear I could feel it then, in that moment which occurred only five minutes ago.

The crazy part, although looking at it now the answer was right under my nose this whole time, is that you can only achieve unconditional self love by surrounding yourself with the people you love and who love you back tenfold. Maybe I'm wrong but I don't think I am. Love, love, love, the word alone is everywhere in this passage. And to make its presence even more obnoxious, I love my friends. And they love me, hooray!

All to say that it was revitalizing hearing those drunken words, scattered as they were. What's more is they keep residence in the back of my mind, to remind me later when I'm sober that I am uncommonly valuable and no matter the outcome everything will be okay. The answer couldn't have been more obvious.

[jefromnj]

In the future, children will think our ways are strange. "Why do old people always grow so much milkweed in their gardens?" they'll say. "Why do old people always write down when the first bees and butterflies show up? Why do old people hate lawn grass so much? Why do old people like to sit outside and watch bees?"

We will try to explain to them that when we were young, most people's yards were almost entirely short grass with barely any flowers at all, and it was so commonplace to spray poisons to kill insects and weeds that it was feared monarch butterflies and American bumblebees would soon go extinct. We will show them pictures of sidewalks, shops, and houses surrounded by empty grass without any flowers or vegetables and they will stare at them like we stared at pictures of grimy children working in coal mines

[jefromnj]

Lake Trip

9/4/23

I noticed while talking to a friend about something I now can’t remember I kept glancing at him through the corner of my eye. And I wondered, if in the midst of his conversations, he was trying to sneak a glance at me also. He must be, I thought. It’s only natural for people in an intimate relationship to always want to be looking for each other. In crowds, at parties, in dreams, in the characters of the movies they watch, in themselves. 

I could look at his face for hours and sometimes I almost do but then his eyes begin to waver. Shifting between the walls, the floor and back on my gaze. It felt strangely powerful that I was capable of drawing out shame and nervousness in another person, let alone a person that made me so nervous. Wielding that power also reminded me that if I were on the other side, the one being looked at, I wouldn’t just be ashamed, I would crumble like cake and melt like butter.

Back to my point of sneaking glances, I think they are a sign of a stronger force I have yet to fully understand. My love is still young. But it did allow me to understand something else that scared me a bit. It made me understand that I wanted his silhouette to always remain in the blurred background of my binocular vision. I wanted to imprison him there in my peripheral right where I could see him. Not in a possessive way, although maybe it is possessive. More so in the sense that I wanted him there so I could enjoy his image at any moment's craving. He's so beautiful to me it's embarrassing.

[jefromnj]

why are u telling people ur 22 when ur 23

Please do not ruin my night mysadpatheticlonelylife

[jefromnj]

Second to last day of summer

8/30/23

After rereading this journal I'm reflecting on moments from my past. It's crazy how writing can capture and preserve a feeling in time. Things I've long forgotten about can somehow enter and leave my body like a Time Machine of Emotions. So visceral and present. Tastes like nostalgia and bittersweetness. And I'm sure the feelings I'm writing about now will also become little daggers that remain closed as long as this journal does. It's still fun though, from time to time, opening the pain back up again.

[jefromnj]

We're so back

Hi girls and the rest!

I am renovating this old high school tumblr account into a new blog called Journal Entries from New Jersey because well I'm in New Jersey and will be posting entries from my own diary. All are welcome to peer into my life and laugh with me and at me hehe. Love you!

xoxo, Bri

[jefromnj]

As I Was Moving Ahead Occasionally I Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty, dir. Jonas Mekas, 2000.

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Me_irl

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meirl

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Meirl

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