[Mechanical Pencil Tragedy|Post It Note Glory|Permanent Marker Tattoos|Erasable Highlighter Comedy]

I’ve wanted to blog for days, but really there has been nothing to say and I’ve been a poor blogger these days anyway. No content, no respect, all hyperspace waste. But today, oh today, today there is content times two.

I think it was last Wednesday when everything started to fall apart, or came together. That was the night Hope and I accidentally got messed up. That happened Thursday night too. (It’ll happen tonight to me probs, and probs not her.) But I think it was Sunday (?) morning when Hope said, “This is Hope and Shelley full throttle.” No truer statement has ever been spoken over a university dinning hall breakfast. (Not to mention the other things she said…) If you read the two outlets I blog for, you might have read this post on The Standby (mine and Hope’s blog on stage management) in which I discuss cutting the “excess fat.” I think if anything I’ve purposefully and accidentally cut off a lot of excess fat since I posted that just about 4 months ago. Besides some lingering feelings for some undeserving asshole who I get to spend every Tuesday and Thursday with, school shit (note previous post) and some other really personal things, I’m pretty much excitingly fat free! haha.

Hope and I have every class together. With the exception of my Cyberspaces class and her being Assistant Stage Manager on a university show and (soon) Production Stage Manager of a non-university show and me being the Production Stage Manager of a non-university show and the fact that we don’t yet share an apartment, we spend the majority of our awake time together. It’s nice to have a friend again who I don’t run out of things to talk about with. (Aside from the million other awesome similarities and differences between Hope and I.) It seems as if all those other friends don’t reside in Richmond and don’t plan on moving to New York this August (with the exception of Chelsea! who already resides in New York) and thus, those friendships, while they rekindle when I return to my hometown and/or visit them respectively (which I never do), have fallen apart and really don’t matter any more than what they’ve already been. I’ve been shedding those pounds since they started to go off to war, they started getting married, becoming drug addicts, and backstabbing whores. “It’s easier to drink with them, than to talk to them.”

As far as the excess fat I’ve gained since I’ve been residing here in Richmond. Well, I’m ending it the same way I started it. Showering, classing, eating at the dining hall, stage managing, listening to the same music on the same ipod, drinking, being in love with the same fucking person, sleeping, being alone and waking up the next day to do it all over again. I like Richmond, honestly, and I would appreciate it more if I grew up in the fan or if I moved here right after college. But the fact is that to me, Richmond is attached to the three years I wasted in college, and that really blows. I’d come back one day and help the local theatre students revolutionize the awesome theatre this city has the potential to have, but when I leave this place I’ll leave it all behind and lock it in the portion of my brain where memories become blurry and unfamiliar. Cutting the excess fat that is my existence in this city is too easy.

Experience is cheap if it doesn’t matter to the company you keep. I haven’t developed a meaningful relationship since I’ve been here. There is only one friend I made in Richmond who I’ll hope to have forever, and well… we’re moving to New York together. There is only one friend who I met during my “time” in Richmond in which I would like to stay in contact with, but with every passing day our friendship seems a little to inconvenient for the both of us. Regardless we’ll probably stay in touch the way we have been the past year for the next few years. There could have been a story here about a boy with greasy hair and bright blue eyes and a nice beard that’s certainly too tall to stand next to me. (Catalyst.) But even if we worked through the crossing squares of our compartmentalized lifestyles, that friendship is over for good. And so is the unrequited love.  And that is what I really wanted to post about, a few days ago.

There is probably less than a dozen theatre people I’ve bonded with since I’ve been here that I’ll “keep in touch with” or run into in the real world and be happy about it. But until I run into them in the real world, I’m just going to keep waking up everyday and going to class and going to sleep and being on repeat, because the only thing I am is the same loyal friend I was when I got here with a lot more scars to show for it than friends and a better understanding of stage management. In August, I trash everything and take my bed to New York and start over. Only for the sake of starting over.

I’ve just never been so excited.