Lana feels

Last night was very, very strange. One thing I forgot this summer as I was busy romanticizing CRMS was how very, very wierd things get sometimes. And how it always happens all at once. Last night... Last night I wrote this. I was all of the things that I said there, but I just re-read it and it sounds a lot worse than it was. It hurt, it still hurts, but it always sounds worse in diaryland. So, I wrote that, and then went and showed Mike Smith (the dean of students or discipline) the monkeys on my shirt because he's scared of monkeys. Then Manda wanted to go somewhere and we went out for pizza at Peppinos. Cesca was there so I snuck up behind her and bit her neck. She doesn't like that, which is why I do it, because she does this thing with the back of my skull. So it was a golden opportunity and I bit her. But I happened to bite a place where she has an extroverted mole and it went between my teeth and started bleeding, which we didn't notice until some time later. So Panda and I had pizza and root beer floats and she had ice cream, and then we parted ways at the playground. Panda and I played on the swings and slide for a while, then started for home.

We got about as far as City Market when I first noticed how strangely Panda was acting. I was teasing her about Laura, and for the first time ever I heard her yell. Yell in the sense of open her mouth and really use her vocal cords. It was a little unnerving, to say the least. Then, she got really quiet. For a couple of long dark minutes, she wouldn't speak at all. When she did start speaking again, it was in an entirely different voice. A scared little girl kind of voice. She would only say one word, and then she'd repeat it. In the entire ten minutes to walk back to campus, she said bus, crash, mistake, pills or hills, rolling roland or rollen, and maybe four other words I can't remember. For a grand total of about 10 words, repeated in this horribly scary tone of voice, over and over again on a pitchblack bike path for ten minutes. So we get back on campus, I look her in the face and I didn't recognize her. At all. It was like her face was a different shape, more angular, colder. Her eyes were all black. I could barely see the whites at all. She looked terrified and confused and all I could do was tell her to go back to my room or her room and I'd come and find her later. I found her a while later watching Robin Hood, Men in Tights, in her dorm with a bunch of the other OGD girls, and sat down to watch with her. She looked more like herself again but still wasn't talking, and so I just sat there. It's a funny movie. Lila came in at some point and leaned on me for a while, and at about 10:30 I got up to go. Panda was still completely vacant, so I left her be. Said goodnight to Lila and she hugged me and made a whimpery noise, tried to get her to come back to my dorm but she said it was too cold. I shrugged and turned and ran away. All that I could think was, if it's too cold in September to come and spend the night in my room, am I ever going to see you at all in December? So I ran away, unwilling to let anybody see how much that hurt, and I went back to my room, took my shoes off, looked around my single, my neat, organized, bed-made single, and I collapsed on that made bed and cried. I thought I had forgotten how, but I've started to remember over this past year. I cried twice sophomore year. I cried when they took Amy away in the ambulance. And last night, when it hit me really hard just how much time I'm probably not going to spend with the friends that by June of last year I thought I could never be separated from. Of course, crying for me involves few theatrics. You can count the individual tears on one hand, and I make no noise. It's mostly just breathing. Lada knows, and I suppose Lila does too. And then, five tears and a lot of catchy breathing later, I stopped, went to the bathroom and got some paper towels. Noticed that I get really, really pale. Took those paper towels back to my room, blew my nose, and spent a couple hours sorting and cutting up pictures for more room decorations. Trying to figure out what I'm going to do this year. Now I have a bus to catch, and a Manda to try and sanify.