today was better than even my optimistic journal entry this morning predicted. i was feeling sassy and friendly and social in a way that wasn't forced. not that i ever reaaaally force it; i just kind of keep my head down. but today...i spent a great deal of time speaking to a professor who gossiped with me the most about class, and about how i'm doing and about all sorts of things. he's much more personable outside the classroom where he kind of shivers like a chihuahua at the sight of students. and the remaining friends of mine (i say this like there are only a few...ha!) have assured me that judgmental people are certainly to be avoided and that, indeed, that's what was going on. those girls can have their opinions and their cynicism, but me...i'll take friends who laugh and mean it and who talk to me with no walls. honest friends, really. i prefer them.

reassurance and an overbooked weekend. this is really the way i enjoy feeling. that and my belly-full-of-love for that boy, who is still buried under a monstrous mountain of work. just 4 more weeks of class. 6 more weeks of school. i can do this. it's almost over, and i have...let's see...60 pages of writing due over the next 4 weeks. holy fuck, that is not something i had even thought about entirely. wait, make that 65.

well. i'm going to have a little nightcap and forget about it for tonight. there's always tomorrow. (i'm so bad at playing flippant, devil-may-care student. i'm totally going to work myself into the ground for the next 4 weeks. at least i'm feeling good about myself...)

just a thought: this drama with the friend dumping has actually been hugely beneficial. it worked up that side of me, the arched eyebrow sassy side, that hasn't been showing herself much at good ol' reed college. it was high time i stopped feeling small in this place. my pride needed poking. but, i'm a little more tempered by reality than i was at the height of my pridefulness, and i think here it's less haughty and mean and more sassy and social.

i think i'll try my hardest to avoid being rude to ash. i'm lying. i have a mouth on me...things tend to leap out at the most incorrect moment (or the perfect moment, depending where you stand, i suppose) and...well, whatever. we will see what happens. my guess is that this will be more subtle than anything, girl warfare is a strange thing. it's all in the glance, crossing of the arms, a measured sigh and precise verbal abuse wrapped up in a friendly voice and or said with a smile. oh, i know how girls work. and i can do all that (i am from the south, where ladies' have claws under those white gloves) but i get fed up pretty damn quick. and then out comes the mouth and the huffing and the possible spitting and perhaps even some kind of bizarre move like kicking them in the shins.

oh, lord. at the moment, i'm doing well in the role of saint maggie--the girl who has been wronged by this awful faux friend. if i kick her in the shins--while very VERY funny in my head--i will not so much be filling the saintly, sympathetic roles. in that case, i would actually be crazy. yes. well. i'll try to control myself. but it will make me giggle for a little while. like, everytime i see her shins, or her.

it's hard to be forgiving when you're still very much hurt. i was totally blindsided by that. but, actually, i guess i'm not surprised. i always knew that clique (and there is a clique of them, as if we're back at ol' saa with the bowheads) was meanspirited. indeed, i joined in enough. but that's half the reason i always felt so terrible (and i was so judgemental with them because i felt so terrible--neverending cycle really). so, in the end, i am pleased as punch, whatever that even means, to be making fabulous new friends, to be 21 and able to say casually "hey, we should go out for drinks sometime..." (so thrilling! i've been waiting to be 21 for maybe 8 years! i wonder when the novelty wears off...i guess once i add up how much i'm spending on alcohol at these damned bars...).

i want to chat with jam on the phone...but i always feel so rude waking him when i know he has early classes. i'm a very selfish girlfriend sometimes...ah, well, if he doesn't wanna talk, he won't pick up the phone...