This is me, standing on the threshold again.

Can't help it, it's just that time of the year. Mid-October seems to be my personal New Year's.

Everything's preparing to move, and yes, we're appartement-hunting again. It's long overdue. It's bad timing. It's way too early.
I want, I NEED to live in an old building again, were the rooms are high, the windows big and the floors creak. I grew up in one, overlooking the sea. The sun woke me every morning (unless I had to get up before dawn). We could hear the children from the nearby playground and tourists tours on aeroplanes roaring through the sky in summer. The doors were old, wooden and beautifully ornate. At night, when I couldn't sleep, I drilled a hole into the wall near my headboard, because I really wanted to spy on our neighbours. My parents never knew about that until we moved. Dad said it was an impressively deep hole for someone with only an old knitting needle. Then he pretended to look reprimanding and taught me how to close holes like that with plaster. And their parties were always just a very big sliding door away.
I want high ceilings again, pleeeease....

Today I woke with a backache so bad that I just couldn't stand up. And I just bought a harder mattress to avoid this kind of ache. So another strategy to get by without sports goes down the drain. I need to move myself. I need to work out already.
I could be the determined, cute jogger on the late evening street. I could be the hard working student mumbling vocabulary. I could be.

I seem to have lost the ability to drown myself in fanfiction and music. Somehow I chose not to be that kind of an addict anymore. I have absolutely no idea when and how.

I read through the first version of my book and really, it's more of a script. Bones and skin and no flesh whatsoever. A good script, though. Needs one added death and less psychobabble, but I think I am getting the latter out of my system via rpg anyway.

I got the students loan from the state. A part of it got lost on the way to my second bank account where it now lays in hiding until I may need it. I hope I won't. I want to go to Japan on a stipend. We'll see. I am going to work pretty hard at getting that.

I turned in my last two term papers this summer break and like every other time I'm not satisfied with my own effort. Could have should have done more would have if I'd just had more time - always the same stupid crap. I'll propably get good to very good grades anyway.

Went home for a long weekend to bond with my sister, to watch my smitten dad, to meet old ghosts.
Henni and I went out one night, a premature Happy 15 celebration. Drank anti-alcoholic cocktails and taught her pub billard. She won the third game and looked smashing the whole evening. Miss her harder than ever, since.
Didn't get to see much of Dad, who's building a new relationship. His new love looks like Mom in her best days and was unbelievably nervous upon meeting his girls. She seems nice enough. Not that I care, he loves her, so of course we're going to spent christmas at my place all together, with her. I'd make a lot more effort to like her, but she's making it pretty easy anyway.
And I met Kathi again at long last. We were both very surprised that we actually hadn't seen each other in person for more than a year. Didn't change a thing between us, we've been talkin on the phone pretty regularly. We talked about a shared ghost, my old best friend Kim. Kim the shiny one. With the bronze skin and the tiny, golden hairs on her tight belly. With the big blue eyes and the bright, loud laugh. Tall, sporty, charming Kim.
The betrayer.
We talked about how we'd both come to terms with a lot of stuff this last year, Kathi and me, and I told her that I think I never left Kim any other chance, in these last years of school, than to turn around and bully me. I left her first, with my long black coat and the elaborately lifted eyebrow. Smiling condescendingly at the bullies who tried to make me feel bad that they weren't my friends. I shut myself off from the school gangs, feeling secure with my old friends all over the city. I was the observer, untouchable, unstoppably cool, uncaring. Best part is, I never knew about all this, inside I just felt bad about those people so I stopped really noticing them. And yes, I think I shut myself off from *everyone at that school*, even Kim, who'd changed schools with me, feeling secure with her best friend at her side. She must have been so confused and alone and yes, betrayed.
While talking to Kathi I somehow understood all that, and then I said: Poor Kim. And Kathi laughed, freely, and said: Childhood antics. Not that important to anyone anymore, I mean, it's been what, ten years?
Ten. Years.
So she proposed to organize a class reunion, or more like a clique reunion. I felt instantly very happy about that, I missed some of my old friends very fiercely, and I think it will be nice to see what became of them. And then there was the thought: Oh my god. I am happy about a class reunion. Is that what accomplishment feels like?

Fruits Basket has ended and I am happy with the ending. Strangers in Paradise is done, and I am heartbrokenly happy with this, too. I watched Prison Break and it was, well, like a long, long fanish wank. Mrraaarr. Since we had to move the couch into the big kitchen we've been hanging out there a lot more. Watching The Tudors, which is a sexy, beautiful series indeed, and old episodes of Friends, which I've never watched regularly. I fear I developed an identification with Monica and a crush on Chandler.

I'm so, so, so afraid of the newspaper reading course by Watabe-sense on Fridays. Last week I couldn't go because of the burst water pipe. Tomorrow... I have to. I have to. Never stop doing something just because you're afraid. Fear Is The Mindkiller.
...
I'll mail her to ask if I may still join and what we should prepare for next friday. Tomorrow evening.
Then there's an open lecture on Thursdays which I'll hopefully be attending regularly after this week (as I've said, backache today). Maybe I'll go to the lectures on Monday, but EVERYthing else on my timetable is hereby striked through. Useless. Forget the one I posted a while ago.

So here I sit, currently not jogging, not cramming Kanji into my brain, neither working on the novel nor on finding old, lost friends for a reunion. My back still hurts. Yeeees, well, I am constantly looking for new appartement adds, but that's because I love looking at them. I'm two months early still.
Maybe all that is alright, though. I procrastinated making detailed plans for the stipend application, for the graduation paper and for refreshing my Japanese more than one week now and only today went at it. Did I mention I went to the hairdresser last week? No term papers for me anymore, no more "Scheine", no more fanfiction frenzies, no more Kim competitions, astonishingly. Yes, maybe I needed a bit of time to digest all that. It may have been the subtlest of them all, yet, but it still was a major change. To a new me. Yes, yes, maybe an accomplishment. I definitely feel on edge again. Afraid of even looking forward, not to talk about taking the next step.
See, life says to me, this is you, three steps nearer to who you want to be. Step over the threshold.

P.S.: Nearly forgot: The permanent braces are gone, too! Nice model smile I got going, now. Can't take a picture, though, because I lent my camera to myriverbed.