Seriously, it makes sense that the movie id most strongly relate to is the one about a girl who acquires the ability to go back in time and wastes it on eating pudding over and over.

The Girl Who Leapt Through Time broke me, it was perfect.

today i hung out with one of the only people in dallas i consider a close friend. we went to west elm for sheets, then to the mall to find a dress for a friends wedding reception (a thing i am also supposed to RSVP to but im not sure i want to because weddings and things related kind of freak me out). i don’t mind doing these things because i like clothes and and clothing construction, i like the display elements of retail environments. we got to west elm and they were hosting some kind of etsy thing. there were tables set up throughout the store that displayed the same handful of prints with the same little quotes laid out on banners with really nice typefaces. it was really awkward and confrontational. my friend found some stuff she liked and we talked about how strange it is that we have an image of adulthood that pertains directly to a certain set of material goods, like matching bedding and new furniture.

we went to anthropolige, which is a store i can only appreciate for its window displays. everything inside it screams problematic things at me but more than that its just too much shit in a really small place. the merchandising is bad, its busy and chaotic, and when you add bodies to the equation, people milling about pawing at things stacked on tables, its too much for me. she ended up finding a dress she liked that was terribly expensive, but what can do you do? things cost money, and its all too expensive when you think about it.

she’s newly single after ending a long distance relationship with someone who had the emotional disposition of a child and im in a weird place with all my relationships (mostly the one i have with myself). it was nice to catch up on the topical details of each other’s lives. while driving home we talked about how we both want to start seeing a therapist (how do you even go about that? how do you look for one and how do you measure whether theyre good or bad? are there yelp reviews?) and this rift we feel between us and the adulthood we mentioned in west elm. how we both want other things for ourselves but we dont know how to make those things happen.

i guess i have really ambivalent feelings about friendship and the activites you do within one. i love all my friends and i enjoy the things i do with the regardless of what they are, but there seems to be this distinct difference between shallow things, like going to a bar, and the other, meaningful things. we kind of reflected on what we had just done and asked “why did we choose to do that, why did we go to the mall and why did we buy sheets?” because those things seemed silly. but what are the other options? do we go to a museum? do we go to a park? do we sit inside one of our apartments and share trauma?

we used to go out a lot together, mostly do dance parties at bars. it was an easy thing for us to do because we could be really mean and catty in a public way. its a thing that people enjoy, women displaying their unhappiness by dismantling each other in really gross ways. its what girls at bars are supposed to do. now we go dress shopping and talk about how the men in our lives are failing us because thats the acceptable way for women their late 20’s to display unhappiness. theres always this hint of irony in it because both of us knew that neither of us wanted to be there. wed look around us and see all these people doing these things and neither of us felt like we belonged there, or that we were having fun. but that in itself was a fun thing for us, to know that we were in it together. im still not sure where people like me and my friend are supposed to go to be sincere…

we talked about how maybe both of us are hateful cynical people, and thats why neither of us enjoy anything. and how it could be that everything is shitty all of the time. we both recognize that every activity requires a willful suspension of sincerity and authenticity. it doesn’t matter if we shop for dresses or if we go to a museum.

but all of this could be hipster posturing. i know this is a thing that everyone feels, that everyone is going though it. we all drink coffee and talk about how everything sucks so it doesn’t matter that we also suck. its an easy way to justify being shitty and mean and its an easy way to justify mindless consumption. it doesnt matter if we are complicit because there are no other viable options…