French press coffee. Undone essay. The new slippers.

I'm starting to realize that this - my life, right now, exactly the way it is - is something to celebrate. There are things that make me feel sad, of course, this is life, not everything will be happy. Sometimes I will feel lonely, unsatisfied, unwanted, awkward, under-qualified, tongue tied, or simply like I have been dumped into a life that someone else seems to have created and I am now here stuck living. But there will always be love, even if I cannot always see it. I have so many people in my life who respect me, who love me, and who affirm me. I have things I might do differently if I got to relive days with the knowledge I now have, but that is very normal.

I heard the other day that there are literally people eating mud pies in the world right now. Talk about a shock into reality. Here I am worrying about eating too much, about relationships, feelings, worrying about how skinny I am (or am not), and there are people on the same planet who will die of malnutrition. Of course, this needs to be taken with a realistic point of view; of course if I stop eating it will not bring them food, but it did make me stop and think about how small and insignificant my problems are.

This brings up something else...how I feel so compelled to make such a big difference in the world. I want to die with a legacy, with people knowing what I've done. Incredibly selfish and arrogant, I know, but true. I want to make a big difference because I care about the people it will impact, because I think that I am here to leave the world a bit of a better place, but also because I want some sort of recognition for myself. How disgusting.

I don't know....I'm done my coffee now and should really go attempt to edit the fricking hellish essay that has been plaguing me for months.

Tell me lies, lies, lies. Sweet little lies when I cannot bear the truth. Tell me lies, lies, lies. Sweet little lies. Help me make them all come true.
*Michael Franti and Spearhead

Go listen to Michael Franti's newest album.

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I miss summer. When things felt easy, when it was warm, when I was warm.

All I want is to be wanted. For some reason I have this constant urge to feel needed. I want a fairytale life and I spend too much time creating one in my head....with elaborate plans of a prince flying in at the last minute, when I had just given up hope, sweeping me off my feet, lightly kissing my face, and riding off together into the sunset. That sounds super cliche, and obviously this isn't actually what I conjure up in my mind, but it may as well be. I come up with infinite reasons not to get that call....or text......or email. I wonder what I did. And the stupid thing is, the more I ever think about boys that I like(d), is that I realize how terrible we would be for each other. I just want someone who will come and hold me. And cuddle me. I wish there was someone who just loved me....all of my weirdness and everything. He doesn't need to understand me, because how can I expect (or even want) that when I don't even understand myself. I just want someone who loves me....

Even though I didn't even really like him, my heart feels like some sort of mushy liquid, dripping down in between my ribs and seeping into my feet. I really have no idea how this goes, do I? I feel cheap.

I don't know what I want, so don't ask me. Because I'm still trying to figure it out. I don't know what's down this road, I'm just walking, trying to see through the rain coming down. Even though I'm not the only one who feels the way I do, I'm alone.
ts*

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fudge.

I wish that sometimes things just worked out for me...that they were the way I say them in my mind's eye. Although I love my life...there are things I would like to change about it. and although there is so much love in my life, I so often feel something missing. This could just be me, being melodramatic, as per usual...but maybe it's slightly right. Christmas this year feels so different. I think it's because I'm beginning to open my eyes to the bad things around me...and as much as I would love to shut the window that has been opened, I know that I cannot. I'm realizing brokenness, when I used to see Christmas as a time when all were complete, I see more and more poverty and hunger, when, as a child, I thought it was the norm to have a big turkey on the table. I recognize loneliness...and I don't know how to deal with it and it scares me, because all I've ever known is a warm house, with supportive parents, siblings who are my best friends, and enough love to make my heart burst. I hate being cynical, but my faith in this world is slowly diminishing. Of course there is love...there will always be love. And as long as there is love, there will be hope, and faith. As long as we hope, we will find beauty. Marianne Williamson writes that the only reality is love...that anything else is simply a figment of our imagination (dare I compare this to samsara??). That evil, hate, bitterness, fear, these are all fictional things we, as humans, have created to fill the void that needs to be filled with love.

Thank you. Whoever you are. I believe that we all change each other...every person you ever interact with, you have changed, and will change. So thank you for changing me. Sometimes I don't want to, but I will.

I don't know what I want out of life...I don't know who I want to be, or what I want to do...I'm not sure where I fit, I don't know if I have friends, I'm so scared to let people down.

It occured to me last night, while sipping tea with one life-long friend, and another who feels just as close, that the chances we will remain friends throughout our lives is slim. They had both been away for the past semester, and it felt almost...wrong...to be casually spending time with them. Not wrong, but somehow...I'm not sure how to explain it, out of character??? I'm sure it was partly because it was the first time we had seen each other in so many months, but it was strange to think that in five, ten, twenty years, we might not even be emailing each other any more. It's a strange thought that someone who has influenced me so much, who has held me as I cried, who has cried with me, someone who I sing with loudly, whose hand I have held while we attacked life together may not be there holding my hand when I'm fifty.

But I think I'm also beginning to see how that's okay. How life goes on, and although I do not want it to overcome me, I know it is important to accept certain things and not dwell on them.

I love you, whoever you are. Please know that.

There's one thing I want to say, so I'll be brave. You were what I wanted, I gave what I gave. I'm not sorry I met you, I'm not sorry it's over, I'm not sorry there's nothing to say.
stars*

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There are these groups that you can join, on a particular popular social network which will remain unnamed, where people vote for the prettiest girl. What is wrong with the world? There is so much more than what is on the outside....why do we feel constant need for affirmation that we are beautiful? When did this become a competition? Why can't we all just be beautiful, in our own way.

I just want to hug all of those beautiful Beautiful girls and tell them that they don't need that pressure. All they need to live up to is their own standards. I wish they knew that it doesn't matter what others say. If you can't be true to yourself, how are you ever going to be true to someone else?

When you see my face/I hope that you don't laugh/I'm not a film star beauty/I'll send a photograph/I hope that you don't laugh stars*

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the new grey skirt...

somehow I consistently manage to make the same mistakes in my life over. and over. and over again. I trust too much, or not enough. I plunge myself into the wrong things.....it seems like this is just a part of me. Maybe I should work at changing it, or perhaps it is better - for me, right now - to simply accept it and love it.

I am realizing that in order for so many things to start in my life, things that I almost desperately want to happen, I must learn who I am. Before I can feel some solidity in where I want my life to go I must accept who I am...not define it, because everyone is constantly changing and shifting and being influenced in the moment, but to realize what I like and what I don't like...to maybe just feel more confident in telling people who this person is....or in saying that I do not know who I am, but in telling people what I do know.

What do I know?

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barricade

What an interesting life I have....it's so normal, but often feels so complex. (oh how could anyone not want to rip it all apart/oh how could anyone not love your cold black heart). I think more and more I'm starting to actually believe that sometimes, sometimes, you can just let yourself experience things...that I do not need (there's only darkness at the finish/meet me at the barricade/I'll be at the barricade) to be in control of everything in my life. (the love died but the hate can't fade) I think...I hope that I am slowly learning to just let myself see things as they really are. To let myself see me as I really am. Maybe. Maybe for a moment, or a day, or an hour, maybe I feel so fully like myself, I just smile. I am starting to realize what I actually like doing...and perhaps this is the beginning of a very long journey to figuring out where I want my life to go, and it is a step on the path I began eighteen years ago to defining who I am.

I love to dance. Baths. I love drinking wine. Spending time with friends. I hate clubs. I love woolen socks. Clean rooms. Dirty rooms. Art........(in its entirety...music, paintings, photographs, fashion, sculptures....). I love helping people and I love to play in the rain. I love to scream and laugh.

I don't feel like doing that anymore. I want so much for myself that often I begin to focus so much on this that I forget to see others for who they really are, and what they need in their lives. The values of society have so corrupted our thinking that we always need more. Christmas disgusts me. The way it has transformed from a holiday of love to a holiday of unnecessary consumerism and selfishness and greediness. All I want to know is when the season of hope, of love, and peace became filled with hate and stress and suicide.

Why can't the ending be happy? Why must it always resolve this way? -Stars

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loud stomachs and the happy angel

Mmmmm here I am on the floor in my undies and a big shirt and I feel so incredibly content. Perhaps it is the absence of school in my life...or possibly the return of friendship, or the beginning of something new?? I do not know, and I do not need to know. This is something I'm learning...or maybe teaching myself. It seems that either my heart knows it and is trying to teach my head or maybe my head knows it and is trying to teach my heart. I get them mixed up much too often.

Even though there is so much to be done....before Christmas, before school starts, before tomorrow evening, before Monday,

it can wait.

It will still be there in a few minutes, or hours, or....days?

Today I learned about 'Love Language'. It's an interesting concept. Now I really want to know what mine is! I wonder if I can take a quiz...ha. If you do not know about it, look it up! It will be an adventure, I promise.

The dryer is going and I hear my whites tumbling with the little blue balls whose purpose I have momentarily forgotten.

I don't know where the sunbeams end and the starlight begins. It's all a mystery.
-Flaming Lips

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