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*