seasons change, i write...

sometimes i do not understand people. or, maybe i understand people too well and become so flabbergasted with strange behavior that i find myself in a tizzy- dizzy with the freedom of allowing other people to matter to me.

the decision to rejoin community has not been an easy one for me. i believe i have expanded more energy trying to push people away more often than not than to reel them in. as i was becoming friends with my current people, there were as many drunken attempts to ditch them, betray them, or tell them, 'fuck you,''i hope you die,' 'you don't know what it's like to have a sexual identity crisis,' etc.

and then i surprised myself. i let them in. and now, a few years in i find the same people that i struggled with then, still here now. it is teaching me something.

conditional love is all that i know. falling was never celebrated or understood, walking properly was. rigid perfection was the norm, and that is what i have always reverted to, aspired to, and ultimately, what i end up doing. whether that means scheduling, working out, top grades, health food, honesty in relationships, pet ownership... i try so goddamn hard.

conditionality is a top-down experience historically. from the top, from god, and right on down to us.

now that i am what, three years out of that jazz, it is interesting to analyze the difference between me then and now. there are very particular aspects of my personality that will forever be shaped by the way that my religious philosophy and religious upbringing influenced my development. and that's ok. i am far beyond the space of 'demonizing' christianity. it is flawed, interesting, inspiring in some ways, detestable in other ways.

just like people. just like friends. family. relationships. and if i chucked religion out for it's complications, am used to conditionality as a norm- what's a girl to do when set up against the imperfections of others?

religious philosophy, and conditionality aside, let's talk about hard knock life, being disowned, leaving your husband, your entire community, your family, and finally, the last people that you cared about and trusted, and the boy who held your heart.

when you say goodbye again and again, or not at all, but people are ripped from you, you cannot help but develop a type of 'breakaway skin,' and a breakaway heart. add with that working with school age kids and learning to say goodbye to them when moves or sixth-grade rolled around. and becoming a therapist, which teaches the art of incredibly close connection to another human being, and then a solemn goodbye, forever.

i know how to amputate people from my heart.

and yet, the desire for connection is strong. i am cursed with such emotionality that the connections are so deep, i am so drawn to authenticity that the bonds are so real. and i am driven to connect. in knowing myself so fully of late, it is hard not to want to mesh that with other people.

and other people don't know themselves, or are in their own dizzy with freedom walk that hobbles in one direction, stumbles in mine, then falls in another.

and i look upon all this and reach behind me for my retreat button, to get back to Safe, to Know Where I Stand... where the reigns belong to me, and i am not at the whim of another...

what do you do when you begin to feel so old, so worn out, so thin, like bilbo's butter scraped over too much bread? isolation is always an option. striving to perfection, sleep...

lately i find myself wondering if there could be such a thing as a coma vacation. a cousin of suicidal ideation, no doubt, but better than it's been.

when i think back to the Me of last summer, early fall, i realize how much i have changed. it's unbelievable really. i find it fascinating to really look at the differences between change and stability in humans.

another conversation, for another day.

i am in a very uncertain place right now. i feel it every day. cynicism clouds my sense of hopefulness, as has been the standard for me. and yet, so high the climb, i can't turn back now.

i have learned again and again that keeping it real does not ensure that anybody else will. loving selflessly does not mean people will not spite you. idealistic hope does not guarantee anything.

as much as i try to ascribe meaning to my life, and to life in general, i still inside, feel lost.

nihilism is a hell of a drug.

and fuck drugs, anyway. my pets give me something enough to know that the tradition that says they have no souls and no real purpose other than to serve men even in their breath forms an argument more provocative than scripture. lol.

karl marx speaks of money, and life without it, sucks.

politics are failing.

globally, whole continents starve to death young, and others make it nearly to older age to die too young from eating too much.

we pollute. we rape. we murder. we lie.

all are guilty. but what the fuck is "sin?"

all who do bad also do good. and every person has the capacity to surprise you.

and i have too much time to analyze my thoughts that tick, tick, tick, in the timebomb of this brain. the treadmill holds much of my anger, the row machine, my grief.

and people are thoughtful and heartless.

here today and gone tomorrow.

please be gone tomorrow.

no, stay.

i guess all that matters is what time can tell...

meh, there's no such thing as time.