Monday, April 22, 2002

I believe I just had another one of my "moments." Somehow thinking about summer and watching an MTV special about the roots of skateboarding made me incredibly happy and hopeful and relaxed and excited and calm and feeling as though in this moment in time I was fully present and completely in touch with my soul.

My sense of self has become illuminated within the last 64 hours and strange feelings of understanding are emerging. Whereas I would formerly mold myself into whatever someone wanted me to be, my inner voice is saying "Don't try and change me. I am who I am, and I love who I am." This is not to say that I am not changeable, because that is the essence of me -- I change myself constantly, I reshape who I am constantly. But this is me saying that I am going to change because I feel that there is a need for change, not because someone simply wants me to. I have been a pawn for too long.

Changing topics, this whole Orin thing continues. I've been given a strange, morbid and/or derisive sense of humor. I suppose separation will do me good. Re-orienting myself both mentally with school being over and physically by being in California will lighten me up a bit I assume.

Shaving my beard off once the play was over was cool, I was sick of it. However, seeing my completely shaven face in the mirror was almost shocking. I hadn't seen that face since high school. Suddenly, as though it were a symbol, that face shot old self-loathing emotions through my veins. I remembered when I was disgusted with how I looked. I remembered when I destructively lonely. I remembered how I tried to find meaning in superficial things, which largely contributed to my "mid-life crisis at 18" during my freshman year of college. Those were feelings I didn't wish to revisit. My dilemma is whether to face those demons and find acceptance of myself completely, or grow back my goatee and sideburns and temporarily remove one of the many issues racking my brain. My facial hair doesn't grow very quickly, so I have some time to think about it....

This Wednesday/Thursday, Megan and I will have been together for six months. Six months! I am very excited. I don't know if we're going to be able to spend that time together though. Hopefully we will on Thursday evening. My schedule has kept us from seeing each other very much. When we do it is often brief. With school winding down, and the understanding that after May 10th I will potentially not be seeing her for four months, my heart aches. All I want to do is soak up this time we have left, but I simply can't because of my academic, financial, and professional obligations. It really hurts me to be away from her like this, especially when she is so close. I can't tell you how many times a day I dream of screaming FUCK OFF to everything and taking her with me to California to spend our lives as artists in a house on the beach--painting, writing, playing music, eating big dinners with all of our friends, and surfing.

Eating shortbread cookies has suddenly become more important than writing. So that's it for today.