Wednesday, May 14, 2003

I'm not drunk, but I'm tired, and dilirium can feel like drunkeness.

Some people fear change but I seem to thrive on it, yearn for it. I can't seem to be comfortable in one place or situation for very long before I need to change it or adjust it. I cannot be content with the way that I am or the spaces I inhabit. Perhaps that keeps me growing and moving, but it's hard to call anything my own because of it. There is very little I've been doing or places I've stayed (willingly) for very long. Maybe that's why I don't have the feelings of understand or depth or roots or history that I so awkwardly yearn for. I'm trying to justify to myself why in this week before graduation I want to get away from here more every day rather than the other way around.

I want to know the whole story...to everything! It fucking kills me. I want to follow people home and be a fly on their walls or a thought in their heads and be able to see clearly the directions they are coming from. I want to know what music they're listening to when they're sad, when they're happy, and when they don't know what to feel. I want to see the times when they go to call someone but hang up the phone before they're done dialing....and then do it again. I want to see what little unmentionable, trivial things get them excited. I want to see who they silently adore or silently dispise. I want a movie to be made about every living person because I want them to be able to KNOW that I know. Nothing makes me feel more pathetic than realizing that I knew just enough about a person to convince myself that I knew them well. People are SO complex, so much more than we usually ever give them credit for. What we see and hear is only an iota of what that person truly is, their essence is so VAST. And I think this is why I find it so hard to truly dislike anyone....because I know that I DON'T know everything about them, and below 7 layers of asshole, there may be 25 layers of utterly amazing. But I get frustrated when I cannot get through those outer layers...cos I want so badly to give in and tell him/her to just fuck off. And then there are my own layers...I sure as hell don't know what they are.

My friend Kim made an interesting observation about the difference between home friends and college friends. She said that the nice thing about your friends from home, the ones that you grew up with, is that they know everything you've been through because they were there with you while it happened. They know your family and your town and your school and your childhood friends and all the other factors that create your past, the place you COME FROM. For example, I don't have to explain to my friends from home WHY I have an aching sense of inadequacy and/or frivolousness because they KNOW it developed from being the youngest member of my entire family, forever comparing myself to the accomplishments of my siblings, cousins, aunts, uncles, and grandparents. Luckily I haven't convinced myself yet that I know Kim well.

My dad's the priest turned psychologist, not me. But the genes are strong, and I'm ever drawn to those in need. It would feel nice to be able let someone fall down hard without feeling guilty that I was supposed to catch them.

On May 10th it was 14 years since the death of my dad's mother, whom I affectionately called Mema. I spent so much of that day thinking about her and realizing how much I still miss her. I wanted to write something that day, but it just didn't happen. I still don't have anything to say about it other than the fact that at age 21 years and 10 months there are so many questions I wish I would have understood at age 7 years and 10 months and been able to ask her.

I think about love a lot, and I think everyone should. It's the most important thing in life and I find it absent in much of the world. People have lost their faith in love, praying instead to the gods of colorful infatuation, comfort, and convenience. I've never imagined love in the shiny, pre-packaged, take a number and wait your turn way it's come to be so often represented. The love I think about is the magnificently overwhelming emotion that leaves you without rational understanding. It's the manifestation of your entire being into 3 tears that uncontrollably slip out because of the way a girl tugs on her shirt sleeve while reading a book. A reaction so unpredictable and so unexplainable, yet so infinite, that the only explanation you'll accept is that for one brief moment your souls were tangentially connected...and you love it. It's the utter joy generated by an everlasting desire to bring utter joy to someone else. It's finding and exploring the mystery of the world and the mystery of one another with someone else. It's celebrating your own incurable imperfections with the incurable inperfections of someone else. It's not sappy. It's not all smiles and sunsets. It's not easy. But it is more important than anything else. And it is so utterly, amazingly, beautifully real.