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| Sometimes I wish I were a kid again, with so many dreams and so much hope in front of me.
And then I realize that while I was a kid, all I wanted was to grow up so I could start realizing those dreams.
No matter what phase of life we're in - there's always something to be gained, some positive feature to pick out. It's important to really try and feel that, especially when things seem hard.
Or even just when it's been a stressful week and you're feeling...less angsty than you did during high school, but a bit more emotional than you imagined you would at the ripping old age of 20.
-dedicated to the emptiness and no person-
i always thought one day the hurt could stop
forever, always i could bear it all
but now i cringe and let my heart just drop
and i, with hollow heart and aching soul
whatever dawn may bring i strive to see
in that a single ray of gleaming light
with now this softest constant hurt in me
i falter every day, try as i might
that silent look, that stony gaze both cut
into my dearkened heart to say goodbye
and never yet i thought that i was struck
until i saw your soul within your eyes
and yet i hope with dreadful ease within
some far off time we shall begin again
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| Yeah, I've switched over to blogspot. I'd been meaning to for awhile, and so I finally took the ten seconds and did.
http://smiles543.blogspot.com
So check that out, it'll be a good time. Or something.
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| Well, it's been an interesting few days. If I (and my gpa) escape the weak unscathed, I'll be very thankful.
So a number of somewhat stressful recent events have led me to realize
an ongoing thought process that I've had for - years? now. I think
smoking is disgusting. Being around a smoker gives me a headache, it
smells bad, everyone knows someone who's died from it, it makes your
teeth and nails all gross. However.
I've caught myself thinking - not acting upon - but merely thinking the
above statement, and more recently the past few days. I don't know why.
It could be that a lot of people here smoke and it's part of the
"stressed out, dealing with it" college kid image I've got in my head.
It could be that I've been around a lot of smoke, and there's some sort
of mild addiction? Maybe it's my way of dealing with things I don't
want to actually face, my way of telling myself "just go do this one
physical action and that'll make all those nonphysical things feel
better"?
I don't know. I'm probably crazy. That's probably the safest bet.
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| So, I had more nightmares last night.
The first one was by far the worst. So, I was back home and there was
some sort of sickness going around. It would start with just being
feverish and tired - and then a person would become clinically dead but
they'd still be able to move around and whatnot. I got the sickness. I
was laying on a couch at home, and suddenly I could just feel that my
heart wasn't beating anymore. Everything in my body was completely
stagnant. I could get up and walk around, but unless I got cured it was
only going to be a matter of time until my flesh rotted away to
nothing. I started to smell like death...and then somehow it got cured
and I was alive again.
I was SO thankful to be me, and not be a pile of rotting matter. Then I
was standing in a hospital room with someone else in the hospital bed,
and you could sense and smell death in the air again. Then I got the
sickness a second time. It was even worse that time because I'd thought
that I was done and freed from it forever. My mom had some errands to
run, so I was wandering around with her in the grocery store while I
was completely dead. My flesh started to smell again, so she gave me
some embalming oil (in a thing that looked SUSPICIOUSLY like my pot of
lipgloss  ) to put on my arms and legs so I wouldn't scare and
disgust people until we got home where either I'd get better or just
finish decaying. It was such an empty feeling because it was like I
still *existed* but I couldn't actually join in anything that "real"
people did - I couldn't fall in love, I couldn't hug anyone, I couldn't
eat, I couldn't do anything besides waste away while I watched what
everyone else did...
It was so vivid that when I finally woke up from it I poked at myself
and smelled my arm to make sure I wasn't really rotting away to
nothing.
Then I fell back asleep and in that dream I wasn't sure if I was dead
or alive but I finally convinced myself I was alive. I was in a
shopping mall late at night (it was technically closed and there were
some thug-like people wandering around) and I was trying to find where
I'd parked my car. (For some reason I'd parked it there "before" the
other dream, and now I was going to get it). I walked in one entrance
and it wasn't the right place, and there were lots of scary people so I
turned around and ran back out and ran into my mom. Then we got a map
and decided where we should have been but when we got there it was like
that MC Escher (sp?) drawing where the stairs are just endleses and
melt into themselves except instead of being a nice courtyard it was a
parking garage.
When I finally woke back up all the way, it took me a bit to realize
that a) I had never been dead, b) My car was back in VA and I was very
mucn not and c) that I'm a student, in college, completely alive and
very much never dead, and I have class at 10:30 so maybe I'd better get
up and get a shower and shake this off...
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| So, it's been exactly a month since he said "I can'd do this anymore" and walked out of my life.
I guess I'm handling it pretty well. I finally have a healthy appetite, and I'm finally sleeping better than I have in a long, long time. I've grown a lot. I'm closer now to a lot of really awesome people than I ever would have been had we stayed together. I'm closer to God than I have ever been in my life.
I'm still really at a loss, though. I'm still not sure how to reconcile my present with my past. It's hard to believe that there has to be such a separation. I have a lot of unanswered questions - a lot of unanswered hopes, fears. Part of me wonders if it's time to move on. I mean, I guess in a LOT of ways I have been moving on - I'm not sitting around moping, I'm going out, I'm having fun, I'm doing better in classes than I ever have at CMU. I've told people that it's broken off, instead of hiding it hoping that things will turn around.
In some ways though there's still that part in my heart that's really tender and marked off as "Tommy" territory. It's not something I think of every minute, but it's there. I can sit around with Laura and agree that a guy is attractive, but it's still impossible for me to really feel like there's anyone else that I'm really meant for. I know there are a lot of boys that I could be with, be happy with, but there aren't any guys that seem like they could really know me, or that seem like they know how to reach out to me in the right ways. (There were a lot of ways in which Tom didn't know me at all, and a couple things that he was dead wrong about, but ... he was closer than almost anyone else has been.)
I feel like there are lots and lots of guys that I could be with, and be happy with, but that I would have to do a lot of work towards...I know that it's not clear what I mean by that; I guess it's just something where I can understand people really easily and I can see the types of things that I would have to do to make them happy, and I can see the types of things that they would do that I would have to be understanding of, and the types of things I would have to say to get them to be comfortable and situated, and I can see how a relationship might be engineered: but I don't want to do that. (I've done it before and it worked okay - but it was only just functioning, it wasn't really living).
I want to be mutually in love again - I don't want to have to play both sides of the game (and I feel like in some ways I even had to do that with Tom), I just want to be me. I don't want to have to have figured out someone and to have to learn to tiptoe around them, I want to understand someone, love them, and respect them. And I want the same in return. I'm not saying this to be aloof or difficult, but I honestly have never in my life dated a guy that has understood me entirely, or as much as I would have liked to have been understood. One thing I can't *stand* is having people "tiptoe" and contrive themselves around me. It makes me feel insulted, and so I get very defensive (okay, angry). I can see right through it, and I don't want that again. I don't even know how it got to that point with him, I just know that it did and I wish that it hadn't because I honestly felt like we were building up something so strong, and pure, and unbreakable. The biggest question I have on my mind is if I was deluding myself about that, too. If I was then I'm deluding myself by not raking over that tender spot until it bleeds and grows some new tissue for someone else. I don't want to do it, though.
It's gotten easier with time. A month ago tonight I was crying my heart out and Laura was holding me and promising that it would all turn out okay. A month ago tomorrow morning I was stepping out into the cold of a frigid February morning, feeling like a shadow; a ghost. A month ago Tuesday I was barely holding it together long enough to get through a day of classes and lab. Tonight I was watching Monte Python with Laura and Brian, doing my pre-lab for 220 and being thankful for having the world's awesomest friends. Earlier today I was walking to church and the sun was shining and I was just so excited to be alive - I've got the best friends ever (especially when it comes to singing Disney songs on the loooong walk back from Joe Mama's late at night, or stressing about class together, or doing homework late at night together, or...anything!), classes are fine, I'm not nearly as stressed, I might have a research position in the fall, I don't feel like my stomach is going to drop out at any instant.
I know that given enough time, the TommySpot in my heart will resolve itself. I know that and I wish I could just hurry the process along. I hate waiting, I hate not knowing. I hate feeling like one of the most incredible people I've ever met might have just walked out of my life because we met too soon - before we were mature enough, before we knew what we were doing, before we were ready to make that commitment. I wonder if he feels the same, and I just hope and pray that he's doing well, that he's finding the peace and the answers he needs. I've been praying too that I'll get the answers and guidance that I need...
And as the Moody Blues say,
"So take your share
Of the gifts that are there
They all belong to you
And come what may
At the break of each day
We all begin anew once more
We all begin anew" | | |
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