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Friday, June 27, 2008

A Singing Subway

I don't know why I hear it or if I'm just loosing my mind but sometimes... I can hear public transportation making music.

When I stepped out of my car this afternoon, I focused on the hum of the 18 wheelers behind me. The highway wails at me even through my window as I sit at this desk. Yesterday the subway rails sounded like a woman singing a sad note. These things catch my attention and stick out.

Remember in the Broadway play Wicked when Elphaba, (the wicked witch of the west) realizes she can make the broom fly? The broom didn't sing of course but the ladies sang and Galinda sings, "you're having delusions of grandiure".

But Elphaba wasn't. She rode away on her broom and the music got louder.

The Perils of Change

I wanted to sit down today and write something meaningful and insightful but today is a blah day; a perfect Friday. Everyone's excuse is the name of the day and not much work gets done. Naps seem like a great idea and writing emails takes president over getting that batch done for accounting.

Billy Joel's 6th concert was last night and everytime I hear "New York State Of Mind", I get a little sadder. I can't figure out if I'm terrified to go, or if I'm afraid it will loose it's magic if I live there or even if I'll just run out of money and be lost. Still, I must've been a New Yorker in a past life. Ho hum.

I guess today's post can be about change and what it means to us as people. God, do we hate it. I wonder if it's because we are such 'creatures of habit', consistant beings that disrupting the flow, disrupts us. Whatever the reason, they hate it. Even within a familiar environment, like my job for example. Even a change in procedure on how things get to my desk, can have everyone up in arms.

So I'm 24 next month and while change should still be part of the woodwork of my life; it isn't. I need a new location, new job and new ways of thinking. But the reality for most, like myself, are the practical and vital things that are pulling fear into us. Like medical insurance for example. How terrifying to move to a city with no job and then no medical insurance for 3 months. Just this morning, without warning, I had my head between my legs in pain.

We're not just talking about being uncomfortable with a new setting and the people in it. We are talking about how danger can play a role in making decisions about change. Now, of course, with medical insurance or without, it doesn't matter. A hospital will treat you. But what about the damage afterwards when the bill arrives?? In a failing economy where everyday living is becoming more and more of a struggle, where does a $2,000 bill fit in to ever be paid off?

I've never been a person to put much emphasis on money until I ran out of it. But looking at my bank statement the other day and seeing $300 in gas in one month made me wonder where on earth rent money will ever come from.

I think money, or lack there of, is the main ingredient when people make changes like location or career. This isn't high school anymore folks, it's the real world and the real world is brutal. To every person who just graduated high school, they'll get a little taste of it. To those who've left college, get a friend and hold their hand... it's going to be ugly.

I can't tell you what I would give to be able to roll over and ignore the alarm clock. To not have to call my boss in the morning when I'm sick and tell them I'm sick. Oh and to have extra credit to make up for slacking... Yes, those were the days. But, BOOM! Real life is here and there ain't going back.

I worry that the new responsibilities of living in the real world is what's keeping me from stepping forward. I'm so worried about my insurance, my bills, my paycheck, my... security, that instead of taking that jump to something that might be amazing, I'd rather stay stuck and 'secure'.

Michael would probably tell me I'm completely predictable, one of the millions, a textbook version of human behavior. I'm certain it's true but... it still sucks.

So I'd pose the question, how does one get out? Of course the answer is to "decide to get out". Why is it that these decisions of happiness, awareness and movement turn out to be so hard to, well, decide? And what makes it easier?

Thursday, June 19, 2008

You vs The World

Giving advice is something I've done for years upon years. Of course, I am young, but you still can't laugh at my 'years'. The amount of time, energy and personal study of people that I have dedicated myself to, truly speaks for itself. I spend a great deal of energy in finding out people's histories, their woes, their hardships and the joy that came out of them all.


Because I had great story tellers in my high school years, the men and women who told me about their lives helped to shape my own. For each person who spent a great deal of after school hours with me, I kept a book. They were teachers, they were people and later became friends. I would write about what they were telling me about life so that I would have something were I to go through a similar hardship.

Maryann would say, "it took me twenty years to figure that out."

I would think to myself, "now I have twenty years to figure something else out because I have the answer to this."


When I wanted to know about people and they were distant or quiet, I began to study body language. This was incredibly fun because human behavior is so predictable. I realized more and more the importance of really paying attention to what people did with their bodies, not only in silence but even in discussion.


My study evolved through others, to bodies and then to myself. Self help books littered my shelves and I read them but they all felt like dead ends. I know now that you're not really going to help anything with those books, unless you're helping your simple mind.

Home remedies for happiness and relaxation are equilvelant to take out instead of a home cooked meal. Nothing tastes better than something you cooked with your own two hands. That's where real happiness happens; in your hands. Not in a bottle, not in a pill and no, not in a joint. Happiness is the hard work and tears you put into your weeks to gather months of smiling. It has to be rich; cultivated from your feet, all the way up.

Studying people plays an important role but studying myself in this recently new format... is blowing my mind.



Studying your own habits makes everyone else's habits kind of make sense and in that I'm furthering all areas of study, seamlessly. The rule of loving yourself first may sound corny, but it's the most beneficial road to take, in order to discover the rest of the world.

Monday, June 16, 2008

Can I Be Still?

In "Meditation isn't for sissies", we are reminded that we're not going to a happy place when we close our eyes, we're not going any place at all.

In all the creative outlets I have available to me, none have proven to be as comforting and easy to run into as "my happy place", as Adam Sandler would say. I can draw a picture if the mood strikes me, I can create an illustration as close to my thought as possible (though they are rarely the same). I can write a good story and describe everything in detail. But even if I sat here and wrote about how fat, loud and strong the rain was, I am the only one getting hit in the face with it, inside the screen. I could tell you about the cool air, the thunder and the flashes of lightning but I'm the only one who can smell the grass and feel the hair on my arm stand.

But imagination is increasingly powerful with practice and when my hands were too tired to draw and my eyes were too tired to read, I could always close my lids and simply imagine.

Sitting in the dentist chair I've concentrated on the same boat picture since 3rd grade. While drills roll inside my head and metal scrapes, I am fishing. I am on the dock having pizza or I am breezing through the ocean in the background.

When I was mad at home, at school or at work, I simply switched off from reality and willed myself into another existence. I wanted something to distract me. I guess most people refer to it as day dreaming. I thought of it as displacement. As I sit here, the thunder cracks and the neighbor roots for the sound. The rain is ruthless against my deck but I am in the jungle somewhere sitting in a tree hut and the darkness of my back yard is really cloaking miles of thick rainforest. When I sit in the shower in my bathroom, it is the same feeling.

I've often wondered if what I were doing all these years was some kind of cliff note to what a sip of meditation would be. These past few weeks I've come to see the difference is ruthlessly far apart. Michael only puts in words what I couldn't when he says this practice is, indeed, the hardest.

The sliding door of this bedroom is open a crack so I can hear the rolling and screaming of the sky. That is the reality of this night and instead of disappearing to another country, I should be taking joy that the beauty is litterally in my back yard.

My mother comes to the door and tells me to switch off the computer. Lightning travelling through the computer is reality too. It happened to us once.

So the moral is that while far off places seem beautiful and peoples faces seem more intricate in other lands, it is a simple case of "the grass is greener on the other side". It is with intent open eyes that we should stop looking past the back yard and appreciate the very wood of the deck we are standing on.

Until I can see the deck as a deck and not a tree house, I'm not sure if I am ready to sit on the deck and just let it be nothing... not even a deck. If I've been substituting things like the deck for tree houses, I must first work backwards and go back to seeing them and appreciating what they are, no matter how simple.

Once the deck is a deck, then I can go a step further and forget the deck exists altogether. Is that when I can be still?


Wednesday, June 11, 2008

Grocery Shopping Monks

"Joey, Bag of Donuts" or "Joey Bags", as we called him, was the first man I saw everyday for a year. He worked in the back of the market with me in the warehouse. His name wasn't Joey at all, it was Richard. He was 5 foot even, fat, New York native, Italian mess who never took his baseball cap off because he was bald.

One morning, after stealing us breakfast, Joey came running into the back room. With a hot croissant hanging out of his mouth, his raspy voice sputtered, "you'll neva believe this honey, two dudes with dresses in the milk isle!"

"Dresses Joey?" I asked following him out to the store.

"You know those meditating people," he threw his hands up.

I watched from a short distance as the two men in question, headed towards Joey and his stained apron. They were draped in red cloth over one shoulder and wore brown sandals. Each of them carried a wooden bowl.

"Can you help us shop, Sir?" The taller, and obviously American, of the two spoke to Joey softly. He explained that he was from our town but went over seas to become a monk. He went on to tell Joey that he could not touch the food they wanted to purchase, or the money to buy it with. They needed Joey to walk the store with them.

Joey, being the curious thing that he was, thought this was hilarious and volunteered to help them with a smile. He started asking questions right away.

His first question was if they had any underwear on. The American monk laughed and said they had shorts on. Joey went on to ask what they did all day? Weren't they bored? No tv? No SEX? He was the most mortified that they couldn't even touch themselves!

As you could've guessed, Joey was NOT a shy man, nor did he leave out details of a hot date to anyone, or even how he handled his morning wood. The monks came back every day for one week and always asked for him.

They were interesting and I looked for them every morning. They were quiet but they stood out. The older man with his beautiful skin color and their wine colored robes. Someone the American knew would leave money at the booth and they would use that to pay. When they bought fruits or vegetables that had seeds in them, they had US pray for them because they would be eating them later and depriving the seeds of thriving.

They had told us that one morning they had forgotten to pray for their oranges and went to the neighbors to ask if they would pray over their fruit and the neighbors weren't very kind to them about it. I wonder why people freak over differences.

At the end of the week, Joey and a few others had helped the monks with their shopping. Joey had asked them all the questions he could think of, even tried to persuade the American to come back to our culture, telling him he was missing great movies and good sex. The young man laughed and left Joey with a book that I wish I had taken from him. And Joey had sent them off with smiles and a bag of Cool Ranch Doritos before I could stop him.

"They'll like those Doritos," he had said to me, proud he could give them a treat.

"Joey, they can't HAVE Doritos, it's unnatural!" I told him.

"Whatever! They have to now because then it'd be wasting!" He laughed, cramming stolen Lays into his mouth, peices falling on his belly. The only monk-like thing about Joey was that you could compare his belly to the fat Buddha. He's make an atrociously ugly Buddha with absolutely no moral fiber in his body. But the thought still makes me laugh.

The moral is, with talking about religion and spirituality, that rituals separate belief. If I can remember all the things Michael said today, which was ALOT, then I'll be able to keep perspective on not getting lost in the rules but instead get lost in the feeling.

For those two men, devine devotion to their craft... to their journey, is what they chose. For me, my path is what happens. I will eat Doritos and seeds, if it doesn't kill me. They say you're not supposed to seek out drugs to bring you to different experiences but I like doing that too. I feel like my own rules will be okay with this new thinking because this thinking is about me; about what I want. And as the guru always says, "if no one is dead, bleeding or on fire... it's okay."

(And yes, that is our Blue Buddha from our garden that my mother has had her whole life. The irony.)

Tuesday, June 10, 2008

Feel Yourself At Summer

It's a time where shoes are not required. Where kids grow restless, knowing that school's almost out and dogs are rolling around in the grass out in the back yard.

When it was time to start shopping for a new place to live, although everything was dead and it was cold outside, each house I stepped into I transported myself to summer. While my mom was bundled up with her flashlight, looking at pipes with the salesmen, I was looking at the back yard and imaging friends and cookouts and gardens. What would this house look like on a summer night? That was how I gaged each place. Would it be nice to walk through in the summer and lounge?

Summer is my season for all the right reasons. No shoes, I hate them. I love bare feet burning on hot tar. Bathing suits pass for attire and even though I'm a lot skinnier than I would like to be, I'm still comfortable enough to enjoy walking around half naked; go me!

I hate being cold. I must have lived another life in the south, in Australia or Africa. I was never made for the cold and I'm only now rolling up my electric blanket and putting it away. Cold is the worst feeling. So warm is the absolute best.

I don't mind the sweating, unless you are in work clothes, but other than that... freedom! Summer is full of warm nights in car rides, people on the beach and life HAPPENING. I'm excited to be back in my element as I am a child of Cancer being born July 18th.

It's good to be home. House and Earth.


I Want To Ride My Bicycle, I Want To Ride My Bike


They say you're supposed to move when you are restless... So I did.

I went to a baby shower on Sunday for my friend Leena. She's due in August and it was nice to see her and laugh with her again. I looked at her big belly, as I do with all women in her condition. It's the only time I really feel a twinge of jealousy. I'm not even sure if it's what I would want right this minute but when I see pregnant bellies, I swoon. Maybe it's a girl thing.

After the shower, it was warm but after being part of big pink decorations for hours I came home and decided to go on a bike ride. I took Max's iPod with no destination and found myself heading down the same road I always take now.

I start along the edge of the water in our neighborhood. It's a long road, with marsh like shores with private docks that have signs that read "keep out". It was only five and I had air and water and... restlessness. So I rode my bike up the hills into the neighborhood. I zig-zaged up and down every road through out that area until I had seen every beautiful house at least twice or maybe three times. They were all cute and sweet. So many of them had bright flowers out front and cookouts in the back. Front porches with old people and wicker. Some people smiled when I drove by because I was smiling.

When I had seen all I could and coasted down all the hills without holding the handle bars, the rushes here were getting old and the music was still playing so I thought I would go back the way I came, past my house and continue on downtown.

I pushed hard up the hills telling myself it's what I should do. I shouldn't give up. I should just go and go and go, even if I was tired... Even if I was ready to fall over. So I kept going.

Ani DiFranco sang in my ears and I weaved through people on the sidewalks even though some didn't move when I was coming. I scooted behind restaurants and crossed streets on green lights and sang with no restriction. I rode past people and smiled at them. They ate at Dad's Restaurant and the Fish Market. Men pulled at ropes and sprayed down boats at the marina and I kept going. Over the bridge I could see the people dining below at Sunset Ribs.

I don't know why it's always so amazing when I ride my bike but it IS. It's like I see the world through rose colored glasses and my bicycle transports me to this place where I'm never tired, never hungry. I watch people living. It's my favorite.

I remember passing a man and his daughter once on one of my rides. They were partially hidden by bushes in the front yard but they sat on their front steps. I heard him say, "sometimes that's what friends are supposed to do..."
I loved that moment because I was passing life lessons happening.

My bicycle is the most powerful object I own besides myself. It's my vehicle and makes me feel free in ways nothing else can. I was gone 3 hours that night and I felt incredible. I felt incredible for days afterwards. I smiled brighter and my mood was stronger, my heart was happier and I felt like I was part of society again.

When I was in Willimantic there were days where I would stay up all night and when the sun would come up I would ride through the streets and watch people start their day. Men opening up shops and unloading trucks, children racing each other to the bus stop and I was a kid sitting on the steps of a church with her bike in her lap... Watching.

As pessimistic as I can be, I will always be the person who sits still and just watches, who listens to her car rattle and her brain run in the morning. Who loves good smells like perfumes and rain on asphalt. I am the person who sweats and is smiling because she appreciates the heat. I am the person who pays attention and chews her food so slow, she's always the last one at the table.

They say that movement is a one of the first key ingredients in calming yourself and I think I understand part of that. I've tried going on long walks and while they are good for talking with friends, they aren't good for opening up yourself. It's my bicycle that moves me... In more ways than one. I have to have my music though too. It's my potion of devotion and I loveee it.

I was proud of myself. What can I say? I just smiled for days.

M O V E YO U R B O D Y T O D A Y .


Saturday, June 7, 2008

They Won't Let Us Die, They Won't Let Us Eat

Today's article was
"The Dilemma of Genetic Engineering and Landmines".
A completely random yet ethically challenging question about GMO's (genetically modified organisms) and how they can help us. Normally it would be a question of GMO's having pesticides built into their genes or changing them to be riper, bigger and more fruitful. Today another spin has been put on, proving that once again GMO's can come to the rescue... if only we'd let them...

America... She wouldn't know a good thing if it kicked her in the teeth. Oh America... Such a young nation still picking up the pieces of a fucked up past only to be in the process of making new wounds.

In environmental studies (one of my most beneficial classes at my no name university) I learned about the Asian over-population. We learned about how wildly out of control it was and the system that was created to bring it back down. The ways the communities were set up to have older women check on the younger ones to make sure they weren't thinking about having more than one child. The health care system that was set up for free, for LIFE, for the single child family. Could America do that? Not in a million years. Why? Cause they don't wanna. That's why.
I have to laugh at all you fools with Hummer's today as you cry at every gas pump you pull up to. A very perfect representation of America. They just want what they don't need and then when it bites them in the ass, they don't understand why.

We JUST started the "Go Green" movement. Where has the rest of the world been all this time? While I was getting picked on by my roommates at school for taking home our papers and recycling every week, no body thought that maybe it would be a good idea to follow my lead. But that's America... Lazy.

So can you tell I'm a little bitter at how badly our country treats itself? Of course it's a beautiful nation, chalk full of opportunities for almost anyone but like any young lady, America has a lot of growing up to do.

So what of this article? GMO's... a touchy subject. Why? It reminds me of when I sat in my class room and the professor showed us a picture of clean energy windmills.
She said they wanted to put these out in an ocean, where the mills could spin constantly and supply us with clean energy. I thought it was amazing and fascinating at some of the things we've made to harvest the elements to use for power. But then she said that a petition was signed in an area they wanted to build. The people who lived on the water said they bought their houses for the view they had and they didn't want some man-made feature out in the water. Even though the structures would only appear an inch in height from the shore. The amount of clean energy we through away the day they said no, makes my head spin. Because of the view.

Sticking with the theme, let's hop back to the genetically modified good stuff. Both sides of this GMO argument come with heavy opinions. Personally I love things that are natural. It would be lovely to say they could stay that way but science is moving too fast to stop it now. The thought that we may be able to specially order what kind of baby comes out is just plain scary. But we don't live in the natural world anymore.

We are excessive people. We want everyone to live longer, bigger, stronger lives. Medicine's keep us alive, computers run our schedules and cars bring us to work. There's nothing natural about that, but it's the life we chose. And if our nation chose to bury weapons, well, it's only their responsibility to make it right. If GMO's can save lives, whether by keeping you from blowing up or by feeding you... How is that different from cutting down miles of natural rainforest to make paper, houses, or the deck you fry your burgers on?

If we don't want people to ever die, which is how medicine and the ethics connected with the sick tends to lead us to believe... Then we need to have a back up plan. Statistics show that more people are living longer. Quality of life is questionable but the point is, there are more mouths to feed and more going hungry everyday. Some people don't have the luxury to say, let nature do it's thing. Man has already gone against the natural flow by cheating death and harnessing "natural" things to make them unnatural. I don't believe it's fair to say we can pick and choose. We'd all be hypocrites, wouldn't we? Unless we live in teepee's in the woods and live off the land.

When you look at us as animals who are surviving - nature is our resource, so let it be that, in whatever form it can be.




Friday, June 6, 2008

Practicing Enlightenment

I want to close my eyes and see (or not see) a teddy bear but instead I see all the thoughts hanging over my head. This article makes me question my insecurites in that department for the first time. When this concept was first presented to me, it was more than satisfying to know that I wasn't crazy, I was just misinformed from my brain.

I accepted that it was a good answer to a bad problem. I always thought people were mad at me for one reason or another, even when I couldn't figure out what the reason was! But this week has been rough and we've been so distant. The article says that emotional distance is normal and that I should relax and let things happen as they do. I find this an incredibly trying practice. But I'm the one that wants to practice. So I need to keep on.

I read a blog on PsychologyToday.com and I believe it was about forming habits. I could be completely off on where I got this but since I'm on that site all day, it must've come from there.... This one man talked about his love/hate relationship with the road as he became a runner. It pulled him out of bed early and he was tired and it made his bones ache. But everyday he got up and he ran. It was warm, it was cold, it was raining or it was just plain early. But he ran.

Eventually it got to the point where he and the road had an intimate relationship. He found rhythm and stride. Suddenly he didn't notice his bones aching or the watch on his wrist. It was about watching the world wake up and experiencing personal growth and stability through practice. That is what I must do.

In these low points of confusion and wonder, I have no choice but to lay down my vulnerability to this exercise and pray that it is the right one and I will not loose people on the way. I love each of them differently and uniquely as they are all different and unique to me.

They call it the "path to enlightenment". Have I put a name to the airy feeling I'm becoming aware of? I wondered if this new 'thinking' was the way of Buddha. I looked it up here. I found that the simple principles of taking care of yourself and each other had already been such a big part of my life, it wasn't entirely foreign to me. I often thought I was the last person on earth who believed we should have faith that people can change and that we should take care of each other. So why weren't we? But, it was the way in which I let it sit backwards. I worked for others before I worked for myself and when you put all your eggs in one basket, well, there's nothing left for you and you're starved.

I've let other people's reactions control me for so long and now that I've finally seen that there's a way out of it... It's terrifying and depressing in one of the best ways possible. I think of all the anger I've carried and how I wasted so many people and events and emotions on things that only existed in my mind because I was scared to alone. When in actuality, I've been alone all along. The good part? There's an actual method to my madness and it's actually not madness at all!

This is the point where I turn to accept my solitude and work whole-heartedly towards a study that could easily change my entire life; just by having new eyes. Like that quote from the movie, Loving Anabelle.

The only real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in
having new eyes.
~Marcel Proust


That's really all it is and all it can ever be. My lanscape, (people), will never change. It is only in having new eyes to view them will I be able to truely appreciate and adore them, the way I long to do, from the safest point available. People as a whole are a messy, crazy, happy, sad mix. I love them so I need to learn to love all parts them... Even the messy, crazy, sad part.

Namaste

Sunday, June 1, 2008

The Piano Man

((**This entry was written on scrap paper at Mohegan Sun**))

Jamie loved Billy Joel.
I remember burning the cd at his Applewood house when he moved his room upstairs into Kathryn's old one. That was six years ago when we had just finished high school and I was wondering if I still loved him, or if I could love the new person that he had become.

Today... Right now, the Billy Joel is 20 feet away from me singing "we didn't start the fire". I can see Jamie's fat head in my mind, bobbing along to the tune, singing every word. He loved Billy Joel.

Now I work as an accountant during the day and by night I am an usher for an arena that has housed dozens of celebrities a year. Some celebrities and their music do nothing to me, some of them move me for their musical talent and every once in a while i will get an artist who kicks up emotional dust. Each one that brings me to tears is over a person that is no longer part of my life.
Part of them is resurrected in the notes and words that fill the air. I'm suddenly transported to another time and place and it's like I'm there all over again and i can smell the leather seats in Jamie's car or the perfume in the hall from Jolene.

Today, May 31st, the "Italian restaurant" plays and Jamie's face haunts me. These people who I loved with parts of me I didn't think I could, will never be gone from me. I'll store them away when I can but the Billy Joel's, Rod Stewart's (yes, I know.. I'm old) and the Josh Groban's will bring them all back out up to the surface and I'll end up face to face with them again.

So much of me wants them in my life but more of me knows that they only come with chaos and are gone for legit reasons.
I'm not asking for easy love and easy relationships. Just a certain amount of forgiveness and more acceptance than people want to pass out.

We lost each other for a reason. For too much pain back then and the amount that still remains. My heart aches when the piano plays and I want to laugh, dance and fall down crying all at once.

Maybe I appreciate music; maybe I appreciate people, words and the like more than the average person. Or maybe I'm just like everybody else.

Maybe it's just an intricate case of missing people and an ultimate test of will to stay away from them. I don't know, even for myself. Now I have new faces and new loves, fresther scares and cleaner breaks.

But the piano man sings now, his own song, "Piano Man". The crowd screams and everyone is sill when the harmonica sounds.


"He says, bill, I believe this is killing me.
As the smile ran away from his face
Well Im sure that I could be a movie star
If I could get out of this place"
-Billy Joel

The stage lights are blue and the drunken crowd (on both excitement and booze) is swaying in all opposite directions, making an arena of 9300 appear to be a human ocean and I'm happily drowning in, out of tune, voices. You get lost in their emotion sometimes. As though I could swim through their sound and movement. The arena brings out the strangest feelings in me sometimes.

The song ends. It was the final encore, so Billy stands and says:
Don't take any shit from anybody,

and he left the stage.


The Warmth

Don't let the world bring you down
Not everyone here is that fucked up and cold
Remember why you came
and while you're alive
experience the warmth
before you grow old

The Warmth ~ Incubus

The sunlight stretches across my computer screen and Incubus is in my ears. It's Sunday evening and my body is warm from walking in the sun all day. I'm not sure what's happening in the air but there's a change there I can't put my finger on. As though it's something I've never even fathomed but suddenly my mind is forced to look it in the face. Like stumbling across an alien spaceship in the woods. Wrap your mind around that. Right now, it's the only way I can describe it. Like my eyes are only half open and I'm starting to notice things that no one else ever will.

I watch the way people interact with each other as though I were standing at the zoo on the other side of the glass, studying a new species. People look so much like animals to me sometimes; especially when I see small children walking hand in hand with their parents.

I'm calmer for longer periods of time. I get upset but I don't get out of control. I get annoyed and keep it to myself until it's safe to talk about. I am forgiving of her again and again. She's a true test of patience and I don't need to put my pencil down yet.

I'm on my day off and it's been blissful. I read what I can to open my mind, watch some mindless internet videos and lay down on my brother's king size bed to watch Jeopardy. Isn't it funny how far away I feel from these people and I spend all my free time around them and they don't always know me and they don't always like me and here I am... relaxing in his room on his bed.

He'd kill me if he knew.

I think it feels like an apartment and it's different scenery to me, so I feel right at home. And by home I mean, some place I haven't even been before existing somewhere waiting for me to rent.