Light the sky and hold on tight...

11:58am: You really don't understand how great it is.
You know how when you fall in love with someone-- someone that's absolutely, indubitably  right for you, someone who understands your needs and what it takes to make you happy, that you feel a sense of bittersweet regret for all the time you wasted with others?

When this someone surpasses your every expectation, you can't help but remember all those lonely nights of bitter disappointment, the frustrated tears, the anguished hours spent wondering if you'd ever find the One?

This one's for you, Tresemme'.

Yeah, this is a post about a hair care line. A collection of shampoos, conditioners and styling products that I bypassed time and time again as I fruitlessly searched the health and beauty aisle in search of the magic product that would deliver on its promises.

And none ever did.

It's not like Tresemme' didn't try. It told me, with commercials of women with lush, shimmering hair that it could give me everything I ever wanted--but they all said that. Each one promised me shiny, bouncy hair that would compel me to toss it constantly. But I just wouldn't listen to Tresemme'.

So it waited patiently. Quietly gathered dust on the shelf and watched wistfully as I selected the pricier brands with the flashy packaging, knowing in its liquid heart that one day, at last, I would say "damn it, fine"  and toss it and its conditioner counterpart in my basket.

That first wash...indescribable. Thick lather, buttery conditioner, hair that detangled with the slightest touch of the brush. The fresh scent lingered, and the silkiness lasted well into the next day. I ran back to the store for the complementing spray gel and hairspray, and every new implement I discovered of the brand left me happier than the last. All for less than half the price of other brands.

I feel so foolish for not listening. We could've had so many happy years together, if only I could've overcome my pride.

No matter. I've finally found the one.

(And seriously. I'm not exaggerating. This stuff is so good that I really did have to write about it.)

1:15am: Shaking free of a nightmare is truly the most wonderful feeling in the world.

My life, the one I knew, the one I understood-- I have it back.

I've learned not to stray too far from home.

1:12am: To anyone who knows me:

Please take the time to share with me this moment of absolute euphoria, as I have discovered an additional Care Bears movie that was made in 1987, that I somehow had never heard about.

Oh man. It's like finding out you've got a one-way ticket to heaven, no matter what you do in life.

1:22pm: I'm not kidding when I say that I thank God every single day that I don't have children.

10:35am: In response to Saturday night's conversation(such a conversation to have on a Saturday night! No amount of wine could sweeten it.):

If you think life begins at conception, you are stupid.

I am not saying that because I'm fairly liberal in most of my views, because I think I know what the right choice for people is, or because I'm really tired of the Georgia Right to Life Commission stuffing my mailbox with propaganda.

I'm saying that because the people who are in such fervent support of the pro-life agenda are the same ones who want to deny fully-formed, self-determining individuals essential aid and basic liberties.

You're not pro-life, you are pro-fetus. The quality of life for actual beings seems to mean very little to those who are against providing healthcare, education funding, vital medical research and just general care to the people who are already alive.

"But we shouldn't be giving handouts!"

Be that as it may. But those people are alive, they are real-- they are not hypothetical. A 2-day-old zygote is a hypothetical person, not an individual with needs and rights.  Educational opportunities are not handouts, though. They're actually a way in which we can prevent people from becoming dependent on welfare services.

But whatever. If I've learned anything from my limited work in politics, it's that the people who are most agitated about reproducing are the exact same people who shouldn't.

Life does not begin at conception. You can show me a hundred pairs of fetal feet, models of stages of development, and tell me that they've got fingernails and hair and teeny-tiny adorable toes.

But until it can breathe on its own, I'm not interested.

Life doesn't begin at conception. Sorry.

11:24am: wtf.
"Sarah Palin's family troubles make her seem more real to me. I can relate to her."

..I don't want a president that I can relate to. I wouldn't trust Sarah Palin to run a bake sale, much less the country(or even be in an influential position, next to the man who does.)


And you know, maybe I can get past the knocked up teenager(family values?) and her decision to ignore the fact that the child's father is guilty of 3rd degree statutory rape under Alaska law(look it up)...rule of law, what?

But the fact that she left her city $20 million in debt, let cronyism run rampant in her administration and wasted God knows how much of taxpayer's money on a worthless project and then bailed out, claiming that she knew was a waste of time. Whatever.

I can probably ignore that too. But again---where are our Abe Lincolns? Our FDRs? Shit, at this point, where are our Bill Clintons?

Shouldn't the leader of our country be a representation of our best and brightest? Isn't that how leadership works? Do you pick the guy "you'd like to have a beer with" to manage your finances? Your company? Of course not. You pick whoever has demonstrated competence in whatever field they are attempting to lead.

But maybe that's in a perfect world.

I'm just talking about America.


(And p.s. to the Evangelical Christians who are applauding Bristol Palin for demonstrating "adherence to her beliefs and religion" by choosing not to have an abortion--guess what else Evangelical Christians who adhere to their beliefs and religion don't do?)

12:25am: I love the way things just come along.

You can take me anywhere in the world, show me the city from the top floor, and make an elevator out of a hot air balloon, but no matter--

I'm always going to be the blue jeans girl, running back to kissing you in the rain, falling a little in love with boys who smoke on the porch and lying in the grass with James Taylor in the Summer-sunset sky.

However, I am equally prepared to wear high heels for the one who brings me an elephant.

No metaphors.

10:03am: Forgive me for thinking that someone who kills for a living can't know anything about love.

Because you can call it defending my freedom, if you like, but calling a rose by any other name certainly won't change the flower's form.

1:05am: It seems kind of strange that after all those years of Sunday School and services that suddenly, I would come to the small, still, quiet realization:

Religion only breeds hate. Religion gives us an excuse to feel superior to others in the name of God.

I revere the objective reality of God. I believe in the teachings of Christ.

But religion-- that doesn't seem to be something I need.

I won't repeat Gandhi. But to call myself a Christian--

well, that just seems like a silly thing to do.

11:05pm: I believe in taking a double shot of your fears. In not coughing them back up, but letting every drop burn down your throat because...it's not that bad.

I don't remember exactly when I stopped believing. When trust stopped being available to me. What baffles me still, is how easily I can put faith in people I shouldn't--but I suppose that's a very common malfunction.

As we grow, the child bits manifest themselves, and at the worst possible times.
Impatient. Sweet. Abusive. But it's easy to tell which, when, and why.
Generally. It should be easier than this to own myself...but it could also be that I have to earn--and relearn who, exactly, I'm becoming, now that my context has changed.

In other news, going to the gym tipsy...rules.

I love walking in the fog...because I'm not there, and neither is the world...until one of us is too close for either to run away.

4:10am: Oh, the places you'll go...from here
What a perfect feeling.

It just might be that Rocky is not my favorite movie. I may not appreciate metallica quite the way I thought I did. I like to bake, yes, but maybe not so frequently. All the things I spent so long trying to love(and you along with them), no longer seem important.

Crying girls turn you on? Outstanding. If you only knew that the tears were for how incalculably far you've fallen...how you keep digging your bottomless pit because maybe every new rock bottom you reach just isn't low enough. I can, really this time, look back at the years and shake my head ruefully, kiss you on the forehead, and walk away. I don't have to say "goodbye forever" and hold the tears in so my heart won't crack-- I'm no longer there. I've been gone a long, long time and maybe I was the one who couldn't admit it.

I had a dream a couple years ago that I haven't been able to forget. It made perfect sense at the time, but now I see:

The players would change. The scenes may not exactly follow the script--

but you, you are the blank eyes I left behind.

So here I am. Free. Not high on it, not careening in my head to a certain crash in which I will run right back, each time more defenseless than the last. I'm not triumphant, I am hardly righteous. I am tired.

Freedom comes with a price, or so I've heard. I can't be sure what it was worth to me, but in the end, we amounted to you misunderstanding my silent tears...tears that did not beg or hurt or ask you for anything.

It was simple:

Tears that set me free, tears that let you go.

4:01am: All the things that are different now, and still I cannot get myself to bed at a reasonable hour.

Of getting older
I'm finding
losing, falling and a wanting for things
too big for even my deepest breath on the cottony tops of wishing weeds.
I am trying my best to forget to look for you
in all the places you used to be--
and making fists against the emptiness of my hands.
To let minutes be seconds and not made of moments
and to speak words that do not prick the heart.
In these ordinary days that pass before my quiet eyes
I move as slightly as a ghost
so that nothing will break
as getting older
means most of all
no longer hurting myself.

For now, that's as well as I can tell it.

3:00pm: I say this only out of the utmost respect for one of my favorite authors ever:

"So it goes."

2:19pm: Restless.

I need more than this.
I need to love with all my heart, not settle for a bitterly unsatisfying relationship-- this saltine-dry pairing that I've accepted as enough--
is not.

I need to be outside. And not in the transient way that finds me going from here to there in an awful hurry--

I need complete disregard for time and to sink into the damp earth with sunlight bathing every inch in a way that restores as much as it takes away.

I need to pray differently. I need to sing more, cry about things that matter and eat the world with my hands. I need to get out, away, and beyond everything that makes me pace in every step, staring at the walls that encase me no matter where I find myself, eyes blank as insignificant differences pass before me.

I don't know where I could get it, or who could give it to me. I need an umbrella and a strong wind. I need a dragon and a star to catch, a tiny boat and a basket of oranges. I need paint and a hoarse radio, a dripping glass and a sunny day. I don't need you; I certainly don't need us. A thousand pages are scattered in a gust, and so desperately I wish that my chapters would be.

12:48am: I feel like it's raining all over the world...
The disconcerting realization Rene' and I reached last week continues to linger in the part of my stomach that's always hungry, aching for something that I no longer know how to consume.
We don't know who we are anymore. Somewhere in the persistent scrolling of names and places and miles of literary text, I lost the words that described what I love and what heats me with angry fever. Writing in my own diary is difficult, as the ink behaves like a flame, dancing unpredictably on the page, painfully catching if I try to connect with it, as I have lost my powers of expression.
That isn't to say that I don't love my life...but at the same time, how frightfully detached I am from living the elements of it, from existing in that stupid poetic way that I used to have, delighting in all things, noticing the minutest of detail in object and interaction. I've lost my way, and so I remain: grappling fingers in the dark, feeling for a space in the facade that would allow me to touch the girl who it made sense for me to be as she fights this ugly, penetrating decay of self.

11:34pm: Wow.
Sometimes we will cry. Sometimes we will scream at each other. Sometimes, we will laugh and miss each other's meanings by a mile...

Sometimes what you get is even better than what you thought you wanted.

But we will never, ever let go.

And I will never walk away.

1:05am: Perhaps I should dedicate this to Miriam, because I find myself thinking of her as I write it. <3
For the first time in my life, I feel like a strong woman. In the midst of all these things, I am trying to acclimate myself to this feeling that transcends independence-- being a completely self-determining individual(financial independence, etc.) has nothing on this sudden revelation to my notion of self: I am filled with fight for me, and as confusing as this is, I am thrilled that I will not back down.
I was meek. I wanted so very badly to be everything you wanted. I apologized for everything, true to the form of a female without a spine.
Fuck that.
I am exhilarated by the welling of fortitude within as you stand shocked by this sudden explosion of fury from a source unseen. I want to celebrate this beautiful feeling, to run in the rain, laughing as I am as free as I used to be, before I acquiesced my identity to someone who I shouldn't even have told my name.
But I don't need a Summer shower to feel like myself again. As I neatly removed you from my life, I became a whole person anew, self-possessed and serene.

I'm sure that this wonderful experience is hardly unique. I believe(and hope) that every young woman experiences a moment where she becomes an emotional lion, capable of all things, fearing of none.
I am so glad that I have arrived at that place.


Now's not a good time for you to talk about it?
Fine. You can just listen.

3:26pm: Sorry.
Until we live in the same reality, nothing can ever happen between us.
And I don't mean that to be an attempt at profundity, I mean to say that you should stop living in a dream.

11:44pm: Today I saw the most beautiful rainbow I'd ever seen in my entire life. I felt like a little Cydney as I walked across the damp parking lot and watched people, in this day of computers and plasma and microwaves and lasers stop and turn beaming faces to the sky, and in the dreamy part of my mind, knew (hoped) that that's what the last day on Earth would look like.

6:24pm: So you will answer, then?

We'll see. Until then, until the probable truth reveals itself, I will put this aside. I'm too young for this. I want dancing and liquor and late nights-- and I shall have those things, because I'm not going to worry anymore. This ache in my heart can't last forever, and I won't let it waste my youth.

Either way, I am very pleased to realize that there are other things I no longer need. Truly? God, I hope so.

12:35pm: And as I float through my days like a Gothic heroine, I suddenly find this:

Another Buddy Holly to my Mary Tyler Moore?

Perhaps exactly what I need. I love it when things are this timely.
But until I find out what they'll say about us(not that I care, anyway), I'll continue with slight, sad, smiles, timid steps and halting breath.
And counting days.
If I call, will you answer?

3:49pm: Sometimes I'm even surprised that the universe has allowed me to have so many absolutely amazing people in my life.
Thank you for the not-so-romantic romance, for saving me from myself(for the millionth time), for dancing with me, for laughing with me when it's the only thing that's left to do.
Once again, I vow that I will greet the best and worst times of my life with a martini in my hand.
And you(whichever of you) by my side.
Thank you.

8:55pm: xsdhkjhlove.
I can play that song and return to back then. When those first delicate notes, plinking from the highest frets, reach me, I am altogether back then: freezing to the seat of the car but vibrant from the warmth that is you and me. Even though those days are a thousand lifetimes behind us, I can still be impractical and filled with dreams.
How did we get too old to do anything for love? These are sudden and uninvited changes in us that make talking til dawn a ridiculous imposition...and spending the afternoon in your arms a waste of time.
When did the most beautiful thing that we might ever know become "not worth it"?
It was only a verse ago that I was devoted to drowning in sweetness, unconcerned by the thought of the future and how far apart it could take us-- and I don't mean us, or then...I mean everyone-- no longer loving, laughing or believing the way we used to be able to.
I'm sorry that I've lost that. "Wouldn't it be nice" to again drive all night, singing til our voices die, to be unable to walk without my hand in yours and possess the innocence of mind to trust that love is enough to keep two people together.
I hate knowing that love is not enough to keep two people together-- and that no matter who I go to bed beside, I'll still be sleeping alone.
Goodnight, baby.

4:09am: There's no stranger feeling than having someone flash randomly in the incessantly-spinning film that is your thought process and then realizing that the only significance you can attach to their identity is the label that they are "someone I used to love".

10:14pm: I can't believe I cried so much...but I knew that the hardest part was walking away.

Shooting stars tonight!