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18:23 - December 30, 2002
the down of the ups and downs
I wrote this last night, but haven't been around a computer until now.

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What I am just beginning to realize is that it is not always about anybody, or everybody, else. Just like my mother would always scream: 'it's always got to be about you, doesn't it?' yes. Yes, it does, at least this time. Only this time it's just me taking responsibility for... whatever... than me just being self-absorbed. I hope. I'm pretty sure. And I have proof.

There is nothing wrong with my group of friends here in Chicago. Apparently to some we are the ideal, or at least semi-ideal. We cuddle and call each other sister and play with each other's hair and trade back massages and drive aimlessly, and we all wax poetic about how much we miss each other while at college, and we even mean it. But now when we're all together, what I've been wishing for for months, I just get a headache.

There is also nothing wrong with my group of friends in Boulder, though they're a little more scattered and less of a coherent 'group'. There, there is much less drama involved. With anyone. There is also none of the weight of the years and years of history on our shoulders. We can have fun without worrying about messing something vital up. These is nothing vital to mess up yet. And I love that. But when we're together all I do is miss the closeness and the cohesiveness of my group of friends at home.

So it is not about anyone else. It is about me. First of all, I don't know yet who I am. I don't even have the perspective to see myself without it being in relation to other people (thank you Erik for the words with which to express this) and other people (rightfully) sense that. I argued this point tonight: that who one is is just a series of facades, masks, or sides faced to whoever the interaction is with. Maybe it's true, and maybe it's true for everybody, but I never see it in other people as much as I see it in me (maybe because the side they're showing me does not involve multiple sides, in fitting with the theory), but I do worry that it's only me who pulls such elaborate switches. Most people have some sort of center core, but I can't find mine.
The more I think about it the more I think the only solution is just to stop talking to everybody for awhile. Discussion used to be therapeutic, a welcome, refreshing purge, but now all it does is build a tension headache. After awhile I just wander away before it becomes unbearable. Please, nobody take offense at this next part. But I'm tired of the same opinions uttered in the same innocent earnest pleading teenage way, by the same people. We think we're covering new ground, but really in the big picture we're not. It's the same stuff, ever since the beginning of high school. I can't stand how small the human scope of vision is. I can't stand how small a portion of our brains we use. The time we're wasting; everything else there is in the world that we don't know about... and part of the reason I can't stand this is because I can't comprehend this. I've lived the same place all my life, but that's only a tiny part of the problem. I could spend a full day, a full week, walking down my block, learning and noticing and thinking about things I've never noticed or learned or thought about before. I could spend the whole rest of my life here in Chicago and never run out of perspectives to try and view it all from. I could stop eating and know hunger, stop breathing and know death, at the end, cut off a hand and know, this time for certain, that I will never be a musician. But I won't do it, and I know I won't, and in that I know there are limits.

One recurring theme that I will never be able to limit myself enough from is love, as illustrated perfectly by our 'soul mate' discussion. Admittedly by then my head was pounding and the simplest answer was what came out. But these things that happen. One person becomes your everybody else. You can talk and talk and talk, but all one half will know is the other half kissing them. And that will be enough, forever. You even speak of it in terms of halves, like you have to lose half of yourself in order to fit the other person in. I don't know if I envy that or if I'm running as fast and hard as I can away from that, but I'm leaning towards the running.

The reason Erik doesn't understand this time is because this time it has nothing to do with him. I am not jealous of Mary, nor do I want to be Mary, nor do I want to be with him, and finally I can say that honestly.

But I do get disgusted, and I don't know why, and it's not just those two but maybe it is mostly, and when I wander away at night I just feel selfish and like I'm trying to be dramatic, but really I'm just exhausted. When I told Camille I was tired I meant it completely, though probably not in the way she took it. I don't know why. Nothing tangible is wrong, I suppose. But nothing, absolutely nothing at all, is right.

 

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