Thankfully, I didn't get into an accident today on my drive home from the gym while I frantically scribbled this on a piece of orange paper I had brought along expressly for the purpose of recording my raw thoughts after a tough phone conversation earlier.

It hurts to hurt someone. I just broke someone's heart, again. I re-broke it. And I'm worried that things won't ever be the same. I mean, I know that "things are never the same," inevitably; life's uncompromising progression rejects the stagnation I need to dissect, understand my reaction and I worry that there aren't any words left that can salve re-opened wounds and I worry about not being able to fix things. I hate not being able to fix things because we're all people and can communicate and things should be able to be fixed. They should be able to be fixed.

I'm a five year old child, head cocked quizzically to the side, belligerently questioning my mom why things have to hurt. Why does life have to be so achingly sad sometimes, and why is so much of that sadness caused by flitting words, tossed carelessly into the space between two people with mismatched understandings? And why can't these weightless words ever be taken back, why is it that their very transience is what makes them indelible? We're all just people. Can't we just see that, see the other's eyes and mouth and ears and cheeks and stray hairs and know that we mess things up, we say the wrong things and sometimes the right ones and it's all okay because we're the same species connecting, reaffirming our own humanity and existance in a gigantic, lonely world?

The truth might be evading me, slowly seeping out of my ignorant mind, sneaking away as my heart pretends it's okay - NO! I'm not lonely, not sad! I'm slipping back into forgetting what it's like to feel real - no, to feel anything but excited or happy; I'm going back to being afraid to feel if it's not good because I'm scared I won't be able to handle it. I'll revel in it too much, I'll sink into enjoying desolation. In "protecting" myself I'm losing sight of myself, I know.

I'm afraid of failing at being alone.

I'm afraid of crying too much and not knowing why and so not knowing how to stop and so I don't think and don't cry when all I really want is to pound my fists against your chest and bawl and tell you that I love you. I know it will feel good to taste my Independent Tears.

Yesterday Jonathan asked me if I ever think about being forgotten, and at the time I said no. But in the past 24 hours I've begun to wonder what my marks have been, are, or will be. This is the greatest test of being alone; I feel rushed to validate my existence to another person, to be given some affirmation that I matter somewhere to someone, even if I know it in my mind. Perhaps that is one the most magnetic draws to being in a romantic relationship - knowing that more often than not throughout a day, someone else is consciously aware of your existance in the world.

I'm scared for my mom, and I'm scared that I'm losing my conviction; I don't want to be scared back into a strong faith. I can't help feeling like a hypocrit.

I hate sounding like an emotionally bypolar psycho here, bloggy, with happy posts followed by equally tearful ones. I never meant for this to be anything more than a journal, though, and my written words are always an exacerbation of reality. Jason Mraz wrote in his journal thing (found randomly online), "the great thing about the shows for me, is how I can stand on stage and work out my problems. That's the moment where everything makes sense to me. Like if there's somebody that I need to say something to, but I can't tell them face to face, I know how to say it on stage....Because honestly when I get on stage, it's almost as if a mirror is put up in front of me, and I'm able to look at myself, and see exactly how I want. Exactly how I want to live. Exactly where I want to go. Who I wanna be. Ya know?"

That's how I feel when I'm writing.

I agree with this too, "There's a seed inside all of us, we're all put on this earth, I believe, for one specific purpose. Whether it's to teach someone something, or learn something from someone, or to say one particular thing at one particular point in their lives which sets off a chain of events that affects the world. Whatever it is we are here for that, and we all know what it is, or how to get to it. And, I hope I can be some type of link in that chain of events that will hopefully put a smile on everyone's face before our time is up. Because that's the inevitable. We need to, I don't know what we need to do. (laughs). I don't know what everyone needs to do. But I know what I need to do and I'm happy."

I'm still searching for what I need to do. Until then, I'm just going to keep trying to put a smile on someone else's face even if all I want inside is for mine to be tear-stained.

....Quick addition a little after I first posted this. I was reading Mandy's livejournal and learned that Erich's in jail. For grand theft auto and possession of cocaine. I don't know quite what I think, other than that my reaction was intense sadness for life's cruelty: the crazy way peoples' lives cross, meeting for only instants on a macroscopic scale, but still define so crisply a certain phase of that life. I haven't seen Erich in 4? years now -- he and Mandy (my best friend from middle school through the beginning of college, and someone I still think about all the time, but that's a whole other story about my inability to maintain friendships) dated for a little more than three (I think) years in high school and college -- but immediately thought back to the time I went as moral support with Mandy to a narcotics anonymous family/friends support group meeting while Erich was at his NA meeting (I think that's what they were called) and how much Erich's drug use affected her and their relationship (how could it not?). He was such a normal guy in high school, in the sense that it was "normal" for the people around me to be recreational drug users, but then he was one of the kids who never stopped when he finished school. He had a good family, both parents, all the stuff "they" say will produce a productive citizen. So why is he now sitting in a Broward County jail cell? I know he has no idea I'm thinking of him right now (I wonder if he even remembers me) -- I don't even know what I'm thinking other than, man, that sucks, and, why? Why you? Why anyone like or not like you? How do people's lives diverge so drastically? Why?

Erich, your shirt is pulled to the side and your face is older, but I look at your drugged out eyes and I still see, or want to see, the same boy that made my best friend the happiest - and saddest - I ever saw her. Why? Why?

......Another addition:

Interestingly, I am the 33rd site that comes up on Yahoo when you search "awesome jugs." This reminds me of today's Dooce entry.