It's funny how time can shape your memories of past events. You think you have a solid grip on what your personal history is, what's happened to you in your life, when suddenly you look back and realize your current experiences are constantly revising what your past ones were. Your perception of those past occurances, anyway.

I don't know if it's that the passage of times heals old wounds or patches over those chinks in your heart that held a grudge; maybe it's that we start to remember things how we want to remember them, or how it's easiest to remember them in our own reconstructionist version of life's timeline. Maybe we remember life how we wanted it to happen, or to fit today's purposes. Like right now, when I really miss you and so only remember our time being really good. Or when I watch a movie and feel this strange sense of identification with a character's perspective when my ability to empathize is mostly based on a slightly refined model of my own truth my mind has molded.

I miss my mom. I miss uncomplicated hugs where you could squeeze as hard as you possibly could and it was still never enough, I never had enough strength to grasp close enough and keep her here, next to me. Even when I wanted nothing more than my individuality and to escape the trappings of being someone's little girl, I've always always always wanted her, and that hug, right here. As I've gotten older I see my mom more and more as a model of what motherhood should be, a model of what being a successful woman is. I've never told her that, though, and probably never will because I'll let my everlasting fear of inducing family awkwardness and tenderness prevent my outpouring of emotions. No, I'll keep those pesky emotions trapped up, instead, where they belong for now. And I'll keep her, unfairly, at arms length.

I watched Stepmom this morning and was reminded of how much I pretend to not "need" my family, how susceptible I am to my stubborn belief that I can do anything on my own, that I don't need anyone. When in actuality, I feel that desperate, insane irrationality that is love telling me to stop being so remote, to take advantage of the relationships I have and give more. But I'm so very scared inside that they're all going to die soon because they're old, and that it'd be fake or not real for me to start now, to create something that I've always wanted but am tormented by all at the same time. As if, I'm taking revenge on my parents now, keepign them away, for all the pent-up resentment I've harbored but once it's too late I'm going to realize that the only person feeling the brunt of that revenge will be myself.

I just need to try harder and care more. It's so easy here, with friends all in the same situation of families at a distance, to create my own little pretend family-type support structure. Which is important, too, but I can't let myself forget that there's no replacement for the real thing. I'm going to try harder this time.

Would it be alright for me to tell you that sometimes, in that fuzzy few minutes that seem to standstill, between shutting my eyes and drifting off I still think of you. And even in my mind's haze I can tell that I'm smiling without trying and my heart's a little happier. Is that silly?

I was disheartened by a sitcom on CBS tonight (How I met your mother, maybe?) which focused on a girl who earned a fellowship to a culinary school in Germany so had to have the "do we break up" discussion with her 2-month boyfriend. And I was disgusted because the conversation only involved two options for this lady, going alone (and breaking up) or staying in NY (or whereever they were). Why couldn't he even consider going with her? This storyline hit particularly close to home because of my own stubborn-head-ed-ness, and also made me really sad. Because as one of the other characters pointed out, you can chose to follow your dreams and live lots of lonely nights, or you can be in love and spend those nights next to someone's heart.

It's not fair for the two to be mutually exclusive, dreams and love or happiness and independence or me and relationships. You know?

And I refuse to believe that they are; I can't believe that they are and still think optimistically that somewhere out there is someone who I'm going to care about enough to be willing to quit any job for him, do anything for him, but who will care enough about me, too, so that he'd never ask or expect me to. I just hope that I'm not fatally idealistic, precluding myself from ever again experiencing the joys and miseries of complicated, torturous, blissful love.

Because deep down I'm scared that I'm completely wrong and that society won't let me be successful in work and still be loved in a relationship, that societal morays will habitually screw me over. And I'll be too pigheaded to realize it until it's too late and I'm a 45-year-old who's had so many lonely nights she can't identify the aching in her heart anymore because she's emotionally dull inside.

sigh.