Know what makes me feel better when I am despairing on my couch, moving listlessly through the motions of life? What makes me feel true hope and know that there really is a place for me in the world alongside everyone else?

It's hearing President Clinton's words on CNN during their special on AIDS, and the hopeful message of all the other panelists. It's being reminded that there are so many bigger issues the world is facing right now, so many more important struggles than my frustrations with personal acceptance and affirmation. It's know that there are better causes for which to despair than my own lack of self confidence and personal fulfillment, and it's knowing that there are ways to make myself better by making the lives of those around me better.

My spark was dwindling, I was feeling captured and a lackluster sense of passion for those worldwide tragedies that normally motivate my heart to figure out how I can go and do and share in my part of lessening the undeserved burden on so many good people. And yet, as always when I'm writing here, I'm still sitting, in the same place, without concrete plans to use my hands and move my legs. The strength of the calling within me to somehow do something only continues to grow and I pray that oneday soon an opportunity will become obvious to me as an outlet by which to express this desire to help.

I don't want this to be my burden, my life's personal tragedy, this specter of loneliness waved like a proud badge of courage. Because I'd rather be comforted than courageous.

Walking through the parking garage tonight my mind separated my two very overlapping, omnipresent frustrations of the past few months -- the loneliness of being physically alone in a new place which I'm convinced everyone feels (an emotion which, ironically enough, seems highlighted and magnified when in a large group), and the sorrow of my desolation that (and I hate myself for admitting it) comes from realizing that I really want to be in a relationship again and not having ANY prospects (or hope of meeting new prospects) to think about a relationship with. *sigh* I hate myself for not being satisfied with being alone, for not being able to find that comfort within myself, for not being strong enough. For questioning my motives and wondering if I really only want to be with someone or if I need to, to be happy -- and I don't want to need to be with anyone for my happiness.

I went to church yesterday, for the first time since last summer with Danny, and it amazed me (as God always seems to, when I open my eyes) how the sermon spoke directly to me. I also talked to my mom for a solid 90 minutes yesterday, which made me simply happy.

I took a different walking route between the building and the parking garage today, and maybe I just needed that little bit of spark in my day to get my mind thinking, because those shadowy steps through the dim, muddy gray concrete jungle illuminated another emotional contrast: a satisfied, comforting acceptance of knowing that I have friends and family who genuinely do care about me, and a rational, if sad, acceptance that friends can't make things better, magically, just by talking to them - even in person. That it's ok and normal to be sad, that I don't have to feel guilty for being sad as if I'm letting someone down by letting my irrational emotions control my thoughts and decision making process. Because Friends are there to make it easier to deal with the sadness that they can't fix for you, not to make you feel guilty for not being happy.

Friends make those sad seconds that last for eons worth living through because you know they'll be there when the eon is over, waiting with a smile and that hug. When I'm shivering from the cold that seems to be seeping over me from the inside out, my friends will be the blanket that gives me even just a degree of warmth, even just the knowledge that there are edges and that the cold can only go so far. And my friends realize, too, that they can let me be sad without needing to try to make me feel immediately better. We all need to weep, sometimes.

And you'll always be there with the fresh towel when I'm ready to dry off.

I need someone to hold me to a higher standard. I need someone to challenge me to be better than what I am right now, to keep learning and growing and not just sit here in my mind stagnating. It seems that the people around me are afraid of talking about anything too personal. Maybe it's because we're all afraid to push the lines since recent events have shown how fuzzy and mutable friendship is. We're afraid to have real conversations because they're serious and not the sort of carefree fun were built our friendships around. But I need my mind to stretch, be told it's wrong, be intrigued, to be sustained and capable of having carefree fun - how can you live a life with half of your faculties turned off for fear of the specter of "seriousness" poking in? Maybe this is the difference between making friends in college and out -- in college you're supposed to be finding yourself, having the big talks, figuring out how the world works, but when you're where I am now the world tells you you're supposed to already have everything down and know how it works.

But dammit, I'm younger than many college seniors! I still feel like a baby in the world, hungry for definition and guidance, but only being fed harsh lessons in the real world without a proverbial mom to come and cradle me under my flailing arms. I had assured myself that having close friends in far-flung places wouldn't make the friendships that much harder, when in college we were all so busy and running different places anyway. But I'm learning that the hardest part about being miles and miles away from each other is not being able to look into each other's eyes and see the friendship so clearly. Now, we're only able to trust the inflection in the voice on the other end of the line to mean everything you want it to. To trust that the other person knows how much you're trying to put into your voice to mean everything you used to just know from their expression. Deep conversations about nothing at all lose something when there's not a shared small portion of the sky speckled with glistening stars overhead or a shared tightly-looped, industrial-grade, blue-gray carpet underfoot. I miss you guys.

I was so excited about having made a new friend recently (and a non-work friend at that!) because so far all our friendship has been was conversation about the real world, philosphical probings of the each other's worldviews. But we haven't talked in a little while and my mind is filled up again and bursting with things to understand and vague notions of ideas to discover, without another mess of gray matter to do so with. And there's only so much philosophical pondering you can do alone over a slice of toasted bread with cheese with MTV on in the background. And I've come to find that there's a finite amount of satisfaction to be gained from doing anything excessively singularly -- only so many nights I can enjoy the solitude of reading a book on my couch or vegging out to a movie or going to sleep early or cooking for one before it just becomes pitiful and boring and lonely. Only so much contemplating my changing outlook on the world and my role in it without another person's thought process to clarify what I see of myself and what's around me. So now I'm left with the sadness that comes with feeling like you lost a friend you never even really had and the frustration of not having anyone to talk to.

I'm tired of not being accountable to anyone but myself, because most times I don't feel strong enough to hold myself up. I want to find ways to stop my nightly struggle to not feel sorry for myself; I'm need to find other ways to pass the time other than reminding myself of all the tangibly good things that make life worthwhile when I'm really just longing for those abstract things that make life life and not just a catalog of events and time's waysigns. I just don't want to feel broken anymore. And I want to have a meaningful conversation about life or the world without feeling like I'm being a downer to all the people around me.

I want to write about things other than my repetitive posts about being sad, even if that is why I started this blog in the first place so very long ago - for seeking relief from those thoughts I'm not comfortable talking about.

The edges of the red paint are curling down, twirling their own petals of latex into shards of whimsy and rebellion. The rubbery flakes of thrice-coated Bold Cherry veer away from the straight edges of the crown molding but can't quite detach from their substrata. They're terrified. They're flawed. They're ugly. But they're my imperfections, I guess.

My overactive imagination has made trying to live outside of my head and its machinations nearly impossible this week. In reveling in my dreams, pretending that a life exists outside of my own and everything goes just how it should, I've unknowingly let go of some of that control I'm constantly grasping with white knuckles to prevent swirling into an abyss of emptyness. And I'm finding a fresh feeling of freedom to experience the kind of genuine happiness I haven't found in a while -- the kind of happiness that comes from honest external validation that tells you you're worth something.

That also means that when I'm not happy, it's hard to just be neutral. Once this door cracks open even a smidge, past resentments crest in crescendo against the hollowed out wooden panels, splintering the door to allow anger and tears and frustration and sorrow to fight the joy for the best seat.

I just want you to know me. To tell me that I'm going to be ok. To tell me that it's ok to cry until you're too tired to cry anymore. That I'm still normal. To tell me why I never quite feel complete even when everything around me is just so, when anyone could look in the front window and see just so evident all around. Tech seems so easy now. I keep telling myself it'll get easier here, it has to, but it's hard to live in the present when the only thing running through my mind is to look towards the future because it'll be better.

I just want to be ok with this.

People shouldn't be this complicated. Or capable of causing this much hurt. And so frustratingly single-minded: I can list on my hand all the things that rack me with sobs and cause me to hide in my own mind. But, identity-less Internet World, I don't think you're ready for that list yet.

Part of this whole experience was supposed to be about "finding me" and "knowing who I am as an individual." But what happens when I realize I don't necessarily like what I've found? And when I recognixe that there's not really a solution to be pointed out in a table, to be calculated and applied?

I really want to feel home again, wherever it's moved to. What to do when my usual tokens of home fail to comfort? Where to go when there's no longer a physical location to be home, there's no longer a specific person to hug to be home? I don't want to have to escape to the numbness of my mind everytime I wonder who I am because I don't have a marker anymore to point me in the right direction ro remind me where I'm going from where I've come from.

On the plane ride back to New Orleans tonight I nudged the radio volume a little lower than usual so as not to drown out my overactive analysis of the weekend's events. And I blinked harder than usual to keep the tears that kept threatening to explode from my eyes from bombarding my seatmates.

I feel similar to how I did the fall of my second year, when I walked around campus numb, always on the verge of crying, when I drove in desperation to the Borders on Ponce to find something to read that would take me away from my mind and its torments. I consumed Death Be Not Proud and it reminded that there are things that could be worse in life even if I didn't think they could feel any worse.

When I couldn't get out of bed and prayed to a God I didn't even believe in yet. When it felt like I was the same person I had always been, fumbling, feeling my life's snoglobe tossed around, wondering if it was me who was changing or everyone else around me or if anyone noticed my difference.

I feel replaced; the seat that was once always mine has been filled by someone new. I don't understand why I feel his words so much, that they hurt or mean so much, why they cripple me in his hug. Because after this long why does it hurt more now than ever before?

I know that I didn't dream the last 4 years of my life, but it's hard to remember what that reality felt like. Walking around campus was real, but out-of-phase. Now there's always something else in the eyes of old friends, the ever-persistant question behind the question 'how are you.'

The other parts of the weekend were happy. Overwhelmingly happy: the friends, the confidence, the smiles, the encouragement. Knowing the doors to walk through. Knowing the tv channels and the funny smell that always pervaded the hallway. Knowing exactly where to put the sink handle to get the right water temperature. Knowing the friends. Feeling known. Being perfectly, completely honest to the most important people to me. Being vulnerable in the safety net that is my friends' arms and words.

All of which makes it that much harder to be back here, only connected through thin wires susceptible to the distractions of life. And now, absorbing the enormity of the weekend's revelations, all I want is to be back on K's couch in the comfort of regular crust pizza and the familiarity of someone who knows everything. Thank you.

All of this, this selfish, petty emotional tumult, is overshadowed by The Kite Runner, one of the best books I've read in a while. My linguistic fingers are feeling feeble tonight though, so I'll leave those thoughts for next time.

Oh sleep, come take me away for the night.