You make me happier when you're near than anytime you're not.

When you leave, my thoughts immediately turn to the next time you'll be close.

While you're gone I wonder if you miss me like I miss you. I miss the way you tease me. I miss how you make me laugh. I miss the way you make me think that the future can't be that lonely.

Do you know how much I like you? Do you know how you infect my mind and make me happier just being with you no matter what we're doing and make my heart squeeze a little when you leave? Because I'm scared to tell you, scared to scare you since it scares me.

Do I let you know how great I think you are? Through the belittling and sarcasm, can you tell how much you mean to me? Is it wrong for me to assume how you feel about me based on your gentle barbs?

I thought it was enough: the way you look at me, the way your smiles tell me everything I assume you're trying to say, the way you sometimes let your fingers linger on mine when they don't have to. But my heart wants more. I tell it not to, I tell it to be happy with what it gets, that it's not allowed to expect anymore because it doesn't deserve to, that it needs to let reality in as much as it does whimisical dreams of happily-ever-after. But my assumptions of how you feel about me don't seem to be enough for my heart anymore. I lowered my emotion-guarding walls and let you in, and now I need more to bolster my heart. I need more to know it's ok to let you in. I need more to know it's ok to trust you to have an effect on me. I need more to know you aren't going to hurt me, scarring one more spot from being able to feel next time. Please don't make me think about next time, not yet.

Now you make me cry because I feel too much. I worry that you don't care like I do. That I've jumped too quickly in letting you in. That you're going to turn around one time on your way out the door and crush me, "Jen, I'm done with this - with you - now. It was fun, but I'm done now."

Do you know you make me cry? I cry in that free, snot-run-down-my-face-in-rivulets sort of way. I cry silently, each choked sob expressed in the individual tears that plop from my eyes, each less reluctant to leave my ducts than the one before it.

It feels so good to finally cry, to finally admit the effect you're having on me, to finally succumb to the emotions trapped inside. I'm smiling, laughing in my tears, at the fact that it's really happened again, that I actually care about someone again in a way I didn't think would ever happen, ever. I really, honestly, genuinely, didn't think I'd ever meet another person I liked enough to make me want to let them make me cry. But I'm ok with you being the person who makes me cry. I just hope I won't regret it later. Maybe that's the beauty of being able to cry, feeling human again knowing that I'm able to be effected by another person, confirming my inclusion in this human society. It's no longer just another person's suffering in some faraway country that can make me cry; finally my own sorrow can force tears from my eyes. It's refreshing. Terrifying, but refreshing nonetheless.

I don't know what to do with myself now. How do I deal with all these feelings always around me? I've opened my heart to you to feel this way, but now I wish I could stuff it all back in a box, lodge it in the back of my heart, and go back to controlling my emotions so that when you leave I'm not left with an empty spot of sad. Do you still control your emotions towards me? Have you let me in yet? Tell me you're affected by me the way I am by you. Tell me this is going to be worth it.

Oh, and I love that you want to go for walks outside.

I leave so many questions unvoiced, left in my mind to ruminate and ask next time. I take what you say at face value, assuming that you don't have hidden meaning behind your stories, assuming you're telling me whatever it is you mean to. Why do I wimp out asking my questions? Maybe I'm not ready for the answers yet. I don't want to be the one who feels more first. It needs to be you. It just does.

My current emotional buoys, courtesy Rascal Flatts:
"Saying you've been waiting all your life for a break like this
It's your chance of a lifetime you just know it is
You gotta go find those dreams
Was the last thing that you said
And then I did

But you were wrong
Love was what I wanted all along
And now you're gone"

"I'm gonna stop lookin' back and start movin' on
And learn how to face my fears
Love with all of my heart, make my mark
I wanna leave something here

Go out on a ledge, with out any net
That's what I'm gonna be about
Yeah I wanna be runnin'
When the sand runs out"

"I don't want to see you anymore
I'm just not that strong
I love it when you're here,
But I'm better when you're gone"

Ah, I know what this emotion is called: Depression. It doesn't come around very often, so it takes a while to figure out what this conflicted, helpless, raging sea is. Only, inside it feels more like what a tissue looks like when dropped from height - kind of swishing back and forth along whatever breezes happens through the room.

Everyone has someone, it seems. Does that magnify my isolation? But I know, in the reality part of my mind, that I'm not isolated, alone, or abandoned. But maybe I feel that way a little because I don't have someone asking me if I'm ok. Maybe because no one knows they need to ask me if I'm ok, because I don't feel comfortable with someone needing to know to ask me if I'm ok.

Or maybe that exacerbates my sadness, realizing how selfish we all are and how we really only think to ask "are you ok" to the people we genuinly, really care about, and there's no one like that here? That's where everyone's someone else comes in, because they're there to be asked if they're ok.

Maybe it's because I feel guilty for not being a good friend, for not always knowing when to ask if you're ok, or not knowing what to say when you tell me why you're not. I feel inept at having non-serious conversations nowadays. Everything is massive-life scale - relationships, physical interactions, moving, mortgages, growing up and emotions. I've forgotten what it's like to talk about nothing and really enjoy that. Or, I have since Tuesday. What?

Anyway. I tell myself I'm happy: "Look at the way the light gently slants yellow through the blinds, the way it plays on the softness of pillows; listen to the soothing bass of NPR's evening classical selection. Revel in making your own choices and following them, whatever you want to do, even when it's just sit in your favorite chair and play with the computer."

So I should be, right? Why is the seemingly-perfect environment just not doing it for me tonight? I hate not knowing what would. So instead, I'll try to distract myself. And then I'll sleep because that makes tomorrow come faster.

The Human element

Whenever my mood and interpersonal interactions seem to change, i find myself questioning my every emotion, why am i like this why do i feel this? Because the past few days i've wanted to be alone more than with anyone else. Maybe that only seems weird because Society tells me i'm supposed to want to be around others, but it also seems strange to me since i'm not stoked about all this time to spend on land with friends! near the end of hanging out the past few nights i've thought about how excited i am to go home.

Is it because i don't know how to interact with people my own age anymore? Is it because i feel like an outsider living someone else's life? Is it because i,m scared to get too Close since now i've been away so much i'm already used to it and don't want to have to go through that all over again? Is it because i'm a girl when science deems it so every so often? Maybe i'm scared i'm becoming dependent so i'm trying to prove to myself that i'm not?

Stupid emotions!
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I am so excited by Technology right now, i just might start hugging my appliances. i am blogging from my new phone!! A little nervous how this will affect content - immediate emotional release could be bad - but super excited! And so the next generation in my interaction with widgetry begins...
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I'm frustrated because I'm sad. I'm frustrated because I'm weak. I'm frustrated because I'm stressed over situations I should have control over, and don't.

I'm not happy in this middle ground like I thought I could be. I'm not satisfied with an unknown, not satisfied with feeling so much, not satisfied with the possibility that I'm getting strung along. Not satisfied with being vulnerable to the emotions and misperceptions of the rest of the female world.

I don't want to move. I don't want to leave my house. I don't want to have to start over. I've already been pulled away from the one constant, the one truly good thing in life right now; my life's been transplanted around me and I'm merely a spectator to the changing faces and scenery.

I'm a better person when I'm alone, when I'm uninfluenced by the ebb and flow of the heart's machinations. I'm better when I care about my impact on and interactions with those around me, instead of worrying about what one particular person thinks of me.

Things have never been "normal." Things have never been too steady, and I'm not happy when they stagnate, but why does this all have to happen at once? Why do I simultaneously have to question every emotion's validity and worth while being removed from my comfort zone?

I think I'll curl up and take a nap. When all I really want to happen is for you to tell me you want what I don't think I can give you. When does it feel ok? When do you not feel like a dummy, and get to take any joy in it? I hate what emotions do to who I am.

Do you ever really believe someone's Number answer? Do ya?

You know what I'm talking about, that oft-wondered and rarely asked nugget of information that might confirm everything you had always thought about Boy. Or that exact same number could mean exactly the opposite. I think it all depends on how you think of Boy beforehand, anyway. How many people have you had sex with?

Does everyone come into the question with a preconceived "slut" spectrum shaded out? Because I think that spectrum's shading shifts per judging.

Let's say Boy A is a whore monkey. Boy A slept with a mere two ladies, but they were all ugly. One night stands. Meaningless. Boy B, on the otherhand, has slept with 13 girlies and he's still Mr. Romeo because he "cared" about each of them. Logical? Maybe. There's disease exposure, the possibility of Little Boy As and Bs. But still. And you know if Boy B is particularly attractive, the thirteen just doesn't seem like that big of a deal. You're still special. He still likes you, and those others couldn't have mattered.

What's in a number? And why do we all want to know? Because you know inevitably, we all want to ask the Question.

(forgive the lack of Microsoft Equation 3.0)
So, if X=the Number, y=attractiveness, Z=likelihood Boy will get laid tonight:
as y goes towards Brad Pitt, Z increases exponentially
X/y is inversely proportional to Z

And my life? It's a sin wave. Peak-to-peak is my week offshore, with the trough in the middle when you find out there's going to be fog in another 1/T

Change is a difficult animal to swallow. Maybe she makes me stronger, just living through her time-constant discomfort. Maybe she makes me stronger willed, facing those who make me tremble, tired, and frustrated. Maybe she makes me cry, just a little, but will give me a modicum of that sorrow back in ways the future endows.

I started thinking today about the difference - or rather, similarity - between regulating carbon dioxide emissions and abortion.

I was questioning my adherence to my "environmental ideals," these very black-and-white perceptions of what's right when it comes to saving Green. Am I the Nation's hypocrit, giving neural- and lip-service to the warm and fluffy goals of the WWF's Sad Panda Eyes Campaign while enabling rich white suburbanites to drive gas-swigging Land Rovers? (Which, by the way, won't ever really "rove" the "land." Unless "concrete" is the new "land")

I love what I do. I've "really drunk the kool-aid," as Jonny put it. But, I whine in a way that sounds pathetically shoulder-shrugging and responsibility-waiving even to my own ears, there's such a disconnect from the neat-o engineering I do day-to-day out here to the potentially negative global impact that viscious fluid has! How can something that feels so good be wrong?

It doesn't seem so negative when I'm out here, seeing the precautions we take to be prudent and responsible. From the middle of the Gulf -- a Gulf with the hazy edges of Dusk and lolling Ocean meeting in springtime -- the world seems altruistic, beautiful, happy, destined. Settled. But my network-tied lifelines to the rest of the world say otherwise.

Back to how the government legislating what I can and cannot do with my body is a succint analog for the Supreme Court's ruling that the EPA has the authority, and the responsibility, to regulate green house gases.

Disappointment has clouded my view on the EPA's motives in the way many of its regulations are written, applied, and enforced. The specific ways the Agency impacts my daily business demonstrate their love of royalties and production so long as they can pass the red-faced test that their regulations limit the industry's adverse effect on the Gulf. It's heartening, though, to see the stewardship that my colleauges and company exercise for our surroundings. So it was no surprise to me to see the Agency's "side" in the Supreme Court case ("let's find a loophole and take advantage of it!"): they had no role in regulating global warming-inducing emissions because carbon dioxide is not legally a pollutant.

Disclaimer: I think pollution is bad. I think we each have a responsibility to recycle and conserve where possible. And, the government probably has some role in ensuring that the globe doesn't become one gigantic Tragedy of the Commons, with the rich industrialized nations puffing car exhaust that even an in-tact rainforest working overtime couldn't counter-act and paying to send the trash we vehemently oppose, NIMBY, to third world countries with no leverage...but where's the line after the government tells me what kind of car I can drive? When does my individual carbon balance become regulated? When does my impact on the community around me supercede my own personal choices? Just like abortion -- how can the government try tell me that I can't do whatever I want with my own body because it'd infringe on "someone" else's rights (the unborn baby. I don't want to open this whole other can of worms of whether a fetus is a person. I think bloggy would feel a little too politically raging instead of the sweet and whimsical touch these pages often shoot for.)

What, then, are my environmental freedoms? What environmental liberties am I, or the little boy playing kick-the-can in the slums of Brazil, or the sister walking to school in Africa...what liberties are we entitled to? Where does my environmental freedom end, and begin to encroach on another's? When, and for what reasons, can the government tell me what my role is in the global carbon cycle? How can we claim stewardship when it's come two thousand years late? At this point, is the earth experiencing a hysteresis of environmental paradigm shift? No matter what actions we take now, will we be able to appreciably impact the reality of 50 years from now? 80? 130?

I'm still a Rachel Carson fan and genuinly believe in the power of sunsets, being lost in the middle of nowhere, gently sloping trees, and bird chirps. But I'm starting to disbelieve that mankind will be able to undo all the damage it's already done. And I'm continuing to wonder if mankind really wants to change or just wants to sound like he wants to change.

What do you think?