it's been almost a month now...

Oddly enough, it's probably the month wherein I've had the most to say, but I've said the least, on here (obviously), in my written journals, and to other people. It's been a month of almost not talking...

He said that my hesitance to conversations is evidence of my general unhappiness with life. I spent a few conversations (with other people-- we haven't actually talked since then) dissecting and then digesting that, and then the rest of my time in the five weeks since then pondering it in relative silence.

I don't know that I'm unhappy with life... I know that I'm not happy, but I don't know what it looks like to be happy, so I'm not sure that I would know it, even if I felt it. I don't think I've ever really been happy... I've enjoyed moments, and I've enjoyed watching other people enjoy their lives, but I don't know that I've ever really been happy. Watching Jesse be happy and enjoy his life and our time together, is probably about as close as I've ever gotten to really being happy. It's weird, admitting that. Admitting how infrequently I've been happy. I guess, in some circles, this means that I'm a bad Christian. Well, whatever. I have bigger vices; the ones who can't handle that can't handle the rest of it.

But what is it that people are ever really happy about? I don't even know... They enjoy their lives... Enjoy what?
Other people? I enjoy other people. I love watching other people be happy in their own lives. Maybe it's because I sit and wonder how it is that they're managing to find happiness? Maybe that's why I love people-watching so much... because I try to figure out not only what it's like to be those other people, but how in the world they smile and mean it so much. It's strange to me.
I think that's why I loved that movie so much... United States of Leland. The guy is so... in touch with everyone's sadness. I get that. I think I feel like that all the time. I just sit down sometimes and think of all the people in the world that are so sad and all the things in the world that suck... and yeah, it's depressing. How the hell can we live around all of it and not feel that, not be that depressed, as well?

I'm not happy.

I love my family, and I love watching them enjoy something, watching them joke and smile and laugh...
I love the few friends who I haven't driven away. I know... people will be crying bullshit on this one, but it's true... I only let people as close to me as I feel they think they need to be in order to not walk away. And I carry them there. Sometimes it seems like honest vulnerability, but that's not the case. I'm just as vulnerable with them, with the things I think they perceive as vulnerability, as they need me to be; they then think the friendship is deep and I can move on. There have been very few times in my life when I've ever broken that... i could count the relationships on one hand, where I've let people in to a place that really let me feel vulnerable. Every time that it's happened, I've fallen in love. And i then push them away. High school was easy... I pushed him until he pushed me away. The second time was a lot harder, but in the end it was either going to be marrying him and knowing I'd hold him back, or shoving him away; I shoved and it took a hell of a lot of shoves, but eventually he left and found happiness with someone who can give him what he deserves. And then there was this last time... and I spent months wondering what would happen next; in the end, I pulled away and he responded in like fashion (though I'm not sure he'd see it that way), and here we are with a healthy amount of space between us. Otherwise I've been as honest as the relationship demanded, but I've kept careful stock of just how much that amounted to.

i can imagine myself easily without God. It's my life... only without the glimpses of hope I let my fingers brush past. And an ability to indulge in my own self-medication without this annoying sense of conviction; I'd turn immediately to sex and drugs and a hell of a lot of alcohol. It scares me that I can so quickly go to moments where I can run away, leave this behind, and chase a different life; I never follow through, but I get increasingly closer each time. The more deeply I can feel God, the more deeply I can crave a life where I'm not bound by these arbitrary rules intended to save me from myself. It's a pendulum that's being swung, and each time I can touch the idea of one end, I can just as tangibly touch the idea of the other end... I've never felt so palpably the thought that I could reach out and touch God in my suffering with another human, nor have I felt so overwhelmingly the realization that I could leave it all and embrace something completely other. And honestly, I think that's why I'm afraid of a certain kind of freedom. There are things that I don't trust myself. i hardly trusted myself to drink with him without seducing him, and it's part of why I knew i had to draw away. Sometimes on the train with strangers, I was overwhelmingly aware of how easily I could go home with one of these people and leave everything else behind, if only for a night. To trust myself to drive? No. Some nights I'm afraid that if I drove I would just ram the car into a tree. More nights though, I fear that I would leave and never return.

my life.

I guess i'm accomplished?
I'll finally be graduating, but i still feel like i'm not doing anything of consequence.
I'm pretty sure I'm afraid of failure and that's what keeps me from jumping and trusting myself, but i don't know how to.

My vices overwhelm me...
i've stopped drinking, in an effort to deal with my emotions instead of self-medicating. It's been an odd month, and not one I've enjoyed. Dealing with my emotions is almost worse than not dealing with them. Sometimes, I'm sure it is. In any case, i attribute the moodiness and withdrawn demeanor partially to that... but then I don't know what i'd blame the rest of my years on... It just feels like the last month has been worse... haven't wanted to spend time around people at all. Alcohol withdrawal... I think it was what made social situations manageable. Hmph. If Jeff thought I was unsociable and unhappy out there, it's a good thing he hasn't seen me without all the wine they seemed to breathe out there.
Guilt...
Self-doubt...
Fear... Too afraid to even put on here the things I feel guilt and self-doubt in reference to.

I want to break free from the shadows, but I'm afraid of the sunlight. The rain is a comfort on skin that hurts this much. The wind is distracting, the thunder gives me a reason to look afraid, and the lightening provides all the illumination i need. Sometimes though, in the moments between the flicker and the crash, I allow myself a shiver, because it really is so damn cold.