It's confirmed. I'm a total creep.

At work we are beginning the process of eliminating all emails over 3 months old and all of our external media devices we use are being password-protected.

That said, I decided to clean up my hard drive - which I tend to use for some personal stuff. While doing this, I found a folder called "Old Papers" and the files for a portfolio I created for my final project in my "Literature of the Avant-Garde" course in college.

Strange, people. Very strange.

Apparently part of the project was to write four Avant-Garde plays of my own. I opened the file for this play called, "The End/Denouement".

Stage: The scene is set in a living room. There is one chair and the room is lit by one singular lamp. A man is seated in the chair. He’s staring off to his left, face in a relaxed hang, as though in thought.

Light flickers a bit. Almost unnoticeable.

Man: Singing. This is the end, beautiful friend, the end.

Man looks at his watch, sings again.

Man: This is the ennnnnd.

Man stops singing. Sits forward and speaks.

Man: Tell me what you see when the darkness finally ceases and tell me, do you like it?

The light goes out completely and for a moment the entire stage is dark.
A faint voice is heard, a radio broadcaster reporting traffic.

The stage is suddenly filled with white light, the chair is gone and in its place is a small boy. In one hand he holds a string, at the end of it is a green balloon, soaring above his head. In the other, a gun, pointed at the audience.

Boy: In a whisper. Bang.

Lights dim, curtains close, the radio program turns to static, then fades out.

Pretty dark for a girl who has been known to wear tutu's and dance to Def Leppard songs on the top of tables.

I mean, what a fucking freak show I am. Shit.

Warm Weather = Warm Feelings

Looking back at the evolution of things, of me and where and who I am now, I don't think I've ever been the type of person who has all the answers. As with a lot of things, sureness has always teased my fingertips with its allure, but I've never been able to get a good grasp.

It seemed that I was destined to wear this heavy necklace of uncertainty, always dangling near my heart, whispering a world possibilities I could never seem to turn a deaf ear to.

I'm not someone who deals well with impossibilities.

The "I love you" that was buried so deeply it took years of digging to unearth him.
The blinding turn of his attention. The tide of him.

Us.

I've never been patient yet this stubborn will is learning to bend instead of always finding itself hurled against a wall. I am now at ease not having to constantly sweep up a mess - I never thought I would be.

I used to long for days when easy words yielded easy answers and I knew I would have to fight for them.

Those days have arrived.

Days like this.

S.A.D.

Wow, has it really been that long since I've written a legitimate blog post on this thing? I guess I need to update you.

I don't know, the past few months have been 'blah'. Nothing exceptional and on the flipside nothing terrible. I usually fall into this apathetic rut during the winter months - I blame it on my dibilitating S.A.D.

On the brighter side of my gloom - I'm continuing to fall in love a bit more each day - which I still can't believe is happening.... TO ME!!! I never pictured myself in a honest, sincere, mutually respectful relationship ... and now I couldn't imagine myself with anyone else. I'm a total faggot - this I know.

Scaling into gray - Work. BLAH. It's unending. It's corporate. It's unfair. It's abusive. I'm constantly searching for more. I am seeking out new opportunities, but not completely actively. I just want to be passionate about something again. Marrying my passion with a paying job would be ideal, but then again I don't know any real life person who actually *does* what they are passionate about and enjoy it.

The world has a crushing way of sort of sucking the life out of ones' passions, even when you are lucky enough to get paid for doing them.

The writing hasn't been coming as naturally for me as it used to. My fingers used to yearn and twitch for the keyboard, anticipating the next moment I let them loose to relay my thoughts to the screen. I haven't felt that compelled in such a long, long time. It worries me that I may never find that convincingly restorative quality in it ever again. That easy release.

The world today is a depressing place. I thought with the election of someone I actually believed in, hope would abound, overflow. I don't feel hopeful though. I feel stagnant, awash with inertia. Everyone around me is changing, and I still feel the same.

I don't thrive in these periods of averageness. I need adversity to feel actualized and I don't know why. Do other people feel this way?

I am uninspired. I feel like my identity has betrayed me, entered itself into a witness protection program on some frozen tundra in Siberia and didn't leave a note.

I used to have a strong idea of who I am. Today, those cracks in the foundation are more apparent to me than ever.

I have begun to self-create obstacles, boulders to throw into the road, wrenches to chuck into the machine. Something. Anything.

I thought what I needed was for someone to show me who I am ... but now that I have that someone, I realize it's up to me to find myself. Scrape my own blanched face off the side of the milk carton.

In the meantime I'll be here, whoever I am. Even though I haven't been completely present in the past few months, I'm not going anywhere. See me through this. There is an exceptional day right around the corner, I have to believe.

In Loving Memory of Beth

You weren't just another fish to me. You were special. Mostly because you lived longer than a day but also because you were my final purchase before I left San Diego. I'll miss your sassy ways. I hope Lisa is planning a very elaborate memorial for you.

You are totally in fish heaven, Little Lady. Along with your predessor, Dwayne Lee.

Miss you, girl.

Shedding my skin

These past two years I think I've become who I'm going to be for the long haul.

Everybody does their evolving at some point, it just took me a while to go from monkey to man.

I've shed layers of the person I used to be and in return have emerged as something completely different. Each layer molting off over time, exposing a new, softer layer than the one before it. I guess I've become more forgiving of myself during this whole process.

It's made me more forgiving of other people, too.

I've shed my angel wings for more undelicate things, embracing the less refined parts of myself, giving away the poetry over prose parts to alley dumpsters and dirty street gutters.

Like stripping off rain soaked clothes in the middle of a storm, I've become lighter, freer, shivering in my new, thinner skin.

But it's better this way, I think.

I'm more exposed than I've ever been and for once in my life, I don't think that makes me more vulnerable.

This is a happy feeling.

There have been moments of crisis, doubt, phases of indifference. I've sat on the edge of candid conversations that didn't turn out the way I thought. Relationships have bloomed and withered in moments that seem as long as lifetimes.

And with them, each layer came off. Wet rags flung to the ground.

So here I am. Baptized by the seven hundred and thirtieth turn of the calendar page.

I can't wait for tomorrow, and not just because I get better looking every day ...

And the most I'll do is throw shadows at you ...

Another year, another chance to take a good hard look at yourself.

I guess I look back at this year with a kind of bittersweet fondness, like a mother watching from the family van, as her child goes off to college. All that time, effort and care that went into shaping them for the future, just to watch them walk off into the distance and make the same mistakes that you did.

For all its ups and downs, this has been an amazing year for me. I know I've changed a lot--gained back some things that somehow I lost along the way. I still worry about getting hurt although I have found myself to be surprisingly unguarded. That was something I didn't expect.

I've grown closer to some people and further from others. I don't try to hold so tightly to the past anymore, instead I've traded it in for more room for my future, like an empty parking spot in a garage full of new experiences.

This year I have loved and lost so continuously that it doesn't scare me anymore. Each major heartbreak always offset by a minor victory, showing me what's important in the scheme of things. I've given up on believing in absolutes and finality's.

I still dive head first into things, falling in love with everyone I meet. But instead of looking at that as a bad thing, as something to strive to change, I've embraced it as one of my best qualities.

I look at relationships differently. It's like I've taken a baseball bat and swung blindly, shattering the perfect snow globe into millions of little pieces, exposing what's really inside; two dimensional people forced to stand in front of a fake background for eternity. Meanwhile trying to weather the storm each time life decides to flip you upside down and shake.

It turns out, you better really like who's in there with you. And I really do.

I've realized that I know I'm alone if I am with or without you and have accepted that as an impossibility that will always haunt our pasts, presents and futures. It's changed what I see when I fast forward my life.

But not who.

I've decided not to settle down or for anything less. That without a little drama, life would be just a bunch of Tuesdays. That I'm not perfect, and that's what I'm looking for anymore. To always be kind and questioning. And most importantly, that no matter how old I get, I can always come home and feel like a kid again.

And I like that.

So here's to a year of lasts, of firsts, of in betweens and maybes. A year of warmth and discovery and forgiveness.

Here's to a present of cheap tabs and excitement, of late nights, vulnerability and impulsiveness.

And here's to a future of infinite possibilities, to the certainty of trips and stumbles along the way and the hope that when and where I do fall, the ground will always be soft and forgiving.