sunday night

the last few sunday nights have involved movies and hanging out with a new friend. the same new friend every sunday. this sunday night is involving my computer and work and no movies and a sense of grumpy disapointment. maybe its a residual effect of the sunscreen that is seeping into my system after having been slatered all over my skin -- one's biggest organ donchano. or perhaps this rumbling discontent is merely sleepiness disguised as crankiness.

there's a name that repeats in my head again and again, a rhythm of a person who's not here. and the name like a mantra in the back of my head. i wish it would disappear. a life lived in yearning is a life lived in a hopeful future, yes? not the present. but we must have hopes for the future to help ground us and to propel us through what might otherwise be a dark series of now now now now now...

"what is love?" i wonder, tonight, as my mind skips all over the place. is it merely, as darren would say -- has said -- a force? like, like... what? (i failed physics.) like pushing against a rock. does love push against my rock, slowly wearing me down until i surrender to the biological imperative of reproduction. i hate this feeling of being manipulated. i hate this feeling that, somehow, everything is already laid out before me, like a buffet, and all i get to do is choose what i want to eat. but what if i don't like what they're serving?!

and yet i often wonder, "wouldn't it be easier if i didn't have to decide, if someone told me what to do." wouldn't that remove this element of free thought that seems to get me in trouble all the time. then i could wander, numb, through my life. and watch romantic comedies and laugh, and cry at sad movies and fall in love and be ok with that and not wonder what if what if what if.

oh god, what am i talking about now? kevin! KEVIN?! are you out there? you're going to toronto and for some reason it makes me soooo sad. i don't know if i've ever told you, but i get so sad when people go away. i used to think it was similar to the irrational fear of childhood that would prevent children from sleeping: if you go, you may never come back. but i know now that it's different than that. i've been the one to leave, i left calgary: my friends, my family. the saddest thing was that the people who stayed behind, the ones i left behind, i realized that in fact they didn't change. that it was me. or at least that's what it seems like now. so every time someone leaves i wonder, "am i doomed to stay here and stagnate and become the boring person i know is hiding deep inside of me?" AND HOW COME I FIND IT SO HARD TO TALK TO MY DAD? and could it be that i feel so alone for a reason and why can't i just let go and open the doors to allow others in and why is it so hard to let go of the things we know are bad for us and how come i'm so afraid that my friends will get bored and leave me behind for more interesting people and really, what do i have to say. what? what? what...

i see i've worked myself into quite a state here. my throat hurts because i don't want to cry even though i'm alone and who cares really. this is going to be a difficult week. i foresaw that last week and didn't really know how to forestall or prepare for the difficulty. that's my next step: how to cut it off at the pass. in the meantime i pack some extra provisions in my back pocket: some fearlessness, even recklessness, generosity (for myself), compassion (for everyone else) and i invite anyone to try to make me laugh. *that* i think could help more than anything else...