Decisions are the worst.

Choice makes me crazy. I personally believe it makes all of us crazy, but me especially. I have a love/hate relationship with choice actually. Because I'm American, and if I didn't have choices I would feel as if I were being denied something essential to freedom. Part of me loves endless options and equates it with grandiose ideals like the pursuit of happiness and the ability to create the life I want. But the other part of me--the neurotic, indecisive part--can never get over the fact that once I've actually waded through all the options and made a choice, maybe--in fact, probably--I've made the wrong one. Maybe I was too hasty! Maybe there was something better!

This is true of nearly everything in my life: from the tiny (the paint color in my kitchen, the name of my blog, the gym I joined) to the enormous (my major in college, my chosen career, the house I live in). So difficult are these choices that until now I have never put roots anywhere, flitting from place to place every two years, safe in the knowledge that I could always pull up my feet and choose differently should I feel the need. In fact, I have never been truly committed to anything (or anyone, really, but that is a different post altogether).

When I am sick, (and I use that word to denote my mental state, i.e. depressed or anxious) the problem of choice reaches ludicrous proportions. Last night I got my invitation to Google Voice, the service that allows you one number for the rest of your life, (meaning you can link whatever cell phone, work number, or home number you have even if they change over the years), and the process of choosing said number was long, arduous, and still destined for regret. I spent an hour thinking about it, another hour searching, another hour choosing, and the rest of the night regretting my choice. I mean, this is my number FOR LIFE! It has to be good! It has to be me! Even now I keep wondering if I can change it. But what would I change it to?

The same goes for my house. I spent a lot of time decorating it, haven't even finished, and already I want to change it all. I am torn between a colorful, bohemian style--eclectic, thrift store furniture, funky art, and lots of texture--and a minimalistic, modern style--neutrals with pops of color, clean-lined furniture, and no clutter. One makes me feel warm, cozy, and creative, the other makes me feel relaxed, clear-headed, and energized. At the moment my house can't seem to decide which one it wants to be, and as a result, negotiations have stalled and it just stays as is, half-finished. Living in a half-finished state makes me more depressed, which in turn makes me more indecisive, and on and on in one of those vicious little cycles. It's no good, I tell you. No good at all! I am stalled. More than a little stagnant. And unable to choose a way out. Help me!

P.S. I love Halloween. LOVE it. Have changed blog accordingly. What do you think of my Rubick's cube costume, lovingly made by my super-creative mother?

House Woes

I love our house. I love that we have a place that's our own, where no one can tell us what to do, where we have space to spread out and freedom to be creative. I love it.

That being said, so far I haven't been able to get out of my short-term mentality. Normally, I descend on a place, work furiously until it's exactly how I want it, and then, thus settled, feel like I can begin my Real Life. But with a house it is different. A house is an investment, a labor of love--a journey, not a destination, if you will. But I still see this place as a short-term stop, and I want it to be DONE. Now. The fact that it is not done has stopped me from "living my life," whatever that means, feeling at home or being productive or what have you. Were we here long term, it wouldn't feel that way. It would be a journey, with twists and turns and unforeseen curves along the way, and I would delight in that and take my time. But we're here for a few more months at the most, and the work to be done weighs on me like a mini-albatross.

So why did we buy a house, you say? If we weren't planning on settling down? Number one, it's an investment in the financial sense. Our mortgage is cheaper than rent. And with an FHA, we put less down on the house then we did on our car. So it just made more sense, especially in a city where houses are going for practically nothing. Plus I was pregnant and needed to feel the ground beneath my feet in a way I never needed before, someplace with a foundation that felt like home. Trouble is it's taken months longer for it to feel like home than usual, if only because it consists of about 800 more square feet than I'm used to. Not including the yard. Did I mention the yard? Oh my heavens the work that is a yard. We've basically just let ours go. Our "flower bed," if you can call it that, is home to weeds the likes and size of which I have never seen, weeds I am afraid to approach, weeds with long complicated names and a particularly aggressive nature. I leave them alone.

But I digress. The point of this is that I've been sticking my little toe in this blog for months, testing the water, but never taking it seriously--or anything having to do with my creative, inner life--for months, waiting until I felt At Home and Real Life could finally begin. But yesterday I finally threw up my hands. This house may never be done the way I want it to be before we leave it. But I am not going to let that stop me from writing every day, and from doing what it takes to feel like myself again. I need it. Daily maintenance, piles of laundry, wild dustbunnies--unfurnished rooms and unpainted walls and unhung pieces of art--all of it be damned.

Why do I always leave the depressing ones up so long?

I feel a bit better. It's been rough, mainly because I went off the Effexor. For lots of reasons that I'm not quite ready to sure with the blogosphere just yet. But I am on my way to wellness... David is taking me back home. It's not that I don't love Scotland, because I do, or that I haven't had a great time here, because I have, it's just that I have no place here yet. I am here, on a tourist visa, for a boy. I have no other reason for existing here. I'm not doing mission work, I'm not studying, I'm not working. And that kind of purposeless existence is a recipe for mental disaster when it comes to my complicated psyche.

So we are going back home. In two weeks. I have lived in David's hometown, now he will live in mine. Yes. we are returning to Cleveland, there to stay for a year or so. After that, who knows. But at least I will be able to work in an actual job and feel somewhat useful and not like a lump of cold oatmeal. Hooray!

Will we come back to Scotland? Most likely. I want to give this place a chance, a real chance, when I have a proper visa and can really make a life here. Stay here permanently? Not so sure about that. I need the sun! But everything is up in the air for the moment, except the fact that I am going home. Home!

I am not well

Again. I am tired of not being well, but there's really nothing I can do about it. It's a season, and I'll get through it, like all the other winters I've lived through, and there will be sunshine on the other end. But until then I feel paralyzed and helpless. I wish I could hibernate until it's passed.

I've been feeling a little down lately

Mainly, things have been rough with David. There has been much discord in our little flat. I even spent the night away with a friend last week (Though it wasn't all that dramatic, since he drove me there and all. But still, I didn't speak to him in the car.), but when I showed up at work the next day at 7:30, he was standing outside the deli smoking a cigarette and saying he was sorry. Then he worked in the deli, apron and all, for an hour to make up for it. We seem to have a pattern of A) David saying something stupid, B) Me getting upset, C) Both of us shouting and/or loudly ignoring each other, D) David apologizing and doing something very, very nice. Last night it was cleaning the apartment. The ENTIRE apartment. I sat and watched television, and didn't even notice at first what he was doing, until I saw him on his knees scrubbing the toilet. Without any kind of pleading or nagging on my part. At all. He just up and did it. I walked around and the place was spotless, and he was vacuuming the floor and sweating and looking pleased with himself. I nearly cried. A man has never, never done something like that for me. Flowers, yes (though he got me those too at one point), little gifties, yes, a variety of aimed-to-melt-an-ice-princess compliments, yes. But cleaning my house? Just, you know, because? A first for me.

I am better

As in, completely. As in, I want nothing more than to describe all the crazy things I've been doing without having to address what I wrote only a few days ago, so far and so foreign does it seem to me. I told you, it is magic, the difference between that me and this me. Already I feel the mild embarrassment that comes when I look back and see my purple prose, overwritten as it always is when I feel some strong emotion. I can't remember now what it felt like, and it left as suddenly as it came. That's why I get so angry with people who suggest I just exercize or think positively or something, rather than take drugs. Because when I, who am only three days out of it, can't understand it, how on earth do they thing they can?

Anyway, I am well. In Paraguay and bursting with stories, though short on time. You'll have them soon, I promise.

This one's not going to be so funny...

So I thought I might escape the whole depression aspect of anxiety this round, but unfortunately I woke up today with the whole leg-shaking short-of-breath heart-pumping sort of nastiness that means new panic, and within a few hours it had settled itself nicely into the heft of pointless, inexplicable sadness. I have dealt with it enough that I can look at it objectively, see it for what it is, but still have no idea how to relieve it, aside from sweating out the four or five more days it's going to take for my little pills to work their magic. And it is magic, bloody witchcraft, so unbelievably effective for me that even now, when my limbs feel like they each weigh a hundred pounds, when I have to drag myself out of bed and can't bear to leave the house or speak to anyone who hasn't known me for ten years, I still get to feel hope, something most people I know who suffer from depression rarely feel. I am lucky, I guess.

In the course of my writing this whatever-it-is, I read through other things I had written over the years, stories and blogs and journal entries, and anxiety and depression always seems to be an underlying theme. It's not the center of my life by any means, most of the time I barely think about it at all, but it is always there, humming somewhere in the background.

I found this old blog entry from my second year in Israel, after I went off Paxil for the second time. I removed it from my blog the very next day, when I realized how despairing it sounded and that, um, people I KNOW were reading it, but it so clearly explains how I feel on the really bad days. I've been free of this feeling for a year, and like a person recently recovered from illness, I've forgotten what it felt like to be sick. I can't explain it when I'm healthy, it all seems so abstract. But today I can, today I remember. Here, for your perusal, before it ends up in my book, which it inevitably will I'm sure:

January 15, 2005

This morning I started crying over breakfast. Luise and Tammy and I were sitting around the table, innocently eating toast, and suddenly tears were rolling down my cheeks. I was talking about something mundane--the lines in the grocery store, the paper Luise has to write--and there they were, all these tears without reason. And so I know: I am here again.

I hate the stupid metaphors I have to use to describe what it feels like when you know you are entering into depression. I hate the words sinking and stagnant and slipping away. I hate the fact that I have to use them at all, have to try and make sense of something so utterly ridiculous, so completely unwelcome.

I used to be, in some small immature way, proud to be the kind of emotionally unstable person who suffers--oh how I suffered! When I was eighteen, I felt that it put me in league with the greatest creative minds in history, as if by having a touch of madness in myself, I had the potential to become any one of them. You start to coddle your own unique little agony, that piece of you that makes you different from all the dull masses of simple people who don't know what it means to truly feel anything. You start to use phrases like falling into darkness or sinking into despair. Having such grandiose expressions attributed to you makes you feel so unbearably special and important.

But after a while, when it finally becomes clear how unromantic, how utterly inconvenient it is to be really depressed--when you're not sad, or down, or blue, when you're just paralyzed, and helpless, and disconnected from everything around you. I don't understand things when I'm depressed. I can't make sense of numbers, facial expressions, how my feet keep moving, one after the other, on the sidewalk when I walk (When did I start walking? When did I leave home?) I can't match up emotions to events--am I sad because we got in a fight, or because when the teacher erased the board, tiny flecks of red pen remained there? Both things suddenly carry equal weight, bring equal distress.

This is what it is like to be me: I know myself so well, have spent so much time wandering around in my brain, critically accepting and rejecting parts of me, changing what I don't like, allowing myself a little pride for the things that I do, analyzing my emotions and motivations and hopes and hurts and longings to the point where whatever life gives me, I will know who I am. But this is when I am normal, when my brain is firing straight and even and I struggle only with the everyday problems of life. The trouble is this: at the first hint of something long-forgotten coming back to reclaim me, I lose it all. It comes up on me so slowly, playing a little game of advance and retreat, so that finally, when it strikes for good, over toast and coffee, I am caught completely off guard, and everything I thought I knew about myself vanishes in an instant.

I guess I write to find it again. I write because I am so tired of this. It does not make me special, or creative, or even interesting. It is trite, it is common, it bores me to tears. I write because I am so angry. With every year that passes I can see myself growing, changing, becoming the person I want to be--and all of it comes to nothing when I'm up against a few rogue chemicals. I write because oftentimes only words and reason can bring me back, only they can make me feel slightly normal when I am suddenly overcome by an almost physical sensation of hopelessness. I am in the thick of this right now. It woke me up at six in the morning, grabbed me mid-dream by the chest, sucked me up through layers of subconscious, and finally pulled me back into reality, only to fill me with irrational panic and fear and sadness. And now I want only to curl up into sleep again, shut down for a while, or run away.

Cracking up slowly

I failed a test today, for the first time since high school.  I am not in a good state.  The combination of stressing out over school, preparing to leave the country that I love, and uncertainty over the future has me teetering on the edge of fear and panic.  And things with Dave being so precarious at the moment has pushed me dangerously close to despair.  (That's a lie.  I am right smack in the middle of despair.) The result of all of these little messes is that I can't sleep, can barely eat, and certainly can't concentrate on school. 

So I failed my Arabic test.  Last night I remember thinking: I should study for this test.  I really, honestly should.  And then I remember thinking: I don't have one ounce of strength left.  I had to leave my apartment, get out, see people.  I was on the way into town when Dave called, and he was near my apartment, but I'd already left, and that knocked the wind out of me even more.  I tried to play it cool, but I don't know how to play it anymore.

And then this morning I was staring at this test, and I couldn't make myself care about it at all.  I left most of it blank, and half-heartedly filled in the rest.  I am alternating between an eerie numbness and the sudden inability to keep myself from crying.  Not good.

Advice from my youth

Sometimes I have to remind myself of things.  Rilke helps:

"If you have this love for insignificant things and seek, simply as one who serves, to win the confidence of what seems to be poor: then everything will become easier for you, more coherent and somehow more conciliatory, not perhaps in understanding, which lags wandering behind, but in your innermost consciousness, wakefulness and knowing.  You are so young, you have not even begun, and I would like to beg you to have patience with everything that is unsolved in your heart and to try to cherish the questions themselves, like closed rooms and like books written in a very strange tongue.  Do not search now for the answers which cannot be given you because you could not live them.  It is a matter of living everything.  Live the questions now.  Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, one distant day live right into the answer."

Last night I had a dream that I was sitting on the beach, and the tide started rising really quickly, and I had to scramble up the sand dunes, and even higher and higher, as the water kept rising and the waves kept getting stronger.  There was nothing threatening about it--the waves were almost gentle--but they were eroding something, taking pieces of things away, and I couldn't stop to save any of it, just had to keep moving.  I was grabbing onto things for leverage: trees, roots, heavy stones, and pulling myself up slowly slowly, but I was still wet, still aware that if I stopped moving I'd be swept away.  So of course the waves are time, making loss out of everything, and the things I take hold of are these questions, that help me climb upwards but do nothing to stop the tide, and the sea itself may be mortality, or it may be the answer, because no matter how fast I scurried, I never thought for one moment that I was moving towards anything in particular, and I had the vague sensation that what I really wanted was behind me, that what I really wanted more than anything was to be swallowed up and carried off.  And yet there I was, still scrambling and panting, grabbing onto what I could and watching precious things drift away.  These are the things I dream about.

I keep on keeping on

I erased my last post, as you can see...sometimes I forget that this isn't my own personal diary, that people actually read this, people who might possibly think that I'm crazy...I get a little carried away, you see.  It's probably because I haven't written in my actual journal in so long, which is really strange for me.  All my thoughts have gotten all jumbled up into a big impenetrable mass, which obviously makes it harder for me to make any sense when I try to sort them out (often to no avail).

I am okay.  I will be okay, anyway.  It's so weird how different this year is from last year.  Perhaps I've stayed past my usual allotment of time to any given space--I already feel the urge to move, move, move...you know, keep things whole.  The second year in a place is always hardest; that's when it begins, the little howling.  It gets louder with time.  Here it is, only January, and it's at a fever pitch.

A little stream of consciousness

I'm getting tired of writing about the things I'm doing here--the parties and the sightseeing, the classes and the papers, what have you.  All these external things--even the extraordinary place where I live--all of these refuse to penetrate at the moment, and I'm left walking around inside my own head.  Not walking.  More like treading water.

I am not unhappy.  I am not even panicky or anxious.  I am just confused.

We only get one life, you see.  We either use it to seek truth, or we give up and start to collect things.  I want to be good, I want to be kind, I want to be pure of heart, but I don't know if I want to look for truth anymore.  Suddenly it seems very, very silly, like investing in something that will never yield any actual result, that will never make any visible impact, that will merely serve as some sort of spiritual pacifier that calms me but doesn't nourish me, eases everything but changes nothing.  I don't want to cling to something because it makes life more bearable or makes me feel like a part of something or gives me a sense of identity.  I want to believe in something because it's true, not just for me but for everybody, and this, this I suspect may not exist at all.

Hanukkah

This has been a rough week.  I'm battling a shapeless little loneliness here, and it's tiring.  I'm having another of those disconnected days--I want to plug myself in somewhere, lean on something for balance, only there's no place, really, for me to go.

A little hopeless

I finally bought my plane ticket home for Christmas.  It was obscenely expensive.  But I know it will be worth it.  I could use a little connection with my hometown, as usual.

I feel as if my state of mind is constantly balanced  on this precarious little peak, arms outstretched, willing itself to maintain some sort of equillibrium.  This balancing is difficult and time-consuming, and often fails, at which point I suddenly find myself plunging into a state of semi-despair, fighting off the most ridiculous sense of hopelessness. 

I have the most extreme emotional reactions to the most mundane of everyday events.  The other day I was the last to arrive to an over-crowded class, and the only seat that was left was all alone in the corner, and I was suddenly overcome with this enormous feeling of isolation.  I had to leave the class, walk around a little bit, remind myself of things.  Then yesterday I got in an argument with a taxi driver about the fare, and it took me two hours to get over the sense of having fallen from a great distance.  It is so strange, being so tightly coiled all the time.  I want to stretch myself out, relax, but I can't.

It makes me think that I will never be able to be completely happy in the life that I've chosen.  I am twenty-seven, single, living in a strange culture; most of my friends are transitory; most everything is transitory.  I need to be living in some small town, where I know everybody, where they all know me, where I can have a nice routine, a couple kids, and a house with a front porch.  I need to put down feet to feel balanced.  Instead I'm running all over the place, collecting degrees, experiences, and photographs, in a constant state of near-panic.

This is probably better.  This life. 

Carrying on

I feel better today. It's odd to suffer from nameless anxiety after a year of relative calm. Not even relative calm: complete and utter normalcy. I suppose the way I felt last year is the way that normal people feel all the time. When my European friends hear that I was on Paxil, normally they smile, roll their eyes, and say something like "You Americans." And I guess that the steady rise of prescription medication is an American trend. Maybe--no, probably--we medicate ourselves way too much, treating the symptoms instead of the problem. The problem with most depressed Americans, in my opinion: work that means nothing to them, isolation, loneliness, lack of purpose and direction, lack of exercise, and overall boredom. To combat this, instead of changing jobs, joining a gym, and doing whatever it takes to end the feeling of isolation, they take an anti-depressant. I'm sure this happens a lot.

But here is where my problem lies: I am working at something that I love, that fascinates me. I have friends who care about me, (mostly) clear and defined goals, and a (decent) sense of purpose.  I am happy. The anxiety that I feel never comes from an actual situation, from something concrete. The hopelessness, the sadness--none of it comes attached with a solution, a cure, or even a reason.

Luckily, it's not that severe. It does get worse in times of high stress, but mostly it's how I described it last night: a constant, dull sort of tug on my subconscious, a feeling that something is not quite right. A bit of obsessive-compulsion helps keep it at bay: when my house is clean, my studies in order, and the dishes done, the tug is less. When everything's a mess, when things go wrong, when I'm running late, the tug gets stronger. And when things in my life are complicated or difficult, the tug becomes an out and out tug-of-war between my rational mind, which understands that this is chemical, crazy, untrue, and my irrational feelings, which tell me that something is wrong, awful, about to be lost forever.

In the past I learned certain ways of controlling this. And when it was so bad that I couldn't control it, I just kind of held on until it passed. And last year, right before I left for Israel, when it was the worst it's ever been and I couldn't eat or sleep or even stop shaking, I finally decided to try Paxil. I've known a lot of people who tried it with no effect, or who went through some really awful side effects, but I responded really well almost right away. I responded so well, in fact, that I convinced myself that it must have been the placebo effect, and went off the drug. Two weeks later I was an absolute mess. So back on I went.

And now, over the summer, I decided to go off it. My life has stabilized, the stress factors are gone, and I was ready to go back to my old methods of controlling and living with my own little insanity. And I'm fine. Most of the time I am fine. But during those weird evenings--when I wake up at six in the morning with my heart pounding and my breath coming in hysterical sips and I am gripped by a pointless panic about nothing at all--on those evenings I wonder if it might not be so bad to be on a drug for the rest of my life.

But those evenings are few and far between, and meanwhile the fact that I feel creative and even crazy again is really comforting to me. So off it I will stay.

There's my explanation for last nights whimperings.

Perfect

First day of classes. But never mind. It's all a blur to me, feeling now so acutely that odd sense of panic I used to be so accustomed to. It's just a small thing. A pea beneath a hundred mattresses kind of thing. But there nonetheless. It's like the smallest, barely detectable layer right underneath my skin: it says nothing but negative words--loss, wrong, never. I don't know what I feel, except that I feel alone again. This is not something I entirely reject. Being alone is an amazing opportunity for growth. It's just that I was hoping my days of being alone were coming to an end, and yet it seems that God is intent on wringing me dry forever.

Whatever it takes to need him alone, I suppose. Only: am I this strong that I need this kind of desperation?

Psyche

So today is one of those days. I find myself, in my loneliness, searching for things to fill up the hours between sleep and sleep: surf the net--one hour; go to the library--three hours; study hebrew and arabic--two hours; watch tv--two hours; read "the story of art"--two hours. That still leaves me with six unused hours. I have options; I can do the touristy thing, go hang out with Gosia, take a walk. But loneliness is a paralysis for me, so I do nothing.

I spent one of these six unused hours talking to Jef, which was, of course, wonderful. He did his best to pull me from my stupor, and meanwhile I nagged him with questions he can't answer. Will all my dreams come true? Will I be happy? Will I die alone? Will I get to have children? He was amused/frustrated/...Jef. I miss him a lot. Difficult to write too much on a website that I know he reads; suffice to say: talking to him made me happy, for a little while.

Ksenia gets home tomorrow, Luise on Thursday, Tammy on Saturday, then school starts on Sunday. So much outside stimulation in rapid succession (is that spelled right?) is bound to liven me up. I should end up with less than one unused hour a day!

List-making is free

I'm beginning to sink into that disconnected, fuzzy stage in which I start to lose sight of myself. This happens when there is little to distract me from The Questions. I don't hate The Questions all that much, in fact I try to foster them whenever I manage to go a long time without asking them. It's what they stir up that I can't handle. Following very quickly on the heels of The Questions comes, almost imperceptibly at first, that odd sense of loss. It's like the floating light inside my eyelid when I close my eyes. I can see it out of the corner of my eye, but as soon as I try to look at it directly, it disappears. If I could only put my finger on it, give it a little shape, then maybe I could dissect it and make it go away. But I never can.

Instead, I make lists. I find this very comforting, in an admittedly obsessive compulsive way. If I make enough lists, maybe I'll stumble upon the cause of my nostalgia.

List #1: Things I Should Be Doing That I Am Not Doing

writing in my journal (weblogs not included)

writing anything at all

improv

filling out my application to cambridge

keeping in touch

learning hebrew

reading something other than formula thrillers

calling my professor's sister who lives in jerusalem (he asked me to)

research for my islamic mysticism paper

um...getting out of my apartment

I suppose that about covers it. I feel better already--that's not so long! Now that I've collected it into a neat little list, I barely feel the need to take any action at all.

Last night I had a nightmare that I was on a sinking ship. I was not upset about this at all. In fact I went on a swimming race with someone else from the ship, a guy who was immensely concerned with my welfare. He was faster than me. Maybe he saved my life. Anyway, suddenly I was walking on the sinking hull of this sinking ship, wading through the ankle-deep water. I was talking to Brett. I was trying to convince him to get off the ship, and he was angry at me. I was asking him questions about things I couldn't recall from our relationship. I had an image of him gently taking care of baby birds that I couldn't place in my memory. We argued.

In my dreams he is always so wise, so strong, so much like I remember him. I have attached to him a personality that doesn't exist, that never did. I even know when I did it--back in college when Paul and I broke up and I was heartbroken. I conjured up this new and improved Brett--a safe image since I could never imagine myself being with him--and this idealized image, this edited memory, helped me get over Paul. I never thought it would be this dangerous, never realized that once the little jury in my brain is convinced, it will not be unconvinced of guilt or innocence. As far as my subconscious is concerned, perfection is this man I've created, and he has Brett's face.

So I suppose he's back in my dreams again because of Jef. Breaking up with him was by far the most traumatic breakup I've ever been through. Who better to help me get over it then my own personal hero, invented and given life by me? Only it doesn't work this time, because there's no feet to put beneath the fantasy. The real Brett is married, lesser, bloodless. I know who he is, and he doesn't measure up to the jury's verdict. Which puts me in an odd predicament: an image in my dreams that is strong enough to confuse and hurt me, but too weak to help and heal me as it did before.

Who's sinking on that ship, him or me?

December Already

I received a Christmas package in the mail from my Mom and Dad, full of cookies and candy and decorations and, best of all, Christmas music. I may be the only one of my friends who still loves Christmas music, but I hold fast to the belief that it is wonderful, magical, altogether lovely. Maybe it's just that I am one of those peculiar people who had a blissfully happy childhood, but I think there is something to be said for maintaining the innocence that allows us to enjoy the trite and cheesy kitsch of life that most people, so set on seeing The World As It Is, choose to regard with such disdain. Of course I could just be trying to defend my affinity for sappy movies, happy endings, and all things Christmas. But I proceed.

It's odd though, I can't seem to listen to the music of my memory without feeling, of all things, sad. Nostalgia is a nasty little illness. The unfortunate byproduct of said happy childhood is this nagging feeling that something has been lost. I know I'm not the only one who's felt this way, but sitting in my apartment by myself, decorating a miniature Christmas tree and listening to Nat King Cole, it feels like I am. Is adulthood just meant to be loneliness? I'm not a lonely person at all; I have an incredible family, great friends, and plenty of people to talk to--but on certain nights, in a certain mood, with a certain scent or a certain melody, I feel so disconnected from everything else, almost lost. Maybe I took a wrong turn somewhere way back, and if I'd gone the other way there would be newness in every minute rather than this constant tug-of-war between experiencing the present with joy and excitement and thinking of the past with sadness and regret.

I know I'm taking a bittersweet mood and waxing it to death here, but I'm not sure what else to do with it. I'm so accustomed to bringing these feelings to God, these inklings and yearnings all too big for me, and asking Him to make sense of them, to bring my life back, somehow, to that place of security, to return to me whatever it feels like I am missing. There is such a comfort in being able to do that. To trust in this Being, this Power that is working everything out for good just for me. There's a promise in it that has made these moods--which come all too often to me--bearable. But now, now with this handful of doubt I'm dealing with, there is only me to go to, which doesn't help at all, since I have this strange feeling that it's me that's the problem from the start. I guess what I mean is, while nostalgia for most people may be warm and fuzzy and merely bittersweet, for me it is all these things, coupled with this tiny little pocket of hopelessness. And when I have to sit, listening to "O Come All Ye Faithful," and secretly, quietly praying that This Whole Thing is true--whereas I used to be able to fight this tiny pocket off with such confidence--the hopelessness feels like it's gaining a bit of power.

Enough of this. This is a happy day. I have cookies to munch on, a party to plan, a test to study for, a visit from my best friend to look forward to, and I'm going home in less than two weeks. What's the sense in these drops of despair?