Stop it stop it stop it!
I'm like a love-struck puppy.
This is so 7th grade, but ... wow ... he is so handsome.
He makes me melt a little inside.
My heart hurts just thinking about him.
Wondering what's going on inside his head.
Wondering what he even thinks of me ... if he even thinks of me.
So ... so very handsome.
This isn't true love or anything, this is emphatuation ... a crush ... a tightening around my heart that occupies the capacity of my heart and mind. Keeps me fromt hinking about the truth. About how ... how I need to move on. How i need to go out, meet people, do the things people my age typically do.
Go drinking, go dancing, go out.
You can't date a temp.
Not really ... ... and certainly not me. Hell, I can't even talk to the boy.
I need to stop ... be cool boy, real cool.

Tags: crush
Current Location: Work
Current Mood: enthralled

I'm alive, but my writing abilities have suffered.
I'm sorry.
I wrote two blogs and deleted them.  
Trust me, they were pretty terrible.
Here I am ...

Tags: writers block
Current Mood: frustrated

I press my hand to my mouth and try not to make a sound. The tears pool up in my eyes, and I'm sorry.
I am a very weird person.
It's true.
I think the scientific word is pathological.
Get over yourself, we're all pathological. These are the pathways of the mind. The way we think, the things we do to achieve what we want, most of the time not even knowing what we want.
I try to make friends, only to distance myself.
I'm easy to like, but hard to get to know. And I like that. If you know me, aren't I then at a disadvantage? My pathologies laid bare, you'll see it coming. Nobody, no not nobody should be trying to crawl around in my head. You'll just end up getting hurt. I'll hurt you. 
We only hurt the ones we love because they're the only ones we really know how to hurt. 
Please don't love me, I just don't think I can take the pain.
Don't call me on my shit, I just ... I think I would wither under the embarassment of it all.
You see, I don't see the flaws so clear to you, at least I hope you don't see, and if you do ... if you do, then all this energy, all this trying to hide my ugliness has been forever in vain. How much energy, how much time ... wasted, just so you can get close to me and see. It's not all pretty.
I've been reading The Vagina Monologues. It fills my eyes with tears, my heart with mourning and some secret longing to know my self, to discover myself.
I feel their embarassment, their fear. I identify with those women who shut themselves down, lock themselves up and throw away the key.
I yearn for guidance, for some understanding of myself, my sexuality, things so taken for granted by my gay peers - a mystery to me.
In the life of a gay man there comes a time almost lovingly called the "slut phase". I'm not in my slut phase. I can't identify or recall my slut phase, I just know that what has come and gone before me in my sex life. I know that I have been left unsatisfied, though not always unsated. I have had good sex, but those partners only grow to eventually reject me. They simply stop calling. 
"Teach me!" I beg, but there is no one there. "Unlock these mysteries of sex between men." I ask the clock on the wall, but he does not answer ... he merely ticks away the moments of my youth, my sexual prime.
I've been told that one day I'll grow tired of sex, learn that there is more to a relationship than the orgasm. I scoff at such sentiments. I am, it would seem, ahead of the game ... far far far ahead. It was always like me to be ahead of the learning curve. I don't want your sex. I want your love. The only thing we can never ask for ... love. The only thing we really need ... love. All our pathologies, all our psychological gymnastics are just this ... the desire to be loved. To find our place ... to find my place in your heart.
Love me. I ask, and immediately feel the recriminations of desperation and pathos. I'm not desperate. I'm not pathetic. I'm just lost ... I'm just somewhere beyond lost.
Being lost implies a state of being "found" of finding your way, of road signs and landmarks. But this is all so alien to me ... I am searching for something I have never seen, never felt, never known. I am not lost ... I am wandering, a state wholey more disheartening than being lost, it is liberation.
Moses in the desert, looking for a promised land.
Love is not promised us. It is something we may find for ourselves with one another ... but there are no gurantees. We are seperated one from another in our individuality, behind our own set of eyes, processing in our own pathologies, trying to connect.
And here we are.
Disconnected.

Tags: longing, love, pathologies
Current Mood: bored

The girl I live with doesn't know about this particular blog, so I have free range to say here whatever I want without fear of reproach. That both relieves and frustrates me. I don't have that much to say about her in particular, except that I am looking forward to living elsewhere. I think that really bothers her, that I am so ready to leave, but she is only part in parcel with my desire to leave. If anything, she makes me feel guilty that I don't meet her emotional needs, that I don't want to hang out with her and chat and while away the hours with giggles and silliness.
I like giggles and silliness, but we rarely find that with one another. She doesn't have a job, you see. And I can't wrap my head around that. I mean, the people I know that don't have jobs are usually destitute or desperate or at least a little worried about finding a job, but not-so her. My other roommate is the same way, his only work involves hanging out in the writing center at his school.
I know that everyone has their cross to bear. I appreciate the gift of poverty that my parents gave me, it taught me how to be frugal, to value hard work, and how to put up with a job I despise if it would feed me. If I had been born into money, I doubt I would be the person I am now. A silly day dream perhaps, this, but I wonder where I would be if I had been born to wealthy parents. 
My immediate conclusion is that I would be half-way to my PhD or closer, at some upstanding university somewhere. But I doubt that some how. I wouldn’t be the person I am, wouldn't want the things I want now. I would probably be more attached to the fashionable world, dressing better than I do now and wearing new clothes, awesome shoes, and generally looking fabulous. I would have a personal trainer, a radiant smile, and a heart full of condescension. Of course if my wealthy imaginary family had remained as staunchly religious as my actual family, I might still be in the closet. I know a lot of homos who have given up freedoms to remain in the familial good graces.
No, I'm glad to be just who I am. Worried from month to month whether or not the ends will meet. I have learned a lot about faith and the power of Providence. I've learned what living within one's means means. 
Once upon a time, I had credit cards, and I lived my life as though I had money.
6 years later and I'm still paying for those mistakes. Of course, that wasn't my money I was spending, it was just imaginary plastic money... until it wasn't.
Today is Friday. It's Pay Day! And the weekend begins in about 6 hours for me. During my 1st or afternoon break I'm going to walk over to one of the pharmacies and buy some ear plugs. I find it no short irony that while living in my apartment and being the only person with a job I am also the only person without a door. That was some well placed advertising by those ear-plug makers, I never would have thought of it without a clever advert telling me how I could get some delightfully restful sleep.
Jeff used to wear earplugs when I would sleep over. At first I felt bad that my snoring disturbed his sleep, but then it just felt ... well romantic that he wanted me next to him through the night.
I've been pondering on Jeff a lot lately, and I guess he was as near to a true boyfriend as I ever had. I still love the guy, always will, and since our relationship came to such a natural and amicable end I can return to his arms again and again in my memories without heartache. We both know that we weren't right for one another, that in a very fundamental way we couldn't understand one another ... but I do love him, always will.
A few days ago he sent me a text message invitation to coffee while I was out on the Employee Appreciation party boat and I almost had a heart attack. I replied to ask if he was in Chicago, and well ... things got a little confusing til I called him that night. He had sent me the text message by mistake, he meant it for his sponsor. It felt good to think about him though.
And then, then there's Todd. The self-proclaimed god I can't believe in. The fantasy about the easy way out. All I would have to do is stop being myself, and all my wishes would magically be granted. When a genie in a bottle grants your wishes, it's your heart and soul that pay the price.
Be careful what you wish for.
So ... I want ... so much. More than I should ask for. So ... instead, I'll pray:
Oh Lord, that you would bless me indeed, and expand my territory.
That your hand would be with me and keep me from evil, that I may not cause pain.
Amen.
Well ... hmm ...
This entry was supposed to kill about an hour, but it hasn't. In fact ... my clock has only moved forward 3 minutes. I just wish I had something worthwhile to say. That though only seems to happen when I'm stoned, and then I'm never motivated to write, I just want to play WoW.
HA

Tags: boredom

I love you.

There, now, no matter who reads these lines, I will have just told you how I feel.

It's not easy loving you though. No, I love you too much to lie, to take the easy road and tell you it's all sunshine and butter cups.

Loving you means having to figure out some way of loving myself, of trusting myself enough. It might take me believing that I'm not just some fucked-up bipolar, smoke stained, used up, broke ass, attention deficit, toothless attention whore.

Cause, I look around me and I just can't. I can't look into your eyes. Not right now.

Because, I don't want to burden you.

I don't want your fucking pity.

I know, I know. It's friendship, but right now everything just feels sickly, coated in a pestilent light, tortured and weird and wrong.

I've been reading too much, and I hate to read. I know I do it so gah'damn much it's just ... the focus I crave. For one moment my mind just slows down and follows the words as they dance across the page, feeding me images and stories, feelings and emotions, companionship with a different voice than the one rolling around inside my own head.

I was informed recently that I don't really need to wear glasses, in spite of my 20/400 vision. No, apparently my eyes are just lazy, or my brain ... and somehow or another without surgery I can be taught to see 20/20, no glasses, no contact lenses, and no gimmicks ... it even says so in the infomercial.

I can't think of cavemen having glasses. What did the blind gay cavemen do? I'm thinking they froze. All for their lazy lazy eyes.

I'm so sick of listening to it. I'm so sick of listening to me.

I am my own worst sadist. My own nightmare, all mine. This is what I wanted right?

The door slams. She's home. This is her home. This is my home. This is Marcus' home. If I had a door I would close it. But I don't. So somewhere inside a door slams in my heart.

It's just that compulsory. I don't want to smile. I don't want to say "Hello!" and be all chipper and mother-fucking Disney. I'm not your Fairy Fucking Godmother. I'm not nobody's Fairy Fucking Godmother. And honestly, I am not sorry that I do not meet your emotional needs, but right now I can't honestly meet my own. All of this boils as I sit in silence, pretending I'm not here.

PAY NO ATTENTION TO THE MAN BEHIND THE CURTAIN!

The tears have dried. She didn't mean to disturb my reverie, my tears, but I can sit here and hate her for it anyway. I can't even cry in my own home. I can't let go. Can't risk discovery. I don't want you to hold me. I want to close my door and fucking hug my duck. But I don't want you to see. Because you can't help me!

It seems like every day I picture myself saying to some psychiatrist "... and then one day I just lost control ... and ..." And what? Everyone says that the pills can't fix you. And I felt so ... right, when I was medicated. It had to be a lie.

This isn't funny, and I don't need your angry voice. I don't need you telling me what I should do, or how I should feel.

You don't know how it feels to be a blind gay caveman, do you? Neither do I, but I'm willing to bet a lot of this has to do with grasping reality near the tip, and pulling, HARD!

I think you'll think I'm crazy, unless I call this a poem. So, that's what this shall be. No longer my redemption through confession, or a letter to you, I'll call it a poem. And be done with it. I even included a 'shall'.

This is how I feel, and it's real, and it's beautiful.

Don't forget that I love you. I'm sorry if the things I have poemed leave you baffled, or at a loss. But it's not so bad to be baffled. Not so bad to connect with the things someone has to say, be moved maybe. Just once in a while.

Tags: anger, depression, guilt, poetry, sorrow
Current Location: Somewhere
Current Mood: Something

I wish that I could be this for you.
I do. Wish.
But I will turn, and I will walk away.
Because I can't.
I just can't.
I know love doesn't come in one of those prepackaged cartons.
It isn't a happy meal.
But we were happy, weren't we?

Wishes don't require action, they just are.
Lazy goals, things we would like if they fell from above.
You fell from above.
Right into my lap.
And I remember smiling and not being able to stop smiling.
You are everything I ever wished for.
And I love you.
And I'm sorry.
But I'm going to have to walk away now.

I don't know why.
Maybe I'm scared.
If that helps you, if blaming me makes this easier...
Blame me.
Hate me, but I love you.
But I can't. 
I can't be that for you.
Maybe I'm wrong, but I just have to.
I have to be this for me.

Tags: love, poetry
Current Location: Lost

I feel as though I should be writing something right now. It's David's last day. I use his real name because he's retiring and moving to Poland and I'm pretty sure that I can say anything about him that I want and he wouldn't mind. That's just a side note, though. Best wishes to David.
I love riding the train. I love the exposure to the cuties. God I love cuties on the train. Okay, so maybe trying to get anywhere by CTA means lots of wasted time and frustration, cramped and crammed and uncomfortably warm we bump and grind down the tracks in rhythm. It's a pleasure dancing with a partner fine as you.
I guess it's good that I love the train so much, having sacrificed my car to persue my dreams here in this city. The most tragic thing about dreams is that eventually you have to wake up and forget about them. Not that it's not to have dreams and all, I guess they can give you something to aim for, but once you're aiming at them they're called goals. Goals ... goals suck. Once you have goals you have to start keeping score, and once you start keeping score you may find yourself the loser, or worse the winner. Winning sucks just as much as losing, for people like me who always want everyone to be happy, taking victory from someone else is less than palatible. 
I called my grandmother yesterday afternoon. When she was my age she was married and moved to Maryland because "it beat working on a farm". They lived in Maryland for 20 years, and made their way. Ma Kate got a job in a factory to pay the bills then got her cosmotology license and set up shop doing hair. I think I inherited that wander-lust. I don't want to work on a farm either ... if that means that I don't want to be hated by complete strangers. I'd rather someone get to know me before they hate me. I mean, let's face it ... people are going to hate you.
I like this job.
I'm at work now.
My job is like one big long word-problem from the SAT. I dig problem solving. Right now the text reads something like: Jeremy has 16 hours to charge to a job that will take him 2 hours to complete and is due July 5th. That's the question ... now ... GO! It wasn't really a question though, more of a statement. I should spend a few hours contemplating that... oh, and just like that the problem is being solved.
This is a journal, so forgive me for the randomness. Unlike my Myspace ... I just don't hear that tone of voice in my head that I like to write in. Sorry for no cohesive commentary on being chronically single, or the nature of sin in the city. Of course ... this is a journal, so I just apologized to myself.
I'm pretty sure no one reads these posts, so I'm free to say whatever I want and hear my own voice echo back to me. With Myspace I write for an audience. I like that - writing to be read. Of course my employer banned myspace from all of their work stations. You'd think they wanted us to do work or something.
I bought an iPod today off my friend the ArchBishop, and I'm currently listening to the music he left behind. I am in his pod. MP3 players are so popular the streets have grown nearly silent as conversations with passersby are sacrificed, replaced by the soundtracks of our lives. The individual reasserting self, locked in to an iDevice. Escapism walks the street, rides the bus, stands on the train next to the doors and never do we enter each other's existance.
I guess I've sold myself to the soundtrack. AWESOME!
I am content. Weird. I'm not sure when I was last just content.

Tags: dumb, journal, music, single, work
Current Location: Work
Current Mood: content
Current Music: Someone else's

A whole lot has been going on in my life lately, unfortunately none of it is going on right now. The senior programmer in our department will be retiring in one week, and I will be taking over his position, as well as his desk. Sometime between now and then I am supposed to come up with goals to meet in the coming months. I'm also supposed to be training someone to take my position. I am doing neither. The young lady that is here from the temp agency to train is cruising the net. The items I gave her to work on shoved aside on her desk. She doesn't understand what to do, and rather than ask she is shopping online. Good for her. Truth be told my tasks could be split between two competent people already on staff, but this is a corporation and that isn't the way that corporations think.

I may have found a place to live. I set myself an arbitrary move-out date of September 1st from the apartment I live in now. After learning that the move out date on the lease is September 30, I chose September 1st to give the persons on the lease a chance to paint and restore the apartment with some hope of getting their deposit back. I will not be the last person out the door. I will not be responsible for the removal of generations of junk. I may be moving in with some friends not too far from where I live now. It will be a whole new experience, and I look forward to it! Of course it is all up in the air right at this moment, but it's good to have direction and deadlines and I know that I will be out of my place September 1st.

I joined a new guild. It's small, but I like the people. They are definately good players, and that makes all the difference in the world when you're in a group with people. My choice to be a professional healer makes me reliant on good groups, and these people are a pleasure to run with. Of course ... everything bad is "so gay" to these people. It doesn't bother me ... I think it would actually bother me more if they tried to change what they would say because I am gay. They aren't going to offend me, but at the same I almost feel like I'm in a digital closet all over again. They seem to be willing to invest in me, running me through to help me get some items thus far and even discussing putting the money together to get me a flying mount so that I can soar across the skies and raid Karazan with them. If they would do that ... I would so commit to them. It's hard to make new friends though, even in the World of Warcraft.

I shouldn't spend so much time at my computer playing WoW, but ... I'm still at a loss for what to do with myself in this city. I have some great friends, but rarely get to see them. I live in a great city, but don't know my way around it. This is the place to be gay, to be young, to have my fun and sow my seeds and all of that jazz, but I just don't know where to start. I am daunted, and from daunted to depressed, and from depressed to disassociated, and from disassociated ot distracted with the World of Warcraft. Of course there is a lot to be said for my romance with the game, after all it's cheaper than booze, cheaper than going out, and in WoW I know my role, know my function, I can see my usefulness and step up to it. I'm a good healer, a good gamer, and in the World of Warcraft that makes me valuable and sought-after. In the real world, I'm just another lost and confused 20-something without a plan, without direction, and without a door (my room is a converted living room - no privacy, I have a quilt stretched over half a living room. Is there any wonder I choose to spend so much of my time escaping?

It's hard to recall what I wanted to say.

Tags: bored, work, world of warcraft
Current Mood: blah

People can be counted on to be unreliable. I know that the sentence negates itself, but so do people. I spent about two hours on the phone with one of my dearest friends last night. I laughed, and it turns out that I really needed to laugh. It is the familiarity, the history, the values and common experiences that we share that bind us to one another in friendship, and it was exactly these things that I have been missing in my life. Feeling so alien in this city, it was a powerful thing to be reconnected.
What I don't want is for anyone to walk away from reading this and think that I am lonely. I don't want anyone's pity. I don't need it, I don't want it, and I don't deserve it. That being said, I will confess that making friends in Chicago has not been the experience I envisioned it. I guess that's the problem right there though, the expectancy.
Expect nothing and never be disappointed.
That sounds like a really negative way to look at things, but I think perhaps it is the most positive mindset one can hold. I mean, here I sit, disappointed in my friends whom I need to help me out. I expected that someone would come to my rescue and I am now finding myself disappointed. Did I ask for help? No, but I didn't want to be a burden. No, I was afraid someone might have to say no. I was afraid of the awkwardness, the "uhs" and "ohs", the shifty vision and the excuses. I was afraid of driving my friends away by asking for that which I would freely give of myself. Since if asked and the answer was no, I was going to have to go it alone, and I didn't want anyone burdened with the idea that they weren't there for me.
I had expectations. 
Expect nothing, and always be surprised.
Slowly, I am making friends, building those bridges, connecting in a meaningful fashion with people I can love and trust. In the mean time, my friend Curly (whom I've known since High School) has been a wonderful and uplifting influence. I really admire her for what she has accomplished in establishing herself a social niche here in Chicago. Her very southern ability to put her best face forward, even under extreme stress - to present herself at her best.
What I have had the most trouble finding, are people that share my values, and I wonder aloud if perhaps my values need an overhaul.
My values, like everything else, were taught to me. Most significantly I can thank my Mother and my maternal Grandmother for passing down these values to me. I certainly am glad to have been raised by such fine, upstanding, and silently-strong women. I have always wanted to be a good person, it isn't just about going to heaven (though ... I would consider that a bonus) I just always wanted to be respected and loved the way that my parents were respected and loved - something that I could never attain in my home town, where being gay meant I deserved absolutely no respect, and no love. I am glad for the values and traditions I have been handed. Unfortunately, in terms of the current, I am a gay man with the values of a Southern Baptist woman, living in Chicago. The conflicts are wide ranging, some more obvious than others.
Being a Southerner means having a big back yard in which to bury all that unneeded emotional baggage. Oh, and making sure that the landscaping always covers over the real story. You might think that unhealthy, but I think pop-psychology has lied to you, lied to all of us about how we should feel, or more specifically how we ought to feel what we feel.
I'll give you an example: For your birthday, I bake you a chocolate cake - your favorite. I bring it to you, and you thank me ... but don't touch the cake. You don't even try it?! "No no, it looks and smells delicious!" you assure me, "But I'm on a diet." Even after reassuring you that you are beautiful enough already, that you shouldn't starve yourself, that it's your birthday and nothing you eat on your birthday counts ... you still won't eat the cake I made for you.
This is where emotions get in the way. My feelings are hurt.
The pop-psychologist would say that I should express my heart-break for the sake of open communication, perhaps even suggesting I use the assertive paragraph: "I feel hurt and belittled when you don't even try the cake I baked you. Please eat some of it." But I think that is just plain horse shit. My upbringing has taught me that the polite thing to do in such a situation, is to allow you to do what you want to do with the cake I made you - it was a gift after all. My upset (in this story) was brought on by my own expectations that you would eat the cake. "I feel disappointed when I expect things to go the way I expect them to go. I would prefer if I didn't have expectations to be unfulfilled."
There I have established a pretty undeniably reliable system by which to keep everyone emotionally satisfied without the clutter of criticism or the unnecessary struggle of individual needs. Unfortunately, it all falls apart in the day to day. When we make plans, and you break them. When you suggest we do something together, then back out - or worse, bail out and leave me to go it alone. When you are fickle, I am hurting inside, I am devoured by the insecurity and uncertainty, I resent you for hurting me and feel the need to avoid you and retreat inside my own security, my own consciousness. I feel as though the walls between us torn down over time as we grew together need to be reconstructed, brick by brick, so that you don't disappoint me again.
Disappointment is the product of an expectation.
Expect nothing, and never be disappointed.
Perhaps that statement deserves amending. I think that to expect nothing may be simply the easiest way, not the right way. Our friends perhaps more than our family or our upbringing help us to define ourselves, and in our desire to be the best that we can be we want only the same for our friends, we want only the same from our friends. We soon realize that our friends aren't ourselves (duh) and have different ideals, dreams, desires, and expect something different from us, behave toward us differently than we do toward them. Our friends are individuals with their own personalities, and other friend and family ties. Friendship is that struggle within ourselves to adapt our expectations to the actual, to know what to expect from one another, to learn how to respect one another.
I have a feeling that my next example is going to get me in an ass-load of trouble, but thinking about all of this my best friend comes to mind. She turns me down flat all the time, even avoids me sometimes. That's okay though, sometimes I avoid her too. I love the girl to death and beyond, but I also know that if I ask her a favor - chances are she's not going to want to do it. I respect that. I expect that she will probably say no. Of course, in return I know that she won't say she will do something only to cancel at the last minute. I value that.
Expect nothing, always be surprised.
So ... since I was talking about her and putting the "no" in her mouth for her, I decided to call my best friend and ask. She said yes, glad-fully so even. Once again I was a victim of my own expectations, feeling silly for going through so much turmoil just to find a ride to the store – seriously, shopping sucks when you have to carry your bags on the train or bus.
This is the beast that is the back yard: A place for us to sneak out to and revisit and re-hash all the conversations and disappointments. Our own private emotional grave yards where our disappointments never rest in peace, but roll over and over in their graves calling for us to revisit them and find some meaning, some error in our selves or our judgments. Someone must be blamed, we think, so we blame ourselves, deriding our selves and constructing monsters in the Frankenstein style from the corpses of moments of disappointment and regret.
Expect the best, and accept nothing less. No, that one seems like too much work and bound to be full of disappointment.
Expect the worst, and be surprised when something actually goes the way it should. No … that’s too negative, sets you up for all sorts of self-fulfilling prophesies of doom and gloom.
Expect to fight for what you want … and be thankful for what you are given.

Tags: friendship, grocery shopping, philosophy
Current Location: Bored at Work
Current Mood: contemplative

As much as I hate to admit it, the distance between us is vast, as vast and broad as consciousness itself.
I've been caught up lately in what can only be called ... frustration.
It's Summer. Summer in the City isn't like Summer in the Mountains. I see the sun come out and I want to go out and join with all of creation to celebrate. I just don't know how.
Back in Boone, Summer meant hiking. I would go out to Simms Creek, or down to Hebron, or Tripplette, or Goshen, or Thunder Hill, or to my parents' house and spend the day communing with the natural. Hiking, climbing, exploring, and most importantly basking in the sun.
Here, in Chicago I languish. From my "room" I look across the square at the children playing in the park, and I'm drawn to go out there, sit under a tree and read. But no one is sitting under the trees reading, because the trees have all been marked over and over again by the spray of neighborhood dogs. I begin to lose hope.
I came here to find my great adventure.
I cut away the cable anchoring me to my past and sailed at full mast into the eye of the storm. I never expected to see this side of it. The other side, the eye - I don't care, I just want to be glad for the calm, but I can find no rest, no recreation.
A girl I work with went downstairs to pick up her lunch and asked me to come with her. There in an air conditioned glass box I asked her - what do people do here during the Summer. She suggested the museum, or the shopping, or ... I cut her off there. I asked what people do if they want to enjoy the sun. She blinked a few times before explaining that is what people use their vacations for. Going on to suggest that perhaps I should take the metra out to a nature preserve, or go out to the lake and enjoy the beach - insisting that if I keep a watch out for needles and broken glass I should be just fine.
I took for granted all those things North Carolina gave to me because my focus was on what I was missing out on. I was miserable because I didn't fit in. I was the odd 'mo out.
I still am.
In North Carolina I grew accustomed to being fundamentally separated from my peers. 
In Chicago, I have yet to find my place in the fray, and remain with a sincere longing to connect.
I know there's nothing for it. These things come with time. I just don't want to miss out. I want to revel in the sunlight while there's still time.
I'm starting to sound like my best friend. She's been miserable since she moved up here.
You know what though ... positive attracts positive, and from the negative to the positive.
I like living in Chicago, and once I find my place, my group of friends, my social support network, my community - I am going to be so happy living here.
I am reminded that we are known by the company that we keep, and glad that I have such an awesome opportunity to choose my new friends wisely. One of my strengths is conversation, and I look forward to many new conversations with many new and wonderful faces.
And ... ... I've never been one to let a dog's territorial markings worry me one bit. I intend to sit beneath a tree and read in my neighborhood park.

Tags: chicago, summer
Current Location: Work
Current Mood: depressed