12/12/04

My writing muscles have withered and gone, but I’m totally not studying for my Russian final (ten hours away) or reading Uncle Tom’s Cabin (absolutely frustrating in its unsubtlety), so I might as well try to get this out.

Here’s something I’ve realized lately that I think is pretty amazing: I am not lonely. It might not seem like much until you figure that I probably went a good ten years without being able to say that. I live with my best friends, and the friends I don’t live with aren’t numerous, but they are wonderful. I am surrounded by people whom I care about and–this is the big one–who I know care about me. I have no shortage of people who love me, and I realize that I am extremely, extremely fortunate for that.

The only reason I can get away with admitting this is that I’m wacky and hormonal and I’ve been wanting to love everyone and cry all night. And that I’m going to Europe next semester and I won’t know anyone, and I’m afraid more than anything that I’ll have to go back to being lonely now that I know what it’s like not to be. This year has been better than most others.

It’s also too bad that I’ve just recently started to feel comfortable and useful and even at times indispensable to my place of internship, and I’ve just started to connect to some of the kids (Kayelani gave me a hug the other day; Skyeblu questioned me with concern about my plans for the future), and I’ve just started to feel like my coworkers actually want me around (George said he would buy me a beer; Charlie said “well, fuck” tonight when I told him I had to go home and study for finals instead of going to a party with people involved in our production; I’m no longer afraid of Gus), and I’m leaving after next week.

I called my baby cousins and one of them said, “Hi, Daddy!” which is apparently a term of esteem now. My family is postponing Hanukkah for me. Jones is leaving on Wednesday. Her uncle died in Afghanistan a couple of weeks ago and there was something so wrong with me that even as I tried to comfort her I had trouble summoning empathy. Over Thanksgiving my sister asked me what I thought happened when you die, and I said the technical words for what think, and I said the “but really I don’t think that’s such a bad thing” words that go along with them, but I didn’t feel any of it at all. I saw half a rat today. This is the most emotion I’ve expressed in a month. I am an adult now and we don’t really do that sort of thing, but I’ve been hanging out with actors for a week, and you know how they can be. Earlier I was thinking not so much about mortality and more about how much I like my hair this way. I blame my uterus. I just remembered I kind of hate December.

Also, yes, that is her real name.