I'm still happy when he holds me and looks down and plants a kiss on my forehead. I'm still excited when he calls. I still wait up every night for that call. I still smile when I think about the last time we had sex and I still smirk when I think about the first time. I still feel elated when rubbing my cheek against his. I am still in love.

And my Nora, my Nora has been so present in my life lately. I am ecstatic to have been spending as much time with her as I have been. Rachel too. The three of us. I have extolled our little group's virtues countless times and for the sake of time ... Nora's making dinner now... I'll restrain myself.

I am grateful to have loves in my life which transcend oceans wires and waves.

It's become ridiculous; the amount of crying I do. The amount of alcohol I drink and food I consume.
I could stand to lose five pounds. I could stand to shut my mouth. I could use a good slap in the face when it comes to my health and my state of mind.

Passing by people who are going to India, I don't ignore them anymore. I talked to Infinite today then to Cindy. I said hello to Cianni. I already think of them as family because I have to.


D spent the night and it feels so good to lay next to him and put my face on his warm skin. I am very happy/lucky/grateful that he is in my life... one of the only people keeping me going. It's been so so so long since I've been so so so grateful.
For both of our sanity's sake ... I'm going to try to cry less and use some other outlet .. or just breathing.. breathing works. I think I cry around him the most because I am most comfortable around him. Every time I cry, fart, eat with him.. I take notice of how comfortable I feel while I'm doing it. With or without knowing it, he's given me a safe place ... the knowledge that I can feel safe.

Two finals today. One paper to write.

Lauren is snoring very loudly. I woke up in a cold sweat because of the heat and open window. Her snoring is like a rattling heater. Only a few more days and I won't have to hear it ever again. Unfortunately, this doesn't make her snoring endearing or bearable. Her snoring is on the list of things I won't miss in India. That list is very short.

I've been crying all weekend. Sometimes it's just emotions that swell up inside of me and right before I cry, the feeling is akin to a cup brimming over with intense emotions. I smell and I feel swollen.

I haven't showered since Thursday or Friday... I've been eating like a woman who is stressed or freaking out .. oh, imagine.

I am a drinker of wine, an addict to love, a spirit of earth, a conductor of electric nights.
I could not love you more, i could not feel you more intensely than I do now, with your eyes open, bearing into mine,. as you say "Hi, Hello, How are you".. your hand pressed against the side of my face; make me feel warm .. eyeballs rolling into the backs of head, necks snapping back, hips moving methodically..

I feel you now... I can hear you always.. I see your face coming closer to mine and I arch my back a little and tilt my little face to yours so that they might meet in the middle.

My brain is swollen, it feels, and the corners of my mouth turned upwards. tonight i got to look at you from across the room and I loved you as if I had just seen you. My eyes worked their way down and around your body.. studying your form and posture and they liked what they saw.
Pleased, I walked over to you and took liberties that I would not have taken if I did not know you. Sit on your lap, touch your cheeks .. I am there, on top of you, next to you, breathing softly into your ear as I talk to you... and we smile and we laugh as no other makes us laugh.

And here you lie.. in my bed ... in my warm bed made warm by our bodies laying in it ... I can turn around and look at your form, your lines of curves and bends of bones. .. beautiful. Your are beautiful and worth all of my attention and every second I devote my thoughts to you. How can I say "I love you" any more clearly?

Tomorrow, greasy chinese food and confidences traded back and forth over hazelnut with room for soy milk and french press. tomorrow, wonderful like all the rest. I have gotten accustomed to spending my days with you and with so many without you up ahead of me, I am scared but hopeful. I am sad, but content knowing that there is nothing that could ever make your presence in my life disappear, nothing that could make you not a part of my life, no one who could be what you are to me, and nobody who could hold such promise as you... no soul out there whose presence makes my body swell with ardent love... with the desire to be close to you.

I say this now with the thought of India ever present on my mind. I say this knowing that you will understand .. that you will feel the understanding of my emotions. That you will have to accept how i see you... as a giving, beautiful, calming, warm man whom I am fortunate to know and glad to care for.

Completely honest.

Racism. Laura says everyone is racist. I'm racist. Or at least, I know I feel uncomfortable around people of different backgrounds than my own. And I'm going to a country where I am the minority and I'm going to have to get over myself.
Wait.. racism .. or just uncomfortableness? I always feel like "big stupid white girl". Maybe that's from the highschool I went to, where "fuck stupid white bitches" was written on bathroom stalls and I felt like an outsider.

I'm scared. I'm nervous I'm going to talk to people like they're idiots. I'm worried that my feelings of inadequacy will translate as my being a snob and everything those kids at Manchester thought I could be .. b/c of my race or lack thereof.

It's less than a month away and I haven't started packing yet. Slight denial, definite laziness.
I started crying the other night while laying next to Demetrius because I was "preemptively missing" him, but more so because I don't know what to get him for Christmas. I hate having to give people things .. people who I love so much, because when I get started, I realize how, in that case, I'd have to keep buying and buying ... There aren't enough scarves, radios, or knitting needles and hankies in the world for that boy ..

Until then.. life as usual. Mom talking about her jobs, my cousins, or hearing her laugh have all taken on a different meaning.

there are oceans and waves and wires between and you called to say you're gettin older



sometimes planes they smash up in the sky

sometimes lonely hearts they just get lonelier




Today. good day. Found two Rilo Kiley cds hanging out on my computer. Your favorite band is your favorite band because listening is therapeutic.

How troublesome to be thinking about the same thing all the time. How annoying.

Laura and I talked yesterday about my fears, her travelling experiences, and what it's like to leave your home country and the sense of displacement you feel when you come back. When she left Peru six years ago she went to all of her favorite places and said good bye to them because she knew she'd be coming back a different person. You have to mourn before you leave because if you don't, once you get where you're going ... you'll miss home all the more.

Every interaction seems a little more defined; every harsh word cuts deeper than it should; every hug a little warmer.

Yesterday I didn't want to feel this way and now I've accepted this has to happen. I have to get ready for leaving in my own way.

We talked about it. I mean, we really talked about it. Not just what we would do, but what the "doing" means.
And it comes down to .. taking it day by day and knowing that I am not ready to be without him. And it's not a choice of ready .. because that makes it sounds as if I am preparing to be ready at some point, but .. it's a matter of choice. I love him and looking at him lets me know this...

I know what I am not .. Not ready to leave. It's more important, though, to challenge my comfort than to stay comfortable.

Taylor came to the potluck tonight and I'm ecstatic she did. We've agreed to be roommates in India. Shit ... right now I'm excited to go .. five minutes ago I would have sold a kidney to get out of this whole thing...

Everything seems out of control. Eating, leaving, love, emotions, ....
D was talking about work tonight and I was happy to listen because it was someone else's stuff and not my own.
We talked about me visiting him in Nicaragua after India ... pipe dream?

If Fall could just last a little longer. If time didn't go by so fast, but seem so plentiful when you're planning ahead. In September, January was an eternity away .. and now it's just a month between me and a plane.

I wish I was tired right now. I wish that all of the impulses to not eat and destroy myself weren't plaguing me everyday. But I'm not giving in at least. It's just some weird defense mechanism against things I can't handle. I feel like I can't handle it right now.

"It" being the intensity of situations and aching pains

when you get woken up by knocking on a window and fall back to sleep with a body next to you...

It's the warmth that I'm left with every time we hug goodbye. The little smile he makes when we wake up together and say good morning. The surge of love that sweeps over me when I lose myself in his embrace.
It's those things... that are responsible for my smile this morning.

Tonight I'm going contra dancing. Tonight I will have to let my body move with a little more ease and succumb to the ebb and flow of rhythm and music. I will not have a nervous episode. I will have fun. I will be with someone I love.

I have every intention of buying a new outfit for tonight. Why? Because I am nervous and new things, while exciting and always important, scare the hell out of me. That's why I do them. If something makes my stomach seize up just a little bit and if I find myself biting my lip...that means I have to do it. There's a line, of course, but contra dancing does not cross it.
But spending is something I have to get a hold on. Last night I went to Shoprite after work and spent $25.05 in ten minutes. Fruit is good, but so perishable; almost making heavily preserved boxed goods attractive. So, strawberries in my cereal and a grapefruit in my backpack today.

And food. Something else to be controlled more, or at least my intake of it. Every day I start over, and it seems as if every night I'm planning how I will start over the next day. It's a horrible way to go to sleep and a scary way to wake up. Ten years. It makes me angry, but at who? Myself, there's only me.

I am almost done with D's scarf. I don't want to be done with it because knitting his scarf lets me think about him and be happy that I'm making something for him. I'll be done with it by Sunday, definitely and I'll get to give it to him either before or after potluck. All that has to be done is the embroidering of his initials (very small, hopefully) on the end of it.

creating something, tangible or not, ... beautiful stuff.