Don't stand around your haunted home
Those demons won't leave you alone
Don't forget me when you grow old
Remember, Remember ......

--liam finn

So I've been told that I've changed a lot this year. In some ways I would agree. I've been through alot of change this year and I am of the opinion that experience and how you choose to interpret it, has an influence on you. To be sure I probably have upset some people who care about me, friends that I've made who have grown to love me and whom I have grown to love as well. I imagine that for them, I've changed quite a lot from the person I was when I was with joe. I know that during the time he and I were together I changed from the person I was in highschool to the person I was for most of college, and all the people I was in between as well.

It must be hard to recognize in me the same girl I used to be. But I am not without similarities to that girl. She is still there in the occassional tone of my voice, in the playful faces I make, in the way I rub my forehead as I read. There are significant traces of that girl, she is not gone. She is just learning how to live life differently, to face the challenges that frighten her and intimidate her and how to look at herself reassuringly when others cannot. I have been told that I have hardened myself, grown selfish and thoughtless where the feelings of others are concerned. I suppose I have hardened and perhaps been too selfish at times. But my world changed last christmas. It was a change that separated me from a part of myself and reunited me with another part of myself.

There are people who will tell you that I'm in trouble. They will tell you that they think I am lost and that I am without direction while at the same time telling you that I am stronger than they are, since I was able to walk away from something that meant so much and to get involved in other relationships without too much hesitation. They will tell you that they rescind their friendship because they cannot stand to watch me ruining myself, lowering my standards, completely debasing myself and living a life where love means little compared with the fear of being alone.

I will tell you that there are mornings when I wake up and hesitate to get out of bed because I have not found a job, and worry that I'll run out of money and run out of strength and courage and take some job that I hate just so I don't feel like a loser. I will tell you that there are days when I wish I was back in school, with only those cares and worries. But I will also tell you that most days I see my life as one filled with beauty and opportunity. I see the sky, and I see myself and I think of the limitlessness of potential and I see much more than a woman who doesnt have a job, but instead a person who has found herself in one of life's more uncomfortable situations. I recognize that the fear I faced at the end of the year was more of the unknown than of not getting what I wanted. Because ultimately what we all want is certainty, purpose, a place to go every morning and a place to sit every evening and collect ourselves and feel like we're worth something. My goal and my desire is still to go to graduate school, I want to be a literature professor more than anything else. And I don't see this as a set back, but as a lesson in being flexible. The earlier I meet with this reality, stumble over it, almost ALMOST break my neck and get up and deal with it- the better I'll be the next time around.

So the trick is not to hide, although there are many times when I think I should just go live in a hole in the center of a mountain and dream my days away-- but instead to live. I will live, and I will do it to the best of my seemingly limited ability.

Those who care for me, I just ask that you be there for me. Because life without you will just not be the same.