If you live you will learn.

It occurred to me today that I haven't written in a while. I keep thinking about writing but then I realize I've got nothing particularly interesting to say that day, so I don't. Then, sometimes, something interesting will hit me and I'll think about it so much that I just begin to assume I've already written it. That happens to me with conversations with people, too. I hardly see my best friend anymore (just because of busy schedules), and I'll think of all these things that I need to tell her when I see her next... and then when I DO see her, I assume I've already told her, so I don't. I've got all these dozens of conversations going on in my head - all these balls up in the air - and if I were to discard one of them, I'd probably drop them all.

Every once in a while I get panicky about what I'm going to do with myself one day. This year has been a race - head down, arms pumping, just concentrating on getting over the next hurdle. If I look up, it'd be like the balls and conversations I just referred to - I'd be sure to trip over the hurdle and go headlong into the dirt. I know it can't keep going like that, though. I suppose I should learn to multitask. I need to think about college, and careers, and all that stuff that comes with growing up... but when I start to think about it all, I get worried and frustrated that it won't work out, so I stop. Which is not the best way to deal with problems.

I'd only admit this if I was in an honest enough mood (which, I suppose, I am right now) : Something happened to me over the autumn and winter of this past year. I think I kept all the things that were frustrating me and making me sad locked up inside of me, until it all just kind of seeped through the lock and went into my bloodstream and spread. Sometimes parts of me feel deadened. I was trying to fight it off for so long that I just got tired; situations at home, situations with friends, and the situation with my grandpa, all just settled in on top of me and I haven't felt the same since.

I've become a dependent person, and I've always given such praise to independence. I feel like a stranger when I'm alone or at school - like I've become a person that I've never met and don't particularly like, with taste very different from my own and mood swings that I don't know how to handle. It's not that I'm bipolar or anything - I don't lash out at people. In fact I think it's the absence of lashing-out that has done this to me. But when I'm around my siblings or my best friend, THEN I become happy and funny and THEN I actually like myself. I hate that my happiness depends on other people. It makes it so miserable when they're not around. For example, last week Kate was home for her Easter break, and this week Jon was home. For two weeks, I actually felt like I knew who I was. And then yesterday when my brother drove off in his loud little yellow car, I lost myself all over again. I don't mind leaving, but I hate being left. Selfish as that sounds.

My mom goes on these yearly women's retreats and when I was little I used to get sick and cry every time she left. Then one year, she gave me this beautiful little candle and told me to light it whenever I missed her. I still remember sitting on my bedroom floor at night, watching the flame. It's been a longtime since I was that physically bothered by somebody going on a trip, but I still light the candle sometimes, in this bizarre sort of hope that it will make everything better like it used to. I don't know when problems get bigger than the power of something like a candle, but they do. I wish there was some simple solution to these problems - I wish there was some small object that my mom could give me and tell me that if I did such-and-such, then everything would be alright. But somewhere along the way, I guess life's problems found a way to out-fox life's candles.