In Too Deep

Whatever the moments in which I remember how beautiful life is are the same moments in which I feel most tragic. That a little thing can be so significant means that in its ability to bring joy is also the ability to confer great pain. Really, rocks and dirt and trees are not little things at all, and who am I, a little thing, to determine anything?

Today, a cat laid on me and I felt its heart and its breath and its purring as validation for the care I had given him. It made me cry. It happened not once, but twice, and I cried. Maybe three times. Thirty is coming fast and I'm not supposed to feel so openly, but I find myself feeling more -- and feeling quicker.

To be moved by the world is an amazing thing, but it's tumultuous. I understand suicide so much more now because life is so unsettled. In the ellipses between childhood and adulthood you don't know who you are or maybe you do, but you don't trust it. You don't trust yourself and you don't trust the ground under your feet. You don't trust that it's OK to be who you are and you are tired of trusting others for direction.

When Christie told me she didn't think I would be married by 35, I think she saw this in me. Not split personalities, but the split in my life.

I would never ever even own a cat in a state like this. To be depended on is the best thing in the world, but I don't have enough ownership over my own life as it is. Whether or not I overeat or breathe steadily or play my music has everything to do with someone I don't care about. I am literally ruled by a nasty, pathetic roommate who takes his unhappiness out on me in unpleasant and passive aggressive ways. I allow him to make me unhappy, and I don't even interact with him. I am still living the same old ways, dividing people into tyrants and allies; dividing myself into the sycophant or the advocate, but only allowing others to make the call.

Yes, it is time to announce that Eddie has nothing to do with me. I have to get out of there. Like a parent who stays in a failing marriage because of the children, I have played martyr long past the opint of good. My life and health are damaged, and I am calling "trapped", but I only need to be saved from myself. Eddie is not a part of my life. The fact that I'm mentioning him at all grosses me out. He grosses me out. That apartment grosses me out.

I want out.

I don't want to write about life details anymore. Unemployment and job searches, freelance and money. In reality, I don't give a damn about the problems I help society plague me with. I want to love and have fun and bring in money many different ways, but I don't care about the things my parents care about. I want love, dammit. I deserve to enjoy my life. I am going to be thirty, and I earned it. All the little steps I'm taking took little steps to get to, and all those little steps are exhausting. You don't always go up those steps, you sometimes turn around and go back down before heading onward. Life is amazingly hard, and then you feel so stupid because it's so easy to just do without thinking like you did when you were a kid. Getting hurt isn't that bad, is it? Then why do I fear it so much?

I need to let go of the past. I need to smile at what's coming. Not in 10 years, but tomorrow. I've got incredible friends here who represent everything I ever wanted. I love them so much and I gotta pull myself up by my bootstraps and at least make it through my birthday songs for them. I owe them a moment when they don't have to be there fo rme. I owe them what I can give them.