My Guru

My guru, you fill me with a light like none other. You make me see all that is good and beautiful and right in the world, because you shine your own light upon it, making it impossible to be missed. When my own clouds of distraction darken my life and block out your rays, they pour down their sorrows and I am soaked with pools of doubt, loneliness, and despair until they become so heavy I start to drown. At that moment, you burst forth like the sun to part the clouds, dry up all the rain, and help this itsy-bitsy spider come up the spout again

And as if any of that weren't enough, you dispell darkness through me. You increase my desire to share the light and warmth and love with the other people in whom I see it so that it can shine brighter and burn hotter and spread farther and farther, leading us into peace and love and beauty for all eternity. I see this light in you, and it burns me to my soul like none other has reached me, my guru.

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p.s. Plus, it's really hard for me to accept that I think those things of someone I still love nevertheless, that I have feelings like that about someone I thought I cared about, and that maybe the only things I really loved about that person were the standards and expectations I didn't even realize I had until they were not fufilled. And then I get even more disappointed in myself.

Elizabeth

I received an unpleasant surprise the other day when looking through the Morris newspaper: a woman I barely knew, and only through an unpleasant association, died recently. I only knew that her name was Elizabeth and that she had problems that made her act and speak like a child, but her death really disturbs me. I mean, there I was at work, flipping through the paper, and I saw her face staring at me from the obituary page and a long blurb about her. She was only 31. Might as well admit that I had several encounters with her when I was in the hospital...actually, she was the one I gave all my food to while I was there. It's just really weird to think she's dead, to think that she's not too terribly much older than I am, and that we had to be in the same place. I guess it's weird because I worry so much I'll turn into her. Here I am, facing adulthood, and pretty much terrified. I'm excited to go out in the world for good but it's hard knowing I will never have a home other than one I make for myself and that it's up to me to create a family and I have to face all sorts of things I don't want to and give up relationships (in a way) that I've created and strenghtened in the last couple of years...and what if I snap? I'm already so on-the-edge as it is, so what if something happens that I can't handle and I retreat back into the "safety" of my childhood, mentally? But then, my childhood really wasn't very safe, wow, but then, isn't that the case with most people who return to it? Take all the people with multiple personality disorder and related "I'm a child" adults: isn't that what happens? Isn't it due to childhood trauma and negative experiences? But as Mom said, I'm not like her. She was on a different plane. But like I told Mom, I'm not one of THEM and I'm not one of YOU. I guess I'll be living in a borderline world forever, never able to cross over completely to either side, and sometimes it would be such a relief to be completely crazy so I could die off somehow like Elizabeth ("of natural causes"...I'm SURE) at the end of my youth, but I'm not there and I really don't want to be. I don't want to be normal, either, because I'm sure this is a gift, somehow, and I'm sure that somehow it's making me a genius, although in what, I couldn't say. Perhaps my biggest fear is that I'll end up like her, a child on the inside and a woman on the exterior, with no one to love me either way. Really. No one visited her the entire time I was there, no one called, did no one love her? Just because we may not be able to relate to people like that does not mean they don't need our love; on the contrary, they probably need it the most. I don't know what would have happened to me if I hadn't had visitors and phone calls every day. Hell, one day there was a blizzard and so Mom wasn't able to make it and I thought, surely, that the end of the world was here. And this was one afternoon. Funny how spending four hours with someone who loves you makes life worth living, makes you fight because you know all the pain and struggle is worth it to someone. I've stepped inside that world of giving up and waiting for or inviting death, and I am so lucky that people have grabbed me and pulled me out into their arms. And it's so scary to think that every day, someone I love may be in that world and I just don't know it...

Galloping Consumption

According to Webster's: peak·ed adj. Having a sickly appearance: You're looking a little peaked today. My coworker said exactly that, except she modified it with the adverb "still." Yeah, well you'd be looking peaked, too, if you were coughing up blood all day. Corina thinks I have TB, but then, I think Corina has been watching too much Moulin Rouge, but then, haven't we all?

Flower Girl

I just got flowers delievered to me! It was such a shock, such a surprise, and so delightful that I'm unable to carry on normally. I think I want to make this my "normal" state of existance, and if I think about it, this probably already is. Here's a fun picture of me playing dress-up. I look kind of angry but it's all sensuality, baby. I don't think I'm going to try out for Vagina Monologues this year. I've done it the last two years, but if we get to perform ahead of time I don't think I'll have it in me to do two performances in one night, especially since I'd probably do a serious one this year, having already done some pretty out-there, funny ones. Urban Funk Spectacular tonight! I just want to write and write and I feel like nothing I have to say is important, and maybe I don't have anything to say, and certain substances keep calling me and calling me and it's so hard to shut my ears to what seems to be an advertisement for wisdom and deeper living. Fuck drugs. Fuck all drugs. Fuck them forever, and not in a good way. Then again, can a fuck really be bad without it being rape? Different context, I suppose.