from an email i wrote to a newish friend

I remember the insignificantly significant. I remember the exact first words Josh Nitschke and I exchanged ("Is that the room? They all look alike!"), what I was wearing when I met Jon (a large lampshade hat, which i was really trying to make work that day, but had come to realize in the hour beforehand that it was not to be, something that his expression told me instantly. thanks, could have saved me alot of trouble). I remember my friend's friends names better than I do my classmates, I connect songs to every event and personage in my life, I collect the ticks and inflections of other people. I think it's because I am saving them up to use someday, maybe just in writing, maybe not. Sometimes I feel like JSF, a collector. Now that I have romanticised myself, I will say that I am also brazen and notorious for sharing things that folk honestly don't care about or don't feel is appropriate unless under influence of alcohol. Though I have never been drunk I would assume that were I to be, I would be the best friend that the main character would not want around because I would tell so-and-so that so-and-so likes him, and so on.

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Forgive this, but my cat has nine lives (i do not tire of finding that amusing): what sort of gesture did you choose to represent yourself? I hate those kinds of things. Not expression, but having to encapsulate yourself, say something about yourself. It seems like on the one hand if you knew yourself you wouldn't be able to summarize at all because it's too great, then again if you knew yourself utterly you would know the one word, the one gesture that could be you, tastes and preferences aside and be damned with only the core remaining. And if you knew yourself you'd be okay with that. Whereas I, though I like to think I know myself so much better than other people, feel like I have to demonstrate my layers or duality or so many elements of my identity (as I would like it to be) constantly. In summary, those kinds of things give me too much personal anxiety-- as if by saying the word or making the motion I am sentencing myself to be that, rather than letting that speak for me. Ah well.

in the words of those great poets the backstreet boys..

oh my god we're back again.

right now is not the time to be writing about my plans for the new year as I sit here, petrified about starting school again. Well, school's the exciting part. Being away from what I consider my home- I guess, who I consider my home- what IS home, anyway, and do I really feel secure anywhere?-actually I don't think I do, but that's beside the point- I am away from people I love, entirely tucked away, and more than I feel alone I feel the intense dread, this immense, paralyzing FEAR of loneliness that right now makes me shake, literally. I think in alot of ways i'm more independent than anyone. but then there's this. this makes me angry, too. i don't want to be dependent on having someone's "uh huh" mean more than anyone else's. i don't want to crave the sound of someone's laugh over the general noise of the world. i don't want someone else's house to feel more like a home to me than anywhere i've ever been. no one needs that kind of dependence, it's not for me or for anyone else. it's sloppy and ridiculous and pressured, it does not appeal to what little pride i have left amongst those who know me well. but right now the thought of soldiering through a day, a single day without the remote possibility of seeing someone i love makes me shake. oh, i am a nomad, but without the heart of a traveler. i have the soul of a settler, but there's no hovel in sight. where is my home? why does my life simply seem ill-fitted for who i am? do we all feel so empty without love?

i know this year is going to be different. it's going to be better, so much better. but i hate being afraid.