I have been doing a lot of cleaning and going-through. I have had these boxes of letters from people, printed-out AIM conversations and emails from when I was, oh, 15, all the way up to 19 or 20. I found many notes and letters (and mixtapes and CDs!) from several of you LiveJournal friends, and did you even realize how long we have known each other? Eons, oceans of time, forevers!

The thing that's really on my mind is looking at the things I wrote 10 (or even 5) years ago, poems, letters that I never delivered to the intended recipient, pages and pages of volumes and volumes of journals (I found that I have filled at least 6 different diary/journal books since the age of 12), artwork I did in high school and college (along with extremely encouraging notes from the teachers that still could not break through the icy barrier of my self-consciousness about drawing and painting), my 'zine' from 2001. It felt good to see the earnest, open girl who wanted to speak and be heard, and to remember that she is still in here somewhere. I worry sometimes that, in the process of becoming this person, the woman-girl discovering what it is like to feel confident because of having a great skill at something, I lost some of the special things I used to be. Looking back on myself at 15-18-20, I like who I was, even though I didn't at the time. I like a lot of things about who I am at 25, too, but feel a strong drive to improve on certain things too. In some ways, I don't even know that there is a static definition of Who I Am, but in some ways, I can see how undeniable it is that certain parts of me persist through whatever my life circumstances are (good and bad parts alike).

Next step: finally begin to feel like an adult(?).

in an update to this post, i'm now officially a MASTER of science in psychology!!!!!!

I've never answered a "Writer's Block" question before but this one was tooooooo good. I watch way too much TV for a grad student.

1) Mary Richards, The Mary Tyler Moore Show: I think this was one of the first shows that really had an intelligent, capable female lead, and I watched the reruns on Nick at Nite as a little girl. I think it played a part in developing me as a feminist, to be honest.
2) Kathryn Janeway, Star Trek: Voyager: Female space captain? Awesome. (The only thing I don't like about her character is this odd, nonsensical moral double standard she sometimes has about when it is permissible to interfere in other space cultures.)
2.5) Also Deanna Troi, Star Trek: The Next Generation: She is the ship's counselor and has telepathic abilities.
3) The Smoke Monster, Lost: Because then I would understand the smoke monster because I would be it, so I would totally understand what the hell is going on in this show.

I will tell you something. There's nothing like that just-right combination of mood and song that makes you sit outside in the car, in front of your house, waiting until the song is over to turn off the car and go inside. There is one line in "Hallelujah" that always wrenches my stomach and heart and brain, and I don't completely understand it, except that I just feel it, like it's this bright light that points directly at some secret place and illuminates whatever was quiet there before.

There are things that aren't going the way I want them to, and it's so hard to just let it be that way. Is this the experience I need to have in order to develop the ability to tolerate the incredible discomfort of it? It's not like I've never had a pebble in the road before, but I can't remember ever feeling so much like the pebble is actually a mountain that is uphill both ways and made of some substance impossible to walk on and the temperatures are intolerable to the human body and the mountain is actually a monster that will swallow me at any moment. The thing I'm holding onto is the feeling of wanting to press on and get through it to have what promises to be the greatest reward.

hey, one of my friends just posted an entry like this, and i found it to be a very timely form of catharsis, so it seemed like a good thing to pay forward.

post a comment telling me a secret, or something that's bothering you, or something you need to say, etc.; comments will be screened, so only you and i will see them.