I've had a lot of hokey self-help business in my life lately. You really have to be in the mood to deal with a registered dietician, or a therapist who wants to do guided meditations, or the African dance troupe that wants you all to hug seven people in the room. I have to let go of my sneer.

I think it's been an interesting semester for me. I think for a long time, I was feeling exceptionally emotionally stable. Unfazable, really. And now, even though I feel a bit more fractured and things are more difficult and I cry like a motherfucker (during work! oh the rare books!), I still generally feel happy. I get a lot of work done, and I've gotten really reassuring feedback on it, and I feel on top of things (like my thesis). I love spending time with Brian. I love my classes.

I really can't wait to see my therapist. Maybe I'll ask if we can skip the hokey meditation. I'll give it a try, but I've been a bit tearful tonight and might just need to cry.

Sometimes I'm kinda sad about my friends. Sometimes I don't know if I've had a friend who is my platonic paramour. I know this will sound so childish - but it's like I want one of those schoolyard friendships where I have a best friend, and I'm hers and she's mine. I definitely feel like I play second fiddle to a lot of my friends, and that wouldn't be at all a bad thing as long as I had someone with whom I came first. I don't know how I feel about this - it might be unrealistic of me, and it might be that I'm not appreciating my friendships or recognizing them now - but all I do know is that I seem to really want it. Like someone with whom I could exchange goddamned best friends necklaces, you know, with half a heart? Oh, dear God.

Sometimes I have these annoying moments where I lose all faith in myself. I just shatter. People I meet have told me that I give the impression of being oh-so-confident. So what a stunning disappointment it must be when I turn into a quivering mess, doubting my worth as a human being, begging for reassurance that I'm smart and pretty.

I am, right?

I should probably go to bed. I always cry at night.

2004-03-18, night crankies

You can talk about sex with just about anyone, but unless you have a Cheng, what a waste of your time.

2004-03-15, mundane things

I've spent a lot of this evening curled up in my bed, writing my literature review. Sometimes some of the things I'm reading blow my mind, and make me have to reevaluate everything I've thought, so that's wild.

I'm really wishing I could be sleeping with a male-person tonight.

I don't know how much I have to say. I feel a kinda cold coming on. I'm not terribly thrilled about my pirates class tomorrow. I've been thinking about porn a lot. I would rather like to publicly apologize to the people who I called (have called, will call) in my drunkeness. (One of my great annoyances with myself is that I am this type of drunk.) I was considerably less drunk and more lucid than usually on big campus party nights (there are about two a year, plus a few we manufacture), so I consider that a minor victory.

I love the Odyssey. I could gobble it up. I love the descriptions of the households, and the sea. One of my favorite songs has always been Calypso, by Suzanne Vega. I find something very poignant about the lover taken away, or leaving, and knowing that you have no control over it. There's nothing you can do.

I tell of nights
Where I could taste the salt on his skin.

Salt of the waves
And of tears
And though he pulled away
I kept him here for years.
I let him go.

My name is Calypso.
I have let him go.
In the dawn he sails away
To be gone forever more.
And the waves will take him in again
But he'll know their ways now.
I will stand upon the shore
With a clean heart

And my song in the wind.
The sand will sting my feet
And the sky will burn.
It's a lonely time ahead.
I do not ask him to return.

I've always had a soft spot for clever, sea-faring men.

Oh, apparently in that class, because I happen to like the fact that Odysseus likes to eat, I've gotten a reputation for thinking that Odysseus is fat. Whenever I point out an eating scene in the book, everyone shouts (literally) "Odysseus is not fat!" Frankly, I don't think I'm crazy for thinking that Odysseus isn't exactly a looker. In the Illiad, Helen (or Priam?) describes him as staring at the ground - he's only awesome when he speaks. And Athena is always going about making him gorgeous, wide shouldered and tall. I don't think I'm crazy for picturing him a bit pudgy. Anyway I never called him morbidly obese or anything. Just pudgy! I still love him! (If we can forget what he did to Hektor's son...)

2004-02-24, and i have lived alone

before / after

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