I'm really good at being the person that other people need me to be; at saying exactly what is needed or expected, or shaping my face into the form that is required for the mood of the conversation. But there are times when the truth slips from my lips in strong rivulets, feeling hot and flowing like blood or something vital, needing to find it's place in the world and come out from that dark place I've been keeping it locked up in. My mouth moves of its own accord and I don't need to think or plan as I speak, I just urge it forward and it comes, streaming forth from somewhere inside me until there is nothing else left to say.

This is beautiful:
"The important thing now is to give up...You should stop kicking and let it float, bob and slip all away. Let it sink down to the bottom with the quiet and the stones and crabs. It will be alright, storms on the surface can't hurt us anymore."
                                                                                    --The Raw Shark Texts, Steven Hall

If death is by definition the parting of the body and the soul, is it not then painful? It seems to me that the separation of two things so intrinsically connected must necessarily be complex and painful. In life they are entwined, so that it is impossible to feel the point where one ends and the other begins; how can it be possible that in death they can separate without complaint?

There's no use in crying for what you don't have. It won't change a thing.

This pain that you're feeling will not break you. It will crush you, and it will teach you that you are weak, you are mortal, you can be broken. But it will not break you. It will not be until much later, after time has passed, that you will start to feel whole again--whole and strong. You will still feel the pulling of your past, making you feel unsure, timid, uncertain--but you are not weak. You are strong for having lived through the pain, for fighting through it on the days when you fought, and by simply continuing to breathe on the days when you were not. I think you are strong, and one day you will see, with a sure and knowing confidence, that you are beautiful too.

If I could take you back to last summer, and all that happened, we would see gray. Gray skies, gray grass, gray space. Gray area. Gray would be the colour of the place where we would stand. And when you, looking back at me, search for words to describe it, you will not want to use that four letter word. He blamed you, and made you bear the weight of something that he did. And so you will say to me:
--It wasn't rape.
--But something close to it, I would tell you back, in hushed tones that echoed yours because my throat was closing up like yours.
I can see you shrugging it off and piecing yourself back together, a thought at a time, until finally you look up at me and say,
--It's about time we started dinner, don't you think?
And we are back in the present, and you are the same, with that same brave look around your eyes  that I know only too well.
You head back to the kitchen and I am left on the couch, knees drawn up to my chin, just sitting there, tears flooding my vision, hurting for you as you jangle pots in the kitchen alone.

Dearest diary,

I spent a good 5 minutes this morning staring into the cool depths of my refrigerator with tears in my eyes. I had stopped at home, bone tired, after an awesome shift at work, and immediately had to leave again to go to the car dealership to sort out some stuff. (Sidebar: with luck, I will have a new baby soon, and I will name him Steven, and he will be mine. Mine and shiny and almost new. The new love of my life, because I am tired of walking and busing, and I can finally (FINALLY!!!) afford a car of my own. :).  **sigh of happiness**.) When I finally came home for good, I decided it would be wise to consume something before I collapsed into a heap on my bed shivering (from the aftermath of a deluge of caffeine that had coursed through my veins in the wee hours of the morning) opened the refrigerator door, when something inside me broke.

I think (I think) the tears were coming from exhaustion. The first night of a set of night shifts is never an easy one (this pearl of knowledge is coming from my extensive experience on the job, a grand total of 4 weeks). Or maybe it was, at least in part, a consequence of my mile long trek to and from work. Whichever the reason, I broke down, and I find this hilarious, 'cuz I don't know why it happened.
I feel fine. I really, truly do.
Oh, the joys of the intricacy of human emotion. 

That's exactly what I am. Because at this moment, there is nothing I want more in all the world than to be the centre of someone's world. I need just this one thing. Nothing more. I need to be needed. I need to know that there is someone who cannot stand the thought of me hurting, or crying myself to sleep. This world is filled with people who could not care less. I just need one person to care.

I don't want to put my needs aside for someone else. I want to cry and be held. What is wrong with needing that?

I'm tired of being told that I am not important, in so many different ways. I am tired of being pushed aside and ignored when I am hurting. Yes, this sounds selfish. Maybe it is. But I need just this one thing.

I could scream at the top of my lungs and not be heard. Do you know how that feels? That helplessness, when you realize you could rail with all your might, and the faces nearest you would only turn away; do you know what that feels like? To be told by someone that your pain is not as important as their own?

You love me whole, but I am broken. Who is there to love me now?

Pure and simple, that is exactly what joy is. Pure, unadulterated happiness.

There once was a time, many days ago, when I could not tell you the last time my heart felt so happy it could burst. The last time my spirit felt as light and as free as the sunlight and the wind. But ask me now, I can tell you, and a smile would appear readily on my lips. I am happy now. I was happy then, last week; the week I spent at my grandparents' house. I sat in the kitchen, at a small wooden kitchen table, in a house that I had thoroughly known since my childhood, and walked through halls that my little feet had once stamped through.

To be with those who you love, and who love you back is a blessed, blessed thing.