August 26, 2002
Trust that Day
I added Mike to the cast, so now you can all go and see how absolutely adorable he is. I realize that he looks all of ten years old in the picture. But let us remember, children, that he is twenty-two.
Going on eleven.
At any rate. You are all angels of even more than goodness and light. We're going to throw sausages in there as well, and, if you're really well behaved, gaunt Indonesian men wearing tartan skirts.
I have no idea where that came from.
Mildly delirious due to lack of sleep, even though took a very lucid nap from three until five. I was dreaming of all sorts of strange things. Including waking up. I love those sort, because in my case, I usually wake up in some sort of surreality and I think, hoorah, finally, the psuedo-world has shown itself to me! I knew it existed all along!
Perhaps I really did wake up in that world. Perhaps that world is this world.
How long have I been awake?
My circulation is really poor. I am getting ultra-paranoid due to the fact that my arms will randomly start to ache from lack of blood flow. And I just keep thinking that that is what people who eventually have heart attacks experience. But how could I be a candidate for that? I'm nineteen years old, and in moderately good health. The last time I had my blood pressure checked it was more than perfect. That wasn't that long ago, and my habits have not really changed since.
So what the hell is wrong with me?
My arm feels better now, but it felt weird all morning and part of the afternoon. And last week I couldn't sleep because it got numb-ish when I was lying in bed.
I am not a hypochondriac. I am merely concerned as to my physical well being.
Yesterday, Kels and I watched some of the old home movies I had around my house, one of which was a tape I made for my grandma freshman year of our band. Cassy was playing hard hats, and then buckets, with narrow, hollowed out cardboard tubes. I mean, drum sticks. Clare had stickers stuck to the organ in Kelsi's basement so she knew where to put her fingers.
And Kels and I harmonized, sometimes poorly, to 'We Go Together.'
O, the waves of nostalgia that came pouring over me. It amazes me what I was, and what I have become. Despite the dissent of my parents, I rather like the track that my life is taking. I fought with Dad today, only because I blatantly refuse to talk to my mother when she is being irrational.
They're up to their same old games.
I refuse to play this time.
What is more important? Happiness, or accomplishment? What is valued in life, what one did, or what one did not do? I cannot be someone I am not. I cannot break my own heart to spare theirs.
No amount of badgering will keep me from loving him. No amount of worry will change my ideas for my own future.
The point is that it is mine.
Justin graduated from Basic Training. I am now officially the little sister, and can honestly understand how he felt all those years having to be compared to me. All I hear about is how respectful he is, how changed, how wonderful and polite and loving. And I'm thrilled to hear that his attitude has turned for the better, the best.
I just don't appreciate having it thrown in my face like I'm some sort of devil-child. I am, quite obviously, not.
They worry me. They make me worry. It is Ryan all over again with them, though it is far from so with me. It cannot be the same. He isn't the same.
Yet one question revolves slowly, and at times of tension more quickly, in my head.
Is he?
I love him, but I do not think I can yet trust him.
astera at 6:56 p.m.