Feeling: Myself I have spent the last couple of years in a fog, lost in the darkness of a new kind of loneliness. My best friend left me, pursuing a life that wasn't true of herself. I resented her. I brooded, and hated the ways we had parted, the different lifestyle choices made; I despised her unseemly departure from herself. All the while, though, I somehow missed that I had done the exact same thing. I had abandoned the only person I have always had, always loved, always trusted. Somewhere along the way, in the chaos of my home and high school, I completely lost my identity. Mind you, I've always been invisible to other people. But of late, in the last year or two, I have felt an unsettlement every time I've sat to observe. A wrongness in the silence of solitude. I became separated from the forces that drive me. From the giddiness I feel when I'm alone. In the last two years, I have not spent my Monday Night Freedoms dancing around the house to music. I've said it was the music, not as much good stuff coming out. Radio playing all the wrong things. Change. I blamed a lot on change. I even looked inward -- some. I thought maturity had refined my taste, that less was good enough for me now. But I'm sure now it was something more. I couldn't remember the songs I had danced to. I couldn't remember what exhilaration I had felt in those hours of silliness, those blissful, carefree hours where I was utterly myself, completely unconcerned with being seen. I was being me, and being Alive. It wasn't childhood that I was losing. Not that uninhibited, ignorant state. I still had that, in a way. Still have it now. But pieces were missing. I no longer made up songs in my head. No longer made up songs at all. My guitars grew dusty and out of tune; and hours spent in laughter and enjoyment became hours spent in discontent, in a cesspool of the same websites, refreshed over and over, hoping that some new fulfillment would come of it. Hours of wishing and rebuking myself for wishing. It's an empty art, unworthy of a moment's thought. Looking back at the beginning of this school year, I realized that, somehow, I'd become a senior in high school almost without noticing. It didn't seem as though so many years had passed. The thought struck me, but I did not yet understand: for all of my junior year, I had not been present. It was only the unsubstantial of me that attended classes, that sat unfeeling through lectures and drowned in inactivity and apathy at home. My thoughts are falling away, this period of coherence is passing. The rest is outlined as follows (I didn't do this for the whole thing, but quickly wrote down just these points, to remember them before they faded): - we all lose ourselves to work and routine - seeing that in my friends may have been a catalyst - - might be why I'm so drawn to Mr. Messner - he hasn't given himself up to the routine, still exuberant and fun. does things on the weekend and has stories, and still makes new ones. - smoking is one of the things that is keeping me from myself - it's something I do when sadly alone, and I'm never so alone when I'm with me - it's a mask in social situations - the song I wrote last week, while partially the fault of Pat (another catalyst?) was a last cry out from the me I've always wanted to be - writing this is in itself a way back to me I am having trouble keeping it in my mind. I've been writing for nearly an hour, now. Maybe a whole one. I see now that my dog is depressed too, she needs my love and attention as much as I do. PLEASE, PLEASE FINISH THIS. IF IT IS THE LAST THING YOU DO, SELF, FINISH THIS. THIS IS FOR ME AND ONLY ME. AND THE ONLY THING THAT CAN SAVE ME. THIS IS REAL. READ IT. READ IT OVER AND OVER AND OVER.