I watched them walk through the door with guns. Their frustration, sheer rage and want for blood showing on their faces. Kill them. Kill them all. It was the rifle and the semiautomatic that scared me the most. I watched the first girl go back over her chair before it even registered that she'd been shot in the head, that we were victims. The look of stark reality that some of us weren't making it out of here, showing on the guy's face across from mine. The look of saddness on the old man's face - of the ending being like this. The horror in the pregnant woman's face, she would not live to hear the cries of her newborn.

In the moments before the shootings, when we were just college students, I wondered whether or not I'd be strong enough to live through it. Now, as I'm watching, knowing the look on my face is thoughtful. I'm truly the writer, the observer, who wanted to capture the depth and richness of the story on paper.

- inspiration - three college kids wearing trench coats walking around the corner of the cafeteria, surveying the room full of people. Listening to Apocalyptica's Path
 

In the night, here in this challenging place, I am reminded that the fog is here. A frightening thing, like darkness, I am unable to see in it. Unable to see through it. It is the fear of what's in the darkness, the fog, that keeps me company. Never the chance for solitude, the welcome of just seeing one thing, focusing on one thing. But the worry of what if? What could.

I can not give more of my time. I can not care more, I am already spoken for. It is not that I do not see the fog, it is not that I do not have the same concerns regarding it. It is my companion - but it is that I've already thought of the darkness, the fog - closing in - that I am able to walk in it, walk through it. - even in solitude.


There are those who hold to their friends in agony, do not leave me, do not let me be lonely.
There are those who stand in a room, with no voice, from having screamed in the lonliness full of people.

I see you. Can you even notice me?

These glimpses - usually found in one of my most exhausting moments - almost forgotten in my tiredness.

Sometimes - it's not that I can't see the crack in the chair. It's the fact that the crack in the chair is just that, a crack - in a chair. Not the chair itself. It is the reason the educated/the older/the wiser do not attempt to explain this, you would not see it - can not see it, until you've looked at the chair, instead of the crack.

Friendship - waxes and wanes. There is a glimpse that there is friendship, where I thought friendship had died. It is welcome news. It is good news.
 

Last night, my boyfriend and I sat down to watch TPO. I had forgotten the magic I found in theatre. The warming up of the instruments brought goosebumps to every inch of my body, the hairs on the back of my neck standing straight on end. The tears that sprung to my eyes at the opulence and decandance found in the costumes, the sheer intensity of the performance were surprising. I had to keep from having - the closest thing I can describe to - a shudder and gasp being wrenched from me - in absolute and total pleasure.

You can say what you want to about how dorky/whimsical all of that might be, but it was a work of beauty and deserved no less of a response. I'll never forget it.
 

My whole life - I've been told how loud I am. Sometimes it's necessary to tell someone to be quiet - children are sleeping, someone is studying, a seperate conversation is being held - variations that are necessary. What always seems to catch me and stick out to me is - it's always when I'm truly enjoying something, laughing or sharing a moment with people when someone will say "God, you're so loud." Effectively, my mood has been tempered.

Growing up hearing this, in truth, it's become something of a complex. Something that no matter how hard I focus on it, how much I try to keep it in the front of my mind - that someone will remark on it, I'll find myself having a truly rare moment when I get to laugh joyously about something - and it will be ruined by my loudness. The moment popped like a balloon.

I've thought to myself recently - that why should it matter the loudness of one person? I've never once been bothered by someone else's enthusiasm. There are those who'd make some remarkably cynical comment about my loudness drowning out everyone else's which is why I'd never hear it and that comment alone - the fact that someone - anyone could/would say or think it - keeps that complex with me. Congratulations - you. You've won.

It would be different if I could change this feature about me If I could actively improve it - don't you think I'd have done it years ago? Then, I ask myself, why should I even have to consider tempering my enjoyment? It happens so rarely to that capacity.

About six months ago - the only person I've ever met who had a similar affliction - wasn't burdened by the same complex I have. He laughs with gusto and vibrance and I find that such a charming part of his personality - his loudness a part of the enjoyment. I wouldn't want him to modify it for others.

 

I just stumbled across some news that my very first boyfriend and his wife are having a baby. It's exciting news for them, and I wish them loads of happiness and healthiness. It's news like this, more than most, that makes me stop and analyze my life. As a woman, it seems that I'm genetically inclined to measure my life's successes by marriage, children, the mountains of clothing in my closet. I caught myself for a moment, ten in fact, thinking that perhaps I had not chosen correctly. That I had not done the things necessary to be succcesful.

Immediately following those ten minutes, I realized I had algebra homework to plow through and if I could swing it, I was going to go visit my boyfriend before my next class starts. I'm exactly where I'm suppose to be. My success at the moment, is measured by the 84 on my problem set. Marriage, children - they'll be there when I get there.
 

There's something to be said for being born an accountant. I can do the math, I can do the job required but for the love of all things holy - don't make me do it all day long, day in and day out. There are the personalities who can do this kind of thing - for 30+ years and love every minute of it. Love the minutia. Me - it's valuable for me to know that I would not.

But it's also valuable for me to know that I could. If I had to, I could sit down, spend weeks doing the math, plugging in the numbers, making the columns line up like music. But I'd rather do it because I'm double checking someone else's work, not because it is my work. A vital distinction between what I want to do and what some people end up getting piedgon holed into doing.

My math is getting better. I can finally see improvement after a full year of investment.
My microeconomics is getting better also. Maybe it's because he's sick and tired of seeing me in his office every day..... (jury is still out on that one)
 

I'm a Business major. I know what I ideally would like to do, which believe it or not, means helping people to a very large degree. However, I catch glimpses of me, almost like my shadow, walking into writing classes, getting on the magazine at school, really diving into this passion of mine. I wonder, if it's because that is where I "should" be or is it the selfish part of me? When I think about helping others - using the degree I'm scheduled for - I feel a sense of purpose. My job would never be boring, it would always be challenging - but importantly, I'd matter. I'd make a small difference in my small part of the world. Leaving it a little better than I found it.

Hopefully, like JR Ward, I may be allowed to do both. Which means that I wouldn't have to choose between both parts of me - it's just that the business part of me needs this more than my writing part of me does.
 

I just got out of my microeconomics class with mixed feelings. I got the material presented - but I'm just anxious that I won't be able to pass this class this time around either. Then, I have to ask myself how smart I really am? What am I doing in college if I'm not smart enough to pass a class if I've already failed it once?

Just makes me second guess myself, yet again, on so many things. Doubt, I've noticed, has become a large part of my life. In a society where so many options are presented, so many directions can be taken - it's hard, even if you know yourself well, to know which direction is the best one for you. I'm fascinated with Economics, largely in part, because of the enthusiasm of my professor - he's the kind of smart I want to be. I recognize that just because I've taken one economics class doesn't make me a prodigy of business, but I've learned the information - just having trouble giving it back in concise form that without a doubt proves I know it.

(All of this - from part 1 of the problem set)

On to part two.

(Side note: Yuck - I sound like Joan. Where the hell is the girl I use to be?)
 

For those of you who scan the blogs here, looking for some spark of interesting - don't gloss over my entry as being bubbly and giddy - in the "Meh, that's nice" kind of way. Truly, I've had the kind of day that would bring tears to lesser beings over the kind of happiness that has touched me today.

I got woken up this morning by my parents giving me a "wake up call". To then proceed with them sending me a webcam video of themselves in their pajamas, with the "lucky pup". My heart ached and healed a bit - by seeing them, closing the distance a little. It is that tone - that set the tone for the best day I've had in I don't know how long. (See, I can find happiness here.....)

I laughed with my roommate(bestfriend) in the car on the way home from a movie - the kind of incredible kind of "living in the moment" high that probably won't ever be repeated, but will go on into the rest of my life as being infamous. In that moment, happiness found me. We were laughing - actually laughing together. Something that I'd noticed over the last several years that we hadn't done often.

I then got home, checked my email to discover LO AND BEHOLD - my big little brother emailed me. His brilliant, genius, genuine, wonderful good sense of humor was the creme brulee of my day. He's doing well in school, settling into his new place, and filled with aspirations of where life and Lord will take him. I'm so excited for him.


 

At my college campus, in the center of it all, next to the student lair - is my thinking tree. Why I have taken a fondness to this particular tree, I'm not really sure. Perhaps it's because in a way, it's on display for my viewing pleasure. Perhaps it's because it's not as uniform and polished as the other trees are. Perhaps that it's changing its leaves slowly and leisurely in a gift unwrapping kind of way.

Perhaps it's because my grandmother mentioned having a "thinking" tree of her own, when I was a little girl. Up until this point, I had never recalled the memory, leaving it collecting dust for nearly fifteen years, it's struck me as tragic that memories like that are sometimes never recalled later in life. A passage of meaningful time forgotten by minutia.

My grandmother's thinking tree was - to me anyway - a random tree on her seven acre wood. It was a nothing special about it kind of tree, nearest to the bird bath, that could be viewed from just about anywhere on her property but it was predominantly on display from her table in her kitchen. (Now that I'm an adult, I can conclude it's because that is where she most often sat, to ponder life and it's secrets.) As a kid, it was the last tree on the property I'd have picked on being a special one.

I sit near this tree every day, looking for it, checking on it, while pondering - realizing for the first time yesterday, that it in fact was, my thinking tree. Just like my grandmother had one. And it struck me as a way of reconnecting with my beloved "granny" and the summers of playing cards at her kitchen table, swimming in the local pools in the summer, the walks to the mail box and the feeding of the animals.

It's also given me a chance to write something not completely worthless - something I haven't been able to do for about six months. For that, if nothing else, I'm thankful for "my" tree.