He awoke each morning with the desire to do right, to be a good and meaningful person, to be, as simple as it sounded and as impossible as it actually was, happy. And during the course of each day his heart would descend from his chest into his stomach. By early afternoon he was overcome by the feeling that nothing was right, or nothing was right for him, and by the desire to be alone. By evening he was fulfilled: alone in the magnitude of his grief, alone in his aimless guilt, alone even in his loneliness. I am not sad,he would repeat to himself over and over, I am not sad. As if he might one day convince himself. Or fool himself. Or convince others--the only thing worse than being sad is for others to know that you are sad. I am not sad. I am not sad. Because his life had unlimited potential for happiness, insofar as it was an empty white room. He would fall asleep with his heart at the foot of his bed, like some domesticated animal that was no part of him at all. And each morning he would wake with it again in the cupboard of his rib cage, having become a little heavier, a little weaker, but still pumping. And by the midafternoon he was again overcome with the desire to be somewhere else, someone else, someone else somewhere else. I am not sad.


I first read this a year ago when I was in a relationship and needed a way to explain why I wasn't happy.  it was the first time i'd ever seen an accurate articulation of this feeling - a constant, daily attempt at convincing yourself that you are not sad, you are not sad, you are not sad.  but you are.  i was in a relationship and i was sad and now i'm not in a relationship and i'm still sad and i'm wondering if maybe the presence (or lack thereof) of a man in my life isn't really what's causing all the problems.


maybe i'm just sad and there's no explaining it and this weight in my chest isn't something that i can fix but rather, something i have to live with.


my head is an empty white room.  i am vacant.  fill me.

this weekend is:

working at destination maternity at the roseville galleria on saturday.  i get to fold, steam, and hang maternity clothing at 10 bucks an hour!
possible shopping at urban outfitters, or...
...coffee with kevin?
MOVIE NIGHT!
writing my unit proposal (Hamlet, 12 grades, tech-based)

next week will be:

figuring out if my internship hours will transfer even though i didn't use the proper forms :(
working on shakespeare paper
thanksgiving!  parents!


i've been sick for a week now and i'm simply exhausted :(  today i had to write my pyschology paper and i swear it's the worst thing i've ever written.  i just don't understand how to write in APA!

so i've got the sorest throat but i splurged last night on some really nice whiskey so i'm in my comfiest clothing drinking a spicy hot toddy and watching In the Realms of the Unreal.  better times are coming.

the face of some despondent thing.
hugs, please?

OH MAN IS A GIDDY THING.

i biked home at midnight in the freezing cold and wanted to cry because the wind hurt my hands so badly.  i'm proud, though, that i'm not detered from riding again today despite the weather forecast predicting even lower temperatures.  i'm going to put on my favorite cozy cold-day outfit, and this time, i won't forget my gloves.

my story must be finished by 4:40.  i love days that force me to be creative!

A day without a bombing is worth celebrating and I'm out with the lads down for a few pints, not to Cosgrove's as they got sacked to shit last week but to Kate Daly's where you can still have a good chinwag with your mates and not worry so about being pushed around much.  We're all rowdy coming off a week of being pent up inside watching news waiting for the all clear to get back out on the streets.  My family's got the only working TV on our floor so we've had visitors in and out trying to get a glimpse of what they can't see looking out their own windows.  My mam eats it up, she gets so riled sitting there in front of the telly with a cigarette and an angry look, grumbling at the set with the other wives wondering when the fuck something was going to be done, there are children walking those streets, God bless, and don't they know how dangerous it is for a child in these times?  The other wives rock and mutter agreements and cross themselves like pious little biddies and I laugh but really I'm thinking how fucked up it is myself.  When I was just a wee thing I thought that this was how the whole world lived, getting woken up to bombs in the middle of the night, molotov cocktails thrown through windows of abandoned buildings, getting shouted at by kids on the other side of the street that you weren't allowed to play with since they went to a different church than you.  The world must be a pretty fuckin' miserable place.  But now we're big men, 17, not little babies anymore and I'm seeing that it's just Belfast that's gone to Hell and that's a good cause to make it to mass every Sunday.  So when the lads across the street shout taunts at us now we know well enough to shout back and usually we can't get to school without there being a fight.  Just got to be careful not to fight with the ones with guns.  They're pretty hard to miss though, running down the streets in packs shouting and hollering like hooligans.  I've got some pride but I'm no good to my mam if I'm shot dead in the chest so when I hear those sorts of shouts I stay inside and keep my baby sister away from the windows.

So we're off to Kate Daly's as it's Thursday and there's the canteen quiz.  As usual none of us win the big cash prize but we have a few laughs calling out answers to the stupid questions and trying to drink each other under.  There's four of us lads and we've been mates since primary, back when we were little punk shits who'd play truant from school and go kicking rocks into the harbor and the talk was nothing but tittes, who'd seen 'em and how big were they.  Our talk's grown up a bit now but Aiden still likes to boast when he's had a few too many and we give him shit but we all know we're just jealous.  There's a girl I've seen a fair few times on the walk to and from school, I know she lives near me but when I turn to go down the lane to my school she turns the other way and I know we're from a different class of people so I don't even bother with the hullo.  She probably has an older brother who'd come try and rough me up and might even knock his pretty sister around for carrying on talking to someone like me and I can't have that on my head.

When the quiz is done we stick around the pub and I order up another round of pints.  Brian asks me if I've heard from my brother and it gives me a pain to tell him no, we've heard nothing.  Six months and not so much as a phone call.  Brian shakes his head and claps me on the shoulder, 'salright mate, he'll come home right soon enough.  I shrug.  I don't think I'd recognize him even if I saw him now.  The night before he left there was big fight in the living room where he'd stood up to my da and said that someone in this family had to do his bit for Ireland and it sure isn't going to be you, you sorry excuse for a man.  I could tell my da wanted to hit him but my mam was crying in the kitchen and I knew he didn't want to make things worse.  So they squared off to each other, my brother with his face all red and that white spit at the corners of his mouth and my da, who after hearing that, lights a cigarette and tells him, go then, be a man.  And so he did, and now my brother's in the provisional IRA off somewhere doing his bit for Ireland.  I know my mam watches the news because she hopes to see him but if he's dead, it's not the six o'clock report that she's gonna hear it from.  

I don't want to get into a big political talk tonight so I say thanks and raise my glass to my brother Johnny, let's hope he's still breathing.  They three laugh.  We drain our glasses and head outside where Darren starts rolling up a spliff for us to share on the walk home.  We're leaning up against the side of the pub while Brian and Aiden light cigarettes and stand in the street with their fists shoved in their pockets and their collars turned up against the wind.  The air smells acrid.  Aiden tells Darren, shut your fat mouth for a second, there's something going on.  We stop and listen and from a few blocks away we hear angry cheers and someone speaking muffled into a bullhorn.  As we're standing there some bloke comes running full tilt by and nearly knocks me on my are.  I want to shout after him but I'm thick tongued from the pints so Darren and the others do the shouting for me.  The man what ran past hollers back over his shoulder that we better start running too, there's a rally on in the square and they say it's going to be bloody.  It takes me a minute to realize that he's not running away.  Brian laughs, looks like there's a show on tonight, lads.  I think I probably should be getting home but I don't want to look chicken in front of them so when they start off walking towards the sound of the crowds I start off too.

more to come.