I slept after I got home from work yesterday, a good five hours at least. It was filled with the strangest dreams. I’m suspicious that one of the dreams is something that has been going on for a long time, and maybe that is why I feel this incredible sense of de ja vu off and on.

I’m in my old livingroom at the home I grew up in. It has its dingy, dark brown carpet and a couch that curls around most of the room. The television is on, and I vaguely look up at it from time to time. I’m walking a little circuit in the part of the room not obstructed by furniture. I must be pacing for hours, because the movie changes and I keep going. But this is a desperate sort of thing, because I’m taking longer strides and I feel a slight panic in myself that I don’t really understand.

Sometimes when I pace in the real world it is like that. I get very anxious and emotional, and I might be crying or just walking much quicker, not really looking at anything in particular, not really seeing.

This behavior started in the time I used to spend alone. My first year of home schooling was very rough on me at first. My mother had three jobs and was barely ever around, and my father had begun to work long into the night instead of coming home at 5:00 as he used to. I was completely alone. My friends had all gone to the highschool I’d rejected. I’d even gone to the orientation for it, but a few weeks before I was to attend, I had a  bit of a breakdown. I couldn’t go. I’d opted to go on home school, mostly out of cowardice. I was afraid, so very afraid. I knew I would only be bullied and harassed even worse than what I’d already gone through. And…I couldn’t. I knew I didn’t have it in me just then to deal with it all again. I was already having thoughts of killing myself, and had gotten to my highest weight ever.

Maybe it was anxiety that started it. Being alone for so long, for days and days when all I had ever known was a life surrounded by other people. They gave me so much homework I distinctly recall falling asleep on my open textbooks trying to figure everything out without someone there to help me. But regardless, I got up later and later, and tried at my studies less and less. I stopped caring. I kind of went into my own world, and for a time, I felt better than I ever had. I even lost all the weight I’d gained and got to my lowest weight because I started spending a large quantity of time exercising.

The pacing had gotten worse, however, and I’d spend hours and hours at night doing it. I had this insane fear of being caught, and would listen intently for the sounds of anyone coming to check on me at night when everyone would finally get home.

In this dream, the kitchen light is on. I keep returning to the kitchen, repeatedly filling glasses with tea. This thirst is on me and I can’t seem to quench it. Back and forth I go for a while, glancing at the television, before stepping quietly into the kitchen to refill my glass yet again. I look out the window for a moment to see the black of night, and a very delicate light from the moon filtering through the branches of the lone tree out on our lawn. I don’t know why the blinds aren’t drawn, and my paranoia suddenly comes to me. I pull the shades down and spin them until all the light is blocked out. I look over my shoulder to the livingroom, and take off my headphones to listen. Just the quiet drone of the television and whatever is playing. It says ‘IFC’ in the corner, which I notice for some reason.

It’s when I go to the kitchen and come back again, that I nearly let out a sound. My mother is walking over to the couch, and looks over at me.

“You scared me,” I say, taking a deep breath and yanking my headphones off a little too irritably.

“I couldn’t sleep,” she answers.

She’s had insomnia for what must be years now, and it used to be common for her to get up in the middle of the night to watch I Love Lucy or The Brady Bunch while I’d be doing my pacing in my bedroom. Occasionally she’d walk in, I’d get very agitated (at being caught and not knowing how to explain it), and wait until she went to sleep again. Sometimes it would take four or five hours, but I’d wait patiently for the sounds of the television to die out. 

“You should take something,” I advise.

It’s not because I care that she sleeps that I say this, I say it because I want her to go away and let me have my time to myself.

“I just did.”

I nod disinterestedly, my eyes wandering to the television. God how I hate that thing. I only use it to cover up the sound of my footsteps. These days, nearly four years in the future, I use a fan. 

I think we sit on the couch for a while, and I’m impatient as ever, asking her if she feels tired. It takes a bit, but finally she does, and I breathe a sigh of relief when she returns to her bedroom. In this dream she is not injured. Her hands are normal, not curled under, and she walks like she always did, without the shuffle that I’ve finally gotten used to.

I have to go get something to drink. I realize too late that all the tea is gone. I start water on the stove, hurriedly. In the meantime, I grab a soda and start chugging that down. My eyes keep going to the window.

Did anyone see me, I wonder?

 From The Five Letters, my personal statement of enduring Jewish values.

 ?אם אני לי מי לי? וּכשאני לעצמי מה לי

I do not deny the need for accreditation, merely the type of accreditation routinely imposed because sectors such as health care would rather define chaplaincy as a type of counselling psychology than as a type of counselling theology: they understand psychology in clinical terms and do not understan theology at all.

Nor do I deny the importance of the clinical pastoral education (CPE). I believe the CAPPE model, however, is inherently biased to Christian practitioners, and while some rabbinic professionals might comfortably access it I highly doubt that this would be true for our more traditional colleagues: I simply cannot see a yeshivish Yid being in a clinical education program with a Reconstructionist lesbian rabbi or a Jewish Renewal rabbi who openly espouses Buddhist ideas.

CAPPE needs to revisit the model they use, for it remains closed not only to fervently Orthodox Jews but also to traditionally trained imams and anyone else who would be uncomfortable in programs allied with Christian theological colleges. Such discomfort may not seem appropriate for someone who wants to practice a universally accessible type of spiritual intervention. It remains an issue even so. In short, I encourage participation in the various CPE programs endorsed by CAPPE but I do not require it.

My answer to the last question – If I unto myself alone, what am I?  – is factual:

I am lonely. There simply comes a time when isolation, which meets my need, must give way to the needs of others.

But let’s not kid ourselves. I am in many ways a tortured master. I am ceremonious, officious, arrogant, and thus I am very hard to get to know. I am also brilliant, charming, and a masterful motivational communicator.

A chaplain, in our time, is a particular religious figure, one with a defined religious commitment, who is open to the universal need people have for spiritual intervention. A Jewish chaplain, for example, is able to assist a Roman Catholic in spiritual peril.

I have long denied the need to be bound by writing my perspectives down. I have finally been convinced otherwise, however, and I felt it was time to place some perspectives in writing, so I have compiled what I call The Five Letters. I wrote these with my student and colleague Anna in mind.  The letters are:

1. On Chaplaincy

2. On Spiritual Direction

3. Oy Gay

4. On Pirqé Avot

5. On Liturgical Ethics

The median, right-side, and left side of Primordial Man are the three points of interaction, where the 10 mystical radiations ("Sefirot") enter and depart

These letters are a statement of my personal Hasidut, called the Hermenuetic of Doubt. That’s an old heremeneutic, to be sure, but I’m a traditional guy and can rightly be called Jurassic Chark. I’m a strange dinosaur, though, because I can see human beings for what they are. Let’s begin with a simple and elegant Hebrew question asked by the great sage Hillel:

The programming I provide through the Metivta is meant to be of value to both Jews and others who encounter you. You will be a distinctly Jewish religious professional when you complete Part 1, and even more so when you complete Part 2, but you will always be accessible to both Jews and others.

The next three core competencies will build on your spiritual direction and chaplaincy skills, respectively. These are more “Jewish” competencies than not, but they nevertheless will give you the freedom to innovate as necessary when you encounter Gentiles who require your spiritual intervention.

This is especially true for the Part 4 course clusters, which deal with alcoholism and addiction. Jewish language is employed to explain the phenomenology, but this should not prevent you from using he widsom of mysteriopathy, for it is accessible to anyone who requires your intervention to initially deal with the trauma imposed by alcoholism and addiction.

Recall that I am a postgraduate educator. A first degree to learn with me is not essential but it certainly helps!

I prefer, however, a combination of skills, experience and unusual fluency with both lanuage and sources. Your previous training should ideally also include a great deal of life experience and exposure to broadly-based social perspectives that are not Jewish.

The best experience a chaplain can have is, after all, life experience.

Hi, it’s me – but just who is me? Don’t worry I ask myself the same question sometimes…you see the true answer is I really don’t know. I don’t know who I am anymore, not at all. But hey, maybe that implies I once knew…which wouldn’t exactly be correct.

I used to be a strong, healthy and rather independent teenager, your normal kind of guy , not the attention seeking mother fucker I am going to look like by posting this. But trust me – I don’t want attention, what I do want is to explain some stuff and get a lot of things off my chest, so if anyone at all ever stumbles upon this blog, you will know at least a little bit about what has brought me to this point. In return for reading this blog I promise to be completely honest with you about my life and thoughts, you have my word.

“I don’t expect them to understand but I do expect them to listen…”

I was a pretty fucked up kid ^^, after all – wouldn’t you be if you had been abused by your own father? Yeah you heard it, fuck it, I don’t care anymore what people think of me. Sometimes I feel like it was my fault and maybe it was but I said i’d be completely honest with you and I think the fact I was raped when I was young may be the reason for who I am now…kind of like a knock on effect.

“Just like a sick game of dominos…”

Sometimes I lay awake at night with the memories running through my head, again and again…they just won’t stop. I still have poems that I wrote when I was seven about him…

“I feel his stare as he strips me bare, turns me over and rips off my underwear…”

“Why will no-one believe me even when they see the bruises he leaves me?”

“My head bangs the bed, blood drips from me where i’ve bled, please god, please let him beat me dead”

Ok, so I was seven…i’m a lot better of a writer now. Probably the one thing I am actually good at nowadays. I’m sorry if people think I am being stupid by posting stuff like this but I am doing this for me, not you.

“Over the sea to Jura…lmao “

Eventually my mum found out what he was doing to me after a trip to the doctors. I can’t remember the whole trip but I do remember little bits…lying on the table while three shadows looked over me, examining every bit of me for scratches, marks…scars that I still own.

“Grab a spade, dig your grave and fucking lie in it”

Sometimes I have dreams of killing him or to be specific…making him kill himself – Right infront of me. Slitting his throat and watching the blood run down his chest onto the floor, then I pick him up while he’s stuggling to breathe and throw him into the fire…watching him writhe as his face slowly slides from his skull.

I hate myself for feeling like this…i’m just as bad as him and you know the worst part…when I think about doing this to him, I smile.

Jon Gosselin it seems, spent Thanksgiving with his family ( no, not the Kate and kids one)...since he won’t have a wife in a month and doesn’t have a girl friend (he went thru all of them pretty quick)……

Christmas should be better…there is a court ordered joint visit on that date……

It can get loney after the everyone leaves egh, jon?

I want to let you people know of a great board that is somewhat similar to HikiCulture; the board is called A Lonely Life.

I don't think that the people at ALonelyLife are quite as reclusive as the people on HikiCulture, but it's still a pretty similar board.

Posted via email from HikiCulture – A Forum for Reclusive People (and Hikikomori) {hikiculture.com site blog}

Warmth rushes down my throat as I take my first sip of hot tea. Something about it floods into my deeper than physical self too… and it seems to burn the darkness away. Such cold, such bitterness lurk in the hollows of my depth… squeezing every bit of tenderness and joy and peace and compassion and love out, out, OUT of me! Frigid insides, cold as death I am at times. Cold as someone who’s been hurt… who’s lonely.. who’s afraid.

Until the warmth…

Hot tea, you warm me back into feeling the feelings I tried to forget. Sympathies return to my heart and longings of rage fall aside.

It is time to grow up. It is time to tend to all of the sadness and sorrow felt. People so hungry they run away.

Oh, but I tire of tending the broken sometimes… the hearts ache relentlessly and I feel never ending bellows scourge me inside out… burn holes through me… and even take advantage. Lord, why? I have heard 20,000 sermons on why I should not ask why… but in my weakness I ask again… why, Lord?

Why do they hurt? Why do we hurt? What characteristic of you do I carry that causes my heart to wrench in sickness and carry the burdens of the broken ones. I am a broken one too. Yes. A broken one too, Jesus. What in me rises up toward injustice and weeps with the battered… even when I don’t want to. Lord, I need you. I want to be a giver, not merely a receiver of your love and grace to hoard them in selfishness.

I must be so alone. Who else knows my longing for Your presence? Who else knows the  depth of Your great Love to me? You God, are all I need. You Lord, are more than capable of guiding me. You Jesus, have made me with fear and wonder, because I can choose whether or not I represent You well.

I want to represent You well.

Hot tea, you have warmed me… warmed my insides softer and softer still.

I am open to your movements God. Show me where you want me. I will go.

To be honest, I started out this Thanksgiving weekend feeling surpremely sorry for myself.  It would just be us for dinner – my family is far away, his family is unavailable, and for one reason or another no opportunities presented themselves to invite anyone over. (I know that sounds lame, but true nonetheless.) So I got a little turkey, made the pistachio fruit salad, and decided to make the best of it. But inside, I was grumbling all the way.

Poor me. All alone with my family, with all of us healthy and plenty of food in the cupboard. No, we couldn’t travel this year (like we do most years) but all in all, it could be MUCH worse.

Then I was reminded how much worse. Yesterday I discovered a dear friend had been hospitalized with leukemia. Her oldest son (whom she and her husband foster-adopted 11 years ago) has the rest of the family sleeping with one eye open as much for self-preservation as filial concern. I went to go visit her in the hospital this morning, and my friend told me about her list of all that she was thankful for, as a result of this sickness.

Of all the people who had reached out to let her know how much she means to them.

Of the answers to prayer that she had already experienced by offering her suffering back to God.

Of all the ways her doctors had been fighting on her behalf, even before she knew she was ill.

Yes, she had much to be thankful for.  And so do I.

So tonight, as I put the last vestiges of turkey carcass into the trash (after “souping” them all evening), pour the last glass from the wine bottle, and sit down to compose this last little reflection for my “Weekend Ponderings” message to you, I just have to say . . . Truly, we have much to be thankful for.

Lord, I’d like to thank you for my friend Roxy, and ask you to illuminate her path.
Give her light enough for the rough places, and courage enough for the dark ones.
Give her only enough suffering to make her holy, and only enough worry to cling to you all the more.
And finally, Lord, as I hold her up to you in prayer, help me never to tire of interceding
not according to my will, Lord, but yours.
In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen.

Mary, Seat of Wisdom, please pray for us.

motherhood...

At night I crawl in to your big boy bed and listen to you breath. I press my face into your neck and I smell your little bones.

They smell like rain on a hot sidewalk.

I push my nose into your cheek and inhale your sleepy breath. That little boy smell is warm in my throat and I pull you into my lungs so deeply that I’m afraid to exhale because I don’t want to lose the feeling of loving someone this much…

I’ve never felt so lonely in my whole life.

Seriously… Today has been quite possibly the most depressing day of my life. I’ve never felt like more of a loser and to be honest, I’ve never felt so LONELY!

It’s so tragic, I haven’t really left the house except to run for the last two weeks. It’s the saddest thing ever. I’m starting to get cabin fever and I’m keen for some excitement in my life.

I don’t even have mum to hang out with coz she’s on vacation… That’s reaching all new levels of retard.

Tomorrow will be the first day of my all new will to be social once again. I’m going to Edgecumb Christmas In The Park with Joy. (Gonna go watch Dallas play :]) I really like Joy, she’s one of my really really good friends. She’s the type of friend you really, truly can trust.

Those kinds of friends don’t come around very often.

I’ve decided to make a list of goals that I must achieve these holidays.

Things to achieve:

1. Make good friends with someone entirely new, that I’ve never met/spoken to before.

2. Find a running buddy, run with them 3 times or more.

3. Have a celebratory lunch with my friends to celebrate the end of exams/school year.

4. Have a picnic with Dallas (he doesn’t know about this one yet lol)

5. Get out of the house and spend a day taking photographs of anything and everything that strikes me as beautiful or interesting.

6. Go to Mount Maunganui and run around it, then get waffle cones, then swim at the beach

7. Go up to Auckland and go for a walk with Kerre Woodham.

8. Have a picnic with somebody at the Heads.

9. Have a girly sleepover.

10. Rope more people in to playing Tennis on my tennis court.

11. Go christmas BROWSING (eg, go to shops, but since I’m broke, look at things and decide what I’ll buy/make for everyone).

12. Get something interesting done to my body. e.g belly button piercing again.

13. Volunteer at the SPCA

14. Go to the movies with Dallas.

15. Go to Hamilton and catch up with old friends.

16. Find a way of making money.

17. Try and organize a nice family dinner.

18. Have a heart to heart with someone unexpected.

19. Have a few of my best friends over for a BBQ.

20. Go surfing (once all the jellyfish have fled the area :S)

21. Rope a friend into making a hilarious song on Garageband.

22. Hang out with Kelsi heaps before she leaves.

That’s all I’ve got for now, but I will definitely keep updating this with details on how I’m going

Fingers crossed I complete it!

Consider this my “holiday Challenge”

Happy thanksgiving to all the American readers!! I’m thankful for blogging!

xoxo

How easy it is to forget about things when you’re busy. I have forgotten about my writing, about my meetings. Can you believe that last night I didn’t even realize that it was Wednesday and the thought that the meeting would be that night didn’t even cross my mind? I felt guilty afterward, but I guess all I can do is try harder.

With school stuff taking over, I hardly write anymore. Right before I fall asleep I have words all over my head. And I recite phrases that are really unlike me to think or feel. It’s weird. It’s like when I’m about to go to sleep or when I’m in the shower, or cooking or doing random stuff, I have the most inspiration of all. Maybe not inspiration. Maybe it’s just talent. I’d like to think so.

Anyway, I plan on writing much more from now on. But sometimes my hand is afraid to touch a paper. I’m afraid of knowing my thoughts are sad again, that deep inside, I’m not ready to face what I am old enough to face now.

I was telling a friend the other night that I am afraid of how I’ll end up. That I might get a crappy career that I’m not happy with. That I’ll marry the first guy that comes along and treats me right – just to make my parents unworried about me, just to check another thing on the list of my senseless illusions. I don’t want to live my life on auto-pilot anymore, you know? I want to know what I’m loving and put all the passion I can into it. I want to do better and wish well for others. I think I’m not doing so bad in trying, but for some reason, I’m just not succeeding.

I want to move away, far away…I want to go to a place where I can be me all over again. But then I remember one of my favorite but most true lyrics…”every step that you take could be your biggest mistake; it could bend or it could break, but that’s the risk that you take”. All I wonder is, should I let that truth cripple me while I try to make decisions, or should it make me strong? I think it’s telling me to be strong. I think it’s saying that no matter what you do, it’s all hanging on a piece of thin wire, and your life could change for the worse or the better….so I might as well do what I want the most and see which way that takes me.

The lonely fool with false belief,

that he’s winning the game,

before the end comes false relief,

realisation, tinged with shame,

two steps  lost follows one step gained,

as the ground silently moves away,

and only that cold familiar feeling is retained,

along with yet another reason not to stay

Time is running out.

But after it runs out, it starts again. And again. And again.

My time is running out. THIS TIME. Im running after it. I want to end it TRIUMPHANTLY. But it’s so hard to catch up. I don’t think I can catch up. I might have to wait for next time. But next time’s not what I want. I want this time. THIS TIME. This time… But it’s running out.

No, I’m not making that promise again
Nothing can change my mind
Nothing at all
’cause love has a way of comin’ undone
’till I’m all alone with my heart
And here I’ll stay

And I always thought I’d see you again
Oh how it hurts, every time you’ve crossed my heart since then
Gonna give it all it takes
To hold what might have been,
But I always thought I’d see you again

Now there’s no reason to run for the phone
No need to hold my breath
Hopin’ it’s you
Each time I see someone we used to know
Or go some place we used to go
It’s not the same

’cause I always thought I’d see you again
‘oh how it hurts every time
You’ve crossed my heart since then
Gonna give up all it takes
To hold what might have been

cause I always thought I’d see you again

Love doesn’t come when you need love
It’s not always there when you fall
Try as you may, you got nothin’ to say
Nothing at all

I always thought I’d see you again
Oh how it hurts every time
You’ve crossed my heart again
Gotta give it all it takes
To hold what might have been
Cause I always thought I’d see you again
Cause I always thought I’d see you again
Again
Again

I Always Thought I’d See You Again: Tiffany

I finally put this song on my mp3 player. I can’t find it on CD anywhere that I have looked, so I am happy to have it on mp3.  It’s kind of a sad song, but lately I have been kind of sad. It is just crazy. I didn’t get any sleep last night at all. I was watching a Jane Austen movie : Persuasion. I relate more personally to this as far as the relationships part. Even though I relate more to Elizabeth of Pride and Prejudice over all. But Now I can relate to Anne. She still has feelings for Wentworth and she is trying to be true to herself. Family aside she is finally sure that her feelings are that of a woman in love. Finally that scheming Socialite  needs to be smacked across the head with something like a bat. I find myself cheering for Anne as though I am at a baseball game and she is trying to get to home plate and she is caught between the catcher: Wentworth’s unknown feelings and possible rejection, and the the third basemen: her family’s persuasion/friends persuasion and other obstacles that could pull her apart from Wentworth forever. I keep thinking if she could only slide home “safe in Wentworth’s heart again, everything will be all better.  I am now reading the book.

But aside from that I felt like crying all day. and so I could only watch part of Persuasion… Before trying to watch the movie though. I was reading a manhwa (like a manga only in the Korean stylization) called He’s Dedicated to Roses, by Hwang Mi-ri.  It is a good story. I love reading all genres of books and it is going into my favorites list. I rarely find a manhwa that I like this much. But I suppose like any good book that becomes one of my favorites, I have to search through a ton of stories that, though I enjoy them, I rarely want to read more than once, until I find one or two that are some of the best that I have read. However there is a downside. I stayed up until 5am, and I cried through part of it. But it has a good ending to it. So apart form my grandmother getting up three or four times last night, trying to turn off the computer screen only to find me still reading, it was sort of uneventful. I am in a lonely/sad mood for some reason I don’t know why  though…. Gonna find a show to watch or something. Maybe kimi ni todoke has been updated.

Much love and hugs,  And HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

A newly arrived soul in Heaven was met by St. Peter. The saint toured the soul around Heaven. Both of them walked side by side inside a large workroom filled with angels.

St. Peter stopped in front of the first section and said, “This is the Receiving Section. Here, all the petitions to God said in prayer are received.” The soul looked at the section, and it was terribly busy with so many angels sorting out petitions written on voluminous paper sheets from all the people of the world.

They walked again until they reached the 2nd section, and St. Peter told the soul, “This is the Packaging and Delivery Section. Here, the graces and blessings the people asked for are packed and delivered to the persons who asked for them down on earth.”

The soul saw how busy it was. There were so many angels working in that room, since so many blessing were being packed and delivered to Earth.

Finally at the farthest corner of the room, the soul stopped at the last section. To the surprise of the soul, only one angel stayed there idly, doing nothing. “This is the Acknowledging Section,” St. Peter told the soul. “How is it that, there is no work here?” “That’s the sad thing,” St. Peter answered. “After the people received the blessings they asked for, very few send their acknowledgments.” “How does one acknowledge God’s blessing?” “Simple,” St. Peter answered. “Just say, “‘Thank you, Lord’.”

Thank you Lord, for giving me the chance to share this message with others and also, for giving me so many wonderful people to share this with. If you have food in the refrigerator, clothes on your back, a roof overhead and a place to sleep… you are richer than 75% of this world.

If you have money in the bank, in your wallet, and spare change in a dish someplace… you are among the top 8% of the world’s wealthy.

If you woke up this morning with more health than illness… you are more blessed than the million who will not survive this week.

If you have never experienced the danger of battle, the loneliness of imprisonment, the agony of torture, or the pangs of starvation you are ahead of 500 million people in the world.

If you can attend a church meeting without fear of harassment, arrest, torture, or death… you are more blessed than three billion people in the world.

If your parents are still alive and still married… you are very rare,.

If you hold up your head with a smile on your face and are truly thankful… you are blessed because the majority can, but most do not.

If you can hold someone’s hand, hug them or even touch them on the shoulder… you are blessed because you can offer healing touch.

If you can read this message, you just received a double blessing in that… someone was thinking of you, and furthermore, you are more blessed than over two billion people in the world that cannot read at all.

Have a good day, count your blessings, and pass this along to remind everyone else how blessed we all are.

THANK YOU LORD!

[ Author Unknown -

I take the LIRR once a week in order to make myself to out to long island to tutor a 36-year-old conspiracy theorist, veteran, with marital problems in precalculus. During these trips I bring a writing book to keep me company. This is what that attempt at masking my loneliness has produced:

Three seats in front of me sits a boy and a handheld game. He needs the full experience of his game; entering tunnel sounds, jumping for coin sounds, complaining to his mom about how the game cheats sounds and all.

I sit, staring out my window, with only the faint sounds of my pen scratching against paper to comfort my desire to be productive.

It is a dreary November day – we’re past the point where the changing leaves make the outside world into a constant rainbow of foliage, yet before the point where cloudy white pillows of snow will blanket the ground. The sun has no desire to see our monotonously grey landscape and has allowed  the clouds to blindfold its view.

The kid is now crying because he let his mother play and she lost his final life. She is laughing. I am crying on the inside because my paycheck is a week late, meaning I have to continue to try to survive on the $1.78 left in my bank account (a fact more difficult to swallow knowing that I need $6.50 to buy a ticket back from Long Island). I am laughing on the outside because my life is relatively simple and I’m worried about the lack of beauty in the landscape I pass by.

There was a Hawaiian-shirted man driving his convertible jaguar with a toy dog yapping out his side window and a pipe in his mouth. That is an eclectic group of things that I don’t like together. THere was a man with bling draped around his neck as he read War and Peace in a playground. That is an eclectic group of things I do like together.

I’m on the LIRR and a high school class is coming back from a field trip. The entire class is Black. Both teachers are White. It reminds of my work at a café where we have sing-alongs for the local children three mornings a week. African-American nannies crowd the café with their white child obligations getting sung to by some hipster guitarist. They sang “Wheels on the Bus” yesterday. At one point in the song the sort of bearded ma with the guitar sings: “The bus driver says: ‘Go to the back of the bus, go to the back of the bus!’” I felt uncomfortable making any lattes and then comforted myself by considering the mixing of dark brown espresso and white milk a metaphor for how society should function. Sure there is less espresso, but even if there is an overwhelming amount of milk, the overall color reflects both pieces equally.

It’s wordpress and it’s on my iPod! Can you imagine? ! That should explain any grammar or spelling errors! It will probably also explain why this is all in one massive chunk too because I havn’t 1found the enter button… So anyway I’ve decided to just ditch the whole limit of one blog a day thing because I just need to get some stuff out!

Oh and I just found enter

Anyway I just started relistening to my top 25 tracks from back in the day! And it’s rewoken some old memories! Like when I used to kid myself that my whole life could be explained in song lyrics… Glasvegas that’s all I’m saying…

So I dunno I’m feeling a bit shitty at the moment for no real reason… I want to talk to someone new. Like never met them before like when that guy commented me last night…

Once again I gotta say I’m sick of being lonely, I’m sick of wanting what I can’t have, and most of all I’m sick of talking all the time and never saying anything!

And once again, this title means something and for once I’m gonna explain it. That phrase ‘there’s plenty of fish in the sea’ annoys me! If I wanted a fish I’d go to an aquarium, but where do I go for an adventure? Or someone new? Or just something to make you feel alive?

And to answer the questions I’ve been getting all day, yes I will ask Will out if that group gets 1000 members. Why? Because I want to do something to make me feel alive again.

Random blog. Sorry.

Jack out.

Do you realize what a privilege it is to have a great family or simply a family? – and family can also be your best and closest friends who reside whether in the same home or out, ones who care deeply like they have your own DNA, people who care about you dearly. Whoever I can put my arms around and feel truly loved unconditionally, appreciated and cared for deeply, is my family – DNA or not.

My son came home from school and as soon as he got home he said to me, “Mummy do you know how good it feels to be home where I can be at ease and at peace?” I am going to have my bath, do my home work and simply lie down and relax. I let him do so because school can be hectic at times, in his ‘relaxed’ time he chose to play or study for upcoming exams.

You may visit other people’s home but you are never totally comfortable until you are in your own space; your home, those familiar pillows and particular feel on/to that bed, a particular spot on that bed even though it may be a big bed, there is a special place on that bed that belongs to you only or the feel of that sofa. Anyone feeling me here?

I also reminded him of the things we sometimes take for granted, the unity of a family; the “being there” for each other to encourage each other and be happy for each other no matter what. There’s a certain thrill and joy seeing your loved ones together under the same roof – that bond that is golden. You feel protected and loved.

The joy of seeing your loved ones get back home safe after every journey at the end of their day. I witness that joy everyday and I am grateful for that privilege, as simple and taken for granted as it may seem to another.

We sometimes tend to take for granted our own family and treat other people we are not attached to with respect and dignity, sounds contradictory, right? Are you nice to others, show others a ‘good’ face and mistreat your own family?

Probably one might say, well their family don’t treat them well either so they are not kind to them and I can understand that, but when we continue that cycle of ‘do for do’ we are also passing it unto generations that your generation becomes a lost generation of family once removed:)

The world is full of pretentious people who take effort in impressing the outside world while they are like a demons in their own home. No love, affection nor compassion for each other yet that person will greet the outside world with such compassion, love etc while the ones who lives with them are treated like dirt. What double standards and to also teach your kids same.

My family is important to me. I embrace them wholeheartedly, even though we all carry different and distinct personality, its that combination that makes family/relationships interesting.

The truth is, every personality they possess is unique. I’m flexible and down to earth so I don’t bend others to my likeness but accept them with all their ribbon, bows, ruffles and feathers:-))

I meet them halfway. I may not be caught up or be absorbed into their complexities because of one’s toxic attitude but they are still family. Believe me, you are going to find some ‘messed up’ attitudes but in the midst there is some good in everyone personality, when you love unconditionally you find and see it, you don’t see it if you close your mind to them. What else can you do but shake your head with a tiny smile?:-)

Though some may not feel nice things about you, it really shouldn’t matter or move you one bit. Remain and love unconditionally, that way whether they love you or not, you will still love them with a smile.

Sometime you are just happy that you don’t live with an entire family under the same roof, and is happy it’s only for a visit that you see them:) all the same you appreciate them.

There are some people who have lifelong rifts with their family that they have not communicated nor see them for umpteen years. I have a habit of welcoming family, I usually want to search for my DNA, I really don’t know if it’s a good thing because I may not like what I may find:). What the heck, they are all family anyway!

I say all this to say, Appreciate your family because when the world comes crumbling down on you, they may be all you got or do not have?. Hope for the former.

Written by Donique C. Perez Copyrighted 2009/11/25 All rights reserved

I Don’t Wish To See You For A Short While
I Need You To Walk The Distance, The Mile
I Need To See You For All Times In My Life
Not When You Feel For A Little ‘Invasion’
I Don’t Need Your Casual Attention
I Need More Than Your Penetration
You’re Just Someone Who Doesn’t Care
And Will Get What You Want Without Fear
Go Away With Your Frivolous Intentions
I Am Worth More Than Your Casual Temptation
I Don’t Need Your Hurried And Casual Time
I Need Someone Who Can Be With Me For All Time
Don’t Come By Because You Need A Squeeze
Don’t Make A Fool Of Yourself I Beg You Please
I Won’t Give In To Your Temptation
I Am Worth More Than Your Intentions

Written by Donique C. Perez Copyrighted 2009/11/24 All rights reserved

Having another bad day. Feeling very emotional, nearly in tears just listening to music or reading. I don’t want to be this way anymore. I can’t feel like this anymore without going really mad. I don’t want to feel like this and I’m sick of merely existing and not feeling anything but crap and worthless. It’s impossible to know how this feels unless you’ve experienced it yourself. Even if close family members have depression, you will never really know how they feel because they will hide the worst from you, even when they try to be as honest as they can. They will hide things from you so you won’t worry and that you won’t be shocked and think they’re freaks. I can’t handle this anymore, I need help.

It’s an endless darkness . Sunk in melancholy nothing but pain within a grief .

How can days be so strange ? how can I be so desperate ? I thought I was hope , I thought was strong , but it’s really too hard to be strong .

Every where I turn to there’s only more troubles and disappointments .

Tomorrow never comes and no matter how we wait for it ; today is today and tomorrow is nothing but tomorrow . I thought I was a step away from it . It turned out to be illusions .  Created by my own inner brain .

It reached to a moment that I believed and lived all this illusions .

How could I be so silly ? how could I let life drag me ? Instead of I running my life ; I let life run me !!!

Weakness I feel all over my body , I can’t handle anything .

What about the sunrise ? the blue skies  . What makes me cry when I see that all ? I just can’t smile . Maybe coz deep inside I know that I can’t enjoy them . I can’t enjoy the beauty of life. Instead I see them all dark . My tears are of blood . My hope is in vain . I lived it all – I lived by myself.

Life stabbed me in my back . And I have no intention to be stabbed again . So I decided not to live , not to live again . And not hope

What would anyone want ?

What makes us wake up everyday ?

What for ; we go on ?

Could it be illusions , dreams or hopes ?

Or Could it be just nothing ?

I dreamed a dream

And dreams are infinite

Infinite are unreachable

Sometimes it just doesn’t rain

Sometimes the days don’t go around

And sometimes all this is not true

I’ll close my eyes

And think in deep

But as I open

I wanna wake up

I want all this to be over

And to start all over again

I can’t sleep. I really should get to bed because I have to be awake in five and a half hours. Urgh.

It’s Thanksgiving break. I cannot believe this semester is over…I mean, it’s not yet. But after Thanksgiving the time is going to race by. And that makes me sad.

I wished college away. Ever since I started at Texas A&M back in 2006 I just wanted to be finished and out in the real world. I felt so restless and unhappy and thought I would never see the end of school.

But now? Now I’m at the end. Not only does that scare the pants off of me, it makes me regret wishing everything away. What did I miss out on? What kind of friends did I miss out on making because I made the choice to sit in my room on a Friday night instead of going out?

I feel I have remedied that this semester; even just a little. I finally got my feet underneath me, found jobs I enjoyed. I made a few new friends, and my old friends became better friends. Best friends.

So I guess I’m sad because I finally figured out how to be comfortable and content in college–for the most part. I wish I had more time. Even as I type those words though, my chest tightens at the thought of actually staying another semester. So maybe I am ready to move on. I think I’m sad at the thought of saying goodbye to some wonderful people. And I’m sad to say goodbye to my “security blanket.” College is safe. College is a bubble. Especially one like Texas Tech.

Moving to Boston is getting closer. I can almost stretch out my fingers and touch it, feel it. I’m beginning to get more nervous. In fact, I had a small breakdown last week. I started panicking, thinking, “What the F*** am I doing, packing up and moving to Boston? Am I CRAZY?”

And maybe I am crazy. Maybe I’m being hopelessly naive about this entire thing. But I don’t care. I love it when people react to my news of leaving. Most people are so supportive of it, and that makes me feel so much better about it. I had a friend say to me today how excited he was for me that I was leaving and doing what I want; taking a chance. And that? Pretty much made my day. It’s good to be reassured that maybe I’m not a crazy freak who can’t be happy in Texas. Of course, he hates Texas too, so that probably went into his comments.

Enough about Boston for tonight.

My heart hurts, for a few reasons.

I disappointed my parents this past weekend, and I hate myself for it. I don’t want to explain everything that happened, but basically, I messed up. I have never felt so terrible about something in my life. And I don’t know how to rectify it. How do I show my parents how sorry I truly am? I’m terrified about facing them tomorrow.

The second reason my heart hurts is because of someone who has become very special to me in the last two months. I’m sad because I’m leaving, and I don’t know if I’ll ever get to see him again. It’s hard. It makes me angry not only because I have to leave him, but because I wonder why I didn’t get to meet him sooner.

I can’t sleep tonight, partly because of that. I can’t stop thinking about everything.

I say to myself each day: “You’ll forget. You’ll forget the boy who made you laugh. Forget the boy who made your heart light, who made your eyes dance. Your heart will stop hurting.”

It’ll happen for me someday. I’ll figure it out. For now? Boston is my true love. It’s what I want, more than anything else in the world. I’m not considering giving it up.

But that doesn’t mean I don’t hurt like hell about it. Cry, too.