THINGS I FOUND TODAY

are we moving apart, together? where are we going? why don't people put me in their pocket?

some days require more sentences.

i am not that into cleansing.

hungoja kwa mwezi ilinisema kwa vile nina mwaka mbili, hufurahi kwa vile nina mwaka sifuri. ninaweza kungoja na kufrahi........

i'm eating apples in protest. no more candy. it hurts.

she drinks out of the toilet. she heard that really, the water's pretty clean. she sleeps on the floor, she curls her knees into a tight ball and shakes herself to sleep. she's losing weight. she forgets to eat. she reads. she cries. she looks in the mirror. she cries. she is punishing herself for making it so hard for herself to be happy.

i started my war with words when i was 5 and i was swinging on my stomach, and i got a feeling in my belly that made me feel strange and i didn't know what to tell my mother. i started my war with paper when i was 7 and i peeled it off the crayons and ate it, and it sat heavy in my stomach.

i will use these one day.

in swahili culture when someone asks how are you, you always say good, or OK and then if you are really not so good you follow it with a "but......". the theory is that nothing is ever really BAD. things are always good, but sometimes there are kinks. i like this about it. when i remember this, i remember why i am going to africa.

THINGS MY MOM SAYS THAT MAKE ME LOVE HER FOREVER

starting something new
makes a world of difference
embrace it and weep
(1st post-card received at college)


I talked to my Grandma on the phone today. It made me miss her something fierce and I kind of wanted to just stay on the phone with her forever.

My friends tried to be my therapists for the day, but I am not so sure we made much progress.

I've been trying to act on instinct more. To do what i WANT to do, not what I think i should do. But that in itself is kind doing what I think I should do, because people are impressed by people that just follow their instincts. It is hard to figure out what is right just because it is right and what is right because it fits some sort of expectation.

i am sew sleepy and i miss my grandma, and I want to be standing in the middle of the cold cold lake with some mulled cider, half drunk, talking to my cousins.

Today S writes
"I am stubborn and loyal to a fault. My heart has been damaged beyond belief and it is still the biggest, strongest part of me. I've survived unparalleled hypersensitivity and the requisite pain and heartbreak for 22 years. I will not, do not, give up on the people, places, causes I love."

and she is really a person i love, because we are kind of the same but different, but we have the same strong attachment to everything, we piece our lives together with memories, sentimental things that we hold as dear as anything else. Those of us that have this, this over-whelming attachment to things, such a strong attachment that we swear we can trace the string that ties our heart to the places and people and things we are attached to, not just feel it and trace it, but picture it, tiny but strong, like a spider web, clinging to all the things that have ever happened to us. We get this from our grandmother, and sometime i just want to ask her if her heart is being weighed down because she is 90 and has so many strings attached to her heart, and I think that she would know just what I mean, and I think that I will ask her, if i get the chance. today i just wanted to tell her everything, because she always has the greatest advice and she loves us, us as individuals and us, us as a whole. My grandma gave me this stubborn love, through my mother, and it is fascinating to know that 7 people came from the same place, but can be so different. and I wonder what my grandpa was like, i mean, i have heard stories, but i know that he is a part of me, perhaps the glue. Mostly I am just trying to find a new way to say what i say so often. I love you.