2003-07-05 - 1:51 p.m.
When I was visiting her in Colcester I was bugging Ariel about updating her online diary, becaue I was feeling selfish and I wanted to know how she was doing. "C'mon!" I told her, "It's a good record, a good way to process, or at least tell you're faraway friends how you're doing." And now who's not updating. Me, that's right, Me.
What I am realizing since I've returned not only to the US, but to Portland, Oregon, is that traveling gives me self confidence. My trip gave me what I needed to purge that sinking bitterness that was weighing me down for months and months from my system. Not that I don't feel angry or get mad, or hurt, but that I feel that I am able to let things go. I am able to concentrate on the peole who really challenge me to consider things differently, while also making me feel like I can be open with them emotionally.
I'm not worried about seeming "cool" in order to protect myself. I remember this winter Lauren reassuring me "You're cool, you're cool, stop it!" And this seems so far away now. I've learned that it takes me longer than I thought to heal, move on, and to be both politically critical and serious, but also feeling like I can be comfortable in my own skin.
It seems really silly to write pages of odes to my friends on the internet (especially when we all seem to aggree that the internet is an emotional void and not a real dialogue)- but I think what I am learning from them is that I can rely on them (and myself) to chase away lonliness. It's not the desperation I felt this winter- needing people to drag me out of my head. Now I feel lucky that we can meet at shows and in living rooms, make dinner, write each other letters and share books, and discuss world and personal politics and art in the same breath.
Today I am cleaning the house and dancing, caffeine fueled style to the Streets ("hold it down boy, you're head's gettin' blurred, I know you can't stop thinking of her...") and I think the Streets have blown the Postal Service out of the water for making a good record on a laptop. The beats are just funkier and the lyrics better, and besides, songs incorporating shout outs to public transit always make me pleased.
