Yet another dream...

Here is what I remember...

I somehow found myself clinging by my fingertips to the outside of a window, located on the second story of my old house. I seem to remember climbing up there in some manner. Regardless, I found myself there, clinging to the edges of the window with my fingertips and to the bottom of the window with the tips of my shoes. I was up there for a while, determined to get out of this predicament on my own. It was useless, I couldn't figure out how to get down and my fingers were growing tired. I began to yell for my mother. After a while she appeared at the window and told me she would be right there to help me down and then she walked away. I waited for a while and then waited some more because I trusted that my mom wouldn't let me down. When my fingers began to grow numb, I began to fear that she was not going to return. So, I began to yell her name and bang my head on the window in an attempt to gain her attention. She did not return and I could no longer feel my fingers and was beginning to fear that I would soon fall to my death.

As my fingers were about to slip off the window's edge, a giant robot came strolling around the corner of the house. He turned his head in my direction and approached me. He stopped in front of me and asked matter-of-factly, "Why are you hanging on the outside of that window?" He said this like it was completely obvious that it was a ridiculous thing to do. I asked him to let me down. He just continued to stare at me. I was moments away from falling so I gathered all of my will and pushed myself away from the window in the direction of the robot's head. I somehow managed to grab hold and scramble my way down his side. Once I was on the ground the robot simply walked away.

I ran into the house and up the stairs to find my Mom lying on the floor and talking on the phone. I stood above her and cried, "Why didn't you help me?!" I could barely get the words out I was so choked up with betrayal. She looked away from me and continued her conversation. I noticed that her face was all messed up, there was scaring and discoloration. She was obviously hurt herself. So, I cried out again, "I know that your hurt and I don't want to hurt you, but you need to tell me why you didn't help me!" She waved me away and continued her conversation.

Furious and hurt, I ran downstairs to find my Dad sitting on the couch reading the paper and my sister sitting near him. My Dad asked me what all the yelling was about. I yelled at him that Mom wouldn't help me. He told me that I needed to calm down, that I was making a mountain out of a mole hill. My emotions began to overwhelm me and I couldn't contain them anymore. In a rage I screamed at him that I was leaving and that I was never coming back. I felt completely rejected and un-loved by the people that claimed to be my family. This got my Dad's attention and he put down his paper and looked me in the eye and said, "You don't really want to do that." I didn't. So in a sobbing mess of pain I related to him the story of how I was stuck outside the window and my Mom promised to help me, but then forgot about me. As I poured myself out to him through my words I began to literally see understanding dawn in his eyes. The story came out of me like an emotional avalanche, I was screaming and crying and choking on the words. I woke up.

I was perspiring. It was 3am. I felt like it was 100 degrees in my room. I checked the temperature and it was 75 degrees. I was angry and I was hurt and I wanted to scream. The dream had felt so real. I could still feel the pain of my Mom leaving me hanging out to die on that window. I couldn't sleep so I wrote down my dream. By the end my emotions had cooled down, but I never really went back to sleep.

I'm so frustrated right now.

Since my last blog I've been in a pretty good place. I've felt freer and more open and generally in a better mood. I've even been starting to feel antsy, which is a good thing. This need to do has been coming over me. I'm letting it build. Today, I was in the middle of doing some breathing exercises and was in a very relaxed state, lying on my floor, when my cell phone rang. I debated whether or not to get up and answer it and curiosity won out, so I got up and as soon as I saw this girl's name on the phone, a smile infiltrated my lips. So I answer the phone by saying her full name in this fantastic monotone that immediately had her rolling. Then we went into this roll of word exchanges that had us both laughing. God, this girl is so fantastic and she makes me want to be a better person. However, she rarely returns my calls and she never calls me unless she wants something and this case was no exception. She wanted a ride. Whatever. I was happy to do it, but I don't get her. We have the most amazing times when we're together and yet whenever I ask her to hang out she vaguely avoids saying yes or no and we never end up hanging out. Yet, on the rare occasions that we end up hanging out randomly, we have this fantastic time together, I mean fantastic to the point where she tells me that hanging out with me makes her feel like she's stoned without actually having to get stoned. We are always laughing at the most random stuff and whenever I'm around her I feel like it's okay to be me. I never laugh as freely, or easily with anyone else, like I laugh with her. It sucks though because every time I'm around her I'll feel, paradoxally, that she pulling me towards her and pushing me away at the same time. It's weird. I should just let it go and be all like whatever and shit, but it's hard to do that when she brings out all of these emotions in me. I don't know. I'm sick and tired of being alone, but I'm also done with feeling needy and shit. I'm stuck in this crappy limbo where in order to not be alone, I have to become happy with being alone, yet I'm sick and fucking tired of being alone. It's like some oxymoronish hell or something. Fuck it, I'm going to have a glass of wine. Goodnight.

Troubles with letting go.

I woke up to rain and a phone call that my shoot was canceled for today. I was a bit dissappointed. I've been lazy all day and feeling very unmotivated. There is a sluggishness in my brain that won't go away, as if all it wants is sleep. I haven't slept through the night in I don't know how long. I'm always waking up, either by noise or dream. I'm holding on tightly ro something and I don't know what it is. I'm afraid to let go. The question that palgues me is, let go of what? I think it's consciousness. Allow me to elaborate...

I hate to fly. There's something about being 35,000 feet or more above the earth in a metal tube that relies on mechanical speed to keep it in the air that just sets my trust issues on fire. I find it very difficult to just sit there and relax, while I put all of my trust into a bunch of people that I don't know. A trust that they put that plane together properly and that some random mechanical isn't going to send that plane plummetting to the earth. To me, that's a lot to ask.

Generally speaking, I'm okay on a plane and can get through it without any sort of panic episode. However, I also generally have a couple of Jack&Cokes before boarding, then take a couple of benadryls to help knock me out. Then comes my favorite part of the flight, the take off. I know statistically speaking that this is the most dangerous part of the flight, but it's still my favorite. I love the feeling of being pressed back into my seat as the plane gains momentum, and then the feeling of the plane floating in the milliseconds before it finds the pressure of the air and takes off into the sky. Amazing. Then the rest of the flight is just hopes that I don't die. I'm fine as long as I feel the plane moving, but whenever the Captain puts on the air brakes and creates that floating feeling at 40,000 feet, my whole body reacts in fear. My fear, you see, is not of flying; flying is awesome. No, my fear is that of falling, of that plane falling out of the sky. It's also a control thing. I don't like the thought of falling to my death and having nothing to do but stay stapped into my seat and contemplate my emminite demise. If I was flying the damn thing at least my mind would be occupied with trying stop the plane from crashing.

So, given all of that, I try my best to fall asleep and not wake up until I land. The funny thing is, that has never happened, not once. One time I had been awake for 27 hours before I had gotten on the plane and I still couldn't sleep. Everytime that I am about to fall asleep the same thing happens. My eyes are closed, I'm drifting off on some line of thought or imagery and I begin to feel my body loosen and my mind is about to lose consciousness, when all of a sudden my mind says the equivelent of, "Fuck that! I'm not letting go! Sleep on your own time!" That's it. My body jerks and I'm awake again and still as tired as hell.

It's a control thing. I have a difficulty letting go, even of myself. I have a difficult time going to sleep, no matter how tired I am. Often times I'll stay up later than I should just because I don't want the day to end. Which is funny, because every morning I don't want the day to begin, or the dream to end if you like that perspective better. I'm always fighting, waking or sleeping, it doesn't matter I fight it. Any change that comes, I fight it. Hell, I was born three weeks late, so I even fought against being born.

I'm holding onto something and I don't no what it is.

A moment of introspection.

A friend of mine is going through a difficult time right now. She's nearing the end of a long journey to find her birth parents. She recently revealed this to her father, but not her mother. He, in fear of losing his daughter, has not given her the space that she needs in order to go through this process, in fact he's been down right selfish and possessive, using love to keep her close to him. She lashed back at him for this and said some things that, if I were him, would be very painful to hear. When I read her blog about these transpiring events I felt very hurt and angry that she would speak to her father this way. My feelings confused me because they obviously were coming from somewhere within me and had nothing to do with her, so I spent the day thinking on it. Why would it bug me so much that her father's feelings might be hurt? I've barely even met the man. So what's the deal? My introspection on this has lead me to a revelation...

I'm angry at myself for not being there for my dad. I feel guilty that when asked to go visit him in the hospital, I said that I didn't want to go. I did go visit him on many occasions, but when offered a choice I chose to stay home. I didn't like going there. I didn't like seeing him that way. I didn't know what to say to him or how to talk to him. I wasn't there when he died. I never got to say goodbye to him.

One thing that I've come to understand over the years is that time moves differently with age. When I was a kid, the last 5 minutes before the bell rang often spanned the distance of years and now a year is gone in the span of 5 minutes. My dad was in the hospital for probably less than a month before he died, but I remember it as being several years. At least that's what it felt like. I remember the last time that I saw him alive. I went with my mom and sister to the hospital and he was lying in his bed with tubes sticking out of him, but he was up and alert. I brought a Star Wars toy with me to play with. I focused on my toy to avoid seeing the reality that was in front of me. I didn't want to know, see, or understand that my dad was dying. He was going to be okay. That's just the way it is. Except for the fact that it wasn't.

My mom was with him when he died. I was at home with my sister. My neighbors from across the street called and told us that we needed to get ready, that they were taking us to the hospital. I knew. I think even before they called I knew. So, we drove to the hospital. I walked down the long white hallways, breathing in the smell of sterile death.

I got into the elevator and the doors closed on my old life. I was enclosed in a metal box that moved me from one life to another. I couldn't stop it if I tried, it was a one way ticket. In that limbo between worlds, I prayed to God that everything would just be all right. I told him that I would do anything if he would just let my father be alive. I was scared and for the first time in my life I felt truly alone. There was a ding and the door slid open, revealing a scene from some alternate reality where everything is turned upside down and topsy-turvy. The first thing that caught my eye was my grandpa, my dad's father, crumpled on a chair crying so hard that no sound came from his mouth even though it was opened and a nurse stood above him trying to console him. My grandma, my dad's stepmom, was standing in the middle of the area being consoled by someone. My mom's mom and stepdad were there too. I didn't know what to do so I just stood there waiting, trying to hide myself in the middle of the room. My mom came out and took my sister and I down the hallway and sat us down on a bench. I knew what she was going to say before she said it. "Daddy died. It's okay to cry if you want." That was it. I felt the emotion welling up inside me and I choked it down and I felt something snap inside of me, something intangible. I refused to cry. I would be strong for my mom. I was the "man" of the house now and "real" men don't cry.

She took us into my dad's room and there he was, lying there in his bed. Only it wasn't him. I mean, sure it looked like him, but it wasn't him. Everything that made him my dad was gone. All that was left was a body. It had this waxy sheen to it, almost like one of those wax dummies you see in a wax museum. He looked heavier, almost flattened out against the bed. It wasn't my dad. I refused to believe that it was my dad. I never saw him die. My mom told us to hug him goodbye. I was repulsed. The idea of hugging that thing that used to be my dad filled me with revulsion. I said I didn't want to. She told me that I would hurt his feeling if I didn't hug him goodbye, or something like that. Whatever the means, the result was that I began to feel guilty. I began to think that what if I left without hugging him and that was the one thing that could have brought him back. So, I hugged the body of the thing that used to be my dad. I shudder just thinking of how it felt. I feel ill just thinking of it. I pulled away and he was still dead. It didn't work.

I told myself the lie of a child. I told myself that maybe he had faked his death for some reason and that wasn't actually him in that room. I had never seen a dead body before and what did I know. It could have been some sort of wax thing. I held onto this belief for a long time, in the back of my mind. I forgot about this idea over time, but I think that was more by distraction than by choice.

Why wasn't I there? I should have been there when he died. I should have been able to say goodbye to him. I have longed to have a final conversation with him. To tell him goodbye and that I love him. Permanently losing a parent at the age of 10 is a very difficult thing. I was old enough to know what I was losing and yet not old enough to have benefited from actually knowing him. He never transitioned from the one who you listened to or else. He never became a person to me and I regret that.

The day he died I dropped a wall around myself that is thick beyond measure. This wall surrounds my emotional self and I keep it locked up tight. Ever since then I have floated through life, physically here, but emotionally somewhere else. I do have, every now and again, moments of clarity where I am completely here in this world. I have had them enough to know that most of the time I feel vacant, not present, not whole. Right now that is who I am. The real me is caught in the fabric of space and time somewhere between this moment and the moment that I sat on that bench and refused to accept my father's death. The real me; the whole, complete, and present me, has been hiding somewhere in fear since that day. I feel like Humpty-Dumpty. I had a great fall and now I'm lying in pieces on the floor and I don't know how to put myself back together again.

So, I apologize to my friend for feeling angry with her. We all live our own Dream, write our own Story, and see the world through the veil of both. When you rip away the Dream and the Story, you are left only with the Truth and the Truth is that her relationship with her dad is not my relationship with my dad. She is acting on the emotions that she is feeling, and within our own Dream and Story, our emotions are the ONLY thing we can 100% count on being real, because they simply are and require no explanation.

To thine own self be true.

Another Dream...

I'm in my house and a rabbit hops in through the sliding glass door. It is a grey rabbit with with a white face, feet and tail. I catch the rabbit and I put it in my car. I'm driving down the street, the rabbit is in the back seat. I don't want to let the rabbit go, but I can tell it wants out of the car. I make the decision to pull over and let the rabbit go. This is when I see a bunch of police cars and motorcycles parked on the side of the road, their lights flashing. There are several police officers milling about and as I get closer I realize that they're all women. It's nearly dark outside and it's beginning to storm. I pull over in front of the last police car. I'm very nervous all of a sudden, I think that I drank a beer or two. I open the door and the bunny jumps out and hops away into the field. I hear a one of the female police officers proclaim, "It's a bunny!" in that 'ah it's soo cute' voice. When I turn around to look at the police women I discover that there are two girls sitting in my back seat, talking. We drive away.

A few minutes later I wake up to the sound of a cawing crow. It's almost 5am. The crow is somwhere near my building and continues to caw, intermittently for the next two hours. I never really fall back to sleep.

Being wise and other revelations.

"When you become wise you respect your body, you respect your mind, you respect your soul. When you become wise, your life is controlled by your heart, not your head. You no longer sabotage yourself, your own happiness, or your own love. You no longer carry all that guilt and blame; you no longer have all those judgements against yourself, and you no longer judge anyone else. From that moment on, all the beliefs that make you unhappy, that push you to struggle in life, that make your life difficult, just vanish.

Surrender all those ideas about being what you are not, and become what you really are. When you surrender to your nature, to what you really are, you no longer suffer. When you surrender to the real you, you surrender to Life, you surrender to God. Once you surrender, there is no longer a struggle, there is no resistance, there is no suffering.

Being wise, you always go for the easy way, which is to be yourself, whatever you are. Suffering is nothing but resistance to God. The more you resist, the more you suffer. It is simple."

-Excerpt from "The Mastery of Love"
By Don Miguel Ruiz


There is an ancient Greek saying that has been attributed to many people, but probably most famously to Sophocles and the Oracle of Delphi...

γνώθι σεαυτόν
gnothi seauton
know thyself

Who am I? I am who I am. I am what I am. Do I judge myself? Yes. Do I judge others? Yes. Should I? No. If I am to truly live I must first stop running from myslef and accept the truths of my past and who I am. I must learn to love and accept myself and my body, because it is the only self and body I will have in this life.

I have mentioned before that I crave and need love. This is true. However, I have been searching for it in the wrong place. I have been searching for it out there, in the world, in the approval of others. That is not true love. It is needy and self-serving. True love comes from within and is projected outward. We are creatures of love. It is our natural state.

Orginaized religion would teach us differently. They would have us believe that we are born into sin and that our basic instinct is toward evil. That is a lie. It is a lie of the mind. It is a lie designed to make you believe that love is unattainable except through the church. God IS Life. God IS Love. Every living thing has Life and thus is a part of God, just as every living cell within us is a part of us. So, in that sense, we are, each one of us, God. Without us, God would not be, just as without the cells that make our body, we would not be. We were born to love, to be free, and to be happy. It really is that simple.

Anyone who tries to take that away from you or impose limitations or restrictions to those three things is a part of The Dark Con of Man. Whether this be rules, such as 'you can not eat fish on fridays' or 'you can not have sex before marriage' or 'you will burn forever in Hell if you don't do things our way' or 'drafting you and forcing you to kill another man over a plot of land or some oil.' It is not right to impose your own Dream onto another person. No one should be forced to live your Dream. Love, Freedom, and Happiness are the rights of every living thing in the Universe. It is not for any one of us to take these away from any living thing, whether it be a tree, or a bug, or a person, or a planet, or a star. This does not mean that we should never cut down a tree or kill a bunch of ants that have invaded our home, however they should be treated with respect for the life that they possess.

I have the right to love myself for who I am and others for who they are, to be free to make my own choices as long as they do not harm others, and I have the right to be happy. These are my rights and it is up to me to claim them, for they are within me and claim them I will.

A story of opportunity missed.

It was nearing the end of eighth grade and I was walking across campus to my P.E. class when I saw this freckled cutie with an Annie fro. I met her eyes in passing and then forgot about her.

It was nearing the end of summer vacation, before I started the ninth grade. My family was friends with another family that lived across the street from us and 2 houses up. When they would go away on vacation they would pay me to take care of their house, water the plants, take in the paper and mail, etc. It was nearing sunset and I was watering the plants in the front yard. The girl who lived in the house next door was playing basketball with her brother and his friends. The sun was setting behind her and I could not take my eyes off of her. I would discover later that this was the same girl who no longer had the Annie fro. I watered those plants for about 10 minutes while I watched her play basketball, my eyes watering from the sun that was setting behind her. She was fire. She was a phoenix. I was in love.

It was the beginning of the ninth grade. I took a seat in my American History class with Mr. Villalobos(?) and who should sit down in the seat next to mine but the beautiful girl with freckles and green eyes. My heart stopped beating. She asked me if I was the boy who lived across the street from her. My voice was stuck somewhere between my heart and adam's apple. I couldn't speak. So I nodded my head yes. She smiled and returned to talking to her friends.

It was nearing summer again. I had P.E. with two of her friends. I let it slip to them that I liked her. After lunch I was heading to my Spanish class, walking up the stairs who do I see at the railing but the girl who stole my heart. Excitement and fear began to well up within me with each passing step. She was watching me as I aproached her. The fear began to overwhelm the excitement. What do I do? What do I do? These words kept beating into my brain with every excelerated heartbeat. My father had died 6 years ago, I had grown up with my mother and sister. I didn't know what to do. I got closer. She followed my every step. She was going to make fun of me. I knew it. She would pretend to like me then she would make a joke of me in front of all her friends. I was getting closer. My father never taught me what to do. I was afraid of failure. I reached the top of the stairs. I was walking past her. My heart was beating so hard that I could literally feel it's pounding tempo within my head. She says "hi" to me. I hear the voice of this girl from the 2nd grade in my head telling me "You need a bra." My chest begins to feel like lips after a shot of novacaine. I struggle out a "hey" as I walk right by her, barely even looking at her. Her friend from the P.E. class is standing next to her and the friend says to me, "Hello, this is E****!" I'm watching the scene in slow-mo as I keep on walking. She hit her friend and storms into the classroom. As I continue to walk down the hallway, my very being is filled with the feeling of cowardice. I swear to myself that I will talk to her after class.

The bell rings and I am sweating, I'm so scared of talking to her. My feelings for her are so strong that I don't know what to do. What if she rejects me? I'm so insecure about myself that the thought of saying "hi" to her is feeling me with dread. I'm walking down the hallway towards her classroom and the stairs. She exits the classroom and is nearly beside me the entire way to the bus and I try and think of something to say the entire way and nothing seems good enough, so I walk a few steps behind her in silence all the way to the bus. We didn't sit near each other on the bus and I walked about 10 paces behind her up the street until I got to my house.

I never got the courage to talk to her and I was in love with her for years to follow. I found out much later that she hated me. I could see why. I was bound by fear of the unknown. I was afraid of everything. I was afraid of life. I hid from it in video games and fantasy novels. I often wished that I could have been born 1000 years ago in a time of knights and swords.

I often wonder what my life would have been like if I had just stopped and talked with her that day at the top of the stairs outside of Mrs Ferguson's English class. I later found out that she was passionate about acting and art and Pink Floyd. She was the Angela Chase to my Brian Krackow. Except in the end of that show at least he had the courage to tell her how he felt. I never found that courage, but I am getting closer to finding it.

This year has been a journey of self-discovery. The majority of my life has been spent deep within myself, an unwilling participant in the this thing we call life. I'm digging deep. I'm trying to find the source of my melancholy. I'm trying to find a way to be present in the here and now. I'm trying to find that which I have lost. I'm trying to find the spark that makes living fun and not the burden that it is. I am making progress. Slow as it may be. It is coming. I can feel the seeds of consciousness within me. Now all I need to find is the water and sunlight to make them grow, and magic, magic, magic. I need to find the magic of life. That undefined thing that puts a glint in your eye and a smile on your face, that thing called love anf not just any love, the love that only flows from within, not dependent upon anything else in this world. If I can find that, life will once again be a grand adventure.

I will never know the love that might have existed, for however long, between the freckled beauty with the green eyes and myself. However, I can do my best to never allow fear to again come between myself and the possibility of love. The next time that attraction descends upon me with such intense ferocity, I hope to be in a place where I will be able to greet it without fear, insecurity, and self-doubt. In order to do that I must rediscover the magic of love within myself. I must rediscover the joy of life.

Monsters aren't supposed to be real...

My roommate just got an update on that girl who was found in Chicago. Someone from his work got in touch with one of her friends and she said that the girl had been chatting with some guy over the internet who told her that he could make her famous. So she went out to Chicago to meet him. He took her to an abandoned building and raped her before throwing her off of the 6th floor. Somehow, she managed to survive, but she's not expected to live out the week. How can a human being do that to another person? How does a man turn into a monster? The monster that committed this atrocity needs to be found and put down like the rabid dog that it is. Death would be an undeserved mercy. My skin is crawling and I want to throw up.

Another day.

I returned to town today. I'm beginning to wonder if this town is just anathema to me. Ever since I got back my mood has been very dark. I don't know what to do. I have so much that I need to do and I don't want to do any of it. I just want to stare at a wall and disappear.

My roommate just found out today that a girl he used to work with and saw just two weeks ago was found after having fallen from a 16 story building in Chicago. What the hell was she doing all the way out there? They don't know if she fell, or was pushed, or jumped. The only reason they contacted my roommate's work was that they found a business card with that number on it. As far as everyone knows she had no plans to go to Chicago, so how and why did she end up out there and once there, how and why did she end up at the bottom of a 16 story building? It's very strange.

I need to make a change.

Mom's birthday(=

It was my Mom's birthday today. I drove her to her doctor for a check-up and on the way she opened up conversation with me about my recent revelation. I felt relief. I was able to let go of more today. I felt lighter. After the doctor visit we went out for Casper's hot dogs. Yum(= It's the Bay Area version of Pink's, only way better. She told me how she used to go to the Casper's that we went to during her lunch breaks when she went to the same junior college that I went to. It's weird thinking of my mom being young at going to the same college and hang-outs that I went to. Cool-weird. After coming back home, a dark mood descended. It would not abate. I took a nap, it didn't help. We went to my sister's for a birthday dinner of BBQ'd hamburgers. Double yum in one day(= My sister and her family got my Mom a new gas BBQ, she was very happy. I got her three wonderful books by the this guy named Don Miguel Ruiz called: "The Four Agreements," "The Mastery of Love," and his newest, "The Voice of Knowledge." I pray that they will set her along the path of healing her own old wounds. We got home and watched 24 together. It was a wonderful end to my visit as 24 is our favorite show and it was really great to watch it with her. My dark mood lifted during the show and I feel that was due to simply being with my Mom, enjoying something that we both love together. Happy birthday Mom!!

Now, tomorrow brings a return trip that I am both dreading and embracing. I will greatly miss the clean air that I have been enjoying here. My return also brings the added stress of finding a psychiatrist, a search I am not looking forward to. It also brings Hamlet, whom I am eager to embrace. I feel him lurking inside me, brooding, waiting for release. May I grant him that without censor.

My thoughts on the floor like a puddle of...

I was talking with a friend a few minutes ago and this wave of annoyance washed over me. It had nothing to do with the person I was talking to and I'm not exactly sure where it came from, but it's growing stronger and moving towards anger. I feel like hitting something and I don't know why. Okay, I'm going over the conversation in my mind and the annoyance hit when my friend asked me how things were going with my mom. Things are not going good. This entire day has been as if I never had that conversation with her. Everything is right back under the rug. I'm frustrated and angry. I want to go scream at her, but I'm not going to. I can't. She's recovering from heart surgery for god's sake. I feel trapped and claustrophobic. I don't know what to do. I don't want to be the one to keep bringing up this topic. It was hard enough for me to bring it up the first time. My mom doesn't open up much, she tells me that my dad wasn't very open either, and neither was my grandfather. Not talking about shit is in my genes and I want to purge those genes away in a great bonfire. I don't want to live the way my parents lived. I feel so goddamned alone. I want to be in a relationship with someone so badly that I don't think it will ever happen. I want someone to hold me and force me to let go of all of the shit I've been carrying around since my father died. I wish my mom had been that strong with me emotionally when I was a kid, but she couldn't go there because she needs the same goddamned thing and I don't have the fucking strength to give it to her. I need to feel close to someone so badly that I want to scream at the top of my lungs a gutteral cry and unfortunately all that will do is drive everyone away. I feel like that fucking loser guy that William H Macy played in Magnolia. So fucking down on himself that he sunk into this self pitying place where all he could do was cry out that he had love to give and needing it so badly that all it did was drive everyone away. I hate feeling needy and I feel so fucking needy right now. It's fucking pathetic and I don't know how to escape from it. God, I feel like fucking dying and all I want to do is live. I want to change this feeling inside me. Want. That's a fucking screwed up word right there, filled to overflowing with paradox. You see, because the more you want something the less likely that you will be able to attain it. It's like a cosmic law or something. It's seems to me that more people "make it" as an actor only after they don't give a shit about "making it" as an actor. I also hear more cases of people finding love or their "soul mate" only after they've given up and stopped looking. It seems that the less you focus on something the more likely it is that the Universe will give it to you. It's like when you are trying REALLY hard to remember something and the harder you try the further away it seems to get, then days later when you've completely forgotten about it, that fucker will just randomly pop into your head. It's like a little "fuck you" that God sewed into the fabric of reality when he created it. I feel like saying, "Fuck wanting! I don't need shit from anybody!" However, if I say that then I can feel myself going down a very angry path that I don't want to venture on. Anger does not attract it repels. I don't want to repel. That will only give me a false sense that being alone is okay. It's not okay to be alone. Don't get me wrong I don't mean that it's not okay to be alone, I actually enjoy spending time with myself, but there's a fucking limit and eventually I want to spend some time with another person and I would like to spend that time with a woman that I care about and can be intimate with. Is that so much to fucking ask?! No, it's not, but it's also not going to happen until I find a way to be happy now. Until that happens, I won't be good for anyone. I secretly hope that I will meet someone that will see past what I am now and see the man that I can be and will help me get there. I'm beginning to give up hope that a woman like that exists. I just want to be seen, really and truely seen, I want to actually feel like I am here, in this reality, alive and breathing, both physically and emotionally. I feel thin and see through. Most of the time I feel like although my body is here, I am somewhere else entirely, like if the wind were to blow to fiercely I would just fade away like so much smoke.

The revelations of revelation.

Tonight I did something I thought I would never do. I told my mother about things that I have kept hidden for a very long time. I told her about my brush with cancer, how I've been feeling depressed and melancholy, how my father's death still weighs heavily upon me, and the biggie, what happened with Tony. I told her that I felt I needed to get some therapy. She was upset and sad about what I told her. I think it hit her a little hard. She wasn't very comforting or helpful in the way I needed her to be. Sometimes I think that everything would be allright if she would just grab me, hug me, and tell me that she loves me. However, that did not happen because she is in the same place that I am. She grew up in a household with a very severe and stand-offish mother. Although my mother was very good to my sister and I, she has trouble expresing and showing her love. She basicly told me this tonight. So, at least now I know where I get that problem from.

I'm reminded of a section from the "Mastery of Love" by Don Miguel Ruiz. Here is a portion of that....

"...Children just feel emotions and their reasoning mind doesn't interpret or question them...We learn to be emotional according to the emotional energy in our home, and our personal reaction to that energy...The emotional energy that lives in our home is going to tune our body to that frequency. The emotional body starts to change its tune, and it is no longer the normal tune of a human being. We play the game of the adults, we play the game of the outside Dream, and we lose. We lose our innocence, we lose our freedom, we lose our happiness, and we lose our tendency to love..."

I may have grown up tuned to a certain frequency, but I don't have to stay on that frequency if I don't want to, and I don't want to. I met an amazing woman a few years ago who taught what it was like to truely love and now that I know what real love feels like I don't want any substitutions. However, that didn't work out for many reasons, of which one of them was that I was not in the right place for it. I wasn't ready for it. I am so thankful to her for reminding me of something that I had lost long ago, something that I had thought lost forever. I eternally thank her for bringing love back into my life in a form that I had not known since early childhood.

Saying aloud the very things that I have always feared to say to the person I thought I would never say them to has illuminated the path that leads me out of this dark valley and toward my own healing. My mom can not help me to get where I want to go because she now stands behind me, in the dark valley from whence I came, a place I am trying desperately to move away from. Perhaps, in making this journey I will be able to one day go back and help her to find the path that leads to freedom, but I can't do that until I first heal myself. My mom is a very strong woman, who has born her own cross out of the darkest reaches of the valley, and I am so proud of her in that, because she could have very easily let herself become like her mother. I thank her in my heart for not allowing that to happen, but I think that she really needs to hear me say it. It is the least I can do for her.

I love you Mom.

O' the joys of laughter...

One of the things that I am working on right now is accepting whatever emotion is occuring within me at the moment. I have spent the majority of my life ignoring and suppressing my negative emotions and that has had an effect on my life as a whole. Now I am beginning to admit that I have done and currently do this. So, in order to begin to correct this I have begun to accept whatever emotion I am feeling at the moment and going with it whether it be good or bad.

Well, today I was feeling pretty mediocre to down. Then I went to my acting class and things began to shift. I began to feel good. It didn't happen all at once, but gradually my mood went from a depressed state to one of definite satisfaction with a little bit of happiness thrown in for good measure. I think the motivating factor to this shift was the scene I signed up to do next week. Hamlet. To be or not to be. Yikes. I love this scene so much that I'm afraid of fucking it up, but that's not going to happen because I know this scene and my partner and I are going to rock it!

The truly fantastic part of the evening came much, much later. As in 3:30am later when I dropped my friend off at her house. We were talking outside and this random thing happened and we only had to look at each other in the eye for like a quarter of a second before we both started laughing uncontrollably for like a minute. Then another random moment occurred that was directly related to the first and I was rolling on the sidewalk fighting desperately for air, as I was laughing so hard that I literally could barely breathe, while my friend was collapsed in my front seat fighting for air right alongside me. God, I needed that so bad. I haven't laughed like that since the last time I laughed with her many, many months ago. She is so fantastic and I just wish we could spend more time together.

Life and all that shit.

I found out the results of my ultrasound today and I don't have cancer. That should have come as a big relief, but when I found out I was almost disappointed. That is probably the closest I can get to describing the way I felt. I need to seriously take a good look at myself and figure out why I would feel that way. I'm not happy. It doesn't seem to matter how much good is going on in my life, whenever something negative or disappointing happens, it always seems to take precedence over anything good. It's like my body is predisposed to the miserable.

It's like I'm in a dark tunnel and I don't like being there, so when I see this ladder that leads up to the daylight, I jump at it too quickly and start to climb. I can see the light getting brighter and closer. I begin to climb a little faster and then all of sudden a pigeon flies over the top of the shaft and drops a big fat bird turd right on my head and all of a sudden the ladder turns into a slide and I fall right back down into the darkness. Now I'm forced to go find another ladder and hope that maybe this time that stupid fucker of a pigeon won't be able to find me.

Maybe I have some sort of chemical imbalance, or maybe certain events from my childhood fucked me up more than I thought, or maybe it's just this fucking town. I don't know. All I do know is that I'm sick and fucking tired of feeling this way. I just want to be able to smile because I feel good and not because I feel I fucking need to. I don't want to be the guy that brings everybody down and I don't want to be the guy pretending to be happy so that he won't bring everybody down. I hate struggling to get out of bed in the morning. I hate feeling this weight on my chest the majority of my waking life. I hate that the only time I feel real is when I'm asleep and dreaming. I hate that since my Father died 23 years ago living has felt like one big struggle. I hate that just found five things that I hate about myself. I hate that I'm using the word hate. I hate that I find it very difficult to nearly impossible to hate another person, but seem to have little trouble feeling that way about myself. I just hope that by being honest with myself about this shit, I'll be able to figure out a way to fix it.

So today's pigeon bomb came from Reel Pros, which are the casting director workshops that I go to. In their system they keep track of good and bad comments or flags. When you get 3 flags they send you an email telling you what the 3 flags are and if you get 5 flags you're kicked out for a period of 6 months. Well, as you've probably already guessed, I got my 3 flag email today. Normally I take criticism very well and use it to better myself, but this one came out of the blue during a very difficult month and to be honest, I really wasn't expecting it. Anyway, these comments came directly from the casting directors, which are the people that stand between me and a job. So, needless to say this did not help to lighten my mood today.

Whatever. I'm done. I'm tired and I don't want to write anymore. I'm going to bed so that I can get up early and go to fluorescent, cubicle hell and talk on a phone for 4 hours trying to get information out of people that aren't exactly eager to give it. Like life isn't enough of a fucking struggle already. Jeez.

Horoscope weirdness...

Here's my horoscope for the day. I need to preface that I don't put much stock in these but they have been strangely relevant over the last few weeks. This one is really weird considering that it came one day after my dream...

Horoscope for: Tuesday, May 02, 2006
If you can remember a recent dream, try to hold on to it throughout the entire day. If you cannot remember your dreams, take a few minutes to close your eyes and create a day dream. Either way, it's important to understand that your subconscious needs to be heard and dreams are an effective way for suppressed feelings to rise to the surface.

A dream.

There's a girl I love, but I can't recall her face. She lives in a very dark place both emotionally and physically. She has killed a lot of people. She is in possession of two guns and claims that they are the cause of every bad thing she has done. I question where she got them, but she no longer remembers. She tells me that she doesn't want to hurt anyone anymore and that she buried the guns outside. After she falls to sleep, I dig up the guns. They are small but very heavy with a weight that defies their size. I put them in my pocket and take them to a guy I know. He has knowledge about guns. On my way I put my hand over the guns and a darkness descends over the center of me like liquid black and a voice in my head, a voice that I have never heard before, tells me to go back and kill her, it is the only way. I remove my hand from the guns and the voice fades away, but the darkness stays.

I reach the building where I can find my knowledgable friend. I walk down a long, white hallway that ends with a very strange door made of bulletproof plastic. There is a very large man standing on the other side of the door and he starts to question me when my friend comes out and recognizes me and tells the guard to let me through. Before I even get near him I feel it neccessary to tell these two men that I am carrying two guns. My friend laughs at my innocence, while the guard stiffens. My friend waves him off and takes me into the back room. I show him the guns. My memory fades here and I pick up the thread when...

I return to my old home, still carrying the guns. I go upstairs and I peek into my parent's room and see that my Father is there sleeping. It never even flashed through my head that he had died 23 years ago. I went into what used to be my sister's room and found some wrapping paper and thought that if I wrapped up the guns that it would rid me of the blackness and hopefully prevent the voice from returning. So I went to work and my Father came in and told me that I need to get out of here, that it wasn't safe to be here anymore, and he left. Then my Mother and sister came in and they told me they were leaving and that I needed to come with them. I wanted to go with them, but I wanted to save the girl I loved even more and in order to do that I needed to deal with the guns. I told them to just wait a minute, that I was alomost done. They were walking out the door. I yelled after them to just wait a minute. They were getting into my Mom's old RV. They were beginning to drive away, but they slowed down when they began to go around the corner. I started to put on my shoes, sticking my feet in the air so that they could be seen through the window. They got the hint and stopped, waiting for me. I put the wrapped guns in my pocket and ran out to the RV. I got in and sat down. The RV pulled away and I kept my hand wrapped around the wrapped guns, the liquid black continuing to seep into the heart of me.

That is where the dream ended for me. There were many other bits and pieces that I know I'm forgetting, but the details of dream fade so quickly in the waking world. Why is that? Why is it that a dream can be so real, so vivid, and yet fade so quickly upon waking? Strangeness. Anyone have thoughts on interpretations?