Ads.

Are my ads trying to call me fat? I'm feeling a little sensitive.

Music! (Hope!)

I'm all music-crazed lately, as those of you who read me a lot might have noticed. I think it's partly because of Vowels being here. She's all music crazy, and she makes me listen to stuff. And it's Question sending me those cds, so now I'm listening to those all the time. Every day, there's a new song that I have to listen to again and again and again. Today, it's "I Taught Myself How To Grow Old."

I don't know how everyone knows what I'm thinking. I'm almost feeling that way like I could write a poem. I'm scared to write poems, though, because it hurt so much when they got stolen. I'd like to write a poem. It might be a little bit hopeful. At first, I was picturing hope like a little, tiny sprout from a seed...that first little edge of it, poking out, just a little bit of green. But maybe it's more like a very small fire that I'm protecting against the wind...like the flame on a birthday candle. Like the flame on a birthday candle in a hurricane.

I've come to a little bit of a crossroads about expectations, which are dangerous, and hope, which is important to living. They grow from the same place, I guess...

Maybe the difference is that expectations have an ending, a pre-determined, definitive stopping place. Hope is open to whatever comes.

But that doesn't feel quite right, either. Being open to whatever comes is frightening, or at least it has been lately. Feeling like there are people who want to hurt me, like there were people who were trying to take my stuff, like there was no one to trust in my day-to-day life was a really awful place, and I wasn't finding much hope there.

Something has changed, though, and it's not me. I'm just doing the same mess I've been doing. It's him. He has reached a wall, and he's desperate to find a way out. He's had a rough couple of weeks, and it took a while for him to transform from "mad," that go-to male emotion, to vulnerable, scared, and willing to try anything. He's "excited" about the meeting tomorrow night. That's his word..."excited."

So I guess I can be hopeful that he will get something out of the meeting, that he will get the job, and that it will make him move in a healthier direction? But I shouldn't expect it?

This is a space I can occupy comfortably, though. I don't feel sick or unsafe. This feeling of insecurity, unpredictability--this is something I can do. I can do insecure. I can't do unsafe. And I need to remember this the next time I'm having that anguish I was having not too long ago...it always gets better.

And my life is good, in many ways. There are blessings: good friends, good food, fulfilling work, a place to write and people to read, a soft cat, a warm dog, a man I love more than anything, calling for me to come to bed.