Yup, it pretty much looks like I'll be leaving the bay area in less than 5 months. What a strange future I have in front of me.

I got a call from the nurse at my brother's day program. She said that she noticed a bruise on him so she took a closer look at him. She recorded six different bruises on him. One the size of a baseball in the middle of his back between the shoulder blades. She is telling me this because she is making a report of abuse which will lead to an investigation of his group home.

For the past few months, I have been trying to convince my mother that I want my brother Rick out of that group home. That he doesn't belong with strangers taking care of him, but with his family that love him. That means my mother and me. Up until this point, my main complaint has been that the wardens in the house lock up his food. They feed him what they want to at mealtimes, but he is not allowed to get snacks when he likes. There is no reason for this - when we grew up together he always had free reign in the kitchen and could eat whatever he liked with no ill effects. I hated that they put him through that. But today's news... well that's a whole nother level.

Everything I have been planning for the "next few years" has been collapsed into the next few months. I am pretty sure that I can't let my brother spend another year in that bullshit place.

I don't know what to do. Moving back to Massachusetts feels like a worst case scenario for me. And although I have kind of been "over" the bay in the last year... this is my home. This is one of the worst times - things are going well... I am meeting new people, starting new projects. I am not ready to say goodbye come June. But that's what we are looking at... finish the year at DVS, and move back to Boston. For only a short time, because my mother does want to move, but what could be years. That's one scenario... but I am too upset to think of any others.

I became my brother's guardian four years ago. I've mostly just ignored the moral implications of that for the last three.... but now, well now, I'm a parent. If the cliche is true, and my gut already tells me that it is, my life will never be the same.

Is it possible to forgive someone (or think you've forgiven them) and then decide that you really didn't or didn't want to and then come to the conclusion that you just aren't going to forgive them at all right now? Can you get re-angry at past grievances?

I think I can.

I'm sorry but OkCupid is pretty lame.

I just want to spend time alone all the time. This sucks because I think that my friends feel ignored and abandoned because of it. I don't always return calls or emails because it means having to talk to someone. When I do talk to someone I often zone out pretty quickly, not having any ability to 'small talk'. I know it is me because I feel this like this with pretty much everyone, but I am sure that people take it personally anyway.

I don't know how I became like this. At my job, I can spend the whole day interacting with people and it doesn't really bother me. I thought that maybe I was getting too overloaded at work with people and so when I come home I want alone time. But I also seem to feel like this on the weekends. Maybe I also don't get enough alone time because Zeth is over constantly? But I think it just might be this house. Okay, I know the whole idea was to live with a bunch of people, but I don't think I can handle it anymore. Pretty much every time I go downstairs there is someone here I have never met before. Everyday. I feel forced to interact with them, but I don't want to. When I come home people greet me.... I know this should make me feel loved and cared for and it does, but I just escape to my room. I don't go downstairs because it is chaotic and messy (another whole issue). It is like this every night.

When I first moved to Oakland, I didn't really make friends for about a year. I thought to myself that I wasn't going to up and move again for a very long time, because it was so difficult during that year and I felt lonely. Now I feel like I know too many people. I don't feel like I can give my friends the attention they deserve. I feel overloaded and again, chaotic. I sometimes feel like doing a 'friend cull'... but I know that I would miss people. Hell, I already miss people that I don't have enough time for.

So much of the time, I look at my friends that want to hang out with a "you're really here to suck my energy, aren't you?" attitude. Which is fucked and I hate it.

I don't know how to not feel like this. I never really had this problem before. Hell, most of my life I never even had friends. I don't know what to do.

1. What did you do in 2009 that you'd never done before?

-planted a banana tree
-went to hawaii
-joined a gym/rock climbed
-went to a couples' counseling session
-did things i hadn't done in 20+ years


2. Did you keep your new years' resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
All I remember is that I was going to have monthly resolutions. Didn't do that. I wanted to keep 801010 (diet), but I am trying that this year as well.

3. How will you be spending New Year's Eve?
got home from the east coast

4. Did anyone close to you die?
best friend from college - sanj. she was the only person i knew that was my age and still fucking down. it was/still is quite a shock.

5. What countries did you visit?
mexico

6. What would you like to have in 2010 that you lacked in 2009?
ability to do chin ups, push ups, handstands, maybe even a backflip

7. What date from 2009 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?
i'm not good with dates - met zeth on feb 10. you all know what happened ten days later. dec 27 pledged that i ate my last raw gourmet meal ever. dec 28 my brother spent a few hours at my mom's house for the first time in 17 years.

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
dealing with body image issues.

9. What was your biggest failure?
still letting body image issues get to me.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?
had to go to the ER for a kidney infection in may. i thought i was dying.

11. What was the best thing you bought?
durian/ticket to hawaii

12. Where did most of your money go?
food

13. What song will always remind you of 2009?
one of the bikini kill songs i learned

14. What do you wish you'd done more of?
activism

15. What do you wish you'd done less of?
working

16. What was your favourite TV program?
yuck

17. Do you hate anyone now that you didn't hate this time last year?
no

18. What was the best book you read?
? maybe colin wilson's new book

19. What was your greatest musical discovery?
myself playing pretty terrible bass

20. What was your favorite film of this year?
the coconut chronicles/disposable humans - can see them both on sprword.com

21. What did you do on your birthday?
i can't remember

22. What kept you sane?
friends

23. Who did you miss?
my mom

24. Who was the best new person you met?
zeth

25. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2009:
you always have to keep pushing yourself. there is no time for stagnancy.

Your Existing Situation

He tends to proceed with caution due to her fear of rejection. This attitude makes in difficult for her to earn respect or develop close relationships.
Your Stress Sources

"Wishes for freedom and independence, free from limitations and restrictions except for the ones she choices to give himself."
Your Restrained Characteristics

Feels unhappy and isolated because she is unable to succeed in finding the cooperation and understanding she desires.

"Willing to become emotionally involved because she feels isolated and alone. she tries to avoid conflict and disagreements, but her arrogance leads her to quickly take offense."

Is satisfied and finds contentment through sexual activity.

Your Desired Objective

Alert and very observant. Always looking for new opportunities which offer freedom and the hope of making the most of them. Looking to prove herself and be recognized for her for her achievements. Feels separated from others and constantly trying to bridge that gap.
Your Actual Problem

"Feeling held back and restricted from moving forward, looking for a solution that will give her more freedom and less obstacles."

I can no longer tolerate the miserable.

This world is fucked. I KNOW that and have known it for a very long time... longer than pretty much everyone in my immediate world. I have seen or heard about more shit than I could ever possibly process. And I have grown weary and tired of it.

Which isn't to say that I don't want to know about the latest, even more fucked up, animal experiment, genocide, toxic chemical dump, sexual perpetrator or your new revelation about how humans need yet one more simply acquired necessity that is no longer available in civilization (good food, clean air, adequate rest time).

But I am tired of those who use the state of the world as an excuse to be in a foul mood all the time or as proof that they aren't an ignorant apathetic drone. It doesn't prove anything other than you rather add more negativity to a world overflowing with it. And I don't know what you are trying to prove to me anyway... I feel like tattooing "I get it" on my forehead.

Preferred ignorance and apathy still make the top of my list of most annoying personality traits, but I just want to be around people who are happy in spite of it all. Perhaps I am getting soft, but really I just want to experience joy the best I can in a culture that wants nothing more than us to be unhappy. I want very badly to heal the wounds that this culture has inflicted on me, the symptoms of which include my own anger and negativity. And I want the people around me to help me do that.... to show me how to be happy.

Sometimes good enough just isn't good enough.

I have never felt as unnatural and disgusted living in an urban environment as I do now. Our love affair seems unhealthy for both of us... perhaps it is time for me to move on.

So it all started because I have this mole that is changing and I have to get it checked out. And with most things that I am kind of freaked out about I fantasize about how it's going to go. (I wonder if everyone does this.... picturing the doctor's prognosis, telling your friends and family, what are you going to do with your last..., but maybe I am too morbid.) And I think about how when some people are told they have x amount of time to live die exactly to the day and how others achieve a full recovery. I wonder what makes the difference and whether someone's will to live is more important than anything. I remember my father's resignation toward death near the end of his life... was he accepting the inevitable or did he help speed it along? Sitting with him in the hospital, I sometimes thought it was the latter.

And then I wonder about my will to live. Don't get me wrong, I don't have any wish to end my life, but I wonder if someone told me that I had a year to live would I really say "no fucking way"? I'm not so sure. But why the fuck not? I must admit that part of me would take pleasure in knowing that I could just do whatever I wanted without fearing the consequences.... I mean whatever anyone could do to me it would only last a year.... oh the shit I would do! And how sad it is that fear keeps me from doing what I want.

But also, and this kind of disturbs me more in a way, is that I began to think that my life perhaps wasn't worth much because human life isn't worth much. I mean in a way, humans suck, right? I can sum it up in one word: civilization and you know exactly what I am talking about. Or I can use a multitude of words: prisons, cars, pavement, nuclear bombs, pollution, deforestation, vivisection, television, jobs, factory farming, bureaucracy, money, slavery, plastic, commercials, etc. and you know exactly what I am talking about. All of my friends (that's probably why we are friends) know this... know that humans have ruined everything. And even the ones that don't want to ruin anything at all, end up doing so anyway. If we care about this planet, our home, we should all just not be here, right? So it is really difficult not to see my absence from this planet as well, somewhat beneficial... so a prognosis may not be great news, but hey, could it really be seen as so so bad that it would cause me or anyone to fight with every ounce of my being any disease I might have? And I like my life; I would say I am at about 80% of yeah, I want to keep on living, I am having fun, I do cool shit, etc. But, I'm thinking why am I not at a 100%, why would I not say "absolutely, no fucking way"? And is this a problem?

It is often said that one of the differences between human and non-human animals is that humans know that they are going to die one day. I don't really think that I believe this, but I am beginning to wonder if knowing that you are going to die one day keeps you from being fully 100% in favor of living. Are we trapped by the idea that "well, it's going to happen one day"? We are told that all animals, by nature, are designed to value and work for their own survival (or survival of their offspring) above everything else. Is me being not at 100%, yet another way I have become domesticated? Maybe there is resignation amongst other species in the face of death. I think I've seen it on those nature programs. But I can't help that something about not being at 100%, just feels, well, fucking weird and unnatural.

But it gets even weirder.... Derrick Jensen argues that most of us in our culture are in love with death, our own death, death of the natural world, death of the planet. That at the base of it, we really don't give a shit about our lives because otherwise we wouldn't destroying everything we need for survival. Why in the world would we value shopping malls over trees, if we didn't have a death wish? So why, then, would my failure to fight for my survival come from my hatred of civilization... from knowing that the world might be better without me (or any of us)?

For me, it comes down to this: either I have to accept that I am not 100% enthusiastic about my own survival or the survival of my species. I have to be able to explain to my mother, my brothers, my friends and the people that love me why I might only have a response of "oh shit, well, that kind of sucks... I'll do the best I can but oh well" in the face of death (and this would include not just trips to the doctor's office, but I also think about how I would respond if I was attacked in a lethal manner) even though they might want me to fight harder. And accept that the uneasiness that comes with that... and that possibly that outlook pushes me in further into domestication. Or I have to really value my own survival... and in some way the survival of my species. I have to see humans (in general, not just certain ones that I have personally grown fond of) as worth saving, even as they destroy everything around them. And in order to do that, I have to forgive and love them again. To see some sort of value, any value, in humans existing. And to not surround myself exclusively and limit my time with those who profess to hate humans (i.e. pretty much everyone I know).

My next doctor's appointment is Monday.

Of course thinking you are going to die is going to do some weird things to your head. The person that I most expected to come to the hospital didn't. I said that it didn't bother me, but it was the biggest lie I've told that person so far. One of the people that did come, one of my oldest friends in the bay area, is now, a few days later, someone I don't understand and can't talk to.

I still don't feel so well.

Now more than ever I want to escape this culture. But is there really anywhere left to run to? And is it really worth it? Furthermore, are these valid questions, or just thinly disguised excuses not to "just do it"?

Because really, I am (successfully so far) trying to spend a lot less time on the internet. In an effort to try really hard to connect more deeply with people in real life. And I realized that there is just too many fucking people around. And I seem to have fleeting and shallow relationships with all of them. Even people I have known for years. And a lot of the time I don't even want to talk to anyone at all because I know that the conversation is going to have nothing to do with our spiritual or emotional lives, but it is just going to be playing 'catch up' because I haven't talked to them in two weeks. I can't stand this anymore. It's civilization at its worst and I feel like I am going crazy with this level of disconnection. Sometimes, I just want to do a cull of people I interact with (or rather I should just move to a smaller town). Not because I don't value each an every person in their way but just because there is so many of them and I know that everyone, including myself, gets shortchanged. But I wouldn't even know where to start with such a thing. Shit.

nothing gives me quite the sense of serenity that i get from a whole slew of abandoned buildings.

"Feminism is confusing." -Thomas, age 12.

"Only what you have not given can be lacking in any situation." When I first read these words, I didn't know how much the sentiment behind them would change my life forever. In fact, I don't even think I understood what they meant. I have heard it put another way: "We are not held back by the love we didn't receive in the past, but by the love we're not extending in the present." From that point on an idea has been stuck in my head which I interpret as this: When we are unhappy with whatever situation we find ourselves in, the answer is always to give more of ourselves. When there is something upsetting or disappointing me, the answer is always for me to be more loving and kind. I am not always able to do this. Hell, I am not always able to even remember this, but whenever I do, it works every single time. I'm not joking. It probably sounds ridiculous to say that when we are feeling at our worst it is most necessary to give all we have, but I think it is an essential part of being truly happy. Whenever you see me unhappy, it's because I've forgotten to do this. So feel free to remind me. And you know, maybe you want to try this out yourself and see if can make you as happy as it has made me.

Good night and good luck!