love.

but there comes a time
when it's time to dive.

First of all, this question is totally serendipious to my life right at this moment!

I feel like my response is going to be way less profound than some others that talked about getting to know themselves or their deceased relatives, but alas, (sigh), I'd really like to get to know this boy named Mike.  I have this huge crazy attraction to him that I don't understand and have not felt in a long time!  I'm pretty sure he's attracted to me too and sometimes we hold hands (gosh i sound like a 13 year-old girl).  The thing is that we've never had a really good conversation.  We've talked for sure but it's usually at a party with other people or while we are trying to watch a movie and we haven't just sat down and talked to each other.  I don't really know if he's the kind of person who could do that...but I love doing that AND I WOULD ABSOLUTELY BE SO GRATEFUL TO CREATE SOME KIND OF DEEPER UNDERSTANDING between us.

I was just thinking this morning about how my family is not very supportive of me traveling to Brazil.  They think it's crazy and unnecessary and a mistake.

But they think that because they have a different value system that comes from their generation and society.  They see travel as a luxury and theatre as a liability.  They don't see how it is important to my soul to pursue study and work in theatre and they haven't really experienced how life-enhancing travelling is.  It's been difficult planning this trip because I feel very alone and it's been easy for doubt to creep in when I don't have people who are also interested and affirming what I'm doing.

The bottom line, however, is that I know that this is the right thing for me to do and I'm doing it.  Maybe one day they will see how completely righteous it was for me to take this trip...But I don't even need their support now or ever!  All I really need is to be able to hear what my heart speaks and believe and love myself enough to feel that I should follow it.

I feel safe in the theatre.  In the theatre you can show anything, be anything, say anything, do anything, and it is allowed....... well, at least that's how it should be in the theatre.  Once in a while we don't live up to it, but I think we all know that that's how it should be.

Sometimes I find myself in a moment that is beautiful and profound.  For example - a couple of weeks ago, a new friend invited me to a party.  I'm pretty shy when I meet new people so here I was at a party with someone I was just beginning to know, hanging out with a bunch of people I didn't know at all, and I was feeling pretty timid and awkward.
At one point, I was sitting around a fire with my new friend and another girl.  My new friend had been talking about religion because we had both been raised in the Mormon faith and left the church in our late teens.  The conversation carried on, evolving, and my new friend's friend, who was basically a complete stranger to me, ended up sharing basically an entire philosophy about life - which I think I really needed to hear at that precise junction of my life.  She said that sometimes in life things are good and sometimes things are bad but you don't need some theology to get you through that - all you need to do is come to terms with yourself and make a place for yourself in this world that suits you.  She just said that like she was talking to me about the latest movie she saw.  I don't think she even knew, or cared to know, how much she was helping me in my life at that moment.
I'm at a place in my life where I'm trying to grapple with the experience of life (and how crappy it can be sometimes) and who I am (and the degree that  I like or dislike myself on any given day).  Honestly, there are times when I don't think that I, in all my unicities, can deal with everything that happens in life.  There are times that I just want to check out because if life is going to suck, I'll just skip it. ...But then I have moments - like when a random stranger inadvertantly delivers righteous guidance - that are beautiful and profound and I'm so grateful to be a witness to this almost magical anamoly.  I would live my life just to be able to have experiences like that.

treehouses fucking rule.  my children will have one.

I think I'm struggling much with my weight/body image situation.  I have not found peace with this aspect of my life and I would like to.  I would like to look healthy and feel great and not be self-conscious.  I want to resolve the issues I have around this aspect of my life.  To ease my struggle, I'm not sure what I can do.  I feel like the whole thing is out of my hands.  I think that the issue might be a disordered thyroid, and if it was, that would be a relief because curing that is achieveable and if the thyroid problem is responsible for my weight issues, then chances are it's responsible with my mood and anxiety issues, and to find healing, well that might be a whole new world.  I'm not sure if I'm ready for that.  I hope to be ready for healing, because I feel like I need to be ready to let go of my pain and not use it as an excuse.  I hope to be ready and I hope to live greater and be stronger and beautiful.  God please help me.

One time my professor called me a "student of life." And that was pretty cool.

Also, a couple of my professors have said that I truly have the soul of an artist, and that's something I truly desire to have.  I think that is the most coolest and if I truly have that then I think I'm being exactly what I've always wanted to be.

And then finally, a classmate of mine once said that I wail like a baby, which doesn't sound like a compliment, but in context it does.  Here's a journal entry from that day:
alright so I'm in Shakespeare class and we are doing our whole theatre people wonderful talk about our emotions and our lives and how Shakespeare makes us cry and breathe and blah. And last class someone was talking about being in church and seeing a baby cry and how the baby was free and could just cry at the top of their lungs and didn't care and how that's how she wanted to be in her art. So today we did this exercise, which was you know all theatre-people-ish and then we sit down and go around the circle of us and talk about what happened for us; I'm like the second to the last one and I say my spiel (which is a story in itself but NOTHING LEAVES THE CLASSROOM so I won't go there and I don't really want to go there on facebook, AND this story is not about what I said it's about what someone else said, which I think is totally allowed to leave the classroom, GOD longest parenthesis ever ANYWAY...) I say my spiel and then we all finish and Bradac (teacher) is like: uim, does anyone else have anymore to say? And this one girl goes and then this other girl, LaCresha, who is like very very nice, she is like can I say something about someone else? And Bradac hesitates and everyone's like: why does she want to talk about someone else? because that's like we are not suppose to be judging each other, but he warns her then lets her. AND DO YOU KNOW WHAT SHE FREAKIN SAYS? This is what she says she says she references the baby crying, talking to the person that said it, so I think oh she's going to talk about Mary, but then she turns to me and tell me that I can be like the baby. SO, maybe nobody can get what this means, and thinks it's not that great that I can cry like a baby, but what she says is seriously the most fabulous thing in my life and I just don't know what to do with myself. (Not just cry like a baby you see, because I didn't cry THAT much when I was saying my spiel, but I can be free like a baby and have emotion and express myself, and flow and communicate and and be interesting and rapturing and alive and excite people and make them happy and that's how you make good fricken art!) I am just so happy with myself and my life and I hope that I can keep crying like a baby and not only when I'm just talking about my biznatch with a group of people like I generally like and feel comfortable with, but with people I don't know, when I'm on a stage, who can be released by my freedom, and excited by life and my living of it...and now I'm beginning to sound really hokey and lame ON FACEBOOK, but whatever I don't know where else to put it. And this is where I'm putting it and I'm happy and I want to keep going and do amazing things. And I'm happy. And I feel good and great and I love my life and I'm very thankful, so so thankful.
and i want to remember this, remember what I have done and where I want to go and what I can do and how great it/I can be. thank you LaCresha Johnson!

Also, the other day at work my boss said that I'm just naturally really beautiful, because I wasn't wearing a lot of make-up, and he looked at me like he meant it.  I really felt blessed by that.

So I suppose that's what I value: the ability to learn, the power to be an artist, and beauty.

dishes

I think I'm depressed.  And that sucks.  Because that makes me this huge downer.  And I don't know how to tell people or if they would even care.  And I want my life to be a good life, and I want to do great things, and I want to make people happy and feel good in my presence, but I just don't think I can do anything right now, and being depressed I feel will just bring other people down.  I think they'd hate me for being such a loser and not care or know what to do about it but just feel uncomfortable.  I really don't know what to do.  I have a job.  A job I really loved and cared about (teaching theatre to children), and I don't feel like I can do anything.  I don't know what to do.  I cannot give up on my job, they'd have no one to replace me and then I'd just be a total flake.  AND I AM NOT A FLAKY PERSON!  I pride myself on being a bright and wonderful contributor to other people.
I hate being depressed!  I hate being how I am.  I don't know how other people are other ways.  I don't want to be that girl that just feels bad, but how can that be so wrong if that's just where I naturally am right at this moment?  How do I become happy again?  How do I find love and peace and beauty?  How do I make that for other people and live in that with them?  How do I have moments of purity in life again, because I feel like I've gone past that place where that happens.  I wonder if anyone else has experienced this thing, why, and if there is hope for me...