what is the feeling when you are standing in a void space unable to look forward or back?

It is entirely annoying when I can't find my journal--my real journal.  The one I can hold in my hands and write with my own hand.  I don't write in it often--most of my thoughts are sane enough that they can exist in cyberspace.  When I do need to write in it though, it is usually an urgent need that needs to be quenched.  I tore apart my room like an alcoholic looking for a drink (no, I am not drunk).  I can't find it, and due to some strange obsession with having to write all entries in the same journal (often in the same ink), I cannot write this down anywhere else.  So.  Here I am.

Let's just say that I am constantly searching for my mother in movies and books.  When a mother character is particularly close to my own, or what I remember her to be (it sucks that I don't remember), I get sad.  Saw a movie tonight and I got sad and I miss my mom.  And then I realized that every day when I do something right--when I actually do my reading, when I make it to the gym, when I feel good enough to write--I am moving one step at a time away from that frail (skinny), broken (beautifully) boy I used to be.  I don't want to move on.  I just want to go back into her arms in the rocking chair where she would cradle me until I fell asleep.  I still remember one night when she took me to the chair--it was dark, there was one lamp, and the room looked like a yellow cloud--and sometimes, at night, when the world is asleep and I am restless (like tonight), I just want to go back and fall asleep on her shoulder.  Mothers shouldn't die.  Seventeen year olds shouldn't have to move on.  There is too much growing up left to do.  I am like that tree that grows up in a drought whose rings are all skinny and close together.

come on skinny love

Come on skinny love just last the year
Pour a little salt we were never here
My, my, my, my, my, my, my, my
Staring at the sink of blood and crushed veneer

I tell my love to wreck it all
Cut out all the ropes and let me fall
My, my, my, my, my, my, my, my
Right in the moment this order's tall

I told you to be patient
I told you to be fine
I told you to be balanced
I told you to be kind
In the morning I'll be with you
But it will be a different "kind"
I'll be holding all the tickets 
And you'll be owning all the fines

Come on skinny love what happened here
Suckle on the hope in lite brassiere
My, my, my, my, my, my, my, my
Sullen load is full; so slow on the split

I told you to be patient
I told you to be fine
I told you to be balanced
I told you to be kind
Now all your love is wasted?
Then who the hell was I?
Now I'm breaking at the britches
And at the end of all your lines

Who will love you?
Who will fight?
Who will fall far behind?

cancer of the forearm

I am not good with doctors.  I am not good with the whole "diagnosing" process.  I don't have great experience with that in the past.

About seven months ago I went to the doctor in Jacksonville for a bump on my arm.  I had researched the bump online and didn't think it was anything to worry about until it started causing pain.  Turns out the bump was/is an abscess and the pain in my arm was a pulled muscle from lifting weights.  I felt rather stupid.

The doctor did inform me that if it started changing color or shape that I should come back and get it looked at a little closer.  About a month after this visit, the bump started morphing, not only in color and shape but also in size.  Since then it has gotten bigger, smaller, changed from red to pink to flesh tone to white-ish and I haven't gone back.  

I haven't gone back because I am convinced that I have cancer; who wants to go through that diagnosis?  Not me.  No thank you ma'am.

I am going back tomorrow because the bump is back to--or rather actually--causing pain.  I am pretty sure this isn't a pulled muscle.  There is a sort of dull ache around the center of the bump and then radiating pain that I feel mostly in my fingers as sharp pricks.  I am pretty sure I have cancer of the forearm and I am going back to the doctor.

As of this moment I have about eleven hours remaining where I am cognitively cancer free and I plan on using that time to plan my funeral.

There will be free elephant rides as well as rainbow parasols with Victorian lace trim.

You aren't invited.

finding the time

I used to be a very busy person.  Today I dug out my old planners and realized just how busy I was.  There were entire weeks when I would get up at seven, get ready, go to campus and not get back to my apartment until well after midnight.  While I recognize that being an M.A. student has its perks--only two courses per semester plus teaching=time to eat, breathe and think--I miss being a busy, overachieving undergrad.

On the wall in the hallway Jordan and I both have the Sturtevant Award given to graduating seniors who exemplified outstanding leadership and service during their time at Illinois College.  When I see it, I feel pride in my past accomplishments but I also feel a sort of nagging regret that I am not doing more with my time at Iowa State.

It isn't as easy to get involved as an M.A. student but Iowa State itself also poses some problems.  It is a large state school.  Getting involved isn't necessarily harder, but it isn't the same experience as it would be at a private, liberal arts school.  Groups here often have fifty or more students, not ten.  I like standing out; this whole big pond, small fish thing doesn't really work for me.  But...

It is hard for me to rationalize this when I see glaring issues that I would love to sink my teeth into and tackle during my spare time.  Iowa State is severely lacking in support for the LGBTQ community.  I talked with the director of LGBT Student Services and he knows of quite a few cases where LGBTQ students were completely satisfied with their academics but were dismayed by the lack of a support community; they transfered to other schools.  Its a shame, and I could do work with it.  I have ample experience with leadership and service--it feels like I am cheating the school as well as myself out of some tiny bit of difference.

In other news, I miss Paris.