Number of dishes I broke this week: 2.

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Something I wrote at a museum recently:

“too many people, too much heat (an experience I don’t often feel), too too sacred a place to share — no, to experience together — nothing is too sacred to share, right? — but experiences sometimes demand alonedom, singlehood, even if only briefly.”

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Something else:

“After our lovers storm
your tongue tornadoes my breast”

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I step on glass. I don’t feel it. I bleed. Repeat.

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I hung out with a friend to(yester)day. We had coffee, and then we went to this and then here. And then I walked to work, about 40 blocks. (It took an hour, and it was amazing.)

He and I talked about a lot of stuff. At one point, we were talking about dating in New York and I said, “it’s awful; isn’t it awful?” He agreed. We shared stories, kind of, and continued to agree on how awful dating was. And then I said something about how it’s only awful for me when I realize I don’t want to be with the person I’m seeing but don’t end it. He said that didn’t apply to the situation he was in.

I’m still thinking about all this. Is dating in New York awful? I think it ties into how isolating the city can be. But I don’t think it’s hard to meet people. I meet people all the time. It’s hard to meet the right people. (Yesterday, I took myself to a movie, a bookstore and dinner at a burger place. Just as I finished eating, this man walks by and then in, straight to me, and introduces himself. We talk a little — he tells me he’s a painter — and he gives me his number. When I get home, I Google him. He’s 49. That isn’t old, but it’s not what I want.) Helen says I get bored too easily. Sia says we INFPs are never quite satisfied. I just always go back to the knowledge that I’ve let a lot of love go. That makes it easier for me to just experience things as they (or we) come or don’t come.

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I found out that one of my aunts died following her circumcision. She was 7 or 8 years old. Another aunt died in childbirth, also shortly after her circumcision.

My great-grandfather wrote an autobiography. I found it in its entirety online. I started to read it but I was too emotional, so much was opening up to me and I had to breathe.

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I have a celebrity crush. (Well, really her character on Fringe.)

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And sleep, soon, I hope.

My throat hurts.

I’m beginning to picture my desires, the pure ones, uninhibited by perceived (or true but unfortunate) responsibility.

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I sometimes wear this necklace that has a key on it. A friend asked me today for the back story of my chain. I said I found a key at a shop in Wichita and I put it on the necklace, not much else to it. “Everything you do usually has a meaning to it,” he said (or something like that).

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I think about home all the time. I still don’t know where it is, but it feels nearer.

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Bismillah.

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Videos I’d Watch: Shit Introverts Want to Say to Extroverts; Shit Black Arab Fathers Who Raised Their Children in Mississippi Say to Those Children, in Arabish, with a Southern Accent; Shit Everybody Says to Nobody (or Shit All Y’all Want to Say); Shit Mississippians Say About William Faulkner; Shit Journalists Say About Journalism’s Future.

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Is “Bejeweled Blitz shoulder” a real condition? Can we make it one?

I found this:

Any INFP who has made it this far in life and not had a serious meltdown due to:

a. being unable to juggle their constant cornucopia of thoughts and emotions
b. being unable to to relate said emotions to anyone.
c. never being able to achieve their stratospheric goals.

seriously deserves a call from the Justice League. Empathman anyone?

Is this a serious meltdown?

I had a really rough day. I was in bed for a long time. I got up, tried to distract myself, but I broke down. I thought I’d composed myself and then Sia gets home and I break down in front of her.

Two friends have gotten upset with me today because I’m not communicating. I was/am too akdfja;dkjadf to try to explain.

I can’t explain, though. I just can’t. There are so many somethings.

I think that’s why I’m Googling. I’m thinking another INFP/Pisces combination might get it or has experienced it and created some sort of artistic work about it, from the other side.

Charity has helped a lot. Of course.

I need to get this out of me. This aching out of me. This emptiness out of me. This pressing, continual hopelessness out of me.

I keep having to redefine my strength, renegotiate my happiness, refine my desires and my intentions.

Lately, my desire has been to exist, to just exist. (Unlocked, by the way.) I can’t really trust myself to expect more. I’ve been too sad for more.

Sad.

I’m owning up to that now. Accepting it, or attempting to.

As I was walking to the subway today, I realized that part of the sadness was because this year is coming to an end. This year of upheaval and heartbreak and love and understanding and coming to. Continuing burdens, developing intimacies. I am sad not only because of the changes I’ve experienced (so many!) this year or the things (so many!) that were discovered this year but because the year itself is concluding. I’m sad to lose 2011 — for all the growing it demanded — but I am thankful it is ending.

Put aside the health issues of the past 12 months — the renal biopsy, the chronic kidney disease diagnosis, the nephrologist visits, the string of sore throats, the abnormal pap, the colposcopy, the four root canals in two weeks, the allergy discoveries, the weight loss, the paying off of $3,000+ in medical bills and receiving a bill today [really, just now] for $1,671.30 — and there’s still a year of saying final goodbyes (to Sara, my 14-year-old cat, to Bailey and to Maggie, the cocker spaniels) and saying maybe-I’ll-see-you-soons (to Wichita, to my Little Sister, to my friends and poets and a great job with amazing coworkers).

There’s loss upon loss and longing.

But simultaneous beauty. As I’ve told Sia and Nic in the past day, I am really sad right now but I’m also amazingly happy. I’m forever aware of how blessed and privileged I am and I know that wonder and love are bountiful (in my life and in life generally).

I haven’t lost sight of that. And I know that’s a testament to the peace-in-chaos clarity that came for me with 2011.

I’m thinking a lot about barriers. There’s distance — even more! — between my family and me. There’s (what feels like) perpetual alonedeom.

There’s New York.

I love being here. It’s a place that suits me and it allows me to follow so many of my interests. It’s stimulating and challenging and I’m surrounded by people I adore and admire. The women I know here especially — the black women in particular — are fucking amazing. They push me to be better and their proximity to me and to my current life is a great gift from the universe.

But New York can feel isolating, to me. It makes me feel that even with the other 9 million people who live nearby, I am here alone. I feel this way even with loved ones nearby. Every time a first gaze is averted or a smile is unreturned, it affects me. It will continue to, even with all the times the smiles are reciprocated and the gazes held.

It’s also exhausting. I’m exhausted. I work a lot and sleep a lot (to make up for the working a lot). I then get frustrated that I do nothing but work and sleep and I schedule too much. I push myself, hard, trying to force a balance on my life. I enjoy my life. But then I’m more exhausted. And more frustrated. And then I complain. I’ve complained a lot lately, pretty much to anyone who’d listen. My standard response to “Hey, how’ve you been?” lately is something like “Ugh, so sick of ____/so tired of ____.”

I fall in step with habits I’d worked to walk away from.

And then I am angry with myself for reverting to a former me — and then I get mad at myself for getting mad at me because that’s an old habit from a former self.

And then nothing makes sense but I remain alone, sad and angry.

And then I see the moon. Or I read a poem. Well, same thing. The point is: there’s plenty keeping me afloat. But the warring tugs are tiring.

I am so fucking tired. Of exhaustion, firstly.

The burdens (some likely imagined or overblown) grow and grow and I adjust my weight to carry them. My knees are starting to buckle, though, and I’m starting to lose sight of the point.

I’m thinking even more about purpose. I’m thinking about love and about giving within means. But, honestly, I’m mostly thinking about sleep. And that doesn’t feel like home to me.

Naji is being so adorable right now.

I had a long cry about it while on the phone with Nic the other night. I’d cried before — mostly at random moments like when the trees in this enclosure at work started to blow really hard in the wind but, regardless of how hard they blew and how many leaves were freed, they were still trapped on the sides by a building — but the Nic cry was different. It was therapeutic. It signaled to me that I was ready for a different kind of strong. That I could and would reflect soon on how alive I feel, about how raw and open I am, because there comes a moment when you want to stop resisting the urge to “fight back” against what’s happening in your world. I’m there. Hell, I’m miles past. But it’s not a negative thing. It’s just a realization that “this is where I am right now and so this is where I need to be.” I feel that. I feel I need to be experiencing this. I just feel, and I’m excited about that alone.

I’ve been neglectful of some things, though. I’m mindful of that now. I’ve let relationships of all kinds fall too loose. Messages like “where have you been?” and “hey, stranger” are becoming common again. My immersion in creative expression has stalled. These things do hurt me, too. Yet, I haven’t had the energy required or the peace of mind (or even a piece of my mind) to address them. I’ve been struggling to stay up, to exist, to be, to just be. And I haven’t expressed that to the right people or to myself fully.

I’m sorry if my complaining is annoying. I need to let myself be sad, moody and a little upset with things right now. I can see how that could be really annoying. Excuse my construction, please. I’m making room. And I have a few more tears that need a new home.

Her: “13.”

Him: “I think I’m falling in love with you.”