I need to take a minute for Joyce Tenneson, because I'm just infatuated with these photographs.

Dolls are little girl toys.

I know that, and it’s a source of half-embarassed, laughing pride that I still play with them. Part of the myth of the grown-up world if that you’ll stop wanting to play when girlhood flutters by, and you stop loving the lace and the frills, and start craving something starker, something colder.

I usually play with my dolls one at a time, so different from the elaborate scenes I played out as a little girl. I smooth curly locks, carefully wipe away dirt on sweet-lipped, waxen faces, apologizing for the careless play of a six year old. Tonight, though, I took them all out and lined them against the wall. I have so many-- red hair and blue eyes, brunettes and blondes, ethnic costumes and ruffly pinafores. It’s such a little girl game, this careful unbuttoning and redressing cloth bodies as we sing to ourselves. White patent shoes with pink satin ribbons, and dolls just love you for snapping them on little feet. Flimsy tafetta dresses, striped pink and white under organdy aprons. Great ruffles of lace, and isn’t life beautiful as it is? I press my cheek against Samatha’s, and feel strangely safe in this purely feminine world I’ve strewn around me. Perfume and nail polish, soapy rouge and silken rosebuds on a tiara.

I wanted to cry earlier today, but little girls don’t cry over things they’ve lost. Little girls are wiser than we. So I sit in my room, arms filled with cloth and plastic, and smile to myself. It could rain tomorrow, great sheets of silvery water outside my window, and I’d still have everything important. The rest is just pale blue satin, lace stockings, and the rustle of tissue paper in between dresses, and that will fade away into the next scrap of destiny.

Go away little HTML gremlins! You know who you are-- you terrible miniature hackers who infest my beautiful coding with insufferable mistakes! I'm onto you, though. I know how you make things on my Mac look all pretty-- and destroy the Windows version. I'll get you-- and your little dog too!

Today's just one of those days Thus far I've done nothing but revise three of my essays and read five pages of Utopia. And eat two bags of mini chocolate chip cookies. Successfully resisted tempation to stroll down to the bookstore and read Elle. Not so successful when it comes to compulsively blogging.

A thousand thanks to everyone who was so sweet during my collapse-- Una B, Jo, Storm, Lady C, Manders, Cryssa, and Dia. I owe you guys a plate of Marilla's best plum puffs and a bottle of raspberry cordial-- or free time with the buzzer. You guys helped me so much just by being there, especially Storm, who I've got to throw out something more for, because she's listened to me many, many times when I was on the verge of going positively mad. To the rest of you-- Kara, Madi, Norah, Nita, Cordelia, Twix, and anyone else I forgot-- you know who you are-- thanks for being my friend. It's horribly sentimental, but I have to say it.

The best thing about this crisis was that it made me re-think a lot of the philosophies I've been living by. Several ideas have been cemented quite firmly in my mind-- who I am, and how proud I am of being me. Just the knowledge that I'm me, Milla-- Camille-- lover of books, writer, poet, shopgirl. I crush on Alan Rickman because he's got the dreamiest voice, and my left sock has a hole in it. You can see the chipped bright red paint on my big toe. I type the starts of stories on an Underwood typewriter until I lose patience, and then it's back to the trusty laptop. I wear pajama bottoms to botany class, and use bright pink font on MSN because it just fits me. I'm who I am, and I'm taking it 'all the way up to heaven' with me.

I am, as of 10:32 p.m., the world's biggest emotional fuckwit. Bridget has nothing on me.

I am shaking, nauseated, and chilled. And I could really use just some. . . support, from people, because I am going through a major personal crisis that was caused by me doing something really, really stupid. I don't want to explain-- and trust me, you don't want to hear, but I'm doing okay, aside from the emotional trauma-- but I just could use a couple of virtual hugs.

Thought you ought to know. And really-- thanks, everybody. I appreciate it more than I can say.

Pictures of my room are always deceitful, as if there's a deliberate conspiracy to show the worst of me. There's no character in the photographs, just squares of wall and floor and pretty knick-knacks on the shelves. I feel at home only at times I like now, when scraps of paper and dried rose petals litter dark blue carpet. When books lie haphazardly on piles of paper. Alice Munro to Raymond Carver (a distant relation, and a strange, unenviable source of pride) to David Sedaris to Annie Proloux, falling gracelessly in uneven stacks. When a high-heeled shoe has tumbled off the nightstand, and the smell of typewriter grease mingles with perfume samples from Vogue and body spray from Victoria's Secret. I'm comfortable only when I can hardly walk for mismatched earrings and winter scarves lying on the floor. When I can stretch my legs out over wicker suitcases filled with old diaries, forgotten sketches and half-finished stories, reading the New York Times. Nowhere else can I look up, seeking reassurance, and finding cheap Monet prints and my glorious Moulin Rouge poster. My bulletin board, scattered with magazine cutouts and CD inserts. Shopping bags on the door, Nordstroms and Banana Republic and Barnes and Noble.

It's not much, this cold little room, pale green walls, and a dingy lace curtain that sweeps from the ceiling over my bed. Yet I don't leave it-- I put Guster on, and dance around the room, kicking my heels against cardboard boxes and J.C. Penney bags. I hear the click-clack of fingers forming words as I type, and the scratch of pen against paper, the rustle of turning pages. I sleep here, I dream here, I write here, and it's mine. Possession is, after all, nine-tenths of affection.

I can see a stretch of pale blue sky from my window, and it worries me. The mountains are hard-pressed for snow this winter, and it shows in everything. There's so much less joy in the world suddenly, or mayhap cynicism dwadled its way into my life, laying icy fingers on my shoulder only now. But no, I think, it turns to this every January-February-March, until I'm watching the landscape with hooded eyes, pleading silently for spring.

It's worse, now, though, because I'm waiting for something. Something really marvelous-- or a turn of tragedy. I can feel it in the watery sun, while I'm sitting on matted green-brown grass, my book slipping from my fingers as I wait.