I just thought I'd tell you that I hate exams, and sometimes I think that group presentations and written finals are going to swallow me whole.

And to put the veil on the hat, I'm sick.

I'm tired more than anything, I think. That sorta soul-tiredness that nothing cures but a good book or a good cry, but oh, I have exams to go to.

The real problem, I think, is that I don't know how to say "you've lost me," or "i miss you," or even "i love you," because this is the sort of thing that they should've taught in school. But they wasted all those years slaving me to trigonometry and osmosis, and now I can't calculate how to deal with either people or numbers, and I don't think the knowledge will sink in.

I want to matter most to somebody. I want to be somebody's love, somebody's best friend, a second sister. This is where I get confused. I have all those things-- loves, second sisters, best friends. But I feel like a small child, standing on the edge of the swingset, repeating in a tinny voice that I'm nobody's best friend not even my own best friend's best friend and feeling so very silly for saying it.

I sat down by a stream this morning. You know, the one that ripples around the back of the Big House of the neighborhood along a bank crowded with weeds and pebbles. The grass was frosted over but the ground's thawed. I picked up a flat stone and tried to be Amélie, but I guess my red fleece pants and old tie-dyed nightshirt gave me away. My little brother grows taller and lankier every day and I'm still me. There was a rooster crowing in the background and the soft swoosh-swoosh of cars, but I focused on the water and felt a little a better about the whole thing.

I came home and felt like opening the windows and spraying Chanel No. 19 wildly around. The basement is really too stifling this time of year. I read Princess Nevermore while I vacuumed and Mrs. Dalloway while folding the laundry. Curled up in an armchair and studied French verbs. Took my little brother out for tacos and cream-filled churros (heaven!) and took the other brother out of school. I wrote my name on the sidewalk in pink and peach, and thought that I could spend my whole life in the warming days, but I needed to organize my books.

I don't know what to say, really, except that spring is worth everything, and that the light shines like green glass and lemonade outside.

I'm going a little stir-crazy in my soul. Yesterday after work I walked out on a patch of grass, feeling the scratch and the dirt under my feet. I untied my hair, felt it blow and tangle and wrap around wind currents. Sometimes I think that all I'm moving towards is the sea. Wet sand on my face, on my arms, on my belly. I'll roll down in my torn jeans and unbuttoned thrift store blouse, my $2.95 flip-flops left behind with a straw hat. The beach is fragmented into bits of broken stones and shells, and I can smell gasoline over my shoulder from tourists down to pass the ocean. Pine trees grow on the cliff overhead, shadowing the peaks of rock. The smell of salt and sea and still the gasoline down by the shoreline. Ocean water feels dangerous. It teems with jellyfish and kelp, strange, gorgeous creatures. Overhead, I see grey skies and someone's long-forgotteen eyes. I'll take San Fransisco bread, eat it without butter, drink Gatorade (orange) and think about how the couple down below me stands separated by a narrow ridge of rocks.

I miss the sea, the cold California sea that's hidden from my sight by the mountains. I miss the change of air and breath, and the flush of ocean spray on my naked face. Here it's just arid wind that sweeps grey dust into the sky like some gothic fairytale set in the suburbs.

I could get on my bicycle and pedal across the desert roads to home (French has a word for coming home, je vais rentrer).

Heaven must be tugging westward.

in the end the world comes down to just a few people
but for you it comes down to one
but no one ever asked me if i thought i could be 
everything to someone
there's a crowd of people harbored in every person
there are so many roles that we play
and you've decided to love me for eternity
i'm still deciding who i want to be today

Ani Difranco, how, how, how, is it that you can say everything for me like that?