Waiting

Still trying to mentally prepare for heading back to the States. I hate the waiting; it’s making it difficult to enjoy my last few days here since I’m constantly thinking about what needs to be done. I still can’t get used to the idea that this is my life. Yesterday I spent the evening cooking with 3 Kenyan acrobats after I met a man from Brooklyn who had befriended them while couch-surfing with them in Nairobi. I’m still trying to make sense of how I’ll explain things like this to everyone back home. I don’t think that going back should be this hard, but maybe there is some truth to the saying “you can’t go home again”. It’s not that I’m not looking forward to seeing everyone it’s that I don’t understand how I’ll merge this new life with my life back in the States. I don’t know how to create a bridge between these two worlds so it doesn’t seem like I’ve just fallen off the face of the planet for 3 months and then suddenly reappeared. And not just reappeared but reappeared profoundly changed. I’m more sure of who I am: a reluctant American, a Jew, open and non judgmental, content, and wanting to experience more. More certain of what I want: a year abroad, to be the crazy auntie in the family, a future with Him, to live communally, to live wholly and completely, however I need to achieve that. I want to be filled with more “when I was picking coffee beans in Guatemala” stories, and I’ve had an excellent start, but it’s going to be difficult to integrate those things into my life in rural Ohio. I suppose each experience strengthens me in a different way and my time back will simply be a coffee bean story for when I’m living in Italy.

Fate

“Fate is encounter only by him that actualizes freedom. That I discovered the deed that intends me, that, this movement of my freedom, reveals the mystery to me.” Martin Buber…perhaps I believe in this kind of fate.

On sowing

Today while chatting with Rachel: "we are always sowing the seeds, we just don't know what will grow"

My soles and my soul

This sole has tread on the holy ground of Krishna’s youth, and this sole has danced a dance with Mayan women to thank her mother Earth for the life giving water. This sole has followed the foot steps of brave Waldensians escaping the inquisition. This sole has carried me to the tops of mountains and through deserts painted red. It has forced me forward when I wanted to stop. This sole has danced salsa barefoot and linked me to generations before me dancing the traditional dances of Piedmonte. This sole has led me into dangerous places. It has brought me into oceans and through crowded city streets. These soles have turned inward in prayer to the deity and outward in the most artificial stance of dance. This sole has carried me through races and anchored me to the earth in the most tranquil of yoga poses. This sole has been dirtied by the blood of the earth and washed clean by the tears of the sky. This sole has guided me home in dark nights and carried others to safety in moments of chaos. This sole has held me safely in place and has been a cursed anchor as I urged to fly. This sole has been wrapped in the brown gold of the Earth. Perhaps most importantly these soles have carried this soul around the world and finally to a place of happiness and tranquility.

Io sono una teiera

Io sono una teiera: there are moments when I am filled with the warmth and comfort of a cup of tea.
There are times when the liquid inside of me is cold and refreshes those who drink of it.
And sometimes I boil and those who take from me thinking they will be satisfied are burned at the first taste.
Io sono una teiera: I am made from porcelain and can easily be broken when people are careless with me.
I am made of tin and steel and aluminum. I can stand the test of time and am strong enough to live for generations.
Io sono una teiera: most of the world gathers around me at meals. Political discussions arise because of my presence and are sometimes settled if I just last long enough. I am unique to each place and time, with the Indians I am spicy and old, with the British creamy and sweet, with the Americans – well they don’t quite know what to do with me.
Io sono una teiera: I am sometimes put up on a shelf and forgotten about and on special occasions I am proudly displayed like some type of masterpiece.
Io sono una teiera: I am sometimes polished and decorated with fineries, but most frequently I am common. I am dented and plain and those who appreciate my beauty do so only through the memories of unity and happiness I have been a part of.
Io sono una teiera.

You can do anything you put your mind to

There is a Brazilian man cutting the grass on the hill of my little utopia as I try not to look too put together with my new jade earings from my excursion to the city; it would seem out of place here. The smell of fresh cut grass reminds me of summers in rural Ohio where bikini's were the only acceptable wordrobe and I think of a well polished woman who used to don her bathing suit, stained green shoes, and spend hours mowing our grass. I used to call her mom. I hope she's proud of the choices I've made and the loves of my life. This moment is one of the few where I think nostagically about that time but not sadly. I hope my choices make her life mission complete and successful. I relish the memories this scent calls forward.
Those memories of fishing in bathing suits and the scent of grass remind me of bailing season, of sun burnt boys and men exhausted from days of hard labor, and I remember I'm not supposed to be here. I'm not supposed to have left that town in Eastern Ohio, I'm not supposed to draw maps of my country for Indian men and Italian women, I'm not supposed to compliment some one's English as I struggle to construct a sentence in Italian. I'M NOT SUPPOSED TO BE HERE. I should be going to school at the local branch of Kent State, taking 6 years to finish my degree, I should be looking for houses with the neighbor boy who finally decided to put a little diamond on my finger, I should be content with summer vacations to the beach. But instead I've chosen rebellion. I've chosen a complete happiness -- I've experienced the world, and the whole world, and chosen my happiness; not from the choices presented before me but from the struggle and strife of making the whole world available to me. I've chosen a complete happiness because I know I can choose anything. I was the child it was dangerous to tell "you can do anything you want if you put your mind to it". They didn't know that to me it meant teaching children in Mexico at 14, or roaming around India at 19, or running off to Guatemala when I felt like my life was crashing in around me. They didn't know it meant a year in Italy after I finished with Latin honors at a university I "couldn't go to". They didn't know that my mind was so curious, devoid of the fear that keeps people tied to one place. No one knew what they were getting into. Doing anything I wanted to has led me around the world, taught me self reliance (or perhaps at least the ability to feign it convincingly), taught me to be open to those around me, to pick coffee beans, to dig foundations of houses, to learn new languages, trust in the kindness of strangers, and to truly decide what I want because for me anything is possible if I put my mind to it. What a dangerous phrase for children like me, but some part of me knows my mother is smiling if she knows any of this. She recused me from what the world would assume to be a life of impossibility and gave me life, a life so I could life it. Never telling me anything was off limits but simply telling me that if I truly want something I have to do everything in my power to get it. So here I am -- 22 university graduate, world traveler, journaler, want to be barissta, hiker, lover, translator, and most importantly content.

Two worlds collide

There are moments in this place where the world I live in and the world I aspire to come dangerously close to mingling in the hazy low hanging clouds of the Alps. I relish the sliver of a limbo I’m now living in. I sit with my wet hair in a damp and dreary world that feels as if the mountains are gently wrapping a lacey blanket around my golden body. I listen to a song that takes me to several places all in the same instant: back to late night drives home, back to long flights to the farm, back to café lunches of alligators and discussions of why vegetarians can eat ducks. Despite the fact that I live in worn out jeans, bare feet, and without make-up I feel more beautiful than I have in the entirety of my existence. I know that what others see are not my clothes or well done make-up but my soul shining through my whole body. My heart isn’t visible only on my sleeve but in my eyes and on my lips, I wear it as patches on my ripped jeans and as shoes on my bare feet. I am wholly myself at every moment, and there are times when I have to remember to breathe, remind myself that this life is real, and that the hazy fog that surrounds me at this moment isn’t the rousing of a dreamer whose sleepy world defines my existence. Remind myself that the fairy tale around me is a result of my choices, my struggle, my tears, and my world, which makes it all the more sweet. This world is mine because of love and choice. I’ve chosen to leave those I love to find out what and in some cases who I really love. I’ve chosen this struggle of language, of solitude in the midst of a crowd, of distance, of self reliance, rather that the struggle of obligation, apartment searching, and moving trucks. And these moments where I’m alone but not lonely, sitting safely wrapped in the blankets of clouds, happily looking like some type of street urchin are my reward. Moment of peace I’ve only felt while seated quietly on my Taize cushion while the scent of incense slowly fills my soul now become a common afternoon occurrence.
I no longer feel like I’m struggling against myself: that the distance I’ve put between myself and the entirety of my life to this point has enabled my soul to expand to full capacity, to grow into what it has been attempting for the past several years but was confined to the size of my body. In this moment I feel not as if my soul inhabits my body but rather like my body inhabits my soul.

None of the Above

None of the Above has suddenly become my theme song and I think of those cold winter drives past the Mason Dixon, and I long to head north to an all night restaurant in North Caldonon while I watch you trace my outline in spilled sugar. I remember those nights when we thought it was impossible for us to live without each other and perhaps in that moment it was true. And now? And now you’ve sent me to pick coffee beans in Guatemala and learn to make patatas a la importancia in Spain and maybe you’ve started to trace my outline while drinking coffee that tastes like soap. I try to replace the cold space in my borrowed bed with a perfectly pressed Milanese man, but I felt nothing. My body is warm and tired but my soul is cold. And now matter how much I want not to want you I realize now that maybe I need you. I hope you’re eating dinner with a bunch of the Jews and impress them with the Yiddish I’ve taught you, but are silently weeping inside as you tell the story of how you became a boy with no last name. I hope you pick up a loaf of Challah on Shabbat and think that this loaf could never send a woman into labor. I hope you miss me. Despite my actions to fill your space I hope you haven’t done the same. As selfish as it is I want to know that even in the moments I didn’t miss you, you were drinking an espresso and thinking about the one I was making at that moment. And as much as I hate the thought of a month back in the states I can’t wait to see you again, kiss you at the airport like no one is watching and spend an entire Saturday in bed while Carla Bruni runs on repeat. I want my parallel lives to easily coexist and perhaps one day in the not too distant future they’ll happily merge into one complete existence.

And I live

This sluggish and dry body which has been called by my name is slowly creeping back into life, nursed by rivers of water and a small stream of tea and whisky. I’m once again beginning to inhabit this place not surrounded by the fog of sleep or the need of sleep. The sun has some how roused this life within me and coupled with my new found knowledge of my emotional self I feel content coming to life again in this place. My new home where trees walk, clowns cook with me in the kitchen, and although I spend hours each day trying to explain what I’ve said I feel like I’m perfectly understood. With bruised arms from wrestling with brothers who have been born to mothers thousands of miles from mine, I dance the night away – all of us dressed in togas as we simultaneously mourn the leaving of a friend and celebrate his time with us in this unusual place. Each of us dances abandoning pretence and allowing our souls to mingle together as life swells inside each of our bodies and begins to leak out of our pores. Mosca and mucca flit about in this thin mountain air and quietly mix with the late night laughter expelled with a hint of alcohol on all of our breaths. And with all these bodies the cold night air is suddenly warmed by the love that each of us is filled with for whoever happens to be seated next to you. I can’t wait to share this new existence with the loves of my previous life, show them that my wandering may have been selfish but it is not in vain, let them meet my kindred souls from the world over and smile to myself as I know they try to make sense of my desire to live with the whole world in one house guarded by a gentle French woman, a consistently angry Italian man, and giants who kindly hold us all in the palms of their cracked and rocky hands. Show them the maps I’ve drawn of the life I used to live, let them see that even the darkest night here is filled with the incredibly light of the worlds I pray are even better than the one I now am privileged to live in.

New month...new decisions

August! When did that happen? I feel simultaneously like I’ve been here forever and I’ve only just arrived. I think I’ve officially become a hippie – I now own a pair of Birkenstocks, but only wear them when absolutely necessary, I go a week without wearing make-up, shave only when I can’t stand myself, and sing around a bonfire at least once a week. I must admit it’s quite perfect.
The past few days I’ve been missing Him terribly so last night I decided I was in desperate need of hearing his voice. It may have been the best phone call since I’ve been away. It was so comforting to hear his voice, to tell him about my new life, and hear all of the wonderful things he’s been doing since I’ve left. I asked him to come to Italy in December and he sounded pleased at my request. I wanted to take this trip and say I could choose him or anyone else I wanted and that any relationship I had was a matter choice but now I think perhaps it isn’t a matter of choice but of need. I’ve had other boys since I’ve been here, and shared a bed with one on several occasions, but the reality of the situation was that even in that moment I felt nothing for that man. Perhaps I didn’t miss Him, and maybe I was trying to fulfill some need I thought I had for physical comfort but no one has yet to stir any emotion inside of me. I slept in another man’s bed but could have been sleeping alone, not to say that it didn’t feel good to be wanted and I didn’t enjoy huddling close to another body when I was cold in the evening, but all of it was devoid of emotion. I think in realizing that I need or want Him, whatever the situation may be. I’ve liberated myself emotionally. I’m not longer fighting something or searching for the emotional of physical comfort of another man. I can relax into myself and even though I’m living for a moment months away with a man a world away I feel content. It’s good for me to know that although it’ll be months before I see Him at least the moments I spend with Him will be filled with emotional satisfaction, that I’ll feel something when he touches me other than the warmth of his body slipping into mine. My soul will be warmed in that moment as well. I’ll no longer fight against myself to give of myself to some one who means nothing more to me than anyone else I live with. Although this moment seems light years away it gives me reason to wait knowing that the moment will be worth it. That once again I’ll get to be one of those couples who run to embrace each other at the airport and kiss with a crowd around them like they are alone in the world. I wanted so badly to walk away and say I don’t need any of that but it simply isn’t true. I suppose the answers we find when we are truly looking are not always the ones we expect to find but perhaps this one is one of the most honest – it wasn’t what I was looking for or what I wanted to find, but some how the truth managed to find a way to seep in even in the midst of my desire for something else. Love has certainly found a roundabout way of getting to me, but nonetheless it has found me and its presence is one of the things I am most thankful for in this strange existence I’m proud to call my life.

A year in one place

I’ve been invited to be a resident at Agape for a year…I’ve decided to accept.

On mountain climbing

Yesterday was one of the most beautiful days since I’ve been in Europe. Marcolino, J, Mischa, Guilia, Lucia, and I spent the day hiking in the mountains around Prali. We hiked to the 13 lakes – unfortunately we only made it to the first 5 or 6, but nothing about making it to less than half was disappointing. We stopped at the 2nd lake and ate Panini and fruit. After we stopped for pranzo we climbed around some old building from WWI. I’ve been to Gettysburg, visited war memorials in DC, but this is the first time that I felt connected to anything of the sort. It wasn’t artifice or simulacrum of war, it wasn’t meant to remind you of those who fought and died, it simply was. Left, maybe not forgotten, but no longer there to serve any purpose, just left to the valleys to crumble at will, to have floor that turn to fields, window that were once looked through in fear now serve no purpose other than to let in a view of the border with France. Writings on the walls are now lost to time meaning little to the few who stumble on the buildings other than to remind them that at one point real men huddled together in that place hoping to make it through the day. Now only adventurous hikers set eyes on those ruins and remember the men who once feigned sleep and bravery in that place. After we felt content to leave the memories and barracks to the mountains we climbed further up and spend hours walking along the crest of the mountain. It’s amazing how you can feel so big and so small all in the same moment. You stand on the top of your world at that moment and marvel at the petite existence below you, and in looking out you see the rest of the Alps and recognize your own place in the petite existence. I have conquered the world and shrunk into an insect all in the same moment. On our descent back to the valley we found a great cliff for rock climbing so we all harnessed up and Marcolino gave me my first lesson in rock climbing. How many people can say they learned to rock climb in the Italian Alps?
This moment in my life is so amazing. I’m living in such a strange place – where parties of men dressed in drag and children building hot air balloons all seem part of a normal day, where practicality reigns, and attempting 3 or 4 languages each day is simply par for the course. I think what amazes me most is not the occurrence of such events but the fact that I feel so normal participating in them. That living with people from all over the world, that my dinner table each evening is filled with at least 4 languages, and I live with a Hungarian woman is all so normal…I will never be able to explain this to someone who has yet to experience Agape. Communal living and this strange world I now inhabit. What beauty, what peculiarity, what perfection now surrounds me?

Andiamo o aspeto

Quivering nights and rooftop sunrises. Cold bodies huddled together keeping warm with liters of red wine. Damp days, dry skin, dry eyes, and we don’t kiss good bye as I climb the mountain to my house in the morning. Tonight I learned that my bed is devoid of a soul and surely doesn’t miss me when I leave it alone for nights on end. Tomorrow I speak Spanish with a Moroccan man and feign a Mexican competence with a woman from Spain. I hang wet sheets in the afternoon and think about crawling into his later in the night. And they all know I haven’t slept in the house for days, and quietly whisper questions as to why I know my way around his. No one bothers to ask what’s happened. No one asks questions but everyone already seems to have the answers. I discover the inadequacy of the English language to describe the world around me, and we all make plans to dance naked around the fire as some one plays the drums the next time the sun refuses to shine. We gather up withered bodies as the world around us begins to glow and the moon skulks behind mountain tops, quietly slipping through open windows as 80 useless men sleep below us.
This world is strange and beautiful and I’m happy that it’s mine. I say I don’t believe in fate but sometimes I wonder if I’m telling a lie. Random chance has flung me to the far corners of the earth with people who make me feel more at home, more my self, and more free than the “home” I’ve know my entire life. Random chance has brought us all to this alpine village to take more than we could ever give to each other, but letting each of us leave feeling that if we were anymore full our bodies would no longer be able to contain our souls. Random chance has brought us all here to participate in the creation of God in our service to one another, to celebrate love in every capacity, and to live fully into the freedom that this God has given us. I say I believe only in love and choice but I marvel at the same love and choice that has led me to spending months in Prali with Koreans, Slovaks, Brits, Japanese, French, and other reluctant Americans. I wonder at this love and entertain the idea that maybe this love is larger than just my soul, larger than all the souls around me who have made the same choice. I am in awe of the love that has brough me away from all that I “love” to serve other people. Not to serve “the needy” not to serve “the poor” but serve humanity. To serve it blindly in recognition that each of us should serve another and deserve to be served by those around us, that rich and poor can serve one another and be equally valued in the moment of divine manifestation. My service is no more valuable than another’s and my participation in divine reality is no more impressive than anyone else’s. I believe in love and choice, and weary souls who gladly restore themselves by giving pieces of themselves to the sacred humanity that surrounds them.

Sometimes you get what you want

It’s mid-July and my skin is a sun-kissed gold, my hair has grown longer and it too is changed by the sun. At night when my skin is still damp from nights filled with reggae I let him touch this body which scarcely resembles my own. I let him kiss me, and it feels good, but I never look into his face. Maybe because he’s more afraid of letting someone in than I am. Suddenly I find the scent of cigarettes, campfire, and alcohol more than appealing. I have an urge to be close enough that in the morning my new found golden hair smells of the night before. I want to be let in, but in the same moment let someone in. In this moment we both need each other. I need warm hands on my hip bones in the middle of the night and he needs me to ask “why the distance?”
And at that moment I think about love. I know that I will never love this man. And I know that 3,000 miles away there is a man who pines for me, who spends long afternoons looking at baristas in small artsy glasses and big scarves while thinking about me. At the same moment I’m serving a morning macchiato to the man I sometimes share a bed with – while I wear my small artsy glasses and think about my favorite scarves packed away in boxes just begging to be let out. I try not to think about that boy. I wish I was wearing my favorite green, silk, scarf from Delhi, and I hope that the afternoon will be filled with sun for lazy cat naps. I concentrate on all the Italian words around me and try to will the courage into him to speak to me before he’s had his third pint. I finally have a warm body next to me but sometimes it comes at the price of silence. I decide that maybe the warm body isn’t enough. Perhaps I need a warm heart too – even if I have no intention of loving it any more than I do the rest of this sacred humanity.
I want to cure fear rather than inspire it. I want warm arms around me at this moment, dark eyes peering over my shoulder as I write these lines, and a Milanese accent asking why he can’t read what I’ve written about him. Maybe I would let him see. Maybe he would find courage in these words, find some assurance in my desire to understand another’s humanity, for both of us to find something of ourselves in another person, and know that maybe the gain of allowing someone to glimpse a piece of your soul outweighs the risk of getting hurt. And maybe in trying to teach this lesson I’d be able to learn it myself.
I know I will never love this man, not because he is unworthy of being loved but because he is incapable of being loved. And even with this knowledge I still want him to lead me in a dance to an old Rat Pack song, to invite me back to his bed that is thousands of degrees warmer than mine will ever be, to kiss my stomach as the notes of a smoky jazz singer fill the unavoidable silence. I want him to quietly rouse me as he heads out in the morning. I see only his body in bed next to me and a soul behind looked doors of steel, below the head I lay on his chest. I realize at this moment I’ve gotten exactly what I asked for, but maybe it wasn’t what I needed.

Walk of shame

Well the truth of it seems that I suck at leaving complicated relationships behind me. Spent last night in J’s bed trying to explain that I don’t believe in sex without love. He asked me what I was doing there then. I don’t know…maybe it feels good to be next to somebody, maybe I just like feeling desired, maybe I like having the power to say “No”. I know that I can’t detach emotion from my physical being. I need to be careful about having this fling. I don’t want to end up hurting myself or some one else. I don’t know what I was doing there…Looking for something I don’t know I can find. I thought perhaps I would be able to validate my humanity through some one else. – but I don’t think that’s possible when the connection is only physical. So this morning I got up and made my “walk of shame,” ashamed only of the truths I didn’t tell and the false hope I keep giving that something more may come of this when I know the reality of it is that it won’t.

Some things I'm enjoying at the moment

1. living communally
2. German boys
3. Italian boys
4. dancing at least 3 nights a week
5. foosball
6. morning cappuccinos
7. lovely French girls
8. late afternoon naps
9. being suntanned
10. being barefoot
11. old ripped jeans
12. bread and oil at every meal
13. climbing into bed exhausted at 4am
14. “looking at the stars”
15. scalp massages
16. Pausa
17. Hanging sheets
18. Friday and Saturday night
19. not worrying about tomorrow
20. Reggae music
21. The excitement of people back home when I call
22. Playing gin
23. journaling in the sun
24. working in the kitchen
25. hip bones
26. feeling like I’m normal
27. my ipod
28 being warm
29. fitting in
30. How things happen when you stop trying
31. feeling desired
32. new friends
33. long afternoon breaks in the sun
34. waking up in the mountains
35. living without judgment
36 slumber parties in my room
37 working at the bar
38. conversations where everyone speaks their own language but everyone understands.

MERDE!

No one next to me has turned into too many people trying to be next to me at the same time.

News from home

Finally go to check my e-mail last night. It was wonderful to read all my messages from home…good to know that no one has forgotten me just yet. Got a message from Him. Now I feel like all those things I’d written about not missing Him and being fine here on my own weren’t the whole truth. His message was filled with lovely new from home – Corey’s wedding, how beautiful it was, how much I would have enjoyed it, and how it was like something he would like to have. How much he hates coming home to an empty apartment and how he would rather come home to me instead. I don’t know if it made me miss Him but it certainly shocked me. I need to stop thinking about which warm body I want to entice to be next to me and start thinking more about long term decisions. Do I want Him to come home to me? I don’t know how good of an idea it is for me to come back from a year abroad, having not seen him for months and months, and trying to get really serious in this relationship right away. I’m sure the moment I start to really focus my attention on these big decisions will be the moment when I suddenly have more boys that I know what to do with, that seems to be the story of my life.

On a lighter note I got to talk to Idge last night. It was so good to hear her voice, hear about her summer, E’s baseball, and to tell her about my little alpine village. Unfortunately she sounded so sad as we were getting off the phone. I felt so awful – a little selfish for taking this trip for myself and leaving my baby sister back in the States. I’m sure that these months will fly past and we’ll be sitting together at home before I know it. But right now it doesn’t feel like that at all.

I am

I AM
An artist,
Adventurous,
Barefoot,
Insatiably curious,
A daughter 3 times over, an orphan twice,
Brave,
Independent,
Difficult,
A traveler,
A secret keeper,
Want to be life changer,
Sister,
Observer,
Hungry for more,
A lover without a lover,
Student of life,
Wandering but not lost,
Hopeful,
A believer in the sacredness of humanity,
Alive but also living,
quasi-bohemian,
reluctantly American,
citizen of the world,
alone but not lonely,
warm hearted,
big souled,
often confused,
an idealist,
trying to be better than I am,
always changing,
lover of broken things,
hiker,
singer,
cat napper,
impulsive,
over analyzer,
full of contradictions,
a river,
constantly finding parts of me that I didn’t know existed,
unfortunately often intimidating,
sun worshiper,
daughter of the universe,
lover of worn out jeans,
author,
living for the future,
trying to be present,
caught up in the clouds,

Meag

Cold nights

Still no warm body next to me at night and I've started to do some serious thinking about Him...no conclusions yet. If I can leave for this long and not really miss Him maybe that should tell me a few things. I do feel bad about not having checked my e-mail in a couple weeks to see if He's written, but more because I don't want to hurt Him rather than the fact that I really miss Him. I suppose I've only been gone for 3 weeks so all of this could change in time. I think that right now I miss the physical comfort of that relationship. I miss the idea of having some one at home waiting for me, but I think that that also would change if I started a bit of a summer fling with some one here. I feel like a bit of a school girl trying to hedge my bets...who knows. I want to be more self sufficient when it comes to things like this, not to need someone to comfort or validate me. I don't want to go home and make things permanent with Him because I need to be in close proximity to another human body. I want to do it because I love Him, but at this moment I think that any relationship I have will be based on my need for a warm body and not genuine emotions. Knowing that makes it difficult to treat some one as an ends in themself and not just a means to an ends.

I want to feel like that incredibly self assured woman I was in Guatemala, but it's proving much more difficult than I had imagined when I left. I thought I would leave home, come to Europe, and easily grow into that woman. But I just don't feel like that's happening at all. Instead I'm feeling more and more awkward in my skin and finding it difficult to express myself or generate conversation with some people. Perhaps it's because I'm not sure I'll come across as the woman I want to be. I'm afraid that instead of the intriguing, wandering soul I'll come across as merely average and trying to be something that I'm not. Since The Kate has written me that lovely e-mail about really revealing myself to some one I've been trying quite hard to attempt to let people in, but instead I think my consiousness has made it nearly impossible for me to show people the public or private version of myself. I find myself caught in a strange limbo where nothing that I show anyone seems true, this distorted public image, that is quite differient from the one I usually display, and I can't seem to let anyone into the core of my being either. Such an inability make me very unsure of what that core really consists of. I suppose only more time will tell. I think part of what I'm lacking is I've yet to have a meaningful converation with anyone, the kind that start when you're the only two people left at the bonfire or the ones that start right before you plan to go to bed but instead spend another 3 hours solving the problems of the world. I think one of those conversations would do some good for my soul, hopefully in the near future one of those will happen. I suppose until then I'll keep tring to find the space I fit into, not at Agape, but rather on the whole. How I can have enough faith in humanity to let people into my soul without worrying about the possibility of pain or rejection, just letting the world see me for me and let the consequences fall where they will. So much work to do on myself, I feel like I'm going backwards instead of forwards but I suppose self recognition is the first step in understanding myself and becoming who I want to be.