Whoever Dances is One with the Universe

We just found out that my uncle has prostate cancer, which is what both his father and my grandfather died of. The doctors think that because he is pretty young and they caught it pretty early he should be fine, but I know he is really nervous about it anyway. I would really like to solicit prayers and good-wishes for him, since he is basically the living incarnation of Good Guy Greg and truly wonderful person.

I finished my commission -- I was actually rather pleased, as it was ordered by someone who contacted the gallery that dropped my stuff because it wasn't selling, so for revenge I bored the director of the gallery by talking about pig breeds for half an hour when I handed it in.

I'll be back at school on Sunday, which I'm looking forward to. Real internet again! It's so exciting!

I'm still figuring out this DreamWidth thing. I will get it someday!

I really miss my school friends right now. It has to do at least partly with this unholy terror I have that if I'm away from people for too long they'll just forget about me, or they won't want me any more--it's not really logical, it's just one of my biggest anxieties, and it's completely paralysing. Maria's friends are all visiting her over the summer--Lydia's coming next month, as is Elena, and Emily may come after that, and she had Will last week, and later on in the summer she'll visit Will and Elena and Monica.

I got to go see mhari in May, which was wonderful, but otherwise I'm going to be spending summer alone. Like always. Which, when I was still in high school and didn't really have any friends in the state, wasn't a really big deal, because it was par for the course, I never had any friends that I saw on a daily basis for a whole eight years. But now that I've spent two years of my friends being available almost all the time, I feel really, really emotionally cut off.

It's also wrapped up in the fact that I really like to be able to touch people, or else I feel distanced from them; I like to hold hands, or cuddle, or just be physically close to people, it makes me feel safer. So I don't have anybody for that (Maria is not a touchy-feely person at all), and also I'm just so scared that I'll get back to school and all my friends there will be all 'whatever, who are you, why did we even like you?'

and for some reason I'm having a depressive episode, and I haven't had one of those in about three weeks, so I'm disappointed. And there are some things going wrong with my plans for the summer; I wasn't able to get hired by any of the places I applied, so my summer job is doing odd jobs for a man at church once a week, I've had writer's block since before I came home and my poetry won't come out, so my MS is still at forty-eight pages and I'll never hit the fifty I want before I try to start sending it to publishers, and I'm only going to get rejection letters anyway, and I never have time to go to Selinsgrove to get the things I need to finish my Big Damn Art Project. And then the priest of our church [Daphne] told Mama she would give me an internship so at least I could get something official out of the summer, but she kind of reneged on that. She's giving me the connexions to meet some people, but nothing really official, and she refuses to believe I'm serious about wanting to go into the priesthood; she keeps referring to it as "[Soujin]'s discernment process" where I decide "whether she really does want to go into religion or not". I know that I want to do this. I really hate talking about it in these terms, because it feels all faux-spiritual and pretentious, but I really do feel called to do this. It feels like I'm finally making the right decision. And even if it's true that kids my age usually change their minds about their career plans and whatnot, it's still at least polite to pretend to believe me when I say this is what I want to do. It really upsets me.

And I feel like Mama's disappointed in me for not being proactive enough, but any time I have to interact with Daphne I just end up feeling so disappointed and depressed that I don't really want her help. I wish so much that I had a spiritual counsellor who didn't make me upset. I'm meeting with her husband Ed to-morrow, who was a spiritual counsellor (and is a retired priest) at Penn State for years and years, and hoping that since he's an actual human being and not an alien ambassador from planet Daphne we will possibly be able to communicate in a way that does not make me miserable, cross my fingers. I just. I want to learn how to organise a fundraiser and run a vacation bible school and pick out the week's hymns and connect the readings together with the season and current events into a big thick woven sermon. I want to learn from someone who loves God and loves the earthly church, too, someone who visits sick people and helps make prayer shawls and runs the book club and teaches Sunday school because that person wants to, but whenever I talk to Daphne she talks like it's all a huge burden that God's placed upon her and she's only doing it because she knows it's the right thing to do. I don't want to learn from someone who feels that way. I want to learn from someone who loves it.

And I want the sink to start working again and the smell of turpentine to go away and for my heart to stop hurting, and I wouldn't mind if only one of those things happened. It just feels like too much of a buildup.

Also, I have to drive to Duncannon to-morrow morning to see the doctor for my physical for my visa for Greece, and that just reminds me how scared I am to go to Greece and how maybe it's not such a good idea and I won't know anyone and my depression will come back and I won't have anyone to reach out to, and my friends will definitely forget me and I won't be able to connect to people because I'm a stranger and the wrong nationality and I'll fail all my classes or I won't be able to get the classes I need to graduate and it's going to be expensive and maybe I should just stay home-- and then I start to have a panic attack. I want to go, but I'm scared.

And really, really lonely. >_<

tl;dr Soujin is a whiny emo kid with hell of anxiety disorder, hi.

The internet is lagging like a bitch; my bicycle has been vandalised again (again!); it is still hell of cold; I have a paper to write by Tuesday that any other time I'd be thrilled about but which is totally uninspiring right now; I have volunteer work to do to-night that is going to require walking back to campus at 10:00 in the dark and the cold; THAT WOMAN is visiting this weekend so I can't hang out with all of my friends; THAT BOY is screwing with me again goddammit I have never met anyone who blew hot and cold so irritatingly and unhelpfully; Jake is squicking me out again I wish we had never met; I have a ridiculous quantity of homework and the girl from my philosophy class borrowed my notes and hasn't given them back yet--

in short, flist, I am feeling VERY SULKY to-day and wish everything would just go away. AWAY I SAY. Fffff.

To-day is a bit of a mish-mosh of things.

I spent altogether too long doing things while listening to Istanbul (not Constantinople) because it drives Sagramore crazy. This is too fun a discovery. It makes Sagramore absolutely nuts, and it has been stuck in my head all day.

Maria spent to-day looking for things that have washed up during all the flooding. There's a lot of scrap metal we can sell, and she found a pink golf ball as well. The best thing, though, is still certainly the miracle turtles we found Wednesday, the little Russian Doll turtles. There is apparently a bridge up by the covered bridge, that Maria thinks would be nice to have, but hard to move, and so prettily made that it probably belongs to somebody in a more serious way.

Together we all managed to figure out Sunday's New York Times crossword. I hate crosswords because I am so bad at them, and yet I can't stop playing them.

(Daddy is really sick and can't see practically at all. Maria is scared and it's making her angry. I wish we were insured for the surgery and I don't think we are. I wish we had more things to hold onto.)

It seems like we've all started doing the thing I used to, where I would make up something to keep on trying for, no matter how far off or silly it was, so that I wouldn't just give up. Mama keeps saying, when I change jobs, like it's a promise or something.

Maria baked new bread to-day, and the whole house smelled like it. When it was finished I cut off a hot piece and ate it with peanut butter, like a blessing, and felt blessed. I've started a sort of daily ritual of praising my physical self to reassure me, and so in the morning or evening I'm always talking to myself, saying pretty things about my hair or my feet.

Has been a v. Mordred day, which fact I resent incredibly. I hate being Mordred (for one thing, everything tends to go wrong).

My nose is v. cold and I put my hand down on the coffee burner, but I did find out that Rachel lives about fifteen minutes away from us and her mother delivers our mail. We discussed carpooling to work. This is excellent news.

Excitingly enough, we were robbed last night.

At church to-day, Shirley took one look at me and started pulling at my shirt and saying, "Oh, you need to cover up your bra straps!". She kept poking my shirt and trying to make it modest. It's a soft white tank top that goes under a much prettier crinkly white long-sleeved blouse that's meant to be worn open. Maybe I shouldn't wear it any more! This is the second time someone's commented that it's revealing.

(the first time, it was one of the librarians. There was a boy who had removed his shirt in the library, and I went back to let her know, and I said, "There's a boy who isn't wearing a shirt--". She said, "Neither are you," and looked at me pointedly. As I said! I should probably stick to wearing it at home, seeing as it elicits such a response.)

In any case, they took the CD players out of the cars, Mama's digital camera, and my car keys; as far as we can tell, nothing else. I remain glad we're moving--I assume the Mennonite neighbours won't do this.

At church to-day, Rog gave me a colouring book of anatomy, a college-level colouring book! XD I love it. I need to write him a very pretty thank-you note. Eheehee.

(This song in my subject line, I need to upload it; it always makes me cry. It's very--meaningful. To me. Amy gave it to me; Amy has this way of knowing what will touch me.)

A defining characteristic--

If you go away, and if you go away for a long time, when you come back I'll also be here, and it will be like you never went away at all; I always wait. You come back and I'm there, if you want me.

(I'm burned all over my arms and I have sleeping cancer in my shoulder; these things happen, you get used to it. To-night I have a date, and I won't be home until eleven-thirty, at best--these things offer happiness, you take them and hold them in your hands.)

I think this song is the only thing keeping me sane sometimes.

Mama's best friend Susan, who I wrote about on Maundy Thursday, who's been sick from her chemo, she died. We're going to the funeral to-morrow. Her husband asked Daphne to ask Waen and me to be greeters. Mama is very broken right now.

We're all having trouble, too. I think everything is sliced up like it was broken and then someone set the pieces back so that they're in a shape of what they were, so that there's space between the ages. And we are trying to manage, and it's all funny and piecey, too. But we're trying.