i am in new york right now, long island to be exact. i booked the trip a month or two ago, to surprise my best friend on her birthday (hence no mention of the pending trek home on the off chance that she might peruse my journal and ruin the surprise). she suspected, though, and that is the price you pay for twelve years of friendship - she sees through me everytime, and i don't mind. it's a small price to pay. so that was the beginning of the week. at the end of this week, on friday, one of my closest college friends is also having a birthday party and i'll be going to that and seeing a lot of faces i haven't seen since fleeing the brick palace, diploma in hand. it's strange because i spent a lot of time coming and going and everytime was always rift with all these emotions, these feelings of helplessness, of time passing, of wanting to hold on to things and throw them in the river at the same time. but now when i come home, a few days is more than enough and i can't wait to get back to my life back in texas. i think this is because for the first time, i've managed to make a home somewhere else. i don't live in new york anymore. i'm not part of this life. my friends here all have jobs, lives, things to do, and when i come home i just don't. i read. i watch bad t.v. i annoy my sisters and feed the family dog too many treats and count the days until i can go home again. and it's not a bad thing. it just means i've cut myself loose. i still love the people here, and they still love me, but there's distance now and that's okay. it used to kill me to feel that distance because i saw it as some kind of failing in myself, as if the fact that i could not be wholly in two places at once was a blight on my abilities to love. but now i see that my love is not displaced - it's just spread out across states and oceans and souls, so thick and so encompassing that no matter what direction i look in i can't help but stare it in the face.

and this is good, this love.

and so am i.