you can't take nachos home with you for later

I sat up late with Maggie last night figuring out the universe and what not. The physicsts asked me to go out with them, but I declined. However, it was good to know that they hadn't dismissed me after my excessive drinking on Thursday.

All last year I sort of wallowed in the sorrow of missing my friends. I would sit in the shit-smelling darkness of my own pity, just longing for the days when my friends would have come to my rescue and snapped me out of the funk.

Well, it occurred to me last night that never again will my life return to a situation where I have swarms of loving people (like in college) to pace my moods and schedule and lifestyle.

So my options are to either feel sorry for myself that I'm not in college any more and no longer communally living among my lovely peers...

...or I can discover lasting ways to satisfy myself (without looking for new friends which would just create a cycle).

It's so easy to bitch about how not-fair life is and to demand that things start working out the way I want them to: like how I used to feel about my father.

Of course I deserve him to be available and appropriate and satisfying and sufficient and etc., but it's not coming from him, so I need not retard my personal growth by mourning what I am never going to get (no matter how "fair" it would be), so I find other ways to comfort myself in his absence.

There's a chance that for the rest of my life I will only see Maggie and Tylere a couple weeks out of the year (unless Tylere marries me). I've already gotten used to seeing Rosemary once or twice a year, and it's been two years now since I've seen Carrie Beth, so I suppose I'll get used to Maggie and Tylere's absence as well.

Anyone who saw me at Carrie's departure knows how miserable that day was for me. It was worse than when my sister left. Worse than when David left. I suppose if I can get used to her being gone I can get used to anyone being gone.

Maggie and I talked about how hard it is to learn lessons, too.

I'll not discuss her business, but just in my life I can look at all the guys I've entertained ideas about since leaving David, and each one obviosly goes against what I know about myself in the foundation of my being.

I went to church today for the first time in a while. It was nice, and a girl who lives two doors down from me also attends which at least makes attendence possible (and accountable). It felt refreshing to go to church. Very uplifting and - moreso - weight-lifting. Like, I felt lighter when I left.

I sort of change a little when I'm in church, too, in a good way. I find myself saying things that I never thought about before.

Like today the lady I went to church with took a sip of coffee immediately after drinking communion. She bashfully admitted to me that she hates the taste of grape-juice, as though it were some afront to the Lord for her to dislike it.

"It's okay," I encouraged her. "It could be Doritos and Coke because it's just about companionship with God."

When I got home from church I began filtering through my mounds and mounds of papers in my room. I decided to find everything I'd written about Tylere since the day I met him, and in the event ended up reading about half a dozen other guys who've weasled into my life and pissed me off on their way out.

There's evidence of lessons hard-learned.

Amrin was the worst. I mean, not him, but his situation. Perhaps I am wrong for not having seen him while I was home, but no one I know has criticized the decision.

He was such a strange deception, though. There were many things about him that were solid, but the problem was the most glaringly obvious fact: he was unfaithful. True, he did keep me out of trouble, but not enough for me to have thrown two years at him.

I remember telling him I was in love with him only a few days before he proposed to his now-ex-fiance, and he said I should have told him sooner.

Well, in hindsight I can see how mistaken I have been with him and all the other guys whose names corrupt my journals, because I really need a man who has leadership skills. I'm not saying I want to be controled, because I've dealt with that, but I want someone who's strength compliments mine.

I sort of mean, spiritual strength, too.

See, I believe that the way God works in the world is through the willingness of those who are filled with His spirit. That is to say: I believe that if I am willing for God to work a miracle through me, He will use me. So instead of wishing God would do stuff, I believe those who have a relationship with Him should be willing to do the stuff they want done.

For instance, sometimes people come to me with words of advice that detail exactly what I need to hear, but the person may have no idea what it is I'm going through. They are willing, though, for the Spirit of God to use them to make my life a little better.

Some people call this being "charismatic" or having the "gifts of the Holy Spirit" or being "Pentacostal" or all sorts of stuff.

I feel like I have identified my spritual gift, and I in turn feel responsible to offer it to God in case He can use it.

It's imprtant to me that my husband feel the same way.

There's nothing I can ever say to convince someone of the power of the Holy Spirit, because nothing I ever heard convinced me. It wasn't until I saw it myself that it became irrevokable. So I feel like I need a husband who already has had these ecstatic experiences with God.

Plus: he needs to know my song. That song thing is the weirdest, though. Someone randomly mentioned it to me recently, but not in the context of me, and it freaked me out so much to see the refernece that my feet went numb.

So I need to stop making mistakes, and deriving purposeful relationships from bullshit connections with people.

I've always known my husband will have a strong spirit and know my song.

Now enough fucking around. I'm too damn old for it.

she's growing old, it's getting late
and so he forgot,
he forgot, maybe not �
maybe he's been seriously hurt
would that be worse?
headlights crest the hill
shadows pass her by and out of sight
Annie sees in dreams:
Friday bingo, pigeons in the park
Annie waits for the last time
just the same as the last time
Annie says, "You see?
this is why I'd rather be alone."
and so, Annie waits,
Annie waits, Annie waits
for a call from a friend
the same, it's the same,
why's it always the same?
Annie waits as the last...
headlights crest the hill
who will be the one forever more
Annie, I could be
if we're both still lonely when we're old