driving lindsay home tonight after having dinner and coffee with mr nolan (and after being taken to his house, which was, by all accounts, exactly what we pictured and absolutely awe-inspiring), I said this: "i don't even know if im happy. i don't know if im fulfilled. i just don't know anymore."

it hurt to say it, to finally just be able to formulate all of those livejournal entries and talks and lack of talks with friends or with myself. things, i think, are too complicated now to really be able to say "im happy" or "i'm not happy." things are shrinking and expanding in size at the same time, circles of friends are reforming into ameoba shapes, ideas of possible future plans are looming all too closely above our heads. bringing up books and poems we read in english our senior year while standing in mr. nolan's study in his house, his real house, the house that i have imagined over and over and over again in my head, really felt like something more important than just the moment that i existed in. i mentioned keats. mr nolan mentioned silas marner. lindsay mentioned yeats. yeats. the second coming. "Things fall apart. The centre cannot hold."

that's how it feels, and how it's felt for several months, maybe even longer. a year or two. maybe three. there is no center to things, nothing that i can take refuge in at the end of the night that will ease me to sleep. maybe i'm just being 20, like joan didion says, "one of the mixed blessings of being twenty and twenty-one and even twenty-three is the conviction that nothing like this, all evidence to the contrary notwithstanding, has ever happened to anyone before." maybe this is all anyone feels right now. maybe this is all anyone in new paltz is feeling, it's all lindsay and i are feeling, it's all anyone has ever felt during their third year of college. but that doesn't make it easier. to wake up in the morning feeling the weight of the terrible possibility of being so alone that it hurts in your chest to walk around an empty house. to drive home from an amazing night with one of your best friends and a teacher that taught you so many things about english and continues to teach you so many things about life. but there's that feeling. that gnawing sense of urgency, like you can't possibly be safe right now, no matter how it may seem.

that's what this break was. "break". haha. it felt like a fantasy being cradled by these few really amazing people that always understood me and understood my sense of fear and uncertainty. how do i crawl out of that?

i'm scared. and i don't want to feel alone. i don't want to go back to putting on happy faces and drinking every night like i should and being with a whole group of people who, for some reason i've never been able to figure out, make that step into just taking a breath. and being with another person. really being present with another person and their fears and anxieties. what is any of this worth--finding a job, creating art to hopefully make money off of it, going to class, finding an apartment, applying to grad school--what is any of it worth if you don't feel really a part of someone else's center? nothing. and that's all i want.