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    This Year, I'm Going Home.

    "Sometimes I can hear my bones straining under the weight of all the lives I’m not living." - Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, by Jonathan Safran Foer

    Or how about this one...


    "The pain I feel now is the happiness I had before. That’s the deal."- C.S. Lewis



    I think I have been spending too much time with my headphones on. I haven't heard real life in a long time, just the constant thump!thump!thump! of the techno waves or of recent - the wailing of the pop princesses I am about to delete from my iTunes. I called my little brother today, after I had been verbally and publicly (through the glorious wonder that is social networking) demoted from sister to stranger, in an attempt to fix whatever in the heckfire went wrong. It’s such a little thing to say I’m sorry… but my god… the effort involved! The ego that had to be overcome for us to get past that…

    The sad thing is… I’m talking about mine. My ego. While I was hurt by the tone and words spoken, it was the message that got to me the most... You failed - you were not good enough. That was the only message I could take from it and it cut me right to the core.

    I spent the better part of the last month in memory. Memory, as if it were a place. Even as the main character, I didn’t recognize myself. So distant and self-absorbed. A friend once used the phrase, “When a man is wrapped up in himself he makes a pretty small package.” Happens to women too. I became so wrapped up in making sure I got what I wanted and that the life around me was as I desired, I didn’t even notice that I wasn’t even a part of it anymore.

    Chicago represented to me a rebirth… a separation of the pain, resentment and expectations I felt I could never live up to. It was the first real thing I had done for myself… my first real decision. I’ve been here five and a half years and have only gone home 3 times… the last was February 2006. I guess I never stopped to think about the toll my leaving would have had on my family and friends. In a way, I guess I didn’t care. Even here in Chicago, I failed to live up to my own dreams and expectations. I have yet to finish school, I have only recently (within the last 6 months) begun to have a social life and a strong support system. I closed myself off to everything… and it took losing one of the most important people in my life to start the journey of discovery. I am coming up on twenty eight years… or twenty eight years are coming up on me. You pick. I have spent the majority of these years searching for acceptance from those around me and destroying myself in the process. Finally, after all these years, I have woken to realize it was only my own acceptance that mattered most and in true fashion, my intensity blew up in my face and brought my world crashing down.

    At the end of the story, it was merely acknowledgment of hurt my brother was looking for - not the crucifixion I took it as. Responsibility for my actions, or in his eyes, lack of. I guess that’s really all any one wants. I was reminded tonight that there are essentially two responses to someone's opinion, "hmm... I wonder how they got there" and "fuck you, you're an idiot". Its time I stopped swearing so much and spent more time figuring out how they got there.

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