a landslide brought me down

I went to talk to my favorite professor about my paper. While I was there we ended up talking about his dog, and he received a call from his wife about dinner that evening, about picking up his son at school. He smiled at me as I left, and I just looked at him for a moment, thinking: how wonderful it must be, to have a job and a family and a house. How wonderful to have an office full of books, to have a son to pick up from school and a dog that barks at snow plows and the moon. How wonderful to have dinner with your family, to pay bills and taxes, to hang pictures on your newly-painted wall. How wonderful to have colleagues and a briefcase, how wonderful to wear a tie to work. How wonderful to have lines around your eyes from smiling, and students who are perhaps a little bit crazy, like your dog that barks at snow plows and the moon, who sit in your office and carry doubts as heavy as their books.

I met at early morn

My shoulders and neck ache, tension and strain over the ache of overuse. Electricity traces the edges of the muscles, a pins-and-needles quiver persistantly out of reach. My hands interlace neatly on my stomach as I lie on the floor.

I don't remember what it feels like to hold someone's hand.

I went to a concert tonight, and my roommate was kind enough to go with me. Perhaps better if she hadn't, and I had gone alone; I don't think she enjoyed herself or was really interested. And all my paths are the same, and lead to the same destination. My path is always a lonely walk through the cold and the dark, towards an empty apartment and a sink full of dirty dishes. There have been a thousand thousand such walks, and there will be a thousand thousand more. I can see them in front of me, sometimes, the endless track of my footprints as they trace a crooked line to nowhere in particular.

College is almost over. A month to go, that's all. I don't know if I should be pleased or not, relieved or not. I don't feel any closer to the future than I was four years ago.

But at least then I had more hope.

It was supposed to be different-- how naive to say that, how foolish. I expected so much, dreamed as if those dreams could become reality. I was supposed to become.

And I have, I guess. But not who or what I wished to become. Not who or what anyone else wished, either. Instead I've just drifted further away, twisted down an endless spiral stair. I can't do it, I can barely connect to anyone on a superficial level. New friends, and keep ye old? Your joke is a bitter one, because I'm worse, not better, and helpless to turn back the wheel. As alone as I ever was, only perhaps now there's more merit to it.

Because it would be truly terrible to wish this on anyone, and yet I do, even though it's too late. That I should maintain such a desire at this point is a sin against my once-shining hopes, my unworthy ambition.