My window is open and there's a fair down the street.

I hear motors turning on and off, doors opening and shutting, beeping saying that cars are locking and unlocking.

I hear screams and chatter and laughter and music.

Maybe as people walk by, eager to get out of the summer night's heat and into their conditioned cars, they will hear moments of my TV playing Korean dialogue through my window that is open to let in some of the cool summer night air.

I was scared get warm,

But I got warm. I got warm

and the window shut and the light left.

I'm shivering, I've forgotten how

to be cold and I don't want to remember

but I know I Must.

There is a season for warm, and

a season for light and

Now is the time to be cold.

sunlight Peeps over my

windowsills, hesitating in case the windowpane drops and Hurts

its delicate little fingers. It might

It might, I cry, but you can stay

after the window is shut you can stay!

So it crawls in and stays, warm and

wonderful, even after the window is shut, we sit and play but I

hesitate to bask in case the curtain closes and Hurts my delicate little mind.

Just turn on the light when I am gone, it tells me before shrinking away back out my window, Just turn on the light. But now it is dark and I cannot find the light switch.

Is life like a grape?

Do we swell up to the point it seems like we may burst and long for relief, only for that relief to come in the form of gradual shriveling, drying up in the sun to the point of almost not existing while at the same time existing almost too much until we fall off and die?

Or do we get to fill again?

Sometimes it gets hard to breathe.

Sometimes that's because so many things are happening all at once that I forget about breathing.

Sometimes it's because I forget about how to want to breathe.

I want to remember. I want to remember so bad it hurts.

I want it so bad and it hurts so bad that the wanting and the hurting get so big that I forget everything else.

And then it gets hard to breathe.

My belly is round

Like the Earth. I wonder if Mother Earth sometimes too takes

A break from the vomiting, and the vitamins, and the blood tests to

Tenderly place a hand on her belly to

Feel the shifting of her tectonics and

Smile at the life growing inside her.

I don't want to see a therapist because he would only help me work through things I used to work through on my own and I don't want to admit that I can't anymore.

But I have these dreams. They're so vivid, I see color and texture. I feel and taste and smell. And everything is bright and lovely. Everything tastes good and I don't feel like gagging when I eat. The problems are the problems of my childhood: minute. Everything worrying me during the day simply no longer exists. It's hell.

Because when I wake up, it's dark. I lay still as I can, trying to soak up the last bit of warmth from my dreams but I have to move eventually, usually a sprint to the toilet to throw up the bile that was unsettled from not being fed the night before.

I return to my bed, trying to find the bright side, but it's fully retreated to my subconscious. For all that I still have the memories of the times I cannot have, a vivid contrast to the little I am left with.

I have much to be grateful for, I am sure. But usually I can only think of about two things, or two people. And even then the thoughts regarding them swell in currents of guilt. So much I want to be able to do for them, so much that I did in my dreams; but instead I can only lay still, wishing for the strength to even shower so I can stand my own scent.

That is maybe why I cannot work through things anymore. My thoughts are tirelessly drawn to my dreams. I cannot get a handle on what is in front of me because I cannot let go of what is not.

Each day I try to remind myself I am trying my best, that there is nothing more I should be doing. Each night I am reminded how painfully untrue that is.

There are hundreds of allegories that raise the philosophical question of whether it is better to know of a good that you cannot have or be kept in a dark, but blissful ignorance. I have always felt that knowledge is power, but I now know it is not worth bliss.

I stopped writing for a while. I was scared of becoming dependent on it I suppose.

I'm trying to figure out how to communicate visually and I guess that I was scared that anything I got out through writing would then be lacking on my paintbrush.

I also found greater needs to communicate verbally. How could I learn to talk to someone if I relied on writing?

Maybe I was right to be scared and maybe I'm foolish to be reverting now. I don't know.

What I do know is the feelings I was scared of expressing in the wrong ways have become the feelings I'm scared of expressing at all and now I'm scared I've lost them.

I'm scared I've lost me. When I look at my old writings I see a person that is no longer me and when I look at what I have made recently I don't see a person at all.

And now I am not faced with a question, but rather a hundred questions face me:

Is this moving forward or backward? Am I helping or hindering myself? Do I even exist anymore? Can the person I'm trying to become and the person I was both exist? Can I fit either of them inside what is left of me now? Is this faith or is this fear? Does it matter?

I know meaning is something that grows as you give it the time to, but I still won't be satisfied until I know where to find it. Each step either takes me closer or adds distance, and I can't know which until I'm there or gone forever.

Is this what gone forever feels like? Or is this part of the fog that gets me closer in the end.

How I long to act without fear of some elusive eternal fate decided not by any moral act but mere personal preference, and yet it is only the hope of a happy such ending that keeps me moving forward.

If I am not true to myself, I'll lose myself. I hope only that I am in the process of finding myself rather than losing it, for I am not quite sure who to be true to quite yet.

I used to write a lot. When I wasn’t writing, I was reading; words were my sanctuary. Language was how I felt most human. I read to children almost daily and myself almost hourly. I read everything from fantasy to the dictionary. I laughed so hard I would fall off couches and only stopped when I was crying so hard I couldn’t see anymore.

I don’t remember the last book I have read and this is the first I’ve written a full sentence in an even longer time. I do art now: visual art. I don’t know if I’m any good and I don’t really know what any good means. I had spent most of my life assuming the only art I would ever be involved in is language arts.

I have found a new language in this new art. I am not fluent and I long for the familiarity of a written, phonetic language and the ease I found communicating with it. I felt confident entering conversations I had nothing to do with and still being a productive contributor. I had no limits in my beautiful little world of words.

I look back on the words I wrote here, many of which express severe pining for a boy who now finally loves me back. Many others are lightly masked notes of intense fear of vulnerability that are clearly visible to me now.

With art I’ve laughed and cried and struggled more than I could have known. In an epic battle with myself to effectively communicate in this new language, barriers have been broken down that I had never before considered weren’t permanent structures. I don’t know what I’m doing on a technical level so I’m forced to rely on the little I know based on only my life experience. I can find the words to express almost anything, except perhaps my own deepest and yet unformed emotions; with art I am driven by those internal forces until they are clearly made manifest.

I don’t know which language is more effective and I don’t know which art I have more potential with. Probably neither fully fits either description. I have drawings that have finished unwritten thoughts and words that have expressed what my brush has tried only in vain to say. But maybe limits in my ability and understanding with one are what are finally breaking down the limits my aversion to full vulnerability the other. Maybe the art behind language is that what we’re communicating is really nothing more than what we know about ourselves.

Another end.

And then: another beginning. It starts slow, then builds; the excitement and anticipation rushes me onward, numbing the pain of the past I left behind. 

Suddenly, it's no longer the beginning and I'm flung into the middle. I start to understand my place, and all the good and the bad is unfolding. As the plot develops I seek to share the excitement with someone who I know will share it with me and understand my perspective. 

I turn back to tell you. But you: you are not there, and I cannot tell you anything. Confused, I turn once more to face forward. I walk through this part, towards another end. 

And then maybe I will find another beginning. And maybe in that beginning I can find you and I won't have to turn back. And maybe then we can both look forward together. And maybe it will finally be that beginning that doesn't have an end. 

But now, I walk without you.