i am really terrible at saying goodbye.

they will be either 1) incredibly emotional, and last for weeks at a time, from preparation til post-departure mourning. or, 2) ill just shrug and half-grin, my eyes darting down, to the left... engage in a quick embrace perhaps, a few incoherent syllables tumbling from my lips.

tonight, i employed my second tried-and-true technique.

but once i got behind the door, and heard the engine turn over, it was a different story. sigh.



  ¶ 23:39

  nika, babe, ding misses you already.  ¶ 22:04

  "the way i feel about music - any song, any style - is that there is no right or wrong, only true and false. if the music and lyrics are conceived out of honesty and if the production of the song goes along with its original message, then what has been expressed is art, regardless of what has anyone's opinion is of it. so things are a lot simpler if you just tell the truth." -fiona apple

amen. at last, ive gathered the courage to do this. and sadly, something as simple as this, takes courage to do... because this is, well, me, more or less... this my mind, translated into text. all of my life, i have been caught up in the right and wrong. just now, finally, im learning how to live the true and false. becoming fully active in my own life has been a challenge... but im just now learning how to do it. those of you who know me, i think, have seen this. im learning how to be comfortable in my own skin, and im learning how to wear who i am more like a mink coat than a soiled shirt. i think im finally moving towards my core... which i suppose some would call their soul... but i feel like soul, or core, are so undefineable, that even if one did eventually reach their essence of their being, they wouldnt even know that they were there... people wear a thousand different masks, brace themselves behind a million different facades, and coming into one's own involves stripping those layers, revealing what lies beneath those different skins, one at a time, is what brings us closer to an inner peace. do we ever reach our goal of being our true, honest self? doubtful. but learning how to finally accept a certain mask, deciding its truth, and melding it to your own skin, i think, is what "finding yourself" is all about... you might argue that what i propose is blind faith, but what faith isnt blind? and although im hardly religious, i guess i am practicing my own version of faith in this way - after all, faith is the axis upon which we base truth. so, at last, here is my truth, as well as my false. ill try to avoid the rights and wrongs.  ¶ 17:09