:: self-diagnosis ::

i am impatient.
and easily confused.

pushed and pulled -- sometimes it seems -- rather than self-propelled. incapable of stillness. unable to wait. to decide. to sustain.

i am passionate and simultaneously dispassionate.

i am a fatalist and an optimist.

i am excited and disappointed in equal measure. i ebb. i flow. i ebb again.

i get uncomfortable if i start to feel too cliche. i want to make connections but i cringe when someone confesses to feel the ways i feel.

i believe that sharing is good because it connects us. i believe that we all feel the same ways. that we are all impatient and easily confused. that we are all searching, seeking beings.

but when you tell me you are a searching, seeking being, immediately i want to be something different.

in a way i am embarrassed for us in our sameness.

when you stand in front of me, mirrored, i want to love you and run from you at the same time. i want to hold your hand and say it's okay that you feel the way i feel. but i also want to stop feeling that way, sometimes just because someone else feels it, too.

it's possible that i want us to feel the same and be the same but i want to know that i somehow feel it more or better or differently.

perhaps the only thing i want more than connection is MEness.

separation.

at bedtime evan likes to come up with similes: i love you as high as the moon. i love you as much as i hate wearing bandaids.

last night at bedtime evan told me that he loves the three of us (daddy, emily, and me) "as much as i would love having the whole planet to myself."

i get that. i really do.

i want to follow the rules.
i want to write the rules.
i want to break the rules.

i want to be the exception to the rules.

this ego of mine? it's a force. it contends with gravity, pulling me centrifugally upward even as the center of the earth pulls me centripetally downward.

away from the center. toward the center.
exception. rule.
separation. connection.