yeah, i was totally going to go to bed, pretending anyone might understand my strange little volcano references. but i am back after less than ten minutes of earnestly trying to fall asleep, because a) i'm not tired because i took a nap this afternoon, b) i don't want that horribly embarrassing last entry to stay up for long, and c) i'm sort of not feeling especially great but i'm going to skirt the real issue with some meaningless pseudo-philosophical rambling.

these are the old theories. the philosophy i created for myself in between the time of torvill and dean and now when i'm not sure quite what to believe in. these are the things i know i don't believe in anymore:

1. you know that old saying, actions speak louder than words? well i always wanted to believe just the opposite. i knew that a lot of the time, when it came to things that really mattered anyway, my actions and my words directly contradicted one another. i'd think and feel one thing, but i didn't have the will or whatever to show it in action. mainly this was the caution i issued to ben: take my words seriously, not my actions. i could say anything in writing. i could make it perfectly clear what a person meant to me in writing, i could show love, and i could allow myself to be vulnerable, and i could open up about anything. but in action? shut down. cold. emotionless. and absolutely inactive. i could say anything, but my actions didn't back it up.

and i used to think that that was okay, that it was reasonable to completely disregard actions as part of the equation. words were enough for me. why not for everyone else? i understand now how important what you actually follow through and do is. i was all talk when it came to love and friendship, and i meant it. but words are not enough; how could i expect him or anyone to believe me when he couldn't see it for himself? of course, actions mean so much more. you can just say anything.

but though i know this is true in my mind now, i still put words before action in practice. just earlier today, i could have written pages upon pages about how to let go and move on, but when it came to physically saying something or doing something to make lani feel better? i'm at a loss. i wish i'd been there tonight. i wish i'd been there any time you guys do anything together. so is it jealousy or social ineptitude or something deeper inside i have yet to confront? i don't know. i just wish i could get out of this diary and allow my actions to express how much i love you guys.

2. alone is not the same as lonely. this was my great epiphany. this is the one great quote and thought lauren ever came up with, and then i managed to contradict everything i ever meant by it by building a monument to lonliness in a website with that as the title page. what i originally meant by that was something i didn't think most people could grasp about me or as a universal truth: that just because i was physically or metaphorically alone at times, didn't mean that i was lonely. i meant that i enjoyed my solitude - cherished it, even. and you could be lonely while surrounded by people. there is no causal link between the two, that was my great theory.

and there's not. i'm not going to say that i feel alone now and therefore i feel lonely, because it's neither. but i realized eventually that i never did like being alone. i was forced to be alone because of the family that led me to lock myself up in my room and associate with friends at school only or through notes up until the very end of high school. i didn't choose to be alone; it was my only recourse. i told myself i preferred it, said i hated people anyway. i spent so much time alone with my notebooks and my obsessions and i said that was all i needed. i was alone, but not lonely. the truth is though, i was lonely. i always wanted some real human contact, but i didn't see how i could find it. in situations like that, wanting something you can't have, you can basically do one of two things: tear yourself apart over it, or proclaim that you never wanted it anyway. as a defense, i chose the latter.

so alone is not necessarily the same as lonely, but if i'm honest with myself, it often is. there are times i can't stand to see a member of the human race, and long for solitude. but it usually happens that when i get my solitude, i'm longing for human contact again. maybe it's just another stupid no-win, wanting something i can't have situation. but i know i couldn't live without the people in my life. they're not interchangeable or insignificant. they are not only important - they are everything in my life. i think it takes more strength to realize that you do need people than to believe yourself entirely self-sufficient. it's hard to admit you need something you can't guarantee will be there, because you can't get inside that other person's head. takes a lot of trust. but it has to be worth the leap of faith when you just can't stand another saturday night alone.. and lonely.

3. do whatever you want to do, unless doing it causes some harm to another person, unless not doing it causes more harm to you. i still stand by this one, a real old 8th grade gem. it is the basis for my rationalized, defensible selfishness. you first, but not at the cost of others - but still... you first. it still makes sense to me.

4. soulmates. i used to hold a lot of faith in this bullshit: that any two people were put on this planet, destined to love one another. i don't know how i could reconcile destiny with atheism, but it was just something i needed to hold on to. i needed to believe that at the end of my tunnel of lonliness that i wasn't admitting to, there was my prince charming, exactly like whatever male celebrity i was currently obsessed with, and we would live happily ever after. i believed in true love. i believed in love at first sight. all that stuff. i believed in love, period, which is saying something because right now i'm not sure if i believe that exists in any form anymore.

i can't say the world has disillusioned me to love, because i haven't had any actual experience with it. i guess you could say witnessing my mother and father's failed marriage, and my mother's other two of same on top of it as disillusionment. and i guess, you could even count having no actual experience in all my 19 years as disillusionment. but no, my heart hasn't been broken romantically. i haven't let it.

so, my utter lack of credibility on this subject in mind, i give to you my observations, and that is that love does not last. i have yet to see one couple together after thirty or more years still as in love as they were in their first year. hell, i don't know if i've seen one couple together after three years this way. if love exists, it is fleeting. the human attention span is much to short to spend one's whole life tied down to one other person.

but here's the big question. is it better to fall in and out of love with many people over the course of your life, as i believe is more natural, but therefore experience one heartbreak after another? or is it better to spend your whole life with one person, watching what you had fade each day? and i can tell you, just staying alone forever is no preferable option either. so what do we do, to be happy? god, i don't know. but i don't think i could ever be married. and i could definitely never have children. i can't imagine a man that convincing.

okay, that's enough nonsensical, circuitious whining for one late, late night. this weekend i'm going to go through that box of the old notebooks i shoved into the back of my closet to dredge up more painful memories and simply replace old sillyness with a new brand of it...

what do you know that i would want to? where do you go that i could belong?

every day takes something away until there's nothing left to say. no single word can deliver you love, no understanding, and nothing to do. it's nothing to you.