Sinking sinkingsinking.  I'm so sleepy.  I'm talking to Jennifer right now, online, about God and her life and she is drinking.  She is thinking so hard about life and darkness and the meaning of her own life.    Again I have no answers.  I offered her my support in a way, I'm always telling her to be honest with me, that she doesn't have to pretend.  But it's hard to bear witness to a person's honesty.

I dont know what to say, there are no answers and only she knows how she feels and thinks. How can I add to that conversation uniquely.  Without saying something like, "please don't kill yourself" or  "I'm sorry" 

Nothing I say is really right, and then I just erase and try again until all my sentiments are reduced to "yeah"

Wish I could add some hope to her life, but all I really can do is listen and try to relate in any way I can.  Anyways It's light out now.  I meant to sleep so much earlier than this…oh well

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Hello.  It's been over a year, that's pretty ridiculous.  I guess i don't' have anything to say now, but just wanted a reason to type a little bit.  I won't offer an update on my life so much, since I only have one subscriber who knows everything that happens in my daily life.  I have been obsessed with pregnancy in the past year, reading about it and watching youtube vlogs done by pregnant women.  I don't really know how to explain my fascination with pregnancy and baby rearing, believe me, I've tried to explain it to my mom and boyfriend many times since it freaks both of them out.  I keep reassuring them that I'm not daydreaming about having them (babies).  I think it's just the possibility that my body COULD produce another human being that's really getting to me.

The obsession started with Jennifer's pregnancy, but, as many of my readers know (haha), after carrying the baby to full term, he died in utero.  I am so disappointed.  I am sad for her, my heart is breaking for her every time I see her.  But I'm also disappointed on a separate note.  I was really looking forward to meeting a real baby that I could get to know on a personal level.  I thought that it would be the answer, that it was going to tell me whether having children was something I really wanted in my life.  I was so curious and so excited to be an aunt too. 

Jennifer printed a photo of the baby after she gave birth to him.  He was dead, but they laid him down and cleaned him up and put a toy monkey in his arms.  The perfect picture of sleep.  She put this picture in a bunch of cards for the family, wrote his full name on the front, and put a Jalaludin Rumi poem inside (incidentally that's who Jalal is named after).  Anyways, I keep peeking inside the card she gave me.  And I really never have seen a more beautiful baby.  I think the beauty of a baby might have something to do with the potential that they hold for the viewer.  I just can't believe that this baby I had been imagining for eight months had real shoulders and fingers and skin creases between each of those things.  He was a he and had a nose and cheek bones that really do look like his mom's, and a face shape that is undeniably Khalil's.  It's just amazing to me.  Inside a pocket of flesh in her abdominal cavity, cells started to grow and gather together, somehow, genetics made choices, formed things in just the perfect certain way.  How is this not fascinating to EVERYBODY!?

Anyways, in other news, life is pretty dull.  About to finish my junior year, and after that I don't have much time left at UW, probably only two quarters.  Jalal and I are again planning on moving in together next fall… We'll see…he's still broke.  My mom has breast cancer, or she had it?  She had a mastectomy and hopefully the cancer is all gone,but she should be starting chemo soon. So I'm going to Spokane for the summer, or at least for as long as I can stand.  Maybe I'll get a fast food job or something.  Something I can quit when I get so tired and depressed from being there.  I have a feeling I'm not going to like being there.  Sigh.  I keep telling myself it's the right thing to do, but if Jalal doesn't come with me, I'm going to go crazy!  I have no friends in Spokane.  Sheesh.  I guess that's all for now, maybe I'll start blogging in a semi regular fashion, or maybe this is a trick of my mind.  Probably the same trick that tells me that I'm going to lose weight even though I have wanted to lose weight since I was 11, before I even started my period, and I have only ever gained it. SOo…sees ya

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Sigh.  Feeling a bit better since my last post.  I don't know what does it to me, but I think the fact that I had been sleeping at about five AM and waking at 12 or 1 just before class, groggy and unaware.  On Sunday night I was supposed to be writing a paper and got sick, throwing up and ewww…just feeling bad.  Anyways I decided to sleep and finish in the morning but couldn't sleep.  So I emailed my professor and luckily he gave me a few extra days.  So tonight is the night, and I woke up naturally at nine today, so that was cool.  I need to get groceries and get some freaking exercise, then I will feel great.  I saw the sun today!  It was nice. 

Anyways, for tonight I will tidy my room…read the poems I haven't read yet…write the journal entries for those poems…and then the paper will come naturally….righttt?  I need printer ink.

I talked to my brother yesterday and he says he is very happy with his girlfriend.  They don't fight and agree on everything apparently.  Good for him.  I can't help but wonder if we are too alike, he and I, grasping the first person to show affection and holding on.  Being grateful just to have someone who loves us.  We'll see what happens once he goes to college though.  It makes me sad how much he is growing up while I'm not there.  I feel as if I won't know him anymore when I go home.  The lucky thing is that we usually grow in the same direction, usually I am pleasantly surprised by how well we get along.  I hope to see my family soon, I'm feeling lately like I was born two years ago into this semi-adult life, forgetting the part which made me who I am, forgetting the person I was when I lived there.

My muscles feel tired, they need to be stretched.  Susan (the roommate who lives in the room beneath mine who complains when I walk across the room) is not gonna like me practicing the splits on her ceiling.

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I'm feeling very scared and nervous and upset and depressed right now.  Everything in my life has felt meaningless for three weeks now.  It won't go away like I expected it to.  I often get these feelings and they go away, but this won't leave.  I feel lonely, but I don't want to be around people.  No one interests me.  Even Jalal.  Being with Jalal no longer serves to put meaning back into my life.  At first I thought that I was falling out of love with him.  I don't think so though.  I don't want to leave him.  I don't want to be alone,  I want to be with him.  He makes me laugh and smile, and he makes me want to hug him…but my heart feels deadened.  It never feels the feeling that I used to call love.  When I do hug him or become intimate with him, I fail to feel happy, I fail to feel my heart leap.  I still love Jalal, but the good feeling is gone.  I feel that my life has been reduced to a series of duties and I am growing tired of them all.

I miss my family, but when I see them I just want to leave.  And be alone…what is wrong with me!

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I've been back in Washington for about a week now.  I was sick on the plane ride back and had so many bug bites you could hardly see my legs through them!  Then we had to do the Christmas thing with my mom's side of the family, then my dad's the following day.  I felt nauseous and nervous and I really was starting to think I was pregnant which was scary and humiliating.  I had to tell my mom because I had no way to get to a drug store without her.  She bought me a test and it was negative and I was instantly ashamed.  How embarrassing to have to admit to my mother that I was possibly pregnant.  I didn't even tell Jalal until after I knew it was negative and then he got mad at me for not telling him sooner.  Anyways then my family left me over here for fear that the roads might close before it was time to go back to school.  I have been at Jalal's house for days while he goes to work and I am going a little bit soft in the head.  I went out one day but the walk to the bus stop is more than two miles in the deep slushy snow.  It's only worth it once in a great while.  I bought some fruit and yarn for knitting hats for my younger brother and his friends.  Since then I have been pretty lonely.  Jalal and I went to his brother's (and his girflfriend's) house for dinner on New Years Eve and played cards.  We drank apple cider because they are both recovering alcoholics, and went home at 3 AM.  Slept without so much as a word to eachother, I felt so married.  I've been staying home and cleaning while he goes to work and it really is depressing.  I can't imagine living in a time when I would have been expected to do that for the rest of my life. 

I have to move in to my new home this weekend and I am really stressed out about it.  I don't have a truck or anything just a small car and I think I will have to carry my bed the few blocks to the new house, which will probably be hellish.  Oh well though, it's worth it to me…

I've been thinking about what to major in and what I want to do with my life.  It's all very boring. 

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I feel a little wobbly.  I can hear a Mexican private party at the restaurant down the hill.  I went to the beach today and after never getting any sun because of the amount of sun screen i have been using i decided to give it a go without.  I got a little burned but not as bad as i expected.  The bad thing was that sunburns make me feel weird.  Kind of chilled and weak and sick.  I rode a rickety bus back to Zihautinejo and that was kind of cool.  Seriously the only Spanish I know is Ci, adios, gracias and the numbers.  I keep trying to speak french to people embarrassingly enough.  My mom is kinda worse though, she says things like "airport is closed, can't fly" with like huge hand motions all slow…I guess thats a good way to get your point across, but she assumes that everyone has the same low level of English and I'm embarrassed that she does that to someone who already understands her.  Anyways.  Nothing really interesting.

I have a ton of bug bites.  I think they are from sand fleas which is gross!  Also my digestive system isn't faring well here for whatever reason.  Maybe I've eaten bad ice or something silly.  I've tried to avoid the water, but its kinda hard, I mean you have to shower…and I can't go without vegetables and ice.  So I've been all burnt and sick and itchy from bites, but I'm having a good time, better each day, and I'm not feeling so depressed tonight.  I played trivial pursuit with my family and my grandma mentioned how much she is enjoying us, which is nice since she payed for the airfare and a lot of other things too.  I had a good time, but that game is hard, we were playing a really old version, I didn't know a lot of it because it was outdated.  Nothing much more to say.  I'm not feeling sad so I have nothing to say.  How funny.

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Wednesday December 17 2008 (last night when there was no internet)

I’m in Mexico with my mom and grandma and younger brother and I’m realizing how very addicted to the internet I am.  God.  It makes me feel alone not to have it.  Its not really entirely the internet I guess.  I miss Jalal and I feel like I should not because I am with my family in Mexico and I should be totally satisfied.  But, we are here and it is beautiful. 

It’s very hot, and humid and there isn’t really that much to do.  Go into town, walk to the beach, swim in the sticky warm ocean.  It’s weird not to be shown stuff, to have to find it, and get lost and feel helpless.  I don’t want to suffer by eating what doesn’t feel good in my body, but because of a language and cultural barrier it seems to be happening, which I guess I expected.  I can’t help but be depressed by the fact that if we had done this trip years ago my brother and I would have been a lot more delighted, and now we are too grown up and boring to be amazed and unworried, at least I am.

Anyways, Mexico is beautiful, there are twinkling lights at night and dirt roads and houses stacked atop each other all colorful and cement or stucco.  The ocean is blue and vast, the trees palm, green and fanning over the heat, the sunsets are always very vivid and sparkling in the water.  The people often seem sweet and shy and interesting, beautiful in their differentness from what I am used to seeing.  I find myself embarrassed by my very pale skin because I feel doughy, and I am ashamed to be lumbering and English speaking, touring a country I know nothing about with my family and their ideas of lounging and being served. 

My heart is calming down though, thank god.  I was panicking at the idea of sleep as I often do.  It is like 8 degrees in Spokane or something, and I may not have time to go there after Christmas because I have to move in to my new house on the 4^th and I don’t have any way to get back here.  It’s too bad because it would be nice to spend some time with my dad.  Maybe go out with him on new years with Rhonda. 

This house is beautiful.  Vines twining up the wooden supports and leaves woven together form the roof, with wooden supports across the top and a chandelier.  So many pretty lights and woods and steps and details.  I’m impressed with whoever created it.  I hope that in my future I am someone who creates.  I want to give something to others that makes them think, “She is so admirable, I want to be similar to her, and I enjoy her company!”  Maybe later…

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The worst part about everything is talking to my brother. I never knew he wanted to spend time with me, I always just felt like his annoying big sister. I always thought I kind of didn’t really matter to him, but I think that in a way he looks up to me, or if not that, he at least wants to spend time with me, and I left him behind, in the web of parent stress. When I call him I’m always surprised at how long he engages me in conversation, even when he is already doing something else, and when I come home to visit he says, “I’ll go wherever Mallon goes” and it’s just so sweet that it makes me want to die for not just staying home and being his friend. He is such a cool kid and really, when am I ever going to have a friend who understands what I mean about everything as much as he does. We were raised under the same contexts and its like, impossible for anyone else to have as close of a connection with me I feel like. It’s weird how meaningful family connections can be. I’m being overly dramatic, I know, but it really makes me sad.

I find myself doing that thing my dad does, where he tells you how he feels over and over to passively pass guilt on to someone else. I kept trying to justify to my brother why I wasn’t coming home. We were in the car and he just didn’t say anything, so I kept talking to fill the silence, and finally I asked him if he was mad I wasn’t coming home, and he said something like “I wish you could visit for longer, but I know you have to start work so it isn’t your fault” and I felt really bad, because it is my fault. If I was a big enough person to put my family first, and let stupid romantic relationships sit for now, I would feel so much better, but I’m not, and i know I won’t. It’s so selfish of me to put Jalal first, when my family gave me so much love for so many years. I know they want me to come home, and it’s like, the more years go by the less easy it will be for me to see them, the more involved Jalal and I get, and the more responsibilities I get, the worse it will be. I should have just given them this last summer. But my family has social lives, and I wouldn’t have a social life at all if I stayed here. It doesn’t make sense for me to stay in that sense. Man. I don’t even know.

Anyways, Greyhound is a creepy crazy institution with no rules! I hate it. Two guys got arrested on the bus last night for being drunk and stealing potato chips and it was just ridiculous. Then, when I finally got on the bus after almost not getting on because they overbooked it, I ended up sitting next to this large lesbian lady reading erotica, and it was awkward because she kept overlapping out of her seat and touching me on accident.

I want to be able to hang out with my friends this week but I don’t feel like I have time. I bought some liquor for us, and I hope we have the time to enjoy it, although it seems that tensions run high within all of us, because when we hung out briefly today I felt like it didn’t go so well. I’m sad that my best friend is leaving the country. I won’t see her for so long and I will worry about her and miss her.

I should sleep. Next week I have to wake up at 6:45 AM everyday and I don’t know how I will do it since that has been closer to my bedtime than my waking time for almost three months now. I hate sleeping at night here though. It’s so eerie to be here, what was once my home and the site of my childhood, I feel like there are ghosts of my past all over and it makes me feel sticky and icky inside.