I Don't Know

I wrote this in 2002, and just recently found it:

I don't know if I hate interaction with other people or if I love it. I know I fear it, but I also know it excites me. Maybe it just depends on who's around.

I don't know if sex is sexy or if it's just the idea of sex that turns me on. I always want to have it but then I always want it to end so I can just think about it. So I can blend it with other thoughts, make it into something more ideal. Because even when sex is "beyond," it's never ideal. At least not for me.

I don't know if I want to spend the next four years reading and writing and making myself a more worldly and educated and attractive and important person with a thin piece of paper that says so, or if I think it's okay to take the rest of my life to learn what it's about and my death certificate will be fabulously more important than anyone's college degree.

I don't know if I want to have a job where I don't really make a difference but I can lie to myself and others that yes, I do, or if I want to marry some gem of a boy who really does "make a difference" even if it's only in my life.

I don't know if I want to RAISE children or if I just want to be pregnant and give birth and glow with my new soft amazing baby that I brought into this world. I can only imagine how full it must feel.

I don't know if I want to live in a rented room on the third story of a somewhat dirty building in the city, where I can keep my window open at least a little all year so I can hear the horns and dogs and sirens and tires stumbling over potholes, where I never feel alone or quite safe either but I always feel like SOMETHING is happening, I just don't want to be outside where it is. Or if I want to live in a century-old house with a dozen acres of woods and hills and hopefully some water running by, where I keep the windows open a good bit all year so fresh air is always filling my lungs and making me feel alive, where I can scream and not be heard, where I can burn leaves just because I love how it smells and just because I can, I will.

I don't know if I believe there is a God or if I am just so desperate for there to be something meaningful that will make me love more because there is more to love, because if I trust someone or something, then I can trust and love everything that comes from him or her or it, because even if it isn't perfect or even very nice at all it came from something that matters.

I don't know if I know how to love or if I'm just so obsessed with it and trying so hard and hoping so much that I've almost convinced myself and I have convinced nearly everyone, with the exception of my father and mother, who are the only people I really want to believe me.

I've since learned to accept the not-knowing; everything is true at once, and at the same time nothing is.