I know that there are those that would love to sit in my shoes and kill for the choices I have to make but they make me uneasy, bringing to mind this one personality test question that routinely shows up on tests of the sort, "Are you more content before a decision, or after?".

In the mediocre boredom thrill of taking a test, I usually click, without a second thought, before, but really, you can't make any Life Altering Decisions, and you can always rely on the security of hitting the BACK button and perform a sort of physics-bending time travel, or slight StarTrek subspace loop and change your mind, once, twice, or as many times as you like, without the usual trappings and the clichéd little, "I-think-I-may be having-deja vu' " quirks edited towards the pacified expectation of a television audience.

Then there is the agonizing disquiet, accurate for the loudness in my mind of whether I've chosen correctly, visible sound waves echoing in a hall of mirrors, infinite outcomes, vast possibilities, one of them cracking the glass and manufacturing a smashing break-down of architecture

Yeah, the door is open, but I can't see beyond the shadowed stairs, extending in any and all directions, or whether they lead, down, up, or are a complete illusion in and of themselves, leading no Where.

I am, in a small way, terrified. A lightly expanding crawling inside my ribs. As small a feeling such as terrified can shrink, crushed mattress down, collapsed spring, full of tension can be.

I'm writing much better today, very much due to the nap I just had and the full belly that followed it after I awoke, a meal that I didn't have to prepare myself. Still living at home while in school does have its upsides sometimes. Tiredness leaves me flat, unable to always keep my mind on what I'm trying to say, or what I should be saying. And mythical Heaven knows, I'm tired.

And so is R and I know that I don't always give him enough credit for that. We had a slight disagreement the other night. He's tired of always deciding things also. And frustrated with me for never suggesting anything, and why don't I ever want us to do something that I want? That would make him happy, just making me happy. So I told him the truth, I've hardly ever been anywhere, so I never have a problem with someplace he wants to take me, cause, chances are, I haven't been there yet. Keerist, he looked at me strangely when we wound up at T.G.I. Friday's and I told him I was never there either.

I've lead a sheltered suburban lifestyle, there's no white picket fence in my yard, no let's-go-out-to-dinner-as-a-family night. But I got more street smarts than the average girl 'round here, and have seen more things than you could fill a freak-show with. I don't get scared in a city, I get pissed off at people who do, and can't figure out that half the streets run one way and the alternating ones run the other.

R didn't quite have the perfect childhood either, but while he and his friends were out trying different places to hang every Friday night, me and mine were out cruising for our particular poison of the moment, surrendering our bodies to chemicalistic alterations for a few hours, or a few days, and in those moments the world slid down to Us, in those days of innocent experiments before the jadedness sucked us down, and we realize the earth doesn't stop spinning. Or at least I did. Some of us haven't.

Excuse my digressions. R and I made up of course, in a better way than usual. I got to sleep in his arms all night, and after being half-awake for 2 hours, he groggily pulled me closer, to make love to me for the first time 4 months. Well, "make love" would be wishful thinking, tender sex with caring would be more accurate. But it was, sweet and it was mellow, and it healed us a little.

1, 2, 3, 4...

(This is not smut, or porn and it is not always explict so don't be expecting anything)