quick September journal entry

I can’t be strong all the time. Bracing myself for the tough
times to come. I know they will come. I know it, because things
are too easy right now. Calm before the storm, but that’s cliché.
If I’m a cliché, then I will be nothing at all. Nothing original. I feel
my thoughts getting looser, like screws holding a too heavy mirror
on oldening, weakening walls. I can’t be happy for them, with
weakening walls. Floodgates opening, flooding the peace, the trust
I built as a child torn down by everyone I’ve ever met. And I hate
that I feel like this, like my naivety is running out. 

I realized this all on a walk the other day. It’s weird to see your
friends get up and go. Leaving you, to pursue themselves. I used
to keep a page of notes of all the funny things my friend would say,
and the time and date when she said them. I never did anything
with them. Rarely look back at them. They make me smile a bit,
but I don’t really feel happy looking at them. Like nostalgia for
a celebrity who died before you were even born, except they are
alive and right there in front of you and so far away. 

Am I jealous, or do I just want to be included? Why does it hurt
so much when they do things without me, without meaning to?
I should be happy for them, but I’m not. I’m so, so jealous. They
get to go out and do things without fear, without running out of
time. It’s childish, but it’s mature to realize it’s childish. It probably
comes off like I’m trying too hard, that I’m striving for things to find
wrong with myself, to compare to others, to talk about something
other than the god-awful movies we’ve watched for the tenth time.
I’m really, really not — it comes so naturally. 

And somehow I still am, naive, childish, taking everything too
seriously, but just the wrong things. How many words do I write to
be myself? How many do I write to be something for someone else?
Should I even bother anymore, with the details of summers wasted
in lonely western Iowa, of friends and half-lovers lost, regained,
lost again inevitably. I hate inevitability, and I’m scared, frozen in
place without it, something to hold on to in the future. My friends
have a future. I should be happy for them. They are going places,
even if it's without me. That’s good right? Or is it too cliché?

My therapist said I should start ending these journal entries
with a positive note, so I guess I’ll talk about the walk I took the
other day. It was sad and lonely, but it was real. I saw a hawk killing
something in someone’s backyard, stomping around like it was
mad at the thing, and I stared for a bit too long. I just thought it
was cool. It flew away shortly after.