defining normal

Friday night, I got home and was so tired I crashed. I'm still sore from the accident but the pain is finally starting to leave me. It still hurts when I laugh really hard. I still get nervous when I'm driving. My time is up on the rental car so I'll be utilizing my bus pass and I got a fill-in for my show tomorrow.

My roommate came back, and we went up to Edgewater to walk along the beach and watch the sunset from the pier. This has become our ritual when we need to chill and there's nothing better for that than water, waves, and the best people-watching ever.

There's been a lot in the way of parties and showers and people getting married and it's only getting to be moreso. It's hard to be single during wedding season, when the weather's gorgeous and all these girls younger than you are flashing their diamond rings and talking about interior decorating and wedding colors and cake flavors. When you get snubbed with some weddings and wonder if you can get out of going to others. I was always bored with the idea of planning an event that may or may not happen, and often speculated more on what happens when you get old and hoping that you're not bored with whoever you tied your life to.

I don't mind being single 95% of the time because I've got a great crew of people to hang out with and there's so much good stuff going on right now. I'm grateful that there's no pressure and that I can take this time to really do something wholeheartedly because I don't have many other obligations. I can pour myself into the lives of the kids and the families I work with, hang out with a lot of different people without worrying about making a boyfriend jealous, work on my music and my art, immerse myself in other languages and cultures.

And I visited a friend of mine this weekend who called me from the mental ward at Lutheran. I've never been to a place like that and we sat there and played board games and tried to act as normal as possible. I wonder what everyone's story is as they shuffle by and ask me and the roommate questions and talk about their kids and their goals and what they used to be when they weren't in there and you wonder how much of it is true and what everyone's stories are. And how true anyone's stories are in general.