Beauty

Be forewarned... this is a stream of conciousness blog with no attempt for coherency or eloquency. I am too sick for creativity, but my defenses are down (physical and emotional) perhaps this is a good thing. I'll see where this goes, I have nothing to fear.

I used to really enjoy being alone. I prided myself on my ability to entertain myself alone, to reflect, to rely on no one -- except myself. Self reliance. I have changed, a little, a slowly, a bit by bit, until that once upon a time of myself is recognizable still, but startingly different than before.

I guess my first main shift started about three years ago. I was coming into my sexuality, I had an inherent need to feel connected with other people -- but I lived far out in the boonies, with only food and my horse for company.

My pride (when I was self-assured enough to need only myself) changed to fear (when I desperately needed to connect) of being alone. I feared being alone. Alone. Why is this?

I was afraid to know myself, and see how I was changing. When I was truly, utterly alone, I lapsed into self reflection, and I was afraid of what I would find. Who had I become, and who was I becoming?

I have changed once again, and for the better, this time, I believe, although there is certainly room for improvement. I do not fear being alone. I easily entertain myself and enjoy being in my own company. But I surrond myself with facebook, and myspace, and music, and books, and hotornot, and riding, and phonecalls, and college applications -- no time to reflect on myself.

I have been sick the last couple days. And I have been driving all over Colorado as well. It's given me time to think, and process, some time with myself.

I'm figuring out who I am, self-discovering, more than I ever have before. It is beautiful to see who I am.

There is so much beauty in the world. Most of it is tainted, but it is beautiful nonetheless. Whoever said something had to be perfect to be beautiful? I look at two lovers, indulging in sin and pleasure, and it is beautiful. Or at friends, drinking a little too much, enjoying one another and spending the evening together, and it is beautiful. I look at two men, holding hands, who truly love eachother, and it is beautiful. I see a funeral, and people crying, death is the centerpiece of the hour, and it is beautiful. There is so much beauty everywhere. Beauty is sticky and viscous, and once it finds you, it clings to you like honey. Always sweet, and always there. It never quite leaves you, unless you make a deliberate decision to wash it off forever. (Who would do such a thing? Certainly not me). Beauty likes to keep you in the moment. You sit down to look at it around you, and you sit a little longer than you mean to. When you realize how much time has passed and try to stand up, it holds you just tightly enough that you don't have enough strength to fight it, so you succomb to its caress and are content to sit and look for a little more of the beauty. You are creative when it comes to seeing it. You used to only see it in things that were obviously beautiful, the women in a cosmopolitan magazine, a rose flower, the sun in the sky... but now you know beauty so intimately that you find it in the most unexpected places. In a sick girl hacking in the bathroom, in a bitter argument with a friend, in the rusted lamppost next to the street corner you pass everyday. Beauty is everywhere, and its sticky fingers have a strong hold on you, and you love it.

My reality is a little blurred right now. When I am sick, I can't distinguish between dreams and reality. Or maybe I'm just sick enough to admit that I have trouble making the distinction. My waking hours are a little muddy, and my dreams are a little vivid, than they usually are, and I can't remember what has occurred, and what has not. It's a light place to be, I don't know how else to describe it.