channeling ebenezer...

       tonight i've been sitting in my room with the lights off, looking out my window at the sparkling snow-covered hills spotted with the occasional dark shape of a tree. the full moon is casting shadows on the snow through a clump of poplars, and i imagine that the the wiry shadows are slithering across the ground, waiting to ensnare their next unsuspecting victim. the stars seem brighter in this place. and i love how the snow makes everything feel so silent and still. we have twenty-two acres here in the outskirts of independence, missouri, and my imagination has soared with each one. but it's different tonight. a darkness seems to be creeping in. and not even my reveries can remove me from everything that i know i'll have to go back to.

       i'm home. that has helped enormously. i drove home last night and it took me about three and a half hours to make the usual hour and a half trip. we had a mini-blizzard, as a friend described it. the interstate was a death trap. but i'm home.

       i can feel myself slipping even more. you may remember in the film version of order of the phoenix when harry is worried that he is becoming...well...evil. no, i don't think i'm becoming evil, but i feel myself becoming someone i don't want to be. i'm afraid i've become jaded, distrustful, and unwilling to allow myself to open up to others. when someone touches me, even the smallest touch, i catch myself wishing that they wouldn't. but, contradiction that i am, i want nothing more. i even tried going on a date the other night. friday night. a girl from work. panera, air hockey, and national treasure 2. we had a really good, although slightly awkward time. but i am so afraid of becoming emotionally involved with anyone. i told her that i wanted to be friends. a girl finally likes me--definitely not something that happens very often--and i tell her i want to be friends. no, she's not everything i've dreamed of. i wonder if i'm a fool to hold onto that hope that there is someone out there that would be perfect for me (not perfect, mind, just perfect for me). but i think that's a different issue. it doesn't help that everyone i know, seemingly, has someone to be with. friends are getting engaged left and right. even the person i considered my best friend, someone much like me except more normal, has someone. even he's forgetting about me. everyone leaves me eventually; they go back to their own friends, their own lives. that's the way things go.

       i'm starting to feel like i've removed myself from my life and hit the fast-forward button, sitting back and watching it go by. then again, it's not much to look at. i know it's too soon to give up hope. but i know who i am. i know what i'm like. i start to wonder if the person who could reach me doesn't exist. and divine intervention starts to feel like a fairy tale with ghosts of christmases and talking door knockers. i want so bad for the imaginary world outside my window to swallow me up so i'd never have to turn the lights in my room back on.