I've got to admit, I'm the happiest I've been in a very long time.

chicago. i am coming.

I've never been so alone, and I've never been so alive. I have the wildest feeling in my guts when I think about leaving here at the end of August. Is it good timing? On one hand, the timing couldn't be better. I owe too much money to school so I can't go back this semester, my lease is up and I literally feel like home is nowhere, all my friends have these big plans and all I have is what is left over from my shattered big plans. I can look at it two ways. My plans are shattered, or maybe I don't need some fucking plan at all. I choose the second. I know now how foolish we were to think that things could ever have worked out for us. The entire time, he told me, "Jessica, you and I are two entirely different people." On the major things, religion, societal norms, humor, we were so in tune it literally felt magical. On the little things, not even close. Not even halfway. At some point in being with him, I developed a very raw hatred for a lot of things, where I once loved or at least tried to understand them. I became surprisingly bitter and most of this was probably my own fault, but misery loves company. This is not to say there weren't incredibly happy days. But happiness and love isn't enough. He told me that all along but I just shrugged it off in my typical lovestruck manner. "love is all you need." I heard that my whole life, I swore it had to be true. After every fight I tried to mend it with, "but it's us." and, "i love you." And each fight only got worse. I have never been pushed to that point before, where I would stand shaking and ready to wreck everything and anyone in my sight. The day we broke up, after I asked him to never bother coming back home again, my own body couldn't even handle it and I sat on the floor in the bathroom while my insides came out of my mouth and I realized that was it. I was done. There is only so much you can put yourself through before you just throw your hands in the air, waving an imaginary flag of defeat. I gave up. Shut my heart down, like a tomb. Then suddenly a new interest is sparked, in someone you never would have guessed. I found myself drawn to a new person and I realized there is life after these shit storms. It is possible to truly love someone until the day your body shuts down. I can hate and I can hurt and I can mope but above all I can still love again. The simplest things have brought me the most enjoyable comfort, things I didn't even realize I needed before. Saying goodnight to johnny every night, hearing sarah and erica's voice daily, texting amanda before I sleep, riding bikes with nick, making new friends from canada and california and frank and his homer phone calls, these are the things I need. and these are the things I have. So, back to where i started this entry? Is this good timing? Should I go? I feel like the things that matter the most to me are things I will be able to take with me no matter where I go. The wiring of my brain is something you would not believe.

Anyway, I'm late for work. Art fair can eat my shit, I'm tired of being tired. But at least I've had the best week of this summer.

This band has broken my heart and put it back together again too many times to count.This song is what letting go FEELS like.

Last night felt unbelievably great. New Found Glory. Everyone I love surrounding me singing our guts out. Tymm's life is seriously becoming unreal. I'm so proud of him and excited for everything his band is looking forward to. Bummer that it means he'll be gone much more, but it's just a small price to pay for all the good things coming his way...

So happy to get the fuck out of this house and into a tiny apartment with my best friend in downtown Ann Arbor. Back to my ice cream shop, back to where I feel comfortable in my own skin. I've got a million things on my mind, but I feel alright. Cast my worries to the side, focus only when I get the time. I will get there safely. I feel so lucky to have the few perfect friends that I do. I've got big plans with them for this season. Summer is here...I can feel all the beach days right around the corner. I will LIVE in a lake this summer. I am anchorless.

For sanity's sake, I wish my dad could leave my mind for at least a few moments a day. I literally spend all of my time thinking about him. Just wondering if things could've been different. I listen to "Anchorless" by the Weakerthans at least twice a day and the water balloons behind my eyelids pop.

"They called here to tell me that your're finally dying, through a veil of childish cries. Southern Manitoba prairie's pulling at the pant leg of your bad disguise. So why were you so anchorless? Shoebox full of photos; found a grainy mirror. Sunken cheeks and slender hands. Grocery lists and carbon-copied letters offer silence for my small demands. Hey how'd you get so anchorless? Got an armchair from your family home. Got your P.G. Wodehouse novels, and your telephone. Got your plates and stainless steel. Got that way of never saying what you really feel: so anchorless. A boat abandoned in some backyard. Anchorless in the small town that you lived and died in."

EARTH DAY.

TODAY. SO HAPPY.

I'm alone but I'm not lonely. I have kinetic energy. The dividing line will separate us all. Sometimes it's those nights where I'm all I have is really all I need.

I wonder when or if it'll get easier. With each day I pretend to feel better but it's just getting harder, and becoming more "real." I still cry daily, possibly even hourly. I miss you, dad.

It's strange how the sun can shine when your father's dead and you're stuck behind a window. But it's only strange until I say fuck it, I will never be stuck anywhere.

Last night felt good. I slept in my best friend's bed while he snored on the couch and I couldn't stop crying. I wasn't even sad or miserable or anything intense. Okay I think maybe I was 10% sad since I was sleeping alone for the first of 35 nights without Tymm but otherwise, I didn't even know what I was doing crying like that into Johnny's pillows. I have the most wild emotions right now and I don't have the energy to sort them out so I just cried last night because I feel so bad and I feel so good. I feel guilty for having amazing days. I feel guilty when I sit with my best friend and laugh until we're drooling (we're pigs). But when I am happy like that, I savor it and I push away the guilt and it doesn't come back until I try falling asleep.

That's when I feel stuck, and I panic and wonder with intensity if the grip on my heart will ever loosen up. That's when I replay my day and the smiles and the faces of the people who made me laugh and then the guilt slams into me and my eyes fill up. And that's when I have to tell myself to shut up because after all of this, I deserve these good days and I deserve these amazing friends. And I close my eyes and push every thought out of my way until all I see is black and after hours of this, I finally sleep.

So, those are my nights, and these are my days. Today will feel good. Picking up Dave Kloc from the airport, he's home from LA for a couple days. Great dude. Then watching the Office with the usual bebes and their dogs, I HOPE.

I'm alone, but I'm not alone. I have kinetic energy.

Sitting on a bench outside my classroom. My crutches are parked next to me. Waiting for Ryan to pick me up from school. I don't know who I was trying to kid coming to school with these pieces of shit stuffed under my armpits. I shouldn't have stayed up so late last night but I had fun in Caitlyn's bedroom, haha. Those Shea sisters....

I just ran into Ryan Felton and he's wearing a Busch Gardens windbreaker that he bought in Virginia because he was cold. Only this dude would spend 55 dollars on a theme park windbreaker.

I got my period today.

Tymm's in Chicago.

See ya.

I can feel myself turning back into the girl I was in that picture. Where I had a better attitude, I saw my friends every day, I ate ice cream in my second family's ice cream shop and then Sarah and I laid together on this hill every single day, where I drove out to go swimming in my dad's pool, where I woke up every morning in my mom's house to either her or the dogs making me laugh before I even opened my eyes, where I didn't even know how to pronounce Tymm's last name so I just pretended he only had a first name, where we'd spend every night in Johnny's backyard around a shitty fire we could never keep going and then end up getting ten people naked and swim, where my grandpa didn't have cancer yet and was still hammering shit in his basement, where I hid moth balls in Mrs. Gibbs hallway and stunk up the entire ice cream shop on accident, where Julie still drove around in that T-model junk ride with star wars stickers everywhere, where I rode my bike more than I drove my car, and where everything felt RIGHT.

March 2009 and the beginning of this month had the potential to wreck me. It was literally my worst nightmare coming true. Moving to Royal Oak and instantly dealing with the creepy Chelsea shit, my stubborn beautiful dad's life being taken from him, breaking my foot on the day of his funeral, and the downward spiral from those two situations. But I feel it closing. I've never wanted something to end as much as I wanted March to.

I know I'm turning back into the girl in that picture because I can feel the brakes slowing and my clear state of mind returning. I can't expect to come to a complete halt and everything just fall back into place. But I can appreciate the slow days I have now, laying in bed, feeling the love of my life's skin next to mine as I rest, dreaming about summer and baseball fields and slipping into the clear water at the beach, teaching my friends dogs to swim, putting some money together somehow to drive out to one of Fireworks shows this summer since he'll be gone for months at a time. I can appreciate my future.

Despair can ravage you if you turn your head and look down the path that's lead you here. Because, what can you change? You're a vessel now, floating down the waterways. You can take your rudder, and aim your ship, just don't bother with the things left in your wake. Just sail, belly up to the clouds, the rocks scraping your back. To breathe in the air will be the only thing that you have. And your love will be warm nights with pockets of moonlight spotlighting you as you drift, the actor in this play. You walk across the stage, take a bow, hear the applause. And as the curtains fall just know you did it all the best that you knew how. And you can hear them cheering now, so let a smile out and show your teeth because you know you lived it well.

I am coming home.