I choose to live my life differently than a lot of kids (adults?) my age and I�ve come to terms that a lot of people will try to change that about me. Maybe they want me to lighten up, maybe they want me to open up, maybe they want to see someone like myself do something �bad�... like a boyfriend of a friends I met at 14 in Orange County who just had this terrible urgency to see me take one hit off of a cigarette. I will never quite understand the motive(s) behind this desire in people that I meet, but I don�t really care to find out more about it. For this reason, I keep a very close bundle of friends. In each of them I adore a quality � whether it be that they worked their way into my heart somehow, that they can always cheer me up or that I can share an endless conversation with them on a level of its own entirely. It feels so wonderful to be understood, but mostly to UNDERSTAND. I love to reach out and see the colors and taste the flavors in other human life. It�s the most amazing experience; like a button I have on my wall that was my Dad�s in the 70�s � �I love REAL People�. I let these people into my life carefully, meticulously and share with them the honesty and complexity that I lead my life in and they are wonderful enough to accept me as I accept them.

You Are You
I Am I
You Do your Thing
I Do My Thing
And if we should meet
It�s Beautiful.
-Anonymous (condensed � I�ll get the regular version later)

But what happens when these friends change suddenly? When they begin to grow older and stretch their lives � caught in the talons that life extracts when we reach 18, 21, 24...? Willingly? It is devastating to me. After I have established this intimate friendship with a person I�ve let them into my small town. It�s usually empty, a little dusty and it echoes a lot. A lonely place for 1. But when my friends are around, they hoot and hollar and laugh with me. Their laughter drowns out the echoes of hurtful things I�ve heard, that have happened, that have been said to me. But when one of them changes and does something out of character, does something to counteract the amazing faith that I have put into them as a person, it�s like leaving the happy livingroom in my little house in my tiny small town and slamming the door without saying goodbye. And all of a sudden it�s quiet again. And I�m lonely. I know I can�t blame their change on anyone or anything � I�ve dealt with this long enough to at least realize the complete lack of control either party has in the matter. And then that itself makes it even more difficult to �deal� with. Friends like the ones I make are very easily missed.

I am a self destructive type of person. I�ve never done any type of drugs, I don�t drink, love life and am waiting till marriage. But the way I DO self destruct myself is through trichotillomania. I pull out my hair. I wish so much that I could just pull out more and more hair to keep my friends, my loved ones, from making the mistakes and turning into the people I thought they never would. Such a simple way � a follicle for a problem. I can see all the signs of this terrible change because I�ve become an expert at it. And when practicing this art of �coping� for a good 8 years, you�d think I�d become pretty good at it, or at least practiced enough that I can turn a blind eye to it. The latter I can do a degree but I really don�t think there will ever be a way to soothe the pain I get from a friend turning into someone �new�.

Or a lover.

I wish I could be great at it and just accept things. Sometimes I want to reach out and grab the girl I see in the mirror by the shoulders and shake her until it just flys out and splats onto the wall. I bet it�s a terrible disgusting greenish brown color. And then, like a fairy tale, everything would be better. But I am too much of a dreamer, a worrier, almost a martyr, to have that happen save a miracle.

I am not perfect, I am nothing even in the same lightyear of perfect, and I know that everyone is a new person each morning they (manage) get out of bed. I make a steady effort to not judge people, to bite my tounge when I am about to say something terrible, to expedite the process of thinking before acting. I am accepting when someone else does not do any of the above, and tomorrow it will be the last thing on my mind, if it was on my mind at all. I am glad people are all different and I try to live my life the way I live it and let other people live the way they want to. When I�ve found someone and we establish that � wow, you�re really cool - and we hoot and holler in my little Small Town Ginger livingroom, or maybe even in theirs, the times are so sensationally grand. And that other person sparkles in a light like you�ve never seen before. At that point, I�ve found retreat in a friend who understands how lonely it gets, and who also needs company as terribly as I do. At the risk of being cheesy, it�s almost kindred.

And then sometimes, at an act of life�s randomness, they change. They slam the door. Disenchanted � and I am alone again, disappointed and completely... once again reminded that slamming doors echo louder in an empty room.