under the gun.

I had a good weekend filled with good company and good food and laughter and comfort. It was exactly what I needed.

And now so much frustration has come upon me. Much of the weekend's relaxed ease and contentment are quickly becoming memories. I am trying to write an essay and I can't come up with a thesis. Not even a working thesis. There is not a single original thought in my head. Although there seldom is, I suppose. Creativity has never truly been my forte and it's like the older I get, the more my brain slows and stops absorbing as much. School and learning used to be so exciting and fresh for me. I felt like I could never learn enough, and now I just feel so ineffectual and academically worthless.

Not that it really matters. Oh, discontent! I have such moments of wonder and glory and beauty and then I fall into the aching sadness for people who are, I suspect, much like myself and find each struggle out of the continual onslaught of valleys harder and harder until we wonder how much bending we can do before we snap. So much sadness, so much anger, so much fury and rage and tempestuousness and sorrow with nowhere to go so that it continues to stockpile and build and amass until it greedily starts feeding on itself and flourishing in spite of all the hopes that might try to spring up.

I feel a disordered dull, throbbing pain for all the words I wish I had to tell people how much I care about them and how desperately I wish that anything I could ever say would matter and make anything any better. But that's the thing. It won't make any difference. No matter how many ways I agonize and try to console or comfort, the gaping hole is still there for others. I'm not using my words, as Malin would say - I'm not getting out what I really want to be saying. The more I write the less I'm able to make the words do what I want them to, it seems. There's so much empty sadness.

There are people that I love dearly and I have been lamenting that I can't be there for them because I'm over here in England. Really, though, that's a quite selfish thought of me to have because why do I suppose it would make any difference? I can't fix anything. I can't go back in time, I can't change any of what they are feeling because what's happened has happened and whether or not I'm physically there is hardly going to make much of a difference. The problems, the voids, the unrelenting, vast heartache would be there regardless.

The funny thing is, this is one of the most down posts I've written in awhile, and I do manage to be a downer quite a lot of the time. But I'm not feeling hopeless or awash with grief - I'm awash with the infinite and unavoidable triviality of the comfort I might try to offer others. It has to be sought elsewhere. I can't give that which I so desperately wish I could.

Do the holes ever get filled, or do we walk around forever, partly empty because of what others have taken with them?

in other, totally unrelated and unimportant news, i am thinking of dying my hair either a much lighter brown or a deep auburn and getting it cut more. this may be a shallow outgrowth of my discontent. thoughts and/or suggestions are welcome.