Once again I find myself struggling in this battle of emotional limbo between heart and head and every strange combination of the two. Also struggling to keep my eyes peeled open as the weight of sleepless nights are coming down heavier than my eyelids. I'm not sure if the exhaustion causes all the confusion, or rather the other way around. Is it possible that I've been emotionally teeter-tottering so much that it's literally causing my brain to start shutting itself down for a mandatory break? Nice thought.

This past week however has been exceptionally entertaining. Flooded with a surgance of great people, cold beers, and sunny days to swim in the pool, I really should have nothing weighing on mind mind. Nonetheless I continue to find myself torn not just in two but rather into pieces over what it is that I truly want. Security? Spontaninity? Companionship? Solitude? Depending on which day of the week you happen to catch me on, the answer is constantly changing. The most frustrating part of that question to me is the fact that it cannot be answered by anyone but myself, and I couldn't be more clueless at the moment.

I think it's time for some serious soul searching.

I seem to let long periods of time lapse before I feel the need to purge my insides and put down some of my thoughts into something tangible. I'm not sure if it necessarily helps me to understand anything better, but it definitely acts as some sort of catharsis as I'm able to ramble on about the interesting and not-so-interesting happenings of my life.

The past year has been a complete blur. It's difficult for me to look back and put the events in order that they happened even. It seems like this overwhelming puzzle in which I know that somehow the pieces fit together, but aside from the corners I have no clue really where anything else goes. It seems like the day-to-day stuff all just becomes those tricky middle pieces that make no sense at all.

So a year past and new friends have come, but more have gone. People close to me have died but others have just been born. I've moved from city to city and the faces change a little bit each time but the feeling stays the same. I've gone to school, left school and reconsider going back but always for something new. The lives of the people around me are being morphed into permanent adulthood as those I've grown up with start telling me about their careers, marriages, and now children. I've gone to more weddings, funerals and graduations than I can count on both hands. So much is changing at a pace that's literally impossible to keep up with; not that I would try to anyway.

I've traveled as often as possible trying to learn everything I could about myself on the way. I found myself in love in Portland and romantically lost in New York. I've gotten into trouble in Vegas and taken whimful trips to San Fransisco. I visited markets in Santa Cruz and spent days on the beach in Santa Barbara. I worked in Houston and then eventually found myself for a quick stay in Southeast Asia. I stomped around on the Great Wall and ate strange things on sticks in Beijing. And at the end of this year I find myself right back where I started, a little older but no less confused about the world and what my place in it really means.

I've often gone back to that famous Trainspotting quote...

"Choose life. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a family. Choose a fucking big television, Choose washing machines, cars, compact disc players, and electrical tin openers. Choose good health, low cholesterol and dental insurance. Choose fixed- interest mortgage repayments. Choose a starter home. Choose your friends. Choose leisure wear and matching luggage. Choose a three piece suite on hire purchase in a range of fucking fabrics. Choose DIY and wondering who you are on a Sunday morning. Choose sitting on that couch watching mind-numbing sprit- crushing game shows, stuffing fucking junk food into your mouth. Choose rotting away at the end of it all, pishing you last in a miserable home, nothing more than an embarrassment to the selfish, fucked-up brats you have spawned to replace yourself. Choose your future. Choose life... But why would I want to do a thing like that?"

She couldn't sleep. The worst part was that she had no clue how long it had been since the last time she rested. She assumed that it had just been a mere few days since she'd laid down in her own bed, but with her mind so constantly weighed down and her heart troubled, it may have in fact been something more like months. Her once steady, but now shot nerves, were starting to get the best of her as she began to feel a twitch that went along with the ticking of the clock on the far wall of the room. She sat indian style in the dark, staring into the white of the walls, and began to feel the shaking in her hands become more constant. She swallowed hard and with it felt the knot in her stomach begin to squeeze her organs tight, making it slightly harder to breathe.

This was no need for alarm however, as these kinds of late nights and even later mornings were becoming a routine of what she considered to be normalcy. This quiet isolation was almost comforting as she could hear her own thoughts crashing into one another while being numbly filled with electronic entertainment of sorts. There was a constant yellow glow of boredom reflecting from beneath her eyelids. That same glow could be seen from outside her window. That and the shadow of a small figure pacing nervously around the room. If you were to come a little closer you would hear the frantic clicking of boots against the polished wood floors. Click. Twitch. Sigh. Repeat. And this is the life she led.