I wake up half an hour before my alarm goes off. I take a little pink pill out of my purse, swallow it, and roll over. At 6 am, my alarm reminds me to get my ass out of bed. At 6:13 am, my cat comes upstairs to enforce the message that my alarm was trying to send me. I get up, fill a bag with grain, and go ride my horse. Around eleven I go to work, make espresso drinks, do dishes, eat uncontrollably, dance with Sierra, burn myself a few dozen times and eventually crack an energy drink. About 6:30 pm Liddy picks me up from work. We go to her house, pour wine and mix cocktails, and slide whatever L Word disk we're on into the computer. Sometime between 1 and 4 am, I go home if I have work the next morning. If I don't I wake up on a futon about a half hour before my alarm goes off, take a pink pill, and roll over.

Somehow in all of this I bring home money and support my dog, cat, horse and I and still save. Somehow in all of this I don't keel over from exhaustion or breakdown and cry. I do every little thing I want to do, with nothing holding me back. Sometimes I spend a little too much money on a lot of things I really don't need, but that's not bringing me down. Sometimes I look out my window and spit at the relentlessly gloomy sky, but that's not going to stop me. I'm going to Hawaii this summer. Twice. At the end of the fall I'm moving back south, but this time hundreds of miles further, with out turning back and with no regrets. It's all set up. I'm all ready to roll. The only thing that catches on my thoughts and causes a momentary skip in the music is the fact that you are never, ever going to be able to do what I can do, and I really don't feel bad for you any more. And that second of feeling absolutely nothing for your pathetic, detached-from reality existence makes me smile, because you will never be what you want to be and you will never understand that. You will crawl through life on your hands and knees clinging on to any little scrap of self-confidence and self-righteousness that makes you trick yourself into believing you're getting things done, living it up and being a successful, progressive member of society. Dilusioning yourself with the idea that you are growing and maturing. But you are a big, big baby who can't handle responsibility, life-decisions and taking the steps it takes to get things done. You can't handle real life, and you tell everyone else that they can't handle it to make yourself feel better. Poor little baby. The skipping stops and the music in my head keeps playing. I've been everything I've ever wanted. I've gotten everything I've ever wanted. I've done everything I set out and said I was going to do.

Look out world: there's a ruthless bitch coming to take you down.

People always tell you that everybody changes. I whole-heartedly agree, but I think there are different types of change. Some people have an epiphany. Some people hit puberty and completely become the opposite of who they were. Some people are so influenced by their media devices that they change according to what pops up on the screen. Some people just grow. Most of my "changing" was not actually me becoming any different (besides physically). I can look back at who I was when I was five years old and realize that I am not at all a different person. I've just grown stronger, more knowledgeable, and gotten over things that used to bother me that stopped once I learned about them. I mean sure, I still have neurotic tendencies like strawberries not being allowed to touch anything besides other strawberries or else they are inedible, but more important things. I used to be a vegetarian. I was horrified at the idea of eating another animal, but deep down I always had the craving. There was always something missing that I knew meat would satisfy, and lo-and behold, there are B-vitamins and omegas that my body could only absorb and process properly from meat. So I eat meat, consciously of course of where it has come from and how it was raised. And that was a big change in my life, but not a change that made me someone different from who I always have been.

What about you?