Lifeiswhatyoumakeit.  Timeisshort. Trustinyourself. Theglassishalffullnottheglassishalfempty.

A stream of endless platitudes, many which I spout myself, believe in when I am strong.  Things have been better.  I have been smiling more, feeling better about myself.  My job is busy, I am doing well. Money is still a struggle, but I'm lucky and I know it.  Spiritual growth rising from the ashes of spiritual devastation.

But I want my life to be like a teen beach movie. Happy, surfs up, cute boys, carefree days.  Can I ever become that happy? The truth is, maybe I never was..but I had enough belief  to think that life could be lived on solid ground, never wavering beyond that which I already knew about. I will survive, Gloria Gaynor told me so.

Yet today I am feeling what the French call "ennui".  Lonely, listless..just plain tuckered out. Start of school for the kids, and my class I'm teaching. Exhausted.  Maybe 9/11 was a grim reminder of the horror that people could do.  He said at the time, he was going to try and appreciate what he had, us.  And now?

The phone rang late last night. Unknown caller. I picked it up and no one was saying anything, but there was someone on the other end.  Twice it rang, and I said each time, "who is this?!".  After, I wondered if it was him.  Doubt it (he is in the other place, the land of someone better, in his mind anyway). But still I wondered.  And felt infintisimally sad.

We see the other happy couples everywhere.  And I wonder can I, really, feel that way again?  Perhaps I'm not ready to try, though I thought I was. I want more, yet I can't help but looking back. I
feel fear of trying again, of getting hurt. of "screwing things up" because his voice and my dads voice is there.  "whats wrong with you, everyone ends up turning on you?". I still hear the mean nasties,
even now.  Fainter each time, or believing them less.  Looking at each meanly flung comment as reflections of another's weakness more than mine. But still I wonder.

Ennui.