an eternity in wintertown

I have no idea why I stayed here today.

It's amazing to think back on the previous year and wonder: how exactly did all of this happen? How did the good come about? And what about the bad? I've realized that I always remember how the bad things happened, but the good seemed to float in to existence, only to be smashed into pieces when the good experiences decided that you've been too happy for too long - and then they turn in to bad experiences.

But the problem here is that people and situations are constantly changing, and I myself am constantly changing, so at what point can you ever say you know someone, or that you know yourself?

All of this doubt, I'm sure, comes from the fact that the ratio of people I can trust to people I can't has dramatically changed in the last twenty-four hours. None of this has come about because of anyone actually betraying or hurting me, but because of what I've seen and felt and experienced recently. I truly am a new person, quite suddenly. I'm not sure I like it. So the ratio, previously, was around 20 to 6,602,224,155. But ever since this morning, I've realized that there are about two people I can put my complete trust in, and being as one of them is myself, it looks like the trust-o-meter is down to one.

I can't help but have this feeling that the world is starting to fall down around me. Only this morning I was buying textbooks for another semester, and now I'm wondering if perhaps I should just leave and go out and explore the world. I'm willing to do anything that staves off the unhappiness that seems to be known as middle-age.

And I think it all comes down to this. Last night I had the most terrifying dream that a man I know was sitting in front of me, and he was quite literally holding pieces of stone, which were his broken heart, in his hand asking me for help. He wasn't dying because his heart was broken, but his spirit was dying, and I realized in my dream that the fate he was headed toward was much more serious than any kind of bodily ache or pain. In order to help him I had to strip his own skin off to bind the four pieces of stone heart back together. As I did this he cried, obviously in agony that I was ruining his body to save his future, even though it was necessary.

I guess it's from this agony that I learn who I am and what my stone heart wants.