I do enjoy that word 
it’s right up there on my list, underneath facetious.
first off, I need to explain about feelings.
it’s incredibly difficult to describe a feeling in a way that someone else will react the same way you did upon discovery of the feeling.
see?
I’m already struggling
what one person experiences isn’t gonna be the same for someone else. we all taste things differently.
so what I’m about to describe can’t be explained the way it is intended, and I’m writing it mostly to help me sort out my own thoughts.
if you somehow understand and have experienced this, you’ll probably also understand a lot of what I’m gonna say.
conversation with my mother today was partially this:
“you’ve always had trouble when people went away, Laura”
which brings to mind the reason people would go away
in my mind, I always felt they were leaving me, personally. it was always my fault, too (in my head).
I was raised very closely connected to a large number of people who saw eachother entirely too often for normal comfort. they were my family, but they weren’t related to me.
I think here is where I should mention, I was raised in large part by a great number of people in a church that had no definite denomination, including the pastor and his wife, my own mother, and my auntie.
the way this family worked, anybody who needed someone would be accepted into the family. I was always the one who approached people and talked to them about them, instead of about their religious preferences and such.
very friendly, playful, and constantly looking for “lost puppies”.
at that young an age, I’d say 5 or 6, it was hard to understand when someone who I’d been seeing so often and connecting with would disappear.
I learned that if you have a fight with someone, they’ll go away forever and you’ll never see them again.
I’d never personally had a fight with any of the people, but they’d had issues with the way the church was run (which I knew nothing of until I’d actually left the church myself) and so they would leave.
these experiences aren’t why I am the way I am, in the sense of my ME me. (aren’t I egotistical? )
they affected my reactions and auto-pilot settings, but they didn’t affect my aspirations.
I used to find snails with their shells crushed and try to put them in a different shell, but they’d be dead, and I’d feel really sad. it took a lot of years to realize they’d already died by then, cause that’s too hard to cope with.
SNAILS, for crying out loud. >..< )
so. my epiphany occured around 6:30pm on saturday june 4th, 2005, while talking to my mother.
it was an acceptance, an understanding, followed by the most glorious sense of rightness I've ever felt in my life.
people have been telling me all my life, and I'd always accept it as at least partial truth, understanding that it applied to a few points of my life and decisions.
this epiphany was a realization that it is not just a PARTIAL truth. I'd been taking the term at face-value. if you define the PERSON and not the WORD, it makes perfect sense.
"oh laura, someday you'll make a great mother!"
"you're so good with children laura!"
those phrases ran rampant through my childhood.
I learned quite young that I was going to be a mother when I grew up.
I realize now that while I'm not ready to be a mother, that doesn't stop me from being one. I still look for lost puppies (people who need people) and offer comfort. I love people.
I've been fairly confused the past week, seeking answers when I didn't even have the questions. I hung out with some friends for a large part of a night, and ended the night in a large snuggle-pile (with me at the bottom, asleep).
why do I like that, why do I feel content being close to people? nothing sexual, though some people would construe it as such, since the question is "why do you do it" and the answer is "I don't know", the answer must instead be "you're attracted to them sexually"
which isn't what it was at all, it was purely (on my part) an enjoyment of friendship.
in applying my epiphany to my life, I realized that almost everything I do is because I'm thinking -like a mother-
comforting people, loving people, knowing people. these are all things a GOOD mother should do, and does without thinking about it. they know their children better than they know themselves.
Since I'm not ready to be a mother, and I know this both emotionally and mentally, my subby (good ole subconscious ) caused me to seek out "children" for me to "mother"
which isn't to say that my friends are all my children
that's just how I connect to people.
there is usually one mother in any given neighborhood that you'll find all the kids who occupy the various houses of a neighborhood with. at the park, in the kitchen, whatever. a woman (or man) who all the kids ask for advice.
(Well maybe not, but there should be!)
people are naturally drawn to that person, for no reason they understand, and find themselves opening up to them.
by the same token there're a lot of people who've been so badly hurt that they don't know how to open up, they don't know how to explain verbally what they're feeling inside.
even those people I love being with, not to talk to, but just to be with. it helps you understand yourself better when someone accepts you for you.
I've lost some friends because they think my loyalties are skewed. someone they think is just horrible is a good friend of mine, and I won't sever my relationship with them, and so I must be bad like they are. unfortunately for me, I feel equally toward both of them, and haven't got the capacity to pick-and-choose someone over someone else. I would prefer to just be friends with both people.
I realized all this in the space of about five minutes, and these answers opened up MORE questions, and that's what I'm attempting to find answers for here now, after this line.
boyfriends, lovers, husbands, friends, children, brothers, sisters.
that about sums it up! my question.
how do I differentiate?
and that, I believe, has always been my problem!
not so much the last four so much as the first three.
my husband WILL be my best friend and WILL be my lover. that's absolutely essential.
I've got probably four or five best friends, which is probably more than any one person should have. I have difficulty making people mean less to me than other people mean to me.
in truth, I've gone through life with a lot more best friends than that, but I don't know them anymore and they probably have forgotten about me.
nya gill (think that was her last name), callie mclean, laura sanchez, david klingensmith, and to date, matt danuser.
guess it's hard to marry a girl when you want a guy
I'm not looking for a husband now, or even a boyfriend. I want to be me.
I need to feel more secure in friendships before I go trying to making them bigger than the friendship can handle.
so for anybody who is reading this, I hope you understand you're very important to me. please don't disappear from my life. every person who does so hurts me STILL, even people who I knew in elementary school (First grade, callie mclean. see? lost her in 3rd grade cause of erin lettire, who became her best friend then, and forbade her from having any other friends).
I need all of you guys, without you, I am not me.
*many hugs*
