Over the past several months I have started dreaming at night of being back east. Every night I find myself back there driving around all the familiar places and revisiting all that I love, feeling safe and comfortable and at home. And it’s all so vivid in my dreams. I can smell the place…in my dreams. When I wake up and realize where I am I cry. This place is just very unfriendly and hostile to me. And yes, I did give it a fair chance when I first got here but IT’S JUST NOT FOR ME. All the bad feelings that are inherent to my personality are magnified now and getting stronger every day. And my control over myself is almost gone and that scares me. I need to be able to hold on until I can escape this nightmare place, it would just help some if I knew WHEN that escape might be possible. It’s the fear that I might be stuck here forever that truly frightens me. I can tell you one thing for sure…if I am indeed stuck here forever then forever will be very short, I’ll see to that, guaranteed.

It just seems as if everything out here is dead. The landscape is brown and dirty, whereas back east you go outside and you see green and life. I just pray that one day I’ll be able to go back.

But there were a few goods parts too. Yeah, I’m as amazed as anyone about that. In the beginning of the year I started a new pastime that I really think I could enjoy especially if family wasn’t interfering (yep, there’s that bad stuff again!). I’ll explain. I started creating stained glass stuff. I could really get into this as it’s an incredible feeling to watch something come to life and know that it’s because *I* made it happen. Now for the bad part…Mom insisted that I pursue this hobby out in the garage. I would have setup my workstation in the house like a real person would but having to listen to Mom go on and on about it was too much to deal with, so I setup in the garage. It’s not that that is a totally bad place to do something like this but it means that here in the boiling pit of hell that I live in I can’t work on anything in the summer months (which out here is about 6 months long)…it’s just too fucking hot. And there is also the thing about Mom starting her usual panic rant about money anytime I say I want to buy more glass. So yeah, that shit does take some of the passion out of things. But in the short time that I was able to work on stained glass I created something that I am really proud of (see image on right). This is something I hope to continue with.

The second good thing came out of having to take a break from the the first good thing – the stained glass stuff. Since I couldn’t work on the stained glass during the summer months, in August I started creating themes for WordPress to be distributed publicly thru my new site The Cloisters. Much to my pleasure and surprise, my themes are fairly successful. And it really is a great feeling when someone likes something that I had an incredible amount of fun creating. It’s awesome! So check out the site and maybe download one of my themes – I offer pretty decent support too!

The third good thing was getting to go back east for a week in June. I swear the minute the plane landed back there I felt I was home. That’s a feeling I haven’t had since I came out here to this desert wasteland. I do have some pictures that I took and will eventually get up on this site. And since I already wrote about the trip in the post Back Home Again, I won’t repeat things here.

I think maybe I’ll stop here and try, for once, to keep things light and end this hellish year on a positive note. So Happy Holidays to everyone and here’s hoping 2009 will bring some good changes.

I am also looking into getting one of those fancy locking mailboxes because of the fools who love to drive around neighborhoods, during the day mind you, and steal people’s mail. I guess they want to make sure our state stays at the top the the identity theft list. I won’t drive 2 feet down the road without my car doors locked because the rate of carjacking is so high.

And before anyone decides that this is just my paranoia kicking up again, I can say with absolute certainty that it’s not. I watch the local news and read the local papers where stories of all the home invasions, murders, rapes, assaults, vandalism, carjackings, etc are prominent on almost a daily basis. I drive around this town and see more houses with alarms and grates on the windows and doors than not. Hell, it’s even in my own neighborhood. The cars on either side of me were broken into, and across the street not only had one of their cars broken into but another car parked in front of their house was tipped over onto it’s roof! I guess the only reason my car hasn’t been bothered is because I use my garage as a garage, not a storage shed. And let’s not forget all of the gang markings all over the place. And up in the north end of town (the self proclaimed upper class area – they insist on having their own name) someone was going around in the middle of the night setting fire to cars parked in driveways. Constant drug related shootings and such. The crime is rampant in this shithole of a town I’m currently stuck in and I’m scared to death.

So thanks to all the bleeding heart liberals and all the people who are soft on crime, this is our world now and I fear it’s only going to get worse. God help us all.

My home in the past (when I was young it was my bedroom) was always an extension of me. A comfortably eclectic mix of furniture and decor that enveloped and welcomed me every time I walked in the door. Then when my mother moved in, my “style” was relegated to boxes in the basement in favor of what made her comfortable and happy. Then there is the issue of non-material things…my sense of self was also banished. I can no longer be myself there, I have to continue the “make everyone else happy” persona that I had to create for the outside world inside now. The pressure is building and the cracks are beginning to show in a big way. And I feel powerless to stop it.

And at the risk of sounding like a drama queen, the thoughts of just quitting life are overtaking me again and the strength required to fight it just isn’t there anymore. And the people that should care don’t.

And the town…a few changes but still basically the same. Simply lovely. Small and quiet. Being there reinforced the hatred I have for where I currently am. My homesickness is more than ever now. I will go back for good someday.

I know I have lots more to say but am still overwhelmed that I can’t find the words. But it was GREAT to be there. I didn’t get as many pictures as I wanted though, I suck at remembering to have the camera at hand. Below are some of the ones that I like the most.

I’ll go see the couple friends I haven’t completely alienated and drive around to soak in all the goodness that is life on the east coast. And take LOTS of pictures.

And hopefully I can convince Mom that that is where we need to be. Housing market be damned! We can sell this albatross of a house for whatever we can get and leave this dirt-strewn shithole once and for all.

So yeah, I’m excited. I think this feeling might even be approaching…HAPPY!

Sunday May 11, 2008 – 11:01am – 4:03pm = 5 hours and 2 minutes.