It is after 4am in the morning and I can not sleep. My body is tired, sluggishly typing away at these keys, but my mind is a whirl of thoughts and feelings and energy. I can not be sure if it is the words jumbling around inside my head or the caffeine I had at 11pm fueling this listless journal entry. I tried a million things in order to fall asleep, well I tried three: I ate, I added a few pages to my novel and I read (I actually read over 200 pages). It was a failed attempt, because here I still am, bleary eyed, but conscious.

What is going on inside of my head? What does the inner Elizabeth whisper under the vail of night that so disturbs and invades my sleep? Often times, the murmurs are so soft that they are inaudible, thus lost on me. Tonight though, I hear the words, I feel them with the weight of my being. I am lonely. I am lonely in the worst sense of loneliness...I have lost myself. Recently I found myself falling for a guy, it is true he is improbable and completely wrong for me just as all the ones I truly like are, but I refused to let him sweep me away. This may sound close to normal for me, but the thing is, more than anything, I want to be swept away, carelessly forgetting consequences and fear. So why, why do I deny myself what I want? In becoming independent, I became unfathomably over protective of myself, so over protective, that I have started to smother myself, thus choking the very essence, thebreath of my soul, from my lungs.

Maybe what is really bugging me is the eternal fear that I have put on so many masks that I don't know what I look like anymore. Layers upon layers of falsity have shrouded the one face I long to see beyond any other...me.

I walked down the street, clutching the baked pears I had made in a borrowed kitchen, when the rain started. At first it was slow and careful; it felt as if each rain drop seduced the plate held fast in my hands, but would not dare touch its precious cargo. However, with a few more steps, the rain forgot its pleasantries and fell in thick, deliberate drops upon my pears, my creation. The way I see it, I had two choices. I could have grasped the plate more firmly and ran for cover in a nearby building, or sat down on the wet curb and ate the pear right then and there. I chose to get my ass wet and pants dirty, I mean afterall, pears taste the same whether you are inside sitting on a comfy couch or you are getting soaked through and through by a rain that although maddening at the start was starting to become refreshing and soothing. Life doesn't always bring you the answers you expected or the timing you wanted, but running gets tiresome and curbs are pretty damn abundant. Shelter has its time and place, but sometimes you need to throw open your arms and twirl as rain caresses your cheek, sliding down past your chin, where it can soak into your heart.