Megan's Fall 2003 Journal

dcmermaid @ 2003-12-08T22:54:00

2003-12-09T03:55:07Z

i bought thich nhat hanh's book "peace is every step" on sunday.
it's beautiful.
john read the first 40 pages while using the bathroom, and told me that it was an easy, fast read.
i don’t think it is.
i think it is the hardest piece of writing i've read in a long time, mostly because it is a reminder of the person i wanted to become these past few years but never really did

looking back at my journals from October, i realize how angry and negative they sound; i don’t want to be an angry or negative person, but whenever it seems i have the chance to sit down and write, i am always in that dark mood, always wanting to cry or yell or hit something, when in reality, i am the happiest i've ever been in my entire life

happy because as each day passes i realize more and more how lucky i am to have found john; this awkward boy that i met when i was just a sophomore (who i never imagined being close to) has become the person i love most in this world, the person I want to see and go everywhere with, the person I want to make plans for the future with, my partner in life and in love.

Happy because of Tara, that we’ve become so close this semester, and for the first time in four years, she seems to be genuinely happy.

Happy because of Christine; I never could understand why my mom used to cry whenever she would talk about her freshmen year college roommate, and what it was like to receive an invitation to her wedding. Now I know because at Christine’s bridal shower, I was the first one in tears.

Happy because of my sister, that she learning how to do the things she wants to do, and perhaps is finally understanding how to live outside the group of friends from high school who haven’t allowed her the opportunity or ability to grow

Happy for the chance to always meeting new, amazing people, but always being able to go home and be with those friends and family who make up the fundamental parts of who I am and will always be

Happy to know that resistance still exists, and that communities of amazing people continue to spring up in the streets and abandoned building in places like Miami, in spite of the harsh consequences (prison) of such devotion

Happy to be in dc, to be moving into a new house, for the chance to try to make it through the next few months without john (with the hopes of coming through the experience understanding myself and our relationship better….), to have had the opportunities to work with activism on campus….

Happy because even though my journal entries sound angry and negative, I don’t honestly feel that way; aside from Georgia, I don’t have that pit in my stomach, my mind can rest at night, all that sadness and angst I felt in high school has for the most part entirely disappeared

Thich nhat hanh writes:
“my joy is like spring, so warm it makes flowers bloom in all walks of life.
My pain is like a river of tears, so full it fills the four oceans.

Please call me by my true names,
So I can hear all my cries and laughs at once,
So that I can see that my joy and pain are one”

Today, when I came home from the grocery store, for the first time all semester, both doors to the house were locked. I kept walking around the house, my feet frozen with only my converse on, finally finding a window to climb into. As I was trying to wedge myself inside, I saw the most beautiful DC sunsets ever- the DC equivalent to those sunsets over the Namib desert or a beach on the Caribbean coast of costa rica. I understand, and one day hope to truly practice, a path of mindfulness in everyday life. Thich nhat hanh writes about how washing dishes, for example, is an unpleasant idea only when a person is not actually doing the washing; when one uses the time available to wash dishes, and transforms this chore into a time and space to meditate and reflect, washing dishes no longer seems as unpleasant. When I got home today, with the snow, hands full of groceries and shoes not even fit for summer time, I was so frustrated that that one of my housemates had decided to lock the doors. Once I was able to stop and see that beautiful sunset, all that frustration and anger left me, and I was only able to feel grateful for that moment, for that rare chance to find beauty in a city of ugly politics and run-down neighborhoods masked behind postcard-like images and worldwide (mis)perceptions of where power and peace originate.

dcmermaid @ 2003-11-06T16:02:00

2003-11-06T21:02:41Z

This week has been a little strange.
I haven’t had as much to do in terms of time commitments, yet at the same time, I’ve gotten less done.
I’ve been having these horrific headaches lately,
The pounding is incessant,
I can’t hear or see straight
Can’t comprehend what people are saying or even walk right.
My mom sent me some of my dad’s pain medication, which I know is probably not a good thing considering I am even less able to function after taking them.
Even more so, these headaches scare me into thinking that maybe as each day passes I am becoming more and more like my father, to the point that one day, I will be so socially incompetent because of these headaches that I no longer have any friends or family close by.
Today, on top of that, I have some how gotten a cold of sorts, one that didn’t enable me to get out of bed until 1:00.
I took my lipring out yesterday and although this was such a big thing for me, no one noticed, not even john. This is going to sound really stupid, but it’s become a part of who I was these past two years, and has been instrumental in shaping so many encounters: like causing my grandmother to break down and cry in front of me, inciting more than one argument with my mother, and making me into quite the spectacle in both those tiny villages we visited along the Angolan border and within my host family in Namibia. I never could understand how a piece of metal so small could have such an impact on the relationships in my life. It’s strange how although it caused such a commotion in my family and my life two years ago, taking it out has had little effect- by little I mean no one has noticed it. When I mentioned it to john- that no one noticed I had taken it out and that I found it strange because I feel like I am always paying attention to things like that about other people, he said that I pay too much attention to people’s appearances; I think I just pay more attention to people in general.
Last night, mark, daniella and I lead the teach-in for this year’s SOA trip. Although I had talked about it over and over again to anyone that has some insight into this, it’s still amazing to me how few freshmen there are involved this year- from activism to religion. Mary thinks it’s because people don’t feel as lost: the last two years, with September 11 and the Iraq war, there was more that ample time and opportunity for people to get involved in politics, activism or religion because their lives were consumed by understanding to make sense of the world and their place in it. This year, the freshmen class has yet to be heard from…the other night, kat, Andrew, Emily and I had dinner and talked about CASJ and activism and everything of the sort, trying to understand what has happened to the activist community here at AU. We came up with a lot of scenarios and proposals, from the fact that all of us involved in organizing live off campus to simply that there are no interested freshmen, but we still didn’t come up with any solution.

dcmermaid @ 2003-11-04T19:25:00

2003-11-05T00:25:58Z

It has been absolutely beautiful these past few days; listening to the weather forecast and hearing about the upcoming possibilities of cold and rain, however, makes all those little kid desires of playing outside quickly fade…. Maybe it’s good that this wonderful weather will soon be gone soon, as I am finding it unusually difficult to concentrate and to get anything accomplished. But I don’t think the weather, in reality, has anything to do with it. It’s November already, and it is terrifying to think that this semester is almost gone….not gone in the sense that there is still a month and a half of classes and exams, but seemingly disappearing because I know that for the most part, this next 40 or so days will be consumed with writing papers, reading until my mind goes numb, planning for SOA/FTAA, driving to Miami and Georgia for these demonstrations, getting things ready for India, NCOR, that brief interlude known as Thanksgiving (where poor John will finally have to meet my intensely insane extended family) and then exams. All of this I think I could handle, but in combination with the anticipation of hearing about grad school, coming to terms with the fact that somehow I have decided to stay on in school and the idea of john leaving and not seeing him for seven months seems to be too much to handle. Instead of focusing my energy/time on schoolwork or activism, all I want to do is to stay in bed and stare at him for days.

Which is hard because I want to so be independent from (the idea) of him, I want him to be able to go and have his time abroad, yet at the same time, we are too attached to each other to even talk about this being easy. We spent last fall apart, but things were so different the- not just because we weren’t in love at that point, but (selfishly) because I was the one who was gone. I took on too many responsibilities this semester, and next semester I want to rectify this. Yet, at the same time, I have this stinking feeling that I will want time to pass as quickly as possible. I am also at this amazing point in my life where although the combination of nice weather, the prospects of graduate school and a boy could distract me, I feel really, truly grounded. I feel happy here in dc, my mind isn’t wondering anymore, drifting off into some alternate reality- I feel full and alive and at peace at my core being, which is something that I hadn’t really found before. I know a lot of times I write about being sad or mad or confused or angry, but for the most part, these feelings are temporary; I am at peace.

I am starting to have doubts though, about this whole starting graduate school thing, mostly because in the grad classes I am taking, I feel young and inexperienced. I guess with having PhD candidates and founding members of the International Solidarity Movement in a class can be intimidating, but it seems difficult at this point for me to believe that next semester, with a letter of acceptance and a new degree to pursue, that I will feel any more comfortable in these classes. It’s one reason though that I am dying my hair back to its normal color and thinking about taking out the lipring; as much as john and I debate it, I think maybe he is right- that in the end, conforming (ie minus the red/blonde/black hair and piercing) will allow me more legitimacy.

Two nights ago, I had a dream about Shakira, my host sister in Namibia, except that her name was now Bernice and she was dead.
The night before that, John had a nightmare and woke up at 4:30 am, ripped all the sheets off the bed and lifted up the mattress, in order to make sure there were no beetles underneath.
Last night, after I dosed off into that in between sleep-still fully clothed and without starting any schoolwork, I awoke in a panic, fell off the bed and landed on a glass, shattering it into a million pieces and cutting myself.

I really hope that this new prospect of living in Mount Pleasant works out…
I know I have moved three times in the past year,
But I still think I need a change.