Where do I start? The haunted fridge? The schizophrenic neighbor who shouts obscenities into the night? It's a pretty spooky apartment. But I'm really loving it. I've spent most of the last week in Target or Ikea. This past weekend I did so much shopping, in fact, that the fraud detection department of my bank called me Sunday night just to make sure everything was cool. It is.

There's still quite a bit left to do, but for some reason I am not feeling overwhelmed. I think that work is keeping my mind too busy to have energy left over for anxiety or sadness. I feel almost dizzy from how fast the days go by. Projects for this weekend include: finding the perfect TV (I welcome your suggestions on that!), hanging my collection of ugly thrift store "art" (which includes a soft-focus photo of kittens in a basket laquered onto a wood plaque).

I know it sounds trivial to most people, but making a place really personal is very important to me. When I lived at home, my room was just a creative extension of myself. When I moved in with my ex, I think I tried to tone down my personality in a number of ways. Not because of any pressure he put on me. More because I wanted to be this new person, leave the old me behind, fit into a different kind of mold. A happy mold. But I just wasn't the right shape.

Over the last few years I've gradually been returning to the place where I split away from myself. I know it won't ever be exactly the same, but there's a road in between that I'm trying very hard to find.

Thanks for listening. I've hardly written a word the last couple of months and when that happens I end up with the kind of way navel-gazy entry here that no one enjoys reading except for the people that love me. But really, who else matters?

Here's a shitty poem, too (Oh, and regarding the title of this entry, there's a signpost near my new place that has a lot of seals and official looking stuff on it, one of them is a little sign that says, "Welcome Optimist Club," that I keep meaning to get a picture of).

Natural Disaster

You want a devastating love,
a heart left demolished,
like a place that's been hit
by a hurricane.

Jagged planks broken ribs
and the wet remains inside left behind
because at some point
it's harder to repair the damage
thank to simply
pack it in.

On a country drive
one after another
those brown ghosts in crooked sheets
line the road.
But every so often
you pass a place
perfect and unscathed.

That's the one I want for us.
That's the love for me.