2/9/04 Do you ever feel like you?re chasing the wind, like you?re faced with a task so impossible that it will take an eternity to finish it? Well I feel like that all the time and I?ve noticed through this that nothing is impossible and there are always ways of accomplishing things. Most of the time we forget in our stubborn minds that there are more than one way to approach issues. When we ask for a friend?s advice a lot of the time they will give you a lot of suggestions and you will disregard all but one, the one you?ve already tried. Sometimes your friends are right and sometimes you just have to look at the problem from someone else?s perspective. We always want to be right so we look at issues from one angle, the angle we think is right. But this is not always the case. Step away from your problems and look at them from a person who is not directly involved in the situation?s perspective. This way you can see where everyone in the problem falls and how they feel, and all possible explanations of why they act the way they do. Sometimes you have to sit back and think. Today stop for a second and stop trying to catch the wind, and if you sit long enough maybe someday the wind will catch you. ?Dry tears? this is a phrase that I have become very familiar with over the years. Dry tears are what I call what happens when I cry, because when I do I don?t form tears anymore. It?s almost like I am afraid to cry. I know this is a problem and I know this is all because I am afraid to open up to people. When I do open up to people it means that I trust them and when I trust them I become very vulnerable to loving them. I hate to love people, if that makes any sense. I have grown a very strong disliking toward falling in love with new people because in my past I have learned that many of the things I love I lose. This is something I have a lot of trouble with. My mother, someone I love very much, is in and out of my life constantly and even when she is in my life she finds a way to make it seem as though I don?t really have her because she?s too busy doing drugs or caring about my brother or her new boyfriend or herself. She recently wrote a letter to my cousin taking to blame for everything she?s done. This was a shock to me because she never takes the blame for her actions. Unfortunately this will get my hopes up in thinking that she will change and as soon as I let myself fall back in love with her she will fuck up again and be out of my life. My brother was a very big part of my life growing up. He?s a really messed up kid but I love him anyway. I was the only thing that was really there for him when he was younger and he used to talk to me about everything going on in his life and how he wanted to escape. I didn?t realize it at the time but escaping for him meant escaping this world by killing himself. I didn?t fully realize this until I was about 9 and he started his first suicide attempts. Sometimes he didn?t even want to talk to me he would just hold me and cry, I didn?t even understand why or what he was crying about but I knew I had to be there for him so I would always try and help and I will always be there for him. I learned at an early age to care for people and the things they do. This is a problem for me now because I take on other peoples problems and try and solve them. Then when I realize that I can?t solve them I don?t know what to do with myself, I literally drive myself insane. When he was 16 he left to go live with my mother and ever since then he hasn?t really been around me. Now every time I begin to trust people I am afraid of falling in love with them because I think I will lose them too. I know this is irrational and deep down I know that people come and go in everyone?s life and I have to learn to deal with it but it?s hard. I know I shouldn?t be the way I am because it?s better to love and lose then to never have loved at all, but it?s so much easier just to never love anyone ever again. ~Ali~