reminders

I am going so stir-crazy and its horrible because the more time I am at home just reading articles & books & watching shows-- the less I feel able to socialize or the will to do anything. I find myself wishing to throw myself into drama just to have a mobilizing factor. Sometimes I think we fall in love to escape our own boredom, to invent a story line for ourselves-- not that that lessens love, if just seems like we spend so much time waiting for something in our lives to be consuming, to matter. Does that make sense? For some people its religion, or a lover, or a cause. I guess we all want meaning in our life and sometimes it falls back into a just sort of existing state. I am not sure what I need to create in Baltimore, it freaks me out that I committed to staying here till next August. 14 months. What gives my life meaning here-- eventually I'll be working and giving a lot of time and energy to that... but, I don't want what I am doing to be the only defining thing. Yesterday I was at the library and this lady started talking to me-- just the smallest conversation but I could tell she wanted to talk to someone and it made me feel more alive too, to have a genuine interaction even though it wasn't deep, it was just kindness, just noticing another human being's significance in front of me. Lately in this funk I've been irritable towards my family and feeling less and less like talking to anyone- it seems energy consuming to create friendships... yet, I know that what gives me meaning is connection to others. It is so hard to keep seeing something worth exploring in any human that crosses my path. It's so easy to reduce people to an idea and dismiss them thinking I don't like that idea or "they won't get me" ... I want to be a person who lives with wide open arms, that welcomes in the stranger & the person I assume I will not like or be known by and learn how to dismantle myself for them, to see them, ask them questions. I am so miserable at that so often. I think that is a reason I have been missing Dorothy's Place (the day shelter) so much lately... because I was forced to connect to people I would never have imagined a connection too- forced to connect not over my ideals, politics, or fatih-- but just over being there, being present in that small crowded room, together, and knowing I was meeting another human- "a self that touches all edges."