why can't we be ourselves like we were yesterday?

Y'all, I just want to be friends. Really, what ever happened to this concept? When did it revert back to a high school dance, with boys on one set of bleachers and girls on the other, and should anyone breach the divide, giggles shook the gym?

I realized last night that there is too much pressure. There is this requirement to determine whether you like someone, really like them, in too short a span of time. It is too much, too much, I tell you. It leads to flares of discomfort over a person's ability to play name-that-tune.

Why, instead, can't you just decide you like someone? Like them, as in the classical definition, as in find them agreeable. Then, one could just have a friendly drink with someone. Then, one would not have to have five drinks in two hours to drown misgivings and uncertainties and behind-the-back whispers. Then, one would have a fully functioning liver. Then, one would not be concerned about the state of said liver when it is subjected to yet another round of drinks.

Granted, tonight, it's more about the miseducation of Marina supposedly-Pac Heights girl. And granted, I've probably killed too many brain cells in the past 24 hours to be at all intelligible at the moment. And granted, it is most likely that I won't even have to address this matter of liking or not liking ever.

But there is something about my current pathetic state that serves to clarify, serves to cure me of all the stomach churning. I keep fearing that I am growing numb, but that's not the case really- I refuse to believe it. Things can still hurt me. I am not made of stone. But I also just can't abide by wasting my precious time, as haughty as that sounds. I have been avoiding the plans that I need to lay out for myself, because I just want to be, for a moment. So, I am neither fending anything off nor letting my mind run wild with speculation. I am trying, instead, to stop fidgeting for a second.

I realized something else last night. I am the definition of a nomad right now. I am here, but I am not. I will slip through your fingers. I live in a crack house because there is no sense in moving with so little time left in San Francisco. I do not decorate. I do not buy nice cars (as a side note, I think I thoroughly horrified SJM yesterday by asking him what a G35 is). I have no fashion sense and the trendiest jeans I own are over two years old. I am not much of a foodie. I am not keeping up with any of the Joneses. And I did not really realize it until I was around people who do not know the why's behind all of the what's. Suddenly, I saw myself through their eyes and I seemed so transient, so loosely held together, of such little mettle. I seemed, well, flimsy. I wanted to tell them- in time, you'll come to understand. But then I realized that I have not the energy to explain.