I need to go to sleep soon, so I can't write a whole lot tonight. I probably will anyway though. I'll explain why in a bit.

My mom nearly passed out for two hours straight today. She felt really dizzy, and said the room was spinning. She couldn't stand up. She didn't feel mentally dazed and could remember facts of day, time, place, name, so it wasn't anything with her brain. I think she may have had heat stroke because she felt a little better after drinking 40 oz. Of water, but she told me she didn't want me to call 911 unless she blacked out or if it continued through tomorrow. But now she's saying she feels fine, so I guess we'll see and hope it has nothing to do with her stomach pain. She freaked me out by reminding me that her adopted mother did something similar � collapsed and couldn't walk suddenly 2 months before she was diagnosed and died of Hodgkin's Lymphoma�so I have to expect the worst as she has been in pain for 4 years. Mainly, I felt pissed that W is in Colorado, and I don't really have anyone to call if my mom ends up in the hospital or emergency. My English teacher, I guess is it.

Today was an audio books day, as I downloaded, maybe, a half dozen. These include some childhood favorites like Anne of Green Gables/Avonlea, an erotic tale I'm not too sure of and won't name till I am, and Kate Chopin's The Awakening, and The Sense of Wonder by Rachel Carson, which I am stunned by and now consider her a sister-in-writing-beautifully. Even with a slight environmental preaching quality, it supports the need to preserve her memories by preserving the actuality of the beauty in the landscapes in a child's world. In fact, I found her writing style in her essay much like my own style. It brought me to tears, actually, and while I tear-up easily, I rarely tear-up for a half hour straight. My own childhood was much like that, even the half that was only in my imagination. She even mentioned fairies. :-) And I agree that part of the meaning in writing is to describe or explain things in life as if they have never been seen before by any living person and without you never will be � even if it has been a billion times � your story, your perspective, is unique and new. I think it is the reason I find description, really getting into the subject and the space, so intriguing.

I am also trying to decide which Antoine de St. Exupery book I'd like to read by Christmas as well. I've read numerous excerpts to try to decide, and in the past meant to read much more of his works than I actually have. Each time I have picked up a various title of his, I find myself not wanting to stop as he describes the world in a way I've yet to see it � from the air. I think for this reason, more than any, I want W to take me flying � just to know the slopes of the landscape while touching the clouds.

I have mere weeks left till school begins and my life ends. My mind today needed tales to fill the emptiness. I'll liken the tales mulling around in my mind now to be like stars illuminating the darkness - a little glimmer of light. I wish I didn't have to sleep.

I have a few stories down now, though they aren't in any way ready to be read � so don't ask me yet Josh.

I am having a hard time narrowing my space, narrowing my focus enough to write of a single second and not have it take a year, or rush through a year in what seems a day. It's like I am trying to be Jupiter when I need to merely be a comet scratching my way through the story.

I need to remember senses that I am deprived of, scents of the bays I grew up on, salty and pungent. I need to remember the sounds of each moment, the chanting seagulls above the waves. The waves rhythmically retreating back into the bay they came from. I need to allow myself to be vulnerable to the moment. And recently vulnerability has not been my favorite experience.

I need to narrow down my subjects, to decide whether I am writing of a person, or from the perspective of the waves crashing against the feet of a child, chilling them before disappearing again. Do I write from the perspective of the crab watching the waves crashing against the feet of the child. Writing is an endless possibility.

And I get lost in it.

The event tomorrow happens to be my going to the mall. But my mom is meeting me there at 10 am, but not going with me. This will be a first. And even though I won't be too freaked out, hopefully, at entering the mall alone and walking to the area my mom is planning to wait for me at, I am nervous. I know my brain, and it will experience the mall through the eyes of a 4 year old � it will be huge and overwhelming. Each child that cries and each person that laughs will pierce through me, because that is how I experience the world whenever I am alone in public. I stop short of saying 'like a victim', but I can't deny that it is close even though I only feel that when I am overcoming a fear, which by the action alone is the exact opposite of victimhood. I am going at 10 am, just when the mall opens, and the time I used to go to the mall when I first re-began to leave the house, amazingly enough 10 years ago this month. After 6 years of being fully housebound then, though it was unbearable and even mothers with babies in strollers freaked me out, the excitement at age 18 of buying my own clothes and CD's, books, and blue nail polish for the first time in my life was dignifying, and the one day I left the house each month for over a year was to the mall at 10am � I called my self-esteem shopping trip. Even then the misdiagnosing doctors told me that it was ambitious of me to go to the mall being so scared of enclosed spaces with too many people. I remember explaining that it wasn't really because I could walk outside at any time to get away if there were ever too many of them. But looking back on it, it was ambitious of me and seemingly the first of my continuous leaps. I handled the mall by reminding myself that there was security there if someone tried to bully me. My mother was by my side reassuring me and constantly telling me I was okay if the least sign of panic presented itself. I left if I got too nervous. This mainly happened when sales ladies attempted to ask if I needed help. I didn't have glasses yet and couldn't see a thing. I did not know how to use a debit card at all and trying to enter my pin the first time made me panic. I could not speak a whole sentence to a stranger without having a full-scale panic attack, so I whispered to my mother who repeated my need to the befuddled sales ladies. And it took me years of trying and failing and retrying to be able to cross the mall parking lot, and then the two-lane street after they built a series of stores I really wanted to go to across the street from that mall. I remember counting painted lines of the crosswalk or my own footsteps on the ones that had no lines, just to keep my mind off of panicking from the possibility of stationary cars somehow running into me. My mind flooded continually with impossible or improbable possibilities.

It is unreal what has and has not changed in 10 years time. And how much my agoraphobia and related disorders have adapted to at least allow me to be agoraphobic in some public places. Me at 18 could never have fathomed my life now, actually going to school, not just hoping for it, even contemplating any leadership role. When I last read the outpatient notes from doctors who evaluated me at age 18, they stated that I wanted to do everything I am doing now, and more � besides college and moving to a new place, my list included acting and being a published writer and illustrator, which they scoffed at because of my severe inability to even speak whole sentences to them. At 18 I was extremely ambitious and had all of my dreams fully intact and un-maimed, yet I was hitting a brick wall at each step just attempting to get the mail or buy food. I did not know what was wrong, why the world felt so uninviting, and I tried to speak but the words continually tripped on my tongue as I melted into panic. I was officially diagnosed at age 19 - diagnosed, meaning given formal labels to describe my way of coping with stress. When I realized the severity of my situation at age 19, and gained a sobering explanation for the previous 8 years of my life, part of me felt devastated by the sudden boxes, and part of me did not believe that the rules applied to me, the behaviors yes, but the rules were for other people � I relapsed twice trying to prove the doctors wrong. And I feared for a long time that the doctors were right. I somehow think I have proven them wrong though, even as hard as tomorrow and this coming semester will be on me.

I think I still handle the world that same way though. I still have a lot I can't do, like pee in a public restroom, especially if anyone else is in there with me. But here I am at 28, preparing, or trying to prepare to begin to go to the mall alone � without my mom or anyone with me - eventually. That is the goal at least. If Agoraphobitch doesn't get in the way yet again. It will probably involve being loaded on xanax and putting mall security's number in my cell phone.

And I have to say that even though I can't initiate conversations with strangers still, it is really nice to be able to speak to people in whole, coherent, sentences when I'm spoken to. I think that and being able to go to school by myself are the two biggest achievements of my life so far. Even more than my GPA and clinging to dreams that very few ever attain. Ignoring being naked with a total loser who had no right to dump me for no reason�cause that was a pretty big event too. :-

Baby steps and occasional leaps�with my clothes on.

And an insane imagination to keep my dreams alive.

Okay, and a great Canadian friend who is still the most loyal and loving person I know.

I must sleep � it's a big day tomorrow, not as big as many will be this month, but big enough for this week�

~e