i've not touched my paper journal in a week. i've not really written here. i've not read much.

i've been packing, exam-ing, studying, baking bread for professors, getting my car stuck on a back road in tennessee and singing musical numbers aloud to an empty campground parking lot as i waited for a tow truck, crying.

graduating.

i've been staying up 'til all hours with friends, talking and laughing and watching 'the graduate' (since we grads had never seen it, nor, i think, had those waiting another year or two).

i've been seeing a boy (oh there's a boy and there's something there, something so new and so close that it should be frightening, but it's not, and i - there aren't any words that don't sound cliche or silly. suffice it to say that my heart physically ached yesterday as i left him in my driveway and drove away from wcu. and we both keep dancing around the fact that there's something inexplicable going on. we've known each other not even ten days now. the coinciding interests, complementary habits, chemistry, everything, all there and sublime and i think i'm in trouble).

and rusti hitchhiked over 300 miles to my house and i found him here yesterday. he tells me he's growing and learning and it hurts, but he loves me and needs me, and i have to subdue the part of me that wants to coddle and nurture this boy because i need to be the one to force him back out to the trail, back out to finding himself, onto his own two feet.

and the winds of the carolinas have been restless for days, but i'm home where i can hear them in the trees, whistling through pine needles, and i need to unpack and start work. but i've barely slept in ages and i've not had a day without a goodbye or a fight or a good cry for me or someone close to me in quite some time.

so that's my life in a small, cracked nutshell.