The peace and mind I found after visiting my boyfriend for my two days off this week has been shattered... I'm not sure what to do for my friends when they start having problems. I listen... I try to make them feel better... But right now I feel impotent to do that. I'm so far from everyone... I'm alone here in noVA. There are a few people from college here, but the majority of my friends live in other parts of VA, and out of the state. Maybe I'm not a good friend. I just don't know what to do...

Liad, I can just imagine how that episode at Fashion Bug must have hurt. It's not easy being as small as a socially-decreed size 2... But I will tell you what I think of you as a woman. Emotionally, you are wonderful. You are so much like Sandy I sometimes am hard-pressed to remember that you are not she. But at the same time, you are uniquely Liad -- quirky, sexy, fun-loving... No party would be complete without you. Physically, I know you are heavy. There are women out there in the world that I would say about them, "Well, if they lost weight, they'd be gorgeous." You are not one of those women. You ARE gorgeous. Every time I see you, I am startled again by how very attractive you are. And I guess I'm a little envious... but not meanly jealous. I wish I had been up there in that Fashion Bug with you. I would have loved to have said something snide along the lines of, "Well, at least she doesn't look anexoric..." only more clever, of course. :o) I wish you could look in the mirror and see the gorgeous, confident, self-assured woman that I know in Liad. Anyhow... I love you. And you're wonderful.

::sigh::

Change of topic: I started reading the diaries of Anais Nin a couple days ago. And I started at the beginning. Here is a young girl, a girl proud of her French heritage, who emigrates to America in 1914, during the First World War. Separated from her talented pianist father, and struggling to survive in the dispassionate city of New York, Anais uses her diary to spill out her heart's turmoil. But it's not the diary of a normal eleven-year-old girl -- even at this tender young age, she is exploring her faults as a person and resolves to be better; she sets for herself the goal of finding out who she is and where she wants to go in life. She realizes that she does not want to become the good little housewife that is expected of her generation. She wants fame as an author. It's just amazing to read this diary because she is so very precocious. Anais is wrestling with questions I haven't dared to ask myself...

Anyhow.... now that my mood has completely slid down into the depths of despair... I shall take my leave of whomever reads these words... I will write again soon.