i was reading my old moleskine journal, becuase thats what i do when i'm uninspired ir want to see how much i've improved as a written etc and i found this entry. i didn't date it, but i know its from last year and it just moved me to tears

*************************************************************************

I was in New York yesterday. I took the PATH in from Jersey City. Its a quick ride, only a stop or two but it's long enough to get distracted. If you know anything about taking trains in New York you know that the path drops you off at World Trade Center station, and to get there you have to go straight through...umm...I hate to call it ground zero. Its a holy crater.

I remember the first time I took the train I didn't know where I was and I asked my mom "Where are we?". I figured that we were in a construction site in Hoboken or something. The look she gave me said it all. It is a wound that will never heal. I will never let it heal. I don't want it to heal. There is a picture of me taken on September 11th, 2001 in english class and you can see the clock in the background. it was about eight o'clock. I was smiling and wearing a sweatervest.

I was twelve years old.

I remember the smell. I can't descibe it to you because I don't know what it smelled like. Nothing on earth had ever smelled like this before. I never cried over it. I never prayed about it. I just turned off my emotions and watched my entire world shatter. Looking back twelve sounds so young, but there was nothing about it I didn't understand. There was no innocence there. No sugar coating. I could see smoke at my house. I remember eating frozen pizza with my best friend Xiao-Xiang and promising that we would live our lives differently; that we would look up, that we would force ourselves to be positive because even in the face of tragedy, life is beautiful. We said that we would love with wild abandon because nothing else matters. Nothing in the world. We thought that was the way we were supposed to live.

It's quite a creed for someone in middle school.

What happened to that?

I kind of went the other way with that though. I'm weird and cynical and I associate with people/ do things if they fit my agenda. If it doesn't fit into my box, it won't happen.

How terrible is that?

Something has been in the air lately. Something that is telling me that I can do better. Something telling me that I'm wasting my time fearing death, because I have never lived.

so je suis fini. i am done.

its time to take my own advice.