Staring ahead into space has the same effect as closing my eyes, it makes everything blurry, what I want it to be. I can pretend it's me and your voice somewhere, somewhere that's nothing, not a location, just a dark place full of your voice, no words, sounds moving up and down, notes on a washboard. I remember what you were singing when I don't try to. The noise is something I can touch. It sneaks up and pinches me at the edges. Have you ever known someone who was difficult to look at? Sometimes you catch their eye and it's too much, you look away by reflex, like moving your hand away from a hot stove. Sometimes you can be hard to look at. I see you better than I think I should, and it's like looking into a mirror.

With the windows too dark to see through, it's like I'm in another city, any city. I'm in any vehicle made of plastic and dirt and metal, seeing lights and signs of other people's lives. Portland is nice to be in, but I keep feeling happier when I get a sense of being someplace else.

I keep thinking that I miss New Hampshire and my home there, but then I remember that I miss what used to be there, and that there's no real way of getting it back. I'm sure everyone finds, after high school and a year or two away, that their home doesn't really feel like their home anymore. I think I expected that. But I look at my friends and everyone who's left, and most of them seem to have established themselves well enough in a different place, where they feel like they belong. I don't feel like I really belong here. I can't connect, I can't explain, I never get the sense that this is where I should be now, even with friends, a job, a school that I love, I never really know why. I'm fairly lost, in general. I'm sure all these feelings are common.

I think there's a place in the world that would be right. I'm sure there's more than one, more than I could imagine. They all seem to be within easy reach, it will just take time to be able to be there.
I need something totally new.

I'm never sure where any words are leading. Real words are difficult. I think in run-on sentences and commas. I don't really know how to talk to anybody about anything real. You can never be away from your own mind, that's the problem. I'm thinking, walking, watching, chewing on sentences until they come out in pieces, the wrong pitch, not what I meant at all. Not how I meant to say it. I'm listening, responding, thinking. I'm blank. I'm going somewhere, I just don't know what kind of place it is.