I love to read PostSecret.
 

Life experiences that people have fascinate me.  I often analyze my own, wondering just how the events of my life have forever shaped me into who I am: regrets, fond memories and all.

I tend to be an empathetic person, which is just as much a blessing as it is a curse.  Sometimes my empathy will cause me to completely agree with somebody else, and forget how I feel, which obviously can be a problem.  More often than not, though, my ability to relate to people has won me some excellent friends.

PostSecret lets me feel empathy for people I've never even met.  It's surprising just how much I can relate, personally, with a lot of the "secrets" people send in.  Some of them contain so much sadness that it can ruin my day imagining the level of hurt that person must feel.

It's funny, because my education taught me to be closed off, objective, and very by-the-book.  That's the complete opposite of who I am.  I learned how to shut off my empathetic side at will, to delay personal judgment and focus on the task at hand.  That was handy the time Max's car was egged and rather than fume about it like he started to, I reacted quickly and took forensic photos of his car before the rain destroyed the evidence (at night, even).  The officer that responded was pleasantly surprised I did so and took my photos, and they were used as evidence.  Max won a settlement for his car.  I like to think my photos helped.

There's been times I've hated it as well.  For instance, my dog Yukon, in his last few weeks before we put him down, was suffering from a tumor that grew out of his right eye.  It started to bleed if it was irritated.   One time in the car, Yukon I think nicked it with his claw and he started to moderately bleed.  As my parents took Yukon out of the car to fix him up, I saw the blood, and my mind (probably as a defense against the upsetting sight) shifted and started to analyze the patterns; the spatter, the angles I would use when photographing for evidence.  I remember squeezing my eyes shut and shaking my head violently, as if my mind was an etch-a-sketch I was trying to erase.  It just wasn't the time to start thinking about that...

I still have trouble drawing the line over what I should care about and what I need to be objective about, like my own personal Yin and Yang in inner conflict.

PostSecret, then, is my dirty pleasure, because it allows me to feel people's emotions while not overly affecting me.
 

Shh...don't tell anyone.

Do you ever feel trapped?  Like...maybe, there's something OUT there that's so unbelievably, insanely good but you're afraid you might not get to see it because you're stuck wherever you are?

I've been feeling like that a lot lately.

I graduated with my Bachelor's, my parents moved out of the house I've lived my entire life in, and they moved into a house they built right on the lake.  Max moved in.  I got a dog.  I got married.  It's like...life was just waiting to smack me in the face with everything and it didn't much matter if I wasn't ready, because I stayed still as everything changed around me.

Watertown's a small town.  I feel like I'm pressed up against some sort of glass ceiling and a wall. 

I used to be able to relate to my sisters-in-law (which was cool, since I don't have any siblings myself) and I don't now.  They're either mothers or a mother-to-be and babble endlessly about kids and how I should have one.  That's how his side of the family is, they're all about kids, which really isn't a bad thing.  I just feel that they look at me like I'm a reproductive waste of space because I don't want to have kids, at least not right now.  It's a lot of pressure.

Which is something my parents have always been completely fine with.  I love my parents, they really are the fairest and the kindest people I've ever met, and I always wish I was more like them.  I was more of a surprise to them when Mom found out she was pregnant.  But they know how I feel about the whole having a kid thing.  They've witnessed me get pressured, and they instantly stood up for me.  My parents even have a plaque on their wall that says "Let me get this straight--my grandkid is a DOG?!"  XD  Wolfie even knows them by "Grandma" and "Grandpa."  

I grew up at a very young age, emotionally, due to factors that weren't under my control and a couple bad experiences.  I attended college for four years and never had a GPA lower than 3.5 and was the picture of responsibility (except for a day at my 4-year school, a halloween party where I got pretty drunk; hey, I was dressed up as a pirate wench so it was fitting XD but even with this, I had made triply sure I had a ride home with someone who was sober).  I worked two and sometimes three jobs at a time, I was a tutor and a note taker for a developmentally disabled student, I was involved in student government and honor societies and local fund raisers for clubs at my school...hee, so, I was pretty boring.  XD

Maybe I just feel this way because I never gave myself the chance to be irresponsible.  :P  I just hope that at 24, I'm not already "old."  

I need to play moar video games.  That'll make this go away.  rofl.


 

People always tell me congratulations, but honestly it doesn't feel much different.  I just wear these two rings on my ring finger now!  XD  We did the math.  We were together for six years, and were engaged for two of those years before we were married.  We waited two years because Max respectfully, according to my Father's wishes, waited until I was graduated from college for the wedding. 

Hehe.

Max and I took two days off to celebrate--well, plus, we needed a little vacation.  We spent Tuesday in Syracuse.  Max took me to the Carousel Mall--and as shocking as it is, he actually had fun in the mall!  We did things backwards.  First we went to Coldstone Creamery for ice cream (it's like gourmet ice cream where they prepare it for you as you wait on a cold stone, hence the name, where the ice cream doesn't melt and you can add in all sorts of goodies).  After that we wandered all over the place, looking in random shops.  The highlight was when we went to Borders, because I wanted to get Max a book for his anniversary present.  He ended up getting The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins.  And he bought me the 2nd book in the Twilight series (which I managed to get myself addicted to, go me) and a little plush wolf that we found there. ^_^  We went to Circuit City to be the geeks we are and look at computers, and I'm pretty sure that this one guy Max was talking to developed a man-crush on him (because he commented on Max's shirt, a WoW rogue-class symbol shirt I bought for him a long time back, because his first character was a rogue, and the guy followed us around the shop while we were there :P)

After, we had dinner at Ruby Tuesdays which was awesomely yummy, and we went to see Tropic Thunder.  I was surprised at how much I loved Tropic Thunder!

Earlier in the day we had bought some blueberry wine and some other boozy fun stuff, so when we got home, proceeded to drink until about 3AM.  Rofl.  We usually don't have the time to act silly for our age; it was a lot of fun!  It was so cute to watch Wolfie try to stay awake with us--it was way past his "bedtime" and his head kept drooping.  :)

Now, to get through work.  Today sucks.  Being alone at this shop with some of the..kind of creepy customers we have isn't all fun.