I pretty much know karate.

I've started a happy journal, full of happy thoughts that I'm not writing on this blog, for the most part, but if you feel let down that I'm keeping a journal that you don't get to read--a secret journal--I'll let you know that it's full of things like told a student today, when he came to class early to show me "how high he could kick" that it was cool but that I'm better because I took karate lessons when I was 12, so I pretty much know karate. And today I am grateful for: all the Olsons I know, the cohort, and also beer.

It's days like today that I need this happy journal, days when life is such a fucking mess that I can only wonder if I'm really me in my body. It's days like today when I get out of a meeting and say, to Mr. O., which drug do you think I'll be addicted to when I become a fulltime teacher? I was thinking coke. And Mr. O says, well, you gotta have a variety.

What is all this about. Last night I went to bed thinking: you are going to wake up tomorrow and be a different person. Last night was one of those defining nights that changes who you are, how you look at life.

Last night I changed how I thought about teaching, how I approach everything in this program--differently. Last night the cohort expressed how human we are, together. Over drinks of course. In a bar filled with men wearing overalls, drunk, eating peanuts. Next to the nightclub that looks like a spaceship and where James told me, the most people get stabbed in Rochester. But I don't care that I drank beer next to the spaceship club. I just care that we said what we've needed to say, only to confirm what everybody wants to hear, always, and forever: I understand what you're saying. I fucking understand what you're saying.

But that's not about this either. It's not about the buzz I had all night, the trip to Target with a little beer clouding my thinking--leading to the pounds and pounds of candy I overbought for the freshman today. It's not about the district budget cuts, the superintendent who bought a $5000 desk and approved, with the school board an $18,000 cell phone budget for our district when they've also decided to increase elementary class sizes by three students. (THREE.)

In fact, I don't know what it's about.

But something sort of religious happened to me last night, when I was talking to my dad, sort of drunk. I called to ask about something trivial. He said: If I don't talk to you, Happy Valentine's. I said: You too, and Happy Anniversary tomorrow. I said you should buy mom flowers. Are you doing anything to celebrate?

He went on about why not, and then he said: well, she can buy her boyfriend a Valentine, but not me. It's...it's the same guy. She says they're friends. It's the same guy.

I try to clarify this. Let's just call this conversation a lot of etcetera.

You know she doesn't love me, he says.

I have to go. I've arrived at my destination, and someone is waiting. All I can say before I say, I'm so sorry, dad, I have to go, is: Do what's best for you. Please just take care of yourself.

I have no idea what's going on. My dad hung up so quickly, like a shamed child, like he couldn't believe what he'd just confessed.

But here's where the situation lies: I care, but I don't care. My parents should be divorced. They should so be divorced. But for some reason, they aren't divorced. I think this reason has to do with church, or with failing, or with--whatever, but if people don't love each other, then they shouldn't be married. I know that looks pretty simple as a sentence (even though that's a complex sentence) but that's how it should be. I mean, duh.

If I could post a giant sign that the whole world could see right now, it would say: DUH. Fucking duh, duh, duh, duh, duh.

Does my mom have a boyfriend? Is my dad paranoid? I don't know. But I do know that the only thing about this situation that has me worried is whether or not my dad will be okay. Why the fuck he stays in this, or my mom stays in this--whatever. Is it church? Because it might be church. This is part of the reason that I don't really feel guilty about not going to church anymore. (Oh, God, am I the poster child for R.E.M.'s "Losing my Religion." Am I going through the experience that high schoolers go through, but just really late? Gross.) But: church stops people from making rational decisions. It's like religion, sometimes, takes place of the rational part of the brain. He'll go to hell if he gets divorced? He's in fucking hell right now.

Anyway. Last night I had sort of a moment of truth, where I realized that the reason I write everything down all the time, why I always have so much to say over and again, is because it's the only time I get to say anything. My family doesn't talk about it. If somebody tries to talk about it, nobody listens. All I can do is write it down.

Look at me! Who even fucking needs Freud.

David and I aren't friends anymore. We in fact, ended it bad, and it's still bad. But I don't feel guilty about it anymore, no matter how much he tries to make me feel that way. I found life was easier, and I was happier, without him treating me like a piece of shit, so I cut that part out of the picture.

Has my heart hardened, hard core? Have I given up a lot of what I held so close to me just to be rational? Am I being selfish because I'm just too busy for all of this?

I don't know. IDK. I don't know the answers of any of this shit today. I just went to bed with a headache on the right side that I tried to drink off last night, almost successfully. And I woke up today after this conversation with my dad, after watching people become close by sharing struggles. I just. I just. Do what it takes to make you happy, but do it without fucking anybody over. Is that too simple for a life philosophy? Or maybe too complicated. I should've written this down last night. It made more sense when I was drunk.

Can I tell my parents to get divorced? Can I just call them and say FUCKING DUH WHY WOULD YOU STAY MARRIED? It didn't work when I said: fucking duh, just kick Amanda's boyfriend out of the house.

I don't know any of the mom's side from this, but I'm just trying not to think about it. There are a lot of things about my mother that I try not to think about. She and I are very different people, and we always will be, and that's how it is. She's my mother, and that is what she is.

But my father's my father, and he's such a fragile man right now. He's the one who will listen, sometimes, when I talk to him. He's the one who needs to find a way out, who needs to realize that change can happen, he is the one. Everyone in my family takes advantage of that man. He's become so frail and angry and drunk. That is where my energy, in any of this, will lie.

But it's not any of my business. You know she doesn't love me. Everybody fucking knows.

Maybe this is too much. Maybe I'm airing out my family's dirty laundry on the internet, for all to see. But I don't fucking care. I'm so done. I'm so done with not talking about stuff, with keeping it all in, that I just don't fucking care anymore. I'm done not talking about it. I'm done with the cloudiness surrounding every decision every one makes, I'm done with people not thinking for themselves, done with them not deciding what makes them happy and I'm fucking done, done, done, done, done, done, done with people not finding out how to get what makes them happy without plowing other people down in the fucking process.

I am not the same person I was last year. Not even the same person I was yesterday. There's been so much thinking going on. There's been so much re-prioritizing.

Imagine you're on a beach At one end of the beach is a piece of cake, and in the middle of the beach are a bunch of sand castles. You want that cake so, so, so bad. In fact, you are certain that that piece of cake will bring you so much happiness that you need to get it as quickly as possible.

All I'm asking, is that along the way, you don't kick over every person's sandcastle in your path. All I'm asking is that you walk around them. You can have all the fucking cake you want. I don't even care if you don't chew, I don't even care if you lick your goddamned fingers clean. Just please, please, please don't knock over my sandcastle on your way there. Please, just consider my sandcastle.

I can't get mad when the tide comes in and fucks it up. But I can get mad as fucking hell at you.

Anway. I'll try to sum this up: hold on extra close to the people who make you happy, no matter how they manage to do it, or for how long they've done it. When they stop making you happy, you owe it to yourself to let them go--in some way. You don't have to cut them away or drown them like unwanted kittens, but use the opportunity of despair when you do let them go to grab on tighter to the ones that continue to make you happy. Life is about relationships, all of them. Keep the good ones. Imagine if you died in the middle of a bad one, any bad one.

Duh.