It's Thursday night. I've written approximately 18 pages of single- spaced typed Art History notes in the last four days in preparation for my first test. First painting critique today. One more class tomorrow. Lots o f studying to follow. There are flying ants buzzing around my desk like unwelcome invaders, lost as they seem. I'm tired. Maybe a little too tired to put any cohesive thoughts together, but alas, I have had many many of them this week.

At the end of every week or so I find myself stopping for a moment to contemplate who I am, who I have become. I stop and look at the previous seven days and wonder who the hell I've been and how I got involved in this whirlwind that I have found myself in. Often, when I get to that place, I must ask myself if in my attempt to put myself out there, to stop hiding behind my observing eyes, if I have ever become insincere. If I have begun to get dressed in the morning for something other than myself. And I must ask myself if that person really even cares or notices or matters. I have to begin to ask myself if I have been accessible without being fake. I have to ask myself if I have tried too hard, spread myself too thin, got involved in too many places.

Someone tonight said this to me: Start with just one friend. I liked that wisdom. I've been working really hard to get to know the people that my life bumps into during the day, but my word-- there are a hell of a lot of people that my life bumps into during the day. I am discovering this little areas of balance. There are places where I have chosen to jump in, both feet, because I am tired standing on the sidelines, waiting for something to happen. But there are most times that I just feel like everything has become too severe, I've been blasting bright red and it is obnoxious even to me. And I fear that I have become too spread thin-- like going to school isn't quite enough so I have to do a million other things. And I'm not sure what to do with that.

I feel a little bit ugly tonight, a little mean and critical of the people around me. Sometimes I tired of being an art major and feeling silently criticized for the way I dress. And I wonder what it would be like just to be okay with me for the day, to believe that I might actually be free from the scrutiny I always feel but never quite hear outloud. I'm just exhausted. And I fear that somehow it is all an ugly blackness inside of me, that all of this judgement and thoughts about belonging are actually me, inside me, not coming in from the outside.

For the moment, I suppose that I will just sleep and tomorrow I will awake and prayer that the weekend will bring some clarity and freedom from all of this self-hatred.