1) I'm working. Well, I'm employed, but not working. The opening of the restaurant keeps getting pushed back more and more, meaning that Amanda spends an increasing amount of time at home. With no school, nothing to do but sit and watch daytime tv, have conversations and arguments with my dog and cat, take my dog outside, occasionally see Jesse and Alexander outside (which breaks up the monotony of the day), then continue to watch more TV and do nothing. I'm bored. I'm so bored out of my mind, I can't take it.

2) Said boredom, for whatever reason, is causing me to feel increasingly apprehensive about the resuming work when the restaurant finally does open. Cause...I don't wanna do it. I mean, I want to work, but not waiting tables for even a week makes me not want to go back to waiting tables. And especially not full time. I mean, I've finally graduated, so I can work full time, but will continue to work as a server. Although I've had my issues with serving over the past few years, it's been excusable - after all, I've been working my way through school. But now it's time for the grown up job, and what does that mean for me? Move into serving full time as opposed to part time? Really? Where is the growth, maturity, and transition into adulthood in that? I've applied at a few non-restaurant places of employment and haven't heard back from any of them. Not even a "Thanks for your interest! We'll review your resume and be in contact!" blanket replies. So...that's discouraging. And may I tack on a "Thank you, synagogue!" for completely fucking me over and giving me a multitude of reasons to believe that I am incapable of achieving anything more than "Waitress of the Month" status at any place of employment.

3) All of this builds up to Amanda being stressed about the one thing that has dominated my anxieties for the past year - MONEY. Namely, not having enough, embarking on a love-hate relationship with currency wherein I want to go shopping so badly and get my hair done and buy Jerry things that I know he would love to have and not have to worry about whether or not the groceries I'm buying are a necessary expense. That's got to be the worst - "Do I REALLY need this loaf of 96 cent wheat bread? Well, how else am I going to eat that jar of peanut butter at home? And if not, what the hell else am I going to eat?" *sigh*

4) All of which leads me to a sentiment of being completely and utterly restless. I'm not sure if it stems so much from the anxiety over responsibility and finances (and the desire to run away from them) as much as it does from the sheer boredom encompassing my life right now, but it's all there, for better or worse. Basically, I need to be somewhere not here. I need to not be in Nashville, and not in Pittsburgh, as those are the only two places I've been in the past 7 years, save ONE WEEK at the beach in NC last summer. I need new and exciting and dare I say, adventure. Don't tell Jerry I said that - he'll have us trekking through the jungles of MesoAmerica, seeking Aztec and Mayan temples. Although I have to admit, minus the whole deadly snakes and panther thing, it doesn't sound like a horribly bad time.

5) Transition from all of those to earlier today, when Jerry asked me what was wrong and I could not find words to capture anything I'm feeling. I know he feels bad and helpless when I get depressed, and I know he's noticed the downward trend my moods have taken over the past few weeks. I love him so much, and I know he loves me so much, but I have no idea how to communicate what I'm feeling to him when I feel like this. Even now, despite all the rambling I've done thus far in this blog, I look back on it and nothing seems right. Nothing's quite there enough for me to say, "Yes. That is how I'm feeling," because it's not enough. It seems as though all my life, I've had this constant teetering between never feeling as though I have enough to be happy and never feeling as though I'm good enough to be happy.

As Jerry said the other night, "I have a good woman, a good house, a good dog...and cat...and I'm going to school for something that finally keeps me interested. Everything else will work out."

And I have a good man...a damn good man. And a good house, a good little family with our dog and cat, and I finally figured out what I want to do with my life as far as studying and career goals. Yet, it just doesn't seem right. Like, I'm constantly worried and hell, even afraid, that my aspirations in life won't support or enable everything else good that I have to continue.

I'm stuck in a severe rut that unfortunately is only exasperated by the imbalanced seretonin and neurons in my brain that always makes everything seem so much worse, so much darker, so much more dire than it ever actually is. I'm intelligent. I'm creative. I'm ambitious. I'm outgoing when it counts and it drives me crazy that I can get so trapped in my own goddamn head so much that it hinders my best attributes from really being known.

I wish my boyfriend weren't at work right now. I wish my best friends were here. I wish I could just break out of this shell and become the person I know I am already. Someone I can respect and someone worthy of the respect my love ones give me. Instead, I will spend my Friday evening in bed, with my dog and cat, some raw cookie dough as comfort food and downloaded episodes The Office and The Tudors to lull me to sleep. And when I wake up tomorrow morning, I hope to God this mood will have passed.

Because I'm not entirely sure what its all about...but it just had to be written...

Achieving clarity regarding yourself is difficult. More often than not, you're too blinded by your own emotions, caught up in your reasonsings, your truths, your understandings and biases in how the world operates in reaction to your existence.

Its not arrogance at all, but rather a melacholic way of believing yourself to be at the center of a cosmic suffering/practical joke that will someday (hopefully) pan out to be the type of experience you'll emerge from as a better person.

A great once in a while, that clarity pushes its way through, either in the form of regret (which can often be clouded with its own set of biases) or pure awareness of yourself and your actions. You realize the grandious rise and fall of your emotions against the backdrop of normalcy and come to understand your part in making the rise higher and the fall deeper.

You can't blame everything on the depression. Sometimes, you have to suck it up and own up to your own fallacies as a human, as a being of imperfection and be capable of forgiving yourself.

I think I'm having one of those moments of clarity tonight. Though I still feel rooted in the inexplicable saddness that I try so hard to hide, the haze before me isn't quite as thick as it was yesterday, or the day before.

Keeping up that new found sight is something I can't promise to maintain when I wake up in the morning, or the day after that. Perhaps its a fleeting moment, like when a smile escapes at an inappropriate time or when you're being yourself before the awareness of your state of being sets in.

But its nice every once in a while, you know? A few breaths before you dive back below the surface to work on what's been broke, fractured...or simply in need of sunlight.

Your preconvieced notions and beliefs of yourself will always stick to your bones, somewhere inside. Those ideas you've instilled in yourself about yourself are as much a part of you and your insecurities as the cells that compose your being. It forms your strengths and weaknesses, determines your crumbling points.

I am painfully aware of my faults, my weaknesses, my points of crumbling. I've yet to embrace my strengths, my keystones or my smiles. They're there...I know it. I suppose there's more water to be tread through before I've earned them, but taking up self-pity won't make it happen any faster. And my saddness - composed of those memories and regrets and slightly off-key neurotransmitters and chemicals that just don't want to mix the way they're supposed to - is not something I am willing to allow myself to be a slave to for any more of my life than I've already allowed it to control.

Am I saying anything at all? Anything worthwhile or relevant to anyone's eyes who happen to be reading this? No. I don't know - maybe. I just know that even if I have to put my spectrum of contraditions and confusion out there for the world to see, eventually I'm going to figure myself out and I'll be a better person for everything I've experienced.