no pills for what i fear

Coming home is like being recalibrated. All of my emotional levels that I have so carefully groomed and stabilized are knocked off their orbits when I come home. I don't relate to people the same way anymore; I can't. All of my guards are down, all of my façades have been stripped away; they know me too well. It's like returning to your first self, the truest part of you, and often it's not pretty. Not pretty, but necessary. Why family exists. And so I am happy to be back, even if the reintroduction-to-self business is unsettling.

Tonight we are having a Christmas party for the families who live on our street; families whose parents are mostly professors and artists. Even though I don't really know anyone, I am looking forward to it because I like hobnobbing with adults from academia and art; they are always violating common social norms and saying strange things. Simply, they're just more interesting than most of the people I know.

Reading French Women Don't Get Fat is merely an affirmation of all that my mother has taught me about food life. Like Mireille Guiliamo, my mother says you never have to diet, you just need to make the right choices. Choose smaller portions, healthier selections, nothing processed, nothing with too much sugar or starches. Don't count calories or pounds; eat what you like but always in moderation. Food should also be visually enticing; the presentation is half of the joy. Food is consumed with friends and family, sitting at a table, never never standing up and never never on paper plates. Chew slowly. My mother is secretly French, I suppose. The book makes me wish I had more money to buy good food and more time to cook at school. One day...

I realized this morning, listening to Pastor Barber speak about Christ and Colossians, that I think of Jesus as an idea instead of as a person. I haven't seen Him or heard His voice; all of my "experiences" of Jesus are metaphysical, so I suppose it is natural that I regard Him primarily as a concept. But they say you need to understand and relate to Him as a person, Son of Man, Son of God, and have a relationship with Him. How do you carry on a relationship with an invisible Person who also happens to be the God of the Universe? This is a whopping problem to my heart today. I am weary of not having any answers. But maybe this is the question I'll be asking the rest of my life.