From the journal of Chris Bernal:

11/18 - 1:30 AM
"I just watched Serendipity. I feel weird.

It's a nice idea. That if you just listen to the universe, it can lead you to where you need to be. It will take you to the place where you can be what you're supposed to be.

I miss being in love. It's been three years since I've really truly liked someone. Three years! I want a relationship. I want someone that I am attracted to to be attracted to me. Is that too much to ask for? Why? Why hasn't it happened to me yet?

What's comforting is that I know I'm not alone. I know I like to pretend to be, but I can name any number of people that are/were in the same boat as me.

But you know? I would rather have every one of them find love and me be alone. Is that stupid of me? Am I playing the martyr? Probably. But for now, that's how I feel.

I would love to find something, but I'd rather everyone else did. Now that is love. Sacrifice.

Or is it just narcissism? That would be the best way for me to be in the spotlight. Forever. Dan would say that it's just me being selfish.
But maybe I'm just not supposed to find love this time around. And is that so wrong? Happiness is not dependent on another person. It's not. Say what you want, but I don't need romance to be happy. I just need to fall in love with something else. Magic, Writing, Librarianship. Whatever. Single people are necessary. Not even just for the Schadenfreude of couples. But sane, clearheaded singles make plenty of worthwhile contributions to society. I know it's harder for us to adopt, but we can do that too.

But I have to be honest. Being single for the rest of my life is just daunting. It will get lonely. It will get hard. It will get sad. But maybe, just maybe, it is the final lesson we need to learn in order to achieve the next level of enlightenment. To leave this plane of Earthly Reincarnations, and to move on.
Maybe."

"Damn community college. Damn myself for losing my tenuous grip on the elemental balance. At this point in my life I have no earth or fire in myself, two elements that took a lot of work for me to get into. During that first year at Cy-fair, I jumped into the water and sunk. I didn't drown, if only because water is my element, but if I had been anything else, I think that depression would've gotten the best of me. But because it was my 'home town', I survived. Now I've surfaced, and I have to learn to live on land again. But I think I can do it. I think I can do it, because I want to do it." -Me, May 24, 2009.

Things are better. I have air in my body again. I have my feet on the earth. And I have my hands near the fire. I need need need to focus on it more though.

Ugh, I'm going to bed. I'll ponder on this more tomorrow.

I had a nightmare and I think a lot of it has to do with my deteriorating mental state.

I was headed home. To Houston, actually. There was a rooftop party, in which Homero proceeded to sell a lot of stuff out the back of his three wheeled jeep. Don't ask me, I don't know how it drove with just three wheels. But he was stoned. A lot. I was being chaperoned by this older man, who was in essence my father, but more like a grandfather type. {We were related, but he looked nothing like anyone I actually know in my family.} Everyone was treating me very nicely, but also carefully, like I could explode at any minute. {And I mean all of my friends and old co workers.}

At one point we ended up going back home, to an apartment on the ground floor of an apartment complex. You know, the kinds that are common in Houston. It was super nice inside, almost fancy. This younger guy, an older teenager, went with us, and it was assumed that he was sort of my grandfather's foster child. He was also drunk, so my grandfather carried him to his room. I followed, and my grandfather pointed out a room that was mine. I nodded, and carefully opened the door.

The room was... it was pretty much a storage closet, but it looked like someone had ransacked it. There was an entire cupboard leaning over, almost about to fall. And there were duvets and sheets and blankets crammed in every which way, in every space possible. I sighed, and tried to clean up a bit before I got ready for bed. Immediately, the blankets and sheets and duvets and cupboard begin to topple on me, and I start having flashbacks.
{I remember a previous dream in which a lot of these flashbacks took place. Mainly the ones involving the Joker.}

I remember that the whole reason I was sent away in the first place is because I had figured it out. Or the Joker had. It was weird, he looked like a mix of the Joker and the Mad Hatter, both crazy as hell. He had discovered that the President was actually a werewolf, and the President's werewolf team was trying to get him. {In actuality, they were worgen, but no one here knows what a worgen is.} So I'm having flashbacks of the Joker going even more mad with joy, the werewolves trying to get him, and the Joker ripping open a portal and jumping in.

And I start to worry that the Joker is going to find me again.

And then I worry that the Joker isn't even real, and I'm going crazy again.
And I try to fight it, because I'm not going back.

{And I wake myself up, at 7 o clock. Which is annoying. I couldn't have slept for another hour or so?}