Sometimes the world just gets too close. When everything seems to be going wrong, and you can't get away from life because it keeps knocking on your door, threatening to break the lock, crawl inside and knock the living shit out of you. Yeah... sometimes there just isn't any point in waking up before noon, sometimes you just need to be by yourself: alone with your thoughts, maybe reaching out to a select few every now and then. Emotions always come in pairs: love, hate; anger, kindness; and it's almost assured that if you feel a certain way, someone you know will either feel the same, or the exact opposite. In these times, when you're crawling toward some unseen boundary and need to stand to see beyond the horizon, these are the shoulders you can lean on. I woke up this morning and after cleaning my room to a point it hasn't been in a few weeks, I sat in my room and played bass until i couldn't see my fingers, I'd never gotten up to turn on the light. I had a few breaks every now and then, to make some phone calls, maybe grab a quick drink, but for some reason, perhaps the impending Valentine's Day, hanging over my head like an english paper deadline, or maybe my sister's fourteenth birthday, which is just a scary prospect. To think that she will have decidedly entered the teenage years, with no looking back, and Albemarle High School planted firmly in her sights, is just a frightening thought. We'll be freshmen together, and she's already planning what she wants to do with my room when I move out to go to college. My life is moving on a track that I seem to have little control over, short of watching the scenery as I go by. I wish I could just get in the car and drive out to the middle of nowhere to stare up at the stars. Nothing puts the world in quite the same perspective as being completely immersed in darkness, lying back and seeing nothing but tiny glowing dots everywhere you look. I need to stop my mind from racing, my palms from sweating, my life from running away. I just want to be able to know that what is in my heart and mind is what is there on the earth.