I want a family. I used to have to one about three years ago. Now I just have people I am related to. Tonight Lauren went home for her sister's birthday. Close family-like friends came over. Every birthday then all get together and eat amazing home cooked food and then play cards afterwards. Holidays they celebrate too and somewhere in there they have third Tuesdays and Friday night bingo. I never thought I was into tradition but tonight, as I forced myself to do homework and spend time alone, I ached for family and tradition and everything Lauren was enjoying. Everything everyone enjoys. Kathy has Sunday night dinner and the band comes over and her mom feeds them all. Jeni's mom cooks food every night. Ryan's mom makes him come home almost every weekend. Matt's dad is almost as cute as Matt. And it hurts so much. I feel like an orphan. I want one of these families to adopt me. I want them to invite me to third Tuesdays and band dinners and families. I want to be treated like a daughter by these families. I want to do chores for these families. And I want to live with these families. Nathan got invited to the birthday dinner tonight. I guess thats one of the perks of being a boyfriend. And I guess thats one of the reasons I want a boyfriend. Maybe his family will make me do chores.

I applied for a job this week. I got a call-back interview. I wore my amazing professional outfit and talked about my amazing experience and then patiently waited to hear back.

I didn't get the job.

I hate rejection. I hate not begin the best at something. I hate not getting picked and I hate failing. Most of all though, I think I hate not caring. Why aren't I more torn up about this? Why aren't I heart-broken and crying? Am I becoming desensitized to the world?

It is night here in the sleepy town where I live. I am awake for so many reasons. I could rattle off insomnia, boys, etc. but really I am fascinated by the night.

It is foggy out. We don’t get fog that much here and it’s not ever like the fog we get in LA. This fog is different. It rests, sepia-toned, on the barren trees making it colder and colder than it ever was.

It has not been a cold winter here. The run from the car to the house is much more than bearable and I even retrieved the mail yesterday barefoot. However, the temperatures disrupt me and I am not nearly content anymore with freezing lifestyles. Am I becoming a California pansy? It would seem so. Even though I can endure this cold, I don’t embrace it anymore. I embrace the city and the fog and even the bad roads but I have let go of the cold. How long will it be before I let go of the roads and the fog and the city?

Change has never paralyzed me. We I was younger and we lived in a new place every month, that was life. When I changed best friends every year in high school, that was life. These life changes became so easy for me that I didn’t even quite understand when other people suffered pain paralyzation.

Nostalgia is a sweet thing. It’s peaceful to remember other times. But change and nostalgia don’t mix and I wonder if both can ever live in harmony. The cynic in me has learned that remembering only brings wanting. Can we embrace change when we’re wanting?

I want to love to cold and the city and the people but I love new people now. I have changed. I have become a different, newer person. Did the change change me or did I create the change?

People change, my mom says when she defends her divorce. That makes me not want to change. Not ever. It makes me want to throw away everything I learned growing up and be like one of my precious girls, wide-eyed and honest.

My life has evolved in so many different ways in the past twelve months. And yet I find myself still sitting on the edge of nostalgia, I find myself enjoying only the moment, and I find myself running from change.

The fog surrounds a house a few hundred feet away that has been abandoned for years. It creates a smoky silhouette of something that once was. It looks like an old farmhouse in a big field when really it is a five-bedroom house on the corner where two busy streets meet. The fog hides a gas station too and in daylight it all looks different. But here, at night, in the fog, I dream of the people who once lived there and the stories that were shared.

Is part of my change becoming less the cynic and more like the precious girls? Is this backwards maturing even possible? And is it maturing to be wide-eyed and honest?