Yes please

My first thought was to say, "Please, can I be?" Some days all I really want is a padded room where I am left alone with my thoughts and a choice of only doing basics required for survival. Then I get out of bed, head out the door and drive to an institution where I have no control but a responsibility that scares me.

An institution can be many things to people. It is like asking who you are. In my short years to this point I have, and continue to be, many people. Diana the daughter, wife, daughter in law, mother, aunt, niece, cousin, sister, sister in lkaw, mother in law, and soon to be a grandmother. So am I just one person? Perhaps I have multiple personalities for which there is no treatment. There also the student, friend, confidante, teacher, nurse, cook, and chief bottlewasher. With all these alter egos residing within, I am entitled to believe that I require a situation where I have control over myself and nothing is required of me except that I continue to exist.

Make a corner in my mind where I can go to hide.

Maybe that is what my reading was all about for so long. A way to escape from the outside. No meanness, no requirements except to read and relax. Introduced to writing, although I can not spend as long as I would like to on it, it is yet anothedr form of institution. A place within myself that is secret and no one can get in or know what happens here unless I put words out there to be read by all. So what will those few think now? A goofball, or normal? Nah, never normal. OOPS! ShHH! The sirens approach. Men in white coats stand at the ready. Red brake lights flash, and wheels spin slower, a driver peers around looking for a place to stop. Hide. The doors at the back open and a light from within shines out. Shrink into myself.

The cashier talks about somthing that happens every night. An institution of their own that I am a witness too but little to go on that permits me to be a part of it.

Across the road stands an institution as old as man. A place where the accused go to prove their worth before having a decision on the next institution to which they may remain as unknowns and forgotten. Or infamy may give them yet more forms of institution.

OK, I have said that word one too many times. What are synonyms, without being detrimental and punishing? None come to mind. I think school, jail, hospital, house, mind. Mind might be the only one that has no negative connotation.

Who else will write tonight? Donna and Vicki are here. I miss the rest of the group. I will meet a new group in January when I take another class. ALong with teaching I must be mad.

There is a chill in here. Air is on overtime. Must be hot in the kitchen. At least there is plenty of fresh, hot coffee.

I started a series of short notes to my son and his new wife. I want to creat a diary type thing that will continue during a pregnancy for which he will be in Iraq, and give it as a gift. Is this possible? How should I go abolut creating such a thing? I started jotting notes, thoughts really and reactions to being a new mother in law and a welcome to the baby growing. Private thoughts that I do not want to keep hidden. A year of being in the family, not meeting us till after the wedding and pregnancy begins, Teagan (daughter in law) is afraid of what awaits her. I want her to get to know us and then be able to read how we welcomed her from the start.

Maybe this is a lofty dream. One I want to attempt.