29/11/2003 - 3:02 p.m.

L'd�piment

I've been gone for quite a long time. I'm beginning to feel rather disconnected from the entire world, except Nathan. I haven't spoken to several of my good friends in quite some time. I owe a million people visits, letters, or e-mails because my life is wrapped so up in him I don't do very much else, and right now I feel awful about that.

I'm gaining a lot of the weight back that I had in high school. I very easily could fix this by simply eating on a schedule and leaving out caffiene and sugar, but for some reason I choose not to.

I have today and tomorrow left of Thanksgiving vacation, and I think that Christmas vacation cannot come fast enough, but I have the idea that it may be some sort of disaster or another.

On top of this finals are approaching, along with final projects and papers that need to be done. I've no idea what to do for most of them. I can do better than I have been doing in school. I don't know exactly why I haven't been.

I've been reading Catcher in the Rye for about the millionth time. When I first read it, I was so much younger than Holden, and now I am so much older than him: I'll be twenty in less than three months. Everyone tells me that this is not old, and it is not, but it is not an age I ever conciously realised I would reach someday.

Life is not as gloomy as I have portrayed it, though. This has probably been the best Thanksgiving of my entire life. It was spent with Nathan's family.

Thursday was a traditional meal at his paternal grandmother's house that included me, Nathan, his younger brother, his parents, his aunt and uncle and their daughter, and his grandmother. Generally there are quite a few more people invovled, but this was an odd year in a few ways I am not entirely certain of. It wasn't exactly comfortable in some way, but it was amiable. I felt like I was at least welcome though not entirely at home, much more like past holidays at my own grandparent's house. Thanksgivings for me the past few years have been at an uncle's house: nothing is comfortable, I have never felt as though I belonged or was wanted in the proceedings.

Friday was Nathan's mother's side of the family, which is immense. Well, compared to any amount of family I'm used to. I believe there were something like 32 people in the church basement for the combination Thanksgiving and Christmas celebration with relations from everyplace from Texas to Cedar Rapids. I knew fewer than ten of the people there, but I didn't feel like it mattered.

Nathan asked me last night if his family was too weird to be a part of. I've never thought so. I doubt his opinions of my own family will be the same. I have no great love for my family, it's true, but in a way I almost wish Nathan would like them, in a way to make up for my own dislike.

There are a lot of things going on inside my head at the moment that I would like to get sorted out here, but in a way I don't feel this is the place. Sometimes, I don't think I have any privacy any longer.

Just as last year, the first weeks of November I was rampant with Christmas expectations. Now that it's coming up on December, just as last year, my delight has cooled. I have the suspicion that in all actuality, I prefer an ideal of a joyous, snowy, giving Christmas I have living in the back of my brain to the actual dead-grassed, melencholy, let down of the event.

I am not as morose as I sound, but nothing more than morosity seems to be coming out of me at the moment.

I'm looking forward to ROTK. I'm surprised to realise how much my life has changed from the life I had at the relase of FOTR.

My novel, incidently, was a shambles. Perhaps I'll try NaNoWriMo again someday when I have the time. I still have the novel, and I will endeavor to finish it, though I doubt anyone but I will read it.

About the title, I'm not entirely certain what it means, but I'm pretty sure it's something to the effect of "The Glooming". It's French, and if anybody can enlighten me further, that'd be great.