20/03/2002 - 1:34 p.m.

Please, don't start that again.

Happy Birthday to Mr. Rogers. He's 74, the newspaper says. I don't care what other people say, I loved Mr. Rogers, and it was a good show. They stopped making episodes in August- I cried. Yes, I did. That was another part of my childhood dying. Mister Rogers' Neighbohood was such a comforting thing to have on television, because he cared about you. Mister Rogers wanted to talk to you. I knew he wasn't really talking to me, but I found it hard to believe that other people saw the same episodes as I did- he wouldn't say the same things to me that he did to everybody else. Which is a narcisstic (I think that's the word I want) sort of thought, I guess, but I did. It was nice to know that somebody on television cared about you.

I know, I'm waxing philosophical on a children's television show, but I've been thinking about the really incredible mood I've been in this past year. These things seem unconnected, but I'm such a different person than I have been. I'm certain the phrase "evil bitch" used to suit me better than anything else. I was downright evil and bitchy to everybody on a regular basis. So I'm asking myself, what's changed?

Well, there are prospects of goodness. I actually believe things are going to change and get better. I'm getting out of my house, and I'm going to college, and things can only get better. This year, I actually believe in love. Before this, I seriously believed that I would probably die lonely and old and dead in a house filled with cats, which was a pretty depressing thought. I'm not worried about that now.

I truly believe that "the greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return". Not because anybody needs someone else to validate their existance, but because it's important to feel needed. I didn't feel that last year at all. The same old people were treating me with the same old indifference, as they had always done.

I guess I've just been given a more optimistic line of thought, and I really prefer it. I call it silly romantic idealism from time to time, but I can't make myself abandon it. I don't want to be the person I was my junior and sophomore years because she wasn't very happy. She was worried about the past and convinced that eternity was so much shorter than it really was.

I've got years and years ahead of me, which I like. I have time to love, and time to live, and time to decide what to do with myself. People keep saying things like: if you don't do it now, you never will. And that's because they expect us all to get stupid desk jobs. Well, I know that's not me. I'm too stubborn to do it, so I'll have to do something else. I've got a built in mechanism to keep me from turning out normal and conventional, and if it fails me, I've also got somebody keeping an eye on me. I was worrying that my life would end this year, and I know it's not going to. That's what's different.

I guess that's what the Mister Rogers tie is, it's ended, but it's OK. Like my theories on death- it's ended, but it's OK.

(I had a much better quote for the title, but I can't remember exactly how it goes. This one is the secondary choice, as a voice of the reader rather than that of the author.)