On Memory.

There are a lot of things I wish I could forget.

In that I'm not alone, I imagine. I'm sure a lot of people would say that they wish they could forget X or Y. But what is unusual in my case is that sometimes, only when I'm in a bad mood, I want to forget many of the good things I've experienced in life.

Occasionally I will look people up on the internet that I used to know. Just to see if they're alive, see if they look happy. I would sincerely like to know if joy always comes with the missing afterwards. I wonder if I can ever love someone without eventually having to face the reality that I will never see or talk to them again.

It can make you question whether it is worth meeting people at all.

These days, most of my friendships I have to admit are not very intense, intimate friendships. I might even say that I don't have very many friends anymore at all. It is a lot different than my life, say, a year or so ago. I am starting to become a very solitary creature. For some reason, I don't feel bad about this at all.

But every once in a while it makes me wonder if I'm doing something wrong. Because I used to have such close relationships with other people that I could never imagine living without them. But here I am. I have no friends now that I don't think I could live without.

Is there no golden mean here? Will I always have to have intense feelings toward other people to have good relationships with them? Because I'm all out of intense feelings these days.

There was a dream that I dreamed, a dream to forget.

An apathetic friend.

The further away I get from college life, the less I care about it.

It used to be that I was really broken up about the end of my life as a college student, and how much I missed the lifestyle and the friendships, but these days I am finding that more and more I do not miss it and do not care if my old friends have anything to say to me. That does not trouble me because I wish it were different, it troubles me because it is so opposed to everything I thought about myself.

It used to be that I firmly believed that all friendships could and should last forever, and that only a faithless friend says goodbye after life changes. But now, I am finding that the longer ago it is since I called someone, the more I think about just never calling them again. Friends whom I shared life with and thought warmly of, friends that I felt so much love for, and now...I just don't care.

Have I become a selfish person? Have I just become comfortable with my daily routine, apathetic toward the lives of others? Does this have something to do with becoming a counselor? I do not know.

Maybe I have just become like everyone else...perhaps this is how most people feel about friendships, and all along it was I who was missing out, not understanding why other people don't care about me - perhaps they did care, but were apathetic about showing it. I wish I knew.

It's been over a year since I left college, and it's been a good half a year since I made regular efforts to reach out to friends from my old life. More and more, I find that now that in my new life, I also don't care as much about being friends with people. They can reach out to me or leave me alone...I am apathetic. This troubles me.

I am afraid that my personality is changing, and I'm not sure if it's for the best.

There was a dream that I dreamed, a dream to care forever.

On jumping ship.

I had an encounter recently that made me angry.

It wasn't a very good reason to get angry - at least, if you don't mistake my anger for righteous anger. It wasn't really the carelessness towards something I cared about that made me angry.

I had an encounter a while back with someone who was deciding whether or not they wanted to leave the Catholic Church. I talked to them patiently about it and gently prodded and poked until it came out that they didn't believe what the Church taught because they never tried to learn why the Church teached it in the first place. I encouraged the person to "make the faith their own" and read some books or articles, they said they would "read," and we said goodnight.

Recently, the person spoke to me again. I brought it up and they said they were in the process of joining another Church. As we talked, it came out that they never did what they said they would do. They did not care about the truth. They said they still thought the Catholic Church was the Church Jesus founded, and yet they still wanted to leave because they "just wanted to be happy." They said they didn't read because they were afraid they would be convinced to stay...as if it couldn't be more clear that they were simply running away.

Well, I got angry and told them exactly how I felt about what they were doing. I suppose I wouldn't have been so hurt if it weren't for the fact that they lied. If they had said before that they had no intention of giving an equal chance to staying and going, then I would likely have had an entirely different conversation with them. As it was, though, I wasted my time on gentle encouragement and providing some of my own knowledge to try and help light their way. But really all they wanted was "Yeah, do it! Who cares what the Church has to say? It's only been around 2,000 years, they've never really thought about any of the cool heresies stuff we've revived discovered since the 60's!"

I wish this person had been as eager to learn and make informed decisions as people who had never even heard of the Catholic faith. All they wanted was to throw it away because it was too hard. They didn't want to go to confession. They didn't want to wrestle with finding what was true anymore. They just wanted to be happy. And I told them if that's what they wanted, that's what they would get. Because it's absolutely true. But people should want more than happiness. People should want greatness. And you will never be great if you do not care what is true.

There was a dream that I dreamed, a dream for truth.