I don't even know what I'm supposed to be anymore, and that's scary.

First off, you don't have to read this. I won't be mad if you don't. But I'm just putting things out in the open because I can't hold them in any longer. It's like I'm being torn apart from the inside out.

First off, it really pisses me off when I'm expected to keep secrets for people with the understanding that we're still friends, and then things change. I'm tired of being taken advantage of. Don't get me wrong, I'm completely open to hearing whatever problems you have, whatever's on your mind, and you can rest assured that I won't tell anyone else. But I'm tired of being strung along with the idea that we're friends, and then having shit happen to make things not ok, and then being blamed for the situation going wrong. There are a handful of you who already know about this situation.

Second, it's getting harder and harder to be home. This applies to any of the places I've called "home" this year. In the case of my "home" in Newberg, things are getting less and less stable as my stepdad prepares to sell the house and move up to Alaska, where my mom has been for the past three weeks. Once that happens, things are going to change drastically. And my parents don't seem to get it. My mom keeps trying to reassure me by telling me that I'm more than welcome to join them in Alaska after I graduate. (This is, of course, with the assumption that I'll be done with school by next June, which looks a lot more possible now than it did a month ago, but is still unlikely given the fact that I may end up changing majors -- still trying to figure out this decision. More on that below.) Of course, this is with their romanticized notion that a job's existence meand that I'm immediately qualified for it. Yes, I'm aware that there's a newspaper on Kodiak Island. No, that doesn't mean I'm going to be able to work there, or that I even want to -- I'm discovering more and more every day that I might not even want to have anything to do with newspaper writing anymore, thanks to Reporting 1 (aka the bane of my existence, worse than info hell, you get the picture.)

As for "home" here in Eugene, and I know a lot of people are going to respond to this with "What did I tell you?" but I'm finding out just how complicated living with a couple can be. Yes, there are clear benefits to this, the most visible one being a mere $230 in rent, which is almost unheard of for an apartment this nice, in a convenient location. But, the difficulties are starting to outweigh the benefits. I'm starting to solidify my conviction that people should not be acting "married" before they're actually married, or at the very minimum, engaged. Not dating. Not just "in a relationship." And all of the crap I've observed -- one person not being able to make decisions without consulting the other, the "Making Marriage Work" DVD that showed up in our living room one day -- is only strengthening my own desire for independence, which is a tough prospect considering I have "honey" this, "honey" that, mushy bullshit being rubbed in my face all the time.

And it's getting more and more clear that I'm more and more of the third wheel. At the beginning of the year, Brian and I had joint responsibility for the apartment. Legally, on paperwork, adding Bess's name to the lease should have only given her some responsibility as well, NOT shifted it so that Brian's in charge, with Bess as his "pseudo-wife" also in charge and me having no power in any situation and therefore being expected to follow Brian's rules. WHICH WILL NOT BE HAPPENING. I will move out before I get walked on. I'm his roommate, not his child.

While all this is going on, I'm still very much in the process of trying to figure out where I can fit in and thrive in the world. I don't stand out in any particular way. I'm not the person whom you can easily pick out of a crowd. Most people probably wouldn't notice if I just escaped to Alaska and never came back.

I'm discovering, as the year goes on, that I'm not cut out for journalism anymore. Even as sure as I was before I left high school -- so sure, in fact, that I declared my major and had my concentration pretty much set in stone before my freshman year at UO -- now I don't know. But it's too late to change now. I'm a junior in college. Any sort of change at this point would guarantee me another year or two of college, more if I were to pick one of the majors that takes a full four years to complete. So unless anyone has any insight, I'm pretty much stuck limping through another year of journalism, graduating somewhere in the middle of my class. And I don't have any sort of "thing" that would make me stand out from everyone else. I'm not good enough at what I do to pursue an internship, I can't write for an on-campus publication because interviewing scares the crap out of me, and I don't have any special skills. So, I'm basically trying to survive instead of being able to get as much as possible out of my time here.

I need to figure my life out. I need answers. I need to catch a break. Unfortunately, I don't have time for that last one.