I ran into someone from my past while getting coffee on Sunday. It's been about 10 years since I've seen him and I was shocked by how he had aged. Gone was the strapping young enthusiastic happy canadian boy in his 20's and in his place was an older, greying around the temples somewhat bitter and tired older man.

Running into him, I wonder if I have aged as much as he has. I can't tell. Too me I look almost exactly the same, maybe a lot heavier, a little more wrinkled, but still the same. And I am more secure, more confident and happier than I was when I met this young man, so for me aging has been good in some ways. Not that I like aging. I hate it and I fight it every step of the way and spend way too much on time and money on ways to hold back the clock. But other than the physical ravages of aging, emotionally, intellectually, psychically, psychologically I feel so much better than I did in my youth.

Sometimes in unexpected moments, I mourn my past, but those times are few, so as not to even occur as an exclamation point in any moment of my life.

After we had parted, I wished that I could meld my personality back then to my personality now. I was so different in my 20's than I am now. I can't even tell if anything of me back then has survived, although I'm sure something has. I want the best of both worlds, but I don't know if that's possible anymore.

I was in a seminar where the leader said we live in an "either or" world. We're either this or that. He said that this either or thinking is just a mental construct and that we can live live in "and" world. We can be this and that and everything in between. I used to believe him, at least for the time, when I was in that seminar. But now, I'm not so sure. Can I still be who I was in my 20's and still be who I am in my 30's? Is there a compromise somewhere? I guess I shall have to find out.

So much as happened since my last post, which coincidentally were two days before the WTC/Pentagon attacks. I not only had to deal with the terror and fear the September 11 incidents engendered, but my best friend Amy had a relapse in her brain cancer and was put into a nursing home. Twin tragedies for me, like the twin World Trade Center Towers in flame.

I suppose I shall write about it more sometime, but right now I'm still in processing mode.

They say disasters come in three or is it pairs? I'm not really sure which. But here's a semi-disaster. I tracked my first love down on the Internet. On a whim, I typed his name into Google and found the website for a film production company he just started. I also found a review of some commercial/industrials films he produced and they said he was brilliant and cutting edge. There was a picture of him and he looked exactly the same as I remembered him. He doesn't look like he's aged at all. I don't why I consider this a semi-disaster, but somehow I do. Part of me really wants to get in touch with him and reconnect and the other part says now. I mean, do I really want to hear what a great life he's having, do I want to see a picture of wife and kids? For me, maybe it's enough to just know that he's alive and doing well. I don't know.

Then there's that small part of me that say the past is dust and besides, he was the one who walked out on me, walked out on our friendship, hung up on me after I told him I was living with a man, much to my surprise since by that point in our relationship we were nothing more than very, very good friends.

Men keep saying they don't understand women, well as a woman, I don't understand men or anyone who would walk out without explanation on a deep love and friendship. As you can tell, I still haven't quite gotten over his walking out on me. I want to get over it but to get over it, I have to understand it and I don't understand it all. I have a half written play about what would happen if were to meet years later by accident. I thought that I wrote about us meeting, I could speculate on why he walked out on me. That play was hard to finish because I wanted to write what was true, but I don't think I'll ever find out the truth.

And do you know what is the most absurd bit in this whole situation? He probably doesn't even remembe what happened. The incident doesn't even occur as a miniscule blip on his consciousness. Whereas in my life, I have speculated on it off and on, obsessed, paid thousands of dollars worth in therapy and group work to try and figure it out and I still haven't come to an explanation that makes sense.

My friends tell me that love doesn't make sense, that love can turn bitter, can turn into hatred and make people do mean things in the name of love. And I guess that's the part I don't understand. Love is supposed to expand you, to make you want to do good things, at least that's what it's done for me. It's never made me that mean, perhaps cruel for a few minutes but never mean. I've never said or did anything I couldn't take back. In fact, I've been accused of holding back my punches in the name of love. I've never wanted my love to hurt people, at least not consciously.

Speaking of love, many of my friends have an urge to merge, to couple, to want to have children. I've had the opposite reaction. I have, for the time being, lost my urge to couple and to have children. If my city is ever attacked, I think I will do better by myself because I know how to do that. I don't how to survive in a couple. And as for children, I don't know if I want to bring children into the world right now.

What future would a child of mine to have? I support our government's current response to terrorism. I don't think we were left with a choice. Whether we attacked or not, we still would have been attacked. The Taliban left us with very few choices. The problem is this war will take a long time, longer than four years, maybe even longer than eight years, no one knows. All I know is we will all be living with this war for a very long time and I just don't know if I want to bring children into this kind of world.

Speaking of the war, the peaceniks bug me, only because they complain about our government's actions but don't offer any workable solutions of their own. In this current world we live in, you can't just complain without offering a solution because then it's a waste of everyone's precious time. I support their right to protest, which is a freedom our country was founded on, I just wish their protests had some kind of relevancy. The peaceniks, I fear are in danger of protesting themselves into irrelevancy and that would be sad because their voices do need to be heard. But, they'll never be heard if they don't start making sense.

It is hard not to live in fear right now about what the future will bring, and it takes every bit of control I have to not freak out, but I know I cannot do that. If we all do that, then the terrorists have won. So I write and I keep writing and I obsess about small things like finding my first love's website, because these small things keep me grounded, keep me in control, make me want to keep going on. And perhaps at this point, to keep going on, is all that counts right now.

God, I'm so bummed. I had just finished posting my feelings about watching the PBS show Changing Stages. I thought I hit the post and publish button but I hit the post button instead and I lost 30 minutes of writing. This is so unfair! And now I'm too tired to recreate and I don't remember what I wrote since it was so off the cuff. Such a bummer.

Perhaps I'll rewrite it tomorrow. And it was good, so good.


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No other posts this month ... too distraught and depressed. Besides 9/11, my best friend's brain tumor got worse and she became a veggie a few days after the attacks. It was a horrific month for me. Check October posts.
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No blogging for awhile. Don't know why ... just didn't feel like it, I suppose.

I did a Master Cleanse diet from August 9 - 17. This juice fast was very popular in the late 1980's in the crunchy granola health food circles and in Europe. I did my first one back then. You drink nothing by freshly squeezed lemon juice, water, grade B maple syrup and cayenne paper for 10 days at a minimum. You're also supposed to drink a natural laxative tea to help get the stuff out of your system. Also recommended is a salt-water flush, where you drink a quart of water with two teaspoons of sea salt. The stuff goes right through in about three hours and is supposed to be like a cleansing bath for your colon. The lemonade diet is supposed to rid your body of all accumulated buildup of toxins and poisons, unclog your arteries, and move out whatever else isn't supposed to be in your body.

The first time I did the Master Cleanse Diet, I was deathly ill for a couple of days. I had massive headaches and bizarre drug flashbacks, most likely due to all the toxins and poisons coming out of my system. My skin cleared up incredibly at the end and I felt cleaner somehow. I won't begin to tell you the stories of what was coming out of my body; they're horrific. But I suppose, better that they come out than stay inside of me right?

This time the symptoms weren't that bad. The first couple of days I had mild headaches and felt a little ill, but that was it. I had never done the salt flush before, so I decided to try it.

The salt flush was terrible. Since I grew up near the ocean and had been swimming since I was a babe, I have innumerable memories of swallowing ocean salt water from near death drowning experiences. Drinking the salt flush brought those memories back in amazing technicolor; some of which I didn't remember and had blocked. And my body had memories of it too. It was hard to drink the salt water without wanting to gag and having experience of drowning. It was very strange.

The salt water flush made my stomach hurt very badly and it was scary what was coming out of me, despite the fact that besides the lemon juice concoction and a cheating handful of almonds, I wasn't putting anything else into my mouth.

I lost about 6 pounds which I expect to gain back once I start eating again, but I'm very glad that that whatever was in my colon is gone now. I started to take the phrase, "Don't look back" very seriously during my cleansing diet and my countless trips to the bathroom.

But now I've finished the Master Cleansing Diet and I hope I can get back to writing and exercising, which I put off during my juice fast. I miss both terribly. Well, that and eating and cooking of course.