spring semester.

So it's been awhile now. Thank you to the person who commented...though I didn't read it until now, you were pretty accurate. A few days after that post he and I decided to take a break, and got back together a month later. It's been much better this time...I've pulled back and he, in turn, has reached out more. Things are going very well, and next month we'll celebrate our two-year anniversary.

Right now, my real focus is my future. I have one job for the summer, and am looking for another. I'm also trying to get an internship for the fall. Plus I'm taking 17 credits next semester. I had been planning on going to Israel with my cousin and brother over the summer, but my brother recently had knee surgery and won't be healed in time for the trip. I couldn't bear the idea of going without him, so I bailed on my cousin. I still feel guilty, and haven't spoken to her since I told her I wasn't going. I also don't think I could spare the vacation time from work. Making money is a priority this summer so that I'm able to support myself through my sophomore year. Right now I feel as though I rely on my parents too much. While my family is not "poor" by any stretch of the imagination, supporting four children is not an easy task, especially when one or two are in college.

I'm also worried about my brother. He came home over Christmas break only intending to stay a week or two, and ended up living there up until this point. My parents and other relatives confronted him about his issues with alcohol and drugs, and he has been in an outpatient rehab program since January. The strange thing is that they don't even know the half of it. I'm the only one in my family who knows everything my brother has been into. It's also very conflicting for me. On one hand, I want my brother to be safe and healthy, no question. On the other hand, this was supposed to be the time in our lives that we began to drink together. I want my brother to get better more than anything in the world, but I just hope his dependent personality was at fault, and it's not a question of alcoholism. I don't know how he will go about working on that, though. Right now he smokes like a chimney (a habit he picked up in an attempt to quit the harder drugs), but I really hope that doesn't become a permanent thing. My mother's side of the family has a history of cancer, and I hate to see him increasing his chances of contracting the disease.

Other than that, everything in my life is going fairly well. I'm working hard in school, which will hopefully pay off in the end. I have a set of friends that I'm living with next year, and all the other essentials: health, family, love, etc. I think that I'll begin posting some of my poems/lyrics on this as soon as I find them. Actually...I'll look now.