Ghost Bride

It's much simpler in terms of black and white, love and hate. Anger is easy. Returning to the gray area is the challenge.

I am ambivalent about Saturday. Having never cared for dressing up, I can't say my feelings have changed. So for approximately six hours or so, I will be strapped into a piece of brown and blue fabric and have ritual paints marked across my face. (My hair is short and styled unevenly, with one side longer than the other, so fortunately I won't be subject to scorching irons.) Then I will be coralled with the rest of my comrades into a dining facility before being herded into a building next to an institute for disabled children, where we will engage in the rituals required for those "coming-of-age" who have survived junior year.

Actually, I am more excited about the thing at JC's. I'm not a dancer, but I have no problem with playing the Wii.

I think the only reason prom has any significant impact on me whatsoever is that it feels like a closing ceremony to this turbulent year. The surreal thing is how I spent probably ninety percent of the year clunking my head on the desk in distress, and when I actually look up, time's almost up. I think about all the goals I had in mind at the beginning of the year; very few of them actually happened. But I don't think I mind so much.

I've never been religious, but somehow I've developed the mindset this year that things happen with a purpose. I don't believe in some otherworld deity dictating what happens. But from an artistic perspective, if I find myself dealing with conflict, I latch onto the belief that I was meant to experience the anger or hurt. You can't say you have lived your life to the fullest if you have never felt the wounded wrenching feeling that swallows your entire body whole.

For a long time, I wondered why everything seemed to go wrong during that turbulent month of April.

The tournesol dream was inaccurate. I am the one who needs to forgive.