When I was young, I spent hours praying that God would use me, use me, use me, even if it brought me pain. Usefulness meant productivity, worthiness, and meaning. I spent hours sitting beside my mother while she slept on the sofa. When she woke up she would rant on and on, crying, yelling (mostly yelling), nagging, bitching, complaining, reminiscing, spilling out secrets and laughing bitterly as her eyes closed tight. I spent hours hiding her pills and replacing them with red M&Ms.

"Tell me what to do."

"I don't know," I would say, "I really don't."

"No, you must help me. Tell me what to do. I need you to tell me what to do."

"How?"

"Just tell me. What should I do? What should I do?"

And that was exactly what I would do. Let go, I would tell her. You have to let go. Bite the bullet. Chin up. Move on. Detach yourself. Protect yourself. Keep going forward. Things will get better. It takes time. It takes time. You'll see. Everything will be alright.

My best friend once asked me why I kept giving him solutions to his problems.

"Sometimes," he typed on MSN, "I just want to talk."

I remember staring blankly at the computer screen and being stumped by that very simple sentence.

"Talk?? That's all?" I wanted to ask, "That's too... easy. That's all you really want?"

It is amazing how much your family shapes you without your realization. You have to fight it, mould it, learn from it, and understand it.

Sometimes I feel like my whole life is a frustrating endless struggle against myself. Yes and no, right and wrong, black and white, needs and wants and blurry lines and contradictions. Sometimes I feel like I'm perpetually stagnant, and yet every time I look back, it seems as though I'm making progress. I don't know what to make of it. I guess, it really does, take time huh.