little bit left.

i don't know where it comes from, but there it is, always. lurking for me around the corner just when i expect it to ditch out .. every time it proves me wrong. i think i'm the most cynical, rational person around, with no high expectations for the human spirit left in me. and there i go again, spilling over with faith-- surprising myself, tripping over my words, amazed that i still have it in me to really believe in anything anymore. i think i'm sarcastic and hard and so jaded, but i'm a big ball of soft and i can't beat hope out of me- no matter how hard i try, no matter how much lack of it i see in other people.

my brother and i grew up playing Battleship, and Othello, and Monopoly, and War - we were a game playing family, at least for a few years. no one can make my brother and i laugh like we can each other. i'm talking full belly, obnoxious, long, hard laughs. his wife rolls her eyes, my mom calls us weird-- but we think we're the two funniest people we know. my brother is both the reason i can't believe i still have faith and the absolute living proof of every thing i want to believe isn't true but is. i guess i don't like to admit it but i give people second chances. i think people can bang their head and fuck up and destroy almost everything and then pick it all up and put it back together again. i've seen it happen. i've seen my brother fall so hard we were certain he was dead, way more than once. and just when i thought he had run out of lives to use up there he was, somehow still standing, this time with a baby in his arms and a wife and a miraculously fresh looking face. i've seen the dark sides of people (we all have, haven't we?) and part of me wishes i would just let in the thought that people are inherently bad, out for themselves, and not kind. but i know it's not true. i believe in fate, and things you dream at night coming true, and i do believe that things can turn on a dime (thanks Mol) and i wouldn't want it any other way. i'm waiting for my truly madly deeply- in every thing all the time. and sometimes it's heart wrenching to have faith that things will turn out the way they need to, that the improbable can happen--gut pulling, heart achingly painful. but fuck it. it's been 31 years and i don't see me changing anytime soon.