Where do you go to hide?

I'm not unhappy very often. About a year ago that statement would have been quite different, sadness was often overwhelming for about a year. Looking back, I'd say it was entirely about coping skills. This time last year I'd stay in bed for a week, today I wore a pretty dress and pigtails and after an hour of meeting happy people and laughing with them, the world is my personal, pearl filled little oyster :) 8 hours of studying later life is so much more doable! 

It scares me sometimes because its almost entirely the people who make my life so happy. Not  only close friends but also acquaintances who share titbits about their lives in lively snatches of conversation, random shopkeepers who will give me rubber bands for free because they want to share in my urge to wear pigtails, total strangers who make jokes when the buses are half an hour late because everyone is equally annoyed and really, you might as well laugh. It's an odd sense of community in big city. Is that an Aussie thing? Because my experience of the States[LA and San Francisco] was that it was comparatively quite cold and alienating. SF not as much, but nowhere near as warm and welcoming as Melbourne.

This weekend was horrible. I was completely stressed out and felt like everything was out of my control. But, for once, instead of panicking, well, instead of only panicking, I sat down at 3am and wrote a looong detailed e mail to S, love of my life, keeper of my soul, which had, in a point system everything that was bothering me and why. It was such a catharsis. While writing I could hear her voice in my head, comforting, like a proper red rice and curry meal. By then end of it I was more than ready to attack all the situations, which I did. She laughed her ass off at how I answered all my own questions and anxieties but using all the things she would have and in a strange way did, say.  

So thats where I run to. To S, to people, to patches of grass in the sun and pigtails. Sometimes I forget that overcoming panic actually is about strategy. And warmth.