new plan

this happened at 4am

Shorty scared the hell out of me on my way to the bathroom, and now I can’t go back to sleep. I haven’t had this problem since high school, but it used to happen occasionally: I wake up sometime after three, and stay awake until bedtime the next night.

I was lying in bed thinking fairly clearly, but now a lot of it is gone. And I was starving.

• ·         My mom is probably so rude to me lately because she’s mad (sad?) that I didn’t come back to the nest.
• ·         Times. Times are good so I don’t feel like I’m waiting around the whole day for things to happen.
• ·         I really need to find an India House buddy, fast.
• ·         I wonder if Grammy had a spice rack that I can use.
• ·         I still didn’t call Uncle Jeff. Fail.
• ·         Thinking about whether I could get away with using someone’s ID to go to the gym and take pilates classes. Alternatively, how to rent Pilates DVDs for free.
• ·         How to make friends. Shit.
• ·         I need to finish my thesis so I don’t feel guilty reading about other things
• ·         Starting a book group (feminist, etc.)

Now I’m playing solitaire and watching the sun rise like it’s Christmas morning (except I used to read Redwall and Harry Potter and I certainly never used to eat) and hoping that somehow these things work out.

gray

I have not succeeded in running away from the feeling of sitting alone on a rainy day, desperate for social interaction and knowing that by tonight, I may not have left the house.

Sometimes I hate summer. I'm reading the internet instead of working and I'm looking out the window at cars waiting at the traffic light, thinking "is this all there is?" I know that in two hours things will have shifted again and there will be people here and someone will have cooked something at least semi-edible, but for now, I'm feeling a little down about my social life.

I have time. I'll meet people. The rain will pass.

observations

is it weird that I like watching you squeeze limes?

I don't know if it's the actual squeezing (hand and arm muscles at work) or the fact that you just know that it needs lime. Or maybe the look of concentration on your face as you measure just the right amount.

probably your (visible) sense of taste.

same old, same old

From your perspective, this seems like the stupidest fucking idea ever. But I didn't want my four years of things like community and support and progress and learning to be a hiatus--I want them to be my life. I'm too prone to depression and not enough of a morning person to bother with anything less than living my passions.

I need more than bars and Pier 1 stores to keep me going.

I have to figure out how to do better than living and dying by federal funding (of nonprofits and/or my future education and meals), but I guess that's where all the skills people have listed on my letters of recommendation come in.

teaser

I feel like I'm doing this right.  Not that "everything has changed" or that "suddenly things come together," but that I'm working things out a little better, and I've found a person to do them with.

it feels like sunrise. not the first day, but a new one.

Ani Difranco- Reprieve

This album took me through two summers ago, when I was commuting and sad and empowered all at once. Commuting because I had the CD (it was one of the last CDs I bought; it's from a record store that caters to all the punk kids in my hometown) in my car and listened to it over and over.

I would get halfway through A Spade by the time I got to the parking lot. I was usually late, so I wouldn't finish the song, and in the evenings I would return to my car, exhausted, and the first thing I'd hear would be the few lines she speaks, about the responsibilities of women.

I used to sit at the long light near the park, singing to Half-Assed. I thought it was funny because I had just driven between fields and was about five minutes from my windowless cubicle.

I loved that job, though. The CD just reminded me that I couldn't do it forever.

like a toddler learning to walk

I have a job and housing for the next year. I have coffee supplies. I can now cook chicken in a pan on a stove. I have clean dishes and clean clothing and I know how to find a doctor. I can take the bus to my appointment tomorrow. I have to submit my work hours and make sure I do not starve to death in August, but these I can do. Success.

one step at a time

I have heartburn so bad that it is coursing through my entire upper body. I have a pounding headache and a sore back and I'm so tired I could cry. But I'm more than halfway done with the weekend from hell (as in, moving from the fourth floor of my dorm to temporary housing with my grouchy parents) and I'm still alive.

oh, and I graduated, mostly-sort-of. I was so worked up about the moving thing, and the asking people to store my stuff thing, and the working out an apartment thing, that the actual graduation was barely on my radar. (anddddd I still need to finish up my thesis, but that is much less scary than this moving-out-while-being-glared-at crap.)

I'm sure it will hit me eventually that a lot of my friends are leaving, and that next September I will not go back to school (although AmeriCorps is placing me at Rochester City School District...good transition, Youth Year!). but until then, I'm really proud of getting this far without breaking down, damaging any relationships beyond repair, getting disowned, or having a panic attack. success!

"surprise"

Life lesson of today: Food is really really good. Stop skipping meals. You will find that you want to spend less time in the fetal position and more time getting shit done.

badly written and smacking of every time I have ever spoken to a counselor

please be proud of me even though I did not take the easy route. please be proud of me for not taking it.

please be proud of me for growing up and for getting over.

please remember that in other places it is not expected that you finish college, and please be proud of me because I did.

please be proud of me because I earned A's and B's, even though I could have done better.

please be proud of me even though my grades dropped as I found my passion.

please be proud of me for finding a passion. and for finding a person. and for loving my friends. and for trying.

please be proud of me in spite of my mistakes. please be proud of me as a leader and as an activist. I want more than anything to be honest with you and have it be all right.

this is not in the mother's day spirit

It was about last July, when I came back to my parents' house after visiting Rochester, when I realized that there are some things Mommy can't fix.

that sentence there does not convey how heartbreaking that realization was. I climbed into her lap (please imagine this; I'm almost five-four and she's about five-six, and she was sitting in an armchair not exactly expecting it) and lo and behold, it did not erase the hurt of the week's events.

fleetwood mac

they're one of my mom's favorite bands, and in the 90s the Dance album was one of the handful of CDs that she kept in the car. she had Rumors too, I think, but played The Dance more often.

The songs, now, are inscribed into the back of my brain. lyrics, music, backstory (since of course my mother knew which band members had dated or been married), images of the streets of Bucks County flying past the minivan windows. She probably played it in Florida, too. I was a smart enough kid; I grasped the emotions and the events even five and ten years before puberty.

I was a damn late bloomer. The Sign of Womanhood [tongue-in-cheek...I know plenty of people with uteruses that are not women and even more who are not "ladies"] that happens in this century to people who are certainly not adults did not arrive until I was almost fifteen. Tenth grade. Normal emotions started their debut when I got off gluten--the end of my senior year of high school.

It's weird to look back on the changes in how much I could feel. and the ability to have reasonable human relationships. it's weird to remember sort of generally loving "The Chain" because it was catchy and because the music was good, and also to remember being eighteen and hearing my own brand new actual heartwrenching yet energized longing in the same words. Driving home from work with the windows down, using my left hand to mimic the drums and feeling my own pounding heart.

also, it's funny knowing exactly why I was so fascinated with Christine McVie's low voice. thanks, puberty.

another one: my sister and I have been able to mimic every guitar twang in My Little Demon probably since she could talk. weird now that I know what he means. To have been there, trying to keep it together for someone whom I'd decided deserved my best. To even know the difference between my best and my worst...I guess I know now to value the ability to know how I'm relating to other people. (knowing when it's okay to open up, though; now there's a challenge.)

once upon a time

I gave away my heart more than once before I learned you should wait until you're going to get one in return. and now I have.

I could have claimed to Know Some Things about myself at the age of fifteen when I met the teacher with the hair. Fast-forward through the boring parts to the end of junior year when I drunkenly made out with a friend of a friend. eye-opening. I was right.

and then...more. less to fast-forward through this time, to D-Day on the quad and your car and fifteen minutes ago in the sun.

urgency

it would have been okay if you had followed me out of your car


but it's okay that you didn't.

collection of images

upheaval.
control.
balance.
fear
longing
excitement
isolation
finality

like getting up in the middle of  the night and opening my bedroom door to the pitch-dark hallway. I know what should be there, but I don't know what will be there.

I'm operating on blind faith in myself that I will be able to get up in the morning [in both senses]. I haven't always trusted myself, but some days I think that if I don't trust myself then I can trust no one. and most days, I think that's certainly true in matters of What to Be When I Grow Up.

I've got no anchor. I have nothing but what I've built myself. but that's not so bad.

I feel like now is the time in my life when I should be rereading Thoreau and Aldous Huxley.