an ode to my early twenties.

 

There was a period of my life when I felt light, carefree. Light as a feather. I'd swing and twist and nearly lift my toes right off the ground to fly. I knew there were consequences, but when they came, I dealt with them casually, flippantly, did the minimal amount to make them go away so I could go back to feeling infinitely small and able to be blown every which way by the universe.

 

This lightness, it wasn't always a good thing. It's doesn't inspire much hope for digging your heels into the ground and holding steady.

 

Steady. Steady, now.

 

In my early twenties, geez, nothing felt steady. Not my living situation, my bank account, my relationships, especially my means of expressing my emotions. No, I was light. Too light for steady. A constant state of flux means lots of wonderful, beautiful change. But it also means nothing is certain, stable.

 

There was nothing sturdy about my existence.

 

Light is good, though, for a number of reasons. It allows for curiosity, adventure, learning to compromise and improvise. It's recklessness and pushing the boundaries and finding out how it feels when you say nothing when every fiber of your being screams 'Take a stand!"

 

I have this vision of myself, my early twenties self. I'm expelling and consuming so much energy, I'm feeling like I could be blown miles by one mouthful of breath sent in my direction as a gust. I'm so light that the smallest thing, a smell, a chord, one word can send me reeling to further boundaries in my emotional spectrum than I ever previously knew possible. I'm learning at every turn so much. I'm gobbling it all up so willingly. Why wouldn't I?

 

But I mean, there's the other side of that too.

 

I'm spending my last 200 dollars on that pair of jeans that make my butt look the best it's ever looked, because what could possibly be more important than a pair of jeans that fit perfectly? I'll pay my phone bill next month, I swear. And then I'll swear off jeans completely in the next sentence, but it doesn't matter. I'm too light to be reached and dragged down. I'll just float away from it all.

 

It was a time to abuse my body and my mind, really put it through the test of everything it can take.

 

There's something to be said about being willing to completely let go of everything around you. Relinquish control. I'm not so good at that now, things weigh down on me, hold me in place,  prevent me from throwing back those five extra shots. Or maybe it's the feeling the next day etched into my memory from being repeated one too many times.

 

Either way, I'm heavier now, in a sense. And that's fine. Really, it is. I mean, it's just one of those things I think that happens with time. You brush up against things and the friction leaves their residue and pretty soon you're covered in parts and pieces of everything you've ever run into, and the build up makes you heavier. Or something like that.

 

Isn't it hilarious how people never change? Isn't it heartbreaking to realize that we have to anyway?

 

When you're young, when you're light, there's still hope that one day you'll collide into one another full speed again. They'll catch up, or you will, or you'll find a way back to each other through darkened alleys and fields of wildflowers. It's easier. It helps you to stay light to think this way. You're never as naive as when you tell yourself that you're going to be forever friends with the person that just drove away from you.

 

I mean, you've just given them part of your heart. You feel lighter just from it's lack of mass in your chest cavity.

 

  

Dearest self. You did light like a champion. It's possible that you did the very best you could have done with what you had. Maybe no one could have done it better in this body, hooked up to this mind. Certainly no one could have done it the exact same way. No one could have possibly ended up in the exact same places and time that you did.

 

I came out whole.

 

That time is over.

 

I may be heavier, but it's not necessarily a bad thing. I feel whole, sturdy, up to the challenge. And sometimes, every now and then, I still feel slivers of light hitting me at the right angle. And I dance and float in them.

things i'd like on facebook if liking things on facebook wasn't so damn uncool

-The line 'you are the smell before rain, you are the blood in my veins' from that one Brand New song that reminds me of early college. Like, before I even had an ipod, which isn't really saying much because I jumped on that train a little late, I think.


-The way Rachel Ries' voice make me want to cry and laugh and howl at the moon all at the same time when she's singing Valentine, NE.


-Really good gchat conversations that go down when my boss is basically looking over my shoulder but I'm too fast and superior at minimizing my shit for him to catch on. Oh, I'm typing fast? Must be responding to a pressing work issue.


-Driving without talking on the phone.


-Actually, not knowing where my phone is for extended periods of time. Not in the way that it's lost because I'm careless or negligent and I've dropped it or left it somewhere, but in the way that I don't need to be connected to anyone that way right now. And that's totally fine.


-Seeing my parents hold hands.


-Sliding my feet into flip flops for the drive home from work. Better yet, taking off my shoes completely and walking on grass that's still a little cooler than the air temperature because it hasn't been warmed by the sun yet. Even better yet, not wearing shoes. Period.


-The knowledge that summer is so much closer ahead of us than further behind us.


-The way it feels when I'm holding my niece and talking to her about all the stuff I'm going to teach her and all the things we're going to do and she stops crying and opens her eyes a little bit and just looks at me. Like, "Okay, tell me more."


-Planning long car rides and concert trips and canoeing adventures over glasses of bourbon.


-The excitement of realizing you have enough coins on DrawSomething to buy more colors. I swear sometimes I think the only reason I'm still playing it is the draw to get more colors.


-Mashed potatoes.


-The moment when you could easily let yourself fall down the endless hole of worry and despair about something and everything being uncertain and not having a time line about All The Important Life Events and why at 25 you're still more worried about scheduling a hair cut than going to the dentist and then you suddenly merge onto the highway and put on your sunglasses and look around and don't let yourself go there today. Because in all reality, there's not a whole lot you'd do differently. And fuck 'em if they can't take a joke.


-Noticing when I get home that my plants have grown so much since the last time I saw them. And feeling so proud.



-The routine that goes along with spending my evening reading at the park. The acquisition of a drink before I leave. The spreading of the blanket. The leaning against a tree to get into just the right position. The finding of my page. The settling in. The getting lost. The realizing it's almost dark and packing up.


-Preparing play lists for each new season.


-The building anticipation at work all day, every Friday.

i'll know it when i find it.

Do we all have some vague idea of what our future safe space of dreaming-and-scheming, creative projects, licking our wounds, laughing with our favorite characters, and laying our heads to rest will look like?

 

You know, home.

 

The home that when you walk in, you feel like the weight of the world has temporarily floated off to bother someone else for a change. The way your parent's house felt until one day, it didn't.

 

You know the one.

 

It comes in blurry half-frames and fleeting visions. Sometimes you look out the window of your car as you speed by and see a tree, THE TREE, that could someday, someday, provide perfect shade in the backyard of your eclectic little bungalow.

 

At least mine is an eclectic little bungalow, on the water, doused from every angle with the perfect combination of shade from massive trees and sun from the light steeping through. For some people maybe it's a brownstone, or a loft, or a sprawling mass of a structure set against a background of fields upon fields of flowers. But mine, mine is old and small. A place with character. Something that's passed the test of time. Something that needs a little TLC, so I can build a bond, take some sense of pride. A labor of love.

 

When I think of my place, what I'm working to find so I can work for it and perfect it and make it my own, I just feel my shoulders raise up toward my ears and my eyes squint and my mouth press into a little smile. Because I know what it will feel like, what it will sound like, what it will smell like. I have ideas of what I'd like it to look like, but that's not for me to decide, not fully.

 

But when I find it, I'll know.

 

Because it will be home.

 

A place where I will pour glass upon glass of wine and crank up Fleetwood Mac on the record player some nights whilst silly-dancing around with my best friends and laughing until we fall asleep in piles of mismatched blankets upon cushions and couches and beds with the windows open and a breeze whispering through. Have I mentioned the window treatments? Think vintage scarves of all patterns and colors sewn together and draped over a hand-crafted wooden rod. Yes, I dream in detail. And window treatments.

 

It will be a place where I'll come home and sit in my shaded backyard and pull weeds and talk to my plants and cry after a particularly draining day at work. Because no matter what you do, some days are just due for a good cry. God, the garden. So much green. And edible things. And blooms big and small. It will be my greatest pride.

 

It will be a place where I center the main living space around a fireplace and not a tv, because when I live, I like to be engaged and not plugged in. That doesn't mean I'm not going to have TV, because I like watching movies on plasma as much as the next 2012-ite... but really, I don't want to center my life around it.

 

Oh, I will have bookcases upon bookcases. For books. Books for days rainy and days sunny. Books for every occasion. I already have quite the collection, but by then I'll have doubled, tripled the volumes, with built in shelves, artfully displayed. And knick knacks and keepsakes from the travels of my own and those who love me.  But mostly, books. I will be surrounded by books and arty little prints and big colorful posters. 

 

I can see my front porch now. It's a sprawling affair.  And my front door, oh, it will be yellow. Or green. Or purple! I don't even know yet. My house and I haven't met, I'll wait to consult her personality for such a decision. But I can almost see her. She's beautiful. Just knowing she's out there, my little refuge from the world, it makes me feel better. I will find her.

 

 

I can almost see it. I'm so anxious for it to get here.

leaping.

Do you ever put yourself out there and end up getting burned for it?



I know I do.


Actually, it is my personal preference to only associate with people who are willing to put themselves out there. For what is mostly irrelevant, but the willingness to make a figurative leap is non-negotiable. We're not talking about blindly jumping off emotional cliffs like lemmings, so much as having something deep down that makes you tick, that matters enough that when it comes down to it, you'll put yourself out there for it.  The more people I meet, the rarer a trait I find this to be; people like to keep their heads down with the rest of the herd it seems.


My friends and I joke about it sometimes, that feeling we all crave. "Let's get all hopped up on whiskey and take some risks!"


But really, it's not just the liquid courage or the laughter or the foolishness in behavior that usually comes with finding your niche; it's something hidden from the surface that has to be felt to be believed in.



It's having something you care about enough to take a leap of faith and the willingness to suffer the consequences- whether it be financial, a falter in stride, humiliation, heart break.



The leap that forces pride, despite most of our strongest instincts, into the back seat. It's passion, it's the glint in your eye, it's a constant and insatiable hunger for whatever it is that keeps you up nights.


It's always wanting more.


I was just thinking about the leap. I've always really liked the feeling right after, sort of a free fall before the result reveals itself, the euphoric knowledge that you found it within yourself to jump anyway, regardless of what happens. No one can take that away.


Getting to the jump though, standing on the mental ledge and forcing yourself off, that's the hard part.


In truth, it's almost never only about the outcome for me, which I know is a little hard to believe, but I've given this a great deal of thought and, at least for me, it's really true. Even when the end result doesn't pan out to my advantage and I'm thrown off course or worse, I'm still just about always glad to have taken the leap, to have risked, to have had enough passion coursing through my veins that I was willing to have things go either way just to know how the cards would fall. That's doesn't mean it's easy, though.


Knowing the result, that's the payoff.


But taking that leap of faith, sending that letter bursting with emotion or moving to that city on a whim, that's proof that you're still more than just alive, it shows you're engaging, that you're living. It's a way to finally clear the air or an opportunity to fall on your face and lose all your money, but maybe you at least discovered some good restaurants along the way- as I found out first hand in both cases.

Anyway, I'm working on taking some leaps here coming up. I'm inching up to the ledge and looking down. I know I'll jump, and though I don't know exactly what will happen, I know there will be results both good and bad.  I also know, without a doubt, that I'll be glad I took the chance instead of standing in place.


Cheers to the feeling of your stomach falling through your feet, and cheers to finding a soft spot to land.

wiping away the dust.

I was going through my old drafts today, little snippets of discarded insight, when I came across the passage below. I wrote it about the year I spent in Kentucky, living hotel-to-hotel, as a union organizer. I was 22 and it was my first job out of college.


I'm so glad I found it, a little glimpse of summer in the middle of January.


---------------
7/29/11

There was something that I loved about walking out of my hotel room on a summer morning, when the air was still cool enough and everything was still damp, before the sun scorched mad and forced the dew to evaporate.

 

 

I never had to be at the office until 10. TEN! Do you know how long I'd already been awake by then? Hours. I almost never had to rush around in the morning to get ready, and if I did it was because I'd taken too much time eating breakfast, gotten engrossed in my book, let the shower water caress me longer than usual.

 

 

My walk was cheerful then. I was approached once walking into a gas station by an older gentleman who asked me if he's seen me reading the news. I grinned and told him it wasn't me and he said "Darling, you've got the aura of a movie star." I told him he made my entire day, and it had. I felt pretty, assured.

 

 

I guess having a career at 22 will give you a false sense of confidence.

 

 

Those mornings, they stick with me.

 

 

It's really one of the most lovely times to be by yourself. You have time and your full attention to devote to the subtle changes around you as morning gives in and the meat of the day begins to take shape. I had a lot of mornings like this, in Kentucky. All the time in the world to myself and I think I realized that I needed to relish in it a little. I almost never turned on my televisions in the room. I loved that. I don't prefer to spend my time that way. I made friends that invested their time in hiking and tennis and seeking out adventure. At night I'd drink wine and soak in the bathtub while reading a book almost every night.

 

 

I was lonely, I remember that. At least for part of the time. But I think I settled in to a point where even that faded.

 

 

I miss it.

 

 

I miss those mornings and the freedom and the frustration and the challenge.

an exersize in happiness

This morning on his way to work Matt got into a car crash at 60 mph while we were on the phone and it was fucking terrifying and I'm still shaken up about it and I wasn't even in the car.

I tried to write about it earlier, but I can't yet so maybe tomorrow.

He's going to be fine.

So I'm going to write about something else.

On the whole, I'm not particularly good at measuring my own happiness. I've gotten better at looking around and nodding acknowledgment to those moments when I'm drunk with joy in the last year or so, with making sure I'm present and aware at the happiness I'm feeling, but in general I feel pretty ho-hum about life.

It hasn't always been this way and I don't know how I got here.

Sometimes I wonder what is really important to me.

It seems like there are so many unknowns right now as I claw and climb my way to steadier footing. So I decided to jot down in about two minutes some things that are important to me, it seems like whatever comes out quick may be things I need to acknowledge and reach for foremost. 

So here we go, here is what I know:

Let's take an ultimate goal, we'll call it happiness. What are the things that will be able to get me there?

 

I know that I love the outdoors.

I know that I need time alone.

I know that I need to cut loose every once in the while.

I know I hate to cook.

I know that I don't want a ton of money, but more a comfortable life among a beautiful landscape.

I know I don't want to be surrounded with commercialism or material, plastic people.

I know I want to be in love.

I need adventures and cannot stand tedium and routine.

I am a good listener

I love to read

I love to do hands-on activities

I love music

I know I need to be closer to Nan. She's having a rough time.

I like to be autonomous

I know I don't like rules

I know I want to live on the water

I know I need to live an active and healthy lifestyle that doesn't include watching TV all day or even every day and I can't make that an option- sitting around only depressed and un-motivates me

I know I get sucked into laziness when I'm unhappy

I know I need intelligent intellectual conversations

I know I love to learn

I know I stand up for myself and for that's true and right in my own mind, even when odds are against me

I know I hate injustice

I know I like to write

I know it takes a lot for me to get close to people

I know I need exploration and adventure

I know I get overwhelmed in crowds unless I'm in the right mindset

I know I can be incredibly charming, social, and charismatic when I'm in the right mental state

I know I'll always want to go to the party

I know I have a tendency to just do things. Sometimes without thinking them logically through.

 

 

So there's what the top layer of my mind knows.

 

 

I could really stand to organize things up there.

 

Sara

 

 

 

i guess i'm home.

When I moved back to Indianapolis, I knew in my heart it was totally temporary.

I never planned to stay. I didn't bother establishing a routine, try to make more friends than I already had scattered around the city, learn any new ways to get around,  find any cool spots to hang out, or get involved with anything bigger than my 9-5, getting drunk with my girlfriends, and hanging out with my family.

I was essentially one step away from vacation mode, a stranger, a passerby.


And that was fine, because I never had any intention of staying, I had no reason to establish more roots, create a network (professional or social) or get myself involved in ventures I'd just have to walk away from when I figured out where I was going, because I WAS going SOMEWHERE else, damn it.

Except that was my life for two years prior to that move to Indianapolis.

And I've been here a year and a half.

Now, this isn't a rant against being a tourist in your own town, exploring places you've never been, eating at new restaurants, or wandering some hidden suburb- those things are wonderful.

This is about just passing through a place every day without acknowledging and accepting that this pit stop is actually your home now- and that even scarier, that big move to somewhere more exciting could just not come anytime soon.

Over a year ago now, four months into my move to Indy, I wrote a very long, desperate, and heart felt letter to my best friend, essentially begging him to give us a shot. That I was finally really ready, after all those years of waiting and waiting and being patient with me and giving up, that it was basically the only thing that really made sense to me anymore. It was fucking draining and humbling to get down on paper. Then I sent it, got extremely drunk, and avoided checking my email for a few days.

What I didn't realize then was that was the moment that the tables also started to turn, I was just ignoring them and choosing to eat on the floor or in front of the tv, or throwing a blanket over some grass and calling it a picnic. Because, fuck tables.

He may have taken me with open arms, but it took months until I realized I was still living in tourist mode, but with a relationship, and it wasn't working too well.

I sat back and realized that now all those things I'd been avoiding? They were happening anyway, I just didn't realize it because I was wearing my "I'm getting the FUCK out of here ASAP" badge so proudly, and it was starting to hurt the people in the HERE and NOW.

So I forced myself to stop researching every other city that seems great in the US and abroad and started paying a little  more attention to my own, which is good because I feel less like my eyes are constantly darting every which way trying to figure out where I can flee to next. I started running, finding new places and paths to run that I'd never tried before. I chewed my lips and hemmed and hawed, but finally allowed myself to move all my belongings to one central location, a home, instead of thrown carelessly about here and there in various locations.  I got involved in local politics and I'm signing up for art classes at a studio near where I live.

And I'm mentoring girls for an organization I've fallen in love with. My first session is today and I'm excited and nervous and decidedly... content.


I'm still not sure what I want to be when I grow up or where I'll land when I figure it out, but I think maybe I was getting it wrong with my vagabond state of mind, maybe I need a bit of stability to help me figure out where I'm going. Maybe I need to be involved in a community, to really love it, to become the kind of person that another community wants to have.


So Indianapolis, I'm home, and you're stuck with me for now.


Maybe you need to be the one to tell me when my time here is up and not the other way around.



Touche.


Xo Sara 

stuck.

Sorry about the lack of posting and all.

 

I've just been tearing through every word Tana French has ever written (that I can feasibly get my hands on) and doing everything I possibly can to avoid tackling the ever-growing mountain of my clothes piling up on the bedroom floor since Manfriend and I kicked Hally out of the master bedroom and moved our stuff in.

 

Yeah, we were sleeping in the tiny second bedroom. It's a long story. The fact of the matter is that the closets aren't switched over yet, and hopefully I'll get a gust of energy this week that forces me to take care of it. I'm not a betting woman, either way.

 

In an effort to keep the restlessness bubbling up inside me from boiling over and scorching everything in sight, I've been a flurry of nesting and thrifting and antiquing. It's getting expensive, but I'll fill your head with another empty promise of pictures soon. Pictures, soon. I promise. I'm trying. It's just that we don't exactly have internet right now. Yes, we have satellite, but no internet. I have to go back to casa del parentals for that kind of luxury.

 

We DO have a washer and dryer now, though!!!!!!!! YAY DOMESTIC THINGS.

 

 

I don't cook.  

 

The meat and potatoes of it is that I feel weird. Yes, I always feel weird, but I guess I feel weirdly off.

 

 

Not long ago, I felt like I couldn't go one night a week without seeing one of my girlfriends for one reason or another. Impromptu cook-outs, a quick drink after work, a jog or a trip to the store- it seemed like there was always a posse around.

 

 

Not anymore.

 

 

Now, it's official.

 

 

Erin and I are the only two left in this city, including the greater outlying area, and to be honest I never imagined I'd be one of the last two standing.

 

I've got a gal pal in Korea, one in Kenya, two gone to the east coast and even more that have shipped out west. We're spreading, exactly what I always expected to happen with any group of friends I made. I've always been ready and willing to deploy the shards of my heart to all the corners of the world in the name of a grand adventure for the ones I love, and now it's happened in spades and I don't quite feel like myself.

 

I'm grateful to be able to surround myself (even at the distance) with women who aren't just unafraid to pack a bag and raise their face to the breeze and set off to wherever the destination may be, but who crave it. I wouldn't have it any other way. But for me this time, watching it all happen and knowing I'm staying here, for however long it turns out to be until it's my turn for another grand run of the adventure track, just seems however TOO long.

 

Sure I can plan trips wherever, a weekend in Chicago, a few days back in the old college town, even a week in a place I've never been, but for me there's nothing as scream-at-the-top-of-your-lungs wonderful as the rush of adrenaline that comes with watching everything you built your life around fade into the scenery. Those terrifying moments where the line between 'Too late to turn back now' and 'I could totally pretend I never really planned on doing this in the first place if I wanted to' start blurring into each other and in the back of your mind you can just see yourself falling. It's the moment when you're far enough away that suddenly everything coming into focus holds the immeasurable potential to shape the whole next segment of your life. Could this be the destination for this new adventure?

 

I can just see myself at that stage. Gas-station sunglasses, friendly-fighting with Manfriend over who has to eat the orange and green gummy worms, daring him to eat all the sugar at the bottom of the bag. My hand reaches out for the volume knob and I give him a devilish grin as I crank it up much higher than he deems necessary. It doesn't matter where we're going, we're on our way. Happy.

 

I'm not sulking, really I'm not. I know my chance will come whether it takes another 200 fitful nights of sleep or 20.

 

But it doesn't change the fact that it's simply not today, and that I'm the one who's been left this time with the usual, the routine, the familiar- and they're the one's who are getting the opportunity to have their minds blown wide-open with new.

 

Be back sooner than later.

 

XO Sare

 

sorry, i'm vague.

I feel all queasy and throat-clenched and just sort of like a total ball of anxiety today. I could really do without it.

You see, last night I had a dream that I'm not quite sure how my subconscious could have possibly stewed up.

It's slipping through my fingers, dimming to me as I type this. I'm losing details of it. Parts took place in a lecture hall, but I've forgotten, lost who was lecturing and what about, already. I know there was partying in part of it and an actual infant in others. It made so much sense when I was having it, but now I can't manage to piece it together.

What I haven't forgotten about the dream is the cast. A motley group of people that would only ever fit together in a dream that I personally would have. They have no other connecting links.

The thing is, it wasn't necessarily a bad dream, just a terribly vivid one. Uncomfortable, the people in largely made up of individuals I've fallen out of touch with, or had to push out completely for my own survival. The toxics.

Even in my dream, I felt a sense of dread seeing these people, but like moth to light, I couldn't pull away from them. I always felt that way about them in real-life too. Pulled.

When taking a stroll down memory lane, it's often easier for me to recall the good times I've spent with people that are no longer in my life, to see the good before the bad. Even the most harmful relationships in my life are peppered with confusion because I ALWAYS seem to look back fondly.

I was mid-dream when my alarm went off this morning. Isn't that a strange feeling, those moments between awake and asleep when you're a little disoriented and confused about reality? I was torn between hitting the snooze to keep it going and jumping out of bed and forcing it gone. I got out of bed. I've reminisced and 'what if?"-ed enough.

So now I'm thinking about a team of absent players, characters from past versions of myself. Naturally, I've been pondering and mentally revisiting the place I was in my life when they were THE PERSON MOST IMPORTANT. Which they were, they all were the MOST important person to me at one point or another, the person I told my secrets, the person for who I'd always pick up with phone.


Mostly, I feel pretty damn good about where I am now, the people I've clung to, kept around. Fortified as my safety net.  But I also kind of miss them. A little.

I'm hoping for a Thursday night void of dreams.


XO Sara