some truth.

he'd just eaten seven hotdogs on dollar dog night. i, however, have no excuse. we are the most photogenic couple to grace the earth, obviously.

There are things I take for granted now that in less than three months may cause tantrums and tears in their absence. This is more than just having an Apple store within a 25 mile radius of my person for inevitable technology-related meltdowns, although I've already gritted my teeth in anticipation of such events.

 

 

This is something more along the lines of struggling to feed myself, lacking back-rubs and soothing words, and the absence of a warm body I've grown so accustomed to waking up next to.

 

 

What I'm trying to say is that Matt isn't coming to Montana with me.

 

 

At least not at first.

 

 

Let me say up front that I am the reason for this. I have asked him to hang back. I've insisted in my own stubborn way that this is a path I need to forge on my own. Because honestly, I feel it like electricity moving through my veins, my need to set off on my own. To me, it's a fact as solid as my eyes being green and my perpetual appetite for bacon. It defies any logical explanation for me, it just is. I need to go alone, to start this pursuit on my own, to go forth without company.

 

 

In true Matt form he's taken this request as he always does with my self-over analyzed bombs of news that aren't what he wanted to hear. First he was silent, then he fought me, and then he accepted it, because he loves me and knows that my way is just as ingrained in me as all the other qualities he loves. The good with the bad. The easy with the difficult.

 

 

To say he understands my need to leave alone probably misses the mark. In truth, I can't even fully wrap my mind around this compulsion, let alone give a cohesive and coherent argument to present my case. But he accepts this as my choice and my decision, and for that I am flooded with gratitude and overtaken by affection for him.

 

 

It took me a long time to reason with myself about this decision, and a lot of grappling with feelings of guilt and selfishness at pushing a distance nearly a country-width between us, especially when Matt is vehemently against us being apart. He planned to move with me wherever I went to grad school from the start, no matter how far or at what cost. He's supportive and amazing and I don't deserve it.

 

 

But he's not coming now, and it's my doing.

 

 

I know the day I leave is one we're both dreading in our own way. But I'm heading toward something I am drawn to with wonder and he's being left behind, so what follows the moment we part will be an utterly different experience for us both. Now that the room has stopped spinning a bit at the reality of the events unfolding and I've had time to calm down and consider things, clarity is coming a bit more easily. But only a bit.

 

 

As I've pondered and poked at the reasons for my decision, I realized a few things about the nature of my choice.

 

 

1. I genuinely don't want to be with anyone else in this world. Just Matt. In my heart, I don't look at my leaving as me leaving him, just a necessary step in the process until we're reunited.

 

 

2. I have total faith in the strength of our relationship. Total faith. Which is kind of eerie, to be honest. I know it will be hard at times, as I've done a long distance relationship before, but I'm going into it with total confidence this time. We will be fine. We will learn a lot. We will emerge stronger and intact.

 

 

3. Going back to school is fucking hard and grad school is very time consuming. I've been out of school for four years. I'm nervous about this. Actually, I'm scared shitless. It's enough of an adjustment and commitment without dragging a stubborn and antisocial man who doesn't want to move to Montana and 160 pound beast-dog across the country with me. I need focus and peace and alone time to process. I fear with Matt there I would not be able to find a good balance for my time. I will have no time to speak of anyway. I cannot afford distraction and resentment because of hard adjustments. I adjust to change almost instantly, Matt is a little slower to come around. It's just a fact, not a fault. Still, it is something I've had to consider.

 

 

4. Matt does not want to move to Montana. It's one of my biggest dreams. I will not have my dream hampered from the start by someone who doesn't want to be there, however unintentional, however much I love that person with all of my heart. However much he may have tried to hide it. I would have known. Things would have gotten weird. Bad weird.

 

 

5. This may be my last chance to live alone. Ever. I can't for the life of me let that go easily. I want one last cozy nook of the world that is mine and mine alone.  

 

 

6. Matt and I have very different ideas about what makes a fulfilling leisure time activity. I want to be outside playing and or reading and or at the bar with my friends and he wants to be at home on the couch watching sports and playing xbox. It's leisure time and there's no wrong way to do it, but in any precious time I have to spend in leisure while I have such an impressive display of the great outdoors at my disposal, I'm not interested in holing up inside. At all. I brought no television to this relationship and I don't intend to carry one with me out west. That's not be being a pretentious hipster, that is me voicing my needs honestly, part of the reason I'm moving out west is the breathtaking landscape. I need to be out in it.

 

 

7. I am infuriatingly selfish.

 

 

8. My guts. My head. My heart. My soul. They're all working together on this one and the message is clear. Do this thing for yourself. This is you, pursuing your dreams. It gets harder to chase them every single day that you wait. Run. Hunt them. Catch them. This is something you have to do to feel purpose and contentment with life, no matter how great your partner. You have to be okay with yourself, love yourself first. This is a journey you must take alone. You can do it. Trust yourself.

 

 

 

And so I am. I'm doing it by myself.

 

 

The plan is for Matt and I to start talking about him moving west after Christmas when he's had time to save some money, look for a job, and buy a car- Another good reason for him to wait.

 

 

 We've talked and fought and hugged and sat in silence over this. And now it's done and we move forward with the plan in place. Not all of our arguments and misunderstandings have such amicable and positive endings, but I'm comforted to see that the big ones do. The ones that truly matter in the grand scheme, those we can work through and tease out and iron of wrinkles.

 

 

I'm not really afraid of spiders, so I can't say I'll be missing my protector from icky things, but there are millions of other ways Matt saves me every single day, and I can't wait to fully appreciate every single one of them in his absence, and then thank him repeatedly when we are reunited. But for now:

 

I love you, Matt. Thank you for saving me hundreds of times every single day in every way I need it.  

 

 

life preservers.

I can't see faces anymore, just outlines of bodies swaying to the music. Still, I kick further because I'm not scared yet.

The water, any water is always more terrifying to me when I'm not submerged in it. It seems to me like a suggestion of a threat, an idea that gently points to danger, 'You can't control this." Yet, when I'm up to my neck, I almost always feel swaddled. Carried. Held onto. Isn't it funny that we call them bodies of water? I guess so much of their anatomy does personify human action, at least in my mind.

I kick further and further, waiting for someone to notice how brave I am, how far I've gone, what distance I've put between myself and the rocky cliffs of shore.

"You should be scared, " I think to them. "What if something happened to me now? Could you save me in time?"

Do we sometimes do things just to make people prove their love for us? Just so they try to keep us safe? Just to test and make sure.

There's a flat boulder perched on the shore. It's where we're allowed to congregate now that we're here for round two. Going to the Mansion is a privilege we've earned with our blistered feet and sore shoulders. Those trays get heavier all the time.

The boulder my friends rest upon is suspended several feet above the water at an angle no man could have willingly produced. Somehow precarious rings a little dull for the illustration. Still, here is where we make our descent on sunny afternoons into the relief of the lake's beckoning waves. It's the kind of jump that you have to steel yourself for mentally. The kind of jump for which you take deep breaths and count down, even as an adult-aged person.

The boulder itself is now shewn with beer cans, bottles, blankets, towels, discarded clothes, sun screen, and an inner tube. An ironic nod to water wings shaped like fishies. Or a non-ironic nod for those of us who are scared of the water. Despite the strong pull to be on an island surrounded on all sides by water and waves, a surprising amount of people here are actually afraid of the lake. And despite the swelling boat traffic and basic goal of getting drunk by most people who visit the island, very few people seem to drown here.

My friend Mary and I grabbed a bottle of wine one night and took off for the beach alone, a long walk from the trusty porch lamp that soaked the yard of our summer home when the dim moon couldn't shed enough light. It was a long walk made short by the wine we passed between us as we strode quick and sure in the dark. We reached and shore and stood silent like a prayer for a moment, taking in the dark expanse no one claimed but us. We floated and talked and marveled at how good the water felt on our limbs, how nice it felt to be so unselfconscious in the act of swimming. How lovely the lack of light. And then, thoroughly wrinkled, we wrapped our shivering bodies in towels and hitchhiked with some guys from the campsite going back to town, giggling in the back of a rusty pickup truck as we bounced our way back home.

It's nights like that which serve to snag like a splinter on my memory as I try to sand it down, simplify it as a time either bad or good. It catches just enough that neither quites fits- how could a place that produced such a perfect night be all bad?  Besides, it's a place I loved with reverence for a time. A home of sorts, if not forever. How could I ever simplify something so complex?

But Mary wasn't there that day for my test, and if she had, likely she would have been conducting it with me, along with the few other friends I've kept from my summers on the rock.

And then I remember the people I knew, their distance-muffled laughter and shouting above The Moon and Antarctica coming from portable speakers, blissfully unconcerned with the growing distance between my rhythmic movement and the boulder on which they stood. It was then that I realized the faces didn't matter so much as the human proximity. Aside from a few strong female bonds, roles could be filled by nearly anyone, so long as they were willing to read the lines with enough bravado. When I was gone, as I would be a few short weeks from that day, someone else would be fucking my boyfriend, coaxing drink orders out of windblown tourists, and drinking straight from the bottle on the boulder with my friends.

The realization made me feel so much smaller than treading water out in the middle of a constantly moving great lake ever did.

I'm a strong swimmer, so I never really had to test the allegiance of the people standing ashore to the drum of my pulse, a fact for which I'm sure, even in their ignorance, they're infinitely grateful.

As am I.

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.

sorry i'm not sorry.

This morning I was typing a response email to one of my best friends when I realized it was becoming a bit of a rant. Now let me be clear, I am the queen of the rant. Give me a subject and I will find a way to go on and on about it forever. So,  that part was not alarming or unusual- But as I skimmed back over my response I realized this was a rant centered at the wrong person and somewhat misplaced.

 

And I think one of the reasons why I'm so incredibly frustrated right now finally hit me.

 

Guilt.

 

I feel it acutely, about everything. Almost constantly.

 

Let me also point out that I am also one of the most empathetic, considerate, understanding people I know. I am accommodating. Yes, I will listen to your side of the story even if I'm running late. Sure, let's take care of your to-do list first. I can make mine up later. NO, don't worry about it, I don't want to inconvenience you.

 

It wasn't until after I typed these couple of paragraphs that I realized this may be a problem. or I may be onto something:

 

 

I'm looking forward to moving to Montana and being my own boss without guilt. Without guilt from my parents, from my siblings, my friends, from Matt, from random people I know that I see around randomly, etc. FUCK everyone. I feel guilty every second of every day for things I do and things I don't do, and for just BEING. For wanting what I want. For needing what I need.

I need to get away from whatever is causing me to feel this way, and right now, it's everyone.

Yesterday I almost didn't put an Obama sticker that I got for free on my car because I got to thinking and I didn't want to offend anyone at work or my parents or Matt. Why do I feel any guilt whatsoever for what I believe is right? I'm not being abrasive about it. It's a stupid sticker! I support this person! Why can't I express that? They sure as fuck don't feel any guilt about cutting my ideas down. I have worked for that man tirelessly the past TWO ELECTIONS and I'm educated and informed and I give a fuck. Why should I ever, EVER feel guilty? Still. I do. For being different. For not being able to see what they see. For caring and getting upset when they tell me I'm wrong.

Sorry, I'm getting kind of emotional.

But honestly, one of the top three emotions I feel daily is guilt. And I'm so tired. It exhausts me.

So you know, Montana won't solve all my problems. But I think it will let me mend myself. I think it will let me DO THINGS and think things and live without being totally overwhelmed around every corner by guilt. I hope so much that it will teach me that I am okay. I am fine. I am not wrong for being the way that I am. I need to learn how to pursue my own interests again for the sake of enjoyment. I need to learn that my own enjoyment isn't something that should make me feel guilt.


Somehow, even when I'm not religious I'm still so goddamn Catholic.

 

Sure, sometimes I make decisions are are stupid and I deserve to feel guilty about them. As compassionate as I am capable of being, I am equally able to be selfish and bitchy when the mood strikes.

 

But I feel like I have to squelch who I am and apologize for that person almost constantly.

 

In truth, I like the person that I am.

 

I like myself. I said it. I'm not sorry.

 

That said, as much as I hate admitting I'm wrong, I know when I do something inconsiderate. At those times, feeling guilty is a mechanism that helps bring me back to myself, it's a meter of how far I've strayed from the person I strive to be. It's uncomfortable, but it's a feeling that reminds me that I care, that I'm human, that I made the wrong decision. In those times, I'm grateful for my ability to feel guilt. For the way I can reel myself back.

 

 

But right now, the meter is broken. Constant guilt is making me question the person that I am and doubt the person that I've always tried to be. And in turn, I feel guilty for doubting myself. So what we have is one overflowing, steamy, disgusting pile of guilt.

 

And I don't know what to do about it.

 

abundance.

When I think of my sister and I, it's always us as children and it's always stained in shades of turquoise and sun-bleached blond. Us in sandy bathing suits with chubby red thighs. We're always damp with lake water or covered in crumbs from sandwiches on the deck. We're always in the peak of summer and we're always at the lake cottage. I think of us with rope marks from the hammock imprinted on the backs of our legs and arms, with flour gone awry on our faces as we stand on stepping stools so that we can see the cookies we're making with our Nan on the counter top, or searching for petosky stones in the clear shallow water.

 

When I think of my sister and I, we're practically babies, alabama wild women with hair flying artfully astray and butterfly nets in tow. We are never wearing shoes. We are drinking ginger-ale out of rocks glasses while the adults, freshly changed and combed to perfection, sit down for cocktail hour together out on the porch at five o'clock. We're making giant nests out of pine needles. We're collecting berries on the long gravel driveway, covered in shade.

 

If we're getting along at all, we're always at the lake.

 

I was kind of a bitch to my sister when we were kids and my family likes to remind me of this constantly, but my own memory has sort of edited all of that out. I mean, who wants to remember themselves as a bully when I was always also equal parts precocious and adventure-starved?

 

She was always my baby sister, equal parts partner and ball-and-chain. That's what I remember.

 

I've spent somewhere around the past nine months watching my sister do something I've never done, grow a baby. She is my only sister and this will be the first baby to come from the team of four that my parents reared. It changes everything. It changes nothing. We're a family. We grow. We care for each other. There is no other way but to consume and apply each new development as we evolve and expand, push out the edges just a little further to find that there was always plenty of room for more. To find that it was never a question of needing to stretch to grow, but rather unrolling the magic carpet we're flying on a little bit more. There's always so much more love than we ever knew held in the reserves, waiting to be implemented.

 

Still, it's hard for me to think about us being grown enough to have children of our own. We're old enough to be in charge of something so important now. That fact is terrifying when I remember us as practically babies so easily, I can conjure a vivid memory with minimal effort. It's so good back there, so little needed to be repressed. Of course I can call upon it for comfort when I need it.  And it's easy to find comfort in the fact that we are the product of happy childhoods. We felt love and encouragement in abundance.

 

 

Abundance.

 

 

I always think of that word when I think of my childhood. I love that word because it signifies some sort of more-than-enough, it whispers 'above and beyond' without feeling too braggy and in-your-face. Sure, it's a little pretentious, but it turns out I'm a bit of a snob when it comes to childhood, so be it. It's not about money because we were certainly not rich. Maybe it's about safety, or plenty of laughter, or eating a balanced diet. Maybe it's about rules and boundaries or the kisses-per-scraped-knee ratio. Whatever it is, it's all I know.

 

I guess I could mention that today is the day that my sister will actually have her first child, and I'm tripping out over the excitement of it. Seeing the preparation that goes into introducing a new human into the world and family unit has been eye-opening, and frankly, exhausting. I can only imagine the feat that growing one inside your body actually is. My sister has made it look easy, as she does with most tasks that she dives into head first. She is decisive, rarely squeamish, and self assured in her decisions. She was a ballerina for most of her childhood and maybe that instilled a sort of grace of spirit that she retains in even her smallest actions. She grows constantly and stubbornly, like one of the wildflowers we'd pluck out of sandy soil and stick haphazardly in our hair.

 

Although I relish in change and chase unsure paths, I do so in an almost constant state of near-panic and neurotocism. I approach every situation steeled for catastrophe while my sister floats through still and stormy sea with the same quiet, calm determination no matter how high the stakes.

 

She will be a good mother, there's absolutely no doubt in that.

 

I can't help it though, the way that I am. The way I need to worry myself with logistics and trivial details until I'm far enough away from the situation that I can process everything that has happened. I can't help but feel like something is somehow out of my hands and then work myself into a frenzy about it until there is, quite literally, a healthy baby in my hands and I can from there formulate a course of action. Even if that is just to stick my finger in a tiny palm for them to grasp onto. No one has told me where and stand and what to say for this one.

 

I can't help but work with what I know. What I know was a happy childhood. What I know is love that is loud and messy and sometimes allow to run a bit wild. What I know is abundance.

 

What I do not know is this title "Aunt." What to do with it. What the duties being passed to me will entail exactly.

 

Maybe the best I can hope for is to pass on what I know.

in kentucky, gravel dances.

I was driving fast. I always drove fast then, even on winding, hilly roads I'd never driven before. I was young, and we don't like to waste a second of our youth. Leave the scenery and slow drives to the old, the ones wise enough to enjoy it. I may be going nowhere, but I'm hellbent on making good time.

God, it was a beautiful day. Warm and sun soaked and every fiber of my skin and bones ached to be enjoying September like every other 22 year old I knew. Day drinking on the lake. Submerging my body in bourbon and cloudy water. Laughing and laughing and getting sun burnt. Instead I was living in a Holiday Inn in Morehead, Kentucky and drinking bad coffee by the pot. This was what I signed up for. This is what I left it all behind for. This is why I went to college, right?

Let it be clear that this was not a happy period of my life. I was working as a union organizer in Kentucky, a job I'd idealized myself right into. Right into the middle of the rural-est nowhereland you can imagine, scrambling to talk to prison guards who had no use for a 22 year old college educated woman from the North wearing a badge that screamed UNION! They had no use for me at all. Even more, they were scared of me. Terrified of everything I represented, unwilling to entertain the idea of change. Still, it was an abundant time for me. I grew a lot, I learned a lot. I met some of the most important people in my life. My frustration was palpable.

So there I was, driving through one of the most beautiful places I've ever lived, hating the everloving shit out of every tree, hill, stump, stream, and squirrel. Eastern Kentucky really is the kind of landscape that will make you glad you're alive and able to see. It's also the kind of dangerous where no one bothers to take care of the roads because the state's broke and no one is around to hear you scream anyway.

No one is ever around. So I'm scream-singing unabashedly on this particular day to Ben Kweller's Problems for probably the 12th time to repeat, pretty sure I've got every nuance down this time, loosely steering, foot crushed down on the pedal to the right. I'm on my way to a work site to try to get some of these people to talk to me long enough to convince them that this is what they need so they'll be able to feed their kids and buy them shoes and take them to the dentist; really stick it to the man. I'm about to make them promises and then ask them to sign on it. Very poor people and those that can barely read don't trust anyone and never want to sign their name on anything, which I learned very quickly. Those things don't have anything to do with intelligence level. When it comes to survival, their aptitude could likely blow almost everyone I know right out of the water. So I'm violently singing out my dread and frustration and trying to get myself amped up. I'm lost in my head the way that I'm usually lost in my head and that's probably what makes me such an abysmal driver in the first place.

All of the sudden I think to look ahead and wouldn't you know it, the road is taking a 90, I'm going at least 50, and straight ahead is nothing but dead air to drop through.

It's a cliff. Just like those stupid Wile E. Coyote cartoons.

Now, I'm the kind of person that will exclaim "We were practically on the verge of death, I mean, we almost DIED," when literally nothing even bordering on dangerous has happened.

I'm also the kind of person that when something life-threatening and truly terrifying or disturbing has happened, is cracking up laughing so hard that I can't breathe.

Sometimes my reactions are a bit off.

Actually, it's probably safer to say usually. Usually, my reactions are a bit off.

But this time friends, it was different. Because I'm sliding off a cliff and despite the fact that my driving foot is now solemnly and decided pressed all the way down on the pedal on the left, I'm no longer on the pavement, but rather I've now hit a patch of gravel and I'm sliding forward and I'm now looking down down down. And it's a long drop.

I understand these things are supposed to warp life into a dream-like slow motion. I've never in my life had a crash happen to me in slow motion, so I think that's all bullshit. When you're truly and surely headed down the path of destruction, willing or unwilling, everything speeds up. Fasterfasterfaster. Even Ben Kweller started wailing at a quicker clip.

I'm making no progress on stopping and now my front tires are pretty much toast. I'm leaning back in my seat because I'm starting to feel the nose dip downward. I'm not thinking 'Fuck!" I'm not seeing bright lights calling me home to meet my maker, and I'm certainly not seeing the faces of my loved ones or any of my regrets. I'm not thinking anything. I'm not seeing shit except the ground below. I'm not feeling anything except the gravel under my tires hitting the sides of my vehicle. I'm feeling that acutely. 

No one is coming to find me. No one is going to hear me explode. No one will find the carcass of my wrecked vehicle at the bottom of this ravine. Even if I survive the fall, I've got no phone signal. I've got no direct supervisor. No one at all knows where I am.

Nothing in the employee manual prepared me for this.

And then something strange happened.

I can honestly say that I've never in my life had this thought cross my mind, but I reach down and I shift my careening vehicle into reverse. This wasn't me problem solving my way to a trial and error situation, there was genuinely no time for that. But some synapse of my mind forced my hand to reach down and grab that gear shift and send it back up two notches. And I'm still flooring it, but now, somehow, I'm back to the right pedal. And the gravel is still dancing all around me, but it's no longer to a funeral song. It's a survival jig.

And I'm stopped and I'm shaking and I'm sitting there, so so still. Suddenly everything is very still. We're not in slow or fast motion. We're stationery. The only reason I know I'm still alive is that I can feel blood rapidly throbbing in every single one of the pulse points where the vein meets thin enough skin on my body. I punch Ben Kweller off and it feels like I'm hitting him right on the nose. And it's quiet and I sit there and I can't call anyone and tell them I'm still alive, in case they cared, but I can't really talk right now anyway.

I peer back the way I came and I look to where I'm going and I don't dare get out of my car to look over where I almost went because I'm not sure if my legs are going to hold me up. I do that thing they do in the movies where they feel all over their bodies to make sure all the parts are still attached and intact. I'm honestly curious to make sure I'm all there because it feels like a part of me may have tumbled over the lip I'm now facing at a safe distance. All parts seem to be present and accounted for and that's when I exhale.

I'm relieved to note that I'm back on pavement, I appreciate that fact because there is absolutely no way that I put myself there.

I breathe and realize I've only lost about 6 minutes total, so I start easing my way down the switch backs that meander down the side of the mountain instead of falling straight off, and I arrive to the work site on time for my scheduled appointment. And like the day before and the day after and many off to either direction from there, no one talks to me. Nothing changed. It wasn't an out of body experience. I didn't change any of my ways. I didn't appreciate tastes or smells more. I just kept moving, working, trying.

I almost died, but I didn't.

streak.

I have a grey streak running through my hair. Really, it's more silver, but still, grey. It's on the right side of my head, midway up and maybe an inch behind my ear. Sometimes when I'm bored or nervous, I'll grab a cluster of hairs in that area and check just to make sure it's still there.

It's still there.

I've always had it. My mother used to have the hairdresser cut out the grey strands from the rest of my mess of hair when I was a kid. I've got so much hair, it's so thick, that no one notices if I'm twenty or so hairs short of my normal full head. I don't think she meant anything by it, it's just strange to have a child with grey hairs, why not simply rid me of any evidence of abnormality? At least of one so easy to remove.

In college, I went through a phase where I dyed my hair pretty regularly. Usually just a few shades darker. Occasionally I'd fall prey to the pictures I'd seen in magazines and go for some highlights. I forgot all about the grey. It was always covered up.

I literally just forgot about that part of myself. Maybe the hair dye killed my brain cells.

Anyway, partially due to financial constraints and partially due to me becoming the kind of person I actually want to be, I stopped dying my hair a few years ago. It kind of feels good to know that the chemicals are out of it. I kind of feel smug to be comfortable in my own skin. At least in that way, for every one part of me I've grown comfortable with, it seems five more insecurities pop up daily. Don't even talk to me about my pores, I'm set on spending an exorbitant amount of money trying to shrink them back to the size they appeared when I was sixteen and worried about the size of my boobs.

It's always something, I guess.

It was December when I noticed that my grey streak is back. I'm twenty five now, so at first it wasn't exactly a happy reunion with an old friend. I was curling my hair for a rehearsal dinner the night before the marriage of two of my college friends. Matt was in the shower in the next room.

I veritably panicked at the sight, because my first thought was that it made me a mortal. Someone who can't stop the sands of time. I mean, duh. I exclaimed for him to come and look and of course, he didn't see what all the fuss was about. When it comes to appearances, Matt is one of the least fussy people I know. Usually I appreciate that. In that moment, I did not.

My parents are both in their forties. I've never spotted a grey hair on either of their heads, and lately I've been looking more closely. None in my father's beard from what I can tell either. Isn't that where men show their age first?

 I'm standing frozen, transfixed, with a hot curling iron in my hand, wearing a salmon colored sleeveless dress in the middle of winter in a dark hotel room next to a highway in Columbus, Ohio, ticking through the Rolodex of grey hairs I have archived in my memory, significant ones. My Nan's blond color shampoo in the shower at the lake house when I was young. Her first attempts at covering what she now wears proudly. My aunt confessing that she's been dying her hair black for 15 years. A few streaks of silver in a couple of my friends, always yanked. And then there it was. The streak, buried far in the back, but still there. A forgotten memory of my childhood. Squelched as quickly as it could stubbornly reappear every time I sat down, cape resting around my narrow shoulders in the spinning salon chair.

Since then my grey streak has been more novelty and less foreboding omen for me. I'd like to say I've always been an old soul or something equally cliche, but the fact is that I haven't. I haven't always been an old soul. Sure, I like a lot of the same activities as my grandmother, and I'll gladly partake in them with her or alone, but really, I'm still figuring out new things about myself just about daily. I think that makes me still pretty young in the grand scheme.

My grey streak? It's not exactly a badge of honor, because I can't for the life of me figure what it's done to deserve that. I guess the best I can decide is that it's been a constant. It's stood there, stubborn, despite all the ways I've tried to yank it, cover it, or forget about it. No matter what I do, it takes root and hangs on for dear life. It's watched me change and grow and love and hate just about everything about myself. And it never mattered because it wasn't going to change, not really, not even when it was unrecognizable.  And now, I like it, just the way it is. Finally. 

I guess it's kind of like me. 

what i think about when i think about summer. and growing up.

Everyone walks to work here. Even the fat, even the lazy. That's how small a place this is, that's how close we're breathing onto each other and how even whispers sound like screams. That's how it is here.

There are tourists and there are locals and then there are everyone else. I am among the 'everyone elses', we work in the bars and restaurants and docks and golf cart rental kiosks during the season. We don't belong, but we recognize that, for right now, we are here to stay anyway. We get to behave like tourists and act almost as entitled as the locals and then, at the end of the season, we disappear until the next spring or forever. We are a dime a dozen and we are constantly reminded.

But for now, we are here, we are young, we are invincible, and we are making cash. There are no banks here. Only envelopes with our names scrawled across in safes at our places of employment or cups we've swiped from work, crammed with bills. The fruit of our labor. Whatever is left in the morning after we've closed all the bars. It's a spin cycle. On repeat. We work to keep it spinning faster and faster, anxious with hope that the days will stretch instead of tighten. That the next night will be a stumble home over gravel and grass and not a boat ride and drive back to wherever we came from. We pray that we'll forget how to drive. We worship the summer. We beg this case to produce just a few more beers. We appeal desperately to the sun, to the tourists we mock and curse to keep flooding in, and to the smell of the dumpster to continue to rot and stink in the alley we walk through to get back home after our shift. We're feverish with the feeling of all we have set foot on here, all we have laid out hands on. And we are drunk. We are drunk, or hungover, or in the state of flux in between. Still, we are standing on a rock.

This is an island. And not in the figurative sense. This is an island, surrounded by water and too far to swim to from any other other bit of land. It is tiny and yet it looms large at the same time. It is enough. In the summer, it is everything.

The first time I turned up here it was still winter and I'd never been on a ferry before. I paid my six dollars and boarded the boat, on the way to my interview to be a waitress for the summer. I'd answered an ad I saw on the internet one day while scanning for a summer escape from my university basement desk job.  On that first ferry there were only a handful of other passengers, if that. A couple of ladies hauling as many Walmart bags as they could handle back over from the main land. Stocking up on supplies, no real stores on the island, and nothing open yet anyway. I sat in the corner of the inside cabin upstairs on the groaning vessel and felt out of place. I was wearing heels. And a pencil skirt. And shivering.

In two summers that was the only time I rode in the inside cabin, or wore heels for that matter. The inside cabin was for tourists. Reserved for those too hungover to be more than three feet from the bathroom, for those who don't relish in the wind raking indelicately through sun kissed tresses. No, for every ride after that I elbowed and edged my way to the front bench upstairs, outside, especially if I was headed to the island, that way I could have the best view, the most wind, feel the waves most intensely, so eager to get back.

It's easy to confuse a place like the island for home, especially when you don't feel tethered to any one place anyhow.

 We live in a dorm-like building. There are rules there, and a strict enforcer called "Dorm Dad" who, despite his portly stature and propensity for flirting with the boarders and starting his day with booze in his coffee cup, will actually fine the fuck out of you at the first sight of a beer can inside the building or a guest that isn't paying rent inside.  The last part is mostly moot, we're all only hooking up with each other anyway, so we don't mind. Plenty of warm beds to keep us entertained enough with each other after hours. Dorm Dad watches the hallway cameras with rapture, just waiting for some poor girl to forget her towel when she goes to shower and tries to make a mad dash to her room. We follow the rules or don't follow the rules, it's too easy to forget those parts. Sometimes the girls walk around the back of the buildings in packs, lining up to pee on the side of dorm that's always blanketed in shade, one hand holding our clothes way from the stream, a half-empty beer can in the other. We never worry about being caught, no one will see us, nothing is at stake except missing out on something out front.

There are two bathrooms in the building. The upstairs for girls and downstairs for boys. And make no mistake, we are girls and boys and not men and women, no matter what we were before we landed here. Anyway, it is explained that there is a girls bathroom and and boys bathroom, but that's not really true. When the time arises, everyone uses whichever bathroom is closest. We are never surprised and we take pride in this; we meet every challenge, we create situations just to rise to the occasion. We are reckless with one another. We are reckless with ourselves. Nothing feels as good as being that alive.

On the evenings when it isn't raining, no matter the day of the week except Saturday, everyone congregates outside the dorm. There are picnic tables, there is a lawn. There is always more booze and a spare cigarette and someone willing to share. Everyone congregates, coming together and splitting apart and multiplying almost like amoeba under a microscope, but make no mistake, there are factions. We may be on a tiny island, but this is a place that thrives and encourages cliques to form, invisible lines to hold everyone in their place.

We are the wait staff. The people out front for the customers to see. The ones who look healthy and all-American. We're part of the display and we know it, we love it. The kitchen staffs and bus boys are townies from across the water, trash from the towns dotted on the shore's crust, or foreign kids. Mostly Russians and Macedonians. The foreigners are the smart kids that expected more and just wanted a piece of Americana culture. Instead they get to wash dishes, chain smoke, and get drunk in the corners of bars. Some speak decent English and they are allowed in the outer circles of groups. Some speak almost none and cluster and cling to each other. Sometimes when the magic is right, alcohol proves a great equalizer and we all sing some shitty song over one sad guitar. Off key, too in love with ourselves and everything around us to notice or care. It's summer, who fucking cares, right?

We're the cool girls, we get our own booze and we go out to the tables before the boys do. We're not waiting for them, but all we want is for them to join us. For them to grin and swig from our bottles and place a hand on our thigh under the table. We're nearly blue in the face holding our breaths, holding our poses, hiding our desperation for one of them to sit down next to us. They almost always do. They're on the same stage, they know their roles. And the darkness hugs us and the drink warms us and we hold hands and couple off and go on walks or we go to bed alone, ignored, ready to try again tomorrow. You never know if the result will be the same of different, but at least we're the ones getting attention, if anyone is.

We are the group that everyone wants to be a a part of. We are the most reckless, the ones that needed to escape the doldrums of outside life the most, and we cling to this despite our place in the light. We drink the most, laugh the loudest, look the best, and have the greatest chance of falling into favorable graces with the locals- or at least of them knowing who we are. We have older siblings who paved the way for us here, or we are at least hooking up with someone who does. Everyone is having fun here, but we are having the most fun. We are having the time of our lives. We are most gluttonously consuming sunsets and bottles of island wine. We are sure we are sleeping under the fountain of youth.

Everything important seems so far away.

Nothing can touch us here. Nothing can touch me. Even after I get an expensive helicopter ride off the island to a mainland hospital for alcohol poisoning on my birthday. I can barely hear the strain in my parents' worried voices over all the "It'll be a great stories!" all around me. It's already a great story. I'm so alive. I'm so thirsty. I feel greedy for one more of everything I've felt. Everything coarsing through my veins is never enough because the next moment will always bring more. I lose touch with people. I don't care. Nothing is real but everything I'm doing and feeling moment to moment. It's too much to try to explain. Why would I try anyway, when just living it instead is so goddamn easy?

I've heard it being compared to doing heroin the first time, always going back to try to get a high like the first one,  but I've never done that, so I can't say.

Nothing that good, that powerful, that fast coming, can last. This is the lesson you learn after you've left, before you've learned anything else. You can go back to visit or to live another summer, but you can't drink enough to hide all the cracks that start appearing from banging yourself around with abandon. We all try anyway. We all just need a little bit of the way it was the first time. Remember that? That was the best. We're all here again, all the people who mattered anyway, so what's the problem?

If it's an apex, it's the height of stupidity. It's the summit where one side climbing is blissful irresponsibility and the slide downward is heartbreak and the reality of all the choices you made while you were still allowed to run wild. It's harder to run wild that second summer. The people, the island institutions you used to name drop about jokingly and roll your eyes start recognizing your face, feeling threatened by your presence, not sure if they want you there anymore. Is this still a game? Why is this a two-way transaction now?  They'll tighten your reigns. You see all the same places you used to run free, but you can't get to them anymore, not if you want to be allowed to stay.

It's a trap.

Once you realize you've been snared, the desperation sets in. Snared, scared animals are always the meanest. All the trapped animals biting at each other because they can't get close enough to the keeper of the keys. This is the way it is. This is the way that the 'everyone elses' act toward each other, ripping at the seems, just trying to tear someone else apart enough that no one else will notice where they're falling apart themselves.

Remember how much fun it used to be?

Yes, let's remember it. We'll recount it over Oberons- Remember how we used to grab them out of the cooler behind the bar after our shifts and go sit on the patio and drink them while we counted our money? Shift drinks, the first one always free. We'd compare customers and recount the night before if there hadn't been time, but there was always time, wasn't there?  We'd discuss the night stretching ahead, itching for it to start fast and crazy, but willing it to last forever, to top the last one. Plans are made according to the teams playing on the one grassy softball diamond, the island league, the amount of cash in our hands, and the hours of remaining daylight. It's an equation only we know, only we can work the solution. We're so good at this kind of math.

We laugh and laugh and do our hair and makeup side by side just as we half-assedly did when we stumbled out of bed this morning, but this time with more care. We try on clothes, but really, it doesn't matter what we're wearing. We're tan. We're pretty. We're paying. We've got each other and we're fine.

You've got to understand that all the good gets jumbled up together. The bad does the same.

The first summer I left with a full heart, the second with an empty one.

I think it's what growing up feels like.

the other side of the coin

There's a particular sadness that comes with making a choice, and that's the part I sometimes get caught up in. The other side of the coin. That scrawny kid that didn't get picked.

 

I've been known to make bad decisions, sometimes just so I can pick the underdog. Sometimes just to make sure it was the wrong decision.

 

And where do all the possibilities that will never become realities go? Do they just fall off into the universe, waiting to be called up in a fleeting moment or fit of nostalgia? Do they become the worst things, doubt, regret?

 

Aren't those the worst things?

 

And didn't they start off innocent enough, as just the other option, the possibility that for whatever reason, we didn't go with?

 

I guess I'm asking because I made the 'right' choices, took the brighter path, followed directions from Those Who Would Know, and yet, I'm still in unfamiliar and unfriendly territory.

 

No, it doesn't make sense to pine away over the turns I did not choose, the roads I did not go down, but it is perhaps easier than forcing myself to continue plunging down uncertain paths in the knowledge that sometimes the things that look the most right don't even guarantee to get you where you want to go.

promises.

Once he broke down into tears as he told me there was just no other girl like me.

 

Hearing something like that from the one person you want to say it, it's some sort of trap. It's not a promise when he reaches for your hand. It's not a promise when you're leaning against your car and he reaches over and pulls your coat apart, splits it open like a pea pod. It's not a promise when he leans inside and brushes your hair out of your face and looks into your eyes.

 

It's not even a promise when he promises this is the last time you'll have to have this conversation. Please believe, you may both want to remain hopeful that it's true, but it's definitely not a promise.

 

It is a promise when he cries with his hands resting on the picnic table without gloves even though it's prickly cold and you feel a bite in your own fingers despite the fact that you're wearing a pair, so you reach over and put your little hands over his big ones and he looks up at you with those brown oil slicks of eyes and you actually return the gaze for the first time since you met that day. You're outside because you didn't want your heart to thaw this time, the frigid temperature is the only thing holding it together. When you touch him, when you look into his eyes, it's over. You're just a puddle, even if you look intact. It's a promise, but you're making it to him and he already knows you mean your promises, so please, refrain.

 

It's better to be the one not making any promises.

 

You can believe him later that day-  after following you back to your apartment and having sex with you and then falling asleep until he's got to leave again- when he tells you it's only because he hasn't slept since he last saw you. You can believe.

 

In fact, you probably should. And you probably will.

 

Go ahead and believe that he loves you and being around you makes him human.

 

But maybe keep in mind that he's already human no matter what. The chromosomes just match up, the genetic material. The way he acts, sure it's bad without you, but he'll never be anything other than human. We are still animals. Remember that. Because sometimes you'll wish you could will him to become a wolf or a lion or maybe even a bug you can squash with your shoe in passing. But he'll always be flesh and blood and nothing will change how trapped in human form he'll always remain. Behavior notwithstanding.

 

Forgive yourself for never knowing if he's really telling the truth or not. It's okay that despite everything you still want to believe every word out of his mouth. It's a pretty mouth. It's a mouth that means something to you. Even if everything he said was only half true, if you always believe him, you've got a 50/50 chance of calling it right.

 

Sometimes, when things get particularly trying, when he's really feeling low, he'll seek you out again, even after years. Don't mistake this for a change of heart, for love spanning the time and miles in one long connecting stride. He needs validation. He's coming to the person who, when they give it, it actually means something. That's not love. I know, I know. It's something.

 

It is something.

 

Try to take it as the something it is and not the something that you wish it would be. Seeing your name in his inbox, it doesn't send him into a tailspin. It doesn't change things. A wave of nausea isn't sweeping over him right now. He's not telling the whole story. Besides, you're a better storyteller.

 

One day we were at the end of a three hour drive and I knew. I knew we were going nowhere. I started ugly crying as we passed over a set of railroad tracks. I didn't hide it, I wanted him to notice. I wanted him to see what he was doing to me. It's funny how people spring to action when the driver starts getting hysterical.

 

I told him I wasn't getting on the ferry, he'd have to go to the island without me.

 

He made me some more promises, so I got on the boat. But, looking out at the water I knew- Even his promises aren't promises.

 

 

I loved him as long as he let me anyway. I keep my promises.

 

 

And now I keep them to someone else. And it feels better when the other person means their promises too.

 

So much better.

 

 

 

token mildly-offensive religion post.

Sometimes when I am asked, put on the spot, curiously inquired "What do you believe in?" I don't know what to say.

Partially, probably, because on any given day I am not really sure exactly what it is that I believe in.

Is this is question of faith? Of God? Of specifically what I DO to insert myself into a group of people who do the same things, which gives us an identity in this portion of our lives? Is this even about God? About finding common ground? Another manifestation of the fact that we're social creatures? Or is this all a quest for some type of serene knowledge?

Am I part of the safety that comes with numbers? Am I naive enough to claim I know the all or nothing of this great debate? Do I love freedom enough? Because don't you dare question my love of freedom.


AMIRIGHT?!

I just don't know.

Not for lack of introspective thought on the topic, let me assure you. Even when no one asks me the question, I ask it of myself.

Come on! What do you believe in, Sara?

There are obvious answers. I believe in post-it notes, for instance. I am very faithful to my relationship with them. I keep them with me almost constantly. I overuse them if possible. I utilize them to keep me on track, organized, to remind me of things too important to simply file away in my mind. I believe in post it notes because they keep things in the forefront. Because they work for me.

There are the less tangibles. I believe in saying 'I love you" every single time I hang up the phone with someone in my life that I love. Perhaps it is fear that drives this along, just like religion for some, knowing it could possibly be the last phrase I say to my loved one, the last chance I get to set the record straight. Love you. When I stop myself from saying it, it weighs on me until I talk to the person again. I believe in saying 'I love you,' even if it's based on superstition, especially if it's not at the end of a lengthy, pour-your heart out conversation, and again, especially if it is, too. I'm sentimental, I believe in sentiment, in 'I love you's.'

But it only grows from there. What else do I believe in? The power of love? The changes that come with time? Evolution? The New Testament?

Am I a Christian?

What kind?

How do I feel about Jesus?

Do I even believe in God?

Of course I believe in God.

Right?

I was raised Catholic, as were many of my friends. What a trip that was. I mean, when you roll with the Catholic crowd, you get some real crazies. Devoted folk too, but damn, crazy. I'm confirmed Catholic, which means I basically signed a blood oath to remain faithful to their ideals and do all their shit and no one else's for the rest of my life. Okay not really, and not a blood oath, but you know, at 15 they told me I was an adult in the eyes of the church and basically I didn't feel any different except that no one else was going to let me be an adult for like three more years. I jumped on that ship right quick, and since I do things all the way or not all all, I started leading youth group and doing bible study.

I loved that shit. I spent more time at church in my final two years of high school than I plan to for the rest of my life. I learned a lot in a general sense, and I learned a lot about Catholicism. And then I got to college and fell in love with my own freedom and actually being a quasi-adult and boom, all of the sudden my path wasn't on the road to righteousness... I was on the fast track to feminism and left-wing politics.

I'm not trying to bash Catholicism. I honestly feel like it's one of the least social-climby branches of Christianity out there and I love feeling like a part of something when I go back. Also, I have so much love in my heart for tradition, as nontraditional as I can be at times, and so many people I love the most in life are Catholic.

But I'm not exactly a practicing member anymore.

Religion is about more than knowing when to sit and kneel, the words of the chants, wishing those around you 'peace' mid-mass. For some, maybe that's all it is, to be a part of something bigger and feel comfort in knowing all the cues in weekly one-hour doses. It's just not enough for me. Because there are some things that I just CANNOT get on board with, and they pretty much cancel out the joy of feeling like I belong as a part of something.

 One of many of these issues (and I mean many, but for the sake of this being a blog post and not a book, we're going to talk about one very well known one) is the fact that we're not supposed to be cool with birth control or abortion. And I'm thinking to myself..... right. I guess it's the pull out and pray method then? I mean, I know that we're supposed to be forced into celibacy or a life of shame, but man, get real first of all and stop trying to scare me straight second of all.

Not really going to work to today's world.

I mean, I love you Jesus, really I do, but the whole immaculate conception story is really only going to work once and I've got living grandparents I'm trying not to shame and a bad case of the "I'm-in-no-condition-to-be-a-fit-mothers."

Don't get me wrong, I think it's wonderful when people have babies, even when they're not married first. My sister got pregnant four months before her wedding! Now we're all baby crazy! I'm going to be an aunt! I can't wait to squeeze the shit out of that little bundle of joy and teach it to say 'diahrea' before 'daddy' and spoil the everloving shit out of it! Look how accepting I am! YAY!

But I also believe in making the right choices for your body and mind to forge a path toward the happiness we're all desperately (some less desperately than others, assholes) pursuing... and damn, I don't think even I could spin a baby to my advantage right now.

This is life. It's basically the ultimate fight to the death cage match. Earth being the cage. I know, big cage, right? There are no fucking maps or strategies and we're all basically the blind and the blind leading the blind, so you know what, yes, I'm going to take any route/shortcut that will even TRY to make this journey easier. You can call me lazy, but come the fuck on, who is anyone to judge another person's choices in a fight to the death?

HOWEVER, I do believe in this idea of a higher being. Of something greater. Of a reason that we have faith. A reason for faith. Something that can't be explained with words or logic or complex equations.


Trippy, right? Damn right, it's the ultimate trip.

I also believe in an equal playing field and treating people with respect and kindness. I believe that there have been some wise, wise people in our past and even now that have had these lasting ideas that stuck and we all have so much to learn from them. But not everything- so much does not equal everything. No one is all knowing. Except God, maybe. I don't know. That's the point! No one knows! *(#&$*&#$!!!!

I also believe in making the choice that works for you. Not the easy choice, not the wahhhh-I-don't-feel-like-getting-out-of-bed-on-Sunday choice, but the decision to say, "Look, I get it, this is how you feel close to God and I respect that, I respect the validation that comes with ritual and gathering among people that hold the same beliefs and and would never try to deny you from doing what makes sense to you, what makes your soul feel peace." Because that's a beautiful thing for those that want it. And those that don't, psh, I'm cool with you too because to take a stand like that requires some guts and some heart as well. 

But I'm fully committed to finding what makes my soul feel peace. It's not comfortable, not knowing. Floating around and always kind of looking for something that makes enough sense to commit to. I haven't found it yet. I haven't found what makes sense fully and completely to my heart. When I do, I'll know, and I have faith that I will.

For now, just feeling that curiosity and desire sustains my faith that it is out there.

So maybe I don't always know what it is I believe in. But I do believe that it's different for everyone, and I will thank God for that.

weird, weird times.

I think I'm entering/have entered a very contemplative time in my life.

It's not the first and it won't be the last, but when they happen there's no telling how long they'll stay or what I'll learn.

It's always a little weird, to be honest. The other night at the bar, over fries and beers, I started crying while trying to explain a book I'm reading to a friend's boyfriend I'd never even met before. Hello, freakshow.

During these times I feel everything very acutely and I'm incredibly emotional all. the. time.

Not a sad emotional, just moved. It's as if everything and anything could have the power to move me.

It's strange. I don't exactly dread these phases, but I'm not jumping for joy to start weeping as I consider how everyone perceives a certain patch of road differently, either.

Speaking of perception, this is taken from one of my new all-time favorite reads, Anthropology of an American Girl, and it touched me so deeply that I've been thinking about it for days. I even read this passage out loud to Matt on the way home from Cleveland yesterday so that we could discuss it.



 Bless his soul for humoring my fragile state of being. (I'm a nerd, through and through.)


 

--------------

         "Actually," Dan said, "I was just thinking about qualities that are essentially incommunicable, like color. For instance, take roses. Kate and I can both call a rose red, though I might see coral and she might see pink."

       

         "Do you mean color blindness?" Kate asked 

       

         "Not exactly," he guided gently. Dan was always gentle with Kate. At parties he would dedicate songs to her, or he would write compositions called "Kate 9" or "Kate 16." "My point is that it's impossible to know what I see matches what you see when we both say red. Comparisons of redness aren't possible. Redness is ineffable: it has to be experienced to be known. "

 

         "Big deal," Jack said. "Perception is variable. If you perceive a speeding car to be forty feet away when it's really four feet away, and I perceive it to be four feet away, I'll jump, and you'll get hit. Relative perception doesn't change the position of the car, and it's doesn't affect the color of a rose. The rose doesn't care what color you think it is." 

 

        "I'm not saying that physical absolutes don't exist, " Dan said. "You're right-the rose is the color it is. I'm saying that absolute perception doesn't exist. That no one interpretation is more valid than another. Like redness, or jazz, or--"
 


        "Nationality," I added, "Or race."



        "What's your point, Daniel?" Jack wanted to know.

       

...


"Art doesn't have to be held accountable to accuracy, and there's no one right way to look at things."

(Pages 142-143) 

lack of patience.

Sometimes when I want to do everythingrightthissecond, I need to just remind myself to just knock it off. Yes, it's 2012 and I'm itching to get my year off to a good start, but I'm not going to accomplish everything overnight.

Which is basically the hardest thing to try to tell yourself when you spent college completing semester-long projects the eve before they were due and still getting A's. Because then, everything could be accomplished overnight.

This is not college.


This is real life.


And these things take time.


So, someday, but not today, I'll look back on all the progress and be impressed.

Until then, I'll be dreaming of this:

the one where i rationalize not working in politics anymore

Monday night I went to see Ides of March. I know, who goes to the movies on Monday night? I do.  It came highly recommended by my grandparents and I'd wanted to go since I saw the first preview for it months ago. (I'm guilty, just like every other woman I know, of being a devoted Gosling fan. I know, razz me about it later. But seriously. Drool.) I had to drag Matt because it's not his kind of movie and also because he thinks going to the movies is a waste of money (it is).

 I'm going to come right out and say that I liked the movie, and I think you should go see it.

I go to the movies a lot, probably every other week. I fucking love the popcorn. Honestly, that's almost my sole motivation. And because it's socially unacceptable to make conversation in the theater. I need to focus and cannot stand being distracted in the middle of a film. Sometimes I go by myself, sometimes Matt comes, it really doesn't make any difference to me.

SPOILER (kind of, not really).  So, this movie is about about the Ohio Democratic primary and how if this governor wins the Ohio primary he'll likely get the nomination for the presidential race for the Dems.  He's a decent guy, with good ideals. He reminds me of Obama, and I'm sure that's what they were going for.   Anyway the main character (Gosling) is his Junior campaign manager and he really believes in the candidate, he's an idealist. Gosling is this brilliant media mind and everything is going great and then all this bullshit happens blah blah blah scandal, blah blah blah drama, blah blah blah secrets. By the end of the movie Gosling is this jaded, crooked hack just like the rest of them. (sadly. but he's also still the most handsome.)

That's just the gist, go see the movie.

Anyway, I obviously started missing politics as I was watching this Hollywood, somewhat accurate-somewhat-glamorized portrayal of the race to the election. I've essentially cut ties with the presidential campaign after this summer because I got frustrated with it and because I also didn't have the time they needed me to devote, it was basically another full time job I wasn't getting paid for. But I miss it. I miss the whole scene of characters, and the flair for drama and the charisma the complete devotion of energy and attention and shaking hands and making a million calls to people that won't bother to show up to anything, and that's if they don't cuss you out over the phone. I miss the group of people with tunnel vision. But, the same tunnel vision as me.

And then I watched the whole movie. And I realized that I don't miss it that much. I maybe don't miss it enough to go back. Or enough to fore sake all sleep or really any personal life for months at a time and to have no idea what's going on with my family but to know the poll numbers at any given moment.

I don't want to live a life that's exciting for spurts and then an overall emotional hangover the rest of the time. Everything seems corrupt and full of bullshit and bureaucracy. The whole system doesn't need any one person, it will swallow up and spit out anyone when their time has come. I don't need to become jaded and spent and burnt out by thirty. I don't want that for myself.

It's more than just politics too. It's organizing and activism in general. I feel this stuff so much, so hard, that it takes over my whole being. It's exhausting. It becomes an obsession and a compulsion and the only thing that matters, and it never even needs me to start with. And it's lonely. It's a lonely life because sometimes that "good,' that original quest for 'right' or the service you want to do to make the world even the smallest bit better is a cruel and fickle mistress. It doesn't need me as much as I need it.

So, I'll continue to volunteer when I have time and support my causes and try to be a decent person, but I'm not going to stake my life on it, not for the sake of the life I want for myself and the person want to be. I don't think I have it in me. It's hard to say and it sucks to admit because for a time, I wanted it so much. I wanted to be a part of it all and another part of the process and part of the team. As much as I miss the hotels and the travel and the people and the clusterfuck of activity, I don't miss myself. When I'm in it I'm so full of movement, and it feels SO good to be moving, but when it's over, I'm exhausted in every sense of the word. And used up to the point where I can't even get through a few chapters of a shitty novel.

I'm rationalizing. Yes, this I know. But I have to. I'm starting to get that itch. That climbing-up-the-walls feeling that it's time. That I need to be at work rightthisminute for the election. That I'm not doing enough. Fretting over all that I could be learning and doing RIGHT NOW.

Anyway, that's my tangent and rationalization on why I'm going to be more selfish or really just less involved with a process that doesn't even know I'm there.

At least that's the plan today.

Sara

a toast for my sister.

As I've mentioned a few times now, my little sister is getting married in three short weeks.

Since somewhere in the book of sisterly duties it says that big sisters are maid of honor material, I am maid of honor material. And even if I'm not, I will simply have to do. There are times that I look back at my mother tying us together at 9 and 7 in a futile effort to force us to learn how to get along with one another and I have to laugh because somehow, we arrived here.

(Yes, she seriously tied us together with pieces of fabric. We weren't harmed. She untied us for bed, but left us together for meals. Our father traveled a lot for work. I think she was pretty ingenuitive.)

We have now arrived at the point where we don't have to be tied together with fabric to understand that even without the knots, we're held together by some strange force that comes from growing up side by side, enduring all the weird and terrible things that happen within a family everyday.  Upon inspection, the weird and terrible might not really be so weird and terrible, but you'd never dare compare it with anyone. We shared the weirdness. We are sisters. We'll always be tied together.

You should know that everything about my sister happens in a whirlwind. She's a tornado that tears through town and stirs things up. She'll level one house and barely leave the one next door a breeze. She'll rage in a fury and deceive you with her eye in the center, only to flare back up almost immediately with a vengeance. She is a force of her own, she needs no source and doesn't follow and pattern or a logic. She never lacks energy, creativity, or originality and has never sought approval or pats on the head from authority.

She is my only sister. She is all I have to go on as sisterly relationships go. In some ways we mirror each other and in as many more, you'd never believe we came from the same family. At times, our relationship has been volatile. I was a bossy and bitchy child, hell bent on having my own way despite the desires of anyone else. My sister has had bouts of self destruction and moments where I am to blame for any wrong that ever came looking for her. Yet with everything we've gone through and everything that has happened,  we find ways to love each other more and our relationship grows stronger every day- despite all of the things we'll never forgive each other for; there will probably always be those things between sisters.

We are sisters, we are at times each others worst enemies and at times each others only ally. I know no better way to describe the teetering balance in the relationship of female siblings. The bar swings heavy one way or another between the two poles, and you're still stuck with each other. Sometimes it's a happy accident and sometimes it's a sentence you'll never live long enough to serve.

She is my sister, and I love her.

But what will I say in my speech in three weeks?

It's too much to try to express it all in a few short moments, all my hope and congratulations, with guests barely listening as they peer longingly down their flutes, waiting to make contact with the bubbly nectar teasing their lips. I know my family, trust that they love their champagne.

Maybe it'll mean nothing to them as I pour out the story of my first decipherable memory, the day my sister was born. I wasn't even three years old, but I remember details from that day, tidbits of realization that no one could have painted for my memory. I'll start my speech with that fact, maybe pepper in some details. My parents will nudge each other and smile knowingly, because they know that's my first memory, of course they do.

They'll lean over their table and mouth to the family members they're seated with, "She remembers it because she's never forgiven us for not making her an only child!" And there will be muffled laughter, but by then I'll already be explaining how that's not the way I see it.

The way I see it, in life there are moments that stick out like sore thumbs. They can be raw, embarrassing, make your heart skip a beat, or cause you to cry out, but they change you, alter something untouchable but true. They're vivid and bright and significant because of what they do to shape you, and everything afterward that you do, think, or say is slightly influenced by that single slot in time. The moment I met my sister was one of those slots.

My sister's presence in my world has shaped it. She has made me stronger, made me feel deeply, weakened my resolve at times, challenged me, made me hate myself, and taught me so much about life and love. She is an anchor that hasn't let up or allowed me to blow away since she planted herself deep into my person. My sister, she is a part of me. A pivotal part, the first thing I've loved constantly and consistently that wasn't provided for me at birth. That's a long affair.

I'll try to explain it all and fall short and start fumbling a little over words. I'll look Matt over at for comfort and instantly regret it and start getting heady with emotion. The express lane straight to hysterics.

I'll mention that I bet her new husband remembers the exact moment Hurricane Beth blew into his life and the ensuing battle to catch and contain her. I'll warn him of what he already knows- not to discuss anything serious for at least an hour after you get her out of bed and the like, but not too much. I'll commend him for holding her attention and winning her peculiar heart. I'll plead with him to try his best to help their relationship grow and blossom the way that I know in my heart she'll do hers. And then I'll thank him for being the man it takes to gently and sometimes not-so-gently handle my sister's mind, soul, heart, and body.

And then I'll thank my sister for being the first to know how to gently and sometimes not-so-gently handle my mind, soul, heart, and body. I'll tell her I love her and I'll cheers to a happy and laughter-filled life. I'll joke about nieces and nephews and the revenge I'll get on her through spoiling them unforgivably. I'll chug two glasses of champagne and smile my biggest smile.

And then I'll march straight to the bathroom, lock myself into a stall, rest my hair-sprayed head on my thighs and weep.

Because she is my sister, and I love her.

Sara

a conversation regarding the future. part 1.

Last night Matt (AKA Manfriend, but I'm tired of calling him Manfriend so from this point forward he will be referred to by his given name, Matt) and I were dicking around, our regular Monday night activity, and one thing led to another, and before I knew it we were actually discussing The Future.

These are not the sort of conversations that I normally pursue for a myriad of reasons, one being that the future freaks me out, man. And another being that I have trouble making decisions and all I see in the future is an endless string of crucial choices and opportunities for failure.

On the flip side I also have a great deal of hopes and passionate interests that I intend to pursue to The Future, which excites me greatly.

I just don't really have a plan, hence the fear. Every time I try to force myself to formulate some sort of plan, something shifts and sends me into a tailspin that changes even basic groundwork in my plan. Which can be good, but also just keeps me fixed to one spot because I'll never actually follow through with anything if I keep changing the plan before I take a first step.

*#&$#*&$

All I really meant by that convoluted mess is that I'm trying to formulate a plan for The Future and it seems like something always gets in the way of the all-important first step in the right direction.

Now though, I've finally actually picked a concentration for my Master's and I'm shopping around for programs and doing copious amounts of research. I'm a nerd. I crave information. As much as possible.

This is all pretty recent and sort of causing me to panic because I want to pour my entire self into applying for grad school right now, but I've also got my little sister's wedding in three weeks and another good friend's wedding in December. Both require a fair amount of attention, time, and money. Especially my sister's wedding. I'm throwing a bridal shower on Sunday and I STILL don't know how I'm decorating.



And that brings us up to speed with last night, in a candlelit room decorated with background music and hot oil being massaged into my back by the man that spoils me constantly. That is the time that I chose to pose the following question:


"So.......ehhh... Where do YOU want to live?"


I know, romantic. But it's a conversation I can't believe we've never had. We literally cannot pick a fucking restaurant to eat at on a Friday night because neither one of us wants to choose something the other person isn't in the mood for,  but I've been researching programs and getting ready to go balls-in with whatever schools I feel like pursuing and I never even asked Matt what he thought.

Whoops?

I mean, I realize it's my future and I AM WOMAN HEAR ME ROAR and I shouldn't let someone else influence my decisions for the life I've dreamed of and blah blah blah.

But, honestly. In all likelihood Matt's in for the long haul. He's been in for the long haul way longer than I have. He wants to come with me and that's good for me because omgz back rubs on the reg. And also all that other mushy stuff.


So I asked him. Because I want to know that wherever I decide to move us all over God's green earth doesn't cause him to resent me for the length of our stay.

And an interesting conversation it was.

To be continued.

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