here and now.

Tomorrow would have been my beloved Nan's 80th birthday. 

While I've genuinely missed her every day since she left us in bodily form on January 24th, today was particularly rough. 

Maybe it was the release of anxiety and tension that came with completing my final comprehensive exams to finish my master's degree this morning, or maybe just the fact that I wish she was still a person I could call to talk to about it, I can't distinguish. 

The fact is that this grief, this undoing sadness, is different from the normal sadness of losing her. 

Today is a reminder that she won't be there to talk to over the phone or in person to dismantle and dissect the bigger and smaller moments of my life from now on, as she has been for my forever. I knew when she died that she'd never attend my wedding, never see me be a mother, never witness my life in a stable form. And it was a bone deep sadness for something that just isn't real to me yet. 

But these smaller markers, they hit me hard. When I realize I'm happy and I no longer get to share them with her. When i feel a connection with someone new, when they do the things she would have known felt perfect to me, and I can't just say that to her and have her just intrinsically know. 

Of course I still talk to her often, our dialogue is open and rich, even though I now take on both parts. I feel fortunate to have known her well enough that I get to feel like our conversation is still two-sided. A death does not end a relationship. I remind myself. 

It's the one sided conversation that I fear. That I dread. The one where I have to somehow make peace with her being gone. I still don't have the words for that. 

Springing!

Okay you guys. 

Spring break is over. I mean, I have no idea what happened. One minute it was starting, and the next it was just...over. So weird. I think stuff happened in the middle, but, time just kind of sped up and got away from me.

I basically didn't even leave Missoula, which is fine because I love it here and I feel like this is the kind of place people come for spring break, so whatever. My beloved jeep finally pooped out, so I'm weighing my repair options. Read: I haven't done my taxes yet, so I may or may not currently lack the fundage to bring her back to life. I'll keep you posted. A guy at work maybe has a tiny crush on me, so when he found out my vehicle was on the fritz, he miraculously remembered he has a friend who is a jeep whisperer. 20 minutes later said friend was prepared to be at my service! It pays to be friendly. And by friendly I mean snarky and pithy in general, because some people like to be messed with, and there's a rapport to giving people shit, I think. It works for me, anyway.

But what I mean is that I'm not fretting about the car. I rode my bicycle to school this morning and while it was a pretty sweaty and winded affair, mostly because my tires are really flat, I feel really good about it now. Plus I did sign up for a half marathon in July, so I should probably start moving my ass. Also, riding my bike to school means that Spring has sprung! (I really hope I didn't just jinx it.) 

Yesterday I planted starter seeds in my little indoor terrarium in preparation for our garden this summer. It's going to be amazing! Humans should grow more of what we eat! I also watched the documentary Hungry For Change yesterday while eating pizza I had delivered and it really freaked me out. I mean, I get it, I'm an adult. I know enough about nutrition to know that I shouldn't drink diet soda or eat anything with an expiration date that will outlive me. But shit, realizing the things we put in our bodies, the things I put in my body, is seriously nasty. Disgusting. And the sugar in everything! And the chemicals! I eat a lot better here in MT than I ever did living in the Midwest, but really, that's not saying much. So anyway, that's a new goal of mine, to eat more cleanly. I'm not saying I'm going to run out and buy a juicer, but I think I'm going to try to at least have an idea of where my food is coming from. As a person who is OFTEN guilty of eating my feelings, this should be interesting. 

On another note, I've got comps in like two and a half weeks and just a few projects and whatnot and then BOOM graduation. Also, BOOM, summer. Comps is really really scary to think about since it's a test and I'm a paper-writing person, but once it's over I'm essentially FREE, so I just need to look through it to the other side. 

And thennnn boom, real life. We'll cross that bridge when we come to it. 

Have a mentioned that my family is coming for my graduation? Because they are, and I'm fucking psyched about it. My parents are bringing my youngest brother and my grandfather with them and I'm going to show them the gloriousness of my life in Montana. Both of my parents have been out to visit before, as has my brother, but my parents were here before I really knew where the hell I was and what I was doing with my life. Now that I actually have my bearings and a life and FRIENDS and a feeling of belonging, I think it will be fun to show them around. Maybe they will come closer to understanding why I have to be here instead of back east. Nah, they'll never understand that. 

Okay. So that's where I am with my life right now. Brigit and I bought a fire pit the other day and had a bonfire in our yard. We'd been mulling it over and talking about it for weeks, so it was a very exciting event to actually have it come to fruition. Although it definitely made me miss the bird-bath fire pit from my days living downtown Indianapolis with Katherine. Cheers to a Spring full of bonfires, bike-rides, and big gardens!

on being a chicken shit. under the guise of control.

I'm taking a class this semester which makes me take really honest, uncomfortable looks at my life and myself. I would argue that these are the best kind of classes, even though they are hard and trying emotionally more than academically. Getting my Master's in counseling has been an entire journey in self-discovery, and while I'm extremely grateful, I'm also exhausted. 

But I'm here to write more specifically on this wonderful, albeit at times shaming-inducing and embarrassing class. 

I've always considered myself one of those people who never cries. For me it was a measure of strength, and I think there was even a bit of pride in being the kind of person, perhaps more specifically the kind of woman, that has control over my emotions. But do I really?  When I think about that now, I feel a little silly. Because in truth, I'm a HIGHLY emotional person. I'm one of those people with big, extreme moods and messy expressions of love and pain. I just got so good at putting a hard shell around it, withdrawing, successfully avoiding emotion that I was a sort of robot-person. Really, I wasn't in control, I was just terrified of what would happen if I had feelings, that I buried them. I like to feel safe, emotionally, even though I'm rather reckless in most other aspects of my life. Emotions are messy and unpredictable and powerful. They're raw. I like to appear polished and rational, self-assured. 

There's nothing wrong with being that way, except that I now really believe it's completely contrary to my authentic nature as a human being, as a helper. As a person swollen with empathy. Writing has been the only place in my life that I've let myself go, and even in that, there's a risk. 

And now I'm off-topic again. 

I'm just trying to explain. Tonight in class, the topic was apologies. What makes a good one? What does a bad one look like? Is hearing the words as important as a change in action by the person that did you wrong? So we had this assignment, and it was to come to class with a written apology, one you wished you would have given to someone you wronged or one you wish you would have gotten from someone who wronged you in some way. 

And suspicion crept in as I was thinking about what I was going to write about. I got this sneaking sense that we would all be sharing what we wrote with the class. So I typed out a bullshit apology to a faceless person about abusing the parking system at the university and came to class feeling safe. Last week, I broke down crying when I gave some of my thoughts on suicide, which was the topic that class. It was scary, I felt out of control, not just my voice and my face coloration, but in the slippery slope release can be on such a charged topic.

I've done wrong and I've been wronged. Not more and not less than anyone else, I don't think, but I have tons of actual examples in my life I could have drawn from. I can make a mountain out of almost any mole-hill when I start writing. It's what I do. In order to feel safe in my emotions, I have to explain and dissect them, and I can only do that through writing. It makes me feel more organized, seeing it all there in print. 

The people in my class, and there aren't that many of us, maybe 15, took risks. Almost all of them. And as I heard their stories and watched them struggle and cry and bravely share, I was ashamed of myself. Here I am, one of the few grad students in the class, and I'm in a program that has me talking about feelings for a living, and I can't muster an authentic apology to share with these people who have only ever been supportive?

So it comes to the end of class and I'm the only one who hasn't shared. And my teacher looks at me. And I say to the class, "I'm so embarrassed you guys. I didn't take this assignment as seriously as I wish I would have and now that I've heard all of your stories, I'm ashamed. I'm sorry, you guys. I was scared." And I read it and people laughed and they didn't seem mad at me for not exposing myself like they did. 

But I just felt so, overwhelmingly selfish and shallow and pathetic. 

And so now, I think it's time to do this assignment over. With feeling. 

hanging in there

I'm  basically white-knuckling life this week because spring break is next week and I have a really bad attitude about school right now. Mostly I think I'm just burned out and worried about what the hell I'm going to do with my life after graduation on May 17th.

It's rapidly approaching.

Does everyone else constantly question, like, every single one of their life decisions on a moment to moment basis? Or is that just me? I never really thought of myself as someone that has a hard time committing to things, but I'm starting to wonder.

I'm a HUGE believer in all that "trust the universe" granola hippy-dippy bullshit, but maybe my connection with said universe has been interrupted or something because I think about paying my student loans back and I kind of feel compelled to go off the grid. But like, for real go off the grid, not the idealistic going off the grid I talked about when I was 24 and my brain hadn't started working yet.

Whatever, I need to complain less. Sometimes I get this (idiotic) idea in my head that somehow complaining about things is funny for other people, but really I think it just makes me look annoying and ungrateful.

So let's go ahead and move on.

This weekend, Courtney, Aubrey, and I went on an adventure. They are my roommates and also Courtney has been my best friend for almost ten years, since the fateful moment that we met in the Ohio State dorms. Aubrey is in my grad program and also one of those soulmate kinds of friends that you feel comfortable talking to about bowel movements and awkward sex positions.... sometimes in the same breath. We accidentally watched a lesbian porn the other day, disguised as a regular old French netflix movie, but that's a story for another time. Just let me say that I looked over at Aubrey and said "Sooooo, this is something I never thought we'd do together." And then we both started cracking up as the ladies on screen transitioned from 69 to ass-to-mouth. It was interesting.

Anyway, back to the adventure.


One of Courtney's bucket list items was to go see the great snow goose migration. It happens every year when they head back to Canada. So we drove East, across the Rocky Mountain Front (continental divide) and camped and then woke to have our worlds rocked by birds. It was amazing and fun and I really needed it.

Below is a short clip from our adventure. It was A LOT colder than anticipated, since Spring has reached Missoula, but not apparently Freeze Out Lake, MT.  We're discussing the finer points of our camping method for the night. Enjoy.

Bucket list item, check check.

On Buried Treasure

still taking awkward selfies after all these years. 

The other night I was waiting for the new Veronica Mars movie to download onto my computer.  Don't even get me started on why I was downloading it instead of going to the theater. Okay, actually I'll just tell you. It's because no fucking movie theater in the entirety of the state of Montana was playing the film. I considered for a fleeting moment driving to Washington to view the movie so that I could see it in a theater, but then realized I wouldn't have a place to stay afterward or a car bud to keep me awake on the drive home. But that's neither here nor there. The fact of the matter is that I was waiting for this movie that I've been waiting for 7 years to finish downloading and I seriously needed to chill the hell out. Tension was running high. 

So I did what any normal person would do, I exhausted Facebook, Thought Catalog, and Pinterest. And then I still had like 71 more minutes of downloading or something, so I got creative. I decided to go through my old draft folder in gmail. Just to you know, see if I had anything good. 

As of this moment, I have 653 drafts in gmail, which I realize is pretty ridiculous. But it's where I go to just jot down a couple of lines I think about or go on pissed off stream-of-consciousness rants. It's my thing. My draft folder is like, really close to my heart. It's also kind of a deep abyss of curiosities and antiquities and embarrassingly shitty writing. 

I don't delve very deep very often. 

But you know, I had some time on my hands and about three beers in my belly, so I dove right in. I found a lot of things. Essays I'd started about my Nana, years before she died. Ranty bitch fits about my best friends in those moments when I actually had the luxury of being close enough to them physically to be annoyed by anything they did, instead of just missing them desperately. And about 200 pages of a story that I started writing four years ago and just kind of ....forgot about. It was all so earnest, you know. I was discovering so much and meaning everything that I felt SO MUCH. 

It was a comfort, you know. To read and think from the voice of the girl that I was, the girl that I'll always be. Romantic and reckless and scared and self-conscious all at once, most of the time. Sometimes I forget myself, all these places that I go, all these things I get swept up in. This was a strong dose of identity. 

Finding my voice, deep and unexpected in my draft folder, it was like finding buried treasure.  

Oh, and Veronica Mars, that was a treasure too. 

good days.

I decided several weeks ago that, from now on, I'm only going to have good days. 

Don't get me wrong, I know that's a totally ridiculous to make a claim like that. And further, I KNOW me, I know exactly how little it takes to totally knock my day off the rails. I've always believed in bad days as simply the means necessary to really enjoy good days. 

Historically, I've had a pretty high good to bad day ratio. I'm a pretty happy person. I laugh a lot. I make other people laugh. I indulge myself. I pursue my interests. I'm fucking privileged. The world is on my side, what do I possibly have to be unhappy about? 

But you know, logic doesn't always win out. 

So, for about four months I was having A LOT of bad days. Like, a lot. Way more bad than good. I kept telling myself "Tomorrow will be the day I start pulling myself out of this." And then it was tomorrow and I just really couldn't find it in me. Of course, there were happy times in there. Obviously. But I was sad in the way where you feel like you're not living in your body anymore. Like, I really didn't care about how my parts felt, I was just slogging myself around from one place to the next, trying to get home so I could have a GD beer or six and go to bed and do it all over again. The sadness was bigger than me. 

And then my Nana died. My one person in the world who really, really understands me and still thinks I'm like the greatest thing that has ever walked the earth. Gone. Just like that. Practically no warning. I haven't really found the words to describe that one yet. 

And I think that was my tipping point. I really felt like, right then, I could just break into a million tiny smithereens and say 'fuck all' to the pieces. And really, my heart is broken. I'm really sad. But I'm not like, throw a glass against a brick wall with all your might, boom the glass is a metaphor for your spirit broken. I'm just sad. The ache-y, wake up crying and sometimes run down the rabbit hole of your memory with the company of a whole bottle of wine kind. 

Anyway, where were we? 

Oh yeah, the "Every day is going to be a good day" thing. 

It's not like, a fool proof plan or anything. But I try my tits off every day to not let myself get derailed. Sometimes days are good in different ways, and I'm trying to acknowledge that. For example:

Good outfit days

Good productivity days

Good find on Netflix days

Good hair days

Good clean room and fresh sheets days

Good discussion in class days

Good jokes at work days

Good conversation with friends days

Good craigslist missed connection days

Good book, so good I can't put it down, days

Good competence as the TA of my department days, when I avert crisis and save the day!

Good people-watching days

Good mountain adventure days

Good sunlight days

Good sit around on the couch with my roommates days

You get the gist. 

Anyway. I signed up to run a half marathon. And I am chewing fucking Nicorette, which is awful. And I drank tea instead of a cocktail last night. I skyped one of my friends AND my family the other day instead of avoiding phone calls. And I'm wearing less makeup. I did laundry! I'm doing that thing where you start clawing out of the hole. It was really hard at first, but I'm climbing out. Little by little. 

on my way back.

I know what happens when I stop writing.

I know the sensation of soul being further and further from body until you look down at your legs and haven't considered how they feel for weeks and weeks. In fact, maybe you can't remember how any part of your body feels. You've stopped considering your body. You're on auto-pilot, going through the motions. I know the dips and deep, hollow sadness that comes when I stop writing. 

And yet. 

I seem to keep doing it. 

Getting back into writing is a battle. Everything takes so much effort and sounds like shit and misses the mark. But if I can just force myself, it gets easier. If I can force myself to be gentle and patient with my soul, it gets better. 

Right now I need to start writing again. For self preservation. Because it's hard. Because at the end of the day, I love to write. 

Three weeks ago my favorite person in the entire world died. Three months from now I graduate with my Master's. 

Highs and lows, highs and lows. 

Hi. Hello.