Commence the Darkness

Waking up today was easy with daylight pourring through my windows. I awoke before the alarm feeling, well, alarmed because it was so bright, until I remembered that Daylight Savings had happened. I was happy about all this daylight for a brief second, until I realized how dark it would be when I got out of work, and how much darker it would get, both in the morning and the evening, as winter moves in.

I've never really been one for winter. I mean, I like it in some ways. I like winter sports, the winter Olympics, snow boots, hats, sweaters, hot cocoa, sledding, snow angels, the holidays, watching the wind swirl snowflakes around from behind a pane of window glass, fogging behind my breath. I like the idea of winter. I don't like being cold but I'm learning, after a lifetime of trial and error, how to avoid this in its most extreme forms. What gets me is the darkness. Maybe it's some seasonal depressive symptomatic syndrome; I've never looked into it enough to know. I just know how the darkness gets to me, how it saps the life from me and kills my motivation. I notice it most when it goes, when spring starts in and the sun keeps shining past 5 o'clock. It's only then that I realize how dark everything, including me, has been.

Tonight, driving home from work through the dark, my headlights cutting the shadows in oblique angles, I felt like it wasn't so bad. It was almost comforting, like the world was hemming in to a steadier pace. It lent itself to my imagination, in which the long season provides enough time for me to find my stride, to get comfortable, to live in to my life a little more. I'm looking ahead to the first year in a long time where I foresee spending all four seasons in one place. I'm not planning on moving, or changing jobs, or running across the country for another adventure. I plan on staying right here, and seeing the seasons through. So I can deal with the dark, as long as it gets light again.

So...Right

The last few days have been somewhat terrifying. Ed and I travelled into a dark tunnel in our relationship, one we couldn't see our way out of. It's the first time we've faced a problem we felt we couldn't solve alone, one that felt bigger than us and like it might just win because we didn't know how to beat it. It was weird...we weren't fighting. We weren't even disagreeing. We simply came to an unsettlingly sober realization that things between us weren't how they ought to be. I know: there are no "shoulds" when it comes to relationships. There's no such thing as normal or right, but aren't these things we always consider anyway? If our relationship suddenly doesn't look like what we both think a relationship ought to be, isn't that a problem?

Well, yes. And so suddenly we were imagining what it would be like if we broke up. After three years, three generally happy years I might add, this was something of a shock. I couldn't eat, and when I tried I got sick. I didn't feel hungry and I was shaking, like my body was in a constant shudder in reaction to my perceived reality. Neither of us wanted to end things. We kept looking at each other and shaking our heads thinking This can't be happening.

The fact is this: I feel like such a novice, like I'm searching for an example of what a relationship should be. It's true, there are examples everywhere: cliched couples on tv and movies, ideal romances all over Cosmo and People. And I look at these examples and nearly immediatelely cast them aside as innapropriate, as unrealistic and detrimental to the human condition. It makes me sad to think that people look to these examples and try to live up to them, but at the same time I realize that at least in part, I am one of them. While willfully rejecting these examples of coupledom, I am simultaneously sucked in because finally finally someone is willing to tell me the rules and giving me a guage by which I can measure my own life, my own relationship.

I'm somewhat disgusted by my own need to measure this way, but I have a hunch that it's natural and that we all do it to some degree. We need sounding boards in our own lives. We need friends to give feedback, and we need to see reflections of ourselves out there to get a sense that we're doing alright. Social creatures, nay? It may be an undesirable side affect of being human, but it's real and it has a real affect.

For me, this meant putting pressure on myself to feel something that may be unrealistic. It meant constantly seeing myself and our relationship as not quite measuring up. It meant allowing someone else's fantastical standards to determine where I stood. It came into play when I considered attraction, when I tried to pin down the elusive creature that is chemistry between two people. Did we have it? Did I feel enough? Was it totally absent? If so, was this a function of living together, of being together for nearly three years, of sharing every waking second for the nine months we spent in the desert? Was my desire waning, and wasn't it a little early, weren't we a little young for that sort of thing? According to the examples out there, this happens when you're 40 and have been married for 20 years. Not when you're 24 and in your prime.

The problem here is there was no alternative, there was only space for me to fit into what was right:
Feeling undying desire and constant attraction for my man, as is normal for someone my age and for a relationship like ours,
or
Feeling unsure at times, questioning my attraction, and sometimes struggling to define my feelings, as may be normal for a middle-aged seasoned couple.

I am not middle-aged and we are not really well-seasoned, nor am I constantly feeling some ravenous desire. I don't fit into these models of "rightness," and these are the only models available to me. It doesn't help that I have few friends close enough to discuss these things, and that one perspective does not a spectrum make. Luckily, my mother is the most brilliant woman alive and does not squirm when I go to her in a state of near panic and desperation. She helped me see through this, to accept my situation for what it is: mine. She helped me name my anxieties and believe that I can beat them.

Last night we went to a costume party and danced our faces off, smiling at each other the entire time. We have fun like this all the time, every day. Despite this, sometimes it's so hard to see that the model we're creating of love and relationships and happiness is about as good as it gets, and not just because some magazine told us so.

Go

Monday: Girls' night at the pizza parlor. Work ladies, good laughs. New friends.
Tuesday: Yoga class after work. Familiar faces, unfamiliar places. Serendipitous coincidences.
Wednesday: Trivia with the old crew, without a few who have moved on. We will win again, I'm sure.
Thursday: Climate-neutral campus event with free pizza at the law school. For the sake of doing something, connecting, being a part and doing some research.
Friday: Not going to work, making up for an abbreviated weekend. Visiting Grandma. Dinner with Mom and Dad. Spending a rare weekday with Ed.

I'm trying. I'm doing a lot of stuff lately, but none of it really makes me want to dance. You know. Those life things that just make your heart come alive, make you feel awake, make you think about purpose and love and connecting. I've been feeling a distinct lack lately. I've been feeling rather meaningless, like my life just doesn't look how I thought it would. It's like this: I left the desert with a picture in my mind of an apartment where Ed and I would live. I imagined a good job. I imagined trees and autumn and New England and home. And I'm here, but there's more I was looking for. I also imagined reading in a warm room with white walls. I imagined crafting on a carpet in the living room. I thought it might snow, and the sun might still shine through a bedroom window and I would stretch, and never wake up tired. I imagined some almost realistic fantasy life, where things would come together and I would feel meaning, I would be confident and I would chase with reckless abandon the things I knew would make me happy. But it's not quite like that. Now that I'm here, with an apartment with sunny windows and books and crafts, with a good job and trees and autumn and Ed, it's not what I thought it would be. I'm not the person living the life I imagined. I am not chasing the things that I know will make me happiest, but we never do. It's almost as if we run headlong away from them, like we're afraid of them and the promise they hold. Maybe we're afraid that they won't be all we have made them, that the anticipation, the imagination, is better than the reality.

These things for me inclued excercising, yoga specfically. Connecting with people besides Ed. Making real true friends. They include cultural events, plays, music, performance, debate, lectures. Cooking and eating well. Sleeping enough and still having time for it all. Reading for long stretches and feeling engaged. Being a part of a meaningful community. Finding what matters to me, having something to believe in that's bigger than this, right here, right now.

I guess I'm working on it. I am forcing myself to remember every day, to not get complacent and just slide through every day without checking in: am I pursuing these things, or am I procrastinating? Procrastinating, at seeking out happiness and fulfillment! Can you imagine?! It's like this though. And I have a feeling I'm not the only one. But I am the only one who can do this for me. So Here. I. Go.

Link o' the Day

SuperMaggie
Cute, fun homemade goods and designs. Great links, too!

Neat

You know what's neat?

Waking up and not feeling like I haven't slept. Waking up without a headache and sinus pressure. Waking up and feeling awake. Getting out of bed and having a hot shower. Eating breakfast, then getting in my car, watching the frost melt from my back window as the motor warms. Waving to Ed as he pulls away.

Having a job. Not rewriting my resume every week. Having a job that I like. With benefits. Being given things to do that are challenging. Using my brain, and trusting my instinct. Being trusted to use my instinct. Being respected because I am me, and not being discounted because I am young.

Realizing that everyone is not, in fact, looking at me and thinking: She's just young. She doesn't know anything. Realizing that maybe they are just like me, only older. Full of doubts and questions, only farther along in the process.

Having a place to live, and an apartment I love. Having a roof rather than a thin piece of nylon to keep out the wind at night. Sleeping in a bed. Heat. Having a washing machine. Living the way I want, and doing it with someone who wants it too.

Getting older. Not much older, mind you. I am twenty-four. But older than last year, and the year before that. Older measured by comfort in my skin, in wisdom, maybe. Learning how to think on things before I let them dog me. Knowing when to stick up for myself, and when to bite my toungue.

The Southwest, and how I lived there for a time. And Chicago, and Boston, and here. These places I've called home. And the pieces of them hanging on my walls in my new office. Paper and pictures, etchings of memory, and talking to people about my adventures.

That's neat.

Fragmented

2006
new hampshire
ed and i have melded into this at-home couple who leans against each other in the kitchen, cooks dinner through conversation of what happened today. and it’s a conversation that doesn’t end, but one we pick up again and again, morning and night. i miss him, miss the presence of another body, during the day. i don’t feel an emotional lack, but when we come back together, my body remembers the space beside me where he hasn’t been.

ben folds reminds me of college, of acapella in the eagles’ nest, of bodies in seats and eyes behind the microphone, singing in a way that i wished i could, or singing in a way that made me weak in the knees. and ben folds reminds me of a concert i went to in college. he played in the arena, didn’t he? was that in boston or new hampshire? did i stand for too long and drink beer with an old friend and a new flame? did i write your name in the snow on my windshield? or else, it was in boston and i don’t remember much at all, except a mixed memory confusing music with comedy, jim bruer and obscene jokes to a young crowd. we stood together and you shook your head as you laughed through your teeth. i was truly disgusted. you were trying to be mature. later on, i found out you really weren’t, but you did a decent job of pretending some of the time.

2005
chicago
and i’m tired of writing the song of ourselves, what about myself? where have i gone in all these tales? where is the ME in them, in the telling even? where is my voice when it’s been sucked on the wind and swallowed into glass coke bottles, corked and shipped and popped somewhere in mid-jersey. this is not where i come from. i need to remember: this girl is tough when she needs to be. this girl is afraid of some things but nothing really comes to mind. this girl like solace, alone time, music, collages. this girl likes windows and carrots. this girl likes walking, slowly, in ice and snow, and singing with headphones where no one can hear. this girl likes writing and documenting and picturing what it would be like, re-enacting conversations by herself after, or before, they’ve happened. this girl likes the space and silence and time to do this.

2004
boston
green day kicks as much ass.
capstone sucks so much ass.
cookies and milk are a godsend that serves only to prolong my schoolwork agony.
dammit.


2003
boston
i wish i could keep it together. i wish i knew the strategy, the steps to take and how to make my moves, mentally and emotionally, how to get from point A to point B. and i’m trying to sciencize something that’s so beyond that, something so far incomprehensible that it doesn’t even exist in the same universe. i think that’s just it. i’ve made it out to be this totally foreign being, and not just something humans do. and my mom tries to explain it to me in such rational terms, of just going and being and spending time and experiencing, but god i don’t know how without my head screaming out in confused agitation and fear. oh god i am insane.

2002
scotland
i would like to go home now. i don’t want to do work and i don’t want the rain to come every day anymore, and i don’t want to hang out with these people very much anymore. i want to go home, and see my mom and my dad, and be warm and lazy and happy. i want it to be christmas and i just want to be there. i’m burnt out on things being difficult. i’m tired of being lonely. i’m tired of being cold and wet. i’m tired of only hanging out with girls, and having only girls in my classes, and i’m tired of loser professors who might or might not be complete lushes. fabulous. i’m tired of waking up in the morning and not being happy that it’s day. i need a nap. i need a map. i need a slap. a sap. oh crap.

Cough, Sniffle, Sneeze

This happens every year. Ed gets a cold, it lasts for one day, and then he's back and running like nothing ever happened. I, in the meantime, have made the colossal mistake of breathing in the same vicinity as him. My immune system, which appears to be made of gum drops and lollipops and none of the piss and vinegar that keeps Ed healthy as a horse, begins crying in the corner. I catch Ed's cold and as you may imagine, it sticks by my side a bit longer than one day.

Oh yes, friends. I have the annual flaming cold of death.

Yesterday, if you had shouted into my sinus cavity, no one would ever have known. The sound would have been swallowed and completely deadened by the amount of junk living in there. Gross, I know, but remember for a second that this is my face and not yours. I am actually living this mucousy horror.

It wouldn't be so bad, but Ed's parents are visiting for the weekend. It is my duty, as loving girlfriend, to keep up the image of civilized human so that I may remain in their good graces and so they will return to New Jersey light of heart. I don't need them thinking of me as the germ-ridden sniveling mess of a weakling I really am.

Today I decided it's best for everybody that I just stay home. Ed and his parents won't need to slow to accomodate my weary frame. They won't need to repeat questions and stories to penetrate the powerful haze of medicine head. And I won't need to consider what might happen if, in the middle of lunch at a nice restaurant, I explode into a fit of sneezing and collapse onto the floor into a restless, snotty sleep.

Not the Mama

As someone who does not have children, I cannot even begin to fathom how people ever reach a point in their lives when they figure they have the time to be parents. I look at my life with all its work time and even less sleep time and what feels like absolutely no free time, and simply cannot imagine adding a constantly dependent person to the mix. Beyond that, I cannot imagine that my life will ever reach a stage when it seems reasonable to take this on. Is it just that people get to a certain point and do it anyway? Do they figure it will just work out, that other things will fall to the wayside as parenting and raising children takes priority?

I guess so. I mean, it's not that parents have more time in their lives and fill it with children. It's that they sacrifice everything. Not just hobbies and socializing, but other things too. Like, you know, sleeping. Eating. Showering. Peeing regularly. Finishing complete sentences.

Doesn't this strike anyone else as completely ridiculous?

Guess Who's Busy?

Last week I made this secret commitment to write every day on this site. And I did alright, you know? Three solid days, and weren't you entertained? And then, ugh, Igotsobusy. So instead of writing on this site or reading my e-mail or by golly, responding, I've been doing THIS:

• Driving all over New Hampshire with Jeremy and his camera in tow
• Watching Canadians play Scottish fiddle tunes at a show in a Unitarian church
• Watching Canadians play Scottish fiddles tunes in my kitchen to warm up for said show
• Picking apples with Jenny Pie
• Visiting the seashore
• Photographing boats and covered bridges
• Oggling the foliage. Yes, it IS as good as everyone says.
• Waking up at 4:45am for an airport run
• Copying the live Counting Crows disc
• Making apple pancakes
• Introducing Jeremy to curry
• Drinking beer in loud bistros with my two favorite boys
• Freaking the heck out about work, and getting over it. Minute by minute.
• Writing thank-you notes from my birthday, nearly a month ago now. Ugh.
• Visiting with my parents
• Watching Jon Stewart
• Listening to Dar Williams
• Six-hour long department meetings
• Wading in Mascoma Lake
• Injuring my arm by skipping too many rocks. Serious.
• Sifting through tables of antiques in Quechee
• Wearing wool sweaters
• Eating nothing but free cheese samples for lunch
• Singing loudly inside my car

I could use some sleep. But perhaps I'll write again tomorrow...

Waiting for Scott

It's our team name at Trivia night every Wednesday down at Benning Street. Scott never shows, or if he does he comes late. We're starting to think it's good luck though, because we've won the event for the last four weeks running. The emcee is visibly getting irritated with seeing us and seeing us win. He barely blinks as he strides to our table and bestows us with the useless, clutter-causing prize loot: XXL beer t-shirts, Jack Daniels iron-on patches, gift cards for the local tanning beds (tanning beds!). Did I mention that this team is made up of friends from work, which is to say: other outdoorsy crunchy liberals who would sooner be caught in a snowstorm on Denali than anywhere near a tanning bed?

A cold front is rolling in tonight after a day of nearly 80 degree temperatures. The wind was howling, sending leaves swirling to the ground from their branches. It looked, for a split second, like snow.

Karas

I remember next to nothing of my high school summer reading, which isn't terribly surprising considering that I began it ten years ago. One thing I do remember, though, is a concept from Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle called "karas."

The book describes karas as "a goup of people you are inextricably linked to by fate." Throughout the book, Vonnegut intertwines the lives of his characters in such a way as to suggest some divine intervention. Characters meet, or pass on the street, share an unnoteworthy interaction or exist in the same spaces without even noticing each other. But the narrator notices, and makes us remember it a hundred pages later when they inexplicably cross paths again. Most times, the involved characters never realize the coincidence. As readers, we watch it unfold and find parallels to our own lives.

My karas shows up every now and then. The best example is Meaghan. She was my temporary roommate at college orientation, where we exchanged fewer than twenty words but slept side by side, on extra-long twin mattresses in the new dorm on campus. Weeks later, after moving into my less-than-new dorm on Newton campus, I ran into her again. I was making work-study to run the cash register of the law bookstore, and it turned out so was she.

We became acquaintances at best during that year, talking minimally during work and exchanging hellos around campus. In January, I went on one of sixteen freshman retreats on one of five weekends in one of three locations. Meaghan was there.

Come Spring, I made plans with friends from home to visit them on their college campus for a Guster show. I went home for the weekend, and met them there on Friday night. We hung out in their dorm and I met their friends. I needed a ticket. On our way to the concert, we ran into a group of my friends' friends. Meaghan was there visiting them, to see the Guster show. She had an extra ticket.

Fast forward six months. It's New Year's, and I'm in Montreal visiting my brother. He lives in an innocuous downtown highrise with an underground mall below. I am sitting at a table in the food court at the mall. Meaghan walks by.

The following summer, I go on another retreat in Maine. It's for sophomores, and is one of eight happening throughout June and July. When I arrive, I see Meaghan get off the bus.

Over the next two years, we run into each other repeatedly and begin to run out of funny things to say to each other. I see her downtown during the democratic convention, and at the train station in an out-of-the way Boston neighborhood. Another random concert and chance meeting later, we're starting to think it's just plain weird.

I haven't seen her since we graduated, but I'm sure it's just a matter of time.

I think of Meaghan on my way to work sometimes, as I drive down familiar roads and pass the same bumper stickers, the same lisence plates along the way. This is less fated, I feel, but still somewhat interesting. It grounds me, I guess. Makes me feel stable, like I'm right where I should be, along with everyone else.

An old pen pal contacted me recently. We've been pen friends for six years and have been out of touch off and on for at least half of that time. We have both moved more than once and changed contact information repeatedly, but somehow we always find each other. Mostly, I credit fate. After that, I credit Vonnegut. Last, I credit the internet.

Auld Lang Syne

It's New Year's Day* at work, so they cooked us a pancake breakfast and we planted a tree, each of us taking a swing of the shovel and shoving the thing into the ground. This is why I like my place of work.

Today is also the day I moved down the hall and across departments and started the new job in public relations. Pretty soon you better believe I'll be relating to that public with the best of them. I wonder if it matters that I mostly feel alienated and as though I can't relate at all in public settings? Nah.

And I've been thinking about the world's damnable timing lately. If this job had come around and they had chosen me two years ago, while I was living in Chicago and barely dreaming of a situation this good, I would have been beyond ecstatic and in total disbelief. I would have been so happy I'd have envied myself. Instead though, two years have passed since I would have given a left kidney if it meant working for an organization I believed in and doing something dynamic and creative. Two years, and I've stopped feeling like I need it or even want it so terribly. I've got my sights on other things, and wouldn't you know it, here it is.

But it's good. I may be dreaming of bigger things and envisioning my life when it doesn't revolve around a desk and a computer, but beyond that, I haven't got it all worked out. So for now, I've got a paycheck and something to do every day, and time. Sweet delicious time. Of course, I had time two years ago too; I just didn't know it.

Like I said, damnable timing.

*Our fiscal year starts today.

Style By Design

This weekend I started up the old quest to learn how to design a real fancy blog site. It's not easy! One of the books I was reading even said it's been known to make burly men cry. I believe this.

But I found a great book and spent the better part of today at Borders, reading it and intending to buy it. It's just...I had to be sure, you know? And, well, Borders is expensive! I will buy it through Amazon instead. But Borders didn't seem to mind being treated like a library. They even set up this cafe which seems to me to be intended expressly for people doing what I was doing, and I wasn't the only one. Magazines were read from cover to cover, I assure you. Bookstores everywhere are getting ripped off, and what are they doing about it?
Installing more comfy chairs and plying customers with coffee and baked goods, that's what.

In the meantime, Blogger has introduced this fancy new design stuff which I can't makes heads or tails of. It seems to make changing your template easier for anyone not interested in actual code, but at the same time hides all the code which was just starting to make sense to me. Now I've got more standard options and less room to experiment, and I don't like this, no sir. For now I'm sticking with my old template and hoping I can find my way around the new one before I jump right in.

Tonight I was considering my dedication to this web design stuff. I thought, hey, maybe I should be shooting for new and exciting stuff and place myself on the cutting edge of technological/design innovation! And then I awoke from this ridiculous reverie and realized how far I am from even the dullest edge, and resigned myself to modest goals. Meh.

Also today, we rearranged our bedroom! I love rearranging furniture and what's more, I love the first few days after doing so when I walk into the room and am repeatedly caught by surprise. My mind says, "Ooh! That looks great there!" and then I get to mentally pat myself on the back for carrying out such a profound stroke of interior design brilliance. This feeling fades after about a week, but man, that first week is great.