Vacation-y

After running around town in the snow, shuffling down sidewalks and slipping through crosswalks, home I came and into my coziest sweats and fleeces I went. Since then, I have lounged in the living room, watched more VH1 than is socially acceptable, eaten chocolate chip cookies (retrieved by my dear Ed on a special trip to CVS), drank soup from a giant mug, hung curtains in my bedroom, flipped through a magazine, fitted my new snowshoes (woohoo thanks Mom and Dad!) and generally had a very vacation-y day. The snow outside makes things queiter, out there and in here. I hope you're enjoying your long weekend, too.

To Cure What Ails Me

After sniffeling, sneezing, coughing, phlegming and feeling increasingly sick over the last week, I am on a quest for health. And so, I am making soup. It goes like this:

6 cups water, boiling
5 cubes vegetable boullion
Christmas dinner leftover turkey
3 stalks celery
2 carrots
4 leeks
1/2 cup onion
3 cloves garlic
1/2 cup lentils

I am somewhat proud that when I woke up this morning dreaming of soup, I realized I had all of these things in the house. This makes me some kind of grown-up, I think.

In other news, the holiday was divine and today it's snowing. Ed and I are redecorating our apartment, and there is a miniature pony living in the backyard. We have named him Tony Zamboni (the Pony). I hope he doesn't mind.

This year, I'm gonna get back to basics, start it up again just like those old Crows sang. I need to get back to me, to what and who I am and have always been. Seems I've lost touch a bit and could really use a refresher. Seems it will do me some good, and I think I'm ready.

Split

It's like we flipped a switch, like night and day, like we woke up after the longest restless sleep. I don't know what to make of it, so I'm living it instead. Everything fits into a comfortable place again, makes sense like it used to. It took the breaking, walking away, giving in to fear and seeing through the other side. I was stronger than I thought, and I did what I didn't think I could do.

It was almost comical, but too terrifying: splitting our stuff and our lives down the middle. You can have the silverware and I'll take the shower curtain. Too polite, too considerate for the breaking. Surreal, but I guess it seemed right. It was right, for a split second. For four hours while we sunk into the reality of it. While he realized who I was again, where I saw him again for the first time.

It sounds so melodramatic, like high school or television. Instead, it was my life and I'm still shaking my head at how things go sometimes. We split, and suddenly everything was right enough for us to be together. Something snapped in him. The shock of it hit me like a weight lifted, like a spell lifted from our shoulders. It wasn't that I felt what life was life without him. It was that suddenly he was back, after months or years of being gone. I remembered what life had been like with him, before he went away. You couldn't have written it to work out the way it did. You couldn't have scripted what we said. It was enough to make me believe again, when I had been so far from belief.

Coming Back

Three weeks and I've barely entertained the idea of writing. My head's been chock full of intermittent panic over the state of my life and calculated diversions which have, in their playing out, made the current state of my life much, much better. By now, much of the panic has passed and the diversions have turned into honest hobbies or enjoyable pastimes. This is how I'd rather it be.

You all know by now that law school and transition and stress and timing and life in general have turned my relationship and my peace of mind for a loop, but I'm not interested in talking about that, specifically, right now. I'd rather leave it at the fact that it's getting better and not delve into how it feels to be getting better from what was a somewhat terrifying experience.

I just want to write and dust out the cobwebs in the corners of my head. Life has been passing at warp speed and I don't want to miss it. I feel like there's a lot I've forgotten to notice with the world spinning around me so quickly.

Like, it got gray and cold. Winter is almost here and yet I feel like it's been this way forever. The sky hangs in pregnant pauses between barely differentiable stages of day and night. The clouds have been relentless, but I guess it seems fitting. I am getting over my disbelief at how pitch dark black it is when I get out of work and drive home every day. I am not, however, over the fact that it's going to stay this way for another couple of months. I am not over the doubletake that happens every day when I look at the clock and the sky and the two seem impossibly paired.

My new job is finally starting to wear in and I'm starting to feel like it fits, like I fit. I'm starting to know what's going on and yet I'm still busy and occupied, and I like it this way. I'm growing increasingly claustrophobic, though, in an office I inherited from a packrat. Two full filing cabinets stuffed with invoices, notes and scraps from '02. A bookshelf stacked to the gills with duplicate catalogs and magazine offers. There's too much big furniture and not enough room to breathe. I'm not sure if I can change it or if I'll have time to try, but I'll keep thinking on it and I'll see what I can do.

I found a yoga class that works beautifully for me. It's with a male teacher, and I think that this has something to do with how I feel about taking instruction and trusting his knowledge and expertise. It sounds anti-feminist or backwards or something, I know, but I still think it's true. With female teachers, I find myself trying to identify or trying to put myself in their shoes too much to learn from them. His approach is different, and the way he explains things make sense to me and my body. That's often hard to find with yoga. So now I'm hooked, even if it's a struggle to actually get myself to go every week right after work. Once I'm there, and especially afterwards, I feel like it's totally worth it.

Lately, I've needed peoples' support so much that it's forced me to be open, to talk about things and to really put effort into finding people and keeping them around. I've learned so much in a short time about the value of family and friends and how integral they are to a full existence. Going through this tough stuff has led me to make more effort and be more open to really connecting with people besides Ed, and it's been immeasurably helpful and joyful. My parents and my brother have been incredible, and I'm realizing that I am who I am because of them. Obviously, right? But sometimes it takes growing up a little to see it. I've also met new people and become true friends with people who had previously been only acquaintances. These connections speak so much to me about common experience and shared struggle, and about the similarity of the human spirit across everyone you meet. I've been learning what it means to get what you give. My phone is ringing off the hook lately with people calling to say hi, to check in, to make plans. And I can't stop shaking my head and saying to myself in delighted disbelief I actually have friends.

And I've taken up knitting. So that's awesome.