in which i carry on

I thought that having time to let my mind wander might bring about more words, more deliberations, pontifications, or observations. But, all this time hasn’t made me want to write about anything but you. You lurk for me in the quiet places even though I’ve tried my best to tell myself that you need to leave my mind. You’re just so perfect there. I know you’re not really perfect but it’s what I want most, the imperfect parts. I’d like to help your through them or just accept them. It’s the desire that makes you perfect, the glossed over effect of faraway vision. And there is this wall, this insurmountable barrier that even though I want to flail against it, I’m kinda glad it’s there. Because perfect (or imperfect) is easy from far away and always less painful. So the choices I have could be made simple. I could give myself a deadline. I’m good with deadlines, goals. I know how to reach them or let them go. I’m good with finite, or I’m just more accepting of it. Maybe that’s the answer, a day, a time to know for good if good is what we could be.

why i haven't written

"Maybe he'll be a writer," said my friend's husband about their brand new baby boy.
"Why a writer," I asked.
"Don't most writers have really bad childhoods?" he asked.
He was joking about the horrible life his child would live if he didn't automatically love water. This river guide and whitewater daredevil assumes that a child of his who doesn't swim on command is down for some real disappointment and better learn to pen those frustrations. I offered my reading abilities. And then his sentiment coalesced in my mind.
I've just been so darn happy- so up that writing has no misery to nourish it. I'm sure that my contentment has even put some people on edge. It's hard for me to harbor sadness, regret or angst anymore. And sometimes I can't listen to other's. All was glistening and tinged with the music of the spheres. Then tiny things starting creeping in. Not all humanity is good. Not everyone serves to better this world. And this, this is what nourishes my melancholy now- the disillusionment of reality.

It's our duty and our right I think to go through pain, to live in it and survive it and when we come out of it we're changed so that we vow to "do no harm." And I caution this with the fact that I do not mean that you begin putting bumper stickers on your car about angels flying and whirled peas. I mean that you think before you speak, you include those you don't want to and you surround yourself with those you respect. And I do this and I did this and life was a giddy. And then it backfired. I won't be deterred from my hopeful selflessness. It's hopeful because it's not perfect. I will simply have to be more cautious and let the disappointment be penned rather than stabbed. And since it takes a sad and reflective moment to make me write, I can't help but as the question "What would I rather be; happy and wordless or melancholy and prolific?"

in which i mourn my melancholy

I want to be sad. I want to wallow in it. I wish I could cry, let it out, release the blockade. But nothing that bad has happened. It's just the tiny little things that after some time start to make me wish that crawling into bed were still my default answer. Bed sounds wrong right now, so sedentary, so almost permenant and that isn't who I am anymore.

Plans got canceled, juggling was done and still people let me down, machines let down. I've had this thought before and it's come up more recently. Sometimes I just want to be someone else's priority. The me, the now, the independence is good. It's great actually, but sometimes- like when my car dies -I want to be the destination that someone runs to, the person that someone wants to rescue. It's the just little things I need help with sometimes and that sometimes is now.

because sometimes i think it

In some ways I feel like a stranger to myself. Because constant contentment has never been part of me- never even a fleeting thought- that sometimes I don't know if it's real. But it is. It all is. And yet nothing has really changed. A friend on the phone tonight said, "You sound sad." "I'm not," I insisted. Twice. It's just such a knee jerk reaction- from me, from my friends- to assume that I am melancholy. What I am at this moment is me, whatever word that describes me (is there one?) I just am. I feel like now, like this day, this moment- even when the tiredness in my voice is read wrong- that I can finally just be still. I guess it's a little like a Buddhist feels after so much meditation- calm, OK with the now. And yet I've done no meditation. I haven't even changed my diet. Should I call this Nirvana or Enlightenment? I don't know. I think what I really am right now is normal. I think I finally feel what most humans feel from the day they are born. It just took me 30 years to get there. So is this my rebirth? In some ways yes. I finally understand that days flow like a river through our lives and that conscience movement of time does not have to be an obstacle, but a serene knowledge of consistency. I've been a time fighter, but now time just is. If I go on a walk, great. If I spend an hour watching TV, awesome. If I finish a book, good job. And stress- I hardly know her. Sure there are things on my plate, deadlines, commitments, friends, family- and my answer to them is "OK, I've got stuff to do, let's do it." And that is the part of me that feels so foreign, so other. I've always been a procrastinator, a tomorrow-is-another-day, even (mostly) a dreader. I'm now a today girl and today and tomorrow and even yesterday are good, really really good. And hope that this feeling, even now when I just want a nap, is something I can hold on to for much, much longer. And dare I say- share it.

me, myself and i

There are moments in my life when I realize a true fact about myself- when an entire emotion or trait takes solid form and sits down right beside me. Yesterday it was sadness and insecurity.

Happiness, contentedness and ease have been my norm, my everyday for most of this year. And after such a long stretch of almost bliss I thought maybe my emotions had been turned off. Maybe I was numb.

Sadness has been a constant in my life- my security blanket, my commonplace. I even say I like the word “melancholy,” that to me it is not negative, but simply descriptive and alright. And “despair”- I know it well. And “funk.” And “low.” But, I don’t have depression, never have. I’m just low key. And for a long time I thought everyone else felt the same way, but that they were just better actors than I was.

Happiness- I know now- feels better, it wears better, it even walks better than melancholy ever could. My doctor asked me recently how I had managed to lose 10 pounds since my last visit. I told her I had no idea and that I wasn’t even trying. I knew I liked my state of mind and how my body was reacting to it. That even if the even keel I was going through was really numbness I didn’t want it to stop.

Yet sadness crept up on me yesterday and shooed away months of what I thought was non-feelings. And part of me was even glad in the sadness because it meant the all my emotions were there. It meant I was not numb. It meant that I really have been happy and even joyful and that I now have a reference point to work my way back to from the gutter whenever I fall in. But, don’t worry- I’m already out.

reaction

I need you sometimes just to be what I fall into. I don’t want to mutter in the low times anymore. It’s too dark there and I’ve been there too long. I like this lightness now, this floating I’ve been feeling. It doesn’t mean I don’t sometimes need you to be the blanket, my wrap around. Because we all need something that makes the ground softer just like moss on a forest floor that dampens the fall of acorns or pinecones- being the equal and opposite force that stops their fall. And it is what I need now, just something I can curl into and lie still with, something that only needs me to be still and quiet- my equal and opposite.

i was the snow

and you scooped me up.

I don't understand the girl who needs to be with someone. I don't understand dependency. I don't understand how the absolute resolve to stand alone is unique. I don't fight the push and pull anymore in my mind. I accept this independence. And yet, I like to watch things like "The Bachelor" and I cheer for the girl who shelters her heart then lets the walls down in the ninth inning. I know that girl. That girl that makes the boy fight for her with everything he's got. But those boys, those boys don't come around very often and when they do I think sometimes I'm more than steel. Maybe I'm titanium. I just know that you won't find me being snow anytime soon. I am not some easily malleable sustance that could melt on contact. Although, I think- somewhere inside me I wish I was.

it's like i work

in Brooklyn. To the office i went, trudging through rain and about 30 blocks (I got off on the wrong subway stop). Soaked and tired I landed on the top floor of brick exposed, old building almost under the Manhattan bridge with big sky windows that look out on the Hudson and Manhattan. How Becca has never described her daily view boggles me a bit. I could just live here. And I'm sure people do. These would be called studios, loft style, one room, impossibly trendy and city-like. There's even a loft, for- the bedroom, i would guess.

I could do this. Well, for today I could. I'm sure the office life, even the chilled, laid back open office style of this office would get old and even that sky line, that amazing view would wear away at some point and only be a blip in the back of your mind, a calling card of a busy life over your shoulder. Then again, this environment breathes of importance and new life, like having no walls, no cubicles, means you are like a 60's era campaign headquarters where battles are fought, men in button down shirts with no ties pound on desks in excitement of defeating some conservative monster agenda.

So, I'm sitting here, in Brooklyn, in an office and I don't want to go out. I'm done. New York has done it's thing for me. I've left some things still on the to do list, but that's how I leave a city, with something undone, so that I will return to un-undo them. And I will be here again, in all these exact places. Hopefully sooner than you or I even think.

in which i wax

melancholy. It's the new black for me. It's my skinny jeans. I like melancholy because I wear it well. It goes with everything I've got. It's a year rounder.

What I don't like it how things like a few seconds of a song can bring me just a smidge past melancholy into- let's call it- a trench. Oscar Wilde said, "We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars." I like his take, his not-to-put-too-fine-a-point-on-it. I know he wasn't exact. Some people are nowhere near the gutter and some haven't seen a star in years. Still, it sits well with me. At least... it did.

I pulled myself from the eternal and metaphysical gutter, but sometimes things like the light in a photograph can remind you of circumstances, words, star gazing. It's OK. I prefer the melancholy side anyway. I get suspicious of happy people, like really they just cry through the night so as to be so happy in my presence. Crying isn't something I do often and I'm not doing it now. This all is really about a song and how I wanted to listen to it, but after three seconds I had to turn it off- the images and words were just swimming too fast and I needed to slow them down if not stop them. And that my dears stinks, that other people can own something that you used to share or that was given to you. I want my melancholy songs without the tinge of extra melancholy.