I am doing that thing where I am constantly composing in my head. When I’m walking to down the street, I’m writing paragraphs for future blog entries. When I’m on the Metro I’m rearranging sentences. When I’m trying to fall asleep I’m relaying dialogue for real-life, future conversations that will likely never happen.

And that’s why when it’s past 2:00 am, I roll over and reach under the bed for my laptop, to write this.

It occurs to me, I never sleep very much this particular Saturday night. Every year, when we turn the clocks back, gaining us an hour of sleep, I stay up until 2am to watch the clock flip back to 1:00am (my laptop does it automatically, I think. Maybe I do it by watching the prevue channel? I don’t remember). I find a certain romanticism in this split second – this year I was tired at 12:45 and consciously decided not to watch it.

Of course, now I can’t sleep. Everyone loves this weekend because its a free hour of sleep, and I waste it. I shouldn’t have had all the heavily caffeinated cinnamon tea, but I was reading I Capture the Castle and you can’t read that book without tea.

So because I can’t sleep, I’m doing a few tiny, tiny tasks to get myself back in the swing of things. I found a job to apply for, and so I opened my template for legal assistant jobs, so I can write it tomorrow while my soup cooks. Which sounds silly, but anything to make getting out an application less daunting.

This is not the end of internal angst and probably some tears. Going to the Film Festival and hanging out with people got me about 50% out of my head. And then I wound up 90% back in it a few hours later.

But right now, almost literally right now, I just want to go on record to say I think it will be okay. I think I’ll be okay.

At this time last year, I had my last day at The-Job-That-Was, moved to DC, and started The-Job-That-Wasn’t 2.0.

It feels like yesterday that Keithers and I were sitting on the floor of our living room (we didn’t have furniture yet), eating delivery that we’d ordered using my iPad (we didn’t have internet yet).

I was always waiting for something to make me settle in. For my furniture to get delivered (so I could put away my clothes). For my bookcases to be put together. (so I could get those unsightly boxes of books out of the living room). For a dining room table, so I could sit down and eat a meal like a grown-up.

None of that made me settle into that apartment. And being a 20 minute bus ride from the Metro made me crawl further into myself, which, for an introvert is quite impressive. I would sometimes look at upcoming meet-up events, sometimes I would even half-heartedly RSVP, but I would always cancel. During the day The-Job-That-Was 2.0 just drained everything out of me (which wasn’t much).

In retrospect, maybe I shouldn’t have gone back to that apartment after getting out of rehab. Nothing good has happened within those walls.

This is what it feels like: A month ago, I quit my job, moved to DC, and started a new job. By two weeks ago I hated my new job. A week ago I got back from rehab, and now it’s time to start looking for a job.

This is what it looks like: I am unemployed with a stack of medical bills. I have boxes to unpack – I live in Virginia now. I think I gained back all the weight I lost. I have a scar right between my eyes.

I don’t have an articulate way to end this, so I’ll just default to my go-to song lyric about time going by at a ridiculous speed:

And I thought about years; how they take so long & they go so fast

I’m writing this post and I don’t know if it will ever see the light of day, and if it does, I don’t know how long it will stay posted before I snatch it down because it’s just Too Much.

One word is reverberating through my brain (I hate that word — reverberating — it’s just Too Much, but it’s the first word I put down): Act.

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Two years ago today, after hours of protest, they finally let me leave the hospital. It was a few days after I’d gotten back from the awful Chicago trip with O-L-B, and I had dealt with it by drinking too much, and drunk dialing. I had tickets to Billy Joel, Last Play At Shea (Awesome, because Billy Joel is…was my favorite ever)

But me, being me, and being fully on board with Self Destructive Behavior, fucked it up. I wound up black out drunk and being transported to some hospital in Queens via ambulance. Kristen – a high school/college friend of mine, still has not spoken to me, other than acknowledging I was alive, since witnessing it. I still feel sickly guilty about my behavior, about the stupid thing I did in reaction to a bad situation, and also, still, how I managed to miss Billy Joel’s last play at Shea.

For the most part, I still can’t listen to Billy Joel, who I have loved since childhood. His music has imbued every Important Moment of my life, and I can’t listen to him. That still breaks my heart, that still is the coldest reminder of the destruction I caused to me and my loved ones while at the depths of Depression.

The morning after, (that past night, I had apparently drunk dialed my own mother, so deep was my cry for help) I boarded the bus to Jersey and came home. That, in many ways, remains the worst day of my life, although if we’re competing, it may be second only to March 18, 2009, which I’ve still not written about here.

I made a lot of drunken phone calls the night I was in the hospital. To O-L-B, and also to Dru, the other Libertarian boy I had stupidly gotten myself entangled with.

The whole week leading up to that incident was so awful. I was hurtling toward it, what with my stupid decision to drive to Chicago with O-L-B and then, to share a room with him.

Thank god for David. Thank god for this random Internet-Stranger-Friend, who had already saved my life months before, when he acknowledged the validity of my feelings, and recognized that yeah, I had a problem, and I wasn’t crazy to think so. Last night, I was out with other people from Message-Board-of-Note, and it reminded me how incredibly grateful I am to have found this internet community, that by all rights, I shouldn’t be a part of. I rarely, if ever, posted on H&R. It is by fate, coincidence, whatever you want to call it that I wound up on Message Board of Note, that I wound up driving to Connecticut with O-L-B as my passenger, and meeting David in person, and then, that Thanksgiving. Well, there was that Thanksgiving.

I have this text message, from that date, two years ago saved. I remember what I wrote. I was waiting for the bus in Port Authority, and I lamented “I just don’t feel like I have anything to get better for.” That text message isn’t saved. But I remember it, because I remember so distinctly what it was to feel that way.

David’s reply: “You have yourself to get better for jackass. What else would need?”

I did get better. It took awhile, but damnit, I Got Better. It was the easiest and hardest thing that I have ever had to do in my life. Staying Better is just as hard. I don’t think I could have done it, were it not for the perfect combination of job/awesome boss, my amazing AMAZING, Internet-Stranger-Friends, and my old friends.

But that text message stands out to me. That day was horrible, and that week had been horrible, and David answered my texts/calls, even though he knew that it was me for was doing the fucking up, he looked past that and still said “You have a lot of good qualities. It’s a pity you’re willing to overlook them and dwell on your flaws”

Lately, I’ve been managing to listen to the song “Vienna,” one of my favorite Billy Joel songs, which is oh-so-appropriate for my current situation. Because, I got better. Not right away, and not easily, and not without my hand being forced, but I got better.

And even though I can’t listen to most of my former favorite songs, I think that may still be the coolest thing I’ve ever done.

I’ve been at my current job for almost two years, and there are still days when I think exactly like this. Even more than two years since being summarily dismissed from the Job-That-Wasn’t, I still, as I confessed earlier this week, have nightmares about it. I still have my moments when I forget that my bosses and co-workers are NOT like the people at the job-that-wasn’t. Earlier this week, I was on the verge of panicking, and was fully cognizant of the fact that there was no reason to panic, but for some reason my brain still anticipates the reaction I would have received at that awful place.

I know I’ve talked about it 1000 times in this space (but it’s my space, and I’ll repeat myself if I want to) but I still don’t know that I will be able to properly convey how much this job has truly been among the things that saved my life since I came back to Jersey in shame two years ago. July 17, 2008, actually. That was the date I knew I was coming back, and that I was coming back for awhile.  Six weeks later I was very lucky to start this job. This job made me feel capable of something again, even when it was just putting together a bunch of meeting materials. The lack of questions I was asked is why March 18, 2009 and everything after were not nearly as horrible as they could have been.

This job saved my life.

Joe’s been in California, apartment hunting, so I haven’t been harassing him with my usual rounds of cover letters and questions. He emailed last night to agree to feed my cat next week (even though the cat is a racist) and I can’t wait to tell him about My Plan. I would not even be capable of thinking about making this plan if it were not for Joe being my sounding board and support system. He said recently, that he never would have imagined the weird friendship we’ve developed, where we hang out and talk endlessly about careers and existential crises (mostly mine) and dating. I’m sure there’s a sector of the population who would call it fate that I ran into him one morning at the bus stop in O-town, almost three years ago now. That, and several other bus rides, is how he came to be the person who drove me to work the week I was stuck and who reads constant drafts of my schizo cover letters.

Joe has saved my life.

Joe is also the reason that Brent and I talk now, constantly exchange emails. We’ll never be the same as we used to, but we shouldn’t. He was still there at my one year in March, because he understood why it was such a big deal. They all did.

My old friends have saved my life.

I had actual work to do this morning; a change of pace, as summer here has been dead. Last summer, I exchanged countless emails and was distracted by dozens of gchats with people from Message-Board-of-Note. David, I hardly think of as being from there anymore, such a good friend he was to me when I really needed it. I still have the text message he sent me after that awful, awful seven days that started with the ride to Chicago and ended with my in the hospital: “You have yourself to get better for you jackass. What else would you need?”

David has saved my life.

The rest, some who I’ve met, some who I haven’t, made me feel as if I was part of something other than just my head. From these internet strangers, I’ve gotten career advice, CDs in the mail, and, with Ellie, countless hours of ridiculous conversation about Hugh Laurie, kittens, and petty-judgmental-thoughts. They made me laugh, they agreed that O-L-B was a jerk, they looked after me via text message, and once, at thirteen days, when I fretted how little time that was, Timothy replied “No, do you know how many HOURS that is? Right now, 13 days is awesome.”

The Message-Board-of-Note saved my life.

And then there’s me, who bemoaned the fact that 2010 is half over, and that I’ve gotten nowhere. That, on a Friday afternoon, I am sitting barefooted and cross-legged in front of my computer at the same job that saved my life, unmotivated to finished the three job applications that are 3/4^th done, and also, already ready to give up on dating because it isn’t that much fun, and the distraction it provides isn’t worth the opportunity cost. I am twenty seven years old, very much single, and still answering phones, among my many other responsibilities.

But I am 190 or so days into 2010, whereas two years ago, I didn’t even know 190 hours. I’m pretty pragmatic (some days, pessimistic), still filled with regrets for the could haves, would haves, and should haves, and still could afford to lose at least another five pounds.

But there are days that I hope. There are days that I am able imagine that I will one day have a life that is not this. I still can’t picture myself with someone else, and I can’t imagine a successful career, and really, there’s nothing tangible in my vision of My Plan. But there’s just this vague sense that I can do something else, and that one day, I will have a life again, that things will get better, because they already are. I am quite far away from the depths of Depression and darkness and utter stupidity that made my life a living hell for most of 2007 and 2008.

And I got myself here. I proved my worth and I got myself this job. And then, after many false starts, I rallied the troops and I finally got myself the help I needed, that came in ways I never expected it could. And that’s why, on an ordinary Friday afternoon, I’m sitting here writing this sappy, over the top, melodramatic entry, because I didn’t really realize what happened.

Because somehow, when I wasn’t paying attention, I managed something I didn’t know I was attempting.

I saved my life.

Yesterday, a series of things that Give Me Hope (like FML, but with hope), to put me under the spell of “Maybe this time.”

When I have hope, I love it (albeit cautiously). When I don’t have it, I hate it and want it in equal proportions.

I warn myself not to project, not to plan, and not to get my hopes up. But…they’re already up. And so maybe I should just enjoy it? Because I know by now that it won’t last. A job won’t come through. What is easy conversation via gchat will be stilted and awkward. My email box will sit empty.

But, I drove home from work last night, and swear to god I had not thought of this song in years, but I caught myself humming “You Gotta Have Heart” from Damn Yankees. Specifically I’m thinking of this part:

Totally lame, but in the moment, it sounded pretty good to me, for all the obvious reasons. Maybe being stuck as a glorified secretary whilst marooned at my parents house in Jersey is NOT the career/life/whatever death sentence I’ve been seeing it as. I don’t so much buy into “everything happens for a reason” – I believe it’s human nature to Monday morning quarterback things without even realizing it, to attribute significance to things after the fact – it isn’t so much that everything happens for a reason then it is that we reconstruct the now logical sequence of events once the conclusion has already been reached.

But I guess that right then, and maybe even right now, I have enough hope to think that I’m going to get to a place, or something’s going to happen, and it’s going to give me the ability to see what this was all for.

And so last night, I got myself to the gym, where I listend to Atlas Shrugged on tape. I got up to the part where Francisco has become something that Dagny can’t understand and for the first time in their lives she doesn’t understand his actions, and she’s terribly hurt, but has no choice but to go on, and to live with it, and to survive it. I, much younger, used to think that if Dagny could handle that, than I certainly should be able to handle whatever complication I was currently obsessing about.

Then there was an email; not one I was expecting/wanting, but a good email nonetheless, and a short g-chat conversation.  I went to bed feeling good for once.

And now it’s Wednesday, and there’s coffee tonight with a boy I’m not sure I want to have coffee with (bad signs: hard to pin down for a time for plans and has mentioned an Ex more than once. good signs: very polite. seems to think highly of me from what little he knows of me) but the fact that I’m going to have coffee with a boy is a big step. Actually, his mentions of his Ex are what made me realize I am ready to date: At no time in speaking to any of these guys have I thought to bring up any of my exes. It hasn’t been relevant, whereas in the past, it would have been relevant to everything. I knew I had baggage (and I still do) but I hadn’t realized how much I had to put away until I realized it wasn’t there anymore.

And I suppose, even if nothing comes of any of this, that was a great epiphany. And maybe that should be my proof that everything happens for a reason.

At first, the requirement to create content drives me. It inspires me. The topics are as mundane as always, but they’re infused with that certain-something thing that I wish I could reference with utter sincerity. That is one of the first things you should know about me. At least half of what I say is tongue in cheek. Most of the time I am being strictly ironic when I use the vernacular. (I will purposefully use “like” to emphasis a point and hide its’ seriousness in one syllable)

I used to find a lot of things to write about. Life DID feel like magic. I don’t need the entries as evidence, because I remember, but the entries are proof that I used to able to talk about certain-somethings without the slightest bit of irony.

[EDIT] I have posted a bunch of stuff from my paper journals, which has thrown off my post count. I feel the need to note that here [EDIT]

I have written 1,166 posts. This makes 1,167. Some of those are private and I’ve definitely deleted posts altogether, but still, that’s not so many posts for seven years. That’s about 166 posts a year. About a post every three days. When I say it like that, it does sound like a lot, as if my life would be completely and accurately (ha!) documented here. But it’s not. It’s missing the months I spent in Europe in 2003 (although I did write that all down and the journal is Somewhere) and when things are stuck, like now, I’m less inclined to write.  And then there are all the things that I hid from myself that I still can’t bring myself to blog publically about.

So I’m sitting here, on a Thursday morning, blogging about blogging, because NaBloPoMo exists, and gives me an excuse to write things like this. I have to post every day for 30 days, and hey, a post about posting makes one! Great!

But it’s more than that. I thoroughly (and unsuitably) miss my old audience. HWSNBN, for all his flaws, and for all the ways in which the situation with him was bad for my sanity and self-esteem and whatever, got me to write. He is the one who made me feel like writing down all these words was actually important. Which is also ironic, because I don’t think he ever really gave a damn about anything I said. And I cringe when I think of those essays I wrote back in 2004-2005 that I let him read.

Things between us ended so long ago – five years ago, actually. But there is so much of him in so many things I do. He is, after all, how I wound up in NYC in the first place. Five years ago, I remember writing something about how it was so confusing to let the same hands that pushed you away, pull you back up. He was always the master of mixed signals (and I, admittedly, was the queen of selective hearing) and for all the ways in which he made me weak, he made me believe in things again. And for that, I still miss him sometimes.

So Evan, this is for you. Because it’s a Thursday morning, it feels like summer, Skidmore won’t stop sending me emails, I miss the city, I’m trying to cull together words that collectively Mean Something and I’m wearing khakis and that makes me think of you.

A pile of half written posts sit in my drafts folder. Ones that, I swear to god, go past the whining and complaining. This past week has gotten to me, in little ways I didn’t expect it to. This happened once before, just before Christmas. I’m experiencing a similar sort of discombobulation.

And then also; May is going to suck. So much is going on at work. I’ll make some money from overtime, but I also haven’t applied to one job this week and the whole month of May is looking to be the same type of frentic pace. And also; it’s already May.

Last night, in one of my half written drafts, I started to think about a May, a ten years ago May, a May that was dreaded and referred to only in hushed tones, but that, when it arrived, my utter impatience had already forced the issues and dealt with the fallout, which softened the blow and it was anti-climatic. I think of six years ago May, which was eerily the same, in which I viewed more sunrises than in the rest of my life combined and drank black coffee at 2 in the morning. Four years ago May was about silence and quiet regrouping and the beginning of the best of times. Two years ago May was bold faced lies to myself and everyone around me as I pretended to get well.

While one year ago May was just about survival, this May was supposed to be about another beginning. I warned Keithers that I might not have a job by May, that the job market was tough, but really, I’m pretty sure that a part of me was sure I’d have a job in DC by now. In February, May always seems far away and like a time when things will be different.

This May is about false hopes and real, but vague longing and trying not to get depressed about my 27th birthday. May reminds me of New York and makes me desperately miss lunch breaks in Midtown and the way the city shimmers at 9PM on a Thursday and it makes me ask “DC who?” This May is weekends at work, for overtime pay to stash away for a financially secure exit to who the hell knows where, and brings the reminder that I’m not going anywhere this summer except back and forth on the oh-so-familiar curves of Route 287.

April is allegedly the cruelest month, but I can’t find a one word way to sum up May. I just want to get through these thirty-one days. Starting the countdown from today.

Two major screw-ups on the part of Other People have us on edge here at work. The first screw-up COULD be no big deal, but due to the second BIG screw-up, it may very well wind up being A Deal.  This randon clerk in another department screwed up; she didn’t read a request form and sent something to the wrong person. This is bad on several levels.

On one hand I am livid. How could she screw up like this? The form was VERY clear. Why was this error not caught? This is a fairly standard procedure as well; why does she not know what she’s doing? Why hasn’t she been trained?

On the other hand, I cringed, because it’s the sort of thing that I used to do at The-Job-That-Wasn’t. The girl is probably wondering what the big deal is – she’s three or four degrees removed from the situation, and she doesn’t really understand the ramifications of her careless actions. She probably doesn’t “get” the looks that her co-workers/supervisors are exchanging.  She’s undoubtably nodded along and at least pretended to understand the gravity of the situation when her supervisor explains why they have to make a big deal out of it.  Or maybe she does and she’s just as panicked.

Either way, I used to be her. I used to have my major errors picked out by someone else when it was already too late. I used to have the moments of panick and absolute helpelessness, knowing that I had screwed up and that someone else had to fix my mistake.

I really don’t know if this situation will work itself out. And of course, it’s not a matter or life or death. It’s just very expensive and a lot of work and time went into this, so for it fall apart over her little error is really annoying to say the very least.

And not to say I don’t ever make mistakes, because I absolutely do.

But I’m glad it wasn’t me today.

In just a few days, it will have been one year. One year since I finally hit a point low enough to start climbing back out.

The past 360 days don’t erase the approximately 1,095 that came before it. There are still things (many things) that make me cringe. I don’t dwell, and I don’t even obsess, but the thoughts do come up. I suppose the fact that I can deal with it when the thoughts enter my head is proof of progress. At least I hope it is.

I don’t exactly know how to talk about what this year has been like. Are things better? Yes. Absolutely. But am I really that different? Am I better person? I don’t really know. My father said to me, maybe 355 or so days ago, that he knew the real Rachel had to still be there, somewhere. And if that’s true, and this is the real Rachel, then do my parents like her any better? Sometimes I think my mother expected a personality transformation; that I would suddenly embrace my “family” (we have never been at all close to my blood relatives. I have no feelings for them one way or another. There are close friends of the family who I spent far more time with growing up who I consider family before the people related to me by blood) or I don’t know. And then, it frustrates me that she doesn’t see the ways I’ve changed. My anxiety level has dropped. I deal with things like disappointment better than I have in probably my entire life.

You can’t control what other people think of you, but my parent’s opinion still matters to me. I know they love me and they put up with an awful lot of nonsense from me in the 9 months leading up to 360 days ago, but I don’t really know if they’re proud of me, or if that think that I’m better than I was a year ago, or if they will always, in the back of their minds, think I’m hopeless.

I didn’t expect to go into this here; I guess I didn’t realize that it’s on my mind so deeply. Because I’m not sad today; maybe resigned would be a better way to put it? Although that seems too fatalistic. I mean, I feel pretty GOOD today. Yeah, I’m annoyed that I lost one of my favorite earrings somewhere between the convenience store and my car and home (maybe I”ll get lucky and it will turn up in my car), and it’s a little weird at home because my dad has a bad cold and my mom is annoyed at him for acting like a total baby for being sick, but it’s not a BAD day. I don’t feel depressed when I think about all these things that my parents may or may not be thinking/feeling about me.

(I’m sure this raises an obvious question; why don’t you just ask them?” The answer is that because truthfully this does not cross my mind very often, I believe that I cannot control what they think; I know that I’m doing the right thing and at the end of the day that will have to be enough)

Perhaps the fact that, even with this ambiguity, I am able to go about my day, and still feel pretty good about a lot of things (my boys, without whom, this year would mean nothing. my internet-stranger-friend-boys who also were a network I needed. the six months of expenses sitting in my bank account. the pair of jeans I have on, a size smaller than a year ago) is what really speaks for making progress.

At least, I hope so.

I don’t mean to go on blogging breaks, but work has been insane, and then, what do I have to say, really? I am still stuck. Oh, and it’s Saturday night, and I have no plans besides picking up some sushi, doing some laundry, and the SVU marathon.

I have basically become ok with the fact that my weekends are like this. I have gotten past judging them as “pathetic” and making self deprecating comments about them. I would just rather be spending my weekends doing nothing in DC (or NYC) and then I would have the option to do something that wasn’t nothing.

I think I might want DC like the way I wanted New York when I got out of college. Back then, I was also craving independence and the opportunity for a social life, to be sure, but I wanted New York because of HWSNBN. I think I want DC, and there’s not even a boy there. I suppose my therapist would say this is progress. Of course, it’s entirely possible that I have just forced myself to not want NYC, because I know that career wise, DC is the only place that makes sense right now. And, given that, there’s no use wanting what you can’t have, or torturing yourself with what cannot be.

HWSNBN still texts me very occasionally. He asked back in September when I’d be in the city next. I said December. He told me to let him know when, but I never did. I didn’t see the point, really, and also all the vain, shallow reasons like I want to be nothing but 100% together if I ever see him again.

So for now, I’m not quite sure what I’m doing. I have a phone interview on Monday for an organization that pays probably half of what my current job does, and who’s political orientation is possibly opposite of my own. Still, they do some interesting work in the security/foreign policy realm, so I’ll give it a chance to see what happens. Already, in my head I’m making excuses for why this is a terrible idea to even consider, and of course this is mere projection, because the phone interview hasn’t even happened yet.

When I moved to New York, I was actually pretty gutsy. Despite growing up 30 minutes away, I didn’t know the city, and I certainly didn’t know the boroughs. I spent the first half of the summer of 2005 job hunting and apartment hunting in the sweltering heat. I learned the neighborhoods of Brooklyn (where I never wound up living) by google map directions and walking. I learned the subway by following the colored lines on the map with my finger. HWSNBN and I were long over, and I didn’t have any friends in the city. I just did it.

“You have to take a step before you’re ready. Because if you wait to be ready, you’ll never take that step. “

Perhaps I would do well to remember this.

Every year I’ve given thanks for “The 365 changes to start over on the right foot.” I usually referenced the same around New Year’s. I started doing this in 2004, when the dumbest thing I was doing was the occasional drunk dial to HWSNBN.

In 2007 and 2008 I did a number of things that I wish I could forget, culminating with the stupidest of them in March of 2009. If it weren’t for the change to alleged chance to start over everyday, I don’t know how many times I would have made it out of bed.

I have indulged in a great deal of self-sabotage. I kept setting myself back. That is why, for the past year plus my only plan was to not have a plan. Given my obsessing over the Libertarian Fellowship, I may have finally felt it’s safe to start planning again. Without getting too far ahead of myself, even if I don’t get the Libertarian Fellowship, there are other things I plan to go for. Of course, that is easy for me to say right now – I will be devastated if I don’t get it.

But anyway.

I am grateful for all the obvious things – my parents who didn’t kick my sorry, stupid self to the curb and my friends for not judging and being supportive even when I was not someone who deserved it.

I am kind of jealous of the people heading back to or starting school today. I love the start of a school year; new clothes, school supplies, and Promise.

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This morning’s entry reminded me about my sorry lack of journaling lately. I do have a small notebook that I carry around and record bullet points of the day. It’s easier than having to find the time to sit down and write paragraphs and string together ideas.

I’ve mentioned before that I have trouble committing myself to mussing over my thoughts and emotions and ideas. It forces me to dwell and for the past eighteen months or so, dwelling has been dangerous. It is only in hindsight, as I see my number of entries dwindle, that I realize just how reluctant I have been to face my mind in a metaphorical mirror.

Here Are The Facts

Four years ago, I wrote: ”These artificial divisions of time turn into benchmarks, ways to measure your life, as you can’t help but turn back and think about what you were doing four years ago today, and what’s changed since then, and what you’ve done in the interim”

I think I stole that from somewhere, but I have no clue where.

Anyway, four years ago, I was still hopelessly, completely enamored with He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named (and I was in denial) I was doing NaNo for the first time, and went on a date with a guy I met at the Albany region gathering. His name was Rob and I convinced him to read Atlas Shrugged. I was less than two months away from graduating college and full of schemes and plans that changed weekly.

On election night, I sat in my room in Fain C, yelling election news back and forth with my housemates. I never though Bush was going to lose, so there was no disappointment. Despite the sorry state of affairs I did not believe Bush could be defeated, and I certainly did not think Kerry would be the man to defeat him. I guess that’s why I wasn’t really upset that Bush one, because Kerry really did not seem like any type of improvement.

This year, I won’t like: I will cry if McCain wins. Not only can I not stand him, and the campaign that he run, but like most women (people?) I can’t stand Sarah Palin. I do not want either of them any where near the executive office.

I said it around the DNC that the change Obama wants me to believe in, is not my brand of change, neccesarily. But it is certainly better than the alternative. I also have a lot of respect for the campaign he ran. I started to notice it in the primaries — I think it was in the third debate he had with HIllary — she was going after him with character attacks, and getting angrier and angrier, and he just DID NOT engage her. I thought that was pretty awesome.

Four years ago feels like a lifetime ago. I have talked about this election for four years; it felt very strange to finally vote today. In a little over 12 hours, we should know for sure.

Libertarians for Obama!

If I’m not careful, I’m going to stop writing here before I ever really started. I still haven’t linked to here from everywhere, not even from my own LJ, where I have a whole 5 readers.

I started this with the idea of blogging honestly “for like, the world,” but the idea’s a little scarier in practice. So I’m writing here, in this space that nobody knows exists and suddenly I have nothing to say. It’s as if I’ve forgotten how to write without an audience (because let’s face it. Livejournal was an audience. For HWSNBN. For The Ex. For the people I figured read it without telling me they read it.) It makes me wonder how I used to fill page after page in those Mead Spiral college ruled notebooks back in high school.

Browing through other blogs lately, I read things that are so familiar that I want to give myself a lobotomy. It forces me to feel things and it makes me want to write about them, even if someone has already said all the things I wish I had written, and has probably said it better than I ever could.

I can’t help but thinking about four years ago when the Election is all over the news, because around Election Day 2004 is where things start to get really hazy. This perhaps is a lame way to mark the passage of time, but the run-up to the presidential election naturally makes me think back to the fall of 2004.

I remember how far away December seemed at the beginning of that September, and how when December came, September was far away.  But I also know that I have to move beyond the defensiveness and walls that I built up as a result of all that.

I have to remind myself to slow down, sit down, and get the words out of my head. Even if no one is going to see them. And even if the eventual audience thinks it’s pointless. Even if it means admitting to anyone who reads this that no, I’m not perfect, my life’s not rose colored, and their’s might be a lot more together than mine.

Here’s the thing with new (non)-relationships: There are no promises, and you cannot, cannot let yourself plan around them. For three months I have let myself become prisoner to rules.

Being around him is almost comfortable. Our arms wrap around each other as if they have been doing so for years. We exist in almost comfortable silence while he makes us breakfast (and he makes damn good coffee) and when we catch each other’s eyes we exchange these quiet little smiles, that almost mean something, — but probably nothing. There is joy when I get him to laugh – he’ll want to keep me around, because I make him laugh, and he makes me laugh.

I am afraid of the unknown, yet I almost don’t really want to know, I’m almost not ready to know; because see, I already know. Because how can you have emotional intimacy when you aren’t really sure you like yourself? This is what I meant about the words on the tip of my tongue and the back of my throat, that I keep biting down and swallowing back. He has seen me erratic, just once, and it scared him. I almost want to open to him, but I don’t know if I can, and then, how can I blame him if he can’t open up to me, for his own reasons? And then, based on what I’ve divined, it’s almost besides the point.

It is that somehow, unexpectedly, I met one I almost actually liked, who I already kind of knew, and I’m more worried about how he sees me, and more clueless than ever. I almost want to know everything about him, and it’s too soon. I’m going to get attached, knowing barely anything more than that it has felt almost completely right in his arms since the first night he kissed me. When I say I have never felt this way about anyone, I mean it. I just don’t know what exactly it is I feel.

And in my mind, I keep replaying all the ways this is going to end, the way he is going to tell me that he’s sorry, he’s tried, but he just can’t be involved with anyone, or he’ll give me that line about how yeah, I’m great, but he just doesn’t feel that way about me, and I’ll be crushed, because there seemed to be potential, and then there will be one more potential gone.

I hate what I’m doing, where I check my email too much and I spend way too long composing a response. This game, of saying all the right things, keeping him interested, making him want more, and trying to be patient and be good with what is right now. Taking it slow, because he’s on the rebound. Wondering if I’m naïve to see any potential in this, to have any hope in this becoming more than what it is right now.

Opening up has always been almost too easy. For whatever walls I have built up in the past, reigning in the instinct to let someone in, with the knowledge that I have to hold back takes so much energy. And then I’m afraid that all this emotional energy will just blow up in my face and he’ll back away.

“I am a cynic. You are a romantic. And you are really romanticizing this.” HWSNBN said this, a sneer nearly four years ago that my heart still contracts on. I’m not sure why he had to say it, since he was the one making all the rules. But he said it, and it hurt, because I thought I was in love with him, and he made it so easy. His disgust for my romanticism – and hence for me – triggered a construction project of concrete around my heart.

Today, I compare relationships to bank balance sheets, and don’t think its that far off. I am afraid to believe in feeling almost anything anymore, both for fear I’ll feel something that isn’t returned and for terror that I just won’t feel anything at all.

MAKE THIS MONTH END.

Basically, I’ve written this month off as a total fucking waste, and that’s okay and stuff. But damn, just END already, October. Please?

Last October, 2 important things happened.
1) I realized a PhD program was not for me. Yeah, it took months for that thought to actualize, but I knew it as early as October..considering classes started on Sept 25, I unfortunately figured that one out too quick.

2) Ryan called me around 7 AM on a Sunday morning and we had a 5 hour conversation abotu relationships. I learned a good deal about myself and confirmed my romantic past and future, and it was incredibly bittersweet. Because I was speaking to my ex-boyfriend, who I actually don’t speak to right now, and we were telling each other these honest honest things about our love lives and how we would be, and etc. and part of me knew that it was the last time we would speak like that, and I was right. And I don’t even think about it that much, honestly, but when I do, like early morning walks down Third Avenue to work the utter sadness it brings me is pathetic.

When I was 16, I took a leap of faith. I took it because it was “right.” This is the first time I have put right in quotations. Most of you don’t know the story, but I got involved with Ryan under very unfavorable circumstances, knowing it would be very difficuult, and knowing it meant having to deal with shit that you don’t usually volunteer to deal with. I still cannot, even in the most filtered of entries, tell the details, which sounds more cryptic and dramatic than it is, but part of me cannot break the silence, nor can I wish silent condemnation on myself for my choice.

The leap of faith I took has had its share of consequences on my life, I had never ‘questioned’ it as a correct step.

For the first time in my life I am dangerously worrying, what my life would be like it I had (probably rightly) chosen to throw away potential with Ryan. If, on that weekend I learned his bit of news I had been able to say ‘Well…nevermind then”

It took me eight years to admit I may have responded in the wrong way.

And so I also want to let go of those eight years, because I wish I knew where I’d be without them, even though that is impossible on several levels.

As in, “i loved you Ryan, I really did. But I should have walked away from you when I was 16 and had the opportunity. And I’ve never said that before. Not even when we first broke up. Not even last fall when you got the new girlfriend. But I loved you and for the first time I wish I never had. And I hate that, but it might be the most honest thing I ever felt.”

Can’t you just feel the angst?

I’ve been listening to the song “Hey There Delilah” incesssently, because my roommate plays it on his guitar all the time, and being a musician, I’m sure its sort of an anthem for himself, but like any love song it makes me a little sad, because I have no one with which to associate the love song.

Which made me want to listen to Bon Jovi’s “This Ain’t A Love Song.” Go figure. That plays, and then “These Days” comes on after that, and it’s freshman year of college and I knew then what I know now, on some level, and this song is so palpitably putting me back on the road in Amherst and Hadley I just don’t know how to put it into words. Arg, my memory and music. The entire album “Maybe You Should Drive” is definitely Amherst/Hampshire for me. What’s creepy is I remember driving North on 91 when i was actually, you know, moving up there, and the song “Jane” playing and I listened to that CD over and over again that year. Which of course I’m now playing, and “Love, Intermittendly” which is another Ryan memory, because what the hell in my music collection isn’t?

This doesn’t even begin to cover the range of angst I’ve experienced this month, but I”m gonna bite down on the inside of my cheeks and shut the hell up about all of it, because it’s not worth it, or helpful right now to try and be articulate about.

Okay well. This month is almost over. I’m not on the road to a PhD and I don’t have a boyfriend and won’t anytime soon.

I also have a really good apartment and a really good job and I really need to focus on both instead of being a slob, not doing laundry, and treating each day as a day to get through instead of a day to day build on each other.

Tomorrow is a brand new month and while it’s technically a meaningless milestone, tomorrow won’t be October and I will try to start again from Square One in New York because I have to, because I want to, because I need to.