a time of fullness

IT'S FINALLY COOL ENOUGH TO WEAR PANTS. (Not that I ever wear pants at work; I'm solidly a skirt person.  But at home I like my schluffy exercise pants and it's been too fucking hot to wear much of anything at all.  I hate you, human-caused global climate change.  I weep for you, planet dying of fever.  I welcome you, fall temperatures.)  Glory hallelujah.  Amen and amen.

Also holy shit this Sudafed is no joke.  (I generally keep myself well stocked with various medicines, Gatorades, ginger ales and chicken soups, because having lived half my entire life alone, I know how to prepare to care for myself during illness.  Side bar: I don't even feel sad right now that there's no one to take care of me while I'm sick, which has always been the hallmark of my I-hate-being-single mourning/whining.  Now I'm like "aw fuck yeah I can sleep in a quiet house without anyone bothering me."  I think I was so seriously miserable in my last burning circus of a relationship that I broke through the other side of even giving a shit.)  I bought the really good stuff -- the kind you have to show like four different forms of ID to even look at.  The kind you have to sign in blood for.  The kind you only have to take once a day.  Thanks to this marvel of modern medicine I have spent the last two days blazing through my work hours in a giddy spaciness that sort of vibrates at the edges.  I looked it up today to figure out why the fuck I've been so over-the-moon happy (I mean, I'm in a pretty good mood generally, especially now that I'm in a voluntary seclusion and better rested, but this soaring glee is a bit unusual), and it looks like pseudoephedrine has an impact on norepinephrine-dopamine reuptake, which is what my antidepressant does, so I guess I'm like double the happy.  Don't get me wrong, it's awesome; it's just gotta be weird for the people who have to work with a giggly, beaming goofball when they're used to professional and no-nonsense.  This is all-nonsense.

Oh well.  I am a many-faceted being.  They might as well see the sillier side of Sarah now as later.

So having got that amphetamine-addled preamble off my chest, here's the post I have intended to write since this morning.
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This is a time of fullness.

As with most metamorphoses, it took profound upheaval to reach it.  I don't subscribe to the philosophy that growth must come from pain; but growth certainly comes from change, and change, to the human brain, however ultimately good, is nonetheless tumultuous and stressful.  In the last four months, I:

1. Learned that my mother has ovarian cancer and went through a summer of travel across states to help where I could (Note: I will not be writing much about this topic for the foreseeable future.  At the moment Mom's treatment is going great, and I am unspeakably grateful, and that is all I can say about it);
2. Ended another terrible relationship;
3. Moved to a new apartment; and
4. Moved office locations and accepted a promotion.

The changes encompassed every facet of my life: family, personal life, home, work.  All in flux at once.  It was the most exhausted I've ever been.

But again, the changes themselves, with the exception of my mother's illness, weren't painful so much as stressful.  The breakup was both brilliantly done on my part, and deeply liberating (I really have broken through some ceiling that I've never been able to breach before; this level of satisfaction and happiness with my own life, on its own terms, is something I never dreamed I could achieve); the move was holy-shit-so-exhausting but I love my new habitat as dearly as I hated my old one, and the closer location to work cuts my daily commute from 2.5 hours to less than one; and the promotion has catapulted me along my chosen trajectory of enacting much-needed reforms in my office.  Undertaking all these changes at once definitely tapped out my reserves (I've been a pretty dry cistern for the last three years, so I didn't have much to draw on to begin with), but even in the middle of the irruption I knew I just had to get through a few months of insanity before everything evened out and coalesced into a beautiful sea change.

Which it has.  I can say without hesitation or qualification that this is the happiest I have ever been.  Which happened when I finished all the change-events, and allowed myself over the last couple of months to do nothing but rest.  And suddenly: joy.  So much joy.  My apartment is still a hectic jumble of boxes; there's still so much to do at work; but everything feels peaceful and unhurried.  And I love my quiet, solitary hours at home.

It is from this joy and fulfillment and happiness that I am starting to write again.  It's been a long, long time since I've considered myself a writer.  You can basically track my writing by my blog posting, which has been essentially defunct since 2009.  Eight years in the desert.

I thought I lost it.  I would sit and try to write something, but it was all stilted, forced, shriveled.  I thought that was it, for me.  It hurt me, but I couldn't fix it.  It just wasn't there.

Undoubtedly there are many reasons for all of it.  I lost my favorite blog reader and blogging after that felt weird; my first Great Change launched around that time as well and my internal perspective was shifting so fucking rapidly that I barely had time to catch my breath, let alone process it, let alone write about it; and then I didn't know how to write about it, because I found myself in a new emotional landscape that I wasn't equipped to describe; and then I embarked on a series of shitty relationships (my taste in romantic partners, with two exceptions, has trended toward the abysmal, although, I think, for no longer) and stretches of in-between recovery time that took over my life and left no room for writing.  Those were all factors.  But primarily, I think, now that the words keep welling up within my metaphorical soul and spilling out and I can't stop writing (yesterday I blogged, and worked on my new piece of fiction (!), and journalled): I had only known how to write from a place of pain, and not a place of wholeness, and it's taken this long, and this much rest and repletion and joy and fulfillment, to arrive in a space where I can be creative again.

It's a really good lesson to absorb.  I need to protect my peace and my wholeness, so that I can write.

This feeling -- this feeling of being myself -- this is amazing.  I am almost wholly Sarah.

And from this place of fullness, I can create.  I can turn my hands and my brain and my entire sense of being to my best-loved, and best-suited, craft.

It is so, so good.

a teeny bit about my job

I can't believe how much I love my job.

It's been a combination of luck and the force of my personality, to be honest.  Luck that the job opened up just when I gave up on teaching and started casting around for something new, and luck that the attorneys I was initially assigned to assist are all fantastic people to work for; then luck that I got to know people who are, or who became, people of influence in the firm.  The rest is personality and will.

Part of what I love about my job is finally working in a place that's big enough for my ambitions.  I've taken my initial position of "legal secretary" and added management and policy development, with an eye far up the ladder over time.  I am well respected in an environment that does not yield itself to a great deal of respect.  I am well respected because I do good work, I am friendly and outgoing, I am smart and competent, I am firm and decisive, I speak my mind, and I don't tolerate bullshit.  It's a role I've grown into, and quickly.  I've only been at the firm a year and half and I've already earned a promotion and started a policy-making focus group within my department.

It's weird, realizing that I'm good at politics.  (I've come a long, long way since my rawboned fledgling days at the homeless center all those years ago.)  I do politics my own way (that is to say, with sincerity and openness), but I know how to make and leverage connections, I know the right things to say, the right arguments to make.  I know how to set a goal and gather support for it.  I know how to get what I want.  I know how not to give a shit when people don't like me.  I know how to use all that for good.

It's pretty fucking great.

I could rave all day about how much I love my attorneys.  I assist three at present; there have been some secretarial reassignments since I came on board, so of the three I initially started with, I've retained two, S. and B. (one of which I kept because I went to my supervisors and demanded to keep him--sometimes when I think about all the brassy, ballsy things I've done at this job I just sit and giggle, I can't believe they've all worked, and also, since that appears to be all it takes to make shit happen, why haven't I thought to just make demands all along); the third (D.) I knew I wanted to assist from my first week on the job, and about six months ago he went to my supervisor and told her he wanted to be assigned to me, and it was done (M.'s recounting to me later made my heart swell with pride, because the people at the top know who I am).  My attorneys are all vastly different personalities, with vastly different positions in the firm hierarchy, and I get along with all of them splendidly, and have really solid working relationships with them.  B. and I are work-spouses who are mostly incredibly nice to each other, occasionally grump each other out, and frequently spend long minutes on the phone together muttering absently to ourselves before realizing we don't need to be talking to each other.  S. and I are old-school-style boss-and-secretary (except that he thinks me a magical computer wizard), with a lot of benevolent cordiality and occasional political commiserations.  D. and I are still figuring each other out, but there's a lot of mutual liking and respect there, and working with him is teaching me to be even more assertive and personally powerful, which I appreciate the hell out of.

And that's not even bringing the management and policy-making aspects into it.

I fucking love my job.  For the first time ever.  I've turned it into a career, and I have a clear vision of where I want to take it.  And I can get there.

The last eight years have seen a few distinctive shifts in my personal development.  2009-2010 saw me burst out of a chrysalis of trauma and depression into healing and coping and joy and freedom.  2017 has been the year of real blooming.  (So I'm a butterfly and a flower.  A butterflower.  Don't mind me, I have a cold right now and this is the Sudafed talking.)  It's been a damn hard year, in places -- completely exhausting.  But this is the most, and most marked and permanent-feeling, growth that I've undergone in a long time.

I've always learned and grown in my own time.  Often that's been later than I would have expected, or than others have expected.  But it's better and deeper for taking so long.

I still have a long way to go, with a lot of things.  But I'm getting there; and even better, I love where I am right now -- not just where I plan to be.

Also?  I love writing again.

sorry, not sorry

We have no intention of having children, and have a dog and cat who are clearly the only kids we want. 

I grinned as I re-read that delightful sentence from my childhood best friend with whom I recently reconnected after at least twenty years (Facebook may have unforgivably cost us the election, but damn it's great for connecting with people).  Aside from marrying young, J. and I followed similar life paths, including shedding our faith (god I love talking with fellow ex-pats from religious fundamentalism; when you run into someone who comes from the same strange subculture as you did, you can swap stories without having to translate anything, which is refreshing), and not having children.

It wasn't the outcome I expected (and as people never tire of reminding me, kids could still happen); since very early childhood I have always dreamed of love and marriage and children--ambitions which eclipsed all others.  I planned to marry right out of college and devote myself full-time to my husband and our three or four children.  While I reserved small dreams to myself--I always intended on writing--I never planned seriously for any career; employment, to my college-aged mind, would serve merely as a placeholder until I could meet Mr. Right and settle down to my real life of wife- and motherhood.

Thank gawd none of that came to pass.

Looking back on that cultural brainwashing infuriates me.  I have clawed my way up to an amazing career, but it took me until my mid-thirties to even really get started.  Everything that came before this was haphazard and accidental; if my talents and ambitions had been fostered, if I'd been taught that my goals for what I wanted with my own life as a sovereign human being should always come first, if I'd been encouraged to plan for a future that holds no guarantee of domestic partnership, if I'd been told, as men are told, that it was imperative to plan for my career because a profession is both necessary and fulfilling, it might not have taken me as long to get here.

And that enculturation runs deep.  Long after I gave up my faith, I maintained the assumption that what I wanted most was love and family.  It led to many years of lonely grief as my short-lived relationships all failed one after the other, and the years of singleness overwhelmed the scale.  It's only been within the last few months that I've started to question whether family is something I really want.  Love and marriage--yes, I still want those.  Not as badly as I once did, because I'm realizing with increasing clarity what a gift this time is that I have all to myself, and what a glorious life I am capable of building on my own.  But someday, once I'm established, once I've built a foundation that limerence cannot shake, once I've met someone who is truly what I want, I would like a life companion.

Kids though.  I cannot decide where I land when it comes to kids.  I have moments where I wish I could kiss a sweaty, tangled little forehead goodnight, plan a magical Christmas, watch a little person become a bigger person, help someone find their way in a big daunting exciting world.  I have moments when it hurts me to realize that the likelihood of any of that happening is decreasing every day.  I always thought I'd be a good mom, and it's weird to think that such a lifelong assumption will most likely go unproven.  

But then I think about all the things I don't have to deal with.  Diapers.  Teething.  Fevers.  Tantrums.  The noise and the mess.  Giving up prioritizing your own schedule and wellbeing pretty much forever.  The sharp drop in marital happiness and personal fulfillment that nearly all parents experience.  All that sleeplessness.  The horrors of pregnancy and labor and post-partum depression.  Homework and sports.  Endless complications.  Middle school.  Constant financial crisis.  The weird culty mentality that most parents I've met subscribe to the instant they have kids.

Yeah, I'm really glad I haven't had to experience any of that. 

So when I read J.'s "we definitely don't want kids" statement (from the tone it sounds like she's had to defend her decision to far too many people with zero actual stakes in but plenty of opinions regarding her life) my response was...interesting, to me.  I wanted to give her a giddy high five.  

Maybe I don't want kids.  (Hahaha since the window is gradually closing I'm thinking that's maybe a happier conclusion to reach than "I wish I'd had them when I was twenty-five.")  I'm cool with that, if that's the case.   

Of course, when you reach your mid-thirties and are thinking about the possibility of dating again sometime in the next 15 years, you have to weigh whether you'd take a partner with pre-existing kids.  I've dated guys with kids before; it was enough to make me realize real quick that I wasn't in any hurry to go popping little people out of my own vagina.  Parts of it were great; I had a really strong bond with one child in particular, and I loved the little routines we built together, the songs he liked me to sing to him at bedtime, the books he liked me to read--and the milestones we reached together, like teaching him to shower and get his own breakfast--and the goals we set together, like helping him deal with his extreme emotions.  But a lot of it sucked, including the stark reality that my relationship with my significant other would never come first, and the realization that I had to set myself aside for the sake of children that I hadn't signed up for.  And even though the kids were the reason I stayed in that relationship so long, I emerged from it realizing a lot more than I had before about exactly what having kids entails, and it gave me serious pause.

Would I date a guy with kids again (or a woman with kids)?  I guess that would depend on the guy (or woman)--and the kids.  It wouldn't be my first choice.  Sort of like having kids at all.  But I could be persuaded, I think, with the right person (the right people).

Just not right this second.  People my age now have mostly younger kids, and younger kids aren't my jam.  Since I'm not really seeing myself taking up dating again in the immediately foreseeable future, there's not a whole lot of worry on that score.  I have shit to do right now, and dating doesn't really fit in with my plans, so kids are a moot consideration at the moment in any case (I will consider fostering, farrrrr down the road, when I'm established; but I'll be damned if I take up single parenting that starts at the kid's infancy.  Nope nope nope).  

One long rambling blog post later...in short, I'm not 100% solid on the kids conclusion, but I'm definitely over 80% on not wanting kids.  That last 20% is confusing; I hate that I can't really tell how much of my residual possible desire for kids is an internalized cultural expectation, and how much of it is genuine, and how much of it is simply a willingness to be open to the best life as it comes.  I tend to know myself very, very well ("Know Thyself" is sort of my life's pursuit), and not knowing this drives me fucking nuts.  

It doesn't help that underlying this margin of uncertainty is a suspicion that some dude could come along and try to talk me into something I don't really want and I might give in because women are also trained from birth never to trust ourselves.  I'm tired of men telling me what I want, tired of female uncertainty being interpreted as an invitation (or a need) for male direction/interjection/interference.  Uncertainty is not the absence of agency, thank you very much.  And then there's the highly enculturated neurosis of the "ticking biological clock" (which intellectually I reject; I have genes that would benefit the human gene pool to pass on like intelligence and resilience, but also genes that I'm just as happy not to inflict on a child like crippling depression; further, there's no inherent merit in having biological children, and arguably there's quite a bit of non-merit in insisting on producing biological children on a frighteningly overpopulated planet with shrinking resources and millions of orphaned, homeless, and unwanted children in need of a good home).  A number of people who advocate for having kids put forth the bullshit argument that you're never really ready anyway and parenthood is something you can't possibly plan for emotionally until you just do it, which is both absurdly egotistical and ludicrously self-righteous, not to mention founded on laughably specious logic.  (Like, no one says that about getting a pet.  You know you'll have to spend money and time caring for a dependent living being, which factors heavily into a responsible person's decision whether or not to adopt one.  "You can't know until you commit irrevocably to it by doing it" is the same nonsense put forth by the Catholic Church regarding the Eucharist; I converted to Catholicism before jumping the religious ship altogether and confirmed that the Eucharist is exactly what you make of it, which is what I thought to begin with.)  My uncertainty is plagued by nefarious cultural factors that I don't trust at all, and which make me narrow my eyes a bit at the remaining 20% of myself that whispers that I might want kids.  Do I?  Do I really?

I suppose where I'm really landing is my own agency.  I'm not entirely certain what I want, and that's perfectly okay; there's no hurry to figure it out, and there's certainly no need to have someone else around to help me decide.  In the meantime, I'm deeply happy that I have kicked off my thirty-sixth year in my present circumstances.  This isn't the life I had envisioned.  But in more ways than one, it's so much better than anything I even knew to wish for myself.  And that includes (for the time being, at least) being single, and child-free.

singleness rocks, part 1

So, I'm not going to lie.  Singleness is awesome.

It's taken a long time to get to this FUCK YEAH point.  But several lousy relationships and nearly a decade after my regular blogging days, I'm pretty thrilled to be where I am.

It's funny, the things that hit you.  Yesterday I was reflecting on the privacy.  Or rather, the complete irrelevance of privacy.  I can shit with the bathroom door open or stride around the apartment naked or belt out random snippets of songs or fart in bed without worrying about my dignity or anyone else's sensibilities.  It's great.

Just now I was mowing down some hummus (homemade; I'm starting to do things around the house again in a way I haven't had the energy for in at least three--but more realistically eight or more--years) and trying to remember who it was I knew who wouldn't eat hummus because they didn't like the texture, and I sat bolt upright on the couch elated by the realization that I don't have to tolerate anyone's weird food habits anymore.  All of my exes had weird food habits.  More than one of them hated tomatoes.  One wouldn't eat vegetables.  One wouldn't eat meat.  This one didn't like foreign food; that one didn't like cucumbers; that one hated hummus and yogurt and pudding and anything else that was neither definitively solid nor liquid.  This other one hated olives.  Another one hated coffee.  Lettuce.  Wine.  Fish.  Bananas.  I can't keep all their stupid idiosyncrasies sorted in my head anymore, and thank god for that--trying to keep that shit straight when I wanted to cook was fucking maddening.  It was like dating a class of adult kindergartners.  JUST EAT THE DAMN TOMATO OHMYGOD.

Not having to mentally juggle someone else's endless lists of food-hatreds while planning a menu and trying to balance it with what I like?  That's gold.

I was reading recently about how women are responsible for the vast majority of the mental labor that goes into running a household, so that even when men offer to help, the men are just thinking in terms of helping with the execution of a task, while women remain solely responsible for planning not only one task, but every accompanying and related task for every part of what makes the household function.  All day.  Every day.  And when you're planning the kids' lunches and getting them up and dressed in the morning and timing their schedules so they all get enough sleep but still get showered and out the door to school on time; then planning throughout the day all the errands you have to run that night, and what menus you should plan out and shop for based on what's on sale, and what special events are coming up, and when to start dinner and how much to prepare and how long all the prep work will take, and whether or not you have enough time to do some laundry while dinner is cooking...well, when you have the massive events-planning of two or more lives constantly running through your head, someone half-heartedly asking "What can I do to help?" is more a hindrance than a help just for asking rather than stepping in to try to take on some of that mental planning.

My own planning is fun for me.  It still occupies a lot of my mental space, but it's all by me, for me, of me, and the reduction in planning that I deal with just for being single is pretty damn sweet.

Also I can eat whatever I want without someone else whining about how they don't like perfectly normal and delicious food.

Like this amazing hummus.

so what

Settling into a new place takes forever.

I don't know what happened in the last few months - some kind of personal metamorphosis, again.  It's not as dramatic as past metamorphoses.  This feels more like...glazing, like in ceramics.  Or maybe firing, after the glazing.  2016 was the glazing.  2017 is the firing.  Like some kind of finish is happening, so that I can move forward to do what I've always wanted to do.

Carole told me once that after I left the house she shared with her mother and stepfather after an evening of fun and laughter and ranting with them, Mike looked at her and said of me, "She's going to be a terror when she realizes what she is."

I think I'm starting to realize what I am.

That's manifesting in all kinds of interesting ways at work (I am KILLING IT with my career, holy shit) and in my personal life (I am NOT INTERESTED in bullshit anymore--that latest round of bullshit with the last loser crystallized into a giant NOPE in my brain), which I'll get into at some point, maybe (I'm cagier with spilling all of my guts on the Internet than I used to be).  The salient application at the moment is how I'm approaching settling into the new apartment.

Even at the beginning of the summer, right after the move, I felt all freaked out and stressed with how much work there was to be done, and how meager the reserves I had to draw upon to do it.  But as I recovered from the latest relationship (notice I didn't say that I had to recover from the latest breakup) and started to tackle adjusting to the new position at work, and realized how critically important it is to rest and have some quality of life, I stopped giving a shit about how quickly I'm getting unpacked and organized.  The kitchen is totally organized, and the bathroom; my bedroom is just about there; the living room functions; and the rest is all boxes and piles of awesome junk, and I'm okay with that.  For the first time ever I'm happy, really, deeply, truly happy -- I fucking LOVE my job, I love my city, I love my apartment, I love my life: having more time because of a shorter commute, having evenings to spend at home, cooking on weekends, exercising early on weekday mornings, exploring new TV shows and new books, reveling in my lovely little Simon-eyes, buckling back down to a budget, beginning to write again, feeling like I'm finally starting to make a difference in the world around me -- so what does it matter if there are boxes everywhere?  There's no rush; I'll get there.  It'll all come together in time.

Also I think I'm beginning to worry less about other people liking me.  I'm cool with not coming across as friendly and warm.  I have shit to do.  People who are worth my friendliness and warmth will get it; people who aren't, won't.  I don't have time to play nice, so I'm training myself out of it.  It's taking the people who don't know me as well a little aback, I think; the people who know me better seem to be taking it in stride because this has been me all along.

I like not being pushed around as easily anymore.  And it's all because I stopped giving a shit.  Which is extending to every corner of my life.

And I love it.  I feel unleashed.

god only knows

After all these years, I am delighted to still be writing about Simon.  (Also, after all these years, I am delighted to finally have embraced the split infinitive. For those whose grammatical training in English stemmed from the Victorian era and cannot read "to boldly go" without cringing, I refer you to John McWhorter's Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue, in which he lays out so sound an argument in favor of the split infinitive that I converted to its acceptance on the spot.)  My lovely kittyboy approaches his sixteenth birthday sometime early next year (hm, I should probably appoint one. Lol I'm a terrible kittymama - no birthday celebrations in fifteen years; I might as well be a Dursley.  I'm leaning toward January 4th; for some reason that feels right), and our fourteenth anniversary of meeting at Easter, and our twelfth year of companionship this Christmas.  At fifteen, he remains full of sass and sweetness, still pert and bright-eyed, and only bushy-tailed when a loud noise scares him.

He's the most adaptable cat I've ever heard of; he acclimated to being hauled out to South Bend, Indiana, twelve years ago, then being hauled back to Erie, Pennsylvania, three years later; he survived a move into my grandmother's mobile home with me, then back into my parents' house for three years, then to my apartment that I dubbed The Eyrie for three more; then the trip back to Michigan to a cramped, cheap little condo for two more years while I spent far too much time at my ex's place; and then the enormous upheaval of the move to the current homestead.  With each change, he has remained his faithful, affectionate, playful self; and with this last change in particular, now that it's just the two of us again, in a large old apartment resplendent with 1920s arched doorways, hardwood flooring and stucco walls, he is relaxed and happy, and I can't look at him without hearing him break into the soft, rhythmic purr that snags a little in his nose - my favorite sound in all the world.

My Simon has seen me through a lot.  I've always had my pet songs for him (har) - "You Made Me So Very Happy," "You are My Sunshine" (or, "You are My Simon"), "Sweet Caroline" ("Sweet Kitty Simon"); lately I've been singing a lot of "God Only Knows."  Because without this cat, this adorable, sweet, loyal, devoted companion, who has literally stood at my shoulder staring down into my face all through my darkest nights, I don't know that I'd be here today writing this.  Every day I look forward to going home to him; every morning I love waking up to his FEED ME yowls; I laugh when he trips me up in the hallways, or trips himself up because he's too busy staring backwards into my face as he walks to pay attention to where he's going; I smile when he settles down into a catloaf next to me on the couch in the evenings.

I know our time is short.  At the moment he is in perfect health (I had full bloodwork done up on him a month ago, and, uncharacteristically for fifteen-year-old cats, he has no renal or liver issues; his hips are only arthritic enough to have necessitated my converting a plastic storage bin into a custom litter box that he can easily step into and easily crouch at full height in, but which certainly don't impede his countertop foraging anytime I step out of the kitchen); but fifteen is old, and though I cherish hopes of him reaching his twenties, there's no guarantee.  My breath catches when I think of losing him (god, what I wouldn't give to have the ability to reverse aging; I would go into extravagant debt to have Simon with me forever); I can envision no greater personal loss or anguish, and I know I'll have to feel it at some point, much sooner than I'll ever be ready for.  But that only underscores the incalculable preciousness of the present that I have with him - a present in which we have each other all to ourselves, and in which I can give him an easy old age full of mommy-love and support and creature comforts and a stress-free environment without roommates or other animals.

Even now as I type this from my lovely balcony on a perfect autumnal-summer afternoon, I know that when I walk back into the house, a fuzzy little black face with vibrant yellow owl-eyes will be running to greet me and demand his dinner (which he will have to wait another 90 minutes to receive).

This precious little nine-pound bundle of sinew and old hips and silky-soft fur and dexterous monkey-paws is my pride and joy, my perfect companion, my favorite person, and I am so glad to still be writing about him, after all these years.  God only knows what I'd be without him.  And here we are.

doctor's orders

About a month ago, at a just-in-the-nick-of-time appointment to get my prescriptions refilled, I finally remembered to ask my doc about that weird mole on my upper thigh (nothing to worry about).  As he confirmed my pharmacy for the scrip refills, I remembered the other thing I needed to ask him, and cleared my throat.

"So I've been having issues with anxiety," I said. "I've been medicated for it periodically. It doesn't require daily medication like depression, but every once in awhile it gets bad, and it's been bad lately."  He nodded, following me; I'd already outlined for him what my last few months have entailed.  "Do you think I need to be medicated for it for awhile?"

His shrewd, brisk eyes took me in for a moment.  "Do you want to be medicated for it?"

"Well, I don't want to feel like this anymore," I said.

He assessed me again with that sharp face that I never know quite how to read.

"You drink?" he asked.

I just stared at him for a moment while my entire body clamped down on the impulse to howl with laughter and yell DO I?  I had finally cut back on my alcohol intake, which, though never more than a couple of glasses at a time, had been worrying me with its frequency; after all, I had reasoned, I can only moan "the election" for so long as a preamble to a glass of wine. This being the only life I get, I had reasoned further, I would like to enjoy a long length of it without cirrhosis of the liver.  I watched Dr. S's face, couldn't hear any reprimand in his tone, and, keeping my face neutral, answered,

"Well, I've cut back a lot. But yeah, I like to drink."

"What do you usually do, when you drink?"

"Well--I come home and pour myself a glass of something after work."

"Glass of what?"

"Oh, just about anything; I like it all.  Usually it's wine though."

"Red or white?"

"Usually red. Sometimes white in the summer, like now, when it's hot out."

"Relax you?"

"Oh yes," I said fervently.

He smiled, a quick twinkle.  "Can you keep it to one?"

"Sure, that's not a problem," I said.

He shrugged.  "So do that."

"Uh -- really?"  I resisted the impulse to clean out my ears on an assumed mis-hearing.

"Sure."

"Like -- every day?"  This was not the medical advice I had been expecting.

"If you keep it to one it's fine."

"I was--" I cast about for a minute, completely unsure of my footing in these uncharted and unprecedented medical waters.  "I, uh, was cutting back because I was worried about my liver."

He shrugged again and started organizing the papers on his clipboard.  "Frankly anything I could prescribe you for anxiety would be harder on your liver than alcohol. Alcohol is more natural" [I successfully refrained from rolling my eyes] "and your body is used to it. If one glass of wine a day makes you feel calmer, just stick with what works."

"Oh -- well -- okay. A glass of wine a day.  I think I can do that."  (I mean, I'm gonna HATE it, but if it's for my health, I guess I can drink.)

I practically skipped out to the parking lot.  (Meg, upon hearing the story that weekend, wanted to watch me slap a prescription for alcohol onto a bar counter.) I had never thought of taking anti-anxieties as pleasurable.  But my doctor-recommended glass of dry red medicine that night carried me off into a land where I did nothing but smile.

wonder woman

I have two recently acquired scars over my right eye.

Two days after moving into my new apartment within the Detroit city limits, I went with Steph to a movie theater to escape the godsawful murderous heat and celebrate the arrival of the first female superhero protagonist to the big screen.  Having heard of the film's largely positive reception, and enjoying a nerdy superhero movie as much as the next person (though not a comic book reader, I love a good story of conflict-ridden heroism, particularly when sprinkled with Marvel's satisfying grasp of the comedic, although for Wonder Woman I'll venture back into DC land, which I haven't done in awhile), and pleased that a woman finally gets to command the limelight, I bought my ticket and my popcorn with enthusiasm.

Taking advantage of the sparse attendance of a weekday matinee, we selected our favorite kind of seat (or maybe it's just mine), two-thirds of the way up and center, and just as the previews started to roll, I nipped down to the restroom for a pre-movie pee: an innocent decision with rather disastrous consequences.

The pee part went smoothly enough.  So did the handwashing.  It was the architectural design of the restroom in combination with my habitual assessment of my appearance in the mirror on my way out the door that proved problematic.  See, the restroom had one of those narrow cement-and-tile barrier walls immediately opposite the door, dividing the entryway from the stalls in the back, presumably to screen users from the view of the hall.  The wall was perhaps six inches wide.  It abruptly stopped a few feet past the entryway and opened into the center of the restroom.  Along the same wall as the doorway stood the mirrors and sinks.  Writing about three-dimensional spaces is not my strongest suit, so please enjoy the below crude diagram:

An unexpectedly murderous layout.

I have a slight attention problem when it comes to my immediate surroundings to begin with; it is not uncommon for me, lost in thought, to misgauge the location of a desk or a doorway, bounce off a solid surface, and sport the evidence of my ongoing struggle with physics and geometry in huge bruises on my legs and upper arms. And my stride is, without any shadow of a doubt, a STRIDE -- powerful, decisive, commanding, confident, with shoulders thrown back, head held high, and a long-legged, ground-eating swiftness born of a lifetime of running late.

And so, dominant left eye focused on the wall-length mirror to my left as I prepared to make my way back to the theater, I was sizing up my reflection and its disheartening revelations regarding the effect of two years without exercise on my physique as I strode powerfully, decisively, commandingly, and confidently headfirst into the barrier wall.

I want to write about this like it was hilarious, because thanks to our primate nature nothing is funnier than someone walking into something, but holy shit it hurt.  The tile slammed into my right eye; a shattering crack told me my glasses had snapped in half; I fell to my knees and with my only cogent thought -- my glasses oh my god this is my only pair -- managed to pull my glasses off my face, though my hands were too stunned to hold onto them and they clattered to the floor in front of me where they lay badly bent but not broken.  Confused about what had made the cracking sound (I realized later it was my skull), I became aware of a horrible pain in my brow bone and, holding back tears, pressed the heels of my hands gingerly to my forehead.  A warm liquid squishing led me to pull my hands away from my face to find them awash in blood.

Forgetting my glasses, I leaped to my feet and staggered to the mirror, where I saw blood sliding down my face from two gouges above my right eye, one glaring darkly red from its deep trench in my eyebrow.  As I reached for paper towels to staunch the flow, bright blotches splashed onto the marble-white counter like the opener in Dexter; holding the paper towel to the cuts with one hand, I mopped up the counter with the other.  After retrieving my glasses I returned to the mirror in a glaze of pain to stare dumbly at the damage as I pulled the paper towel away.  My head felt thick and muddled, but I knew to stay put to stem the bleeding, and I knew to be vaguely grateful that no one was in the bathroom to witness my absurd mishap.  I wanted to laugh at myself -- cutting my head open in the women's restroom just before seeing Wonder Woman, honestly -- but it hurt too much and mostly I just felt furious.

"Where were you?" Steph whispered as I slid into my seat five minutes into the movie, holding the paper towel pressed to my eyebrow, and holding my glasses onto my face at the same time.  "I thought you got lost."

"I ran into a wall and sliced open my face," I whispered back.

"You--what? You're bleeding?"

"Profusely."

"Jesus."

"Yeah.  So what'd I miss?"

She caught me up on the exposition, and I managed to enjoy the film immensely, though I couldn't help wishing I had stopped a mugger or lifted a vending machine off a child or any number of heroic things I could have done to earn a lacerated, swollen and rapidly blackening eye before seeing goddamn Wonder Woman save the world onscreen, instead of knocking myself out in a highly dramatic homage to a deeply socially instilled concern for public appearance that constitutes one hallmark of the experience of womanhood.

I did feel a bit grimly badass for watching a gloriously badass woman singlehandedly end a god and a world war while wounded in my own (admittedly much smaller and stupider) battle with the patriarchy, at least.

And I also felt a bit grimly badass sporting my first shiner two days after moving into actual Detroit, and then I felt all full of subterfuge when I bought a palette of pink and purple eyeshadow and managed to match my eyes on both sides so the bruising didn't even show when I returned to work two days later (and then I felt angry thinking how many women have mastered that precise skill because of human harm rather than ridiculous run-ins with bathroom walls).

And now I have two new scars above my right eye, physical markers of the first female superhero movie on the American cinema in the 21st century.  Woman's experience, carved right into my skin.  So that's something too, I guess.

Climb Ev'ry Mountain (now it's stuck in your head, sorrynotsorry)

Holy shit it is so good to be home.

Of course, "home" right now, to the stranger's eye, would translate roughly to "a senseless conglomeration of oddly assorted piles of way too much crap" but after a week and a half of hospital and hotel rooms and guest beds it is close enough to heaven to sit in peace in a living space that I can call solely mine that it almost makes me remember faith with fondness.  (Lol but not really.)  Currently Simon is curled up on the new, beautiful alpaca blanket that my work friend Maggie brought me back from her trip to see her daughter in Ecuador: a lightweight, beautifully striped creation which shielded him from viewing the scary world outside the car window yesterday and now lies heaped on the couch; I'm sitting out on the balcony for the fourth straight hour marveling at how much quieter my city neighborhood is than my parents' small-town block off Main Street.

Settling into my new home will take, almost certainly, the remainder of the year.  With three years' exhaustion sagging from my bones and dragging at the corners of my consciousness, a whirlwind of purposeful activity will elude my capability for some time.  But I don't mind, much; I keep reminding myself that I have no deadline, and as busy as my job keeps me during the week, I need to focus primarily on catching up on the rest that I have missed while surfing the constant upheaval.

Not that I'm complaining; the last three years have held their share of challenges, but I look at it as a growth spurt.  When I recall my physical growth spurt back in fourth grade, at a literal bomb shelter of a school long since demolished and replaced with a park, I mostly remember intensive discomfort -- particularly in my knees, which ached so badly that they felt hot to the touch and kept me awake at nights.  The last three years have had their share of discomfort and aches and sleeplessness, but as I survey my current position in life, I feel just as I did when my knees finally stopped hurting: taller, stronger, and proud.  Hell yes, this was worth it.  In three years I have nearly doubled my income, found a career and begun to climb ladders with alarming rapidity, and adopted a city that I absolutely love.  I have shed dissatisfying boyfriends (and hopefully, at this point, the inclination toward them, because I am tired of wasting my time and emotional capital on fruitless, doomed, and frankly stupid endeavors).  I have made a place for myself into which I can now settle, and begin to build my own little empire.

Man, it's good to be here.  Poised on the brink of something spectacular, and excited for the experience.  For the whole of my time on this planet, I have been waiting for life to start; and nine years ago I realized that I would have to be the progenitor, and it's taken me this long to make the journey to the mountain I am finally equipped to climb.  I'm not sure what's at the top, but I'm going to work hard and have a whole lot of fun finding out, and the path, for the time being, is challenging, but clear.  

It's good to be here, and it's good to be now.

oh my god fuck this year

Maybe this is a bad time to start blogging again hahaha.  I'd love to have something optimistic and cheery to present to the world, but oh my fuck I am done with life right now.

Let's see.  So far in 2017, the country has gone to abrupt and sickening hell and every day the news headlines read like the writers for The Onion are running out of ideas and diving headlong into the absurd; I entered and exited another disappointing relationship characterized by extreme stress and emotional chaos; my mother was diagnosed with, treated, and is currently recovering from surgery for ovarian cancer; I moved out of one apartment and into another, with attendant unnecessary drama; and I received a promotion at work which while totally YAY THIS IS AWESOME also means more upheaval and adjustments and additional responsibilities without leaving any of my old responsibilities behind and the old responsibilities were highly hectic to begin with.

And each one of those things comes with its own pageant of additional stress factors.

I am tired.

Everything is moving in a definite good direction; by the end of this year I will have lined up nearly all my life circumstances to exactly where I want them.  I just have to survive long enough to get there.

No part of my life has remained untouched and free from change this year.  Settling into the new things will take awhile.  Change is always stressful.  And I didn't have a lot of emotional capital to spare going into any of this, because of how the last three years have gone.

Fortunately, as far as I can see ahead, there is no further urgent thing coming down the pipeline; it's all just a matter of adapting to the latest changes, and there's no huge rush on any of that.  So I can settle in, get a shit ton of rest, and try to recover and reestablish myself in a way I haven't been able to do since 2013.  And that part is exciting - or would be, if I had any capacity to feel excited right now.

It'll probably take the better part of the remainder of the year to rest up.  But that's okay.  It is nice at least to finally have some time on my side.

eyes to see

At the corner of Griswold and State in downtown Detroit, the streets lie empty. The low ambient tide of surrounding noise absorbs the occasional passing car, leaving no interruption to the impression of silence.  Here in the rainwashed graylight just before dawn, all is still. 

Glancing from side to side, I cross Griswold against the advice of the traffic light, breathing the fresh smell of water in the air.  It’s not a good week.  My head feels congested, both by viral symptoms and unhappy thoughts; anxiety twists my stomach.  Sunk into a gloom that matches the downtrodden exhaustion exuded by the lightless skyscrapers in a city long faded from glory, I step toward the puddle at the edge of the curb and start to fall into the habitual obliviousness of the daily walk from my stop to the office.

I don’t know what catches my attention and draws my gaze up.  Maybe it’s an edging in my vision.  Maybe it’s the sound of wings.  But just before I reach the puddle, I pause and turn, and find myself staring over the little square at a flock of pigeons wheeling into flight.

Hundreds of birds, black against the overcast sky, dip and scatter and soar in a synchronicity arresting in its thoughtless grace.  The breeze, thrown into vortex by the ash-gray, soot-darkened skyscrapers, surges in waves of air under the multitude of wings; the flock sweeps up against the wind and billows in slow ripples like sheets.  The gyre widens, narrows; the flock dissolves, spins apart, swirls back together.  Ribbons of pigeons, streaming in spirals of flight, around, and around, and around the open valley of air over the square. 

I have never seen anything this beautiful.

Mouth open, forgetting everything, I stand with my face to the sky, watching, wondering what moves them to flight, wondering, as they swell to the top of the corner building and begin, in scattered waves, to alight on rooftop and windowsills, what moves them to stop; watching the thinning banner of birds who circle the square just a few more times, losing a few to the rooftop each time they come back around, until they have nearly all landed, returning the square to its empty morning stillness.  In all of this, there is no sound but the susurration of distant traffic, or possibly wings. 

small hopes

Well, at least now that it’s March the rainy non-wintry mornings won’t strike me as acutely with the awareness that the planet is dying.  It’s still dying, but I can more safely ignore it, and so human laziness wins again.

Not feeling particularly well today - this virus appears to be dragging its way through my body still like some kind of congestion-inducing zombie, and my stomach hasn’t felt great the last couple of days.  Probably nerves - actually investing in my job has its disadvantages.

(Teach us to care and not to care. Teach us to sit still.)

But the thought of better living accommodations has a perking effect that bolsters me through the loudness of the upstairs neighbors and the length of the bus commute.  I keep thinking, Four more months.  Just four more months. 

I will have a life again.  I won’t know what to do first.  It’ll be the homebody nerd equivalent of rolling in a pile of cash and giggling.  Do I play piano all evening? Do I read? Do I run around naked in honor of not having a roommate?  Do I cook everything in my fridge?  Do I work on my magnum opus?  Maybe I can do them ALL AT ONCE. 

So exciting.

So, that infuses the daily grind with a sense of upcoming relief, and takes some of the edge off the growing national disasters. 

Also it’s daylight now - soon I will ride down Woodward Avenue in a bus that does not have to tunnel its way through darkness.  Makes the heart lift.

interlude

Back again!  Last week, recovering from some kind of virus that apparently specializes in draining your will to live, I considered blogging and could barely summon the energy to think “fuck it.”  So I took a respite.  Now of course my body is rushing headlong into its monthly uterine misery, as indicated by wanting to cry about everything, but at least I feel a little like writing, so here I am.

For the last week, most of my extra-survival effort has gone into my job - I think I should start calling it my career, now; first time I’ve had one - planning an ambitious future and starting to lay tracks in its direction.  Assessing the ladders to climb and building networks and generally playing the political game has surprised me with its feeling of FUN. I never knew I could navigate these kinds of waters. I never know I would be good at it. I love it.

On February 29th of last year I launched this career.  Fitting that it should have begun on Leap Day, albeit somewhat annoying for celebrating anniversaries.  I look back on what I’ve accomplished in one orbit around the sun and feel a strong, happy glow.  I built a whole new life for myself, and it’s only going to keep getting better; this past year stands as a testament to resilience, resourcefulness, and bulldogged determination.  I have a lot to be both proud of and grateful for.

Possibilities for a more conveniently located, stylistically pleasing dwelling are developing nicely as well.  It’s all lining up.

Nothing particularly special to relay today; I am still very tired and hoping that this week doesn’t demand too much of my reserves; that cistern is still a bit low.  But otherwise I am happy, and looking forward to summer, both for the more amenable weather and for the finalization of my relocation plans, when - fingers crossed or atheist equivalent - my life, complete with time to call my own in the mornings and evenings - can really begin.                                                              

the faces that you meet

Well I didn't make it to the end of the day yesterday; around 11:00 the chills started racking me and I gave up and went home.  Had to call in sick today.  I loathe missing work (it's a toss-up between racking by chills or guilt) but really had no reasonable options.  (I am grudgingly thankful for the voice of reason as repeated with varying degrees of exasperation by a certain Neil.  They breed us stubborn in Pennsylvania.)  

After I finally yielded to good sense yesterday, I trudged the two blocks to the bus stop.  Detroit's bus lines run at odd times.  The city buses, which stop approximately every ten feet, run all day, but if you want to get to the suburbs and you don't have a week to spare you'd rather not take them.  The commuter buses, which I take daily, only run during morning and afternoon commute times.  Late last year the regional transit authorities teamed up to create an express bus line that both runs 24 hours and makes extremely limited stops all the way to the suburbs; only drawback is that the buses run once an hour, so you have to get the timing pretty exact.  Shivering, I made my slow, shaky, feverish way to the express stop on the other side of the central city park to wait the 15-20 minutes for the next bus.

As I approached the stop - one of the rare-ish stops boasting an actual shelter - I could see that it was occupied by three rough-looking men of color engaged in loud conversation.  When I reached them I paused before stepping into the shelter; they noticed me and all started talking at once.  

"Which bus line you looking for?" "You wanna see the schedule?" "There's one in here or you can look at the one on the other side if you're more comfortable."  

At that last proclamation, said with perfect understanding that I might not be comfortable in close proximity, I smiled and stepped into the shelter with them.  "No, this is fine."

Their faces were both friendly and prepared to flirt; the smell of alcohol stood strong in the air.  One of them asked how I was doing.  "Pretty sick, actually," I said.  "I had to leave work early."

The flirtation instantly disappeared from every face, replaced by solicitous concern.  The most inebriated of them jumped up and offered me his seat; all of them began offering their favorite remedies for illness.  "You go home and wrap up like a burrito in a big blanket with some hot tea."  "Get lots of sleep."  "Make sure you eat a good salad or some soup first.  You want to have something in your stomach for when you're resting."  "Tell that man of yours to leave you alone, you need to get better."  

I loved listening to them.  They knew each other well, kept interrupting each other and then apologizing, talked about relationships (the man sitting next to me said, "I got a sweetheart, when I'm sick she takes good care of me and I'd do the same for her but she's never sick!") and germs and the spread of disease ("People are always touching things with their unwashed hands, like the toilet handle or the door, you touch those and you pick up germs"), and taking sick time off from work ("You work hard, they know that, they know if you go home you're really sick").  They gave me little details about their lives ("He's got two beautiful baby boys at home, his sweetheart can't afford to get sick").

A skinny hipster passed the stop hastily with his eyes fixed straight ahead.  I know that look from wearing it myself when walking through downtown Detroit, a city with a nationwide reputation.  It hit me pretty hard, though, seeing that look on someone else's face - race-based fear.  I must have worn that look as I approached the stop to begin with.  What hit me hardest was the matter-of-factness and compassion with which my new friends accepted it.  They saw my caution and wanted to make me comfortable.  They didn't even spare a glance for the nervous hipster.  They deal with white fear all the time.  And the fear looked different to me from my unaccustomed perspective, sitting down on the bench instead of walking past - it lacked all subtlety. It dehumanized.  And I saw, for just a second, that this othering is the daily experience of the men who were being nothing but kind to me.

I know that already; I have read fairly extensively on the subject of systemic racism.  But, typical of most white people, my social groups remain largely homogenous.  I don't see.  And seeing brought me up short.

I don't want to be a part of that othering.  It's bullshit.  I want to help break it down.  Changing my body language when I walk down the street might not be a large contribution, but it's a start.  

tragicomedy

Waaaah morning why.

Going to be another weird Sudafed-enhanced day where my body wants to die but my brain doesn’t stop.  I can picture myself suddenly looking around at my office at 5:00 and finding that I have organized all the things; I hope it happens. 

I don’t have any deep thoughts today.  Valentine’s Day the other day took me through some memory montages of the past couple of years, leaving me on a mental loop of “a year ago….” but I don’t feel like spending a lot of time considering that.  I have constructed an immeasurably better life for myself, and I seem to have reached a phase where I feel less interest in dwelling in my past hurts.  It will cycle back around, of course, because processing requires revisitation, and that shit was painful; but for now it feels nice not to define myself by what has happened to me, but by what I’ve chosen for myself, even if the choices necessarily responded to circumstances I didn’t choose or want.

Of course I’m probably full of shit; traumas leave their marks and sometimes I feel sad, and that’s growth and healing too.  Wholeness is complexity. 

Oh fuck it, of course I’m full of shit.  Here’s my last Valentine’s Day:  My ex resentfully bought me grocery store flowers because I straight-up asked for flowers; they smelled like nothing and died after a day.  He took me out for dinner at one of our favorite sushi places because I asked him to take me somewhere (he so seldom displayed any kind of affection that I had hoped to cash in on the annual marketing tradition of special-occasion love to tide me over for awhile), but got mad at me when I drank too many martinis and wouldn’t speak to me on the way back to his place or for the rest of the night, except of course for the explosive sighs and slamming doors, which count as communication.  I ended the Commercial Day of Romance curled up in his bed silently crying myself to sleep. 

What a douche (him).  And also - what an idiot (me).

Silver lining: He was enough of a douche that it finally woke me up to the realization that I won’t accept non-love anymore, and showed me pretty clearly that I need to change a few things myself. 

Blech.  (Quick mental shake.)  Thank god I quit that when I did.  Thank god I have elected not to live that daily reality going forward.  And now it seems just as funny as it was painful.  What the fuck was his problem?  What reason does anyone ever have to behave that way?  That’s like a sitcom-farcical level of douchery.  And what the hell was my problem for tolerating it? 

It’s a little weird, looking back on a version of myself I can still connect with emotionally but don’t entirely recognize.  I can’t see this current self, or any future self, succumbing to those kinds of circumstances.  Part of me would love to upload my present perspective into my past brain and do the whole thing over just for the satisfaction of bringing my ex up short, and maybe to spare myself a lot of what was at the time intense misery.  But I think my present perspective was forged in that misery, so now I can treasure the satisfaction of looking back on his self-important dismissiveness and my kicked-puppy woundedness and laughing at how ridiculous the whole thing was.  I mean, I still recognize how badly it hurt.  That was not a fun two years.  But at the same time...LOL.   Seriously wtf.  Under no circumstances would I have managed to fit happily into that life.  Like trying to ride a child’s bike.  It just took me awhile to realize that I could put it down and walk.  And while seriously attempting to ride that bike strained all my joints and bruised me horribly, there’s something kind of amusing about a fully grown woman weeping because the kiddie bike doesn’t work for her.  Oh, honey.  Get off the bike.

So here I am, wryly amused at my past determination regarding all the wrong things, and glad I woke up about at least some of it, and weirded out by the fact that my sad-sack life was in full swing only a year ago.  I’m a little perplexed as to where all the heartache went; most likely it’ll blindside me out of nowhere one of these days and I will empathize completely with my past self and cry about it like I did last weekend, and that’s okay too.  Self-love involves self-compassion, and I really didn’t know any better at the time, and that relationship really really hurt; and now I get to take that past experience and make it count for something going forward, in the resolve to live better, if nothing else.

Guess I managed a decent reflection after all, despite my swollen tonsils and drippy sinuses.  Thanks, Sudafed.

bah

I’m sick.  I have no brilliance, and barely even any lack thereof, to share with the ether.  My mental capacity, my sinus contents and my phone battery are all draining away like the concept of American democracy and all I want to do is creep home and pull the covers over my head.

Fortunately I’m on the bus heading gradually in that direction.  Unfortunately the only person having a loud cell phone conversation decided to sit right behind me.  To the likely benefit of my sense of self as a decent person, this cold-borne lethargy has me suspended between the collapse of my social filters that usually restrain me from going full aggressor on people who piss me off, and the collapse of any internal wherewithal to act on any of it, so I’m pretty much left staring angrily at my lap and trying to bully my over-agitated brain into ignoring all the extra stimuli around me since my body can do fuck-all about it right now anyway.  

Does this even count as a post?  Do I even care?  Why am I not in bed right this fucking second?  Everything is stupid.  Including this post. 

Go Down, Miss Moses

Late last winter I joined the ranks of the downtown workforce - Lilliputian ranks, practically Spartan, very mixed in metaphors, but as proud and determined as we are sparse.  And this little small-town mouse found herself needing, for the first time in her life, to negotiate a city commute. 

For whatever reason - mostly, I think, because humans are basically inherently helpful as long as you’re not talking politics (and as long as you bear with you all the markers of race and class privilege, ugh) - I have almost always found someone to point me in a useful direction, in this case my job predecessor who trained me for the first two weeks of my employment before taking her well-deserved retirement.  I voiced my apprehension about making the drive from the suburbs to the downtown (sure, Detroit isn’t THAT big, but it’s much bigger than anywhere I’ve lived before and it’s also, you know, Detroit) and she recommended taking the bus.

So, armed with her various tips and a newly purchased bus pass and jotted notes from calling the bus line’s customer service number to find the best stop, I embarked on my first use of public transportation that didn’t involve visiting Jess in Chicago and being steered patiently everywhere by the elbow.  All my type A/Virgo/anxiety-driven control traits rose up like an army to bolster me through it; I’m sure I presented quite a picture, slightly wild-eyed, on edge, staring down every detail to assess its effect on my plan.  (“Relaxing under new circumstances” does not hang in the wardrobe of my stronger suits.)  Fortunately a kindly commuter named Walter took me under his wing, talked to me the whole way down the bus line, and showed me the best stop, and I alighted without incident a reasonable walk from my new office building.

In general I love taking the bus.  I don’t love the length of the ride, but driving wouldn’t save me much time, and this way I can write or read or scroll through the increasingly insane news feed on Facebook or just stare out the window at the endlessly fascinating layout of metro Detroit.  My employer pays for my monthly bus pass and I park in a free lot, so I conserve enormous amounts of money that otherwise would have to foot the bills for gas and parking and wear and tear on my car.  Occasionally you get the odd creeper, but I’ve perfected my “don’t fuck with me” face (which takes resting bitchface and stirs in a healthy dose of potential aggression) and have crafted a really quite effective “get the fuck out of my face” speech, so I rarely experience harassment. 

The biggest drawback to taking the bus in winter is the unbelievable cold.  It’s the kind of cold that seeps into the marrow of your bones and leaches out your body heat from the inside.  It eviscerates.  There’s no brisk walk, no quick scurry between heated car and heated building, to mitigate the horrific chill.  You stand still, you stand exposed, and you stand for sometimes quite a long time, when the buses run late or fail to show altogether.  I had thought of my winter coat as heavy, but I learned last year that it’s actually made of tissue paper.  And holy shit was that walk from the bus stop to my building miserable. 

But once again a kindly semi-stranger gave me some pointers.  (I must go through life with these huge eyes that say I’M LOST PLEASE HELP ME.)  “Get a down coat next winter,” she said.  “And get a long one.  Fuck fashion.”

So on her advice I did indeed fuck fashion and before the snow flew (that one time, since the fever that is killing our planet has resulted in a parsimony of snowfall) purchased a down coat that falls to mid-calf.  With a hood trimmed in faux fur.  It isn’t stylish at all and I can pull it off only because I am formidably tall and long things make me look majestic (or so I tell myself), but oh my glorious fuck, is it warm. I cheerfully withstood negative temperatures feeling (and looking) like I was wrapped in a freshly toasted marshmallow.  Also the hood is warm like a hug around your face and I can dispense entirely with the notion of a winter hat, which is awesome, because I hate hats (mostly because they squish my hair but also because I look stupid in them).

So here’s to my down coat, and its beautiful way of adapting to the temperature around me so that I am never too hot or too cold, but always, Baby Bear-style, just right.

fixing on rest

God DAMN Monday morning came way too fucking soon.

Sometimes it feels like my entire life’s goal boils down to getting more sleep.  Why this simple practice should remain so consistently elusive makes perfect - and yet at the same time no - sense.  I haven’t managed a rhythm of good sleep habits since before I met my ex.

Those two years prior to meeting my ex stand out as the most stable stretch of time I’ve ever enjoyed (up to now).  I lived in The Eyrie, the top flat of an early twentieth century duplex that I adored (god that place was spacious and bright and perfect); I worked out every morning while listening to segments of The Skeptic’s Guide to the Universe; I played piano almost daily; I managed my money carefully; I ate well; I went to bed at 9:30 p.m.  I wouldn’t call that phase of my life perfect - my job bored me and I lived reclusively and therefore often felt lonely - but I liked the simplicity, the dependability, the quiet.  In that microcosm on the corner of 24th and Raspberry, I cultivated something good.

What I have, what I’m building now, is better.  My first career is well underway.  Although my internal state has not quite reached the even keel I remember from back then, the foundation of confident self-possession I’m building on runs much deeper, and promises a rich fullness I couldn’t have dreamed of in Erie.  I’m writing. I feel happy again.  I have all the pieces for the most amazing life I could ever want, all spread out in front of me, shiny and beautiful.  I just have to put them all together into a coherent picture, and some of those marker pieces - regular disciplines to maintain an optimal state of wellbeing (exercise, budgeting, music practice, diet) - I’m not quite ready to arrange yet. 

It’s coming, though.  And it starts with better sleep habits.  I think once I’m rested I will be able to conquer worlds.  I’ve managed some pretty impressive accomplishments on sheer grit and stubbornness; I can’t wait to see what I can do when I can rely upon a regularly replenished brain and body. 

And while I look back on my former life in Erie with fondness - and nostalgia for the comfortable regularity - I don’t want that life back.  The peace I achieved then was hollow, a convalescent’s absence of illness rather than a robust expression of health: a necessary phase, but an inadequate end.  What I’m undertaking to build now is immeasurably better, worth building slowly and carefully, with forethought and consideration.

And if confidence and self-possession are the foundation, sleep is the frame.  So for the remainder of February and the entirety of March, I plan to hone my gimlet eye on the goal of establishing a healthy resting life.  Good sleep hygiene, better and more sleep, a regular schedule. I want to rise every morning eager and ready to take on the day. I have shit to do, and I want to amass the reserves I’ll need to do it well.

Ready, set, snore.

In Memoriam

The first time I met Dr. Price I was wedged into one of a dozen collapsed desks crammed into temporary storage under one of the side stairwells of Calderwood Hall, my hands blocking out the glaring fluorescence while Eric pressed his long fingers into my temples.  I wouldn’t receive a migraine diagnosis for another six or seven years, but even then I was prone to headaches, and one had clamped down on my skull halfway through Brit Lit.  Eric, one of the few people with whom I felt physically at ease, had directed me to the broken desk, out of the flow of between-class foot traffic, and told me to sit down while he worked on the pressure points in my skull.  I obliged, in no mental shape to notice the stairwell’s location opposite Dr. Price’s office door.

It came to my attention, however, when an intense, strained voice materialized next to my right shoulder with an abrupt “Is something wrong?” I jumped and shifted my hand away from my eye to see a face, comically upside-down, peering into mine.

Oh shit.  I knew Dr. Price by appearance and reputation, having been regaled with horror stories from my first day of classes by older students. He’s the meanest professor in the department, they told us, as if we sat around a campfire listening to the insidious exploits of bloodthirsty ghosts.  He NEVER gives As.  He hates everyone.  He hates teaching.  He had a nervous breakdown last year.  He yells at students.

I yanked my hands away from my face.  “Omigosh! Dr. Price! Are we bothering you?”

He blinked, a small man with a military-style crew cut and a sparse mustache, looking, in the rapids of moving students jostling each other to get around him, both slight and confused. 

“Why would you be bothering me?” he said.  “You’re not making any noise.”

“Oh…” My voice trailed off, confused, unsure whether he disapproved of the physical contact between a boy and a girl at a strictly conservative religious school, but not quite direct enough to ask. 

He straightened up and stood there awkwardly blinking again before venturing, “Are you all right?”

“Oh! I’m fine--it’s just a little headache--we can go away if we’re bothering you--”

“Do you want some Ibuprofen?” His voice cut mine off.

I blinked.  “Oh---no, that’s okay---”

“I have some in my office,” he said.

“Oh--sure--thanks!” I managed, trying to figure out what the hell was going on. 

He whipped around and scurried into his office, then returned with a bottle of Ibuprofen the size of my head.  He brought an aura of intensity with him that seemed to buzz in the air around him.

“How many do you want? Ten? Twelve?”

“Um--two?”

His face fell.  “Just two?”

I watched his face and saw the disappointment there, and said, “Well, maybe a few more for the road, if you don’t mind.”

“I don’t mind!”  Excitedly he twisted off the cap while I extended my hand, and then poured a slot machine of pills into my cupped palm until I had to catch the overflow in my other hand. 

“Thanks, Dr. Price!” I said.

He beamed.  “Do you need anything to carry them in?”

“Oh no, I’ll just put them in my pocket,” I said, standing up.  Eric, silent through the whole exchange, stood at my shoulder, his eyes assessing.  “Thanks again, Dr. Price.”

“Sure, if you need any more, just stop by my office,” he said, and then went back inside and closed his door while I turned to look at Eric with raised eyebrows.

“I thought he was mean,” I whispered.

Throughout my tenure at Grove City I only had one of Dr. Price’s classes, Civ Lit, one of the core humanities classes required of every major.  The stories of his ogreish reputation swirled unabated, and I saw the abrupt manner and harsh writing commentaries that gave birth to them as I sat in the front row of Civ Lit; I also saw how his hands shook whenever he held a paper between them, and heard the deep anxiety that tightened his voice, and listened to my other professors speak in tones of respect about his research in classical literature, and remembered, from our first encounter, his awkward, shy eagerness to alleviate someone else’s pain.  I saw, in his red-pen slashes through his students’ attempts at essays, a profound love for writing.  When our term paper was assigned, I poured all my effort into it, going so far as to begin writing it weeks in advance rather than the night before the due date, and brought several drafts for him for review, at which he almost literally lit up in delight, and insisted that I sit while he went through it on the spot so we could discuss.  He liked my writing, offered excellent suggestions with unusual warmth, and, when he handed back the graded results in class, proudly delivered mine into my hands with the semester’s only “A” scrawled boldly across the top.  “You earned it,” he said.

I wanted the A.  But I also took my writing process to him as a gift.  And I made sure, when the campfire stories about his cruelty and craziness circulated, to append them with my own experiences and observations of him, concluding simply, “He’s nice.”

In my senior year, when I defended my undergraduate thesis, he sat on the panel of professors who judged it.  I had undertaken an intensive criticism of C. S. Lewis’ Till We Have Faces using the psychoanalytic theories of Julia Kristeva (all of which I look back on and laugh as total horseshit, but it was a fun exercise); Dr. Brown demanded to know why I hadn’t used a Christian interpretive lens, which sparked an intradepartmental war right in front of me, with the Drs. Dixon and Dr. Potter and Dr. Stansberry leaping into the fray in my defense and Dr. Brown throwing barbs at me and then drowning under their indignation, so that I barely needed to say a word to earn my honors.  Throughout the farcical ordeal, Dr. Price sat quietly in the back corner, having obviously not read my thesis but unwilling to participate in any criticism. I loved all of my professors (except Dr. Brown) in that moment.

Following graduation, I moved out to South Bend, but for a few years returned annually to Grove City’s Homecoming.  At one departmental breakfast, after catching up with classmates and the Dixons and Dr. Potter, I made my way across the central lobby of the English suite to say hi to Dr. Price. 

“How’s your writing?” he asked.  “What are you working on?” 

I told him about my biggest project - a retelling of the life of Clytemnestra, using an experimental narrative format - waxing enthusiastic about all the details of her life (ones that Aeschylus left out) that I had discovered in my research into mythology.  He joined in with some details of his own, his face taking on the rare joy of a scholar speaking about his subject with someone who could follow it.  I described the narrative structure, and where I wanted to go with the story.  He listened intently, nodding.

“This has legs,” he said.  “You need to write this.  This can go somewhere.  It has legs.”

I think it was the last time I spoke with him.  A year or so later I returned to Grove City to sit in the chapel with a handful of other students for his memorial service.  “There was an accident,” the classmate who called to tell us about it had said.  “He went off the road in the dark and hit a tree.”  I thought about his shaking hands, remembered John’s story about the time Dr. Price suddenly stopped teaching his Advanced Writing class and sat under the table, and wondered.  His ten-year-old son, whom he had spoken of rarely but with affection, stood next to his mother looking stunned.

This morning, anticipating a full day of heinous menstrual cramps, I checked my supply of Ibuprofen in my purse and saw that it was running low.  As I reached into my bedside drawer for the industrial-sized bottle I keep there, twisted off the top, and poured a jackpot of pills into my palm, I found myself thinking of Dr. Price, and the intensity of unaccustomed kindness on his face as he gripped the bottle tightly to keep it steady and poured pain reliever into my hands.

I’m still working on the magnum opus I discussed with him all those years ago - have finally brought it back to light and begun to write it again.  When I finish it, in 20 or 30 years, I don’t expect anyone to read it or want to publish it.  It will be difficult and challenging.  It won’t sell.

I’m dedicating it to Dr. Price anyway. 

A Game of Thrones

Finally getting enough sleep after months - no, years - of going short on it. I still feel exhausted, but the mortal death’s door sensation is draining away and I can go through my day in a reasonable facsimile of human responsiveness. Which is great news for the plans I have around my job.

So I guess it’s time for a little about my work. There’s only so much I can disclose due to confidentiality and not being an idiot, but in short, I work as a legal secretary at a large firm in a large city.  I struck gold when I landed this job, and I fought hard for every bit of it.

Something fundamental shifted inside me when I went for it.  Even worn down and depressed as fuck from teaching and two years of a miserable relationship, I mustered the resolve to drive a hard bargain for my salary and assert my value as an employee from the first interview.  I had a stroke of good fortune (well, not really; the resume and cover letter that I posted online kicked ass) when my resume attracted the notice of a legal recruiter who set me up with the interview and negotiated my salary up to a nice cut above the usual starting salary for my position.  And they wanted me badly.  Where most of the people I’ve spoken with at the firm underwent a hiring process that spanned many weeks, I secured the job offer in less than 48 hours.

I’m not entirely sure what happened, but I think it had to do with every fiber in what I know as my being suddenly, absolutely, and in unison revolting against a shadow life of toiling for the grudging table scraps of lesser people.  Everything in me snapped and screamed ENOUGH (or possibly FUCK THIS).  I was, quite simply, done. Done with nonsense. Done with constant criticism (Christ, teaching is such an abusive environment). Done with depending on others’ terms. I had never worked at a large firm before, and envisioning the huge corporate professionalism about which I knew nothing scared me out of my MIND at that interview table, but I channeled the fear into performance energy and put all my charisma and cool rationality into impressing the living fuck out of the people I decided to view as my equals.  And I seized this job like I was born to it.

That assertiveness that I stepped into at the interview has only grown. Almost a year later I have risen in the ranks of my department to the recognition of nearly all the attorneys and staff. At various points I have approached each of the attorneys I assist to tell them, “You are underutilizing me. I am very, very smart. I have been doing this for a long time. My grammar is perfect. I can handle a lot. And I can boost your job performance like you wouldn’t believe. Make better use of my skills.”  I have also approached my managers and said, “Give me more responsibilities. Here are the attorneys I want to work for no matter how the secretarial assignments shift. Here is where I want my job to go. Here are my ideas for the department.” And I have done all this with a political panache I never knew I had, so that instead of pissing people off or coming across as brazen, I have won respect and trust.

A long time ago, under vastly different circumstances, a tearful, cowed me was told by an angry manager, “You would be eaten alive at a big firm.”  I am happy to discover that she was many orders of magnitude mistaken. A big firm, it turns out, has always been the answer. I was BORED. I am not bored any longer. Here I have room to stretch and cultivate my ambitions. I have my eyes fixed hard on the present and the future both, everything I do in the former designed for the impact of the latter, with a heretofore latent talent for building tactics on the fly and navigating political maneuvers with a smoothness that should probably not astonish me as much as it does (this feels like walking onto a dance floor at a huge event, having never danced, and suddenly learning that your body knows all the steps and takes OFF while your mind is watching your own nearly flawless performance and going “what the fuck?”). I have a lot to learn still, and mistakes to make, but I know I’ll land on my feet and learn even more from the mistakes. I have plans for my job.  Plans for the department.  Plans for the firm.  And lining up the pieces to get there is fun as hell.

I fucking love what I do.  It doesn’t fit my adolescent impressions of success - and people still ask me, “Don’t you want to be a lawyer?” to which without missing a beat I always answer NO - but I like this better. I can have influence, and achieve my real goals, more completely in this position than I could as an attorney. I like helping. I like a nine-to-five. And I’d rather be the power behind the throne - Varys, rather than the contenders for the crown of the Seven Kingdoms (come on, you knew the reference had to happen). I want to be the one running the show in the background, and making the firm into a truly amazing place.

All of that is miles ahead. I’m still just starting out, still the newbie, still an underling. But I’m setting up the board. I’m attracting notice. I’m focusing on intense excellence in my current responsibilities, and putting out feelers for the ones I want in the future.

And the great thing? I’m doing all this by just being myself. I am doing all this by being warm and funny and enthusiastic and helpful. I’m doing all this by being direct and plainspoken and forceful. I’m doing all this by being tactful and diplomatic. I’m doing all this by taking no shit and no prisoners.

Damn, this feels good.