I don't vent on here generally but since it's 2 a.m. and I'm awake again, I figure my few phantom readers will forgive me this exception (and hey, it's my dime, right? No reason you can't skip it.) This has been a rough day. It's just as well that I didn't go to see Rent tonight because I probably would have fallen asleep. I have worked this hard before, but never this much in a vacuum, and never with this much confusion about how I was going to get a job done. It's made the transition to winter more difficult, probably. It's been causing a lot of stress, and leaving me at a loss. I found myself crying - hard - on the way home from work today, and that hasn't happened in several months. Comfort was needed but nonexistent - nothing around but cold and a sprinkling of snow, earlier this year than in several that I can remember. This time last year I was happy. There was pressure but I felt loved and supported in a way that I don't this year. To be truthful, I'm feeling rather adrift. There's pressure too to get into the "holiday spirit". I'm not there yet, and I don't like being rushed. I don't like feeling the external pressure to be jolly, to want to cook certain things or operate on a time schedule that's dependent on other people.
I wish I didn't feel this way. And I wish that I had more of an ability to fake it but I don't. I want to feel connected but I don't know how. Everyone is so busy, running around chasing the tail of whatever this life is supposed to be. I don't even know anymore. I don't recognize it. No one seems to really stop and talk - myself included. The phone rings but it's always planplanplan - where will you be? What can you pick up? When is it due? How much does it cost? I'm sick of planning, sick of worrying about the next thing.
I want a moment back. I want a hug. I want someone to ask "how are you?" and really care, I guess. I want someone to be there in the morning to make breakfast with me and read the paper and check out what I'm up to, and let me know what they're up to, too. I want someone to go to the grocery with me - to read my work - to make sure it's all good. I want someone to look at my photos and give me feedback, without saying "that's interesting" and leaving it at that. I want the impossible back again.
In the meantime, I am trying to take moments with people. I'm trying to remember to do that. I'm trying to see - and act - beyond the window dressing, even though my heart feels like a hole. A friend of mine was in the hospital this week with a serious ailment. She has a chronic disease that causes her a lot of pain. I stopped in last Sunday to see her, because she has been one of the most important people in my last several months and she likes company. She likes to ask about people and see how they're doing. She takes time, and I find myself doing the same for her. And when I went to see her in her temporary room, I found that this kind of unscheduled time to talk, with no distractions, was very unusual, and one of us had to be ill in order to get it. Next time we'll hopefully schedule just another late lunch.
So tonight I wrote a letter to a nice lady who always remembers me on holidays. I went to bed early accidentally - passed out around 10 and here I am, like I said, awake. I'm thinking about how for these reasons and more my life is nothing like what I thought it would be at this age, and I'm not thrilled about that. I work on being grateful, but I have to say that there is more this year that I'm dissatisfied with than last, and that isn't good progress.
Sometimes it's okay to tell the difficult truths.
I did wake up about an hour ago, though, with a sense of peace that lasted for a couple of minutes. The things that had been really bothering me when I closed my eyes sort of lifted out of my head and up and over my bed, finally dissipating just a little bit. That doesn't happen often. Usually my brain is flypaper, and the bad thoughts are, well, flies. Sticky. Sticking. Stuck. So I decided to think about the happiest moments - times when things really clicked, and when my life made sense. I decided to write them down even if that's cheesy to do, because it's important to remember your capacity for joy when it's feeling like it's dwindled. Hopefully stuffing those thoughts in your head will magnify them and squeeze out the space for the bad stuff. Anyway, we should remember moments like this - times when all seemed more than well - times when life seemed to make the most sense.
My sister coming home from the hospital (a new baby)
Monsters of Rock, 1988
Bringing both of my dogs home
College Park graduation
My best friends' weddings - Karen, Angela, Gretchen - beautiful days all
Concerts - Metallica in 1992, Barenaked Ladies last summer, the Cowboy Junkies in Cincinnati, Elton in Vegas, Dave Matthews Band a couple of times, Lollapalooza in the mud with Joe, Girlyman at Jammin' Java, Mary Chapin Carpenter at Wolf Trap, the Indigo Girls all over the place, U2 at RFK
Late-afternoon beach time in South Carolina, talking about nothing and feeling fine
Meeting C. in the kitchen, and thinking, "I'm going to know him forever...or at least a very long time."
Angie's 21st birthday limo ride.
That best-ever nights with Craig driving me home in the ice storm and then at 1470 - the price of happiness often being the knowledge of its absence later (itself an informative thing)
Driving through the Arizona mountains and discovering natural wonders around every curve
Flying somewhere new
An indelible very wonderful first kiss, and its rediscovery years later
The view of the sunset from the Virginia mountains
Holding my friends' babies
The "Maryland Welcomes You - Please Drive Gently", "Ohio - the heart of it all" and "South Carolina - Smiling Faces, Beautiful Places" signs...depending where I'm going, where I've been, and where I'm trying to get to...but mostly the first one. There's something about home.
Dancing to the Beatles with the dogs in our old, empty dining room
Opening the bookstore
Meeting my boy at the bookstore and questioning love at first sight.
The first time a print I photographed emerged in the developer
Chocolate Chip at the House of Blues
The back room at Ledos on Monday nights
A boy reading me Walt Whitman poetry
Saying and hearing "I love you" and meaning it too
Sitting by the water talking
I guess I'll stop there. I needed to remember.
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