Ghosts and Hauntings

The air is at a stand-still, grasping on to early fall as long as it can even though late fall and winter are fated. The temperatures haven't dropped much below 60 and my coat is still too heavy to start living in and the leaves aren't even sure if it's safe to let themselves go quite yet and fall.

I get fixated on things. It used to be on feelings and people and the smell of him which wouldn't leave me for years or thinking about the what-ifs and what could of beens; now I'm just fixated on myself and I keep looking at things about me and thinking "man look at that flaw" or "man look at that gap between my two front teeth that seems to be growing exponentially."

And it's true. I've been looking more closely at myself than I have in years. I'm examining and documenting and taking mental notes because I'm scared of my body changing. Of growing a baby in side of my belly and not being able to recognize myself.

Never really left

I'm sitting here in my new office surrounded by mugs of half-drunk old coffee and student papers and it's so many years later. It's been three years since I told this blog I wouldn't be writing in it anymore and two years since I came back for one more post and told it again that I was finished. It's like most things isn't it? I'm learning more and more that there's no such thing as endings, really.

Beginnings though, beginnings happen all the time and it seems like the last three years have been an onslaught of beginnings and firsts and never-befores. I've begun marriage, begun owning a house, begun a new career, begun to understand and accept myself more. 

I've learned that beginnings can be absolutely terrifying and incredible and chest-squeezing and jaw-clenching and on-your-back laughing and can't-help-but-be-smiling. Beginnings can make you want to run out of your office, which used to be a closet, screaming. 

I guess I'm back with you, Blog, because life's complicated again--and not complicated like it was when I had lost love and found love again. No. It's far more complicated than that and I think I need to write about it again until it's out of me completely and I can look at it again more clearly. 

Hard Sayin' Not Knowin'

While it's been a long time (and no I still haven't found a new blog to spill my thoughts and feelings) I've found myself this last hour, as I sit in my cubicle watching students type, reading through my posts from two years ago, when things in my life were just beginning and I was spending my days reading theory and unable to recognize that what I was feeling and thinking were ideal and that that excitement I felt was the excitement of someone who had not yet entered the real world where adventures don't happen each day and theory doesn't always apply to practice.

I feel so much older now, reading these posts and I keep catching myself shaking my head, feeling sentimental and tired and wishing very hard that I might recapture those feelings I once had while knowing full well that I'm much different now.

Love on these blog pages was smiles and butterflies and not-knowings and somedays. Now, since leaving these pages, love is still smiles but it's also accompanied by so many more not-knowings and those somedays don't seem as certain. Love is no longer filled with spontaneous trips to New York, but rather long-planned trips to weddings and parents' houses to see family and celebrate unions.  We plan our days, weeks, months together but we still don't plan our lives together.

And it's hard to not plan my life with you because you're so much a part of it. It feels odd not to talk about what we'll be doing together in five, ten, twenty years. 

But then I realize, slowly (because I figure things out slowly, after tears and long exhaustive evening conversations) that what we have is good and true and the now is like a blanket I want to wrap myself up in and never take off. You know me so well and it surprises me and scares me sometimes because what would happen if I lost you?

And then instead of thinking about all of the not-knowings, I begin to think about all of the things I do know. At what moment did all of that deep knowing finally happen? You bring me coffee from the kitchen when you know I won't be able to make it down there to fill my mug before work. I don't have to ask, you just know it. You put in one packet of stevia and a little milk because you know that's just the way I like to ruin a good cup of coffee.  And you know when to give me some tough love and a reality check, even if I resist it or fight you or pretend like you don't really know. Because you do. You do know.

So while I'm not as idealistic as I used to be on these blog pages, and I'm not spending my time traveling around, nose in a book or butterflies in my belly with a crush on a guy I'd just met online, I am more myself and more in love than I've ever been with a man who knows and loves me back.

This City of Ghosts

[So, I know I said I was leaving you for bigger and better things--and I still am, I wasn't lying--but life's been moving so fast that I haven't had time yet to find a suitable replacement, so here I am. But only for a little bit, I promise.]

It's last fall whenever I think about you. Walking to class with the leaves crunching under our feet and laughing at spilled coffee and words that spilled out effortlessly. You were always so positive and so much more prepared than I ever was, always late and frazzled, but you never once made me feel guilty for any of it. And today, I can't help but find myself replaying last fall over again in my head, because right now all I want is to hear real words and to be hugged at the end of it all. You left us too soon.

And that's probably why today, as I rode the bus to the grocery store, ready to fill my backpack with orange juice and cans of condensed chicken soup, all I could think about was what would happen if I didn't get off at that stop I'm supposed to get off at and instead stayed seated, riding the bus in giant circles around the city. And then I started thinking about jumping in a car, or even on a plane if I could manage it, and going so far away that everything would be new and nobody would be familiar. And all the while I was trying to figure out if this was possible or not, I sat there with walls up and everything securely tucked away and almost missed my stop.

Au Revoir!

"...these are the times of dreamy quietude, when beholding the tranquil beauty and brilliancy of the ocean's skin, one forgets the tiger heart that pants beneath it" --Herman Melville, 'Moby Dick'

This blog initially blossomed out of a bunch of new beginnings--grad school, leaving my boyfriend of three years, moving away from tiny williamsburg to a new city. It then gained even more speed during the passing of my two grandparents, and the surprising end of that three year relationship which followed soon after. Luckily, that He has moved on to become a distant memory. And the few Hes that followed Him never really mattered much in the end.

But after a little more than a year of writing, I have found a new He, and I've found him unexpectedly at that. But in full disclosure, friends, this He is not new. In fact, he's been around for a little over five months now. Yet whenever I sat down to write about him here, I just couldn't--I tried once and it felt funny and forced and not good enough. My words sounded too real and normal and uncomplicated--but more than anything, they came nowhere near capturing how full my heart was or how much fun I was having. There was nothing to lament or yearn for or romanticize because what I have been feeling these last few months is tangible and real and strong and what I had been searching for in all those posts but just hadn't realized I wanted.

And so instead I wanted to tell you about things we'd done, or the guacamole and pancakes we'd made, or the places we'd gone to, or my rekindled affection for all things Badger (!), but the words and the stories didn't seem to fit here in a blog so unintentionally devoted to lost love and all sorts of other pasts. And so, with all this in mind, I've decided to bid adieu to Dreamy Quietude. New stories are beginning, and I need somewhere else to spill them all.

My new blog is going to be much more about the here and now. I want to tell you stories in words that are less cryptic, but just as pretty, this time around. Oh, and I want to share lots of photos, too.

So goodbye bloggie. Thanks for being such a good friend.

The Right Words

Today, it was difficult to get out of bed, so I didn't. I stayed home and slept most of the day. I know tomorrow will be better, but today it doesn't feel that way.

I want so badly to be done with it, but it always seems to be there. I could go three months without even giving any of it a second thought and then all of a sudden every day seems like a struggle again and little things trigger me and I'm back to those old insecurities. And talking about it, to anyone, is hard, mostly because I wish I didn't have to talk about it in the first place, but also because talking about it always seems so dramatic and intense and those are the last things I want to be. So, I end up keeping people I care about at a distance, putting on a super happy face or going off the grid for a day or an evening until I've regained my composure. Because the one thing I know for certain is that I have the terrific ability to 'bounce back' after a day like today-- I know that even after an evening of tears, tomorrow morning I'll wake up, get dressed, and it will be like today never happened. And I know that's wrong and what's worse is that I always secretly hope that someone will call me out on that sadness, see through the guise. But mind-reading, I'm fairly certain, doesn't exist, and I know that help's rarely given unsolicited I guess my biggest fear is that talking about my on-going struggles with my ED will make me seem insecure, needy, self-doubting, unhappy, lost--words that I don't feel accurately describe me, because overall I am happy and I am OK. I'm just not entirely free.

A Forward Glimpse

Rainy, gray weather's had a hold on this city for far too long and I just can't seem to shake the January-February blues. I can't wait for 70 degrees and hiking and walks around Roosevelt Island and sundresses and raspberry lemonade and taking pictures of spring's first blossoms.