On My Way Out

Two in one day - how's that for exciting?!

Although my blog documents the decision-making process that led to me deciding to matriculate at FES this fall, this month, my last in DC, finds me a bit mired in nostalgia, with more affection for the city than I would generally like to admit to.

I have 26 more days in the 20010 zip code, 26 more days of my fantastically diverse neighborhood, with all the drama and problems that that encompasses. 26 more days of sitting on my shoddy back porch with the housemates, doing almost nothing at all besides enjoying the gorgeous DC spring. 26 more days of this fabulous cast of characters being my housemates, at all.

Of course, there are good reasons to leave, but it's easier to see the reasons to stay when you're facing your own certain departure, especially when the line, "this month, my last in DC," is so familiar.

As I've said or alluded to in previous posts, December 2007 was supposed to be my last in DC, and January 14 was supposed to be the day I tried not to cry while driving away.

Luckily for me (mind the change in perspective!), my then-boyfriend broke up with me, leaving me to reclaim my room in the group house I share with four others, reestablish ties with people, friends I thought I was leaving, and rediscover that, truly, I love DC.

Instead I stayed, and re-did all of those things, and accomplished a few new ones as well.

I learned to work from home, as a consultant, and manage my time better. I created a home office to work out of, saved up for and paid some big bucks for a friend's destination wedding (which was worth every cent), and made new friends. I followed up on barely-there friendships from my last 9-to-5 (or 6, or 7), and turned them into true friendships, and I learned a lot about myself as a person. Like that I'm just as strong as I thought I was and, in many ways, stronger.

I even came around to see the bright side of Paul breaking up with me, which is that I don't know if I would have decided to pursue the graduate school program to which I was admitted if I was looking the debt in the face with him by my side (he is profoundly debt-averse), especially since he wanted to go West, not North and East. But instead, I was able to take stock in my options, and decide to go North and East alone. (So there, Paul!)

But now after all these good and healthy realizations, the renewed direction and reinvigorated...EVERYTHING, I am leaving this base that has provided the foundation for all the self-defense and self-reflection I needed to do in the last few months, and I admit it's a tad scary. DC has been good to me. My friends have been good to me here.

So with 26 more days, what's a girl to do?

I want to go to the National Gallery and the Sackler, the museums I never got to. I wanted to go to the Hotel Washington rooftop restaurant and watch the sun go down over the National Mall, but late last week I found out it's been liquidated (oh, well). I want to go camping with my friends and do happy hours, and I want to walk around Columbia Heights more. I want to explore my neighborhood and meet more of my neighbors (belatedly, I know), and I want to dance with my girlfriends. I want to sit out on the back porch with my housemates wrapped in a comforter, tea on the wicker table in front of me, as I did yesterday, and do nothing in the company of friends.

For my last 26 days in DC I want to be still and content, and just be here, and not anywhere else.

I have loved DC.

Free, With a History

Ryan Adams wrote a beautiful song called "Harder Now that it's Over," which I listened to perhaps a dozen times a day when Paul first broke off our relationship. Feeling mellow tonight, I put on the playlist I created when our relationship ended, and let myself look through some of the old GMails I found while double-checking that my 2007 tax returns were definitely submitted and received (and they were).

Love is so funny, is all I can come up with. My GMail account is the story of my life in Washington, and in particular is the story of my many loves. Not all true loves, not by a long shot, but loves in the way that I was filled with love by the experience.

I scanned past the early history of my and Paul's relationship - there was so much love and silliness throughout, that it still sometimes takes my breath away that it's over. Even in my emails, you can tell that I never saw it coming.

Before Paul was BB, the crazy one, the one no one (least of all me) understood. Charming yet demeaning, he didn't last long.

And prior to BB was PP (love those alliterative boys, don't I?), the college boyfriend who set me free to do what I already knew was right by cheating on me my very first weekend here in DC, when I didn't even know enough people to mourn with. I had briefly written that he broke my heart in the previous sentence, but that is untrue. He set me free. And when I doubted my freedom six months later, and contemplated reuniting with him, I broke his heart.

How revealing, though, to read those exchanges, and to mull over the little elements of truth that emerged over the years, and how those elements became molded into something bigger, and stronger, and unavoidably integral to my person as I worked harder and harder to face my own truths, in love, work, and otherwise. I feel like I owe GMail one for still being able to be a witness to that.

I am amazed to realize that it has taken me three months of mourning everyday to be able to resign myself to Paul's having left. Had I been told before that I would be so deeply effected, I may have believed it, but I could never have imagined what that would mean. I feel like I spent the last three months living in a very dark cave, and struggle to remember feeling joy at all throughout that time. It makes me feel stuck in the dark even to try to recall how I passed the days.

I still feel sad about Paul several days a week, now, but the change from the all-encompassing sadness of late winter is so drastic that I feel light, and...joyous, even while I am sad, these last few weeks.

And yet today was a sadder day than has been my norm, of late, because yesterday my housemate Judith and I went for a long, unutterably hair-brained bike ride (my idea), which ended in cold defeat, on the side of a small highway, in the dark. And somewhere in there, I thought of Paul, and what he might think of me were he to see me, and I carried that curiosity into today. I still think about whether he would be proud of me, although I know he is no longer thinking anywhere along the same lines. I still wish for him to be proud of me.

And yet there was a bit of happiness in that, too. My other housemate, Ben, came to pick us up in his car (hence our static presence on the side of the parkway), good-naturedly coming out after nine to rescue his outlandish housemates. And when I saw his profile lit up by a passing car as he pulled up next to us, I felt this little stir of something. A crush, perhaps? Excitement and fondness, and perhaps a small amount of pleasure or - better put - desire.

I was glad to see him in part to get out of the cold, but there was more to it than that, so I stepped up to give him a hug and it turned out to be warmer and longer than I might have imagined or intended. When we parted to grab the bicycles, I found I instinctively wanted to reach for his face with my hands and very tenderly kiss it, very differently than I might have wanted to in the past. The feeling of it warmed me up, so perhaps that may bring something worthy of a good look forward.

And, hence, the title. I find myself free, but with a history.

Protracted Feelings of Loss

Happy Easter to any who may stumble upon my little forays into blogging.

I spent this weekend visiting my first college roommate in New Hampshire, spending a night at her apartment, a night at her parents' (wonderful, cozy, homey) farmhouse, and then returned to my native NJ, to join my mother's side of the family for Easter dinner.

I am not, generally, so much a fan of Easter as I am a fan of family. I am a true, confirmed, comfortable atheist. I have now come through loss and death in the family, and remain atheist, and so feel comfortable that it will stick. I only wish Atheist didn't sound so dark, so hopeless. I find it honest, not untruthful.

To the point, however - today was a different kind of Easter. We, the 20-30 something generation, have birthed two babies this last year, and this was the first holiday that my little second cousin (and her cousin - my third cousin??) were old enough to do more than burp. Which is to say, they wiggled and kicked, and in one case, did so quite vigorously

The afternoon's entertainment are 8 and 5 months, respectively, and it was...weird. There was almost no adult conversation (whatsoever), with the exception of a quick insertion by my uncle about his finding Bear Stearns to be a sleazy company in his professional experience, and even that was aborted when one of the babies did something exciting...like raising a leg. Or burping. Or drooling. Or all three.

I, who don't want a baby, and finally just told my mother that the subject of children was a defining point in Paul's decision to terminate our relationship, was handed a baby by my wonderful cousin-in-law, the proud (ridiculously, sweetly proud) father. I haven't held a baby (before theirs at Thanksgiving and then Christmas) since my less-fearful youth, when I babysat. So not for about...8 years.

My cousin-in-law wanted to help his wife clean up and set up (they were hosting - I have no idea why we let the new parents host), and turned, smiled, held out his child, and deposited her in my arms while I sat at the dinner table.

I'm not sure how to describe what happened next. It moved me. This beautiful (crying) little baby wiggled around and looked up at me, then out the window, then at my father (who was making old-man-gaga-for-a-baby faces - you know the type), and then back at me. And I started to bounce her gently, and smooth her hair while leaning her head on the soft part of my shoulder...and she stopped crying.

I am not an instant convert. A fairly consistent, even, and logical person, I am not someone who will be instantaneously smitten by a sweet-faced child, although I think my cousins' daughter is beautiful. It's what comes after the baby (the toddler, the child, the preteen, the teenager) that I am wary of, and it is the concessions that all of the women I know have made, that make me dread motherhood. I don't want to lose myself in the mix of childbirth, of motherhood. I don't want a husband that goes to work while I stay home, and I don't want the grass is greener resentment I've seen such bifurcation of responsibilities yield. I don't want to live a life that ends up looking like that.

But while I held the baby today I had such a moment - I was really deeply moved. And with a sudden jerk she swung her head back, and then forward, and planted her little mouth firmly on the small amount of breast showing above the line of my shirt. And that moved me too. It wasn't strange, or confusing, or peculiar - I felt as though, were she my child, I would be capable of fluidly, effortlessly feeding her, that I knew the steps without ever having practiced them, without ever having thought about how it's done. I don't know how better to express it - I was moved.

But then came the loss. Paul loved babies, and I had looked forward to the day we would be able to visit my cousins, and he could play with them. I wanted to show him that maybe I wasn't missing some piece of what he thought was important in a woman, that I too can make silly faces at children, can love them, even if I don't want them. I think I had secretly hoped that Paul and I would visit my cousins and their baby, and I would be moved, and I would discover something in myself that was deeper and more primal than my politics, my goals.

And so when I was moved, although it was not towards a desire for motherhood, I reached my head around to show him, to share the moment and the pride of connectedness - and he was not there. Was not there and won't be, and I am alone.

Even now, hours later, in the last moments of Easter, I wish I could reach out to him and share. I miss him.

Between a Rock and a Hard Place

The amount of time and activity that has passed between each of these all-too-weak blog posts is embarrassing, and amazing. I am constantly in a state of surprise at how quickly the time passes, even while seeming to drag along. I constantly wonder what it is I am racing towards, and if, when I get there, I will feel as if I missed some important part, some space that was supposed to be populated by a deep breath, some fresh air, a renewed sense of self, and an actual decision about my future.

Decision-making has become more important to me, as of late, because in January I lost the ability to make decisions, and became a bystander to my own...fate, for lack of a better word.

When I last blogged, I was in love. Terribly, wonderfully, totally taken with it, in love. I actually (I blush a little typing this) didn't know love could feel that way. I didn't know how deeply I could be consumed by my affection for another person, how completely it would permeate all the different layers of the person I thought I was.

And as a result, I couldn't begin to understand how badly it would hurt me if I lost it, which I did. In December, the man I love(d?) returned from two months in Mexico, to a version of myself that seems remarkably distant, and ended our relationship, in a fiery showdown in a hotel lobby, two weeks before I moved to Minnesota to be with him.

It almost reads like a movie, but it wasn't, and it was heart wrenching. It still is heart wrenching, every day, and I'm still trying to work through it. But as I recover, or perhaps rediscover myself -isolated from the large whole into which I had so happily and unwittingly been subsumed, I am trying to return to that list of things which "I've always wanted to try." And this blog is one of them.

I lost decision-making capability on another front in January, as well. In the day before Paul and I finalized our break up (I resent the use of 'I' as an actor in this sentence), I submitted a single graduate school application - to the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, a program about which I cared passionately, until Paul came home from Mexico, at least.

On that front, I am pleased to discover that my decision-making capacity has been restored, at least temporarily - I find myself admitted to Yale for 2008, although I'm not sure I can enroll without taking due time to mourn, some more, and to find myself, first.

So that's where I've been, and that's why the title. I was off between a rock and a hard place.