Le Glorious Sigh

So I was thinking,

it's harder to write when I'm happy. now that I write that<-- I remember I've written about this before. my blog frequency trends follow the emotional trends I've had trouble dealing with without writing about them. when I'm excited to just get out and DO, I do that instead of write about it.

there are so many sensations and thoughts I'd like to mull over and get down into form, but I can't even sit still for that long.

everything is going my way, and I can't even fathom why that is, outside of God's great love for me. I remember saying, God, you had better show me fairly soon why I'm better off this way, because right now I don't believe you.

ha! I love how "challenging" God only challenges yourself. in God's goodness, He separated me from what He knew I didn't need and sat with me through the pain of my own ignorance until I emerged, better for it, on the other side. and now I sit in a warm bedroom I share with my sister-slash-best friend across the hall from my brother-slash-best friend killing time until I mosey on over to one of two amazing jobs. my biggest worries concern which dream I will follow next, and my biggest expenses are funding my next adventures. I have never felt so whole, and I could never have imagined that so much independence would yield so much peace.

long story short, if you're wondering where I've been, it's because I'm too busy thinking about where I haven't. what a great age and time and weather and disposition to consider all of this during. In sifting through my blog in future years, I need this to be documented. right now, Lucy, you couldn't have asked for more.

oh! no reason not to fill you in. this is why I'm so happy:

-I have a pet turtle named Simon and ILOVEHIM (there he is now!)

-I have a job that lets me paint my nails

-my other job just promoted me

-I'm not going to school ever again and I'm not worse off for it! [cue Tayler cringing and my hearing about it later... love yooooou]

-I see New York and all its wonders (and all my buddies!) in two short weeks!

-I have plans to travel to ICELAND

-I just auditioned to be a Wheel of Fortune contestant!!!

-I'm moving back to New York in 6 months :)

-just thinking about the holidays makes me giddy

-I have two kicka$$ concerts in my near future

-I know of ways to get myself to Portland, Seattle, Alaska, and Denmark

-I mull over which tattoos to get in which order, and that feels cooooool

-my hair is red!

-and more, somewhere, somehow :)

Seasons

I remember exactly what I wrote one year ago today. That year has been the most dynamic in my life.

My favorite part of my life right now looks like a winding neighborhood road on a beautiful, cloudless fall day. My windows are down, my favorite song is playing, I just ended my work day, and my family is home. The best part is that this happens almost every single day.

I still find ruts--one best friend expressed that he didn't realize I do. And I don't either, because I'm usually too busy mentally remarking at how fortunate I am and how much freedom my future has.

The only rut that sticks is that I have no motivation to write and I don't know why that is. I'm hoping it's a season of life just like anything else.

Most days, I realize I'm still waving at a boat that's very close to disappearing over the horizon. From then on... smooth sailing, friends.

jus' stopping by

thoughts:

--more tattoos

--found out about Steve Jobs's death on an iMac

--I need an iPad. need. I said it.

--travel

--God is good

--please please take me to the beach

--I was going to type one sentence about this one thought, but it just turned into a poem right before my eyes. in the way that I haven't written it yet. in which case, by "before," I mean "behind." you know, cause it's in my head and all.

--I love you suckers

Fall Back, Spring Forward

I woke up more than once yesterday. The sister's alarm told her to go to work right before the brother's, and I was next. I could feel the chill coming in through the curtains, and it nipped at my toes as they peeked out from under the comforter to welcome a brand new day. I chose long pants and a dress code jacket. I found pumpkin muffins and a flannel-coated father when I reached the top of the stairs and felt, for the first time this year, that overwhelming Fall.

I wonder if it's the animalistic part of humanity that sends our psyches into seasonal habits, but I'd like to explore with you the transition of one of my own.

The fall of....let's see. 2006. The fall of 2006 began my crush on a boy. Crushes are exhausting. Mentally, emotionally, and physically as a result. I spent that fall wishing and dreaming and wondering and scheming, and it spilled over into winter without me realizing or keeping count. He started dating my best friend the following spring, and so I returned to the independent, self-confident, unaffected version of me. They broke up that summer, and in the fall of 2007, my more dependent, emotional, romantic side started to surface once more. I was doing whatever I thought it would take to secure him, and I did. The resulting winter and spring were somewhat blissful, if I remember correctly, in a high-school-honeymoon sort of way. And then for whatever reasons, the summer slid down into a fall that left me feeling insecure and grasping for effortless mutual interest once more.

This past year and a half has revealed more to me about mental habits than I ever knew existed. If I had entertained the idea that my cycles of overanalysis depend on, well, the fact that they are cycles, I think I would have remained more aware about reigning them in. But I didn't, and as a result, whenever the first chill of fall hits--the first college football game, the debut of pumpkin ingredients in grocery stores, the final sale of all short-sleeved items--I begin to notice my mental...decline, for lack of a better word, into the half of me that functions best as a worried and infatuated half of a whole. When spring rolls around and wakes me from my hibernation of insecurity, prompting my confident green leaves to burst forth, they do, and all pangs of fall inferiority are forgotten.

Noticing this strange pattern has fascinated me for the past four years, but this year presents a curveball. The cycle has reversed. I will spend this fall more content than I've ever been in a fall that I can remember. And the way timing and friendships go, I anticipate (though don't look forward to) possible emotional attachment by the time spring rolls around. What I'm left to wonder is if this year will feel entirely like a skip in a record track, or if it will feel like a brand new precedent.

I've never explained this sensation to anybody and been met with understanding, and that fascinates me even more. Is it overthinking itself that produces these hypotheses? I'm not sure. All I know is that wool socks and peppermint mochas are appearing like film editing discrepancies; it's been so long since they stopped by while I felt this happy and excited for my future that I suspect their misplacement.

I leave you with this: an entry from dearoldlove.com that reminded me I wanted to write this post.

Habit

I'm at the point where missing you isn't even genuine. It's just that I've been doing it every day for so long that it's a habit.

[by the way, I submitted to this site, and it got published! yay! happy hunting....]

ba-dum. ba-dum.

soo I left my family to come home for work's sake and alone time's sake and a warm bed's sake and my tortoise's sake, but I am sad. I go through phases of weathering loneliness and dreading loneliness, and I dread it tonight. I wish I weren't alone in this house, and it reminds me that on any day that I think living alone would be a good idea, I am simply moving through a phase of weathering the loneliness. my four happy roommates are away until tomorrow, and I think I'll sleep on the couch tonight. something about grouping unordinary circumstances always feels more ordinary. alone in my bed: strange. alone on a couch: normal. and as much as I love my tortoise, he isn't much of a cuddle bug.

it's a weighty feeling that I'll do my best never to give myself over completely to a relationship without anticipating that it will last for...well, for forever, because in that vein, I anticipate it will be quite some time before that happens. I've given pieces of myself away, but the good news is that I like myself enough to hold on to the rest. it will be something of a triumph for whoever wrestles it from me, actually. or is it whomever? no matter.

my heart is skipping beats. ba-dum. ba-dum. badumbadum. ba---dum. ba-dum. ba-dum. ba-dum. badumba. dum. sigh.

oh, and I wrote something new, if you'd care to read it. never date a poet of any variety. no matter how it ends, the end will remain an artistic wellspring for the rest of your life. which is an especially long time if you're a tortoise.

***

you taste like the mugginess of a summer midnight
the air of marked heirlooms—old upholstery perhaps
a taste that smelled like the beach at dawn
a smell I’d know anywhere
a smell that taps me on the shoulder from time to time
and challenges me not to know it.

nothing intrigues me more completely
than the idea that your taste has changed
that your smell has developed
so that, when I stumble upon the likes of either,
I am not remembering you at all
but all that’s left to remember.

a smell that taught me home
a taste that let me go
and a realization that my senses
are making sense
of more than I knew to require of them.

you tasted of permanence
and of transience
the way cigarette smoke disappears as it stains your clothes
but I don’t like everything I used to
or dislike all I’d never touch.

my tongue has grown as my brain has,
contained only by the vessel that holds it.
both have too much to say.
my taste has fine-tuned itself,
adapting to what I need.
your taste has grown as your needs have,
increasing the distance between its realities
and my view of them.

your taste has doubtlessly marbled itself
mixed what I know with what I don’t
all the while leaving what I remember
no choice but to marble as well.

a future collision of our brains
or tongues
would act somewhat like a software update
or the recognition of external hardware;
reacquainting would require acknowledgement of increased memory.
they are as two poles that will never touch
or a wave that follows another to the shore—
composed of the same material
but never at the same time.

the whites I labeled
Fresh Starts and
Good Parts and
Free Hearts
now present themselves differently
no matter how slightly;
for any good designer knows
that a coat of Eggshell
taints a coat of Porcelain.
the eggshells you coated me with have since cracked
and scattered,
leaving the porcelain I now don
to chip under someone else’s wear.

if walls could speak,
they say,
if walls could speak,
they would fill their rooms with a foreign future
dotted simply with remnants of their past.
crooked rocking chairs
mismatched china
framed scenes of glossy smiles
hung level on faces that will never again respond
to the stroke of your stranger brush.

yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah

love this song. the only one I ever aced in Rock Band vocals. and bass, of course! though I never looked quite as emotionally stressed as she does...

enjoy:

#confessions

The breakup with you, sure. I may never recover from the breakup with Dave and Marcus.