May 10, 2010 | Filed under: Is She Still Talking?, Thinky

We were in grad school when my friend Margaret turned 31. I’m just so comfortable and mellow, she said. I remember thinking it was weird to have that kind of revelation at that age – 31 is such a random number, not a milestone age like turning 30 or 35. And I, being a decade younger, had little concept of what the hell she meant.

I do now. At the ripe old age of … 31.

Back in March, after surviving another ugly, ugly February, I was feeling it. Mellow. Despite everything being up in the air – I had no boss yet no shot at a promotion, no relationship, and no semblance of work-life balance – I was actually pretty chill, which came as a great shock to me. I looked around at my life and thought, “This may be all there is. And that’s not half-bad.” This was quite possibly the most mentally healthy I’d been in, you know, ever. Rather than thrashing about, striving for whatever is around the next bend, I was doing what I needed to be doing and feeling good about it, nothing more.

In retrospect, I wonder if all the pollen clogging the air was making me high.

In the last few weeks, I slipped up, and I let myself want something, if only for a brief moment. And now instead of feeling good about where things are (statuses all being the same, except that my new boss starts soon), I’ve been restless and churning. Instead of deliberately marching myself back to that mellow place, I’m left wondering if that feeling was instead resignation, complacency, a way of anesthetizing myself in light of an existence that falls short of the one I really want.

I don’t know which is better, healthier. Accept the way things are, and make peace with that? Or continue the quiet — but possibly desperate and futile -– struggle that we learned in AP English class:

Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

* * * * *

Ten days ago, I read this article in the Times, and reflected on how good it was for me to see that perfectly lovely, well-educated, and by all accounts accomplished people sometimes don’t get the life they would have chosen.

Today, Elena Kagan was nominated to the Supreme Court. Which either makes her a great example of how you should always strive for your dreams, try try again, etc., or it’s definitive proof that god hates me .

February 25, 2010 | Filed under: I Run Therefore I Am, Is She Still Talking?

I’ve had New Year’s resolutions to tell you about for, oh, the last sixty days.  Now’s as good a time as any to discuss them, as they’ll become important in a minute.

1.  Eat healthy foods, made from real, non-processed, organic/locally-grown ingredients.

2.  Exercise.  Sixty hours a week in front of a computer is not healthy.

3.  Do not let February steamroll you this year, as it has in so many years past.

That’s it:  three things.  Manageable, right?  While resolutions #1 and #2 are going … well, not great, but fine … I am completely and utterly failing on the February part.  (Five days into February, my boss resigned.  Then I tossed a hand grenade into my precariously-balanced relationship.  On the same day.)  It’s been an anxiety-filled three weeks here, and if you don’t believe me, ask my spice-loving co-worker who took a break from the sauce (literally) because it was eating a whole in his stomach.

But!  Tomorrow I’m getting on a plane, bound for New Orleans and the Rock’n'Roll Mardi Gras Marathon where I will drag my under-prepared self 13.1 miles to the finish line.  (The chance to run regularly would have really helped my stress levels, but DC was busy being buried under 54 inches of snow this winter.  Great timing, Mother Nature!)  While flying to another city to run 13 miles seems crazy, the real crazy is that it’s the best excuse I’ve had in a while to take two days off of work.

When I get back to DC, it will be March, the piles of snow will have vanished, and I will have survived another dispiriting February.  I may, however, need to keep that resolution on the list for next year.

November 25, 2009 | Filed under: Because They Pay Me

I spend a lot of time being aggravated by work, people at work, things associated with work, etc.

But today I spent 15 minutes with some construction paper and access to 64 of Crayola’s finest.

And not just me — most of my office.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.  Maybe this year we (and by “we” I mean “I”) should lower our standards just a bit and be thankful to have a job and a home and friends with whom to celebrate this crazy holiday that features a conveniently hand-shaped bird.

November 17, 2009 | Filed under: Boys Are Dumb, I Write About My Feelings

This is when it’s the worst: two beers after work and I’m relaxed enough to want some affection, some attention, a connection to someone who wants to know how my day was and to tell me stories about his in return. Instead, I’m on my way home to an empty house where the only thing awaiting my attention is the dishwasher that needs to be unloaded.

* * * * *

We broke up two months ago. Feels like six. Or yesterday. Or a lifetime ago.

In my head, I know it was the right thing. To my family, I characterized it as “square peg, round hole,” which is accurate, but gives short shrift to the emotional intricacies of it all.

I feel sadness, to be sure, mixed in with a dash of anger and a hearty scoop of frustration/annoyance. And there’s this weird achy hangover sort of thing that I’ve never felt before. I think it’s called regret. For someone with a “no regrets” approach to life, this merely leads to more anger and more annoyance.

If I could take it all back, I would. Undo, somehow, the last four and a half years, gather it all up and shove it into the Pandora’s box from whence it came, never to see the light of day. Yep, in a heartbeat.

I hate that that’s true.

* * * * *

This is when it’s the worst: in the middle of an average day, when I’m listening to a series of boring speakers and the next one starts and I wait on the edge of my seat, counting the minutes until the panelist says those two words that he and I both know are coming. FLAGSHIP ISSUE. I look around the full room and realize that there’s no one to share the joke with.

* * * * *

Believing in me is easy. Believing in him wasn’t that hard, either. But at the end of the day, after all that was discussed, all that was promised, all that was intimated … none of it came to fruition. It was a man behind a curtain, nothing more.

I believed in us. And I was wrong, oh so wrong. That’s going to take some getting used to.

* * * * *

I miss him, sort of. More accurately, I miss us. I miss the good parts and the spectacular parts and even some of the so-so parts. I really miss the components of a stable, workable relationship that we never had.

At the risk of sounding like a song from middle school, there’s a hole in my heart that can only be filled by him. And it never will be. I know this; I’m not holding out for some sort of magical twist of fate that will change that. Nor do I expect that anyone else, ever, no matter how wonderful he/she is will ever fill precisely that space. All I’m hoping for at this point is that I can turn the vase and have the blemish face the wall, thereby presenting a perfect face to the rest of the room. Flaunt the good, disguise the ugly. It’s the American way, at least according to Hollywood and Madison Avenue.

* * * * *

He had a birthday recently, and for the first time in three years I wasn’t there to take him to dinner at his current favorite restaurant. I wonder which one it is. I wonder who was there instead. And I know that no matter who it was, or is in the future, she’ll never be able to replace me.

* * * * *

This is when it’s the worst: crawling into an empty bed, wondering if I’ll ever feel that kind of closeness again, and holding out hope that maybe, just maybe, next time it will be for real.

June 28, 2009 | Filed under: Boys Are Dumb, Thinky

I want him to be cute and smart and funny, but doesn’t everybody say that?

I want him to be sensible and responsible and responsive to others’ needs.

I want him to have a job he likes and finds fulfillment in.

I want him to have a positive view of marriage and building a family. It would help if his parents are still together and actually like each other, but I recognize he’s not in charge of that particular dynamic.

I want him to have friends, some of whom will become my friends.

I want him to be good in bed. Yes, I said it.

I want him to come with only an overnight bag’s worth of baggage from previous relationships, if at all possible.

I want him to still be hopeful.

I want to walk down the street with him, holding hands. When we’re 60.

I want him to be athletic.

I want him to know, instinctively, that we’re on the same team. Some days we’ll be running a relay race, others we’ll be the core of an offensive line, but always we’ll have matching jerseys.

I want him to like his family.

I want him to like my family.

I want him to read and explore and travel and be willing to join me when I suggest something crazy like, “Let’s hike the Grand Canyon!” At the very least, I want him to willingly hold down the fort when I go off and do something crazy like hike the Grand Canyon.

I want it to last.