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| I'm looking for a dare to be great situation
When I think back on it, I can honestly say, the thing about my life back then is that it was perfect.
No, really. I'm not doing that thing where you look back and let nostalgia color your memories, some sort of idealized retrofitting of memories and events. (as the Kim Richey song goes the way it never was.) It was that way, it really was.
My job? Excellent. I liked my co-workers, no, I loved them. I had a great deal of flexibility and freedom in my job and I was good at it, heck I was epic at it. I liked going to work every day. I had just the right amount of responsibility and freedom, lots of time to spend with patrons, plenty of freedom over budgets, programs, and displays. I did outreach to schools, wrote a column for the paper, worked with patrons of all ages, from babies to senior citizens. It was a great, interesting, fulfilling job.
My friends? Amazing. My co-workers were among my closest friends. We ate dinner together, had sleep-overs, went out to drinking and dancing. I had other friends too, geeks to watch TV shows with and have lunch with and go to movies with. It was a group of friends that was not only up for casual adventures but close confidants who had many things in common with me.
My family? Exactly right. My parents were there, I saw them just enough to keep my mother from worrying and guilt-ing me. My father was there to come pick me up if it snowed or I had a flat tire. It was the perfect amount of parental interaction. And I had the Williams too, my exactly right second family, there to offer a serenity my birth family (because the Williams are my family, of course, just not my birth family) couldn't match. I had all the family you could want, in just the right ways, and more.
My home? Lovely. I lived in my paternal grandparent's house and I could feel the spirit of their love and encouragement in the walls. It was a huge, lovely house. I had a living room the size of small apartment, a giant library with stacks of books and a cozy chair to read in, a study, a fireplace, huge walk-in closets, a bathtub so big I could curl up in it. I rented it from my parents, who charged me a super low price. There was a possibility of having them put all the rent money towards me buying it outright on a mortgage in their names. The decoration, the feeling, it was entirely mine, entirely me.
My love life? Blissful. Just what I'd always wanted, a settled relationship with someone interesting and completely different than any person I'd ever met. He was kind, attentive, passionate, and original. He liked my friends and my family and ME most of all. He thought I was a princess, a goddess, a treasure. He read Harry Potter and Lemony Snicket books, bought me jewelry, rubbed my feet, introduced me to new music, and was always up for adventures like seeing movies in Inuktitut and driving randomly around New Mexico. We spent the perfect amount of time together, understood the spaces in our togetherness. We were compatible in every way, every Tuesday night we'd eat Chinese take-out, watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer and then spend the night curled up around each other. I couldn't have asked for more.
See, my life was perfect. I didn't make a lot of money, but I made enough to live comfortably, to buy presents and have adventures. Every element of my life was in place, everything clicked just the way it should. It wasn't the life I thought I was going to have, exactly, but it was a good, satisfying life.
When I think back on it that's what I think: my life was perfect.
But I changed all that.
I woke up one day, I don't even really clearly remember how or when it happened, I woke up one day and I knew that I was going to change everything. That I was going to take everything that was and turn it into something else. I left behind all that good stuff, all that perfect, all that settled and happy and right.
Of course, I recognize that all that good stuff was going to eventually change. It couldn't hold forever, things would have moved on, friends moving away and getting married, things were perfect, but part of me probably knew they wouldn't always be.
The fact of the matter is that even though I knew things were changing, that they might not be perfect anymore, I still knew that they would be GOOD, that they would be steady, safe, and reliable. That sounds boring, doesn't it? But it's no little thing, I know, having a life you can count on. Anyway, maybe that's as close to perfect as you can get.
My life was perfect, it really was, and I chucked all that for ... who knows what? I knew what I wanted to do, yeah, I knew what I wanted to happen, but when I packed it all in to start over, lo these seven years ago, I had no idea HOW it was going to happen. I just knew that it if it could happen, I wanted it to happen.
Here's the thought I can't get away from, the one thing I now know is true: my life was perfect and I changed everything for the chance that it could be something else.
Today, I turn 32 years old.
Sometimes, I feel a million years away from the woman who had that perfect life. But sometimes, just sometimes, I can see and feel her out of the corner of my eye - in the friends I still have from that life, the memories of the times it was so good, the desire for more out of my world.
I am that something else. I am becoming that something else every day, second by second, and I won't give up until I get back to perfect. It's out there, I know, and I'll have it for my own again someday.
Until then, I am so damn proud of myself.
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| Two quick reminders
1. Since I am trying my best to post here, that means some posts will be protected. (Maybe there will be a protected post about how posts have to be protected. Oooooh, meta!) So, this is just your reminder: if you're not on the protected list and you want to be, please leave me a comment or drop me a note.
2. I am pretty sure 99.9% of you know this, but just in case! I have a professional blog now, where I write about libraries and young adult books and comment on my field as a whole and all that good stuff. I also write about fat acceptance and body politics. Anyhow, if any of THAT interests you, please feel free to read, bookmark, and comment: Fat Girl, Reading.
More! later!
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| (back to blogging here. No, really, this month I mean it.)
lone wolves
Being a grown-up is HARD, you guys. I have all these stressful life decisions. What usually makes them even more stressful is even thinking about how the fact I consider them to be stressful comes from a place of incredible privilege. Then I feel stressed about that too. (this was something I was raised with, first of all, not just that "there are kids starving in Africa!" but that I had to be mindful of how good my life was and about what really constituted a "problem" ... this was really cool and I appreciate my parents ingraining this in me, I swear, but I think it came with its own set of, um, burdens. Besides that, now I am constantly trying to check my privilege and not get wrapped up in my first-world problems, and that's GOOD! But sometimes those two factors combined, well, they can be overwhelming.)
Anyway, I have all these stressful life decisions. Like about rent and and housing and cost of living and how and where I should spend my money and, and, and then about my professional life. My whole "outside of New Mexico national level" professional life and, and, and what I planned for it and how that plan is coming and what toll it's taking on me and what I should do about it and how I should do it and when I should do it and -
it's stressful.
The thing is, it's not like I don't have anyone in the whole wide world to discuss this stuff with. I mean, to some degree I do? The professional stuff, I have colleagues and I have my group of girlfriends who are also archivists and librarians. There's that. But that's about it. And even then ... I dunno, it's a different conversation.
It's the kind of conversation I'd have with a partner, I guess. God, even that word sounds wrong. I have partners! Friends, co-conspirators, partners in adventure, you name it, - I've got that, I really do, I'm blessed with so, so many good friends, I can't even believe it. It's just the kind of conversation you'd have with a partner in all things. And while I have just about every kind of friendship you can imagine, that's one thing I don't have.
And that's OK by me, no, I mean it. I like being able to drink the juice out of the bottle without getting a cup if I want, not having to share my space or my decisions on what I spend my money on with anyone. I like the quiet of my own time, a good book, a whole day in bed. I like turning up Lady GaGa really loudly and dancing in front of my monitor at 1 AM. The simplest way I can think to say it: I am my own. I relish this, cherish it, struggled to it!
It just gets so frustrating, sometimes, running the same damn thing, the same damn problem or situation, over and over in only your own head a thousand times, getting stuck in all the same places. Sometimes when I try to think about this stuff, I can, like, feel my head locking up at the possibility of it all. Like, my brain just shuts down and stops trying to process it. WHY DON'T YOU THINK ABOUT HARRY POTTER OR SOMETHING INSTEAD? my head says.
So, back when I started writing this blog (forever ago!) Ebert tweeted this link to a blog. (Ebert is one of my favorite, and most infuriating, Twitter-ers? Tweeties? Tweeps? Whatever! Anyway, I'll write about that too, soon.) In the tweet he called this blog "Honest and heartwarming, sad and brave" so I knew it was going to be a doozy. (this is part of what makes him so fun to follow, you never know what kind of crazy, and crazy good, stuff you're going to find.)
For Caroline Marie...and all Lone She Wolves
I related, oh man, did I relate. It had some great parts, some really amazing writing, and some not so great parts too.
The blog was honest and heartwarming and maybe even a little brave. But when I finished I knew one thing for sure: I didn't think it was the least bit sad.
For men, in our culture, this is like, the ultimate badge of awesome, the thing you get TV shows and movies and epic legends told about you: you're a lone wolf, baby, you're out there, on your own, doing your thing. Wow, everyone wants some of that. But, for some reason, for women, this is worrisome, sad, something to click your tongue over.
I won't click my tongue. I won't feel sad about it. And I certainly won't feel "brave" about it, because there's nothing "brave" about deciding to live life on your own terms, deciding to make your own choices and work through things on your own, even when sometimes you wish you didn't have to. It's hard, I guess, and I will have to train my brain to stop shutting down, to keep going when I get frustrated and stressed and pulled in eight directions and uncertain and lonely.
But I can do that. I can be that.
I can howl.
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| I ain't looking for praise or pity
I ain't coming 'round searching for a crutch
I just want someone to talk to
and a little of that human touch
So, I miss blogging here. I don't want my life to be 140 characters and status updates anymore. I know no one is still reading. I know the community here has drifted away and I, myself, have been neglectful of this place. I wish it was like it was, I guess, I miss the good old days, all those people, all those stories, all those lives ... well, I can't do anything about that. But I can do something about MY part. So...I'm gonna.
I miss here, I miss the record of my life, I miss the introspection, I miss the writer it made me. I was reading through some old entries and they are such a sharp, accurate, sweet depiction of my life, well, I want that record. (even when some of them make me cry, for the bittersweet-ness.)
So, here I am. I won't promise every day, I don't even expect an audience, (Xanga? What, am I 14?) but I am going to give it a shot. I can't just walk away from nine years of my life on one site, I can't just change it over to a tweet. (but I'm still gonna be tweeting and facebooking, catch me there too!)
Come along, won't you?
you might need somethin' to hold on to
when all the answers, they don't amount to much
somebody that you could just to talk to
and a little of that human touch
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| Wes is awake.
Can't talk much or for long, but I managed to IM him for a bit.
He has a long, physical recovery in front of him. When I asked what could make him feel better he said, "Japanese men with swords?" Meaning, Kurosawa films.
The first thing he typed to me:
hoooooooney.
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