"Why not be sure of it...?"

To all of us the thought of heaven is dear--
Why not be sure of it and make it here?
No doubt there is a heaven yonder too,
But 'tis so far away--and you are near.

I am a marvelous procrastinator. Sensational. Writing papers in undergrad, going to the dry cleaners, and things that I thought would be unpleasant. But I've been realizing more and more lately that by putting off something I think might make me sad or angry, I am actually letting those feelings fester by putting it off.

I grew up in a cluttered home. My mother would always tell me that my father was a pack rat, that he saved everything. In hindsight, I think we were both, actually, trying to save my father. Bits and pieces of his life, of a man who I did not know, who died when I was so young... if he had saved them, we clung to them with a desperation that makes me sad now. There were boxes upon boxes in our garage of receipts from his days as a landlord. My parents had sold the property years before his death, even, and these papers were of no use to anyone, seemingly. Yet they were not useless to my mother, who could imagine, perhaps, his steady hand as she gazed upon his impeccable script.

When I moved to Chicago, my mother was remarrying and also moving. She didn't talk much about the process of throwing away all of that stuff, but I can't imagine it was easy. Happy as she was with her new husband and her new life, there's a part of her that will always love my father. Throwing some of those things away was a real admission: that part of my life is truly over, and we're moving on. Here we go.

Tonight I spent over an hour cleaning out and reorganizing the kitchen. The task had been started a few months ago, and as I knew would happen, the boyfriend and I found things from my old life. These things made me angry, throwing old junk into the trash with force, and some of the things made me sad, turning my face to blink away tears. I'd put off cleaning the rest for this very reason. Stuck in those drawers are memories and betrayals and regrets and the reminders of a life I very actively opted out of. The boyfriend knows that, and he has been so patient, so loving, and so understanding as he watches me wade through old things. Truly. But last night, we hosted Thanksgiving here for some of our friends. And it all felt so right. It was the life I had always wanted, surrounded by friends in a home I share with someone I love that is full of books and maps and dog hair and laughter. So today, I took the plunge.

I made snap decisions, ruthlessly tossing papers and photos. It's been over a year since my ex moved out, and here I am, still afraid of the monster in the closet, in the cardboard boxes, in garbage bags. So I dug in, and I realized the difference between the drawers of my mother's home and the drawers in mine. While she was trying to hold onto something, I was trying to forget about it. To get rid of it, I would first have to unearth it, consider it, see it. That's really all divorce is anyway. For me, at least. Going over the past, trying to undo it, and then realizing that you can't. So, you hide it. But it always spills out. No drawer is that big.

I live in 650 square feet. My storage unit in the basement is 8x8. I didn't think there were too many places for the past to lurk. Wrong. So wrong. When he first moved out, I tied everything he left into garbage bags and put them in the storage unit. I couldn't face them yet. Earlier this year I went through a painful three hours of sorting it all out for donation, coming unglued when I found the suit he wore to our wedding crumpled on the cement floor. But I did it. And then I made sure the closet in the bedroom had been exorcised. Then the bathroom cabinet. Then the hope chest. The storage unit needs one more go, as I became emotionally exhausted the last time. But I did the kitchen tonight. So I estimate about one more hour.

One hour. Just one.

I love my life. I have never been so happy. This is not a reluctance to let go of the past, but a strong urge to stop confronting it. I want it to be gone. I want it erased. The happier I am, the more I realize how unhappy I was. I don't like the person I am in those memories, and am much more inclined to spend time with this new version of myself, as duct tape and cabinet doors hold back the old. I kept saying "later." But why? Later never comes. I have a very clear picture in my mind of what that magical "later" looks like, and otherwise, I've done a great job creating it. So let's go. Full throttle.

I'm promising myself that it will be done by next week.

"...hearken, then, the way..."

In the first post on this blog, I merely stated that last year was the worst year of my life. I hesitated to expand, thinking that, first, most of the people reading this blog know that. You are my friends, and you were there, oh were you there, and it needed no further explanation. Secondly, I thought that maybe it wasn't anyone's business, friends or not. And, that is still true. I don't owe anyone an explanation. But that doesn't mean I can't give one, if I feel the urge.

So, in the (perhaps naive) hope that someone who doesn't know me reads this blog, I will explain that very melodramatic statement. I spent the year 2009 unraveling, making decisions, and swimming upstream as the repercussions of that decision washed over me. I got divorced.

Truth be told, I was living very unconsciously for a very long time. There was that voice, that nagging in my brain, for so long. It didn't feel right. Something was wrong. Isn't there more to it than this? But these thoughts were muted when I answered them with, "Everyone feels this way. No one is perfect. No relationship is perfect. Everyone fights. Lots of people have these problems. It's fine." After years of lying to myself, and for this dishonesty I take full responsibility, I came to a screeching halt, hit rock bottom, and knew I had to make a decision. Sink or swim.

This slap in the face that prompted my decision came in the form of another person who showed an interest in me. This was more than a seven year itch, more than a curiosity after being with one person for so long. It wasn't love, either, but, well, it went like this.

I had written my undergraduate thesis. This experience was, arguably, one of the most meaningful of the past ten years of my life. It made me entertain the idea of pursuing academia as a career, reminded me that I needed to write in some capacity to feel fulfilled, and the topic of my thesis was politically and personally radicalizing. The hours I spent at the library with books, journals, and my computer were wonderful. I savored them. I have always loved the sounds and smells of a library--cracking spines and airy page turns, and rustling plastic book jackets on hard backs. Heavy wooden chairs against the mosaic floor. Typing. The smell of a musty book, the smell of a new book like a new car begging to be driven. It was intoxicating, from the days my father would take me to the library in my youth, and plunging in to it and living in it for a semester was affirming and exciting.

The thesis was accepted to conferences at which I was the only undergrad. He didn't think to ask off work to come to either. Stammering for an excuse when my thesis advisor asked, "Where is your husband? I thought I'd get to met him today," was a moment of realization. And embarrassment.

All summer I tried to work on our problems. I tried to start conversations. And at the end of the summer, an old friend came to visit, asked to read my thesis before I mentioned that I had even written it, and we had a three hour conversation afterward about the scholars I had referenced, and the ideas I had pursued.

My husband never read it.

We talked. I found out he didn't want kids, ever, and I wasn't totally ready to give that notion up. He wanted to end up in Indiana again. I couldn't imagine that. He didn't want to move for a PhD program, no matter how good my funding. And so I made the decision. And he moved out. And we officially got divorced. The financial and emotional fall-out for me is something I can't articulate yet, and maybe one day I will with more distance. But I have never been that unglued, untethered, undone. I remember one month where I literally cried every single day. It was this month, last year.

Things have changed. I cried once this month, after I received my promotion at work and, in a really unprofessional moment, telling my boss how much this raise meant because last winter I didn't turn my heat on. I had not cried happy tears until this year. My life has completely changed. It was worth a month of crying to get to this point. Friends tell me I look so much better, that they missed hearing me laugh. I was shopping for winter hats yesterday and the boyfriend was helping me tame the static frizz and stopped suddenly. "You almost have no grey in your hair anymore," he said. "When I first met you it was one of the first things I saw. It's almost all gone!" Did I really look this bad? Was I really that far gone? Because I was dealing with the internal, I suppose I didn't realize what it was doing to the external. Sure, I remember that I had gone grey up front, that I lost twenty pounds, that I was always sick with a cold, that most days my eyes were red from crying. Apparently everyone else had noticed, too.

I have moments each day when the world seems to stop, and I am still, and I take in everything around me. I see the ways in which my life is finally matching up with how I had wanted it to be. Some of these moments begin with regret; why did I waste so much time? But then I know that maybe it's all so much sweeter because it was so bitter before. The contrast, perhaps, is where the real joy is, or what magnifies it all anyway. Simple things are the world to me. An average day is a wonderful day, because I hold inside myself the memory of awful days. Maybe more awful days will come my way. Yet, today is so wonderful.

Would you be happy! hearken, then, the way:
Heed not TO-MORROW, heed not YESTERDAY;
The magic words of life are HERE and NOW--
O fools, that after some to-morrow stray!

Grey Days

It is insane to think that, while this blog is about being happy and making the most out of every moment, that I will actually succeed in being happy all the time. That wouldn't be interesting to read, anyway.

I have always been prone to depression, or cynicism, or something like that. I think it comes with being a creative person. I think some of us feel things in a different way--not better, not worse than other people, but just differently. I am easily affected, let's say. Today I am feeling particularly affected. But, I made myself think it through, and ask, Why is it a Grey Day? (What I call my down days)

And you know what? I realized I'm down because things are so good. Right. That's a really Irish Catholic thing to say. Let me explain.

I'm down because I'm writing for a website and loving it. I love that I can say "I'm a writer," and the proof is somewhere visible, people can read it, it's not just in a folder saved to my desktop. I'm down because I'm making more money than I've ever made, and I'm dangerously close to an official raise and promotion. I'm down because I have one of the most amazing men in the world cooking in the kitchen we share, eager to spend his days with me, and even though we work together and live together, I am always excited to the point of grinning when I get to see him again. I'm down because my relationship with my mother has never been better, because I have more friends than days of the week to make plans with them, because I'm healthy and so is my dog, because I had enough money to go on vacation this year and I'm already planning for next summer's trip.

Now, to explain.

I'm down because my father was a writer and would have been so proud to see me doing the same. He would have loved it. I'm down because he doesn't know, and, really, wouldn't know me. He died when I was six years old. I'm mostly sad that he never knew me, and so many things I'm doing are things he did, things he would relate to. I'm sure we would have gotten on famously. I'm down because last year was so hard, that I can't help thinking all of these wonderful things will pass, that I can't be lucky for very long. I'm sad that it took me this long to realize how incredible my mother is and that I wasted so many years there. I feel guilty that I'm healthy and so happy when other people are not, people a lot more deserving than myself, probably. I have so much, and by chance, and that doesn't seem fair. If I believed in god, or gods, or something like it and them, I would reason that there is only so much good to go around and since I have a plethora, that soon someone else will have their turn, and everything wonderful will come crashing down. 

But then I realized two things. First, there is no one or nothing keeping score, constantly maneuvering a pie chart of having and not having. Secondly, if I'm waiting for something to go wrong, it will. Because things always go wrong. And if I'm waiting for it, I won't see it as one hiccup in an otherwise pristine path, but I'll say, "See?! Exactly what I'm talking about!" Self-fulfilling prophesies, etc. 

So, while I do think it is healthy to allow oneself grey days, I am also going to remind myself that what is making me sad is that my life is that wonderful--so wonderful that I don't want a thing to change. So beautiful, and beauty always affects creative types. Time to get over myself. Time to enjoy, even if there is someone keeping tally of my good fortune, always at the ready to even the score.

My reference to Khayyam for today's post is this stanza:

"But here are wine and beautiful young girls,

Be wise and hide your sorrows in their curls,

Dive as you will in life's mysterious sea,

You shall not bring us any better pearls."

What's in a name?

So, what's in a name? The name, specifically, of this blog. "Here." Where is "here," what does it mean, and why?

My favorite poem, and one of my favorite pieces of writing across all genres, is the Medieval Persian poet Omar Khayyam's Rubaiyat. Particularly, the portion of this work included in The Portable Atheist, edited by Christopher Hitchens (one of my favorite writers, as well). This poem is, in short, how I wanted to live my life, and how I wanted to think about my life. A stanza to demonstrate:

Men talk of heaven,--there is no heaven but here;
Men talk of hell,--there is no hell but here;
Men of hereafters talk, and future lives,--
O love, there is no other life--but here.

This atheistic sentiment reminds me of my constant struggle with contentment. For as long as I can remember, I have looked forward--not to an afterlife as I have no belief in it, but ahead in my own life. I have planned for the future, only to meet it, when it becomes my present, with discontent, dissatisfaction, and longing for something more. I have made stipulations starting with the words, "I'll be happy when..." and then filled them followed them with: I move to Chicago, when I transfer colleges, when I graduate college, when I have a job, when I got to grad school, when I have money in savings...

The list goes on.

Well.

It did. Now, it ends.

Last year was the worst year of my life. In hindsight, it might become the best, as it was the catalyst and the beginning of the rest of my life, which, as it turns out, is full of joy and wonder in the present. I have never been this happy before. I have moments of real contentment. And I realize more and more each day, as I marvel at who I am and where I am today versus who I was before last year, that I should savor this. I should savor life. This joy is not to be wasted.

So what can I do to enhance this joy? And what was preventing me from feeling joy before? These are questions I wrestle with each day. So, in an effort to be my most authentic self, to become the best version of myself that I can be, and to really feel each day, I made some changes. I'm trying to be very aware of every choice I make. And I hope to catalogue it here.

Go.