A year ago yesterday, I updated this blog. And I wrote of plans. I wrote about making plans and breaking plans, and coming out whole on the other end. A year ago, when I wrote that entry, I had no idea that in 6 months, my mother would be dead, and in 9 months I'd be married, and that in a year I'd be grappling with it all, the way I am shattered by extraordinary anger and extraordinary bliss. I can't quite lend it language yet, but I am trying. A writer without words is not much.

We'll start with shock. We'll end there as well. We'll say that life is staggering in it's abruptness. In searching for a way to put letters to swirling thoughts, I recall the sharp and winding turns I drove in California on my honeymoon last fall, after the exhilarating straight uniformity of the Golden Gate Bridge. "Here we are," I thought. "Driving across the Golden Gate Bridge." Suddenly, the roads became  S curves that didn't stop for miles. I feared every car and animal I saw. I had never driven those roads before, and had never seen anything like them. I didn't trust my driving skills, though I've been driving for many years. I felt as if I'd never been in a car before, as driver, passenger, or cargo. I tensed, I panicked, I likely produced much eye-rolling from my ever-patient husband. How did we get here? Weren't we just driving straight and predictably across that magnificent landmark, leaning out the windows into the October breeze with our camera?

It took me many miles to realize that the S curves had their own beauty. I should have taken more time to pull over for photos.

The Book of Love

When I was twelve, I fell in love. Completely, whole-heartedly, head-over-heels, to the point of obsession, in love. With theatre. And writing.

For years, I had taken acting classes, spending my summers indoors, on stage, while my friends canoed, hiked, swam, and threw various balls toward various nets. I pantomimed a tennis match in one of my summer shows, I recall. That's about as close I got to what my friends were doing. I loved it. But nothing prepared me for the utter infatuation into which I would fall after acting in my first real show, Flowers for Algernon in the sixth grade. I had a small part, just two scenes. But before the run was over, I had two more auditions lined up. From that point on, I ran show into show into show. I learned to work backstage, too, and loved that just as much. I took a summer playwrighting intensive and while watching my one-act at the end of the summer, I couldn't stop thinking, This is what I want to do the rest of my life.

Through high school I imagined I would major in theatre. In fact, I even visited and applied to theatre programs. But, as seventeen year olds often do, I changed my mind. I contacted the college I had chosen and informed them that I would instead be majoring in Cultural Studies and Linguistics. When others found out, they were shocked. The refrain seemed to be, But what else can you do? This was not exactly inspiring, and I began to worry how "one note" I must have appeared to my peers all along. Didn't they know that I studied two languages in high school? That I wrote poetry, read sociology and psychology for fun, and liked to train and handle dogs? Didn't they know about my small but growing collection of political science and philosophy books? It seemed they did not. They couldn't. I spent most of my time in rehearsal or performing. I wasn't as far along in French or Chinese as I had hoped because I just didn't have the time. I had begun to resent theatre for this. And so, I knew that I would grow to hate it if I relied on it to pay my bills. It would have to be a hobby for me to love it so. And, as with any great love, saying good-bye, even if just for a time, was tragic. My last performance before leaving for college had me sobbing for hours, sitting on an old scenic flat backstage breathing in the smells of freshly cut wood, paint, and moth balls for as long as I could, like a lover's cologne. I was afraid I'd never nestle my face in this neck again.

During college, I attended theatre whenever I had the extra money, which was rare. I continued to write, even if it was only academically for stretches at a time. I missed theatre, but life without it gave me time to pursue my studies, decide that I wanted to study other things, and then pursue those. By the time I finished college, my life was completely unexpected, yet, looking back now, completely predictable. When I left my hometown for Chicago, I had been dating my high school sweetheart for two years, and it was just a matter of time before we'd be married. I thought for sure that I'd return to theatre, that I'd be an interpreter or professor, mostly writing for a living, and that I'd eventually live in a home that looked more like a library or used bookstore.

Today, I run a training department for a dotcom start-up. And while I don't write creatively for a living, I do spend a bulk of my time at this job writing and editing training material, which becomes more rewarding each time I receive an email from a superior who cannot communicate effectively in writing. Apparently to do so is a skill not granted to most people. I graduated with BAs in Social Justice Studies and Feminist Theory. I did marry my high school sweetheart; and divorced him, too. Writing does not pay my bills, but my work does appear on several sites, and I'm a staff writer for a great local city guide. Sometimes, I attend plays.

There was a plan. I had a plan. My plan was theatre. It changed. Then, it changed again. Careers I have entertained over the past ten years include, yet are not limited to: interpreter, professor, journalist, film editor, mortician, social worker, editor, restaurant manager, massage therapist, business owner, nurse... etc. But in my frantic search, what I kept neglecting to ask about each career path was, "Will this make me happy?" I don't know if it was maturity, or enough unhappiness in my life that finally made me ask that question, but once I did, I realized that I can't have an all-consuming career. I need a job that I love, yes. And I do love my job, believe it or not. Cubicle life ain't bad! I don't worry about my income the way I would have with many of my other career options. The 401K, stock options, stellar health insurance, and paid vacation make life less stressful. And when I leave my office, I leave work. I come home to write, to read, to laugh, to walk to the dog. I just started learning the history of the typewriter for an essay I'm writing (and for my own quirky enjoyment, of course). I spend my nights trying writing exercises with my love, and eating his delicious meals. I live, essentially. I love to live, no matter how different his life is than the one I had planned. Sitting in that dark theatre years ago, watching the play I wrote being performed, thinking, This is what I want to do the rest of my life, holds true. For in that moment perhaps what I wanted for the rest of my life was not so literal as watching my words come to life through actors, but the feeling I had, the unmistakable spark inside that says, You are alive. You are happy to be alive.

"So I be written in the Book of Love

I have no care about that book above;

Erase my name, or write it, as you please--

So I be written in the Book of Love."

Praying

I’m recalling past days with a past lover, and in the background I hear a drone, a noise so inane that it is silence, in a way, because it matters that little… but then I remember that silence can sometimes say so much.

I am thinking about the day Michael Jackson died. I was married to a chef, and we had just walked in, carrying sandwiches from Subway. Our kitchen remained mostly unused, save the frozen food I would heat up and consume listlessly on the sofa while he was at work. As I juggled the plastic-bagged sandwich, paper soda cup, and a messenger bag, I heard the familiar and hated sound of the television being turned on. I didn’t know I hated the sound---not then. It wasn’t until later that I would realize the hours lost to that noise, moments that could never happen, conversations that could never be. An entire life sat unlived, just beyond that glowing screen, and he and I never did find it. Our lives had a soundtrack of CNN politicos, ESPN commentators, and reality show blather. I would spend my day in a university, surrounded by intense dialogue and discussion of important ideas, walk to the L train entertained by the delightful symphony of city life, and spend my commute pouring over assigned reading. I would gaze out the window once in a while as I pondered a new idea. The Art Institute buzzing past the bus window to my right as I considered political theories, the sun shining unabashedly on the Chicago River and glinting off the Trump Tower as I tried to make sense of an economic text.

Soon enough, I would arrive at my stop, and, in reverse of most people, I left the solace and inspiration of my commute for the tomb that was my house. Upon entering, ideas left me, the drive, the life, dried up. This was where I slept, where I dressed, where I took care of necessary bodily functions and grooming. I vacuumed it. And then I would leave again to continue living. For when I entered my house that was not a home, I would find the television on, the man I married asleep on the sofa, and I knew that this would be the scene until I’d surrender and go to bed. We’d converse for a while, sharing highlights from the day spent apart, and then I would start my studying and the TV would continue and he would fall back asleep and eventually, we’d decide we were hungry and it was too late to cook, and we’d eat a frozen pizza.

We were having a day like this when Michael Jackson died. Before I had even set down my things, the television had been turned on and Anderson Cooper was telling me that my favorite musical artist was dead. It was June, and a few days before my one year wedding anniversary. I did not know it at that moment, but in only a matter of months, I would stand again at my front door, crying like I was for Michael Jackson’s life, but for my own life. The man whom I thought would love me until I, like Michael, could no longer make art, would tell me that he was not interested in being married to an aspiring writer anymore.

With the divorce, I did not have money to pay the mortgage, so a new television was not in the budget. I went without. I set about remaking a life, buying what I needed on credit, and two friends repainted the place as a divorce gift. They rearranged the furniture and discovered that when a television is not the focal point of a living room, we media-obsessed humans have a hard time knowing how to orient our lives. “Well, what do you want to look at?” one of them asked. I thought about what made me happy. In those days of living in the red, choosing between feeding myself or my dog, not very much made me smile. I went simple. “My books,” I said, “I like to look at my books.” So the living room was arranged thusly. And as I laid on my sofa and cried each night after work, it was some comfort to read the titles of books that had made me laugh or made me think. My wet eyes would catch a title I hadn’t thought of in years and I would get up, retrieve the book, and re-read it. During those nights, I thought of this surveying and reading as an escape from my reality; yet now I know I was actually working to forge a new one.

I spent my time at home writing and reading and listening to music. I would call friends. I would think in silence. I would play with the dog. When the silence became too lonesome, I would go outside and enjoy the sounds of the lakefront. I thought a lot. I was constantly thinking.

The months wore on and my luck changed. Forgive me for skipping ahead, but there isn’t much to say about the first six months on my own. So much was happening but at the time, it felt like nothing was. I felt desperate and alone and I wondered if anything would ever feel normal again. But, eventually, I began dating a man, even though I had told myself it was too soon. Something about him told me it wasn’t. Or, even if it was, I’d have to make it work, because he was special. A month after that, I got a job that doubled my income and I was able to keep the house that, slowly, was becoming my home.

It’s funny how quickly, or how slowly, things happen. I’m not sure which. In the end though, it seems that suddenly you find yourself in a certain place, living a certain way, and you can’t quite recall how you arrived. I realized, it seemed, in an instant, that I was living a lie. That the life I wanted to have and the person I wanted to become would not ever be if I stayed married. My life was not full of ideas and art and joy, but a low humming from a box in the corner of my living room, where I did not do much living. And while it was years in the making, the realization and the decision-making and the fall-out happened in less than a week.

In the same way, I come to realizations now, but they are much more pleasant. Years of wanting this life, years of not having it, months of repercussions after deciding that I would die trying to get it brings me to moments when I realize that for a year, I have not had a television in my home. Instead, I spend hours talking with, laughing with, writing with, eating with, and loving a person who inspires me. It will hit me when we spend an hour drinking tea together in a bubble bath; when we spend an evening researching, shopping for, and preparing a meal together; when we spend our day off in libraries and second-hand bookstores.

When I am alone in the house, I do what I did when I was alone and not expecting anyone to return. I read. I play with the dog. I think. I think a lot. My eyes scan the covers of my books and I re-read some. I still leave for the lakefront, but it’s no longer an escape. I don’t escape one life for another, as I now live one cohesive existence that is all me. And I am sobered by the knowledge that this all so easily never could have been.

Every day, and I mean every single day of my life, I marvel at how fortunate I am. I am in love with one of my most brilliant humans I have ever met. He is kind and hilarious and thoughtful and talented. He cooks and loves like the Italian he is. His passion and intensity for living life is rare, really. And, lest this read like a fairy tale in which the damsel in distress is rescued by love, I will say that my life began before him. He is here because he complimented the life I was creating for myself. And I don’t know whether I am more thankful for the life I chose and was lucky enough to realize, or for someone to share it with.

Khayyam knew something of awe and gratitude. He also knew it was misplaced when spent on mythical figures and deities. Instead, he looked at a body. A real, tangible, live body, perhaps his own or perhaps his lovers or perhaps both, together, and he worshipped there. He said,

And all this body of ivory and myrrh,

O guard it with some little love and care;

Know your own wonder, worship it with me,

See how I fall before it deep in prayer.

"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.