I've always had a particularly pronounced sense memory. Smells, sounds, even a certain atmosphere, light - all provoke the return of sharp visceral memories for me. This little trick came in handy at times during acting classes when I was in college. But on a day to day basis, this sensitivity piles up into what I refer to as TTLY Syndrome or "This Time Last Year Syndrome" (TTLYS).
The oppressive heat and humidity of the last fews days have thrown me into last year's frame of mind. Indeed, the past few weeks have brought on a bewildering myriad of memories. This time last year, I was interviewing for The Job. I was feeling bereft and rootless. I was waiting.
And inside, away from the shimmering heat, in the cool darkness of my brain, the chemicals were sliding out of the proper equation. My stomach was burning, turning itself inside out almost every night. The Panic was coming.
This time last year was a tipping point, away from what was and toward what is. It was a precarious lean into the unknown. Everything was tossed into the air, floating down in a slow-motion freefall with no end in sight. Everything was all questions and no answers. The unknown was my only friend.
It's back again, like a second wave. I am waiting. Waiting for a movement away from this stalemate of grief. This terrible endgame, all the pieces on the board and nowhere to go. The Panic is rising. I waffle on the edge of nausea, try to push it down, pray through it. The unknown is siddling up next to me...it's reminding me that in a year, I haven't made very many strides. I haven't built the life I envisioned.
The heat lashes down on me when I walk out of work each day. I stumble through the evenings, fight the TTLYS washing through my veins. I remind myself that I have moved down the road, made progress. That I'm waiting and panicking and befriending the unknown because I had not choice when life jumped the rails in February.
Tonight, Dad said to me, "I feel like...we're never going to be normal again." And somehow, seeing the weight of it on his face, hearing the crushing reality in his words, I thought, "Not any time soon."
As I stare down the barrel of TTLYS right now, I rue the next season of it - the last season where everything was normal. And that season followed by the one where everything fell apart.
Tuesday, August 05, 2008
TTLY Syndrome
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3 cat calls:
I misread this as TTYL at first and was expecting a biting post on some young college girls and their "talk to you later" text messaging banter.
It's been a year already since you were interviewing for the job? wow.
The first year will be the hardest, because it's all of the firsts. .without. Each year after as you look back and are further away, hopefully, it does get better and lighter and easier. But do try to give yourself a break for having to deal with all that's been thrown in your path.
maybe it's neither of those extremes of before and after or normal and abnormal. it's just the movement of your life and it will always contain such ebbs/flows... what was, what will be and that's what makes it the badass awesome life that it is. this portrait that your life is painting.
but i am most curious about this powerful sense memory you have. my friend joanna will sort of intuitively start thinking of whereever she was last year at whatever time she is in. hallmark of a sensitive person indeed!
If you build the life, it will come? I mean that in a half-silly, half-serious way. Maybe it's time to move on out and steal a little piece of the world just for you. Just pondering out loud...
Lovely writing, as always. I, too, feel compelled always to think "Last year at this time" and compare, with a feeling of nostalgia and slight melancholy, no matter what events transpired.
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