What are You Doing New Year's Eve?

In the waning hours of 2010, I considered going out in response to a solid invitation to one party and the probability that any number of my friends would be ushering in 2011 in the ATown. In light of last year's epic fail, I had compelling reasons to attempt to start off the new year in finer form. I considered the old superstition that what you're doing as the calendar starts over sets the tone for the coming 12 months, and I certainly wanted to be on better terms with the impending '11 than I was on its decade-capping predecessor.

It ended up that, even though Reese came down with the flu earlier in the week, the family was able to make it to my parents' house for our belated Christmas celebration. This holiday confusion (otherwise known as the Christmess) does tend to make for a difficult time truly enjoying New Year's Eve. And as it turned out, with relocating my bed to the new house and the kitchen remodel, we were short sleeping arrangements at Mom and Dad's, so Anna and me made our trek across town to spend the night at my house.

And so it was that the final moments of 2010 ticked off the clock. Anna went to bed, and I lay in my own bed, listening to the pops and crackles of fireworks outside in the night sky. I lay in the darkness and let the sad lonely year ebb away. In the silence that followed, I could almost hear the freshness of 2011's arrival. Like a sudden rush of warm air distilled in a soft white puff again the winter night, it came. And with it, sweet hope. I lay listening to the way the air changed, to the way that the light shifted, to my own breathing. I felt suddenly empty; but emptied of the heavy burden of so much sadness and tragedy. Hollowed out as it were, like midnight spooned out the lead and left behind a smooth, dark place for good things to settle.

In the stillness, I prayed for this fragile new year. I prayed that its tender newness would be allowed to blossom into something wonderful. I prayed to God to keep my hands reaching out toward Him, toward hope, toward the belief that there is plan so much greater than what I've imagined I missed or lost or let pass me by. And so I closed my eyes against the clean night sky that was already making its way toward the first day of the new year. And I fell asleep with a prayer on my lips. At home. With hope.

Gratitude: Part I - Belonging

For so long, I felt like a ship adrift, having untied my moorings and sailed into different waters. Though I found a harbor, it was difficult to drop anchor. It seemed that I would throw it over the side, only to find it weightless and futile. An anchor with no gravity. A ship with no way to hold.

I stubbornly stayed in the harbor though, convinced that I had followed the right currents, that I had read the map correctly, that I had found the waters where I could finally fold up my sails and put my weary soul to rest.

And while I had one myopic eye to the telescope looking into the distant future and trying to spot that solid ground that I longed for, slowly but surely my anchor gained gravity. Ounce by ounce, it grew heavier. One by one, those whose names I knew become those I knew. The husks of acquaintance were stripped away to reveal the meat of friendship.

On Friday, I passed through the Atlanta office on my way back home. Two women came surging from one of the hallways and one said, "I told her I heard your voice!" This welcome, this recognition of me, was a reminder that I am home in more ways that I even acknowledge. There are a multitude of places I can consider myself among friends (including here), and I think of those places and faces and I am astounded; I am overwhelmed by their surprising numbers - more than I would've guessed at first thought - and I am touched by the depth of feeling for this motley crew of people I've collected. Without realizing it, my skeleton crew has evolved into a tour de force.

My anchor has grown heavy but my heart has grown light. So I throw gravity overboard, and climb down to the solid ground where I belong.

Tumbled Thoughts from the Shoreline

Right now, I'm sitting on the, well, we'll call it a balcony of my hotel room and listening to the Atlantic fall on the sand again and again. There's enough of a breeze that it's sort of chilly in a way that simultaneously makes me want to go inside and want to sit here shivering just to feel alive. It could be that I'm tired - I was up til 2 a.m. working on our project and then up at 6:45 to get back to it - but I find myself staring into the inky darkness and thinking harder than I want to...

* About working too much. There was the trip to Orlando. And then another to Atlanta after that. I left yesterday morning to be on J.I. now. I'm headed back tomorrow, and then early Wednesday, I'll get up and head to Atlanta. And it's good...I'm proud of myself. But I wonder, what about everything else?

* I'm on this trip with two guys who have kids, and they're always talking about their kids. And I have nothing. I mean, I tell my Dillon stories like a good auntie and laughingly interject something about Kudzu, but sometimes, it just feels empty.

* I feel sad about The Professor and his ex. I feel sorry for her. And I feel sorry for me. It's just a weird place to be in for both of us - me and this girl I don't even know. I feel like she's having to go through the place I just was, and I'm looking at the situation, and thinking, "I'm glad that's not me."

* There's a quiet right now - besides the constancy of the ocean - that makes me feel so solitary. I can't hear anyone else talking, no signs of life. The quiet is almost eerie, and far more lonely than soothing.

* Lately, I've been thinking a lot about how we all think that happily ever after will happen to us. But the truth is, there are so many people who don't have it. For every happily-ever-after is an also-ran. I'm not condemning myself as an also ran yet - and this really isn't the part where I want everyone to tell me that my day will come. This is the part where I face the reality that you don't get everything. And I have stellar friends and a fabulous family life and a good career...and lots of wonderful things. I spend entirely too much time thinking about the missing pieces...especially in light of the fact that maybe - just maybe - they were never meant to be part of the whole.

TTLY Syndrome

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.

Failing

Tomorrow's Friday. I have to go to a meeting in Atlanta tomorrow at 3 - the world's worst possible time to try to get into the city (and subsequently out of it afterward). It's a meeting I'm not so jazzed about - one where I think I'll be slightly out of my depth and with an Atlanta associate I don't know so well to boot. I'm not looking forward to it.

Tomorrow's Friday, so the question comes up, what are we going to do this weekend? Anna says she can be flexible, about whether we come there or not. Dad has to get a haircut, mow the lawn. Mama tries to determine from all sorts of context clues and tone of voice what Anna really wants us to do. We all try to pass the buck to each other saying, "Whatever you want to do."

I finally spoke up and said that I'd leave from the Atlanta office and travel on north to Anna's. Dad and Mama will join us Saturday after the lawn and Dad's hair get a trim.

When I called Anna to tell her, it came out in a rush. In trying to be funny, I told her that it took a flow chart to figure out this weekend's plans. And I immediately wished I could take it back. Because I know it made her feel like a burden. And she's not. But I'm tired, and tired plus frustrated sometimes leaks into your voice if you're not careful.

I want to do whatever I can to help her right now, but sometimes, it's hard. It's hard knowing that "tomorrow's Friday" always means that arrangements must be made. I feel so selfish and guilty to resent that even the tiniest bit after what Anna's gone through - with what she's still going through. And so there's this cataclysmic struggle between the rising resentment and the guilt that pushes it back down and the sadness that engulfs them both and culminates in a shuddering, "When will this end?"

When will it? I don't know. For Anna...maybe never? And for me, even the slightest moments of moving on feel wrong. When I talk to her and know she doesn't want to get off the phone because the silence will be deafening after we hang up, I feel so guilty for every second I had that day that Ronnie's death wasn't weighing on me like a ton of bricks. I know that's not realistic; in a way, I know I'm not even being fair to myself. I'm only human after all.

But there's no guidebook. There's no instruction manual for dealing with death. Each of us deals with it in our own way. Meaning that, as if the circumstances weren't bad enough, you find yourself trapped in an emotional mine field worrying that your next step might be in the wrong direction. There's a sense, however off-base, that you could be missing the right way to handle it. And when you don't handle it with the appropriate sensitivity, when being tired overcomes your sense of compassion, when your frustration with having to pack one more bag, when you can't help the little selfish corner of your heart that just wants to stay at home and do nothing, when all that bleeds through into your voice, you know you've detonated one of those things. And it splinters into a million shards of guilt.

The truth is, it's messy and painful and ugly. I don't get to walk away gracefully. I just have to blindly free-fall my way through it...trust that gravity and faith will pull me in the right direction...and that eventually I will make a landing that will be less than disastrous. And for all those times along the way that I fail, I hope that Anna knows that I'm doing the very best I can in a situation she knows better than any of us has no "best" - and that's she'll forgive me of my shortcomings.

The View from Here

* Work avalanche

* Sorry I'm blogging less

* Swing State - swung? No commenters, no motivation. Should we withdraw from the race?

* 401(k) decisions

* Still trying to determine the fastest way to get to work

* Working on a (one, just one) friend(?)

* Dinner with Atl coworkers last night at DePalma's...so lovely to have dinner with four women and gab

* Light fading, shadows long and eerie

* Pillows and good night

Nostalgiaism

Today I went to a meeting with a local organization that advocates for and preserves historic buildings in ATown. The office is located in a renovated fire station, a corner block brick building with the firepole still in the far corner, massive glass-globe chandeliers, and the pale green fireman's lockers lining one wall. As soon as I entered the building, I was accosted by nostalgia. The smell of an old building - aged wood, old paint, and history (it smells, I swear). And when I reached the top of the stairs, I was almost speechless at the tall arched windows whose frames were painted almost the very same pale blue-grey shade as the ones at Grace Street.

The whole time I was there, I couldn't help noticing how suddenly I felt at home. Like I wanted to spend the whole afternoon there. I belong in an old, rickety building. I need the splintering wood and the creaking boards and the drafts and the echoes and the ghosts. I left feeling a little bit renewed, like I'd had some sort of spiritual transfusion.

And then I had a fairly good day at work, which included a brief meeting with my boss about several projects I have been working on that needed his input, one being an interview with an intern candidate. "She's got enthusiasm," I said. Like you, he responded. "Me? Are you serious?" Yeah, he said. I hear that banter going on down the hall. And I laugh and say yes.

But later, I'm thinking about banter, and I'm thinking about sitting at my old desk at my old job with my old coworkers. I'm thinking about shouting ideas to my boss next door. I'm thinking about eavesdropping and answering everyone's questions. I'm thinking about fake arguments with STGD about when he's going to get a job done. I'm thinking about raucous lunchtime chats and late afternoon staff meetings and brainstorms where everything goes downhill quick but you can't stop laughing. And I think, That's banter.

Right now -just right now - all the good is rushing into the sad and the past is haunting the present and my heart is creaking against the memories. And I am lonely and struck down with nostalgiaism.

Cheap Therapy

Dear Ray:
I hope you don't mind that I call you Ray, seeing as how you seem to be inside my head these days. And I can attest that's a scary, weird place to be, so I think we can start out on a first-name basis.

I just wanted to say thanks, Ray. Thanks for writing every word, every chord, every note of Til the Sun Turns Black. It's aural therapy. Honestly, I can't stop listening to it - and I don't want to stop listening to it because it's soothing. And so few things fall in that category right now.

I know I'm a barfly...I know it and feel it. I know I've I looked my demons in the eyes, lay bare my chest said do your best to destroy me. And there have been moments where for a while I sat there staring at the photograph. For a while, I cried and tried not to make a scene.

And then I hear you sing, "Don't let your heart get heavy, child. Inside you there's a strength that lies. Don't let your soul get lonely, child. It's only time, it will go by." I want to believe you, Ray, so I just keep listening. Keep hoping it will come true.

Thanks for being inside my head. It was getting lonely in there.

Love,
Ash

How to Feel Every Day

Mendacious requested a blog on blogging about feelings that seem to never change from day to day. I've given some thought to how one should address this matter, and I think a to-do list is in order. Perhaps it's best to catalog and check off the feelings for each day:

StopStopStop
Stop trying so hard to fit in, make a place, put down roots, shake the dust off your feet. Stop worrying about whether or not you think you can do your job, whether or not they think you can do your job, whether or not you really can do your job, whether or not you're going to get fired any moment from your job. Stop looking back and looking forward and looking back and looking forward - it won't help you make sense of what you're looking at now. StopStopStop or else you'll panic.

ThisTimeLastYear
This time last year I was sitting on my back porch reading a book from the library. This time last year I had a job I understood where I sat across the desk from STGD and laughed. This time last year I lived on Grace Street and walked the wide-board wooden floors and sat on the windowsill and dreamed. This time last year I stood on the Cape Fear River. This time last year people knew me. This time last year was another lifetime.

PeoplePeopleEverywhereAndNotaDroptoDrink
People from dawn til dusk, from waking to sleeping. Always someone else occupying the same space as me. Next to me in the office, in the same house. Crowded for breathing room and the thoughts cartwheeling in my head. The people are familiar and unfamiliar, and they are omnipresent, and they do not comfort. People everywhere and yet so lonesome am I.

OneIsTheLoneliestNumber
Try not to think about being alone. Just one. Just me, just me, just me. And I don't know anyone. And I don't know how to meet anyone. And I look jealously upon groups of peolple who appear to be friends. Who laugh with each other. Who talk and know each other's language. And I am just one. Just me.

WhereIsTheEnd?
To round out these feelings, to sort of end where you started and as a nice second to StopStopStop, there is the question of when this ends. How far ahead is the light at the end of the tunnel that you can't see? How long does it take to get to the destination that isn't in sight? How do you find the place on the map if you don't know where you're looking for? How do you tell yourself there will be an end when you really don't know?

Georgia on My Mind

Other arms reach out to me. Other eyes smile tenderly. Still in peaceful dreams I see, the road leads back to you....Some sweet day when the blossoms fall and all the world's a song, I'll go back to Georgia cause that's where I belong. -- Stuart Gorrell and Hoagy Carmichael, "Georgia on My Mind"

About six years ago, I sat in a dorm room and wondered what would happen after graduation. I'd applied to five grad schools, received nice and less-than-nice rejection letters from four and clung to the single hope that my place on the waiting list of the fifth would give way to an actual spot in the M.F.A. program. And two months later, it did.

I made my way to the Carolina coast and started grad school - and at barely 22, I was about as tender and green and unprepared as I could be. But after about a semester, I had managed to find a few friends and a job. I had cried a lot and felt lonely more. And I wondered if I would ever feel at ease in this town. And two years later, I did.

When I arrived, I never imagined that I would stay so long. That grad school would run its course - rife with good friends, good memories and bad workshops. That my part-time job would turn into a full-time career. That I'd start to think of the big yellow house with the red roof as home. That unexpected relationships would be unexpectedly important.

But in the past year, I've started to tire of the long way home. It's six hours at best - and I've seen a few speeding tickets trying to make it less. I long to be closer to family and to put my roots down in the Georgia red clay. I suddenly noticed how flat it is here and found myself wanting hills. Smelled the salt and wished for pine.

And so I've decided to head back to Georgia. It's long been on my mind to do it, and I finally decided that the longing wouldn't go away, no matter how hard I tried to make it. I'm still getting my plans in order, but suffice it to say, I'll be weathering my last spring in Wilmywood. It's been a difficult decision to make - to pack up and say goodbye after so many years. To leave behind friends who have been my family away from family for so long now.

I won't be going back the same person I was when I left. I depended on my family for everything then - I'd hardly ever stepped out of the nest without someone holding my hand. Now I've grown so independent they hardly know what to do with me. I'm so proud of what I've accomplished while I was here and who I've become. And I will miss Wilmywood and the house on Grace Street and the river and the downtown streets. And more than that I will miss friends and faces and morning coffee across the desk from S. and girls' nights with Pen and Mel and gatherings at the bar with my old grad school comrades and dinners at Circa with Justin. I will miss the part of my heart that I will leave here.

And then I will find out if it's true that you can't ever go home again.

Holiday Garland

Driving home from the office Christmas party tonight, I saw the lights from what Wilmywood claims is the world largest living Christmas tree - at least I think that's what it was. And then I had a sudden memory of going to Port City Java with Kim one night right before Christmas when we were in grad school. We were in her Camry with the blue fuzzy steering wheel cover listening to a mix of Christmas music that included the world's deepest bass voice singing "Go Tell It On the Mountain", which I believe Kim said was from a very famous gas station Christmas compilation.

Classes were done, and we were both getting ready to go home and leave our sadly decorated apartments behind for real trees (and real food - as I recall we were living off Chic-Fil-A and Burger King). And Judy Garland's version of "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" came on as we drove down Front Street through the Christmas lights. We started out singing it, and I think by the end of it, we were both crying for wanting to go home. Don't be fooled by that "merry" in the title - that song is sad. And once again, I find myself trying to muddle through somehow until I can go home to a real tree and real food. And sadly, no Kim to sing me Judy Garland.

In the Holiday Dispirit

I decided not to decorate my apartment for Christmas this year. Something about having to haul the decorations down out of my parents' attic - because an old house equals no closet space to store it myself - plus the reality of having to tote it up the many stairs into my apartment made it all seems so exhausting. And so my apartment is as it always is - untidy and decidedly unfestive.

Which may explain, in combination with the uncooperative weather, why I simply seem unable to get into the spirit of the season. I tried unsuccessfully to dream up wonderful gift ideas for family and friends on Saturday, but I drew a blank at every turn. With only so many shopping days left, I've got precious little to put under the tree - about which I seem to be alternately awash with guilt or indifference.

Last night, I went to Wal-Mart. And it was packed, as always. But last night, it was packed with holiday shoppers - mothers who had left the kids at home with dad whose carts were laden with action figures and Barbies; a couple who hustled past me with a little-girl sized pink armchair that read "Princess"; and the family who checked out in front of me with a fake tree and ornaments and two little boys who could hardly wait to get it all home. I bought one little candy-cane striped candle - not really because I was inspired but because I thought maybe the gesture would imbue me with some holiday spirit.

"Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas" is playing. And as much as I'd like to let my heart be light, it seems heavy. And though my troubles should be far away, they seem near. And, for whatever reason, I'm caught between being the Grinch or Scrooge or just plain lonely. And the candle is burning, but somehow, it seems even more sad - one lowly little decoration swallowed up by the emptiness of the apartment.