Me, The Professor and The Come to Jesus

Some of you have been inquiring about the status of The Professor, considering my mention of a less-than-stellar date with Mississippi and his absence from the tags on posts about the Coldplay concert. The former can be attributed to my determination to keep my options open - I just got back in the saddle, so it seems awfully soon to be narrowing down the field of play. The second can be attributed to my need to keep Coldplay untainted by my flailing dating life.

It wasn't so easy in actuality to separate "The Scientist" and The Professor, since our journey to, enjoyment of, and return from the concert put us together for a solid eight-hour stint. We managed to avoid the heavy stuff until the return trip...but there was no denying it was time for a talk - for each of us to lay out our case for Defining the Status.

He kicked it off by lamenting my distant demeanor and his inability to crack through my shell.

I countered with the well-known fact that three out of the past five weekends, he's spent with his ex-girlfriend (if you count the weekends bookending the entire week she visited). And on that latest jaunt into the past relationship, he attended a Halloween party dressed as an angel - to counter her devil costume. Score one point for me.

But he persisted and explained (as best he could) the tangled and undefined nature of the broken-up-but-friends-not-dating-but-special-relationship situation. If you can deconstruct that one for me, I'll give you a dollar.

And then I explained that this crazy web he's weaving doesn't make me want to let my guard down. Score another point for me.

Then we moved into the P-phase of the discussion in which he used the word "priorities" a lot. I mean. A. Lot. As in, he would really like to be a higher one of mine. (Please, see counter argument numero uno in which I cite his involvement with The Ex.) We went tit for tat for a bit, with him shooting out needs like Han Solo's blaster gun and me deflecting them at every turn with my light sabre.

By that time, we had circled one another quite exhaustingly in a verbal endgame, and we were rolling into the driveway. This provoked a round of conversation in which there existed in his tone a subtle note of disdain for my current living situation that was tempered with (excessive) praise for the closeness of my family and punctuated with The Declaration of Independence: "I just want to make sure you know that I'm dating you and not your family."

In that moment, at 1:30 a.m., hoarse and overwrought from three hours of screaming and the hour of verbal sparring, I felt approximately one quart of acid dump into my stomach, a gallon of ice water pour through my veins, and experienced instantaneous paralysis.

At which, The Professor knew he'd stepped in It. He tried to retract, backtrack, strike the previous statement from the record. Especially after I said, "My family...is non-negotiable."

In the end, it was time to get out of the car, weary, bewildered and bleary-eyed...to bid him adieu on good terms for having bought such amazing seats, and to take his arguments to the jury room with me.

So far, the jury seems to be voting in my favor, pondering holding The Professor in contempt of court, and finding him guilty of being unsuitable for long-term dating. If said verdict is returned...what will the punishment be? Life...in the Friend Zone.

The New Theory of Relativity

Motion is defined by a point of reference.
There are two directions in which you can move - backward from the date of death or forward from it. All things are defined by this point - a nondescript Monday evening in February when the wind was cold and dry. Perhaps it was the wind that defined the motion, sweeping away all that came before and bringing in the chilling days that followed.

***

There is the other point, the great leap of faith from the shores of North Carolina back to the red clay hills of Georgia. The movement from that to this. The movement of time from there to here. The shift in self from the person I was then - so uncertain, so broken, so full of questions - to the person I am now, forged in flame and still standing.

Space and time are relative.
Distance from the point of reference is widened as the days pass. But relatively speaking, the space isn't making the passage of time any easier. As the chasm between then and now broadens, the pain shifts from the sharp, knife-twisting pain to the persistent weight of a leaden heart. And though the weeks roll past, the space of it from everyday life isn't easing. It is there, in your face, on your mind, demanding your attention every second of every day.

***

It's 385 miles from here to there. It's almost been 365 days since I left. The distance sometimes seems other worldly, and the time, another life entirely.

There is no motion greater than the speed of light in a vacuum.
In an instant - the flicker of light hitting the back of your retina, reflected piercingly through the lens - in the vacuum of a sterile white room, life passed. One breath emitted quietly, one last heartbeat against the cavity of a failing body. No motion greater than this - the final falling of the chest and life extinguished, all the light fleeing the world for a moment.

***
This motion swung swiftly through my world like an unmerciful pendulum severing all the lines of second thoughts and uncertainty. On the heels of the light leaving the room, all my questions followed. I stood certainly on polished eggshell white tiles, my hands seeking those of my brother, my father, my mother, my sister, my sister-in-law, and I said, "I am here."

Mass increases as velocity increases.
The faster you try to outrun this tragedy, the greater the weight of the shackles that bind you to it. You can try to escape, pushing one foot in front of the other, call it "going forward" or "moving on", but the truth is, the speed at which you move only heaps the heaviness of heartache upon you, bringing you slowly but surely to a full stop. The sadness alone will determine speed - however achingly slow it wishes to pass, it will do so, without regard to how heavy the burden is to carry.

***
I am running a hundred miles an hour against the wind trying to make sense of this world in which I find myself. And everything I try to outrun is just clinging to my back. Flying unfettered behind me are all sorts of ghosts - sometimes, the ghost of my apartment in the golden spring light; sometimes the job where I felt so sure and accepted; sometimes the friends who knew me soul-deep. And I imagine myself with exacted light steps that fall to the earth with the heaviness of all the filmy white memories streaming behind me.

Mass and energy are equivalent.
This heaviness finds its way into your bones, making them leaden. This heaviness steeps in your veins and dilutes energy. Every time you stand, you are assaulted by lethargy. Every time you think about your heart, you are exhausted. Every time you think of all of the life that has left your sister, you realize that there is nothing left with which to fight.

***
For so long, I fretted over whether I'd done the right thing and gone the right way. I carried the burden of my decision around in my pocket, pulling it out from time to time to reflect upon it. With feverish energy, I reviewed it from every possible angle until there was absolutely no stone left unturned - until there was a rote memory of what lay beneath each stone.

Time is dependent on the relative motion of the observer measuring the time.
Others are simpling measuring days on the calendar. Today is Tuesday. Next week there's a holiday. When can we schedule this meeting? And I see the days marked by days forward from it and days since it happened. And as everyone moves through life, heedless of what happened, I seem to have come to an abrupt standstill.

I'm not sure how to go about redefining the time. I'm not sure how to be a different kind of observer. I'm not sure when the day that Ronnie died will stop feeling like a nightmarish Maypole around which I keep twisting and twisting...

***
The days have ticked off the calendar with astounding speed - at the time, those days seemed to go by with impudent slowness. And yet, here it is, that time when I almost can't say "this time last year" anymore without including a geographical shift. And with that point of reference diminished, I know that there will be nothing left to observe other than the days trickling away from the very worst day of my life. And even as we move forward, it will be a long time before we can say anything is "good" or "happy" or "joyful" without the suffix, "relatively speaking."

The Tipping Point

Several people asked me over the weekend how long I had been back in Georgia. The first time, I looked to the left, calculating in some empty space above my head. "Almost seven months," I said. And then I said it again and again. Oh, wow, I thought, almost seven months.

After a few times, it occurred to me that this is a tipping point. No matter what, this year will be one in which I spent the majority of the year in Georgia. It can no longer be a North Carolina year. As though some proverbial scoring has been tallied, I realized that I'm mostly Georgian now and less of a Carolinian. And I'm not sure how I feel about this shift in the balance of things...this dive toward more of one and less of the other. It's an odd feeling, particularly because this time last year, I was announcing The Big Move to my family. And that alternately feels like yesterday and years ago. It was a tipping point then, to move forward with something I had been thinking about, and, now, it is that uncertain feeling of the slightest movement working in concert with gravity to pull me in another direction.

Choose Your Own Adventure: The Blessing and The Curse

My favorite choose your own adventure book was about searching the pyramids for treasure. At best, you ended up with the Pharaoh's riches; at worst, you ended up trapped in a dead-end tomb with no escape. But the best thing about ending up in that tomb with no escape was that you could simply go back to the beginning of the book, try harder not to lose your map and your flashlight, take the right tunnel instead of the left, and at least walk out unscathed. Over and over, you could choose until you found the right permutation of choices to achieve the best possible ending.

Perhaps it's this early love of revisionist choices that cripples me now. It's not so easy to go back to the beginning of the story and retool the choices to configure a better ending. There are professional, financial and personal implications for every "do-over." The threads of life get all tangled up during the criss crossing.

And yet, today, I was reminded on more than one occasion that choose your own adventure is still possible. The implications are there, yes. But if I shift my focus away from the details of what will happen, I realize that I can go back - or go forward - and find the right ending. I realized that I'm in the incredibly lucky position to have a supporting cast of characters at the ready, whichever way I choose. So that even if I end up in the dead-end tomb, there will be people who love me, who support me, who will have a flashlight handy to lead us out of the dark. And now that I know the ending, the curse of trying to determine how we'll get there.

Handle It

handle: (noun, slang) a name by which a thing is known, described or explained; nickname
Let's call it indigestion, ulcer, acid reflux, "nervous stomach", under the weather, PMS, too much ice cream. An episode. An inconvenience. (Try to laugh about it later.)

handle: (verb) to manage, direct, train or control
Take double-shots of Alka Seltzer, Pepcid AC, Zantac. Crunch Tums like candy. Turn to exercise -- copious amounts of exercise. Lose ten pounds. Go to bed early.

handle: (noun) that which may be grasped as to understand another thing; a key
Examine the symptoms closely. From under the rubble, you may hear a whisper, a single hieroglyph to unlock the Rosetta Stone.

handle: (noun) a part of a thing made specifically to be grasped
It is slippery smooth and shapeless, and just when you think you can grab hold, your fingers close around a wisp of smoke. In your determination to excavate it, you may find that it is not a thing to be found.

handle: (verb) to deal or trade in
I handle broken thoughts, waiting, overanalysis, fragility.

handle: (noun) the total amount wagered in an event
Absolutely everything. I gambled it all to be here.

handle: (verb) to behave or perform in a particular way when operated
Under the circumstances, in the grand leap from one place to the next, I find that I don't handle well at zero gravity. Sputtering and shaky, I'm unreliable at best.

handle: (verb) to touch, pick up or carry
I handle loneliness.

fly off the handle: (idiom) to become very agitated without adequate warning or reason
Cracked.

handle: (verb) to manage, deal with or be responsible for; cope
Begin the search for equilibrium - set out on the quest for an even keel. Map out a way to peace of mind, shepherding thoughts to greener pastures beside quiet waters. I ask kindly, "Restore my soul." And, yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, please, please comfort me.

Don't Panic

Thoughts pell-mell like so many colored kites jagging in storm winds...tugging to get free of their lines, giving slack and then straining, but all the time held tight by a single unyielding thread. Colored blurs flapping, the sound of a playing card on bicycle spokes. A loose thread unraveling, the reel coming free.

Lines tangle. Kites crash.

One singular sensation
It starts with...
...thrumming blood, right ear, so hard I press my finger in to make sure the drum won't burst
...sharp tightness, central chest, pinching beneath the bow of my sternum
...dull nausea, stomach pit, slick and threatening...

Pleasemakeitgoaway

Fight the pricking tears. Fight the gag reflex. Fight the breath coming so fast that is never enough. Fight the claustrophobia of mind.

AndIdon'tknowwhy

Wracking shivers but I am not cold. Or maybe I am. I am numb and feeling everything amplified - a sense of irrational imploding. Attempting sleep, but in the darkness, all I can think is

Pleasemakeitgoaway

If I fall asleep, it is to wrestle like David with an Angel, restless and overpowered. And when I wake, it is to purge.

Justtomakeitgoaway

AndIdon'tknowwhy

The Georgia Identity

The reason I didn't start work this week is because a) I'm not insane and b) I am still an illegal alien in the state of Georgia. The time has come at long last for me to surrender my NC self and convert back to a true Georgian.

First step, the DL. Getting a driver's license in any state under any conditions is generally a pain. But this time around, it was downright humiliating. I had to provide proof of residence - you know, bank statement (not converted to GA yet), utility bill (not in my name), canceled rent check (nonexistent), or proof of employment (sighs...aha). So I was forced to email the HR director at my new job to request a letter of employment since I'm living with my parents and have no other proof of residence. Yes, I had to make it overtly clear to my new employer that I live at home. The experience itself was rather painless - even though I went to the DMV armed with the iPod, Northanger Abbey and a notebook for thoughts and observations during what I estimated would be an interminable wait. They called my number before I could even get the forms filled out.

I have to say that it was with some sadness and definite reluctance that I surrendered my NC driver's license to the examiner. That license is like a badge of honor, and I have a particularly fond memory of the day I got it (even though the NC examiner called me a cyclops because of my terrible vision in one eye). [An aside to the great state of Georgia - please improve your camera equipment. My license photo looks like it was taken with a bad camera phone in a bar. And the composition. It's not flattering to any lady to have a photo that cuts right across the middle of her bustline. But I digress.] Plus, the state requires me to send my plate back, too. The injustice!

As I trade in my planes for peaches, I can't shake the feeling that I'm surrendering a little bit too much. And perhaps it's horrible to admit, but I suddenly feel Just Like Everybody Else. Like somehow, having gone outside the bounds of Georgia qualified me as Being Different. It's like some sort of superhero who gives up her powers for the good of mankind and agrees to live like a mere mortal among them. I had taken the road less traveled and then I backtracked all that way to the most benign, most familiar of lanes. At least now, it's legal for me to drive on them.

Leaving: Part Six - Love Letter to a Ghost Town

Dearest Wilmywood:
I fought you for so many years, unable to see the ways that you were slowly, inextricably becoming a part of me. Your landscape was my landscape - your streets mapped out in my brain, your buildings in my mind's eye, your river and ocean made my boundaries. I know your steepled skyline, your cobbled streets, your ancient trees and your columned houses. And while I was fighting to let go, I found so much to hold on to that now you haunt me.

And flashing over the bridge, I saw the familiar riverfront and I met my ghosts. There was the ghost of my life past, an eerie shadow of all that belonged to me that no longer does. An apartment I no longer have a key for in a house that still seems like mine. And the office that I sat in has two desks and someone who started the day after I left. Three have joined the company and another is leaving, such that in just a few months time, the cracks have shifted and filled and the place that I was is gone.

On your streets, I saw strangers and tourists and realized that I am a stranger to you now. This is the ghost of my present life, a subtle shift in things that reminds me that change has come. New buildings, construction along familiar streets, a sudden moment driving when I couldn't remember where to go. I've left and you've gone on. You're a different city, and I am a different person, and we simply can't be what we once were.

All of this made all too real by a phone call on the way to see you in which I accepted a new start. And here we meet the ghost of my future life, the hollow-eyed face of the unknown. Even as I was there with you, I was thinking about it - this life in another place that I'm headed towards. This ghost is the most frightening, for it tells me that, to go with it, I must let go of more of what I'm holding.

And, Wilmywood, I must tell you, I don't want to let go. I want to hold on to you and Grace Street and the river and the places that I know. I want to make friends with the ghost of the past, change the ghost of the present and turn my back on the ghost of the future. But we both know I can't do that. We both know it was time for me to go.

But it doesn't mean that I don't miss you. That I don't know now that I loved you. That I didn't cry when I drove away from you, on the street I know so well, past the buildings that marked my existence. And even as I leave, it's all printed in my mind. I'm going now, taking hold of that future, but we'll always have what we shared. And, if we're honest, I think we both know, you'll still be a part of me.

Love,
Ashley