Today is not a winter-coat weather day, which is what a lot of my knock-on-wood wishes have been going for, I'll admit. This has been the mildest February I've had in years, and I'm lucky for that, but I need to be better, now, and sunshine sure would help. (Speaking of "sure would," I got a copy of Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio for only fifty cents last night, and one of the lit professors made notes in it! Which means that I'm about to embark on a creepy handwriting analysis quest to figure out whose book this is.)
Yesterday was four months since Marshall and I became official, and that's a relief, realzing that we've already gone through the hardest season together. Most of my romantic entanglements start up in the springtime, or the summer, when everything is alive and blooming and green and the world feels staggering in its potential. What I've got now started up in scarf-wearing season; all of the snow and slush, the process of watching things die or migrate, that's all been the backdrop to me&Marshall. I'm ready to get onto spring, where I'll be manic and wanting to skip through the BoGardens and blow dandelion seeds from the stem and wish on shooting stars that are actually just planes flying overhead. I'm much better when it's warmer, when the birds all come back.
It's been almost five months since London, so you'd think I'd be past all that shit, but it's only getting worse, in lots of ways. Crying jags following nightmares, moments where I stop and withdraw and hurt my lover in the process, all of these weird insecurities magnified through the lens of October. I think I'm a bad feminist for still feeling absolutely guilty and ashamed. I would like to talk to my counselor about this, except that that mean, you know, actually talking about what happened, which isn't high on my list of fun conversations, right now. I just want to get on with it. I just want to forget.
Spring break is soon, and I'll get to see my cats again, and my baby brother, and my parents, and my grandma. There's not much left in Erie for me, but what is there means everything. I wonder if (when?) my parents will move, and to where. I don't want to be far away from Grandma; I like best when she's living with us, watching Golden Girls with me and MTV2 with Greg, one hand brushing Spunky while the other throws a ball for Sal to catch. Visits from Ali are really good for me; we watch bad music ideos that make us feel nostalgic and I can tell him all of my anxieties and escapades knowing that he'll be amused and honest in his reactions, that nothing I can say will really shock him ever again. Even if we're not getting heavy, though, even if he just comes by wearing his tight vintage Batman Returns t-shirt and refugee blanket and rambles about hair product, I feel better just knowing that he's in my world. All of my friends are incredible, really, the ones who color my days here and the ones who are too far away for my tastes. I don't know how I lucked into this life, but I do realize how undeserved it all is. Really.
Steve Orlen is doing a reading here tomorrow night, and teaching my Poetics of Perception class tomorrow. I am thrilled for this, especially because it falls in the same week as The Vagina Monologues and Wrestling Season. And seeing Marshall's family, and needing to write a really good story for the Comfort reading, and Headwaters meetings, and Lord fucking Byronfest. And other things, too, almost all of which I'm looking ahead to, especially the world warming up again. This is good, you know? This is how coming out of winter is supposed to feel.
Yesterday was four months since Marshall and I became official, and that's a relief, realzing that we've already gone through the hardest season together. Most of my romantic entanglements start up in the springtime, or the summer, when everything is alive and blooming and green and the world feels staggering in its potential. What I've got now started up in scarf-wearing season; all of the snow and slush, the process of watching things die or migrate, that's all been the backdrop to me&Marshall. I'm ready to get onto spring, where I'll be manic and wanting to skip through the BoGardens and blow dandelion seeds from the stem and wish on shooting stars that are actually just planes flying overhead. I'm much better when it's warmer, when the birds all come back.
It's been almost five months since London, so you'd think I'd be past all that shit, but it's only getting worse, in lots of ways. Crying jags following nightmares, moments where I stop and withdraw and hurt my lover in the process, all of these weird insecurities magnified through the lens of October. I think I'm a bad feminist for still feeling absolutely guilty and ashamed. I would like to talk to my counselor about this, except that that mean, you know, actually talking about what happened, which isn't high on my list of fun conversations, right now. I just want to get on with it. I just want to forget.
Spring break is soon, and I'll get to see my cats again, and my baby brother, and my parents, and my grandma. There's not much left in Erie for me, but what is there means everything. I wonder if (when?) my parents will move, and to where. I don't want to be far away from Grandma; I like best when she's living with us, watching Golden Girls with me and MTV2 with Greg, one hand brushing Spunky while the other throws a ball for Sal to catch. Visits from Ali are really good for me; we watch bad music ideos that make us feel nostalgic and I can tell him all of my anxieties and escapades knowing that he'll be amused and honest in his reactions, that nothing I can say will really shock him ever again. Even if we're not getting heavy, though, even if he just comes by wearing his tight vintage Batman Returns t-shirt and refugee blanket and rambles about hair product, I feel better just knowing that he's in my world. All of my friends are incredible, really, the ones who color my days here and the ones who are too far away for my tastes. I don't know how I lucked into this life, but I do realize how undeserved it all is. Really.
Steve Orlen is doing a reading here tomorrow night, and teaching my Poetics of Perception class tomorrow. I am thrilled for this, especially because it falls in the same week as The Vagina Monologues and Wrestling Season. And seeing Marshall's family, and needing to write a really good story for the Comfort reading, and Headwaters meetings, and Lord fucking Byronfest. And other things, too, almost all of which I'm looking ahead to, especially the world warming up again. This is good, you know? This is how coming out of winter is supposed to feel.
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