universal truth

Sometimes I feel the great weight of this whole thing--being apart, knowing it isn't the last time, and knowing I still have to perform, [all] at once.

Mine is an act of blind compulsion. At 7am the squealing pulse of my cell phone goes off. I have nowhere to be, most likely, but anything later than that hour feels wasteful and lazy. I sit up in bed bed, fumbling for my glasses and make my way to the bathroom. Everything following this routine is the result of the necessity to hurl myself toward darkness, another day's end. If I don't think about the "great weight" or if I simply move forward faster than I think it can keep up, or if I tell myself that the inconvenience is almost over, not a pattern in the cycle that will soon form our life together, then the hours feel normal, like my friends', like the lives of conventional people.

No one spells out the phases of separation. No one has so kindly written What to Expect When You're Expecting Him to Return. Maybe I wouldn't have liked knowing that the last weeks would split my personality into multiples, none of which perform independently. Instead they vie for the spotlight hungrily, without reservation. I am angry and broken hearted and giddy with excitement, and overflowing-happy, while tears pool in dark spots on my clothes and vainly shouted curses ricochet from wall to wall, unheard. I have embraced the control that lies in day-long check lists and home projects and rendezvous with friends that have become my family. There are time-spots left open for washing dishes and ceremonies put into play for scrubbing sinks and the tub. This autonomy makes sense, this is what had to happen.

Now I am asked to hang in waiting for a coded word, then the next one and the next until he finally steps from the magic vessel that will bring him home. I'm no good for these terms, and what about after, when my lists are disrupted and my support group is pushed into second place, and the Army has control again of more than just an arrival date. How does the switch flip smoothly? How is it possibly fair to be expected to bounce from one existence to the other without suffering an inevitable and utter breakdown?

I don't have the patience or the focus to write. It certainly isn't that I don't have material. Turn on the news--I have LOTS of commentary. I have traveled to both ends of America this summer. And now that my personal life is slowly settling down, while the world is keeping it's usual, tumultuous pace, I just can't find the desire to express myself in words. The Middle East has temporarily made me a reader instead of a"writer."

I wish that my bank account or possibilities at world peace or something else equally worthwhile would swell in accordance with my stress and anxiety levels on this trip. Calling it a vacation would be overstating the experience thus far. Day two was...better? --was less explosive than day one. I have been accused of an endless number of shortcomings and told how to correct them. I have been warned of the immanent failure these character flaws will bring to all hopes of a successful future with The Staff Sergeant, who is inconveniently otherwise unacknowledged.

Two summers ago when Dad and I set off for 3000 miles in his suburban, I worried that it would be like pitting two angry dogs against each other, in a tiny ring, to fight to the death. I was pleasantly surprised that we only had one small tiff in Canada over driving tunes. Outside of that secluded incident (due to having almost no taste at all in music and the insistence in his never failing rightness) the trip was great. So when he asked about Savannah and Charleston this summer, I agreed.

It has been trying, to say the least. I found that today flowed much more smoothly after my mint julep at lunch...and then again after my early evening glass of pinot grigio. At some point, on this great disaster of a southern journey, I hope that he finds something other than my grades to be proud of or to agree with or to simply just accept.

Tomorrow we see Charleston.

will the circle be unbroken

Life at the end of a semester is something like I imagine Plath's bell jar was, or rather the motive for her crawling beneath the house, taking pills, and truly hoping not to be found. At any rate, try to understand the madness and the always-tingly-tightness of anxiety as a physical symptom - strung across the muscles of a lower back - and the lack of sleep and the gnashing of teeth and pulling of hair. That has been the last two or so weeks. Then there was my invitation for a Mother's Day weekend, which was mostly kind of okay except for the lingering anxiety and equally tingly-tightness of muscles prolonged by comparisons to my father or early afternoon drinking or the mention of a man friend. I wanted a couple of days to lavish in the freedom of my first year of grad school completed but it didn't work out that way. Tomorrow morning (earlier than I had planned for) my father, who just today compared me to my mother, is picking me up for a week long road trip to the coast of South Carolina. While a suburban is a fairly spacious vehicle, I often feel that the 250 miles between here and home is not enough area of space. If I had had the time to myself, the luxury of surfacing slowly enough to avoid the bends, I would likely not be so dreading the next 7-8 days.

It's difficult to understand what has happened over the last four months. Mom kindly pointed out that she was worried about me having spent so much time alone - a comment spawned out of one of my explanations of these new lifestyle changes. But something has changed in me. I used to be this independent before I left their house, before I had the physical escape of leaving the tumultuous energy of home. I would sit in my room and do god-knows-what for hours without being bored. I mostly recall painting in the floor, the oatmeal carpet stained multicolored with acrylic pigment, the therapy they never funded.

When the rooms here felt too silent I looked to those memories for reassurance. Then one day I was strong enough to just look forward. The unsettling part has been realizing that I have re-arrived here, that I am somehow enough and that I am content. As I was talking to a friend about this very phenomenon, she used a phrase that struck home, "false independence," as in feeling needless in the front of one's mind while holding tightly to the security that remains in him, even if he's not here. It's like her daughter - able to walk but refusing to take a step without the aid of an adult's finger gripped within her tiny fist. Maybe I've only sold myself on the hype, just like I'm supposed to, distanced myself through days upon days of the mantras, the whatever-it-takes methods of coping. In the process I have fallen in love with my little piece of the world. This house is my domain. This house that I thought I could only loathe and curse is my niche, and I kind of hate the thought of leaving my security if only for a week. Leaving means breaking all of those habits that I've built my independence on. In moments like these, on the eve of variation, I dread packing and driving away from the reliability of home. I miss him more. I feel like a traitor to the routine that keeps me from flying apart in all directions. I start to feel short of breath.

He sent a couple of pictures the other day of him Over There. His smile is still perfectly heartbreaking and his eyes and his form and his skin-just-out-of-reach, and what I first thought was how much I wanted to touch his hair. He in his uniform and my bags waiting to be packed make the earth shift underneath my steady footing. Yesterday all of this seemed so much easier, and coming full circle, it would seem that my sense of independence is completely false. I have wagered my ability to survive on the continuation of a domestic cycle of old things done in new ways and old passions reignited. I've gone back to my savior, Creation. As long as my hands are busy, as long as I can dovetail the pieces that I've made, I'm fine. You would never know how much it hurts to be apart from him - most of the time these days I don't.

It started as an exercise in growth, and then ironically it become a blatant instance of mockery and self-loathing.

Dear year-ago-self,

You are the bane of my existence. Hope it was good back then, that you were having lots of sex, being treated to hot dates, and that you appreciated it for what it was worth!  And that concludes the very brief and futile walk down memory lane.  I should probably stick to the here-and-now to avoid any further jolts to my fragile state of sanity.  Was the dimple thing necessary?  [super gross.]

Your older, embittered present self,

SP

2 of 31: giving (in)

What I really meant to say had nothing to do with weather, storms of any genre, except maybe this one back home that has yet to pass [figuratively]. But because I have some dignity, although unapparent to the naked eye, I asked about it there to keep from crying. The bare essence of pride, that that's left, kept me from demanding a verbal shrine, a garrulous flow of all the reasons and ways that you love me, something completely selfish and over-indulgent, concentrated like last season's apple butter or the jar of marshmallow cream for s'mores that arrived a few days ago.

It's more desperate than the boxes can conceive or deliver, right now but not always.

Despite claims of pride, or fraying threads of pride and strength and normalcy, I really meant to free the contents of myself this morning, not that unraveling on the phone would make any one of the circumstances change shape or even appear to. I would still like the luxury of not caring, the freedom of a child to wail full-force, head thrown back, the rest of me limp in surrender just because it is sometimes too much to house this sadness within my body.

What was I thinking?

Tomorrow morning I have to teach two English 1020 classes before noon.  Tomorrow morning may be a two-cup coffee day.  Come to think of it, tomorrow morning may be ripe for a number of out of character activities, such as: vomiting in my new purse, actually forgetting my name, crying in front of two classes of college freshman/sophomores, getting drunk before 9am, actually forgetting coherent language, totally forgetting the way that "Young Goodman Brown," "Boys and Girls," "The Lost World," "Araby," and Erdrich's character, Lipsha all share the commonality of innocence lost to experience.  

I'm just a teensy bit nervous about this endeavor.  I keep imagining myself walking into the classroom and through some supernatural occurrence, they all know that I am horrifically under-qualified even to be supervising them for a period of 55 minutes.  It's a little like the dream where you're naked in pubic.  While I will surely remember to dress myself, what if they know I have no business being their temporary authority on American Literature?  This is only my second semester and I wasn't an English major.  I am the epitome of "fish out of water."  My second dreaded scenario is that they all have I.Q.'s infinitely higher than mine so that when they ask me questions, I have no. idea. how. to. answer.

Back to the lesson plan.

you know all the rules by now

I'll preface the following with this character flaw: I can be a little neurotic.  

I missed Thursday's call and then Friday's.  I blogged that already.  

I was crossing the street when I noticed the second one and I thought, though just for a fleeting second, about stopping mid-stride.  To say that I was angry with myself would be an understatement.  Both prompted minor episodes of...[cough]...graceful disappointment but life went on.  I kept the phone close all day Saturday and Sunday but by Sunday night I could no longer stave off the throes of absolute hysterics.  

I struggle with the lack of control that this deployment seems to yield.  Two missed calls back-to-back is one thing.  Worrying that he might think it was intentional is another.  After four days of furious festering, all I could think about was the probability that he had concluded I no longer loved him.  In retrospect I can acknowledge the level of ridicule that this deserves, however in the moment it was reasonable fuel for a kind of discord that unhinged me.  I couldn't tell him that I was punishing myself for the simple error of a silenced phone.  I couldn't tell him that he had done nothing but make this easier for me, that I love him to pieces, that I was sorry.  I couldn't do anything more than watch for a tiny screen to light up, "unknown."

This morning I finally got to talk to him.  My mouth opened and apologies gushed like dammed water released -  

IloveyouandI'msosorryandpleasedon'tthinkIwouldignoreyouonpurpose

[breath]

I don't think I could be too angry to want to hear your voice.  Please don't think I don't love you.

I think he phrased it as, "jumping to extreme conclusions," and I'm pretty sure he said so laughing.  After all he knows me and how I let the cynical committee of judges in my head take over sometimes.  He assured that he never once entertained any one of the crazy things that I had assumed and that he had never questioned how much he is loved.  

After our conversation, I was too relieved to feel as embarrassed as I should have.  He is the Reason and Strength in this couple.  I grip tightly and sink in my heels, all the while hoping for just enough prowess to portray a state of sanity.  

hoping and praying

It's 7:25am where he is.  It's already tomorrow; he's one day closer than I am to the end of this deployment.  As I'm sitting in my living room watching the 10 o'clock news, I can't keep my thoughts away from him.  I wonder what he is doing, if he's having a cup of coffee to start his morning or if maybe he is just now rolling over and blinking in another day.  I wonder if he's thinking of what I'm doing.  I wonder if he knows that I'm thinking of him, sitting here on the sofa, bundled up in his much-too-large hoodie, wishing I could find that crook where I fit under his arm, into him.  

Most likely he's the kind of busy that forgets first-thing coffee.  That's how he is, focussed and deliberate.  He's probably been awake for a while already, keeping everyone else in line.  But maybe he does know that my thoughts are all colored by him.  I've started thinking that we might be connected enough for him to sense my mindful vigil, or maybe that's just a game I play to dissolve the potency of so many miles.  

For the first time since he left I have managed an even keel.  It all depends on how busy I can keep myself or how many distractions I can cram into a day.  I slept in his bed last night and did some laundry and continued my rediscovery of Six Feet Under from his couch.  I can feel him most strongly there and I swear his sheets cleanse my dreams.  I woke rested this morning to very wintry temps, but not as cold as predicted for tomorrow.  I got up slowly and showered and packed my stuff and left, locking the door behind me.  I'll be back soon but he knows.  

I met a friend for lunch and then met the cable guys back at my place where I was given the gift of technology once again!  And after they had climbed some poles and clamored  around in the basement, and asked a lot of questions and scanned the goodies on the desktop of my computer, I had internet and limited basic cable [and thoughts of restraining orders].  Hooray!  Then my mom showed up for a few days of assisted unpacking and the performance of a circus side show that I can't describe without visual aids.  I will say that the immediate addition of alcohol made it more bearable, made everything more bearable.  Even though this is how the crazies live, my mind stayed away from sad, sad thoughts, the kind that split your heart and punish you with too many tears before bed.  It was a good day, considering.

And now I'm thinking about bed because it's getting late where I am.  I'm toasty warm in his sweatshirt.  I'm getting ready to pull out the book I started reading the morning he shipped out.  I'm full on peaceful, wonderful memories and thoughts of him and looking forward to the cookies I'll make tomorrow for our first care package of this trip.  

[safest thoughts to you, my soldier, and all of my heart, too.] 

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night

I'm home for Christmas and just like last year it isn't what I had hoped for.  I've had to cut my trip short and neither parent is pleased with the abbreviated visits.  There is no tree at my Dad's, no empathy at Mom's.  It seems more probable that this is the going rate now, the status quo, expected.  I had wanted so much more from the holidays this year -- a roaring fire and the twinkle of tiny lights descending from a tree's peak in woven spirals and that intangible, indescribable feeling of comfort and rightness.  I hate that my muscles now clench as the oddities of others become irritants that mark the Christmas season, for example, the 62 inch projection of an exclusive musak channel.  

My father reminded me on the way home from the big family dinner that I do have much for which to be thankful.  And I do, though it really is difficult to clear away the fog of Murphy's Law long enough to give appropriate praise for physical health and economic security.  I have the pleasure of loving an amazing man who treats me like a princess.  I take a lot of things for granted, nevertheless I'm tired of fighting battles.  Maybe I ask for too much or expect too much.  Maybe I outgrew Christmas with age.  Maybe I actually am lost in a sea of raging idiots.  I'm leaning toward the latter and it chips away daily at my usual disposition and temperament.  I want one day to pass without a major trial, and to forget for one day the notions of deployment and war and divorce and wrong-doers.  I want a simple task to be effortlessly executed.

Perhaps tomorrow will be the day, a Christmas miracle, if you will.

lost and insecure [you found me]

I don't know what I'm hoping to get out of life, much less this blog.  Like others, I'm torn between living and recording the motions.  There's a time and place for sharing and sometimes life's momentum just gets to whirring and buzzing and humming all at once and you're swept along in the swiftness of it.  This has mostly been attributed to the end of the semester.  In a few words, grad school is a hell of a lot more than I ever expected.  It not only engulfed me in its currents, but it held me under turbulent waves for much of the latter half of 16 weeks.  There are a dozen other trials that have kept my stress levels at maximum capacity, but it's probably better not to air it all right now for reasons of op-sec and patience.  

Though the blog halted, life goes on.  I'm waiting on my grades and anticipating A's.  I surprised myself and a handful of professors.  I made a new family of fellow english grad students and made a homey little nest out of our one, lone conference room.  I know Louise Erdrich better than she may know herself.  I know the Cult of True Womanhood to degrees of nauseam.  I fell in love with the ideals of the Expressivist movement led by Elbow and Murray.  I wrote my first short story and again surprised myself.  I did a number of seemingly unconquerable tasks and crushed them beneath my tiny feet.  

I keep thinking about that Eleanor Roosevelt quote: "You must do the thing you think you cannot do."  I believe that idea alone sums up the year.  I finally graduated college.  I survived months and months of army induced separation and survived.  I somehow defied all notions of feasibility by getting into this masters program on such short notice, and beyond that, I have excelled.  Those are the hills that I've climbed, leaving the horizon speckled with far-off flags bearing my crest -- pink and flowery, for sure.  The mountains, however, await, standing rugged, impossibly tall and taunting. 

 Next year is coming all too strong and quickly, like a train whose force makes the earth tremble long before arriving.  This is my life now.  There is no turning back.  It's ironic how badly I want it and also how fiercely I dread it.  I have to keep looking back on the achievements, on the things I never thought I could actually pull off until I landed on the other side of Trying and the ride was over and I was still intact.  Love and wanting are tangled in some powerful magic, and perhaps I am a little stronger than I thought.  But I won't admit it often, for it isn't often that I feel it might be true.

if only a sigh were loud enough

My muscles pinch and crawl like intolerable little spiders up and down my back, up the length of my neck, around my middle.  I balance in between grabbing for the swimmy-head, stomach tickling anxiety pills and screaming and swinging and unbinding any sense of composure I have ever held myself together with.  

I don't understand why there are times when each single task erupts into odyssey after odyssey.  It's god-damn over-the-phone bill paying.  It is MADE to provide a convenient service!  Charge me ONCE, not twice OR not at all!  It's tracking down the apparently out-of-print book for 19th century lit. that LITERALLY is only housed at the smallest, out-of-the-way-est library known to mankind, and it only took 10 phone calls and an absurd conversation with the 85-year old uninformed campus librarian who could NOT explain to me why the online catalog listed the fucking book as both "available" and "checked-out" before I could lay my twitching, exhausted hands on its cover.  And it's the bionic fleas that refuse to surrender the sweet, tender flesh of my poor, suffering dog, and the vet money I don't have and every cure I've tried [as best as I could].

I meant to tackle backed-up homework, though the universe clearly had other plans.  I spent the day unpuzzling an unexpected Rubiks Tuesday.  A couple of times I considered erasing my notion of maps and to-do's and driving aimlessly forever, but I settled on cooking my woes into oblivion.  I checked-out the book, had treated the dog with prescriptions and unearthed an intricate grocery list from the bowels of my purse.  I wandered until I found myself parked in a grand Kroger lot.  With eco-friendly shopping bags and wallet in hand, I entered the automatic gates of Salvation.  Ripe palettes of produce, chirping lasers kissing barcodes, panes of frozen aisles, warm yeasty shelves of bread; I love this pocket of life better than the hilarity of the world at large.  With my blue bag brimming full of dairies and veggies and tubes of dough, I caught myself before making my way to the finish-line cash register.  Hard cider and less of a white-knuckled grip on each angry minute beyond the thick walls of food would feel nice.  Finished, I went to pay.

This is where I picked up [yesterday].  And rising today, full on sleep and drawn by sunshine I started collecting myself, directing myself, finding my Wednesday purpose.  All was well and free of anxious, crawling muscles until I dumped out my purse for re-organizing.  No wallet.  Of fucking course: no wallet.  Because how could a day be whole without the blinding frustration of something amiss!?  And again I want to drive away, uncoil my mind with a pill, fire up the oven or uncork a thick, glass bottle of freedom.  

It's still at Kroger, holding my place in the land of salvation, only I'm miles and miles away, stuck in the here and now.

Presidential Debate [no. 2]

Welcome to my alma mater, Belmont University.  We may be a small, private school you haven't ever heard of, but who cares?  You know us now.

The audience begins to arrive via Gray Line tour buses. 

(This is the same building where I graduated!)

One of several viewing parties.  

We are live from Bongo Java, home of the Nun Bun.

Before our mesmerized gazes is a giant screen and all around our hungry ears is the booming volume of arguing politics.  We are pretending we aren't mere yards away from the Great Hoorah, but that we are there as well.  

Even more impressive was the crowd watching the outside screen in the 60 degree, pouring rain.  They are the true rockstars of the evening, and their numbers are many, many times those of us sheltered by the coffee house.

photo credits owed to tennessean.com

um. so. yeah.

I rubber-stamped some manila folders [to keep my school papers organized and fashionable] but I couldn't stop there. I've had a strangely creative day in comparison to this summer's drought-for-ideas and this whole blog thing - it remains a festering sore. It seemed an appropriate time to give this place a bit of focus. I can't decide what I want with it, and frankly, I shouldn't even be thinking about a blog with all of the reading I should be maintaining. I'm a believer that balance must be found and also, it's Friday, so I let my mind creatively wander to bloggier places than Erdrich and Jacobs.

[but only for a spell]

I'm thinking that this could absolutely not be what I want out of "new" and "fresh." What the hell, though, right? If we all cumulatively despise a limp attempt at irony, The Sound is only an upload away. For now, I'm going to sleep on this and see how you respond. We'll convene next week for a final judgment.

detour

After talking for almost two years about graduate school, I've scrapped the lukewarm chatter. Last week I succumbed to impulse and applied for the Fall 2008 semester. Surprisingly, I got in! Mentally ready or not, I begin the newest new chapter in about two weeks and I can't wait! Soon I will be embarking upon an MA journey in English creative writing.

Soon and very soon

Sucking low and full into empty lungs, a breath is held. The first seconds are uneventful, novel even, before the warm burning in your core begins. The fire spreads, igniting concern that soon sets ablaze panic and desperation. Skin flushes then glows, and theoretically turns a plummy shade of purple. Following the climactic peak - air, a theatrical and exaggerated inhale preceding a return to natural rhythm.

Hurry up! [and wait]

Pensive, waiting, timing the captive lungful. Days never pass fast enough. Twenty-four hours double and triple themselves into grueling painstaking barriers. And I tell myself his jokes once more. And imagine the reunion, play my scripted Hollywood versions over and over and over. Even my mental cast is tired of running through the scenes.

Tick. Tick. Tick.

Eyes shut tight to relive hungry, deliberate kisses. Reread the letters, each word artfully plucked from fathoms too deep to measure. Over and over and over... Try on the first-time-we-meet-again wide-leg jeans and floral halter. Try on the buttercup wedges for full effect. It doesn't matter that we're eons away from reunion. Try them on just one more time. 1200 calories, it's crunch time. Perfection. Shoot for the moon. Be stunning.

Holy blue-in-the-face!

Maybe he will...[not a chance, dreamer]. Walk five miles to imagine how he could but won't. Knowing that reality is the first to go before fantasy takes the driver's seat doesn't stop the imagination. What if he remembers me in some inflated form? What if that last letter said too much? What about meeting his mother? What about heart palpitations from self-induced anxiety? What about irrational fears? Fitful is the new Restful sleep.

I only wrote it 'cause I know he CAN'T be reading [now].

It happened last summer, too. Channels of information would barrel by, sideswiping me in the gossipy whirl of the newly engaged. I tried to let the confetti fall then with less effect, then when I was raw and refusing to heal. And now full on love also, I mask the sting of envy but artfully, more optimistically, more contented. I have found that I actually am glad for those embarking upon such a merging, in the same way I have grown to appreciate friend's whose soldiers have returned while mine remains away. It is one of the most grown-up lessons I've learned thus far, to be happy for others when the same place inside is filled with only echoes.

I'm one of those girls who dates with agenda, who loves with future visions, and scribbles a familiar first name with possible lasts [Mrs. The Staff Sergeant]. And for the first time, I am not met with similar views. I brought up the taboo language of Marriage once, too early of course. It blew up with a cacophony of offense and defense, blubbering and recoiling. We survived though.

- I'm sorry about last night.

- I'm sorry it scared me.

We carry with us the heavy weights of childhood impressions, though I am unsure why I want it so - the last name, the family-of-two, the Home anchor. But I do. I do ten-fold when he's gone and I'm weary from absence, and wondering, but pretty sure he doesn't think about Us that way. And week after week more futures spin by like trains with destinations I cannot see. Life works out how it should, I know, but there's no one I could imagine being more perfect than him. There is no one else I would willingly follow to the ends of the earth, through the obstacle course of Army, and war.

We're closing in on a year and maybe it seems rushed to claim readiness. But don't they say that when you know, you know?

so THIS is the journey for which I've been longing?

I've concluded that I am really quite dull as a newly-graduated, single-but-not individual. Today's high point was a pair of paisley pajamas, that mind you, match the latest purchase of my table linen craze.

[Make that painfully dull.]

Oh, and I can't leave out the errand I was hopefully looking forward to following work - exchanging a pair of unmentionables for The Staff Sergeant. Annnnd just for good measure, and because I am not absolved of my pathetic solitary existence with only those few sad confessions, I stopped by the cologne counter on my way out of the store to douse a card stock sliver with his scent. It should be easy to make an evening of drinking [alone], huffing the magic of Kenneth Cole, hypnotized by the over-dramatic absurdities that constitute Lifetime television, all clad in said paisley jammies.

Enviable, no?

out of control

I've been falling short in the blogging world but rapidly excelling in the one of Domestic Goddessery. I always seem to do things backwards. It's one of my signature trademarks. I bought a house at 20 and shed it for apartment living. My collegiate journey entails a number of forward and backward motions, and now I have taken up nesting long before I have a partner to nest for or with. But to my credit, it does put me leaps and bounds ahead in my goals to dethrone the reign of Martha Stewart one good thing at a time.

While I haven't been here launching creative ideas through prose, I have been busy in my mind redecorating and stocking my life with such creature comforts that enable one to claim that they are one or two steps closer to being a real-life, adult, girl. It began with china - fine china. I used my graduation money to purchase the most beautiful, S. Princess-esque white and gold set of Richard Ginori, "Duchessa Gold." It was love at first sight and when the shipment arrived, it was like Christmas! Naturally the gorgeous plates and cups and saucers and coffee pot needed a vintage cream and sugar...so I ebay-ed until I found a pair that added a little funk to the mix. With special plates, I needed fancy table linens...and acquired several many tablecloths and napkins and chargers, etc. And because I had all of these new pieces with which to entertain I needed a place to house them - enter vintage sideboard/china cabinet. And while I was seeking out the furniture to hold the china, I happened upon a spectacular vintage dresser that needed to come live in my bedroom...and a Dwell duvet cover because...[at this point, why the hell not?].

...so you see, it's been a rambling and ridiculous frenzy of gathering, and I have justified it through the reasoning that I am now a grown-up and need an adult home. I need adult china and linens and old, substantial furniture, and new stemware and more silver. There's no time to blog when the writer is 100% consumed with and obsessed with collecting crap. That's part of it. The other part is the value of a thorough distraction. I haven't talked to The Staff Sergeant in 11 days and counting. This stint is a rough and lonely one, and as I excuse my crazed behavior with the "adult" tag, I'll also admit that it's an outlet used to soak up the Lovesick.

'cause light strikes a deal with each coming night.

Reason suggested that I wait until we were face to face because our moments of attempted [serious] communication can be understated by a comparison to torture. We don't work it out, we just wear each other down until we're tired and disarmed and I've cried and he's taken the lord's name half a dozen times in that raspy, far away tone.

And in the last text I sent, I "said that I needed time," which he accurately decoded, a little to my dismay. I didn't want to talk to him. Didn't want to read the little digital message about the sun and the good day he hoped I was having. Didn't want to think of his eyes or his smile or his wonder and intelligence. I wanted them gone...like in the cartoon when the wee man with the giant pencil turns it over and begins erasing. I wanted a faintness to descend on the things that would break my heart so that my mental departure would perhaps be less devastating.

In the minute before I desperately wanted him on the phone, I desperately never wanted to hear his voice again. So naturally I called and texted in a manner that only an established girlfriend can get away with. I hated him and loved him and hated and loved myself and hated and loved the warm spring air and hated the heavy-heartedness of night. But I decided that it needed to be now, the dreaded tete-a-tete, because I'm that impulsive. And when his returned call interrupted the voicemail I was leaving on his phone, I threw my trusty maze of madness out the window and gave clarity a go.

He confirmed some fears. I created some. I secured myself close to composure and his boots crunched earth beneath them. He walked and listened. I parked and talked. Then he talked and I listened. Making sure not to venture too far from the mold, he still spat an abbreviated hiss or two and I shed a few silent tears. I hope he understood that I understand a great deal, though I am also overwhelmed with the unfamiliarity of acronyms and objectives. I know that giving himself is hard under the kind of pressure put on him. I also know that "manning-up" is not my style.

He has to go before we can really even begin. He says, "I love you. I really do." and for the first time in weeks, I believe it [the words]. And he's sorry, so sorry that I'm feeling distraught and sorry that it "falls on his end."

[I'm sorry that I'm not stronger. I'm sorry I had to tell you that I'm scared it all might be too much.]

In a voice unexpectedly calm, I tell him, "we just need to figure out how to make it work." And before he again leaves behind the world where I exist and enters the other, he affirms that "we will."