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."

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.

the silence [i] keep from [my] head

I try to look happy and somewhere in my heart I must actually be happy for them, but mostly I'm the same kind of jealous as every other summer of my adult life when the engagement announcements come pouring in. I just learned that one of my oldest friends is getting married. I think I knew him when he was three years old. It's hard enough to believe that we're so much older and that I think we should all be so much more experienced, so much further aged than we are. And then the childish tears well, the whiney phrase, "not fair" finds use, and the pacing begins and I can no longer look around the elephant in every room. I think to myself, "well, wouldn't it be nice..."

This time it has very little to do with someone else being in a place that I am not - metaphorically speaking. Instead it has everything to do with the volume and obstacle of oceans and continents, this goddamn war, the lushness of spring versus alien deserts. We've talked about "taking the plunge" but...a voice is a delay is a phone call is lacking. This is neither the time or place and that is precisely the notion that throws me off balance. Life on pause is worse than life remodeled, is worse than living like the hours are mine. I can lose myself in a frenzy of recipes and organic vegetable seeds and cold brewed coffee and local eggs and manual mowers and prayers and mantras and clean plastics, but only until I remember:

I want him to come home.

I want him to come home.

I want him to come home.

a place for everything::everything in its place

I can't believe it's already Friday. Another week down is a good thing both in deployment terms and in grad school terms. This semester has been far less magical than last and less inspiring and less motivating. I've dragged through it because I had to, much like the days that he has been gone. The day he left I lived through the coming months in big bites, overwhelming concepts that drew my stomach up into my throat and left an empty chasm where it belonged. I felt like crawling out my skin in the most desperate and panicked way. Looking back, that seems so long ago, but then again, we're already on the other side of all my enormous measurements - seasons, semesters, length of daylight. And for most of the time that I've powered recklessly through British Romance poetry and fallen asleep without his arms around me, I've been surprisingly okay.

I have found little things to occupy my mind and stories that I've gathered to color all the hours. Though one of my biggest fears was learning to live on my own, misery-free, I've come to love most of it. There are times, like yesterday when I really do wish that he was here, but not in the cry-myself-to-sleep way, more in the he-knows-how-to-shoot-big-guns way. Not that I don't...

(me topping the badass scales - Winter '07)

...but he's better.

I pulled out of my driveway en route to the post office and to the vet. I backed out, righted my direction only to see three police cars pulled haphazardly onto the curb of my street, three doors down. Lights were flashing, a few cops were coming around the corner, an obvious exit from the premise, and a stand up gentleman stood cuffed behind the trunk of the closest vehicle. This falls into the "ignorance is bliss" section of life. I felt much more settled not knowing that a criminal lived on my block. I'm making double sure that the doors are locked and that every outdoor sound is over-analzyed and that I sleep with one eye open.

In other news, the garden project continues to prosper. The back-up patio tomato (the one not grown from seeds) and the homegrown zucchini squash, along with my window box of sprouting spinach and romaine lettuce all found homes outside yesterday. They're growing up so fast! My herbs are nestled in a sunny corner of my porch and the poppies continue to explode into thread-thin stems with miniature leaves. Inside my summer squash and sweetie tomato have just this morning shown through the soil, and I'm still giving the sweet pepper and straight eight cucumber a chance to do the same.

It's safe to say that this endeavor has become far more involved than I ever expected. I awoke in the night to a mild thunderstorm and thought briefly of running out in the rain to bring their pots inside. I kept seeing visions of disrupted root systems and disturbed onion seeds, over-watered failure, etc. Luckily, for the sake of preserving some dignity, I stayed curled up in bed and let Mother Nature induct them into Her realm without me. Using a calming mantra I talked myself down from pathetic actions - they are Hers, not mine.

13 of 31: giving (confession)

I've heard that it takes about twelve weeks before this starts to feel normal.  I'm not quite there so I can't vouch for the resolution that is said to bloom after three months of struggling to find a balance.  What I do know is that it hasn't come soon, in fact I have done a fair share of backsliding, which leads me to believe that I am progressing, though I can't determine if I've moved from denial to anger or depression in the grief process.  There are no moments that I can recall bargaining for anything so I'm led to think that this is anger.  I feel like I don't know him in pictures, that we might as well be filler models used to show how perfectly other couples' smiles might fit within the frames.

I really wouldn't write any of this if I wasn't supposed to write something daily.  As it turns out, March is full of cynicism and will accurately be remembered as such.  One of my friends recently explained to me that she would like to run away from her life.  I asked her to share her destination because I would happily pack my bags to join her.  I need a manual (written by a human being) on how to do this.  I feel like I'm failing us by not being strong enough, yet I don't know how to be anything other than this.  

Tune in for April, maybe I'll edge toward acceptance next month.  

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.

1 of 31: giving (up)

I'm giving nablopomo[.com] a try for March.  The theme is "giving (up)," however if I stuck with it, this would be a mighty depressing month, and I can tell you that the Forever Winter we are experiencing in these parts and deployment are doing a damn fine job of setting a forlorn tone.

For the kick-off, I'll do my best to throw on my rosey glasses and grace you with a little optimism.

[clears throat]

I wish that I had something profound and gracious to write.  And while I know that all the good outweighs the sacrifices (or I wouldn't be doing this) it's hard to be quiet enough to hear the meek, whispering reminders of choice.  The Staff Sergeant told me he was in the Army after luring me to coffee.  I considered walking out the door, giving him my best wishes and telling him to be safe but never to call.  However (entranced by his good looks and good shoes), I took my coffee from the counter and followed him back to our table.  He talked about literature and family and his smile, so perfectly perfect was hypnotizing.  By closing time my bones had dissolved and my limbs were tingly and beyond my body's physical acknowledgment that something was different, I couldn't stop what would happen in the months and months to follow.  

I was living the urban-dreamer life.  I had dibs on a loft in downtown Nashville, hopes to study sociology at Vanderbilt or to earn an MFA in writing, plans that snaked ten-times around the earth's circumference that did, in no way include or tolerate the Army.  Needless to say, I'm not in the loft of my dreams nor am I in a masters program at Vanderbilt, but I can say without a shadow of doubt that I am better for the altered plans (think space and money).  A year and a half ago I couldn't have told you that I'd be living it up in army-ville, working may way through a deployment.  In fact, I might have told you that a deployment was impossible.

I remember sobbing over the scene in The Interpreter when an African terrorist blows up the bus.  I thought to myself, I can't do this.  I thought that phrase a hundred times before looking around and realizing that I am doing it, regardless of how hard and heavy some days are.  At some point the thought became a question of how to be not whether or not I was strong enough.  

I hesitate to categorize any choices that I've made or changes to choices as "things I have given up", rather my perspective has changed and what I want out of life has taken a detour once again.  What I have [temporarily] given up is time and proximity.  He's not the first thing I see in the mornings or the last that I see before bed.  I've given up kisses and running inside jokes and dinner for two and the luxury of speed dial and an answer.  I've given up a lot of control that I probably never had anyway but let myself believe that I did.  

As I tell him almost daily, in emails that I'm not sure he really has time to read: I wouldn't change anything about where I live, who I love, and what that means about the person I have to be.  I don't like this leg of it but it will make the time that he's home so much better and so much more appreciated.

The Advice of the Dream

The dream that escaped the dream

went to live in a field.  It was happy,

being undreamt, snapping dead sticks to add

to the fire it warmed itself around.

All night, in order to stay awake, it counted places.

How many oceans?  How many mountain trails

lined with fern and woodchip, with flower?

And how many windows in the evening strangely lit?

The arms.  Avenues.  Estuaries

of ancient rivers, markets of spice, cumin

shifting in the barrels like sand,

like the desert, like anything in the open air.

It happens that the characters inside the dream

mill about, awkwardly, lost.

They've been knocked from the epic,

loosed from line of plot, from story.

The index cards have gone blank in their hands.

What's my line?  When do I enter?  And where should I stand?

Evenings in the field, there's the rustle

of autumnal husks, and beyond that,

a slight creek running.  The advice of the dream?

It's important to stay unattached

to an actual happening.  This makes you fleet-footed,

able to be everywhere in the world.

- Kate Northrop, Back Through Interruption

Home-sick

I wonder if it's just me that ever feels this kind of weightlessness, like tugging on strings that never pull tight--just small.  Tonight I think that I could jump up and down and shout without acknowledgement from the universe.  And really this is just about realizing how little control I can possibly have at all.  

I'm not sure to what I should attribute this existential panic.  Maybe realizing that he will always leave as long as he does this.  Or perhaps it came when I concluded that the emails I send him don't really get checked, and I can't call and that makes me feel completely...powerless.  It could be a number of other things, really, but those are the likely culprits this time around*.  

Everything here is a little off balance.  I like to think that I've mastered this, that I am exempt from any more rough days and that the short calls I do get are perfectly enough.  When I overlook the telling symptoms that a hard night is coming, I not only feel the initial want for him, but am then also angered for being caught off guard.  This is another one of those nights.  I can be found planted on my sofa in sweats, dwelling on the stories he doesn't get to hear.  Those that he does are abridged or outlined with lost punch lines and a diminishing presence of laughter.  They feel boiled down to hurried transactions, and knowing that he doesn't read the heartfelt emails only adds to my overall sense of impotence.  I am pretty much an ineffective little thread in this great, grand scheme and I hate that.  He can call me, but I cannot reach him even through methods that should.  I am cookies and quickly penned notes with smiley faces, minor and inessential.

-------------------------------------------------------

*this panic surrounding things I cannot control is my usual disposition 

I hate the phone [but I wish you'd call]

...or IM.

And then he did, rousing me from a Sunday morning slumber. I've never been more happily woken, except, well, there were some mornings when he was here... We christened our webcams with funny faces and smiles and then mimed along with the text. There was a problem with the sound so we made do with written words and motions, though they were lagging on a typical delay.

Now it's finally time for coffee. Oh, sweet caffeine!

And the rest of Bye Bye Birdie - Oh, sweet mid-century culture!

[One day you find out

This is what life is all about,
You need someone who
Is living just for you.
One guy,
One special guy,
One guy to live for,
To care for,
Be there for...]

If this were easy, everyone would be doing it.

"...if there's one thing I learned, it's that when our servicemen and women go to war, their families go with them. I saw how they take care of each other, heard how they fill in whenever the system fails and discovered that the trials they faced always were matched by the hope they shared that better days are still ahead." - Michelle Obama

Thank you for being strong enough to hold me up, live your dreams, and keep us safe all at the same time.  My flowers are beautiful and this morning's brief call made my birthday wonderful!  I hope the deluge of care packages adequately convey how much I love you and how proud I am to be waiting for you to come home.  I'd choose this life again and again and again to spend it with you.  See you in dreams tonight - let's meet somewhere warm!

O MY LOVE

TONIGHT

THE SKY

IS A DARKENED CIRCUS TENT ABOVE OUR DREAMS

AND THE MOON SLOWLY WALKS A TIGHTROPE INTO MORNING.

LUCIA

Relief

My title photo seems quite out of place since our serious Winter broke today after a week.  While I appreciate the season and I like the crispness, the clean sensation of cold air, and our occasional snow, I was kind of glad to hear the birds chirping and to feel a warm preview of Spring.  Also, the sooner Winter subsides, the sooner he'll be home.

I've made it almost two weeks.  I'd be lying if I didn't own up to some pretty wretched days, some horrifying moods, and supplements to help me sleep.  And honestly there was at least one full day I wasn't sure I could do this.  My dad always tells me that the darkest hour is before daybreak and here it's certainly applicable.  There is a full range of uncontrollable emotions that go hand in hand with sending the man who holds your heart off to war.  The one I'm most ashamed of is that particular episode of anger.  Anger that he's gone, that he left me, anger at the universe for fating me to this position, anger at myself for blaming him.  It isn't like that and I know it.  This isn't something he did to me, however the knowing better only amplifies inevitable feelings of guilt.  The Staff Sergeant is a good man, the best, and I know how very lucky I am to so proudly stand by him (most of the time).  Then daybreak--and I awoke a new woman, the fever had gone and I felt like myself again.  

No one ever says that this life is full of ease and rose gardens, but somehow abandoning it is impossible.  I've hurled myself into a care packaging oblivion.  Every time I feel like crying I start planning the next one.  I've gotten back into school and am getting ready to start a new job.  All of that and I'm slowly chipping this new house into some semblance of order.  Tonight I hung my closet bar for all of the clothes I have that wouldn't fit into the tiny crevices this house deemed closet space.  I was so motivated by that small victory that I sorted the storage room and put together my new desk chair.  Now I'm sitting for the first time at my study space and not a moment too soon.  A magenta glow falls over the old tin table top I'm using as my work surface.  I have a victory cocktail to the right of my laptop and soon I'll go fish out a good photo of my courageous soldier to put in the corner. 

Moments like this let me peek from beneath the layers of Overwhelming just long enough to see the light.  I can do this thing that challenges me, this living on my own, this new town and old house of Murphy's law.  I can wait, be patient, be okay while he's away because he's doing the same thing for me.  

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.] 

When an ocean sits right between us

How do you write a swallowing heartache? How do you convey the emptiness left behind, the no-one-else-is-home-ness, the reality of letting him go because this is what he was made for?  

All along I knew I would have to--let him be less mine and more Soldier.  So he is now, far away for too long.  And it isn't fair because I want to know he is always safe, and selfishly, because I want his eyes to start my days and for his quiet breath to end them.  I want to be able to touch and smell and kiss him and to forget my awkward so-long and the reasons I had to do it.  

It's hard describing the way your emotions hijack any notion of self control when you have had to imagine him leaving with your heart in one of his velcro pockets.  The tactful threads wear thin and fray and just when he needs you to be the strongest, you're burned out and completely transparent.

Winter Song

Uhh...err.  It seems that I'm just stopping in for one of my usual, now sporadic visits.  And in a way, perhaps it's fitting that not even this place feels like home anymore.  The one thing I want most out of life, the one driving force that keeps me clinging to the steadiness of earth when everything else in the world spins wildly -- Home, and I may have never felt more Home-less.  My apartment has grown stale and I don't really stay there much, his place feels most familiar but I'm acutely aware that it isn't mine, there aren't my things in the closets and cabinets, and of course, there's the house, still under construction, the bane of my existence, holding a car load of crap I hauled around for a while and an address I hesitate to actually use.  I'm hesitant to have anything of import attached to that place since it seems that my landlord's promises are empty...an understatement.  

Tonight it's just me and any one of those three choices - a bed so mine that the crest of my body is pressed deep into the mattress, the empty, dishonest walls of an old bungalow where I could curl up in a corner of one of the many vacant rooms, or here: burrowed into pure, warm comfort, a pool where our tributary veins run partially together, picking the peanut butter cups out of his Moose Tracks, dressed in an oversized PT shirt, my favorite.  He isn't here but he is, he is everywhere in this room and the next and in the shower.  In a few hours I'll climb a flight and a half of stairs and melt into sleep and it will feel like he's the big spoon because his essence lingers like a decadent flavor.  

This is the last preview. 

[all we can do is keep breathing.]

general complaints regarding the institution of chaos

I don't know whether I should laugh or cry or shatter things weaker than I feel right now, for the pleasure of a power trip and the satisfaction of destruction. Don't ever wonder how it might be more difficult than it is; it could always be worse.

He's always full of new news and it almost always makes a mockery of the things I thought I could rely on, even when they aren't desirable. I've been bracing for some events since the beginning of us. They are bristles-raised threatening, guns-and-bombs scary; they creep into the dreams of even a sound sleeper to chip away at rest long before they are urgently upon us. Nevertheless, a person can condition oneself for anything given enough time to build up walls of sandbags. Even a war-flood becomes a tolerable idea when you have had time to prepare for it.

And so I think that's the worst of it. Nothing is bigger or more difficult than all we've been through already and all that is written into future date boxes. Life on the coat-tails of a soldier isn't billed to be an easy one - constantly jerked and bounced around in the shadow of his duty to country. No matter how jostled, the peak was in sight just above the crags and ridges. It always appeared to be reachable until new news birthed low clouds to make me question our direction.

I knew that you in the calamity of war would be fucking awful! And yes, it is simply unbearable to let my mind entertain the possibility of that phone-call - so I don't, I can't. If I did, every tomorrow would be "insurmountable". There are times when it feels like we are held together only by fraying scraps, but you come home and we stitch the wounds and mend the tears. What do we do if there is no home, and all the patched up ragged shreds wear faster and thinner? It isn't this over that, it's both circumstances stacked high and heavy one upon the other.

This is a life for the mad, the numb, the inhuman. The truth is, I don't want to be stronger. I want to crush thin, perfect glass between a swift downward blow and a solid surface. I want to scream and kick my feet against the floor in an epic tantrum. I want to tear out my love-drunk heart to wring it sober.

highways and bye-ways

On Friday I met with my non-fiction professor to discuss an idea for an independent study next summer. I'm not sure how it came to me, but on my way to class the thought congealed: travel writing; a month long road trip. She loved it!

I'm thinking, roughly, 6000 miles on $5000.

The answer to a quarter-life crisis?

A liberation from responsibility and sense?

For what and why?

To find my true self.

To stumble upon Home in pure form.

It doesn't sound crazy in my head, though the money will be a trial. They say, "if there's a will, there's a way." And there's time to consider logistics and funding. I'm not going to mask my lust for it nor will I deny how mesmerizing the day dreams have been. Thirty days to see and taste and smell half of America, or more if I wanted. Thirty days to reinvent my purpose, my place, my routine. Thirty days of distraction from all that is "fair" [in love and war]. And to write it, for credit no less? This is why I can't give up higher education. The Man would never allow such a blatant severing of strings. Ah!, freedom and The Road...

Come and stay with me.

There's a crackle in the distance. Something is moving, brewing, ready for birth. Love does things to you that you cannot anticipate and when they are in full force, arguing with their direction becomes futile. There is a pull westward then north, southbound and to the East. Each mile is a minute lived slower than others, each day lost together is simply lost. It is a challenge to recount moments passed as they have become mere shadows and echoes. Too many prequels have been archived and the threading of continuity has been removed. We are less and more. We are estranged but kindred, restless yet content. Footing is temporary, for the earth always shakes again.

Too long, too vacant, too far apart. It isn't only good things that eventually must end. Somewhere there is a white knight awaiting his damsel.