16 Candles

Following receipt of a slew of depressing text messages that were absolutely identical to messages she received 10 years prior (when she was 16), she:

• took 2 showers - back to back
  
• looked into a 401k
• balanced her checkbook
• made sure her passport was up to date
• confirmed with her best friend that her boobs HAVE, in fact, grown
• watched 3 St. Ides commercials
• tried (and failed) to walk in stilettos
• used "Romy and Michelle's High School Reunion" as a point of reference
  

SELF-PRESERVATION/ANXIETY MANAGEMENT/BABY STEPS

Relationship Demise as it Applies to Interior Design

Recently, she had been told that "going out" was done for no other reason than to stay on top of reputation management. To bars that is. She disagreed immediately (since it applied to the part of herself she denied), thought about, and knew she was wrong. But she also decided not to admit defeat. This process was her standard.

On a night of lackluster rep-upkeep, she ran into a former fling who was explaining that he was ready to throw in the towel with his current romantic endeavor. The girlfriend he had been internet flaunting just hours earlier.

Based on a disagreement.

Their first.

About interior design.

She tried reflecting on what it was that had ended her own affair with this man, but the distraction of friends egging him on to text message the "Dear John" was proving far too overwhelming. The beauty of a meaningful relationship was lost on her peers. After an incredibly distrubing moment of envisioning her own appreciation of love being sucked out of her by 19th century Westerly vampires, she

• took a shot
  
• winked at a stranger
• promoted some band
• went home

Reputation: upheld

Enthusiasm: M.I.A.

Dignity: intact

Inspiration: not at the bar

there's not enough time for timeouts

One year has passed since 2 years, and what should have happened in those 365 days happened in 14.

And the weight that's been lifted is more overwhelming and burdensome than she could dare try to explain.

...both we and our words were overproduced

There are windows on all sides of the manor allowing her to perch and watch for days...months...maybe even years. She doesn't know yet, she hasn't been there long enough to find out.

She's watched the first snow of the year blanket the woods that her kitchen gazes upon in such a way that she's reminded of third grade and Laura Ingalls Wilder's little house in the big woods.

She's watched the cat that she nearly crashed her car on her way to work dodging get run over. By a truck that she was certain never drove faster than 5 miles per hour down her street. On the one day they were in a hurry.

She's watched a crazed kid, no more than 20, run laps around his dorm building at Rhode Island College screaming "Fuck you RIC!" repeatedly, all the while waving a paper above his head.

She's watched the moment that a father lets go of his child's bicycle seat, still telling the little girl that he is holding on when he is not. And the transition from terror to joy when the little girl realizes she is riding all on her own.

She's watched a date get eagerly out of his car and walk to her door.

She's watched someone she didn't want to see leave get into their car and not look back.

She tends to jot these things down as they happen. She doesn't want to forget why she left her old place or start to feel comfortable staying in only one room of her home. In fact, she's tried (in vain) to go to each window every day and write something down that she sees. Maybe she'll compile them all after a year and send it to a publisher. She had a conversation recently over breakfast about how publishers seem to love publishing lists. She'll make a list. And one person will think her strange while the other considers her a martyr. Her lonely attempt at salvation may even be someone else's suicide note. Strange. But it happens.

However...

She's starting to become deeply concerned that she will always be the voyeur.

She has been told on several occasions in the last few months that one of her most attractive qualities is her drive and her need to do her own thing and have her own passions. She is worried that these people have been greatly fooled. But perhaps her concern in lacking is a testament to that passion. She's trying to figure that out too. She'll get it. She's worried anyway.

"...then i'm movin' out."

"I miss my old life," her friend whispered.

Taking a deep breath (more to overcome the pit in her stomach than to process what she'd said), she replied,"So get it back. We're too young to be killing time already."

Except that you can't "kill time". She often wishes you could...she wishes that she could have murdered moments in cold blood and made the good ones last longer. One slaughtered month would have made way for a lengthened previous. But with the ability to kill doesn't come the power to resurrect, so she does her best to push those thoughts out of her head. What she should have said was "hiding" or "waiting" or "procrastinating". We're too young to be hiding already. We're too young to be waiting already. We're too young to be procrastinating already.

She was a hypocrite. She was doing all of those things.

***********************************

There was a night when she felt like the only person awake in the world and certainly knew she was the only person awake in the house. Looking around a dark room lit by store signs, street lights, and cars passing, everything took a form as deceiving as most things in your twenties turn out to be. Three children’s books leaned against what she guessed one could consider more "adulty" books. Side by side. As if there were no transition from the tracks little engines travel to the roads Kerouac did. Then ceiling. Shadows, books, ceilings. She spent what felt like forever trying to figure out if she could crawl in that little triangular space that’s created when two straight objects are leaning towards each other. She was convinced that if she could get in there, then it would all make sense. All the questions she had been wanting to ask would just be answered and she would never have to ask at all. Everything she wanted to hear would be said and then some. But she couldn’t fit in that space…of course she couldn’t. And she started thinking it may be time to stop choosing her experiences based on what she hoped could happen and start going by what the reality was.

But it was something real. Parts of it. All of it?

There is a place out on the island she grew up on along Ocean Drive where someone took the time to place line boulders to what seemed to be the middle of the Atlantic. Maybe a quarter of a mile…the distance is actually irrelevant. Whether you walk five feet into forever or 100 miles, it’s still towards forever. She used to drive by almost every day and wanted so badly to get out and walk to the middle of everything. And she finally did it about 4 months ago. She went out there. And she doesn't know how to not think there’s some merit to that. Something brought that on.

And now she needs a little bit of a break from the crazies to figure out what that was.

She doesn’t want to fixate on what could have beens or compare and contrast stories, because the truth is this:

We’re all going to have the same stories to tell.
We’re young.
We’re going out.
We’re getting drunk.
We’re getting inspired.
We’re getting fucked.
We’re getting hurt.
We’re getting smarter.
We’re getting less naïve.
We’re getting off.
We’re getting comfortable…

...and the terror in moving forward and moving on...the terror in not procrastinating, waiting, or hiding...is that you need to find comfort in all of those things. And she has no clue where to start.