One Year Ago

I feel as though life reached out, grabbed me by the arm, and dragged me at warp speed through the last year. 

And I sit here rubbing my muscles from the impact; cozy at a small table at my new-old coffee shop that I used to frequent years ago, and now haunt again, on Sunday mornings.  I have an omelet and cold iced tea, and am sitting with hipsters and the the hippies of the neighborhood, and there are magazines on the shelves with titles like "Queer DC" and "Saving Sudan."  An Elvis poster is on the wall.  It's terribly overpriced, and terribly delicious.

Last year, I remember the summer was unseasonably cool.  This year, today, there is a heat index of 108.  Ah yah, as Ms Moon says...everything changes, babies. 

This blog title is from a Counting Crows song, from an album called "August and Everything After."  I explained this last year, and I also talked about the yearning and restless in my soul, the knowing that life was about to change for me --I  knew it deep down and I knew it so clearly that by the time opportunity knocked that September, I reached out and locked on with both hands. 

I remember writing these words, on my couch (that later sold for $35 at my local Goodwill).  I'm sure I had the TV on, only on mute.  It was nighttime and my screen door was open and my cat was climbing the screen (with claws he'd lose in a few months) to bat at moths by the porch light.  I felt frantically at peace.  I wrote "It's time.  It's time for August.  And it's time for everything after."

And wham bam, damn, if August isn't already upon us again. 

This is going to be a very, very difficult month for me.  I have to travel for work nearly all of it, and I'm not sure if this is going to impact my very new relationship.  My boss is making me conduct one of the meetings by myself, and this is incredibly intimidating to me, and then the week later I fly to Kentucky to be in a wedding of my old roommate, to whom I've barely spoken in the year since she asked me to be in the wedding.  So, I have no idea how this is going to go, as I spend hundreds of dollars on dress alterations and plane reservations...and the cynical but knowing side of me knows that I will barely talk to her again in my life after all this. 

Also, our contract at work (from which I am paid) is being hotly debated around the corridors, and I will know by Sept 15 if we will be renewed.  We will, I am confident, but in the meantime, there will be meetings and discussions and endless whispered conspiracy theories and....well.  None of it will be pleasant.

My family knows about my relationship, and they are pestering and poking me for information, for details, for pictures.  My friends know too, and one practically sobbed with relief when I talked about how much I liked him :)  She knows me, and knows that I am easily afraid of relationships and just frankly haven't had many (any, really, that were very serious.)   And when I said I was happy, and this one is different, she was over the moon for me.

I haven't seen him in a few days, and I'm just wondering if I made him up.

I feel anxiety creeping in as August approaches ---this is always my most hated month.  Having all these stressors that are going along with it doesn't help.

Sometimes I can't find anything good at all.
But hell.  It's time, I suppose, for August and everything after.  For fall to come, for cool air to remind me that everything changes and everything works together for a reason and that with every passing day, I am reminded of grace. 

Thank you for being a part of this journey, and the whiplash that comes with it sometimes. 

We can't blink.