Be Like That

Well, it's Wednesday. I keep thinking I should blog, and get the image of me sadly tromping up an escalator staring at words about wounded soldiers, off the top of my blogroll :)

Life ain't all that bad. I'm going through a period of stillness, I think, and I've been spending alot of time just kind of reflecting on things. Not in a bad way though....not in the "oh my dear lord, what does it ALL MEAN?!" kind of way. As we all know, I can tend to walk on the melancholy side of the road, and only really find myself savoring people and things when they are either 1) far away, 2) in my past.

I was walking down my street the other day and it's just beautiful. It really is and it looks like something out of a movie sometimes. I walk by Afghani, Lebanese, Polish, Bangladeshi, and Thai food restaurants everyday and that's just on my street. I tuck away in the basement of a gorgeous house and I doubt I'll ever have an experience similar to the way I'm living now. So why do I want so desperately to know what's going to happen when I turn this page? When I do move on, and when I do leave DC for god-knows-where?

One of my favorite songs in college -and still now- was "Be Like That" by 3 Doors Down. In my sorority house, my dorm room window opened out onto the awning of the house--you can see it behind us in the picture here: (I am, of course, the short one).

Anyway, we used to sit out on this awning all the time and sometimes at night I'd go out and watch all the people pass and I could see the neighborhood on the other side of the street and I distinctly remember the lyrics of Be Like That going through my head, or sometimes through the window while a CD played:

"She spends her days up in the north hall
Watching the people as they pass
And all she wants is just a little piece of this dream
Is that too much to ask?
For a safe home, and a warm bed, on a quiet little street"

And you know what?

I got it.

"If I could be like that, what would I do?...."

I recall the experience...

Every morning, I descend down this long escalator to the metro:

Inscribed on the stone wall all around the metro's entrance is a quote by Walt Whitman. I have no idea why this particular quote was chosen but it is:

Thus in silence in dreams' projections,
Returning, resuming, I thread my way through the hospitals;
The hurt and wounded I pacify with soothing hand,
I sit by the restless all dark night - some are so young;
Some suffer so much - I recall the experience sweet and sad...
-Walt Whitman, from Leaves of Grass, 1876

We are all so disconnected here.  I rode the metro today with a coworker of mine standing right in front of me the entire ride.  He never looked at me, because we don't meet eyes around here.  I cram on the train with my arm tucked around someone's waist so I can reach a pole to steady myself on.  My back presses against someone else and we all collectively suck in our breath so we can make sure the doors close and train moves.  I hurl through the darkness clutching strangers for balance, and the whole time, we never speak, never look at each other.  Its as if we aren't there at all.  Ghosts.  For me, usually, it's the only time I'm touched all day unless I see someone after work.

As we reached our stop, I reached out and touched my coworkers arm and he jerked it back and turned to me with a glare before realizing it was me.  Our defenses are so up, all the time.  Don't look at this homeless person, don't look at this person who looks sad, don't even think about looking at someone asking you for money.  We drift and it strikes me sometimes how god-awful lonely we all look. 

We break apart as the train emptys, our morning embraces forgotten, shaken off and in the haste of the day we separate -never knowing anyone, never speaking, never looking.  The pattern repeats in the afternoon, and I ascend the same escalator and trudge up with my footsteps echoing and my ipod clutched in my hand and I'm thinking of how we're going to keep people on Medicaid, and how we're going to get through these lawsuits, and how I'm going to get through the next few months. About how god-awful lonely I am most of the time, and how I am both luckier than hell and sad at the same damn time.  And I look at the quote which I know will remind me always of my time spent here, now, in Dupont Circle as my twenties wind down and the rest of my life winds up. 

I'll recall the experience sweet and sad.

All the things I do not know

Update:  I slept. For ten hours. I feel like a new person =)

"I (hiccup) want (sob) you (gasp) to (hiccup) hold (sob) meeeee" My three year old nephew wailed this pitifully from the step of his "time out" designated stairstep. I'd just walked by him and was determinedly ignoring him since I wasn't exactly sure how this whole time-out protocol is currently working for my sister and kiddos. But, this broke my heart….and I'm not his mother, I'm his soft-hearted aunt and I never get to see him and now he's got his arms out for me and the ends of his hair are sweaty from crying and of course, I grabbed him up. I rocked him on the stairstep a minute before my sister came to check on him, looked at me exasperated, then smiled and freed him from his stairstep prison.


Approximately 12 hours later, I'd be repeating this mantra.

Around 1am this morning, as I sat up in bed after not sleeping a wink, with my head in my hands crying as every anxiety, doubt, worthless and awful feeling consumed me. My poor sleep-deprived best friend, who was due to get up at 4am to get me to the airport by 5:40 am, so I could fly here in time for work this morning, rolled over and asked if I was okay. I was so not okay. God bless her, she did hold me and ask a million questions about what is wrong (I was incredibly helpful in answering her "everythiiiiiing" and what could she do about it? "nothiiiiing")

Of course, everything is not wrong and there is a great deal she can do to keep me balanced and sane, along with the rest of the people who sustain me. But sometimes at 1am, it sure as hell feels like it its all wrong even with someone saying how much they love you over and over.

I went home for the weekend to try to re-find my balance, to even out my inner self--I've been spending too much time alone, and too much time working, and forgetting too easily how many people do love me and instead focusing on who does not. What I don't have. What I fear I'll never have. (My upcoming birthday is doing nothing to help quell these tick-tick-tick feelings of not only the biological clock, but just my overall clock as well and how I'm using my time here).

The weekend didn't do much to help that though, unfortunately. Home is a haven, but it is not immune from problems and issues, and of course, their lives are going on and they have their own struggles. My grandmother is getting older, my stepfather is getting more unpredictable, my mother is getting more stressed. I had a lot of niece and nephew time though, and that was most important. Even though a four year old coughed in my face all.night.long on Saturday night, and babies spit up on me, and three year olds had three year old tantrums, it was well worth it.

So here I sit at work, so freakin tired that I don’t know if I'll make it past lunchtime, I guess I'm going to have to come to grips with the fact that I just don't know a damn thing. I have no earthly idea if I'll ever somehow transition from the life I'm living to the life I want to live. If I will ever stop feeling like I take two running leaps forward toward that life, only to crash into a wall and slide to the bottom, then rip my jeans climbing over it.

My friend dropped me off at the airport this morning and I mumbled bye and started to drag the suitcase off after hugging her. I was a little embarrassed at how ca-razy I had been a few hours before…it was certainly not my best side and couldn't have been a picnic for her so I was trying to make a fast exit. She grabbed my arm back, and took my face in her hands and made me look in her eyes--I have a hard time doing that sometimes if I'm feeling sad or whatnot. She said "I adore you. When you think you have nothing, you have that."

So I have that. And I have this big, weird, wonderful family and one zillion kids that fight over who gets to sit on my lap at church. A good job, money, a roof over my head, and a cruise in the fall to the greek isles. Things to look forward to, and a life that is going to go forward even if I can't see past next Tuesday.

Maybe one day, I can finally feel that I have it all. And that maybe, I have all along.

Last night

For the first time, I dreamed of my grandmother. I've been having incredibly vivid dreams lately, and last night was no exception. I woke up at 7, disoriented and confused, and fell back as soon as I found out we had a snow delay.

And I dreamed of her. I walked over to her, where she sat in her pink nightgown in a bed that was raised up on her back so she was half-sitting. I went over, and laid my head on her shoulder and made a noise. She smiled without opening her eyes and said "Well hi, Stephanie." In the same voice and inflection she always addressed me -although it was never my name in that sentiment but always "Well hi, sweetheart." I can hear her saying that countless mornings as I shuffled in the kitchen from sleep, for cheerios with sugar.

Always with sugar, at her house.

I watched a documentary last night on HBO of John F Kennedy, showing little-before-seen footage of his life and presidency and death. During the funeral processional, I noticed my office building in the background. Startled, I paused it and looked beyond that saluting boy and realized that I walked down that exact same street everyday.

I went to work this afternoon, running and dodging through snow and sleet and looked up to see the Capitol before me -ever present, ever constant, ever my view out the window. And I thought about all the people it has seen under its shadow, and that now, forever, I am one them. I am one of a million twentysomething workers that leave their good shoes at work and sludge through the street in boots trying to go and do and be. To try, somehow, to leave our mark.

I thought of my grandmother and I felt her walking beside me, taking big steps and stumbling when I did too. I thought of that processional.

I thought of the feet who have walked that same street. I paused for a moment and thought to myself: "Here you are."

Here we are.
I am in good company.

(Me, circa 2003)

Weird books and Famous people

I have a difficult time writing when things are all going just fine. Nothing in my life is wrong at the moment, and that in itself is enough for me to breathe a giant sigh of relief. I'm not caught up in existential despair at the state of my life, work is going fine with no real issues other than day-to-day little dramas, my friendships are strong and my family is happy and healthy.


I have battled a little bit with the "what in the hell kind of world are we living in?" moments, which have culminated this week. I'm reading "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo" series and it's horribly graphic (to me) and more than a little disturbing. The story is good, so I'm sticking with it (i'm on the second book) but somehow those books are bringing to the surface and spelling out the horrific things humans can do. I was reading in the lunch/break room on our floor the other day during lunch, and the TV was turned as it always is (why, why, why??) to some trashy daytime talk show. So I'm reading out things like murder and sexual assault, and then listening to the show with the headline "I lock my wife in the closet." Yeah. After about twenty minutes of reading one thing and listening to the other, I had to just leave.

It's really no wonder that I simply re-read Harry Potter books over and over most of the time, because I sometimes need some magic and make believe in this strange, horrible world.

I just got back from taking my lunch in a cafe right down the street. The West Wing cafe is awesome and it has shaded windows so that tourists dont really know that its there and that keeps the crowds down in the summers. I've run into a handful of 'famous' people, inasmuch as people are famous in DC, and today was no exception. Although it was by far the strangest encounter.

I ran into Larry Craig. Remember him? The former Senator from...Utah? I dont know. I'm too lazy to look it up right now, but he was the guy in the airport bathroom who assumed a "wide stance" aka -- solicited sex from his fellow bathroom mates. The secrets and scandals I guess, of the sexually repressed. I have no idea why he's in town. He was sitting alone facing a wall, but he spotted me looking at him, trying to place him. He gave me a small, sad smile.

It's so confusing when you see people who have been paraded about as horrible people who do horrible things, caught in a moment of humanity. Do you feel sympathy? Empathy? Indifference? I just nodded my head and walked away.

It was a little like the time I ran into one of those leggy blond reporters on Fox News (I never watch it so I have no idea what their names are; but I am in the same building as Fox and I know the anchors by their makeup), crying in the bathroom. No longer a perma-smile robot giving Ann Coulter a shot at throwing out one-liners, but a dry-heaving vulnerable woman hunched over the sink.

It's been months since I've been on my own bathroom floor, crying and praying for relief from my own tortured thoughts and worries. My main mission of each day? To stay off.

Half-staff

I snapped this picture while walking to work.  This is Union Station, the main train station in the middle of DC, and this is where I get off the metro everyday to go to work.

The flags are half-staff because of the Tucson shootings.  I'm standing at half-staff internally due to the death of an old friends' sister that happened this week.  We all grew up in the same church family, but she was 4 years younger than I -better friends with my sister than I was, and I was mostly friends with her brother. 

But still, a girl I knew when she was just a little girl is dead.  A car accident, with a husband in Korea in the air force, and two baby girls that were in the car with her.  Thankfully the girls are okay.  Erika isn't.

And suddenly, it's fifteen years ago in my head and memories of that time in our youth when time suspended and we were at the top of our entire lives are spilling into my present life and it's all too much to take in.  I'm sitting in a meeting and I'm flashing back to a moment when we're gathered on somebody's porch and guitars are playing and I'm high on the sound of our voices. 

Tomorrow morning I will get up before dawn, drive to Kentucky, and I will hear the sound of those voices all the way home.

"I would love your hands, even if they weren't yours."  She said this to me over Christmas while we were laying on our backs, and she was holding my hand up in the air inspecting it to see how much I'd been picking my nails lately.  She pronounced my nails to look awful, then took my hand between both of hers, patted it gently, and held on.  We kept watching the movie.  I laid my head on her shoulder, and she leaned her forehead against mine.  It's how we always sleep when we're together.

A snapshot, a moment in time -the intimacy between the deepest of friends and none of it sexual in the least.  But the intense closeness of a connection that is felt deep in your bones -this, I can only feel with a few.  A secret place that nobody knows.

I say this as my life seems to be turning into an episode of Sex and the City -without the sex.  Perhaps more aptly named, "Fool Around in the City."  An old flame has recently returned to my city to live (long-time readers will remember him as "guy in Seattle" from last spring) and that quietly rekindled, and now our flirting takes on a new level, with possibilities behind them.  Possibilities in which we occasionally indulge even though we know he and I will go nowhere as a couple. 

My first date last week went well, and while we barely know each other, I like him and we're going to the movies tomorrow.  I'm taking it slo-o-o-wly and I like it that way.

As I always do when I first begin dating, I start thinking of past relationships.  Or in my case, rather, past hook-ups that lasted a few weeks.  I've never really had a deep relationship with a man.  My emotions, my true self, my heart has always been reserved for those closest to me.  And those have primarily been the women in my life.  I keep men at arm's length, and I hesitate from throwing all my cards out on the table. 

I found an old flame on Facebook recently, and I looked through pictures of his oldest daughter, born while we were in the midst of our tumultuous high school relationship...thing...that we did for quite some time.  I looked at him, and her, and it was like a tiny glimpse into a life that, were I a different kind of person, may have very well been mine. 

My sisters and I have begun texting each other almost daily.  We don't ask about our days or our little day-to-day things.  I have no idea, really, what they do between the hours of 8-5, and I'm not involved in the minutae of "so and so had an accident at school so s/he lost a sticker on the behavior chart" drama.  They say simply "Hi, I love you. Stay warm." 

I never dreamed we would be this close.  One of the best blessings of my life.

These women in my life -the one who knows the words of my story and run fingers through my hair and hold me when I can't stand up anymore on my own. And the men, both those I have known and those I will, who also run their fingers through my hair while we lay there, and I wonder when I will find one who loves me enough to stick around.  Until then, I proceed with caution, but with a heart that is -finally- ready to try.

It's been a long time coming.