The Separation

Forward, to the side, together

My life has revolved around my friendships for a very long time.  As I've gotten older, my life has started to evolve around them evolving--I have seemingly stood still in comparison to many, although in my heart of hearts I know that is not true. I have grown too, and whatever changes have occurred in my relationships have been both in my control and partly of my doing.

It is hard, being 32, and watching your friends not just have weddings and babies -- but be in marriages that have gone on for years, with children in school. (It's just as hard watching your sisters do this, too). Some of them would maybe argue that it is hard being 32, and watching me live a life entirely of my own making, direction and having no demands other than those I make for me.

My two best friends from high school and I are used to this. I was in one of their weddings this summer, and met the other's new baby also this summer, and I haven't really spoken to either one since. We keep in touch online and the occasional phone call but that's it. There is an ease there that I think only the very lucky have - we don't have to be in each other's day to day lives to stay close simply because we've learned that dynamic to be the norm for so many years. Though lately, I've been feeling those absences more than I have in the past.

For my more recently acquired friends in my adult life, that's not the case. We don't have years and years of background together to know without a doubt that if we don't talk for months, no big deal.

My best friend is one I've referenced many times on this blog through the years, even at times when it wasn't obvious I was referring to her. She was a major part of my life when I was in Lexington--which, as crazy as it sounds, was almost five years ago. We've stayed as close as we probably could after I moved and she stayed behind in Kentucky.

I'm still reluctant to talk about her and what caused us to break all those years ago and we've tried to mend throughout this time. I still have a paranoia that people in my "real/offline" life secretly read this blog (which is pretty ridiculous) and I don't want to drag her name through the mud. In a nutshell -- when I met her, she was on her second marriage and she had 3 kids and her mom living with her. 2 dogs and a vibrant household. Things were deteriorating with the marriage and 2 of the kids were difficult teenagers and, and, and. I was (am) ten years younger than her, so this put me at 25. 25 and still very scarred from my volatile home life and family, and I started sinking into their dynamic.

She met another man, and I went along for that ride. I watched the family break and I watched her break from me as she pursued this relationship. I had very mixed feelings about everything and I even voiced to her that all of this was over my pay grade, to use a work term. I was too young. I was too naive in the ways of relationships -- I didn't know what in the hell I was talking about when I was engaged in these spirals down. I had never been married; I had barely had a boyfriend I halfway liked.

I moved away; her relationship with this man evolved. They are now engaged. When she told me of her engagement, I told her I was happy for her and smiled although I felt like I was sinking deep. My hands were shaking and I cried when I got in my car and drove away. I knew I was losing her in some way, but it went way deeper than that for me on a lot of levels. I was so SO bitter. In a "Well, didn't everything work out great for YOU" way when it felt (feels) like I spin my wheels relationship-wise and I am so frustrated at how easily this come for other people. I also don't like this man at all for a variety of reasons that are not blog-worthy.

Also -and this is something I still struggle with- I have no perspective on how to have a marriage and still maintain very close friendships. In this way, I am as worldly and knowledgeable as a 15 year old trying to figure out how to have a crush on a boy. I just simply don't know because I've never experienced this from the other side. I've been the one waving behind the car with Just Married on it. I'm the one left behind.

We've stayed fairly close through the years, as close as we could for being two very busy people living in different states. She travels here a few times for work a year, and we text/talk. We've kept a connection that has ebbed and flowed. We've been as close as we can considering we're one half of a pair that deeply dislikes the man who the other plans to marry, and one half very likely resentful that her best friend hates the man she's going to marry.

We haven't spoken since the fall. I was in Kentucky and I didn't call. I am willfully placing an arm between us until I can get the same emotional space as I have the physical. I need to learn how to let things go, how to let my own issues untangle from hers. I need to grow up, in some ways. I need to learn how to love with detachment. This has come naturally through mutual transitions with my older friends--and in this case, I'm the one watching and waiting for time to heal the wound. The wound that, if I am honest, I gave myself.

At the end of the day, I really miss my friend. There are soo many things that make me want to pick up the phone, but I always hesitate. And to be fair, she's not exactly reaching to me either right now. I'm not sure where this ends. Or continues.

Forward, to the side -- together?

I don't know.

Light things

Illustrations of a life.

(My New Year's Eve with a six year old)

Ice melting, perfectly parted

I work too late.

Desperado

You better let somebody love you, before it's too late.

What a winter it has been. There have been so many times I've wanted to check in with each of you, and I think I've gotten a bit spoiled by being friends with many of you on Facebook. I toss out the snippets, and leave out the details, and truly only neglect myself by not coming here to augment those thoughts, little stories of my day, and so on.

So much has happened, but nothing so monumental that things are not also still the same. I sit here, blissfully alone and with no plans on a weekend and I couldn't be happier about that for now. It's been a long week and I've been on a 3 day business trip and a conference here in town and oh, met a long lost relative while I was there and then had to go to Baltimore last night (every time I'm there I smile because of the name of this blog). So, I am very very happy to be tucked away here in my apartment for these two days, just cleaning and puttering. Tonight I made chicken enchiladas, took a bubble bath and had a glass of wine.

I need to talk about so much. I need to talk about how, in December, my 3 year old nephew became so sick that he was admitted to the hospital for two weeks. I cried in my office about how I couldn't be at home. I've never felt so helpless.

I need to talk about how I went to New York City twice in December and what both of those trips -each so very very different- meant to me. I need to talk about going home for Christmas in Kentucky this year, and how it was more hard than good. And how deeply sad that made me. I need to talk about how I don't want to do to myself again.

I want to talk about how relieved I was to be back in DC, but unhappy I am at my job. How miserable I am most of the time. I want to talk about how furious I am that I feel I am being pushed out of my job by the hire of my new 'boss' when I've been doing his job and mine for the past year. I want to talk about how I'm shutting down.

I want to talk about how I sometimes think about walking away from my life completely and how everyone else seems to have it so much more together than I do. I want to talk about how I was in Kentucky for almost two weeks and saw zillions of family members and no one asked how I was. No one asked how my life is. No one. My life is full of so much, but not of husbands or children, and that limits things sometimes. And I do get that. But it is lonely. I want to talk about how my lifelong friends seem lost to me. I want to talk about how I've made new friends too in this time, and how I feel like I have a small safety net and how lucky I do.

I want to talk about how sometimes I can get too enmeshed in the blog world and the friends and life it's enabled. I want to talk about how it is simultaneously one of the biggest blessings in my life. I want to talk about how I dated someone this winter with three children, and how now that is over. His name was Owen. I want to talk about how I've gained a few more pounds I shouldn't have, and how frustrated I am that I feel like I come to my little space here to write the same things month after month, year after year. Always the same.

I am fine--truly. There's just so much to talk about.

4:11 and the sun is setting in my office. The light slants across my keyboard, and I’m typing away. Listening to a conference call with some of the most annoying people I’ve ever met. The big boss around here is leading the call and is So! Perky! And! Fake! I can’t stand people like this. To sum it up, this is a woman who makes more money than the president of the united states, and still talks in baby talk like she’s just a gosh-darn, good ol’ gal y’all. And then can turn mean as a snake in 20 seconds.

But, eh. I’ve dealt with worse, I’ll deal with many more like her in the years to come.

Elizabeth posted this quote this morning, and I very rarely ever stop and consider the weight of words of a quote anymore. It feels like I’ve heard every platitude under the sun by now, and these days, I feel too rushed and frantic to pause.

Do not be overwhelmed by the enormity of the world's grief. Do justly, now. Love mercy, now. Walk humbly, now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it."

-The Talmud

Working in healthcare policy right now is very hard. It’s been hard, from almost the moment I had this dropped in my lap in 2006 and it took off into this career I’ve grown into. This city is in firing squad mode about healthcare.gov, and I have friends and colleagues in the government that feel more like indentured servants than employees. One testified on the Hill yesterday, and since his summons to appear before Congress came, he’s slept on the floor of his office. It just sounds like a nightmare over there right now. Don't get me wrong -- this needs to be fixed. It should have never happened this way. Things could have been done so much better.

I touch Obamacare’s reimbursement/insurance/payment issues in my career, but it isn’t specifically my day job, and I’ve been guarded from the onslaught of criticism. But our time will come. 2014 will be our heavy lift; it will be our triumph or our downfall. I know I am being cryptic, and it’s nothing secret, just nothing worth going into.

Work is consuming me. So much (not the public stuff, more like office dynamic stuff) is going wrong and I feel like I’ve been on a steady decline all year as far as morale. And now I’m sitting at the bottom. My coworkers all bring their complaints and problems and hurts to me because I’m senior to them, but I’m not their boss. So I have the pleasure of listening and being dragged in, but having no authority to fix anything.

Ah lah, as Mary Moon would say.

The other night I dreamed I was prepping the CMS Administrator for her appearance before Congress. I had been emailing with her during the midnight hour the night before, and she had gone before Congress that day, and I guess this creeped into my mind at rest. I was sitting across from her and she kept asking me questions I couldn’t answer, and getting more and more mad and insistent. Uh, paging Dr. Freud please. I can’t quite figure out what all this means. Geez.

And I don’t have the answers. Things with this law aren’t perfect, things that we’re doing on our end aren’t perfect either. We’re slowly turning a ship in the middle of the ocean. S.l.o.w.l.y. I can’t be burdened with the enormity of it all.

But nor do I feel free to abandon it either. I’m seven years in, and I feel entrenched in this. Invested. Stuck. Honored. Lucky. Caught. Attached.

I suppose this all seems very dramatic, the ravings of a mid-level employee, mid-level in life. But it has been consuming me for so long that I’m putting my head up to realize that life is too short for all of this, surely. I can’t be dreaming about the office every single night. I need more.

No good way to end this, so I’ll leave a snapshot of my view, and know I am thinking of each of you as I type these words.

Every Day

Every day feels frantic.

I’ve entered the point where I was when I moved here, almost 4 years ago. And when I moved away from DC the first time, 8 years ago. And when I graduated college and moved to DC, 10 years ago.

What was senior-itis apparently transitioned into stagnant-itis with every few years bringing pretty seismic shifts in my life. Leading up to them was this anxious, frenzied feeling of quiet desperation (I know that sounds dramatic but it’s the best way I can think to put it) of “Something is going to change, it’s going to change in a big way, but I don’t know when/what/where and how any of it will occur.”

4 years ago, I actually went to the doctor and got on anti-depressants which I JUST weaned off of this summer. I was well past the point of actually needing them, and basically just was taking them to avoid the side effects. But that’s all done now, and I don’t feel that they’re needed to weather this similar….transition, whatever it may be.

4 years ago was different; I was different. I am a very, very different person than I was when I moved here, and that’s a very good thing.

My job is not going well. Beyond the government shutdown—has anyone heard the government is shutdown?—and the rollout of Obamacare—have you heard that some people don’t like that?—and the nitty-gritty work that we are in the middle of with health IT—you probably, actually, haven’t heard of that—things feel confusing and smothering and mad. Just mad. Mad crazy and plain mad, with my  blood pressure constantly on the rise.

Does anyone watch “The Middle?” The littlest kid, Brick, has a tic where he whispers under his breath what he is thinking or the last word he says. I’ve developed a Brick-like tic where I whisper “Fuckers” every single time I see John Boehner on TV and whoever he happens to be with. Add Michelle Bachmann to that list. And Eric Cantor. Fuckers. Life-alterers and destroyers and laughing all the way to the bank when this is all over with their book deals and TV gigs. Fuckers.

My health is also not going well. My cholesterol is up, my blood sugar was too elevated, etc etc. Doctor’s orders were a low-carb, high protein diet so I’m trying to figure out what the hell I’m going to eat. For an insane moment, I thought of using my blog to document my food and exercise. Then I realized that that would make me want to kill myself, as that is just so boring and I wouldn’t do that to you faithful few who come around to hear my thoughts. Like those are so exciting!

Every day, I look for jobs in Louisville, or in cities in Tennessee, North Carolina and South Carolina. I would move within that radius. I don't necessarily want to move "home" right smack in the middle of my family, but I  want to stay within a day's drive of them. I want to get to where I can get a patch of dirt. I want a home. I want to put down some roots. I love my leaky basement apartment in the most historic neighborhood in DC. But I can't live there forever.

I see dozens of jobs I could qualify for easily, right here in DC but they’re few and far between anywhere else. They’re there. They just take time and work to find, and for better or worse, my life has been here and focused nationally. It’s hard to pick someone like that who isn’t in tune with a state’s government, political players, and whole environment. But I’m trying.

Every day, I don’t see much. I apply for what I do see. I don’t date (what’s the point?), I play softball with my various co-ed teams, I come home, I get drinks with friends, I take out the trash and toss the cat in the air and catch him when I come home (he … loves it). And every day I feel like at any point, it’s all going to stop and change.

Something is. What? When?

Every day. 

Texts with Dad

Sums up my work life, and my relationship with my (can't say enough good things about) father.

Home

This has been a tough month. I've been working crazy long hours, have been traveling around from big towns to small ones (I was flying into Mobile at 8pm, watching the darkness below and I thought --Shit, are there even cabs here?) I am home for a good long time. Fall softball starts on Tuesday. Time to get myself back for a minute.

I've been ready to leave, lately. Thinking thoughts of what's next. I'm ready to buy a home, settle down, get a patch of dirt. In DC, that's just not possible. Especially not in the area I'm in now -- trust me when I say I'm practically stealing my apartment from my landlords who are happily coupled up in Cape Cod owning a B&B and basically being the biggest gay stereotypes there are. I love them like crazy, and vice versa, and so they let me stay. I take care of the place, and they are happy because their history is here. Their life as a couple, their first ten years together.

And now, my own history is here. New Years Eve will mark four years here. Almost 7 years total of being in the DC area. When I was being introduced on Tuesday before I spoke, I heard "Stephanie has over ten years experience in...." I have been in a stage of life longer than ten years! Jesus! I haven't done anything for ten years other than attend my county school system.

It's been a tough September, and here are a few pictures of my neighborhood tonight. I took a walk to remember exactly what I'd miss, so that I can enjoy it now. I'm weird like that.