Four months

I've been single now four months. I leave Chicago in less than one month--23 days probably. No job, as of yet. No place to stay, as of yet. But prospects (I was just approved for a great short-term lease on a studio, so once they have their money, it's mine).

But I've been stress crying from exhaustion and waves of emotion. 

And still breakup songs. Return to me songs. Lines of poems I'll never write down. 

Slowly creeping out of "barely functioning but putting on a game face" and into "holding onto as much stability as I can muster for short periods of time."

The Adventure Westward is nerve-wrecking. Everyone keeps asking if it's exciting. That is a rare and fleeting feeling. It's more anxiety-inducing. Doubt-forming. Self-reliance-challenging. Depression-agitating. Eventually I'll build my courage and confidence from this. Just....not yet. 

I really appreciate everyone's encouragement and support, but it's like they believe in me more than I believe in myself. Maybe that's the thing. Where egotistical people believe more in themselves than others believe in them.

But humble people believe in themselves less than others do.

So my nerves are raw. Once I get an apartment or once I get a job, I'll be immensely relieved. Until then, I'm wearing my night guard each night and drinking LOTS of coffee. 

Anyway, I haven't been working out. I haven't been sleeping well. I have been working 10-hr days. I'm packing, loading up, doing what I can, still purging all during he weekend. All those things. I hope to get a lot done this weekend and next. 

Next weekend I lose my furniture--selling them to a friend. Which will be totally strange. Not having a squishy place to lay down when I get home. This selling of furture has been the plan the whole time, but having an empty living room is gonna be weird. I sold so much furniture, but I'm glad bc there's likely no room in the new place. 

I have so much to do in the next few weeks, I just hope coffee will pull me through! 

I have waves of "it'll be alright" and then waves of sadness that I'm doing this "alone." But I'm learning to accept he's never going to call or write me. 

For whatever reasons he has. Losing my best friend in the breakup has been hard for me. I just hope moving to Seattle to start fresh is the right move. Because I don't think I could handle staying here and running into him. 

My friend made me promise that I wasn't just running away to Seattle to get away from my ex. I'm not. I'm running there to start a new life, to be closer to stire, to figure out if what I think I need and want are one and the same. 

I want to hike. ACTUAL HIKING TRAILS. And run around a lake with a path. And eat fresh fish and get used to new surroundings. I want to be the person I've always been jealous of. 

And if I become the woman I've always wanted to be, that means fostering in a few years and adopting in a few more. Hiking. Fresh food. Better winters. A new job path. A little girl before I'm 40. Maybe a tiny house in a few years with a large garden and chairs to read. And a kitchen with space to feed my friends. 

Nothing flashy. Just right. 

HERO

I want to be this chick because she says all the things I've thought. Also, I had to tell someone who was yelling at me about his perfect writing that he'd forgotten a verb in his sentence. 

BOOM. 

You got editored.

The Magic Hour Is Teaching Me the Edges of Want

Margaret Atwood — 'To want is to have a weakness.'

Cinematographers and photographers alike have deemed the time when the sun is setting and casts a blush-orange glow on everything "The Magic Hour." The lighting is perfect for filming and photos, the shadows golden and all things slightly fuzzy--a natural "retouching" by the sun.

This is the hour when I find my mind wandering. About how I'm leaving the apartment in which I wanted my ex and I to grow as a family. About dreaming about things that won't ever happen here now. Or at all. About giving away nearly all my stupid fucking possessions because they don't matter. About how material things weigh us down and consume our time when we should be helping and celebrating each other more.

I love the fucking light in this apartment. 

Between where I thought my life would be, where it is, where I want it to go, how happy I am, how alone I feel, how supported I feel, how grateful I am, and ending usually on just how FUCKING alive I am. 

Because every day I wake up, I am given a chance to DO something awesome. And awesome things take time. Baby building blocks of everything we've seen, done, everywhere we've been, every PERSON we've been...all leading up to turning points, riding the waves up and down that are thrown at us. Or lying on the shores in the sand, and feeling each wave pass over, creeping or tsunami. 

Each wrench in the wheels, each crippling wave that knocks us off our feet, still doesn't diminish our ability to stand back up.

And I always do that.

But my ankles are weak. I'm getting weary.

I'm 34 and I've seen no fewer than 4 suicidal major depressive episodes. Meds, therapy, support networks, copays, doctors, psychologists, psychiatrists, articles about the pros/cons of all coping mechanisms. Drinking, drugs, sex, self-hurt, TV, exercise, food, shopping, talking, group therapy, all the ways we push things down, we share, we heal. Read, watch, listen, learn, form an opinion, listen to the other side, flip it over, open up, readjust, reconsider, learn.

FUCK, MAN.

I have SO. MUCH. PRIVILEGE. and even I'm exhausted. I have insurance, and come from a middle class, and I'm a white woman with a Masters. I make enough money to get by. I have great friends and family. 

But no companion anymore. And since I was little, I've ALWAYS put the emphasis on the approval of another person, a partner, and wanting a family. 

Maybe we find ways to complain because our brains feel locked inside the reality that we are born, will live, and will die on this planet. Because we don't know for sure what is before or after consciousness. Maybe that's just me.

The Meaning of ItAll. Everyone makes up one's mind over the course of one's lifetime. Feast or famine. Fight, flight, or freeze. Make pretty things. Make money. Make babies. Make chaos. Make people listen. Make people move. Make people believe you. Make them believe in magic. Make them drink the KoolAid. Make believe. Make up your own fantasy. Make fantasy a reality. 

So back to this Magic Hour. I've always been in love with the way the sun hits things, its shadows, its sunset, and, on the rare occasion I catch it, its sunrise. So I can't help but get frozen by the way the sun floods my back window in my Chicago apartment. On the weekends when I attempt to apply to jobs, find apartments, finish taxes, FUCKING START PACKING, do anything other than watch TV and eat (no seriously), I am frozen by the sun and all these goddamn thoughts I have.

Namely because this is the second time I'm leaving a city after a breakup to a man I thought I'd marry. (Note: in 15 years, there's been two.) Each so drastically different. Both times, I felt like it was unfinished. I feel like I have to venture west to figure things out. To figure ME out.

Shadows hide the ugly. Illuminate the sky.

I know myself. I know who I am and who I am not. I am learning to be okay with that, to accept it, and to be proud and secure in that. 

But still I feel unfulfilled. I know what I want. I just don't know how to get it. I guess I need to learn to want what I have. Or to un-learn to want. 

When I was 29, I finally resolved that the greatest sadness I could experience would be to wait for someone to share my life with. Then I had a relationship that reversed that. 

These edges of want--to have and give and lose and gain--have been sharpened and smoothed hundreds of times. How sharp does this knife need to be?

Unfinished

This just feels half-baked. 

Unfinished.

Like there's still leaves
to turn.

Or rake 

and
set
on
fire.