i'm not gonna write you a love song...

'Cause you ask for it, 'cause you need one
You see, I'm not gonna write you love song
'Cause you tell me it's make or breaking this
If you're on your way, I'm not gonna write you to stay
If all you have is leaving, I'm gonna need a better reason
To write you a love song today

When C and I were "breaking up" for the first time, he threw a lot of particularly nasty accusations my way. He accused me of lying to him all the time, about everything - even what kind of pizza I liked, because one time he saw me eat a slice with green peppers when he knew I didn't like green peppers. I reminded him that it was homemade pizza, and I didn't want to insult our host, so I tried a slice. We moved on. He accused me of talking about him with my girlfriends and giving away all his secrets. I reminded him that since we'd started "dating," I didn't have any girlfriends with whom to boy-talk and secret-share. We moved on. He accused me of plotting against him and trying to get him to incriminate himself. I reminded him that I'm not smart enough to be plotting against anyone, and if he's worried about incriminating himself, then maybe we have bigger problems here. We moved on. Sort of.

"Well, you never write anything about me." I stared dumbly at him, in complete disbelief that it had seriously come to this. "I mean it," he continued. "You say you're a writer. Why don't you ever write anything about me?"

"How do you know I never write about you?" I decided to be cute before realizing - too late - what a mistake that was. He scowled, accused me of keeping secrets from him. "It's not a secret... I just don't show you everything that I write. We agreed on that, remember?" Several times I had tried to share things with him - a few of them even about him, but I guess too obtuse for him to notice - and he'd stopped just short of ridiculing me. Halfway to his credit, though, he'd realized that he'd hurt me and said that he just didn't understand writing. At least not your writing, anyway, he threw in for good measure. That day, "we" decided it'd be best if I did my writing on my own time.

"Still... if you really loved me, you'd write about me." Instantly, I compiled a list of at least fifty things that I "really loved" and had never written about, but I threw in the towel.

"You're right," I said. I looked at him, but it was dark on the porch, and the streetlight made his eyes look like empty sockets. "Someday when I write a novel about naive girls and the hell their older boyfriends put them through, I'll dedicate it to you. Then you'll know that I wrote about you." I picked up the sandwich that I'd made him from the plate resting on his lap and threw it on the ground. The top piece of bread fell off and landed mustard-side down on the pavement, and the wind blew two leaves of lettuce from the top to reveal neatly-folded black forest ham. I walked calmly to my car, concentrating on the thud of my Nikes and the swing of my hips. I thought how I'd have to clean up the sandwich in the morning before we got ants.

When I drove off, I stole a glance at him, confident he couldn't see me in the dark. He sat still on the bench and removed the plate from his lap, resting it where I used to sit, crossing his legs. He held the other half of the ham sandwich in his left hand. He draped his right arm over the back of the bench and took a bite. I knew he was chewing with his mouth open, but I couldn't tell if it was a good or bad thing that I still cared.

period

I was feigning a smile and stirring the rum and coke I hadn't yet tasted when I felt the air in the room change. It became hard to breathe, and something made me turn towards the door. I saw a head of sleek brunette hair and an extended arm shaking the hand of a stranger. She gently tugged at the back of her slate gray suit jacket and passed her briefcase into the coat check. A silver sparkle on her left hand caught the light as she turned toward me. Our eyes met for less than a second and left me reeling. I knew who it was before I even turned to the door.

I spent the evening stealing glances at her from a corner, staring at her over the rim of my glass, watching her out of the corner of my eye. I kept waiting for my heart to drop, bottom out – for that hollow feeling to swallow me whole. But it never came. I never felt empty.

I tried hard to picture them at home on a Friday night: pizza and beer, a rented video, pajamas. Their comfort was inevitable, their love quiet and convenient. I imagined the day he gave her that ring. He’d be nervous, stumbling over his words, and she’d find it endearing. He’d finally say what he came to, she’d smile and whisper his name. Neither of them would cry.

I watched her make her way around the room, watched as the people she hugged goodbye smiled genuinely, sincerely. I tried to remember a time when I’d felt a shred of affection for her. I couldn’t, and imagined the rest of the room to be faking it.

I thought that she’d ride the train home that night, enter their apartment to find him reading in a chair, waiting for her to return. He’d rise to greet her and slip her shoes off. Kiss her lightly, say he missed her. Soon they’d go to bed. They probably hadn’t gotten a new one since the time I’d shared it with him. But he never thought of that now, not with her under the covers. He’d lie between the sheets and watch her as she hung her skirt in the closet, unashamed.

Numb. A small part of me missed the sweet torture, ached for the dull throb of the familiar realization that they are real. I found myself alone in a crowded room drudging up old memories, trying to resurface an ounce of that former pain. But I couldn't. For all my hard work, nothing came. No vacancy, no sadness, no heavy sigh. As she exited the room, I thought this certainly meant I was over him, her, it. I felt my shoulders square and my chin rise. I thought surely I’d find someone new – a new lover, a new friend. A new scenario not destined for tragedy.

But I still didn't feel anything.

Me: As Told By...

I have a good friend who teaches English to some of the luckiest kids in the nation. Annie is the type of teacher who makes me want to go back to school just to be in her class - I'd put up with the hell-on-earth that was high school for the opportunity to discuss a book, complete an assignment, or diagram a sentence within the confines of her classroom.

Luckily, I don't have to pull a Never Been Kissed and go back to high school because Annie is juuust geeky enough to regularly do all those things (and more!) with me. We lived together for a year in college while she was student teaching, so I got to hear all her unique lesson plans, relive the beautiful stories of juvenile literature, and test myself with grammar games. After she graduated and began teaching full time in Northwest Indiana, I was able to sit in on some of her classes one day for a story I was writing. She was even better than I had remembered. Ever since that day, she sometimes shares lesson plans and assignments with me, and it's like Christmas morning every time I get one in an email from her.

"Me: As Told By..." was a project she assigned last year that asks her students to use the internet to look up and choose quotations that represent their viewpoints or experiences. She provided a bunch of topics for them, through the words of others, to comment on. I always thought that was such a cool way to allow the students to describe themselves without assigning the dreaded essay or theme writing, while simultaneously exposing them to many classic and cherished quotes.

I've kept the assignment tucked away since she gave it to me, pulling it out from time to time to marvel at her ingenuity, always intending to complete my own. I started to complete it once and saved it as a draft on this lovely blog. Now I'm going to finish it.
--

Me: As Told By...

Attitude
"Every day may not be good, but there's something good in every day." - Author Unknown

Beauty
"Our hearts are drunk with a beauty our eyes could never see." - George W. Russell

Books
"I would be most content if my children grew up to be the kind of people who think decorating consists mostly of building enough bookshelves." - Anna Quindlen
"My test of a good novel is dreading to begin the last chapter." - Thomas Helm
"It is what you read when you don't have to that determines what you will be when you can't help it." - Oscar Wilde

Character
"I have found some of the best reasons I ever had for remaining at the bottom simply by looking at the [people] at the top." - Frank Moore Colby

Confidence
"All of us have wonders hidden in our breasts, only needing circumstances to evoke them." - Charles Dickens

Creativity
"Creativity comes from trust. Trust your instincts. And never hope more than you work." - Rita Mae Brown

Criticism
"It is better to be making the news than taking it; to be an actor rather than a critic." - Sir Winston Churchill

Death
"Life is better than death, I believe, if only because it is less boring, and because it has fresh peaches in it." - Alice Walker

Dreams
"Sometimes you wake up. Sometimes the fall kills you. And sometimes, when you fall, you fly." - Neil Gaiman

Education
"The whole purpose of education is to turn mirrors into windows." - Sydney J. Harris
"A child educated only at school is an uneducated child." - George Santayana

Failure
"A man may fall many times, but he won't be a failure until he says that someone pushed him." - Elmer G. Letterman

Faith
"Faith is the bird that sings when the dawn is still dark." - Rabindranath Tagore
"Never confuse the faith with the supposedly faithful." - Randy K. Milholland

Forgiveness
"Love is an act of endless forgiveness, a tender look which becomes a habit." - Peter Ustinov

Friendship
"Friendship isn't a big thing - it's a million little things." - Author Unknown

Happiness
"If only we'd stop trying to be happy, we could have a pretty good time." - Edith Wharton
"Happiness is excitement that has found a settling down place. But there is always a little corner that keeps flapping around." - E. L. Konigsburg

Honesty
"The greatest way to live with honor in this world is to be what we pretend to be." - Socrates

Heroes
"You don't raise heroes, you raise sons. And if you treat them like sons, they'll turn out to be heroes, even if it's just in your own eyes." - Walter M. Schirra, Sr.

Learning
"It's what you learn after you know it all that counts." - Harry S. Truman
"You have learned something. That always feels at first as if you had lost something." - H. G. Wells

Life
"The first step to getting the things you want out of life is this: Decide what you want." - Ben Stein
"Life is like playing a violin in public and learning the instrument as one goes on." - Samuel Butler

Love
"You have to walk carefully in the beginning of love; the running across fields into your lover's arms can only come later when you're sure they won't laugh if you trip." - Jonathan Carroll
"Love one another, and you will be happy. It's as simple and as difficult as that." - Michael Leunig

Money
"You can only become truly accomplished at something you love. Don't make money your goal. Instead, pursue the things you love doing and then do them so well that people can't take their eyes off you." - Maya Angelou

Morality
"Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life. Aim abovev morality. Be not simply good; be good for something." - Henry David Thoreau

Religion
"It is a fine thing to establish one's own religion in one's heart, not to dependent on tradition and second-hand ideals. Life will seem to you, later, not a lesser, but a great thing." - D. H. Lawrence
"Everyone ought to worship God according to his own inclinations and not to be constrained by force." - Flavius Josephus

Suffering
"In the depth of winter, I finally learned that there was within me an invincible summer." - Albert Camus
"Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, vision cleared, ambition inspired, and success achieved." - Helen Keller

The future
"The future is an opaque mirror. Anyone who tries to look into it sees nothing but the dim outlines of an old and worried face." - Jim Bishop

The past
"You can clutch the past so tightly to your chest that it leaves your arms too full to embrace the present." - Jan Glidewell
"For the majority of us, the past is a regret, the future an experiment." - Mark Twain

Truth
"Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth." - Oscar Wilde

Trust
"You may be deceived if you trust too much, but you will live in torment if you don't trust enough." - Frank Crane
"When I'm trusting and being myself... everything in my life reflects this by falling into place easily, often miraculously." - Shakti Gawain

War
"War does not determine who is right - only who is left." - Bertrand Russell
"The problem in defense is how far you can go without destroying from within what you are trying to defend from without." - Dwight D. Eisenhower

Writing
"Writing gives you the illusion of control, and then you realize it's just an illusion - that people are going to bring their own stuff into it." - David Sedaris
"A word is not the same with one writer as with another. One tears it from his guts. The other pulls it out of his overcoat pocket." - Charles Peguy
"Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass." - Anton Chekhov

Monday

The chapel that brings such comfort and familiarity on Sunday mornings can seem so foreign and impatient when you’re there to bid someone farewell. The pews are cold and unforgiving; the light through the stained-glass windows appears dull and dreary. Your normal front-row seat is now reserved for family, and the view from the back seems miles away. The only saving grace is that it’s nearly impossible to see the white-dressed casket before the altar through the teased hair of the woman in front of you. When you kneel to pray, she does not move, and you awkwardly search for a gap in which to place your folded hands. All around you are familiar faces and the embarrassed echoes of choked sniffles. You cross yourself and sit back, pulling the collection of tissues from your left pocket: right for used, left for clean.

You subtly glance around the filling chapel and try to overlook the mourners entering in pairs, the fragile women sobbing into damp Kleenexes, and the men feigning strength as they press tear-stained faces into their lapels. In another situation a world of bad news away, you’d turn your nose on all of them, scoffing at their codependency and silently patting yourself on the back for rising above it. On this day, however, you close your eyes and let your head fall back, hoping to hide the longing you feel for a strong arm around your shoulders and the presence of a familiar body warming the space beside you. You push the ache somewhere deep inside of you and open your eyes.

You’re surrounded by the well-known faces of coworkers, few of whom you’d venture to call friends. They are merely people you see everyday, people with whom you exchange polite hallway smiles and nervous bathroom laughter, people who call daily meetings and waste your precious time. That notion of time has become quite apparent of late. You didn’t have time to return your brother’s phone call, so you vow to speak to him tomorrow. You didn’t have time for a healthy breakfast, so you settle for hastily eaten fast food. You didn’t have time to iron the black trousers you planned to wear to the funeral, so you pull the loathed, gray, herringbone slacks from the back annals of your closet. You blink yourself back and realize that the service has begun, and all around you sniffles are keeping cadence while sighs harmonize with stretched rivulets of tears.

Before you know it, it’s over. You’re singing the closing hymn to the tune of Danny Boy, your tissues are saturated and stretched thin, and the pallbearers are carefully avoiding your eyes. Outside, the sun is shining and the earth seems joyful to know it will soon swallow a woman so good. You give the sad nods and the closed-lipped smiles; you receive the necessary hugs. You hold hands with a woman who looks as if she’s about to crumble, and together you watch the hearse pull out into traffic, red and blue lights heralding it on its way.

You slip out of the crowd as soon as you see an opening and walk the few feet back to your office. You close the door behind you, catch your breath, and fall into your big leather chair. You read the same sentence six times before you realize that you haven’t a clue what it says. So you stop pretending and rest your head in your hands, alone in your space and alone with your thoughts. And you think how wonderful it would be to go for ice cream.

Sunday

Mourning the loss of someone close is the hardest thing about living alone. There are many difficulties that come with being on your own, like falling asleep alone each night, the echo of your solitary laugh at an evening sitcom, the fear of being seen unaccompanied in a restaurant. Nothing can compare, though, to the day when you learn someone close to you has died – from the moment you receive the news, to coming home to an empty apartment that evening, to dressing for the wake, to climbing the steps to the chapel, to reshelving your emotions after it’s all over.

I’ve found over the years that I prefer being alone. I’ve grown to savor the feeling of stretching out in bed and wrapping the entire blanket tightly around my body, and I’ve even gotten comfortable being seen around town by myself. I’ve learned that the best way to avoid the empty feeling of your single laughter is simply to watch The History Channel and Animal Planet instead of Seinfeld or Friends. I’ve even discovered the beauty of simply ignoring the debilitating ache that fills my heart and forces me to sadly sigh each time I see people happily being together. I’ve found out that it is indeed possible to triumph in sadness rather than work to overcome it and that a somehow-pleasing apathy waits just below the surface of loneliness.

And although I’ve perfected the necessary tactics to staying home alone on a Friday night, and I’ve cinched pretending to read a book while I pray no one sees me sitting alone at Sunday brunch after church, the one thing I can’t seem to master is how to deal with the death of someone close. The drive home is possibly the hardest part of the entire process. Tonight, driving the short distance from the funeral home, I couldn’t help but think that mine would be the next unexpected death to shake this small town, having perished in a horrible car wreck because my eyes were so filled with tears that I couldn’t see clearly behind the wheel. When I did, in fact, make it home, I tried to laugh at the absurdity of my dramatics, but it only made me cry harder. I turned off the car and sat a moment, trying to collect myself. The moment I finally made it in the door, I collapsed against the wall and dragged myself up the narrow staircase. I looked around, angry that I lived here in this aging house and angry that I had conditioned myself not to care enough to do anything about it.

After I had closed and locked the door behind me, I didn’t know what else to do. I looked around the living room expressionless and walked into the bathroom. I brushed my hair, staring at my splotchy face and glassy eyes in the mirror. I changed my clothes, finding the same worn sweatshirt I had slept in the night before and pulling a pair of trackpants from the hamper. I laced up my tennis shoes. And I went for ice cream.

Fast Enough for You

A million things could have happened
in the time between when you said goodbye and when you closed the door behind you.

In the spirit of a sappy movie montage,
you could have turned and, with tears in your eyes,
thrown your arms around me,
changing your mind and swearing that you could never breathe unless I was near.

You could have tripped on your way to the door --
we would have laughed, and I'd have offered my hand to help you up,
and when you gripped it, you'd remember the way it fit
and realize that your fingers call the spaces between mine home.

Maybe I should have called out to you,
begged you not to leave me,
confessed every feeling that I've ever had for you,
confessed that you are my core.

With your fingers wrapped around the cool metal of the doorknob,
you could have pictured my sad and lonely self
sitting in the green chair behind you,
and finally decided that I am beautiful enough for you.

You could have stared hard into my eyes before turning,
read all the words on the grocery list of everything I wanted to tell you,
forgiven me for being less than what you needed in your life right then,
and surrendered your pride to a lifetime with the one who makes you laugh.

The moments it took you to

close your mouth,
turn away,
place one foot before the other roughly eight times,
open the door,
and close it

were not long enough for me to commit all of you to memory,
for me to take all of you in;

but the click of the latch
in the brass handle
couldn't have come
fast enough for you.

"What you remember is not what they think you will remember. It is often not."

When I think about my grandpa - my Poppy Chuck who died almost seven years ago - the image that comes to mind is the placemats he had at his dining room table. He lived in a condo in Munster and bought only the finest things. Every appliance and piece of furniture was the best of its kind, and there are only six mediocre things I remember him owning: two red, fake Tiffany-glass candle holders, the kind you might expect to find in a small, Italian restaurant, and four cream-colored, vinyl placemats. We used to have Oreos and milk at that table, a younger version of me with my legs folded underneath for height, my elbows making round, semi-permanent indentations in the vinyl, and him smiling at me over the rims of his bifocals.

There was a small courtyard out front with wrought-iron patio furniture and pink impatiens, a heavy sliding-glass door that lead to the living room. He lived on the ground floor, and the woman on the second floor loved him - as she should have. He had an electronic scale in his bathroom, the face of which registered weight in red and announced each horrifying pound out in a mechanical voice. I got in trouble once for turning it on and waiting to hear the weight of the plunger - the voice was loud and had sold me out to my parents in the next room. From then on, every time I went in his bathroom, I tried to figure out how to override the voice component. When I finally did, I weighed every object on the shelves, in the cabinets, and along the shower wall.

He collected penguins. The huge entertainment center that took up an entire wall in his living room - and since his death has taken up an entire wall in my parents' living room - was lined with penguins. He had stuffed penguins, my favorite of which was a big, plump guy wearing pleather boots and a hat with a fuzzy ball at the tip, wind-up penguins, penguin pens and pencils, penguin statues, and penguin snowglobes. I always think that I would like to start collecting them, a way of inviting a piece of him to my own home, but I never do.

When I found out he had cancer, I was pulling my ponytail through the back of the burgandy beret I was required to wear to work at Showplace 16, a then-new movie theatre in the heart of The Region. When my mom left my room, I leaned on my dresser and cried, staring at myself in the mirror and wondering, "Why him?" and "Why don't you wear waterproof mascara?" After I reapplied, I called my boss and explained that my family was going to see my grandpa before his surgery tomorrow. She called me "honey" and said she was sorry; I could have the night off.

I drove separately because I wanted to be alone in my car to cry and listen to sad music. I told my parents it was because I wanted to show off my new used car to my uncle Carl and his girlfriend Karen, who would also be there. Inside, on the overstuffed furniture, everyone acted like it was normal for all of us to be together in such a capacity. No one mentioned what must have been on everyone's mind: tomorrow we will trust this man's life to a surgeon who knows nothing about the intricacies of this family, a surgeon whose obligation it is to save every diseased body that is brought before him. I drank diet root beer and tried to commit the scene to memory.

A week later and everything had gone well. In his weakened state, he had developed pneumonia, but that was to be expected, according to his doctors. I went to see him once after school; his hospital was in Hammond, so my mom wouldn't let me go alone. His eyes were closed and he had tubes in his arm. I sat on a chair at his side and answered his questions about school, singing, and art. He always wanted me to be an artist, dreamed that I'd one day have an instructional television show on PBS. Days later, I was at home watching City of Angels when Mom and Dad came back from the hospital. Dad stayed in the kitchen and Mom came to the living room. "How is he?" I asked, and she answered, "Poppy Chuck died." The Sarah McLachlan song "Angel" was playing in the background. It would take me five years to finally watch the rest of the movie.

My dad was sitting in the kitchen when I went to him, hugged him, and moved aside for my mom to put her arms around him. He looked up at her and said, "I'm an orphan now," his eyes so filled with tears that their blue seemed to go on forever. Three months later, his brother finally proposed to his girlfriend of ten years. My mom said that some situations make you rethink the events in your own life, and Chuck's death brought Carl to a lot of realizations about himself. I thought part of it might have been that Poppy Chuck loved Karen and, more than anything, wanted her to always be a part of our family.

His birthday was October 4 - when we'd call to sing to him, he'd always respond, "Ten-four, good buddy." He died at the end of September, just days before his 70th birthday.

Something about a particularly low Saturday evening just made me think of him. It's always like that, though. I can go for days without the thought of him crossing my mind, then something suddenly pops up to remind me.

Like a friend asking why I never let anyone call me Rebecca. "There's only one person who ever regularly called me Rebecca... other people have tried, since then, but it's never felt right." Although I do miss hearing it spoken outloud conversationally, some things are just sacred, I guess.

"When I grow up, I want to be a principal or a caterpillar."

I wanted to be a lot of different things when I was a kid.

The first thing I remember wanting to do was draw. I've always been very good at art, so I decided I would be an artist. Then first grade happened. I remember this day distinctly. My teacher asked all the children to draw pictures of what we wanted to be when we grew up. As all the other kids asked the teacher how to draw spaceships, cowboys, and princesses, I set to work at drawing myself drawing. I worked on drawing myself first. When that was done, I thought I'd draw an easel next to me with some paintbrushes. But when I tried to put pencil to paper, but my hand paused in mid-air. I didn't know how to draw an easel. I didn't even know where to begin. So I thought about it a few minutes, and when I couldn't come to a conclusion, I regrouped and decided to draw three dogs instead. I put them on leashes in my hand and titled it "Becky Scherer: Dog Walker."

Needless to say... art wasn't a contender for much longer. I made my first rule: if future career involves drawing, prerequisite must be ability to draw one's own commonplace materials for said career.

Then there was the time I wanted to be a wildlife biologist. I had no idea what a wildlife biologist did, other than got to play with cool animals like killer whales. I had seen the term in one of my dad's National Geographics, magazines I read religiously as a kid. And I'm not even talking about just looking at the pictures... I actually read the thing, cover to cover. I have no idea how I understood any of it in my young age... but evidently I didn't, as I chose my future career based on a cool picture of a female scubadiver petting Shamu. And it wasn't just a childhood thing. That idea stuck with me until roughly my freshman year of high school, when I had to take my first Biology class and realized how hard it was. At the end of that grading period, I ended up getting a B+, but decided that while Biology made for a very interesting class... I didn't want to have to work that hard to earn a B+ at my job for the rest of my life.

Second rule: refrain from choosing future career based upon full-page, syndicated, color photos in hard-to-decipher publications, especially if said career contains form of suffix "-ology."

Later that year, ignoring the second half of rule two, I took my first Psychology class and found another job aspiration. I would be a psychologist. Not a psychiatrist, though, because I already knew I would never make it through medical school. I absorbed every psychology-related thing I could find: I had a subscription to Psychology Today; I researched and reported on a different psychological disorder for every term paper for the next three years; I rented movies like Pi and Sybil every weekend. My junior year of high school, I did a semester-long job-shadowing gig at a counseling center in Merrillville and learned all about the luxury of a Psy.D., making my medical school woes obsolete. I enrolled in college as a Psychology major.

Then varied events commenced that I don't really wish to talk about, and my dreams of counseling people through their sorrows and helping them find happiness were sadly lamented.

Third rule: when attempting to discover your passion in life, allow no one to defer you from your course, no matter how silly or outdated they believe your latest attempt to be.

I had to pick a new major, so I settled on the subject of the last compliment someone gave to me: English/Creative Writing. My favorite professor had spent the last week stroking my ego about a story I wrote for class, and so at my low point, I decided I might be good at writing. The next year, an internship in the Office of Publications and Media Relations fell into my lap when the real intern quit and I was promoted from the lowly student worker to the esteemed intern. Ever since then, I've "known" I was supposed to be a writer.

But, really, what do any of us know? How do I "know" I'm destined to write? Because I was an impressionable freshman and an adult complimented my work? Because a campus job was handed down to the next student in line? Because I wrote one great story four years ago and suddenly gained a reputation for writing?

I'm working on putting together some pieces for possible publication (that's for another post), and I was having a particularly hard time with revisions a few days ago... so I took an online job aptitude test as a means of procrastination.

I learned that I'm most suited to be in the food service industry, where I spent my entire high school career and summers/breaks from college before I got my first "real" job. I also discovered that apparently I'd rather "test canoes in rough water" than "teach deaf children to lip read."

In high school, I took a similar test with my guidance counselor. The two careers I tested highest for were manager of a fish hatchery and a rabbi. According to that test, I have to either let go of my aversion to slimy fish eggs or convert and get a sex change to achieve my life's calling.

Teaching deaf children to lip read... helping fish eggs hatch... spreading the word of the Torah... maybe I was just taking the easy way out when I decided to write. Maybe there's more for me out there than press releases, event photography, and publication proofs. Maybe there's more for all of us than the careers we settle into and the names we forge for ourselves. Maybe I should have just tried a little harder to draw that easel.

A Slow and Steady Pace

I found this poem the other day. I wrote it a few years ago after a friend of mine told me a story about something that had recently happened to her.

At the time, Nancy was working as a student Admissions Representative for St. Joe, and each week she was required to make a certain number of phone calls to prospective students. One evening, a girl had called her, rather than the other way around, saying that she just needed someone to talk to. Nancy, toying with the idea of a psychology major at the time, decided to take a break from selling St. Joe and counsel this poor girl.

The girl opened like a floodgate. She began telling Nancy about how hard her life had seemed lately. Apparently she was having a lot of problems fitting in - her family didn't understand her and she felt like her friends were beginning to desert her. The girl was in her car at the time and kept telling Nancy how she almost didn't make the call because her cell phone was roaming, but randomly dialed the numbers anyway. As my friend continued to give advice to the girl she thought was suicidal and lost, the girl continued to open up and reveal her problems.

Satisfied with the good deed she was doing, Nancy noticed a steady change in the girl's voice - she seemed much less gloomy. In fact, she was almost upbeat and happy. Breathless, even.

Nancy, suddenly deciding that something about the whole situation wasn't right, stopped talking for a moment. Just as she was about to ask the girl what she was doing, the girl said:

"Don't stop. I'm masterbating to you."

-----

A Slow and Steady Pace

A trusting girl,
a sturdy desk,
a phone with an extra-long cord.

A lonely road,
an emotional time,
a random roam from a beat up Ford.

She wanted to help,
thought maybe she’d win,
give the voice an outlook anew.

Cracking and strained,
jaded and drained,
but soon light began to peek through.

Just when she felt
that she’d finally done well,
reality slapped her square in the face.

The voice was happy,
the voice was pleased,
at a rather quick but steady pace.

Then she understood
as her hill toppled down
why the voice had changed at such an alarming rate.

For while she thought
she was changing someone’s perspective,
she was just a tool used to masturbate.

Your Life Two Years Ago

It’s so hard to get started sometimes. Just when you think you’re there – when you’re feeling good about your life and the choices you’ve made – he makes his way back into your view and everything is lost. Everything you worked so hard to achieve… it’s like it never existed and you’re standing in the same spot you were in two years ago. Only your haircut is different.

It will never be as comfortable as it was with him. No matter how hard you try, no matter how much you commend yourself for making it work as best you can – it will never be the same. You’ll never have the feeling of ease that came so quickly with him, never have the idea that he knows exactly what you want to say without saying anything at all.

The new one is smart. Very smart. And funny, and polite, and kind. He is a pleasure to look at and speak to because he is clearly pleased to be looking at you and speaking to you. He stares at you when you talk; he remembers the details you tell him of your life. He holds your hand under the table at dinner.

Then you get a phone call or an e-mail or a lingering look as you pass the other one on the street. Immediately it is two years ago again, and you are thrown back into the indecision and longing. You cancel your dinner plans and drown in the hatbox under your bed, the one that holds everything that represented your happiness for so long. You read letters, touch pictures, hold matchbooks… all while the new one waits for you next door. He knows something is wrong, but you don’t say the words. He’s good for you. You cannot allow yourself to be convinced otherwise.

It’s so hard, though, not to get lost inside that flowery box. It even smells like your life two years ago, like everything good and worthwhile that you’ve ever known. You close your eyes and remember his old cologne, wishing for your long hair of two years ago.

Tonight I saw an old friend at the Laundromat.

I was sitting at a table in the corner reading a book called “Love,” and in walked the man who I used to believe helped me learn the true meaning of the word. We made small talk for a few minutes, each of us retelling our daily woes in the office, voicing our inner most desires to quit, just up and leave the town and jobs that we were both growing to hate.

It felt like I was talking to a stranger, someone whose face I recognized from the produce section at the grocery store. Our conversation was forced and awkward, and, truth be told, when I was safe behind the wheel of my car, I was glad that I had left instead of added more quarters to the dryer to stay a few extra minutes to preserve something that wasn’t there to begin with. He looked different, somehow, from behind the windshield, the headlights shining at him through the windows of the building. From the outside, it was easier to see that walking away was the right choice, the better and healthier choice.

The drive home was longer and lonelier than expected, though. The past four years of my life were sitting in the passenger seat, taunting me, reminding me of how it used to be and how it still could be if I only could figure out what I had done wrong and go back to fix it.

“Of course it’s all your fault, silly girl,” they told me. “Did you really expect him to stick around for someone like you?” In my heart, I felt the word “yes” pump through my veins for a split second, the surge of the feeling quickly becoming a faint echo to the stronger, more solid sentiment beginning to dominate. No. Of course not. He would never love me, something I had figured out long ago but refused to fully realize, and now it finally was clear that he would never simply be just a friend, either.

More loneliness awaited me in the darkened apartment on Milroy Avenue. The empowering feeling I felt when leaving the Laundromat was gone and forgotten, replaced with emptiness. The sobering feeling of independence lurked in the shadows, mingled with the sullen drone of the yellow refrigerator. I switched on the lamp that Brandy likes and began to put away my laundry, begging to be lost in the lingering scents of Mountain Rainfall dryer sheets.

On the Loss of a Friend

She stared in disbelief as the woman she presumed to be her best friend continued down the sidewalk, barely glancing up from the rim of her coffee cup as she called her name. “Come on, get moving,” a voice grunted from behind. She had stopped mid-pace and was holding up the rush-hour sidewalk traffic down Main Street.

This woman, with whom she had spent the bulk of her life laughing and gossiping, pretended not to see her as she passed. Was this the same girl who cried about boys on the phone every night as a teenager? Was she the same college graduate who worked twelve hours a day and sometimes weekends to pay off her acquired debt? Was she the same best friend who supported every bad fashion choice, ill-advised hair cut, and drunken rage?

Surely that woman – that girl, that best friend – wouldn’t have been more concerned with her Irish crème latte than the welfare of the woman who used to be her best friend.

She began walking again, much slower this time, her thoughts weighing her down like bricks in her backpack. A now-meaningless fight five years ago had left the pair in unspoken decomposition. Neither had gotten to say their part, and so neither felt forgiven; for five years, both had been at fault but it had somehow been easier to blame the other. She couldn’t remember the last time she had had anything good to say about the formerly best of her friends.

She had – for five years – always been reluctant to give away the title to someone else. No one else seemed to fit the description. When she told of her crazed fantasies and unattainable dreams, the eyes of others' became glossy with judgment and mockery where the earlier best friend’s only shone with understanding, support, and friendly humor. She – who had long dreamed of fancy weddings and big parties – had given in to her fiancé’s request for a small, sparsely attended affair because she couldn’t bear to think about choosing a maid of honor other than her childhood confidant, her past best friend.

Though she was happy with her new way of life and the bulk of the choices she’d made throughout, she had never been able to shake the feeling of emptiness when studying that portion of her life – the portion where she tucked away the fondest memories and the most meaningful experiences. It seemed there had forever been a tear in need of patching, but she couldn’t find the right materials to fix it without ruining the entire package.

"There is nothing so fatiguing as the eternal hanging on of an uncompleted task."

Well, it's over. I can finally stop worrying about the reading (which, of course, wasn't nearly as big a deal as my worry made it out to be).

It actually went pretty well, I think. I read too quickly and I was beyond nervous, but there was a pretty big crowd (they had to bring out more chairs, even!) and the things I read seemed to be fairly well received. Sandra and Christie came, which I think is great of them... I know I said I didn't want anyone there, but once the time was finally upon me, I realized that I really did want people there... and now I wish I hadn't been so stupid about it and invited more of my friends.

I learned three things:

1) In times of great nervousness, long nails will never last. I now have ten stubby, bitten-to-the-bone fingernails to show of my experience.

2) I really dislike poetry readings.

3) I don't feel like myself when I'm at a formal function. When I'm out of my fashion element (jeans and sweatshirts, mostly), I feel fake. It feels like everyone knows how uncomfortable I am. I would have done a lot better yesterday if I could have worn what I wanted instead of having to be a girl and look nice. Bah.

In conclusion, I woke up this morning with the song "Muskrat Love" by Captain and Tennille in my head.

WTF?

"Change is inevitable. Growth is optional."

I can't wait until the day when I will feel comfortable refering to myself as A Writer.

I watched an episode of Sex and the City tonight, and in the 35-minute show, Carrie called herself A Writer five times. She didn't flinch when she spoke the words; she didn't even blink. She really believed it. Everytime I heard her speak aloud her comfortable title, it gave me a feeling inside that I imagine is comparable to the one Frema feels when she sees a little baby.

I just finished selecting and dropping off to Dr. Kerlin the pieces I'm going to read for Tuesday night's Senior Showcase. I've been so nervous just thinking about it that I've managed to wait until two days before the reading to choose my material. For the past week, I've been stressing about trying to finish something new for the occasion instead of ressurecting something old. Tonight, I decided to stop worrying and get down to business.

Once I started sifting through my old stuff, I started to have a little fun with it. Reading through my past four years made me realize a lot about myself and just how much I've changed and grown, not only as a student but also as a person. It also made me realize that maybe I am just a little too hard on myself at times. Some of the things I've written really are pretty good... and I'm forcing myself to read that phrase over and over again until I become comfortable with it.

Anyway, until the day when I can legitimately call myself A Writer, I'm going to work on being content with what I can call myself: a sister, a daughter, a best friend, a student, a hard worker.

I'm also going to try to keep this feeling of comfort steady until Tuesday night. It's nice to feel good about this finally... although I guess it's normal to feel okay when there's still almost two entire days till the big moment. I'm sure it'll be a different story when 7:00 rolls around on Tuesday.

If anyone's free around 6:00, I wouldn't be opposed to knocking back a few shots... maybe some wine...

Let me know.

For what it's worth........

I'm back.

My slump has lasted long enough-- I've been making a real effort lately to bring myself out of it, and while it hasn't lifted completely, it's definitely gotten a lot less heavy.

So, what's new, you ask? Let's see.

About a week ago, I got a job doing freelance at a small magazine in LaPorte (Lake Magazine). I'm pretty excited about it... but mostly just incredibly nervous. I mean... my writing is good enough for The Observer (mostly because I'm in charge of it and can print whatever I want), but is it good enough for a real magazine? With subscribers and editors and distribution areas and everything? ...I guess we'll see.

I'm still in the process of sending my resume to virtually every newspaper in the Chicagoland area (and a couple in Seattle and Bangor, just so I can say that I made some attempt to get out of this area). A cover letter is the single worst thing in the entire universe. PS.

On April 5 I have to do this reading thing... definitely *not* something to which I'm looking forward. Every year, senior creative writing majors have to present 20 minutes worth of work-- poems, fiction, non-fiction, etc-- in front of an audience. First of all... I get nervous just saying "here" during a roll call. 20 minutes?! Of being in front of people and feeling them look at me and listen to the things I've written?! Good God. But, even better, second of all... this year, as a "special treat," Nobert Krapf (an SJC alumnus who's published a book of poetry and releasing his second at the end of this month) will be joining us. He'll be reading selections from his new book of poetry while James Cochran (the other senior CW major) and I read our own things. This means a bigger audience, more pressure, fancier location (instead of the Shen Auditorium, the reading will be at the Carnegie Center this year), and, in my case at least, a lot more booze to be consumed beforehand. I already told Charley that I'd need something to calm my nerves (and a lot of that "something"), and he promised he'd bring some brandy. What a good guy :)

April 12 is the SJC Colloquium Day... definitely not as big of a deal as the CW reading, but still an instance in which I have to read in front of a crowd something I've written.

My Core 10 paper is due April 19 (20 pages about the ethics of banning books in schools.... hah....) and my 18-20-minute presentation concerning the same topic is due the following week, April 26. Wanna know how I feel about giving presentations, especially 20-minute presentations? Scroll up two paragraphs.

That very same week is the Scholarship Dinner (April 29), something I've *always* wanted to attend, and finally am able to my senior year. I've always wanted to go because I think it'd be so much fun to dress up, go downtown, and schmooze with the VIPs of the college... but this year I'm going because the jazz choir has been invited to sing. [I love singing... although I've never been able to speak my mind in front of a crowd, I've never had a problem singing in front of a packed auditorium. There's something about the height of the stage, the weight of the velvet curtains, and the spotlight blinding your eyes that's so exhiliarating... in high school, I lived for theatre and choir. Since coming here, however, I've grown less and less fond of it. Don't get me wrong-- singing is still my most favorite thing to do in the entire world, but SJC definitely has been the place to challenge that sentiment.] We're not very good. And singing at the Scholarship Dinner in front of people I've known and respected for four years isn't going to be fun if we're not going to be very good (which we won't be, I promise). Plus, Mr. Samra asked me to sing a solo... four years ago, I would have jumped at the chance and worked my ass off to sound my very best... but now I've pretty much just reluctantly accepted. I'm sure I'm making too big a deal of this whole thing, but still... I'll be a lot happier once it's over.

After the Scholarship Dinner.... that's it. I have no more academic or extracurricular committments... the only thing I have to worry about is choosing a wardrobe for the many senior events of senior weekend... events that, as a Senior Class Officer, I got to help plan, which was a very good time. Beginning the night of April 29 at the Dinner, I will most likely be drunk for the rest of my college career... I plan on binge drinking with my roommates (who will be completely done student teaching by that time and, therefore, able to socialize with me once again) straight until graduation on May 8. This is the not the post for me to get into my sentiments upon graduating. You all have that still to look forward to. :)

Then it's a week of work at the hospital back home (my last week EVER, thank GOD) and then it's 10 days of Florida with my roomies, and then it's the real world. And then Spec (the big choir to-do at my high school, my brother's senior performance... I'll probably cry more than he will!), then his graduation (again, I'm sure I'll cry more than he will), then Cortny and Bill's wedding, then Kelli and Chuck's wedding, then Timmy's and my graduation party, then Timmy leaving for college (again with the tears... just cause we fight more often than we get along doesn't mean I won't miss him... he's my only brother, come on...), then... nothing.

Nothing except 40-hour weeks, small paychecks, and working at what I'm sure will be a thankless job in Northwest Indiana. Not that I'm not excited to start the chapter of my life after college... I'm just more than a little worried that that chapter will be nonexistant. And at the number of responses my resume has generated thus far, that is a definite possibility.

Wow. That's a long one. Guess I'm more excited to be back than I originally thought :)

"No one can find your life for you. You must find it yourself."

Last night I said something I thought I'd never say. I was talking to an SJC employee who I hardly see anymore, so we were catching up on a few things. She asked the inevitable, "What are you going to do in three months?" and I found myself uttering the words that have been weighing on my mind lately:

"I don't want to be a writer anymore."

I get in slumps. I'm easily disappointed and take *everything* very personally... so feeling down for a few days isn't anything new to me. But for weeks now, I've been thinking that maybe writing isn't what I'm meant to do. Thinking something like that is one thing... actually speaking the words is quite another. I tried writing an article for work today... I had to quit because nothing was coming out... it was like I've never taken a writing class or haven't learned anything from having this internship for three years. It almost seems like now that I've actually spoken the words aloud to another individual, it's somehow more real than it was when it was still just a thought in my head.

I don't actually know if it's true... looking back at some of the things I've written, it's hard to imagine where I would go if I didn't have the comfort of pen and paper to run to. I don't know what else I'd do... in three months, I'm going to have a creative-writing degree... I refuse to work at the hospital for any longer (I'm done after Spring Break)... maybe I can convince SJC to hire me to be the editor of the newspaper forever. Although, after today's issue and the two missing headlines... that's probably out of the question, too.

Yuck. I just feel gross, you know? I feel disgusted with myself. For years I've been convinced that I am a writer-- I've been doing writer-ly things and living a writer-ly life. It's so weird to feel the loss of something that has been constant for so long-- so many things in my life have been changing lately... it's always been a comfort to know that at least that one thing would stay the same, would remain steadfast in a world that was becoming slippery.

"By the time I recognize this moment, this moment will be gone."

Why can't professors just recognize and accept that sometimes there are things more important than paying attention in class? Today in Shakespeare, I was hit with the sudden urge to write something. Anyone who knows me knows that I haven't been very happy with my writing lately and am desperately working myself through a 3-month long spell of writer's block. So, naturally, when the familiar itch crept into my hand, I allowed my eyes to glaze over and I indulged it. Dr. Garrity, however, must not have understood how monumental this moment was for me, and called on me to answer a question (which, of course, I had not heard... and not having finished reading the play or even spark-noting the last few scenes, I couldn't even BS my way to an acceptable answer). I admitted I had not been following and everyone laughed-- I thought I was done. But he continued to press me for nearly five minutes to uncover the depth of the subject in discussion-- and honestly, I was trying, at this point, but I really just had no clue what he was talking about. Finally, my face red and splotchy and my ears on fire, I asked him to move on to someone else because I had no idea.

Under normal circumstances ("normal" being the life I was accustomed to living for the past 21 years, up until about three months ago), this scenario would have resulted in me locking myself in my room and refusing to leave even for bathroom breaks, lest someone see the tell-tale signs of embarrassment permenantely etched in my face. But for some reason I've been more mature about things, lately. (The correlation between my onset of writer's block and my new outlook on life just occured to me when typing this.) Instead of burying my face in my book and willing myself not to cry, I kept my head held high for the rest of the Shakespeare discussion and made sure that I answered the next question correctly. Dr. Garrity and I joked about my lack of comprehension after class, and all ended well.

From there, I made my way to the cafeteria for a quick solitary lunch before my 2:00 class, which has become a habit of mine on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. For my entire school career, I have never once eaten alone... not until August 23, 2004, that is. Something just clicked and let me know that it would be all right to eat alone... the world would not stop turning if I ate in silence instead of surrounded by friends. Reality TV would still suck, Harry Potter would still be my 15-year-old underdog hero, and Carrie would still love Mr. Big through seven seasons of Sex and the City. And you know what? I kick myself everyday for not having realized this sooner. Eating lunch at 1:00 is one of the best decisions I've made in a long time: there is less than a handful of people present at that time, so I'm free to hear the radio or read a book or study notes for class; the cafeteria workers (although getting a horribly bad rap in light of recent rules) really are nice people who each have thoughts, feelings, and beliefs of their own and apparently love to discuss them with students; if seated quietly in the correct location, one can overhear some rather controversial school topics and policies being discussed by the authorities who utilize the nearly-empty venue.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that I'm finally starting to feel a little bit like an adult. I'm no longer embarrassed about messing up in class in front of my classmates (because, really, who are they anyway?)... I'm no longer embarrassed about eating a sandwich and some fruit in the middle of the cafeteria without a comfort cushion of friends to protect me... and I'm no longer embarrassed to leave the apartment without wearing any make up. This might seem trivial to some, but has become a defining factor to me lately. I used to put make up on to go get the mail (well, ok... not really... but still) and this past weekend I hung out with friends and went to lunch clean-faced and sans mascara. And I wasn't even thinking about it. I was thinking about having fun with the people about whom I care and feeling comfortable in a group of friends. And I have never felt better.

By the way... the thing I started writing in class didn't turn out so well. I lost the inspiration when I became unnerved by Garrity's question. But I did finish it. Although it's not my best... I'll still take it out and read it from time to time when I need to be humbled and remember the first piece I finished after going without for so long.

"Leave New York and Remember Your Footsteps" ... or something

On the advice from someone who I consider a good friend, this is my attempt at a blog. I hope that sharing my thoughts and feelings on this little piece of the Web will make me feel more comfortable with sharing my thoughts and feelings with others, without a pen in my hand and away from the glow of the computer screen. I'm not promising anything great (surely nothing up to the caliber of Frema or This Girl), but I hope I can at least come up with something.

Thanks for stopping by... more to come later on today.