I have that restless feeling again. It is a feeling that scares me because it is so full of wants, wants that I can never fulfill. Wanting to stay out until dawn, to meet a stranger who I feel knows me, who will light my cigarette, blocking the glowing tip from the cold january wind until the heat has taken hold. Who will push my hair out of my eyes, put his hand on the small of my back and laugh. A clear, deep laugh, of real joy.

His lips will taste like nicotine and whiskey. The smell of cigarettes will linger in his beard. His lips will make my stomach flutter and my knees weak.

We will stay out together until the sun is starting to rise because we do not want to part. Because we want each other so badly, but feel that what has started to bloom between us is too precious to crush with sex each fears will leave the other feeling empty. We'll pass the early morning hours in a diner, drinking coffee and eating hash browns, holding hands until the trains start to run again. And the trains will start but we will find that we don't want to be separated so quickly, torn apart by metal tubes hurtling in opposite directions.

He will walk me home, and kiss me on the lips. Kiss the crown of my head. And I will go to bed as the sun has claimed the sky, knowing that something wonderful has begun.

I believe the things I want aren't so uncommon. I want the feeling of meaningful connection with other people. I want to feel like the things I do each day have a purpose. That they lead to something better, something beautiful.

DC is a city that is hard on beauty. Hard on dreams. It is a city of cold reality. Of scheming. Of working your connections. Of knowing what can be done and what cannot be done. Pragmatism is the rule.

But pragmatism means saying no so much. Pragmatism means keeping people at a distance, keeping passion contained. It means wearing suits and having endless catered Cosi lunch meetings. It's exhausting. It is draining.

I come home from work at the end of the day, and I cannot maintain the focus to read. I come home at the end of the day and all I can do is watch tv shows on netflix instant. I have no energy to cook. No energy to write.

And I am tired because I am once again depressed. I tricked myself, last year, into thinking that I was done with this. And I am so, so angry. I am furious because I see now that this depression played a role in things with Alex falling apart. He could not make me happy, no matter what he did. But what he didn't see and what I didn't see because I did not want it to be true that this dark shadow had returned again, was that I would not have been happy anyway.

But I didn't see. And he didn't see. And I lost him.

Most people, I think, have trouble understanding why Virginia Woolf laid down in the water with rocks in her pocket. It is terrifying to realize that I do. You lose things to mental illness that you regret, that you are sad and sorry about, even after the spell is over. The losing is hard. So very hard.

But I did not fill my pockets with rocks and wade into the Potomac. I called and called and called until someone could see me. I have pretty light pink pills that will make me feel better. And I will never, ever allow myself to lose something precious to the shadows in my mind again.

Cities I would like to move to (an alphabetical list):

Albuqurque

Austin

Chicago

San Francisco

City I am stuck in:

DC

Since graduation I have picked up and moved to a new city with a week's notice twice. Once a year. It's tempting to continue the streak. DC is serious and small, a small town that doesn't know it's smallness, but not in a romantic way. In a "I'm kind of a big deal" kind of way when it just isn't.

It's running into people all the time. It's what do you do and who do you know. It's brown flip flops. It's trying to be something, someone it's not. It's never admit your failures or your weaknesses. It's what we do really matters, even though we're just pencil pushers. It's only dream of moving into a fantastic condo or renovated town house, not dream of making something beautiful.

It's terrible lounges and "you can't smoke here"s.

It's men who don't know how to fall in love.

People who don't know how to fall in love.

I cannot imagine a true romantic gesture happening in this town. I imagine proposals are all diamond rings in the tiramisu . Spoons tapped on champagne glasses so that the whole room looks. Look at me, look how I look like I love this woman. Look how we will spend a hundred thousand dollars on the wedding, and then even more on the divorce. Look at us. Look at me.

Look at my ring. Look at my wedding invitation. Look at my dress. Look. Look.

Or else it's "I'm afraid of commitments" Everyone in this town seems to be afraid. Don't say that. Don't take that picture. Don't be so loud. Don't dance. Don't make me have feelings. Don't make me take risks with my heart.

My heart never learns not to take risks. It lets people in, it gets hurt. It gets so hurt.

But I would rather have a brave and bleeding heart than a frightened cold one. Every time my heart is broken, I at least know I am alive.

I need a city where other people are alive, too.

2009 was a dark, strange year. It will stay a year I prefer to forget, but I cannot because it shaped me. In ways I do not yet even know.

I caught up for lost time in having sex. Sleeping with strange men who now I do not know, or never did. The year passed in a blur of body parts, whiskey, and stolen cigarettes. The tastes of different tongues, different skins. The smell of different sheets, different borrowed shampoo, different disappointment.

It was a year of Js, most disappointing.

The first was my first, now married. Now expecting to be a father. Now preparing for war.

The second took my heart in his hands, weighed it and found it wanting, and told me that he could no longer see me. Told me as I stood about to board the L train on my way to work. Told me as the smell of our sex still lingered on us.

There was another like this, who does not matter.

The third, the one in between the second and the one who doesn't matter, taught me. It was a lesson I took my time in learning.

We met on a rooftop in brooklyn. Fourth of July. He brought me pbr and gave me his cigarettes. We flirted. We danced at union pool, awkward hipster dancing that put a smile on my face.

Later we went to a dank bar in brooklyn where he played pool with D. D who is another story, but as I watched them play pool I was deeply, sickly satisfied with knowing it was up to me who I went home with that night. I could have had either. I maybe could have had both.

I went home with this third J. We shared only two nights together. That first because I did not want to sleep with him. Because I was fond of his hands and his voice and his dirty blond beard and wanted to see him again. And I had learned that with men I cared for, it was best to make them wait. Because more often than not, they left after sex. So I stole time from them by delaying their inevitable ejaculation, their inevitable leave taking.

The second time we were in bed, in his bed. He was hard, and full of wanting. He kissed me, hard, deep, and told me he didn't want to have sex. I told him I didn't believe him. I asked him what else he could want from me. What I was doing there.

He held me and told me that he liked me. That he would have wanted more from me. That he didn't want me to sleep with him because I though that was all there was.

He was moving to Chicago. There couldn't be much more for us. But he wanted me to know that I had more to offer a man than my body. More reasons to be desired than my breasts.

It took me a while to learn this, for these words of his to sink in. But I finally found it. I had to change jobs. I had to move to a different city. But I found a man who loves my body, calls it wonderful, but sees me as so much more.

Thank you, J.

I need to let myself feel this. This bone deep sadness. This cold watery heart feeling. This ache for connection, the pull of my lungs for something that is not there.

Being tough is not what I need because I do not need scar tissue. Though I feel so hurt and sad and disappointed, I need to stay tender for something better that will come along someday.

There was a guy. And I liked him very much. And too soon, even though he himself tried to warn me not to, I let him come into me. My first. And I have not seen him sense. He has not reached back to my outstretched hand. And this hand is now cold and lonely.

And I feel hurt and betrayed and disappointed and so very sad. And I have been fighting all of these feelings because they are so big. So scary. But the bigger they are, the more they refuse to go away. They become twisted demons who come back later to hurt you even more.

So I am feeling this. I am sad.

As my heart cracks open fear sneaks out with the love; a reversal of Pandora's box. I am surprised and alarmed by how my heart is calling to him already after a week and a small handful of days, by how I want him in my presence. Too much, too much! I feel like crying out. As if I am afraid that my flow of love will rush out too quickly and leave me emptied -- and maybe unreplenished. As if love is a commodity weighed and traded, though I know this to be untrue. I know my heart is filled from some great eternal deep and ancient well and what spills out is no loss to me, but flows back down into this common love spring we all share - and that to hold it in means it will turn brackish and dead.

But I know, too, that hearts can be hurt, and when they are they close up. So how do I protect my heart? I do not want spears or arrows, or bombs or guns. And I don't want stone walls piled high enough to block out even the sun. I want none of these instruments of war. I think of how my mother protected me when I was a small child, and I know that I want great soft skirts to hide my face in, arms to hold me tenderly and fiercely, hands that can put on bandages and that know when and how to tear them off.

I think of the women I have surrounded myself with, and how we hold each other sometimes in the dead of night, and I know that I have this strong mother power with me, that I can reach out to it and find strength.

So I will go forward, with one hand reaching out to him, one hand held by these women, and I know I will be safe.

I am being set up tonight. At a bar I will meet a friend of a friend and we will both hope that we do for each other, but we may not. Or we may for an hour, but then one will say the wrong thing and a small timid flame will be snuffed out. Or we will not trip over our tongues and we will kiss good night and we will talk and dream and later make love. All possibilities. And there are more.

How strange how many things besides what is desired may happen. How strange is this mystery of chemistry, that two people brought together by their desire to meet another in their hearts could still leave unsatisfied, found wanting, and finding want.

I have been actively not thinking of this, pushing it out of mind because the higher hopes rise the harder the fall. But as the hours slip away between now and then my hopes are climbing and my thoughts are turning to this meeting. I have washed my hair and shaved my legs and plucked my eyebrows and cleaned my room and tried to distract myself with reading. But these things must come out, I suppose.

And because of where he comes from, I worry that he will be too conservative, that even if things go well I will hide parts of myself from him - or worse, tear them off. And then hurt both myself and him with this dishonesty. But this is too far away now to worry about - these worries a symptom of high hopes. I will do my reading. I will learn, and think, and dwell on other matters. Because I have now put these thoughts out.

Prescription for self:

Breathe in love. Breathe out jealousy. Breathe out hate. Breathe out bitterness. Breathe in love.

Breathe in honesty and life. Breathe out cynicism. Breathe out nihilism. Breathe in beauty.

I have to fight these sickly thoughts because they make my heart hurt and contract when I have them. When I only want it to grow, grow, grow. To be strong and tender. To not confuse brittleness, hardness, with strength.

Breathe in possibility. Breathe out the "I Can't"s. Breathe in the dawn.

No one tells you about the habits of depression. The ways of living that are ingrained even after these modern chemicals work their magic. The accommodations you have made for yourself so that you could survive that are not easy to let go of. The way you can still see the world through a depressed person's eyes. How that darkness hovers on the edges, reminding you always of how bad life can be.

There are limits that you have imposed that you are afraid of breaking, because you do not know if on the other side lies that dark cliff. You do not trust these chemicals completely. But you know if you stay still the darkness will seep in. I can'ts and I won'ts and I'll fails will become self fulfilling prophecies, and you know this but it is still hard. And sometimes you feel like your own Cassandra, futiley foretelling the danger.

So.

Breathe in love. Breathe in color. Breathe in taste and sight and sound. Breathe out the fear.

Barack Obama is inaugurated this week. And I am strangely unmoved. I am excited, I suppose, in some clinical, detached way. Happy that the 8 year Bush nightmare is coming to an end, and with the swearing in of a democrat, in a better way than I had dared to hope for. But I see the sparkles in the eyes of some of my friends who are so very moved by this occurence, and I am sad that I cannot muster up the same level of emotion.

Perhaps part of it is lingering Hilary sadness - the longing that I still have to see a woman place her hand on that bible. And yes, the accusations are true, I like many of her supporters did see it somewhat as her desert. I wanted it badly. And on Tuesday I get my second choice.

I think there's more to it than that, though. I think perhaps I am protecting my heart with cynicism, not letting myself beleive in change and hope because I fear I will be disappointed. I want a new New Deal, a better FDR for this new century, but I don't believe it will come to pass.

Like I do with more intimate matters, I am keeping myself cool and distant to prevent some future pain. But it means I miss out on the joy, too.

My heart is heavy right now. I can feel it sliding down my diaphragm, pushing on my kidneys and my spleen. It is so heavy with want. It wants someone to give me tender words and hands, someone to teach it how to love so it will be safe and not have to harden because it fears being destroyed. But I have no tools to help me get what my heart needs. Nothing but distractions which from time to time cease to be enough, and then my heart begins to slide down, pulling on my esophagus as it goes, making my throat tight.

And inside I ask why this is so hard for me; complain that life is not fair. I wonder why it is so easy for some to love and be loved, and why it is something that remains for me out of reach. I get jealous of musicians singing songs of heartbreak because at least they know what this love thing means; they have rested in its hands.

I should go take some pills and let heavy chemical sleep lull this throbbing want. But it's only a matter of time before it is back again.

New year, new ?

It is 2009, the year I graduate, and I strangely feel like already so much has happened. I have changed the way I do my hair, taking the time to blow dry it smooth with a large brush, enjoying how I tame these wayward curls, enjoying an illusion of control. But I let myself go, too, bringing in the new year by kissing two (yes) guys on new year's eve. Through a haze of long island iced teas and patron, I wanted what I wanted, and I knew what that was. I wanted lips and tongues and hands and the skin of their necks. And so I got it.

Sometimes I think there's only a certain amount of control I can have in my life, and I think I'm ok with that.

And then there was a party I go to every year, full of people I never see again until the next winter. There was my old high school crush, looking amazing and keeping my wine glass full, talking to me long after I thought he would cease to be interested. But some things never change, because facebook tells me he is not single, though he acted like he did. They always do, with me. I think sometimes I have other woman written on my lips, the skin of my breasts, the phrase wafting out of my pores. And sometimes I'm ok with the attention this gets me, but mostly I want to be the original woman, and am ashamed for letting myself accept these table scraps of affection, and want to want more for myself.

This is scattered and strange like my thoughts about this year are. It is 2009. It is the year I graduate. I hold the year, 2009, in my mouth and it feels like marbles, big and smooth. My life is shapeless now, like this post. My plans drop off the edge of a cliff on May 24th. Where I live after that lies in darkness, that I only have a few months to illuminate. The very place where I will lay my head, I do not know.

So I'll start with small changes, like the way I do my hair. I will try to accept only what I deserve, and not let myself be comforted with what isn't real. I will reach out more in love to the place where I live. I will pour the love I carry with me out over everyone I see. I will be better, one step closer, every day and every year.

Me and the Military

I have a strange relationship with the military. Not typical for your elitist, liberal, un-real American girl. For one there is my cousin, who was overseas while his child was born and is now, thankfully, in Florida with his wife and his young family. I wrote about his goodbye party as my admissions essay, about how strange it was, the feeling that it was a pre-death wake. Yet we could not speak death's name, it was silently forbidden. Now, we all have reason to hope that we will only attend a wake for him when he has died an old grandfather, with grey hair and crepey hands.

And then there are the men I have been involved in. Or perhaps I should say boys? A string of ROTC members, and students at military colleges. A strange history for a Vassar girl. There was P., who swept me off my feet one New Year's eve, after a summer of dangerous flirtation, and remains fluttering on the periphery of my life. And then there was T., who I met at one weekend for a wedding and cried over on Monday, sad that his tender hands would grip a gun. These are the important ones, but there where others.

The always surprise me with their gentleness, the strength of their manners. How they know to buy a girl a drink just so, so she does not feel hunted. How they speak of their mothers. And how they surprisingly hesitate, waiting to know that this kiss, this touch, is the one you want.

I think of T.'s hands, and how on the first night we just caressed the hands and arms of each other, sleeping in a living room full of other people after a bachelor/ette night in a bar, and unable to do more. I remember how it seemed his skin barely touched mine, but I still felt like I was burning, and I longed to burst into flames.

But then I cry afterwards because I fear that all this gentlesness will be ruined, that these hands that caressed by hair and my hands and my breasts will become forever stained by blood. I long to put my hands on their foreheads and wipe away all they know of how to kill, like I would wipe away a sheen of sweat.

With them, I want the impossible. I wish to save them all, to claim these hands forever on behalf of gentleness and love.

If I allowed myself to fall in love with one of these men, it would destroy us both.

Thoughts on Thanksgiving

Last week, we had Christmas break. We returned to campus, stuffed, rested, and for the most part glad for the holiday. Not everyone enjoyed it so much, though. I heard someone on campus greet his friend, "So how was genocide day?"

This is, of course, a variation on the anti-Columbus day theme, which I'm generally down with. After all, Columbus didn't actually discover that the world was round, he didn't "discover" the Americas, and he wasn't even the first European in the western hemisphere. So getting rid of or not celebrating Columbus day? Fine with me.

Thanksgiving is a different case, though. Now, I have to admit my bias. I like Thanksgiving. Even though I don't eat meat, I like the food, and the family, and seeing old friends from high school over the weekend. And of course I love that Christmas officially begins at 11:50 Thanksgiving Day when Santa pulls through Herald Square in the parade. But we all know that's not a good enough reason to support a holiday some people experience as racist. And especially as a white anti-racist, I have a responsibility to examine my own beliefs and reactions, because I've picked up the free floating racism and ignorance in our society. But I think I can still defend Thanksgiving, or at least one particular conception of the day.

The argument against Thanksgiving is a pretty compelling one. People opposed to it basically say it's a day commemorating the exploitation of one people by another, a day that celebrates the survival of a people, the Puritans, who slaughtered thousands of others directly and paved the way for the further colonization of North America.

But this isn't the spirit of Thanksgiving. To me, it represents an opportunity that was lost, a moment in history when events could have taken another, more just turn. It all depends on what cultural myth you're using when you think about the holiday. And because everyone has a slightly different version, let me tell you mine.

Once upon a time, a small band of people called the Pilgrims had to leave their home country because they could not practice their religion there. It was hard to leave everything they knew behind, and harder still to cross the ocean to a land they had never seen. Some died on the way, unable to survive exposure on the high seas. Most of them made it, though, and were filled with joy. They set out rebuilding their lives in this new place, but this was another challenge. Their ship had arrived late in the year, and soon winter fell. The homes they had hastily built could not keep out the cold, and their food stores were dangerously low. Luckily, they were not alone. For another group of people, the Wampanoags, this place was their home. They saw their new neighbors were suffering, so they gave them food and helped them survive the wind and snow. When planting time came, they taught the Pilgrims how to plant in the sandy soil. They taught them about plants like corn, which became an important crop to their descendants for generations to come. When the harvest came, the Pilgrims were overwhelmed by the bounty, and awed be the generosity of the Wampanoags, without whom they could not have survived. So to give thanks, they shared their harvest with them, celebrating with a large communal meal. Every year when we sit down at the table with our families to remember what we are grateful for, it is this meal that we are re-enacting.

So that's my cultural myth about Thanksgiving. It's a story of grace and compassion and the awe inspiring capability humans have for kindness. It is also, to me, a sad story because it is not true - because the Pilgrims did not show their thanks. I personally feel shame about this, because I am a Mayflower descendent. I literally owe my existence on the earth today to the Wampanoag people, and I am ashamed that my anscestors treated them so cruelly.

But this story has a powerful moral lesson to offer - it is saying that things could have gone another way. And I am aware of the economic and cultural and political reaons that they couldn't have actually at that time, so when I say "could," I'm talking about the wide range of possibilities that exist in the human heart.

Thanksgiving commemorates the way the United States should have begun. And because we cannot forget how we have failed, we need to commemorate the day.