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.