left and leaving

And then there are times like this, where I get hit with a wall of missing-you that knocks the wind out of me and sends me under.

Is the nest half-full or half-empty?

It's a brand new semester, and I'm at the end of the first week of classes. A lot of new things to get used to: Nick has a new job and different work hours, Thing 1 doesn't live at home anymore, and I have new PIs at work. This is me most mornings, just rolled out of bed and super thrilled about getting up at 5:30am on the days I have class after work:

And by "super thrilled," I mean "ZZZZZgzhkzzzz...wait, wha...fughh."

KU's quickly becoming our second home. Nick and I grab lunch and coffee a few times a week, and Thing 1 stops by the Union to talk to Nick nearly every day. Rather anti-climactic, for as life-upending a transition as this was supposed to be. It's super quiet around the house, too, now that we just have one kiddo living at home. No fights! This means I'm able to do some of my assigned reading at home instead of having to find a quiet corner in some downtown coffee shop. With classes starting at 4:00pm, I'm not able to grab coffee on the way out of town anymore, but I also get home a little earlier so it's not as necessary. I still find it's less distracting to work on actual assignments somewhere else, so staking out a corner and testing my caffiene receptors' load capacity is still totally necessary:

"Bitch, sit in that chair and I will cut you, so help me Jesus. PERSONAL BUBBLE."

Thing 2 still struggles with Thing 1 being gone. I remember going through the same thing when my older brother left home. I was heartbroken, and couldn't understand why he didn't seem to miss me as much as I missed him. I tried to explain to Thing 2 that his older brother is really excited to live on his own and go to school, and to not take it personally if he doesn't call. He'll come around eventually.

My classes are awesome, once again. Other than the terrible Am Lit I debacle of last spring, I've been lucky to have excellent teachers and fascinating course material. This semester, I'm taking a couple of English classes and a Sociology class about death rituals across various cultures. I have trouble not reading ahead, no matter what I've been assigned. I'm back with one of my favorite English professors, and the sheer oddity of the topics and random quips in class make me want to live-Tweet the entire thing, MST3K-style.

Other than that, it's been kind of a weird week. The temps dipped down 20 degrees or so as soon as PK left, and it's been cloudy and rainy for the past few days. Buskerfest is happening downtown this weekend, and all of the students are back, so the sidewalks are crowded and the atmosphere is generally obnoxious. I'm hiding out, putting away laundry and getting ready to make raspberry waffles for dinner while Nick's at a KJHK meeting. The one downside of Nick working a "normal" schedule is that household chores had to be shoved over to the weekends. I'm trying to pitch in and help with dinner on the nights I don't have to be at class. So, yeah...woohoo. Trying to work out a care package exchange with PK, since he keeps raving about the local wine.

Okay. Time for waffles.

I know I promised letters but I probably won't send them

I had big plans of attending Sean's birthday party tonight, but I went to brush my teeth and started throwing up. And there's your dose of TMI for the day. Oh, no...wait...there's more.

Last Saturday night, Nick and I went out ONE LAST TIME (for the love of god, I know right?) with PK. It was the very last of the very last going-aways. I've been attending these for months, it seems. I did okay, right up until it came time for him to hug me, say he loved me and would see me in December, and walk out the door of the Pig. I fucking shook and sobbed like a little kid. Nick and Travis took turns hugging me and rubbing my back until I calmed down. It took a while. You'd think he walked off to be shot by the Gestapo. It's embarrassing.

And that, my dears, is why I'm slow to make friends. It's not that I don't feel enough. I feel too much. I can't walk around handing out that much emotion to just everybody.

Sunday morning, I woke up with a resolve to make the most of this week. So much happening: Nick starting his new job with KJHK, me getting ready for classes to start, getting plans together for a work conference in November, moving Thing 1 into McCollum, and setting up appointments while I still had time during the day. I took Thursday and Friday off ahead of time, and it was the smartest thing I could have done.

The first few days back at work felt a little rough. I'll have to get used to working with a different research assistant now that PK's gone, and to be perfectly honest, it was a little difficult to walk into certain hallways and rooms without expecting to see him. I felt better knowing Nick was on campus, though. I stopped by his office in the Union after work on Tuesday, and we got to walk home together.

Thursday, Thing 1 had orientation at KU, so I treated myself to a day of wandering downtown before I picked up my textbooks for the semester. Friday around noon, I took him up to McCollum and helped him carry his clothes and bedding to his dorm room. It took all of ten minutes to move him in, it was over before I knew it.

I waved goodbye and walked down the stairs with a lump in my throat. A flurry of emotions came and went: scared for him, happy for him, accepting that I can't help him get through this, relief that it's not on my shoulders to do so, relief that he made it to this point, pride that he made it to this point. And it was the pride that made me cry.

So this poopface is leaving today...

...and leaving for Seattle on Sunday. Last night, I gave him a haircut and pizza, not to mention that Nick and I also gave him a book that's all about the secret of happiness (okay, it hides a flask) and a shirt from the Bourgeois Pig. Now all that's left is to dive back into work and school. I don't think any more of my friends are leaving any time soon. Please don't, or if you do, break it to me the night before you leave. I don't think my heart could take it, otherwise. I'm not good at goodbyes, and I've known this day was coming for the last six months.

Up too late. Can't sleep. The usual. I had fun tonight, but it sounds like Nick is starting to get sick. At least there's ice cream in the refrigerator for when he wakes up, so he can't nominate me for Worst Wife of Ever just yet. But maybe he can because I hung out with Sean, Chelsea, Patrice, Megan and Roni until damn near 11pm or something and he probably wanted that ice cream a little closer to 7pm. After I got back to Lawrence, I walked around and ended up at the Taproom, talking to Nick Ray and Joe Noh. I had a Ginger Smash, which is fresh ginger, syrup, and a shitload of fuck-you-up. Then I went to 6th St Dillon's to fulfill my domestic duties, marveled at the caliber of crazy townies in LFK, realized I may be counted as one myself, and drove home with a sneaking suspicion that insomnia would hit before I unlocked the back door. And I was right.

Things I realized this evening:

1) Whether I'm 16 or 36, my heart twinges when I walk or drive past someone's recently-moved-from apartment/house, but only if they totally move out of town. It's like the dwelling is now an emptied husk, and if it doesn't house our friendship anymore, then where does our friendship live? Are you there, god? It's me, Margaret. Right?

I wrote a poem about it once, that I'm too intelligent to post here, but the ache that made me write that literary turd still raises its ugly head when I'm dealing with transition and loss. I'm nostalgic to a fault, at times, even in towns I'm just visiting. I get choked up in house museums and random streets in Chicago. Yeah, it's like that. If I still lived in Belvidere, I'd most likely be prostrate with grief. So many bad memories in that town, and so many dead friends and friends who moved away. Don't ever let me visit Boston, I'll probably die of crying-induced dehydration after visiting some random 400-year-old wooden house. I think I may have some abandonment issues.

2) I can have female friends, it just takes a very specific type of female.

3) Pretty much anyone Chelsea chooses to hang out with is friendship material. In fact, sometimes I can't believe she likes me, because she only likes cool people.

4) I may never be able to shake the resentment that wells up whenever I have to deal with pretty, rich people who've had a relatively easy life. There is shit that they just do not get and probably never will. I don't know whether to work on my reaction or work on their frame of reference. Their conflict and self-loathing seem just as genuine of emotions as I might have, even when I'm seething over whatever boneheaded nonsense they've dished out. I don't know. Someone always has it worse.

"You know when sometimes you meet someone so beautiful - and then you actually talk to them and five minutes later they're as dull as a brick; but then there's other people. And you meet them and you think, 'Not bad, they're okay,' and when you get to know them ... their face just, sort of, becomes them, like their personality's written all over it, and they just - they turn into something so beautiful." - from "The Girl Who Waited"

If you need me, I'll be in the bathtub...

According to the National Weather Service, we'll bake until October.

a memory retrieved is a memory remade

we teach each other the story of us
what we have is hours
and ours alone
I will teach you by telling myself
and you repeat the words back to me
with each telling
shaping the structure
selecting for strength
so you can know it by heart
and carry it with you
so I can hold it
like a focused light
and when we need to lean
sagging in our broken moments
it will support us

Thing 1's 18 years old, today.

In July of 1994, I was a miserable pregnant teenaged girl. I was living in a 10x14 room with a full-size bed, a refrigerator, a hot plate, a toilet, a sink, and a shower. The toilet and shower occupied the same footprint in a tiny closet paneled with showerboard, meaning I could sit on the toilet while taking a shower if I really, really felt like it (I never did). We had two windows, one had a box fan blowing hot air out of the room. Being Florida, and near the ocean, it rained every afternoon. All of my possessions fit in a duffel bag. The refrigerator had a break in the door seal, so finding groggy roaches hanging out on top of my WIC cheese and juice was a daily occurrence.

I shared this room with a guy who chain-smoked and drank beer for most of the day, when he wasn't picking fights, stealing whatever money I managed to save, and hitting me for hiding money from him. About a week before we left, we took in a room-mate, who slept on the floor between the bed and the window. He paid us in food stamps and a flea infestation. I weighed about 175, up from my normal 115-120. Most of this was water weight, caused by the excessive heat and humidity and a swiftly developing case of pre-eclampsia. I had stretch marks from arms to thighs, thanks to the rapid weight gain. The day before I had Tony I started having contractions, but the hospital said it was just due to the amniocentesis the week prior, and sent me back home. The next day, I came in for a follow-up appointment. They discovered I'd been leaking amniotic fluid pretty much since the amnio, and so they admitted me to the hospital and started a Pitocin drip. I wasn't prepared for an overnight trip so I didn't have anything with me. The Pitocin drip kicked in pretty hard after two hours, so they gave me Demerol, which is how I learned that Demerol gives me hallucinations, and not the good kind. After another six-hour nightmare of rolling panic attacks and hallucinations that I was drowning in an undertow, I delivered a 6lb 5oz boy. The father was downstairs chatting up a girl and trying to make a date for later that week, which I learned after she accosted him on the bus two days later. She was visibly horrified to see me holding a newborn and asking my then-boyfriend to help me with my nursing bra strap, as he'd assured her he was single. Hilarity ensued.

I used the first welfare check I received to buy a bus ticket out of Florida. I never looked back. Thing 1 lists his birthplace as Daytona Beach. He must think it's exotic to be from Florida. I could have had him in a gas station in Albuquerque, for all the attachment I felt to the place. I could have been anywhere hot and miserable. I shut my mind down for the last two months of my pregnancy, except for trips to the air-conditioned public library where I read books like Geek Love and Dolores Claiborne, any work of fiction where abusers got their comeuppance, and let myself pretend to be human for a while. I dreamed of getting myself out of this mess, and it was the first dream I made come true.

And now an entire childhood has passed. Thing 1 is older than I was when I ran away from home. He's graduated and finished one semester of college. I don't feel like I've lived long enough for this to have happened. In my head, I'm still a kid. Just somehow older and wiser.

in which I disclose that I am, in fact, not good at this shit, but I'm trying

I don't make new friends easily. For one thing, I'm just not built for walking up and introducing myself to anyone, ever. People usually have to be outgoing, like my friend Ashley, one of the techs I work with. They have to get right in my face, ask me a lot of questions, and draw me out before I start interacting, and even then I tend to operate under the notion that it's a trick of some sort. I'm incapable of making small talk. I have trouble maintaining eye contact. My face turns red anytime I start talking and realize that people are actually paying attention to what I'm saying. The main perk of my job is that I can go HOURS without seeing another human face, and scientists are notorious for mentally being on another planet at all times so I don't have to make much conversation with the researchers. It's quite lovely.

But pretty soon after starting my current job, I realized I needed to get to know the various labs whose animals I care for. I was in email contact with all of the labs, but nobody knew who I was, and being on a friendly "Hi!" basis would help if I ran into problems later. So I started saying hello to people when they came in the rooms. I introduced myself, got through the red face, and asked their names and tried my goddamned best to match names with faces. After a few weeks, I had a contact in nearly every lab. It made my job easier, because I could just ask directly about issues with the animals. Also, I was able to do my job better, because lab assistants started sharing information with me about their projects and started giving me a heads-up about supplies or testing. I was able to HELP because I was COMMUNICATING. Holy shit, it was scary.

I wasn't looking for new friends, but one lab person kept showing up outside of work, at various coffee shops and shows I went to. We had both glanced at each other enough times on awkwardly silent elevator rides that I was able to place him when I saw him at the coffee shop one day, studying. Since I was there to study, too, I screwed up some nerve and walked over. I just wanted to say hi, and I was always a little excited to see someone from the labs when I wasn't wearing scrubs and covered in bedding and mouse urine. Lab people tended to be friendlier when they found out I was also in school. It turned me into a fellow student, not just a nameless grunt who mopped floors and changed cages. So I asked if he was PK, from one of the labs. Yeah, he was. I can't remember who, but one of us mentioned that they came to this particular coffee shop to get away from everyone, and the other person agreed. And that was it. I was now beet-red and out of conversation topics. I found a place at the opposite corner of the shop and started studying.

That was in September. It was January before I felt comfortable adding a few people from the labs on Facebook. So I added him, and he added me back. I had a little bit of an agenda. I was trying to figure out if I wanted to get into research, and the research assistant I'd originally wanted to shadow left her job in December. I shot him a message asking about his experience in the lab, and we started writing back and forth. He agreed to let me come in and observe some of the testing, and we actually started talking to each other and found out we had TONS in common. By the end of the afternoon, I'd made two decisions: research was not for me, and PK was worth getting to know better. I invited him to one of the Nerd Nite presentations, secretly terrified that he wouldn't show, that he said yes just to be polite. But he showed. And he seemed to really enjoy himself and really let go. At one point, he looked back at me and said "This is fantastic! I love it!" And I beamed. Part of it was due to alcohol (first-class in getting over social anxiety in short bursts), but part of it was due to OMGIJUSTMADEAFRIENDHOLYSHITBALLZ. He started working as a freelance reporter for one of the university organizations and got a Twitter account. We added each other, and in one of my tweets I made fun of myself for borrowing and reading his Lit Crit textbook:

Who else reads Lit Theory textbooks for fun? I really shouldn't be allowed around other people. ‪#bookgeekery ‪#socialleotard

To which he replied:

Does this mean I'm enabling your social maladjustment? And what about people who take Lit Theory classes for fun? ‪#justcommitme

And I said:

Haha, I predict a feedback loop. ‪#run ‪#now

And I half-meant it. It was a couple of months before I lost that feeling that he was just being polite, and I made a lot of self-deprecating comments in the beginning that were intended to let him off the hook if he wanted to stop hanging out. But he genuinely liked me. We started bringing each other coffee and taking breaks together. We met up for Nerd Nites and Horror Remix shows. We went to concerts, movies, and sometimes just met up for drinks and talked about all the crap going on in his life. We studied together and people-watched at the coffee shop, looking over and raising an eyebrow when other patrons said or did something particularly interesting. We got on like a house on fire, to the point where Nick just started referring to him as "my wife's boyfriend" as a joke. Literally, yeah, he was my best male friend aside from Nick. We were developing this friendship that reminded me of how I felt when I met my best friend Roxanne, or when I met Eddie and Adam in real life after getting to know them on LJ. That feeling of "Holy shit, we have the potential for a lifetime of conversations in us." I introduced him to some of our friends, and it turned out we'd been one degree of friendship away from each other the whole time. I tangentially knew his friend Robert, who worked with my friend Eddie and whom I'd met a few times while hanging out with Courtney and David. Meaning, we ALL should have been hanging out loooong before this. By this time, I knew PK was trying to get out of research and both he and Robert were looking around for grad schools to attend, so knowing that I'd wasted time and delayed the start of amazing friendships by MONTHS due to my own shyness and was going to lose both of them in just as much time...it was a little kick in the gut.

I started to berate myself for reaching out. 'This is what happens," I told myself. "You shouldn't try, because now you get to try and keep up a long-distance friendship. You were better off before you knew how awesome he was." But I knew better. Sure, I could have turned back around at the coffee shop and pretended I didn't see him. I could have had a thousand more awkwardly silent elevator rides with both of us looking at corners instead of speaking. I could have gone to Nerd Nites, movie nights, and kickball games, and had just as much fun not knowing he had the same interests. But at the kickball game he turned to me and said, "This is great! I never knew Lawrence was so amazing! I love this!" He'd been having a rough time lately, and to see a genuine smile on his face, to know that for a few seconds he wasn't worrying about his problems...how could I have wished away and written off his happiness to spare myself some pain? So I resolved to stop feeling sorry for myself and concentrate on being a good friend to him for as long as we had together. Yeah, it's hard for me to reach out. Yeah, it sucks having friends move away. I've made amazing friends and watched several of them move away due to jobs, school, family. It hurts every time. But knowing that I've made someone's life a little better by being a friend to them outweighs the feeling of loss when they have to leave. One of the nicest things someone ever wrote to me was, "You made me feel loved at a time when I needed a friend the most, and I'll never forget it." And I cried when I read that, because that's one of the highest compliments a person can get. Maybe I'm awkward as fuck, and a little weird, but I can love people like a sonofabitch. Once you're my friend, I'm in your corner: someone to help you move, someone to help you fight, someone's shoulder to cry on, someone to make you laugh. And all I ask is that you include me right back, and accept my weirdness. It helps if you're a little weird yourself.

But I have a tendency to get too attached, and right now I'm going through a rough patch. Robert, PK, and Ashley are all moving away in a few weeks. I've been to so many goodbye parties in the last few weeks that it starts to feel unreal, that this is just practice. But I know it's coming. One day soon, I'll walk into my office, and Ashley will be in Utah. One day soon, I'm going to walk past the room where PK used to work, and he'll be in Washington. One day soon, I'm going to sit on the bleachers at the Bottleneck and Robert's not going to be leaning over and whispering a snarky comment in my ear during a terrible horror movie, because he'll be in Texas. And I will cry like a motherfucker, every damn time. Nick will have to administer a lot of hugs, but I'll try to keep my whining to a minimum. Nick, after all, is the best friend who signed up for a lifetime and a mortgage and made himself legally obligated to me. As long as he's around, I can get through anything.

I think after Leota died, I got really sensitive to losing friends, especially far-away friends. It's easy to get complacent: people will always be there, you can always visit next year, you can call them another time when you're not so busy. And then one day they're really gone, forever. So I've been trying harder to stay in touch. It's always worth it, and no matter who it is or how long it's been, we tend pick up right where we left off. So I'm going to try my best to get past this. I'm going to keep in touch with the friends who move away, remember stupid stuff we did and smile, and count myself lucky to know such awesome people. And maybe I'll know even more cool people by this time next year, and I'll be astounded that I lived this long without knowing them. You never know.

Until I can figure out a way to mush all of my websites together, just go here for all of your stalking needs:

Purveyor of Wholesale Construct

Life is getting a little better. I have an actual writing job now, in a addition to the hospital job and am in a start-up roller derby. We'll be practicing in Ottawa after this week, which will be a nice change from having to skate through packs of little kids at the rink in Topeka!

I still miss Leota something terrible, but it isn't so raw and close to the surface anymore. I was talking to someone about it the other day, and had just finished expressing how much better I felt, when she noticed my hands were shaking and I started tearing up. I guess talking about it is still a little rough. I'm working through a lot of the junk from the past that has held me down for so long. It's going to take a while. I know this.

Home from work, for what was supposed to be a mini-vacation. Instead, one of my closest and dearest, though estranged, friends has died. Thanks to a severe storm system sweeping the Midwest, and my own fears about not being welcome at the funeral, I am still hundreds of miles away, sitting on this couch, crying because I've ransacked the place and can't find my favorite picture of her. Spring, summer, I have to survive the winter so I can drive back and visit her grave. Leota, you were loved. I wish I could have loved you enough for the both of us, to keep you steady and upright in your dark times. People keep telling me to feel better. "Wouldn't she want you to be happy she's not hurting any more?" Right, because the worst that could happen has already happened. She can't get any more dead. Please, just let me grieve.

Thing 1 won third place in the State Picking and Fiddling Championships. Places one and two were won by ADULTS! Mandolin has been his saving grace. He has not stopped beaming since Sunday.

Don't tell LiveJournal...

It would break its heart.