the vanishing point

I've started to believe in dreams again, and he has long been my favorite. We've been many things to each other in both our time together and apart. There haven't been words to describe most of them. We are something like friends-- we've settled there with relative ease before-- but there is simply no denying that, together, we come alive. He wakes me up from a life I otherwise sleep through. And I burn into him. We'll always share that much in common: we bear each other's scars.

I pulled up to his house with giddy anticipation. We were celebrating his birthday, and I got out of my car with cupcakes in hand. I was met by a lawn full of wishes. I plucked the tallest, roundest one, and closed my eyes, blowing the seeds apart-- mostly into my own face. They stuck gracelessly in my hair and eyelashes, and I giggled, shaking them off as I waited at the door for a face I see far too infrequently.

He appeared, and we embraced for a long while. I felt an ease come over me that I hadn't felt in too long, a happiness I scarcely could contain. How can you contain it when you're so close to the things you've wanted for longer than you're willing to admit?

I left the cupcakes in the kitchen and we sat for a while on opposite couches, catching each other up on our day-to-day lives. How busy he has been. How busy I have been. We covered the bullet points of the Venn diagram of us, focusing on the middle-- the things and people we have in common. We talked about the foreseeable future-- about the career he is preparing for, and the one I'm hoping to embark on.

"I really hope you get it," he said.

"I'm too scared to think about it too deeply. To really want it," I said.

"Why?" he asked.

"Then it becomes real. Hope is dangerous. It's dangerous to want so much."

We both smiled, caught off-guard by what I'd said without exactly meaning to say it. I looked away.

We spent the lovely afternoon that we had both desperately needed. We played childhood games, laughing at silly jokes that no one else ever seems to appreciate. I sang a bashful solo "Happy Birthday" over a half-dozen chocolate and vanilla cupcakes. "This is where I make a wish?" he asked.

I immediately flashed back to another spring, another birthday, sitting in his car, in the unseasonable cold. That was the night we had first discovered our mutual feelings for one another, and I'd remembered that I still had birthday candles in my purse from my best friend's party weeks before. I retrieved a candle, though neither of us carried a lighter.

"Well, make a wish anyway," I had said, holding a single white birthday candle between my thumb and forefinger. It all felt like the end of a John Hughes movie.

He knew better than to question it, and closed his eyes, blowing the imaginary flame between us. A few moments went by, with me nestled against his chest. "I'm surprised you didn't ask me what I wished for," he said.

I looked him in the eye. "If I ask, then it won't come true."

Our lips found each other for the first time. The first taste of magic.

"That's what I wished for," he had laughed, running his fingers through my long, straight hair.

Extraneous memory, I thought, back in the present, in his kitchen again. "This is where you make your wish," I confirmed. "Wish wisely."

He closed his eyes and blew out the very real flames that flickered over three of the cupcakes. We chose our flavors. "I can't tell you what it is," he teased.

"Nope," I said, scooping a bit of chocolate frosting off with my finger.

He sat next to me on the couch, and held out his arm for me. I froze. So close to the things you've wanted. I quietly buried my head in his chest, listening to the familiar, unfamiliar beating of his heart. So long ago. We curled up into one another, in an innocent intimacy that I thought we'd grown too old and jaded for. So many thoughts echoed. Safe. Warm. The right things always come back around. 

"I owed you a cuddle," he explained.

"Right," I giggled. "This is for me."

"I don't know how things are going to play out," he said, "but... you're special. The way you speak. Your intelligence. Your fire. I wish I had just a little bit of that fire."

I laughed. "You are fire! I've never seen anyone push themselves like you do."

"Not like you," he sighed.

I squinted reflexively. "You really don't see yourself, do you?" It was rhetorical, but it had finally dawned on me. He'd been pushing himself to prove a worth that, although intrinsic to me, was a blind spot for him. It felt, for a moment, like the stories of our grandmothers, waiting patiently for the loves of their lives to return from war. Only the war was man against himself.

"I have met so many people. I've dated..." I trailed off. In the interim, I had even fallen very much in love. "But the bottom line is... nobody is you."

He pulled me closer, nuzzling his face into my hair. "Nobody is you," he mused. "No matter what happens, whether we end up together or not, I could never forget you. I mean, there are far better out there than I. But I'll never find another Katie."

"There aren't," I said. I've always hated when he says those things. I never know whether he has placed me on an undeserved pedestal, or if there is a subtext I'm afraid to read-- but I don't like the thought of either. "And even if there are, why would I ever deserve better than you?"

"Because you're Katie."

"The world is full of Katies."

"I mean, I may meet other Katies, but none of them will ever be you. Nobody is you."

We sat together for a long while. He pulled me close, listening to me inhale and exhale, and I held him, words failing me. It's the simple things, I thought, that make life's complexities bearable.

"Do you ever wonder what if?" I asked. He emboldens me.

"Of course I do. All the time." His eyes burned into mine. "Just because I'm not always around doesn't mean I don't think about you. I just don't ever want to hurt you."

"Don't worry about me," I sighed. "I think I've already done all the crying over you that I'll ever do."

I remembered so many similarities in the way it had ended. He had told me I was the first person he thought about when he woke up in the morning and the last on his mind when he went to sleep at night.

I had said everything I needed to say, and probably more, reasoning to him, and to myself, that I didn't want to be the one with regrets someday. "That means something," I had told him. "You don't find that all the time. You don't just walk away from that."

But he did.

Ours is a love story that has spanned across springs, across too many empty seasons. Years go by, and they do so with more urgency. They build up speed; they gather momentum. More candles top our cakes. Maybe they're just enough to wish on now.

But I know, deep down, what happens next. For now, he will go back to his life, to working tirelessly to prove of himself things that I have never questioned. And I will go back to tirelessly throwing spaghetti at the wall of my own life, just maybe daring to hope a little harder for the things I know to be real-- for the things I already want too much.

But there is a point on the horizon where I have long seen our paths meeting. It is impossible to tell where. Maybe it is merely an optical illusion. Maybe it's akin to a mirage when you're dying of thirst, alone in a desert, and all you can think about is lifesaving water. But I wonder if I will find him there, someday, at the vanishing point.

Goodbyes have never been our forte. It's always been the emotional equivalent of pulling magnets apart. And no matter how many hours we while away together, it always comes too soon.

We stood on his lawn, and without a word, he plucked a dandelion, blowing its seeds far and wide,  his wishes vanishing with them into thin air.

Someday, I figure, we will see where they land.

mother's day

My mother, tending to a baby squirrel, Mother's Day 2015.

Happy Mother's Day, readers!

Today, I am reminded of how lucky I was to have grown up surrounded by strong women, particularly my own mother. When I think of my mother, I think of the tiny blonde force of nature who has never failed to leave those around her better than she found them.

I arrived late to a family party this afternoon, after an overnight at my volunteer ambulance company. It shouldn't have surprised me that, at the height of the party, she was sitting in a patch of dirt in the backyard, tending to a motherless baby squirrel. Nothing could better capture the essence of the woman who raised me.

Growing up, my brother and I witnessed her earnest, tireless drive to heal everything she found broken in the world. She has always been the kind of person who stops homeless people to ask them what they need, finding them later with blankets, food, and bottled water. As a stay-at-home mom during our early years, she generously offered to watch several of our peers with struggling single parents. And she took the tenderest care of her ailing mother-in-law, my beloved Nene, spending endless hours running errands, organizing a cornucopia of geriatric medications, and driving her on appointment after appointment, without complaint. My mother, quite simply, has never had anything in this world that she wasn't willing to share, whether it was her money, her time, or her uncommon gift of kindness.

In turn, I have had to share her-- not only with my brother, but with many she meets. Born a nurturer, she has been a motherly figure to many from her early days as the big sister of a large family, to her work as a nurse. My grandpa refers to her jokingly as "Mother Teresa without the religion," and he is not far off. There are many gifts to have in this world, but I have found none quite so rare as hers. She is pure heart.

She was a relatively young mom-- merely 23 years of age when I was born. It couldn't have been easy, and we didn't make it any easier for her. I was precocious. I rolled my eyes at her too much. I had too many opinions that I voiced too loudly, way too early on. I went through days of hormonal teenage angst that lasted well into my twenties. But my mom has loved me through it all.

I hope that I have begun to live up to the example she has set for us. I hope that my brother and I are somehow continuations of the legacy of compassion and caring that we simply could not ignore. I hope, someday, to be able to impart these gifts to another generation.

But, as a woman divorcing in my thirtieth year, I do not have the luxury of knowing whether children are in the cards for me-- which has been a difficult concept to come to terms with. Strongly maternal myself, I always imagined that I would someday have a family of my own, and I planned my life accordingly. But things fall apart, sometimes, in ways you can't quite piece back together. There are things you can change. There are things you can't.

Whatever life holds in store for me, I am lucky to have had her beautiful example to learn and to grow by. Though I may never quite live up to it, I couldn't be more thankful for the opportunity to try, every day, to fill the very big shoes of the very little woman I call my mom.

the other girl

I didn't even know she existed until the guy I'd been dating posted a vlog entry on YouTube. Although he spoke in generalities with characteristic charm, he chronicled a date he'd gone on after Easter dinner-- a date that I had not been party to. It was a clear enough time marker, and I knew I had been home alone, likely hoping to hear from him. That's the problem with smart girls. Until then, she had been theoretical. He had merely reserved her space. If I want to date other people. If I want options. She had been other people. She had been options. She had been if.

Moving forward, I never really cared to venture about who she was. I'd promptly removed myself from an overly complicated equation with one-too-many variables. I had solved, quite simply, for the appropriate "x" and I didn't look back.

I never knew her name or her face.

But she knows mine.

This is all weeks behind me now. I lead a busy life, and it's scarcely crossed my mind. Yesterday, however, the plot thickened. While talking to a new potential, he revealed that he knew the other girl, and that she'd been poking around, trying to learn what she could. He curiously knew my ex's name, and details too on-point to come from anyone but the girl in line behind me.

"How does she know we're friends? How does she even know who I am?" I demanded. It was uncomfortable, vulnerable, in the way it must feel being watched behind a one-way mirror. Someone was clearly looking at me, but I had no way to see to the other side.

He didn't reveal her name, but then, I never asked. I had already walked away from that situation with as much of my dignity as I could sweep up. I haven't verbalized, even to my closest friends, details she had so freely intimated. Part of me feels vindicated. We end up where we belong.

I cannot speak for her, because hers is a voice I do not know. But it's not a great leap for me to imagine that,  in this situation, you'll never really know where you stand. I know I didn't. Once you have the relevant information-- once you know that there is another girl-- it is no longer the romance you had the smallest hopes it might be. You know that it's not a love story you'll one day tell children. You know, with sad resignation, that it's not a love story.

I suppose she wanted to know the same things that I had initially been curious to know. What's she like? Is she prettier than I am? I suppose it mattered less to me because I didn't see him as territory I was looking to claim. Is there something about her that makes her, somehow, the better choice? This is perhaps the only answer I really have.

The other girl would always be the clear choice.

She had stayed.

champion

Happy May, readers! Today marks a brand new month for www.just-like-a-woman.com! 

The past week has been a dizzying circus. The other evening, I received a phone call from one of my best friends. Truthfully, I received several phone calls followed by frantic texts that read something to the effect, "CALL ME AS SOON AS YOU CAN! URGENT!"

He had always been championing me and my burgeoning writing career, and recently, his nudging had become more insistent. He introduced me to editors. He spoke with just about everyone he knew in the industry on my behalf. A few promising leads trickled in: I received emails, and phone numbers with instructions on the best time to call. I received guidance from people who had once been in my position, who now worked in the field of their dreams. On Monday evening, he called me with a proposed assignment.

Due to the inherent time constraints of a one-day deadline, I had no business taking it. I had worked late, and was prepping for another 13-hour workday on Tuesday. It left me with very little time to conduct interviews, secure photos, and write a first article that would impress an editor enough to want to work with me again. However, we do not have the luxury of choosing when an opportunity will arise. When it does, you take it. No matter what it takes, you take it.

I stayed up on the phone with him as a largely silent cheerleader, typing as I listened to him laugh at the television in the background. We'd been friends for more than half of our lives, and there was a certain comfort in just having him on the other end of the phone. I wrote the body of my 500-word article in just a few short minutes, and then spent hours second-guessing trivial differences in word choice and sentence structure. There came a point in the evening when I looked at what I had written on the screen, and decided that it was ready, even if I wasn't. I sent my article to the editor of the paper with a cross of my fingers.

Early the following morning, I received an email from the editor, applauding my story, and saying that she would definitely use me again in the future. It still was not a guarantee, I realized, that the story would run. Yesterday morning, while working my job in EMS, I happened upon a newsstand. Serendipity. I rifled through the paper to see if my article had made the cut. It was on page 10.

I rushed to send the photo of my byline to several people. He was first, of course, because it was chiefly his doing. He had made it happen.

"I wish there was a BIG way I could thank you for this," I said. "Maybe someday, when I make it."

"I prefer to be behind-the-scenes anyway. That's why I went into PR."

"That's so 'Wind Beneath My Wings' of you. Are we living the movie Beaches now? Don't be so Barbara Hershey!" We laughed.

They say opportunity knocks softly, but opportunity does not always knock. Sometimes, you have to chase it. Usually, you have to run after it like a fat kid chasing the distant song of the ice cream man. But, occasionally, you're fortunate enough to have someone in your corner who creates it for you-- who hunts it down, who places it neatly in your lap. He has been many things to me in our time together-- we've gone through many incarnations-- but more than anything, he has been my champion. If you're ever lucky enough to find a champion in life, never let them go.

just outside of everywhere

I was born the product of a rationalist and a dreamer: one with lofty aspirations that we never quite knew how to reach, or even see-- the other with hands that ceaselessly toiled in the earth. They were polar opposites, and we knew that very early on. Although it lasted for over two decades, like so many fruitful relationships, it was simply not meant to be forever. Maybe their union was just a trick of nature-- trying to create cosmic balance by bringing together two disparate beings-- generating new, recombinant life that, at the very least, had a shot at the best of both worlds.

My brother and I lived most of our lives in an awkward realm between today and tomorrow, never really knowing which to hold more stock in. We didn't belong to the sky or the earth. We didn't grow roots, and we were too affected by the gravity of pragmatism to ever quite reach the stars. We hovered somewhere in between-- just over the land, where we couldn't quite touch anything, and nothing could touch us.

We occupied that lonely space together, just outside of everywhere.

As adults, we are growing to have the distance that perspective requires. Opportunities have begun to surround me this year-- some of them rational and well-established, with the security of benefits, pension plans, and the comfort of reasonably knowing what to expect of tomorrow.

Another road glistens before me without any promises or expectations at all: an awe-inspiring though formidable cliff which beckons me to trust in what I had come to believe were vestigial wings.

But they are not. They beg to be tested.

I suppose, ultimately, we were lucky. We may not be able to simultaneously occupy both worlds, as we had once so desperately tried to-- but we have the unique option to move freely between them-- something akin to dual citizenship of the earth and stars.

the things that scare me

My earliest years were spent in quiet, careful introspection. I was a thinker, and I lived almost exclusively in my own head. I read. I wrote. I was afraid to venture out into the world, and I spent a great deal of time just observing life as it went on around me. I had been so afraid to make a mistake, or to potentially hurt something, that I never affected anything, either. My eyes were open, but I was closed off.

It occurred to me that I had approached my life as if it were a watercolor painting-- wanting to see the full picture before committing to the canvas. I needed to know where the white would be, where the spaces would show through, before making a stroke I would regret.

In recent years, I have actively pushed myself to really experience the world, to become a part of it. In essence, I try to do the things that scare me. I have generally found them to be good for me. They push me beyond my comfort zone. They expand the boundaries of the world I belong to. They make life interesting.

Although emergencies once seemed daunting, I became an EMT and I now regularly manage situations that would once have seemed impossible. They can be taxing, but they are routine.

I have taken leaps to explore and share feelings that the girl I once was would have pushed down forever. I have become strong enough to let myself be vulnerable. I tell people how I feel. I write an online diary for the world to see. I have become comfortable enough in myself and my ideas to be, so to speak, an open book.

Where I was once so painfully quiet and shy that a classmate went a full year thinking my name was Bridget, I find myself much more extroverted, befriending diverse personalities with ease.  I am actively engaged in a world where I once sat on the sidelines.

This weekend, I was given the opportunity to become a backstage assistant to a major Broadway star, which was a terrifying prospect, but one that I immediately said yes to. When would I ever get the chance to do something like that again? Although I feared the unknown, I took a necessary step forward into it, and ended up having a lovely day, learning much about major theatrical performances and getting to watch most of the production from the wings. She even cut me a slice of her own birthday cake.

This has been my year of taking necessary risks, of daring to say yes to all of the things that intimidate me just a little.

I now live in a different medium. Watercolors are beautiful, but life is not so neat. If you are actively living-- if you are truly participating in the world-- your canvas will be covered with many false-starts, strewn with nonsensical lines and colors that bleed into one another, sometimes in less-than-appealing ways. You will make missteps, but they are perhaps the most important element of the well-lived life.

ghost

It's been said that spirits-- if you are inclined to believe in them-- sometimes linger long after their physical presence has ceased to exist. Believers claim that it largely occurs in situations that end traumatically, suddenly-- those with the most heightened of emotions swirling around them. They are the ones who leave unfinished business. They leave loose ends.

There are loves like that, too.

It was the most logically illogical thing I've ever wanted, and it had felt so close, once. So lifelike. Too dreamlike to be real, but too real to be make-believe. We would while away sleepy midnight after midnight, talking endlessly, drunk on a new magic we had found together. I never quite figured out the trick.

So I came to believe.

I would nuzzle up against him. I loved his smell. "Those are just the pheromones," he laughed heartily, and I loved that, too. He became something like "base" in a childhood game of tag-- a tangible place where you're safe from everything, and nothing and no one can touch you.

When everything came to a crashing halt-- when we realized that we had to follow divergent paths in order to lead lives that made sense for us, it was sudden, and traumatic, and a loss. It was a loss of lives that could have been. They had glistened before us, full of promise not meant to be realized.

Loose ends. Unfinished business.

He has become a ghost in my life, and perhaps in his own. Every so often, I'll be left with a message from beyond, some evidence that he still exists, in some form, somewhere. I'll catch a glimpse of him too briefly. I'll get a text that rings with the most wonderful, terrible sound in all the world. I never give up the opportunity to tease him.

"How's my favorite phantom?" I'll giggle. "It's been too long. I need a proper haunting."

And I'll get a witty quip back, or all too familiar laments. And I'll sigh, and close my bright, starry eyes for a moment, holding the magic still within them. Deep down, I'll know that he chose the right path, and that someday, it will all make sense for us both.

But when things go wrong, he's where my mind wanders. That's begun to make me wonder if it isn't everything else in the world that makes up wandering for me.

Maybe he is home-- if in my memory only.

I have moved on with my life. I've been through many incarnations since those carefree days. In the process, I have had to make peace with the fact that some ghosts may never stop haunting.

For now, I will just take solace in the fact that the right things always come back around.

moving on

Moving on.

The other day, I sat down with a psychologist as part of a never-ending battery of pre-employment testing-- just another event in the vocational equivalent of The Hunger Games, in potential and long-overdue entrée into a big, grown-up career. I sat across from her, hoping to keep my demeanor completely even, not hinting at my understandable nervousness, or resorting to the silly jokes I was certain she'd immediately see through as a coping mechanism. She shuffled a stack of papers, and finally spoke.

"Your intelligence is off the charts," she said without so much as a change in inflection, glancing at her notes.

"Thank you," I blushed.

"No, it truly is. It wasn't a compliment. These are the results from the test you took."

I tried not to peer too eagerly at the numbers and letters scrawled on the piles of paper. "What did I get?" I asked.

"You were well into the 99th percentile. I'm just curious," she continued. "It says that you never completed your college degree. Doesn't it frustrate you, being so bright, and not having a bachelor's?"

Loaded question, right off the bat. Right where everything hurts the most. How emphatically could I possibly say yes?

"Of course it does," I said, maintaining my composure. "It's something I plan to rectify."

"Good. You need to be doing something more with your life. Even if it's a small step at a time."

That re-ignited that little fire that's always burned in me. My days have been whirlwind-- life doesn't slow down for a second. But despite the chaos, despite the aftermath of so many meaningful things-- I find myself a little more upbeat, simply because I've started doing more with my life. I've started doing things for me.

First, I am back on my healthy lifestyle change (Goonies never say diet). I'm slowly getting my body-- my other weak point-- exactly where I want it to be. I stepped on the scale yesterday, and despite having taken a couple of weeks off due to a mixture of Easter and the emotional spin-cycle, I am only up a couple of pounds.

Easy fix. They will be off by tomorrow. Moving on.

I decided today that I would get rid of my TV. Bill had been looking to buy one for his new place, and I told him, quite simply, that he could have the one we had shared. There are a number of reasons why this is a good thing for both of us: it will mean more to him than it does to me, and it will save him the money and the trouble of buying a new one. It will give me back some much-needed living space. Most importantly, it will give me back the little free time that I do have in pursuits that are more meaningful to me and to the dreams I have deferred. I will get more reading and writing in without the distraction. It will make the gym that much more appealing. That's a step.

I signed up for my third annual Book Expo America conference in May, which is essentially my Christmas, or something like heaven to a bibliophile. Nerd-vana, if you will. This year, instead of going as a passive member of a writer's organization, I am going as an active writer-- a blogger. Forward.

It turns out that when your life falls apart-- and I shattered mine on purpose, not feeling quite at home within it-- you're given the unique opportunity to rebuild something different, and perhaps, something beautiful. I am going through a lot right now, and I can't see the whole picture yet. But I'm on the cusp of something, and that is what has been keeping me going.

For far too long, I have been working far too hard-- running in circles, wondering why the scenery never changed.

Now, even if it is merely that one small step at a time, I feel confident in my stride. That's how we move on.

fuel

In prehospital medicine, as in life, pain can be a valuable tool. It's a primary indicator that something is wrong. It helps us to know where the problems are. It helps us to help.

I wonder, sometimes, how much of my life has been lost to anesthetic. Food, wine, the comfort of pleasant company. It has many faces; it takes many forms. But by dulling myself to pain through lovely distraction, it seems I may have done myself a terrible disservice. I haven't been able to get to the heart of the things that most need help.

Quite simply, I have to be able to feel, to heal.

Today, I discovered that I had some parting influence on the gentleman I broke it off with on Saturday: less than two days later, he's exclusively with the other girl. He's always seemed to want the other girl-- even when the other girl was me, initially, and I'd told him that I wasn't interested in getting in the way. It still hit me hard in a tender spot, on a day of hormonal vulnerability. It felt physical, acute-- as if I'd stubbed my heart by carelessly bumping into the wrong things. But I am grateful, if nothing else, for the sucker punch back to reality.

When it comes to dating, I have a world of choices right now. It's as if I've lit up like a porch lantern on a dark summer night, and potential suitors-- if most of them can seriously be considered that-- swarm around like eager night insects. I don't even really want them right now. I realize that I would only be numbing the pain, and depriving myself of this chance to hone in on the problem. That's how we know what's wrong. That's how we fix it. 

This is what I want right now: I want to learn to live alone, to be fully independent-- perhaps I'll feel loneliness sometimes, but within struggle is the potential for growth. It's a sad thought, but it's the healthiest I've had in a while. I'll be better equipped to know what's real when it comes along because I won't feel reliant on someone else. It won't sway me when a boy calls me pretty, or laughs at my jokes. Boys say plenty of things, I've learned too well. Men mean them.

I'm going to take inventory of where I am, and where I want to be. I'm reprising my "lifestyle change" that I've been too lax with for the past couple of weeks, getting my body into its healthiest, though Khloe-esque form.

I'm going to make my living space my own, and learn to feel at home in what Virginia Woolf called "A Room of One's Own."

I'm going to go back to school for something that utilizes the natural gifts that I've been wasting for too long.

I'm going to be better, and, radically, I'm going to get there by feeling the things I've desperately avoided feeling.

I thought, in a weak moment today, that I might finally cry, but I realized: at my core, underneath the marshmallow-fluffiness of my gentle, doe-like demeanor, I'm a badass bitch.

This is fuel.

And I am fire.

some quick monday morning quarterbacking..

I haven't cried yet. Maybe it's because I've been so busy that I haven't had time for the proper introspection that endings require. I went straight to work, then to volunteering in my department. I wrote a quick entry before socializing with my peers, and falling asleep on a couch that wasn't mine. It could be that I'm growing used to the whirlwind of life's changes-- which is to say that I am growing callous in all of the soft places that once defined me as a gentle, sensitive soul. But I haven't cried.

Life has been moving at a rapid pace. I work unpredictable hours at a full-time job in equally unpredictable EMS. I work a part-time job on my days off, and I teach whenever afforded the opportunity. I volunteer weekly within my department, I have a rich social life (when time permits), and I write. I have hobbies that enrich me, and dreams to chase. I carved out time for one person everywhere I possibly could because I thought I'd found something worthy of it. I'll never fail to make time for a person. I'm just done making time for games.

I don't think they were ever meant to be games. I doubt there was ever even the hint of ill intentions; he was a sweet guy. He was honest with me. But when actions say something completely different than words, it feels like a game-- and one you can never win. I honestly believe it was fear of the possibility of something real-- something that could have gone somewhere-- without first exploring the billions of other possibilities that exist in the world. But that's what I've found to be the purpose of relationships themselves. You don't have to plan out forever to decide that you like someone, or that you want to date them. You continually figure that out along the way.

I find myself still filled with mixed emotions, but I haven't cried. Maybe-- just maybe-- I'm finally growing up.

if you like something...

Upon reflection, it was something.

I knew it in the way I felt. I know it in the way I feel. Feelings are very real things, and they are always to be respected, if not trusted. The heart knows what's important. Mine always has.

Lately, it's been telling me that the post-city arrangement of "seeing other people" was a miserable idea. At first, it had nearly made sense to me. We had been moving too quickly into something we had rushed to define. He had said the forbidden word in a moment of drunken confusion or clarity; I'll never know which. That's what really happens when you get caught between the moon and New York City and one Smirnoff Ice too many-- you say all the things you didn't really mean to say.

It had scared him off, quite simply. I had tried to be passive while he sorted things out-- giving him space for weeks-- figuring that, if he was really interested, if this was really what he wanted, he would realize it. If he wanted to talk to me, he would initiate the conversation. If he wanted to see me, he would say so. It made for an unfair balance of power-- I was too accommodating, too readily available, just pathetically happy to see him. The messages were too few and far-between, and a single phrase resonated through my mind-- if you like something, set it free.

At first, I liked him too much to give up seeing him, but I came to realize that I liked him too much to simply be a choice, to be one of the girls he was seeing. An afterthought. For a good time, call. Today, I liked myself enough to simplify things for us both. 

We sat in a Chili's, my downward gaze and pursed lips an unmistakable giveaway that something was wrong. He apologized for being late, and I nodded, my lips tight, my eyes on the table. We made easy, comfortable conversation-- it's always flowed effortlessly. I warmed up a little. Don't look at his eyes, I thought. His green, green eyes. But they caught me. They always have.

Eventually, I spoke. "I can't help but feel that, if you really did like me, you wouldn't feel the need to date anyone else. I feel like I'm being comparison shopped." My words came out quickly. They'd been waiting on my tongue for too long. "It's like, given a choice of 31 flavors... when I find one I really like, I splurge for the cone."

"I really like you. I don't want you to feel like that, but that's just not where I am right now. I've always entered into relationships quickly-- within a few weeks of getting to know someone. I want to be able to meet people before I commit. When we leave here today, this isn't going to change how I feel."

"I'm not giving you an ultimatum," I said. "I hate ultimatums. I'm just telling you how I feel."

I flashed back, for a moment, to him telling me in earlier conversations about the space that he needed, but that he didn't want to lose me. But, in this moment, I realized: I was never his.

I have a lot to offer. I'm kind, and endlessly loving. I'm generous, and passionate, and bright. I know that I can be a great many things to a prospective partner. But second place will never be one of them.

11.11.11

We were married on 11.11.11. "Make a wish," I had said when we'd set the once-in-a-century date. And I had so many wishes for us-- youthful, childish wishes. Cake-top-candle wishes. Penny-fountain wishes. It was less of an exchange of vows and more of a crossing of the fingers. Please work out. Please always work out.

As we move forward into new chapters of our lives, I find myself with more grown-up wishes for us. 

You have been my best friend for years. I hope the fruit of them stays with us both. When we look back, I hope their memory is always sweet.

I hope we navigate the next phase with at least half of the kindness and respect that we have always shown one another.

I hope you live a long, healthy, beautiful life. I hope that I always remain a part of it.

I promise that you will always be important to me. I hope that you remember that.

I hope you find everything you are looking for in this world. I hope you dream of even more for yourself, because you deserve everything wonderful that life has to offer. I hope that the right dreams always come true.

I hope you are happy, and if you are not, I hope that you will be.

I hope you never lose your kind and generous heart. I know, of course, that you never will.

It is my sincerest hope that you find someone who can complete you in a way that I couldn't. I hope that she is as amazing as you are.

Although it is difficult to consider too deeply, I hope she is clever, and above all, kind. I hope that she makes you laugh, and I hope that she gets your wonderful sense of humor.

I hope she makes terrible puns. And I hope you learn to enjoy them.

When you come to difficult times, which I hope will be few, I hope that neither of you lets the love get too far away. I hope that we have both learned that.

Lastly, I earnestly hope that we've done the right things. And I hope we remember that when the road ahead gets difficult.

limbo

I once met a psych patient who had claimed to be Jesus, which is a common enough delusion in those suffering from psychosis. He wasn't the first I'd encountered; I'm certain he won't be the last. I suppose, if you are going to have a significant break from reality, you may as well go big.

"We're all stuck in limbo," he told me. "We're on the edge of hell."

"Don't I know it," I whispered wryly.

These days, that's what I think back to when I think about dating. Limbo. What used to be a world of sunny possibilities has become a dusky place where the sun has fallen behind the horizon. I find myself largely in the dark, and confused by ambiguous shadows I can't quite make out on the periphery.

I have always done my best to live without regrets, but there are times when I doubt my own choices. Was it somehow better to feel secure in what I knew, deep down, to be the wrong story? Or am I better off finding myself alone in a strange, ever-shifting new world-- like Alice, perpetually falling down the rabbit hole?

I guess it's par for the course during this awkward period of un-nesting, when you leave the relative safety and security of the home you have built for the unknown. For limbo.

That's the price you pay for the chance to fly.

the sad memory of magic

Something about a breakup naturally makes you start thinking about relationships in general-- what they mean, who you are when you are in them, and the parts of you that you sometimes lose when they have run their course. It's made me think back upon the loves of my life-- each loss a unique lesson in what can go wrong in the space between two people.

I've seen many things go wrong. There have been imbalances of affection: those I have loved more deeply, those who have been more passionate about me. There have been insurmountable course-of-true-love obstacles: too-great discrepancies in age or maturity, too-little communication; the basic incompatibility of personalities, and, in the case of my high school sweetheart, incompatibility of gender. There have been relationships that have come to dispassionate endings with quiet, sad resignation, after trying too long to make them something they weren't built to be. But one of my greatest heartaches came in the form of what may be looked back upon as a simple case of the wrong timing.

I never meant to love him. There were many reasons, but among them, we were coworkers. Despite the odds, we gravitated toward one another with the unstoppable force of a physics experiment gone awry.

He was handsome, but something else drew me to him. Maybe something about his self-deprecating humor, his wit, his ability, like me, to go from intense to silly in the same short breath. Maybe it was the fact that I couldn't help but see through the cracks of what others found to be an intimidating facade. Or maybe it was something in his deep, soulful eyes-- a sadness, a longing. Maybe they mirrored something in my own.

We'd always had exceptional rapport. We made terrible jokes that endeared us to one another. We laughed at things that seemed lost on others. Our conversations grew increasingly longer, and we quite suddenly began finding ourselves standing in darkened parking lots after work, long after the last of our coworkers had left. I felt the stirrings of something important. I felt it in the way he looked at me, in the electric energy of his nervous pacing. I felt it in every hug goodnight that lasted a little too long, but never long enough. I felt it in the lyrics of the songs he sang. "Bring Me to Life," he implored. "Save me," he whispered.

We began to spend time together after work. It had been that magical time of year, what e.e. cummings described aptly as "in just-spring"-- the time of the season when things that had been too-long asleep found themselves just awakening. First flowers began their skyward ascent through the soft earth. The world around us had begun to blossom.

One day, we made plans to go ice skating with friends. I laced up my rental skates and quietly prayed for courage in lieu of athleticism. I stumbled over the rubber flooring to the ice with all the gracelessness of a newborn giraffe. With both feet on the ice, I grappled with the wall. He was already skating laps that looked deceptively easy. He swished behind me. "You have to let go," he said. "You can't be afraid to fall. It's going to happen. You just have to learn to fall the right way." I sighed. "Do you trust me?" he asked, and I really did. I let my hand go from the ledge, and he found it with his. "Come with me," he said.

We found ourselves spending most of our free time together, and magically making time where it didn't seem to exist. And, for a while, it really didn't seem to exist-- we lived in stolen moments. I showed him life's simple joys: playing on the swings at the beach at night, wishing on dandelions, hiking out to my favorite tree in the arboretum. He introduced me to new games, and language, and culture. We played well-matched games of four-lettered Scrabble in the park. We marveled at starry skies on crystal clear nights, with Van Morrison on the radio, playing soft and low.

Just after midnight on his birthday, we found ourselves standing in a friend's driveway, not wanting to say goodnight. Not ready to say the obvious. He gave me a hug that lasted too long, and before I could stop myself, I blurted it out. "Is there something more going on between us?" I asked. I stated my case with uncharacteristic brazenness. He started to shiver.

"I don't know if it's cold or if it's the adrenaline," he laughed weakly. "Can we talk about this in the car?" he asked.

We sat in the car, in the driveway, for what seemed like a long time before he spoke. It wasn't the cold. The heat was on, and, still, he shook. "It's obvious that there's something between us," he said, his words measured. "But there are problems." And he laid them out neatly, scientifically-- the undeniably incompatible worlds we found ourselves belonging to. Stuck, I thought. But he asked if he could hold me, and I lost myself in him, enveloped in his arms.

"I'm listening to your heartbeat." I sighed.

"Sinus tach?" he asked.

I giggled, inhaling in the moment. "Sinus tach,"

For a short time, we lived pretty happily in a world where not much else seemed to exist-- in a world that was ours. But the demands of the real world pressed on-- eventually, too great to be ignored. It had all the makings of what could have been a great love story, but the timing was off. It was like watching a movie where the picture and sound didn't quite match up, and the actors' lips moved at all the wrong times. We were in two different places that we'd tried to bring together, but there were things that were fixed. Maybe someday we could make it work, but there were decisions to be made in the present.

"You're worth waiting for," he told me. "The question is... am I worth waiting for?"

I bit my lip. "You're worth waiting for," I told him, my heart sinking with every syllable. "But what you're talking about isn't waiting. It's standby. There are no guarantees."

He nodded. "You're right. It's not even a fair question to ask. I just... have to get my head and my heart on the same page," he sighed.

I nodded, not wanting to prod, but unable to help it. "Which am I?" I asked.

He closed his eyes for a long moment. "The heart," he said.

Although, for me, the heart has never failed to win out, it lost for him. I think it was always supposed to. There were things we needed to move on to, to accomplish in life-- and I've always been confident that everything works out for the best, in the end. Sometimes, in a love against the odds, the odds win. They aren't the stories we love, because they aren't exceptional; they are the norm.

But when it's over, when the last card has been played on the table, and we bear scars in all of the vulnerable places that love once touched, all we are left with is the sad memory of magic, and a single thought that lingers: nothing haunts like 'almost'.

the writing on the wall

I learned to read so early on in life that I don't even remember the process. I can clearly remember sitting down with my parents, or my aunts, and reading such poignant children's literature that it stirred emotional places within me that I hadn't even discovered yet. I remember falling in love with Chris Van Allsburg and The Polar Express on Christmas Eve 1991. I remember sobbing mournfully for The Velveteen Rabbit. I remember desperately wishing that Winnie had chosen to drink from the spring in Tuck Everlasting, but intuiting how important it was that she had lived the course of a natural life. And, of course, I had wanted a Secret Garden of my very own. I can remember sitting on the steps of our apartment with a generic chapter book, sounding out the more difficult words, and outright asking my mother for help when necessary. What does S-C-H-E-D-U-L-E spell? Schedule. That's ridiculous. That looks nothing like "schedule". Reading was always a powerful experience to me, and I consumed books voraciously. I hoarded words. There was such beauty in learning, and I absorbed everything I could about the world. My first, most sincere love affair was born.

At five years old, I remember reading Roald Dahl at my grandmother's kitchen table, and being in awe of the power of books to wholly transport you to another time and place-- even places I could never go without them-- for example, inside the minds and emotional worlds of other people. These stories, I thought, were magic; their authors, magicians. I wanted to harness that power, to hone their craft. I wanted to learn all of its secrets. It was the closest I have ever come to understanding a "calling". I felt quite sure that this was what I was meant to do with my life, and I dove in with the earnest enthusiasm reserved only for a child or a dreamer. I had been both.

I spent the years that followed immersing myself in elective classic literature, reading books in restaurants, and scrawling away hilarious journal entries and melodramatic poetry. When assigned to write a pretend resume for my dream job in a middle school journalism class, I spoke with my teacher in between periods.

"I want to write books," I told Mrs. Eddington. "How do I write a resume if I want to write books?"

 She considered the assignment, "Choose something else. Just for your homework."

I ended up writing a pretend resume and application for a job as the eponymous rodent at Chuck E. Cheese. "Where do you see yourself in 10 years?" the fake application demanded.

"Working as Mickey Mouse at Disney World."

When I was around 12, my mom asked me what I really wanted to do with my life.

"I want to be a writer," I said, with the unwavering certainty reserved only for a child or a dreamer. I had been both.

"I know," she said. "But what do you really want to do?"

"...Write..."

"Writing is a wonderful hobby, and I know you're talented enough to be anything you want to be. But a lot of becoming a successful writer is luck. You'll need a real job, too. As a backup."

My mother is the most beautiful of all pragmatists in all the world, and I will write more another day on the example of endless selflessness and love that I was fortunate enough to bear witness to, and grateful to call my mom. She is truly among the most beautiful human beings I've ever known, and time has proven that she certainly wasn't wrong. But I was so locked in to one vision of my future that I couldn't even think about the notion that I would ever do anything else as a career. I could become a nurse, or a doctor, I supposed; the human body was fascinating. I could go into social work or psychology, talking to people about their problems and helping them sift through them; I was a good listener, and naturally fell into this role within my group of friends. I could become a teacher and stand up in front of a classroom, lecturing on any number of fascinating topics. My problem wasn't disinterest-- it was that nearly everything else held the same vague appeal. I felt incapacitated by what I considered Barbie syndrome-- I equally wanted to be the pilot, and the veterinarian, and the paleontologist.

I've never quite worked my way out from under the weight of that feeling. Despite the many and varied jobs I've held to eke out a living, I've always identified as a writer.

For decades, I have done the prep work. I have studied the craft, experienced the world, and filled journal after journal with the fruit of those days. I have lived. I have written. I have read.

But I somehow missed the writing on the wall: you can't be afraid of what you were born to do. Even if it is terrifying. Even if it seems ridiculous, or if others don't understand it. Even if takes everything you have and everything you are in order to find the courage to do it. This blog is a start.

the heart of a tree

Tonight, as a change of pace, I figured that I would share a children's story that I wrote a number of years ago. It's been gathering dust (and rejection letters), so it is in serious need of a good home. I'm hoping it finds one here.

THE HEART OF A TREE
By: Katherine Signorelli

In the heart of an old wood of bramble and thorn

Lived a great mother oak and her baby acorn.

Mother oak loved her acorn--and no love was deeper--

But knew, though she could hold her, she never could keep her.

“One day,” said the tree to her littlest one

“You’ll break free of your shell by the light of the sun.

“And you’ll sprout your own roots, and you’ll be on your way!

And you’ll reach up great branches like I do, someday.”

The acorn was small, and it pained her to wait;

For, though she was tiny, she longed to be great. 

“Just believe in yourself,” said the great mother tree,

“And someday you’ll be bigger and stronger than me!”

“But I am too little,” the acorn replied.

“You’re little right now, but you’ve greatness inside!

“And, someday, you’ll find it--just wait, and you’ll see!

For inside your small shell lies the heart of a tree.”

The acorn took pride. She itched to break out.

She could feel all that greatness just waiting about.

“When?” asked the acorn, “When will I be great?”

The mother oak smiled. “My acorn, just wait.”

One day, said the acorn, “Please teach me to grow.

I don’t want to be little forever, you know.”

“There’s a cycle to life, and to all in its grasp

Be careful, my acorn. Don’t move it too fast.

“Before very long will come your time to go

So I’ll teach you the things that an acorn must know. 

“Someday, you will travel the land of your birth

To find your own place, in your own patch of earth.”

“Why?” asked the acorn, “But what if I stayed?”

“You cannot grow if you live in my shade.

“So don’t fear to find your own place on the land,

Because I will be with you wherever you stand.”

Acorn pondered her great mother’s words for a while,

And mother oak smiled her wise, knowing smile.

Said the eager young acorn, “I’m ready, I’ll bet!”

Mother oak whispered softly, “My acorn, not yet.”

In the depths of the forest, that springtime did pass.

Too slowly for acorn. For her mother, too fast.

One day, asked the acorn, “How do I grow tall?

I’m sick and I’m tired of being so small.”

The mother tree laughed, “My dear little seed,

You must first find the things that an acorn will need.

“When you come to a place where the weather’s just right,

And there’s just enough water, and plenty of light,

“You’ll begin to take root, and your roots must be strong

As they’re what will connect you to where you belong.

“Your roots will support you, and help you to grow;

With strong roots, there’s no telling how far you can go!

“With your roots in the ground, your real journey’s begun:

You’ll sprout big, shiny green leaves to gather the sun.”

Like a sponge, acorn soaked up all mother tree said.

“But what if I land in the wrong place, instead?”

“In the wrong kind of soil, where light does not fall,

Some trees grow crooked-- but you will stand tall.

“Though, at times, it may seem hard to tell wrong from right,

You will never go wrong if you follow the light.”

The warm days of summer did soon wax and wane,

And the crisp autumn winds foretold mother oak’s pain.

The oak looked at her young one with bittersweet eyes.

Her once-tiny acorn had doubled in size!

Her acorn was ready, the oak thought with pride,

To become the great tree she was always inside.

“I have given you, acorn, all I can provide.

Now the path that’s before you is yours to decide.

“You’ve learned all I can teach. You’re no longer too small.

It’s time now for you to be part of it all.

“It’s time, little acorn.”

“But am I prepared? I’m not sure what to do. I’m a little bit scared.”

“We all are, my acorn,” the mother tree quoth,

“But fear is just part of the process of growth.

“Sometimes, you’ll be scared, but you’ll have to go on--

For it’s only through this that you’ll one day be strong.”

The acorn fell softly from mother tree’s eaves,

Into mother tree’s shade, in a bed of her leaves.

For a moment, she lingered, half-frozen in place,

But she knew that, to grow up, she first needed space.

So mother tree rustled her branches goodbye,

And the acorn rolled off with her eyes on the sky.

The small acorn traveled through disparate sands,

Under wide, open skies, into faraway lands.

Till she happened upon the most fertile of loam,

And the acorn just knew she’d, at last, found her home.

The cold days of winter became of the fall.

And not very much seemed to happen, at all.

But the acorn believed in the heights she could climb

--And knew growth happens one tiny inch at a time--

So the acorn stayed brave, and that was the thing

That carried her through to the warm days of spring.

The days soon grew longer, and down the rains came.

And, somehow, the acorn was not quite the same.

She felt herself changing. She knew. She could tell.

She no longer fit into the same, tiny shell.

She was simply too big to find comfort inside,

So the shell she had lived in began to divide.

Little by little, till out came a shoot!

And the once-tiny acorn began to take root.

She clung to the ground, spreading roots deep and wide

To carry the bounty the earth could provide. 

She stretched herself out, she began to uncoil,

And in no time at all, a sprout sprung from the soil.

She had worked toward her goal, and now she was succeeding!

No longer an acorn, she now was a seedling!

She followed the sun toward the sky, where it led,

Growing great, leafy branches, like her mother had said.

As the young tree grew taller, her views did expand.

She could take in much more of the lay of the land.

And the things that had once seemed so big in her eyes,

She could tell, from this height, were quite little in size.

The higher she climbed, the more in her sight.

She could see her great mother in all her great height!

Though the distance between them was wide and was long,

Mother oak had been watching with pride, all along.

And with all of her might, ever sunward she yearned--

As the things most important take time to be earned—

But with something to grow toward, and the courage to try,

Now nothing could bind her but the infinite sky.

Then, some years later, a mighty oak stood,

With a tall, sturdy trunk, in the heart of a wood.

Her acorn sat perched on a branch way up high,

With a shell full of promise-- her eyes on the sky.

“When will I grow up? What can I do?

I want to be bigger and stronger, like you!”

Said the once-little acorn that now was a tree,

“Be patient, my acorn--someday, you will be.”