Here’s to Momentum

Tonight after coming out of the apartment I felt like I had walked into a movie. The wind had that perfect sing, strong and threatening gusts, and the scent that it carried was of a creeping spring and a beginning. The long stalks of brown grass in the field in front of my car whispered that I was not alone. The powerlines above me were buzzing. The black of the evening was pure silk. It was setting the stage.

Something was afoot.

Heat.

I was in the shower. I had received a phone call only minutes before that for all intents and purposes had thrown my morning into the garbage disposal. I could feel the stress I had been desperately trying to avoid creeping up the stalk of my neck. I rehearsed the next conversation. I replayed the previous one. I rehearsed the next one again. I played the whole scenario out in my head. I felt like my frustration was oozing out of my pores and dripping onto bathtub floor.

My skin that was being hit by the water was turning red.

I had been standing there for ten minutes doing nothing but feeling and staring off at the wall in front of me in overheated water.

I hadn’t even noticed.

All I wanted was NyQuil.

My boyfriend and I were at his apartment watching the Giants football game. I don’t know much about football, but it’s becoming more and more a part of the holiday season for me, so it’s comfortable to have a game on when we’re together.

My boyfriend started losing his voice early in the day, and by the time the Giants reached half time he was starting to feel sick with a cold. I ran out to the Kroger down the street to grab some NyQuil for him.

I walked into Kroger. I regularly visit this particular location, so I know exactly where I’m going. I get to the pharmaceutical aisle and locate the NyQuil. I start to compare bottles and all of a sudden some guy comes up behind me and says the following:

“Excuse me, can you tell me where the cigarettes are?”
I gave him a confused look and promptly said “Uh, I don’t work here. Sorry.”
“Oh, you don’t? I’m sorry. Actually, I know you don’t work here. I just saw you when you walked in and your hair, and just knew I had to come over.”
“Oh.”
The guy took a step back from me, looked me up and down, uttered a “wow”, and then headed back across the store.

Now me, being the paranoid individual that I am, quickly grabbed the bottle of NyQuil, grabbed two rolls of paper towels and practically ran to the self-checkout kiosk. I got I.D.ed for the NyQuil, put my phone and a pen into my pocket just for safety reasons as I didn’t know where Creepazoid had slinked off to. I jumped back into my car and drove the eighth of a mile back to my boyfriend’s apartment.

Once I got back to his house and had put everything where it belonged, I realized my phone was missing. I searched all over the apartment. Nothing. So, I bundled back up and went back out into the cold to look in my car. (Mind you, it’s 3 degrees outside with a windchill of -15 degrees. There are 20mph winds and the remains of accumulation of 11 inches of snow fill the parking lot caked with slush and snowdrifts.) (I’m really not excited at this point.)

Anticipation, heartbeat

It’s the waiting, expecting.

The little cynics inside us sneer and say that we’ll only get a dusting of snow, when in reality we’re all expecting to wake up tomorrow to find a world that’s white and blank.

A foot of snow forecasted for overnight, and it’s not even snowing yet at 2am.

But I did check the window.

There’s something about the picture in our heads. The picture of waking up, scuffing in my blue slippers into the kitchen and looking out the window towards the parking lot to find it swelling with white, winter sand. The snowflakes are still falling in clumps and we’re lost inside our own neighborhood. I’ll fortify my afternoon with blankets, a David Sedaris book and a steaming bowl of Cream of Wheat. The snow will light the living room and my roommates will be on the couch watching a movie. I’ll slowly carve my afternoon into a solitary, cozy, December memory.

We’ll be snowed in.

Right this very moment though, two hours after the forecasted start time, not a flake is seen to be falling. It’s the anticipation that counts.

 

We’re all planning,

peering out through the front window,

pressing our noses against the cold glass

to see if the porch light tells us that the rumors were true

and that we’re snowed in.

 

It’s the anticipation that counts.
The anticipation, the heartbeat.

Your dream, my dream! We all scream if it’s… not.

I’m really tired of living everyone else’s dreams.

I’m tired of walking into the office on Monday morning and having to check to make sure my mascara looks good and I’m wearing the right shoes. I’m tired of making sure everyone is hearing what they want to hear out of the conversation. I don’t want to attend to anyone’s social needs anymore.

Because up until this point everyone has been just fine except me.

I like where I am in life right now. I have my heart in everything I touch.

But, at the same time, I’m also at the point where my child shadow and my dreams separate. I’m starting to turn the car to a slight left in the fork in the road and everyone is losing their minds over it.

I’m tired of feeling like my life is only worth how many checkmarks can be checked off other people’s lists for me.

Do you have a diploma? Do you have the right job? Are you dating the right guy? Are you off at the right college? Do you like the right music? Do you go to the right church? Do you really think you should be going to church at all? Do you have the right ambitions? Have you done the right things before you get married? Do you live in the right state? Are you spending enough time with me? Have you called everyone you should this week? Have you kept up with all your emails, voicemails, tweets, text messages, phone calls, and meetings? Why don’t you like your coffee black? Do you really like computer coding? Why did you dye your hair purple? You should date him again–he’s changed. Why aren’t you an astronaut? Why would you ever consider living in a rainy city like Seattle? Why would you ever like the color grey? Don’t ever bring home a boy with that type of hair. All our professors just love you, why don’t you do my test for me? Why don’t you play volleyball for your school? You should be a model.

Just say it to me.

We are all too good to be true anyways.

Terminal Clock

I’m sitting along the wall at a gate in the new terminal. It’s early December and I’m at the airport on a dark Thursday night. The concourse stretches out in front of me and behind me like a never-ending hallway. I can hear the mid-pitch hum of the moving walkways that run down the middle of the hallway. There is a giant screen tv that almost takes up the entire top of the wall behind me. I can’t see the screen, but it’s bright and I can see the brilliant flashes of color on the white columns lining the windows. Everyone from my gate and the next was facing me, their tired eyes staring up at the screen. Their faces held quiet expectancy and fizzing faith. My boyfriend was leaning his head back. He was holding my hand; eyes cosed with headphones in his ears. A tram snaked its way past the gate and down through the concourse on its track on the next story. Outside, through the wall of black, I can see small flurries and lights on the runway.

I am away from the urgency of the clock and swimming in a quiet corner of the world. For a moment I am not gasping and inhaling to survive; I am breathing and awake.

Winter

It’s winter and everything is covered in snow. December midnights are uncluttered, silent, peaceful, and clean. We’re inside the little gingerbread house inside the snowglobe. We’re alone, wrapped in the quiet snowflakes sinking. We’re someplace deep inside the pocket of this freezing earth. Everything is just fine.

There are people that I wonder about during this time of year. The world seems larger in the winter. I feel so separated, like I could drive for hours and this city would continue to stretch for miles and miles in front of me. I feel unreachable and holed up in this little state. And everything is just fine.

It’s easy for me in December to smile upon the memory of you like some dissolving dream or some long absent sickness that barely scathed me. The demon that never was, the imagined ghost, the lover I made up in my head so long ago. It’s easy for me in December to smile when I remember, and all fear has soaked softly into the snow. And everything is just fine.

We’re alone or maybe I’m alone, wrapped in this blanket of cold and solace. And everything is fine as I sleep inside the cradle of this quietly spinning, burning, and freezing earth.