a month. or so.

it's been a long time, dear blog. i'm writing for a newspaper in portland. i have a job. my apartment walls are still yellow. but i am here, and happy still. even though it feels sometimes as if time has stopped, and if i'm not going forward, i look back at my old posts and see that, indeed, time has passed. those thoughts and feelings have changed, some irrelvant. it's a public diary. i'm not sure why i've chosen this.

it's fall now, nearly winter. there are yellow wet leaves all over the sidewalks, and a night i can hear the rain pounding on the sidewalk outside my bedroom winter. i like it when i can lay beneath the blankets (we've all had that moment, haven't we?). especailly when the boy is next to me.

i made a mistake, though. out of nowhere i told him that i love him. i told him that he meant something to me. at that moment, i meant it as deeply and profoundly as i possible could. he has not said it to me though, and there is a stiffness. me, who has always fought so valiantly not to be "that girl who says such dribbe" has turned into...that. i spoke with my best friend on the phone about it. he said, "welcome to being a real human being."

in a sense, i suppose he is right. why is it wrong to be in love? why does it scare people off and make the toes curl in the way you don't want them to. i'm not sure that i understand. i love you. but i may not be here forever, or want to live with you in a small house somewhere for the rest of our lives, or even have you fall in love with me (although that third part is a lie).

i thought he loved me, i felt it, and now it's gone. perhaps just for a time.

It continues

I moved into a new apartment this week. Or, at least I got the keys. It's old, probably built in the 1920s or 30s, and the hardwood floors are beautiful with mahogany inlays, but the walls reveal their years... i'm going to paint, remove the yellow from the living room walls (I've read Charlotte Perkins Gilman). The bedroom is painted a dirty santarium blue that needs to be replaced. But the apartment still gives me a thrill everytime I walk in. The space is tremendous. After my tiny New York City apartment, palatial even. There's even (a) hallway for me to meander. I wonder if during lonely moments I won't know what to do with myself in there. It may be, but for the moment, I'm savoring the vastness.

Something larger has been building this week. I left it for the second graph. I realized that I may be falling in love with the Boy today. From the beginning it occured to me that this could happen. I fall in love easily. But things unraveled with him at the end of summer, and then were clumsly refashioned into a relationship...although perhaps it wasn't so slapdash, because what is between us now is something...far more than it ever was before. There is a depth of emotion that I didn't think I would be able to have for him after we briefly fell apart. And it's caught me by surprise. But when I lay next to him in the dark at night, and hear him breathing next to me...i am perfectly content.

I am not foolish about love, I know that perfection doesn't exist, and that even it's doppelganger, when it's there, doesn't always stick around for long. I am a half empty.

But for now, I am going to try enjoy being full.

Last night I was driving through the dark streets of Portland, windows down because it was a warm evening, and for the first time in years (?) I felt real, genuine happiness. It was sudden. I don't know if it was the balmy dusk...the possibility of a new job...or that I was going to see the Boy. I suppose it doesn't really matter. What blew me away was how it popped into my head...as if out of nowhere, i was thinking, this is what happiness is...a gentle feeling of contentedness, nothing is wrong in the world.

Do regular people feel this way, I wonder? Certainly everyone goes through bouts of depressions, ups and downs, because, well, that's life. But I'm curious what form happiness takes in other people's lives. After years of crushing depression, and anxiety, I came up with the idea (for survival's sake) that happiness was not a neccessary part of a fulfilling existence. But after what I experienced yesterday, and still feel today, I don't think I gave hapiness enough credit. I watered it down. It couldn't be that important, I reasoned, because me - the girl who had it all - couldn't find it in her own life.

I don't know how long it will last, maybe it'll be gone by the end of the day. I'd like to say I'm not thinking about that - truth is, I'm trying not to. But I am savoring this feeling. There is nothing better.

I am [supposed to be] a writer

How I stumbled upon my career isn't interesting. Nor is the day-in, day-out word wrangling and clicks on the keyboard. You don't want to know about that. But, I thought I had to lay THIS out on my first post. You ought to know that I'm a writer...but I never said I was any good.


The cold days are finally coming in Portland, and I'm looking forward to it. Intensely. Summer is so decadent, with the skimpy clothes and the long daylight hours and the cold beers and tropical drinks and naughty flings. It sounds completely idiotic, but I'm usually bored of it all by September and am ready to hide myself under a fleece blanket in front of a fire. This year isn't really that different, in that I'm ready for a change of seasons. But my summer hookup has stuck around, which has complicated things. As a result, I'm not quite ready to give up the cold beers and tropical drinks because they quiet the voices of discontent and worry (fear?) in my head. Dirty martinis are a good fall drink though, so I suppose I can sub them in. But back to the summer fling. And his presence. I think the big problem is not that the Boy has stuck around, so much as it is that I have so little to think about. So I stew, and I worry and I fret and I wonder what I'm doing with someone who's younger than me, and who was probably still in high school when I was doing my first beer bong.

Portland is sapping my energy. It's an easy town to just EXIST in. It's all birkenstocks, granola and fresh (solar roasted!) coffee. Money? Incidental. I used to live in NYC. I used to work around the clock. I used to party around the clock. I had no time. Now, in Portland, h-o-m-e, I have no job. Just the Boy.

Every morning I wake up thinking that I'm going to do something that day. Sometimes I say it out loud. You know what I'm talking about. Something real instead of watching Charlie Rose in my sweats. Like, change the world real.

I'm wearing pink velour track pants right now.