525,600 minutes

One year ago today at approximately this time, I was detaching K's keys from my keyring and walking out the door of his apartment. I'd walked in still calling myself his girlfriend. When I walked out, I wasn't anymore.

In the days leading up to that moment--after I'd made the decision, but before I'd told him about it--I'd wondered if I had ever really loved him. I felt so distant from any time in our relationship in which I'd been happy, it was easy to think that those times had never existed. We'd stopped overlapping. I was happier when I was spending time without him than I was when we were together. It was over.

I walked out the door and felt part of myself evaporate as I went. I'd lived in his apartment longer than I'd lived in any of my own during our time together--over five years, I'd lived in four different places. I knew his neighbors better than I knew any of my own. I walked out and knew I wouldn't be back. Not in the same way. Not as someone who lived there.

I walked down the street and away from his building, past the nightclub and the steady, thrumming bass that had reliably kept me awake on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights for the past five years; past the local coffee shop that sold bad drinks and attitude but didn't take credit cards; past the bar where a month or so later we'd meet for a first awkward post-breakup beer. I was leaving him behind, shedding our past.

As I walked away I knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that I loved him. I knew that I loved him and that it was over. 

A year later, I have no desire to call and tell him I'm thinking of him. I still see things that make me think of him almost every day, but I don't immediately pick up my phone to tell him when I do. When I see him--I still don't know how to act, because he's still so much the person that belonged so much to me--but when I see him, there's the distance of what our lives have become in diverging, and we flounder as we try to negotiate it. So I try not to see him.

Someone once told me about a girl that he loved with his whole head--the problem was his heart, which stubbornly refused to come along for the ride. I think with K and I, the problem was just the opposite. My heart was his in spite of my head--but try as it might, my heart could never make my head settle down.

I still love K. I will love him always. I miss the love we shared. But 525,600 minutes later--I still have no regrets.

Rebuilding Year

2010.

After three months, I think I can safely say that the theme of this year is transition. Learning to thrive on being alone would in itself be a huge mental shift, overwhelming in and of itself--but on top of that, I also have to figure out how to move from being a law student--which I've been almost as long as I had been with K--to being...something else. Something yet-to-be-determined. A lawyer? Hopefully. A professional. Someone with weight to throw around. Someone with gravitas.

Insert laugh track here, says my mind.

Why should it be difficult to take myself seriously? Entre nous, I probably take most things much more seriously than they should be taken. Everything has import; everything has meaning. I have difficulty relaxing and letting the world flow around me. But when it comes to me--but maybe it's the same problem. Maybe I just need to go out into the world and let it flow around me--not worry about whether I should or should not be taken seriously and just do what I need to do. But, says my mind--what is that, exactly? What do I need to do? To be happy? To be successful? To wake up one morning and be where I want to be?


It's a rebuilding year.


That's what I keep telling myself when I'm sitting in my apartment alone feeling like there's not a single person in a 30 mile radius--except for K--who would even notice if I suddenly disappeared off the face of the earth. I did this to myself. I made my choice. I decided that what I had wasn't what I wanted--and that, at least, I know to be true--and threw my life to the wind. 


It's a rebuilding year.


That means rebuilding my confidence. It means rebuilding my life from the ground up. It means overcoming the paralyzing fear, self-doubt, and loneliness that are the hallmark of my days and laying brick on top of brick to create the future I'm hoping for. 


Rebuilding sucks.

Channeling Dennis Rodman

Get it?

Rebound.

I started into the new thing without knowing what I was doing, or why--I just knew that it was what I wanted. It was what I wanted more than anything. It transported me away from the pain of losing K, even if losing him had been my choice. It helped me ignore my all-consuming, soul-trembling fear of being alone. And he turned me on like I hadn't been turned on in years. Like an idea, babe--like an atom bomb. He reminded me that feeling that way existed.

And then it went, oh--so wrong.

I don't really even know what happened. One minute it was there, the next minute it was gone. I expected him to behave like K--pliable, compliant, willing to be handled--even though the reason I was attracted to him in the first place was because he was none of those things. And the more he failed to behave like that, the more frustrated I got. The panic began to build. I began to cling.

And he ran. Like Jesse Owen, like Carl Lewis, like Jackie Joyner Kersey. Off like a damn shot.

It was the right thing. I got my rebound, and the ball is back in my hands.

Here We Go Again

The night after K and I broke up, I went out for a drink with friends.

They came over to indulge me--to play some poker and to make sure I wasn't about to gauge out my eyes with something sharp. I needed them. They stopped me from being overwhelmed by the oppressive freedom of filling the hours any way I chose.

And as we chatted over cocktails in the cement basement of a local bar, I remarked to one that I would have to start cultivating my crushes instead of ignoring them.

"Do you have a crush?" he asked, amused.

I did. A silly, adolescent, heart-palpitating, stomach-churning crush that snuck up on me from the middle of nowhere and took root before I even knew what was happening. It was absurd. It was rebounding at its finest. It made no sense whatsoever. True to my word, I cultivated it.

It worked.

And now what do I do? As silly as I was before, I suddenly find myself having real feelings--strong feelings, feelings that make me gasp--feelings that make me sigh in spite of myself like a character in the kind of romance novel we used to buy in college to read to each other in front of ski lodge fires while we drank more than anyone would consider strictly necessary.

Am I in any position to do this again so soon? Or is whatever it is not even close to being the beginning of anything worth talking about? Am I just naive enough to think that there's something there when there's nothing more than hormones and too much beer? Can my worn-out nerves handle it if there is? Where to begin? Where to go? How to make it work?

And then there's K. As much as I know that I did the right thing for both of us, I can no longer deny how much of my heart I left behind with him. When I see him, I feel all the comfort that our years together have made second nature to both of us--and none of the annoyance that made me leave.

And I don't know what to do. With any of it.

On Independence

So far, more than anything else, independence means loneliness. It's a strange sensation--in the B.K. years, I was more often without a social network than within one. Loneliness was a second skin that I drew around myself and called freedom when I lacked the tools to find a home for myself among others. In Florence, trying to escape, I found a home wandering the streets, or on the steps of a medieval orphanage decorated with white terra cotta babies by Luca Della Robbia with a book in one hand and a block of cheese in the other. (I only recently discovered that the metal grate at the front of the building that I could never identify was in fact a depository for unwanted babies, and that similar orphanages had 90% infant mortality rates). There more than anywhere else, but everywhere--alone. Lonely.

K changed things for me in ways that I'm only beginning to understand. Someone I could call, just because I wanted to say something. A place I could go, just because I didn't want to be at home anymore. Nights out that stretched into the wee hours, and wee hours at home that stretched into work days remarkable only for the frequency of emails flying back and forth between our two computers and the general struggle that staying awake and appearing productive required. And comfort--more than anything else, comfort. As the giddy newness wore away, it was replaced with a sigh of relief every time I slid my chin over K's shoulder or he nestled his head on my chest. Home.

And with these joys came a fearful dependence. I knew that just as easily as I had glided into the life of weekdays on the couch watching sports and weekends out with the girls, I could glide out and return to my loneliness skin. For all its familiarity, loneliness could not compete with two real arms--and so I fought to keep them around me forever. And as time wore on, keeping them eclipsed any reason for wanting these arms, these specific arms, attached to this person. Slowly, slowly--but inevitably, at the end--my loneliness skin came slipping back.

As I unwillingly welcomed my old friend back to the fold, I began to fight harder. If only we moved in together, our lives would start to overlap again. If only you weren't so. If only you could. If I weren't. If I would. And at the end: if only I could live like this. The only thing that frightened me more than the idea of spending the rest of my life in a relationship that I had come to know to my very core was wrong for both of us was the idea of spending it alone, and my stubborn nature tentacled itself to my choice even as I struggled desperately to find a way to force myself to let go.

And then I did it. Four years, eight months, and two weeks after the beginning--I did it.

It seems a strange thing to announce as though it were a triumph. At its core, it is a deep and ponderous loss--of time spent, of work and energy devoted, of love shared. But I choose to emerge a victor from the self-imposed destruction of my comfort zone. At once the end of a long trajectory and the work of a moment, it forces me to build my life anew.

I'm terrified. But I'm free.

My Capstone: The Graphic

http://www.wordle.com

Why I Love Ever After

It doesn't take much to make me love a movie. All I ask is the barest sketch of a plot, a couple of main characters that I like to look at, and--I admit it--some kind of romantic tension. This isn't to say that there aren't movies I enjoy that don't fit this formula (isn't, aren't, don't...right). On the contrary--in order to pass into the realm of truly beloved, a movie needs a lot more than that. But I freely admit that my movie shelf is heavily stacked with the five-dollar rom-coms that I pick up at Target when I'm feeling angry, annoyed, or overwhelmed by life. Yes, I do own You've Got Mail, Two Weeks Notice, and Catch and Release. Got a problem with that?

Even within the much-maligned genre, there are gradations. Poorly written romantic comedies thrive on the heat between their main characters; the story lives not in the triteness of the lines but in its invocation of something to which we can all relate. Call it what you want--romance, passion, porno for prudes, whatever. It's the baseline that all even mildly successful films in the genre must meet. Without that, you wind up with a Gigli or a Must Love Dogs.

The better films of the genre evoke something more specific--your Say Anythings, your Bull Durhams (yes, it counts), your Bend it Like Beckhams. You say to yourself--I was a geek in high school too! I also love baseball! I've know what it is to struggle against unfair expectations! There's something going on in all of these films that goes beyond a simple boy-meets-girl narrative. Not much--let's not get too optimistic. But they're comforting as well as passionate. They appeal to the intellect as well as the heart.

Devoted student of the genre that I am, I can't help but be disheartened by it. Surprise! The romance-craving feminist feels conflicted about craving romance! It's hell to have layers. I mean, let's be clear--the last thing I want from life is for some knight in shining armor to get down on one knee and condemn me to a life of subscribing to traditional gender roles. At the same time, it's nice when the one I love tells me I look pretty (I assume--not that mine would ever do something so pedestrian) or does something to show he cares. But too many of these movies that I adore for making my heart twitch are ruined because they make my head hurt. Oh please, Mr. Male, make it all better! Thinking makes my sexy shrivel up and die--just ask Dick Armey.

These are hardly new complaints. But Ever After--a silly modernization of Cinderella with Drew Barrymore that includes Leonardo da Vinci, for some reason--is the kind of Cinderella I can get behind. Why? The Prince falls for Cinderella not because she dances like an angel, but because she quotes Sir Thomas More. Their first date? A freaking library--a.k.a. Heaven on Earth. She saves him from his arrogance and apathy just as he saves her from the Wicked Stepmother (and somehow, Gypsies are involved). She can make it on her own just fine, thank you, as evidenced by her escape from the villainous clutches of Pierre LePew. She winds up with the Prince because she chooses to wind up with him.

There are flaws; of course there are flaws. It's a movie, not a political commentary. It's made for entertainment, not to represent the Third Wave. So I accept the flaws. And I aspire to be that kind of Cinderella.

Once More With Feeling

The nice thing about my life right now is that it's predictable. I wake up about an hour after my alarm goes off and finish up the reading for my first class of the day. I stumble down the street to the Metro; I try to avoid running directly into the other bleary-eyed commuters (and, predictably, I fail). A comforting rhythm emerges.

In class, I'm sometimes silent and sometimes talkative. When I contribute, I'm sometimes insightful and sometimes embarrassingly inarticulate. I type like a madwoman for two straight hours and then it's over.

How to break the monotony? In the rush of my daily life, I find myself in a situation that my dad used to speak of with horror--I'm waiting to get my ticket punched. I've somehow lost the passion that governed my first year of law school: the excitement has dulled; the passion has lapsed into routine. (I am talking about law school, right?)

Flashing moments remind me of what I'm waiting for--being able to help a friend in need; understanding controversies; providing assistance to others at a more useful level. I know that when it's over, I'll be glad.

So what am I complaining about? As with most things, Joss Whedon said it best.

I want the fire back.

Return of the Law School Blogger: On Facebook and other distractions

I'd pretty much given up this blog for dead--nothing interesting ever really happens to me. Well, nothing that can't be condensed into a witty-yet-poignant Facebook status update. And I'm convinced, after long study, that the last thing the Internet needs is yet another self-important pseudo-intellectual blocking the tubes with his or her unedited bloviations on topics ranging from the state of the world (YnksRulz4EvaJrK and IHartRonPaul have some GREAT ideas about the economy--if only you people would listen) to the guy in Public Forum X who WILL NOT STOP ANNOYING BEHAVIOR Y. Ugh. The nerve of some people!

So why the return to the airwaves--or whatever it is that makes the pretty pictures of cats with calculatedly grammatically incorrect captions fly into the little metal box I haul with me wherever I go? It occurred to me that rather than talking to myself while I walk down the street, running into trees and signposts more frequently than one strictly should, and devoting large portions of class time to crafting Facebook status updates that perfectly capture my mood, I should just start writing my blog again. It seems like a good way to blow off steam. Follow-through has never been my special gift, so this may be the first and last post that I write.

At least, until I start running into trees again.

Hospital dramas

I finally made it further into the Hospital de Clinicas today, and what an experience it was. I spent the morning wandering around with a very nice volunteer-retiree (here they call it ¨jubilada¨). Our first task was to find clothes for an elderly patient whom a retirement home had unceremoniously dumped on the hopital´s doorstep. Stark naked. Hospital gowns are either not used or not available, so we visited a room full of old clothes to see what we could find for her. We dug up a couple of nightshirts and some socks and then moved on after dropping them off. The woman was very disoriented and difficult to understand; she seemed to have as little clue about what she was doing there as the nurses and doctors did.

Next we visited a few rooms in the maternity section, stopping in to chat with some expecting mothers. The maternity and peds intensive care sections were the only ones that didn´t have peeling paint, rusted and dripping pipes, and gaping holes in the wall and whose floors weren´t covered in linoleum that had worn to the cement floor underneath. It seemed clean and efficient, though most of the rooms did not have lights.

In the peds intensive care unit, we visited a woman and her two children who were both sick with pneumonia. The woman seemed to provoke my companion intensely, and she went into the hall and talked animatedly with a nurse for several minutes. As we left, she explained that both the woman and her husband were ¨tontos¨, which in context I think meant mentally ill or retarded. She expressed frustration that nothing could be done to help them, and that the children would only be taken from the parents if the government´s assistance were solicited. She expressed frustration that they continued to have children that they could not care for.

My silent thoughts were something like ¨Not in a Catholic country--no contraception for you!¨ When she expressed her frustration to another volunteer, my thoughts were borne out--the woman, surrounded by pictures of saints and with ¨Juan 3:16¨ draped as a banner over her bookshelf, tsked at my companion and explaint that it was ¨la naturaleza¨ that they should keep having children.

Indeed.