8.15.2014
Dear Kates,
Lindsey kept asking me last night why I was so quiet, and truthfully it was because I was preoccupied with this project; this idea. By no means do I figure this to be a kind of "catch all" for the shortcomings we gave each other this summer when we both deserved more, and better, from one another, but I'd be lying if I wasn't putting a lot of stock in this. Maybe that's misplaced, but worrying about that is neither here nor there because I won't be able to measure the meaning in this until you receive it and read it. At any rate, I was wondering if this would come across in a sort of 'smothering crazy ex' way, and I really hope it doesn't.. Really really. Then again I worry about too much what others think of me anyways, so it's probably best to say eff it and do it anyways. Right. Back to the point.
I was going back and forth as to if this was a good idea to pursue, and while I didn't pray about it, as I know you'd tell me to, I woke up this morning and you were all over the place. You left some Valentines candy in my nightstand drawer when I was looking for my checkbook, your old shower gel somehow made its way back into the shower, and the first song I heard as I took lunch was 'Born to Run' by Bruce and the exact line I heard was 'let me in I want to be your friend'. The song references some nondescript Wendy character, but all the same, I figured it to be a small Godwink of sorts.
All of that being said, here's letter number two which is one more letter than I anticipated I'd actually write. I have a bad habit of starting online projects with the best of intentions and keeping them and then failing miserably: I figured this would be another one of them. We'll see.
My mind is all over the place today. I need to focus on work but I'm slowly waning in that department, and I keep wandering between the events in Ferguson, Missouri, PhD's, my inability to accept that summer is on it's way out instead of way in, and what seems like a million other things. I'm restless and can't sit still and I don't know why, but what I do know is that in these moods I always seem to be called home. Literally, home. I want to not be an adult for a few hours and have someone make me dinner and sleep in my bed as if I were 18 again and wake up in the morning feeling more settled than I am now. Is that odd? I feel as though I dance between embracing the responsibilities of adulthood with this seriously intense nostalgia for years past that, truth be told, weren't all that spectacular compared to parts of the here and now. It's this kind of melancholy that hits and I want nothing more than to press the rewind button instead of the fast forward button, because there's something dangerously comforting about the past in comparison to the yet unknown that the future holds. I feel like I spend too long in these moods than most people, and while you can romanticize that into a hundred different tween novel plots, it feels unhealthy to me. Like overindulging in sea salt caramel gelato: it's good while you're in it, but you know you should stop, but when you've gone too far you just feel nasty and wonder how you're 3/4 of a pint down.
It's because I don't feel grounded to things. The past year, year and a half I feel like I've been in a disquiet limbo where things that I had placed firmly in the "forever" category are no longer there. The cabin, the spectacularity of belonging to a 3/3rds friendship, the hope that things with my family would even out soon: all of that isn't here anymore, and those were some pretty sturdy rocks I thought I'd ground myself in. I feel like it's just me, myself, and I hanging out waiting for the return of quote "normalcy" when I don't even know if normal is any kind of realistic at this point in life. Logically, no, it's not, but does that mean I don't want it back and envision that to be in a time already happened? Nope.
We'll need to work on this, that's all I know. It doesn't do good to dwell on daydreams, so says one of my favorite book characters (Dumbledore). Let's just add that to the list of everything else I feel like I need to work on with myself and we'll make that it's own novel, yeah? Aye.
Oats.