And Just Like That.

A pause in the rapid clicking sounds coming from my own fingers, flying across my laptop's keys.  

Only the hum of computers and the sound of our breathing.

Words.  Gentle words, softly spoken.  Words whose very softness belie the devastation each syllable contains.

A calm.  A warm hand pressed against the small of my back, squeezing my thigh.

Brown eyes searching for my own, now darker glance.

A phone passed, it's weight solid and real, and the discarded.

A shaking breath.  A shaking hand.  A shake of the head.

The screen blurs.  The fingers slow but can't quite pause.  Finally the "Submit," button is clicked, a quick press of the fingers and it's done.  With barely two hours to spare, I have submitted my application to the grad school of my dreams, with an application fee paid by my boss because I couldn't afford it, and letters of support from faculty and friends.  There is no sense of relief, though.  No sense of pride and joy.  I know that I had to finish, to type the last words which seemed so all-consumingly important moments ago and now ring hollow and . . . and. . .

. . .there is a long, slow swallow and another shaking breath and then the tears come and will not stop.  They fall so fast and so hard that there is no discerning an individual tear from the fast running streams.  I reach my hands out and Boyfriend knows what I need, instantly enveloping me in arms that are far larger and stronger than my own, but not enough to hold me together as my heart falls to pieces.

It's been a long, slow process to this point.  There has been the deterioration of a brilliant mind, the clutches of a sad and frightening disease.  Mind and body failing, slowly at first and then so rapidly it makes me think of the very first hill on a rollercoaster.  Up and up and up and up, chugging away steadily, relentlessly, and seemingly endlessly despite the feeling of fear in the bottom of your stomach and then woooooossshhh you're over the other side, careening.  No breaks.  No pause.  No chance to reverse courses.

I think of the Beatles, of toolbelts, of a bearded smile and Elvish poems.  I think of blue jeans and ducklings and being called a smartass.  I realize how stupid I was, trying so hard in the last days, the last hours, of his life to do "the right thing."  You cannot orchestrate grief, stupid girl.  It is neither simple nor elegant nor tidy, no matter how much you wish it to be, or how many sweeping songs are written, or how many aching poems are penned.  Yet it is something that will not be left alone.  I worried about how and when to touch the hand, to look in the eyes: to whisper goodbye through lips that quivered, to a man who probably had no idea who I was any longer.  I held my brother and I told jokes.  I read pages from a warn, thin book penned by a mutual favorite author - J.R.R. Tolkein.  And then the day before Tolkein's birthday, my uncle slipped away to see him.

There aren't really words for grief or a way to express properly my thoughts.  As Boyfriend held me and tears receded, I ran through the Sacred Canon in my head.  The list of names and faces and cherished memories of those I've laid to rest: and my heart ached and ached that the list was so long, that some of the names were so young, families left behind extensive, and marveled that grief long since passed out still stung so fresh.

You would think, by now, my heart would be used to these goodbyes, and yet it breaks anew, as though each fresh wound must be carved from the unique spot the loved one held.

"Quel esta, quel kaima, tenna'ento lye omenta"

Rest well, sleep well, until we meet again my Uncle.

They Came, They Saw, They Kicked Ass.

Last weekend was one of the most Happy-Sad Days of my life.  Happy-Sad Days are exactly what the name implies: days of bittersweetness, where you are laughing with genuine pleasure while tears tug at the corners of your eyes.  Saturday was a perfect example: Graduation Day for the Class of 2012.  It was such an amazing, special graduating class and ceremony.  For one thing, I am proud to announce the first ever students to graduate with a BA in Theatre from our college crossed the stage and collected their diplomas. Without that moment, my own graduation as a Double Major would never be possible.  Additionally, the BA Theatre Class '12 has in its ranks some of my dearest, most beloved friends and the most talented assortment of people you can imagine.  I utterly adore them. 

Then there were the dancers. . . my dancers.  More than any other class (including, in fact, the one I came in with) this group of exceptional, talented people took me in and made me feel at home.  Taught me about love, family, loyalty, courage, self-expression, worth, work, and creativity.  My world is so much better for having them in it and I am genuinely a bit nervous to imagine it without their daily presence.  Below are some pictures of the festivities!

Julia, BA Dance '12 & Colin BA Theatre '12

(aren't they a ridiculously pretty couple?)  

I call this one "Family: You're Doing It Right."

My fierce roommate, all decked out in her honors gear and the fabulous Jenna

(Both BA Dance '12)

 Roommate's glee and awkward arm motions in anticipation of graduating.  Also, note our bare walls and empty looking apartment.  I am just so sad.

The boys.  My boys.  Let me tell you, they are more trouble than you can shake a stick at, more fun than is legal, have less sense than your common household goldfish and better hearts than half the Saints in heaven.  I love them to pieces.

{ I didn't take this picture: it belongs to my friend Em, you can find her here}

Woohoo! We did it! First graduating class! Bye-bye college!

Thoughts Instead of Studying.

I am sitting here, my mind heavy with knowledge it can't quite absorb and reeling from pressure and stress that accompanies an academic lifestyle.  I click through old pictures, and your face appears, leading me down a new thread of thought.

My how things have changed.

My how we have grown.

There are miles and miles behind me from the person I was when we met - awkward and untamed and fighting blindly just to survive in a world I was unsure of.  There are years, so many more years than I'd realized, between you and these images.  Skinnier, younger, less secure. I forgot about the cowlick you had, right on the top of your head, that made your hair go crazy.  Why do we notice these things?  Or rather, why do I?  After all, I can't speak for what anyone else sees. . .

There is so much I'm not prepared for on this test.  I need to not procrastinate, the night won't get any younger. . .

Both of us smile, frozen in time as megapixels and data.  These pictures exist nowhere else but on our computers, drifting in an endless sea of binary code, our younger selves reduced to less than photostock.  We're a blur, only a simple digital blur. The soft blush color of my cheeks isn't the glow of early teenage years, but the careful combination of zeros and ones and dots until an image forms; the same is true of your disheveled hair and laughing face.

A click and we're gone again.

There are forty more slides still to go.  Why must the powerpoints be so long?  I hate spending my time locked to this screen.

I wonder who we'll be ten years from now.  Will there be a baby on someone's hip?  A new city beneath their feet?  Will we still find a way, somehow, to each other through the impossibilities that life brings to our friendship?  Will you be happy, then?  Will I?  And where will these current selves be - stored digitally thanks to social media, somewhere in the great Other where neither of us can truly erase the file?

Stored as memories shuffled carefully away with our younger selves?

Will this version of me as I am now eventually become nothing more than a digital echo and the vague impression that you once held someone's warm hand against your own cupped palm?

I am so tired.  My eyelids are heavy and my heart feels funny, as it always does when these strange reflective moods come over me.  I don't think I am old enough to think this way.  Am I?

When I am honest I realize I don't miss the old us - not the younger, less secure, more difficult you.  Not the frightened, breakable, naive me.  I am much happier with the confidence we've both managed to find though we both know it is sometimes hollow.  Hollow is good - hollow can be filled.  I think of it less as a shell and more as an outline, where the potential can still be reached.  We now have lines to color in.  And what lines they are.  The line of your shoulder is thicker, broader.  The spread of your stance more confident, taking up more floor when you enter a room.  You've learned to own your space.  Quiet confidence suits you.

I on the other hand am still a smudge: a smudge of emotions and thoughts and ideas and colors, a moving blur like a photograph not properly exposed, that person in the back who didn't quite stay still when the photographer said "three."  My energy and motion have a direction, now, a goal other than "Away.  Run away."  This is growth, though it is not the solidifying you've done - if anything I am blurrier and busier than ever.  But I think my colors are richer, too.

I really have to tear myself away.  There is nothing in these pictures that will help you learn what you need to know, girl.  Stop looking at them as though they'll help.


So many things have changed.  Why am I noticing them now?  How disjointed and jumbled all these thoughts will seem in the morning.  How silly I feel even now thinking them to myself.  I wonder if I will have the courage to hit the little orange "publish" button in the top corner of this snow white page, the courage to commit this image of myself too.  To press it, like a dried flower in the pages of a scrapbook, into the time capsule of myself the internet provides.

I think I will.  After all, it's just binary code and digital dreams, right?

Back to the books I go. . . 

The Inner Child

You know how wise man have often talked about the child inside of all of us?  That happy, adventurous, joyful and free spirit who keeps us youthful?  Creative?  Inspired?  How important it is to let the inner child out?  Well, I've always had a hard time with that idea.  I agree there is an inner child inside of all of us. . .

But in my case - and I think maybe in the case of many other abuse victims - the inner child is not as joyful, as free, as at peace as the grownup version of myself.  I can still picture her, my inner, younger self.  Sometimes - often in the still of the night, or when I am somewhere peaceful like by the water or in a silent stage/rehearsal space - she reappears.  I can close my eyes and see her there, like I'm looking in a mirror.

She is short for her age.  Her hair is long and brown, hanging well below her shoulders.  Her brown eyes are big in her small face.  There is intelligence there, and passion.  But it's already curtained, hidden by little traces of fear.  You can still see the questions, though.  Always, always, always a question.  Who? And Why? And when?


I wish when I touched my inner child, I felt the urge to cartwheel.  Or to dance.  But usually, I just end up feeling sort of sad.

Her nose is too big for her face, just like her hands and feet are too big for her limbs.  She's a thin girl - very thin.  All skin and bone, hands and feet, and brown eyes.  Sometimes she is holding a book. Almost always she's holding a worn, well loved doll.  Even when she was a toddler, the only thing this little girl ever wanted was a story, her dolly, and enough room to dance. 


Sometimes it isn't at all like looking in a mirror.  It's like I've become the little girl again.  Confidently answering questions, talking too fast and too much and never far from a book.  Carefully listening beyond my own chatter, for any sound of instability.  Any hint of a threat.  The sounds of breaking things: plates, knick knacks, fingers, hearts.  They each shatter under different amounts of pressure, each cracking at a different volume.  If you keep your insides very still, you can actually feel the vibrations.  Way down deep in your core, like the echo of a plucked guitar string.  While I've never been very good at keeping still I'm very good at staying still.  I'm always in motion, doing something.  Even as a kid - but my spirit is still.  Calm.  Listening for the vibrations.

Tonight was one of those nights, when all I could see in front of me was the little girl I used to be.

There are already circles under her eyes, even though she's barely even ten years old.  They're faint and thin, delicate lilac rings, more a suggestion of sleeplessness than a statement of it.  If you know what to look for though, you see it.  The telltale badges of someone who imagines worlds past the stars instead of sleeping beneath them. 


I feel myself sliding back into that old self, who loved the worlds books and ballets brought her to as much as she feared the one she lived in. I feel little and nervous again, as I imagine making decisions others might judge me for.  As I think about changing my appearance, embracing the person I'm becoming, so different from who I was, I feel my little self peer around the corner, asking if it's ok.  Ok to be someone new?  Is it. . . safe?

She always wanted a big brother.  Someone tougher and cooler and smarter than her.  To show her the ropes.  To worry when the shouting happened that she might get woken up.  To make fun of her - to notice her. She wants someone talk to, instead of only getting to listen all the time.  As much as she talks, she's a good listener - it's her "hidden talent" like the ones beauty queens have.


When I ask a question now, it's with my in-between voice.  The one that sounds like me, 21 and self-assured, but comes from me, 9 and a half and without any confidence at all.  I ask my big brother questions - oh yes, I have a big brother now.  As soon as I became a teenager - all awkwardness and nervousness and strange ideas - God decided to send me someone who'd adopt me as his little sister, maybe because our strange baggage sort of. . . coordinates.  And now I reach out to him, asking about how it feels to get a tattoo and what I'm afraid of when I think of moving to a big city alone.  And somehow my little voice takes over and I'm talking too about where my fears came from.  He's telling me now to be brave - tattoos hurt and moving is lonely.  But it's worth it to sacrifice for things you love and believe in.  Right?

Right.

And I suddenly wish I could summon my elementary school self here, and answer some of her questions.

Does the shouting ever stop?  Why do some people get best friends and some people no friends?  Did you know ballet terminology is actually a mixture of three different languages (if you don't count English?)


It's ok.  The shouting stops - though the vibrations never do.  You'll always feel them, behind your closed eyes, in between your heartbeats. . . in the pause in other's stories.  Don't worry about friends: I promise there will be good and loyal and true and courageous people in your future.  You'll keep learning ballet terminology for as long as I've seen of your life.  And whenever you're really angry, or truly ready to cry, or bad dreams creep back in, you will recite it in your head - every step you know, every movement you love, lovingly repeated. You get a big brother.  And a big surgery.  And a very kind and sweet man will kiss you, right before you leave for college.

It's ok to cry, little one.  There is a lot of time left for cartwheels. . .