THAT. IS. IT.

after the blogger outages, i have decided that i am done with this platform. i'm leaving this one up, mind you, but i'm heading over to wordpress. behold, my new home:

http://magnoliathoughts.com/

the new place has all the content of this one, except it will also feature the two posts blogger decided to eat between tuesday and now, and new stuff going forward.

join me at the new home, won't you?

[drops mic]

today at 11:01AM eastern daylight time, i walked out of my last exam, put in my headphones, and cranked one of my very favorite crazy-aggro middle-school jams. i walked down the hall, out the door of the school, and as i crossed the street to head to the train, i may very well have said out loud, peace, bitches. and by may very well i mean that's exactly what i did.

it. is. over.

today marks the last day i will ever sit for an exam, have to contend with school procedures, or otherwise live as a student. my formal education ended today. the last time i ended a chapter of my academic career was a mere 385 days ago. then, i was elated, yet filled with a sense of sadness. when i left LSU, there was something there to miss. i missed - and still do, by the way - the school, the people, the attitude. i miss louisiana, even when its elected officials do boneheaded and wildly reactionary things on a near-hourly basis. LSU was amazing, indescribable and criminally underrated as a legal educational experience.

but this? hmm. i will benefit from having this name on my resume for the rest of my life. i spent 70 large on a year of education, and the benefits will filter through my career. i can always say that i'm a [fancy school which shall not be named]-educated lawyer, and people will say, wow, how impressive! that's an amazing school. but when they say that, they will be wrong. it's a great name. but it's not, by ANY definition, an amazing school. that would imply that it's a place where learning and collaboration are encouraged and valued. and folks, that is not the case.

what my fancy LL.M. institution encourages is paranoia, competition and grandstanding. everyone is selling something, all the time. even things that are supposedly good - charity work, fundraisers, etc. - are done not from a place of genuine selflessness, but from a place of look how awesome this is gonna be on my resume! i'll bet i can get a seat on the pro bono committee at [fancy law firm i'm clerking for] once they hire me. everything is tinged with an overabundance of caution. they're nice, but not friendly. they're pleasant enough, but not open or warm. their smiles don't reach their eyes; their eyes are too busy watching you to make sure you're not gunning to knock them off their perch.

i ran across some great friends at this school. i will miss seeing them every day as we all go back to our lives, scattering across the country (or in my case, staying here). it wasn't a total loss. i laughed a lot. but i am not, and will never be, nostalgic for this. there is no bitter spiked through this sweet. i got what i needed from these people. i am now shut of officious administrative policies, unnecessary restrictions, socioeconomic elitism and religious health insurance. (hmm, how novel - to follow MY conscience in my own healthcare decisions, not someone else's.) i got what i sought. now it's time to end this association and move on with my life.

peace, bitches. i'm out.

throwback: the wall

[let's go back to the very, very beginning. there's been some significant alteration in circumstance since this one was written. first, the old; then, the new.]

february 11, 2010: the wall
maybe it's the weather. maybe it's the season. but i'm starting to notice a certain... ambivalence, maybe, in my dealings with the other boy. we're both physically and emotionally close to each other, just as we have been the whole time. but it's starting to dawn on me that we're as involved with each other as we'll ever be. i think this realization has led to my disengaging a little.

he's been a constant joy and a thorn in my side for the entire run of this relationship. i love what we are to each other. but i hate, hate, hate the fact that there's this ever-so-thin wall between us, one that's entirely of his building. he's made the choice that this will only go so far. i've gone, over the course of things, from KNOWING he'd see the light, to HOPING he'd see the light, to realizing that he never will. and what is "the light?" well, basically, it's the fact that there's not another woman on the face of the planet who will ever care for him the way i have, do, and probably always will. i can't stand the fact that a) this is true, b) he can't or won't see it, and c) even if he knows it, and even if some part of him wants it, he can't or won't go there.

i love this boy. it's a deep and complex situation. but the foundations we've built this relationship on are so messed up that there's no possibility of things ever being white-picket-fence-ish between us. i guess it's asking too much to turn a lover into a partner, even if that lover was - and still is - your best friend. it's also asking too much of someone with so much iron will to remain aloof to break the wall down and let someone in. i wish so much that he'd drop the defenses. i just don't see it happening. i want him so much. i care about him so much. but, without malice, he's really doing a number on me. he cares about me as much as he can, and i know that. it's up to me to decide whether that's enough.

[so yeah, in the words of a fellow writer, your guy has become your man. as it happens, he took the plunge. we had a state of the union talk the other night, which is a big feat for him. i asked him what made him say lo those many months ago that he thought we had a future. his answer was more cryptic than what i expected: i don't know what i meant, specifically. i just know that i finally reached a point where the sense that it would go well between us was stronger than the fear, the risk, that it would go poorly. well, how has it gone? it was definitely the right decision.

there's no question that our origins are complex. the story of how we eventually fell in love ain't the kind of story you can tell grandkids. our time horizon is all jacked up. but none of the details matter. it's all window dressing. he eventually threw a line down and hoisted me over his wall. he realized that i was right, that there isn't another woman on earth who will love him the way i do. we went emotionally all the way in that talk the other night, and i told him in no uncertain terms where i see this going. he's on board, too. it's hard not to rush, to get to the shining future in the distance. but one thing all of this living i've done in the last few years has taught me is that the destination is not always the most important part. the journey matters, too.

turns out, to quote the man himself, you got what you wanted. yes, babe, i did. how 'bout that.]

glad to have a friend like you

[soundtrack. i am deeply sorry in advance for the visual here. it was the best the internets could do for me. go get the original free to be... you and me for the good stuff.]

i've been thinking a lot about compatibility. it's a very fungible concept, as you can be compatible with someone emotionally, but not practically (see also my ex - great guy, but being funny and sweet isn't enough to form a life). there's the kind of compatibility that makes you friends, the kind that makes you lovers, and the kind that makes you a "soul mate," inasmuch as i believe in that concept. it's hard to describe what makes you compatible with someone, but just like justice stewart said about obscenity in jacobellis v. ohio, you know it when you see it. (yeah, i know i just quoted a supreme court case in a blog post. i'm a lawyer. what do you want from me?)

being a blogger has added a whole new dimension to this idea, too. i started writing here in january 2010, really on a whim. i don't exactly know which layer of the cocktail of emotions that was swirling through my system drove me to reach out to the internet to find an audience. but i did it, and my lord, i couldn't be more glad that i did. turns out that there are tons of people all over the country who are kindred spirits in one way or another. there have been reconnections to old friends. i've made new friends based on political agreements or similar tastes in music. i've found people whose life stories have closely (if not damn near identically) tracked mine. i've met and commiserated with the divorcing and divorced.

in other words, it's made me feel less alone in this journey to know that there are others out there. this is the good side of blogging/social media and all this connectedness we have in the twenty-first century. and when you're young-ish, contemplating a drastic life change and sure that you're the only person suffering like this, the real-life world can be a lonely damn place. but lo and behold, y'all are out there to be supportive, warm and friendly, in ways that in many cases people in my flesh-and-blood life could not or would not be.

and now that i've turned the corner into the new life, you've been there to root for me and the man. i love that more than i can say. as the back-to-school chapter ends, and i go back to my adult life already in progress, i'm thrilled to see what happens. and a large part of that happiness and confidence going forward happened because i've had some great support from some people who really, truly get it. i am not alone. i never was. i've had kindred spirits out there to rely on for advice and laughs, and all it took is finding some compatible people.

i'm a lucky woman to have friends like y'all. :)

far and wide

i had a brief text conversation with a good buddy of mine the other night, one of my very favorite people. we were chatting back and forth, and he said, [the place he lives, where i used to live too] is more challenging without you. boy, oh boy, do i know that feeling.

see, when you're moderately itinerant, as i've been in my post-teenage life, you pick up friends wherever you go. college friends? they're all over the country. law-school friends? they're somewhere i'm not. everywhere i've lived, i've gained myself amazing friends. and though quite a few of them are here, quite a few more are not. and that's not even including all of you fine folks out here in blog-land, scattered far and wide across the country.

i used to have a recurring dream when i was younger. it took place at my old high school, under the giant oak trees dripping with spanish moss. we were having a barbecue, and it was a perfect reunion of all my friends from every stage of life. i used to wake up from that dream vaguely depressed, because i know it's just not possible. but what if, for just one day, i could have everyone i love in one place? maybe the beach, maybe the mountains. food, drinks, nice weather? man.

life is challenging without friends. i have a nice clutch of them around, and that helps. but sometimes, the person you want more than anyone else is thousands of miles and a time zone or two away. that sucks. but that's life in the twenty-first century, i guess. i just wish i could have a drink with my nearest and dearest more than once a year. or longer. sigh...

bouquets

so what do you do when the whole world is celebrating, and all you can do is look through the window from the outside?

i didn't do a mothers day post last year, largely because i spent that day packing and giddily contemplating my escape from the old life. but now, this year? i definitely woke up feeling out of sorts for (at least at that moment) no reason. i was just a bit prickly, but i chalked that up to the fact that i truly hate life for about the first ten to fifteen minutes of every day. i don't do mornings. but then, quite out of nowhere, the man and i had a full-on feelings-hurt yelling argument about something thoroughly stupid. it was resolved. but i was then, and still am, rankled about it. i said, i feel like i did something without meaning to. don't worry about it. but it sticks with me when i cause harm for reasons unrelated to the incident in question. and the reason why i'm upset today?

women getting roses. friends cradling babies. heartfelt testaments to love and devotion from goofball football players on twitter. pink bats during the damn nationals game, for god's sake. and me? well. i have a grandmother to call in a minute, and a stepmom who loves me to death. it's not like i'm lacking for love and affection. but it's just not the same, and even though this is the fourth mothers day without her, it's no better. in fact, it's worse. i know what i don't have, and it stings. badly.

so i really do hope that everyone out there celebrating has a fabulous mothers day. sincerely. but as for me, i just kinda wish the whole thing would go away. it's just another reminder of what happened. there's nowhere to send flowers today, no brunch reservations to make. the only bouquet i could give would be scattered in the waters of the gulf of mexico.

happy mothers day.