landslide

i've been afraid of changing
'cause i built my life around you
but time makes you bolder
children get older
i'm getting older, too.
 - "landslide," fleetwood mac (or about six million other people)

i always thought i owed it to the past, to what's happened in my life, to try to maintain a positive relationship with my ex-husband. we grew up together. kind of, anyway. at any rate, we lived together, shared so much for so long. i felt it proper and right to make the effort to normalize relations. and honestly, the marriage didn't end because he sucked as a companion; he sucked as a partner, which is completely different. but i realized something yesterday: what i thought was good-faith progress towards detente, and possibly even enjoying one another's company again, was a lie, an elaborate ruse designed to manipulate me. i'm fond of using the line someday, you will ache like i ache when i'm angry, stung. he has apparently decided to use it to bring me to his level. he hurts. he's mad. i broke his dream. so because i did these things, i should suffer the way he did. it's only fair.

yeah, funny thing. i'm sorry for his pain, legitimately. i did not set out to injure him in saving myself from mediocrity and discomfort. but that's how this works.  you're happy, aren't you? his words stung. he informed me, in no uncertain terms, that if i won't take him back, he doesn't want to be friends. oh, and then he hands me three envelopes with goodbye notes. one for my dad. one for my stepmom.

one for the man.

yeah, that happened. so i brought the envelope to him, and he read the contents. as i poured out the hurt and the heartache, then demanded to read the parting shot my ex-husband threw at his (unbeknownst to him) replacement, the tears flowed. again. one. more. time. the man dealt with it. again. one. more. time. we talked, and as we did, it finally hit me, the knives that have been twisted into my side, the pain that's been wielded like so many bludgeons. i parroted his words to me in my talk with the man: you're happy, aren't you? the man responded, so what if you are?

it was the quintessential saul-on-the-road-to-damascus moment. just like that, the scales fell from my eyes, and i saw exactly what he'd done to me. i owe him NOTHING, not after he treated me like this. i did everything right, and my reward was twisted manipulation. so guess what? you get what you wished for. if we can't be lovers, and we MOST ASSUREDLY cannot, we can't be friends.

i was afraid of changing, of thoroughly abandoning that relationship, because my adulthood had been completely confected around that relationship. he was all i knew of grown-up life. but time has passed, and lo and behold, i got the nerve to let it go. i'm better than a cheap manipulation thrust into my most tender places. i've gotten older, aged a lifetime in the space of a night, and i've gotten bolder. so i'll take the machete to my past, because i owe it to my present. more vitally, i owe it to my future. i owe it to that gloriously loyal, reasonable man who's been left far too many times to rebuild what my wounded, rage-crazed ex husband has sought to destroy.

for you, my love, i let it all go. wash it all away. never, ever again. i promise.

my apology

[your soundtrack]

"it’s not the way that i intended this; i didn’t realize how much i would miss, but with every parting of our company i hate to think what it has done to me..."

you're never far from my mind, you know, no matter how good i am at keeping you at bay. (you weren't wrong about the arm's-length treatment; it's a very good coping mechanism.) i do not have a single regret about this course of action. it's the best thing for both of us, it's what i want, and it's what i need. but that doesn't mean that it's not sad, way sadder than i ever imagined, to see this day finally arrive. not that you'd know how i feel today if you look at me. i'm really skilled at moving forward when i have to, and this is one of those times. but there's a small frayed place in my soul, torn a little more each time, that belongs to you and will forever.
 

"when cruelty comes with blind indifference, my humanity becomes the best defense. but when you consider the alternative, i really didn't have that much to give..." 

that's the crux of all this where you and i are concerned, i think. i didn't try to be cruel or indifferent to your needs in pursuing mine; i am trying desperately to maintain things as well as i can, but in being true to my humanity, i've inadvertently destroyed yours. sigh. at the end of the day, as it turns out, you were better at being a part of this relationship than i was. i gave you as much as i had to give you. looks like it wasn't what even i thought it would be. i failed at the modest task which was my charge, and that was simply being enough of a selfless person to make room for your flaws. 

"a tragic victim of my circumstance; never give the devil a second chance. if you do, you know that you can never win - probably best to forget and begin again..."

so here we are. we lost. fitting that all of this comes to an end this week, so many years after we pledged ourselves to each other in the sorrow and confusion of the falling of the towers. we clung to each other in the wake of the madness, when everything permanent was stripped down to its skeletal remains and the harsh reality of the loss we faced collided with our adolescent immortality. funny how that's not really a great way to build a future, isn't it. i dedicated myself to you with passion, intensity and a total lack of thought. that's the real reason we lost. there's nothing to be gained from clinging to scraps. time to box up the memories, the laughs, the ups, the downs and put them in the back of the closet, to be looked through on the occasional rainy day with something approaching warm nostalgia. the bitter will slowly leach out of the sweet. at least, that's my hope. 

consider this a statement of, not conciliation, but sorrow. i didn't want this to be the way things ended. hell, up until recently, i didn't think there would be an end. but here we are. we've reached the conclusion. and for everything i've done, and god knows i've done a lot, i'm sorry. i let you down. there's no way to recover from it, either. all i can do is give you this.

"can’t you see that I am sorry? this has to be my apology, my apology, my apology."

the hard part...?

i should've been asleep an hour ago; i'm going to be hating life when that cab shows up in less than six hours. but here i sit, feeling drained, yet strangely serene. the hard work of tearing down the last twelve years has begun in earnest. y'know, all the stuff i've spent the life of this blog (and the eighteen months before that, to be honest) preparing myself to do. you'd think i'd be a wreck at this point.

nope. to be frank, there's a feeling much like how an overstuffed sandbag must feel when it finally springs a slow leak. the pressure is gently easing. the negativity is draining out of every pore. honestly, this is easier than i thought it would be. but then, how many times has this pendulum swung?

"oh, this is going to be simple."
"wait, no; it's going to be hell."
"oh, hold on - there's hope yet."
"there will be no hope, just blackness."

it's quite a bit bipolar, isn't it? but that seems to be the nature of the beast. and weirdly, it's ok. actually making the request was nowhere near as hard as i thought it would be. i mean, we'll see what happens with the aftermath. but in this moment, i can rest a little bit easy. and really, though there's a lot of work ahead of me, that's all i need.

fractured

in a lot of respects, i am not good at waiting. but one thing i can do well is extend generosity, even when i'm being tested. i do everything i can to make things that are difficult as easy as possible on everyone around me. but i've now entered a situation in which this state of affairs is becoming increasingly impossible. i am no longer able to make everything passably comfortable.

this is really driving the point home that not only is it 100% over, which the reality-based community already knew, but that the aftermath will be infinitely uglier and more harrowing than i had even anticipated. i can't deal with the anger, the hurt, the alternating displays of rage and paranoia that have become the hallmark of every single weekend now. it's simply too much to bear. so i won't do it anymore.

there's an artificial deadline at work here, stringing us all along for another few weeks of grating our souls. but beyond that, well, that's it. there are no more illusions of everything being okay, or at least steady enough to maintain cordial relations. things are broken beyond repair, hanging together on the broken shards of a past that was once so promising. any hope of reconstructing them into something workable is gone.

we're in the fourth quarter, but the game is still going on. but this time, after the final whistle blows, there will be no cordial handshake and back-slap between friendly adversaries. there will be nothing but the stony silence of the final ending. and while i'll carry the trophy off the field, there won't be any joy in this victory. all i'll have is the knowledge that, despite my best efforts to make it okay, i just couldn't heal the break.

bonus post: thank you!

still kinda wired, but i am in bed at home now. blog-land friends, y'all have been smashing throughout this torture session known as my bar-exam summer. now that it's over, i want to thank every single one of you for how supportive you've all been. it's been hugely reassuring thinking about my little band of buddies out here in the world rooting for me. (i did, with no exaggeration, think of y'all at one point during today's testing, and it gave me a boost when i was struggling.)

so thanks. it means a lot to me, more than i can express. :)

appomattox

sometimes, in the cold light of morning, you wake up and realize that you've lost. the troops are scattered, the fort is burning, and the cause is gone forever. this is one of those days. i got out of bed with a dull, thudding headache and the weight of the world on my chest. the headache made sense; that's what happens when you drink too much. but the weight? that eluded me for a minute... until i turned around and saw him lying there asleep.

and just like that, there it was. it hit me like a ten-ton truck that there was something so fake about this that it hurt to even see him there. it's not even his fault. he never lied to me, not once. he told me a long time ago what we were doing, and moreover what we weren't doing. i asked him once, "why am i not dateable?" i couldn't stand the ambiguity anymore; i needed him to tell me what was happening. there are obvious logistical reasons, but he's decided that it's just not worth the "risk" to take a chance on me as more than... i don't even know anymore.

and i still spent the entire weekend wanting his company, just to be near him, to the point where i invited him in last night just to sleep next to me. i just wanted him there. then i woke up and saw what i had done. no. unacceptable. i felt so freaking DESPERATE. it's not that he doesn't like me. it's not that we aren't good friends. it's that i keep trying to make something when there's clearly never going to be anything. and the simple reality of that finally sunk in, after all this time. i need to put some space between us for awhile, i think, to make the lesson sink in, but the fact remains that it's finally dawned on me that this is one more thing that i've lost lately. i don't know how much more i can take of this, but if i want to keep someone important to me around, this is a necessary loss.

i get it. finally. i surrender.

louisiana [TRUE STORY]

i depart from fiction today to write a long-overdue love note to the state that's been my home for the last three years. when i left home to go to law school in louisiana, i was really disillusioned with things as they were. i was in a rut, plain and simple. it was time for a change, time to shake things up. but i had no idea whatsoever what lay in store for me when i arrived in baton rouge on july 31, 2007 to start my career at LSU paul m. hebert law center.

leaving a major city to go back to a college town had its downsides. there's no doubt about it. but a funny thing happened to me as i grew into my new life: as much as i missed what i'd left, i came to love LSU, its people, and the state as a whole. LSU was an amazing place to spend three years. i had brilliant professors who broke me of my old way of looking at the world and rebuilt me into a sound legal mind. i am profoundly different intellectually than i was when i got here, and for that i will be forever grateful. LSU law center made me a mature thinker, and moreover made me a mature person. aside from the main business at hand, though, LSU brought me some incredible people. my nearest and dearest from PMH know who they are. i'm not sure i ever made this clear enough in our three years together, and if i didn't, that was my fault. but this is for y'all: thank you so, so much for all the love and support you showed me. i never would've made it without you. you held me up when i was sure i couldn't go on, you laughed with me, you listened to me. i only hope i can be as good a friend to each of you as you've been to me over the years. i love you all.

and it's weird; i never saw it coming, but it's true what they say about living in louisiana. it's unlike any place else in the country, and probably any place else on earth. i grew up in the deep south; 17 years as a gulf coast kid made me think i understood southern life. i had no idea what i was in for. louisiana is a jewel among places in our country, even with its flaws. there is no place more special. there's a way of life here that can't be replicated anywhere else, and it's something to be cherished. when you read about this oil spill and what it threatens, understand that it threatens something so valuable, so irreplaceable in american life that it should inspire everyone to demand solutions now. the people here have suffered long enough, as rep. melancon so eloquently stated this week.

there's a lot about this place that makes me angry. there's a lot that frustrates me. but for everything i don't like, there are five things i love about louisiana. the deep love i hold in my heart for new orleans alone could fill a book. if you ever need to know about south louisiana, others have said it way better than i could ever say. but know that once you've lived here, once you've laughed all night long on the streets of new orleans with your friends over rum drinks, once you've experienced boudin balls, crawfish boils and cochon de lait, once you've watched the sun find its home in the western sky as it becomes saturday night in tiger stadium, you just know. and you'll never be the same again.

i love my yankee, big-city mid-atlantic home. i am thrilled beyond belief to get back to what i knew before. but i am forever changed. i'm a law-school graduate now, and that's great. but i've also given a part of my heart and soul to the sportsman's paradise, the pelican state, the bayou, the big easy. louisiana is in my blood forever now, and i wouldn't have it any other way. the fleur-de-lis that hangs around my neck is only a small token of the way louisiana has changed me, got into me, and made me who i am today. i love this place for that. always will. so as i get ready to fly back to my old life, i leave a piece of myself behind. i sure never expected to fall for this place as i did. but for what you gave me, what you made me, and what you showed me, louisiana, i have only one thing to say:

thanks.

the en-sleek-ening: summing up [TRUE STORY]

well, thus ends the 30-day yoga boot camp. here are the stats:

classes purchased: 30
classes taken: 27 (missed one for a 101-degree fever, one for the end of law school, and today for the sunburn from hell)
pounds lost: 8-10, depending on the day. it's vacillated.

that's pretty much all i can give you for hard data. but man, oh man, do i feel so much better! i am supremely happy, i'm definitely toned up (especially in my arms), i can do a ten-breath shoulder stand without wobbling, and i'm a lot more flexible than i was at the start. i can put both my heels down when i'm in down dog, i can almost touch my chest to my legs in forward fold, and i feel like my old dancer-girl self again. this is one of the best things i've done for myself in a long, long time. i won't stick to the same strict regime i've followed this month, most likely, especially not with all the craziness to come in may, but i will keep taking classes, and i will work at least some sun salutations into my day as often as possible.

yoga. it works, bitches. :)