always be my baby

"you'll always be a part of me, i'm part of you indefinitely..."

pop music and i are not on the best terms in my adult life. i find most of it, well, juvenile and ridiculous. but last night/this morning, i sat on a bar stool belting out the lyrics to mariah carey songs like it was my job. a large part of it was the wine i drank (oh, and we drank a LOT of wine, don't get it twisted), but it was also the security of being with someone who cares for me through and through, only judges me in jest and indulges my ridiculous side. hell, who participates willingly in my craziness.

so i sang my heart out, and in that moment, it was 1994 all over again. it's funny that the songs we used to dance to in eighth grade have a weird resonance in our thirty-year-old lives.

"and we'll linger on, time can't erase a feeling this strong." 


we didn't realize we were prophets. people who i couldn't live without as, like, total BFFs in middle school still form the fabric of my life today. and thank the gods for them. as i remember what it's like to be me, they're part of the answer to the question. these people will shepherd me through my renewal, as i awaken the old memories and slip back into the skin i wore so well back then. i treasure you more than i can ever say.

"ooh, don't you know you can't escape me; yeah, darlin', 'cause you'll always be my baby..."

cool blue reason

there's a time in the middle of every big life decision when the fog of fear, pain, confusion, etc. parts, and for one brief second, the cold light of rationality shines on you. the road becomes clear. consensus may even be reached in a bitter fight.

i woke up this morning in a very bad head state. things had escalated way out of control, and every answer i thought i'd reached had been replaced by a hundred questions. but for once, my instinct to overthink, overanalyze and generally obsess myself into a serious problem held itself in abeyance. i sat down on the couch, picked up a leisure book, and simply... started... thinking. it almost felt like my process during the bar exam, weirdly: i felt myself looking at the fact pattern of my life, issue-spotting, and applying the law to the facts. well, not the law, but more like the truth of my emotional life.

and strangely enough, i started to come to some realizations. things became clear again. for the first time in probably two years, i feel like i'm at a place emotionally where i can function normally. there's not this weird, clamped tension in my heart when his name comes up. there's no longer that desperate, pinched neediness to the interaction. instead, i look at him and i see, well, him, sitting across from me. i see a way to a peaceable future. maybe not the one we'd imagined, or even the one i'd imagined, but a good, pleasant co-existence.

there's hope. there's a chance. and by god, that's all i need.

drive

one benefit of this insane week has been that i've had a rental car at my disposal. as much as i love walking, metro trains and the urban lifestyle, there is precious little in my life that i enjoy more than getting behind the wheel of a car. i've had a license for 13 years; this is the second extended stretch of time over that entire period that's found me carless.

the first time, i was a freshman in undergrad, seventeen years old, and living in a teeny little mountain town in virginia. alone for the first time, i thought i had everything well in hand. but then the walls of the teeny little mountain town started to close in on me. my world, which had never really been that big (i mean, there's only so much you can see in small-city alabama in the mid- to late-1990s), suddenly shrank to about three miles square. and there was no. way. out. i was stuck. every little problem became massive, and with my adolescent coping skills being, well, stunted beyond all belief, i reacted about as well as you'd expect: i freaked out.

so here i sit again, on the other side of over a decade of life experience, carless. this time it's different; i'm old enough to attain several means of escape, and i have a tight web of close friends and family to support me should i freak out again. but tonight, i took to the roads of my city, cruising around with no real agenda. i let my mind wander far and wide (the results of this wandering, by the way, will be seen later on this week; i'm brewing up a nice writing project which will debut here in pieces in august), and it was simply heaven. i've always thought so well while driving. it's one of the few places in my life where i know i can think clearly and without interruption. i used to go on long drives with my cell turned off. there was a freedom in being completely unreachable.

behind the wheel, you are 100% free to do whatever you want. i realized driving back last night that, if i so desired, i could have gone anywhere i wanted. there was nothing holding me back. in my new life, i miss that feeling. it's one to be savored.

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. :)

whew

just a quick check-in from the road. on my way home now. it was a long two days. i feel... well, it's hard to say. not awful. i did what i needed to do. now, we wait. and now, for four glorious weeks, my time is mine.

bring it on. :)

halftime

oh boy. not much to say tonight; my hand hurts from writing. it went OK. i rocked a couple of questions, muddled my way through others. i didn't walk away feeling like i wanted to die, but i didn't feel like a million bucks, either. so tomorrow is the last day. the multistate bar examination. 200 multiple-choice questions. what multiple choice has to do with being a lawyer is beyond me, but whatever. it is what it is. so back to the books for a quick read-through one last time, making sure i can remember the tricks and keep my focus. i can do this. i will do this.
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and now, a little self-congratulation. for those who haven't seen this, i have written my very first guest post as a blogger. i'm kinda proud. check it out for yourself at secret society of list addicts. i'm even capitalized for once. :)

game face

"this is it. don't get scared now." - macaulay culkin as kevin mcallister, home alone

we're now less than 12 hours from the bar exam. one more brief refresher read-through, then it's to bed with this little girl. of course, i had to have chosen the hotel full of not just harley riders, but high-school cheerleaders. it's a touch noisy. but i mean, would i really have slept the sleep of the just in any hotel? this is serious nerves time.

or is it? to be honest, i am not that freaked. oh, don't get me wrong; i am nervous. but it's mostly about tactics, gamesmanship, etc. i know i know this stuff. i went through three years of law school. i also went through two months of concentrated preparation. seriously, when i wasn't in someone else's bed, i was at the kitchen table, poring over essays and outlines. it's been a very binary summer in that regard. the knowledge is in my head. it's just a manner of getting it to flow from my brain, through my pen and into those blue books. (no, i'm not typing the exam; though i might look like a prolific typist, i am slow and inaccurate. it's longhand all the way.)

so it's time to get psyched. head down, eyes up. like knights of old, let's fight to hold the glory of the purple and gold. let's carry through. let's die or do. to win the game for dear old... well, for me. for my future. for everything i've always wanted. this is the last test, the final boss. time to slay the dragon...

out to stud

i sat on the edge of his bed and chatted blithely with him until he was awake enough to drive me home. i would've walked, but it's too damn hot, and besides, he offered. usually, these moments are shot through with some form of wanting, hoping, wishing he'd see more to me than he does. not this time. i just took him for what he is for once in my life: the friend who knows my ins and outs, who respects me and cares for me the best way he knows how.

racing animals have short careers. elite racehorses are put out to stud shortly after their fourth birthdays. why? because it's tiring beyond belief chasing a nearly unattainable goal. some of these poor animals run themselves into their graves with exhaustion. others retire peacefully. knowing when to say when is the difference between life and death. so i throw up my hands. i'm no longer willing to exhaust myself this way. i've made this declaration before, and i swore i meant it those times, too.

but i sit here tired, pushed to the brink from stresses internal and external. i am at my weakest right now. these are the times when my resolution fails, when i get sad and lonely, when i seek comfort and start imagining a future that will never be as perfect as my mind can create it. even in this weakened state, i think about him and, finally, don't feel that old pinch around my heart. i just don't want to go there. not now. and hopefully that means not ever.

i care so much about him. but he's not for me. i know it intellectually. i think, at LONG last, that's starting to seep into my emotions. i think i've managed to convince my heart to listen to my head. not a moment too soon. i won't chase him anymore. the race is over.

sickness and health

i am one uncomfortable blog proprietor today. let's just say that between the bar exam drama and the life drama, i ignored a little problem until it became a full-blown disaster, and i spent all. damn. morning. hanging out in the urgent care clinic. nice. so after much antibiotic and painkillers, i am now in bed, about to start the sleep i missed out on last night.

haha. last night. see, here i thought i was going to prove to myself that i could be a big girl and stay in. yeah, that didn't happen. i ended up at a friend's place, watching TV until all hours of the night. i felt a little under the weather, but nothing i couldn't handle. we watched "the hangover" again, just some mindless entertainment, and before you know it, oh-ho, it's 3:00 AM and the trains aren't running anymore. oh, damn; he's been drinking, so he can't drive me home. looks like i'm staying out here tonight.

i don't think i need to tell you what happened next. i mean, nothing earth-shattering; he's not my sexual crack cocaine boy (from whom i am abstaining at the moment - another time), so it's not the kind of experience that needs to be recounted in great detail. but it was a nice diversion from the stress of the exam. i dozed off in his bed around 5:00 AM... only to awaken at 10:45 AM in some of the most intense pain it's ever been my misfortune to experience. so i did what every red-blooded american girl would do in this context: hey, friend i just slept with? lend me your car so i can drive to the doctor. it's best to do this when the boy is sleeping, so his defenses are down.

so that was my day: hours in the doctor's office, cursing my own stupidity and trying not to curl up into a little ball and throw a temper fit out of pain. lovely. but it's funny; when i returned the car, he was still asleep. i walked up to his room and woke him, mostly to tell him about my misadventures, and he said, "you shouldn't take the train home. i'll drive you." now that's what friends are for.

in sickness and in health. hmm. maybe that's not just a throwaway line from the marriage vows the churches lay on us. maybe it's more like the governing rule of friendship: stick together, sickness or health, no matter what. that's a nice thought, and he's a nice guy. i'll have to remember that...

one is the loneliest number

i claim to be tough. in a lot of ways, i am. i've been through a lot and i'm still standing. but if you scratch me deeply enough, you'll get to my core, and you don't have to go as deeply as i wish you did to find it. long story short, i am not as strong as i think i am, or even as strong as i purport to be. this is never more obvious than on friday evenings.

as it gets dark out and the weekend begins, i start to get really edgy if i don't have somewhere to be, somewhere to go. i haven't quite let go of that mentality that weekend nights are for youthful socializing, and if you're not out doing something, you're missing out. now that it's just me, and i don't have someone at the house who's always there to talk to or go out with, this feeling's gotten 100 times worse. i know i just need to soldier through it, bite the bullet, snuggle up with some netflix streaming stuff and realize that life doesn't end because you spent a night in. but that doesn't change this feeling of, "oh, my god, i am alone. there's no one here to talk to and i am alone. ALONE." the walls close in.

i have friends. good ones. i know this. but friday night alone makes me feel like the most unloved person on the planet. it's totally irrational, but that's the way it is. maybe that's why i backslide, looking for companionship in all the wrong places. it'll get better soon, i know it will; i'll grow used to my new lifestyle. i haven't spent a weekend alone in a long, long, long, LONG time. time will make this better.

right?

monteleone (a flight of fancy)

oh, you spin me right round, baby, but not like a record. you spin me like the carousel bar, that bastion of pure NOLA weirdness in the "quiet" part of the french quarter. the captain and coke only puts a fine point on the dizzy good vibe of this cool november evening, generated largely from that slow, measured rotation, experienced for hours on end. you almost forget that you're turning, but you are. the kindly old eccentric on your right side insists on giving us his blessing for our evening's activities, another classic NOLA moment. in new orleans, your secrets are never just your own. but we sit and laugh, spinning in more ways than one.

you flatter my ego; i flatter you back. you lose that layer of cool, that polish you always carry, and give in to the absurdity. no one knows us here; we're just two more strangers. it feels like something out of a tom waits song. you expect the bartender to have a tattooed tear for every year he's away, except that this isn't ninth and hennepin. but the patrons do have that sort of weathered patois in their voices, that slightly less than above-board sensibility that every good adventure bar should have. this is the city that care forgot, after all.

maybe that's why you feel so free. well, that and your johnnie walker black. but you wear it so, so well. you get looser and looser with each rotation around the room. you laugh easier, you indulge that battered old codger and his tales of gridiron glory from far longer ago than anyone in the room would have the rudeness to admit. you take to ordering my drinks for me, your repressed southern gentleman instincts flowing forth as easily as the bourbon flows into my glass. and you touch me so openly, in ways you never would if this night weren't so singularly constructed. you lock eyes with me, stroke my cheek with the side of your hand and proclaim, "anything for you." we'll debate the truth of that line later; it's irrelevant right now. this night sparkles with the surreality of the surroundings. when you take me out of this reverie and back into the harsher, less well-crafted narrative of the outside world, you won't wait for the hotel room to show me what you're after. you'll trace the back of my neck with your finger as we wait for the elevator, and as we ride up, up, up, you'll start right there what you intend to finish behind the locked door down the hall. you've been filled with the spirit of the night, that bar, that sepia-toned conception of what every louisiana evening should be: a hazy, liquor-soaked dream, where the lines of the real world curve where they'd ordinarily be straight.

tonight, you surrender to the fantasy. and it's as close as you'll ever come to surrendering to yourself.
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this piece is based on a real bar in the hotel monteleone on royal street in new orleans. i've explained my love for NOLA a few times before. this is my stab at trying to bottle the magic, the je ne sais quoi that resonates in the air down there. ain't no doubt, cher bebe.

behind blue eyes

"but my dreams, they aren't as empty as my conscience seems to be... my love is vengeance; it's never free."

i am, outwardly, a friendly, warm and genial person. if you win my loyalty, i will fight and die for you. i will often subsume my needs if i think your needs are greater. i love those whom i love fiercely, protectively, passionately. i give, give, give, give, give. all. the. time. if you've earned my trust and look into my blue eyes, you'll see true-blue dedication and a willingness to do whatever it takes to make you happy.

but lately, that fierceness, that loyalty, comes with a certain edge. there are some places in my life where, suddenly, i don't feel like giving as much as i used to. that's the main reason i'm on my own right now. but it's also starting to seep into my other recreations. we've talked a bit more this summer than i know he would care to about things between us. i mean, it's not like they've been really substantive conversations; that's not how he rolls. but i've managed to squeeze some things out.

we make strange pillow talk when we're together. sometimes, when we're regaining our composure, we talk about nothing in particular. other times, we manage to get into these weird emotional places where it's probably not a good idea to go when you're lying naked in someone's arms. but that's where we went the other night, regardless of the intelligence of it. he was flush with the ego boost of producing multiple orgasms out of me, and he was crowing about what he knows about me physically, what he can do with me. so i pushed him, asking, "all right, big man; what do you know about me emotionally?" stupid question; i pushed too far. i finally heard precisely how i come off when i think i'm being passionate: "when you care about someone, you'll do almost anything to ingratiate yourself to that person."

ingratiate. what a word. conjures up servitude, subjugation, and generally lowering yourself to elevate someone else. how hard. how blunt. here i thought i was being a good friend. apparently, i just look pathetic. i felt something clench when that word came out of his mouth. i let it go at the time (in fact, i responded to this by going down on him), but the more i think about it, the angrier it makes me. to be told once that my loyalty is one of the things that's most valued about me, and then to be told that the very same loyalty makes me look like a charity case? i'm undone.

i think i need a new strategy. i think, as part of the reinvention process, i need to take a good, hard look at the way i love. i can't see myself giving up loyalty; it's something i value in others, so i see no need to totally dispatch that quality in myself. but what i am going to do, at least with him, is change the way that loyalty is expressed. there's going to be a sharpness to the way i love him. there's not going to be any more ingratiation. that girl is dead, as far as i'm concerned. what there will be is a new reality.

my sex is submission. but my love is vengeance. and it will never be free again.

a note from management

i love my readers. y'all are awesome. i started blogging because i like to write, but i don't have the time anymore to sit down and devote hours to hitting the keyboard and developing larger pieces. i also like the feedback i get with these exercises.

so it's with y'all in mind that i wanted to tell everyone about a change in... tone, i guess it'd be. with all the changes in my life of late, i'm finding my writing interests skewing towards territory that's decidedly more adult than it was when i started. i'm not going to become a sex blogger; there are people in this world [case in point] who do that way better than i ever could. but i am going to explore some things that are part of my new reality. just a heads-up to those of you who might be more sensitive to that sort of thing. i don't want to startle anyone.

your not-so-good girl may very well be going bad. heads up.

liminal

liminal. adjective. 1) pertaining to a threshold or entrance; 2) relating to a beginning or the first stage of a process.

being the chronic examiner of my past that i am, i've spent a huge amount of time thinking about the moments in my life that have tripped switches, triggered changes and started me on various paths. more often than not, these examinations have started in the midst of crises or problems, usually focused on, "my god, how did i get here?" kinds of inquiries. really fun, let me tell you.

but not this time. not even close. this time, my liminal moment is... well, intriguing. interesting. my curiosity is piqued beyond belief. such a small thing - words exchanged on a sticky summer night - but oh, so fraught with options. the best kind of options at that: the kind without expectations, rules, etc. all i need to do, all i feel compelled to do, is to ride the wave and watch this unfold.

so. many. possibilities. i can't wait to see what happens next. the threshold's crossed. what's on the other side?

the river

"is a dream a lie if it don't come true, or is it something worse?"

i'm winding down a fabulous weekend escaping stress by studying constitutional law and watching a bruce springsteen concert film. i have a long and complicated history with the music of bruce springsteen, and during this particular tour, they did an alternate arrangement of the river, one of my favorite songs in the entire catalogue. this line in particular has sneaked up to blindside me from time to time over the last couple of years, as i face a path littered with the shards of broken dreams and a planned future dismantled.

but when i think about it, i'm not sure it's either, really. i mean, i guess i was telling lies when i said i'd never leave, that i'd be there forever. but how was i to know that? somewhere in the tragedy, buried under the piles of regret and the things you swore would never be your reality, is the tiny silver glint of something, well, better. it's hope. it's possibility. it's rebirth. and it's the knowledge that there are just no guarantees. just do the best you can. walk forward. make amends.

you can't be responsible for another person's happiness. all you can do is tend to your own needs and be as kind as you can. it's not a lie if you dream something that can't come to pass. it's just another day.

give and take

[it's disclaimer time again. this one's gonna get dark, it's gonna get VERY adult. i have some depths-plumbing to do. so for the benefit of those who either don't like the dark stuff or just don't want that much information, i'm putting this entry behind a jump. proceed if you want to; skip if you don't.]

fire and rain

this is a bittersweet day for me. this would've been my mom's 58th birthday. i've written about her before, what happened, how she got sick and how she went. but i'm not really interested in focusing on the end of things. it sucks that she was so plagued with illnesses mental and physical over her life. but there was a lot of good in that woman, and i miss her on days like this.

she was a force of nature when she had her wits about you. so damn brilliant. no one could compete with her brain. (i like to think i take after her in that.) when i graduated from law school in may, my dad and i had about five minutes to ourselves in the midst of familial insanity, and he said to me, "your mom would've been so damn proud of you." that was probably the most meaningful thing i was told during all of that. she wanted to go to law school, but it never happened. she taught kindergarten and worked as a legal secretary instead. she'd have been great at it.

when she left us, i played the live version of "fire and rain" by james taylor from his album one man band on a non-stop loop for about a week. i thought i'd have more time. don't we all. but i've since made peace with what's happened. she's free. that's what matters. i have my memories of her, and i have the knowledge that i've done right by her legacy. i've grown into what she wanted for me. that's enough for me.

top of the world, mom.

torn up

whew, what a freaking dog of a day. i have been running, running, running. and in 3" heels, nonetheless. nine hours of bar review, a networking event and househunting, all on foot. i looked good doing it, if i do say so myself; i was dressed for this networking thing without time to change at all, so i had to be pulled together.

i love these shoes: green, round-toed T-strap heels. fun while still professional; just edgy enough to be interesting. but i sit here writing to you tonight in some pretty serious discomfort. i must've walked 2 miles today, and my feet are paying the price. but you know something? i looked the part. i was dressed to professionally kill and it helped my acumen in class. i was able to navigate the event alone with a smile, chatting up lawyers from the area with no real agenda other than to get noticed. i may have (if there's a just and loving deity in this world) even found myself a really ideal living situation.

and i smiled and i sold it, even though the pain was exquisite. it's a lesson, i guess - struggle, grace under fire, etc. also, maybe bring some better commuting shoes. but even though my feet are just torn up right now, my heart is surprisingly light. i lived. there's something to that.

[smile]

my life these days, by necessity, is quite small. i study, and i take an occasional break from the crushing weight of the biggest test i'll take in my life. but every so often there are small moments of simple transcendence that sweep in and remind me that everything's going to be okay. i got one of those today.

it's been a pretty rotten day, frankly. i woke up early feeling rotten after being up late feeling stressed. i dozed, i took a phone call, then i hit the books. i ran an errand that did not end well, and then, nerves shot beyond all recognition, i set out for dinner with my stepmom. i settled down over dinner, but i was still feeling really frayed and weary.

then i took a cab home. (my stepmom didn't want me to walk from the train alone. sweet, eh?) and the cab driver and i had a fabulous, warm and hilarious conversation about life in the metro DC area. he dropped me off, and i am now ready to spend another hour or so working. nothing like a little recharge like that to get me out of my head and remind me what matters.
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hey. how 'bout this - it's my 100th post. i'd like to take this time to thank y'all out there in blog-land. i've had a fabulous time getting to know my readers, discovering other people's work and generally taking advantage of this side of the internet. here's to many, many more. stick with me; it'll be fun. :)

the boss

didn't i just write about losing a piece of the yankee firmament? damn.

the boss is dead. after nearly 40 years, mr. steinbrenner is gone. if mr. sheppard's passing messed with my head, this knocks my world for a loop. i was born 8 years after CBS sold the team. i remember the insane years of hiring and firing, tampa-trust free agency foolishness, and the suspension for tailing dave winfield. the man was the original big spender.

every yankee fan had a complex relationship with the man. i hated how he treated yogi berra. i hated the mercurial nature of the 80s and early 90s. but i loved the drive. i loved the acumen. i love how he - and don't argue with me on this - resurrected the yankee mystique of the earlier dynasties and rebuilt the team into the billion-dollar juggernaut of class, polish and high standards that it is today. without mr. steinbrenner, god knows what would've happened to us.

so we say goodbye to our multi-faceted benefactor. god speed, mr. steinbrenner. may your sons take what you built and make it even better. may we never forget your dedication to the yankee brand. you join the pantheon of lost yankee legends today. we're better for having had you.