And back again

I have been very amiss in updating as of the past two weeks or so, and for that I am sorry, not because I imagine that you have been holding your breath in anticipation, but sorry because perhaps creating the narrative of my life, as this blog tries to do, might have helped clear the fog in which I feel I have been wandering during that time.

(Whew! Long pompous sentence completed. Time to stop writing like a 19th century politician -- not strange, though, bc have been reading about Lincoln in attempt to actually learn about
the people/places/things I say I like. End T.M.I. parenthetical.)

After returning from the journey back to the East coast (and partly back to myself), I dithered around Crimson City for a few days, running errands and trying to take some time to decompress after the trip. In that time, as you might have read, the Scientist and I broke up, much to my lustful heart's discontent. Eh. I'm over it.

Mathgirl drove me to the airport last Saturday so I could catch my plane to Our Nation's Capital, where I met up with the Ringleted One and her sweet southern friend for a weekend of memories and movements. Many fine moments took place in DC when I lived there, and many less fine moments as well. I'm not the person I used to be, nor are the friends who still live there. I like to think we've gotten better at being who we are, less offensive to ourselves and to others.

I got my crap out of the basement of One-Armed Maggie's dad, who has kindly held onto it from before I went to Korea. Five years! I can hardly believe it. I couldn't even remember what I'd put in that basement.

After DC, the Ringleted One, SSF and I went in the loaded-down (with my crap) Green Elephant up to the Ringleted One's house in P'kpsee (how it should be spelled), which will house my crap for a bit longer before I have it transported to my apartment in New York.

That is where I am now. New York, that is, not my apartment, which will hopefully reveal itself by the end of a few days. I am in Joiner's apartment, a one-bedroom in a prime Upper West Side location. It's much nicer than what I will get, but that's all right. I am not in New York to luxuriate or revel. I am here to pay off my stinking student loans. I do not expect to enjoy my job. I hope to be able to bear it for two years.

If I sound grim, it is because I feel a little grim. I reached a level of happiness during the trip across the country that I hadn't felt in 3 years. It was like a journey back to myself: the happy, open self who likes talking to old codgers and free spirits; the good-natured, kooky self who blasphemously laughs at interstate billboards reading "HELL IS REAL!" and "HEAVEN OR HELL: IT'S YOUR CHOICE"; the thirsty, curious self who wants to know more and more and more, whether it's about caves or the 16th president or horse racing.

But the fun is over for now, and I must turn my attention to the so-called adult world. It's funny. I've been getting a sense from others -- or maybe it's just me -- that it's now time for me to be an adult, with the trappings of the adult life. A decent-sized apartment with decent furniture, decent clothes for work, etc. No more dorm living, no more mooching off friends, no more moving by myself. Be a solid member of society rather than a free-wheeling, indecisive, tra-la-la-singing child-woman.

Well. I say to that part of myself: if that's all it takes to be an adult, that's a club I don't need to join. Someone I respect and admire paid me a great compliment recently. She wrote: "You seem to me someone of great integrity who doesn't settle for easy answers." I keep thinking of that, and hoping that it's true, and hoping that although I tend to make my path rougher than it could be, there is some value to thinking about every step and struggling with every decision with an eye to how it becomes part of the me in progress. So often the struggle seems pointless, especially now, when I have only just reached the point where my other lawyer friends were 4 or 5 or 6 or 7 years ago.

But then I remember. Maybe I don't possess the trappings of adulthood. The car, the house, the profession, the baby (and there are so many now!). But after a hard-won fight, I am pretty fond of me.

I was lost during law school. No, I didn't wander around the moors in my nightgown, aimlessly yelling for Heathcliff, but I did the mental and emotional equivalent of that: I told myself that it wasn't that bad, that some classes were interesting, that it might work out for me after all. Instead of facing up to the fact that law school was the wrong place for me, I got lost in the mire of my own rationalizations.

Well, I don't want to get stuck in that bog again, jumping from the "it's not so bad here; other firms are probably worse" tussock to the "well, finance is sort of interesting, I guess" lilypad. I know the firm is the wrong choice, that law is the wrong field, and that, to a certain extent, New York is the wrong city. I will make the best of the situation, not to worry. But I am here for a purpose: to pay off my loans. And then? Then I continue on toward another stop on that long road trip of life, which will undoubtedly still be rife with decision-making struggles. I think, though, that the voices in my head, the ones that argue and jeer and cheer (sadly, very rarely) and compose long disgustingly self-absorbed journal entries -- those voices are ones I can travel with, because they are, in the end, me.