this is the story of a girl

today i went to a meeting in the parish hall of my old grade school. the meeting was a training for substitute teaching at that very school, which is strange and interesting and circular in its own way. but what struck me most about tonight, when i walked into that room, is how utterly unchanged it looked - down to the same old tiles, the same auditorium stage, the same round tables with the faces scratched from age and use. i sat down at one of the tables (thankfully, they had enough common sense to get new chairs after ten years) and could almost see myself as a shy ten-year-old, sitting across the table staring at what i would become.

and i stared across that room and i saw as i had in all its different incarnations: dark and strobelighted for our seventh and eighth grade dances; stark and full of white robed kids before our confirmation and graduation ceremonies; loud and crowded as it always was during our lunch hour; hushed and spotlit for every annual talent show. i grew up in that room and i never even noticed until i came back, unwittingly, ten years later.

at the end of the training i ducked into the bathroom to see if it, too, had remained the same. sure enough, it was as though i had stepped into 2001 - the same off-white tiles, the same off-white stalls, the same single sink and the same blue ribbom wallpaper border. i stood in front of the mirror and brushed the hair out of my face and realized that although i am now twenty-three and so different than i how used to be, there i was: standing in the same place and doing the exact same thing as my eighth-grade self. there were the same eyes peering out at me; they hadn't changed a bit (and you know what they say about the eyes). so there i was, completely different and yet still, somehow, the same. and in that moment i realized the biggest difference between me, today, and the girl who looked in that mirror all those years ago: as hard as she tried, she could never, ever like what she saw. the girl looking in the mirror today sees it all for what it is and what it has been (beauty and flaws alike) - but unlike the girl from long ago, this one wouldn't change a thing.

beautiful and crystalline and epic

notre dame is pulling off at exit 77 with your heart in your throat. notre dame is the first glimpse of the golden dome calling me back home. notre dame is the way any ordinary landmark is extraordinary through the lens of memory.

notre dame is sprinting across a driveway and tackling and hugging. notre dame is best friends for life. notre dame is walking to the bookstore and laughing at old jokes. notre dame is buying unnecessary school merchandise just because.

notre dame is old friends and new friends. notre dame is sharing a mirror and appliance cords getting tangled. notre dame is dancing around the house to an ipod while getting ready. notre dame is taxi cabs and three dollar fare. notre dame is jumping around to 80s songs and screaming all the words and swaying in a circle. notre dame is dancing until 3am and staying up talking until 4.

notre dame is waiting out two stadium evacuations on the concrete concourse floor, sitting on a poncho with two of my best friends. notre dame is walking back into that stadium and looking around and seeing it mostly full after two hours of lightning and rain. notre dame is most of those people still coming back after the second evacuation. notre dame is screaming my throat sore even when there's two minutes left and not even a chance of a win.

notre dame is standing in the back of the crowded basilica. notre dame is kneeling on the floor even though it hurts a little. notre dame is looking up at the vaulted ceilings and feeling like the luckiest person in the world. notre dame is tearing up when the folk choir sings an a capella alleluia. notre dame is getting choked up and almost sobbing at the sound of the alma mater. notre dame is a friend's hand on my shoulder saying it's okay.

notre dame is lighting a candle at the grotto and praying thank you, thank you, thank you. notre dame is the way there's a still a hush even though the place is crowded with tourists. notre dame is the way that when i'm there, it feels like no time has passed at all. notre dame is our lady of the lake watching over us always. notre dame is family. notre dame is love.

it was the end of a decade but the start of an age

today i was looking through old pictures, primarily those from the end of our 2008 fall break trip in barcelona, spain. we had just arrived from traveling for five days in cold norway and germany, and it was 75 degrees and sunny in spain. in almost all of these pictures, we're smiling; not just scheduled smiles for the camera, but real, open-mouthed grins, traces of laughter from something just outside the frame. those three days in barcelona were some of the happiest and carefree days of my life. the weather was warm and we dipped our feet into the mediterranean and we ate delicious food and sat in the sun, drinking sangria and enjoying life.

on our last night we wandered down to port vell, and sat on the edge of the dock with wine and cheese and i felt as though my heart could have soared. i was in a beautiful place with people that i loved and i was so happy, truly happy, and some of the things that had weighed heavily on my heart for the past few months lifted for a while. i have never been so engrossed in a moment in time as that last night on the pier, sipping wine from a plastic cup and laughing, head tipped back.

i feel like ever since i've graduated i've been wallowing in a pit of nostalgia and recently i've been trying to crawl out. that feeling of happiness i felt on the barcelona pier, walking through london streets, licking a cone of gelato in rome, giggling with friends in my dorm room, walking across south quad looking at the dome and the sunset sky -- i want to feel that way about my life now. i want to love the past but to a degree, let go, so that i can live in my present and be as fully happy as i was then.

in eat, pray, love the author introduces a concept where your entire sense of self can be defined in a single word. my word is traveler. i have always been a traveler. i boarded my first plane when i was less than six months old and ever since then i've always been itching to go places, see new things, visit corners of the world where i've never been. i left home after graduating high school and in a way i've been traveling ever since. D.C. might not be my favorite adventure but it's definitely a huge part of the overall journey, and for that i am grateful. so i'll hang on. and i'll keep traveling. and i will be happy.

for the burning in our veins

have just come to the realization that i am in the midst of the biggest writer's block ever. i look back on some things i've written before and i wonder to myself, why on EARTH am i not writing? i do try sometimes, but for some reason i just seem to repeat the same things over and over, and i can't make anything come out the way i want it to.

but for the first time in my life, i have an idea. a real book idea that i think could really get somewhere. i actually have some semblance of a planned-out plot. i always said i wanted to write poetry but for the first time in my life i have an idea for something longer than a few pages, and it's a feeling like no other.

all i have left to do is write.

i don't know when this block will go away, when i'll be able to let the prose pour out of my fingertips like it used to, in my elementary school story notebooks. but i am armed with an idea and a keyboard, and when the time comes--whether it be two days or two years from now--i will be ready. and i will write.

even though the moment passed me by

i'll never forget that morning; the lump in my throat, the wide-eyed disbelief, the feeling of hanging on the edge of a precipice.

to this day, when i see pictures i feel like i could climb inside and be exactly where i was that day. the way the ground felt under my feet, the breeze that ruffled my hair and the sun that made us bake inside our shapeless black robes. the way i felt when i walked out of the tunnel into the bright light of the stadium: i looked up at the blue sky and at the people all around me and for the first time, i felt truly proud. i was proud of myself and everyone else that day, because we had made it through those four years and had something to show for it. we had learned. and that's what college is, really: learning in every aspect of the word.

at the very end, i wandered around the campus grounds with full eyes and a heavy heart. i said goodbye to every person, every place, all the while feeling like it was all a dream. leaving was inevitable, but leaving was unthinkable. how could it be that so much of my life whizzed by in this place: me at eighteen, thrust into a brave new world; at nineteen, living and loving; at twenty, making mistakes and facing consequences; at twenty-one, independent and free and incandescently happy. i retraced the spots where i had my first kiss, fought bitter fights, rolled around in the snow, rode my bike in the sunshine, splashed in the fountain, yelled my throat sore, whispered at night, turned pages, typed furiously, scribbled poetry, broke my heart, broke my bones, danced 'till i was out of breath. it's hard to fit four years into a paragraph, or an hour's time, but on that last day it was like i relived it all.

throughout my four years at notre dame i was exposed to countless opinions and sentiments about the place, both positive and negative. and for me, the one thing that rang true was this: from the outside, you can't understand it, and from the inside, you can't explain it. the university of notre dame is a part of my life that i loved then, cherish now, and probably romanticize - but those four years changed me. they taught me who i was, who i wanted to be, and what things in life were worth fighting for. they taught me to hold on to my faith and make it an ever-fixed part of my life. they taught me that no one is perfect, and no ever will be, and that all we should do is try to be our very best. they taught me that the people that matter are the ones who will stay.

they taught me that even if we have to let go, our time was was real. it happened. we will carry it with us for the rest of our lives, and no one can take it away from us.

when the rain starts to fall

on a more uplifting note - this one's for you, my love.

I'll be there, my darling, through thick and through thin

When your mind's in a mess and your head's in a spin

When your plane's been delayed, and you've missed the last train.

When life is just threatening to drive you insane

When your thrilling whodunit has lost its last page

When somebody tells you, you're looking your age

When your coffee's too cool, and your wine is too warm

When the forecast said, “Fine,” but you're out in a storm

When your quick break hotel, turns into a slum

And your holiday photos show only your thumb

When you park for five minutes in a resident's bay


And return to discover you've been towed away

When the jeans that you bought in hope or in haste

Just stick on your hips and don't reach round your waist

When the food you most like brings you out in red rashes

When as soon as you boot up the bloody thing crashes

So my darling, my sweetheart, my dear...

When you break a rule, when you act the fool

When you've got the flu, when you're in a stew

When you're last in the queue, don't feel blue

'cause I'm telling you, I'll be there.

-- Louise Cuddon, I'll Be There For You

we spent time in swings empty

day five - your ex-boyfriend/girlfriend.

i was listening to third eye blind the other day and when the lead singer wailed out how's it going to be when you don't know me anymore? i couldn't help but think of you.

there are a million emotions i could name that, in some way in the past, related to you. guilt. naivete. hurt. anger. inadequacy. frustration. loneliness. and maybe, in fleeting moments - happiness, something close to love.

but what i never felt with you was calm. safety. the feeling that i could wrap myself up in you as if you were a sweater, and close my eyes and sleep forever. our relationship was fueled by angst, by uncertainty, by the things left unspoken that haunted me for those years we were together.

i still don't quite know what to make of you. i don't think i will ever understand you, the way you could break a chair over a lost football game but couldn't shed one tear the day before i went across the ocean for four months. somewhere deep inside there's a real you, a real person with real feelings - but it's covered up with your brash attitude and braying laugh and a thick armor that deflects any difficult question or subject. i don't know what, or who, made you that way, but i know that i couldn't be happy with someone who locks real emotion deep inside themselves, never to see the light of day.

i guess i found out what it's like to not know you anymore - but i don't think i ever really knew you, not at all.

i'm sorry i hurt you. this much is true. no matter how much i needed to get out of our relationship, you still didn't deserve for me to neglect you and distance myself and yes, kiss another boy, all the while assuring you that it would be okay. no one deserves that, not even you. but the truth is, i didn't know anything other than you, and i was afraid of the void you'd leave if i let you go. i was a coward, but i was also young. i look back at myself then and it's so clear how lost and alone i was back then - i just didn't fully know it.

even that day i said goodbye you i didn't truly think i was going to do it. deep down, though, we both knew it was happening. it was too late for us: we could never have fixed it. i don't think we were meant to fix it. and i knew that i had to let you go not only because you deserved better, but also because i deserved better.

i have a new life now and i am happy in ways i've previously never known how to be. the only thing i regret is that the way we went out completely killed any chance at friendship, because i think in another world we really could have been friends. now all i can do is hope that you're happy too.

in the end, our story is over. i hope that when you think of me, you don't hate me. in fact, i hope you don't think of me at all. i hope you live out a full live. i hope that whatever it is that makes you lock your emotions away will disappear.

(then i whisper these wishes to the wind, and let them go.)

hanging on the edge of nothing

continuing this series...

day five - your dreams.

i just want to be a writer, okay?

it's not my fault that i have only one talent in life, and that talent decides to come and go as it pleases. it may not even be that great, what do i know? all i know is that the one thing i want to do with my life (write) is the most difficult thing to achieve as a "real" job. i'm not competitive enough for an actual writing job and my grades weren't good enough so an MFA is probably out of the question, even if i decided i wanted to jump back into school again.

and the worst part is, i don't even know what i want to write - poetry? maybe, but the only poetry i can manage to write these days are either a) dripping with treacly nostalgia or b) about doomed love/my past that i've romanticized to sound more glamorous than it actually was! i tried to write short stories but that never worked out. i even tried to start writing a book and well, that just sucked. the only thing that i'm really that good at is writing non-fiction, writing about myself and my life experiences in overly romantic terms. but could i really write a memoir? my life isn't even that exciting!

i'm having a minor life crisis here.

i don't want to sit in an office and write about things i barely care about when there's real truth and beauty in the world waiting to be written about! i don't want to stay inside all day when i'd be happier just sitting in a field writing about a freaking blade of grass! i don't want to force myself to find a job that i know i will never love because i am not a career girl, i'm a writer, probably not the best writer, but a writer nonetheless. and i want to do what i love, is that too much to ask for?

i know so many people here in DC who are all about careers, careers, careers. if you don't have a career path or a five-year-plan or any vision for your future then you are not a feminist, you do not have self-worth, and a whole bunch of other nonsense that, on paper, should apply to me.

i don't care about a career, or a five-year-plan, or losing my freaking independence as a woman if i don't have a job. i am a writer and that means that my primary purpose in life is to feel, and then put those feelings into words. i want to love life, and i want to feel the good and the bad as much as i can, and i want to enjoy friends and enjoy family and i want passion and i want joy and i want anger; i want to "suck the marrow of life," damn it!

i am so frustrated with trying to find a job that i know i won't enjoy, when all i want to do is write and write and write until i have enough to make some sort of compilation and get someone, anyone to read it and get someone, anyone to say it's good enough.

that's it. and yet, it seems so impossible.

i will never forget those books and poems and essays that i've read that have made me laugh out loud, cry, think, write, dance, call my friends and say "you just have to read this book/poem/essay/whatever it is." i will never forget the way other people's words have made me feel, the moment i realize that this is important, that it's speaking to me in ways i never knew were possible.

i just want to give that feeling to someone else. is that too much to ask for?

it's the way we feel that this is real

seriously dudes, i feel like my life undergoes a spring cleaning every year. maybe it's because every time lent rolls around i take a look at myself and think, "hey, you can always be better!" and then i actually go and do something about it... but this fledgling spring in particular has been great because i can actually feel myself getting better, and i feel myself becoming happier.

i always wonder whether i secretly have SAD (seasonal affective disorder, for those non-midwesterners out there), because winter seriously gets me down in the dumps. i cannot tell you how many times i have cried on the phone to my mom, to jeff, about how much i hate DC and the weather and the get-ahead mentality and all that good stuff. and while i still feel similarly about the get-ahead mentality (among other DC work/people-related things), now that the sun is out and it's warmer and the cherry blossoms are in bloom, i find myself walking a little slower, smiling a little more, and realizing that i don't hate it here. maybe it's not what i would have dreamed for myself - i have always wanted something a little more exotic, exciting - but it's all right. and i'm actually happy. and life is good.

the temperature outside is above fifty degrees. the sky is brilliantly blue. i'm wearing a skirt without leggings. i've been going to mass almost every day. i've been eating healthier and i am in much better shape than i've been in a while. my leg hasn't been in pain or swollen for months. i'm about to buy a plastic adirondack chair for balcony. my family is coming to visit. molly's baby shower is this weekend. jeff and i are coming up on two years. summer is just around the corner. spring is a beautiful time that reminds me how much i love life, and that anywhere can be home if i keep the things and people i love close to my heart.

these times are hard and they're making us crazy

this morning was a fight to get up

those words still ringing in my head

never felt like such a fool in front of anyone

i guess that's what you do when you love someone

i was in nashville, you were driving home

i wish I'd been in the passenger seat

i just needed you to know that i'm coming undone

that's what you do when you love someone

if i fall, i'll try a little harder and get back up

please stay by me, love

that's what you do when you love someone

that's what you do when you love someone

just give me time, if you need more

there's no way to ever really know

how to protect yourself or predict the outcome

but you'll do anything when you love someone

you'll do anything when you love someone

if i fall, i'll try a little harder and get back up

please stay by me, love

that's what you do when you love someone

that's what you do when you love someone

i just hung up the phone

you've got a way of changing my day

you proved me wrong

when i was convinced i was alone

yeah, that's what you do when you love someone

if i fall, i'll try a little harder and get back up

please stay by me, love

that's what you do when you love someone

that's what you do when you love someone

-- When You Love Someone, Bethany Dillon

the morning will come

every so often i come across what i like to call a "punch in the gut" poem. in my facebook profile i quote kafka:

I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound and stab us. If the book we are reading doesn’t wake us up with a blow on the head, what are we reading it for? We need the books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside us.

i think this can apply just as well to poetry, or even more so. i can completely understand the need for a book of fluff, or chick lit, or a mindless read after a book that leaves your mind spinning. and while i have nothing against, say, william carlos williams (i have eaten / the plums / that were in / the icebox, etc.), i personally feel like when you have so few words, you should use them to say as much as you possibly can. yes, yes, different tastes and all - but if it's possibly to achieve so much with so little, why not do it? or at least try?

the point: today i read a poem that speaks volumes to me. it is called "A Litany for Survival," written by Audre Lord. it's a tad long but the beginning and the end are my favorite parts:

For those of us who live at the shoreline

standing upon the constant edges of decision

crucial and alone

for those of us who cannot indulge

the passing dreams of choice

who love in doorways coming and going

in the hours between dawns

looking inward and outward

at once before and after

seeking a now that can breed

futures

...

and when we speak we are afraid

our words will not be heard

nor welcomed

but when we are silent

we are still afraid

So it is better to speak

remembering

we were never meant to survive

what this poem says to me is that we are not meant to just be survivors. we shouldn't sit and endure, coming away with only what the storm did not weather. when we are silent we are still afraid. so speak! maybe we still won't be heard, or welcomed, but at least we didn't have to wonder what might have been. to me, this poem screams, live! to me, this poem screams, be! we were not meant to merely exist; we were meant to do more than just survive. these thoughts, i think, are one of the many things we can hold on to when remembering not to be afraid.

for my friends

love and maps

i can count the sparse scattered freckles
on my arms like stars, or like dots on a map,
colored pushpins over cities we can connect
with a pencil line or twine. we loop around each
opaquely and solidly placed pin amidst paper earth tones,
orange, blue, yellow, green, red just like
our rough chapped palms grasping at strings,
plus two big cans and some small hearts
who whisper hello, goodbye.

we were strewn about like birdseed
countries, continents wide; seagulls snatched us up
and flew us away over bodies of water,
though none as vast as our ocean eyes, airplane skies;
just catch the wind and we'll sail the sunrise.
but the world turns my head and time zones make it spin
so maybe i'll just write to you instead:
pen scratching, thumbs tapping, keys clacking.
we can build this world on words, our alphabet maps
out this place where all the you’s and me’s still spell out us,
lettered across the clouds, the land, the sea.

don’t let go of the string; i won’t let go of your hands.

you are whatever a moon has always meant

pablo neruda is coming close to tying with e.e. cummings as my favorite poet of all time, because this is one of the most beautiful things i have ever read, especially in spanish (there's just something about reading the original rather than the translation, and i'm lucky to be able read it this way!):

Soneto XVII

No te amo como si fueras rosa de sal, topacio
o flecha de claveles que propagan el fuego:
te amo como se aman ciertas cosas oscuras,
secretamente, entre la sombra y el alma.
Te amo como la planta que no florece y lleva
dentro de sí, escondida, la luz de aquellas flores,
y gracias a tu amor vive oscuro en mi cuerpo
el apretado aroma que ascendió de la tierra.
Te amo sin saber cómo, ni cuándo, ni de dónde,
te amo directamente sin problemas ni orgullo:
así te amo porque no sé amar de otra manera,
sino así de este modo en que no soy ni eres,
tan cerca que tu mano sobre mi pecho es mía,
tan cerca que se cierran tus ojos con mi sueño.

(i love when poems hit that place where your head can't quite grasp what it's trying to say, but your heart just gets it.)

the heart not to lose it

there are always moments like these, after talking to my friends, when i miss them and notre dame so much that my heart lurches and i have to catch my breath. sometimes i scowl at the injustice of it all, how the powers that be gave us those four years to love and treasure and then ripped it away without a second thought. it's like london all over again, but a thousand times worse. all i can do is think about how even though we weren't perfect, or even happy with each other all the time, we stuck together through it all. we were a unit, each of us parts of a whole. on nights like these i yearn for nights we took for granted: sweaty, singing, laughing, dancing; conversations in the dark when we were supposed to be sleeping; not caring when the clock ticked to 3am, then 4, even 5.

in moments like these, at my most selfish, i wish i could have any of those nights back, relive their ordinary glory now that i know how much it actually meant in the long run. at my most selfish, i feel like i'm turning into those people i can't stand, who pine over the past until it's long overdue. but at my most selfish, i can't help but feel justified, because damn we had it good enough to care so much that it's over now.

i love and miss my besties so much.

so this is the new year

so everybody put your best suit or dress on

let's make believe that we are wealthy for just this once

lighting firecrackers off on the front lawn

as thirty dialogues bleed into one

i wish the world was flat like the old days

then i could travel just by folding a map

no more airplanes, or speed trains, or freeways

there'd be no distance that could hold us back.