Great Advice

"No ONE, I repeat, No ONE ever gives you the message that your 20s are going to be hard, do they? It's a vital message that I missed or was too cheeky to hear until suddenly I found myself in the throes of it and was, like, "shit this is really hard." 20s = tough times. Just climb your way, tool and nail, up to 30 and then have a drink."

I really hope she doesn't mind me quoting her again.  After a rough patch and a brief exchange of messages, I found this in my inbox, and it was like a warm blanket on a cold day.

Cheers

Every once in a while, it feels really good to get really drunk and loud and maybe make some bad decisions and wake up with some bruises.
Not all the time, because then you're just a mess. Just enough to work the kinks out and remember what a hangover feels like, and maybe prove to your rapidly aging self that you can still function relatively well on small amounts of alcohol induced sleep.
Now where the f*$& is the aspirin.

p. 188

"Grief turns out to be a place none of us know until we reach it. We anticipate (we know) that someone close to us could die, but we do not look beyond the few days or weeks that immediately follow such an imagined death. We misconstrue the nature of even those few days or weeks. We might expect if the death is sudden to feel shock. We do not expect this shock to be obliterative, dislocating to both body and mind. We might expect that we will be prostrate, inconsolable, crazy with lost. We do not expect to be literally crazy, cool customers who believe that their husband is about to return and need his shoes. In the version of grief we imagine, the model will be 'healing.' A certain forward movement will prevail. The worst days will be the earliest days. We imagine that the moment to most severely test us will be the funeral, after which this hypothetical healing will take place. When we anticipate the funeral we wonder about failing to 'get through it,' rise to the occasion, exhibit the 'strength' that invariably gets mentioned as the correct response to death. We anticipate needing to seel ourselves for the moment: will I be able to greet people, will I be able to leave the scene, will I be able even to get dressed that day? We have no way of knowing that this will not be the issue. We have no way of knowing that the funeral itself will be anodyne, a kind of narcotic regression in which we are wrapped in the care of others and the gravity and meaning of the occasion. Nor can we know ahead of the fact (and here lies the heard of the difference between grief as we imagine it and grief as it is) the unending absence that follows, the void, the very opposite of meaning, the relentless succession of moments during which we will confront the experience of meaninglessness itself."

-Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking, Ch. 17

Hiatus

After a series of unsatisfying, frustrating, and at times hurtful encounters with men, I've decided to take some time off.

I realize that for some of you that know me well enough, there are any number of jokes that could be inserted here. No, time off does not mean just until next weekend, and no, it does not mean I'm going to date women instead. (Not that the idea isn't appealing in a lot of ways, but that is a subject for an entirely different blog, if not essay.) I have been thinking a solid six months is a good start, but I'm not setting anything in stone. It could easily be longer, and if it's a shorter hiatus I'm not going to beat myself up too much. In the meantime I am finding more constructive uses of my time - I've started this blog, am taking up needlepoint, have sent out a lot of thank-you cards, and will most likely be drinking more heavily in the coming months.

In addition to being able to stitch a nice pillow cover, however, I do have a somewhat more serious motivation behind this decision.

I need to let go of the instant gratification mindset and the "If-I-don't-seize-it-now-it'll-be-gone-forever" feeling, because I have learned that the things that are worth it, worth me, don't tend to fade away quickly. I realize that many of my past disappointments could have been avoided by taking even just a night (or better a week, but who wants to ponder for a whole week?) to think about them.

Now, not all my moments of expedited judgment have been mistakes - on the contrary. My decisions to go with what feels right, or good, at that moment, have ultimately brought me to where I am today, and for the most part I'm working with a pretty solid foundation. Most of what I know about my strengths, weaknesses, and habits I've learned by bouncing off other people. And, I have had a lot of fun.

I am in a place in my life where distraction is a relief, and men (and all the degrees of relationships one can have with men) have become a focus that hasn't been this prominent since puberty. I am ready to admit that I have been avoiding doing what I need to, which is, in the most cliche sense, 'work on me'.

I know I'm still grieving, I know that's a road that I don't see the end of, but I feel ripe for a foundational change within me, and I don't want to waste it.

In the meantime, you can find me debating the merits of a thimble over my fifth glass of wine. Cheers.