I just finished my last Fall semester of Undergrad and I’m set to graduate from Rhode Island College this coming May. I confirmed it this morning. Mainly because anyone who is attending or has ever attended RIC knows that the Records department can fuck your shit up so lovely that you blow an aneurism before said graduation date, thus derailing all that progress you made to get out of there. I spent this semester scrambling to get work done on  lack of sleep, stresses of living on my own, making/not making bills, dealing with work and the boatload of fucking fun that is… and outside of two take-home finals, I’m done. For now. (Still haven’t started those yet. Procrastination: 1/Terri: 0). I sat down this morning to start one of them and was instantly flooded with mental “Oh fuck(s)!” that covered just about everything and turned me into the closest I’ve been to an insane person in my academic life. The list looked something like this:

1. This final is going to take longer than I thought when I first read (see: skimmed) the prompt. Neat.
2. Ugh, what about the other one? Yep. This one too.
3. My stomach hurts. I should make breakfast. Is this too many calories? Fuck. It is. Okay, there’s that. I’ll drink another cup of coffee to fill up.
4. Fuck, I drank too much coffee. Now I’m jittery and easily distracted.
5. I should call RIC’s Records department. I need to know how to do this “Request Official Transcript” shit to apply for grad school. Fuck. My first deadline is Jan 1. I still have to write a personal statement about how unique and awesome this university needs to believe I am. I should get to that.
6. Fuck, I need to write these finals first. (See No. 1 & 2)
7. Okay, I’ll do these, then write the personal statements. What is it that I want to say? Should I talk about what I want to do? Do I talk about racism? Should I tell them about my first experience with college? Fuck, is that too personal? How personal do I want to get? Do I beg for funding because I am already in enough debt from undergrad? (Cue thinking about graduate school, quitting my job, accruing an additional crushing amount of debt) Start panicking about ALL THINGS money related.
8. Mentally smack myself and try to snap out of it. So many things, immediate things, to worry about before thinking about enduring $150k student loan repayment on some measly salary I’ll get from wanting to do something good in the world.
9. Right, finals. Jittery. Deep breath.
10. Can’t focus. Do them later. Watch Dexter. Bad idea… Serial killers aren’t exactly comforting. Go back to looking at timeline for remaining semester work. Grad school deadlines. Will I get in? What if I don’t? Am I a failure? Am I trying to cram too much in before the end of the year, during the busiest time for me at work? What if I do get in? Will I need to move? Can I do that? New job? Moving? Okay, slow down. Next semester. Graduation. Summer. Loan repayments. FUCK.  What?

I do this to myself all the time. I create this metaphorical, giant boot and I place it securely on my own neck and apply pressure. I spin out and burn out. I think I do this because I’m older and I feel like I waited too long to get my life together. I waited too long to get my undergraduate degree. I am too old to be trying to be going for a Masters or PHD. I am too old to be moving around the country like I did in my early 20′s… I had zero worries about whether I could stand to make all new friends. I had zero worries about whether I thought I needed to. I just did it and I never looked back.

I think I miss that kind of bravery. I convince myself I do.

Stop.

I don’t miss that kind of bravery. Mainly because it wasn’t brave. I was running. I ran so far and for so long that it didn’t even occur to me that I’d gotten nowhere as a person. It wasn’t until I stopped, until I stood still,  that I started to develop some kind of perspective on what the world can offer you… If you let it.

I moved to Providence in July of 2006. That makes Providence the only place, other than my hometown (and I didn’t belong in my hometown; I always knew that), that I’ve stayed in more than a few months to a couple of years. Long enough to build a life, to find a community to belong to. Even still, I’ve spent most of my time here running back and forth from home to school to work. When I wasn’t doing that I was hopping on a plane or in a car to leave it any chance that I got because that’s what I do. More accurately, that’s what I did. That started to change a bit this summer… The process was slow but important just the same. It was part realization, part recognition. Do you know what I mean? That feeling that you’ve known it could be like this all along but it still surprises you when it happens?

I have a community. I have a support base of amazing friends in this place I never thought I’d call home. I have a partner that is likely to be the most amazing person I’ve ever met, ready to help me get anywhere or accomplish anything I’ve ever wanted to do. I met him on an airplane… Flying back here.

I’m headed into the last semester of a grueling process that has brought me countless nights of studying until I thought my eyes would dry up, too many wine-induced hangovers, and a number (which I am not willing to admit) of last minute heart-attacks over incomplete projects due sooner than I’d like. But it’s also resulted in relationships with brilliant fellow students and Professors that helped shape who I am, someone I didn’t know I could be and probably wouldn’t be without them.

All of that, and I’m sitting here at my kitchen table freaking the fuck out about… what? Deadlines? The next six months? Moving? Money?

I think I need to take a minute and realize what I’ve done.  What I’ve got, sitting right in my hand, right now and how to hold on to it. And how holding on to This, will help me figure out where it is I’m going. What I will do, when I’m ready.

I’ve got a Charles Bukowski quote tattooed on my arm. If you know me, you’ve seen it. It’s big. It says:

I dream. I let myself dream. I have a sonnet in mind that I want to write before sunrise. At sunrise I will be asleep and there will be a strange cat sitting upon the windowsill. It could happen. I’m ready. And I won’t forget you. I’ll send postcards and snapshots and the finished sonnet.

I’m ready to live my life. If that means I wake up tomorrow morning and I realize I need to take a year off before trying to impress whatever graduate program I’m obsessing over, so be it. If that means I wake up tomorrow and I realize the opposite, that’s great too. But either way, I’m done with the crippling bouts of worrying.

I’m ready to fully enjoy the people I’ve been lucky enough to meet, to keep close to me, without any sort of hesitation or self-imposed barrier (because let’s face it, y’all know I set those from time to time without really knowing it). I’m ready to take slow, even steps towards getting the things I want. That degree. That stability. That sigh at the end of the night that means I’ve done what I can do to be present in the place that I am, wherever that is now, or will be later.

So, on this inconsequential weekday, the weight of my world is not coming down upon my shoulders, as I so thought roughly 1300 words ago. There is a strange cat curled up on the kitchen chair next to me. And I’m ready.

I’m ready for whatever might come in whatever time that it takes to get there.

I just think it’s time I started to write that sonnet. You know?

The light that reflects in a person’s eyes
when they stand on a balcony
facing the sun, sand
and say, “I love you.”

The thousands of footsteps that follow
trudging through city streets, riding buses,
and ending each night
fingers intertwined, eyes closed,
and completely sure
that those days will carry on forever.

The assumption is the arrogance of love,

The presence that it will persist,
That it is resilient to all of world’s teeth
biting it down,
churning in a well-worn jaw,
and stay whole.

The hope is the grace of love,
That refuses to die
even when the sand washes into the ocean,
The sun sets on the horizon,
And the fingers spread apart
leaving an emptiness,
Making space
For another to assume
the arrogance.

It’s random, surprising, yet ultimately calming. I’m in the back seat of a moving car, looking at the ash of my cigarette burning down to a pencil point, grey and black flakes soaring in the rushing wind. Or I’m walking across campus after class, placing one foot in front of the other with the sole intention of force-feeding myself caffeine. But mostly, it’s when I’m surrounded by sound. Colors bursting into consciousness, purples for the deep bass of voices, yellows for high-pitched bells, a sharp crimson for the clinking of glasses. My body goes rigid, poised like a bird looking skeptically sidelong at the world, wings at my side but ready to open and spring into flight. Because I can.

A flight into comforting silence. Solitude. Weightlessness. I know how easy it would be to vanish into the night. To empty my bank account, buy a plane ticket with cash, and board a vessel ready to do my flying for me.

There’s no particular destination in mind. I imagine I wouldn’t know until my money fluttered down in crisp paper layers on the ticket counter and I opened my mouth to speak to the person who would soon become the accomplice in a real life magic trick. My final act.

I never do it though. I never open the car door, or veer from the path to the cafe, or put down my own glass because the next moment is always the same. The balls of my feet grind into the pavement or the shag floor mat, or wherever the hell I am and my lungs fill with air, expanding, collapsing, steadying. The realization is there. Not yet, not now.

Soon.

Soon I’ll be a shadow in the night. A silhouette against a chalky moon, enveloped in quiet, alone, and irrevocably missing.

In any event, it felt amazing to find all of these things that I thought were lost… Now it’s just a matter of staying focused and following through.

But I don’t remember what I felt like then, I only know what I feel like now. And I guess it’s all the same isn’t it?

Drink that drink, hang your head, and damn it all to hell. There’s always tomorrow.

I have this naive notion that the sole purpose for our lives is to love and love well. That doesn’t have to play out the same for everyone. It doesn’t have manifest as marriage, children, life long partnerships… for some it can mean embracing the people that enter our lives and loving their presence for however long it lasts. The single caveat, at least for me, is to do with respect. Relationships burn out in blazes, they fade away slowly over time… An end or not, the respect is there. Always. At least for me.

It has become blatantly obvious that despite my attitudes towards how I (try my best) to handle the recent romantic relationships that occur in my life, the people I attract do not bother to give me the same courtesy. I’m twenty-nine years old, almost finished with my first degree, completely transient and not interested in settling down anytime soon. This has somehow translated to my appearing as an easy mark.

But not anymore.

Instead of feeling hurt or angered by the way people have treated me in recent days, I plan on doing the opposite. It came as a reminder that it is so incredibly important to show how much I care about the people that are there for me, that respect me as a person and friend. I’ll force my muscles to work in unison to be kinder, love more, and that is the face I’ll show to the world around me.

Communication isn’t just a means to an end, to gain an advantage towards the things we want (or think we want). It’s vital. It’s intrinsic to our own well being. At least, it is to mine.

It isn’t about resolutions, or single goals to grab out of the air but rather themes to approach and immerse myself in. For credit’s sake, I’m borrowing the idea… but it’s a good one and I think it will work for me. My theme for 2012 is transformation. The beauty behind such a vast theme is that I can make it mean anything. Transforming myself (back) into the writer I once was, but still progressing, always getting better is part of that.

So here I am. This isn’t meant to be a place for only professional pieces, creative writing… but more for any kind of writing that comes about. A place to flex my figurative authorial muscles and remind myself of how much I simply loved writing as an action.

Further, I wanted a place to just put my thoughts. With transformation comes the bursting of ideas, especially those connected to art, music, and whatever else. So here I am, back again. Let’s see how it goes.

Like writing.

Writing is what keeps me level, especially when someone hurts me.

Except times like right now. When I don’t really know what to say.