Category Archive

As was made unfortunately clear in my last post, uncertainty is not something I deal with especially well.  It looks like J will be living part-time in Richmond.  For real.  He wants to look at apartments, condos and the like once I get back from a much-needed vacation in August.  He wants me to move there, too; to find something new, and just start over. 

Sometimes that idea sounds really good.  Most of the time, actually; divorce myself from all the losers here at work, get out of the city (but still be close), and be in love and have some room to breathe. 

I do really well with ideas.  I get excited and plan and it’s all sunshine and lollipops.  It’s the looming certainty of it–and in fact the inherent uncertainty of it–that’s getting me drunk on irrationality (and, oh yeah, tequila). The grandiose ideas in the map of my mind don’t translate so well into reality, I have found.  What would I do there?  Where would I live? I won’t live with him–not until we’re at least engaged–but is now the right time?  And there I go again.  The idea of being Mrs. J is so, so lovely to me.  But I think the recent influx of so many friends getting engaged and married and this climate of Weddings! Weddings! Weddings! has gotten me all turned around.  I still like the idea of marrying him. It’s just the all-of-the-sudden very real prospect that’s got me cowering. 

Happily, some things do respond well to careful planning, and are known, and follow their course as they should.  Like the Nordstrom Sale.  Oh, the oasis of sale shoes and suits and back-to-school-ish clothes!  It’s been in my calendar since, well, since I got the calendar, which works out to slightly over six months ago. 

I think it’s genetic.  Mom used to plan our family vacations around the sale. 

Happily, the stores here aren’t near the warzones that they are in Seattle, so my shopping experience tonight resembled what one might find on an ordinary Saturday back home.  People, but not too many.  No lines for the dressing rooms.  No numbers handed out in the shoe department.  That sort of thing.   

Tonight’s goal was primarily to cruise through, and get the lay of the land.  I bought the MOST ADORABLE suit, here:

I’ll try to hit it up again next Monday because they bring out new things during the second week.  Not a lot.  But some.  I used to work there; I can confirm the truth of this chocolate morsel.  I might even be nice and invite my non-car-owning Seattle friend out for that last encounter.  Because really, it’s kind of too good to keep all to myself. 

And, I suppose, at the end of the day, a balance of certainty and uncertainty, planned shopping and spontaneous friendship, isn’t so bad at all.  It’s probably just about the way it should be. I can’t live my life with the precision of a well-executed shopping weekend, and if I’m honest, I don’t think I’d want to.  I’m working on being okay with whatever life brings.  It’s a process.

I’m a real believer in writing as therapy. Thus, even though writing something for the blog is really the last thing on my mind right now, and even though I’d really like nothing more than to close the computer, go sit outside in the grass, close my eyes and hope to wake up in some foreign land, I’m going to deposit a few thoughts, incoherent as they are, in this space, and hope to make sense of something.

I feel like I’m living in a cloud.  Not on a cloud—that would be nice.  Rather, in the cloud, where it’s foggy, and confusing, and hard to breathe.  I think it’ll be worth it once I get out and am on top, however.  Sometimes you just have to struggle.

I have no energy.  Thinking about work and all of the assignments on my desk makes me want to collapse with exhaustion, and just fade into the carpet.

I’m afraid that things are on the fritz with J. For so long, I wanted and wanted (and wanted some more) to be with him always. Having friends get engaged would send me into a tailspin of waiting for OUR shiny, diamond-studded moment. These days, I wonder if he’s really what I want. Do I really want to be engaged to him? Does he fit the happy ideal of the couples around me? Is this, being married to an ex-lawyer and wanna-be music insider, a life I really want to sign up for? Really? All of the sudden I feel like I need way more time to prepare. Like that test that you felt so confident about, but you get there and open the bluebook, and holy sh!t I don’t know anything; how did I study all wrong?

I’ve never felt as homesick as I do right now. I’m starting to feel really guilty about moving so far away, now that I’ve essentially proved my point: yup, I’m self sufficient, I did it, look at meee! My family is so important to me, and I’ve only got this one life, and I’m starting to realize that I’m betting my most valuable chips on the gamble of always having more time. More time later to do the things you love, and see the people you need; buy now, pay later! Put in the hours now, and cash out later! All of this, of course, presupposes the existence of a glittering “later.” I feel like the older I get, the more foolish I am to bank on that illusion. My parents are young now—51 and 50, respectively—and I sometimes look at myself and say, stupid girl, get home and hang out with them and know them while you still can. I think I’m going to come back to this in 20 years where they’re all pent up in assisted living, and wonder what the hell I thought I was doing, running around being “independent” during the best years of their lives.

I wish we all lived in Ireland, where they have close families and it’s okay and expected to live nearby, and even if you move to the whole other side of the island, you could basically drive it in a day if you wanted. Some of their assisted living homes have pubs in them, too, which is TOTALLY the way to go. Totally.

I had my one-year review today, which was totally unexpected since, oh that’s right, I was hired in October. So, over the last year and eight months … As it happened, I’d forgotten (?) that I had a little fist-fight with upper management right before Christmas about a promotion I had been promised but had, at that point, still not been awarded. We came to an agreement (read: they listed to me and the grievance panel groupies I gathered) and promoted me retroactive to June 10. Had the effect of a marvelous Christmas bonus, plus apparently reset my hire date to June 10—aka last week—which kind of makes no sense to me, but whatever.

I’m doing just fine, they said. And the greatest part is, it doesn’t matter AT ALL as our company automatically gives you a nice raise ever year, with or without your manager’s approval. Very good, since I work for the Stingiest Man Alive. Also rather makes up for the fact that I still haven’t seen my stimulus check yet. I’m going to have to call those IRS commies at their little “if you don’t receive your check in six weeks…” number. The United States hates me. Probably doesn’t help that I first typed that as the “untied” states. Huh.

Now I’m going to hand over some of the fruits of that raise to the barrista man at Starbucks, lose myself in a book for an hour, and probably come back about the same, but eh, we’ll see. It’s all about progress, even if the steps are really small (or in this case, are wildly disjointed paragraphs). You get what you get.

I don’t know when I became so wildly paranoid about my relationship with J. Some minutes, I’m naming our children and everything is bliss. Should one cloud pass over the sun, however? It’s over, it’s a sign, we weren’t actually meant to be after all. I really don’t think I’ve always been this edgy, so fickle with the feelings I’m so quick to call strong.

Take Sunday, for instance. In the morning, I’m amusing myself by looking at engagement rings (and matching wedding bands!) on the tiffany website. By nightfall, I’m bickering with J outside of my car over a bottle of wine, which was a totally ridiculous back-and-forth scene that ended with me telling him I am having “serious doubts” about the relationship. I don’t even know if that’s true. I’m a bad arguer; when I start to feel like I’m losing, I pull out the biggest punches I can muster. And it’s been happening more and more.

I’m not used to arguing with anyone other than my sisters. We used to fight fiercely and, I later learned, regularly sent mom to bed in tears, convinced she’d failed as a parent by raising three children who routinely professed undying hatred for each other. We’re all friends now, incidentally, so maybe it’s not such a big deal? I don’t know. I never argued much with any other boyfriends (like, not at all), and I feel like this could go a couple of different ways. J could be the real deal, like family, and we’re still just growing up and I’m feeling vulnerable. Equally compelling, he’s a bad clash with my personality and it may never resolve.

J isn’t one to hold a grudge, thankfully, and while I have a fiery temper, it subsides. I love this guy, I do. We got together last night; he picked me up and we went to Costco (oh happy oasis). He’s going to put some Connecticut in me and teach me to play tennis this summer, and we were looking for rackets.

My tennis experience is, shall we say, limited. I love to watch matches on tv, but that’s mostly because I like the whoosh-and-snap sounds and the british announcer-man’s voice. I’m also quite partial to Wimbledon, the Kirsten Dunst movie, but this similarly is a poor substitute for actually getting out on the court.

They didn’t have rackets at Costco.

I sent him an email today, with a link to a sports store nearby. I signed it “tennis love, magda.”

Only later did that british announcer man pop back into my head, reminding me that in tennis, love is zero.

Why? Why is love zero? I feel like this symbolism bodes badly. I’ve backed myself into a love-love corner: but win-win, like love enough to go around, or totally nill? The distinction, at least in my current mindset, is quite troubling.

Sometimes, being a working girl really makes me wonder if I’m not on the verge of becoming a major danger to myself and/or others.  The one that all of the nurses pity as they pass my perfectly white room with perfectly padded everything; I’ll sit there, perfectly still, staring out the perfectly locked and barred window. “Poor magda.  Her job drove her to this.” They’ll cluck their tongues and head on down the hall to visit the more interesting patients.  The man who thinks he’s a chicken, maybe, or the psychotic German.

But then little things happen to bring the color and the light back into the day.  A man gives up his seat on the train.  The best kind of yogurt is on sale.  A delightful package has come in the mail.

From a far away girl on a far away blog in a far away place I’ve never been, I received this afternoon the most amazing box of goodies.  It’s springtime, and we’re all in this together, the gesture said; and truly, it made my day.  Penelope, you’re amazing.

There’s really something to be said for unbridled goodness and unreserved generosity.  Everyone should try it out.  It’s quite contagious, and really, really nice. 

Things like this and days like today make me so grateful for this blogging community.  I started writing here mostly as an experiment; it was something I’d seen done and wanted to be a part of, sure, but I also wanted to see what it would feel like to write out my feelings and thoughts for anyone who cared to listen. 

I have a tendency to stumble into things with an extreme degree of naïveté.  The first time J asked me out, for instance, I didn’t get that it was a date.  At all.  I thought we were just hanging out.  “He thinks I’m cool and he wants to be my friend,” I thought.  Wrong.  Moving across the country is another good example.  “Maybe I’ll just move to DC,” I said one day.  “Yeah. It’ll be no big deal.”  Ha. Ahahaha.

For the most part, though, these things work out for me.  It may be luck or it may be some bigger plan, but I’ve stumbled into a lot of deep goodness.

The blog is no exception.  I don’t often directly address you, my readers, but tonight I think some thanks are in order.  Thanks for hanging around, and for coming back, and for inviting me to share in your lives and struggles, too.  You all are the best Internet friends a girl could ask for.  I mean it. 

It’s true what they say about life moving fast. Sometimes it’s hard to tell where the boundaries are; the movements blend so seamlessly that you wonder if the curtain was pulled at all. These costume changes—are they new characters, or were you just too distracted by the front lines to realize what was going on in the wings?

This weekend I was a date and a hostess, a girlfriend and an enemy, a competent planner and a disorganized mess. Nothing unusual, really, but surreal when I think on it now.

The me who was out drinking northwest microbrews until an ungodly hour Friday with J and his Senate groupies was the same girl who, the next morning, was making pancakes and wandering, latte in hand, on a Mother’s Day mission through old town. She was the me who was glad she’d so responsibly remembered her UV lotion, the me whose arms are less pale (but not sunburned!).

Hours later, she was the me who was expertly fixing her hair into an envy-worthy cascade of curls, fretting over her eyeliner, and packing her accoutrements into a few totes and hangers to take over to J’s for her routine’s finishing touches. In typical me fashion, she takes three trips to the car before she remembers everything, and then realizes she doesn’t have the car keys; four trips later, she’s en route.

She was the me who sipped white wine while touching up the pedicure she wrecked by running into a doorframe on her quest for those keys, and the me whose adoring boyfriend had flowers waiting in his otherwise cluttered apartment, and who waited, camera in hand, to document what he called her “biggest night ever.”

Still, she’s the me who lets stress overrun her and who snaps at him, laying blame for the little things she’s forgotten, upset at him for the stresses all too common to the transient girlfriend plight.

She’s the me who stepped out of his car, with a heartfelt thank-you and a kiss goodbye, and onto the red carpet, averting her eyes from flashbulbs meant for someone else. The me who met her guest, an exceptional attorney downtown, and worried that she wasn’t entertaining enough, connected enough, engaging enough to make the evening worthwhile. The me who drowned her insecurities at the myriad open bars, trying to make lively conversation that might stand a chance against the glittering surroundings. The me who wanted to be so much more than she was, and worried that she wasn’t living up to it, but the me who smiled just the same, as any petrified fish out of water will do.

The me who walked through camera crews pointed at John Cusak, at Marcia Cross; the me who stood behind Madeline Albright in line for the ladies’. The me who heard the President speak mere meters away. Hundreds of meters, sure, but meters just the same. The me who laughed and clapped in all the right places.

She was the me who, knowing of no after-parties, star-gazed with her guest for a few drinks at the bar before heading out, in the pouring rain, into separate cabs home. Kisses on the cheek, thanks for a good time, let’s talk again soon.

The doormen at J’s building know this me; the well-dressed me that arrives circa 12a, haute hooker-style. They smile and let her in without question; she crawls into the elevator, staring fixedly on the numbers as they light, 10, 11, 12. Ding, you’re home, they seem to say on opening.

She’s the me who wakes up to the smell of breakfast cooking with slight smears of makeup lingering on her eyes. The me who, having not planned for the seachange outside, has to borrow one of his coats before they walk around downtown.

Swimming in a man-sized fleece, she’s the me who gets teary-eyed in JCrew because he’s picked out three shirts for her that aren’t her style at all; she sees a tote she likes and he suggests another; she takes it as a giant sign that they aren’t meant to be. She’s the me who all too easily surrenders her heart to the life-sucking relationship goons that stalk her, who is too willing to blind herself to the goodness underwriting it all for the brief high of self-pity.

She’s the me who drives with the radio at such an outlandish volume that she doesn’t hear him when he calls to tell her that she’s forgotten her flowers. She’s the me who drives back for them, at midnight, because they were possibly the sweetest thing he’s done for her. She’s the me who, at the end of the day, still manages to see the sunshine, and thanks him for it, and apologizes for being such a wreck.

She’s the me who realizes that unless she slows down, she’ll be up and down to the garage, siding up to bars, and driving across state lines for a long time yet. She’s the me who’s finally learning to catch her breath and enjoy the sights and surroundings because really, life’s pretty sweet.

I have a serious fear of throwing out bills and other “real” mail with all the junk that gets jammed in my mail slot each day.  I get a lot more circulars and ads that are either practical or necessary, really.  The mailroom recycle bin is usually a collage of Safeway coupon books and fascist comcast fliers destined for a directly circular life journey, but mine never join them. 

No, they all take the elevator ride up here with me, where I carefully sift through them, turning each page looking for hidden charges.  And, sure, wondering what it would be like to be one of those shoppers that sees an ad for Prime Cuts of Meat—On Sale This Week and just twinkle in my toes.  Or get excited about gallon-jugs of orange juice, buy one get one free through the 29th!

Someday.  Maybe when there are little magdas running around that each have their favorite cereals and need school lunches and are very picky about their vegetables, these things will be important.  For now, though, I just need to be sure I’m not losing an electrical bill. 

When I was growing up, my mom had a total bill-paying system, and there was always one day a month when she would pay all of the bills.  As each bill came, she’d open it and stick it in a special file; then, on the right day, she’d take them all out and pay them in concert.  I don’t think this would work with my bills.  They all have really different due-dates, for one, and they come at totally random times. 

My system is, admittedly, totally haphazard.  The bill comes, I pay it.  Then I put it into a little excel spreadsheet I call “east-coast expenses.”  Like I’m on a temporary assignment? Or a three-hour tour?  Yeah, I’ve been here a year and a half, with no immediate plans of departing. Seriously, sometimes I worry myself.  Especially since it’s been more than a month since I’ve updated this sheet, and I have a pile of receipts accruing on the floor, since me and my Visa? Totally in love.  In love!  I show it off everywhere!  But really, that’s another story entirely.

For now, though, my interest in the daily accrual of junk mail is simply that I’m petrified that Giant’s Super Deals is going to eat something really important, and mar the credit score I’ve worked so hard for, and it will SO not be my fault.  I’ve yet to find any offenders.  But still.

Miss Earth National Capital Area was standing by the side of the road near the Alexandria Whole Foods tonight, waving her little beauty queen wave at all of the commuters on Duke Street.  Conveniently (insofar as I love flashing that credit card) I live but a block away, so I passed her leaving the train tonight.  I’ve just googled that title and I think it’s totally bogus; my guess is that Whole Foods made her up to promote Earth Day specials.  Still, I’ve half a mind to march my bag of paper recycling, currently near over-flowing (thanks, unnecessary ads!) down to her perch and demand some action out of her title.  Her assistant did give me an eco-friendly keychain as I passed, however, and she flashed me a bright smile as she reminded me to bring my own bag! (imagine here one of those cheesy tooth “ding!” shines from TV).

Sigh.  There’s only so much a girl can do.

When I was growing up, I had this system.  If I looked outside and it was raining, it was a little sign from God that everything was going to be okay. I took great comfort in it; no matter what was going on, no matter the complexities of circumstance plaguing me, I’d let the rain wash it away. Ah, I’d say, the rain’s here.  Everything is righting itself again.

I think I’d watched too many documentaries on parched African cultures, or had studied too many Native rain dances.  I grew up in Seattle, where the constant drizzle is as signature as the latte addiction. My dependence on the rain, then? Possibly self-serving.  Still, coming out of work today, the droplets on my skin reminded me of that comfort I used to find.

This has been a workweek that’s lasted a lifetime.  Really, I love my job—but the environment is, I fear, slowly growing toxic.  I hate my manager, and quoting my mother, yes, hate is a strong word.  I’m quickly growing disenchanted with the tedium of the day-to-day, and sure as this happens with any job—really, wasn’t it so much better when we were still in school?—I’m drowning in the thought that this is it, the final train, my destination this lonely depot.

I should say not. 

The rain spoke to me today.  The common “it’s going to be okay” message remained, but with teeth: it’s going to be okay, and better; different things are coming.

I spent the ride home drowning out reality listening to really loud Postal Service.  I think everyone has moments when the constant hum of the commuters is too much, when the buzz of the doors opening, doors closing routine seems altogether stifling.  The only escape is within, and thank all goodness for the iPod. 

It can, at times, be easier to just move forward than acknowledge the stops and starts along the way. Still, though, there’s something about that routine that’s comforting.  It’s dependable, it’s calculated, it’s certain.  I think that’s what scares me the most about this thing called adulthood.  I’m worried I’ll lose myself in the wash of sights and sounds, colors and movement and, adrift, grasp sightlessly for the parameters I’ve so long clung to.

I think it’s going to go like this.  I’ll stick around courting the rain at this job until 2009.  Then, come January, I’ll look elsewhere and I’m out like a sprout.  A charming, if unconventional, simile:  I’ll be out like a sprout and doing new things, growing in new places, meeting new people, and sinking my roots into different soil.  Which makes the next eight months so much more bearable, somehow. 

It’s amazing how I can go from insanely lazy, hmmm I’ll check my e-mail five billion times days to days where everything seems to be coming at me with little jet engines attached. 

Today was definitely a jet engine day.  I had to be at Commerce (as in Commerce, Department of) for an early morning hearing, yet I stayed up far too late last night drinking margaritas to make that a very pleasant encounter.  Tequila has a tricky way of making everything seem like it’s suddenly all better.  I’ve got to stop wanting to believe.   

Of course the hearing ran so long it could legitimately have been called an early-afternoon affair, which left me scrambling to get back to the office in time to file a short report before I had to head out at the ungodly early hour of 3.30.  Ordinarily this kind of early dismissal would delight me, and ordinarily tight deadlines bring out my best work.  I was just too frantic, though.  ”Think, Magda, Think!” I said, over and over, to an oppressively blank screen.  I filed something of undeterminable quality at 3.28, and ran home to get my car to drive to J’s to take him to Baltimore so he could catch a flight.  Then breathe.  

Far more movement entered my day today than is usual.  I took the train into the city, then a cab back to work; a train home and the car for the hour trek north to the airport.  And all the walking and scurrying in between.  

Mid-day metro rides are a different experience in a lot of ways, I realized (or remembered?) today.  At 3.30, say, not too many people are commuting.  They’re just traveling,  just going.  The aisles that house crammed be-suited urban professionals with ipods and impressive briefcases are empty, and almost refreshingly so.  People dot the seats; a guy reading the paper here, a mom and a little girl there, but the empties far outweigh the occupieds.  It’s quiet.  It’s calm.  I should leave at 3.30 every day, seriously. 

There also were a considerable number of uniformed military personnel onboard.  This does not surprise me; it’s DC, afterall, and the fatigues are a sort of city uniform. Sometimes, and I know this is odd, I see them all walking about near my office and I pretend I’m a spy.  Like, a real spy in some eastern-bloc country, where the work I do in my windowless hovel is of critical national importance and I, magda, must infiltrate the enemy and bring justice and peace to all.  Or something.  

Today, though, I wasn’t feeling so spy-like.  A serviceman in my line of sight was on his cell phone, his beret perfectly (perfectly!) pitched on his head.  I looked at his wedding band, and I though of the sacrifice.  The long nights, the fear and the anxiety, the trials of the love answering on the other side of that call.  

Two women–one in fatigues, one in rather masculine pressed khakis and, dare I say, dull black flats–talked and laughed nearby.  I mostly watched them in the reflection, covert-like, but they fascinated me.  What it must take to trade normal hours and cute business suits for the front lines, to take combat boots over manolo blahniks for the every day. 

I flashed them all the warmest smiles I could conjure on exiting.  If I could have, I would have hugged them all, thanked them all sincerely for giving so much.  For giving their skills, and their talent, and their lives so that I can wear impractical heels to run with freedom across the chambered halls of our government, to hear about the challenges of internet governance and know that it matters and we have a say, to travel how I want when I want with whomever I want, to live my life as me, howsoever much tequila that involves, and to realize that nothing is ever all that bad.  Thank you.  A million times over, thank you.  

They looked at me like I had everything in the world but didn’t deserve it, and I had no idea how to respond.

I went to my Catholic women’s group again last night.  My best church-y girlfriend couldn’t make it, but I opted to go anyway.  I hadn’t been in so long, plus (and this is very self-centered) I was looking especially cute.  (Seriously, madga.  It’s church.  They won’t care. Moreover, you shouldn’t care.).  

There were only four of us last night, but they were all strangers to me save one. I hadn’t been since before Christmas, and it seems the composition has shaken slightly.  That’s DC for you—people move in, people move out, and it’s all very transient.  Here, at least, a common faith creates a common ground.  Or so it should. 

The group I left was predominantly bubbly post-college girls, but last night was a different crowd.  These women were older and, pardon me, bitter.  They were ALL single and ALL unhappy about it.  As I popped in, looking young and sparky with a cool career and a real boyfriend, you could see raindrops looming for their pity parade.  I wish I could have fit, I wish we could have all talked like equals. 

They didn’t hate me, but I saw a real resentment oozing out of them. They created a camaraderie of misery that excluded me.  I just wish that they could have seen that I’m not really all that perfect, and not really all that happy-go-lucky.  Sure, I’ve been blessed with a pretty amazing life, but it’s not like I just woke up one morning and the world waved its wand and said, “magda, you are my golden child, and I will lavish on you all things good and desirable.”  I have wants and hopes and fears just as much as they do.  Comparisons don’t always work, and I don’t think I’m “better off” just because my life, on the surface, matches their mental checklists of fulfillment. I don’t think my existence presents any outrageous unfairness.  I just wish they could have seen that.  It might have made them happier.

Is it possible to be haunted by someone who doesn’t even know you exist? Phrased differently, I think I have some borderline-psychotic jealousy issues.

J is the first boyfriend out of the not altogether large pool of my past that I’d call “serious”–at least as far as that term connotes something more than long-term. He’s the first one with whom I’ve really seen it working, really working for the long haul. From an objective perspective, then, it doesn’t make much sense that about the time I fell in love, I contracted a raging case of insecurity. Or maybe it was just that the insecurity I’ve always had crept out of dormancy once I started believing that I was wanted, loved, cherished that much. Either way, it doesn’t make much sense.

Before me, J had a string of attractive and pseudo-serious girlfriends. If I would have had this blog last fall, it would have chronicled me finding their photos on his laptop, finding emails from them archived on his back-up hard drive, and finding some of their numbers in his cell phone. All that’s over and done with. Well, except for the damage to my psyche that comes with actually knowing. You can imagine all the Ones Before, but until you actually know, it’s relatively easy to block it out. I’m not proud of snooping around his computer and his phone. It was wrong, but my insecurity is a ravenous and hungry beast. It needed to fuel itself to keep me feeling inadequate. 

After many tears and false-positive breakup threats, J destroyed the evidence. I can’t in all fairness say I don’t sometimes still pop into his photo library while he’s in the shower or scan his text messages when I find his phone, but I’m working on it. I’ve found absolutely nothing incriminating.

Still, one of these “befores” haunts me. The Other One wasn’t his most recent, but she was his most serious. They lived together.

I’ve seen her photos and I’ve read her words, and as much as I try to banish her from my mind—he’s mine now, bitch, so back off—I think her ghost is here to stay. I find this terribly disturbing.

He made the mistake a little while back of telling me where she went to school. I think this was in one of my especially low moments, when I was practically begging for details on her. I wanted to know everything (or so I thought); I wanted to see that I was better (which, with my mindset, would have been impossible).

Enter again the ravenous beast of insecurity. Armed now with her first name and her law school, I found her. Ah, the Internet–my friend, my foe. Only one girl with her name graduated within the two year window of when I guessed she had (psychotic? me? never). She went on to pass the bar in Florida, I found, and is now a PARTNER in a law firm there. I saw her picture and read her bio. She’s still gorgeous. And perky. And smart. And successful. The list goes on.

More than anything, I wish I didn’t know. Now that I do, however, I’ve got to find a way to manage this information, and I’m pretty much sucking at it.

J and I went to the national zoo for the first time this weekend. I was like a little kid once I saw the map. Look! They have monkeys! And pandas! And wow, let’s go to the elephant house!

“Tell me you’ve been to the zoo before,” J says, jokingly, and of course I have. Just not this zoo. And not with him. He goes on to tell me, of course, that he’s been there “a couple of times.”

My masochistic minds translates this as “on dates.” With girls. Specifically, with the Other One. They met here in DC when they were both summer interns (Why do I know this? I don’t want to know this!).

I really spent the entire afternoon in a funk. All I could think about was J and the Other One, standing where I was standing, holding hands, laughing and being in love. It’d be summer; she’d be in something adorably sexy and slinky. I looked down at my gloved hands, my chunky sweater, my tennis shoes, and frowned. She’d be sophisticated, I thought, and here I am getting giddy just reading about the elephant house. She’d be everything I’m not.

But I was there, I was in that moment. I was everything she was not, and I blew it. I had a so-so time, but I could have made him happy, made him feel alive and in love the same way she did in my mind. Sometimes, though, this jealousy is an unbearable weight. I want to shake it, but I just can’t see out. It is miserable. And I need to stop googling her. She is far away and out of his life, and I am here.

More than anything, I’m scared that these irrationalities are going to lead me to cause the destruction I’m so afraid of. He had absolutely no reason to know why I was upset. It’s not like he said he went to the zoo with the Other One; for all I know, he went there on his own, or with his sister, or whatever. He doesn’t bring her up. Ever. She remains, however, the star of my own dramatically envisioned drop into relationship despair, and this is not good.

I’m sitting here scared he doesn’t love me, but he does; if I keep doubting it, I may give myself something to really be teary-eyed about. That would be the worst thing I could possibly imagine. I don’t need to plague myself with What Could Have Been, on top of all else.

Arrg. I swear, I just need to get out of my own head, but I’m swimming for the exit and I can’t find the out. My imagination? It creates a cruel, cruel landscape sometimes. I don’t know how I fell so far from the doily approach to love, but I’ve got to find my way back. And soon.

I’m more judgmental than I like to admit.  It’s one of those uglies I like to gloss over with a sweet smile, a pleasant outlook, an accept-all projection to the world.  It’s not true. 

Judgmentalism, which spell-check is rejecting as an English word, isn’t quite the same as haughtiness or snobbery, at least not in my experience.  I’m still really really nice to most everyone I meet.  Somewhere inside me, though, I’m comparing myself.  I’m assessing how I stack up, and I’m making a snap judgment.  I don’t even know who you are, but your hair, your clothes, your shoes: I’ve already decided that I’m better.  Better.  Whatever does this mean? And what is my scale? I really hate that I do this.   Sure as this goes the other way; I decide you’re better, I can’t stand so close to you, I may as well walk around with a bag over my head.  That’s normal.  It’s the “I’m too good for you” mental tally I’ve been noticing scrawled about in the rooms of my mind that’s really got me reeling this time.  It’s alarming.

On paper, you’d expect this more of J.  He’s one of those stereotypical moneyed, privileged New Yorkers; hard nosed more than you’d like with an impressive resume including boarding schools, the ivy league, and sweater vests.

I won’t say that he’s an amazing all-accepting demi-god (though I’d like to); he has his flaws, but he seems to see the person through the exterior really much better than me, and I’m trying to take a lesson.

J, I still think most unfortunately, is enamored with bluegrass music.  I dislike bluegrass.  In fact, I’ve been known on more than one occasion to profess undying hatred for it.  It’s a constant bargaining chip: I’ll pick up the check, but no banjo music till March; that kind of thing.

We went to a bluegrass-y “concert” at a community center in middle-of-Virginia-nowheresville over the weekend, and the minute we walked in the door, I felt like I didn’t belong.  Truth be told, I felt superior.  Here were some bona fide misfits: hippy-style crochet clothes; big skits and clog-shoes; argyle knee socks with woefully clashing peacoats. Women with unkempt hair and no makeup.  Scraggly beards and cowboy boots; oversized and un-tucked flannel shirts.

J has a sort of business connection with the fiddle player; we watched the whole show and, it turned out, were obligated to hang out afterwards.  I had a flask in my purse in express preparation for this contingency.  [Aside: Magda! What! The! Hell!].  It’s fair to note here, I think, that the main attraction legitimately reminded me of a serial killer.  He had a frantic look in his eyes; a really receding hairline, but a long ponytail and a somewhat unruly beard.  I figured, hey, if I’m going to go out, I’m going out with a smile and a sizzle.

The after party, which J informs me is properly called a “jam session,” was in a warehouse not far from the studio; we walked up and I was like, this is it, I’m toast, there’s definitely some kind of ritual death going on in there. There I go again, see; assuming my demise is on the line just based on what this guy looked like.

I breathed a big sigh of relief when we were greeted with no candles, no blood, no torture devices.  It was just a bunch of people sitting around on old couches.  There were snacks and good conversation; people were talking and people were, well, jamming.

He surprised me, the serial killer mandolin man.  I can’t conjure a sudden love of his music, but I did appreciate it.  He was very, very skilled.  And afterwards, he talked to me.  And he was nice.

The serial killer introduced himself to me, and he got me a beer.  He didn’t know a damn thing about me, and he probably saw how much one of these things is not like the other just as much as I felt it.  Here’s a man who’s enormously talented, and he’s accepting me.  I should be able to return the favor, yes?

He sat back down with his fellow followers after that; the argyle girl, the hippie earth women, the guys in their flannel; they were just there, being marvelous, being themselves, and truly producing art.  They were to their instruments what I am to my laptop.  I actually—and this is a little bit alarming—I actually found myself wanting to be one of them.  Really.  They were all just such great friends, such great artists, such great people.  They were like a fun club that I’d dissed, but now wanted to join because it was just so cool.

I was impressed, and mighty ashamed of myself.  There’s always so much more going on in life than can be ascertained through the filter of our own experiences, our own prejudices, though; I’m chalking this up to a learning experience. And I do hope to have many more. 

There’s a lot I needed to do tonight, and coming home stumbling drunk at 7pm didn’t really help that.  It was a long and ridiculous day, and when the opportunity presented itself to meet a few friends after work, yeah, I took it.  And Grey’s Anatomy is a re-run again tonight, so here I am.  I’m staring at the phone, at three missed calls, and listening to a voicemail I’m not planning to return from my most recent ex-boyfriend.

Mr. Quiet and I dated for about a year during my last year of law school.  He was a very sweet, very nice guy, but we would have made better friends than romantic compatriots for two key reasons: (1) although I came to greatly care for him, I was really only looking to pass the time, which was incredibly selfish and wrong; (2) I was his first girlfriend ever.  His first holding-hands person, his first kiss, the whole shebang.  Definitely not my first.  It was a bit awkward, to be honest.

The thing of it was, though, that we just got along so well.  We really were glorified best friends, but of course like any relationship that ultimately ends in combustion, there were some loose wires that ultimately proved fatal.  He wasn’t sure he wanted kids, for one.  There’s nothing I want more than to be a mom.  Not too soon, sure, but I see little magdas on the horizon, no doubt.

Church was also a pretty serious divide between us.  It would take a skilled imagination indeed to cast me as any kind of devout, but faith and tradition are really important to me.  Mr. Quiet was not so much into that.  He flat-out refused to come to church with me. “It’s not for me,” he’d say.  I’d talk about how my dad’s faith has been so instrumental in the way I’ve shaped myself, and he told me straight up—more than once—that he was never going to be that guy.  It was easy for me to dismiss these differences because, once again, I wasn’t sure it was going anywhere.  The scars from some pretty detrimental relationships were still pretty fresh at that point, and I was enjoying the glow of just being, just finding appreciation in another’s eyes with minimal effort.  I later learned, and none too soon, that this just isn’t what love is about.

Just after we’d crossed the year threshold, I moved to DC. It fizzled, and fast.  He wasn’t one of those guys who can carry a conversation telephonically, and that hit hard.  I found myself saddled to a man who wasn’t there, who wasn’t want I really wanted, and who couldn’t fill the void of loneliness and longing that moving somewhere foreign necessarily opens.  I ended it, after about a month, and another month found me dating J.  Even had it never gone anywhere, I saw in J a spark I knew I’d never draw out of Mr. Quiet.

I didn’t tell Mr. Quiet about J, at least not at first; our friendship was thus (perhaps fraudulently) preserved.  I finally fessed up when I was home in August. It was awkward, but it was ok, and I legitimately thought I’d lose him.

Au contraire, the stars say, chuckling.  Our conversations remained a calm constant, but since the new year, Mr. Quiet appears to have gone aggressively on the offense, presumably on seeing that J and I are still together.  Why now? Why this week?  What, does he think I’m finally going to realize that he’s the one, leave J, and move back home?  It’s all rather depressing.

He’s been sending long-winded e-mails about how hard he’s working, and what his ambitious career plans are.  He’s asking me about nice restaurants around home, if he ever took me there (um, NO, we were in school on student budgets, but whatever); he says he’s making a list for when I come home next.  It’s like he’s painting himself as Mr. Spectacular, despite the common knowledge that I already have one of those.

But it goes on.  His last installment talked about how he can’t wait to have kids.  Then he tells me about this new church he’s found, and how he goes to the 8am mass Sundays before heading to the office to bill more hours.  He said he read the whole bible last year, and this year would like to really study it.  He says he never realized how spiritual he was. 

Ok, hold it, wait just a moment.  He’s no longer playing fair.  I feel like I’m being manipulated, which hurts a little bit because really, aside from the selfishness and J-concealment, I really thought we were on pretty solid ground as friends.  I also don’t really like that this seems to have come positively out of nowhere.  Where were these pages of perfection when I was trying to make it work?  Why now, now that I finally feel happy and settled?  I think it’s possible that I may have hurt him far more seriously than I realize.  For this, I am truly sorry.

She smiles when, every afternoon, she laces up her toeshoes.  She’ll tell anyone how much she loves it. I think about it all the time, she says; I’d live in the studio if I could!

Her face can lie, but her heart can’t.  The mirror is her lover, but her nemesis.  It magnifies every flaw.  How her bun doesn’t quite lie flat; they way her plie isn’t quite as deep; the arch in her leg that is just this much shy of conformation.  She becomes a creature of self-loathing.  It’s an addiction, this idea of perfection; there’s a formula, and the longer she stands in critique, the harder it will be for her to accept the reflection.

She’ll spend five years and three Christmas breaks chasing perfection, and hurting herself along the way.  Rehearsals early in the morning till late at night while her friends are out skating, out skiing, out shopping.  “I have a goal,” she’ll say; “I have a calling. They’ll see.”  The friends will eventually tire of watching her as a court dancer, as sugarplum fairy; they won’t understand her exuberation at being second understudy for Clara. The invitations to come over, to hang out, to sleep over will slowly peter out.  She won’t notice, not at first.

The love of a few will eventually pull her out, change her views, and put meat back on her skeletal ballerina’s frame.

There are dark chapters in each of our lives.  Mine begins like this. Every Christmas, when we go en masse to the Nutcracker, it closes when I realize all that I have, all that I am, and all that I have become.  To all the other Clara hopefuls out there, past or present, hang tight. 

Once upon a time, in a far away land, I went to (and graduated from) law school.  It was, as many of mine tend to be, a error of thunderous proportions. However, the experience left me with a couple of assets.  (a) a J.D., which sometimes gets whipped out to intimidate losers at bars (Lame guy: “What do you do?” Me: “Who, me? Oh, I’m an attorney); (b) a license to practice law in a far-away state, which basically means I pay the bar association a preposterous dollar amount every year for the privilege of legitimately claiming (a); (c) an impressive bookshelf full of very heavy books, like the con law book that tonight killed an insect in my apartment.  A big insect.  A big, suspiciously roach-like insect in my apartment.  My seventh floor apartment.   

I distinctly remember reports of roaches in the apartment reviews I read before I moved out here.  I live in a very modern high rise on, as noted, the seventh floor.  I am a very clean girl.  Okay, sure, there are some crumbs in the cracks where my cabinets don’t quite seal and where my vacuum doesn’t quite reach, and my recycling has been sitting out for a few days.  But seriously?  

There I was, washing dishes from the gingerbread dough I’d just finished, and then a big crumb seemed to just fall out of the cabinet under the sink.  Then it started moving.  It had these alarming little tentacles, or feelers, or whatever, and I screamed.  I’m only an occasional screamer, but this brought out the worst in me. It froze, and I busted to the bedroom for the biggest, baddest law book I could find.      

My vengeance came in the form of Constitutional Law,  Fifteenth Edition.  1500+ pages of pestilence-destroying goodness.  Ah, the founding fathers would be so proud.  Or, maybe not.  I hurled that bastard of a book very, very hard at my trespasser.  I’ve heard that roaches are hard to kill, that they can flatten themselves very small, and can even crawl out of vacuum cleaners.  My mom told us all these stories when we were growing up; her kind of “uphill both ways to school” kind of tale about how hard things were where she grew up, and we should be so grateful for our happy west-coast existence, where there are no snakes/poison ivy/humidity/roaches/hellfires and damnation, etc.    

This fucker was no match for the United States Constitution, however.  He was crushed.  Absolutely pulverized.  After a calming glass of wine, I scraped his guts off of my tile, and launched into a seriously intense deep cleaning session which is still, in fact, underway. The unknown is petrifying.  How did he get here? Why did he come? Am I that dirty? Did he walk up seven flights of stairs to come and hunt me down? Also, he was kind of small.  Maybe that’s why he was so easily overcome.  Are there more of him? Is his family planning a stakeout? I keep thinking that every cabinet I open, every drawer I pull, will yield an angry army of bugs, like in the movies.  Like Pacific Heights, right, where the bugs just, like, come pouring out of everything.  It’s all very disturbing.    

Thank GOD I’m going to J’s tonight (bearing gifts of gingerbread, hooray!).  I do not think I shall mention the roach.   

I take little risks every day. I drive faster than I should; I drive, period. I compromise my privacy online, both by sharing data and information, here and elsewhere. and I order things, relinquishing that little cvr or whatever number on the back of my credit cards. I hold my breath in tunnels. I rely on a little pill to keep me from being mom until I want to be.

There’s something in me that’s crying out to push the boundaries. It’s a little voice that says, ah, come on, there’s got to be more than this. It was that voice that said hey, let’s do something radical, and left me packing boxes to ship cross-country, changing the plates on my car, and learning new way home to a new home, across foreign rivers and badly signed highways. Some days I catch myself, and say WHAT was I thinking? What was it that prompted me to venture off like this, to see what there was to see?

I’m generally a boundaries girl. Draw me some black borders, a “do not cross this line” scenario, and I’m happy. No boundaries, I’m liable to run amok on you. I was always the child that needed the firm hand, the hard spanking, the clear instructions. I’m detrimentally good at entertaining and amusing myself; always have been, always will be.

I suppose I could cast my move out here as a wild abuse of freedom. I’m freee! Time to be irrational!

I don’t let myself off that easily, though. I really think I moved here not just because I could, but because I wanted to try something new; I wanted to take a risk. It’s human nature, really, to take ownership for where you are and what you have. For a long time, my life was largely handed to me. Now I’m more in control. I’ve wielded the marker, and I draw my own boxes. Sometimes my lines are wobbly, sometimes they’re misinformed, but I’m learning and growing and trying.

I still don’t know exactly why I did it, what prompted me to take my life into my own hands like this. Some part of it’s inevitable, sure, but I took the whole “move out, move on, be an adult” to a new extreme by essentially leaving the familiar behind. Risky, yes, but exhilarating just the same. The feeling’s not new. It’s the same, albeit differently translated, in my sister, getting married; in people having kids; in any number of major shifts. It’s like, ok, life, here I am, and I’m ready to be in charge. Let’s take a new path. It’s all too short to second guess, you know? Sometimes a drastic change is what’s needed; a risk to spice things up and keep life on its toes.

Two years ago, I never would have seen myself here. I’m pretty glad about that. I’ll tell you a ballpark picture of where I expect to be this time even next year, then hope to hell I’m wrong. I like the spontaneity, the unexpected joys and trials of everyday. The details that defy definition, in other words.

The creak of the kneelers, the smell of the incense, the way the fading light manages to penetrate the leaded images in the windows–all of these things remind me that it’s been far too long since I’ve been to church.

For reasons largely unknown, I made women’s prayer group a priority this week. I met up with them after holy hour Thursday. My connection with these girls began as part of my initiative to be more religious; to rediscover my Catholicism; to find community when I first moved here. I met with the women’s group regularly for a few solid months, then tapered a bit, then sometime early summer quit completely.

For some reason, though, they wouldn’t quit me. Some people you can just shake with a “I am going to ignore you 100%, I won’t return your calls and I’ll delete your emails” strategy. These girls? Not so much. It wasn’t that I hated them, or that we had some kind of falling out. It’s just that they weren’t like me. They weren’t what I thought. We didn’t have anything in common–nothing of real substance, anyway. Sure, we had our faith. But did we? I found in them a breed of uber-Catholics that (maybe tragically?) I just can’t relate to. I’ve never seen anything like their dedication, their whole-hearted everything-Catholic mentality.

I love the tradition of the church, and I love the peace I feel there. It isn’t my life, though–I don’t my shape myself or align my identity around being Catholic. I have plenty of friends who aren’t even Christian, much less who aren’t Catholic. Even within the church, I’m not wholly integrated. I don’t know all the saints, I can’t recite any portions of the catechism, there are plenty of prayers I’ve never memorized. Blame my progressive west-coast Catholic school for that. In my school, we learned about religions of the world. We were taught Catholic values, certainly, but we were also taught tolerance. We learned (gasp) about sex and, drop dead now girls, birth control. I never learned how to pray the rosary.

My first women’s group meeting should have proved to me that I didn’t belong. “Instead of our usual Bible study, I thought we’d all pray the rosary tonight,” the pseudo-leader said. And ALL THE WOMEN BUSTED OUT ROSARIES! Like, from their purses! I have a rosary. Somewhere. It certainly isn’t on me. I pulled the hair elastic off of my wrist, and played with it as if it was a set of beads. Hi, I’m magda, and I’m pathetic.

I think my attendance at these girls’ meeting was born of some larger desire to find something deeper. I don’t know if I’ve found it, but I think I’m getting somewhere.

Between their hard-line, “must find a devout Catholic husband and have 10 babies” goals and my laissez-faire “yes, I’m sleeping with J, who’s sort of Jewish, but I still want some semblance of meaning in my horribly secular life,” there’s got to be some sort of amiable middle ground. (And no, I do NOT make the above admissions to these girls. Is there a better way of saying, hi, I’m evil and going to hell? Curious). I’ll be the first to admit that I have a lot to learn. There are so many ways for me to improve myself, it’s quite shocking, really. But they, too, could be more open, more realistic, more accepting.

In the meantime, it’s December! Hooray! Less than a month until Christmas. I’ll always love the Catholics for their celebrations, and Christmas surely tops the list. The parties, the colors, the warmth, the drinks. Ah, the drinks. Show me a church that loves drinking as much as the Holy Church of Rome, and I’ll show you … no one.

When cars honk at me when they drive by, I may glare or flip them off.  There’s a smile somewhere inside me, though.

When a waiter leaves his name and number on top of my receipt when I’m out with my girlfriends, I’ll call him a creep, but I really kind of like it.

When strangers on the train ask for my card, I don’t give it out; but really, I’m flattered.

Notwithstanding, when I look in the mirror, I’m sometimes repulsed with myself.  I call myself uncute; undeserving; unattractive. It’s like I’m a different person, inside versus outside, and it’s more than a little bit unsettling.   

There surely must be a balance, somewhere between my insecurities and image anxieties and the world of cheap compliments.  Maybe some of the honks and numbers and requests are sincere, but maybe they’re not; maybe I’m only desirable when it looks like there’s something in it, a cash reward, each dollar spent earns a point towards valuable merchandise!  

In so many ways, this is where I see J as something of a savior, a hero, a cheering crowd that loses no intensity despite the sleet and pelting rain on the playing field. He loves me even when my tears have left black trails down my cheeks, when my hair is unruly and ridiculous, when I angrily hang up the phone and pout that I can’t go out because I have nothing to wear, and I’ll never be cute enough to be seen by society, ever again.  Little by little, his constant presence reassures me. I’m sure that I frustrate him, but he sticks by me just the same.  He holds my hand and pulls me out, dripping, from my dark pools of pity and self-loathing.  His love, he gives freely; his appreciation, his adoration, his absolute admiration is apparent.  For the first time in cognizant memory, I feel wholly loved by another.  His love is building me to be something beautiful, and it’s a beauty I (at last) can understand.