Bed of My Youth

Last night as I was laying in the dream-awake state, fantasizing about some mundane detail of tomorrow, I woke myself up. Not all the way up, I just startled myself back into a lazy consciousness and for the first time in years I didn't know where I was.

There was a spot of light, or was it my imagination, on the wall beside me. For a moment that spot was the window in my old bedroom on Powell Street. A pink canopy (the canopy Mom and I argued over endlessly, her saying it was too childish, me liking the cocoon it encompassed me within) rests protectively over me as I sleep. The windchime hangs in front of the air vents, jingling in the central air, and the Degas hangs menacingly at the foot of my bed, the figures of ballerinas strange in the night light. I sleep alone with Puff and two pillows in the single bed. My door is never shut because Mom is afraid of carbon monoxide poisoning, and she'll peek in on me and open the door a little wider before she goes to bed late at night. I'm still a child nestled like an egg between Mommy and Daddy, still unable to conceive of a life outside of this bedroom. There is a lifetime of firsts ahead of me, if they can sneak in beneath the lace roof over my head and penetrate my child's sleep. My heart and body are unbroken, untouched as my mother's watchful eyes rest on me, peering through the darkness until she is satisfied I am safe in my sleep.

I woke up knowing I wasn't in my parent's house. I haven't slept in that bed in 8 years- it and my canopy are long gone along with the pink innocence I slept enveloped in. But for a moment last night, in between dreaming and waking, I thought I was in the bed of my childhood in the home of my parents. When I finally broke through the confused haze I remembered the blue attic roof and the wide empty bed I share with the cat, my fears, my tears, and occasionally a man, under a sea foam green duvet. The Degas sat beside me, but its figures have lost their menacing touch in the last ten years. Then I drifted off again, a woman once more, caught up in mundane sometimes innocent fantasies about tomorrow.

Birthday Musings

Well. Here it is. I'm about to turn 26 and in spite of being happy I am in fact nowhere near where I wanted to be at this age. And I just can't help being a little upset about it.

Yes, yes, I KNOW. That's life. I actually do understand that. In spite of all my forward planning, and all my contingency plans, it didn't work out how I wanted it to. Ok fine. It's all fine. So I'm not going to have the performing career I wanted. So instead of being engaged with plans for a family I'm single. So I got a cat not a dog. So I'm still dirt broke. So I'm working 5 jobs that are apparently leading to nowhere. So I haven't left the country since 2009. It's all good, it's just different. But the reason I get so depressed after 3 beers is because plans have been the bread and butter of my existence until now. And now I have no plans, just the moment I'm in. For a woman who writes daily to-do lists, this is not a comfortable situation to find oneself in.

This is as far as I can see: Pray car lasts until Fall 2013. Attend an MFA program somewhere in the continental US. Following degree, pray for a job and a husband. Once a job is acquired, if no husband is to be found, seek other possibilities for obtaining a child.

That's a lot of praying for a Christmas Catholic.

When taking trips I am never content to let the GPS guide me. I can't handle only knowing a turn or two in advance. I want to know the whole trip, from point A to point B, and then I'll deal with the middle details after I've seen the whole route. The problem when turning that trip into a metaphor for life is that life happens in the middle details. It's not that I can't live for the present it's that I want to know the ending before I read the book. I eat dessert first. I always ask people to spoil the ending of movies for me. To date, this has always worked out for me.

But no one has seen this movie yet and no one's serving dessert and there is no map, just road signs. And it's all right. It truly is. And it will all be all right. But for now I'm deeply unsettled and finding it difficult to let go and just let life's current carry me where it will.

It's hard for a control freak to let go. (And before you go judging me for trying to control, understand this: because I'm a control freak I'm great at my job. I just suck at relaxing.)

We were driving from Chicago to Virginia with a Brit in the back seat, no GPS, and crappy Google directions. We ended up driving through bumblefuk Maryland. Rolling hills, tiny corner grocer's.....our English friend was giddy with glee as he got a peek at "real America." And our horribly diverted path ultimately took us to our destination, but we had more fun along the way. And this is how life is. These diversions, road blocks, detours, etc that are put before us are gifts.

This doesn't solve the problem that I have no clue where my ending destination is any more and I'm a little scared.

But I look forward to the wisdom I will acquire when I pass this juncture and learn to accept that worrying about the unknown is a waste of energy. And I look forward to being a more patient, less stressed Christine on January 18 2013.

Happy birthday to me. Let's drink to gray hairs, crow's feet, and the journey.