introspective periscope : peeking inside since Y2K ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- date yourself sunday night - 13 july 2014 "just to be there in the morning with the sun coming through the trees...well, you know, there ain't no place i'd rather be."~frank black it has been a nice weekend to myself. no trips out of town, no meet-ups with potential pals here. just me. sammy. the black lodge and the woods. i'm getting so good at being alone. i'm back in the swing of things at work and feeling better...which i presume means that my vitamin d is finally going up, maybe? or maybe i just needed to dig out of some rut...i let myself sink so far under, after all. i woke early yesterday morning and headed to the woods. we got in just about 4 miles, taking the trails around the perimeter of the bangor city forest. with no pressure to get back home and get a shower before work, we took our time a little and i was way less nervous about how far we were getting from our starting point. i've gotten lost in there once before. yesterday, i didn't much care. there was a nice breeze, it was sunny, and it was comfortable in the dappled shade of so many trees. i was thinking about where my head was this time last summer...thinking about how i was craving getting the hell out of pittsburgh to be anywhere else. how i wanted to reclaim some of those things that i lost in those years because i was just realizing how long it had been since i'd done any of them. that's what bothered me the most, i guess...i let myself get lost there somehow after i'd spent all that time figuring out who i am. maybe i just wanted to help him be what i knew he could be. my focus was on him whether he ever understood that or not. convincing him that he was smart enough to go to school for whatever he wanted. convincing him to try. making our shoestring budget work, year after year. in those years, i stopped reading, really. that's something that strikes me so much now. i've got so many books i want to read. i used to envy him his hours spent with library books while i was working. i stopped drawing for a long time except maybe a random doodle on a note left in the kitchen for him. the only thing about me that really seemed to survive us was my cooking...because it was one of the only things i could do that i knew made him happy. i know he loved the meals i made for us. i didn't write anything for over a year towards the end. my imagination was dulled, i trudged through days. there were times that it was harder for me to conceal and those were bad times for both of us. i refuse to do this to myself again. i'm surprised how quickly i've settled back into old old routines...getting up early, staying up late. eating when i'm hungry. music on almost all the time to sing along loudly (the neighbors are out of town) and take an occasional time out from whatever i'm doing for a little dance party. these walks in the woods are no doubt the remedy, helping me clear my head and think about what i enjoy again. as much as i love getting to the city (any city) at this point, i know that i cannot leave the things that bother me behind there. they accumulate, building up and suffocating me. i need to be able to be outdoors in a space like my forest more frequently...it has changed how i feel about almost everything for the better. i've been here for two and a half months and i'm finding my routines. it's strange on the weekends to know that i have no plans, nobody with whom to share the time. the thing is, it has been so long since i've had no plans. there is something sad but freeing about it. i start making lists of things i have to do but then i realize that if i don't get to everything, it's okay right now. right now, i just want to enjoy being where i am, doing what i am doing. it'll all get done eventually, anyway. i love the feeling of just not worrying about meeting up with someone for dinner and having the house cleaned up and the food ready to go and the games out to play and...all of it. i love that, don't get me wrong. there is something that makes me so happy about feeding the people i love and spending time with them...but those were becoming the only times i was feeling useful or happy. i want to be happy more often...content where i am, no matter where that happens to be. i remember how i started keeping saturdays sacred for awhile there. i was trying to carve out time for myself in a home where there wasn't much to be had. holing myself up in the dining room to write and listen to music while he disappeared into some video game or other. sometimes, our saturday nights were also date nights--usually dinner in. i don't think i should stop having date nights, even if there is nobody to date right now. i think it's still important to take a night to just have a nice dinner that took some time to put together...some candles, some nice music. a movie, perhaps. reading. this weekend, i did that very thing. i spent saturday with sammy in the woods and grilled something for dinner and lit candles and just enjoyed doing something a little nice...even just for myself. i ate all the brussels sprouts i wanted and didn't worry about there being enough for someone else. how have i not had brussels in over two months? my friend tom said something online about eating at a burger king alone and feeling more lonely than he had in his life. i had a pang of empathy...there are places i want to try here but i haven't really gotten to where i want to go out to eat alone again. it has been a lot of years since i've done that. i remember i used to write and read on my own that summer i lived in the country. i'd go out for breakfast alone and it was one of the best things about that summer after i got through the first time. i might do that for my next date night. i might take myself out...because it's been too long since anyone has. i guess this will be like my sister buying herself flowers every week? to celebrate a little, on this first self-date saturday, i even had a little silver box for myself, a tiny gift of jewelry that i'll need for when the baby comes, anyway. practical self-love, guys. i spent the today catching up on all that sleep i've been putting off (i told you i'd catch up, didn't i?) i talked with my dad--he never calls me. he asks about the baby. he misses my mother who is on a vacation in south carolina. he thinks i should name the baby dean. or deana. or nadeane. i'm not naming this kid ANY of those, pops...sorry. i had a video chat with rachel who pointed out that my boobs are gigantic and i'm only slightly more self-conscious about them. they're taking over everything. i bought all the avocados at hannaford's and drove to the neighboring town for a calzone for dinner because it was too hot to cook in my little kitchen. so much for moving the furniture around, i guess. it was just too hot. tonight, it is raining, finally. the temperature has dropped off a little and the rain and wind are picking up...it will be a good night for sleeping. i read that i'm going to keep getting more and more tired again...i feel like i can't sleep enough right now. maybe the high doses of vitamin d and super b will fend off some of that because there is only so much summer left around here. i swear the tiger lilies always tell me when things are peaking. my blueberries will be ripening soon. cal is coming to net them so the birds don't get at them. i swear to you, america....i'm going to lay in the grass and shake those bushes and let blueberries just rain in my mouth. that's a thing i can do, right? we. shall. see. xo, jones ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- .what came before. - .what happened next. a diamond at the bottom of the drain - 20 october 2017 |
||||||
|
||||||