Pathetic, just pathetic, this no-writing thing.

For the first time in a while i have the house to myself for the
evening. I like my solitude- I've filled the time with things I've been
meaning to get to, as well as little things to pamper myself. Tristen
will come home in the morning and find I've painted my toenails, done
the dishes, and gotten oil pastel under my nails in my studio. I've
petted Audrey and the bunny, and made myself some peanut butter toast.
Dorked around on the computer. Made a cup of tea. Process and nurture.

A lot has happened over the past couple weeks, I suppose. A lot has
happened over the past six months. I guess I haven't been able to
figure out how to write about it without getting caught up in the
details of my daily dramas, and these significant things have been
passing me by, unremarked.

A year ago? I was with Bryon, halfheartedly planning a trip cross
country which started off as pure wanderlust, and then developed an
itinerary. I guess my heart just wasn't in it, philosophically or
emotionally. Everything in my soul revolts against having such definite
things- plans are boring.  After all, wherever you go, that's
where you are. Journey, and not destination.

Six months ago I made my great escape- not to the desert like i'd
hoped, but to my friend's futon for refuge. My home and everything i
had was in Jamaica Plain,  that little hipster art mecca
neighborhood I adored. Suddenly i was transplanted across the city to
Malden, a drab little blue collar hood which was inhospitable turf for
a strange-ish girl like me. I found solace in the fact that i had been
born in that town, in a hospital that no longer existed, and maybe
being there was a sign of a renaissance. Or just a longer bus ride to
anywhere. Most of my material life ended up in storage, the stuff that
furnished my old life condensed into a sad little room and a uhaul key
on my keychain. I had no job- since I'd  long ago quit my
fulfilling art-maven occupation in hopes of bailing town with the ex-
now i had no room of my own, no computer, no boyfriend, no permanence.
In a way, I thrived on my upturned situation. I suppose I could have
succumbed to the wilting realization that everything i had was suddenly
taken from me, but instead I somehow took the blank space that was
handed to me and filled it with everything i could muster. I went crazy
reckless for a month or so, flirting, running around the city till the
wee hours, meeting crazy, happy, mean, frantic party people. I learned
to salsa dance. I went for a plane ride. I got in trouble. I wore my
hair in pigtails, and vamped up my old mojo. I walked in the rain at
night with headphones on, just like old times. It was grand.

My compadre in all of this was an elfy boy from the backwoods of Maine,
a discombobulated chef turned ninja turned sorry drug addict who served
as my dance partner and party-sherpa. We went out nearly every night,
ran through most of the money I had left, and spent most of the
daylight hours sound asleep. I think i might have loved him a little
bit just because he was so goddamned lost, and I was feeling a little
half-lost myself. Unfortunately, the mooching started to wear thin
after a few bitter nights and misadventures. I guess there comes a
point where you have to realize that you can't fix someone, kick their
ass into gear, or nurture them into an epiphany when they won't do it
for themseves, and you gotta kick their sorry slacker ass to the curb.
Poor guy- I sent him packing to home his mother in Maine. After
everything, he had the gaul to accuse me of failing him. I nearly took it to heart, but instead I decided to save myself, and reconsruct my life.

But then, one afternoon while standing at the bus stop, the whole of my
life was changed. Naw, it would be a lie to simplify the moment and
claim that it alone had earth shattering consequence, but that
renaissance i mentioned before had definitely come to pass. I remember
the exact moment i first saw him, walking up the block with his usual
scowl and black jacket. Every nerve in my body went: "Wuh-oh..!!"
Somehow we ended up talking on the bus (long-ass bus ride, hallelujah)
all the way into the city, and mostly I recall his now-familiar dark
eyes, the rain on the window, and an instant sense of camraderie and
trust. I think someone might have stopped us that afternoon to ask if
we were together or married, which would happen more than a few times
during our friendship. You meet someone at the bus stop, and an hour
later it's as if you have known them your whole life.

I'd like to write an ode to Tristen. But then again, I don't think the
things I might say would do us justice, and i worry about sounding
stupid or sappy. But then again-again,
why should i give a damn? I don't write to justify my heart to anyone
who reads this. I just do it because I'm at home alone, my toenails all
painted, my art pinned to the wall, and his stray sneakers tossed
haphazardly under the chair. The moment moves me, now that i'm finally
home....content in my solitude, missing him a little bit, and knowing
he'll be home tomorrow. That's a good enough ode for the one I love,
and for the knowledge that things happen just the way they ought.

I have a big bruise on my hip, and I have eaten all the snacks in the cupboard. The chocolatey ones, at least.

Bedtime in this house is like one of those sleepover parties you go to
as a kid. It's all giggling and snorting and blanket-monsters and
cracking jokes and romp-stomping around the house until a grownup
hollers from upstairs: "WILL YOU DAMN KIDS JUST GO TO SLEEP ALREADY?!"

except we're the only grownups around here. bahahaha. right.

I am so graceful. This was me, scampering across the floor at two am, as Tristen describes the scene.

"hee hee hee!"

and then

WHUMP

I fell on my ass.

Apparently, i wiped out on a wayward sock. Ow.

whoo-bah.

dunno, just felt like saying that.

Last night I walked home from Harvard Square. Wait! let me repeat that, just to savor the typewritten sound of it...walked...home ...from Harvard.
Oh, yes. 
I can't decide if it's because of the Harvard bit -I'm meandering
distance from the neighborhoods I like- which have more than a little
history and sentimental value in my life- or if it's because I finally
have a place of my own somewhere, where I can wander home on a spring
afternoon.
I walked down little cambridgey side streets with close-knit green and
yellow houses and teensy lawns, a used bookshop, the chatter of
sparrows in the branches overhead, damp sidewalks, lopsided telephone
poles, a broken chair left on the curb.......past the house on Albion
St where I got my first taste of urban life.....the playground where I
used to go, my first time walking by myself in the city. When I walk
here, I am walking home, but walking through my thoughts and memories.
I could grow to love it here.

I am homesick for Jamaica Plain sometimes. But it's the way you feel
homesick for something you can't go back to, and I know JP isn't the
same. My life, the way it was- is  now 98% percent altered. I
haven't written much because I have no idea how......so much has
happened.......I
still have a chaise and a guinea pig, that's about it. I tried to move
back  to JP for a little while, but it seemed like everything was
fighting against me being
there.  Move on, the world was telling me, you won't find your
sanctuary in this place anymore. I could be really angry about it, I
guess. The broken-hearted bit, being
kicked out of my home and treated like a pariah, having to put most of
my belongings in storage, all the bitter, psychotic, extreme, nasty
people who
tried to get in my way, all the days I wanted to give up,  be just
as cold and mean as everything else, and not give
a freaking damn anymore. Yargh.

But then again, there are the people who stuck by me. I think about
them, now that it's springtime again, and on my long walk home I
realized that all these tribulations put me right where I ought to be.
I missed the bus one day, and even though it made me fifteen minutes
late for something insignificant, I was there at the right time waiting
for Tristen to walk around the corner and say hello. Things happen the way they ought to, I suppose.

So I walked home from Harvard Square yesterday and thought about
things. I plunked down on my chaise lounge and watched the rest of the
spring afternoon dissolve into evening. Tristen came home with a flower
for me, fed me some salad, and later scooped me up from my nap and
snuggled me back to sleep.

Home, again.

• new jobby-job, pseudo managing a tea cafe: check.
• extra jobby-job, teaching art to kiddoes: check.
• consolidation of my worldly posessions under one roof: check
• said roof being my awesome new apartment in a neighborhood i like: check.
• cohabitation with best pal/ boyfriend in lovely apartment: check.
• general purging of nasty, negative, spiteful persons from my existence: check. Grr.
• internet, telephone, and other systems of communication re-established after an agonizing hiatus: check
• a whole new life/ state of mind/ outlook on my future: check.
• near-return to the face of the earth: CHECK!

(I miss my mom, though. I need to go home soon.)