Horoscopes like this one make me glad I was born a Pisces:
Applying your efforts toward a higher goal might be more important to you than to anyone else. Others question your motives or ask you to do additional tasks for them. This pulls the rug out from under you and saps whatever energy you have. Make a conscious decision to keep your head above the waters of irrational self-doubt. As usual, your instincts are trustworthy.
Wonder of wonders, I dig every word of that.
It’s true that my instincts about people are really good. I should trust that truth – and myself! – more often. Putting aside initial negative impressions never serves me well. When I dislike someone viscerally, there is always a reason, even if I don’t know yet what it is.
+++++
What a week. Not Paris Hilton, the immigration bill or that found kidnapped girl in Hartford. Me again.
A few days ago, just when I was literally on the point of making a huge mistake, I heard some news. It was bad enough that I actually started a brand-new truly anonymous blog. I wrote a vitriolic post; a real doozy! I was so vexed I got terse, which is about as angry as I get. I thought I would find it satisfying, but I was wrong, so I’m back.
Here I will say merely this:
First, I and only I make decisions for me, and no one but me had anything to do with my seemingly abrupt decision to resign. It’s laughable to pretend otherwise.
Second, I am thankful that I discovered what the “word” really is before I embarrassed myself by asking to come back. I have heard some crazy talk, some of it truly ridiculous, some of it predictable enough to bore me, some of it even rather enlightening. I could bitch and moan or whine and complain or even gloat, but I have no appetite for that. My switch has been firmly set to off.
Instead, I will cut my losses and stop looking back. Being betrayed by someone I considered a friend is of course always painful, but this time I am relieved. I am relieved that my eyes were finally opened to that toxicity before I unwittingly offered up any additional ammunition.
There’s a silver lining. I’ve also seen/felt support where I didn’t expect it, which I appreciate more than I can adequately express in words. So the unexpected discovery of the complete toxic package – toxic friend, toxic advice, toxic gossip – is totally tempered by the discovery that some other friends are more real and true than I had ever suspected.
The above four paragraphs are more than it’s probably safe to say about the present. Me and my big mouth again . . .
Anyway. I have less than two weeks before I head back to New York, which is a good thing because I’m getting bored, and for me boredom invariably leads to trouble, even if that trouble is “only” sadness. So we’ll nip that in the bud, cull it and toss it in the bin, where it can lime to its heart’s content with my toxic friend and toxic job.
That being finished, I make a commitment to myself to WRITE OUT LOUD!
(Yes, like a Sharpie.)
I won’t demand from myself any particular frequency, because then I’ll end up with a bunch of insipid horoscope- or lyric-related posts, and I’d rather focus on quality, not quantity. This post, for example: I wrote it longhand on Sunday; it is Monday now as I sit here typing it offline, and I may not actually post it until Tuesday. I submit that even if it bores you senseless, it’s still better than three silly and superficial musings.
This flexibility is especially important now, because we are – as the title may have alerted you – going back to roots. Roots in this case being late 2003 in Amherst, where the Letters from Grenada story begins. Arbitrary, that, but I have my reasons, as you’ll see, the primary one being that you have to start somewhere.
As one of my favorite non-toxic friends enjoys pointing out from time to time, I’m nearly two years late on this project already. That, plus the fact that I’m only happy if I’m writing, and last but certainly not least, that I keep catching myself staring into the abyss, is more than enough reason for me to get it in gear already.
***
A rather long and even more winding road led to Amherst. Early that fall, some things – the condition of my hair, my book collection, the cool weather of the Berkshire mountains, the awesome house my brother and I had rented, my relationship with my pets, and the sheer number of hours I could devote to listening to NPR, not to mention walking around campus and town blending in seamlessly with the undergraduates – some things in my life were quite good.
The shadow-side included a dwindling bank account, a pathetic job market, isolation from my friends, missing my mother and resenting her for not being there, and no internet connection. I coped.
I was becoming an industrious little kitchen alchemist, experimenting with my own recipes. These include:
–>my special rustic turkey chili, with hot peppers and corn and extra onions and molasses instead of brown sugar
–>frittata that called for a dozen eggs, four potatoes, a pound of bacon, a smorgasbord of veggies, lots of cheese and a couple of hours over extra-low heat in an enormous cast iron skillet
–>seared tuna! with sesame!
–>chicken breasts with broccoli and portobello mushrooms, fresh basil or oregano and balsamic vinegar, red baby potatoes, all sprinkled with olive oil and baked
I was breaking away finally from a five-year relationship with a man I deeply loved but could not live with. I was having some fun and I was very relaxed, but really I was sick with myself.
I had been like a deer in headlights, paralyzed and unable to pursue anything personally fulfilling. Had been so since before graduation more than four years earlier. Today I can finally see that in school, the personal and “work” were so very connected, that I had actually FED MY SOUL with my school work and the amazing circle of friends I had all living within easy walking distance of my house where I lived with three equally amazing roommates. My life was charmed and I was rather fulfilled and satisfied with mostly everything. So it’s almost natural that I didn’t handle much well after graduation, when I entered the “real world” and suddenly personal and work became distinct and even at odds with each other. For a while I was nice and impressive and wunderkind-y at my job. But eventually it all dissolved, after a few blatant disappointments but mostly just terminal fucking ennui. (I read an awful lot of Sartre in school, yes.)
When I thought about it – which was as infrequently as possible, unless I was feeling self-righteously indignant and in the mood for a bitch-vent session – when I thought about it I had to admit I was in this position because I’d only halfway followed my instincts. I’d gleefully ignored the opportunity to be a hedge fund manager or some kind of analyst or whatever, justifying the dismissal of such assumedly guaranteed fortune (this was 1999) by waxing on about my planned immediate and dramatic entrance into the publishing world. (Naïveté was cute on me back then. Or at least I thought it was.)
But then I didn’t. I didn’t do it. I didn’t even try!
Instead I took a job that had very little room for creativity but plenty of room for heart. That was good enough for a time, as I totally got off on the “GOOD” we were doing. But like I said, I got bored and resentful after a few years.
It took me too long to get it together to quit, so when I finally did I was drained and yes, I must admit, feeling sorry for myself . . . yet at the same time totally self-righteous. Sound familiar?
(Left out of this survey is my 9/11 experience, as well as the fire that occurred about a year later and destroyed most of my belongings, including the only copy of the book I had finally started. Those are key points, but this is background. Since it has only recently become possible for me to talk about either of those events without being overcome by emotion, I’d probably never return from that tangent. It’s certainly a part of MY story, but we simply do not have time for it now.)
Back to Amherst. There I am, the third floor all to myself in this fabulous house. I have a bedroom, an office and my own bathroom with a tub. All the things holding me back were gone – my relationship, my job, my lack of room of my own. All the conditions I had set, all the conditions I told myself had to be fulfilled and then I could write, sure, no problem, were indeed fulfilled. Yet I still couldn’t do it. I still couldn’t write. I don’t think I even tried. I wasn’t even writing email.
I said some things were good; I never said I was happy. Neighbors with apple orchards, amazing coffee and microbrewery beer and the like are nice and all, but nice is rarely enough.
So I blamed the fire. I blamed G. It had been months since we’d spoken, by far the longest time we’d ever been out of contact. I missed him terribly and finally called him one night, drunk. (Genius again.)
So when my brother and my dad got together and tough-loved me, I didn’t even resist. They were right, it was time to go back to New York and look for a job already. I had to leave Rabbit behind, which hurt, but I convinced myself it was best for him.
Strange attachment to a cat, indeed. I’d rescued him when he was maybe ten days old, and bottle fed him around the clock for a couple of months. He was gorgeous, with plush gray fur mitted with white. He was affectionate and full of personality and fat yet slinky and I think he thought I was his mother. At that moment, he was the thing in the world I cared about most.
I packed fast. Dad came to pick me up, and JUST LIKE THAT –>
I moved to the Bronx.
Posted by maria 
