Today marks nine months of being with Eric. It feels ceremonious in a way. Like, I have come so far in my life and I have learned so many lessons, this is my reward. It's been worth it. It really has. The lengthy relationship drama I endured throughout the course of college and afterwards... and the volatile "single years" following college... all of it was worth it. I ended up with someone who can make me happy on all of the levels I need to be happy. He supports when I am weak and makes me laugh even when he's not trying to... and he loves me. He really loves me. More than I thought anyone could ever love me.
Anyway. Besides that, I thought of my novel today. Is it worth finishing? With this final distance I have achieved with Eric, could I give it the finishing touches it needs to be complete? If nothing else, it would be nice to have closure. And nice to work on something creative in that vein again. I've been saying I need to start writing again... maybe finishing the novel will satisfy that urge. Especially sinec things at home are sort of... uncomfortable right now. A little tight around the waistline. I need to breathe on my own accord. Even falling asleep last night, I was happy for the air in front of my face and my own arms around my back. There is no question of the necessity of Eric, there is only question of my own self-security and confidence.
There will be closure and there will be satisfaction.
It's getting to the point in Fresno where the air starts smelling like heated blacktop, warm dirt, mosquitos and hot olives smashed on the sidewalk. I can still get out of my car without immediately losing breath (heated air not providing enough oxygen in some way), but I can't walk from my car to my apartment without getting a line of sweat under my bra, under my hair.
We sleep with the fan on, window open, but we only turn the air conditioner on for a few minutes when we first get home.
I watched him sleeping this morning, a bead of sweat on his forehead. He felt me watch him, brought me closer, and the dampness of my face on his neck wasn't uncomfortable.
It's getting to the point in Fresno where I can wear skirts, but it's not to the point where I can go swimming yet. He told me he's safe in our love. I told him I love him more today than yesterday (a little bit extra in love with him, is what I said).
I will try to wear my hair down as much as I can, but it's getting hot. I might have to pull it back so he can see my whole face. Last night at 11:30, he went to the store to get me allergy meds. He begged me to let him go. "So you can sleep," he said.
so i haven't been blogging as much as i said i would. i know. bad. but i have to work even more now than i did before because i owed
are you ready?
742 dollars in taxes.
now, for someone who makes that much every two weeks, that is NOT COOL. not cool at all. so i have to up my work habits for a little while until that can get paid back into savings. sucks. so bad. sucks so, so so bad.
anyway, this weekend was good times. easter. went out dancing for the first time in a long time ... which was super fun (even though i fell in someone's vomit and had to walk home to change... and walk back)
and every day, i realize more and more how much in love with eric i am. and how good we are. it's never ending, never stopping... it's exactly what love should be.
Not so full of moxie and viscosity today. Feeling more like... full of cotton and mold. Just... off. I wrote Eric a long email this morning and he wrote me one back explaining why I was feeling the way I am feeling... he was, of course, right. Long weekend, not enough release, too much stressful design project bullcrap, family pressure still builds, we are not the same as we were in the morning time, not enough release, not enough release, not enough release! Everything is just misaligned, you see, like a table with muddled cellpadding tags. Slightly off. I cried on the phone with Mary today but not on purpose. Just let a little steam off. Hot, steam tears.
Anyway, this weekend I go to see Emily Roellke, Lauren Santiago, Melanie Nyema, and Lizzy Carley. This will be a good thing. I am wanting to move away from moldy cotton insides and get back to viscous moxie. I love Eric, at least I rest my head on that.
Second graders today. It's the kind of class that has 18 super industrious little kids and two total tyrants that cannot sit still, keep their hands to themselves, or keep from crying over everything... makes the day interesting enough. Lots of tattle-tales.
I'm stressing pretty hard about my credit card debt. I know that I can get through it, obviously, but there are days like today where I really wonder when I will ever get out from under the shadow of it. Probably when I have a decent job, right? I mean, I HAVE a decent job now, but any extra goes towards moving to Portland, so there is no room for paying off any cards.
What sucks is that if I really want to go back to school to get my degree to move forward with what I want to do, I am going to get further in debt. Debt, debt, debt. I guess the idea is to stay afloat with little nylon patch kits until you can buy a new boat.
In other news, I stayed the first night at my parent's house in a long time last night. It was nice to sleep in the smell of my parent's heater and shower in my old shower and see my parents before work in the morning... but there were three times in the night when I woke up, wanted to find Eric's arms, and fell back asleep, cuddling myself and the sheets instead. Finally, the day has come when my arms own a home other than those empty sheets.
In conclusion (don't you love conclusion paragraphs that start like that?), children are children, debt is inevitable, and love is in the air. Not bad.
In the midst of my most fulfilling experience, Eric, I have realized that I am missing out on some other fulfilling experiences that I once held my heart inside of: namely... writing. So the blog will return, hopefully, much more frequently than it has been around as of late.
We've been doing a lot of graphic design. A LOT. Samples:
There is a bit of time that I miss... that time when I was in Vancouver. I would come home from my twelve hour days of work and sit at my computer. IM Vicki. Email Micah. Call Lauren. But now, I don't have that time. I come home to Eric and we feel ourselves in love and we work hard on graphic design and we laugh and play and love... but there is no reflection time. There is no time for letters and words and moments of quiet concentration. I want that back. Eric does, too. He looked wistfully at his guitar last night while we finished up some Dreamweaver stuff.
I haven't played my guitar in a long time, he said.
Me either, I thought. I touched the pen inside my palm and rolled it over a couple times. I gotta start writing again, I realized.
Not poetry. Not emails. Not blogs. WRITING WRITING. Stories about trips to the zoo and too-short pant legs and what it means that my cousin Matt was hit by a car and killed two weeks ago and why I can't get my brain or heart to wrap around the reality of that. How my family's face looks every morning, inside every phone call how their voice is cracked... how silent it is at night, how echoingly silent it is.
And then I realized it, too. There are more things in this world to write about than love. There are more things in this world to write about than J and his effect on my heart... the pain of college community... the ache for love.
There are more things in this world to write about and I am able to see them now, because my road-weary heart is full of the One and I don't have to worry about love anymore because I am overflowing... so I can see the importance of other immense things: the shortness of life. The beauty of my family's love. The emptiness of the world and the fullness of our hearts.
There is much to write about, and I have to make time for it.
