12.03.2010

All there is is silence. This bed. His bare arms wrapped around me. My face buried in his chest holding back the words I don`t know if I mean yet. If I am even allowed to mean them. He`s drifting off, I can tell because his grip around me loosens, his gentle fingers stop mid-stroke on my ribcage, I feel his warm breath on my hair slow and deepen. I raise my mouth to his one last time before he gives into sleep, which isn`t coming as easy to me. A million thoughts flitter around in my head, fluttering in time with my eyelids that won`t stay shut. My chest feels heavy and tight. I keep clenching and unclenching my jaw, grinding my teeth in time with the pulse of blood pounding in my ears. His heart beats against the side of my head out of rhythm with it.

I think about what has brought me to this moment. If it was meant, what it means now. To me, or to him. But when I begin to think about what has led me to this country, I become more and more aware that it has also led me to become suspicious. Guarded. I am wary of deceit, and all too familiar with the lies told by men to get what they want. And now, in these arms, in this room, in this tiny mountain town, I am wondering if this boy is who he says he is; and if he is so, whether or not I know who that would be, being that our mother tongues lie so discordant with the other. He stirs beside me so that his body is facing mine. His eyes open, shyly, one at a time, and he regards me with his lips curled up towards his ears-which I understand to be a look of fondness. He draws me closer to him, places his mouth to my forehead, and reassumes his place in dream.

I decide that nobody could be that cunning, that committed to subterfuge as to mislead me from the hazy edge of sleep-a decision that surprises me, considering how cynical I have become over the years-and that even if such a thing were possible I would be lucky to never find out. Hopes can only come true when there is someone there to hope them, and they become increasingly hard to hold onto the more they are veiled by disappointment. I resolve to not let myself be disappointed by this boy. 

A wise girl kisses, but never loves, listens, but never believes, and leaves before she can be left.

I'm learning how to be more grounded, how to root myself to the moment. 

Sometimes volcanoes erupt when you least expect them too, and you're left with no direction.

My life up until four days ago has been a series of countdowns. 

[827 days until graduation. 

14 days until I see Calum. 

85 days until I start university. 

35 days until I leave for Vancouver. 

7 days until I leave for Switzerland. 

2 days until Amsterdam. 

2 weeks until mom visits.

2 weeks until mom leaves. 

21 days until my period. 

A month until Budapest.

23 hours until I'm on a plane to Canada.]

Only, I never get on that plane. I never get on that plane and I am lost. 

I am so busy looking ahead of me, that I keep tripping on what's right beneath my feet. Lost in time, and the only thing I can do is live minute by minute. So for the last four days I have been doing just that. 

As liberating as it has been, I am still glad to know when I get to come home. 

Tuesday, April 27th.

On January 1st, 2007 I made a resolution to finish everything I start.

I have a closet full of knitting needles with half knit scarves. Books on bookshelves with bookmarks two thirds of the way in in. Two novels each a sixth written. Four glasses of water of varying volumes and ages on my nightstand. Pieces of music with four movements in which I have only learned one. Five thousand, five hundred, and twenty eight songs out of eight thousand, one hundred, and eighty three, in my iTunes library that I haven't listened to the whole way through.

I can barely finish my sentences.  And when I do, they are mere fragments of sentences.

Three hundred and fifty three days later and it's almost finished. Five days and the hardest year of my life will be over. I can't wrap what I learned this year around my neck, I can't quote page 250 of a Hemingway or Phillip Ball, play the double-tounged thirty second notes in Poulencs Sonata, and I will most likely pour the stale water in those glasses out. 

But this extends far beyond warm necks and literature. Beyond substance, matter, the concrete or visible. Beyond wasted glasses of water, one quarter full. 

I'm leaving with new friendships, new values, ideas, opinions, attitude. I'm leaving with a new perception, a new definition. Strength, spirit, appreciation. Awareness. Experience. Knowledge. Certainty, or a new inspiration to find it. Independence. I found the maturity it takes to be immature. Because adults are sometimes boring four-sided figures who forget how to laugh. I've learned what it takes to raise a family, what it means to be a good friend and how to tell when you've found one. I've learned how to undo belt buckles and jean buttons with one hand without looking, and how to spot a lie from even the most practiced of liars. I've learned how to drink beer without making a face, the consequences of letting a man get the best of you, the ability to say NO when I want to say no, swiss etiquette, and how to make mulled wine. 

I've learned to let loose in a country where seemingly no one knows how to let loose. 

And I've learned about myself in all of that. Accepted who I've been and where it has taken me. And I've realized everything I'm capable of despite the cruelty everyone else is capable of. 

I'm ready. For whatever lies ahead. 

I can't really say why everybody wishes they were somewhere else,

but in the end the only steps that matter are the ones you take all by yourself.

I am proud of me. And for the first time in my entire life, I don't need anyone else to be. This has been the worst, most amazing, most substantial learning experience I could have ever experienced, and I wouldn't trade it to be anywhere else. I am going to soak up every last minute of my time here, and I am going to take with me the self-certainty I deserve.

The men in my life...

You had nothing to do with it. I am where I am because of the steps I took to get here. Maybe I'll never know who I am, maybe no one CAN ever know that, but of this I am certain: who I am is strong, determined, passionate. It took an entire year of looking, and only one night to make this entire year make sense.