It is spring again.  Spring always comes so gradually, then one day I wake up and see leaves on the trees.  This was not a hard winter physically, and, compared to many, not a hard winter emotionally.  Or perhaps it was; and this time, I was just safe.

I am not looking forward to summer, for once in my life.  I suppose it has so much to do with the trauma of last summer, the trauma that still comes out of nowhere and sideswipes me.  We’re coming up on the one year annivesary of Sharon’s and my trip to Charlotte, and I still cannot find the words to talk about it.  Sometimes I come close, sometimes the words dance around my mind as I stand on the pier, overlooking the water and the mist rolling in, swirling around me, enveloping me until I am gasping for clarity of thought.  Sometimes walking down the street, standing at the corner waiting for the light to change, I almost reach the words.  And yet, at the last moment, they escape from me, like yesterday’s dreams.

Last summer was filled with so much pain. So many broken promises, shattered relationships, empty dreams.   I cannot go through another few months like that, ever.  Yet I have no reason to believe I will…no reason to believe this summer will be as heartwrenching.

This summer will be different.  I have different friends now, a different job, different plans.  I plan to stay close to home, to spend most of my time here in Schuyler county.  Mostly, now, I just really want to be alone.

Everyone always said the truth would set me free.  They never told me it would be terrifying.

 

 

The phone rang early last evening.
“Hi, my name is ________ from Houghton College.  Can I talk to Sara?”
“This is Sara.”
“Hi, Sara, I’m calling on behalf of the Houghton College Fund.  As you know, we’re…Are you okay?”
(Admist much laughter)  “Fine.”
“Um…well….can we count on you to support your alma mater financially?”

I laughed so hard the poor caller finally hung up.  In two words, though…HELL NO!

Once again, I freaked out for nothing.  I received my tax refund, which wasn’t a lot but enough to replenish my bank account, and all is well again.

 Thank God for medication.

(I probably shouldn’t post that on the web, because prospective employers will probably google me, find this, and not hire me.  Oh well.)

I saw Riverdance tonight with my grandmother, great-aunt, and my grandmother’s first cousin.  It was incredible.  And, to be honest, I was slightly annoyed that other people were on stage, and not me. 

If this is incoherent, I’m sorry…I haven’t had a day off in twelve days….sleep must come, but work comes in six hours….

People who are having a bad day: Me.

First of all, I didn’t realize that my old bank would actually close my bank account if there was a zero balance for two weeks.  This is an old account I was planning to convert to a savings account, so I had my tax refund direct deposited there.

But, no! They closed my account three days ago, and my refund, to be deposited today, is off floating in never never land.  It will be about six weeks before I actually get it, in check form now.

Also, I still live at home and work in food service, because I have no marketable skills.  Which, while I was in college, everyone told me I was worrying way too much about(graduating with no marketable skills, that is) and that things would work out. 

Guess what! They haven’t! Look who was right after all!

‘Tis a bittersweet victory…

 

 

And all I can think is–it wasn’t supposed to be like this.

I’m coming up on the second anniversary of college graduation, and I’m still working at Subway for minimum wage.  I’ve been out of college two years, and I’m still living at home with my parents working for $6.75 an hour.

Part of this, of course, is incredible lack of planning on my part.  I had intended to work a year and then go to graduate school. When no jobs presented themselves immediately, I hurried the timeline a bit and it was a disaster.

Like everything else at the moment. Graduate school at Binghamton was a disaster. Americorps was a total and complete failure, the Chernobyl of disasters.  Elmira College was a failure and a waste of money, but it did solidify that I want, more than anything, to earn my master’s in family studies and special education.  None of my classes from EC will transfer anywhere, and I’m paying back on the loans from Binghamton, but at least I know what I want to do now.

And I’m lonely.  I’ve never been this alone.  Rachel’s married and gone, and I’m left realizing that I really had no other close friends.  Oh, I did, but in the end, we weren’t really that close.  I was in their lives for enertainment, and it’s only now I realize how completely different our personalities and lives are.  There’s a movie I really want to go see tonight, and I have money in the bank–and I have no one to call to go with me.

So I will pick myself up and dust myself off, and since there’s no one home tonight, I will head on down to town and see who I see, and bring a good book and eat at Pizza Hut.

And wonder how, exactly, this all happened.

There is absolutely nothing going on in my life that would be even remotely interesting to blog about.

My back is bothering me again, but I’m pretty sure none of you want to hear about that.  I’m working thousands of hours a week, but that’s boring, too.  I want to sleep a lot more.

Mostly, I think I just want my mommy.

…Usually she was the last person to appear in the
morning–arriving flustered, handbag open, coat flapping, no makeup, cigarette in hand, some wild story to tell. She hadn’t been to bed until four A.M. She had a whale of a hangover. She’d mixed her booze badly last night. She’d met some guy and on to a party.

Her life seemed wildly haphazard to me. She was lively, scattered, funny, forever on the edge of some great upheaval or other…It always struck me that in reality she didn’t give a damn one way or the other about these little dramas. life for her was something you lived, and if you couldn’t laugh about it, if you couldn’t throw yourself in the deep end, then you didn’t deserve it.

She’d dump the contents of her purse on the table in the staff room…This was always a complex operation, but she had it down to a fast art. She’d brush her red hair, which she wore short at this time, in broad strokes. She’d take a couple of puffs on a cigarette without losing the fluency of her movement. the lipstick(usually a bright pink or something similar). Some kind of powder(always just a touch). Eyeliner(sparse). Mascara(even more sparse). A few more drags on her cigarette, a couple of slugs of coffee, and she’d be transformed from an A.M. wreck into somebody fetchingly prseentable. She always wore bright colors, and if they clashed–what the hell, it didn’t matter.
She was just over five feet tall. Her face was oval, and she had a tiny gap between her front teeth. She wasn’t beautiful in any sense of that word, but she had a delightful air of mischief about her, an impish quality, and a smart, sharp light in her eyes.
I sometimes had the vague suspicion that she didn’t have half the confidence she tried to project, that under the seemingly blunderbuss approach she took to life, the haphazard exterior and all the easy repartee with salesmen, she wasn’t exactly imbued with self-assurance: something troubled her, something gnawed at her on a level she didn’t want to explore. What did I see there? A sadness? A slight haunting? A hidden fragility? Or was I inventing a mysterious persona for her? I wasn’t sure.
I liked her, I knew that. I was intrigued by the currents of her life, stories of her mishaps. There was a Keystone Kop element about her misadventures. They always involved the wrong train, the wrong bus, a taxi to the wrong address. She had a stand-up’s sense of timing and a good line in self-derision. She disliked pomposity, people with affectations. If she had plans and ambitions, she didn’t speak about them. I felt she was just going with the flow, and yet, just underneath the surface, I suspected that, in fact, she was quietly directing the flow to go where she wanted it.”

(“I Hope You Have A Good Life”)

The Mark and Dan show

Starring

 

Keeley and Sara

 

Dan: Keeley, how did we meet? Was it through Mark somehow?
Mark: I don’t think so.

Keeley: I think, Michelle, maybe?
Dan: No, it definitely wasn’t through Michelle.

Sara: It was meant to be.

Dan: I remember the first night I ever saw you was that night you went out clubbing.

Keeley: Oh! It was because we were talking online. We met online.

Dan: You’re right, we did.

Keeley: It was the Mark and Dan show.

Dan: Right!

Keeley: It was because I said something off-color, and you IM’d me and said, Who are you?  And we got talking about how much we hated Houghton, and I’m, like, I feel clubbing, and you said, something, like, yeah, you too, or something.

Sara: I want a t-shirt screenprinted that says I hate Houghton.

Keeley: Really.

Sara: Should we do that? I’ll go to graduation if I can wear a t-shirt that says I hate Houghton.

Dan: I think they’re going to make you wear a robe.  They make you buy a robe.

Mark: I’m going to wear papal vestments to graduation.

 

Mark: What I’m saying is we all carry emotional baggage into marriage.
Keeley: Snorts. I get pretty emotional. With my baggage.

Mark: I’ll be quiet now.

Keeley: Please don’t, you set me up for some good stuff.

Mark: I don’t want history to record that you’re cleverer than I am.

Sara: Oh, no, we’re sending this to Dr. Airhart.

Keeley: Dr. Airhart, Mark has a crush on you.

Sara: I need you people.  I’m taking you with me when I move south.

 

Keeley: I want that guy there.  (Talks into the phone)  Just to let you know, a major, major hairdo just walked by us and we all stared.  She’s probably right behind me now with a butcher knife, going, “bitch.”  Back to Sara.

 

Sara: He might call the sexual assault hotline at Houghton.

Keeley: We have one?
Dan: Yeah. I’m surprised you haven’t prank called it yet.  Either one of you.

Sara: That’s a very good idea.

Dan: I’m sorry I said it.

Sara: I quit going to my lovely counseling experience. She was on to me that I was just making all this up.

Dan: Yeah, after the whole raped-by-clowns thing, I can kind of see it.

Keeley: You know what would make this funnier? You marry me.

Sara: Can’t we do that in Canada?

 

 

 

I’m still alive.

And, yes, Mark, I know you tagged me.

Speaking of Mark Lempke.

The other night, while cleaning through some boxes in my attic, I happened across an old tape recorder.  I pulled it out, put in new batteries, hooked up some headphones, and discovered that we had taped some of our fake wedding marriage sessions at the truck stop.  I listened to hours of Mark, Dan Perrine, Keeley and I drink milkshake after milkshake at the truck stop, and I laughed so hard tears ran down my face.

After finals, I shall transcribe some of it and put the best quotes up here.

 

Excerpt from the weird dream files:

First of all, I was driving a Miata, and there was a screaming kid in the car that wasn’t mine.  I think it was Jimmy, but whoever it was, it was annoying the bloody heck out of me.  I decided that the kindest thing to do would be to find a hotel and drop him off with the concierge, and never come back.

The saddest thing is, I would probably do that in real life.

So we’re driving down this long desert road, and I can’t figure out where I am.  Then he starts babbling, like babies do, except he was babbling in Russian.  And then my radio kept skipping frequencies and was only broadcasting in Morse Code. 

I woke up in a cold sweat and thought, OhmyGod, I’m now actually dreaming in dits. 

If you need me, I shall be in therapy.