awake

City life.... Last night I woke up in the middle of the night and couldn't go back to sleep for at least an hour. Why? Definitely more than one reason. To take a step back, I've been living in the city for almost a month now. Before moving to the nicer end of Chandler - and believe me, there is definitely a nicer end - I was living in my childhood bedroom at my parents' house, a quaint little cape set back in the woods on a back road in what could be classified as the poster-child of "small town". Where you step outside your back door and wave to your neighbors who are enjoying the summer afternoon on their bench in the shade of their giant oak tree. The same neighbors you've had for all 25 years of your life and who had not-so-typical farm animals growing up such as geese, chickens, and those goats your brother fed match-box cars, watermelon rinds, and practically the kitchen sink to.

So anyways, sparing any additional nostalgic gallavanting, I'm now on the 2nd floor of a 3-decker. The monsoon that has been the New England summer of 2009 is finally evolving into some variation of normalcy, including the humidity, the heat, and thunderstorms. Coupled with the phenomenon known as heat lightning - something that can be extremely anticlimactic when all you want is for an awful clap of thunder and pouring rain to follow a bright bolt streaking across the sky, and instead... silence.

As I'm sure every city has its own collection, Worcester has an impressive clique of tactless, disrespectful, grease monkeys that like to charge their crappy, jacked-up Hondas down Chandler at 2a.m. in some attempt to drag-race. While their muffler-lacking, imported piles of aluminum junk shift from 1st to 5th in impressive speeds somewhere between tortoise and hare, car alarms go off and join in the nocturne serenade.

And...because the night is not yet complete, the sound of clinking bottles and clattering cans pierce the din as the homeless crawl out of whatever box or gutter they're refuging in and sort out whatever they might find that will collectively in $.5 deposit form fund whatever addiction haunts them.

It's a wonder that I was only lying awake for an hour...although somehow on most nights, I'm usually able to sleep through it all. I blame the lightning.

2a.m.

Spinning. Tossing. Turning. Falling so fast. Giving up on looking ahead for what direction this may take... Instead, reveling in the moment. The hours. The words. The butterflies. How is it that so little time can feel like so much more? I wake up in the middle of the night looking for you next to me, wishing. Waiting.

Usually so methodical. So meticulous. So independent. So...me. Ignoring everything? Reason. Rationale.

So eager for whatever lies ahead. Whatever may come. Wherever this goes. So much cascades through my mind... So much has a completely different meaning if it means having you with me. Come back soon.

smoke

The countdown starts. 10 days. Wondering. Amazed really. How quickly things have completely turned around. It's already begun. Absence. The plane hasn't even left the runway yet.

Yesterday, I could only think of one thing. Walking along the narrow, bustling roads of the sea-side towns, all I wanted was to have you next to me, your hand in mine. The seagulls calling, the waves crashing on the sand, the warm breeze tickling our faces. The day was perfect... except for that. So many things I want to do... Places to go... Moments to share.

I miss you and you haven't even left yet.

candlepin

And suddenly, the clouds part. My smile has returned. My heart beats faster. My stomach ties into tighter knots. Total excitement. Eager anticipation. Complete curiousity. The fact that I have to wait is torture, but all the more worth it. Anxious to see you again. To smile with your smile. Feel your fingers entwined in mine. Perfection.

I can't smear the goofy grin from my face. I think about your words, and a tingling thrill shoots through my veins. There's so much I want to know. So much I feel like I already do. I wonder how something could be so amazing, so absolutely incredible, could feel so...right.

I started missing you when I closed the door. I'll keep missing you until you come back and I can feel your arms around me. Because "you've already got your girl".

blink

Scared of the clarity with which I see myself, how easily I understand my contemplations.... And yet I don't. Desperate to force things. Everyone around me is so perfectly happy. So content. So complete. It's like the world makes such absolute sense for anyone and everyone except me. While the stars and planets are aligning elsewhere, the world around me is spinning so fast and so out of control that things are shaking loose, coming unraveled, crashing, and all I want is the stability I lack.

Settling simply to acertaine a title, a definition, a meaning. Because outside of my own individual, complicated existence, I feel like I have none.

green light

The process of starting over... It's scary, nerve-racking, exciting, inexplicable. So hard to open up. To express those feelings that only so few know. To be myself despite the struggle and desire to be accepted. I carry my shell with me; crawling into it is so much easier. My shell...My facade?

There are rules to it all. Frustrating rules that I don't want to obey. Who decided they had the right, the gumption, the omnicience to establish such boundries. Who really cares? If things go well, why can't we just flow with that? Time frames... Safe topics... Phone calls...

I guess my feeling is just that at this age, at this time in our lives, after - and based on - all our previous experiences, we have an idea of what we want... What we're looking for. If we find it, why can't we just reach out, grasp it, and hold onto it. Why do we have to keep it at arms' length for just the right amount of time until it's permissable to clutch it close.

Eventually it will work out... Eventually I'll find what everyone else has and will share that scintellating, contended smile. I'm just impatient.

weigh

My thoughts are running away from me... Too fast and too far. Sometimes - accomplished, successful, content, happy. Others? Lonely. Sad. Lost. Failure.

I wonder where did I go wrong? What misstep did I take? Why am I so far from where I thought I'd be, and why can I not attempt to crawl out of this ditch and return to solid, stable ground. I'm struggling just to stay with the current - I've given up fighting against it. Survival. Breathe. Sooner or later, I'll wash up on shore, battered, breathless, and dripping with the consequences of my past mistakes... or I'll tumble into the rapids and over the falls. I have to fight.

Guilt envelopes me as I dwell on the life I left so far behind. Was it worth it? What did I find? My heart aches, and my arms reach out instinctively to find and embrace and recoup what I lost. But if you choose to leave it behind and not look back, is it really lost? Old dreams are dying; reincarnating into new ones...more rational ones? Rationale. What good is it? Life is built on dreams, they say.

All I can do is keep taking that next step. One foot in front of the other. Walk on. This too shall pass. Just keep on keepin' on.

"I took the road less traveled and that has made all the difference..." I seem to have lost the path.