living with abandon

Jean-Michel once explained to me, "Nothing happens for one reason alone." I've heard few things truer since.

So here's the story of the last two months:

Turning eighteen was a solid victory. Following enlightenment, and I exited the dark-ages of childhood to step into an mature, well-read, sophisticated social class that could, if it chose, buy cigarettes and lottery tickets. (If you want, said the army, you can kill people; travel abroad in peaceful countries.)

Even more glorious was the vaporization of my job at the library, which was slurped suddenly into that big political bendy-straw pundits call "state budget cuts". There was definitely a puff of white smoke somewhere when the librarian politely informed me that I would be "terminated" and my job disappeared. (Given our current governor, the phrase "terminated" feels, now, quaintly appropriate.) And that is how I suffered an unfortunate transmogrification and became a percentage of country's unemployed.

Then my boyfriend left. He departed, what seemed suddenly, for 6 months of boot camp and military training in Georgia. 3,000 miles and 3 timezones away. The day he left, something overpowered my white T-cells and I was sick with a cough, and physically miserable throughout a school week but holding too many AP classes to put them down for even a few days. Dejected, I raised my spirits the only sure way I knew: I exhausted myself, running excessive amounts in the cold night at odd hours (usually half-marathons, craved impulsively around 3AM). Once, a run lasted as long as the first Lord of the Rings movie. If I remember right, that's three hours.

Did I mention I can only run with music? Just after he had to leave, my shuffle disappeared. Imagine life, without music. Without soft sound waves to beat on the beaches of your mind.

Picture a banana-split boat, but empty.

The weeks following I found band-aides for my sanity. Fighting on the front lines was a rekindled literary obsession: poetry, a corrupt Shiv Sena in Mumbai, and an unhealthy New Yorker addiction. To buy the next issue I ran to the bookstore; 11 miles. (The New Yorker is published weekly.) With these distractions lashed in place around my heart, I found a fine balance.

Then without warning, someone bit my arm.
"To get you psyched on life," he explained.

Now I have my mojo. I'm going to Bish next week. For a week. And with a family.

I'm back, and living alone, but with abandon.