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saturday morning

NP: Counting Crows - "Saturday Nights & Sunday Mornings"

Man, the holy grail of psychoanalysis must be to be the person who lands the Adam Duritz account.

It's Saturday morning. For the first time in a long while, Saturday morning feels like a grand adventure. The feeling has always been a fleeting one, but those first couple of hours, with coffee and music and interneting and reading and planning and dreaming of what the day could hold -- those are absolutely magical.

Things are moving along. I was hitting the job market rather hard for weeks, putting out tons of resumes but also being relatively picky. I landed about 4-5 in person interviews and made a trip back to St. Louis to try my luck. I ended up getting my first choice the very first morning I was in! I interviewed at 8 am, and by about 10:30 they were calling me back to say "congratulations"! Fucking amazing. It's a good job doing a variety of tech things I've done before, but with a little bit of new stuff, too. It's a solid, work/life balance oriented workplace full of nice, respectful, hardworking people, which suits me to a T. Everyone has been so kind and professional through the entire process. They're gonna pay me a little more than I make in California, even better benefits, 401K, vacation, etc. I like. My first day is August 25th, which means my absolute last day in the Bay Area is August 17th, if not a little sooner. I'm bummed because I haven't been able to give my 2 weeks' notice at my current job yet due to my boss being on a weeks-long Alaskan cruise. But I put a meeting on her calendar for first thing this Monday morning to break the news. I'm very much looking forward to getting out of here.

Honestly, I'm going to miss California very, very much. Especially the Bay Area. Especially the East Bay. Oakland and Berkeley have been incredible experiences. It's rare to find a place that seems to operate on the same wavelength as you do. Beer pubs everywhere, bookstores, a killer record store, healthy restaurants and markets, movie theaters, people walking/running/hiking/biking around the lake and to/from work every day. It's my kind of place - tolerant, diverse, interestning, but still gritty enough to separate it from SF. I couldn't live in SF, I'd be priced/hipstered out. I mean, it's bad enough over here! But as much as it is my kind of place...I can't stay here. I won't live my life lonely. I might eventually make a new nucleus of close-knit friends. But at this age? I think people's focuses are either on career or marriage/families. That's not a knock on 'em, either, but just my observation. When I think about St. Louis, I think about a place that I also love very much, but that if all things were equal, I belong in a bigger place. However, St. Louis has those people you cannot ever replace. That's where I belong. At least that's where I belong right now! Who knows where a few more years will take me -- maybe Chicago? I don't know. All I know is that if I ever try this big-city adventure again, it can't and won't be so insanely far away from the people I care the most about. I need to be within reasonable visiting range! There's been a little bit of reverse culture shock -- at least there was when I went back for my visit. But at the same time, I won't be living this goofy country/suburban wastleland life in my parents' subdivision 2 miles outside a tiny village. Well, I will be for a month or two. But before I know it I'll be back in the city, amongst the red brick and thundering buses, the Saturday market in Soulard and the smell of hops in the air.

The aftermath of breaking up with Sarah has been...interesting. We don't see each other too often, although a few encounters are impossible to avoid since most of her stuff is still here. For weeks things were totally amicable, although she was acting crazy weird and awkward every time we spoke or saw each other, if even for only a few minutes. I just figured she was stressed as hell -- what's new, eh? So, earlier this week, the night I got back from my St. Louis trip, she texts me asking if I wanted a pick-up from BART when I got back to Oakland. Hell yeah, I did! I didn't want to wait more after traveling all day, *and* pay for the cab. I thought it was a genuninely nice thing to do. Upon returning to the apartment, before she left, we sat out on the balcony talking for a bit. She looked even more nervous, and finally said "I have to tell you something". Uh oh. That phrase never bodes well. She told me that she'd been seeing someone else...that it was just a few dates, wasn't serious, and it hadn't been going on while we were still together. But oh man, hearing that was like getting sucker punched in the gut! Why was she telling me this?? What am I supposed to do with the information? I don't want it. She claimed it was purely benign, she just thought I deserved to hear it straight instead of third hand since she respected me so much. Plus, she's been going sufing again -- just getting out and doing things! All the stuff she resolutely didn't have time for when we were together. It made me feel cheated, lied to, taken advantage of, and the entire process felt nothing short of shady. I was already feeling raw, emotional and vulnerable after finally confronting some of my bottled-up feelings while on the plane back (job hunting kind of made me able to compartmentalize my relationship feelings/sadness/upsetness away, but once the job was sorted, it all came rushing back in), and to get ambushed like that upon my return...not cool. It was unfair and borderline mean and definitely sneaky.

So, I was already feeling pretty anxious and out of sorts before that, but that encounter totally flipped me over the edge this week. I've been a huge, anxious, depressed mess this week. Last night and this morning is the first time I've felt normal for a week. Part of it is that Sarah came back by on Thursday night to pick up some surfing gear. We ended up talking for a while, again, and I confronted her & ended up letting her have it about how badly she hurt me on Monday. I didn't yell at her, but I din't hold back -- I told her it was unfair, hurtful, and that it felt like she was only doing it to make her feel better. 'Cause it didn't make me feel good, and it was way way *way* too soon to even start bringing up things like that. She got really meek and shamed looking, and flat out apologized to me. Wow. She said that even though her motives truly were pure (and I believe her, at least I believe that's part of why she told me), that she shouldn't have done it. I told her that I understand, but at the same time that there's absolutely no other way I could've taken it. It was such a cathartic conversation, I felt nearly instantly better! She stayed for a bit longer, we talked & it was fun, relaxed, productive and bittersweet. That said, I depserately need to get out of California, and to put some distance and closure behind this and me and my present/future. I don't really want to see her any more than I have to right now, and once all the logistics and done, I don't want to see her again for some time. It's all far too raw now, too new, too familiar yet utterly alien.

I wake up some mornings with the strangest feelings. I miss her, but I don't miss her at all. I miss waking up with my arms around her, the way her hair smelled, and the joy of just cuddling together as long as we wanted, then getting up & making coffee and deciding where we wanted to explore that day. But, at the same time, those days were long gone, even for ages when we were still together. She checked out of this relationship a long time ago...which isn't fair in the slightest, but it's important for me to remember that even if I nostaligize (is that a word?) the past with her, while there were good & great times, they weren't there for a long, long while. Once I realize that, all the other thoughts and emotions come rushing back in -- I'm overjoyed to be on my own again, to be free to live my life and to cultivate my own happiness again.

That's the thing -- we're not entitled to happiness. But we are entitled to the chance to try to make ourselves as happy as is humanly possible. That's the one thing, the one certainty I know lies ahead for myself. I will be happy. Or, at the very least, I'll give myself the best possible chance to do so. The time is prime to live my life on my own terms. I owe it to myself, and I know it's going to come back a hundred fold.

Everything is changing, each element of my life is familiar yet tinged with otherworldliness, like it truly belongs elsewhere or to another person, or another time or place. I'm alternately (and sometimes concurrently) scared and exhilarated, sad and excited. But it will all work out. It just takes time. Thankfully, that's the one thing I have in spades right now.

then / now