Happy Birthday to Me

I'm really only writing this because I should be writing something... I mean it's my birthday and I should have some statement to make. But curiously, I don't.

This is mainly because of the glaring, gaping chasm between what I am feeling versus what I should be feeling or want to be feeling. The day of one's birth is a day of reflection, like New Year's. I don't like what I'm seeing in this annual mirror; I'd rather it be a day of fun instead. Self-reflection these days is nothing more than a curse of voices in my head. Someone cure me!

Instead of Maya Angelou, I am Edgar Allen Poe, dreary, dark, and sad. It's not how I want to be! It's just what is.

I find myself wondering if anything can pull me out of this funk; right now, if someone showed up to my door with a lottery check with my name on the payee line, would it make a difference? Not immediately (but I could buy some smiles within the hour I bet). This emotional problem has become deeper than circumstance. This is a bottomless pool of melancholy and nameless regrets. Not happy with where I am, not knowing who I am anymore. Fighting to hold on to the me that I want to be, trying not to despise the me that I am forced to be right now. Warring to implement biblical lessons of contentment and joy in reprehensible circumstances. Exorcising worry and fear every minute, bailing out buckets of dark emotion while trying to row against the current. Sinking fast.

It's because I feel completely ineffectual and powerless to effect change in my own life. Out of control, moving nowhere, achieving nothing. What have I done in the past year? Nothing worth writing about! Nothing worth remembering.

Strangely, I feel better now. At least I can pour my secret sadness somewhere.

Happy Birthday to me.

Post Theme: Private Party by India.arie

Tonight I feel...

Tonight I feel like the last person standing after a war. The only sane one in the room. And after writing that I can't help but think: how emo! That was the equivalent to a childish whine, "no one understands me!" Crisis averted by my inner wit.

Tonight I feel like there are a lot of stupid people out there, and all of the smart ones are incommunicado, or maybe can only be reached by ham radio, which I don't know how to operate.

Tonight I feel cabin fever crawling up my legs, my back, and through my scalp, like the flesh-eating red ants in the latest Indiana Jones flick.

Tonight I feel frustrated that everyone that I want to talk to, to take comfort in, all the people that I call to get a lift from a funky mood, or a fresh perspective on my dreary circumstances seems to be living a more interesting and fulfilling life and is unable to be reached at this time. I hang up before I can leave a message. I don't want to say something that I will regret, or be unwilling to clarify or discuss tomorrow.

Tonight I feel angry and ashamed of my unwavering penchant for comparing myself to others and envying their accomplishments. However short I may have fallen, or short-sighted I may be to do it, it's like I can't stop. I am certain this isn't why Facebook was created!

Tonight I feel like I am on a giant wheel of fortune, and I keep landing on bankrupt and losing my effing turn. This game is rigged!


Tonight I feel like human nature is a dark thing, and no one does the right thing anymore. An example: I think that HRC is "suspending her campaign" instead of conceding because she plans to wait in the wings in case "something happens" to Barack Obama. It's not too far a stretch for me tonight, especially in light of her bizarre and malevolent statements about Bobby Kennedy's assassination a few short weeks ago. All the evil conspiracies seems totally plausible tonight.

Tonight I wish it were the future. The place where this is a fuzzy memory, chucked into the bucket of melodrama, of bored self-indulgence. The time where my life is so full that there is no room to remember these times as anything other than the desert journey toward an oasis destination. And it would also be cool if Barack Obama were president at that time....

Tonight, I see, will be tomorrow in a matter of minutes. Although not far enough in the future to forget tonight, it is better than nothing.

Post Theme: Sometimes by Bilal

March on...

Today I am deeply disappointed. I had the ominous feeling that I had been presumptive in my joy, and loosed-tongued in my overconfidence, and yesterday, I fear, I was proven correct. I would have loved to be wrong in this!

What am I talking about? Well, I had a great interview this week, was positive that I was moving on the last and final round of interviews, was certain that I would receive an offer, allotted less than a week for salary negotiation, and started planning my end of the month move to New updating my financial goals, mapping out a budget, and looking at homes for sale on craigslist! Whether this is a case of healthy success visualization and claiming God's promise, or gun-jumping at its finest, I do not know.

Not to mention all the people I told... people that are going to want to know what happened with the job and when do I start. People who will attempt to encourage me or comfort me when I tell them that I am back to square one. So heaped onto a crushing sense of disappointment and weariness in being disappointed is a sense of shame. No good news to report guys, nothing to see here. Let's all just get some sleep... Isn't that what the police say when they're shooing away the gawkers at the scene of the train wreck? Why yes it is... how apt.

I received an email telling me that the position that I was certain that I would be offered is "on hold for a month or so". I don't even know what that means, and it can mean so many things. What happened to the strong sense of rapport that I built with my interviewer. I thought for sure that I could have depended on her for more of an explanation than that, no matter what the outcome. A terse, two-sentenced brush off what outside of the realm of my expectations.

Of course, not all hope it lost. I have to keep on trucking, keep on looking... I mean, what else is there? It might even turn out that I will eventually be handed what looks right now to be impossible: this job on a silver platter. There's really no excuse for me giving up now, particularly with the amazing support system that I have in family and friends that are behind me, with the number of people offering themselves: money, time, favors. I appreciate you all more than I can say.

I just can't help but wonder how much longer I will have to wait. The bible says be ye not weary in well-doing, but the negative emotions and thoughts, bruised feelings, and tough circumstances weigh down on me like baggage, and it's baggage that I can ill afford. Today, with a sigh and a tired smile, I soldier on.

Post Theme: Bag lady by Erykah Badu

I Know What It Means To Miss New Orleans

I went to New Orleans yesterday with my mom to return an expensive purchase and visit some of my relatives who remain there. It was a great day, and I returned home with memories of laughter, smiles, and of course beyond delicious food, but my heart was heavy with wistfulness. I miss New Orleans, deeply, in a way that a bi-monthly weekend visit cannot remedy.

It's been two years since catastrophic Katrina, and I am literally still exploring the wreckage. I feel in turns a developed bitterness, a shocked shame that I'm not "over it", especially considering how well I made out compared to so many others, and a frustrated and futile yearning to turn back time, which is a completely hopeless (and therefore pointless?) desire. With every corner that I turn in my struggle to cope, I encounter another part of what has become, quite obviously, a maze. The question is, am I navigating this maze with purpose, or wandering aimlessly, blinded by tears and a mind full of the unhelpful detritus of a full life abruptly destroyed like a fussy toddler's block tower? I must admit that tonight I am the wanderer; purpose is hard to find.

When Katrina hit, there was no thought but of the immediate survival of myself and others. It was in the wake of the storm that damaging epiphanies buffeted the shores of my consciousness like residual storm surges, continually destroying my ability to understand how my life had changed, was changing, and would continue to change. I realized that my career was over, as was my home, my community, my routine, my possessions. In essence, my situation in life, a tangible construct resulting from the execution of plans, realization of dreams, and achievement of goals, was immutably annihilated. This has translated into: not holding a job for more than a year, long bouts of unemployment, loss of health benefits, living in communities to which I do not belong, starting over financially an average of once a year, changing addresses every six months, scattered family members across the country, seeing my grandmother once or twice a year instead of weekly or more frequently, and just plain old missing my hometown like a phantom limb.

I told my mom yesterday that New Orleans fits me like a pair of old pajamas. I've never meant anything more. This is something that I should have known. I've been around the world, and never understood how fundamental that home base was to me until I'd lost it. I left for months, years at a time in pursuit of an education, of cultural immersion, of adventure, but also counted on it to be there when I was ready to return. And it always was there. It still is there, a testimony to the fact that the more things change, the more they stay the same. Something in me aches, and the irony of living an hour and a half away and being forced to move farther away to support myself does not escape me.

Sadly, I am not unique in this. So many people know what it means to miss New Orleans, and so many will not return despite that. I just can't stand the fact that returning is not beyond my reach, and yet it is. I won't waste time trying to articulate what makes New Orleans special, describing the sights, smells, sounds, events, and the like, because greater writers than I have done that for literally hundreds of years. I'll end by saying that I want to go back, and am determined to do so eventually. It's like a piece of myself is missing, and I know precisely where to find it.

Post Theme: Do You Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans by Louis Armstrong