Tracey Does UVA- The Sequel

Yesterday, I had an epic battle with financial aid and lost. I lost because I cried and they STILL wouldn't give me my money. Ahhh, graduate school. I never thought I would beg for money I have to pay back with 7% interest. But here I am, Tracey graduate student. Somewhere between waiting for my 11th amazon.com used book order to arrive and starting the 8th spreadsheet at my work study job I realize- I've made it.....through my first week. I'm feeling pretty confident with one week under my belt. My classes are fascinating and I feel that I have insightfully contributed to class discussions. I enjoy my classmates and respect my professors. I have avoided binge eating from vending machines and accurately identified which bathroom has the least traffic. I have gone a whole week accident free on my bike, a feat which I failed to accomplish in undergrad.  Finally, I have also not heeded the siren call overpriced Pav food. Suck it, Wrap Station.

Honestly, I'm surprised at how easy it's been to move my brain into academic mode. It's like my brain just perked right up and said "Ohhh you're going to stop drowning me in wine and let me WORK for a change! Goodie!" It's like being an abusive pet owner- I'm an abusive brain owner. If I didn't start letting it out more, Brain Control would be called in. I hope that I continue to love what I'm learning as much as I do now. I'm afraid that I'll suffer from early saturation and my brain will suddenly stop taking in information. It'll be like Alzheimer's for academia. I'll re-read the same sentence 4 times and realize I didn't remember a word and it'll all go downhill from there.

I jest, really. It's just been so relatively easy and fun, I'm waiting for the fall out. But, with any luck, it never will. I can't say the same for my ability to avoid the Pav. I can't say no to sushi and chic-fil-a forever....

Boldly Going Where I Have Never Gone Before

Graduate school is upon me. I know that when people begin something new, the often say that they are "excited and scared!", so it would be cliche for me to also say that I am excited and scared. Truth is, I am more ecstatic and terrified.

I've spent a great deal of my life avoiding a committed life plan. I've clung for a long time to the idea that if I wanted, I should be able to take off at the drop of a hat to xyz Latin American country and live the tragic and wonderful surf bum life. My liberal arts background, wino career and three TFA rejections are only a few of the stunning examples of my ability to accomplish feats that fail to lead me in any particular direction.

Right now, I finally feel like I have turned a corner. I have a plan that inspires me. I realize where this plan will lead me, and I understand the great difficulties and sacrifices that are involved, yet I am at peace with the plan. Though you can never be sure of anything, I am confident that I have made the right decision to return to school. It's going to be interesting, to say the least. I have a lot of old college habits and mindsets that are going to have to change. No more Freedom. No more tasteless jokes. Foxfield will have to be a lot tamer for me this year. But I know the things I gain will far outweigh what I aim to lose- the ability to listen and really hear, the capability to help others better themselves, a deeper appreciation for my fellow man.

Eventually the time comes for every man to stand up and better himself. My time has come. God help me to not screw it up.

Hugs, love, and quiet Friday nights

Tonight, I just wanted to be quiet. Though I don't tend to gravitate towards silence, I'm beginning to realize how much of life is better understood without words.

My evening of quiet was inspired by my roommate. He's falling in love. He didn't tell me this, but I can tell. He plays the piano with more vigor. He smiles, even when he is annoyed. He hugs me more, which is great because he gives excellent hugs. He floats rather than walking.

Love is patient and kind- it also grows quietly but with great purpose. Sometimes, love is certainly not quiet. It can come out in screams and sonnets and song, and is equally beautiful in all forms. But I contend, the greatest love to behold is the silent type. Love that permeates the air, is shared through a touch, passed in a gaze, felt in the heart.

Maybe all the love in the air is squelching the noise usually associated with the mid-20's lifestyle. Maybe I'm just getting to old to go out on Friday nights. Either way, I'm glad that I decided to revel in quiet for a while this evening. I hope to become more comfortable in quiet spaces. The quiet helps me appreciate the present so much more. And I hope that my roommate continues exuding love all over my apartment. The extra hugs are a great thing to come home to.

Letters Unsent

Dear Blog,

I promised I would not use you for the powers of evil. I meant it. I really did. But tonight, I have had just enough wine that my need to over share is just too much for me to contain. I have some letters to write, some things to get off my chest. I am sorry to use you to this end, but I really have no choice. The power of the vino compels me.

Dear Ex-Boyfriend,

Please stop hanging out on your front porch so much. I have to drive by your house EVERY F-ING DAY, and seeing you have fun without me is really impeding my healing process. It's irrational, but all your porch loitering makes me feel like you don't give a shit. Throw me a bone, please?

Dear Disposable Income,

Why do I spend you on wine and fried food? I should spend you on paying off my car and knee surgery. I hope you don't judge me for my misappropriations.

Dear Virginia Wine Industry,

You are a hot, hot gossipy mess. But I can't quit you. And I hope that you don't interfere with my pursuit of higher education. Because the lower education you have provided to me has been so awesome. Hot mess.

Dear Grad School,

Don't make me hate my life. I fear you, revere you and depend on you to complete me. Don't fail me. I have $20000 banking on you.

Dear Promissory Note,

You are the scariest 17 pages I have ever read. Please don't take my uterus if I don't pay back my loan..

Dear Poopie,

If you were here right now, you would highly discourage this post. And I would ignore your warnings, but wish I listened to you after the fact. This is why you are my best friend.

Dear Leprechaun,

Thank you for letting me be in your wedding. I have not been so proud and excited in years. I love you.

Dear Roommates,

You are a consistently positive influence on my life. I am extremely grateful for you all.

Dear Preston Ave,

The cycle for your traffic lights is senseless and dangerous. Get your shit together, stat. Thank you.

Dear Women Who Don't Like Red Wine,

I judge you. We can't be friends.

Dear Band,

I live for our trips. You really don't know how much of my happiness you are responsible for.

Dear Friend who I never dated but should have,

I am sorry I drunkenly told you I never dated you but should have. I am too old for that sort of behavior and I am sorry. We had our chance and I should have left my hope behind a long time ago.

Dear Hetero,

You complete me. Who needs a therapist when I have you? I was serious when I said we should vacation in CA. That would be epic. On an unrelated note, I'm still sorry I never married your brother.

Dear Daniel,

I am so sorry I fail at calling. It's not because I don't want to talk, it's because I literally suck at calling.

Dear Mom & Dad,

You really did a good job as parents. You're still doing a great job. I'm sorry you didn't work out. I really am.

Dear my Martin Guitar,

I am so, so sorry I never learned to play you. It was my loss, I swear.

Dear Teach For America,

I am sorry I rebuked you three times. I think you are a great cause, you just weren't the cause for me. I'm sorry it took me three deferrals to realize it.

Dear my old landlord,

I can't really talk about how I feel about you because we are in a pending lawsuit, but check back in a few months and I'll have a nice little diatribe for your reading pleasure.

Dear morning,

You always come too soon. There are so many mornings I wish would have never come and those I wish would dawn twice. I'll never understand you. Even if I get a coffee maker, you will never cease to rile me.

Dear my Louisa Students,

I think about you all everyday. In fact, the only time I pray is when I pray for your happiness and personal success. You meant more to me than I could ever express.

Dear God,

I'm sorry I pray so irregularly. And overindulge in wine and fried food. And doubt everything I was ever taught in bible school. I hope you pull me back into your fold one day. I hope it's okay that one day isn't today.

Be Well,

Tracey

Excerpt from my CA vacation, written on the plane....

....When you fly west in the United States, you get three hours of sunset if you time it right. And if you fly Virgin Air, you can get a huge airplane bottle of Absinthe, too. One bottle in, I'm feeling particularly contented with myself, nestled happily in my leather seat with my on demand music videos and mood lighting. Even the baby behind me and the guy next to me with a cold cannot interfere with the level of contentment I am experiencing right now. In fact, I am so compelled by my contentment that I am writing about it in the back of the novel I am reading...or not reading at the moment, as it were.

Here's the situation as I see it. Contentment- true, internal contentment- really has nothing to do with the three hour sunsets and large quantities of quality liquor. These things just made me realize the full extent of how at peace I am becoming with my life. Now, don't get me wrong, I still bitch plenty and have days where the only peace in my life is the huge piece of pie that I am eating. But through all the work and relationship trials, the bills, the dirty kitchen, and the insane traffic situation on Preston Ave, I am growing this patch of calm in my soul that is really a stabilizing force for me right now. I feel that, just maybe, true contentment may be beginning to harbour inside me, and though it's dock is small right now, the sea around it is slowly growing quieter. I'm learning that contentment isn't a physical place- not some vacation I can get to, or safty in the arms of someone else. Contentment is something I must work for, something that grows both slowly and quietly, and must constantly be cultivated, especially in life's most harried moments. Contentment is the deep understanding and appreciation that we are all blessed, even in the darkest of times. Contentment is a walk, a long one....a lifelong one. It's what we all strive for- not the money, the prestige, the love- it's all just contentment. And it's a beautiful moment when we suddenly stop and realize the extent of out contentment, whether that extent is limited to a moment, or a year, or a lifetime.

My contentment? It's fleeting, sure. My contentment is in the seedling levels of it's cultivation. But the sun is finally setting, the guy with the cold and the baby are both sleeping, and my best friend sitting next to me just reminded me that it's time for another Absinthe and Sprite. It's going to be a good flight....

The condition of heartbreak

In my opinion, heartbreak is a diagnosable condition. I personally think it's almost like a cold- you feel it coming, suffer for a few days, but the effects of the illness can linger for weeks and months after the cold itself has finally left your body.

Just like a cold, you can feel heartbreak coming. You can see the conversation coming- a look, non-characteristic behavior, displaced feelings. You see it coming, but you can't stop it and you just keep hoping that maybe you're wrong. Like a cold, you try to excuse away that cough for an allergy, that outburst for a bad day at work. You're rarely wrong.

Once your heart is breaking, your insides feel suddenly cold and explosive at the same time. You literally think you are going to die. Not the "oh I'm going to throw myself off a bridge" kind of die, but the literal "my unhappiness right now hurts so much I think I am literally going to die". This feeling of impending death may last for hours, or basically until you take whatever you need to take and then fall asleep.

Waking up is probably the worst. You get those first few seconds of sweet, sweet amnesia. For those first few seconds, everything is the same as it was before the heartbreak, but not for long. It all comes rushing back, freight train style. Then you panic. And this is when the frantic stage starts, the cold sets up camp. Your mind is racing to keep up with your heart, trying to eliminate feelings of self doubt, rationalize behavior, explain yourself to yourself. It's exhausting, and makes it really hard to get out of bed at all. If you're a reasonable person, you'll know you have to get out of bed, have to distract your mind with work, school, whatever can distract. There's no distracting the heart- it'll keep bleeding and crying and beating it's walls in hopes of repose. But there's no repose yet.

You've still got a few solid days of frantic. You'll talk to friends, talk to God, talk to strangers and yourself, all is hopes of getting your mind wrapped around your heart so it'll feel reposed enough to stop beating it's walls. After a few days, you'll get your first hint that the cough is letting up. One day, you'll wake up (the upswing usually starts upon waking) and your mind will have slowed to a passenger train speed. It's now conversing with your heart rather than frantically screaming at it. You won't really feel relived yet at this point, just not totally crazy.

You'll start to see pretty things again. You'll notice the trees, the sun, a kind act or word. Your world will slowly shift until you realize that you no longer feel overwhelmingly sad, but nostalgic- you miss your old pre-heartbreak life. You aren't crying- you're pining. So many little things remind of your old life, and every little thing pulls viciously at your heart. Your heart is tired, so it just sits there and takes it, but it starts to lose hope of ever being as happy as it was before it was broken.

This period is the post-cold period. The cold is gone, but the cough, the phlegm- it's still consistently there, with no signs of slowing up. You exist in a place between total nostalgia and total hopelessness. This will last for a while. I call this post-heartbreak purgatory. And this one doesn't disappear when you wake up one morning. It'll hang out for weeks, probably months.

But after some time, you realize you're creating new memories. You find a great Petit Verdot, and stop longing for Merlot. A fun new bar to frequent. A new favorite song. Slowly, your life before the heartbreak becomes not something you necessarily long for, but something you consider fondly from a distance.

And then you are there. Your cough is gone. It becomes time to appreciate your determination to overcome and proud of the new life you are creating for yourself. Time to take that old, pretty life you had before and leave it for your heart to admire, but not suffer from it's presence. You survived the heartbreak.

You may still cough once and a while, and unfortunately, just like colds come around more often than not, heartbreak may again find you. At least the next time you'll know what to expect; you'll know what medicine to take. Good friends, good food, good booze, and reminding yourself you won't die. We've all been there- it's practically a diagnosable condition, after all.

My Life Story

So I have this management coach. How I ended up with a management coach is a story for another day, but none the less I have one. I see her twice a month and we are working towards the goal of developing in me a sense of "authentic leadership". To achieve this goal, I have taken personality tests, gone through scenarios and talked at length about my strengths and weaknesses. She usually gives me "homework"- to read some sort of article, take a personality test etc, but this week she shocked the hell out of me by assigning me the task of writing my life story. In two weeks. She said it so nonchalantly. "Oh, and by next time we meet I want you to write your life story. It'll help us to better define and understand your passions and motivations."

First of all, the idea of writing my life story was daunting enough, but to know that from said story I am somehow supposed to glean a better understanding of what moves me- that's downright intimidating. That means my story is going to require actual thought and effort. No "I'm Tracey and I was born in Norfolk, Virginia, liked journalism in high school, eeked by in college and now live happily in Charlottesville with my pet rabbit and too much wine."

How do you find focus when you have to cover twenty-five eventful years? I could focus on tragedies. Divorce, drama, death, dismemberment. They make great book to made-to-TV-movie story lines. And are an easy out for finding personal motivations (ie- my parents divorced so I suck at boys). I could focus on the people in my life and how the have shaped me, for better and for worse. for example, I love working with people because both my parents are pathological extroverts. Life story- done!

Somehow, I don't think it's going to be that easy for me. First of all, I am the most verbose person on the planet. I can't shut up, especially about myself. Second of all, I have been in some pretty hysterical situations in my life, all of which should be accurately and fully declared in my life story. I mean, no "Tracey's Life Story" would be complete without a retelling of the "night I got my first tattoo", the "born again virgin part(ies)", the "I almost streaked the lawn during a hurricane", "that one time in Chicago I got everyone kicked out of a dunkin donuts" and of course, the "easter beer hunt". Retelling these gems and others will obviously take some time, and will probably not actually assist in helping me identify my passions, unless my passions include beer, shameless dancing, donuts or blaspheming the resurrection of Christ.

I think perhaps I could tell my life story by mapping out the things I love. Maybe that's the wrong way of putting it. I love so many people and things. Rather, I think my story should be told by the little things in my life that enable my soul to love in the first place....

My mother's often mediocre but best intentioned suppers
The last faint strands of a steel guitar
Smelling the wax of my board, the salt of the waves and the warmth of the sun
Letting wine replace self doubt
A freshly made bed, with extra pillows
Coffee, but only when shared with the best of girlfriends
Cell phone calls that only end with the life of the battery
The air through the windows at over 80 mph
Purrs, of the feline sort, that calm even the most miserable of days
Sudden realizations of mortality, and in turn, gratitude

An open heart. Lots of mistakes. Too much fun. My life story.