second to last

Wide awake past midnight. Caffeine doesn't keep Chelsea from sleeping, but I think it is keeping me. I should be so tired, and I need to be up early tomorrow. Today, I mean. But my mind is busy turning over thought after thought, churning together all my nostalgia. It's an unavoidable process. It is being reacquainted with a once familiar smell, home, or path. The faces of all I admired and the paths I once followed so faithfully. 

Right now I want a chance to know myself. Or rather, to find someone who can really get to know me. At least get to know how I have become whatever it is I am now. Which feels an awful lot like who I was a decade ago. I am afraid I have learned nothing, although I tried to learn it all. I think I would like to find a good therapist. 

I don't know what I need therapy for... just that it would be nice to have confirmation of all that I feel can never be confirmed. My first attempts at relationships, platonic and intimate. My failures in college. My inability to steadily nurture life long relationships (maybe because I never could imagine my life continuing this far). Looks like I need therapy for depression, but fuck that. Life is depressing, and should be. Life is also joyful, as well it should. We all need to take the good with the bad. It does no service to yourself or others to deny any part of this world.

But then I wonder if all I ever needed were a few close friends to confide in with all my fears and doubts and crippling anxieties. I never did have such friends, though there was so much potential. Timing really is everything. So is place. Unfortunately my poor timing seems to be turning into a clinical condition. At least it seems I may be out there in some textbook, already dissected and studied and buried in peace, or so they may think. 

But there have been moments, long ones too, where I think I was in the right place at the right time. But was I right? To have ever met my ginger english teacher, rugged art teacher, or granola eating pig. Only more time and more places will tell. 

In a few hours I will have yet another undeserved shot at righting all my wrongs. Spend some more time with Chelsea, at an ll bean sale. Drive out to the bee farm and continue trying to carve out a tiny space to call my own, no matter how temporary. Try not to give in to all the negative outcomes my eyes cannot help but see before my heart.

I am going to miss my home on our hilly ridge, between two great river valleys and the scores of mountains who made our skies so brilliant. I will miss stepping out the front door at night and feeling such pervasive peace. No hums, distant roars, or ticks. Just enough points of light on the distant hill to make you not feel painfully alone. And then looking up at her most beautiful tapestry, the stars and the clouds with theirs seas of blacks and blues, purples and reds. The moon in all her masks and all the celestial bodies dancing through the divine court. I will miss being able to feel alone, and knowing I am alone. I will miss the purity of the season's sounds. The beats of the woodcocks, the hoots of the owls, the laughs of the coyotes, the silence of winter, the rustle of fall, the solo and the duet of the rains and the winds upon what was once our home and our hill. I will miss the sound of Martha coming and going. 

It is so noisy and feels so crowded now. And I am not even in LA.