in which i reevaluate

I'm steaming a pot of beets on the stove and sitting in my lowslung, black chair in the middle of my apartment where I can see out the window that the sun has started to come out a little and there is a blue sky peeking between the green leaves of the trees across the street. That last post about having no friends was kind of pathetic. I mean, it's all true, I do find myself somewhat solitary, but it was the tone that was pathetic. There was something too victim-ish in it.

Over the past couple of days I've felt a slow, creeping peace settle over me and I've realized there's nothing lamentable in my situation. I have let my friendships slide away and I have not made much effort to create new ones. But all for a reason. This has been a shitty summer, capping off a shitty spring which followed a shitty winter. All of which has led me to a place of solitude. And it's a good place. A place to rest in and a place from which to move forward.

Last November, when CB's bender was three months old and I was miserable but not yet ready to leave -- and when SK was still just a mysterious coworker on whom I'd long had a crush and whose attentions I always sought, usually in vain -- I went into her office one day to sign my timesheet or pick up some paperwork or something mundane and we started up a conversation. I can't remember all the details, but I think I told her things with CB were bad.

In the midst of all that, she told me about this astrologically significant event that had begun at the end of October and would last for a full year. Jupiter was passing through the sign of Scorpio, which happens once every twelve years, and would be bringing all sorts of good fortune and opportunity for those of us with our sun in Scorpio. She printed something off a website for me that detailed some of the many good things the next year would bring me -- amazingly it showed my breakup with CB which was already beginning to happen. It also promised new love and opportunities for personal growth and significant career change. I was hopeful and I reread the paper many times over the next weeks as I left CB and started sleeping in my friend's cold attic.

The thought that I was entering a charmed year helped bolster me through a difficult and bleak time. However, as the weeks and months passed, none of the charm seemed to be coming and every new turn seemed to bring more discomfort, more sadness, more friction, more disappointment. Last semester was awful, my internship with Birdlady was miserable, things with SK have been tricky and difficult, my summer has been bleak. I have been in a low-grade depression for months -- lacking motivation, lacking inspiration, lacking direction. The cheery promises of that astrological occurrance began to seem like a mean joke.

Lately, though (in the past few days) something has started to feel more solid. As I said, I'm starting to feel a certain peace in my solitude. And now that school is starting up in less than a week, I feel a purpose returning to my days. School will sweep me onto a sort of roller-coaster that will carry me quickly through to December and exams and then into the bar prep course and finally the bar exam itself at the end of February. I will get on next Monday and the ride won't seem to stop until next March. That will probably feel a bit like a blessing. And then what? I think I'll leave. For an undetermined period of time. I envy SK's nomad years (she spent quite a long time wandering and exploring India, Nepal, Australia... where else, SK? I've lost track). I think I should have a nomad period myself. We'll see.