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Apr. 9th, 2009
I did try. Really.
Apr. 9th, 2009 12:10 pmBut I realised last night I've been horribly disorganised about my taxes. I thought I had everything together, but then, last night, I said, "If I go to Bob like this, he'll pitch me out a window." I have printouts, neat and orderly, but I think they're incomplete. So, bless him, he's going to file an extension for me, and I'll do everything properly and go after the 20th. Is it an absolute job rule that every accountant takes off starting April 16th? Do they all start to twitch uncontrollably at 12.01am that day?
Last night was not fun. I went to my parents' for dinner with my aunt, and that was, as ever, lovely. We really didn't do a seder, which I miss, but we had my mother's matzoh ball soup, and some very good matzoh. But how disorganised am I? I actually don't have any matzoh in the apartment. None. And I'm starving.
After dinner, though, I stepped out of my front door to get the car to take my aunt home, and I paused on the steps, caught for a moment in my old life: years and years ago, where I was, who I was with, my hopes and dreams. My birthday is just a few weeks away, and I feel like it's staring me in the face: what did I think I'd have or do by now? My life as it is is weird and unconventional and blessed, but no one's ever completely free of the desire to peer down the path not taken.
What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why,
I have forgotten, and what arms have lain
Under my head till morning; but the rain
Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh
Upon the glass and listen for reply;
And in my heart there stirs a quiet pain
For unremembered lads that not again
Will turn to me at midnight with a cry.
Thus in the winter stands the lonely tree,
Nor knows what birds have vanished one by one,
Yet know its boughs more silent than before:
I cannot say what loves have come and gone;
I only know that summer sang in me
A little while, that in me sings no more.-
~Sonnet XLIII, Edna St. Vincent Millay
It comes to me now, and is both apropos and stunningly not. "I'm here, I'm here, I'm here!" I want to scream, but I don't know to whom, or concerning what.
People tell me not to let a birthday concern me, that it's not important, that I shouldn't judge myself. But this is a milestone, ad I refuse to let my life cross it without some self-examination. I improve, I grow, I work, but it feels so glacial. There's a burning, cold emptiness I see beside me, and I wonder, somehow, how I've let it creep into so many spaces inside me.
I have plans, I have hopes, I have things to look forward to and move on to. But I cannot not look around and see what isn't there. I just have to move on without it, and find other things.
I do not feel like a failure, or that my life has gone, somehow, horribly wrong. On the contrary: I know to my soul how blessed I am, and how I have opportunities so many others do not. I have a job I love, amazing people around me, and some small measure of tenuous security where so many others don't. I wouldn't not, for a moment, trade my strange, uncertain job for another staid, respectable, more lucrative one. I even enjoy most of my part-time job working for someone else, because I do it well, and almost no one bothers me there.
I just won't pretend that everything is perfect, and I won't turn away from examining that. We're all broken and lost sometimes, we all need to pull things out into the light.
Last night was not fun. I went to my parents' for dinner with my aunt, and that was, as ever, lovely. We really didn't do a seder, which I miss, but we had my mother's matzoh ball soup, and some very good matzoh. But how disorganised am I? I actually don't have any matzoh in the apartment. None. And I'm starving.
After dinner, though, I stepped out of my front door to get the car to take my aunt home, and I paused on the steps, caught for a moment in my old life: years and years ago, where I was, who I was with, my hopes and dreams. My birthday is just a few weeks away, and I feel like it's staring me in the face: what did I think I'd have or do by now? My life as it is is weird and unconventional and blessed, but no one's ever completely free of the desire to peer down the path not taken.
What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why,
I have forgotten, and what arms have lain
Under my head till morning; but the rain
Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh
Upon the glass and listen for reply;
And in my heart there stirs a quiet pain
For unremembered lads that not again
Will turn to me at midnight with a cry.
Thus in the winter stands the lonely tree,
Nor knows what birds have vanished one by one,
Yet know its boughs more silent than before:
I cannot say what loves have come and gone;
I only know that summer sang in me
A little while, that in me sings no more.-
~Sonnet XLIII, Edna St. Vincent Millay
It comes to me now, and is both apropos and stunningly not. "I'm here, I'm here, I'm here!" I want to scream, but I don't know to whom, or concerning what.
People tell me not to let a birthday concern me, that it's not important, that I shouldn't judge myself. But this is a milestone, ad I refuse to let my life cross it without some self-examination. I improve, I grow, I work, but it feels so glacial. There's a burning, cold emptiness I see beside me, and I wonder, somehow, how I've let it creep into so many spaces inside me.
I have plans, I have hopes, I have things to look forward to and move on to. But I cannot not look around and see what isn't there. I just have to move on without it, and find other things.
I do not feel like a failure, or that my life has gone, somehow, horribly wrong. On the contrary: I know to my soul how blessed I am, and how I have opportunities so many others do not. I have a job I love, amazing people around me, and some small measure of tenuous security where so many others don't. I wouldn't not, for a moment, trade my strange, uncertain job for another staid, respectable, more lucrative one. I even enjoy most of my part-time job working for someone else, because I do it well, and almost no one bothers me there.
I just won't pretend that everything is perfect, and I won't turn away from examining that. We're all broken and lost sometimes, we all need to pull things out into the light.