twenty one summers worth of unsolicited desires

A new home...

Sat, 18 Jul 2009 23:23:05 GMT

I hope you'll visit.

web.me.com/kjstar7

Wed, 27 Aug 2008 21:41:22 GMT

in certain circumstances, i see little pieces of the person i used to be being to peak out. it comes out in gusts of flirty pep and the subsequent shallow guilt.

and every time it feels like a regression, a throw-back to a classics album, the record i played for four years straight in high school and tossed on far too frequently through most of college.

and with it comes this heightened insecurity that i had forgotten i was so adept at feeling. for two years, i was so thoroughly infused with a sense of purpose that i never had an idle moment to worry about how i might be perceived by others. in fact, i simply cared that my students thought i was compassionate, yet challenging, and if i succeeded at that, little else was relevant.

but now, i am back to being surrounded by peers. for now, i am back to being defined as the girl in the middle of the circle of guys. for now, i find myself starting to fear my innate ability to stare a little too long and laugh a little too loud.

there's less than two weeks left to training, and then it will be an entirely new set of circumstances, ones that i've never called my own before. i'll be an adult amongst other professionals performing a job that in its very nature requires that i be attentive, helpful, and thorough, but rather than catering to the needs of adolescents, i'll be facilitating financial transactions that build infrastructure and create wealth. i knew that this change in careers would require quite the paradigm shift, and yet, i still don't think i've successfully made it.

when i ask myself why i'm here, all i can come back to is that it's a new challenge, and one that seems to communicate to the rest of the world that i am intelligent, driven, and valuable in a very tangible sense. i wish those things didn't matter to me, but truth is that i see wealth and power two integral instruments of radical change, and i've been desperate to feel what it is like to be respected in a way that wasn't drenched in those sticky, insincere undertones of "admiration".

the simplest truth is that i'm writing because i'm confused, because that's what i do, because these thoughts all tie themselves together in impossible knots and life lately has been a little too hectic for my natural unraveling mechanisms to accomplish much.

at the core there's love and lust and longing and it's all coated in this dripping layer of inadequacy that gives off the scent of fear that my best efforts won't be good enough for me.

because when my heart's not in it every second, it starts to get restless, it starts to panic, quicken, and dart about in infantile directions. and i start to remember why for so many years it was words that finessed my fluctuations and fears. that it is words that will always be my substitute sense of purpose, my humble offering in hopes that they'll mean something to someone other than me.

the power to imagine better

Mon, 09 Jun 2008 03:13:48 GMT

this past week, i had my "graduation" ceremony from teach for america. they printed a book of reflections and it included a piece i had written. a friend of mine praised it, recommending that i send it in to the new york times magazine. hours later, at the gym, i found a discarded copy open to the exact section she suggested. all it took was a mere coincidence to reactivate my dormant dream. all i've ever wanted is for my words to make others feel something.

yesterday, i stumbled upon j.k. rowling's commencement speech at harvard university. in it, she speaks of imagination as ultimately the human ability to empathize, our capacity to put ourselves in others' shoes. she implies that magic happens when those who have never had to experience atrocities use this power to understand tragedy and react accordingly. i am not a child of immigrant parents, i don't know what it feels like to be marginalized, but these past two years have been an exercise in this sort of imagination. these past two years may in fact be the best thing i ever do with my life.

i look at my students with love love love and i'm terrified of the next three weeks shifting from tomorrows to yesterdays. i know that even if i wasn't leaving this year would have to end and yet i'm desperate for a pause button, i'm dying to linger here a little longer.

there's so many things i've been too busy to write down and i just hope that i find the words before the feelings fade away. if i can capture what it's been like and do it justice, i might just make the sort of difference this world really needs.

Thu, 13 Mar 2008 00:29:16 GMT

there's a lot of things i haven't done, and i know i'm young, but the same way that even the largest funnel leads to a narrow point, i can feel the path i've chosen eliminating many of those things from my realm of possibility.

at 23, part of me feels thirty. part of me has sunk my teeth into this bulky, uncertain idea of being an adult without even the slightest sentimental glance back at my adolescence. and truthfully, it's this part of me that has parted with my verbose tendencies, that considers long, unwieldy paragraphs a remnant of my youth. at seventeen, writing was a reflex, and now, somehow, the same sentences that once flowed from my fingertips need to be coerced out one phrase at a time.

perhaps it's just rust, as already, the pace of my prose is picking up speed. but that same part of me fears that it's not, that it might be that in order for me to write things that make sense i need to live a unsettled, unhappy life that simply insists on being pieced together by musing for hours, and the absence of this discontent simply means that i have much less to say at the end of the day.

not that i'm happy, because it's much more complicated than that. rather, i'm comfortable - comfortable in the same pair of orange sweatpants that i slip my sore legs into every night, comfortable underneath the same sheets with my toes pressing up against his same, sturdy calf muscle, comfortable with the tedious trials of my job and the fact that after a year and a half of the same thing it can still bring me to tears several times a week, comfortable with my routine self-improvement and the reassuring way that eventually i lapse just enough to invigorate my motivation to be a better teacher, lover, human being.

daily, i'm asked to spend the majority of my waking hours denying that i have wants and needs of my own, convincing myself that my purest purpose is simply to serve as their fifth appendage, eager to answer their questions, soothe their tempers, and scratch wherever it itches. and i'm good at it. i've even convinced myself that my wants aren't all that different from theirs, that i can only be happy when i've made them feel special and quelled their fears. still, by dismissal, i want little more than thirty minutes to pound the pavement followed by an evening of snuggling through unbearably bad reality television.

as much as i want to believe my humble aspirations are a repercussion of my job, i'm afraid that they could be repercussions of any full-time job, repercussions of turning twenty-something and knowing who you love and having just enough faith in yourself that the sort of worries that used to get you worked into a fit of anxiety rarely flare up anymore.

so, perhaps i'm not a writer anymore, perhaps my pen falls flat upon the page, perhaps those vibrant, tortured days are behind me now, perhaps this too is just another stage.

all i know is that i try each day until the trying's fresh out of me, and on occasion, this alone is enough for that elusive idea of happiness to feel like something raw and tangible, even like something definitively possible.

a good fit;

Sat, 18 Aug 2007 14:23:41 GMT

just embrace the idea that you're not going to settle for something that isn't a good fit, he said, and it actually made me felt better, since i always need someone else to justify my indecision, my persistant seeking, my inability to take something ordinary instead of exquisite.

when he says he could do this, for just a few years, just show up and sit there, part of me envies him. it's because of a greater vision, a sense of where he's going, that the late nights and sunny saturdays spent sitting in front of the computer screen would feel worth it. but my greater vision doesn't include an eventual 'buy side' or forcing myself to get through some sort of flexible-work schedule once i have kids. my greater vision doesn't include my boyfriend moving out because he doesn't want to live with someone he never gets the chance to see. the bottom line is, it doesn't include living to work instead of working to live.

this year, it was nothing short of passion that got me from september to june. it was the devestating adoration i felt for my students, the absolute intensity with which i believed that they all deserved a chance to achieve. when i sit in my boss's office listening to yet another conference call, i pass the time by trying to understand the motivation behind the voices. this guy just wants to get off the phone. that one wants it to be clear that he's not taking shit from anyone. she's determined to assert her knowledge as if it was in spite of her gender. and my boss? well he just always wants to get his way. he wants to get the deal done so that we can charge some exorbant million dollar fee that will manifest itself in his end of the year bonus. and the associates just want to get through the day. their tired eyes and the this is the life i've choosen, but i'm still not sure why attitude is a perpetual slap in the face. i don't want to look like that. no number of zeros following a dollar sign is worth having survival as your best case scenario.

the happiness i felt at discovering my eighty-thousand-dollar salary faded within a day, but the lack of purpose lingers throughout every moment i spend in that office. it's only when i'm laughing, perhaps too loudly, at my fellow interns, that i forget that there are literally a million places i would rather be. and you know what scares me more than anything? the fact that i think even i could adapt to that level of malcontent, that degree of awkward fit, because days have a way of turning into weeks, months, years until we wake up one morning and ask ourselves how the hell we got here?

i don't want to wake up twenty-six and relatively rich, but completely out of touch with the things that sustain me. i want to be able to work hard with purpose and spend my spare time soaking up sunshine, poetry, and white wine. i want to believe in simple pleasures even if i can afford the more elaborate kind. i want my legacy to be love, not money.

and when my boss told me that he knew i could do this, he just doubted that i wanted to, i had to agree. it's not a matter of stamina or mental capabilities. the actual work that they do is almost mind-numbing. it took me about a week to see the relationships between the numbers and their agenda, to adjust my vision to market correlations and how they lead to breaking news. and maybe that's all i needed - to be validated by knowing that my time could be worth exorbant sums of money, but only if i want to settle for feeling like i'm wasting away the days.

it's just when a job takes up 100 hours of your week, it's more than just a job. and when the only people you ever see exist within your office walls, you need to absolutely adore them. and ultimately, when you've been lucky enough to get to twenty-three with a damn good resume and no debt, it feels foolish to choose misery and money over simplicity and satisfaction.

just embrace the idea that you're not going to settle for something that isn't a good fit, he said, and as the words lingered in my head, continually creeping through my ambivalence and fear, they began to be less justification and more motivation. they began to make perfect sense.

on reinvention;

Tue, 03 Jul 2007 19:48:59 GMT

and i wonder if everything i do

i do instead

of something i want to do more

we only get one life, right? one chance to be a child, an adolescent, a twenty-something, an adult. i know i can't go back and do college again, yet some part of me is rolling my eyes at this notion of time as fixed, irrevesible, linear. it's the part of me that spent childhood relating to a thousand and one protagonists in the books i read and songs i screamed along to. it's the part of me that wants to simultaneously please my mother, my father, and myself. it's the part of me that still sees a career the way i see a pair of shoes - something to try on, try out, and dismiss to the back of my closet with a flick of my wrist.

i think that this year i deliberately tried not to cultivate a teacher persona. i thought that as long as i didn't change my clothes, or my style, or my doting, maternal way of relating to children, i was just extending who i've always been into who i currently am. i threw away every union publication that found its way into my mailbox, refusing to consider myself in the same general category as the people who have given their lives to this profession. after all, my teaching certificate is only transitional, my time in the classroom will most likely be limited to two or three years. and since i'm just trying it on i can deal with the way that certain things rub me the wrong way in certain places and focus on the detailing that fits perfectly.

plus, teach for america basically enables me to be like this. i signed up for a two-year commitment, a chance to change the world for a set number of students in that set time frame. the compact, goal-oriented nature is exactly what drew me towards its premise. i have friends who by september had begun referring to themselves as teachers - teach for america was simply the way they went about being one. i, however, consider myself an ambassador doing exactly what this program expects of me - eliminating the achievement gap in my classroom. i am a teach for america corps member and as long as i continue to define myself this way, i feel less guilt over all my desires to do something drastically different next.

and i know you would always want more

i know you would never be done

we only get one life, right? just because i'm giving these two years away, just because i'm making them more of an aside than a foundation doesn't mean that they come for free. i was twenty one when i began last summer and i'll be nearly twenty-four by the end. and i know your twenties are supposed to be a time of career exploration, that very few people fall in love with their first job, that i took this job because i knew it was even expected for me not to stick with it, - but what i worry about is that insatiable part of me that always, always wants something more.

next week i will begin my summer internship at an investment bank, in their securitization division. i'm already speaking in words that meant absolutely nothing to be sixth months ago, i'm already understanding concepts that used to be totally opaque. i've already bought the trendy suits and figured out a way to get button-down shirts to rest seamlessly on my breasts. the truth is, i found a way to weasel my way on wall street without any credentials beyond an A in microeconomics and high math scores on standardized tests. all this was a challenge, a tantalizing carrot baited just beyond my reach that kept me paying a dollar for the wall street journal each day. i'm sure the summer will pass in very much the same way. i've always loved a chance to prove myself, to show the world just how together i can be. but when the end of august rolls around, who knows what steep uphill climb will appeal to me next?

if they offer me a job and i take it, it won't be a two-year commitment. sure, i could leave at any time, but that would be like quiting. i'd have to stick with it indefinitely, i'd have to wear my suits until they were completely worn out and i'd have a job title that i couldn't squirm out of. this is all premature, because i don't even know if i'll like it, i don't even know if they'll like me, but it's still twisting my insides into knots of anxiety.

hour follows hour

like water follows water

everything is governed by the rule

of one thing leads to another

we only get one life, right? all the decisions i have and have not made have brought me to this present moment, to this present day. now, i can look back and try to find the subtle hints of all the would come, unknown to me then. now, i can reflect upon how the child i once was and all those teenage years that i struggled through brought me to this, the eve of my twenty-third birthday. it's been said that years are like the rings inside a tree, concentric, growing outwards in only one dimension, encapsulating everything that once was. but what if i want more than a tree trunk? what if i want my years to be like branches, sprouting off in a dozen different directions, reaching upwards and outwards, and maybe even backwards? what if i want to choose both the road less traveled and the worn, predictable path - one leg on each route, forging forward until i snap in half?

because you can only have one, because you can't go back. because there aren't enough hours in the day, because even indecision decides by default eventually.
because your next bold move could change everything, because the very nature of choice implies that in the end, there's something left unchosen.

so go ahead

make your next bold move

tell us

what's the next thing you're gonna need to prove

to yourself

on imperfection;

Fri, 01 Jun 2007 02:48:55 GMT

i don't have that many opinions. maybe that's why i'm so hesitant to express which ones i have. the few are born of passion and certainty - two things that make it very hard to hear someone disagree.

yet i do make millions of judgements. in my defense, they are often fickle and transient, but still, i think them, dialogue with myself in snide, snarky tones, and ultimately feel a little let down.

my biggest character flaw is that i often feel superior. while i can relate to the impulses that people weaken to, i can't relate to the weakening. i don't find it hard to be consistent, to exercise daily, to keep things clean, to read widely and learn quickly. i'm intelligent and efficient, a fortuitous combination in theory that protects me from many of life's disappointments while actually leaving me feeling quite flawed.

i've spent so much of my life in pursuit of perfection that it's almost automated. i'm good enough to impress at a dozen or so things and i'm spoiled by my own effortless success. i no longer have to try to write in perfect bubble letters. i no longer have to think when i blow-dry my hair in that breezy salon-styled way. i can mindlessly grind my way through an hour of cardio. i can plan my day tomorrow as i read a children's book outloud upside down. my students call me over to demonstrate how to sketch bambi, how to edit an essay, and how to do a perfect quarter turn.

there's a million or more things that i'm just not good at, but i've created a life without them. the one that remains most relevant is my inability to stop feeling invisibly independent and stupidly smug. i can't seem to need anyone except my boyfriend, and even that relationship seems to be a lot more about me being a perfect girlfriend. i cook dinner, pick his dirty socks off the floor, and rub his feet as some boring show he's recorded off the national geographic channel plays in the background, trying to think of something i could ask him to do for me that would still mean something considering i asked for it. and trying to get over my pride long enough to ask. (i'm also awful at asking favors. since i never say no, i live in fear of my over-reaction when someone says no to me).

everything i am good at shows me that the one common thread is the fact that i'm good at improving who i am - so how hard could it be to be more gracious, more considerate, more open-minded?

harder than i want to admit, mainly because my judgements protect me from unearthing deeper, more devestating character flaws. like my selfishness, insecurity, and inability to believe in pretty much anything.

already, i sit in the car with my parents and listen to my father talk about a woman that just died. a friend of my grandfather's who used to make my late grandmother laugh for hours. and my mother goes "well maybe they're laughing together again". the kind of off-hand-full of faith-comment my mother normally makes. like when she mentions that the rose bush she planted after my childhood friend died blossomed the same week as the anniversary of her death. and ninety-nine percent of me is scoffing, relying on reason. ninety-nine percent of me just knows that as nice as that sounds, it just can't happen. but there's one emphatic percent begging me to give in - to stop being so logical, so rational, and just believe.

less in a god, per se, and more in things happening that i can't predict, control, or explain away. it's been so long since i've been sloppy drunk because sobriety is synonymous with stability. and i don't think pounding ten shots would solve anything because i'd wake up with a hangover that would last slightly longer than my latest batch of self-hatred. i need someone to unscrew the permanent link between perfect and acceptable that's embedded itself within my brain. or i need someone to understand what i'm feeling and know how to be this way and not be bored, aloof, and indifferent.

the bottom line is we're all struggling with something. even if my struggle is getting it through my head that appearing to struggle with something isn't all that bad.

Mon, 21 May 2007 23:48:19 GMT

whatever you don't, don't do everything for him. make him cook dinner, do the dishes, take out the trash.

these were my mother's words of wisdom upon hearing that i was moving in with him, that i was essentially let him have the milk for free, as the old saying goes, that i was rushing my way into a reality that she herself knew from the age of eighteen.

i laughed and embeded the words in the folds of my memory, but that doesn't mean i listened.

i see socks on the floor and i pick them up. i cringe at the thought of an unmade bed. i hate the way the residue from dinner hardens on the plates if it's not rinsed within ten minutes. if the laundry isn't done early enough of sunday my stomach twists into a nasty knot of anxiety.

and him? he's lazy. he lavishes in the very minutes that make me insane. he could walk past a pair of socks sixteen hundred times and forget that laundry needs to be done until he pulls his final pair of boxers out of the drawer. he already expects dinner five night a week and makes a big fuss if i ask him to take out the trash for a change. and it's my fault, one hundred and ten percent.

i make sure the dinner's ready because i know he'll be hungry. i pick up the socks because i know they'll sit there otherwise. i do the laundry because if i get it in the washer and switch it to the dryer, i can ask him to go down and pick the hot laundry up without feeling like i'm nagging too much. then i'll sort it and fold seventy-five percent of it and hate the way the piles will sit on his side of the bed until he wants to go to sleep, when he'll promptly relocate them to the nearest chair. because what other choice do i have? i could put them in the drawers for him, but wouldn't that just be the final step to complete and total self-defeat?

i don't even consider these things character flaws. sure, it would be nice to not have to do it all. but i vacillitate between narrowing my eyes and breaking into a wide smile when i see him reclining on the couch after i finish scrubbing every inch of the floor. i try to adopt his "who cares" approach to housework and it works, for an hour or two, until the socks and the unsorted laundry and the dirty dishes might as well be screaming my name. to strike only fills me with anxiety, and what's worse - it taps into my secret fear that if i don't do it all, i'm not everything. and what would be stopping him from looking for someone who is?

from perfect daughter to perfect wife. how is it possible that i know he has never noticed when i've windexed the bathroom yet i still see the presence of streaks on the mirror as evidence of all that i fail to be?

choose your own adventure and settle in for the long haul;

Tue, 14 Nov 2006 00:58:42 GMT

i love him in grey sweatpants, even when he leaves them in a pile on the otherwise clean floor. i'm growing to love the way i make the bed when i get home every day because he'll never find the time or reason to do it in the morning. i hope to eventually love the fact that he'll never bring his cereal bowl into the kitchen and what little leftover milk there is will cement itself to the bowl's bottom.

i'm beginning to think i'd recommend this. sure, sometimes i feel like we're prematurely elderly, sometimes i wish we still had any incentive to actually plan things, but everything comes out even when i factor in every moment we wouldn't otherwise have. i feel like there are two distinct parts of me - one that wants a ring and a cat and a shared last name, and another that wants to run far and fast because i'm still so young, because there has to be other bodies i'm supposed to see naked, other lips i'm supposed to taste. both sides scare me equally and i'm left without a middle ground.

each day takes it a little farther away from playing, pretending and a little closer to some sort of permanance. for how long is it dress-up before it becomes the expected garb? for how long is it make-believe before it becomes every day ordinary? growing up isn't something you try on; there's no receipt and certainly no exchange policy. by living in this studio apartment with him i'm simultaneously not being a single twenty-something throwing together one haphazard combination after another to see what best fits.

it's so easy to forget that life is all about choices, and that even the ones that no longer feel like decisions are always excluding some alternate option. i feel like part of me has been mislead by reading so many stories. i think that it's okay to take a stab at this for a while because i can always go back to the first page, pick a different setting and a new cast of supporting characters, but that's just not the way it is.

and still, when it dawns on me that this life is a decision i've made, i can't think of anything i actually want to change. i can't imagine my bed without his body beside me. i can't imagine any ending that doesn't include him unless i was able to go back and erase our beginning. investment is its own layer of protection - how can you walk away from something that defines you? all of sudden i understand husbands and wives in denial everywhere. when there's such a beautiful beginning you simply can't help but see it out.

and maybe that's just love, much less of a choice than we'd like to convince ourselves. and maybe if comfort is a trap, it's one in which i'd willingly get caught.

today my kids found a spelling list tucked inside one of my childhood books. it was mine, from fifth grade, and when they read from it they said the year 1994 like it was before they were born. which it was, for the most part, and as they oohed and aahhed over my anal-retentive ten year old cursive, i found myself, for the first time in my entire life, feeling truly, unexplicably old.

Fri, 06 Oct 2006 00:42:08 GMT

http://false-cognates.livejournal.com/

my teaching adventures. i needed a place to separate. i still plan to use this journal, as long as i still have things to say about other parts of my life. which i will, as long as i continue to have other parts of my life. sometimes it's hard to imagine i will.

♥

how love and habit blurred so thouroughly to make a life;

Sat, 30 Sep 2006 00:22:05 GMT

today, in the gym locker room, i was tying my shoes and a woman carrying her baby paused in front of me. "i have a rather odd favor to ask. i want to know how much my son weighs, so i was thinking i'd weigh myself and then weigh me with him, but..."

"you want me to hold him?"

"yes, if you would.."

she holds out a towel and then hands me her three month old son. he's heavier than i expect, but it only takes a minute for him to settle against my shoulder, as his once surprising weight begins to dissipate.

last night, i coaxed a three-and-a-half year old to sleep with the story of jack and the beanstalk. the only problem was i couldn't remember what happened after the magic beans and the stalk that stretched into the heavens. i was disappointed because this was my great-grandfathers favorite story to tell me and that fact is about all i still remember about him. i forged ahead anyway, making up my own tale so long-winded and full of pointless twists that my aim was little more than to exhaust her before i had to come up with an ending that made sense.

she was persistant, asking why at the most innocent times, curling closer to me and deeper into the sheets. when i finally found a sufficient way out, i had barely said 'the end' when i felt her little arms wrap around me tight. as i picked her up and repositioned her in bed, all i could think was that this was exactly what i've been missing.

one of my students speaks about ten words of english, which is nine more than she spoke four weeks ago. her name is patricia and she has already been in the country for about six months, electing to stay in sixth grade even though she had ms. pierce as a teacher for the tail end of last year. she's nearly six feet tall and thirteen years old and her favorite word is 'beautiful'. she uses it to describe anything she finds pleasing, like the cherry scented pencil i gave her or my hair on what i would consider one of my worst hair days. she uses it each day to comment on the ever increasing number of books she reads a night - her record being forty. these books are only about ten pages each, with more pictures than words, but i know that her reading level has already increased, and i try to believe that she learning all her words from one of these.

every time she slowly begins her sentence with "miss jones", pausing for a couple seconds to process what might come next, this look of intense concentration comes across her face. today i sat with her as she took her science test and tried to remember what the letters of the acronym i made up to help them remember the english steps of the scientific method stood for. after trying to spell hypothesis with an "a" and inventing a word that started with an 'r' that was nowhere close to results, something clicked and she began to say "observation! analysis! conclusion!" with a childlike glee. i then helped her find the words in the spanish-english dictionary they were allowed to use, knowing that unless she had something to copy from observation would be written as orbsvetn and the science teacher would mark it wrong with a cursory glance overlooking all the effort it took to even get that.

when it was all over, she came and sat with me while i made my poster for the next period. the rest of the class was in a post-test frenzy. the science teacher had all but given up. my head pounded from the boys' noises and the girls' giggles, but all of that began to matter less as patricia pointed to every single letter i wrote and said "beautiful, miss jones, beautiful."

kids don't make me feel bad for how much i care. they don't mind that i yell and then feel bad twenty seconds later. in fact by the time i'm convinced i need to make it up to them, they've completely forgotten that it ever happened. they compliment in a completely organic way, asking me to be their math teacher or their older sister because of the fact that it would make their life better. whenever i walk in a classroom i'm greeted by a chorus of "hi miss jones!", whenever i confess that i'm just coming to drop something off or pick something up, they let out a collective groan and pout as if they weren't a day over three.

still, i spend my days feeling ambivalent about my teaching ability. no matter how much they like me or how well i explain things, i feel like i fail in some way that's impossible to articulate.

it's a three day weekend that i need to spend with people my own age, away from the whines that make me want to cry and the puppy dog eyes that never fail to make me change my mind. but i guess it can't be all bad considering i already know i'll miss it all enough to not hate tuesday when it comes.

Fri, 15 Sep 2006 23:16:17 GMT

without them, i'm beginning to feel music again. without them, tears swell in the corners of my eyes for almost any reason - a subway car full of tired, lonely eyes, my children when they get to the door in the morning, out of breath from running up the stairs, only to be told by ms. pierce that they need to go back down to the cafeteria until the classroom clock says 8:10. without them, sex is more sexy, but sadness more heavy, disappointment more likely, bad luck all the more devestating.

my days are a fluctuation between the highest-i-could-do-this-for-the-rest-of-my-life highs and the lowest-i-can't-even-bear-to-come-back-tomorow-lows. the kids are either calling me over to tell them that they think i'm nice, funny, fun - that i explain things well and are happy to be in my class, or they're screaming my name to tell me they've finished and can't bear to be patient for a single second, that they don't understand the meaning of a word, that they want to go to the bathroom. they're boundless balls of energy, sound effect pros. they make your head spin, spin, spin until all you want to do is go home and collapse until the alarm goes off at 6am.

at the end of each day, i breathe a sigh of relief, happy to have survived and wanting to cry at the same time. because when i do nothing but stand in front of the class tapping at my stopwatch to remind them that it's their own time they are wasting for forty five minutes straight, i feel like my job could be done just as well by anyone. but then i switch the numbers on our constantly changing board of books read so far - and it hits me that we've only been in school for two weeks and one class of fourteen kids has read 256 books already. and maybe, just maybe, that's why it's me in front of the classroom, me with my way of making the impossible sound attainable, me and my willingness to demonstrate to jimmy that the word spun is the past tense of spin by doing a ballerina twirl in front of the class, me and the way i brighten our classroom with my meticulous poster making ability.

it's just that without them, it's hard for me to focus on the positive for more than a moment, and so much easier to dismiss, dwell, blame myself for every one of the bumps i encounter along the way.

maestra, maestra

Sat, 09 Sep 2006 01:25:45 GMT

i'm not good at classroom management. i like kids too much. they call out when they are excited and i like them more because that was me. they whisper to one another during independent work time and i like them more because it took me eighteen years to learn how to shut up. and i've always been bad at being mean.

i'm good at communicating through the language barrier with dramatic pauses and hand gestures. i'm good at getting their respect by respecting them. and i've always been good at getting kids to like me.

i'm holding it together with rules and procedures. i'm making myself remember what i consider to be largely pointless routines. the kids like that they know what to expect, and that's enough to make me bite my tongue and say "academy 2013, stand up" after every single one of them is resting their chin in their hands to show that they are ready to leave.

there's maria who couldn't wait to tell her mother how much fun the first day was, who wants to go to harvard but doesn't ever want to stop living at home. there's trinidad who says "me too" to anything maria says. there's erica and jimmy, who are profiecent in english according to the state of new york. there's maik who wrote that his goal is to be the best student in the class. there's leonel who doesn't speak, but manages to hand in everything. there's jorgelina who came in with her writer's notebook already decorated. there's kevin who "should" be in special ed but who tries harder in the company of highly motivated students than he ever has before. there's dani and karina who are cousins and promised to bring in each others homework if one of them is absent. there's marlin who wants me to bring in all the babysitters club books that i still have from growing up because she loves to read and they are her favorite series.

and then there's yaminel who writes in english when every other student chooses spanish. there's digna who doesn't belong in the class of beginners. there's yannery who refused to write a single english sentence in my presence but promised to do it for homework because she was afraid to be wrong in front of me. there's fermin and leandro, the rowdy twins with thick, dark curls. there's francis, who always smiles shyly at me. there's edwin g. who's mother typed up a replica of our independent reading log when he decided to read two books at home but only had enough space to record one. there's edwin e. with eyelashes that could make a girl scream. there's giniandris and genesis who could be sisters. there's jeffrey who obeys even when he doesn't understand what you say. there's patricia who told her mom she wanted to be held back because she loves ms. pierce and has yet to speak much more than a scattered word of english.

the numbers are so small that they are threatening to combine the two billingual classes. this would be a disaster considering one class is almost fluent and the other learned "hello my name is" yesterday. this week was a whirlwind of propraganda and ice-breakers, doing anything and everything we can to invest them in our entirely invented "billingual academy." sixth graders are so much smaller than i remember and school days so much longer. but it amazes me the way their enthusiasm never wanes - no matter if i see them for the first or final period of the day.

i knew i wouldn't understand why i did this until i met my students. but now i'm taken, by their earnestness, their ability, and their bright eyed beauty. i lose track of time when i'm teaching. i feel at home in our print-and-picture rich classroom (recognized multiple times as the best decorated in the school). i come home more exhausted than i can ever remember being. but that's okay.

after only four days, i can already say they're worth every bit of effort that this will take.

involve me, and i'll understand;

Tue, 05 Sep 2006 02:19:03 GMT

it's been almost two months since i first commanded attention in front of a classroom, five weeks since i passed my teaching tests, a month since institute in all its sordid glory came to an end. since then it's been three weeks of professional development, piles upon piles of instructional texts i've half read, handfuls of group meetings to finalize procedures, and a thick stack of final round posters waiting on my floor.

and still, it's not until tomorrow that i really become a teacher, according to both the doe and me. it's not until tomorrow that i get students that will be mine until june, not until tomorrow that all the memorized teaching tips will really get put to good use.

tomorrow is my eighteenth first day of school. but instead of smiling for mom clutching a brand new backpack, instead of mentally mapping out when i'll pass by my locker, instead of wondering if i actually picked good classes taught by good professors - this time i'm the teacher, this time i'll be telling the kids when they go to their locker, this time i'll be trying to convince them they got lucky by getting placed in my class.

tomorrow i will struggle to remember my spanish, tomorrow i will try my hardest not to smile when a student manages to be both hilarious and disobediant, tomorrow i will see if i can deliver a lesson and remember the couple hundred things i should constantly be trying to either do or not do. and hopefully tomorrow, i will begin to consider myself a teacher and not a student that somehow wound up in the front of the classroom.

when perfect comes, imperfect disappears

Mon, 21 Aug 2006 20:52:08 GMT

there are so many things that i can't believe: that it's already been a year since the water rose over the levy, that, had she lived, jon benet would be sixteen. that i'm old enough to be living with my boyfriend, to be considered a teacher, to have an annual salary. how can it be that i've experienced a lifetime this summer and still instinctively plug in '21' for my age on cardio machines?

i saw world trade center last night and i wasn't sure if i was crying because of the movie or because it made me increasingly aware of my own mortality, of the possibility that the things you take for granted might not always be. everyone says the world is crazy, teetering on the brink of collapse - of ruin by nuclear warheads, terrorists attacks, or glacial flooding - but i can still think of no greater tradegy than having someone i love taken from me.

i can't think of a more beautiful secret than this.

when people ask me how it is, living with him, all i can come up with is it's like "playing house." i do the dishes with a whimsy, feel validated by a precisely made bed. we bicker with a playful banter and try to allign our bedtimes. i've never felt closer to another than i do when he wraps his arms around me as i finish washing my face. after two years of obstacles, there's nothing sweeter than knowing he's bound to be a part of each and every day.

for the first time in four years, i have the comfort of my friends from way back when with the freshness of new faces that i've already gotten used to. for the first time in four years, i'm not the least bit lonely. i miss the people i've had trouble getting a hold of, but there's almost too many people i'd like to spend my saturday night with, almost too many items on my "social" to-do list. i've been overwhelmed by the connections i spent all of college desperately seeking, the instantaneous, circumstance enhanced kind of friendships that i actually want to last long beyond the two years i'll be spending here.

Sun, 06 Aug 2006 16:20:19 GMT

what stays after six weeks of exhausting effort, six weeks of reflecting to the point where everything becomes a question, six weeks of transitioning from being a 22-year old college graduate to a young professional, a teacher even?

the people - the tap on my shoulder that told me our friendship would last past the closing ceremonies, the phone calls that began less than twenty minutes after we left, the tears we were no longer embarrassed to see each other cry, the songs i can no longer hear without wishing that you were near.

the moments - stopping to watch the stars from the turf field after two miles and a hundred crunches, swapping ipods on bus rides, sushi and sapporo making everything alright, the early, early mornings and late, late nights.

the children - the way ricky would walk in thirty minutes before school started every day, isaac's smile when i told him i expected him to get every single one right, their pride when they each finished their five paragraph essays. & these;

so much left to learn;

Thu, 20 Jul 2006 22:47:42 GMT

it's thursday night and i'm not packing a bag. tomorrow will be my first friday night on campus, solely because i have to take my certification tests for like ten hours on saturday. institute is a thousand times harder without the promise of his soft matress and strong arms.

i haven't found the words yet for this experience. i am beginning to doubt that i ever will. i had to sacrafice my daily workout to write this. there's simply not enough hours in the day when you have to be a teacher to isaiah, ashantis, and lavaughn while being a student of teach for america.

i love the kids - the way seventh grade makes you too tough to volunteer but young enough to be persuaded to do pretty much anything. i get a surge of energy every time i lean down to read what's written on their page and find the correct answer, the thing that i didn't think sunk in when i tried to teach it yesterday. their faces glow when i slap a post-it down on their desk without looking back, one that reads "i was so impressed by your outline steven" or "you amaze me every day isaac."

but teaching summer school is basically like a month long group project for twelve hours a day. nothing makes people rub you the wrong way more than constant proximity. i spend my days walking on eggshells around one of my partners since she's just the type of girl you don't want to piss off. i lucked out that we're all competant, but i breathe a sigh of relief every time i get to talk to someone else, someone that actually makes me feel at ease.

tonight we had planned to go out for sushi and sapporo, a thursday treat that almost makes up for the rest of the week. but they sprung some last minute mandatory lesson planning hours on us, which pretty much just makes me pissed off that i spent last night writing four plans in an hour so i could remind myself what it feels like to be aimless for even an evening, to talk about something other than classroom management or the ceaseless ramifications of my (lack of) diversity clashing with the children i'll teach.

the only good part of today was when i was observed by someone on the recruitment staff. she told me that she could sense my energy and enthusiasm the second shei walked through the door, that i have a natural demeanor and great rappaport with the kids. she said these are the things you can't teach and i'd figure out everything else along the way.

it was the first compliment i believed all week.

i wrote this during a lecture. it's taken me too long to include writing in my multi-tasking agenda.

Tue, 18 Jul 2006 03:07:49 GMT

two and half years from a circumstancial crush to picking plates - patterened or plain? bright or just white? - at fortunoff. we may seem young, foolish, rash, but it's less about years gone by and more about those on the horizon. it's less our two year anniversary and more our entire uphill history. from stolen summer kisses to international calling cards, from justifying inconvienent feelings to two years' worth of frequent flyer miles.

even now, i'm here - never been busier - and he's idly waiting on the other side of the hudson river. even now, i'll finish this august fifth and he'll be on a far off continent.

but this time there's a bed with a powder blue bedspread, in a studio apartment on the intersection of 97th street and central park west, waiting for us.

and already i wonder what it will be like to fall asleep next to you without having a countdown to the next farewell flicker through my mind, what will it feel like to wash your dishes daily, to have our clean laundry smell the same?

but these questions don't make me anxious, like almost any indecision can. because in order to do this, i have to trust that proximity won't make you forget that i'm delicate, that no number of days can diminish my stubborn surprise at the softness of your skin. i need to know that i'll never stop feeling lucky that you're sweet when you're half aasleep, that your instinct when i stir is to wrap your arms around me. i need to believe that our love can be both extraordinary and routine.

in order to do this, i need to be more certain of us than i am of anything ♥

relentless pursuit of results...

Tue, 27 Jun 2006 19:52:25 GMT

for the first time in my life, i underpacked. for the second time in my life, i'm figuring out a college campus. for the third time in my life, i'm ambivalent about the "good luck" that let me wind up with a single. for the millionth time in my life, i'm adjusting to something new.

i look at the window and i can't tell that the campus is in new york city, queens technically. i sit down at a random lunch table and i can't tell that i'm surrounded by the "best and brightest" college graduates with any interest in giving back to underprivledged youth by giving them a chance at a good education. i wake up in my twin extra long bed and can't tell that i'm almost twenty two years old instead of eighteen all over again.

currently, i feel less than challenged, but i know that won't last for long. soon enough i'll have real students at summer school who are depending on me to make things make sense to them. but until then, i'm unsure of what to do with this free time. i've been making friends by going on runs, never moving fast enough to make conversation all that difficult. i've been getting enough sleep, so far. last night i even watched some crap mtv while doing our largely redundant homework.

i love how everyone is so together, so sociable and confident. but i hate the mandated wearing of our nametags, the dictated wardrobe of slightly wrinkled business casual. i hate sitting in a classroom feeling indoctrinated by "core values" and the dual nature of teach for america's mission. as amazing as it is that there are five hundred qualified people at the new york institute alone, i want to feel like more than a pawn in a broad political agenda, even if that is exactly what i am.

what matters to me, is i now have a school i will be teaching at next year. i will have students eager to acquire the language they will need to succeed in this country from a teacher that desparately needs to brush up on her spanish. i will have a daily objective and a chance to make a very real difference on a very small scale, to individual students, to other teachers, to one of many new york city public schools.

i still need a place to live. i still need desperately to get to that day when i will come home to our apartment, to that day when he's expected to be in our bed with me at night, when he's the first thing i see when i wake up in the morning. but i'm closer than i've ever been before, and i'm on to something new, something more.

even though i'm smart enough to know there's no such thing as effortless perfection;

Mon, 12 Jun 2006 18:27:12 GMT

"Kasey, an econ major with a psychology minor and a ''markets and management'' certificate, brings her books to the gym. ''And a highlighter,'' she says. ''Not that I can actually read this small print on the treadmill, but it's just the fact that it's sitting there and that I brought it and the effort's there.''

''Reading on the treadmill with the highlighter -- see, that's Duke in a nutshell,'' says Allison. ''You've got to do everything at once, and you've got to do it well.''

Or at least girls do. Boys at Duke don't seem to feel that pressure. ''The guys are always hanging out, playing video games -- why don't girls do that?'' Kasey looks at her friends. The others shrug. ''Girls will either be at the gym or doing something productive. They work so much harder -- spending two hours at the gym trying to look good, and eating salmon.''

Allison adds, ''If there's ever a time when I just sit around, I get horrible anxiety.''

In 2003, Duke launched a yearlong study, known as the ''Duke Women's Initiative,'' to look at the social attitudes and concerns of women on campus. What they found was alarming, says Donna Lisker, director of Duke University's women's center. The kind of hyperactivity Allison describes is typical among female undergraduates, whom, Lisker says, feel tremendous pressure ''to excel both academically -- get the right grades, the right internships, move your life in the right path -- but then you also need to excel physically, if you will,'' with perfect hair, skin, clothes, makeup and a size-four body. Women interviewed for the study spoke of the immense effort they had to put in to create this illusion of

aside from the fact that the girls in this article seem painfully un(self)aware, i, along with almost every college-age female at a top academic institution that i know, can relate to this.

i began reading this article because my interest in the duke sex scandel stems from actually knowing two of the players involved (including the one who wrote the e-mail) and my frustration with my beloved sport of lacrosse being completely branded by this incident. but the above portion is far more interesting to me than any speculation on what may have happened that evening.

i joined a gym in evanston because the wait for treadmills and ellipticals at northwestern facillities was unavoidable. but eventually even that gym became full of college girls in their sorority letters highlighting coursepacks while simultaneously watching dawson's creek or gilmore girls. this year i've had the flexibility to avoid the peak hours, mainly because the whole thing depresses me. my dependance on exercise is something i wish was more unique, mainly because it makes me sad that there are so many girls out there who must feel like me.

and oh how i tried to avoid that anxiety that sinks in when you have to do nothing. eventually i surrendered to medication. and that is probably the only thing that has me okay with sitting here in the middle of the day (after a grueling morning at the gym, a light lunch, and a nice shower of course) reflecting on how sad it is that this is probably the most lasting thing i will take away from college.

this being that unless every piece of my life fits together, unless i'm happy with my body, my hair, my skin, and my resume, i don't deserve to sit still. that unless my bank account looks promising there's no reason i shouldn't be working. that it doesn't matter that i'm already a size four, because i could probably get down to a two if i just tried hard enough. this being that i still can't look at my transcript without wondering what happened on those extremely rare occasions where i let myself get anything but an a, deriding myself for being preoccupied or lazy. this being that i better treasure those fleeting moments where i feel important and special, because if four years at northwestern university have taught me anything, there are plenty others just like me, better even.

and this, truth me told, is the reason i deactivated from my sorority. i couldn't handle the magnified degree of scrutiny, the collected conscious of inadequacy. this, truth be told, is why i can only stomach so many nights out in a row. i've internalized this notion of "effortless perfection" so completely that i feel guilty being carefree knowing that i have so much more work to do on me.

article from http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/10464110/sex_scandal_at_duke

do you not know, my son with what little understanding the world is ruled?

Mon, 05 Jun 2006 04:38:33 GMT

it always comes down to the places; i remember rooms as well as i remember faces. four walls can freeze memories i'd otherwise forget. i am overwhelmed by emotion when i set my foot on once-familiar ground. i find that while yes, my life is changing, the thing that gets to me the most is that the context of it will change. the frequently traveled paths, the rooms i've lived in, the grassy green fields where a new kind of love unfolded right before me, all of them will be but a picture in my mind until i come back again and experience them through a cloudy lense of nostalgia.

i've spent four years being ambivalent about college, but the one thing i can whole-heartedly embrace is the life i've made for myself in this setting. the relationships i've maintained are more than wonderful, they are utterly necessary. the jobs i've undertaken are not only lucrative and often exhausting, but unbelievably fufilling.

and the bottom line is, i'm good at what i do here. i couldn't be a better coach, a better babysitter, a better person to myself when i have all this time to remember to treat myself better. and i'm terrified what will happen when i leave all this behind. i've never been very good at reaffirming myself even in the face of so many reminders of my capability and worth. in new york city i get him, but i'll also get a tremendous challenge for a career, and an only slightly less crippingly challenge of context.

i spent a wonderful week at home. i was able to talk honestly with my parents about the future. i got to spend a large part of every day with him. it was the first time ever that i felt i was beginning to reflect who i've become out here back there.

but for the most part, i'm afraid that it will just be too hard to keep this up. that eventually i'll resent him for always wanting to hang out with the same old friends. part of me wonders if the thing i need most is a completely fresh start, minus him of course. and that's something i can probably never have.

i just want to have more people i love that i'm not paid to spend time with. i just want to feel as comfortable around people my own age as i do around twenty-two sixteen and seventeen year old girls. i just want to have as much fun with my friends as i do with a certain seven year old boy. i am capable of caring about people so much. i'm just sensitive. it's just complicated. and i can't love you unconditionally until i feel like you love me.

i'm caught between feeling like i want to make a million changes and feeling like the reason my life is this way is because i more or less chose it. i'm caught between thinking that i can modify almost anything and knowing that there are parts of me that will just always be. it's gotten late and i'm not thinking straight.

and i will walk with you;

Mon, 22 May 2006 17:03:18 GMT

saturday night, the last song that played as we fell asleep was "walk with you" by dispatch. by that point, most of us had been together for twenty straight hours. i had seen them minutes after they first woke up, coached them through five lacrosse games, won one trophy, laughed with them though three hours worth of bus rides, celebrated into the early morning hours, and watched as one by one they gave in to the exhaustion of sunshine and athleticism, the late night and early morning. at some point during the evening, one of my players laughed and said we were less like a team, and more like a family.

i will never find the words to express my complete adoration for the separate individuals or the team as a whole. all i know, is that these next weeks feel like gravy, as the substance of my time here will come to an official end on wednesday. of everything i've experienced in the past four years, it will be lacrosse that stands out as the only unequivocally wonderful experience of my college career.

they will be who i associate with happiness here, the true purpose of my future visits. they are the only reason i ever log on to facebook anymore. all the emotions that are supposed to surround graduation - the gratitude for all you've been given, the reluctance to let it end, the shocking realization that what was will never be again - those all hit me yesterday. i cried as i wrote them all out by hand, wipping my tears between breaths so the three year olds i was watching wouldn't look at me funny. i cried because it's been so long since i've felt this attached to something transient, so long since i became reliant on something despite my best efforts to breeze through these four years without too many messy entanglements.

i'm writing this in procrastination of making the awards i will give them. it's something i love to do, as i love to do pretty much anything for them, but at the same time, it is the one thing that truly, absolutely, signals the end.

Tue, 16 May 2006 18:46:39 GMT

in high school, i fell for boys like they were a drug - in an instant, without much hesitation or further consideration. but before the boys, there were a few girls, fun and carefree enough for me to come alive in front of. she is perhaps the best example of them, the way we could pass an entire school year with a single inside joke, elaborating from shouting out names for our made-up "emo" band during creative writing class, to her making me a cd, complete with a booklet of lyrics and pictures of us she cropped from the original 4x6 kodaks.

i was home for less than five minutes yesterday, stopping by to give my mom a hug on the way to drop one of her better friends off, one that stayed in touch when it wasn't as effortless, one who immediately felt the gravity of what she would forever miss. i'm able to stay one step ahead of it. this morning i returned to my apartment, 800 miles away from the mourners, 800 miles away from the closets in my chlidhood bedroom where i know that homemade cd case and handfuls upon handfuls of evidence from our once upon a time friendship rests.

it still hasn't hit me. there are people you grow up with who you cease to worry about, because you watched them tranform from quirky and adolescent, to fiercely beautiful and compelling. people you assume are invincible by virtue of their innate goodness.

it was with her that i swallowed mouthfuls of grenadine, deciding that the resultant sugar-high had to be like being drunk. it was with her that i wrote the name of a crush that would become my first love on my stomach with sunless tanner, because we were hyper-active at one of a hundred sleepovers. it was with her that i spent a year in creative writing class, befriending all the older boys, feeling awkwardly proud whenever she would compliment my innate ability. it was with her that i had my first sips of alcohol (bacardi to be exact), deciding a few moments later in my hot tub that we would run topless through the cornfields that bordered my house. it was her that gave me a bag full of reminders that it was okay to still be childish when i turned twenty. it was her that no matter how long it had been since we talked i felt like she still understood me, still bothered to read what i wrote in here, still bothered to think about the quotes i posted in my profile, asking to borrow what could be my favorite one, by pablo neruda - i want to do with you what the spring does with the cherry trees.

and the truth is, if there was ever anyone that had an effect on people similar to the effect that spring has on cherry trees, she did.

i just hope she knew it.

♥

Thu, 04 May 2006 05:31:14 GMT

each night, i shuffle through all the moments that stood out during the day. normally this process is brief, a momentary transition between waking and sleep, but lately my mind races long after my eyes close. somehow, the past three days have been both a routine and a surprise.

i spent monday buying streamers and balloons in orange and navy blue. i threw a pasta party for my team complete with homemade pesto and walls covered with their pictures. they loved the decorations and made me play never-have-i-ever with them, resulting in conversations about when casual sex is okay (next to never), if you're ever too young to be in love (no), and how many people on the team have seen a therapist (definitely close to seventy-five percent). when they left i did the dishes, overwhelmed by how those three hours in my living room were filled with more honest relating that the past three years of college have been. there's something about being sixteen that i still relate to, the hesitant outpourings of stories and opinions that practically scream "someone, anyone, say they understand what i'm saying." maybe i skipped a very necessary point of life when i spent those four years around only boys, maybe there's just some part of me that never got enough of the "me too" and now i just want to be the one to say it to every one of them, so they know adolescence isn't something exclusive, that we've all been there, that we all make it through.

today one of my players came to practice in the clothes she wore to school. she had had a rough day and wanted someone to talk to. i listened to her speak with my eyes darting around the field to make sure everyone else was actually doing the drills, but i wished it could have been okay for me to turn and look at only her, and tell her it will all be okay. her friends call her anorexic; she's the kind of girl that most of her grade is probably afraid of, pretty and powerful but completely plagued by personal demons, ones i understand all too well. there's so much you grow out of, and equally as much that you never really do.

i was watching oprah tuesday morning at the gym and terri hatcher was on, talking about her book burnt toast. she said something about how every woman has a lifelong journey of learning how to treat herself better. it's so true and it's something i still need to learn how to do. sure i get enough sleep, eat the ideal ratios of protein to complex carbs, and exercise at an obsessive frequency to clear the clutter in my head. i know i deserve real, good love and i've taken all the necessary steps to equalize my imbalanced brain chemistry. but pleasure? i'd rather give it. same thing with charity, advise, and unexpected acts of kindness. perhaps the only thing i'd rather recieve is a compliment, and to be honest, i'm pretty bad at that. some guy walked by me today on the way home from the gym and he said "damn girl you look fine" immediately followed by "yeah, go ahead, roll your eyes." he was right, my eyes were already looking at the sky, not because he was some random guy, but because i still haven't learned how to say thanks with a smile.

i look at my team, watch them act, listen to them speak. they say things like "if i get fat again nobody will be my friend", they hesitate to be great because they're living in the shadows of "perfect" older siblings, they shy away from the ball at crucial points in games because they are afraid to ask for it and make a mistake. to all of this, i just want to say, stop, don't worry, you're wonderful as you are and still have more potential than you could ever know. it's okay, in fact it's necessary, to make mistakes - on the lacrosse field and in life in general. the only thing that isn't okay is treating yourself that way, like you don't deserve better, or like you aren't capable of getting it even if you know you do.

but if i did, i'd be the world's biggest hypocrite. i hold myself to impossible standards every single day. we lost a game on tuesday, our third and hopefully final loss of the season, and i spent two hours thinking of all the drills i could have done last week to make us a better team. truth is, we talk a bit too much during practice. truth is, i'm always willing to forgive an absence. if i was more of a hard ass, if i had stricter standards, well, i'd be an entirely different coach of an entirely different team. they learn, they have fun, they enjoy themselves and their company, so why can't i be okay with the fact that i'm me?

it's one example of many, and sports are an easy metaphor for the highs and lows we all experience along the way. in the end, i think the season record speaks for itself. i think that the ability to come back after a bad half counts. i think that a laugh matters more than a perfectly executed ground ball, that a shot counts for something even if you don't score. that playing your best means different things on different days and that nothing is more important than enjoying yourself as you play.

Thu, 27 Apr 2006 14:27:58 GMT

content has rarely been more than a moment, more than a flickering feeling, more than a brief relief. but now it settles, it lingers, it penetrates deep enough to distill into a sort of meloncholy awe - wonder that this is actually what i've been missing for the past three years, fear that it still won't stick around for long, shock that i'm still capable of it, after all.

part of it is relief that what's next is beginning to be figured out, part of it is love, forever an opiate, somehow renewed by us just being how we always are, part of it is lacrosse, with a team and a season that will stick with me much longer than college parties and courseloads.

on may 13th, we play our final games together at a day long tournament. on may 13th, i fly out of chicago at nine-thirty in the evening to syracuse, new york for what could be the last time. i'll watch him graduate with a sense of foreshadowing, he'll head home and i'll go back only to tie up loose ends and make a little bit more money. lacrosse was my justification for borrowing this time, and i already know that i'll be trying harder not to cry at the banquet than even the most committed seniors. it's just become so much more than a job. in the past three years it's helped me get by every time, helped distact me from injury, lonliness, a lack of purpose.

i'm sentimental this morning, stuck in my standard contentment trap, my doubt that this satisfaction will stay when the variables change. it's like i can always hear the ticking of an egg timer behind every moment i enjoy, the ticking that i have relished at times because it promised me proximity to something i wanted more. but now i know everything is coming, no matter how fervently i wish away the days. and ironically, it's the first time i'm afraid to countdown to seeing him again, because this reuinion also coincides with other varied ends.

the truth is i'm incredibly lucky.

it scares the crap out of me.