i have seen the moment of my greatness flicker

Have you ever loved someone so much, whatever love might be, that you just sit in their lap and cry? You look at that person, and think about all the times you ever felt so alone, so ceaselessly alone, like the universe. You take that person's face in your hands and you try to say something that will touch your universe to the other person's. You say, I love you. You say, oh my god. You say, before I knew you, I waited. You say, never leave and I won't either. A tear might fall from the other person's eye, or maybe the person laughs, and that's when you lose it. A hundred nights of asking God for a sign seem like another life altogether. Once the sign comes it's easy to forget about the miles of stretched out concrete that led up to it. And equally easy to forget that whoever is in charge of making the signs does so without err, but doesn't account for the flecks in your eyes.

You take the person's face in your hands and a tear falls or a laugh bubbles up, and that's when you cry. You cry for every person you've ever loved, your mom and your dad. All the people you used to love but don't anymore. You want to actually curl up into a ball so small it's visible only to that person, then you want to press into their stomach and disintegrate into their skin. Being in love is wanting to disappear.

And all the other times, when you've been alone so long you nearly forget what it's like to love someone, you can allow yourself to remember. You can lie in your bed with a book and a pen and you can write in cursive letters, Sometimes I want to fall asleep with the light on. And then you'll wake up at 4 a.m. and the lights will be on and you'll crawl blind to switch them off, and then just before you drift off again, there it is, that feeling you haven't felt in this life. 

You pull the blanket up around your nose, take your face in your hands, and cry. You pray for a sign.

Cage

I watched Breakfast at Tiffany's last night. As cliché as it is for me - a 20-something female living in New York - to like that film, I still openly really, really like that film. I didn't much care for it the first time I saw it, but it's grown on me with each viewing. I've also read the short story, which I actually like even more - think better writing, no happy ending - but there's just something about the film that calms me down when I'm feeling restless and crazy and anxious. Something about watching Audrey Hepburn, so beautiful and graceful and classy, get drunk at a speakeasy and retrieve her phone from her suitcase and pull shoes out of her refrigerator; it somehow reassures me that maybe everyone goes through these crazy stages in their lives, where nothing seems to be in its proper place, and even all the glamour and parties and amazing New York experiences somehow seem to come up short.

At the end of the film, she and George Peppard are riding in a cab and he tells her he's in love with her and she says, "So what?" His response is so poignant and true and beautiful. And God I sound like such a cliche of myself but I don't care because it really spoke to me last night when I watched it. I'm pretty sure if a man ever said anything like this to me, I would marry him on the spot.

"You know what's wrong with you, Miss Whoever-you-are? You're chicken, you've got no guts. You're afraid to stick out your chin and say, 'Okay, life's a fact, people do fall in love, people do belong to each other, because that's the only chance anybody's got for real happiness.' You call yourself a free spirit, a 'wild thing,' and you're terrified somebody's gonna stick you in a cage. Well baby, you're already in that cage. You built it yourself. And it's not bounded in the west by Tulip, Texas, or in the east by Somali-land. It's wherever you go. Because no matter where you run, you just end up running into yourself."

No matter where you run, you just send up running into yourself. If the past six months have taught me anything, it's that. So it's time for me to figure out who I am, and love that person, and find my own happiness.

Until next time.

Hell is other people

Sometimes when I come back to my blog after being away for a while, I can't believe how long it's been. June 23?? REALLY? Today is July 12. That's, like, almost a month. It's been almost a month since MJ died. Can't believe it. If any of you out there have aspirations to live in New York, one of the first things you will learn is that time means nothing you thought it meant. A week is a blink of an eye, and a month feels like a week. I wonder if it's like that for "adults" everywhere, or if it really is a New York thing. Either way, it's bizarre.

Sartre wrote in his play No Exit that "hell is other people." I've read it--depressing--basically this guy dies and finds himself in a room with no exit, trapped with like three or four other people for all eternity. Of course gradually they start to hate each other and go insane. What would be worse, do you think? All eternity in a room by yourself, or all eternity in a room with a few other people you hate?

I'm single again. It was more of a mutual thing this time. We each had our own reasons I guess. It's amazing how after being with someone a year, you still feel like you don't know them at all. Is that normal? Is that par for the course in serious relationships? Like, it's the big secret no one tells you, oh yeah, a year is nothing, you still have a lot to learn about the other person. I don't know, but I really hope not. I don't want to feel like I know someone, only to learn that I don't really, over and over again over the course of my life. Why can't people just fucking be honest about who they are from the beginning?

I'm being very vague on purpose, but suffice it to say that I was in DC last weekend and found out something that made me feel like, oh here we go again, I think I trust someone and then he shits all over it. Well, I tried for a year. I mean, I think that's pretty good right? Off and on, but I tried for a year to put my full trust in one other person. And it didn't work out. Time to move on.

I'm gonna try not to let myself get ruined. I want to stay in tact, be the Meghan I used to know and love, so that one day I can wake up and suddenly be ready to date again, and meet someone equally awesome and we can truly love and trust each other. But as of right now, I'm really over it. I spent a year trying to make something work with someone, and when I think back on it now I see one struggle after another. That really sucks, because we had some good times, but right now I just want to be alone. At least when I'm alone there are no expectations, no games, no failed attempts at communication. It's just me and my apartment and the city and my friends and all of y'all and my family, way down South.

And for now, that's exactly what I want.

Majorly yours.