Today, as the Northwestern-Boston College game was just about to start, I texted my mom and told her that I really miss NU and really just want to go back. She texted back and said I should go back for law school and, this time, keep a record of my experiences so they will always be with me. I did a triple-take when I saw she was suggesting I go back to the place of endless terrible weather, but then I settled in — or sat on the edge of my chair — to watch the game and kind of got into the idea of returning to my alma mater for another degree, this one a little more directly pertinent to the rest of my life.
After cardiac-cat-typical excitement and thrill, the game ended (with a Cats victory) around 3. I read about how to keep my "ticker" healthy on womenshealthmag.com (you know, eat less salt, do yoga before bed, drink a glass of wine every night, have sex, etc.), pretended to work on school stuff a little bit, then went to dinner at a Mexican place, Mazatlan, in Williamston. I had a combo burrito-taco-rice-and-beans meal, then we came back and talked for a bit before I put on "Love Me if You Dare," a French film that I love oh so much but that I can't convince people to watch because you have to read subtitles to experience it. I made myself a glass of chocolate milk, Erica went to sleep and I teared up at the end of the movie with Julien and Sophie living as old people in their happy little lawn chairs and kissing in remembrance of all their kisses, seized to prevent them both ending up in a concrete block (the alternate form of undying love they may have endured, it's up to you to decide, but too confusing and a bit of a spoiler to describe here). After the credits rolled out in full and the DVD went back to its lovely fuchsia and blue start screen, I still sat here a little desperate for something. I sat back, thought of Matt's face when we last saw each other and had to part in the dismal Florida rain, thought of all the pain and hurt in such a torturous relationship as Julien's and Sophie's in the movie, and felt so simultaneously empty and full.
That's what I have now, this dichotomous, drumming feeling. It's the feeling of a person finding her footing in the waterlogged grass on the side of US-64 after slamming into a guardrail and reeling out of her totaled car in a fury to call in her emergency. It's the feeling of a person wondering how she can reasonably expect or be expected to lead three classes of bright, beaming, naive seventh-graders (and then eighth-graders) to success in science, much less in life. It's the feeling of a person begging for light to be shed on how she is supposed to go through this experience, this overwhelmingly terrifying life, without her love by her side, or at least near enough to flee to at the end of a grueling week. It's the feeling of a person who momentarily thought she could get swept away by a hurricane in Raleigh, literally and figuratively, and felt — maybe still feels — like she was or is in a whirling dream that refuses to be unveiled as whimsical or nightmarish. It's the feeling of a person who feels pain but wants to forget it. I think that's the gist of the schism between empty and full: I'm overflowing, but I need it, or at least some parts of it, to just be empty...if only for a little while.
And I think the point of all this is to say that I have things inside that need to wrest their way out of me and onto paper or screen or wherever. My mom is right, always is. The sense of drowning I feel now seems just shy of insurmountable. But 10 years (maybe even 1 year) down the road, I will have forgotten all that I'm feeling at this moment. I will have lost this particular ambiguity in favor of another and will have moved on in innumerable ways, though hopefully not in all ways. There are parts of me I need to keep and parts of me I yearn to force free and bid adieu. But I'm beginning to realize that when all is said and done, I want a record of it all. Even if I never return to the words I write, to the hurt I've suffered and caused, to the questions left tauntingly unanswered and God forbid even unexplored, I want it to exist someplace. It's impossible to share in any other meaningful way, so though this may be imperfect, it'll be my way to cope or share, whichever happens.
Just one last note: "ENC Soul-Searching" is a cop-out and a half. I'm not here to search my soul. I hardly even feel like I'm here, period. So it's pretty deceitful of me to write as though I have some master plan to find myself in this two-year life in what's apparently the poorest county in North Carolina. Nope, that title was just easy to write. I'm sure I'll reach points where I feel like I've found my soul; the rub is that nobody's looking for it.
No comments:
Post a Comment