Plural

"Well, I mean, Kelly is plural now and we have to start taking that into account."

I start laughing and end up with beer up my nose. It's been a really long week, and I'm--we're, I suppose--hanging out and having pizza and beer with one of my old roommates. She's tired and a little frazzled, talking to her husband about how we need to see one another more often and the difficulty of coordinating schedules.

After coughing the carbonation out of my lungs I say: "What a funny way of thinking about it."

She shrugs. "I always thought it was kind of nice."

***

I'm going to be sad to see 2014 go.

It feels like a selfish sentiment, given the general fucked up-ness of the past twelve months. But the truth is that grim global realities aside, 2014 has been the best year of my life. 

Independent of the whole ohmygodLOVE thing, this year has been fantastic. I celebrated a year in the Twin Cities, packed suitcases, took cross-country flights, and crossed finish lines and things off my  my 30x30 list.

This has been a great year. 

Here's the funny thing. 

All of those things felt really good. I love marking things off of to-do lists and travel is always deeply satisfying. 

That's not what made this year wonderful. 

During the course of the past year I've felt less and less like I was waiting for the bottom to drop out on me. Work has felt manageable, my family is healthy, I live in a city I love surrounded by people I cherish. Things feel more stable now than they have in a long time. Until this weekend, I had a really hard time pinning down what, exactly, was so different about 2014.

***

I'm happy. 

That's it. There are no qualifiers or addendum to the statement. That's what changed in 2014, and it's such a simple thing, I feel like I should be embarrassed that it took me so long to figure out. But I spent so long with depression and anxiety that I forgot what it felt like to live without them. And even in the process of getting better things were still kind of bad. But over the course of the past year, my worst days have become roughly equivalent to what my best days used to be. 

Happiness has stopped feeling tenuous. 

Partly, I expect, from therapy and sorting out any number of things that I had repressed for awhile. Partly from learning triggers and healthy coping mechanisms and any number of the other tedious grown-up things you learn to do in therapy. Partly from falling in love.

Being plural has a lot to do with it. 

Not just the simple being plural of being in a couple, but the complicated, beautiful, crazy feeling of having a group of people who love you and have your well-being in mind, people who bring you pho when you're sick, let you cry on their couch when you're sad, celebrate your successes and milestones and let you be a part of theirs.  

They make happiness feel like maybe, this year, it might be permanent. 

Grace 2.0

The theological gears in my brain have started spinning again.

It was sort of inevitable after the weekend. We went to go see a play called The Whale on Friday night. I spent most of the week looking forward to it. The boyfriend told me that it was a beautiful show, and he hadn't missed with a recommendation.

Most of the time I know what (and how to avoid) things that I find profoundly upsetting. I flatly refuse to see shows or movies with sexual violence. Ditto domestic violence. Actually, I consume very little violent media, at all. My favorite video games are puzzle based games rather than first-person shooters.

Aside from violence, I tend to do pretty well.

The Whale, though.

I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that I spent most of the play crying. Or that it impacted my mood through much of the weekend. I went to bed sad on Friday, teared up a few times thinking about it Saturday, and spent a solid chunk of today writing and thinking about it.

One of the most interesting parts of the show completely opposite ways the boyfriend and I saw it. For me, it was a show about watching someone commit suicide by tiny increments. For the boyfriend it was a show about redemption and the ability to see grace and kindness in other people, even when they are verifiably rotten.

Either way, the show was a lot to process.

In theology, when we talk about grace, we talk about God breaking into the course of human events. For Christians, the major example would be the Incarnation, but also through sacraments and the liturgy.

One of the things I loved best about my theological education (especially graduate school) was the idea that moments of grace would break into our daily lives, without the sacraments, without liturgy, we could find these little moments of God's love in the everydayness. But more than the in-breaking-of-the-Divine-into-the-world, what appealed to me most was the idea that everyday grace could be transformative. 

The accessibility of God in those moments, or the idea of it, always appealed to me. 

It's been . . . awhile since I've thought about anything even tangentially related to theology. But our differing reactions to a play that was about depression, loss, and redemption, has me thinking about grace throughout the weekend. 

Relationships are such grace-filled things. 

Not in the big born-of-a-virgin or the slightly-less-big-consecration-of-the-Eucharist kind of way, but in the everyday way that has always meant more to me. The chance to see yourself in a different way is no small thing. Particularly when seeing yourself in that different way makes you want, quite simply, to be a better version of yourself. More than that, it's the other person's ability to look past who you are in your worst moments and say "I believe in the person you want to be and want to help you get there." 

That kind of unflappable belief in another person and the transformative power of grace is, I think, what The Whale was about. And it's something I would have missed, had I not had someone there to help me see something that wasn't colored by my own experience. 

Like I said, perhaps not the Incarnation, but in my worst moments, it doesn't feel any less miraculous. 

Drama

Here, in no particular order, are some things I always thought I wanted:

• Sex, sex, sex, sex, sex.
• Huge, romantic gestures. 
• Huge, dramatic fights followed by some ridiculous making up including both of the above. 

Needless to say, my adult relationships have all been kind of rocky. 

Someone twice my age? Well, it worked for Gary Cooper and Audrey Hepburn in Love in the Afternoon, why is my life any different? Living half a continent away from one another and communicating mainly by once-a-week letters because our schedules are at odds? It has a faint tang of Jane Austen, does it not? An emotionally abusive genius I can't stand unless I'm wasted? If the waifish Zelda Fitzgerald can do it, why can't I?

Yeah, I know. 

I bought into all of ohmygodtruelovehastobeallconsuming bullshit, the idea that in order for Love To Be Real it had to be Passionate. And I equated Passion with really specific things. Let's get real. I conflated Passion with Sex and Drama. As if eating one another alive was the measure of the seriousness of a relationship. 

We all know how that story ends. Francesca spending eternity in a whirlwind, Cleopatra with an asp at her breast, Catherine locked in her rooms at Thrushcross Grange.

Me, crying in a feminist sex shop in Minneapolis. 

As established, I am a colossal fucking idiot when it comes to relationships. 

Here, in no particular order, are some things I never knew I wanted:

• Texts during the middle of the day simply to ask "How's your day going?" 
• 96 (continuous!) hours in another person's company. 
• A major holiday dinner with a family that isn't related to me. 
• A cat to like me. Well. At least not actively despise me. 
• Flowers. 
• My spare set of keys with someone who would make use of them. 
• The bed to smell like someone else. 
• Sleeping wrapped up in someone's arms. 

These things, these quiet, day-to-day, being an actual part of one another's lives blow my mind almost every day. I am actually amazed by the extent to which I enjoy family dinners, evenings in with the cat, drinking champagne and cheering so loudly during superhero movies that the neighbors start knocking on the living room wall. It feels completely natural in a way I've never experienced before.

I'm astounded by how being a part of someone's life can expose the depth and breadth of their heart, of their capacity to love.

And all of those things, the having-of-the-spare-keys and sleeping-with-his-shirt-under-the-pillow doesn't mean that the other stuff is missing. It turns out your neighbors can hate you because you cheer during Captain America: The Winter Soldier and for the other reasons people hate sharing thin-walled apartments with couples.

Drama, it turns out, is overrated.

Thank God. 

All This and Heaven Too

"Oh, Kel. I know."

I have imagined this situation, the words I've just said out loud hundreds of times over the past two months.  I wrote them down. I practiced saying them in the shower. I ran phrasing and timing past friends of mine. I planned how I could leave, quickly, when things went awry.

This is the one situation I didn't anticipate.

It's a hell of a thing, to tell someone "Here are all the ways that I'm broken" and have them still treat you, well, like a person. It's an even bigger thing to tell someone "Here are all the ways I'm broken" and have them say:

"Yes, I know. I love you anyway."

It leaves me speechless.

In the past I've written a lot about love. About how much I love it, how I feel it for my friends, how I wanted it despite someone tap-dancing on my heart. I wrote about how I need different words for love and how Upper Midwestern parents changed my conception of love.

This blog has many, many entries that fall under the category of "love."

Yeah, they're total crap.

Perhaps that's a bit harsh. Some of them have it right (mainly things about friends and family). A couple of the ones about relationships probably have it half right, but Jesus H. Jones.

I had no idea.

There's a line from a Florence + The Machine song that I've been thinking about a lot lately.

And all my stumbling phrases never amounted to anything worth this feeling. 

I mean, we've all felt this way, right? It's the (almost) universal human experience, and something we know idiomatically if not intuitively. "Love at first sight." "We just knew." "Opposites attract." "Chemistry." "Love is blind." "Lieben uber alles." "Love is the neutrino that doesn't interface with the Higgs Field of Logic."

What, you've never used that last one?

But regardless of all the idioms, all the friends in happy, successful relationships, it still feels unique, doesn't it? Like ohmygodnooneinthewholecourseofhumaneventshaseverfeltthisway. So we listen to sappy pop songs on repeat. We tell our friends how we received a tablet in the parking lot at the Wedge and it was a big thing not because of the gift, but because it was a gift based on something we mentioned in passing like three weeks ago and wasn't it sweet that they remembered? We smile thinking about one another during the course of the day and spend long Saturday mornings cuddling and talking about video games and anime and our families and the books we're reading.

We talk. We talk a lot. 

And those things and the way we talk about them are great. They're better than great, they're amazing. But the stuff that gets to me, what makes me think "I love you" is subtler, somehow. It's the look of understanding on his face when I say "I have obsessive-compulsive disorder and anxiety and some shit left over from exes that weren't very good to me." It's the way he smells, the messages when I'm stressed or upset, the way his voice sounds when we're up late talking that just . . .

Well, all my stumbling phrases, right?

Whatif

"Will talking about it help?"

My lizard brain is in full on panic mode, which means that I've exercised, cooked for the next week, baked six pies, and my house is spotless. All positives, right? Or they would be if they weren't coping mechanisms for distracting myself from my overactive amygdala.

The question from Kerry is all the prompting I need.

"What if therapy uncovers some terrible childhood memory that I've repressed for 30 years?"

We continue with the whatifs for awhile until I get to the big one.

"What if I'm broken and can't be fixed?"

 ***

The woman sitting across from me laughs out loud.

We’re in a dimly lit room with muted furniture. She’s dressed in soft colors and has an Eastern European accent that I can’t place, but find incredibly soothing.  She’s delighted by what I’ve just told her, that when my OCD was really bad I used to take a picture of my stove before leaving the house.

“That’s rather ingenious, isn’t it?”

I give her a look that says “Oh, get off it” and she laughs again.

“What I mean is that for many people, well, they let OCD simply restrict their social functioning. You didn’t. You’re highly adaptive, and it’s really quite wonderful. You’re doing quite well.”

“It doesn’t really feel that way.”

“I know it doesn’t. But believe me, you’re really doing much better than you think.”

“I have to admit, I’m pretty pleased to be called “highly adaptive.””

She smiles. “I thought you might be.”

***

It is not, I think, an exaggeration to say that I owe Kerry my life.

When we talk about that period in my life—the North Country years—we talk about being in the hole.  Outwardly I was fine. I was succeeding at my career, I was dating, I saw my Twin Cities friends regularly. I was passing.

As an interesting aside, people with high-anxiety tend to be chronic over-achievers.

Back to the point. As I’ve written about, exhaustively, I might have been passing—even succeeding—but I was a bigger mess during that time of my life than I am now.  And Kerry was the one who noticed, who hopped into the hole with me and helped me find the way out.

How do you tell someone thank you for helping you get your life back?

It’s the question I ask myself as I’m dumping all of whatifs on her, and I ask myself again when she comes up with the perfect response.

“Are you familiar with a Japanese style of pottery repair called kintsukuroi or kintsugi?”

“Nope.”

“It’s the process of mending a broken piece of pottery with a lacquer mixed with gold dust. The philosophy behind it is that the brokenness isn’t something to hide. Rather, it’s a part of the piece’s history, and more beautiful for having been broken.”

Then, "Kel, no one is so broken they can't be fixed."

The T-Rex roaring in the back of my head snaps his jaws closed and goes quiet for awhile. The fourteen other Kellys in my head stop screaming.

"Thanks, Ker." I pause. "I guess I've got some pies to go shrink-wrap."

History is a Nightmare

"You all right?"

We're out. I'm picking through my dinner and taking small sips out of my glass of beer.

"Yes. Why?"

"You're just quieter than normal."

"Oh." I shake my head and smile at him. "No. I'm sorry. Caught up in my own head."

"Anything in particular?"

"The show. It was good. I'd like to see more. But . . ."

He waits for me to finish. It's one of the things I like best about him, this ability to ask questions without asking them.

I flip the program over and tap the advert for the next show. The Woodsman.

"I don't think I'll be seeing this one with you."

He scans the synopsis. "Oh. Oh. Yeah. I can see where that might have some triggers for you."

I open my mouth to say something, to give him more than the one sentence explanation I stammered out the first time we were together.

I pick up my fork instead.

***

"So what's the problem?"

"I'm sorry?"

"It sounds like there's a problem."

"No. Problem isn't the right word. It's that I haven't figured out a way to say "I'm not entirely certain you aren't going to murder me in my sleep" yet. 

"Huh?"

"I know it's not actually going to happen." I see the look on her face. "No. I'm serious. I know it's not likely, but it's the only shorthand I know for "my lizard brain panics every time I leave because I'm really happy and it doesn't know how to deal."

"You don't think that's a better thing to say than "I'm not entirely certain you aren't going to murder me in my sleep"?"

"Oh, shut up."

We're quiet for awhile.

"You know that everything you're describing sounds really textbook for victims of trauma, right?"

"I know."

***

"Oh, here, You'd like this one too."

We're lounging. It's a brilliant, blue-sky autumn morning after days of rain, but I'm disinclined to venture out. This, being alternately wrapped up in someone's arms and his button-down shirt, is exactly what I want out of this slow, sleepy morning.  I read comics and my bookclub book. He makes me coffee and messes around on his computer.  We talk, intermittently, about anime and books and video games. He explains how he's making some piece of software run better. I tell him a long, funny story about my mother. And in between I read. He messes around on his computer. 

Even my best Saturday mornings have never been this good. 

I start, a few times, to tell him why I woke up crying the night before. Why I always wake up crying when I stay over. More than that, I want to tell him how big and different and terrifying this is for me. Just this. Just this sleepy, quiet morning together. I want to tell him that it scares the hell out of me and why it scares the hell out of me and why I'm having nightmares that wake both of us up, and I come close, so close, a time or three.

But he looks up from his computer and smiles at me and asks if I want more coffee or comes and sits next to me on the couch and we read a comic together and all I can think is:

I can't. 

This, the coffee, the comics, the smell of his shirt and my perfume, this long, lovely Saturday morning is wonderful. And completely, entirely, ridiculously unexpected. It's the kind of thing I've wanted for years and never thought I was going to get. 

"Hey, we should walk to the grocery store if I'm going to cook for you."

"Yeah. It's a really beautiful day. I suppose we should take advantage of it."

I go to the bedroom and slip out of his shirt and into my own clothes, holding the soft black and white cloth to my face for one more deep breath. 

What would be the purpose in talking about nightmares now? Better to enjoy the sunshine while we've got it.  

Some Conversations, with Family

"C'mon, Kels. I want to drink wine and make doughnuts."

"Oh. That sounds like fun!"

I should know better than to trust my mother. Halfway through an incredibly finicky recipe, I push my flour-filled hair out of my face, spin around, and see her contentedly drinking a glass of wine at the kitchen table.

"Hey! I thought we were supposed to be making doughnuts together!"

She laughs. "By "making doughnuts together" I really meant "I'm going to read the recipe out loud to you and drink wine while you do all the work.""

I take off my apron, grumbling, and remove my scarf. "It's too damn hot in this kitchen." I observe, twisting my hair up out of my eyes. These days I'm wearing it past my shoulders and it gets in the way of almost everything. As I'm fussing with the last pin, I look up and see my mother snickering.

"What's so funny?"

"Well, Kel." Her eyes are sparkling. "Bite marks are just so retro, don't you think?"

I remember why I've been wearing my hair down all day and blush. She cackles.

***

"What are you doing with that?!"

"What?" I've picked up a power drill from the workbench and am carrying it out to my car. 

"What are you doing with the drill?"

"I got new plates for my car because Minnesota makes no sense. I'm going to go put them on."

"Put it down!"

I've never been very good with power tools, but for goodness sake, this is the limit.

"Daddy, I am perfectly capable of . . ."

"I know. But the tools here are all pretty greasy and you're in good clothes." He snatches the drill from my hands and gives me a half hug. "I don't want you to get gunked up. I'll do them for you."

"Fiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiine." 

On the way out of the shop I take a deep breath and think about how the smell of Lava Soap, engine oil, and diesel will always remind me of my father.

"Kel!"

I turn around. "Yeah, Daddy?"

"I mean, I also don't trust you to use it. You do call it an electric screwdriver."

"That was, like, six years ago."

He raises his eyebrows to indicate that it doesn't matter. I roll my eyes to indicate he's out of his mind.

***

"You look like hell."

"Well, you know." He gestures to the infant, snuggled up in my lap. "Newborn and all. We're not sleeping much."

"Yeah. Mom says he's fussy between eight and midnight?"

"Yup."

"What does "fussy" mean?"

"It means he screams his head off from eight until midnight."

"What?"

"He cries. Just cries."

"For four hours?"

"He's a baby, Kel."

"How have you not, you know, left him at a local police station?"

He just stares at me. "You're never baby-sitting. You can take him for a weekend after his 21st birthday."

"I mean, I was joking, but I think we both know that until he's capable of verbalizing, it's probably not a great idea." 

"Yeah, it's almost like I suffered through years of having you as a baby-sitter."

I snort derisively. "It wasn't that bad." 

My snort wakes up the baby, who immediately starts bawling. I pass him back to his father who gives me a "see what I mean" look of exasperation and retires to the rocking chair. 

Unbearable

"I was actually going to order you that other sake."

"Oh. Okay." I turn back to the waitress. "Then we'll take a glass of the first sake you talked about." When the she leaves I lean across the table and stage-whisper "Are you trying to get me drunk?"

He smiles. I melt.

"No! I'm just trying to expand your horizons a little. Like you're doing for me."

I swear, they're going to need to mop me up off the floor.

***

"I'm just saying. I was offered a month's free trial to Steve Harvey's dating site, based on his book Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man."

"Well, that just sounds like blog click bait. You gotta do it."

"Yeah. I'm not really looking."

"Oh, right you're ohmygodsohappy and boring these days."

"We still talk about video games and writing and history!"

"Whatever. OMGOD, soooooo happy."

"Yes. And, if you and, like, one other person are to be believed, a shittier person because of it."

"Maybe you could start writing about how your relationship is slowly driving you crazy with insecurity."

"But it's not."

"Oh. Well then."

***

I like the little things. 

The way someone's t-shirt smells. When someone buys you a book that they loved because they know that you'll love too. Being able to get incredibly excited about something in front of them without feeling self-conscious about it. Their taste, when they kiss you. How they laugh at all your jokes, even the ones that aren't very good. The sometimes breathless way they have of saying your name. 

What can I say? I'm a simple girl.

***

"You've been having too few misadventures lately."

"What?"

"Seriously. We need you embarrassed and confessional about something, and how."

"Why are all my friends saying this?"

"Because you're at your wittiest when you're mortified about something."

"What an asshole."

"At some point you're going to have to pull it together. I'm sick of talking to you."

***

"Reality check. On a scale of 1-10 how annoying am I lately?"

"Uh. Not even."

"Are you sure?"

"Right at this moment you're being more neurotic than usual. But other than that, you're fine."

"Someone called me unbearable earlier today." 

"Any annoyance I would have (and I assure you, it's none) would be counteracted by the following A) I love you. B) I've never seen you this happy. C) By virtue of A&B, I must be happy for you."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes. If this were a Lamborghini, you could crow for a week. Being what it is, I don't care if you gush forever." 

"I'm happy. Just . . . happy."

"Oh, honey. I know."

***

"You smile in your sleep."

"I think I probably only do it while you're here with me."

"Oh my God."

"What?"

"What a line. I'm already here, do you really think you need say things like that?"

"You do that a lot."

"What?"

"Act like I don't mean the things I say." 

I'm quiet for a long time. "I'm not used to people meaning them."

"I guess I'm just going to have to keep saying them until you realize that I do."

I lean in and kiss him. I'm so happy it's almost, well.

Unbearable. 

Hold on Tight

Friday afternoon finds me frantically scrubbing my wood floors. 

I am frantically scrubbing my wood floors because it's not a running day and I'm worrying. 

I could worry for a living. 

I'm worrying because I caught myself humming La Vie en Rose.  I'm worrying because I'm about to have a really good weekend. I'm worrying because my friends are about the meet the guy I'm dating.

I'm worrying because I'm really fucking happy.

I'm worrying because I'm waiting for the bottom to fall out.

And since I can't channel the worrying into a sub ten-minute mile or a ten mile run, I'm on my hands and knees scrubbing the floor.

It gives me something to do while I'm worrying.

***

I'm standing at the top of the bluff, shaking. 

"C'mon, Kel!" My mother's voice is quiet from so far below. "You can do this!"

My climbing coach is standing next to me trying, quite literally, to talk me down. 

"Kelly, You did the hard part. You got up the route. Getting back down shouldn't be hard. You've got this."

I shake my head, tears dripping from my closed eyes. If I could stop shaking long enough to talk I would tell him that I want to hike back down with him. I can't do this. I can't rappel down this thing. I can't step backwards off the edge of this and trust that the ropes will catch me. 

I can't. 

He leans in and gives me a bit of advice. "Take three deep breaths. Close your eyes. Hold on to the ropes tight, and take one big step."

I do.

***

I've been thinking a lot about Sandman recently.

A friend of mine has started reading comics and I've been proselytizing Saga (duh) and Sex Criminals (less of a duh) and thinking a lot about rereading Sandman along with them. My signed copy of Preludes and Nocturnes is sitting next to my door, and I see it every day when I enter and leave the house. My comic book reading club is talking about picking it up.

I'm also thinking about something a character says in volume nine.

[Love] makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means that someone can get inside of you and mess you up. You build up all these defenses, you build up a whole suit of armor, so that nothing can hurt you, and then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life...You give them a piece of you. They didn't ask for it. They did something dumb one day, like kiss you or smile at you [. . .]

Fuck you, Neil Gaiman.  

***

"I can't imagine dating you."

"What? I'm delightful. I'm thoughtful and funny and smart. I've got a great rack. What the hell are you talking about?"

"We've been friends for, how long now? Long enough. Do you know how long it took me to convince you to drop your sword and shield and take off your helmet? I love you, kid, but you don't let your defenses down for anyone."  

She reaches for my hand and I pull away and reach for my keys. "I've gotta go." 

The look on her face as the door shuts is not entirely unfamiliar. 

***

"Hey, are you ready to go in?"

We're standing outside the restaurant, dawdling.

"No."

"Why?"

I just shake my head.

"Hey." He reaches for my hand. "What's up? Let's go in."

If I could find the words I would tell him I can't. I can't trust that whatever this very new thing is will catch me on the way down.

He lets go of my hand, steps back, and I brace for whatever's coming. Or, think that I've braced for whatever's coming.

He smiles at me.

I drop the sword and shield, the helmet, the cuirass, everything, instantly, and reach up to kiss him.

"Better?" He asks when I've finished.

I nod, take a deep breath, a big step forward and grab his hand. "My friends are little odd and we've had a couple glasses of wine." When I look up at him, I see the smile around his eyes. "Hold on tight."

He does. 

30x30 #1 Run a Ragnar

A little over a week ago, I ran a 12 person, 205 mile, 30 hour relay race.

Ragnar Napa Valley was really what drove me to write my 30x30 list. It was going to be the crowning jewel of the list, the capstone to everything I did.

Yeah, the list is only about one third finished. 

I've checked off some big things that I haven't blogged about because, well, because I haven't blogged about them. I saw Hamlet live. I directed a 5K. I gave away my copies of books that changed my life and I accomplished random acts of kindness (normally in the form of baked goods). I'm giving myself until January (when I wrote my list last year) to finish the rest of it. There are things that are unlikely to happen (Century Ride, duathlon) and things I'm really looking forward to doing (best friend road trip to South Dakota, visiting the World's Largest Ball of Twine Made by One Man, hearing the Minnesota Orchestra in Orchestra Hall). 

But Ragnar was really it for me. 

One of the biggest things I wanted to do with the 30x30 list was pick things that were fun, challenging, or places where I could grow. 

Ragnar was all of those things for me. 

There are a lot of things in my life right now that are challenging my ability to write, and write well, because the sheer enormity of the experience or the emotions is hard to capture. So here's Ragnar, in brief. I learned what it means to be a team captain. I ran across the Golden Gate Bridge (Bucket List Achievement Unlocked!). I relied on strangers and watched as they turned from people I met on a San Francisco street to teammates I was excited to see at the exchanges. I found out that I'm tougher and stronger than I knew. I discovered what it means to have someone at home say "I've missed you" and mean it.

More than any of those things, though, Ragnar reminded me that I have a home.

Let me back up. For months now, I've been looking at job postings in other places. I've had the itch to move, mainly because I've rarely stayed put for this long. I was anxious and getting ready to bail, because if I didn't bail, I'd never be happy.

The dumbest part about that whole thought process?

I was happy.

Not annoyingly, disgustingly, ridiculously happy, but just happy. Content. Pleased with the direction my life was going. So, of course I had to move. Because it was possible that annoying, disgusting, ridiculous happiness was waiting for me at some other point of longitude and latitude.

Trust me, I know.

After a lot of long conversations with Kerry, I managed to calm down and resign the lease on my apartment. I told myself I would give this place another year and I was going to San Francisco in a few weeks, a city I love and a place where I've considered moving many, many times. It would be enough to get the travel bug out of my system and I could find out if my love affair with the West Coast was still a thing.

So I booked plane tickets and Air BnB rooms. I bought and broke in new running shoes and made a Wonder Woman costume. I counted down days and racked up miles. I argued with my running partner and listened while he sang me Justin Timberlake. I dreamed of Golden Gate Park and seafood.

And, meanwhile, in my real life, I got an amazing performance review at work. I met someone. I went to birthday parties and had long heart-to-hearts with my best friend. I made art for my walls and unpacked the last of my boxes.

When I landed in San Francisco the city was everything I remembered, everything I loved (a little hotter and dryer, no doubt). And I wandered Golden Gate Park and went to Muir Woods and walked next to the ocean and ate seafood. I ran Ragnar.

It was amazing.

And the whole time I was there, the Midwest poured out love and support via phone calls, texts, emails, and Facebook. I received a "kick Ragnar's ass" gift that made me melt. My Midwestern teammates, used to my emotional reactions to things, rubbed my back and insisted the team stop for chocolate milk at the end of my long run.

While I ran along the Golden Gate bridge and through Napa's rolling vineyards, I reveled in their beauty and the ability to do this difficult thing and be supported by people who love me. I kept myself going by thinking of all the people back in Middle America who were cheering me on. I made it up those final hills thinking about my job and how much I love it (also about how I will be a prairie runner FOR LIFE).  When I watched my running partner finish his final leg, I got excited about all the races and trips we have in store for us.

If Ragnar made me realize that I'm stronger and tougher than I thought, California forced me to realize that the Midwest made me that way.

Put another way, I love you, Minnesota.

Or, another way, see you next year, Great River.

The Bubble

It's unusual for me not to want to write.

Wait. That's not right. I have writer's block like everyone else. There are days when the thought of sitting in front of the keyboard and trying to hammer something out leads to me lace up my running shoes and go knock out six miles.

It's unusual for me not to want to write about relationships.

I'm a fairly introspective person, particularly when it comes to interacting with other people. On my good days it means that I am a thoughtful friend or girlfriend. It means texts during the middle of the day just to say that I'm glad you're in my life, a really good Christmas present. It means that I'll show you in a thousand small ways that you mean the world to me.

On my bad days it means that I obsess over every interaction I've had in the past two weeks. I'll have conversations in my head and finish them the way I wanted to finish them. I'll worry about how I phrased some innocuous text. I'll chew my lip over the length of time it takes someone to return an email.

Because of the way my brain is hard-wired, I write about relationships. It's how I process the world, and I usually feel better when I'm done journaling or when I've finished a blog post. It's something that's neither good nor bad, and at this point I've either wavered all of my friends or we have a tacit oral agreement that they could end up on the blog.

Right. Except not all of them.

A few weeks ago I started seeing someone new.

I cannot emphasize enough how unexpected it is. I never like anyone when I first meet them, so when we seemed to click right from the first date I was as surprised as anyone. And when I wanted to continue seeing him, and walked home from every date smiling like an idiot, you could have knocked me over with a feather.

Sounds like the kind of thing I'd write about, huh?

Except I don't want to write about it.

Partly, I expect, because everything is still really new and I don't know what it is and I don't want to get too publicly excited about it (as if the idiotic grin I have on my face isn't enough of a tip-off). Because, you know, people are unpredictable.

Okay, yeah, that's part of it. But the bigger part is The Bubble.

You know that part of dating someone when you're, quite simply, dopamined out of your mind? Where it takes you twenty minutes to say goodnight and your stomach flips when you get a text message from them? Where every damn song on the radio is about you and your text messages to your best friend become completely fucking irritating?

That's The Bubble.

I'm in it. My predictive text now recognizes "swooooooon" as a legitimate word. I owe my best friend a night out and about 23 drinks. I have a list in my head of things that I can't wait to share with him. The memory of the look on his face the first time I laughed so hard I snorted makes my heart skip. Every time we discover one more thing we have in common I have to fight off the urge to kiss him. And ohmygod have I mentioned how his smile made me realize "weak at the knees" isn't just an expression?

If we were in high school (and it was 1999), I'd be making him a mixtape.

That's the reason I'm so hesitant to write about this, to write about him. Because The Bubble is such a good (and, have I mentioned, unexpected) place to find myself. Once I start writing about it there's the obvious hello, internet, welcome into my life aspect, of course. But moreover, it invites me to a level of scrutinizing this new thing that is, let's get real, unhealthy for this short of an amount of time. Part of me knows that. But the part of me that's used to writing-as-processing, that's used to over-analyzing (and over-sharing) every damn thing doesn't really know what to do. It's like there's a tiny part of my brain that's shouting "But that was a silly thing to say" and "What are you thinking?" and "YOU'RE BLOWING THIS."

But the volume on that part of my brain also seems to be turned waaaaaaay down these days (thanks again, brain chemistry!) The Bubble is going to burst at some point, I know that. Just like I know that at some point scrutiny will happen just like I'm certain that at some point I'll want to start writing about this.

For now, though, I'm happy with our long goodbyes and my shaky knees. And that's all I'm going to say about it.

Happiness is My Default

"So anyway, there's this physics professor at the U who wrote a book about the physics of superheroes." 

"Oh! Yeah, I heard him interviewed on NPR. And he has another book. . ."

"Yes! I've read it. It's called . . ."

"The Amazing Story of Quantum Mechanics."

It takes all of my self control not to reach across the table and kiss him, in full view of everyone on the street. First of all, because he's read a book on quantum mechanics just for the hell of it. Second, because we've finished one another's sentences twice over the course of the evening.

When the check comes and I reach for my credit card he waves me off. "I'd like to see you again. How about I get this and you get the next?"

I'm smiling so much I can't even reply.

***

"What the hell is the matter with you?"

"What?"

"You're out. In Dinkytown. At 12:30AM. In a club. And you're smiling. What the shit?"

"Happiness is my default."

"She's texting."

The couch we're sitting on doesn't really have room for a third, but he squishes in anyway.

"That can't be it. Nobody smiles that much while they're texting."

"She found someone who laughs at her grammar jokes." 

There's a collective groan. 

"You guys are a bunch of assholes."

"Just make sure that if you eventually bring him around, you bring him to our house first. We're the least judgmental of this whole group."

"What? Who are you kidding?"

I'm grateful to let the conversation devolve around me. It gives me a(nother) reason to be on my phone.

***

"Hey, are you all right?"

"Yes. I'm fine."

"Are you sure? You're shaking."

I take a deep breath. "Call it an involuntary stress response." 

"Bad exes?" 

"Bad exes." I shiver. "I'm sorry. That ruined what could have been a really nice goodnight." 

He smiles at me, reaches over and pushes the hair out of my eyes. "We all have something."

I bury my face in his shoulder. "That was the exact right thing to say."

I can't see his face, but I can feel him smile.

***

"Oh, God. I'm so sorry. I'd be annoying myself if I wasn't so dopamined out of my mind."

"Yeah, you're pretty disgusting. But, really. How did it go?"

"You mean, aside from the panic attack?"

"Yes. I mean aside from the panic attack."

"Well, first of all, I think everyone should have a panic attack on their second date. How the person responds to it is a good barometer for what kind of a person they are."

"Oh, for fuck's sake."

"Seriously, though. I might understand why people do this now." 

"Wow."

"Yeah. It feels kinda weird to be this happy."

"I think it's a pretty good default place to be, Kels." 

"Yeah. I think so too."

Dealbreakers & Pep Talks

"I used to have a lot of stupid dealbreakers."

The car is split. Half of us are dating someone exclusively. The other half  of us are single. It's nice to have a conversation with people who are in couples, if for no other reason than it's reassuring to hear that everything isn't all rainbows and ponies once you pair off with someone. It's also nice to have a single representative of the XY crowd to get some feedback on the Loop of Craziness that's been going on in my head lately.

"What constitutes a dealbreaker these days?"

"I can't date someone who doesn't read." 

"What if they consume their knowledge in other ways? Documentaries, audiobooks, podcasts?"

"Audiobooks are permissible. But they have to be books in some capacity. I'm going to finish somewhere between fifty and seventy-five books this year. If I can't talk to my boyfriend about what I'm reading, we aren't going to get far." I pause. "I also want to know that he'll get it, on some level, when he wakes up in the middle of the might and finds me curled up in an armchair crying over a book."

"Anything else?"

"Oh, yeah. Kids from a previous relationship. Zero professional motivation." 

"Those aren't stupid dealbreakers, Kels."

"Well, that's because I decided I needed to stop looking for reasons to dislike people. I started to wonder what I was missing out on." I smile. "And it seems to be working, 'cause I have a date that I'm actually excited about next week."

"Attagirl." 

***

"Would it be all right if I told you some of the non-serial killer things concerning me?"

"Yeah. That's fine. I'm listening."

Michelle and I are having a pre-first date pep talk.

"Number one."

"There's a list?"

"Yes. Shut up. Number one: I don't remember how to kiss someone. Number two: I don't know when, you know, after you start dating someone it's all right to start having sex. Number three: I'm worried he's secretly gained 180 pounds and hasn't updated his profile pictures and I'm not going to be attacted to him. Number four: I'm afraid number three makes me shallow. Number five: I'm worried we've texted and emailed everything we could possibly say to one another and we're just going to be awkward. Number six: I don't know when to disclose, um, things like preferences and the OCD."

"Uh. Okay. Where do you want me to start."

"IT'S A LIST."

"Okay, okay. With number one . . ."

I interrupt her immediately. "I'm also worried he's a serial killer."

***

"Are there other stories that have stayed with you? You said Sandman and American Gods. You like to read, what else?"

We're about two hours into a conversation I didn't expect to last more than fifteen minutes and I'm so pleased by the question that I clap my hands and pull my chair in closer to the table. I flip my clutch over and the front is a reproduction of an out of print cover of The Great Gatsby. "I reread Gatsby every year. It has this line I love from it. Well. It has a lot of lines I really love in it." 

"Can you tell me any of them?"

I pause, considering. "Reserving judgement is a matter of infinite hope." 

Some Messages

"I mean, if it all goes south you'll have good material for your blog."

"I'd prefer not to think of my dating life as potential terrible stories to share."

"Yeah, but imagine the clicks you'd get!"

"I know. People seem to really enjoy my misery." (Pause) "You aren't helping."

"I'm trying to buck you up."

"I don't need to be bucked up! I need to not be excited about this in case it ends up disappointing."

"Ha! You, not excited? Is that possible?"

"No. Not really."

***

"Hey, thanks for your interest, but kids are not my thing, and I'm afraid they're a dealbreaker for me. Good luck."

"They live with their mother."

"Still, I'm sorry, not my thing. Good luck."

"God, you didn't seem like you would be so fucking shallow."

***

"Hey, apparently I'm supposed to message you because algorithms say we're compatible."

"Well, who am I to argue with mathematics?"

"Let's get the shibboleths out of the way. I love Neil Gaiman. Doctor Who isn't my thing, but I love The West Wing and The Wire. I've played in more than one tabletop game tournament."

"You're cleared for further conversation."

"Here's the thing. I don't know how you feel about meeting dating site people after one good email exchange, but I'd like to meet you for a drink so we can talk about books." 

"You said the magic phrase: "talk about books." Where and when?" 

***

"It just seems kinda weird to be getting all fluttery about someone I haven't met yet. I don't want to get too amped up and then just be disappointed."

"Yeah, that's legitimate."

"Blorch."

"I mean, to be fair, I had this same conversation with my bestie when she was emailing with her (now) husband."

"Oh man, and he's wonderful. They're wonderful."

"Yeah. So. I mean. Don't go in there with your dander up just for the sake of not being disappointed."

"As always,  you are the source and fountain of all truth. I love you like I love Doctor Who."

"Love you too, Kel."

***

"CAN I BE UR SLAVE OVER SKYPE?"

"Um, huh?"

"CAN I BE UR SLAVE OVER SKYPE?"

"Okay. First order, always spell out the word "your." Second order, never contact me again."

***

"I laughed and groaned at that one."

"I'm just pleased I'm still cleared for further conversation." 

"I realize this is going to make me sound tragically unhip, but I also have to confess that I *really* don't like Murakami." 

"Yes, but have you played Murakami bingo?"

"Oddly, yes."

"And I was worried we were going to run out of things to talk about." 

OK, Stupid

"This is going to end in with me stuffed in the trunk of a car somewhere."

"You're being dramatic."

"Or, best case scenario, it's going to be a repeat of BDF."

"You never did tell me what that meant. I resorted to Urban Dictionary."

I cackle. "Yeah, that's not the right definition. It's just shorthand that . . . one of my more ruthless friends came up with to describe that whooooooole situation."

"Oh. Oh. Oh. "

"Got it?"

"Yeah."

We're quiet for a little while before she says, "Seriously, though. So you have one more BDF adventure, so what? Although, I really think that made you learn your lesson."

"Don't be such a slut?"

"Yeah, you hussy. And, what happens if it does happen again? You go off dating for another few months, you settle down. You get back into it again. The law of large numbers means you have to find someone you don't dislike eventually."

"The fact that you just invoked the law of large numbers to demonstrate your point makes me want to date you."

"Yeah, well. That's your classic Catch-22. The amount of alcohol it would get me to agree to that is greater than the amount of alcohol that would cause me to pass out. So stop equivocating and just do it."

"I hate when you're right."

"Just don't be stupid."

***

It's official.

I now have a pickup line. An actual, honest-to-goodness, I think you're cute and would like to get to know you better line. And, somewhat weirder, it actually seems to be effective.

"Can you tell me how a warp drive works?"

First of all, let's get one thing straight. I know how a warp drive works. I'm neither an idiot nor a scifi newbie.

I've also only used it a couple times, in situations where I can be reasonably certain of success (The Source, tabletop game nights, online dating), and while I haven't met anyone to date long term as a result of it, it has started some interesting conversations about physics (if I'm really lucky), comic books, and the merits of the various Trek franchises.

Mildly disingenuous? Yeah, okay. A good way to start a conversation when you're shy and the chances of that cute, skinny guy in the Picard vs. Kirk shirt also being shy are pretty high? Absolutely.

There are worse approaches.

***

"Is that a mush . . .OHMYGOD WHAT?"

She peeks over my shoulder and starts laughing.

"You should start a Tumblr of these."

"WHY WOULD YOU THINK ANYONE WOULD WANT TO SEE THAT?"

"Do I need to get your paper bag?"

"Okay. So. One gross photo. Fine. Whatever. Maybe this doesn't have to be soul-crushing."

"Are you pep-talking yourself?"

"Yes, fuck you, I am. Did you see that thing? It was like The Spooky Old Tree!"

"You realize you're the only person in the world who has to pep-talk themselves into filling out an online dating profile? And that you've ruined that beloved book for me, right?"

"IT'S AN ACCURATE DESCRIPTION. And, screw you. I'm a shy introvert who's scared of serial killers. What do you want from my life?"

"Seriously. Get some therapy about the serial killer thing."

***

It takes an hour and a half back on OkCupid before I get my first "Ew, gross" message. 

In fewer than twenty-four hours before I receive one invitation for a FFM, four messages that are, shall we say, forward, and a surprising number of offers for explicit pictures. 

Oh, OkCupid. I really didn't miss you at all. 

Right. So. I'm back to online dating. 

Before the Spidey-Senses of my female relatives start tingling, let me be very clear about something. I'll own up to a few "lady protesting too much" moments in my life. I will. But everything I wrote during July and August about being happy being single, that still holds. I freaking love being single. Yesterday I went for an impromptu dinner with a close friend. Then I came home, opened a beer, and played Civ IV for three hours and then watched the Lizzie Bennett Diaries until I fell asleep straight down the middle of my bed, with my rattley fan in the window and snuggled in with all the blankets. 

It was great. 

I'm not just whistling in the dark. I take a lot of pleasure in my life the way it is. It's full of people I love, work I find meaningful, passtimes I enjoy. My life is better than I ever imagined it was going to be. But at the same time, I recognize that it might be nice to surprise someone on Saturday morning with scones and have someone with whom I can talk about books and play video games and have sex afterwards. It's possible to love being single and acknowledge that my life could be a richer place with a partner in it. 

I'm the Schrodinger's Cat of relationships. 

Tiny

Tuesday, August 26th, 2014
St. Paul, MN
6:14AM

Hey Tiny,

I woke up to a text this morning about how your mom started labor about, what now, five hours ago? Not much news since then, aside from your grandma and grandpa (my mom and dad) announcing that they were at the hospital (as of 2014, they're still not totally sure how to work a group text).

Kid, I have started this letter to you about sixteen times now. A couple times I've apologized for the colossally fucked up world you're going to inherit (and also to your folks for dropping the F-bomb in your letter. I'm supposed to be cleaning up my mouth in advance of meeting you.). That was just too depressing for me to think about. A few times I've tried to tell you a little about your dad's side of the family, but you'll decide about us as you're growing up (Good luck and Godspeed). Once or twice I ended up writing about my own disinclination for children, but this isn't a therapy session (It's not even a therapist's idea that I write to you). Although, that said, it is strange to me that my baby brother, your dad, who I still think of as a fellow conspirator in broken lamps and lineball, is a dad. What a trip.

Tiny, you scare the hell out of me.

It isn't just because your skull hasn't closed all the way or that I'm afraid I'm accidentally going to drop and break you (although it hasn't and I am). It isn't that I'm worried about whether or not you'll be a shitty teenage or if you'll like science, or what you'll think about the books-through-the-mail idea I had for you. Nah. Those things don't scare me. What scares me is the amount of serotonin, dopamine, and oxytocin that hit my brain when I heard you were on your way.

That's your aunt's way of saying, "I love you, kid."

That's what scares the hell out of me.

I don't like a lot of people, Tiny. I really don't. And of the people I actually like, there are very few that I'm willing to say that I love. And the people that I do love and say I love? Tiny, they've been in my life for years. We've broken lamps and climbed trees and butchered deer together. We've shopped for homecoming dresses and cried over broken hearts. We've traveled through foreign countries, worked our asses off to make the world a better place, shared meals and booze and funny and sad stories.

We've been in one another's lives a long, long time.

I've gotten used to loving people that I've known for a long, long time. It makes sense to me. It's familiar and comfortable. It made me think that this, this knowing is what love is, what it's supposed to be. And now, suddenly, you're about to be here and . . . Jesus. I love you without meeting you, without having a conversation about The Great Gatsby or going for runs or singing along to Metric.

I don't know what to do with it.

That's really it, Tiny. That's what I got out of bed early to tell you. I'm reasonably certain that by the time you're old enough to read this, you'll have realized a lot of crazy shit about me (including how much I relish cussing). You'll have received a lot of books and unsolicited advice, some hugs and age-appropriate music and dinosaur toys. You'll get lots of stuff from me over the years, and we'll (hopefully) have some fun together, I'm almost certain of that. But those things, like the things I have to tell you about Shakespeare and our family and universe aren't important right now.

I love you. And it's terrifying and amazing. Right now, that's all you need to know.

See you soon, kid.

Kelly

Just Another Girl

"What song is this?"

Over the sixteen odd years of our friendship, Michelle and I have come to a tacit agreement with regard to driving. Namely, I don't drive. Ever. Instead, I'm in charge of watching for deer at dusk, navigating (inexpertly), keeping an eye out for roadside attractions to take goofy pictures at, and (most importantly) am in charge of the radio.

"It's your jam!"

"Nope. No idea what this is."

"The Killers."

"Honey, my jam is Shot at the Night."

"Oh, right! This is my jam."

She shakes her head.

"Give me a break. It's been a rough couple weeks."

"Just this once, I'll let it go."

***

On the list of embarrassing places to start crying, a feminist sex shop has gotta be at the top. 

I know because over the past week I've made a list of embarrassing places to start crying, as a result of crying all over the damn city. The bathroom at work is fine as long as you can muffle it. The car is less than ideal as there's always the chance of causing an accident. The bar during trivia and the bus are also right up at the top of the list. 

And I'm not talking dignified, silent weeping. I'm talking loud, totally unanticipated sobs that make the entire establishment turn and look at you. 

It's been a pretty great week.

So crying in a feminist sex shop is awkward for a lotta reasons, not the least of which is that you're harshing everyone's dopamine high. When I start welling up in the middle of the Smitten Kitten, I reach into my purse for the packet of tissues that's been in there for the past couple days, wave my friend off (wondering for a moment if refraction is distorting the size of what's in her hand) and bolt for a bench outside. 

The woman I'm with comes out about twenty minutes later and starts rubbing my back. "Are you all right?" 

"Yeah," I manage to hiccup out. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to." 

"No, it's my fault. You said you didn't want to come. I hoped it would cheer you up."

"Yeah. It's just . . ."

"Oh, honey. I know." 

"Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck." I put my head in my hands. "I forgot it was like this." 

***

"I think that saying that you love someone unconditionally is idiotic."

I was prepared for a lot of things on this road trip, but this conversation was not one of them.

"Why?"

"Because no one means it. If someone murders your whole family are you still going to love them?"

"I think that might be a bit of an outlier."

"What if they spend all the money in your joint account? Screw your best friend?"

"Really, I think that people who say that they'll love someone unconditionally would accept those as, you know, extenuating circumstances."

He blows a raspberry and I start to laugh. "Why," I ask, "are you so worked up about this? Has someone claimed that they'll love you unconditionally recently?"

"No, but I'm a firm believer in saying what you actually mean."

I study his profile for moment before saying softly, "Yeah. Me too."

***

"Kels, do you think that maybe you're pushing yourself just a little bit too hard?"

I'm standing off the path, about waist-high in some bushes, dry-heaving. I shake my head. "I'll be fine in a minute." 

"I'm just saying, maybe I need to take you over by Michelle's so you can talk it out?" 

I wipe my mouth with the back of my hand and emerge from the bushes. "I am so fucking sick of talking. Let's just run."

"Are you sure?"

"I'm certain." 

***

"I don't get dumped."

"Kelly, everyone gets dumped." 

"I don't. It's one of those laws of the universe, like the second law of thermodynamics or how Doctor Who is the greatest sci-fi show ever written. I am always the rejector, not the rejectee. It is known."

"Yes, well, I mean, it's really not that different is it? You'll do the same things you always do: drink a lot of bourbon and listen to a lot of Patsy Cline, eat Indian takeaway, and run until you're exhausted." 

"You forgot "Come to in four weeks with a new PR and a haircut I don't remember getting." That's always an important part." 

"See, it's not actually that different."

"It is."

"How?"

"All that serotonin, oxytocin, and dopamine made me stupid. They made me giggly and gushy and just stupid." 

"What's different? That's what happens every time with you." 

I sigh, giving my best impression of eighteen year old, emo Kelly. "I felt like I was someone special. Like this time I was more than just another girl." 

Midwestern Girl

"Today," I say, pausing to take a bite out of my corndog, "is everything I wanted it to be."

"You really are a Midwestern girl at heart, aren't you?"

"What the hell does that even mean?"

We're walking around the Minnesota State Fair. I'm happily eating a corndog and drinking lemonade, on my way to see the butter sculptures of Princess Kay of the Milky Way. I've been relentlessly, ridiculously cheerful the entire time we've been here, no small feat considering I've spent most of the past week really down.

"For all your love of big coastal cities, for as much as you talk about the West Coast in particular, you're just so damn Midwestern."

"Yeah. Again. What does that mean?"

We detour into the Horticulture building so I can talk to the beekeepers and see if I can identify the queen in the display hives. I charm the beekeepers with equal parts erudite questions about bees and hives and sheer, unadulterated enthusiasm. When we get to the crop art section of the building, I literally clap my hands and jump up and down when we see a picture of Nikola Tesla made out of grain.

"That's what I mean." He answers my question from half an hour earlier.

"Exuberance is the antithesis of Midwestern." I retort.

"Nah. That's not what I mean. I mean, well, a lot of things. Mainly that when you love something, it's unironic and intense and maybe just a little bit weird. And that you love, well, Midwestern things. Corndogs. Lemonade. The sound of Canadian geese migrating. Scott Fitzgerald. Winter."

"I honestly don't know if I've been complimented or insulted, but if you really want to see me love something, we should go get some cheese curds."

We go for cheese curds. We see the Butter Princesses. We talk and laugh and get stopped by an impromptu parade and listen to a marching band arrangement of Fireworks, which prompts a long, funny story. We marvel at the paddlefish in the DNR exhibit. We eventually say goodbye and he heads one way to his moped and I walk to the transit hub and board a bus home, ruminating on something Fitzgerald wrote in Gatsby (have I mentioned how it's my favorite book?). Nick Carraway, reflecting on the summer and Gatsby writes:

I see now that this has been a story of the West, after all--Tom and Gatsby, Daisy and Jordan and I, were all Westerners, and perhaps we possessed some deficiency in common which made us subtly unadaptable to Eastern life.

The quote's been rattling around my brain for most of the summer. Time during which my private writing has consisted of me muttering about being discontent, distracted, and dissatisfied. There was nothing concrete to complain about, just a vague sense that settling here in the Twin Cities was, well, settling. That I've never done anything or been anywhere. Prior to now I've never lived anywhere for longer than nine months without actively scheming to go somewhere new and try something different and (trust me, I know how batshit crazy this sounds) spending this much time without being dissatisfied is making me dissatisfied. I spend a lot of time wondering about Gatsby and Nick and Daisy's subtle unadaptabilty to Eastern life, and wonder if I would be the same.

The discontent is something that I only discuss with Kerry. I spend an entire Sunday afternoon spilling my guts about how I'm worried I'm settling and that I've never done anything. My every instinct is to bolt, to pull up my stakes and head off to Boston or Seattle. When my landlord slides my lease for the next year underneath my door, I run for a paper bag. Kerry reminds me, gently (in the way of really lovely friends) that perhaps I've spent too long pulling up my roots, that staying is the uncomfortable, difficult thing for me.

So it's more likely I'll learn something if I do. 

My 20s have been about bolting, about learning to leave bad relationships, bad jobs, bad cities. Those lessons have, literally, saved my life. However, they also made me terrified, well, of things being right. I spent most of my 20s unhappy, either as a result of other people (aforementioned bad relationships) or because I was slowly going crazy. Happiness still feels a bit like walking on ice at the end of March. I'm reasonably certain that it'll support me, but it every creak and groan leaves me anxiously counting the steps until I get to the shoreline. 

I get off my bus a few blocks from the Mississippi and take the long way home, thinking about what, if anything, it means that I loved the Fair unironically. That I look forward to fresh squeezed lemonade and long, lazy summer afternoons on the boat. That I can't wait for autumn and anticipate winter with the kind of eagerness that would horrify my fellow Minnesotans (still a little shell-shocked from three Polar Vortexes).

Maybe it means I would be subtly unsuited for life on the coasts. Perhaps it doesn't mean anything. But for the time being, I'm going to trust that it means that I should be content to be content, and learn to trust the ice under my feet. 

And eat more cheese curds. It definitely means eat more cheese curds. 

Games II

"This is some guy's fantasy."

"To be fair, this is about three-quarters of the way to way to one of my fantasies."

Krista and I are half dressed, in my bed, waiting for the air conditioner to catch up with the weather, and she's watching me play The Walking Dead. We've been here for about an hour and made it most of the way through the first episode. This wasn't the plan for the day, but when I got to the airport an hour and a half earlier, Krista got into car and found me crying. She got me back to my apartment, and immediately started asking if I wanted a cup of tea, to talk, a hug, to go for a run. I haven't slept in three or four days and am feeling a bit like a zombie myself.

"Honestly?"

"Yeah, Kels. Honestly. What do you want?"

 "I want to kill some zombies."

"Then let's kill some zombies."

So we're snuggled up in my bed killing zombies. After I drop a particularly vehement string of cuss words (fucking Kenny) she leans in and kisses me on the shoulder.

"I love you, Kels."

"Now we're nearly all of the way into one of my fantasies." I reply, distractedly, before I frantically start smashing buttons. "Oh, shit!"

"Careful, honey, that guy's about to eat your face off."

"Nope." I say, after a particularly gruesome scene involving a hammer and a zombie skull. "Got 'em."

I forgot how therapeutic video games can be. 

"Bad" does not even begin to describe the past few weeks. They've been a potent, emotional catastrafuck cocktail of stress, long days, bad decisions, and failures to communicate. I'm so worried about my coming race that running is only adding to the frustration that I feel (I cried, twice, after runs this week), my attention span is so short that the books I'm reading can't hold my attention, and I have zero emotional energy left over at the end of the day to invest in television. So I've been knocking around the house. I honestly couldn't tell you what I've been doing, sitting and staring at a page or the wall, probably. 

Until I started listening to the Love and Wario podcast. 

You know that feeling when you meet someone and instantly think ohmygodweshouldtotallybefriendsbecauseyou'resocool! If you're an adult with a functioning self-control system, you won't immediately blurt that sentence out, but will go about being friendly and kind and outgoing and the other things adults do to make new friends.

Spoiler alert: I don't have a functioning self-control system.

After binge-listening to the podcasts I immediately messaged one of the hosts and, well, let's just say there were a lot of capital letters and exclamation points. 

(I also maybe said that being a special guest on the podcast was my new life's goal.)

I can be cringe-inducingly fangirlish sometimes. 

So it's sort of a bad news/good news thing. The bad news, of course, is that I might have did come off as a total fucking nutjob. The good news is that I ended up with a long list of games that would run on my ancient laptop as well as a couple that I could play on my phone. 

I forgot how much I love video games. 

I met my first boyfriend at a LAN party. My younger brother and I used to spend hours in the basement testing Age of Empires strategies. I don't think I slept the week after we got Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (the nostalgia I feel for the game is incredible). I once nearly gave my brother a black eye after a particularly tense afternoon of playing first-person shooters. When Diablo II rolled out I created a special character (melee, I typically play ranged) specifically so I could go hack apart demons after stressful days. 

I stopped gaming kind of abruptly when I started dating someone who preferred we spend our time reading Great Books and listening to Bartok (that guy was the fucking worst). He made me feel really guilty about the amount of time I was spending playing games. After we broke up, the guilt remained and I switched to the occasional tabletop game because I could be social and feel less guilty about the time I was spending on games.

I was pretty fucking dumb. 

Don't get me wrong, the eight-twelve hours a day I used to spend on Diablo was probably a little much (between the game and my social anxiety, I was like a proto-Codex). But going cold-turkey, especially for an  pretentious asshat who didn't understand why I might enjoy playing video games (nerd boys for life now) was colossally stupid. Equally stupid was never picking them back up because of some kind of misdirected guilt about what I should be doing with my time. 

The truth, I realize as I choose to save Carly instead of Doug during a particularly tense moment in The Walking Dead, is that video games are as therapeutic and soothing for me as a long run. A good one can take me out of my own head and immerse me in a storyline as easily and completely as a good book. And when Krista reaches over and rubs my back I'm reminded they can be just as social as any of my other hobbies.

Thanks, Love and Wario. 

Grown Up

"I'll tell you what."

"What?"

Krista and I are sitting on my bed, drinking tea and staying up later than either one of us really needs to be up.

"This whole thing has made me so glad I never have to do my 20s over again."

"Really?" She's suspicious. "I've had a lot of fun."

"Really. They were great and crazy and fun, but I knew fuckall about anything. I had no idea what I wanted from jobs, relationships, apartment, cities. My sex life was grotesque." I repeat, louder, over her groan. "Was grotesque. I don't know if it'll be this way at the close of every decade, but I am so glad to be turning 30." I pause. "The Gospel According to Kelly."

"Thanks be to God."

***

"So basically everything is a whole lot of meaningless bullshit."

"You sound like we're back in college. But if you want to drink beer and sit up talking about the existence of God and the futility of our lives and sentient bags of carbon, we'll have to run to the liquor store."

My reaction when friends start existential crisis-ing around me is always one of three things. Best case scenario, I'll make them a cup of tea and listen. Second best case scenario, I'll say "Oh, honey" and give them a list of reputable therapists in the Twin Cities that I've compiled. Third scenario? I'll make fun of them.

That's what I do in this case. A friend of mine, normally the counterweight to my emotional excesses, has been reading a book of New Atheism. It's depressing him. I've spent the last few minutes listening to him talk about the meaninglessness of existence and how we're all wasting our lives eating, fucking, and shitting (three activities I know he enjoys thoroughly while in a better mood).

"C'mon," I say, tying my shoe laces

"What?"

"Put on your shoes. I'm taking you for a run."

"What's the point?"

"At the moment? Spiking your dopamine levels so you enjoy eating, fucking, and shitting again. It's either this or we're going to have sex. Your pick."

He puts on his shoes.

***

"I've been asking myself the same question a lot of people as around our age."

"What's that?"

"What would 18 year old me think if he could see me as I am now?"

"Well?"

"I think he'd be pretty zazzed."

Pause.

"The problem is that my reaction to that kid would probably be to yell 'You know nothing!' and punch him in the face."

"For what it's worth, 18 year old Kelly would probably stage a hunger strike over the life I'm living now." I wait for a moment. "God, she was such a cunt. But. Either way, maybe neither of us is getting it exactly right."

***

"Adulthood is a weird thing."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah."  We're in the car with the windows down, covered in a fleece blanket because it's cold, but we like the feeling of the wind washing through the car. "I have this job that I love and that I'm actually kinda good at. I pay my bills on time, take grown-up vacations, juggle social obligations and personal needs. I had a whole fucking therapy session where I complained about all of the things my parents did wrong, cried, and then stopped blaming them."

"Those do sound like things you do as an adult." I can hear the slight, sassy edge in her voice.

"Phhhhhhhbt. But here's the thing. For years, that whole time I was in graduate school, and again while I was living Duluth, I was miserable."

"You were depressed."

"Yes, and I know there are a bunch of chemical reasons why that was happening. I get the brain chemistry, or at least as much as I'm ever going to, but I was heaping extra shit on top of an already enormous shit sandwich." I shiver and pull the covers up higher. "Since I was a teenager, I had this idea of what adulthood was like. It meant that you had to give up all the stuff you loved."

"Kels, I love you, but you are a complete fucking idiot sometimes."

"I know. So now. It's funny. I have ice cream for dinner sometimes. I read comic books on a regular basis, listen to a podcast about video games. I spent an entire hour and a half yesterday looking for a cosplay wig. And do you have any idea how many hours, hours I sit cross-legged on my livingbedroom floor in my underwear and a tank top blogging about comic books and video games and feelings. This is adulthood?"

"This is adulthood, honey. Welcome to it."

"What the fuck?"