I'm tired all the time.

This isn't the post I meant to write. I was meant to be writing about a personality trait of mine, a particular quality I seem to have that I can't say I admire, which, if I had the strength to write about would be my tendency towards cowardice (what I consider cowardice anyway).

Instead I'm tired and irritated...like really annoyed, and I am writing about it because that's the only way I can stop being irritated. I don't know what it is. Correction. I know exactly what it is, but I'm not certain why it's affecting me so. Seriously, it's this job. I'm working a full time job, and I'm pretty sure I despise what I'm doing (ok..despise it harsh. Dislike. Don't particularly care for?). I wake up and I drive for almost an hour to get to a place I'd rather not be to deal with people I'd rather not deal with. Then I come home and I have no time to think, no time for myself, to recon the day's happenings, to figure out and deal with what is really important to me, to even find time to think about some things that need thinking about, like my next step, a major decision that I have to make by April 15th. No, instead I come home tired with my skin almost itching from irritation and frustration because I'm so tired and because I have no time and because I'm already tired of hearing myself whine. And this is where tears come in, because what I'm feeling is a mix of things, including the weariness, which results in a confusion of emotional reactions best summed up with salty tears. I've had men tell me they don't understand why women cry when they're angry or frustrated. We aren't sad after all. No, we're not, but my body almost has no idea what to do. How do I express this? This...confusion? This frustration? It's like a little bomb, but one without the force necessary for screaming. I can't even find it in me to scream. Tonight though I can't even cry. I'm too tired. And quite literally done. With it all.

But there's always the part of me that won't let me get away with this incessant petulance. The part of me that says this is only temporary, not a career, that it pays the bills, that I should be happy I have a job at all so stop whining, shut up and go to bed earlier. The part of me that tries very hard to calm down while listening to Mr. Marley singing about "Good Vibrations", the part that refuses to be weak (because weak is akin to cowardice and neither are savory qualities).

I'm fighting so much emotional crap these days that I almost can't stand it. I can't even enjoy packing for a much needed trip to Vegas on Wednesday. Imagine that! I'm going away, and I can't quite find it in me to enjoy it.

Ugh. Perhaps this too shall pass.

I've never much thought about what kind of person I am.

Ok, that's a pretty big lie. I'm pretty sure I do that more than breathing. Or, at the very least, in between breathing. Makes me who I am. What I'm realizing these days though is that a lot of things make me nervous. For example:

• Being in a situation where shaking hands with someone (or, God forbid, multiple someones) is necessary, if not compulsory. My hands sense it (I swear they have a mind of their own) and immediately get moist.Typically I'm not nervous when meeting new people, but nervous only because I know that their first impression of me will be the girl with the sweaty palms.
• People who laugh for longer than they should...meaning that their laughter extends waay past that window where something stops being amusing. Then it just becomes awkward. Which leads me too...
• Awkward situations in general, since I feel like it's my obligation to un-awkward the whole thing, which puts pressure on me and increases my nervousness (I didn't say any of these made sense).
• Feeling inadequate or unintelligent. It makes me want to perform in a way that would prove otherwise, which intensifies my nervousness and inhibits my abilities to perform tasks satisfactorily, which enhances the inadequate and unintelligent feelings. Horrible, terrible cycle.
• Driving on the highway with my knee on the steering wheel. You would think I'd stop doing this. You would be wrong though.

What sucks is that I look and sound a bit like a teenager (which is not so great when you're being carded at the age of 25, but excellent when you're 50 and get mistaken for your son's sister...or so I hear) which only intensifies when I'm nervous. I've been likened to Minnie Mouse when excited before. I was not amused.

This bank job makes me nervous. It occasionally makes me feel inadequate (dammit I can't count twenties that fast yet!) and a bit like I want to quit. But I'm not a quitter. Not really. Not when people I know have survived worse (even though messing with people's money is sometimes the equivalent of messing with their kids or other such loved ones). Not when I have people who expect timely payments from me. Not when I've gotten so used to eating regularly.  So. My only other option is to suck it up, smile my baby-faced smile and, in my most child-like sounding voice ever, say "I'm gonna kick ass today!" This, of course, will not be said out loud since customers probably don't appreciate bank tellers who talk to themselves. Or say ass.

Look. I know it's March 12th already, and that it's been a month of Sundays since I've written (I love saying month of Sundays. Makes me feel like a little old lady. Hmm. On second thought perhaps I should nix that from my vocabulary). The thing is, life right now is like a large whirlwind, a mixture of goodness and badness and more goodness. I've barely had time to breathe much in the past few weeks, and when I did have breathing time writing...shoot...thinking was the last thing I wanted to do.

As far as updates go, I've passed my Master's Exam and managed to get into one school for my PhD in Folklore. This good news, however, is coupled with the fact that I was thoroughly rejected from two other schools (both in much more desirable locations, but which, as one of my closest friends mentioned, probably weren't the ones meant for me to attend) and I now have to fight tooth and nail for funding to the place I was accepted to. And yet, I am content. Goodness and badness and more goodness. Such is the way of the world.

I'm just excited I have a job (though it may be a short lived experience come fall), which comes in handy when one realizes that one has amassed a pile of bills over the years. I'm also exicted to have options. I have not yet quite decided if I will actually go to said school in said semi-undesirable location, but it's an option. I'm mostly excited though, to be alive. Honestly. Some days it's enough to be quite aware that not everyone wakes up in the morning, and not everyone who wakes up will go to sleep.

It's the little things these days. Like being very aware that the little buds I can see on all the trees are growing a little bit bigger every day. That never gets old. Little things like Friday afternoon right after work, a moment so joyous not even massive amounts of never ending traffic ruins my mood. I'm pretty certain my Lion King soundtrack helps makes the ride more palatable too though. Little things like being able to pick up a book and read. For fun. Almost brings a tear to my eye.

All my life I have been relatively blessed. My transitions have been mostly easy. Not necessarily painless, but mostly devoid of those terrible life stories one hears on a day time talk show and cringes about. I've had some interesting non-fun time periods, as has everyone. But there's something else. I've apparently been given some leeway. Someone is looking out for me, and I'd be remiss if I didn't at least acknowledge that. Thanks God.

Besides, believing that there is a being that sort of cares a lot about you enables you to think silly thoughts like " Why doesn't God speak out loud? I mean, we'd be more willing to listen if a body-less voice said something like 'Yeah...you probably don't want to date him' or 'I'm pretty sure if you eat that omelet you'll get sick'. Or maybe we'd all just have heart attacks. Body-less voices can be disconcerting."

I was probably banging around in the kitchen a little, intermittently interrupting my brother's spanish "stories" (for some reason he's decided to learn spanish by watching spanish soap operas. Though I can understand about 70% of what's being said I only really know when something dramatic is about to happen because the music gets all organ-y) before I realized something was wrong with me. Actually my brother was the one that said "...long day?" You know what? It kind of was.

Actually it's been a bit of a long week, mostly because I feel like I'm in a constant state of waiting. I wake up in the morning and go to work, and while I'm there I'm mostly liking learning new stuff (...as much as one can enjoy counting money that belongs to someone else), but I wait for my lunch break. Then I go back to work and then wait until the end of the day, at which point I hope to go home and find some mail announcing my acceptance into one of PhD programs I've applied to (or at the very least my daggone W-2 so I can do my taxes!). There's been no news, and that compounded with the fact that I'm waiting on my Comp exam results makes all the waiting almost unbearable. And apparently it makes me cranky.

Now I'm at home and the lights are irritating me, as are the commercials on TV, and the smell of my mom's cheerios. I feel restless, and I can tell I need some ice-cream. And a massage. That might smooth out this apparently permanent wrinke between my eyebrows.

Struggling to count a large stack of $20 bills at work today as my freshman year math teacher from college walks through the bank doors. I'm not going to tell you what my grade in her class was.

Ironic.

I am tired today.

Still, there's something in me that wants so desperately to write me. Not to write about me, but to draw with words, to document the things I've been feeling and thinking so that you will understand. So that you could know me. But I am tired, and expression escapes me.

But oh, the things I'm feeling. The beauty. The occasional bouts of painful yet fulfilling moments. Bittersweet I think they call that. There's something about being alive. Sometimes we get glimpses of the part of ourselves that aren't flesh, the part that appreciates sunsets, and that causes our hearts to leap at the sound of exquisitely beautiful music. The part that is in between, that can't quite be described because words slide off of it like an oil slicked wall. Our insides, our souls, the invisible thing that is behind our skin but before our internal organs. That part. I'm feeling that part. I am that part this week. But I am tired, and I have no words.

I was sitting in my car in some traffic on my way home from work listening to the "Drive at 5" on some station (98.9 FM, 100.3 FM...who knows) when I realized I finally understood why people flock into elevators and out of office buildings and into their cars right at 5pm, which consequently results in congestion on the roadways, which inevitably means people are listening to the radio at 5pm. It's because people hate their jobs. Yeah, ok maybe I'm late with this. Maybe all of you people who have jobs have always hated them. Maybe you've hated your job for so long you don't know what its like to not hate like...anything. Maybe this is why shows like The Office are so popular. I never got it, because quite frankly I've never had a job.

I mean, I've had a job. Don't get me wrong. I'm Caribbean. We work. I mean, I'm not Jamaican (no offense to Jamaicans...I love your patties and I would have probably been one of the women who had Bob Marley's babies. Mmm...that man...but I digress) but I had multiple jobs all throughout college and even while getting my Masters (which I am, sadly, still trying desperately to get. Gimme my degree!!!). I noticed this while applying for my most recent position, a full time position at a bank, no less. I'll get to why an English major is working at a financial institution in a minute. I looked over all of my resumes (I have at least three) all categorized by job types. I've had customer service jobs (due to my killer smile) and academic jobs, boring jobs and fun jobs and applicable-to-my-career jobs and not-even-remotely-in-the-area-of-my-interests jobs. I've been a teacher, tutor, pseudo-librarian, clothing seller, credit card representative, book seller. Some of those simultaneously. But I've never had a job I hated. Not really. Or...maybe it's just that I've never had a full time job, one that has me looking at liquor stores on my drive home and empathizing with some of the poor saps carrying brown-paper-bagged bottles. Chances are they have way more issues than job hate to spur afternoon drunkeness, but I'm saying. I thought about getting a bottle of dessert wine today. It's only Tuesday!!!

Truthfully, I haven't even started the job yet. Not for real. I've been doing a series of boring computer training sessions for a week, amped up today by a live training session which was, sadly, equally as boring. But at least I got to talk to people. Except, all I ended up doing was noticing the exceedingly annoying way certain people from certain parts of southern New Jersey talk, and I began to wonder why my mother moved to this state, and to hope and pray that I didn't start saying "ya" instead of you and the weird way they say "wuder" for water. When I wasn't busy cringing as my trainer spoke I was busy cringing about the thought of working at a bank as a teller for 30 years of my life.

I, of course, have no intention doing any such thing. Primarily because counting money is like a level of hell Dante never wrote about (should you be concerned that I, as a teller, despise counting money? Yes, yes you should. Shame I won't say which bank I'll be working for). Mostly though, I have plans for my life that do not involve a regular 9-5. Maybe  a 10-6 or a 10-noon followed by a trip to another country for a meeting or something. Ok, nix the trip to another country, but I do plan on having a rather unorthodox type of gig. Specializing in something people rarely think people can specialize in. I'm already starting to enjoy the looks of utter confusion when I mention that I plan on getting my PhD in Folklore.

In the mean time, I'll flock like everyone else at the stroke of 5pm.

Occasionally, in the midst of all the living, in the midst of the present the past makes an appearance, pops in to say hello, or to apologize, or not. And it leaves an odd taste in my mouth. Vaguely unpleasant. Slightly painful. Almost distasteful. Occasionally my present is disrupted, and it is disconcerting.

"It's like a triangle trying to fit into a square. It kinda works, but not really." This statement could potentially refer to anything. Ikea furniture, for one, has so many loose pieces and thingamajiggers, triangle shaped things and square shaped things. I once built a bed from material that was supposed to be a coffee table. Ok, no I didn't but I'm sure I could. They're all about putting piece A into slot B. I don't know why that sounded dirty. Ahem.

Really though, my long time girlfriend and I were talking about life, about the nature of being in our mid-twenties and being in transition, and being utterly and completely clueless about where life will take us. And about loving it. We started talking, of course, about relationships, about men. We've both had our fair share of experiences, of stories. I've known her since middle school so we're able to chart each other's personal (and physical...she notices, for instance, if my jeans are a little less snug than usual) growth. Our pasts came up, our last relationships, and we both noticed that there was something that didn't quite fit. I mean, there was a fit of sorts. And after years of somewhat fitting there's always the emotional attachment to keep you going. But there are always signs aren't there? Little things, little ways that show that the triangle occasionally slips from side to side, that there's room for something else in that square. There are always signs. But we become quite adept at ignoring the rattling, filling in the sounds with inane chatter, with vacations. Still, the sounds slip in, disturb the routine. I heard them occasionally, and they would grind against my sensitive nerves like long unmanicured nails against chalkboard (I assume, spuriously of course, that manicured nails sound much more pleasant against chalkboard). I heard them and saw them occasionally, and my heart would hurt a little, and there was a funny feeling in the pit of my stomach like an empty space. Eventually though, something happens. You either move forward (in a manner of speaking) and the space gets more noticeable, and concurrently you get better at ignoring it until you get married and then one day the rattling is unbearable and deafening and someone quits. Or, someone quits before it gets that far.

Except it's not quitting so much as making an intelligent decision, or in some cases having the intelligent decision made for you. It's realizing that you now have an opportunity to have someone who does not complete you because there is no such thing, because a square without one of its sides isn't a square and therefore not whole, and therefore not capable of doing much (as much as shapes are capable of doing anyway). No, it's realizing that you have an opportunity to have someone, to be with someone who is vaguely square shaped too, and you need not fit into them nor them into you because you can sit by side and work just nicely that way.

I'm pretty certain things fit better that way.

I'm not really and truly back in the dating game yet. Not really. My "free time" these days entail reading up on the history of theatre, and deciphering the difference between farce and satire. When I'm not doing that I'm at my brand spanking new job (which I may go into detail about later). Still, it doesn't hurt to be prepared. Or, at the very least, day dream...

It's nice outside, maybe late spring, early summer. We (referring of course to my ridiculously handsome and very tall date and I) meet up somewhere for a nice dinner (not somewhere too fancy because I'd be preoccupied with trying not to get food on myself or on the white table cloth), over which we talk and laugh and I feel completely comfortable (could have something to do with the two-three glasses of wine I ordered). We finish dinner and head out to listen to some live music (maybe something sexy like the Blues...which shouldn't be sexy at all since it's mostly about men's women leaving them and their alcoholic tendencies and such, but sexy nonetheless). First we just sit and listen, maybe holding hands or gently resting thigh against thigh. Then we get up to dance, sometimes upbeat, sometimes slow. Eventually we leave and decide to take a walk at night, heading nowhere in particular, his hand on the small of my back or around my waist constantly. We stop somewhere where there are trees, or a body of water, somewhere relatively darkened (but not prone to robberies and stabbings) and stand side by side, leaning against each other, breathing and talking and laughing. There's occasional touching, like a tickle or a poke, and eventually we get closer and kiss (hands on my back or butt).  We stay that way for a while. Then err...head home

Rinse and repeat the following weekend (..and if, by chance, any of that sounded dirty to you that probably has more to do with your mind than mine...probably).