Today has been a day of days. Nothing spectacular really. Not that kind of day. But it's been a day of things. Life things. First, there was sitting on the couch in pjs at 2pm thing. Then there was the decision to greet the world (in people-friendly-pants) thing. And buying used books at a used bookstore in the town I've lived in for over a year (at the recommendation and in the company of a classmate, which was another unexpected thing). Suddenly, in between the pain of recent break up and the familiar loneliness thing, there was a feeling of being alive again. Yes, that thing. Small discoveries! Crisp air on a dark night in November thing! And laughter, deep belly laughter over silly things. Life things. All things I'd been missing. Day of days I say.

I sincerely miss blogging. I'm not quite sure why I don't except for the fact that I feel like I have nothing to say.

That doesn't mean that there aren't things to talk about. I recently had insomnia I think for the first time in my life. I've recently finished my first year as a PhD student. At some point during the year I'm going to be 27..which slightly weirds me out (am I really no longer in my teens?). I want and like babies and marriage, but want to be nowhere near either for..some time. A few years maybe. There's lots I could be saying and writing about. But I don't quite know how anymore. And I don't actually know why that is.

For a while now I've felt a bit separated from writing. It doesn't come to me as naturally as it used to. As I write this though I realize that's a lame excuse for not doing something. Very few things come naturally, and even those fade with no practice. Action precedes skill. Or something. Anyway, I need to not complain about not writing if I have no intention of doing something about it.

So there. I guess that determines it. I'll either write, or I won't. Either way I'll shut up about it.

Love happens when you're happy.

And I don't exactly know if I'm happy. I suppose if I were happy I'd know. I think my default emotion has been "thinking" for a really long time.  I know that's not officially an emotion, but honestly I think that's all I've got.Yo pienso que...

I think that. I don't think I'm happy, and I don't know why. I'm not unhappy. I mean, I'm not depressed, or even sad really. But I'm not happy.It's not an emotion I think I get to have and hold on to. I have been happy, of course. Occasionally things make me happy. Seeing my family smile. Traveling. Coffee ice-cream. But I think a reoccurring pattern in my life has been that I don't hold on to happy. I don't even necessarily go looking for it.And I've finally realized it's tiring not being happy. It makes my legs heavy and my back tight.

I want to be happy. So I'm gonna go find it.

This is the most random return to this place, but that's precisely the point. I feel a little random. A little out if it. A little crazy.

I've been feeling like this off an on for a little bit, and mostly it's hard to put into words. So I haven't, except now as I'm sitting on a couch in a dorm room that I live in now because I'm a graduate student who is a resident assistant for 20 or so undergraduate girls attempting to write a paper about my experiences interviewing a man via skype I've never met who, despite the fact that he is friends with my boyfriend, is probably the most boring person I've ever met...online and I can't for the life of me make this paper sound good and I'm freaking out because I've been sneezing and blowing my nose and sleeping all day and finally took some drugs as well as a McDonald's mocha frappe which was delicious but is now, in conjunction with said (legal) drugs, probably responsible for the racing thing my heart and brain are doing. I feel just a little crazy. And wondering how I got here. Seriously.

How did I get here?

Things happen so quickly. Life happens so quickly, so that even when we're sitting on our asses on a couch being bored we're not realizing how quickly the world moves. I'm 26. I'm 26 freaking years old! When did that happen? How did I miss that? I'm a PhD student? Really? O.M.G! I find myself doing all these things, being a part of all these things, moving, and not quite realizing where I am. I don't remember really how I got here. I love it here. I'm moving, growing, getting better and better at being me (I hope), but I don't remember how I got here. How I got to be 26 and living on my own (so to speak) and learning and earning another degree and...here. I used to be 19. Something about that blows my mind.

And yet I feel all of those years. Every.Single.One. How can I not? Years are like scars, memories. Reminders that things happened. I'm here because of all that I've done, all that has been done to me. All the life I've lived. I'm here. And I'll be elsewhere in the future. And that's a little crazy too.

But mostly. It's a good thing. Ok. Heart has sort of stopped doing that racing thing. I'll go back to life.

Hello Xanga.

My, it's been a while. I know, I know. I haven't talked to you as much as I used to. Honestly, I've known you for over five years and the truth is I know you deserve better. But I've changed xanga, just as you have. Funny thing, time. I don't quite sound the same as I did when I was 20. I suppose I should be thankful for that. We become new people, different versions of ourselves after a while, and sometimes it happens so slowly, so gradually that it catches you off guard when you realize it. It's like you've been infiltrated by guerilla style warriors, sneaky buggers who knew the home turf and decided that hiding in the shadowy places in your mind would prevent you from noticing them until it was too late.

I'm not quite the same person I was then (quite frankly, I'm not the same person I was last year around this time, generally speaking. I mean, I'm about the same height and all and my eye sight hasn't improved miraculously which means I still wear glasses...but I'm different).

And because I'm different the way I write, the way I talked to you, dear Xanga, is a little different. Let's see if I can paint you a picture. Do you remember when you were 12 years old, Xanga (Are you even that old yet? Maybe you won't understand until you're older)? I do. I was skinny, and hadn't quite grown into my head yet. My face was narrower, arms a little longer. Hips growing in, but chest..not so much. I was awkward, Xanga, as many 12 year olds look and often feel. Thankfully I was not (and never have been) a 12 year old boy, subject to embarrassing voice modulations mid-sentence. And yet, it was awkward for me during that in between stage. The part of life where you're literally not quite sure where you fit. You feel terribly tempted to rid yourself of your dolls and that teddy bear your mother hand sewed for you when you were around five and which you named Sasha, but you still secretly think she's slightly alive and hate to drop her, or your dolls for that matter, into a dark box in the back of a closet. Lately I've been feeling 12 years old again, even down to the awkward, not quite right in my body feeling (though my chest has grown in nicely I might add). Being in between feels not quite right.

I was in the process of making major changes in my life. Still am. That is, after all, the definition of living. Movement. Hopefully forward, but backwards happens too. Nonetheless, my movements finally feel less awkward. There are less in between moments now. More time to clear my head (so to speak, as my time lately has become slightly endangered).

I'm me again. Or, perhaps more accurately, I'm different me now. And I'm free to speak with you again. Hopefully you took no offense. How's your family?

The end of the year is always such a pieced together, well worn looking thing.

Frayed ends hanging loosely around it's feet, rips and tears and mends. But it's there. Kept going, pushing, moving, dragging. It lived. And has the scars to show for it.

There are things I find attractive in a man. Some of them are physical. But not the obvious things. I like the look of a man's forearm. A nice long forearm, which in some way relates to his height (arms being proportional to the rest of the body). I like the look of a man's forearm wearing a rolled up button down and a nice watch. Something very masculine about that. It's a weird thing maybe. That snippet. But I like it. I like the obvious things too (a nicely shaped behind, clean cut hair), but those are sometimes less important.

Mostly I like a man who makes me remember that we are more than just our physical bodies and our minds. There's some other things about humans that make us special. Things that have no proper description, things called souls and spirits, but are just referred to by words, names. I don't always trust words. But I trust men who can talk to that part of me that has no name. It doesn't happen all that often. Only three times in my life so far. But each successive time I wish I could hold to it.

Blood of my blood,

Flesh of my flesh,

Heart of my heart,

Lay me to rest.

Slay me no more,

Leave me my mind

Spare me my soul

Release thou this bind.

Lend me your ear,

Return my goodwill

Make easy this life

While I have one still.

Blood of my blood,

Flesh of my flesh,

Oh heart of my heart,

Pray heed this request.

I can't help but feel like a glass of fine wine, or a bit like a rotisserie chicken roasting in an oven. Food analogies aside (I haven't had breakfast yet) I feel like I'm getting better, like the more time passes I'm getting more and more savory, smarter, stronger (browner?).

It has taken some time for me to truly revel in being single. After my (not very publicized) breakup with a boyfriend of five years I felt less than, faulty. Like there was a fundamental thing that was wrong with me, and would remain faulty until otherwise noted. I didn't realize that during those months afterward, today even, I've been slow roasted, changing slowly but into something delicious. People are all faulty in some sense yes, but we grow and shift and change and sometimes its magnificent to watch what happens. When I moved to the U.S. 13 years ago (good Lord, getting sorta old) I was 12 years old, tall-ish, skinny and awkward (physically and emotionally). I'm as tall as I'll ever get, no longer skinny (not that adolescent finding the right fit for your body sort of skinny) and only occasionally awkward (endearingly so). One of my aunts, who still lives in the Caribbean, saw a picture a few months ago of me and my younger sister on facebook. She knows we have grown, as people logically do, but probably still associates us with these children
 
(that's my older brother in the middle, me on the right and my younger sister on the left).

This is (more or less) what my sister and I look like now  (notice she's taller now. Sucks.) My aunt commented "Look how big them girls gettin'!" (paraphrasing of her Trini accent). Indeed. We are (all three of us, my brother, sister and I) "gettin' big." We're adults, all with very real concerns etc. But we're growing, and it's a wonderful wonderful feeling.

Things are moving a little too quickly. I expected some transition time, some quiet time, a span of maybe a month or so to quietly and secretly get used to this place, this school and meet people on my own terms. But, it's all been happening too fast. I haven't had a moment to feel lonely, or to put it another way, to feel alone but content in this new place. I'm not necessarily complaining. I must have prayed for a situation like this, a smooth transition, people to call, things to do, not a moment's rest. My father has been praying for a husband for me (without me asking him to because I'm so very not ready for that situation yet), and this crush thing is resolving itself (in that my crush has admitted to crushing on me too...what are the odds).

And yet. I don't know. Too quickly. I almost can't believe the new life has begun, has moved on and is now rolling on without my conscious effort. It's all too fast, and mostly painless and non-scary, which is scary. I expected to suffer a little, to build some fortitude. Instead I'm trying to find time to manage it all.And wondering why it even bothers me at all. It's mostly because this situation is good, ideal even, but I, unfortunately am not. I'm not good. Not as good, as scholarly, as settled as I wanted me to be before I started living again. I can already hear the logical responses to that statement, that "no one is truly ready for anything" and "good is relative" and "just be happy". Yeah. All of those things make sense.

But that doesn't erase the fact that I sort of wish my life here, as new as that is, was already a little simpler.