six months

An ex-boyfriend used to tell me that in his opinion, I was capable of more than I thought I was. He would say it whenever there was something I thought I couldn’t do because of my depression or anxiety or endometriosis or whatever else. “You can handle more than you think you can.”

I understood where he was coming from, and I knew he meant well, but I never liked hearing him say it. It made me feel guilty for not doing more. It made me question my carefully-implemented self care regimen. It made me feel like he thought I was acting weak. Sometimes I wondered if he thought I was weak.

The only way for me to know what I can handle is to think of a thing and decide whether or not I can handle it based on what I assume are my limitations. Or I can look at things I’ve done before that I couldn’t handle and not do them again.

Both methods are faulty. How do I know for sure what my limitations are if I don’t test them? And how do I know that not being able to handle something in the past means I couldn’t handle it now? Most of the time I just have to guess. Or sometimes I do a thing I think I can’t handle, and try to prepare myself in advance for the ramifications of the not handling.

Other things happen to me whether I can handle them or not.

Moving to a different state may be the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my adult life. Here is a list of the things about it I’m not handling very well.

  1. I work from home, so I’m at home alone all day, but in the evenings I don’t have any plans, so I stay at home then too. I go to sleep, wake up and work from home alone all day, and the cycle continues.
  2. There isn’t really anyone in St. Louis around whom I’m comfortable being needy. In Austin I had friends and a sister I could text and say, “Can I come over?” or “I know we’re supposed to go out, but I’m feeling down so can we just sit around and watch TV instead?” or “I need help with something, can you help me?” My parents are here, but they have their hands full with my dad’s care, so I try not to bother them unless it’s an emergency.
  3. I don’t feel very needed. My parents need me for logistical reasons, but I don’t have friends here who text me and say things like, “Can I come over?” or “I need help with something, can you help me?” It’s hard feeling like I’m not part of anyone’s emotional support system like I was in Austin.
  4. When I first moved here, I tried online dating. It was by turns a strange, hilarious, frightening, humiliating and very hurtful experience. Some things that happened still hurt and will probably hurt for awhile. Online dating has made me question my trusting nature, my appearance, my self worth and my value to others in ways I haven’t done in a very long time.

How was I supposed to know I couldn’t handle moving to another state? I’ve never done it before.

I’m not going to undo it, though. I don’t want to move back to Texas, and I don’t want to admit defeat and move somewhere else just yet. It’s only been six months. It’ll get better, probably. Maybe.

so you roll on with the best you can

It’s Valentine’s Day in Austin and good god is it fucking gorgeous outside tonight. I’m at my sister’s house, doing my laundry and sitting on the patio watching through a baby monitor as my nephew sleeps. My sister and her husband went out to dinner, and in return for baby monitor-sitting I was promised a slice of cake from the restaurant.

I’m single now.

I never thought much of Valentine’s Day to begin with, but that was easier to say when I was in a relationship. It’s a dumb made-up holiday! Why can’t we show love whenever we want? Why go out when everything’s so crowded? Cards are stupid! and so forth. And I still think all of that is true, but this year it’s hard to see my coupled friends’ smiling faces in pictures from their dates. I talk to these coupled friends about my breakup, and I imagine that after I leave their houses and head home, they look at each other and say, “I love you so much! Thank god we have each other!”

Well, thank god you do.

I tried to reserve a houseboat on Lake Travis for myself for tonight. I thought, what better way to spend Valentine’s Day this year than alone with myself and the lake and some wine and good snacks and, I don’t know, sleeping in a berth or something? The houseboat turned out to be booked for tonight, but I got so attached to the idea that I claimed it for tomorrow night instead. I’ll still have the wine and snacks and berth, and it’ll be a nice thing to do for myself.

I can’t talk about the breakup here, of course, but I will tell you this: I’m moving to St. Louis. My dad’s condition never improved much after his brain surgery last July (I have a half-finished part 2 post on that I’ll revisit sometime), and my mother is now his full-time caregiver. When I told my trapeze instructor that I was considering moving closer to my parents, she said, “Well, you have to lead your own life, right? But I guess that’d be hard to do if you just sit around Austin worrying about them and feeling helpless.”

And that’s pretty much it. They’re too young and able to start thinking about assisted living, but the house and my dad are too much for my mom to take care of by herself. She puts on a very game, very capable face, but I can see the cracks forming in it, both figurative and literal, and I know she can’t go on much longer without my help.

My sister and I tried to get our parents to move to Austin, since she and I both live here and could share the workload, but my mother won’t hear it. When we brought it up she revealed that she hated all thirty years she spent living in Houston, and now that she finally got out of Texas she doesn’t want to go back, even to a different city. I’ll admit it hurt me a little to hear that since I was raised here, but I understand. In any major life decision involving multiple people there is always a stubborn one, and this time my mom has earned it.

There are other factors. I’ve lived in Texas my whole life, and I’ve always said I would like to live somewhere else eventually. I work remotely now, so I can move without having to find a new job. The Texas summer heat is getting to me, the cost of living in Austin is skyrocketing, I’m tired of the politics here. St. Louis isn’t exactly what I pictured, and it isn’t perfect, but it’ll do. In my mid-thirties I’ve found myself desperate to own a house in a way I never was before, and St. Louis has lots of beautiful, affordable old houses I’d be comfortable and happy living in.

Alone. Which is fine. It’s fine.

I cry a lot these days. It’s triggered by random, mundane things, and then when it starts I don’t even know why or what it’s for. Is it the end of my six-year relationship? Is it leaving the town and friends I’ve known for ten years? Is it not being near my baby nephew to spend time with him and watch him grow up? Is it leaving Texas, the only state I’ve ever known? Or is it the fact that my father, my constant, my rock, the person who always understood me even when nobody else did, isn’t really there anymore?

I mean, he’s there. But he doesn’t know what day it is.

I think about how excited the pre-surgery Dad would be to help me with buying a house. He’d have all sorts of advice about it, which he’d only give me if I asked, but I would ask. He’d know what to do about the financial aspects, the inspection process, the weird little problems and quirks that come with owning an old home. He’d help me knock out walls and install and fix things and we’d have a great time doing it.

But if he wasn’t in this condition, I wouldn’t be moving to St. Louis, and I wouldn’t be buying a house, so none of that would ever happen anyway.

My active imagination allows me to think about all sorts of things that might happen to me, and live them out in my head as if they were real. Last year I wrote that applying and interviewing for jobs was like living a thousand different imaginary lives. With each application, with each interview, I’d picture myself driving to that job, working in that office, traveling for business meetings, moving to a different area of town to live closer to work. And with each rejection, that little life in my head would die, and I’d have to start all over again.

I do that with everything. When I make new friends I invent road trips we should take together. When I used to go on dates I would think about what my life would be like with that person. When my nephew was born I pictured all the time he would spend with his grandfather, learning about sports and woodworking and music and farming and history and all the things my Dad knows and taught me about.

But that won’t happen either. My father is not able to care for his only grandchild.

Okay, maybe I do know what I’m crying about.

I’ll be all right eventually, I guess. I’ll move to St. Louis in a few months and live in an apartment until I can buy a house. I’ll take little weekend trips to places in the Midwest I’ve never been, or to visit old friends who live nearby. I’ll restart my jewelry business. I’ll learn trapeze at a different aerial studio with a different instructor. I’ll make new friends. I’ll meet someone? Maybe? I suppose it’s not impossible to imagine that someday my life won’t be a hot garbage fire, and someone new will come along and say, hey, I want in on that.

But then while I’m on the date with the someone new I’ll get a call from my mom saying that my dad fell down the stairs again, and I’ll have to leave the date to go help him, and then I’ll never hear from that guy again.

Which is fine. It’s fine. That guy sucks anyway.

In the past four years I’ve lost two jobs, my beloved dog died, my nephew was born, my father had brain surgery that didn’t work, I ended a long-term relationship, and now I’m going to move to a different state to help care for my father. When does it ever stop?

It doesn’t, does it? I keep waiting for things to calm down and they never do. I’ll get my heart broken again or I’ll lose this job or my other dog will die or I’ll fall off the trapeze or my new house will burn down or my mother will get sick.

I was talking to my sister earlier about everything I’m going through. I was telling her about some unexpected feelings I’m having, and how I think they’re maybe just my grief over what’s happening to Dad and the end of my relationship and moving away from my friends, but my brain is manifesting them in a different way so I can handle them better.

“Does that sound right to you?” I said. “How’s my armchair psychology?”

She paused. “It sounds fine, I guess.”

“What?”

“Well, why can’t you just feel your feelings? Do they have to be manifestations? Can they just be what they are?”

“I… I guess they can.”

“I mean, they are what they are, and you’re going to go through them no matter what shape they take.”

This had never occurred to me.

Every few years I get the overwhelming desire to blow my life up and start over. I’ve only done it once, when I left Houston and moved to Austin in 2005, but the compulsion is often there. What I learned in 2005 is that when I feel this compulsion, it always means that what I’m not happy with isn’t my life, it’s myself. I blew up my life when I moved to Austin, but it didn’t work, because when I got there I was still me.

But I’m not the same me now that I was in 2005. I’m still a little weird and self-centered and abrasive. I dramatize things to cope with them, I’m plagued by insecurity and anxiety, I’m oversensitive and over-serious and over-analytical. But I’ve learned how to take care of myself in a way that minimizes these things. I’ve learned how to be a better friend and a better family member. I’m stronger now.

When I move to St. Louis, I can take me with me, and that’ll be okay.

i’ve lived with window units before

I’m in my old apartment right now, borrowing someone’s wifi while I clean everything and take the last of my stuff.  I don’t like being here.  My new apartment is gorgeous and clean and has all the stuff I like in it.  The kitchen is huge, and the bathroom is covered in green tile and has an old medicine cabinet with a slot for razor blades.  Last night I opened all the windows and did the dishes to the sound of wind chimes and chirping crickets.  Last night I also did laundry without having to wait for someone else to be done, and as I put the last load in I looked out the window at my assigned, covered parking space and sighed with happiness.

Tomorrow night I will walk to the grocery store.

If my landlady called tomorrow and asked me if I wanted to buy my new apartment, I’d…well, I’d probably say no, because we’re in THIS economy and I’m in THIS town and in THIS financial situation.  But I’d really WANT to buy it, which I guess is my point.

So screw you, old apartment.  Screw you for the following reasons:

1. You were built after 1980.

2. Despite your large parking lot, you never had a free space near my building unless I got home before 5 p.m.

3. You were too yellow.

4. You contained the following residents:

a) The guy who asked if I’d date his friend, who is the same guy who offered me cocaine.

b) The guy who asked me three times if I watched “the game.”  What game?

c) The upstairs neighbors who stomped around as if wearing cement shoes, who are the same neighbors who threw water onto my patio, who are the same neighbors who broke some glass right outside my front door and did not clean it up.

d) The guy who kept his German shepherd locked on his patio.

e) The adjacent neighbors who had a video camera installed outside their front door (or they did until I reported them), who are the same neighbors who 1. had a food fight right outside their front door or 2. projectile vomited outside their front door. I couldn’t tell which.

f) Anyone who walked past my patio while I was sitting outside and chose to stare at me and/or talk to me and/or get into a shoving match with each other while I was trying to read or write something.

g) Various shouting people.

5. You are in the same complex as the apartment I lived in with my ex.  Not that I feel negatively about it, but who wants that kind of reminder?  It’s time to move on.

6. Your trash was always full.

7. Your recycling was very far away, as far away as the mailboxes.

8. You are in a neighborhood that doesn’t contain many things I like to do.

9. Your TV-antenna reception left much to be desired.  I know, I’m a dinosaur, and this complaint will be obsolete in four months, but still!

10. Your sidewalks flooded every time it rained, which meant that after every rainstorm I had to consider what sort of shoes I could wear that would protect my feet from rainwater.

11. You only had three windows.  THREE!  (My new place has six.)

12. Your patio had a five-inch gap underneath the fence, so every time the landscapers came, they’d blow armfuls of leaves onto my patio.

Old apartment, I will miss your friendly landlord and your dishwasher and your central air and the size of your patio, but I will not miss anything else.  I’m going to load up the last of my stuff and go home to play with the friendly cat who hangs out near my assigned parking space, take a bath in my green bathtub, and drift off to a nice, quiet sleep.

(Maybe a lot of this makes me sound like one of those creepy watchful neighbors who looks out the window through binoculars and writes down the license-plate numbers of suspicious people, but I’m not! I swear!)