2/14/07 - Here We Go.... Again...

Carl left yesterday and it looks like the proverbial shit storm is starting to die down. The first big snow in Boston has come and gone and now there are just piles of nasty grey and brown slush everywhere and the occasional ice patch that you have to watch out for, or, since it's hard to see, just learn to slip gracefully upon.

But the sun is out, and the icicles, they're melting and they drip on your head from time to time if you don't notice you're walking half in, half out of the roof overhangings. I'm getting used to the cold, I guess. It's really not so bad. It's like learning to stay on the windy side of the island in Maui when the sun rises and sets to avoid mosquitoes.

But here's the thing that every 20-something-year-old knows and dreads. I find myself working part-time at a coffee shop in Boston and I'm wondering what the fuck I'm doing with my life. I came here for the opportunity of it, and as it happens for so many people my age, that opportunity turned out to be an illusion and now my life is again filled with bouts of depressed self-beatings with mixed in splashes of optimism and hope.

I thought the hardest part of this whole thing would be transitioning out of my job and into whatever comes after. In a way it was, and Carl definitely helped cushion the blow. Surely I would have broken into many more pieces if he had not been here. But this part is hard, too. Yesterday morning after Carl left I went to sleep and slept until 6pm. I woke up for a few hours to look up free lectures and events in the Boston area and plan my extracurricular/enrichment schedule. Boston is a great place to self-educate.

I wasn't quite as bummed about being alone on Valentine's day as I was last year. Swilled the Jameson for a bit and listened to music, chain smoking cigarettes and ho-humming because I realized I was still too tired to do anything about it. So I went back to sleep and slept straight through about 22 hours of Valentine's Day to 7:30am this morning- just in time to get dressed and head out to BU for training at the Espresso Royale there.

The work is hectic, but the people and music are great. I am having a hard time accepting that I get paid so little for so much work, but who am I to complain. People don't work at coffee shops to make money. They work there because it's fun. It's a decent thing to do in the interim while I decide what the fuck to do with myself.

I feel pretty lost though, I must admit. Really lost, actually. It's like I had an opportunity, and I put my whole heart and soul into it; I was in it for the long haul. And then one day it was just gone, taken from me. In a split second. It's pretty hard. I thought I'd been given a chance.

But everyone keeps telling me that there's something to be learned from all this. That at the very least, what I got out of it was Boston, a city I love. But what did I learn, anyway. And why don't I want to hear this: "Well, there's a lesson to be learned from all this"?

What lesson is there to be learned? What am I supposed to learn, not to trust? Not to go after something that seems unbelievable? Not to dream?

What was I supposed to learn from last year's heartbreak, not to love? I learned that, and I hate that lesson. I hate it.

I don't want to distrust. I want to trust with all my heart! I don't want to stop chasing unbelievable opportunities, I will never let them pass me by! I'll never give up! I'll never!

I'm pretty sad right now. I feel it in my stomach. I thought that I had let go of expectation, and freed myself from the possibility of disappointment, but I was wrong. I forgot that the very ground can disintegrate from beneath your feet.

But I have wings. I can fly. And if I forget, my friends won't let me fall. Everything will be okay. Everything will happen just right. I know it.