the way back

Oh, February, you saucy minx. You sneak. You dickwad. I was muddling through January with enough on my plate, fighting some of the most apathetic classes I've ever had, and then you came waltzing in.

You brought two snowstorms, and you had me fielding interviews with three, count 'em, three schools, and then you had more tricks up your sleeve: a wicked head cold, and a campus interview, and lots of middling bureaucratic things. Lots of paperwork, lots of doctor's appointments. All this, and lots of gray.

So I crouched at the start line. I bought a suit. I bought plane tickets. I lined up substitutes and drank fluids and tried to sleep, even though I would start awake at six in the morning, mind racing. I made fake syllabi and graded fake papers. I didn't shovel the steps. I put my head down, and I tried not to let the crushing panic of all of these things overwhelm me. And I managed not to.

At the end of all that, I got on a(nother) plane, and I flew to Minnesota. I went back to the town where I used to live with the people I used to live there with.

I have the same demons. I worry the same worries. I am facing down the same daunting stretch of unemployment. I (still, again) have to make a very similar decision regarding where I want to strike out next, a sophisticated decision that will most likely result in a panicked consultation of the atlas and crossed fingers. Only now I am four years older, and my teaching contract ends on the day I turn thirty, and I don't have even a serving job to get me through the summer.

February. I hate you.

*

I have been here before. So why aren't I any better at handling this? And why haven't I yet figured out what to say to the voice in my head that asks me, every hour in every day, So ... figured out what the fuck you're going to do with your life yet? 

I tell it, No. Be quiet. Leave me alone, please. But it doesn't.

It never does.

*


Here's the thing: even just a few months ago, I wanted to turn thirty. I was looking forward to it. I was feeling pretty good. I was working hard on accepting my faults, and all that O magazine bullshit. I taught classes filled with students who seemed, for the most part, to be genuinely interested in learning. I went for walks. I watched a little television and I read more books and I sent out application after application. I knew that I had a few months of waiting ahead of me. I felt ready.

But then the winter came, and the job interviews got me in the door but weren't enough, and now I am standing here, thinking that I haven't changed at all. That I am still the same moron who can't quite get it right. Only now I own a suit. And my classes seem angered by the simple fact that I am asking them to read things and write things, and I question if I even want to keep trying this career. And the envelopes that arrive in my mailbox confirm that I probably can't, even if I wanted to.

Now, the idea of turning thirty--as this same mess--seems terrifying.

*

So I think. I think all the time. I think about moving to a big city and losing myself in the crowd for a while, taking whatever jobs I can get. I think about the futility of this line of work I've chosen. I think that I'm not any better at anything less futile. I think about moving to the beach, where I can take a walk at the end of the day and throw sticks for the dog. I think about getting another dog, something to take my mind off the big. 

I wait for spring. I wait for the phone to ring. I wait for my inbox to fill. I wait until it's time for bed, and then I crawl into it and watch old episodes of The West Wing, a show where smart people who speak beautifully fight the good fight. And when I fall asleep, I dream that I am back waiting tables in Minnesota. In the dreams, my pockets are filled with hundred-dollar bills.

Here is where I am, reader. And here is where I think I'll be for a while. I have to try and find  the way out of the gray mess that is my head. I have to take another long walk.

*

I think a lot about this fragment of song, by an artist that I listened to a lot when I was seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty. I don't mind telling you that I still listen to this artist, even though that makes me a cliche.

The song is "Knuckle Down," and the part I think about goes: I think I'm done gunnin' to get closer/To some imagined bliss/I gotta knuckle down/Just be ok with this/'Course that star-struck girl/Is already someone I miss.

*

I hope that you are doing better than I am. I hope that wherever you might be, there are small green shoots coming up through the ground. I hope that you have soup and cookies and good coffee beans to sustain you. I am thinking of you, and I know that you are thinking of me, as I try and find my way back.