So today I move and it's awful and actually really sad and I can't think about it

So instead all I'm thinking about is last night when the guy who already has my heart made me fall even harder and got our friends together at the swanky little Capital Club 16 for a dinner that made it just enough easier to say goodbye.  Also gin and tonic.

After dinner everyone leaves and I'm swept up to the top of the Plaza for a bottle of Biltmore wine on the clubhouse terrace with a pool and we played shuffleboard until he won under the Raleigh stars.

for keeps

I love friends you can just go get dinner and a drink with and you don't have to take pictures or post to social media or try even at all because they're so real you just feel real with them. You can just talk and laugh for hours and even complain and then end the night feeling happy and whole, like someone out there cares how you're doing and you care about them.  And then it makes you want to go be that kind of friend to everyone else and just talk about real stuff and be like I understand you!

 I visited the Biltmore estate last weekend and big and elegant and beautiful as it was, there was a sad, eery, lonely energy about it that I couldn't seem to shake.  Kind of like walking through the red light district or thinking about the Holocaust. You're sad because it is and even displaced, as  if paying attention to the details is prying on a life that isn't yours to know or understand. But also so fascinated.  You picture what it'd be like to be there and almost get lost absorbing, paralleling your imagination with what's in front of you.

So why am I feeling this way about a house, an estate? Hundred of lovely rooms upon acres of rolling forests and lush pastures and extravagant vineyards. There for me to enjoy for 60 bucks. No one suffers. 

It's the loss of integrity, the dignity not rightfully taken that is so tragic to me.  This place wasn't built to be a museum or a case display, or a tourist attraction, it was meant to be a home. A home to be loved and missed and felt like something special to someone. Sofas placed just so and tables so carefully set.  This room has these colors because.  The baby will love this cradle. Won't the pool be so much fun?  Let's sit here and have breakfast every morning.  And just look at our view. Think of the parties we'll throw!

Now the plants are watered just to make money.  The beds never get a night unmade.  Who even knows what the books are about? The kitchen, embarrassed by fake peppers and plastic bread, never gets to cook tortellini at midnight.  

Once a home. Trusted walls.  A mutual love . Now, a slave to it's owners. 

Of course the house is haunted. I'd be sad too. 

what it feels like to get out of your own head

my head's like:
"STRESS FREAK OUT STRESS WRINKLE UP YOUR FOREHEAD AND FROWN AND BE SERIOUS ABOUT EVERYTHING AND STRESS SOME MORE"

and I'm like:

Let's get out of this town baby we're on fire

I say to myself as I sharpen my pencils and charge up for yet another chapter in this nonsensical but somehow lovely life. Grad school. Masters. 25-year-old me. Wait what.  While it feels like I'm about to take on someone else's life, I know I'm ready for it to be my own.  Saying goodbye to the day-to-day that I know so well has never been easy, but I'm ready for it to be.  I'm ready to toss the miserable drag of melancholy like I'm ready to toss old throw pillows from beach-themed days.  Like last summer's bad Target finds. Like those free plastic cups that pile up in the cabinet and fall out when I open it, begging for attention.  Like the gifted shower gels that sit tiredly under the sink with crowns of dust, too dramatic for my ornery skin.  Tossing out the battered string lights in the bedroom that used to look so cool at night. The jeans that never fit right but stuck around because maybe one day. The pilly tanks. The stuff that's just stuff because that's all it will ever be. Ready to toss it all. Love the good with all I've got and take the bad for what it was. Then fill my suitcase with nothing but great jeans and Light Blue and things that make me better.  And Richmond can love me or hate me or give me a run for my money but at least I'll know where I stand and I'll smell good and the cups in my cabinet won't fall out when I open it. 

A summer of summer memories

The smell of banana sunscreen 

What day is it? We laugh 

Squinty eyes behind shades too cool for their job

Salty beaded upper lip caked with coconut balm

The blanketing heat of well-rested leather seats and the damp reminders of yesterday

Bleached-out strands tangled with adventure, a mermaid top

The crisp volume of the car radio cuts through the haze. 

I LOVE THIS ONE! We shout

A summer of summer memories

For the twenty-something working girl.

Things you learn on work trips

People aren't going to give you what you want.  They're probably not going to give you anything at all.  In fact, they're going to take.  They're going to take from you what they want. Which isn't going to be anything related to what you want, or anything you wanted them to take, much less anything you wanted to give.  You start giving without even knowing, expecting maybe eventually they will give you what you want.  You wait.  And you keep giving.  But soon you get tired of giving and you stop feeling kind or generous or extravagant.  You just feel used.  And so finally you take.  Just once, you take what you want.  Which isn't anything anyone else wanted, and probably not anything anyone wanted to give.  But you wanted it and now you have it. They were never going to give it to you.  You had to take it.

Now you know.