Cat's cradle

WAY too many hands...

Arrrgh, my head feels tangled and STUCK. Did you ever play that game Cat's Cradle when you were younger? I did-- I was pretty good at it, making Cup and Saucer, Eiffel Tower, and Jacob's Ladder easily and then untangling my fingers from the loop of string. Well, right now it feels like I have one massive tangle, way too many hands, and a flurry of swearing and cursing inhabiting my mind.

Today I've focused mostly on moving as soon as possible. Picking myself up and throwing myself into life in a completely different city, with new people and new problems to distract me. I called DC area graduate schools-- is it strange that they make the education program websites as hard as possible to understand? like they're trying to weed out bad educators?-- and apparently I can start classes as a non degree-seeking student as early as mid-January. I can then compile an official application, become a degree-seeking student, transfer the credits so that they apply toward my education degree, and pursue my MEd and student teaching minus the courses I took as a non degree-seeking student. Phew! Which then means that in a little over a month, I need to choose a school, get them the information they need, break the lease on my apartment, find a sublet for six months (prior to student housing), move, deposit my furniture in a storage locker, find a job to allow me to pay rent and live, and not pass out from overexertion.

But then all of these doubts creep back into my head, just as I start to think that yes, I can do all of this, and yes, it is the right decision. I haven't even had time to investigate DC schools and see if that's where I want to go. What if NYU or UVA have the graduate programs that were meant for me? Then there is the fact that whereas I've always said that I had no good friends in New York and maybe I should just pick up and leave, that is no longer true. I have found a few friends who have been unbelievably supportive and who possess the same sort of artsy, contemplative, fun, and quirky personality that I do. Knowing that my friend Kate lives three blocks away and is always up for lazy bonding has been a huge help in the past couple of weeks, and having way too many people cram into my apartment and pop a bottle of champagne to celebrate the end of workplace abuse turned that day from one of confusion to one of triumph. I love my English cottage apartment and have no idea how I would find one I like as much elsewhere. I have no idea how to find a job in DC, and isn't being unemployed in DC just as dangerous/pathetic as it is in New York? And then there's the biggest knot, the one that stubbornly refuses to be untied: I feel like moving is admitting failure and giving up. In more than one capacity. It's saying, "I couldn't do this," but most of all, it's saying "I'm putting physical space now instead of just verbal space...and in addition to dumping the bad times, I'm dumping the good times too." It's a reality check in the worst way: being forced to realize that things are permanently severed with someone I cared/care about through my own departure, my own clearing of the premises.

I didn't want to get that personal here, and I feel that this entry is straddling the vague/clear threshold. But one last thing I will say before I continue to try to make decisions is that one of my dear New York friends has recently started a blog as well (sparrowsoul.blogspot.com) and yesterday posted an entry called "how I learned love." One thing that I can say for the last year, with all of its ups and downs and ambiguities, is that I without doubt learned love, when I was just starting to think that I was incapable of it. But in the past year I loved with my entire being, fingertips to toes, in dreams and while awake, and that is a pretty spectacular accomplishment.

"white. a blank page or canvas. his favorite. so many possibilities..."