I both love and hate living in a new city.

A new city allows one to reset to anonymous; there's no chance of running into someone I know. For me, this is both a wonderful thing and a scary thing. While there is essentially a zero percent chance of running into one of them, there is also no one here (except Andrew) when I find myself slipping back. And while I know I can always talk to Andrew, there's a limit to how much I feel I should burden him with. For awhile after we moved up here things got better. I was sleeping more and having fewer panic attacks. For whatever reason, that has started to reverse. I can't figure out why, and I think that's what bothers me the most. I'm not sleeping, and when I do sleep it's horrendous. 

I thought everything would be better when I moved away from them. It scares me that I feel like this again. If moving 300+ miles away from everyone and everything I've known isn't enough to change things, I can't imagine what will. And if things aren't going to, can't, change I don't know how much longer I can handle it. It's a little like how Green wrote in Will Greyson, Will Greyson: "When you wake up in the morning you swing your legs out of bed and you put your feet on the ground and you stand up. You don't scoot to the edge of the bed and look down to make sure the floor is still there. The floor is always there. Until it's not." I look for that goddamned floor every morning. 

Unfortunately, most of the times, it feels as though the floor isn't there. And if it is, it is certainly spinning wildly out of control. Which is appropriate, since "out of control" is the overall feeling of my life right now. Sometimes it doesn't even feel real. But I know, if you can bleed, you can see it and feel it, then you know you're alive. It's irrefutable, undeniable proof. Sometimes I just need a little reminder. Mostly it makes me stop remembering. 

The Pelican Poems [M.Z.D.]

We hold our dreams
   in lost dreams
and tear our hearts out
   over chance.

     "She carried the songs
       of  centuries"

and in her passing
my madness
passed.

          -For the waitress at Cafe
           Wilanowska. Warsaw. July 7, 1988




One forgets
that one is one.

I must try
to

remember this.

          - [illegible] Warsaw.
           July 9, 1988



With forgetful ease 
the forgotton tease
of shapeless days
pass by
   and I feel them hesitate
sometimes
   and whisper their concordance
of slight gestures in glass.

They are mine
   and drift still with the irregularity
of wine and doors
   in constructed mythologies
   of evening reflections
long since gone by?

          -For Johanna in Rome.
           August 14, 1988



Heavy, heavy blues
are absinthe for me
tonight.

   "It's the notes
and the black and white photographs
with tattered edges
that go together so well
--Don't you think so?--
with brass."

     "You're lost."
     "I know."
     "Again."
     "Again."

          -For Spiros and Tatiana                                              Greece. August 23, 1988



The ruminations are mine,
   let
      the world
         be yours.

          -For no one.
           Olympia. August 31, 1988

Touring around Exeter!

The two above pictures are of the Rougemont Castle, which was right next to our hotel. It was absolutely beautiful. The entire structure is no longer standing, but the city has taken the ruins and added beautiful, expansive gardens and statues around it. It was lovely.

This was part of the stained glass window overlooking the main staircase in the hotel we stayed in in Exeter.

One of the monuments/statues in the garden area around the Rougemont Castle I mentioned earlier.

One of the coolest things about being here is the diversity of English currency. I love the coins and the colorful cash :)

On the way to Exeter...

After school ended on Wednesday, I loaded up and headed home to get Remus. Naturally, as soon as I made it to turn left onto 83, I remembered I left my iPad at school. A "quick" 20 minute trip there and back and I headed home as originally planned. Andrew met me there and taxied Remus to the kennel and me to the Chows. I was there a good hour earlier than I needed to be. We were aiming to leave at 5:30, but we then found out our flight from Harrisburg to Dulles had been delayed so significantly that we would miss our connecting flight to Heathrow. So, we very quickly loaded the kids and luggage into the car and drove to Dulles. Fortunately, we did not hit traffic and made it with enough time to check in and go through security. It's a good thing we have Global Entry status, or we would not have made it. Boarded the plane, aaaaand say on the runway for an hour and forty minutes waiting for a severe thunderstorm to pass. Finally we got up in the air. Not too much sleep for me...about seven hours later we landed at Heathrow (10:40 am in the UK, 5:40 am in PA). Global entry allowed us to fly through customs and we headed to get our rental car. A little over an hour later, we had it. We stopped for some lunch:

 Then came the best (sarcasm) part of the day: sitting in the mid-back of a mini van and driving for 5+ hours in a manual van on backwards streets. My head is still kind of spinning. Our route from Heathrow to Exeter took us past  Highclere Castle and Stonehenge. We went to the castle first (closed to the public till July), then we went to Stonehenge (by appointment only). I think we are making an appointment for another day though :)

Around 6:40 we finally made it to our beautiful hotel in Exeter (pictures to come!). Even just briefly walking around the town has convinced me that the travel troubles were worth it. When i get home, I'll have to edit the positioning of the pictures in these posts; the blogger app is a little less flexible. Cheers!

Off to England!

Soon. Very soon. 

In about five hours, I will be on my way to the airport to head across the pond to the UK. While it sucks that today is my last day at East, I'm happy for it to be because I'm travelling. That's not even to mention that I get to travel with the G, La, Q, and V. I spent most of today making note cards for my NY State English Content Exam so I can study them on the immensely long plane rides (if the kids aren't sleeping--if they are, I'll hopefully be asleep instead. By this time tomorrow, I will have seen Highclere Castle and Stonehenge. I am so very excited. I am a little disappointed that I'll only have my old phone with me; the camera on that is not nearly as nice as the one on my new phone. I realize that is definitively a first world problem, but I kinda want to be able to clearly see what I'm photographing. 

And so the panic sets in...

I feel as though it's difficult to both feel panicked about today's appointment and get others to understand why it can be so panic-inducing. Well, I suppose it is difficult, as most people simply don't know why I react so strongly. I've heard, "oh, it's an uncomfortable and awkward experience for everyone". But I guess once one has been violated in such a fashion, one truly understands what it means to be uncomfortable. I spent most of the week dreading what will happen later today, but I was always able to at least shrug it off with an, "at least it's not for a few days" and yesterday with, "it's not till tomorrow". But now that tomorrow is here, the panic is really setting in. I'm never going to be ready and willing to have what is essentially a stranger invade and break down those well-guarded barriers. I feel like I will always have to deal with those inevitable feelings of dread that wash all of the blood out of your face and slowly creep down your spine until you can't handle it anymore, and you start to shiver to try and shake it off. Fortunately for today's trip, G realized he and I both needed to be in Reading at the same time. One of the scariest parts of making this trip is the drive home; my state of being after the visit always scares me. From that, I would assume it's typically not smart for me to be operating a motor vehicle. Thankfully, I think G is going to drive us there and back. He has been fortunate enough to see me panicking on several occasions, so it makes me less nervous to know it will be him seeing me like that again. At this point, however, I'm tried of pointlessly laying in this bed. If I'm not going to sleep, I may as well get up and go to the grocery store. 

I've neglected this for quite a few months now, and I'm not entirely sure why. I know that between not getting the full time job at the high school and the uncertainty resulting from that, I just don't have much to say in a positive light. I was able to get approved through two school districts to sub day-to-day, but it's just not the same as teaching. It feels extremely menial and faintly demeaning. Most teachers don't leave more than a VHS for the sub to tackle...and that it both unchallenging and extremely boring [times five-six periods of the same thing]. I thought that maybe subbing at East High would result in some teachers who know me actually giving me something productive to do with the students, but as it goes, I often don't get the teachers I know/the teachers I know call off last minute and have nothing planned. Sigh.

As far as everything else goes...let's see. The boyfriend is good. As is becoming the norm, he is pursuing further education and will be moving away in the fall. I'm kind of getting used to this, sadly. He did come with me to a therapy session; this was both intimidating and panic-inducing....almost embarrassing too.

To be continued...