“Further, since also one itself is meant in more than one way, just as is being, one must examine in what way they mean that the whole is one.” Physics, book 1.

*

A hard, prickly, Möbius nutshell that comes out of nowhere and kills you like those damn shells in MarioKart.

“In a parallel universe somewhere, I said yes.

In that parallel universe somewhere, I’m picking out a white dress. (It would be tea-length, of course, with lace sleeves and a sweetheart bodice. I would wear bright green shoes.)

A block from my parents’ house, in that parallel universe, Jason and I would be unpacking our wedding presents and writing thank-you notes.

Five years from now, in that parallel universe, we would be welcoming our third child. We would name her Allison, after his sister, and she would be blonde. Her first word would be “ducky,” but she’d be referring to her father, whose killer Donald Duck impression would only have improved over the years.

Seven years from now we would send her older brothers off to school. The twins would be the only kindergartners to show up in sweater-vests, and they would hate us for it until we told them the second choice was matching cummerbunds.

Ten years from now, Jason and I would be curled up on the couch with our Saint Bernard, spending our Tin Anniverary with the house to ourselves. The kids would be confused as to why we sent them with their grandparents to Disneyworld when it was our anniversary, but their Aunt Allison would hand us a bottle of chardonnay and tell us she understood perfectly.

Twenty years from now, in that parallel universe, the twins would be graduating high school. Allison would be complaining because we hadn’t let her graduate early, but years later she would thank us for it.

Fifty years from now, in that parallel universe, Jason would still wake me up every morning with a cup of Irish Breakfast and a kiss, and I would still greet him with a “Hello, handsome!”

Somewhere, in a parallel universe, I said yes.

Somewhere, in a parallel universe, Jason never hit me that once, so long ago now. If it were a parallel universe maybe it wouldn’t matter. But he did, and it does, and I still miss seeing his smile as he handed me my morning cup of tea.

* * *

I have no idea where that story came from. Leibnizophobia, probably. He’s the next on the list for that darned nat sci paper.

Wish sometimes I could go back in time and find a person in a moment and really thank them.

I still don’t like Skittles, but I still regret saying no thank you instead of yes when Noel-from-the-bus offered me some. Usually he was just incredibly mean, but occasionally I saw something else. I fell up the bus stairs one day, and the immediate concern in his eyes was so tender and real it shocked me. He hid it as soon as he could, of course, but I was never completely fooled again. However, I was still an eighth-grade moron, and I never made enough of an effort to get to know him. He was mean, but–But. I hope to always remember that human look in his eyes that day. I wish I knew where he was now. I want to say hello.

I also can’t ctrl+F my schoolbooks, but luckily GoogleBooks has most of them available, so I can find the pages quotes are on without the trouble of searching 400 pages for a couple of sentences.

Funny how a red Skittle can bring up memories. I don’t ever want to refuse a Skittle again. They’re peace offerings, and peace is precious.

Back to paper-writing. Lucretius, Cannizzaro, atoms, and (if I’m lucky) Austen. I want one more draft of my soc paper before I hand it in. I want to be proud of this one.

Sitting at Noble Tree, which is pretty much decorated the way my ideal house would be, with old casement windows hanging as decoration on the walls, and at least as many comfy chairs as hard ones. Frankly, even my wooden chair is comfy.

Have my knitting sitting next to me. It’s recognizable as a sweater now, albeit a rather cropped one. But I reckon I’ll like it. It’s blue tweed, and my main debate right now is whether to have shortsleeves, longsleeves, or three-quarters-length. I’m thinking long at the moment, if I have enough tweed.

Sara’s across from me. It’s a Nanowrimo write-in, and there’s music playing, and I just had a really enjoyable cup of coffee. A generous splash of half-and-half, two raw sugars. I loved it, even though I’m not a coffee person. It was best when it was lukewarm, strangely, right after I’d finished my poppyseed bagel. Poppyseed for sleep, coffee for waking; that counts as achieving balance, right?

The MLs (sorta-bigwigs, in the sense of responsibility rather than fame or abusable power) have just left, but there’s another novelist behind and to my back.

I’ve gotten a lot done, in a funny sort of way. Partly because I’m avoiding Facebook; there’s an unpleasant message waiting for me. I’m toying with the idea of separating myself from Facebook/the-internet-in-general more and more. I want to stay connected to people via the internet, but I really love the feeling of being real, and I have that know–from writing, ambiance, accomplishments, what-have-you–and I don’t get that from spending time on the internet.

Texting Dylan. (Hi, Dylan, I know you occasionally read this.) Emailing Michaela. (Hello, lovely, I know you frequently read this.) Noveling away. I’m going to miss this. I can reproduce most of it easily, except…except that I want to bring the people with me.

I need to leave. I need to move. It’s time. It’s been almost two years now, which tends to be my limit, but more than that I’ve gained what I wanted and I’m losing, at this point. But I’m not losing when it comes to people.

And it’ll be hard to see them this next month. I’ll be busy, they’ll be busy–hell, some will be gone for break by the time I come back after Thanksgiving.

And that’s okay. Because I’ll be back. Not permanently. Never permanently. I’m still not sure if I do permanence, but I know it doesn’t work in big cities. I feel swamped, crowded, anxious, overwhelmed, STRESSED. And I just don’t want to live my life in capital letters. (Italics, however, are perfectly fine.)

So I’ll leave. I’ll leave in order to grow, to become, to be. Every day I work a little more at being the person I want to be. I feel my productivity should skyrocket when I make it to Washington. For one thing, it’s beautiful there, and I feel most like myself in beautiful places.

And then, I’ll be more here than I am right now, I hope. I can’t be Superwoman (thank heavens–I’d love a cape, but I’m not wearing high-cut panties in public; this isn’t Japan), but I can be me. And these people whom I’ll miss so much, they seem to like me. So in a way, I’ll be closer to them than ever yet. And I’m excited about that.

Perhaps the coffee’s gone to my brain. I don’t even know if that train of logic makes any sense at all. But in any case, I’m excited to see what happens this next month, and the one after. Life, work your magic. I can’t wait to see what prestidigitation you do next.

1. My ex-boyfriend (and, more importantly, a one-time dear friend) did get my email telling him goodbye. He’s just not answering. (His right. But I don’t have to be pleased. That was an olive branch, dammit!)

2. My father says e. coli hit the fan in Michigan, which will have a “deleterious effect” on his ability to visit me. That proposed visit being the first time we would have ever met. It’ll be decidedly more complicated once I’m two-thirds of the way across the country, instead of a hop-skip-and-a-jump across one state. (The difference is 269 miles now, or 2,393 miles in a month.)

3. My roommate is mad at me for the only thing that’s getting me through this semester–the fact that I’m leaving at the end of it.

4. I have lots of vaguely archaic German to translate, 149 pages of dense philosophy to read (assuming I don’t try to read the 60 pages I have to catch up on), a semester’s worth of chemistry to review for an in-class writing assignment, and a 13-page research paper to rewrite. By tomorrow, Friday, and as soon as I damn well can, respectively.

5. A rather large selection of my dearest friends are not talking to me for one reason or another. Either they simply aren’t responding at the moment, or they are miserable and holding their tongues about it, or they’re just…not talking to me.

6. The thing that makes me happiest, that is, knowing that in a month I’m headed to a beautiful place where I can pursue things that actually make me happy, is contributing to or causing everything on this list. And I can’t fix that.

Yeah, that one. He Who Does Not Know I Exist–the older, that is. I don’t know much about the younger.

But the older one wrote this post: http://bit.ly/205ZJU

I’ve always wanted an older brother I can admire. I’m really glad I have one.

It’s almost five in the morning. I’m tired. I need help. I can’t keep doing this.

I need to leave.

Stuart keeps making demands, not big things, not unethical things, just things. His priorities ahead of mine.

But it’s my life. My goals. My needs. Isn’t it?

Whose else can it be?

I need certain things. Me things. Church. Faith. Encouragement. Sleep–lots of sleep. Protein, amusingly. I get very crabby without protein. Exercise, I suspect.

But I stop functioning when I lack any of those things. Slowly, bit-by-bit, but I do.

I can’t take this right now. I need someone to tell me I’m doing a good job. I need someone to hug me if I look the slightest bit sad, and even when I don’t. A certain kind of hug, though. For some reason, the hugs that count with me are the amazing, brotherly (or uncle-y) hugs that kind of envelope me, but not in an invasive way. It’s tricky. Can’t be all elbows, not too smothery. Yeah, I never said it was easy.

I also need to be validated. What a Shimer term! But, even though saying it sounds silly, it’s necessary. I need someone else to tell me that I’m okay, that I’m doing what’s best for me or at least that I have the right to try and choose. That’s honestly more the issue.

I’m no child. I can’t be a child. Not right now. Probably not ever again. At 5′0″, I must stand tall.I need to be able to trust myself, and to do that I must earn my own trust. So, I have to make decisions. I have to stand on my own feet, take consequences, learn, try again. Every body has to.

Even submission requires strength. And, frankly, I don’t feel I need to submit to Stuart. He is not my father. He is not my spiritual father. He is not my husband, thank Heavens. (Good grief, what a thought.)

He’s a facilitator. A professor. That’s it.

I value his instruction. But his advice is unsolicited and not applicable.

His priorities have to come first, he says. I have to cater to his wishes, he says. Can’t cut class for ten minutes to make it to work, but must put all other obligations aside if I made a commitment to the school. I have to break any promises I make that conflict with school.

But other things are dearer to me. And I get to make that choice.

I claim it. Recognized or no, it is my right. Humans get to choose.

It’s the only God-given right I believe in.

So, to keep it brief because it’s almost 3 am, I stayed up two extra hours after I finished my nat sci paper so that I could read pages upon pages of GivesMeHope.com. It’s been a tough week; well, a tough few weeks. There are a lot of insane issues in my life right now, but I’m surviving. The thing that’s been hardest to deal with has been one of the smallest things.

A facilitator of mine, the prof for my soc class, said to me recently that I needed to put my school obligations before being so nice to others. Well, yeah, generosity was interfering with my academics, because I accidentally worked a forty-hour week while trying to keep my head above water for classes. That didn’t work, and it was poor planning, but it was a one-time thing. The next week, I told Stuart I’d need to leave class early just once so that I could sub for someone at work so they could have their birthday off. He said no. He treated me like a highschooler. He was completely inflexible. He didn’t let me be an adult making my own decisions. Like I always do when feeling powerless, I cried.

It worked out because my boss is a godsend, but it’s been a problem. I’ve been a lot more selfish this year than in the past, avoiding crazy needy people and getting more-or-less all my work done. But I’m still me, and when I focus solely on my official needs I turn paper-hearted; kind of crisp and crackly and two-dimensional, not at all right. I need to be kind. I need to take that time. I need to let myself put others first even when the brats don’t deserve or appreciate it and when it runs me ragged. I don’t need to run myself ragged all the time or even ever, but I need to let myself when I want to.

Reading GivesMeHope.com gave me the same feeling I got on Tuesday when I drew smiles across a cup and wrote “have a splendid day!” because I saw the customer crying while waiting for her drink. It doesn’t actually accomplish anything, necessarily, but it makes me feel a hell of a lot better.

Here’s one of my favorites: “At my college graduation everyone is allowed to take a loved one with them as they walk across the stage. The last girl to walk across held the arm of her 90 year old grandpa. As they crossed the stage the chancellor read her grandfathers name. He graduated 60 years ago but didn’t get to walk his own graduation because he was fighting in WWII. GMH.” It’s charming, honest, and disarming. And you know what? It’s taught me something.

I was already right.

Being kind, developing spiritually, and becoming a well-balanced person really ARE the most important things in life. I’m never happier than when I take a while to be mellow and warm towards others. When I pray, I get that same feeling. When I balance my responsibilities towards others with my responsibilities to myself, I’m much happier than when I take care of all my own needs without making time to open doors for strangers.

Stuart’s wrong. And thank God he is.

1. Persuasion – I’m in the middle of the book, and I’ve watched the movie at least five times since I got it in August.

2. Port Townsend, WA - Lovely, small, vivid, convenient. And it has mountains on one side and ocean on the other. Irish music community. A sweet, vibrant church. Orthodox people my own age? Unheard of!

3. My cat – Hermione has been particularly sweet lately. She is fluffy and orange and fickle, and I wouldn’t have her any other way.

4.  A day of my own – Today is my first day off in a very long time. Nothing’s due, I have no plans, I get to spend the whole day as I like. I’m cleaning, cooking (cornish pasties!), and pampering myself rather wholeheartedly. I got to spend last night with my mother, who brought me all sorts of nice Mary Kay things she’d found while cleaning out the soon-to-be-old house.

5. My violin – Learning to fiddle is one of the greatest things I’ve ever done for myself. I’m finally able to play the tunes my godparents and their friends play at sessions, and it’s a great way to relax. I’m happy.