A recent email to my friend, Angela

Hey Ange,

Thanks for the Happy Birthday. I had a good one. Someone once told me that 22 sucked, but at 23 things started to make sense for them. The first part was definately true. As for the second, I definately have a better grasp on reality and where I want to take my life. I would even venture to say that I am happy. This is the first time I have been happy, not because of the people that I am around or the situation I am in, but because of the person that I am and what I want to do.

So that sort of answers your question about how I am doing, but only partially. I'm really happy because I left behind a lot of personal baggage in Europe and feel mentally and emotionally stable for the first time in a long time. I am also lonely. I think I achieved a good balance of alone time and not-alone time while away. Since I've been back, I've been happy to reunite with people, but not able to talk to anyone about my trip. It wouldn't be fair of me to say that nobody's asked about it; it's just that nobody's asked the right questions. It was really hard to see someone for the first time and have them say, "How was France?" We'd be standing there and all these images would come to my head and I would be thinking, "I've just walked into the room, we're standing here, and in two minutes we're going to be talking about something else." "Good" "Awesome." Sometimes I venture, "It sucked," with the right people. So for that reason I've kind of been alienating myself. Because I'm afraid I'm already forgetting about my trip and I'm not ready to. It's been a productive alienation. "I'm not fucking around this time" is my new motto.

In the bittersweet news department (extra-bittersweet, if you like your chocolate dark), I'm returning to my job at the chocolate store, but I'm not fucking around this time. It's not the step back that it might seem. At least, that is what I'm telling myself. The reason I came back was that my old boss made me an offer I couldn't refuse. So It's nice to feel like I'm a valuable asset to something. The raise will allow me to save money, which I really need to do. One of my closest friends at Moonstruck will be leaving just as I am returning. I think he's pretty pissed at me for returning and, though he hasn't talked to me about it, I can imagine why. I can imagine why because it is exactly the same reasoning I would have used before my trip. I tend to live my life in romanticized chapters. I closed the Moonstruck chapter with a lot of celebration and sincerely-written thank you cards and my friend and I solidified the fact that we were incredibly special people to eachother for an incredibly special period of time. My going back could be seen as invalidating that time because now I am turning it into just a job. From my end of things, I am secretly happy that it's going to be just a job and that I'm breaking my supersitious belief in romance for the moment. I
struggle with practicality and right now I need a strong dose of it to be able to accomplish what I want to accomplish. So yeah, I'm back to the chocolate for as little time as possible--no longer than the summer, but hopefully shorter. I want a real job and I'm not fucking around this time.

I am also lonely because I am not in love and there is a big part of me that will never lose sight of that romance. I function very differently when I am in love, which is part of the reason I have been avoiding it like the plague. But I'm also ready for something interesting to happen. I tell myself that I want a boyfriend, but really what I want is a captive listener. Is that wrong?

I did get your email about the dinner with comedy people a generation ahead of you. That is so awesome. If you meet Amy Sedaris, when you meet Amy Sedaris, tell her that my Party Log is growing. I am so happy that you have found that place in the world. You just have to keep immersing yourself in what you love. It sounds like it is really paying off and will continue to. (If I am not mistaken, that is the second time I have ended a sentence with a preposition.)

On Travel. An amazing thing happened while I was traveling. When I would stop and think about time (what time it was, how long until my next trip, how long I had been gone) I realized that I didn't want it to move any faster or any slower than it was. I wasn't homesick--I didn't want to speed up to get home. I felt like I had filled each amount of time that was given to me with the right amount of thinking, the right pace of walking. Time just moved at the speed time moves when you are not thinking about it. I wrote "Time=Time" in big letters in my journal (before I lost it). I wanted to write an essay about it and explain in some way (that was not too cliche, I hoped) that this must be what it means to actually live in the present--to be totally conscious of the moment that you are in and not any other moment. I still want to write that essay, but as I've lost track of the different thoughts to use as evidence, it's become a farther away dream. But I also realize that I don't need those thoughts, because the phenomenon I was trying to explain was so simple and not complicated at all: I was happy.

Do you mind if I post this on my blog? Because it is slowly approaching the most coherent thing I have written since my college entrance essay.

Oh, and in response to your last issue, which refers to the latter part of the subject line of this email: aren't we already?

Always,

Aud

P.S. Did I tell you that I read Children Playing Before a Statue of Hercules? I loved a lot of the stories, but it was hard for me to get past how good Sedaris' introduction is and the line: "I did not question, as I believed, and still do, that stories can save you." Thanks for the recommendation.