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Dec. 11th, 2018 10:30 amThis is the first non-crosspost I've made here since March 2011, and seven years is a long time, but more has changed than I possibly could have imagined. In March 2011, I was a junior in college writing Iliad fanfic in ENG 209: Gore and Glory (and then getting called out for it by my rugby teammate, who was sitting next to me). I had no idea where I was going besides "not Classics grad school." I wanted to stay in NYC forever, if only for the public transit. I had vague ideas that I wanted to do a translation for my thesis, but I was still thinking about the Homeric Hymns (I had yet to show up with my initial translation in Professor Ford's office, only for him to tell me that everyone had translated the Homeric Hymns, which sent me off on a mad dash to find something else, leading to excavating the Orphic Hymns from a dusty corner of Classics).
2012 - 2014 was pretty miserable -- I still had no plan in June 2012, or December 2012. I did a semester or two of non-credit classes so I could have enough credits for a year of miserable Latin teaching grad school. After getting into a classroom with actual children, I realized that that would never work out, especially with New York State's guidelines for teaching Latin, which are terrible. I got my first office job in August 2014, and getting paid was nice, but everything else was miserable -- the organization didn't do much, so I had nothing to do, but the President's wife didn't want to admit that it did nothing, so I had to account for every minute. I got sick for a week and a half, make the hour and a half trip up to work, and was sent home by a coworker, who said "Since neither of you [me and the other person] is reliable, I can't get sick." I moved out of my parents' apartment and into a fourth-floor walk-up closet with four roommates. Towards the end of my time at this job, I had anxiety attacks so bad I couldn't move my hands. I went to Italy for two weeks and then was let go the day I got back, which was, honestly, fine.
I looked for work for three months, found a fairly decent job, had to move out of my apartment (but found one about three times the size for the same rent), liked my job, got tired of my job, was let go after a budget hiccup, looked for work for nine months, with varying intensity, stressed, cried, had lots of migraines, went to the ER, dealt with bureaucracy, and generally felt like hell.
And throughout it all, I worried about ever finding love -- that I was unloveable; that I was incapable of strong feeling; that no one who could fill even two of my many needs existed. I was awkward; I didn't know what people talked about; I couldn't find friends, much less lovers. I fell out of love with New York gradually, but realized towards the end of 2017 -- the promise of the city, I realized, was for other people. People who had the energy to go to the opera on a Tuesday and then work on a Wednesday. People who wanted to go to bars. People who could do more than one thing on any given day. Most of all, people who had money.
In March of 2018, in one of the worst months of my life (I had a migraine every day that month; I was completely unmedicated, and therefore exhausted, depressed, and in pain), I sent a facebook message to the second person I kissed, who I'd met at camp when I was twelve and kissed as a counselor at 18, facebook messaged for a while, and then, after he stopped answering, had thought about on and off over the years. I didn't write about reasons in my journal at the time, and I'm a little mad, because I don't know why. A message from Aphrodite herself, I guess (and hopefully Hera was looking over her shoulder). I didn't really have high hopes -- I thought he wouldn't answer, or that it would be awkward and unpleasant. When he answered, two days after I sent the message, we talked for five hours. I found out he was in Austin and told myself nothing could ever happen.
He visited for the first time on April 21st. We took standing room tickets to what turned out to be Anna Netrebko's first Tosca. I made no romantic overtures. We'd both established that we were single, but nothing else. The next day, after the Met Museum, I asked him onto my bed and, after a while, we kissed. He visited again in May, and then the break from May to late August was agonizing. I started looking at Austin job listings.
And now I live in Texas. I work; I drive; I take care of plants on my patio; I cook; I love. I could never have imagined this in March 2011. It's so much better than anything I could have imagined.
2012 - 2014 was pretty miserable -- I still had no plan in June 2012, or December 2012. I did a semester or two of non-credit classes so I could have enough credits for a year of miserable Latin teaching grad school. After getting into a classroom with actual children, I realized that that would never work out, especially with New York State's guidelines for teaching Latin, which are terrible. I got my first office job in August 2014, and getting paid was nice, but everything else was miserable -- the organization didn't do much, so I had nothing to do, but the President's wife didn't want to admit that it did nothing, so I had to account for every minute. I got sick for a week and a half, make the hour and a half trip up to work, and was sent home by a coworker, who said "Since neither of you [me and the other person] is reliable, I can't get sick." I moved out of my parents' apartment and into a fourth-floor walk-up closet with four roommates. Towards the end of my time at this job, I had anxiety attacks so bad I couldn't move my hands. I went to Italy for two weeks and then was let go the day I got back, which was, honestly, fine.
I looked for work for three months, found a fairly decent job, had to move out of my apartment (but found one about three times the size for the same rent), liked my job, got tired of my job, was let go after a budget hiccup, looked for work for nine months, with varying intensity, stressed, cried, had lots of migraines, went to the ER, dealt with bureaucracy, and generally felt like hell.
And throughout it all, I worried about ever finding love -- that I was unloveable; that I was incapable of strong feeling; that no one who could fill even two of my many needs existed. I was awkward; I didn't know what people talked about; I couldn't find friends, much less lovers. I fell out of love with New York gradually, but realized towards the end of 2017 -- the promise of the city, I realized, was for other people. People who had the energy to go to the opera on a Tuesday and then work on a Wednesday. People who wanted to go to bars. People who could do more than one thing on any given day. Most of all, people who had money.
In March of 2018, in one of the worst months of my life (I had a migraine every day that month; I was completely unmedicated, and therefore exhausted, depressed, and in pain), I sent a facebook message to the second person I kissed, who I'd met at camp when I was twelve and kissed as a counselor at 18, facebook messaged for a while, and then, after he stopped answering, had thought about on and off over the years. I didn't write about reasons in my journal at the time, and I'm a little mad, because I don't know why. A message from Aphrodite herself, I guess (and hopefully Hera was looking over her shoulder). I didn't really have high hopes -- I thought he wouldn't answer, or that it would be awkward and unpleasant. When he answered, two days after I sent the message, we talked for five hours. I found out he was in Austin and told myself nothing could ever happen.
He visited for the first time on April 21st. We took standing room tickets to what turned out to be Anna Netrebko's first Tosca. I made no romantic overtures. We'd both established that we were single, but nothing else. The next day, after the Met Museum, I asked him onto my bed and, after a while, we kissed. He visited again in May, and then the break from May to late August was agonizing. I started looking at Austin job listings.
And now I live in Texas. I work; I drive; I take care of plants on my patio; I cook; I love. I could never have imagined this in March 2011. It's so much better than anything I could have imagined.
