Warning: stream of consciousness blogging in process, come what may....
AH left early early this morning for Mexico and at 2 pm was calling me from the highway with a surfboard strapped to the car, surrounded by a gaggle of his old friends. Isn't technology amazing, that in a few short hours you can be across the country with people you've known your whole life, calling your wife back where you ostensibly live? Sometimes I wonder if airplane travel hasn't screwed up our heads completely. In a few hours you can dip in to completely different countries and lives and out again, like nothing happened. We finally got to see Season Six Sopranos, the first half (from the library, natch) and I found the episode where Carmela goes to Paris oddly moving. Like the Alexander Payne short in "Je T'aime Paris", it talked about how odd it is to visit somewhere for a short time and leave changed, but not to change the place you had been and how travel makes you realize the sheer size of the world, the flow of people, your own small insignificance.

Of course it doesn't take traveling to remind you of your insignificance. I don't mind being alone so I wasn't worried about feeling sad while AH was gone. But suddenly here I am - sad. There is something about being alone in North Carolina that is so much more than just alone - hours from people who care what happens to me in any real way. But it's all mixed up with my feelings from school and wondering why I consistently and reliably project "go away/stay away" vibes and find it so hard to just not be so damn shy and quiet. Why talking small talk is so irritating to me, it literally sticks in my throat. Why I would rather say nothing than something insincere. I have my few girls who I feel attached to but we don't have classes together and so the rest of my days becomes a battle within myself: be myself or force myself to be extroverted? Old habits usually win. I guess I've also been flummoxed by the squeaky clean sincerity and sweetness of all my classmates - hard workers who do all the readings and come to class prepared and speak kindly to each other and want to passionately debate topics I've already sort of become numb to throughout the years - like whether libraries should collect popular fiction, for gods sake. Always destined to feel just a little out of step I guess. I kinda wanna pierce this veil of sincerity and politeness and niceness. I kinda miss sarcasm and black senses of humor and the admitting of faults. Sometimes I think it's just my ill-adjustment to the US, a land of sweet and plentiful milk chocolate when sometimes I want just a square of dark bitter chocolate that's kind of painful to eat, you know? Or be in tune, not the single discordant note that screws up the music, the One Who Is Pregnant, the One Who Hates to Lead Class Discussions and Seems to Be Completely Inarticulate, the One Who Doesn't Go to Happy Hour because at the moment, drinking and sitting around bars hath lost its charm, the One Who Can Keep it Together But Just Barely. It's good to be challenged and push yourself but there isn't one level on which I haven't felt like a screwup in months - not work, not school, not my personal life. Good god, wait until I stir mother guilt into the pot. What if my kid learns to be shy and awkward from me? Has trouble fitting in? Feels like the wrong note? Oh dear.
My response to feeling sad today is to search for last minute tickets to who-knows-where so I can just sit on a plane and lose myself for a few days. A place where no one knows me, a last trip where I can truly be alone and wallow in it.