Wednesday, July 8, 2015

365

As of tonight, I will have been home for one year.

In the past 53 weeks (I'm including the one right before I left North Carolina in that count), so much shit has gone down. Some of it was awesome. Some of it was just okay. Most of it sucked.

I had to say goodbye to my jobs, office, and apartment all at once. I miss my blue bedroom more than I can describe.

It's not unusual for me to get nostalgic about stupid things; earlier this year, for a moment, I missed making the 45-minute drive to Fayetteville--a city I actively dislike, but that played its own strange part in my life for ten years.

There are still times when I cry. Sometimes it lasts a minute. Sometimes it lasts an hour. Sometimes I'm not entirely sure why I'm shedding tears over this or that memory. All I know is that the pain isn't gone.

One day, I realized that I was grateful my aunt wasn't alive to see (what I view as) my downfall. The thought of disappointing her makes me more depressed than the events themselves.

Since I set foot in Michigan last July, I've twice watched the eight Harry Potter films, all three seasons of Sherlock, and all ten seasons of Friends, and I've managed to watch once all six seasons of I Love Lucy and all six seasons of Sex and the City (along with the first film). I have read far fewer books than I hoped. Beyond blog posts, I have written very little.

For six weeks in the run-up to Christmas, I lived through retail Hell, but it was nice to be able to help people again, no matter how insignificant I might have been to each customer.

I've bought so many novels, poetry collections, and history books that I'm running out of places to put them in my bedroom. I may have a book problem. Additionally, I've blown quite a bit of money on handbags and two expensive pairs of shoes that I love.

My closet here is about a third of the size of the one I had in North Carolina. Dresser drawers have now become my friends.

As an early birthday present, my parents gave me a Yorkshire Terrier. I call her Little Dog. I know it confuses her when I do so, but sometimes when I'm crying, I'll pick her up and pet her so I don't go off the rails completely.

When my unemployment benefits ran out, I managed not to panic. This was an important moment in my life.

I've embarked on a sort of self-improvement regime, which consists mainly of my feeble attempts to re-learn the French I lost between high school and now.

I took a six-week creative writing course through the local YMCA in the hope that it would jump-start my writing again. The only tangible benefit I saw was that it got me out of the house for a couple of hours every Friday for the first month and a half of this year.

In spite of having tons of time on my hands, I'm still behind on reading copies of my beloved Smithsonian.

Nothing is the same. Everything is the same.

-Cate-

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