stitches are the new grills

After the exam, which was a bloodbath, I walked to my boyfriend's house and crawled into his bed and slept while he worked in his office ten feet away.

Later I went to a nerd-rock concert with EC, it was kind of fantastic and I recognized a lot of the kids who were out from the community radio station. The show had that organic dance party feeling, like everyone who was there liked the music and wasn't preoccupied by the indie-cred of recent gushing reviews. The band was so fresh they ran out of music and threw something together for an encore. We walked home in cold pushing into spring and he said

"so I don't know when I'll see you again?"

Which is possibly true. Eleven nights left in this city; eleven nights living in the same location as so many people I'm so close to. I'm not actually sure I'll ever live in the same city as my best friend again, which I try not to think about, because she's kind of been my family for the past three years. Who am I supposed to call when my face is three times the size it should be, to bring me popsicles and just the right amount of sympathy, mostly by being hilarious?

My best friends have made me a better person because they have always made me feel like who I am is really okay. Foibles, aggrandizement and all. You can tell who we are in the room because we're having a conspiratorial good time and laughing inappropriately.

We went out to a movie, The Counterfeiters, and then for cake at the coffee shop that was around the corner from the apartment I used to live in. Walking home at night in front of my old apartment I still get these happy goosebumps, even though I'm not going inside. So many things happened there.

{The change has been permanent.}

I look at the crazy of the past week, of the past six weeks, amazed. No one says "being a grown up means you will have to deal with a lot of crap at inconvenient times that no one tells you about" but you kind of know; no one says "and, remarkably, you will figure out how to deal with all of it, and you won't need to tell anyone or go on a talk show with a bestseller about overcoming inner demons, you won't need to see a therapist or seek closure, it won't trigger a fetal position life crisis, you probably won't even blink long enough to pat yourself on the back, and that will be that." Something changed being away most of the last year. Maybe it was the places, maybe it was the right time, maybe it was unconditional surrender to things like having no real home, maybe it would have happened anyways, maybe it was the ocean, maybe it was the people, maybe it was the perfect storm. Somewhere life got big. So much bigger than this, me, or anything that goes on.

My life right now is contained in a half full closet and I don't know that I've been happier.