I had the words but as soon as I started typing, they disappeared.

I wanted to write about how it’s been a year since I moved here.

About how in two months it will be a year since I met the person I am going to spend my life with.

I want to write about hundred degree weather that never seems to end and the way you never notice how much of a miracle rain is until you can’t remember the last time you felt it against your skin. I want to write about how hot the water coming out of the faucet is all of the time.  How it is impossible to take a cold shower ever.

I want to write about how my father has quit drinking (again) and how every time it happens, my sister and I still hold our breaths hoping this will be the time that it lasts.  I want to write about how I no longer feel anger towards him, just this great sadness for all of the things that could have been.

I want to write about my grandfather’s stage four lung cancer and how he insists that the most important thing to do right now is to pray.  I don’t tell him that I can’t remember the last time I prayed with any conviction.  I want to write about a fifty year marriage and how in the world do you ever have the strength to start preparing for goodbye.

I want to write about how my dog sprained his back.  About how scared I was waiting for the x ray results.  About how I need Tuna in my life for years and years to come.

But most of all, I want to write about how much I have learned about love in this past year.  About how maybe I never really knew what it was before.  About how much I am growing all of the time.  I want to write about the woman I am and the woman I am becoming.

Soon.  Soon there will be words for all of this.

I fly home on the eighteenth.  The eighteenth through the thirtieth.  Twelve days in the place that I once thought I would never leave.  It will be good to be surrounded by my family.  But I am fearful that once I’m there, it won’t seem so much like home to me.

I know I'll fall for you all over again.

Do you think this happens every day?

I have been wanting desperately to write but have been far too busy with actual life.  And then when I do try to put down what it is I’m feeling, the only thing I can come up with is I am happy.  Happy happy happy.

That is all that wants to come out of my fingertips.  No hurricanes.  No storms screaming from blue-ink stained fingers.  Just happiness.  Perfect, simple happiness.

I wake up every morning next t0 someone I never thought I would find.  It’s like all of those Disney movies that reality swore up and down were never supposed to come true no matter how hard we wished for them.  It’s like every romantic comedy ever made.  Once the nerdy yet attractive heroine gives up completely on love, she walks around the corner and runs smack dab into her soulmate.  Hilarity ensues and they live happily ever after.  It’s like every single thing I never thought could happen to me.

Yet, here it is.  Here it is and I’m not going to let this go.

I feel beautiful again.  A thing I have not experienced in quite some time.  I feel special.  He wraps his arms around me and squeezes me so tight and says over and over again My baby…my baby….my baby and that is absolutely everything.

I am happy.  I was not expecting this.  Not in the least.  I had my guard up and somehow he slipped through my defenses without me even noticing.

I want to quote Wizard and Glass because Stephen King is always who I turn to for major things like this.  But I don’t have my copy of the book right now.  And at long last she felt her ka…It was the sense of finding a road that you had been searching for all along.

And all at once, I am found.

And I think how refreshing of a thought that is.  Thank god we didn’t work out.  Thank god I am not that person.  Thank god you’re a fucking asshole.  Thank god I didn’t get stuck in that life.  I always wanted so much more than that.

And I wonder if I will someday think that way about you.  It is hard to see which directions our lives will take until we are already well on the way into the future.  But someday, will I look back and think that while we had some good times together, I am grateful that things didn’t work out between us?  Where will I be when I think that?  Who will I be?

Life is moving along.  As it always does.  School is busy.  Friendships are forming.  I got a new car. A 2005 Mustang.  I am trying to project the life that I want.  My old boss, Linda always told me that if I put out positive energy in the universe, I will bring it back in.  That I will attract positive people into my life.  She’s the reason I moved here.  She made me realize that I should stop holding myself back from opportunity.  That you have to take ahold of your life.  That if you’re not happy with the way things are, stand up and change it.

And I did.  I am.  I will.

Animal Science lecture seems like it should be a pretty easy class for me to get an A in.  Apparently there are about eight trillion different types of cows and I will be learning how to identify each and every one of them.  Before this week, I honestly thought that the only types of cows were black and white ones and brown ones.  And those were my highly technical names for them.  And my technical jargon for goats? “Oh, look at the little babies!!!”

The animal science lab seems like it will be pretty interesting.  We’re going to visit a dairy, a feed lot and a place where they shear sheep.  I have never been to any place like that in my life, so it will be an adventure.  I also met a couple of kids in this lab who I exchanged numbers with and I think I’m going to join Block and Bridle club with them.  Don’t make fun of me for that, I’m an agriculture major!

Chemistry is hard to focus in.  The teacher talks super fast and his most used phrase is “but we’ll talk more about that later.”  He constantly says that and it drives me crazy.  If we’re not going to learn it yet, don’t bring it up!  He completely reminds me of Mr. Harvey Korman, the hypochondriac from Scrubs.  It’s crazy.

I don’t have too much to say about the chemistry lab yet.  The people in there seem okay so we’ll see how it goes.

Government is boring boring boring.  The teacher is a question talker so I get so distracted in the middle of taking notes.  He just trails off a lot in the middle of thoughts.  And he told us on the first day that his tests are multiple choice but very hard. On the plus side, he’s from Chicago and is not too bad to look at so I can’t complain too much.

Principles of Range Management is okay, I guess.  I’m only taking it because it’s a requirement for my degree.  I get to learn about how to sustain rangelands and in the lab we are learning to identify about a bajillion different types of grasses.  There is a quiz on that in two weeks so I have plans to go out there to the ASU ranch thingy with a few girls from class to study those grasses like crazy.

And then there is my required computer class which we will not even talk about.  That’s how stupid it is.

So that’s it so far.  Me, as a university student.  If you had told me five years ago that I would be in west texas riding around in the bed of a truck in the middle of nowhere and trekking through pastures to identify grasses, I would have laughed so hard.  But that’s where I am now.  And  from where I’m standing, life looks beautiful.

You grew up and you sparkled

For a long time, I was in constant disgrace.  ((Removed from a state of grace.))  I made it look beautiful.  Being such a mess.  Cigarette in hand,  poetry scrawled on my body in black sharpie, I could have stopped the world in its tracks with the hurricanes in my pen.  But I think maybe now that they were never my hurricanes.

I am different now.  There are parts of me that have survived.  Parts that have thrived.  And others that I had to burn to become the woman I am.  And there are parts of me that are still there, just buried.  Each goodbye is a chance to find yourself again.  It took me years of love making and heart breaking to come to that realization.  But the reason that you keep doing this, that you pick up and keep going is because one of these times, you stumble into the right room at the right time and there is someone there who has been walking down the exact same path.  Someone else who has learned that we must become ourselves first.  And you’ll look at that other person and there will be that spark of recognition.  That sense that this is what you’ve been traveling towards your entire life.  That knowing.

I cut and dyed my hair.  I am fire engine, again.  But not too hide.   Not like before.  But because  red is ruthlesswildpassionate everything I am.   Because it’s part of who I am   Because I need to be me.  I haven’t been in a very long time.

It’s been years but I am your fire engine girl again.  And I am going to sparkle the way I always used to.

I’m absolutely in love with that song.  But moreso, I’m in love with the video.

I came here to write but now the only words that want to come out are sad ones.  I dream of things that no longer exist

There’s a line from Scrubs that keeps beating over and over again in my head and it’s killing me because I can’t remember what episode it’s from.  But JD says, “You know what?  I’m gonna be just fine.”  And I am.  Of course I am.

It will just hurt like hell on the way to being fine.

You say I’ve changed.  I’ve changed?  No shit.  It’s been years since we met and life is never at a stand still and neither am I.  When you first came into my life, I was fighting with demons that I thought would never let me sleep again.  I’d had my neck brace off for a month, had my heart shredded and thrown back at me, and was struggling to make sense of the world that I woke up to when I woke up after my surgery.

I’ve changed and there is not a thing wrong with that.  I am still growing up.  I think now that I maybe always will be.  I am growing towards my dreams.  Towards my future, whatever it may be.  I’ve got my arms open ready for life to give to me what it will.

((My heart was bound for a better poem.))

I’m trying to find myself in music.  The way I haven’t in years.  iTunes has been my best friend and I’m rebuying cd’s that I haven’t  seen in years because really, it all comes down to the same music that it’s always been. ((She knew that.  Perhaps better than anyone, she knew that the music that saves us is the same as it has always been.))

Perhaps as I find myself in music, it might lead to finding myself in photography and words again.

((Redefine yourself without me.))  I don’t remember what that’s from but the words I need still seem to be just below the surface when I need them the most.

I wrote this poem in September of 2008.

I remember years ago
sitting in that other bedroom
(you know the one)
in that other bed
the one I shared first with you
and then with you but
never never with you
writing about manufactured
matter-of-fact orgasms in a
hotel bath tub just south of
St Louis and
that was the first time that
I had felt the
poetry screaming through my
veins in fucking
lifetimes

God damn, I miss it
((and there was a time
when that line would have went
God damn, I miss it ((you))
but fuck, that was then and
not now and even if it was
(it is) true, it’s not the way
things were supposed to
turn out for us
so they didn’t and I left
and now here we are.))
but things always change

or so he said, once.

and of course, I believed him.

I think now I am starting to understand why.  I am only 6 episodes in to the first season with David Tennant.  (Or I was when I first started writing this.  Now I’m almost through the second season with him in it.) On a side note, I know that everybody says that he is the best doctor but I don’t know.  So far, he’s not my doctor.  I loved Chris Eccleston and I’ve only seen the last handful with Matt Smith but I love him too.  But Tennant…I don’t know.  Maybe as it goes on my opinion might change.  But anyways, back to why I think I love this show so much.  At least initially.

It’s Rose. I relate to Rose on such a deep down level.  She’s never really been anywhere special before.  Never done anything out of the ordinary.  And then one day, she’s offered this amazing opportunity.  The doctor falls into her life and sweeps her away and shows her things that she’s never seen before.  Things she never could have dreamed of.  And then after, how can she ever go back to her real life?   Can you even call it her real life?  Her other life.  Her old life.  And it’s not like she doesn’t like her own (other) life.  Not like she doesn’t love it.  But there’s a billion fucking other galaxies out there.

Rose is an adventurer.  She understands that there is so much out there.  She lives her life completely awake.  And that’s how I want to be.  I want my life to be full of adventures.  Not necessarily time travel.  Although having a Tardis would certainly have it’s benefits…But I want to be able to do things that are amazing.  And not just once.  But over and over again.  I want life and adventure and I never want to be able to look back and wonder what if.  I don’t want to go through life saying, “Why?”  I want to always be able to say, “Why not?”

((It took me awhile to realize that it would have been your only adventure.))

And I think that the thing that I love most about Rose is that the Doctor believes in her.  He believes in her.  And really, that’s what she needed more than anything.  She needed someone to believe in her in order for her to become such an incredibly strong woman.

I think Doctor Who touches me because it’s the story of wanderers.  And aren’t we all, really?  Aren’t we all just searching for that place that we can really belong?  No matter how far you wander, how much you like to wander, we’re all searching for our life.  Our real life.  ((Don’t you understand?  I already have a plan.  I’m waiting for my real life to begin.))

I just wonder when I’ll find mine.

MICKEY

Thanks. We’ve had a laugh though, haven’t we? Seen it all, been there and back… who would have thought, me and you off the old estate, flying through the stars?

ROSE

All those years just sitting there… imagining what we’d do one day…

We never saw this, did we?

MICKEY

Go on, you’ll miss your flight.

“It was a better life. I don’t mean all the traveling, seeing aliens and spaceships and things, that don’t matter. The Doctor showed me a better way of living your life. You don’t just give up. You don’t just let things happen. You make a stand, you say no. You have the guts to do what’s right when everyone else just runs away…”

I’m very excited for school.  But I’m also counting down the days until winter break (125!).  I’ve already been researching flight prices.  ($350!!!)   Planning dates to be home.

I had something I wanted to say but it’s escaped me now.

This morning I dreamed that it was raining in the midwest.  Sounds like a silly thing, I know.  But there’s a subtle difference in the way it rains here.  It’s easy to miss but sometimes if you watch close enough, you can see the way the raindrops hit the ground here.

On nights when not even wine will cure this loneliness, I watch Jim and Pam’s wedding.  I’ve seen it a million times.  But still it’s comforting.

Life is short. When two people find each other, what should stand in their way?