tip-of-the-tongue.

i got off the A train at 181st street around midnight last night.

from the train platform to the entrance of the street is nine stories. you can choose to take the stairs or long escalator up.

i hurried off the train last night, toward the towering, long escalator, and found myself in step behind a taller man, blond, dressed in an impeccable suit. and walking behind him i thought, this man reminds me of someone.

but i couldn't put my finger on it. couldn't dislodge it from that proverbial tip of a very real tongue.

it started to drive me nutty, who does this person remind me of? it wouldn't come. there were murky images and half-formed thoughts, but still, even now this morning as i sit with my coffee, a lit spiced egg-nog candle just off to my side, i haven't really a clue.

the strongest thought or sense or notion, is more that it's someone i've yet to meet. not the man i followed behind, this really has nothing to do with him, it's that he reminds me of someone i've yet to meet.

nonsense.

and yet.

not.

i don't know.

it's been happening a lot lately. this pervasive feeling that i have exciting news to share and then thinking, well, what is it? and coming up blank.

everything feels so on the cusp. just over the ridge. beyond that next hill. so close--closer than ever before.

but what if it's not?

you know when you've can hear a really great song in your own mind? and it sounds so good rattling around up there that you attempt to sing it aloud. it's clear as a bell to you, perfectly crystallized, but when it comes out, oh dear, hideous. the journey between your mind and the mouth, the surfacing that has to happen, it distorts, mistranslates.

i feel like that's where i am: a song surfacing. coming through water for air. on the way up, so very near to the surface. but what comes out, well, that has yet to be seen.

it could be nothing short of disaster.

or not.

i don't know.

i just feel like i'm nearing the end of this nine-story-long-escalator. and as for my sense of what's waiting at the top when i get off? murky, half-images, at best.

enough.

as a girl i fear.
as a woman i doubt.

and i wonder if these are hallmarks of my sex?

i am insecure. i second-guess. i worry and wonder and spin tall-tales, fabricate nonsense, pull from from thin-air. i make myself small, diminish my own worth and power. i relive memory after memory until they are worn dull from overuse, from being taken out too often, exposed to the air and error of misremembering.

and then i think that perhaps what makes me a woman is the co-existance of all these things with a deep-seated sense of how i could, given the chance, transform the world--so potent and reaching is my strength.

i've been worrying a lot lately. so much so that at times i can feel my chest closing in on itself--constricting breath, creating a needle of pain.

and then a few nights back, from that deep place of sleep, i had a dream in which i lived through the very thing i'd obsessed about and mulled over and doubted might ever be. and before i knew it was just a dream, while it was happening, i stepped out of myself and spoke. the deepest, fullest, truest part of me--the bit closest to divinity, spoke:

enough. it said. enough of this nonsense. the next time you begin to worry. the next time doubt creeps in you must remember this moment, this moment right now. you must look at what's happening before you--to you as evidence. that's what you want, right? tangible evidence? well, there it is. that is my gift to you.  so stop. enough. be better. 


and then i woke. transformed. knowing the very deepest part of me trusts in my worth--in my right to desire and the pursuit of such.

so, enough, then. be better.

my wish.

this is what i want to say to you:

just for tonight, let's be happy.

just for tonight let's forget about all that's come before. gloss over the fissures, smile from that small store yet untouched by sadness. just for tonight let's take a cab home, sit close and revel in whoosh of summer's fading air.

and if we have to go moment by moment, breath by breath we will--if that's all we can manage, so be it. if all we can do is the three feet in front of us, then we'll take those three feet together.

just for tonight.

just for tonight smile. just for tonight let me get a good look at those laugh lines ringing your eyes. just for tonight let me see how many times i can make you swallow a snort.

i could tell you it all gets better. i could tell you there's meaning in all of this and that the how are you's won't always feel like scythes cutting through fields of tall grass. and i could do my very best to reach in and pull you out--and i'd have some pull, i would, having been there before, a near native of the murky depths of that great, big blue. but it wouldn't be fair. there is a power in the floundering--the ocean salts do heal. so i won't try to. i'll head to the shore and go about the forward motion this life demands.

but before the floundering, before the blur, before the sinking and pulling, let's take tonight. to levitate. to be fifteen and carefree and pay no mind to what comes next. to kiss with the space between our toes--to hold hands and have that be enough.

the kiss. reprised.

it happened again.

the forgetting of how to kiss...it happened. again.

there was a kiss. a first kiss, of sorts.

he leaned in and i. was. lost.

i. simply couldn't. figure it out.

and that moment of not figuring it out stretched before me. eternal was that moment.

i can't give words to the embarrassment that rushed in.

this was a thing i could do at fifteen. and now here i was, twenty-five and...inept.

okay, in all fairness, it was not a thing i did at fifteen. i was eighteen when i had my first kiss. sitting in my father's old toyota camry. next to a wonderful boy by the name of matt who i had been going to the movies with (or occasionally sharing an ice cream cone with) for over a month before he asked if he might lean in and kiss me good night. it was on the eve of our high school graduation. he was such a good guy--probably one of the best i've known, which says a lot for him, and not much for those who have since followed.

but i digress.

so there we were. each in separate chairs. leaning in, ever so innocently, pressing our lips together. and i just couldn't seem to do it. and so i became horrendously self-conscious. and let out a laugh as i said, it's been so long. i can't seem to remember how. 

and he said what any guy worth his salt might say in that situation, really? i can't tell. 

and of course he said that. it was the perfect thing to say. the perfect thing to calm me and (let's be honest) the perfect thing to encourage me on.

but i wanted to shout, don't do that, don't lie to me. i know that you can tell, i know that you're surprised by my...lacking or whatever this is or who-knows-what...oh hell.

so i groaned and he teased me and generously let me get away with it. (this one is, in fact, one of the good ones).

but i'm not going to lie. i'm more than a little concerned.

because this go round i didn't really figure it out. this time fear and history and the little fragments of something broken got in the way and i. didn't. figure it out.

girl talk.

i'm not good at being a girl. or rather, i'm the worst of all things female.

all that stuff that guys attribute to girls--the things that drive men nuts about women--i embody them.

i think way too much. i overanalyze everything. i worry. i gravitate towards nuttiness. i get lost in my head. or at the foot of my bed (i've been lost for days at the foot of my bed).  i disappear inward. have unknowable, unwordable thoughts.

and i cannot say what most needs to be said when it most needs to be heard.

i sat with my best girlfriend alisha last wednesday. in a diner on ninth avenue. it was pouring. we rushed in under the cover of a single, red umbrella, slid into the dark, brown booth and began an epic and important session of girl talk:



dating is hard, i said.                               {profound}.

yes, it is, she replied.

i've had enough, i said.                         {it's  not been a terribly successful month}.

okay, she replied, the way i see it you have two choices, meg. you can be done with dating.  for the time being, if you've had enough, then sure, fine, okay. but you gotta get yourself two cats then. and every day after work you have to go home and feed those cats. and then you have to sit on your sofa watch some bad television and eat some unsatisfying ice cream. then you have to go to bed and do it all over again. 

don't mock me, alisha.


i'm not. i'm really not. i'm just being brutally honest. so you can do that. or can you soldier on. and accept that it's hard. for everyone, dating is hard. and we all struggle and we all worry and don't be so ridiculous to think you're the first or the last person to have ever had these thoughts--to have ever wanted to give up. 


alright. point made, i said, half-smiling, leaning back, reluctant to admit that i was lapping up her wisdom.

not quite, alisha continued on, you have to be hard on yourself. you can't go on one date and be satisfied for a month. you have to keep pushing and going and moving forward. you have to be courageous and hold yourself accountable. 






alisha is one of those dear no-nonsense friends (part of the yesterday's blogged about cocktail for happiness). and i'm trying really hard to hang onto all of her wise words this week.

claire (another dear no-nonsense friend) coined the phrase "cocktail for happiness" and suggested honesty is a part of the mix i forgot to list. i suspect she's right.

so courage and honesty...my two signposts of the week.