on living alone. and the small joys.

i'll be the first to admit that living alone can be somewhat lonely. but good lord is it wonderful.

having some of my friends gathered into the small space this last week reminded me of that--preparing for their arrival reminded me of that. the joy of cleaning. of a clean bathroom. and wiped-down kitchen sink. the joy of buying paper towels and flowers at the grocery story that i can walk to. (i remember having a roommate's meeting at my last apartment about half-way through our last year together and there being a discussion of expenses and who pays for what and what we use and one person said, well i don't use the paper towels so i don't want to pay for them. and i probably-not-so-calmly said, I WILL PAY FOR THEM. I WILL PAY FOR THE PAPER TOWELS. AND THIS IS AN OFFICIAL INVITATION FOR YOU TO USE THEM: HELP YOURSELF). which is to say, there is a special sort of joy in those cloth-white-sheets. a special sort of joy in opening the fridge and not wondering what is mine. in keeping the eggs in one of those special egg-crate-containers.

the small joys add up to a different quality of life. one that is wholly and altogether different, but only has meaning because of all that came before. so strangely enough i am thankful for each time i paused before my front door wondering what i'd walk in on. each roommate meeting i wanted nothing to do with. each time i danced before the bathroom door wondering if i'd make it until whoever was in there GOT-THE-HELL-OUT. i am thankful for all that came before. and for having to made it to the other side--to this place that feeds me in so many ways.

what i know at 27.

these are things that i know to be true for myself, at this moment in time: 


never accept advice where love or matters of the heart are concerned.


all thoughts and feelings and beliefs are subject to change given the right experience.


sometimes you have to graciously and gracefully relinquish your grip.


don't berate the character of a man to make a girl feel better. it'll only make the girl feel worse.


the F train is far superior to the A.


i love Brooklyn just about as much as everyone thinks i can't possibly. which is to say, a lot.


loneliness is character building. it is also a bitch.


there is nothing interesting or noteworthy (or worth anything at all) about the notion of cool. cool and fine and totally okay is where the coward lives.


it is totally acceptable to wear your sunglasses on the subway if you are crying. otherwise, no.


no woman should ever stand in front of a man and ask him to lover her. literally or metaphorically. the man worth having will love you long before the question even crosses your mind.


love or happiness or in-the-mood is not a place that you get to and then live there happily ever after. these things are moving, movable places with shifting terrains that demand constant navigation with new eyes and courageous hearts.


nothing offers more protection than honesty, even if in the moment few things feel more vulnerable.


i have always learned best by making the worst sort of mistakes.


falling in love with a lot of the wrong guys is par for the course. this is not everyone's story, of course. but if it's yours, that's okay.


sometimes the blues really is just a slight breeze and then sometimes it is a motherfucking freight train barreling straight through.


every woman (and man) should have a really good therapist and a hairstylist who tells the truth.


we suffer small deaths as we age: the feeling you get as a child the night before your birthday. or on christmas morning. the wonder and sense that the world is different--and you in that world are different too. but the wonderful thing--the thing no one talks about--is that you find these feelings elsewhere in unexpected ways. christmas morning becomes a man--becomes his hand on the small of your back.


everyone has a ground zero. a phone call that splits the before and after. a moment that lives like a sinkhole and around which we then narrowly navigate all that follows. we are not alone in our suffering.


humility is damn appealing. and a man who offers his seat to a pregnant woman or an older woman or a man with a cane is damn sexy. you can't ever go wrong with flowers. and few things are more attractive than someone who pays for the dinner bill long after the first date.

i wore cowboy boots, ate a lot of cake, and welcomed another year surrounded by the best people i know.

homesick.

i have been homesick ever since i went home to texas this last time.

it's such a particular emotion, homesickness. unhurried and unconfused. the compass needle pointing north, unrelenting in it's message: that thing there, go there. home. a small and quiet and unyielding chant.

it's not that i've been homesick for texas so much, but homesick for home in that large and aching way that has nothing to do with place and everything to do with people.

we're not from texas, my family. i'm the closest, having been born there. but my family, well we can't count back the generations the way a lot of people can.

there's me. just me. the lone one from that lone star state.

growing up there was always an awareness of being a little bit different--a little other. of being raised in a home in which texas and its values and its history and its culture wasn't in our blood.

and so there was this perpetual sense of displacement. of a loyalty to one's self more than the place.

a ferocious sort of independence.

now, looking back, i can think of nothing more texan than that.

the state and the place and that little sense of otherness branded me. texan, indeed.

my parents are looking to buy a house as they enter this next stage of life.

there's been a lot of talk about this house. about where it should be--beach or mountains, north or west. texas and.

and being the question that must be answered.

and then there's the talk of the bones of the home. of its configuration. of how many rooms are needed and should there be two kitchens and more than one floor and the real concern there is the families my brother and i will one day have. and the children--those small and noisy and heavenly creatures that i think we all really want to fill this house on holidays and long summer nights.

but we don't talk about this explicitly. and so the house is heavy with all those things not talked of.

i am homesick for this house. homesick for the life that has yet to be built to fill it.

this will be house in which i'll be married--beach or mountains, north or west.

my parents don't know this. i've never told them this. but i imagine they'll read it now and it will worry them.

my father because he'll say that i'm putting the cart before the horse and he'll be right of course, but i also think he'll understand precisely what i mean and what i want and why it is i want what i want without me ever having to say.

my mother will read this and it will worry that soft and feminine part of her that fears i'll never find the one. she will deny this of course--say this is not a worry she caries, but we both do--mostly because it is a want we both have--her wanting it for me, me for myself. and where wanting lives, worry trails.

i want to get married in this house.

i want to get married in that place where we welcome the next generation. in the yard where my children will one day play.

and i want to say to them as they romp and fall and stumble into each passing year--there--that spot there is where your father and i did the most courageous thing a person can do anymore. where we promised to weather the worst and the best of it. where we pledged, in front of family and friends, to trade in the fairytale for that delicious and dangerous thing that a real life is.

i am homesick for a thing that is but a wish i carry. but it is true and real and the needle points north.

LOVE LIST// septmeber 25

morning lattes  .  afternoon lattes  .  lit candles  .  red brick  .  Fall  .  Fall in New York  .  men on bikes  .  men with rolled jeans  .  beards  .  a little gray in those beards  .  stripes  .  cobblestone streets  .  front stoops and corner stores  .  high pony tails  .  pine nuts  .  corduroy pants  .  gray corduroy pants  .  and black ones too  .  Sunday markets  .  brunch  .  the peel of church bells  .  the Avett Brothers  .  the dance of water on a horizon  .  the blessing of Home  .  a pile of clean laundry  .  Saturday nights just before  .  a cupped hand  .  reminders (the big kind, the life kind)  .  that quiet sense that it'll all be alright  .  the promise of Paris  .  when the man leaning against the wrought iron fence just outside my home declares that the street feels nothing like New York. he could be somewhere in the South. and i laugh and tease, what do you know about the South  .  that the street feels somehow other  .  that I am somehow other  .  from another place--if not the South, a bit deeper down and in  .