I gave my notice today

Posted on June 17, 2010 by Phoebe 3082 Commentshttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.phoebenorth.com%2F2010%2F06%2F17%2Fi-gave-my-notice-today%2FI+gave+my+notice+today2010-06-17+20%3A04%3A27Phoebehttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.phoebeeating.com%2F%3Fp%3D308

and soon, I begin a new adventure. D.C. Cherry blossoms. Winter and autumn and spring. And everything that’s been missing in Florida, even if I will miss many things there.

I wrote this:

This is what happens over time: you become afraid to make leaps, however small, as if your routine of sleep coffee work coffee dinner wine sleep could really ever satisfy, you become convinced that the cycle of buying sensible shoes and selling yourself and buying atom-powered netbooks and selling yourself and drinking dirty martinis on date nights and selling yourself is inescapable because how else will you buy buy buy but to diminish your true soul.

Eventually what was inside you a sunset is scraped away to a mass of pastel colors and fading lights: heliotrope and cerulean and you tell yourself that if not today, tomorrow, and if not tomorrow, well then it wasn’t really meant to be or to be me. One day, at a picnic, you meet a girl who is bright and shining as a new copper penny and she tells you something: her plans. And you no longer burn and rage inside but think oh, that’s nice.

You think: house. You think: babies. And you think within the skeleton of house and babies, think of building a legacy this way, not that. Think that it doesn’t matter that the only true telepathy is art. Think that it’s irrelevant that once you’re gone you lose those small silent moments: alone in your car on the highway, the radio stuttering in and out, the noise inside you louder than any truck that rattles on without you. You convince yourself that it’s okay to lose those moments. That everyone loses those moments. That we all must resign ourselves to becoming irrelevant. Because you have.

This is how the light inside you might change without your ever really realizing. This is how you unbecome yourself. This is how you forget to talk about what the hallway looked like at night when you were young. This is how you forget to speak for those who have gone before. For Chuck, and for Frank, and for Francis, and for Frank, and for Louise and for Richard and for Freddie and for all of those dogs and lizards and guinea pigs gone. You forget. And you are silent as they are, even as you breathe. Worse, you are reticent.

This is the story of getting out. But it’s not a simple story. We will not talk about the shoulders that you stepped on to step high and over. We will not talk about how easy it is to fall back. Health insurance. Ballet flats. Comfortable. We will talk about what happens inside you when your argue, when you write. When the people inside your head start to breathe and get insistent: make time for me. No one else will.

He said it better: It’s living in and writing your own story, and yes, yes, you nod, that’s why you married him and if it’s possible for you to do that, you should.