gearing up

Another hot August day, sunny and humid, rasped by waves of cicada wings and the occasional gusty breeze. These are the sounds I notice, even in the heart of the city with the endless ocean roar of traffic, the punctuating barks of distant dogs, the pulse of bass and wail of car alarms. I'm a small-town girl. I hear the wind and the insects. Country sounds.

I'm sitting out on the balcony where a truly enterprising spider has constructed a web the size of a schooner sail. I used to be terrified of spiders. Through no particular design, I'm not anymore. Mostly I attribute this to science enthusiasm and being tired of fearing things I can't avoid. The web I'm looking at now is liberally sprinkled with insect corpses, and I'm raising my coffee mug in tribute to a master predator whose feeding habits benefit me.

Hopefully this is my last summer renting. Apartment life has been good to me but it's time to call the shots in my own living space. I'm sick of sharing walls with inconsiderate neighbors and putting up with laissez-faire landlords. So here I am, less than a year after declaring that I would rent until retirement, obsessively scanning listings and constructing castles in my head. My therapist says it means I'm in a healthy place: For the first time in my life, I'm putting down roots. I know he's right but mostly I'm just excited for an absence of pot smoke and dance music bleeding through my walls like the superbly shitty ectoplasm of the world's worst ghost.

When you don't have kids, I guess this is what drives the homeownership decision. Fuck everyone with their noise and their laziness. I'm buying a fort.

I'm planning on buying in Detroit. I love it here. I love watching, all around me, the neighborhoods begin to come back. It's only been two years since I moved into the city limits and the progress is astonishing. Four years ago, my realtor told me, you couldn't hire contractors in the city because no one would work here. Now you can't hire contractors because there are too many jobs. Just this summer, rehab work has begun on three derelict houses within eyeshot of my balcony.

Trauma and disaster don't last forever. Not on a wide scale. I'm lucky enough that they don't last forever on a personal scale either.

I shouldn't have survived what was done to me from birth. Certainly not with my personality intact. My therapist says there's no explanation for why I'm okay. Some deep, impossible wellspring of resilience brought me through.

I had to make hard choices to get to the other side of survival. I cut ties, cast off bonds, tore up roots, burned bridges. I obliterated my place in the world. You don't know what it is to be alone until you've cut yourself off from your family of origin. Even a shitty family is family. Even a shitty family gives you a place. I incinerated all that. With nothing to replace it. It took strength beyond strength.

And here I am, more than okay. I'm thriving. I'm free. I'm crafting my own place in the world. And one of the best things I discovered is that irrespective of trauma and depression, it is not in my nature to be miserable. My default state is happiness.

So I can sit here on the balcony of an apartment I'm tired of, enjoying a day moving toward thunderstorms, relishing the drop in temperature as I scrutinze the latest house listing to catch my eye, gearing up for the next phase in my evolution. I can savor the present even as I anticipate the future -- a balance that has heretofore eluded me. It's still a little wobbly some days, but I'm getting the hang of it. Because that's what I do.

It's starting to rain.

Life couldn't be better.

My kingdom for some ointment

Month 3 of new cat motherhood:

Thackeray jumped on my chest and promptly started licking his ass 2 inches from my face, then spent 5 minutes kneading my tits with his claws right over the nip.

I need a shower and bandages.

Also he is frighteningly cute.

l'hote

On an antiquing venture with my sister in PA this weekend I picked up what can best be described as a "framed owl thingie." Constructed of leaves, pine cones and papier mache, it is equal parts creepy and adorable, the kind of thing you hang in a guest room just to fuck with your guests. 

Which is precisely what I'll do when I buy a house. 

Sleep well, motherfuckers.