I don't juggle apples. Not only do I have the hand-eye coordination of a blind amputee, but it's also a waste of perfectly good apples.
(Seriously, there are several more worthwhile things to be done with apples. Biting into them, making a pie with them, making them into cat toys, making an omelet -- especially if they're granny smith apples and you've got some gouda.)
My life is, in some ways, not as I imagined it would be two years ago when I made the decision to move to Virginia. I am not on the path to becoming an anthropologist. I've applied to graduate school, sure. But I woke up one morning to discover that the passion I once felt exploding from my sternum had become something I'd contrived so cleverly, so subtlely that I fooled even myself. The real passion I felt for it had expired slowly, gracefully, until one day it simply closed its eyes and drifted away. But I made myself turn a blind eye to its decline. I ignored it so thoroughly that my sudden remembrance of it plunged me into a depression. Now, I think it was meant to die, that its presence in my life was only temporary. I had such ambitions! But at the end of a 40-hour work week, I am now just another person trying to get by and make a life. My old ambitions couldn't survive in circumstances like that, and I'm not sure I want them to anymore. The price (my happiness, my health, my sanity) is not worth their satisfaction. At least not yet.
I do, however, have a cozy apartment in the Museum District. The Museum District is a neighborhood in the city known for its odd assortment of historic properties and, of course, museums. It borders another neighborhood called the Fan, which is made of an array of bars interspersed in even more historic properties. The Fan is also home to one of Virginia Commonwealth University's campuses. My apartment is just on the lacy edge of the Fan's borders, close enough to the nightlife to stumble drunkenly home, yet far enough away to sleep in near silence. This is the place I envisioned for Mo and I two years ago. And now we live here.
Mo and I are still together, despite the way life's troubles have threatened to separate us. We're learning how to know one another again after all the changes we've gone through as individuals. More importantly, we're discovering how to like the new people we've each become, and how to recall the best of our old selves. We have a cat. She had always been part of the dream, but she came into our lives at an unexpected and illogical time. I think that made her even more perfect for us. She lights up my life with her frisky little run, her purring, and her strange water drinking habits. (She likes to drink leftover water from the tub and the thin dampness on our freshly washed hands. She rarely visits her bowl.) I even adore the occasions when she crawls across my lap while I'm typing just to demand cuddling and affection. And yes, I will stop what I'm doing for her. I can already see myself as a frightfully indulgent parent.
I sometimes feel an emptiness where my pagan faith once lived. It is a hollow space I want to fill with something akin to its previous occupant, but I find that I no longer trust in those beliefs as they were, and I can't seem to find anywhere in Virginia to explore them further. So I find other things to temporarily fill the void, or at least skate around its borders. I dance, I do yoga, and I go outside. When the spring comes, I hope to frequent mountain trails.
These are things that I do, not things that I am. At this point, I'm not entirely sure of who I am or what kind of girl I am. I suppose the future will tell me... eventually.
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