I surrender

My roommate and his girlfriend came down the stairs—he turned and headed into the kitchen and she came and sat on the sofa adjacent to me. My roommate reemerged, asking her if she was ready to go to the movie.

“Oh, what show are you going to see?” I asked as he turned and left the room again.

His girlfriend answered, “We don’t know.”

“So, how can you be late?” I puzzled.

“I don’t know, “ she said. “He’s driving me crazy.”

My roommate reentered the room just in time to hear the last of her comment.

“What did you say?” he asked her.

“I said, ‘You look great, baby.’” she replied. I giggled uncertainly.

Then he turned to me. “No, what did she say?” he asked. I shrugged.

His girlfriend brushed past him on her way to the back door and he came and leaned close to my ear. “What did she say?” he whispered.

“I’m not getting in the middle of this.” I answered.

“You’re already in the middle of this,” he said, raising his voice.

“No, I’m not.” I stood up. “I’m just an innocent bystander,” I clarified as I raised my hands in the international gesture of surrender and walked away. “I’m going upstairs, into my room, where I’ll be safe.”

Healing

Normally bruises are black and blue, but this one—it’s orange and blue.

I wasn’t prepared for this blow.   After the Broncos beat the Patriots I tried to be superstitious, but I started remembering their two Super Bowl wins.  I began to believe that this year was going to bring number three.

I almost had to kill my roommate's girlfriend yesterday because with about 5 minutes left to play, she yelled upstairs, "Angie, I don't think your team is going to win."  Yes, please go ahead and rub salt in the wound.

The game ended and all I could think was, “It wasn’t supposed to end this way.  We weren’t supposed to lose at home.  Our season wasn’t meant to end this way!”

Dragging myself out of the fetal position I had assumed on the couch, I slunk upstairs—determined to start the first step of healing: denial.  

The rest of Sunday passed by as I lay on my bed in a haze of books and my favorite Christmas gift.  

Today I saw a glimpse of the second step of healing: hope.  This morning a coworker sighed, “Maybe next year…” I replied in the affirmative.  

But I’m not completely out of the first stage yet:  football?  What is this thing you call football? ;-)

Leftovers

We were eating shrimp cocktail while watching the Broncos win on Saturday night. My sister turned to me and handed me her shrimp tail, “Here you go.”

I thanked her sarcastically. “What’s this for?” I asked.

“They’re fairy wings,” she replied.

I laughed, charmed. “Really? Why am I eating them?”

“Because they’re magic,” she answered.

“Just the wings, huh?”

"I ate the fairies because they contain more magic," she explained.

My brother interrupted, “She’s just giving you the leftovers.”

Go Broncos!

Sharing secrets

First, a confession: tonight is the first night in my life that I've come home tasting of beer. I've had sips of beer before, but I never really enjoyed it. But sitting at a bar table, sipping a glass from the pitcher, I realized that I was finally experiencing something that most people first had years ago.

Tonight I was out with one of my sorority sisters and her husband. Like one of Suzanne's recent posts, now I hope that I'll get an invitation from them to spend another evening like the one we had tonight. Her husband looks young but he is smart and sweet--the kind I'm looking to find--and she and I got a chance to learn more about each other and share secrets. Telling stories from college and our lives today, I know that she, her husband and their friends are people that I hope get a chance to know better.

Security blanket

I clutch the tattered pieces of my pain around me like a blanket, unable to let go because they are the only thing I have left. Once I let go of them, our relationship is truly over.

I wrote those words after PJ broke up with me. Tonight as he referred to our breakup, I didn't feel any pain. I thought I had let go of that blanket finally--until his words sunk in.

"You look back and there are things that at 26 you would do differently then you did at 19."

A tiny spark of hope lights in my chest for the reconciliation that I know is impossible. Words rush out of my mouth as I try to smother that spark, deny what it means. I tell him I understand what he did, I agree with it, we should be able to talk about it--and yet I don't tell him that despite my professed agreement with the decision he made, that hearing his voice makes me want him to reconsider that decision, to wrap me once more in the blanket of his love.

In my room

Sunday night I shut off the light and unerringly found my way to the bed. Even with the lights off, I knew exactly what my childhood bedroom looked like.

The first bed in that room was one that my dad and grandfather built just for me. Tall and white, with primary colored accents (for my feminist mom), it was mine until I was 8 and it was time to get a new one so my sister could sleep in mine. It was the daybed I chose then, white with bronze trim, that I curled into that night as I thought about my bedroom.

The walls were yellow until 10 years ago. It would probably surprise some people to find out that I painted my room pink at 16, when most people were painting their rooms to get away from pink. I remember picking the wallpaper that covers two of the walls—spending hot summer afternoons in the air-conditioned cool of the paint store, pouring over many books of wallpaper samples, doing my best to picture each sample in my room. I finally settled on a pattern that I continue to think of as casual contemporary—abstract flowers that pick up the pink on the facing walls.

I know I’m spoiled. Most of my friends discovered their rooms had been taken over for sewing or guests when they returned home for their first visit after starting college. My best friend’s room has already been redecorated once in her absence. Four years after I moved into my own place for the first time, somehow I still expected that space would always be mine.

Laying in that bed, I started to cry as I looked ahead to my job on Monday—going through my books, papers and clothes that I’ve left in that room. To also help make room for my sister, my bed was going to be taken apart so that it could start a new life as the guest bed at my house. After I finished mourning the upcoming changes, I rolled over and burrowed my face into the soft dry flannel under my cheek. I reached out and curled one finger around the frame of the bed before I drifted off to sleep, hoping to tether myself in the moment and steel myself against the upcoming changes.

Today's weather

Angie: I told her that it sounded like the Big Bad Wolf was here, trying to blow down the office.

Coworker: I'm looking for the three piggies and when I find them, we'll definitely send them out.