Reunion

I’d forgotten how sticky DC is in the summer. The return of the sweat is a reminder that I’ve been here nearly a year—unofficially from the end of last June when I worked in the mountains of Virginia and drove to DC on weekends and officially since I unintentionally stumbled into a job here in August and moved here with one day’s notice. This city has been a wonderful surprise. Everything else has been difficult. I do not think I’m the only one relieved that the school year has ended and we have a moment to breathe. 

I spent last weekend in Providence for my 5th year college reunion during which I slept about 6 hours in a span of 64 and walked 30 miles. My general state of delirium may have played a role in the intensity of the experience, but I don’t think that’s the only reason that reunion hit me much harder than it did most people. Maybe the same can be said of college itself. Maybe college wasn’t such a transformative place to people for whom this was the plan all along— those who went through the half-million dollar preschool then college prep school followed by the Ivy League and six-figure-first-job circuit—the people who expected the person they are now was always the person they were going to be. Maybe to them college is just a memory of fun and stress and relationships and strangeness and the things I imagine all college experiences are, and their lives move on in a linear fashion with those years a memory solidly in the past. One friend said that it felt weird being back because once you leave school, you leave this version of yourself and don’t think about it much anymore because you are no longer that person. 

Welcome home

It’s harder for those of us who the past never lets go of. I’m not sure I’ve fully left that place or that I ever entirely will. I think Brown means something different to those of us for whom it was life-altering, to those of us for whom this was inconceivable. 9 years later and 5 years away and the opportunity to go to that school does not feel less shocking. 

Reunions are painted as this euphoric time of reminiscing and reliving memories with your forever-friends. Social media tells us this is true. (I want to ask all of the people of social media if anything has changed in their lives now that makes being together different than it was 5 years ago. Surely there is someone it is awkward for you to see here? Surely your memories of this place are not so straightforward. Surely no person alive is so self-assured.) Then again, I guess my social media doesn’t portray something entirely different. But social media unintentionally lies, and of course it’s more complicated than that.

Prospect Park 

Reunion was a lot of nostalgia. Sometimes it was that euphoric kind, and sometimes it was the sad type. A friend told me once that he believes true nostalgia can only exist when you wish you could relive an experience differently than it happened. There are things I do regret missing at Brown. I spent 4 years there as an intensely private person (which has perhaps not changed so much) with one or two best friends and only a couple more roommates/friends I felt close to. I spent the first year of college hardly speaking to anyone. In retrospect, I fear people may have perceived me as a stuck up snob. In reality, I was painfully shy and intimidated by people I believed were way too cool to be my friends. I was so busy observing everyone else that I let almost no one know me, except for those couple of people who made it their mission to try (which I will always be grateful for). 

 For years after college, I couldn’t forgive myself for missing out on friendships I might have had if I hadn’t been too shy to pursue them until it was too late. It took me 5 years to feel like maybe we can give ourselves second chances. Maybe it’s not too late after all. Maybe that realization was the best part of reunion. 

But I believe there’s nostalgia in missing something exactly the way that it was, too. Since graduating, I’ve only visited Providence once a couple of years ago. There was no one in town that I knew, which took away the emotional impact of it. A blizzard hit, and I had to leave early, but I remember not minding much because without the people, there was nothing else I needed there. I wrote a post about how Providence felt like home before Brown did, how I had to grow into the people there before they felt like home to me, and about what home means and how we can have more than one. 

This time, I was back on campus with hundreds of my classmates, and glimpses of my 18-year-old self reemerged complete with the social anxiety, insomnia, and self-consciousness. 18-year-old me was the boldest of cowards and the most restless of loners. Did I really live like this everyday? Always so hyper-alert, always looking over my shoulder, always feeling surrounded by people I wanted to be sure I saw first so I could decide how to react? I spent last weekend trying to sleep in a dorm bed/brick-like-plank on the side of campus I’d never lived in, listening to downstair’s party music, wondering how I slept at all in my four years there, and remembering that I didn’t sleep all that much, in fact. I felt the same in ways I didn’t want to feel the same. 

Luckily my 27-year-old self was also there to step in. My 27-year-old self recognized how incredible it is that eating 1:00am pizza with friends that random housing placed me next to as a freshman does not feel different than it did 9 years ago. Neither does trying Cambodian food for the first time with the same people who made me try my first taste of sushi/Greek yogurt/thai/salad-dressing-that-wasn’t-ranch (thanks, guys).There’s always a comfort in having friends with whom you can pick up right where you left off. 

WaterFire 

My 27-year-old self still needed to get up too early to go to my favorite coffee shops and walk around the city alone, the way I fell in love with it the first time back when it was the first city I’d ever lived in and places like Manhattan and DC felt so far from my reality. Providence is much smaller now, but no less beautiful. I thought of the other writers I’ve known who fell in love with this city with all of it’s strangeness and poetry. I thought of the first writing workshop I ever took during freshman year before I wrote words for anyone else to read. (I will forever be indebted to you, Michael Keenan.) I felt so clearly again how happy I was to be here. How never for one second was I not so happy to be here. 

My 27-year-old self missed people. Because it is painful to try reliving memories alone that you made with others. Because you cannot separate memories of a place with memories of the people who made it home for you, and because that version of home can never exist in quite the same way it once did. 

I have never felt so strongly about a place as I felt (still feel) about Brown. There was never a time in my life when I felt so constantly on edge, so self-conscious, so expectant. There was never another time in my life when someone might knock on my door at 3am to tell me it was snowing (thanks, Eric). There was never another time in my life when I spent hours painting pictures on the art building staircase, or sneaking into the old gym’s pool in the middle of the night, or climbing roofs and exploring tunnels under the dorm. Apart from grad school, there has never been another time that I’ve felt so fascinated by every person I met. There was never another time I would have passed up studying abroad because I couldn’t bear the thought of leaving that place. That I had standing breakfast dates every Friday, frequent 3 course dinner parties with my best friend, my "own table" in my favorite coffee shops, and a city I felt belonged to me. There was always a feeling of transience, of changing fast enough to notice it, of being afraid of what happened when it was gone. There was never another time when I learned so much from every person I met or when I felt so far from home but also like I was exactly where I belonged. I love that school no less today than I loved it 9 years ago. 

It is hard to say who I would have been without Brown or to pinpoint the specific ways in which it changed me. It is hard to list the things I have to thank the school, students, and faculty for. One thing that Brown taught me in such a tangible and lasting way is to be bold in caring about things that matter.  It was not surprising that every speech during commencement got political. In Daveed Digg’s Baccalaureate speech, he said, “What these times really need are people who challenge all explanations. Who never thought outside the box because they never accepted the premise that there was a box… We need your new ideas because our old ones have made a mess of things.” I’m glad this was my reunion year so I could hear those speeches. Because I do believe in the young people in this country. Not just at Brown, but colleges and high schools throughout America. I believe they will pull us out of this mess we’re in. 

Walking through the Van Wickle Gates the first time

And 9 years later

I got back to DC on Monday and couldn’t decide if I felt like I was leaving home or coming home. I went to my last full day of work on Tuesday. I won’t be returning to this job next year, and there’s a lot of anxiety in not knowing what happens next or if I’ll be here next year or somewhere else. But I feel lucky to have been here this year, even when I might have once imagined living here during this election as torture. For now I will read all the books I wanted to be reading during the school year and try to write some things for the first time in 9 months.

Blossoms and Protests

It was a year ago today that I visited DC during spring break.The cherry blossoms were at their peak, and I admired again how beautiful this city is. I never imagined I would live here. 

The first time I ever visited DC was ten years ago, the summer before senior year of high school ,when I convinced my parents to take me on a college tour up the East Coast. This was before I’d ever ridden a train or tried hummus or knew I’d be leaving Mississippi. It was the first time I’d been above the Mason Dixon, the same trip I saw Brown for the first time (where I never thought I’d get to go), and Boston and New York (where I also never imagined I’d live) and Philadelphia. We stopped for a few hours in DC on the way back south. We parked somewhere alongside The Mall then walked around the monuments for just long enough that our car was towed onto a median and left with a nice parking ticket. It doesn’t seem like it could have possible been ten years since then. 

The next time I visited DC was spring break of sophomore year in college when my best friend and I road tripped south and spent a couple of nights with his family here. His uncle took us on a driving tour around the monuments and Rock Creek Park. We walked around the Tidal Basin to see the cherry blossoms, went to the National Gallery, then got lost trying to find the Metro. I did not know of a DC that wasn’t the monuments, Smithsonian museums, and politics. Sophomore year felt too early to think about graduation or worry about jobs, but DC wasn’t what either of us imagined when we considered it. (He ended up here for a while 3 and 1/2 years before I unsuspectingly stumbled in.) 

The forecasters didn’t think the cherry blossoms would survive our snowfall last week, but they’ve pulled through, as always. It’s the 4th cherry blossom season I’ve seen. This time it feels different. 

I get Indian food on the weekends, or Ethiopian if I’m downtown. I follow the Twitter account that tells me where the outdoor movies will screen all summer long. I ride a bike to Georgetown every weekend that it’s warm enough. I can parallel park if I have to. DC isn’t the place I imagined it to be, in that I didn’t know it could feel like a version of home. (Okay, technically my address is Maryland, but  the mile to the District line never counted to me.) 

I worried about living in DC after the election. But it’s weirdly comforting to be in a place where people are so passionate about social justice and equality and general goodness.

On Inauguration Day, I worried that the city would turn into a 1984-style dystopia. But it seemed instead like most people ignored it. We got the day off from work because so many roads were closed, and other than a sign telling me that there was restricted traffic on Wisconsin Ave, I saw no sign of it. I grocery shopped and avoided the news and watched Netflix on my couch. It was a surreal and not terrible day. 

The next day was the Women’s March. My journalist friend/former roommate was in town covering the inauguration, so we went together, and it was the moment I was proudest to call this place home. I’ve never seen so many people. I’ve never seen a group so uplifting, so passionate, so bold, so happy to be together. There’s nothing I can say about the march that doesn’t sound cliche, but every word is true. My feet hurt, and I nearly got crushed once, and we stood stuck in the crowd not moving for nearly an hour due to complete grid lock, and I regret not one second. 

On social media later, I saw acquaintances and politicians from home ridicule the “Pro-Abortion March,” and I felt so, so sad for how completely they were able to (and eager to) miss the entire point. 

There were protests every day for a while. I went to one supporting education, one protesting the immigration ban, and a vigil for free speech. My dad started calling me The Protestor.  As in, “The Protestor is coming home to visit soon!” But it never felt like some decision to embrace social activism all of a sudden—it felt like sitting home and doing nothing wasn’t an option. One of my proudest moments of life was when my mom, sister, brother-in-law, sister’s friend, and my dad (a life-long Republican) each called the Mississippi senator to oppose Betsy DeVos for Education Secretary. My dad called me afterward to let me know he’d called two offices when he couldn’t get through to the first one. I wanted to weep. 

In February, I went to New York for a literary agent’s mixer at Columbia. I was supposedly there for networking, but I mostly wanted to see my friends. I told one of my favorite professors as much and she said, “I know, it’s like a camp reunion,” before grasping me by the elbow and introducing me to some agent who I was too intimidated to look up for days. My friends were better promoters of my work than I was, and I thank them for rescuing me. 

The next day, I took a 28 hour train ride to Mississippi to meet my niece. Lily cried when she met me because she was so overwhelmed with emotion and excitement at my presence. She got past it and we became fast friends. I even overcame my fear of holding her, although not my fear of picking her up. Lily likes ceiling fans, snacking, naps, and when her Auntie Kay reads her the book about the sloth and the one about the greyhound and the groundhog. She tries so hard to talk, but as she’s 8 weeks old, it hasn’t quite happened yet. Soon, though. 

The sun doesn’t set until 7:30 now, and everyone has come out of hibernation. Restaurants have reopened their outdoor patios. The tourists have arrived by the hundred to catch a 5-day glimpse of this city. It feels good that I get to stick around this time. 

Thanks, Obama

I was supposed to be a Republican. It was an unspoken fact (though still a fact) in my hometown. Republicans were the moral ones who upheld our Southern Baptist values. They were kind and grandfatherly, familiar with their slight southern drawls. They did not have sexual relations with that woman. They did their job, which was to give long and boring speeches on TV that affected me in no way whatsoever and then carry on with whatever they did in that white house. No one in my family cared much about politics—it was never a topic discussed over meals—but I got the point, from church and from school, about whose side we were on. (And of course I’m generalizing, and of course there were people in my town with different beliefs and opinions, but as a child, I did not know those people. As a child, this is what if felt like.) Even in high school after I understood that there were issues apart from religious ones and that presidential candidates were individual people instead of cutouts of their parties, I couldn’t bring myself to care about politics.

The first time I heard of Barack Obama was during my senior year of high school. I don’t remember ever hearing so much about a candidate before—the adults couldn’t stop talking. Barak Obama was secretly a Muslim plotting against our country, I heard many of them say. He wasn’t even American—he had no birth certificate to prove he was, or if he did it was fake. He looked suspiciously happy in pictures. But what mattered most was that he was evil. Evil. Not evil like, oh, that evil teacher keeps giving me detention, but evil in the Biblical sense, like the evil that we should be deeply, instinctively afraid of. So many people said this with confidence, and surely they knew something I did not. I was treading dangerous ground anyway, asking too many questions, doubting opinions I’d always been told to have. I took AP Government that spring, and in class we researched all of the candidates for the election the next fall. Obama looked shockingly young. He didn’t look evil. I also remember taking one of those “I Side With” quizzes in class and getting Obama and not knowing how to feel about it. I was tapping hard from inside a conservative shell, the outside of which seemed tempting and terrifying. It was hard to know what was my opinion and what was placed on me by someone else. 

I went to college in the fall of 2008. Until then, I had never known a person my age to care about politics. But my classmates felt so strongly about what they believed that they were willing to knock on strangers doors to tell them.I don’t think I’d ever heard of canvassing before or met anyone who volunteered for a campaign. I didn’t know that people could volunteer for campaigns. I had never met people with this kind of passion and never heard this side of the argument. I kept quiet and listened, the way I’d listed to the adults who told me that man is evil. I realized that I’d known I would vote for Obama all along, but I’d needed to get out of that cage, needed to be sure. I wondered what my family would think, if they’d be disappointed or horrified. But by the time I figured out the absentee process, it was too late to vote. (Mississippi has a notoriously difficult absentee voting process.) I regret it still. 

I remember watching as votes came in on election night. Before he was even declared the winner, students started flooding the Main Green. I stood on the steps of the John Carter Brown Library, watching thousands of students cheering, crying, dancing, and setting off illegal fireworks in celebration. Some of my friends climbed onto the balcony of Faunce House and hung a sign they’d made as everyone cheered. Maybe I’d never seen real joy until this moment. My best friend, Sam, called me from Chicago where she was watching his speech live in Grant Park. I could hear the crowds cheering around her. There were some things I already knew at that point that I would never forget. Where I was when I heard about 9/11. When Hurricane Katrina hit my town. And when Barack Obama won the 2008 election. “Yes we can,” my classmates screamed from the Faunce steps. Yes, we can. 

Four years later, I visited my two best friends in Chicago a couple of months before the 2012 election. One of them was working for the Obama campaign, so he gave me a tour of the headquarters. Everyone there was so young, some even younger than I was. They were volunteers, sleeping on couches and doing this work for free because they believed so strongly in things that mattered. And Obama believed in young people. In my four years of college, he’d taught me and my generation that our opinions mattered, that we could make a real difference in the country. Before I was 18-years-old, no one had ever told me that. As a 22-year-old, he’d made me believe it. I finally got to vote for him that year, in my hometown, where I no longer cared in the slightest that I would be shunned if people knew. I knew exactly what I believed, and I did not need them to tell me. 

9 years later and many people back home still hate the Obamas. I’ve heard racial slurs about him and his family that you may believe only exist today in Faulkner novels and surely not real life. I cannot tell you why they hate him— maybe because of his skin color, his stance on an issue, his political party, or just because someone told them to—but they must not have spent these 8 years watching the same man that I have. I watched a man who believed in art and compassion and humility and kindness and respect and equality and laughing and having faith in people. I watched a man full of hope and love and never hesitant to show it. 

I am grateful that Obama was president during my college and grad school years, the years when I was figuring out what I truly believed and stopped listening to what I’d been told to think for most of my life. The years when I started caring about politics and understanding how it affects me. I’m grateful to have had a president and first lady who were not just figures on a TV screen but true role models. I’m grateful that I had a president who made me feel like my opinions mattered, like all of our opinions mattered. I’m grateful that I had a president who inspired me. 

Obama believed in my generation. He believed that young adults could impact the world. And then he proved that we could. 

Obligatory New Year Post

I started this blog three years ago with an obligatory “New Year Post”, and I could not have imagined then that I would find myself here three years later. Since then I’ve finished grad school, moved four times, lived in three states, spent a year sick, got better, and had four jobs. Three years ago I was trying to climb out of a difficult time in my life, and there are so, so many things that are better for me now that I’m grateful for every day. But 2016 was another hard year for a lot of us. I’ve watched this year tear people down in ways they won’t easily bounce back from. But I’ve seen a lot of renewed hope, too. 2016 had some beautiful moments. I don’t want to let the bad overwhelm those.  

In the past year I left a job I really loved so I cold move back to a city (a bigger lesson in sacrifice than I understood). I went through a job search process even longer and more bleak than the first one. I finally got hired in a city that I never expected to live in but that somehow seemed to fit. I taught summer school at a military school on a mountain. I was able to start exercising again for the first time in years. I hiked in the Shenandoah, kayaked in the Potomac, read my work to strangers in DC, listened to ghost stories at The Capital, and heard my favorite band twice. I moved from Tennessee to Mississippi, briefly to Virginia, back to Mississippi, then to Maryland. I flew on no planes for the first time in almost a decade and felt very content about that. Instead I spent over 46 hours on buses, 54 hours on trains, and 15,000 miles in my car (and then had to buy him a new battery). I rode over 100 miles on way-too-big-for-me bikes. I spent 18 nights in hotels, a month in a dorm room, and 12 nights in other people’s houses in 9 different states. I visited friends in New York twice, DC before I moved here, Atlanta, and New Orleans. I saw the Shenandoah with fall colors, Murfreesboro in ice storms, DC during the Cherry Blossom Festival, and New York City at Christmas. I saw my friends make movies and win awards and get published. I got my fist invitation to a reading series. I spent my last nights in my old apartment in New York and first one-bedroom in Murfreesboro. I owned a dog (for 5 days). I said some very hard goodbyes. I spent a lot of time missing my old students and feeling lucky that I taught them. I got closer to old friends and made some new ones. I hosted half a dozen visitors and made/mailed several hundred brownies. I volunteered for the Clinton campaign. I interviewed 18 prospective Brown students. I watched one of my favorite people get married. I only read 40 books and felt horrified at myself because of it. I didn’t use as much film as I wanted. I started working at a Catholic school and attended my first Mass. I turned 27. I missed Nashville and the granola at Portland Brew and the smoothies at The Post East, and I missed New York, and I missed Providence, and I’ve finally realized that I will always, always be missing somewhere. I found out that I’m going to be an aunt. 

I spent New Year’s Eve night in Alexandria watching the fireworks with thousands of people who were not sad to see the year go. I think we can work hard to make this one better. 

November

Somehow it became Christmas time overnight. I was walking to the Metro station last week to find that three giant, fully decorated Christmas trees have appeared in my neighborhood. I went to school on Tuesday (our first day back after Thanksgiving break) to find the single largest Christmas tree I’ve ever seen inside a building that’s not a mall or an airport. The Mother’s Club spent half the day hanging wreaths throughout the halls, and I looked out the window while teaching one of my classes to find a complete nativity scene in the circle drive by the main office. Teaching at a Catholic school apparently means that your workplace turns into a Hallmark movie setting. And I’m happy about it. I didn’t feel well yesterday, so I went to Whole Foods for some soup and came home with a Christmas tree. I think we could all use a bit of holiday spirit right now. 

November has been the strangest month. I felt like it kept offering things that it never gave. I turned 27 a few weeks ago, but I mostly ignored my birthday since it was the day before the election. I spent my birthday weekend volunteering for Clinton’s campaign, and then I spent a few days in a sort of numb shock afterward. 

There are few places I can think of more depressing than a DC high school the day after the election. I went to work in a daze and sat down in the English department room where my coworkers silently trickled in. We gave each other weak smiles and raised eyebrows instead of real hellos and we sat without talking until one of my coworkers finally voiced what all of us were thinking—“What am I supposed to say to the kids? What do I say?” Which no one had an answer for. Some teachers let their kids talk about it in class that day. Others let their students journal on a piece of paper that they were then free to rip up. I didn’t know how to talk about it that day, so I tried to avoid it instead, which went about as well as you might imagine. One of my 9th graders asked quietly from the front row, “Ms. Smith, how did this happen?” and I had to say, “I don’t know. I really don’t know.” 

I stayed in DC for Thanksgiving and spent half of Wednesday volunteering for the Salvation Army. My official job was to register other signed-up volunteers (check their name off the list and give them an apron or t-shirt), which I did while having an intense 4-hour conversation with two of my fellow volunteers (one of whom is a delightful woman in her 60s who embraced me before I left, told me that she thought we were long-lost sisters, and who declared us new best friends). On Thanksgiving day I made a pan of cornbread dressing and ate more of it than I will ever publicly confess to. I thought of some really excellent ways to procrastinate grading the giant stack of essays I brought home. One of my friends and I watched Fantastic Beasts together, and by together I mean we went to screenings of the same movie at the same time, even though we are 10 hours apart. This worked very well, except his theater showed one extra trailer, so my movie was about two minutes ahead, which meant I kept accidentally texting spoilers. I went to Annapolis. I went to Alexandria. I finished half a dozen college candidate interviews. I watched Gilmore Girls.  

I had to say a hard goodbye to a friend who’s moving away for work last night. Even though I’ve known I would have to say this goodbye for a long time, it didn’t make it any easier. I’m bad at goodbyes. I either want to avoid them altogether and sneak away unnoticed, or I want to prolong them indefinitely and create a spectacle of melodrama and too many words (which I stop myself from actually doing). The result is always underwhelming and full of things I mean to say but don’t. What feels like the real goodbye exists in my mind, but what plays out in real life is something else. It happens more than is fair that there are no words that would mean the right thing. 

I hang on hard to things. People, places, moments. I exist in a perpetual state of nostalgia and what I enjoy in the present I recognize as fodder for future nostalgia. Scorpios have the longest memory of all the signs supposedly, and I am the truest of Scorpios for my tendency to replay and replay and replay and remember everything. But November, for once, I’d be alright letting go of. 

Autumn

The first quarter of school has ended and autumn is here and I’m almost 27 years old. I keep accidentally lying when I tell people that I “just moved here” because it’s been two and a half months already. Even though I still don’t have my paintings on the wall or my landlord-required rug on the floor, my apartment has started to feel like home. 

DC keeps tossing me small gifts. It’s been a year and a half since I lived in a place full of chance encounters. I ran into a college classmate in a bookstore and another who I took my first creative writing workshop with and haven’t seen in about 7 years. I got to visit with another college friend who was in town for the weekend, and I got to go see one of my favorite teachers when he came to DC to promote his new book. I feel connected to strangers because I feel like there are fewer degrees of separation between us. It’s the same feeling that I felt in New York—that the world is both fuller and smaller.

 One of my oldest friends, James, came to visit last month. James and I haven’t lived in the same place for almost a decade, but when we’re together it feels like nothing’s changed. Those are the kind of friendships you want to hang onto. I forced upon him some new experiences. Like trying a vegan smoothie (which he liked!). And sweet potato fries (not impressed). And a square millimeter of chopped, raw tomato (also not impressed). We went kayaking on the Potomac and bike riding around the monuments, and I took him to see my favorite band which I have a secret hope is now his favorite band. He never complained about how I unintentionally tried to kill him by making him walk 12 miles on already-sore feet. 

Another friend, Elijah, came to visit a couple of weeks ago. Elijah is the type of human who you find standing in the middle of Union Station sketching the ceiling. He is the best expresser of the awe that I feel at things most people find mundane. A beautiful ceiling. The Metro. Street performers. Carrot cake. The right phrase. When someone expresses your feelings for you better than you do, it’s how you know you’ve found a friend. We browsed bookstores at midnight, got way too excited about the Library of Congress, biked around, and took a ghost tour. 

It’s nice to have friends visit to accompany me on my adventures. But here is a thing that I wish more people knew/believed—being alone should never stop you from having adventures. “I didn’t have anyone to go with” should never be a reason to not do something you want to do. Sometimes people act surprised at the things I do by myself. Yes, I did eat at that restaurant/go to that concert/tour a cemetery/take a road trip/bike 20 miles/hike up a mountain alone, and why should being alone have stopped me from doing any of it? (Unless you want to hike up a mountain that includes a rock scramble that the internet warns you may be too difficult for those 5 feet tall and shorter, which is a different story entirely. Just watch me, internet. Just watch.) There’s this weird stigma about doing things by ourselves that if I paid any attention to would have prevented be from ever even leaving Mississippi. And people are generally way too preoccupied with themselves to notice or care that your by yourself, so forget about the stigma. And doing things by yourself makes you appreciate your friends so much more when you do get to spend time with them.

I’m trying to get back to writing, so I looked up reading series in DC and submitted to one and was thrilled when they asked me to come read for them. I’ve only ever read in front of my classmates/friends who already know my work and who I trust to get what I mean. It is a nerve-wracking and liberating thing to read in front of complete strangers who you are half afraid of offending if the sarcasm doesn’t fall just right (or maybe even if it does). But there are few things more validating than when those strangers laugh at the right moments and tell you afterwards “I know just what you mean.” 

I opened my mailbox the other day to find one of the best surprised I’ve ever received—a Webb yearbook that my students from last year signed for me. The notes they wrote were some of the nicest things anyone’s ever said to me. I thought of emailing them or sending a letter to tell them how much their words meant to me, but I came to the conclusion that the words do not exist in the English language for me to fully express my gratitude and how I miss them, so I baked 100 brownies and mailed those instead. 

The leaves peaked in the Shenandoah over the past few weeks, so on a whim I got up too early last weekend and climbed a mountain to see some. October was a good one. 

Blog Posts I Started and Never Finished

1. The one where I hiked to this waterfall.

2. The one where I rode a bus from New Orleans to Atlanta to see one of my college roommates/favorite humans get married. The one where I reminisce about reunions and late-night talks and how random dorm room assignments 8 years ago brought together a (now) husband and wife and how absurd and beautiful relationships (all types of them) are. 

3. The one where I spent a night in New Orleans with three of my best friends and realized that I could not remember the last time that I was with more than one of my friends in the same city.

4. The one where I share some thoughts about women’s Olympic gymnastics.

5. The one where my sister found out she's having a girl. 

6. The one where I was, yet again, jobless until mid-August and then in a span of a few hours I got an interview (then a second, third, and fourth), and two days later a job offer. Then the one where I packed everything I could fit in my car in one day and drove to DC with no apartment or plan other than showing up at work two days later. 

7. The one where I crashed at a friend’s apartment while starting my job (5 days after all the other new hires started) while trying to find an apartment at the same time and teaching myself how to parallel park. 

8. The one where my new school is a Catholic school and I had to attend my first Mass afraid that I  would accidentally reveal to my new coworkers that I had no idea what was happening. 

9. The one where I found an apartment in Bethesda, which I only knew to be the home of the girls in The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, but is, in fact, a delightful town less than a mile from DC where everyone has enough money to attend $30 per visit exercise classes daily. 

10. The one where I attend a couple of said exercise classes (for the $15 first visit discount) and had some thoughts to share about them. 

11. The one where I slept on an air mattress in my empty apartment for 9 nights until my heroic parents drove a U-Haul here with my furniture, stayed exactly 24 hours, then had to go back home so they wouldn’t miss work. 

12. The one where I live next to a Capital Bikeshare stand (where you can rent city bikes) and have ridden something like 50 miles in the last three weekends. 

13. The one where I try to figure out how to teach 5 classes of over 20 students each when the largest class I’ve ever taught was 15. 

14. The one where I discover that I’ve somehow landed at one of the best high schools for athletes in DC. (Perhaps the country.) Which is not a thing I can ever say I imagined. 

15. The time where my car died in the school parking lot and no one could start it for three days, so I had to Uber to and from school until I finally got it towed to a repair place where they put in a new battery. 

16. The one where I finally finish unpacking and have an apartment that actually looks like a home. 

17. The one where I tell you all about DC and what it’s like to live here so far and how incredibly nice everyone is. 

18. The one where I describe each of the smoothies I splurge on every weekend. Because that truly deserves a post of its own. Though I will never confess how much I pay for them.