Faster Than the Speed of Life.

Following a thoroughly exhausting week, it has been another exhausting week. Last weekend was really great, considering I got to a) See my best friend Peck, b) Eat food in a big urban garden while watching Ghostbusters on a projection screen with Adam and my best friend Peck and c) Stay up until 4am drinking with a bunch of teachers in Long Beach. I mean, that's a pretty good weekend.

But regardless...the week has been mentally, physically and emotionally exhausting. I don't know what it is, but I think everything that we've done since June-- moving to New York, getting new jobs, getting used to a break-neck paced new life-- it's finally catching up with us. Adam and I don't generally shout at each other, I mean, hardly ever. But this past week we've shouted at each other, oh, at least two or three times. It sort of feels like we're pulled taut, like violin strings, and then something cuts through and, SNAP! you could sever an artery with that thing. And the funny thing is, we both know it's happening, we both realize that we're not really angry at each other, we're just so tense. So the shouting doesn't last long. And honestly, I think this weekend will put an end to it all. It's our two year anniversary! But more on that later.

For some reason I've been feeling particularly morose this week, probably because of several things all mashed together in a blackened Morbid Pie. First of all, I found out on Monday that Barbara from UMBC has died of cancer at the end of last week. My Mom was keeping it from me, and I don't really blame her. She knows how I am. But at any rate, it was a severe blow. I knew it was going to happen, but these things tend to affect me more deeply than I can help. I have no emotional defenses for death. I never have.

And then, during the weekend, Peck was telling me about a girl her ex-boyfriend was visiting in the hospital; a young girl like me who had just found out she had leukemia. She only has about a 40% chance of survival. Just like that. Peck was barely herself (perky, wacky, etc.) and told me, in her honest, baldfaced way that I adore, "I can't stop thinking about death."

But we forgot about it for a while and had a fun weekend, but you know, it's still there. Oddly enough, the books I've been reading (by no intention of my own) have concerned things of that nature, too. One was about a young girl whose Mom got breast cancer (happily she survives, but is obviously changed forever), and I've been reading a biography of Lewis Carroll, who is infamous for his worship of youth and his desperate fear of growing old.

Today, on the way to the train to work, I passed the little fenced in garden where the many packs of wild cats live. One of the cats, a little black one, was lying near the fence. Someone had put a pink rose in its arms. I knew it wasn't breathing. It was one of the saddest things I've ever seen. I spent the entire train ride trying not to cry and wondered why I never grew out of this.

So, I don't know what the hell is going on. I don't know why the world is so full of all these senseless tragedies. It is probably the one thing that has most troubled me, all my life. It is times like these that I wish my faith could tell me, without a doubt, that this too, shall pass, and all things happen for a reason, and all good things go to a better place. My faith tells me these things, but my heart doesn't always believe it. I don't know why I'm writing all of this.

Anyway, it's not all doom and gloom over here, really. This weekend, Adam and I will be celebrating our anniversary on a 3-hour dinner cruise around Manhattan, and it will be incredibly romantic. And we will relax and think about life and look at the sky and feel the wind on our faces. Sometimes the wind on your face and a warm hand holding yours tightly is all you need to believe in goodness.