It bothers me that I didn’t document my move before a big giant hurricane swept through and really fucked everything up.  It’s not like I couldn’t remember why we moved here, it just got hard to remember BHS (Before Hurricane Sandy) AHS (After Hurricane Sandy) when everything was in upheaval.  

Every time I talk about those first crazy months AHS, I have to state that we were lucky.  Insanely “we might need to start going to church” lucky.  One of us said that aloud just a few minutes after we opened our door holding our breath and expecting to see everything in our home floating and water logged.  Yet, somehow, other than the mess I made while lifting everything up several feet before we left, our house was exactly as we left it BHS.  I still have trouble comprehending that.  Sure, the grade in front of our home is a few feet higher than street level.  Sure, starting with our house, a few blocks directly above us didn’t flood (on the ocean side, the bay side did).  All the houses directly behind us flooded, homes to the right and left of us flooded.  We were told that when the ocean rushed up our street it took a left turn and completely inundated everything behind us.  I’m still not sure how that works, but it was the only explanation our neighbors who rode out the storm could provide.  Luck is random, and we were randomly spared any physical damage.

But, in my darkest hours I wished that maybe we hadn’t been so lucky and then beat myself up for thinking that way.  An insurance check would have given us an out and we wouldn’t have had to endure the isolation, the uncertainty, and the horrendous commute that followed.  The hardest part of life AHS for me were those internal battles and the guilt that followed.  Constant mental exhaustion with the desperation to leave, the lists and math to make that happen, the worry I was being too hasty, the feeling of quitting amidst the resilience I saw all around me, the love of my neighborhood, the want to call it home again, penance, hope, rinse, repeat.  Add to this equation the other half of  "us" and "we".  Both of us were going through the same miserable psychological spin cycle.  At times we fell out of sync and turned against one another.  Luckily, four and a half months out,  we've settled back into our groove as a team and so goes the cliche that I think our love is a lot stronger for it.  But at times, I worried that I'd lose my relationship – which is a lot more important than my apartment, where it is, or anything in it.

The last night BHS we went shopping at Target for some non perishables, batteries and a raft.  Yep, a raft.  We’d been stalking some fringe weather blogs the week before and expected the worst, and yet, I wanted to buy a fucking raft.  Hurricane a-coming – get me a raft.   Sometimes even I can't explain my logic.  If I ever doubted for a second that Matt is my favorite person on the planet, the fact that he humored me with the whole raft thing, is one tiny example of how much I love this man.  In the end, I’m glad we didn’t find a raft that night, we might not have evacuated the next day.  I might have been stupid enough to use it when our street flooded, I might have been swept out to sea.  If we hadn’t left, I can only imagine how terrifying a night it would have been as we watched the water come down our street and consume everything around us.  Our car would have been destroyed like everyone else’s, and we would not have been able to get out for weeks.

We left when we were told – and I am glad we did.  We moved to a barrier island in July, and for the first time in a long time – I can say that I’m glad we did.  I’m a realist and a bit of a pessimist, I knew this could happen, I think I partially expected it to.  I’m pretty sure I pay for every possible rider you can get with renter’s insurance – if an earthquake hits, I’m covered.  I just couldn’t have imagined all the peripheral things it would affect for so long after.  There were amazing times between then and October and, I’m starting to remember them without the bitter taste of the misery and isolation of what came after.  Homes which have been gutted now have walls and people are living in them again, restaurants have been re-opening more steadily, laundromats are back and we even have options, there is talk of new businesses, roads are finally being repaved, street lights are coming back on and we're going on local adventures again. 

Now I just need the A train to come back.  Lately, like a recurring dream, I remember coming home from work BHS, walking through our train station on a summer evening and smelling sun tan lotion, sand and sea.  And though I might not want to spend another hurricane season or winter out here on this island (maybe that will come, I’ve learned patience).  I am starting to remember the details of the things I loved most about last summer, the things that inspired us to take a chance and try to live out here for both the warm and cold seasons.  The memories are a start, but it’s going to take a lot of people walking through that train station wearing sunblock to bring back that exact moment of “home” that got me giddy every time.

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I haven't written much.  I suppose I've been waiting for something good to happen or to feel like Hurricane Sandy is far enough behind me that it's not still affecting me every day.  I hate getting stuck, like a skipping record…but I am and I've been for so many months now that the ache has grown to fear.  Will I get through this?  Like seriously, will I get through this…safely?  Almost every commute to work and every commute back is a reminder, a battle, and has depressed me to the point of not wanting to talk or share beyond random kvetching on twitter.  And I'm stuck there too in 140 character bursts on twitter, reduced to pleading with the MTA for help.  So much has returned to functional, yet getting where I need to get each day and back, seems to be a process that gets worse each week.

Since October life has been a sort of spectrum of struggle.  First there was not knowing and assuming we lost everything.  We didn't.  Yay!  So there was the lull of realizing there were far worse things in life than living in an area decimated by a storm, while we still had an undamaged home.  I basked in that feeling of luck for all of a minute until the reality that our neighbors, family and many friends were not so fortunate.  There was petty complaining about LIPA and our electricity – because our house felt like a delicate husk that could burn, flood, be robbed, or disappear into a sinkhole.  And, though the structure was indeed still there – the anger was tangible, something to throw our energy toward (and re-electrifying was a test of sorts in itself).  There was helping where we could – because we had to do something – and feeling like I could never do enough. 

Eventually, and overlapping some of those initial fears, there have been the attempts at normalizing.  Trying to find little joys again, starting to recover, and trying to distract ourselves.  This often led us outside our community (because so little was open and we hadn't lived in the area long enough pre-storm to have made local friends or even routines).  Then came the resignation that the logistics of just getting to and from where we live is often more trouble than it's worth.  So there we are, back in our husk spinning the same maddening questions over and over.

Like any spectrum, it's a scale that leans positive on one side and negative on the other.  Some days have been great, some days are okay, some include normal levels of stress.  All things I can deal with.  But, most days are far off any sanity check, okay there is no normal, life is hard kind of spectrum.  Those moments at their mildest are "Our friends in Brooklyn and Manhattan lead somewhat normal normal lives, not all their conversations are about hurricanes and they have restaurants, laundromats and gyms just over the bridge". On the other extreme end – "It's cold, I'm soaking wet, I've been commuting for three hours for the third time this week and I just want to lay down on the sidewalk right here and give up."

This is some of the complaint I just filed with the MTA.  Since it was sent in haste, I made some tweaks in what I pasted below.  I'll spare you the letter I sent to the CEO of my insurance company, because that is a whole other battle that just exhausts me, and I am beyond tired…

Tonight I took the A to the Q52 at Rockaway Boulevard as I do every day.  It’s a transfer I dread, it’s rarely pleasant, but I do what I have to get to work and back.  The trip seemed uneventful until we got to Broad Channel when I noticed the bus was going very slow.  We were in the right lane and I stood up a few times over the course of a few minutes to see if there was traffic blocking the way.  There was not, cars were swerving around us.  I noticed fellow riders were also starting to stir and trying to figure out what was going on. 

After a few more minutes I started to worry that perhaps the driver was ill or in distress. I got up and asked the driver if he was okay.  I looked as his speedometer and noticed we were going 10-15 miles per hour.  He told me that he was frustrated that the stop button kept getting triggered and no one was getting off the bus.  There are not many stops through Howard Beach –  and I hadn’t noticed at all.  I was annoyed that I was being punished for what could have been accidental or even mechanical failure of one of the buttons.  That didn't stop the driver from slowing down and waiting for his protest to be noticed.  I noticed, I worried he might be dying, I checked on him and was confronted with a situation I had not considered, and so I returned to my seat.

I didn’t expect that some of the other passengers would react as they did.  What had started as a questionably dangerous situation quickly escalated to one.  Passengers were screaming at the driver, the driver was screaming back.  Cameras were shoved in his face while he continued driving the route.  Threats were made.  It was awful.  I regretted saying anything, even though my purpose was out of sincere concern for the driver.  I felt like I had triggered what followed.

I thought of the passengers, what they might still be going through, how disrupted our lives still are, and how awful our commute has been from the Rockaways without the A.  I wondered where the driver was from, what his life might be like, I mean we all have "things" and surely he had stuff that might be causing him to act out beyond what he told me was bothering him. 

The situation has been escalating seemingly every week over the past 3+ months.  Lines are longer, people are running on fading patience, fumes really.  Two weeks ago I was caught in between two men fist fighting after the man behind me shoved an older man in front of me (the man in front of me was walking with a cane, who does that?)  I've sat next to a grown woman bullying a larger man in front of us for taking up two seats.  Seats are a rarity – I've been pushed over by an elderly lady with a grocery cart jumping the line because she knows no one will offer her a seat up front reserved for the handicapped or elderly as they should.  During rush hour the trains are packed door to door, there is no visible white line to protect the passengers or the driver.  There are no lines, there is no order while waiting.  Civility has started to disintegrate on the Q52 and I believe it is only a matter of time before I witness or am caught up in something worse.

Taking the bus from the Rockaway Boulevard stop takes less time than other alternatives for those of us in my part of Rockaway, but a lot more time than anyone who lives within MTA serviceable routes plans for.  I feel confident in speaking for the passengers on the peninsula that we are tired.  I have no doubt your employees are too…and I would hope that your drivers aren’t goading passengers on when something as annoying as being asked to stop when no one gets off happens.

Before I exited, I stopped to tell the driver that I was sincerely worried about him.  That I hadn’t imagined he was trying to punish us for what one person may have done that upset him, and that may have even been because they were lost, or that maybe the bus itself was malfunctioning.  The driver then started yelling at me, about how people were shoving their phones in his face and yelling at him and how wrong it was.  I agreed, but also disagreed with how he handled it.    Then I just started sobbing and asking him to try to understand what life is like for all of us out here.   This was not how I expected my Friday evening to go, for my commute to end being yelled at by my bus driver.   But that’s the direction it went in when I boarded the Q52, bus number XXXX and found myself in the midst of a fight around Xpm on Friday, February 15th.

What I'd add if I hadn't already sent -

I’d ask that drivers on the Rockaway route (and others) get some extra support and perhaps sensitivity training for areas affected by life altering circumstances.  I ask that all drivers announce bus stops ahead of time.  When it’s raining and dark – you cannot see out the windows.  I have been that passenger who pressed the button ahead of my stop before.  In areas I am familiar with and areas I am not.  I ask that drivers understand customers may be confused by routes they are not familiar with.  This is not my first time dealing with a hostile and unapologetic bus driver.  I ask for more buses to ease rider’s frustrations, most of which I suspect are fear and actual pain from having to stand and balance, stuffed in like sardines, traveling on roads that have been deteriorating since Hurricane Sandy.  I ask for an ETA and commitment on a date for the return of the A and more communications on it’s progress.  Mta.info was great to check in for updates through December, but they have stopped updating on the situation in the Rockaways.  I ask to not have regular fear for my safety, other passengers, and for your drivers. 

This was not the first time, but it was the worst yet.  This cannot be the new "normal", there has to be a better way while the A will be closed for months to come.  Please help your customers and your employees get through this, it's escalating.  It is not working, it is broken

Because there is no option but to move in some direction, I try to move forward.  I try not to be angry, throw tantrums and otherwise sulk when services are still limping post-Sandy (this extends beyond the MTA).  I know you can't stop the world because you want to get off.  Life will deal harder hands still if I'm blessed to live a long life.  I know I can't dictate new bus lines and schedules.  I know our spectrums are skewed by any number and sorts of disasters.  And as a disaster implies, our spectrum is more likely to lean on the negative side.  I know I can't snap my fingers or click my heels together and have a lease dissolve or a painless, inexpensive move without sacrifices and risks.  But, I also think sometimes you have to stick up for yourself and file a complaint instead of carrying it and hoping things will change.  Maybe not scream "Uncle"  Uncle!-  but allow myself to cry a little.  I've lost track, I don't know if some of what I've been dealing with is normal, I don't know if my take is skewed so far in a direction that it doesn't make sense outside my day to day.  I honestly just don't know anymore.  And, I think that might honestly be the hardest part.

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Of all the things that have played on my mind over the past three months, one of the things that has troubled me most is that I don’t think I have expressed or could ever really effectively express my gratitude.  I’ve woken up in a panic more than a few days over the past few weeks over the intangible – when saying “thank you” just feels insufficient or that it’s been awhile since I’ve heard from someone and that I need to check in them; or the tangible – that I still haven’t returned a friend’s keys or that I simply never even responded to so many generous offers of places to stay just after the storm.

With the holidays now passed, I wish I had planned better, done more thoughtfully.  If Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s feel like they sneak up most years…this year they didn’t creep, they felt more like a sucker punch.  In December I thought it was still October most days.  It was as if I lost weeks of time, but time kept on going as time is wont to do.

In contrast I can’t help but think of the year I moved to California.  I made the decision to move in October, the same month Sandy rearranged my life this year.  I moved in December.  Of any time in my life I’m proudest of those two months in between.  I was present with friends and family because I knew those moments would be fewer and further between after I moved.  Life was busy; I had a full time job, freelanced part time, and was packing to move cross country.  I was busy, that hasn’t changed -yet, I found the time, I took the time, and I was more thoughtful.  I poured heart and soul into my holiday gifts that year, this year I didn’t even get holiday cards out.

I’m not one for New Year’s resolutions, but I know when something doesn’t feel right – it's time to change it.  It's not about gifts or cards, it's about slowing down, picking friends and family over chores and spending less time focused on the same old problems.  I have so many unfinished journal entries, blog posts and podcasts and many of them were about how I felt changed.  How I didn’t want to forget the kindness I saw among people, neighbors and strangers.  Now that the shock is wearing off and life is normalizing…it’s time to make good on that. 

* If this post seems vague, it is because it originally contained a litany of specific things and people I was thankful for.  As I have been trying to actually live life more presently and not just talk about it, the draft fell on the back burner because I knew I was leaving things and people off "the list".  Just posting the many thanks here was not the point.

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2011  2010  2009  2008

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Last night I struggled with my end of the year video.  "Struggle" is the wrong word – having reached my creative end probably comes closer.   It's such a goofy, self indulgent little exercise, but I enjoy spending a few hours each December reflecting and summarizing.  Usually I can figure out the "story" and how to tell it pretty easily…  I mean, it's been unfolding all year, right?  But, this year I am stuck.  I've been working on it for days and I'm ready to throw it in the virtual trash bin.   It's an endeavor I do for fun, but I'm not enjoying it, because it speaks to something bigger.  So much has happened over the last 12 months and yet – one day, one effing storm has my whole life feeling as though it's been thrown into a state of limbo – no pictures, no videos, and no words can sum up how ridiculously overwhelming it still feels.

I guess in some way I keep feeling like if I could just aptly portray just one small bit of how it feels, maybe those bits could relax, and the rest of me might follow.

Bob Hardt's NY1 Blog does a better job of explaining some of the subtler aspects of life in Rockaway these days.  It's an odd comfort, but I return to it several times a day.  He wrote this earlier :

"Rockaway Beach has reached a “life during wartime” stasis where things aren’t quite working but they’re not totally broken either. There’s some sort of mass transit service off the peninsula. Some stores are back open for business and there’s sort of a daily workflow on the streets that have been made muddy and dirty by all the sand deposited by the storm."

…

"There are plenty of signs posted everywhere. Signs promising free things to hurricane victims, signs touting demolition and construction, and plenty of signs for businesses that are still boarded up and may never be coming back.

Plunked down on top of all this near the boardwalk on Beach 94th Street is a massive Christmas tree that’s been donated by a Long Island nursery. But – like most things Rockaway – there’s an argument going on about where exactly the tree should be placed. And like most things right now, it’s a little bit beautiful and confusing."

Tuesday 12/11/12, 10:30 a.m., NY1 Political Director Bob Hardt

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The other day I wrote the date as October.  I have done that a bunch of times through November and now into December.  I know it's the 12th month of the year, not the 10th, but part of my brain is still stuck.  It's well into another month, and still I want it to be October, I want to un-lose that month in there.  I realize there is no going back to before this storm, it happened, I just miss so many of the things we had before.  Mainly laundromats, restaurants, and peace of mind…not small things, but some of those things will come back.

Most of all, I miss the A train.  The MTA has offered alternatives.  The three solutions, so far as I've seen -

• The "H" shuttle.  The A train currently terminates at Howard Beach.  There you can get a bus to the beginning of what used to be the A train at Mott Street.  From there, you can board the H train which is running the route along half the peninsula

• Seastreak is running a ferry from 108th street to Wall Street and East 34th

• The Q52 and Q53 buses continue to run from Rockaway to the A train at Rockaway Boulevard.  The MTA has started running the Q52 more regularly than before.

Those are the most objective ways I can state the transit "alternatives".

The realities -

I live in the middle of the peninsula.  So….

• I can take the A train, transfer to a bus at Howard Beach.  Normally home would have been just two stops later.  Two long but lovely stretches across the bay, those are the parts of the A train's tracks that have fallen into the water and are otherwise are out of commission until the Summer (likely the earliest).  The bus doesn't just run the old route of the train, that would be bearable.  Instead it runs directly 7 stops (or across the bay and then over 70 blocks) to the end of the line.  At that point I'd get to re-board the train and back track 6 stops.  This easily adds 45 minutes to well over an hour to my commute
• I can and do take the ferry.  I drive 15 minutes to the dock.  I could take a bus, but I'd have to give myself at least 30 minutes to get the 30 or so blocks there.  I love the ferry.  I get to take a boat to work!  It takes about an hour to get to Wall Street, where I then walk a few blocks to the subway, which takes roughly 20-30 minutes to get within 2 avenues of my office.  If I miss the ferry, I may have to wait over an hour for the next one.
• I can and do take the A train to Rockaway Boulevard.  Walk to an island in the middle of some crappy traffic patterns and board the Q52.  On a good day, I get a seat on the bus that arrives shortly after I do.  But, I have waited in excess of an hour on that cold island in the middle of a junction of what feels like 4 different throughways.  So, it's a crap shoot to say the least.

This is my new reality.  Is your head spinning, are you a little confused?  Welcome to how it feels every morning when I try to figure out which route to take, or every afternoon when it's time to head home.  Where I chose to live in a somewhat remote far flung edge of a borough, I did it because it was only one train, I hate to transfer.  But, life can be about adjusting to what you hate, I'm not going to be all "Wah, I have to transfer".  My house didn't burn down, it could be worse.  On a good day it took me just under and hour to get to work, on a bad day, about an hour and a half.  While I am thankful that the MTA offered up different routes post-Sandy, it is so hard not knowing if my commute will take 1.5 hours or 3.  It is exhausting and keeps me from making any plans after work.  The monotony of going to work and running right home before I turn into a pumpkin gets old, and makes me feel old.  I feel stuck at home and stuck at the office, with no time to just enjoy being unstuck in between.  This is monotony, certainly not the biggest problem in the world.  I work damn hard have a career and live in a city I love, but this…this makes me love it all a lot less.  It feels like the last time I had to commute and I fought like hell to change that situation, to do what it took to fix it.  I put in the time and the effort to change that, but it was freaking hard.  I am just so damned tired, and it may be temporary, but it is draining.  Then I think, I'm lucky I have heat, and so I suck it up and do it all again.  And that is the current setting in which I am stuck.

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Last weekend I got one of my "nesting" impulses.  They started happening a lot after we moved to the suburbs and having a nest large enough to ing in, I wake up inexplicably wanting to paint or shop for curtains on a pretty regular basis.  It felt slightly unfamiliar having been disconnected from all things "home" for weeks and I welcomed the feeling and dreaded it.  It was both comforting and alarming.

The comforting part was that I wanted a Christmas tree.  From the first time I sat in our living room I had the space picked out in my head.  This was going to be the year I would have a "proper tree."  My definition of proper is far from idealistic imaginings involving chopping one down in the countryside or picking the fattest and tallest from a city lot and the pine scent that comes with the season.  In reality, my dream just involved a fake tree taller than me, I'm not fancy.  I have been deathly allergic to trees since I was a kid and after a few years of winding up in the ER around Christmas, my family finally realized real wreaths and trees were the culprit.   But, I never begrudged Christmas, it's the time of the year when everything shitty is magical, right?

Also, since I've lived in very small apartments most of my adult life I never had a Christmas tree over a foot tall, and for much of that time I had no interest in traditional things like that anyway.  But, this year was different.  Over the summer when I realized the winter out here on the beach would be long, cold, and dark, I imagined tricker treaters at Halloween and making some Christmas traditions of our own with great romance and excitement.  Halloween never really happened as Hurricane Sandy landed just a few days before and the Rockaways have been very much a disaster area since.  A few weeks ago my parents were over, and they brought me a bunch of old ornaments that I had either made or were given to me when I was a baby.   Christmas was ON and it was going to be super sentimental and sugar coated, I couldn't wait.

The Sunday after Thanksgiving it was time to get our tree.  I needed Christmas cheer, and damned if I have no idea where we will be this time next year, I wanted a tall artificial pre-lit monstrosity.  No matter what.  So I started calling around and found that our local Walmart still hadn't opened post-storm.  But, there is a mall just across the bridge in a relatively unscathed part of Brooklyn.  So, after much hyping how much we "needed" this and how it would make us feel better, Matt lovingly trekked out with me to take advantage of the post-turkey sales.  He thoughtfully and very cautiously reminded me that seeing as though we might have a lot less space in the future, might I consider a smaller 6ft tree?  No!  I wanted the 7.5 foot tree!  And, then of course I needed a star, so add on another journey to spend a birthday gift card to pick up ornaments, an advent calendar, and more than one star "just in case"… an hour later I was sitting in the back seat of our trusty Corolla, riding bitch to a Christmas tree, buyers remorse started to set in.

I  had done it, I got my big girl Christmas tree.  Even disassembled in it's box, takes up a lot of room.  Where on earth would we store the box, and then the tree after the holidays?  Right now we have a somewhat ridiculous spacious 3 bedroom apartment, but it all feels so temporary.  I had just spent over $100 on yet another thing for our home, that has been feeling less like a home daily for the past month.  It didn't feel very good.  Without digging very deep, I could name family, friends, and a bunch of charities that need that money far more than I should have tossed on a plastic suck on our already high electric bill.  By the time we had fluffed the branches and plugged all the lights in, and gotten some ornaments on it, I resented it. 

I stopped decorating it just about half way through due in part to not having Matt's ornaments and losing interest, it feels more than incomplete.  It offers no comfort, only questions.  So, we have a big apartment in an area cut off by subway service.  We loved it here, but without facilities for laundry, and just about every local resources we need and no longer have…how long can we keep it up knowing that just across the bridge life has all but returned to normal?  With so many kids in the area not having things like homes with heat and walls and basics, why the F do we have a Christmas tree?  This thing that was supposed to bring comfort just leaves me feeling spoiled, decadent, wasteful, and utterly gross.  I never thought that finally getting a holiday tree would feel like this.  Then again, I never thought within a year of moving near a beach, the big one would hit.  So, most days I don't want to even plug it in, if a tree could mock me, ours does.  It brings questions and seems to scream them from the very corner I had picked out for it. 

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Putting all the various links I keep digging back to reference in one place…

The video Matt put together on our first walk around town that makes me cry every time I watch it…

From matthewgunn.com/blog

NYT – A Survey of the Flooding in N.Y.C. After the Hurricane
www.nytimes.com/newsgraphics/2012/1120-sandy/survey-of-the-flooding-in-new-york-after-the-hurricane.html

WNYC Flooding & Flood Zones – How Sandy flooded the NY & NJ coastlines, with storm-surge predictions by hurricane size. Sandy was downgraded from Category 1 before landfall
project.wnyc.org/flooding-sandy-new/index.html

NY1 Blog: NY1's Bob Hardt Reports On Sandy From Rockaway Beach
www.ny1.com/content/politics/ny1_political_itch/171519/ny1-blog–ny1-s-bob-hardt-reports-on-sandy-from-rockaway-beach

MTA Rebuilding the Rockaways after Hurricane Sandy
www.mta.info/nyct/service/TheDamagefromHurricanSandy_11_08_12.htm

NYT – A Much Criticized Pocket of the Rockaways, Built to Survive a Storm
cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/11/19/a-much-criticized-pocket-of-the-rockaways-built-to-survive-a-storm/

Daily News – The Rockaways, on solid ground
www.nydailynews.com/opinion/rockaways-solid-ground-article-1.1209003

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When I was 12, I moved from a town full of canals, which was on the bay and not more than 10 or 15 minutes from the ocean.  We moved to a town in Northwest NJ, with many lakes and less than an hour and a half away from the beach I grew up on.  It was during that time in NJ that I realized I'd always be drawn to water, and missed the sun drenched summers I had come to dread as my body changed and sitting around in a bathing suit became a trial of insecurity.  My escape was wandering down to the lake at night when it was quiet, when I needed to be calmed I found what i needed in the water I refused to swim in during the day. I don't swim in still water unless it is a chlorinated pool, and even that kind of grosses me out.  We all have our quirks.

The first time I visited somewhere truly landlocked was when I went to Prague for a summer study program in college.  It was my first time being a substantial distance from the ocean.  I spent nearly every night down by the Vltava River, once again calmed by a body of water.  At the same time, I had an inexplicable antsiness.  The word "landlocked" qualified the experience, as in "I am in love with this city, but it is landlocked".  I know, I know, it's ridiculous, spoiled and arrogant, but it was always underneath what was very close to unconditional love (in the same category as not being able to find an after hours laundromat or being able to order pizza to go).  As soon as I got back to Boston, I spent the remaining weekends of summer and fall on the harbor islands and visiting the beaches of Maine. 

I visited Las Vegas almost 10 years later and that nagging reticence to embrace a desert city had grown to something more annoying, I couldn't wait for the trip to end and to be home.  Not that I wasn't having fun, I just wanted out of the desert, like right now.  Combined with a phobia of flying, I think some of that fear spilled over and started taking on a life of it's own, however misplaced.  A few months later, when I first visited Denver, combined with the effects of altitude, knowing I was landlocked really chewed on my mind.  I tried not to think of it that way, the word "landlocked" alone conjures up negative feelings.  But, from the moment I got off the plan, I obsessed, fighting off panic and constantly trying to distract from thinking about how far I was from the Pacific or Atlantic.  I know it is ridiculous, and so I tried to keep it at bay (pun unavoidable) and only mention it aloud in offhand ways, and simply planned most trips to places nearer to the coast.  

And so now that I've witnessed what my beloved ocean, bay, and rivers can do first hand, I have to admit I'm not quite at peace with it at the moment.  My magnetism to water feels a little polarized, and I'm not so sure I need the shore anymore.  And, while I sort that out, I'm visiting my boyfriend's family in one of those landlocked places that used to cause me so much anxiety.  Out of habit, my brain keeps doing that thing – only when it goes there, I feel uncertain and a different kind of panic starts to set in.  Right now it is calming just to know how far away from water I am.  Does that mean that by tomorrow it won't feel as though my heart is literally drying out and screaming for humidity?  (Yep, it feels that way sometimes, and I don't even like humidity).  Does this mean more inland places are now in consideration to one day consider home?…I have no idea.  Though I am a little confused about pretty much everything at the moment, it feels good to just to have made peace with the desert.

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