enough

It's incredible, to see where I am, compared to where I was a year ago. From rock bottom, I've managed to pull myself to a fairly decent place. Not without loads of help, of which I am very appreciative. I'm proud of myself for getting better at wanting to get better. It's been a rough year, but I think I'm in a pretty good place right now.

Which isn't to say things are perfect. My mood has been volatile again lately. Everything in my life seems very uncertain at the moment, and the lack of stability is both exciting and terrifying. I found out today my seasonal job ends in a week, and I'm not quite sure what I'm going to do with myself when 1) my income source is gone, 2) I'm not working 6-7 days a week, and 3) no longer have an excuse for neglecting myself, along with my relationships, among other things. For a number of reasons, I can't wait for this job to end, but ultimately, I will miss it. Rather, I will miss a lot of the great people I had the privilege of meeting. I miss a lot of people all the time, including ones I stay in touch with, and I have a really hard time with more permanent goodbyes.

Mostly, I'm trying to be positive about my job ending. I'm feeling relatively optimistic about finding another job, and in the mean time, I have interning to keep me busy. I turned down a second internship recently, just because I don't have the time for it, and I felt it would just make me more stressed and more exhausted.

Exhaustion has been a problem for me lately. I work 32-40 hours a week at my job and 14-16 hours a week at interning. Yet, I welcome it. It's a great distraction, and helps me think less, feel less. I work, eat (sometimes), sleep. I don't have much time for friends or family. I stayed in New York over Thanksgiving and my birthday this year, and nearly decided to stay here for Christmas. It was just easier. For New Year's Eve, instead of going to any of the parties I was invited to, I plan on staying in and going to sleep early, and I don't mind it. I guess I'm kind of a workaholic. I've always liked to keep busy with things I enjoy, and it's gotten harder and harder for me to find things to take joy in.

Keeping busy helps me ignore the fact that I constantly feel like something(s) is missing in my life. I know I have more close friends, more people I can wholly trust, than most people do, and for that I really am grateful. But at the same time, I find myself feeling lonely and extremely vulnerable to any kind of attention, and that's dangerous. My sense of self-worth is still mostly nonexistent, which has led to me making some serious mistakes in the past year. I've gotten pretty good at treating these mistakes as life lessons, and haven't beaten myself up over them too much, and that's been hard for me.

And now my self-consciousness and fear of an unhealthy level of narcissism is kicking in and so I'm stopping.

a city of miracles

The city itself was built upon water by celestial decree. It was a miracle, in itself, to build upon the sea. Thus it became a city of miracles. Everywhere in the Venetian chronicles there is a great and shining image of the city. Venice became part of the history of human redemption...Venice was idealised beyond any recalcitrant historical fact or inglorious episode.


Yet the real origins of Venice, scattered or random as they are, vouchsafe a great truth about the city. They convey certain characteristics, or certain qualities, to the nature of life there. Every organic thing wishes to give form and expression to its own nature; and so, by obscure presentiment and by the steady aggregate of communal desires, Venice took shape. The statue is latent in the marble...There was a constant preoccupation, among all sections of the community, with stability and continuity. Where are those qualities more necessary than in a place shifting and uncertain? A city created by exiles became, over the centuries, a home for many and various refugees...By the tenth century it was already known as "la civitas Rivoalti," civitas implying a citizen state.


The great and enduring fact, however, was the fight against the sea. Out of this arose the need for common purpose and community of effort. There was no antagonism between the individual and the collective or, rather, the Venetian individual through the centuries subsumed himself or herself within the organism as a whole. It is an organism that, like the human organism, can be seen as a unity. It obeys its own laws of growth and change. It has an internal dynamism. It is more than the sum of its parts. Each aspect of Venetian culture and society reflects the whole.

Venice: Pure City by Peter Ackroyd

In short, this is everything I miss about this city. I would go back in a heartbeat. I've been missing it, and my friends and professors from there, a lot lately. My time there was so rejuvenating, so revelatory, that I think my longing for the city will never quite go away, even though I know I can never recreate my previous experience there. I wouldn't want to recreate it, though. I think Venice would reveal a new kind of magic with each visit, and I can't wait for the day I go back.

For the briefest of moments, December '11 was looking nearly as bleak as December '10. But thanks to some amazing coworkers and friends, things are looking up again, and I'm handling negative situations in a far more positive way than I perhaps thought possible. I'm taking responsibility for my mistakes but still standing up for my right to be treated like a decent human and I think these are good things.

And I still like my life.

For once, November wasn't totally awful.
So much has changed in the past year, and for the better.
I like my life.