Final station

Her happiness is infectious.
She is smiling with her whole body. Her eyes can hardly contain it.
It is beautiful.
She is in love. It's taken its time with her. I've seen the disappointments, the heartbreaks. I've held her hand through hers. She through mine.
Today, she doesn't need any hand holding.
She has found him, she says.
After years of being alone, of being lied to, cheated on, of having chased love that had never wanted to be caught, of so many mistakes... she has found him.
When it's right, she says, smiling, it's easy. It's so easy, she is scared.
I wonder what our decisions, our emotions, our lives do to us. She is scared that there are no problems with this one.
It's too good to be true, she says. She is afraid, what is the catch?
We feel right, she says, then smiles as her phone beeps. I watch her smile widen. It is him.
For the first time, she says, we are on the same page. She is not chasing, doubting. She isn't sitting around wondering where he is, why he hasn't msged, he doesn't make her wait, she says, like she has had to do with all the others. She smiles. He feels the same way for her. She is complete.
I touch wood during the whole conversation.
No chances, I smile.

Here and there

Today, everything has been a little bit better, and a little bit worse.

Today, I have laughed more than I have laughed in a while, and I have been pensive, more than I have had reason to be.

Today, something ran free inside me while another part of me sank further into a dark, safe corner.

Today I was more honest than I have been in a while, while on some level, I lied through my teeth.

Today I felt good about who I was, and at the same time, a sense of self-loathing coursed through me.

Today, I felt beautiful… and at the same time, I felt a thousand years old.

Yeah, today, everything has been a little bit better, and a little bit worse.

The incredible lightness of The Morning After

It's the morning after Issue-Closing.
3 days and nights of non-stop, and by non-stop, I mean in a didn't-have-time-to-pee-for-so-long-that-I-forgot-about-it sort of way.
3 nights of coming home at 2am, falling into bed, and into an uneasy, restless sleep, trying to drown out the noise in a mind that's already making page counts for the next morning, and remembering commas missed, boxes numbered...

So, today, it's the morning after.
I am sitting at the window of my living room, laptop in lap, looking outside at the relentless, beautiful, euphoric rainfall, at the green mini-forest my mother's plants make at the ledge, and then unfortunately at a horrible, ugly building obstructing any further view, ugly or otherwise.

My mind is uncharacteristically restful, not empty of thoughts but not really acknowledging any thoughts... like a car in neutral gear... it's on, it's at work, but it's not really at work.

Comatose. Sigh.

I don't live from day to day.
I live from issue to issue.

Life becomes a 15-day cycle (the cycle changes depending on whether the mental asylum [read magazine office] you're working on puts out a weekly, fortnightly, monthly, and so on). Any plans, any at all, dinners, movies, parties, dates, revolve around the one great event of the month: Issue Closing. Happens for me around the 14/ 15 of each month. A whole new meaning to 'that time of the month'.

When you work for a magazine for a while, severe and almost permanent disorientation sets in. At any given point, I am hopelessly in the wrong month. I've just closed my October issue, so in my head, I am already preparing for November... any questions about birthdays, plans for trips, etc always start and end rather embarrassingly:
Me: Of course, you should have your anniv dinner party outdoors. It'll be nice and cold...
Baffled person: In September? In the rain?
Me: Ah. Hmm.

And so on.

Every issue, around a week from Issue Closing, all the status messages of my various networking sites start to scream sad, dreadful, ominous. 'ULTI' in all caps, is my favourite status message. SO much so, when I didn't put it up for a few issues, people started demand for it to be put up. It became a buzz word. "It's ULTI time of the month" or "Not coming for movie? Oh is it ULTI time?" Quite powerful, this social networking thing.

But the truth is, though I hate the process of it, I love the high it gives me when we send the magazine, kicking and screaming, to press. I may crib and whine and cry foul every time it comes around, but we're on autopilot that time. The office is in a state of hysteria, ideas are yelled and crushed, abuses are hurled at almost all inanimate objects, especially printers, computers, etc (Print. PRINT you dinosaur piece of S***. Of course OPEN, I SAID OPEN. don't hang, don't you DARE HANG ON ME, YOU #@%%#$#). Fun times. We're a creative, loud, opinionated group, with a crazy, insane sense of humour. Our funnest, falling-down-from-laughing-so-hard memories have been products of Issue-Closing.

Of course, in hindsight, everything seems pretty.
It's not. It's probably the incredible lightness of the morning after that's talking.
Issue-Closing is a bitch. :)

It's been two years now at LP. I live in hope that at some point, the issue will learn to close itself.