Verklempt

Let's blame it on February. Every one I know has winter ants in their pants. We're sleepy. We bake muffins* like fiends. We fling our socks in a rage from our 4 am hot feet. We are sick of snow, tired of shoulders tight from hunching against the wind. We hate our skin and winter insulation. We have cabin fever and we are sorry for our sorry selves.

It's been a weird few days for me.

See, the fact of a pretty clean breakup coupled with a couple months of some some hard-on misery did not, as it turns out, do me too much harm. In fact, just lately, I have been experiencing an odd feeling. Took me a while to place it, but then today, trudging up bank street to yoga, the freezing rain already soaked through my puffy, my back sore from shovelling, I felt it again, this time, this time with a word on its surface: contentment. It's lasted since then.

A corner behind me. I'm not saying I'm better or that I'm not still sad. But I am deeply contented with my life as it is and as it will unfold, however that looks. It's actually even a little exciting to think about who I might get to know, who I might next kiss, where I can take my life. And that's alright.

Here's where it gets weirder: you mix one part grand irritation with two parts sighing contentment with one other part re-emerging father issues and what you get is someone who can barely restrain her sobs at the Nina Nastasia show last night and definitely can't control the tears.

Some people cry during movies, I cry during songs.

Jennifer and I were both just exhausted, mid-winter not-enough-booze late-show tired. I was loving NN's show, but with the tired and the worry over poor Freya (who I'd forgotten to feed before leaving the house, fuck. me.), I knew I didn't have a whole show in me. Six or so songs in, I figured she wasn't going to play the one song I was kind of desperate to hear before I got my guilty and did I mention tired ass on a bus home. I leaned over to J. and said, "One more song?" She nodded.

And then the opening chords of "In The Evening". I leaned over again, grabbed J's arm tight, just above the elbow.

"This is the song I wanted to hear. I am going to cry now."

Truth is, I'd already been crying. Two songs earlier, the lines

I always dreamt of the day I would bury you/ I never thought on the day I'd stop hating you. // On an altar, you look smaller

made my eyes ache and blink, blink and ache.

So when my favourite of her lines came up - the words I moved into this house alone/ My jacket like an awning/ Oh, and it was hailing melancholy soaring over the optimistic driving chords and beat - my breath hitched up and I pulled my shoulder blades in like tight armour to keep from curling up on the floor and sobbing. In relief, possibly, though I'm not sure.

Aie, snow, rain, cold, dark. A visceral sense of well-being. Breakups, my lost father.** February.



*I'm going to lose big useability marks on this, because that link does not take you to a post that talks about muffins. But Andrea likes muffins, and may write about them again sometime soon. In fact she might, like Jennifer, have a muffin-hole.
**Right, in the euphemistic sense. It's not like he took the wrong turn at Albuquerque or I put him on a shelf and promptly forgot that fact when I shut the cupboard door. I still even have his address and phone number. Though I haven't talked to him since Christmas, so it is possible he's moved.