A Year In Between

It’s usually a bad idea to listen to the Sea Change album by Beck in the middle of the evening. It’s usually reserved for late night, post-breakup, crying jags. But I just downloaded it again and pushed play without thinking. I promise you all that I’m not really the negative Nancy type.

This blog is about what I’m doing, and since I’m not doing anything at the moment, I’m going to make it about how I’m feeling for just this one post. This might be the post you want to skip. I understand that. Skip away. I’m just going to take a moment to talk about that space in between the end of the relationship and the moment when it’s really over or when it comes back together.

A huge part of my year in between is influenced by the fact that me and my boyfriend just took a trip to splitsville and it doesn’t look like we’re ever going to make it back. A huge part of me wants to give it another go. But another part of me is okay with the fact that it probably won’t happen.

I’ve got a trip planned to head back to Fayetteville for a few short days, and those days will be telling to say the least. They will be life changing, at any rate. Either we work it out, and I head back to Arkansas and make that my home base once again, or we don’t. In which case, I’ll probably jet around the world and back in an attempt to clear my mind and start moving forward. It’s going to be a tough one to get over. I say that because I feel it more every day.

Fortunately for me, this isn’t my first rodeo. I’m armed with Beck, Bon Iver, Eliot Smith, Ray Lemontagne, Fiona Apple, and a strategically planned trip to Panama. I’ll be headed out two days after I get back from seeing him. If our relationship doesn’t work out, I’ll be off to a tropical environment filled with sunshine, cheap beer, five dollar manicures, creative tattoo artists and free pancake breakfasts. It sounds like a place of new beginnings.

If it does work out, I’ll tie up my loose ends, find an apartment and head back down. Either way, this is the way I look at it: I’m going to be in love again. It will inevitably happen. But this period of not being able to detach or reattach; it’s the most gut clinging, soul spitting, esophagus burning feeling. I just want it to be over. I want it to be over now.

Unlike Beck, Bon Iver or Fiona Apple, this isn’t necessarily the best creative jumping point for me. I’m just a sad sack with a shrunken vocabulary and wounded ego. This purgatory is so much worse than any kind of hell. If I were in hell, I could adjust and get used to the heat. But I’m hanging here in the balance, knowing that a change is coming. Waiting. Waiting. Hanging. Wondering. Waiting.

At any rate, it will be over soon in the scheme of grand things, and I will know what will become of this mess. Until then, I’m beginning my year in between in the place in between. Perhaps it’s fitting. I’ll let you know at the end of the year.

-Corinne