08.02.2004 - 5:29 p.m.

It used to be that when the boyfriend was snoring, and would not stop when poked, I could close my eyes and picture the ocean until I fell asleep. (The *SNRRG* part was the gathering water, and the *PAAHH* was the falling wave crests.) Unfortunately I have been to a real beach this week, and it is just not the same sound. It seems I�ll need a new strategy for that one.

The snoring, in addition to the jet lag, the caffeine effect, and not one but two overnight thunderstorms, is why it�s so funny that the first thing my coworker said to me when I showed up at the office today was, �You look well-rested. Good vacation?�

Oh yeah. Did you hear that, crusty eyeballs? You are well-rested. So are you, pounding head. Also, stomache, remember it is three hours later than you think, not actually lunchtime at the moment. Ri-ight.

I have been absent since the 20th because I was in California, mostly in towns of size equal to or less than Viola, population 97, or possibly 98 by now, based on the look of that waitress in the diner. It was in fact a good vacation. I saw the redwoods, I collected volcanic rocks, and I did not kill my mother.

(Actually, I would never kill my mother. And I am making progress at hearing what she means rather than what she would have meant when I was seventeen. But wow, one more day with no way to get out�)

Family vacations have always been hard on me. It is not the family that makes it hard, and I have always enjoyed the places we�ve gone, wildernesses like Canada, Utah, and now Northern California. It is the space. I am a person who, on an average workday, works in a closed office for eight hours, then goes home to an empty apartment for six more, has maybe a conversation with a roommate or the boyfriend, then goes to bed. I like it this way. It leaves room for crafts, and writing, and making choices, and most importantly for hearing the voice in my own thoughts. Existing within a Chevy minivan and single hotel rooms with five other people does not allow this. Choosing a restaurant with five other people does not allow for the honesty or for the efficiency of choosing the one you really want, then going to eat there. Before I moved out, I negotiated all the silences and compromises effortlessly, most likely because I had never conceived of the possibility that I might have my own preferences; I was the expert at finding the happy family medium.

I have no patience for that anymore. I broke down in the bathroom at a Chinese restaurant on the third day, pleading at the mirror to �Leave me alone leavemealoneleavemealone,� and I got through after that by taking every opportunity to savor moments of self--in the bathroom, lagging behind on hikes, on early mornings before the other bodies stirred. I was still sick of them for the last two days. I guess I�m no longer willing to be the one who always gives in, but at the same time, the jockeying for what I want wears me to the bone. I don�t know where to take it from there.

I�d have more to write here if I�d written anything while I was gone; for some reason this was an uncharacteristically dry trip for that kind of stuff. Usually even a two-hour plane ride will generate at least eight journal pages; this time I mostly stared out of the window. In the rental car, I was the navigator, or I worked on a cross stitch, or I stared out of the window. Very odd for me, but then I suppose I have some things piled in my head that aren�t done fertilizing yet, family things and growing-up things and all of that about what it means to be independent in such limited situations. So in addition to seeing lots of cool stuff and eating a lot of perfect roadstand fruit, I got some good thinking done. This is good; it just leaves me unsure how to write about it. I guess this is enough for now.

It is also interesting to note that although it�s been seventeen days since my last update, it was written in a state of sleep deprivation, too. No Dr. Pepper tonight.

-stonebridge

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