class, endless class.

When I arrived back in Tulsa in the fall of two-thousand and eight, after attempting to teach english in South Korea, I was itching to escape. I felt like I was going in reverse, and conjured up numerous ways in my head to get out before it was too late. I had to move out of my lovely old house a few months after returning, and I didn't really have anywhere concrete to go. It was around the holidays; My friend Chris took me in for a few weeks, and I stayed on another friend's couch when she left to visit her boyfriend's family for Christmas. And then, sometime shortly after Christmas, I moved into the house of my late great grandmother. I had my own room, and shower, and also, two jobs. I was baking and working at a coffee shop, two of the most early morning jobs one could come up with. It was a rather unenjoyable combination, leaving me quite exhausted. I began to crave a space of my own, somewhere marked by simplicity and ease, and I found a nice little space in a nice old neighborhood that proved to be just that.

The price tag I thought I could do. The lease was the more uncomfortable option for me to reason through. I would have to stay a year, they said. This means twelve months in a row in the same place. I looked around at the little kitchen with black and white floors, fixing my eyes on the spotty red-orange paint job attempting to cover the walls, and the notion of fleeing...Fled. The lease was a piece of cake to sign, and this over thinker of most everything capable of being thought of didn't have to think much about signing the line at all. In the back of my foggy brain, somewhere, I knew this year in this place, both the concrete former garage floors covered with carpet, and the city known as Tulsa, would be vital for years to come. And so, once again, I summoned my father, his truck and trailer, and made the little space something of an oasis, all my own, and began to feel excitement about the coming year.

The excitement was valid; It was truly a great year. My cup overflowed. And that's what I was leaving behind when I came to this place. A year of growth, confidence, encouragement, companionship...Life was plush.

The thing about places like that is that they change, whether you leave or stay. Friends that added to the wonderful canvas will move, marry, and make changes of their own. I wasn't tempted by the goodness of my year to stay; But rather, I was tempted to believe more in myself, and my ability to find goodness wherever I chose to roam.

So that's what I did. Packing up my little apartment was the first leg of letting go. I put things in boxes, gave stuff away, brought in reinforcement to leave it as clean as could be, and then I cried, after handing over the key. I drove to my new little temporary home in the basement of a house, with boxes piled in the back seat, and I just let the tears fall. I followed the tears with work, and distracted myself with tasks. My walls turned mango madness, and I turned my sights to what was in front of me, which wouldn't be for much longer. All of this gave more weight to my beliefs; My thoughts about life and about what we can do with it became only stronger.

And then I left in a frenzy, jumbled it up with "a run into my future", and plopped myself into the foreign, and got all clammy. Really! Clammy! If I was an animal when I left, I'd maybe have been a zebra...Something confident and valiant, odd and okay with it. Somehow I transformed myself into a clam! Sheepish, anxious, and inadequate. Who is this person I am waking up to in the mornings?! I don't recognize her! AAAaaaaa! What is happening here?

So what I didn't realize is that not everything transfers, like those blasted credits and classes you have to RETAKE when you switch universities. YOU'VE already taken them, with the SAME book. "Sorry," the dean says. "They didn't transfer." "What do you mean they didn't transfer?! I've already learned this stuff." "You learned it somewhere else. Now you have to learn it here."

So that's what I am doing now. I am retaking confidence 101, philosophy, and style, and a great course about relearning the art of solitude. I have managed to fall in love with the white chair in the corner of my room, which is my newly adopted oasis, and today, I wore my yellow tights. I signed up for a wine class that starts in September, so I will be adding a few new lessons too. I am also, frankly teaching myself how to eat again. Luckily the coffee credit transferred seamlessly, as is evidenced by the empty macchiato cup to my right.