terminating

Sarah and I have been talking termination lately. A somewhat silly, overblown word for a natural, if somewhat scary, process. We've decided on January.

Back in April, after having spent a year on anti-depressants and two months going off of them, I was trying to figure out what my real self felt like. And I found myself whining to Sarah, one afternoon, about wanting to be back on the Prozac, or on some other (any other) drug, if only to not be the type of person who cries so damned much. And she kind of looked at me funny and said something about there being so very many different ways of crying.

I have always been someone whose emotions hover pretty close to the surface. Sometimes this is good and sometimes this is bad, but part of what I've learned over these last few years of working with Sarah is that, in the end, it is what it is.

I am a person who cries a lot. I cry from sadness and I sob with glee and I tear up over being confronted with things as simple and as beautiful as a spectacularly blue sky just before dusk, forming a window to the heavens, framed by concrete and glass and metal in these urban Manhattan oases.

This is by all means embarrassing, and sometimes even mortifying, but it isn't going to change any time soon, and I'm realizing that I wouldn't really even want to change it anymore, even if I could. I like this emotionality in me, when it's not bogging me down in frustration or anger, or drowning me in sorrow, and I find I'm kind of running out of things to say to Sarah. Though the quiet, too, is comfortable in its way, it's getting on towards being time to say good bye.

These are some of the things that, in the last few days, have gotten me at least a little bit teary-eyed:

Listening to Colin Powell's endorsement of Obama (specifically from 4:27 to the end).

A row of trees at the NYS Sheep & Wool Festival.

Staring out at the Hudson River and listening to this horribly cheesy pop song while coming back to the city on the train this morning.

The closing credits music from The Wire.