September 11, 2009

On 9/11

I was in my sophomore year of undergrad at St. Bonaventure. I had just gotten out of Latin and Greek Etymology class, which ended at 9:15 a.m. I reached the student center by 9:20 a.m. and walked towards the cafeteria.

That’s when I saw everyone. Dozens and dozens of students standing, sitting, all crowded around the TVs. It was completely silent. I stopped and joined them and watched. And that’s when I found out what had happened.

I tore myself away to head back to our apartment, where my roommates and I spent the remainder of the day watching the news and trying to call our former roommate and friend, Dena, who was attending NYU at the time.

We couldn’t reach her, of course. There was no signal. We finally got a hold of her the next day and were so relieved to hear she was safe.

She told us that piles of ashes had collected on the inside of her open windows in her apartment in Brooklyn. She was devastated. She loves that city more than anything in the world.

I know she has a hard time with the memories of that day, so I always try to tell her I’m thinking of her and love her, especially today.

Originally, I spent most of my time trying to convince her to leave New York and move to Erie, but she won’t ever leave the city. (And for some reason she thinks everyone in Pennsylvania is inbred, but that’s an entirely different story.)

Anyways.

If anything, I think the events of that day solidified her love of the city and its people even more. She was a part of that unified force that vowed to not be beaten. That vowed to rebuild and be better than before. That refused to be afraid to continue on with their daily lives.

I admired her for her courage to stay and persevere. I still do.

August 25, 2009

Story

I am sixteen and hanging out with three of my girlfriends. It is Friday night, around 11 p.m. I have my dad’s car, and we are bored with nothing to do. We want to go somewhere, do something fun, have an adventure.

But we live in Erie. And the most exciting thing a sixteen year old can do is go to Wal-Mart, and hang around in the parking lot. Which is where we are.

“Let’s go somewhere fun. Let’s go to Cleveland!” someone said.

And so it was decided. Road trip to Cleveland. We’d stop at Wegmans and get candy and snacks first. Then we’d take the back roads to Cleveland and stop any place that seemed like it might be fun along the way.

I needed to stop at home for something first. What is was, I can’t remember now. I do remember we stopped to steal a blinking street sign on the way to my parents’ house. It barely fit in the car with us and we couldn’t figure out how to make it stop blinking, finally covering it up with a jacket so no one we passed could see.

I grabbed what I needed from my house and we left the street sign in the garage. Then we stopped at Wegmans and loaded up on bulk candy. As we brought it up to the scale, I instructed the girls to hold the candy up as they keyed in the number so it wouldn’t weigh as much.

After the third or fourth bag a voice came over the loud speaker in the nearly empty store. “GIRLS! PUT DOWN THE CANDY AND WEIGH IT PROPERLY. I CAN SEE YOU!”

“It’s God!” I said. And we giggled.

We re-weighed the candy and printed our price tags. I still remember the manager coming over and watching us at the checkout line, glaring the whole time. I remember not caring. We were having fun.

By the time we left Wegmans it was after 1 a.m. We took the back roads and were disappointed to learn there was absolutely nothing that looked interesting along the way. Even if there had been, it was 1 a.m. It would have been closed.

On the way down we talked about all the things we’d do in Cleveland. We’d find a cheap motel, and the next day we’d get up early and maybe head over to the Rock N’ Roll Hall of Fame.

We talked about work. We talked about boys. We talked about our upcoming senior year. We laughed a lot. We took turns writing down various accounts from the trip in a notebook my best friend still has somewhere.

We got to Cleveland around 3 a.m. and the fire was starting to burn out. Now what? Where would we stay? We had no directions, no GPS, no map, no clue. We just figured we’d find something somehow.

And we did. We drove around for what seemed like forever, and ended up in the ghetto, somewhere off Euclid Ave., where we finally found a hideously disgusting motel with hourly rates.

“Hi. We want a room,” I said to the night manager.

“Are you girls all 18?” He asked, not even looking at us.

“Yes,” I replied.

“Fine,” he said. “It’s gonna be $35 for the night. Here’s your key.” And he pointed toward the direction of our room.

We paid and headed towards the room, giggly again, having gotten away with something. Which apparently wasn’t much, we found out, once we got into the room.

It was a small, dark room, with a worn, sticky shag carpet. There was a large, crooked TV that only got two channels, both of which were hardcore porn channels. (I know – lucky, right?)

The bedspreads on the two beds had so many mysterious stains we peeled them off immediately and refused to even sit on them. There were blood spatters on the curtains. There were huge spiders in the bathroom.

We thought all of it was hilarious and we continued taking turns writing in the notebook all of the gory details on the motel room. We laughed and talked till the morning, slept a couple of hours and then decided we’d had enough of that place.

We scratched the idea of the Rock N’ Roll Hall of fame. We were tired and ready to head home. We stopped in Geneva-the-Lake for lunch on the way home and my brick-sized cell phone rang.

“Hello?”

“Katie? It’s mom. Why is there a blinking sign in my garage?”

“Uh.. Oh. We forgot to put that back.”

“Yeah, put it back. It’s illegal to steal those. Where are you?”

“Geneva-on-the-Lake. We’re coming home soon.”

“Ok, whatever. Put that sign back when you get home.”

Oops.

We finally made it home and dropped everyone off at their houses. I headed home with my best girlfriend, Colleen, and we talked about how much trouble she’d get in if her mom found out we’d gone to Cleveland the night before. Her parents were a lot stricter than mine and she’d told her mom she spent the night at my house.

When we finally ran into her later that day, she asked us what we did the night before.

“Oh, drove to Cleveland and stayed in a seedy motel room,” I said.

Colleen looked nervous.

“Haha Katie Fish. You’re sooo funny,” her mom said, rolling her eyes, and walking away.

Colleen might or might not have punched me after she was out of sight.

I can’t really remember.

July 29, 2009

Who Says ‘What If’s’ Aren’t Productive?

After ending my four-year relationship, one constant, nagging thought I can’t seem to escape has been coming up over and over and over. Especially lately.

It is this:

I gave up what everyone else has to be alone.

Yes, I gave up the fighting. I gave up a LOT of fighting.

I gave up his drinking problem, including all the lying, hidden liquor bottles, and failed attempts at rehab that came with it.

Gone are the accusations and name calling. Gone are the ultimatums and control and the constantly walking on eggshells.

Other bad things are gone, too, of course, but those were the main things I wanted to say goodbye to. The main reasons I left.

And now? Now I wonder.

What if I’m looking for a perfection that doesn’t exist? I mean – everyone fights. Everyone has flaws. I’m full of them. TONS of people have drug and alcohol addictions and chemical imbalances. Seriously, half the people I know that are dating or married practically hate each other.

Maybe what I had was normal. Maybe I gave up something that’s as commonplace as air for something I hoped would be better – but maybe I was wrong.

Let me back up. I gave up the bad things – but there were good things, too. A lot of good things. (Duh.) Things that were so good they often made me cancel out the bad things and allow him a clean slate. He was generous, loving, protective. He was smart. He finished school. He had a great job, was independent and self-sufficient.

But most importantly, he loved me. He asked me to move to Maryland with him, and said he wanted to build a future with me.

And I said no. I didn’t want to move. In fact, I didn’t even want to date him anymore. I’d had enough.

But I could have. I could have been doing what everyone else is doing. Or most people. Getting by in a relationship that is, at times, so amazing and fulfilling and, at times, disastrous and dysfunctional. With someone who is both everything and nothing I want.

Instead, I’m alone. (Cue sad music…) And wondering if maybe I was expecting too much. Wondering if what I want is too idealistic to even be possible. Maybe what I had was as good as it gets for anyone and I threw it away because it wasn’t good enough for me. Maybe it should have been. People do that right? Settle? I could have done that.

I could have learned to white knuckle it.

Maybe.