The Religous Experience

I went to church last night. I sat there, trying to enjoy the huge, silent cathedral in the heart of Manhattan, but my mind was racing. It was then I realized I don’t do this enough. I don’t sit alone in the quiet, because sometime in the past two years quiet has become uncomfortable. The noise is deafening outside the church, and the glare of Rockefeller center, the women in the Coach store buying expensive purses with their iPods blaring.
This is the atmosphere I am accustomed to now — the constant clambering, pounding, screeching.

My roommate, who is very religious, asked me if I had gone to church yet when I told her about the big interview. I explained that it felt strange to be asking for something after I had spent so much time away, so much time avoiding the silence. She encouraged me, and I wanted to go – in the past I have gone in for mass, or to light a candle, or just to sit for a few minutes before returning to the noise.

But a conversation with a close friend this weekend put the idea back in my head, as I counted up the times I have been to church, or even stopped to take a deep breath and say thank you for the life I am living, which, right now, feels like the one I have always asked for.

Of course religion for me, like it does for many people, brings feelings of guilt along with any feelings of relief it provides. I remember going to mass once or twice when I was a kid, (we were Holiday Catholics to the extreme) and never knew the reason why I was not permitted to go up to the front of the church and receive communion. Maybe I wasn’t old enough, maybe I wasn’t (fill in the blank) enough, but we never went to mass frequently so it wasn’t something I felt I needed to ask my mother about. It was only when I was an adult that I finally put all the pieces together.

I knew I wasn’t baptized as my brother and sister had been. I just assumed my mother, a single parent, had stopped going to church over the years, and didn’t think it important to go through this ceremony with me. Through pieces of conversations when I was younger, I learned my brother and sister (10 and 8 years older) were adopted and my mother divorced her high school sweetheart when they were little. It was not until I was a young teenager as my mother tucked me into bed that I said something about her being married twice. She looked away, the Catholic guilt stained her face. She corrected me, saying she was only married once, kissed my forehead gently and walked out of the room.

I lay awake for hours trying to piece her history, and mine, together in my head.

Now that I am older, these conversations with my mother are more clear and linear. I am still afraid to some extent to ask big questions, but she is no longer so hesitant in giving me the answers.

His name, my father, was Stanley Harris. He was a working-class man, an elevator operator. My mother was alone, with two small children when they met. They were together, although my mother perhaps knew she would never love him the way she was supposed to love a man. He was a comfortable place for her to fall, although he was little support when she really needed him. After I was born, they arranged to get married, picked out a suit for my brother, and a flower girl dress for my sister. Her side of the story, the only side I have ever known, says that he was never fully reliable. Always wanting to come and go as he pleased, and never committing to the idea of marriage, or being a father.

So one day, when I was five or so, she told him to leave and never come back. And he never did.

I have told very few people that my parents were never married. I have dealt with it in my own way, but it will never stop being my little secret, I suppose.

So I let the silence engulf me last night. I sat and observed the other visitors, all better Catholics, better people perhaps, than I. I sat in the pew for a half-hour before my head calmed, and I could pray. I asked God for the strength to wait for an answer from the AP. I asked for the result I wanted. I asked for patience. I asked Him to show me the right way to pray. I asked for forgiveness for not being a better Catholic. I lit a candle.

So now my world is spinning again. But I am calmer. The calm is, however, peppered with questions. And I guess, to some extent, those will never stop.

The Fire

In an attempt at clarifying my last post: The truth is I didn't run out of ideas. I just had so many ideas, so many things happening to me, all at once, at what seemed like warp speed, I couldn't even stop to take a breath let alone sit, contemplate, and write about it.

I am still in the job that I don't want in the city that I do, but since I last put hand to keyboard I have been promoted, and taken on so many new responsibilities I can't always remember what happened 20 minutes ago, or where I left my keys so I can go home to sleep for a few precious hours before having to return to the deadline that never seemed to end.

I was flattered by the promotion, and so far I have taken it extremely seriously - working 90-hour weeks and trying to make as many changes as I have the power to. But this magazine, this office, was turning long before I stepped onto the stage. I know for sure that I didn't start this fire, but in the effort to satisfy some personal goal to be a success at this, I have started to put out the flames with my bare hands, which is simply exhausting.

Of course all deadlines end eventually, and my first ended almost as uneventfully as the others. I am avoiding the calls from co-workers, even though they are some of closest friends, because I know that inadvertently the conversation may drift back to talk of "The Office," and my shoulders tense up and begin to tingle with pain. I will see them at work and apologize for not returning their calls next week, I think to myself. Just a few more hours to enjoy the quiet.

But the quiet does not hold me for long, because my brain is racing about tomorrow. Tomorrow. Tomorrow. Tomorrow.

In the heart of last week's deadline, I took a short lunch break with a co-worker. We had made a rule that there would be no talk of the office during this much-needed venture outside those four walls, which left us with absolutely nothing to say. We sat, quietly, until my cell phone rang. My shoulders once again began to tense. It's my editor, I thought, there is something she needs, something I haven't done....why can't I even get out for 20 f-ing minutes without a call from that b---

But it wasn't a number I recognized. I picked up. A woman began to speak. She was from Human Resources at The Associated Press, looking to schedule an interview. I got a cramp in my stomach. I made the appointment, trying to remain as calm as I could possibly be after receiving the call I had been waiting for for two years. The call I was beginning to admit, that I thought would never come.

So as I sit here, on a lazy Sunday afternoon, my shoulders are tense again. Not because of deadlines, or angry bosses, or added responsibility. But because my future is going to be decided tomorrow morning, at 11 a.m., when I walk into the offices of The AP.

Sure, if I don't get the job, other things will come along. But for some reason, this time, this interview is different. The stakes are higher, much higher, and I just hope that it's my time to jump out of the fire.

Pondering My Starbucks Cup

I have officially run out original ideas.
So here are someone else's words that I found in the last place I would of thought to look: the side of my morning coffee cup.
They will have to do until I can think of something creative on my own.

"My father said being an artist was the shortest road to the poorhouse, claiming 'real' work is something you don't like. I ignored him through oppositional behavior, later reasoning that only an idiot sets out to find the poorhouse, not to mention devote himself to something he doesn't love. Instead, I discovered an interesting back road to the unknown, and deliberately without a safety net." -Russell Chatham

So There!

I, like may people, have a fair share of bad habits. One of the biggies is my competitive nature. In fact I nearly killed myself the other day at the gym when I saw a girl on the rowing machine, pulling splits close to what were my best in college.
So after she completed her thirty minute workout, putting me to shame with her perfect complexion glistening with sweat and thighs that could likely crush walnuts, it was my turn.

I drove my legs with more determination than I had in months. I was determined to show her up, concentrating on the big display that showed I was actually beating her splits. I pushed and pushed to beat her.

It was the best four minutes of my entire week.

The Sob Story

I miss being in a relationship. Save a couple “you know it’s going to end before it begins” types of short-lived mistakes, I have not been in a relationship for over two years. And with all the cheating and lying that were woven in to the seven years before that, well, it feels like I have very few points on that hypothetical scoreboard.
The problem is that the longer I go without it, the less I think I deserve it. Or can get it again. I am not necessarily lonely; although the irony of living in a city of eight million is that it can be, in fact, a very lonely place.
I bump into people, get shoved, and touch people all day long. On the subway, on the street, in line for lunch. But it feels as if someone is playing a cruel joke, because I haven't had the kind of touch I need or want in a long time, and I have no idea when it's coming.
Some friends make me the butt of some harmless teasing, but it ends up by not being so harmless. I freeze up with a dare to go talk to that tall, cute guy across the bar. And he is not coming over to talk to me. And then I think that I am not going to meet someone I have anything in common with in a bar anyway, so the next time my friends invite me I don't bother to go. And then I feel bad about myself and just want to stay in all the time.
I am doing better now: working out helps; friends on the weekends seem to lift my spirits-but nothing can fill that void.
I miss being in a relationship. I miss someone loving me not because they have to, but because they choose to. I miss bouncing big ideas off another person that I can completely trust.
Perhaps I'm idealizing "The Relationship"- I know I am, but I want to feel that again and I just don't know what to do to get it.

The Not-So-Simple Wish

Ever have something happen at the exact time you needed it to? A raise when you needed money, a new love when you felt alone, a new job when you felt you couldn’t go on another day at the one you have?

I need that to happen now.

I can feel that I am on the cusp of a major change in my life, and I am hoping it is for the better. I have been applying to jobs in New York, Connecticut, New Jersey – in a nutshell, anything that was train accessible and had the word ‘newspaper’ somewhere in the ad – for one year and three months.

One year and three months seems like forever, although I know its not. I know that the likelihood I will have to work harder, work longer, sell myself better, is extremely great. I know the city can swallow people alive, and yet it has left me whole. I have made it through the growing pains, and the horrible breakup and the doubters that told me I would never make it. I have made it, and made a life for myself here. It’s just that this last step feels so insurmountable. The puzzle is only missing one piece, but it’s a big one – and its jammed between the sofa cushions, and – well, you get the idea.

I came to New York to be the next Carrie Bradshaw and now I want to be the next Bob Woodward. Funny where life takes you. I came looking for a career that would make me the talk at high school reunions, even though I would never go to one. I came looking for the glamour, and now I just want to get back into the khakis again with the notebook in my back pocket, pen on my ear and camera in my hand.

I applied for another one today: Special Sections Editor at amNewYork, a free commuter daily owned by Newsday.

Here’s hoping.

UNME4EVR

I have a very simple rule about my future: No man I will ever marry spells the word "you" with the letter "u."

Text message or not, it's just creepy.

(And yes, I am aware that if there were a land called Anal Retentiva, I would be their Queen.)