i can't be who you are.

i just woke up for the last time at my lovely little yellow hillview house. my room is bare except for my (gutted) desk, bed, and computer. some of my landlord's furniture lines the walls-- all empty. i feel like every keyboard stroke shatters against the bare blue paint, echoes glaringly off the gold curtains (now limp and pulled taut across the windows), and weighs heavily on the floorboards that creak with my last footsteps across the knots and separating planks.

i won't lie-- i'll miss pieces of you. but for the pieces i won't, i've boxed up our memories, sealed them tightly in a circular, green box and left them for you in the corner. parcel them out yourself.

be warned: you'll find cobwebs of wide smiles, dusty lint that whispers late night conversations stuck on repeat, and many, many pictures of regret.

goodbye, you bastard. may you reign here as unhappy as you were when i first shook your hand and fell for the mask they all still ignorantly accept.

i suddenly understand:

i heard a line somewhere (perhaps read a line somewhere) that's something like this: "at the precipice edge we stand alone." sounds pretty dark, right?

but that's where i am right now.

in many aspects of my life, i've reached the end:

-the end of my student days at boise state
-the end of my masters degree
-the end of my conversations with fellow TAs about the meta-meta-metaness of rhet/comp theory
-the end of my teaching faithful yet heartless 101 students
-the end of my cohabitation with a guy i used to really admire and who seemed to emulate all those wonderful bookish-writerly things that i never was
-the end of living with roommates.ever. (husbands don't count)
-the end of purchasing spendy (and now very mainstream) ed hardy items online, since i now have a rent payment/utils to pay for SOLO
-the end of vacillating freely in the far-off notion that someday i'll have to make a decision

because i've reached the edge of the precipice. and i am alone. i won't have my student peers to remind me of how english studies dumb i am, or students to email me frantically in the middle of the night so that the first thing i do in the morning is check my "teacher" email, or loudly thunking footsteps outside my door in the AM.

i wish i could describe the view from here, but i'm afraid of opening my eyes. i wish i could dance and sashay my hips a little to celebrate that i've made it. i'm here. i've arrived.

just please tell me it's not a dead end. i don't have wings to fly. and i don't have the guts to jump.

personal essaying

last night, i sat down and wrote a segmented personal essay. it gets better: not just any personal essay, but a personal essay that i assigned for my students. i sat down in my cozy, welcoming office (*sudden outburst of hysterical laughter distracts writer*) and looked over my own assignment sheet for unit one.

i asked my students to explore the question, "why write?" which framed my entire 101 semester. we brainstormed some reasons in class, and the activities we did responded to their ideas. but it was my turn to share why i write with my students, and i referred to a list of brainstorming questions i gave them almost 10 weeks ago.

not only did i stare at the blank screen for longer than expected, but i found myself bullshitting my own assignment. "ha, i write because i have to. neener." "i write because i'm emo." oh man, is this what happened for my students too? and why did i feel the need to mock an activity that i use to define myself-- my interests-- my goals in life?

perhaps i was uncomfortable admitting to my students how seriously i really do enjoy writing. it's not a choice for me. i write because i am a shriveled up, cranky, apathetic mess without it. how could i possibly share that with them? i'd seem like a freak. (who wears ed hardy shoes. i just have to add that because i'm staring at my pink shoes with a bright koi fish staring back at me. loves.)

but i am a freak.

aren't you too? don't you write because you have something to say? and not just anything: but something you deem important enough to set pen to paper (or-- who am i kidding-- finger to keyboard)? writing is selfish; writing is self-centered; writing is--

self.