i try to keep the walls from falling down

the title of today's blog is from Tracy Chapman. Beautiful woman. Beautiful song. It is one of those albums (telling stories) that reminds me of a time in my life. a whole time. i listen to this album now, and i am back in charleston, SC. it was the first time that I lived in my own apartment. when i started to work to pay bills to live in this world. it was my first real experience in "the real world".

mind you, i was still in college. i transferred out of chapel hill (perhaps i have a history of being decidedly undecided) to "finish" at the college. big mistake. i was enrolled full time and working two jobs. and loving this man i shouldn't be while crushing on my roommate a bit because he was always around when the other man wasn't.

it was a true situation of me trying to keep the walls from falling down around me. my two jobs paid a buck and some change above minimum wage. basically all of my money went towards rent. luckiy one of my jobs was a coffeeshop, and so I ate their food, drank their coffee. i did homework there. i lived there. i lived off of the 30some dollars i received from tips per week. i would buy a footlong veggie sub from subway and split it between lunch and dinner.

it made me realize, however, that i am a fighter. i made it through. i graduated, and moved up to new jersey only to face harder obstacles. higher rent, a car note, travel money (path, subway, bus...everyday), food, etc etc.

now i'm probably my most stable ever living in nyc. which i find ironic, as it is ont of the most expensive cities in the world.

where am i going with this? well...i'm trying to keep my life together. while i'm stable a bit, financially, i am unstable in relationships. those walls are falling down, down, down.

some of them i have asked to fall apart and away. a week ago i decided what things i wanted to see manifest. i asked for a full ride to graduate school, for a prize for my book, and for people in my life who are harmful to disappear. it's the letting go that breaks up everything that you know. it's why we don't let go. we hold on, thinking we're holding things together, that to let go is to let all the walls fall down.

maybe i need to understand that letting go is keeping the walls from falling down.