This blog is on hiatus until its writer returns.

See you in 2012.

Best,
Andrea

Amber and I cleaned out the bottom half of our built in buffet. So, that counts as moving, right?
Here’s the question I ask myself at night before I fall asleep:
How does so much shit accumulate in one year?
And then it spirals….
1. How did I donate at least five garbage bags full of clothes and still have no place to put my clothes? I wear the same five things…all the time.
2. Why do I have a pamphlet on healthy choices for food of Jon’s from 2010?
3. How many of Molly’s fans do I use to keep cool at night?
4. Does Dave want his vitamins back?
5. How have I kept this yellow magnet that Elizabeth and I found on her bunk freshman year?
6. Does anyone want their stuff back?

Moving is gross on two levels:
1. Everything, and I really do mean everything, is covered in dust.
2. I realize that I’ve lived in and around my friends shit for so long that I can’t separate it from my own.

And maybe that’s beautiful or something.
Phone tag. You’re it.
Andrea

I’m sure you noticed from my nasally voicemail that last night wasn’t the easiest in recent memory. I somehow made myself believe that facing another good bye would be easy. And while the “good-bye (for now)” I said to Sarah certainly wasn’t the hardest one I’ve had to say this year, it still stung. Her leaving signified the beginning of a transition that has been gnawing at me for months: Boulder Court, for me, is ending in a large way. My friends that I lived there with for two years are moving on and so am I. Krissy and I move into our place in North East in a little over a week. Amber and I have to pack and clean up another year in Minneapolis. It’s no secret that I hate to move. Krissy always reminds me that it is, “one day out of a whole year.” But that one day, for me, has been ELEVEN times since I moved to college.

I move into my place in NE knowing that it will probably be one of the last apartments I live in in Minneapolis. My heart breaks to leave the Seward neighborhood…to leave behind the homey smell of sewage in Tracy’s and the free sodas from Luce. Comfort comes in the way of a new routine, experiencing a new neighborhood in a city that has come to feel like more of a small town. I’m going to have a lawn and a porch and a backyard and a neighborhood that isn’t filled with the sounds of bar goers and fire trucks. I’m moving away from the student I used to be and the places that shaped a life I’ll always place on pedestal even though it was complete madness most of the time.

Here’s to a new Minneapolis order. And to you being a part of that.
Welcome home.
Andrea

I’m sublime with relaxation right now and it must be that I get to see you soon or that my midol started working.

Maybe both.

xo
Andrea

I’m exhausted. I’ve been making jokes at work about letting Them “take it from the other arm” (cliche, I KNOW). But, after a conference in Chicago and helping facilitate final research presentations and lunches on top of recruiting for Fulbright, finding an apartment, and planning a vacation with my mom, I’m feeling the weight of the question I ask myself almost everyday: am I qualified for all of This?

Not long ago, I couldn’t tell the difference between what piece of mail was important and what wasn’t. I let junk mail, bank statements and bills pile up in large, dusty piles. But tonight, when I got home from work and cleaned my room, there was only one real piece of mail for me to keep out of a large stack and the rest I put in a “shred” pile to be taken into work and shredded. And now I’ll stretch that metaphor as far as I can and say that, in the past year, if I’ve learned anything, it’s to learn to separate what’s important and what’s not. To let go the super stupid shit and move on…

When I started my job, I joked with my dad that I was over worked and under paid–he laughed and said that I was starting to sound like every teacher he had ever met. I was offended then…I wasn’t a teacher! But, I take pride it in now. My exhaustion, one that I feel deep in my throat and brain, stems from the fact that I have another marathon of a year settling itself in front of me. But, if I live by my own rules, ones that I’ve worked hard to understand, I’ll see that it really doesn’t matter that I’ll be moving out of Boulder Court, that I’ll be shedding my “only one year out of school rule” in exchange for two years, that my friends will be Leaving and I’ll be relocating and staying.

And here’s the truth about What’s Important, and how I know I’m qualified for at least a few things, and why, when someone asks me (seriously) if it sucks for me to stay at Augsburg and watch all these people I know leave, I can stomach the rudeness: I adore my students. My wonderful, frustrating, awkwardly growing-in-academia students that I really, REALLY love to see and talk to everyday. And OH MY GOD, do they know it (and rarely [but sometimes] take advantage of it). So, when I think about the stacks of junk I have to shift through in my job that I love in the next year, I know where I can find that one, important envelope.

So, here’s to the extra hours and the people and places that make it totally worth putting them in.
Love you.
Andrea

Ps: If you were here, I’d let you unwind from the 2nd to last day of research with Krissy and I….

nomnomnom

But here’s the thing, we’re Fine. I know where to find you and even when I don’t have the energy to sit down and write to you, I think about what I WOULD say to you if I had the energy. So…it evens out.

What I’m really writing to you about is something that I NEVER thought would happen. On this 23rd day of July, my parent’s bought me a Nissan Versa. That means: my 1996 Ford Taurus is headed back to Marshall with my parent’s WITHOUT ME IN IT. I’ll start by saying that I am so happy to have this new car: my mind is at ease, I have assistance on it in the cities whenever I need, adult things, etc. BUT, as my dad drove away with all the little scarps and empty cd cases of my past, my heart broke (only a little).

My plum interior has been replaced with beige, the smell of stale french fries and sweet perfumes…erased. I’m uneasy in my cute little hatchback because it hasn’t quite proven itself to be the car that gets me to home, to school, to a friend’s late on a Friday. Has it even seen a winter? Will it ever take a loop and feel the worn in patterns of my friend’s as they snack and sing and sleep. I suddenly have a whole new world to break in and the possibilities of what this little car will see seem foreign and endless. My first car, my cliche first ticket out, has been traded in.

Like all good things, Lolita has ended her stay in parking spot 9 at boco. May she rest safely in the hands of my mom and dad until the end of her days.

Ok, that was dramatic. But think of Tempo. THINK OF IT. There. Now you know how I feel.

Hope you’re staying cool.
xoxox
Andrea

Everyone and their mom wanted to talk about “body image” this weekend. I drove with some friends to Montevideo for a high school grad. reception and for a majority of the way there, we talked about eating disorders and Fat Studies. Don’t get me wrong, I love to talk about these things…and I’m happy to exercise my mind with people who know the language that I know when it comes to talking about bodies and Fat Studies, but I sometimes find it exhausting to educate friend after friend about what I know. Is that selfish? Does that mean that I’m going to be a bad teacher someday? And it isn’t that I’m ever angry that I have to do it. I think I am angry that any of us EVER have to do it…society, ya know?

Here’s the thing: I’ve fallen into a friend group that is younger than many of my friends; they are socially aware and smart and they eat up the ideas of feminism and sociology. They are fascinated and I think it is so great that they are willing and hungry to learn….but I learned from theorists and mentors and while I can pretend to supplement wisdom, I certainly don’t do the things I know justice by getting into pedestrian conversations about them. Also, I find it exhausting to have to “come out” as a Fat person every time someone wants to talk about the way I look. My closer friends and I have spent enough time talking about Fat Studies as I worked through my thesis and personal coming out as Fat person and Fat scholar.

Fat Studies in itself is fascinating to people because the only discourse surrounding Fat people in the media is that of fear and hate…. but what I heard yesterday in the car was the same question I always hear: How did YOU (specifically me) come to “love” yourself? And by yourself, I feel that the question is: How did you come to love your body? (And, further, how did you come to love your fat body…because I don’t think that I could?)

First, I love myself, the whole me, because I am funny and charming and smart and quick witted and sensitive and self assured by some grace of God and my parents and my friends and the teachers who didn’t pass one judgment on to my face. Ever. Who supported me regardless of who they thought I was. My brain, while often crippled with anxiety and self deprecation, is pretty remarkable and I don’t think it makes me arrogant or awful to say that Your brain is, too, if it makes me look like less of an asshole…. I came to love MYSELF through finding that I can do the things that everyone else can do (yep, even if I’m Fat). I came to love myself through counseling. I came to love myself through losing myself in the words that I hear and see, the music I experiene, the life I am living. Through having friends who loved me back. But I certainly don’t wake up everyday and think that I am awesome. That’s hardly the case and I know that you know that.

Second, to answer the REAL question that my friends ask: I haven’t come to LOVE my body in the way that they think they want to love their own. I certainly care about my body and I’m glad that I have it and that it works and I try to do things that let it continue to work. But, the truth is, I’m learning to love what my body can do and I think that is markedly different than this bullshit notion of “learning to love myself”…I don’t think that I will ever buy into the language that I will LOVE my body because it cheapens the relationship I have with it. I once worked with this obnoxiously smart (and good looking) man who said, very matter-of-factly, that he rarely could admit to loving people. After he was met with dissent by the people we were with, he explained that he could love things like fried chicken or a pair of pants, but he didn’t care about those things. It meant more to him to tell someone that he cared about them and I’ve kept that in mind in my relationships; I love you, there is no question about that, but I care even more about what happens to you, what you think, and what you choose to do.

I’m sure it seems silly to obsess about this small slip of language, but in a big way, I think it clouds our relationships with ourselves. It separates my body as a vessel from my body as an object and I think when people are struggling with “body image” they are facing a disconnection between what they can do, what they can see and what they can feel. When I look in a mirror, I don’t care about what I am seeing: I am loving the way my boobs look or the way my hair falls in ringlets. But, is that really what matters? I think yes, when it comes to getting laid which is a chief goal in life, don’t get me wrong. But, when it comes to facing everyday and doing meaningful work…I want to care about the connection between what I see, what I can do and what I feel.

So, I’d rather answer the question: how are you learning to live in the body that you have? I will respect it. I will learn to trust it. I will find that it fails me and I will grow frustrated with the shape and smell of it sometimes. I will love the way my tits look in the bras I spend too much money on. I will place care in the thoughts that I let pass through my beautiful brain. I will exercise my muscles and adjust my bones. I will give into the fried chicken and eye my ass greedily in pants that look good…but I will care about the whole person who chooses to breathe and laugh and think and write even more.

Whatever.
Andrea

Sometimes, when the sun is shining and the blue sky feels somehow false and too high (unbelievable), I miss Marshall and the sweet smell of the lilac bushes that grow on the riverbank outside of my parent’s house. In these delicate moments, I feel a longing that I know can only be filled with a quick loop or a thick, melty malt from DQ (or Hardee’s, let’s be real). I cling to this nostalgia, these memories, in hopes of finding something better. And I have and do, mostly.

But, sometimes, like tonight, under the almost full moon in the cloudy sky….I miss you. And for that, there isn’t a cure or a placeholder; there’s nothing better. My friends at the bar, or my friends at my job, or my parents voices over the phone can’t fill the simple spaces of conversation and understanding that you occupy.

I miss you and I’ll let Japan keep you for a little bit longer…I guess.
<3 (but not a hug)
Andrea

I want to pose the cliche questions and statements I felt myself encounter in the past month: Why did this happen? What do we do next? How will we ever get by? If only I could have told Jessica how much I appreciated her. The truth is: I didn’t know how much she meant to me until I couldn’t talk to her. Until I was reading at her memorial. Until I saw how my friends lifted me up and made sure I was safe, that I was eating, that I was laughing, that I was continuing to be held accountable for the words I said, the things I did.

It has been hard for me to sit down to write to you without thinking about writing about Jessica. I go back and read my last letter and I’m overwhelmed by the space and time that exist between me and a month ago. Everything then was in pieces; anger and exhaustion were my reality. But I have seen what healing looks like in the faces of my sisters and I can feel the spring pushing us up from the ground; our roots are here, together, and I am surrounded by the wealth of the earth: Friends, fierce and excellent, that burn more brightly than ever before.

Because Jessica died and because Cass got an award for mentoring from Augsburg, I’ve been thinking a lot about how grateful I am for the people in my life that force me to be better than I ever imagined I wanted to be. Ted makes me funny; Malena forces me to think; Sam won’t let me give up. Maybe you’ve noticed that my “year off” is over…so I guess that means I have to turn myself back on. As I begin to revisit statements and papers for revision, I think back on our conversation in my backyard before you left for Japan. I was terrified of giving up my MFA, my fiction writing, but I did it anyway, because you believed that giving up that acceptance wasn’t the end of my writing or the person I wished so wholly to be.

This winter, I thought too much about what would happen Next Year, without realizing that nothing was happening this year. My plans changed, but my actions stayed the same. I’ve never been the person who let’s herself give up, but I buried myself in the snow and refused to find the value in misery, in absolute insanity (Adele-red lipstick-wine), in the hard work it takes to sustain myself and my relationships. So, like Christina has taught us: go back to the basics. And so, here I am with The Basics: writing to you, listening to the same song on repeat until I hate it (youtube videos are ridiculous), drinking iced coffees, wallowing in my very own self importance and sitting with these words until I take shape…sentence by sentence, paragraph by paragraph.

Next Year will come, but not until I get to work.
<3
Andrea

Over a year ago, I met my real self: the woman who could write for hours and pour herself into feminist theory, morning after morning in the library; the woman who fell in love with Angela Davis, Chandra Mohanty and Monday nights from 6-9 p.m. Last year, under a careful, critical and loving watch, I became the woman who could call herself a feminist without feeling silly, a scholar who could dissect the carefully crafted sentences of Olsen, hooks, and Huff.

As you know, Jessica cultivated some of the most powerful and lasting relationships in my life. And, as a reader on my honors project, challenged and frustrated me more times than I care to count (although when I was working on my revisions the other day, I thought I might count, just to know). I have been struggling to understand, still, what I would say to her if I could (how is “thank you” never enough?). I am hollow when I speak about the good work she has done not only for me, but for the collective life I live at and around Augsburg and in the world. My sadness, the one I feel now, is new to me; I have not lost family or friend, but both and teacher, mentor and antagonist.

Here it is: my bones are tired and my heart aches. My nose runs and my eyes burn. My heartspace is raw and exhausted and at the end of the day, no matter how the day is, I am collapsing into my bed and hoping for the miracle that will not happen. But this selfishness has been short, and I know, because I have been taught to know and have trusted that teaching, to look up and find faces that can see into mine, to look up and hear the voices that speak with me. I don’t hear the cadence of Jessica’s voice in the sisters I have found, in the women–the fierce pillars of life and love and intelligence–I have come to crouch next to; instead, I hear the confidence she helped them cultivate, the brilliance she frustrated out of them, the collective thought that we can do anything, as long as we can agree to do it together.

And maybe that’s what I say:
Thank you for them, for me, and for making it both entirely possible and impossible to tell the difference.
Love.
Andrea