Kitchenettes are like sanctuary.

June 17th. 8 more days, including the weekend. 6 without. I can do this.

I'm not sure what it is about the end of the year that gives everyone such a violent case of the jitters. For juniors, it's Decades for sure, and for everyone else, I suppose it's that feeling of being trapped. We've been here in this building nearly every day for how long now? Nine months or so? (Huh - coincidentally that's how long I've been in a relationship.) Everyone around here just feels like they shouldn't be here anymore. They want to feel a little bit more freedom, the freedom to get up at 10 or 11 am, or 4 pm if you prefer.

Me? I'm feeling a little jittery for my own personal, almost opposite reasons. I'm uneasy because it's all ending so quickly. Nine months ago, I was in a small kitchenette in the science department of Bryn Mawr, laughing because everything felt so new and special and scary. We were almost juniors, we mused about how we could and would succeed in the coming year. Now the year has come and gone, and I've grown into a new person. It took a lot of gentle tugging among forceful pushing and pulling, but I'm pleased to say I feel like a whole human being now.

This summer, I may find myself in another version of the kitchenette, say a full grown kitchen or the familiar hardwood floor of my home away from home. I can sit cross legged on the floor, eat excess chocolate ice cream off a spoon and stare at someone who was in the same position a year ago, when everything was undefinable. Just me, and him. Smiling at each other because we don't know what's coming next, just like we didn't know a year ago.

My, how a year can change everything.

A fistful of dandelions.

I'm not sure what it is, but I tend to do most of my best thinking/writing when everyone else is sleeping. I shoul be too, but hey, it's Spring Break, and I don't have to be up until 11 tomorrow. (Normally I'd say about 1, but I have a lunch date with Sailor and an uncle with a perky determination to make him cry.)

Indeed, Spring Break. A time to stop, relax, take a deep breath. I have no homework due on Monday.

Yet, tragically, it seems difficult to actually find down time. Friday afternoon I was supposed to do something or other with Sailor, but my Mother called me with a sense of urgency that made me feel unbearably guilty. "I need you to watch your sister. I have to run out and see a patient and no one else is available."

Did I want to do it? Of course not. I'm a 17 year old, looking to spend time with the boyfriend. But did I do it? Yes. Of course.

As it turns out, the day was not wasted. I spent my time at my house with Tillbird, waiting for Sailor to arrive. "Kaitlin, can we go to the pink park?"

"I don't know; the pink park is kinda far."

"You're no fun. Daddy takes me to the pink park. You're the meanest sister in all the world." Tillbird meets my gaze, lower lip juttig toward me in defiance. She places one arm over the other, in a matter in which a five year old crosses their arms.

"You don't mean that, sweetie." I smile sweetly and glance absentmindedly at my watch, out the door, waiting for our guest to arrive and ease the tension.

"Yes I do! Meanie!"

"I never said we couldn't go to a park! Just not the pink park."

Tillbird drops her arms to her sides, bobs her head like a caricature of Michelle Tanner. "Well you didn't say that earlier!"

My patience ticks away with every second. Glance at my watch. "Just come upstairs so we can get your shoes." She defiantly hmmphs in my direction and tromps up the stairs in front of me as my phone buzzes. "Here," the screen reads, and I look over at the door and see Sailor staring at me through the glass.

Tillbird gasps with excitement. "He's here?!" She exclaims, "Will HE take me to the pink park?!"

"No one is going to the pink park," I send her down the stairs to be greeted by Sailor, who greets her as he pulls off his shoes. Never have I seen a little girl more infatuated with a teenage boy. She smiles sweetly at him, acts like an angel for him, draws him pictures of kittens lined up in circles. "Will you please sit with her while I do something?" I call down to him.

"No problem," is the response, muffled already by the floor between us.

I gathered up Tillbird's things, and while doing that, I realised maybe that in the moment I was stressing about the pink park, maybe I should be relaxing. After all, no one's asking me to write a research paper, or take a test on WWII. My little sister wants to go to the park with me and my boyfriend in tow. I should be willing to go along for the ride.

Downstairs I throw my necessities into a small purse. Sailor is beaming at me, perched on the edge of the ottoman with a dandelion tucked in his thick hair. "How do I look?" he muses, the corner of his mouth drawn up, expecting a snarky response.

"It suits you." I put on my sunglasses, grabbing my keys.

"Hipster." He teases, motioning to my sunglasses.

I stick my tongue out at him and gather up my sister. "I gave him that flower," says Tillbird, seeming quite pleased with herself.

I motion for them to leave the house, gently urging them out the door so I can lock it behind us. "C'mon, let's go to the park." Till grabs my hand and grins, and as I walk down my porch steps, I figure that doing things that seem stressful can be fun. But only if you have the right attitude.

Electric sheep.

Sometimes, it can be amusing to allow your thoughts to meander about your brain at 11:30 on a Thursday, a school night. But usually, it's a sign of a restless, anxious mind. I'm having trouble deciding which category I'm falling into.

I stay up pretty late, most nights - as is made evident by the sweeps of deep purple under my eyes. Everyone that I normally talk to goes to bed, and I find myself becoming envious. Hell, Sailor wishes me goodnight every night promptly in the 10 o clock to 10:30 range, turns over in bed, and is presumably fast asleep in a matter of minutes. I send a half-hearted goodnight, see you tomorrow, etc, etc, etc. I lay in bed, turn over, turn back, switch positions, become frustrated and ultimately sit up again.

I enjoy it when I have a good excuse for sleep deprivation. For example, Tech Week. Staying at the school every night until 10-10:30 is usually a bonafide excuse to teachers. You find yourself, with weighted eyelids and unwilling limbs, passed out on your Biology notes during a presentation on cell respiration. Three minutes before the bell for third block sounds, your seat partner nudges you awake, the teacher is looking at you with unbearably kind eyes. "Tech Week?"

Your response sounds as though the sound were traveling through wet pebbles. "Mmmhmm."

I wish I had an excuse for my regular lack of sleep. Insomnia? No - probably not. I think maybe my mind just works to anxiously. My thoughts don't behave in a nice, streamlined way. They're either pleasant and complacent, or they jolt about at a rate with which I can't keep up.

Did I turn in my Art and Society paper? Yes. Okay. Good. Was it good? Maybe. I hope so. Damn, I have to do research for my research paper. Okay. Where? Internet? Feminism in the 1960s, good topic? No, broad. Go tighter. Focus? Am I focused? I'm bored. Maybe I should check Facebook again.

I've reached the point where I absentmindedly focus on different points in my bedroom. I look through them, into myself. How many more hours till I get up to school? Maybe I'll try counting.

One, two, three, four, five, six.

Violet.

The smoke swirled so thickly through the air when I saw her for the first time... I could hardly be sure it was her. I say the first time - well, it wasn't the first time. It was probably about the hundredth time in the course of my life. If life is just a series of misguided attempts at being adventurous, then let's just say I've been slightly too cavalier. Then again I consider talking to a pretty girl to be an adventure, I may not be the appropriate gauge.

She was just as I remembered her to be. Violet. Not that she was a shade of violet - that's ridiculous. No, her name is Violet, and it seems to match her persona perfectly. She's languid, thin, with a dark mind and an even darker heart. No amount of booze or cocaine or sex has ever been able to break her. She's dark, tainted, unworldly. If you were to blow in her direction, you'd think she would fall over like a shrubby twiggy tree in a hurricane. She'd actually just stare at you and ask why the fuck you were blowing at her.

Even though she is tainted, she's just as radiant as she always was. She glows. She is as pale as the moon, and whenever there is a light source it finds its way to her. It seems to bounce off her skin, into the hearts of everyone she happens to be around. She's illuminated from within. She is a bug-zapping lamp; I'm a poor misguided junebug. I fly towards her, make it inside just to bounce back, away, battered, fried, aching.

It's always been this way, ever since the very last time I laid eyes on her. It was June 14, 2001. Don't think I'm a creep, this day stands out in my mind because it was the day after I graduated from high school. I was the valedictorian. I got to make a big speech and everyone clapped and shook my hand and said things like "Good job, Charlie, you're going to go far." "You'll do great things, Charlie." "Princeton could use a guy like you, Charlie." But these hollow words of praise rebounded off my eardrums, or better yet they seemed to enter my head, snake through my frontal cortex and then work their way out again. I wanted to smile, nod, push my thick glasses up my nose and be modest but I couldn't. Violet wasn't there, she hadn't been to school for the past month or so.

I know this not because I am creepy - Violet was my best friend. I know. Weird. It doesn't seem like we'd be able to mesh, but we were close ever since I punched a boy pulling her pigtails in the fifth grade. That's the last time I was the one doing the saving.

Why did this seemingly bad girl hang out with a geek like me? Violet wasn't always so abrasive and distant. She used to be just like me. We used to watch The Wrath of Khan and practice Python together in high school. She was a chorus geek, she did band. Art club, physics club, av club. All these were crucial parts of Violet.

And I was also always in love with her. But we have only ever done anything twice.

Once during the summer between junior and senior year Violet had an explosive fight with her father. This is out of the ordinary. I can't remember why they fought or if they made up, but I remember she drove to my house in her rust-spattered VW station wagon and insisted we go sit on the swings at our elementary school. I was unsure because it was past my curfew but I looked into those eyes, so much like deep vessels of lake water, and got in the passenger side door. She had two bottles of some dark, foul-smelling booze in her backseat, and they were making me nervous. Neither Violet or I had ever tasted liquor, let alone drank it. I didn't know where she was going with this.

We sat on the swings for hours before touching the bottles she craftily stowed in her purse. We had made our way back to the station wagon before we made eye contact and each took a bottle. I drank about half. She drank about one and a half.
By the time they were both gone, our eyes bore this heavy, lack-luster sheen and I kept getting urges to reach out for her. She must have sensed this, because she grabbed my face and kissed my lips sloppily. I felt bad because she was drunk, but so was I, and this is what I had always dreamed of. I kissed back, we flopped down into the back seat of the station wagon, our mouths working sloppily together, our numb hands pawing at each other in the dark.

Over the next few days, I waited for more kissing. Perhaps some exchange of class rings or shy note passing. I waited. No more kissing, no more booze, we each kept our own rings and notes.

The last time I touched her was the last day I saw her. June 14, 2001. I went looking for her behind our high school, next to the dumpster where she liked to smoke after she dropped out.

"Violet."

She looked up, smoke billowing from her parted lips like gray waves in a stormy sea. Her lips were the waves, her eyes were the storm. "Charlie."

"What are you doing here? I at least expected you would show up for graduation."

She stared at me blankly. "For what? To graduate high school and go to another school three or four months later? That's bullshit, Charlie. And you know it. I don't want to spend my life chasing ivy league coattails."

Her comments pierced me. I wanted my Violet back, the sunny Violet who smiled at me instead of scowling sourly, as though she had bitten into the proverbial bitter lemon. "I at least thought you'd come hear my speech. But whatever, that's just fucking stupid right? Your best friend gets to make a big, important speech at your graduation, but to Hell with him. He'll be stuck in a yuppie existence for the rest of his life."

I picked up my eyes to see if she was looking at me. She was. I expected her to be glaring at me, to smolder the way she was capable of, to pierce my heart for good with her eyes. But she looked... frail. Sad. Scared. Human.

She flicked her half-smoked cigarette onto the asphalt, calculatingly grinding it into the blacktop with the toe of her boot. She took the same boot and stepped forward with it, slowly, like a fawn taking it's first step. It took her all of five steps to make it over to where I stood. Once she got there, I expected her to stop a few feet in front of me, but she didn't. She stepped so close that the bridge of her nose could brush against my chin. She looked at me pleadingly. "You're really going to go far, Charlie."

She stood on her toes and kissed me. It was neat, no hands, no tongue, just lips. She tasted like cigarettes and cheap strawberry wine, but the fact that the lips on mine were hers made them taste sweet. She pulled away and I leaned in for more, but she got down off her toes and just looked at me. She walked to her car, pulled out, and drove away, out of my life. For what seemed permanently, until tonight.

When she made eye contact with me, she smiled and made her way through the sweaty, boozey crowd and leaned against the bar across from me. At first she seemed like she almost didn't recognize me; I had grown much more attractive since she had seen me last. I wasn't a gangly, awkward teenage boy anymore.

"Charlie." She said my name as though she had seen me yesterday, and every other day for the past nine years.

"Violet." I was having trouble being as nonchalant as she was. I felt like all the blood was rushing out of my face and into my stomach. My hands and cheeks were cold by the time she was able to say "Let's get out of here."

I couldn't hear much as she led me out the door into an alley beside the bar. I wasn't really surprised or shocked as she pulled a key out of her small purse, fit it into a lock in a door in the alley, and slipped inside. She beckoned for me to follow. I wasn't surprised she lived over a shitty bar.

My blood was whooshing about in my ears as she sat me down on the couch. "Hey." She said almost sheepishly, setting down a mug of black coffee on the beat up coffee table by my knees.

"Hey." I said, staring at the walls. I couldn't look at her, not yet. I may pass out.

"Charlie." She said, pressing my knee with an extended finger. "Charlie."

I stared at the wall for an increasing amount of time. I was not actually there, I felt distant from myself. As if I was blowing around, watching myself from above. I could spend the rest of my life trying to describe the sensation, and it would never be accurate.

She sighed and stood up, taking her mug with her into the kitchen. She was getting creamer or something, probably.

But she stepped out of the kitchen with her mug. As she walked out of the small kitchenette and into the living room, moonlight from the skylight shone on her pale, exposed shoulders, wet moonlight glistened on her red pout. I knew I couldn't keep going on without her.

She sensed my urgency and dropped the mug of coffee onto the cracked hardwood floor. Before I knew what was happening we were on each other, like animals, desperately clutching and ripping each other apart. Because if we let go then the other would disappear.

"Violet." I whispered through her quick, violent kisses. "Violet."

She murmured into my collarbone. "Yes, Charlie? What is it?"

"I need some answers." Thinking was becoming difficult with her all over me.

"Can't they wait? I'm here, right? That's what matters." She was slowly unbuttoning my shirt, trying to work her lips onto my neck and chest. My mind was quickly being consumed by her, my hands instinctively snaked their way over her breasts. She smiled and exhaled onto my mouth.

"No... Please Violet. Please tell me why you left." She was still kissing me, my shirt unbuttoned, her voice was a small, broken reply.

"I... I guess I just..." She pulled back slightly. "I just wanted to start living." I felt her syncopated teardrops on my chest and on my cheeks.

I thought for a millisecond, then grabbed her waist and pushed her down onto the couch. She gasped, but smiled up at me, expectant.

I leaned down and kissed her softly, for real this time. 16 years of emotion flowed through our lips.

My mouth lingered over hers. "We all have to start sometime." She exhaled onto my lips, smiling sweetly in the dim light of the city through the window. I smiled and worked my body behind hers, clutching her in the darkness. Through her, a life seeped into me, spreading like ink on wet paper and enveloping me warmly. I pressed my lips against the back of her neck, her body shook with tears and complex, bottled-up emotion.

I kissed the back of her head and whispered into her hair.

"Welcome home."

"After all this, won't you give me a smile?"

Recently my dreams have been alternating between sickeningly cute and horribly depressing. Though I guess they seem to reflect my subconscious, as dreams always do. My life is better than it normally is. Straights A's, a boyfriend, good friendships... but I still have personal attachment and possession issues. I don't think they're going anywhere anytime soon, honestly. I've had them since I was very little, traumatic experiences, etc, brought them about.

Oh and also, recently I've been growing exceedingly closer to an ex-boyfriend. No, not in that way, I'm much more than content with what I have. I'm ecstatic about it. But the ex has started acting like nothing awful ever happened between us. Which is good, I suppose, but it's also a little frustrating. He just came into my third block study hall, this is why I felt the urge to bring him up. He even gets slightly flirtatious sometimes, and I'm thinking, "Dude. No. I'm busy and happy with what I have. And you should be too." But talking sense into him is like trying to talk sense into a brick wall. I've been trying for close to four years now, and it worked for a little bit, but then he snapped back so violently I didn't have ample time to react appropriately. I was holding on to the stretched rubber band that was his happiness. For once he was able to smile and mean it, and I like to think I had something to do with that. But he severed the tie, snapped back into the darkness where his temperament normally resides. It's awfully depressing, and I want to help, but I have to realise that he is not a charity case, his happiness is no longer my responsibility. I'll always have a soft spot for him, but I'm not going to try to pull information out of him. If he wants to talk to me, I'm more than happy to sit and listen and offer comfort and advice. But I have to stop worrying about his happiness and focus more on mine. I'm so happy, because what I have now is exponentially better than what I had then.

Title for post compliments of The Clash.

Everyone must breathe.

One moment. Breathing, living, circulating. These are things we all have to do. Everybody breathes until they are dead. This is an obvious one.

One moment. He was in love with me for one moment. For one moment, there was no one except for me. There was no wife, there was no boyfriend, there was no wall.

"Where is your wife?"

"Oh. She's... on hiatus. For a while now."

"From what?"

"From me."

"Oh."

Was he pushing his arm against mine, or was I imagining it? I looked at him in his perfectly tailored suit. When you are a successful college professor, you can have lots of perfectly tailored suits. All of your female students will want to be with you, want to slide their hands under your perfectly tailored suits. He had this affect on his students. I should know, he was my Sociology professor for the six years I was in college. He did not just affect the female students; he made the girls feel strangely flirtatious and men slightly aroused and threatened. This man, he was so handsome, he was so dark, he was so close.

He said something. It's difficult to be sure of what, all I could hear was the din of alumni laughing and half full glasses of champagne clinking. Women laughed pretentiously in their perfectly tailored, one-time worn evening dresses.

"What did you say?"

"I said, how was the drive back up here? As I recall, you don't come from these parts."

"Oh. No, I don't, but I actually only live about thirty minutes away from campus these days. With my boyfriend."

"Oh?" he smiled, cocked his head. I caught the brief scent of his aftershave. "What are you doing? I haven't seen you in nearly three years." It's true. I graduated three years ago, I never looked back.

"What am I doing? Well, right now, I'm at a party."

"No, I meant, do you have a job? Because, I was thinking, you might want to go into teaching... You could always come back to the old Alma Mater."

Yes. I thought. Say that again. Don't let me go back to waitressing at that stupid diner, owned by my stupid boyfriend and his stupid fists.

He spoke again.

"I'm sorry, what did you say?"

"I said, come to my office. We can discuss there." He said this into my hair. He was a large man. Not large in the fat sense, but his shoulders were sizable in his perfectly tailored suit. He was a foot taller than me.

"Oh, okay."

--------

I found myself again in the room I spent so much diligent time in three years ago. I instinctively sat in my old seat. I am a creature of habit.

He chuckled, leaned against the table next to me. There was polite chatter. Small stories shared about "the student who showed up and vomited on his final exam" and "the one time my dog ran into traffic unscathed" and "that's the reason I can no longer eat tangerines." As the night waned, I looked at his clock. 1:56 am.

"Oh shit, oh shit, shit!" I stumbled over my own feet, my sister's heels catching on the floor.

"What's the matter?" I could not see him, he was behind me.

"It's just, it's late, it's so late. He hates it when I'm late."

"Who does?"

Instinct kicked in. "No one. No one will be. Nothing."

He gently grabbed my waist. But he held me fast. There was no escaping, I knew I couldn't move my legs, I realised then that he had frozen me to the spot.

But I was wrong. He turned me around slowly, brushed the strategically placed hair from my forehead. He saw it.

Standing here, with his hands on my hips, it was not difficult to imagine making love to him. Gently lifting my skirt, hands in his hair, sliding together, two fragile creatures clinging to each other for warmth and shelter. He needs me.

On queue, he breathed in, drew me closer. My face was buried in his tie. I shut my eyes, inhaling the complex smells of his life. Books. Aftershave. Pine trees. Rosemary.

The clock struck once. Two am. He looked at my eyes.

The clock struck twice, setting off a wave off kinetic energy. Two am.

I slid my fingers into his hair, he slid his hands down, over my body, over my borrowed evening dress. He tasted of god awful champagne and cinnamon. Like nothing in particular and like everything.

I moved my fingers into the rim of his perfectly tailored slacks. He grabbed my hips and pulled them into himself. Breathing, living, circulating, loving, wanting, dying.

Ringing. An awful ringing. He pulls away, reaching sheepishly into his pocket.

"Yes dear?" he says.

I am quietly putting my heels on, sliding my dress down over my thighs. He straightens his tie. I grab my coat. He looks at his watch.

"Yes, I know, it's 2 am. I'll be right home."

He expects me to be standing right there when he turns around, I'm sure. Too bad.

Three minutes, thirty seven seconds, and 200 or so feet of running in heels later, I'm seated by the wheel in my car. I clench the wheel, unclench it, clench, unclench. I look at my phone. One new message.

"Where are you bitch?"

Out the windshield I see a young couple. They are not alumni, not dressed nicely, perhaps only freshman. They are so young, so beautiful, so happy. I tell myself if they see me, if they acknowledge me, I will live on. I will quit my job, quit this life. Start writing again.

Look up look up look up.

As if on his own accord, he looks up. He smiles, he looks back at his beautiful young girlfriend.

I put the car in drive, I back out, I get on the road. No turning back. Breathing, living, loving, dying, smiling, and the earth still spins.

Pet peeve #43.

You know what's really annoying? When people dislike you for a stupid reason or for no apparent reason.

There's this girl. I was friends with her in eighth grade, we were tight, but we grew apart. Okay, it happens, no big deal, right?

So from seventh to eighth grade I went through a crazy radical transformation. Not my inner self, who I am, the essence of my Kaitlin-ness, but my outer appearance. Sometimes I like to change what I look like. I don't think there's anything wrong with that.

But apparently, when someone changes their appearance, they change everything about themselves. (According to this girl.) So when I lost weight or lost/got glasses or dyed my hair red or chopped it all off, I was changing who I was.

Sorry, but no, that's bullshit.

Just because I get tired of my outward appearance, doesn't mean I get tired of who I am. I don't. It took me a while to create and piece together this person I am now, and I like myself. It's just annoying and obnoxious when people like to tell me that changing my outside changes me inside.

Maybe I just like trying new things. Ever think of that?