emotional sandwich.

i don't sit still well, which kind of sucks and is really inconvenient considering how unemployed i am. oddly enough, even with way too much time on my hands, i blinked and the rest of june and half of july were gone before i posted again. in some ways this is completely typical of me. first, i tend to write in spurts. second, at 22 years young, i realize that when i have an ample amount of time on my hands, i overthink, overanalyze, and as a result overwork myself--even though i'm not really doing anything. introspection can be very productive and healthy. it has always been a part of my life even when my every minute was scripted, which was more often than not the case until now. this time last year, 16 hours of each day were infused with ticket office duties at the Binghamton Mets ticket office. so i sprinkled my introspection over the course of a typical work day--often times consisting of denying coupons from customers on fireworks nights, pocket schedule refills, and regurgitating our rain out policy on repeat.

and here i am, a different person, in a different location, with a degree and i'm still battling many of the same issues. nearly everything else from my life has changed, and in most ways improved over the past year, but these abstract issues with no definite start also lack the abrupt ending that i generally crave. it is the only consistent thread that remains from who i was a year ago. although many of the players i saw at the Binghamton Mets have followed me to NY due to major league injuries, so i guess there is another hot bed of synergy to rest on.

that being said(/typed/blogged/tweeted.etc.) most of what still stares me in the face did not actually happen a year ago--that is only where the aftermath began. my life stalled in the 'shit hitting the fan' phase for seven consecutive years, a chronology of traumas both major and minor that i measure in yankee post season opportunities. forced to stomach a buffet of issues, i came to realize that the healing process seems pretty consistent, and that at some point there is relief in resolution, even if the resolution isn't what you pictured, or isn't as satisfying as what you thought 'getting over it' would be. but at some point in the process, and more often than not a reoccurring point in the process, their tends to be this nagging stage; a mentality that you are stuck in and cannot shake (like david eckstein with a full count. strike the hell OUT already).

i call it the 'ship in a bottle phase'. you are sailing along, but not actually going anywhere. you see blue sky above, and can see through the entire situation to the outside world. you feel mostly at peace, and accept the ending circumstance. hell, sometimes acknowledging the ending itself is the biggest step. but even though everything around you is clear, you have run-ins with your glass surroundings. not only are they deceiving, but they are inescapable. and even more so, when you are breathing oxygen free and easy, the oppressive outside force sticks a cork in the bottle. now try going on a boat without thinking about how loaded that metaphor is. i'll leave out the obvious endless sea and starlit navigation rhetoric that would typically follow.

so we find our frustration sandwiched by a giant slice of progress and a slice of vague hopelessness--that the bottle will never break, that the glass will always be there, and that we will never make the jump from 'getting over it' to 'moving on'. and that, is an emotional sandwich, of which the flavor cannot be tamed by neither mayo nor salt and pepper. but i contend that you can sail free--but only if you bust the bottle from the inside.

-k.