November is cold

I'm waiting for Sharyn to ring my doorbell so we can go on a walk, but the dusk out my window is getting greyer, stiller. The leaves are gone - were they ever there? - and the mazes of dark blacky sticks are exposed and still as if frozen in place, thinking that if they don't move, no one will see their naked bark.
People from the Midwest don't ever really leave, someone said to me in passing. It wasn't such a big remark but has stuck with me dedicatedly, making itself known like a misplaced dot amongst stripes. Although my Sociology textbook would disagree, showing me a map of population changes that prove how many, many people are actually leaving the Midwest in a slow trickle toward coasts, cities, money. This contradiction brings me not even the smallest comfort.
But my apartment is warm and I vaguely remember that nothing does remain the same. And at some point I'll look back to now and wish I had lived inside it, all the way to the edges of it, instead of worrying that it would never go away.

I awoke, awash in guilt. 9:14. I tried to remember what it was that I felt guilty about, maybe something I did yesterday, or is this one of those times that I remember it was all a dream and welcome a rush of relief and snuggle back under the covers?

I had a dream last night that Nate and I were going to elope, and that thirty minutes before the wedding not only was I not sure I wanted to do it, but I couldn't find a place to plug in my curling iron - although why was I looking for that in a hardware store? I was wearing frilly white and looking for an electrical outlet amongst slabs of blackboard. The elopement was secret but I called my mother to ask what she WOULD think of it if I DID elope, and her response was a sigh and that she didn't want to talk about it right now.

Maybe I felt guilty from the dream, or maybe the dream was a result of my guilt. I feel like this relationship and my living in Kansas is taking me away from my family and that they somehow need me. Guilt.

I feel guilty because there are three to five people who have left me voicemails, nice, friendly, wondering why I haven't called or written. Their voices are starting to sound terse, disappointed. And why haven't I called or written? I don't know. Except that when I think about calling or writing, I think about how long it's been and how many people there are and I panic and brush it all under my bed with a big mental sweep of guilt.

So I'm writing a blog to purge my thoughts and fly them like sails instead of dragging them around like anchors.