One part of this whole pregnancy experience that has been kind of interesting is the time between 3:45AM and 5AM. I inevitably wake up around this time every morning and have a tough time getting back to sleep. My mind leads me around, sometimes into the future, but mostly, it takes me back to seemingly-random points in my life and really lets me take a good look at them. The thoughts are rarely unpleasant, so they're not stressful or anything like that. They're just thoughts about things I've done in my life, free and clear of any judgment.
This morning, my mind settled in with thoughts of the year before I moved out to Glasgow. It was a weird time--I was in this new-ish relationship with someone I rarely had a chance to spend time with, and was mentally preparing to leave the country, but not for a year. I was working a job at a hospital with weird hours, and had a part-time job as a mental health worker that was quickly becoming like a full-time job. I was living in a little apartment in uptown next to a chronic alcoholic who was both sweet and concerning. It was a kind of stressful time, but I remember also feeling like it was sort of fun to be young and poor and living on my own.
Anyway, I had decided to move out of the apartment and into some kind of other living situation that would allow me to get rid of the majority of my personal possessions so that when the time came for me to make my way across the ocean, I'd be unencumbered. I found an ad on Craigslist for a couple who was looking to rent out one of the bedrooms in their apartment. They lived only blocks away from my old place. The ad said the room would be furnished. It sounded fine. And yes, I understand finding a living arrangement on Craigslist is sketchy. I wouldn't do it now, obviously.
I alerted one of my friends that I was going to look at this place, and told her to call the police if I didn't call back in an hour. When I arrived, I was greeted by what I would now call a 'late 30s hipster couple', but who at the time, I referred to as 'the old hippies'. The woman was wearing some kind of caftan and had disheveled, maroon hair that hadn't seen Pantene or a brush in a long time, and wore manic, red lipstick. The man was equally disheveled with long hair and a longer beard. There was a sweet dog with matted hair who jumped immediately into my lap. The apartment was crammed full of dusty piles of books, mason jars with plants and dirt, and smelled strongly of incense. The part of me raised by my parents felt immediately dubious, but another part of me really liked it. We, the hippies and I, talked for over an hour about politics, community gardens, and people from the suburbs getting mugged in their neighborhood. I ended up going to their neighborhood block party, drinking wine and biking the few blocks home a little tipsy.
The short story is that I was thisclose to moving in with them until my school in Glasgow told me I might be able to enroll a year earlier than I had anticipated (this ultimately fell through). Mary and I ended up moving in together, and it was the best possible way to spend my "last year in America", which turned out not to be my last at all. The hippies ended up keeping my deposit because I bailed on them at the last minute, which sort of irked me at the time, but really, nothing came of it and I never saw them again.
So, this morning, my mind brought me there. I don't know why. Maybe it was saying, "Hey, look again at this odd decision you almost made." Or maybe it was a warning not to lose that open-minded part of myself. Or maybe it was just a random thought my mind was trying to get rid of in order to make space for all the parenting advice I'm about to be given. Who knows?
xo
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