calm in the valley of the dogs

there is calm in the belly of the beast
there is no alarm in the least
for a thousand and one flashlights in one place
and the glow of a thousand TV waves

The tapping of my feet has moved from the floor and into my chest, where they beat restlessly to no certain rhythm, sometimes resting for a few moments before starting up their thrum once again. There are nerves in my belly now, spent yesterday wavering in uncertainty over the toilet, wondering if I was indeed going to throw them all up. I didn't. But this weekend marked a finality - the last weekend I will ever spend at home as I know it. I will not be back next summer. And so the family and I went shopping - two trips that always mark the weekend before I go back to school. Mervyn's for an extra pair of cheap Levi's jeans and replacement sunglasses. Target for underwear and socks and notebooks and pencil lead. The bags are thrown down on the floor of my room and I second guess myself at how much I'll be able to fit in what I'm carrying back. I won't be able to fit all of it. Up until this point, my mom has been fabulous at keeping my room the way it was - my posters up, my stuffed animals out, still piles of stuff left on the floor from last summer - but how long will it be there now? Saturday was one more week with my kittens. They are staying home and I have given up all Christmas and birthday presents to ensure that they will stay alive the year I am gone. Guilt. I charged up my iPod for the road trip and sometime this week I have to bring in pictures to Costco to get developed so I can put pictures in my album and pictures on the wall. Tiny obligations, squishing my chest in from all different directions. I do not wish to pack. I do not wish to say goodbye. I want, for a while more, comfort in things I know - things like sitting in front of the telly with my mom and brother at night, working on one of my half-finished projects. At the same time, I want this Saturday to get started!i'msoExcited!disneyland!Brother!RoadTripIknowwillbefabulous&IamSpendingitWithaFabulousPerson! but no, I am just a baby. And I'm going to wrap one arm around my little brother and the other around my mother. I'm going to remember how my dad fixed both my old sunglasses and Puss-in-Boots watch with his little tools and tricks of ingenuity. And I will smother my face in my little kittens' fur until I sneeze.

And while I think about this present that will soon be the past, I must remember that this is my past. And that the last few years of school - what I have felt and what I have done - they are the past, and other people are allowed the past as well and prying into a past that is not offered up to me willingly is not worth knowing. I hide things, I do. Not because I am ashamed, not because I am lying, not because I want to forget, but because this is you, me, here, now. That doesn't really matter right now. That was me in the past. This is where I am, and I hope to stop fretting and start trusting and start forgetting...