Thawing

The last week has been weird.

Thursday was sort of the climax - had to present group meeting...lots of stress trying to get as much data and as many movies edited as possible to work into my presentation...low on sleep...in addition to all of the crap going on in the world, I was just generally worked up into a tizzy. Presented group meeting - everything went over really well, the boss was thrilled with what I had done, general good feelings abound. Oh, and according to Labmate, the VGLM totally checked me out in a most blatant manner, but who can blame him? The pants I was wearing made the Booty look pretty damned good, but I was too busy to notice him walking by. (Okay, not really, but the man does seem to respond to Aloof, and I am so rarely busy and/or tired enough to successfully pull off the appearance of indifference so when I CAN swing it, I go with it.) So Friday was my decompression day; the weather FINALLY felt like spring, and I spent most of the day finding excuses to get into the sun and generally avoid doing any actual work. Even got the boss out for a good hour or so of Frisbee action, then had appetizers, beers, and a surprisingly earnest and meaningful conversation with another labmate.

When I came home Friday night, I got the chance to talk to a friend of mine from home for the first time this week. This friend is a Virginia Tech alum, and an athletic director and former football coach at a high school in the county we both grew up in. It had been a far rougher week for him than for me, to say the least - while he didn't know any of the victims personally, he does have passing memories of two of the professors killed, and he knows about a dozen current VT students, three of whom have been in and out of his office all week when they needed to cry and talk to someone who would understand (two of these lost close friends in the shootings). As I asked how he was doing, and he told me how every time he thought he had gotten his emotions under control one of these kids would come in to his office or he would see the shooter's face or video on the news, and how he needed to understand why this happened, wanted to drive down to Tech to go to Mass this weekend and welcome the students back, but he wasn't sure his body could take it since he recently had back surgery...I finally started to feel tears well up in my eyes and the familiar knot in my throat.

I gave myself permission to cry. I waited for the wave to come over me.

"I walked along the road with two friends - Then the sun went down - Suddenly the sky became bloody red (and I felt a breath of sadness - a sucking pain beneath the heart) - My friends walked on and I was left trembling with fear - And I felt an infinite scream go through nature."
-Edvard Munch

Except the tears never came. They passed, without ever falling from my eyes. My body reclaimed them.

My lovely Friday gave way to an even lovelier weekend - I spent yesterday downtown, in good company, doing as Torontonians do. I wandered St. Lawrence Market, the lakefront, watched a hockey game and a truly awesomely bad Samuel L. Jackson movie. Today I took a baguette, some cheese and smoked meat, a tetrapak of wine, and a loaded mp3 player down to the bluffs and had myself a little dinner picnic. And again, as I listened to my music and sipped my wine while looking out over the lake glistening in the sun, my eyes welled up.

And again I didn't cry. And this time, I even had wine.

All of the sunshine and fresh air, coupled with the decompression that comes with the realization that my job is basically done for another semester (and apparently done well), has put me into a kind of euphoria for much of the last 3 days. Unfortunately, if there's one thing the murky emotional waters of the last couple of years of grad school taught me, it's the difference between an authentic good mood and a manic state. And I'm afraid that this euphoria is reeking of the latter. There is something just under the surface - that infinite scream - that's still trying to find its way out.

I was numb, and now, like the Toronto weather, I am thawing. All it takes is a shift in wind direction on the lakefront to be reminded that winter has not truly left us just yet. The lake hasn't forgotten us - it takes over again in another day or so - I just hope that I don't turn cold and clammy again with it.