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[May. 23rd, 2011|12:33 am] |
I should start at the beginning. Tabitha Michaels. Nice to meet you. The quick easy personal ad version goes something like this: SWF, 26 with small rambunctious puppy. Likes cooking, food, laughing. One brother. Many friends. Clumsy as sin. Working on life.
I say working on life, because it's been a strange few years. Everything I thought I knew in the world, or at least in my corner of the world, had changed.
School was over, really over. After what felt like forever, because it took for-freaking-ever, I'm finally finished with the BA in Creative Writing. That combined with my mighty Culinary Arts degree, means it’s all really done.
And then there's the whole Alex thing.
Alex was the one. From the day I met him, I knew he was the one. We started dating early in college, everything was set, and then he went and asked me to marry him. We planned on getting married in his parents' back yard in Florida, surrounded by our friends and family. I was to white and yellow tulips, because roses were overrated. I was ready to kiss the man I loved with all my heart and took his hand as we jumped into the whateverness of life. Everything was wonderful; we had our little life, the dog, the house and us.
And then it happened.
It was a warm day in late September, warmer than usual for Upstate New York. I was at work- and when I came home and found Alex on the couch, watching the door, waiting for her. He said he didn't know how it happened, or when, but he knew it did. And that he... couldn't. Just that he couldn't. Somehow, in the years we'd been together, something changed. He wasn't in love.
I don’t remember too much after that from that day.
Actually, that’s a lie. I do remember he had on the same running shoes he was when we got engaged. I remember his stupid Yankees cap. I remember a pack of Camel Lights, even if he didn’t smoke in the house. And most of all I remember what he smelled like, what his laugh sounds like how he smiled first thing in the morning when the puppies climbed into the bed. I remember the small scar on his chin from collegiate lacrosse and the way his kisses tasted like cigarettes and Doublemint gum.
I remember all of it. Just like it happened yesterday.
That was almost four years ago. I'm still trying to work through things, which may make me sound super lame.
I talk to my college friends often. My brother laughs, because he calls me the pit bull- I'm fierce, and for whatever reason, he thinks I can't let go. Once school was done my friends scattered across the country, in some cases the world - but we're all still tied together somehow, doing their own things. Getting married, starting families, living life by their rules.
After the breakup, when I realized that now that Alex and I weren't happening and my grandparents were gone and Eric and Elizabeth lived in Costa Rica, there was nothing solid holding me to Chicago anymore- I did some traveling. I visited Daniella and her brother in Boston. I went to Los Angeles to visit Kisha and her husband Anton, and to finally meet my favorite niece Amia in person. I went up to Vancouver to visit Sandra and Michael, who were taking care of an island off the coast for the summer. I went to Costa Rica to visit my brother Eric and his wife Elizabeth, and ended up staying for a little over a year. I went to Japan to visit Tasha, who was teaching English there. I tried to learn something everywhere. To do something. To find something. Maybe to find peace. Probably to find out what that something I was missing was.
It was Eric who convinced me to try the states again. Leave it to my brother to remind me that I could always just go home.
But where was home?
I mean, I'm Chicago born and raised. I still shared ownership of the house I was raised in with Eric and Elizabeth.
So I went back to New York, and tried it out. I put the city on like a familiar pair of shoes- but it wasn't a fit. It just wasn't right anymore. But there was something about Boston. Maybe it was the lure of the water. Maybe it was my best friend's family.
That's why I'm here.
Edibles is a small catering business out of my kitchen at home. I did small parties- mostly weddings and showers, until one of my customers suggested that I do small meals. That’s when things started to take off- making meals for busy moms and dads so that family time can be just that. I rent kitchen space and make food for families. And I like it.
It wasn't supposed to be home. I was only passing through, just like everywhere. But Grandma always said "Tabitha Diane, you know that things never happen exactly when you expect them. Not when, not where, and sure as hell not how. It's all a big ol' game of chance."
I found it all by chance.
But it was home.
And it makes me feel whole. |
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