Myspace has eaten my soul.

www.myspace.com/saraelstonmoore

I want to write something.  I want to write something meaningful and deep, words that are sitting in my heart just below the surface.

But it's too far below the surface.  I don't have internet access at home right now, so I'm using it at the library in Elmira on my way home after work.

(Tonight was a conversation with a delightful seventeen-year-old who insists she does not need help.  Honey, if the professionals are telling you you're sick, you probably are.  On the other hand, I once or twice maybe have done the same thing)

I suppose the words I'm trying to reach are about sacrifice, about what we let go of to have what we truly desire.  About what it is to drive down 414 and see the denim blue water nestled against a dark green tree line, and to begin to understand that you gave up potential friends and spouses and children and succesful careers, so you could move back to the place you grew up and see the sun set over the water. About what it is to begin to long for the lives your college friends talk about; the ones where they embark on careers you will never have, and Friday night club hopping that you will never do, and lectures you will never attend, and, in general, a life in a big city that you will never know.  I am the only person I know who graduated with a bachelor's degree and still lives in the small town she grew up in. 

And I want to write about what it is to not regret it.  To understand that by moving back to Schuyler county, someplace I love and really have  no intention of ever leaving, but that I know by choosing to stay I have also chosen something different from my peers.

A friend of mine is getting married this summer.  In an email that I received today, she asked if I think I will ever regret not marrying, if I will ever regret moving back to someplace where I am quite certain I will never meet anyone to even date.(I'm not dissing anyone.  It's just that everyone seemed to marry while I was off at college, so I don't know any single people anymore) 

This particular friend was there when one particularly good romance of mine went sour.  The man broke up with me for this reason: Men, according to him, want to rescue the damsel in distress from the dragon.  Also according to him, I've already smashed the door down, slayed my own dragon, and am running around waging war on other people's dragons.  That, he said, was why no one would ever want to marry me.

Jen mentioned this in her email to me, wrapped in the middle of a description of the wonderful man she is marrying. He slays my dragons, she wrote.

Sara, she continued, what are you going to do when it's 2 a.m. and the dragon shows up at your door?  Don't you want to move someplace bigger, someplace where you will be surrounded by people who will catch you when you fall...who will climb up and pull you down when you get too high...who will reach out a hand when you are stuck too low...who will sit in the emergency room with you for hours when you get sick...who will pull you out of a ditch when you are in an accident...who will be there to slay your dragons when they show up at 2 in the morning.

In case you can't tell, we were both creative writing majors.

There are choices we make every day.  Every choice means we gain something, and every choice means we leave something behind.

Every choice means we give something up.  Life's a balancing act, and we all choose the things we have to drop.  Come Friday night, I often have a twinge of regret about moving home.  There's no doubt in my mind that my social life would be a thousand times better had I moved to Charlotte like planned. There's no doubt in my mind that I would have met some nice, professional, single man there, married him, and had his children.

And there's no doubt it my mind I would always have regretted it.  That I would have known, somewhere, deep down inside, that I had made the wrong choice.  I would have had the world, and given up too much for it.

I'm not sure yet what I'll email back to Jen.  I'm not sure she can understand what it means to live in a community, in a place where you are never really alone, even when you want to be.  I'm not sure I can explain the beauty of Seneca Lake, beauty that strikes so deep it becomes an almost physical pain.  I'm not sure that I can make her believe that in the times I've been gone, the times I've lived other places and stood on the brink of an exciting and brilliant life, I've known that I was missing something very important.  

Maybe, someday, I will throw my car into a ditch, or I will fall down and not be able to get up, or I will climb up too high and not be able to get back down.  Maybe the dragon will come visit me in the middle of the night, and I will be stuck in my tower window looking out.  And maybe, then, I will wish I had someone else there to help me fight it.

Somehow, though, I don't think I will be alone at all.

Oh, well I'm going home,
Back to the place where I belong,
And where your love has always been enough for me.
I'm not running from.
No, I think you got me all wrong.
I don't regret this life I chose for me.
But these places and these faces are getting old.
I said these places and these faces are getting old,
So I'm going home.
I'm going home.

daughtry

here it is, then
the releasing you've waited so long for
the one you feared though
you never dared admit it

you expected it more like
a sudden spring storm that
sneaks up from behind the mountain
blocking out the sun until
day becomes night

instead it comes like summer
a little more every day
until one morning the leaves awake with the sun
and the heat rains down from the sky
you haven't even noticed the snow is gone
and the mud dried

here it comes, then
this gradual death, the one
you've practiced your whole life for,
every night you slept
to find a new season with the sun

oh, you think, hello.
i remember you.

i should not have let you go so easily
instead i would have fought
carrying sepia flowers and a blue hat
in this other time we would
have danced in wooden shoes
and slept in quilted trundle beds

you would have blossomed
with melted butter dribbling down
your chin, instead of the
ashes smudging your cheek.
and we would have sprinted across
buttercups, barefoot, instead
of cold sharp glass encasing
your narrow heel.

unlike you, child etched in
tintype, it all shattered
long ago. and when, tomorrow,
you meet me young again, i
shall tell you of the death of beauty,
and then hand you flowers
and a slipper blown of fire.

A month since I've updated?
Lord, how is that even possible...

But I have been so busy...I am now a full time student taking thirteen credit hours of Fire Protection Technology. Just Firefighter I and EMT-B, but apparently it added up.  And working just about full time. And having the flu.

I got this message on my MySpace recently and thought it was so sweet I had to share it...pretty cool, except I'm not dying for no damn cat.

I would like to tell you about a princess who doesn't need a tiara

A real hero by the name of Sara

She's smart and sexy her smile divine

But her greatest gift of all is her giving of time

You see Sara isn't like Superman a high-flyer

She's more of a hero a volunteer firefighter

she doesn't leap tall buildings in a single bound

But she'll rush into a fire to make sure your Kitty stays around

She'll crawl through smoke to save a kid

and in my book that's better than anything Superman did

So If you're wondering why you still have a store

Thank people like this Real Hero The lovely Miss Sara Moore.

I am proud to have you as my friend and God Bless You for your service to this community.

Big Dan