Lord, If You've Got Lungs--C'mon and Shout Me Out!

A couple of months ago, my oldest friend mused in her blog about what she called the "The in-between blues." It was an excellent post, and I think it highlights a lot about the confusion of the mid-20s. No matter who you are, what your job is. No matter what your relationship status--married, dating, single. It's a weird age.

My favorite movie of all time is Garden State--and I think it describes the uncertainty of this time with an enlightening clarity:

"You'll see one day when you move out it just sort of happens one day and it's gone. You feel like you can never get it back. It's like you feel homesick for a place that doesn't even exist. Maybe it's like this rite of passage, you know. You won't ever have this feeling again until you create a new idea of home for yourself, you know, for your kids, for the family you start, it's like a cycle or something. I don't know, but I miss the idea of it, you know. Maybe that's all family really is. A group of people that miss the same imaginary place."

But with my most sincere apologies to the delightful Mrs. H, I do believe I have to describe myself as being firmly ensconced in the "In-between Yellows."

I don't mean to be infuriating or overly sunny, I promise. Life here is not easy. Not by any stretch of the imagination. But surely you are tired of me complaining about chronic exhaustion and a grumpy boss [who, by the way, happens to hate Christmas because people stop working as hard...seriously]. So--my yellows.

My grandmother refuses to stop asking me when I am getting married, and I am tempted to tell her "never." Although I do want--and occasionally long--to be married, I am increasingly satisfied with this stage of in-between. It's like all of the fun of being married--cheaper finances, living in the same place, getting to go out on dinner dates and to get coffee at the bookstore--without some of the more serious stresses. I don't know what it is--if not being constrained by the legality and formality of it makes it seem easier to love harder and more freely. Or if it's just the lingering "honeymoon" phase of seeing each other every day, as opposed to once every two weeks. Or if it's just that we finally feel pretty sure that we can, actually, do this. But, whatever it is, this in-between is somethings else. Something my grandmother doesn't understand, but something--simultaneously--that I'm not eager to let her take from us.

The in-between, mixed with the absolute good fortune of living in a city with college friends and working in a field that constantly exposes me to people of my general age, has also yielded a collection of friendships that is deeply satisfying. For the first time, Joey and I have real couple friends. Like, "Hey, we'll be inviting you to dinner when we move into the new house," couple friends who are actually married. Somehow, the in-between lets us bridge this gap, the one between married friends and single friends. We have things in common with both. In the same week, we could ostensibly go to dinner with a married couple one night, and then spend the next out in bars with our less-attached friends.

But I continue to be amazed with the amount of intimacy we can manufacture with this latter group--I am, as always, intrigued by what I have come to call the "post-crazy intimacy" of these friendships. I am enamored with the arm thrown casually above my head on the couch, when we're tipsy off liquor, debating the finer points of Lady Gaga and leaning into each other. I am taken with the the image of my clove cigarette in Charlie's mouth as he lights it for me, after I've failed miserably in the dual forces of the December wind and my own inexperience. There's the delight of knowing that someone knows how I pronounce the word "couch," of knowing how someone else pronounces the word "breakfast." Making Janet laugh until her face turns red and she cries. Getting drunk and hiding Rob's kitchen appliances--finding some way, any way, to relieve the disarming stress of a crazy week.

It's the hangups, the sudden pleasure of a slip of emotion you weren't expecting. The sudden frustration that you can only feel with the best of your friends, followed in a flash by something redeeming they do. Something that makes you smile and forget why you were grumpy in the first place.

Because Joey lives here, I am now closer to the people I intentionally guarded myself from. I am safer, less worried about what someone will think. If a boy falls asleep on my couch on a Saturday night, it doesn't matter. Let the neighbors be confused about two boys slipping out of my house, one at 4:45 AM and another at 5. I couldn't care less.

I'll just be asleep in my bed, hoping to avoid a hangover and not minding if I don't. Stuck--somewhat improbably--in the in-between yellows.