Champagne

There’s this bottle of champagne that’s been sitting in my fridge. I’ve been traveling with it for years now. Its original purpose has long since become something that can’t be celebrated, something of my own personal failure, but I keep looking to repurpose the bottle. There must be something worth popping a bottle of champagne over, right? I mean I’ve been aging it, so it must be even better. That’s what I keep telling myself at least.

I’m starting to think that it’s that bottle of champagne that makes the world feel a little bit smaller each day. Like every day I don’t open it the world closes in just a little bit more, and I can breathe just a little bit less. I keep thinking about just smashing the damn thing, but that seems sad. It was given to me as a beacon of hope from a friend, and to smash that wish for me seems wrong. But to keep believing that something good and magical will happen, well that’s starting to just seem depressing.

I remember when I was handed the bottle; there was this sense that everything was just starting to go my way. There was a sense that hard work would pay off, that it was about to pay off. It almost seemed to say my just rewards were coming. It kept me going, enough that I still have it, just staring at me, even three years later. There’s something about booze and bubbles that just implies happiness. That’s a feeling I keep waiting to feel.

More and more every day this past week, I feel the need to get out, get away, move, far, far away, just change everything and leave. I told myself that staying put would lend itself to building the life I keep saying I want, but I don’t think I’m any closer than I was when I kept leaving all the time. At least then there was a good reason, not just yet another personal failure. Maybe that’s why I was so attached to always being able to get gone. I’d way rather have no chance, than give myself a chance and still fail.

It’s terrible to look back and feel like you’re exactly where you were three years ago, back to when you were given that bottle of champagne. But it’s even worse to realize that you’ve yet to have something big enough to celebrate. Maybe it’s worse to realize you still have no one to really celebrate with.

I used to hide the bottle in the back of the fridge. But recently, space has been limited, and it’s staring at me from the door, every damn time I open the fridge. Every dinner, every glass of wine I go get, every single day, there it is. I go to bed at night praying to have something to open it for. Sometimes I get close, and then it falls apart. I tried to buy a piece of land, start my own business, but it fell through. I had already deemed the bottle’s use to celebrate the deal being finalized. Then I told myself it would be to celebrate the sale of a horse that has still yet to occur. A sale I have painstakingly waited for in order to find the exact right situation. The bottle still stares at me.

So here we are.

Now it’s staring at me from my countertop. Making me wonder if I just crack it to get the monkey off my back, or if I wait for that big moment I’ve continually saved it for. Maybe its lesson is to teach me that any and all moments can and are big moments. But, it’s a hell of a commitment to have carried around this long to just waste on just any old moment.

What do you think my friend dreamed for me when she handed me that bottle? Was it the same thing I dreamed of? Or was her idea different? Was it smaller or kinder? Was it just about my own feeling of success and happiness? How did I loose those feelings as well?

I write about the lost-ness I seem to feel and find a lot. And yes, in some ways I realize that the nothing is also the endless sense of possibility. But it’s not certain, and it’s not safe. It lacks direction and goals. There’s no point to fixate on, and conquer, and achieve, three things I so desperately need. Or want. Maybe I just desire them.

Writing is usually my angsty outlet. So I guess that means for a while, I ceased to feel that angst. I finally didn’t feel teenage me trying to jailbreak out of my head despite my six foot thick concrete wall that I build to trap her where she belongs, alone and away from anyone who might be able to view her.

In that time, adult me has tried to move forward and make plans. For once, I decided to live a full life, achieve professional goals, acquire more major income earning, even have a personal life. The funny part is none of them are really any further along. My not-yet-sale did nothing but set me against one of my best friends. The property deal is gone with nothing on the horizon. I’ve disappointed everyone prepared to work with me on that front. But I’ve also made them feel as though they have the right to tell me I don’t even care about starting the business, as if it’s so easy to do a start-up, as if they don’t fail all the time. It’s easy to be excited as long as you carry no risk. And the personal life, my relationship… God, I’m not even sure I’m in the one I’m in.

How is it that what looks like progress from the outside just feels like spinning from the inside? How is it that it feels like going nowhere? How is it that it feels like just having even more questions?

My brand new boyfriend, my first boyfriend, moves 5 hours away in 25 days. He’s this super great guy, Smart and funny, interesting, stories to boot, life experiences I couldn’t never even imagine, and his own bus-full of baggage to go with it. When he’s with me, in my house, he’s definitely my boyfriend. But when he’s here, I find myself questioning whether he knows that I care. And when he’s not here, I find myself wondering whether he’s the one who may or may not care. He disappears, sometimes for days, he’ll not see me for a week at a time. But he’s also the one who had the talk, who locked it down.

He’s also the one that gets to leave this time. Not me. I’m here. I have to stay. He gets to leave, and I have to stay. I’ve never been the one who has to stay, and I want so badly to hate him for that, but mostly I think I’m just jealous.

Sometimes I miss the transient life, the certainty and the safety of never staying still, the ability to always run away while making it look like you were just moving forward. It was the perfect excuse to stay by myself, to stay alone, to never connect. It was my own personal test. If you could stick with me through that, then you were true, then you were worth it. And it’s exactly what he’s doing to me.

This relationship sits tenuously on the precipice of impending distance. There will be no in-between. It will either fall to the wrong side, cracking into a million pieces, or it will flourish into something great. But I guess either way, that bottle of bubbly will be there for me waiting to celebrate the accomplishment of finally trying.

God I hope it’s a good bottle.