A Proper Postscript

The tour of our friend’s new house was making its way back to the rest of the party when we stopped halfway down the stairwell. This tall, wiry fellow was standing in our way, seemingly as part of his plan. It was the same guy from earlier in the evening, the one who’d made a comment toward Emily that could be taken as eccentric, hilarious, or creepy from different angles. He continued to chat us up, relaxed yet intense, with these occasional off-the-wall remarks. I thought they were hilarious. Emily? The way she restrained a smirk while giving him the side-eye suggested she was either unsure of him or embarrassed to be amused. It took a few hours, but once she started responding back, it became clear that this guy was winning her over.

When Emily went to the kitchen with a friend, the guy leaned toward me and asked, “So, are you two affiliated?” I thought it was a quirky way of asking if we were dating. Quirky but memorable… you know, I guess that could summarize Jon and that whole encounter. I told him we were not an item, which gave him the green light to ask for Emily’s num--

“Oh, I’ve heard this part before,” Jenny interjected, willing to amuse me nonetheless as I completed the story.

The start of Jon and Emily, two friends I was about to visit, was familiar to Jenny. She probably first heard the story before we attended their wedding eight years ago. I’ll bet she’s heard the tale of their beginning at least five or six times. She’s used to me repeating stories. Call me (insert mediocre 90s sitcom you like more than you admittedly should), because I’m always on rerun.

The details of my friends’ first encounter weren’t even important at the time I was sharing them for the fifth sixth Nth occasion. I tell my wife passages like that all the time, sometimes in passing, sometimes to reshape a story with new information, sometimes using context to express a different sentiment, sometimes just because I like to share things with her.

I could apply a lot of that last (run-on) sentence to what it was like writing in this blog.

My dissertation defense was a long time coming. Although the project was completed in 2014, the idea originated seven years prior… give or take a month from the time this blog was last updated. I’ve written a lot in my area of study in that time. It’s funny, though: when it comes to me and “publishing,” I don’t just think of the sexual violence research. I reminisce on my writing prior to this, when I’d sit at a computer writing boxing articles from my bachelor apartment. I’ll say this: my area of research may be controversial among the general public, but I’ve never been called anything like “half breed hack” from someone reading my academic writing. Not to my knowledge, at least.

I experienced plenty of stumbling blocks along the way to completing my dissertation. I was regularly exhausted by a surly, ever-critical colleague who put it upon herself to judge my intentions before “allowing” me to proceed. There was the day I felt that fizzy head dizziness when I’d discovered that not only had my flash drive been corrupted, but also I’d been incorrectly backing up my research database (I’m savvy with computers like my neurotic dog is savvy with boxes blocking his way into a room). The biggest obstacle, though, was Mr. Procrastination. Putting things off a week was more the indirect roadblock. The momentum I lost by getting distracted by things like my clinical cases, deciding what Jenny and I should do to add to our (metaphorical) memory scrapbook, and checking IMDB to confirm which actors from a decades-old movie are now dead hurt my efficiency and really slowed me down.

Despite all the inevitable adversity, the day came for me to defend my years-long work to a small room of scholars and colleagues. I usually feel anxiety in anticipation for a big event by overthinking various scenarios, but I was unusually calm that day. Scratch that: I was unusually calm until I forgot the most up-to-date version of my defense and had Jenny scrambling for it in an adjacent building 10 minutes before showtime. Whatever: I’d been calm long enough to be well-rested and eat a sandwich, so I had enough fuel to get me through.

The details of the actual defense are a blur, but the aftermath was very vivid. I stood outside the door pacing with Jenny, well confident of the outcome but antsy to have this all just come to its proper conclusion. She looked proud of me. In most situations that’s good enough for me… but I wanted that Ph.D., and my university did not include an awesome woman’s pride in the prerequisites for my degree. About ten minutes later, my advisor waved me into the room and looked over with a smile. She offered a nod of respect, shook my hand, and referred to me as “Dr.” to indicate I’d achieved my longtime goal. For all intents and purposes, I’d be able to call myself Dr. the next day, once I deposited my completed dissertation and filled out the proverbial paperwork.

When everything was finalized that next day, I was alone in a room with an administrative person I’d never met before and probably will never see again. I don’t really remember the moment it became official, but I remember what happened immediately after.

I stood up, walked toward the exit, and stumbled head first into the door.

I’d pushed on a door with a large, unambiguous “Pull” sign.

It’s the kind of blunder you would normally edit out of a key moment, but it was quite the visual to me. I knew immediately that this was what I’d remember best about that event. To fail to properly use a door immediately after receiving your Ph.D.: it was an imperfect ending that felt quite fitting.

Imperfect endings rarely transcend big moments the way that did. Most of the time the details just fade away. In other instances, they’ll continue to nag at you, leaving you itching to rewrite the ending. When you can do something to alter those kinds of endings, maybe you should.

The iPhone. President Barack Obama. The popularity of Taylor Swift and Justin Bieber. NFL players Adrian Peterson and Calvin Johnson. The debate over what happened in the finale of The Sopranos. None of these things existed the last time I updated this blog. Michael Jackson, Heath Ledger, Boris Yeltsin, and Anna Nicole Smith were still kicking. Hell, I probably visited MySpace soon after I’d last clicked “publish.”

I never consciously made a decision to stop writing here. I’d say it just gradually happened, but can not doing something happen? In any event, I could pitch a number of reasons for the decline of my recreational writing without resorting to hackneyed “I got so busy” excuses. The efforts and energy put into my research (I know, I know, this sounds like an “I got so busy,” but wait for it…) left me less than inspired to spend my spare time typing in front of a computer screen when that’s what much of my day job involved. I became more social and spent less time by myself (and with my computer). My attention span weakened to the point that I became too distractible to follow through with tasks that don’t work well on the installment plan. Increased use of social media—by the public, colleagues, and prospective employers—made me second-guess what I could/should relay online.

But probably the biggest, yet simplest, reason for the end of my writing here is that my life changed. In most ways (read: Jenny and all she is) this has been for the better, but no matter the changes, life is simply different. Many aspects of my life have stabilized as I sprinted, jogged, limped, danced, and strolled through my mid-to-late 20s and early 30s. In those times I need to express myself, vent, or explore musings on the fly, I have a wonderful partner as my go-to outlet.

This blog was written by an intermittently lonely guy, age 19-24, still finding himself. I liked that guy (though several parts of College Anthony in particular make me cringe), but that version is not entirely around anymore. It’s much like the way a picture of me from those days would only resemble—and by no means represent—how I’d physically look in a picture today. I’m not suggesting I’ve found myself and have life figured out, but the scope of that search has certainly changed. Slowly but surely, sitting for hours to write in a blog no longer filled the purpose it once did.

         

We were sitting alone in the lounge of our loft apartment building, two emptied bottles of homebrew sitting on a nearby end table. The Psych finale was on the television, and we were watching to see how things would end. At one point early on, Jenny giggled at something on the screen. I felt butterflies in my chest, as I tend to experience whenever she does Jenny things. I don’t mean to trivialize what makes her great because she’s an amazing, multi-talented, generous spirit of a woman, but it’s often the little things like that that make me take a mental snapshot of how much her partnership means to me.

The Psych finale was off to a promising start, which we were admittedly surprised about given our feelings toward the shit in the final season. Most of the time, perfect send-offs don’t happen. My dad’s final words to me were, “I love you too.” About as perfect of final words as you can imagine, right? Nonetheless, aside from the obvious fact that he left us way too soon, even that was a flawed send-off since he'd lie unconscious for over 24 hours after those words.

I sometimes wonder if a “perfect ending” is even possible. No matter how much we try to compartmentalize, life and events don’t occur in a vacuum. Going back to my dad, there’s a moment in his final days that always stuck with me. After bringing him outside to see our dog one last time, I was guiding him in his wheelchair back to his hospital floor. As the elevator door opened, I glanced toward the right wing of the floor, an area I hadn't explored. I’m sure I’d read the signs before, but I hadn’t really processed that over to the right was the baby delivery unit. I wondered how many lives had begun that hour, that day, before turning my dad’s wheelchair to the left back to hospice. Within the same bubble, beginnings and endings were occurring in synchrony.

Jenny and I thoroughly enjoyed that hour of watching Psych together. Once the finale actually finale’d, we looked at each other and smiled in relief. Given that this was a show we'd followed over the years, we were invested in the send off. Jenny indicated she was happy with the episode, and I was glad to see the series wrap-up pleased her.

I felt similarly. I knew it wasn't a perfect ending, but it was way better than how it would have been if they hadn’t returned and wrapped things up in a fitting manner.

In my head I thought, “this will definitely do.”

Eventually, we walked back to our apartment together, saying hi to a ridiculously excited puppy and continuing the everydayness of our life together.