Circuitry

Don't worry.

 

I'm not dead.

 

I don't have Zombie virus.

 

I haven't run off to join a Mormon cult. And I wouldn't drink the kool-aid.

 

I've just been moving.

 

To be honest, I've been having the hardest time beginning this post because I feel like I've been away for so long. But when I think about it, it's been less than a week since we spoke last. In that week (reality: 5 days) I found the apartment of my dreams back in my favorite midwestern town, received the keys a mere day later, packed up every last bobby pin I own in one Sunday morning, painted a shitload of closet space and had it all moved in by Monday evening. I also drank a lot of celebratory beer.

 

(AHEM. Before I get in trouble, let me take a moment to thank those that actually painted the closet space, assisted me in packing, and donated their time to at a dime's notice moving all my crap on a Sunday afternoon: thank you Buddy Holly (painter extraordinaire), The Mother (moving dictator and master coordinator), brosef (stop drawing on my furniture and just put it together already) and the entire Kotecki family (no, Emma, you cannot hang your Big Time Rush posters in my room). You're the Rotel to my Velveeta.)

 

Tell me you're still with me.

 

Most of you -- most of my favorite people in existence -- don't even know that I've moved. Here's my announcement:

 

COME OVER RIGHT NOW. And bring me a couch, because there's nothing to sit on right now.

 

I've had a hard time believing I would get back to this point. When my apartment was foreclosed in August due to lackluster landlord performance (read: asshole hadn't paid his mortgage in 4 years), I thought my time as a Real Adult was coming to a soul-shattering end. I thought I was being squeezed back into the hole of my adolescence by some force of God or whatever brand you want to slap on it; stripped of the only space I'd ever let be truly "mine" and "solitary" and "quiet;" regressing back into some state of what-the-fuck-edness that only losing everything you've accumulated as your own can bring. You've been reading. You know that it messed with my head.

 

But I remember how I found the previous place. I had envisioned myself as never having the capacity to leave home, lest some Career Breakthrough stumbled my way or I sold my soul to the corporate takeover (I still don't think they'd take a college-dropout CEO-wannabe). But then when The Mother told me "get out of my house. You're miserable and you know it. It's annoying," and I actually listened, it took me a total of 7 days to make the decision and move out. I did my budget on a Tuesday and had gotten the keys on a Friday. That's how fast it goes, sometimes.

 

I'm a firm believer that when you admit to yourself what you want (and sometimes even when you don't), it will come to you. When I moved into my first place, it was very small but entirely mine. The moment I let myself believe I could have it, I did. And it was the first home I built all on my own (not literally. How awesome do you think I am?). But when I was forcibly moved, I still had not admitted to myself how unhappy I had become with it. It was too small. I'd outgrown it. My energy and my life were becoming stifled because I had moved on without admitting it to myself. And though I was devastated when I left, a tiny part of me was relieved.

 

A few things wouldn't have happened if I had not left that place:

 

1) I doubt I would have started writing. My creativity was so stifled by the discomfort I felt with my surroundings that I couldn't get myself to look outside of any kind of box. And though I didn't know why or how, I could feel it.

2) I would not have gotten that money I used to pay off my car and buy too many clothes in the interim, which made it possible for me to;

3) Find the apartment I had long known was waiting for me but took some stumbling to walk across.

 

So it goes.

 

From all of this I find myself back at one of my favorite conclusions; the one that I keep as true as anything but as hard to hold as a snake swimming in jello. The one that says that everything happens for a reason, simply because it happens. You have no choice but to go with it and hope for the light around the corner.

 

Our lives are not linear. They do not follow a cookie cutter or a play-doh mold. They are circular. And sometimes it takes working your way all the way around that circle to find where you begin again.

 

First meal in the new digs, circa last night. Jealous of my table setting?

 

 

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Thanksgiving Massacre

Oh shit, was yesterday Thanksgiving? Did anybody eat any turkey and stuff? And if so, did you take a picture of it so that I don't feel like I missed anything? Can you post it on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, too? Can you also talk about how delicious it was? What? You already did? Oh yeah. I HAVEN'T MISSED ANY OF YOUR TURKEY-GRAVY-STUFFING-BOOZE-VEGAN THANKS/FRIENDSGIVINGS. I HAVEN'T BEEN LIVING UNDER A ROCK.

 

Just kidding, guys. You know I love seeing how much more awesome your holiday was than mine. Even though mine did comprise of 13 amazing people, 5 dogs, 3 pies that you wish you could have had singing in your mouth and 2 badass games of charades. One of which included phrases such as "the artist formerly known as prince" and "genocide" (you can blame my brother for those). I acted the SHIT out of genocide. Thanks for having my back, Grandma.

 

Ever since I stopped going out of town for Thanksgiving -- or maybe since I dropped out of school and have a job that doesn't call for four-day turkey weekends -- the holiday seems to be shrinking. It's become confined to the one day, in the middle of the week, that flies by as quickly as it came barreling down at us. It's like a brief, violent firework that signals the first of 40 days of bloating, booze and being broke (TAKE THAT, alliteration).

 

That's not to say that I don't love the holidays. I LOVE the holidays. But sometimes, in the middle of the days that actually constitute them, I find myself slipping back to other time zones. On occasion I hear myself speak, or see from above how I sneak into the background to chop potatoes, or find myself asking over and over again what I can do to help, that I remember my little-kid self. I find myself occupying a mold I created a long time ago within my family unit: one of peace keeper, one of Perfect Eldest, one of Thou Whom Has Thine Shit Together. And sometimes when I see myself in this light again I want to whack that saucepan full of cranberry sauce over my head and shout WAKE UP, MOTHERFUCKER!

 

Because look, Here's The Thing:

 

The holidays are that perfect time of the year -- regardless of your current or past relationship with your family -- that bring up all the years that have come between Birth and Now. There's something about being with all the people that have seen you through that life -- not to mention helped shape it -- that pulls out all the best and worst in ourselves. It's hard to take a step back from everything and remember what you are at the current moment when there are so many reminders of what you've been before it swimming around you.

 

I absolutely adore my family. I couldn't ask for a group of more loving, supportive, endearingly obnoxious or thrillingly loony people than what I've got. They have worked infinitely hard at being healthy, strong and mutually supportive. But there's no denying that with every family comes baggage, and the holidays are the perfect time for all of it to come tumbling out and trip you down the stairs.

 

The Mother and I used to get into explosive arguments nearly every single holiday when I was growing up. After I started taking a look at myself and the person I had grown into, it was easier to see where that dynamic came from. We were both fulfilling rolls that we had created and we were both working our ways out of them. It's easy to see after you've done some digging where your patterns are. And after you've learned to see those paths more clearly, it's a hell of a lot easier to change their direction.

 

Of course we all grow into different people after we've moved out of our parents' houses, formed our own identities, claimed our unique lives. But if you find yourself becoming lost in it around this time of year, just remember that it's a collective thing. It's the ground zero of all the poignant moments in our lives that gets sticky when somebody spills the cranberry sauce. And it's the strength needed to say "yes," "no," or "maybe."

 

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Hooray?

I paid off my car loan yesterday. I didn't even plan to -- I was assuming I'd continue my let's-just-squeak-by-unnoticed plan until the middle of next year, at which point I'd probably just keep the payments rolling with way over due car repairs and ten missed oil changes. But as I was driving to work yesterday morning and I began my daily ritual panic attack about all the things I'm unsure of currently, I started thinking about the money I have sitting in my account after the bank made me unceremoniously chuck my own ass out. And then I started thinking about all the money I owe, outside of those student loans that will haunt me of my failed scholarly attempts until the day I trip over a toe and die in a puddle of ice cream or something. Assuming my diet is purely mechanical soft, at that point.

 

Mid-Taylor Swift radio repeat I realized: money + debt = NOTHING. Or broke, whichever one is still Not Bill Gates (does Bill Gates have debt? If so, is that like the United States having debt? Like, we have debt, but we really have a shit ton of money in all the wrong places? Do I even know what I'm talking about here? Should I just stop making myself look like an easy target for telemarketers and door-to-door campaigners?).

 

Money is a big hot button for me. Growing up we were dirt poor, living around a bunch of people who were absolutely not dirt poor. Although I did learn that garbage picking furniture in a town whose welcome sign should read Welcome To White Upper-Middle Class really shows you the value of the curb. And dry couch cushions.

 

Growing up broke around people who vomit Jeep Grand Cherokees on their children's sixteenth birthdays makes for a pretty twisted material complex in a child. I always lusted after the best of everything but grew up believing I would never have it. Though I never wanted for anything, none of it was ever enough. And I never thought anything would ever be enough.

 

When I began making my own money, I started developing this love/terror relationship with it. The more I had, the harder to it I clung. The emptier my account, the more consumed I became with something I ABSOLUTELY NEEDED but could not afford. And the more elaborate the schemes I would come up with to just make enough money to afford ONE MORE Tamagotchi (to clarify...this was allowance money. I was not working at Dairy Queen at 15 just to buy Tamagotchi. Enter: Fall Out Boy).

 

Even today this come-closer-go-away relationship I have with the dolla dolla bills, y'all, persists. I had all this money just sitting there, for two months, knowing it was an opportunity to clear a large obstacle from my way. But I chose to just let it sit there, so I could obsess over whether or not to blow it on new tattoos or completely clear my debt slate as a Responsible Adult should.

 

Truth is that money came completely out of the blue. But as soon as I knew it was mine, I all of a sudden couldn't have survived without it. So I guess the cycle comes full circle, in a way: the money that I didn't know existed became imperative to pay for things I didn't know were possible until that point. Which leads me to wonder, what am I clinging to now that may not be necessary in my life, but seems so just because it's here? What about you? When was the last time you took stock of what you have -- things, experiences, people, etc. -- that you may not need anymore? Does anyone else have such a dysfunctional relationship with their wallet as me?

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[Dys]traction

Hey guys, I'M BACK. And yes, I know I should note my total failure as a NaBloPoMo contributor. I have not kept the streak alive. Though if it were not for my last three days of absence, I probably would have had to wring the following post out like a brain-squeegee, instead of chasing it in earnest as I am now. And honestly, I prefer it this way. So like, SUCK IT, or something.

 

Today I found my perfect red lip color. Please do not underestimate the power in this statement, as I have spent countless hours and non-tax deductible dollars on this very pursuit. This is what it looks like to find your perfect lip color:

Taking pictures of your hand with an ipad at Starbucks: forever awkward.

 

And this is a break down of your day when you find your perfect lip color:

 

Miles driven: 50

Hours consumed: 3

Towns visited: 4

Dollars Spent: Don't ask

Brain Cells Lost: Shut up

 

Ah, the perils of consumerism. I will say in my defense that a portion of those miles driven were to and from my bi-weekly visit to Crazytown (a.k.a: therapy) and just happened to pass by Sephora en route, prompting the sudden and ALL-CONSUMING NEED to find my perfect shade. Which I did find, but was soul-shatteringly disappointed to find was OUT OF STOCK at this particular store. So onward to Ulta did I travel which, let's face it ladies (and a few of my favorite men), does not cut it all the time, and around and about a good hike further, until VOILA! It was mine. Never you mind that they'd have it back in stock on Thursday at the first location. I simply CAN NOT WAIT for what I didn't know I needed until I discovered its existence. Simply. Voila.

 

Have you sensed the connection yet? The downward spiral I tripped into after stirring up a bunch of shit I didn't want to look at in Crazytown, followed by what can only be seen as far greater madness in my manic search for Nars Red Square? Can you say "com-pul-sive?"

 

This is what I meant by "distractions." This is what I do when I'm trying to avoid feeling that which kind of resembles something I'd pull out of my shower drain. I fixate on something totally outside the realm of necessity, something that for a single moment in time I can pretend is the most important part of that moment in time. In that way, I don't have to worry about all the the stuff I was worrying about before: my discomfort with living at home again, the uncertainty of going to Phoenix in January, the status of my relationship and codependency therein. All the things that I know are getting in my way but seem too big to handle right now. For all you compulsive shoppers, drinkers, workers, TV-ers, and a million other -ers that are nothing but a way of turning yourself off from yourself: you know what I'm talking about. Even if you don't.

 

But look, here's the thing: the difference between today and countless other similar moments I've experienced before I woke up to them is awareness. Awareness is the difference between being asleep and being awake. Awareness is the moment when you stop being a victim of your life and start being your life. Awareness is the choice between unconscious actions and understanding what you're doing and why -- and then maybe doing it anyways or not. With awareness, there is power to do or not to do.

 

Today I chose to "do." I chose to play with my insecurities and compulsions. I have before and I will again -- probably more times than I'd like to bet my sweet red lips on. But you know what, I KNOW I've got shit. I know I do things that are fucked up. I know I am happier being nicer to myself and my checkbook than filling it with things. And I know I'm working on pulling myself in another direction. What about you?

 

 

...erm, I'm aware that that last sentence seems pretty snarky. But like, I'm being serious. What do you do that you know is a total distraction? What is your crux? What is your poison? TALK TO ME, DAMMIT!

 

So glad to be back. LOVE YA!

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(Un)politics

Today is that risky, emotional and politically tense day known in our country as "election day." Like I've said before, I am not here to delve into politics -- mainly because I have little patience in educating myself about their minutiae, and rich white men talking about my vagina makes me a little nauseous (oops). But I will let you know that I have a sticker to prove I braved the smell of my local VFW to blacken some ovals behind a big white screen. Oh no, did I just make a euphemism for the entire [political] race, there? I must be cleverer than I thought. I am America, and so can you!



Four years ago I voted for the first time. I also spent the evening of my first participating election in Grant Park with thousands of other voters, watching the giant screens set up outside the real rally -- seriously like, Oprah was so close to us -- awaiting the country's decision. It was one of the most emotionally charged things I've ever been a part of, because there were so many of us in such a large area. And when Ohio went blue? My god, I thought a hole had been torn in the sky. The feeling was just so big and so great and so hopeful. I will never forget that moment -- of thousands of people crying and holding each other; of cheering in unison over something we couldn't even grasp the magnitude yet.



The successive four years in our country's history is -- and will continue to be -- debatable. Everyone has something different to say about how Obama has affected our country, be it is positive or negative. I'm not really interested in that. What I'm interested in is the monumental shift that occurred that day and is still cascading through today. On November 4th, 2008, America chose to leave the past behind and elect its first black president. Ever. After centuries of persecution and a cultural mindset that has still not even fully healed, we chose to think differently. We chose to elect someone because of who they are as a person, and not the color of their skin.



Four years ago I was also going through my own internal shift. Remember how I told you about the time I was hibernating in my parent's home, afraid to leave for fear of sunlight, and miserably depressed? Yeah, that was then. On the day of the 2008 election, all my screws were still loose and I was staring at my insides as if they were a million-piece jigsaw puzzle that would never get put back together. I was in the middle of personal crisis and I had no idea which way was up or where left met right. I was still broken.



But as if our country were some strung-out crack addict that ODed mere days before the election, on that day it chose to be and do something different than it was used to. In the parting clouds of my own rock bottom, I also had a choice to make. Keep doing what I had been and stay miserable, or do something different. Thankfully, I chose the upward path. I chose to be and do something different.



I won't lie, it's a long road back to the top. But when faced with yourself, where would you say you are failing? Where would you admit your unhappiness? When it comes to your life, what would you say you wish were different? And how many times have you done the same thing over and over again, waiting for the magical day when it changes?



Folks, I'll let you in on a little secret: it was Einstein who told us a long time ago that the definition of insanity is exactly the formerly described. We all have choices to make in life, from the trivial to the serious. From the color of our hair to the personality of our spouse. But what we have to start realizing is that we are not the victims of our lives. Just as our country chose to do something different four years ago you, too, can choose the very same. You are in control of your life. You have the power because it is happening to no one but you. So when the road gets rocky and you begin to see where you're lacking, learn from those around you. And make your choice.

Yeah, this kind of says it all.

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