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| I just realized, sitting here with my roomie and bestie, Katarina, living in Chinatown, working in luxury travel, in the Big Apple, feeling my third glass of wine and generally at ease with the world, that I have not written on Xanga for what seems like ages. Because it has been ages.
Nowadays we Tweet, we update Facebook statuses, we text, we BBM, we video chat via gMail, we Skype, and of course, we blog. But in the beginning, I broadcasted my life to a chosen few, from the basement of a language academy in Bonn, where I found my first love (the ever-evolving Nathan, still cross my fingers for him...) and my lifelong best friend and substitute older sister/twin figure to fill the void left by my recently profoundly-changed companion. I traded a Jessica for a Katarina. And it was bumpy, and scary, and based on much more than that one lost relationship and one found relationship. But all said and done, the one constant remains. I lost and I found. And I am weaker and stronger, and hopefully wiser.
Best of luck to all of the people I started this for, and any who still read it. Crazy how the time flies, eh?
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| Every time I see the light, it's enticing.
But then I see the darkness around me
...and how far away the light feels
...and the distance between it and me.
And I get sidetracked into embracing and understanding the darkness right next to me
...and I lose track of the light.
When I see it again, it seems a bit closer
...which is nice, I suppose.
But it would be so much nicer if I could resist the diversions
...and just walk toward it.
I know some people achieve clarity and they hold onto it
...they fight for it.
But my grip isn't very tight
...and there are so many other things around me to grab hold of...
...that I become an expert in letting go, instead.
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| I always liked my Easy Bake Oven because it was bad-ass. Making real snacks without supervision? That's empowerment. It wasn't just pretend, I made my cake and ate it, too. Not once did I think of emulating Mommy in the kitchen. I thought of making things. Delicious things. For my own enjoyment. I still do. Too bad its "girly" pink and purple design discouraged little boys from discovering their inner pastry chef, too.
It looks like Hasbro still hasn't grasped the genius of gender neutral marketing and design:
Go to
Rose Petal Cottage
and click on the "Dreamtown for Moms" video to see for yourself.
I'll be damned if my daughter's first concepts of creativity are moving an armchair around or the first thing she "imagines" is putting laundry in the dryer. Those are CHORES. Enough with the Cinderella complexes. Get this girl some Playdough (part of the same Hasbro family). Or better yet, some fingerpaints. Girls can get messy, too.
PS. While we're at it, Sunsilk needs to realize that the world is not made up of two camps: blonde or brunette. I can't speak for anyone else, but this redhead thinks you need a marketing makeover.
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| It's days like today that I can look forward to the coming winter because the balminess outside soothes me into disbelief. I guess it's a given that those months of rushing between corridors are necessary to maintain a certain appreciativeness of these generous and gentle intervals in between. But if only we could be subdued and dormant just long enough to achieve a sense of seasons rather than the long, cruel slog that is winter, I would be satisfied. If hibernation maintained that coziness inherent in the first few snowdays, where we relish fleece and cocoa, and scraping off car windshields is a novelty rather than a torturous test of endurance... Then I wouldn't be so inclined to swear it all off forever.
But I am not one of those so foolish, to be blinded by the brilliant colors of fall, by the harvest-themed festivities, that I welcome such change without regret or apprehension. These days where the out-of-doors welcomes better than the in - they are too fleeting, and much too quickly traded for the briskness of apple orchards and fall jackets and scholarly pursuits.
Rather sweat and breathe and bless the cool respite of night than withstand the slap of cold, midday, with a sun too far removed to properly warm the bones, and a wind too sharp to call friendly. Winter is my lifelong adversary. I'll miss the summer.
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| I looked down, sighed, and resigned myself for what seemed like the hundredth time to the fact that I had had the same legs since I was two, and would always have them. My eyes grazed the scattered bruises on my shins, and the inexplicable dots from countless encounters with door jams and furniture I could never seem to avoid. I thought back to the knock-kneed kid standing barefoot next to her big sister in the driveway.
Where was that picture anyway? The photo albums were nearby on the shelf. I sat down with one of them and hoped that Mom wouldn’t see me getting distracted on the way to bed. Suddenly I really wanted to see that picture, and I didn’t want to waste any effort explaining myself. Sifting through album after album my first memories flashed before my eyes. It struck me how glamorous our mother looked in every photo we took. This was my mother, so familiar, but frozen in the past as the mother of two hugging, tumbling little girls. Our personalities were already etched into every single frame; my sister’s all-American, wrinkle-nosed charm, always such a lady. And there I was, flat-footed, matter-of-fact, alternately pouting and open-mouthed in laughter.
And there were my legs. Fatter than fat as a baby, they’d grown into two stout little trunks, perfect for planting stubbornly wherever I went. Bruised because who had time to care about where limbs went when there were so many people to keep up with? Half the time, I was sprawled out in some ridiculous game where I’d entertain Jessica with my floppiness.
And Jessica... my big sister, Jessie. She had two albums to herself before I entered the picture, forcing her to compete for the first time for the attention and affection of our doting parents. But she was in my life from the start, sharing rooms, sharing beds, sharing bathtubs, sharing favorite videos, sharing Mommy. She was always there. Prettier, sweeter, more grown-up, and completely upstaged by the ballsy, demanding little sidekick her parents had introduced into the family.
I could say no wonder she left, but I know that’s not the reason. And I don’t want to know the reason. I don’t want to understand. I want it not to hurt so much. I want her to take it back. Take it all back, and not let life be so uncertain anymore, and not let me see how precious our irritating, inconvenient relationship was. Not desert me when I needed her most.
I want her to understand the loss I feel. How much I had to prove to myself and, I thought, to everyone after she left, because she left. I want her to see how her absence affected every single life decision I made since then, and how it still grips me now. I want her to get it, that the pain goes so deep I can hardly feel it, and to know that I push it down because to let it come up would be to let it swallow me whole. That torrential pain, that overwhelming sadness, I don’t see a definite end, I don’t see a stopping point, and in the end I can’t face it. And worst of all, I can’t reach out to anyone, because the person I’d reach to is the person who caused it, and the very ache I suffer from is not being able to pick up the phone and talk to her. I know I could get her on the telephone, I could hear her voice. But the truth is that I’ll never be able to reach her, and that truth just defeats me every time.
Nobody tells you how to grieve for somebody who's still there. They don't rally around you and help you cope with the fact that you'll never see that person same person again, not when that person is alive and just refuses to acknowledge who they were before. There are no precedents, no rites of passage, no luncheons, no periods of mourning. They're just gone, teasing you with the fact of their physical existence, and the crueler fact of their self-rejection. I was angry with my mother for so long for dwelling on it, talking about her all the time. But it seems, in the end, that I'm the one who's never gotten over it, because I never tried to start.
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