I wish I hadn't found a large, dead moth underneath my papers before I left work last night. I wish its legs weren't ripped off and scattered over my work.
I wish I hadn't seen the large spider crawling down my shower curtain as I showered last night.
I wish I wasn't such a sissy.
I wish I wasn't on my period. I wish there as no such thing as cramps.
I wish the service department at the VW dealership hadn't been closed last night.
I wish I had set the alarm clock correctly. I wish I hadn't woken up at 8:07 a.m. when I should have been out the door 10 minutes earlier.
I wish it hadn't been raining this morning. I wish there hadn't been an accident on every highway in the city.
I wish I wouldn't torture myself with songs that remind me of memories and feelings I'm not ready to deal with. I wish they didn't make my heart fit to burst.
I wish someone would have chosen to love the man who shot that girl in Colorado and then took his own life. I wish he didn't feel that death was his only way out.
I wish my canker sores weren't eating away my lip. I wish I could smile, eat, and laugh like usual.
I wish my boss would be nicer to me. I wish my other boss was back from vacation.
I wish I didn't have to wait by the phone to hear what the damage is on my car.
I wish I didn't have to call the seller to tell him he sold me a lemon.
Ever since my whole emotional angst, started months ago, everyone has asked me the same question: What do you want, Leslie? You need to do what YOU want to do, Leslie. So tell us, WHAT do YOU want?!
This question frustrated the fucking hell out of me for two reasons:
I didn't know what I wanted.
Even if I did, I didn't know how to stand up for it. It was just too damn hard.
So I kept saying 'yes' to everything and everyone and, with every minute, I was losing my sense of self.
But last week, I kept hitting low point after low point. I was sinking with no way out. And someone said it one last time: Leslie, what do YOU want?! FUCK everyone else. WHAT DO YOU WANT?
And for the first time, I answered. Meekly at first, but still, an answer: I want to go home and not go anywhere. I want to feed Maxi, clean my room, and organize my closet from summer to winter. I want to watch the movies I've been meaning to watch for months, but haven't because I keep saying 'yes' everytime someone asks me to go out.
It was a small and pretty nerdy answer. But it was MY answer. And for the first time in a long time, I did what I wanted to do.
That was last weekend. And since then, I've been building up steam to learn what it is I want and how to follow through with it. I still cave and say 'yes' sometimes without thinking, but I'm getting better. I'm starting with the little things and maybe in time, I'll learn how to handle the big things.
Monday night, I came home to Maxi's cage pushed up against my room door, a huge hole in the wall, rust stains on my bathroom rug, and no note or explanation. My condescending bastard landlord had finally fixed our broken shower...and ruined my rugs in the process.
That same night, my bitch roommate told me that if I was to use the other shower, I was not allowed to touch any of her 6 shampoos nor any of her 4 face washes. She also told me that I couldn't borrow her books because I hold books open and that creases the spine...which according to her, is inhumane.
I called up my friend Christopher and said, "I'm going to throw up."
Yesterday I went back and forth between my dentist and my old insurance provider. Several months ago, I had a biopsy done on the floor of my mouth. Possibly oral cancer. Unfortunately, my dentist sent it to a lab that was out of network. After several months of phone calls, I was finally told that I was lucky to not have oral cancer and that I should just swallow the $280.
I had a plan last night. I was going to go home. I was going to finally relax.
My co-worker dropped me off in the driveway and before I got out of her car, I searched for my keys.
Keys.
Where are my keys?
I'd left my house keys at work.
Angie, my other co-worker, was still at work, and was gracious enough to meet me at Target to give me my keys.
An hour later I was finally home, a bag of new bath rugs in one arm and a bag of 'My life is shitting on me' new clothes.
Tonight I'm taking the car to the dealership. They will tell me just how bankrupt I'm going to be.
The sky is blue today. Light blue, with puffy white pastries sprinkled about. Blue - like last week never happened. Like I didn't work until my lids drooped every day. Like I didn't accidentally give Christopher a concussion, shake him and beg him to wake up, and hold his hand until the EMT's arrived. Like I didn't almost lose Jason, my bestfriend, to my mistakes and the point in which our pain met. Like my car, just one-month purchased, wasn't breaking down and won't cost me $2k that I don't have.
It's so blue today. And I attribute its shine to the short, plump, sweet woman who cleaned my teeth today. I showed her the angry ulcer that was eating away my upper lip and she coo'd and showered me with goodnatured, grandmother advice. She called me 'good girl' and made me feel like holding my lips open for her was some kind of grand achievement. She asked me if I flossed, and before I could admit that I rarely do, she clucked and said, "Oh I know, you're afraid of hurting your gums and getting more ulcers aren't you? You poor thing, I don't blame you". I felt like a little girl again who got away with something she didn't think she would. She sent me home with a new, vibrating flosser she had bought from Big Lots. And before I left, she smiled happily and said, "I knew I was going to give that to someone special. You're that special person today!" If it weren't for my ulcer, I would have smiled wider.
And then Mark IM'd me. My Mark. One of only two friends I took with me from school to home, from fancy New York to humble Ohio. Mark, the prototype ROTC cadet, the boy stuck in a man's body, who spent every moment at the gym to forget his pain. Mark, who told me he couldn't hug me because he was afraid of himself. Mark of the big chest tattoo. Mark of one coffee per hour slept. Mark of the invisible Achilles heel. Mark of all the women and no woman at all. Mark, who would punch me in the arm if he saw this and then deny deny deny.
It took me a while to tell him I loved him. I thought it would scare him. But I finally did last Christmas. I hid it away at the end of a letter. After that, I'd sneak it in when he least expected it. Embedded in an email. Tossed in at the end of a phone call. Always followed by the name "brother", "buddy", or anything else non-threatening. I just wanted him to know. I wanted to say 'Hey, the world thinks you're tough, but I know better. I love you and it isn't overwhelming and it isn't conditional. It just is."
Since we've graduated, he has been the one keeping tabs on me. Despite his hectic army training, he calls. He writes. And just now, he IM'd me. I must have said something funny because that's when he said it.
"Love you." Just like that. Like it was so easy for him. Like it'd never been a struggle. Like he'd been telling me every day for the last 3 years.
"Love you." Simple. Not overwhelming. Not conditional. It just was.
And that's when I looked out the window and noticed.
I didn't grow up with parents who loved each other. I didn't have a pair of grandparents, either. Mom's dad died young; without his calm , cooling nature to complement her, grandma turned into a dominating matriach who only gave a rat's ass for the one grandson born of one of her sons. Dad's dad divorced my grandmother after she bore his last child, leaving her to wither away with her birds in a one-bedroom apartment, surrounded by folks who speak a language she can't understand. Only for a small period of time did I have grandparents - when my grandfather remarried. But he died just 4 years after, and it was everything we could do to keep my step-grandmother from drowning in her tears.
So when I walked out into a parking lot and saw two elderly people kissing and caressing each other, well...I had to blink a couple times before I realized what I was seeing.
Maybe if it was two teenagers going at it, then I could scoff, shrug it off, and chaulk it up to hormones.
But they were at least 60. I was 50 feet away, but I could still make out their silhouettes. His thinning hair and her silver curls. His button down shirt and her cardigan. His back was against the car and she leaned against him. Her arms were around him and his hands were on her face. They were kissing and holding and hugging and it wasn't gross or over the top, but just right...like after all these years of bumbling and stumbling, they finally knew what love was.
I couldn't stop staring. I couldn't stop smiling. I felt my heart go mute.
Maybe I wanted to be them, I don't know. I guess since I'm just beginning to learn what love is and isn't, it was so wonderful to see two people who had gone before me and still turned out okay. Right now it seems like I'll never figure love out, let alone what to do with it. But seeing those two...I don't know...just for one moment, I felt like everything was going to be okay.
Perhaps it's not actually the winter, but it might as well be.
I have not accepted the fact that summer is leaving, let alone gone. Since I only see the world in two seasons - summer or winter - the loss of summer means winter. And I don't like that.
I'm not sure why I'm so averse to winter. I guess I just got so much of it seeped into my bones at Syracuse that I feel I'd be better off if I never felt it again. Four years of collecting your frozen limbs in a place that gets 172 inches of snow per year will do that to you.
I'm in denial. I still sleep naked. I walk around downtown without a jacket. I've been fighting a cold for weeks.
I might just give in this weekend though, and make the summer clothes v. winter clothes switch. And maybe it won't be so bad. I do have a lot of cute winter clothes...
Are Germans really beefy people? I mean really, how could they possibly be skinny with all the starch they eat?
Last night I walked through Oktoberfest. It was fun for the experience, but wow, they don't deviate much from the starch when it comes to food, do they? Their drink (beer) is starch. Their vegetable (corn) is the starchiest of all vegetables. Their dessert (cream puffs, cream cheesecake)...well okay that's just fatty.
I settled for roasted sweet corn, a handful of sauerkraut, and some apple streusel. Had a major gas attack afterward, but it was totally worth it.
I think my favorite part was when a homeless man got up and started dancing to an accordian.
Saturday I went with my family to King's Island in honor of P&G Dividend Day. (In other words, a weekend where Dilbert lovers like my dad can put on their short shorts and pull up their socks to release their pent up white collar frustrations on the coasters.) I hadn't been there for 4 years, and frankly, wasn't sure how well I would handle it. I used to be a coaster junkie, but my body had taken a serious dive in health. I could barely stand for half an hour, let alone a whole day.
Sure enough, just one hour into the day, I was close to throwing up from the pain. That's when I spotted it. A glorious little side station with this sign: Wheelchair rental.
Best 12 bucks I've ever spent.
I spent the rest of the day in that wheelchair, during which I made several observations:
People don't approve of people who aren't visibly disabled to be in wheelchairs. If you're drooling, have tubes coming out of you, and have lost control in at least one of your limbs, that's okay. But if you're a pretty girl smiling, laughing, and occasionally getting up to go to the bathroom, you're cheating.
Everyone's much taller than you when you're in a wheelchair. (This is a 'duh', I know, but I hadn't been that low to the ground in 15 years.)
There are no coaster entrances specifically for wheelchair bound folks. Your entrance is the exit. Not exactly the most dignified way to get to a roller coaster when you're being pushed against the grain.
Skipping a long line to get to a coaster is nice.
Not having any of my diseases would be nicer.
Sitting down while everyone else is standing is nice.
Being able to stand without pain like everyone else would be nicer.
The Disability Booklet is so cool. You go straight to the coaster, and if the line is too long, they pen in a time you can go on. In the mean time, you can leave and goof off until that time.
Anyway, we spent the entire day running through a revolving door of nausea: go on coaster, get really nauseous, go to bathroom and drink Coke to quell nausea, go on next coaster, start over. We topped the day off with two funnel cakes. Mmmmm funnel cake.
Friday night, I treated my sister to Cirque Du Soleil's Quidam tour as a belated birthday gift. Neither of us had been to Cirque and didn't know what to expect.
It was absolutely marvevlous. It was like watching your fantasies unfold before you except the magic isn't on film or in a dream - it's right before your very eyes. The little circus tent even smelled magical. They pushed, then crossed, the boundaries of human thought, imagination, and limitations. It left us breathless and wanting more.
Hm...I thought I'd have more to say on this, but really, it's something you have to experience for yourself if you've never gone. It brings you back to a place you thought you once lost and when it finally ends, you're not sad. You're just happy you got to go back if for just one moment in time.
My friend Christopher asked me this question yesterday: If you could have any superpower, what would it be?
Since he grew up on comic books (and by 'grow up on' I mean that is ALL he ever read as a child) he had his answer all ready: Wolverine's power to heal, his immortality, and his near-dauntless strength.
Frankly, the idea of accidentally stabbing someone when I shake hands, watching my loved ones die, and being around for the stupidity of man to endure...scares the shit out of me.
So I thought and I thought...I weighed all the pros and cons...I thought of every comic and superhero I knew...then made up my own quirky superpowers (i.e. the ability to eat whatever I want and never get fat, the ability to have a fatal fart)...
Nothing. I couldn't come up with anything at all. Because honestly, even if I had the most insignificant power ever, I would still be geeked out enough to think it was the coolest.
Maybe I'd want the ability to make you pee your pants.
What do you think? What would you want as your super power?
about love, relationships, lust, and the inbetween that got blasted out of the water this weekend. Some I got right. Others - dead wrong.
And I'm glad I was wrong. Better yet, I'm glad I'm learning. Because you don't know until you try it for yourself. And sometimes being wrong is a pleasant surprise.
No details here, but I will say this: The stuff they show you in the magazines and on film? Fake fake fake. Error error error. It doesn't happen that way, people aren't really like that (the ones you want to be with, anyway), and the euphoria doesn't last.
Why is everyone getting married? Why? Is it the no-guilt sex? Is it the tax savings? Is it the save in commute gas? What?
21. That's how old I was when everyone around me starting getting engaged. It was like a trend, except trends come and go. Marriage is here to stay (unless you get divorced, which I hear is a bitch.) By the time I graduated, several of my friends had already gotten married. Now just 2 years out of school, almost EVERYONE'S online profile pictures are of them on their wedding day. And many of them are younger than I am.
What's happening here? Why are we in such a hurry to grow up?
I look at all the wedding photos and a small part of me is jealous. They look so happy and peaceful...like in a dream. But then I wake up. I realize that I'm 23, I'm at the peak of my life, and I'm having such a good time! If marriage is for 50+ years, can you not sacrifice just a few of those years to enjoy singlehood?
Don't be offended if you got married early. Some people are just ready early, I guess. Me? Naw. I have lots of new things to try, people to meet, and men to torture before I settle down.
I hate public restrooms. I have nothing against the restroom part. The toilet and I are good friends. If my butt is having frequent outings with the toilet, that's the sign of a solid friendship.
It's the public part I can't stand. I can't have conversations with the toilet when someone else is sitting right beside me having the same conversation. How did restroom designers think that a metal semi-wall would make me feel more comfortable? Does that somehow shorten the distance between my dropped panties and hers?
When someone walks into the stall right next to mine, I freeze. I squeeze my systems to a shutdown, close my eyes, and pretend I'm invisible. Then it happens. My mind floods with an overwhelming rush of thoughts. Is she having the same conversation as I am? Am I going to faint from her part of the conversation? Is she looking at my shoes like I'm looking at hers?
And then I start listening to clues. A rip means tampon. A nervous shuffle means poop. A clearing of the throat means pee. (You know you have the same decoding system, don't lie.)
Finally, I start sending her strong 'go away' vibes. Go away, I say. This is an A-B conversation, so C yourself out.
Okay, who dun it? Who put 'YUCK' under my 'Sushi is good'? Come forth, you silly swaggert. I just know it's one of you ladies from the midwest. Admit it or receive your due judgement!
Am I the only one who runs on Asian time? I don't think I could be punctual to save my life.
For all your crazy on-time people, how do you do it? What in your brain tells you that it's better to leave early than to sleep in for just 10 more minutes?
I know you all are wondering. I've saved this topic for last because it's the most complicated, the hardest to understand, the most painful for me to explain, and the reason why I haven't written you all in so long.
Some of you may already know this (or have guessed it from my writing), but prior to college graduation, life was pretty sheltered and bleak. Childhood is not something I care to remember. College was definitely a breakthrough for me, but my soul was still a bud. It hadn't bloomed.
Then I graduated and almost immediately met Jason. I'd never had a serious relationship before, but the chemistry was there. We had extreme ups and downs and fought the ourselves as well as each other. But I never questioned who I was supposed to be with or who I was.
Up until a few months ago. I'm not sure what happened. Something in me snapped or maybe a switch turned on. But suddenly I looked at myself - young, beautiful, at the peak of her life, finally blossoming - and realized I simply wasn't ready to be in a serious, committed relationship. I fought the feeling for a long time. After all, I loved Jason. He was/is a good man. The best. No one knew me or loved me like he did. That's still the case.
But after a while, I got tired of fighting. It just wasn't fair to Jason...to be with him because I wanted to protect him, because I was scared of letting go, all the while hating myself for feeling this way in the first place.
It's been a very emotional couple months, but I've finally gotten to the place where I'm ready to let go...not for lack of love, but because of it. And for my own sake also...to dip a toe into the unknown, to discover this new me, to meet new people and to settle my mind at peace.
So now here I am...whoever I am. I guess I'll find out, won't I.
Out of deference for Jason, I won't be sharing much more on this topic publicly. However, feel free to email me in private. Your support is so welcome, as always.
I recently discovered something I never knew about myself: I love to dance! No, not the fancy dance stuff like ballet or ballroom. My back would never allow me to do that. Nope, I'm just talkin' about the good ol' fashioned dirty grind on the club floor.
Hahahaha...I'm laughing as I tell you this; I just can't believe I'm saying it. Moi? Into hip-hop? And clubbing? Never ever! But ever since my first clubbing night one month ago, I've been feeling the bump in my hump and a little high in my grind. There's just something about the rawness of it...the sweat...the heat...letting everything go with no cares beyond the hips shaking in front of you. And now my car is full to hip hop, my wrists are on the steering wheel, and my hips are gyrating into my seat.
My first radio commercial came out a week ago and I heard it for the first time in my car this past Thursday. It was the coolest feeling ever. I wrote the script, picked my voice talent, and directed them in the studio. And now it's on the air.
After 1 month of procrastination, I finally bought a car. And not another Toyota Camry, either. (Was tempted to add a SIXTH camry to the family, but why conform?) No, I dared to be different. I went with the Germans and bought a Volkswagen!
Yes, a beautiful blue 2000 Volkswagen Passat, replete with a V6 engine, 6-cd changer, fog lights, heated seats, heated windows, keyless entry, and a power sunroof.
Honestly I've never driven anything so nice...or so fast! The first time I drove it, I was in it for 5 seconds before I realized I was driving at 75 mph. Oops! Other than the V6 engine, my favorite aspect are the butt warmers. It's getting cold and nothing feels better than a warm pad under your bum on a chilly day.
Conclusion: Cars are a pain in the ass, but SO much fun when they're not! If you see a little Chinese girl whipping around in a blue German car, say hello!
Well I did it. I went to my first Bengals game last Monday. Everyone else screamed in jealousy when they found out I was going, so I figured it was something I had to experience at least once.
It was...well...okay why sugarcoat it? It was stupid. $30 for parking. $4 for a soda. $8 for a hamburger. 70,000 people dressed in orange and black tiger stripes, boozed out of their mind, high-fiving strangers every time we moved along the yard line. (Am I getting that right? Yard lines are in football, yes?) I kept thinking, "Do ANY of these people know how dorky they look?" Plus, football has so little action. It's a bunch of meatheads doing short sprints and running headlong into other meatheads. Where's the fun in that?
Conclusion: Baseball and tennis are WAY more exciting to witness. Phrases that can be heard from me while watching either sport - "Woo hoo HOO!" and "Oh WOW!" and "Oh OH OH! That was SO good!"
