Have you ever grudgingly figured something out about yourself as you've gotten older?  Something that has been exactly the same, probably from the day you were born, your entire life?  Something that you have attempted to deny since the day you began to be cognizant of it?  Sometimes I think that one of the most rewarding things about being a parent must be knowing something about your child from day one and watching them come to realize it, after denying it vehemently, once they are older.

Story of my life.  

When I was a baby, I used to get my baths in the sink.  Because I was small.  And small creatures are often overwhelmed by things as big as bathtubs, therefore, I got washed in the kitchen sink, and then patted dry on a towel my parents laid out on the counter.  There was a whole song associated with it, but that's a story for another time.

Once I got a bit bigger, my parents felt that it was time for me to take the next step in development and start having my baths in the bathtub.  I was still a small creature, but not too small.  Unfortunately, for my parents (so many of my stories seem to have that statement built in…), I was not having it.  I happened to like the sink.  I was adjusted to the sink.  It was a known quantity.  And that was a BIG deal for me, because the unknown was terrifying and to be avoided at all costs.

According to my parents, when they tried to put me in the bathtub I screamed blue green murder and stiffened up, splaying my small, chubby limbs outwards, like I thought I might be able to push my surroundings away from me.  I am not sure how many times I did this, for how long I stubbornly adhered to this course of action, but ultimately, I decided that I LOVED the tub.  Loved it.  Didn't want to get out of it.  Hollered when bathtime was over because I preferred pruney fingers and toes to chilly, post warm bathwater air.

My mother actually had to shock me out of taking baths and into taking showers as I got older, because I liked them so much.  She said, "Don't you know that when you take a bath you're sitting in your own dirt?"  I took showers everyday after that.  Recently, she mentioned to me that she felt horrible because she believed that she had single-handedly ruined my devotion to baths and the pure happiness which I derived from taking them.

She didn't.  I would have switched to showers anyway once I realized that no one else my age was still taking baths.  I was very prone to peer pressure in my younger days.

Anyway, I have finally come to realize that I don't know myself nearly as well as I think I do.  I've identified this as being the root of the issue.  I've had a misformed idea as to my identity ever since I realized in elementary school that there was a divide between the cool kids and the kids no one wanted to be friends with.

It's tricky, though, because as I've gotten older, I've figured out that it's something that I need get sorted out or face living a life that isn't actually mine!

The first real crush I had and, subsequently, my first real heartbreak, was on a boy I was convinced I despised.  Not just disliked, despised.   When our summer camp was over, I cried for days and literally stopped eating because I was so upset.  My parents didn't understand what was wrong with me.

I almost didn't even get out of the car to take a tour of Bryn Mawr because I was positive that I would never EVER go to a girls'  (women's…) school.  Later, I was making moves to apply early decision.

When I finished school and was looking for places to live in the Philadelphia area, I was initially certain that I didn't want to live in the city.  I live in the city.  And I wouldn't have it any other way.

It's sort of incredible.

And somewhat worrisome.

I'm learning to listen.

The post is coming! I promise!

My family never puts up a Christmas tree before Christmas Eve day.  When I was little, I used to hate it.  I watched all of my friends and their families go Christmas tree shopping immediately after Thanksgiving, and I often had the sense that life was inherently unfair because it seemed like they all got Christmas for about twice as long as I did.

Whenever I complained, my mom always returned with anti-commercialism sentiment and the importance of sticking to principle, and, in this case, keeping Christmas happening at Christmas was the principle.  I didn't get it.  It irritated me.  It made me pissy and probably more than a handful of unpleasantness for my poor parents to handle.

I think the Christmas that took the cake, though, was the one where we literally picked up somebody else's discarded Christmas tree.  Actually, we wound-up with two.  We had spent Christmas proper in New York City - something else that I'd kicked up an enormous fuss over because it wouldn't be a "real" Christmas since I wouldn't be waking up at HOME on Christmas day - and had arrived home on December 27th.

Let me just tell you, walking into a cold and highly unfestive house was ridiculously depressing.  I was immediately saddened and probably, knowing me, enraged.  I probably stomped around, blazing, "This is the worst Christmas ever.  It doesn't even feel like Christmas!"  I was probably the perfect cross between Ebenezer Scrooge and one of the entitled, stuck-up little girls from "A Little Princess."  So my mom had the brilliant idea for my dad and me to drive around and pick-up a tree off the side of the road, and, once my dad listened to her, he was equally as enthusiastic about the idea.  I, however, was not.  I was mortified.

"You want us to do what?!" Every inch of my small body was trembling with indignation.  Not only had we had Christmas entirely the wrong way, as far as I was concerned, now my parents wanted to make it even more wrong by dumpster diving for ALREADY USED Christmas trees.  I would never get over the shame.  The humiliation.  No one, no one, did things like that.  It was unheard of.  And humiliating.

"Tons of people get rid of their trees the day after Christmas, and they're perfectly fine."

"That is NOT the point.  We can't just…take somebody's tree off the street!!!!"  I'm sure that at this point I was feeling frantic and helpless, which is not the best combination for me, because I get kind of like a cornered dog.

"Why not?"  My mom was infuriatingly calm, and was actually laughing at me a little bit, which was really like poking that cornered dog with a stick.

"It's just…stupid.  It's revolting."  I don't know if I actually used the word, "revolting," but if I'd had the presence of mind to have used it, I'm sure that I would have.

"Then I guess we just won't have a tree."  My dad sounded mad and smug all at once.  Clearly my abrasiveness was costing my parents their festive moods.

"WE HAVE TO HAVE A TREE."  I couldn't believe my family.  At this point, I felt that I was the most misunderstood child in the entire world.  My parents didn't understand anything.  They didn't understand me, they didn't understand the holidays, they didn't understand the natural way of things.

In the end I got in the car with my dad and we spent about half an hour driving around the neighborhood, scanning the curbs for trees.  I'm positive I spent most of the ride muttering unpleasant things under my breath.  (In retrospect, I really was not a very nice child when I was unhappy.  The older I get, the more I realize that my parents really must have loved me a lot to put up with me and not lock me in a closet somewhere).

My mood changed drastically when we found what was probably, to date, the nicest tree we've ever had.  It still had a little bit of tinsel on it and one small ornament clinging to an inner branch, as though it wasn't ready for it's time to be over.  It was also perfectly proportioned and enormously tall.  It was kind of like looking for a hobo to offer food and shelter to, and instead finding a hobo, we found a disguised prince, heartbreakingly handsome and willing to come take up residence in our house.  Honestly.  The tree was just that good.  It literally made me reassess my original opinion of the whole endeavor.  For the next couple of Christmases I was only half-joking when I suggested to my parents that we wait until a couple days after Christmas to find a tree.

Our second tree was just a rather small, well-proportioned, sort of sparse kind of tree, and we took pity on it.  So we took it home, with the big one, and it wound-up leaning up against the side of our house in a bucket with popcorn garlands that I made wrapped around it. True to the theme of my life, which is that things I think I hate wind-up being the things I love the most, it was probably one of my most favorite Christmases to date.

I felt poetic at work this morning:

Hold me like I'll break
Two glasses on shifting planes
But do not touch me.

***

My office is hot
Heat rips winter asunder
I want to be naked!

I promise that I'll try to write something more entertaining and in my more usual vein tonight.  Perhaps, in light of the upcoming holidays, some anecdotes about the family dynamics in my house.

I was besieged for about half an hour last night as I sat in a chair in my apartment, reading the Honesty Thread on Bryn Mawr's ACB board.  The worry was clawing its way up my chest and into my throat, like invaders on their overly crowded, top-heavy ladders.  Except my defenses were down, no one was stopping them, and the ladders were staying upright, an open path into me.

I was completely consumed and frozen for that entire 30 minutes.  I sat huddled in my chair, struggling to breathe and feeling like a little ice cube of an island, wondering what the hell was wrong with me because I was sure that it was not normal.

Then I remembered that I am me and that this is normal.  I am one of the biggest closet neurotics I know.  I blame it on thinking.  Actually, I blame it on a series of things:

1) I think a lot.

2) I am imaginative.

3) I like to be in control at all times.

4) I like to know what is going to happen.

Those four things make living life a little tricky:

1) There is always too much to think about.

2) Similarly, imagination is boundless.

3) Life is often not controllable.  It's what makes life, life.

4) Similarly, life is unpredictable.  It is also what makes life, life.

People are my kryptonite.  With people, each of the four areas combines with each of the other four areas and makes the perfect storm.  I start to feel like I'm going to implode.  Or explode.  I'm not exactly sure which it is.  I get internally frantic, and have to work really hard to chill the fuck out.  I breathe into a metaphorical paper bag.

I've gotten marginally better at controlling myself.  Now I just funnel my OCDs and compulsions into making sure my shampoo and conditioner bottles contain exactly the same amount of liquid at any given time.

I need a crash course in being brave in the area of human emotion.

Best Thing Ever: Clicking around on Amazon.com and looking at the "Customers who bought this item also bought…" section of the page.  It's like walking into a closet full of stereotypes, just dangling from the hangers, begging to be picked out and worn.  Amazon practically holds your hand and guides you to everything you need to put on the persona you desire.  For example:

The Longchamp Le Pliage Large Folding Tote. 

Here's what else those buyers bought (I'll let you draw your own conclusions):

It's brilliant.  It's mainstream distilled into a pure essence.  It could be a new game called "How Original Are You?"  Suffice it to say that, Amazon, you have made my evening (I'm not sure what that says about my choice of activities or about how boring a person I am, but stumbling across this revelation was like stumbling across the Christmas presents my mom had stuffed into various corners in order to hide them from me before Christmas.  Just sayin').

The state of this country leaves something to be desired.  I have a hard time writing about political issues because, until very recently, the immediacy of politics did not exist for me.  I lived in a bubble ruled by academics and my social life, my well-being was completely determined by my parents, who I knew would look out for me.  It isn't until very recently that I have begun to learn that my independence over the four years of college was really only "independence," a manufactured sense of autonomy and control.  It was autonomy and control without any real responsibility, which, as anyone who has eventually assumed responsibility knows, is not true autonomy and control.  It is the kind of autonomy and control that a puppet might have within the context of a puppet show.  The puppet's character gets to take action within the context of its play, however, there is a puppet master who is pulling the strings, making sure that the scenery is correct, and ready to do any necessary damage control before the puppets are ever affected.  

Moving out on my own and taking more steps in the direction of handling my own affairs brought certain realities into stark relief.  Politics, for instance.  Suddenly I found myself very involved, and concerned about, the political state of affairs in the U.S.  For me, the hook was healthcare, because I am currently dependent on my parents' coverage as my job does not provide insurance.  As a young person, one might imagine that allowing coverage to lapse, being sans insurance for a little while, wouldn't be much of a big deal.  However, due to a kidney condition that I have had since birth, allowing my coverage to lapse would bring with it the risk of never being able to get covered again - because the truth is, insurance companies don't actually want broken people.  They don't want people who might actually need to cash in on their coverage.  For all intents and purposes, I am a broken person.

Anyway, health insurance and the Republicans' almost rabid intent to dismantle Obama's healthcare bill put my feet firmly on the surface of the planet.  It's become crystal clear to me that remaining uninvolved is akin to lying down in the middle of a highway during rush hour and hoping that, by some miracle, every car will swerve to avoid my prone body.  It's a positively absurd expectation.  But, oddly, it seems to be the very expectation that a huge percentage of this country.  The apathy is frightening, and I'm beginning to think that the apathy is less actual apathy and more a lack of realization that cause and effect exists in politics as much as it does in gravity.  Drop a rock off a building, and it will hit the ground.  Every time.  Ignore an election, or vote ignorantly, and the state of the country will suffer.  Every time.  We don't understand.  And, at this point, we're afraid to understand because things have developed into some horrifying mimicry of the twilight zone, and to look too closely into what's going on, is to stare into the face of a nightmare.

When it comes to fear, we are children.  Nobody outgrows the need for reassurance.  Nobody outgrows the desperate wish for comfort, for someone to tell them that everything will be okay and here's why.  Becoming an adult means that most of the time, you learn to exist without that external comfort and that you learn to give it to the younger generations, but no longer needing it?  Pure myth.  You grow up, but you still get scared.  You just get to be exposed to the nasty truth that the world doesn't get less scary, you just have to deal with it on your own.  We are a broken and frightened country right now, and what we have going on is the result of no one being, well, results oriented.  We keep being told what's busted, but no one is doing much to walk us through what's happening and what needs to happen.  It's terribly unhelpful.  And more unhelpful still is the existence of political parties that operate in a vacuum in which reality is suspended.  John Stewart and Stephen Colbert had a rally to restore sanity.  Could we please also have one to restore reality?