It's one thing to learn to live without someone. It's another thing entirely to get over someone.

I hate that you won't hold me tight
And that you make me hollow
I hate the way you say you care
I hate that you will not follow

I hate your stupid Wawa snacks
And the way you said my name
I hate South Park and Family Guy
I hate that there's no one to blame

I hate your balanced perspective
I hate how you made me feel
I hate that you taught me how to love
And now I don't know how to heal

I hate the way we said goodbye
And that you let me go
I hate the way you fill my brain
And that time moves so god damned slow.

Who feels like this post breakup? I can't figure out if it means that the breakup was the right move, or that the universe is planning great things, or both. Or...what. Because I feel so peaceful. So zen. So calm and collected and solid. It's the very last way I expected to feel.

Let's play a game where I post pictures that reflect how I feel.

I believe that the universe is conspiring to give us presents. Thing is, the universe has a whack way of handling itself and our lives. For instance, one could think of a gift from the universe as being something like your gym teacher handing out clothespins to all of your fellow students rather than telling you directly that your feet stink. Once the clothespins are out, and everyone has one but you, you have to isolate the issue. On the one hand, it's an insulting gesture. On the other, if you take it for what it is, without making it personal, it's a gesture that nips a problem at the bud. Okay, so it's probably not the best parallel in the world, but hopefully you get what I'm saying.

Lately, it's been feeling like I can't quite catch a break, like the universe has started throwing curve balls and yelling, "GO! GO! GO! Catch as many as you can! GO!" all the while aiming for my head and my heart. It's a little difficult. But also a little invigorating and a lot strengthening. For a while, I've felt like I've simply been traveling through a series of rooms, each room containing one door. My choice consists of either staying inside the room, or going through that door. Suddenly, though, I'm standing in a ballroom whose walls consist of nothing but doors. My choice is now to stay in the ballroom or pick one of a 101 doors to enter, but I can't preview any of the doors ahead of time. My choice must be based on clues I retain from the rooms that I've already been through - my life so far.

Here's the thing. Being a naturally cautious person in life, I try to play it safe. All the time. This entails not making decisions until I think that I have mapped out all possible futures and am okay with any of them happening. It's silly of course, and purely psychological, because as cracked.com explains, science has come up with this little thing called the Copenhagen Interpretation which basically means that anything is possible at any moment. Meaning, I can't pretend to anticipate all of the outcomes of my decision. Sucks to be me.

In recent days, through a series of different occurrences, I've come to realize that I hedge my bets. I am a bonafide bet-hedger. Which is altogether not a good thing to be and sits dangerously close on the shelf to the intent to "have one's cake and eat it too," and we all know that that simply doesn't work out too well. When you try to have your cake and eat it too, usually your ass catches on fire and everyone hates you. (That's barely an exaggeration). Now I find myself in a situation akin to straddling a spreading fault line that's spreading at an alarmingly rapid rate. I have a very small window of time in which to jump to one side or the other before I fall down into the crack and both options more or less disappear. Thanks, universe. You're a pal.

I'm scared of large changes. Adjustments have always been difficult for me. Any of you who have read my other posts will know this. Transitions are the bane of my existence. I'm getting better (thanks again, universe, for making me move 3 times in a year), but am not all there yet. So even when I know what I need to do. What will, on a fundamental, gut level, be the best option for me. I balk. I want to have a preview of all of those doors in the ballroom, just to confirm that what I think is behind the one that I want, really is behind it.

Here's to improving, and improving soon!

It's hard to fully comprehend just how tricky and frightening the world gets once you leave the academic chute until you suddenly find yourself swimming in a sea of adult concerns and responsibilities. And you haven't got a flotation device. Or a study guide. Or a list of expectations, a check-list to help to make sense of the many things required to successfully navigate the ofttimes muddied waters of life.

I didn't actually expect life to  beat me up the way that it has. And saying that is rather like saying that I experienced starvation after eating 3 meals in a day because I'd been used to eating 6. In other words, 97% of the people in the world are getting beat up much worse than am I. But my point stands. I found myself confronted by challenges that were outside the realm of familiarity. Sometimes it felt like I was scrabbling around on a slippery wall, grasping for handholds.

It's been as much of a refreshing and invigorating experience as it has been an exhausting and troublesome one. The scariest thing is coming to the realization that to live life, you do have to be truly brave. To get up every day, thinking about not only your work, whatever it may be, but also about your interests, your goals, pursuits, and about your responsibilities. What doctor's office to call to complain about tests being run unannounced. Which bank teller to ask what to do after an ATM failed to provide the $40 taken out. When to take the time to write a scathing indictment of your apartment's poor customer service skills and blatant attempts at screwing its residents. How does one not lose oneself in the avalanche of "must dos?"

Prioritization is hard. It's become very easy to see why youth are idealists and the older are downtrodden and cynical. How are you supposed to pursue those ideals when you're also worried about sweeping up dog hair every single day when you get home from the office? Where is the energy supposed to come from? I have it easy, comparatively. The latest that I have stayed at work is 6:00pm. That said, I have approximately 6.5 waking hours every day not spent in the office to myself.

I'm trying to study for the LSAT. When I'm being rigorous in my studying I try to study for 2 hours a day. I'm left with 4.5 hours.  In the morning, I spend half an hour getting washed-up, dressed, and doing my crunches and push-ups. I spend another half an hour making coffee and eating my breakfast. Then I go to work. I'm left with 3.5 hours.

3.5 hours. A day. No wonder the adjustment is hard. It takes practice and stamina to learn how to use the little bits of free time every day wisely. Efficiency is a hard mistress to master.  And I need to learn how to do it.

More to come.

Life is really terrifying. Well, time is. Life itself isn't actually all that scary, and if time didn't exist, it might be a lot like wading in the kiddie pool, lukewarm water lapping below your knees. But time. Time is the monster in the closet. Time makes for urgency, and urgency, if disregarded or handled poorly, makes for regrets. And life is often full of regrets; and regrets' close companion, what-if.

Holding patterns feel safe and are easy to slip into. They are also treacherous. The perfect intro to forever. The wrong kind of forever, though. The kind of forever that's more purgatory than heaven, more assembly line than innovation, and more suburbia than outback adventure. It's the kind of forever that I don't want. I haven't quite figured out how to get the forever that I DO want.

I spend a lot of time casting about like an idiot. Sometimes I feel a little like I'm doing the equivalent of walking into walls, even though I know they're there, just to sort of...see what happens. And a bruised nose isn't enough of a deterrent to keep me from continuing to do it. Or maybe I'm like a bat with a defective sonar. Either way, I get frustrated a lot these days, wanting to go in so many different directions that I wind-up stuck in stasis, a frozen lump. I should probably make a list of the various directions in which I wish to go. But when I try, I get overwhelmed and thus, stuck again.

I have used-up a lot of life being stuck. I still had training wheels on my bike long after everyone else was whizzing by on their two-wheelers. I made myself feel better by pretending that my bike was a horse (remember? I wrote this in my last post). Metaphorically speaking...I'm still having to go through the different stages of my life with training wheels. That's frustrating as well.

I don't know what I want.

That is the crux of the issue. To evolve, extend, and move forward, one has to know what one wants. I envy people who are already there. Who already have the vision, the drive, the lifeblood of a wish, to propel themselves through their lives. I get worried that I was born without proper passion, with a lack of motivation, and a predisposition for laziness. Except I know that that's not true, because when I get fired-up about something, I will tear apart the world to get the end that I want. So it's in there.

Time to figure out what I want, and to lose the wheels.

1) I am bad at multi-tasking.
2) I am easily distracted.
3) I am very good at coming up with ideas and very bad at implementing them.
4) If I am going to get where I want to be, I am going to have to overcome the previous 3 points.

I've decided that it's time for me to stop half-assing my way through LSAT studying. I'm not going to get anywhere at that rate. I very much like to think of myself as someone who does everything perfectly on the first go-round. And when that doesn't seem to be happening, I'm prone to give up and leave.Unfortunately in life, one is rarely able to do everything one tries perfectly on the first attempt. This is a bitter pill for me to swallow.

As a young person, this aspect of my personality caused trouble.
1) I was slow to learn to read because the black symbols on the page didn't make sense to me and I already knew the wonders of reading from having been read to and the effort didn't seem worth it. It shouldn't have to be that hard to get to something I loved that much.
2) I avoided letting my mom teach me how to cook because I KNEW I wouldn't be able to do it right the first few times and I couldn't stand the criticism. This has left me only able to make biscuits with any degree of certainty.
3) I had training wheels on my bike for about a year longer than anyone else my age. I made myself feel better about this by pretending that, with its extra appendages, my bike was actually a horse.

You get the idea, I'm sure. But this means that I'm going to turn on the parts of my personality that SHOULD counteract the parts that are being lazy and frightened of initial failure or lack of success. The stubborn, focused parts that hang onto their goal the way my dog hangs onto her rawhide chew toys. They're very good at coming out when I'm mad, but less good at coming out when I'm settled. Time to practice!

When you do what you love, the seemingly impossible becomes simply challenging, the laborious becomes purposeful resistance, the difficult loses its edge and is trampled by your progress. -Steve Maraboli (Life, the Truth, and Being Free)

On my way to work last Tuesday, I decided that I walk strangely. Of course, I can't tell for SURE because I can't see myself unless I watch my reflection in building windows. I try to refrain from doing this because I'm concerned that the people around me will think that I am checking myself out rather than worriedly attempting to diagnosis my mobility issues. But the flip side of that is that they already think I'm strange because I walk oddly.

My legs just feel like they don't want to cooperate in a smooth fashion when I move around. They seem to prefer a jerkier, slightly lopsided motion, potentially exacerbated by the fact that I walk about 3x faster than the normal person, as it is. This is something that I cannot help. When I try to slow down, I am faced with a sensation that feels like what trying to stop a very heavy wagon from rolling down a very steep hill feels like. I have to concentrate really really hard on moving my feet more slowly. Usually, I just give up and speed back up again. Because, actually, my walk gets even more awkward when I attempt to reign it in.

The other day when I was walking home from work, an older businessman with a briefcase in hand actually commented on it.

"Must be those Chuck Taylors making you walk so fast," is what I heard as I zoomed by him.

"Haha, could be! Or just the cold!" And, with a good-natured smile, I kept going. But seriously. I must look...irregular. I blame my New Yorker mother. As a small child, I had to move my little stubby legs at double-time to keep up with her purposeful stride, and, as I became accustomed to moving at that speed, proportionally, I continued to move that quickly when I got older. That is my thinking.

Things are far worse now that there is an irritating amount of snow on the ground. Now I wobble on top of moving strangely. On Friday I almost careened into the path of an oncoming vehicle. Such is my life.

Today, as I sat in John's car at the Bryn Mawr train station, I was struck by the thought that I really ought to make a concentrated effort at self-improvement. When I said this thought aloud, I was met with a look that made me think he was thinking that I was a lunatic. Which was nice, for all intents and purposes (assuming he wasn't thinking that I was so hopeless that working towards self-betterment was a fruitless endeavor), but which didn't change my mind.

I too easily give myself a lot of leeway when it comes to figuring my shit out. "I'm young." "There's time." "I've got a lot to get through first." Yeah, sure. Excuses. It's not like I am suddenly going to hit a place in my life where things are suddenly smooth sailing and I can kick back and hone whatever skills I think that I might have. If I keep giving into those excuses, letting them ultimately direct me, I'm going to wind-up as a very boring and very unaccomplished person. Just like most everything in life, self-direction and self-knowledge take effort and work. But I'm fairly certain that it is well worth it. In the end, I'll know exactly where I stand. I don't think I'd ever quite realized how exhausting leading an interesting and full life really is. As far as I can tell, society does a bang-up job of wearing us all down to little nubs of the people we are by telling us what we "should" be doing. To live to the fullest takes a kind of courage and a kind of independence that I hadn't really considered. Life is too short to stay safe and to put off exploration and development. I have to work to get where and what I want. And now is the time to nail down exactly what it is that I DO want. Period.

"420. Don’t be sorry for speaking your mind. It’s like you’re being sorry for being real." (Thanks, Leo)

 

This is a good thing to remember. We are so often frightened of getting a load off of our chests that we forget that evasion, avoidance, and misrepresentation are akin to saying, "My thoughts aren't good enough" or "My thoughts are wrong." It's too easy to fall into that trap. It makes you wonder how many thoughts worth hearing are lost in the shuffle because the thinker is too afraid or too ashamed to give them voice.

 

I'm in a funny mood today. Sad. A little. Pensive. A lot. I sat in front of my computer trying to come up with a post that would center around something light-hearted or funny, and I came up blank, so I decided to go with reality as opposed to vignette. I blame this state partially on the blog that I have been reading (click the link above) because never in my life has my little brain been flooded by so many beautifully simple pieces of wisdom in such a short period of time. I'm realizing that someone, somewhere, at one time or another, has created a quotation that encapsulates literally every moment of every life. The magnitude is frightening and awe-inspiring.

 

It also has me convinced that I have to read more.

 

The other part of the blame rests on this song:

Between the two of them, blog and music, I have been reduced to small, emotionally fraught, body. And let me just tell you, it blows popsicle sticks to feel like this and to have to pull together some semblance of productivity while I am work. Tongue depressors might be more on point than popsicle sticks, actually. Like the big kinds in the jar in the doctor's office that always used to be really scary because, as a kid, you never knew if the doctor was going to come at you with one of them and attempt to jam it down your throat.

 

I picked this particular quotation because I'm starting to get the feeling that it's going to be representative of the theme of my 2011. I have this sense that it'll be a year for journeying and growing. I also picked it because speaking my mind was something I was amazingly good at as a small child and something that I was equally as bad at once I got older. And let me tell you, being challenged in that particular area is anxiety-inducing. And also character-splitting. Two bad things that could get pathological if I keep it up until I'm old and grey. Which is not how I want to end up when I'm wizened and grumpy, zipping around in my little motorized chair. I'll probably already be running over people in grocery stores, I don't need to be fighting panic attacks and dual personalities while I'm doing it.

So here's to speaking my mind, being honest and upfront, confident and sincere, and here's to strengthening relationships through doing it.

 

 EDIT: Look! Images from my blog are showing-up on Google Image Search!

Don't tell anybody, but I usually spend the first half hour of my workday screwing around on the internet and being unproductive; this is mostly because I am always the first person into the office every day and because mornings tend to be slow (probably because everyone else is screwing around on the internet, too). This morning, I got an email from my mom that included this: Crow and Cat

Unbelievable, right? It sort of throws a wrench into the nature vs. nurture debate, or at least adds another element to it. Anyway, I just wanted to share.

***

Have you ever been someone who was scared of everything that was, or could be construed, as even a little off-kilter? Like wearing plaid socks that might end-up being visible when you sat down? Or like having parents who implemented a 10pm curfew when you were a a senior in high school so you pretended that you just didn't actually WANT to be out late anyway? That's how I was. I also embarrassed really easily, which made me less than open about just about everything.

Like sex and anything related to it.

I was still scared of penises when I was a senior in high school, and I was utterly convinced that if anyone was going to be the victim of immaculate conception ever again (no offense intended), it was going to be me. I was equally convinced that the first time I had sex I would get pregnant and they'd put me on one of those trashy MTV shows about good kids who managed to somehow fuck up big time. Sometimes, when I was feeling especially masochistic, I would play out a scene where all my family's friends were gathered around, shaking their heads, and saying, "She had such a bright future...I just didn't see this coming. She was always such a smart girl..." I also figured I'd have to move far away and not talk to anybody I knew ever again. Looking back at my youth now, and seeing how many complexes I gave myself, I'm shocked that I'm even half as well-adjusted as I turned out (which is not extremely, but I do all right).

Most of them came from being frightened of everything but my shadow, and maybe even that at night if I were half asleep and trying to stumble into my bathroom. I made it worse by never actually owning up to being frightened of everything, and I'm fairly certain that that misstep is what gave me complexes. I used to work very hard to put up a facade of suave, untouchable, coolness. I tricked most people with it, because I was a control freak and kept myself in an iron-tight grip, but I was stressed-out all the time. It was a tough existence! I constantly had to anticipate and predict any bumps on the road that would force me into patch-up mode so that people didn't actually figure out that I was a huge, lame, weenie. This made me every girl's best friend in high school and an enormous bitch to just about every guy. Which somehow managed to work out for me, anyway...which still puzzles me enormously.

That is why, with the dawn of 2011, my biggest goal might just be to be open and up-front about myself with myself and with other people. (Can I get a "HELL yes")? So far, I'm doing pretty well.

Now that it's the new year, I'm going to kick into high gear with respect to studying for the LSAT. And I really mean it. The tumultuous romance between me and my study aids wore off about 3 weeks after I received them in the mail, but now it's time to settle into a comfortable relationship with them and learn them inside and out. I plan to do this in several ways, including but not limited to:

1) Make a schedule. Withhold things that I want from myself until I stick to said schedule. This means no tv show binging on my computer, no Starbucks, no friends, etc.

2) Reward myself when I succeed. Could occur simultaneously as studying (see number 3).

3) Bring the romance back. Study in public (like at Starbucks). Look studious. Attractive. Smart. This can be done by carrying more books than I actually need, plugging into my iPod so that people think I'm divorced from my surroundings (when I'm still probably people-watching), carefully choosing an outfit that looks effortless, yet good, and arranging my materials so that at least one book's title regarding the LSAT is visible to passersby.

4) Get my roommates to guilt-trip me if I don't seem to be studying enough. Rubbing in the fact that I might never be able to effectively handle idiot corporate bureaucracy like Park Towne's if I don't go to law school might be a good starting point.

I think there are probably more. Besides the LSAT, there are other things that I want to do in 2011 (I recently came to the abrupt realization that this is the first year of my life in which school is not a player at all. It scared me).

1) Come up with a backup plan if law school doesn't pan out; maybe just a plan for 2012 pre law school if it DOES pan out: move to Chile and do something that doesn't count as this, move out west and work on a goat farm, work on a cruise ship, team up with Mike and drive around a country - doesn't have to be the U.S. - in an RV.

2) Learn how to cook.

3) Stop only grocery shopping once a month because doing so means that I have at least a week where my diet consists solely of rice and beans and pasta with garlic and olive oil. And maybe some leftover frozen veggies if I'm lucky. Hello, scurvy.

4) Be more honest with myself. Own the person I am.

5) Write more frequently, both blog and otherwise.

6) Finish Shogun. Finish at least 10 other books over the course of the year. This means less brain-dissolving online tv watching. And normal tv watching. Also read the NY Times more regularly.

7) Make good use of my art museum membership. Go on more tours.

8) Be better at staying in-touch with my parents. We have a 5 minutes a day rule for a reason!

9) Don't forget how to think critically sans the help of school.

10) Live more. Make memories!

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?

I was just looking at the labels that I have used thus far on my blog, and I am really not sure what they say about me…  Take a look - it's a long list.

adulthood

Almost Recess

anger management

appendicitis

art

asphyxiation

attraction

aviators

bandaid

binging

blogging

bosses

boys

budgeting

buttons

candles

cartoons

cell phones

cereal

childhood

cleaning

clumsiness

confusion

contradiction

death

depression

dreams

elevators

emails

embarrassment

emoticons

English

environmentalism

exercise

fire

food

George

Harry Potter

Hermione

hospital

hot men

humor

hurricanes

hypochondria

hypocrisy

Igor

illness

immaturity

infants

internet service

iPods

jeeps

landlords

lawnmowers

maturity

mold

money

monsters

old women

orthodonture

paranoia

parrots

pick-up lines

procrastination

ray bans

retro

Rooney

saloon

shower pans

smoking

social étiquette

solitude

South America

spelling

Starbucks

storm preparation

Superman

teachers

The 1900 Storm

tire swing

toilet paper

Trader Joe's 

trampolines

Twizzlers

weather

wheezing

workplace goofs

My blog is a complete cluster fuck.  However, going through the list, I realized that that makes it a fairly accurate representation my life.  I write about nothing and everything.  And my life is full of daily events that confuse the hell out of me - I'm often not very quick.  It is also painfully obvious that I am completely clueless about the Ways of Things.  The list reads like a frantic collection of possible answers to all of the situations and events that I don't understand - just put a couple of question marks after each word or phrase.  There is also a lot of discomfort and conflict.  I am so glad that at 22 I still don't seem to have a very good handle on things…   

However, at least I am learning how to be flexible.  My mother commented on this today as I was wandering around Philadelphia in flip-flops, in the rain.  Park Towne's internet was failing to work again this morning, so it was impossible for me to give sustenance to my email/facebook addiction, which left me in-need of finding a different location at which to get my fix.  Seems like the universe was pretty set against my getting it, though.  My first stop was the Starbucks right next to the Whole Foods that is a couple of blocks east of where I live.  I could tell from a distance that it wasn't going to be very promising - there were too many visible heads in the windows - but I thought I'd pop my head in anyway in case I wasn't seeing some secret little secluded table in a corner somewhere.

Nope.

It looked like the whole neighborhood was crowded into the place.  The whole neighborhood and its friends and family from out of town.  I left and made a beeline down the parkway, getting completely caught in the Puerto Rican parade that was making its way down the parkway to the sound of drums, reggaeton, and salsa music.  My mom, who was on the other end of the phone, was very excited by all the commotion, and thrilled that she could hear it all in the background.  I was surprised she could hear me at all, since I was also hollering over pretzel vendors and festive parade-goers who were chanting in Spanish.

I made it out of the fracas only to discover that Starbucks #2 was closed due to a planned power outage (wtf?).  This was very depressing because their little white sign directed me to their location on 16th and Arch, which I always forget about even though I pass it EVERY TIME I walk down the Parkway.  I didn't want to go all the way back, so the only thing to do was keep moving forward.  There was only one stop left - the Starbucks on the corner of 16th and Walnut, right next to where I work.

Normally, I do not like sitting close to people when I go to public places.  Maybe it's a function of being American (they say that Americans need about 3 times the amount of personal bubble space than do people in pretty much any other part of the world), or maybe it's just another awkward me thing, but either way, I don't like being squished up next to people I don't know.  However, being at my wits' end, I was all about squashing and squeezing.  Which is good.  Because when I got inside, it turned out that squashing and squeezing was pretty much my only option.

Apparently on rainy days all of Philadelphia turns out to go sit in the closest Starbucks.  Starbucks must love days with crummy weather.

So I am currently sitting at the little bar that runs along the window that faces 16th street, between one girl who, from my surreptitious side-long glances, seems to be working on some kind of lesson plan, and another girl who is trying to eat a fruit and cheese plate while simultaneously reading and highlighting in a  space that is far too small for that activity.  There is a dude on the end in a backwards hat who looks mad annoyed that his space has been so encroached upon.

Sorry, dude, it wasn't my first choice, either.

But anyway, I am proud of myself.  I am sucking up discomfort and tight spaces after a forty minute walk.  Here's to being confused but flexible!