My Boo the Blackberry

Why didn't anyone tell me that  car ownership and driving and like mobility is the greatest thing in the whole entire world? I feel like everyone's just kept this giant secret from me to save me from how horrible public transportation is in comparison.

It's been 9 days since I picked up my car! Her name is The Blackberry and despite being 7 years old and in need of some TLC, I love her. I officially purchased the car September 10th, but I didn't pick her up until last Wednesday because she was kind of in rough shape when we first arrived at the dealership. I was totally okay with waiting a few days for the car while the dealership fixed her up and repaired some obvious problems (e.i, the broken handle on the car). But quickly those days became weeks and I was starting to get super nervous. I got this car at a ridiculous price due to some fuck up by the dealership, so i was worried that they had changed their mind. Doesn't matter that I put down money and signed a bunch of papers, I thought maybe they could still renege on the deal because they realzied how big of a deal this was.

Or maybe, they sold me a effing lemon and it was taking so long to repair because the car was a piece of junk. My first real car was a 96 Mazda. My mom bought it for my brother and I when I was in the 11th grade. I rarely got to drive this car because my brother pretty much claimed it as his own from day one and subsequently put that car through so much hell, it was barely something either of us could drive on the road. My mom spent more money having to fix it (or tow it) that she was more than happy to sell it a few years later for $500. Because I know buying used comes with more cons than pros, I convinced myself after a week of waiting that I purchase a lemon and that the dealership was trying to mask how much of a lemon it really was before I drove off the lot.

In reality, it took so long for me to pick up the car because they had to order the handle which took longer to arrive than any of us thought. Last Sunday I was told that the handle would arrive on Monday and I could pick it up then. Of course Monday rolled around and  I was told the part could come in Tuesday or Wednesday.  It definitely did not come in on Tuesday even though I was prepared to go to the dealership after work alone because Heather was unavailable that day to take me.  The part eventually came in Wednesday afternoon and I was able to pick up my car later in the day.

Since then I've been cautiously driving like a 16 year who just got her license. This is not an exaggeration. I got my actual drivers license a day before moving up to New York and spent the next 8 years walking all over the damn place, using public transportation and/or getting rides from friends. I am the most inexperienced legal driver ever. So while this car thing is very exciting and my car is freaking adorable it still feels..unreal. This feels like a temporary experience instead of an everyday thing. I keep waiting for someone to tell me my week is up and I have to return the car to the rental place or worse it's actual owner.

Of course, it is all mine. I do not have to return her and she is paid off so no one can take her from me but the experience of driving to work and going to the supermarket or even to the library is so...strange. Things don't take as nearly as much time as they used to which of course results in me having more time to do things. It used to take me an hour and 15 minutes to get to work via the bus. Now my trip is 25 minutes top. Since I don't start work until 10am but am usually up at 6:30, I can actually do things in the morning. Or at least that was what I initially told myself. The last couple of days I've just stayed in bed longer instead of i don't know, going for a jog/eating breakfast / making my bed. I've just extended sleep because...obviously.

I am hoping this new found Independence and  great new addition to my life is only some marker of all the great things to come. I've been in such a lull personally, emotionally and mentally these days this car has become a source of light.

She's Home

Melatonin Nights

On Monday I had a small panic attack at work. My panic attacks are generally very internal. There are no visible signs that I am freaking the hell out but inside I am just a mess of nerves. I get anxious and nauseous and light-headed. I feel faint and suddenly overwhelmed to the point of exhaustion and then because I've had the attack I immediately feel ashamed afterwards because "what the hell".

I am anxious about a whole lot of things these days: some things I can control and some things I can't.

As you may know I bought a Car on Saturday! Woor Woot! I wish there was some long dramatic story I could tell you regarding the purchase. But honestly, I hung out with Heather on Friday and sort of spent the whole time complaining about public transportation. Last Thursday I left work early because I needed to run errands after work. I got out work at 4:30 and did not get home until 7:00pm. If I had a car my commute home would be 30 minutes at the max but because I have to take two buses to get home, my commute can sometimes be a disaster.

As I am complaining to Heather she bluntly tells me "the moment you say you are physically ready to buy a car. We'll find you a car"  Of course she reminded me of our last disastrous not car buying experience and wanted to make sure that if i said I was "ready" it meant I was absolutely able to put down money. I of course told her I was, even though I may have fudged about what I could and could not realistically afford.  My budget was a low 5k and including taxes I was only looking to spend about 5400 all in.

In the car world this is not a lot of money and I thought I would not be able to find a car at that price that wasn't a lemon. The next day she calls me at like 10am and says"so I'm not sure how serious you were yesterday but if you are, i think i may have found you a car". The car was well over my 5k budget but Heather was sure she could talk them down a few hundred bucks because she is really good at this car buying stuff. We get to the car dealership and of course I am smitten with it as soon as I see it. This love only continued to grow when I test drove it and felt like the boss ass bitch that I aspire to be. When we got back to the dealership to crunch numbers I realized that the mileage on the car was misquoted by 30K. When i bring this up to Heather she pounces on it and the salesman like a pit bull. He apologizes profusely for misleading us and then says he will knock off $1500 from the car because "we are not in the business of scamming people and obviously the mileage is well over what it shows on the website".

And that my friends is how I walked out with a 2009, Nissan Versa that was $1500 less than my original budget. Well, not really walked out. I am still waiting for them to fix up a free bumps and scraps on the car so  I could get the car as soon as tomorrow or as far as next week. In the meantime, I have had to get insurance, take a defensive driver class and buy things for my car that as a car owner I didn't know I needed. As I wait, I am also filled with anxiety about my impending independence but also having to drive on New York roads. I am a very inexperienced driver and the idea of driving on the highway makes me want to hurl but I can't take back roads my whole life and I can't chicken out now and continue taking the bus until I'm 90 years old.

My other anxiety front is this falling out with Kat. She's been super quiet since I went ghost on her a month ago but I keep having this sense that this relative calm and quietness could mean a storm is coming OR Kat is absolutely okay with us not being friends which is only bothersome because it means she thinks I am at fault. For the past month, I thought I've had the upper hand in ending this friendship. That I took this big step in reclaiming my independence and terminating a friendship that was unhealthy with a person who was unhealthy. This doesn't mean I am not in many ways grieving the loss of the friendship, when it was good it was fabulous and I don't think I'll ever have such an intense bond with another friend as I did with her. But her relatives okay-ness (which I can only assume at this point) makes me think that this was her plan all along. When I asked her about her birthday festivities she was the one who said he wasn't interested in celebrating with me. Maybe she was done and had decided she was done well before I reached out to her and instead of me cutting the cord Kat cut it. 

If that's the case, holy effing hell, am I to blame for our falling out? Am I such a difficult person to have in people's lives that rejection is imminent.  I am a person who needs her space. I can love immensely but when I feel smothered I have a tendency of retreating because I need "me" time. Does this come across as mean? I am not sure, but Kat often accused me of being mean because of my desire to spend time apart and if this is true what a horrible effing feeling that is. Selfishly, I'd much rather be a case of us growing apart because we expected different things from each other. I'd much rather take some of the blame then all of the blame (even though I have of course but her in a position where she is at fault). Whatever the case, I am feeling a little off this week and just out of place.

My life anxieties are of course compounded with the news and while I am not a person who likes to discuss money, religion or politics....what the holy hell is happening. Just a few weeks ago I was riding high from the DNC and feeling super patriotic and grateful as fuck to be alive to see a women accept the nomination as Presidential Candidate. And now, I am filled with dread and terror and just awfulness because we have a man running who is the fucking worst, just the fucking worst and her chances now seems slimmer than ever. I have had to stop myself from watching the news because last week after watching the Matt Lauer disaster, I physically got sick and ended up throwing up and then couldn't go to sleep. It was awful and since then I've been taking Melatonin to sleep better and the only food I can keep down this week is toasted bread.

I am worried. Very fucking worried because I have seen some atrocious, awful and hateful things during the campaign and I cannot imagine an American with that dipshit as my commander is chief but we are nearing the finish line and this motherfucker is still front and center and I am baffled and I am nervous and I am afraid.

:: snoopy dance::

I bought a car today!!!!!!!!!

Falling into Autum....

I'm feeling all sorts of gross and anxious day. The Kat thing is hitting me hard this week, not necessarily cause I miss her crazy ways but because in her absence I all of a sudden feel very alone. How did i go from having so many friends and people around me to....well a very small few. Maybe two, if I'm being honest.

To calm my anxiety I'm trying to create a dope ass Fall playlist for the impending cold mornings and changing leaves. It is my hope that Fall will bring about really great changes (both in my life and maybe my mood) because right now I feel sort of...alone and stuck and without a clue if the decisions I am making will lead to results I am actually happy with.

Le Sigh.

The Art of Disappearing

I am incredibly good at disappearing. I have always been good at this.

A lot of it probably has to do with my size. I am tiny, like Olympic gymnast tiny. My vertical challenge is also compounded with my often slender or svelte frame. This was not always the case of course. Much of high school and college was spent feeling awkward in my soft/round frame. I was adorable and cuddly like a stuffed animal but even still I hate looking at pictures of myself from those years because of my roundness.

Living in New York is the diet I currently live by. I walk a lot because I don't have a car and I've always eaten like a bird so when I first moved up here I lost so much weight I hardly recognized myself. While my weight fluctuates like any normal human being, I am comfortably small which makes it easy to disappear/ slip through things / escape quickly without anyone noticing.

My skill also has a lot to do with my personality. I can be secretive, often evasive and distant. Outside of this blog, I don't like talking about myself. I only like to offer up enough information so people get a general sense of who I am without knowing the whole story. I save being open, honest and fully present to a very small handful of people. I am not sure why this is either. I don't think I will ever understand why.

The point is when I make a decision to remove myself from a situation or person, I do so as soon as my mind is officially made up. I disappear. I slip away. I make myself as unavailable as possible because it's the only way I know how. There are few to no take backs in my very complicated book and world view. I mean obviously this is harder to apply in certain situations. It took me forever to decided to move on from Sean and even then it was a hesitant and slow disappearing act. But when it comes down to it the moment I hit my breaking point, I remove myself completely and swiftly. It's the only way I've know how.

I bring this up because I recently decided to end my friendship with Kat and in doing so have completely and utterly removed myself from her life. I have chosen to disappear and no longer be friends: a decision that did not arise overnight. My blogging has been very spotty these last few years and there are gaps that I have not had the time to fill in properly. Despite my overall closeness to Kat, my friendship  has been a downward spiral for little over a year and this decision was one that evolved and came into affect over months of deciding.

My relationship with Kat is murky and it would take several posts to summarize the last few years of it. What I will say is that we bonded at a time when i was desperately in need of a friend. We were friends long before Marie died but in a lot of ways after she passed Kat and I's relationship became stronger. I needed and wanted a close friend to remind me that I could connect and be engaged with another human being again and Kat was always willing to provide that. Of course when the boy stuff happened we only had each other to confide in and we become inseparable due to shared suffering.

But there is something about having an inseparable friend when you're 12 years old and when you are 30 years old. Our closeness began to wear thin pretty quickly because she expected more out of our friendship that i was willing to give. She wanted to hang out all the time, I had to text her everyday or she would feel slighted. If I made plans with other people she would openly express jealousy. If I made plans to do something by myself she would openly express annoyance that I did not include her.

Though the behavior was odd, I sort of just let it go because who doesn't want a friend that  is your right hand man. Who doesn't want to have a person in your life that you know is always available to go to the movies or museums with. I've had the most fun with Kat during my time in New York. Most of our outings were effortless and fun because wherever we went we'd spend most of it talking about things that we were both interested in: books, arts, boys, pop culture. We could turn outings to the city into night long adventures which usually ended with us laughing until our stomachs hurt. Or we could have a chill hang out at my place watching Gilmore Girls and contemplating our place in the world.

But while I valued our closeness, moving to a new town and in a new apartment created this fierce independence I didn't know I possessed. I began healing and thriving independent of our friendship that gave me a renewed sense of...productivity. Though I still loved hanging out with Kat, I quickly grew tired of our routine because I wanted to try new things and meet new people. She expected us to hang out every Friday in my apartment for hours watching TV followed by solidified plans of hanging out on the weekend. She'd get annoyed if I had something going on that would prevent us from hanging out during the week and this made me feel like she was preventing me from becoming whatever person I am trying to become.

It became overwhelming during the holidays when she expected us to spend Christmas Eve together opening presents and watching Christmas movies at my apartment. I expressed my disinterest in participating in that activity for several reasons and her response to this was very immature: why don't you want to spend the day opening presents, why can't i hang out at your house, why are you being so mean I just want to hang out, followed by catty like behavior for the next few weeks until I finally conceded and we spent an afternoon opening our presents in front of each other. Like children

I guess where the shift began was Kat's all consuming need for me to make her my #1 priority. Every decision I made had to indirectly affect her. Eventually every decision she made was directly related to one's i made. Soon after moving to my adorable town she announced that she'd like to move there also and get an apartment down the street from me so she could drop by my house whenever. At first I thought this was a joke but a few weeks later she admitted she found an apartment 3 blocks from my house that she wished she could move into. Luckily it sold before she could even ask to see the place. 

THEN I told her about my interest in getting a car and based on that discussion she went out that weekend and leased a 2016 Subaru Legacy because "if you deserve a car, I deserve one too". THEN she ask if my job was hiring because she thought it would be cool if we worked together again. THEN when i told her I was going to take my mom to Washington D.C, she booked a trip a few weeks later and stayed at the same hotel I booked with my family.

I know these seems like very minor similarities but jebsus meffing fiest! I felt like I was living the plot of Single White Female, except with someone I've been super close to for the past 5 years. I was always aware hat she had a habit of 'copying' out of love. If i liked something she would try her hardest to like it as well, in some attempt to relate to me BUT i am not the kind of person who likes that attention and  never found it flattering. Instead I resented her and what I perceived as a blatant overstep in our friendship.

In many ways I felt like her copying allowed her to take credit for ideas or achievements that were never her own but that she was getting validation for. And it annoyed the crap out of me. She would tell me that she only got her car because I inspired her to get it and then she accidentally sent me a text meant for another person where she talked about her new adult purchase that she made all by herself. The fact was that I knew Kat  as a person who couldn't make any decision without the approval of someone around her was greatly different from the person she presented to the world. The person she presented to the world very closely mirrored me and things that I did or talked about doing.

In order to prevent myself from resenting Kat I decided to distance myself a little. I started hanging out with other friends and planning activities that didn't involve her. I still put aside time to catch a movie with her every once in a while  (and Fridays for the most part resumed as normal) but I wanted to create a boundary with her where was one was lacking. Naturally she did not take this well. She thought that I didn't value our friendship and said that "people would kill to have a friendship like we do and you are outgrowing it. that's sad". Before crush boy became bye boi she was worried that he would cut into our 'us time" and got vocally upset when i wanted to reschedule plans to hang out with him.

Now, I know what you are thinking because I have thought it to but Kat has been in a serious relationship with a great guy for 10 years. They live together and have talked about low key marrying because both aren't going to just up and start dating someone else. Though Kat cheated on him twice she admitted that she would never leave him because he treats her like a fucking queen and honestly he does. But Kat is a person who likes to have the best of both worlds. I think she is used to getting undivided attention from her boyfriend that she expects this sort of end all-be all commitment from her friends and that was something I was not willing to do.

I love Kat. I think she's dope but in her mind she was okay with me just being there only for her. and no one else. If she could plan the future it would involve me remaining a dutiful, faithful friend who is always available to her when she needs me to. In doing so though, I didn't have much time to pursue my own personal interest or relationships because she demanded my attention constantly.

After several months of living like this, I completely got fed up two weeks ago when I told her I saved up enough money to finally buy a car (this is before I knew that my enough was not actually enough). I only told her this because she picks me up on Fridays for our mandatory Friday night chill-fest and I wanted to let her know that she wouldn't have to do that soon. Her response: speaking of big news, so I've decided to go to Chicago for my birthday. It was a last minute thing but you talked about how much you liked it and I figured I would like it to"

What? Asaywhat? Awhatthefuck? I don't know why I was annoyed by this announcement but on top of everything else this just seemed to be the icing.  Home girl couldn't find Chicago on a US map a few years ago and now I inspired her to go. It was at this point that I admitted to her that it makes me uncomfortable that I inspire her to do things that end up very seriously mirroring my own experiences. Despite my frustration and anger, I promise I told her this in the most polite but direct way ever. And her response "ARE YOU KIDDING ME. ARE YOU ACCUSING ME OF SINGLE WHITE FEMALING YOU. YOU KNOW WHAT I'LL CANCEL MY TRIP NOW AND RETURN MY CAR WHILE I'M AT IT"

She eventually calmed down but the fact that she herself brought up Single White Female as a reference makes me think this is not the first time someone has accused her of copying. We ended the conversation on what I thought was a good note and then proceeded to hang out as normal that Friday. A few days later I texted her about her trip to Chicago and what she wanted to do for her birthday when she returned. Her response: No. Thanks tho.

It was at that moment that my disappearing instinct kicked in and I decided enough is enough. I don't want to be her friend anymore. I don't want to know someone who cannot support my ideas and aspirations but instead robs them from me. I cannot be friends with someone who wants me to sacrifice my own happiness to cater to her own. I do not want to be friends with someone who only months ago gave me an ultimatum: be my friend like I need you to be my friend or I am done with you.

So, I made it easy for her. I disappeared. I faded. I slipped through the cracks and made a fucking break for it. I sprinted as soon as she gave me a petty window to do so and because my decision making is very absolute, I have no plans of turning back. There is so much I want to do and see. There is so much I want to accomplish and be and man o' man did it feel like she was in many ways preventing that progress. Cause progress is what I am about these days.

My Exhuastative and Never Ending Used Car Buying Experience.

Jebsus Mucking Fiest. If I new how hard this car buying experience was going to be, I would have created a time machine to go back 10 years and not fuck up my credit  so I could just lease or finance a car like a normal adult. But alas, that is not my current financial situation so a couple of months ago I made the decision to save up enough money to buy a cash car.

I know, I know....I've already heard all of the arguments between leasing/financing vs. buying but i must reiterate my credit is crappy and I don't feel comfortable leasing a new car with fancy things like heated seats which my bum does not need. I like owning things because I didn't grow up owning many things.So after researching my options, I decided that I would save up enough money to buy a car with cold hard and earned cash. I am pretty cheap by nature, so it only took me a few months to save 5k which I thought would be enough money to purchase my first vehicle.

It's not.

Ever since telling my friend Heather that I was prepared to go car shopping, I've been dragged to countless dealerships that a) don't have any cars in my price range or b) have cars in my price range that I have no interest in buying (I'm talking about you 1996 Buick). The search has been disheartening to say the least. But yesterday Heather sent me a link to a 2009 Nissan Versa for 5k. It was a gem of a car ( I gem i tell you) and in any other situation I would have been over the moon at finding my potential new vehicle.

But then I started crunching numbers and realized that my 5k budget did not include tax and stuff. Insurance and stuff. Registration fees and stuff. I suddenly went from "omg, omg I think I found my dream used car" to "wait, by the end of the actual transaction I will have spent a little over $800 more than my budget. $800 that I honestly do not have and could not borrow from anyone".

As soon as I realize this I tell Heather that I don't think we should head to the dealership to look at this vehicle because i don't have the money I would actually need to buy the car. This is the point where Heather becomes super overwhelming "but you said you were looking for a car" "this is the gem we've been talking about" "I can't keep driving you around like a cab if you're not serious about buying a car" "are you afraid of driving" "are you stalling because you're afraid of driving" "am i pressuring you into doing this".

My mind and body shuts down when I am emotionally overwhelmed. It just does. I lose words, I lose thoughts, I lose mobility in my limbs. It's like I can feel myself float away from my body and I am literally watching the situation outside of myself. It's the closet I think I will ever get to one of those outer body experiences, except that I experience them during duress.

So I'm sitting in Heather's car and she keeps going on and on and on about what I want to do. Except she isn't really asking me what I want to do (because I've already told her " i can't afford this car right now so I think it's a waste to head all the way up to this dealership and I'm not ready to buy" she is demanding an answer from me and I can't deal. "why are you changing your mind" "why don't you have enough money" "why am I wasting my time" and I just feel awful because I didn't know how hard this car search would be and had I known I would have waited a while longer instead of getting my hopes up that I'd have a vehicle by the end of the summer.

We eventually got to a point in the conversation where I simply told her I was not ready to continue looking for cars unless I had more money to cover all the expenses. And because that is not the case, I have to put off buying a car for a few more weeks. She seemed satisfied with this answer but there is still a bad taste in my mouth about the whole day.

Thanks to the interwebs, I was reminded that I moved to New York 8 years ago this month. My mom and I took an amtrak from South Carolina to New York so she could drop me off at my aunts house. I had maybe $70 in my bank account, no jobs prospects and and a small duffle bag of clothes. 8 effing years ago. I was 22 years old. I thought i was going to move to New York and work in publishing and life would just start and work out the way I imagined life was supposed to work out. It didn't. The last 8 years have been anything but easy.I struggled and I fought for bare scraps and only now am I at a point in my life where I feel like my efforts are paying off. Little by little. Day by day.

BUT I am surrounded by people who have it easier than me so it can make it hard to relate. I sometimes feel as if I am playing catch up because it seems like everyone else in some way or another has an advantage.  Heather recently told me that her bf paid off her 6k credit card debt because, well he could. When I brought up buying a cash car at work, several people chimed in about leasing because they all have 2016 vehicles and pay only $230 a month on car payments ( i can't afford that). Kat had someone write her cover letter/resume and applied to jobs for her because she complained it was too hard.

I hate that I'm envious of their situations. I hate that I hear the phrase "well if you could do, i knew that i could do it to" because it implies that I have made things look so easy and yet have achieved so little.  I was so annoyed recently cause Kat decided she wants to go to Chicago for vacation this summer. She said they wanted to go to Hershey Park for her birthday and the she decided that because Hershey Park is not far from Chicago (please google it. It is not) that they would just drive to Chicago right after because "if you've been to Chicago it can't be hard for me and [insert boyfriends name] to go.

I should not have been infuriated by this news but i was only because both trips to Chicago were exhaustive, expensive and challenging experiences. I didn't suddenly have the urge to go to Chicago with some person willing to drive me and flip the bill on the whole trip. I was just brave, reckless and stupid (my general traits) and look where they got me.

The same sort of envy has arisen with this car search. We hit up so many dealerships this past week that my wallet is full of business cards from sales people who were so nice out of pity. During every visit Heather would say something like "i can't believe no one has been a jerk to us yet. My budget was $15k and people were so rude. You're practically poor and people are being so nice". I don't need to be reminded of how poor I am. I don't need to be reminded of this. When did having 5k in my bank account equate to poor especially when I used to have little to no money at all to even feed myself.

I am frustrated that in comparison my achievements don't feel like actual achievements because I seem to fight for things that my friends obtain easily and/or with added assistance. Kat literally purchased a new car because I told her I wanted to get a car and she figured if I could go out and get a car she could too. I still do not have this vehicle I talked about getting almost a year ago. I am still taking public transportation where today an ant crawled on my face. An ant.

I am frustrated and tired and a bit of a Charlie Brown this week. I know that things with me are always going to be a struggle because honestly I like being the underdog. But sometimes even a dog needs to be thrown a bone every once in awhile.

Boi Bye!

As you may or may not know, I had a little bit of an office crush these past few months. I didn't want to talk about it because after the Sean situation I have learned not to let myself get to wrap up in something that could or could not be.

This boy sort of came out of the blue though. He started working for the company about a year ago as a marketing representative and I did not think much of him when he first started. He was super quiet and hard to read and seemed only interested in coming to work and going home. When he did talk, it was only if someone brought up something nerdy (which was usually me) but then would retreat into silence as if he never uttered a word.

I remember thinking he was okay but then characteristically being turned off when during one of these rare moments of interjection he said "i have a girlfriend." after I made some remark about wanting to drive a Volvo. I thought the comment was so random and was a little put off that he said it as if I were digging for an answer I never questioned him about. My little bit of curiosity flew out the window after that day and I sort of went about ignoring him like I do everyone else at my job.

However, a few weeks later  he brought up the fact that we had a mutual friend in common. I was minding my business at my desk when he came over and sort of announced that I popped up on Facebook as a mutual friend and that we knew someone in common. I am not sure why this made talking to him easier but it did. The moment he mentioned that we shared a friend we instantly hit it off and the last few months have been great in the work friend department.

Turns out this 'boy' is the most introspective, musically talented, philosopher I have come across in a very long time and I was quickly swept up in his mystery. He was an engineer major in college because of his interest in numbers and concrete answers. He sort of 'fucked up royally for a while' and took a job in marketing because he needed to get his life together before applying to school again. He likes hip hop and philosophy, is a professional gamer outside of work and once quoted Plato and Thomas Jefferson during our many rambling sessions.

Because my office is super weird, we spent the most of this time getting to know each out via Slack (a g-chat isque form of communication which served the purpose of making us look busy at work while simultaneously allowing us to chat for hours with no one really knowing).  We spent the first few weeks getting to know each other on a superficial level, asking each other questions about our past, present and likes. He was a jock in high school turned nerd. He is a foodie and likes driving to remote areas and writing lyrics. He is self conscious about his weight and height(he's a giant compared to moi)  but he's also super aware about everything and everyone around him.

I can't remember where we went from superficial to in-depth but to put it bluntly: I found him fucking fascinating. I kept telling him this when we first were getting to know each other. He'd send me song recommendations throughout the day and every song, every melody every lyric was so beautiful I felt like he knew me. He'd genuinely want to know stuff about me and then be totally reciprocal when I asked him questions back. We shared enough similarities to make us friends but enough differences to keep each other engaged. He is fascinating, self-deprecating but honest and whenever i got the chance  I'd tell him over and over again upon each new discovery that I was utterly fascinated by him and his mind. Just fucking fascinated.

Of course, once we got past the initial stuff I knew that I liked him in a way that bordered on romantic and platonic. I may be a person who is unable to have a lot of platonic male friends. I am a person who does not think men and women can easily be friends without some sort of feelings shinning through. Trust me, I have had a lot of male friends I did not like in that way. But I have noticed that most of the guys I tend to like and fall for start off initially as good friends. I am more comfortable dating someone that I have a history with (be it a small 1-2 year friendship or in recent cases someone that I've known for a super long time) and more often than not, I (or the person) end up making a decision to just be friends or have suffocating feelings for each other. There is no black or white.

But  based on my previous mistake, I knew that I should probably squash any crush feelings that could come to the surface because he mentioned he had a GF when he first started working here and I just don't ever want to be in that situation again. So I enjoyed making and having a new friend. He made work the best place in the whole entire world and introduced me to the most euphoric music I've ever had the pleasure of hearing. BUT THEN, during one our conversations he said that he broke up with this GF (the one who drove a Volvo) months ago and I mentioned that I too was single and I'm not sure, something just clicked.

He started driving me home after work, where we spend the ride home talking about the universe and music and life. We'd smoke weed (i know, i know...i only smoke socially) and ask each other questions and bond like i haven't bonded with any other person in a long time. I couldn't get over how open and honest he was about everything. He seemed filled with regret over being someone who picked on people in school but then also very apprehensive about his future and trying to figure out what he wanted to do with this life. And every time we'd get to this point of our interactions, I'd become even more fascinated.

But for every great interaction between us, he'd respond by sometimes retreating for days into silence. I tried not to take it personally but of course that was pretty tough to do cause I enjoyed talking to him and being around him. Despite our shared singlehood, I wanted mainly to be his friend because as his friend we could see where or if anything transpired. And because I knew we only had a limited time left as colleagues (he was accepted to an engineer program and would only be working in the office until August) I was tasked with becoming his friend while also leaving our budding friendship open to progressing naturally.

I thought I was doing a bang up job of this. Thought being the best word i can think of at the moment. Despite the pitter patter and the rumblings on interest in my chest, despite catching him on numerous occasions starring at me from his desk, I tried to keep it as friendly as possible. Not so casual that he didn't think i was interested but not so suffocating that it would scare the living daylights out of him if he wasn't interested in me that way. It's a hard line to walk but I felt pretty good about how I was going about it AND he seemed pretty receptive about my approach. But then last Friday rick-rolled around and boy o boy....

So, we planned in advance to chill after work his last day. He is a professional gamer so he had a tournament to drive to that night but said he still wanted and could chill after work because it wasn't out of the way. We left work mad early (because Fridays everyone is on a summer schedule), drove to my house, smoked in his car and talked about everything under the sun. Towards the end of hanging out I told him that I thought he was a really dope guy and that he made work bearable and that if he wanted to hit me up anytime to just chill and hang out or nature walk and write lyrics, i'd be totally down for that.

Good, right? Well, i thought it was good. Especially since I am not a person who willingly puts herself out there. Nope and more nope. It makes me uncomfortable and I am petrified of rejection. So after I said this I was hoping, yes hoping, that his response would give me  hope that I have moved past this Sean situation a better brighter person...with a potential better brighter boy on the horizon. I was hoping but that hope was quickly dashed.

"Um, yea, maybe. I mean, i don't see myself coming up this way for a pretty long time so that might be impossible but I'll definitely keep you in mind, maybe".

Ugh. Ugh. Ugh.

I am emjoi cringing right now.  That is definitely not the response I was hoping for. One bit. After he said this, i said "oh, okay" and then slinked out of his car like the loser I apparently am. I haven't talked to him since and I guess, I won't ever talk to him again since you know...even being friends was sort of out of the question. Surprisingly despite the initial disappointment and embarrassment I am super proud for putting myself out there even if my attempt got chewed up and then spit back at me. I may have been baby birded in a negative way but you know it happens and it doesn't feel...devastating.

It feels a little liberating knowing I don't have to waste my energy on someone who doesn't want to be my friend...or my friend. It feels a tab bit liberating that I can have an interest in someone, have nothing come from it and still just kind of move on. Like today, I woke up, put my hair in a bun, got some coffee from Starbucks put on my gangster rap and heavy metal playlist and went about my day killing it at work and maybe even at life.  Maybe I am just finally learning that rejection is a part of life but it does not define my life or the strides I am making everyday.



 

Qulams

It's been over 3 years since that disastrous night with Sean went down and despite coming out of the situation in a better, healthier place...i fucking hate that I am still plagued by that night and the aftermath. I hate that I carry his words with me, even now, even after all this time.

I've been having a pretty shitty couple of weeks. Nothing major, just anxiety related stuff that has made functioning like a semi-normal person a hard task to undertake. Kat is being difficult and needy which only makes me needy and cranky. Last Friday after work we had tentative plans to grab dinner and see the new Ghostbusters movie. Her brother has been having an equally shitty couple of weeks so she invited him and her bf Mark to dinner and the movies. BUT during work that day 'the boy' asked me to chill after work with him. I texted Kat immediately and told her that I would probably have to skip dinner but would meet them all at the movies because something came up (followed by emjoi eyes and a wink). She went batshit and said that I made plans with her first so i couldn't skip dinner cause her brother was looking forward to the night.

Needless to day the boy and I did not hang out that night.

On top of my continued issues with Kat, my mom and I are in the midst of a mother-daughter argument that has brought out the petty 16 year old me who went out of her way to make sure people knew when they were being ignored. My mother is my best friend and that is probably why when we do argue, which is rare, it feels like having an argument with a friend rather than a mom. We've been passive aggressive to each other the whole week. Work, oh work, is becoming stressful because they want me to give me more responsibilities, since I am doing so well at my current tasks.The problem with this is that by dumping more work on me, it has sort of prevented me from excelling at my actual job. I feel like they (and maybe everyone in my life) thinks I am a swiss army knife, capable of performing all sorts of functions upon request. I am definitely not a swiss army knife. I am a tight rope walker: just trying to balance myself on the line so I don't crash into the ground.

Pfft. Splat.

When I am anxious, like i am now, my sleeping habits are terrible. I generally am a perfect sleeper. I am like a cat, I can  curl up anywhere, anytime to take a nap that turns into deep sleep pretty quickly. I fall asleep fast and can clock in 8 hours of uninterrupted shut eye. But that is when I am not anxious. When I am anxious, going and staying asleep is a struggle. My mind wanders, my body is tense, i drum up every single thought and explore it with frustrating vigor. The other night I went to be around midnight (cause the DNC has been killing it this week) and woke up at 3 and could not shut my mind off to return back to sleep. I was miserable and cranky the whole next day and instead of resting peacefully when i  got home the restlessness remained.

Like most things in my life I am ruled by cycles and my general unease and anxiety is almost always related to something in the universe. July tends to be a hard month for me in many ways. It's a humid, sticky, uncomfortable time of the year. I am a Spring baby who loathes the heat and the shine and desire for activities outside of my house and July is the epitome of summer and I just can't handle. But as I was tossing and turning the other night, it finally dawned on me: 'it' happened almost 3 years to the day.The disastrous night at Sean house that could have been nice and murky and disastrous which instead turned out to be awful, swamp-like and disastrous. Over 3 years since "it" happened things said and both unrevealed.

3 years since he showed me who he was like a moth emerging from a cocoon. 3 years since he freaked the fuck out at being exposed and revealed. At being naked and vulnerable and in need of someone like me. And because he felt all those things ( i imagine) he lashed out and said I wasn't good enough, that I would never be good enough out of both honesty and fear. He said I was a mistake and that he never saw a future with me at all because he wasn't a attracted, he was never interested.

3 years since I understood what it meant to pitied for the 2nd time in my life. The first being when Marie died. I knew something was wrong the days leading up to her death. I know that she was in trouble and I kept calling out for someone to take my fears seriously. It would not have prevented Marie from dying but it would, in many ways, have validated that i saw her too, a butterfly struggling to hatch. I saw her too and I knew she needed me. And when she died, I just remember how it felt to be watched by everyone. how they pitied my foresight and small voice.

The 2nd being that night in Sean's car, during our confrontation. There was initial awkwardness and unease when we both made the decision to talk about the night before and everything (said and unsaid) that happened. I began to tell him that I cared for him but that I didn't feel comfortable with everything that happened the night before because he was in a relationship. I told him that unless things were clearer between us we couldn't do what we did the night before. I told him that i saw him, that night, that where i held and caressed and loved, he revealed himself to me. I saw him.  But instead of confronting my fears, validating my voice and maybe even my body he diminished me. He devalued my worth and then looked at me with pity:

"why would i ever be with someone like you" and every ugly thought that i've had about myself, every reason for not wanting to continue and be a person were validated selfishly by him. And it broke me. It continues to break and chip away at me 3 years later. How is that fucking possible. Today is his birthday at date that I hope i'll forgot sooner than later and I am so frustrated by the stupid residual pain left from the mess we both made.

I worry constantly that I am so jaded by the Sean situation, I won't know how of if I am able to open up to someone in that way again. I mean, don't get me wrong the last 3 years have been extraordinary to say the least.  I live in a great place, I can pay my bills, I have friends and a life that I am so grateful and proud of. I am not that girl who Sean looked down on in this car, I am not that girl who people starred at after Marie died. I am different, essentially the same heart but the parts are rearranged. But these affirmations about my life now doesn't mean I don't worry. I am still a girl who lost her best friend. A girl who worries that I cannot hold on to people. A girl who wonders if I will ever be good enough for anyone to stay.

And despite moving on from several bad moments in my life, despite coming out of the other side a little stronger though banged up... I worry and I wonder how much of what I still carry with me might prevent from me from fulling moving forward.

Updates

All of my posts should start with "work is killing me" cause jebsus effing Christmas, this place is killing me. And it's only Wednesday. How is it only Wednesday.

Tomorrow my boss has decided to have a company wide meeting to discuss our progress and goals moving forward. We have these meetings every 4 months where we gather in our big conference room for an hour while he goes over, in excruciating detail, all the things we are doing well and obviously on the things that could still needs improvement.

I hate these meetings. I've only been to 3 since I started at this job but they are the most meaningless things in the whole entire world and I spend most of my time drawing unhappy faces in my notebook. Tomorrow though, my boss decided to mix it up: not only are we having a meeting but it is going to be in the afternoon instead of the morning and afterwards he expects us all to attend a summer party on the patio to revel in his successful career venture.

The meeting is supposed to run from 5:30pm to 7:00pm (excluding the after party) and I am livid that I even have to attend this thing. My role in the company is marginal at best, I am the only one who takes public transportation and my town is so far away that even if I do catch the last bus home, I will still have to pay for a cab or take the train to get to my actual neighborhood. I have already planned an escape route so I don't have to go to this party but there is no way to avoid the meeting. I am dreading this meeting. I am dreading the awkwardness that comes about when there are gatherings of any sort. I want to sit as close to the exit as possible. I don't want to engage in small talk. I'd rather just disappear.

The only good thing about this job is they pay me well or okay enough to live normally. I plan on buying a car in two weeks because i've saved up enough money to purchase one without too much financial worries. It's so weird that 8 years ago, I didn't even think i'd ever get my drivers license because i keep failing the test. I finally got my license a few days before moving to New York but by then I owning/driving a car was not in my near future. And now here I am, only a few more shitty bus and train rides away from owning a car and driving, finally driving.

The idea of how much independence this will give me is overwhelming. I am so used to being the passenger, it will be an adjustment to be the driver. To have a little more control over...well everything. Metaphor for life, I guess.

Le sigh. 5 more hours to go.

Nope.

Don't worry, this isn't from Satan himself (aka Sean, who if you can believe,  I have not actively talked to in almost 2 years!)

This is from my ex-friend Justin. Or Patricia's boyfriend. Now Fiance.

I work with Patricia who hates my freaking guts. When I first started, she actively went out of her way to throw me under a bus to make me look bad. Because I am doing so well at my job she can't find ways to make me look bad so instead she is actively nasty or dismissive of me. All because I told her her guy friend at work was being sort of inappropriate towards me. Le sigh.

Needless to say Patricia and I are not friends and by proxy I am also not friends with Justin who ignored me when I stopped by the store to say hi a few months ago. Literally, I went up to him, said hi and he walked in the opposite direction without uttering anything to me.  I thought maybe he didn't hear me, so I followed him and said hi again. He stopped, shelved a book and walked by me again without uttering a word.

So, I am very confused why I got this stupid email last weekend about their engagement. I only found out they were engaged via Kat who received an email from Justin saying he wanted to let her know first that Patricia gave him an ultimatum (we are getting married or I am not supporting you any more) and that he feels like being with her is a death sentence but he doesn't really have a choice.

And even though i've known about the engagement since it first happened neither Justin nor Patricia have mentioned it to me, despite the fact that I see Patricia every day at work and she has told plenty of people from the office about her engagement while proudly showing them the ring she bought.

I can't imagine gifting Justin or Patricia anything because they decided to marry for the sake of marrying. And who the hell has an engagement party? Especially after announcing to both family and friends via Facebook that you are engaged.

I've been sitting on this email for 5 days, not really knowing what or if to say anything. I weighed the pros and cons. I could go, show my support, make amends and attend a wedding in the fall of 2017 with my friends.

Or, throw subtle shade, burn a bridge that wasn't worth saving and move on.

I guess by my response you can tell which petty road I took.

Fingers Crossed

I literally just fell asleep at my cubicle. No lie. For a brief minute or two I actually dozed off,  only to be startled awake by a soft snore. How is it only Wednesday? Why is it not at least 5:30, so I can start packing my stuff and head home? Why the hell am I still here at this cubicle doing my job on daily auto pilot? 

Creepy Guy and Annoying girl are both  on vacation this week and without the constant pitter patter of Creepy Guy hovering near my desk or the annoying and asinine ramblings of Annoying Girl(who i don't think i've mentioned before) talking insistently,  the office is pretty quiet this week. Like excruciatingly quiet. Like i-have-run-out-of-ways-to-even-fake-busy quiet.

Crush boy has been pretty aloof and uninteresting this week and I am sort of bummed out by the lack of consistency in our budding friendship. He vacillates between being an engaging and inquisitive guy to an aloof, distant and static robot. This week he is a robot and because I am uber sensitive, I am trying not to be hurt but the sudden malfunction. I can't help wondering (of course) what or if or why things have suddenly soured between us.

He seems to have given up all of a sudden and because I am not as invested to the relationship outside of curiosity and musings, I haven't put much of an effort to figure out why.
I too am at fault for some of this static work week. I have other things on my mind and this hasn't made me much of an inviting person lately. Last weekend Heather and I had a impromptu hangout where we ran errands, drank coffee and complained about stuff. I'm not sure why I enjoy doing this with Heather as much as I do. But honesty anytime she asks me to run errands with her, my answer is immediately yes.

Last weekend was no different. She picked me up around noon so we could run around buying things we needed (groceries, office supplies, coffee) and some things we didn't (moleskin notebooks, decor related items, candy). During our hangout she mentioned that one of my supervisors at the University recently got a promotion and was no longer at my old department. With her absence there is now a full time position open  and she thinks I should apply because my boss loved me and I could get my job back at a place that i adored.

It took me a moment to digest the news. I've been looking for a opportunity to rejoin the University since I left. I only quit because I was poor, poorer than I've ever been in my life and at the time my boss did not have a full time gig to offer me. So on many fronts being able to return, this time with a salary and benefits, would be amazing, plus i could go back to school for free. I am only a little apprehensive about the gig because my department was always on the brink of huge budget cuts and at the time I quit, I was nervous they were going to let some people go to save money.

Regardless, I sent in my resume and cover letter a week ago. I haven't heard anything back yet and am not sure if I should reach out to my former boss just to let him know I am interested. I feel like every decision I make for myself now has this immediate effect. I quit the bookstore, I moved to a new town, I got a new job and my life is so freaking different than i ever could imagine. Mentally and physically. I'm in a good place. I still struggle emotionally and I guess socially and I must admit this is pretty frustrating.

I want to return to the University for a litany of good reasons, but mainly for one selfish one. I miss being around people. I miss being park of a community. I miss being surrounded by potential relationships. And that fact that every one I have started to form at this job has fallen threw the cracks or is Patricia's case the depths of hell, returning to the University could greatly impact my nonexistent social life. Because it is non existent outside of my mom and Kat. And that shit is sort of depressing

Le sigh.

The Spinster Diaries

My mom said something insensitive the other day and while at first I was upset at her, I realize I have suddenly crossed that weird threshold where if I am not in a relationship, engaged or already married with five children my achievements outside of that and that alone mean nothing. Absolutely freaking nothing to anyone. And it's sort of frustrating.

Le Fucking Sigh.

Per usual Kat and I hung out on Friday where she expressed concerns about my crush/new guy situation. This crush thing sort of crept up out of nowhere and honestly I am going in it with little to no real exceptions. I like him but I am not sure if it is on a romantic or platonic level. We primarily talk via gchat and occasionally face to face when he isn't actively avoiding me. I find him interesting but doesn't that come with meeting anyone with similar interests? We come from completely different backgrounds and yet bound over music, books and outlook on life. We spend the bulk of our day at work sending each other music via spotify and analyzing lyrics. He's nice, I mean as much as anyone could be. At the moment he is also the only person I tolerate at work, so that too might have something to do with my curiosity and attraction.

I will not assume what or if the boy has any interest in me. I think he finds me somewhat interesting and a confidant to talk to at work. But for every good interaction where we pass the hours 'talking', there are other days when he is distant and preoccupied. He has literally gone days without saying anything to me followed by a days where he seems overwhelmed with everything he wants to tell or ask me.  That's why it came as a complete shock when he offered to drive me home the other week because I got the sense that I had annoyed him somehow due to him not being overly chatty or engaged in my attempts to converse.

Then out of the blue one day that week he asks if I need a ride home and i'm all like "holy shit yes!". Of course on the ride home, I liked him more. He was a little nervous but funny, he seemed more comfortable in his car and I was glad that we were able to talk freely and with the same enthusiasm as our work conversations have been. Despite my initial 'omg, a boy i could potentially like is driving me home' excitement, when it is all over and done with we are  simply just getting to know each other, so I want things to evolve naturally. Whatever that mean. He's going back to school in the fall and I might have an opportunity to return to the University on a full time basis. So whatever is or is not happening between us will evolve as it's supposed to.

Of course, this doesn't stop my mom or Kat from meddling in my interest of this boy and for completely different reasons. On the Kat front, she was annoyed that crush boy drove me home this past Friday because it interfered with her weekly routine of picking me up, grabbing salads and going back to my house.  Then during dinner all she could do was express concern that this guy situation could mean I have less time for her. She legitimately expressed this concern. I feel like she is incapable of seeing me be happy and what's worse is that I don't think she is aware of this. She'd ask questions like "but do you think he's going to want to hang out every week" "what does that mean about the free-time you have for me".

 I am grateful for Kat's friendship but as I mature, I don't want her to be so reliant on me for companionship. I wouldn't mind going weeks without seeing or talking to Kat because we are too busy doing our own things and killing it! Instead I feel weighed down by her friendship and expectations of me. I feel trapped in a one sided friendship where my goal is to make her happy and secure while I am less happy and secure. She is a succubus, and my life source is fading.

I've decided to not tell her anything else or happenings between the boy and I (so there will probably be a lot of it here if anything develops) and also keep her out of the loop on any big changes I am planning. I need my own life, I am ready for my own life, I simply cannot be responsible for anyone's happiness outside of my own. 

On the mom front, upon learning of this crush boy she immediately went from "i don't think this is a good idea" to "you know what, you really do just need to find a man, any man, so I think you need to be more assertive". I cannot tell you how gutted I was. As you may or may not know, I have not had many romantic relationships and the one that I 'did' have was not really a relationship but more of a complete and utter disaster. But why should it matter if i'm single or with someone? Why would i need to "find a man, any man" to fulfill my life. I'm not saying I want to be single forever because honestly i'd like to spend my life with someone nice and kind and funny but it's not something I dwell on.

Honestly I've been killing it the last two years as a  single chick getting her life together. I have my own place, I have more money in my bank account then ever, I have a full time job, I'm finding my creative voice again, I am on this serene journey towards physical, mental and emotional stability, I look super cute 5 out of 7 days a week. I am so proud of the women I am becoming and because of this there is something frustrating that those achievements mean so little because I am not with someone. Anytime I go out with friends or talk to family members it is the first and only questions that pops up. "So how are you?" "I'm doing really great!" "Oh nice, who's the new fellow in your life" "Oh, no i'm not dating anyone, things are just good cause---" "Oh..."

I hate that a single man in his 20s,30s, 40s, 50s, 60s is a bachelor who has decided to live the single life. That person is admired because of his tenacity, grit and single-hood. He can travel around the world, buy property, actively date women, pursue a career and still be seen as someone who is successful. A single woman in her 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s is considered a spinster who is unlucky in love. That person is pitied because of her inability to secure a mate. There must be something wrong with this person who is often portrayed or characterized as a lonely, cantankerous figure envious of her friends in committed relationship. This person's success will never amount to much because of her mate-less-ness.

This is an infuriating concept! Infuriating and yet, here I am being damn near condemned by Kat for having an interest in a guy that could take away her spinster friend who is always available to her when she needs to vent or cry or because her bf doesn't want to go to an art show that she's been dying to attend. Here I am, being told by my mom that she just wants me to 'have a husband'. Why can't i just be boss ass Beckett living her life however I want without this pressure of seeing or nor seeing someone. Why is this boy, who didn't say much to me outside of "hello' last week, more interesting of a tale than say me: saving 10K, going to Canada, rock climbing and writing my first novel. Why is our/my success in life only measured by who I am or am not shacking up with.

It doesn't make any sense. Any sense at all. And it's sort of disheartening cause I feel like whatever I accomplish doesn't measure up to much if I don't have a dashing gentlemen in the periphery.

Boy O Boy

Crush boy offered to  give me a ride home.

Looking like I bake pie for a living apparently worked.

All the Feels

crush boy makes me sweat. uncomfortably. like when he is around, I am drenched in sweat. Is that supposed to happen. where is all this water coming from.

I don't even know what it is. He's a normal boy. And I'm a normal girl. Except on days, like today, where I get all fancied up in hopes that he'll notice and talk to me. I am wearing a stupid polka dot dress and a cardigan with knee high boots. I looked like i am on my way to make cherry pie. The sweetness is unbecoming. I am actually a carnivorous beast but he is sweet and shy and slightly skittish so I thought i'd dress innocent and wholesome (instead of carnivorous and beastly) so, you know, he'd be less nervous around me.

I mean who can be nervous around a girl who looks sweet? I look like I bake cupcakes for a living. But alas, the boy is still being super distant and weird even though I catch  him looking at me all the time. It's confusing. I am confused and also very sweaty

Vacation, All I Ever Wanted.

In a blink of an eye my vacation has come and gone.

I can't freaking believe it. I feel like I was just talking about going on vacation and now here I am back in New York and  miserable as hell. Okay, that's a slight exaggeration I am not miserable (crush boy is making things easier but more on that later) but I definitely could have used another week (or two) of chill time instead of being thrust back in to the real world.

For the most part my vacation was pretty spectacular. After my cousins finance called off their wedding, I didn't see the point of cancelling my vacation. I know, I know that sounds terrible but I'm just being open and honest. This is a very distant and much older cousin who I haven't seen in a billion years and I was only going as my moms plus one. While  I sympathized with my cousin, I could not justify throwing away a whole week of being home just because the wedding was called off. Especially since my mom would be on vacation at the same time.

I knew that I had vacation time saved up and for the first time in a year I was able to book one without having to worry about my finances too much. Because my mom and I are pretty much best friends for life, we decided to split my time home in half: four days at my moms house  and 3 days in Charleston with our extended family. As a treat, for ourselves, we decided to rent a hotel one of the days in Charleston so we could freely site see and shop and eat food sans the constraint of being around family

We only decided the last part because days before I flew home, I found out my  drama-filled aunt and her daughter, Michelle, were coming down south (as well) to spend a few days with our grandma who lives in Charleston. My trip and their trip would only overlap for two days but based on the fact that my relationship with my aunt continues to test my patience there  was cause for concern once I heard we'd be on vacation at the same time, in the same place.

This is the aunt who i first lived with when i moved to New York. This is the same aunt who 'kicked me out' because I was taking up too much space. This is the same aunt we went to Washington D.C with, who still has not paid me or my mom back for the train ticket and hotel room we purchased so her and Michelle could come with us. This is the same aunt who recently asked both my mother and I for $1000 because she failed to pay her electricity bill. I love my aunt, I really do, but as you can tell she's not without fault and drama.

Lately, her new source of drama is health related. She had a freak accident a little over two years ago (she tripped onto some train tracks after the train departed) and has had a few minor surgeries to repair the fractions she obviously received. While I am not diminishing the severity of her accident, I do think she is milking the attention she's gotten from it. Though she complained to her insurance company that the accident left her emotionally and physically unable to work for 6 months, I saw her two weeks after the accident at Target because there was a sale on clothes she could not pass up. Grant it, she had a cane and a limp but if she was well enough to walk all the way from her apartment to Target to buy things then why tell your insurance company other wise.

Most recently, my cousin Michelle has adopted this need to fain sick for attention or approval. She's 10 years old and suffice it to say there a multitude of emotions and concerns that have come up because of this.  I have a much longer post planned for this part. I wrote it a month ago after Michelle had an 'incident' at school but I've been hesitant to post it because it's uber personal and private. For the sake of this post, I will only say that for the past few months Karen has had Michelle diagnosed with a litany of health issues:  asthma, juvenile arthritis, sleep apnea, various joint ailments and recently...wait for it...muscular dsystrophy.

For obvious reasons I claim BS on all of this (especially muscular dystrophy which she could not even pronounce yet alone have or pretend to have) because she's a 10 year old kid with no authentic signs of sickness. I only say this because from what I've seen,  her 'ailments' only come around when my aunt is there. I spent Christmas Eve  and Day with them and for a few hours I babysit Michelle while my aunt was out buying groceries. During the hour or that she was gone Michelle was bouncing off the walls from pre Christmas excitement. We danced in the living room, baked cookies, ran around outside because it was freaking 70 degrees and played various games. She was perfectly normal.

As soon as my aunt came home, Michelle became a different kid. Everything hurt, she couldn't breathe, she developed weird jerky spasms, she was meek and dependent and I was confused as hell by the turn around.

Of course even having these suspicion regarding Michelle's health is...a line I am not ready to cross. For one, I think her reasons for faking ill is closely related to the warped relationship she has with my aunt. My aunt is not a good mother. She doesn't nurture, she doesn't know how to take care or sustain things. She is self involved to the point of emotional neglect and I think Michelle is at an age now where it is having an affect on her. Secondly, my aunt seems to thrive off of having a 'sick' kid which only causes Michelle to act out more. When she isn't talking about her own aches and pain caused by the accident, she is constantly showing me all the medicine Michelle is on and babying her to the point of annoyance for anyone who has to watch.

It's a mess.

Anyway, I've let my mom in on this recent drama with my aunt but I don't think either of us was prepared for the act in full force. but I'll get to that after the positive aspects of my vacation!

On the whole, my trip home was relaxing, fun and comforting. I am glad my mom and I have the relationship we do (more best friend than mom) and I spent 7 days enjoying her company. My mom is this gregarious, goofy and charming women who is too good natured for this world. I say that outside of being her daughter. She makes me laugh harder than anyone else and while i was home, I wanted to be around her all the time just to listen to her tell stories.

 It was a good 7 days of bonding with her and my nephew Elliot. I can't describe how much I love my nephew. He is full of kisses and hugs and sweet talking. He's five now and he likes to talk to me on the phone, so before I even got to my mom's house he was counting down the days before my arrival. When I finally showed up, he greeted me with love and warmth that I will never understand. He doesn't even know me but he loves me and he likes to show this love with hugs and gifting me juice boxes when i was thirsty.

For 4 days my mom and I stayed in town, reconnecting, running errands, shopping and decorating. On the fifth day we headed to Charleston to visit my extended  family and meet up with Karen and Michelle. We knew that staying with Karen and Michelle at my grandma's house was going to be an ordeal, so we headed to Charleston a day earlier than expected,  rented a hotel in downtown Charleston and enjoyed a day of sight seeing and eating. It was glorious.

When Karen and Michelle arrived the next day we were prepared for the worst and like clockwork the drama started as soon as they arrived. My uncle picked them up at the airport while the three of us (my mom, grandma and I) waited at the house for them. As soon as they arrive my aunt starts recounting the harrowing story of Michelle's asthma related attack on the ride from the airport. Except it's not really asthma she ends up describing. Apparently Michelle now has a new disorder where....wait for it....cold air or warm air or extremely hot air makes her body convulse in this cartoonish jerky movements, followed by hyperventilation which then causes her to pass out. I was a little confused when my aunt was re-telling the story: they get into my uncles air conditioned car, Michelle starts shaking because it's cold, so he turns off the AC which causes her to shake even more, so my aunts has to pull out her emergency inhaler...

I gave my mom a knowing look as my aunt finished up her story waiting for us to react. My mom turned and apologized to my uncle for the inconvenience, my grandma shook her head and went back in the house to watch her game shows and I rolled my eyes and asked if anyone was hungry because I was famished! How else were we supposed to respond.

After they settled in we decided to head back downtown to Charleston because Karen and Michelle hadn't been in almost 9 years and as far as anyone else knew my mom and I hadn't been to Charleston either. My grandma opted out of going because she's older and can't get around as fast as she used to, so it was just the four of us.

We were downtown for about two hours before Michelle decided to have one of her meltdowns. Up until this point, she was on her cellphone or her tablet ignoring the beauty of Charleston and her heritage. She was only ever engaged when we brought up eating or when there was something kid related for her to do. I was annoyed that she was more interested in watching youtube on her phone than learning about where we are from but she's ten so I gave her a pass. I wanted to head to the historic part of Charleston to take pictures and we all agreed it would be a nice walk because the day was perfect. As soon as I stop to take a photo of a gorgeous house Michelle says "i want to go home...my feet hurt". I put my camera down and tell her "you're 10 years old, we've been out here for less than 2 hours there is no way your feet are hurting".

I can tell in her face that she is planning something. She looks hurt that I called her out for complaining which I only did because I knew she wanted to go back to our grandma's house to watch television.

Before I can even turn around to to resume taking a picture,  Michelle starts shaking and jerking in the most hilarious way. It was like a jig more than a shake and the movements are so forced I can't believe anyone who's seen it has taken it seriously. My aunt announces with what I can only describe as weird excitement "oh no! Michelle is having an attack" and starts pulling out various instruments of health: an inhaler (because you know shaking uncontrollably must mean you can't breath), some pills and a fucking airway device that she was hiding in what I thought was a lunch bag. SHE DID NOT HAVE LUNCH in the bag.

My mom, who is devouring an ice-cream, causally says "what the crap is this--" but my aunt cuts her off and tends to Michelle by fanning her face and holding her up. "It must be too hot outside" she says and of course Michelle agrees through hiccups that she is taking a turn for the worst because it's too hot and her feet are tired. I ask her is she needs to me get her water, and she meekly says yes. I slowly walk to a cafe and buy a bottle of water, when I return all three of them are sitting down. Michelle starts guzzling the water but instead of getting better her "shakes" get worse because now 'the water is too cold!".

At this point my mom, gets up and starts walking back to the car, which mind you is parked about a mile away. I catch up with her and we exchange a "wtf is going on face' but she is too annoyed and embarrassed to express anything more than that. I look behind us and Karen is practically dragging Michelle by the shoulders as she continues jerking and shaking in what I can only describe as the whip nae nae + the jig. Her arms are flailing, she is contouring her body like she is possessed while she bounces up and down on her feet.

 By the time they catch up to us, we are waiting in front of a cupcake store. As soon as Michelle sees the store front and the cupcakes and the sweets she immediately stops shaking, convulsing and jigging. Like immediately. She straightens up, peers into the window and excitedly asks my aunt Karen if she can get a cupcake. She must have caught me or my mothers eye roll because she quickly followed it with "...because my attack seems to be over and a cupcake would make me feel a little stronger".

I almost screamed at everyone when she said this. I almost lost my cool at my aunt and a 10 year old in front of a cupcake store in Charleston. How in the world is my aunt allowing this to happen? What the hell is going on that Michelle is acting out? How has no one (including myself) called them both out on how preposterous the whole thing is! My mom must have seen my inner dialogue and felt a storm coming because she tells my aunt we'll meet them back at the car and then drags me down the street. We didn't mention anything until we were well out of earshot. But when we finally we are...we are too shocked and concerned to say anything.  There is something terribly wrong and I again feel in a position where I don't know necessarily what to do.

We returned to my moms house the next day where I spent my last day home sleeping for about 12 hours. Going home is always such a weird experience. I keep expecting memories of my time home to come flying back to me when i'm there and instead I spend the bilk of time trying to find out who I was back then only to be disappointed that the reminders are smacking me in the face. Coming back to my home here is also equally exhausting. I still feel like I don't belong and am in search of my place. I think this is my place but not quite yet. After the fiasco with Karen and Michelle, I am having an even harder time adjusting back to the real world and this life I am creating for myself.

Le sigh. I could use another vacation. A staycaction. A grace period to adjust and evaluate and acclimate.

i think i like a boy at work.

And it's so fucking stupid because based on my last experience with a work-related crush, I should stay clear of any said feelings.

But snerk gerks this boy is super interesting and there are legit moments of intrigue during our various getting to know each other conversations.

New York State of Mind

Yesterday was the most superb magical day of my life.

Just saying.

Wrong Side of the Bed

I may have woken up on the wrong side of the bed today and because I am a superstitious person, i believe the signs are telling me I should have stayed home.

I woke up late this morning because I had a bad dream which made me restless the rest of the night  ( I was on a subway platform waiting for my train and before the train arrived a fight breaks out between two strangers. One stabs the other violently and at first everyone is so stunned no one realizes that an attack has occurred until the knife wielding stranger starts directing his rage at the rest of us. The subway car pulls up just in time and we all board the train before he can slash us. I then wake up). Because of said restless I only got about 5 hours of uninterrupted sleep.

I tend to wake up an hour before my alarm goes off, but today I woke up only because of the alarm. I didn't have enough time to make breakfast or coffee and my bus was 5 minutes late because he is the worst effing bus driver in the whole world. I am his first stop of the day, the first stop!, and he is always late. True to form, he was 5 minutes late this morning and drove extra slow so I almost missed the transfer bus that takes me to work. 

When I get to work this morning, the first thing i see is a snarky passive aggressive email from one of the managers at work, indirectly critiquing my job function. A few weeks ago this manager asked me to help him out with a project unrelated to my department. Simply put, he would send me emails full of tasks that he wanted people in his department to complete. My job was to simply to assign them a 'ticket" of their task via a ticketing system that my department heavily relies on.

The idea of creating and assigning 'tickets' to a different department made no sense on many levels, but he asked me to help out so I obliged.

A week ago, he pulled me over to his desk and admitted that it was silly to have me assign tickets for his department when he could easily do it himself (duh).  I told him it was a redundant step when he first brought it up to me and he agreed. So he said I wouldn't have to assign tickets for the marketing team anymore...which I was relieved about. I washed my hands of the project and returned to just overseeing my departments ticket.

Needless to say when I came in this morning, after an already frustrating start to my morning,  I was surprised and immediately pissed that he sent out an office wide email complaining that his marketing tickets weren't being created and it was unacceptable for things like this to be overlooked.

Are. You. Fucking. Kidding. Me?

The people I work with have a tendency of throwing each other under buses. On a weekly, if not daily basis. After the Patricia debacle, I made a note of being solely responsible for my work to avoid being thrown under buses. I have about 5 specific tasks that I and I alone am in charge and  I make sure that no one else dips their toes in those tasks. The last few months have been better because of this and if I can be honest my departments success is in direct correlation to this. I am certain.

So to walk into this bullshit this morning, over a task that was given to me and then taken away, was beyond infuriating. I responded to the email of course because I am not about playing games, reminding him that he told me not to create his tickets anymore and that i was confused by the tone of his email. Instead of extending a 'oops my bad you're right" he said 'I changed my mind, so forget everything I told you last week and go back to making tickets for my department".

If there was a table nearby, I would have overturned it. If there was a door, I would have kicked it in. I had to step out of the office just so I wouldn't hulk smash everyone to the ground. And even then when I got to the hallway to catch my breath I wanted to smash things.

Today is not my day. It's just not. I seriously, honestly would like to go home now and curl under the covers forever.

Spring Cleaning.

I want to spend the weekend cleaning my apartment. I know,  I know, how effing lame but it think the actual purging of things (I don't use or wear)  is long overdue.  In jest, I am sort of ready to make space for new things. There's probably a metaphor about life in there somewhere... but seriously I have too much stuff and most of it needs to be thrown away.

I am a person who clings: to things, people, ideas...you name it. I've always been a somewhat clingy person. In the fifth grade my mom bought me a light blue wind jacket that I absolutely adored. I think she bought it for my birthday and I was immediately drawn to the blueness of it. I loved this jacket so much that i wore it everyday and refused to take it off in class.  When the weather warmed up, I still wore that jacket and I remember asked several times to take it off by my teachers who worried.

Eventually I outgrew the jacket, or my mom threw it away...but the fact that I still remember it must say something about my hoarder-ish ways. I cling to things that I find un-spoken value in, and because of this it is super hard for me to let things stuff go. Once again, there is probably some subtext there, but in all honesty it is time for me to let some things go.