In a week Ill turn 24. I feel simultaneously much older and younger than that. In the past year Ive been so poor that I dug dimes out of Surfin Steve to buy food. Ive been wealthy enough to maintain a temperature of 70 degrees (heaven) in my apartment. I tried sake. I tried a vegetarian diet. I shrunk from a size 6 to a size 4 (thanks to sadness and depression) and got angry when people complimented me about it. I came back to school after a long absence. I let myself fail a class, I gave myself permission to not kill myself over a grade. I watched one of my best friends have her second child, and the other get married to the love of her life. I was outside the door when I heard the first cries of my twin nieces, born at home in perfect condition. And I cried myself, on the curbside in Lufkin, when I was told that my father had been arrested for unfathomable crimes against family. I transitioned, ungracefully, with lots of tears and shoe-throwing and weird conversations about mollusks, out of an online social network to a flesh-and-blood community of friends. I missed the hours spent Skyping and chatting on message boards. I missed the glibness of getting to edit conversations and backspace thoughts. The real world is messier. The real world has a lot more awkward moments of I think I might like you and Im sorry and foot-stuck-in-mouth. The flesh-and-blood world comes with sharper thorns and dirt aplenty. I took a massive interest in fashion subcultures. I got excited about getting dressed and looking, for the first time in my life, like myself. I watched less movies, played more board games. I went to a handful of rock concerts, one of which (Heavy and Light) changed my life so profoundly that when I broke down on the side of the road that night at 3 a.m. with not a friend or tire jack in sight, I saw it as beautiful. Me, kneeling in an ant bed, cussing at my broken down car, cars whizzing by in suspicion, calling 911 to ask pitifully if they could bring me a tire jack, please, help me. Beautiful. And its been so weird and wonderful, and I am so grateful for you all. Its been these friendships, formed and reformed over time, that keep getting me up in the mornings when everything is bitter and draining out of me in angry and odd behavior. Frodo wouldnt have got very far without Sam, now, would he? :)
Posted on: Sun, 30 Mar 2014 00:19:31 +0000