Current Rotation

The past few weeks I've been slightly obsessed with the following songs. Don't know why, but I thought you should know so you (the public at large) can get on board and sing along so no one will notice that I can't sing either.

Britney Spears - How I Roll
Florence and the Machine - Shake it Out
The Naked and Famous - Girls Like You
Katy Perry - The One that Got Away
Silversun Pickups - Lazy Eye
Rihanna - We Found Love
Red Hot Chili Peppers - The Adventures of Raindance Maggie

Sh*t.

.

.

The feeling of nervousness bubbles. 

It doesn't escape. 

It grows with each kiss. Touch. Caress. 

His hand moving over mind. Through my hair.

I find both comfort with his ease. 

And panic it my beats' reaction. 

Faster. "Take it slow."

But faster - and my breath escapes me. 

A moment to find it, I find myself lost in what was once a non-negotiable. 

Now open to negotiation. 

"Who is writing this movie script?"

It's too soon -- And suddenly I'm 17 again. 

"the time such clumsy time in deciding if it's time. 

i'm careful but not sure how it goes." 

August Revelations

I have been feeling particularly existential this week. Well, yesterday into today. Weeks start on Mondays, not Sundays.

After my whole “health” scare a few months ago – reaching a finality just yesterday - I am happy to report that I am back to normal. My hormones are back to normal. And everything is in proper working order again and I return to a full-functioning 28 year old lady (who one day hopes to create spawn). I will never go on NuvaRing again. That aside, I am fascinated with the resilience of the human body – and remain convinced, once again, that I will provide the first male grandchild for my momma, as my sisters only seem to produce girls. (She said she’s going to vacuum seal all the boy baby clothes she’s collected over the years if that’s the case, "so they don’t dry rot".)

I told her not to worry. I do think she is half-convinced I’ll end up an old maid, but at least she doesn’t think I’m an alcoholic slut anymore. Thanks, mom! (I don’t twist words. Me? Never.) And while I don't plan to be an old maid, I think my independence secretly makes her nervous.

Someone posted something on Facebook today that read something like: Let your past make you better, not bitter. And I found it fitting, having spent my past few days truly appreciating all of the grime I spent the past year (or five, really) dealing with. I’m nearly thankful now that I went through all that. It taught me so much. And, while thinking about it all, I realize some of it was deep-seeded things from my ex – as the pink elephant was my first crush after him. And to be honest, I crushed six months before the end (though the end started long before). He was the first person that showed me that there was someone else out there I found suitable to date. I got stuck. It was a vacuum. I sacrificed myself. I didn’t realize I was; but I did. He was the physical catalyst. I’m picky and he made me realize I had other choices, while everything was really starting to fall apart. I don’t know why I did that - why my brain made that connection - but I think that was part of it. Certainly not all of it, as we did get along very well, but I allowed myself to be put in a position where I excused how I was being treated and rewrote my own rules of love and lust and relationships to suit what I was in. I ignored my intuition. And scrambled to find a way out of something that made me cry…and nearly seek therapy. It became a revolving door. And I was finally flung out of it. (Thank you, Universe.)

It took much longer than I have previously realized to learn remember that I am happy. Just me. To recapture the first six months after moving out with my ex, before I started seeing the pink elephant - reminiscing the "youth" of those months. And now I know that if anything throws a wrench into that happiness, it isn’t welcomed in my life. The people that you “choose” to keep in your life are just that: Choices. We are blessed with friends. And we have the awesome power to “choose” this extended family we want to hold close to our hearts and share our most profound moments and life choices with. Friends are the family you choose: Isn't that what they say? And a partner is the most significant of friends.

The best friend guy that was confused when I was breaking in July and was wretching me more chatted me after a few months yesterday. It went like this:

A: what's up, stranger?
 me: whoa. hey.
  i miss you a little. but don't let that go to your head.
 A: awww.
too late. me: haha.
 A: miss ya too
[…talking about meeting up over thanksgiving] 

me:   i need to hear about your life.
A: I've just been super busy lately. […his business]
me: ah.
well, everything's good over here. kinda great. actually.
 A: yeah?
 me: *kow *
  ya. i'm almost thankful for the whole [pink elephant] fiasco now.
  i've grown. a lot.
A: go on...
 me: haha.
  idk what to go on about?
 A: how have you grown, I mean?
me: i realized i think that some of the [pink elephant] stuff was deep seeded [ex] stuff.
  but that's kinda irrelvant.
i just know who i am. and what i deserve.  and that my intuition is spot on.
  and that i can't listen to other people, but i have to trust myself.
  and thank god i'm out of that situation.
  anything that makes me anything other than smile in a relationship isn't something worth it.
i'm happy alone. i really am. and anyone that makes me anything less than that isn't worth a damn. A: that's awesome
  congrats!
 me: august revelations, we'll call them. lol
[…]  

A: yeah. other people can't make you happy. only you can do that.
  lot of talks with the therapist about that.
me: ya. its true though.
  and i find it a very frustrating item in life that it's only when you're happy alone that people gravitate towards you and pair up.
  or at least that's my experience.
  cause now i'm like "ehhhhhhhh...ya. idk. i kinda like it just being me. thats all i have to worry about and i can do that"
 A: life's weird.

Yea it is.

And I'm moving forward. No walls. No bitterness. And no suppose-to-bes. Every bad thing that happens is probably just put there to teach us something we hadn't picked up yet on our own. So, are some people cursed with unfortunate luck? No, they're probably just stubborn.

This is my official resignation of my own stubbornness. ::crosses fingers:: I have learned so much. I am not bitter, but better. I am happy and healthy. My heart is whole and mine and forgiving. And I refuse to ever again accept anything less than exactly what I know I deserve. Which, to be honest, is a lot. Because when it comes down to it, all we really want is to pair up with someone that thinks we're as awesome as we think we are: Appreciation, I think it's called. Maybe it only comes with age...or the resignation of stubbornness, but it's going to take something really fantastic now for me to relinquish the "ehh, idk"'s of being just me.

:)

.

Dreams 111011, 111311

I remember my dreams A LOT. And I always mean to write them down, but don't. I'd like to start. So here seems good.

11.10.11
So last week, Thursday night I believe. I had two dreams. One involved eels, I think, but that could have just been work getting into my head based on a project name I chose for the first project I'm managing since being asked to test drive being a program manager at work. Upgrade? Promotion, you say? Not so much, more of a lateral move, in addition to all the marcomm, web and graphic work I already do - but great on a resume. I'll take it!  (Plus, I get to boss around the engineers I've worked with over the past four years. Score!)

The second dream that night involved family. Not typical. It was me, my middle sister (I'm the youngest, but 2nd oldest sounds weird), my one aunt, my grandmother and my mom. We were running away from people - in war, maybe - outside in this field and we came upon a way out, but to get to the end we had to jump over about 8 lines of wire about 6 inches off the ground that was covered in razor blades. Everyone made the jump safely - everyone but me. I was tore up (from the floor up. what?). Everyone was trying to save me, the enemies were on us. And I took the time to look at myself, feeling terrified for what I'd see - I felt covered in blood. And I saw my reflection, which was harsh, but not nearly as bad as I was expecting. My mother was helping me and my grandmother and aunt were aside, watching. At some point my sister was back on the wires, behind me, but she wasn't cut or stuck like I was - perhaps she was delicately walking through them. I was panicking, trying to figure out how to get out of the razor wire, and the embedded straight razor blades out, without dying...then I got one out and it was simple. I started to pull myself free and instead of bleeding everywhere, they were coming loose so easy. I pulled myself away from the wires as my dream was ending (or at least what I remember of it). 

11.13.11
On Sunday night I had an odd dream. It was of my ex. (The real one, not the last reject/pink elephant I dated.) I was at his apartment and I"m totally unsure of the context in which I was there. He was wearing a blue shirt I discovered that his belly and back were completely waxed. (NOT the type.) We start heavy petting for approximately 20 seconds and I realize I don't want back into that. We stop. One roommate comes in. A few minutes later his second roommate comes in complaining about coffee and donuts. He works at a Starbucks and complains about it and how working at Dunkin Donuts was so much better. While eating a donut he said he got for free. This roommate was Dave Chapelle. My dream ends while Dave Chapelle roommate is talking about needing to find a new job and the ex is concurring that his part-time "professional" job needs supplementation too.

I guess my subconscious thinks Dunkin Donuts and Starbucks aren't great places to supplement an income...but the free donuts are probably great.

Halloween

Meant to write this for a little while. Sixteen days, maybe.

Friday. October 28.  

Originally I was going to be in Vegas for Halloween, but the guy that was going to front me decided to go to Australia that Monday, so that was thwarted. He invited me to go to a house party, but he did so directly in the middle of a blonde moment, so I missed the actual context of the invitation. Suffice to say, I was left going to my other friend's house party. The house party in which I knew he was going to be at. With her (who has, apparently, decided to act like I don't exist). And me... dressed like this:

Normal. Totally normal. Nothing to see here, kids. He was a douche to both of us, lied to everyone and now she won't talk to me and she's here with him up her butt and dressed as a "sexy" children's book character and I look like this: 

And no one will make eye contact and every time I go in a room, they leave to another one. And the whole thing feels like this: 

Yup. Nothing to see here except three rather large neon pink glowing elephants everyone is pretending don't exist, while we all delay adulthood and look like this: 

My life is a sitcom. (I'm still giggling.)

Totally normal. Completely causal first encounter of the love triangle kind. Move along...

And I did. I went out to the bar that night after the house party; after they had cornered themselves in the back of the tiny kitchen just to avoid me and I leave chuckling under my breath that THAT ALL JUST HAPPENED. I have power? Cool! And then 800 people at the bar complimented my costume and that "other" black swan kept making awkward eye contact then looking away. It's okay, lady, I'm going for duality here: white and black, good and evil. Turns out, duality is lost on drunk people. 

Leaving for the night, I pass a girl sitting on the ground of the parking garage outside of the bar; bawling her eyes out and yelling at every person that asks her if she is okay, while dressed as pseudo-sexy Buddy the Elf. So, ever the pacifier and peacekeeper, I tell her not to yell at me and I ask her what's wrong. So here we are, 2am on a Friday, in a parking garage; two strangers: a fucked up good and evil ballerina is kneeling next to a sobbing Elf telling her everything is going to be okay until "Buddy's" boyfriend (whom was the cause of her tears) comes to pick her up. I giggle again. I go home, wash the evil off my face and prepare for night two. In which, the duality was again quite lost.

Saturday. October 29.

I lay on the couch most of the day, then share a bottle of wine with my roommate as she photographs night two of applying a painful amount of precise makeup. She takes more pictures; I leave.

I meet some girlfriends at a bar: A peacock and a flamingo. We get hit on. Free drinks. I see more Black Swans. The duality is lost again. The bar crawl gets crowded. We leave. We flee to a shit-kicker bar for cheap Jello shots and fresh popcorn.

I win a prize?




...

After a plethora of free Jello shots (since our bartender was also dressed as a peacock), we delay our plans to go dancing - although, in corsets, we can move little more than a slight wriggle below the hips and above the boobs - and head to her friend's house party a block down. A peacock, a flamingo and a (black and white) swan walk into a house party...

They proceed to drink. A lot, I think. Partial moral of the story: Popcorn does not absorb alcohol; so lets fast forward, because I lost my memory. I wake up the next morning. I'm on the wrong side of my bed and sleeping on top of my boyfriend, i.e. my five remotes. After a brief moment of what the hell am I doing, I look over to see a body in my bed. Whoops? (Don't worry, semi-chastity belt was securely fastened - despite what my mother tends to think at times. Hi, Mom.)  

We start chatting (which I later learned we'd done for a while the night before; empathizing with his situation and offering advice while perched on a kitchen sink...dressed as a fucked up ballerina) and out comes the fact he has a girlfriend. ::pause:: That he lives with. As casual as it was said, I figured he must have told me the night before (later confirmed). My response: "I don't think its working out"...followed by a burst of laughter. 

Suddenly, I realized that this story was becoming so much better than the sitcom scenario of pink elephants two days prior. I encouraged him to laze around with me and skip golfing. He did. After a couple of hours, he took off the largest t-shirt I owned - which was "fat guy in a little coat" tight, even though he wasn't fat - and picked up his weird Asian pajamas costume to head home. I told him to call me when he dumped his girlfriend, he left, and then I went to a bar to watch football with the friends whose house party I missed due to the blonde moment previously mentioned. Somehow all of this was not awkward, even though the house dog had burst through my door mid-morning - while we lay in bed, slightly snogging.

I texted the peacock and told her what had happened. She went and told someone else, who then told her he was actually engaged. She then told me. And then I decided it was most definately the best Halloween story ever. Trumping even the one where I made out with a guy at a bar - sneaking in at the age of 20 - dressed as a "sexy" gangster, because drunk me was convinced he looked like Hugh Grant. Then waking up the next day, opening my eyes and immediately saying, "Where am I and how did I get here?" (I was in my friend's dorm.) A few days following, I saw "Hugh" walking into class and he didn't look anything like what I thought he did while making out on a sidewalk next to a main street in Pittsburgh. Whoops?

Anyway, the peacock said I should be mad. I wasn't at all; quite the opposite, actually. And for whatever reason, I thought the whole thing to be fantastically amusing. And I trusted the random guy in a too-small tee-shirt with a girlfriend he lived with (later discovered, not actually engaged, which stole some story pzazz, but he did break up with his girlfriend the next week: added pzazz?), who happened to be in my bed, more than I ever did the pink elephant. Go figure. So all I could say to the peacock was "I get it". And I did. I do. I've been there and I get it. And the story was great. This is everything the psychic talked about in New York....

That reminds me, I have another blog to write. 

Here's the thing

I was listening to the latest Coldplay album (which, again, I'm sad to say I was very underwhelmed by) and I had a thought; a Confucius moment, if you will. I posted it on my status and my mom commented that I must be feeling good again, judging by the positiveness of it (though I was more referencing the stories of others present). Perhaps, or perhaps it is just beautiful logic. I thought:


Here's the thing about a broken heart; it just marks the number of times you can fall in love again. 


Which is wonderful thought and sentiment, if I don't say so myself (which, clearly I do). Love is great and all and it's nice when it's comfortable, but that fall, the initial butterflies in the stomach? I would lay down my heart for that feeling forever. Infatuation turned real is impossible to put into words. Some people fill their time (and perhaps lonely nights) with people unworthy of those moments; I sit and wait in anticipatory excitement with the realization that because I'm alone, my great love is still out there somewhere. It makes my shoulders bounce at the idea, the to-be's and flutters abound. I am happy alone, you sly 28! So, for me, anything less than butterflies and a heart that makes mine beyond mend, and flourish and love more than what's broken it before, won't do. Wee! Time will tell if there's a person out there that can make me happier than I make myself; but I'm a hopeless romantic and happy to hold out - I believe in the stars.


Thanks for the thought Chris Martin. But if you could go back to the days of Parachutes, that would be great. Nothing has lived up to that so far...then again, I fell in love for the first time while that album was on repeat.