1. So here is the thing
2. I want to remember what it was like
3. before
4. I don't want to be content
5. I love you
6. but I miss loneliness
7. and I miss longing
8. I miss what they did to me
9. I miss how they made me strong

1. We are fighting in the grocery store about whether to buy disposable Swiffer pads
2. You say they're wasteful
3. I say I don't want to chase cat fur tumbleweeds around the hardwood floor with a broom
4. and I end up walking away
5. and you'll say differently but not raising your voice
6. doesn't mean it's not a fight
7. And I buy tuna fish
8. (I haven't eaten meat in a year)
9. and macaroni and cheese (but the fancy kind with the sauce not the powder)
10. out of some fleeting rebellious feeling
11. I am having
12. but also it is that I am tired of eating
13. raw vegetables and a protein shake every day
14. and it is 90 degrees in the house
15. and I know that running the window unit air conditioner is wasting a valuable resource
16. (I know, alright?)
17. but I'm worried about the cats
18. and I almost passed out in the shower
19. from dehydration and hunger
20. so maybe I didn't eat enough hummus
21. and I am drinking gallons of water but hardly ever peeing which means it is
22. fucking hot, okay?
23. We recycle all of our paper
24. the glass and cans we get from food at the local grocery
25. and use canvas sacks
26. at the farmer's market
27. and I wash out the few plastic baggies
28. that I loathe to use
29. and we save our aluminum foil for cooking
30. We compost, we hang our clothes to dry
31. (although that is more my thing than yours)
32. We eat [mostly] organic, avoid driving when we can
33. and you haven't been to BP since the oil spill
34. We reuse
35. and you save until
36. I'm throwing away styrofoam when you aren't home
37. like an alcoholic sneaking a drink behind your back
38. You'll take just a corner of a napkin, you don't like flushing the toilet every time,
39. I save every damn plastic container we acquire
40. I was this-close to washing my hair with baking soda
41. and I've eliminated bleach
42. and anti-bacterials
43. from my cleaning regime
44. and this is all to say that
45. if you don't want to use a Swiffer
46. that is fine
47. but if I ask you for an alternative
48. and you say dusting with a rag (presumably on hands and knees)
49. I just need to mention
50. that I really want to live green
51. and I will happily haul our stuff-that's-not-trash to the curb every Tuesday night
52. but I am living in the city
53. not somewhere remote off the land
54. which you should know means I didn't sign up for some frontier life
55. in middle-class, urban America

1. So [a million words for frustrated]
2. I got the food ready without you asking
3. and sometimes I wish you knew what I was thinking
4. or that I could speak it out loud without sounding
5. like my heart is beating so fast
6. and I'm angry
7. My heart is beating so fast and I'm a little angry
8. No one ever gets jealous over me
9. No one ever gets passionate over me
10. No one ever thinks I'm worth it
11. I have a friend who used to break the bad news to me
12. "He cared for another girl while he was with you"
13. "He's using someone else but not as bad as he used you"
14. I can't forget what it felt like staring down at those flowers,
15. like I would always be fifteen 

1. Um
2. well
3. Sorry I stopped talking
4. I keep trying to see past the edge of the garage roof
5. past the fence around the property
6. past the things I regard with such importance
7. I keep trying to separate the clouds from the sky
8. glean the virtue from the chaff
9. the fat from the gravy
10. The fat is what makes the gravy
11. I am never sure why I remember so strongly
12. those words said to me
13. My father talked to me tonight about relationships working
14. Tag that: Things I Never Expected to Happen
15. Not that I ever thought he was incapable
16. It's just that when you are a teenage girl,
17. there are things that come as a surprise
18. and when you are a 30-year-old woman
19. there are things that come as a surprise
20. and when you look back over your life
21. you were waiting for the surprise
22. I miss having a big yard
23. I used to lie in it and feel small 

A Quick Kiss Goodnight

One of my friends recently punctuated a list of how to get the most out of life with this item: Have as many orgasms as possible. I wondered briefly if his message was an attempt to see how slutty I’d get over Myspace.com emails (answer: mildly risqué) before giggling myself to peaceful slumber about his words of wisdom. I think he also advised me that this wasn’t a go-ahead to “spread my legs all over town” (his phrase.)

I think the woman in the apartment next to me had three orgasms, two last night and one this morning, from what I counted as I was trying to think about ANYTHING ELSE while lying in bed seeking rest. At first I thought it was someone throwing up, but no, it was her moaning. I could not hear the guy, so I spent a few minutes wondering if she was in there alone or if he was just hard at work and didn’t have time to talk. My guess would be the latter. Nobody jacks off for that long.

Such is the predicament of spending Valentine’s Day alone. Having your “hearing your neighbors having sex” virginity taken off you abruptly and violently before you are ready. My last neighbor, in our upstairs apartments, heard the downstairs couple doing it all the time, and it nearly drove her mad. “They might as well be in bed with me!” she would complain to me, at her wits end about the fact that their physical relationship had essentially forced her to live vicariously through them. I would shrug, and say that must be terrible, but I couldn’t actually sympathize fully. Until now.

The most I ever heard my downstairs neighbor doing in the last apartment was watching television or putting together more bookshelves for his looming stacks of anthropology and history texts. The most I ever heard living in the all-girls dorm at Youngstown State University was chick chatter and the guard yelling, “Man on the floor!” when he would arrive to lock up the laundry room at 11 every night. Those were the strict rules at Beuchner Hall, also known as The Lesbian Lair and The Vault. Boys were allowed only to carry something heavy or to fix computers. “So I guess I would say I need some RAM?” I asked Jemimah when I moved in.

I met a boy yesterday and of course the timing is all weird. My timing is like that of a slowed, in-town locomotive, crawling along the tracks at a much-reduced speed in order to avoid cows and cars and who knows what else could be parked on the rail. His seems to be going a little faster, because he kissed me goodbye tonight, though we have hardly talked. One drink, one dinner, a movie, an apartment gathering and a short walk together is it (all with my roommate and his posse of girl social worker buddies, who all go to Case Western and who all are awesome and who all told me they are my instant friends! Yay! And who all are pretty much babes. And I’m incredibly shy so I’m not sure why I’m the interest?) But I am glad for the friend in this new city. (And I will be careful.)

My primary fear when dating a guy is that he will either a.) think any attention I show him means I want to get married and have babies like, now or b.) immediately want to get married and have babies. I suppose it could have something to do with the fact that my mother was whisked off to South Carolina when she was 18 to have a Marine-attended wedding in a tiny chapel in Beaufort with my father or that my brother met and tied the knot with his bride within the span of a year. I’m not against getting married and having babies, I just have this unfounded phobia that it is going to happen someday without my consent, that there’s nothing I will be able to do to stop it, and that before I know it I’ll be wading in a sea of Elmo or Dora or whatever it is that’s hip with hip-monkeys right now hearing, “Honey, I’m home!” from a man I hardly know.

And yet that hasn’t stopped me from falling in love this lifetime. It’s like that lumbering locomotive that is my ability to open up my heart and trust somehow creeps its way through the slow-moving suburb and picks up speed, gaining momentum and velocity but losing the ability to maneuver the brakes as well as before. I’ve had a few wrecks.

Happy Valentine’s.

Emotional Glutton

When I was little I thought that the way our bodies grew was by eating food. Which is partially true. Our bodies do grow from nutrients we receive from food. I thought that the food stayed in our bodies until we got bigger and bigger, and then when there was no more room to store it, we died. Thankfully soon after that I started health class, and I learned that the real process of development actually involves a lot of intake and output, so I didn’t begin second grade believing I had baked chicken in my fingers and corn in the cob in my toes.

Growth requires we get rid of a lot of things in life. Maybe more than we take in. When my ex-boyfriend and I broke up, I gradually threw away everything. Clothing he’d bought for me. Emails we had exchanged. I packed up the pictures and certain notes he’d sent and put them in a specially-bought plastic container from Big Lots, and shoved it onto the highest shelf of my closet, and forgot all about it for a long time.

Only recently did I retrieve it, because my family is turning my old bedroom into something else, and I didn’t really think anyone would care to find the card he got me for Sweetest Day that says, “Violets are blue, roses are thorny, thinking of you makes me really…corny,” and the little pencil-top eraser he once gave me that I saved. It was always ironic to me that I was able to reduce our relationship, something that for both of us was admittedly the longest one we’d ever had, into a container the size of half-gallon milk carton. But, I’m not a packrat. In fact, I don’t keep much of anything.

I have been in the process of downsizing my life for several months now. I stopped buying new jeans and shirts, switched from 20-dollar-a-bottle conditioner to the cheap stuff, and although my hair is feeling the effects of that, I’m paying my credit card off. I kept the décor in my apartment to the bare minimum. When my work pants got a hole in them, I sewed them instead of buying new ones. I took my favorite black heels to the shoe-smith (is that what you would call that?) instead of purchasing another pair.

And yet I have been collecting other things, intangible things from relationships; romantic, friendship, familial or otherwise my whole life. I’m not really the smartest person when it comes to biology, and math doesn’t come naturally to me, either, but I have a detailed, expansive memory and in it is documented a sizeable portion of every interaction I’ve ever had. I am able to recall obscure comments, offhand questions, in-passing remarks and moments shared with ease.

And I think it’s starting to weigh me down.

I would like to say that I approach every new situation with a clean slate; that I don’t judge guys I date based on guys I’ve previously dated; that I don’t gravitate toward people who are hopelessly turned off to getting to know me at all; that I’m not jaded about church or love or politics because of single, isolated experiences; and, that I generally hope for the best. But right now my heart is holding onto things that can’t possibly be beneficial. Having this many ties and memories and soulful looks backward makes me toxic when it comes to moving forward. I don’t know how I could be so devoted to something or loyal to someone while at the same time I am raging against my logic to say that all isn’t lost.

 
I have a lot of emotional crap to expel and I'm metaphorically constipated.

Lessons in Rejection a.k.a. This is Life, Deal With It, Sucker

Let’s see. As if my ego wasn’t fragile enough to begin with, I have begun a – what’s a good adjective for this, oh, how ‘bout…fervent! – that’s it, job search and have discovered that there are more people out there in the world who don’t want me than I could have ever dreamed.

Applying for employment should also be called Lessons in Rejection because there is a ton of it that goes along with it, unless you are applying to sell life insurance or vacuum cleaners or to The Restaurant I Work At because they, and we, hire everyone, “we” in particular hire people who have a lot of strength in being crazy and well-honed skills in screwing other people over and sometimes several ongoing addiction problems. Or, as they say in the corporate business environment: areas of opportunity!

Anyways, I have been sending out dozens of resumes highlighting my various amazing talents and writing accompanying cover letters which should make even God hire me. Oh wait, I already worked for God and I had to quit because I wasn’t making enough money to support myself, so I’m not sure if this difficulty in finding a job has anything to do with God saying, “You shouldn’t have quit the church, you virtue-less heathen child of sin,” or if it’s just that I’m not trying hard enough. Not that I am putting words in God’s mouth. If I was, I’d have Him whisper to my future boss that he/she should totally put me on staff lest the rod of judgment strike his/her business down. Not that I’m getting desperate enough to be threatening.

Being turned down for jobs is a chance to learn something, and it reminds me of dating. I think back to the boyfriend I had been with for two weeks, who broke up with me on Thanksgiving, because he just thought we were getting too serious, and he couldn’t see us getting married (what?!), and he was probably moving away to graduate school, and I might be moving, as well. That was two years ago and we both still live in the same town, and I really can’t believe he broke up with me on a holiday I spent alone because my family was working, and I’m almost positive I learned something from that, but right now all I can think of is that he taught me never to loan out your favorite Tchaikovsky CD to your new boyfriend who is about to break up with you, because you will never see it again.

But back to attempting to be gainfully employed and having the maybe-future-employer, your savior, the person who can potentially rescue you from a life of flipping burgers or collecting Welfare or selling your body on the street for Ramen noodle money, tell you no. No, I’m sorry, you have not been selected for this thing you want more than anything else in the world, this thing you are willing to move across the country for and give your whole heart for and change and listen and study and grow into. Nope.

It doesn’t really sting any less each time but it should cause you to realize a few things and those things are (feel free to apply these to your romantic acquisitions, too):

• “No” doesn’t mean the bridge has been burned. Write thank you notes, ask to be considered for future positions (this may not work with ex-boy or girlfriends, as the whole friends-with-benefits arrangement tends to get a little clumsy, especially when new lovers are brought into the picture), see if they can suggest anything for you to improve on.
• Use it to affirm yourself. Remind yourself why you can’t give up and why you started looking in the first place.
• There are many, many fish in the sea. Or careers in the global job market. Or men/women in your town. Uh, well, not this town, but some town. Somewhere?
• Make it a time to reinvent yourself and reinforce just how buoyant you are in the ocean of life. Even when storms come, you can use incredibly cheesy metaphors to show your peers and family how resilient you are.
• Lie. It’s not you, it’s them. They don’t know what they’re missing. (This one can definitely be used in dating. In fact, if you don’t, you’ll probably soon find yourself romantically unemployed. Or as they say in the relationship world: single.)

Decisions of Grandeur

I haven’t felt like I’ve had much of value to say on here lately. Blogs haven’t been coming so easily like they used to, when I’d have something touching happen at the grocery store or in line at the movies or driving down the street and think up a whole lovely correlation on why life is beautiful.

No, lately I’ve felt like life pretty much sucked, except I was still trying to pretend I didn’t think that, and guess what not being honest with your self does? Well, I can’t say for everyone, but in my case it makes me hyper-anxious and really, really angry. Yep, I’ve been relatively enraged for a good two to three days now, and while that burns a lot of calories, my stomach is a wreck and I, again, am disappointed in my attitude.

The brunt of my aggression has mostly been work. Maybe I need a day off; maybe I need to buckle down and try to ride out The Change (the kitchen switched to computer screens instead of paper tickets for orders but it feels like we are surrounded by one million middle-age women simultaneously going through menopause.) I think I actually rolled my eyes at the G.M. the other day because I asked him what he was working and he said, “Actually, I’m not really here. I’m out of the store today.” But what it felt like he was saying was, “I’m gone, baby, fend for yourself.”

And fending for myself is pretty much what I’ve been doing in every aspect of my life, since I no longer rely on The Voice of God to tell me what’s right and wrong. And that feels great. So much better than having an inner dialogue with God in my head about the direction my actions were taking.

“God, should I do this?”

“No.”

“But…I really want to.”

“No.”

“I’ve wanted to my entire life. I’ve dreamed about this.”

“This is wrong.”

“But why?”

“YOU ARE NOT MEANT TO DO THIS.”

“Arrghhhh.” (weeps)

And that was just about switching from skim to 2 percent milk. Imagine the insanity that raged in my brain when I tackled the bigger issues, like whether to use lace-ups or Velcro, or separate shampoo and conditioner or two-in-one! This stuff could really affect your life. What if, by using two-in-one conditioner, I miss meeting my future husband because he appreciates the slow, step-by-step procedure of one rinse with shampoo and another rinse with conditioner? What if I don’t land my dream job because instead of living in the now and taking advantages of shoelaces, I am foolishly sporting Velcro all day and all night? What then?

I mean, I could totally screw up world peace for everyone.