State of Mind

I want to sprawl on the grass, but I dignify myself by finding a bench to sit on. My face is turned towards the sun, reveling in its warm rays, shining orange behind my closed eyelids. I open them a bit, peering through my lashes at the sparkling water. The sun is high in the sky. I'd like to stay like this forever.

My odometer hovers at 2 9 9 9 9 and I watch it slip silently into 30 thousand miles. Only 3 thousand miles of those are mine, but it feels like I've been here forever.

I draw pictures of mountains early Sunday morning babysitting, and wonder if I'll ever get the chance to go there. I offer to take my little friend shopping, but she just wants to stay in pajamas and watch TV. I can't say I blame her.

I walk unhurriedly around the canal, taking deep breaths, and enjoy being outside. The crunchy sound of my sneakers on gravel reminds me of a campgrounds. I want to be 17 again, working at a camp, wearing t-shirts and long skirts and worrying about nothing. I want to be young again, with endless possibilities and no reservations.

My phone weighs me down, like a third arm. I wish I'd left it at home. Today, I try not to use my computer. I eat breakfast outside, by the pool, and then I go for a swim. The water is freezing. It would be, this time of year. But the sun soothes me, dries my skin, calms me.

I eat lunch slowly, remembering to chew my food. Before long I am full. I want to feel full, and not worry about my next meal, not be constantly thinking about what I will eat next, even with a mouthful of food. I want food to sustain me but not imprison me. I want my life to be so full of happiness and importance that I forget to eat.

Today, I am working on wellness. Finding my inner calm. Focusing on the positive. Focusing on what I can have, as opposed to what I can't.

Today is a good day, not because of how it ended, but because of how it started. Some days, most days start off with the best of intentions and take a somersaulting tumbling turn. But that is not what matters.

It took almost 6 months but I think I'm starting to figure out why I'm here, why I 'ran away'. I don't believe there is any particular place one can go to sort things out, find clarity, find themselves or their purpose in life. Clarity is a state of mind. (Or, according to Jimmy Buffet, Margaritaville is a state of mind.) It begins and ends inside of you.

But it doesn't hurt that I'm living in a warm climate, have all the freedom in the world, no responsibilities, and nothing to do but think.

And when that doesn't work, there's always TV.

Deja who?

dé·jà vu

ˌdāZHä ˈvo͞o/

noun

1. a feeling of having already experienced the present situation.

Deja vu: I've been here before.

Or

Deja vu: I've seen this before.

Or

Deja vu: I've stalked him before.

I've definitely stalked him before.

The profile comes with no name, photo or identifying details. If you like it,  you email the administrator who sends you the full profile with all necessary details including name and photo. 

I liked it, I really liked the profile. So I sent away for the full expose, and waited merrily for the reply.

Deja vu: I've stalked him before. Why does his picture look so familiar? Oh right, I checked him out on Facebook. He must have commented on a friend of a friend's post, I thought he looked interesting and promptly tried to find out if he was married. We have 5 friends in common. He's friends with my brother. He rides a motorcycle.

BUT

My hopes fell. I read and reread the description of the person he is looking for, trying to match the adjectives to me. Am I intelligent? Sure. A pleasant person? I can be when I want to. Would I describe myself as compassionate and considerate? That depends, does he mean all the time? Am  I kind to people and strangers? All except the dumb ones. I hate dumb people. 

I pull his profile apart word for word, and I feel my confidence waver. He is too good looking, he comes from a "gezhe" (yichus) family, why would he want me, he probably wouldn't go for me. He lists himself as physically active and loves to try knew things. Sure, I can be too, with the right person. But I'm not that active at the moment.

One voice tells me, just go for it, have a shadchan email him to see if he's interested. But the other, more powerful voice just sits down and sighs, says "don't bother, I'm in no mood for more rejection right now".

And here the story ends.

The sound of sirens

I wake up in a fog. I went to sleep at 4 am, I am tired as hell and I'm pretty sure I have a carb hangover. It's like a regular hangover, only it comes from eating too much sugar instead of drinking alcohol. Yes, food is my drug of choice.

I clumsily reach for my phone, and see a red triangle warning me about a tornado in the area. I can barely focus on the words, but it seems like I slept right through it as the warning had since been lifted.

That sounds about right. These days, I'd sleep through anything. I put my phone on silent and would not know if the president called me. Not that he would; not that I'd care.

The sound of rain registers in my head, not just rain. It's pouring out. And then I realize it is silent in my apartment. No sound from the air conditioner, fridge, or my trusty noise machine set to ocean waves. The power is out. I check online and text my landlord while updating my Facebook 'friends' that I just slept through a tornado. The electric company estimates about an hour.

I turn over and try to fall back asleep, it is way to early for me to be up, I have a headache and feel sick.

I hear sirens, so many sirens, continuously wailing, I wonder if I should go check on my car, maybe a tree fell on it, but I am too tired to care. These days I don't care about much, it seems.

I fall asleep and wake up to the blessed sound of the ac, power is back on and tornado is long gone. The rain has stopped, the sun is shining.

I turn over and go back to sleep. 

How to be single

It's easy to be single in the sense that, if you are not in a relationship then categorically you are single. But it's not easy being single.

I saw the movie in theaters with my mother and my aunt. The main thread of the story is about Alice, a girl who dumps her boyfriend temporarily so that she can go out into the world and 'find herself', figure out who she is as a person, alone. During their time apart, she meets guys and has a string of meaningless flings. When she finally sees her ex again after a particularly sad and empty one-night stand, she tells him that she is ready to be with him, that she knows he is the one. He tells her that he has met someone, that he never needed a break to know that she was the one, but that he has now moved on.

I watched the movie and I was sad. For Alice, for myself, for all the single people out there who are sad and lonely and just want to meet someone and fall in love. Some days, it is so hard to contain my emotions, I feel that anyone can tell how I am feeling by just looking at me.

Alice goes through this whole thing where she doesn't know how to be alone, she is scared if she doesn't meet someone she will be alone forever, she can't unzip her dress by herself and she needs a man to do stuff for her and take care of her. She eventually snaps out of it, creates a pully to unzip her dress for her, and hikes the Grand Canyon alone.

The movie ends with Alice looking out over the canyon at sunrise, spouting some nonsense about being in the moment, enjoying being single and learning how to just be yourself without anyone else, because you may meet someone in a week, a month, so don't let this time pass you by.

I don't know what it says about society that this movie was released on Valentine's day. All I know is that I don't really believe that. I've had enough time to be alone, and I still have no idea who I am.

Maybe it's time to discover that with someone else. I think I'm ready to be un-single.

What is your biggest fear?

I am surrounded by my biggest fears, my deepest insecurities. They stare at me, and scream "shame on you! How dare you walk in here like you belong?"
Do I belong here? Will I ever feel like I belong?

Hundreds of thousands of words make up thousands of books, I can smell them, I can feel them, they can sense my fear. I touch them, longingly, willing them to be mine, to not just sit on a shelf near my bed telling the world that I own them, have read them, no. I wish they were a part of me, I want to inhale them, will them inside my brain, but instead they make me feel small. Lacking. Inadequate.

Of course, I pick out the book that makes me feel worst of all, like I am beating myself up for my own shortcomings, it is simply called "You", by Caroline Kepnes, and I think it was written for me.

"You're not the standard insecure nympth hunting for Faulkner you'll never finish, never start; Faulkner that will harden and calcify, if books could calcify, on your nightstand; You don't stage Faulkner and your jeans hang loose and you're too sun-kissed for Stephen King and too untrendy for Heidi Julavits and who, who will you buy?"
...
"Thank God for a customer and it's hard to scan his predicable Salinger--then again, it's always hard to do that. This guy is, what, thirty-six and he's only now reading Franny and Zooey? And let's get real. He's not reading it. It's just a front for the Dan Browns at the bottom of his basket. Work in a bookstore and learn that most people in this world feel guilty about being who they are."
 ...
"Everybody is always striving to be better, lose five pounds, read five books, go to a museum, buy a classical record and listen to it and like it. What we really want to do is eat doughnuts, read magazines, buy pop albums. And books? F-- books. Get a Kindle."

 Turns out the book is not about me, after all. It is about a psycho stalker who turns into the guy he thinks the girl will want, while killing those who get in his way. Ya. Does that make me crazy because I started reading it and couldn't put it down? It's intoxicating.

I started to lose my faith in books, and once lost it is truly hard to reclaim. Books used to be my love, something to get lost in, transport me to a different time, make me feel better about myself, different, like I was simply misunderstood in my world.

A few bad books can turn me off, but here I am on a Sunday, in a place where I so wish to belong. There is a dog nudging my leg, an older man excuses the dog, says he's just being friendly, and I can swear he is gay. The man, not the dog. He calls his mother, and I wonder how old she is. He reassures her that he is fine, he's out shopping, he didn't call because he was busy, is she okay, I wonder about their co-dependent relationship, if his mother is the only significant relationship in his life, I wonder what he is looking for in here, because trust me, we are all looking for something.

The playlist just seems to match the decor so perfectly, and a song comes on, it is so beautiful, a melody sans words, and suddenly I need to know what it is. I ask the manager sheepishly, like I have to apologize for not knowing what song it is, not being hip enough, and he tells me, it is a remake of the song "Use Somebody" by Kings of Leon, played by 2cellos, and just like that I feel like an idiot. So I don't even know good music.

I hate these places because of how they make me feel. I stopped writing because of how it makes me feel. I hate how it feels like the world's a club, and either you're in or you're not.

What is my biggest fear? That I'll never be good enough. 

This doesn't change anything. I'm going to finish reading the book, self-loathing and all.

And then.

And then.

Seeing my blog drop to three weeks, it's gotta mean something.