Something is in the air.

Perhaps it’s the fumes emanating from the 8 bus. That’s the bus that will take me from Halstead to Broadway.

See? Three days in the city and I’m learning stuff, ma! I’m really doing it then, aren’t I?

I had grand plans to write about my recent move with sweeping and colorful language, re-hashing the isolated drops of quirk that I observe from day to day, like a particularly whimsical RomCom, light on the ‘Rom’. Though somehow I think that would cheapen the experience for me. I can see myself going back someday and to peruse over this post and frown ever so slightly at my clumsy reconstruction of moments that may remain mysteriously precious to me on into my old age.

I have, I will admit, (however young and awash with naiveté as it may paint me) been happier in the last three days than I have been in months. It really is all those silly small things that you can’t  gush over without feeling like Daisy May seeing a Manhattan Skyrise for the time. It’s not that I’ve never navigated the city before. It’s that, every time I step off the Fullerton Redline, I know that this is it– I’m home, and there ain’t no returnin’ to no cornfield in the foreseeable future.

It starts with the musky smell of the street musicians that barged their way on to my car, invading the periphery of an upper middle class WASP (are there lower middle class WASP’s?), insulting her delicate sensibilities. She promptly relocated herself farther down the car. Hygiene obviously wasn’t (and probably still isn’t) at the top of their priority list, but at that moment I could ignore the rank fragrance of near-homelessness wafting in my direction.

These guys were sexy.

And it took me a moment to realize that these are the characters that populate my life.

The nervous actress who muttered and laughed to herself across from me in the waiting room, the hot Israeli guy who sat across from me on the bus, the Wrigleyville broseph’s perpetually high fiving and chest bumping their way around the city– these are all the lives that are touching mine, ever so slightly, tangentially.

All of this of course, is the reasoning and fantastical visions of a twenty-something proto urbanite who has spent only enough time in the Windy City to be seduced by it. Bring the cold, and the long commutes and I’ll be longing for the days of class time and never ending nights spent in PD2.

But for now I feel infinite.

And more importantly, I feel happy. I could worry that it’ll all fade away too fast. Or that the universe, in its ultimate quest to fuck me up the ass at every turn, will suddenly strike me deaf, dumb and blind for having the audacity to see the world as rosily as I do right now. But fuck it all, man.

I’ll wait for the bad. I might not even notice it coming, I’m having way too much fun.

trudge, trudge, creak, slam: the sound of desperation.

Wynona is moving out.

I can hear him trudging from his room across the hall to his car outside. Passively (aggressively) letting the door slam on each trip. He moves with the speed and coordination of a drunk toddler, trading in precision and class for heavy feet and a less than graceful exit out of my summerstock life. I can’t help but feel little tinges of pity for poor Wynona, each passing moment punctuated by that familiar creaking of a screen door, followed closely by that sharp, metallic slam– a sound that lives uniquely in my mind as a mainstay of adolescent summer evenings in the suburban midwest. The sound has been decidedly perverted here.

Wynona probably had it coming though, to be perfectly honest. All things considered, I should probably feel a little bit more self-satisfied at our young Mr. Wynona’s late night termination from the summer company, as it was, in part, due to my aggrieved testimony that we’ve all found ourselves in this situation. Wynona stole a shirt. Wynona stole a pair of pants. Wynona lied about both instances, so the course of action was pretty clear here.

Alas, my heart. It bleeds.

I know he lied to me. Right? We know he lied to the Zara king across the square, right? Right. Right?

Aside from his suspicious (some might say, unfortunately coincidental) behavior and my genetic distrust of most mouth breathers, there is no proof on my end that he lied. I do know people though. I know when someone is, out of a desperate need to control their own perceived identity, sowing sad-sack lies to avoid coming out on the other end looking poorly.

I used to do that all the time.

After I finished telling Boss men my own interpretation of what I know in my heart of hearts to be a lie on Wynona’s part, I felt a sinking feeling. I knew Wynona was going to be fired. I knew Wynona would, even in the face of unarguable evidence, continue to lie about his actions– invoking his own dead mother’s name (once, twice, three times by my count) to avoid having to come out as a liar and a thief.

It brought me back to those moments in high school. Or junior high even, when, faced with the insurmountable reality of an ugly truth– I would deny, deny, deny, even convincing myself  of my own falsities at times, to avoid owning up to being a liar or a thief. Or, y’know, queer.

But we’re in the real world now. And as much as I feel for Wynona, actions do have consequences.

So now I’m stuck, trapped sadly in my bedroom due to my aversion to confrontation (Wynona has to know my part in his termination) I was planning on sleeping soundly tonight. Between the sullen trudging and  banging however, i’m left to ponder the situation and mine it for literary greatness.

I would’ve preferred the sleep.

Kristen Bell is the voice in my head– who’s yours?

My empathy compass is spinning wildly out of control and sending my emotions into hemispheres that are neither helpful nor healthy.

Perhaps it’s my brain trying to distract itself from the raging unhappiness that is this bastion of culture, Sullivan, IL– but something decidedly neurotic is going on in my head lately.

I saw a fat adolescent girl, and almost had to excuse myself from the counter. Pouty Arleen would have loved another excuse to bitch to my superior officer about the breach of concession stand conduct, but luckily for me I managed to avoid a semi-psychotic emotional breakdown. That all must seem pretty random to anyone reading this. More than random to the people who don’t actually know me (as though knowing me accounts from some of the daily dose of crazy). But don’t you know how unhappy that little girl’s going to be?

I’ve probably just left empathy and headed straight into insanity. Do not pass go, do not collect $200. Straight to the overwrought nuthouse for Joel Kim.

There’s something else going on deep underneath my resounding concern for childhood obesity. I haven’t quite cracked that case yet, but a few more clues and I’m heading straight for the sheriff!

Talked to my mom today. Apparently the party animal was getting a little crazy with some knitting pals in Geneva and fell up some stairs. That’s right up the stairs. I told her not to knock needles with some strange women she met over the internet, but she never listens.

It is, all joking aside, fairly serious. Mom apparently lost all feeling in her legs long enough to collapse up those stairs, and now all of modern medicine is having a rather tough time figuring out what’s wrong. MRI didn’t show a stroke, so the culprit is possibly her back– which translates in my mind straight back to a spinal injury she suffered when I was a kid. I admittedly don’t know much about medicine, my only knowledge stemming from a few drunken trips through Hulu episodes of House MD. But still, what would’ve caused that?

Mom assured me that everything would be fine. No stroke–no problem!

But as someone who worries daily that, in the absence of any truly horrific events in my life thus far, I’m statistically due for one soon, this is less than comforting news.

Standing at Konigsberg (aka Arleen’s cookie and booze station) I wasn’t focusing too much on soliciting donors. I was, however, conjuring up as many terrifying images of what Mom’s mysterious ailment could be. Worse yet, I couldn’t stop my self from picturing all the ways it could possibly come at the worst possible moment.

What if she lost feeling while driving and careened into a light pole? What if she falls and damages her back even more? What if she died? What if she became permanently handicapped. What if the worst possible thing, bigger than my recently diminished imagination could create, actually happened?

Then I naturally think about how devastated my mom would feel. I think about how poorly my family would handle something like that. I think about how much time I’ve wasted with my own personal resentments. How they’ve kept me away from home.

Then I catch a glimpse of the fat little girl and think about how awful she must feel about herself, or how she will once she gets to high school and can’t escape the cruelty of adolescence.

That all probably still doesn’t make a lick of sense to anyone. But that’s where my mind’s been going tonight. Every worst possible scenario I’ve been thinking. For everyone. No one is safe.

Just a year ago I probably would think about talking about how scared I am to garner some ounce of sympathy from anyone who might listen. Neurotic, quasi-sociopathic weirdos like me feed off of pity. It’s something I’m working through. But what worries me most about all of this, is that, crippling narcissism aside,  I’m just really scared for my mom.

I’m sending this out into the great, dark void that is the internet. I’ve gotten it out and exorcized the negativity. No one needs to read it, because I have– and isn’t reading your own silliness enough to cure you of it?

‘Til next time rangers.

Sometimes I can’t find the right word for “popular” or “brilliant beyond compare”

This is not my summer.

I am once again a victim of my own whimsical and unrealistic expectations.

Not to say that I’m not not having fun– because I’m not having fun. But that has little to do with anyone else, or even me for that matter. I blame it all on my own backward sense of self-worth and the sea of neuroses that I’m swimming in lately. I mean, not having a job, feeling physically unappealing and struggling to see how I’m ever going to support the whimsical and unrealistic big-boy life that I know I deserve, isn’t such a big deal, right?

Right?

I’m a mess. Socially awkward in a way that brings me back to the days when I transitioned from apple-faced, sexually repressed homeschooled goon to the quick witted, yet equally sexually dysfunctional young adult. People used to find me funny and interesting, right? I’m not making that up, am I? Because lately I’m feeling about as interesting as those little pieces of garnish on the side of your plate at fancy restaurants. They do nothing. Nothing!

And now I do nothing. Nothing.

I’ve gone from planning parties and drinking until I can’t feel my ankles to sitting in my bed re-watching entire seasons of 30 Rock, while bits of hummus fall out of my useless mouth.

I have to get out of this funk.

and it’s about time.

…I started showing my face around these parts more often.

I will, I will. I always do. I just need time to process, and re-learn the keyboard.

All aboard– lame excuse.

maybe we could be a family

And summer has officially begun. I still have no idea where I’ll be for the majority of it, but it looks like I’ve got another soy-filled summer in my future. Each day the painted turtle doesn’t get back to me, the farther away California dreamin’ seems to get. Now I’ve got a stomach ache and I’m sitting in my roommates inflatable bed, waiting for some kind of inspiration to hit. 

Nope. It ain’t coming. 

I wish this year had ended on a better note, but not only am I currently alone, but I feel isolated and hurt, and a little bit confused. Alone seems like such a temporary, small word in the most cases, but today it feels like this big looming presence that’s casting a big shadow over my mood. I literally feel alone, like a visceral feeling in my gut. Or perhaps that’s the stomach ache. 

I thought writing this down would help, but all I’m doing is adding logs of bad metaphors to the fire. I hope this summer perks up. I hope I get back whatever sparkle I lost. 

LOST: One sparkle. 

Please return.

wherever you go, there you are…

I’m looking at my shoulders, and it’s not a pretty sight.

Between getting thrown on the ground several times a night for the past three weeks as a part of my role of hostage to Iranian terrorists (I was acting. Maybe you’ve heard of it), general clumsiness and residual bacne scars, I’ve come to the concise decision that tank-tops are not going to be an option for me this summer. 

I’m poking at each of my wounds and scars right now trying to decide if they give off the air of rugged physicality, or if they’re giving off a more literal “air” of infected flesh. I’m hoping not the latter, because I’m having enough trouble getting a guy to look at me, the last thing I need is the stench of an infected rug burn to start cock-blocking me too. Goodness.

So, as you can tell, Summer is starting off just great for me. Let’s hope I get the call, and California beckons. 

But then again, a summer in Cali with no tank-top privileges just doesn’t sound like that much fun at all…

pretty people.

It might sound kind of conceited, but I would say that most of my close friends would consider themselves pretty people. It’s not really anyone’s fault, they don’t try to be so pretty–for them it wasn’t even a choice. They just happen to be one of the lucky few. The lucky few who can walk down the street with the kind of confidence that only comes with perfect bone structure, a killer body, even skin, and a super glamorous outfit. The four combined creates one of the most deadly cocktails known to man. The pretty person.

Most pretty people know that they’re pretty. If I’m a pretty person, I would say I’m not actively aware of my status as one. But nevertheless I was invited into their tribe, and treated as an equal amongst some of the prettiest of the pretty. Sometimes I wonder why I was so lucky. Lucky to be surrounded by that kind of pretty all the time.

Maybe I’m the ugly friend. Every pack of pretty people needs an ugly friend to balance out the group. After all, my pretty friends are the good natured, selfless kind, willing to send out their tendrils of charity and offer me the kind of friendship that ugly people just can’t afford.

I love my friends. I really do. But more and more I feel less lucky, and more a social anomaly.

Sometimes it sucks being the ugly friend to pretty people.

i’ll gamble away my fright

I think there’s too much these days. “Too much what?” you ask? Just too much. I think the issue is as simple as that. It’s a frightening paradox of life that we’re constantly striving for more, when the real problem is all we have. We’re constantly told “less is more, less is more” but we’re just given more and more every day. Too much advice I say. Too much pressure to be successful, too much pressure to have, too much pressure to be pretty, too much pressure to be smart, too much pressure to be PC, too much pressure to have it all figured out, and you have to wonder eventually when it all just slows down or when you get a breather or if it ever just all stops. Stops. My writing isn’t narrative enough. It’s too explorative. Too much. Too much exploring? I felt the need to write, and this is all I have. All I have, and that’s certainly not too much, but I’m spent. I’m spent on writing, and sometimes I feel like I’ll never be able to write well, or be successful at it, and life just seems so much scarier than it did when real life was lightyears away from me. When did it all become too much?

Many the miles.

I find myself oddly nostalgic about London right now. I knew it would hit me later than the rest, but I think I’m only just now starting to feel the pangs of desire to just sit on the underground and watch London pass by from several feet under.

This is strange for me only because I find myself fairly content with the present.

No- that’s a lie.

I never find myself content with the present. In fact, like most people, I trudge through most of my days looking ahead towards the next hour. And after that you’re just forced to keep trudging until the hours finally give way to the next day. Where you can resume trudging. 

I hate trudging. I hate the word, the feeling it gives me, but it’s also the perfect image for what I’m feeling right now. I feel like each step is a little too mucky, a little to difficult to even bother. With every step the reality of the present gets a little bit closer, and suddenly you’re just stuck, in the now, and you’ve forgotten whichever way you were going in the first place. It’s at these moments, I’m forced to ask myself: “What the fuck?”

How do I get out this?

I don’t think London felt like trudging. At least with perspective filtered through fond memories, it’s hard to see it that way. I was having a lot of sex in London, and now I haven’t had sex in more than four months. 

Sex never feels like trudging. God.