Forever Young...

"And you asked me what I want this year
And I'll try to make this kind and clear
Just a chance that maybe
We'll find better days.
'Cause I don't need boxes wrapped in strings
Designer love and empty things
Just a chance that maybe
We'll find better days.
So take these words
And sing out loud
'Cause tonight's the night
The world begins again.
I need someplace simple where we could live
And something only you could give
And that's faith and trust and peace while we're
Alive.
And the one poor child who saved this world-
There's 10 million more who probably could.
If we all just stopped and said a prayer for them
I wish everyone was loved tonight
And somehow stop this endless fight
Just a chance that maybe we'll
Find better days..."

Love you Alayna. Still miss you every day <3

Karma Police

I'm never leaving New York again.

I realize that I say that every single time I go somewhere...and after Philadelphia again this weekend, the shore in two weeks and Florida in a month...I really mean it this time. Really.

I can only deduce that I must have done something awful to the cosmos...because I have the WORST traveling luck on earth. And it just keeps getting worse.

I think my problems really started in Charlotte, the time that I came back from a weekend in Philly to find that my luggage had not come back with me. I was otherwise devastated about external relationship/life factors, and it was torrentially downpouring. It was a Sunday night and I had to be at work the next morning with all of my makeup, my heels, curling iron, hairdryer and deodorant a few states away. I cried myself to sleep and was awakened at five o clock in the morning by my luggage being tossed onto my front porch in the rain. I thought it was the perfect awful thing to end an otherwise devastating weekend. And I thought it was over then.

Instead...it has progressively gotten worse each year, with each trip I make.

This Thanksgiving, as most of you DO NOT know...because I was too embarrassed to tell you...I was left at a rest stop in Sidleling Hill Pennsylvania on my way to Pittsburgh for the holiday. We'd stopped for "15 to 20minutes" and the first ten I stood in line @ Starbucks with everyone else. Once I'd gotten and paid for my coffee, I canvased the room and saw that everyone was still mulling around, so figured I had a minute to run to the restroom. I was wrong.

When I came out, everything looked strangely empty. I bolted out the front door and much to my horror, there was nothing but dark, snowy parking lot sprawling quietly in front of me. The bus was gone. I took off running, my scalding Grande peppermint mocha exploding out of the plastic lid all over my arm as I ran. I didn't know what I hoped to accomplish. I just had to try. Once I got about halfway to the exit ramp, I saw the tail lights of the bus pulling onto the highway, and then, fading out of sight. It was suddenly freezing, and my arm was burning and soaked. The snow was falling silently, and I was completely panicked. I made my way inside and the rest of the story is even uglier, so I'll spare you the tears and the humbling kindness of strangers, and say that three hours later, my Dad was there to retrieve me, and we drove back through the blizzard to collect my bags that made it to Pittsburgh on the bus without me.

Next, the week before Cristmas, came the transit strike. For whatever reason (maybe something I should try to figure out) I was unusually panicked about the inconvenient three day ordeal. I'd just started dating someone, and on the second night of the strike, it seemed unlikely that I could afford to make it all the way home and then back to work in the morning. We finished our date (which I'd tried to cancel in the first place, due mostly to said panic) and decided to spend the night at his apartment. Or rather, I spent the night hyperventilating quietly in bed next to him in the hopes of not waking him up and scaring the crap out of him with my displaced anxiety. It didn't work. He couldn't figure out why I was so upset. "You'll get there," he said. "It'll all work out." I was starting to feel like I wouldn't get there, (wherever there was) ever again.

Then, TT's wedding shower in February...I missed the bus @ Port Authority and made it to Philly just in time to take a cab to the end of the shower where everyone had already eaten and she was finishing up with the last of her presents.

Most recently, last weekend, I was headed back to New York from Easter dinner @ TT's parent's house, when our bus pulled over to open the hatches on the roof. The air was broken and we were roasting miserably in the post-Holiday weekend traffic, stuffed from dinner and countless chocolate eggs and miserable about the prospect of getting home any later than anticipated. We were stopped only a few seconds when it occured to me that I'm not lucky enough for this to have been the only problem. I knew something else would go wrong. I knew it. And as luck would have it....I was right, and the bus never started again. We were stranded for nearly three hours while they dispatched another bus from New Jersey through the traffic to retrieve us. I got home eight hours after I left Philadelphia for my two hour trip home.

And then yesterday...on a spontaneous rendezvous in Pittsburgh, I was given the opportunity to restore my travel karma. The flight had been accidentally oversold by one seat, and they were asking for volunteers to take a later trip. I was scheduled to fly back into Westchester county, which is an hour north of the city. "Will you fly me into Laguardia if I stay?" I asked. "Absolutely," they said, "and you can have a free round trip ticket wherever you want to go." So I took it. The woman was so greatful, that I barely flinched when they told me at the ticket counter that there WERE no direct flights into Laguardia, and I'd have to transfer in DC. Or Boston, or Baltimore, or Atlanta?? After a few ridiculous exchanges with these people, finally frustrated I agreed to switch planes in Baltimore, which would still put me into the city only about an hour later than originally anticipated. That is, until I landed in Baltimore and realized that all flights into or out of New York had been canceled or temporarily grounded due to inclement weather. BEAUTIFUL!

I was stranded in the Baltimore airport for only close to three hours...which was just long enough to make the free ticket not seem so free anymore.

And that, as they say, is that. It's funny...almost. People are getting so used to my traveling mishaps that when I call from an airport or the side of the road, the news has ceased to register a reaction. Perhaps I should donate my free plane ticket to someone who might actually get to their destination without the threat of certain disaster along the way.

I'm not sure what I've done to warrant the negative attention of the karma police...but I'm more than willing to pay my fine so that I can once again move freely about the highways and airways of the world. Otherwise, you can all start getting used to scheduling trips to the lovely, the convenient...the always full of at least SOME reliable form of transportation...New York City.

Jen, the Week of 4/10

It's been hectic, and I haven't been writing much. But it feels wrong not to keep you posted @ least occasionally on my life and times. Here is the readers digest version of my life this week, at least as it appears to me:

I'm ONCE AGAIN procrastinating the packing. I'm leaving work around 11 tomorrow and heading to Philly. I've possibly NEVER been as excited to go home as I am this trip. First of all, not that you particularly care about my plans for the weekend, but they're pretty all-inclusive. First, stopping by our Philadelphia office to hang out with some co-workers. Then it's off to TT's, down to South Street, going to see some former clients/friends who I haven't seen in a long time. Buying a few drinks for TT whose wedding is in FIVE weeks...my God.

Then Saturday, we'll be @ the shore all day, meeting with the bakery about her cake, doing a trial run of everyone's hair for the wedding, and well...just being at the shore. Isn't that enough?!

Sunday I get to pick up my bridesmaid dress for TREE'S wedding (five months away now) and onto Easter dinner @ TT's paren'ts house. I'm going to be dragging myself home on Sunday night, more exhausted than I am right now. Which is a price I am perfectly willing to pay.

Hanging out with the coworkers is the one tricky spot. I'm incredibly excited to see them. But it's going to bring back some troublesome memories of people I used to know there. Luckily, the office is in a different place than last time I saw it...so the remnants of the people who left there are probably mostly gone too. I hope.

Here are a few other things I've been cooking up this week....

1) I'm becoming obsessed with 9/11. It's disconcerting for my friends who lived here when it happened, and have already dealt with it and moved on. They think I'm crazy. I'm not sure why the sudden preoccupation with the whole thing... I think it has mostly to do with the fact that when it happened, I was so bent on NOT reacting, because I felt I didn't have a right too. Now that I'm here (and I think, secondarily, as a result of having to read about the Zacaris Moussoui trial EVERY single day in the paper...reading the transcripts from the cockpit recorder on flight 93, and from the 911 calls placed from the WTC...) it's kind of bombarding my psyche. I can't help but react now.

I was at my GBF's apartment the other night (gay boyfriend) and I was forcing him to show me the documentary "Seven Days in September" which he has permanently Tivo'd. And as I watched, I noticed how VERY MANY of the shots were taken right outside of his building that morning. (He lives just two blocks from ground zero.) In one scene, a handful of men walked out of the front door of the apartment across the street from him, and into what looked like the middle of the night...dark and cloudy and covered with filth and fog. The time reading on the bottom of the screen was 1145am, Tuesday Sept 11. In another scene, clouds of smoke poured down the street as the South Tower collapsed, people ran for their lives. All you could hear was metal crashing, shouting, and a frightening whoosh...which came at the camera along with the wall of smoke it accompanied. In the corner of the frame, I saw Trinity Church. I turned to the window, and leaned over the back of the couch, looking the 25 stories to the ground. There, sat Trinity Church. Unscathed. You would never know what happened there, two blocks away, five years ago.

"That's where you get on the subway to go home," he said.

"I know." I replied. But I can't believe it's the same. I can't believe I've walked past ground zero a hundred times and not really bothered to understand what happened there. I think now, I'm doing some overcompensating.

2) I'm back in another bad situation with a guy...and it's lead me to believe that the healthier part of me is weak and stupid compared to the conscience-free morally devoid part of me who just wants to drink martinis and sleep late and buy shit I can't afford. What can I say... I'm weak.

3) I'm obsessed with the RENT soundtrack. My new morning ritual consists of the following: plopping down @ my desk, chugging my iced hazlenut coffee from the cart guy outside my office, downloading my morning reports and listening to Seasons of Love three times in a row. My coworkers hate me.

4) People change. Pepople who tell you that "people don't change" only say so because they are afraid of changing themselves. Be cautious of someone who claims to have never changed, or to have disbelieved that others around them have done the same. This is why it's imperitive to forgive. I see occasionally, remnants of the person I'm growing out of... and I barely even recognize her. And I'm sorry, sometimes, for the things she did and the way she acted. My solace then, is in the fact that I am no longer her. Because I have learned her lessons. And they have been the things that changed me. Better or worse. People do change. And thank god for that.

5) I'm feeling morally conflicted about downloading music. I haven't done it in a long time. But I want to. There, I said it.

Now I'm tired...and I STILL haven't packed. Or done my nails, or showered, or done laundry or run the dishwasher or cleaned my room.... you understand.

Have a great weekend. Happy Easter, and Shalom!!

Entitlement to Feeling

I'm lonely.

That's a hard thing to say. Especially for someone who [supposedly] prides herself upon being alone. But I am. And I think it's been a long time in the making.

When faced with adversity, I've noticed that people seek refuge in one of two places. Some, will turn outward toward others, in search of solace in, and support from those around them. They will cling desperately to friends, relationships or family. Maybe they move back home, hide in a boyfriend or girlfriend, or even in some cases go so far as to seek out brand new relationships in an effort not to deal effectively with themselves. Most people I know cope this way. It's easier, I think, to hide behind those that they trust and love, than to have to face their lives on their own.

The other defense mechanism (as far as I can tell there are really only two) comes in turning inward, in an effort to protect ourselves from that which frightens us. Maybe becoming distant, withdrawn, moody or quiet. Friends probably begin to complain that you don't come around much. Your family thinks you're too busy for them. You're not really too busy for anything. But it's better they think that.

I've never been much for seeking protection in others. So in the face of adversity, when things start to go wrong, I move inside myself, and hide out. A decade of protecting myself later, (I figure all real troubles for us begin at or around puberty) I've come to realize that I've made no real room for anyone else in my world. And thus, the way I suddenly find myself to be lonely.

In the past five months especially, I've endured a series of weird heartbreaks and tests to my strength and character. Things have been going badly since Thanksgiving for me...which is a natural part of life's influx. Hills and valleys, which I understand. Unfortunately, as it always is, my reaction to the complications has been regression into myself in an effort to avoid having to cope.

I wish I didn't do that.

I was speaking with one of my best friends recently, who just turned 35 and has never settled down. Never had much of a real relationship at all, actually. Much the "inward thinker" that I am, he could feasibly fall out of sight for weeks at a time before anyone started to worry. It's just his way. I asked him if he was lonely. If he ever planned to let anyone in...in part hoping that the answer was yes, and there was hope for me yet. "No," he sighed. "I thought, for years, that some day I would want to make room for someone in my life in some legitimate way. But the older I get, the less willing I am to do that. And the more I realize, I'll probably always be this way."

"Why are you this way?" I asked, surprised at my own disappointment. He told me that when his father died, he decided then and there (completely unbenounced to himself) that he would never let anyone in again. Because anyone can leave you. But you can never leave yourself. I know that he and I are not the same... but at that moment, I saw myself in twelve years, looking back at me from his eyes.

I'd like to make clear, for a moment, that I am not depressed. Depression and loneliness are different. Feeling the results of tough times is natural, however such "real feelings" have in recent years been virtually removed from our lexicon. Whether it was the ridalin insurgence, or the mental-health clauses in corporate benefit plans, or prescription drug ads... something has lent us to the notion that you are clinical if you are sad. Bi-polar if you laugh and cry in the same day. Suicidal if you've ever wondered who would show up at your funeral. When I try to say I'm lonely, people say "Celexa." But I look at my friend...and I see only normalcy. Surviving. And albeit alone, how is it worse than those who survive hidden in the false security provided by others?

Is that better?

I wish there were someplace between the two extremes, where I could go to find comfort in people that I love, and security in myself and the knowledge that I'll always be OK. I think we all want that. But it's hard to come by, especially when we've been conditioned to rely on other things (hiding, relationships, prescriptions) to keep us going.

But I've got to believe that along the way, I'll find just what it is that I'm looking for. And hopefully...... I won't be afraid to feel it.