Calculated Fear

I was meant to do better. I meant to do better. I meant not to be afraid. To take chances and to fall in love and do the right things when choices were presented to me. I meant to do all of these things.

Something about me has always seemed different. I've tried to convince everyone, me especially, that I didn't want to be happy in the conventional sense of it. That instead I'd find my happiness alone. That falling in love, caring about people, staying around even at the risk of being hurt, was weakness. That it was beneath me. Most things seem beneath me.

The truth, of course, is that I can't stand to be alone. I can't stand it. I'm sure that doesn't come as a surprise... the problem is only that I've spent my entire life convinced that alone was how I'd do it. I'd be on my own. And now, twenty years or so later... I believe it. Now that I'm really, really alone... I no longer know how not to be. I've fulfilled the prophecy which fueled me. And it turned out to be a terrible mistake.

The disasters of our lives, the disappointments and times of great sadness are our own creations. We own them, however unwillingly, as well as our greatest accomplishments and achievements. The moments we run, are as defining of us as the moments we stay and fight. And they help determine those things about ourselves which we would never know how to create on our own. We make ourselves in part out of those times. The things which scare us are those which formulate our roads and journeys out of here. Into where we're going. Or in some cases, not going at all.

I believe now, that having spent so much time being too strong to love anyone and too scared to try...that if a real life were to present itself... I'd be unable to accept it. I'd move away from it too. Just as I have moved away from everything else I've known, and been afraid to know.

I've run myself into a place that I cannot navigate. Sadly, no one can help me out of here but me. I can't see, anymore, the path on which I began. I forget what seemed noble about being stronger. And now, as I have lost sight of who I thought I was, I find myself believing everything everyone says that I am. And you can imagine, maybe, how glowing the responses have been...from those I have been driving away.

The tragic, the crazy, the useless overreacting, the pretentious and the vicious. The drama queen. The manipulator. The easy girl. The simple, insecure and easy girl.

I wish I could take some solace in the fact that at least I knew what I wanted. And that I did what I did as a means to a more comfortable end. Where I might finally feel secure. In fact, I've done what I did...which seems like nothing but pushing away... for no discernible reason at all.

The In-Between

Everyone always talks about life in terms of goods and bads. Good relationships and bad ones. Good times, bad times. It's easy to associate with these things, because they're easily indentifiable. When you spend a month crying over a breakup, or wake up every morning dreading another day @ your job (two things I can thankfully say I have never done) you know that these are the bad times. They're OK, because you know they aren't going to last. If you're well-adjusted, you can grieve them as the crappiness that they are, and wait for the better days.

Those times are glorious. The good times make you forget the bad times. You're making good money, or you're surrounded by love, you've got a great apartment or your job is going well. These times are obviously the best...but a little daunting since you know that they too, aren't going to last forever. Time is fleeting. Good time the same as bad.

Well anyway, we become accustom to both things. The older we get, the more perspective we gain and the more we understand that if you wait out anything, it's going to go away. So we learn to cope. We learn to enjoy. We learn to appreciate time in general. Generally.

But there's a new kind of time in my life that I'm not enjoying at all. And that I am calling "the in-between time." When nothing happens at all.

I should probably like this too...because it means that nothing's wrong. But I can't help but feel bored and unhappy, to the point that even the good things aren't good enough to warrant a reaction. I think it's called a rut. And I'm in a big, deep, muddy mess of one.

It was prompted, I think, by the move. I was stressed out and grossed out by the prospect of having to move, (which I think most people are...) but I overreacted as usual to the whole thing. Once we were here, exiled to Brooklyn, and everything associated with the last year was gone...I fell asleep, and I feel like I haven't been awake since.

I had to find a new job pretty quickly, because with the new apartment I wouldn't have been able to afford rent on my salary. So I reluctantly started to pursue some kind of career that I might not hate. I sent resumes, I wore my suit, I shook hands and answered questions the way I was supposed to. And I managed to get a great job, despite my attitude, and gave my two weeks notice last Wednesday. I should be excited, probably, but I don't really care. I don't know WHY I don't care...because I'm accustom to caring way too much about everything. But nothing phases me recently. And I think it's the in-between. It's sucking the life out of me.

My roommate was going to a party last night somewhere in Brooklyn, and my coworker JW was going to one in Manhattan. I wanted to go to both. But I didn't go to either. I couldn't summon the energy to associate with people. And here was my train of thought: I'm not going to be working with JW after next week, so why bother fueling that friendship with anymore bonding time than necessary. My roommate was going to be with a guy I dated briefly around Christmastime (isn't it weird that that's one word?), and although he's moved on (happily, in love, blah blah) I don't feel particularly enthuzed to deal with him. I should be friendly and happy that he's happy...instead I'd like him not to exist at all.

So I watched my boyfriend Seth Meyers on SNL and fell asleep. And instead of feeling guilty for being boring...I didn't feel anything @ all. Again.

It's probably to be expected that at particular times in your life, you're going to lack the enthusiasm that you sometimes have for living. But it makes me sad...because I'm usually quite obsessed with living, and doing so loudly and with feeling.

I should learn to understand and respect the in-between the way I have the good and the bad... but it's hard. It's just, so....

Toast to the Good Life

TT (who can no longer be called TT after Saturday, when she officially became TR, which doesn't have the same kind of ring to it as TT does...) picked me up @ the bus station just around the time that dinner was wrapping up at a restaurant a few blocks away. She jumped out of her parent's huge SUV into the rainy evening, which seemed too cold for early May at the beach.

"Happy Birthday!" She squealed. I balanced the handle of my oversized suitcase against my thigh and hiked my bag onto my shoulder just in time for her to jump at me with a hug.

"You're getting married!" I squealed back, hugging her just as hard. I thought, this is the kind of thing you frequently see in Hallmark movies. She grabbed my bag from my shoulder and went to the back of the truck.

"I ordered you a veggie wrap. Sorry you missed your birthday dinner," she sighed. "Everyone is just now finishing their food ... so don't feel like you have to rush." I smiled at her and heaved my suitcase into the back and she slammed the hatch.

The restaurant was right on the beach, a few blocks from where the wedding was going to be in two days. It was dark early, and the navy skies were spitting cold rain on us. We pulled up to the restaurant and I looked at the ocean.

"I hope this passes," I said with some measure of concern.

"I knowwww," she sighed, but it seemed like she didn't care. True to form, she'd prepared 37 contingency plans in the event of poor weather. We climbed out of the truck and her fiance was waiting on the sidewalk. He hugged me, which always seemed to make him uncomfortable, and I said another, "you're getting married," as though no one got it but me.

Once inside, I hugged her parents, greeted the future inlaws whom I've come to know quite well, and ate my cold veggie wrap. The preteen waiter told me "happy birthday" and I thanked him for not singing. It seemed like the start of a perfect weekend.

The following day, TT and Mr. T met with their wedding planner for the three billionth time this year. The wedding planner was an extremely butch lesbian, but married to a man and the mother of three kids. She made me uncomfortable. I wanted to tell her that her career choice is ironic and that she's living a lie. Instead, Mr. T's sister and I went tanning, got manicures and pedicures (with the mothers of the bride and groom) and stocked up on a handful of bottles of Asti for the rehearsal dinner later that evening.

At the rehearsal, we didn't rehearse anything. The weather had broken, luckily, but there was nothing to practice on the beach. So, we had a tremendous barbeque instead. TT's parents rented and enormous, historic house in the heart of Cape May for the weekend. This was the scene of the said tremendous pre-wedding cookout. (And also where I resided for the weekend.)Both families came, and some of TT's friends. I started to notice only then, how awkward it can be when families are forced to intermingle. No one's family is free of neurosis...and when pushed upon one another...these neurosis can become explosive personality conflict disasters. The night was mostly void of drama, until the groom's mother (admittetly toasted) stole a bottle of Pinot and smuggled it out of the house for personal consumption later at the hotel. TT had to be calmed, and everyone went unharmed. We went to bed early in an effort to be well-rested for the big day. It didn't work. No one could sleep. I shuffled across the hall into TT's room.

"Are you asleep?" I asked. I suddenly remembered our dorm room in college. We used to lie in bed talking for hours while our goodnight playlist would rattle off a list of quiet Sarah McLaughlin and Bruce Hornsby songs.

"No," she said.

"Do you want to talk about anything?" I asked. "Life? Getting married? Anything like that?"

"I don't think so," she said, matter of factly, as she says everything. "Do you?"

"Well, no, " I said then. "But I'm not getting married tomorrow." It seemed like even if she had something to say, the time to say it was years gone by now. "Well alright, sleep tight. See you at your WEDDING tomorrow," I cooed as I walked back to my room across the hall. She really is my sister more than anything else. And I realized that then.

The next morning was nothing if not chaos. The kind where you just go along and try not to make too much noise or be too much in the way. It was six thirty when I shuffled across the hall to see what time they were leaving for the salon.

"I don't want to be here by myself all morning," I whined.

"Then get your stuff and come with us," she said. "But hurry up because we have to leave."

I threw my curling iron and makeup into a bag and put on a tanktop that I could step out of. I grabbed the last bottle of champagne, leftover from the night before, a gallon of orange juice and some strawberries, and jumped into the car headed for the salon. I did my own hair and makeup, and by the time the other girls were done getting ready, we were already late to meet the photographer at the house. The rest of the morning was made up of pictures, flowers, flashbulbs satin and lace. All the kinds of things you expect a wedding morning to be. There were curls and perfume and bronzer and it all seemed a little overwhelming. The carraige arrived to pick her up, and we started on foot to the beach. I wore a Jessica McClintock black satin dress with sparkly Kenneth Cole flip-flops. It was a strange combination, but next to my date, (the bride's brother) who was in a tuxedo and reef sandals, it seemed to make perfect sense.

An hour later, she was walking down an aisle lined with beargrass and white tool, flanked on either side by everyone she knows in this world. The waves crashed behind the lattice work altar, and the wind blew our hair to the very limits of hairspray's capability. Flip flops and dresses were everywhere, and as they kissed, and her father wiped his eyes, everyone clapped and it was truly perfect. Even by my standards.

At the reception, which took place in a large, old house and where we ate fried chicken and drank bloody mary's...I toasted to the new couple. "TT, whom I love, and SR...whom I have grown to love as well...may you have found in each other your one, great love. And may that love guide you through your lives together, surrounded as you are right now, by all of your wonderful friends and family. Here is to the good life. Salut" Glasses clinked, I downed my champagne in one swig and commenced poking at my salad. They danced to "True Companion" by Mark Cohn, which without fail makes me cry. And since I was two hours into cocktail hour, I did not hide my tears. But no one else did either.

At the end of the afternoon, we all went back to the house and the immediate family continued about their drinking. TT (now TR) and SR sat in the front parlour and opened their presents. I shuffled upstairs to bed. My head felt a little fuzzy (the sun and eight bloody marys later) and I fell asleep immediately. When I awoke, everyone was gone, and I went downstairs to help her mom clean up.

"It was really beautiful," we kept saying. Because we didn't know what else to say about something that was suddenly so over. We would all be going home in the morning.

As we cleaned, we talked about life, and regrets and winding up where we do and how. I wondered if my life would ever hold such things. I wondered if I wanted them. She remembered like it was yesterday, when she and her friends got married. She told me it passes quickly. I believe her.

I can't say that it could have gone any better. It surprised me how NOT strange it all felt. How the entire four days, four years ago would have seemed a lifetime away. But now that it's happened, now that I've seen it, nothing else seems to make any sense. I didn't leave Cape May in tears this weekend, the way I left her shower only a few months before. The way I thought I would have. Perhaps it's a product of my having grown up a little. Perhaps I'm just getting used to the idea. But it doesn't seem so far away now. And in fact, I can tell you that it was the happiest weekend I've had in a long time. And I hope for my friends, that if their wedding was any indication, they really are going to have the good life.

Enough As It Is

I've always been really paranoid.

When I was very little, I used to relentlessly torture my parents about my fear of their being killed in a car accident. I was obsessed by the thought. My father, as President of the Chamber of Commerce for a time, seemed frequently to be dragging he and my mother to dinners and parties and I always just knew they wouldn't ever come home. They always did... but still...

I also spent much of my time examining my freckles for signs of skin cancer, and needling my mother for the fool-proof ways to detect a brain tumor in an otherwise healthy child.

As I grew, my paranoia began to focus slightly outward, and more on the people around me. Less so on myself (though I'm still convinced that every headache is a brain annurism in the making.) When the phone rings at a strange time now, I know with absolute certainty that it's "the call." My caller ID is frequently met with certain dread.

My oldest friend called me today, which almost never happens, so of course I didn't answer. My first thought wasn't, "maybe she misses me!" It was instead, "my God what happened?" It turned out that she was calling to confirm that my grandparent's house, a sprawling institution of our teenage years and the place where my friends and I spent most of our summers, was in fact for sale. It is, and I would have called back to tell her that, if I wasn't putting off trying to break the news that one of our classmates recently died under some confusing, drug-related circumstances. And anyway, the last time I spent any time with her was the night of the baby's funeral...and I'm tired of talking about such things.

I've been really lucky to have gotten through this much of life without any major disasters. I can count on one, maybe two hands, the number of times I've gotten those "calls" that break the frightening news. So why the paranoia?

I think it's a strange combination of ego-centrism and anxiety. I'm pretty sure that everything that happens, happens only to me...and so it's easy to assume that when the shoe drops, it'll hit me right in the head. Also...the anxiety lends itself to over-thinking almost every circumstance, good or bad, and interpruting it all with a kind of doom that's unusual for most normal people.

And again, those of you who know me well, can take this moment to once again claim that I've got far too much time on my hands. Point taken.

In the meantime, just don't call me with bad news. I'm freaked out enough as it is.

Happy May?

I walked into my boss's office Monday morning. It was my first day of work absent my sidekick, Dallas-Ryan, whose last day was the Friday before. My GBF was going to be gone all week in the Dominican Republic and I was facing a week covering their desks in their collective absence. I was anticipating a lot of self-pity. I'd also gotten almost zero sleep the night before, and having just returned from Tree's wedding shower, was feeling (as usual, post-wedding anything) a little deflated.

"Morning," I said half-heartedly, expecting as usual, no response other than glancing up from his work, smiling broadly at me, and continuing about his business. Jack is not much for small-talk. Instead, he looked up, smiled and said, "Happy May!" It hadn't really occured to me that it was May in the first place, but what about that was particularly happy, I wondered? I looked at him funny and went out to my desk. I thought about it a little.

Cinco De Mayo is in May...and for Americans who aren't celebrating Mexican independence, it's really a holiday mostly of just drinking and being happy. Maybe that's it. Memorial Day and Mother's Day are also both in May...which makes for three holidays in one month. That seems like a lot...and that could be cause for some happiness. Also the weather has by all accounts, changed for the season now. No more cold, no more dark. The opression of another Northeastern winter has lifted and I'm noticing that everyone does seem to be appreciating that, and thus, most everything else a little more. My birthday is in May, and so this year, is TT's wedding. Professionally exciting, the Network Upfronts are also in May, which means five of the industries biggest parties of the year, all in one week. By the time I was done mentally listing all of the reasons that May should possibly be greeted with anticipated happiness, I'd forgotten all about feeling tired and sad, and found myself instead, smiling.

Valerie came over then and we talked a little about the shower. "It was fun," I said. And she looked at me the way I'd just looked at Jack. "You never have fun at showers," and she should know because I go to a lot of them. "I know," I said, "but I think I'm getting used to it." I think I'm getting used to a lot of things...mostly though...adulthood. And the fact that it sometimes sucks.

I faced an abundance of uncomfortable adult lessons in the first few months of this year. And from minute one I'd resigned myself to the fact that it was a year doomed to fail me at every turn. But maybe not.

Here is my hope. Maybe May won't let me down. I've had a few promising job interviews, TT's wedding is in six days and the apartment is finally coming together. Tree's shower went flawlessly and I've managed to make the most of my nearly crippling surprise financial dilemma. I got to see my family recently, I'm planning visits with most of my close friends at some point over the summer, and it turns out that Brooklyn isn't all that bad.

So maybe Jack is right. It seems to have everything to do with how you look at things, and so I've revised my outlook in the hope that maybe it is, a happy May.