Are we adults?

As well as pretending that I’m actually a lady (the kind that crosses her legs when wearing a dress and doesn’t fart, burp, or swear in public, and sips from her wine glass daintily), I also pretend to adult really well. Like, this morning: I got up, made waffles and coffee for myself and a friend, did dishes, revamped my resumé, cleaned up my email inbox, proofed a friend’s resumé, put away laundry, cleaned my room, and updated my calendar. I have a frittata and a bean salad in the fridge for dinner tonight, giant Mikasa wine goblets under my bed, and a nice bottle of Chianti on my counter. To all appearances, I’m adulting really well. And then we consider where I am right now: still in bed, unshowered, with glasses on, and wearing a gigantic old man sweater I found at my local thrift store, and seriously debating whether or not getting out of bed again today is worth the pain (I went for the first run of the season yesterday and my body is yelling STUPID STUPID STUPID at me, every time I so much as twitch).

Actually, I’ve spent most of this weekend in not real person clothes and glasses, because a) I’m one of two people in my house right now, b) it’s the weekend, and c) I wear business casual all week for work and my slobby side is crying for sweatpants around 4 p.m. every day. Also, my brain has been operating on insane levels of FUTURE PLANNING all weekend and I tend to have my most creative time in bed with pajamas on. There’s also a whole list of things that have been grabbing for my attention all week and I’ve been too tired/lazy/otherwise engaged, to get to them. (I have about seven or eight articles that have yet to be edited for a journal and a scholarship application and multiple cover letters going “Please love me and hire meeee for the summerrrr because I can’t be at home again and I need job experience so please think I’m awesome and great and shit kthanxbai”.)

I changed my Mac language to German yesterday because I need more practice, something glaringly unavoidable after a two hour Skype date with my friend in Germany yesterday. Hey Self, I said. Yikes, you’re out of practice. Little did I know that my Mac changes things like webpages and surveys to German as well. So that’s been fun. And the week is getting better: I’m not ragingly angry more and I’ve stopped banging pots and I finally finished all that mac and cheese up. A ton of my friends come back this week. I had a lovely evening last night with a good friend, over frittata and Pinot Grigio, and a fuzzy blue blanket. I think I’ve hit upon the answer to the Great Mystery (aka: what I want to do with my life). It feels settled and snug around my bones, a good gut feeling. Like the universe is saying, Yes. Yes, this is right. A feeling I got when I applied to Rotary and a feeling I got when I left the United States for a year abroad in Germany. And a feeling I got after having spent a night sobbing in my host family’s bathtub, which ended in me withdrawing from my beautiful, expensive, first-choice college, and sending in my application to Geneseo. There’s something about having your bones feel comfortable.

I was talking to my friend last night and we were talking about how the older you get, the more you realize that adults have none of their shit together. Fake it til you make it, is basically the motto. It’s kind of terrifying, because I’m aware my younger cousins think I’m sort of superwoman. I’m the impossibly old twenty-one year old who is moving out of her house and is 99% financially independent and I’m the shit to them. To which I laugh hysterically, start crying about my future, and then start laughing again at the thought of me being an adult, and try to stop before anyone sees me and actually decides it’s really in my best interests to commit me to an insane asylum. I assume most of our parents have also done the same thing, but when you’re five or six or even ten or eleven, your parents are heaven and earth and they can do anything. My mom keeps remarking on how much people mellow with age (she’s one of eight volatile siblings and I can only imagine their house growing up), and the more I think about it and talk to post-graduate friends, the more I think she’s right. We’re so uptight and tense about stuff in high school and even in college, but then somewhere along the way, the stuff that drove us absolutely fucking nuts and the people we wanted to throw out a window turn out to be kind of okay. Or at least you’re happy to see them when they come visit for a brief period of time.  OR you learn that the people who turned out to be not okay at all need to be out of your life for good. And you swing that door shut with a resounding bang and are maybe sad for awhile, because cutting people out of your life is sad; drawing a big black X over all that history and shared time is hard. But it’s necessary. It’s important to surround yourself with people who make you happy, who make you your best self, and who value you as much as you deserve. Big things happen–parents die, friends get married, someone loses their job, other various personal tragedies– and the little things like people leaving milk on the counter or not putting the toilet seat down truly become little. Perspective, you know? In high school, there’s this incredible standard that “friends don’t talk behind each other’s backs” but here’s the thing: everyone talks behind each other’s backs. And there’s a line between trash-talking or talking maliciously and viciously about someone with the intent that it gets back to them or with the intent to ruin someone’s reputation or malign someone’s character, and discussing mutual concerns, seeking advice, or getting something off your chest in a productive way. All of our friends, no matter how dearly we love them, have small things that drive us bonkers. My friend and I were talking about this whole thing and I know some people are going to say “Well you shouldn’t talk about people behind their backs, period,” but realistically? Those people have probably done that at some point in their life, intentionally or unintentionally. But there’s the difference between doing it with the intent to hurt and doing it for a more productive purpose. I’ve been reminded of Cheryl Strayed’s marvelous piece on this a lot lately. You can find it here. (Also I still maintain that everyone should read Cheryl Strayed’s Tiny Beautiful Things, because it’s the most beautiful thing I’ve read so far in the new year.)

I’m not sure where this whole blog post was going. Spending a week alone (or almost alone) has been good for hashing out a lot of future plans/thinking about priorities, and cooking good food. I’ve been lighting candles and singing alone in my room, and spending time in bed. Haven’t seen many people and that’s okay. Taking some slow days just for me. I went for a run yesterday around 3 p.m., just as the sun was starting its downward descent. There’s one hill where you can see this gorgeous view of the Genesee Valley and the sun was all goldy-red fingers streaking down across the gray winter sky and because classes haven’t started yet, there’s no one around. I had the campus all to myself. After a week of sitting at a computer 8-4 and the whole polar vortex thing, being out in the fresh air, moving in 40 degree temperatures was like having a little piece of heaven all to myself. I need that. I need that space and that quiet and that burn in my lungs. I came home and spread-eagled in the middle of my living room floor and tried to remember how to breathe properly. Reflected that our carpet could use a good vacuuming.

The craziness starts back up next week. Everyone floods back into Geneseo, classes begin, and Spring 2014 begins in earnest. Trying to get all my ducks in a row before the semester starts. A little bit of early spring-cleaning.

Stephen Elliott sent out A Daily Rumpus email a couple of days ago titled “You will probably fall for someone who loves you”, and I think I want to write a poem with that title. I haven’t been doing a lot of creative writing lately, which is sad. But hopefully as the semester begins, I’ll start writing more again.

I saw this quote on Tumblr that I feel is pretty applicable to everything in this post. Someone asked their roommate “Are we adults?” and the roommate’s response was this:

“We’re adults, but, like…adult cats. Someone should probably take care of us, but we can sort of make it on our own.”

Accurate and awesome.

Also, if you want to find me on Tumblr, click here. I reblog a lot of writing quotes and artsy fartsy pictures, the occasional selfie, the wardrobe I want, pretty flowers and lots of wordy shit.

-15 With Candles Lit

I spent my last night at home driving home slowly, taking all the back roads. The radio volume was up 10 notches higher than my mother likes it and I was singing along, tapping the heel of my hand on the steering wheel. The noise and brightness of the restaurant were fading into the snowbanks on either side of me. I’ve been having a hard time figuring out time lately. Somehow the stillness and the dark made it less irrelevant. The songs on the radio sounded like they had a direct wire to my brain. I kept switching back and forth between stations–some songs hurt enough you can’t listen to more than a few bars. I fishtailed going up the hospital hill, swore, caught my breath and control, and went a little slower. Leaving always has been such a tragedy for me. It always means turning down another road before I go home, doing another loop before I turn off the radio and resign myself to pulling in the driveway. The lights at the gym shone a bright square as I came down the hill towards my house. This might be my last Christmas at this house; we have potential buyers coming on Wednesday. Part of me tries to not think about it too much. Part of me is already reaching out to the change.

I had just come from a small restaurant in my hometown, surrounded by my aunt and five cousins. Tomorrow I’d be back at college and in two weeks, they’d be flying back to Australia. I hadn’t seen them in two years. My fifteen-year old cousin is taller than I am, by a good six inches. He’s into surfing and good music and a sweetheart of a kid. My thirteen year old cousin is turning into the kind of young woman who’s going to turn heads, with a kind soul, and starry gray eyes. It’s been fun to hang out with her, to have chats, like big sister to little sister. My eleven year old cousin is the sensitive one of the family, content to curl up in the corner with a National Geographic, and an avid outdoorsman. The nine year old is a terror, with a penchant for blowing stories wildly out of proportion and a completely innocent look that swears they’re 100% true. And my five year old godson is feisty and independent. His lack of one arm doesn’t hinder him in the least and he’s the craziest of the bunch. I feel like I’ve just got back into knowing them and now they’re leaving again. I don’t know when they’re coming back.

Tonight, I banged around the kitchen, on the phone with various people, trying not to wallow in my empty house like I did last night, tucked up under blankets with How I Met Your Mother and tea. It’s all about keeping your hands busy, trying not to listen for the rhythm in the shrieking wind, turning on the porch light to say “Welcome home.” So I stirred cheese sauce for homemade macaroni and shouted on the phone and forgot to preheat the oven before everything was done, and there was a pause between conversations. I turned Anna Nalick off, turned on Grace Potter and the Nocturnals. Threw my phone onto the couch and made tuna salad. Worried about all the things I had to do that I couldn’t face just yet. Drained the pasta, answered the cheerful ringtone and paced the floor. Being home alone is not always the best thing for an unquiet mind. I washed the dishes, dragged out the blanket my mother made in the 1970’s, and looked at the list of movies I had to watch. Settled on Lost in Translation, with a quieter, more melancholy Scarlett Johannson and a serious Bill Murray. My mother called as I was dialing my home phone. It’s like she has a sixth sense. I was on my second bowl of macaroni. Trying to eat a 9 x 13 pan of comfort food by yourself is also lonely. I like to cook for other people, communal meals, and I forget how to cook for just me. I forget how to do a lot of things for just me. In the last two days by myself, I’ve been talking a lot more on the phone. The house is too quiet on winter nights. I think I could live by myself in the summer, with long-fingered days and balmy nights. But winter nights are too harsh and solitary to spend alone.

It’s like everywhere I look, I see pieces of people. Of a person. Like everything in my life is linked to some common experience, some shared memory, tied to some person. Maybe that’s why leaving is so hard for me–you can’t just snip people out of your life as easily as you’d like to. Four years later, there’s still songs that reminds me of someone I used to love. And there’s scents tied up in there too. What do you do with a great boundless love that can’t help but spread from your fingertips, make new constellations in your eyes, and squeeze your heart so hard it runs dry? And what you do with the ghosts in your closet, moaning through your silken scarves, and histories you’ve buried underneath mismatched pairs of socks, and all the songs you can’t listen to anymore? And what happens on a Monday night when you’re listening to “Sweet Winter Songs” on Spotify (which is a great playlist, by the way), and watching the candles you lit three hours ago burn down to nubs, and trying to make sense of the roaring chaos fire in your head?

Well I guess my solution was to write. And have a melancholy night, huddled up against the -15 degrees outside, wrapped in something my mother made. To make tea, just for myself. To reclaim all the cluttered space in my mind, just for myself. I guess it’s just a day of “having the mean reds”, because I’m in my 20’s and I feel like that’s common, but also because I’m human, and we’re all scared of something–even if we don’t know what it is yet.

I’m trying to be better at watching movies. Trying to get lost in other people’s stories to maybe find a little insight in mine.