January 22, 2009

Good Goodbye... Can't Wait

I see it around me
I see it in everything
I could be so much more than this
I said my goodbyes
This is my sundown
I'm gonna be so much more than this
With one hand high
You'll show them your progress
You'll take your time
But no one cares
No one cares
I need you to show me
The way from crazy

I wanna be so much more than this

Jimmy Eat World

January 20, 2009

Because I Can...

I know we know... that NYC is expensive. I pay $1,295 a month by myself. If you get a chance, take it. If it changes your life, let it. I am seriously, very very seriously considering a move when my lease is over. The problem always was that I didn't want to move across the country alone. Now I can go with my sister. I can buy a house in Portland, OR for less than the cost of my rent. I hear it's artsy out there. It's laid back and I might be a West Coast girl born on the wrong side. Maybe I'll move to a Santa... Santa Monica, Santa Cruz, Santa Barbara.... I know there is something else I'm meant to be doing with my life.

I don't want to be a New Yorker. I don't want to move to the suburbs and hire a nanny and make tons of money for working overtime. I need to do something bigger... or different. Something that no one else does. To add to the corniness and throw in another cliche: The dream in your heart may be bigger than the environment in which you find yourself. I think that's true.

I don't know what I'll do when I get out there, but it will be creative. Maybe I'll go to school or teach or change my career. Maybe I'll get into politics or start a business or write. It doesn't matter. If you want something, you make it work. The best part is that no one in Portland or CA has ever lied to me. I don't have any bad memory associations with the West Coast. I've never been disappointed out there. I actually feel better just thinking about leaving here. I should've gone out there when I graduated like I wanted to. I don't know what I'm waiting for here. I'm over being practical and wasting my time. I'm sick of feeling like everything is temporary. So I won't have a ton of people I know out there, but at least it's an adventure. At least it's unpredictable and new and at least I'll try.

If I hate it, I'll just come back, but I have a sneaky feeling I won't be returning.....




January 19, 2009

Be The Change

MySpace Celebrity and Katalyst present The Presidential Pledge

Lost

I keep saying I'm fine and I like my life and thank god I'm on my own and not dependent. It's to the point where I'm repeating this to people, not because I want to reassure them, but because I'm trying to convince myself. I'm almost forcing myself to have fun and make plans so I'm temporarily distracted. I've been going out more and drinking more and I knew this would happen. I knew I would crack at some point. Covering up feelings doesn't make them go away, it just makes them surface in other ways, such as sickness or nightmares. I've been having recurring nightmares for a few weeks now. At first I kept dreaming about death, then I was dreaming about being forced to get married. In all of th0se dreams I was crying and I didn't have a dress, because I can't imagine getting married in the traditional sense and it scares me to no end. Now my nightmares are about my house. It started with dreams about trying to rescue my cats. I'm actually angry and anxious about my mom moving I guess. Rationally, it is fine. Things have to change and people move all the time. It's just a house. But on some level, I can't grasp not having a home base. I know there are other places I can stay, but for so long it was always my mom and sisters in that house. I can't even get my mom on the phone anymore. She doesn't answer her cell phone and she isn't online, so it's like she is gone.

Last night I had the worst nightmare ever in the emotional sense. I was at this cafe and this woman looked exactly like my mom, but I knew that it couldn't be her. I kept staring at her and I was going to say something, and then I found out that it really was her. She wasn't the same though. She was a different person in the same body. Then we went to the house, because she was moving and tearing it apart. It was a complete mess and I was frantically trying to get all of my things before she torched it all. Nothing looked the same. The stairs were rickety attic steps and when I tried to climb them they fell apart and I was hanging from the second floor. My grandmother and aunt were there and I just wanted them to leave so they didn't have to see the disaster area that my mom created. Honestly, this is how I feel about the situation. I think it's a selfish, spontaneous decision that came at the worst possible time for everyone and I am beyond stressed about it. I'm raging.

It's true that you can't make decisions based on what other people want and you can't make other people happy. It's also true that you have a responsibility to your family and your children. I'm not saying she shouldn't be moving. I'm saying she needed to prepare us and transition it instead of getting married without telling anyone right after a shocking death in the family and then picking up and moving in a whirlwind of urgency and secrecy.

It's hard to know how to handle things, but I'm seeing that she hurt her parents and her siblings. I'm having anxiety attacks again, and I don't want to blame her but my dreams tell me that it's a serious issue for me. I'm not ready to "grow up" and be on my own. Sometimes I need to talk to my mom and no one else can take her place. I want to get out of NY and stop drinking and living a life that isn't me. All I really want is to go home and I can't. I can never go home. It's not there. I wish home was the town or the rest of my family but it isn't. Home is in the past.

A Place For My Head :: Linkin Park
Find another place to feed your greed
While I find a place to rest
I want to be in another place

I hate when you say you don't understand
(You'll see it's not meant to be)
I want to be in the energy, not with the enemy
A place for my head
Maybe someday I'll be just like you, and
Step on people like you do and
Run away the people I thought I knew
I remember back then who you were
You used to be calm, used to be strong
Used to be generous, but you should've known
That you'd wear out your welcome
Now you see how quiet it is, all alone

January 13, 2009

From the Trenches of the Lower East Side Holy Writer's Club

I'm going to write about writing because ultimately I want to get paid to write. I would be happy if someone wanted to give me health insurance to blog. I would even write research papers about tables and chairs. I just like words and putting them together. Today a sales rep wrote "verticle" instead of "vertical," and I nearly choked on my sugar dense tea latte. Spelling mistakes are disgusting.

Anyway, the story begins when I signed up for free writing workshops from the Gotham Writing School in NYC last week. I almost didn't go today, because all day I just wanted a nap and a Friday instead of a cube on a Tuesday. The class was from 7-8p and at 6:15 I found out it was too late to cancel my spot and I had to just go so I wouldn't feel guilty about it. Whatever, it's only an hour. So I took the 6 to Bleecker Street from work and walked a little bit too far on Bowery so I wound up in the slums of the Lower East Side wearing Via Spiga, Uggs and a preppy Italian scarf. Clearly I should stay on the West side above 14th Street at all times. So I blasted my white, suburban music a little louder and stormed past some homeless people, a few abandoned buildings, and a lot of trendy Asians.  I tried to look hard core so I didn't stand out so much, but I think I needed some spandex. At least I'm not blonde right now.








I backtracked and found the place. Not just any old building, but the YMCA. Immediately I think of charities, religion, pools, and single teenage moms. I don't know why, but I do. I went to the class and it sort of inspired me to write a memoir about the "Mom and Her Wrench of a Boyfriend" debacle that has been building for the last decade. I definitely have material and I definitely have enough sarcasm to make it mildly entertaining and relatable. Why not? I was thinking that I could write it with my sisters, so the reader gets some different perspectives on one situation and then we can divide the profits or pay for Mom's nursing home in the future. Ha ha just kidding, I think. 

I learned that to write a memoir or a story or build a character, you have to put the character in a tree, throw rocks at him and then get him down from the tree.  And now we are back in first grade and "the dog ran." It would be run to throw rocks though. 

The class was very rudimentary but exactly as I imagined. Big classroom, some chalk, a bunch of notebooks and a few annoying volunteers. Whenever a writer writes, on some level they think their work is decent. People who hate writing or can't think of words don't waste their time just for fun. Blogging is inherently self-serving and egotistical because who really cares? Honestly I write this to vent and I tell my sisters to read it whenever I update. I don't care who else sees it, but I guess maybe I think I'm entertaining sometimes. Not right now, but when I rant perhaps? So when people volunteer to read their 5 minute writing exercise out loud in a free workshop, they come across as arrogant and weird. They are so smug about it! Also their stories are stereotypical wannabe writer fluff. They write about their roommates or their commute or protesting in a forest. This is why I am not published and I don't submit my work and I don't volunteer in class. It's hard to put yourself out there and be original in front of a jury of peers. We're all really the same. We have different experiences and perspectives, but underneath the black cloaks and ugly sweaters, we're all just animals with advanced brain functions. It's silly to think we're great at anything. 








When I left, I was laughing to myself because the event was just so average and predictable. Nothing even remotely interesting happened. To add to the typical NY evening, I had to take the gross F train to the 14th St. Path and of course it's creepy and a rat ran past me on the platform and I almost jumped onto the tracks trying to escape. Once again, I wish I had a blow gun in my pocket. I was practically running to transfer at 14th and this old, haggard woman was going down the steps one at a time every five minutes and yelling something about "suffering." I'm like shut the hell up for the next five minutes and just be happy you're alive! Your life probably isn't as bad as you imagine and no one cares anyway. This is Manhattan. We don't look each other in the eye, let alone pity our neighbor. Get out of my GD way! 

When the Path came, I actually jumped for joy discreetly. I love Hoboken and my expensive apartment overlooking Wall Street. In fact, tomorrow I think I will skip my writing workshop, because I don't need to know how to write a story. I just need a kick in the ass to do it. I also need an attention span that lasts longer than 5 seconds so that one of my ideas (or dating interests?) can prevail and I can finally get out of my cube...

January 7, 2009

What's the Point?!



OMG. I don't know what my passions in life are anymore. I just feel so brain washed and neutral. I used to have so much motivation to write and travel and act and paint.. and now I don't do any of that really. My latest "plan" is to get an MBA... WHY? I have to take statistics and econ and I don't even care about it! I don't know what classes in college I loved. I just don't remember.. or maybe I've never really been excited about anything in my life except winning.

I get excited to get a new job... or if I win an election... or get the part... but that's not a passion! I was more excited to get into all of my colleges than I was to become a screen writer. Then I changed my major and I was more excited to compete in the AAF competition than I was to learn about the industry. I obsessed over my GPA so much that I memorized information instead of processing it. I'm on my third job in a year and a half, because I care more about getting ahead and not settling than I do about the actual responsibility of having a career. Or maybe I don't want a career.

I just realized that I have nothing to do in life that is worthwhile. I'm going to die and no one will know that I lived 100 years from now. It won't matter. I'm not doing anything remotely important or good. I'm now on a mission to figure out what makes me happy and what I can do to actually help someone. I don't think planning where a corporation should buy advertising space for millions of dollars counts as a good deed.

I can picture myself having my own business... but I can't do that yet because I don't have money. I can't get published til I have an idea. An original idea. But those don't really exist. Everything sounds like something else. What am I gonna do with myself now!?

I need divine intervention. Universe! Reveal my purpose.... now please?

January 6, 2009

Even this Blog is Bipolar!


Random Quote of the Day: "I'm sorry if he's ugly and fat, but he should still be a nice person." -My Dad who then proceeds to laugh at himself hysterically.

I was going to blog about the wonderful holiday season, including the five day New Years Eve bender, but now I'm all caught up in drama and I can't think. I'm almost 24, so it's not that I feel abandoned by my mom moving across the country. I feel sick because she's bipolar and not taking medication and she's going to live with a psychotic brain washing control freak. I'm afraid that she will realize it was all a mistake and won't have a way to escape. Also she doesn't answer my calls anymore and doesn't say "I love you" when she hangs up. Not a huge deal normally, but I used to talk to my mom almost every day. Now she doesn't know what's going on in my life. At least she remembered that I needed pots and pans, so when the movers came 3 weeks early today, she left those in the abandoned house for me to get... somehow... in the car that I don't have. It's a good thing my sister is home, so I could call her and tell her to put mom on the phone so I could find out that she didn't go to work today because she's moving early. So I guess if I didn't happen to stalk her, I wouldn't have found out and I would have gone home on the 15th to see her before she left. I hate secrets more than I hate lying.

Mostly I'm afraid to be like my mom. When I feel restless or moody, I get extreme anxiety. This is not because I live in a city or because my job is stressful or because I'm just a 20 something head case. It's because I'm deathly afraid that being bipolar or schizophrenic is genetic. Is it? It runs in my family. My great grandfather, my uncle, my mom... what if I'm not just moody. What if I need lithium?

My dad says she's always been like that and that he can't imagine moving away from us. He said he would love to move to Montana, but it's not in the cards because he has a family. He then gave me parental advice for maybe the fourth time in my life. The first time was right before my 7th birthday and he told me to be grateful for any gift I got, even if it was a used tissue. I know my mom cares about us on some level, but she's also not sympathetic to anyone else's feelings. She thinks that how anyone feels is only because of how they interpret a situation and she refuses to take responsilbility for another person. This also applies to being sick. She doesn't believe in Western medicine and she thinks that even cancer is caused by some mental or emotional state. Probably half true, but we're not any closer to solving this problem. It might not seem like a problem to anyone else, but it's literally tearing the rest of my family apart. My sisters and I are trying to be "strong" about it, but my grandparents are a wreck and my aunt calls me all the time now. Splendid times.

Meanwhile, I am actually happy with my life here. I had a really great "Chicken Fried" Christmas and a crazy long fun weekend. My New Year's resolutions are to stop worrying so much about things I can't control (I will probably never blog about this situation again), to be grateful for the good things and focus on them, and to study for the GMATs and apply for NYU in the Spring. Good luck to me. I'm also going to Pittsburgh on the 23rd and Vegas on March 11th. Today I am so so so grateful that I live in this place on my own and that I don't need anyone to give me money. I'm so happy that my mom didn't decide to move before we were all 18. Welp, I just destroyed dinner as usual. I can't cook, but I'm grateful I have food at all.

Happy 09.