Chapter: Resilience

The last 12 months have fumbled by with such a determined, graceless speed that I literally do not know what month it is until I've received my monthly subscription.

In one year I have had enough developments for a lifetime. I got dumped by the man I thought I was going to marry (read: first love), I was sent to Asia for one job therefore taking a temporary leave of another, I was told by my roommates that they were moving out of the area and therefore I would have to find a new apartment on my own (a good and bad thing: good - cause they were the worst roommates ever, bad because getting your own apartment in l.a. is not exactly an affordable task at this juncture), I came back from Asia after deciding it was not a good fit and was unable to get back my old job, I lost my favorite uncle in New York, cleaned out my savings account to fly across country to see my youngest sister who was unexpectedly diagnosed with renal failure in Philadelphia - an event that took place after she visited California and was dragged away by police because of our worse-than-a-storybook-evil-stepmother who felt like upping her crazy bitch points, which subsequently caused me to break my rule about never going over to my fathers house to go search for my sister and then call every hospital and police station in Orange County until I found her in a lockdown facility where my stepmother was going to let her stay to rot without telling her family...(pause for breath).

I left my modeling agency because they were lazy, signed with a new agency who didn't end up matching my enthusiasm or believe in me nearly enough, signed with a management company knowing full well that up until this point I had zero acting experience or frankly even a desire to act at all, became a title holder and a Miss California, USA 2012 contestant which put me under so much stress that I became obsessed over every freckle, pore and hair follicle on my body,  my computer acquired a virus and crashed, I reconnected with an ex-boyfriend I had not seen since I left him in Germany over 3 1/2 years ago - it turned out to be a bad idea, discovered that my mothers new beau was in fact my fathers best friend from the navy - a secret I was expected to keep while she ceaselessly attempted to set me up with his man-boy son, My father cancelled my medical insurance out of spite but decided not to tell me until I had racked up thousands of dollars in hospital bills, I was accepted into a local university as a transfer student for the Fall and then in the Summer discovered they had "rescinded" my acceptance after first cashing my registration check, and of course during this time one of my best friends decided to go to Saudi Arabia for a year for work experience, my transmission died while I on the freeway and given all of the aforementioned events I have unable to acquire the funds to fix it and on and on I go with my tail of woe. 

I have always been a tenacious person. I was met with extreme opposition at a very young age and at one time I even questioned why I was so afflicted during a time where everyone else was so carefree. I eventually concluded that it was all preparatory for something greater. I figured that if I was to do something great with my life that that would come with a price and that I needed to ready my backbone, and spirit for such a tremendous responsibility. 

I have since lost that optimism. 

Moving to L.A. and seeing the suffering and struggling around me made me believe that sometimes great suffering comes with no gain and no fortuitous agenda. 

But even as I type this I wonder if that mentality in itself is defeat. 

Is living on the street with no roof over your head a struggle - a moment of extreme opposition to get through, or is it the cards you've been dealt? Is it the entire picture? Are we homeless because we have given up or are we homeless because that's our lot in life? Have we folded too early and so we accept our situation as our permanent condition and allow ourselves to fall categorically into an affliction that might have been temporary? Is it not possible for it to simply be "the way things are"?

I see how easy it is to give in. How easy it is to wonder what it's all for and to finally decide that the universe is conspiring against you and you concede that the path of least resistance is the one where you sit down on your stoop and die. 

There are two major theories when it comes to life's choices. One is that if it's supposed to happen then it will - the universe will conspire to help you fulfill your own personal legend. Then there's the idea that if you are met with enough opposition and hardship then it is a sign that you are on the wrong path and you need to be going the other way. 

This seems incomplete. What if what the universe has in store for you is to face that opposition head on. To suffer greatly and face sky-scraping challenges, to tell you with all it's weather and natural disasters to "turn back" but pulling your heart and will forward. Can't it in fact be true that maybe your personal legend is to battle daily? That there are no "signs" only the will to survive? To survive outside of your circumstances? To not accept "that's the way things are"?

If that is indeed a possibility then I believe I am in that category. I have not seen a green patch or the 9th cloud ever since I can remember. With every mediocre opportunity comes a contract with the devil. 

Maybe it seems like I'm being glum - maybe I am. But I reflect so often upon my life soberly and carefully that I wonder if maybe glum is my virtual avatar.  

I want to believe that most things are out of my control. And that with the billions or people, the earths unpredictable tendencies, politics, economics, and disease that not everything can simply change because I wish it. That sometimes my failure is not a result of a single choice but of a network of choices made by a network of people. Still it is up to me to take responsibility for my own life. To decide that I am going to be the head of the network and braid it to let out on the road I choose for myself. As far as the opposition, and the signs, and the gloom what choice do I have but to recognize their existence and continue to prepare myself for the day where all that muscling actually builds a life for myself. 

Estrogen Sonata.

February 2006 - a market roof collapsed in Russia killing 56 people

March 2006 - More than 200 wildfires in a 24-hour period destroyed 15 homes, killed 10,000 cattle and horses, and burned 191,000 acres.

April 2006 - terrorists set off 3 bombs in the Sinai Peninsula resort city of Dahab, killing 18 and injuring 85.

June 2006 - an overloaded bus plunged into a ravine in Tanzania killing, 54 people.

November 2006 - a fire swept through a home for the mentally ill in Missouri, killing 10.

With events like these my own personal "natural disasters" are horrifically  irrelevant. However, to a 19 year old girl with man troubles these news headlines don't even appear on the radar. It's spring 2006, and I am almost a year into a relationship that would end up lasting 3 years. Of course I knew at the beginning that this partnership wasn't going anywhere - but being the headstrong post teen that I was - I did it anyway. Now those of us good with arithmetic can gather that investing 3 years in a relationship going nowhere is quite the time-suck. However it would seem that although I had the wisdom not to start attaching his last name to my Christmas cards I couldn't convince the rest of me that I wasn't 100% committed. 

100% commitment: My gift, my curse. My passion, my blight. I had been living under the harsh impression that if you don't go big, you go home. And home was no place I wanted to be. 

So I committed 100% of my time and attention to an idea that at 19, I had no right to have. I continued my lifelong endeavor of assigning myself every single extracurricular activity out there and pairing it up with whatever class would give me the most homework all so I would never have to go "home". Since homework at the collegiate level is more of an "optional" thing - I gave myself case studies. My relationship was my homework. My woman-cave. My escape. 

I was reminded of this fact after an impromptu laundry date with my best friend in my room this evening. Pandora has once again failed us by being so damn stingy with their allotted 40 hours/week free listening gimmick so we had to result to..*cd's (*definition available on wikipedia). Since we just moved here there was still a full box in my room, this box was full of photo albums and burned discs. I pulled out a cd in an attempt to sountrack our folding session and I was mortified to listen to what I thought was an acceptable mixed tape back then. After a few failed tracks I would change one cd out for another and then I started noticing a theme. 

Not only was 2006 a complete disaster for my love life it was not good for music either. 

I mashed up Carrie Underwood's - "You Won't Find Me" with Lifehouse's - "Whatever it Takes" and Angels & Airwaves - "Lifeline", and of course, OF COURSE I topped it off with 1994's Hootie and the Blowfish - "Let Her Cry". Woulda been a sin not to, (if you're going to play a country singer opposite a blink-182 frontman you might as well go for the gold). And then various worship songs about Jesus for filler. 

I'm STILL listening to this cd - and I'm thinking, "what in God's name was I on?" I realize, often too late, how hard I am on myself. I was a young girl with normal estrogen levels trying to figure out an adult relationship way above my maturity level. I wanted to feel and experience things I couldn't really even identify because I never had them, in ANY  capacity. I was so intrigued by love and the concept of 2 people doing life together that I had no real grasp on what kind of life I wanted for myself.

I eventually torpedo'd that relationship and found myself in the aftermath. And out of of all disasters in 2006 and the years following - I am lucky to have been reunited with my  core and be among those counted as a survivor. 

Six Chunky Monkies.

It occurred to me today, for no particular reason, that it has been six months since the fated end of my last relationship. Here it is, the festive day of Patrick the Saint and I am awake...blogging...about my "x".


Stick a half eaten carton of “Chunky Monkey” in front of me and I would make a perfectly sad cliche’. (Chocolate Chip is in the freezer, so that makes me ahead of the curve). <— This is what it takes to make me feel superior. Wow.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Some time later - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

In an effort to widen the gap between me and every other sad dumpee who pours their heart out to their online diary - I’ve taken to distracting myself in a hip, young, intelligent, “it’s not me, it’s you”, sorta way. 

a la “How to: HTML” 

• Widen gap ftw

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - even more time later - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 

But what if it IS me? 

I mean I’m pushing 25 and the world is going to end soon and I haven’t had my roots done in at least a month which could be a clear indication that I’ve “let myself go”, and the fact that i’m in this phase where I think my grey wife-beater goes with everything, (everything), isn’t helping my case for “it’s you”; and he might have sensed all along that I was this mess of a person! 

Either that or he found out I’m not a real blonde…

Nah.  

He knew I would one day wear wife-beaters for days at a time over my yoga pants and traipse around Los Angeles under the half-implied impression that I was always coming or going from an intense yoga workout.

It IS me! 

Well fanfuckingtastic. That damnable phrase about “coming full circle” applies. 

Gap Narrowed. 

• Double Chocolate Chip.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - you now gather what the dashes mean - - - - - - - - - - -

There’s really nothing to be said. And since that person I call my best friend has started counting my calories for me (yes, it’s like that), I can’t eat my feelings either. So i’m forced to confront them. 

6 months at a time. 

Fortunately I can’t fit it into my schedule at present.

All I know is that from time to time I catch myself moving forward, but thinking backward and my mental odometer is getting confused.

Paulo Coelho has been my literary Xanax when he wrote in the Alchemist “If what one finds is made of pure matter, it will never spoil. And one can always come back. If what you had found was only a moment of light, like the explosion of a star, you would find nothing on your return.” 

There’s something nurturing about that statement. Even more so when read in context. I may not have the time or even the wisdom to decipher what any of my internal communicators are telling me about love, life, and growing up - but for now I just have faith and a Coldstones punch card, and that’s good enough for me.

It would seem that even if I circle, and circle, and circle and step forward then back, then forward again; I’m in this calm place where I’ve learned to: 

• appreciate things more (colors brighter. flowers prettier. grass greener. etc.)
• adopt “only time will tell” into my phraseology  
• conceded that patience really is a virtue (and not necessarily one I will ever attain). 
• set a new standard for when, how or if I enter into a relationship. 
  • I know, choosing to be single on purpose during my early (I can still say early) twenties when the pickings are good is brave/stupid/cat-ladyesque.
•  learned to value love, via loss, but still - deeper meaning attained. 
• and I’m still being taught about all the little nuts and bolts that make up my composite.

Whatever lost, whatever (to be) gained - there are things that are building and abiding and I’m going to cherish that. Always.