love's not punk (first draft)

sometime in the last year, something within me changed. i find myself overwhelmed with love for the people in my life. i cried all day at a friend's bridal shower a few weeks ago. i can't even make it through an episode of grey's anatomy without choking back tears.

when i told my mom i thought i was broken,  she said you are not broken, you are grown up. you are looking at the world around you and seeing the possibility for your future. you are appreciating the human experience.

emotion is described on dictionary.com as an "affective state of consciousness." feeling is a form of consciousness, something that lets us know we are human. we fear pyscho- and sociopaths because they lack empathy. horror books and movies villainize the rise of unfeeling robots and computers. almost every romantic movie delves into the pitfalls of unspoken love between two people. stories of people like kitty genovese, who died because of social indifference, are widely televised.


 
and yet every day, i am amazed at the indifference i see in the city around me. by the time we are teenagers, we have been trained by society not to show people that we care. it's cool to not give a shit about anything. it's easy to numb yourself to pain, to keep others in the dark about who you really are and what's going on inside you. when i was in high school, i wanted to be blase. in training to be indifferent, i didn't tell anyone i loved them or permit myself to hate. i learned to love in the dark.

but when you are 16 and your mom gets her own room in the ICU of Mayo Clinic,
when you are 17 and your best friend gets so guilty she stops eating,
when you are 18 and you are alone, hundreds of miles from home,
when you are 19 and the only boy you've ever loved puts a gun to his head,
you have to stop loving in the dark.

eighteen

i held the bloody hand of a boyfriend after he punched a hole through his door big enough to match the hole in his heart. i watched friend after friend break down, drop out, lock themselves away. i saw family members betrayed and stomped on by people they trusted. i witnessed my mom cry for the first time. these experiences taught me that telling someone to chin up, to feel better, to stop crying, denies the right to having that emotion, the right to humanness.

your emotions are important and relevant. you are not less valid for waking up crying or pissing yourself laughing. you are not stupid or childish for being so happy you could scream or being mad enough to break an entire china set. cool indifference is bullshit. letting yourself become numb only works for so long.



i never saw my best friend cry until she fell in love with someone her parents hated. somewhere between putting her family relationships at risk and knowing it was the right thing to do, she grew up, became secure enough to be vulnerable. she was 19.

the summer before i moved to chicago, my mom covered up her sorrow so severely that i thought she didn't care that i was leaving until she broke down a week before i left. she was 44.

my great-grandma spent the better part of her life spewing disdain and dressing herself in callousness. when she got dementia in old age, she forgot how to be indifferent. she cried, told us she loved us, asked us to stay with her. she was 92.

it has taken me 20 years, a lot of heartache, and my best friend saying, "i am so glad you wrote this" to get here, to this paradigm shift. to realize that apathy is overrated. to appreciate my own very human experience. to bleed compassion. to let love in.

i always used to stress out about whether or not i was happy, whether or not i was still a good person, whether or not i was whole. in the last year i have come to recognize that as long as your emotions aren't permitting you to harm others, you are still a good person. that the point of life is not to be happy or whole, it is to be chipped and broken and real. to appreciate the ups and downs of being a fallible living creature who has the very special privilege of experiencing emotion.




following is a collection of quotes i have found relating to this topic as well as lyrics, art, stories, and poems that were submitted to me by my friends and colleagues for use in this zine.

groove

i told a friend earlier this week that i would cut her hair tonight & we could watch grey's anatomy together.

somehow more and more people heard about it & wanted haircuts/to hang out, so tonight emily, alea, sam, leah, dan, juan, and tj all came over. we got 4 pizzas and a couple 6 packs of mike's hard & just sat around talking. i cut emily's, dan's, and leah's hair, and then we watched tv and played mario kart.

it was probably a stupid idea and a waste of precious precious time to get this zine done, but i don't care. i missed my friends. i did the dishes after, piled up bottles and boxes and took the trash out, and i just kept thinking about how i feel really fulfilled in my relationships here, which hasn't always been the case.

sometimes going to art school it's a little hard to maintain friendships because artists and designers are usually very introverted and somewhat selfish. but i'm so proud of my friends, and nights like tonight when my friends need and want me, i feel really good about myself. everyone just kept saying how much they love how we've decorated our apartment, asked to see my portfolio and told me they were super impressed, told me they liked my hair and the way i was dressed, sought me out to consult them on how to cut their hair...it was just a good night. i'm so happy that i have friends who lift me up, especially lately when my life is a giant ball of stress and emotions.

mouse hunt

one of my favorite movies when i was a kid was mouse hunt, but let me tell you now that trapping mice is a lot less fun than the movie made it seem.

a few weeks ago, we had our property manager set traps around the kitchen and front closet because we had discovered that a mouse had eaten a good 1/8th of my favorite beautiful tapestry that hung on the wall between the kitchen & front hall. we hadn't noticed because there was a shelving unit in front of it (full of other things of mine like my extensive collection of thousands of precious cupcake liners i've collected over the years, completely shredded. i cried over those.)

we caught one pretty early on, a couple of weeks ago. it got snap trapped & i threw it out. it was gross, but he didn't suffer so it was fine. yesterday a mouse crawled into daniella's shoes by her door, and i trapped it in a trashcan before transferring it to our terrarium container with some food & water. (we're taking him to a huge park several miles away from here tomorrow.) tonight, another mouse got stuck to a glue trap we nudged a little bit from its usual position. and of course it squealed and cried and tried to rip itself off the trap, so daniella came and got me from my room to help her.

she wanted to pry it off the trap, not understanding how strong the glue is. she didn't want it to suffer, but she didn't want me to kill it either. she was scared for it to die. so she called her parents, who got upset at us for not using no-kill traps. (can you imagine the deadpan look on my face right now?)

i was thinking how daniella & her parents must think i'm such a hardened, horrible person to be able to drown a mouse stuck to a glue trap (by the sounds of the call, it's the impression i got. maybe it's not true at all.) but i think part of the problem with it was maybe our difference in spirituality--daniella is an athiest, and i'm not at all. i think that she holds a very high reverence for life & not harming other creatures, as do i. and i'm not trying to say that athiests don't in general. but i think that maybe her belief that life and death are black & white equips her with a fear of death that i don't have.

that's not saying that i want to die or think that it will be easy when my time comes. but i was raised knowing that life doesn't end with death. i was raised communicating with my "dead" grandparents and great uncle. i can even hear my family's voices reciting that 4th principle during service, "we affirm that the existence and personal identity of the the individual continue after the change called death." i don't know what i think about mice going to heaven or whatever, but i do think that my remorse was enough to honor his little life, and it's part of the circle.

everything is a lesson, and i'm glad that the mouse gave his life so i could grasp the concept of holding life and death in my hands and giving the poor little dude serenity when he needed it.


(that's not to say that the other five glue traps positioned around my house are staying, because they're not. i could do it all again if i needed to, but i don't want to witness that suffering again.)

the first good visit

i didn't post on my visit back home, and as i was reading back through some earlier posts about how evansville has been a sore spot since leaving, i realized i should. i'm happy to say that my last visit home was wonderful.

i got home friday night, helped my mom prepare for the bridal shower until about 3 am, and then we had two back-to-back showers the next day. i wore my dress (which is now my second favorite outfit) and parted my hair in the middle and felt really great all day. saturday night i got ihop and old chicago with dustin, and i went home and went to bed. normally i drive around and listen to music and get reacquainted with my hometown. this time i didn't, and i feel like it was a good decision.

sunday my mom and i had cupcakes in bed for brunch, and then she drove me to kanpai for solaris' earth day celebration. it was really great to see everyone, meet the new people, and catch up with amy and cole. as much as things can get tense doing design work with amy around deadlines and miscommunication, i really do like getting to just hang out with her when i'm in evansville. same with cole, and his partner is the sweetest & just gets me. it was good to be social. sometimes because i have such a small social circle in chicago, i forget what it feels like to have a community of people. and that was nice. we just talked about things at solaris and shopping and everyone's babies. amy and cole bumped into dylan at fresh market apparently, and they said he followed them around trying to talk to them the whole time, like he used to do at the salon. my mom said that sometimes it's just nice to hear someone else call your ex a weirdo and i think she's right. being so distanced from the situation now, it's easy to slip into thinking i made a bad decision. but i didn't, and i'm happy with how i am now.

monday my mom and i got breakfast at cross-eyed & then i got a haircut. it was so good to catch up with mashae. she's got her life all planned out, and has babies and a house, but i can still talk to her and i have always loved talking with her. she's far from a best friend, but she made working with dylan bearable. she was a friend to me when i felt alone and inferior at work. and i'm happy to see her building a life. especially with blake finishing school and moving across the country and mashae having another baby and getting married in alabama, it's easy to feel static and boring in comparison to my friends. but it's a process. this time next year will be my time, and until then, i have the freedom to be young and a little reckless. and i'm grateful for that.

and i'm grateful for the fact that i was able to go home and not hate it. i felt like an outsider, but in a good way. in a way that i have found a new home and niche elsewhere in the world, and am happy.

pantydropper

i know that this is way way way way way way WAYYYYY too early to be thinking about this, especially considering that all i've got so far is a smile and some intriguing conversation, but damn it i NEED things to work out with cute smiley boy because i don't think i've been this attracted to anyone ever and it's starting to interfere with my life for reals.

i've thought this guy was attractive all semester but something about today has just got me going crazy. i literally spent all afternoon and most of my night class imagining him in my bed & his adorable little skinny pants and oxfords on the floor.

uuuuuuuuuuuggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.
here's hoping he responds to my email asap

good things and scary things

a short post while i wait for files to upload & then finally getting some sleep

i was talking to my mom on the phone the other day about college and plans and whatnot and she told me that although it isn't a longshot for me to stay in chicago, she doesn't think it's plausible. a mediumshot, she said. and it just kind of threw me off kilter. i've been existing in a space of pretty high expectations for my future, so maybe a dose of reality from my mom is necessary. but it also hurt my feelings and created a rift of self-doubt within me that i don't like.

it's strange to think that this time next year i'll be on my own, out of school. scary strange. and unfortunately i am not giving myself the grace period of grad school to figure my shit out; i don't have the safety net of a serious significant other to help me pay for rent and food and what have you. and that's terrifying. but mark my words, i will not be moving back to evansville long-term. literally every time i've been back to evansville (save the two times when dylan and i were still dating), i have been disappointed and left empty by my hometown. and i can't exist there after college. i can't move back in with my parents as much as i love them.

maybe i'll end up in north carolina with my aunt and mamaw. maybe i'll go to cincinatti, or iowa city, or savannah. i have been happy in those places before and know that i could exist there if only temporarily.

my long term goals change like crazy, but at this point i think i'd like to end up in san francisco or somewhere abroad. i want to travel the US with gitsy and my bike, maybe by car or train. i think i still have a lot of soul searching to do. but i don't want to live in my mom's house for longer than a summer. i don't want to go back to a town in which i'm constantly worried about running into people from my past, being judged. i want the end of college to be a fresh start.

the good thing? i tried on dresses at forever 21 today & am officially too small for the plus size section. the larges are generally still pretty tight/weird looking, but the plus section were all much to big, too long, too bulky. i ended up getting a normal f21 sheer maxi dress that i LOVE, i just have to find a slip because the one that came with it literally suffocated me. so im excited to be going home for this weekend with an awesome new dress!

plans (and maybe something more, and definitely things that i will regret writing later)

tonight i planned to get good & drunk (2 shots & a beer and i was far more gone than i'd anticipated i'd be), write and sketch the outline for my zine while listening to music, and watch mulholland drive & ink some of my sketches while i sobered up. ("write drunk, edit sober" ...i'd never tried it & thought it might help stimulate flow of words i was hesitant to put down)

right as i sat down with my sketchbook, i got a notification that tj had tweeted something & it was about how he was crying on the train & didn't know what to do. so i pulled on some clothes and walked my drunk ass to the train station to meet him for coffee.

it turns out his big ex, his dylan, had texted him out of nowhere asking if he was happy and it was just too much for him to handle. the kid who listens to death metal and mercilessly destroys all life in halo every time we play, and he was sitting with an empty cup and eyes full of tears when i got there.

i don't know what i'm getting at here. i just hated seeing him broken. and it's not like i havent seen him break down before, but it just hurts. it's something ive been thinking about a lot lately in the making of this zine, how this city has done so much for me, how i blossom here and am driven by what surrounds me, and how he wakes up every morning wishing he were somewhere else.

i like to think that i'm the type of person who fixes things. i always have been. even if i'm sheepish about it, i do what i can to help. the other day i listened to an HRC rep on the phone for 15 full minutes before telling her that i really have no spare change at this moment in my life but to please call me back this summer. today i gave my uneaten snacks to a man on the train with a teardrop tattoo and dirt-caked fingernails who was apologizing to strangers as he asked for charity. i couldn't make eye contact with him or speak while i did it, but i listened. and i'm the only person on the train who acknowledged his humanness.

so maybe that's why everything with dylan has affected me so much. why it's been fucking forever and there are still tiny pieces of me shattered on the floor, why i can't let myself get close to any of the boys who have taken me out to dinner, bought me sweet wine, and opened themselves up to me. i have always been a guilt internalizer and i feel bad for what i did to dylan. even though he could be so dismissive and emotionally abusive. i still feel bad for leaving him when he was at a low point because ive seen what that does to people.

this semester i've built a shell around myself that surprises even me sometimes. daniella has tried at least 3 times to talk to me about how tj is leaving school and i straight up closed the bathroom door & told her to stop talking to me last time. lately when i'm down, i don't call anyone. i pretend i'm not down to everyone but me. i don't let myself even write down half of what im feeling because i don't want to admit it's happening. but i'm a little bit tired of that. it's hard to be like that all the time.

so this is an open apology to dylan because right now i need to get it out of me:
i am sorry for leaving you when you were at your worst. i am sorry for helping break you. i am sorry that i wasn't there to put you back together. when i broke us, it was my intention that we would get to know ourselves better & after that, things would be ok for us to be together again. and then things got too hard. but know that it was never my intention to leave you broken--i wanted to be there for you again.

i am not sorry that we are apart, i am not sorry i called your mom when you told me you tried to kill yourself, i am not sorry that i lashed out when we worked together last summer, i am not sorry that i texted you saying sorry so many fucking times. i'm still fucking pissed at how you and your friends treated/treat me. the way you publicly demonized me multiple times on facebook was inappropriate, cruel, and immature. but even then, i am training myself to look to the future without picturing you somehow back in my life, and it's fucking hard. i debate with myself all the time about whether i should give a shit or not, and maybe i'll never know what's right. but im sorry for leaving you when you were low. i'm sorry for being the type of person who walked away when someone needed me.