Ray Hay's Soap Box

It's All Good

2011-10-27T12:07:00.000-07:00

I haven’t written in forever because my whole life is like Jenga, and each little piece is all stacked up into a nice, neat tower, and I’m scared if I take one block out to make time to write or work out or anything that I don’t have much time for, all of the other pieces will fall all over the floor.
So here’s to falling on the floor!

Things have been really good for a while now. My life got significantly better in April, and things have been pretty uphill since then. Don’t get me wrong, now, I’m exhausted all the time, and those old anxiety demons have reared their projectile vomiting heads a few times since I started school again, but those are minor battles when compared to the two years prior. Ughhhhh. I don’t even like thinking about that stretch between 09 and 10.

Life is finally taking some shape. Things are headed in a clear direction. I’m working towards a goal. I’m engaged in project work. I’m doing research. I’m working with kids. And I’m still making time for some fun things here and there. It’s nice to go to sleep every night and realize that I did something with my life today. There are few crappier feelings than lying there in the dark and thinking, “What the hell did I do with my life today? I can’t think of one single thing…”
Though I am content, I am currently experiencing the post-mid semester slump. I had my meltdown last week after I pseudo failed a test, but it was good to pencil in a little crying jag to release some of that pent up intensity. Other than that, I’ve held it together well. I’m just POOPED. All I can think about is taking a 20 hour nap.

I don’t like Christmas much, and I never really have. I love the idea of it, but the reality of it overwhelms me. I know that I physically present a little bit like a crazy person, but I really don’t like to be over-stimulated, and too much activity sort of makes me want to puke or start crying or just freeze up and pretend to be dead so everyone will leave me alone (I’ve always thought it’d be funny if people just tried to “play dead” any time they wanted somebody to go away. Steve Correll does that in “Dinner for Schmucks.” Hilarious!). It feels like the metropolitan statistical area grows about 40 million during the month of December, and I hate being elbow-to-elbow with fat moms in Hobby Lobby. I can’t stand it. I hate how they will bump you in the ass with their basket filled with sparkly little Santas and all kinds of glittery poinsettias, and they don’t even act like they know they did it, but you know they know. They also talk REALLY LOUDLY on their stupid cell phones. Anyway, back to Christmas. This go round, I’m looking forward to it. I’m looking forward to a little break from school and work. I’m looking forward to baking gingerbread cookies and making lewd little ginger bread people, using sprinkles and icing to create their inappropriate anatomy. I’m looking forward to watching “It’s a Wonderful Life” by myself, since everyone I know hates it, and crying my head off when Jimmy Stewart is hugging and kissing his wife and kids and he’s finally grateful for his lot in life. I’m looking forward to drinking Big Doug’s eggnog. I’m looking forward to taking a few things in stride, and not worrying so much about deadlines and projects. I think this year will be different.

My perspective on things has changed a lot, and I really started to feel like myself again in the spring. Now I feel more like me than ever, and it feels good. I needed a while to restore and reshape and get back on track, and I am finally there. I feel independent and motivated, and I’m happy to feel like everything is working out.

Back from CALI, CALI

2011-07-26T09:49:00.000-07:00

I got back from L.A. yesterday. I had a great time. It was so good to see people that I knew when I was there. It was nice to be able to drive around and know where I was going. It was great to be around people who knew me and loved me based on who I was in L.A. at that time in my life. But what was really good was knowing that I made the right choice. I got closure.

I sort of hate the word "closure" because it's so clinical. It's like saying "they have issues." What the crap does that even mean? Anyway, I tend to second guess EVERYTHING I do, which is completely annoying to myself and most people who know me. I try to make decisions based on what's right, whatever that means, and I try to mull over a decision until I'm good and ready and have come to a verdict that makes the most sense. I don't make rash decisions and I don't make impulsive ones.

My choice to move home was one of the hardest ones I've ever had to make. Moving away to California was the first time that I got to establish myself as an adult. I got to leave behind all of the things that I wanted to forget and I got to build my life based on new goals and expectations. The thing is, though, after a while, I started to change. I resented a lot of my past. I was bitter at a lot of people. I got really hard.

L.A. brought out strength in me and it taught me that I could handle things on my own. It also taught me that relying on myself was self destructive. You have to have a support group to stay afloat, and you have to be willing to accept the support that other people offer you. Most of all, though, you have to remember that God is in control. I forgot that part for a long time.

I moved back to Memphis and was so depressed and defeated that I couldn't be who I knew I was. I was overwhelmed and depleted. I was taking so many steps backward. I was living with my parents again, I was in a lot of debt, I felt like a loser... I couldn't reconnect with people or give my relationship a fair shot. I couldn't remember what it was like to be happy. I was working in a job under a pervert boss who was banging a 24 year old girl in our office. I was broke and empty and alone, and I kept thinking that I made the wrong choice.

I met this older guy who kept telling me, "Life is about relationships. You have to focus on those, and not where you live." After a while, that made sense to me.

Things started to change. I'm not sure when the turning point happened, but God scooped me up out of my depression and isolation. My prayer, over and over again, was "God, change my heart or change my circumstances." He did both.

Now I have the best job I've ever had. My relationship is maturing and growing. My relationship with my family is better. I'm better.

I guess I want to get to this: God has never left me. He's blessed me beyond my wildest dreams. There were times I thought I couldn't wake up another day. I couldn't handle going through the motions of ONE MORE DAY. But I did. And I did it because God did it.

I was scared of visiting L.A. again. I was scared that I'd visit and not want to leave. I was scared I'd get back into my old scene and I'd resent moving home. I'd feel like a loser again. I'd feel regret.

I flew over L.A. on Wednesday night and I saw all of those billions of lights down below. That used to make me have butterflies. Seeing all of that activity made me excited and hopeful and challenged. This time, though, I didn't have that feeling. I just felt content.

I got to see some of my closest friends when I went back to L.A. That was a great thing. I was really happy, and it felt so good to reconnect. The thing is, though - it was good to VISIT. All I could think of was, "I can't believe I was living here when I was 23. How the crap did I do this?" I went hard and strong for two years, and then I was exhausted.

I got to go to "The Tonight Show" on Friday and see my hero, Dolly Parton. I never thought I'd be so close to her! She was amazing, like she always has been. I can remember dancing around in a blonde wig when I was little and singing Dolly's songs. I used to watch "Smoky Mountain Christmas" religiously. ("Thar's spells in this PIE!")

It was incredible. My friend Mike took us to the green room and gave us VIP treatment. I got my picture with Jay Leno. I couldn't believe that I was there with Jay Leno and Dolly Parton and one of my best friends. I kept thinking how blessed I was.

The next night we went to the Hollywood Bowl and saw Dolly's concert. I was so moved. I kept thinking how she was so in touch with who she was. She has all this fame and she was just this girl from TN and now she's 65 and playing at the Hollywood Bowl. My friend and I saw a shooting star. It was amazing.

Dolly started playing "Coat of Many Colors," and she talked about how she wrote that song to let the hurt out. Kids bullied her for being poor, and she said that by writing that song, she started healing. I knew what she meant. It's like all of that hurt from growing up, all of that resentment and bitterness from being bullied or misunderstood just sort of left me. I felt completely OK with myself. I started to cry. I felt grateful and fortunate and happy.

For the first time in a long time, I feel really happy. I've felt happy the past few months. I've come to terms with my life. I'm OK with not knowing what's next. I'm OK with lacking direction and certainty. But most of all, I'm OK with being here, and I'm actually happy.

Some other work blogs.

2011-06-29T07:48:00.001-07:00

Before you decide that I'm a disgruntled employee (yes, yes I am), please note that I am not using anyone's names, nor am I disclosing the name of the hellhole in which I worked. That has to count for something, right?

January 20, 2011

Let me give you an example of why I hate customer service. I emailed someone today to tell them that their issue has been fixed, and this was her email response to me.

"So. . . . What’s the answer to the question? Why did this happen and how was the issue resolved? And have you checked that it’s fixed on other pages? I was expecting a more complete response."

And I sort of wanted to google her home address, show up on her front door step, take a big pile of dog crap out of the yard, and rub it in her face to "teach her a lesson" about what it means to employ professionalism and courtesy in the workplace, but instead, I sent her a very very sweet email telling her how very sorry I was for being the dumbest person in the whole wide world who wasn't smart enough to be in a service position.

AAAAAAAAGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Am I the only person on earth who feels like EVERYONE IS GETTING ON MY NERVES RIGHT NOW?!?!?!? If only I could blame it on PMS. But I can't. It's just me.

January 24, 2011

I just received an URGENT email telling me that I had to URGENTLY fix something. The issue was this:

"Kimmie just came up and told me that there was a spelling error in the disclaimer of the site. There is a lower-case ?C? in the word ?care? and it needs to be upper case."

ARE YOU EFFING KIDDING ME?!?!?!?!?

When I think of URGENCY, and CRISIS, and IMMEDIATE, I think of suicide, or school shootings, or terrorism, or international crises.

Even at this stupid job, I think of urgency as someone's entire website being down, or someone's information not showing up.

A lower case c?

Really?

REALLY!?!?

A Good Old Fashioned ROAST

2011-06-28T07:50:00.000-07:00

There are few things in life better than a good old fashioned roast. My last job was HORRIBLE. It was the second worst job I've ever had, and if I'd stayed there ONE DAY longer than I did, it would have been the first worst job I'd ever had.

One thing that's kept my mental health in check has been to journal and blog. In my formative years, it was creating artwork, but at some point, I transitioned to writing.

One of the things that kept me from strangling my boss at my old job was keeping a work blog that I promised not to publish until after I quit. I only worked there for four months, and my boss hated me, so I will never use him as a rec. So, old boss, this is my special gift to you.

Entry #1
January 24, 2011

My boss is a very passive aggressive person who dresses like some sort of homosexual hipster from the early 1990's. I don't mean one of those wonderful, sexy Greek god homosexuals, or one of those homosexuals that is hilarious and sassy and flamboyant (don't judge me for the stereotypes- my gay friends make jokes about the stereotypes and have given me full rights to making jokes, too). I mean one of those dark, brooding, hateful homosexuals who pours rat poison in your ginger ale because he resents being a flight attendant. You know what I mean. He is also deathly skinny. He's one of those people who considers himself an "artist," which is really weird, because he's a geek and does not have a single creative bone in his body. He tries desperately to be associated with the "arts" community, but he has nothing to offer it. He's just one more underachiever in this life who has a lame job down by the airport and works in IT.

I've been trying to figure him out. I've been trying to make a mental map of his passive aggression, hateful sarcasm, and biting comments, but I've decided to stop trying. Every day he tries to make my job more menial. I've seen this before. He is trying to force me to quit, because he doesn't have one good reason to fire me. He doesn't even have the fact that I'm blogging about my dumb work as a reason to fire me, because I'm not posting any work blogs until after I quit, and yes, you lame, uncreative, 1990's suppressed manorexic homosexual, I am quitting this stupid job that is infinitely beneath me, and I wish I was quitting today, but I'm not, because I am responsible, which is one more reason you will be regretful when I leave.

He speaks in all of these weird metaphors and analogies that DO NOT MAKE ANY SENSE. Maybe this job is to teach me more empathy for people who have disabilities. I'm not being funny. I really mean that. I take for granted that I do not have any disabilities. When this guy talks to me, it's like I'm totally disabled. I feel completely confused. When he has these "Come to Jesus" talks with me, I sit there listening to him, watching his lame little soul patch float up and down, trying to figure out what in the hell he's saying. He'll tell me things like, "Well, Rach, you just need to dress for the job you want." Does that mean I should wear a firefighter uniform? Because I want the job where I burn down the building.

My best friend is a very wise and interesting person with intuition beyond his years. He said, "Rachel, you just have to think of your work as the set of a sitcom," (obviously my best friend lives in L.A.), "and your boss is just one more character. Just know he isn't a real person, and that will help you deal with him better."

What's weird is that my boss doesn't really get under my skin that badly because I know my own value. I'm smart, I'm a hard worker, and I can learn to do any job. He can treat me like some idiot all he wants, and it won't get under my skin as long as I KNOW that I'm not an idiot. The fact that he can't control me is why he asks me to order him lunch and answer his phones. Ugh. He hates women. Sexism is so stupid. Why live in America if you're one of those people? Aren't all men created equal here?

I am so ready for this layover in my life to end so I can board the next plane and fly to my destination.

This might be the dumbest job I've ever had.

The upside is that it isn't emotional at all. It's just stupid, mind-numbing monkey work.

There's a girl at my office that I endearingly refer to as Pollyanna behind her back. She's got long stringy hair and she needs braces and she thinks that she is very smart. There's a very (VERY) slight attractiveness about her, despite her vampire teeth, but once she opens her mouth, she turns into this disgusting, wretched, urchin. She tries very hard to denounce her Memphis roots by faking a mid western accent, which could be hilarious, if it wasn't so obnoxious. She's 23 years old and has that virginal, fresh out of college look on her face. She often asks me to make her copies.

I can play the passive aggressive game, too. Watch me walk out the door without a 2 week notice, bitch.

Dresscode for Death

2011-06-28T07:43:00.000-07:00

Life has been great over the past few months. GREAT. My job is the best job ever, and every day, I'm excited about going to work. I've never had an experience like this. Also, I'm on the verge of moving out (again). This makes me excited. Something about looking at piles and piles of cardboard boxes and mismatched furniture makes me absolutely bonkers. I'm looking forward to everything having its own place again. I even had a moment last week where I wasn't just tolerating this town, but I was actually embracing it. I was sitting in a rocking chair on the front porch of my bf's dad's house, and I was drinking a glass of red wine, and it started to rain. The house has a metal roof, so you could hear the rain tapping away. It was so nice. I kept thinking that I couldn't wait to get out of Memphis. I couldn't wait to cut ties with everyone I knew and start over. But I went to LSU and came back. And I went to L.A. and came back. And even though this isn't a place that I necessarily want to be forever, if I wind up staying here forever, there are moments, like hearing rain fall on a roof in the summertime, that make it ok.

Then there are moments that make me want to light the whole city on fire.

I have mentioned on countless occasions that I grew up attending one of those really strict tele-evangelist churches. Not one of the ones that casts out demons and people speak in tongues and fall backwards on the stage, but a tele-evangelist church, nonetheless. Despite the PTSD that I've carried into adulthood from a lot of my memories at that place, I have a strong appreciation for parents who took me to church every Sunday and paid for me to go to camp and all of those things. I'm appreciative that I have an understanding of who God is, and who He isn't, and what I believe and don't believe about Him. I appreciate my background and my faith is the most important thing in my life. But certain parts of the cultural Southern church thing just aren't my gig.

My mom's good friend died on Saturday. She'd been battling cancer for a long time, and on Saturday, she passed away. She had such a servant spirit, and she was someone who was genuinely kind. She'd dedicated her life to serving God, and that was obvious in everything that she did.

I'm not big on funerals, as I've touted before. I hate death and I hate funeral homes and I hate the overwhelming smell of memorial flowers and I hate hugging people whom I hate. So, pretty much, I avoid funerals if I can. Last time I went to a funeral and went back to work afterwards, I was totally worthless and kept crying the whole time. So this time, I decided to go to the visitation the night beforehand, so if I started bawling my eyes out, it wouldn't be quite as bad.

I had a lot of respect for my mom's friend. I respected her because she was the real deal. She wasn't fake or hateful or intolerant. She was genuine. I respected her so much that I carefully picked out a funeral-appropriate outfit that wouldn't make me look like a trollop. Now, I am Dolly Parton through and through, and I typically think, "the flashier, the better," but in this case, I ruled out flashy because this was a matter of respect. I also ruled out casual. I wear flip-flops religiously, but decided I'd go with some very low heeled, close-toed pumps. I even wore pantyhose. There's nothing in this world I hate more than pantyhose except mayonnaise. I HATE how pantyhose drag across your leg hair if you aren't freshly shaved, and I HATE how they bunch up around your crotch so you usually have to wear a slip so your crotch doesn't look lumpy, and I HATE how just the tiniest little snag will make them run and then you look like white trash. I HATE them (I do wear fishnets on occasion, though. not because I want to look like a hooker, but because European women wear fishnets in the winter, and everyone knows that European women are very glamorous, except for the whole not shaving their pits thing). But, the point is, I respected this lady so much that I put on close toed shoes and pantyhose in the 4908 degree heat and I wore a business casual outfit (I hate business casual).

My sister and I pulled up into the parking lot and I saw a few people walk in. And these people were wearing flip flops. And khaki capris. And t-shirts.

And I almost fainted.

I walked into the funeral home and probably would have thrown up if I hadn't spent thousands of dollars in therapy figuring out how to manage anxiety around people that make me really uncomfortable. Everyone was about 50 pounds overweight and I had never in my life been so offended at peoples' lack of taste. I saw people wearing blue jeans. BLUE JEANS. At the funeral home! I had bunched up pantyhose creeping up my crotch and my feet were all crippled because of my close-toed pumps and these white trash people were wearing blue jeans, and SHORTS, and FLIP FLOPS at the FUNERAL HOME?!

Unbelievable.

These are the things that make me hate this town. But you know what? I've noticed that there are just certain subcultures of people around here that I just can't be around because they irritate the crap out of me. It isn't really the entire city that sucks, despite the high crime and educational deficits and obesity and lack of constructive activities. There are actually a lot of wonderful, supportive, moral, good people here. And I've been genuinely happy since I started my new job and my life is back on track. But seriously. A word to the wise: if you're going to a funeral home, shorts, flip flops, blue jeans, capris, cargos, and tank tops ARE COMPLETE INAPPROPRIATE.

No News is Good News

2011-05-01T14:26:00.000-07:00

I used to work with this lady that I sort of hated, and she was big and fat and gross and her hair was gray and greasy and always pulled back in a short pony tail, and she had little skin tags all over her face and neck that looked like little skin lice or something, and her teeth were short and brown and she always had a lot of spit in the corners of her mouth when she talked. I didn't hate her because she was gross. I hated her because she was mean. She was mean and hateful and a HUGE judger, and she told the same uninteresting stories all the time, and she manipulated and spread rumors about everyone behind their backs. She was so negative. Plus, she looked like Chief Bromden.

Anyway, she used to always say, "No news is good news," and that's how I'd like to start my blog. I've noticed that I write more when I'm depressed or mad, and I haven't been depressed or mad in so long that I haven't really had the need to write in order to vent. With that being said, let me tell you about a few really cool things that have happened in the past month.

God's been working in my life, and I can feel it with every part of my being. I know I'm sounding kind of Benny Hinn-ish, but for reals, I feel like a changed person.

I was working in an incredibly negative, isolating, depressing job down by the airport where I was crunching numbers and getting yelled at by sorority whores all day. My boss was a disgusting male chauvinists, Pee-Wee Herman looking pig, always telling me I needed to dress sexier or act a certain way if I wanted a raise. He was really stupid, too. Stupid people on power trips are the WORST. There was also this disgusting, obnoxious, LOUD, raging idiot girl in the office with whom I think my boss was having an affair, but that isn't really relevant. She was the fakest, most ignorant person I've ever had to endure, and she'd be really fake-positive (fake positivism sucks) all the time in the loudest voice you've ever heard, and I always called her Pollyanna. Between Pee-Wee, Pollyanna, and the Greek culture, I could barely handle it.

I was working in this joke of an office shared with about 10 other different companies, in the GHETTO, surrounded by drug dealers and Mexican strip clubs. Plus the office is really far away from my current domicile.

It was during this time that I was struggling with a crap-ton of crap. Serious depression mainly, but I'm not sure how much was biological and how much was environmental. I was struggling with my faith. I was struggling with invasive thoughts. I was sucked into a huge black hole that I couldn't crawl out of, and every day felt like Monday, and I had nothing to look forward to, and all I could do was beat myself up for being a loser and a failure and leaving a dream to live a nightmare every day.

So, all of this leads up to me eating chicken.

I love fried chicken, and so does my bff, and one night around 1:30 in the morning, he and I bought all of the fried chicken (and I do mean ALL of it) at Popeye's in Hollywood and we ate every last bit of it, and the Persian guy running the place was really mad that we bought all of his chicken. I digress.
So, I am at work in my ghetto hellhole one month ago today, and I decide to go to Popeye's for lunch, because there are literally only two or three restaurant options in that area of town, and I was having a bad day and decided to make it better with some chicken. So I drive down into the deep hood and buy me some Popeye's, and I'm sitting in my car, parked in front of the strip club, eating my chicken leg and biscuit, and I get mad. I decided to have a Come to Jesus meeting with Jesus. I started talking to Him. And I sort of challenged Him.

I've never been one of those sweet, "precious" Sunday School kids who volunteers to put the felt Jesus up on the board. I've always been the one to ask my Sunday School teachers why they act one way at church and another way at home. I asked them why what they were teaching was completely opposite of what Jesus preached. I was never really a hellion, but I'll tell you what, I had no problem telling somebody that I wasn't going to believe them just because they told me to. And I think that's what ultimately really made me believe the Jesus stuff. It wasn't the church or Sunday school or youth group. It was me doing my own research because everyone else seemed so "off."

So I'm sitting in my car, eating my chicken, looking at the strip club, and I say to God, "Hey. You want your children to be happy, right? You want us to honor you, right? You want us to be holy and righteous and to love you and live for you and to be vibrant and free in You, right? So why am I working in a horrible, dark, evil work environment, eating chicken in my car in front of a strip club? I just absolutely don't believe that this is what You want for me. I really don't. So show me what it is that You DO want, because honestly, I just don't think that this is it."

So, after we had our little talk, I drove back to my stupid hideous office and sat in my car for a second wondering whether or not I should even go back inside, because I really didn't feel like I could handle it one more SECOND. But I did. I went back inside. Back to my computer of death, back to my debits and credits, back under the tyranny of the most ridiculous wimp of a sexist pig boss ever and back to Pollyanna's metal lungs of ignorance.

I sat in my chair, and my cell phone rang. I answered it.

Guess what.

It was a job offer.

I just about dropped dead. They weren't calling asking if I'd interview. They were calling to ask if I could START WORK ON MONDAY. They wanted me to work with kids with learning disabilities. It made me cry.

I quit my stupid job via email on Saturday. And on Saturday, I met this old Jewish guy named Lenny who started going to a Christian church and has been reading the Bible for the past few months.

Today I had lunch with Lenny and a girl named Tammy whom I'd never met. Tammy started telling me her story, about how she has been transient for the past 12 years, and she was homeless and an addict and a prostitute. She told me that she hit bottom and almost died time and time again, and then one day she found God. To see this vibrant connection between this old guy, Lenny, and this young girl, Tammy, and how they both had to go through brokenness and emptiness and heartbreak to find God... It blew my mind. I felt so encouraged and real and authentic after we had lunch together.

For the first time in a couple of years, I feel like myself again. I love going to work every day. I love my kids. I love that every day, I wake up, and I feel like God is giving me another chance. I got into the school psychology program at U of M and will be starting school again pretty soon. I can't wait. For the first time in a long time, I'm excited. And you know what else? I'm happy.

"Don't you never take no for an answer."

2011-03-29T09:41:00.001-07:00

Things are looking up. I'm feeling better. I've been doing a lot of soul searching and reading and praying and consulting (and cardio!), and I am starting to feel more settled.

My mom took me to lunch at the airport yesterday. It was a great way to break up my Monday.

You know what? When you have a monkey job, every day feels like Monday.

Anyway, we went to the airport and ate lunch, and it was really fun, and it made me feel like my situation wasn't so terminal (get it? airport? terminal? haha. I'm funny.).

I met this guy (who is kind of a famous dude) in the school psychology department at Memphis last week and we talked for a good solid hour. He helped my wheels start spinning again and gave me some ideas, and those ideas gave me hope.

I am not sure how people make it without hope.

I went to the eye doctor yesterday (I never go to the eye doctor) and my eye doctor was this old guy who was kind of hunky because he was very gentlemanly and had white hair and he talked like Colonel Sanders, and I'm a sucker for those gentlemanly old dudes who pull out your chair before you sit down to eat. He checked out my eyes and we shot the bull a little bit and then he brought me over to this optician lady named Debbie.

Debbie wasn't anywhere close to five feet tall. She was kind of a midget. She was super skinny and had really long pageant hair that was way too young for her and she had a TON of wrinkles around her mouth from smoking for a hundred years and she had dentures. We were sitting at her desk and I was looking at different glasses, and then I noticed her engagement ring. It was huge and beautiful and looked like a Yurman, so of course, I said, "Whoa. Your ring is gorgeous." and she said, "Thanks." and I said, "Somebody must really love you!" and she said, "I was divorced for 16 years and never thought I'd be married again, but then I fell in love." and then I noticed...

her ring finger was....

A nub.

Not kidding. Her finger was a nub. It was chopped off right at the knuckle. And then I got all paranoid that maybe she thought I was mentioning her ring because I was covering up for staring at her nub, but the truth of it is that her ring was unbelievable and I really was looking at THE RING and I didn't even NOTICE her nub.

So that was weird.

We flitted around from stand to stand trying on glasses. This lady was so good at her job. She kept putting her hand on my arm or my back, saying "Oh yes, those are so you!" or, "Those aren't sassy enough for you, girly." and normally I HATE IT when people I don't know touch me, but it didn't bother me when she did it because she was so genuine and maternal and rough around the edges, like Loretta Lynn or something.

She told me all about her 33 year old son who has special needs and who works in the deli at Kroger full time and volunteers at the VA hospital and goes to church every Sunday. She told me about being married to a guy in the air force and living in Nor Cal for a while and picking oranges right off the tree in the backyard. We didn't talk about me very much because I listened to her and was interested in what she had to say, but the hunky old man eye doctor came out and said, "You gettin' your doctorate?" and I said, "No, I applied but didn't get in. Not sure what's in store for me." and Debbie looked at me like I was stupid and said, "You try again. You just fill out the application and keep trying until you get in. Don't you never take no for an answer." and even though I don't really know if I'll apply again, I was really encouraged by Debbie and the eye doctor. They gave me hope.

Death Comes in Threes

2011-03-29T09:40:00.001-07:00

Well, death comes in threes, and last week it was Nate Dog and Mikey and yesterday it was Liz Taylor.

I'm sick of being in my rut.

I feel very trapped by my life right now.

I keep thinking about Hannibal Lecter in Silence of the Lambs, where he's trying to bargain with Jody Foster, and he says, "What I want is a view. I want a window where I can see a tree, or even water," and he has this look on his face that is really hopeful, and his eyes are on fire with excitement because he's envisioning something better than right now.

I'd like to have that Hannibal Lecter face, where thinking of something good gives me hope. I always think about walking West on Washington and looking out at Venice Beach, at the ocean and the sun and all of the weirdos, and the Santa Monica Pier and all of those mountainous hills of Malibu on the right. That's what I think of a lot. I remember feeling like, "This is it," when I'd look out at the water. It made me feel whole or something. I'm not sure that's what I want anymore, though. If I had been sure, I wouldn't have left, right?

I wonder what it is that I actually want.

I've been stagnant for a solid year and I'm a little bit afraid that I've lost myself for good. I keep hearing this echoing, "Rachel has left the building," envisioning all of the lights at the FedEx forum shutting off with that resounding "POW!" followed by a resounding silence. I am struggling with my faith. Not just my spiritual faith but my faith in myself and my faith in people and my faith that things are going to get better.

I talk to one of my friends a lot about the quarter life crisis that we're enduring, and something we often discuss is that it's sometimes frustrating to know that what you THINK in your mind logically can conflict so strongly with what you FEEL. I KNOW that things will get better, I KNOW that life will, eventually, work out - but I FEEL like digging a hole in the backyard and just sleeping in it until I'm about 35 because I feel like I can't handle one more second of my life right now.

I keep thinking that if my quarter life crisis is this bad (and it truly is the worst stage of my life I've yet to endure), then I am very, very concerned about my impending mid life crisis. I can just picture me 20 years from now, getting tons of Botox, driving to Vegas, stealing some hunky gas attendant named Jose away from his family as I drive through Arizona and making him be my cabana boy, wearing mini skirts and sparkly heels and getting extensions and blowing through money on red Corvettes and Louis Vouittons and Nike Shox and Ed Hardy hats for Jose....

Seriously. I'm not handling my current QLC well, so the fast approach MLC is really going to be a doozy.

I'm not even sure what I think is fun anymore.

I'd like to just quit everything that I'm doing right now and take a road trip. It could be my own, white trash self-discovery/Tibetan spiritual journey equivalent. I want to leave this depressing building RIGHT NOW and just take my keys and my Chapstick and start driving until I reach some sign in the middle of a prairie somewhere that says "You are not insane. You do not have a terminal illness. You do not have bad karma. God is not punishing you. You're going to make it. YOU ARE GOING TO MAKE IT."

My Quarter Life Crisis is Kicking My @$$

2011-03-24T12:10:00.001-07:00

I googled "Quarter Life Crisis" today to see if I could get any tips. I came across this:

“I believe I am entering phase five of my quarter life crisis. It’s a bit like how grief has stages: denial, anger, bargaining, depression & acceptance.

Anyway quarter life crisis, phase 1: Denial. Party harder than before, delete your birth year from your Facebook profile.
Phase 2: Anger. MY LIFE IS SO SO BAD ARGHNNGGGMMPPFFF.
Phase 3: Bargaining. Give up smoking for a week and buy some expensive face wash.
Phase 4: Shame and regret.
Phase 5: Fear of your imminent death.
Phase 6: Acceptance that since you’re not ever going to do all the things you want to do or know all the things you want to know you may as well sit around smoking weed all day if you feel like it as anxiety only hastens your IMMINENT DEATH.
Phase 7: Death.”

It made me feel a little more hopeful, like I'm not the only one (THANK GOD).

Here's the link to the whole article:

http://galadarling.com/article/how-to-cope-with-a-quarter-life-crisis

The first catalyst for a quarter-life crisis is a lack of meaningful work.

Please excuse me as I get back to my debits and credits.

A Tribute to Mikey

2011-03-20T08:01:00.001-07:00

I used to meet this older guy in Memphis all the time for lunch or coffee. His name was Bill Burke, and I met him at an arts conference at Rhodes College in 2006. I think that I’ve written about him before. Anyway, he was in his 70’s, and he used to write for the Commercial Appeal newspaper, and he was also the editor of Elvis World Magazine. We used to meet up and talk about writing and editing, and he gave me a lot of good guidance when I was fresh out of college and had no idea where my life was going (and still don’t, but that is neither here nor there). Anyway, my friend Bill passed away in 2008. I remember the morning that my mom came into my room after I’d been out late getting into all kinds of trouble with a certain elected official in my town, and she said, “Rach, Bill Burke died this morning. He had a heart attack.” I wasn’t even really awake yet, but I couldn’t stop crying, because he was one of the only people in my life I felt like, at that point, “got me,” and he’d really invested in me as an aspiring writer. Yesterday, I remembered one thing that he told me that has never left me. He told me that you have to write in the middle of the pain. You can’t wait for the pain to pass, or you’ll forget.

He was right.

In 2009, my grandfather died when I was living in Los Angeles. I remember after his funeral, I was so ready to go back to L.A., because I was grieving so hard, and I wanted a break from it. On my way home, I was sitting in the airport in Dallas and trying to write about him, but I was crying so hard that I couldn’t get the words out. I was grieving too hard. I still have a Word doc saved on my desktop, two years later, that says, “Paw Paw,” and I’ve never been able to open it up and read it. One of these days, maybe I’ll be ready. The point is, I didn’t write in the middle of the pain, because I couldn’t.

This is going to sound trivial compared to the death of a human, but right now, I’m sort of doing a social experiment on myself, and forcing myself to write in the middle of the pain.

Here is my first stab at it.

Before I begin, though, I want to reflect on my speech class at LSU when I was a freshman. My teacher was talking about conveying human emotion and the importance of demonstrating your humanity when you give a speech. That day, he played a famous clip from “The Johnny Carson Show,” where Jimmy Stewart read a poem that he wrote about his dog, Bo. At the end of the poem, Bo died, and everyone in our class was crying, including my professor, as we saw Jimmy Stewart choking through the end of his story, about how Bo died, and he still missed him and thought about him all the time. I don’t know how to embed videos (still), but you can see the clip here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qUNJjIwlHk8

My boss verbally assaulted me at work yesterday, and I felt so defeated as I drove home, between not getting back into school, and having yet another unhealthy work situation, and feeling like I’d failed over and over again despite trying really hard to do the right things. As soon as I walked in the door through the garage, my dad said,

“I have bad news. Mikey died today.”

Mikey was my mean old cat. When I left for work yesterday morning, she was perched at the top of the stairs, gray and fluffy, looking arrogant and content, like a big fat lady on a swing in a Renaissance painting, and I said, “Bye bye, Mikey!” but I didn’t know that was the last time I’d ever see her. It was my real goodbye.

I got Mikey when I was 18. My old boyfriend had cat-napped her and brought her to my house when my parents were out of town. We both knew that they would kill me if I brought an unwelcome pet into the house, but she had such a sad story that we couldn’t turn her down. Mikey had been an orphan and was raised in a cardboard box in the closet of an alcoholic neighbor. If that isn’t a Lifetime movie script, I don’t know what is. When my boyfriend brought her over to my house, I fell in love with that cat right off the bat. I would put her in my purse and take her shopping with me in Saddle Creek or put her in my lap and drive to Wendy’s and take her to get a frosty. She was a little gray powder puff, and I took her with me everywhere I could until she became a teenage cat and got real mean. Mikey would bite the hell out of anyone she could. She’d bite me, she’d bite my parents, she’d bite pet sitters. She’d bite up all the wires to my computer or lamps or clocks until I’d give her attention. She’d bite my ankles when I’d stand up by my bathroom mirror to put my make up on. She was mean as hell. And she was the best cat ever.

She was really intuitive. When I got my tonsils out when I was 21, Mikey was right there in my bed with me, perched on my chest and purring until I was back to my old self. When I went away to college, she felt sort of abandoned, I imagine, and when I’d come home for spring break, she’d walk right up to me and turn her back toward me for a good long while, pretending to ignore me until I gained her approval again. Then when she decided she was finished punishing me, she’d hop up in my bed in the middle of the night and start purring and paw my face gently. She was my little girl.

We used to play this game that I called “Monkey Paws,” where I’d be on one side of a closed door and she’d be on the other, and she’d stick her little monkey paw under the door and try to grab my finger. We played that dumb game for a good half hour at a time.

One Christmas in 2006, Mikey ran away and was lost for three days. I was so devastated. We couldn’t find her anywhere. We prayed and prayed that Mikey was safe and that she hadn’t been eaten by coyotes or anything. Then my dad ran into my room one morning and threw Mikey on my bed while I was still asleep, and I remember her fur being really cold, because he had found her outside, and she hadn’t even been found long enough to warm up yet, and my dad teared up and said, “It’s a miracle- Mikey is alive! I found her! I found her!”

Even as I type all of this now, I’m crying. I’m crying because I didn’t get to tell her goodbye. I’m crying because I wasn’t with her when she died. I didn’t get to stroke her on the head and face and tell her that I loved her, even though she’d always bite the shit out of me and she was the meanest old cat I’d ever met. I feel bad that she died at the vet and she died by herself, and I wasn’t there.

Nobody knew she had a bad heart. Nobody knew that her time was running out.

She used to hide under my bed during thunderstorms because she’d get so scared. She felt safe in my room.

She used to jump around through piles of wrapping paper on Christmas morning. She also used to bite through any kind of dessert that was wrapped in Seran wrap. That cat had a killer sweet tooth.

I feel a little bit bad that I’m this devastated over a cat. Some people lose their parents, or spouses, or children. My cat died out of the blue one day, and I cried all night and cried at the gym this morning.

I guess I just feel like I can’t deal with any more loss. For some reason, I had these ideas about this year that haven’t panned out. I thought that good things were coming. I thought that the whole reason I moved away and moved back here was because I was supposed to get my Ph.D. I thought that I’d get a job that I loved. I thought I’d have clarity in my personal life. The truth is, though, I’ve experienced one loss after another. The loss of a vision, the loss of a dream, the loss of friends, the loss of a lifestyle, the loss of freedom, the loss of ambition, the loss of a cat.

Rest in peace, Mikey. I hope that there’s some kind of cat heaven where you can bite wires and play Monkey Paws all day. I miss you so much and loved you more than you could ever know.

Jorts

2011-03-14T13:45:00.000-07:00

My new life plan, as inspired by my bff:

We should do a cross-country trip this summer and wear JORTS the whole time! We could get a Bronco 2 and paint "Jorts across America!" and just tour all the states in our jorts. We could do public speaking things at county fairs and act like we're motivational speakers and run up on the stage with our jorts and headset microphones and drink a ton of coffee beforehand so we're all hyper as shit when we run out on stage and ask all the confused people- "Alright! How's everybody doing out there!?!" and then we can pipe "Everybody Dance Now" by C&C Music Factory or "(Whoomp)There It Is" over the PA while we run around the stage and through jorts at people in the crowd.

Support Systems

2011-03-10T07:18:00.000-08:00

Well, I didn't get into any Ph.D. programs this go round. Yesterday I had some trouble keeping the catastrophizing at bay. I'm not sure what happens now. I left the land of opportunity to try another opportunity, and it didn't pan out. It's been one disaster after another. So what do I do now? Move back to L.A.? Stay here? Move somewhere else? Wait?

I'm going to wait.

It's been a brutal road. From selling crap on Craigslist to buy a GRE prep course, to studying every day for six weeks, to retaking the GRE, to the extensive Ph.D. applications, to writing the essays, to spending money on transcripts, to securing the recs, to the application fees. It's been a long, drawn out, 7 month process. At least it's over now.

Yesterday, I cried on and off at work all day, which was pretty embarrassing, and I had to blame the glassy eyes on everything from a hangover to a period, neither of which was true, of course, but saying "It looks like I have no escape, now." just wouldn't have been the appropriate response.

I'm really disappointed. I'm alright, though.

I had this overwhelming "calling" type of feeling, this instinctual draw toward counseling that really made me believe that I was supposed to do it for the rest of my life.

You know what, though?

Sometimes your instincts are wrong. Or sometimes they are right for that season of your life, and then they change.

I went to this conference at Rhodes College one time where I met this really interesting hippie lady who told me she went to law school and loved practicing as an attorney and just imagined herself dying, crouched over her desk at 100 years old as an attorney, but somewhere in life, the attorney thing didn't work out, and she wound up playing the mountain dulcimer and joining some kind of medieval times band or something. And she told me that everything in your life is valuable, even if you don't use it, and your life can change courses immediately for the better, even when you can't see what's going on.

Yesterday someone very dear to me called me out of the blue. We haven't talked in a year, probably. He was driving up the coast and told me that he had just heard some guy on the radio saying that the people who are the most successful people in the world - Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Michael Jordan, Abe Lincoln - all had one major thing in common, and that was a tremendous amount of failure. The smart guy at my church said this, too. I think both of these guys read "Outliers." Anyway, my friend calling me made me start remembering some things. He's older than me and was able to give me the "I've walked down this road and it sucked, and now you have to do it, too, but as one person coming from the other side, I'm here to tell you that you're going to make it."

I was whimpering out, in between sobs, that I made a lot of bad decisions that wound up stunting my career path and I didn't have enough life experience in L.A. to know better, and he said something that I'll keep me with me forever. He said, "But Rachel, that WAS your life experience." And he's right. You have to learn, and go through some crap, and keep moving forward.

He told me to keep my rejection letters to remember all of this and to look back on rejection as something that made me keep trying.

Then another friend of mine shot me a text and said, "Remember U.Memphis failed Fred Smith when he pitched his FedEx idea to his marketing class. So, f*ck them!" And I needed to hear that, too.

I'm not sure where to go from here, so I'm not going anywhere. At least, for now, I have an answer.

I had this item listed on Craigslist, and this lady emailed me to inquire about it, but it wasn't available anymore, and somehow she and I have become pen pals. This is what she wrote me yesterday:

"Dear Rachel,

I am sorry to hear that you didn't get into a PhD program, and I will certainly pray that God gives you a job and willingness to comply with his plan for your life. That being said, I'd also like to encourage you with a verse that has given me hope during a number of miserable seasons in my life (including the one I'm currently in). It's from Romans 8:28, that "in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose." That's a big promise. That means cancer, financial ruin, not getting into desired PhD programs--all of these things work for the good of those who trust in and are called by him. There are a million connections, unseen to you, that God sees. Getting into one of those programs could have been the worst thing that ever happened to you.

Be assured that you have someone praying for you, and have faith that God has something far greater prepared for you this year."

Pretty amazing.

Ready

2011-03-03T08:18:00.001-08:00

I think I have writer's block. Ha. That makes me feel like a real writer. Dropping lines like "writer's block." It's like those fresh-out-of-grad-school kids who constantly label everyone with a diagnosis. I had a friend who was really obsessed with reactive-attachment disorder for a while. Almost more obsessed with it than I am with Asperger's.

I'm going to New Orleans tomorrow and I can hardly wait. I can't wait to see my cousin and my aunt and to be in a place that's more open and free than where I am now. I always feel relieved when I'm down there, like I can be myself without being judged. I think that I could move there for a while. Explore the city and meet weird people and go to little holes in the wall that only the locals frequent. I think after a while, though, I'd get bored with it like I do with most other things. I was recently reading a book by a real smart guy who said, "I love the city. I feel right at home with the concrete beat." and I knew what he meant. I'm so ready to move back to the city. I can hardly wait. This small town stuff is killing me, but I'm grateful for the small town background I have. It makes me feel like Elvis or something. That whole grassroots community thing has given me a lot of good solid morals and an understanding of family and friends that a lot of people don't have the privilege of knowing. I'm ready to have it as the place that I come back to, though, not the place that I live. That time is coming.

I had a big week last week, and since then, I haven't slept well or much, and I've been on edge. I've sort of been a jerk. I haven't meant to be irritable or edgy, but I have so much going on in my mind that I haven't had much tolerance for meaningless chatter and a battery of questions. I'm looking forward to having some solidity in my life, although solidity never really comes in its entirety, because life is spastic, it isn't smooth. I'm looking forward to knowing a few things and having some ground to stand on so I can move forward. I've been doing a lot of investigating about places I'd like to live and things I'd like to do, and it's made me feel hopeful and ready to take on a new challenge, which is a nice feeling. It makes me excited.

I really miss doing research. I watched a show about crazy people last night and it made me miss reading scholarly journals about mental illness and doing research studies about all of that stuff. I'm hoping that I can get back into that again. I am happy when I'm learning things.

I'm reading a treatment that my friend sent me for a screenplay he's drafting, and it feels good to be engaging in something creative. Doing debits and credits all day long has sort of made me lose my creative bent, or at least made me forget about it. About a week ago, I was at the gym, putting my work out shoes on. My work out shoes are bright yellow, blue, red, and black, and I got them on clearance at an "ethnic store" a couple of years ago because I liked how obnoxious they were. Nothing is lamer than the glamour puss at the gym who never breaks a sweat (because she's there to catch a man, not work out) wearing a matching $300 outfit. Lame, lame. This lady in the locker room said to me, "Wow, I love those shoes... You're a creative person, aren't you?" She also commented on my toenails, because they were black (I wear black nail polish a lot because I'm too lazy to actually paint my toenails every week, so I touch them up with a Sharpie. I know. I know.) Anyway, I wanted to hug her. I think not really doing anything with my life for the past six months and feeling sub-average has made me forget about all of the things about me that used to be my favorite things. My creativity, my sense of humor, my excitement about life and adventure. All of those things have been dormant because I've focused this lag time in my life on paying off debt, refinancing loans, selling crap that I don't need, general life maintenance, debits and credits. I've had to take the past six months as a time for maintenance so that I can finally start living again.

The guy who preaches at my church is a really smart dude, and on Sunday he was telling us not to cut our stagnant time short, because when we learn a lesson in "the valley," it will prepare us for the mountain top experience that is to follow. I'm so ready for that mountain top I can hardly stand it. I think it's right around the corner. I don't know why, but I have this eminent sense of hope that is overwhelming right now. God probably sent it because I've been begging Him for another adventure.

The reality is that things have been pretty shitty recently as far as general life activity, but it hasn't gotten me down, really. That's a victory in and of itself. I have a really good feeling about things to come, and I'm getting as ready as I can.

Good things are Coming

2011-02-22T08:36:00.001-08:00

My dad called me this morning. He's in L.A. He told me where he was staying and what he was doing, and it made me imagine exactly in my mind what everything looked like. I got incredibly homesick, but instead of being sad about it, I started writing an entry in my memoir about my L.A. adventure, and it started with my old job.

As I was writing about my old counseling job, I started laughing about it. Maybe when you're going through a dark period in life, when you're broke and people are mistreating you and your work is so miserable that it's all-consuming, you don't see the humor in it. Well, I'm far enough removed now that I could NOT STOP LAUGHING at how bat-sheet crazy my work was. I mean really. What 24 year old recovering Baptist from Memphis winds up working in forensic counseling with 50+ year old B-listers and trans clients and sitting in on their divorce trials at the L.A. County Courthouse? Just thinking about some of the blatant insanity that I dealt with made me have full-fledged belly roll laughs.

I guess sometimes I don't realize how intensely ridiculous a situation is until I think back on it and consider the circumstances. I started thinking about some of my clients and the situations I dealt with and how, considering my sheltered and very protected upbringing, I thought about and dealt with these situations. Hilarious.

When I talked to my dad this morning and he told me he ate at In-N-Out Burger, I said, "You know, I was so destitute and fed up with L.A. when I left, I never foresaw me missing it this much, but every single day, I really, really miss it." And he said, in such a practical way, "Well, you never know. Maybe you'll move back." and for some reason, that gave a lot of relief. I don't know that I'll ever move back there, because being poor really sucks, and I don't foresee myself being able to have a decent middle class lifestyle in L.A. without being extremely rich for Southern standards. But what I recognize about myself is that I lock myself into picking choice A or B, deciding that if I choose one thing that I'll have to take everything that comes with it...But that just isn't so.

When my parents met, my mom was in Baton Rouge and my dad was in Memphis. She didn't know she'd be moving to Memphis and leaving everything that brought her down, but that's what happened. All she did was take a chance by trusting my dad, and with that leap of faith, she was able to embrace the adventure of a lifetime.

I have been doing SO MUCH BETTER than I did at first. I don't feel depressed and regretful like I did at first, but I still cling onto this desire for adventure, this hope that maybe I'll be able to pack up all of my crap once and for all and finally find somewhere in life that feels like "home," whatever that is, if it even exists. I look forward to finally doing away with all of the cardboard boxes, and being able to have all of my life in one place. I'm not sure if this sense of "home" is something that I've just made up in my head, but I think that there's something to it. I don't think it's necessarily a geographic location - I think that having that sense of home is when you feel like your little place in the world is yours- you fit there and you can make it your safe place where you can really be yourself after you've been beat up by your day. It's a place where you can proudly display what's important to you- your pictures and knick knacks from travels and degrees and paintings. It's a reflection of your heart. That's what I think it is. And I think I'm on the verge of finding my "home."

I think finding peace within myself is probably the first step, and knowing me, I'll never 100% attain that peace, because I don't think that I'm one of those zen types of people who accepts life as it comes. I always try to make it better, which is one of my best and worst traits... Anyway, despite this, I know that if I am more cognizant of having an attitude of acceptance, it'll be a heck of a lot easier for me to maintain peace than if I just let my own human nature rule my day, and I think that I'm getting there. That makes me happy.

I'm excited about things that are coming down the pike, even though I have no plan and I have no idea what I'm doing or where I'm going. I think that this is going to be a big year. I think that, despite the uncertainty and ups and downs and shaky ground, that good things are coming, and right now, I just have to make myself ready for them.

I'm still going to be irritated with the obnoxious yuppies with whom I constantly interact. I'm still going to want to sock people who try to cram their unrealistic and shallow cultural views down my throat. I'm still going to roll my eyes when people try to make my life as small as theirs. But I am also going to try really hard to remember peace and acceptance and to see that all of these little fractions of pictures, will, eventually, become one big mosaic of my life, and it's happening every second. Time to embrace today and look back at all of the INSANITY and belly-roll laugh at it. It feels good.

Snow Blows

2011-02-07T11:53:00.000-08:00

I've been spending a decent amount of time writing my memoir, so I haven't been blogging about day-to-day crap as much, so forgive me, faithful readers (I always feel empowered and elderly when I address you as "readers," especially if a pleasant adjective is used prior to the word. I was born way too late on the time line of humanity). Not a lot has being going on in my pseudo-personal life, so forgive me for having nothing to write about. And, as always, sorry for ending a sentence with a preposition.

This morning I drove to work in a pelting-down of snow. I imagined God up in Heaven shaking the dandruff out of his hair, onto Memphis, before reaching for his Selsun Blue. I know that's sort of ridiculous, but I really did think of that while I was driving down the doldrums of 240.

I had a good weekend. I finished Tori Spelling's first book, as trashy as it sounds, and it was sort of like watching a mindless movie. I loved it. I felt like I had a little wee vacation from my life. It brought back so many memories of my own life, oddly enough, from memories of growing up to the first boy that kissed me (ugh. haha. do I throw up or laugh?) to the places she referenced in L.A.

That's one good thing (of many) about my life right now. I have more time to read and do things I typically don't have the time to do. I also finally have a little bit of money to do things like buy new blue jeans. Score!

I attended a Superbowl gathering last night with a few of my childhood friends. I don't spend enough time with them. It was nice to be with people who have always known me. It made me feel safe. My guard was down because it didn't need to be up. I don't feel that freedom as much as I should. Maybe i should try to think about that safe feeling more so that I can experience it more. Maybe I think too much.

What else, what else.

During the Superbowl, I kept thinking about how A-Rod's brothers played Rockband with me and my friends at my apt. one night in L.A. when another party that we were at was crapped on by the po-lice. They seemed like nice boys. I know. I'm so cool with my third-party connection to the MVP via online brag blog. Anyway, that's what I thought about.

I think I've been under an immense amount of stress recently (I know, I know. I'm always stressed). What sucks is that I don't always realize it when I'm stressed. I just recognize the symptoms of it.

FOR INSTANCE...

I got into a little tiff with someone the other day, and I subsequently had to pick up some garments from my alterations lady, and when she asked how I was doing, I started bawling. Not just some ladylike crying. Some all-out, full blown sobbing at her counter.
She said (in thick Chilean accent),

"Life is too beautiful to cry."

It was nice. Until she started talking about a bunch of crazy crap that didn't make any sense.

My alterations lady, the one who said I'd have "problems in life" because my boobs were too small, and that my pants always fit weird because my calves are too big, and the one who constantly makes me feel like crap about myself, was the exact person I happened to have a meltdown in front of on Saturday, and she even gave me a hug. Life is ironic.

I also started crying in the tanning bed, and at first I was trying to choke back the tears because I was scared of electrocuting myself in that cancer box, but then I figured if I sweat my ah-ss off in there anyway, what's a few gallons of tears? So I had a nice long cry in the tanning bed until I decided to suck it up and go run. So I got over my little crying spell and ran my butt off, until I hit the steam room. Then I cried again for another 15 minutes or so. Then I started to feel like I was going to faint, so I bailed out.

So. Crying for me is often a symptom of stress. It doesn't always mean that I'm "sad" or "distraught." Sometimes crying is just a way for my body to let stress evaporate.

I just noticed that I use an unnecessary amount of quotation marks.

"OH WELL!"

I hate not feeling like myself. To me, crying in a tanning bed = NOT FEELING LIKE MYSELF! I pretty much don't have any clue about what "myself" is supposed to feel like, because I've been undergoing so many transitional life issues for so long, but I do remember a time where I was kind of fun and spry and excited and adventurous.

The thing is, right now, I don't necessarily feel like I'm NOT all of those things anymore (double negative! Shame on me!). I just kind of feel like they are all dormant.

As I was driving to work in God's dandruff this morning (to borrow an enlightening sentence from a friend, "snow hasn't been cool since I was 10."), I wasn't feeling depressed or upset or worked up. I was just sort of going through the motions. And that's OKAY, it's not the worst thing in the world, but I think I need to embark on an adventure soon so I can reconnect with myself.

Church was awesome yesterday. They did away with the skinned-cat singers and had a big, voluptuous black lady singing about Jesus, and she was waving her hands around and jumping up and down and doing some preaching in between singing, saying things like (while singing, too), "If you lose your job on Friday, and you wake up on Monday, Jesus is still the boss," kinds of things. It made me get excited for the first time in a while during the music part of church. This is what Memphis means to me, when I set aside the B.S. of this town---the blatant hypocrisy, the cliquiness, the private school/pleated pants/fraternity thing, the "everyone goes to church" fake crap-----what Memphis is, aside from the crap, is a town rich with soul and spirit and wisdom, but you have to look to find it. That lady singing at church yesterday reminded of the things that I miss when I don't live here. Then, of course, some white guy gets up there with his guitar and sings some "I want to kill myself" "worship" song, but he wasn't depressing enough to kill the mood that the black lady had just ignited in everyone.

I'm really looking forward to Mardi Gras. Some of the best memories I have in my whole life are from Mardi Gras. There's this family-oriented partying that takes place that makes you feel warm and content, and you forget about all of the run of the mill B.S. that can be overwhelming, like paying off loans or living with your parents or gas prices getting higher. You just enjoy your family and your friends and come home with a trunk load of beads and stuffed crap, and you remember who you are.

I can't wait.

I Heart My Paw Paw

2011-02-02T12:03:00.000-08:00

I may or may not be turning into an old maid/school marm. Today I put on compression hose to wear to work. Let it be known that I vehemently hate pantyhose, and have refused to wear them for many years because of the way that they drag across my prickly legs and run and bunch up around my crotch, but last night during Zumba class, I noticed a vein throbbing in my leg, which sort of made me recognize that I’m getting old and that I need to start taking preventative measures to remedy this lumpy leg issue. I hope that my legs don't turn into a map in a few years. I hope they aren't covered with Mississippi River sized veins. Recently, though, I've been kind of been accepting my fate, whatever that means. I don't think about feeling overwhelming regret EVERY DAY anymore. I just sort of wake up and go to work and go to the gym and tan and that's about it, and it hasn't been so bad. I've been more accepting of my bland circumstances/existence.

So, today, under my blue jeans, I am wearing pantyhose that are squeezing the HELL out of my legs and make me look like Oksana Baiul. Triple axle, here I come.

I got a facial the other day that may or may not have given me third degree burns all over my mug. My friend and I took our other friend out for a spa day because she just got married. As a result, my face has been flaking off. I look like a leper.

I also got a massage that day by a big beefy girl named "Tabby." Tabby could have played Linebacker for the Packers. She was a bruit. I might be paralyzed from the neck down now. I'm not sure I'm that cut out for all of the girly/high maintenance things in life, like pedicures. Man, I HATE pedis. I also hate sitting in a chair for four hours while my hair color processes. I like to get my tan on, because that takes less than 15 minutes. I also like to work out. All of the other stuff is a little too much, I think. Well, I used to get massages from this ex-baseball player guy who was sort of a sleeze, but he had a good grip on him and could crunch all of the knots out of my back like a champ, so I'll probably get a massage again, but I have decided that facials are OUT.

I've been looking rough this week. Burn face, varicose veins. I'm only 26 and I'm totally falling apart. And yes, it is because I live in Memphis again.

Last night in my Zumba class, we did the Tina Turner dance to “Proud Mary,” where we did, indeed, do the “pony” from the 60’s, and I just imagined myself skipping around with a big teased hairdo and thick black eyeliner and white fringe go-go boots. It was the most fun I’ve had this week. Zumba is awesome. All of my friends in there are baby boomers.

I went to a wedding on Saturday night that cost the daddy of the bride $400 grand. I don’t even know how many zeros that is. And guess who was there. Pollyanna. I’d get into it, but I can’t. Eventually I'll tell you, dear readers, all about Pollyanna, and we will have a Blog roast about how obnoxious she is, but not today.

The wedding was well done, but really over the top. They spent a ton of cheese on it, so it SHOULD have been well done. I kept thinking, though, if hell were to ever freeze over, and I were to ever get married, I wouldn’t want to invite 600 people and feed them all fillet mignon just so I could have a big beauty pageant wedding. It just isn’t me. I don’t like enough people to invite the whole world to my (hypothetical) wedding. Maybe by the time I get married, if I do, I’ll recruit more people that I like, but even by then, if "then" occurs, I won’t want a big huge shin-dig. Not like that. Not with 13 bridesmaids and a tiara and an after party where everyone has to wear a wristband to get "in." Nah. I’m more of a $75 drive-through chapel in Vegas type of gal. I guess this makes sense, though, considering that I'm wearing compression hose and have a burn victim face.

I called my Paw Paw on the way to work this morning. My parents and sister are going to the Philippines to see where he was captured during WW2. I wish that I could go SO BADLY, but I can't take off that much time from work, since I'm already taking off work for some other important dates. I was supposed to go to the Philippines last October, but the trip was canceled. Makes me sad to think about it, but everything happens for a reason.

I was so happy to talk to my PawPaw. He always encourages me about going back to school and what I'm doing in life. He's always supportive. He never makes me feel bad about not being married or living at home or working through all of this crap in my life. He's awesome. People like that are so few and far between in life.

I made a CD w/ my best friend when I was living in L.A., and we recorded a bunch of old country music (Hank Williams, Ray Price, Tammy Wynette), so I mailed him a copy of it because he really likes that sort of thing, and he couldn't ever load the songs on his computer when I tried to email him the files. This is what he said about the emails:

“Well, I couldn’t load your music on the computer when you sent it to me. A box popped up that said something was holding me up.”

Hahaha! Something was holding him up. Nobody's funnier than PawPaw Haley.

He asked if I was working, and I told him that I was doing bookkeeping work now. This is what he said about that:

“You having so many different kinds of jobs is really going to give you an advantage when you have your doctor’s degree. You’re like your Uncle Randy. He worked at a service station and as a guard and at the store. That makes him a better doctor. And your cousin... Well, all your cousin ever did was just go to school. But you and Randy? Y’all have had lots of jobs. So one day, when you are a doctor of psychology with your doctor's degree, and you have a patient come in who says, ‘This bookkeeping makes me nuts!’ You’ll be able to say, ‘I know EXACTLY how you feel.’”

And you know what? Hearing that today was exactly what I needed.

Cocktail Parties are for Douches

2011-01-28T13:50:00.000-08:00

Wanna hear some total crap?

I called U.Ga a few weeks ago to make sure that they had all of my information on file, and they said that they did. I checked the website today, and my file was listed as incomplete. I called the advisor, who said The Graduate School never sent my LSU transcript to her, so she couldn't process my file. So I asked when interviews are going to be held.

NEXT EFFING WEEK.

So basically, because people are idiots, I didn't get into Georgia. I would feel better knowing that I didn't get in because I couldn't get in, because I don't have enough clinical experience or because my GRE scores were too low.

What a pain in the ahhhh-ss.

You know what, though? This is how life is, and if life wasn't like this, maybe I'd wind up living in Georgia and getting murdered by some Ted Bundy, college-hopping serial killer or something. You just never really know why something happens. I'm not mad, which is good, but I'm annoyed, because I know what it takes to be responsible and NOT be a slack ass, and really, it only takes some basic common integrity and a little tiny hint of sense. It doesn't take that much effort.

What else.

Oh yes, a lady got mugged across the street from where I work, so cop cars and ambulances have been parading around my perimeter all day.

I was pretty upset about not having a job for 4 1/2 months when I first moved back, but that too, happened for a reason. At that point, I was far too emotionally fragile to be able to handle working in the ghetto with swarming cop cars. Now, I just think when I wake up every day, "Another day, another dolla." and I keep moving forward, and my whole L.A. experience is nothing but a hazy mist in my mind, even though it sure was one hell of a ride, and probably the best part of my whole life.

I've been feeling significantly better since I started working, working out, and getting enough vitamin D, and the change in my mood and life perspective has been so encouraging to me.

Stuff that would normally drive me bat shit is not quite as obnoxious.

For instance, at work, I have to do a LOT of stuff with sororities, and I read this article where this girl said, "I have been working digilently." About 3 months ago, I would have left that word unedited, and thought to myself, "You stupid hoe, you deserve to be published as a blatant idiot," but the new me fixed her stupidity and wrote "DILIGENTLY" out of the kindness of my heart.

I do still get annoyed at the overwhelming influx of "sisterhood," the word "special," and "nail panting parties," but, whatev. Sometimes you just have to suck it up and deal.

I'm almost finished with my Johnny Cash book, and today, I read this:

"Then we were called upon to attend an affair which I detest- a cocktail party. And I haven't only recently started hating cocktail parties. I have always hated them with a passion. I have never consumed a cocktail, but that isn't the reason.

Everyone seems to feel they're obligated to act as if they're enjoying themselves, standing around with that weird-looking dainty drink in their hand with that little finger sticking out.

I can never remember anything significant ever being said at a cocktail party. Nobody really listens to anything anyone else tells them. You open a conversation with somebody, and they're looking around you to the left or right while you're talking to be sure they're not missing another celebrity."

This goes back to my constant soap box about detesting meaningless chit chat, but I feel like I'm presenting myself in a less hostile manner now when I am dragged to an event or gathering full of stupid, fake people. It took me a few months to deal with it since I moved back here, because I forgot about that saccharin obnoxiousness, but now I'm getting used to it again. I'm always bombarded with fake, airy hugs and meaningless chit chat and dumb questions and empty conversation, but I'm realizing that it's just how it is here, and if I am here indefinitely, I can't let it eat me up so badly. I just have to start saying things like,

"So nice to see you, I just crapped my pants." because they (the infamous panel of they) aren't really listening anyway.

She says she talks to Angels

2011-01-28T13:46:00.000-08:00

Well, I have started a journal regarding work occurrences, but because I still work at my work, I can't post anything. So, for now, I will talk about other things. I went to Birmingham over the weekend to visit one of my girl friends. I talk a lot about how I miss having girl friends. I had a lot of girl friends in L.A., but I don't have many in Memphis who are in a similar stage of life as me because most of my girl friends got married when they were 20. Which is to say that they have husbands and families so when I talk about singleness and $1,000 insurance deductibles and all of that crap, they can usually offer some kind words of advice, but they don't relate.. So, I have this girl friend who lives in Birmingham, and she's HILARIOUS, and I decided to drive down and visit her on Friday.

We didn't engage in any craziness all weekend, and I loved every second of it. I was relaxed and happy and calm. I laughed so hard I just about cried.

And then we went to church.

I've gone to church almost every Sunday of my whole life with the exceptions of near-death illness and being out of town. I just pretty much always go. And even when I don't physically go, I watch it on TV. I miss it when I don't go. I don't go because I've been pressured into it or it's cultural or whatever, I just enjoy it, so I go.

So, my best girl friend is an Episcopalian, and I never knew very much the Episcopalians, other than they are sort of like Catholics and they are usually very academic and "junior league" and rich and polished and classy. Pretty much out of all of the Christian denominations, the Episcopalians seem to me like they'd win the awards for writing a thank you note in black ink within two weeks of the deserving circumstance and they definitely would NOT wear white shoes after Labor Day. Other than that, I don't know much about them, because I am not one, and I do not know very many.

I go to this very counter-cultural Christian church in Memphis that used to be really, really cool, because we had a staff of musicians who came straight off of Beale Street and there was a heavy blues influence on the music, and we had a large number of black people who attended the church. I liked that. I liked it because I grew up in a "you have to wear your three piece suit" type of church that was very vanilla. There was no ethnic, racial, cultural, or very much socioeconomic diversity, and so I always felt sort of bored and stiff at the church where I grew up. I moved away for a few years and my current church has really been influenced by the white Bible belt, private Christian school, khaki pants culture. My preacher is a rock star, and I love him, and he's really smart. The demographic of our congregation has changed substantially, though. I'm pretty much back at an all white church. Also, the music is totally different. I guess Beale Street when back to Beale, because now we have all of these white girl star-warbling divas who do that Christina Aguillera thing with their hand that sort of looks like the Mr. Miyagi "Paint the Fence" move, and they sound like a bunch of cats being skinned, warbling and screaming, trying to sound like Lauryn Hill. I guess.

ANYWAY.

So, the all-white people churches usually make me feel sort of nervous, even though I'm a white person. I may have some sort of cultural identity issues. I think it's good to be around different people. That's one thing that I'm really grateful for regarding part of my upbringing.. My parents made sure we traveled and met all kinds of different people. I remember this lady named Alyce made my family some chai tea in Africa and she stirred it around in a metal pot with a goat femur. We were all sitting in her dung hut in Africa. We were totally grossed out because we were little kids and we had to drink chai that had a goat bone in it. But thinking back on that, I can appreciate how cool it was for my parents to let us experience cultural difference and what it meant to be uncomfortable and all of that.

WAIT!

One more thought.

I had another encounter with the Episcopalians. I was invited by a girl friend of mine in L.A. who was from South Carolina to go to her Episcopal Christmas dinner thing with her church because her husband was working on his Ph.D. in Mexico or something. I am anticipating some sort of churchy potluck function where everyone wears a Christmas sweater with little pom poms all over it and some big fat lady in a floral print dress and Mary Kay make up plunking out carols on the piano. Oh, quite contraire. We go to this amazing house in Beverly Hills, and her pastor is a woman who lives in this unbelievable house, and apparently the Episcopalians own the parish or whatever for the lady pastor to live in. Now, please be mindful that I grew up in an ultra conservative Southern Baptist church and had never really met a lady priest/pastor. When we got inside the party, I met a few different gay couples. Keep in mind that I'd never seen openly gay men at a church function, because that isn't exactly Southern Baptist kosher. That was my other Episcopalian experience.

Ok, so I went to the Episcopal church with my girl friend, and it was so gorgeous inside. It made me think about a few times when I was just trying to figure my life out at Loyola, and I'd go up to the Catholic chapel and sit on one of those hard wooden pews and just be quiet and stare at the stained glass windows and massive crucifix at the front and I could physically feel the quiet.

Here's the part I really want to talk about, though. Communion sometimes makes me nervous. I leave during communion at my church a lot because we do it every week and it takes a good solid half hour, and my AD/HD can only take about an hour and a half of church and cat-skinned-screaming divas before I lose it. So, communion makes me nervous when they pass it around because I'm always nervous that I'm going to spill grape juice all over someone's white pants, and I HATE it when everyone drinks out of the same cup. I hate foreign germs so much that I always Purell my hands right after we do that meet and greet hand shaking thing. I always hope to come in late enough that I miss the screaming cat "worship" team and the hand shaking, but I never actually reach that goal.

So, we all get summoned for communion, and we have to walk in a single file line all the way up the aisle, onto the platform, through the choir members, to the kneeling bench thing. And here's what I want to talk about:

I FELT LIKE I WAS IN HEAVEN.

All of the choir members were wearing these white robes and they were signing so angelically, that I seriously looked from side to side and thought, "Man, this must be what Heaven is like." and it was absolutely beautiful.

Then all of the stuff about only white people at church and Beale Street blues worship and stuff sort of left my mind, because I felt so peaceful and angelic and nice.

Rent Free Ain't Enough

2011-01-19T08:08:00.000-08:00

All of a sudden, over the weekend, I decided that I'm "over" going to bars. At least Memphis bars. I stopped going to clubs early in the game. I used to like to go to clubs to dance. Then after experiencing the whole Hollywood club scene, and I recognized it for the meat market/coke playground that it was, I just didn't go anymore. At least not the ones with the pulsating music and sweating people who are barely wearing any clothes grinding all over each other. I haven't even been to Vegas in a year, which is sort of a world record for me, because I used to go a lot.

Over the weekend, I went to some "cool" bars with a group of my friends, and both times, I looked around at everyone and felt grossed out and bored. Seeing these dumb girls who are all giggly with their cleavage hanging out and flipping their hair around for free drinks and these fratty boys smoking cigarettes and staring at the cleavage and everyone blowing jager and smoke into each other's faces grosses me out so much that it takes all of the fun out of it. It's all so phony. It's all so blatantly phony.

I used to be really naive and I could go to a bar or a club and have a great time and never notice all of the depressing stuff around me because I was oblivious while I was dancing and having fun. But all of a sudden, I've turned into this old, wise, fat cat, and I don't even know what it's like to enjoy myself at these places because I look around at everyone else and am so overwhelmed by the atmosphere that I get bored and kind of would rather be at home reading an autobiography or swimming laps or caulking my bathroom.

In L.A., you could go to a bar, and something fun would be going on. There would be turtle races or a cool 80's band or trivia night or some kind of interactive fundraiser. I used to go to these fun red carpet events with my ex (who is the worst human on the face of the earth, so let's remember that no event would justify me ever interacting with him again as long as I live) where there'd be all these really fun, interactive things to do. Like a huge Rockband party or video gaming event or something. Going to bars or clubs was interactive; it wasn't just a bunch of people sitting around getting hammered and preying on who they were going home with. Well, it probably was, but it was masked by fun activities. The man-predators and women looking to be eaten weren't near as obvious when everyone was caught up drumming on Rockband. In this dive, the only thing offered at bars is football or basketball on a big screen TV, and all of a sudden, I am just plain old "done."

When I was so emotionally exhausted and spent during my last 6 months or so in L.A., all I could think about was resting and coming back to remember myself for a little while. I was desperate. But guess what. I forgot about how it is here. I forgot about the overwhelming boredom and lack of things to do.

When I was in high school, my on-and-off-for-100-years bf's family owned this lake house, so we'd all go to the lake in the summer. Well, he had a brother and a sister, and I was friends with the sister, and we always wanted to do fun stuff at the lake, but he and his brother and dad always wanted to watch sports, so that's what the family had to do. Male dominance is so alive in this part of the country, it's absolutely disgusting. I swore back then I'd never be a part of that crap, with my mind rotting away watching a bunch of barbarians running around and smacking each others' asses on TV for a hundred hours. His sister would have cowardly been a part of the whole sports cult, because she was a woman and was out voted by those man-pigs who "ran the house," but I conned her into doing stuff with me like assembling a front porch swing or riding around on 4-wheelers in the mud, which was really fun. I love being an active person, but in this town, availability of activities is few and far between, which fires my frustration. I need a vacation.

I struggle a lot with being content, because right now, being content might bleed into complacency, and I abhor complacency. I just keep thinking about starting my life over and having a clean slate. People get so caught up in where they are and what they're doing that they forget that they have options. I am obsessed with thinking about my options. I'm so ready to know if I get into school, and if I get in, where I will get in, and if I am moving or staying or what have you. I'm ready to have my own place again and my own life and my own routine. I'm ready to feel like a real person again.

It's important to me for me to be able to establish my own life. I don't have that quite yet at this point in time, but every day it's a little bit closer, and I hang onto that.

I've been trying really hard to accept this point in my life and ask myself very difficult, guilt-ridden questions related to where I am in life and where I'm going, and as a result, I have revealing and sometimes upsetting thoughts. I've asked myself hard questions and sometimes I'm really sad when I hear myself answer them because they aren't what I want to hear myself say.

Back to what I started with: if I wind up staying here for a while, if I get into school here for a while, I can't do the bar scene anymore and watch all of those disgusting pheromones flying around while people breathe smoke into each other's faces and scratch their nether-regions while watching football games. Ugggggh. I always think about Jack Nicholson leaving his shrink's office and asking the people in the lobby, "What if this is as good as it gets?" And I answer myself with a resounding, "No." "No, no, no." It just isn't. And that's all there is to it.

I joined a gym a few days ago. I'm going to try to focus more on getting myself balanced and living a holistic life. I'm reading more now than I have in a long time. I think I need to just spend some time taking care of myself, and staying out of places and away from people that bring me down or make me feel like crap.

I ordered "Man in Black," Johnny Cash's autobiography, for a dollar online. "Man in White," his book about the conversion of the Apostle Paul, was something I wasn't ready for yet. I felt like I was sitting in a seminary class. I mean, I was learning a lot of historical stuff, but let's face it, I'm not exactly seminary material. Anyway, I can't put "Man in Black" down. It's a ripped up old library copy with brown pages and a worn-out jacket. I buy most of my books for a dollar. Over and over again, I'm reading about Cash's life, and even though he's one of the most amazing people who has ever lived and I'm not exactly on the same playing field, he makes me relate. Having this crazy drive to do something special with my life, and always striving toward making it happen. Reading about him selling appliances and then making phone calls to Sam Phillips every week to keep his head above water makes me think about me bookkeeping but calling U.GA and U.FL and U.Memphis all the time, pushing hard and hoping that I'll bug them enough to get me an interview.

It's also sort of cool reading about his start in Memphis. I drive past the Overton Park Shell (it is now called Levit Shell) when I am in midtown, and knowing that Johnny Cash opened for Elvis there sort of makes me feel connected and makes me feel like it's holy ground or something. It'd be easy to drive around this city and diagnose it as the set of "8 Mile," because it's poor and run down and torn up and full of a bunch of people who are in denial about it and are hanging onto an idea of Memphis that got shot and killed in the 1970's, but there are some incredible historical milestones here that I take for granted.

On Monday night, I went to a concert, and had more fun than I've had in months. I danced for hours. I'd never been to one of those DJ concerts before like you see on TV, but I showed up adorned in glow jewelry and glitter, like the gay district on Bourbon, and had the time of my life. Confetti rained down on the crowd and huge balloons filled with confetti were bounced from section to section. It made me kind of feel like I was a kid again. I needed it. The last time I had comparable fun like that at a show was right before I moved back to Memphis and my bff and I went to see the Spazmatics at the Key Club in Hollywood.

I think I need to listen to more music, and dance around my room more, and do things that I enjoy, because this weather is KILLING me.

I keep wondering how many more Memphis winters I can take, with the boredom and rain and freezing temperatures. I wonder where this leaves me. What happens when you are living somewhere or your life is some place, but you aren't really there, because you're somewhere else in your mind? Does that make you insane, or really smart? Cash wasn't selling appliances or living in a shit town in Arkansas or driving a car with cardboard windows, because in his mind, he was somewhere else. I just hope it pans out for me. Not all of us can be a Johnny Cash, but we can always strive for something, and we can find ways to keep us busy.

No Regrets Friday

2011-01-15T07:58:00.000-08:00

Typically, I'm careful about the content of my blog regarding things that could get me in big trouble. I don't blog that much about work unless I'm not working at a place anymore or unless I have something positive to say about it, I don't blog about my love life if I'm currently in a relationship, and I don't really blog about my family. I count this as "too bad," because I've got some fantastic stories in all three genres, but when I think about how writing about any of those could be misinterpreted and hurt people, I figure it isn't worth it. Most of my blogs are about internal conflict, every day observations, and human interactions. They get personal because of the internal conflict part, but not because of the things that I hold in high regard, like interpersonal relationships or my job. So, let me generalize when I write today, and try to track with me.

In my old job, we used to talk a lot about different careers and jobs because we were helping people figure out how they were going to survive after they went through a horribly gruesome and humiliating divorce. So, in that process, I gained a lot of knowledge about a lot of different jobs. One thing that I learned is that PR/advertising is always a field for young people. Well, that came back to me today while I was in an employee-wide office meeting and I noticed that everyone at my office is really young. Ok. That's the first thought. Try to track with me as I jump to the next thought.

Second thought: I beat myself up for a while, and still do from time to time, for pursuing an advanced degree in the helping professions, because, let's face it: grad school is really effing hard. I mean, REALLY hard. It's like being married, or at least what I imagine what it's like to be married. It's being committed and focused and making a crap ton of sacrifices. Getting my M.A. is one of the hardest things I have ever done because it took so much sacrifice, and it was worth every second of it: the money, the discipline, the sacrifice, the time, the willingness to run from potentially serious relationships. I loved it. The reason I beat myself up, though, was because I usually think that I should've gotten a degree in something more lucrative, because, let's face it (again): there ain't no money in the helping professions, and a girl gotta pay her bills, and sometimes I felt a little bit like working that hard for a degree that wouldn't really pay me monetarily made me feel kind of dumb. I ran around with a bunch of UCLA MBA boys for a while, and they were incredibly smart and talented and entrepreneurial, and they'd tell me about their projects and marketing strategies and start-ups, and I'd sometimes feel this little twinge of regret, because I thought to myself, "Heck, I'm creative- and I'm inventive, and I'm tough. I could do this MBA stuff.... But I'm becoming a counselor." I knew how much money they would be offered once they got that MBA behind their name, and I couldn't help but think to myself that maybe I chose the wrong path, and maybe I should've gone to business school so I could be making six figures straight out of school, too.

So. This is where I am going with these thoughts: during my meeting today, I looked around at all of the wrinkle-free faces, and heard the word "vibrant" used about 3098 times, and also heard the word "pretty" used a lot, and heard a lot about pushing Facebook and Twitter and "checking into" places with our iPhones to live VERY public, social media oriented lives.

And this is what I thought about: I am really glad that I don't check into places with my iPhone so that people can know exactly where I am, who I'm with, and what I'm doing. I'm really glad that I don't talk about my family or love life online. And you know what else? I'm really glad that I didn't go to business school.

You know what I thought about when I was hearing a bunch of very young people talk about living "publicly" and "vibrantly"???? I thought about two of my elderly professors at Loyola. One of them was a real old catholic priest. I loved him so much. One of them was a grouchy old man. I loved him even more. I thought about one of my professors/advisers at U of M, and what a beautiful heart and an incredible mind he had under that gray head of hair. I thought about old people, and old people who are professional helpers, and how blessed I've been to learn from them, be mentored by them, and appreciate their "oldness" and "privateness." (I know that privateness is not a word. Don't worry about it. Stay with me.)

I started thinking about what it means to be private, and what a sacred thing it can be to be private, when there's something special between you and another person that isn't all broadcasted all over the internet. I thought about this safe place that's created in a counseling environment, and how sacred it is to be able to know that you're bound by confidentiality and HIPPA and all kinds of crap to keep quiet and open up and help and be helped.

And then I was really, really happy that God put in my heart to help people. I know that right now, I'm not practicing as a counselor, and that I'm working amongst a lot of visionary idealists who lack life experience because of their youth, but there's an excitement and "vibrance" about my current situation that makes me see the value in being excited. I can learn a lot from these young, energetic, idealistic people. Even though right now, I'm doing math all day, and I'm bad at it, and I screw up a lot, I work with a supportive staff. The most important thing that I know, though, is that deep in my heart, I have this soul craving to help people, and to help reduce the stigma of mental health in the south, and a desire to learn from old people in academia, and I am so happy to know that it has never gone away, even though there's no money, and I'm poor, and I've worked really hard to not be moving forward in this direction at this second in time. Today, for some reason, I felt no regret, and that felt really, really good.

I Get by with a Little Help from my Friends

2011-01-13T14:36:00.000-08:00

Last week was a really hard week, but there was this amazing outpouring of love from my friends that I've never experienced in my life. At least, not to the extent where a different person was there for me every single day and I felt like each person and each interaction was a God-send type of deal. I met a friend every day who helped me get through the week. It was amazing. From going to lunch twice to having a phone call with my best friend in LA to one of my closest girl friends coming to my house with mixed CD's and cupcakes, I felt like God knew exactly what I needed and sent people my way who could help me get through the worst week I've had since I moved to Memphis. Again.

One thing that I learned in school was to never tell people, "I know how you feel." when you truly do NOT know how they feel. It's a major slap in the face to someone when you're telling them just how much you KNOW how they feel, and you're dumping a bunch of word vomit on them that has nothing to do with them. A lot of times, people just need to be still, and reflect, and cry it out. They don't need you to steal their time of emotional purging with stories about YOU. I remember last spring, it was maybe one of four times total of the year and a half I spent at my old job that I actually went to lunch, and I had this meltdown at Subway where I was sitting at a table outside, facing Wilshire Blvd., crying my face off because I was dealing with so much crap. I was in so over my head with work and not making enough money to pay bills and sucked into a destructive lifestyle and empty relationships and complete emotional burnout, and so much other stuff that I am still working through, and one of my two coworkers started going on and on about Nelson Mandela and him being in prison or something. She kept telling me to remember Nelson Mandela. She had absolutely no idea what I was talking about, and she wanted to steal the limelight with Nelson effin Mandela. It was the epitome of the "I know how you feel" mistake.

I've noticed since I've once again moved back to this city that most of its inhabitants are always at effect instead of cause. It's sort of weird. People are always at the solution and never at the source of the issue. It's like you live in a house that has walls that are covered in mold, and you have this incredible lung condition that has you on your death bed, and while you're crying out to everyone you know that you're sick and something in your life has to change for you to get well, the people of Memphis decide that they will come right into your house and paint your walls a new color for your health to improve. They don't see the mold. They don't see the source of the problem. THEY DON'T SEE THAT YOU HAVE TO MOVE OUT TO GET BETTER! They're at effect instead of cause. It's a city-wide phenomenon, for the most part.

It seems like the people who are always the ones who don't have a clue as to what you're going through are the ones to dump a ton of self-help crap onto your lap. They are the people who tell you what you "should" or "must" or "ought" do. It's incredible. People who don't have a CLUE as to who you are or what you've walked through are the effervescent "musterbaters," telling you things like, "You MUST go to church." "You MUST pray more." "You MUST change your attitude." But the people who really know what you're going through, or the ones who don't necessarily know what you're going through but know that you need them to love you while you're going through it, are the ones who never tell you that they know how you feel, or that you should/ought/must do something. They just love you where you are. They bring you flowers or burn you a CD or send you a text in the morning. Those are the people who love you. It's like counseling. They don't try to "fix" you, or even harp on what broke you in the first place. They're just the bumpers in the bowling lanes, keeping you on track so that you can get to where you need to go.

One of my dearest girl friends told me last week that she had to come to a place in her life where she would let people love her, because she had a guard up so high and strong that she made herself unlovable. I know I've heard stuff like that before and had revelations about that concept that resonated with me, but something about hearing HER say it shot through my heart and made me realize that during this healing process, where I've felt alone and undirected and unclear, I have tried so hard to preserve the little bit that I've had left that I have not only made myself unlovable but I have also not allowed others to love me. It's weird how I have these "I don't need anyone, I can do it on my own." thoughts, but then I'll reach a place, like last week, where Monday started with a funeral and Friday ended with a meltdown and all I can think about is how I'm going to ask people to help. A lot of times, I just don't know how to ask. I feel like there isn't anyone to call, but the reality is that I have a lot of people in my life that I could hypothetically call, but they don't have a crystal ball. They don't know that I need them. I have to learn how to ask for help. Moving back in with my parents was a huge step in that direction. That was one of the hardest things I've ever done. Moving home again, asking for help again.

I went to lunch with a lady about a month ago who said, "I want to be hands-on in your life. I want to be someone you can call when you need help. So tell me, what can I do?" And you know what? I couldn't think of one single thing.

I sent Garrett's mom an email talking about some of the memories I had with him, and she wrote me the most touching note in response. She was so grateful that I told her about memories of our friendship, because G was a quiet person who didn't talk a lot. She said she printed my email and was putting it in a book that she was making about his life. It made me think about how open she is right now to receiving love from other people. I want to be like that.

I also talked to my old boss on the phone yesterday, and I was talking her ear off because I had just eaten a crap ton of carbs and I was feeling all insane and hyper, so I ran my mouth for a good 10 minutes before she told me that she was still at work (I sure don't miss those days of working from 8:30 to 6:45 or later) and holding a meeting at the office. She is the most task-oriented and workaholic person I've ever met, so for her to listen that long was a really big deal. She kept saying, "I really miss you. Why don't you move back here? You always have a place to work for me." And even though I know for sure that I could never do L.A. like I did it ever again, and I pray to God that I'll never work in divorce again, for her to be so vocal about her wanting me to come back was kind of a big deal and made me feel sort of good.

I was having this tech support problem at work last week, so I called a hotline somewhere and wound up talking to this tech support guy on the phone for about 15 minutes. He said that he was from Lawndale but now he lives in Dallas, and he's wanting to move and ready for a big life change. I told him that I know exactly how he feels, and I am in the same boat right now, but I also told him that just because both feel like we aren't going anywhere in life right now doesn't mean that we aren't. We just have to hang onto the principle that everything happens for a reason, and things are happening all the time that we can't see, so we have to just ride it out. I asked him about Austin and if that might be a good place to move down the road. He said he highly recommended it. It's funny how much normalcy is out there if you are just willing to take the time to see it. Sometimes it takes calling a tech support hot line. The point is, you have to let yourself be willing to ask for it, and once you ask for it, you have to be willing to receive it.

The Waiting Game

2011-01-08T09:34:00.000-08:00

I woke up today with this entire outline in my mind about what I was going to say to people, and what I was going to do, and how I was going to run my life like Donald Trump keeping someone on or kicking someone off of "The Apprentice." I feel lest traumatized when I can prepare for events or conversations. I think I realized that I'm about 45% insane when I made a comment at Christmas about how I wish that my family could all accept Outlook calendar requests so we could figure out when to do our annual Christmas "dinner" and movie ("dinner" is in quotes because it usually happens in the afternoon. Although this year it happened at 8:30 p.m.). Anyway, I like things to be structured and scheduled so that I know how to prepare, because when I'm prepared, the curve balls that are hurled at my face aren't quite as destructive, and I can feel successful when I can pull all of my preparatory materials out of my emergency tool kit. Life never works like that, though. Life doesn't work in favor of control freaks. I hate to admit that I am a control freak, but alas, I am a raging one. I became one because lack of structure made me become one, not because I am one by nature, but the point is, I am a big, fat control freak.

So I was driving to work, planning everything out in my mind, and then I got to the office and saw that we didn't have near as much going on as I anticipated. So, I randomly had lunch with one of my friends. Even in this current job, where I can dress like a slob if I want and everyone is pretty laid back and little Oscar the dog runs around the office, I always feel like I can't leave. I have this really compulsive tendency to eat lunch at my desk and work my face off all day and not take any breaks. I'm not sure why. I put a lot of unnecessary pressure on myself, a lot of people tell me, and I wish I didn't, but I do it. I do it with school and work and relationships. It's weird. Anyway, I've been having this really weird "The Shining" type of week from hell, where I go to work and fail at my job... but in my heart, I hear this line from "The Sandlot" where the voice over guy says,

"We played our best then because, I guess, we all felt like the big leaguers, under the lights of some great stadium. But Benny felt like that all the time. We all knew he was gonna go on to bigger and better games, because every time we stopped to watch the sky on those nights like regular kids, he was there to call us back. You see, for us, baseball was just a game. But for Benjamin Franklin Rodriguez, baseball was life."

I always hear it. Always. I hear it when I see someone's lame status updates on Facebook about cooking their husband chicken for dinner. I hear it when I type in Excel formulas to figure out how much money I have to go out and head hunt for. I hear it when I meet people who think they have "arrived" because they made it to the cover of this dumb local magazine we have here called "RSVP" that features professional beauty queens and people who've made a lot of money from manufacturing textiles. I keep hearing it. Of course, it isn't about baseball for me. It's just about moving on to bigger and better games. It's about staying focused and not watching the sky. I'm working hard to get somewhere so that I CAN get somewhere, and if I were only existing and bumping along through these hours upon hours of debits and credits, I would never get to the bigger or better game. If I stopped at RSVP magazine, I'd never get there. If my statuses were about cooking effin chicken, I'd never get there.

Today, though, I did routine emotional maintenance and had lunch with an old friend just so that I could have a break from working hard and I could take some time for myself. But guess what. Somewhere, in the middle of lunch, when my friend asked me how I was, I started to cry. And then, he said, "This is the first time I've ever seen you cry." We've been friends for about 10 years, now. I felt like this was a breakthrough for me. We talked about how the crap in our lives keeps us from being who we are meant to be, and how we have to stop and make some big changes before we can get to the bigger and better games. He talked to me about all of the near death experiences he's had and how God has clearly closed doors in his face because God had something better. Then he said, "God didn't want you to stay in L.A. If He did, you would've gotten another job. He would have kept the door open. He didn't. So now, you have to KNOW that He has your best interest in mind, and wait." So. I'm waiting, and I hate waiting, and I'm sick of wasting time with jobs and relationships and hard work if it isn't going to go anywhere, but there's no way to really know if it's going anywhere until you get there, and you can't get there before you wait.

My Aunt Denise gave me the epic "Oh! The Places you will Go!" book by Dr. Seuss for my high school graduation gift, and it's funny how I've read it over and over again through periods like this in my life, where I feel like God shook up my ant farm and all of my little tunnels came crashing down. Dr. Seuss > Dr. Phil.

"You won’t lag behind, because you’ll have the speed. You’ll pass the whole gang and you’ll soon take the lead. Wherever you fly, you’ll be best of the best. Wherever you go, you will top all the rest.

Except when you don’t.
Because, sometimes, you won’t.

I’m sorry to say so but, sadly, it’s true that Bang-ups and Hang-ups can happen to you.

You can get all hung up in a prickle-ly perch. And your gang will fly on. You’ll be left in a Lurch.

You’ll come down from the Lurch with an unpleasant bump. And the chances are, then, that you’ll be in a Slump.

And when you’re in a Slump, you’re not in for much fun. Un-slumping yourself is not easily done.

You will come to a place where the streets are not marked. Some windows are lighted. But mostly they’re darked. A place you could sprain both your elbow and chin! Do you dare to stay out? Do you dare to go in? How much can you lose? How much can you win?

And if you go in, should you turn left or right…or right-and-three-quarters? Or, maybe, not quite? Or go around back and sneak in from behind? Simple it’s not, I’m afraid you will find, for a mind-maker-upper to make up his mind.

You can get so confused that you’ll start in to race down long wiggled roads at a break-necking pace and grind on for miles across weirdish wild space, headed, I fear, toward a most useless place.

The Waiting Place…for people just waiting.

Waiting for a train to go or a bus to come, or a plane to go or the mail to come, or the rain to go or the phone to ring, or the snow to snow or waiting around for a Yes or No or waiting for their hair to grow. Everyone is just waiting.

Waiting for the fish to bite or waiting for wind to fly a kite or waiting around for Friday night or waiting, perhaps, for their Uncle Jake or a pot to boil, or a Better Break or a string of pearls, or a pair of pants or a wig with curls, or Another Chance. Everyone is just waiting.

No! That’s not for you!
Somehow you’ll escape all that waiting and staying. You’ll find the bright places where Boom Bands are playing. With banner flip-flapping, once more you’ll ride high! Ready for anything under the sky. Ready because you’re that kind of a guy!

Oh, the places you’ll go! There is fun to be done! There are points to be scored. There are games to be won. And the magical things you can do with that ball will make you the winning-est winner of all. Fame! You’ll be famous as famous can be, with the whole wide world watching you win on TV.

Except when they don’t. Because, sometimes, they won’t.

I’m afraid that some times you’ll play lonely games too. Games you can’t win ‘cause you’ll play against you.

All Alone!
Whether you like it or not, Alone will be something you’ll be quite a lot.

And when you’re alone, there’s a very good chance you’ll meet things that scare you right out of your pants. There are some, down the road between hither and yon, that can scare you so much you won’t want to go on.

But on you will go though the weather be foul. On you will go though your enemies prowl. On you will go though the Hakken-Kraks howl. Onward up many a frightening creek, though your arms may get sore and your sneakers may leak. On and on you will hike. And I know you’ll hike far and face up to your problems whatever they are.

You’ll get mixed up, of course, as you already know. You’ll get mixed up with many strange birds as you go. So be sure when you step. Step with care and great tact and remember that Life’s a Great Balancing Act. Just never forget to be dexterous and deft. And never mix up your right foot with your left.

And will you succeed?
Yes! You will, indeed!
(98 and ¾ percent guaranteed.)

Kid, you’ll move mountains!
So…be your name Buxbaum or Bixby or Bray or Mordecai Ale Van Allen O’Shea, you’re off to Great Places!
Today is your day!
Your mountain is waiting.
So…get on your way!"

I am Bad at Math

2011-01-05T15:41:00.000-08:00

Here's the thing about life. It gets harder as you go. I remember talking to this beautiful friend of mine around a year ago about the guy that I was dating. He was a business school guy who was busy all the time because he was married to his MBA program, and I understood that, but I also was sort of sick of dating someone that I wasn't THAT crazy about who required so much scheduling. I mean, he was OK, but he was nothing to write home about, and even though we dated for about 5 months, I never really got that into it. Anyway, I was trying to decide whether or not to can him, and as I talked to my friend, who is one of the wisest women I know, she said, "You know? Life just gets harder as you go. If he's not making time for you now, he never will, because if it isn't an MBA program, it's a job, and if it isn't a job, it's something else. When you love someone, and you can't stop thinking about them, and you want them to be a part of your life, you do whatever it takes to make it work. Being busy is just a stupid excuse that people use." And she's right. Life gets harder and more intricate and more murky, and all you can really do is decide who and what make the cut, and then make it work from there.

I went through a bout of two or three weeks where I was having nightmares every night, but they stopped for a couple of days until last night. I woke up this morning all sweaty with my heart pounding about 308 miles per hour, and I was so overwhelmed with anxiety that I couldn't really shake it until about 2:00 p.m. This is a really terrible feeling. It's still sort of lingering around and making me nervous. I think there's a spiritual dynamic to dreaming sometimes. I think sometimes dreams are sort of like omens. Anyway, despite coffee and Facebook and chapstick, I still have that "shook" feeling from my nightmare, and now I am sort of wondering what to do with it.

Maybe I should join a gym.

I don't know where nightmares come from, but I think they could come from a variety of sources, including stress. Then stress comes from a lot of things, including overcast weather, funerals, nightmares, and not performing well at work. I think I broke our teller scanner and I lost the invoice for our rent. I am trying my hardest to learn how to do math and do accounting, and I absolutely am NOT getting it. I'm not sure what happens when you're actually trying really hard and you still can't do your job. It's sort of embarrassing. I've never been fired, but 2011 might be a year of new beginnings. Er...endings.? I have been really scattered recently; repeating myself a lot and zoning out and not paying attention and losing things. I may or may not be losing my mind. Or maybe it's AD/HD. Or maybe it's just my personality. I'm not sure.

My friend whom I sat with at the funeral texted me today and asked me how I was doing. I told him,

"I'm OK. Having a bad week at work. Weather here is dreary. I'm depressed but things will get better."

His response was, "Rachel, Rachel. You have been depressed for the past 12 years just like me. It never gets better!!!"

And, maybe it was sadistic of me, but I got a good, hearty laugh out of that, and it was exactly what I needed to read. I feel guilty sometimes that I can't just snap out of it, or change my "mood" with willpower. It's rough. I am wondering if I'm still in there somewhere. It's hard when you feel withdrawn and exhausted all the time, and then when you're ready to sleep, your sleep is complete crap, because you've had these terrifying, paranoid nightmares all night. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGHHHH!

I got another message from a friend today that said, "I read your email, and thought, she doesn't realize how EVERYTHING is temporary! Ha! Rachel, life is so long... so get your damn PhD. You know why? Because people need help -- they get off track, into a rut, and just need help -- therapy -- a different set of compassionate eyes looking at their situation for them."

I needed that wee little bit of cheer leading. I also needed to be reminded, that ALL people, get off track, into a rut, and just need help, and all people definitely include me. I am definitely off track, in a rut, and need help. I bet a lot of my anxiety (again) is also coming from not knowing whether or not I am going to get into school. I have no plan B if this doesn't work out. I hate not having a plan B.

I've spent the past 7 hours sending invoices to sororities and cheerleading companies. Haha, for people who know me, they see the hilarious irony of this situation. My job is doing MATH for SORORITIES and CHEERLEADERS. Surely, Jesus is coming back soon.

I am really struggling this week. A lot of people have been on my case, and it'd be nice to have a good, long cry, but I can't, because I am all post-funeral cried out. I think the weather has a lot to do with this. It's like freaking Seattle outside, and it has been for months. I think besides the fact that Memphis is sort of like one of those West Virginia mining towns with a Texas Chainsaw Massacre twist, for every day from November to March, it's overcast and rainy and cold as crap. I think this contributes to my dread for this town a great deal. I don't mind Memphis so much in the summer, because it isn't so depressing, but during the winter, I know that an intense case of SADD awaits, so I always dread the changing seasons.

I am looking for little things to bring me back up. A piece of cold pizza or a call to a friend who will always make me laugh. Today I snuck some dog treats into work to earn the approval of our office mascot, who runs away and hides when he sees me. I have won. I had that dog eating out of my hand in no time. That was a big check in the "successes" column of my day.

I think I need to go out of town. I honestly think that I need to just pack up all of my crap and move again, but not get weak when I run out of money and can't pay my rent. I think that next time maybe I should just be an egg donor and sell plasma.

Life is a Vapor.

2011-01-04T19:34:00.000-08:00

Yesterday was a hard day.

Last week, when I was at work, my sister sent me a text and told me that an old friend of mine had been killed in Afghanistan. I felt bad that I didn't feel that sense of shock like I usually feel when someone young dies. I guess in the back of my mind, I always knew it was a possibility, even if it wasn't a reality. I didn't get that sick, sinking feeling when I found out. I was just really sad for his family.

Here's the thing about death. It never feels natural. I sort of want to punch people in the face when they say, "Well, death is just a natural part of life." No it isn't. There's nothing natural about living your whole life ALIVE and then one day being DEAD. Maybe it IS natural, but it doesn't feel like it. So many things in life feel natural. Establishing a sense of autonomy, and leaving the nest, and falling in love...Those things FEEL natural. Death always feels like you got robbed, or somebody attacked you when you were dying of cancer, or someone stole the only child you had. It feels so incredibly wrong.

I guess I'm not that good at expressing how I feel when it comes to death because I always feel so sick when I hear about it. When my grandfather died and I was in grad school in L.A., I called one of my buddies who brought over a pack of Cloves and a lighter. Some of my classmates threw together a bunch of loose dollar bills, wrapped them up in a piece of paper, and told me to buy myself a few rounds on the flight back home. Death shouldn't require someone who doesn't smoke to start smoking or for someone to get hammered on an airplane. Death makes people totally different. Marriages end over it, families break up over it, people steal because of it. It sucks.

When I heard about my friend, I shoved it in the back of my mind and didn't deal with it.

I do that with a lot of things.

Maybe it's coping. Maybe it's a defense mechanism. Maybe it's self preservation. I don't know why I do it, but I do it, and somehow, by shoving things deep in my mind until I can deal with them, I cope a little better.

Over New Years' weekend, I went to Holly Springs, MS, with my bee eff and an older couple who are friends of ours. I survived 36+ hours of football and nonstop man talk, from business deals to sports statistics to whose ex wives were banging business men in the community at NBA games or local restaurants. Sometimes, I felt like I wasn't even there. Not because I was ignored or not included, but sometimes I just sort of zone out and forget where I am. I do this whether or not I'm interested in the current topic of discussion. I just sort of float away into my mind, and I have no idea who I'm with or what I'm doing. I try not to do this while driving.

I obsessed over thoughts of graduate school and was sad when I saw the Rose Parade in Pasadena and felt hopeless when I saw local commercials starring people we knew who sold furniture or reenactments of the Civil War in dreary open fields.

But then, I got that feeling. I felt sick.

"Memphis marine killed in Afghanistan."

And every time I saw my friend's face, I felt sick.

On Sunday night, when I got back home, I lay in my bed thinking about his face. I thought about his strawberry blonde hair and how he used to spike it up when he was a punk rocker and how he had it all military cut when he joined the marines. And all of a sudden, in my bed, in the dark, I started crying.

I think the past few months caught up with me. I couldn't stop crying. I couldn't sleep for most of the night. My hair was all wet around my face, because I was lying there in the darkness with tears rolling down my cheeks and temples and back around my ears.

I kept telling myself that I didn't need to go to the funeral.

"He's not here anymore," I told myself. "It doesn't matter if you go or not."

But I couldn't sleep. Back and forth, back and forth.

I thought about the people I'd see at the church I grew up attending. I thought about having to leave work in the middle of the day. I thought about being really tired from not sleeping all night. I talked myself out of it a thousand times. I said, "You don't need to go. You can't handle it. You'll have a nervous breakdown."

Then I thought about how honorably he died. This was his sixth tour overseas.

When I first graduated from college, I taught second grade at a private school. It was, hands-down, one of the crappiest jobs I've ever had, but there was one thing that I remembered. My class used to write letters to Garrett. I'd have them draw pictures of soldiers and America and all that, and I'd send him the pictures and tell him that we were all proud of him and praying for him. My kids always asked about "Mr." Garrett, and if he'd sent us a letter. He sent me a few, and he always drew pictures of wherever he was so that the kids could see what other countries looked like.

I thought about his big old beat up truck and how the air didn't work and the radio didn't work, and he picked me up a few times in the hot, humid summer, and we'd ride around singing Frank Sinatra songs at the top of our lungs to "make our own radio," sweating our asses off the whole time and laughing at people who would stare at us for not acting more civilized.

I thought about going to eat with him and his sister at Soul Fish Cafe in midtown and about how he showed me his drum set when we were in high school.

I don't know that I'd consider him one of my closest friends or best friends, but we WERE friends, and I spent so many hours at his house, and to know that he wasn't here on earth anymore made me feel so surreal.

His service was at my old church, and I haven't stepped foot in that place in a solid five years, if not more. I knew if I went back there, I'd feel like Cary busting into prom, and everyone would judge me and whisper behind my back what a bad kid I was, just like it was when I was in high school, and they'd all say that I was hell bound in a hand basket.

But all of a sudden, I thought about my PawPaw. My PawPaw is a marine, too, and he served in World War II. He was a prisoner of war for 3 1/2 years in Manilla. He fought for our freedom. He fought for me.

Then I thought about how stupid it was that I was honestly wagering between my own pride and feelings of awkwardness and honoring my friend at his funeral. People sometimes get married 9 or 10 times in a lifetime. I always think it's dumb when people say, "You only get married once!" Well, you don't know that. What if your spouse gets eaten by lions? What if they cheat? What if they tell you they are gay? Then all of a sudden, that dumb statement becomes electrifyingly ignorant. You might get married 10 times in a lifetime. You only get one funeral.

I went to work yesterday and told my boss I needed to leave at 1:30 to go to Garrett's funeral. I started crying at work. I am very good about compartmentalizing my life, but yesterday, my heart and my work blurred over, and I cried, and I was embarrassed, but it didn't matter.

I left at 1:30 and drove up to this tele-evangelist church in a divey area of town and felt strangely eerie and encouraged at the same time. There were marines in the parking lot wearing red jackets and rehearsing songs on their bagpipes and there were freedom riders parking their Harleys all over the lot. American flags lined the entry way into the massive sanctuary.

I couldn't pull it together. I was so sad. I thought about what guts it took for an 18 year old kid to serve his country, weigh the risk, and go for it. I thought about how the last time I saw him a couple of years ago, he told me he was thinking about going to nursing school. I thought about his sister having to open the door at 11:00 p.m. on December 27th and see marines dressed in their greens and tell her that her brother had stepped on an explosive device and been killed for his country. I thought about his "Semper Fi" sticker on his truck. I thought about his camo pants and his sisters and his dog and how I saw his mom at the airport in L.A. one time.

I saw a lot of people I hoped I'd never see again as long as I lived. I saw a girl with a monkey face and her husband who has gained about 50 pounds in the past 3 years who is best friends with my ex who represents a very sad and lonely part of my life that I wish I could forget about and erase forever. But you know what? I didn't care. It didn't matter.

The first person I ran into was one of my closest high school friends. We sat together.

Garrett's nickname was "Bear," and a lot of people brought new teddy bears into the sanctuary to donate to our local children's hospital in lieu of flowers.

I guess I wanted to write about Garrett because I have lost people in my life before and never taken the time to write about who they were to me. I never wrote about the impact that losing them had on my life. My sister has lost two of her good friends this year. I lost two friends to suicide within a one year period, but when I was in L.A., it's like it never happened, because I wasn't here. It's different when you see it on the news and you go to the funeral. It's different when losing a life is a part of yours.

I have never been to a friend's funeral before. It made me think about how obsessed I am with doing something with my life, and not subjecting myself to this lame town and just getting married and having a menial job and being a baby making machine. You never really know when God pulls your timecard. You never know when your time is up. You have to live every minute of your life exuberantly. Life is such a gift. It is such a precious, fleeting, sacred gift. It's hard to remember that when you're on the 405 or 385 or you get rear ended or you can't pay your rent. It's hard to remember it when your depression has stolen your personality or you love someone who doesn't love you or you interviewed 4 times for your dream job and you didn't make the cut. It's hard to remember what a precious gift life is when it doesn't feel worth living; but just because it doesn't FEEL worth it doesn't mean that it ISN'T worth it.

I'm not sure how to live. I'm not sure what it means to wake up and really LIVE. I want to have that. I want to DO that. And I'm not sure how, but I want to start.

I just know that when God pulls my timecard, I hope that I am remembered with integrity, the way Garrett was. Even the mayor came to his funeral. I'll never be able to send Garrett another letter, or tell him that I'm praying for him, but I am still really, really proud of him.

Same ole same ole

2011-01-04T06:00:00.001-08:00

My friend from L.A. got stranded in Memphis the other night due to inclement weather, so I picked him up at his hotel and we went out to eat at a bbq place in the hood that has bars on the door and windows. It was nice to have a friend from another part of my life stop by and see where I am now, since I always feel like I'm floating around in the twilight zone and feeling like Marty McFly from "Back to the Future" when he starts to see his body erase from his family picture. I don't know where I fit or belong or where I'm supposed to be. The worst part is that I don't completely know where I WANT to be. I think if I knew what I actually wanted, I wouldn't feel quite so lost. I wouldn't feel like my fate is left up to a bunch of people who may or may not have my best interest in mind. And of course, people don't determine my fate at all; God does and I do, but when you're at the mercy of most other people, it's hard to remember that. I feel like I have two or three paths that I want to go down that ultimately could bring me a lot of joy and fulfillment for the course of my life, but picking one means giving up the others, and so I just wait, hoping that one of the paths will choose me so I don't choose the wrong one and screw up my entire life. This is not an original thought. A lot of people have thought this throughout the course of history. But when it's my life; when I'm the one experiencing it instead of just reading about it, it means something totally different.

Listening to my friend at dinner made me sort of feel like the past few years of my life never existed. We talked a lot about where I am now and where I'm going- what makes me happy or how I'm trying to find that out. Then he said, "That's the beauty of L.A. It's the Land of Dreamers. You can change your name. You can be whoever you want and do whatever you want. And nobody cares." And part of that is the paramount appeal of the city and culture; you CAN do whatever you want, and NOBODY cares. People don't hang onto the past. But they don't necessarily move to the future. There are two groups of people in L.A., though. Those who are only concerned with this very second, and those who are so ambitious that they will go to any measure to move forward. People don't ask you where you went to high school or who you used to date because they don't care. I love that part. For those who care about this very second, about the here and now, it was nice to experience that for a little while because that is so completely opposite of who I am. It was nice to be exposed to a new way of life.

Part of what makes me hate this town is part of what always brings me back. People here know me. People here know where I grew up and who I dated and who my friends were and where my house is and who my family is. They know me. That can be an anchor and a comfort at the same time.

I don't know what has happened to me, or what is happening to me, or what I'm doing. I'm 26 years old, I live with my parents, I am a bookkeeper and am making less money now than I did when I first graduated from college. I feel like my education hasn't really paid off and I get discouraged most mornings when I crank up my car in the freezing temperatures and drive 18 miles to work, way down the interstate past the ghetto and under overpasses, past muddy lakes and dead trees and slick surfaces to a job that took me 4.5 months to find. I'm not dogging my job. I actually like my job and tell God, every morning, "THANK YOU for this job." My coworkers are incredibly supportive and encouraging and I never think about work when I'm not working. I have never had a job like this. All of my jobs have been in the helping professions (special ed and counseling), so when I leave work, I never actually LEAVE- my mind is always thinking about treatment plans and support systems and helping people get their lives together. I keep thinking that maybe this time in my life, where I'm older than everyone in my office and am at the very bottom of the proverbial totem pole, is maybe a time for me to rest, and sleep all night, and enjoy the meaning of a functional environment, and finding what balance is. Maybe this time of hours upon hours of debits and credits and commutes and what could appear to be stagnation, is, indeed, a time to relax and be quiet and still until the next thing in my life, whatever it is, requires my undivided devotion.

My last job was spent with my boss always talking about how stupid everyone else was, and she would constantly yell the F word in all of our faces if we put the wrong postage on an envelope or spelled something wrong in an email. I've been working here since December 16, and two of my coworkers got me Christmas presents. These people don't even know me, and these are the kinds of people that they are. They are good, solid people who think about others, and that is invaluable.

Don't put me in another box

2010-12-23T14:52:00.000-08:00

"I'm a Christian." I said. "Don't put me in another box." - Johnny Cash

Last Christmas day, I stood in front of Michelangelo's beautiful Pieta, with Mary holding Jesus' broken body, and on the other side of St. Peter's Basilica, there was a majestic wooden nativity scene showing Mary holding Jesus as a baby, and in between, there was this vast gap with no span of time at all, because in between the physical representations of His life and death, there was nothing but beauty. There lingered a sacred sense of holiness and awe that you didn't want to mess up by breathing too loudly or walking too hard. St. Peter's is the most beautiful cathedral I have ever seen. The dome goes up into heaven, and around that paramount sanctuary, there is this feeling that is so sacred, you can just feel the Spirit moving around like a whisper in a monastery. I'm always so hesitant to talk like that, because the last person I ever want to be mistaken for is some nut job false profit who is casting demons out of people on TV and telling you that you'll somehow acquire a yacht if you give all of your money to the TV church...But honest to God, I had this eery, life changing, sacred experience then, and I really felt like I had an encounter with God. Now, I believe that God is always there, and you don't have to look far to find Him; but I feel like there are only a few times in life that you can have a very sacred, intimate, almost physical encounter with God where reality sort of folds and bends and you're in a spiritual dimension.

I gave up that day.

I remember telling God that He could do whatever He wanted, because doing it all on my own didn't work, and I was so tired. I was so, so tired. I haven't rested since then. I haven't rested in almost three years; but I know that God isn't gone. I know that He is working. Even though my life is completely stagnant right now, and I have no plans, and all of the sandcastles that I've built have collapsed back into sand, I really do believe that God is doing something in my life, even though I can't see it and don't feel it and have nothing to look forward to. He's up to something, and I know it's good.

One difficult thing for me has been to wonder how God can use me when I'm so hot headed and stubborn and mad all the time, and when I have the mouth of a sailor and drink PBR right out of the can from time to time just because I'm rebellious, and I hate people telling me what to do. And then I realized that Peter, my favorite guy ever, who was a hot headed fisherman who walked around wanting to punch everyone in the face, was the one whom Jesus told, "And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it." (Matthew 16:18), and Peter was crucified upside down and buried right there at St. Peter's. The guy who was the one who betrayed Jesus, who totally turned his back on him and lied about being his disciple to save his own butt; the guy who chopped off somebody's ear because he was so pissed off- this guy was the one whose body is buried under St. Peter's, the holiest, most beautiful place I've ever seen in my life.

All of this makes me think about my own life, and my struggles with anxiety, and depression, and body dysmorphia, and anger, and guilt, and pride, and selfishness, and disobedience, and telling God that I'm going to do it my way and He can just take a hike- this whole life that I've battled back and forth with since I was born sometimes makes me feel like I'm not really good enough, or holy enough, or whatever enough for God to use me. But my favorite guy, the one who really needed anger management, who really needed to do some weight training and cardio to burn off all of that pissed off energy, is someone that God used for thousands of years after his death for people like me to realize that God can even use a hot headed potty mouth like me and turn all of my crap into something beautiful if I'll just let Him do it.

This Christmas I will not be in Rome. I won't even be in L.A. I'll be right here, in Memphis, driving down 140 to the airport, going to work in a building that is full of broken multi-line office phones and ceramic plates that are chipped and a space heater that doesn't really let off any heat. And I'll be reading "Man in White," by Johnny Cash, my fellow hot head. My fellow Christian who wants to punch most people in the face and would rather sing songs in prison with the degenerates and slum dogs than deal with the hypocrites and "religious" people in the Southern community who are pious and Pharisaical and disgusting in their self righteous hypocrisy. There aren't many of us out there, especially in the buckle of the Bible belt where being good is better than being honest, who are stupid enough or desperate enough or broken enough to say we're really messed up and we aren't going to fake that we're holier than everyone else because we're the biggest sinners of them all but we're going to try really hard to do what's right, and to help people who are hurting, and to still call ourselves Christians, and to trust God in the middle of our stupid behavior for Him to pull us through and get us back on track.

I feel like God is teaching me that I don't have to be in Rome for Him to make an appearance at Christmas. I don't have to live in L.A. to feel like my life has promise. I don't have to be in graduate school to be successful. I don't have to be perfect to be beautiful. I don't have to beat myself up every time I want to punch someone's face. I just have to believe that God is who He says He is, and the rest will work itself out.

Everclear

2010-12-21T06:11:00.000-08:00

I am still living with your ghost
Lonely and dreaming of the west coast
I don't want to be your downtime
I don't want to be your stupid game

With my big black boots and an old suitcase
I do believe I'll find myself a new place
I don't want to be the bad guy
I don't want do your sleepwalk dance anymore
I just want to see some palm trees
I will try and shake away this disease

We can live beside the ocean
Leave the fire behind
Swim out past the breakers
Watch the world die

We can live beside the ocean
Leave the fire behind
Swim out past the breakers
Watch the world die

I am still dreaming of you face
Hungry and hollow for all the things you took away
I don't want to be your good time
I don't want to be your fall back crutch anymore

I'll walk right out into a brand new day
Insane and rising in my own weird way
I don't want to be the bad guy
I don't want to do your sleepwalk dance anymore
I just want to feel some sunshine
I just want to find some place to be alone

We can live beside the ocean
Leave the fire behind
Swim out past the breakers
Watch the world die

We can live beside the ocean
Leave the fire behind
Swim out past the breakers
Watch the world die

We can live beside the ocean
Leave the fire behind
Swim out past the breakers
Watch the world die

We can live beside the ocean
Leave the fire behind
Swim out past the breakers
Watch the world die

Yeah watch the world die

If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.

2010-12-19T13:08:00.001-08:00

I found out today that my "professional" email address was not linked to my "casual" email address, so I've missed meetings from last September, missed important business memos, and assumed that people were irresponsible for not emailing me back. Well, they did email me back. They emailed me back and I was the irresponsible one, and that made me feel really terrible, and my stomach sort of sat in the bottom of my feet like a rock when I made this discovery.

I started my new job on Thursday, and apparently, I'm a bookkeeper, and it's pretty much a 100000% Excel job, and of course, I made an F on my Excel project in Computer Applications class in college, so I'm feeling a little overwhelmed. It will get easier, I know, but for now, I feel like crying. Crying and a can of PBR.

Last night I went to an event, and so that people won't know whose event it was, I won't say what kind of event I attended. I made the discovery that people in this town are just as rude as people in L.A., but I used to just think that people here were stupid. Well, it isn't that they are stupid. It's that they are really rude. They say things to try to be "cute" or "coy," and their rudeness is sometimes disguised in Southern gentleness, but when you're a see-through-the-crap kind of person like me, you throw the charm out the window and recognize that people are just plain old fashioned RUDE.

Bad things come in 3's, right?

Well 3 rude things happened.

#1- there was this guy in high school that I knew who was sort of drop-dead gorgeous, but he was a huge jerk, so his gorgeousness didn't disguise his crapiness. I always sort of hoped that a "Cops" situation would present itself so I'd have the chance to pin him on the ground and beat the crap out of him, but the chance never presented itself, so to this day, I've still never gotten in a fist fight, and hopefully, I won't, even though I sometimes think about how fulfilling that punch to his face would be. Anyway, back in his hunky days, he went to Ole Miss for college and became your typical frat-tastic party guy, who should've had a name like "Chaz," complete with boat shoes and that dumb sunglasses strap thing that people should only wear on ski dos, but of course, all of the Ole Miss guys wear them, or at least they did when I was in college.

God proved that He is just when He made "Chaz" lose his hair, get fat, and drop out of college due to his compulsive, irresponsible partying.

So, Chaz was the first person I saw last night, and he said,

"So, what have you been up to?"

to which I replied,

"I'm trying to get back into school."

to which he replied,

"Oh. You're trying to finish your bachelor's degree?"

And all of the crap that I remember about gender stereotyping in this town, like it's 1920, made me livid, and my face felt hot when I said,

"No, I've applied for my doctorate. I finished my bachelor's in 2006."

Stupid punk.

He said,

"So you've already got a bachelor's AND a master's? And now you're trying to get a Ph.D.? Boy, was I wrong about you."

And I wanted to say, "Well, I was dead-on about you, because all of you hunky high school bullies always wind up being the dead beat drop out football watching male chauvinists with your beer guts and receding hairlines."

But, much like God closed the lions' mouths when Daniel was hanging out in the lions' den, he closed my mouth, and I just smiled politely.

#2- of course, someone I knew who also knew my bf wanted to talk to me about his exes. This is so rude. Please, people of Memphis, stop being obsessed with the past. Show a little bit of courtesy. You're rude and ignorant, and you aren't cute when you compare me to all of the girls who came before me.

I dated a raging hoe bag in L.A., and of course, at the time, I didn't know he probably had some sort of sexual addiction, but despite that he'd probably had carnal relations with everyone on the West Side and most of Hollywood, nobody ever talked about it. And you want to know WHY? Because NOBODY CARED.

In conjunction with this,

#2
a. the ex-obsessed person also wanted to talk negatively about one of my sisters, which REALLY hacked me off. If I want to talk crap about them or they want to talk crap about me, that's just fine, because we own those rights. You, rude person, might make me curb stomp you, "American History X" style, if you talk crap about my family.

#3 A person came up to me, with wide open arms, with a saccharine face full of excitement, and approached me for a bear hug, and called me my sister's name.

UUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So that's that.

I know everyone is sick about me talking about Memphis and L.A. and all of that, so I'll get spiritual for half a second.

I read this yesterday:

"God may cause our circumstances to suddenly fall apart, which may bring the realization of our unfaithfulness to Him for not recognizing that He had ordained the situation. We never saw what He was trying to accomplish, and that exact event will never be repeated in our life. This is where the test of our faithfulness comes. If we will just learn to worship God even during the difficult circumstances, He will change them for the better very quickly if He so chooses."

I sort of felt like that was written just for me. It's funny how I felt like everything in L.A. fell apart and I had to move home with my tail tucked between my legs, just to find out that once I got home, life got way worse than it was in L.A. I also feel guilty a lot because I don't want to be known for my bad attitude or critical heart or acid mouth, and that's all I seem to be these days.

But you know who makes me feel better?

Johnny Cash.

Here's a blip about Cash from Wikipedia (the most credible source of all time, right?)

"Cash, a devout but troubled Christian,has been characterized as a "lens through which to view American contradictions and challenges."A Biblical scholar, he penned a Christian novel entitled Man in White, and he made a spoken word recording of the entire New King James Version of the New Testament. Even so, Cash declared that he was "the biggest sinner of them all", and viewed himself overall as a complicated and contradictory man."

Boy, do I know how you feel, Johnny.

It's funny how I can consider myself a Christian, and someone who truly wants to be a genuine person, but as soon as I go to a Memphis event with a bunch of ignorant people, I want to walk inside, Bushwacker-style, and start punting them into a corn field. Pretty sure Jesus never felt like that.

BTW, I ordered "Man in White" on half.com for a dollar. I can't wait for it to come in the mail.

I have recently heard a few people tell me that they hate my blog, for various reasons. I have some advice for to you, gentle readers (as Anne Landers called you):

Don't read it.

If you hate it, stop reading it.

I was reading a book last week that got me so upset that I just tore my bookmark right out of its spine and threw it in the garbage can. I really did.

Please know that I don't write anything to change the world, or change your mind, or to upset you, or brainwash you. I don't even write for you anymore. I write for me. I started this thing to write for you, but now I write because it brings me the slightest bit of clarity. So if you don't like it, don't read it, and if you do like it, read it and understand my heart.

Estrogen Inundation

2010-12-14T15:11:00.000-08:00

I got my hur did this morning. The whole white lady hair thing is sort of a funny idea, to me. We'll sit in a chair for three or four hours doing nothing and will pay 300 or 400 bucks to get a new 'do, and then go home and wash all of the crap out of it so we can do it ourselves. Anyway. I worked at a hair salon for a while in college, and the interplay between all of the stylists was fascinating. Everyone talked about each other behind everyone else's back. Everyone kissed the owner's butt. Everyone was having an affair with one of their clients, and you always knew who was having carnal relations with some gorgeous, Cary Grant, silver fox age man, because the guy always got a free haircut. It was unreal.

There was this one lady with whom I worked that I really liked, because she was colorful and expressive and had paid a small fortune in plastic surgery fees, and I liked her because it was clear that she was total white trash, and she embraced her white trashiness and never tried to be anything that she wasn't. I like people who embrace who they are and aren't fake. People like that are few and far between. Anyway, I liked her so much until I found out that I had been buffaloed by her, and she was a big fake. Then I sort of started to not like her, but never told anybody else, because I didn't want to group myself with the rest of the hen fest. Anyway, this white trash lady was really involved in church, and had to leave every Wednesday early so she could sing in the choir, and come to find out, the whole time, she was going buck wild with some married man, and then I'd hear stories from the other stylists about how the white trashy hyper religious one lost her panties at the Christmas party last year and all of that. It was sort of a disappointment when I found out that she was a legitimate home wrecker. It's one thing to know that someone is a little rough around the edges and they are completely honest about it. It's another thing to act religious or pious or moral and then be losing your panties in the community eggnog bowl at the holiday party. I really dislike hypocracy. But I guess everyone dislikes it.

So, today, I got my hur did, which I've only started doing since I moved back "home," because my dad said my hair looked too stripper-esque and I needed to have it done professionally. I hate sitting there for hours upon end while my color is processing, much like I hate watching TV, or other mind-numbing activities that don't involve any creativity or critical thinking, so today I brought a bunch of thank you notes and a book to read, and that helped the time pass.

When I first got to the salon, I was sitting in the waiting area because my stylist had not arrived yet. This was a mistake.

I wound up sitting next to the most OBNOXIOUS, STUPID, LOUD talking mom of all time. She probably weighed 100 lbs and had a pixie hair cut and was talking to another mom friend at the TOP OF HER VOICE on her phone about NOTHING. NOTHING, I tell you, except her dumb kids, and their dumb activities. I understand that people love talking about their kids. I get that. So do grandparents. They just love talking about other people. I can handle that, though. I think it's a sign of love when someone is bragging about their kids or grandkids, as obnoxious as it might be. But when you're so rude that you're loud talking ABOVE the sounds of horse powered hair driers and you have nothing but really stupid things to say, you might make me do something like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EgaJuPDHhek (I would have uploaded the video, but for some reason, it isn't working).

Next, I had to get shampooed by this girl who was pretty, and she was really skinny and had big boobs and long dark hair, and she looked like she was about 27, but then I found out she was 23. She had this tattoo on the place on her hip where a love handle would be, if she had one, but she didn't, that said, "Heartless" in script. Then she started going on and on about how some guy in New York was in love with her and sent her flowers all the time and they met in Hollywood five years ago and he makes $30 an hour and wants to move to Memphis and marry her. I started to think that maybe being beautiful and having long dark hair and being skinny and having big boobs wasn't enough, when, at the end of the day, you brag about how "Heartless" you are and you're dumber than a box of monkey crap.

I started observing the interplay between all of the customers and stylists and I sort of wanted to run out the door and across town to Bass Pro, where men are simple and grunting and primitive, and they don't give a crap if your kid goes to the best school in town or if you got a new Louis Vouitton just for kicks or if your non-boyfriend who lives in NYC makes $30 an hour.

Women were pouring in the doors with foils all over their heads, with their hands loaded with shopping bags, and they'd gossip about how they hated their mothers or how so-and-so just got engaged or how they carpool all week. It was bizarre.

I felt like an alien.

I looked at my book and my thank you cards. My hair dresser said, "Don't pretend like you know how to read and write. You're too pretty to know how to do that." And it made me laugh that he sort of caught the irony of it all, how we, as women, might spend an entire half day and half our paycheck to be beautiful, stripping our hair of its color, or spending thousands of dollars to have our bodies mutilated under the knife or purging our brains out to lose just five more pounds. We do all of these things and I have no idea why, and if, in fact, you're a smart girl instead of a pretty girl, it really doesn't help you at all, and if you're pretty but not smart, you're only ahead until you're about 32, and then you're withered and "old," or if you're pretty and smart, people will assume you're stupid because you're pretty and probably won't hang in there long enough to know you're smart, and if you're not pretty and not smart, you're screwed.

So in all of this weird estrogen inundation, I hoped that maybe I could change the way I thought about my body and my hair and my skin, and maybe I could start appreciating that I'm healthy instead of thinking I have nappy hair and I'm too pale and have acne scars and my butt is too big and my boobs are too small. Maybe I could start thinking of myself as really blessed for being healthy and created in God's image and without any major problems. Maybe I could just be grateful.

2010-12-13T09:26:00.000-08:00

This, so far, is my greatest accomplishment of the day:

It feels so good to have achieved a goal that I set out to accomplish. When I first moved home, I felt so exhausted and miserable and unsafe, somehow, that I lost sight of my long term goals. I forgot about last Christmas, in Rome, thinking to myself that it was time for me to move past L.A. and that stage of my life that had started to consume and mold me into someone I never thought I'd become. My personality started tarnishing, and you could see smudges of materialism and bitterness and underlying sadness if you looked hard enough. When I first moved home, I forgot about the big picture. I could only see what was right in front of me. Moving boxes and stacks of pictures that had never made it to albums and seashells from reflective days on the beach. So many little fractured pieces of things that never amounted to anything solid. I'm only just now getting to a point where I'm remembering who I used to be and all of the dreams I used to have.

I'd been home for a few weeks in August and had realized just how restles I was, how bored and sad and lonely I was, and my dad and I sat down and had a long talk while I was having one of my many meltdowns. He said, "Whatever happened to wanting to get a Ph.D.? Did you decide not to do it, or did you forget about it? Heck, you're a smart person. If you still want to do that, now is the time to go after it." It took that little prod of rememberance for me to get my life back on track and to suck up the self loathing and move forward.

I sold the remaining furniture that I owned and took a GRE prep class with the money. I took the GRE again and came up about 180 points, which wasn't quite enough, but was the best I could do. I had lunch with former employers and professors and colleagues and tried to reconnect the best I could.

Then the letters started to come.

Most of my letters of reference were sent directly to the schools to which I applied, so I didn't know what they said. But two of my former professors sent me copies of what they had written, and I started to remember who I was.

It's funny how you can live somewhere for a few years, or be in a relationship for a few years, or hang out with a clique for a few years, and totally forget who you are. Sometimes life really changes you. Sometimes you go through something that seems like it occurred by happenstance, but it became so much bigger than a chance meeting, and when you look in the mirror, you have no idea who you are anymore. That's a pretty scary thing.

Despite my disappointment about moving "home" and all of the crap that I always talk about, I've started to recognize some things, slowly, that I've been hanging onto desperately as they have whisped by in quiet moments. There's something so comforting and safe about a grassroots community. I had lunch with a lady last week who told me stories about when I was little, and it blew my mind that she not only remembered the details but also that she'd kept up with me my whole life. There's something beautiful about that. You don't find grassroots connections in Los Angeles like you find in a dive like Memphis. For the most part, I've resented running into painful memories since I've moved home, but recently, I've been able to shove a lot of that stuff aside or face it head on, and as the negativity has started to fade, I've started recognizing my cheerleaders. I've started to see people who want me to succeed and believe in my ability. That's been a very humbling process.

I just wrote a paragraph that was sort of passive aggressive, because I knew that the person who would read it would eventually talk to me about it, and it'd be easier to bring it up through public Blogging than in a private conversation between the two of us. But then I realized how cowardly it was and deleted it.

I keep ending my blogs abruptly. I think I used to be better about being a writer for entertainment's sake, but now I write to help me sort my mind out. I'm hoping that soon I'll get back to that wit, that little hint if hilarity that harps on details and idiosyncracies.

I got a Book

2010-12-08T20:57:00.001-08:00

Today sucked.

Well.

I'm being dramatic.

The past week has been pretty cool. I house sat for a friend and had a lot of time to myself, which I liked, because I am a hermit, and my friend has this wonderfully accepting little weener dog named Jackson, and he made me feel appreciated.

It's a nice feeling when you open a door and little wagging hiney is sitting there to greet you. I never really had that feeling before. I got a cat from about 30 boyfriends ago who is mean as hell and bites me when she sees me. I love that mean old cat. But of course, she's real mean, so I never feel loved by her. But little Jackson made me feel loved.

This realization that I sucked up all of the love that a five pound weener dog gave me made me feel sort of lame. It's funny to me how cautiously I wager whether or not to accept human love, but how when an animal offers it, I suck it up like a sponge.

I felt like Jack Nicholson in "As Good as it Gets" when he played Verdell songs on the piano and fed him bacon. And he cried when his owner came back from the hospital and he had to give Verdell back to his owner. I'm not crying over Jackson, but I miss him and his little smiling dog face.

So.

Today everything caught up with me.

I've been coping well. I've reframed from feeling regretful and stupid and sad about leaving L.A. I've been thinking, "You made the best decision you could at the time. You had a 50/50% shot, and you blew it. So what? It isn't like this ruined your life. It just changed its course. You'll get out of this place. You'll make it."

I've been reframing for a couple of weeks.

Then today, I took a dump on reframing.

All of a sudden (but maybe not all of a sudden at all), I felt like I was suffocating. I got so burned out on watching stupid, mind-rotting reality shows on TV. I got sick of Christmas commercialization and consumerism. I got sick of former relationships always glaring me in the face, refusing to be ignored. I got sick of feeling fat. I got sick of seasonal traffic. I got sick of being stagnant and empty and biding my time until my life starts. I just got sick of it all.

I had a pseudo meltdown at 9:00 p.m. and felt like I had to just GET OUT OF THERE, whatever it meant, and I started driving home, but didn't really want to drive back to my parents' house. I wanted to drive somewhere to stop and feel at peace. And I couldn't think of one single place. So I drove home.

I listened to some Neil Diamond on the drive home and cried my face off.

I felt a little better.

Then.

I got a book.

I got a book in the mail that my friend from L.A. made for my birthday. It was full of pictures of our adventures and vacations and road trips to Vegas and crazy men we met at bars and clubs and Hollywood high heels and memories and she wrote a story talking about everything that we did over that insane, dreamy two-year period that almost feels like it never happened.

I laughed and laughed so many times remembering really stupid or really funny things that we did. One Halloween, we were both single, so we put a posting on an online dating site trying to find dates for ourselves, and our reply address was hunkyhaloweendates@gmail.com, or something like that. I remember we got so many emails from fat, middle age, Persian, hairy men wearing gold chains trying to convince us of how sexy and delicious they were, and we'd stay up reading their responses laughing our faces off trying to figure out why more people didn't online date like we did.

There were pictures of us at house parties in Rome and clubs in Vegas and dives on Venice Beach and karaoke bars in Hollywood, and everything about my reframing evaporated into the air and flew away like turtle doves (Home Alone II, WHAT?!).

I went from feeling like I couldn't take ONE MORE SECOND of being bored off my face and lonely and stale to remembering every single thing that charged my life into insane, hilarious adventure. I remembered it and felt really happy to know that someone else remembered it, too.

This was the most thoughtful gift I've ever received, I think. I can't imagine the hours put into getting the pictures and story together.

It made me happy and appreciative and so sad all at the same time.

It's weird how you can be so unhappy at a place and your life, and unsure of yourself, and know that God is closing a door, and you step out in blind faith, trying to find something to stand on to change your circumstances...and then you find out you stepped in the wrong direction, crapped on your own dream, and realize that you made the wrong decision.

You know what, though?

Making the wrong choice has made me know that the wrong choice isn't unfixable. It isn't so bad that it's skewed everything else. In fact, it will probably even be OK.

This makes me feel better. Or maybe it wasn't the wrong decision at all. Maybe something incredible is about to happen, and it took me locked in purgatory for a while until the incredible thing could occur. I'm not really sure.

What's weird is that I don't think I could move back to L.A., because it's such a weird, surreal place. There's no reality ANYWHERE. That's part of what makes it beautiful and alluring and seductive. Eventually, though, you get sucked in, and you start believing the illusion, and it changes you. It sure as heck changed me.

So now, I'm sort of this dried up, former adventurist living in a place that looks upon anything against homogeneity in complete disgust and utter horror because this town is scared of integrating ANYTHING with what they cling to so tightly that feels safe.

I think I was sort of delusional before I moved home, and had this grandiose and unrealistic idea that I would either find my niche here or that SURELY (Don't call me Shirley) Memphis had changed into a better place, and if by chance it hadn't, I could change it myself. Joke's on me. Things are just as they have always been, but so much worse, because I have changed. I think I'm more different now than I ever have been. I called my best friend last night because I've felt so weird recently, and we talked about things like getting married and having kids and growing up and all of that, and one of the things I realized was that I think I get scared to make assumptions in life about big choices because I've drastically changed over the past two years, and before that, I drastically changed in college. I keep going through these crazy, milestone changes, and I wonder if I'll ever level out.

I kind of hope that I don't level out. It's nice to surprise myself, and I hate predictability.

On the flip side, I hope that I don't change so much and become so weird and eccentric like Howard Hughes that I scare off all of my best friends or romantic partners and family and wind up dying alone in first class on an over seas flight by my DAMN SELF, and someone discovers that I'm dead while we're over the Pacific Ocean, so the flight attendant just puts a navy blue blanket over my head and then starts using me as a coat rack so none of the other passengers freak out.

I have to do some work now.

New Job Monday

2010-12-02T08:51:00.001-08:00

I finally got a full time job. I start in two weeks.

I had two of the worst interviews of my life last week, but somehow I got a job offer out of one of them.

Interview scenario numero uno: It was my birthday and I woke up at the butt crack of dawn to drive to the hood to go to this interview. The last thing that I really wanted to do, of course, was wear my cheap crap suit on my birthday. I hate wearing a suit because it feels too stiff, and my suit is really cheap and it's starting to fray at the seams. I got it when I was 19 to wear to funerals, and now it's all beat up around all of the important parts (shoulders, hems, crotch), so it sort of looks like it could belong in Mick Jagger's closet, or the wardrobe rack of "Law and Order," or on a power suit (not lipstick) lesbian.

So I drive down to one of the worst neighborhoods in Memphis, right by the ever-so-classy "PONY" strip club, where there are these two huge, hot pink, concrete ponies on the roof, standing on their hind legs for full frontal exposure. I park my car outside of this nonprofit mental health facility and check in.

The place is way more beat up than any V.A. hospital I've ever seen, with scuffs and holes in the walls and carpet that smells like Cheetos and is all buckled at the seams. Everyone looked disheveled and confused, like they weren't supposed to go to work that day, or they showed up at the wrong site.

I waited for over half an hour to meet with the lady who was interviewing me. I hate waiting.

I went to her office and had to dodge piles of crap to sit in a chair. There's nothing I hate more than a fire hazardous office. There were huge stacks of manila folders everywhere with client names in full view. Everybody in the helping professions knows to hide your client's files. Confidentiality 101.

During the course of this interview from hell, the director kept running out of her office to break up some sort of fight that was going on in the parking lot, where this lady kept having psychotic episodes and assaulting a kid.

My interview ended with the director making an emergency call to the po-lice.

Happy birthday, RSH!

I decided not to further pursue working in this house of mayhem.

Thanksgiving happened. It was stressful. All of that family time gives me inordinate stomach ulcers. I think that having a bunch of siblings in their mid to late 20's all hanging out and sort of playing out their childhood dynamics is somewhat bizarre, and it's uncomfortable that none of us really act our biological ages when we're together. There's a definite pecking order that makes us all tense and angry. We have fun, too. It's not like we all sit around plotting to kill each other. But it's exhausting. I think we're at a point where we all need to redefine what it means to be an adult family. I didn't recognize the magnitude of this until I moved back from L.A. I didn't know I'd have to brace myself for it, so it hit me like a lead boot to the face, and now I'm sort of picking up all of the shattered pieces and trying to glue them together, figuring out who my family is and where I fit.

Now. Interview numero dos.

The second interview I had was on Monday, and I had to wear the old frayed crap suit again, and for some reason, I was a total wreck. I think the post-Thanksgiving stress and exhaustion sort of stole my brain and personality away. I acted SO WEIRD during this interview. There's no way I would have hired me if I had been the interviewer.

I basically sat there with a blank stare for an hour, and when the boss would glance over my resume and say something complimentary, like, "I can tell you're very smart, based on your education and experience," I would say something TOTALLY AWKWARD, like, "Go oooooon...." Which I did. No lie. I really told him to "Go on."

Then he asked me about what I knew about his company. This is what I said.

"I really have no idea what you do. Maybe you should just tell me."

It's like I was socially retarded the entire time. I acted weird and spacey and was having trouble focusing. And then he offered me the job.

I can't wait to be able to GO SOMEWHERE every day. I don't know how people have these "stay at home" types of jobs...stay-at-home mom or dad or employee. I hate not going anywhere. I hate sitting around and not doing anything.

I'm finally getting used to having a slower life. I don't know if that's a good or bad thing. It's been hard to hang in there since I moved home. I went from driving around the bends of Mulholland Drive at nighttime and looking over the whole city of Los Angeles and feeling like each little light below symbolized an exciting opportunity to moving back to Memphis and feeling like my life got incredibly small overnight.

I went to a baby shower a few weeks ago where I was promptly bombarded by a room full of women (I hate single sex functions. That's why I always lived in a coed dorm, could never sell out to the whole sorority thing, and always went on a date during "Girl's Night." Too much of one gender gets far too unbalanced.) who asked me about this guy that I broke up with SIX YEARS AGO. I felt like my life shrunk. I felt like I went from sighting the Kardashians in Venice to people hanging on to lame ass crap like who I dated six years ago and asking "Whatever happened to you two? You seemed so happy!" How depressing.

I've been better about reframing, though. I had a birthday get together last weekend, and I couldn't get over how many people came. So many people showed up. New friends and friends from middle school and friends from out of town. I saw how many people loved me and have left a dent in my life, and I realized how much support I DO have, outside of the people who have tiny lives or no lives who live to plan the next wedding shower.

I'm house sitting and it's nice to be in a different environment.

That's all I've got. I haven't been writing much because nothing interesting has happened in a long time. I'm hoping that my life is going to pick up a little bit with this new job.

New Paint

2010-11-18T15:03:00.001-08:00

Things have picked up this past week, and I feel great about it.

I secured a contract job at U of M and feel SO MUCH happier than I have been since I moved home. I’ve regretted moving home since Day 1, but now that I’ve had a little bit of activity, I don’t feel near as much of a Debbie Downer. I still get choked up when I hear “Hotel California” or watch those stupid Kardashian whores, but at least now, I’m not bored and feeling stagnant and empty.

I love working- and I love having meetings and sending 30 billion emails a day and having to drive to work. I actually got to teach a graduate class last night, too, which was awesome, and made me feel sort of school-marmish and empowered at the same time. I want to start a movement in Memphis, though- one where we can wear jeans or jorts and Chuck Taylors and bikini tops and t-shirts to work. This town needs to fast forward about 60 years and become more progressive and less uptight about stupid crap. Maybe the number one appealing factor I think of when I consider working for myself is the ability to wear WHATEVER THE CRAP I WANT. This whole pantyhose crock is for the birds.

I’m sending two of my three doctorate aps out next week, which will be a relief and will give me a sense of accomplishment. I don’t think my chances of getting into either of the schools is that great, but whatever, it’ll be done and done.

Ugh, stupid Blanket!

We have this cat named Peaches or Pumpkin or something, but I call her Blanket in honor of the late MJ’s son, and she looks just like our former major, Jim Rout, in the face.

Anyway, Blanket is super codependent and needy, and she’s always sitting at my feet, starting at me like a pervert, or she jumps up on my desk and starts piously stomping around on my keyboard, and she always knocks over glasses of water so she can lick ‘em up like she was raised in a barn.

Right now I’m eating a bag of popcorn because we have no groceries. I sure hate that. I hate it when (Fightclub) we have a house full of condiments and no food. You open the refrigerator door to see gallons of mayo and relish, but there isn’t one dang thing to eat. These are the things I miss a lot about being poor as crap and having my own budget and household. I always had a system. I’d go to the grocery store once a week and always have SOMETHING to eat, even if it was mediocre and stupid, so I wouldn’t wind up like Karen Carpenter. I miss Trader Joe’s. They always had really good meal ideas. I miss the silence, too. My place was always silent. Right now we have propaganda news programs at MAXIMUM volume blaring through the house, with crazed, sensational messages delivered in Y2K style about canning your own vegetables or something.

I’m going to paint my bathroom soon. I went to Home Depot today and picked out a good color. I’ve always loved painting. It’s a fresh start. There’s something cleansing about starting over.

Crazies at Rum Boogie

2010-11-11T11:31:00.001-08:00

The GRE handed my butt to me, but at least it's over, and now I can sell of those stupid study materials on Craigslist to a lady named Channelle. True. I really am doing that. Two N's, two L's.

Blake, the TOMS shoes guy, came to Memphis yesterday and gave a talk at U of M. I was sort of surprised at my own reaction. He went to my church in L.A., and he lived in a nearby neighborhood, so I'd see him around from time to time, but I never met him. Anyway, seeing him in Memphis was sort of a comforting thing, because it made L.A. feel a little closer. On the flip side, every time he'd mention Venice or the L.A. Times, I wanted to cry my face off. I often mislabel myself as someone who is not overly emotional; but like I just said, that's a mislabel. I'm not that emotionally RESPONSIVE, typically, but I'm emotional as all get out, and I hate it. Someone could yell and scream at me for an hour and I could blank stare them with no reaction or just walk out the door and never say one word, but I'd internalize that crap for months.

I had an eye opening conversation with a dear friend yesterday who suggested that I have ADHD. I have been accused of this disorder for many years, but testing has proved otherwise. Then my friend started telling me about this book that he read about how people with ADHD (note that I am saying ADHD instead of ADD because ADD is a phased out diagnosis, even though nobody knows that---please refer to the most current DSM-IV) are often instigators and like to be engaged because they constantly need some sort of stimuli. And then I started connecting all of the dots about how the happiest time of my life was when I was working 40 hours a week, taking 9 hours of grad classes, serial dating, and having a raging social life. That's when I was really, really, really happy. And I wonder if it's all attributed to me just needing a ton of stimuli to feel satisfied. Things to ponder.

I think I'd like to start going to more philanthropic or entrepreneurial events, though they are few and far between in this town. Another reason I miss L.A. so much. There were always people available to teach you things. It's hard to seek those things out here because the resources just aren't available. But I'm finding them slowly.

I'm finishing up my Ph.D. applications and feeling pretty solid about them, despite my sub par GRE scores. It's been sort of nostalgic to go back to my old essays for my master's applications and see how far I've come since I started out. It's also helped remind me why I was passionate about the helping professions in the first place.

I attended a fundraiser the other night that made me feel like a ghost. I stole that line from my best guy friend who said he went home recently and felt like a ghost the whole time that he was there. I liked that illustration. I feel like a ghost a lot, and I felt REALLY ghosty the other night, like I wasn't really there the whole time, or maybe I was, and people didn't see me, or maybe they saw me but I didn't see them because I was trapped in another dimension. BTW, I don't believe in ghosts. But they make good illustrations. So I was at this function, feeling like a ghost, and then once I got into the car afterward, I had a meltdown and cried, and I think it was because my body had internalized the GRE so much that I needed several days to purge the stress, and one of those purging activities was crying. So we ventured downtown and listened to some blues music. And you know what? It helped a lot.

Despite my abhorrence for most of what Memphis has to offer, there are one or two things here that are sort of sacred. I remember I used to go to church with this lady who was such a hippie. I mean, she was like, a real, legit, pie-in-the-sky hippie from the South Bay. And she and I met, and she asked where I was from, and I said Memphis, sort of grimacing at the thought, because I had visited recently and was so happy to not be living there (here) anymore. And she said to me, "You don't like Memphis? I went to Memphis once. I walked down Beale Street, and I could feel its soul. Soul was oozing out of the bricks and mortar and streets, and I could feel it all around me." And even though I was pretty sure she was blazed out on grass, I also thought that was a really cool way to think of this town, despite its overt suburban conventionalism. So when we were downtown listening to blues music, it took me to this sort of surreal place where I could think about things outside of myself, and I could just be quiet and listen, and I liked it a lot.

And now I will tell you about the crazy people. The nicest crazy people ever, but crazy nontheless.

My bf and I were looking for a place to sit, because Rum Boogie Cafe was pretty crowded, and this crazy man and his wife said that we could sit at their table.

The crazy man had wild gray hair and a big gap in his front teeth. He was wearing a Harley jacket and had a gold chain necklace on with a big freaking gold eagle hanging from it. He was wearing gold rings on most of his fingers. His wife was dressed like a mom, and her ears were pierced twice (I hate that. No offense to anyone who has the double holes. I have lots of holes in my ears, but not consecutively. Wait. I do have some consecutive holes, but they're at the top, so they don't have the Jessie from Saved by the Bell look to them.) and she had gold rings on every finger except for her thumbs. She had a Brighton purse. It was fugly.

They were probably in their mid-50's, and they started telling us all about how they drove their camper down to Florida and it was in the 30's the whole time and they froze to death, but they parked down by the beach and the sunset was beautiful. Then the crazy man told us about how he was washing his truck and he was standing on the running board and his trailer was hitched onto the truck, and he was trying to wash the roof, but he called it the RUFF, and then he slipped and fell and busted his head open. Then he told us that his brother grew so fast in high school that his joints couldn't support his weight, so he had to walk around on crutches for a couple of years until his hips could keep him from killing himself. Then he told us he was a mechanic at Ford Motor Company. Not just Ford. But Ford Motor Company. Then he told us that he and his wife go to a dive bar in Kansas City, MO, every Wednesday night, to hear a band called "TUF," or Trample Under Foot, and all three of the musicians are siblings, and they are all left handed. And their waitress is the best waitress in the world, and she is smart, attentive, likes people, and is very pleasant, and she was just BORN to be a waitress, I tell you. And then the mom told us that she never went to college, but if she had gone, she would have become a psychologist. She was an antique dealer. Her grandsons are very tall and will both be pro athletes.

I loved the crazy people. I LOVED them.

Then we shook hands, and they left, and I realized we never even got their names, just like when you're on an airplane with someone and you know their life story, but then they leave, and you never see them again. Or you exchange numbers and the guy wears a suit and drives up in a BMW from 40 miles away to take you to the Cheesecake Factory for lunch. It could go either way.

So that was nice.

That's all I've got. Suddenly I feel like sleeping.

Barbie Burning

2010-11-03T21:37:00.001-07:00

I had a great day last week where I got to visit LeBonheur hospital downtown and browse the halls with a lady who worked there. Now, I constantly boast about my inability to exude any type of maternal ANYTHING, so what happened last week was surprising. We were in this play room with a little boy who had tubes hanging out of his nose and he was all banged up in the face, with stitches and wraps and bandages all over his eyes and cheeks. He had a big black eye and looked like he'd been in a bad wreck or something. Now, some people can't handle blood and gore that well, but I'm the first in line for the "Saw" movies or a real gory haunted house, so the blood didn't bother me.. But seeing a little kid all beat up looking bothered me. It sort of hurt me.

I guess he looked worse than he felt, because he was flying ALL OVER THE ROOM in a Spiderman outfit, bossing me around and telling me to eat a big stack of fake plastic donuts. So here I am, fake eating donuts and making pig chomping noises, and then I had to leave with the lady who was walking me around (sorry for ending a sentence with a preposition). So I'm walking out the door, putting my "donuts" on a little yellow kid-sized table, focused on completing the rest of the tour, and the kid flies up to me out of nowhere and hugged me, with his little hands around my butt. And it made me sort of want to cry. Even though I don't have that weird, maternal, "let's all sit around and tell breastfeeding stories" thing going on, I felt sort of complete or something when that little sick Spiderman kid hugged me. I wasn't thinking about the tubes in his nose or getting his spooky body fluids on me and I wasn't thinking about not having a job and wishing I'd never left LA and feeling like my life is a wreck. I didn't think about one single thing. I just received a hug from a sick kid, and I hope I hugged him back.

Other good things: I went to New Orleans with my bee eff over the weekend, and it felt like a flu shot for my quarter life crisis. It was so good to be away. It's weird that I'm not from there and have never lived there, but I always feel like I'm home there. It always feels right. I got to spend a lot of time with my family and I got to sleep in and be a big lazy pig. I also got to party with some politicians, but as to not put in myself in a position to be sued by anyone in office down there, I'll leave it at that. But I'll say that certain elected officials love to smoke cigars and do the "Thriller" dance.

What else. I wanted to write a bunch of stuff about our trip to NOLA and how my cousin scored free tickets to the Saints/Steelers game (my first NFL game!), but my brain feels sort of gray. I've been studying for this dang test so much that when people talk, I can only imagine things like, "y=mx+b" in my mind. I haven't been a very good listener recently.

Today I was so burned out from studying all of this crap that I took a couple hours out of the day to make a big pot of chicken and sausage gumbo. Nothing is better than a really homey gumbo when the weather sucks and its raining its face off.

My insomnia is back. I think it's because test day is near, and when I have pressure or stress of any kind lingering around, I usually can't sleep. So. Let me tell you about the creepy non-sleeping event of last night.

It was about 2:00 a.m. and I decided that I was sick of trying to sleep organically and thought I'd pop me a melatonin (those things work like a champ, BTW.). So. I take one, and decide I'm freezing to death, so I turn on the heat, and in about 3 minutes, I'm passed out, drooling like a beauty queen. I can smell that carcinogenic heater smell in my REM cycle. So then I start having this dream that I'm holding a Barbie doll over a fire, and I can smell her polyurethane hair curling up, and her face melting off, and it was like something from a horror movie, and I woke up, sweaty and scared. It was weird. When I was awake again, though, I was thinking about how smart humans are, in a way. What made my brain think of a melting Barbie when I smelled that heater smell? Pretty amazing associations, if you ax me.

In a fruitless attempt to avoid burnout, I've been watching classics on Netflix in small increments in between studying. I watched "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" for about three days. There was this part where Richard Burton tells this young punk kid, "There's quicksand here and you'll be dragged down before you know it." and when the kid gets all punky with him and tries to tell him to shut up, Burton says, "...but I'm trying to give you a survival kit. Do you hear me?" I thought that was so cool. The analogy of a place feeling like quicksand and then defending the analogy with calling it a survival kit. I loved it. Boy, can I relate. What a great line. The rest of the movie, though, upset me a lot. The drunken insanity and screaming fits of rage. Made me think of my old boss. I wonder if people who are crazy rage-aholics get some sort of rush out of yelling and screaming?

I feel like I'm writing a lot of half-thoughts, because I'm tired and burned out.
I'm going to make another attempt at sleeping. Hopefully no burning Barbies this time.

Keep ya Head up

2010-10-25T15:18:00.001-07:00

Life is emotional.

I remember one of my favorite professors at Loyola opened a class with,

"Life is difficult."

And everyone sort of looked at each other like, "No sh*t, Sherlock," but I've thought about that line about a billion times since his class, so now I'm thinking that it held a lot more weight than what we gave him credit for in the beginning when we were young.

I accidentally texted the Pharisee last week (isn't it funny how "text" has become a verb?). I was meaning to text someone with the same name in an attempt to schedule a lunch date. She eagerly replied back with about 230 texts.

"I'd love to have lunch. How about Monday? Oh wait. I am busy Monday. How about dinner? Here's my schedule...." BLAH BLAH BLAH FREAKING BLAH BLAH...

300000 TEXT MESSAGES LATER, I'm over analyzing and thinking the following:

It makes sense that she's so eager to hang out. She can't wait to judge me again and somehow make me emotionally dependent on her. That is so gross.

So I texted her back with the only response that made sense.

"Sorry. That was supposed to go to someone else."

It was true. I wasn't sure how to tell her without telling her, so I just told her.

Then I get about 39082309 messages in response. They said something to the effect of:

"Well, OKAY Rachel, but I sure hope you haven't written me off as one of those religious people that you are always talking about, because I am TRYING to offer you LOVE and bla bla bla bla (can't remember all the crap she said)."

What I DO remember is her saying this:

'It's not my problem that you are "DEPRESSED" or "sad."'

How very ignorant. That'd be like me going up to someone who has Stage 4 cancer and putting big offensive air quotes around this sentence:

"It's not my problem that you have CANCER.'"

People can be really dumb. Now, there's a very clear difference between someone making a joke about being wasted and you have this image flash through your mind of your dad coming home smelling like booze and beating the crap out of you with an extension chord (my parents are teetotalers, so please know that this did not happen. I'm just using it as an example), or if someone's making jokes about bulimia and you've had a battle with it since puberty. That kind of ignorance isn't coming out of spite. It's coming out of people just really not knowing that they're being insensitive and stupid.

It's a different ballgame when someone knows something about you and they decide to use whatever area of opportunity (sounds more positive than weakness) you struggle with to make a cheap shot at you.

Alas, I deleted her number and hope that if I ever see her again I will have the energy and ability to fake kindness.

What else.

Last week I was feeling sort of distant from everyone, like I'd got sucked into some kind of GRE-studying subculture that I couldn't break out of, and my boyfriend came over with a dozen roses and lunch and a box of chocolate covered strawberries. That just about made me drop dead. I've never dated someone who did something like that just for the heck of it. There's always an anniversary or fight or holiday involved. It was so kind.

What else.

The sky rained its ass off yesterday and I sort of wanted to retreat into a funk and cry, but I didn't. I just took a really long nap. I dread the winter. I dread the overcast and gloom and freezing temperatures and ice and rain. Ugh. I just have to suck it up and remember that THIS IS WHERE I AM. I'm not in L.A. I'm not in Venice Beach. I'm in Memphis, and I have to make the best of it.

I talked to my LA BFF a few weeks ago about living in the poster city of American suburbia, and he mentioned that sometimes being around all of those middle aged, commercialized American families makes you feel old, too, like you're sort of sucked into this surreal environment of mini vans and manicured lawns and 9 to 5 jobs. And he's right. I feel real old these days. I definitely needed to get out of the LA party scene, which I did, but this sure as heck ain't it. Memphis is one of those places that could make you lose it if you aren't careful. I'm walking that tight rope.

The best therapy for me recently has been attempting to run (yeah right) and listening to Tupac. You gotta keep your head up.

I'm going to have dinner with an old friend tonight, which I'm excited about. I'm not having HER for dinner, in the Hannibal sense of it, but I'm looking forward to catching up after a good 7+ years.

Let it Be

2010-10-18T21:45:00.000-07:00

I've been studying my arse off to retake the GRE, and my mind feels sharp and numb at the same time. Sometimes I put too much pressure on myself, like if I can't pull up these scores, I'll never get into the right doctorate program, and my life will be over, and I'll have to peddle crack and sell crap on Craigslist for the rest of my life, which is, in counseling terminology, "catastrophizing" at its best, but at least I recognize it, I guess.

I always start my Blogs with "it's been a weird past few days," or "it's been a hard week," or what have you. I've noticed this pattern. I am looking forward to a day where I can say, "I have this effervescent feeling of peace," or something. That day will be a momentous one.

For some reason, a lot more than usual, I miss a girl friend that I had in L.A. that used to be very close to me. I have a bad habit of being in love with an idea or a memory instead of recognizing something for what it is right now. I think part of that is the blessing and curse of a creative personality/mind. When you look at something and see possibilities, you can make it so much bigger and incredible than it ever could have been on its own. When you do this with people, you can help set them free; you can help them see their potential. You can help them become a live. On the flip side, when you do this with people, and you only see what they can become instead of what they are, you fall in love with an illusion. It's dangerous. It's dangerous for friendships, but it's super dangerous when you're in love with a person. I used to fall in love with ideas of people a lot. I just wrote a bunch of sentences going into unnecessary detail about falling in love with the ideas of people, and then I saw how weird it was, so I deleted it. This shows that I am not impulsive or careless, though the idea of both is very attractive to me.

So. For whatever reason, I keep thinking about my old frienemy in L.A., and when I think about her, I get sad, because I miss her.

I miss having a gal pal that I could call and laugh with and cry with and go on road trips with. But I don't just miss her role as a girl friend, I miss her, as a person. She was a lot of fun, and I saw how great she was, but it all fell apart, maybe sort of like when you have a break up, but maybe not, because we weren't gay. I never know if my analogies make sense. Sometimes I think so fast that the words don't keep up and I speak in a lot of fragments, so I ask, an OBNOXIOUS amount, "Did that make any sense to you?" and instead of my audience/co-conversation participant feeling like I am being considerate of their attention, they just feel like I'm treating them like a freaking idiot, but that isn't where my heart is, and as a result, we both feel bad. I hate that.

All day on Saturday I was sick with feelings of regret for not sucking it up, working as a cocktail waitress in booty shorts and knee socks at Cabo Cantina, and doing whatever it took to stay in L.A. until I could come up with an exciting Plan B.

I mean, it was a really, really overwhelming day, right in the middle of my four-day bender, when all I wanted to do was take my purse with me to the airport, get on a plane, and call my best buddy to pick me up at LAX so we could just be like we used to be.

Part of this holding tank feeling is having a stagnant feeling of stationary existence. It's difficult. My BFF told me, "Don't think of this as long term. Think of it as temporary, and you'll get through it." It's hard to think of a situation as temporary when the feeling never leaves.

Also, I feel like every single inkling of creativity has left me. I used to be funnier in conversation. I used to record music. I used to paint sometimes and write more.

I was hoping to use this time in Memphis (I pray that it's temporary, but fear it isn't.) as a time to write more and do some stand up and really hone in on creative endeavors, but I haven't that much. I've spent most of my time just mulling over the same old thoughts and the same demons that never go away. I don't really like to think of myself as a tormented person. I prefer to use the word "restless." It sounds a little less sociopathic. But I've been reading and watching a lot of Tennessee Williams stuff recently, and that's helped me sort of embrace the torment, and hope that somehow, out of all of this; out of all of this stagnant, depressing, stale, uninteresting, uncreative existence, that I will find light.

And when the night is cloudy
There is still a light that shines on me
Shine until tomorrow
Let it be

Depression Management 101

2010-10-11T16:43:00.001-07:00

I'm convinced that the best therapy for feeling like crap is humor. Before the APA comes knocking at my door, maybe I should rephrase this and say that the best therapy for people who are only mildly mentally/emotionally ill is humor. This has always been a topic of fascination for me and I've done a lot of research about the effects of humor on depression. I wish I could hire a bunch of rats or monkeys and build some sort of maze or something and make them watch Mitch Hedberg videos and then have them run around and I could ring a bell and make them tell jokes and have them feeling more motivated and light hearted and then people could make corny jokes like the ones about Pavlov's dogs but they'd be talking about me and my joke telling monkey-rats.

I just googled "Monkey rat" and there was a picture of this dirty skank on all fours and she had spike heels and pasties on. Really? REALLY? I wonder if that was her name. "Miss Monkey Rat." If I was a boy or a girl who liked girls, I do not think that I'd even be remotely interested in having wild relations with or going to see an exotic dancer with a name like that. Crystal or Candi (with an "i") or one of those hookery names, I get, but a monkey-rat stripper/hooker? No thank you.

I was having the worst week EVER since I moved back here, and I was feeling so trapped and desperate and awful, and then, I hung out with some funny people. Some of them I'd never met, some of them were a blast from the past, some of them were family members. We all sort of just met up somehow on Saturday, and we went to the BEST HAUNTED HOUSE EVER, and I laughed so hard that night that I finally started remembering myself. I didn't feel so alone anymore. I didn't have that feeling like my life wasn't going anywhere because I was too caught up in all of the hilarious crap that was occurring. That night made it to the top 5 of the best nights of 2010, and so far, the only best nights of 2010 have been nights in L.A., so to have a Memphis night make the top 5, I feel a little bit encouraged and maybe even a sense of accomplishment.

It's funny how one day you can wake up and feel like there's no point in even taking a shower, and then by the time you're going to bed that night, you've laughed so hard,you can't wait to see where you're life is headed.

Also, I have started sort of attempting to exercise, SORT OF, but not really, because sweating is a completely putrid activity. The past couple of days, though, prior to me hanging out with hilarious people, when I was having a series of nervous breakdowns, I started thinking to myself,

"What the crap did we learn in grad school about telling people how to live when they just wanted to crawl into a hole and DIE?!"

And then I remembered that Dr. D used to always talk about exercising - how it's one of the only constructive activities that angry people can engage in that lets off energy without them destroying property or humans or whatever.

So.

I stuffed my iPod in my brassier and started wogging around "The Path," and I started out with Eminem and ended up with The Stones and I found myself weezing and feeling like absolute DEATH at times, like I could just picture my hips or ankles or any pointy part on my body just snapping in half and shoving its disgusting marrow through my skin, and at other times feeling awesome because I was so upset and angry and sad that running it off made me feel like it was being released out of my body and into the air and maybe disappearing or helping plants grow.

I'm writing a lot of run-ons in this one. Forgive me.

I ran into my ex bee eff's parents at the grocery store today, but it wasn't all weird like that. I guess because I never think of this particular ex as an ex, even though I guess he is, by technicality, but it was one of those things where we dated so young in life and it was so on and off for so many years that now it all just sort of seems like "Back to the Future 3." You can remember it, but the plot was pretty crappy compared to the other ones, so you don't REALLY remember it, and you sure as heck can't remember the details. But anyway, it was nice to see people that I knew and liked who have known me since I was 12. And even though the dad said,

"Haven't you found a husband YET?!"

like I'm some sort of old hag school marm or raging lesbian, I wasn't even mad. I just sort of laughed it off. Then it occurred to me that this dad was a total sexist and was asking me really ignorant questions, and then I started thinking that EVERYONE here does that, and then I thought, maybe I should try to reframe my attitude about it whenever people say stupid crap to me and just laugh it off instead of getting so irritated about it, because the chances of me changing this entire city and making everyone fast forward about 70 years aren't that great.

So the new depression management plan is as follows:

-listen to more music from the late 60's.
-attempt to SORT OF (but not really) exercise by wogging.
-hang out with hilarious people as often as possible.
-laugh off people who are idiots.

Loony Bin

2010-10-09T11:35:00.000-07:00

This past week has been hard.

I keep having these visions in my mind of people in black and white movies where the protagonist (ironically) flips the EFF out and loses her mind and has a nervous breakdown and either has to go to the loony bin or remains distant and damaged the rest of her life.

I have this really tight feeling in my chest about 80% of the time where I envision my heart being the texture of a hard boiled egg and I imagine it being wrapped up real tightly in fishing line, and if someone pulls one end of the line, the whole thing is going to disintegrate into a hundred million pieces. So I’m trying not to exhale too hard.

I don’t know what the deal is. I guess it’s everything. I’m pretty sure I’m at my breaking point now. I don’t see where I can feel any worse than I do in this very second. I feel like I have no clarity at all, like I’m sort of existing and hoping and praying that God will just deliver me, and I don’t even know what it means when I’m praying it, but it’s all I can say. “Deliver me. Please, please deliver me.”

I see someone I know almost everywhere I go in this God forsaken, degenerate town, and for whatever reason, it makes me feel nauseated, like the social anxiety is so overwhelming that I sometimes start shaking in my core. I’m so much more introverted than I want to be. Something about that crippling shyness from childhood has never left me, and sometimes it resurfaces with such an overwhelming power, I don’t know how to contain it. I’ve spent my life saying that it won’t win, and I’ve spent years being loud and the center of attention and the first person to jump up to the microphone because my motivation is a terrifying fear of other people.

Mitch Hedberg wore sun glasses and often closed his eyes because his stage fright was so bad that he’d puke before he did stand up. My coping mechanism is to pretend to be more secure than I am, and more outgoing than I am, and friendlier than I am, and I try to fake myself out and make myself think that THIS person is me, but it isn’t.

Memphis is getting to me, and I can tell. Maybe it’s like being in the desert without water and all of a sudden you start losing it and seeing things and hearing voices.

I’m telling you. This has been one of the worst weeks I’ve had in a very long time.

I keep looking for solutions, searching for clarity, trying to find peace, and I can’t.

You know, I started this Blog in ‘08 to write about my adventures in Los Angeles; then for a while, I wrote for audience entertainment. Right now I’m writing as some sort of primitive survival tactic, I think. Maybe I write down how I feel in a subconscious attempt to find solutions or at least to feel a little more normalized, if such a feeling exists.

I had this huge meltdown last night. I bet I cried nonstop for two hours. It’s like all of the rejection letters from fruitless job hunting and the wild goose chases of trying to decide which grad school programs to apply to and all of the desperate, faceless people in this town living vicarious through someone else got to me all at once, and I had to leave a party because I was so overwhelmed and depressed and anxious and I felt like the floor fell out from underneath me. I walked to the car feeling like my head wasn’t on my body, like every sound I heard echoed, and I felt so disconnected and isolated that the walk to the car felt like it took months.

I keep closing my eyes and remembering one distinct moment of peace in my life, when I was in the Cayman Islands in 2006 and I was in a hammock on the beach and I fell asleep despite the noise. I have to sleep with big orange hunting earplugs in my ears every night just to help me to get a couple of hours of mediocre sleep. But during that time, I heard the ocean and the trees and the sound of peace, and I slept deeply and peacefully. I remember being in a relationship during that time with an underachiever old guy who was putting immense pressure on me to get married, and it was way too much pressure for a 21 year old kid. I remember when I broke it off with him, I saw that moment in the hammock in my mind, when I felt human, and I knew that somehow in the silence of that moment I found the strength to keep moving forward.

Winston Churchill said, “If you're going through hell, keep going.” I admire him for that. I admire the fighter. And I’m so dang tired and burned out these days that I don’t know if I’m a fighter at all. I used to sort of think I was. I was just in my bed for over an hour trying to sleep, but despite the big orange earplugs, my thoughts were so loud that I couldn’t even close my eyes, and I wasn’t sure what to do, because I couldn’t think of a single person that I could call to remind me that I’m not actually insane, I’m just going through a dead zone where I don’t have reception, and pretty soon I’ll get my service back. Pretty soon. It’s a bad feeling when you know that there are so many people in your life that love you and would die for you, but when you’re racking your brain trying to think of them, there’s nothing but static.

So. When I can’t nap, I write, and when I can’t write, I work, and when there’s no work, I’m tormented.

Gym Day in Germantown

2010-10-05T10:41:00.000-07:00

Because my last wee entry seemed sort of like one of those death-cries like when Marla Singer calls Ed Norton after she’d popped all those pills in “Fight Club,” I thought I’d give a little update to let everyone know that I’m still kicking.

Not having a lot to do, as I’ve beat to death in previous entries, has amplified my depression time and time again, so I spend more time than one might think facilitating “depression management,” since the thought of meds makes me roll my eyes. Effin pharmaceutical companies. Whores. They’re all WHORES I TELL YOU!

Seriously, though. I have crappy, short-term, you-can-only-use-it-if-you’re-air-lifted-to-the-Med-and-have-to-talk-out-of-a-Stephen-Hawking-box insurance right now, so meds aren’t an option. Shout out to Joey L re: Stephen Hawking boxes.

I’ve been doing a lot of work that might seem menial but has been very therapeutic for me. I’ve been working on my book and trying to articulate my whole L.A. experience and the cultural differences and all that, and I feel like it’s coming along pretty well. I’ve also been working on these effing grad school aps, which are starting to wear me out, but once I’m over that hurtle, it will be well worth it. I think.

I also did something on Friday that I haven’t done in a long time.

Crack.

Just kidding. I’ve never done crack.

Wait. You don’t “do” crack. You smoke it, right?

Clearly I need to catch up on “Intervention.”

Anyway, on Friday, I went to an exercise class with my friend! And it was actually pretty fun.

I used to occasionally go to some sort of sweat-your-face-off, 300 degree yoga class with my neighbor at a studio full of sculpted gay dudes in Santa Monica and I’d always leave feeling sick and empty and sore and wanting to gorge myself on pizza and Chunky Monkey afterward, but I also felt a little better, like I was able to buy into the whole Eastern voodoo hippie stuff for a few minutes and make those really mad groaning noises and think of everything in my life that made me mad and I could just let that negative energy spew out of my body like puke. But yoga also made me bored a lot because you just stand or sit or pretzel yourself into ONE position for freaking EVER and I’d have those flashbacks of when I’d cross my eyes as a kid and my uncle would say, “Your eyes are gonna stick like that if you do that for too long!” and I’d be afraid that my body would be frozen in time in the “Warrior 2” position until kingdom come.

So I have this love/hate relationship with exercise. I like the idea of it, but I don’t always like it in reality if it’s really boring or if I have to be in a real gym.

I never go to gyms because I’m insecure and I hate the smell of sweat and I have performance anxiety and big hulky men who shave their calves and lift trucks over their heads make me very, very uncomfortable. I hate those stupid slutty girls who walk around with their Under Armor spray painted onto their-rock hard bodies, and they all have names like “Chrissy” or (I almost wrote a really cheap hooker name right here and then I realized that one of my readers has this name and I’d hate to offend her on purpose. So just fill in this blank with some slutty whore name) and you never actually see them WORK OUT, you just see them prancing around in their booty shorts trying to seduce a hulky gym man-whore with the IQ of an eggplant. I am so grossed out by those kinds of women. They make me want to start burning bras and listening to Gloria Steinem tapes and going undercover as a gym whore to really see what it’s like self-marginalize and to expose all of the stupidity and desperation.

But, all caustic tirades about women who marginalize themselves aside, Friday at this particular gym was Senior Citizen day or something, and I didn’t feel intimated at all.

We walked into the class with a bunch of late-Boomer Germantown housewives, and we collected all of our equipment- those rubber band things, blocks, a huge exercise ball, a basketball that weighed 400 pounds, a yoga mat with someone else’s disgusting sweat all over it.

Then our instructor lady started the class.

Let me preface this by saying that the instructor lady looked like she was about 50 years old, and she did NOT, under ANY circumstances, have a hot bod the way you think that a personal fitness person would have. She was wearing a work out shirt that showed her flabby arms and she was wearing pants so tight that you could clearly see her frontal camel toe and her butt looked like a big old salami sandwich sitting vertically.

Anyway. I sort of thought to myself that this class would totally be a joke, because our leader lady was old and not very fit and her butt looked like a salami sandwich.

Boy, was I wrong.

That lady kicked my butt. She also came back to where I was (insecure and behind everyone else since I hate physical exercise) and kept smacking me on the arss, trying to put more stress on my hammies and all that.

It was awesome.

I haven’t laughed or grimaced like that in a while, and it sort of made me want to grow up and be an absolutely INSANE, old, unfit fitness instructor and yell and scream at a bunch of 55 year old women in spandex and talk about how exercising justifies eating four bags of Halloween candy.

Zoloft

2010-09-27T11:25:00.000-07:00

I am encountering a very intense depressive episode and I feel like it's winning.

Thanks for the Niceness

2010-09-24T07:42:00.000-07:00

I've decided to shout out to two people who made my day yesterday.

First, I got an unexpected phone call from my Aunt Denise, who lives in New Orleans.

Aunt Denise is one of those people that I ALWAYS look forward to seeing, no matter how crappy my mood is or how unsocial I'm feeling. Anyway, last Saturday was spent in NOLA with Aunt Denise, a bowl of crawfish etoufee, and a cell phone. I went through her phone and called some of her attorney friends and left them immature and ridiculous voice mails. This never stops being fun. This also never becomes stupid. You reach a point in life where rolling people (or "TP-ing" people, as some say) is just lame and mean and the fun is gone, but prank calls never, ever get stale, if you ax me.

So Aunt Denise called me to tell me that her buddy butt dialed her on accident, and when she called him back, he said, "Me and six of my doofus coworkers sat around the lunch table listening to that ridiculous voice mail that your niece left me last week, and that was just about the damn funniest thing I've ever heard in my life." So Denise called to give me a little upper for the day and encourage me to never retire my career as a professional prank caller. That made me feel good.

Side note - I always talk about having a homesick feeling, or a feeling like I don't belong and want to feel like I'm a part of something, and I always feel like I'm home when I'm with Denise, because she loves me right where I am and doesn't expect anything else. You don't get that too often with most people. At least I don't. There's something sacred about a raw sense of genuineness that you can share with someone, where they can celebrate with you when you're up and they can hold you when you're at the bottom. As long as they don't keep you on the bottom. Or smack you on your bottom. Pervs.

The second shout out goes to my dear friend Rinzee. She comes over once every other week or so to visit me. I look forward to it every single time. It's like I'm in the nursing home and I'm always gazing through my window waiting for my relatives to drive up. I look forward to it. Yesterday, she brought me a cupcake. A cupcake that looked like a wedding or a bat mitzvah. It was gorgeous and frivolous and it tasted like a nap. We never spend less than two hours together. We only leave each other after one of us receives a phone call from a concerned husband or boyfriend because we get so lost in enjoying each other's company that time just evaporates. I felt restored after she came over. She always brings me back to center, and she cries with me when I feel hopeless. She's a once-in-a-lifetime kind of person. I've only met a couple of those.

So.

Last night, I watched "12 Angry Men." Here they are:

What a great investment in my borderline day. And boy, what a flick! They just don't make 'em like that anymore. Anybody wonder who we talk about when we say, "THEY just don't..."

The infamous panel of "they."

I wonder who "they" is.

Are?

Anyway, the movie was fantastic, and it made me start thinking about writers, and how brilliant they sometimes are, when they can create a dynamic character on paper and have that character exuded (is exuded even a word?) by a human, and then a bunch of humans are acting out parts as if they were really real people, and then a plot is developed and you start finding yourself wrapped up in each person and part and character until you're lost in the story of it all and an emotional response is evoked. That's amazing to me.

I have this stack of essays that I have to write. Seems so boring. I started writing this Ph.D. application essay that started like this,

"I've decided to pursue a Ph.D. because stopping at my master's would be like leaving the party at 9:30."

Then I decided if I actually wanted to GET IN, I better "backspace" the crap out of that line and act serious.

I hate being serious.

I can only be serious around people that I really, really trust, and most people, I either don't trust or I don't think they would "get it" if I let my guard down and got really serious.

I'm going to Bulldog Bash tonight. I'm looking forward to it. Starkville isn't my scene, but my sister's friends are always nice to me, and I always come away with some good tales after staying up late and getting into trouble in a college town.

Alright. Onto essays or packing an overnight bag. Time to be marginally productive.

We put the "fun" back in Funeral.

2010-09-22T14:17:00.000-07:00

Well. My Uncle Terrell passed a week ago. My sister always makes fun of me for saying, "(person's name) passed." I think it's a funny expression. It makes me feel like wearing a hoop skirt and riding side saddle, all ladylike on a horse, and riding up to a plantation and saying to the man who lives there,

"Suh, I'm so terribly sorry to infawm you.... But ow-ah de-ah, sweet Beauregard has passed."

(Same dialect as Gone with the Wind): Your child has been born. Has been born and mercifully has died.

I'm one of those people who typically doesn't do well with death. I usually get really attached to people, so when they pass, I go through a very deep and intense grieving process, and it's down right exhausting. But with Uncle Terrell, I was so happy to know that he wasn't trapped inside his body anymore. He had real bad Alzheimer's and wasn't himself for a long time.

I know that people always say that death is a necessary part of life and all that, like Forrest Gump's mom when she was fixing to croak, but I think that's a crock. It always sucks, no matter what, even when you're happy that the person isn't suffering anymore. Just like break ups always suck, even if you're relieved to get rid of the dimwit you're dating.

Sometimes I need help gaining perspective because I'm notorious for catastrophizing. My best friend in L.A. sent me an email recently when I was saying that I feel like I'm drowning, and he put it like this:

"In my opinion, life is like a book... all the parts of your life are chapters... which means they will all eventually end and move on to the next chapter. Some chapters are boring, sad, annoying, and don't really move the story along that well, and some are exciting, fun, hilarious, suspenseful, romantic, new, and you never want them to end. But, they always end. And, just like in a book, things from previous chapters can reappear in later chapters....the point is- never get too attached to or sick of a particular time in your life, because a new chapter is inevitably around the corner (for better or worse)."

And you know what? He's right.

Anyway, the main reason I wanted to Blog was to tell you WHAT HAPPENED at the funeral home DURING THE VISITATION.

I remember one time I was talking to this Australian guy, and he absolutely freaked out when I told him that in the South, we pretty much always have an open casket. People just love showing off their dead bodies around these parts. He thought that was totally sick and in poor taste. Maybe he was right, because ever since he reacted so dramatically when I said, "Oh yeah, you leave your dead body out so everybody can tell it goodbye," I started thinking, "Man. That's kind of disgusting."

So. I HATE funeral homes.

They're always like 20 degrees and you're freezing your face off and that terribly heavy floral smell is suffocating you and old people are trying to KISS YOU ON THE LIPS and old ladies have mustaches and crap in their teeth and lipstick smeared all over the place and you just want to run as fast as you can to that little coffee room in the back and hide under the paper tablecloth until it's time to go. But you can't. You just have to keep hugging people and smelling the smell of carnations and death and suck it up until it's time to leave.

I think visitations are much more graphic than funerals.

At least at funerals, a lot of times, they close the casket, so you don't have to be looking at that locust shell of a person that doesn't even remotely look like the person you used to love.

So there I am at the funeral home during the visitation, and some crazy man keeps telling me that he used to have drug and alcohol addiction problems and he used to work with at-risk youth at the loony bin, but he never even introduced himself to me or told me how he was kin, so he just followed me around telling me about all of his problems, until finally I got saved by some family members and was able to ditch him.

I'm sitting down talking to my Aunt Bev. Aunt Bev is very glamorous and has Parkinson's, so sometimes she has to ride around on a scooter. This is a real picture of her:

So she and I are talking about our boyfriends (her husband died a few years ago. I'll write about that sometime.) and what I'm doing with my life these days and how we miss the old days when I used to go to LSU and stop by her house and we'd sit and visit. And then.....

Someone made the announcement.

"Tomorrow at the funeral we are going to have a closed casket. So if you'd like to say goodbye to Uncle Terrell, now is the time to do so."

I was just sitting there, politely, quietly, minding my own business.

And then.

Memaw grabbed my hand and we made a bee-line for the casket.

Just looking at him made me feel really queasy. He didn't look ANYTHING like Uncle T. I don't like looking at dead bodies shoved in a casket, with the person's face and hands looking like wax and pancake batter.

Maybe I should say that my Memaw has no problem with dead bodies. She isn't creeped out by them at all.

Memaw shoved her hand right into the casket, started patting Uncle Terrell on the arm, rubbing it up and down, up and down.

I was so mortified.

I was dared by one of my cousins to touch my great grandma's dead bod when I was a little kid, so I did it, but that was my first and last (I hope) encounter touching a stiff, cold corpse.

And then guess what happened.

Memaw took her hand off of Uncle Terrell, and then began STROKING MY ARM WITH HER HAND FULL OF DEATH GERMS!

Are.

You.

KIDDING ME?!

I wanted to run away and start throwing up everywhere. I wanted to run through one of those biohazard car wash things that they make you run through if they think you have anthrax.

Now please know that it was nothing against Uncle T. It's just that I hate germs. Especially death germs. I always Purell my hands after we do that hand shaking thing in church. How disgusting.

So. That pretty much scarred me for life.

The next day, the funeral itself was pretty nice, but this lady was sitting behind us and was singing all of the harmony parts to "The Old Rugged Cross," and she was singing in some sort of Disney cartoon voice, and the lady in front of us had a huge, blonde, bouffant hairdo and she smelled so stout that I felt like I'd just stomped on the anthill of those obnoxious people trying to spray you down with perfume in Macy's at Christmas time, so I kept getting distracted. That too-much-perfume-lady kept nodding her head like a parakeet. It drove me insane.

But anyway, the after party was really fun, and I hung out with some family members and we ate a lot of good stuff and drank a lot of good stuff and I heard some funny college stories from older people.

Then we went to New Orleans. I'd write about it, but I'll probably get in immense trouble. All I know is that I was dreading this whole funeral experience since death is so uncomfortable for me, but the whole thing actually wound up being sort of fun.

So let's just say that Anna and I put the fun back in funeral. And I didn't make that up. Props to my dear wonderful former college roommate who is one of the funniest women I know.

Ham Sammiches and Ducks

2010-09-15T06:01:00.000-07:00

I've been spending time attempting to be still and content in my circumstances. Usually this means that I fail miserably and feel frustrated, but I try to remember that awareness is tiring, and change is exhausting, so I can't expect for this lag time in my life to be easy.

I'm filling my time with writing a lot more. I'm working on this damn book that I've been trying to write for the past four years, but at least now, it has some direction. I don't know if it makes any sense or if it's even what I want, but my friend from L.A. said, "You better be spending this time in your life writing when you don't have a job."

I said to him, "What am I supposed to write about?"

He said, "Your crazy, F*ed up life. The point is that you write. Just keep on writing."

So I am. I hope it's doing something.

When I'm not writing, I have these cravings to go to NYC.

NYC in the fall is the best. Now don't confuse me for some East-Coaster. I couldn't make it as a West Coaster and God SAVE ME if I ever am remotely tempted to be an East-Coaster...but something about NYC is totally different than the rest of the pompous East Coast a-holes with their pleated khaki pants and their nail-clipping accents that make my ears SCREAM for peace and quiet. Something about NYC means starting a new life. I keep wanting to start a new life. I want to do this about every six months. Sometimes I think that I need to be medicated. Other times I remember what my 51-year-old friend said to me.

"Don't ever let anyone talk you out of a mid-life crisis. I've had at least three already, and they've all been wonderful."

I'm stuck in a permanent quarter-life crisis. I'm holding out for winning the Publisher's Clearing House and being able to fund my trip to NYC and plastic surgery. Plus all of my knock-off Coach bags are unraveling and the back of my favorite D & G watch fell off, so I DO have my reasons for needing an emergency trip to China Town before it gets too cold.

Yesterday, my mom and I went to this crappy little gas station not too far from our house. The gas station has a little grocery store attached. The whole place smells like smoked ham and fishing bate, and there's a big row of shrink wrapped pickles by the cash register. We went over to Canale's, bought ham sandwiches for 2 bucks, bought BBQ potato chips and Dr. Pepper.

We went to the local park and sat on a picnic bench and looked at the lake and the ducks swimming around while we ate our two-dolla sandwiches under the trees. It was so pleasant and peaceful. I didn't think about not having a job or direction or purpose. I just enjoyed the lunch date with my mom watching the ducks. We haven't eaten lunch at a park like that since I was little, and I tried to etch it in my memory, because I think this time of quiet in my life is fleeting.

I'm trying to hold onto the memory of living in L.A. and constantly chasing an illusion around, trying to make a life work for me that never would. I try to remember feeling isolated and empty all the time, feeling like I had no support and no hope. I try to remember this so I can recognize how lucky I am now to live closer to family and live closer to people who care.

I still get sort of shocked when people are nice.

I went on an awkward trip to the lake a couple of weeks ago, and while we were tied up to a bunch of other boats, some hillbilly with a gold pirate medallion hanging around his neck said in thick, redneck English, "Y'all just come on down to my boat if you run out of beer. We've got liquor too. Just come on down, and we'll getcha whatever ya want." And I thought to myself, "Wow. That was nice. That would never happen in L.A." Then I chalked it up to this guy, named "Rip," (Not a joke) being a typical guy and hitting on us, so I sort of discounted his kindness. But then, these two cute girls in their early 20's came swimming up to our boat, and said, "Hey, we thought y'all might be around our age, and you look nice, so we wanted to come be friends." Then I thought to myself, "People in the South are just genuinely nice. That's all there is to it. Hang on to this, Rachel. Don't throw out the gentility baby of Memphis with the boredom bathwater."

It's hard to sift through what makes living here worth it and what will eventually drive me to insanity. I have to hang onto cheap living cost. I have to hang onto kindness. I have to hang onto a possible Ph.D. for next-to-nothing and people who ask how I'm doing and actually CARE how I'm doing. I have to hang onto it all, and keep remembering that everything happens for a reason. It really does.

I Miss my Funny Friends.

2010-09-13T09:01:00.000-07:00

Though I've been reading a lot of serious books and watching a lot of serious movies recently, putting me in a kind of serious mood, this morning I woke up really, really missing my funny friends.

It's hard to find funny people. Genuinely funny people, that is. I laugh at a lot at people, but usually not because they are genuinely funny. I laugh at their facial expressions or ability to re-tell a story or at the inflections in their voices, but there aren't very many people in life that I've come across who make me laugh so hard that my insides hurt.

I recognized this yesterday in church. I go to a church that I probably really need to go to right now, because every time I leave on Sunday, I have something to think about and apply to my life. There's a lot of reflective and applicable teaching. I catch myself doing the same thing every week, though. Not laughing. We have a staff of folks who are really smart, which is part of the reason I like the church so much - they aren't those hokey TV preachers with thick Southern drawls who don't know anything about theology or whatever and just preach about giving your money to them, like this guy:

I hope I'm not making fun of somebody who's actually a good guy, here. I don't even know who this guy is. But I'm glad that my preacher/pastor/teacher doesn't look like Rod Stewart. Or am I?

Anyway, yesterday, in church, the guy who was preaching/teaching said a few things that were pretty funny. When I say pretty funny, I mean marginally funny, they weren't gut-wrenching funny, but they were funny enough for me to laugh at, if I wanted to. The thing is, I didn't laugh at all. I didn't even smirk. I just heard this joke here and there and thought to myself, "Wow. For a preacher, that was pretty good." But I didn't even smile.

Then I started thinking.

I haven't interacted with funny people much since I moved home. My funniest friend here is a lot like me. She's funny in a crowd, but one-on-one, she's a counselor, a listener, a friend, a sister. I don't count on her to be funny and I don't want her to constantly be a jokester, because usually, when I call her, a joke isn't what I need. I need a friend.

I had two funny friends in L.A., but my best friend was one who always made me laugh, even if we were having a serious night where I was crying my face off and being a big baby. I knew he could say something, in perfect taste, that would be hilarious.

I might have written about this before. I can't remember, and I currently lack the energy and motivation to look through past Blogs and find it if I've written it before. So I'll just say it again.

I use this thought when measuring the responsibility and trustworthiness of my friends: would I let my kids play with THEIR kids?

Now, I have no kids, so this might be a sort of dumb idea. I also don't typically do well with babies, and I have no maternal instinct. So sometimes I think about my baby sister, suck her into a time warp, imagine her when she was little and breakable, and wonder if I'd let her play at my friends' house unsupervised.

So, one day, right before I moved home, I was telling my best friend in L.A.,

"You know what? I'd definitely let my kids play with your kids. I'd even let them play with your kids without me around."

and he said, without missing a beat,

"Good. Because my kids are cannibals."

I laughed harder in that moment that I remember laughing since 2008. I got spoiled having direct access to people like that.

One of my dearest and most treasured friends is my former college roommate, who was the first funny woman I'd ever met. I think it's easier to find funny men. Think about how many famous female comics are out there. Slim pickins compared to the men, eh?

My college roommate was opposite of me in most ways. She was an engineer. I was a fashion major. She went to chemistry meetings, I went to fashion meetings. We were very different, but our common denominator was our love of humor. She brought into my life a completely different kind of humor. She is very dry. She'll say thinks without being flamboyant or attention seeking. She says things blankly sometimes, and they hit you like a slap in the face, and if you don't listen, you miss it. You have to listen to her to get her humor, and if you listen, you gain some sort of humor/comedy treasure. I miss her.

So. All of this has me thinking that this town needs a makeover. Memphis is a lot like Disneyland. It was in it's hey-day (is it hay-day? or hey-day? or heigh-day? what does hey-day even mean?) in the 70's, but now, it could use a face lift. It needs a new coat of paint.

Please, Memphians, or at least those who know the answer, where do the funny people hang out here? I need you.

This is a cry for help for humor's sake.

I've been writing some more jokes recently, most as self-help, more as a lifeline than an outlet for funniness, and have been thinking about giving stand-up a shot again. I don't love it enough and am not competitive enough to do it in L.A., but I'm desperate enough and sad enough to give it a shot in Memphis.

Faceless Girls and The Path

2010-09-12T16:08:00.001-07:00

I’ve had an unusual past couple of days. Maybe unusual is my usual though, because I’ve never had a normal day in my life.

I’ve been thinking a lot about people who really make an impression on me and people who don’t, and I wonder what kind of impression I make on other people when I meet them and they meet me.

I started thinking about this after I completely offended a girl whom I couldn’t remember. A couple of weeks ago, I met a very plain-faced girl at a dive bar. I remember her face had absolutely no features. She had brown hair, I remember that. But her face was totally blank, like a ghost from Pacman, and there was nothing about her face or body or personality that stood out to me at all.

That same night, I met another girl who had the most dynamic and hilarious personality of anyone I’ve met since I moved back to this crummy town, and I remembered her name.

Last night I attended a shower where I pretty much knew nobody and I didn’t really care to meet anyone because most people were married, so if I met any of the men, the women would think I was hitting on their husbands, and if I met any of the women, they would not want to be friends because they were already in some big wives’ club where they all went to the same church and they all grew up together and they weren’t accepting applications from newcomers who (God forbid) left Memphis, came back to Memphis (Oh, there must be hope!), and who aren’t married (God forbid again). So. I just sort of stood around and mingled here and there and tried to keep abreast of the LSU football scores.

Then this brown haired girl enters the room and my boyfriend says something to her, but I don’t know what it is, because I’m on the other side of the room out of ear shot. She waves to me, and I wave back. Now, my boyfriend could probably be the mayor of this town because he knows EVERYONE and I don’t know anyone anymore so I constantly feel unpopular, like the fat kid who never gets picked for the schoolyard games, and he constantly is very nice about saying, “And this is my girlfriend, Rachel,” and people wave to me and pretend to care, even though they don’t, but at least they’re nice, I guess.

So the brown haired girl comes up to me and extends her hand, and I say,

“It’s nice to meet you. I’m Rachel.”

And then a miracle happened.

The no-faced girl all of a sudden had a face.

It was full of expression.

I still had no idea who the crap she was, but in retrospect, I was proud of her human face, because beforehand, like I said, it looked like a Pac Man ghost.

“We’ve actually MET,” she said to me, all pissed off-like.

I said,

“Oh. I’m sorry. I’m a drunk. I forget things a lot.”

And then I walked off.

So I’ve been thinking about this stupid girl who had no personality and no face and plain hair and I’ve recognized that maybe it’s the really uptight and plain people that make the people who are funny and smart and brilliant a lot brighter. And now I would like to pay tribute to my dear friend in L.A. who took the cake on hilarity yesterday.

Let me preface by saying that my dear friend is incredibly smart and has this sort of vintage romanticism about him, and he constantly talks about becoming a Southern gentleman and he talks about “the War.” Now. We assume this is World War II, but he isn’t even 30 yet and he’s never been in the military so we know that he is not a WWII veteran. I also sometimes think he means the Civil War, because he'd like to live on a plantation one day. Anyway, he talks about “the War,” and sometimes I ask him about it.

So yesterday I was g-chatting with my dear friend, and I told him to try to survive the war, or something to that affect, when we were closing our conversation, and his response was….

..

(drum roll)

…

“The war is tough out here. Thank God for porn and Skype.”

BAAAAAAAAHAHAHHAHAHAHA!

This is why I miss my L.A. friends. There was a wittiness about two of them that is so incredibly rare, and I can’t believe that I found two of them in one city. That never happens.

What else, what else. My parents are out of town, so our pets have become increasingly codependent. We have these two cats, Mikey and Peaches, but I call Peaches “Blanket,” in honor of Michael Jackson’s youngest son. It seems like any time I do ANYTHING (pour cereal, load the dishwasher, do laundry), Mikey and Blanket are sitting right at my feet, staring at me, like my little fan club. My peanut gallery.

I’ll be sad when my parents come home tomorrow and all of this feline attention is disbursed accordingly.

I’m trying to exercise a little more, since I have nothing else to do other than compulsively worry about things that are out of my control. I’m saying this like I actually exercise. I don’t. But at least I don’t binge and purge. That really sucks. Then you smell like puke all the time and your teeth start looking like candy corn. So the past few days I have been walking or riding my beach cruiser down “The Path,” as the Haleys like to call it.

“The Path” is this long bike path that is the best kept secret in my neighborhood, where you can walk behind the neighborhood and forget that you live in American suburbia, because on the right side of the path is a canopy of green trees, and on the left side is a field that is filled with bails of hay and swaying wheat, or something that looks like wheat.

So today I was riding my beach cruiser down The Path, and I was thinking about how sad I was that I wasn’t riding my bike down in Venice somewhere and I was cruising down a dumb country path, but I was hopeful that once I got to the lake where The Path ends, I could sit on the bench in front of the fountain and read my book.

But guess what.

I got to the lake and a rat bastard family was sitting on my pre-claimed bench and they were fishing. And they looked so cute and vintage Americana, like a Norman Rockwell painting, that I decided not to cuss them out or throw rocks at them, but to just make my way home and read my book by the pool.

So, my aforementioned friend also suggested that I beauty up my blog a bit, hence the new layout, etc. My friend said that I should add some pictures, etc.

So my plan was to describe to you this really homey and plain wooden barn that is by The Path. The barn is big and brown and there are horses all around it nibbling at the wheat.

Then I was going to put a picture of a barn and horses here for you to see.

But guess what.

I googled “barn and horses,”

And this is what I found.

Really?

REALLY?!

This man is clearly NOT a horse, nor a barn.

I (less than three) Naps

2010-09-10T12:02:00.000-07:00

This weather is killing me.

I'm starting to think that maybe I'm a bad luck magnet or I have really bad karma or something, even though I don't really believe in karma. My mom called me her "little rabbit's foot" for a while because my "luck" was so bad, with threads in my life unraveling over and over again. I'm not sure about the whole bad luck thing, but I think that I'm bringing bad weather. L.A. is notorious for gorgeous weather, and this past summer, every day was thick with a marine layer and gray clouds. It's like that in Memphis right now, too. I kept thinking before I moved home,

Well, at least you're moving back in the summer - the best time to be in Memphis. If you had to move back in November, it'd be so gray and dark that you'd blow your brains out, so maybe at least with the nice weather you won't feel quite as depressed.

Joke's on me.

The sun just broke through for about 5 seconds. Thank GOD.

I might have to start tanning. Vitamin D saves.

I've been taking a lot of naps recently and having these really weird, weighty anxiety dreams.

I don't understand this napping business. I've been taking at least a one hour nap every day, and my mom says she thinks my body is still recovering from dramatic stress for two years. Seems to me that the body could recover from stress in about two weeks. I'm always looking for a faster way.

Side note.

Stupid effing clouds just hid the sun again.

I never understand those melodramatic people who love clouds and rain and Seattle and winter.

Maybe I shouldn't hate on the melodramatics. I happen to breathe melodrama. In fact, if I was a gay man, I know for sure that I wouldn't be one of those very professional and well groomed news reporter types. I'd be a gorgeous, diva drag queen with lots of glittery eye make up and screeching gestures and sassy sayings. I'd call everyone a "Glamor Kitten" or a "Bitch," real lispy and giggly, and I'd wear my melodrama on my sleeve with pride.

So back to my naps. Every time I take a nap, I'm asleep in about 10 minutes, and I start to sleep so hard that my face feels like it's swallowed up in pavement. I breathe really heavy and my whole body feels like it weighs a thousand pounds and the mattress is eating me alive. And then I start to dream.

Yesterday I had a really bad anxiety dream and I woke up all sweaty, which really irritated me, because I had just changed my sheets, and the thought of sweaty sheets absolutely disgusts me. I brush my teeth, change my panties, and change my sheets far more frequently than the average Jane.

So my dream yesterday was one involving a lot of interpersonal conflict, and me running around crying out for help to a bunch of people who were too preoccupied or disinterested to help or listen to me, and then the whole inside of my house was covered in snow, and I didn't have a coat. It was like "The Shining" turned inside out. I hate snow.

Then I woke up and felt very needy. I felt like I needed a hug from a grandparent. I felt like I needed someone to say, "It's going to be OK."

But instead of finding a way to meet that needy need, I psychoanalyzed instead, and started thinking, "Hot dang, Rachel. You're such a control freak."

This is one of millions of reasons why I miss my best L.A. friend a lot. We talked very openly and vulnerably about our need for control, and I really miss normalizing this gravitation that I have for order and safety.

I started out writing today with this end goal in mind. "I need to write about this, this, and this..." But guess what. I just took one of those killer naps. This one was a really good one. And now I have to let our dog out.

I Hate Carnies

2010-09-09T09:20:00.000-07:00

I had a rough night last night.

I've been in a sort of reflective state, trying to figure out how to survive this bout of unemployment - trying to figure out whether it's worth it or not to pursue more education to get where I want to go in life, trying to figure everything out, and feeling that, in a lot of ways, I am more confused now than before I started finding answers to all of my questions.

Last night started off weird. My stomach already felt a little uneasy, and I'm not sure why. I think I ate some bad ham. I don't even like ham. Between the bad ham and this disgusting "Sleepy Hollow" weather where little spurts of rain kept spitting out of the charcoal sky, I notice that one of my ex's movies was on TV. Maybe one of the worst movies of all time, and it just happens to be on TV, broadcasting when I'm already feeling melancholy and mildly ill because of that bad ham. That's what sucks about dating people who are in "the business" who are marginally successful. You can't ever really get away from them. Someone will write a song or star in TV show or in a movie and then they just pop up unexpectedly when you least want to be reminded of them. I kept hoping that his scenes wouldn't come up. I didn't want to see his stupid arrogant face. I got that really mad feeling like I wanted to punch my fist through something sheet rock. But instead, I just changed the channel.

So after being reminded of the worst human I've ever met, I headed off to the Delta Fair. The fair is always sort of a big kick off to fall. I haven't been in a few years. Probably not since college. The fair always smells delicious, like funnel cake and farm animals and pronto pups. I didn't smell all of that homey deliciousness, though. I could only remember the bad ham and think that the fair smelled like busted ass.

We started to ride rides. What was I thinking? I've watched all of these documentaries about county fairs and how the people who run them will hire hobos and pedophiles off the streets to run all of the rides and to be weight guessers and all of that, so the fair has sort of an evil flavor in my mind.

Then I got really sick.

Really, really sick.

It's like I had some sort of inner ear thing going on, where I couldn't really see straight, and I kept feeling like I was going to fall down.

So, my boyfriend bought me a Sprite, and I turned into the "Purse Holder" while everyone else road rides, and I felt a little better.

As the night went on, I had fun, once my stomach left my brain and settled back into its normal position.

We went to the petting zoo and I pet a bunch of goats and a big old water buffalo and some sheep. I love the petting zoo. Animals are hilarious. I also snuck away and saw a whole bunch of pigs spooning with each other in the pig pen, snoring away, happy as could be. That was fun.

Then something happened that made me feel incredibly guilty.

Maybe I should preface this by saying that I LOVE FREAK SHOWS. I love them. I used to frequent the Freak Show on Venice Beach, even though I knew everything in it was fake and dumb, and I'd still spend five bucks to see the two-headed turtle and the pig with the brain on top of its head.

So there was this sign that said, "Smallest lady in the world!" and you could pay a dollar to go see her.

For some reason, I thought this would be one of those fake things, like when the sign says "SPIDER LADY!" and you go behind the curtain and there's a lady with her head stuck through a hole in a plywood plank with a bunch of fake hairy spider legs painted on it, and it's really dumb, but funny, too.

Well. I paid my dollar.

And there was this lady, this REAL lady, sitting on this tiny little sofa, and she sat there with the saddest look on her face, and I felt like I'd just walked into a strip club, like I'd just thrown a dollar at a person just to make her my entertainment.

I felt so guilty.

Her name was Linda. She was from Haiti.

I felt so guilty that she was a real person and I just paid ONE DOLLAR to stare at her.

Ugh.

Makes me feel sick just thinking about how guilty I still feel.

Maybe it's all those papers you have to write about social justice in graduate school, or how you study human rights, or how I went to the Civil Rights Museum the other day, and it has nothing to do with politics or agendas or right wing this or left wing that, it just has to do with what's right and wrong, and I felt so wrong.

So. Maybe you could think of it as great that she has a job or something. But I didn't think of it like that because her face was so sad.

After I felt like a dirty cheap freak show pimp, we rode on one last ride, but the lights kept going out, and my anxiety sky rocketed, and I just imagined myself being thrown from the carnie pedophile assembled "Fire Ball" ride and my body just combusting in mid air, and all of my limp body parts just sort of scattering all over Cordova into suburban front yards.

So the carnies started to stop the ride, and start it, and stop it, and start it. And by about the 5th time that we were up in the air, my ovaries were in my throat, and I felt so incredibly sick that I was positive I'd reenact "Squints" in "The Sandlot," puking all over the place.

By the time we finally were released from Carnie Purgatory, all of the carnies were laughing and mocking us, and my whole body felt clammy and cold and hot all at once, and I wobbled to solid ground, and I felt like I had the worst hangover of my life. One of those heinous tequila hangovers, or a hangover after you haven't eaten in a couple of days and you've just been on some crazy binge drinking shot fest where your brain feels like it's hemorrhaging and you're just begging God to help you wake up the next day.

I was riding in my boyfriend's car on the way back to his house with my eyes closed and the cold air on full blast in my face and I was death gripping the sides of my seat. I kept putting my finger on the window button. My stomach was in my thyroid.

By the time we got back to his house, I walked slowly to his couch and stiffly laid on it. I tried so hard not to move. He got me another Sprite. Then he came over and pulled my shoes off and put a pillow under my head, which felt like it weighed a thousand pounds. And then, the worst part of the whole night happened.

I started to cry.

I'm a huge cry baby when I feel bad.

I was so humiliated. I think the whole day just took a dump on me at once. My bad ham and my stupid ex's movie and the pervert carnies with Meth Mouth and the one-dollar wee lady and the smell of pigs and my swimming head and my inner ear and desperate craving for Dramamine and the pure humiliation of crying over feeling sick. It was just too much.

So. I'm not trying to say that the fair sucks. And when I think back on the fair a long time from now, hopefully I'll think back on all of those cute little pigs sleeping side by side like little jelly beans, and I'll think about hanging out with my sister's friends and how nice they were, or I'll think back on how sweet it was for my boyfriend to buy me Sprites and take my shoes off...But right now, all I can think of is that I hate carnies, and just the thought of last night makes me feel like total hell.

Traveling Mercies

2010-09-08T15:31:00.000-07:00

I started reading this book called "Traveling Mercies" that my hairdresser told me to read. He said the lady in the book sort of reminded him of me, because she was reverent and irreverent at the same time, and she had a very real but funny flavor about her. I always investigate these things, when people say, "You remind me of..." If it's a person or an author or a musician or whatever, I always check it out, because I want to know what the person MEANS when they say something like that. I normally look at what people MEAN before I look at what they do. Motive before action. Very important stuff. It makes me miss counseling.

So I started reading this book today, and we never have any food in our house, and we never have, as long as I can remember, so I resorted to eating a couple of stale peanut butter crackers I had shoved in my desk drawer from a few weeks ago.

I was lying on my back and I had peanut butter cracker crumbs all over the place on my chest where cleavage should be, and I was reading a part in this book about this lady who was in the church choir who always looked down her nose at this guy who sat at the back of the church who was dying of AIDS, and how one day when they were singing "His Eyes is on the Sparrow," the lady left the choir and walked to the back row of the church and held the man up to stand even though his body was deteriorating because of his disease, and this lady and this man were both crying and holding each other, and I don't know what happened, but I started to cry. I've always loved that song, and it's like I felt really connected to an idea of love that seemed very raw and appealing, even if we only see it once or twice in a lifetime.

I just laid there (one of these days I'll learn all the tenses of the word "lay" and start to use them properly) on my bed with my crumbs all over my concave chest and cried my ass off.

Usually I hate crying because my face gets so raw and I feel so swollen and fat and disgusting that I just want to hide under the couch, but when I was reading this book and crying I was thinking about my hair man and how much I love him and how I feel like God sent him into my life when I felt really alone.

I hope I can be like that to some people.

Isn't it weird to think about the people in your life that came in right at the perfect time, or said the perfect thing, or gave you a hug or wrote you a little note out of the blue, and it's right when you felt like you were about to break, but you didn't, because that person gave you just enough to feel like waking up tomorrow was worth it? I love that.

So anyway. I don't know why I felt like I needed to write about this little experience, but somehow, I felt enlightened, covered in Ritz cracker dust and tears.

Labor Day

2010-09-07T09:26:00.000-07:00

I can't help but feel significant counter transference whenever I watch "It's a Wonderful Life," which I haven't watched in a long time...but I hear this quote in my head every single day, even if I only see the movie on an annual basis:

(George to Mary)

...I know what I'm gonna do tomorrow and the next day and the next year and the year after that. I'm shaking the dust of this crummy little town off my feet and I'm gonna see the world. Italy, Greece, the Parthenon...the Coliseum. Then I'm coming back here and go to college and see what they know and then I'm going to build things. I'm gonna build air fields. I'm gonna build skyscrapers a hundred stories high. I'm gonna build bridges a mile long...

I feel like that a lot. I feel like Memphis is one big small town where everyone knows everyone else, and everyone is in everyone else's business, and there's always some third party connection between all people, and I just want more out of life than this crummy little town has to offer.

I ran into some girl the other night who immediately approached me and said,

"Didn't you used to date (fill in the blank with an ex-douche's name circa 2007)?"

And I thought to myself how depressing it is to be remembered for people you've dated.

Then I met a Pharisee for lunch last week. I haven't seen this person in five years. Randomly she asked if I'd like to go to lunch. I thought that was a nice gesture.

Big mistake.

Lunch entailed her telling me I was "living in sin." I always thought living in sin meant co-habitating before you're married. That's what old people and movies say, anyway. But to this particular legalist (I know "legalist" isn't a real word, but it works, so bear with me), living in sin meant whatever it is that I'm doing. Isn't that weird? I didn't even get mad. I wasn't even surprised. I just thought how depressing it is that this is the culture in which I live in this crummy little town, suffocating under the legalistic and self righteous buckle of the Bible belt.

I got a redemption call from a friend back in L.A. I told him about my experience and he quoted,

"My jaw is agape."

Thank God other people think that these types of occurrences are completely bizarre.

And all of it started with this here Blog. The girl who met me for lunch said she'd read my Blog and concluded that I am living in sin because of it.

I apologize to all of my readers who constantly provide supportive and raving feedback about the attention to detail and humor that I provide in this here online journal. To you, I apologize for projecting an image of me living in sin.

w.

t.

f.?!

Anyway, it's real easy to get caught up in the small-mindedness of people in this town if you aren't careful. It's easy to chalk up this culture to very small and routine living if you aren't constantly in tune to your own lifeline, whatever that may be.

My lifeline has consisted of making to-do lists and being more positive about living in Memphis by taking advantage of its cultural opportunities.

Yesterday, I went to the National Civil Rights Museum.

Walking through the museum and watching educational videos and standing behind the balcony where Martin Luther King got shot made me feel like I was learning something - like Memphis is pretty historically rich, if you can look past the fruitcakes who live here and see the soulfulness of the culture as a whole.

There were two drunk ladies walking around who created some much needed comic relief, too, which was entertaining. You could smell the booze and cigarettes a mile away, and they kept taking pictures of everything, even though it was against the rules, and they'd mutter things about how they were going to get shot for taking pictures, but they didn't even care.

Oh, hilarious patrons of the National Civil Rights Museum. Thank you for making me appreciate my Labor Day.

:(

2010-08-31T18:13:00.000-07:00

I'm feeling extremely restless. The following is a cover letter I sent with a job inquiry email today:

I need a job so I won't have to become a hooker or make meth in the
bathtub and sell it to elementary school kids.

Thanks,

Rachel

Recent Stuff

2010-08-30T17:49:00.000-07:00

Right now my finger looks like this:

I've been spraying water on my wallpaper to yank this crap off my bathroom walls, but now I've got this gimpy finger. I've hated this wallpaper since I was 15, and I decided that the wallpaper will not win. I am kicking my ugly wallpaper's ass.

Maybe unemployment is getting to me.

I'm running out of day time duties, so I've started taking down wallpaper and Googling how to distress my cabinets.

I've met some interesting people recently.

I've been purging my life of crap that I don't need. I used to have this ex boyfriend years ago who was one of the dumbest people I've ever met, and he was a computer "engineer," except of course, he wasn't any kind of engineer at all. He was just a really stupid guy who would Eff up your computer worse when he "fixed" it than when it was messed up to begin with. So anyway, I needed a laptop, so he gave me this total POS one, and today, I sold it to a lady in the Burlington Coat Factory parking lot.

She sort of looked like a viking.

She was driving this huge portable dog grooming van, and she was wearing a uniform that looked just like a FedEx courier outfit and she was rather robust and had two short pigtails. And I liked her.

Then I sold my mini fridge to a lady today who is a military wife and rides motorcycles. Her husband went to LSU. She said that she is going to California in two weeks and she and her best friend are riding a convertible up the coast.

I love these people I meet on Craigslist.

I know that girl got murdered from some nut job via Craigslist, but so far, I've had only pleasant experiences.

What else.

Oh yes.

The other day, my dad and I took the cat to the vet. The cat is a girl cat. The vet kept calling the cat "him." My dad said,

"You keep calling Peaches him [I call the cat Blanket after MJ's son]. Is this cat not a girl cat?"

and the vet says...

in a VERY excited voice...

(drum roll)

"LET'S CHECK ITS GENITALIA! IT LOOKS LIKE A SEMI COLON!"

And I just about fell out of the chair, onto the tile floor, covered in cat hair and animal fingernails, and laughed so hard that I almost died.

I don't care how old I get.

I will continue to call every girl I meet named "Jenny" "Jenny-talia" and I will always laugh at 7th grade humor. Always. Until I die.

My Friends are Funnier Than Yours

2010-08-25T09:47:00.000-07:00

Because I haven't felt funny in a long time, I decided to post a funny email that my friend sent me that made me laugh my face off. Enjoy!

"...Idle hands are the devil's playground. Sometimes when not much is going on, you over-think shit and think you're going nutso. But you'll be fine!

I miss you a great deal. Probably because I took your presence here in Los Angeles for granted and thought, "Oh, I can hang with Rachel next week." But next week turned into Rachelisinf-ckingmemphis. Oh well. We will still keep in touch and possibly have some sort of Notebook-esque reunion in the future. But hopefully without the Alzheimer stuff. That shit freaks me out. If you haven't seen the Notebook, well, I've just spoiled it for you. It's your own G.D. fault."

Baaahahahahha. It's true. My friends are funnier than yours.

Funemployment Rawks

2010-08-24T12:32:00.000-07:00

Unemployment is starting to be really fun. I think in about two weeks, I could lose it, but as of now, it's working out well. I swam a bunch of laps today and starting getting my paperwork together for grad school and sent out some resumes. I just spent an hour playing Hank Williams songs on the guitar. I rode my bike around the driveway and ate leftovers by the pool. I haven't been able to enjoy time off in a long, long time. I'm starting to like it.

I just wrote like ten paragraphs about how stupid people always feel the need to update their Facebook statuses with really dumb things, like, "...

You know what?

I was about to post an idiot's EXACT status update, and then I thought,

"You know, somebody is going to read this and think you're a huge a-hole for calling that girl an idiot," and then I decided to delete it all.

I'm going through a weird phase where I'm trying to figure out what my ultimate goal is for a career. I used to be really sure, but then I realized that I'm not enough of a do-gooder to spend the rest of my life being poor. Also, I'm sick of always having jobs but never having a career. I want something to work towards.

Is it toward? or towards?

Anyway, I've been setting up meetings with people that I like and people who are smart and picking their brains about where my life should go, and it's been a very insightful and enriching experience. I've even been exposing myself (ha, makes me sound like an exhibitionist, doesn't it? I'd change "expose" to "interact," but now you're hooked) to people I've lost touch with or I haven't liked in the past, and I'm finding out that maybe I have more in common with a lot of people than I think. I self-isolate a lot. I don't know why. I'm really happy when I'm around a big group of people. You'd think I'd spend more time interacting with groups. But a lot of times I just want to be a hermit, and I turn my phone on silent and turn my Skype off so nobody will contact me. Anyway.

It's been nice to reconnect with people and learn from people and see people in a new perspective now that I've lived on a different planet and got a degree in counseling and worked with some severely emotionally/mentally impaired people. It sort of changes you.

I started out wanting to Blog about all kinds of hilarious ongoings, but I can't think of any now that I'm actually typing. I need to write more. Writing is the only thing I never get sick of. When people talk to me, I think of their words running across the top of my mind in a big long word banner. It's like closed-captioning for my brain. Isn't that weird? I think that's a sign that I need to write more. I really want to write a book. I started writing one in 2006, but I couldn't ever develop my ideas, and it was fiction, and I'm starting to think that maybe I could write an autobiography about one genre of my life. I need to get on that. But right now I need some Chunky Monkey.

Lunch Lady Land

2010-08-22T21:43:00.001-07:00

I thought I should probably update my Blog because I’ve been receiving a lot of “DON’T JUMP!” messages from concerned readers. Moving home has been a tough transition, but things are getting better. I’m starting to feel a little less crazed. I’m still dealing with feelings of isolation and homesickness for my own space and friends in L.A., but for the first time in years, I am sleeping like crazy and having dreams again. Nothing tops that punch-drunk feeling of REM sleep.

I started embracing this whole unemployment period of my life by enjoying the things I don’t usually have time to do. I’ve been playing Dolly Parton songs on the guitar. I’ve been having lunch with people. I’ve been lying by the pool and reading books. Life is starting to relax a little. I don’t feel near as depressed as I did at first, and despite the fact that I don’t really have friends in Memphis anymore (I have one, anyway), I am feeling a little less lonely.

I had lunch with a former professor a few days ago, and it felt good to feel understood and it felt good to laugh with somebody who “gets it.” It was like medicine for my soul. Nothing is better than connecting with someone who understands you when you feel like you don’t even have anyone in your life to call if you run out of gas.

Yesterday, I volunteered with some people from my parents’ church to feed the homeless at the Memphis Union Mission. I used to volunteer at the Union Rescue Mission in L.A., and I loved it. Memphis Mission had a different feel altogether. Some old ladies from my parents’ church tried to talk me into being a Christian counselor. That’s the weird thing about Memphis. Everyone tries to pin you into a religious corner. I remember I grew up with some kids whose dads were ministers, and they were absolutely appalled and began overtly judging me when they found out that my dad was a pilot and had never gone to seminary. Ha. What a bizarre mindset. I never got it. Not even when I was a third grade kid. That never made any sense to me, and thank God it still doesn’t.

Anyway, these old kooks kept telling me that I should join the staff of counselors at a mega-church cult whose name and location I will not disclose, or that I should go to seminary. Isn’t it weird how some people put a fix-all on your life with a religious answer like “church” or “seminary” or “Bible fellowship” or “small group,” and they don’t know what your background or experience or passion or life is all about? I find this really, really weird. I forgot that I grew up in the thick of all of this when I lived in L.A. How quickly I have been reminded.

I found myself shutting off pretty quickly. I found myself remembering why I found most Bible-belters ignorant and why when people have asked me my “religion,” I’ve said, more than once, that I am a “recovering Baptist.” But then something happened.

We started serving people who actually needed help.

Maybe I should tell you about my abhorrence for Mayonnaise before I do anything else. My sister and I HATE--- LOATHE Mayonnaise more than anything in this entire world. If I even SMELL it, I want to puke. So guess what my job was last night.

My job was to be the coleslaw lady.

We all know what the base of slaw is.

Effing Mayonnaise.

So. I had to dump a big heaping spoonful of Mayonnaisey slaw on everybody’s BBQ plate.

The thing is, my focus wasn’t on the smell of the slaw. I didn’t notice. I didn’t notice because these guys really did need the help. You start looking at all of those teardrop tattoos and missing teeth and scars and eyes full of brokenness, and mayo ain’t nothin.

Every man that walked by and had one of my magical scoops of slaw said “Thank you” and really MEANT it. Most people don’t mean it when they say “thank you.” They say it because it’s a formality, not because they really feel the gratitude. These guys felt it.

So all of this got me to start thinking about some things.

I’ve been grappling with separating what I think about faith and God from the cult I grew up in. In my attempt to separate my faith from cultural religious beliefs, I started thinking about how if we don’t help meet other peoples’ needs, maybe those needs won’t get met. I mean, there were enough people down there helping out last night to serve all those guys, but I went through three huge pans of coleslaw to feed everyone, and I probably still could have given those guys seconds. I mean, what if people actually started helping other people, and got their butts off of church pews and out of programs and classes and organized religious activities and started to HELP people? I am not being critical of the programs and all of that, I’m just saying, I don’t know if Jesus did Awana and Bible Drill and went to church camp and played electric guitar in the church “worship” band, but I do know that he washed his disciples’ feet, and he healed the blind, and he was there for Mary and Martha when Lazarus was dead.

Then I started thinking about all of the times that God has met my needs through other people. And here’s what I started to think about.

Two years ago, I was all geared up to move to L.A. The problem was that my car had about 160,000 miles on it and sort of ran like crap. So I started to pray. I thought: if God was opening the door for me to move away, he needed to provide a way to get there. So I reminded Him of that. I prayed all the time, “God, I need a new car. I only have five bucks to my name. If you want me to go to L.A., you’ve got to do something about this.”

So one day, a couple of weeks before I moved, my dad said he wanted to talk to me. He told me that he was going to let me take his SUV out to school until I was finished. I cried my face off. God did that.

I think that God uses people even if they don’t believe in God or even if they aren’t Christians and even if we have different beliefs and values and views. I think that God uses everybody to get things done.

For instance, when my purse got stolen at work, I had to take two days off to get a new license, to get new keys made, to replace everything. Just going to the DMV took me a million hours. That job didn’t give me sick days or vacation time or anything. When I wasn’t there, I wasn’t paid, no matter what. So not only had I figured my budget for the month including those two days, but I had also figured out my budget to get my boyfriend a birthday present, and then, my budget was completely shot, and I was up a creek.

Taking those two days off and the cost of everything in my purse cost me about $800. Who has an extra $800 lying around? Well. Probably rich people. But I sure didn’t/don’t.

So I prayed about it. All the way down to my stolen iPod and Coach wallet. I prayed that God would just deal with it, because I couldn’t, and I was so worn out and felt like I was a pair of shoes that had been thrown in the washing machine and I just didn’t belong in L.A. anymore and I was so exhausted and over it.

My boss called me over the weekend when I was at the gym and said she was writing me a check for $1,000 on Monday to cover the cost of everything. I cried my face off again. This covered the cost of the lost days at work and everything that was stolen in my purse and the cost of extra keys and changed locks and a new license and everything. My boss wasn’t a Christian or a “God-fearing” person or someone that I’d ever ask about how to live a good, moral life, but God used her to meet my needs.

That extra $200 gave me enough money to buy an iPod, but I used my iPod money to buy my boyfriend’s birthday gift. And guess what. Before I left, my friend gave me a going-away iPod. God used my friend to meet my needs.

I’ve just started to think, though. What if we stopped worrying about who was Baptist or Presbyterian or Catholic or whatever, and we just helped other people out? You never know how you’re touching somebody else’s life. Maybe you can do it by being a coleslaw lady.

In my TN Moutain Home

2010-08-10T09:02:00.000-07:00

It’s been hard for me to pull it together to write recently. I feel like I have marbles in my head. I keep talking in watery sentences that don’t make any sense. I’m in a perpetual state of exhaustion and I’m not sure if I should chalk it up to clinical depression or just a disruption in my quarter life crisis.

The week before I moved was hard. I wanted to spend as much time with the people that I loved in L.A. as I could, but in the back of my mind, I sort of wanted to just be a recluse in my apartment so I couldn’t get any more attached and I couldn’t make any more memories.

I sold a bunch of my stuff on Craigslist and met some interesting people. A guy named Chris with tattoo sleeves came to look at my dresser. He owned a Harley dealership. He was from Missouri. He opened the drawers to my dresser and said, “Wow. These are roomy. I could fit a body in here.” Hearing that from a Harley-dealing, tatted, bald-headed man who was in my apartment alone with me didn’t provide a lot of solace.

I met a massage therapist who bought my bed. She asked to be my friend on Facebook later. What a cool lady. She was the epitome of attractive L.A. The idealist, the warm-hearted, the person connected to the industry but not brainwashed by it. She told me that after she gives Colin Ferrell massages, he rubs her feet. She hugged me when she left.

A lady named Sharon bought my bookshelf. She was my favorite. She was about five feet tall and 200 pounds and she had two knee replacement surgeries. She was a professional caterer for celebrities. She told me that one of her celebrity clients bought her a new Mercedes. She auctioned it off and gave the money to St. Jude. She told me that her husband does stand up comedy and that I should keep doing it. I told her that I don’t feel funny these days.

I had an Indian guy buy my mirror and when I told him that I was moving back to Memphis, he said, “Oh yes, isn’t that where Elvis’ palace is?” Hahhahahaha. Elvis’ palace.

My last night in L.A., I spent with my best friend out there. It was hard to leave. I cried a lot.

I have a lingering feeling of defeat that I tried to counsel myself into anticipating, but let’s face it, you can’t counsel yourself. Hell, I don’t even think a counselor could counsel me right now. I didn’t really have a coping strategy for the depression, just a basic “brace yourself” plan for the transition.

The trip home was a disaster in a lot of ways. Things kept going wrong. I tried so hard to be prepared for my family to help me move, but I kept having these massive sobbing meltdowns, so I never quite finished packing. Currently, I keep opening cardboard boxes full of shampoo, panties, and light bulbs. My OCD had me packing everything, wrapped in bubble wrap and paper, and putting organized labels on the boxes. My family had a different strategy for packing. I appreciated the help, but I think the mounding disorganization made me feel even more lost, like I had (have) absolutely no control of my life, and things would just continue to spiral downward, and I’d get sucked down with it. Sucked down into unlabeled boxes full of mismatched items.

I know I did the right thing by moving home, but I sure do feel hopeless right now. I feel like my life got really generic all of a sudden and I have no goals. It’s a hard time for me. I know that a lot of people read my blog to be entertained, but I don’t have it in me to be entertaining right now. I just need to write a little bit here so I don’t feel like I’m keeping it all trapped inside of me. I don’t want to be one of those nuts that goes on a shooting spree or something because they never actually vent. I’m definitely not a candidate for insanity in that capacity, so don’t worry.

Some weird things have happened recently. Last week my boyfriend took me to a victory party for a local elected official. That was pretty wild. I was surrounded by baby boomers in boat shoes and golf shirts and my glass was never empty because everyone was so attentive. I grew up around extremist political activists, so I sort of despise the whole political scene in general. And here I am at the elected official’s house, toasting glasses with Memphis royalty. Oh, Rachel. Your life is so unpredictable.

My dad has been on my case about my hair looking too much like that of a stripper (I have always had a fondness for bunny blonde), so he offered to pay to have my hair done at a salon. I decided I might as well take advantage of the opportunity, and I called the best guy in Memphis, who used to cut my hair when I was little.

I showed up at his salon and it was obvious that he didn’t recognize me. We shot the bull a little while and then I told him who I was. I’m pretty sure we’re best friends now. He said, “I can’t believe that sweet little brown haired girl grew up to be a glamour kitten!”

My hair man talked to me about his story. He told me about his struggles and his life and where he came from. It made me feel connected for the first time since I had moved home (which had only been a few days, so don’t think I’m as dramatic as I sound). We talked about the pseudo Christian subculture that we grew up around and how incredibly weird it was/is. It felt good to talk to somebody who was real. Most people aren’t real. Most people don’t even know they’re fake. Most people aren’t very smart.

I told him about where I am in life and how I just feel like I’m floundering around, waiting for my death sentence. I keep thinking that coming back to Memphis is like a return to the elephant graveyard, like I’m here to accept my fate and die amongst the elephant bones. He put it so plainly.

“Honey, sounds like you have Vocational ADD.”

Maybe I’ll write a book called Vocational ADD.

I get so into certain things. I get so interested in ideas and plans and I go after them a thousand percent, then one day, I wake up bored as all get out and feel trapped and disgusted. Maybe that’s why I have some commitment issues. You can’t pull that crap when you get married.

Right about the time that I’m really feeling happy at my hair man’s place, the most OBNOXIOUS PERSON IN THE WORLD walks in.

I knew this girl because she grew up with my younger sister. She always has that Little Orphan Annie/Pollyanna look on her face. All dewy eyed and smiley, like Howdy Doody. She NEVER shut up. Not once. She ran her mouth nonstop. She is also the best friend of the girl that was “the other woman” of my ex, who he subsequently married. I always wind up seeing these people that I wish I’d just never see again. There are so many parts of my life I wish I could just forget about. I did for a while. In L.A. I didn’t think about all of this crap as much. Then I moved home to see that everyone is exactly the same and all of the b.s. I left behind is still alive and well and thriving and waiting for me to remember and confront. I don’t have the energy to confront it.

Anyway, old Howdy Doody Ratchet Mouth finally left, and I was able to enjoy the rest of my hair experience while listening to things like this:

“My daughter just turned 10, so I took her and some of her friends to Graceland for her birthday party.”

“The first fight my boyfriend and I ever had was over bar-b-que. I said Central was better, he said Corky’s was better. I didn’t talk to him for a week.”

The meaningless chit-chat at the salon made me remember things about Memphis that I do love, even though I currently feel like my life is over.

My boyfriend and I went down to his friend’s lake house on Saturday. Memphis is the only place on earth that you can spend the morning getting your hair done and the afternoon in a golf cart in the woods, rushing down steep hills and catching spider webs and bugs in your teeth. It felt good to get out of town for the day. I saw a bunch of wild turkeys and a deer and a bunch of bass jumping out of the water. I always sort of hated that stuff. All of those variations of brown always disgusted me. But on Saturday, it was peaceful, and I needed to remember the peace that comes with nature. Made me think of Dolly Parton.

“Sittin' on the front porch on a summer afternoon
In a straightback chair on two legs, leans against the wall
Watch the kids a' playin' with June bugs on a string
And chase the glowin' fireflies when evenin' shadows fall

In my Tennessee mountain home
Life is as peaceful as a baby's sigh
In my Tennessee mountain home
Crickets sing in the fields near by

Honeysuckle vine clings to the fence along the lane
Their fragrance makes the summer wind so sweet
And on a distant hilltop, an eagle spreads its wings
An' a songbird on a fence post sings a melody”

Saturday night we went to Oxford. If there’s one place on this earth that I loathe with all of my heart, it’s Oxford. I hate politics and Oxford and preps and Greeks and Ole Miss, and all of a sudden, God started dying laughing at me, and plopped me right into the middle of an Oxford, preppy, political, Ole Miss dynasty. So I had dinner in Oxford and actually had a good time. A guy walked by the plate glass window of the restaurant in a seersucker suit. I kid you not.

On Sunday, I’m pretty sure I attended a cult service at a local church. I am currently shopping around for a church. I feel like it might be the only thing that could perhaps provide me with a little bit of stability, since the rest of my life feels like a total disaster right now.

I sat in a stiff wooden pew amongst a 100% white crowd of Frozen Chosens. Everybody was wearing a suit or a dressed-up J.Crew sweater set. It was incredibly depressing. The pastor was draped with black robes. There was organ music and a star-warbling fat lady singing a bunch of warbly soprano words that were completely indistinguishable. I saw some girls that I knew from childhood who married their husbands when they were like 20 years old. They still have their natural hair color. Put a bullet in my head if I ever succumb to my natural hair color. They sat there in their pressed dresses and sweater sets stiffly and blankly, like slaves.

I wore metallic shoes.

Living in L.A. made me sort of forget about some things. I mean, I didn’t really forget them, but I lost touch with them so they weren’t in the front of my mind anymore. I forgot about the crippling effects of legalism and group-think and blind conformity, because I was out doing my own thing where nobody gave a crap if you went to church or where you went to church or who you were dating. Nobody cared, because everyone in L.A. is so driven by their own motives for success that they really don’t care about you unless they can use you for their own merit.

Here, in Memphis, there’s a lot of emphasis on where you go to church, who your parents are, what your last name is, where you get your hair done, what kind of clothes you wear on Sunday, which “legacy” you are, what area of town you live in, blaaaaaa bla blaaaaa. I mean, I guess that is everywhere- it’s in L.A., too, but there’s just so much emphasis on these pristine cultural norms that it sort of makes me want to jump in my car, move to another city, and escape again. I’ve done that twice though, and it doesn’t seem to work. I always wind up back in this town, like a dog returning to its vomit.

I was approached yesterday to do volunteer work for a Christian counseling center. I don’t know how I feel about that. I always swore up and down that if I ever had to work in any form of “ministry,” I’d off myself. But maybe that’s where I need to be. I think the whole ministry has a crying need for people who are real and who have struggles and who feel lost and can admit to their own humanity. “The ministry” doesn’t need any more cultural Christian zombies, walking around in their stupid sweater sets with their mousy hair and spouses they’ve been married to since high school.

Anyway, I digress.

I really want to write a book, but I have no direction. Can you write a book with no direction? I guess that Don Miller guy does it all the time. Maybe I can just type a little bit every day, documenting my caustic tirades, and throw it all together and see if some schmuck will publish it.

I think I am going to continue organizing my iTunes files. I have 30 boxes to unpack, but the thought of opening another unlabeled box really stresses me out, so I guess I’ll go back to my Rolling Stones files.

My Last Victorious Day

2010-07-16T12:19:00.000-07:00

Today is my last day of work in the most depressing, taxing, burnout provoking environment I've ever encountered. That feeling that my sister told me about- the one she said that I would have whenever I graduated from college- I HAVE IT RIGHT NOW. Degrees and promotions and accolades could never give me this feeling.

I am free.

I have a sense of relief and peace and victory like I've never felt before- like I've just slayed a dragon with a butter knife. All odds were against me and I've still come out alive. Barely. I feel like I can finally start a healing process and begin to investigate job options that could potentially bring me joy instead of despair. Imagine that!

This morning, my boss asked me to write my own letter of recommendation. How typical. It seems like all of my bosses have me write their personal thank you notes or letters of reference or love notes to their spouses on Valentine's Day. I'd be crushed if I knew that I received a sympathy card that was written by some office peon. I hate insincerity. One time she had me write a sympathy note to a colleague of hers whose wife had recently died. She wanted to sign it with, "I hope you aren't too lonely without Barbara." I told her this was unbelievably calloused and tacky and I refused to be a part of it. She began to laugh hysterically and quizzically, wondering why I would not write this for her.

Unbelievable.

Thank God I have decent writing skills. I wrote my letter of rec this morning, and I tried to capitalize on the things she's told me over and over again, throwing jellybean rewards my way with no monetary compensation. I sent the letter to my sister, who often writes recs for her interns, and these were her (hilarious) replies:

You should have said,

"it has been my privilege to act as a reference on behalf of Rachel. working here is tougher than any war-zone environment. Rachel came to combat daily for 2 years with a pauper's salary. don't do what i did, or she will quit your company too."

"Rachel was a part of the historic process of man-handling Attila the Hun. She showed great diplomacy in dealing with reeking breath and fits of rage"

"Rachel's maturity level was exceptional as she rose above the leadership of her work environment on every occasion of temper tantrums""
Hahahahha. There's nothing better than laughing with someone who knows your pain. That might be the greatest gift of life aside from Jesus.

Here's a facebook message I received from a friend who reads my Blog:

"Have a blast on your final working day in the whorehouse of western civilization. Space may be the final frontier, but it's made in a Hollywood basement"
And another Facebook message from the guy I replaced at my job:

"I hear tell today is your last day....as a fellow escapee I can certainly imagine how you're feeling today."

I feel strangely relieved, like I've just found out I don't have a terminal illness.

I talked to our IT guy about a week ago, who stops in sporadically to fix stupid problems that I could fix on my own (even a MONKEY could figure out how to make a signature on Outlook), and he was very down in the dumps about me leaving my job. He and I are pretty good buddies. I think I crave that testosterone to balance out everyone's mutual menstrual cycle in this office, and because I don't bring all of my emotions with me to work, he enjoys shooting the bull with me. He's like my Jewish, middle-age, earring-bearing dad from the Valley. He was very encouraging and told me he worked at a telephone company for just under 10 years, and at the 10 year mark he was supposed to get a huge raise and stock options and all these perks, but he quit just shy of those 10 years because HE COULDN'T TAKE IT ANYMORE. He said he couldn't see his awful boss ONE MORE DAY and it was totally worth it to cut his ties and never look back.

I get it.

I have no job lined up and funemployment starts today at 6:00 p.m., and it's 100000% worth it to me to not have to deal with the abuse anymore. I think I could be restored within a month.

My dad told me he had a horrible job one time too, and he didn't have a job lined up, and he was married and had a wife to provide for, and the job was so awful that he had to quit. He just had to before he lost his ever loving mind.

I GET IT.

I even had a former client send me a copy of "Joe vs. the Volcano" specifically to help me laugh off the fact that Joe's life is EXACTLY LIKE MINE regarding work and his office looks EXACTLY LIKE MINE. Another person who saw the humor in the pain. God sent me that woman!

I am about to fully embrace whatever it is that lies ahead. It could be writing or sales or clinical work or research or education. I don't give a shit what it is. As long as it isn't working in divorce in Los Angeles, California, I can handle it.

Don't Talk to Your Exes

2010-07-14T11:18:00.000-07:00

I'd like to write a little blurb about relationships, since I have obsessively been beating this dead horse regarding my upcoming move for so long. Hopefully, I'm finished talking about that. I know that I'm not, though. I won't really be over it until it happens.

The moose (whom I will now refer to as Bullwinkle) and I had a bonding moment in our roach-infested kitchenette this morning. Side note: I am renaming the moose because she is a winking moose. I think she's got that winking Tourette's tic thing going on. She's always winking with one or both of her eyes. The moose + Tourettes' winking = BullWINKle.

This morning, Bullwinkle looked sort of downcast, and asked me my opinion on current boyfriends talking to ex girlfriends. I feel like of all people, I should either be the ultimate authority or no judge at all regarding relationships. I've dated about five billion people since high school, and most of my relationships have been totally dysfunctional. Despite all of the long term ramifications of these experiences, through these relationships, I've learned an immense amount about myself, others, and relationships.

I started thinking back on a time where I was in a pretty intense relationship with a douche bag idiot who was 10 years older than me who kept calling me "Marissa." I learned after a while that this was his ex girlfriend's name. I was only about 21 at the time, so I had not yet learned that the first time he called me this cheap hooker name I should have ended it. I also happened to find ole Marissa's diamond hoop earrings on his night stand a few months into it. All the clear signs that he was still hooking up with her were right in front of me, but during that period of my life, I actually still trusted people, so when he said things like, "Oh, I was cleaning out my closet and found her earnings from five years ago and put them there to remind me to mail them to her," I sort of believed him. Eventually, I dumped him when I was cracked out on wisdom teeth meds, which was a great way to do it, because I had completely flat affect, and that really twisted the old knife. Anyway, the point of all of this is that I think the only reason to keep up with an ex is if you have intentions of still engaging in some sort of unhealthy relationship with them. If you really want to have an invested and committed relationship with your current significant other, talking to your ex all the time is like driving a car but letting all the air out of the tires. Sure, the car can still drive, but after a while, all the air is out, and then you hit the ground. I think it's sort of impossible to have a healthy relationship if you're talking to your ex all the time.

I told Bullwinkle that I probably wouldn't be OK with it. She said every time she's with her boyfriend, he gets a call from his ex. That made me feel sort of bad for her. Even though she annoys the crap out of me and I want to punch her more days than not, I know the feeling of being in a failing relationship, or at least one where you feel insecure and trust is disintegrating, and it really sucks.

It's weird for me to be in a relationship where I am not constantly worrying about the other person all the time. Though I was in a series of dysfunctional relationships prior to moving to L.A., I've never had terrible encounters like I've had out here.

I was flipping through this Elvis biography book the other night, and I was looking at pictures of him when he was young and living in Memphis. He looked so wholesome and full of life and heroic. Then as time progresses, there are all of these pictures of him in L.A. and Vegas and he looks bloated and tired and that look of life and vibrance is gone, like he's running on empty. I can't help but wonder if maybe I would have had that look after I'd lived here long enough. I already feel like my personality and outlook on life is completely different now. Maybe I would've turned into "Fat Elvis" after a few more years of this intensity. I bet that taping aluminum foil to my windows would have been inevitable.

My boyfriend sent me a beutiful bouquet of pedaly flowers yesterday for no reason. I've never had that happen. I've never received flowers for no reason. I've typically received flowers to memorialize a fight. It was wonderful. I felt valued.

I've noticed that when he and I Skype, I'm constantly jumping out of my chair to go get water or dental floss and I'm always rubbing my hands all over my face and through my hair. He sits there still as a painting the whole time, completely invested. It's funny how this is a metaphor for our personalities. He's so stable and calm and anchored and I'm always running around like a headless chicken. I remember one time someone told me, "I feel like a dragonfly that's just landed on a boat." I know what that means now. I know what it means to feel anchored and calm around someone who is that way. Normally I feel completely insane.

I have to do a big subject shift because I am uncomfortable talking too much about my personal life on my Blog. I keep that stuff for my old school, hand written journal.

I just walked to the back of our office, where Bullwinkle has essentially taken over my personal space like Napoleon conquering Europe, and she started complaining about how cold she is. Why is it that fat people are always freezing to death?

Scientifically, it makes no sense. All of that insulation is supposed to keep you warm. I mean, bears get all fat and then sleep in freezing caves ALL WINTER and they don't wake up. Their BLUBBER keeps them WARM.

I don't get it.

I should probably diverge into a long-requested topic because it segues nicely.

My sister has this roommate that reminds me of this nutjob girl that I roomed with for a short time at LSU who we (me and my posse) refered to as, "The Mighty Goliath." She was a humungous landmonster who practiced poor hygiene, washing her hair only once per week, and her legs were covered in vericose veins. We had these intense air condition wars. She alway cranked up the heat to about 90 degrees in the 100% Louisiana humidity and I'd sneak down the hall and put it on 72. Up and down the tempertaure went for hours upon hours. I hated that girl. She smelled like crap. And oily hair.

Anyway, my sister has this INSANE roommate who wrote her this 40 page Communist Manifesto letter in a very small, typewritten font. Page after page after page of word vomit was explosive with anger, documenting her insanity for anyone to see. Little does Roomie know that my sister copied this letter and sent it out, like the Magna Carta, to all Haley family members via postal mail. I have never read anything like this in my life. This crazy person documented EVERY SINGLE THING that my sister did to irritate her, all the way down to saying that my sister owes her 33 cents here for the gas bill or 67 cents here for toilet paper. It was absurd. Roomie clearly has significant mental health problems. Roomie went on to write a lot of bizarre, intended guilt trip-ridden phrases like, "if you were a REAL friend, you would do (whatever whatever)". It's like "Mean Girls" manifested itself into roommate-from-hell form. I'd put in direct quotes, but I don't have the letter in front of me.

This leads me back to the whole ex thing, sort of. I don't talk to my exes, but I do have guy friends. It's so much easier to have guy friends, usually. Girls are crazy. I love being a woman and fully embrace my feminity, HOWEVER, it takes a hell of a lot of work to be friends with a girl, especially in L.A. Out here it's always a contest of who is prettier or who is more popular or who goes on the most dates. It's completely absurd. Clearly, (see paragraph above), crazy women exist everywhere, but they are especially insane in Los Angeles.

I'm looking forward to moving back and recruiting some nice, non-crazy friends. I have a couple of old ones with whom I have kept in touch, but for the most part, I'm going to have to start from square one.

I guess I better get back to my menial monkey tasks for the day. Only three more days to VICTORY.

Sunday Afternoon

2010-07-13T12:17:00.000-07:00

I stole some cardboard boxes from the trash room at my friend's apartment complex. I was scared about how I would feel with them sitting in my apartment. They are currently sitting in my kitchen, and so far, no panic attacks.

I'm starting to fully embrace the last few fleeting moments of my L.A. experience instead of dreading the move back and crying all the time.

On Saturday, two of my girl friends and I rode our beach cruisers around Venice and Santa Monica and had a day that really felt like summer. It hasn't felt like summer at all so far. June Gloom has unfurled its black tentacles into May and July, and it's been difficult to feel upbeat when every day looks like Seattle in February. Today is the first day since May that it has been sunny, and I am feeling positive again.

Saturday was spent sitting on the back porch of my friend's Venice beach bungalo, eating hamburgers, petting a Jack Russel-ish, all American-looking dog, and sitting around in the sun.

Sidenote.

Persian women hate white girls, I think. This cook out event was predominantly Persian. The dudes were nice, but the girls never said "Hi" or "Nice to meet you" or "Go Eff yourself" to me and my white girl friends. Whatever.

Friday was great. I went to see an 80's cover band with my friend and we ska-danced to "Come on Ilene" types of songs all night long. Something about wearing plaid pants and Chuck Taylors and kicking my feet around on a dance floor makes me feel retro and American.

Speaking of retro Americana. I'm going to give you a lot of back story and then tell you about my retro American feeling on Sunday.

I was feeling pretty down in the dumps on Sunday. I went to church and the power was out at Beverly Hills High School (where our church meets), so we all sat outside on little folding chairs, and something about being under that gray blanket of death-clouds made me feel a little bit like going home and watching movies that make me cry my ass off and popping about 40 melatonin and sleeping my life away. Of course, I didn't do that. I just kind of felt like it.

Driving around in the pitch-black parking garage at BHHS reminded me of Africa. I've never seen night so black. When I was 8, I went to Africa, and it was so black at night that I couldn't see my hand in front of my face. It was like that in the parking garage on Sunday. Between the gray sky and the black garage and feeling weird, I just couldn't take it anymore. I felt really burned out on all of the negativity.

This is where I would like to insert a paragraph about good friends.

I'm one of those people who has about 309823 aquaintances but very few good friends. Maybe most people are like this. I'm not sure. I just know that I only trust about 3 people in the universe. The people that I consider closest are the ones I can really act like myself around- myself meaning that I don't have to laugh or joke or even smile around because being together is enough. Being quiet and together and not having to entertain is enough for good friends.

So my friend texted me on Sunday afternoon and suggested that we go hiking. Hiking sounded like the worst idea ever to me at that time. I wanted to eat a grilled cheese and sleep all day. But I figured that maybe the endorphins would pull me out of my rock-bottom mood, so hiking away we went.

We started driving down the PCH with the windows down listening to Jan and Dean and the Beachboys and a bunch of other awesome surfer rock. I felt like I was on "Beach Blanket Bingo" or some other 1960's cheesy beach movie. It reminded me why L.A. is my favorite city in the world.

We cruised along the ocean with the windows down singing "Barbara Ann" at the top of our lungs and stopped at Ruby's in Malibu and had some milkshakes. Ruby's is sort of like Jonny Rockets. The whole day felt incredibly vintage, if that makes any sense.

We cruised along some more and stopped off at Paradise Cove, where we took our shoes off and "hiked" through windy sandy hillside. We walked down about a thousand stairs to the ocean. The waves were braking all over these smooth gray stones. I could picture some '60's muscle car speeding over the cliffs and "Dead Man's Curve" playing in the background and the car smashing into a zillion pieces on the rocks.

We walked along the beach and the clouds broke up and the sky was blue and huge and stretched out for a million miles for the first time in months. The waves were huge and they kept rushing their way up the shore all over my feet and the bottom of my pants and I didn't even care. The water was freezing and my feet were really cold and my pants were all wet and covered in sand, and I took my pony tail down and closed my eyes and welcomed the sun and sand and freezing water with a smile on my face. Feeling it all over my feet and legs made me feel really alive.

I kept seeing these little oysters all over the beach that were split open. They were black on the outside and pearly on the inside, and I kept picking them up and washing them off in the ocean and putting them in my purse. It's like I wanted to take every piece of the beach around me to store in my heart and mind for the rest of my life.

When I was a kid, I had a film canister (I bet my future hypothetical kids won't even know what a film canister is) and I put some sand from Hawaii in it. I kept that sand for years. I always do that. I will pick up a rock or a shell or some sand somewhere, hoping that one day when I look at it in my suburban house full of busyness and routine and boredom, that I will somehow be able to close my eyes and remember the feeling that came with seeing that seashell or rock or sand for the first time. That never happens, though. It's like going to your grandma's house and looking at some seashells covered in an inch of dust and they're sitting in a chipped glass dish on the bathroom sink around water stains and random strands of hair. It's depressing. These poor seashells were probably beautifully gleaming in the sun in Florida in the 1970's. And now they're covered in dust and Comet cleaner and dog hair. I kept hoping that maybe I could keep these little oyster shells in a dish on my bathroom sink in Memphis and remember this day forever, even though in the back of my mind I knew they'd wind up all dusty and domesticated one day.

We left the shoreline and walked back to our car and drove up to Point Dume and went hiking again- this time through the mountains. We had to wear shoes. I saw deer and rabbits and little birds everywhere. We hiked through brush and dirt and rocks and we could see the ocean in the far off distance.

This is part of the reason why I love California so much. You can hike without wearing shoes and walk on the ocean in one hour and the next hour you're hiking up a mountain wearing full foot gear and hanging out with deer and the smell of camp fires all around you.

When we got sick of hiking, we had a race, and we ran down a hill, down a rocky trail, as fast as we could. We were breathless and laughing at the bottom, like we had both just got sucked into a time machine back to childhood.

Every once in a while, in life, you come across a friend you wouldn't give up for anything. You have a friend that you can just be with and feel comfortable with and there isn't any threat of betrayal or back stabbing or awkward romanticism. It's just easy and fun.

I've had my share of fair-weather friends out here. I recently was at a friend's house and noticed that all of our pictures were removed from her fridge. Only a month ago, there were pictures of the two of us stuck all over the front of it, like some sort of kitchenette collage. We got into an argument a couple of weeks ago, and next thing you know, all of our pictures are gone. Like the history of our friendship was completely erased.

The great refridergator picture removal incident of 2010 made me think of that part from "Catcher in the Rye," one of the best books ever written.

"That's the whole trouble. You can't ever find a place that's nice and peaceful, because there isn't any. You may think there is, but once you get there, when you're not looking, somebody'll sneak up and write "F*ck you" right under your nose. I think, even, if I ever die, and they stick me in a cemetery, and I have a tombstone and all, it'll say "Holden Caulfield" on it, and then what year I was born and what year I died, and then right under that it'll say "F*ck you." I'm positive."

That's how it's been a lot in L.A. People hugging you and asking you to be a bridesmaid or a wife or the mother of his children one second, and the next second they are erasing you and writing eff you all over the place. The thing is, though, there are a few people in life that bring out the best in you. There are a few people who will make you go hiking when you feel like crap, or they'll take you out for a milkshake, or they'll let you cry and not judge your raccoon mascara tracks. They'll laugh with you or congratulate you or send you a card in the mail for no reason. And these are the people that make you a better person. These are the people that have made my life rich with memories.

I was Born on the 4th of July

2010-07-07T11:59:00.000-07:00

I took an impromptu trip to Memphis for the 4th of July. I was invited to several 4th of July events in L.A., but all of them sort of overwhelmed me for one reason or another. Maybe I just need to be sedated to function properly.

Being back in old Memphis was both comforting and weird. Flying back over L.A. when I came back here made me feel blank. I looked over all of the lights of the city from the air, watching them blanket the ground for thousands of miles, remembering a time when all of those lights represented opportunity to me. They represented a chance to do something with my life. This time, though, I looked over them thinking, "This is the last time I'll see these lights while I am living here. This is the last time I'll see these lights while I'm going 'home' to L.A." But I didn't really feel anything at all. I just felt blank. Maybe it's because I was sitting next to this rat bastard kid who kept kicking me while I was trying to sleep, and she devoured an entire family-sized bag of tortilla chips, and little chip fragments were ALL OVER Row 5, and I kept dreaming (while I was attempting to sleep) that rats would smell the chips and bite my feet while I was asleep with my mouth wide open.

Going back to Memphis, every single time, is totally weird. I go back to my parents' house and unload the dishwasher and have no idea where to put the Tupperware. I used to know where the Tupperware went. This makes me feel like I don't belong there.

Every time I feel like I start to figure out what I'm trying to get out of life, I all of a sudden realize that I pretty much feel exactly the same way I did in the 7th grade, except now I'm more educated and more irritated. I guess a lot of people feel like this, though. Even U2. One of my most hated bands.

And I still haven't found what I'm looking for.

Or The Stones, one of my most loved bands.

I can't get no satisfaction.

I had this epiphany in Rome that I've probably written about before, as I tend to have the worst memory in the universe and often repeat myself regarding ideas or experiences that I find particularly insightful. I was standing in front of the Pieta in St. Peter's Basilica on Christmas Day, recognizing that I'd finally done pretty much everything in life that I'd wanted to do by age 25, which gave me quite a sense of accomplishment. I felt proud of myself for the first time in my life. Moved to California, got a graduate degree, visited Rome. And I stood there wondering what really mattered in life after I'd already done everything I wanted to do. It's like I thought, "Now what?"

In the middle of this "Now what?" moment, I imagined this voice saying, "The only thing in life that matters is your relationship with God and your relationship with other people." I thought about this for a good long while, and realized that I'd never have a relationship with other people in L.A. I can experience God anywhere, any time, but meaningful relationships are hard to find. Most people in L.A. don't give a crap about you. Not all of them, but most of them.

It's weird how the ideals of Memphis are completely opposite of the ideals of L.A., and I don't really agree with either one of them, but I take little fragments of each and apply them to my life, and wonder what the crap it all means or if it means anything at all.

I remember going out about two months ago to James Beach, and being with a crowd of acquaintances that I really have no relationship with, and in their drunken philosophical states, several of them tried to convince me that staying in L.A. made sense because I could make it as a stand-up comedienne, and I was abandoning my chance for fame far too early in the L.A. game.

That depressed the hell out of me.

That's just how it is, though. Everyone grappling for a few seconds of fame and fighting for a few extra bucks or a mic on a stage or a chance to be discovered. Even with my few seconds of stand up, which I really liked, I didn't feel like it was something I'd ever want to sell my soul to do. I like it because I enjoy laughing with people, but not because telling jokes to drunks in bars gets my jollies.

Anyway, back to opposite cultural experiences. Memphis vs. L.A.

I saw Khloe and Kris Kardashian about a month ago with their film crew. Khloe was driving her white Range Rover down Washington Blvd. and Kris was running behind her on the street, all coy and laughing because the cameras were all up in her face. Even though I got excited, because I love that trashy show, and I started waving to Khloe frantically like she'd know who I was, I thought it was sort of retarded. If my mom tried to whore me out, I'd be pretty disappointed. Part of the reason why I love my parents so much is because they really act like parents. They send me cards in the mail when I'm down and out and they take me out to eat when they pick me up from the airport. They're not running down Washington Boulevard with a camera crew, being phony fame whores and trying to prostitute me out on E! Thank God.

Anyway, let's get back to Memphis.

I sort of felt like I had amnesia or something the whole time I was in town. It's like I forgot that I live in L.A. now and I forgot that my good friend's daughter goes to school with Arnold Schwarzenegger's kids and I forgot how tough life is when I'm not living it simply. It's like nothing really feels familiar. For instance, I woke up on Sunday morning to a note on the stairs from my dad that said to please tell my boyfriend not to wear a tie to church, because it is "No Tie July." I thought that was so funny. People DO still wear ties to church. And jackets. And full-fledged suits. I used to be so appalled that people out here wore white shoes after Labor Day, and now I watch these hoe-girls walk into church wearing booty shorts and spike heels, and I hardly notice. A couple of weeks ago, there was a girl sitting in front of me at church who had a huge purple hickey on her neck, and it didn't even phase me.

It will be nice to live somewhere where beer is a buck 50 and gas is less than $3 a gallon.

I turned in my notice yesterday that says I'm moving out in August. A month from right now, I'll be living with my parents in Memphis again. I have no idea how to feel about that.

Sometimes I feel really nostalgic about it. My boyfriend comes from a real estate family and when I was in town, he walked me through a couple of houses that are being built right now. Walking through those open rafters and raw buildings and tall green grass in the heat sort of felt like "The Notebook," like everything was calm and simple and easy. I wasn't all worked up like always.

I don't know what my problem is. I get scared that I'll move home and get sucked into some sort of stepford wives role and have to wear pearls and vacuum all day. And that just isn't the case. I have no idea why I think this. Then that Sylvia Plath quote spins into my mind, "So I began to think maybe it was true that when you were married and had children it was like being brainwashed, and afterward you went about as numb as a slave in some private, totalitarian state." Maybe this is because I look at my peers' facebook pages and see them with their babies and their "girls nights out" and I'm so scared that Memphis will be so slow, that I'll just get sucked into a baby-making machine role and my life will be over. WHY DO I THINK THIS?!

Memphis is way too slow and LA is way too fast. Could they have a baby, and could I live in that well-balanced Walden Pond?

I always try to figure my life out, like what I really want out of it, or what I really want to do, and all I can come back to is that I've never gotten sick of writing. I get sick of EVERYTHING except that. Then I think about the really great writers. Let's put aside the fact that they were all raging alcoholics. But I think about the best ones, and realize that they lived pretty simply. They didn't have to live in an energetic city like L.A. to be great at what they did. Maybe i could be like Faulkner or Hemingway and live in a log cabin to clear my mind and write better.

Or maybe I could turn my life into some sort of screenplay. Then I could merge the writing with "the industry" with my story with my background with my current life.

Because I'm always quoting Plath, I might as well end this with some Plath. I'm sure I've quoted this before, too, because like I said, my memory is total crap, especially when I'm stressed. I can sum it all up with old Sylvia.

"I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet." ~The Bell Jar

Feeling Torn

2010-06-30T11:26:00.000-07:00

Every time I think that my decision to move home is easy, I go on a crying jag and feel like I've lost my dang mind.

I feel some comfort in knowing that both of my sisters have either gone through or are going through something similar. I remember when my older sister moved away from NYC, she had similar reasons to the ones I have for leaving L.A. High cost of living, people are insane, need to financially and emotionally recover, yada yada. My other sister is experiencing some similar emotions- saying goodbye to a chapter of her life that's been rich with good memories, venturing into unknown territory, feeling a little bit like she's taking a step backward by moving back home.

Me too.

I constantly feel like I'm torn between two different places, two ideals, two feuding gangs. The Crips are on one side and the Bloods are on the other, and I'm not wearing the right color for either one.

I know that going home is where I am supposed to go. Most of the time, I even miss home. Being homesick doesn't make me less scared though. The thing is, despite the fear and angst, I do (sometimes) get excited about going home- I get excited when I remember that hot sticky feeling at the back of my legs and in between my shoulder blades that only comes with Memphis summers. I get excited about listening to music that's full of soul, and people asking me how I'm doing not because they want to use me and run me over but because they really do care. I get excited about driving all the way out to Jerry's Sno Cones for frozen goodness that cost a dollar, and drinking coffee with my parents on the back porch.

But I also get so sad.

I get sad that I won't see my apartment manager anymore. His name is Steve. I usually go down to his office on Saturdays and shoot the bull with him about life. He's always been nice to me. I get sad when I think about not being able to drive down streets that are lined with palm trees. I get sad that Mr. Young won't be my haircut guy and I won't see the staff at Cabo Cantina anymore. I get really sad when I think about not being able to see my closest friend out here whenever I want. We've spent so many hours recording music and laughing our heads off and watching Michael Jackson videos on Youtube. I've built my own home here, and now I sort of feel like I am abandoning it. It's like watching the last episode of a classic TV series or finishing a good book. I remember when I was about 10 or so, I read "Cheaper by the Dozen," and I LOVED that book, and at the end, the dad died, and I cried and cried and cried. I haven't changed one bit.

I keep having sporadic meltdowns.

Despite this grappling feeling of wanting to stay (a little), there are signs pointing other places. I'm very into "signs." It might make me sound like some loony tune Tammy Fae Baker, but I can't help it. When I see signs, I pay attention.

I was sitting in church on Sunday and I got this sudden urge to jump up and leave. Actually, it wasn't that sudden at all. It was sort of this brooding, itching feeling, like the need to escape had been building up inside of me for years, and if I didn't get out of there in about five minutes, I'd scream.

I had read an article in The Los Angeles Times only a few days prior about some couple at my church who'd built a 40,000 square foot house in Bel Air for $68 million and they made this really big deal about how they built their pseudo-Versailles for "worship" purposes. I don't know why I got so irritated by this, because I don't even KNOW the people, and it's none of my business, but I sort of wanted to take that newspaper and wipe my butt with it, because I knew it was a crock of crap. I got sort of burned out on all of the phony baloney people at my church. The excessive wealth and Gatsby-style "worship" services and people rolling up in their Rolls Royce's for absolutely nothing. It just seemed so phony to me.

This is where I start to sound a little bit like Sylvia Plath going on and on about how everyone is dying. Bear with me.

On Sunday, it really got to me. This big fat cow in a circus tent/moo moo got up in the pulpit and started READING off prayers. If there's one thing that irritates me, it's written-down prayers. I'm not an authority on theology, but I'm pretty sure that God doesn't expect you to give a public speech when you ask Him to help you out. I also don't think he requires you to talk to like a medieval warrior. The moo moo cow lady kept going ON AND ON AND ON with her Times New Roman font "prayer," full of "thous" and "thees," and all I could think about was that $68 million dollar house and this lady praying like she was a knight.

Every time that woman gets up in the pulpit, I want to cold cock her. She's got this long stringy Mama Cass hair and she always wears plastic headbands. Have headbands EVER been in style? Anyway, she makes an announcement for some punk kid to come up on stage (a punk kid with a hyphenated name. Come on, girl. Feminism went out of style in the 80's) because he just got her PhD. So. The punk gets up there and begins to openly demasculate her husband, saying that HE only has a MASTER'S and SHE has a DOCTORATE and SHE makes him call HER "Dr. Wife." It was disgusting. I don't know what the deal was. I just couldn't take her lame jokes and watching her make fun of her husband. The whole thing was a big phony crock of crap, and I just couldn't take it.

It's weird. I never cared about hyphenated names. I actually thought for a while that maybe it was a good idea. But then I started thinking about how it's sort of a real big "F YOU" to the person you marry, and it changed my mind about it, and I decided that hyphenating was sort of lame.

I couldn't take it anymore. I just couldn't take it.

So I left.

I got in my car and drove to my old church. The whole time I was thinking that I was probably too late to catch the sermon, but I figured that making an attempt was better than going home and eating a whole carton of Chunky Monkey. So, I drove there, and I snuck in the back door like a hooker in a cathedral. I didn't recognize the guy who was preaching. He started talking about things that made a lot of sense though. He said,

"Don't become so stubborn on doing things the way YOU want to do them that God has to force you to surrender to His Will."

To a lot of people, that could probably sound totally weird, but to me, it made complete sense.

"Maybe you came out to this city because you had a voice. You had a voice and a vision to live here, and you came out here only to find that nobody heard you, and you were defeated. You got lost under all of the madness of this city, and now you're moving home, and you feel like you're moving backwards."

I started to cry.

"Abigail had to remind David that he defeated Goliath because of his FAITH. Because he had faith, God was able to empower him to do impossible things."

I sat there in the back and cried my head off.

It all made sense.

When I went to see my grandparents in April, I felt like I was clinging onto a little thread of hope so desperately, and less than two months later, I'm back on the L.A. battlefield, feeling completely empty and defeated, but also desperately wanting to cling to a dream that is clearly ending and SUPPOSED to end.

Maybe it takes having a crap job and a church full of phony rich people and no real friends and a sense of defeat to surrender.

It's like at home, I feel like people really care. People see my value. In L.A., I forget about that stuff. I always feel lost in the shuffle and alone. I only have one friend that I'm sad to leave.

A few days ago, I worked with a very well renown surgeon that I thought was going to be a big a-hole. He got in my boss' face and said, "You know, you have a really bad habit of asking me questions and answering them for me. It's incredibly rude. I'm losing a lot of money by being in your office today, and it'd be great if you would just act like a professional and stop wasting my time. So, how's it going to be? Are you going to act like a professional and let me answer questions after you ask them, or are you going to continue to be rude and waste my time?" and I sort of wanted to jump out of my chair and smack his butt like a pro athlete after a victorious win. Of course, I just sat there, smiling to myself.

Anyway, I worked with the guy all day, and right before the hard-ass surgeon left the office, he told my boss, "Give Rachel a raise. She's great. I'm serious." For the first time in forever, I remembered my value at work. He saw that I was worth something. I don't want to make my self esteem dependent on other people, but sometimes you forget that you have any value when people are always telling you how much you do wrong and never tell you what you do right.

My time here is drawing to a close, and there's a sadness and excitement in my heart that are wrestling around like there's no solid ground to stand on.

I went to the bar in Hollywood on Saturday where they filmed "Swingers." On Sunday, I watched a movie that was filmed down the street from my house. I always get a little bit excited knowing that this is "my town." But at the same time, L.A. isn't my town at all. I don't have a town at all. I kind of feel like a hermit crab who keeps packing up his house on his back and trying to find a place to call home. Maybe that doesn't exist. But I'm going to keep on looking.

Rest in Peace, MJ.

2010-06-24T14:45:00.000-07:00

The countdown to quitting feels like it's taking decades. Every day is like driving to death row, knowing my head will be shoved into a guillotine. I have a hard time even getting excited that every day is one day closer to freedom when I know that I still have to endure the day at hand.

There are things about this town that I'll miss. For instance, I just walked outside of my office, saw a Tequila food truck, got a free taco, shirt, shot glass, and bottle of water, and booty danced to Michael Jackson while wearing business casual for a promotional commercial. MJ's one year anniversary of passing is tomorrow, so a lot of people are playing his jams this weekend. Score!

Dealing with my job and the traffic and the worst people I've ever met and the high cost of living and the liberal propaganda and the sense of entitlement and the entire soul-sick culture of this place has just taken the glamor out of it for me.

My boss often mentions how "sophisticated" she is, and I am using quotes because I am directly QUOTING her, as you might guess. I am also emphasizing this because when you read on about her behavior, sophistication might be lower than the last thing on the list of adjectives you imagine as you visualize her constant MO.

She thinks she's super "sophisticated" because she has a big East Coast chip on her shoulder. I'd love to say, "Lady, not only is Los Angeles notorious for being full of FRUIT CAKES, but a lot of people associate women from Boston with being loud-mouthed yankee broads who drink beer right out of the bottle and pick their wedgies in public." Which is true. But of course, I don't say it. I just sit there and let her sunbathe in her ignorance and imagine myself on a beach in Mexico like that guy from "Shawshank Redemption."

I always laugh to myself a little when she brags about just how sophisticated she is while she sits in her dusty little moth-eaten upholstered chair with her legs spread wide open like she's trying to keep the flies away. I'm telling you. It's like she's ready for somebody to just walk right up and go spelunking in her crotch-cave of death. If I ever bear daughters, the first thing I'll teach them is to KEEP THEIR DANG LEGS CLOSED. Ugh. It's so vulgar. I know I'm not exactly a debutante, but I also know not to be advertising my snatch all over town for everyone in the world to see. It's completely appalling.

As her legs are open at a 180 degree angle, she begins to pick flakes of dead skin off the heels of her feet and then flicks them on the floor. There's a little pile of foot flakes on the floor right under her crusty gray heels. Oddly enough, despite the overall look of her feet and general disheveled appearance, her toenails always look nice. The most sophisticated thing about her is that right after she's finished peeling her heel skin off like she's skinning a dang tuna, she begins picking her teeth. Now mind you, she always has all kind of plaque and beige colored build up around all of her jagged teeth, but right after she's picked all of the 70 year old skin off her cracking heels, she uses the same bit-down nails to begin scraping plaque off her teeth. Unbelievable.

Let's discuss some further sophistication. We have a proper phone-to-phone office transfer system, where if someone has a question in office 1, they can dial office 4 and ask them a question like a normal, middle class American person. Ooooooh, not in my office. Attila the Boss is always yelling and screaming from the back of the office to the waiting room about stupid, trivial, mindless monkey shit. It drives me crazy. "DID YOU ORDER THE STATIONERY?!" "WHY WON'T MY OUTLOOK WORK?!" "I DON'T UNDUH-STAND THIS!" like we know what the crap she is even talking about.

I wasn't raised like that. I just wasn't raised where everyone was yelling and screaming and talking on top of each other like everyone is doing an auditory dog pile on top of everyone else's voice. Ugh. AND, she's a compulsive interrupter. When a client doesn't understand a question, she starts talking louder and louder and LOUDER and slower and SLOWER like the person is some kind of effing retard. She never changes the content of her sentences to make things more clear. She just talks louder and slower and shakes her liver-spotted, nail bitten, plaque and foot-flake crusty finger in the person's face and breaths her halitosis that's bubbling from her stomach all over the office until everyone feels like they will faint. I've never seen anything like it.

The way she contorts her face like she's being exorcised is completely unreal. It's like her face is claymation. She can contort it and make it look so disgusted and enraged that you sort of feel like a dog who has just crapped on the floor. You know you're about to get your face rubbed in it. She began verbally assaulting my client today, over and over and over again, yelling at him for the same EFFING thing, and as soon as she left the room, he looked me like he'd just had the soul sucked out of him, and he quietly and blankly said,

"She is such a bitch."

And I just gave him that understanding, old soul, Paula Deen look.

"The Devil Wears Prada" is like "Sesame Street" compared to where I work.

Let's keep talking Los Angeles-style sophistication. We've hired a new girl that is constantly on my case about what I eat. Let me tell you that the new girl weighs more than my first boyfriend and is about 15 inches shorter than him. I say this not to pick on her, but because she decided that it was appropriate to tell me her exact height and weight the first day I ever met her.

People who think they know everything and openly judge you about something when its quite VISIBLE that they have no authority to do so really get on my nerves. So, this new moose is sitting around, with her fingers always in her mouth, constantly biting her nails off and spitting them on the floor, also with her legs spread wide open like she's keeping the flies away (twins?), and popping her knuckles ALL THE TIME ---always popping those knuckles---CONSTANTLY criticizes me and what I eat. She barrels down the hallway like a bull moose, slumps her robust figure into my office chair, leaving vibrations like the aftershock of a standard Baja Peninsula earthquake, and then begins to RUN HER MOUTH about why my eating a microwave Healthy Choice meal is incredibly unhealthy and I should only shop at Whole Foods. She also criticizes my hair, clothes, and accessories, telling me that I should only buy Michael Kors and should only get haircuts from her hair person. How does a big, frumpy, knuckle-popping moose feel like she is an authority on what I should eat, wear, and look like? It doesn't make any sense, and it's down right obnoxious and rude. If I hear Michael Kors one more time, I might punt kick her butt into the middle of Wilshire Blvd.

The moose is also obsessed with trying to be "California," so she's always talking about "going green" and recycling. She also carries around this big canvas bag that says "I USED TO BE A PLASTIC BOTTLE" on the side of it in all caps. Irritates the crap out of me. Not because I boycott environmentally friendly attempts (I actually recycle), but I get irritated with people who try to be something they aren't. She's from some po-dunk Southern town and she has not only lost her accent and tries VERY HARD to sound "California," but she also attempts to talk about whatever she thinks will make her sound more "L.A.," like stupid effing recycling and stupid Michael Kors.

During the moose's first day of work, she told me that she bleaches her man-beard. She has facial hair and decided it was appropriate to tell me how she maintains it. She also told me that she wants to be a Disney Princess and loves Avatar.

I don't know exactly where I fit in these days. In fact, I really don't fit in anywhere, and I'm OK with that. But there's a difference between feeling like you have no place and realizing that everyone else would be better off if you weren't in the middle of it.

All I can think now is: let them all have each other. Let all of the hippies and yogies and tree huggers and knuckle poppers and "sophisticated" women with their wide-spread legs and heel flakes and hacking and coughing and putrid breath HAVE EACH OTHER.

Last week, I had a traveling experience that would probably be the equivalent to "Home Alone" and "Trains, Planes, & Automobiles" having a baby. I got bumped and was delayed and took planes and SUV's and teleporters all over God's green earth to visit my grandmother for her birthday. I'd get into all of the details of the trip, like meeting wonderful airport friends and having coffee with them and discussing interesting topics regarding hellacious work situations and job search strategies, but the most memorable part of the travel experience was watching a Delta employee at the ticket counter in Memphis with "the look" on her face.

THE LOOK is the one I get the second I pull into the parking lot of my work and I see my boss' luxury car, knowing that I wont even have five seconds of peace in the morning to put my lunch in the fridge or use the bathroom after my hour long commute. As soon as Attila the Boss hears the back door open, she comes flying down the hall like some levitating, possessed demonic presence, blowing her moldy jack-o-lantern breath in my face and screaming at me about what I need to do RIGHT NOW. No time to use the restroom, or God forbid, put away my Yoplait Yogurt.

The employee at the Delta ticket counter had her boss hovering all over her like an effing OCD control-freak helicopter, and she had that look on her face. I watched her roll her eyes and touch her forehead like she was using every bit of spirit she had to keep from smacking her boss in the face. I know the look. I know the feeling.

Yesterday, the lady in my office was a complete nut job, and right when I think the L.A. people that I deal with couldn't get any crazier, she shows me her boob. Well, it was really an absence of a boob. It was like her boob was invited to the chest party, and RSVPed, "I'm sorry, the right boot cannot attend."

This lady, for whatever reason, wanted to "prove" to me that she had a mastectomy. Her shirt flew up so fast I sort of thought it was a mirage. I turned my head in the other direction as fast as I could and thought to myself, "Did that just happen?"

When I was flying back from Memphis to LAX, I sat next to some dewy eyed 22 year old fresh off the boat from New Albany, Mississippi. She lives in L.A. and works for a talent agency and just loooooves it. She kept flipping her hair around and she kept blinking her long black eyelashes real slow like every second she was thinking about working for William Morris, she might just start singing, she was so happy. I remember the comment of a fellow jaded Los Angelian a few years ago when I too had that blissful look of L.A.-flavored virginity. He talked about how this city will chew you up and spit you out. And he was right.

I sure hope that when I move home, I can remember the good things about this town, like booty dancing in front of a tequila truck to Michael Jackson, and for once, not think about knuckle popping, wide-spread legs, and moldly jack-o-lantern breath.

Rambling

2010-06-11T13:17:00.000-07:00

About a week after my purse got stolen at work, I got an email from a guy who said he found all of my credit cards scattered across a parking lot in Hollywood. He said he googled me and found my work email address. At least now I know I didn't hallucinate. My purse, indeed, was snatched from under my desk while I was in my boss' office. Laaawd, hep me.

In between dealing with all of the crap that comes with having your purse stolen, half the staff quit at work, so I'm doing the jobs of multiple people and still make the equivalent to what I made as a first year teacher in Memphis. I am starting to think that I should try my hand at cleaning lady jobs. Then I could see the physical results of my work and I wouldn't have to pay taxes. I also have extensive cleaning lady experience. Let me explain.

I remember when I taught a few years ago in Memphis, we worked with a bunch of OCD kids who had a myriad of emotional and psychological issues, and because we were some sort of nomadic, traveling school without a real building, we wound up having school at a church building in the middle of po-dunk NOWHERE Tennessee where people were always wearing "Kix 106" shirts splattered with dirt and paint and everyone smelled like fried catfish and crickets. Well, anyway, one day the director of the school asked me if I would help her scrub the racquetball room down with clorox because the kids just couldn't stand the sight of black smudges on the walls because they were all OCD. So there I was, with a decent education, fresh out of college and the only one of my friends who wasn't married, thinking "FML" the whole time I scrubbed boogers and racquetball mank off the walls of a hillbilly church.

The job after that, I worked as a personal assistant/slave for a humongous, sweating, foul-smelling charismatic woman who SHIT THE BED in her sleep and asked me if I would clean her diarrhea sheets for her. I almost fainted the morning I walked into her house. It smelled so foul that even a corpse would have puked. That was my last day.

I often tell people that I currently work in a haunted house. The combination of CERTAIN people around here openly flagellating in my tiny, dingy, peach walled office with poor ventilation, this person having the breath of an open sewer, and cockroaches scrambling around all over our kitchen, I just don't know how else to describe it. It's a haunted house. A couple of weeks ago, my boss asked me to take everything out of the kitchen cabinets and put it all in boxes because the exterminator was coming to "take care of" the cockroach problem. It is during moments like these, when I am being talked down to like I'm freaking Rainman and asked to do disgusting jobs like remove 1970's tupperware from asbestos coated cabinets, that I feel like going to graduate school was an enormous waste of time and money. Every time somebody asks me to do some menial, bullshit, waste of my time task, I want to scream. The thing is, I don't really mind doing stupid stuff like reorganizing or cleaning. The task itself doesn't piss me off. I can do it all day long if I'm asked to do it with respect... But if I'm asked to do something as a way of being patronized, it sort of makes me want to punch somebody. Oh, and P.S. The cockroach problem still isn't resolved. I made my client a cup of coffee the week afterwards, and I handed it to him and said, "Would you like anything in your coffee?" and he said, "There is already something in my coffee." and he pushed the cup away and I saw a dead cockroach in his cup, floating upside down. FML.

So, back to the purse caper. I drove down to the hood to fill out a police report that I knew would do me no good, and a guy came in who'd been stabbed by his wife about 30 times. They made him take off his shirt and they took pictures of him as he stood there, all cut up like some emo rocker. A few minutes later, some big hunky Hollywood actor looking jerk came in and had to file a report because his girl friend and her new boyfriend stole his sports car. That was sort of interesting. Then an Asian lady with a baby strapped to her chest walked in and filed some papers about identity theft. It sort of made me want to hang out there all day. The officer who was helping me gave me some big long speech about how I should never carry checks or a debit card and told me he hates L.A. and his family is from Florida and he's been a cop since before I was born and I should get the hell out while I can. And the whole time he was talking to me, he spoke in these abrupt, monotone sentences, and I sort of felt like he was faking it, like he was on Dragnet in the 1960's and he did such a good job at acting like a cop that LAPD felt bad for him and decided to let him sit at the desk and fill out paperwork on stolen purses.

I got really paranoid about the purse thing since my photo ID with my address was in there, so I got my locks changed and got the remotes changed on my car. I know that most purse snatchers aren't also into home break ins and grand theft auto, but a single white girl gotta watch her back. So. Let's talk about the car place. I was at Car Max, and I was the only white girl there, and none of the men would stand up and let me sit in their seats because they were all trash. And, of course, when I eventually got a seat, it was right in front of a 100 year old disgusting man with a TRAKE and a little kazoo looking thing sticking through his neck hole where he coughed and hacked big yellow loogies through it FOR HOURS. I just about puked. I wanted to sit outside, but I forgot to put a shirt on that morning, and was only wearing my hoodie, and I was so effin hot sitting in the sun with that hoodie on that I just decided to sit there and let old Trakey Mc Trakerton blow his kazoo loogies at me all day long.

I get so burned out. I get burned out for multiple reasons. I love living by myself, but it also sucks, because I feel like I can't ever completely let my guard down. I have to take care of EVERYTHING by myself. I can handle it, and I don't mind it so much, but it makes me tired.

The week before the great purse caper of 2010, I had to go the doctor to get my annual physical, but I couldn't go the gyno because the closest gyno who approved by my bull crap insurance is an hour away, so I went to a general practitioner instead. I got to the doctor's office and all of the signs were written in Spanish and I was the only white person around and nobody spoke English. I waited for an hour. I finally got called in. When I went to put the gown on, I laid down on the table, and some old Asian doctor walked in who spoke very limited English, and he started beating on my stomach like it was some sort of tribal drum, after I told him that I wasn't active and there was no way in hell that I had a baby in there. I said, "What are you DOING?!" and he just kept beating away, smacking me on my stomach. Maybe he was trying to hear if it was hollow. There weren't even stirrups or anything. I just sprawled out on the table like a starfish, completely humiliated and being beat to death and afraid that I was about to be sacrificed to the pap-smear gods. This guy also swore up and down that I had diabetes and said that I needed a blood test. The problem is that they dont do blood tests at this make-shift, fantasy doctor's office. So he gave me a list of blood test centers in Compton and Inglewood and said to go there. I'll risk it. If I have diabetes, I'll just lay off the Lucky Charms. My options are to have diabetes and risk it until I get some decent insurance or get shot in a drive by in Compton attempting to get a blood test.

Despite all of the crap that happens, and the fact that my ears CRINGE every time my boss pronounces words like a total fruit cake (examples: she says fortune like four-TOON, liaison like lee-ay-ZON, and niche like NEESH) and flips out if I call my cell phone a "phone" instead of a "telephone" or I say I have to take an "exam" instead of an "examination" and there are cockroaches everywhere and she yelled at me because I threw away her black banana that had hairy gray mold growing all over it and I got the worst physical of my life and my purse got snatched, good things happen, too.

For example, I got bumped in Dallas over Memorial Day weekend and I met a fantastic old Asian guy named Eddie, who I sat next to on the airplane going back to Memphis. He was like Mr. Miyagi. When he talked, it's like I could hear wind flutes and everything sort of had a pumpkin/amber color and time stopped. He said to me, "You look worried." and I said, "Yeah. I'm always worried. I'm always anxious." and he said, "You must let the Holy Spirit control your worry. You must keep your faith in God. He is the one who will take care of you. You call on him 24 hours a day." and I started to cry. Right there on the airplane. Then he told me I needed to drink red wine and eat dark chocolate because of the anti oxidants or something. Then he said, "My father is turning 90 years old. He say the secret to long life is to not worry. To be happy where you are right now." Old Eddie and I wound up talking the whole flight and he even sat with me at the gate when I got to Memphis and was waiting on my flight to LAX. He lives in New Orleans. His dad lives in Long Beach and he sent me an email a couple of days ago inviting me to his dad's 90th birthday party in Long Beach. I love airplane friends.

Another good thing is that my boyfriend came to visit last week, and I haven't felt so relaxed and comfortable ever. It was so nice to be around somebody who came from where I came from and had my same values and knew what I was talking about. I dont know how to explain it. I randomly met some girl at a bar last week, and when I shook her hand and said, "It's nice to meet you," she said, "Ooooh my gaaaawd. Are you from f-cking ALABAMA?!" and I said, "I'm from Tennessee. But you must be from here, because you clearly have no manners." My boyfriend "got" it. I don't know how to explain it. He just gets it.

We went to The Tonight Show via a hook up of my writer friend, and it occurred to me that I've seen Jay Leno 5 or 6 times in real life now. It's so weird. When I was a kid, I'd watch his show, and all I could think of was how I wanted to grow up and have a job like that, or be that kind of person where I could be funny all day long, and now I've seen him in real life several times. I grew up and moved to L.A. and now I've seen Jay Leno multiple times. It's so weird. It's like my life has panned out exactly the way it's supposed to have panned out, and now that I've ridden the L.A. wave, I'm just ready for my life to be calm again. I'm ready to go back to my roots. Maybe it's like how elephants get old and go back to the place where they were born once they're ready to die. I'm not really ready to die, but I've had a good run, and like any good TV show, there just comes a time where the series is over, and it's time to move on. I'm ready for that now.

F M L....A

2010-05-20T08:19:00.000-07:00

I need a hug.

And a box of girl scout cookies.

And a mimosa.

And a quart of Chunky Monkey.

And another hug.

My purse got stolen from under my desk at work yesterday. Work is rough as it is. It's divorce counseling. IN LOS ANGELES. Is there anything more contentious than working in divorce with an all female staff who all share the same menstrual cycle? You can imagine that at the end of my day, I'm ready to bolt out of that place and speed home just to enjoy some peace. Maybe this is why I like living by myself. I can find this little tiny sliver of peace when I come back to ole Casa de Ray Hay.

I couldn't wait to go home last night. Typical workday made me want to puke. I went to get my keys, and my purse was gone.

Seeing that I grew up in a gang banger town, I always implement heightened security. My fellow coworkers (not all of them) are always leaving the back door to our office wide open. I always say, "It's all good until a crazy homeless man runs in here and murders all of us. KEEP THE EFFIN BACK DOOR CLOSED."

So. Of course, the back door was open all day.

And some d-bag stole my damn purse.

Now, the fact that my purse is gone isn't the worst thing. I have to spend all day at the bank and the DMV and all that today- that's an inconvenience. It's a hassle. It's not the end of the world.

I'm sad that my Ipod is gone.

I'm sad about this because I always take it with me when I travel, and I feel creative when I travel, and I think life is funnier when I travel, so I had a lot of my stand up material written into my Ipod, and it had not been transferred into my computer yet.

So all of my hilarity is gone.

You know, sometimes I have these days where I'm driving down the PCH and my windows are down and I'm listening to Tom Petty and I'm feasting my eyes on palm trees and the sunset and the Pacific Ocean, and there's this sadness in my heart about leaving this town. And then the window of my car gets busted out with a crowbar, my purse gets stolen, and I have the worst interpersonal experiences OF MY LIFE just by living here.

I'm not catastrophizing and saying that all of L.A. is full of crooks and a-holes... but I kind of am.

I guess I'm beating a dead horse by saying I'm ready to move home, but I am. I'm just ready to have an emotional break. I'm ready to be able to sleep at night and not be worries that somebody is going to come in and murder me. Before you diagnose me with paranoia, remember that my purse, with my photo ID, with my ADDRESS, with KEYS TO MY HOUSE, with KEYS TO MY CAR, got stolen. So old Bob the Purse Snatcher knows where I live and could walk right up to my apartment and shove a pillow over my face while my body writhes around like a snake with its head chopped off until I go blue and limp. And now is not the time for me to get murdered. I haven't had my roots done and my nails are chipped, and there ain't no way I'm gettin in a casket looking like white trash.

As shitty as some of my circumstances have been, I've learned so many amazing things since I've lived in this town. I've even made one or two amazing friends that are once-in-a-lifetime kind of people. I've learned what it means to forgive. I've learned what it means to accept things that are beyond my control. I've learned that I'm more and less self sufficient than I think.

I had so many great ideas for Blogs rolling around in my head, and now that I'm making my to-do list of bullshit I have to do today to take care of the Great Stolen Purse Incident of 2010, I can't really remember them. I was going to write about my family visiting and crazy people and this girl at the CVS pharmacy that I almost choked to death because she was such a jerk and my new man friend coming to visit, but all of those things have to wait.

I'm off to manhandle the DMV.

There's No Place like Home

2010-04-22T13:06:00.000-07:00

I flew home last week to go to my sister’s thesis show in Mississippi. Man. What a trip. Now, all I can think about is how homesick I am.

I hate admitting that. I hate admitting that I am homesick, because I remember when a girl I knew was living out here and she wrote some blog about being homesick, and she kept talking about how she wanted to move back to Memphis so that she and all of her “besties” could “raise babies together,” and I thought that was lame and disgusting and stupid, and I don’t ever want to come off like that.

Now that I’ve set THAT disclaimer, I can freely say that I am homesick for my culture. Now, it’s taken me a long time to figure out what that means, exactly, and even though I can’t articulate it, I know it when I’m around it.

It feels right.

I picked up my cap and gown two days ago. I also got my degree framed. I remember the day that I graduated from college, my sister said to me,

“This is the happiest day of your life. You’ll never have another feeling like this. You’ll never have to write a paper AGAIN!”

And I remember not feeling like that at all.

I hadn’t really felt like I’d done anything. I just felt like I got a piece of paper. I remember during the after party, I felt really humbled or something, because a lot of people came who wanted to show me they loved me and supported me, and I was kind of shocked to realize what a strong support group I actually had, but actually walking at graduation didn’t really do it for me.

When I got my master’s, I was proud, but it was sort of the same thing. I don’t really feel like I’ve done something amazing or whatever. I just feel like I’ve checked something else off my list, like I’ve just bought detergent or had my oil changed. Maybe I just don’t feel anything. Maybe I’m a robot. With a nice butt (a “FANTASTIC @$$!!!! That is for you, Anna).

So. I’m saying all of this to say, that I moved out to L.A. and got a master’s. I came out here because I’d wanted to live in L.A. my entire life. I’ve come out here, and now I can check it off my list.

And now I’m ready to go home.

I’ve thought that going back home would mean that I’ve failed. I thought it’d mean that I’ve half-assed a lifelong dream. I thought if I moved home, it would’ve meant that I couldn’t do it, I couldn’t hack it, I wasn’t strong enough or something. All I could think about was the “I told you so” speeches I got from EVERYONE before I moved out here, how they all said I’d be back. That’s what I’ve thought about. I’ve thought about failing. But now I see that all of that is a crock of crap. I’ve done what I came here to do. I came out here, I got a master’s, I’ve “lived the dream,” I’ve hung out with celebrities, I’ve been to amazing events and met wonderful people and done stand up comedy and done things that lot of people could never do… And I’m ready to go home now.

I sort of feel like Forrest Gump. He runs and runs and runs and runs, and has this huge following of people whose lives he has changed, and then he just says, out of the clear blue,

“I'm pretty tired... I think I'll go home now.”

Now I get it.

I don’t want to talk too much about my work, but it has caused me severe emotional burnout. Severe. I’ve watch my boss jam her liver spotted finger into a grown man’s chest and make him cry. I’ve watched her verbally assault people time and time again and scream at them, asking why they are so “f-cking stupid.” She’s a rage aholic. I’ve never seen anyone so addicted to raw, sulphurous, venomous rage. It’s bizarre. I didn’t grow up in a yelling, screaming household, so this has been completely unfamiliar to me. And after awhile, it broke my spirit.

After my boss will make our clients cry and I watch them turn into puddle on the floor and my boss will scream, “I can’t deal with this f-cking idiot. Rachel, you deal with them.” I’ll sit in my office with a client while they cry quietly, and after they feel safe, they tell me their story. I’ve heard everything from divorce to abortion to drugs to the death of a child. You name it, I’ve heard it. I tell you this to give you a glimpse of my typical, 10-hour work day. It’s hell.

After I went to Mississippi to see my sister, I drove down to Louisiana. I needed to see my grandparents. I was soul sick and I needed a shot.

I picked up some dinner at the grocery store and drove to my Memaw’s house. Just driving down her street, that same street that she’s always lived on, I felt safe. I felt like I was home.

As soon as I walked into her house, I started crying. I’m even crying a little bit while I type this now. I just fell apart. I put the lasagna in the oven and sat at her kitchen table and I cried. I told her that I was done. I told her that L.A. had kicked my ass and handed it right back to me, and I was in a dead-end job that had completely made me give up all hope, and I’d spent all this time and money on a degree just to be in a job that I HATE, and dating has been a nightmare and I’m alone and empty and done. And I cried some more.

My Memaw hugged me like she does. She just hugged me. And she prayed with me. And I kept on crying until I had nothing left anymore. And then she said this.

“Now Rachie Pooh, you know that you are a feathers and sequins kind of girl. Now what does that have to do with divorce and abortion?!”

It was the most practical thing I’d heard in about two years.

I think I’ve spent a lot of time trying to be something I’m not. Actually, I don’t think I’ve done that- it isn’t that I’ve tried to be something I’m not as much as I haven’t been able to just embrace who I really am.

When I was a little kid, I wanted to be Dolly Parton. Then somehow down the line, I became a counselor, and I wear a bunch of frumpy, homely business casual close to work, and I come back home every day to lie on the floor and be depressed. What the eff happened to wanting to be Dolly?

The last guy I dated couldn’t handle dating me because my personality was too strong for him. When I was in the seventh grade, my Sunday school teacher told me I was the worst kid she’d ever taught. When I was in graduate school, my professor wrote me a note to tell me to stop being “so funny” when I made presentations. All of these messages made me feel a little bit ashamed, like maybe I needed to sort of calm it down and be more tame and average and safe.

Memaw taught me to say “Jam it” to people who want me to be less than everything that I am.

As I sat with her in her kitchen, I started to remember who I was. I started to remember that I can be obnoxious and make jokes and drive people crazy but also be thoughtful and kind and make people feel appreciated. She made me remember.

I spent a lot of time with family when I was home. Paw Paw and I went fishin down on Lake Tickfaw. I felt at peace for the first time in years. We fell asleep on the boat under a mossy tree. I got sunburned so bad that my face felt hot for a week. The incredible thing here is that I fell asleep. I actually slept. I slept every single night while I was home. I haven’t slept in years.

My aunt and I hung out at her house and danced like crazy to Michael Jackson on the back porch. We danced around while all of her dogs were barking and jumping around us. I had a coke with my cousin while he was recovering from a car accident and we just enjoyed being together. I saw my best friend from back home and spent time with her and her husband and saw their new house. I was around people who loved me just as I am.

I also met a nice guy. A genuinely nice guy.

Being home reminded me of who I was. I had some unfinished business to take care of when I was in Louisiana.

To set the stage, here, my dad gave me the OK to go to LSU two weeks before school started. TWO WEEKS. I had very little time to prepare and make my move down there. I got placed in some sort of horrendous ghetto housing, and I didn’t even care, because all I wanted to do was go to LSU.

So, I’m on a campus tour, and I see my new dorms, and they look like something out of Spanish Harlem, and I don’t even care because I just want to go to college so bad that I can barely stand it. My first choice had been East Laville dorms, but I wasn’t able to live there for a variety of factors. I don’t want to get into all of them because it’s irrelevant. Anyway, I came back from the tour, and my dad says,

“I want you to come with me. I need to show you something.”

So we walk down to East Laville in front of room 109. I didn’t know what was going on. My dad said,

“Honey, this is your new room.”

I told him to stop messing with me.

He wasn’t.

He had recognized the lady who was working at the housing desk. He knew her when he was in THE FIRST GRADE. Anyway, her name was Irene, and she hooked me up. Just like that. I got exactly what I wanted, and my roommate freshman year became my best girl friend.

I tell this story because when I was in Louisiana, I had to have a come to Jesus meeting with Jesus.

I was driving home from my best friend’s house and I drove to the LSU campus. I drove right up to East Laville and turned my car off. And I started to pray. I told God I remembered what He did. I remembered how despite being told that I couldn’t go to LSU and I couldn’t live in East Laville, I got both, despite impossible circumstances. I told Him that I remembered. I told him that I needed help. I told him I couldn’t keep working in this job in this environment with these people. I told him I was in over my head in L.A. and I was lost and confused and empty and broken. I told Him I needed help, and I remember who He is. We had a meeting. I sat there in my car for a long time and remembered walking up those steps a thousand times as a freshman, and every time feeling so fortunate that I got what I wanted. I told God I didn’t know what I wanted anymore, but I needed help, and He’s the only one who could pull me out. I laid down my stone of remembrance.

I kept postponing my return to L.A. Every day I thought that maybe I’d come back, but every day I’d stay one more day in the South.

I don’t know what I’m doing right now, but I know that there is something else for me. I know it isn’t this. I know it isn’t working in an environment where every day I come home and want to fall apart. But something’s coming. I don’t know what it is, but I'm not ashamed about going home anymore. Maybe that's exactly what I need. I came out to L.A. and did what I need to do. And now, I'm ready to go home.

Bump in the Night

2010-04-22T12:14:00.001-07:00

A lot of weird, life changing stuff has occurred since my last blog. I am not very good about regularly writing. I have to be in the mood, and sometimes, I’m just not in it. The mood, that is.

So! Let me work from a few weeks ago up to the present.

I think that during my last blog, I was still dating my pseudo-boyfriend, but that went up in flames, which was a good thing. I don’t even know what happened. That’s the thing about L.A. You think that you might be dating someone, and maybe you are, and maybe you aren’t. You go to parties with them and they don’t introduce you as their S.O. (Significant Other, if you will), but you still hang out several times per week, and you aren’t dating anyone else. Then, once you attempt to have a DTR (Define The Relationship) talk about whether you ARE together or you AREN’T together, just to gain some clarity, your pseudo partner says,

“I just can’t handle this! You are too outgoing! I hate that you are friends with my friends! I hate that you meet people on airplanes and then you invite them to your parties! I feel like I have to always fight for your attention!!! I JUST CAN’T HANDLE THIS!”

And you wonder what the F they are even talking about, because you’re not sure what they mean by not being able to handle “this.” What the crap does “this” even mean? I was just trying to find out if I could date other people or not. Sheesh. Anyway, you wind up never talking to them again until they really miss you, then they call you up and tell you that they miss you and it’s just KILLING them not being able to talk to you or take you to parties and not introduce you as their S.O. anymore, and you’re thinking that the freedom from all of this dysfunction has been complete bliss, so when they give you some lame plea about getting back together, you just say, “Thank you,” and hang up the phone.

And that’s how it is when you date in L.A.

So, with this being said, the pseudo boyfriend is no longer in existence. Good.

Since we’re on the word pseudo, I have a pseudo-celebrity ex boyfriend/neighbor that I have stopped talking to who invited me to a party in Hollywood about three weeks ago. It was some big shin-dig that was kicking off a new Xbox 360 video game.

So, he picks me up and we go to Le Deux, which is all decked out like “Clue” has come to real life, with burgundy fabrics covering the ceiling and candelabras everywhere. We get there, and my neighbor, who thinks he is extremely famous (bless his heart), has to make his appearance on the red carpet and essentially leaves me abandoned by the bar. I begin drinking beverages out of bottles just to prove a point. In the South, women are never to drink adult beverages out of bottles. Adult beverages are to be poured into a cup and sipped ever so politely. I made it a point to be a little bit white-trashy on purpose, just to make him look bad. And I did it with pride.

There was some sort of iPhone game going on where we were given clues and we had to go from room to room in Le Deux and find certain “characters” to retrieve the next clue. For instance, the instructions might be, “Go to the back bar and face the door. Find the girl in the black dress with the red gloves to get your next clue.” So we’d find some girl and hope desperately that she was part of this game and not some stranger that we are accosting, and she’d pull off her glove and have a word written on her hand like “September,” and we’d have to type that in to get the next clue. Man, it was fun. At the end of the night, if you’re the first person to get all the clues, you win a free Xbox 360.

We didn’t win.

It didn’t matter.

Somewhere in the process of all of this, I meet some porn star named Taylor with long blonde extensions and boobs bigger than L.A. and lips full of collagen. She was wearing some sort of one-piece outfit cut into booty shorts and a plunging neckline, and of course, acrylic, 6-inch heels. Where I’m from, you just don’t dress like that. Even if you’re a hooker. Even if you’re a porn star. But you can do that here.

We got to chatting and she told me that she always wanted to be a kindergarten teacher. Man. What a career shift. She was actually pretty nice. I felt sort of bad for her. I can’t imagine lacking such career longevity. She was sort of a butter face. She was only a butter face because she looked really effin old. She had this old lady face with the texture of a baseball glove that had so much work done that it sort of looked like a construction site, and this dynamite body- and she had this vacant look in her eyes. And I kept wondering when ole Taylor the Porn Star’s career would wear out. You can only do that kind of work for so long. Tragic.

At some point, Taylor asked me if I wanted to “bump.”

I didn’t know what the crap bumping meant, but coming from a porn star, I was a little bit nervous about it, and politely declined. She said it was an iPhone application for exchanging contact info. No matter what it meant, I was pretty sure that “bumping” with a porn star would make me wind up with Chlamydia, so I nicely said no thanks. She also said something about cocaine, but it was loud and I couldn’t really hear her, so I split. I got scared. Only in L.A. are porn stars freely walking around and telling you they always wanted to teach kindergarten one second and the next second asking you if you want to bump with them and mentioning cocaine. This place wears me out.

I started walking around as my neighbor kissed everyone’s ass, because that’s what you do when you’re in the “industry” out here, and I bumped into Joel McHale from “Talk Soup.” He was a cool cat. He was a lot taller than I thought he’d be. He looks like a wee man on TV.

I saw a bunch of D list “celebrities” that I’d seen at the Oscar party I worked at, and I thanked God that I wasn’t involved in this industry. It’s funny how glamorous it seems when you watch movies and see people on Leno and Letterman, and then you see them around L.A. with cocktails in their hands, talking to all of their fellow empty suit friends about NOTHING. They talk about NOTHING. They just talk about what they’d think you’d want to hear if you could overhear them, but the music is so loud that you just see their mouths moving, and then you appreciate the fact that you aren’t in that inner circle of depressing empty suits.

So that was my Le Deux, D-list celebrity experience.

The next day, I went out on the worst day of my life with a guy who looked like he was in his 30’s but would never tell me how old he was, so when he left the table to use the restroom, I grabbed his wallet and checked his ID. I was on a date with a 40 YEAR OLD MAN.

I sort of wanted to run away, but I decided that as long as I kept everything platonic, I could bail out at the end and just never talk to him again. Which is what I did.

I often think that I have Tourette’s. I don’t know what happens, but I blurt out whatever is on my mind without really thinking it through before saying it. So. I asked the 40 year old if he had fake teeth.

They looked really fake.

They sort of looked like they were made out of a bunch of Scrabble pieces that were spray painted white and all glued together in a big U shape. Of course, this was the worst thing I could ever ask, and he said, “No!” all huffy and what not. I don’t really blame him. I wouldn’t like it if I had a whole set of Mr. Ed teeth and someone asked me if they were fake.

During the course of the evening, though, he told me he had a tumor in his mouth when he was little and almost died. And I knew those teeth were fake as Hollywood.

I always ask men about their family of origin during a first date. I want to know where they came from and what they are all about. Bad question for this 40 year old joker. His dad was murdered on Halloween.

Way to go, Rachel. You’re really doing well on this one.

During the course of the night, I find out that not only is he 40 years old, but he is also divorced. Not to say I wouldn’t date someone if they were divorced, because that isn’t a big deal to me, but it IS a big deal that he’s 40 and divorced and has fake teeth and his dad got murdered.

I ruined the night for good when he took me to a movie. Guys, never take a girl to a movie for a first date. That is the worst idea ever. EVER.

So, we go to the movies, and guess what I do. I pass out. I seriously fall asleep so hard that I’m having dreams and I’m lying there like a starfish corpse.

After the movie, I wake up and JUMP because I didn’t know that I’d fallen asleep, and I look at the guy and say,

“Whoa. Did I just fall asleep?”

And he says, real miffed, “Yeah, you slept through like THE WHOLE THING.”

So, that’s the story of a terrible date, and it was terrible because I ruined it. Poor guy. He actually texted me last week and asked if I wanted to go out again. Some people like abuse, I guess. Needless to say (so why say it?), I politely declined, just as I politely declined “bumping.”