Nostalgic in her 20s.

"In our artificial civilization many young people at twenty-five are still on the threshold of activity.  As one looks back then, over eight or nine years, one sees a panorama of seemingly formidable length.  So many crises, so many startling surprises, so many vivid joys and harrowing humiliations and disappointments, that one feels startlingly old; one wonders if one will ever feel so old again."

- Youth and Life, by Randolph S. Bourne (1886-1918)

I turned 24 last month and something sort of crazy happened.  Everything shifted. Right beneath my feet.  I don't think anyone around me could have felt it.  But it was there and I wonder if it's happened before but I was too young or too wrapped up in the madness of adolescence to see it. 

But this one I felt.  

It wasn't some epic moment, but several tiny little realizations flickering past me forcing me to realize that I was seeing things slightly different.  I was feeling slightly different about myself. 

But it was better.  Everything got a little clearer.  The fog lifted just a bit. 

I suddenly felt miles from my teenage years.  I saw some kids skateboarding on the street as I drove past and they were suddenly a completely different generation than me.  And it wasn't necessarily nostalgic.  I didn't want to jump out of my car and buy a Slurpee with them and sit on the curb.  I know all the people I would want to do that with were driving around like me.  Thinking about bills, kids, and real life. 

And I'm not sad about that.  Suddenly I wasn't reminiscing or going over every single decision i've made for my life thus far with a big What If tacked to the end of it.  I was excited.  Excited to watch my friends fall in love.  I felt excited to get to watch their lives unfold and to share the huge moments that our 20s will afford us.  I want to watch them fall in love and see their bellies grow with life.  I want to have big backyard BBQs with our kids running around while we have another margarita and talk shit about our youth, books, love, and our kid's swoon-worthy pediatrician.  

We're driving full-steam ahead to our late 20s and (gasp!) 30s.  We're suddenly not the kids anymore.  When you say you were born in the early to mid 80s, it's not that recent anymore.  The 90s have been past us for almost 10 years. 

How is that possible? How are we starting to feel the weight of time when it was only the argument of all those people so much older than us.  We didn't hear them when we were running around, drinking Slurpees and sitting on curbs with nothing but time on hot summer days.  But now we're the ones talking about it, feeling it, laughing at the whole idea of a quarter life crisis.  Some of us are racing through degrees, getting married and starting families, sweating our way through the grunt work of our chosen careers, falling in and out of love, chasing our bliss through cities not far enough from our high school, or maybe still sitting back wondering when the pieces will fall into place into the picture we thought we would see by this point in our lives.  But we're all there, smack dab in our 20s, nostalgic for a time that is suddenly gone.  

I think about that youth and I remember thinking that the 90s would never feel so archaic.  They would never feel as far away as the 80s or (gasp!) 70s ever would.  And then I look out my car window (mind you the AC is running full blast because i'm too old for 90+ degrees) and I see the youth of now.  And feeling as far from them as I do, I'm able to separate myself and find the differences in my day and theirs.  

We were some of the last to know what it was to just play outside.  We spent summers riding bikes, playing kickball, and living with the politics of our neighborhood society of kids.  We stole kisses, chased ice cream trucks, ran through woods, and found shapes in the clouds.  

We were the first to figure out how to use computers and weren't impatient with dial-up.  We begged our parents to let us have our own screen names on American Online and didn't have junk mail clogging our inboxes.  When we got that Super Nintendo we were all over that racoon tail and watching Mario fly and then that N64 and it's 4 controllers were the big leagues.  Mario Kart is still our favorite.  We recorded songs on cassettes from the radio.  We remember buying our movies on VHS and that it was kinder to rewind before sending the movie back to Blockbuster.  We passed notes, created slam books, and lived without cell phones.  We made friends, shared and exposed secrets the old fashioned way without Myspace or Facebook.  We took pictures, without getting to delete them,  before getting them developed by the oily faced kid at the grocery store.  We fell in and out of first love the organic way---face to face.  

And yet we lived in a time of excess.  We were comfortable.  We were sheltered.  We grew up before September 11th and we can feel those changes right in our bones.

We were the last ones to feel that safe.  To have the luxury of being that disconnected.

I would ask if you remember it all, but I already know that you do.   

"The song must be beautiful or they wouldn't sing along
And if sometimes the kids all seem a little sad,
it's 'cause they're saying goodbye to the youth they think they had...

I remember on the sidewalk when I bike up to the hills
You singing in the headphones as I told you that I will
That song again in the alleyway takes me to my door
I'll be back for more, I'll be back for more."

-"14 Forever" by Stars

Women and ink and their glossy pink covers.

“When a woman writes a book that has anything to do with feelings or relationships, it’s either called chick lit or women’s fiction, right?”  

“But look at Updike, or Irving. Imagine if they’d been women. Just imagine. Someone would have slapped a pink cover onto ‘Rabbit at Rest,’ and poof, there goes the ... Pulitzer.”

-J. Courtney Sullivan’s “Commencement”

April whatever 2009.

Some days I just feel like shit. From beginning to end. Maybe I didn't sleep well enough the night before, even though I went to bed at a reasonable hour, but I wake up already over the day. Like somehow if I just skip this one it'll be better.
And there's nothing wrong with the day itself. There's nothing looming to bring about shit feelings, but they're just there. And I sit back and wonder why.
I look up. Sky is blue. Humidity is low. It's actually a pretty fan-fucking-tastic Spring day here in Florida.
But still I feel it. Like something heavy just sitting in my chest. Today is shit.
I have to believe we all fall into ruts. We put our best foot forward, and try to take on every day like we're going to rock it. Use up the day given to us to the best of our capability. Because that's what I think when I find myself having one of these shit days. I think about how I'm wasting it. I look at the calendar and see that one day has turned into another and this day, April whatever 2009, isn't going to happen again. Even if there is nothing to the day, the day itself is a gift I can't get back. I get all existential about it like that. And that of course doesn't help, because it just further goes to make me feel like shit about having this shit day. This shit day of Nothing.
I'm in a rut, and I acknowledge it. I'm in this inbetween stage of my life, and I've been here for about a year. All days aren't like this of course, but some are. Like today. Where I just feel bored. Useless. Like a waste. A waste of a day. A waste of a person. A waste of the possibilities of what today could have meant. This April whatever 2009.
I do have my saving graces. I have my writing. Because there I have control. I have these characters that depend on me, and through them I get to create. And I have Phoenix. Who constantly pulls me out from any deep neurosis I fall into to remind me of the simple things I need to stop and enjoy. Like the fact that the sky is blue. The humidity is low. And it's a good time to be outside, Ma.
Even if it is a shit day for me, he reminds me that from his viewpoint, it's a pretty fan-fucking-tastic day.
And sometimes, I just need the reminder. Because tomorrow i'll wake up, and it won't be. For some reason it just works out like that. Tomorrow just might be April something 2009.

I'm a liar. A terrible liar.

<--- See that box. You can follow me on Twitter.


Ignore the last post.

The Dark Side.

I'm fighting the urge to wade in the waters of Twitter. 

I can't. I won't.  

I have this. I have facebook. I have the death of myspace. 

God, help us. 

From Tonight's Episode of Grey's Anatomy.

"Doesn't matter how tough we are. Trauma always leaves a scar. It follows us home, it changes our lives, trauma messes everybody up. But maybe that's the point. All the pain and the fear and the crap. Maybe going through all of that is what keeps us moving forward. It's what pushes us. Maybe we have to get a little messed up before we can step up."

Counting the cars on the New Jersey Turnpike

I think the way I look at the world is problematic. It's unhealthy and bound to shower me in disappointment, and yet it's one of the things I love most about myself.

By no means am I some eternal optimist. That's not it at all. I get swallowed up by my own pits of despair and find myself hating the world. There are nights that I can't watch the news because it makes me afraid for my child and the world he'll soon leave my arms to be a part of. I hate with every fiber of my being that I brought something so innocent into a world where there is so much shit. So much capable of hurting and breaking him, that this is a world where I could lose the most important thing in my life. And sometimes I'm clouded by my own understanding of things. My own battles with myself and my choices. Trying to understand where I stand in the scheme of all of this, if I feel good about where I am and if I'm strong enough to push aside the judgments of others. I believe in the idea of taking care of each other. That a stranger has a life, outside of what I am aware of because the world doesn't in fact revolve around me, and that that life is full and worthy of its place amongst mine. And it's that understanding that makes what I see on the news shake my resolve. When I see those faces on the screen and hear what they did I want to know who their mothers are. If they have daughters and sons looking up to them. If those men making big decisions in fancy suits understand the weight of their responsibility and the injustice in their prejudices. If they would still love their son if he grew into becoming a man different then them. And those are the nights I turn off the television.

Because I do. I picture it all when I see these things, and that's where my view of the things can be problematic. It doesn't fit into the box of reality, and I'm told that all the time. I'm a fan of unrealistic expectations. I believe in a sort of love that reality with its mortgages and everyday ruts forces to seem impossible. I listen to Simon & Garfunkel and Bob Dylan in a time that won't hear it anymore. I watch movies and believe in those characters with their perfect soundtracks. I listen feeling like that one song, that one lyric could alter your understanding of your own life. I see my life as this story I'm writing. Where I have the choice to waste it, to watch it fade away, or I can step up to the plate and believe in it. I can feel the heartache, make the choices, live the struggle, feel the enormity of love regardless if a world I can't fix can take it away from me. I can believe in myself enough to ignore what other people may expect and instead make this one mine. So I will. I will always try to find the perfect song, have faith in these characters, love them despite the impermanence of life and never stop following my bliss.

And I'll listen to America by Simon & Garfunkel, letting it play in my soundtrack.