Sometimes figurative tornadoes tear things apart

In light of the recent tornado warning in Ingham county, here's a little story that may or may not explain some things in my life.

The other day I was sitting at home -- you know, the place I go to do laundry and eat real food. I was watching a rerun of NCIS and just waiting for my father to call me. It was the day before his birthday, the day before Memorial Day. Yet, alas, working in the newspaper industry, Monday was a production night. I had to be at work. So we were celebrating a day early. At least some of us were.

They say that photos capture moments, memories. Maybe that's why I work in a photography department. But memories can fade and change and suddenly become the most painful thoughts that the mind can fathom. And as I was sitting there, watching Leroy Jethro Gibbs head slap his senior field agents, my mother started to cry.

These once happy memories where my brother and I would vacuum the living room at the age of 5, or swim in a tiny swimming pool barely big enough for a guinea pig.  A family.

All of these happy moments captured on film, to survive until they burned to shreds.

Or until something rips through the memories and pulls them apart piece by piece, something like divorce.

My parents are in the middle of a divorce. The papers were just served, the stuff has been divvied, and my father has moved out. Everything has been turned upside down, tossed across the room, and changed shape. Happy memories of family vacations have now turned into hollow moments.

But that's why they make photo albums. You can tuck away those memories nice and neat, stick them in a closet, and you can buy a new album. You can fill it with whatever you want, whatever makes you smile or cry from joy. There is always the option to create new memories and new moments that will stay with you forever with new people.

Pulling out those old albums might hurt, just like all good things, but loss and heartache just allows you to appreciate love and joy more so than you might already.

After all, T'is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.

Gatsby Review: How old is the sport?

So old.

Old as balls.

Let me preface this with a disclaimer or two. I have seen The Great Gatsby exactly once. I saw it in 2D. I don't study film, I study literature. I haven't read Gatsby in a few years.

That being said, I walked out of the theatre with mixed feelings about the movie. The classic literature student in me wanted to rip everything apart, but the modernist in me wanted to post up a round of applause. I was stuck debating whether or not I wanted a more traditional Gatsby or a fully modernized Jay-G. I haven't decided yet.

So I'll take this in pieces. First, the soundtrack. At first I was very wary about the completely modern music choices, but the mix of the jazz age and today's R & B was actually very entertaining. The sequencing of the movie to the music fit very well. Now that isn't to say that the soundtrack was my favorite, but I can appreciate it for what it was.

The casting. While there are many literary criticisms suggesting that Gatsby is black and while I would have loved to see someone of a different ethnicity play Gatsby, I think DiCaprio did a good job. I wasn't fond of the casting of Nick, but honestly I don't like Nick anyway. I honestly wish there was more of Gatsby, mostly because I like DiCaprio's slightly awkward portrayal of the original symbol of the American dream. The Wolfsheim minor character portrayal was very interesting to me. He was a sleazy person and made me uncomfortable. I thought it was fitting.

The cinematography, however, was excellent. There were times, during the party scene, I felt just as drunk as the people there. And that was honestly sort of neat. I would really like to see the movie in 3D, because I realized in the 2D showing that there were a lot of scenes that were just meant to be in 3D. So I think that's the next thing on my to-do list.

But all in all, the movie acts as an idea present in the Gatsby novel: The old versus the new. The past versus the present. The soundtrack, the characterizations, the cinematography and the movie as a whole is simply an extension of that. The 1920s meets modernism. And while the movie didn't blow me away,  it certainly didn't disappoint me. It is a movie that can be appreciate for what it is and be enjoyed as a form of entertainment, not an object of criticism.

And while I would love to expand upon this, I need to finish my blogs for class. But feel free to hit me up sometime in person.

Making tea: If you want something, you'll find a way

Last night, around 1 in the morning (I'm not 100% positive on the time, but something around there. My phone was dead), I wanted a cup of tea. My allergies were bothering my throat and I was suddenly losing my voice. But alas, I was not at home. I did not have my shiny red tea kettle at my disposal. I was in a coworker's basement with a box of tea that I had just purchased at 7-11 a few hours prior to.

I didn't want to be rude, so I offered tea to the rest of the group. Three people took me up on that offer. I was now at the point of no return. I had promised tea, I was going to get that tea.

But this house was an all male house. And we all know how men fare in the kitchen. There was not a tea kettle. There was one massive pot that took me five minutes to find. I didn't want to microwave tea in a mug, because microwaved water is disgusting. So I put some water in the giant pot, dug out some plastic cups, and waited for the water to boil. That was the easy part. The tricky part was somehow going to be pouring the steaming hot water into a plastic cup without a funnel and without spilling all over myself.

But finally, after fifteen minutes in a kitchen that wasn't mine, I managed to produce four cups of black tea.

Moral of the story? If you want something, you'll find a way to get it.

Humans are adaptable creatures. We are capable of so many amazing things, so many things that other people wouldn't even dream of. But you need to understand that.

Confidence is the first step in attaining what you want. This isn't a tutorial on how to get it, but rather some observations. If you want to ask someone on a date, ask someone on a date and do it with confidence. It's attractive when someone goes for what they want. To others, to employers, to everyone. You have to know, for a fact, that you will pour the tea into the cup without spilling. And if you do, you wipe it up and keep going.

Start with a plan. If something goes wrong: Improvise. Wing it. Just because something alters does not mean that you will fail. It just means you have to try to get it from a different way.

And you can.

What if?: Old poetry, same themes.

1.
_{I hope you read this one day.
Maybe while you're sitting at the top
(or maybe the bottom) of the bright yellow slide--
which probably isn't bright anymore.
Or maybe you'll be seated in the small white chair
facing my old fence
with your old blue helmet sitting near
you know, the one with the dinosaurs on it?
I think they were dinosaurs.
I hope they were dinosaurs,
because every time I stare at my dinosaur blanket
I think of you.
And every time I hold it close to me
I remember what we were.}

2.
_{Now when you read this through until the end
(at least until the end I proclaim,
because it's the best I can offer),
I hope you think about me
and all we could have been.
While you're thinking, I hope you remember me.
But I'm not the same little girl,so I'll ask you to do your best,
and hope you don't think too little of me
because I never sent you a picture.
I only sent words.
But those words are me, just like always.
They give you a better idea
because I wrote them. No one else had to do it for me
like they would a photograph
with a fake smile.}

3.
_{And I hope you read this and have that feeling
where all our memories flood back
and seem so real that you could reach out
and just pluck one--like the pensive
in our favorite movie--and watch it again
and over and over, together, you and I.
And when you remember all of this,
I hope you can feel everything I did 
and I hope it brings a tear to your eye
like it did mine (but maybe that's because
I am just a girl. But I am that girl).
and when you cry I hope you feel better soon,
because I would never wish you hurt.}

4.
_{When you read this, if you don't trash it,
I'm going to ask you to remember my letter
the one you might have burned or destroyed
or left it unopened and tossed away.
Or maybe you never got it.
I'll ask you to remember why you never replied,
why you hurt me so;
why you made me think you dead;
why I cry when I remember you,
because you brought that pain into my heart
like an introduction to hell.
And you destroyed the trust I had left
and every hope I felt.
And I'll ask you to ask yourself:
What could we have been?}

5.
_{And though you destroyed me,
I will always be attached.
I will always fall in love with you.
I will always wait.}


I wrote this poem a year ago and for some reason someone thought it was alright. I don't know why.  Looking at it now I sort of wish I would change some things, but I'll refrain from doing so in order to grasp the originality.

The idea behind it, however, the thought process that went into it, remains.

Too often today people ask themselves "What if?"

I am one of those people.

Too often I get caught up in fear that my chances end sooner than I can realize I had them. I'm talking relationships here. Remember when I wrote a blog on why I've never dated? Did I mention that I was also absolutely afraid of being rejected? I mean god. Everyone is.

I'm still absolutely afraid of this. It's still why I've been single for almost 20 years. It's why I've never kissed anyone or been on a date. I've managed to never tell a single person that I was falling in love with them every time they laughed or smiled or told a really bad joke.

I am the person that asks "What if?"

How do I fix this? I haven't figured that one out yet. Over coming this fear isn't something that I've been able to do in so many years, so when I find the answer I'll be a-okay. But until then I'll sit and stare and smile and laugh at jokes that I don't understand and silently wonder what could happen if maybe I said something out loud.

Or what if you did?

I am a flight risk.

I'm not being arrested and sent to prison, don't worry. I'm not attempting to run away from court or the police or impending incarceration. I simply have the need to be somewhere.

There are so many places that I want to be, so many great countries and cities all across the world. Places and trips that would give me a purpose.

Whether it's takin the train to Chicago or driving to New York. Hopping on a plane to England or to France or to Spain and getting lost in a foreign country.

I have the need to disappear into the world for a little while, to lose myself in streets in another land, to lose myself entirely, only to eventually find my way back home. I have the need to be someone else, if only for a minute. I am a flight risk.

But I also realize that I have responsibilities. I have a job, I have classes. These are the things that hold me back. So I relieve myself by taking small adventures into forests and corn fields, by disappearing for a few hours. I drive, I take myself on these seemingly endless roads that I never want to end.

I seek a purpose because I don't have one just yet.

I have no obligation to my family to be in a certain place at a certain time. My parents are divorced, living separate lives. My brother has a job, has his own friends, his own life. I have friends, but I force myself to ask the question: Would they miss me if I disappeared on an adventure? I have no significant other to spend time with. I have no obligation to anyone but myself, and sometimes myself wants to escape life for a little bit.

Yet I'm here, stuck in a small college town trying to make the best of it, eagerly seeking that freedom, waiting for the chance to leave my life for a week or a month or however long it takes to find something absolutely incredible. So I'm forced to make the best out of midnight trips to Meijer or the simple act of discovering a new street that I didn't know existed.

In some sense, that small discovery is great. I have a purpose for a small amount of time in my life. But the big cities, the foreign countries, the concept of a new place where no one knows my name -- these things call to me.

One day I will answer to this call and simply disappear into the wind for a little while. My obligation to myself will be complete and I will have no one to answer to. But until that day I'll need to make the best of my dreams. I'll dream of the day that I step foot onto an airplane for the first time, or the day that I stand on the edge of a cliff and listen to the wind. I'll dream of the people that I'll meet and the people that I will fall in and out of love with. I'll dream and I'll know that one day those dreams might be reality, if only because I need them to be.

Everything lives to die, but:

Life is all about the end. Televisions shows end, books end, parties end, relationships end, jobs end, roller coasters end, road trips end, marriages end.

Everything essentially lives to die.

But death, as is demonstrated in the tarot card of the same name, is not always a bad thing. The death of one thing simply means that something is changing. Change is helpful. People change so much within a short amount of time. Certainly, it can be a bad thing in some cases, but sometimes that change is so amazing that it can inspire boundless things.

A year ago I never let anyone in. Two years ago I didn't have friends. Look at me today. I've been called a social butterfly. I drink socially. I have a great job with great coworkers. I spend more time with other people than I spend time alone. I have great friends, and while I don't tell them everything that crosses my mind, I'm more open now than I've ever been. I write personal shit down in a blog that gets posted to the internet. Anyone can read my intimate thoughts and past struggles. But everyone can also see my current successes. My life, the people in it, my mental health has improved so incredibly in a year that I hardly consider myself the same person anymore.

I have changed drastically for the better. I can safely say that the person I used to be has died. There was an end to what I was, and that ending was the best thing that could happen.

If a marriage ends, there's the potential for another one. If a television show ends, another one will replace it. When the last cover of a book is closed, there's another book on the shelf. There's always another party, another friend or another lover. There's plenty of jobs -- unless you live in Michigan.

There is always something to look forward to.

Humans adapt. We live through and we push on and we survive. And one day we won't survive, and the people around us will adapt because nothing gold can stay. And that is perfectly alright.

Stuffed Teddy Bears (Fiction)

We liked the darkness. The way that the stars were dangling in the sky, like they were yellow paper kites being flown by the sun. We loved the stars.

We would watch, your head on my chest. We would bring a blanket, the same blanket that sat in the corner of your closet underneath your old stuffed animals. You would pick them up so gingerly, like they would fall apart, tell me that they were fragile, like memories of the past.

They were the past. They were everything you had that didn’t get burned away in a fire, the things that you could touch and hold and cry over. Even though you said you were done with tears. “There’s no more sadness,” you would say. You would swear it, joke about it. “There’s no room for sadness, it burned down.” I could never tell if you were serious, never could tell if you were lying. I wasn't sure if you missed that house or not.

Your eyes would always say something different. You would smile, but I could never see it in your eyes. There was no light there, nothing to show your happiness. It was a dead smile, burned down.

I told you that once and you looked at me like I was a little bit crazy, like I was telling you lies, yelling. I never tried to yell at you, I never wanted to yell at you.

I wanted to love you. With every inch of my body. It was in my skin, in the patch of grey hair at the back of my head, the crooked middle finger on my left hand. It just was, and I never knew how to explain it to anyone — especially you. It just happened, it had always just happened.

We were something that just happened. There was never any reason to it, just the fact that it was. Because we were both young, because we were both stupid. I like to think it’s because we just were — We were alive.

But “were” was the only thing that mattered now. Everything was stuck, stuffed away like the teddybears in the corner of the closet, lying down on top of that old plaid blanket that you were always so fond of.

We were looking at the stars and we were falling apart.

We were kites, falling from the sky.

Why I've Never Dated: Finding first love

Wait, what?

Nope. That's not a lie. That's 100% true. I've never been on a date before. Why? I could tell some sob story about how I'm forever alone, but I really don't believe that. I'm not a whiner. If I focused on the fact that I've been single for nearly twenty years I would probably hate my life. That's pointless. I've done enough pointless things in my life to know where to draw the line. Not limited to blogging.

Regardless. I recently wrote a blog post about how not having a dance partner can be better for you. The same rules apply for relationships:

You need to learn to love yourself before you can learn to love someone else.

In elementary school, while playing Harry Potter on the playground (I was Hermionie, in case you were wondering) with two of my best friends, the one boy that played the role of Harry walked me into the tires and told me that he loved me. We were too young to understand love.

In middle school I was still much too young to understand what relationships were. I was so insecure that I didn't care what clothes I wore or how I dressed or whether or not people wanted to talk to me. I had to tell my gym teacher in seventh grade that I was female and that I didn't want her to put me into the boys' locker room.

In high school the same rules applied. I looked different than all of the other girls. I was insecure. I had short hair, I didn't have boobs or curves, and I didn't have friends after my best friend of 5 years was offended when I jokingly commented that people that read Twilight needed to read better literature. I stuck my nose in my books and no one talked to me. But I didn't talk to anyone else. I hated the way that I dressed, the way that I looked, the way that everything around me was going. Plus, let's be honest. Everyone I went to high school with kind of sucked.

When I came to university, I found a great place that lasted a year. The people helped me, I hate to be cliche, but they helped me come out of my shell. I started talking to people and dressing relatively more to how I wanted to dress. I still didn't look like other girls, but I didn't want to look like other girls. I hate long hair, I still hate wearing makeup. But at college there were more people like me. I felt more comfortable, and I found the other half that I was looking for. I found me and I fell in love for the first time in my life (Pierce Brosnan, as sexy as he is, did not count).

And now, a year after finding that self, I'm happy.

So take a bath, feed yourself, write yourself poetry. Get drunk because you want to get drunk. Fix your hair in the mirror because you want to look great for yourself. Listen to "I'm Too Sexy" on repeat. Learn all the words. Lip synch very poorly to them while you get read in the morning. Find a song that's just you. Learn all the words to Ice Ice Baby. Dance poorly. Master the wobble.

Find someone that loves everything that you love about yourself.

How to survive paranoia: Living life when death is imminent

People often make fun of me for disliking elevators. And escalators. And sharp objects. And strangers. Alleys, airplanes, trains, roller coasters, semi trucks. The list of things that I live in (slight) fear of seems to be never ending and constantly growing. The people that are around to make fun of that list seems to grow right along with it.

Dani, why won't you take the elevator? What do you mean you don't take escalators? 

For me it isn't a hard choice to make. The elevator mechanism is going to collapse and everyone inside will plummet to their death. The escalator is going to implode upon itself and everyone will be sucked into the gears -- to their death. The knife, or whatever sharp object it is, is going to cut into me. The stranger in the alley might actually pull out a gun or a knife. The airplane is going to plummet to the earth below, the train is going to be derailed, the roller coaster is going to stall or fall apart, the semi truck is going to explode, flinging sharp metal pieces all around.

I live in a world of illogical fears, where I focus on all of these stupid little details that might occur. By might we're talking about 1%. However: I'm not afraid to admit that because I have it (mostly) under control.  How? When I'm afraid of every little thing that moves -- or doesn't?

I surround myself with people that laugh at my stupid fears. The people that tell me I'm a fucking idiot for being afraid of derailed trains. When you focus, like I do, on these stupid little details -- these minute, impossible, intangible, idiotic things, it's easy to miss the big picture. Walking around with a magnifying glass burning a hole in my life is not how I want to live.

I've been forcing myself to take chances on things. Last night I climbed out a window and up a steep slope to stand on the roof of a two story house. Was I terrified? You bet your fucking ass I was. Any minute I was going to slip, someone was going to fall, the roof was going to collapse inwards. Was that in the back of my mind? Holy shit it was. But I forced myself to push it to the back. I looked up at the stars and out at the city, realized how small that moment on the roof was. I forced myself to ignore the fact that I was standing on an old roof and I forced myself to realize that I was standing in one of the greatest cities I've ever known with someone of the greatest people in my life to date.

I thought about that moment and what it would mean for my future, what it would mean for the relationships that I have with the people in my life. I looked at the big picture.

That's how I've been surviving. I look at the massive picture instead of every small thing that could go horribly wrong. I focus on the people I'm spending my time with and where I'm spending my time. I focus on the memories that I'm creating and the relationships that I'm building.

And mostly, ladies and gentlemen, I take the fucking stairs.

I should be sleeping, but I've been blessed with great people.

I have to be up at 8 AM. I should put my ass in bed. I should have been in bed three hours ago. What was I doing?

Standing on top of a roof, looking out into the city of East Lansing with some of the greatest people that I know. And it's not like they're the people that are going to cure cancer or solve world hunger, but they're the people that will make you forget about everything for a little while as you stand in a place that is virtually unforgettable.

These are people that will tell you to shut the fuck up, people that will listen to the best and worst music, people that will laugh with you and at you. But they're the people that will make you smile. Even if they're belligerently drunk and think that somehow you're pissing off the side of the roof with a magical (and suddenly sprouted) dick.

Yelling off the top of the roof and ignoring the rest of the world, if only for a moment. As you laugh with these people, share stories and jokes and make up really stupid haikus in the moment, you know that they don't know something about you.

Allow me to clarify. I'm a private person 95% of the time. I don't talk about who I like or what I do in my private time or how I feel about certain things. People can know me without actually knowing me. But there's something that I've felt the need to get off of my chest for a while, for about a year really, and I feel like this summer is a new beginning and it needs to be put out there.

A year ago I would have been standing on the edge of that roof, debating whether or not jumping off would be worth it.

Today I stood on the edge of the roof and felt the wind on my face and I smiled.

So much has changed in a year -- so many people have changed me. And I have been blessed with amazing people that would tell me, jokingly or not, to stop pissing off the edge of the roof and come back to join them.

To all of those people: Thank you.

The Future, also known as: What the fuck am I going to do with my life?

That's a really good question. I don't actually have an answer. But, let's talk about some of the things that I've considered doing in the past.

• The veterinarian. I was never a child that wanted to be a ballerina or a singer. When I was in second grade I could neither dance or sing. I still can't really do either. I wanted to heal animals. So, when "What you want to be when you grow up" day rolled around at the age of 8, I went to school with a stethoscope, a stuffed dog, and my mother's lab coat that was about fifteen sizes too big for me. This was my dream until we had to put my grandmother's dog down. I decided that I couldn't work in a veterinary office. I liked animals too much to kill them.
• After being a vet clearly didn't work out for me I became obsessed with wanting to be a forensic scientist. Blame the television show CSI. I still consider switching my major to criminal justice, but after touring a crime lab I realize that doing so would be really dumb. Most criminologists work until they basically die over their work, so there aren't ever any openings anywhere. Plus who wants to spend their days dressed up in plastic sheeting so we don't drop a hair at a crime scene and accidentally get convicted of murder? Not me.
• At the same time, joining the CIA was always an option. I was that child. I wanted to run around with a gun and a badge and kill bad guys like James Bond. I was a little fucked up as a child, if you couldn't already tell. But the idea of running and having to pass physicals and be one of those people that worked out sort of turned me away from trying to work for the government. Plus it's the government. I probably get paid more as a journalist than I would for government work.
• And then there were the days I swore I would go to Med School. That was funny.

But now here I am, working at a newspaper as a photographer and studying for two extremely pointless degrees. English, creative writing, and Spanish. The fuck? What the hell am I going to do with those degrees? I don't want to teach at anything below the collegiate level. Do I go to school and get a masters in creative writing? What the fuck will I do with that?

I'm creating a website for photography. Business cards, those too. Do I try to get into sports photojournalism? Or weddings and portraits?

Do I actually want to even fucking write books? I haven't written one in something like four years. Can I actually take good photos? I have no idea.

HELP. 

Do I go into photography? Do I go to school for 4 more years? Do I write books? What the fuck am I actually going to do with my life?

I legitimately don't know.

Connection, or why ballroom dancers are great at sex

I recently was at a party. I was drinking, having a good time, laughing, the usual. And then I got involved in an intense conversation with the sibling of one of my old coworkers. By intense I mean we covered a very wide range of topics, ranging from majors to hometowns to hobbies, you get the drill. It was a good conversation and it got me thinking.

I started to think about the connections people have to each other. Alright, not connections like mutual friends or jobs or dumb things like that, but an actual physical connection. Like sex. Which ballroom dancers (as a generic rule) are good at. Well, at least the half-decent ballroom dancers. Newcomers might be better at other things, like sucking

at folding laundry.

I joke. But back to the point of things. Let me explain this.

Ballroom dancers are used to spending so much time with their partners. And that might not even be one partner. Take me,  for example. I've danced with so many men that my entire high school graduating class would be put to shame. But dancing with all of these people you learn to follow, you learn to be lead into things. You never grow accustomed to one person and how they do things.

You follow by touch. And that's not even sensual touching, guys, it's the simple hand to hand connection found in a latin lead. Confused yet? Go over to the nearest wall and put up your right hand like you're swearing an oath. Put your hand against the wall, now make sure your elbow is touching the wall. That's all it takes.

Now imagine that the stupid wall in front of you is a person. Someone that you're dancing with. I do this a lot since I never have anyone to actually dance with, so maybe I'm just weird. But in reality, this is the frame of a single latin dancer.

With a couple, this frame is like duct taping two pieces of paper together. The slightest movement of one person is felt by the other. Closing one's eyes and simply following the weight shifts of the other person, the slightest inch shuffled to the left or to the right, a step sideways or forward. Everything is felt, everything is responded to.

And I mean, do I have to point out the obvious? If a ballroom dancer can respond to you just by touching hands and elbows, if a dancer can move with you, following everything that you do and reciprocating, what happens when the clothes come off and bodies touch?

Getting inked needs to mean something, or: the backstory of my tattoo

They tell you to get a tattoo in a place that's easily hidden, which is exactly where I got mine: My upper arm. Four lines of text, it's about as wide as my hand and placed so that I can easily read it.

Since most of my sleeves happen to cover the tattoo, people generally don't see it. I have noticed, however, that when the sleeves come off for parties, everyone is suddenly intrigued by it. Which I suppose is no big deal, but I always feel the need to explain it whenever someone is curious.

I'm an English major. I have a tendency to like dumb poetry and classic novels. The four lines on my arm are actually two lines from a poem by Tennyson titled "In Memoriam A. H. H. Obit MDCCCXXXIII: 27" or simply "In Memoriam 27." The full text of the poem, so I can further elaborate:

I envy not in any moods

         The captive void of noble rage,

         The linnet born within the cage,

That never knew the summer woods:

I envy not the beast that takes

         His license in the field of time,

         Unfetter'd by the sense of crime,

To whom a conscience never wakes;

Nor, what may count itself as blest,

         The heart that never plighted troth

         But stagnates in the weeds of sloth;

Nor any want-begotten rest.

I hold it true, whate'er befall;

         I feel it, when I sorrow most;

         'Tis better to have loved and lost

Than never to have loved at all.

It's basically a poem about how experiencing love no matter how painful the loss of the loved one or of the love can be, is better than holing yourself away to avoid feeling the pain. It is better to feel the love than never to have anyone to love or be loved by.

So not only is this my favorite Tennyson poem, the year prior to my getting this tattoo was a very rough year for me to live through. So much went wrong with friendships and love interests and family relationships that I started talking to a therapist. It was not a good year.

So I got this tattoo, having remembered this couplet for a very long time, to remind myself that loving, no matter how painful it can be, is better than not feeling.

Fuck you, Universe, or: Why I know it's going to be a great summer

Because I deserve it.

Last summer you turned me into an underage alcoholic because everything went to hell in a handbasket with little bunny ears riding shotgun.

Wait, what?

I've accepted, by this point in time, that my parents will be divorced for the rest of time. I've accepted that my father may or may not find someone else to marry or be with or what have you. I've accepted that my mother will probably finish out the rest of her life alone. I have accepted, if i ever get married, that it will be a really fucking awkward reception with my divorced parents in the same room. I've even accepted that I will probably not get married.

I have come to term with the fact that my relatives will not be around forever. That cancer, old age, and accidents happen.

I've realized what I've known in my heart for a long time: People come and go, things change, and I need to accept it.

I've reached what might be the best part of my life right now, but I know it can always get better.

I have a great job with amazing coworkers. People that I could never get sick of, even if I drank too much. I know people now that would move worlds for me, people that are irreplaceable, no matter how much shit I jokingly give them.

So I'm going to laugh and cry and love and hate, but I'm not going to fall down. I've had enough of crawling on my knees for problems that are unfixable. I'm going to make my own luck and make my own love and be the best and happiest damnedest mother fucker on the planet.

And nothing is going to stop me.

Look I'm writing things.

She lived across the alleyway. A different apartment complex, but I saw her every night when she stood at her window, staring out into the nothingness because the city had polluted the stars. There was a small glow on the tip of the cigarette in her hand, moving occasionally with the rest of her body, swaying to some silent music inside of her head. The moon lit part of her face for a good portion of the time she stood there, and the half that it lit was beautiful. 

Sometimes she had clothes on. Sometimes she didn’t.

Sometimes I could hear her sigh -- imagine that she was sighing through the glass pane. In the summer, with the windows open to let hot air out and back in again, her sigh would drift across the small gap between her life and mine.