soopastryheart

I am not a very good sleeper. Actually, no, that’s wrong: I’m an excellent sleeper; when I am asleep, no earthquake, hurricane, or rock concert could wake me (true story, I once fell asleep in the corner of a nightclub in Canada). The problem is, I have extreme difficulty falling asleep. I will stay awake for hours, lying there in bed while Boyfriend blissfully floats away to dreamland.

Most nights I sleep with headphones in, partially to dull Boyfriend’s raucous snoring, but mostly to shuffle through new music that Pandora and Spotify has for me. I’ve discovered some of my favorite artists and bands this way, at 3am, in the midst of trying to find slumber. And one of the benefits of semi-insomnia in bed are the lack of distractions that allow you to focus on whatever it is that you want. In my case, the lyrics that flow out of my headphones become the most intriguing narration, some silly, while some, acutely revealing. And while I perilously claw my way to construct words to accurately describe a feeling/thought/revelation, some lyrics will do so for me, in the most effortless and poetic ways.

So the other night, in the second hour of my usual bedtime routine of waiting around for drowsiness to hit, Barcelona’s “Please Don’t Go” came on. It’s a song I’ve heard numerous times before, but for one reason or another, my brain zeroed in on the lyrics. You know those scenes in movies where a mathematical genius becomes so engrossed in the problem that the equations on his white board come alive? He becomes wrapped in a vortex of mathematical expressions until suddenly the answer becomes undoubtedly clear. Well, I guess that’s what happened to me, but instead of numbers, the lyrics to “Please Don’t Go” were zooming in and out of my line of sight, leaving me in a whiplash of words that I never really paid attention to.

And suddenly, I found my face losing all control, as it contorted into what can only be described as a “scrunch,” the precursory expression your face makes just milliseconds before losing your shit.

In that moment, at 3am, surrounded by the darkness of the bedroom, and with the ambient sounds of Boyfriend’s muzzled snores, I broke down in uncontrollable, legitimately ugly sobs. I was so confused as to why this was happening, that I tried my hardest to muffle myself, but that only caused my chest to stammer and tighten with each restraint. And because I didn’t want to wake Boyfriend and have him privy to me having a random fucking meltdown, I flew out of bed, and ran to the bathroom, where I cried for a solid minute or two. I then splashed some cold water on my face and went back to bed, where I spent the rest of the night/morning completely mystified as to what triggered this outburst.

Some time the next morning, I looked up the official lyrics to the song, hoping it could help decode why it affected me so. It’s a beautiful melody, but it’s one that describes the love and desperation that comes with heartbreak, written for/about a particular lover. This couldn’t possibly apply to me, because as saccharine as it may sound, Boyfriend and I are truly, madly, deeply in love. And while our relationship is nowhere near the spectrum of perfect, there’s absolutely no reason for the song and its lyrics to have punched me like it had.

The lyrics struck a nerve, and it affected my mood for several days thereafter. I grieved the way one would after a devastating breakup, without really understanding why. Maybe there were no reasons; maybe I had finally unraveled, and this was the official invitation to looney town. But then more songs started to have the same effect. I wasn’t breaking down in tears with each song, but more and more started to tug at my insides, like a petulant child trying to remind me of something urgent.

As I tried to investigate what was going on with my emotional balance, I realized that my lyrical attentiveness gravitated to those songs of loss and heartbreak, especially those where the singer expressed regret, pleading with the object of his/her affection to not go/come back. If this was my subconsciousness trying to tell me something, what the fuck was it? What was I trying so desperately not to lose? What was I trying to get back?

There’s a folder on my desktop labeled “Works in Progress” that I’ve had for the better part of 15 years. It’s a folder that’s been passed on from computer to computer, and it’s one that carries hundreds of drafts. In years past, I’ve visited this folder frequently, occasionally opening some random files with every intention of deleting, but after a few paragraphs, I deem them to still have potential, so I keep them. This past year, that folder began collecting virtual dust from abandonment.

Frustration led to discouragement, which quickly turned me complacent with being stuck. And instead of sticking it out and trying to make it work, I simply gave up. I began to resent the entire process: thinking of ideas, the roughest of drafts, even reading. Somewhere along the way, I started to tell myself that I wasn’t the problem; I didn’t leave writing, writing left me. And like the worst break ups, I couldn’t remember any of the good times, and instead, could only think of the ways writing betrayed me. And ultimately, it destroyed my self-esteem and ability to love (write) again. I have felt tremendously empty, an incomplete version of the person I used to be. I’ve been floundering for some time now, lost and insecure. And though I’ve attempted many times to find distractions to fill this inexplicable void, I’ve only found fleeting relief. Not writing effectively broke my heart and I never recovered.

And that’s where I am now. I know why I’ve been unhappy, why I’ve felt unfulfilled. I know why I stopped daydreaming, why I stopped reading books, and why I lose my shit to love songs in the middle of the night. I’ve become a real-life Adele music video.

I’m taking things slow. There’s a lot of trust to rebuild, and a lot of self-loathing to scare off. Things might be rough for a while; there will be prolonged absences, and more fits of “this time it’s REALLY OVER.” There will be terribly played-out cliches and metaphors (good lord there’s so many in this post alone). There will be viciously long and barely coherent rants of nothing of great significance or purpose. There will be awkward transitions between paragraphs, repeated and recycled themes and ideas. There will be more fights, definitely more tears, and the occasional bouts of flagrant wailing. There will be a hell of a lot more of bad writing before the good ones appear. But we belong together. If these past few couple of years have taught me anything at all, it’s that I can’t be me without it. Since the longest I can remember, all I’ve wanted to do is share my stories. Your stories. Your mom’s stories. And for fuck’s sake, writing is super hard. It makes me angry and it makes me cry. It makes me hate so much of myself, but it’s the only thing that I’ve ever had that’s ever truly been mine. And I’ve never been happier than when I was doing it. I don’t know how to be me without my words.

And I haven’t run out of them quite yet.

*Title lyric from “Please Don’t Go” by Barcelona

As I was typing out the first line of Iggy Azalea’s breakout hit for this post’s title, I got caught up in a fifteen minute squabble with my own brain about it being “realest” or “realist.” Though my biggest gripe with the rap world is with the general disregard and desecration of the English language, this time, both words could technically work (and were in fact, words). And when all my Google researching gave inconclusive results, I realized THIS is why my writing often gets stalled: I can’t get past the most superficial and pointless parts of the process. Anyway, here’s the super belated end of year recap (see last year’s here), one that I highly considered skipping altogether this year, because frankly, I’m a day shy of February and that’s pretty late, even for my standards.

11. You have to cut yourself a decent amount of slack to move forward. And you absolutely have to learn to love yourself (but not like, in a weird, self-absorbed selfie-a-day way); you can’t expect everyone else to do it for you.

10. Love is the only thing that transcends time and space. Anne Hathaway told me that.

9. There’s nobody I take less seriously than someone who claims to be too busy to read. You might as well be walking around with “my tiny brain can’t possibly handle more information” tattooed on your face.

8. Give more than you get.

7. It’s important to ask yourself, “Am I being an asshole?” Because chances are, if you’re in a situation where the question arises, you probably are.

6. “There’s three things in this world that you need: Respect for all kinds of life, a nice bowel movement on a regular basis, and a navy blazer.” – Robin Williams in The Fisher King

5. Text your parents, often.

4. You can take plenty of things for granted, but people should never be one of them.

3. Covers: making what seemed like silly lyrics hit you in the face like a sack of emotional bricks.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ScF52yhG-mg

2. “I know who I am and who I may be, if I choose.” – Don Quixote

1. You’re never too old to grow up.

*Title lyric from “Fancy” by Iggy Azalea

If memories could be erased from queue, they wouldn’t be called memories in the first place. Instead, a more appropriate title would be “singular events that can be immediately forgotten and never mentioned ever again.” But that’s not how memories work. And as one of life’s cruelest ironies, when it comes to memories, we find ourselves desperately clinging on to the fondest of them, while hopelessly pleading for the awful ones to leave and never return.

And I don’t know how some memories lie dormant for years, some for decades, until a trigger unleashes a relentless vomit of sights, scenes, smells, sounds, and emotions. I don’t know how they seem to work like that, how sometimes, you can’t remember something that happened a week, or a few hours prior, but others can come flooding back to you with an intensity that seems to be immune to time.

The other day at the gym (I say things like this now), I was about five minutes into a lackluster session on the elliptical machine, debating whether or not to jump off for a “lack of energy” (i.e. didn’t want to do it), when I found myself staring squarely at a familiar face from the past, a face that I had not seen since I had graduated from high school. He had gone to the rival school in my hometown, a place so small that you couldn’t flick a booger without hitting someone you knew. We had plenty of mutual friends, hung out a handful of times, but weren’t close enough to keep in touch after graduation. And in honesty, I had forgotten all about him.

We were 14 when we first met. Our first interaction was through ICQ, the now antiquated messaging system that showed primal signs of social networking, as you could add friends to talk to, and provide a profile of yourself with carefully manicured details (Favorite Singer: Lauryn Hill! Third Eye Blind! Interests: Hanging wit frenz! Sports! Shopping!). We started chatting online because of the abundance in mutual friends shared. And through those chats, we came to realize that we only lived a few blocks from each other. That inevitably led to the suggestion of a meet, and one day, I agreed to stand outside on the porch so he could stop by and say hi.

I hadn’t ventured out to the world of makeup at that age, so I didn’t do a lot of prep work for our meet. I may have brushed my hair, and applied some Dr. Pepper Lipsmacker. He showed up wearing an impressively large T-shirt, the sleeves cut off to expose the pubescent muscles on his arms, which were only slightly bigger than mine. His hair was gelled into peaks and valleys, the way cool kids styled their hair back when the look wasn’t considered a colossal joke. He stood at the front of the gate, pushed his sunglasses down to his chin, and looked cautiously at me.

“Soo?”

“Hi! Yeah, that’s me!”

“Oh hey…” By the way he was already shifting his glance up and down the block, my brain told my feet not to walk up to the gate. Instead, they remained glued to the porch, held down by the obvious disappointment that was being flushed out of his face.

“Okay, well, see you later,” he said, and just as quickly as he had shown up, he was gone. We were at an age where an interaction so awkward could still be socially acceptable with its brevity. And it’s not like I wanted to stand there and have a conversation when such a crushing first meet has just occurred.

You see, at that age, I was five-foot-five, my capricious weight of 100 pounds largely dependent on whether or not I was carrying my algebra book. I had a mouth full of metal to correct some gnarly and aggressive canines, and glasses that looked like I had stolen them off Harry Potter. I looked like your quintessential geek because I was one. I was not a gifted athlete. I did not carry around the newest Jansport backpack at the beginning of every school year, or own Doc Martens. I was barely filling out my training bra. I read a lot of Nancy Drew.

Many girls my age were hitting puberty in strides. They were experimenting with different types of mascaras and foundations that were two shades too dark/light for their skin tones. They were wearing jeans that made boys notice their asses. They were going to the movies together, holding hands, making out, copping feels. I wasn’t there yet. Not even close.

But with what I lacked in my chest, I made up for with emotional awareness. I was acutely alert of the experiences my peers were having around me, and I desperately yearned to be included. I had watched enough She’s All That and 10 Things I Hate About You to believe that it could happen – that someone could see all the potential I had underneath my Gap Kids sweatshirt and take me to the prom.

But real life teenage boys are vastly different than the 20-something-year-old actors who play their counterparts. And in that interaction, I was rudely and swiftly snapped out of my naïve fantasies. A two-minute encounter and one unintentional look of rejection was all it took to obliterate my self-esteem. I never spoke of the incident to anyone, though I’m sure there’s an entry about it in one of my diaries somewhere.

I slowly grew out of that stage. I traded in my glasses for contact lenses. The removal of my braces assured my parents that they had gotten their money’s worth. When it became obvious that boobs were never going to be a factor, I bought some great pushup bras. More importantly though, I learned to use (disguise?) my geeky tendencies to mature other facets of my personality, enough so that I was able to have a great high school experience, one that didn’t leave me feeling like a hopeless sap.

There are people who are inherently confident, and thus have no problem exuding sex appeal. I’ve imagined what it’d be like, walking into a room without clammy palms. Or not having palpitations over initiating conversation. Or not thinking the worst about yourself when catching someone’s stare (Oh god, there’s something wrong with my face, that’s why he’s looking at me!). I’ve always envied these people, these people who don’t get mini anxiety attacks over the smallest social interactions. But I’d like to believe I’ve made some huge improvements, and I’m not as clueless as I used to be.

But when I saw that face from my past, more than a decade after I saw him last, I was suddenly transported back to that porch, back to the heartache that happened so abruptly and unexpectedly. And I couldn’t understand why I was flashing back to that awful first meet, especially since I thought I had vanished that memory. I thought I had mended it by hanging out with him a handful of times throughout high school. I thought I had gotten over it, but in that moment, on the elliptical, I froze. That heartbreaking scenario of my tiny self nervously waiting for this boy to appear, then seeing the utter disappointment in his face at the sight of me played on loop, until I could pinpoint the exact gut-wrenching moment where my morale crumbled. And even with all the years that had passed, I felt everything just as potently as I had before.

But the difference was, I knew I wasn’t 14. Sure, my ass had remained the same size, but it was no longer in a pair of size 00 American Eagle jeans, but rather, in a pair of overpriced Lululemon yoga pants. I hadn’t morphed into a supermodel, but I also wasn’t that same girl, with her cheeks stinging from humiliation. I had exboyfriends. I had travelled. I had some major achievements under my belt. I had experienced things. I had lived, man.

A part of me wanted to approach him, greet him with a friendly hug before shouting in his face, “HEY! LOOK AT ME NOW!” I wanted to point to my super muscular boyfriend and yell, “SEE THAT HOT PIECE OF ASS? THAT’S MINE! WE LIVE TOGETHER! HE THINKS I’M SEXY AS FUCK! SO, SUCK IT!” I wanted to drop an imaginary microphone, march over to my boyfriend, dip him in my arms, and land the most exaggerated kiss on his lips. This scenario obviously never took a step out of my imagination. Instead, I let him walk by without acknowledgement.

Some memories aren’t there to torment you. They don’t exist to make you feel small, or take you back to a place when things were unpleasant or hurtful. Sometimes, they’re there to remind you of the person you were, the challenges you had to overcome to become the person you are now. Sometimes they poke their heads out to remind you to be appreciative of everything you’ve endured, to make you realize the magic of growing into your own person.

And that’s exactly what happened. I was visited by this repressed memory, not as a way to damage my psyche, or my brain’s twisted way of trying to make me cry at a gym, but to provide perspective. It made me look over at my Boyfriend until I felt a flood of appreciation for who he is, to love me for everything I am and had been. He didn’t require overwhelming sex appeal and physical endowment to love me the way he does, which is, a lot. And then it made me appreciate myself, for taking all those little heartbreaks along the way and using them to build what is now my wacky ass sense of self.

So the next time you’re reminded of someone or something unpleasant from your past, don’t get discouraged by their presence. Just give them a smile, ever so slightly, to let them know that you turned out just fine.

There’s nothing quite like finding out your blog has ceased working due to you not renewing the domain, that makes you come back from yet another hiatus. I have like, no excuses, and will chalk my absence due to plain old lack of inspiration to write. But at last, here I am, squeezing in my end of the year post (see last year’s here) on the last day of January.

11. Help others always. And don’t brag about that shit on Facebook.

10. If you can get past the naked straddling of construction equipment, it’s actually a pretty song:

9. Instagram has proven that teenagers represent the worst of human society. There is no need for that many selfies with that many Taylor Swift lyrics.

8. Though we’d like to believe otherwise, often times, life is not a meritocracy. It’s nice to believe that you’ll get to where you want to be by hard work alone (and you should certainly possess a strong work ethic), but more often than than not, life is about the who you know rather than the what. Nepotism and sycophancy will be ubiquitous. You can be doing everything right, but getting nowhere because the system is inherently rigged. Don’t be sucker and learn to play the game.

7. It’s totally fine if you’ve lived nearly three decades of life and still find fart/poop jokes funny.

6. It’s also totally fine if you have random breakdowns of “OH GODDDDD WHAT AM I DOING WITH MY LIIIIIIFFFEEE” every once in awhile. Cry hard. Cry ugly. Then wipe your face of snot and carry on with the rest of your day.

5. If you are over the age of 18 and you forget about time zone differences, you are a fucking idiot.

4. How does any man compete whilst Idris Elba exists*?

*Except you Boyfriend, of course, you’re my number one hunk.

3. Let people know you appreciate their presence in your life.

2. Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.

1. “Don’t feel sorry for yourself. Only assholes do that.” – Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood.

A little while ago, a friend commented on one of his friends’ posts on Facebook, congratulating her on getting an article published in a major magazine. Her name was not familiar. We had never met. I’m sure she’s a lovely person. Or a total cunt, I don’t know, I don’t know her.

I don’t know why this showed up on my feed, since it was on her wall, and we only have one mutual friend. But regardless, we were suddenly connected by Kevin Bacon degrees, which meant by some obscure way or another, I knew her. That meant I had to read her published article, and I had to go full Michiko Kakutani on her ass.

I read it twice. That’s a lie; I read it three times, and with each review, I felt a reluctant heat behind my ears intensify. The first time, I thought, what the fuck, this was worthy of being published? This was good enough for this magazine? The second time I read it, I examined each paragraph as if I were a gemologist, picking out the most minor of flaws. There was nothing particularly noteworthy in her article, I concluded. No specific style, no unique voice. The article lacked substance, and the very meat of the story felt barren. I made rationalizations in my head that the magazine needed a filler, some fluff piece to take up some space. She probably knew an assistant editor that granted her a favor. Yeah, that was probably it, it happened all the time.

Before I could calm down, I found myself googling this chick, this no talent hack. Okay, so she earned her degree at an Ivy. So? Plenty of ordinary, slightly above average folks went to Ivy league schools. Her writing was proof that she wasn’t part of the demographic of extraordinarily achieving superstars. I found her Twitter and read a page worth of tweets. They weren’t clever or witty. She called herself a foodie and a “mom” despite not having any children, which I concluded meant she had multiple cats. It was pretty clear that her personality was as vapid as her writing. And, she had a wonky-ass looking nose.

That burn behind my ears lingered for weeks. In fact, it started to spread to my shoulders and my chest, like some sort of emotional leprosy. I didn’t write once during that period. Each time I tried, her stupid face would hover over the screen, taunting me. I kept checking her Twitter, twisting my fingers for news that her insipid article was retracted on the case of her having sperm brows. It didn’t happen. In fact, she tweeted links to other articles that were being published (on a much smaller scale, for local vendors).

It’s an odd conception, to feel such potent doses of hatred towards a total stranger. And it’s toxic as hell, because it begins to contaminate so much more than the artificial layers of your consciousness; it starts to seep into your insecurities, exposing them so openly when you’ve tried so hard to hide them in between the cracks of your façade. And the worst part is, I knew what I was feeling from the moment I saw that Facebook post. I stared at it square in the eye but allowed it to come inside anyway.

Jealousy is the uninvited guest who crashes the party. It’s spiteful because it’s been deemed an outcast, so it does what it can to taint the mood of everyone else. It turns into an SNL skit, as it sits with you on the couch and ruins conversations. It’ll stand next to you at the refreshments table, compliment you on your new expensive dress, and then tell you about the thousands of malnourished children and how it only takes forty cents a day to keep them alive. Oh, your mom has been diagnosed with cancer? It had an uncle with cancer once. He died.

That’s what jealousy does. Once it appears, it will pollute you with reckless abandon, especially if you’re pretty fragile to begin with. It detects vulnerability like a shark in the water. It manipulates your self worth. It dilutes your confidence. It diminishes your abilities, your skills, and your achievements. It suffocates you with evil thoughts and words, aimed at both you and your aggressor. Jealousy will FUCK. YOUR. SHIT. UP.

There’s the finest of lines between allowing jealousy to turn your soul black, and using it to fuel your ambitions. One tiny trip can place you on the wrong side, so it’s imperative that you know where your feet lie. But the one redeeming quality to jealousy is that it’s also just as easy to get out, no matter how deep you’re in with it.

Pretend like you’re playing Jeopardy, and you’ve selected Obstacles for $1000. Whatever clue is behind that block, you know the answer: What is, my insecurities, Alex. If you can get your anger and jealousy to subside for a minute, you can find the roots of why they appeared in the first place. Chances are, they weren’t buried that deep to begin with.

When I reread the article the third and final time, I didn’t find it as clichéd and stale as I originally had. It read like a news report, because it was one. It wasn’t a fair comparison, between her and I, because she was more of a journalist, and I am most certainly not. Our writing styles, our audiences, and our goals for writing were vastly different. And this was a well-known and respected magazine, so her draft was more than likely combed through by a proficient editor, who deemed that it was an article indeed worthy of being published. Was I better than the magazine editor? No, of course freaking not. It wasn’t a horrible article. It was articulate, well written, and served its purpose.

What triggered my hasty initial response was not due to this relative stranger being published, but rather, my lack of doing so. When I had read her article, I was hitting a particularly rough patch, where I could barely write a grocery list. I hadn’t submitted a thing in months, and here she was, showing bravery where mine had scuttled off to a corner. Hating on her achievement wasn’t going to relieve me of my creative block, it was only going to heighten my distractions (this resonates).

For the sake of repentance, I liked her article through the magazine’s website and left a generic comment about it being well written. And then I returned to my own writing, where I think I wrote two paragraphs before I retreated to the floor with Instagram. Relieving myself of the jealousy didn’t undo the funk I was in, but I wasn’t drowning in it any longer.

I’m a big fan of feelings and shit. You want to be pissed off? Be pissed off. You want to break into hysterics at a Target parking lot? You break into hysterics at a Target parking lot. If it helps alleviate any sort of anxiety, I say it’s better to express yourself than to hold it all in. But when your emotions start to interfere with your personal growth, that’s when it’s time to reign in it a tiny bit. Sometimes, you have to think of your emotions as invisible muscles, and you have train them to improve overall functionality. Jealousy isn’t a horrible thing; it keeps you humble, and it can help you stay hungry. But you have to provide a little discipline so that it knows where to go when it materializes. Declare your dominance, and make sure it knows who’s boss.

After my jealous episode, I’ve definitely gotten better at controlling the ugly. When upcoming writers I admire hit milestones, I don’t see red anymore; instead, I observe and learn. When I feel the urge to compare, I choke it back down because I’ve trained myself to understand that that gets me nowhere, that it’s not constructive in any way to me. Word by word, day by day, that’s the one way I’ll get to where I need to be.

Do you boo, do you.