Melancholy Maze

It's all fun and games in Janunary...

It stops being fun March 3...

A bit of melancholy takes over. It’s been there for months: It ebbs in flows with the tide of frozen precipitation. It paralyzes me into a state of nothingness. And I can’t help but wonder: Where’s the sun?

And 17th...

It’s hiding again, as it has been for what feels like forever. The cold that’s been biting at our bodies now feels normal, but our pants don’t fit: We’ve acclimated to the cold; the darkness. Now I need the spring to come; change; renewal; motivation; any desire to get out of bed. But the month winds down and we’re five days past spring and it has snowed all day with the dull drone of grey sky looming over our collective heads. We sigh in need of the sun; spring; sociability. Who even wants a window in this mess? Who even wants to meet the challenge of smiling through the pale gray, trapped in the limited visibility of blah?

This looming darkness of a never-ending winter creeps into my mind; stealing laughter and expanding my waistline. “I’m sick of it,” I exclaim yet again. A mental  malaise has plagued this winter, fighting back with hope just to breathe above the water’s blizzard's break: I hope this snow is the last. A winter of challenges and a chosen sort of solitude, personified by Mother Nature, magnified by her wrath; played out like the war in my mind. The clouds win again today, but, I tell myself, the sun is coming. It will be back.

...and twenty fucking fifth!

 This is my version of hope.

At once the green will grow; the sun will shine from sky of a pure and welcoming blue. Flowers will blossom and baby birds will annoy the shit out of us with their morning cries of hunger. Our beds will disinterest and our collective goal will be 72 and happiness. Our Earth will warm. It will. It will. It will. And we’ll be okay again.

Beetlejuice. Beetlejuice. Beetle…

Vices and the Casualties of War

I have a vice. Okay, I have a few.

1. Shoes. I really like shoes. I'm somewhere around 200 pairs, which, up until last year, I really didn't think was a lot. But honestly, estimate yours, then go to your closet and count them. I'll bet you had more than you thought. Also, growing up, my mom always had a ton of shoes and I never understood why or why women always talked about loving a pair of shoes. 'They're just shoes', thought 10 year old me. But as I am my mother's daughter,I grew up thinking copious amounts of shoes was normal and apparently puberty comes with a set of boobs and a need for more shoes. So there's that.

2. Alcohol. Because alcohol. Although I don't drink when I'm bored or when I'm sad. Or when I'm alone. (Pro tip: If you are texting with someone else who is also drinking then you're not alone.) I’m anxious by a combination of both nature and nurture and alcohol relieves anxiety and pot isn’t legal here yet and the few times I tried it I wasn’t all that impressed anyway. Also, 'real' drugs scare the shit out of me. Plus alcohol tells me to dance - and promises I do it well. So anyway, alcohol is my “drug” of choice and simply by definition counts as a vice. So there’s that one. 

3. Reality television. More specifically, bad reality television; like Bravo TV Real Housewives of Anything Shahs of Sunset bad reality television. (See also: Maury Povich.) I’ve been watching it for years; I will watch it for years to come. I love it; I zone out; it’s my time to space and clear my head and think about nothing but other people’s problems and prospers.

So what’s my point, right?

Well, lately I find myself relating to the problems of the characters on these shows: the villain, the princess, the trouble-maker, the martyr and the interpersonal dynamics and a who said what and who’s fighting with who. Whose side do I want to take and what’s going on behind the scenes; what we the viewer are privy to as the real story. Because, you know, there are always three sides to a story: yours, mine, and the truth. 

For years I’ve said – as I’m sure we all have – my life should be filmed. Anything’s interesting when it’s edited into all the parts where you fall flat on your face or heal a broken heart. These are the universally relate-able things. But lately I can relate to all of the gossip; the mud-slinging; the talking behind backs. Us with the reality vice watch and think: These people are morons, why do they even bother with any of this?

And then we realize: Well duh, they’re being paid. 

So then I think: Why do I even bother? I'm not being paid. There is no fulfillment in my drama-filled interpersonal dynamics now and I refuse to be cast as the martyr for free just because some guy with a hero complex I mistook as a friend villain-ized me because what he'd heard. I'm not okay with it still; I'm still hurting and there's no fixing it. So I’m walking away. I’m moving away - and with no "going-away" party. (I heard the rumors of a 'should we?' You shouldn't.) That would be like celebrating a war over the grave of casualties. Too many hearts were broken in this battle forged by the sword of one misguided hero's words. Sometimes you just need to keep marching forward, leaving those that have fallen; taking with you only what you've learned (and the few you trust beside you in the next battle).

Another Sting of the Bee

Today's edition of "Another Letter I'll Never Send", we revisit the issue stemming from my birthday that has yet to go away. Upon seeing all of our mutual friends RSVP to his Super Bowl party that he held last month, which I was clearly spending my first year uninvited to, I wrote a note. It was only after seeing Ginger (who he only knew because of me) and who had just ditched me at the airport three days prior, say that she too would be attending that I felt the need to say something. So I wrote a note. 

And then I realized the situation was probably hopeless as he was unlikely to hear reason or pain - having previously heard how hurt I was before and giving nary a shit about it. So, I thought, why bother. And then like so many in my Letter Graveyard I thought, maybe if I post it here, I'll feel a little better anyway.

January 22, 2014 

For days I've been watching the invite returns roll in for your superbowl party. Friends that are friends because I introduced everyone - all going. I hide it on my feed, someone responds, it returns again. The latest: a girl who almost ran over friends while drunk because they were trying help keep her safe; that ditched me at the airport for waking her - going. And I'm just like "how could anything I've done possibly be worse than this?! 

I can't say that it doesn't hurt that I'm still exiled, still defriended, for hearsay and a young twenty something not speaking up at a birthday-gone-awry and whatever else there might have been. It's your prerogative, but whatever misdoings you think may have in my past, would certain pale in comparison. And yet, I realize I would still open my heart to forgive her. I know better than anyone that people make mistakes. 

The real crux is that all this misagas is keeping me from people that I love and it's becoming increasingly hard for me to process. I'm a damn good person and an even better friend to those I love, but it feels like I'm being punished for being one. I struggle to make sense of the situation. I used to be at your house to play with [GFN] - I can no longer do that. And it seems us girls involved have moved on, but this remains a lingering scar that we can't make sense of and we can't fix ourselves without changing your opinion. And we can't change your opinion because I"m not sure any of us understand it - myself included. I'm a good girl, but your total dismissal of me as a person and friend speaks to the opposite. Not gonna lie: Still hurts. 

It sucks to learn that someone that meant something to you, that you thought was a friend, can so easily cast you aside as a misfit not worth their time. And even more that I'm losing time with current friends in the process. GFN, yes. But people like [one guy and another guy who he only knows because of me] -my first real friendships in DC - who saved me, going to something I'm not part of because...I don't know. I can't tell you how difficult it is watching this all transpire on facebook - I have to hide each individual response every time stings worseevery effing time. And when they ask if I'm going the only response to why is "honestly, I don't know". 

I hate it. I hate this all. I hate that you decided to hate me and I really don't know why. I hate that I'm not even worth a moment to reach out and move on from this (being forced on a drunken night and a lost phone aside) isn't worth it. Our friendship over the years being scarred by what others have had to say and not your own personal interaction. Miscommunications have resolve; and knowing who I am, I can only imagine that's all this is. 

I'm leaving in four months and this situation is leaving such a black mark on my time here. Can this be fixed? Yea, probably. Should it be? I think five years of friendship is worth it. But at the least, if you're going to invite 50 mutual friends to something and blatantly leave me out of it, please make it a private event. Each one of *our* friends' responses is another sting of the bee. 

Thanks for reading.