Happy Father's Day

When I was 15 and my heart got broken, I climbed onto my Dad's lap and cried on his shoulder while he rubbed my back and offered to kill my ex-boyfriend. Even though I was way too big to be sitting in his lap, I'll never be too big for him to tell me everything's OK.

Thanks to my Dad, and all the other Dads out there whose love is unchanged, even as their kids grow up.

OW MY LEGS, Plus Deep Thoughts

I know you're probably sick of hearing about running, but I just ran 6 miles (for the first time ever!) and it's the most impressive thing I've accomplished today, so I have no choice but to tell you about it. Although I don't exactly recommend it, it wasn't nearly as miserable as it could have been. On a scale of 1 to 10, 1 being "merely exhausted" and 10 being "this is a fate worse than death," I finished up at about a 6.5, which is roughly equivalent to "I'd like to sit down now and never stand up again, please."

I generally do my longer runs on this really nice flat, paved trail not too far away. The trail is about 6 miles long (supposedly, I haven't covered it all yet) and it's marked every quarter-mile so you get the satisfaction of seeing your distance tick by as you go. The best part about the trail, in my opinion, is that when I reach the marker for one quarter-mile from the finish line, I can actually SEE the next marker, the one where I get to stop and walk and never run again, amen. I cannot overemphasize the rush I get from being able to see the finish while I run that last miserable quarter-mile. It's like the difference between lifting a car because a guy in a bar dared you to, and lifting a car because your baby IS TRAPPED UNDER THE REAR WHEEL OMG SAVE HIM NOW!

Even though I didn't drop dead this time, I really needed that extra push today, because things started to get kind of hazy during the last mile and a half. I could tell I was really getting tired when I realized that in addition to being sore and out of breath, even my thoughts were incoherent. It was like the kind of stuff you think about right before you fall asleep, like you're riding a camel backward through the desert while reading an old copy of Esquire when suddenly a flamingo flags you down and asks for a ride and zzzzzz..... Except I didn't have the pleasure of falling asleep, I just waited to see whether my feet would keep moving even if I happened to completely lose touch with reality. The good news is that life started making sense again when I finally stopped.

I think the best thing I've gotten from this whole experience so far is a much broader idea of what I can withstand. I stopped and walked a couple times today, for 3 or 4 minutes at a time, and if I had given myself the choice I probably would have walked the last mile or two. But every time I forced my feet to start again, and found that somehow I had the ability to keep going for a little while longer. When I put it that way, it makes it sound kind of like I have some kind of amazing willpower, but I really don't. Anyone who's ever seen my behavior in the presence of Oreos knows this.

In reality, I think it's just one example of what any person can do, and it applies to much more than running. In almost any situation where we think we're at our limit, we can make the decision to bear it for one more step, one more moment, one more breath. And if we make it through that one, we can do it again.

There's this thing that happens occasionally where I think I'm as tired as I can possibly be but I keep running anyway, and then suddenly my whole body starts to tingle. The feeling itself isn't really pleasant or unpleasant, and the first time it happened I was vaguely unsettled, waiting to see if a light were about to appear to guide me home. I have no idea what the scientific explanation for it is; in all likelihood it's the feeling of three years being taken off the end of my life. Nevertheless, I like to think of it as my brain just throwing up its hands and resolving to just stop registering pain altogether, since I seem to be hellbent on ignoring it anyway. I'm beginning to believe that you can short-circuit your brain like that in any situation that seems unbearable. Maybe by choosing to accept it and keep going anyway, you adapt, and suddenly your mind justs stop protesting.

So. In your face, brain! Now who's in charge??

Today's Post Sponsored By My Inner 12-Year-Old Schoolgirl

It's been awhile since I updated everyone on the latest embarrassing thing to make me (almost) cry, so here's a new one for you:



(Sorry for the janky video, it was the best embeddable one I could find.)

Today on "What's New In Humiliating Tears" we have a classic by young country artist Taylor Swift. I had all but forgotten about this particular sob-inducer until it came on the radio a couple days ago. Based on past evidence, Miss Swift appears to have a direct line to my Hormonal Cry Center, and I'm just about sick of her shit. I'm 95% sure that all of her sappy, nonsensical love songs are specifically intended to neutralize my powers of skeptical cynicism but I'M NOT FALLING FOR IT. Know this, Taylor Swift: every time one of your cotton candy songs gives me a lump in my throat, I redouble my efforts to block out every weak-ass feminine cliche you represent. SO THERE.

Now then. If anyone needs me, I'll be on the couch, watching Pretty Woman.

Living With No Regrets

Since I was such a huge internet crybaby when Lee and I broke up, I feel obligated to notify the internet now that we're, um... back together? This is great news, of course, but it also makes me feel a little embarrassed and silly to have to announce it, because you can break up with someone and get away with not explaining why, but it's a little harder to break up and then get back together without offering an explanation. At least, that's how it feels to me. Why am I compelled to explain myself? Who knows! Just join me, won't you?

While it's great news(!) that we're back together, Lee graduates in May, at which point he will permanently relocate to Texas in order to get started on his goal of becoming a Big Deal. (Or a Republican, I'm not sure.) Although Texas is kind of a stupid state in general, that in and of itself is not a huge problem. I'm sure a person can learn to love Texas, in the same way that a child learns to love her crazy uncle who is constantly preparing for the apocalypse. The main issue here is the fact that I have recently started a PhD program, and I have approximately four (4) years of graduate school left after Lee moves. Four years of graduate school that must be completed at my university here in North Carolina. Which is roughly 1,000 miles away from Houston. A $400 plane ticket away. Thirteen hours by car, one way.

I know what you're probably thinking right now. This level of long-distance relating is impossible. This is a disaster. We're fools. I know you're thinking it because I've thought all of it myself, as has Lee. It's why we broke up. But the fact remains that life, while livable, just doesn't feel right when we're not together. And I can't seem to get behind the idea of ending a relationship with someone you love when there's still a chance it could work out. There are plenty of stories of couples who carry on in extremely long-distance relationships and manage to make it work and live happily ever after (whatever that means) in spite of it all. Of course, there's also a huge chance that we will crash and burn and it will be quite a spectacle. Either way, it should make for some interesting blog reading, I guess. And either way we're going to go down fighting, with no regrets. Because if there's anything I think it's worth being a fool for, it's this.

So that's that. What's up with you?

Choices

Forgive me while I philosophize for a moment...

I've been thinking a lot lately about some of the personal qualities most revered by our culture. Specifically: confidence, faith, and courage. Confidence in particular is one that I've thought a lot about over the past several years. Self-confidence has always seemed to me to have a kind of mystical, paradoxical quality to it. I've looked sometimes at those people with remarkable self-confidence and thought how impressive it was, how lucky they were to have such intrinsic, unshakable belief in themselves. The more I think about it, though, the more convinced I am that it's not luck, and it's not intrinsic. Beliefs aren't based on luck, and they're not in-born; they're based on choice, to a certain extent. The difference between a person with self-confidence and a person without is not that the person with self-confidence was born under a lucky star. The difference is that a person with self-confidence chooses to stand up and say, "I believe I am a worthwhile person, and I will not be passed by, denigrated, or ignored. I will demand the most from life, because I deserve it, and I will reach for my dreams, because I can accomplish anything." On the other hand, a person without self-confidence often acquiesces to being overlooked, abused, and undervalued. Self-confidence, so highly revered, is really nothing more than choosing to believe in yourself.

Faith is similar, I think. By faith I mean seemingly unassailable fundamental beliefs in forces greater than ourselves. Forces like Love, or God, or the Laws of Karma. I think when it comes down to it, every individual with strong faith has at some level simply chosen to believe and to live accordingly.

Courage, too, is just another matter of choice. Those without courage see frightening obstacles before them and decide that it would be best to accept failure as inevitable before circumstance proves it conclusively. Courageous individuals simply choose to ignore their fear and try. Of course, all of these things are tied together. I'm sure that when you have self-confidence and faith in something transcendent, making the choice to behave courageously becomes much easier.

Confidence, faith, and courage. Each one boils down to a choice, to taking that first heart-stopping step resolutely forward and saying, I am, I believe, and I will. Knowing that, how can we choose not to believe, or not to act? What excuse do we have not to be amazing?

I'm Such An Idealistic Crackpot

If you had asked me 6 months ago what I would consider to be a 'good time' to break up with someone, I would have put "Right at the beginning of graduate school" at around number 26 on my list, below "Just before winning the lottery" and above "While being stabbed." (Number 1 on the list of Good Times to Break Up With Someone: "Uh, never?")

I'm surprised to find out that breaking up right at the beginning of graduate school is actually not that bad. I mean... it's bad of course, because breaking up blows in a serious way, but it's not as bad as I would have expected, given the timing. I mean... I don't know, let's not get sidetracked quantifying how shitty it is. What I'm trying to say is, even though there's no good time, I can think of worse times than this. Grad school so far has been an adventure, for sure. And there's a lot of work, and an insane amount of reading, and it's pretty stressful at times, but occupation-wise I'm SO much happier than I was this time last year. This time last year, I was working a decently enjoyable job that paid well and pretty much left me to my own devices, and I wasn't unhappy by any means, but I wasn't that deep-down satisfied that people say you feel when you're doing something you love. At the time, I thought that maybe my something that I would love was going to be social work, and I was just slowly working my way toward it.

[Let us pause for clarification: social work is a lot of things other than Child Protective Services snatching up people's children and placing them in foster care. I mean yes, sometimes that's what it is, but it's also much more than that. In general, a social worker is someone who's devoted to fighting social injustice, through a variety of means. I just thought you might like to know, for perspective. OK, moving on...]

Obviously, I didn't know a whole lot about social work, but I thought I had an idea of what it stood for, and I thought that it was right for me. I could have started grad school and found out that I totally had the wrong idea and I had made a huge mistake and I was miserable and totally at a loss. But luckily, that's not what happened. I moved here and I started school and I met almost a hundred other people with worldviews, concerns, and aspirations that were eerily similar to my own. (I also had almost a hundred conversations exactly like this: "Where are you from? Oh cool! Me? North Carolina. Where'd you go to undergrad? Sweet. Wake Forest. What are you interested in? Awesome. Child poverty.") Obviously, it's dangerous to only ever associate with people that agree with you on everything, and of course there's a lot of diversity in my class. But there's something just so damn magical about being surrounded by people that understand where you're coming from and share your passion and are looking forward to the same goals as you. It's like... by God, it's like coming home!

(I'll give you a minute to throw up, if you need to. Ready? OK.)

I look around at school and I feel comfortable talking with just about anyone about what I believe and what I want to do with my life. I look around and I see great people with good hearts and amazing aspirations, who can and will change the world for the better. Maybe I should feel that way about people all the time, but the truth is that I don't. I (usually) look hard for the good in everyone, and I really believe that it's there, but it's nice to just be able to see it, right there on the surface, and feel good about people right away. Of course there are one or two people at school that I'm less than warm and fuzzy about: the girl that talks in class as if she's doing everyone a favor by being there, or the one that only wants to be friends with guys, if you know what I mean. But for the most part, I have to keep physically restraining myself from exclaiming "Man, I love you guys!" several times a day. And I'm not even drunk! (Generally.) It's crazy!

Even in class, I sit and I listen and I get straight FIRED UP. I want to stand up and yell Amen! like I'm in church or something. (Not that I'd know what that's like, being a godless heathen and all.) I start thinking that EVERYONE needs to go to social work school, and meet the people I've met, and learn the things I'm learning, and then wouldn't the world just be a better place, and we could all link hands and have a Coke together.

There's no denying that things aren't ideal write now. It's hard to read 7 chapters and write a 5 page essay when in the back of your mind you're reevaluating your life and your priorities and your plans and your dreams. And I've got other things going on, family things, that are sometimes a little worrying and distracting. But school is AWESOME. I'm happy as hell with school, and I can say that if I know nothing else, I know that I'm in the right place, right now. Of course, it's easy to get all het up about social work and social justice when it's all shiny and new, and I'm sure that as time goes on I'll come up against frustration and disappointment and disillusionment, and I'll learn from it. But I see too much raw power in the hearts and minds of the people I'm working with right now, both the brand new students and the people that have been social work workers and scholars for 25 years, to ever passively give up my belief in and my willingness to fight for a better world.

So, uh. That got a little impassioned there at the end, huh? My point isn't just "social work is awesome!" - my point is that every day since mid-August, even the days when I'm unbelievably frustrated or stressed out or depressed or not totally sure where I'm going with all this, I've believed that I'm on the right path, and that makes it so much easier to deal with whatever other bullshit might be thrown at me. I'm going to do whatever I can to hang on to that feeling of peace and happiness, and I sincerely hope that all of you, my tens of thousands of readers, can find it too.

Romanticized Life Fantasy #127

Trapped in an unsatisfying, emotionally abusive relationship, I decide suddenly to just pack up and run in the middle of the night. I drive as far as 2 tanks of gas will take me. I stop and get a room in a motel in a small town by the highway. While I'm there, I take steps to ensure my now ex-boyfriend can't track me down. I hide my long-ish dirty blonde hair by dyeing it a dark auburn and cutting most of it off, myself. I get a job waiting tables at a diner, under the assumed name 'Jeanette Fox,' and rent a room from a sassy, maternal, middle-aged waitress who I've befriended. Eventually, I fall in love with the standoff-ish yet sensitive cook at the diner who, like me, deserves better than the hand he's been dealt.

Sometimes we have wild small-town diner sex in the pantry. The end.

It's a Totally Underrated Talent

I'm officially back from the beach and I have a few riveting stories to tell you and 3,000 blurry pictures of fish in the aquarium, but that will have to wait until later. What I want to tell you right now is that I have the ability to make myself cry just by singing. There are a variety of songs that I can't sing without getting choked up, chief among them "Amazing Grace." And you'd think that there would be some kind of touching story behind that, like maybe it was sung at the funeral of someone dear to me, but it's not that, it's just that I'm a sentimental idiot. So there you go. Happy Tuesday!

Serious Blogger Is Serious

In general, I try to be all light-hearted and ho ho ho over here, because I feel that people would rather read about fun times than serious times. Also, usually when I find myself being overly earnest in real life, I immediately feel embarrassed that I have just vomited my feeeeeelings all over some poor unsuspecting person. I don't want to do that all over the internet, where there's a permanent record of it that the CIA can catalog and add to your permanent record anytime they like. But hey! What the hell! Sometimes you just have to throw caution to the wind, especially when you can't think of anything else to write about on your silly little blog, and your imaginary audience is constantly glaring at you and wondering why you even bothered to come out of the dark backwaters of xanga if you didn't have anything good to say anyway.

What was I talking about? Oh yeah, serious business. This week's (month's?) serious business is relationships, specifically the future of. This may surprise you, reader, but I have this thing. This thing where I like to feel like I'm in control of my life. I like to know what's going to happen, when, and why, and what I can do about it. I like to know what and who I can depend on, and what and who I can't. I like to be able to plan for things, prepare for things, map them out and make an itinerary. This makes me feel like things are going to be ok. Nothing can go wrong if I have a plan, because the universe will see my plan and obey it.

The problem is that even the simplest plans depend on other people, and other people are often just blatantly uncooperative. Why people don't understand that they must follow my plan first and theirs second, I will never know. This whole thing gets particularly sticky when your life is all entangled with someone else's. I guess you see where I'm going with this.

I tend to take romantic relationships pretty seriously. I've never dated someone without being pretty firmly sure that I could hang out with them long-term. I just don't have the kind of 'que sera, sera' temperament that I think you have to have in order to casually date. When you're always looking forward, trying to plan your life, it gets kind of confusing not knowing who will be there and who won't. This has come up in a pretty infuriating way in the past month or so, since I'm gearing up for another major stage of my life. Up until now, I had a 2-year plan: live in Winston, work at this job, apply to grad school. Now I'm working on a fresh 5-year plan: move to a new town, go to grad school... and that's as far as I've gotten. Grad school is squared away (for the most part - I still haven't officially accepted, because I've still got to go for my grand visit and all), but that's about it. I'm trying to imagine what the next 5 years will look like, because that's how I prepare for major changes, but I'm having trouble. Where will my significant other (you know, old whats-his-face) be for all this? He's done with his higher education at the end of next year, leaving me locked in to my thing for 4 more years while he does... what? I have no idea. Will he move to another city? Another state? Will we see each other more often, or less than ever? Will we break up? Will we get married? If we got married, when would that happen? How could we ever get married if we're going to be spending 4 years in different states? What's the point of continuing a relationship under those circumstances? If we break up, what will it be like being single again, looking for a new sugar daddy in the world of social work? Are there even any men in the field of social work? (Quick internet research confirms that yes, there are men in the field, but there are only 4 of them and 3 of them are middle-aged and married already.) If I'm not dating a successful lawyer, then who will support my unprofitable idealistic whims?

I HATE not knowing. The urge to just KNOW, just so I can feel secure in the knowledge that I know what's in store for me sometimes makes me think crazy things, like: well, he's probably going to move to another state, and we'll never make it through that, so we might as well just go ahead and break up. And I know it's the crazy that makes it sound like a good idea to end a relationship that you're perfectly happy with, and so I remind myself that it's the crazy talking, but then I'm left with... what? The feeling that I just have to wait and see. That I might be investing all this time and energy into something that will just crash and burn, but maybe not until I'm 30 years old and THEN what will I do?

Then I have moments where I go in the complete opposite direction, moments that I'm even more embarrassed by, when I start thinking, you know, maybe you're just a little too independent. If you're this worried about it, maybe it makes sense to act more conservatively. Just do a 2 year Master's program and then you'll be able to stop and see where your relationsihp is before committing to a longer term PhD. Do you really want to sabotage a great relationship by unflexibly sticking to your own goals when you know it could mean the end of a beautiful thing? Would it kill you to compromise a little?

I hate thinking this way. I know deep down that I would never forgive myself if I gave up the chance to go to a great PhD program just because of some guy. Maybe it's a mistake, but I deeply believe that I shouldn't have to compromise my dreams to make a relationship work. I also know that, in reality, all relationships are an investment, and you hope it doesn't fail, but there's always the chance that it will. It's not that I'm some kind of insecure nutjob that's just in a hurry to get a ring on her finger, no matter what the circumstances. It's just that I hate feeling like I'm over here happily plugging away at something when I have no idea what the end result will be. Like maybe I'm involved in the relationship equivalent of that first scene of a scary movie, where everything is bright and sunshine-y and people are going about their daily business to the tune of a cheerful soundtrack, but it's painfully ominous because as the viewer you know damn good and well that this is the last time the sun will shine for the entire movie.

And in spite of my certainty that I have to follow my dreams, come what may, I'm still terrified that one day I'll look back and realize that things might have worked out differently if I'd been a little more willing to slow down and take a detour in the name of love. But if I'm honest with myself, I know that Lee would never allow me to do something like that anyway, and I guess that's Real Love, right there: pushing someone to be who they are, regardless of the consequences.

/serious

No One Wants to Hear About How Lucky I Am, But Here It Is Anyway

After spending almost a week at my parents' house, eating my weight in candy, pot roast, and crab legs (daily!), playing video games and sleeping in, I was, shall we say, a little unprepared to return to work today. So perhaps you can understand how I ended up spending the majority of my day reading the ENTIRE INTERNET rather than getting anything done. (God knows what I'll do tomorrow, now that I've finished the internet.)

Anyway, one of the things that I stumbled upon* during my virtual ramblings today was dearoldlove.tumblr.com, which is a website that has very short (a few lines at most) letters that people have written to old/lost loves. I got really sucked in and read all of them, and I think that you should, too. The best thing about the website, though, was what it made me realize. I was reading through all these bittersweet missives to ex-lovers and I'm trying to think of what I'd write to my exes, and all I can think of is things that I would miss about Lee if we ever broke up. So I'm thinking that either this is a good thing, because I'm so satisfied with my current relationship that all my past relationships are resolved for me, or it's a bad thing, because if/when this relationship ends, I'll be pretty bummed. I'm gonna go with good thing.

*I "stumbled upon it" via a link I found at Sarah Brown's blog, which I like a lot. It's not updated very often, but I think she's a really great writer, so maybe if you're bored sometime you can check it out.

EDIT: For some reason, this template doesn't differentiate links from normal text unless you hold your cursor over them, so be sure to kinda move your cursor around to find the links (hint: there are links to the blogs in question).

Giving Makes You Feel All Tingly

The honor society at our high school always sponsored a Salvation Army bucket (kettle? money repository?) outside the local grocery store, usually every evening for a week or two before Christmas. The students signed up to work the door in shifts. My friends and I signed up as a group, because high schoolers don't do anything alone, and because at the time we had the kind of group where if any two of us were doing something, we all did it together. (Although even at the time it seemed to me like 4 teenage girls to 1 bucket was a bit of overkill.)

We showed up that evening for our shift, which probably began around 6 or 7pm and lasted a few hours. It was dark outside, and chilly, and I remember hopping up and down and shivering a lot. We all wore santa hats, although I don't recall where we got them, and we took turns ringing the bell. It was sort of cold and dull, watching people walk in and out of the grocery store, but we would cheer and ring the bell everytime someone gave us any money. It felt like scoring a point in a very close soccer game, and I'm sure the generous individual also got a thrill from the grateful reactions of 4 hyperactive high school girls.

But looking back now, it seems like the donations were few and far between. We found other ways to entertain ourselves during our time in the cold. The grocery store shared a shopping center with a Kmart, a Subway, a Radio Shack, and a video store, so it had a parking lot which was, at the time, the largest in town. This made it a popular place for high school guys with a lot of time and little ambition to park their tricked out Civics and shoot the shit after all the stores closed. It was also apparently a good place for "cruising," a pastime I could never really get behind. In the few hours we represented the Salvation Army outside that grocery store, we saw a particular blue truck drive by over 10 times. After the third time, we started calling out the number each time he went by. At the tenth time, we all yelled "TEN!" and rang the bell and jumped up and down, like we were all extras on a Sesame Street segment with The Count. I can only imagine that either the guy was oblivious, or that he was encouraged by the thought of having his very own group of cheerleaders.

Obviously, this is one of my favorite Christmas memories. By extension, Salvation Army bell-ringers have become one of my favorite things about Christmas. Every time I see one, I'm reminded of the fun and excitement of ringing a bell, shouting and harassing shoppers. It's like being a town cryer with no news and getting paid anyway. It's like being Backwards Santa: instead of giving presents, you take money, and instead of being secretive about it, your goal is to be undeniably noticeable. It's awesome. But it also reminds me of how cold it was outside, how frustrating it was when it seemed like too much time was passing between donations and all people did was walk by without making eye contact. And I think that maybe I wouldn't have had so much fun if I hadn't had 3 of my best friends there with me.

So a couple of weeks ago I stopped by WalMart on my way to my parents' house. There was a Salvation Army guy out front, and I immediately felt the old familiar kinship, the warm nostalgia in my tummy. He seemed about my age, maybe a few years older. He also seemed to be a little... less attentive than your average bear, but he cheerfully wished everyone that exited the store a good night, regardless of whether or not they donated any money. I smiled at him on my way in (sadly, he didn't have a santa hat), and on my way out I took all the $1 bills I had in my wallet (it was probably only $3 or $4) and put them in his bucket. He said "Have a good night!" just like he had said to everyone else, but when he realized what I was doing - and that it was REAL CASH MONEY, no less - he got this adorably surprised look on his face and said, "Thanks! Have a... have a great Thanksgiving!" And I said, "You too!"

And even though I don't even know what awesome things the Salvation Army is going to do with my $4, that awesome look on my fellow bell-ringer's face made my empty wallet totally worthwhile. And I smiled the whole way home.