strange musings of a distracted spunk

Randomly, I dreamt that GDB and I were back together. And he was married and had a kid. This devastated me.

Then I dreamt that GDB and I were in a show together. And he grabbed me off the stage to make out with him behind the curtains. Oh. And then he met my entire family and announced we were on permanently, which made me very happy.

Then I dreamt I sent him a text message that said, “You’re not married with a kid somewhere, are you?”

Yeah. That last part? I didn’t dream.

He responded with “What the hell?!”

Moral of the story: Turn the phone off when I go to bed.

I never expected to read an old professor’s book and leave it feeling profoundly depressed.

She writes of her experience as a 38 year old woman, never married, subject to the experience of watching nine of her ex-boyfriends marry the girl right after her. She details various dates with men she so desperately wants to have a spark with, but feels nothing for at all. She interviews other women in her field who are also alone and reveals this uncompromising truth:

Women who are smart end up alone.

In fact, the higher the IQ, the more likely they are to end up alone.

This bodes well for me. So well in fact that it leapt me into second thoughts about whether or not breaking up with Gymnast Drummer Boy was the right decision. I may only be 24, but as I read the book, it occurred to me that my entire family, second cousins included, have been married by the time they were 24. (Though I am a bit disappointed that no one has proven to be gay. I feel like Jewish families such as mine could always use a little bit of spicing up.) It was a sinking sort of revelation, when I realized that for as much as I may have thought and cared about GDB, the vast majority of people I am friends with know nothing, or very little about him. There’s a strange paradox of knowing that I spent almost a year and a half wanting just him, and as far as they were concerned, it was just another year and a half of me being me, doing my nomadic thing, relationships be damned.

Is it my nature of being open but guarded? (Yes, walking contradiction, acknowledged.) Is it my nature of wanting to wait till something is serious before I really make any necessary introductions? Or is there a part of me that is so hesitant to see something succeed because I believe it will fail anyway, I don’t bother?

For that matter, what is it about girls that when we meet a genuinely sweet, smart, funny, caring individual, we wait for the other shoe to drop or swear if things keep going this way, we’re going to end up hurting them? Why are we so hesitant to believe that we deserve something good? We’ve been conditioned into believing that we don’t want to be alone; whether it’s nature or nurture that put us there, I don’t know. But when I think back to my septuagenarian boss who has never been married, I can’t help but wonder, “Did she miss out?” and then feel ashamed for subscribing to such conventional notions. And at the same time, I know I don’t want to be where she is, no matter how content she may be with her life.

It’s not that I want someone right now. Not at all. I’m simply licking my wounds, waiting for them to heal before I re-emerge back onto the scene as a single girl. I’m not the sort of girl who needs someone. But I am the sort of girl who will want someone. And at the end of the day, after reading the stark reality of how smart women fare in the dating world, I wonder if someday, there will be someone waiting for me at home, or if instead, I’ll be tucking into my bed alone.

Ready for a secret?

Normally, I’m pretty happy with my body image. Normally, I like how my boobs snugly fit a bikini top and how my bermuda shorts ride low on my hips and make me feel sexy. I knew that even if I put on a pair of jeans with a sweatshirt, I would still get looks as I walked down the street, because I am pretty cute. But lately, over the last few weeks, I’ve become victim to self-hatred towards my body.

Perhaps I should start from the beginning. As an overactive, skinny stick who danced five days a week, the biggest complaint I often had was my butt was too bony. It hurt to sit on the ground and other people’s laps. Almost twenty years later, I still have that complaint, but the rest of me has rounded out. I chalk it up to puberty and events in my life that happened when I was seventeen. I didn’t realize how much weight I had gained until post-college, when I was almost thirty pounds heavier than I was when I had entered.

The thing about my body is, I’m not petite and I’m not small boned. I have shoulders; broad ones. They look great in halter tops and spaghetti straps, but they will never look delicate. I’ve got curves, hips that jut out but my stomach tends to be pretty flat; I rock a four-pack pretty easily. I most definitely do not have an ass, but I more than make up for it in the chest region. My legs are muscular; maybe not as muscular as they were when I danced, but my calf muscles are still pretty huge. I’ve been mistaken for a soccer player numerous times.

When everything went down with D last year, I couldn’t figure out how to move out of the zombie phase. One day, a friend suggested I go to the gym with her. I was never a good gym-goer; I felt it was too isolated and too machine oriented. But something clicked that day, and suddenly, I started hitting the gym three, four, five times a week. I would go at the end of my day, after work and class, getting home close to midnight. I felt good about myself, and it showed. The weight I gained in college melted away, and I found myself gravitating towards more feminine clothes, something my high-school and college-self rarely did. But more importantly, I wasn’t mourning the loss of D anymore. I was redirecting my energy to a place where I didn’t have to think, where I could just move and somehow, that blank slate let me move forward.

I struggled a bit when I first moved to California. Living in a strange house where I couldn’t make food or bring home food meant I ate out a lot. And cheaply. When you were only making 800 bucks a month (thanks AmeriCorps!), gourmet meals are not exactly an option. But when I found my apartment, I got back into the rhythm; of cardio, pilates, then weights. I would be at the gym for an hour and a half to two hours, and I felt solid. Comfortable. It helped that a boy loved me, inside and out, even when he was 1800 miles away. For some reason, having someone who thought I was impossibly sexy somehow made me feel even more sexy, which was never a term I would have applied to myself until he came along.

When he and I broke up for the first time in December, I lost the motivation to go to the gym. Sneaks of depression would slither in, and all I wanted to do was go home, curl up in my bed, and zone out with a book or a movie. I didn’t want to think. I was afraid to think, because unlike D, GDB would somehow crawl into the furthest recesses of my mind, even when I was running at top speeds on the elliptical. I wasn’t willing to cry in front of other people at the gym. So I hid from it all at home, where no one could see me cry.

I struggled with my body and him for the next few months. He and I were so up and down, he infiltrated my thoughts so often, I thought it best to find as many distractions as I could. I would go to the gym, but it would only be a half-hearted effort. Finally, when I walked away in March, I started to feel good about myself again. I struggled with how my body had grown softer, but I wasn’t afraid of facing my innermost thoughts at the gym anymore. I still felt sexy, even when it wasn’t GDB who left me messages every day, as much as it was Rebound Boy. I was back in a rhythm. I liked myself and my body.

Of course, that’s when the world shifted again. Remember when I got fired? And had to deal with an asshat of a roommate? And GDB came back? And oh yeah. I traveled for a month and a half. Oh right. And broke up with GDB for good. All in the last two months. Yeah. I’m still recovering from that.

So I’ve taken solace on my parents’ couch, in my bed, eating their food, most of which is not what I would keep in my own house. I’ve seen pictures of myself from Thailand compared to pictures of myself from this past weekend, and something feels wrong. My clothes don’t feel right. My body feels strange and bigger than usual. I don’t feel sexy, at all. I don’t even really feel attractive. I’m putting on my more masculine clothes, hiding my body again, because I’m not happy with my body as it is anymore.

I won’t say pounds because I try not to go by pounds as much as I try to go by how my clothes feel, but I do want to get back to where my body was. Where I felt tight and fit, where I wasn’t afraid to wear my more feminine clothes because I felt pretty and light, and mainly, where I felt damn sexy. Part of me wonders if it’s because I’ve finally ended something where I felt like the most insanely attractive thing in the world in GDB’s eyes, and am I not able to see myself in that same light? I honestly can’t answer that today. For the first time in a long time, I am taking a break from relationships (if you haven’t heard Alanis Morrissette’s “Moratorium,” I suggest you download it now), from positive reinforcement from guys I find attractive, and from feeling like I have someone I want to dress up for.

I want to dress up for me. But more importantly, I want to feel like I CAN dress up for me, when I am back to being comfortable in my own skin. I want to shed the weight I’ve gained in the last two and a half weeks of being home. I want to remember what it was like to walk down the street and turn heads. I’m not there yet. But hopefully, even though my routine is at best a joke, at worst, a pretense, I’ll get there again.

1. I started this blog.
2. I got published. Twice.
3. I kicked a boy out of bed.
4. I tried changing the world.
5. I hugged a cactus in Arizona.
6. I went to Seattle and Vancouver.
7. I stepped in two oceans and one sea.
8. I quit one job and got let go from another.
9. I found joy again in taking a pen to the page.
10. I didn’t have any emergency trips to the hospital!
11. I took a dance class with Taye Diggs, who clapped me on the shoulder.
12. I walked away from the one person who often made me feel the most secure.
13. I met some amazing people, yet I always end up on the opposite coast.
14. I moved cross-country by myself, to a place I had never been.
15. I road tripped from San Diego to San Francisco.
16. I had a bike go all transformers on me.
17. I found a softer, more reserved me.
18. I learned I have awful travel luck.
19. I went to Thailand and Japan.
20. I realized my own strength.
21. I lived the same day twice.
22. I moved. Five times.
23. I fell in love.

Here’s to year 24; may it be as enlightening and exciting as 23.

Maybe it was the balding black guy with yellow teeth screaming in my ear as I walked past, that Jesus would be coming back and what are you doing to repent?

Maybe it was the rush of fashion and comfort, with hello nipples everywhere.

Or maybe, it was just the steamy, arid breath of Manhattan as it forced its way back into my lungs, like a long-lost lover who needs to drink every breath in again.

I walk slower this time, taking in the stained glass art in the walls of the tunnels beneath Times Square. I watch men in suits and briefcases and boys in polos and jeans, flipped and shaded. I listen to the subway announcement, the loud ding of “The doors are now closing” more quixotically poetic than I thought those words ever could be. People rushing to work, to lunch dates, to meetings; this is life in the fast lane again. I once lived like this too.

The RW line has been updated. This is new, I think, as I watch a commercial on the train. I remember the last time I took it was with GDB, on one of our last dates before we left New York. Pangs of nostalgia hit me, for the love we didn’t know we had then, and the love we soon will watch fade away. People still hurry about with ipods clashing discordantly, songs in their ears to ignore the music of New York. The streets are still far too crowded, with pedestrians, SUVs, and the standard yellow taxi. But there’s a rhythm here that congas its way back into my veins.

I wonder, how did I ignore you for so long? And more importantly, how did I ever leave you?

Will I forget your tune, when I too become one of the masses, rushing to work, to class, to the gym? Will I forget to breathe your noxious and intoxicating air in, so consumed with my self-worth and reality? Or will this time spent away remind me to love the drop of water from scaffolding above, unexpectedly plinking the street?

Hello New York. I’m home.

For the last few months, I’ve been walking a precarious tightrope. The thing about tightropes is you know there’s a chance you’re going to fall and break something. But you do it anyway. I walked it because love was on the other side. But love can only take you so far. You can mean it, you can want it, you can live and breathe it; but sometimes, it’s just not enough.

Today, not enough came through. So I took my first step off that tightrope. The ladder may shake and quiver under me, but with each step, I’ll come closer to solid ground. It was nothing to do with him, and everything to do with me. Or perhaps it had everything to do with him and nothing to do with me. Quite simply, I want more.

I want love, the kind where you breathe each other’s name every time you exhale. The kind where hearing the other person’s laugh sends shivers up your spine, like it did the first time, and like it will each and every last time. The kind where life may come and go, but your hand is still there for the taking, no matter what happens.

I want the kind of love where it’s not about who loves who more, but how can you love me any more than you already do? I want the kind of love where his hurt becomes my hurt and my hurt becomes his. I want his heart to become my heart and my heart to become his. I want to experience every elation, every sadness, every quixotic moment in bliss because it is what life is made of.

I want to know that I’m the first thing he wants when he wakes up, and the last thing he wants when he goes to bed. I want to know that when he looks at me, he doesn’t see if, he sees when. I want to know that when I finally let him in and am ready for the next step, he will already be waiting for me on the last. I want recklessness, impulsiveness, silliness, because I am worth all of it and more. I want him to buy that damn plane ticket. I want him to want the world for me and the milky way too.

I want him to distract me with laughter when my family hurts me. I want him to brush aside his own work when I need to be handled with care. I want him to yell at me and snap me out of my brain, reminding me to live in this life, here, with him. I want to argue with him, passionately, exquisitely, until we’re out of breath and logic is rendered useless. I want sex, hours of sex and love mingled together, tracing lines on each other’s bodies, finding each freckle and errant hair and the scar from when I fell off a seesaw when I was four.

I want love. The good and the bad, the pain and the joy, the explosion that will occur when I find the one who is meant for me, who will love me with as many atoms as I love him. I apologize in advance if we send the universe out of orbit, but my love is too much for only me.

I want love. I’ve had it before. I’ve seen what it can do and how it makes me feel. I can say it now. Love. Love. I’m ready for you.

Settling in is a lot harder than I thought.

It doesn’t help that my body has fine-tuned itself to fall asleep between eleven and twelve, and rise before eight. Further exacerbated by my now religious ritual of driving my sister to the bus. There are three cats waiting to be fed when I wake up, and sometimes, this involves them sitting on my head. Or at least being outrageously flirtatious and allowing me to pick them up for a few seconds longer than they’d normally allow. To be fair, we’re still not sure what the youngest cat thinks she is; her “sqgurks” and “-ehp” sends me into hilarious laughter every time.

But my room is significantly messier here than it was in Berkeley. Maybe because I still haven’t found a proper home for everything yet? Here, my past, present, and future all collide. The Care Bear I used to carry with me as a child. The black and white cat my stepfather gave me when I had surgery. The brand new dress I bought for my birthday party on Friday. I struggle, feeling slightly like an unwilling archaeologist, accidentally digging up the artifacts of my time. There are memories stored in every pocket, every corner, every box and bin and yaffa block. Most of which, I had put aside for the time being.

I have to borrow my sister’s earring rack for the time being, which is a bit of a struggle, seeing as I have over eighty pairs of earrings and hers can only fit about forty of mine. It’s strange accidentally glancing at the headless earring mannequin that holds six of my earrings, but seems to wonder where her head went. In a lot of ways, I feel as though I can relate.

The job hunt is not having it. I wonder if I need to dress myself up - professional clothing to yield professional results? More often than not, I sit at my parents’ makeshift dining room table in pajamas, scrubby hair and face, and bemoan the lack of publishing jobs that I’m actually interested in applying. The job industry is one that far forgets the long-term effects of positive reinforcement. Just a single, “We’re interested,” would be lovely; proof that all those cover letters and proofreads are worth my time.

But the thing that hits the hardest is…when I wake up, everyone else is still asleep. It used to be that when I woke up, everyone on the East coast was bustling away, starting on their day, and I would have plenty to keep me distracted. Avocado and I were on the same time zone, Thailand was always up before bed, and I could begin my day-long conversations with my friends. GDB would have invariably dropped a line or twenty. Now, I wake up to several lines from GDB who has this uncanny poor timing of signing on after I fall asleep. I blame the central time zone. I wait for everyone else to slowly wake up, get their coffees, churn their minds, while I’ve been sitting and wondering what to do today for the last two hours.

It’s a strange feeling, feeling so purposeless. I feel as though I should try to make sense of my new room (for it is new; my parents moved into this house a year ago. I’ve never lived here; only visited.) I feel as though I should foster better relations with my three cats. I feel as though I should be writing a book or more stories or just writing in general. And instead, when someone asks me what I’ve done today, I can only answer, “I’m not sure.”

Is this what coming home means?

Edit: Good news! I just found out I am published in You’re Not the Only One, a book that dedicates its profit to the non-profit group, Warchild! Additionally, several other spectacular authors are published, including the ever-lovely Hope. Buy it here!

-Why does Macy’s Wedding Registry keep sending me e-mails? Do they think I might be a customer soon? They have wild aspirations.

-My parents’ smallest cat makes noises like a robot. I’ve never heard anything like this, and I end up cracking up every time I hear a “Sqgruk.”

-It’s kind of nice having a shower that works. My apartment in Berkeley was excellent at being temperamental in temperature and pressure. This is why I often took baths.

-I’ve been shaving for at least twelve years. So explain to me why a chunk of my right leg is now missing?

-Kyle XY is quite a spectacular show, and they need to come out with the season 2 DVD ASAP. (We started watching this in the islands in Thailand. This is geek chic; who needs to go out and socialize when you can watch a boy without a belly button!) Also, why is Lisa still on Top Chef? And why did my family forget to DVR the last two weeks of So You Think You Can Dance? At least I get my dance fix tonight! *cheers*

-Twould be lovely if I could stay awake past 10. Last night I passed out at 9:45 pm. This does not bode well for my alertness at a bachelorette party on Saturday night.

-I’ve lost an inhaler, an earring rack, and 50 yen. Each one of these are in a different country. Awesome.

-When I invited D to come to a party next week, he said, “Are you sure it’s okay if I come? Won’t your friends want me to die?”

-GDB makes me laugh. He can stay for a bit.

-Family barbecues with mine and Thailand’s family are super fun, especially because he and I finish each other’s sentences and would tell stories and giggle hilariously. Also, I am craving a hot dog like no one’s business.

-One of my easiest snacks is a ketchup sandwich in a hot dog bun. My mom used to have to have my camp counselors take them away from me if I made that, but I’m such a picky eater sometimes that instead of picking at my food, it was easier to make a ketchup sandwich! I don’t know why it hasn’t caught on more.

-I think my hair is redder in California than it is in New York or New Jersey.

-I’m actually kind of digging not doing anything this week.

Sometimes I think my life is set up in polarizing opposites just to mock me.

Other times, I think if I hadn’t lived the life I have, I’d have less material to write about.

And still others, I wish I didn’t expect so much, even though I know certain things should be a given.

I wrote about my father and his lack of follow-through. He wants to see me on Monday. Part of me wants to blow him off, treat him as though he doesn’t matter, that I don’t care; but I do. I have a tie for him from Thailand, and I want to show him pictures. I still want his approval and I still want him to care. Even though when I landed in San Francisco on Friday and called him to tell him I was okay, he launched into a lecture about my boxes in his garage. Not “It’s so good to hear your voice.” Not “Welcome home!” Just, “I’m glad the plane landed safely, I was worried. By the way, you really should have let your grandparents open the box and unpack your clothes. They’re probably all mildewy and moldy since you shipped them here more than a month and a half ago.”

Hello to you too.

When I walked into the baggage terminal at JFK yesterday morning, I just happened to look to the right, while my mom happened to look up from the newspaper she was reading. It took us both a second before we realized who the other was. She jumped up to give me a hug and a kiss. And told me if I ever think of moving that far away from her again, she’s putting two ton bells around my neck. Breakfast at my grandparents? Involved a lot of squealing, hugs, kisses, and “I’m so glad you’re home. My heart feels better.”

How on earth were my parents were married for fourteen years?

I went to my paternal grandparents today, to say hello and pick up my clothes as I’ve been looking at the same ones for the last month and a half. Also, because I’ve been worried sick about my grandfather, who has been in and out of the hospital for the last two months. The first thing they did? Gave me a lecture that was more or less the same one as my father’s. No doubt they all sat around the kitchen table to discuss the current state of affairs; my white pencil skirt being eaten by moths and my black suit jacket being infiltrated by ants. I imagine my cousins, aunt and uncle, and all the grandchildren were invited to participate since it is an important family matter, obviously. Were my clothes to become traumatically damaged, it would completely affect the dynamics of my father’s family and upset the hierarchy of familial patterns that have been carefully cultivated after fifty something years. I imagine that this serious conversation was only disrupted by a request to pass the pita bread.

After the lecture, it occurred to them to say hello and hug me. Their response, so completely opposite from my maternal grandparents, upset me to the core. They told me, “It’d be nice if you went over to your cousin’s to see the new baby.” No “Welcome home.” No “I’m so happy to see you.” Just simply a disguised statement of “Your cousins are more important than you because they get married, live near us, and have babies.”

Sometimes, it’s enough to make a girl feel completely pointless. And wonder why she even bothers trying.

So I picked a fight with GDB. Things have been good lately; nothing serious. Just friendly banter and flirting; IMs and text messages, pictures and e-mails. He’s been doing his best to make me a part of his daily routine, even though we’re not dating. But today, after feeling as though I wasn’t good enough for my grandparents, wasn’t good enough for my dad, I just needed to be good enough for someone. So I picked a fight. And then we were discussing things I wasn’t ready to discuss. He got upset with me. I got upset with me. I walked away.

I realized later on what happened. And apologized. He replied, “It’s super frustrating when you pick these fights after you see your family. I’m doing the best I can to be there for you and you make me feel like I’m not doing enough.” Apparently, you can get sucker punched twice in one day by the people you love the most. It seems it’s easier for me to pass the hurt on to those who mean the most to me than take it all on by myself. It’s a battle Avocado and I have faced for years. Or perhaps after so many years of dealing, I just don’t have any more room in me to put it away. So it leaks out at the seams, and poisons everything and everyone around me.

I’m scared that three months at home is going to cull out the depression, singing a siren’s song. I’m afraid that I’ll collapse again, in empty arms and meaningless words. I’m afraid that I’ll never learn that no matter what I do, I’ll never get the approval I so desperately want, though I know I shouldn’t. I’m afraid I’ll ruin my own relationships by taking out my hurts on them.

I’ve only been home a day and I’m already frustrated. I wish my parents’ families weren’t so different. Then, I’d at least know not to feel so disappointed every time I think they might actually have cared.

His hands traced circles on my skin, green eyes on mine. First he lined my palms. Then he traced my wrists, marking my skin with his invisible words. His hands nimbly moved up my arms, slowly, carefully, climbing up to my neck where they kneaded and pressed. I’ve never been good at eye contact. But this time, something forced me to match the intensity of his gaze, to focus my eyes on his while his fingers lingered.

His hands were warm on my skin, Wesley offering “As you wish” in the background while I watched his eyes. I couldn’t see my reflection there, in the dim light of a television, but I wondered what he saw. Did he see the unexpected pleasure as he touched me? Did he see the jagged wall, spiked from my most recent entanglements with the past? Or did he simply see iris and pupil, gazing at his own?

What is he doing? I wondered. Earlier, he had stretched out, the mock-arm-around-the-shoulders move, before pulling back in and laughing. I had shaken my head at him, grinning all the while. He had tickled me, till we were both breathless and flushed of face, traces of laughter gurgling out. We sat on the futon in his living room, facing each other, as his hands grazed my skin, declaring a tickle truce.

I marked my own words into his skin, asking how I could feel so fundamentally me with someone I had only met twelve hours before. I asked do you like me? before deciding I like you. Not the kind of like that would collapse me into bed with a friend, lazy kisses and fumbled fingers. Not the kind of like that would result in denied chemistry and repeated frustrations. This was me, implicitly, wholeheartedly, convincingly in like. Had I ever experienced this before?

My fingers skimmed over his skin, almost as white as my own, but more carved and sculpted, as I kneaded, pressed, pulled. I wrote the stories of everything and nothing at once, of how I was so utterly in the moment, of how there was no aha moment, he’s going to kiss me realization. I wrote how spontaneity can get lost in the face of basic lust. I told him it didn’t matter if he didn’t kiss me; it was enough to meet someone I felt so utterly comfortable with. I etched lines of my contentment, too cautious to look into his eyes anymore because I was afraid of what I would see. I scribbled and doodled the longitude and latitude of my heart, giving directions the only way I knew how.

He didn’t need them. Without warning his hands wrapped my face, his eyes met mine, and his lips crushed mine; wrenchingly beautiful, soul shattering, and utterly different from anything I had experienced before. I didn’t know then like would become love. I didn’t know then the roads we’d take, full of shortcuts that led to the same place. I didn’t know then how much I’d want him every time I saw him, spoke to him, thought of him, in every possible way and even some impossible. I didn’t know.