strange musings of a distracted spunk

The thing with moving away for a year is you expect everything to be the same when you get back. You expect the little sister to be the same snot-nosed brat she was for the last twenty years, instead of the more mature and humorous twenty one year old she’s turning into. You expect more arguments and getting stuck in the middle between your bitterly divorced parents, instead of the rational conversations and less badmouthing. You expect your friends to kind of be the same, even though you know they’ve experienced tons of milestones in their own lives.

Moving away for a year also makes you forget how many friends you actually have. I knew I had friends. I knew I had people who were excited to see me. I just didn’t realize twenty five of them were going to come out on Friday night. Had my six usual players been in this part of the country or not a Mets game, they would have been there too. Going from living in Berkeley, where I knew all of nine people that I would regularly see for a once-a-week social life to being in the middle of a bar with people I know everywhere…it’s overwhelming. I forgot how much it hurt to talk that much. My voice was scratchy by the end of the night. Yet it was absolutely wonderful to be with everyone again, because I was reminded of my history with each and every one of them. I forgot how fun it is to just reminisce about silly things with people who have known you for years. I had a little bit of that in Berkeley, when we would create new memories, but this was like slipping into an old sweater and the most comfortable pair of jeans and just being yourself.

I was surprised at how easy it was to hug everyone and fall back into the same patterns. With my life partner, we hadn’t seen each other since November, but we fell right back into almost finishing each other’s sentences. With my Pea in a Pod, though I talk to her every day, having that face-to-face interaction where she knew how I was feeling and having her be there was just really really nice. But perhaps the biggest surprise was when D showed up. I knew he was coming, having invited him, but I wasn’t prepared for the actual interaction. When I gave him a hug (because let’s face it. I’m a hugger now. I have no idea where this came from, as my family is all too happy to share stories of how I would punch them were they to try hugging me, kissing me, or even pick me up when I was younger), he was slightly awkward. But then…he would poke me if he wanted my attention, just like he used to. He ended up being my ambassador of sorts, because outside of Thailand and Avocado, he knew almost everyone there. We slipped right back into our old routine of chatting away and absorbing each other’s attention, and then I would remember there were still twenty four other people there. Needless to say, the whole night was a success.

Then came Saturday. After a lovely brunch, I had a family party to attend, before stopping off at a friend’s birthday party in my old town. I got a phone call. “D is going to be here. Is that okay?” Coming on the heels where I got furtive whispers about, “When did you and D start talking again? I thought you said you would never talk to him again!” it just felt another, “Oh boy.” So I got there. And we chatted. This time, we both tried to redirect our energies towards other people in the room, but quite simply, there was no one there as interesting as us. We caught the whispers and stares and “When did this happen?” We fell back into laughing at one another and just moving around each other to talk. It was like old times, where we wouldn’t plan it, but we’d end up hanging out multiple nights in a row.

And suddenly, it felt all too comfortable. The whispers. The stares. Him poking me and me laughing at him. The ease of our conversation, even when we talked about my now ex-boyfriend and his girlfriend. And suddenly, I felt as though I needed to leave. Because it had only been my first venture out back into socializing the night before, and already I had seen him twice. And I can’t do this again. Are the old feelings there? I don’t know. They were too tied up in comfort and familiarity for me to really ever accurately separate them. So I left, because it was too easy to see this going down the same road. Of the friendship and comfort building up until one day, I decide that he’s the right one for me.

I wondered if I was displacing my feelings for GDB onto D; as though he were the brief interlude during this year and a half we hadn’t seen each other. Is D the Harry to my Sally? I don’t know. I don’t want to find out. I’m glad we were able to spend time in each other’s company, and see that we still have that same ease of comfort, playfulness, and interactions with more awkwardness, but I think…this isn’t a path I want to head down again. What it means, I don’t know. I just know it’d be too easy to make the same mistakes. How is it that everything really can change and yet nothing change at all?

-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.

He held my hand, loose but warm. His enthusiasm caused him to pump it up and down as though we were swinging along as we walked, though we were only standing in the back of a restaurant. Something felt different about that moment. As though our world was about to shift, again.

Just the night before, he had accompanied me to an event in our shared hometown. Where we wandered among vendors, performances, and hundreds of people, wailing kids, and smeared faces of cotton candy and funnel cakes. We had friends there, and were just putting in an obligatory appearance. Yet I was excited; there would be fireworks. The first time in our history of friendship and more that there had ever been the fireworks of the exploding kind, and not just the ones that jumped when his lips had touched mine. I wanted to stay, sit on the dewy grass on an early summer evening and watch everything I had felt for him light the sky like a visual stage of our tumultuous relationship.

As we walked into the park, I teased him. “You know there’s no one more awesome than me,” I said. He nodded sagely. “Yeah. You are the coolest girl I know.” Half teasing, half wistful, his words were the lyrics of the song I had been waiting to understand. After three years of tense friendship, a week of romance, and another year of tense friendship, I was reassured to know that I was his number one girl. His hand swung close near mine, but we never touched. My heart didn’t leap, but it was then, in that moment, that I knew something was there still.

We stood in the restaurant the next day, me in a strapless dress, and him in maybe a blue checked shirt, or a green one. His eyes were bluer than I recalled seeing them, and even with my family and friends surrounding me, all I could think of was, “He’s holding my hand.” In the past, we would only hold hands when one of us wanted to pull the other somewhere. Or when I was tipsy and about to fall over. We had said goodbye to the days of romance when he said he couldn’t do it, not now. That he regretted kissing me, being with me, after we spent five hours exploring each other, mouths, cheeks, shoulders, more our first night together.

But that day, when the sun was bright and shining, and I was already in a great mood, surrounded by my closest friends and family, he held my hand, vigorously, excitedly. I teased him about how the past year had been hard on our friendship, but we were better than ever. He blushed, turned red, ran to sit with my friends from college, all of whom he had befriended when he visited during a particularly eventful weekend.

I felt as though light would stream from every pore, like Beast at the end of the film when Belle revives him with a tear and a kiss. I had wanted for so long a signal to say he was still there. He was still in that moment. That he never regretted kissing me, being with me, that he cared about me as more than a friend. That him holding my hand in front of everyone was a sign of more to come.

But like the night before, when he suddenly turned sick before the fireworks and I could only turn behind me to watch them splinter the night sky as we drove back to his house, I wasn’t meant to see those fireworks. I wasn’t meant to watch spinning Catherine wheels of delirious delight. I’d see the occasional spark, a brief rush of “Can we do this again?” before a tree would block the view. Had I been able to watch our story, it would have showed spikes, up and down, holding onto the smallest detail for more. Why is it that we cling so tightly to the actions we construe as signs?

Our story wasn’t written in the skies that night or any night. Our story ended with an angry text message, leaving behind a blank sky and a broken me.

I’ve never been on this side before.

Of having to say goodbye, forever, intentionally, a text message the last communication we’ll ever share. Usually I was on the receiving end, rather than the delivering.

There was a time where I thought he was my present, my future. Now I know he’s only my past.

I couldn’t wait for him to contact me again, not after the last time we talked so many truths unfolded, of betrayal, deception, lies, replacement, ultimatums, and more. How do you stay friends with someone who hurt you worse than the boy who once sent you a message saying, “We are not friends anymore?” I knew that it would eat at me, knowing that even though he knew I was unhappy with him, and didn’t trust him, he would still contact me, wanting us to be able to talk, wearing me like a trinket on the necklace of ex-girlfriends turned friends.

I told him where he had once complained my wall was too high for him, he knocked it down, and managed to hurt me so deeply in the process that I didn’t think I could ever trust him again. He said he understood that. But he doesn’t, not truly. Waving contradictory statements like a flag, it became clear to me that he decided at one point that he wasn’t good enough for me. And in the process, he became not good enough for me. Yet he still wanted me, and to some degree, I imagine he still does.

But when one is reduced to “super-intellectual with a great pair of tits?” Or made to feel like almost a year’s worth of relationship was a farce? I know that he cared for me on some level. Just not enough. And I deserve more than that, much more than that. There were a few days of seething fury, of requiring Tylenol PM and hours of television to drown out my churning thoughts. Finally there were days of blankness, knowing that the fury was subsiding, but fearing the day he contacts me again. Because I can’t fall back into it, especially with someone who won’t ever understand the degree of hurt he doled out. He does seem to realize that he is on the side of hurt, rather than hurting, but not to what extent.

For when I finally told him I couldn’t be friends with him anymore, he said, “A bit extreme, but okay. I’ll respect that. Consider this the last time you’ll ever hear from me.” A wave of relief washed over me, knowing that i had made the right decision, that he still didn’t get it, that I would just be the girl he loved (maybe?) for a year, but a thing of the past. I felt more sorrow for the fact that we couldn’t make it work as friends, that he didn’t respect me enough to give me the ending I deserved than I did for the loss of our relationship. I’ve placed a barrier there now, making our relationship a thing of separate memories rather than shared. And as painful as it is to know that I had to do that, I still know it was the right thing.

Because now I can move forward. The last chain has been broken, the last bond severed, the last form of communication destroyed. Where once was only happy memories and smiles are just apathy and anger. I know there will be days where I think of him fondly. Just like I know there are days where I recall memories from my time with D, or K. Conversely, I know I won’t ever forget what they had done to me, though the anger may have turned to disinterest. Someday, he will become that too. Relationships can change. I accept that there may come a day where he reaches out or I reach out, curiosity more than care. I don’t know how my exes grew to be my friends, but they did. I wish I could say never, but I can’t, because if nothing else, life changes constantly around me and I never seem to get a say in how it goes.

I keep finding scratches in the most unlikely places, as though I’ve been taking out my anger at him on me in my sleep. I’ve enough emotional scars and I don’t want more physical ones, not from this. I’m hoping by delivering this final message, on my terms, for my needs, the scarring will fade, the anger will dissolve, and my life will go on. I never thought I would say without him, having been committed to him longer than I’ve committed to anyone else in the past. But it is just me again. And I’m ready to see what else is out there, what else I might find that he would never have given me. Because it truly is time to move on.

Choking back sobs from my diaphragm, tears running soundlessly across my eyelids, cheeks, to the bottom-most earlobe, I told him I was crying because I always cry when I come. Truth was, I was crying because I felt like I had cheated. He lay beside me, pleased with himself, while I fervently hoped my thoughts wouldn’t untangle themselves in my mouth and reveal the truth.

“Why can’t you just acknowledge that you still have feelings for me and then we can both just move on and be friends?” I implored. I couldn’t move forward, waiting for the day he would open his eyes and accept what was in front of him, something he’d let slip time and time again. A familiar refrain, song, second verse. “We’re just friends, DS,” he said. “That’s all we’re ever going to be. What happened last summer was a mistake. I’m not going to ruin our friendship over one week together.” I didn’t know I would be the one to sing the last chorus back to him.

His arms were wrapped around me, his blond hair shining in the early morning sunlight. We lay naked under a blue and white striped sheet, accessory to my twin-XL bed provided by NYU. I noticed him looking at my body, and asked him what he was doing. “Just admiring you. I hadn’t seen you in the light yet.” I turned to my side, propped up on an elbow. “See anything good?” I asked.

“You have to be the most confusing girl I’ve ever been with. You want me to touch you, but you don’t. You’re not ready for this, but then you kiss me like you want me anyway.” I couldn’t see him in the dark shadows of my room, feeling as though my body betrayed me, wanting something my mind couldn’t wrap itself around. I tried to explain I hadn’t been with someone new in a long time, unable to explain that I just broke my own heart weeks ago.

His body covered mine, his mouth reaching for mine, two and a half years of tension unfolding. Drunk on grey goose, the party atmosphere, and each other, the room blacked out as we found each other, again and again and again. He lip-read to me. “You’re beautiful. I don’t know why we wasted a whole summer.” The sound of our friends whooping and cheering in the background as we finally knocked down that seemingly impenetrable wall was the soundtrack to what would soon become my devastation.

“I can’t do this. I don’t want to be long distance anymore. I want to be with you, here.” “But I can’t do that. Not till December at the least.” I told him. “Then I guess we can’t be together anymore.” The words unfolded themselves off my screen, burning its way down my throat, my vocal chords, my heart. I watched the memories we had yet to create, so firmly entrenched in my mind, shatter into shards of ash, melted by all the tears I would be unable to cry that day.

His fingers marked trails down my spine, mapping out new territory, land recently unmarked. Part of me was annoyed. I wanted him to leave, to pull out my vibrator for release, and cap off the night with Sabrina the Teenage Witch. It was too soon, too fast. What kind of a girl does he think I am? I just wanted his arms to lie in and nothing else, to feel safe when I felt lost.

Hidden within tall blades of grass, shaded leaves verdant and bright over our heads, his arm provided the cradle for my head. I teased him with a blade of grass, sweeping it against the paleness of his skin. He sighed. “Being fondled by grass is better than man.” I laughed, wishing it could always be like this. Just us.

He donned a pair of gold spandex shorts, tight, perfectly fitted, with a grin on his face. “The things I do for love,” he teased. On the heels of my realization that my job was a farce, my fear that I moved across country for nothing, he shook his shiny butt, determined to make me laugh and smile again. “I’d do anything for you,” he told me. “Would you do anything for me?” “I’d go to Timbuktu and back again,” I answered. Partially serious, partially joking, I was falling.

100. I’ve been a dancer for probably longer than I could walk.
99. My parents lost me one night and found me break dancing in a night club on vacation.
98. I was two and a half.
97. I used to do gymnastics too, as well as tennis, until my parents made me pick one activity. I chose dance.
96. Several years later, I ended up doing circus stunts at my sleepaway camp. See: aerial lyra, swinging trapeze, static trapeze, and spanish web.
95. I miss it. Sometimes I look up classes and contemplate running away with the circus.
94. I was a Mr. Rogers girl through and through. Sesame Street was kinda bull, though I did enjoy Big Bird goes to China. Relatively.
93. My childhood room was covered in Rainbow Brite memorabilia. I even have a t-shirt still that says “Sharing is caring.”
92. I also loved My Little Pony and the Smurfs. There used to be a show with animals who had the body of one and the head of another, and I can’t for the life remember the name of them, but I loved that one too.
91. I lost my virginity when I was 16.
90. It was more a sort of…I wonder what this is all about than it was wanting to be with someone I loved.
89. I’m a lefty.
88. I’m one of four lefties in both sides of my family.
87. Both of my grandfathers have red hair, blue eyes, and were born lefty. They both write recreationally, but were taught to write with their right hands. My mother is the only other lefty, but she’s brunette with hazel eyes. She didn’t write; she performed.
86. I wasn’t born deaf.
85. Neither was my sister.
84. But they at least have a strong suspicion why she lost her hearing. I’m just a medical anomaly.
83. We’re the only ones in our entire families.
82. I think my mom blames herself, while my dad blames some doctor he thinks misdiagnosed me.
81. I’m technically third generation American on one side, and first generation American on the other.
80. My dad was born in Israel. It’s made for interesting dynamics.
79. I tend to get bitten by the wanderlust bug often. I’ve traveled to Israel, Spain, Chicago, moved across country, and other places, all rather impulsively. I’ve also traveled to many other places, but those were less impulsive.
78. The first time I fully understood the Holocaust was when I was in fifth grade. It shocked me to realize that I would have been one of the first killed, for my coloring and for my poor vision and poor hearing.
77. It took me another year or two to realize almost all of my paternal grandparents’ relatives were killed in the Holocaust. Including my grandfather’s baby sister.
76. If there were ever one person I’d like to meet or bring back, I’d wish for her so my grandfather would have had her in the lonely years between her death and his next sibling. He might have had a childhood then.
75. I’ve only been in love once.
74. I still am.
73. My first best friend’s name was Ilana. She had a swimming pool in her backyard, and I wrote my first book about her.
72. She moved to Florida when I was five. I saw her again when I was sixteen, on a family trip.
71. Sometimes I think I’ve led a really easy life.
70. Other times, I think I’ve been put through more than most people have, and deserve a fine karmic break for the rest of my life.
69. It still destroys me every time my parents fight. It’s become easier now on this side of the country. I’m nervous to go home because I like not being in the middle anymore.
68. I was a commitment-phobe for the longest time, because I couldn’t imagine ever feeling passionate or interested enough in one person to want to be with them for the rest of my life. I also never wanted to inflict the kind of pain on my children, should I have them, that I experienced growing up.
67. I had a german shepherd named Gingi growing up. It means red in Hebrew.
66. My grandmother calls me gingi calavasa. I still don’t know what calavasa means.
65. My family stopped teaching me Hebrew when I lost my hearing.
64. Some doctor told my parents I’d be lucky if I ever spoke English, let alone Hebrew, and should be locked away so as to not burden my parents.
63. I’m glad they didn’t listen.
62. We used to go to special gala affairs at the New York Aquarium for the League of the Deaf and Hard of Hearing.
61. I will always have a special fondness for the aquarium, even if it is much smaller now than I remember it being.
60. I still sleep with the teddy bear my dad brought back from Boston when I was seven.
59. But only on nights when I feel lonely and cold.
58. I’ve known Thailand since before we were born. I didn’t get much of a choice with him in terms of our friendship.
57. Our moms were each others’ bridesmaids, and we were born a month and a half apart. We’ve been more or less stuck together since then.
56. I’ve managed to sprain at least one ankle once a year, up until I was about twenty one. I’m hoping my streak is broken.
55. Once, I hobbled all over New York City with K as we wandered around, having sprained an ankle the day before.
54. I’ve also managed to step on a kickball and go flying in the air, sprain both ankles days apart, and jam a finger. All in the same summer.
54. Sometimes, I still wonder if there will ever be anything again with D.
53. My mom thought we were going to do a When Harry Met Sally.
52. So did I. We didn’t. And we won’t. But I still wonder anyway.
51. I can find traits of myself in all four of my grandparents, but more presently, in my grandfathers.
50. My paternal grandfather and I could be identical twins if we were the same age and the same gender.
49. We aren’t. So we just argue a lot.
48. I’ve fainted two times.
47. The first was when I was ten, and got a Hepatitis B vaccine.
46. The doctor gave me pretzels and M&Ms with orange juice upon my reawakening.
45. I still remember the taste of all three in my mouth. It was surprisingly pleasant.
44. I don’t recommend blacking out. Everything shrinks, and surprisingly, my hearing was the last to go, even though I could no longer see anything anymore. It was strange relying on my hearing rather than my sight. Then I woke up on the floor.
43. On the bright side, both times I fainted happened to be in a doctor’s presence. The second time, I happened to be volunteering in the ER at the local hospital.
42. I’ve been to the ER several times. Most recently for pneumonia. In the past, it’s involved sprained ankles, jammed fingers, as a volunteer EMT, and lots of x-rays.
41. The first house I lived in was a small row house in Brooklyn, in the middle of the block. We had an alley behind our house.
40. At the end of the alley, a friend of mine lived. He had a treehouse. I would often scale the chainlink fence and hop to the other side to play with him and his brother in the treehouse.
39. While we lived in said house, my sister dropped a radiator on my right foot during a game of hide and seek.
38. It didn’t break, but it was badly bruised. It still hurts when it rains. I was nine.
37. The second place we lived was a two family house across the street from a small park.
36. I never knew how small it was - my mom did the best she could to give us a proper home, despite the recent divorce she had just undergone.
35. It had two bathrooms, adjacent to one another. One black and one blue.
34. I cut my bangs once in the black bathroom, after thinking my hairstylist cut them unevenly.
33. I spent the rest of the summer with the most godawful curly bangs bouncing in front of my eyes.
32. That might explain why I didn’t cut my hair for another five years after that disastrous cut.
31. In high school, the girls sitting behind me would pull my corkscrew curls, just because they liked to watch my hair bounce. Our teacher would yell at them for disrupting the class, or at least mildly berate them.
30. I met Avocado in high school. She wasn’t my biggest fan when we first met.
29. That’s since changed. But we usually have one big fight a year.
28. The only song that can effectively make me cry is “The Trouble with Love Is,” by Kelly Clarkson.
27. I can’t explain why I can understand or hear music in ways that don’t make sense to most doctors.
26. Then again, I tend to come across as a medical mystery in all shapes and forms. When they do my autopsy, they’ll find I have three misshapen hearts, one highway of a vein connecting my body, four overclogged arteries of memories and unspoken thoughts, and one brain that segments itself between my right pinky toe, left knee, left rib cage, right clavicle, and parts in my head where it properly belongs.
25. I’ve been on and off writing a novella/novel for the last four years.
24. I don’t know if it’s going to go anywhere.
23. If I were to be a Disney character, I’d be a mix between Ariel and Belle, with a healthy dash of Abu thrown in. And perhaps a little bit of Rafiki.
22. One of my cousins told me tonight that she loves how I don’t ever express emotion. I laughed and thought, if she only knew about this blog.
21. Neither sides of my family adequately understand me. But at least my mom’s side tries.
20. Sometimes, I feel like I’m living a teenage rebellion now, even though I went through my rebellion phase when I was 12.
19. I volunteered with a first aid squad for two years.
18. While I was there, the guys nicknamed me jailbait. I was a bit of a tease. I ended up tied up and tossed in an empty garbage can by one of the guys who was frustrated with me, because I wouldn’t go anywhere with him. Luckily, Techny Besty pulled me back out.
17. What most of them didn’t know was I was sleeping with a 20 year old and a 26 year old when I was only seventeen. Both of them were on the squad.
16. I don’t know what I want to do or where I want to live anymore. I used to think I did. Now I feel like this country is too small, and they need to build a new city that is the perfect blend of New York, San Francisco, and Chicago.
15. Sometimes I think I will never speak to GDB ever again. And then I realize that I talk to K and D, who hurt me in a way I never thought I’d recover from.
14. I taught myself how to use power point, illustrator, and photoshop in high school, because I was bored.
13. I like teaching myself how to do things. I feel a sense of accomplishment. I’d often rather learn from a book than have someone else tell me how to do it.
12. I don’t think I’m sexy outside of the framework of someone else telling me I’m sexy. I think I’m cute, but I never considered myself sexy until GDB.
11. I don’t struggle from low self-esteem. But I do struggle with overanalyzing everything to death.
10. I tend to feel like a walking contradiction most days.
9. I’m strangely attracted to nerds. My house’s motto senior year was, “I date nerds.”
8. For the longest time, I thought something would eventually happen with one of my old housemates because we had so many sparks. I don’t think it will anymore. His girlfriend was one of my good friends our last year in college. If it weren’t for her, I do sometimes wonder if things would have played out differently. He’s since become a close confidant.
7. I’ve only been high once. I spent the entire time giggling at the three people attempting to paint one girl’s room, all high, as I sat on the bed in the middle falling over with laughter.
6. I learned my harshest lessons about friendship at the camp I went to for seven years. I think it’s one of the main reasons I knew myself so well by the time I got to high school. I had already experienced heartbreak at the hands of those I believed to be my friends the summer before.
5. I won’t ever want to live in the suburbs. But I’m grateful to my mom for moving us out to New Jersey so I saw how much of a world was outside of New York. I wonder if I would have developed such wanderlust if I hadn’t been so bored with New Jersey, and would have missed out on seeing so much of the world. If I do have kids, I’ll probably move to the suburbs for that very reason.
4. GDB was the first person I ever felt like I wanted to marry and start a family with. It won’t be him. But I still want that now someday. I never thought I’d ever say that.
3. I still remember most of the guys I’ve had one night stands with. Mostly because they had some special meaning, or came at a point in my life where it was needed.
2. I don’t regret anything I’ve done up to this point in my life. But I do wish things had happened differently in some cases.
1. I truly believe everything happens for a reason. I just hope to find what my reasons are.

It’s unnerving to find myself glancing back on my life as a viewer. I’ve been sorting through a mass folder that held all the photos on my computer before it crashed two weeks ago, placing them in proper labels. England. Halloween. Israel. New Year’s. College. Grad School. Mom’s Side. Dad’s Side. GDB. What should be methodical, simple, easy, has turned personal. The photos are so crisp, so clear, that I find myself lurched into a memory that I thought I had forgotten. People who were once an integral part of my life are just an image, preserved in digital memory for as long as I remember to back my computer up.

I’m not scared of my past. But I see parallels. I see extra weight in my face that I don’t like there. I see relationships played out in various stages, juxtaposed against the backdrop of similar situations, different times. The photos are so out of order, yet they still seem to tell the same story, despite being months or years apart. I am reminded of events that happened years ago, a blip on the graph that has become my life, when I thought it was a turning point. I am reminded of the times when I linked arms with others, feeling high on energy, as though it were the best night of my life, before it came crashing down around me only an hour later.

I recall feeling so unsure and confused one night that I wondered if a camera could adequately capture my emotions. It did. I recognize the look on my face, as D and I talked animatedly. It was one of comfort, familiarity, of this will be how it is forever. It wasn’t. I see nights of laughter, of freezing cold weather as we traipsed around Manhattan, looking for this obscure bar for my cousin’s birthday. Only one of those bonds remain.

In a way, the photos that I’m forced to look at as I place it in its proper folder, they’re almost painful. They remind me of how much I’ve lived, how much I’ve seen, where I’ve been, and what I still have to do. They show me the people who I thought were going to be around forever, and are just a faded fingerprint pressed on my heart now.

I debated last night bringing my camera with me on an outing with McGee, who I must say is one of the strongest, and most amazing women I have ever met. I opted against it. I wonder if I should be taking more pictures, capturing my life on the West Coast as I live it, commemorating the white shower curtains around my clawfoot bathtub as the sun gazes through the window. If I should be taking pictures of me in my work clothes, to show that yes, I can look professional, and I look damn cute at it too. If I should capture the sun setting on the water as I walk home from work in the evenings, its colors reaching out beyond the bridges, the mountains, the bay.

And then I think, it’s just a phase. Like everything else in my life, it’s just a phase. I don’t want to look back on this phase and be reminded of the painful memories, of being alone and lonely, when I only wanted someone to call when I felt isolated from everyone. I don’t want to necessarily be reminded of all the thoughts, the transparent wisps of memories and cognizations that I’ve undergone in my last seven months out here.

It occurred to me that when I return home, or move to the next phase of my life, this year will be my forgotten year. Where the boy I loved was known by only a handful of friends, known better by name than person, where I sometimes wonder if we actually did spend the better part of a year together when no one else could document it, and we only have five pictures to memorialize our time together. Where my family reminisces about a memory that happened while I was gone, wondering why I wasn’t there, before they remember my imposed separation. When I felt like my reality was so different from the reality I lived before, that if I should ever return to the previous reality, this whole year will have been a dream.

But then I think, this year is my year. I could take pictures, but I’ll find myself in the same spot. Of being forced to look through memories, my life out of order, reminded of the highest highs and the lowest lows as I embarked on a year of self-exploration and discovery. Ultimately? I think I’d just rather rely upon the stores of my mind to capture a moment, colored with the emotions of the time, a faint image burned into memory to be called upon when I want. Everything changes. Something will always remind me, of the good and the bad. It will always be my dream year, a year where I stepped away from my life as I knew it, and created a new one. You can’t take photos of a dream.

Sometimes I get frustrated with having to process thought on three separate levels. Unlike most individuals, I can’t just listen and process and translate in a snap second, a response on the tip of my tongue. I feel sharper in the written world than I do in the verbal, mostly because it’s too easy for me to miss a crucial line of a joke or statement. Nothing ruins a joke faster than someone asking you to repeat it, after everyone else has laughed.

I suppose that was one of the things I loved about D. No matter where we were, what we did, he would always make me feel part of it, even when he was teasing me about my fake deafness. If there was something going on and I couldn’t understand, he wouldn’t tell me never mind, or brush it off. He’d just enunciate carefully, having learned at the stern hand of my need to make it easier on me. We could be at a loud concert, and he’d text me instead of trying to scream at me across the crowd. Or he’d stand on the opposite side of a crowded room, lip reading to me and telling me jokes to make me laugh, to the point where I didn’t care for anyone’s attention. There was a sense of a secret world that only we shared, and that might be part of why it took me so long to give up on the hope that it would be us.

On post secret the other day, someone wrote, I’m scared that because I’m minoring in American Sign Language in college my kids will be deaf one day. Immediately, I wanted to find the person who wrote that, shake them up, tell them that deafness is not the end of the world. That I think it’s made me work harder to prove that not only was I as good as everyone else, but I could be better. That I could be the best dancer, the best writer, the best basketball player, the best student, etc. I don’t doubt there’s a modicum of overachievement drizzled through my blood, but I think the disability forces me to push myself even harder to be someone. I don’t want to be the deaf girl. I want to be the girl who gets up at graduation and gives a speech, her slight lisp the only indication that she might be something out of the ordinary.

I should perhaps clarify. I wasn’t born deaf. Deaf is something that came to me shortly before my eighteenth birthday. For the fifteen or so years prior to that, I was simply hearing impaired. A beige compact device snug against my ear, the mold often a clear color, shielded by long hair and extravagant earrings. I’ve never learned to sign more than the alphabet and a few words, and that was my decision. I chose to be part of the oral world, knowing full well that my role in the oral world would be a much different one than most. For starters, the mouth would be accompanied by the body language and the most minute gestures others easily miss. When I say fake deaf, it’s because I don’t exist on the realm of true deaf individuals, fingers flashing and lips moving in a mimicry of what sound must look like. But I don’t entirely fall easily onto the hearing realm either - when my boss pronounces a name I’m unfamiliar with, I must ask her to write it down because certain letters get lost between the vowels and consonants I do recognize. Instead, I float somewhere in between, where I dictate the rules of how my language both communicates and interprets.

I’ve never wanted to be the stereotype, something a boss of mine once ascribed to me when I worked at Nordstrom for three summers. She would repeat things over and over, slowly, as though my brain were at fault, and not just the nerves inside my cochlear. I secretly relished all the times she would get flustered and annoyed at my ability to pick up on things quickly, because I was supposed to be the dumb deaf girl. In a way, the hearing, processing, and translating functions of my false ears only serve to speed the efficiency at which my mind works. It flows from subject to thought without a single glance, only to return back to the same subject hours later, having traveled to Jupiter and back in the same time it takes to twist off a bottle cap.

Granted, there are just some things I can’t do. I can’t play team sports that involve coordination and collaboration, because I won’t ever hear someone call my name. I can’t follow in my parents’ footsteps and be a lifeguard. I can’t go whitewater rafting and actively participate because my movements won’t be in sync with the others. But when there’s a can’t, I make a can. My grand jete is always going to be more graceful and to the leap of the bass, and I am one heck of a ping pong player, if I do say so myself.

If I weren’t deaf, I might just be average. And then I’d be boring. Instead, I get to watch the way words spark off someone’s tongue, how their lip rolls give their emotions away before they even say their thoughts. I can play voyeur to an unwitting conversation on the bus or train. I can think more about the words and their meaning, see through the false layers and to the flickering jumps from their vocal chords to the outward world. It may not be something I’d necessarily wish on someone else, but it seems to me I’m doing just fine with it. We cope. We learn. We live. There are always sidesteps. But my deafness doesn’t need to be mine.

Sometimes, trying to find meaning in something is like asking what 2 + 2 is, and having someone answer, “Shakespeare!” You know Shakespeare is the right answer to something, just not what.

Lately, there’s been a lot of Shakespeare thrown at me, when all I really want is just a simple number 4. Today was the kind of day I needed, one I hadn’t had in a long time. Lunch with the ever delightful McGee manifested into a self-adventurous afternoon of wandering in and out of shops, bakeries, stores, street performances, bay cruises, and various forms of public transportation. There were smiles from cute boys on bikes, skateboards, and their own two feet. I chatted with an undergrad from UC Davis on the way home from San Francisco and made temporary transit friends throughout the day (it’s my sparkling personality and all). I was reminded that yes, I guess I can be pretty cute. The self-imposed week of mourning is over, and with that, the break up diet exits stage left as well. Good bye Mr. Haagen, I will miss you, but that’s okay, because I cheated on you with Cold Stone today. (That sounds like such a porn star name, doesn’t it?)

As I sat on a boat touring the San Francisco Bay, an impulse buy to see the city from the water, I watched a seagull soar through the air. He (she?) flew directly to my right, using the wind to propel its motion forward instead of having to stroke against the beat. Sometimes, the wind would lift it up, send it up and over the boat, but sure enough, that same seagull would always flap furiously back to reappear right by my side, gliding through the air as we glided through the water towards the Golden Gate Bridge. The sun setting behind us, families and couples enjoying the breeze and the beautiful weather, I looked out onto the scenery around me, but more often than not, admired the persistence of the bird.

“It must be masochistic,” I thought, “to keep flying back over here, even though the wind pulls it away every time and it has to fight to come back.” I then decided, as the former English major I am, the bird is a metaphor for me. It was this time last year, that D and I went out, laughed, and he said, “You’re so perfect for me. And yet, you’re not.” It was a euphoric evening, where he finally said what I wanted and needed him to say, the “we’re going to make this work, damnit!” after months (years?) of back and forth fighting on what we meant to each other. That night was my last happy moment with him.

A week from today marks a year since the day I thought my heart would fall out of my chest. It’s not an easy place to be when your best friend who happens to be the boyfriend you didn’t know you had decides to end your friendship. I remember it well, because I met GDB exactly a month to the day that D stomped all over me with a heavy black boot, leaving treadmarks that took a long time to fade away. I look at what I’ve come through in the last year, from moving across the country to rediscovering me and determining that either you take me for what I am, or I walk.

I’ve done so many other things, painfully so, and yet, I’m still here. I’m still standing, somehow, even though I accidentally walked into a bench trying to take a good picture of Alcatraz and have a huge black and blue mark to show for it. (My new name should be spectacularly awkward - after I scared the bejeebus out of multiple people by walking into a bench, I just kept walking as they called after me to make sure I was okay, pretending I didn’t hear them. But man, that thing hurt!) If the events a year ago didn’t knock me down - just made me a weeble wobble for a long time until I could right myself, and the events of the last two months haven’t knocked me down, then there’s something that keeps propelling me forward.

I know now that D was the 4 when I was looking for the guy who wrote Romeo and Juliet. I also know, like the seagull flying next to me, no matter how strong the winds are, I’ll still keep flapping away. What for, I don’t know yet - maybe I am masochistic. Or maybe, I just really like that moment when I finally do catch a breeze that lets me rest my wings while I glide along, even for as brief as it may be.

(Taken with a camera phone - that should tell you how close the bird was.)

Thank you for validating me. By telling me that I do at 50% what most people do at 100%. For telling me that you’re so confident in my ability to keep up with all the work you assign me, you want to give me more responsibility - that of event planning. Which is incidentally what my dream job, current degree-in-progress, and past experience all involve. Because dammit, I am kickass at getting all the details together and putting events on like nobody’s business. I know now that I needed the job from hell to get to here, to a place of positive reinforcement and actual work.

It might be 3 or 4 AM your time, yet you’ll still talk to me for hours on end. You’re there for me when I need an escape from my own brain, you pick up the phone on a Saturday night when I decide to look for Mrs. Field’s cookies at the local supermarket and fail, and you laugh at all my quirks. Thank you for all that, and for knowing me better than I know myself. Road trip? Yes?

You’ve been around longer than most people. We might be in the same state now, but there’s still quite a distance - and that’s okay. We’ve figured out how to keep our friendship burning bright and strong, when you were ten minutes away, or an ocean away. Also, since our lives are so ridiculously interconnected, you give me hope that if you can make it work, I can make it work. Funny how we always lean on each other, eh?

When I feel particularly crazy, I think of you, and realize how tame I am in comparison. You’re my brother from another mother, and when I need a crazy night out, you’re the man to call. Now come home already!

I’m not quite sure how I got so lucky as to find you in class one day - you sat across from me and laughed at me every time my pen cap flew across the room. Distractions and all, more than a year later, you’re one of my daily confidants. It’s so refreshing to not have to explain things to someone who knows it and has been there already. Whatever did happen to dancing Barbie?

Four years ago, I wanted to kill you for your bipolar nature. Now, I want to hug you for making me laugh when I wanted to chop off my boobs because they hurt and I was in a terribly bad mood. You even offered to marry me without boobs to save others from my “sparkling personality” (as long as I was rich and there was no prenup).

Whoever you are, epic boob girl, you send a ton of traffic my way. So…thanks?

You laughed at me when I told you that I might secretly want to be a wedding planner someday. Because I love details and putting things together and making one hell of an event at the end of it all. And maybe that’s why I’m watching all these wedding shows. Or maybe, it’s just because for the first time in my life, I really want to have a wedding. Thank you for not judging me on either of those, and promising that we’re going to have kick-ass weddings, even when you’ve been feeling all over the place yourself. Also, you got me started with this crazy blog world. I both blame you and will adore you forever.

A year ago, you broke me. It sounds dramatic, but I was at the lowest point of my life. Now? After telling me you never wanted to talk to me again? We talk semi-regularly. You may have been the single-most devastating blow I’ve ever experienced, but I know I will never suffer anything as traumatic and deep as I did with you. Simply, because you kicked me when I was already down. I won’t ever be down there again. Either way, there are no hard feelings. Only hard lessons.

You drive me crazy sometimes with your puns, corny jokes, and self-deprecating humor. But you’re still the big brother I never had. And the only person who tried to save me from what became the biggest lesson I’ve ever learned.

You don’t read this, and I probably won’t ever tell you, only because you get how I feel before I get how I feel. There’s no point in you reading something you already know, and if I ever did tell you this, you probably would be mildly curious and then say, “Yeah, but I know all this. If you want me to read something, I’ll read it for you. But that’s your personal space.” It still bothers me that we’re in this place right now, where future and present collides. But when I feel low, Gwen Stefani sings “I really hope we make it, do you think we’ll make it? We’re running, keep holding my hand, so we don’t get separated,” and I think she knows what she’s talking about. Thank you for making my heart leap when I only wanted to keep it buried under miles of jagged glass. No matter what happens, I won’t live with regret.