strange musings of a distracted spunk

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!

When we were younger, our mother took us to Disney World in her first act as an independent, single woman. I was twelve and my sister was nine. In a rare display of affection, I offered to give my sister a piggyback ride in the pool. As we sunk lower into the water, her arms clung to my throat, cutting off my air and circulation until I couldn’t breathe. I thrashed around, trying to pry her fingers off my neck, before I was able to finally push her off. Gasping for air, I wondered if that was her way of getting back at me, for the decapitated Barbies whose hair I couldn’t brush properly, for accidentally slamming our grandparents’ door shut on her fingers, for ignoring her whenever possible. She said she didn’t know she was doing it. I’m still not so sure.

I was never a good sister. I’m not sure that I am today. I wanted nothing to do with her, and sometimes I still don’t. I wish I could be stronger, tolerate her more, but my patience wears thin, snapping like straws of spaghetti before they’re cooked. Where I was red, blue, and aged before my time, she was black, shifting colors, and stunted. We’ve wondered if she might be mildly autistic for it took us years to explain what humor was. Her inability to process sarcasm and understand that the world is shaded more in gray than black and white makes it difficult for me to connect with her, being a deeply sarcastic person and never one to focus on stark contrasts. Her inability to keep friendships for long is something we have difficulty understanding, explaining, because the awkward, angry, hurt person she is around my parents and me is not the one she presents to the outside world. So few people realize how difficult it can be to deal with her when she has her happy face on.

When she doesn’t get her way, she takes it out on whomever is nearest; lashing out at me by telling me I think I’m perfect, I know everything, don’t I? Our mother for “refusing” to give her the money our father supplies us with. Our father for not being there, in our house, a stepfather instead in his place whom she hated for much of his appearance in our lives. Much like I would throw gum in my father’s girlfriend’s hair to antagonize her when I was ten, my sister would find ways to incinerate him to the point where he punched a hole in the wall. She has become a source of contention in both my parents’ dissolved marriage, and my mother’s remarriage. I often worry that if my parents were to ever get divorced, she will be the reason.

Her willingness to play the victim both angers and upsets me. So we got into a fight yesterday, one that left her screaming at me and me parking the car in our driveway and walking out. I told her we’re too different to ever be friends, that if I weren’t related to her, I would have nothing to do with her because I don’t associate with people who don’t take responsibility for themselves.

I’m not one to mince words. Rounded edges has never been my forte, and yet, it’s what my parents have used to get her through her childhood. I’d rather the sharp edges, so it cuts at once, and you know not to make the same mistake again. I never can tolerate how quick they are to hold her hand through everything, to reassure her that the world is not out to get her every time something doesn’t go her way. Empathy and sympathy are not emotions she understands for anyone else, yet she demands and clamors for it when the slightest thing goes wrong. It has often led to me slamming a door in her face and sobbing behind it when my world is crumbling and she wants to go to the mall.

I can’t pretend to be a good sister. I know I’m not.

This time, she didn’t cry. The red-faced anger was still there; the one that leads to tears and shouts, locked doors, “I hate you!” declarations throated from a voice that can’t quite absorb the world around her. She said, “We’re different. You’re always running away, moving onto something else. I need time to get used to things, to learn how to do things, because I’m slower. That doesn’t mean you’re better than me.”

I told her I never thought I was. Just that I wish she would stop saying, “I can’t” and start trying to say, “I can.”

How is it that she and I were made from the same cloth? Can you agree to disagree? Maybe she has changed in the last year, grown wiser to the ways of maturity. But my scars run deep. I can’t so easily accept she’s different when she’s still so unwilling to accept the damage she dispenses, wielding a baseball bat of irrationality when it strikes her fancy. I can’t be the punching bag she directs her anger at because she’s not getting what she wants at that immediate moment. I can’t be the wall between my parents, waiting to break the minute I get loose.

I’ve been home less than a week. Is it too soon to take flight?

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.

She dropped us off at the dance studio, after telling us our father would pick us up. We hadn’t seen him in three months, not since before we left camp in August, before we came home to a household full of possessions and a broken marriage. My sister went to class in her leotard and black ballet shoes while I buried my nose in a book in the waiting room. When I next looked up, there was a brand new white car in front of the studio. He took us to see the Santa Clause, a first date of sorts with our father the weekend figure. We wouldn’t have any more Sunday mornings playing Monopoly and Life on their gray platform bed because we were now divorce kids. Our life would consist of being shuttled between houses and cities for the next eight years.

I found myself missing him while I was in Thailand, wanting to be able to tell him about what was going on and everything I had seen and experienced. I would have called but the connection was faulty. So instead, I sent him an e-mail.

Four months after he left us, he told us he was inviting a friend to come out with us. She walked out of her house, long black hair, Barbie pink lipstick, and the smell of coffee and dog clogging up the air. It was a sickly sweet smell that made me want to throw up, gag out the window for dramatic effect but the only one who would have noticed would have been my sister, and only to complain at that. Something was off; once she entered the car, it was like he forgot about us. I threw gum in her hair, kicked the back of her chair, did whatever I could to make her experience with us an unpleasant one for the first few years.

I asked him if he would be around on Saturday afternoon. It surprised me how much I wanted to see him, considering I sometimes hate him with more passion than I’ve reserved for any of the boys I’ve dated.

She came with us everywhere. He’d pick us up originally in Brooklyn, then Staten Island, where we would slowly make our way over the Verrazano bridge, over the Belt Parkway, to the Long Island Expressway, and finally his house. By the time we got to his house, all we had energy left for was grilled cheese, TGIF, and bed. When I’d wake up the next morning, she was already sitting at his kitchen table. I once asked him if she absolutely had to come to the dentist with us, since I couldn’t imagine that being a very romantic date while [sister] and I got our teeth drilled. He replied, “She has no one else but me.” I thought, But what about us?

He e-mailed me back. “I’ll be in New Jersey on Thursday and Friday nights, but I leave Saturday morning. I guess I’ll see you next Thursday.” There was no explanation needed; Saturdays are his days with her.

It never seemed to occur to him that by making her his priority, he became at best an embellisher, at worse, a liar and a cheat. I still wonder if he’ll ever admit cheating on my mom. As it is, I never could look at him again in the same light. Many of our fights, when they weren’t about him badmouthing my mother or making excuses for my sister, were about her. It seems no matter how hard I try, it’s impossible to show him his words mean nothing when his actions say everything to the contrary.

That sucker punch hit hard. The wind fell out of me and my breath ran jagged miles over my tongue.

In some ways, I wish I knew how to stop wanting him to change, wanting him to become the man I admired for so long as a child. So instead, I cry, for all the years and arguments, for my inability to ever properly articulate how I feel, for always wanting more than I’ll ever be able to have because he’ll never understand.

He always did know exactly where to make it hurt the worst. Even when he doesn’t know he’s doing it.

Dad: I want names, addresses, and phone numbers of every place you’re staying.

Me: Okay. Thailand says his address is Beach Hut #2, Apartment #3.

Dad: Beach….Hut….Was that number two you said?

Me: Dad. It was a joke.

Dad: Oh. That was funny. You know, women disappear and go into sexual slavery all the time in Thailand.

Me: …Oh god.

The sound of sand shuffling while the sun beat down on us was all that could be heard. Some murmurs overlapped, of people talking, but mostly, it was quiet.

We walked, foot over foot, up a crag, down into small valleys. We tripped over roots, hard rocks that had yet to disintegrate into sand. The sand was a thousand different colors, every shade between yellow and brown and gray one could imagine. The sky blazed blue, almost gray when juxtaposed against mountains of yellow.

All we could see was sand. We stood on the edge of a crater, watching where our ancestors had walked thousands of years ago, nature shaping itself into a solitary existence where there was nothing but rocks of sand. This was the Israel that I had always imagined. This was where I finally stopped wondering “What if,” and finally said, “When.”

I came across myself there, in that desert, as though I had been there before and was waiting for me to return again. It somehow instilled a sense of calm, one I hadn’t had in a long time. We were close to the end of our trip, close to exploring Masada and the Dead Sea, but I couldn’t remember feeling so relaxed. As though finally, my father’s native Israeli roots had sprung out from inside me and reclaimed me as its own.

It has nothing to do with being Jewish. It has everything to do with being Israeli. I’m proud to be able to call myself half-Israeli. I’m proud that the small country that my father was born in is one that reveals its contradictory nature upon first glance. I identify with the contradictions, being a walking one myself.

I had expected sand, only sand, sand everywhere with the deserts and the beaches of my father’s childhood. I never expected the waterfalls, the forests glens, the meadows, the creeks and the luxuriant  flora that could poison you if you drank its stems in water. I didn’t think when we would hike miles a day, that we would do so under the cover of trees, finding abandoned buildings made of stone, disabled by the ages. Even the scorpions held an aura of mystery around them, which I found when our tour guide placed one in my hand for me to feel.

The natives I met, compromised by a sense of concern for the next war and a sense of laissez-faire for it’s going to happen anyway stunned me with how different their attitudes were, how willingly they accepted their challenges, living in a politically charged country. I was just a visitor; willing to absorb as much of my father’s culture as possible. He hasn’t returned to Israel since he was twenty one. I first went when I was twenty one, having just graduated from college and barely on my way to graduate school. I was lost, saying goodbye to my college years, and welcoming a future that was uncertain at best, hopeless at worst.

I started to find myself beneath a waterfall, where we splashed and laughed. On the rocks, which I climbed forty feet or so barefoot, just because I felt like it, where I stretched out and faced the sun, while I waited for the rest of the group to catch up. And finally, in the desert, among the sand, where each shuffled step was muted somehow, silenced by the sun and the overwhelming expanse of the desert, as it valleyed and dipped around us. Somehow, I thought, each of us was in a grain of sand. That our stories lie there in the desert, tracked by the footpaths of our past. I wasn’t home. But I was found.

It started like it always does.

The raised voices in the room next to mine signaled a cue to play the music louder, or raise the volume on the TV. The sun had just fallen out of the night sky, streetlamps casting a glow into the windows of our house. I was home briefly, a respite between Brooklyn and Berkeley, my suitcases almost packed, the boxes a fort of my accumulated life.

The cats ran to the back of the house, hiding beneath the bed, ears perked towards the front of the house where shouts could be heard. My stepfather quietly slipped into the sunroom, an LCD screen and five hundred channels to distract him. He had stopped trying to be the sensible one in these kind of situations, where irrationality had a louder song than quiet logic. Besides; all it would do would get him angry to see the same story play out.

I wanted to stay in my room, lock the door, arm myself with the words of a boy who at that point cared for me deeply, but all I could say was “They’re fighting.” He didn’t know the extremes to which my mother and sister could take it to, the stories of police showing up at the door in the past, hysterical phone calls and empty threats of “Go live with your father.”

I wanted to stay, let the sound of the television drown their voices out, just like I did when my parents would fight in our old house. Where I would bring dinner up to my room, and watch Married With Children before Full House came on, with promises of dysfunctional families who would come together in the end anyway. The television my parents bought served as a way to escape the voices rising up from the kitchen or the living room as they fought, the closed captioning my safe haven. Years apart, and I was still the same nine year old, seeking a normal life through airwaves while my home life splintered again.

The conflict raged on, both outside my doors and inside my head. Should I separate them? Or should I stay and watch the words on the screen, the volume no longer loud enough to drown their screams. The hysteria had started, and I could see the tears spilling down my sister’s face, while my mother’s was a bold red, anger her default emotion when my sister attacked. I didn’t need to be in the room to know what was going on.

But I am who I am. So without a parting word to GDB who was trying to make me laugh, I rose up from the gunmetal gray folding chair, opened the doors and walked into my sister’s room where I was confronted with the faces of two angry individuals, the same person to the core, but evolutionary years apart in understanding. Where one stood on the precipice of her twenties, the other had absconded into the mature age of fifty. Yet both were unable to understand the words necessary to resolve the matter. My mother shouted at her to get out of the house, if it was so bad here, why didn’t she live with our father? My sister screamed back, “You don’t want me here anyway.”

“You’re right. I don’t. Get out.”

Tremors shook my mother’s body while my sister cried even harder, wanting attention to the point where all she did was decimate it when it was given. I quietly channeled my mother out of the room and steered her towards her bedroom and asked her to please stay there, until I said it was okay for her to come out again.

I picked up the phone, my cell phone, somehow aware that seeing my father’s phone number on the phone bill would further enrage my mother when she got it. Politely, quietly, I asked him to please come over, to pick her up, because if he doesn’t get her out of here soon, something’s going to happen and it won’t be good. He said he’d be right over. Fortunately, he was in New Jersey, only a few minutes down the road.

I attempted to calm my sister down, rationale somehow moving me through this night where I remained cold despite the summer humidity that somehow hangs in every molecule of air. She railed at me, “You think you’re so perfect, you think you know everything, just get out!” I tried to impart reason, cool logic, but she turned instead and began packing her belongings. When I walked out of her room, the door quickly shut and locked behind me. I heard her on the phone, calling our father to come pick her up, unaware that I already had.

When he arrived, I slipped out the front door into his car, having updated my mother on my sister’s pending departure and asking her to stay in the room so as to avoid any further conflict. The cats watched me, no doubt mocking my inability to keep a family together for a single night, while the screen flashed on my stepfather’s face in the sunroom.

“Please take her, Dad. Just keep her. Let her live with you. She’s been home all summer, and if you don’t take her, something bad is going to happen, and I won’t be here for it.”

We could see the outline of my sister packing furiously through the windowshades, the lamp shadowing her figure as clothes and books were tossed into suitcases. We talked briefly, quietly, about something we had never been able to discuss rationally before. I tried telling him they needed to stop giving her everything; the more they gave, the more she’d take, the more fights there’d be. That he didn’t know how bad it could get, because he was just the rescuer of the situation. That he never had to broker any peace treaties or usher my mother into her room before it became physical.

My sister finally departed, bags in tow. She saw me in the car, and said, “I’m not getting in until she gets out.”

I got out. I walked back in, sought to apply balm onto an already widening wound that would just keep growing. My stepfather watched TV. My mother locked herself in her room. I fled.

I received a letter from my mother yesterday.

We’re not typically mushy, gooey, I miss you, I love you. We talk but I’m as cryptic with her sometimes as I am with the rest of the world. It’s no surprise that my family thinks I’m cold, emotionless, and unaffected. Hell, even my best friends think that sometimes.

But a few weeks ago, I started writing, about when I was twelve and angry at my mother for somehow having encouraged my father to leave her. Even though I knew my dad had cheated on her with a woman thirteen years my senior, I still thought it was my mom’s fault. I like to think of it as my teenage rebellion years, several years shy of my actual teenage years.

It wasn’t until we were in Disney World that year, at the New Orleans Resort more specifically that my grandfather sat me down and more or less told me to stop being a little bitch and grow up. In those exact words. To open my eyes and realize how much my mother had to sacrifice, change, lose to find a home for me and my sister after my father left her with a house newly sold and nowhere to go. I began to see things a little differently after that.

The latter half of my thirteenth year involved commuting; quite possibly the reason I swear I will never commute more than twenty nine minutes today. Having been uprooted to New Jersey in the middle of the school year, she and I were both still committed to our respective schools, in Brooklyn. She worked, while I went to class, danced, told my English teacher she was boring, and more. We would drive in, a red Chevy Blazer more our home than the new townhouse we just moved into, and talk.

I don’t much remember what we would talk about. Sometimes, we would drive in on the Belt Parkway, and find the ocean lapping onto the highway, just before we reached the exit for where I got my ears pierced for the first time, when my cousin who was a full year and a half older than my wise five years chickened out. We’d watch fog blot out the apartment buildings and rides of Coney Island, typically visible from the Verrazano Bridge and home to my mother’s childhood and unwrapped Chanukah presents in my grandparents’ closets. Sometimes, I’d nap in the fully reclined front seat, eyes shutting in the dark and opening again to see the sun rising over the Atlantic Ocean.

We did this for six months. Then I started high school in New Jersey, and she transferred to a school district in Staten Island. Our conversations were more for the drive back into Staten Island on a Friday night where we’d meet my father, for the bi-weekly drop off of child custody. College came, and with that, graduate school. Yet somehow, we would inevitably find ourselves in the front seat of her car; a Chevy Blazer soon became a Honda Accord, which became a Nissan Maxima, handed over to me in favor of a Mitsubishi Eclipse, traded in for a Montero Sport. Let it be known that my impulsive nature is ingrained by my mother’s DNA.

It was during these car rides that we would talk, candidly. About her experience with my father. About her bitterness towards his family, and how he treated her. About her childhood, and how different her parents are now from when she was raised. About her job, to my schooling, to my decision to move to California impulsively, to the aftermath of D, hinted at but never fully disclosed. I am nothing if not consistent when it comes to revealing my love life to my family. The last time we had one of these car rides, absent of my sister, was probably right before I went to the airport. Where we spent the morning driving around town, running errands, finding clothes for me to wear to a new job, and just talking about all the possible changes coming my way.

We’re not Lorelai and Rory Gilmore. We don’t talk about everything. But I found myself on that night a few weeks ago inexplicably missing her so much that I cried. I had to write her, to let her know how much I loved her for letting me go, for understanding that I needed to do this for me, and that I know how scared she was when I finally told her I was going to a therapist, but that instead of trying to pinpoint where along the line I became fucked up, she just said, “Okay,” even though I know she wanted to know why. How proud I am of her for making her life one that anyone would envy, fashionable, but comfortable, happy, and content. Wishing that I could just go home for the weekend, sit next to her on our beige suede couch covered by cat hair and the scratch marks left by our eldest, clawed cat, and watch hours of The Real Housewives of the O.C. and laugh at them.

So I wrote her. I wanted a card, but Walgreens had closed ten minutes prior. I knew if I didn’t write all this out now, I’d lose the moment and it wouldn’t come back, not for a while. A piece of looseleaf paper did the trick, and I wrote it all out, careful to keep my tears from smudging the ink. The next morning, I woke up feeling detached and removed as ever, and I felt grateful that I’d had the foresight to write while the moment was still hot.

I knew she got the letter; she thanked me for it, but we didn’t talk much about it. What I didn’t expect was the letter I got in return. I won’t post the whole thing here, but it was strange receiving it at a time where I’m feeling so conflicted about my future in New York, and if I even want it beyond my degree.

“Dear DS:

I miss you so much. It’s just not the same talking on the phone. I would like to tell you that I am so proud of you. I admire your bravery and courage and always knew that you were the one who would step outside of the box and try new things regardless of where and how hard. You make every challenge look like a walk around the park. Always know that I am your greatest supporter and rooting section.”

I guess that sweetens the pot to move home a bit, eh? I don’t talk about her much, but she is one of the few women I admire, for her strength to rebuild our home when it was shattered, and to provide me with love and support, even when she didn’t understand what I was doing. I’m still terrified about moving back. I’m not sure I’m ready yet to reveal all my cards, about what I want and where I’m going. But I know that when I’m home for that wedding in July, there will inevitably be a car ride. And just like old times, we’ll fall into a comfortable routine of talking about anything and everything. Who knows. There just might be a different front seat to sit in this time.

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.