The 5 AM shift usually begins with a twitch.

It’s not that you willingly wake up then. It’s just that something happens; your subconscious fades into your conscious. Restful becomes restless. A cat waits outside the door to play, her light eyes barely visible in the dark.

We once drove through the night from New Jersey to Toronto. We were the night shift then, a lone car on a road full of trucks and night shift drivers. We took turns sleeping, waking only for a rest stop and fitfulness. Signs blurred; Harrisburg. Binghamton. Rochester. We made conversation with the rest stop workers, as they made coffee and breakfast for the early-bird drivers.

Have you ever noticed how there’s nothing on during the night shift? You look and search in vain for the tv show or movie that might put you to sleep and instead only find paid programming and porn. You finish the book you had been reading, and feel disappointed that there’s not more.

We stopped when we reached early light, at Niagara Falls. We parked illegally in a hotel lot that had signs proclaiming it was not to be used for Niagara Falls. We jumped fences, meandered, looked for signs to lead the way. When the sun finally appeared, the sky was clear and we were drenched from the mist.

So you lay there. You lay and wait and in those hours, you think of all those things you try not to think about during the day. You think about how you go in circles. You think about how things have changed so drastically in only a month. You think of what it would be like to sleep in someone else’s arms; would you still wake up at 5 AM then?

We climbed back over the fence, just before we got yelled at to move our car. We drove again, the sun rising higher into the sky. It was a new day, and we were ready to meet it, to greet it, to make it ours.

The 5 AM shift is one that blurs consciousness and subconsciousness. It’s one that makes the computer desk look like a polar bear, and you suspicious of a loved one. It’s where questions and fears spill out, dancing over the tangled sheets and blankets until you only want to hide.

Until with another twitch, the 5 AM shift is over.

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

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

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

Yeah. That last part? I didn’t dream.

He responded with “What the hell?!”

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

An old college friend messaged me tonight and said, “DS. You’ve always been good at giving unbiased advice, and you understand relationships better than anyone else I know.”

I laughed, but then I thought about it. And realized that there are three very distinct people who have been using me for relationship advice in the last few days, outside of the usual folk. And this is not the first time I have found myself giving advice to people I don’t consider my closest friends. Did I unwittingly pass a relationship advice dispenser test? How would such a test even work? I’m imagining walking a yellow line with a spoon balanced on my nose; for this sort of test must be completely arbitrary and random. For the record, I would most successfully fail. Nor can I really answer what makes a relationship work, other than to say, “My grandparents knew each other for six weeks before they got married and they’re still together 53 years later.”

For that matter, why do I come across as unbiased? I’m quite biased. I’ve determined that I like contrary, obstinate asses. I’ve determined that I can only sunburn in patches; today gave me a jigsaw puzzle of a sunburn. Which later migrated, so I have a more complete puzzle of a burn.

I am no longer split in halves; at least not physically. I’ve determined that the universe likes to do what it may with me, and I’m just a merry pawn on its game of life. Yet I still wonder, what qualifies me to advise others in the fair matters of the heart? How do you be there for a friend whose mother is dying when he’s sick of hearing “Is there anything I can do? I’m so sorry.” Can a hug or a blown kiss make everything feel better? We’re not the same four year old children anymore, who when mommy kissed the boo-boo on our knee felt better. The band-aid is just that. A band-aid.

We rip them off, thinking less pain now is better but have we even given the wound time to heal? I can’t profess to understand the dynamics of relationships any better than anyone else. I’ve been on a perpetual merry-go-round of my own for a year and a half, and where logic should hold true, it fails in the face of “Well. He makes fun of me when I bang my elbow.” All I can do for myself and anyone else is say, “Be honest. If you’re in love with her and think it’s going to blur the lines of how you treat your friendship, clear the air. If you’re not sure you want to marry her, should you really have moved in with her when you know she’s waiting for a ring? If he hasn’t gotten in touch with you by now, it’s not very likely that he’s going to.” Maybe, it’s just the act of listening, letting someone think the pockets of their brains out that lets them slowly piece their feelings together. Does that qualify me as Oprah then?

I don’t sugarcoat. It’s both a blessing and a curse, and has gotten me in trouble many times. I don’t know what makes a proper relationship work. I can sit in the kitchen and watch my grandfather make his coffee while my grandmother prepares dinner for that evening, but I won’t see the inexplicable magic that lies beneath after 53 years together. I can agree that someone sounds wonderful, but ask, then why are you running away? I ask myself why people value my “unbiased” judgment so much when it seems all I do is make judgments about what I perceive as the truth they don’t see.

Are we ever truly unbiased? Can we come closer to finding the truth out when someone else has to make it clear for us? Or do we shade our own beliefs with those of the people whose opinions we trust the most, losing our own truths along the way?

I can play devil’s advocate. I can listen like nobody’s business. But I can’t give out relationship advice when I myself have been so blind to my own.

A dark subject like depression has no place sitting pool-side, wearing an old blue and green bikini and soaking up the sun. There were no tears. There was no sitting around a table, drinking out of red glasses and hashing out my complicated history. It was a simple fact, laid bare for me to read on his lips.

“I think you’re depressed,” he said. “I think you’ve been depressed for a long time.”

Does the depression wear itself on my skin like a gaping wound, taunting anyone who dares come near? Or perhaps as I stand here, my skin opening like window shutters and exposing my vulnerabilities to anyone walking by. “Broken heart!” it exclaims on my right kneecap, whereas my left middle finger knuckle declares, “She doesn’t know what she wants!” My ribcage pulses out, “Daddy complex!” and my nose flibbers, “Have you found home yet?”

The first time depression called, she kept me up all night. I’d fall fleetingly asleep just before sunrise and nap fitfully, until my alarm went off. The vibrating disk under my head only made me want to throw my hands up in despair and call out of work. The second time she swept into my life, I wised to the ways of Tylenol PM. It might have only given me three to four hours straight, but that was three to four hours more than I was getting.

I’m not sure when she came calling again. It was subtle this time. I fell prey to her cliche, of the depressive that never gets out of bed. The one who sees the mess in the room but ignores it in favor of laying in bed. The one who when confronted with a family situation begins to feel itchy and out of her own skin. After just two hours with my extended family, an internal war waged.

Side A: They haven’t seen you in months! Indulge them! You don’t have to be social! Just nod your head and pay attention to the four babies!

Side B: Do you really want to pay attention to four babies or make conversation about things you don’t care about when you could be at home, in bed, with pajamas on and reading a book?

Side B won. Side B always wins these days. Side B spent a full two minutes trying to come up with a wish after her belated birthday candle was blown out by an enthusiastic two year old. Is a wish still effective if it’s made after the candle blows out? Had Side B or Side A even managed to declare a wish, this line of questioning might be more valid.

The last time I can so acutely remember feeling so tee-tot-ery was when I met an old coworker for dinner. After three years of working together and several more of being friends, he saw right through me. Perhaps I was as shaky as a drug addict in need of his next fix; except in my case, the addiction had no name. He said, “DS. Why don’t you take the bus back to New Jersey with me? I’ll drive you to your parents’ house.” Something about his voice, his course of action made me say okay. Maybe it was because he was more definite than I had ever felt.

I just wanted to get home that night, crawl into the bed that had been mine since I was fourteen. I had begun to develop an irrational dislike for tunnels, and that night we got stuck in the Lincoln Tunnel. Suddenly, I wanted to scream, fling myself off the bus, run through the tunnel, through the fumes of hundreds of cars marking the walls with their scent, back to open air. I wanted to shake people and cry and sob and list back and forth, because goddamnit, we were stuck in the fucking Lincoln Tunnel and I was going to die if I didn’t get some fresh air and breathe and why is he able to sleep next to me so calmly, as though we’re not all going to suffocate, and not even my ipod or furious fingers texting is going to save me. I had visions of the tunnel collapsing, of drowning and feeling so exhausted and being stuck on this damn bus and not being able to swim out to the surface.

Ironic for the girl who has no qualms about getting on a plane.

I couldn’t breathe. I began to hyperventilate. Tears began streaming down my face. I clicked through my ipod, looking for a song that might calm me down. I almost tapped him on the shoulder, to save me from myself, but I couldn’t bring myself to do that, to expose myself under such vulnerable conditions.

We emerged to a horrendous accident, and yet, I couldn’t bring myself to feel horror for anyone else but myself. Was it an anxiety attack? Or did depression just have me deep in her throes?

I’m a junkie waiting for her next fix, but I don’t know what my fix is anymore. I can sit by a pool in an old blue and green bikini and laugh and dive and splash, but I’m a stranger to my own skin. I can be in the presence of my family and love them for who they are, but I can’t stand a single minute of it. My bed is my prison and my home.

She’s back.

For me, it started on the bus.

She had been in a few of my classes; almost all of them, actually, but we didn’t talk. She thought I wasn’t cool enough, because I didn’t care what other people thought of me. She was the envy of most girls in our classes because she was tall, with long blond hair, and she could eat for days without gaining a single pound. Not to mention, she was model pretty.

One day, we started talking on the bus. Did I reach out to her? Did she reach out to me? We both lived outside the town our high school was in, so we rode the same small bus. When her friend was dropped off early on in the bus ride, I became the default. It never bothered me; I just liked having someone to talk to to kill time.

Over time, we grew closer. Our conversations extended to instant messages. We chatted during drama practice and lunch. We even talked during class. By the time we got to the end of sophomore year, there was something infinitely more comfortable than it had been the year before. She was less concerned with pretenses. I still didn’t care. But I began to genuinely like her, and not just as someone to talk to. She came to my sweet sixteen and sat next to me, even though I didn’t yet consider her my closest friend. Those pictures tell a story we didn’t know was taking place.

Junior year changed everything. We both came back from summer with boyfriends. She kept hers for years, while I discarded the first, and moved onto another. Sex was now an option. We would sit in the very back seat of this small little bus, talking about what our boyfriends liked and what we liked. We talked about how we felt. We talked about the annoyances of high school. I was more than ready to leave, but she was still feeling her way through the halls. We described sex, graphically. We discussed penises, having never really seen them before. We talked about articles we’d find on how to leave our man satisfied.

I woke up one day, and she was my best friend.

I can’t imagine what other people on our bus thought, had they overheard us. We wouldn’t always sit together. Sometimes, we’d sit in the two back seats, so she could finish putting her makeup on, but when the bus became more crowded, she would move over to my seat. I don’t know that we made any attempt to be quiet. Self-consciousness had no place in our little corner of the bus. It was here where we could hash out everything on our minds; the future, the past, the present. We ran over every article of thought, like a highway to overanalyzation. There was nothing too big or too small for us, and by the time we graduated, she knew almost everything about me and I her. We understood each other. We understood why we did the things we did, and why we didn’t. She knew the most about my parents and family, and we would talk about them on the bus, sun pouring in through the unlatched open windows so we could enjoy the fresh air, despite the grit and dirt of my memories.

That bus is probably no longer in service. Yet, that bus holds a memory I don’t even have; of how we became friends. Of how ten years later, she is still the first person I turn to because she knows where I came from. It holds the teenage gossip and babbling that we thought was so important at the time, only to find out that the world largely disagrees. Except for sex. Sex is always important. The bus is inscribed with the words of our high school lives, the stories of where we were going and how did we get there, and us.

Sometimes, I wish I could find that bus, and see if there would still be the two girls in the back corner trading tips, test answers, paper topics, and friendship. Would they be as close as we are now? Would they have double-dated throughout college and visited each other, and even flown across oceans for one another? Would they still do as much for each other now as they did then?

For me, it started on the bus.

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

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

Women who are smart end up alone.

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

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

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

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

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

Scene: Three twenty-somethings are sitting at a table in a busy, popular restaurant. They have each gotten dinner, and are now eating dessert. While one is admittedly, a bit messier than usual, there have been slight snafus with the service leading to said messiness. The one with ice cream on her hands goes to the bathroom to wash it off, while the other two continue to chat.

Suddenly, a managerial type individual walks over to the table.

“There are a lot of people outside waiting for a table, so if you guys could just wrap it up, that’d be great.

Reaction: Stunned silence.

Reaction to reaction: Walk away.

Post-stunned silence reaction: “Did he really just ask us to leave?”

“I think so. Did he ask anyone else to leave?”

*Glance around to see if anyone else has been hustled and bustled. Confirms that no, it’s only the two twenty-somethings, waiting for the third.*

“Maybe we look really young?”

How would you respond?

Ready for a secret?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The thing about being me is I don’t exactly fit into the hearing world. But I don’t exactly fit into the deaf world either. I don’t pay attention to hands moving, unless it’s to accentuate the shapes their mouths make. But I can’t turn around and hold a full-fledged conversation with someone standing behind me either. My version of hearing involves context clues, lip-reading, and making the most of my hearing aid. It’s in this way that I often pass for hearing.

But I cringe every time I hear someone speak in a deaf voice, their words sounding out what it should look like, rather than what it sounds like. The whining tones annoy me, irrationally, because I would sound like that too if it weren’t for modern inventions.

I don’t suppose I’ll ever know what really happened. My mother’s side says I was born deaf. My father’s side says I had an ear infection and lost my hearing. Neither side accounts for my ability to speak as clearly as I do, with the exception of an s, z, x, and ch. It’s pretty difficult to repeat sounds you can’t hear; after a while, between the fast speaking and the overactive brain, my language can get sloppy. I can pronounce the hiss of an ’s’, but more often, it sounds like a ‘th’ because I simply don’t care enough to focus on bringing my teeth together. I can pronounce the choppiness of a ‘ch’, but that requires moving my tongue to the back of my mouth, when I could just leave it behind my teeth for a ’sh.’

My kind of hearing works for me. I can take my hearing aid out when I’m tired of hearing the world, when I’m tired of hearing just how much noise there is, when I just want to curl up with a book and read and rely on my visual sense and imagination instead.

But then, my kind of hearing was challenged. Mysteriously, randomly, some of the nerves in my cochlear wiped out, and took approximately 30 decibels of sound that I previously had had with them. For someone who was only operating at about 27%, 30 decibels is a lot to lose. I was suddenly plunged from severe to profound, the last label before you fall off the cliff into total silence. I wanted it back. My hearing aid was no longer powerful enough; I had to adapt. Certain sounds got lost. I used to be able to hear most birds chirping with my hearing aid. I couldn’t anymore. I used to be able to hear crickets and sopranos hitting the highest notes. I couldn’t anymore. My speech patterns changed; they became sloppier. I couldn’t have a conversation with someone standing behind me as easily anymore; I needed to really focus on lip reading to understand the words tossed my way.

When I had lunch with my childhood best friend a year ago, she immediately noticed the difference. She said, “You sound a bit different. And you never had to pay this much attention to me when we were younger.” It was startling, but acute the way she so accurately diagnosed the changes.

I had the opportunity to recoup my losses. Still do, in fact. When those 30 decibels wandered away, I became an unlikely but eligible candidate for a cochlear implant; a device that for all intents and purposes recreates the cochlear and electromagnetically works to simulate sound in your ear.I was warned that I heard so abnormally well with my hearing aid that I may never reach that same stage with my cochlear implant.

It didn’t matter, I said. I’m impulsive at best, brash at worst. Just give me the implant, I said. I was afraid of not being able to communicate anymore, of losing the grip I had on the hearing world, of my connection to my family and friends. Who would hire me if I couldn’t hear anymore? What would I do? I took so much for granted, the idea of not having any hearing at all scared me out of my wits.

So I had the surgery. I woke up with a sore neck from my head being turned all the way to the left so they could operate on my right ear. I missed the American Idol finale where Ruben Studdard beat out Clay Aiken, which I thought was a travesty. I was knocked out by pills, though I don’t remember being in much pain. Just feeling the scar behind my ear, where they had sliced open my head to relieve pressure on my ear. I can still feel it sometimes, a line behind my ear, though no such line exists anymore.

A month later, they turned the implant on for the first time. And for the first time in twelve years (as I had flushed my hearing aid for the right ear down the toilet accidentally on purpose when I was seven), there was sound filtering through my right ear. It didn’t sound like much. White noise, maybe. But it was sound, nonetheless, where there hadn’t been sound before. Suddenly, I was faced with the reality of it all. There was sound coming from my right ear, while my left ear kept disappearing. There was sound coming from my right ear, but my brain was so unprepared, I had a sudden headache. How do you retrain your brain to hear? To translate the signals sent from false nerves from the ear that had previously been as useful as an appendix.

I would take my hearing aid out and listen to music with my cochlear implant on. I could pick out the rhythms, the bass, but how much of that was from memory and how much of that was from actual sound? Suddenly, I was faced with my worst fear. It wasn’t about losing my hearing. I had done that. I could handle that. But what if this implant, with my hearing aid, showed me all the sounds I didn’t know existed before? It’s a bit like telling a full man he’s still hungry. How can you know he’s hungry if he feels full? I felt that I had all the sound in the world that I needed. I could hear my cats purr, I could dance along to the beat, I could even listen to the quiet still of a summer night at my parents’ camper. Was I ready to recategorize the world, when I thought I had it already carefully labeled?

So I put the cochlear implant down. Five years later, I’ve only touched it here and there. The magnet in my head is a party trick, to stick refrigerator magnets on and joke about how I’m the most electronic of all my friends. Until last night, when I watched a documentary about a couple who decide to get cochlear implants at the age of sixty five years. Sixty five years of never hearing sound, and they’re willing to trade all that to hear what the rest of the world can. Was it easy? No. Is it ever easy?

But I wonder. What am I so afraid of? Even as I write this, I still can’t summon the courage to take out the cochlear implant and tuck it behind my ear. What would have to change for me to accept it? Am I waiting for more decibels to drop, to lose my hearing for good? Am I waiting for some sort of sign, that I’m ready to hear again, if I’ve ever heard before? Or am I just really…a fucking coward? Who will let her fears of not knowing the world as it was anymore override her fears of never hearing again?

The trouble with my kind of deaf is you don’t really fit in either category. You hear but you don’t. You reject the deaf community outright, but you don’t exactly fit into the hearing one either. Is it time to make a change?

What do you do when your vibrator breaks?

A. E-mail the following?

Hello!

This might be a bit of a strange e-mail, but my rabbit habit vibrator broke. Not because of overuse (perhaps from underuse?) but simply, because the battery pack fell off. The shaft no longer works, though the bunny ears twitch quite well, but there is something to be said about trying to use a vibrator when it has wires sticking out and a battery pack hanging off. A vibrator in general is not nearly as appealing as a genuine cock, and sadly, a vibrator with wires (and somewhat reminiscent of a floppy dick) is even less so. And yes, I am quite aware that this is slightly absurd; I should really just go out and find another penis, but I just broke up with the one I really liked best.

Is there any way I can get an exchange for my vibrator? I only bought it in mid-February, and it broke in the beginning of May, but I was unable to do anything about it as I was traveling for the next month and half. Now that I’m back in one place, I’d like to see what can be done about getting my Rabbit Habit fixed. Thank you!

B. Research vibrator repair shops? I feel like the people who work in a vibrator repair shop would be akin to the kind of guy who puts on a used condom. Ick.

C. Suck it up and shell out money for a new one, even though I currently have to hide the old one behind my bed, where I fear my cats may find it and use it like a toy for their amusement. Kitten + twitching bunny ears = hours of entertainment/mortification.

In which case, I need recommendations. The Rabbit Habit’s clitoral part works well enough for me, but I’d like a bit more stimulation vaginally. Suggestions?

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?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hello New York. I’m home.

To whom it may concern:

I’d like to submit my resume for the (insert title here) position at (insert company here). I’m not going to give you a song and dance routine about how especially skilled I am, as evident by my previous positions in publishing, higher education, and non-profits. I’m qualified. I’ve got a brain and I’ve performed a number of duties in my professional and collegiate careers that make me the perfect candidate for your position. I will put all of my energy (and I’ve got plenty) into my job, especially if it’s one that challenges me. I realize that there will be some quiet days, just like I realize there will be some busy days. As long as there’s work to be done and it challenges me at least 80% of the time, this will be a beautiful collaboration.

My weaknesses? I gravitate towards the higher-brain activity type of work. Filing and copying are necessities in any business, as is updating databases. For the right job, I’ll happily do that, as long as I get to do other things too. Please don’t draw me in with promises or misrepresentations of the job responsibilities; I’ve been there twice and nothing hurts worst than hating a job you were once so passionate about.

I’ll be honest; I can be fickle. But if the company keeps growing and matches my growth, then I’ll stay with you till the end of my career. My strengths? Energy and enthusiasm, of course. But I’m also wickedly expert at taking constructive criticism and changing my behavior to become a more effective employee. It’s a challenge, and anything that challenges me interests me. I’m detail-oriented, time-conscientious, great at communicating, skilled in event planning and management, and a nifty writer; two published pieces under my belt are just the beginning.

I work hard. I don’t believe that a job should be your life, but I believe life is better when you love your job. I want to love my job. I want that job to be with (insert company here). Let’s discuss what I can do for you.

Sincerely,

distracted spunk.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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