I'm Not There Yet

I spent a long time figuring out how to start this conversation. Wasn’t sure what to say to you, world. Had an eloquent narrative drafted about how hard it is to grow up, with all the opportunities of the world in front of you, while you’re busy running about like a chicken with your head cut off. But it wasn’t quite right.

Instead I’ll preface this whole thing with a simple fact: I have no clue what I’m doing. Not just on here, but as a sweeping generality. As a child, I had an “overactive” imagination that I projected onto the world around me. At some point, I realized that in my head, I knew what I was doing – so it was easier to just live in there all the time. Plus, it was a whole lot more fun. And of course, THE man, Dumbledore himself, KNOWS the real skinny on the situation: “Of course it is happening inside your head, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?”

So before I take you down the rabbit hole and start babbling about the world as I see it, I figured I’d share a few things about myself. Because strangers are creepy, but strangers who share things aren’t! Wait… shoot. Close enough.

• Those plastic rings around a six-pack of bottles? I still cut them apart. Some sort of animal will probably die from it regardless, but at least when it’s chopped up they have a fighting chance!
• I’d eat my feelings…if I had any. Preferably on a stick.
•  65% of the time I have earbuds in or headphones on - I’m not listening to anything. In the office, walking down the street, at the gym. It’s the modern gal’s defense mechanism. Don’t talk to me. Can’t you see I have earbuds in? Go bother someone else. It's the most fun in the grocery store, because people look at you like you're projecting some song onto them when you glance their way. Nope, I'm not listening to anything, but I can hear your self doubt from over here, lady with too many boxes of cereal in her cart.
• If ever I’m depressed or sad, I watch one of two movies. Wall-E or Schindler’s List. They are both reserved for emergency sad situations only and cannot be watched under any other circumstance. Both make me sob openly and literally shout at the screen throughout. They bring me back. If I’m ever watching them, it’s a sign that life isn’t going to plan at the moment.
• When cleaning my apartment, it’s usually Petula Clark or Neil Diamond echoing out from my crappy, little, portal baby-blue record player. I don’t listen to vinyl to be cool or because I’m musically inclined enough to hear the difference, but because I believe vinyl curbs the ADHD of the world. You’ll listen to an album straight through, because skipping to the next song isn’t just a click, and we’re all WAY too lazy to change it to a different song.
• I’m not adult enough to know the difference between a yam and a sweet potato. Are they the same thing? Are they not? I call my grandma or my mother with these sorts of questions when I’m at the grocery store. Or I struggle, taking a stand on my adultness.

Sweet Yams?? Now you're just being cheeky, world.

• Sometimes I purposely don’t mute the phone when I sneeze on conference calls – just to scare the people who aren’t paying attention.
• When it comes to rational fears, I have two main ones: 
1. That one day I’ll look in the mirror and I’ll see an old woman who never accomplished anything in her sad, lonely life – woooah, zip up the fly on those emo pants!
2. Needles.
• Meanwhile, on the irrational front… I’m an extremely paranoid person. I live my life in a constant state of fear and I’m 99% certain that I’ll be killed by the serial killer that lives in my attic some day. He’s just been biding his time.
• I live for the ellipsis… for they are where imaginations live.
• For the majority of my life, I was under the impression that eggs don’t expire. I knew that rotten eggs were common place in teenage pranks and at the stocks during the public humiliations of old, but never fully grasped the concept that eggs in my fridge would expire some day.
• I collect “adult points” in my head. When I jokingly exclaim, “Woo Adult Points!” I’m actually assigning a point value and filing it away. Quietly banking points to burn up later when I revert back to the chaos of my youth. Trips to the laundromat, cooking a meal with more than one vegetable in it, going to the gym, dusting: all these things gain points. Hiding things in the closet and calling it “cleaning,” forgetting to replace my hidden emergency snacks after I ate them the week prior in my cube at work, smashing up an avocado and pretending that means it’s guacamole: all negative points. This is how I get through the transition to adulthood. With a game.

Above all things, I also have a problem with being long-winded. You may or may not have noticed. There are so many stories, so many words to express, and I just want to get them all out. I was that little girl who talked so excitedly that she actually got winded and had to physically throw herself aside to pause for air before jumping back in. Verbose to a fault, that’s just how this will go. The rambling will happen, because I don’t know where life is taking me.

But I promise, I’m getting to the point… 

It's a dangerous business, going out your door.