A Picture's Worth a Thousand Thoughts

DAY ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY-THREE: The Pauper Gets Nostalgic

Photographs are a beautiful thing.  They capture a moment.  It could be something that means very little to us (as evident through the many selfies that bely the Internet.)  Or they can mean everything.  They can help us remember a time that we cherish, or in retrospect, a time filled with melancholy.

I've spent the evening looking at pictures.  I looked at pictures my father took of my dog's last moments on this earth.  I petted the screen like an insane person, hoping to retain the meaning my dog brought me while he was present in more than photographic terms.  I looked at pictures of pure happiness with someone who means the world to me.  And I looked at pictures of my parents clutching a baby version of myself... relatively new to the idea of parenthood, not fully sure of the future it would bring, but sure of the love that encapsulated them.

I looked at these baby pictures of myself.  Taken before memory both blessed and betrayed me.  And for the first time, I saw the story beneath.  I saw two people who have given me stories of life.  People who have told me of the fears of being parents.  The rockiness of relationships past that lead them to each other.  The turmoil they faced as a couple.  And the result of making it work.  I see myself as an innocent.  A child not yet tainted by the inner deviousness of the world.  A child whose mission that day is to pop the bubblegum of one of two beings she cherishes the most.  The most?  Try at all.  A child whose pure joy comes from the love the surrounds her.

And then I come back to the present.  Life is no longer based on the most purest of joys.  We question every action we take.  We sulk in moments of joy because we hope that there are bigger and better moments to follow.  We become our own worst enemy.

But this is growing up.  Pictures capture our memories, but they are meant to do only that.  Some times, we stare into the abyss of photography, hoping to grab ahold of the feeling we had at the moment it captured.  But the truth is, moments are fleeting.  They cannot continue forever.  Photos will be there to remind us that life is worth living.  And that we have lived in a moment worth capturing forever.  And if you are lucky, you will always be able to look back on those moments and smile.  Even if they span beyond your reach of memory.

Auld Lang Syne

DAY ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTEEN: The Pauper's Fairy Tale

It's New Year's Eve*, an adoptive day of reflection over the calendar year.  Was it satisfying?  What did I accomplish?  What did I not accomplish?  Will the next year be better?  Who did I lose?  Who did I gain?  What did I learn?

Certain years of our lives have such monstrously important events in them that we can use said event to define the whole year.  2007 will forever be the year I studied abroad and befriended some of the most important people in my life, people who made me feel comfortable with myself for the first time.  1999 was the year I moved to Maryland, and sunk into a dark place that defined most of my teenaged years.  But it's also the only way that 2005 meant the year I graduated from high school and moved to Chicago to begin college.  Without the lows that 1999 brought, I would never be where I am today.  It's the lows that often define who we are.

Except in 2013.

Let me backtrack to 2012.  Thus will begin my modern fairy tale.  In 2012, I struggled with getting over someone I cared for very much.  As a result of getting over him, I spent quite a bit of time bed-hopping during the summer.  Proudest moment?  Well, it's not quite how I felt when winning a theater scholarship in front of the entire audience for Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, but it's maybe a close 2,586th.

During this string of empty hook ups, I revisited the films Before Sunrise and Before Sunset.  As I searched for meaning and purpose in my life, I watched these films and hoped with all my heart that I could just have what Celine and Jesse had for one brief night.  Something that would reaffirm an idea that got lost in the shuffle of rejection and casual sex: That I'm awesome.

About a week later, I went to Lollapalooza as a fifth wheel.  My roommate's sister was in town, and a couple from high school was staying with me for the weekend.  It became apparent on day one that I would have to embark on my own throughout the weekend if I wanted to see everything I wanted to see.  (Sidebar: when you have been single for your entire life, selfishness is hard to ditch.)

When the final day of the festival rolled around, I received a text from the man I spent all summer trying to fuck out of my mind.  Not really digging the whole Sigur Ros style, my friends had left me alone to contemplate this message.  So I spent about 15 minutes of this gorgeous show searching for him to no avail.  We decided to try and meet up for the night's final show, Jack White.

I had reconvened with my fivesome for the penultimate show of Florence and the Machine on the opposite side of the park.  Not being a major fan, but dying to get a good spot for Jack (and feeling confident I wouldn't end up alone), I hightailed it out relatively early and ended up on the fence at Jack White.  Perfect viewing spot.  More perfect than I could have imagined.

I tried contacting my crush, but phone reception morphed into a mythical creature.  Getting reception to send a text was like trying to spot The Loch Ness Monster.  I knew I was to meet him at the spot he was in for Sigur Ros, but I never figured out where that was.  So I stayed.  I stayed there, and the next year of my life changed irrevocably.

A drunk man named Keith began asking me why I was alone.  Having no one else to talk to, I obliged his drunkenness.  He then started talking to the girls in front of me, the guys behind me, and finally, the solo man next to me.  When he started talking, I heard the British accent and knew I probably needed to talk to this guy as well.  I found out he was on a road trip across the United States until October, and we started talking about travel.  Apparently, Keith picked up on something maybe neither of us did, because he remarked that he had made a love connection.  The two of us blushed and continued talking.  We spent the night watching Jack White perform a kick ass set.  When it was over, we made our ways out together and decided to ditch the crowd at the local red line stops and head south.  We talked about our lives.  He told me about his road trip, how he was in a band back home, how he had just gotten producer credits for a movie his friend made - you know, pretty much everything I could possibly want.  I told him how I was about to begin writing classes at Second City, my cancelled plans for teaching English in Spain, and most importantly, how my parents had just moved to London.

When you get so caught up in a conversation that you never want it to end, everything around you becomes a blur.  I didn't feel like I was walking so much as moving my legs in sync with his.  After about an hour of walking, we realized we had gone much further than a stop or two away from the crowd.  It was his last night in Chicago, and I had friends at my apartment leaving in the morning whom I wanted to say goodbye to.  So begrudgingly, we ended our Before Sunrise night of connection and we headed to the train, exchanged emails, and said goodbye.

Over the course of the next few months, we became pen pals.  He would regale me with stories of his travels that I got to live vicariously through while slaving at my nine to five.  I got to practice some of my writing by trying desperately to make him laugh with clever and well-crafted emails.  And come December, we were planning a day to spend together while I was in London.  It ended up being one of the last days I was in town due to Christmas travel plans on our ends.  So we planned to spend December 30th walking around London.

Though my stomach often felt like it was going to fly out of my throat as I waited for him to pick me up, all my nerves flushed out of me when I greeted him at the door.  That same sense of calm and comfort washed over me, and we headed out for some lunch.

I've talked about perspective before, and how you often need someone's help to get you to see even the most obvious things.  That conversation at lunch became a turning point in my life.  As I listened to him talk about how much he loved the work he does, I thought about how little I could add to the subject.  You weren't supposed to like work.  People are always miserable at work.  But you suck it up and do it because you have to be responsible.  But he told me something that stuck in my craw and wouldn't budge: "You are at your job for the majority of your life.  Why would you allow yourself to be miserable for the majority of your life?"

If I was a cartoon character, a little thought bubble with a light would have just clicked on.

We spent the rest of the day doing what we do best, walking and talking, and then decided to throw in the added pleasure of stopping into pubs for a drink every now and then.

But we had a deadline.  His final train to his home would leave at midnight.  I knew that I so badly wanted more out of this than just friendship, but when an ocean separates two people, it's difficult to gauge the situation.  So finally, with about two hours left and a few drinks in me, I recommended we just grab some beers and sit in a park.

I remember watching an episode of Grey's Anatomy some time in the second or third season when it was still appointment viewing for my late-teenaged self.  I genuinely liked it, but it reached a point of cloying awfulness when this scene happened and everyone thought it was the sweetest and most romantic thing in the world. But it was just written to appeal to the type of girl who went on to bigger and more nauseating things.

First kisses, last kisses.  If you can remember every detail about anything outside of that feeling, then you aren't living in the moment.  I don't remember how he smelled or what we said right before it happened.  I know that I felt pure happiness sweeping across my body.  I know that felt like a kiss that had five month's worth of build up instead of five minute's.  A kiss of pure investment from both parties.

After my nihilistic summer, I had taken a personal vow of celibacy for the foreseeable future.  And considering I've encountered few men who wanted anything more than that out of me, the offer to spend the night together scared me.  But a funny thing happened on that park bench in Green Park.  He told me he didn't care about that.  He just wanted to spend as much time as humanly possible with me.  It was a foreign feeling; finding a man who genuinely cared about me.  Foreign, but welcomed.

Once I returned to the States, we faced a conundrum.  We've spent about 24 hours in each other's company, we live thousands of miles away from each other, but neither of us wants to say goodbye.  So we emailed.  We got to know each other through our words, as we had been doing before.  But this time around, we added in Skype.  Rarely did a conversation last less than three hours, and by my count, the longest we spoke was around six hours in one session.  He made plans to come out here in May.  So we made due.  He began encouraging me to start applying for jobs that would utilize my creativity.  He fixed up my resume, prepped me for interviews, and most of all, he enlightened me.  I didn't see much of my professional worth, but he did.  He gave me perspective on myself, and that's worth everything.

We continued to talk after his May trip.  My head filled with ridiculous post-coital ideas about trying to go to grad school in London.  Find myself a new career path while getting to spend actual time with someone I care about to see if this was real or some blissful semi-annual encounter.

But as the weeks went on, I stepped off of cloud nine and faced reality.  I had my first show open that summer, and it felt like a waste to throw that away to try and start over again in a strange city.

And then August happened.  The fateful error that occurred at work.  I texted him as I was on the verge of up and quitting my job out of blameless rage.  Of course, one of the problems with long distance isn't just the actual distance, it's the time zone issue.  So the next morning, I got a response to set a Skype date before work.  We discussed my options sensibly.  And it came down to this: If I do the budgetary math, can I support myself enough to quit my job?  I spent the day working it out, and realized I could.

And the rest, my friends, is detailed in this blog.  So I'll spare you the retread.

With my recent life changes, having an undefinable, long distance symbiosis became harder to handle.  When change occurs, it can be a very lonely place.  You lose people you care about.  It takes awhile to settle into a new groove.  And you don't always feel as confident as when you were boasting about your impending plans.

But you're always alone in this life.  If you exist completely co-dependently, then how do you get through change?  How could you possibly move forward if you don't keep at least a little bit of yourself just for you?

People are going to come in and out of your life and pepper it with good and salt it with bad.  But if you allow yourself enough perspective, you can regulate what goes into your mash.

A couple days ago, I ended my symbiosis.  What does that mean?  I don't think either of us knows exactly.  But I had reached a point where I needed to focus more on myself, and when I care about someone, that is rarely something I can accomplish.  But for what it's worth, I met someone who made me believe in myself again.  Now I just have to go out and prove it.

2013 began a real life fairy tale.  I met prince charming, and he tore me out of an unlivable life.  But just because I no longer have my prince charming doesn't mean the fairy tale is over.  In fact, it's just beginning.  When do all fairy tales end?  When dreams come true.

*This post coming to you a day late thanks to the realization that I was going to be late for work.