The Young and the Wasteless

DAY TWO HUNDRED AND FORTY-TWO: The Pauper Kills Her First

Adulthood.  It's a right of passage.  We go from babies to toddlers to children to adolescents to... adults.  The first four earmarks of our lives are simple.  You learn to walk and talk, you exit babyhood and enter your toddler years.  You enter the memory phase of life, you become a child.  You start to grow hair in weird places and believe you are the center of the world, welcome to adolescence.  But what demarcates adulthood?

At 18, you are no longer a minor.  The adults in your life can no longer control your decisions... in the eyes of the government.  But can anyone really look back at an 18-year-old version of themselves and call themselves adult?  At 18 I still relied solely on my parents for support and the most adult things I did were getting my cartilage pierced (healed into a small bump on my ear 6 months later) and buying a peach flavored cigar that I smoked on the hood of my car with Kelsey Painter in the park across from my development.  Oh, and giddily walking into a sex shop with Amy Tolbert in Georgetown.

LOL.  We are so old.

So then what?  Buying my first legal drink at Hahn Liquors on Devon a quarter past midnight on my 21st birthday?  If I'm old enough to go out to Wrigleyville and throw up in a trash can inside a bar I'm legally allowed to be in, does that make me an adult?

I can taste my 401k.

Once that glitz and glamor superseded me, I began to search for new rites of passage into adulthood.  Losing my virginity (yes, it happened after my 21st.  Get over it.)  Cooking meals outside of buttered pasta or grilled cheese (look guys, CHICKEN!)  Making my bed every morning before work (that lasted about 2 weeks.)  Having a job that gave me health insurance (huzzah for an HMO that I never used for fear of venturing into China Town alone when I had strep throat.)

As a nearly 27-year-old waitress renting an apartment who looks at friends who now have homes, marriages, and children, I constantly find myself quipping, "Look at you.  Your such an adult."  So when does my adulthood kick in?

In literature, rites of passage into adulthood range from getting your monthly fertile reminder to killing your first prey (in more dystopian societies.  Or in the Ozarks.)  So if I've never felt like an adult because of our society's visions of legal purchases and car rental capabilities, then how do I know?

My parents' generation was much in the mindset of finding a good job to support a family.  Mostly because it was infinitely possible to skip college, get an entry-level position at a company, and work your way into a career.  In our age, finishing grad school doesn't even secure you a position in the mailroom.  So many of us put off the family goals as we meander aimlessly through life trying to find that Tetris piece that slots us into the next level.

In lieu of the ages, I believe adulthood sets in the moment you realize what you need to do to make yourself happy.  This is why so many movies about arrested development have become so popular.  We are the generation lost.  With vices and distractions lurking around every aspect of the Internet, we rely on these senses of happiness to lull us into the idea that we are living life the way it's meant to be led.  We drink because we'd be social outcasts if we didn't.  We hang out with friends instead of working on our goals because we don't want to be left out.  We search for love because we think we are the only ones without it.

Essentially, we become adults when we realize it's time to grow up.  And no amount of homemade sesame chicken dishes with a side of potatoes au gratin will trick us into believing otherwise.

For long.

Benedict Arnold

DAY TWO HUNDRED AND TWENTY-EIGHT: The Pauper Meets Her Nemesis

The time has come to address my Benedict Arnold.  The element of life that has double-crossed me.  The thing I most loved and trusted, but has reared its head to be my sworn enemy.  Everyone, meet Cinema.

A little backstory.  Cinema and I met at a young age.  There were cartoon iterations of the beloved spy during the years of memory that elude me today.  But my most vivid first viewing experience comes from Marcus Theaters in 1994 when the Tim Allen holiday masterpiece, The Santa Clause graced us with its affable presence.  But for reasons unbeknownst to me (but my brain might be able to tell you), I only recall this viewing experience due to a journal entry fixed in my mind recalling the moment I waited in line outside the theater SO FAR that I was stuck staring at the far more provocative poster for Interview With a Vampire (a film it took me nearly fifteen years later to (inter)view.)

Tagline brought to you by L. Ron Hubbard.

But it wasn't until 2002 when I fell in love with the most sinister of vixens.  She puffed her cigarette in the corner of a dimly lit jazz club, her lips lined in stop sign red, but her stare insisting "go."  Her name was Moulin Rouge.  A film I scoffed at during the seedy underbelly of trailers, but fell deep and hard during VHS distribution.  I was fourteen.  My brain whispered "no... not tonight."  But my heart screamed in ecstasy, "Yes, Yes!  Do me now!"

After that, I was hooked.  Adrenaline pumping through my veins every time a waifish teenager neglected to card me for an R-rated flick.  Closer, Sideways, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, oh God, yes!  You name it, I was there.

And as I gobbled up every ounce of Cinema I could gorge myself on, I fell deeper and deeper into the rabbit hole.  Where my life was full of awkward daytime interactions and late night humorous-only-to-me-and-three-other-people rendezvous in the parking lot of Giant, Cinema was were I could, how do you say? Get My Rocks Off.

This, but sans the bottle.

I quickly rejected the norms set in "chick flicks", as my untouched lips at the age of 17 so bitterly denounced.  But yet, I still binged on films that focused their existential follies on love.  Films that utilized narrative devices such as montages to skim over the hard work that creates product.  Films that allowed me to believe that a life story can exist in two hours, when life so churlishly lasts for much longer.

And now, at 26, and as a woman who has given up a decent, mind-numbing job to pursue this minx, I question her motives.  What does good Cinema do?  Does it provoke us?  Does it give us hope?  Does it show us reality?  How do you cope with life when you live most of it vicariously?

When life brings you down, you often look to music to find the truth in it.  As an adult, I like to think I dive into more substantial realms of emotion.  But even as a teenager, you turn to things like the latest pop sensation's drab takes on love to justify your crush on Football McQuarterback.

HE JUST GETS MY SOUL

So for the little Hannahs of the world, I want to create an existence of relativity.  I don't want to lose touch with the lows of life just because I've grown past them.  I want to hang on to the feelings of crushes lost, never-lasting friendships, and big deal moments that fade within the year.  I want to expound the truth.  The honesty of life.  A truth that Hollywood often neglects to address.

Because if I can do that, well, I don't want to say my life is worthwhile.  Honestly speaking, I'll probably have some major downs in my life post-truth speaking that will make me reflect back on grand statements like this.  But if I can create something that people can relate to, then at the very least, I've inspired someone to be something more than a stagnant viewer in their own life.

 

Don't You Forget About Me

DAY TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTEEN: The Pauper Remembers...ish

Memory.  She's a tricky vixen.  The kind you pour into your glass thinking it's a good idea, but ending the night in a world of regret.

Your brain can only hold so many.  It's how it has been programmed since the dawn of time.  Much like your inbox, it will delete certain entries when it grows too full.  But unlike your inbox, it doesn't give you an option of what to preserve.

Why is it that I can vividly remember my brother explaining a nightmare he had about a monkey popping a balloon outside his window and bursting into histrionics, but I can't remember what I was doing exactly one week ago today?

It's rather unfair, isn't it?  That our brain gets to make these decisions about what it cares to preserve, but our conscious mind has no say.  Oftentimes, I've had friends recite moments of comedic impact that we shared, and I am forced to smile and nod and pretend that I have any recollection of what they are talking about.  And I search my mind for that moment, but it is lost.

When we lose moments that are important to others, do they really continue to exist?  As a writer, the most important tool you have is your brain.  (If The Diving Bell and the Butterfly taught us anything, it's that our fingers are merely a vessel of truth.  Not the answer.)  So how do you cope with the wear and tear of your most important tool?  You have to preserve it in the moment.

I recently came to the realization that I have been out of college longer than I was in it.  When I entered college, it felt like the apex of life.  I moved far away from home.  I met new people.  And I had been programmed to believe that college would catapult me to the path I was sure to lead.

Throughout my college days, I began writing a screenplay entitled "The Twenty Year Old Virgin", a playoff of the Judd Apatow comedy with an emphasis on the pressures of losing your virginity at a young age.  As a woman who "became a woman" at 22, this idea meant everything to me.  I specifically remember "coming out" to my best friend that I was, in fact, a virgin on a bus ride home from a party one night because it felt like such a defining feature at 20.  And as a woman who has since sought validation in casual hook ups, the idea of finishing this screenplay seems odder and odder.

But memories are what dictate our future.  There's a reason we hang on to the people who fucked us over and the people who changed our lives.  It's because we need those memories to make ourselves better people in the present... and the future.

- I remember spying on my parents watching Alien when I was 5 years old because I happened to pick the moment when the alien bursts out of John Hurt's belly.  And I remember not sleeping very well that night.  But I have zero recollection of anything that happened before or after that moment.

- I remember choking on an ice cube I was sucking when I was a child, and the cantaloupe I threw up into our sink, but nothing before or after that moment.

- I remember my dad surprising me Saturday morning at our kitchen table because he travelled home through the night to see my stage debut in Little Women when I was 11, but I can't remember any lines from my show.

- I remember the smell of Quizno's subs seeping into my hair after shifts at my first job, but I don't remember how to make a single sub.

- I remember failing my first permit test - vividly the screen and the questions - but I don't remember how poorly I reacted to it.

- I remember vomiting on myself while giving blood during Calculus of my senior year of high school, but I don't remember how to find the derivative.

- I remember hopping on a boat with some strangers during the Taste of Chicago, guiding by an old man named Gordon who enlightened us on his Pagan ways, but I have no idea what the hell he was talking about.

I could go on, but you guys get my drift.  We have moments in our lives that carry significance, but at minimum, the best we can say about them is the moment.  Outside of that, we have to wing it based on experience.  I remember that my father who worked away from us for three years found his way home to see me perform in my first real show because he loved me.  And as a writer, I am forced to fill in the gaps that I don't positively remember.

The pain comes from realizing that there are some beautiful moments in your life that may pass.  And the only way to preserve them is via a photograph or the written word.

As we get older, days blur more into months.  Months into years.  And years into gaps of time that are harder to define.  A co-worker recently discussed a philosopher's idea of memory with me.  That when we are younger, time feels more marked because we have more to look forward to.  We have years in school that demarcate events.  I remember the Blood Drive Vomit Scandal of 2005 also happened in April, because I was a senior and it was the moment I realized my blood giving compatriot was who I wanted to ask to the upcoming prom.  But post college, the years blur together because we have less to associate with them.  The Pagan Boat Journey on Old Lake Mich happened, well, what?  I don't know.  Maybe 2010?  Maybe 2011?  Somewhere around there.

It's hard to believe college ended 5 years ago, because what has happened in my life since then?  A blur.  Whereas every moment of college carried weight.  Carried significance about the rest of my life.  But as we get older, we have to find our own significance.  Our own sense of worth.  It's no longer handed to us.  And hopefully with time, we can start to figure out how to manage our memories in a more efficient fashion.

But probably not.

Yessssssssssssss

DAY ONE HUNDRED AND NINETY-TWO: The Pauper Releases

Ever since I've gotten back into the acting ring (where people exchange cutting side-eye left hooks for punches), I've been trying to remember how to be a good actress.

Over the past few months, I've been trying desperately to come to terms with the idea that I'm no longer an honor's student at Frederick High School.  Shove me into an AP class there now, and I'd be lucky to leave with a C.  Drop me in a class at Loyola, and I've lost my Cum Laude status.  When you were once the kid that other kids gave a slightly audible "yesssssss" when assigned you as a partner, it's a weird and humbling transition to realize you rely on your calculator to figure out what you owe the busser in tip share at the end of the night.  Suffice it to say, I'm not the A+ student that got me those chords at graduation.

What I didn't realize until recently was that acting remains a skill in the same vein.  I grew up under the impression that creative talents were a gift bestowed upon you at birth.  That education in these fields was next to useless.  You either got it... or you don't.

Now, I have come to understand this is about as useful as allowing me to perform your vasectomy because I've seen my way around a dick.

Because eight years without any experience has brought me back to square one.  Except, joke is on experience.  Because my life has taught me the art of observation.

Theses gifts are, in part, bestowed upon us at birth.  We are left brain dominant, or we are right brain dominant.  Neither is right or wrong.  But in the same way that our sexuality is determined at birth (and it is), our logical vs. creative skill set is determined genetically before we are even capable of giving the middle finger.

So the person who once was a great actress.  Someone who found solace in the stage; an awkward teenager more comfortable making an ass of herself with the lights blinding her vision instead of flirting with a boy in gym class; now has to figure out how to regain that confidence with a whole new mound of deeper insecurities to cripple her.

The younger we are, the fewer inhibitions we have.  As ass backwards as it seems, our most "awkward" time (adolescence) couldn't be farther from it.  Awkward as a teen means breaking out in acne, not understanding your body, and having very little grasp on who you are.  These are skin deep issues.  I only wish that someone told me how deep anxiety would spread in your twenties.  When you start to doubt your own character.  When your goals and ambitions seem fruitless.  When you can't understand why you were put on this stupid piece of land to begin with.  THAT is awkward as fuck.

So dropping the whole acting thing during the prime of my maturation was regretful.  As now I have to relearn my craft as a human hobbled with self doubt and insecurity.

But tonight, I released.

During the rehearsal process of our upcoming sketch show, I have felt about 60% present.  I'm here.  I'm hosting.  And I am saying my lines.  But tonight, my brain let loose.  I've been watching the actors in our show.  I've been watching improv.  And I've been eating a hell of a lot more kale than pizza (which is hard at Pizano's).  And some where along this road, my brain opened up.

Credit the impending spring time (30 degrees!)  Credit the better diet (KALE!)  Credit the aforementioned euphoria (READ MY BLOG, GODDAMMIT!)  But I'll just go ahead and credit myself.  Because who else will in this crazy, fucked up world?  I make the choices I make.  All of this leads to a better me (hopefully?)  But somehow, tonight, I tapped into my inner actress.  And for the first time in eight years, I saw that girl on stage, age 17, who needlessly dropped a Madonna rap to little applause during an improv showcase and left the stage ready for more.

Can't Stop The Beat

DAY ONE HUNDRED AND NINETY: The Pauper Feels Euphoric

It's a weird feeling.  That feeling when you are used to being depressed, and you can't get your body to feel that way anymore.  It's called euphoria.

What makes us feel euphoria?  This happiness that you just can't seem to shake.  You work all weekend and check your newsfeed to see that everyone got crazy drunk celebrating Saint Patrick while you spent your weekend serving up some hot pizza pie to said drunks.  You spend Friday and Saturday night alone watching videos on Youtube and psuedo-Netflix binging.  You haven't made any professional strides.  And a song comes on the radio at work that reminds you of past love.  But it doesn't shake you.  What is wrong with you?

Perhaps euphoria exists because even if the immediate doesn't feel especially fantastic, you know it's because you made a choice for the greater good.  You stayed in all drunk weekend because you no longer find joy in binge drinking in the hopes you will find some sordid hook up that you'll forget about.  You spend your weekends tired from long shifts because you enjoy the relaxation of staying off your feet.  You take a break from professional advancement to enjoy the time alone.  A song reminds you of someone you once cared about, not someone who hurt you.  You are happy in your decisions.

After two months of frigid depression in this windy city, it can begin to feel unnatural to feel the opposite.  Why are you so happy?  This happiness is a fallacy.  This isn't you.  Even the dark week of your monthly Red Wedding should surely bring the empty thoughts.  But they aren't.  They won't.  You can't help but smile.

Why does feeling happy feel like a weird turn of events?  We should always feel this way.  That's the point, correct?  But when you are constantly plagued with fear, self doubt, and inadequacy, happiness can feel like some kind of seasonal flu for which no amount of NyQuil can dull.

So accept it.  Embrace it.  Hold it closely to your breast until it feels so full it might burst.  The moments we feel content in life, we should not question.  Over-analyization can start to bring the chaos back into your cerebellum.  Allow yourself to feel the good as equally as you feel the bad.  For I fear we tend to dwell on the bad and let the good slip away like an extra 20 we find in between the seats on the L and spend on an extra special bottle of wine.

It might be difficult to dwell on happiness.  It's easy to forget moments we get caught up in.  But perhaps, if we spent a little more time dwelling on contentment, we get a little bit closer to a euphoric life.

Nothing Wrong When A Song Ends in a Minor Key

DAY ONE HUNDRED AND EIGHTY-EIGHT: The Pauper Makes an Honest Vow

One of the problems with being a creative is figuring out where the hell to put it.  Where do you assign your thoughts?  Not necessarily the channel, but where do you resign the segment of life where you output matters?

I've always felt my strengths laid in comedy.  In my group of friends, I got an inherent joy from making others laugh.  But as a current student of comedy, it no longer feels my strengths lie in that realm.

But one thing I have clung to - and perhaps why the show "Girls" has been such a grating pain to me - is that my life experiences have led me to believe I was put on this earth to dispel the fiction blasted to women through cinema.  I want to expose the truth.

Film, television, and media in general perpetuate ideas I have never found are true.  And that has led to a lot of misery through teenage angst and adult existential crises.  Life isn't about happy endings.  Important life events don't end on a note of poetic justice.  But we believe they do because our windows to "the world" portray them as such.  Perfect careers, perfect boyfriends and love affairs, perfect friendships and familial relationships.  These are the notions broadcast through the media aimed at adolescents: some of our most formative and impressionable years.

It isn't until we experience the fallacies of these "truths" that we realize how wrong they are.  And by then, is it too late to adjust our thinking patterns?  Is that why we grieve?  Is that why we suffer?

Life doesn't tie up its bows in pretty little Pinterest patterns.  So why should we create those realities in the minds of our youth?

I genuinely believe we are on the precipice of a revolution in popular culture - despite the Jezebels, Buzzfeeds, and Perez Hiltons of the world.  We are ready for the truth.  And I would love to be a part of it.

You will not know what you want to do with your life when you are 20.

You will not find total happiness in someone else.

You will not always want to get out of bed.

Your life will never montage.

You will gain weight.  And if you choose, you will have to work hard to lose it.

You will fall in love... and you will get your heart broken.

You will have to break someone's heart.

You will cry in a way that is not beautiful.  That consists of snot pouring out of your nose while drinking and listening to Fiona Apple.

You will succumb to vices.

You will disappoint people.

You will hurt people.

And it won't immediately be fixed.

You will make the wrong decisions.  But hopefully you will learn from them and make the right ones next time.

You will wake up in the morning feeling happy and fall asleep that night feeling miserable.

You will wake up feeling miserable and fall asleep that night feeling elated.

You will not get to make a wish that comes true every time you blow on an eyelash, see the time is 11:11, or blow out your birthday candles.

You will get nowhere unless you work hard.

You will get nowhere unless you work hard.

You will get nowhere unless you work hard.  Because you will have no montages.

And sometimes, songs will end in a minor key.  But that doesn't mean they didn't teach you anything.

It's Friday, I'm In Love!

DAY ONE HUNDRED AND EIGHTY-FOUR: The Pauper Stops to Smell the Tranquility

A funny thing happened on my way to work last Friday.  It was 9:45 a.m.  The rush hour morning commute had dwindled enough for me to find a seat at the Belmont Red Line - an impossibility an hour earlier.  And when I arrived at the restaurant, I danced and sang along to "Drunk In Love", which boomed over our loudspeakers as I set the dining room waiting for my red-shirted compatriot to arrive and help.

But in my moments of tranquility before his arrival, it had dawned on me that it was Friday.  This day of the week I once held in such magnificent high regard now appeared to be just another day at the office.  Because I no longer wake up on Monday mornings with this simple thought occurring once my brain registers lucidity: Five More Fucking Days.

There's no longer a day of the week I dread.  I no longer wake up stressed, wondering whether I remembered to accomplish a task at work, and if that meant I would formally get my posterior handed to me on a decorative platter.  There's no more self-loathing in the path I have chosen.

It doesn't escape me that this could be the result of not yet having the opportunity to fall victim to a routine.  Routine is the boner killer of creativity.  But for right now, it's a fantastic feeling to have gone from eating rotted Aldi fruits to fresh peaches bought off the beaches of Ischia.  And perhaps the next time routine befalls me, my senses will be ever so keener to its void.

You would think that without the low lows of Mondays, I could never have the feverish highs people experience at 5:00 on Fridays.  And to that I repeat: dancing and singing along to Beyonce at 10:00 a.m.  At work.