Everybody's Somebody's Everything

DAY THREE HUNDRED AND NINETEEN: The Pauper Falls Madly In Love

I have no idea how it happened.  Truly and honestly.  All these years I have been searching.  And it's true what they say, it happens when you least expect it.  But suddenly, I'm in love.

It's not quite the euphoric feeling I imagined after years of digesting Disney princess films.  And it wasn't quite as obvious as listening to a musical cue play while two strangers reach for the same book and looking longingly up at each other.  But it happened.

I remember the early days of our relationship.  I was in an utterly lonely place in life.  Having just moved to a new city, I had zero friends aside from my own personal alienation.  And then one day, we took a walk together.  Around the area.  It was late, the sound of summer cicadas echoed through the streets.  We listened to music.  And we walked.  And we discussed our insecurities.  Our pleasures, our pains.  Our fears and dreams.  We bonded in a way few people ever do.

And to think, I was only 12.

I spent the majority of my teenaged years hating my new companion.  She was embarrassing.  In school, she had difficulties adjusting to the changes around her.  Oftentimes she was teased for being herself.  Put down while trying to make new friends.  And she got smaller and smaller because of it.

But no matter how much I distanced myself from her, we still had our walks.  We'd still stroll around Ballenger Crossing, peeping into Kingsbrook.  We'd pass the tennis courts, walkman in hand.  Some times a dog would pass.  Some times we'd pet it.  Some times he'd bark.  But after the excitement of interaction settled, we'd return to our conversations.  Wondering why the boys weren't chasing after us.  Wondering why we had such difficulty connecting.  Wondering what the future would hold.

We attended college in the same city.  Far away from home.  As the city proved an even lonelier abyss than the suburbs, we found solace in each other.  So we'd pack up the Creative Zen Micro, shove an earbud in each ear, and go for a walk to the lake.  This time, armed with pepper spray.

Two years into college, we traveled to Rome together.  The first weekend we were there, we left the orientation grounds to be alone together.  Our desire to travel clashed monumentally with our disdain of small talk.  Of forced social interaction to meet new people.  It's so much easier when it's just the two of us.  No judgement.  No ridicule.  No disappointment.  And besides, we were two pretty rad people.  Enough company as is.

We left college and were forced to forge our paths in adulthood.  We watched our friends fall in love.  We watched our loves fall away.  We watched our dreams age and petrify.  We watched our ages tick away, feeling more and more like Cinderella as we waited for midnight when everything withered away.

But every now and then, we'd still find time to take some walks.  Perhaps even a bike ride.  And perhaps even with a flask tucked into my pocket.  We'd venture to the lake, sit on the rocks, take a swig, listen to music, and stare out into the vast aquatic darkness.  Straining to see the other side.

Until talking no longer felt adequate enough.  And that's when I started to write.

Days before my 27th birthday, I am no longer afraid of being alone.  Some of the most wonderful things that have happened to me have happened because I allowed myself to be alone.  I allowed myself to move to Chicago for college.  I allowed myself to travel to Rome.  But most importantly, I allowed myself to go for walks.  Bike rides.  Movies.  Concerts.  Dinner.  Flights.  Road trips.  Back porch wine nights.  I've done it all by myself.  And without this kind of quality time spent with an individual I spent so much time and energy hating, I don't think I could have fallen so madly in love.

I love my flaws.  I love the emotional intricacies I weave in my brain.  I love my pain.  My pleasure.  I love my failures because they keep life interesting.  I love my successes because I'm not some kind of depressive and ironic douche bag.  I love watching my journey.  There's a glorious satisfaction in fully realizing that everyone is fucked.  Not in the schadenfreude sense (although everyone can relate).  But because once you realize that no one has it figured out, you can sit back and enjoy watching yourself try.

So now I'm going to go out on my back porch, pour a glass of wine, pop my ipod into each one of my years, and have a good long chat with the love of my life.

All That She Wants

DAY TWO HUNDRED AND NINETY-NINE: The Pauper Has A Craving

What do we want?

It’s a question asked of us almost daily.  You ask it in the morning when you search for the perfect shower song on your ipod.  You ask it on your way to work when you dip into Dunkin’ Donuts instead of making that oatmeal at home.  You ask it when your friends invite you out for drinks when you know you have to wake up early.  You ask it when you stare into the gaping maw of the future.  The barren unknown.  What do I want?

This has always been a difficult question for me to answer since the age where ordering chicken fingers off the menu became a hearty blow to my maturation.  I used to be a picky eater.  I’ll eat whatever is easiest to choke down so I can appease my parents before ordering the make your own sundae bar at Max & Erma’s.

But at some point, my palate inexplicably changed.  Food became something to cherish as it slid down my gullet.  And as my experiences with food grew, as did the creeping sense of anxiety when the waitress turned to me and asked, “And what do you want?”

Honing our desires as children is as basic as “this will please me immediately; therefore this is what I want.”  When ordering ice cream, we don’t think about the consequences of weight gain.  When choosing to go to the mall with a new circle of friends, we don’t plague ourselves with insecurity.  When looking for our first jobs, we don’t question whether it will lead us down a path of self-loathing so deep that we aren’t sure if we’ll ever crawl out of it.  Ice cream is good.  Friends are fun.  And money is the bee’s knees.  I want all the things.

But as we age, more questions have to be answered before we can make life decisions.  And figuring out what we want in life becomes a craft.  It’s a strategic mind fuck of a game where we must balance our ids and superegos delicately so as not to break our souls.

One of the less decipherable desires I’ve had in my life pertains to the XY chromosomes.  And perhaps, because attraction is such a fickle and unrelenting mistress, I am not alone.  I have never been in a relationship.  Not for lack of want.  But I tended to fall for men because I loved that they would laugh at my fart jokes.  After 8 high school and college years of thinking blowing into the crux of my elbow and emitting a sound only the deaf wouldn’t appreciate, I came to realize that maybe guys weren’t trying to have sex with “one of the guys.”

So to overcompensate, I lost my virginity to a guy I knew so little that his name in my phone was “Office Guy”.  In a plot twist that would give The Usual Suspects a run for it’s money, “Office Guy” and I parted ways shortly after our initial encounter.

My second sexual encounter was with a guy I had negative 7 interest in.  But after my friend left with her boyfriend, I sat with a newly refreshed Jack and Coke without much of an escape plan.  When he asked me to come back to his place, I sort of shrugged and mumbled as much as one can mumble the word “sure” and slumped into a cab with him.  In a plot twist that would give The Sixth Sense a run for it’s money, I never returned his calls.

After that, I had the only “Facebook official” relationship of my life that lasted a staggering month and a half with a guy who seemed right up my alley simply because he seemed interested in me.  Never mind the fact that he was selfish and immature and made me pay for my own ticket to see a movie I had zero interest in ever seeing in my life.  (It was the remake of A Nightmare on Elm Street.  For anyone who knows me, there is literally no other genre on earth that interests me less than slasher flicks.  Much less crappy remakes of slasher flicks.)  But I digress...

In a twist that would give the sinking of the Titanic in Titanic a run for it’s money, I broke up with him by quoting a song by Fiona Apple.

Now, I could go on and on and on and on and on and on and...

about the number of guys whom I continued to associate myself with simply because I was so eager to have someone want to associate themselves with me.  But I don’t think I can hold your attention that long.  We’ll save that for the memoir.

The point is, after being turned down so many times by the guys I always truly wanted, I no longer knew what I actually did want.  I would become transfixed by someone who appeared interested, regardless of drunken nonsense.

But over the past year, I did encounter someone whom I truly cared about and who truly cared about me.  It was real and genuine.  And though distance doomed it from the start, it doesn’t change the fact that it helped me hone my desires.

Because you may think that you want something.  You may crave it like a junkie selling their grandfather’s ass watch for one more hit.  But until you get a taste of what truly makes you happy, then you’ll wander around aimlessly until you find it.  And you’ll delude yourself into believing something fleeting will actually make you happy.

So as I sit here and watch the lightning flash every couple of seconds during this June thunderstorm, I don’t feel lonely because I don’t have someone to cuddle up with tonight.  I feel a sense of happiness.  Because I know that one day again, I will find someone who will sit with me on my couch, our feet entwined, and we’ll exchange looks of awe at each other as each crack of light and sound fills the air.  We’ll smile at each other because we know how special every moment together is.  Because that’s what I want.  And I’m no longer willing to settle for anything less.

But until then, maybe it won’t hurt to hit up that ice cream sundae bar after all.

**Please note, due to the storm, my Internet went down.  Therefore, this post was unable to post during the actual storm.  Now it's morning and kinda nice out.**

TBA

DAY TWO HUNDRED AND SEVENTY-SEVEN: The Pauper Turns Off the Power

Most people who know me know my aversion to technology.  My cell phone still flips open and only functions as a means to send text messages and make the occasional phone call.  When I take a screenshot, you can usually see the "How to take a screenshot" tab open on my window.  And when I received an ipad for Christmas, I went to the Apple Store for a free seminar and was the only person in attendance who has never seen a standing president shot in the head (Lincoln included).

So it should come as no surprise that I have decided to take a stance against something I have termed "Technological Brain Atrophy."

I'm about to make a revelatory statement: Our reliance on technology is rotting our society.

*Pauses for shock and awe to cease.*

Remember the good old days when you asked your parents or grandparents a question?  "Are tomatoes a fruit or vegetable?" and they would simply respond, "Go look it up."

This used to mean searching through an encyclopedia.  Scanning for the correct letter volume, finding the word "tomato" alphabetically, and then reading the passage until your answer presents itself.  Now it means, Google "tomato vegetable fruit?"  Question mark optional.

Sure, this seems insanely easier.  And in our fast-paced lives, why should we bother to look things up in books?  We have much more important things to accomplish.  Like binge-watching Orange Is the New Black on Netflix.*

But the fact is, the less we use our brains, the less our brains become useful to us.  Our brains are muscles.  If we don't exercise their incredible talents every once in away, they will get fat and lazy and start binge-watching Orange Is the New Black on Netflix.

So I have taken a break from Googling for the time being.  For instance, today I tried to remember the names of all the Starks' direwolves on Game of Thrones; Ghost, Summer, Nymeria, Lady... Beebo?  Tupac?  I drew blanks on the last two.  But I refused to Google it.  If I really want to remember what dumb little name Rickon came up with, I will have to search my brain to figure it out.

Because there's also a beautiful reward in finding something on your own.  When Netflix took Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind off their instant play, I was devastated.  Genuinely.  When I'm going through a rough time, that movie is my Cherry Garcia.  So I decided to buy it.  I went to Amazon, and I put it in my shopping cart.  But then I stopped myself.  No.  Not like this.  If I want this movie, I will go out into the real world and find it.

If I recall correctly, the greatest relationship of my life happened because I explored a world outside of the Internet.  I was 18 and had just moved to Chicago for college.  I knew very few people, and more so, I knew even less about the city I newly inhabited.  But I knew the Mag Mile!  And one fateful day in September, I stumbled into Virgin Records (RIP) on Michigan Avenue.

It was that day that I happened upon the wall of new releases.  I walked over to this album with what appeared to be a pea pod on the cover.  I recognized the name, so I slipped the headphones on and gave it a listen.  The first song, so simple, so beautiful.  It grabbed me immediately.  I knew I had to have it.

And from that moment on, Fiona Apple changed my life.

Am I saying that I would have never discovered Fiona Apple on the Internet?  Absolutely not.  But there's no way that moment would resonate as powerfully if I was simply clicking away at YouTube videos on my computer.

We are a society that complains about the blistering cold and having to stay indoors for months on end because it's so awful outside, but then we spend our summers staring at our gadgets and gizmos a plenty.

So I ask for a call to arms.  To join me in the fight against TBA.  Let's pledge to function more as humans and less as drones.  Let's open our eyes and our brains.  Let's not become sheeple.  For we cannot let the machines win!

And now, I'm going to play brain games on Lumosity.... GOD DAMMIT!

*I plan on doing this soon.  So please understand the hypocrisy oozing out of every word in this post.

Ch-ch-ch-changes

DAY TWO HUNDRED AND SEVENTY-TWO: The Pauper Slows Down

As I look back on this blog from inception until this post, I notice a trend.  A trend that gets me down a bit.

I haven't been doing a good job keeping up with this blog.

In 2013, words were coming both fast and furiously.  It was as if Vin Diesel was at the helm of my fingertips.  Rushes of emotions and experiences flooded my purview.  I sat on the train and got an idea for a post that I just had to jot down in my notebook.  I'd be sitting on my porch with a glass of wine and suddenly leap up and rush to my computer.

But that's not the case anymore.

And it wasn't until recently that I understood why.  It's not because I have no words left to write.  It's not because I don't care.  It's not because I'm not a good writer.  It's simply because I've settled into my new life.

When change occurs, it's a deluge of experience.  You make a decision to leave your job to pursue your creative dreams; it's an emotional adrenaline rush.  Like jumping out of an airplane knowing that one of the parachutes in the pile is a dud.  Every moment feels like a new experience.  Everything was worth commenting on.  Whether it was going to the Starbucks across from my apartment at 11:20 a.m. on a Tuesday.  Or waking up without obligation.  Or having actual time to sit my ass down and write.  It was all new.  And it was beautiful.

But even for the risky skydiver, at some point, you determine whether you grabbed the dud parachute or not.  And once I opened it up and started gliding towards the ground, my grand experiences settled into routine.

So although the thoughts are no longer pouring out of me in a way that change mandates, I'm not going to believe that's any kind of a slight on me.  It's just human nature.  Much like it's easy to be happy when things are going well, it's easy to miss the nuances of life when life runs at a steady pace.

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.