Connect Four!

DAY THREE HUNDRED AND SIXTY-FIVE: The Pauper Re-Evaluates the Essentials

If you died tomorrow, where would you define yourself?

It's a heavy thought, but as someone constantly floating through life searching for an answer to "why?", I think about this often.  Do we leave our mark on others?  Did others leave their mark on us?  Unless you were some kind of latchkey kid who never grew out of it, our lives are constantly echoed by the voices around us.

Relationships.  A bond between one individual and another.  Be it familial, friendship, romantic, or nemesis; our lives are constantly being molded by the people around us.

Last year, a friend posed the question to me; "If scoring the soundtrack of the movie of your first 25 years on the planet, what 4 to 5 songs capture the essence of your core periods?"  I opted for a full soundtrack in lieu of 4 to 5 songs.  My response was an amalgamation of intrepid battles with the opposite sex.  Songs ranging from an electro-pop declaration of loneliness to a meditation on unrequited love.  From a song dedicated to asking my crush to prom to a scene I've always wanted to write into a movie with a woman ridiculously bawling over a recently lost love.  There was a common link that my friend pointed out: Most of my songs revolved around the wounds bestowed upon me by the opposite sex.

It was a jolt.  The kind of jolt you always knew was lurking behind some lurid corner, but never noticed until someone pointed it out.  Like the smell of last night's booze on your breath as you walk into church.  So one question remained: Why did I place so much emphasis on spoiled goods?

As someone no longer self-conscious over the fact that she's never had a relationship, I have niente qualms about admitting all of my past loves have been unrequited.  And yet, I still defined myself by people who couldn't see the beauty I can see in myself.  Why?  Is it some kind of twisted low self-esteem logic buried deep within the teenager that never left?  Fabricated obsession?  A medieval torture device?

Because the thing is, I have had some amazing relationships in my life.  When I was ostracized for suicidal tendencies at age 14, one brave friend confided her personal travails so I didn't feel so alone.  I spent the past three and a half years living with a boy I befriended at age 15 when we both whole-heartedly believed we would be superstars by the age of 21.  I found my confidence in a girl I admired for years before we eventually studied abroad together.  I've had a mentor at work who taught me how to stand up for myself in the face of ugliness.  I've met partners who have nurtured my creativity.  And, oh yes, I met some guys who treated me like shit.  And yet, they are the ones whom I allowed to define my soundtrack.

There is so much beauty to be found in every single relationship we happen upon.  It's such a shame that the pop culture machine breeds [women] to believe the romantic relationships should dictate their lives.  I've spent countless nights sitting on a friends' porches, bearing my soul.  My dreams, my fears, my regrets, my shames, my past, my hopes, my embarrassing bowel movements.  My everythings.  Why do we not cherish these relationships the same way we do with the ones that turn so sour?

I pose this thought because I wonder if it's how the populous feels.  Because the media would lead us to believe so.  I spent some time watching trailers for upcoming cinematic features.  Anything with a female lead inevitably featured a woman toiling over her romantic woes.  Do women genuinely obsess about romance this much?  Or do we obsess about it because we've been programmed to believe it's our lot in life?

You know what I want to see?  More than anything.  I want to see a world where femme-centric films no longer center around the fallacy that women's relationships need to be defined by whom they are fucking.  Because as a woman who spent too much unsatisfying time doing said activity, I can tell the young girls of today the truth.

Relationship: The way in which two or more concepts, objects, or people are connected, or the state of being connected.

Relationships will always define who we are.  Because the interactions we have in life will invariably affect the actions we take next.  But make no mistake; romantic relationships will define about 5% of the person you become (Scientific fact... Ish.)  As a woman who has very limited experience in relationships of the romantic persuasion, I can promise you that life continues to astound me.  The people I encounter and share my life with, well, those are the people who remind me to wake up in the morning.  That life can still amaze me.  And when two people meet and connect on a level that defies odds, well, that's what I live for.

Blackout

DAY THREE HUNDRED AND FORTY-FOUR: The Pauper's Back Porch

What are earmarks of our lives?  Birthdays, New Years, and anniversaries.  These are randomly selected dates based on a calendar that dictate the passing of time.  But as days blur into weeks, weeks into months, and months into years; time becomes less visible in our memories.  It's harder to remember what year events occurred in my adult life without the demarkation of school years.  I became an adult at 18 - in 2005.  But I became an independent adult while living in this apartment.  This apartment I say goodbye to tomorrow.

As you get older, life becomes less about monumental dates and more about moments.  Like the moment you cut yourself off from your parents financially.  Or the moment you decided to fuck a life not worth living and start one that was.  Or the moments you spent on your back porch figuring out who you are.

Tonight, my last night in my apartment, I decided to have one final GrubHub food delivery to 3050 N Greenview.  Some fabulous (read: decent) Thai food.  I popped open my Netflix and put on a documentary.  Elaine Stritch: Shoot Me (a carryover from my recent 30 Rock re-binge).  After an hour and twenty minutes spent watching a woman contemplate her impending mortality (made all the more poignant after her recent death) by shuffling on with what she loves to do in sassy, brassy fashion; it made my forced reflection on this apartment much more imperative.

So onto the dirty work.  There was still some packing to be done.  I've spent the past couple of weeks slowly taking things from my shelves and cupboards and shoving them into boxes that I'll have to reopen like Christmas presents after you already peeked in the basement.  My kitchen has looked just a little barer.  My bathroom a wee bit more sparse.  Even the lack of furniture in our shared living room didn't seem to bother me.

But as I consolidated the bulk of my furniture into our dining room to make the moving process easier, I turned and looked at the nakedness of my bedroom and burst into tears.  A room that has shelved my memories, my personality, and my life for the past three and a half years was now just another blank slate for a new life to infiltrate.  It's not mine anymore.  The most stability I've had in my life in years is now gone.

I had to get out.  I grabbed my beer, my ipod, and my tears, and I headed outside.  To my back porch.

There it was.  Unchanged by packing.  Never big enough to furnish, I've always chosen to sit on the bare wood while sipping on my wine and staring off at the large tree whose outline looks like a cross between an Edgar Allen Poe and a Shel Silverstein poem.  I searched my ipod for the perfect song to calm me down, as I've done a thousand times before.  And there I sat.  Looking inside myself, trying to get a hold of my emotion.  Not to get rid of it.  Never to get rid of it.  Because it's on that porch, where all the tears and fears and anger were welcomed.  Where I learned to stop pushing my emotions out.  Where I finally understood that each and everything I feel can and will be used for good.  To spread to others like a promiscuous 15 year old with mono.  (Or maybe she's just someone who really likes to share her water bottle.  Who am I to judge?)

I spent years of my life trying to rid myself of my inner demons.  Therapy gone bad years ago made me believe that they were ridiculous.  My moodiness pushed people away.  It became a burden.  And I had to quash them.

But as I grew lonelier and lonelier, less reliant on friendships who found solace in significant others and lovers who found little solace in me, those demons became all I had.  So if they were there to stay, I might as well learn to live with them.  And once I grabbed ahold of them, I became more able to twist them and use them for my own gain.  To release them on the world.

My lonely nights on my back porch.  They made me who I am.  Time we spend with others can be magical.  But the time we spend with ourselves is essential.

So as I sat there, stumbling upon an old Muse song, I couldn't help but smile.  My tears evaporated on my cheeks as the cool Chicago wind blew them so only the salt remained.  "Don't grow up too fast / And don't embrace the past."  And on my back porch, I bid my apartment a humble good bye.  Not embracing the past, but simply utilizing it in the way it's - by nature - intended.  To be remembered.

This Must Be the Place

DAY THREE HUNDRED AND THIRTY-NINE: The Pauper Says Goodbye

And now, I say to you all, "Good bye."

I'm kidding.  I'm not going anywhere.  I'm just going to keep on waxing poetic regardless of whether you read or not.

Two parallel milestones are currently occurring in my life.  Friday, my parents closed on our house.  The house I grew up in.  The house I spent my adolescence.  The only place I've called home.

Until I found my home.

This Saturday, I will be leaving the apartment I have called home for three and a half years.  The home I moved into at the malleable age of 23.  The home I found my adult family in.

Selling my childhood home has been a series of crying wolf.  After moving to Maryland in 1999, my family finally decided to dig its roots.  I had lived in five houses and two apartments for the first 11 years of my life.  So it was a relief to stay grounded during grades 6 through 12.  And as I left for college, my home was constantly on the precipice of leaving me.  My dad's job was ever-changing.  And many times I remember receiving the devastating phone call that they would be moving.

Though it never came to fruition, the nostalgic in me feared losing touch with the only constant I had known for years.  Regardless of finding new life in Chicago.  It was always comforting to know I could go home.

I moved into my first non-Chicago dorm residence in 2008.  Between 2008 and 2011, I moved into three apartments and one house.  I was a nomad who never grew attached to the place she called "home", because I knew I still had one back in Frederick, Maryland.

Until I moved with my best friend into my Greenview apartment.  It was the only place I scoped out myself.  And we signed a criminally cheap lease in Lakeview thanks to signing a 16 month guarantee.

As my family moved to a new country, and my brother and I grew more and more distant, evolution forced me to find a new home and family.  My roommate became my brother, my touchstone.  Someone I wasn't afraid to hop into bed with and watch videos of Beyonce ad nauseam.

Earlier this year, we decided to end our living arrangement for him to move in with his boyfriend.  I felt ready to begin a new, but apprehensive of leaving behind this life I had cultivated over three plus years.

It was only fitting that around that same time, my parents announced they were finally putting our Maryland house up for sale.  And a funny thing happened on the way to a real estate agent... I didn't care.

I wasn't taking moody walks to the beach pondering what life would be like without my Maryland home.  I wasn't going through old pictures of the good times shared with friends and family in that home.  I wasn't buying jugs of frosting in bulk to reminisce over the multiple tubs I sucked down of them after school when no one was home.

I just said, "Okay."

But now, as I read the news that the closing went through, I sit here staring at the boxes in my apartment that I have packed.  I'm staring at the empty bookshelf where Cody kept his DVDs.  I'm rummaging through my cabinets jonesing for a jar of peanut butter to lick off a spoon.  But there is none to be found, because ain't nobody got the room to buy new groceries before moving out.

A house is an object.  It's a place you stay so you aren't on the street.  You pay rent.  You spend ridiculous amounts of money on heat when it's forty below.  You hang your Moulin Rouge poster on the fifth wall of a residence.  But a home?  A home is where you cry.  Where you laugh.  Where you grow.  And shape.  It's where you look back on the hole in the wall where you jammed a knife out of frustration.  Where you can joke about your slanted shanty floors.  Where you still find the imperfection in the bathroom door that looks like a moorish face.  A home is where memories are cultivated.  Fresh and raw.  

And sooner or later, every home you have reverts back to a house.  Because you find a home to replace it.  You find new memories that feel so important they take precedence in your mind.

So as I look around at the blank walls in my home, the boxes that I grabbed years ago at a Dominick's to shovel my things around; I know that there is only one home I have to say goodbye to this month.  There is one place that I will be thinking of for the next few months with nostalgic longing.  And that home is no longer on the east coast.

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.