Don’t worry so much that I can’t be found right now. I’m not disappearing, just going through metamorphosis in my little cocoon. Stop looking; you’ll know when I reemerge.
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When hungry, eat your rice; when tired, close your eyes. Fools may laugh at me, but wise men will know what I mean.
—Lin-Chi
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At dinner last week, my little sister and I had my mom giggling to the point of tears at the table. We were out at a longtime favorite Italian restaurant, one of those hidden gems that will be booming with business even if the neighborhood around it falls to pieces.
My sister and I share a struggle to gain and keep weight on our wire-thin frames. In her case, she suffers from Chron’s Disease, which prevents her from properly absorbing the majority of the food she eats. In my case, I’m just a bundle of fidgeting energy, never stopping long enough for, as my friend Monisha once phrased it, “moss to stick to this rolling stone.”
Pair that with my obnoxious corn syrup allergy and the normal post-breakup “I haven’t eaten or slept in a week” weight loss I’ve recently experienced, and I’m in pretty sad shape. I looked in the mirror the other day and realized my breastbone is currently visible, and the gag-tasticness of that is what brought up the weight gain conversation at dinner.
My little sister was giving me some tips that the school nutritionist had given her for healthy ways to gain weight. Apparently the word of the day in the world of nutritionists is “caloric,” as in, “How could you make this meal more CALORIC? You could add a spoonful of peanut butter! And how could you make THAT more caloric? Add a stick of butter!”
We were having a field day with this at the restaurant, slathering slices of bread with entire packets of butter, debating whether or not we should add butter to our meals when the finally arrived, and trying to be as CALORIC as possible. Our waiter was very amused, and kept refilling the bread basket without us ever needing to ask.
My mom asked me why I was so worried about gaining weight, especially when I have the opposite issue of most women. I explained the horror of seeing myself turning into Ms. Skeletor, and added,
“My push-up bras should be ENHANCING, not COMPENSATING, Mom. This is a big deal.”
Thus began her fit of the giggles that carried us through dinner and out to the car for the drive home.
It is not lost on me that I am trying to both literally and figurative grow a thicker skin. I want to look and feel healthier both physically and emotionally, and maybe a new layer of insulation will offer me some protection I didn’t have before.
And, if that thicker skin offers me a few curves, less compensation and more complimenting, all the better.
Pass the butter, please.
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When I first moved out of the house at 18, my little sister waited approximately five minutes to make sure I wasn’t coming back to grab something I’d forgotten, grabbed her pillow, and swooped my room up.
This has meant that the only room left for me is the downstairs guest room. This was not actually my sister’s former room – she slept in the upstairs hallway most of her life, it’s a really long story, just know that my family is both wonderful and insane – and let me just show you why the guest room was never meant to be lived in by an adult:
It’s incredibly small, and you’d think, “Well, there’s an entire rest of the house, she must hang out in the living room,” but no, I spend most of my time with my 6′ tall frame folded into the tiny space that is “mine.”
There are some challenges that come with living in the guest room, one of them being the fact that the room has zero ventilation. None. In order to keep the room from reaching 98.6°, a window must be kept open at all times, regardless of the season. In the summer, the higher temperatures mean both windows in the room must be kept open.
As someone with newly developed allergies, this is obviously not a dream situation. I am, however, grateful that my mom is letting me get back on my feet and get my life back in order, so I take a Zyrtec before I go to sleep and just deal with the smoker’s cough I have developed from constant exposure to pollen.
The allergies, though, have taken a major backseat to the new issue. The awful issue. The issue that’s kept me from sleeping past 6:30am - weekends and all – for the past three and a half weeks. As my current bout with insomnia has been putting me to bed at an average time of 3:30am each evening, this issue has become quite the bad situation.
Folks, meet The House.
This house went from a hole in the ground to its current state in a matter of weeks. The men working on the project start approximately five minutes before the birds have stirred from their nests, and seven days a week they wake me up with their heavy machinery, park their cars all over my street, politely check me out up and down every time I get the mail or drive by them, and generally make sure I avoid my own home like the plague.
At the very least, the speed at which they’re currently working seems to imply that the house will be done sooner than later. I’m to the point of asking my friends if we can do sleepovers so I can get one evening of hammer- and nail gun-free sleep. My allergies and I cannot survive a summer of this.
Beyond the noise shaking the entire neighborhood out of their Saturday slumbers, there is the fact that the house is bigger than everyone else’s on the street. I hope the new homeowners weren’t hoping to make friends with the neighbors anytime soon, because they are more likely to be met with an angry mob of overtired soccer moms.
I only hope the mob waits til a decent hour of the morning, because I’ve really got to get some rest and I don’t want to miss the show.
Yesterday, I had one of the most productive days in recent memory. I wasted my morning waiting for a UPS shipment that never arrived, and by the time I reached the office I was chomping at the bit to just…and I can’t believe I’m writing this on my blog…“Get ‘er done!”
There have been a handful of old projects I’ve had stuck on my plate for months and months and months, projects tied to very unhappy human beings looking to vent their frustration with their own lives onto me. Clearly, there is no better person to dump all over than your friendly graphic designer, and I’ve had a plate full of it.
One in particular became such a negative situation that my stomach now drops every time I see this person’s name in my inbox. And yesterday…oh yes, yesterday was the last day of it; I made sure every base was covered, made sure the finished product was as perfect as I could humanly make it, and sent it off to the lab along with a note to the person saying, “This has been submitted, it’s out of my hands at this point.”
And it wasn’t just for that landmine of a situation, but the rest of the stragglers from the past few months; I managed to get every single past project out to print, as well as a few new ones that were thrown into the mix last-minute. It was amazing, because even for the clients I adore, having unfinished projects hanging in the air is mentally exhausting. When the “To-do” has four items that never seem to get crossed off, the release from that is wonderful.
Even better, the finished products are going to be superb. All the orders were for marketing pieces to be printed out and shipped, and my clients will be thrilled to receive their packages. I get the relief from the on-going projects, and they get the most gorgeous materials they’ve ever seen.
I’m impressed with myself at the amount of work I was able to whip out in a day; it goes to show that a clear mind is the true secret to success.
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Getting off the more “Debbie Downer” topics of late, I have a funny and brief story.
I pulled my Volvo into the driveway today behind my little sister’s car. She’s been running a painting business as a summer job, which has left her clothes, shoes, car, and anything she owns covered in paint that seems to inevitably be the color “Clary Sage.” Apparently it’s a Sherwin Williams classic, and judging by the amount this kid tracks home every day, half the homes in the Capital District must be this particular shade of green.
As I pull in behind her paint-spattered car, which has all four doors wide open, paintbrushes strewn across the driveway and yard, I observe her diving in and out of all four of the doors in a mad search for something.
“I lost my cell phone!” she said, pushing her hair out of her face with Clary Sage-colored fingernails.
“Why don’t you get the house phone and call your phone next to your car?” I asked, amused. My sister loses everything that she hasn’t managed to break first; it’s why I will quite literally have a conniption fit if she as much as pretends to touch my stuff. If it’s not her cell phone, it’s her car keys; all of her belongings are now Clary Sage so it’s even harder to track them down.
She ran inside and grabbed the phone, and I headed out to the mailbox to fetch the mail. Suddenly, she ran over next to me, house phone in hand, and beelined to the trash can at the end of the driveway. I leaned my head in, and together we heard a faint “buzz” coming from inside the bin.
While attempting to clean her car for the day, my little sister had managed to throw her Clary Sage-colored cell phone in the trash along with all her trash bags and empty paint cans. I laughed from the mailbox back into the house, and could hear both the buzzing phone and my sister digging through the trash can to find where it had landed.
Her response once she came back inside, phone in hand? “That’s a new one…”
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In the past few days, I’ve had two of my friends who practice Reiki contact me because they haven’t been able to find my energy anywhere in the Universe.
Normally, I shine to them like the Batlight on the clouds over Gotham City, so this was a source of concern for them. Where did Carlene go?
Good question. Where did I go?
I guess before I go forward any further, I should do a slight recap of the last month or so of my life. I’ve alluded to the changes I’ve experienced without actually sharing them, and my self-imposed silence isn’t doing me any favors; self-expression is what helps me work through life’s ups and downs, and I’ve kept a pretty tight lid on things thus far.
For the past three and a half years, I loved a good man with my entire heart. We had a lot of great times, a lot of good times, and some bad times. And, unfortunately, the bad times made a deep enough impression (and depression) on the relationship that the great and the good lost out in the end. I made the decision to end things when I recognized I wasn’t able to move past the scars left by those bad times.
It was my decision, and it was a heartbreakingly difficult….no, that’s not strong enough….it was a shit decision to have to make. How do you walk away from someone who loves you, supports you, enjoys spending all their time with you, will sacrifice anything for your happiness?
How do you hurt them, cause them pain, make them cry, all because the pilot light in your heart was blown out by the bad things, things that happened years ago? Where the hell are the matches? Couldn’t it just be relit?
And, after trying for six more months, I realized that no, I can’t relight it; the deep hurt that came along with the bad did too much damage to my trust, and that’s the only thing that relights that flame. I can’t live a life without that spark. And that reality has sucked. A lot.
I’ve been what Gia terms a “sad panda” since the beginning of May. I’ve been grieving the loss of a major piece of my life, one that took me places I didn’t even know I was equipped to go. Now it’s June, and some time has passed, the normal angry breakup words have been exchanged, the not-so-normal violations of each other’s boundaries have occurred, the “will we get back together?” window has closed, and now I’m sitting square in the middle of, “Hmmm…”
I’m all by myself now that it’s all over, and, though it pains the independent woman in me to admit, I’m not entirely sure what to do now that I’m here. Being sad is easy because it’s predictable: hang head, feel depressed, shuffle through the day, go to bed. Until now, every passing week has felt about an era long instead of seven days. For the first time in weeks I’m starting to notice terrain that exists outside of my own head. And I’m supposed to DO something about it.
It worked out well that I had the accidental foresight to set summer goals for myself last week. First off, goals are always good to have. Second off, “summer” goals puts a bit of a time crunch on things; this is the Northeast, and while winter can (and will) stretch its tendrils into fall and spring, summer is our mini-vacation from the grey and gloom.
I’ve already checked off #1 on the Summer Goals list by finally pulling the trigger and trading my life savings/”Run away to Europe” money for new camera equipment. It’s the most terrifyingly satisfying thing I’ve done since signing the papers that originally established me as a 23-year-old business owner. My mom and I celebrated by jumping up and down in the kitchen, shrieking in excitement between bouts of my hyperventilating over having spent every penny I own on camera equipment.
At least it’s really, really good camera equipment.
So, thanks to my goals and their gentle push forward, I am adjusting. I’m getting used to not calling to let someone know I’ve got to finish some work and will be late to dinner; after being in serious relationships for the better part of a decade, now I’ve got no one to answer to but myself. And, quite honestly, it’s weird.
I suppose I need to make an addendum to my Summer Goals list. Goal #11 is going to be, “Get used to being the boss.”
After the ink dries on that new goal, I’m going to track down the elusive Carlene and reintroduce myself, see if we can’t turn that Batlight back on. We’ve never met as 27-year-old single women and, quite frankly, I’d like to see what she’s all about.
I have a hunch she’s gonna be a hell of a lot of fun.
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Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgement that something else is more important than fear.
—Ambrose Redmoon
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