If Sloths Did Yoga, I Would Be the Cutest Slovenly Sloth

I’m the worst blogger ever.

At least, I would be if I was passing judgment on my ability to blog with frequency and gusto, which I’m not, of course.

As a reintroduction to my neglected life-documentation habits, I will bookend the last month or so with two illustrated examples of general slovenliness. In the middle of these two episodes, I have been putting my life together, becoming at peace with the universe, loving Lent (The Catholic church actually pressures you into becoming a better person once a year- it’s lovely), and practicing yoga, but it’s not as fun(ny) to detail all of that as it is to recount my moments of ridiculous slovenliness to you. Right?

Roughly a month ago, I woke up with pie in my hair. Pie. IN MY HAIR. How did this happen, you ask? I might possibly have been eating not-quite-set-correctly chocolate pie made for work right out of the pie tin before bed. I also might not have had any clean dishes, as I hate doing the dishes and always procrastinate about them, and might have been using a fork to eat drippy pie.  And that’s how I went to work (I didn’t have time to shower!) with pie in my hair.

This is how you do your hair when you have pie in it.


A full month after this event, it’s still very much winter here: wet, cold, and snowy. An interesting side effect of being really cold (aside from bedtime pie gluttony) is that your nose might develop the propensity to shamelessly run without your consent, or even knowledge. When your nose is numb, and your face is numb, it might take some time to realize that there is snot dripping out of your nose for no reason at all. Of course, I might also be crying. Either way, sometimes, often, in the winter, my nose is drippy.

Yesterday I was having a too-sad-and-defeated-to-move phase at my desk (these are fairly rare these days, but if any place will incur them, work will), and drinking tea out of a giant mug. Can I just say that I love these giant face-mugs? I think most people use them for soup and such, but my sister painted me one for Christmas (I would link her, but she’s lame and not on facebook or the internetz, so no such luck) and I use it at home for tea all of the time! It’s like a giant tea pot. For your face, and your insides.



Dramatic reenactment


Yesterday I was clearly too sad to move my body enough to lift the tea, so I was delving my face towards the cup on my desk in a half-hearted attempt to chai my way out of my sadness and despair. I overshot and pretty much dunked half of my face into the tea. As I resurfaced, I sighed at my general failure to thrive, and thought, “I hope there isn’t snot in my tea.” Shame. SHAME.

And so goes my life, basically. Lena Dunham has nothing on me (aside from being famous and wildly successful).

Thankfully, my entire office is not as sloppy and haphazard as I am. I stand in stark juxtaposition to my other Americorps compadre, who had worked here a full year before I came.  We dress similarly, are both going to grad school for social work (she macro, me clinical), we’re both vegetarians (well, she’s technically a pescatarian, but let’s not nitpick self-labels here) and seem like we should have just loads in common. She is always more beloved than myself, however, and I think I’ve stopped fighting it.

I recently read this really shaming article about why some people are habitually late, and it made me feel sad about myself and I want to have friends so I’m trying to be better about my perpetual late-ness. If you’re worried the office doesn’t function as it should because of my propensity for less than timely behavior, good news for you! NM is always early to everything, and the first in the office every morning. Her hair is smooth and shiny and bobbed, braided sleek against her head, while mine is frizzy and waivy and generally a long, hot, kind-of-managed mess. When we recently managed a registration table at an awards ceremony (she was lovingly assigned to do so, I stepped up to the plate second-string because I’m rarely asked to do anything and I was bored), she smoothly, clearly, and loudly directed people to our table while I positioned my scarf in such a way it hid the stains on my white shirt, pretended my cardigan didn’t have a hole in the elbow, and smilingly directed people to the coffee and pastries.  When we do presentations at high schools, giggling boys will pass up notes addressed to her.

She has keys to all of the office things, I don’t. When I offer to help with something, she smilingly replies that she has it taken care of. I often feel like the less-favored child, pluggling along in my poverty and slovenliness while she takes center stage and is handed awards. If I shovel snow for three hours on a weekend, she shovels for seven. Even though I’m sure some of my annoyance is highlighted in this post (WORKING on it), I don’t wish to be NM in any way. I am as pretty (high school boys’ opinions don’t count), as smart, as capable as NM, even if I am rarely given the opportunity to demonstrate this.

Rather, I’ve recognized in NM glimpses of myself. How did I have any friends in college?! Taking an excess of tasks because it was easiest to do them myself than to manage and work with others, constantly trying to prove myself to someone or something, looking perfect, sometimes at the expense of another. Well, that’s a shame. Threes of the world, be shamed. BE SHAMED.

A friend was recently talking to me about enneagrams, and I’m either a two with a very strong three wing or a three with a very strong two wing. I’m leaning towards the latter, but there are all kinds of rules about how you can only have a "wing" next to your type and this and that and I don’t fully understand all of the rules and regulations. Threes are The Achiever. Threes spend their time performing, pleasing, accomplishing, achieving, doing. Although none of this should have been self-revelatory news, it’s always interesting, I think, to delve into what motivates oneself. I’m motivated by accomplishment, and I don’t havvveeee to be. Everything is not THAT important, and sometimes it means I have come off as snooty or self-involved or exclusive, which is not nice and universal and such.

One of the greatest changes I’m implementing in my life is giving a lot less fucks. While I’m sure this would be horrible advice for some individuals, for me, it’s life changing. I’m so much more zen and Mudita and stable and happy. And possibly humble, but my blog is probably a bad place to try to convince you of that.

 Any of my advice should probably be taken with a grain of salt anyway, since the other night when it was a full moon and I had half-bathed my face in tea I started crying when I learned that “buffalo wings” are actually little baby chicken wings.



And

 

And

My Mom is BFFs with Mrs. Claus, and All I Have is Mascara on My Socks

I haven’t posted in a long time, which is regrettable, since my last post made me sound like a baby-hater (untrue). I’ve been very emotional (read on) and my computer has died a tragic death. These are my excuses, although my recent lack of internet transparency is likely of no concern to you whatsoever.

My cat being terribly cute and hugging my arm for hours because he missed me,
because cat pictures are always a good idea.


My mom used to make phone calls to Santa Claus when we misbehaved. She employed this tactic once, anyway. I was fighting with my sister in the kitchen, and suddenly she was on the phone with Santa, just like that, using one of the tools in her mom-arsenal of secret things adults get access to and children don’t. Or maybe it was Mrs. Claus; I’m not sure. I was five or six years old, and I wasn’t terribly convinced. “How did you get their number?” I asked, with one eyebrow suspiciously raised and my little arms folded over my chest accusatorily, a preemptive emulation of my glaring-at-the-world–suspiciously faze, circa the ripe old age of ten. “All parents get their number when they have kids,” my mom replied. I suppose this ruse worked to some extent, because we stopped fighting, but I don’t think my mother tried this method of discipline again.

A visual of the timeless skeptical eyebrow


A part of me has always loved Christmas, but this year I found myself being a bit of a scrooge. With so many young children, the idea of Santa, (and perhaps therefore, holiday magic) has always been well perpetuated (definitely did not believe at the age of my eight year old little brother, but you know, he’s the youngest) in my family. We have many, many photographs of us dressed up in matching outfits for holiday pictures, in which plaid, Scottie dogs, and big bows are often themes. We tour neighborhood lights, read the “Christmas story” Christmas morning, and get to mass hours early on Christmas Eve to stake out the front row.

Every year I find myself more annoyed by the consumerism of it all, the exclusive, Christian-middle-class implications, and the materialistic obsessions of the season. Even in religious settings, we begin relaying the message to children that good things come to you if you behave well, and if Santa Claus doesn't show... it's not about means, it's about being good.

A poor-quality phone of the Rockefeller Center tree I saw in New York.

 

My cynicism this year might not have been terribly unique, but my emotional upheaval was. Something happened to my ability to regulate my feelings when I landed in the DFW airport. I’m not sure exactly what triggered the overexertion of my tear ducts that would continue for my entire vacation- probably some perfect storm of seeing people I hadn’t seen in a long time, holiday food, and being extremely vulnerable. Whatever the cause, I found myself crying hysterically and inconsolably roughly every fifteen minutes. For almost three days straight, I didn’t at any point stop crying for more than three hours.

When I begin crying, I physically cannot stop. No matter how hard I stare at the ceiling and try to calm myself down, the more I cry the angrier I get at myself for crying, and thus more crying ensues. I’m not a pretty or light crier. I sob hard, I can’t breathe, and fountains of snot flow down my face. I’ve had some rough moments of public humiliation while crying- I’ve cried in Disneyland, in restaurants, in front of people I desperately needed to present a professional face to. I’ve always been criticized for being overly sensitive, and I cried much too often as a teenager, but most of the time my emotions have been much better regulated as an adult.

All for naught. On Christmas day I spent roughly the early morning into late afternoon crying my eyes out, sprawled across my bed as I threw used Kleenex and toilet paper tufts into the wasteland of snot and angst developing aside my bed. I physically had to arch my eyebrows to keep my eyes from disappearing into red folds of sagging flesh for days afterwards.

Eventually, I ran out of Kleenex, and reached for the closest absorptive article I could find: my soft new socks. All of my socks (and underwear, and cardigans…) have extremely large holes in them, so over Christmas my mom took pity on me and bought me some new socks. It was quite kind of her. In so doing, she unlocked for me the most comforting tear-wiper in existence. The next time you can’t stop crying, find a (clean) sock to wipe your eyes (but not nose…) with. It’s extremely comforting and pain-relieving.

In my desperation to pull myself together (while holding socks to my face- not pulled together, clearly), I googled “how to stop crying.” I found this wikihow article, which is a bit shocking in its willingness to recommend mild doses of self-inflicted pain, and was entirely unhelpful to me, but the weird illustrations almost make it worth it. Of course, there are also numerous articles on women's crying habits (we’ll save nitpicking gender stereotypes for another day). At the end of this article, I was left aghast at the suggestion that on average, women cry for eight minutes at a time. Eight minutes?! How does everyone’s face not dissolve into a torrential downpour of sadness for hours on end every time they cry?

My best found solution to this weepy state included curling up on the couch with Sara and watching all three Tegan and Sara documentaries ever made, fangirling their personal lives, and singing loudly to every one of their songs. Tegan and Sara understand all heartbreak and sadness.

Based on my extensive experience, I have put together a rough list of ten things (coincidentally, my favorite number) to do when you can’t stop crying (compiled out of necessity from years of experience):

1.       Listen to every sad Tegan and Sara song (which is all of them).

2.       If a specific person is making you cry, make like you’re in elementary school again and imagine how very, very sad they would be if something awful happened to you. Never discredit the value of a few well-placed "DON'T TELL ME HOW TO FEEL"s, either.

3.       One of my friends gave me the handy tip of freezing spoons and then placing them on your eyelids. It at least gives you something to do.

4.       Watch this video. It’s guaranteed to make you so happy you won't even be able to handle your feelings.

5.       If you’re up to it, tell yourself nice things, like “you’re strong, you’re smart, you’re beautiful.” I strongly suggest not doing this in front of a mirror, unless you’re either the most resilient person alive or a pretty crier. In fact, just avoid mirrors in general.

6.       Wear leggings. The one or two times a year I elect to wear leggings as pants, I always run across some slut-shamey post on facebook about how girls should dress. Don’t let yourself be judged: you’re out of bed, walking, and comfortable. If any person is able to overlook your puffy train wreck of a face long enough to check out your ass, more power to them.

7.       Hug your best friend, your cat, or new acquaintances (in desperate straits).

8.       Let yourself cry at other, more appropriate times, so that the greatest public damage to your reputation might be eluded.

9.       If you have money, buy yourself this, or this (dying), or this, or this, or these, in purple (dying again). Items of materialized joy, right there. In fact, if you have all the money, buy me these things as well.

10.

I’m now past the holiday season, back in Massachusetts, and much more internally collected. Too bad my friends and family couldn't have seen me in this state. My “New Year’s resolutions” are basically my general goals for improving my life, like taking better care of the planet, better care of myself, not being late (or less late), writing more, etc. Trying to become a better person so I don’t mope so much.

While I work on that, if you need a shipment of socks, ask my mom. Tell her Ms. Claus called and told you to ask her to.

Babies > Late Nights at Bars or Late Nights at Bars > Babies? Right Now, I'm Going to have to Say the Latter...

Thursday night, I was at the Center for Hope and Healing’s annual holiday dinner. A baby was also in attendance. Towards the end of the evening, the baby left, and people commented on how cute it was. I leaned over to the friend and fellow volunteer sitting next to me. “I don’t like babies," I said, a few glasses of wine in, “but that one really is pretty cute.” “That was too loud," she said. “Go to the bathroom. Now.”

I don’t really like babies.

I feel like on the list of my not necessarily being a naturally good person this ranks just below not liking dogs and not liking Harry Potter, but… I just don’t.

I think they kind of look like monkeys, they cry too much, and they lack interesting personality. (I wish I could show you a picture of myself as a baby; my eyes are all squinty and it's somewhat amusing.) I’m not actually a bad person, I promise, I do like kids (sometimes), just more so if they're teenagers. Maybe it’s blameable on my changing my first diaper around the age of nine or ten and thus realizing the reality of constant child-responsibility, or maybe it just points to the possibility of my not having a soul.

Also, read this. 27 reasons why kids are actually the worst.

Friday I had the best day I've had at work so far, as I spoke to hundreds of teenagers about suicide prevention, one on one and in groups. The question I got passed on a notecard to me multiple times that day caught me off guard, however- instead of the anticipated “I struggle with this, is there hope, etc” notes, I repeatedly received the following question: “Why does it matter? Why do you think suicide is always bad?” Yikes.

I can only speak of loss and hope, of how glad I am to be alive every day, and, philosophy and religion excluded, how valuable they are. When I do this, I always think that if my story gives even one kid hope, the struggles of my job and the struggles of these past months have been totally worth it. This is when I think being bad at math might make me better at my job… I can never understand the idea of measuring lives logically; I could never sacrifice one person for the greater value of a group.

You matter so much. Let me tell you again and again and again, and please fight for yourself. Silly kids. This may be part of the reason teenagers have my heart. They’re so smart, but so dumb.

In case you hadn’t noticed, it’s actually baby season. So many of my friends my age on facebook, many who were married right when I was also supposed to be married (that’s a whole other story) are now pregnant. I’m happy for them, but to be honest… I’m also a little confused.

That’s not to say that I’m not interested in pushing a child out of my own vagina one day, because I am, but honestly I’m more interested in the pregnancy itself than the actual resulting human- which I think is a bad sign regarding potential motherhood. I’m highly confident in my own fertility (that word always makes women sound like a field to me…), and was very recently told I have “wide hips, good for birthing” by a Harvard medical student, so it does seem like a shame to leave all of that to waste. In my mind, I’ll be totally hardcore, having my child in a birthing center with relaxing music playing in the background and a total absence of pain medication coursing through my body, all deep breaths and calm strength. This may also be a strong indicator that I’m not ready to have children.

In the good ‘ole south, it’s not weird to have children and a family at such a young age, although it would be up here. Subconsciously, I always thought I would be a young wife as well, raising children and settling down. I kind of feel like a rebel, running away to explore and focus on my career and education and planning to hyphenate my last name if I ever do get married. I feel kind of weird not being ready to settle down- maybe I’m still just too selfish at this point in my life, maybe I don’t want to live with any regrets, or maybe I’m just stupid enough to walk away from a good thing when I have it.

I still stay up irresponsibly late at night, I leave my kitchen dirty for days at a time, and as I've mentioned before, I’m trying to manage some basic skills of what I consider adulthood.  It’s healthier for me, admittedly, to do things like avoid being out late at night and do downward dog-type pilates poses  before falling asleep, it just still seems a little boring. I recently did some investigation into why I still have the face of a fifteen year old at almost twenty-three, and the list of natural remedies I found I found was full of things I fail at doing, like eating vegetables and going to bed early. Boo.

I'm getting better at cooking, though- look at what I found on my desk this morning!

I do kind of wonder if I’m missing out, though. Being on your own team is hard. Is it weird that that’s what I miss most about a long-term, committed relationship? Always having someone on your team? While this whole living alone independence thing can be somewhat empowering, I also wish I had someone to tell everything to at the end of the day, to come home to dinner too, to share hopes and dreams and fears with, to love and be loved by unconditionally. Maybe it’s not so black and white, maybe you can have both, but after growing up in a culture where women largely stay home and cook and clean for their families while their husband is the “head of their household”, I’m just like… ewww. No thank you.

The idea of an unfettered, self-reliant, no real binding obligations to others sounds just lovely at this point in my life, but other than the times I was absolutely psychotically crazy, it’s also been the worst period of my life thus far. Living fast and fancy free sounds like the best of a coming of age novel, but after a regular attempt at it in not terribly recent previous months, I’m not sure it’s always that great. It’s all fun and games until you can’t get out of bed, you never feel on top of anything in your life, and you realize how flat-out jerky people can be.

I really don’t want to fall into what I sometimes perceive to be the black vortex of marriage and children yet, however, from which no one ever hears from you again. What’s the right balance of stability, anyway?

I feel like many people in their twenties can be stereotypically and unfairly blanketly placed in two extremist groups. There’s the young hipsters, all about freedom and travel, high on life and who knows what else, living for the day with no future plans. Then there’s the ‘adults”, settling into careers and committed relationships. I want to fit in between, I suppose. To have nights I feel 22 (obligatory Taylor Swift reference) and to also have enough routine to function at my best.

Maybe there’s more people in this category than I think. Those of us still discovering who we are, but also wanting to focus on careers. To have the freedom to travel (although not necessarily the money to do so) and also enough structure day to day to feel well balanced.  

Or maybe not. Maybe it's just me.

I'm going on an Adventure! (And this is how I pack.)

I’m taking a trip tomorrow! My main purpose is to visit a school this weekend, but I’m also going to spend some time just seeing the city and I’m extremely excited. It’s my first real vacation alone, and I’ve never been to New York before. This sounds like an excellent adventure, and is exactly the kind of thing I want to do while I'm young and poor and uninhibited.

I’ve been lucky enough to go on some pretty amazing trips in my life, but unfortunately, I didn’t appreciate most of them until adulthood. Vacations with my family were always An Event. You can’t mobilize 10-12 people, on a normal day or a holiday, without attracting a good deal of attention. Growing up, we were always mistaken for 1) a daycare, 2) a church group, or 3) a posse of estranged children. In our 12 passenger van, often with a full trailer attached, it’s no wonder we were a spectacle. To make our van look even more daycare-oriented, I recently found out that my mother had these custom license plates attached. I. Can’t. Even.

Once, at an airport, someone actually tried to enter our van thinking it was an airport shuttle. My family is wonderful, but as a preteen, I was not amused. I spent most of our vacations behind a constructed wall of blankets in my corner of the van, listening to my walkman and reveling in my teenage angst. Clearly, a lovely, positive child to be around.

My real ability to plan and execute a trip well was developed when Sara and I won a trip through writing an essay for our honors department to Geneva, Switzerland. Yes. That happened. This is the moment we found out:

Our lives might quite possibly have reached their peaks at 21. We paid almost nothing to stay in a fancy hotel, fly to a beautiful country, visit the UN, and explore every detail of Geneva. To do so, however, we had to plan a vacation in a country we had never seen, among people speaking a language (many languages, actually) we didn’t understand, in an unfamiliar culture. We’re best traveling buddies ever for life, so we did it with smashing success. I think what this experience taught me (aside from arguably being the apex of my here-to existence), is that I can travel well independently.

It’s only very recently, however, that I learned that I can enjoy traveling alone. I am not an alone person, but there’s a lot I want to see in the Boston area and not always someone to see it with. A few weeks ago, I visited Bunker Hill, and I realized I can still enjoy myself when seeing things without someone else. So, I’m going to New York. By myself. And I’m expecting traveling alone will only enrich the adventure.

I’m staying in a hostel and taking the bus, so I’m going to be carrying everything I'm bringing around every day. In general, I am a small purse girl. Although many women carry a purse this size around daily, my fragile old lady back, general laziness, and continual efforts to make my life less chaotic inspire me to carry only the essentials with me. Did you know that perusing the contents of other people’s purses is a thing? It's a thing. I think these exhibitions a bit of a lie, because I’d like to know what woman doesn’t have a pile of receipts waiting to be gone through or recycled in her purse, but it can be an interesting sociological display. In honor of carrying a large purse carefully packed for a very specific trip, I have laid out its contents for you. This is what I’m bringing:

In top-ish to bottom-ish order: Tales from a Traveling Couch and A Big-Enough God: A Feminist's Search for a Joyful Theology. My journal, which is the main reason I will be ensuring this bag does not get stolen, because it was handmade in India and I am in love with it. Organic goat's milk oatmeal facial soap. A scarf, because it’s actually winter here in the Northeast. Lip gloss. I recently lost my nice fancy Mary Kay lip glosses, and because I’m a very feminine girl who is also a borderline low-maintenance hippie, I have been without anything other than drag-queen-red lipstick to wear. According to basic lipstick rules for people like me, you’re supposed to go one or two shades darker than your natural lip color, so yesterday I bought a pretty, grown-up color (not super cheap) and a lighter, all the time color (super cheap). Nail polish, because what else are you going to do on a bus for four hours other than paint your nails? I love nail polish, and if you want to buy me something for Christmas, I'm in serious lust with this color. This one is pretty fantastic as well, because it’s like a party on your nails. I decided that in the pursuit of looking like a polished adult, lip color was more important than almost-black purple nail polish, so I’m trying to use black and purple as a somewhat-substitute since I’m too poor to splurge on nail polish. On another note, if you happen to have a desire to learn the most popular nail color by city, you can find that here. Nice taste, Dallas.

My camera and camera charger. Tank tops, because putting clean tank tops under my sweater is going to be my interpretation of wearing clean clothes every day. Razor, toothbrush, deodorant, moisturizer, body wash, toothpaste, a toothbrush, and eye makeup remover, for what should be obvious reasons. Gap bike shorts to sleep in, pressed powder, and snacks squirreled away from the conference I went to yesterday. My wallet with cards and ID (although I’ll actually be carrying that directly on my person, because technically, those are more important than my journal). “Colleges” composition book (Like my father, I make composition books to organize everything, from “Life Plans” to “Boston”). Cucumber lip smackers chapstick, because moisturized, tasty lips are always nice. Cliff bars, which I find disgusting, but they’re high-calorie and filling and I plan on severely limiting the amount of food I buy. I consider the fact that looking at them, writing about them, or thinking about them makes me nauseous to be a perk, because after I eat one I will save money by being unable to eat anything else. Lotion. Every medicine I might possibly need mixed into a cocktail, from vitamins to Excedrin. Underwear, because I’m not that much of a dirty hippy. “Essential” makeup. Cell phone charger. Headphones, although these are a bit superfluous because I apparently have the babiest earholes ever, and normal people headphones won’t stay in my ears unless I balance them very carefully and keep my head very still. They are included in case of an annoying bus buddy. My knitting, which is not only something to do on the bus, but is actually really good for your mind and body as well.

Heck.



Yes. (See that spray bottle? That's what I was squirting Alexander with all night.)



I apologize if going through the contents of my purse is extremely boring to you, but the only other way my purse would ever look when unpacked is like this:

And that’s sad, so that would really be unfair to me, if that’s the only purse I ever got to show-and-tell.

Although Alexander doesn’t know it, he is about to cross a very grown-up milestone of his own by spending three days at home alone. This is our pre-trip picture, which is not a quality photo, as it was taken as he was flailing about, breathing his fishy breath all over me, and making disturbing yodeling sounds like this. Since I was packing, he decided to be in full brat cat mode tonight, so after he gorged himself on all of his food (I bought food of the same brand but of a slightly different nature recently, and he won’t stop being a gluttonous fatty cat about it), he immediately began to repeatedly dig through the trash can and skitter crazily about the apartment. There was a lot of yelling tonight, and I’m having to buy new cat food before I leave tomorrow so I don’t come back to this.

It’s now 5:00 AM, and because I’m too irresponsible to sleep and am too excited to stop drinking coffee and typing, I’m still up. I’m going to go get my two hours of sleep (ugghhhh) and see if any of this post makes sense in the morning or if I’ve just typed out the words “New York, New York” over and over in a fit of hysteria.

Alexander is finally sleeping. My bag is perfect. I’m not going to miss any of my connections tomorrow. And in case I want to be a parking lot groupie, the middle school intern at work has informed me that Taylor Swift is in New York this weekend.

Failure is My Arch-nemesis, and I Have Excellent Taste in Music Unless You're Happy

You know how some people have that notorious falling dream? The one where you just keep falling until you wake up? My reoccurring dream isn't like that, but I've had one since I was a child. As I've gotten older, this dream has more often been replaced by agonizing ones of murders, but no matter the nature, the nightmares I have many times a week always leave me paranoid and shaking after I jolt awake.

In my dream, I’m driving a car, but I can’t control it. I’m pushing frantically on the pedals, turning the steering wheel, but the car is moving of its own volition and nothing I can do will stop it. I know that I can’t protect the people in the car (as a child, most often my family), and it makes me feel like a failure. I’m losing control. (At least my dreams are easy to psychoanalyze, right?)

Of all of the things in my life, I might be most afraid of failure. Perhaps, more tangibly afraid of than I am of serial killers, although that’s debatable.

FOF (I just made up an abbreviation for Fear of Failure)  might be the reason I cried every time I got in the car while learning to drive as a teenager, the reason I can’t check my voicemail to this day (running high number is 93 unread messages), and certainly the reason academic success has had historic jurisdiction over much of my life.

This is what I'm bad at.


My chronic FOF didn't develop slowly over years of pushing too hard, it’s simply innate. During my teen years, many professionals tried the somewhat Freudian approach of blaming my parents for pressuring me into perfection. This never happened. Many times, my mom watched in bewilderment as I cried over low A’s and high B’s. I cannot tell you the number of times a teacher has scrawled on a critique to be less hard on myself, or a friend has calmly told me to stop being irrational in my expectations, but somehow, I've never been able to listen. Failure does exist, it’s real, and it’s simultaneously terrifying and terrible. When I truly did face failure in something, I simply quit. I walked away. And as an adult in a society in which women supposedly aren't supposed to be highly motivated by achievements and career success, I am.

We’re obsessed with numbers in America. We’re all, whatgradedidyoumake-howmuchdoyouweigh-howoldareyou-whatisyourBAC-justwritedownyoursocial-we’llhavetodoacreditcheck. We slap Apgar scores on babies as soon as they’re born. Fast forward to college, and not only are good grades important, but positive feedback and perceived success are as well. As an undergrad, I treated every test not only as an opportunity to make a good grade, but as a race. I illogically felt obligated to finish first in the class, although second was also acceptable. Any later, and I figured I hadn't studied enough. My friend Sara and I often finished our tests within seconds of each other, and as we have the same brain and often studied together, I’m still amazed our basically identical tests never condemned us as suspected cheaters. Or our notes. We were always writing notes and still being the favorite students, because we’re fabulous. 

By far, my worst college class was Honors Statistics. I took it with Sara, who is one of the most intelligent people I know. She is also as bad at math as I am. Our class was divided into two groups: the front three rows, and the back two. The front-row students understood the material and nodded their heads happily over problems containing random numbers and symbols copied from the mysterious board of non-logic. The back two rows of lost souls, of which Sara and I made up two, spent all of the classes giving furtive, terrified, haggard looks at each other or silently weeping. We all were making D’s or F’s, and most of us were in shock at the perpetual string of scrawled on, condemning tests and homework handed back to us. 

The class that is clearest in my memory is one of our final ones, during which I received yet another accusatatingly marked test that I knew was about to destroy my GPA. In the locked classroom (meaning I couldn't enter again if I left), I began crying. This time, my tears were not silent, sad ones, however, they were big, giant, body-shaking sobs as I adopted the fetal position on my chair. Snot was everywhere. Giant, salty, soppy holes were being torn into the test. After the class, I went up to the teacher and expressed my fears and concerns for the third or fourth time. I wasn't just crying, I was SOBBING. Who wouldn't take pity on a sophomore girl crying as she watched her future slip away in a tangle of integers? This man had DAUGHTERS, for crying out loud. He was unsympathetic, and Sara and I attempted to comfort ourselves by dedicating this song to him.

I spent the final days of my statistics career wailing hysterically in the shower as I played Tori Amos’s song “Mondays” on loop. This song is about a school shooting, which I apparently felt was an appropriate choice for my song of mourning. Of course, it should be entirely clear to everyone that Tori Amos writes wonderful tragedy songs, the way Taylor Swift writes great breakup songs, Tegan and Sara articulate angst like no one else in the music industry, Lily Allen writes the loveliest enemy songs, and Regina Spektor's lyrics make me understand the world.

I fail to understand why statistics will be essential to my being a good social worker, but apparently there is a strong correlation. Despite everyone else’s concern in the matter, the only possible common factor I see between my honors statistics math class as an undergrad and my future career as a counselor is a possible abundance of Kleenex. And, in all honesty, if a client ever cries as much in a therapy session as I did over that statistics class, I will probably have to immediately send them to the nearest hospital to obtain a rehydrating IV.

This is what I looked like every time I did my statistics homework.

I recently stood before an information table at a graduate school fair, being that student everyone hates who captures the recruiter’s attention and asks about a million minutely specific questions. The Columbia recruiter was young, blonde, and perky. I’m not sure, but I think she might actually have been hired as a model to staff the table, just so Columbia could be all, not only are our students smart and rich, they’re also really pretty. I highly doubt she was actually a Social Work student, at any rate, because she responded to questions she didn't know the answer to with a vapid smile, instead of a concerned face of assurance. And in my very limited time as a social worker, I've already learned that we L-O-V-E the therapist face. She handed me brochures and flyers as she chirped away about how excellent their program was, although she didn't know, um, all of the details about their internship placement procedure. As I wrapped up my barrage of questions and blockade of the table, I asked, “What are your prerequisites?”

“Oh! We don’t have any. Well, except for one. You have to have made a B or better in a statistics class.”

“Well, what if I didn't?”

“Make a B or better?”

“Yes, what happens then? Will it affect my acceptance?”

The woman’s tone changed to one that was both bemused and condescending, her face reading, why in the world do you think you can apply to an Ivy League school if you can’t even make a B in statistics? Damn you, statistics, I knew you would haunt me and get me eventually. I could sense the recruiter’s long, manicured pink fingernails just aching to snatch those brochures back from my supposed academically incompetent hands.

This is not the only time I've been given this look. I was also given it by my department advisor in college, who did little in my presence other than twitch his mustache, and took productive action towards my future only when I was sitting at his desk and physically watching him do so. The Social Work department loved and gloated over me, as I was apparently their Most Favorite Student Ever. “What is your GPA?” he asked, scrolling through my transcript as I forced him to plan for my future, or at least supplement it with emails and letters of recommendation. “I guarantee you it’s higher than any other student’s in the department," he said, twirling his Ron-Swanson-wanna-be mustache and smiling. “Umm… a 3.8 something? Maybe a high 3.7?” He turned towards me in his rolley chair, suddenly looking more concerned than he ever had when considering the location of my final field placement. “What were those B's and C's in?” he asked, as though being bad at math was a grave disappoint not only to me, but to the entire department. “I got C's in pre-cal. And stats. They brought down my GPA”, I explained. “Oh, and I got a B in earth science, because science is stupid. And in my online classes, because…. well, just because I’m bad at online classes.”

He wished.

I wasted a lot of tears in school, because, at the end of the day (despite Columbia-barbie-girl’s opinion), statistics does not matter. It wasn't that I was stupid or inept or unmotivated, as the permanent indent of my ass in one of the math lab’s tutoring seats from that semester can attest. It was just a bad fit. And, quite suddenly the other day, I had this revelation for the first time: SOMETIMES THINGS ARE JUST A BAD FIT.

Statistics was a bad fit the way ballet sucking away my life was a bad fit, a bad fit the way waitressing was a bad fit (I once literally dropped a steak at my boss’s feet), a bad fit the way maps and me are a bad fit and puzzles are a bad fit and my current job is a bad fit.

I’m about to start crying (that was definitely just a Freudian slip for “applying”) for graduate school for the second time. These applications are so overwhelmingly obnoxious and daunting. Columbia University’s application is all like, FORGET BEING 22, YOU BETTER HAVE DONE ALL OF THE THINGS. The first time I applied, I had just faced some rather future-altering-forever decisions, and missed the deadlines. Whether dates or lack of experience or simple undesirability was the cause, rejection letter after rejection letter flowed in. I've feared a lot of failure in my life, but I never feared getting into grad school…I graduated in the top 5% of my class. I wasn't emotionally prepared for that defeat, and when the rejection letter from my top school finally came, my body shut down. I went to bed and slept for over 24 hours.

Something like this, but in a bed.

The worst part, however, was telling other people I had just plain failed and hadn't made it in. I don’t really want to have to break that news again, but if I have to, I will. I’m only applying to schools I’m really interested in going to. And if I fail at that, then I’ll develop awesome potential back-up plans.

Maybe I’ll get super brave and join the Peace Corps. Maybe I’ll get a degree in something else then go back for my PhD. Maybe I’ll get my TEFL certification and go teach English in another country for a few years. Maybe I’ll just settle into a job I like and work and volunteer and pay off my car. That’s the great thing about being young and single and not-yet-settled. I can do whatever I want.

Sometimes, things are just a bad fit. And this doesn't mean you or I or anyone else is a failure, because most of us just can’t succeed at everything. HOW DID IT TAKE ME ALMOST 23 YEARS TO LEARN THIS?!

No one fails at EVERYTHING, anyway. I’m not good at sitting at a desk and planning, but if you need someone to talk to teenagers and parents about suicide, I’m awesome. I can’t understand math to save my life, but I can write you a kick-ass essay. I’m horrible at directions, but… well, I’m not good at anything vehicle-related, but you get the idea.

So just maybe maybe believing in yourself doesn't mean believing you’ll succeed. Believing in yourself maybe means believing you’ll be okay if you don’t. Because even if I’m having to buy jeans a size up or I get school rejection letters or… I’ll be okay.

BAM.

And finally, I just realized both the best friend and Taylor Swift have been mentioned an inordinate amount of times in my blog. I’m not sure what this says about me.

Being a Grown-Up is Hard

I’ve begun a giant “pull my life together” project, and as a result, I’ve been having trouble completing a blog post. I've been working on a few for weeks, because I know that writing is good for me, but pulling my life together as more activities enter it has been more draining than I realized. I’m having to relearn productivity, as well as attempt to master some basic skills of adulthood. Unfortunately, my body has yet to understand that I don’t actually need ten hours of sleep a night, that I’m still capable of multitasking, and that it’s possible to do more than five things on my to-do list a day. As I relearn that it’s possible to live with anxiety and daily pressures, my body twitches and shakes continually and my thoughts are constantly scattered.

Over the past week I’ve been throwing my brain into working on grad school applications (which make me nauseous), my emotions into listening to trauma stories on the hotline in the middle of the night (which also sometimes make me nauseous), and last night I told some of my story to a group of highschoolers (which I love, but is always draining). I’m also going through the endlessly high stack of unread mail on my table (completed-BAM), dealing with the consequences of not reading said mail (City of Boston, please don't actually issue a warrant for my arrest because I didn't pay a late fee on my parking ticket), and cleaning my apartment thoroughly. I’m both impressed at and incredulous of the speed and level at which I used to function, although having a constant stream of Taylor Swift playing in my head is helping me work on Operation Pull Your Shit Together, as it’s titled in my journal.

For whatever reason, I view adulthood as the ability to manage all of these tasks in my life well and therefore feel like I’m learning to be an adult. Not an over-eighteen-in-college adult, but an I-paid-my- bills-and-did-my-dishes-in-the-same-night adult.



Me, when I only had to worry about embroidered Scotty dog sweaters, not adulthood. (on right)


I failed at this yesterday. I ran out of gas on my way to an important meeting.

Massachusetts is unlike Texas in the fact that access roads do not run parallel to the highway with easily accessible gas stations in sight. Here, access roads twist and wind away from the highway, and when you find a gas station in a random city next to a Dunkin' Donuts (I would hypothesize that Dunkin' Donuts owns Massachusetts, due to its infestation of the entire region), you may be many miles out of your way. I was running late to this meeting, of course, and decided to assure myself that I had enough gas to get at least most of the way there rather than stop before I left.

As I was driving along the highway, my gas light went on. I began looking for a gas station, passed a few on the wrong side of the road, and eventually exited to find one a highway sign alluded to. Of course, once I exited the road, I could not find the mysterious gas station. Back on the highway, I told myself that cars rarely actually run out of gas, and I kept towards my goal, keeping an eye out for more stations. Then event Kathleen Fails at Driving #456 happened. Going seventy miles in the left lane, my car began to wheeze and slow at an alarming rate, and I was forced to suddenly put on my flashers and coast over multiple lanes onto the shoulder. I called triple A, missed my meeting, and mentally chastised myself for not being a responsible adult.

I decided to try to make myself feel better by making a list of “adult things” I do well and "adult things" I don’t. Surely, I thought, this will prove to me that I’m actually more responsible than I think. Here’s the result:

Clearly, this wasn't as reassuring as I had hoped, since the "Horrible at" list is longer than the "Good at" list. I suppose, from now on, I could just burst into Lady Gaga's "Born this Way" when entering a meeting or event late. Or, I could just move to a country where being late is the norm and people don't drive anywhere. Preferably the latter.