No need to pick the lock, friend! Just waltz right in. Also, did you know that I had a cereal bar for breakfast three years ago on my birthday? Isn’t my memory fascinating?

My nostalgia has been in overdrive this week, spurred on by a friend’s Facebook photos of her new baby girl. I met this friend during our year in New Jersey, which was also the first year of our marriage, which was also nearly twelve years ago, holy FUCK.

My friend, K, now lives with her husband and two kids in a small, quaint town that’s just a few miles down the highway from where our old apartment (in the highly sketchy apartment complex) still stands. I started browsing through her photos and had that weird feeling you get when you revisit a place that’s only existed in your memory for the past several years: Oh. Huh. That place and those people are all still there. I guess August of 2000 through September of 2001 really did happen after all.

It’s not as though I assume that places up and disappear when I’m not in them (I’m not quite that self-absorbed), I just don’t think about them on the reg, and when I do take a minute to remember, really remember, what life was like twelve years ago, it’s all at once shocking and bittersweet (and also just plain sweet) how things have changed.

And how long ago it all seems now. Again, HOLY FUCK and WHO ARE THESE MERE BABIES?!

I think about our newlywed life in New Jersey from time to time (whenever K posts a photo, whenever I run across an old photo, whenever someone mentions Bruce Springsteen), but I haven’t ever acknowledged how close our New Jersey life came to being a much-longer-than-one-year life, and I never stopped to think about what that life would look like had we never gotten that wild hair to move to New York City on the spur of the moment in August of 2001.

We arrived in New Jersey in August of 2000 after a HELLACIOUS road trip that involved both sets of our parents, torrential downpours, confusing New Jersey highways, and a moving truck so ridiculously large I suspect it was used in Maximum Overdrive.

Coincidentally, that’s also what my face looked like after a weekend spent refereeing two sets of parents through a very stressful relocation OMG DID I EVER NEED SOME BOOZE.

I remember the day our parents left: mine departing in the morning, and Brad’s later in the day. With the last of the real grown-ups back on the road to West Virginia, we were finally alone in our very first home as two married adults. I remember feeling completely giddy (and just a tiny bit homesick), and eating a dinner of beer and take-out fried chicken that night, because…that’s what adults do, right?

It’s also what GENIUSES do, OMG I want this in my face right now.

I have very sweet memories of all those little nesting activities I’d waited to do for so long: a big grocery shopping trip to stock our fridge, painting our tiny kitchen bright yellow, decorating the apartment with all our new furniture, cooking for each other with all our new dishes, drinking martinis out of the many (MANYMANY) martini glasses we received for our wedding (martini glasses were seriously in that year, holy shit), and…wondering what the fuck we were doing in New Jersey.

Oh, that part was easy–at first–because I was going to grad school at Rutgers. I had a week or so after we moved in before starting classes, and Brad wasted no time getting hired by an ad sales company in Manhattan, which meant he had about a 45-minute bus ride each way. I have very specific memories of driving him to the bus stop every morning, and returning to our empty apartment (which smelled like freshly brewed coffee and his cologne) and feeling instantly sad. That place without him wasn’t quite home just yet.

Ours was the upstairs apartment, accessible by the door on the right. Please note our lovely balcony, from which we witnessed many domestic disputes unfold at our neighbor’s place across the courtyard.

The fall progressed and I got busy with classwork. Brad was doing well at his (SUPER-DEE-SUPER SHADY) job (it was seriously similar to the shit that goes down in that terrible Boiler Room movie), and we often took the train to the city on the weekends (which sounds so bizarre to me now — we just…WENT? Without having to think about bedtimes or sitters or ANYTHING?!). We had family visiting pretty often to help with residual homesickness, and with each visit, things felt more and more settled. This was our life — me in school, Brad doing…things to make money in the city. We were doing it! We were surviving! GO US!

Gee, what are those DARK OMINOUS CLOUDS OF FORESHADOWING doing here?

Sometime after Halloween, I started to wonder if maybe I hadn’t made a huge (expensive) mistake enrolling in grad school. This was an enormously terrifying realization for many reasons, but mostly because WHAT THE FUCK, I had dragged myself and my poor innocent new husband hundreds of miles away from everything and everyone we knew to LIVE IN NEW JERSEY so I could pursue my education, so WHAT THE FUCK, if grad school isn’t my plan, then what the hell is?

One sunny afternoon as I was standing outside the Fine Arts building on a short break from acting class, my (giant, 2000-era) cell phone rang. It was Brad, who was audibly upset. The strain of the shady dealings at his workplace had gotten the best of him, and he had quit. He was freaking out because he was now unemployed, I was freaking out because I WAS SUPPOSED TO BE THE DIRECTION-LESS ONE HERE. I didn’t react very well to the news at first (something I feel bad about to this day), because I saw in Brad what I was seeing in myself for the first time in maybe ever: complete and utter confusion about what the fuck I was supposed to be doing with my life.

Things settled down; Brad found work as a reporter for the local paper, and I immersed myself in classwork and decided not to make any rash decisions until the end of the semester. We drove the long nine hours back to West Virginia for Thanksgiving (I remember absolutely nothing about the holiday that year, for some reason), and on the way back, we got stuck in a horrific traffic jam in the middle of Pennsylvania. Pulling into our apartment complex back in New Jersey, exhausted after what ended up being a ten hour drive, Brad uttered a phrase that we still repeat to this day (albeit under happier circumstances): “Ahhh, home crap home.”

Coincidentally, I took up cross-stitching around this time.

The short time between Thanksgiving and Christmas was a total blur, as it always is. Highlights included me getting a cavity filled at the most terrifying dentists’ office I have ever seen (he had pictures of celebrities he’d ripped out of magazines TAPED TO THE WALL — I actually almost left when I first arrived because I thought I’d made a mistake and was in a TATTOO PARLOR)(Why didn’t I leave?!), Brad covering a tragic shooting for the newspaper which involved him being inches from a freshly killed gunman (’tis the season!), and putting up our very first family Christmas tree.

That part was actually nice.

After another epic holiday journey to WV and back, we welcomed another family member into the fold, and for a while there, things seemed better.

DAWWWWWWWWWWWW.

But then classes started up again, and with the beginning of the new semester, it became abundantly clear to me that I wanted (and needed) to get out of there. In a move that still hurts my grade-grubbing Nerd Pride, I dropped out of grad school at the end of January.

I don’t really remember the terror that must have been (or SHOULD have been) filling my gut at that point, but I do remember applying for a jobs at Hallmark and Pier One. I started working at Pier One around Valentine’s Day — our first Valentine’s Day as husband and wife! — which we celebrated by getting really drunk on house wine at the Olive Garden.

Shut up, we loved that place. Unlimited soup, salad and breadsticksissimo!

Working at Pier One was…OK. It was a shock to be in the working world again after I thought I would be mostly in the academic one for a couple of years, but hey, I had an employee discount and got to go home to Brad & (tiny sweet wee) Tootsie every night, so I wasn’t complaining. We bought a used car for me (my first ever car JUST FOR ME, eeee!), and I wasted no time purchasing sweet fuzzy dice for my ride. In March I even auditioned for a musical and got a lead role along with K, the person who would become my very best New Jersey friend.

After Jersey-born-and-bred Tootsie, of course.

Feeling more like myself after completing a successful run of the show (and with my mood bolstered by the emerging spring weather), I interviewed for a job with a software wholesaler that would take me out of retail and boost my earnings, and I was happily offered the position. The commute was longer than the one to Pier One, but the extra money (and distance from papasan chairs and wicker furniture) was worth it. I ended up taking an 11am-8pm shift that meant I avoided most rush hour traffic, but MAN, do those hours sound CA-RAZY to my 35-year-old mom ears now. I remember having to SET AN ALARM to wake up for an 11:00 START TIME at work, and I also remember meeting Brad at the gym after work (and BEFORE dinner/meeting friends for drinks). When the fuck were we eating dinner those days? 11pm? I do not understand you, crazy young version of myself.

And you were also apparently really into white t-shirts. Ah, youth!

This was when life in New Jersey really started to settle for us: we both had jobs we liked (enough), we had friends we liked to hang out with, we knew our way around the area, we got to hang out in the city whenever we wanted. We even spent some time looking for houses to actually purchase, if you can believe that shit (I can’t — real estate prices were RICOCKULOUSY high and WAY beyond anything we could afford, but what the fuck did we know, we were 23 years old). We ended up renewing our lease in our (questionably safe) apartment complex over the summer of 2001 and prepared for another year in Jersey.

Where you can’t pump your own gas — did you know that? I did not, but became hip to the fact after getting screamed at by my fair share of Middle Eastern gas station owners.

That second year in Jersey didn’t happen, of course. Brad started doing stand-up in the city and we both decided that it was now-or-never time in regards to taking a chance on life in NYC. Brad sweet-talked the rental company into letting us back out of the lease, we found an apartment in Queens, I put in my two weeks at the software company, September 11th happened, and suddenly we were New Yorkers (if by location only).

But unlike living in New Jersey, New York never felt like home to me, not really. I never once thought we’d stay there forever (or even for more than a couple years), whereas New Jersey felt…do-able. And looking through my friend K’s photos of her central Jersey life this week, I let myself imagine what things might be like had we never moved away.

In the middle of August 2001, before we decided to take the leap and move to New York, I took a pregnancy test on my lunch break at the software company. It was negative, of course, but what if it had been positive? I know for a fact that if I’d gotten pregnant while we were living in New York, we would have hightailed it back to WV in a full-on panic, but if I’d gotten pregnant in New Jersey, where both of us had friends and insurance and solid, full-time jobs, chances are good that we would’ve stayed.

And I would have a kid who’d be turning ten right about now. Shit.

It could have been me in some of my friend K’s pictures of her July 4th cookout, her son’s first birthday party, the Halloween parade down the main street of her quaint little town. Brad and I might have been her neighbors there (assuming we’d managed to conquer the crazy real estate market), and I might be writing here to complain about our NINE hour road trips to West Virginia instead of our four hour ones. Or I might not be writing here at all.

I would still be with Brad, but we might not have Sadie. I might have found some success commuting to Manhattan for an acting career, or I might have given it up altogether. Brad & I might be the pretty much the same people we are now, or we might have grown in a completely different direction.

I am of course referring to spray tans and hair gel.

All the different permutations just never stop being completely fascinating and terrifying to consider. But the important thing to remember is that we made all the right decisions, lived the exact life we were supposed to, and ended up precisely where we are supposed to be.

Good luck, crazy young people. I barely recognize you, but you are in for one hell of a fun time.

Pssh — that’s nothing. You should hear Jeffy’s theory on dialectical materialism.

That is, of course, an altered panel of Family Circus, the original version no doubt containing some kids-say-the-darnedest-things bullshit, but hey, at least this one didn’t include those creepy dead grandparents.

Sometimes I think the world cannot provide me with enough Family Circus parodies.

I found that first image up there a couple of weeks ago, and I’ve honestly been thinking about it ever since. Hey — it’s better than what thoughts usually occupy my mind, which are often some combination of pasta, naps, and detailed fantasies about how I’m going to trick Christian Bale into boning me when he’s here in the fall filming another movie.

I have a really sweet disguise, although I admit I’m taking a risk assuming he likes to bone women dressed as John Cleese dressed as an old-timey aviator.

Anyway, faux Dolly up there kind of got to me for reasons I’ll probably not be able to explain very eloquently, but HOO BOY, do I ever think that sentiment is right on — for me, at least.

I’ve always been a sensitive sort. Things that spurred days-long weepfests at different points throughout my childhood included learning that baby seals were clubbed for their fur, watching The Elephant Man, seeing a cheesy TV movie where some kids made fun of a mentally challenged boy, and–when I was really old enough to have been less naive–learning that my best friend (who I’d defended to anyone who dared to speak an ill word against her) had been saying some pretty nasty things about me behind my back. The older I got, the thicker my skin became, and honestly, these days I get pretty annoyed at people who create drama out of the tiniest things. Not because I don’t understand how the little things can be devastating, but because I suspect that they are doing it for attention, and GOOD GOD people, haven’t you learned to distract and delude yourself from the horrible realities of life already?

And right there’s the thing: the way I deal with the terrible and unavoidable and unpreventable crap things about life is to not deal with it. Well, that’s not entirely true — it’s more of a two-fold process: I avoid it, and then I slap something happy and non-threatening on top of it in order to distract myself that we were all born into this world with only one real job: to die.

YAYYYYY! Happy Friday e’erybody!

I know that sounds bleak, but I actually do find some comfort in the truth of that sentiment. When I acknowledge the stark reality, I feel free to move on and look at pretty things on Pinterest. Just because I’m headed for eventual death and decay doesn’t mean I can’t learn how to make a doily lampshade, dammit.

(I feel compelled to mention that this also ties into my religious beliefs — or non-beliefs, I guess. I know this may seem counter-intuitive to people who believe in God, but I actually find the notion of God less comforting when I think about things like death and disease and random tragedies. I’d rather accept that hey, life can sure be shit sometimes than try to justify why a supposedly benevolent force would, say, gives kids cancer or what have you but I REALLY don’t want to get into religion today, so let’s just end this here. Amen.)

All this being said, I have quite an optimistic outlook when it comes to life. I tend to give people the benefit of the doubt and I think the great majority of us are inherently good. People can do some fantastic, amazing, inspiring things–both big and small–and I wouldn’t have brought a shorty into this world if I didn’t truly believe that there were more good things about this world (art, sex, pepperjack cheese) than bad (raisins, pleat-front khakis, Rick Santorum).

But before you think I think I have it all figured out, know this: I can barely watch or skim the daily news before my shoulders are up around my ears and I’ve stopped breathing. I regret donating to St. Jude’s Hospital, because every time their promotional materials show up in the mail, it dredges up thoughts I can’t bear to entertain. Sometimes when I’m behind the wheel of a car, I want to pull over and yell to all my fellow motorists “WHAT THE FUCK ARE WE DOING DO YOU KNOW HOW INCREDIBLY DANGEROUS THIS IS?!” And so forth.

So I distract myself. I force my mind to focus on the beautiful and positive: art (as Dolly said), my friends, my family. I even stopped visiting websites that evoke any kind  of negativity in me (goodbye, schadenfreude-y, train-wreck reads), and sometimes that includes the news. I don’t know if that’s irresponsible of me (I suspect that it is), but holy fuck, if I didn’t do it, I’d never be able to get out of bed in the morning.

And then, yesterday–a day I got out of bed and distracted myself in the usual fashion–something horrible happened a few blocks away from my office. A random shooting left two people dead and seven injured. One of the dead was the gunman, another was an innocent bystander whose sister had been killed in a domestic dispute a couple of years ago. With his death, his parents saw the second of their two children violently yanked out of their lives forever. How the fuck do people even make sense out of the world after that? Distraction? Delusion? Medication? I can’t think of any other way.

It’s always been a damaged and damaging world, and because humans are humans, it always will be. That’s something I thought I’d learned to accept, but it seems like all I do is force myself to accept it over and over and over again.

WELL. I certainly didn’t mean to send you into the weekend with a post like this. Why don’t we all just draw the shades and sob until Monday?

Sorry about that. I really didn’t mean to take a tragic situation and make it all about my tender psyche, I guess I just needed to get all of that out of my head. I’m sure I’m not the only one who feels helpless in the face of life and its constant assfuckery, and I take Pinterest as proof that I’m not the only one who desperately needs distraction. I suppose the only thing we can do is keep creating the good things: art, babies who will grow up to treat each other well, perhaps more pepperjack cheese.

Actually, screw the art. Let’s just focus on the cheese.

Excitement over seeing beautiful baby somehow trumps sandwich, even though baby does not contain bacon or cellophane-topped toothpick.

Like any span of days, the weekend had its high points and low points, the low points leaving me to wonder what the fuck is wrong with people. I realized I wonder this quite a bit, as there seems to be something in my psyche that craves an actual, decisive, black and white answer to that question, even though I know full well there isn’t one. I also spend a great deal of time trying to justify the shitty behavior of others (and an equal amount of time trying to understand my own shitty behavior), all in the name of trying to decide whether I think some people are born assholes or just a product of the assholes who shaped their lives for the worse. Wow…shit sure got heavy in here for a post that started out talking about babies and sandwiches. Time to cleanse the palate before we go on:

Ah! Better. Nothing a little Jerry Lewis couldn’t fix.

I subscribe to a listserv for my neighborhood and the adjacent neighborhood — it’s kind of like a mini-Craigslist for my little pocket of the city, with the occasional complaint about noise and/or report of petty crime thrown in for good measure. I have seen everything on there from an unintentionally hilarious diatribe about how the wild turkeys in a nearby park are dangerous (“It charged me and tried to take my hat!”)  to the monthly reminders of a singalong hosted in someone’s home (which, incidentally, spurred a conversation between Brad & I about the singalongs probably being a cover for the dirtiest, nastiest sex party in town).

Which, in the case of these two, WOULD EXPLAIN A LOT.

Anyway, people are always getting shit stolen out of their cars in the neighborhood next to mine — sometimes because they flake and leave their vehicles unlocked, and sometimes because a group of surly teenagers or a desperate junkie sees something they want. I’m used to seeing reports of stolen property, but nothing like the email that came across this weekend. A woman announced that someone had stolen her 2-year-old son’s pediatric wheelchair from the back of their van overnight. Her son has cerebral palsy, and needs the chair to eat without choking and participate in therapy. Her family waited 6 months for the chair to become available, and cannot afford a replacement (or the wait for one). She attached a flyer and asked that we post it wherever we could to get the word out. On the flyer was picture of her 2-year-old son, sitting in his wheelchair and being pushed by his twin brother.

Enter the Ugly Cry.

Crying Dawson and his Creek aside, I can’t tell you how much this bothered me, Internet. I mean, of course it did — it’s horrible.  It upset me not just to imagine the family’s situation, but to imagine what would prompt a person to do such a thing to someone else. The person who stole that chair knew they were stealing from a child — and not just a child, a disabled child — and they still didn’t care. The money they’d get off the chair was far greater than what they’d get from, I don’t know, a few car stereos and a hand job here and there?  So they took it. The end.

After reading that email, I thought back over the past few days and remembered all the insanely shitty things I’d heard of in one week alone. Like my Facebook friend who posted during her bus commute that she had just witnessed a woman slapping her toddler in an attempt to stop the poor kid from crying (SPOILER ALERT: it did not work). Ignoring the obvious brilliance of this woman’s plan, I ask you: WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH PEOPLE? My default explanation for people who are shitty to their kids is that they were treated just as poorly (if not worse) throughout their own childhoods, which is obviously very sad. But it’s hard to feel sorry for someone when they resort to violence (bonus points for the dickwads who feel so entitled to abusing their children that they do so IN PUBLIC), even if it was modeled as an acceptable method of parenting for them. I can accept a deeply shitty childhood as the reason for someone’s clouded judgment in this area, but it in no way excuses it. Abusing a child is WRONG, and even people who were abused themselves know that. Right? Maybe the woman on the bus was abused as a kid, or maybe she was stressed out beyond belief and having a horrific day, but still: no excuse. Does this make her a horrible person? Just inherently bad? Because who else would think slapping a tiny kid is OK?

And then there was “The Case of the Dick Who Thinks Differing Political Opinions = an Excuse to Gleefully and Cruelly Wish Death Upon Someone.” This one pretty much floored me. I will be the first to admit that I can get pretty het up and angry over certain political issues, but dude: making fun of someone’s disfiguring and deadly cancer? Telling that person you will happily celebrate his eventual death? Because you disagree with his politics? Again: WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH PEOPLE? I understand how easy it is to let things get ugly when you can hide behind the relative anonymity of the Internet, and I’ve always believed that trolls are to be pitied more than anything else, but this felt different to me. Purposefully and joyfully hurtful. I can’t even come up with an excuse for what would make a person say such ugly things, except to say that this guy is a Bad Person. And saying that makes me feel even worse than the article does.

Early Thursday evening, I picked up Sadie from daycare and rushed home to hand the car off to Brad, who needed to be back downtown for rehearsal by 6:30. For situations like this, we don’t bother to park the car in our detached garage, as it’s quite the production maneuvering our 2009 car into a 1920s structure that likely housed Tin fucking Lizzies and the occasional horse. It’s not a big deal, though, because there is usually a generous amount of on-street parking in front of our house. I always try to leave ample room for each of our next-door neighbors to park (they don’t have garages), and Thursday was no exception. I left plenty of room for our neighbor to the right to park her tiny Corolla behind me if she happened to come home in the 15 minutes I’d be outside, although another car parked on the end of our block meant that she’d have to parallel park. Well, OF COURSE she came home just then, and OF COURSE there was a giant city bus behind her, meaning that she had to attempt to parallel park under the gaze of 50+ surly commuters and an impatient bus driver. I didn’t even notice the whole drama unfolding until I looked up from peeling Sadie out of her car seat, and just as I saw my neighbor folding under the Parallel Parking Pressure (which is both real and hellish), I floundered to find a way to communicate that I’d only have the car here for, like, ten more minutes, and I’ll take the spot across the street if that makes it easier…but before I had a chance to shout or even gesture, she jammed the car into drive and sped out of her attempted parking position, slowing down only to yell at me from her hastily rolled down window: “I’m TIRED of not being able to PARK OUT HERE!”

I don’t know if it was the fact that I was pretty tired myself, or the fact that I simply can’t stand it when people are angry with me, but I lost it. LOST IT. I made it inside before I started crying, and quickly handed Sadie over to a very confused Brad before I flung my purse on the ground and flounced back outside to move the car for this horrible woman who apparently felt entitled to every damn spot of park-able curb IN THE WORLD. My legs were shaking, and Sadie was frightened by my reaction…and honestly, so was I. Even though what she said to me wasn’t very mean (and hardly personal), she was just ONE MORE ASSHOLE on the mountain of assholes in the world. Worse, I felt like she was somehow confirming all the self-doubts I’d casually had about myself over the course of the day. Maybe I was just a totally selfish shit person, and she called me on it. Great.

She was already parked across the street when I went out there to move the car up (which I did anyway, for some reason), and I couldn’t look at her. Brad had followed me out with Sadie, and I begged him to go back inside because I was terrified that he would confront her (confrontation with neighbors: DO NOT WANT). I rushed back into the house to continue losing my shit, and because Brad didn’t follow me in, I knew words were being exchanged, making me cry harder. What I didn’t know, however, was that the only words coming out of my neighbor’s mouth were ones of sincere apology and regret. Words she made Brad promise to pass on to me.

When he came inside, Brad told me that she hadn’t even noticed it was me by the car until I looked up, and that made her feel even more awful (she had assumed it was one of the many, many, many-many-many delightful-and-probably-drug-dealing visitors the other occupants of her duplex get on the reg, and let me tell you, they are just lovely and don’t sit on the porch belching and saying “cunt” really loud AT ALL).

And then there is the bald gentleman who looks like a genie, but like, a really unhygienic genie. Hence our nickname for him: the Diaper Genie.

The next day, I found an un-postmarked card mixed in with our mail. On the envelope was written “To My Neighbors” in script, and inside was a rainbow notecard that said:

“I am so sorry for losing my temper yesterday. I had a bad day at work (no excuse) and was frustrated. I shouldn’t have yelled at you, especially not in front of your baby girl. I’m truly, truly sorry.

- Your Neighbor”

It might as well have been a double rainbow card, because my reaction was pretty similar.

Just as I was stunned by the act of someone stealing a pediatric wheelchair/hitting a toddler/heartlessly taunting a dying man, I was stunned by how quickly and repeatedly this woman — whose name I still don’t know — wanted to right the relatively insignificant wrong of snapping at me at the end of a long day. I mean, she didn’t even use profanities! Sure, her actions upset me, but I know I’ve been a far bigger dick far more times without having the balls to apologize and own up to the fact that yes, I was an asshole. I made a mistake. Please forgive me.

I suppose everyone has their own way of dealing with the assholes of the world. I try to remind myself that there is almost always a reason why someone is a raging dickhead, even if that reason isn’t a very good one. I like to think that — at some point — the wheelchair thief and the abusive mom and the Twitter Bully check themselves and make things right. To err is human, after all. Even if you err, like, REALLY REALLY FUCKING BADLY.

And even if you err and the result is secretly AWESOME.

I have to admit that dealing with the assholes of the world was easier back before I finally owned up to the fact that I am a big ol’ atheist. It’s a lot more satisfying to think that the douchebag who hit your car and didn’t leave a note will rot in hell for at least a day or two. But — for me, at least — I know that’s not where I can find real peace with this type of thing. I don’t need to know that there will be punishment and payback for every wrong, I just need to know that the good is in there somewhere. That for every abusive parent on a bus, there’s a complete stranger who cares enough to genuinely apologize for an offhand comment.

I can tell you right now that I intend to always keep the card my neighbor gave me. And the next time I feel like writing off the human race…well, first I’ll probably go watch this:

GOD I LOVE THESE FUCKING GIFs

And then I’ll go back and read the card. And remember that people can be pretty awesome sometimes.

Case in point.

]]> http://www.jiveturkeyjives.com/?feed=rss2&p=4410 15 http://www.jiveturkeyjives.com/?p=4238 http://www.jiveturkeyjives.com/?p=4238#comments Fri, 08 Oct 2010 21:02:09 +0000 Jive Turkey http://www.jiveturkeyjives.com/?p=4238 Continue reading →]]> One of my all-time favorite Yo Gabba Gabba songs (shut up) is the song Muno & his slightly dildo-ish family sing about being a family.

The fact that all the males in Muno’s family have bumps and all the females are smooth makes me feel weird. Is it some sort of subtle commentary on hair removal for women? A segue into a birds-and-bees conversation? A cautionary tale about STDs? WHAT IS GOING ON.

The song (of which I can’t find a video anywhere online because it’s 1997 all of a sudden), is really sweet and immensely catchy, and highlights the unique personalities of each of Muno’s family members (“I’m Muno’s Mom! I like chihuahuas and Chinese noodles!”) before returning to the refrain: “1-2-3-4-5 people are in my family/We are best friends/We love each other/That’s my family!” etc., etc., etc., long story short, I’ve been singing this song since January.

And if you are getting ready to label me as a crazy Yo Gabba Gabba fan whose adoration knows no bounds, allow me to share with you that I draw the line at the Magic Dance Hat. I think.

OK, maybe just let me put it on for, like, five minutes.

So, here’s where things get weird(-er): When I first heard this song, it made me sad. Granted, this was back when my hormones were going apeshit from weaning (“My boobs are useless AND SO IS LIVING.”), but it still gives me a little twinge in my chest when I hear the “we are best friends, we love each other” part because…well, SO MUCH about my experiences with family falls way short of “best friend” status, and while we do love each other, it’s just so much more complicated than that. In short: WHY CAN’T LIFE BE AS SIMPLE AS YO GABBA GABBA SONGS?

Think me up an answer to that shit, homes!

Before I delve any deeper into this subject, allow me to explain to you the kind of family I have, because I think that’s important here. Families come in so many different varieties, and I’m not just referring to the single mom/single dad/ two mommies/two daddies designation.

And Lord forbid you fall into the “My Two Dads” category.

No, the family classification I’m talking about has more to do with things like how you argue, how you spend holidays, how you do (or don’t) stay in touch, and how you all relate to each other as adults. These are the things I think really create a family’s dynamic. I don’t care if you were raised by your queer grandmother and I was raised by a heterosexual married couple; if you ALSO find yourself walking on eggshells to avoid conflict and weathering months- (and sometimes years-) long grudges, WE HAVE MUCH TO DISCUSS, MY FRIEND.

Anyhoo, my family can be summed up thusly:

1. We like to ignore messy problems. Actually, scratch that: 50% of us like to ignore messy problems, and the other 50% like to bring up said problems at the worst possible time and get everyone all worked up, which usually results in…
2. GRUDGES. There is one main person who holds grudges in our family, and it sucks. Mostly because half the time? You aren’t even aware this person is upset with you until it’s too late. Which is adjacent to another family-wide issue:
3. We don’t tell each other when we’re hurt or angry. Instead, we let it fester, come to a head, incite a major fight, get a couple grudges out of it, and then maybe — MAYBE! — temporarily patch things over months and months later, but the root issue is never really resolved. But we’re not all bad. We also…
4. Are able to have a good time around each other. We can go on vacations together without wanting to saw off each other’s heads by Day Two. Which is kind of amazing, because…
5. We have all cultivated very different belief systems. Well, OK, mostly it’s ME who has the “very different belief system,” but still, even though the other members of my family agree on most major things, they have amongst each other some pretty different opinions on things (see: messy problems, ignoring of; grudges, holding).
6. We leave a whole shit-ton unsaid. Because we are all very different people, I don’t think any of us has ever had a really, truly in-depth conversation with another member of the family (save for my parents talking to each other, I’d imagine). There is always so much that has to be hidden in the name of maintaining peace and harmony, and sometimes I think we just plain can’t predict how the other person will react, so we keep it in. And although it’s an unrealistic expectation, I feel disappointed and almost embarrassed that we aren’t all best friends or something. I feel like I should be able to blame this on sitcoms. WE ARE NOT THE HUXTABLES, INTERNET, AND NOT JUST BECAUSE WE DON’T DANCE DOWN STAIRCASES ON SPECIAL OCCASIONS.
7. We don’t stay in touch very well. This makes us all a) feel guilty, and b) blame all other parties in the family for their shitty staying-in-touch skills.
8. Last but not least, we love each other. I mean, of course we do. And we are able to genuinely enjoy each other’s company (as long as we all take pains to ignore the “messy” topics). Go us!

I realize that my family is not unique in many (or most) of these ways, but I’ve always felt that — I don’t know — we could be enjoying each other more? Trying to understand each other more? A little slower to shut down whenever someone says something that falls beyond the parameters of what we’re comfortable with?  Something like that. And, of course, having Sadie has brought this stuff to the forefront of my mind, because I sure as hell don’t want HER to feel as though she has to keep things from me, or that she can’t be her real self around me for fear that I won’t understand, or — worse — that I’ll judge her. Honestly, the thought of that fucking kills me, Internet.

I’m not saying I want my daughter to be one of those people [I never, ever believe] who say “my mom is my best friend!” because, NO, I do  not want that. I’m not her best friend, I’m her mother. We’re not peers. I was alive 32 years before she came along, and I don’t know about you, but most of my BFFs did not pass me through their genitals. I want her to share things with me and enjoy spending time with me, sure, but I’m not looking to redefine the mother-daughter relationship here.

“I’m a cool mom!”

I won’t (or will try not to) guilt-trip her into calling me or visiting me, because I want her to want to call me and visit me. I don’t want her to feel like she has obligations to me (well, besides the obligation of maybe picking a half-decent nursing home for my old, incontinent ass to play Scrabble in), because frankly, I’ve never really understood the whole “obligation” aspect of family. Perhaps the Internet can clear this up for me…

I remember watching an episode of the Golden Girls (not sure which one — maybe the one where Blanche had sex and they all ate cheesecake? Yeah, that one) in which Sophia tells Dorothy “We do for family.” That has always stuck in my head — probably because I don’t understand (or don’t like) what it means. I just have a hard time with the whole “duty to family” thing. Sure, I cut my family a whole hell of a lot more slack than I ever would a friend or coworker, and I can’t ever imagine extracting myself from their lives altogether…but where does it stop? Do you have to stand by family members even when they’re being abusive and destructive (or self-destructive)? Do you owe them X amount of loyalty just because you share blood and a childhood? How far does the obligation go?

Just so we’re clear, I’m not necessarily referring to situations like, say, caring for an elderly parent, or giving your ancient Aunt Yvonne a lift to the podiatrist every week. I absolutely feel a sense of duty towards older family members who are lonely and/or need extra help in certain areas, but I also want to be there for them. I don’t have any grandparents still living, but if they were, I might not consider a 3pm dinner with them the most scintillating time I’ve ever had, but I’d want to do it.

I suppose I’m referring to family members who are of (theoretically) sound mind and body, but who seem to be constantly bringing The Shit down upon themselves and — in most cases — distributing it among family members so that everyone is suddenly fucking miserable as a result of one person’s drama. YOU KNOW those relatives. The perpetual victims who constantly turn to brothers, sisters, parents, even children for whatever the Need o’ the Day is (usually money, head-patting, and sympathy). I have a relative like this in the outer orbit of my family, and Internet, I’m just about fucking done. Because the selfishness and disrespect and — without revealing too much — the certain activities that are not on the up-and-up are fucking constant with this person. But this person is also a part of a family, and as such, deserves some loyalty, protection, and love, right? If your family won’t give you a second (and third, and FIVE-MILLIONTH) chance, who will?

This is veering precariously close to Intervention territory (which is, uh, no small coincidence), and having watched my fair share of episodes, the whole “enabling” aspect of family is something I think about regularly. Of course, having Sadie has given a whole new dimension to the parents I see on that show struggling to kick their addict children out onto the streets FOR THEIR OWN GOOD. They have to shun them as a last resort to save them, making tough love seem like the polar opposite of “doing for family.” But when a person has become toxic and manipulative and destructive in that many ways, what choice do you have? Even if it is a person you’ve known since the first breath they drew on Earth?

I am not generally a person who thinks in black and white. I believe the entire fucking experience of living is one giant shade of gray, and I like it that way. But for whatever reason, the realm of family dynamics is the one area where I want the rules to be clear. Here are my obligations, here’s when it’s OK to ignore them. Here’s permission to believe that your own daughter won’t feel similarly conflicted about you.

Wow. I think this is the most scatterbrained Deep Thoughts I’ve ever posted. Apologies if it’s not making any sense to you, because I’m not sure it’s making any sense to me. At any rate, please tell me your thoughts in the comments, Internet.

“If you don’t, that’s fine. I understand. You know, some blogs have readers who comment EVERY TIME, but you’re busy, I understand that. Did I mention the doctor told me there might be something wrong with my heart? Oh, but you don’t need to be bothered with such details. *siiiiiigh*”

]]> http://www.jiveturkeyjives.com/?feed=rss2&p=4238 45 http://www.jiveturkeyjives.com/?p=3524 http://www.jiveturkeyjives.com/?p=3524#comments Fri, 16 Jul 2010 18:09:38 +0000 Jive Turkey http://jiveturkey.wordpress.com/?p=3524 Continue reading →]]> Time for Deep Thoughts again, Internet.

I know, right?

So, I had been hearing some noise about this New York Magazine article (charmingly entitled “All Joy and No Fun: Why parents hate parenting”), and when the truly awesome and cute-baby-havin’ Lawyerish linked to it in her latest post, I took the opportunity to read it. My feelings about the article in general can be summed up in Lawyerish’s words:

“I think the fact that our society, including the highest echelons of academia, has become crazed with studying, measuring and analyzing happiness is, in itself, rather bizarre and sort of amusing and also so very distinctly American.”

Damn, Lawyerish, you always say just what I’m thinking, but all intelligent-like and shit. Steve Martin was right: “Some people have a way with words. Some people…not have way.”

I suppose I could just leave well enough alone and dismiss the entire article as kind of insane because YEAH, the fact that we are now attempting to measure happiness like it’s a fucking cup of sugar or something is just…well, it’s not the most scientific thing in the world. But why leave well enough alone when I have a blog on which to blather away about my own point of view? EXACTLY.

First off: I want it to be understood that I fully acknowledge the following things about myself:

1. I only have one child.
2. She is only 15 months old.
3. Therefore, I do not know what it is like to raise multiple children and/or older children.
4. I can only, of course, speak about marriage as it relates to my own experience, which has been a very positive one.
5. These are merely my opinions. Opinions = assholes = everyone has them, they all stink, some people do that weird bleaching thing, etc.
6. Wait. Forget that very last part.

That being said, I’ll also take this opportunity to remind you that I spent the first 30 years of my life staunchly opposed to the idea of having children. That stance changed, obviously, but back when we were trying (and failing) to conceive us a young’un, I remember telling Brad that if for some reason we weren’t able to do this whole baby thing, I was perfectly fulfilled with our lives as they were. Now, who knows how I would have felt if Sadie had never been born, but all I can say is that back then — despite all of our monthly disappointments — I was confident that we could be happy even if we never became parents.  And I think we would have been. Of course, I’m SO SO SO SO SO glad that I never had to find out for sure, but I know that having children is not the only way (and certainly not a surefire way) to be happy.

When I was first pregnant and feeling kind of assy and hormonal and weird, I felt really guilty most of the time because I was having all these thoughts of “WHAT HAVE I DONE?! Our lives were perfectly fine and now there’s this irreversible life-changing event going on and OMG BABIES EPISIOTOMIES POTTY TRAINING  where’s the booze oh wait I can’t have booze SONOFABITCH. I know now that this is a pretty normal reaction after the initial giddiness of the positive pregnancy test wears off, but I felt like such a massive, enormous, ungrateful whore. Who gagged at the thought of lemon hard candies.

Go ‘way!

Once those first trimester crazies wore off, I was left with my normal, underlying crazy, which was comprised mostly of “What if I don’t like motherhood or my baby and make Joan Crawford look like June Cleaver by comparison?” So I spent a lot of my pregnancy generally unconvinced that I’d be maternal worth a damn, and sort of expecting being a parent to suck really, really hard in a lot of ways, and to be insanely, mind-blowingly difficult on top of it all. I was worried that I’d feel trapped and frustrated. I was worried what it would do to our marriage. I was worried about this poor kid inheriting my bad eyesight and anxious tendencies and OMG she’s going to be terrible at math just like me, I know it, FUUUUCK.

I think we can all look at this and call my fears justified, no?

I had a friend who was pregnant (also with her first) around the same time as me, and she was pretty much my polar opposite as far as anticipating motherhood was concerned. She couldn’t fucking WAIT to dive into that shit, and had been wanting kids for as long as she could remember. This first baby was just the beginning of a whole brood of shorties she and her husband planned to have, and her enthusiasm for becoming a parent made me feel a little less insecure. “This is going to be SO AWESOME!” I remember her saying. And I thought, yeah, maybe, I guess. I hope so.

Cut to: five months later. We both have our babies. Guess who loves this whole parenting gig. Guess who really kind of hates it.

…FTW!

Let’s take a minute right here so I can be clear about what I’m NOT saying in telling you this little tale:

• That I am somehow an awesome person and awesome parent because I was a doubtful, anxious pregnant lady;
• That my friend is somehow a lesser parent because she was having a hard time adjusting;
• That I wasn’t right about parenting being really fucking hard.

What I AM saying, however, is:

• That going into ANY situation with expectations that high is pretty disastrous, especially when that situation begins with A PERSON COMING OUT YOUR BREWSTER.
• That I would like to ask some of the parents in this NY Mag article WHAT EXACTLY THE FUCK they thought they were getting into when they decided to add a person to their household whose main job is to scream, poop, bogart your attention, break your things, try your patience, and — later on — royally piss you off. (I am speaking mostly to the first paragraph of the article, in which the author seems somehow surprised and disappointed that her 2 1/2 year old son is acting…like he’s 2 1/2 years old.) Is the fact that kids are demanding 100% of the time somehow hidden from a large part of the population? Have these people never witnessed a toddler meltdown in Target? And if not, can they please tell me which Target they patronize, because I would like to start shopping there now, please.
• That we need to stop treating the act of having children as some sort of rite of passage, status-symbol-y thing you do because you’re bored and all your friends have kids. Having children is not a requirement. You do not have to give up that career you dearly love to get pregnant and have a baby. You do not have to turn your life upside down for 18 years plus if you don’t feel like it. You do not have contractual obligations to provide your parents with grandchildren (at least, I hope you don’t, good lord). But if you decide to do it, then sack up and stop acting put-out whenever raising kids isn’t motherfucking Pleasuretown 24/7, because you know who suffers the most from both those scenarios (being born “just because” and/or being viewed as this massive CRAMP IN MY STYLE, OMG)? The kids.

Who — as she will gladly tell you in her teen years –  didn’t ASK to be born, Mom, GOD!

I freely admit that parenting is really hard, and that’s coming from someone who has it relatively easy (happy, healthy baby, supportive husband). I remember changing Sadie’s diaper in the middle of the night during her first week at home, and as she lay there screaming bloody murder at my bloated, sleep-deprived face, I thought to myself “THIS IS MY LIFE NOW.” And I may have panicked a bit. Because babies do not ease themselves into your life, my friends. It is some serious shellshocking shit. And it is very easy for your life to become unrecognizable very quickly, and maybe for a very long time. I do not think there is any shame in having a hard time adjusting to parenthood, and if you claim that it was a breeze and you didn’t have AT LEAST one moment of Calgon, take me away (and by “Calgon” I mean “tequila,” and by “away” I mean “to the furthest reaches of the globe for a month or five”), I will not believe you for a second. And I certainly don’t think that we should make any secret of the sucky parts of parenting. I’m a firm believer in the lowered expectations, remember (or at least well-tempered-with-reality expectations), and I think knowing about the tough parts going in is immensely helpful and important for people preparing to dive into the abyss themselves.

But. BUT. This is where I get frustrated with the article. While I absolutely, positively DO NOT DENY that being a parent is hard in so many ways, I call total fucking BULLSHIT on the whole “kids have destroyed my happiness” point of view. Because there is one — ONE — person who is responsible for your happiness, or lack thereof. Know who that is?

Ewe.

(Not literally, of course. What I mean to say is “YOU.” I was just trying to be cute with puns and such. Although it would be kind of refreshing to just blame everything on this poor fucking sheep in a field somewhere. Stupid fucking sheep! Why can’t you ever let me be happy, DAMN!)

I don’t really believe the NY Mag article is actively arguing that people aren’t responsible for their individual happiness(-es?), but that’s the tone I get, and it’s cockassed fucking horseshit.  Yeah, it’s a challenge whenever my day starts out with a cranky toddler who delivers a barrage of sharp kicks to my gut when I’m trying to kiss her goodbye, and who slams an entire plate of lovingly-prepared scrambled eggs to the floor without taking a single bite. And yeah, my life sure was a lot more peaceful when my evenings did not consist of a whirlwind routine of PICK UP BABY! FEED BABY! BATHE BABY! PUT BABY TO BED! OH FUCK NOW IT’S 10PM AND I HAVEN’T EATEN AND POSSESS NO CLEAN UNDERWEAR FOR TOMORROW! But I can either choose to be a miserable fucking cuntbag about it, or I can choose to accept that this is what life (a life I chose!) looks like FOR RIGHT NOW, and be happy about it.

Because, after all, this is also what life looks like right now.

A few years from now, life will look totally different. And a few years after that, it will look eerily similar to a few years ago, because Sadie will be grown and gone and it will be just me and Brad again, deciding on a whim to go to happy hour after work or spending a Saturday afternoon at the (R-rated) movies. And I don’t know about you, but going to the movies is much more enjoyable when I can be confident in the fact that I didn’t choose to be a giant, raging bitch of a black cloud during the bulk of my daughter’s childhood.

Choosing to be happy isn’t easy, of course, and I’m not saying I’m a ray of Mary fucking Poppins sunshine all the time (and there are many inanimate objects that have been hurled across the room during these past 15 months who would back me up on that). But I fucking work at it. I make a damn effort. And that’s a sentiment I don’t see anywhere in the article.

And you know, the whole idea that parenthood is this unending slog punctuated with very rare (and short-lived) moments of happiness is kind of laughable to me. Because, uh, isn’t that kind of what LIFE is, kids or not? My life pre-Sadie wasn’t some fucking 32-year-long orgasm of unending parties and fabulous globe-trotting vacations. I still went to work every day. I still got the flu. I still had bad days and paid taxes and had to do the laundry. But now I do all those things AND I have a really awesome moment at 5:30pm every weekday when a little girl cries “Mama!” and flings herself into my arms like she’s been waiting ten years to see me. So IN YOUR FACE, life! You may think you’ve shit on me by making me a parent, but the laugh’s on you.

And while we’re (sort-of) talking about pre-kid life, I have to tell you I really hate the whole pretense of a baby “changing” who you are.  This paragraph had me rolling my eyes from beginning to end:

“While children deepen your emotional life, they shrink your outer world to the size of a teacup, at least for a while. (‘All joy and no fun,’ as an old friend with two young kids likes to say.) Lori Leibovich, the executive editor of Babble and the anthology Maybe Baby, a collection of 28 essays by writers debating whether to have children, says she was particularly struck by the female contributors who’d made the deliberate choice to remain childless. It enabled them to travel or live abroad for their work; to take physical risks; to, in the case of a novelist, inhabit her fictional characters without being pulled away by the demands of a real one. ‘There was a richness and texture to their work lives that was so, so enviable,’ she says. (Leibovich has two children.)”

Well, it seems that the nurses in my postpartum world totally forgot to shrink my world to the size of a teacup when I was discharged from the hospital, because I don’t know WHAT the fuck that means.  A teacup? Really? Granted, you weren’t going to find me on a flight to Japan when Sadie was 3 weeks old, but BITCH, PLEASE. I think the operative term in this entire paragraph is “AT LEAST FOR A WHILE.” Babies grow up, motherfuckers. Quickly. If you’re so sad about having to give up taking “physical risks” for a few years, then get another fucking Nuvaring and clam the fuck up. And the insinuation that having a baby would have caused the novelist to become a less effectual writer? FUCK THAT SHIT. I can’t stand the pretense that having a baby means you have to morph into this entirely different, talentless robot. People who think that are the same people who tell you that getting married will change you. No. No, it won’t. You’re still you. Just married. Or with a baby. If you find yourself changing into this person you don’t recognize UR DOIN IT RONG.

I admit, however, that the article makes some good points about the effects of having children on a couple’s relationship. Babies are hard on relationships (and do not even get me started on the bone-headed notion that having a baby will somehow “fix” a struggling union). I think the toughest non-anticipated struggle of parenthood that I experienced was just how much time Brad and I end up spending apart now that there’s a shorty in the mix. If chores need done or errands need run during waking hours, one of us has to be on Sadie duty while the other completes the task in question. If there’s something fun and non-baby-friendly we want to do (but not exactly worth the hassle & expense of finding a sitter), we have to do it in shifts (or maybe forgo doing it at altogether).  If one of us is in a show, the other is home with the baby. This can be lonely. And for all my doomsday anticipations, I didn’t foresee all this time apart, which is hard for the attached-at-the-hip couple we were before the baby. It takes time (and, again,  MAKING A GODDAMN EFFORT) to find your rhythm again as a couple once you become parents. And as the baby changes, the effect she has on your relationship changes (sometimes for the better, sometimes not), so it’s a constant process of adjusting and re-adjusting. And then if you have MORE kids — well, as I said, I don’t know what THAT would be like, but it certainly does give me pause when I ponder having another baby. I’m pretty sure it would mean even more time apart for me and Brad, and I might need him to start wearing picture ID around the house lest I wonder who that strange man making coffee in the kitchen is.

The article makes some other interesting points — especially about the shift in how parents view children in the current day vs. in the past, and the “concerted cultivation” of middle- and upper-class children — and it is helpful to explore how putting off having children creates such monumental expectations whenever the long-awaited babies finally arrive. But you know what’s not helpful? Quotes like this: “[Children are] a huge source of joy, but they turn every other source of joy to shit.”

Uh, thanks, Dad!

(And if you’re childless and reading this blog, allow me to tell you that the sentiment above is entirely untrue. Because when I was contemplating having a baby, I believed miserable assholes when they said things like that, and in hindsight, I am SO ANGRY to have been scared and manipulated by people who clearly just wanted to shock me or fuck with my head.)

OK. I think I’m done now. I just had to get all that out. Feel free to agree or disagree as you see fit in the comments — I’m certainly not claiming to be any kind of parenting expert.*

Parenting experts generally do not recommend turning your child into a giant agave plant.

*Is there really any such thing as a parenting expert, when we talk about how to raise individual children? I’m pretty sure the only expert when it comes to Sadie is ME, motherfuckers. I didn’t see her slide out of your vagina, Dr. Sears. And I’m pretty sure it was me getting up with her multiple times a night for several months and figuring out how she likes to eat, nap, sleep, poop, take baths, and just about everything else.

Oh, and of course Brad is an expert on Sadie too. OMG I FORGOT BRAD. This article is right! Having a (naked, banjo-strummin’) baby is ruining our marriage!!1!!11!!!

It’s moments like these when the absurdity of life hits you square in the balls. Or ovaries. Or….balls?

OK, let’s pump the brakes so I can preface this shit right quick: Religion is a dicey topic. I know this. I don’t want things to get ugly or judgmental up in here. I honestly, truly, 100% respect a person’s individual religious beliefs. I may not agree with them, but if you think the divine Holy Father is present in your pudding cup, well then, I absolutely respect that. And I’m sure as shootin’ not going to dive into my Snack Pack around you.

Made with Real Milk! It’s practically a damn vitamin.

As my lovely readers have always been consistently civil and otherwise awesome in the comments, I’m saying this not to lecture YOU GUYS in any way, but to just make it known that by presenting my personal feelings on this topic, I am not trying to shit upon anyone else’s beliefs. Cool?

Now let’s shit on some religious beliefs!

(Sorry, couldn’t resist.)

So, I was raised Catholic. My entire extended family (on both sides) is all Catholic, and for a long time, I wasn’t aware that there were people in the world who DIDN’T go to a Catholic church on Sunday. I had a Jewish friend when I was in second grade, and I remember riding in the backseat of our car with her after she spent a Saturday afternoon playing at my house. As we passed church after church, we had the following conversation:

ME: “Is that where you go to church?”

HER: “No.”

ME: “What about there? Is that where you go to church?”

HER: “No.”

ME: “Where do you go to church?”

HER: “I don’t go to church!”

ME: …?

Aside from knowing that she was definitely the luckier one for not having to suffer through a seemingly eons-long mass every Sunday, I was totally fucking bewildered. She doesn’t go to church? Whaaa? Don’t her parents care that, like, God will be mad at her and stuff? And I’m pretty sure that God is BFFs with Santa, and she is going to be totally screwed come December when they compare notes and decide she’s not getting anything for Christmas. Wait, what? SHE DOESN’T CELEBRATE CHRISTMAS?!

I eventually came to understand that there were other religions in the world, thanks in small part to our move to West Virginia, where, like, NO ONE is Catholic. Our town had one Catholic church, unlike Pittsburgh, where those darn Catholics are uuuurverywhere, and your Lenten parish Fish Fry options are as numerous as they are delicious.

Pass the cod, hold the God.

My childhood memories of church are, well, BORING. This is not news. Church is boring for kids, period. It’s lots of sitting still and being quiet and NO TV OR TOYS, and I pretty much saw it as one big obstacle standing in between me and a pancake breakfast at McDonald’s. It wasn’t until I got older that I learned that some churches actually provide alternatives for kids during Sunday services – like, they take all the under-twelves away to go sing songs and color in pictures of Jesus and stuff. Brilliant! But that wasn’t the case in the churches we attended (not sure if that’s a Catholic thing, or just my personal experience). I had Sunday School (CCD), sure, but I had to go to that IN ADDITION to going to church. This means that my Sunday mornings consisted of an hour of mass with a 60-or-90-minute CCD chaser.

I’m pretty sure even young Jesus would have preferred playing Atari to that.

In the back of my mind, I always imagined that church was something that made more sense when you were a grown-up. I figured that the all-encompassing love of God and connection to religion was something that came with time, so – while I definitely kept my dread of Sundays to myself – I didn’t sweat it. Although it always really bothered me when the CCD teachers reminded us that we were supposed to love God more than ANYTHING in the world, more than our parents or our pets or JON BON JOVI, even. I wasn’t entirely sure how that was possible (or fair) to ask of someone, but – as was a pattern for me in this area of my life – I kept my mouth sealed shut about it. Even though I knew from CCD that God would be perfectly aware if, in my heart, I was placing Bon Jovi on a slightly higher pedestal than Him.

Does it help that he was Livin’ on a Prayer?

By the time I reached the ripe old age of 14, I was ready to be confirmed (confirmation = becoming an adult in the Catholic church). It’s certainly not unusual for religions to bestow the title of “adult” on you at this tender age, but when I recently asked a priest why the Church asks you to make an adult decision before you can even drive, he said that it’s done so early mostly for convenience. It’s just easier to confirm the kids while they’re still in school, he said, so that it’s all “out of the way” by the time they graduate, and then they’re in the clear to receive their next sacrament (marriage).

To sum: 8th-graders are asked to commit their lives to the Catholic church because it’s convenient.

CONVENIENT.

Internet, allow me to share with you what was going on with me when I was 14:

This girl could barely make a sound decision regarding HER OWN HAIR, and you expect her to make a very adult commitment regarding the rest of her spiritual life?!

During a particularly heated discussion about religion with my parents, my mother asked me why – if I had always been so unsure about my faith – I had agreed to be confirmed. Internet, she might as well have asked me why I’d agreed to be born with a vagina. There was no AGREEING or DISAGREEING involved in my confirmation process. I was getting confirmed, PERIOD. No room for discussion there. I mean, I can’t even IMAGINE the shitstorm that would have been unleashed if I had said, “You know, I just don’t think I’m ready to go through with this.” So, not committing myself to the Catholic religion when I was all of 14 years old = NOT AN OPTION.

Of course, all of these strong feelings re: my confirmation have only been developed in hindsight. At the time of my actual confirmation, I was still operating on the theory that I’d, like, probably be all into God later, and all this crazy Jesus and Bible stiff would surely make more sense when, I don’t know, I’d been getting my period for more than a year? I really didn’t think about it much.

After my confirmation, though, I definitely started to feel more strongly at-odds with my religion. I was becoming more aware of issues like birth control and abortion, and quickly realizing that my opinions ran exactly opposite to what they were “supposed” to be as a Catholic. I was in that “I AM MY OWN PERSON” stage of teenhood, and I very much did not like that fact that – just because some dude in a pointy hat said so – my mind was supposed to be made up for me regarding so many important issues. And according to my parents and my CCD teachers, holding my non-church-approved beliefs did not come without consequences. Having my own (wrong) opinions was a flaw, something that was deeply disappointing to God. I still held a weak hope that I’d “outgrow” my opinions and magically gain that obedient and God-fearing nature that seemed to come so naturally to everyone else in my family.

My experiences with the church during my high school years were disheartening at best. My church was affiliated with the town’s only Catholic school, and didn’t give much (or any) thought to their teenaged parishioners who weren’t able (read: wealthy enough) to attend the school. I’d always been insanely jealous of the youth group at the Presbyterian church across the street that many of my classmates attended. They went on ski trips and camping excursions and just generally seemed to be enjoying themselves – nothing like the TWO-HOUR-LONG high school CCD class I was forced to attend after church each Sunday. Internet, this class was awful. We had a TEXTBOOK, for shit’s sake. Our only trips were to the convent down the street and to an old folks’ home, the only two places IN THE WORLD less interesting than our regular classroom. Our teacher, as you can imagine, had quite a time trying to engage the ten or so sullen teenagers in her charge, and one day, in a fit of frustration and boredom, attempted to engage us in a discussion about “real” issues (our usual curriculum involved studying the Catechism of the Catholic Churczzzzzzzzzzzzzz). What follows is a nearly word-for-word transcription of what unfolded, as it is permanently etched in my memory (you’ll soon see why):

TEACHER: OK, everyone close your books. Let’s have a real discussion here. I want to hear what you think.

(ME and PRO-CHOICE FRIEND RUTH prick up our ears, because WHOA, Straight-Laced McGee up there is going OFF BOOK? Wha?)

TEACHER: Let’s talk about abortion. How do you feel about abortion?

(Stony silence, as we are all kind of IN FUCKING DISBELIEF that she is choosing to dive into ABORTION TALK after six solid months of dissecting Vatican II.)

TEACHER: Come on, guys! Tell me what you think! Ruth, what do you have to say about this?

PRO-CHOICE FRIEND RUTH: Well, I’m pro-choice…

TEACHER: THAT IS WRONG, YOU CANNOT BE PRO-CHOICE, ABORTION IS MURDER, IT MURDERS BABIES AND THE CHURCH IS AGAINST IT SO YOU CANNOT BE PRO-CHOICE!

(Stony silence, the sequel.)

TEACHER: OK, open your books back up to page 56…

Internet, I may be paraphrasing, but I am not exaggerating. It wasn’t exactly a think tank up in there.

My parents – in an unprecedented move – actually allowed me to stop going to CCD by 11th grade, when it became clear I was gaining nothing but an even stronger distaste for my religion. I looked forward to college as my escape from going to church every week (as well as my escape for, well, just about everything in my life up until then).

As it turns out, escapism involved a lot of kegs. Who knew?

I think I went to mass at the Newman Center on campus all of three times (two of those with a full-on hangover) before I gave up on the charade altogether. I was going mostly for the free (and surprisingly good) spaghetti dinners anyway. My parents, however, were under the impression that I was going every week. Thus the lying about going to church began.

Fast-forward to 1999, when I got engaged to Brad. I decided to get married in the church based on the following reasons:

1. My parents expected me to, and I just wanted to get married already and not rock the boat;
2. I had always pictured a church wedding, and never really thought to entertain any other scenario;
3. I still (STILL) honestly thought that I’d magically become a faithfully devoted Catholic someday;
4. I was 22 years old, and apparently clueless as all get-out.

In hindsight, I really, really fucked that one up. I never should have gotten married in the church, but I just didn’t know how else to go about it without seriously damaging my relationship with my parents. I wanted (and still want) their approval, and I knew that starting out with a non-church wedding wasn’t the way to go about getting it. I don’t blame them for this colossally bad decision, but I know that it would have been World War III up in that bitch had I shunned a Catholic ceremony.

So, a church wedding it was. Followed by roughly four years of not going to church but telling my parents that I was.

Oh, I tried to go. Everywhere we lived, I tried to go. When we were in Queens, I lived across the damn street from a huge Catholic church. I went once or twice, but…I never felt a damn thing. I never felt like I fit. What’s worse, I had a sneaking suspicion I didn’t even WANT to fit.

Eventually, my parents caught on to the fact that I was non-practicing, and they were naturally very disappointed and angry. It’s too much to go into right here, but let’s just say there was a lot of anger on both our parts, and then…we just kind of stopped talking about it. It’s a touchy subject. And – despite empty assurances made to the contrary – it’s really not up for any kind of rational discussion.

Of course, I understand why my parents are so upset. I didn’t need to have a baby of my own to understand that. I know that they feel like I’m throwing their religion back in their faces. I spent a long time wishing that I could just MAKE myself believe in the church because then they’d be happy. I want to make them happy. But the fact that I still couldn’t bring myself to go to church despite my overwhelming desire to make them proud of me was telling of just how much I didn’t believe.

It surprised me how much of a damn relief it was, though, to be open about not going to church. I didn’t have to lie and pretend anymore, although we just replaced the lying and pretending with lots of awkwardness about the topic of religion. I spent the next few years exploring how I felt about my religion, other religions, and the concept of religion in general.

You know how sometimes The Way You Really Feel creeps up on you, and waits patiently underneath all the layers of How You Want to Feel until you’re ready to recognize it? Like when you’re in a bad relationship, and one day there’s this nagging little feeling in your heart telling you that this is all wrong and you need OUT, but it’s buried so deep beneath all the other stronger, louder feelings of I CAN MAKE THIS WORK that you just drown it out? Eventually, all those other feelings grow silent, exhausted after months (or years) of trying to disguise the truth, and only then can you finally address what you’ve known on some level all along. Yeah, well, that’s me and this whole agnostic-but-probably-more-like-atheist thing.

Ugh. “Atheist.” I have such an aversion to that word. Growing up KrazySexyKoolKatholic, “atheist” was pretty much the equivalent to “Voldemort.” It was generally understood that atheists were shameful and most definitely bound for the hell in which they did not believe. A high school friend of mine was a self-proclaimed atheist (and a former member of the aforementioned Awesome Presby Youth Group – even co-ed ski trips could not save her!), and I remember my sister telling me she felt sorry for her. I heard that sentiment a lot when it came to atheists: that they’re to be pitied for their sad, Godless lives. And at one time, I agreed.

I’ve coasted along for a number of years on the understanding that I was pretty solidly agnostic. I felt comfortable with that label. Except for the one time I read the quote (and I can’t remember where) that an agnostic is just a person who doesn’t have the balls to be atheist. Hmm. I didn’t like thinking about that. And – following in the grand tradition of things I didn’t like thinking about – not wanting to think about it was a HUGE red flag that meant it was probably true. Damn.

See, I’d arrived at my agnostic diagnosis by doing a lot of thinking. I thought about the Bible. About the derivation of (and the very human need for) religion. About the plain, old not-adding-up-ness (from my perspective, anyway) of most religious theory. And it didn’t take me long to realize that I wasn’t picking up what religion was laying down. And oh, MAN, did it feel good to finally just come out and own up to that. I felt at peace for the first time in, well, EVER, when it came to spiritual matters. And oh, how I WANTED to feel at peace! So much so that I was ignoring that nagging feeling in the back of my mind. The one that was trying very hard to let me know that I was not quite done thinking yet.

Back in January, when I was stuck at home with Sadie’s mysterious fever disease, I had the chance to watch Showtime’s taping of Julia Sweeney’s stage show “Letting Go of God” (careful with the link, it plays music, GAH), which is all about her journey from devout Catholic to atheist. It’s long, and it can be a little cheesy in that one-woman-show kind of way, but…wow. It pinned down my experience with and my feelings toward religion almost exactly. Granted, Julia Sweeney had a much more positive experience growing up Catholic than I did, but the twists and turns she takes on her way to finally discovering she’s an atheist really resonated with me.

Towards the end of the show, she talks about how the idea of being atheist was really frightening for her to consider. It seemed depressing, this idea that there was no God out there watching over us, looking after us. That after death, we just cease to be. She was terrified to think of seeing the world in these terms, so she came up with a plan: putting on the “no God” glasses for a few minutes at a time – just to see what it looked like! – and taking them off whenever things got too scary. And then, she discovered that looking at the world through the “no God” glasses wasn’t scary. It was oddly comforting. Oddly beautiful. It fit what she had been feeling all those years.

Pat’s DEEP, yo!

I had never thought of atheism in these terms before. Instead of seeing the absence of God as making things somehow empty and sad, it made them even more amazing. I mean, if some great, big, all-powerful entity didn’t create the universe, isn’t it just that much more amazing that it all came to be on its own? How powerful to think that something as intricate and mind-blowing as my body creating and giving birth to a baby happened not because God designed my body to do so, but because the biology of my body knows how to do so? She also mentioned how, as an atheist, coincidences take on a whole new dimension. Coincidences don’t really exist for the religious; things happen because they were meant to happen, because it was part of God’s plan. But when you take God out of the equation? How incredible! The fact that I wouldn’t have had Sadie if that ONE specific egg and that ONE specific sperm (of millions!) hadn’t met up? Is humbling. And mystifying. And truly, truly amazing.

Also: pretty gross to look at. But mostly: AMAZING!

I also used to think it would be unbearable to see the world as an atheist because of the magnitude of just-plain-unfairness that abounds. If I eschewed the idea of an afterlife, then that means all the huge assholes in the world are just GETTING AWAY WITH IT, with no flames of hellfire at the ready to engulf them. And it also means that there’s no mysterious, Godly reason for all the suffering on Earth. After all, when I found myself asking why such terrible things had to happen to good people, the only answer that seemed right was that God had his reasons, and those reasons were not for us to understand.

But now? That seems like a major fucking cop-out. I mean, does God (a God who creates us out of love) not at least owe us some explanation whenever something horrific happens in this life? Is “Eh, it’s a God thing, you wouldn’t understand” a suitable answer? Well, for me, it’s not. I believe that religious folk would call this outlook “pride,” but sometimes I think that trying to shame someone by calling them prideful is just a way to get them to stop questioning things.

As for the assholes-not-getting-punished thing, I found that when I entertained the idea of no great big Detention Hall in the sky, I found it surprisingly…peaceful. I mean, yes, there are terrible people who will get away with terrible things, and it’s terribly unfair. But what if that’s just the way it is? Nothing we can do about that, can we? And isn’t finding peace in this the same as finding peace in the “we don’t understand God’s reasons for shitty things” rhetoric?

Of course, nothing is black and white, and my atheist-leaning feelings are no exception. Just as I had a nagging feeling that this is the way I’ve really felt all along, I have a similar feeling that there really is more to us than our life here on Earth. I think that living beings are more than just their physical selves. I think that we go on – somehow, in some way – after we die. I just don’t think that the force outside the physical world is necessarily God. Or God as we think of Him, anyway.

Also, I honestly believe that this is simply my truth, not everyone’s. My mostly atheistic viewpoint feels as gut-feeling-right to me as being a Christian or a Muslim might feel as gut-feeling-right to you. I am not interested in converting anyone; I’d just like a more universal recognition that spirituality is an intensely personal issue, and should be treated as such.

Not unlike an individual’s Girl Scout Cookie preference.

I also wish people would see religion as the positive influence it should be in their lives, not an excuse to exclude, shame (or worse, hate) other people. The religious people I respect are the ones who take joy in their beliefs, and who use their religion to enhance their lives and better themselves (this obviously does not pertain to those lovely few who like to BLOW PEOPLE UP as a display of religious celebration). Unfortunately, I know a lot of people who simply go to church out of habit instead as a purposeful, meaningful choice. I saw a lot of this in the Catholic church – the whole “Oh, sure, I’m pro-choice and pro-birth control and I support gay marriage and I think it’s a travesty that they flat-out refuse to ordain female priests, but you knoooooow. I’ve just always been Catholic!” Back when I was struggling with Catholicism, I was told that I was “taking things too seriously” when it came to feeling misaligned with the church. I was encouraged to “stop thinking about it so much” and just “go to church anyway.” Some huh? Internet, I don’t get that shit. It was – theoretically – MY VERY SOUL these people were talking about, and I was being encouraged to phone it in? I had an actual priest tell me I could disagree with almost every tenet of Catholicism and STILL go to church. Why, why would I want to do that? Would I be fooling an all-knowing, all-seeing God? To me, that does nothing but belittle and insult the entire institution. If you can’t be bothered to take your spiritual beliefs to heart, then I just can’t take those beliefs seriously. I mean, if you don’t, then why should I?

I don’t think I’ll ever get my parents to understand or respect my viewpoint, and that’s a tough pill to swallow. And I’m not sure how I’ll broach the topic of religion with Sadie, except to encourage her to explore her options. I don’t think I’ll be able to tell her (as Julia Sweeney told her daughter) that her dead pets and relatives simply cease to be after death (that one’s still a little harsh to lay on a kid, in my opinion), but I want her to know that there isn’t one right or wrong answer when it comes to religion.

I’m fully aware, of course, that things could go all Alex P. Keaton up in here and Sadie will become a born-again enthusiast who spends her time inundating me with Bible verses and blaming me for her Godless childhood, but that’s the chance you take with kids, isn’t it?

And hot damn, it’s worth it.

]]> http://www.jiveturkeyjives.com/?feed=rss2&p=2920 56 http://www.jiveturkeyjives.com/?p=2813 http://www.jiveturkeyjives.com/?p=2813#comments Wed, 03 Mar 2010 17:00:23 +0000 Jive Turkey http://jiveturkey.wordpress.com/?p=2813 Continue reading →]]> A’ight, you guys. Thanks for giving me your blessing to proceed with posting my Deep Thoughts. In fact, I created a special category for these posts on my blog, so you know right away when shit’s about to get all contemplative up in here, and you can read on/navigate away to Selleck Waterfall Sandwich accordingly.

Lest we forget our inspiration.

But first: an update! Remember how I was going to audition for a show, and then it snowed and the audition was canceled? And then it got rescheduled, and I was shitting my frilly little drama pants with nerves about the new and improved audition? Well, I ended up not making it to THAT audition either, because (GUESS WHAT) it fucking snowed again that night too. BUT: as I have worked with the fine folks producing this show before, they gave me a call and asked me to read at the callbacks. Score! So I sloshed downtown amidst the snow and ice and gave a reading. SO much fun, and I was so glad to have the opportunity to get out and audition again, because I am a massive nerd. Fast forward a few days, when I got a call telling me I got the mothafuckin’ PART, yo! It’s a small part, but it is by all accounts an awesome show, and I cannot wait to get started in April.

And yes, I have already weathered my obligatory attack of maternal guilt over leaving my precious offspring to attend rehearsals.

This update actually segues quite nicely into this Deep Thoughts entry, because today I’ll be talking about careers.

a.k.a. CAREERS: IM DOIN IT RONG

Like most young kids, I had some grand ideas growing up about what I’d want to do for a living. Thanks to a Dr. Seuss-themed “All About Me” book that my parents still have, there is hard and fast proof that I gave some serious, 8-year-old thought to being a flight attendant or a veterinarian. But I would be remiss not to share with you my very first career goal, which I remember coming up with after watching a “J is for…” segment on Sesame Street:

A jaguar. I wanted to be A JAGUAR.

(In my defense, jaguars are badass. And in hindsight, this career goal was probably more attainable than my chosen path of “actor.”)

I liked school, and good grades came easily to me. It wasn’t until junior high and the advent of Algebra that I started to struggle in math (a struggle that would result in me earning a D in Trigonometry despite having two private tutors), but despite this I was still on the honor roll.

And fighting off the boys with a stick.

I remember having an ABSOLUTELY ABSURD “four year plan” meeting with my parents and a counselor in 8th grade, during which everyone discussed my grades and the counselor asked my parents to help me decide on a fucking CAREER PLAN so that I could focus my upcoming high school years accordingly. I distinctly recall my Dad being all “She’s in 8th grade, jackass,” to which the counselor responded with a long, pre-rehearsed speech about how important it was to have direction during these years and blah blah blah better take Calculus. My parents told me afterwards not to stress out about knowing what I wanted to do with my life that very instant, and I was relieved. And then I probably went to a yearbook staff meeting or got a perm or whatever the hell it was I did when I was in 8th grade.

I’m guessing episodes of “A Different World” were involved.*

The career-related shit only got more intense when I entered high school. My school was very academically competitive; it wasn’t uncommon for each graduating class to have several ivy league-bound overachievers, and I’m still impressed when I think about how many of my classmates are doctors today. There was significant pressure to enroll in college placement (AP) classes, and I felt a certain amount of shame in the fact that the only AP class I took (because it was the only one in which I knew I’d have a chance at getting an A) was AP English.

Even though – as it turned out – I suffered through term papers about Cry, the Beloved Country and Beowulf only to get to college and realize that I didn’t need an English credit in my major, which rendered my fucking AP credit useless. WEEEE!

My insecurity about AP classes (and my ineptitude at math) aside, I did well in high school. I had dreams of becoming a lawyer early on (for no other reason than it just seemed grown-up, I think), which morphed into dreams of being a politician (based on a weekend trip to DC which spurred fantasies of working in all those fancy, columned buildings), but pretty soon I settled on art and theatre. I felt a little strange when I compared myself to my AP Calculus and AP Biology friends who seemed so casually confident about their medical school goals (I make the same good grades! I’m just as smart!), but I knew in my heart that I didn’t want to go in that direction. So off to theatre school I went. And I got cast in a show immediately!

And subsequently learned the meaning of “be careful what you wish for.”

Being a theatre major was a lot different than my academically-charged high school environment, naturally, but there was that same underlying optimism, that feeling of being able to achieve and succeed if you just worked hard enough and got good grades. After all, benchmarks of success aren’t hard to come by in school: getting an A on a test, earning a part in a play, being praised for creative thinking in class – it’s everywhere. Why wouldn’t you think the world is at your feet?

At the beginning of my junior year, I had a very uncharacteristic moment of uncertainty about my major. It was mostly due to my mother’s constant worries about my post-graduation plans (“Why don’t you switch majors to Arts Administration? Then you’ll be able to find a job!” “Because I’m an ACTOR, Mom, GOD!”), but I panicked and decided to take up a minor…in Communications.

Yes, Communications. The degree second only to Theatre in its vagueness and uselessness. This was my safety net.

A week into my Communications minor (long enough for me to have sat through two horrifically boring two-hour evening classes about…something. Communicating? I don’t know), I dropped it. Feeling flaky and aimless, I made an appointment to talk to my advisor, who was also my very favorite director and acting teacher, Russell.

Think Rip Taylor meets Joan Crawford meets Maxine from the Hallmark cards. (Thanks, Brad, for helping me put my finger on that one.)

Our conversation went like this:

Me: I think I need a back up plan.

Russell: What in God’s name for?

Me: Because…I might need a job?

Russell: You have a job. It’s being an actor.

Me: I like animals, and there’s a two year veterinary tech program at [college two hours away]…

Russell: You’re an actor.

Me: But -

Russell: You like animals? Go get cast in a show where you play a veterinarian – maybe some James Herriot adaptation or something. That’ll get it out of your system.

Me: What if -

Russell: YOU’RE AN ACTOR.

Fin

And Internet, I knew he was right. I definitely had other interests – astronomy, Egyptology, even fucking equine management, for Christ’s sake – but there was only one thing I really wanted to do for the long run. Just like my friends who knew their skills = doctor or scientist, I knew my skills = actor, and that was that.

I’ve already written at length about what happened after college, and while I’m mostly at peace with where I’ve ended up acting-wise, sometimes when I re-frame my life in more traditional terms and realize that I do not and most likely will not ever have an actual career…

It feels a little like this.

Bear with me here, Internet, because this is where my thoughts get very disorganized and rapid-fire and hard to communicate.

DAMMIT! I knew I should have stuck with it!

These attacks of OMG NO CAREER hit me every 6 months or so, and are usually brought on by something like, oh, asking to book travel for someone at work. Someone younger than me who has a Ph.D. Someone who wanted a career in whatever discipline, then went to school, worked for it, and achieved it. And then I think:

• I could have done that.
• But I didn’t.
• But I didn’t want to.
• Did I?
• Or I guess I DID, but then I dropped out.
• I blew my chance.
• BUT I WANTED TO!

And then I realize that part of what’s rankling me is my hurt pride. I wonder if the person I work for looks at me and thinks I was probably just not smart enough to do anything other than this job; that I had no other ambitions. I feel desperate to let them know I’m just as capable as they are, that I can probably spell better and read faster and think more creatively. I just didn’t feel the drive to put my skills to use in a way that would win me a high powered job or a lot of initials after my name. And it’s obvious the person who has the biggest issue with this is me, not them.

The obvious solution, then, would be to just fucking suck it up and GET a damn career already, right? If it’s such a fucking big deal to me? But Internet, as I admitted to Brad a few weeks ago, even if you told me I could go to school for any degree absolutely free of charge, I can’t think of a thing in the world I’d actually have the drive to study. Sure, I’d like my MFA just because it bugs me that I didn’t get the first time around, but it’s not like I’d actually DO anything with it. I don’t want to teach, I don’t want to uproot my family to act, I just…I don’t know. I don’t think I want anything career-wise, and I don’t know what that says about me.

Most days, I’m OK with this. I’m OK with my very ordinary office job (the only kind of job I have the experience to get), because it allows me to act and pay the bills. But so help me, I can’t help but wonder if my high school friends – all lawyers and doctors and scientists and professionals – look down on me. Feel sorry for me. Although, like the situation with my coworkers, chances are I’m probably just doing those things to myself.

My mother and I had an argument in the car (always the best place for unsteady emotions) one day during The Year That Will Live in Infamy. I was complaining about the office job at the bank that I’d taken in order to save up for our wedding and grad school (HAR HAR HAR). I’m entirely confident I was being unreasonable and overly dramatic, but I felt like such a sell-out. Working as a glorified receptionist after four years in college being a SERIOUS AC-TOR was, like, SO humiliating, Mom, GOD! So, yeah, I can understand why my mother had little patience for fucking Meryl Streep over here, but I felt so trapped at that job (even though it was always just a temporary arrangement). I felt like the world was seeing me as someone I wasn’t, someone I never, ever wanted to be. I pouted and wailed about how this job WAS SO NOT ME, and my mother told me to suck it up (as she should have). Internet, sometimes I still feel like I am that annoying, petulant 22-year-old, whining in the car to her mother when it comes to my work situation. Except I’m 11 years older. Holy shit, if 22-year-old me could fast forward 11 years and see that I was still working an office job?

Incidentally, Brad looks hot in this picture, doesn’t he? Check out that, uh, womanly ass…?

So here’s what I want to know: people who are dentists and doctors and lawyers and such – those jobs that take years of studying and commitment and preparation – did they always just know they were born to drill teeth/examine unsavory body bits/use words like “tort”? Some of my high school friends have been on the medical school track since age 15. Now, I’m pretty sure we all change pretty drastically in the years between 15 and 33…

THANK GOD

…so how is it that they managed to forge ahead through all those radical personal changes and pursue the career they wanted back before they could legally drive? Because I don’t understand that shit. Are they just more determined? Genetically predisposed to not having changing tastes or aspirations? Just really, really stoked about having to probe strangers’ no-no parts?

Someone please ‘splain.

But for every friend I have who’s managed to sail smoothly along in a single career track, I have another friend who, like me, still doesn’t really know what she wants to do with her life. And because I was alive and had ears in the late 90s (and especially because I was graduating from college at around that time), this reminds me of that annoying Sunscreen Song. You know, the one that sounds like a commencement speech set to a Casio keyboard, and trots out the old “Don’t feel guilty if you don’t know what you want to do with your life. The most interesting people I know didn’t know at 22 what they wanted to do with their lives. Some of the most interesting 40-year-olds I know still don’t.”

I’m now realizing I was 22 when I heard that song, and I am now closer to 40 than I am to 22 HOLY MOTHER OF ASS.

(Also: how much do I love this photo? LOTS.)

Anyway, I guess I take comfort in that particular quote…but then I feel immediately pathetic for doing so. Because doesn’t that quote just reek of defensiveness? I can’t help but feel pretty damn sure the person who first uttered those words did so between sobs as he watched Judge Judy in his stained bathrobe at 3pm on a Tuesday.

I don’t know, Internet. What do you think? How do you feel about this? Any of you have one of those fancy careers I’ve heard so much about? Do you love it? Is it worth it?

Sometimes I feel like I wasted my potential, and that I owed it to my family to force myself into a successful career of some sort (no matter if I liked it or not) because they worked so hard to make my life so nice and to send me to college to earn a degree. I think about my parents and grandparents, whose main concern in life was not following their dreams, for fuck’s sake, but securing a steady job and providing for their family. They worked hard so that I could have the luxury of having and pursuing dreams, and I…fucked it up. Would I have been more successful with less opportunity? With less choices? Would I have been a more successful person if, like my parents and grandparents, I had fewer options when I graduated from high school? Is anyone out there still following this COMPLETELY INSANE line of thought?

I don’t really know how to wrap this up, except to say that – regardless of how much this career thing eludes and frustrates me – I think I’ve made the right decisions in my life when I look at where I am and who I’ve got there beside me.

Is totally over this career conversation. And, apparently, kisses from me.

*Do you guys remember Jaleesa? And Whitley? And Freddie?! They all seemed SO OLD AND MATURE to me back then, but in looking back at production shots from the show, they are BABIES, you guys. Sunrise, Sunset. Dwayne, Wayne.

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