Etch-a-Sketch

Sometimes I wake in the night reaching to my right, still expecting your warmth. You always lay to my right. Though only I bear witness to those  groggy fumbles, that expectation always leaves me a little embarrassed. Even ashamed.

Some memories are still so vivid. You’d think by this point they’d begin to fade, but they refuse. The scruff of your face, how it itched my cheeks when your lips fell on mine in the middle of the night, that sensation is forever etched into my mind.

Your smell was always a comfort. I still remember it. I’d steal your t-shirts to sleep in when you left for tour and I missed you. I’d find myself awake on your side of the bed next to the wall, too.

You were never one for public affection. In fact, I know you hated to be touched too often, it made you claustraphobic. But you always appeased me. You always let me have my way. You knew I liked to wrap my legs around yours while we lay on the the couch, while we slept at night. You let me hold your hand as we walked down the same street we’d walked for years.

Nothing made me happier than when affection came from you, though. Sitting in easy quiet, smoking a joint on a car ride home, you’d rest your hand on my thigh and I knew there was no greater joy in the world. You loved me too and that’s all that mattered.

You liked winters together, but I liked the summers. Seeking salvation from the heat indoors during the day, venturing out at night to the park with a couple 40 ozs of Heineken made for memories that will forever leave a smile on my face. (OK whatever, they aren’t 40s, but what did you want me to call them? 24s?)

One summer night, it rained. The heat drenched us in sweat all day, and was washed away by the warm droplets from the moonlit sky. We were 22, but we ran screeching and laughing down the street toward our darkened park with no cares, splashing in puddles along the way until we fell in a fit of giggles in the grass. And we kissed. I write about that night a lot.

Our most special moments seemed always to take place under the stars. When boys still asked girls to be their girlfriends, with sprinkles of light speckled across a chilly autumn sky, you asked for me to be yours. We wrapped ourselves tight in blankets found in the back of your dad’s old truck. You wore your studded olive green hoodie that always poked me anytime I tried to steal it away.

Everything we lived, we lived together. Our triumphs, our accomplisments, our heartaches, we felt together. Our names were synonymous to each other. We were and still are, lifetime buddies.

Our familes cared for each of us like each was one of their own. Your parents supported my treck into college as much as they did yours. Your older sister was my role model for the epitomy of cool. My humungous family accepted you as a son, a grandson, a cousin, a brother. Your presence was mandatory at every family function.  One of my cousins often tells me it feels like I removed a member of the family from their lives without consent.

Sometimes I wish I could shake our memories out of my mind the way you can shake a picture from an etch-a-sketch. The best ones, like you teaching me to love hockey, or buying our first ornament to adorn our first Christmas tree purchased together, often ache more than the memories you’d expect to hurt.

I can’t remove them, though. Even if I could, I’d have learned my lesson from Eternal Sunshine. It’s almost shameful to wish to erase them, when so many may never know love in that way. Who would I even be today were it not for that love? It’s  a scenario I can’t, and don’t illustrate for myself.

Light at the end of the tunnel

Tomorrow marks the day of my first day of my senior year.

I can’t sleep.

I’ve been working for so long — so hard, to finally see this day. It’s like the first sign of light at the end of a long tunnel. You’re there. You’re moving. You just have to keep your eyes straight ahead so as not to veer off to the wrong side of a one-way road.

And it’s easy — so easy — to lose focus of that light.

I had thought it impossible to continue. I was halfway through another blog post the other night, that, in short, attempted to validate my fear of failure through an excuse that I had never been cut out for college. I still slightly maintain that I’ve never been one for structure or authority, but it’s never stopped me from pushing myself through responsibilities in my own, personal way.

An inspiring conversation with someone whom I respect and admire yesterday gave me the one push I needed to power through the one thing I’ve been dreaming about since I was a little girl. And it’s not the dream of a gaudy, overpriced gown streaming down an aisle toward the average-minded notion that a white picket fence and a baby on the hip is the answer to fulfillment — something young women too often perceive as their ultimate purpose in this world.

I don’t really know what my ultimate purpose is.

What I do know is that long-standing goals shouldn’t be given up on so easily in the way that I almost gave up. Life is hard. It’s hard for everyone. The most notable accomplishments aren’t handed on a silver platter. They’re achieved through blood, sweat, tears, and some damn hard work.

And the easier something was to accomplish, the less meaningful of an accomplishment it actually was.

I’ll take the path that brings me that sense of fulfillment and accomplishment over any other any day of the week.

So bring it on, senior year. I’ll power through whatever gets thrown my way and laugh about it when I make my way toward the end of the tunnel.

 

A manifesto of self reliance

I did my grocery shopping at the gas station today.

And because I no longer drive, I trudged down the street in 110 degree Arizona heat — sweat pouring down my face and drenching my hair — and lugged a gallon of water and a pint of cheap Shamrock milk along with me.

I walked home through my neighborhood speckled with abandoned houses in the middle of the city and upstairs into a one bedroom apartment I barely afford on my own.

Actually, if I’m going to be honest here — which I am — I don’t afford it. At least not until my student loan disbursement is deposited into my checking account August 18 (I’m counting the days, you see).

I really should be studying for a final in one of three classes I’m taking this summer instead of blogging out my personal business into cyberspace.

Wait, no, that’s not right either. I should probably be writing the Craigslist ad for the car I’ve been saving to drive again in August when I get my student loan money that was meant to afford my insurance so that I can pay my electricity and rent.

I bought that rundown, sun weathered, ’96 Honda Civic with a broken driver’s side window that doesn’t roll up two years ago while I was still in community college. I saved every single penny I had for five months to buy that car.

That car is my baby — a souvenir of those months I rode the bus or walked two miles in the summer heat to get to school — of the days I’d pay $20 to take a cab from Glendale to Goodyear to get to work only to earn $40 waitressing at a restaurant where I couldn’t afford to order food from the menu on my breaks.

I now sit at my laptop — an older version of MacBook I acquired from my mother who checked it out for me over the summer from the school where she teaches first grade. I’m not really sure what I’ll use for schoolwork and the occasional, obligatory Facebook trolling and tweeting when I have to return it back to her school in August.

It is 11:50 p.m. on a Tuesday. I’m precisely 47 hours and 10 minutes away from pay day. I ate discounted food from my work for dinner tonight and — mom and dad please don’t cringe — that was the first thing I ate since last night. And I’m pretty sure I had pretzels for lunch yesterday. I’m also fairly certain that dinner the night before consisted of raisins a coworker (whose identity shall remain anonymous) and I stole from the back pantry at work.

My family and close friends know I am stubborn and have too much pride to ask for help very often. I’m sure it’s a little frustrating at times.

But this year I’ve been trying my hand at independence. At growing up and learning to fend for myself through the last year of my undergraduate college career. As tough as the real world is, I am still here. I am alive and healthy and having the time of my life.

I like to think of myself as taking a double major in life studies.

I do not want to be taken care of. I do not want to become dependent on anyone but myself. And, just to be clear, this isn’t any sort of feminist manifesto. I strongly believe in everyone — man or woman — having the ability to be self reliant if necessary. A year ago exactly this was a quality I valued yet was strongly lacking.

Now I can say I am considerably more self sufficient. I am confident that on the day I graduate I will be ready to face the real world and the challenges that await me on the other side (namely those of massive student loan repayments coupled with a bleak job market).

And I want to be proud of the person I am and where I came from and the road I took to get where I’m going. I want to know that what I’ve accomplished is the direct result of my hard work and dedication to pursuing my passions and rising above the norms of my predetermined socioeconomic class. I want to be a living, breathing example to my future children that anything is possible if you want it badly enough.

So on a last, personal side note to my daddy that you (whoever you are) are welcome to read:

When I tell you everything is OK, and that I am OK, and that I am happy — it is and I am. I look to you and to mom and at all of the struggles you have each faced in your lives to provide Christian and I with a good life and am inspired. It drives me and pushes me even harder every day. My entire life you have taught me the value of a hard day’s work — and it has not gone unappreciated the way parents often think their parenting is. When I graduate and am off in the world chasing my dreams, I will know that although my accomplishments are my own, I will have you and mom to thank for being so supportive and always willing me in the right direction.

Thank you, California: the beginning of summer

“Which of you is going through tough shit?”

I looked down at my feet.

“Come on, which of you is going through some tough shit?”

“Me,” I said.

Every time I need to get away, to clear my head, I go to the same place. I travel six hours from my hometown to sit on the same boardwalk, to feel the same sand beneath my feet, to look across at the ocean and feel small and infinite.

Water has always had a healing effect on me.

And it never fails that every time I make this escape, I meet complete strangers who somehow just get me. And from these chance encounters I always have something to take away. I go home with a new perspective. It’s funny how sometimes people who don’t know you at all can see you so clearly.

“Where are you from?”

“Phoenix.”

“Have you been in the ocean yet?”

“No, it’s too cold.”

“Girl, I know you came here for the ocean. You don’t drive six hours on a whim just to sit here. How often are you in California?”

“Almost never.”

“You have to get in then.”

And just like that I was whisked away. The girl put her arm around my shoulder as we walked across the dark, empty beach.

“Did you know sand is a natural exfoliate?”

“I guess so.”

The girl stopped and I stopped and we looked down.

“You need to feel the sand and embrace it.”

She pulled me along again and we ran into the ocean.

The air was cold, but the water was warm. A wave splashed against me and I couldn’t stop laughing. I ran along the water as fast as I could and the cool seaweed wrapped around my ankles and trailed along behind me.

“You know, you look like you belong here,” the girl said.

She ran back to the boardwalk and I stayed, wading deeper into the water and gazing off into the black sky.

Time stopped. I inhaled as deeply as I could and tasted salt.

——————–

It’s 3 a.m. now and the beach is empty and serene. My pants are soaked and I’m covered in sand. I’m so close to the water that the breeze from the waves has made my toes go numb.

The sky is pitch black and seems to stretch further than I can even comprehend. I strain my eyes to see anything at all and there is nothing.

And I am alone.

Growing up I learned that crying should be saved for when you mean it, for significant life experiences and emotions that need to be released and let go. It is personal. Tears, if used sparingly, possess a powerful cleansing effect that only you can provide yourself.

I saved any crying I might do for the ocean. I sat and I cried and it felt good. I washed away the hurt, the regrets and the stresses of the last year of my life and of the day.

When I couldn’t cry anymore I trekked off into the night back to my bunk in the bungalow off the beach.

——————–

I awoke in the morning in a room full of strange faces. The light of the sun seeped in through the window behind my bunk and cast the room and the faces in an effervescent orange.

I was afraid of the feeling of forgetting and remembering as I walked in from the ocean last night – that twinge you feel after sleep when you’ve remembered your world has been slightly shifted.

The twinge came eventually, but the feeling passed. I shifted around in the bed and turned over toward the light from the window. I had only slept a short time, and I hadn’t slept the night before, but sleep would not come back to me.

I sat up and shook the leftover sand from my hair.

The faces began to stir in their bunks and speak. I realized many of them had traveled even further than I had.

And for some reason it made me smile.

I tucked my shirt back into my shorts, put on my shoes still soaked from ocean water and we left.

I stepped outside and the combination of the sun and the air and the vastness of the ocean in the daylight was beautiful and overwhelming.

It’s funny how the air can taste so differently mere hours away from the air you normally breathe.

And the sky was the bluest I’ve seen in so long. I almost forgot how blue it could really be. The clouds hung and seemed suspended between the sky and the ocean. I couldn’t stop looking upward as we walked down the boulevard for breakfast.

——————–

Back at the beach the sand is warm. I slept a deep half sleep on my stomach and awoke to the roaring quiet of the crashing waves.

I’ve never felt so calm.

My heart beat slowly; the rays of the sun enveloped me in a soft warmth – dreamily persuading my eyelids half closed. I felt and welcomed every possible sensation.

I’ve always thought it impossible to write what you haven’t felt, or what you’ve forgotten how to feel. Every sight, every taste, every sound, smell and touch is a reminder that you are living – that you are human. Emotions too, most especially negative emotions, are vital to embrace. Sadness is a sign that you have known and felt joy. To feel emotions and sensations, really feel and embrace them is the most important aspect of living.

——————–

“Don’t you think the waves look like lines of cocaine?” the girl had asked me on the walk down the beach.

I laughed.

“They kind of do.”

“I wish I had some right now,” the girl said.

I said I did too, but I didn’t. No drug could have given me what I took from the sand and the water and the endless sky.

——————–

My friend told me on the drive home that I’m a dreamer, that I’m the kind of person that is constantly inspired. I think that’s true. It’s a quality I value in myself and in others.

And with the bright, almost blinding sunset peeking through the gaps between the mountains along the winding road home, I promised myself a life of travel and constant incitement. And I promised myself to feel comfortable sometimes living it on my own.

So thank you for the inspiration, California. I’ll see you first when I graduate. And from there, who knows.