I JUST HAVE SO MANY FEELINGS

I’ve been thinking a lot recently about how I suffer from “unbearable lightness of being,” to quote Milan Kundera. I belong to no one and no place. I have no anchor to hold me accountable for my actions— no significant other, no children, no familial obligation. I could move to Pakistan next year, and it wouldn’t matter to anyone, except maybe my closest friends. Although my freedom can be liberating, it can be lonely sometimes. I’ve been reading the NYT Sunday Routines feature in big chunks, and it makes me rather sad and jealous. All these people just hang out with their cute families, looking so comfortable. At the same time, I’m only 22. I need to chill the fuck out and realize that not being tied down is a gift and also totally normal at my age.

Once, on a dinner date (I think it was a date? I mean, I slept over his house after, so let’s pretend it was), the guy asked me, “If you could do anything with your life, what would you do?” The question was so loaded, it pissed me off. I felt he was trying to get to the core of my being in one fell swoop. Unprepared, I was like, “I don’t know.” He said that he would pack up his life and move to Oaxaca, Mexico forever. However, he said that this wasn’t a real possibility because he couldn’t bear to be so far from his family. His exact words were that “it wouldn’t be fair to them.” I felt extremely alienated by his comment. It would never cross my mind that I couldn’t live in a foreign country forever because my family would miss me. 

Speaking of irritatingly loaded questions from guys, over the summer I was buying beer with a romantic interest. We were directly in front of the convenience store freezer when he asked me what the most exciting thing I’d ever done was. Why would you ask me that? As I grappled for an impressive response, I felt as though I had never done anything remotely exciting in my life. I thought, “Fuck you” and said something about CouchSurfing. When I shot the question back at him, he answered, “Playing a concert in front of 10,000 people.” I don’t remember the exact number, but it was absurdly high. He was a musician. I asked him if he got nervous performing, and he said, “No. I get more nervous talking to a girl.” 

I am so tired and so over Spain!

Facebook profile photos in which they are the sole white person, surrounded by dark-skinned orphans (ethnicity variable) whom they have volunteered to help.

I have my period again which means that I have been in Spain for a month. I am pretty regular, FYI.

The day before I flew out, I went to get self-serve frozen yogurt with my sister. Oh god, I miss self-serve frozen yogurt. I was wearing the same gauzy brown dress that I am wearing at this very instant, in fact. There were no seats available, so we perched ourselves on a roomy windowsill to eat our lychee-flavored froyo or whatever it was. I felt like my tampon needed a change, but I was enjoying my final American yogurt too much to be bothered. When I stood up to throw away my empty cup, I noticed that I had left a maroon splotch on the (crisp white) windowsill. How can I still mishandle my period when I’ve had it for half my life?! I had defaced the store with my blood puddle. Fortunately, it was a Saturday night, so the employees were distracted by customers. I quickly sopped it up with some napkins and ran to the bathroom where I cleansed both myself and my gauzy brown dress. When I was walking back to where my sister was sitting, a girl stopped me and said, “You left—”

I waited on tenterhooks for her to finish, “— a dirty period stain on the windowsill, you nasty freak!”

But instead, she said, “—your iPhone in the bathroom.” Oh.

My sister: “How did she manage to bake ONE cupcake in ‘Bridesmaids’? Did she use egg substitute?”

Do you ever have the realization that you’ve been “penciled in”? Say someone texts you to ask if you’re free to get drinks over the weekend. You’re surprised by this message— after all, you only met him briefly while apartment-hunting, and he didn’t even try to Friend you afterward. Yeah, whatever. Rather touched by his invite, you employ a friendly “Hey!” and propose Friday night. In response, he says something like, “Then we’ll do 6pm on Friday at so-and-so bar.” 6pm? That’s early in the U.S., let alone Spain, you think to yourself. Moreover, how odd that he didn’t even ask if that was a convenient hour for you, instead presuming that it was hunky-dory in your book. What if you had made prior plans to hang out at the beach until late evening? Nonetheless, you agree to that whack time because okay fine, you don’t have plans then.

On Friday afternoon, you are eating “chips” and salad with your British friends at the kitchen table. While discussing the Spanish-English language exchange that’s happening later that night at a local bar, they mention that The Person you’re meeting for drinks is going to attend the exchange, which is scheduled for - wait for it - 7pm. The puzzle pieces align in a split second. You are meeting him at 6pm + he had something to do at 7pm = HE PENCILED YOU IN. It was really the perfect way to cut short his Annie time, as we all know that can be overwhelming and maxes out at one hour for normal folk: “Oh man, I gotta flee, I mean go, to this language exchange. Bye!” This is silly planning on his part because like, what if we’d been having an awesome conversation, the kind that picked up his mind and blew it into tiny pieces? It would have been truncated by such a strict time limit, and that would have been sad for him. By the way, it’s not that I feel like a jilted date; there were zero romantic connotations. In conclusion, the question is: was I petty enough to cancel our drinks redenzvous on Friday after I figured it out? The thing is. The thing is. I’ve totally penciled people in before.

Pencil in (verb): to intentionally impose restrictions on the duration of a meet-up by sticking it before some other obligation, often out of fear that the meet-up will be dull, awkward, physically injurious, or all of the above. I’ll pencil you in.

This ole blog ended up getting too personal for mass consumption, so I started a new chaste one over here for my Spanish travels. However, if I have to write anything slanderous, juicy, or mad bitchy, you can bet your bottom peso that I’ll be over here typing away.

I woke up in my childhood bed for the first time in months. My alarm had been set to 8:30AM so my dad could drop me off at the bike store before work to get my tire fixed. The bike man said that the repair would take three hours, so I went to a nearby Starbucks and read the New York Times while drinking green tea. That newspaper is so long. By the way, I had no idea that Android was an operating system— I thought it was a type of phone. Well anyway, that’s something I learned while reading about the Motorola-Google merger. The height of luxury is having the time to read the NYT cover to cover. I forced myself to read the Wall Street Journal afterward, but fortunately with one phone call, I found out that the bike repair had been finished early, at noon. After picking up my pink mountainbike, I rode it to the local YMCA, where I purchased a month-long membership and promptly went swimming in the cold water. I really fell in love with swimming this summer. It centers me. After several laps, I was informed that a child had had an “accident” in the pool, mid-swimming lesson. Everyone was forced to get out. I waited in the sauna for twenty minutes, as the pool was cleaned. A lady in the locker room said, “I like your bikini. Where is it from?” I answered, “Filene’s Basement.” She asked, “The one in Boston?” I told her no, the one in Newton, the best one of all. I went swimming for 45 minutes, until I realized I was extremely hungry and on the brink of passing out. It was 3pm or so. I biked home in the drizzling rain. When I got home, my mom texted me that her father had just passed away. She was on a flight layover; she had just left Boston for Taiwan that morning to see him before he died. I was debating whether to respond with a sad-face emoticon (oh my god, that seems callous, doesn’t it?) or an “I’m sorry” when my phone’s screen turned white. My water bottle had spilled in my bag earlier, and I suppose my phone was more drenched than I thought. Currently, my phone sits drying in a bucket of rice, but I fear that the damage is insurmountable. The rest of my day sucked so much, not even because my grandfather died. Other irritating stuff occurred. I think I was more upset about my broken phone than his death. Since he was very old and had led a very successful life in a professional and personal sense, I feel his death is kind of…okay. I just feel sad that my mom is sad and also that he died due to health problems, rather than in his sleep. Also my dad is a moron, and I can’t stand to be around him. The one nice thing about today is that I made a pitcher of mango iced tea. 

Age 21 was so much better.