they come, they go

my downstairs neighbor, bob, wrote a song about living in our apartment building. he made me a rough cd of it and it's not bad. his voice cracks, and the song is actually really cute, sort of catchy in that soft-guitar-paired-with-a-lonely-male-voice kind of way.

but I'm pretty positive that he thinks my upstairs neighbor is in the mafia, and that the reference to the "young girls with their boyfriends and girlfriends who don't last long" is about me. at least now I know he's as much of a voyeur as I am, pretending not to watch the rest of the building come and go outside our windows...

***

for a few years now, I have taken pride in the fact that I am the absent one: that I am the one who lived far enough away that I got to stay out of family drama, and who was welcomed heartily at family events because it was a big surprise when I did actually get to come home and/or show up to something. there has been a certain amount of celebrity added to all of my interactions with family members that has inflated my ego just enough to have me fully enjoying such interactions. or at least has made it feel like I am less of the stick-in-the-mud I sometimes think they all think I am. my life is instantly interesting because I am a fresh face, a fresh voice, and a fresh opinion; and their lives also become edited to the version that is most entertaining, making interactions much more cocktail-party-esque and easier to digest.

maybe this is why, apart from the fact that many of my post-high school life and living situations have been temporary (four years here, two there, one there...), I have so many long-distance friends: because when they finally do hear from me, and vice versa, it is this great joyous event and we are both nothing less than ecstatic about the updates we proffer. granted, this approach to maintaining relationships does provide for a somewhat vacuous experience, whereby neither party ever truly knows the other person well enough in real life - a sense of distant closeness, I'd say. but it is fun, and it seems to give us the chance to treat each other more congenially and with more enthusiasm that one might think we would on an everyday basis.

due to my comfort with such distant closeness, I've found that being present, or living in the same city for more than a year and really trying to have a social life that consists more of face-to-face contact that email-to-email, has been quite the surreal experience. I am often unsure of how frequently I can call or drop by or write or ask to lunch, and am likewise amazed that other people just seem to know that we should be interacting on a regular basis in order to maintain the level of closeness that we do seek. really, to contradict the naive conclusion about everyday interaction above, I am amazed that many of these people are just as excited to hang out with me, hear my stories, and have shared experiences, as the people who only see me once in a while. I'm slowly realizing that when you pick the right friends, they're going to love every minute of hanging out with you, no matter how frequently that happens, no matter how long your friendship lasts.

***

as bob sang: I am the young girl with the friends who come and go. and as of this weekend, I am also the young girl with relatives who come and go - or at least, it's starting to sink in that some of them may go, and go sooner than later...

my grandmother fell ill over the weekend. and I'm realizing now that I haven't seen her since last christmas... or maybe the christmas before that... and I think what has been lacking in our relationship is part of what I'm talking about above: we have allowed our excitement in seeing each other to wane. I used to see grandma weekly. I used to mow her lawn, to play cards, to have dinner, to do all of those basic things you do with someone to whom you are actually close. most of those times, however, were fun. she made me laugh, with her crazy latvian accent and forgetful nature. but somewhere in my process of obtaining family celebrity status, she stopped making me laugh. and I stopped gracing her with my presence.

I am okay with the fact that I haven't seen her in two years. I have already been missing her, missing the woman I remember who made me piragi at christmastime, who sometimes let me beat her at cards, who spoke the most ridiculous baby-talk to her heifer of a cat, and who once called my brother "chuck" when she couldn't remember his real name, for longer than that. I don't think I could handle remembering her as anything less than pleasant and quirky, it would be too much. but I guess what I should be learning from this is that relationships, while fantastic when the parties are constantly excited to see each other, also need that element of the down. they're like everything else: the down makes you enjoy the up so much more. I suppose that's why all of my memories, save that one about the lawn-mowing incident in 1995, have been pleasant about her lately: I'm preparing for the ultimate down.

the difference is more than twenty-one

I was six when I realized that people existed outside of the time that I saw them.

we were driving past my elementary school, across from which my then-best friend lived. she and her family were getting into their car and I asked my mom where they were going. when my mom told me she didn't know, we had a circular five-minute conversation about other people's business, and I then realized that we didn't control everyone else's lives. this was huge! I thought that when my mom called lindsay's mom, it was this instant thing that lindsay was able to come over... because my mom called, my mom said so, and that's all that mattered, that's all that was necessary to my time spent with lindsay. we mattered, we made things happen, we were important.

and I was six when I learned how to ride a bike and tie my shoes, both things that I avoided until I was six, not because they were hard or outside of my abilities, but because I was afraid of trying and failing. afraid of having to practice, afraid of looking like an idiot in front of my mom, my younger brother (who'd already learned such things), and the little old lady who lived next door. I finally became more embarassed by the fact that I was the smartest kid in the class but was still the only person who couldn't tie her shoes or ride a bike without training wheels that I gave in and learned both things. I still carry this trait - this seeking of the situation with less embarassment despite the potential learning lost - though I can attribute the lessening of this trait to years of my mother making me show up to and finish things throughout the years. and to a final realization that I could make myself show up to and finish things, and that I would be okay afterwards.

the moral of both of these stories is that I seem to be spending my life realizing that I am not as important as I think I am: people's lives will go on without me. they have places to be at certain times, obligations to people who are not me; they have things to do, and think about, and talk about that are valued as much as those that I do, think about, and talk about. and because of this, I've realized that those moments when I think I look like an idiot are probably overlooked due to the other person's internal fight against looking like an idiot themselves.

while I still struggle with trying new things out of this internal preoccupation, and am often held back from trying things I would like to try by nothing more than my own issues, I've at least learned to laugh at it. and to ask for help once I've attempted something independently and failed (and laughed about it). because if I really am equally as important as others, the only way anyone's going to know to help me is if I ask; the only way anyone's going to know I screwed up is if I tell them; and the only way anyone's going to benefit from my learning process is if I do it with good humor.

I was also six when I first spelled a word that keeps repeating in my life, one that I'd never seen written but woke up the morning of my sixth birthday and spelled aloud: nick, n-i-c-k, nick. I thought it, I tried it blindly, I succeeded; twenty-one years later, I'm still winning on that one.

I was a pretty great six-year-old. I think I'm gonna be a pretty great twenty-seven-year-old.

new year's resolutions

in my head right now, there is a big band playing some grandiose theme music and I am wearing a ridiculously sparkly red dress, some gaudy junior-prom-like jewelry, long white gloves, and red lipstick. I have perfected the take-my-picture smile and the princess-wave. I am confident, laughing slightly, and blushing just enough to make you wonder what I'm thinking. as I waltz across the stage of your mind, envelope in hand, you cannot resist "ooh"-ing and "ahh"-ing at my shiny-ness, anticipating what is, I'm sure, the most important announcement of your year thus far - my new year's resolutions, my "master plan v. k27"!

oh, how I love being self-entertaining!

so, without further ridiculousness, the list:

• take classes - yoga, climbing, art, swimming, whatever. just get out of the house and learn something.
• write more - my current nervous habit is to stand in the kitchen and find something to do, like eat chips and salsa or rearrange glasses in the cupboard or water the plants. my new nervous habit needs to be that I sit down and pound out the things that are bothering me. writing is my favorite therapy, and let's face it, it'll probably be more entertaining for you!
• focus on fry - I got him because I needed unconditional love and wanted to give it in return. I think I've done an okay job as his mom so far, but I think I can do much better when he finally returns to st louis.
• listen to less sad-bastard music - though it has its place and time, I'm easily depressed enough as it is, why do I need the help of music?
• see three doctors - for my heart, because my blood pressure/flutter are out of whack and scaring me a little; for my teeth, because I haven't in a while; for my intestines, because I need to be sure. okay, maybe a fourth. for my head.
• remember my own self and be true to that self - I tend to sway in situations. I tend to let certain currents take me or commit me to things I don't necessarily mean. usually it's small things in conversations, for sake of not arguing or just agreeing. but sometimes it's big things... and then those snowball... and then I'm unhappy. which leads me to...
• communicate better - to reference one of my favorite wilco songs, "handshake drugs": it's okay for you to say/what you want from me/I believe that's the only/way for me to be/exactly what you want me to be. I think the reason I like this song so much is because it's ridiculously true: the only way I can understand anyone, the only way anyone can understand anyone else - and thereby cultivate good relationships - is by saying exactly what they mean. there must be tact involved, surely, but clear, honest, and sincere communication has proven to be the best thing in my life so far this new year, and I bet it will continue to be as long as I allow it.
• allow money to rule part of my life - the part that calms down when I've paid all my bills on time and have a positive bank balance. but only that part.
• practice better consumerism - speaking of money, I spend too much of it entirely too frivolously on things I don't need or sometimes even want. I ripped an opinion article out of a magazine in the WF breakroom one day on this woman's crusade to buy things second-hand at all costs and re-read it whenever I'm nervously standing in the kitchen. I have come to believe that she was right: it's so easy to run down to target to get whatever I need right now; but it feels so much better to randomly find the coolest glasses ever from my childhood at value village, and have inside jokes about them for years to come.
• stop intentionally eating things I'm allergic to - I have food allergies. everyone in my life knows this. (as I recently told nick, "most people are weird, but they don't have to tell everyone about it all the time.") considerate people in my life take this into account when we go out, for which I often feel guilty. the problem here is that I sometimes disregard these health- and life-threatening factors. sometimes I order something and just eat around the peppers. sometimes I eat a cherry hershey's kiss because I want some chocolate and it's the only thing in a 20-foot radius. sometimes I find myself with a bag of something that "may contain sunflower/safflower oil" in my hand, thinking the worst that could happen is that I end up in the hospital, I think... but I have some benadryl somewhere, so I'll probably be okay. and this is completely unhealthy; it's self-harming and even mildy suicidal. I know what can kill me, and I must choose to avoid it, to live. this requires creativity, and remembering that there are things I can eat... and that in order to keep eating those things I can eat, I have to fully and truthfully avoid the things I can't. and I must face whatever it is that is really bothering me, really causing my laziness or desire for anaphylaxis, instead of stuffing it full of deadly proteins.

there you have it, folks: the sincerities of me in one convenient list. some of these will prove to be easier, more measurable than others. and some I will just have to track myself. but if I'm anything like the person I was last year, all of them will be accomplished with a freshly-brushed smile.