A Second Wind

I'm still trying to get used to my new life. Everything's new. Nothing, except for 2 of the cats, is the same.
I miss going to school. I miss...everything. Sometimes it's easy to get so caught up in missing things and people, that I fail to realize what's in front of me. I was starting to feel defeated, like maybe this acting/modeling thing was just a pipe dream doomed to fail and maybe I threw everything else I ever loved away for nothing. I haven't been this poor since my freshman year of college. I was applying to normal, 9-5, soul-sucking jobs again. I was losing faith...
It always seems to go like this with acting though. Just when you think your passion is going to bankrupt you, opportunity knocks at the door.
Now I have an audition tomorrow. I have a photoshoot this weekend. There will be talent scouts at said photoshoot.
Maybe it's not a lot to most people, but it is to me. You don't have to be famous to act for a living. Everyone has to start somewhere.
It's getting a lot better, but I had been so sad... so I agreed to start anti-depressants again. Unfortunately, they did not react in a good way. They made everything worse. I felt like giving up. It exaggerated any negative thoughts I was having. If you or someone you know suffers from depression and needs meds, it's important to note that sometimes they do make things worse. Luckily I was warned, and luckily I made peace with my brother and we're friends again. He noticed. Sometimes all you need is for someone to notice. It was a rough patch, and I'm getting out of it. Everyone has to get out of it on their own, to some degree. I feel like I have a lot of reasons to be sad, but sometimes there really is no reason. I hope it's situational, and not something I'll have to deal with forever. I was a very happy kid, and a very happy teen, and I just want to get back there again. The Bloggess  taught me that depression lies. Sometimes she writes very candidly about her struggle, and she offers encouragement. It's a hard thing to do. Being candid on the internet is a scary thing. People can use it against you. People can judge you for it. The Bloggess puts it all out there anyways, and I love her for that.
So, since I'm on the other side of the dark fog now, maybe I can offer encouragement for someone else.
What works for me when I'm so sad and every little thing seems so overwhelming and I feel like a failure is...my wanderlust.
I think of the places I haven't been. I step out of myself and try to see a bigger picture. I think of the history of this planet, and all the landmarks I want to touch with my own hands. I think of how foreign air smells. I remember how I felt on my honeymoon at the Mayan pyramids. I remember my walks around Alster Lake in Hamburg. I picture myself on the ocean, floating on my back. Just floating. Many people might not know this, but I was a beach baby. My parents had a timeshare in San Carlos, and we were there every year, without fail, for my birthday (until Alexa was born). Of course I would also tag along any time anyone else in the family went to Guaymas or San Carlos. So it helps me to remember the salty smell, the sound of the waves crashing on rocks. I remember that time when I was left unsupervised at a new beach. It was really clean and I had those goggles that covered my nose so I could swim underwater like a mermaid. I swam out, squirming my way on the seafloor, when suddenly there was a steep drop. I came up for air and down I went again to explore. I could feel this cold, cold current coming from this steep, dark drop. I went down as far as I could. Obviously that situation could have ended badly, but something scared me and I came back up. As I did, I thought to myself "I'll be back when I'm bigger. I need to know what's down there."
I guess...that. I need to know. I need to know what's out there in the world. I need to know what's on the bottom of the ocean. I need to know what's under the polar caps on Mars. I need to know what else is lurking in the rainforests. I need to know how my story ends.
Curiosity might kill me one day, but it's the only thing saving me right now.

Luna

I write all the damn time, in a notebook. I was talking to my brother about this. I have a bit of a dilemma. I actually uttered "some of my stories are just too real, even for the internet." ... :p
I guess what I meant was that...I want to publish some stuff. It is very personal, but also stuff that happened a long time ago. These aren't problems I am currently facing. A lot of people advise me against putting problems on the internet, but, well, what good are these stories if no one's ever going to hear them?
So, to lighten the mood in preparation for my first "I almost got shot" story, here's this awesome song I was sent!

The Girl at the Show

It's true that you don't get to choose what stays and what stays behind. I'm sure we all have some really random things we remember years later. When I am really sad and just don't have time to feel it all, I make myself imagine the happiest things that I can to bring out warm and fuzzy emotions instead.
I used to sit and reflect on the endless directions that life can pull us, and would get lost in elaborate daydreams of  the various different places I could end up, the different types of work I could be doing in 15 years, and wondering about the people who will become crucial to me whom I don't yet know. It always filled me with hope and determination.  However, time seems to become a scarce resource as we get older, so I found something that requires much less of it: pulling from my happiness memory bank.

A really popular mental destination of mine is the first Florence and the Machine concert I went to with my friend Kitty.
It was a weekend trip, because did I mention the concert was in Los Angeles?
The drive there was pretty spectacular. We shamelessly jammed out to our favorite ladies to get in the concert mood. After we got a couple of date milkshakes, I passed one of the ultimate friendship tests back then (somehow), because Kitty was actually letting me drive her fancy car.
It was shortly after she let me take over that she discovered one of my most endearing qualities: my intense phobia of semi trucks.
The rest of the ride was just a thrill for her, and a test to how well I could hold my pee in (from the intense laughter...and scares) for me.
We realized as we were entering the Wiltern that night that most of the concert goers were females, in relationships with other females. We thought that was adorable, and I tried to hold Kitty's hand and pretend to be her lover but I don't think she was amused.We got an amazing spot. We were as close to the front as we could be without being in the pit, standing against the dividing wall. We had a better view than those in the pit, anyways.
I'm super impatient and wanted the openers to hurry up so I could see Florence already.
I was not expecting to fall in love that night, but I did. With Grouplove.
They opened for Florence and the Machine. I still don't know if it was the caffeine pills I took before the show, or magic, or what. All I know is that I suddenly felt...alive. I felt like I was waking up from a coma. I felt like how someone must feel when they get told they're going to Hogwarts. Fireworks were going off in my head. The band just seemed so happy, liberated, and connected to one another. It was palpable.
I think they were playing Gold Coast when I noticed the girl. There was a girl in the pit, dancing. She wasn't...dancing with anyone. She wasn't doing conventional dance moves. She was just dancing. It was like she could feel the music in her soul, like she anticipated what the next note would be before it was played.
She was surrounded by people, but she was in her own world. She didn't care what anyone thought. I don't know how to describe this emotion. I watched her and I simultaneously wished I could be as free as she was, but also wished I never had to know what that was like. It was tragically beautiful.
I don't know that girl, I don't know her story, I just know that at that moment I wanted to know everything about her, and I wanted to give her a hug. I didn't say anything to her though because I didn't want her to stop dancing.
I'll never forget what it was like watching Florence and the Machine at the Wiltern, the dress malfunction, the electric energy, or singing myself hoarse. I'll never forget how excited I was about Grouplove, buying their EP, and meeting Andrew afterwards (and telling him he smelled good, what?). I also won't ever forget that girl, dancing in the pit.

Dizzying, Dazzling, and Tragically Beautiful

I know this Vevo video is ten minutes long so, but the opening includes a poem/intro that I adore. I have a bit of a Lana obsession because while yes she's the singer and songwriter, but she makes some beautiful videos to go with her words. They're haunting, enchanting, ethereal, melancholy..there's a beauty in the sadness. I think sadness might be the wrong word, too. (Forgive me for sucking at words sometimes)


When I watch films and I know what fate eventually befell the great actors in the scenes...well, it's almost....I can't describe the feeling I get, and hopefully I'm not alone and someone can help me expand my lexicon. It's like the feeling I get when I'm laughing and crying at the same time. The feeling I get when I accept the absurdity of life. The feeling I get when I watch the sunrise by myself, or lightning in the night-time rain. There is so much beauty around us, so many touching moments in the natural world that we may catch glimpses of, every sunrise will look different and so will every sunset. The clouds, the trees, you, will never be in quite the same position, the light won't refract in quite the same ways, the color combinations wont be quite the same... Beautiful but fleeting. Shining then gone.

 I'm learning to notice beauty, and I don't mean that in the shallow, put-on-makeup, posed portrait type of way. It's the behind-the-scenes, candid-photo type of way. We can always put on make up and dresses and fake smile until our cheeks hurt and get some pretty pictures, but a candid picture can capture that ephemeral moment of joy.  
There were times when I was struck with an urgent need to memorize everything about a moment, commit it to my treasure trove of blissful memories before it ended. It's like I knew I would need those memories to sustain me someday. 
This is a double-edged sword though, because I can't control which one of those scenes play out in my dreams. They're too real, too good, too happy, and my mind makes up new scenes that never happened and they feel so real. When I wake up I actually do have a few seconds of stillness, before that feeling in my stomach returns and I want to roll over and die. This is why the sharpest objects allowed near my bed are....cat claws? Archer takes the task of not letting me roll over and stab myself to death with his paws very seriously. He's waiting with fresh cat snuggles instead.

Having to remember so many changes, so many losses, and deal with all of it all over again whenever I get out of bed....that's why I loathe going to sleep. At a time when I needed my home more than ever to cope, there was no home to go to.  I knocked on all the doors I knew, and there was simply no answer. 
So I mourned all the reasons I had to want to be a good person. I mourned the feeling of having roots firmly in the ground. And I mourned the future I had meticulously laid out.
 I don't think many things can feel worse than this, and I certainly do not wish to live through whatever IS. Before you waste your time typing, just keep reading. Yeah, sure, this is totally like that time your dog died and I should be over it. Got it.

Yet...the worst I ever experienced prior to this, I was 16. In the aftershocks of that event, I was in a mini-freefall. After years of being a vegetarian,

I ate burgers again for the first time. I went to school with smirnoff in my coffee mug once or twice, I may have skipped a class or two, embraced the black nail polish, dyed my hair magenta, and just stopped caring what people thought. Rock bottom, looking back, was apparently not turning in an essay for Karen, and dropping that hard-won A.

I would be lying if I said that back then, a small, dark and twisty, integral part of me wasn't kind of relieved when some innocence or naivete was chipped away though. Falling can be exhilarating, freeing. It's when it happens all at once and I just hit the ground that's a problem. But I wouldn't be me without those falls, even the really bad or embarrassing ones. 

Anyways, some of Lana's words and videos capture that a feeling of chaotic change for me, a feeling that's tragic and beautiful, between hope and despair. The feeling that anything is possible and like nothing matters at the same time... 

Edit on September 5, 2013 @ 3:56 PM.

Driving and Babies

Driving and babies make me cry. Today I got a little of both.
I went to Goodyear to visit my dad. It is so hard not to scream and throw things every time I walk into that house. I just want to go plop on the bed next to my mom and tell her every meaningless thing that is happening in my life and then listen to her prattle on about the latest thing the babies she nannies for did. Instead I am greeted with her pictures in the living room and flowers that are there to remind me that she's gone. Her urn was there but my dad has taken it into their room now. My dad. Seeing him breaks my heart all over again. She was his life for 35 years. He is just so lost now and I can't stand it. Today I was in the living room and I heard clear as day the exact sound her slippers made when she walked into the kitchen from her room. I know she's gone but that didn't stop my heart from doing a little joyous back-flip and it certainly didn't stop me from looking up really fast. Even as my heart broke all over again, I got up and walked over there, just to make sure.
There was nothing there.
Any time I go visit and drive back home I cry the whole way. The stark contrast between what my visits home used to be and what they are now chip away at my soul and I cry. Today I stopped at Target before driving off, and I had to pass by the baby section. The only thing I can think of when I see all the adorable baby clothes, car seats,  and nurseries is: who is going to care about my babies? I mean, aside from Anthony, I can't imagine anyone is going to care the first time my kid smiles or rolls over or sits up. Who the fuck is going to care when they are just sleeping really cute for the 200th time that week and I HAVE to take a picture? No one is going to want to see that many pictures. Who am I going to call freaking out when I don't know how to do something baby-related? Who is going to call me ten times a day just for me to gush?!? No one. No one is going to do that. I know how crazy my mom was with my nieces and nephews and how often she called my sister and how happy she would be to hear any little thing about the babies. I feel like other moms aren't like that, not to the extent my mom was anyways. My moms' ideal vacation was one surrounded by grandkids, and all of the vacations she ever took were to Mexico to see them. My mom was a nanny since I can remember. She has raised so many children from little babies until they start school. She was an infinite source of baby knowledge and I was so thankful for her. She has been curious as to what my kids will look like and act like since I was about ten. She really wanted to meet them. At the end, that was all she wanted. She would pray to God that she could be here at least for my first. She wanted to see me pregnant and to see how in love Anthony would fall with a little tiny blend of us. We aren't having kids for a while, but it already breaks my heart whenever I see little baby clothes at the store or see a pregnant girl out shopping with her mom.

This is all so fucked.

16 Percent Chance...

Well, I wrote this last January, after my mom was diagnosed with cancer. If you are reading this, chances are you already know what happened. I meant to post this and other things a long time ago and update on how my mom was doing. Too late. But here they are anyways:

January 28, 2011

I'm unhappy. I'm stressed. I'm guilty for taking the time to write this instead of being at work, doing homework, or being with my mom. I'm also kind of empty and numb. I don't WANT to feel this, I really don't. My chest feels tight all the time, and the tears are always just under the surface. If I lose my composition for even a second, I know they will come rushing out like a cascade of water breaking through a dam. And just like that, I will be powerless to STOP the tears until there is not any more water left. This is what happened the first time I let myself cry over this. It was awful. We had been drinking, my friends and I, and when I knew I could retreat into my room without anyone caring I did. And I cried and cried and cried for HOURS straight. There was no break in my crying. I took sleeping pills during this hysteria so I could pass the fuck out and after a few hours I finally did. One minute I was blowing my nose and wiping tears and crying and next thing I knew it was several hours later and I was waking up on a still-wet pillow with the tissue in my hand. Needless to say I felt awful and don't ever want to repeat that ever again. So that is why I have to repress this thing that's in my chest. It almost feels like it's a little dragon in there, and it started out as a vaguely uncomfortable little dragon egg that I could ignore but now he's hatched, and every day that I don't completely lose my shit it gets bigger and stronger, and now he has claws and is scratching at my chest from inside, and every now and then he breathes fire, because he recently learned how to do that. In fact, I  know EXACTLY when this dragon learned to breath fire. It was the day I decided to do more research on the internet to "make myself feel better" about my mom's cancer.  It was also the day I discovered the number sixteen. Sixteen percent survival rate after five years, that is, for stage 4 breast cancer.

                Five years. In five years I will be twenty four years old. That is WAY TOO FUCKING YOUNG to have an 84 percent chance of not having my mom around. I know, I know worse things have happened to other people. Some people never get to know their parents, or their parents die suddenly in a freak accident when the kids are young. There are natural disasters and poverty and wars. I honestly don't know how the world isn't a more fucked up place than it is, considering all the horrible things the majority of the world's population is subjected to on a daily basis. I can't even imagine. But then again, I could never imagine one of my parents getting cancer, either.

                Most of the people my age I know have never experienced death. Sure, they had a pet die. Or maybe a distant relative, or a grandparent died when they were little. Some kid they saw once in the hall at school died in a car crash. That is not what I am talking about. Those people might think, "Oh, I've experienced a death and it isn't as terrible as some people make it out to be." It's so much worse. I lost my grandmother when I was 7. We saw her every day, and the last few weeks she was alive she was living in my house. So yes, I knew her and was close to her. Was I super upset? No. As a child, death isn't that terrible. I didn't grasp the PERMANENCE of it, nor had I yet started to question whether people go to " a better place" or whether I would ever see my grandma again. I KNEW I would see her again, I didn't see why everyone was so sad if she was somewhere better than here, having a ball. When I was in maybe 8th grade an uncle died. Again, we weren't that close. This time, I was very, very sad that he left behind a little boy, and my cousin was absolutely HEARTBROKEN at losing her husband to cancer so young. I cried at that funeral, and I was genuinely very upset for my young widowed cousin. But again, I wasn't in mourning. It was sad, but I could leave the funeral and return to my life and not be consumed by it. I thought I understood death then. Sadly, my cousin was the one who got that horrible understanding then. She couldn't just "leave the funeral".

                Then Austin died. The grief was all consuming for a very long time. I spent months crying at night.  Our lives are irreparably changed because of his death. My family, his family, completely changed. There will ALWAYS be a piece missing. It is still so hard to think about and I still cry. The crying is a lot more spread out now. Usually something triggers it, or on New Years I don't know but I was just hysterically crying about it. Heavy drinking triggers it too, apparently. So it doesn't ever go away. It never will. Eventually during the grief you just accept that this is always going to hurt and that you can't fix it and that you can't give up on the rest of your life. The show must go on. The whole process is so long and exhausting and fucking sadder than anything I had ever known before. Before Austin died, when I read a book and someone died I would get sad and think "oh that would be so sad". Now when I read a book and someone dies I start bawling, because I know. It's one of those feelings that you absolutely cannot imagine no matter how hard you try until it actually happens. Then, no matter how hard you try, you can never forget. It's kind of like being in love in that way I guess. You don't really know what it's like, no matter how many romance novels you read as a tween or whatever, until you actually fall in love.

                 So having the experience of death in my repertoire of memories is not helping me in the least right now. It's not one of those things that will become easier because I already went through it once. Nope. Now that I know... the remote prospect of losing my mom is so much more horrible and breath stopping than I ever could have imagined when I was younger.  The whole process...of grieving...is SO EXHAUSTING. It takes a part of your soul and keeps it forever and ever. Not only that, I think of how many things would trigger a hysterical crying fit for my mom, and it's basically anything imaginable would trigger one. I feel like I am staring up at a mountain. A mountain on Jupiter. And I know that somehow I have to get up that mountain and to the other side, and I can't turn back because there is suddenly a moat full of alligators cutting me off from my old life, and I can't just sit at the base of the mountain and carve out a life there, because there's a group of orcs hunting me. So, somehow, someway, I have to get over that impossible mountain that doesn't even EXIST on earth, because if I don't climb it I will die, but getting up the mountain might kill me too because I'm not a fucking mountain climber and I didn't even bring any water. Fuck.  Oh yeah, and I've never been to Jupiter so just breathing is a huge hurdle at this point, not even taking into account the orcs and the poisonous mote.