In Loving Memory

Dear Trudi,

I hate those days when bad news comes. So unexpected and so unwelcome, it waltzes in like our old forgotten friend. I never expected to hear those words through the receiver a thousand miles away from our home away from home.

I don't want to pretend that I was one of your close friends. I just want to tell you how big of an impact you had on me. It is my pleasure to call you a sister. It was a pleasure to share some of my life with you and it is my honor to have gotten to share some of yours.

What an incredibly beautiful person you are. I am certain I will never meet a soul as forgiving as yours. You are uplifting and you have an incredible amount of love in your heart. I am looking back at some of our correspondence when you were leaving KD and I wrote this,

"I hope that Alpha Upsilon can help you transition to a better semester, even it that means letting you spread your wings out of our circle. As cheesy as it sounds, our mission, if you remember, is to inspire women to greatness and better know those without our circle. I think you are on a mission to better know those without our circle, and that is exactly what a KD lady is made to do. We want to inspire you to greatness and help you be the best Trudi.

 I admire your attitude and your perseverance. I know that you will do great things in your time.... If you ever need anything (support, love, ears), please come to me or the chapter. We love you and will always hold true to our AOT."

You spread your wings. You got into your grove. You inspired other women to greatness by being yourself and sharing your energy with those around you. Your attitude is unmatchable. You are kind, silly, bright and refreshing. I will always be affected by your presence. I am so glad I got to see you accomplish great things. I am proud of who you are. I will always know you as a sister and I will be here for you always. KD is forever. Just remember what those letters stand for and know that I will never waiver on that.

Remember that time you accidentally came into the wrong apartment when you were a freshman? Instead of turning around embarrassed you sat down with a group of mainly strangers and just talked for 2 or 3 hours. We danced on the floor and sat around with no furniture and a bunch of smiles. Your energy lighting the dark room. Thank you for showing me that light. Thank you for your smile. Thank you for your faith in me.

I hope you got to that better place we talked about.

Good vibrations and love in AOT,
Jane

Seri-es (*read: Serious) Goodbyes

I have been working my way through all of the episodes of The Office. For a long time I had heard about it and people told me that I needed to watch it. Finally, I did. Sometimes it just pissed me off because Michael's management style was so inefficient; sometimes Pam was stupid and selfish; sometimes Angela was a bitch. All the time, I was learning life lessons and building relationships with people who are "fictional." They became my family and the people who get me through each day; the people I turned to when I was down; who made sure I wasn't bored; the last people I thought about before I went to bed; people who mean a lot to me and people who I grew to love even with their rough parts. It is just wild because they felt like my only friends.

I know it was only a tv show but it has marked my existence in Connecticut so far. I have very few people here who I know and interact with (including my sister's dog, Brody, and cat, Spanky). The Office was my family. I think I cried as much as I laughed throughout the brilliant series.

Their friendships were mine. Dwight was my annoying best friend. Kevin was my lovable fellow foodie. Ryan was that guy I could not understand but I still wanted to be like. Michael was my Dad in this house away from home. Phyllis was in my knitting circle and Kelly and Meredith were my happy hour crew. I miss working there and being a part of the Dunder Miflin family. It makes me miss my other friendships and want to hold them close. It puts things in perspective. Things are fleeting but life is always happening. I feel like I am waiting for it to begin but it never stopped moving.

With all of this camaraderie and affection in mind, a question comes forms in the shadowy depths of my head. It is going to sound weird at first, just warning you. Why don't we kiss the ones we love on the lips? Most of us are raised kissing everyone who pinches our cheeks on the lips. When did we decide we were too cool for that? Who taught us that at some point you have to pretend you do not care? When did love become so downplayed and unimportant? I want the people I take time to nurture relationships with to know that I love them. A kiss on the lips is nothing. When we were blooming preteens struggling with our sexuality, kissing on the lips may have been racy but that is in the past and I want to bring it back. I want to be able to show my affection. I am not talking a 3-second, sloppy, wet smack on the lips. But a peck goodbye; an embrace; an IRL xoxo. I don't want to make it awkward. Friends, I will not force it, but you should expect it. I constantly reinforce relationships verbally. I just think it needs another layer of protection. Like sealing a pinky swear with a kiss on the pact, let us seal our promise of friendship with a kiss on the lips.

Revisiting the fact that my friends (aka the cast of The Office) have grown up and moved away, I want to talk about the alone rut. Since I need to develop new friends, it only seems fitting that I should explain why I have yet to do so. What is this, you ask? The alone rut can be described as the feeling of being more alone in a group setting than being alone all by yourself. I am hardcore in the alone rut. As you know, I only know a handful of people here, the majority being those friends of my sister and her husband. I feel like a small child being unwillingly dragged from party to party. Even though I sit alone all day and feel malnourished waiting for human interaction, I would sometimes rather stay home than go out with their friends. I feel like I am sitting perfectly invisible between multiple conversations with nothing to add to any of them. For starters, I am in an entirely different place with my life, but even so, I do not feel any connection to the group. I feel more alone and unlike anyone when I succumb to these outings than when I can talk to myself in the comfort of my sister's home. I am desperate for friends, but I think desperate for the friends I already have. I may have high expectations in wanting these people to be my people. It is an impossible dream.

So I say goodbye to my friends on The Office and I offer them a full frontal snog on the way out of the door. Thank you for being there for me. Thank you for helping with the move. Thank you for reminding me of what is really important.

Woe is Me- the new title to every blog post from here on out.

I just need to write. You know when you are crying and you can barely see the keyboard through the tears? Well that is where I am at right now and I am thankful I know where the keys are. 

I haven't had a good night's sleep in weeks. In the last two days, I have slept five hours collectively and I am on my way to another sleepless night. I can't get comfortable; I can't turn my mind off. I tried a sleep aid but it made me restless and achey, which seems counteractive. 

What should I be [*silently, "When I grow up"]? Well, I want to do what I love- duh. Okay, so what is that? See, the problem is that I love so many things. Unrelated things. Is there a way to do 50 kajillion things at once and be like scuber duber successful, because I want to do that. I want to be the jack of all trades and the expert of none. I want that life. Where am I going? Who am I? 

You know what is worse than that though? How small my problems really are. I know (at least I sincerely hope) that one day I will look back on this time and laugh and think how lucky I was to have the freedom to choose and to have all of the world's possibilities at my feet. I look on my Facebook page and see people my age dying, raising children, facing cancer. What happened to simpler times? Do you remember when brownie mix came in a bag and there was only one kind? I was at the store today and there were over 30 boxes and I just exasperatedly shouted for a bag of brownie mix- plain and simple. The old lady walking by looked at me like I was one with her and I am beginning to feel like I am. What have I become? Why must the world harden people? I am perfectly gullible and the world won't even let me play the fool. It AIN'T right, people. 

I missed my nephews birthday after thinking about it a least four times this week. Like really Jane? He is 8. He remembers that you forgot, you piece of shit.

The thing is, I am good at getting things done. The problem is that I don't have any project that seems completable. I keep approaching it like any problem- I try one thing and if that doesn't work I try something new. The issue with this technique is that I have no focus. *Queue Christian saying, "I told you so. You need to focus on one thing, Jane." I try to peg a career path and focus on that. After 25 returned applications and remnants of crushed dreams on the floor, I try a new career paths in hopes that my luck will pick up. Each time I get more hopeful and more devoted. Each time I get more upset with myself: because I am failing, because I can't find a path, because I am not where I want to be, because I can't back myself up, because I didn't do the right things, because I didn't take that opportunity, because yadda yadda yadda. 

My day is a list of menial tasks that will never be finished. 

• Find what makes you happy
• Get a job
• Pay your loans
• Take a creative writing class
• Learn German
• Have fun
• Do something cool
• Make friggin' friends
• Make memories
• Unpack
• Apply to more jobs
• Change your approach
• Watch 5+ episodes of The Office
• Think of other shit you could be doing
• Talk to your friends back home on the phone for a collective 3 hours a day
• Listen to people lecture you on what you could be doing
• Make connections with people who could get you a job you will be miserable doing
• Try to decide between working for the man or working for yourself
• Is being happy even important at this point
• Focus on not getting stuck
• Decide to run again
• Think better of it this time and get a job there first
• Figure out where your next destination is
• Contemplate how much of a failure you will look like if you go back to Birmingham
• Make another, more achievable list
• Fight sleep
• Pet the dog and cry into his fur
• Brush the dog
• Read more books
• Pay attention to the news
• Try to make yourself more you
• Think about how much you want to blog
• Never do it
• Open 32 tabs in Safari and don't read any of them for at least a week
• Continue opening more tabs
• List all the things you need to accomplish
• Remember to get your prescriptions filled
• Think better of it because that money is more useful elsewhere
• Be super hardheaded
• Wonder how other people are getting this life shit right
• Be sort of angry about it
• Be actually happy for them
• Imagine yourself successful in 20 years
• Try to be useful
• At least feel like you are useful
• Remember when you were really good at shit and people probably thought you were going somewhere
• List all of the things you could do or buy if you had money
• Wonder how much of your life you are wasting doing these things
• Think about wrinkles
• Say "Fatty Fatty Boombalatty" over and over in your head and wonder where you heard it last
• Surf Tinder
• Realize that everyone here wears cargo shorts and earrings
• Cry inside
• Think about how wonderful it would be to have your own place
• Realize you need money for that
• See: train of thought nine bullets up
• Make excuses

I want you to know that I wrote this list before finishing a single one of the paragraphs above. Do you see what I mean about focus? I think of nine things at once and cannot finish a single thought before another persistent little bugger is working its way out. 

I am throwing a pity party for myself. After all, since I have no friends to party with, it is all I have in the way of entertainment. You are all invited.

You know what? When I was a freshman in high school, I went out for the school play- Our Town. I happened to be (distant at the time) family friends with the Drama teacher. I ended up getting a part and I proudly walked into my house and proclaimed to my mother, "IT IS NOT ABOUT WHAT YOU KNOW, IT IS ABOUT WHO YOU KNOW!" When I tell you that this statement is biting me in the butt right now, you have no idea how hard. Not only do I not know anything, I also have the great joy of not knowing anybody either. So in this case, I am screwed. It feels like nothing will be able to get me ahead. Shit. Isn't it sort of fun to look back on moments like that and realize how stupid you were? I am sure these are the days your parents dream about. 

My head feels clearer now. I am no closer to an answer than I was when I began; however, the tears have subsided and I feel refreshed. This refreshment doesn't help with the desire for sleep though. You take what you can get, am I right?