Rumspringa

I officially declare myself to be in a state of Rumspringa. This is my solution to dating mostly oddly immature boys. The other option is to get thee to a nunnery. I am hoping this works. I use the term loosely because A) I am not Amish B) I am applying it to a very specific facet of life.

The root and necessity of Rumspringa arises from my own nature which happens to be part crazy, part emotional basketcase. Unfortunately, it is not a nature that functions well within the world of modern casual dating. I am not good at casual surface level friendship. I hate small talk and yet here I am talking small on countless occassions to the opposite sex in the hope that it all just clicks and we ride away on white horses into the sunset of happily ever after. Yeah and then I found $10 dollars.....I wish. The oxymoron of the whole situation is that one must guard and protect their heart and reveal nothing of true importance but at the same time reveal enough of one's true nature in order to encourage the other person to reveal truths about themselves that can later be used to build a long lasting relationship. Seriously though, see how exhausting this is? I know I'm practically comatose just writing that.

Rumspringa is my way of hardening myself to a generation that largely thinks only for itself. Its like carrying around a 10 foot pole and prodding anyone unworthy who steps into your inner sanctum. On the surface nothing will change. I will be more than ever open to new experiences and people but I will have the wariness and the ability to prevent myself from getting sucked into emotional black holes. Rumspringa for me is going to be the art of living within a contradiction, of becoming a contradiction of one's self. This doesn't have to be a bad thing. It can be liberating even to live within a carefree space where you do not attach emotions to the unpredictable nature of human behavior. I know that it won't be easy to go against one's own nature. But I will try to recognize the warning signs and "shut it down" before I again find myself on the floor of the kitchen licking the remants from the inside of chip bag blubbering nonsense, entrenching myself in the belief of my own unworthiness.

My main fear is that Rumspringa will not come to an appropriate end, that I will run around in my mid 30’s oblivious to the pitiful looks 20 somethings dart my way as I try to “put myself out there.” That I will build up such a thick shell of protection that I will fail to recognize the humanity in others. But If I have learned anything thus far, it is that calculated risks are worth their wait in gold. So its either Rumspringa or pushing Emily Dickinson....the cat around for her evening stroll in her custom baby carriage while I mumble things under my breath to bystanders.

I am a Vampire

It has been most conclusively decided by myself that I am a vampire. I haven't necessarily developed a taste for blood or carnage but I'm not completely ruling it out, don't knock it till you try it? Right? The facts are that I love the night. Night is generous and full of possibilities while the day exposes all of my shame and shortcomings. Sure sunlight is beautiful and lends to great days at the beach but it also betrays you by slowly turning your skin cells cancerous. Nighttime would never do that.

At night I am more optimistic...about everything. As a self proclaimed pessimist, this is the ultimate confession. At night I know that the day is done and that there is nothing more within my power to change its outcome. There is only the promise of tomorrow, of getting a second chance to try to do it all over again. And lets not forget to pay homage to one of the finest things in all of existence, sleep. Those last few seconds of consciousness as my head is being cradled by my one true love, aka my pillow, are some of the best seconds of my existence.

Morning on the other hand is life's cruel joke. In my life, morning can only go one of two ways. The first scenario involves my alarm going off at 615am. When the jagged sound crashes through my REM waves my first reaction is confusion. My heart beat pounds in my head and waves of nausea greet my first few seconds of wakefulness. Once the fear of life's consequences sufficiently convinces me that yes I must get up, I stumble around in a zombie like state where I am unable to form intelligible English words to my roommate who seems to enjoy these strange unnatural hours of wakefulness.

The second scenario involves my alarm going off at 830am. Remember, my optimistic vampirish night self set the alarm. The reality is that........its not happening. After swiftly silencing the offending alarm I spend approximately 30 seconds tossing around disgust and guilt in a last ditch attempt to try to motivate myself to get up and do something productive...like the 9am yoga class. Before I can sufficiently conjure up enough self disgust to be effective, I fall asleep, where I blissfully remain until about 10am. When I finally do awake the daylight streams into my room highlighting all of the dust and specks of dirt on my furniture and rug. In this moment, I know that I have already sold myself short. I know the day will be an uphill battle to try to overcome the waste of those hours I spent in my bed. And yes, I look forward to the night where I will have the opportunity to hope for a better tomorrow.

Worst Thanksgiving Guest

Yet to be Determined

The day is beautiful and blue with a hint of fall crispness and yet I sit waiting. Waiting for something to jolt me out of my paralyzed state of fear. Today I am scared of things lurking under the surface of my subconcious and since I cannot tangibly see them, they taunt me, skirting just outside of my locus of control. So I sit and wait hoping that something will change. Hoping that at any moment I will lace up my running shoes and begin the rest of my day.

SEASONAL NONSENSE

I am a rational girl. I believe in hard work, science, good decisions (whatever those are) and feminism. I am have the makings of a terrible housewife. I don't cook and hate supermarkets. I hate buying food in general and wish that I didn't have to waste my time with preparing food or "heating something up." But I love to eat and admire and treasure good food. My version of doing laundry is putting everything into one washer and putting some soap in there....usually everything comes out fine...usually. I am often so impatient that I leave the laundrymat with a majority of damp clothing which I then hang up to dry at home. I read way too much and I stay up way too late 99.9% of the time. My car has approximately 5 empty ceramic coffee cups rolling around on the ground at any given time because I find it impossible to remember to take them out.

All of the above I confess to be true and yet I admit that I make the largest exception in the history of the world for holidays. I love holidays. They fill my heart with joy and glee and fill me with strange desires to craft things. I love them so much I believe that I would attempt in the right circumstance to save any Christmas or Thanksgiving by cooking a large decadent meal. I love decorations, I love pumpkins, I love lamp.

And.....it is starting. I feel it in the air and above all things I want to carve a pumpkin and watch Hocus Pocus. Godwilling.

Dirty Laundry

This point in my life seems to resemble a washing machine set at the spin cycle. I honestly tried to slow it down by throwing a few wrenches in the gear shaft but that only made the barrel spin off-center. So in the end, I decided to pry my own iron grip from the metal edges and allow my body be taken into the spinning chaos. Surprisingly enough, I have found a deep sense of peace in accepting that I cannot control many things about my own life. And well to be perfectly honest I most often experience this deep sense of peace after yoga and when eating Haagen Dazs coffee ice cream but who is really keeping track?

My greatest fear about letting the tides of life changes wash over me was the fear of encountering a deep sense of powerlessness. Strangely enough, powerlessness is in a way a certain kind of freedom. It is ever so tempting to latch on to the idea that I am actually in control of my life because there are moments where I feel that life is managable and maybe just maybe if I put in just the right amount of effort I can find true love, find the perfect career crafted for the oversensitve me while becoming a fine tuned yoga goddess dancer extraordinaire who never if rarely becomes downtrodden or somber..........but then ever present reality patiently waits for the moment when I am so tired that I take a two hour nap and spend the rest of the day in a nauseous sense of self-loathing. In this muddled, disheveled state I usually have the wherewithal to realize that it is just me myself and I fighting the fact that I have fallen desperately short of my ideals.

So here I am just me spinning in my life dryer (because obviously I am done with the wash cycle).

The Rise of the Man-child

URGENT ANNOUNCEMENT.......MAN-CHILDREN ARE TAKING OVER MOST OF OUR MAJOR CITIES. They bag our groceries at the supermarket checkout, they are our coworkers, friends, peers and fellow human beings. They look like regular human beings but they are not as they seem. They are sneaky byproducts of the millennial generation sent to prolong adolescence indefinitely.

Here is the inconclusive breakdown of the species...

1) The Bro Man-child: This group of man-children is by far the most obvious to the outside observer. Their typical attire may range from colorful board shorts to gym shorts with some other shorts worn for specific occasions except for short shorts. Baseball caps are mandatory as are collared shirts and t-shirts. Typical interests of the bro-children include; sports, beer pong, their fellow bros, video games, drinking games, womanizing, going to vegas, watching sports and living with other bros. Their moms frequently do their laundry well into their early 30's. The primary goal of the bro lifestyle is to have fun. Bros see relationships as a threat to their brotherhood and seek to primarily use women in order to obtain a means to that end. Their primary fear is homosexuality.

2) The White Trash Man-child: This group is largely rurally based. They marry young, typically to their high school sweet-hearts and have many children. Their primary interests include; drinking bear, taking pride in manual labor, loving America, watching sports, doing minimal housework and avoiding the responsibilities of child rearing. Patriarchy is a core belief. Their primary fear is terrorism.

3) The Peter-Pan Man-child: These impish individuals cavort around as though their whole world is their endless Neverland. Girls are either viewed as a nonentity that interferes with careless fun or as careless fun. They typically clothe themselves in V-neck American Apparel t-shirts, colorful sunglasses and cut off corduroys or jeans outside of their work hours. Their primary interests include; pranks, dangerous pranks, dressing up in costumes, carefree travel abroad, growing mustaches, pointless competitions and living in unsanitary conditions. Their primary fear is growing up.

4) Child that wants to be a Man: Not a man-child group per se but can easily be confused as one. In their early 20's, these boys want to be men despite having no realistic concept of adulthood. Typically serial monogamists, these young men pursue serious relationships with gusto and the end goal of marriage. They take on a lot of responsibility prematurely and depend heavily on female instruction for success. Although chronically unprepared for life's follies and unexpected catastrophes, these men typically learn from their experiences and grow up to be valuable members of society.

5) The Unsuspecting Man-child: Out of all of the man-children, these boys cause the most destruction to themselves and others. They are usually well-spoken and extremely intelligent. Their primary goals are existential and numerous usually involving the achievement of some kind of world peace with their creative and numerous talents. They dress well with a nod to European fashion. Their interests surround the appreciation of the finer things in life including; food, world travel, film, humanitarianism, literature, theology, wine and art. Do not let appearances fool you though, for these are children in the truest sense of the word. These individuals often fall into relationships with those who grow to truly love them but they are unable to handle the reality of something outside themselves. Marriage and children are only viewed as possibilities of the distant future and serious relationships disrupt that world view. The carnage and destruction of the heartbroken lies in their wake. Their greatest fear is being tied down.

As mentioned earlier, this is an inconclusive breakdown with room for expansion and discovery of more Man-children. Also this breakdown does not dismiss the existence of good men. I know they exist for I have met some.