Just a really good story.

This story is really a good story. It's the kind of story that, if I had been hanging out with Hans Christian Andersen, he would have made it into a fairytale with lots of heavy-handed Christian symbolism and loss of appendages. Because people always lose appendages in fairy tales.

In tenth grade, I was required by participation points to go to a certain number of music- and acting-related events every semester. In music theory, we listened to a great number of symphonic scores and I really liked Stravinsky's Rite of Spring (a score to a ballet in which someone dances herself to death, so we're already borderline HCA territory, here). So, when I found out the symphony would be playing it, I decided I wanted to go to that one as one of my events, and my parents, being both my financial backers and very protective of their only child possibly wandering around downtown by herself at night, came with me. 

It was a good night. We listened to Queen all the way out to the symphony and sang along to Bohemian Rhapsody and Somebody to Love. I remember feeling that pang of teenage something that goes along with not having a significant other in high school, watching everyone else date like it was easy, somehow? Wondering if that would ever happen to me. 

We got to the symphony, found our seats. Every time I go to the symphony hall, I just have to take it all in: the gold, the wood paneling, the crystal chandeliers winking with the breath of people tuning their instruments, people waiting collectively for music. Then I think about the time when I was four or so, sitting on one of the balconies with my grandparents, reading a picture book and yelling part of the dialogue really loud during an intermission. Which always serves to make me really embarrassed and wonder if somehow everyone at the symphony remembers me as the small child who yelled "RIBBIT" because that kind of illogical thinking is what anxiety does to you. 

And THEN, because once the anxiety has kicked in, I start thinking about how many people would get crushed in this building in an earthquake, where the chandeliers will fall, if the balconies will fall into each other and then down onto the aisle seats. At that point I usually start worrying about whether I left something plugged in at home that would catch fire or whether I locked the car. It happens every single time. 

I'd taken my seat and was going through this process of being in awe of my surroundings to being paranoid, when suddenly this boy did the awkward "sitting in rows" sidle past my family and I and sat down a few seats away. I was watching him out of curiousity, when he sat down and then he turned and looked at me. 

I don't mean a glance. I mean a look. We made eye contact and we just sort of sat there, taking the other person in. It wasn't sexual, or creepy, at least; it didn't feel that way, and since I'm the one telling this story in retrospect, it wasn't. It felt more like a curious attraction based on some sort of unspoken connection. 

Which is a weird sort of feeling to experience with a stranger, let alone one whose walking past made you stand up because the aisles are too narrow. But it was there. And to this day I can remember what I was wearing, and what he was wearing, and what he looked like: he was wearing black pants, a green plaid button-down shirt, and he had short curly blond hair. He was wearing some variant of sneaker or skate shoe, as teenage boys will do. I remember wondering what he was doing there all alone, and why he decided to come to this particular symphony. I remember him so incredibly clearly, and I don't remember much of anything else from tenth grade that clearly. Obviously things happened that I remember with a great deal of clarity, that I can't forget because the stories are funny, or sweet, or formative; but I don't remember any of those things with as much detail as I remember that moment. 

The look didn't last that long, but it lasted long enough to change the atmosphere and make me feel self-conscious for staring at a stranger. The lights dimmed a little, and the conductor came out. Applause happened. I was still pointedly trying not to look back at him and failing. 

The music started. 

The Rite of Spring is such a cool, creepy, dissonant piece of music, and normally I would have been totally invested in listening to all the weird tonalities and that infamous bassoon, but my eyes kept getting drawn back to the boy a few seats away. And more often than not, when I looked at him, he was already looking at me really intently, which made me blush a little. Getting me to blush is NO MEAN FEAT. I don't usually visibly turn pink. My face gets hot when I'm embarrassed, and I think I'm blushing, but 9/10 I don't actually blush. But I know I was blushing that time because once the whole thing had ended and we were at intermission and he got up to walk past us again because my mom commented on the fact that I was pink. Teenagers are anything but subtle,  and my mom is unusually (sometimes annoyingly) observant, so of course she'd picked up on the whole thing. 

I was worried the whole time during intermission that he wasn't going to come back in--I don't know why, it's not like we would've been able to hold a conversation--so when he showed up and sat down, I was relieved. But the eye-flirting didn't start, and didn't happen as frequently during the second half. Instead he looked to be deep in thought about something, and I was like "WELL OBVIOUSLY I RUINED IT WITH MY LOOKING AT HIM TOO MUCH." I don't even remember what music played during the second half because I was trying to pinpoint what I had probably done to make him lose interest. 

We got up after the second half and filed out, and I remember trying my very best to look aloof and unconcerned, and at sixteen when I tried to look aloof and unconcerned, it always was obvious that I was trying. Walking out of the building to the corner where my dad was bringing the car, though, it was evident that he was following us, just a little, because he wanted to talk to me. 

Actually, at the time, it wasn't evident to me at all. I was walking along, fairly happy that he happened to be walking in the same direction as we were, but completely oblivious as to what he probably actually was hoping for. We got to the designated street corner, and he hovered by a lamppost a few feet back, helping someone who asked for directions. Eventually, after a few minutes,  he turned and walked all the way back from whence we'd come. I watched him leave, feeling hugely disappointed, when my mom nudged me. 

"Hilary," she said. "He wanted to talk to you and was hoping you'd come talk to him." 

I turned to stare at the empty space where he'd been as if he'd materialize. "Why didn't he just come talk to me?"

"Because," she said, in a gentle tone that was clearly stating the obvious, "you're with your mom." 

"Oh," I said, understanding. "Crap." 

All the way home I wondered if I would possibly run into him again if I went to another symphony, wondered how often he went to the symphony alone, and kicked myself for not having gone to talk to him. 

But, the semester got busy, which meant I got busy, which in turn meant that I didn't go back to the symphony. Which meant I didn't see him again, assuming going to the symphony regularly was something he did. 

That was the first and last time I ever felt that kind of a jolt-connection with a complete stranger. My track record pretty solidly shows that I've only really ever been strongly attracted to people I know really well. It was just the one time that that was different. And I've always kind of wondered what would have happened if we had talked when we had the opportunity, if I had given him my number. If it would've been a train wreck of momentous straightwhiteboystexting.tumblr.com levels. If he would have only been interested in me because he was a horny teenage boy. If it would have fizzled out within a week, because x, y, or z circumstances that get in the way of teenage relationships. 

Of course, I also wonder if it would have been something good, too. I feel silly, still, for not realizing why he tagged along a few footsteps behind us. 

But there's only so much silly you can feel when it's been seven years. Mostly, I just remember that whole experience with a fond glow, how exciting it was. The funny thing is, if I could go back and  choose, I don't know that I would talk to him. Even though resolving what might have been is tantalizing, the memory itself is sweet enough that I don't need to. It could have been really good. It could have been really bad. And myself, I like wondering. 

After all, it's not that far off from wondering what happened after happily ever after. 

THE END. 

Who DOESN'T love uncomfortable, freaky coincidences?

I hope you all are ready for some seriously X-Files/Alternate Universe Mayhem realness, because I'm gonna serve you some.

Just call me Spooky Mulder.
Just kidding. I want to be Scully.

So, once upon another time in my life, as I'm sure you all remember, I was 

arried-may

which I don't like to talk about, mostly. Because it's uncomfortable, and people usually are like "What? Really? BUT YOU ARE SUCH A YOUNG HUMAN."

Although, not coming clean about it quickly can result in some uncomfortable situations where (usually well-meaning older) people are like "you're such a beautiful young woman! Didn't you meet anyone in college who wanted to wife you up, like, ASAP?"

Paraphrasing, but that definitely did happen, and I was like "haaaaaa....uh, well..."

That's not the point of this story, although that incident does deserve its own blogpost. And it may well get one.

Scratch that. It WILL get one. 

I digress. I came into class about a week ago to find that we had a substitute, who, I had noticed from discussions on our class Facebook group, happened to have the same name as The Ex. Which was a little weird, and sent me into an irrational panic spiral that somehow the person who was subbing for our class actually WAS The Ex. And I promptly talked myself out of it because seriously The Ex is not in this industry. Paranoia is fun!! 

I showed up to class, a bit off-put by the name, which totally wasn't his fault, and it turned out he was a very personable and pleasant individual, recently engaged; with a knack for making a classroom feel at ease. 

But then...THEN. 

One of my classmates knew his fiancee, and she was like, "Hey! How's Hillary doing?"

I have never tried so hard to stop myself from whipping around like a character in a Looney Tunes cartoon to look at her and say "WHAT DID YOU SAY HER NAME WAS?"

I thought maybe I'd misheard, but no. My classmate mentioned this person who shares my name several more times over the course of the lesson, and every time I jumped like I was getting hit with a low-grade electric shock. I mean, Hilary is a fairly common name, but it's not THAT common. And to have this Hillary be engaged to a person with the SAME NAME as The Ex? The chances are (and I've done the math) slim to none. 

The longer I was sitting there, the weirder the thoughts got.

"Maybe they were the couple with those names who were meant to work out, and the Grand Scheme of Things just got its wires crossed--"

"Maybe I'm living in a weird fragmented universe where somehow there's a copy of me living in this same world who is living the life that I almost had and will be happy--"

"Maybe Loki, God of Tricks, has decided that my life is far too tame and needs more unbearable coincidences."

"IT WAS ALIENS, WASN'T IT. THE ALIENS HAVE A VENDETTA AGAINST ME." 

When in doubt.

There have been times in my life where I half-wonder how close I'm dancing to the border of insanity, and being in that room at that moment was one of them.  So as I was leaving, I had to ask--

"So. Your fiancee. Does she spell her name with one L, or two?"

His answer--two--soothed my nerves. But only a little. 

He subbed for our class again this week. People still kept asking about Hillary. Even joked about asking her to bring pizza to class. Which probably would have created a rupture in the very fabric of space and time. 

It's weird, right? 

It's still weird. 

Social Interaction is a Necessary Evil

Guys, I have a shocking confession. 

Are you all ready for it?

I...am kind of an awkward person.

Which comes as a shock to none of you, if you've been following this blog for a long amount of time.  I know I seem incredibly cool and laid-back on the Internet, but I assure you that if you met me in person you'd wonder if it was social anxiety pumping through my veins and not blood. I get flustered really easily in face-to-face conversations when I feel like there's nothing left to say, and I usually make a quick exit and chastise myself for Probably Making People Not Want To Talk To Me Ever Again.

essentially how I feel after a botched social interaction
but I tried really hard to impress you probably!!

This gets compounded if I'm talking to an attractive boy who I don't really know.

I identify as demisexual (which I'll talk about in another blogpost because it's super important) but that doesn't mean I'm immune to experiencing primary attraction (attraction to people based on instantly available information; smell, physical appearance, etc etc) on rare occasions, which is a super freaking pain in the 

neck. We'll go with neck. Keeping it PG today.

So once upon a time, there was this guy who I thought was very attractive at my school. I'd seen him around on campus and even traded the occasional "hey what's up" so it wasn't like we were complete strangers. I mostly noticed him because he had immaculate facial structure and I am (I kid you not) a sucker for immaculate facial structure. It sounds REALLY weird, but--

We interrupt this regularly scheduled blogpost to bring you

~A Quick Study in Immaculate Facial Structure~

JAWLINE.

World-famous zygoma and stuff

How do people this attractive even exist
I don't even know sometimes
does this unsettle anyone else? 

and here we see another great example of great genes and face and bone structure.

What was I talking about again?  

Right. Facial Structure. Being awkward around guys. 

*coughs*

I attended an event at school and this boy with facial structure from the Gods, probably, happened to be there. After the event, we chatted for a minute. I don't remember the exact specifics of the conversation, except that he went in for a hug and I was like aaah help no we don't know each other we can't hug it's too soon but you're really pretty. 

Well, that and I accidentally squeaked at him. 

It was significantly less embarrassing and involuntary than I'm making it sound. I have a habit of making things sound much worse than they actually are because that's just how I remember things in my mental world. What really happened was he politely said something, I politely tried to say something back, and my voice cracked. 

Like a prepubescent boy's. 

Loudly.

And it was after that that he awkwardly went in for the hug and I was like I don't actually know what's happening but I squeaked at this boy so I can never speak to him again.

I think I nodded at him after he hugged me and turned tail and ran as fast as I could to find someone else I knew really well who wouldn't let me flush myself down the toilet out of embarrassment (like I said, my reactions are not proportionate to the real severity of my actions) and I ran into Sahara, who, as you all remember, is my oldest friend and put up with a great deal from me in preschool when I was preschool-engaged.

I relayed the story to her, and to my friend Carlie, who also happened to be present.

They thought it was absolutely hilarious. 

I did not. 

They insisted that I should just talk to him some more, that he probably didn't even notice my vocal abnormalities; and that if he did he probably thought it was cute that I got all flustered.

In response, I tried to convince them that the real answer was to lock myself in an empty room until everyone left the event. 

They told me I was silly and dragged me into his general vicinity, and basically almost this exact scenario went down: 

That basically was all it took to cure me of...whatever malady it was that had caused me to squeak at him. There's nothing like getting the attraction embarrassed right out of you. It works wonders, and only the people who are truly your friends will do you this favor. They know how mad you'll be at them outright, as in Sahara Carlie NO SHUT UP HE WILL HEAR YOU THIS IS VERY BAD YOU GUYS ARE UNBELIEVABLE WHAT IS THIS HIGH SCHOOL but they also know you will forgive them once you realize you're so embarrassed that you have become entirely free. 

It's sort of like when you have emotional pain and you do something physically painful, like wear shoes that are too tight because the physical pain distracts you from feeling the emotional pain as acutely. I was no longer embarrassed about squeaking; instead now I was embarrassed about the fact that he probably knew I thought he was cute. 

It sounds harsh, and I don't mean it to. I love both Sahara and Carlie very dearly, and I know they have nothing but my best interests at heart. They really don't torture me on a regular basis, and they're both actually very understanding of my social anxiety. 

I never spoke to him again.

Well, that's not entirely true. I've bumped into him since. Interacted with him, even. Carried on a functional, squeak-free conversation. He still has an immaculate facial structure. It's very distracting, but not as distracting as it used to be. The Embarrassment Cure my friends used on me has worked its magic.

And I'm still immaculately awkward, so

until next time 

here's a picture of Tom Hiddleston in Crimson Peak because how else would I end this stupid blogpost? 

you know that's right. 

Tales From the Call Center

Now that I've got a more or less Real Adult Job doing social media managing for a company,  I feel like I can open up about the world I've been working in for the last six months with some impunity.

Excuse me while I give my supervisor a meaningful look and reassure him that I'm not going to write anything too compromising about his true nature as a shape-shifter-hunting captain of the Enterprise billionaire playboy philanthropist.

See, Jim? Your secret is totally safe with me.

I knew Jim and I would become friends the first day of training. He'd been very professionally giving us all a lecture with a slideshow about call center rules, and after that we'd been permitted a break. I was making conversation with one of the trainees (my future friend Manda) and Jim and his co-supervisor, Chase, descended on the newbies to finish training.

"All right," he asked, quoting Iron Man, "Do you want to be in the Fun-Vee or the Hum-Drum-Vee?"

"That depends," I deadpanned back without batting an eyelash, "Do we get attacked and killed by terrorists on the way?"

I think I took him aback a little, because he blinked a few times before saying "Are you a coward?"

"I don't think so."

"Good, then you're with me."

It took me about three weeks to not feel a full-blown panic attack coming on when I answered the phone with the standard greeting, and three more weeks to have the entire first medicine-related script memorized. When I applied for the job, I wasn't at all sure if I'd end up making friends. By December, I had several: Jim, Manda, Amy, and Max. Doubtless you'll hear more about each of them in the future. And I started feeling like, anxiety or not, these friends made the job worth it.

Of course; December was when we started working on a political poll that was twenty minutes long, and I'm fairly sure that the vitriol that seeped out of the respondents of that survey prematurely aged me a little bit. Everyone I spoke with in this state (with the exception of one or two people) seemed to seriously hate Democrats and it was all I could do at the end of surveys not to be like, "well, I sure hope you enjoyed completing this survey with me, a more or less liberal-leaning feminist who is terrified of the effects of global climate change and who also has definitely voted for Democrats on several occasions. Because I feel pretty great and stuff, knowing that you just hate all Democrats forever."

Which isn't just me being resentful. Someone actually DID say that to me.

I never said any of that, obviously. I was tempted.

The high point of that survey was the respondent who answered one of the questions about congress with "You know what I wish we could do? I wish we could bring back Andrew Jackson and have him challenge all of the senators to duels on the White House Lawn."

Believe it or not, that was one of the least crazy things I heard on that survey. Mostly I was (and am) more concerned by the fact that Andrew Jackson is a terrible candidate to put your bets on in one of my favorite parlor games, "Which Dead President Should We Bring Back To Power?" Andrew Jackson was a homicidal, genocidal crazy person who would probably kill at least 8/10 people who looked at him askance. Sure, there's a decent musical about him--the title of which should also put up some red flags: Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson. Bloody once is bad enough; bloody twice? Forget it--in which he is reimagined as a rockstar (and in the production I saw, he looked like Zach Baggins, one of the hosts--I refuse to say star of--Ghost Adventurers which was massively distracting and vaguely upsetting). Rockstar, sure. President, again? Nope.


Working at the Call Center, I also learned that Idaho is a very hostile place. I've been on several surveys that did outgoing calls to Idaho and all of the meanest and most disgusting things that have been said to me on calls were ALL comments from Idahoan respondents. If they could have done so over the phone, I am confident I would have been stoned to death with those pleasant Idaho potatoes they're so famous for. Among the winners were:

"I'm sorry, I have diarrhea and I'm on the toilet RIGHT NOW so I can't take this call."

"If you suck my d*ck first." (in response to the standard "would you help us by answering some questions?")

Seriously.

The Call Center also taught me how to be polite in a way that nothing else had before. I never realized the usefulness of the phrase "I understand" until I was caught in a face-to-face conversation with an acquaintance a few weeks before I started my social media classes. This person had said something wildly insensitive and I was scrambling for something to say that wasn't shouty or rude or what I was thinking, which would have only made the situation worse.

The words "I understand" fell from my lips in a graceful, carefully neutral way, and I felt myself smile like the Madonna (the religious figure, not the artist; although for some people I'm pretty sure singer Madonna is an actual religion). "I understand" is maybe the most glorious phrase in the English language. It automatically transforms the speaker into a backhanded-benevolent Atticus Finch, who understands but doesn't say exactly WHAT it is that they understand. I'm fairly sure that people who write and dictate the laws of neutrality in survey administration didn't have that in mind when they set up this system, otherwise they might have taken it away from us. To them, it's just a true neutral response to whatever anecdote. But in my book it's a civil way to be polite to people of whom you actually understand very little. Civility like that is something you don't really learn in any other job, except, of course, if you're working the food service industry; where the pressure to be polite is unrelenting and the people are short-tempered and rude for no good reason.

I honestly think the world would be a lot kinder and more understanding if we were all required to do a stint in a job that puts that kind of pressure on people. I learned quite a lot about what I was capable of, emotionally--arguably, working phones isn't actually all that hard; it's physically easy if emotionally taxing for someone like me who has social anxiety, but I wouldn't trade the lessons that I learned for anything.

I'll be honest: coming to the end of my tenure at the call center is a bit of a relief; but it's harder than I thought it would be, too. It was a good job. It was, funnily enough, exactly what I needed at the time, and I'm incredibly, incredibly grateful I had the chance to work there. I could never have accurately predicted all the good times I would have.


So, just for the record--coming clean and all that,

every. single. time.

Well. Except when Idaho was involved. Seriously. Because of the way people from Idaho talked to me on this job, I'm never going to Idaho. Ever.

It's been very.

It Never Hurts to Be Grateful.

It's been a very tumultuous few days at Chez Forbush (I'm never using that phrase again, just so's you know. Way too much sibilance. It's making me a little bit uncomfortable). I've been doing things with Jobs that are very new and intimidating (I'm going to actually start doing Social Media for people!) and some of my dear friends have taken some pretty heavy blows this week. People going through pain is hard to watch from the outside, especially when they are people close to you and the events that they are feeling pain over (for one reason or another) hit really close to home for you, too.

All the sadness and stress floating around my face like fog has got me feeling very introspective, but also very lucky, too. Lucky, you say? Yes, say I. And, as you probably expect, I'm fixing to tell you why.

There are some people in this world who you just know you have been lucky; honored, even, to know. They fill up a room with their positivity. They've been around your whole life; or it just feels like they have, to the point where you can't imagine a time when they haven't been there. You can talk to them after years and feel like nothing has passed. They're the kind of people of whom the simplest gestures of kindness are remembered for as long as you have breath to tell others the story.

If you're lucky, you have one of these people in your life. I have several. They are friends, mother-figures, and family. And though they wouldn't tell you themselves, they are truly exceptional people. I like to try and pretend that somehow, some part of me is exceptional: if it's not my looks (which it definitely isn't) it's my intelligence and my 3.9 Summa Cum Laude with a cherry on top, if it's not that, it's my wit and vivacity, and if it's not that, well, then, it's my ability to read a freakish number of words per minute (which scares my dad). And if we're scraping the bottom of the barrel, it's the weird little pads on my fingers that I'm almost positive will turn sticky one day and I will don the mantle of Gecko Girl and fight crime in my native city.

Yeah. Like that'll ever happen.

But I'm not exceptional in the way that these people are exceptional, no matter how much I try to be.  If you know one of those people, your life is the better for it. And when they're gone from your life, you feel the void. You remember things, like the time they let you stay at their house as a teenager, or the fact that they always went out of their way to ask you how you were doing when you saw them. You remember the way they smiled, the fact that it radiated so much genuine kindness that it made other people's smiles seem cold and forced by comparison.

Sadness and loss makes me realize just how much people matter. I've always tried to practice this philosophy in my day-to-day life, but it's times like these that it gets thrown into sharp relief. Individuals matter. I look at my friends, and without exception every single one of them matters so much to me that it takes my breath away a little. Sure, I've been frustrated by (and DEFINITELY frustrating to) my friends at different times. I've felt lonely and abandoned (if we're being melodramatic) at times, just like every other human on the planet. But I look at this constellation of individuals that make up my little corner of the galaxy, and I mostly just feel incredibly, well, lucky. All the little things--the things that have caused vexation, feelings of pettiness and jealousy, all the little spats to the really big fights--they don't matter, not really. Ultimately, for me, they're forgettable, like the Hobbit Trilogy, or chicken n'waffles flavored potato chips. Because people matter. More than the fights, more than pettiness or jealousy, more than their mistakes.

You'd have to make me really suffer to want to give up the memories I've made with friends over my life. Growing up, co-ops and homeschooling and semi-hippie-sheltered childhoods. Adolescence, the abruptness of quick-changes (backstage and in-body) and the feeling of the hot stage lights on skin, the smell of varnish and high school halls, vulnerably trying so terribly hard to be grown-up, to be genuine. College, late nights in semi-illuminated dorms spinning wild stories off of one another, reading submission after submission of terrible prose, discussions of self-discovery, piano music and watching fireworks from the roof of the parking garage. Getting shattered, feeling numb; but not so numb that I couldn't appreciate how many pairs of hands appeared, trying to help me put what was left of me back together.

And the present time (After College? AC?), though of course I can't quite view the present with the same lens where everything is smooth and glossy and easily encapsulated by a single image. The present has too many jagged edges that my mind habitually tries to skip over. My present, though, is still made up of a lot of those selfsame friends.I'm one of the most flawed people I know, but I will say this: I am fiercely loyal to all of them. Because they're exceptional. They matter to me, so much. I want to hold them all tightly for as long as they'll let me. I'm not very good with loss, or change, and these whole few days have had a particularly elegiac feel to them. I just wanted to put it into words before this present becomes another of those well-eroded memories I keep in my pocket.

I want to remember the way this knowing feels: in spite of how brief a spark our existence is, how messed up we all are, how much we hurt each other; in spite of humanity's flaws and fatal failings, I want to remember for right now, just how much people matter.

And in spite of how crazy these last few days have been, that knowing feels like enough.

Adventures in the Unpleasantness of Blanket Statements of Exclusivity

I guess I should preface this with a little bit of exposition.

I've been taking some classes pertaining to Social Media Marketing. Last semester, during a lecture about how the Internet is Forever, my teacher mentioned that, at one of her writing/editing jobs, there had been a certain amount of uproar about a listicle entitled "[number] of ways that you know you're a Liberal Mormon." 

There was this low "ooooooh" reaction when she said the title of this article. You know the kind of "oooooooh" I'm talking about. It's the kind of "ooooh" that people generally reserve for the villain in a melodrama. The kind of "ooooooh" that you use when you hear about a celebrity getting in trouble for doing morally/ethically reprehensible things. It's definitely not the kind of "oooooh" that you hear at the mall when someone sees cute clothes for half price! 

It's not a good "ooooh." 

And then, one of my classmates intoned, "You should never mix religion and politics."

It took every ounce of restraint that I had not to just turn and throw the most serious shade that I've ever shaded in my life. 

I live in a state, where, arguably, the line between religion and politics is thinner than most. A lot of the people in charge are members of the same religion, and a lot of those conservative values are overwhelmingly held by the religious majority. And that's fine. In fact, it's fine to say that you shouldn't mix religion and politics! I'm inclined to agree. After all, that's what the separation of church and state is FOR (hypothetically, anyway). I'm all for not mixing religion and politics. I think it's a fabulous idea, if you can get it to work right. 

But the thing is: it's almost unavoidable. Almost. There probably are people who manage to do it, and do it well. I respect those people. But I also know that liberals do it. Conservatives certainly do it. You can't just say "you shouldn't mix religion and politics" when the reason you are part of whatever party/lean more one way than another is that its ethical and social views more closely align to your own personal religious beliefs, whatever they may be. 

For example, gay marriage. It could be argued that giving gay people the right to marry is against your religion, because your religion states very clearly in (book, verse) that it's wrong. But, continuing in that vein, it could be argued that denying them a civil union (performed by the government, not a religious institution) is mixing religion and politics. I'm not here to tell you you should or shouldn't support gay marriage. That's not the point of this particular post. It's just an example of the way that theoretically, logic should follow through. 

Or, for another example, changing the words "Christmas Break" to "Winter Break" in schools. I'm aware that a lot of people feel very morally strongly about this. Again, I'm not telling you you should or shouldn't agree with that particular point of view. But if we're not mixing religion and politics (which, as said by my classmate, should NEVER be done), then logically, it follows through. Because public schools are governmental institutions, and because the government is NOT a religious institution, it has to be Fair and Equal to those public school students who are not of a Christian persuasion and celebrate other wintery holidays, like Chanukah and Kwanza; and fair to students who don't have a religious preference at all. So Winter Break it is. At a religious private school, of course you can continue to call it whatever holiday break you want: you're fully within your rights to do so! 

Enough examples. The point, more or less, is this: Because you hold x religious/moral/ethical belief, you hold y political belief, because it corresponds. It fits in with what you believe, something you're passionate about, something you care about.

And it's still mixing religion and politics. It's equal and opposite mixation. And even if that opinion happens to be held by the vast majority of whatever religion/group, it's still mixing religion and politics. 

It rankled me enough that I've been thinking about it for months, trying to figure out the best way to approach it. Mostly because the tonality of that comment seemed to say: "you shouldn't mix religion and liberal politics." 

I could be wrong. My own personal history may have interfered with my thoughts on this matter. But on the other hand, I don't think that an article entitled "[number] of ways that you know you're a Conservative Mormon" would have incited the same response from the class or that particular individual. 

I'll just reiterate this: Just because someone mixes a different sort of of politics with possibly the same kind of religious/ethical/moral belief than you; or even the vast majority of whatever group/religion you happen to belong to doesn't mean that their system of religion/politics is wrong, and it doesn't mean that you/the vast majority DON'T mix religion and politics. Because you do. And that's to be expected. Because it's human nature. 

I'm not saying that I know everything and that I'm not guilty of judgement myself. I know I'm not sitting on a bed of roses having made no mistakes or offended exactly 0 people with my thoughtlessness or lack of self-awareness. I definitely have. But I think that we just need to be careful with the type of comments that we make, with so much surety that We Are Right and Others Are Wrong. I'm not suggesting entire self-censorship, or that we trip all over ourselves to be neutral and bland on the off chance that someone in the room might be hurt or offended by our particular point of view. 

But I don't think that blanket statements of exclusivity should be made in such a blasé manner, with no more thought to their effect as though one was simply commenting on the weather. 

I will say this: the religious and ethical beliefs that I was raised with as a child; the teachings of love, respect, tolerance and acceptance have definitely affected and mixed with my own political views. I'd like to think they've affected them in a compassionate and positive way, and made me more humanistic and empathetic. And I'm not ashamed of that. I'll never be ashamed of that. 

But you all heard the man. You should never mix religion and politics.  

Nostalgia: "Too close to let you quit, too far to comfort you."

It's that time of year again.

No, I'm not talking about mating season. Or watering-your-lawn season (ha, please don't if you live in the Western US. I mean, please). I'm talking about graduation season.

Naturally my thoughts get all nebulous and float back to last year, when I was the one walking across the stage, smiling through my teeth and panicking like a crazy person all day, until I crashed into my bed and promptly woke up with a very enthusiastic case of depression.

I'm pretty sure I anticipated feeling depressed after I graduated: if my posts from last year around this time on this blog aren't an indication of that, then I don't know what is. 

And you all know it's been kind of nuts and out of control for a very long time, and that I'm still dealing with it, etc etc. 

Said and done before and will probably be said again. 

My goal in writing this is to remind my soon-to-be graduated friends (especially those who aren't headed straight to grad school) of a few things. 

1) You don't have to have it all figured out. It's okay to flounder. It's probably less preferable to spend three or four months bingewatching Supernatural on Netflix, but I am in zero place to judge. Seriously. Zero. What I wish someone had told me is this: find something that isn't work, outside of your house to occupy your time, if not every day, then every other day. It takes the edge of the restlessness, and gets you out of your head while you wonder why everyone else has it figured out. 

2) Going back to school after you've left is weird. It feels weird. It's silly, because of course the workings of campus life don't revolve around you; and that is what feels weird. The school hasn't stopped because you're gone. There are still people there. And in four years, no student will even remember you spent time there. Your friends will be all gone. Your acquaintances will be all gone. Some of your professors will forget you. Buildings will all be different in the blink of an eye. It's just no longer your home. And that's ok. 

3) Everyone who looks like they have things figured out (and you hate them for it) probably don't have it all figured out, and chances are they're improv-ing some percentage of their lives, too. 

This transition has been one of the hardest of my life; and it's not even because I miss school. It's partially because I miss school, but mostly it's because I miss the structure that school provides, the security of doing something you at least partially like every day. 

But in a weird way, it's also been a huge growth period for me. I wouldn't have said this a few months ago, and I find it weird to say now, because depression if anything feels like living under a gross mossy rock with gross bugs and you don't grow at all. But being that depressed kind of gave me a sense of what I DEFINITELY DO NOT WANT. Because of that, I've started doing some reading about forming positive habits and learning how to be grownup, and shaping up a budget, and taking some extra classes from another school so that I have more skills, and actually feeling more responsible than I ever have in my life. 

Nope, I still don't have it figured out. 

But I'm getting closer, and I'm getting closer every day to reaching my goals. I bought myself my own freaking laptop! Before the year is out I hope to have either my own car and/or my own place, and I can guarantee by that point I still won't have it all figured out. I'll just be in a shiny apartment with a car payment and bills and it'll be fantastic, but I'll still be confused as hell. 

So, new graduates: congratulations, chins up, all that. You've got time to figure this shit out. 

And if you have a panic attack, feel free to chat with me. We can panic attack about Adulting together.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go buy a Star Wars t-shirt. Or, at least, argue with myself about buying a Star Wars t-shirt, because I'm an Adult and I have to be frugal. Right?

Ha ha ha.

The Most Grown-Up Purchase

There's nothing as affirming as buying an expensive item that you would never have been able to afford as an adolescent: with the keys to the shiny new (possibly new to you) car, apartment, house, whatever, you have basically bought your way into being an adult.

Did I say affirming? I meant terrifying.

I'm sure my long-term readers (ha) will remember last summer's saga of George Clooney, my old laptop, in which George Clooney decided to burn and kill his hard drive, thereby effectively destroying everything on it (my iTunes library, all my schoolwork, all my writing, and 10,000 words of the longest thing I'd written to date) and rendering himself useless.

We managed to save George Clooney by giving him a new hard drive, which relieved me no end. But he's never quite been the same since, and lately he's been acting up a little. Not yet broken, but definitely a little suspicious.

So I decided that I would invest in a new laptop.

And when I say "decided" I mean "casually mentioned to my mother that I thought it might be a good idea."

I wasn't convinced, though, until I realized I'd be needing a laptop if I decide to pursue work in social media (hahahaha job hunting what).

Long story short, yesterday found me at the Computer Store (well, a computer store, not THE computer store) after having done a good amount of research (Consumer Reports) on what I wanted in a laptop and

I bought one.

It's sitting on my lap now. I'm typing on it.

Everybody, I'd like you to meet (in as much as you can) my new laptop, Meryl Streep. Named thusly because, like George Clooney, she is a silver fox.

Which is great and all, and this laptop is amazing and gorgeous, but ho. lee. CRAP., I can't believe that I bought a thing this expensive. Still. It's been 24h and I'm still a little bit lightheaded even looking at its screen. I almost passed out yesterday after handing over my debit card with all the money on it. I almost passed out when the sales associate handed me the box with Meryl. I almost passed out setting it up. I almost passed out walking around afterward with a bag with a computer in my hand. I almost passed out into the cardboard carton in which the Hot Dog on a Stick people served my cheese dog.

I got home and did pass out (read: napped)  for about twenty minutes before I went to work, and my words upon waking up were "well, gotta go earn some of that money back now."

I've never spent that much on anything IN MY LIFE. The closest three things were when I paid for half of my first laptop, when I paid for rent because my ex forgot, and when I paid for my annulment (which was a lot less gratifying and I think I was too much in shock and was probably crying dead from everything else in my life to realize that I'd forked over lots of money to no longer be married).

If I spend this much time almost passing out after buying a very pretty computing investment, I can only imagine what will happen when I get a car.

The Depressed Band-Aid Heart; or, Deck-Chair Writing.

In case you all were wondering, The Depressed Band-Aid Heart was definitely a title that Edgar Allan Poe considered for his short story. Or it would have been, if Band-Aids had been tradmarked as a brand in the forty-eight or so years that Poe was live in the 19th century. Or, you know, been invented at all.

This isn't a horror story, though. Not unless you consider late-night examinations of one's depression to be a horror story.

Sometimes it feels like the last few years of my life were a massive shipwreck, Titanic style. I want to write about it, or anything, and I keep dragging the sea of my subconscious hoping to find treasure or the Heart of the Sea or even like victims of the shipwreck (which would provide closure to families obviously) to write about, but instead all that bubbles up to the surface are deck chairs. Deck chairs, while they do have some value, are fairly pedestrian things. I'll take anything I can get when it comes to writing these days, so if I have deck-chair level ideas, I grab them. I also secretly live in Mortal Fear that I won't find anything else but deck chairs, ever, and then someone like James Cameron will swoop in on my blogs and journals after I die and find the ship itself, and make a three hour movie out of it starring an ancient, still-Oscarless Leonardo DiCaprio.

It's a valid fear.

So as I was lying awake last night on the steam of Margaret Atwood's The Blind Assassin wishing I could write something that awesome or just write at all, I came up with an absolutely deck-chair level analogy about the whole situation.

I've written about both my depression and how difficult it can be to write before on this blog. I still stand by both of those posts. It's even more on my mind because it's coming up on a year since I graduated, and that's when I did the whole black-hole bungee jump, which is incidentally not a pass-time I'd recommend to anyone.

Depression is probably the most effective paralytic of all; even more effective than bitterness (thanks, Sherlock). It was the convergence of school being over (and thus life as I understood it) as well as having to face down the whole ordeal I went through my junior year that tipped me over the edge. I thought I'd manage after graduating somehow; but I can honestly say I'd never been laid that low in my whole life. You all remember hearing about it: episode after episode of Supernatural, like somehow I believed that if I watched it enough, Jensen Ackles would turn into a teddy bear that I could hold onto forever and never feel bad about my life or the world again.

Just to be clear: I'm not even talking about a sexy teddy bear (is there such a thing as a sexy teddy bear? Is that a fetish? I wouldn't be surprised, but I also do NOT want to know. I DO know people call their significant others "teddy bear" sometimes and that's not even what I mean). Just, like one of those giant teddy bears you win at carnivals, but with way better eyes.

I really, really hope he never reads this blog.

Some writers can write through depression. Some writers have written their best works while being absolutely depressed and also probably completely hammered. I am not one of those writers, and I spent months beating myself up over the fact that I'm not Ernest Hemingway.

Here's where the analogy comes in.

Let's run on the truth that everybody in the world is the walking wounded. At any given time, when you meet someone, you just assume that they've been dealt emotional blows and either have experienced or are experiencing some sort of emotional pain at that moment. And to deal with that emotional pain, they've probably put band-aids on those (metaphorical) holes in their hearts so they can walk around during the day and function while the hurt heals. Some people have hearts that are just covered in band-aids, some people have one or two, depending on how much emotional hurt they're dealing with.

Being a writer is being willing to peel off those band-aids while the wounds are raw; or to not even put band-aids on them in the first place. You're not afraid to confront the pain into character experience. Sometimes you're even okay to open up old wounds if it means you can give believability to a story.

Some of you are probably thinking, Writers are masochists! and I say to you, absolutely. Some of us are. Well, most of us are. Some of us are healthy people with healthy lives. The rest of us are secretly envious of the functional people and are convinced they've sold their souls.

I was so depressed last year that even thinking about pulling off the band-aids to let out more pain just sounded unbearable. The problem was, a gaping depression wound had opened up in a really tough scar tissue area of my heart, and for that reason it was much harder to pull it closed.

And I mean, I have followed a lot of advice of Writers Who Have Made It. I've tried to practice, I've tried to establish a routine. I've tried writing what I know, which was in fact a terrible idea: about a month or two ago, I started writing a memoir of what happened to me that junior year of college and ended up shaking and crying at two in the morning from excess of flashbacks and I haven't touched it since. I will come back to it eventually, because it is a really promising skeleton, and even if it turns out it's not something anyone wants to read, I need to tell it.

I've finally gotten to the point where I feel healthy enough to pound stuff out on here, and for months I obviously didn't. I don't really trust the feelings of stability, because there have been times in the last year where I've felt like maybe the sunshine was gonna break so I could go trawling in my subconscious for good ideas and ended up curled up in a ball on the deck because I saw a piece of wood that looked like an alligator.

I haven't had an idea for a fictional story that I could carry successfully since my senior thesis/play. I miss that. That was the last time I worked for two weeks non-stop ON FIRE. Ann LaMott talks about how good that feeling is, when that kind of inspiration strikes, and she's right. I'm not a surfer, but if I was, I'd probably make an analogy about how it's like riding a the perfect wave. I'm not a base-jumper, but if I was, I'd make an analogy about freefalling. It's a bit stunning, and not much is in your control: the words just keep coming out and ideas that you didn't know were hiding come out of your fingers sparkling, and even though you know probably a good portion of that is absolute sh*t and you'll have to go back and edit and research and eat your vegetables, right now it is holy and anointed because you're blazing.

It's a good feeling. Maybe the best feeling. If I had to pick the feeling of a first kiss and the feeling of being carried along by a giant tidal wave of inspiration, I'd pick the latter. Every time.

I've been doing a sidestroke against the current, carrying along this ten-pound anxiety-ridden seriously depressed patched-up heart for the last year, trying not to let any salt water get in the open parts. Having a depressed band-aid heart is a lot like having a child made of cement with a death grip on your hand: you can pull and pull all you want, but you won't move more than an inch at a time.

Reading back over this makes me think I'm really good at making excuses for my malaise and my lack of productivity, and also really good at describing them. I'm currently healthy enough to think that's part of the trap that depression sets for me.

And I've decided that I'm publishing this post, overblown prose and six bad analogies and all. Because I feel like it. It's cheesy and everyone at my alma mater who is a writer would probably sneer at it. I'm very well aware of that.

I don't care. I'm finishing this analogy about my band-aid heart because I'm still alive to write about it. Because I'm still dealing with it. And because I'm guessing there are other people out there who are sad and beating themselves up that they can't set up a writing routine or write through their depression like Ernest Hemingway. Frankly, I'm still pretty upset that I can't myself.

And then I have to remember that Jane Austen herself went through a depressive period when her father died and didn't write anything for like five years, and then she wrote and revised and produced lots of brilliant books. She clearly had a depressed band-aid heart, and she managed to heal it enough to have fulfillment in her writing. And I'd rather be more like Jane Austen, anyway.

Vive la deck chair.

Why I Can't Play Video Games: An Arbitrary Childhood Rule

The other night, my parents and I were discussing just how cool computer games for kids were in the late 90's/early 2000's. We can all agree that any era that features heavily in Carmen Sandiego computer games is probably the golden age of said activity.

WHERE IN THE WORLD did she get that trenchcoat? I want it. 

Not, mind you, that my parents particularly relied on computer games to calm me down or keep me out of the way. As an only child, I was skilled in the Art of Entertaining Myself With Books to the point where it was more like, "Hilary! You've read through that Harry Potter book TWICE today! Come solve some puzzles on the computer!" than it was "Hilary, you've been playing computer games ALL DAY, come do your homework!"

In fact, my mom liked to play some of the computer games even more than I did. One in particular, called the Zoombinis, featuring essentially blueberries with hair, feet, and varying style accessories, was one of her favorites.

"I hated that game," I said, vehemently.

"Why?" This from my dad, who worked during the day while I was homeschooled and had not been around to witness several Zoombini-related meltdowns.

"Because," I said, "Sometimes they fell into abysses or got smushed or died, and I couldn't handle being responsible for that. I couldn't be responsible for not all of them making it home. I felt too bad about it."

It's hard to believe these ridiculous blueberries caused me so much distress.

Both my parents laughed about it, and my mom said something along the lines of "you were always a tenderhearted kid," according to the affectionate script that she relies on when talking about my childhood eccentricities.

This was, in fact, not isolated to Solving Puzzles with Blueberries with Hair. This happened SEVERAL TIMES when my dad brought home a GameCube, insisting that "Video games will be FUN!"

The first video game I ever played on the Nintendo Gamecube was a racing game called Super Monkey Ball. If you know me, you know that if I can't  do something well the first time I do it, I get a little embarrassed and offended by my own incompetence, which is probably a bad habit I learned due to the fact that certain skills like reading and swimming came to me like I'd been born knowing how to do them. Video games were not immediately easy. I remember sitting down to my first round of Monkey Ball, in which I picked the character who was a baby monkey, complete with a diaper and cinnamon roll-ears. It was all very adorable.

NO ONE CAN SAY NO TO THAT FACE.

Predictably, I lost. By a wide margin. And that was embarrassing enough, but the BABY MONKEY CRIED. There were tears.  So now, not only was I forced to deal with the fact that I was Bad At Video Games, but that I HAD INFLICTED PAIN ON SOMEONE ELSE WITH MY UTTER LACK OF SKILLS.

Which of course makes no sense to the people who can disconnect virtual characters from actually having feelings, but I didn't have that ability as a child. There are several screws loose in my brain, but one of them definitely has to do with the understanding most people have that fiction isn't reality.

I was inconsolable. I started crying. Not because I'd lost, I could deal with losing, but because the monkey was crying. I think my family, or at least my dad, was somewhat confused by this reaction, because he kept trying to tell me that if I practiced at video games I would win eventually, to which I would loudly and wetly respond "NO YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND I HURT THE MONKEY, I MADE THE MONKEY CRY, I SHOULD HAVE WON FOR THE MONKEY SO I DIDN'T HURT IT" and I'm fairly sure he was thinking "no I don't understand why are you reacting like this," because he took me for a walk to get me to calm down.

And then when we got home I made him play the video game as the baby monkey avatar so that it could win and be happy. Several times.

Once my parents figured out that nobody was ever going to get me to love Monkey Ball, they moved on and bought a few other GameCube games, a few of them first-person solo, which I could get into a little more because there was less competition and crying involved. However, when they brought home Pikmin, stuff got real again.

Pikmin as a game is brutally honest about what it's like to be on the low end of the food chain, but not for the protagonist. The protagonist is this tiny astronaut with a bulbous orange nose, and nothing bad ever really happens to him in this game except his spaceship crashes on an alien planet and he may never see his family again. The goal of the game is to rebuild the spaceship with the assistance of tiny, slightly mindless but maximum-adorable sentient root vegetables.

I cried extra-hard when the blue ones got eaten.

These root vegetables--of course, called Pikmin--have unwavering loyalty to the tiny astronaut, and follow him around wherever he goes. But, like in the real wilderness, there are predators. The pikmin can (and DO) get eaten by horrible mushroom-shaped dogs with chicken legs. Or die. And these sad little ghosts rise up every time they do, making pitiful little gasping noises of grief and disappointment.

I have no idea who thought "We should give this game to a small girl who got violently upset by the sad feelings of a fake baby monkey the first time we introduced her to video games, but let's give Kill or Be Killed a try." Probably someone in my extended family. Or my dad, who often brought video games home on the basis that "they reviewed really well!"

I played it once, for maybe an hour on Christmas morning, and got so depressed at my ineffectuality as a leader of tiny squeaking root vegetables with a primitive cult mentality that I couldn't emotionally handle it anymore and (no surprise) my mom started playing it instead.

I'm more rational, of course, at my *cough* advanced age. I know logically that the baby monkey isn't actually crying because it's not real, and that the Pikmin and Zoombinis didn't actually die in the real world, and that it's a game, but these are all reasons that when someone asks me if I want to play MarioKart, I look at them a little bit like they've asked me to skin a cat. I'm sorry, I want to say, You want me to watch Yoshi cry because I can't play video games? I can't be responsible for that. Have you SEEN Yoshi? He's too cute, and my hand-eye coordination has never been good. There's no way this is going to end well.

And it's not like I'm a sore loser. Well, there are times I have been of course, and I think it's safe to say nobody actively enjoys losing.

And I knew this. I turned down going into competitive swimming for a lot of reasons, but one of them was "I don't want to make other people feel sad like I feel when I lose, if I win." Looking back, I suspect that I was secretly a tiny socialist disguised like an eight-year old.  Or just a pacifist. To some people, they're the same.

Rather, my dislike of video games boils down to this: I don't like watching the effects of losing, especially when they're tied to me. I've never really been comfortable with winning at the expense of other people losing. Even now that I've fostered a healthy sense of competition and like being able to be the Best at Certain Things, I can never quite shake the sensation that someone else who thought they were The Best at that Certain Thing got humiliated or disappointed by me winning.

Not that this is really relevant when you're casually playing video games with your friends and family. That's supposed to be fun. And when I say "fun," I do realize that video games with family members or friends can just as easily turn into a bloodbath as a convenient evening on the couch.

And on those occasions, you can find me in the corner, saying "I'll just watch you guys play for a few more rounds, really; no really I'm good," secretly wishing I could just give Yoshi a big hug so that he'd just freaking stop crying already.

I'm not saying I'll cut you if you make Yoshi cry but
I WILL CUT YOU IF YOU MAKE YOSHI CRY.