Thursday, November 21, 2013

The sometimes bearable lightness of being.

I don't really have a memory of writing this, but I love how impressively eloquent I can get when it's late, and I have had a few beers. Time is both cruel and kind to us all, and what we recognize as darkness only turns out to be light in the end. I have been thinking a lot about this life I used to live, And how difficult it can seem to adjust to the final acknowledgement of adulthood.  The best part of all of this, is that I have made some truly beautiful, hilarious, and sad memories, and that, dear friends, is the point.  All of the blackness and tears, and happy drunk times, and feelings of accomplishment and failure, are what makes you a person.  Just because you scream "YOLO" every chance you get does not mean you are living any sort of interesting of fulfilled life.  Getting to truly know yourself, and realize that the incredible journey you are on  takes so much less time that you'd imagined is where the true magic begins.  This being the month of giving thanks and all, I am grateful for the overwhelming power of human memory, and it's ability to transform a place as simple and comfortable as my room, into a virtual photo album of people, places, imagined loves, and very real losses.  I am grateful to this city for introducing me to all of you whom I have the pleasure of calling my friends.  I am grateful for the opportunities I have been given, and for those that have been taken away, and I am grateful to be alive to see the change in myself and in others as we grow, and age, and truly live over and over again.  Please enjoy the semi-drunken musings of a 31 year old person who is on the journey...

 October 27, 2013

 It's like I forgot what it was like to be sad, and emotional, and like I forgot what it was like to listen to records in my apartment, and think about how heavy we all thought it was. It was so heavy there for a minute. it really was. We were all just sitting in our living rooms listening to this music that is/was just a complete replica of what we were feeling at that time. I was thinking about how much I used to love, and how much I still do love Death Cab for Cutie, and that tonight, I searched, and scoured through my CDs, for my Death Cab albums, because I wanted them near me. I wanted to hear them, and to feel that tangible sadness, and to think about who I was ten years ago when I was listening to all of this. I wanted to remember that I used to get emotional about everything. I used to have emotions. Before we were hipsters, we all used to be EMO! Don't let the world allow you to forget that once upon a time, we were all scene kids who wanted to be awesome and meet every member of every band ever, and be cool. We really just wanted to feel like we were cool. In a way, think of it like, people who were late twenty-somethings in the 90s, who knew Curt Cobain, or Courtney Love, and who felt like that and that those people were their anthem. For the early part of my twenties through the later part of my twenties, all I wanted to was to give Ben Gibbard a hug. I didn't know how sad I was until I realized I was sad. early Death Cab really set the bar for sadness, and I think that it was absolutely the right thing and the right time for me to feel this emotional. I wanted to think that somewhere out there, was a man, not unlike Ben Gibbard, who needed me to save him. He was out there somewhere, and I was here, and I was waiting for him to appear unto me, and together, we would work through our crippling sadness, and what I have later described, and understood to be depression, and we would have this beautiful, and perfect life together. He was the real and genuine manifestation of what I thought and felt all men my age, at the time, wanted, thought, acted like, and appeared to be. This much may have been true, but I wanted so much more. I have lived one thousand lives before the one I am living now, and the one that seems most genuine, the one that makes the most sense to me, is the one I was living when I was 21, in the South Loop, alone, drinking white wine, and showing up places alone, and meeting people who were in the same mental place I was in. Also, I get it. Ten years ago, when we were 21, we were all mostly in the same place, and were living out the same fantasy about our lives. I understand that. I get that we were all fucked up, and we were all thinking of different ways to figure out how to escape. Something About Airplanes, and The Photo Album saved every part of my life, and stood for everything I was feeling even if I didn't know it was a feeling I needed to be feeling. I just wanted to live in this dramatic fantasy life where Dave Eggers was my emotionally connected and intuitive husband, and Death Cab for Cutie was the soundtrack to my every move. Every move,watched. I imagined my life playing out like a cool hipster romantic drama, before those were even a thing. I wanted so much from a person I had no chance of ever knowing. "He's unresponsive because you're irresponsible." is one of the best lines ever written ever. EVER. These songs are about breakups, and extreme heartbreaks, and listlessness, and the general ennui that comes with being a mid twenty-something person. I wanted to think I was above this, but I wasn't. I am not. I am absolutely at the level, I am at sea level with this information. We are basically equal, and we are 100% ok with it. I am not a bitter, or jaded person, at all, I mean, maybe a little, but no more than the next person.

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