Len, The X-Files, and My Doppelganger

"Oh, yeah, I meant to tell you. I saw this girl on TV that looks just like you."
My brother was sitting in his usual spot in front of my 32" television which had finally made its way out of my bedroom and into the living room, uniting us all. Len had moved his x-box out of his own room and hooked it up. My TV was both larger than his and HD capable, though Len scolded me that 720p did not compare to 1080p when you dealt with video games. I didn't care. I was just glad he was sitting with everybody and being less of a hermit.

Things were improving at 3501 West Houser Road lately. Since I'd scraped the bottom of the barrel and changed my lifestyle a bit, staying at home every night of the week including weekends, I spent a lot more time on the couch with Len watching Netflix oldies like The X-Files. Oh David Duchovny...

"Are you telling me you saw my doppelganger? I hope she was pretty and not ugly and fat."
"Oh, no, she's all right. She just looks a lot like you in the face. Like from the nose up. Hang on and I can find it." He clicked through page after page of Netflix shows.

Len had recently scored a paid internship with none other than the nations' second most-watched wrestling federation. After finishing his first day, he had already sorted and read some fan mail from some of the bizarro viewers.

I was really proud of him. I was actually a bit jealous. But it made me happy to think that things would be okay with Len. I had rolled my eyes about him for probably all 22 years of his existence. But this was cool. I had gone around to half my co-workers at the office just to break the news that my brother would be working for a company that made money off of cage fights, ladder matches, and too much spray-tan.

"Okay, I found it. Here it is."
He pressed play as the camera was zooming in on an old British guy surrounded by an audience. I recognized the show as an auto program from the UK about restoration. The old guy and his buddies were hilarious. I'd seen an episode where they drove across four US states in cars that they bought for only a thousand dollars a piece, only to come back and close their show saying that the number one thing they'd learned in America was NOT to go to America.
"Look, see that girl behind the dude? She looks just like you, doesn't she?"
I sat up in my seat on the couch.
"Hey! She does look like me!"
"Seriously, doesn't she? Like, hold up she's about to smile."
A few seconds later, sure enough, the girl smiled.
"See, check out her cheeks and the way her eyes look when she smiles. She looks JUST LIKE you."
"Oh. Yeah, she does." I was kind of taken aback. Len was really excited about this.
"I was just watching the show and I was like, dude. Is that my sister? Is my sister in the UK right now?" Len laughed and then slowed down the video. "See, check it. She just did something. Wait, let me roll it back."
Len rolled the video frame by frame over the girl in the background as she smiled a tight-lipped smile and quirked and then dropped an eyebrow.
"That is JUST LIKE you!"
"Yeah. I guess it is."

Then Len went back to late night TV and I sat there on the couch wondering about how he saw me. I thought it was funny that he had even noticed someone in the background of a television show who looked like me. And I thought it was even funnier that he had taken the time to show me, and roll frame by frame over the facial expressions that made this would-be doppelganger look the most like me.

I thought of the other times in our lives when Len and I had been kind-of friends. We both liked funny youtube videos. We had hooked up the netbook to the TV so we could watch on a bigger screen. We had gone to eat by ourselves a couple of times. Really, though, Len had gotten on my nerves a lot.
He lives a lifestyle that was totally and completely opposite to mine. In college I had pretty much gone wild, while Len had come home like clockwork every weekend, saved his money, bought only video games and food, and didn't ever actually buy a car until he was a Senior. Yes, in college. I had a cell phone and a car by the time I was 19 and I used them to create my own idiotic independence. I was young, pretty, and boy-crazy. Len was conservative, quiet, and practically a eunuch.
We were opposites and we looked down our noses at one another.

Lately, though, it was almost like we were meeting in the middle. Len had gotten a sweet job, and I wasn't boy-crazy any more, or going out on retarded pseudo-dates. We sat around together and watched weird X-Files episodes about inbred freaks, alien abductions, and genetic mutants.
It made me think about when Len and I were younger. And I mean a lot younger. When Len was still little and I was his big sister walking him home from kindergarten. I had an excuse in the third grade that I could leave early and walk home with Len out of his kindergarten class. I can still remember the day when Mrs. Ault stopped me on my way out the door.

"Don't you think your brother can make it on his own today?"

I felt like she was butting in on my relationship with him. I liked being protector, leader, BIG sister. To this day, I'd call myself a nurturer. And maybe that's what some of those pseudo dates were about. What all the Catching in the Rye was about. That I am straight up, 100%, a nurturer. But what if, all this time, I was the one who needed to be nurtured the most? What happens when you realize that the one you've been trying to Catch is yourself?

Len laughed at something on TV. I was glad he hadn't lost me over the years. That he could still pick my face out of a crowd in the background of some random British TV show. It made me smile.

Apology

I have been trying to write to you for the past two weeks and can't seem to come up with a single scrap of interesting material.

I'm really sorry.

The older I get, the less I seem to want to share with other people. I can't tell if that is a result of maturation in that I don't feel the need to be heard or sympathized with any more, or if it is a result of depression and self-defeat in that I don't feel like any of my life is worth sharing anymore.

To be honest with you, I'm a little bit scared about the future. I am scared in ways I never thought I would be. I'm afraid that I will sell myself short. I'm afraid that soon everything will be over, and I'm also afraid it will never start. I'm afraid that I will never be satisfied. I'm afraid I'll be alone in my head forever. I'm afraid the opinions of others will be allowed to run my life, and I'm afraid NOT to let them.

I'm afraid of how dumb all this sounds, and how you'll probably get to the end of this post and be like, "God, what a retard."

But I just want you to know that I actually AM really tired of censoring myself for other people so I can control what they think of me. Its so flipping hard sometimes! And I'm doing okay at it right now, but I don't know how long I can hold out. So be prepared. There might be a little explosion on the horizon.

Right now, though, I just seem to be waiting.

Popular Kids Meet the Equalizer

"How is your daughter doing in school this year?" I hadn't had a chance to talk to the girls from Valuations since I'd come back to the office. My return to teaching had become only a hiatus from my desk job. I was back after six months. I'd been placed in the middle of the office floor this time, far away from Valuations, where I used to sit.

Tricia sat diagonally from me then, and I'd heard many a story about her daughter being bullied at school, and many a phone conversation between Tricia and the school principal. Now we sat across the table from each other at a department luncheon in a Mexican resturant.

"She's doing well!" Tricia remarked of her daughter, "I think she's finally worked up the guts to stand up to those mean girls."

"Good!" I said. "Middle school girls are the worst. I'm tellin ya. That's where I just came from, and I think its probably the first time in kids' lives where cliques start to form and you start recognizing popular kids and not-popular kids. They don't really seem to be aware of that in elementary school."
"Yes!" Tricia said. "And you know what they're picking on her about this year? Her clothes! If she doesn't have on Hollister or American Eagle she doesn't even want to show up at school."
"Yeah, uniforms have really changed things like that in Metro schools."
We nodded, as did the other ladies next to us at the table.

I always hate department luncheons with no seating charts. Everyone mingles, but you never know who you're going to sit by. If you get stuck with someone who's your superior, you get nervous. If you get stuck with people you don't know, you get left out. If you get stuck with someone you hate, you get annoyed. Its a total crap shoot.

Megan Cates was sitting next to me, adjacent to Tricia. Megan was fairly new. She was mid-twenties, blonde, a tad chunky, and rumored to have tattooed eye make-up, meaning that her eyeliner was permanent and would never come off. That weirded me out.

"I don't even think we had popular kids when I was in school," she said. "Everybody was pretty nice to each other. There were groups that hung out together, but I don't think any one group was quote unquote cooler." She chuckled, and took a sip of water.
"Did you go to a small school?" Tricia asked.
"Well, it was a small town, yes."
We digested that for a minute, crunching our free chips and salsa.
"You mean you seriously never got picked on?"
"No. I can't remember a single insult." Megan smiled. "I guess kids aren't like that anymore. I wonder what causes that."
"TV," Paula chimed in from the other side of Tricia.
"Probably," I added.
We crunched our chips again in silence, listening to the commotion at the other end of the table.
"Well if I've learned anything from teaching its that your experience in school is totally unique to you. Nobody has the same experiences. I don't remember kids being crazy hooligans and running teachers out of their classrooms, but I went through Honors and Advanced Placement classes where that didn't happen that often. Teaching Standard classes and low performers really made me realize that things haven't changed, but my perspective has."
Megan nodded to me, but I didn't stop there.
"So... maybe there were some other kids who DID feel picked-on at your school."
She paused.
"Well come to think of it, yeah. Actually. I guess there was this one girl who was kind of a bully."
That wasn't what I had asked, but I was interested.
"All of my daughter's bullies are girls!" Tricia added. "People don't really call girls bullies. I guess they think they're too feminine, but they can be just as mean and awful as boys."
"Well, this is actually a pretty funny story," Megan started. "When I was in high school I was active in a lot of clubs and stuff. I was on the yearbook staff, and I dated Jeff, who is now my husband--"
"--Oh! That's so cute!" Paula was still listening too.
"Yeah, so I dated my husband for like two years of highschool before we went to college." She took another sip of water and her grin got all big and loaded like this was a super juicy story. "Well. There was this girl at school who I guess wanted to date Jeff? Anyway, she just got so mad at me for dating him. And she was kind of a weird girl, too. Like she's still weird. I think she's a lesbian now or something, like she seriously does DRAG shows and stuff as a MAN, which is funny, because she was mad at me all Senior year of high school for dating Jeff, who is a man." She laughed, and made this face like 'WEIRD-O!' and continued. "Well, she was on the yearbook staff with me, and before the pages went out to be printed, she got into the lists and deleted my picture and my name out of the yearbook altogether."
"Oh no!" Tricia and Paula across the table gaped.
"Your Senior picture!"
"What did you do?"
"Nothing," Megan said. "I mean, they gave me my money back, but there wasn't really anything we could do. The books had already been printed. And they knew who did it, you know. So they kept her from walking the line at graduation; she got an F in yearbook class. But let me tell you. My friends gave that girl hell about doing that to me. I mean, she probably wished she'd never even met me."
"What do you mean?"
"Oh," Megan mused, "They called her some terrible names, drove to where she worked, slashed her tires. You know, stuff like that."
"Oh my god! That's horrible!" I was taken aback.
"Well she reaps what she sows, huh?" Tricia seemed unsurprised.
"That poor girl." I said.
"Well, I wasn't in on any of it, of course. She tried to press charges against me or something for damaging her property but I wasn't even there, you know. And that whole rest of the year was just hell for her I'm sure. But she probably deserved it." Megan smiled. "Other than that, though, nobody was mean or clique-y in my high school. Everybody pretty much got along."

The waiter came a few minutes later with our food, and cross-table comparisons to lower priced Mexican resturants began. But I couldn't stop thinking about the girl. I couldn't stop thinking that the only reason Megan hadn't experienced any bullying and thought that her school didn't have cliques was because she was in the biggest clique of all.

Everybody probably got along from her perspective because they weren't about to cross her or her friends, and she was probably too self-centered to even notice that people didn't like her. I mean, if the girl really did become a lesbian later she was probably going through some intense times in high school. Megan and her friends probably weren't the only ones who thought she was weird. And who knows! Maybe something actually HAD happened between her and Megan's husband Jeff, to make her really angry. Some of the best people I know had the worst times in high school. In fact, it's all the popular kids who end up never leaving town and making anything of themselves. The weirdos are always more successful.

Isn't it strange when you're years and years beyond high school, but you can still feel the old us-and-them principles creeping in? I suddenly knew for a fact that had I been in high school with Megan I would NOT have been able to be her friend. She wouldn't have glanced twice at me. More than likely I would have made friends with the girl that got terrorized. And yet here we were having lunch together just because we worked in the same building.

Man, adolescence sucks.
When I was teaching middle school kids my favorite kid was a class clown who made jokes to roll the insults off his back. He came from a broken home and was the youngest of four, the only boy, and his mother had recently become pregnant with some random guy's kid even though she didn't take care of the four she already had. I wanted so badly to explain to him how adulthood was an equalizer. That he really could be whatever he wanted to be. That no label would ever stick with him his whole life. That he was brilliant and hilarious and good no matter what people said or how many times he was sent to the principal's office.

But you can't explain those things to someone who hasn't experienced them. His future felt like a white void where he didn't even exist yet. It didn't matter what I said, he was not going to be able to fill in those blanks. His only reality was now. And for all he knew it would be all he'd ever know.

And thats how I imagine that girl that Megan was talking about. I imagine her balling up her fists because the only reality is now and she's trapped; she can't move.
It makes me wish I could teach again, just to talk to her.

I put down my fork and looked at Megan laughing at something Tricia said.
She was a temp just like me.
Adulthood really is the equalizer.

Prelude to My Non-Gothic Life

I heard my cousin say something depressing.

My aunt is supposedly studying theology at a local university. This came to me as a surprise because she is a grandmother, and has already aged beyond the standard "college age group." Additionally, religion is not something that is openly discussed on that side of the family. Thus, I had no idea that theology would be of any deep interest to her, or, for that matter, worth spending thousands of dollars on professional study.

"Why, hell..." My cousin Ben said, after hearing this news. He was wearing a polo shirt and ripped jeans. I could not decide if the jeans were designer or just worn from many nights of drinking and running amuck. He slouched deeper into my grandmothers forty year old couch and worked the wad of dip around in his lower lip. "I'd probably set the place on fire if I set foot in a church. I'd straight up burst into flames."
My uncle and my cousin Gina laughed.
"I have no business being there," Ben said. "No sir."

How sad, I thought. That's probably the BEST place for him. But it would be too weird, too out of the norm to board that train of thought. It would also be too weird and out of the norm for me to suggest I thought so.

That side of the family has layers. They're like onions. There are things you get to see, the "appropriate" parts, and then there are the hidden, unseen things. Motivations for bizarre actions go unquestioned. Its the epitome of the Southern Gothic movement in literature. There is no need to ask why this and why that and whats up with this. One is polite, and cheerful, and nothing is ever wrong. This is not to say that something is always wrong, but occasionally there will be something that it seems everyone talks around. And still occasionally I wonder if I'm the only one who smells the rats.

There are nine cousins, and I am the third oldest. Three of my cousins are married and have children. Two older than me, and one younger. I like watching them. I like to see they way they interact as married people, as families. I hope to myself that they're happy, that they're safe. I wonder if they'll play charades and gestures and pictionary with their emotions. I wonder if there's hope for me. I wonder if all the bad modeling will lead us all to the same highs and lows. I wonder what we'll do when our grandmother passes away, and the house and the glue that presses us together a few times a year will still adhere. I guess one day we'll find out.

Still there are some things I am certain about. I want to make sure I smoke out all the rats in my relationships. I want to shoot down the elephants in the room and transcend awkward levels of communication. As much as I love Southern Gothic literature, I really don't ever want to live in Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio. Or McCullers' Sad Cafe.

And I still wait for the fresh start that will be the prelude to my non-gothic life. So as Ben giggled like a school kid, and my cousin Gina changed the conversation, I stayed polite. I didn't say a word, and I tried to think about something else.

Advice I'd Give My Daughter

Sex is not power. Anyone can have sex, and most guys would have sex with a bar of soap if it looked like it wanted it, so make sure you don't lower yourself to that level. Don't be the soap. Be you.

Even if you don't quite know who you are yet, its good to pretend you're important. People will treat you the same way you treat yourself. Every time. Its like the Golden Rule flipped inside out. So don't mope around thinking you're a piece of crap, and don't put up with anyone who wants to treat you like one. Because the people that do that are only doing it because they feel like pieces of crap themselves. Look for this, and you'll realize its true.

Make sure you look good. If you like the way you look, or at least put effort into it, you'll realize you feel better about yourself. This means that, yes, sometimes shopping therapy is necessary. Because its good to feel fabulous. All the time, if possible.

Accept the fact that no one is going to rescue you. Do not be fooled by romance novels and chick flicks. Do not live your life waiting for something to happen to you that will change everything. In the end, you are the one who brings about all the changes. Don't surrender that right to anybody else.

Be the change you want to see in YOURSELF. Stop thinking of yourself in terms of what other people see, and think of yourself in terms of what you see in yourself.

People can change. But don't expect it out of anybody but you. If you wait for someone to change, you could be waiting your whole life. Realize that sometimes timing just sucks, and there's nothing you can do about it. It doesn't matter how cute he is, if his life is a mess you can't expect him to clean it up just because he met you. The only thing you will ever have control over is yourself. Don't ever forget that.

If you're waiting to do something while no one's watching, you shouldn't do it at all.

Feed the fish in the fish tank, and know you are needed.

Secrets are not beautiful. They won't keep you warm at night, and they trap you in ways you can't even understand right now. Be honest with yourself AND other people. Its beautiful and it will make you feel good.

Religion is not "gay." Despite the hilarity of some televangelists, faith in God is the best possible thing to have in your life. Talk to him. But most importantly, listen to him. If you stop and just listen, he'll always tell you what to do.
Matter of fact, stop right now and make an effort to listen. This time, when you ask a question, don't you strangely feel like you already know the answer? Stop and do this at least once a day. It will change your life.

Don't drink. I know you will, though. Please remember that alcohol is a depressant, it makes you gain weight, and that even when you think you are totally in control, you aren't.

ps- If I catch you drinking I WILL kill you.

Don't get wrapped up in what you think is cool. Remember that your life is short. Time passes quickly. Your youth will fade. You'll be thirty one day. And you'll look back on all the things you did at your age and think... what? Do everything with your future in mind. The present is its best predictor.

Drugs will make you barf. Including herbal drugs. Especially herbal drugs.

Sometimes you have to stop talking to people who allow you to behave unhealthily. If they're holding you back, you don't need them. Don't feel bad letting them go, and don't feel like you have to explain a thing. Change your phone number. Delete your social network. Read a good book. Buy new clothes. Dye your hair. Reinvent yourself.

It is impossible to screw up so badly that you can't ever have a fresh start. The only thing keeping you from the best version of yourself is you.

Be good to your family members. Don't hide things from them. Don't be ashamed of them. They are a part of who you are, and they'll never stop loving you.

And finally,
Eat fruit.
Drink milk.
Don't smoke.
You will thank me later.

What I Know Despite Myself

I am not, I repeat, NOT joining eHarmony. Nor may you expect to see me on Match.com
Those websites are for desperate people looking desperately for someone to fill a desperate little void in their desperately hopeful little lives. And I refuse to be desperate. Whiney and totally obnoxious, maybe. But I intend to have a bit more spunk, a bit more kick, a bit more spice to my attitude, desperate or otherwise. Therefore I am not desperate.
And these are the things I know despite myself:

I know you're out there somewhere. You don't know who I am and I don't know who you are either. But despite myself, despite all the sick, gutwrenching drama of the last couple of months, and all the years leading up to the last couple of months, and all the years that will succeed the last couple of months, I KNOW for a fact that you are out there.

Because I'm sure we haven't met yet.
(Don't get cocky, Michael Buble, I would never use your song title in my far-superior-to-you blog)

Even though we are totally and completely compatible, we haven't met yet. Perhaps we were staring at the same Latin Pop section at Walmart, looking for the same Carlos Baute cd that always freakin flies off the shelves. Or maybe we were both at Melrose and your order was the one that made them forget to make my extra cheesy quesadilla. Or you could have been the one who stole the last purple Norcom comp book at the Office Max so that I had to drive to flippin Cool Springs to look for another one. Or maybe you don't even live here. Maybe I need to move, because you live in Atlanta or New York City or... Spain (Sergio Ramos) I don't know.

All I know right now is that I have to chill. Because when you come along, you're not going to wait for me to get my shizz together. It'll be BOOM, SONIC BLAST, EXPLOSIONS OF LIGHT, SUB ATOMIC PARTICLE SPLIT. It'll be intense. And I don't want to be preoccupied with myself and how crappy my life is and how I'm not really ready for this or perhaps I'm SO ready for it that I throw myself on you and freak you out. I want to be cool, yo. I want to be so cool you can't resist me.

Though. Of course. That's not hard. I'm too cool to resist already. I have to make sure I have a squirt bottle full of unflattering things to say so that I can spray them on unsuspecting suitors at the mall or the Walmart or the... office cafeteria (Mazatlan).

I'm thinking about you the whole time, though. I'm trying to. I wish you would just show up and rock my world already. I'm impatient, and I don't want you to miss me in my prime. Hurry up, okay? I'll keep hanging tight over here, and you keep doing whatever it is you do. But please don't forget about me. Its hard to remember what you're supposed to look like, but I think I'll know you when I see you.

Maybe I won't be surprised at all when we meet. Maybe you'll just walk up and I'll say "Hello, other-half. Where have you been all this time?" And we'll exchange awkward stories of how long its taken us to find each other, and how ridiculous it's all been, what with the boobie traps and dead ends and do-not-pass-go's, do-not-collect-200-dollars's. And we'll hold hands and walk out into the rest of our lives like old friends.

Maybe, anyway.

Soy Tu Duena at the Mapco

I get in my car. Its raining this morning. I'm wearing a pink and teal button up shirt that looks like it was meant for summer. But it's November, and its raining, and I really don't care. It looks good on me, and I did my makeup carefully for once.

I feel my eyelid and realize that the anti-aging serum stuff I bought on 75%-off clearance has worked. My skin is smooth and soft. My eyelids are always getting flaky these days. Probably because I, myself, am also getting flaky.

"I'm running out of time! I'm on a schedule here, people!" I told my dad the previous night on the phone. I laughed when I said it.
"Whats so funny about that?" Again with the deadpan. God, Dad, you're gonna have to lighten up.
"I'M GETTING OLD! That's why its funny!" I laughed again. "I'm like those horrible girls who consider harvesting their eggs! I'm gonna get old and nobody will have ever been able to stand me long enough to procreate with me, much less marry me and doom themselves to forever being my sidekick."

Yes, I think, now driving to work in my car, I am also getting flaky. Sidekick? Seriously?
My windshield wipers make a squeaky noise when they scrape against the window. I really shouldn't have used them to help me defrost the window last year when I lived in that apartment.

I pull into a gas station and get out. I get water in my shoes because of the puddle that has most conveniently placed itself under my car. Again, its November, and I'm wearing grey open-toed shoes. Whatever, I did my nails all cute and french-like.

"Seis noventa y nueve." The cashier is an overweight white girl with bleached blonde hair. She is speaking Spanish to the All-Pro Lawncare workers who have entered the Mapco to buy coffee that they doctor with too much sugar. America has been bad to them, I muse, giving them all sweet tooths when it comes to a product that is most likely grown and harvested in their own native countries.

One of them cocks an eyebrow at me as I head for the energy drinks. I'm a sucker for energy drinks. One day my heart may explode. And it won't even be a man's fault. It certainly won't be your fault, I think to myself, side stepping around Pedro and his paint covered pals. Apparently there is more than one vanload of Latin men in the Mapco today.

I grab the drink and wait in line behind a guy with tattoos, peeking around his shoulder at the bleach-blonde cashier. She's really speaking Spanish! Like fluently. And its funny, because I look at her, and she does NOT look like a person who went to college, or a person who graduated top of their class, or a person who could even interview for a desk job, and yet she has learned another language to the point where she is completely fluent! And here I am, Miss 13th-out-of-three-hundred-twenty-five, Miss college graduate, Miss 7th grade teacher, and I can't do that. I mean, I could. I almost did.

But when I think about it, the bleach blonde cashier lady has probably married some Latino dude and now has two kids named Julio and Renber, and her last name is probably Pineda, and she probably goes home to her crappy apartment and drinks Tampico while watching Soy Tu Duena on Telemundo.
I don't live in that environment. Now, I think, if I did, I might end up being able to facilitate cash transactions in a gas station while speaking two languages. Hm.

She rings up my can o' energy and tells me to have a good day in perfect English, and I think to myself on the way out the door that we both have okay lives.

I kind of hate Tampico anyway, and the girls on Soy Tu Duena make me feel like a fat cow just looking at them. Which, by the way, is very un-stereotypical of Spanish tv. Usually those girls have crazy curves. Like me. But whatever, the point is that I think it would be cool to speak another language. And the fact that bleached-blondie with the GED has been able to do it gives me hope.

Besides. Instead of learning Spanish while popping out half-illegal children, drinking a juice-flavored fruit drink, and working at a gas station, maybe I should just move to Spain.

I slam the door to my car and my mouth waters just long enough thinking about a Spanish rendezvous with Sergio Ramos before I pop the top on my energy drink and wash it all down.

I turn out of the Mapco parking lot and merge back into the stream of traffic funneling its way toward the heart of the city.