Because Church Is Not a Dating Service

Sometimes I still have trouble deciding who I am when relating to other people.

I think it’s the fatal flaw of a terribly individualistic person. I feel most comfortable when everyone is at arms length. I can define myself without having to worry too much about how other people view me. Its when I get close to others that the inner dialogue starts. Well… what am I? Am I really the professional working girl with a great, salary paying job? Or am I the fun-lover who goes out on the town Saturday night and stays out til close? Am I a homebody, cooking experimental chicken dishes using ginger and red pepper? Am I a nurturer, taking care of people *ahem* and potty training my 10 week old puppy? Am I a church goer, all devout and straight laced? Am I a wild child, buying Caguama and watching Jersey Shore until it borders on the grotesque?

To me, I am all those things. But I know other people don't see that. They see a couple things and then make their assumptions. The wild child drinking Caguama couldn't possibly be the devout church goer. The fun-lover couldn't possibly be the professional working girl. Am I wrong for being inconsistent? Or am I not inconsistent, and I'm just a strong, well rounded, free thinking individual who can't be contained by a single labeled box for my life?

"Hi!"

I couldn't believe he had remembered my name. It had been months, literally months, since I had last walked into the church. I was embarassed, really, that it had been that long. But what was I going to do, let it keep me from coming back? I climbed the steps to the second floor Bible classroom with the rest of the twenty-somethings. Andy included.

"You look like you just came from work. Do you work late?" I asked him this because he was wearing a suit and tie. Several other guys were wearing suits and ties as well, and it make them all look like some sort of religious fraternity together. Oddly, I found it attractive. I'm sure that's the reaction they were probably going for, too.

"No, its more like I just never went home. I went and ate, and then to Starbucks to read. Then I came here."

"That sounds nice." Bells were going off in my head. It seemed cliché for him to say that he had come from Starbucks. That's where we had met, originally. He had gone out of his way to introduce himself to me, and tell me that he recognized me from the Twenty-somethings group at church. I had made a mental note of it, and when he introduced himself a second time a couple weeks later after church assembly, I made a second mental note. I always felt like he was trying to say more to me, but couldn't quite find the circumstances under which to stray beyond small talk.

"I always have to go home and change clothes. I guess its because I'm a girl. We wear heels at work and stuff." Despite my attempt at coolness, I was kicking myself for leaving the house wearing a red t-shirt and jeans. I was also wearing cork platform flip flops, and that made me feel even more like a sloppy loser. But I reminded myself quickly that I wore that because I didn't care. I don't care. I told myself. I don’t care because I’m stronger than these frou frou girls, and church is NOT a dating service. I still wished I had looked a tad lovelier.

We entered the classroom and stood there for a moment. People filtered in around us.

"Would you like to join us?" he asked. I kept looking at the back row, full of people I should probably say Hi to. "By us I mean me."
What a cute admission, I thought, and smiled. "Sure."

It was really the same situation we had always been in. His friend on the other side of him introduced himself to me. Then immediately Napoleon Dynamite, whom I hadn't seen in months either, popped up and started asking question after question and rambling about how he was doing. Andy sat there next to me, and I could feel the tension. He was quite obviously trying to talk to me while Napoleon went on and on. Furthermore a girl in the row in front of us was trying to talk to Andy. She made some joke when he asked her for gum (which he said he desperately needed, again I took note) that he would always be indebted to her now, and would have to sit by her for life. Her eyes flicked over to me for just a second and I couldn't help it, mine darkened. I enjoy competition, even when theres really no prize.

Or was there.

We still didn't say much to each other. The class started just as we were able to talk. Halfway through it, I caught him looking at his watch. And then again. And again. Five minutes before the hour, which was not when class would end judging by the looks of it, he pulled a business card out of his back pocket and held it in his lap. Right at 8 he nudged me.

"I have to go." He was whispering loudly. "I wanted to give you my card, though. See ya!"

And then he stood up and pushed in his chair.

I blushed redder than my shirt. It surprised me that he would give me his card. How odd, I thought. But then again, he had gotten it out 5 minutes before he stood up. He had been thinking about giving it to me, probably the whole time, things being time sensitive. I was surprised. I sat there smirking to myself and telling myself that I was just too awesome not to notice.

But it also confused me a bit. Why was he so forward about things? Why was he sure he even wanted to talk to me? Was it because of the way I looked? It must be, I told myself, because he literally hadn't said very much to me at all. He MIGHT have heard me talk in class. I used to talk my head off in class. Making off the wall, out-of-the-box comments that usually made total sense. Usually.

"You know, modern women wouldn't be unhappy with their Biblical roles if men would perform theirs. You know? Don't reprimand me for asking for respect because I do your job and mine, espeically when you're the one making me do it. You be a man so I can be a woman."

Yeah I'm sure that made me reeeaaaal popular with the guys of the group.

Still, regardless of whether he had heard me talk in class, he really didn't know me at all. And that scared me. It scared me because I'm different from every other girl in that church group. I've lived a different life than them. I absolutely hated Lavery. And there they are still living it. I've lived a different lifestyle in the past. I've experienced different things. I just feel… different. And in a way I would feel really terrible if someone called me out on it and said that different really meant WRONG. Even though I know that's not right. Even though I know it makes me so much more. I just don't want to have to deal with someone who thinks it makes me second rate.

So am I really experiencing cognitive dissonance regarding my behavioral inconsistencies? Are they really inconsistencies at all? Do I need to change them? Align them? Would that keep me from thinking I'm second rate? Am I supposed to call or email Andy?

What do you think?

Connecting the Dots That Slap You in the Face

He was standing on the back of a truck outside the Lowes Vanderbilt Hotel.

It was a big moving truck, unlabeled, and there were two other guys pushing heavy black rectangular boxes with brass buckles onto the truck.

"Evan Solomon!" my memory shouted at me. Memories always seem to shout at me and slap me in the face. I had dated Evan Solomon seven years before, in college. Presently, he, like the other two guys, was wearing a loose button down shirt and jeans with work boots. He had his hair pulled back into a pony tail, and his glasses, the same small round ones I remembered from when I was nineteen, were perched too high up on the bridge of his nose. He looked dirty. When I saw him I kept walking. Evan Solomon? As I passed the truck, questioning whether or not it had been him, I saw a little plackard next to the door of the truck that said, in scrawled handwriting, as this was obviously a truck that had been rented, "Separation Music Group."

And that’s when I laughed. I knew I shouldn't, but the corners of my mouth shot up as high as my eyebrows did, because it started to hit me that that had to be him. It had to be him because Evan Solomon had been a Recording Industry major when he was in college with me. It was a running joke that RIM majors never really made anything of themselves, and that they all ended up drowning in overexposure with the rest of the would-be bands and singers and mixers and djs and audio production engineers. If you saw someone older out at a bar somewhere wearing inappropriately youthful looking clothes, you might stifle a laugh because you just knew that they were another casualty of the campus RIM program. Only a quarter of students coming for that program ever made it into upper level classes, and those that didn't, or who made it all the way out and then flatlined, seemed doomed to wallow in what-could-have-beens and drink away their sorrows, still insisting they were the next big thing.

I remembered Evan playing his guitar, with his oddly spaced teeth, in his oddly furnished dorm room. I remembered us meeting in the hallway of a boys dorm under blue-white flourescent lights. I remember being set off by the creamy complexion of his skin, and the way he looked at me and grinned with that gap between his teeth. I remember him growing his hair out later, long after we had stopped seeing each other, and him showing me one day the pills that supposedly kept him from "freaking out." I had laughed then, on the inside, thinking he was going no where. In his mother's house. His best friend smoking pot in the basement. Petting a dog with three legs. Everything seemed broken.

Passing him on the street, seven years later, seeing him load a truck with audio equipment he once thought he'd be paid to operate made me chuckle a little bit. His hair, looking similarly long and greasy, the gap in his teeth now making him look creepy, the color of his skin taking a grayish tint. Was it the weather, a coincidence, or was it really the smoking catching up to him? He didn't see me. He didn't even blink. I probably bled into all the other suit and skirt clad office workers strolling up and down the sidewalk on our ways to lunch.

It seems so surreal to connect the dots of past and present and finally see it all. Long ago, neither of us could have ever predicted our futures. We tried to, but the cards always seem to fall where they may. Who knows what any of it means.

All I know is that I wish I could have seen myself then as I do now. Not that I wouldn't have talked to Evan at all, but that I would have been more conscious of who I really was, and what I really deserved, and what that meant. They always tell us in school that we can be whatever we want to be, and do anything we want to do. But could the crack in this magical statement be the part where we percieve who we are? And what we percieve we can do?

I passed him again on my way back from picking up my lunch. He and the two other drivers were trying to put the truck in gear. Yeah. It really was him. I kept walking toward my shiny building and took the elevator up ten floors to my desk.

The Longest Game of Word Feud

"How are you? … Happy Friday!"

I got messages like these every week from a person I don't know who lived in Arizona. He worked at the University of Phoenix. Not the online school. Though they may be related.

"I'm cool. I'm hungry, though. I may have to eat lunch before 12 today!" I punched the buttons quickly and returned to my boring work computer screen.

I had been working for a Financing company for over six months on a permanent basis. Sometimes it was really interesting, figuring out how the numbers fit together, making sure the customers got the funds. Its never dull when someone wants something from you that their business depends upon. Then again, there were also whole days sometimes where I was scraping up the filing and scanning and copying and dragging it to the copy room along with my cell phone. If I was going to be that bored, I may as well be connected to the world.

Jaime777 played HE for 13 points

And the world of Word Feud was the best place to waste time.

"How long have we been playing this game? I mean, all games considered," I threw a couple files on top of the filing cabinet, and waited for his response.

Just over a year I think. You were working at a bank when we started."

"Holy cow! I think we deserve an award or something!"

Jaime777, whose name I didn't really know, was 29 year old with two kids, a suicidal ex-wife, and was himself a former marine. He was half Mexican, spoke fluent Spanish, and appeared to have a lovely complexion.

JLEdna played PERSONAE for 97 points

He sucked at Word Feud.

I suck at Word Feud."

I laughed, while copying my fifth set of documents.

"They should give you an award for longest losing streak."I knew I shouldn't be counting, but there was nothing to count. Jaime777 had not won a single game against me. I literally aways won.

In fact, being literal had always been something I was good at. I had pet peves when it came to grammar, both spoken and written. Reading poorly spelled posts on social media cracked me up to no end. I had been known to laugh until I cried at the ebonics I found on the profiles of wayward friends of friends. Spelling, grammar, and phonetics were an ingrained rulebook for me and I couldn't understand why no one else seemed to have it. It made me a good student. It made me a terrible teacher. And sometimes I think it made me a bitch.

I don't really keep any other games going anymore." I was almost finished scanning. Then would come the hole punching.

I always have more than one game going, but I guess I've been playing with you the longest." I pictured him at a big desk, meeting with prospective students and their parents. I pictured him hiding the phone under his desk, it buzzing with every obscure word I played. The copier hummed beside me and then jammed, disrupting my day dream.

I can't stand it when people spell things wrong. I can't stand it when they do it consistently. When they do something that blatantly wrong over and over, it makes those of us who realize the wrong-ness cock our heads and wonder… is this person all there? They must not know they're wrong… how sad. And then you politely don't say anything about it. But somewhere in the back of your head you're thinking "They aren't very smart, if they think that." That, of course, is how lots of opinions are formed.

The last person I dated had a horrible habit of cutting off the adverbial form of "serious" when describing things. As in, "I didn't take that inverview very serious." Which he didn't, of course, since he didn't have a job the entire time we were together. He continually replaced the word "moocher," as in someone who begs or scrounges, with the word "smoocher," which I KEPT TELLING HIM meant a person who kisses or cuddles amorously. In fact, on Valentines Day, I woke up to a lovely handwritten note underwhich were some print ads where I saw he had been practicing various word spellings, trying to figure out which was right before he wrote them in the card.

This unnerved me. I just couldn't date someone, much less marry someone, who couldn't spell the word "THEIR" without practicing on a scrap of newsprint. And what the hell was I doing with someone that STUPID anyway? Someone who didn't have a job. Someone who was 26, my same age! Someone who asked me for gas money. Someone who thought corporate America was "a bunch of BS," or "really bad," because they didn't know any other adjectives to express how they felt.

I balked. In the last year or so, while playing Word Feud with Jaime777, I had won EVERY SINGLE GAME. I had never lost. I had won by margins of hundreds of points. And you know something weird? My dating life had the exact same win-loss record. I was just SO MUCH BETTER than that, and yet I was willfully letting myself be put into ridiculous situations with someone who would never even be considered at my place of work. I mean, honestly, didn't I have two pets? A chihuahua and a boyfriend? I had always been better, even when I thought I wasn't good enough. Even back when we had started going out, and he had his parents money, and went out to clubs literally every single weekend. I was holed up in my apartment, saving my money, going to work every Monday through Friday, paying my bills and my rent, cooking my own food, WINNING the longest game of Word Feud.

Jaime777 played MICE for 9 points.

I guess it's just fun to play against someone you know can't win. Its fun to win easily sometimes. Maybe it’s the predictability of it all. Like I know what will happen if I play this game, so I'll play it because there'll be no surprises.

But I was changing. I was getting older. I couldn't play the same games anymore. I needed a challenge. I needed stimulation.

JLEdna played FASTING for 76 points.

I needed someone on my level.

Go Ahead, Jon Gosselin, Make My Day

Every morning I go to the same gas station on my way to work.

A few posts back, I found a dog there.

Today, I found a man there.

Well, okay, so I didn't really "find a man" there per se. In fact, we didn't even speak.

I pulled up and got out of my car to purchase my overpriced energy drink of the day. I turned my french rap down so that no one would notice how much of gangster I am. Walking up to the entrance, I tried clicking the door-lock button on my remote to no avail. Something about this particular gas station blocks the signal. Every single day I try to make the doors lock using my clicker and every single day they don't lock. Luckily, I never buy more than a single energy drink and I bring in my wallet, phone and keys, but it makes me uneasy to open the door to the Mapco and never hear the satisfying click of my car doors locking behind me.

On this particular day I was feeling pretty svelte and awesome looking. I was wearing a new blue and white ruffly shirt underneath my black suit jacket tucked into my black criss cross BCBG skirt. Which, by the way, is the only thing I own that could in any way be called designer. I bought it at TJ Maxx for 10 dollars on clearance. In any case, I was wearing an outfit that, in my opinion that morning, made me look both sexy and expensive. So when I opened the door to the Mapco, I noticed a few heads turn.

The usual couple of landscaping Latinos were getting coffee and conchas, those little shell shaped glazed donuts. I had been on a diet for almost three months, and had lost nearly 25 lbs. I reached for the sugar free red bull. Once stepping into line, I was distracted by a older gentleman, maybe in his late sixties, in front of me who seemed very chatty.

"Look at you all dressed up!" He stopped talking to the older lady in front of him and actually tipped his hat to me. "You look so sharp, I gotta let you go in front of me." And he stepped to the side.
"Aw, thanks." I smiled. I did only have that one drink. It wouldn't take but a second for me to pay.
"You must work in an office building. People who work in office buildings don't smile enough. You have a pretty smile."
"Thank you!" I said, and turned just in time to see the guy at the front of the line turn to leave.

I swear he looked just like a skinny, more attractive version of Jon Gosselin. Dark hair with a dark complexion, and deep set eyes. I noticed the eyes first because they slid sideways at me as he pushed open the door. He was dressed nicely enough. A button down shirt and some black pants. I didn't get a good read on the shoes, which always seem to be the most telling article that men wear, but that was all because he kept looking at me, burning a hole through the side of my face as I turned back to the older gentleman.

"Do you smile much at work? I bet you don't. I bet you only smile when the boss is smiling."
I put my drink up on the counter.
"I smile! My boss smiles a lot. Maybe that's why I smile so much."
He was pumping gas outside, I noted, looking through the window.
"People don't smile unless the boss is smiling. Why is that? I want all my employees to smile. All the time. Office people are never happy, are they."
I swiped my card. "Well, they treat me pretty well at my job. So maybe that's why everybody smiles." And the clerk handed me my receipt.
"Well then you've got a good job! Stick with it! But I don't have to tell you that, they'd keep you around just for decoration," the old man said. And he laughed a little too loudly.
"You have a nice day, sir!" I smiled back at him and pushed open the door, myself. I was thinking about what the old man said for a second about how office people never smile. I decided that he was probably a manager at some shop or store, and he was probably a darn good manager, too. I bet he wasn't rich, but he was good people. Like Flannery O'Conner thought was impossible.

The Jon Gosselin lookalike broke my concentration. He was still looking at me from the gas pump. Back and forth, here and there. It wasn't a creepy steady gaze or anything. Just an I'm-letting-you-know-I'm-looking kind of thing. He looked professional. He looked nice. And established. He looked down to shut his gas cap, and I smiled to myself, hopping into my unlocked car. I left the door open for a few seconds and made room in my cup holder for the very unhealthy Red Bull I was about to drink.
Glancing up at my rear view mirror, I saw the back end of his black Honda drive off.

Even though we never spoke, he had already made my day.

It was almost overkill when I passed his car heading toward the turn lane and caught him looking for me again. And the last time I saw him, he passed my car on his way around a corner. In my peripheral vision, he was STILL eyeing me.

Okay, so you might find that a bit creepy. But it made my day. Compliments and open gawkers? Bring it on. At this low weight, which I haven't been since a bit after college, I expect these things. And I revel in them.

Frankly, though, if Jon Gosselin had spoken to me, I would have spoken back. Still, if I'd found that it actually WAS the REAL Jon Gosselin, I might have run screaming in the other direction.

Carlos Baute is a Poetic Liar

Early last year I watched a lot of Spanish tv. Over a period of about two weeks I saw the same blond Venezuelan actor/musician on a total of 3 television shows. I saw him on a morning show being interviewed. I saw him on Sabado Gigante. I saw him on Belleza Latina. And by the second time I saw him, I was in love. He was so cute and skinny and bright and knowing-looking. He kinda looked like a sunshiney bad boy. He had this toothy grin that blinged with white sparkle and he was always laughing.
So after enjoying the song he played on each show, I downloaded his whole cd. It became a fixture in my car's 6 cd changer. He sits in position number four, and has for an entire year. Right behind my three french rap cds, and before my Aventura cd.

All of his songs are love songs. Melodic and acoustic splashed 90's pop rhythm, the hooks on the songs have an amazing build and are a perfect compliment to a sunny day with your windows rolled down. Unlike American love songs, though, they're not about dirty sexy love. They're incredibly romantic. They talk about marriage and kids and the kinds of things every girl secretly wants to hear. I could have eaten Carlos Baute with a spoon! The whole idea that a guy was out there thinking those things made me giddy. Especially if the guy thinking them was as attractive as Carlos Baute.

One day, though, Daniel Castillo rained on my parade.

I was driving him to a soccer game and singing along to a song that sounded like this:

"Me quiero casar contigo.
Quiero dormir contigo.
Quiero que lleves mi apellido
Nuestros hijos, tu sonrisa.
Te quieres casar conmigo.
Quieres vivir conmigo.
Quiero pasar el resto de
mis dias con tu compania."
Which, of course, means:

I want to marry you.
I want to sleep with you.
I want to give you my last name
and give our children your smile.
Do you want to marry me?
Do you want to live with me?
I want to spend the rest
of my days with you.

"You like that song?" Daniel asked.
"YES!"
He paused for a second, pulling up his knee socks before saying, "I think maybe Carlos Baute is a liar with poetry."
I laughed. "A liar with poetry? Why! The whole cd follows a pattern, Daniel. Early tracks are about him falling in love with someone who is is best friend, and then they have an anniversary song, and he wants to marry her, and the last song is about always remembering those early good times together!"

Daniel's eyes grew wide, and I knew he was about to give me some major scoop. He had looked the same way when he was telling me about how Cristiano Ronaldo and Paris Hilton had sex in the back of a limousine. And how the pop artist Belinda (see pic below) had taken a fancy sports car in exchange for her virginity. Because, clearly, Daniel had been there. I rolled my eyes and braced for it.
"No no no... Carlos Baute, I see him interviewed on Don Francisco Presenta. And you know what he say?"
"What did he say?" I was already slumping. "I know he's not married. So whoever he's talking about, they didn't actually get married, but I thought..."
"Don Francisco ask him a question, like he ask everybody this same question. He say what is your favorite thing to do? What is your favorite time? And you know what Carlos Baute say???"
"What did he say..." Darn it, Daniel, I thought, you're gonna ruin it for me."
He say he like to take some girl and go some place, like tropical paradise place, and make a big vacation."
"Well... that's not so bad."
"Yes! Yes it is bad!" Daniel was not smiling at me. "You know why? It's because Carlos Baute say his favorite thing to do is make a big vacation and all he wanna do the whole time is mucho sexo and mucho comer. All he wants to do is have lots of sex and eat lots of food."
I laughed a little bit. "Really?"
"Yes. I saw him say this."
"Well, what about getting married and giving the girl his name and all that?"
"Nada. He wants sex and food."
"Ugh! ...he probably didn't mean it that way. He probably only does that with one woman. Not some woman."
"No, he says different women. All this things in his songs are big, big lies with poetry. He says anything for the girl to give him sex." I turned into the YMCA parking lot. "I'm sorry, Barbie."

So, Daniel was convinced Carlos Baute was a man-slut. And I was convinced he was beautiful. It is true that I often give people more credit than they are due. When I thought about it, though, Carlos Baute was really just the cover of a romance novel in my head. The stories he told in his songs were sweet and made me happy, and as I parked my car near the soccer field filled with Guatemalans and rich white people about to get their butts kicked, I decided I didn't care who Carlos Baute was in real life. As far as I was concerned, all his songs were about me.

To this day, I will listen to him with my windows rolled down, and my sun roof cracked open so the air blows through. I sip artificially sweetened coffee on ice, and sing along even when the people next to me at the red light stare. Daniel Castillo has come and gone, and left his dents, but Carlos Baute still loves me.

So I don't care if he's a poetic liar. Or if he beds a thousand Belinda's every night. When I play the cd, he loves me. He is what I want him to be. And that's all that really matters.

En Cambio

Sadly, despite my system flush, and attempt to rid myself of unnecessary stressers, I have added stressers that have little to do with my social life.

A week and a half ago I decided to plan a trip to Aalborg, Denmark, through Germany, and finally to Paris, France where I would attend a french rap concert featuring La Fouine. La Fouine, as you may know, is my ABSOLUTE FAVORITE french rap artist in the world.

And I do love french rap, probably too much. I love it even when its inappropriate, because I wouldn't know. I love the way it sounds, all tough and delicate at the same time. I love that it's cheesy and fun. Its sense of humor is always a bright spot to my day.

I had been enjoying my time back at the only Temp job for the company I love and would die to work for.
I had been enjoying English Outreach classes on Sundays, classes I volunteered to teach, but hadn't yet.
I was looking forward to my presentation at work.

Then things got hairy.
My friend in Aalborg informed me that he cannot travel outside of the Sweeden-Norway-Denmark region because he is living in Denmark on asylum and recieves assistance from the government. Upon hearing this news, I angrily calculated that I had already spent around 400 dollars in preparation for the trip and the concert.
"You can still come to Aalborg!" he said. "We'll do some fun stuff here in Denmark! It is beautiful. You're gonna love it!"
But I was mad. I was really, really mad. To be honest, here he was thinking the trip was about spending time with him, when it was really about spending time with EUROPE. I wanted the trip for ME, not for him. I wanted to be romanced by the location, not the person I was visiting. I never officially cried, but when I got into my car after reading his email, and La Fouine came on my cd player, I might have shed a single tear.

My trip to Europe was put on hold indefinitely. I was extremely disappoined in myself, in my Danish friend, and in my helplessness to travel alone. I just didn't think I could do it. It had crossed my mind to attend the concert alone, but I was terrified of being stoned by angry Frenchmen.

Two nervewracking events soon occurred in quick succession.
I taught the Advanced class at English Outreach.
I gave my presentation at work and shocked everybody with my old Forensic skills.

A couple days later I was approached about a position that might be opening up at a high end bank. I jumped on it, scored the interview, and three days later, during the interview, was offered a job. The thing is, I don't really want to leave my current position at all. But I need a career, not just a place holder, and I need medical insurance.

Sigh...
I haven't had a good nights sleep in almost a week. I continually grind my teeth and dream about strange things like driving in the dark without any headlights, which seems oddly symbolic.

Slowly, and with much chagrin, I spitefully told the Danish dumbo that I would NOT be coming to Aalborg to stay with someone who hadn't even figured out his own legal status. I called France Billet in Paris using the $6 credit on my prepaid phone account to stay on hold for over two minutes and beg the CSR to help me in English sil vout plait! Canceling the tickets and retreiving my 110 dollars was a weight off my shoulders.

Still crushing me, however, was the job decision.

As of about one hour ago, I have officially chosen the bank.

Still. I am sad. The whole situation is a catch 22 of sadness. Sad if you don't go, sad if you do.

CHANGE, my friends, is the word of the day.

I can still remember my first few days of fourth grade. I hated it. I had no friends. I cried upon asking someone where my classroom was. I had to ride the bus for the first time. It was awful.

I can remember waking up and putting on the kitty cat sweater with little red button eyes, and sitting down with a bowl of Captain Crunch in front of the living room tv. I dreaded the bus like nobody's business. I HATED it. But Sesame Street was on. I remembered Sesame Street from when I was in Kindergarten and first grade. In fourth grade, everything was harder.
A song came on the episode of Sesame Street, and I have never forgotten it.

"Things are always changing. So don't be sad and blue. Change can make you happy; it can bring you something new."

I never forgot that song, and I sang it as a mantra, along with a couple poems I had memorized, just to calm myself down sometimes on the bus.

Things ARE always changing. How right you are, Sesame Street. How right you are...

The Only Option: at 180 Beats Per Minute

According to my wrist watch heart rate monitor, my pulse was racing at 180 beats per minute. I had been dancing for around thirty minutes already, my shirt tied up into a knot right above my stomach. The ceiling fan was on high, the dog was under the covers in bed, and mentally, I was a million miles away.

I was kicking the living daylight out of someone. I was grinding my heels into their eye sockets. I was punching the air wildly, knuckles into jawbone. I was swinging out my hips, moving faster and faster away. But then back, and with a terrific smack, and the crunch of bone, the nose would break.

"How DARE you lie to me!" I was swearing. "How dare you pretend!"

It wasn't anyone in particular. But the past was swirling swirling swirling. And I thought of my exes, and my church, and my old, backstabbing, nay-saying friends and I pushed harder and harder.

"DO YOU EVEN KNOW WHO I AM?"

Because, of course, they didn't. But did I, even? I pictured writing mean notes about infidelity to my former friend's husband. I imagined strategically ill-timed, revealing, embarassing posts on the public profiles of my exes. I imagined conveniently dropping full cups of hot coffee into their laps in passing. I imagined giving back the camera I'd recieved as a gift with a one finger salut as the only contained picture. I imagined sabotage, and the destruction of worlds.

"I'll show you! You just wait! I'll get you so good!" Punch, kick...

And then I thought about what the minister had said that past Sunday about a girl whose life changing, life determining experience had occurred in the 2nd grade, where her teacher had allowed all her classmates to write nasty things about her on the blackboard as punishment. And years later, after a failed marriage and lost jobs, her therapist had suggested that she revisit that day. Because Christ had been in the room, too. And after all the kids sat down, he had washed all the nasty words away. He had rewritten them. And hearing this, the girl was reborn. Even though she was 47 years old, and she was old and she was tired and bitter like soured rotten milk, she was reborn. She could let it all go, because he'd been there, and though she didn't know it, he'd never left.

My heartrate dropped to 156.
It just wouldn't be worth it. There are a thousand mean things I could put my effort into. And I'm conniving enough to carry out plenty of maliciously backhanded acts. In the seventh grade, I poured red food dye into Rebecca Blackwell's body lotion. Pointless, but amusing. These days I could probably get myself arrested without batting an eye. But where would I be then? It wouldn't make me any happier. My old speech coach used to say "Rise above, ladies. Rise above." Of course, there came a time years later, that I learned I had to "rise above" some of what even she said about me.

I pushed harder.

The only option, I thought, is to let it go. Its the only healthy option.
My heartrate was steady at 151, and I stared straight ahead, watching them all fade into the background, watching them slowly be erased, watching the pathway in front of me widen.

"Let me see the best version of myself."

And I kept on dancing.
And that was my Valentines Day.