That Moment When...

This post is in response/coordinates with moments ago when I made a joke Tweet that started with the familiarly annoying "When you..." which is like those garbage sentences that read, "That moment when..." It's the start to a Tweet in which I read it and then just want to punch a person (Read: My mirror if it didn't cut my fingers up. They are delicate so that would be bad, so I don't and never have.)

Anyway, the Internet, gees.

summer violence.

when the sheets
crumble
beneath your sweating body
damp

ugh—
how gross is that word?

but that's all it—

you're cut off—

it's just a bit of moisture

sick, i said stop.

what?
...moisture?
moisture. moisture. moisture.

pushed to the ground
crumble
why don't you just buy a fan
you dumb motherfucker?

joy

It's been a long time since I've written something that wasn't an email. That wasn't a poorly scrawled note to my friends in distant lands. That wasn't a note typed into my phone to be forgotten about until I'm scrambling for poorly thought-out stand-up material in the back of a show that has already started. Sometimes, I am a true mess.

At the moment it feels as though it's a-million-degree LA day, so it's as good a time as any to chronicle some things. I'm in my bedroom in my second apartment since moving to Los Angeles nearly two years ago. I'm happy to say I've finally gotten around to purchasing a rod iron bed frame, and a beautiful one it is, at that. I have an accent wall that is painted "Olde Amethyst." My sheets are light turquoise. My pillows are beige, yellow and gold. My comforter is white. I am classy, I tell you. My roommate Kristina once remarked to me that my bedroom looked as if it were out of a page of Anthropologie. To say I was anything less than jazzed is to lie. I was and am pretty jazzed.

Lately I've been jazzed about a lot of things — on Sunday I got home from an extended trip to the East coast, where I celebrated my friend Kerstin's Bachelorette in Boston, where I went to Maine to visit family, as well as tour the Vertex Pharmaceutical Facilities, where I met my boyfriend John's family and friends by way of a wedding in Pittsburgh. These were all fun, interesting and joyful privileges.

So, in closing this frankly very lackluster post, I would like to write 5 things I love and am thankful for:

1. I love that I have an artistic eye for colors, how things go together, and that I can afford to make things look nice.
2. I love that I have friends who are willing to pick me up from and drop me off at the airport.
3. I love that an icepack on the back of my neck actually does cool me down enough to focus when it's hot out.
4. I love that I have three roommates who always want to chat even when they say they can't.
5. I love that I have family members that care about each other and me deeply.

Life is Long.

I hurt easy, I just don't show it

You can hurt someone and not even know it

The next sixty seconds could be like an eternity

-bob dylan, "things have changed"

Life is long. It is so long. I get it, "if you don't stop and look around once and a while, you'll miss it." Whatever, Ferris. I challenge you to think this instead — "if you don't look around and reflect and think about the future, you'll live your life without feeling the pressure of how daunting it is." 

Life is long. It is so long. I often forget about just how fucking long it is. There are full days I have no recollection of, there are full years I am told I lived. There are moments that last forever, days that won't end and feelings that never fade. Life is so long. It is so long.

It's so long that it stresses me out. Simply continuing to exist is this huge burden sometimes. It's a huge burden because there are so many instances to fuck it up. Every moment is a moment you can wreck everything you've worked for. Split seconds, that's what we get to make decisions that effect this whole long life. This incredibly long life.

You can fuck up your body, you can fuck up your mind, you can ruin someone else's life, you can taint the world with your very existence. There are so many opportunities to wreck everything, and it just seems like the bad far outweighs the good sometimes.

And, it's not fair. It's not fair how easy it is to destroy everything.

Even something as simple as weight gain or loss. Someone eats a hamburger, slurps a milkshake, they skip a work out, take the bus instead of ride a bike — our bodies suffer the consequences. Then someone eats a salad, drinks a glass of water, hits the gym, and rides a bike on their way there — our bodies are better for it, but you have to do that 10-1. What unfair odds.

I think of Adam Sandler in one of my favorite films, Big Daddy, as he chats with his new 5-year-old friend about eating. He makes the insanely accurate, and thus hilarious comment, "I drink a milkshake and my ass jiggles for like a week."

This life is so long, and lopsided. People remember the bad things said about them, they gloss over the good. You do it. I do it. Let's call an apple an apple.

Why do we do this? Life is too long to do this. Whether your life is 10 years or 100 years, every moment counts, so stop doing this. I'm in my twenties, and sometimes I feel as if I have been here forever. And it's this weight of knowing that even my own body will fail me, even my own mind will leave me, everything I have isn't mine — and that makes life feel so long.