You may never understand why

It's 6 AM and New Year's Eve and if you asked me to tell you how I was feeling right now - I know I wouldn't be able to. I never thought that I would ever be surrounded with so much love in my life and still feel so uncertain about everything to the point where it was harder to sleep at night.

I keep wondering if it's worth me getting upset over this. Wasn't it a loss in the first place? What if you woke up and the thing you thought you had always lost... might not be lost after all? Does that mean that even if you go through all the effort of searching for it - that if it goes lost again...everything is back where it was? And I remain the same?

Somehow, no matter how many times I might try to tell myself that you can't feel loss over something already lost...that I inevitably will. Because initially, isn't it always 'hope' that we feel anyway? 'Hope' that we could find that missing piece to our puzzle...and then when the hope disappears, it isn't necessarily the actual piece that we're missing. I think I'd start to miss the feeling of hope that it was ever there in the first place.

I am a step away from possibly knowing everything...or maybe even having more questions than I know what to do with. How do you differentiate between the questions of a 6-year old and the logical questions of a 23-year old? You can't, I guess. There is probably little difference of importance in my mind between: "Whose nose do I have?" and "Were you economically in hardship when you made that decision 23 years ago?"

Who knows what is going to happen on Friday. I am not even sure if I have an idealistic pan out of how I would want it to go because it hasn't crossed my mind.

But one thing is for sure...please don't ask me how...I have missed you.

A Day To Remember (or perhaps to forget)

There are four pages of a scribbled letter tucked inside my black and white marbled notebook. It was the beginnings of a future blog post for this blog - my annual letter to my birthmother - telling her the struggles and triumphs of my 23rd year of being alive.

For the past week and a half, I, for some reason, kept holding off actually sitting down and typing it out here, not because it was too personal or too gritty...honestly, if you had asked me why I wouldn't have been able to give you a straight answer. Maybe it was because I have been so consumed with the move from Dundalk. (Yes, I have finally LEFT Dumb-dalk for good...and will post pictures of the barren room once I find my camera in one of these boxes that are looming in my room.) Whatever the reason, it just never got done.

And maybe it was a sign that I was meant to read it to her in person...

I don't really know where to begin with the rest of this post. I was trying to think of some clever epithet that might transition into the whole point of the post - but at this point, my brain is too fried with an excess abundance of emotion and utter cluster-fuckery (I just made that word up.) to even be witty or even give a hoot whether I am witty or not.

December 23, 2008 @ around 1 AM will be forever seared in my brain. If and when I have children, and I reflect on this tale to fill bedtime story nights, I will probably still struggle to piece together just exactly what got seared into my brain: a cautionary tale or a Christmas miracle. It is too early yet to decide.

But whatever it will be - what it is right now, at the present, is the exact time that I was trying to get rid of a nasty migraine by sleeping it away... and my 2nd night sleeping on the mattress that is in what will eventually be my bedroom in my Aunt's house. It seems ordinary and simple enough, and started out as any other night ...except that 1 AM will also forever be seared into my brain as the time my mother came into my bedroom to wake me up with the news.

The news that my birthparents have been searching for me and want to meet me.

It is now 11:02 pm of the very same day and I think I must have written the above sentence or said variations of it to myself at least a hundred thousand times. And yet even with saying it a hundred thousand more, I do not think that the sentence's true meaning will ever fully sink itself into my brain and channel signals of acknowledgement to my being.

Even now, there is still detachment from that sentence - as if tomorrow that whole sequence: me sleeping, my mom rushing into my bedroom in her jacket, shaking me awake, her eyes lighting up, and me sleepily opening my eyes to watch her lips move to form the words of that very same sentence....that whole sequence will be nothing but a dream. An afterthought to another dream that I had had.

But a part of me knows that it wasn't. That it was real. But I am not ready to believe that part. All day long I have been trying to figure out how to sum up how I feel and I just can't...it is hard to explain how in one moment - everything has changed with nothing happening. How just words could change my entire world and turn it upside down with no action following.

I am, Blog, scared shitless. Today I have felt happy, annoyed, joyous, angry, resentful, sadness, fear and frustration in succession of each other and even at times, simultaneously.

I have so much to say and yet have no words to say it with.

I have so many questions and yet am not quite sure I want to know the answers.

I want...and yet wish it was easier just to walk away...at the exact same time.

And despite all these crazy feelings - the one thing I keep dwelling on is the revelation that they searched for me.

These took the place of medicine and tissues today

I woke up this morning with a huge fever, and decided that I needed to call out from work. Not only did I get the sleep that I needed, I also got a large amount of H2O which I learned today that I should be drinking in enough quantities so that eventually I will piss out clear fluids. (How gracious of me to share that with all of you, I know.)

Along with the slumber, water and mounds of tissues piled up next to my bed, I listened to several songs on slow repeat like a nice slow IV drip of therapeutic sounds. Starting with a steady drip of John Mayer courtesy of newcomer Gabe Bondoc (one of my favorite covers of this song):



And then onto "Right Here"... you know you loved this song... hahaha

If God was on my doorstep this morning...

I would re-enact that scene from "Say Anything" and blare this song out of a 1980's boombox as loud as the volume dial would go. This is the new single from the highly-anticipated (for me and my best friend anyway) album from The Fray. It's is self-titled and although you might think it's too early for this yet -- this song has become my all-time life-anthem and will now replace that wretched smelling pink bookbag that I still have hung in my closet from my homeless days. Not only is this song more therapeutic, but I'm sure my room will stop smelling so bad now that the bookbag has had its proper burial in the trash.



I found God on the corner of First and Amistad
where the west was all but won
All alone, smoking his last cigarette
I said "where have you been?"
he said "ask anything"

"Where were you
When everything was falling apart?
All my days
Were spent by the telephone
It never rang
And all I needed was a voice
It never came
To the corner of First and Amistad"

Lost and insecure
you found me, you found me
lying on the floor
surrounded, surrounded
Why'd you have to wait?
Where were you, where were you?
Jst a little late
you found me, you found me

In the end everyone ends up alone
losing her,
the only one whose ever known
who i am, who im not, who i want to be
no way to know,
how lost you will be next to me

lost and insecure
you found me, you found me
lying on the floor
why'd you have to wait?
where were you where were you?
just a little late
you found me, you found me

early morning city wakes
I've been calling
for years and years and years and years
and you never left me no messages
you never send me no letters
you've got some kind of nerve
sticking all i want...

lost and insecure
you found me, you found me
lying on the floor
where were you where were you?
lost and insecure
you found me you found me
lying on the floor
surrounded, surrounded
why'd you have to wait?
where were you where were you?
just a little late
you found me, you found me

yeah yeah

Why'd you have to wait
to find me, to find me?

99 Problems

This morning's Damage Control Report:

(1) semi-sore throat with a slight post-nasal drip.
(Probably a rebuttal from that region of my face for locking myself in my office during lunch and having an hour cry-fest.)

(10) completely bitten and torn up fingertips.
(Because when all shit hits the fan, my nail-biting habit ensues. And why worry about manicures when I still have my car payment to pay?)

(3) cups of coffee.
(The amount of caffeine it took to actually wake my ass up today.)

(2) hours of sleep.
(Why I needed the coffee)

On the up side, I did self-consciously reaffirm to myself last night within my 2 hours of sleep that I, in fact, have not lost my optimism.

In the dream there was this massive SUV that miraculously somehow held every single one of my friends along with me. We were just driving along with no particular direction when I felt this incredible shove out of no where to the right of me. I immediately felt my chest cave in, and my body get thrusted forwards. (Not only did it happen in the dream but I know that I definitely felt something.) I frantically began looking around the car for the safety of my friends, and it felt like we were transcending into this Matrix-like space in time where I could literally see the pieces of glass flying through the air in slow motion. I caught the faces of my friends - all of them fine, no blood, no cuts, no broken bones. And just like that - the car finally came to a screeching thud-pounding stop.

I realized that everything was okay. The car accident itself was a tragic and traumatic experience but in the wake of the aftermath - I had survived. Everyone had survived. I remember hearing my friend Andie's voice calling to me from the back seat as I quickly was dialing 911. "Everything is okay."

Everything is going to be okay. I just have to keep believing that. This is small, it's a little hill on my tumultuous journey through life. And I can survive it.

So I guess a big thanks to my self-conscious is definitely in order.

Music was my breakfast this morning...

Who needs eggs and bacon when you've got Kanye West and Holly Brook? I had these two songs on rotate all morning long on my drive into work. And you know what? They are playing right now, too.

I have a big collection of music because for me, it's what keeps me sane. Sometimes there are just no words to explain the emotions that you feel and its just better described through lyrics. Thank God we've got some brilliant artists out there so I can release my good and bad energy every morning drive with my iPod cranked up loud.

This song is the 2nd song off of Kanye West's last dropped album: Graduation. "Champion" is awesome to me because even though the tone of the song is upbeat and kind of a "dance track" sound, if you listen to the lyrics, they are super bittersweet. It completely reminds me of my personality when shit goes bad: I smile, and seem upbeat, keep focusing on the positive yet I'll never forget that there is still sadness and frustration in my life. And eventually, I know I'll get back to being the "champion" that I know I'm supposed to be. I am quite aware of all the controversy that surrounds Mr. West, but I am not one to make sudden opinions about music artists based on what I hear in the media and what I see displayed on my TV screen. So he hit some guy...everyone's entitled to get pissed off, right? Good music is good music to me and if it helps me out of my emotional distress - well then, I'd hit that papporazzi myself.



I absolutely love Holly Brook. I love her look, I love her style, I love her voice. When I first found her album "Like Blood Like Honey", I listened to every single song more than ten thousand times over and over again. I found myself nodding vigorously with tissue clasped in hand as I listened to every lyric like it was a Lifetime movie special thinking, Oh my God, Holly Brook - you GET ME, you REALLY GET ME. This song is just one of my many favorites from this album, and if you ever get a chance you should really listen to it from cover to cover. Every song is completely melodic and brilliantly written. Plus I think that you'll agree with me when I say that after listening to it in its entirety, you feel like you should have somehow gone through a life changing journey or something and become completely depressed when you realize you've been just sitting on your couch surrounded by a pile of used tissues that equate to the amount of sorrow that you actually have in your life. *le sigh*




PS. For both of these, it really is worth it to check out the lyrics.

She'll never admit that she's wrong.

Tonight, while wallowing in my self-pity that I have begun to think of as an art form in the past two months, I finally had the last straw. I keep saying that every single bad or shitty thing that has happened to me in the past two months is the last straw - but this one, well, this one was the very very very very last straw.

Financially I am just way in over my head. Where I thought I was ahead, I am now significantly behind all due to an unfortunate mishap with the scheduling of my payment with the auto insurance company (As Chris Rock would say... my "in-case-shit-happens" policy).

For God knows how long, my mother has been OCD about lists. And before you try to read that sentence again, don't. It's not worth wasting your time. You read it right: lists. She loves lists. No, no, let me scratch that. She ADORES and IDOLIZES and maybe if one day a magical wizard turned a List into a man she would probably marry that List and run away and adopt babies to supplement his lack of love for her.

It's become this sickening obsession for her and when I was younger, I used to think that it meant she was organized and that I, by being one who did not keep a list, was severely unorganized. However, twenty-three years of living as a terminally SANE human being and a few years of puberty and a month of homelessness has helped lead me to the conclusion that the lists do not help her at all. In fact, I have come to the clear diagnosis that the list itself is a manifestation of her insecurities and her lack of being able to control and handle even the smallest minute detail of her life. So to make up for the discrepency of say........not being able to function like a normal human being like the rest of the world, my mother writes a list. Every day.

AND THEN PROMPTLY LOSES IT AND SPENDS THE REST OF HER DAY SEARCHING FOR THE LIST BECAUSE WITHOUT IT, GOD FORBID SHE BE ABLE TO FUNCTION.

Now in her defense, this does not happen every day. The great event of "losing-the-list" is one that happens often, but not every single day. But she does write one.

So of course, when I first lost my job and realized I was going to be way in over my head if I didn't find a job to supplement my income fast, you could guess what advice my mother had for me.

Mom: "Hi dear. How are you?"

Me: "Lousy. I just lost my job... I have bills to pay this month... I just filed for unemployment but I am not going to hear from them for another two weeks or so and shit is already starting to become due. I don't know what I am going to do."

Mom: "I know what you need to do. It'll solve all your problems." (said very matter of factly)

Me: "Do you know of anyone who might have a job opening? Or do you know anyone I can send my resume to?"

Mom: "No, of course not. You'll have to find that on your own. I am talking about writing a list. A list dear. A list of all your debt. Once you see it all laid out on paper, it'll all become clear."

Me: "Mom, do you realize you're asking me to slit my wrists?"

Mom: "What was that?"

Me: "Nothing. I am not going to write a list. Not now, not ever."


But tonight, Jesus, maybe the stress got to me, but for whatever reason - she was standing over me in the kitchen and I am sitting there with tears starting to form behind my eyes and she kept talking about this damned list writing --- so I did it. I wrote a damn list.

-=Me writing numbers and scribbling calculations on a page then handing it to her=-

"There, Mom. There it is. In black and white. What do you have to say? What happens now? What does the list do now?"

-=My mother stares blankly at the page. Blinks again and takes on an empty look.=-

Mom: "Wow. Didn't know it was this bad. Don't know what to tell you. But don't you feel better now that you wrote it all down?"

Just in case people would like the Cliff Notes version of this story: NO, I DID NOT FEEL ANY STINKIN' BETTER!! I felt crappier actually because I now had numbers and figures that are higher than the year I was born staring me in the face. So much for lists.