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.

What I imagine the sound of my heart pounding in a bed of silence looks like...

This is about the time that my heart exploded in my chest, and then I realized that the fast breeze blowing through the strands of my hair was actually the air being broken by my airbourne vehicle:

This is probably what the police report and insurance claim reads because this was all I could manage to muster five hours after the accident:

"4:12 am. Was leaving DC and following the direction of my GPS system, took the tunnel leading towards the 295 SE/SW entrance but went into the wrong tunnel heading towards RFK lot. Entered into complete and utter darkness with no lights, no signs. Tried to adjust to the darkeness and just when I realized the pavement swurved to the left, I tried to turn left but had already hit the tree with my right side and turned upside down, did a 360 degree turn in the air befofe flipping back over and doing a 80 degree swurve to a stop."

The only reason how I know exactly what direction my car flipped, okay, there are two:

1. The fact that as my car impacted on the tree I felt my entire insides lift up from my stomach to my lungs, compressing together like a Slinky being turned upside down. What I didn't fully realize immediately? That I was upside down. And I caught a millisecond glimpse out the cracked glass of the passenger window enough to see the pavement at eye level, and the tunnel glowing through the darkness at me. That's when I closed my eyes to prepare for nothing, something and everything - all at the same time.

2. My Guardian Angel: In the form of a 6"5-6"7 thin-framed man in a red Honda hatch. An image that will stick with me for the rest of my life as a reminder that the smallest instantaneous moments can quite possibly bring you the most purest form of joy that you'll ever feel in a lifetime.

Hours before I would see the "light of life" and my car was left demolished, I had spent the entire day just trudging through work. It was just another day among the many where I kept wandering the maze of cubicles wondering why I still, without fail, park in the same spot, walk through the same building and sit in front of the same screen every single day and endure the bezerk behavior of certain people who have made it a career in having no basic social skills.

By the time 5 o'clock chimed in, I was ready to leave the smothering feel of work and escape to a place I knew I could just let go: in the presence of friends, dancing and just releasing all that anger and stress out.

Several hours later, Christauff and I were doing our regular Friday night ritual of walking each other to our cars safely. We had the miracle of parking on the same street as each other (a rarity to anyone who has ever tried to park to go to a club in DC) and I got into my car and watched as he walked across the street to his. I went to program my GPS to head home, and started to pull out of my spot.

There were a lot of little miracles that night. Little bits of instances that in retrospect, I will be grateful for, for the rest of my life. The fact that I had decided to go to Ultrabar where seven people I knew were going to be there, the fact that Christauff and I always walked to our cars together after the night was through, the fact that Christauff forgot that I had a GPS in my car and had seen me headed in a different direction than he thought would be the regular way for me to get home and just figured I was lost, the fact that he then, as a great friend with concern, decided to follow behind me to make sure I was headed in the right direction - and that he kept following me until he was 3/4 mile away in his car as he watched my car propel itself through the air.

I even feel blessed that I had had such a crummy week prior. I had pictures of my brother's bedsores running around in my head, constant thoughts of my brother's legs being amputated, depressed over my job and my inability to deal with overt micromanagement, frustrated with the outcome of my future - where was I headed with my life? how was I going to get there?, hurt from the loss of a friend and caught in a whirlwind of complete and utter confusion with life in general.

But in that millisecond glimpse of the world upside down, and in the next instant when I closed my eyes and prepared for what I feared to be the end, I found myself shaking away that fear, gripping the steering wheel with both hands tightly, keeping my eyes shut tight as my heart pounded in my throat, my ears, the pit of my stomach - I just let go of every single stress and hurt that I had been consumed with before - and relaxed my body and just breathed.

When I opened my eyes, glass was everywhere, and my hands were bleeding and so was a small patch on my chest where the airbag had hit. Smoke was all around me, and I turned my head ever so slightly to try and make sense of what my eyes were seeing through the cracked and broken glass window of my driver's door: Christauff, his red Honda hatch, and him running from his car, across the pavement, to open my car door.

I walked out of the accident truly unscathed. No broken bones, no massive amounts of blood. As I lay in the guestroom of Christauff's and his girlfriend's condo that morning, I kept counting the solid breaths of air that I sucked into my lungs.

"Someone wants you around, Em," Christauff had kept saying as we drove to his condo.

This is my second chance at life. This is my chance to keep living it without regret and to realize the true value of what I have surrounding me. I was given a second chance at this journey and I am not going to waste it worrying about things that I cannot change.