powerfull life

“My life is not significantly different, but it feels like everyone else has changed around me. All my friends are progressing down that heteronormative life stage thing.  They’ve gotten married.  Or gotten a house.  Or had kids.  Whereas I’m more in this extended adolescence thing.  It’s really changed my social life.  I used to be able to rally a group of friends on an hour’s notice.  But now it’s like herding cats.  You really have to work to get on someone’s calendar.  Last month I had dinner with good friends of mine, they’re a married couple.  Great people.  We wanted to squeeze in a date before their twins were born.  My job was to keep their child entertained while they cooked dinner.  He’s like two.  Wonderful kid.  Very nice kid.  Only says a few words, but nice personality.  Likes to hug the cat.  Really cares about the cat.  He’s also really big into picking things up and dropping them on the floor.  He showed me his box of pencils, even gave one to me, which I thought was really nice.  Things were going great.  But then came the ‘tired’ thing.  During dinner there was a sudden change.  He started rubbing his eyes.  Lots of throwing.  Rice and vegetables began to fly across the table.  Then came the screaming.  Nobody signaled this was abnormal, so I attempted to plow forward with the conversation.  I’d find short breaks in the screaming to slip in a few words.  But it got louder and louder.  The parents were professionals.  Completely unfazed.  And I didn’t care.  I was leaving in an hour anyway.”

“I was the only black girl in my sorority.  I don’t even know why I rushed.  I think I was inspired by ‘Saved By The Bell: The College Years.’  I pictured sleepovers, and nail painting, and close friends that you could share secrets with.  I imagined that once you became a sister, these things would just materialize.  But it doesn’t really work like that.  My pledge name was Eeyore.  I didn’t talk much.  I didn’t smile.  I always assumed people were thinking negative things, about my weight, or my clothes, or my hair.  I joined the sorority to feel like part of a community, but I mainly just felt black.  One time my sisters tried to set me up with the one black guy at another fraternity.  And once I was wearing a French maid’s costume, and somebody asked if I was Aunt Jemima.  I couldn’t seem to make any close friends.  Nobody really included me in things, or opened up to me.  And I always attributed it to my race.  It’s what I always assumed.  But now I’m not so sure.  Maybe I could have been more social.  Maybe I could have made more of an effort.  People don’t automatically want to spend time with you, and I wasn’t the friendliest person.  So it’s hard to tell: what was race, and what was me.”

“I was in my fourth year of owning my own interior design business.  Things were beginning to click.  I was finally hitting that sweet spot where after so many years of putting myself out there, business was starting to come to me.  I don’t one hundred percent remember the wreck.  I just remember driving to work, being hit from the side, and ending up in oncoming traffic.  I still haven’t fully recovered.  I had headaches for months.  I was sensitive to light and noise.  I got tired easily.  Some days I couldn’t even get out of bed.  And my business began to suffer.  I was forced to turn down offers, and each time I did, it felt like the opportunity would never come again.  Everything I’d worked for seemed to be slipping away.  I got mad at myself for not recovering faster.  I tried to push through the pain.  One morning I decided I was going to write an article, and take my daughter to play dates, and be home in time to cook dinner.  By the end of the day my head was going crazy.  My body was no longer willing to keep up with my drive.  I’ve always been a ‘yes’ person: student council, president of clubs, always one more thing.  But that isn’t working for me right now.  I’ve had to learn that the pain isn’t a weakness.  It’s a real injury.  And it needs time.  My current mantra is ‘do what you can.’  My only goal is to become a healthy mother, wife, and friend.  Today I’m meeting a friend from New Jersey.  And we’re just going to chill.”

“We were moving downstate.  My wife and daughters went ahead and I stayed behind to pack up the house.  The accident happened on Mother’s Day, so I was already feeling guilty that I wasn’t with them.  Their car stopped at a drawbridge and they were rear-ended by a distracted driver.  Knocked them forty yards onto the bridge.  They’re lucky they didn’t end up in the water.  I thought it was just a fender bender.  My daughters were fine, and my wife sent me a selfie to show that she was OK.  But then the swelling came.  And the next day she was completely black and blue.  It was a traumatic brain injury.  She’s better now, but she still gets very tired.  Sometimes it can hurt for her to carry on long conversations.  She’s been unable to work.  The insurance companies have been fighting us.  So it’s been a tough couple years.  But recently I started a cider business with my friend Steve.  It was a huge risk.  I’d never done anything like it, and there was always so much to do: picking apples, labeling, bottling, capping.  Some of the apples we grew ourselves, but we’d also find these abandoned orchards with wild, craggy, arthritic trees.  We’d literally pick tons of apples, take them to this turn-of-the-century cider mill, and watch them get pressed into juice.  Then we’d bottle the cider once spring came around, and I’d drive into the city to sell at markets.  We’ve sold hundreds of cases.  The response has been unbelievable.  It’s the most fun I’ve ever had.  It’s exhilarating.  But then I think about my wife, and I get the blues again.  It’s like my mind is at war.  I get sad because I’m away from home so often.  There’s a lot of driving involved.  But my wife says she understands.  She says that it’s good for me.”

“When the relationship failed, it felt like I had failed.  Being a good girlfriend had been so important to me, and I couldn’t succeed at the one thing I put all my energy into.  Admittedly I was a very codependent partner, which is something I’m working on. Even after we broke up, I still hung out with him all the time. He saw it as a casual thing, but I was still looking for the validation of being wanted. I felt so lost.  All of my life plans had been contingent on the relationship.  Finally I moved back to New York, which is where I grew up. At the time it seemed like giving up. I moved in with my parents. My confidence was low.  I didn’t think I’d be able to find a job.  I went through all the motions but I felt like I was faking it. There was a voice in my head telling me that I didn’t deserve any of the jobs I was applying for. But after months of searching, I just got hired last Friday.  I’m going to be a trauma therapist at a victims’ services agency. It’s exactly what I wanted to be doing with my degree. It feels like the start of something. And that’s exactly what I needed.  Before coming home, everything felt haunted and attached to him.  But up here, everything is completely mine: my job, my schedule, my surroundings.  Even coming to Grand Central is something I used to do as a kid, and I’m doing it now, and I’ll continue to do it.  It’s connected to my history.  And it’s a part of me.  And it has nothing to do with him.”

“It was simple.  So easy to get.  I just typed my information into a website, and was immediately approved.  I thought: ‘Here I go, I’m doing it, this is going to be great.’  The loans seemed like an investment.  According to the law school brochure, which turned out to be lies, I’d be making six figures when I graduated.  I thought the payments would be manageable.  Just another bill.  Like the phone bill.  I first knew I was in trouble after I got my first job, and well over half my income went toward payments.  I kept falling behind, calling some agency, and working out patches and fixes.  That dynamic lasted for years.  It was incredibly stressful.  Things have slowly gotten better, but then again, the debts have gotten larger as well.  My husband has them too.  They keep us where we are.  We’d like to move.  We’d like to own a house.  We’d like to do things.  But we just can’t.  We’re not sure if we want to have children.  But I feel like the debt keeps us from having clarity.  We need to be in a secure place to make that choice.  But I also know that if I don’t decide, nature will make the choice for me.  It’s not all bad.  My husband is an adorable teddy bear.  I made great friends in law school.  I adopted an amazing dog.  And I do enjoy my job.  I just wish I could go back and tell myself: ‘Girl, that’s a lot more than you think it is.’”

“I was going to Arizona State when my dad passed away.  I didn’t handle it well.  Sort of fell apart.  I had just paid $9,000 for the fucking semester.  I opened my laptop, dropped the semester, opened up a new tab, bought a one-way ticket to New York, and threw myself a going-away party.  Once I got here, I started working in retail.  But on the side I was writing about Fashion Week for a blog called Style Cartel, shout out to Charlotte, Muslim like me.  And every time I went to these events, I’d introduce myself as a stylist.  I kept saying: ‘I style athletes and celebrities.’  I didn’t give a fuck.  Then suddenly I started getting clients for real: actors, NFL players, you name it.  Now I’m up to 42 clients.  Down to two days a week in retail.  Pure hustle.  No Miami mommy money.  Well I’m not going to lie.  I did have a sugar daddy first year,  billionaire, you’ve heard of him.  But never fucked him.  Anyway, the one thing I’ve always wanted to do is go back to school.  Cause I promised my dad.  Then one night I was watching Billions and there’s this psychologist who always keeps the men in check.  So I peeped the psychology degree at Hunter College, walked into the admissions office, and told the lady: ‘My transcripts are trash.  My dad died of cancer.  But I’m intelligent.  I need a second chance.’  The deadline had already passed, but she ended up doing me a solid.  She performed some sort of alchemy on my transcripts and came out with a 2.6 GPA.  That was enough to get me in the door.  I just finished up my second semester.  Now I’ve got a 3.5 GPA.  Plus the teachers love me cause I’m entertaining in class.”

“Most teachers say I have messy handwriting but I’m just trying to write quickly so I can get it over with.  The assignments don’t make sense.  I’m not sure why our teacher is always saying ‘write about this’ or ‘write about that.’  If I decide to be an author, I’m not going to write about other people’s books or the play we just saw on a field trip.  I’m going to write about monsters.”

“We worked in the same IT department.  I think our colleagues knew earlier than we did.  Whenever we’d go out, they kept trying to sit us next to each other.  She always seemed really interested in me.  She’d ask me a lot of questions.  But I felt really nervous because I’d never had a girlfriend before, and I didn’t want to mess it up.  So I kept things professional for about eight or nine months.  But then one night a group of us went to the club.  We were all having fun until a tall, blonde guy asked her to dance.  I had to think quickly.  I knew it was time to make a move.  Somehow I needed to separate them, but I didn’t want to escalate the situation.  This was a very tall man.  So I thought: ‘It’s time to dance.  You need to dance now.’  I wasn’t quite ready because I hadn’t had enough to drink.  But thankfully I’d just learned some dance moves from the movie Hitch.  Slowly I wedged myself between them.  I backed in,  butt first, using my special moves.  I didn’t even make eye contact with the guy.  Thankfully he gave up.  We danced together for about an hour.  At some point the rest of our colleagues went to the bar and left us all alone.  That’s when she leaned in and kissed me on the cheek.”

Today in microfashion…

Today in microfashion…

“We had dorm rooms next to each other freshman year.  We mainly just played a lot of board games: Risk, Scrabble, Scattergories, a Trivial Pursuit game from the 1980’s, which everyone sucked at.  But we became best friends, and the next year decided to get a house together.  That’s when things started to get tense.  We began sitting closer together.  We were touching more.  We’d play with each other’s hands.  Never holding hands, but playing with hands.  And we’d even fall asleep in the same bed together.  There was a time that she told me goodnight, and I swear I felt her brush my lips, but by the time I opened my eyes she was out of the room.  Neither of us had ever dated a woman.  And I was terrified to try anything.  We were such good friends.  There was always this fear that if I voiced the desire, it would ruin our friendship.  But one night we were out for drinks at a hotel where Al Capone used to stay.  I was feeling pretty drunk, so I leaned over and said: ‘Sometimes I feel like I want to kiss you.’  And she replied: ‘Sometimes I do too.’  I didn’t say a thing.  I wasn’t even sure that I’d heard her correctly.  I just kept thinking: ‘Oh my God, it’s happening.  It’s happening.’  Then once we finished our drinks, and started walking home, I stopped her in front of a bridge.  I said: ‘Shall we do it here?’  It was December 12th, 2002.  And even though we got married five years ago, that’s the day we celebrate as our anniversary.”

“I owned a frame shop in Atlanta for thirty years.  But every time I went to a theater and sat in the audience, I got the feeling that God had come and left without me.  I just knew that I was meant to perform.  Then one day a woman walked up to me in a health food store, and asked:  ‘Do you always talk like that or do you have a cold?’  I said: ‘Excuse me?’  And she told me that she wanted to cast me in a BMW commercial.  I thought it was a freebie.  But on the way out of the studio, they asked for my social security number.  $750 for three minutes on the mic!  I thought: ‘I need more of this.’  I started taking acting classes.  I got cast in a few local plays.  I moved to New York on my 50th birthday.  I wasn’t about to sit around in my later years wondering if my soul had gotten what it needs.  I drew unemployment for the first time in my life.  But by 2003 I was a member of SAG.  By 2005 I had a speaking part on Law and Order SVU.  And at the age of 62 I was given a full scholarship to the American Academy of Dramatic Arts.  Things have dried up a bit since then.  I had to take care of my mother for six years.  And it’s hard for women of a certain age to get cast.  But it ain’t over yet.  Things happen when they’re supposed to happen.  And I’m a firm believer that nobody can get what is yours to have.  And I will tell you this: I’ve already envisioned what I’m wearing the first time I get invited to the Oscars.  Red mermaid dress, fitted from the waist to the knees, and flaring out at the bottom.  A stand-up collar that frames the back of my head.  Stunning neckline.  And a king’s ransom of rubies on loan from Harry Winston.”

“Right now I just feel confused.  It’s fear, really.  I’m scared.  I’m graduating in a year.  I still don’t know what I want to do.  I’ve always wanted to be a leader in something.  But I don’t know what that is exactly, and I feel like if I’m not doing it already, then I’ll probably never be a leader in it.  So it’s a lot of stress.  The one thing that’s giving me solace is the thought of being a mom.  I’ve wanted to be a mother since the age of four.  I used to put blankets under my shirt to pretend like I was pregnant.  I love taking care of people.  And if I can’t conceive, I’ll adopt.  I’ve got everything figured out.  I didn’t think about it much in high school or middle school.  But now that the future is in such close proximity, motherhood has become my security blanket.  I think about it whenever I’m feeling overwhelmed.  Since everything seems to matter so much right now, it’s my way of saying: ‘nothing really matters.’  Because at least I’ll have a family.”

“We’d been friends for three years.  We’d mostly see each other at the Catholic Center on campus: picnics, group outings, stuff like that.  But then we started hanging out alone.  And one day during finals week we spent an entire day together.  We talked for six hours straight, and that night we ended up eating burgers at Five Guys.  Remember it was finals week, so I was stressed out and sleep deprived and not thinking clearly.  I started telling him that he’s so great, and that I’ve never felt so comfortable with someone, and suddenly I realize that I’m practically telling him that I like him.  And he’s got this blank expression on his face.  Total poker face.  So I panicked, and said something silly.”     “She told me, word-for-word: ‘But don’t worry.  I could never date you.’  My heart sank.  I’d been planning on asking her out after finals.  I had a whole plan.  Suddenly it felt like I’d misread the last three years, and especially the last few months.  I tried to keep a straight face.  No crying.  And after we paid for the check, I dropped her off at the dorm and walked the entire two miles home.  I kept telling myself: ‘You can recover.  She’s still a dear friend.  Life has its ups and downs.’  Two weeks later I helped her move into a new apartment.  And we kept hanging out as friends for the next few months.  But then on Valentine’s Day, she sent me a neuroscience card.  It’s a bit of a tradition because we’re both neuroscience majors.  The card said: ‘Are you a neuron? Because you have action potential.’  Then she followed up with a text that said: ‘If a man really wants to impress me, he’d bring me pancakes and yellow roses.’  Suddenly things were looking up again.”

“I grew up in Colombia.  There wasn’t much to watch on television back then because we only had a few channels.  Everything was black-and-white.  But every night there was a famous music show.  All the big bands came on that show: the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin.  Always my nose would be stuck to the TV.  I went completely crazy.  My parents could not understand.  Sometimes I’d get so excited that I’d cry.  I grew my hair long.  I told myself: ‘One day I will be in a band.  I do not know how.  But I will do it.’  A few years later my father got the opportunity to manage a dairy farm in Spain.  From there I was able to get a visa to London.  I was nineteen years old, and London was almost too much for me.  It was so exciting.  All the time I was crying.  I worked as a dishwasher and started going to all the nightclubs.  I fell in love with punk music: Sid Vicious, Billy Idol, The Clash.  They made me dance like a crazy.  So many times I cried.  But I especially wanted to be on the stage.  So I found two guys and started a band.  We were called The Ridiculous.  For two months we played on the street outside the club.  But it was harder than I thought.  We never were invited inside.  Our drummer found another band.  Then the guitarist found another band.  And then it was just me.  That was forty years ago, but I’m still keeping the punk alive.  One day I will try again.”

“When the kids were young I was living in the moment.  I was just trying to get them through the day: homework projects, sleepovers, keeping the food coming.  Taking this one to a band concert.  That one to a track meet.  There were plenty of worries, but they always seemed manageable.  I could usually intervene if one of the kids had a problem.  And I thought: ‘Once they’re out of high school, I’m done.  I’ll finally be able to relax.’ But all my children are adults now, and I’m worrying more than ever.  Because their problems didn’t stop. They just became adult problems.  And there’s not much I can do anymore.  One of my sons has depression.  I began to notice during our Sunday night phone calls,  his voice was flat, the answers were short. Then I asked the right questions and it all came out.  He said:  ‘I’m depressed. And I don’t know why. And I don’t know how to fix it.’  One night he just wept on the phone, quiet weeping, which is the worst. Because there’s nothing to address. Just lots of dead space, and: ‘Are you still there?’  There wasn’t much I could say to cheer him up.  Mothers tend to lose their credibility after a lifetime of praise.  So I’m just left to worry if it will ever resolve.  I worry if he’ll ever be happy.  I urged him to see a professional, but there’s not much else I can do but pray.  I’m not sure if prayer helps, but I get on my knees and do it anyway.”