From Twitter this morning:

@Chookooloonks: 5 best decisions of my adult life so far: go to law school, move to London, marry @marzjennings, adopt Alex, quit law. What are your 5 best?

My response:

1. Moving to Washington
2. Leaving Washington
3. Dating whoever the hell I want
4. Starting No Pasa Nada
5. Living alone

Some of these decisions just happened by accident, living alone for example, others required pro/con lists, hand-wringing with a dollop of anxiety but when it comes down to it, hindsight always presents perfection. Decisions that were difficult turned out to be the best ever. The things I have done in my adult life – all of them and however short my adult life has been – have lead to one good thing after another. Even with those bad days where it seems like I have done everything wrong, they’re just little bumps reminding me to move forward. I can hardly remember the bad when thinking of what I did right. It’s true that every little thing will be alright. Inevitably. Eventually.

So now I ask you, what are the five best decisions of your adult life?

Schmutizie’s response is here: http://www.schmutzie.com/weblog/2011/9/28/the-five-best-decisions-of-my-life.html

A few weeks ago I found myself going back and forth with my friend Allison as to how wonderful life in Salt Lake City would be for me. The only caveat she said is that she was unsure of the (strict) drinking laws in the city and perhaps I should find a non-Mormon to assist in that regard. So I added Salt Lake to the list of “Hey…I could live here”.

Most people daydream about a relaxing vacation, I daydream of a place in this vast country of ours where I could put down some roots. It’s a list that grows each day depending on my mood. My therapist recently noted how wistfully I speak of DC and that she doesn’t hear that same tone when it comes to Albany and I had to remind her that a) This is Albany for Christ’s sake and b) I wouldn’t live in DC unless of course I won the lottery or made it big as a Democratic Consultant. I will get into the Albany v. DC thing at a later date but the point is that as of right now DC is not on that list. Several friends of mine and perspective job sites just collectively sobbed. I love DC with a fierceness but my gut tells me that it most likely isn’t in the cards.

Denver is there. Along with Boulder. I regularly contemplate Austin but recently reneged on that possibility because I don’t hate snow. That statement will come back to bite me in the ass some day – probably on a very frigid day in January where I find my nipples permanently erect and frostbite on my toes – but no, it doesn’t bother me in the way it should and could.

I see myself in a capital city since the only thing I’m really qualified to do is work in politics. Though some might say that I’m barely qualified for that. I could live on Martha’s Vineyard full time. That creeps in when I find myself alone walking up Circuit Avenue without the July and August hustle and bustle. But then I find myself stumped worrying that I haven’t been to enough places, seen enough, absorbed enough to make a “Forever” decision.

Perhaps I’ll marry someone who enjoys a life on the road. I’ll telecommute and home-school and spend summers in Montana. Who knows. The good thing is that the older I get the easier I find that I am able to go with it…absorb the ‘whatever happens, happens’ mentality. I just want to be near water, mountains, I want a yard.

Or perhaps I’ll just spin the globe and wherever my finger lands that is where I, too, shall land. Yes. That will work just fine.

This same topic was discussed on Curvy Girls Guide today and I wanted to bring it over here. Where do you live? Do you see yourself living there forever? If money were no object where would you call home?

I kind of left you hanging there, sorry about that. There is more to that story and in hindsight I realize that there was more than just one singular incident that lead to my feeling so very alone. It was more like months of compounded interest that finally caused the dam to burst. But more on that – all of it – later. Your comments and DMs and emails were greatly appreciated. I’d hug you all if I could.

A few things:

1) I’ve spent the better part of the last few months trying to figure out my 2012 plans. Not in terms of forming an exploratory committee but a combination of conferences and how to operate a political blog and possibly facilitate another event during what could be a tumultuous, down and dirty campaign season. I’m attempting to fit my passion into my real life without stomping all over one or the other. It’s hard.

2) Speaking of 2012: I submitted a panel for SXSW along with Joanne Bamberger and David Wescott on Women, social media and political engagement. This will be an entire post on its own – not here, but over here – but if you would go over to the SXSW Panel Picker and vote for it, I’d sure appreciate it.

3) Speaking of projects: I saw what AB did for Heather and now I want for her to help me with my living room and bedroom. Look, I live in Upstate NY and therefore spend a good chunk of the months of December – March indoors, fearful of giant chunks of ice falling off a branch and busting me in the head. That said, if I’m going to be indoors I want it to look pretty. And what I have now is the opposite of pretty. So she’s going to help me and it will be so very worth it. I’m realizing that the things that make me miserable can easily be fixed or rearranged. Why I just sit there and let things make me unhappy is beyond me but my therapist and I are working on it.

4) I curated a slideshow for Kirtsy. It’s of Washington, DC at its best. I love that place: http://kirtsy.com/2011/08/27/dc-curated-by-heather-barmore/

5) Speaking of weather: This is what I did during Irene on Sunday. Narcissus much? I was bored. May I present to you the many faces of Heather L. Barmore. You’re welcome.

6) I have a four day weekend. Hooray for labor!

BlogHer coincides with the anniversary of the start of this blog. So, I return more pensive than usual (the first post lives here, if you are so inclined). The first year – at least – is speckled with my shaking my fists at the Universe as it forced me into adulthood and the frustration of leaving the safety and security of childhood for…well…this. You can’t see but I just made a sweeping gesture to my surroundings. I tapped my finger on a stack of bills and post-it notes reminding me of phone calls to make and where to be and when. This is what it is now. Getting here wasn’t particularly graceful but I have managed to fall into it without breaking any bones. Though No Pasa Nada is only six years old, it is considered ancient in Internet years but what I see from the past is a very young, 21 year old woman unsure of herself and her everything. Now I see a woman who is 27 going on 28. Still unsure of being called ‘adult’ but rolling with it. Tectonic plates have shifted and now I am here at this desk with this office and the home and with it all. Not where I expected but I take it each day. 21 would have shunned so much of this because of its imperfections, however small. 27 likes the scratches and dents and will to run with it anyway.

Six years ago I never expected to essentially come of age in front of a live studio audience. I held my finger over the publish button, took a deep breath and that was it.

I never expected you. I regret many things but this will never be one of them and for that I am eternally thankful.

On Friday I flew from DC to Albany. On Saturday I drove back down to DC to retrieve a tupperware full of winter items and my cat and those other things that I have managed to collect after four months away. Let me be the first to tell you that since packing, unpacking and repacking over the last four months, I am seconds away from taking a giant broom and sweeping out anything that isn’t a mammal. Scratch that, my cat just puked on the floor. He’s out too.

My parents requested that I call them upon my arrival to Washington. I, of course, forgot as I opened my door and saw the amount of work to be done then shut the door and took a walk around the block with a diet coke. Mumbling to myself ‘I can do this. I can do this. I can do this.’ Then I got back to my apartment and a random pair of winter boots kicked me in the shins and I started mumbling ‘fuck this. fuck this.’ So, my parents were put on the back-burner. My mother called first to see if I had made it ok. Then my father.

I’m fine! I told them. I’m 27 or as my brother likes to say “Heather, you’re like fucking 30…”. I have grays sprouting at the top of my head. I’m fine. I can drive to DC and back.

I’m fine.

But at 27 I am still their baby. My brothers and I ranging in age from mid-40′s to mid-20′s are still babies. I’m a woman with grays and bills but that doesn’t put a stop to my parents wanting to know that this person – a person they created and love with a fierceness that I cannot begin to comprehend – is out there, driving down the Jersey Turnpike. Alone. They wonder if I’m wearing my seatbelt or if I’ll stop when I’m tired. They wonder if I’ve made it ok or have enough money for gas.

It would stand to reason that because I am older they would worry less. In fact it’s the opposite. I am older, the world is my oyster. They worry more. They don’t let on because they don’t want to be helicopter parents at 50-something and 60-something. But their baby. Their only daughter is out there and that freaks them the fuck out.

My mother doesn’t sleep at night until she hears my 25 year old, law school-attending, brother return home. Then she knows that he’s back and he’s safe.

My oldest brother is in his 40′s. My father still calls to make sure he’s ok.

I read Ali’s words on protecting her children. She sees stories of young children being abducted and violently murdered in small communities. We all see these stories of children being gone much too soon. I send messages to friends who have lost their children without warning wondering how they do it. How they put their whole being in the form of their child out there into the world and hope for the best. And if the best doesn’t happen? How do you keep going?

I question these things as a non-parent of course. As a person who is able to forcibly remove herself from thinking of these things day in and day out because I don’t have to. There is a part of me that relishes in the great joy of not having to think about the person that I created from my own body. The person I have nurtured, loved, protected and held to my chest while giving reassuring butt-pats. I don’t have to think about that person being out there. I don’t have to worry. I get to sleep at night.

It is no secret, that I long to become a parent. Not at anytime soon, I can assure you but…you know…someday. I want to love and raise a person – by whatever means, that child comes to me. I want to nurture and fulfill and put a person out in this world – All of it – who is loving, kind and will do great things. That is every parents dream.

But then I remember that with that great responsibility comes great worry. Sleepless nights not due to colic or hunger but due to wanting that person who have rocked to sleep so many nights before to be more than ok. To be safe and sound and back with me holding my hand.

I so want to be a parent but, my God, I don’t think I can.

Thanks be to other outside forces, I popped a klonopin prior to opening this document. Klonopin being a drug in the benzodiazepene family used most commonly for treating anxiety and panic disorders and as a secondary treatment to epilepsy. Then again, there is nothing like the look on your pharmacists face when you get your monthly refill of psychotropic drugs. They speak to you in hushed tones as if I fell on the “psychosis” side of things, ready to burn this mother fucker (a CVS in a tiny town in Upstate NY) down. In turn I speak in normal tones to say, “dude, it’s ok. I promise not to lose my shit up in here. Drugs please”. And so goes life when you’re felled by severe anxiety over any and everything.

I bring this up because long-time readers of the site know that I am fearful of change. If I could preserve the status quo, forever and ever, I’d be ok with that. I’m sure ‘stagnation’ was the first thing Thomas More thought of when he came up with Utopia. Change brings out a shock to my system and on top of change is it’s evil twin Different and their cousin New. No. No. And another emphatic no. It brings out the worst in my rather frail mental state. It’s the reason for why I attend events and spend the first hour(s) standing behind a fake tree pretending to be super important while scrolling. I now have a blackberry and an iPhone. I look like the world’s most pretentious douchebag but at least I won’t have to form sentences in front of strangers.

Do I wish that I wasn’t like this? Of course. My job and my livliehood both depend on my ability to interact successfully with people in a variety of situations. This career path that I have chosen for myself means facing these fears each and everyday. Hence the medication and need to sit out at times just to regroup. I take deep breaths and as if I’m participating in a game of double-dutch, I jump back in. Following the rhythm though cautiously, I’m still in there until the movements come to me and I’m able to move a little bit more freely.

In the next two weeks I’m headed to Chicago and then Utah for conferences that are completely different but depict the two very different sides of my life. Though I still refer to one side as “real life” as if the social media/blogging/writing/non-stop tweeting side of my life is fake. Alas when either side pinches I feel it. I am thrilled to be headed to Utah. It will be my first trip there even though I’ve been dying and promising to go for years. My first concern being that there are no black people there. I mean the last black person there might have been Karl Malone circa the early 1990′s. And one friend acknowledged that quite honestly. “We’re not really diverse. But you’ll like it”. So there’s that also given that I recently survived two weeks in New Hampshire, I think I can handle Utah. Other friends and varied cohorts will be at the EVO conference as well. Despite knowing that I’ll know people there I am still a little on the nervous side because of The New. What if these women hate me? Or find me uninteresting and boring and oh my God, they fell asleep mid-conversation. What if?

Then again new is what I am currently craving. Isn’t that odd? I want a change and different and smaller and to see what other smart people are up to. I’m looking forward to this adventure where I have no agenda other than being able to experience the unfamiliar. Sometimes you need to push yourself towards what makes you uncomfortable. That’s where I have always been able to find myself at my best.

If you’re headed to EVO ’11 please feel free to say hello.

On the day Ike was born I went for a brief visit with his mama. Upon my arrival she and Jason were sitting there all nonchalant like “No big deal. I just had a human being come forth from my stomach and now we’re just chillin’” My natural reaction to such an event, the birth of another person and having that person COME OUT OF ME would be somewhere on the Look at what has been brought to me/Circle of Life/Mammals are amazing/look at his tiny toes! spectrum. But there they were ensconced in a genuine love for someone who was all of 10 hours old. Predicting his personality and his poops and hospital food as if it were an everyday occurrence. Why yes, having a baby has been happening since the dawn of mankind and so really, it’s not that big of a deal and yet I was overcome by the hugeness of it all. Often I read mocking of women on the Internet by other women of course – but that’s a totally different story on Women: Why do we hate each other so much? – because they (she who just gave birth) is behaving as if it (giving birth) is the most amazing experience ever and treats the event like she’s the only person to ever do it.

That’s because in that moment, looking at this new person is the most amazing experience ever. Parent or not.

I was afraid to touch him. I peeked inside his bassinet at this little baby burrito. Amy said “Get in there! Get you some!” I picked him up as gently as humanly possible and then refused to move for the next 15 minutes. I just stood there admiring his features. When the crook of my arm started to hurt I still just stood there statuesque. What if something happened as I switched him to my other arm. “You can sit down!” she and Jason said. I could sit down but what if I tripped and fell and I broke your baby? I thought. So I gingerly sat myself on the seat of a chair once again frozen in the awesomeness of having this tiny person in my arms and gripped by the fear that I could do something wrong. I am the woman who has not removed her iPhone from it’s protective case since it’s purchase. My $300 dollar phone. I worry that it might break. That worry and anxiety passed right along to holding Isaac. A fear that I could be doing it wrong.

But they trusted me with their child and they always have since week five of their parenting almost six years ago. So I sat there with Ike in my arms staring at him. Just staring. They spoke around me and I looked at his nose and his eyes. He was perfect. I mean absolute perfection. I’m not saying this because I love him (they are my little DC family and I love those boys) but because he is perfect. He has his own personality that is unscathed by the bullshit of the world. He knows nothing of cruelty and life to him is that last week he was swimming in water and now he’s out and about. Everything is so new to him. I could only sit there and absorb and have these very life affirming, this is what it’s all about thoughts.

Amy was happy that he was so chill with me. I’m the baby whisperer, I said. What? I’m good with wee ones. “You should tell your job that. You need to be with me because you’re the baby whisperer and I need you.” Well…if I must.

Just above my left temple I have a little patch of these wiry gray hairs. They’re short and do not conform to the curl pattern of their surrounding brethren but instead decide to stand out on their own not only in color but, man, it’s like they’re trying to get my attention. I look at them each morning and say “I see you! You can stand down now!” but they don’t listen. They’re just there mocking me responding with a curt, “We’re here to stay, lady. Get used to it”. So I have. I part my hair in certain parts and what used to be well hidden and a surprise, I now see more silver spots that stick out like a sore thumb – at least to me – only slightly covered from a long ago dye job.

In reality, they don’t bother me. They’re just there and I have no clue whether to (re)dye or not to dye nor is something that consumes me each day. I’m too busy focusing on my mid-section to worry about the state of my hair. There’s only so much vanity to go around, you know.

People say that with grays comes wisdom. Usually women who boast that they’ve earned their silver stripes and it proves something. I usually eye roll to that one but now I sorta get it. There are things that come with quickly approaching 30 that I didn’t have at quickly approaching 20. Things like knowing that when things are bad, they could be worse. Or why sometimes flats are the best decision. Or why instead of screaming and crying you just have to sigh and move on.

Before I found my approach to adulthood to be nothing more than a royal pain in the ass. An endless cycle of bills and guilt for not doing it right. Oh, there are still bills and guilt that ends with just sucking it up and heading to work even though your throat might close up on itself but then there’s the other stuff wherein you realize how fascinating this entire growing up process is. Sometimes I feel like I’m on the outside looking in at someone else’s life. There’s some other woman traipsing the north east and fretting over organizing campaigns and shaking hands with that member of congress. Someone else is being mature and realizes that hating takes up too much time and that falling in like is the best feeling ever. I still don’t feel like an adult, but who actually does?

I just finished a brief text conversation with an ex. The Ex to be exact. The one who left me heartbroken and sitting at Coldstone Creamery each afternoon shoving my face into a giant milkshake. We were discussing a conference that we’d both be attending and instead of leaving that conversation feeling hatred and that continued hurt. I told him that I looked forward to seeing him then and there. I cannot wait to catch up and I mean that. With those gray hairs comes the realization that things keep moving, feelings keep evolving, I keep growing. With the age and the grays I finally see me as a better version of myself. I like it here.

Over the last six years I have gone from a person who believed that the Internet should share in every mundane detail of my life to holding back; preferring to hold the mundane details that are my life, close to the vest. I’ve learned that a) not everyone needs to know everything and b) what everyone knows, someone will be happy to use against you. A possible jaded outlook on people in general based on several bad experiences but ‘rather safe than sorry’ are words to live by. So there’s that along with the ever present under current of anxiety. To which….gosh, I know. I know. While having a conversation with a friend of mine about my anxiety disorder that requires actual medication, a bartender blurted out “You know! You’re too young to have all that worry! And I know because I have all of this white hair which makes me wise…” etc., etc., oh my hell, do I tell you how to make a margarita? No. So don’t tell me how to manage my meds. Thanks. Bitchy, yes, but that’s what I was thinking. I digress. The point is that Dear Internet, I have some shit going on that I have decided not to tell you because I don’t need the judgement and sideways glances. And here’s where I stumble and mumble and want to apologize because I’m not telling you about The Things. I’m…uh…sorry for not telling you about something that you knew nothing about until I sat here flummoxed for a bit about what to write about and wondered what others find to be off limits. I’m sure I’ve asked this before but humor me.

“My beloved speaks and says to me: ‘Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away; for now the winter is past, the rain is over and gone. The flowers appear on the earth; the time of singing has come, and the voice of the turtledove is heard in our land. The fig tree puts forth its figs, and the vines are in blossom; they give forth fragrance. Arise my love, my fair one and come away.” – Song of Solomon 2: 10-13

Liz and I have had two fights in the last seven years. The first was due to my disappearance for an entire weekend with nary a phone call to check in. Upon my return she was furious. She looked at me, shook her head and said sternly, “We’ll talk about this later” then walked away. Later in the evening after I was shunned from our usual dinner group she approached me in the quad to say, “I don’t know what kind of friends you have at home but here? You can’t just do that…you can’t just leave without telling anyone.” It was in that moment of genuine concern and fear for my safety when I knew that she was a real friend. I mean that last statement not to be so cliched but it came on the heels of high school; a time in which you have spent almost almost 13 years forced into friendship with people. In the event that you do not get along with said hormonal teenagers, you are then forced to see them everyday for the next several years until graduation when you are free. I spent a good portion of middle and high school dodging people I disliked not because they actually disliked me but because at 14 pretty much everyone hates each other. Then again, I could be wrong.

So there was that time and the second time was joyful (she says with sarcasm) and something I brought up to the bride during her rehearsal dinner and her face turned beet red. “I’d forgotten all about that….” her voice trailed off as she slowly backed away and put her head down, embarrassed by something that occurred six years prior. I smiled. A perfect example of how funny something will be in the future.

I had let Liz and her then boyfriend borrow my car for a week while I was in Las Vegas. I returned to a broken hood and a non-functioning transmission. And where was Elizabeth? She was packing and heading off to South Africa. I chased her down on campus and it wasn’t that I was furious it was more like “What the fucking fuck happened?” To this day I don’t remember her response but she left and enjoyed Africa. I enjoyed spending $3,000 on a transmission.

We were even.

*******

One summer I decided to have the girls up to my mother’s house on Martha’s Vineyard. Three of us drove up while Liz stayed behind and flew up the next morning. As we drove across the Bourne bridge she phoned to tell us about a boy. A boy named Michael. As she sat at her kitchen table eating her cheerios, she wanted to detail her previous evening. Her conversation with Michael, how great and charming and cute he was. “That’s nice, Liz. Get to the airport! We’ll discuss this later!”

We discussed Michael while sitting on the beach in the Inkwell. She gushed. Five minutes later she was stung by a bee. She teared up because it hurt. We went back to the house.

*******

Michael was hipster before there was hipster. He had a handkerchief in his pocket. We met on $10 bucket of beer night (Thursdays for those not in the know) at Front Page. He was there with his girlfriend who Liz coyly pointed out. I stared. “Don’t STARE!” she hissed. Michael had a beard and crazy hair. He was serious. But she was right, he was charming.

******

A few weeks ago I lost my wallet. With no cards or cash or identification I had nothing. It’s funny how much less hopeless you feel when you have a best friend to call. Liz was on her way to work. “Call Michael”, she said “He’ll take care of you”. I called him and he said “Sure! How much?” I gave him an amount and because Michael is Michael he dug into me. “Are you sure?…I mean, doesn’t it cost that much just in tolls?” He fretted. I, the one without money or a license, shushed him. “I’ll be fine”. I made it from DC to Albany with $26 dollars to spare.

He’s a good man.

******

Saturday was the perfect day. Insert your version of picteresque landscape and sunlight here.

It was late in the afternoon on the way to the cathedral that I could feel this knot in my stomach as if something wasn’t right and my body was gearing up for panic. I swallowed to make a lump in my throat disappear. Was I on my way to a panic attack on the front lawn of a church? In front of JESUS? Each time I tried to swallow harder to get the lump to go away it wouldn’t budge.

I sat at the end of my pew waving hello to friends I hadn’t seen in months but still with this odd feeling. That feeling of uneasiness like something was about to happen. As the families were ushered down the aisle I thought about things that had to be done on Monday and how open of an open bar there would be that night. Slowly my mind wandered to the first night that Liz and I met, on her 21st birthday at a bar in Bethesda. In Da Club was played and it snowed, those heavy, fat flakes well into the night.

Then the day after I returned from Spain just one day before graduation. Our parents met for the first time and we had dinner at Zola.

The day she got back from Brussels and we met her at BWI.

I had a key to her first apartment.

She let me share her bed in the days before my departure abroad.

My 21st birthday. I threw up on our friend Brad’s car after leaving McFadden’s. She thought I was going to die.

The evening I lost my shit and called her the following morning from the mall, sitting outside of an Old Navy before it opened.

The day she got her appendectomy and called me from the hospital.

The shooting.

It was a deluge of memories. A movie montage of sorts. All of these things that had happened and composed this thread of our friendship. Which, at first glance, probably seems tumultuous but I have always had the most fun with her. And Michael always folded right in. Her parents adored me and mine her. I’m tearing up while writing this because it is the type of relationship that many of us crave. The kind where weeks can go by and we pick up right where we left off. We look for companionship and those who would help us move a body.

Then she walked down the aisle and that lump? The one that would not and could not go away pushed up and broke the dam. I cried. I have never understood people who cry at weddings. Ladies who keep hankies neatly folded in their pocketbook only to wind up crumpled from being gripped in a hand. Smudged with black mascara. You never remember to purchase the waterproof kind until it’s too late.

******

There are these moments where everything comes together. The light hits at the perfect angle, you make all of your flights, there’s the perfect amount of vodka in your Bloody Mary, your manicure doesn’t chip, your empire waist dress doesn’t make you look pregnant, your hair doesn’t eat your face, your best friend cries while saying her vows, two people who are meant to be walk down the aisle hand-in-hand. These are the moments that give me hope. Things can go horribly awry, we get wary of this whole life thing. But if you can look back at the specks of good amidst the messiness? Well…I don’t know about you but that, right there, is what keeps me going. Knowing that somewhere, out there, it is possible for something so wonderful to exist.