Category Archives: Whoa feelings

I’ve got issues

By nopasanada | Published: September 29, 2010


“Life is a series of collisions with the future.”  ~José Ortega y Gasset

I have until the close of business today to write something “fabulous” about myself. I’m participating in an event on Sunday and in reading the brief bios of the other participants I’m suddenly self-conscious. More self-conscious than normal. The kind where I scan a room and wonder if it’s me that is doing it all wrong.

The other ladies involved are close to my age and have 14 month old children and husbands and a motherfucking M.D. They have houses, probably in Niskayuna or Guilderland where their property taxes are through the roof but they have multiple bedrooms and sizable dining rooms for entertaining. They’re probably the kind of people who have matching sets of wine glasses where as I have what would be called ‘eclectic’. I break them as I stumble around the apartment. That’s the kind of life I have. It is one where I spend a lot of time with a wine bottle and my laptop busting out posts left and right and watching DVRed episodes of Neil Cavuto.

I like my life. I swear, I do. It’s just that…I don’t know. Everyone is getting married and getting pregnant. They have these very tangible signs of progress through life and I have a cat that pees on things because he’s pissed off that I’m away again. But I get to travel to DC to my heart’s content. I get to bond with my faux literary agent over margaritas in Martha’s Vineyard. I get to make trips to resorts in Park City just because I can. What I find troubling is my reaction when I hear of the marriage, baby thing I can’t just shrug it off. I start to take a look at myself: Almost 27 and very alone.

Then again, I have a king sized bed to myself and if I fancy a cupcake and beer for dinner then a cupcake and beer it is. I don’t have to check-in with anyone pre-departure. I have my family and my friends and a job that affords me such luxuries as health insurance and 25 days of vacation that I have to hurry up and use. I’m appreciative, as I should be. But is it all that wrong to have some angst of what the others have? Will the grass be all that greener on the other side?

Also posted in That's Life | 13 Comments

“Having mom friends keeps my ovaries in check”

By nopasanada | Published: May 17, 2010

“There’s a period of life when we swallow a knowledge of ourselves and it becomes either good or sour inside.”  ~Pearl Bailey

One of my colleagues recently had a baby. Well he didn’t have a baby but his wife had a baby but you get what I mean. He works from home and with the newborn we have been meeting at his house. After our meetings I announce, “I’m going to hold your baby”. I pick up said newborn and talk to her in my baby voice, asking, ‘who’s the ‘cutest wittle baby in da world?!?’ I do this enough to get her – The Divine Miss E. – to eek out a half smile. I hold her until she gets creaky and cranky and pass her off to one of her parental units because far be it for me to get shrieked at for whatever babies get upset about. Air? Wind? Being looked at funny? Being looked at in general? AIR? Regardless little does my colleague know that though yes it is convenient to meet at his house the real reason – and I’ve been waffling back and forth as to whether or not I wanted to say this out loud – well, the real reason that I like to meet at his house is because there’s a baby at his house.

A baby. A little snuggly, cuddly baby. And as of late babies have had this odd affect on me. I see a baby and it feels like my ovaries and uterus are going mutiny. My lady bits are standing there ready to charge. Fists a-blazing ready to go. What it feels like is my lady parts are on PST and I’m on EST and currently our clocks ain’t synching.

Ya’ll I seem to have developed an intense biological need to procreate.

Mother. Fucker.

This is funny. As in HA fucking HA funny because my mother never had this need. I could mention all of this to her and she’d ask if I were high. She wasn’t all that into kids in the first place and then she had me and she realized, ‘Eh, they’re not so bad’ and so she had Garrett. Me? Oh ho ho. I will make this as short and sweet as possible but I recently told my friend Alana that I wanted to have a baby. Not today. God no but then I presented a very strategic time line not based on my life but on actual rational arguments. I expected to be laughed out of the restaurant and she actually told me that it was GOOD that I was thinking of this NOW and that it was GOOD that I am prepared in this way. And then she proceeded to point out all of the glorious things that parenthood brings. Like wiping someones ass and being woken up at 5 fucking thirty in the morning and that intense pain of loving some little bald person more than yourself. So much that your heart might explode.

Alana said that having a kid is something that you have to do without thinking. There’s no preparation. You just jump and hope there’s a safety net and you land. I’ve never admitted this as fully as I am right now. I’ve said it out loud and casually but I want that pain and torture. I’m shocked and obviously unprepared and no, this will not be occurring anytime soon. But! But. I want to jump because someway, somehow I know that it will be worth it.

Posted in Whoa feelings | 16 Comments

A love theme

By nopasanada | Published: April 20, 2010

“We are all a little weird and life’s a little weird, and when we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours, we join up with them and fall in mutual weirdness and call it love.”  ~Author Unknown

Right after Christmas I was in bed ready for slumber when my best friend, LB,  called me. She never calls me and I never call her. We communicate enough of course but it’s 2010: I text her and she emails me back. I haven’t heard her voice since April of 2009. So when she called my hear immediately stopped because she must be dying. Or pregnant. Or both. Though it was neither; she was engaged. My heart did that rapid fire swelling thing and made its way to the base of my throat. I swallowed hard to keep those feelings at bay and made her repeat herself. “You’re what?”

“I’m engaged!”

“Wait…what?”

“I am engaged”, she replied with a giggle.

I replied with a few sniffles and tears out of the corners of my eyes because some people should be engaged. You see these couples together and you know in your heart of hearts that they one day will be affianced. It isn’t that it *will* happen but that it *should* happen.

*********

In February I was at BWI airport fussing with my phone after a long flight. When I finally got the thing on I had messages galore but there was one message I was looking for in particular. One from a boy. Nothing serious or anything that I was all that interested in but enough to give me that flutter. You know the one. Where you know that someone is just thinking of you. It never worked out but while at the airport I did not receive a text from this man but from my cousin. It was simple grainy photo the only part of it that I could make out was a large shiny looking object. I knew. I just knew.

The second text message was the announcement of an engagement and once again the proper response was for tears. I am not a terribly emotional person especially when it comes to matters of the heart. Relationships don’t make me ooey-gooey. I have never once cried during a Hallmark commercial.

But I couldn’t help myself. My heart does feel.

**********

Having experienced the boundless emotions of being absolutely, head over heels in love with someone and the subsequent torture of falling out of love and all of the messiness surrounding it, I have been rather ‘meh’. I’ve become fantastic at doing my own thing. I am an excellent solo diner and movie goer. I can put together furniture and have a design aesthetic that effectively combines the bright and the bold with the neutral. I have certain aspects of my life down pat and others…well…I’m learning. I didn’t enjoy the horrific clean up of a relationship. In fact that process reminded me of a recent event where the cat puked wet food and I had run out of paper towels and so I had to use kleenex. Horrible. Messy. And no amount of hand-washing gets it off.

So there is that. I am thinking out loud here so forgive me but that messiness is part of the whole love thing, no? And I don’t like it. I don’t like certain aspects of a lot of things. But it still keeps me from dipping a big toe into the water. And other times I feel like I don’t deserve to be with anyone. Isn’t that sad? It’s those oft internalized feelings of inadequacy. That I am not good enough so why would anyone in their right mind want to be with me? And yet….I don’t know. I’ve never been a good dater. It was never casual because I always put too much thought into it or just didn’t care at all. On more than one occasion it has been pointed out to me with grand flourish that perhaps if I actually spoke to people I would learn that there are many interested parties. In fact there are often interested parties and my exact reaction is this, “That’s nice. What’s new on Netflix?!”

**********

During my best friend’s engagement party this past weekend there were tears during the toast. I put a comforting hand on the bride-to-be’s mother’s shoulder and she gave me a squeeze. I met the groom-to-be’s father who gushed about his marriage and his relationship. He pointed out his wife to me by saying “That’s my baby!”. He told me that when you know, you know. And he beamed when speaking of the upcoming nuptials. Michael called LB the love of his life and then we had cupcakes from Georgetown cupcake. No detail was spared and so on top of the cupcake was a heart shaped piece of fondant. I licked the icing off the back of the heart and then LB walked up, took it out of my hand, asked if it was edible, then bit something I had licked. I could only laugh. God, I love that woman. It was very like her and our relationship. One of mutual love, respect and pure joy when the other does something fantastic.

I know that I can leave you with this: I don’t doubt for a second the amount of love in my life. In fact there is a lot of it. But maybe, just maybe, I’m ready for a little companionship. Maybe I’m ready to share my bed and my pillow with someone other than my cat. Maybe.

Posted in Whoa feelings | 4 Comments

Lesson Learned

By nopasanada | Published: April 7, 2009

“Few delights can equal the mere presence of one whom we trust utterly.”  ~George MacDonald

I keep a list of lessons I’ve learned in a moleskine notebook. It’s full of really excellent advice like why one shouldn’t forget to put their car registration in their car or why one shouldn’t pretend to be over 21 to purchase alchohol when they are only 20 and my personal favorite: When walking around on grass, watch out for dog shit. I think so many people would find that last one oh so handy. But for me it’s a terrible memory of a time I stepped in dog poop on my way to the school bus. I must have been 12 or 13 and later that afternoon I was making my first trip to a ‘friend’s’ house – a word I put in quotes because she turned out to be an evil heinous bitch but that’s a story for later or when I’m not still bitter. She was one of the popular girls and I spent years fawning over her trying like mad to get her to be my friend. I wanted her to like me and that there is a lesson in itself: If people don’t like you move the hell on. Don’t get on your knees and hope that blowing them will get them to like you. It won’t. Regardless, I stepped in dog poop and she subsequently made fun of me for it. The strange thing is that over a decade later it is one of those days when I can tell you exactly what I was wearing. Forever etched in my memory as the highpoint of my groveling days.

The worst lessons to learn are those that involve realizing that trust is an issue. It’s an issue with everyone but the second you find that someone is untrustworthy it’s like a 2×4 to the head. Though worse because it’s to the heart. And we all know that mending an injured heart is one of the most impossible feats known to man. We can walk on the moon but to this day no one has figured out how to fix a broken heart. And it’s like as an adult we should know better because with age comes automatic wisdom which is why adults are so fucking brilliant, right? Adults are just big third graders with more money and more anger. They do just the same things that Middle Schoolers but without parental supervision.

The more I contemplate how adults compare to children the more I get that feeling in my heart as it sinks down to the pit of my stomach. The difference I suppose is that adults are more aware and calculating of what they do and what they say. They aren’t cruel because they know better but instead because they know that no one can or will stop them. They mask things under the guise of ‘concern’ and they are a prickly, mercurial bunch hence the overwhelming cynicism in this world.

Of course there are a few good eggs but you really have to search them out but if you’re lucky you’ll happen upon one when you most need it. Though the hurt and heartbreak that comes from finding out the truth about your peers is more overwhelming and damaging than finding out that Santa, the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy do not exist. And time? That which heals all wounds? Well there isn’t enough time in the world to heal that kind of break.

That’s the hardest lesson of all.

Also posted in Lessons Learned, The year on the edge | 16 Comments

When I get drunk and fall on my ass

By nopasanada | Published: January 22, 2009

“Bygone troubles are good to tell.”  ~Yiddish Proverb

I’ve been known to drink quite a bit and now I feel compelled to assure that this is not a daily occurance. I don’t wake up each morning craving vodka on the rocks but I do fully embrace my heart healthy glass of red wine with my meal. But then there are the times where I’m flitting around, caught in the moment. The drinks are poured and the laughs start; the stories and “Remember when…” that end in a slew of words and a fit of giggles. Those moments when we up and decide on anothe round because sometimes it feels good to be caught in the whirl of things only stopping to smile and embrace the good. The evenings wear on and the guffaws turn into a cacophany of noise as it is so possible to be carried on an air of good feeling and adrenaline. But the evening ends and what was once fun slowly turns topsy turvy complete with the spins and what was once fun may turn sour. Sometimes you puke. Or sometimes you just fall on your ass and the laughter starts again. The best parts are the mornings; waking up giggling with friends over brunch. It’s the silly happy drunk with life and martinis and stories to share.

At the start of January I was drunk. Slap happy drunk and full of good thoughts and feelings. I kept refilling my glass and grooving around so feuled by pure energy that I thought it would propel me to a year of awesomeness. Then 11 days in, I fell on my ass. I wasn’t drunk and happy go lucky anymore. I was ornery, sad and surly. Convinced that I was destined to falter and fail. It was this crushing failure that rears its ugly little head every once in awhile. The time that burns and turns everything inside into something the consistency of sawdust.

But I do that a lot – I get swept up in the moment, lose my footing and then fall. It’s not just the wine but its how life is. Going through motions and enjoying things, bobbing and weaving and yeah, you fall on your ass. I fall on my ass more than I would ever like to admit. You fall, you might puke, you might even get a hangover but you have to keep going. It takes a few weeks but until one day you sit at a table with your friends laughing over martinis. Remembering why you do the things that you do and that even when you have those awful bad days that are so hard to bear that tears prick your eyes that there is the good.

So sometimes I get drunk I fall on my ass. And instead of laying there whimpering I get up again and eventually throw my head back and laugh because it never fails that there are these people around me who help me up again and support and I lean on them to something better just around the corner.

Also posted in Strait-jacket | 7 Comments