This post was inspired by this. I turn 30 four weeks from today. ***
Drag queens.
London. Busted lip and tits out. Acting in a garden. Grateful. Berkeley. Apartment
8. Making out all night. Walk of shame. Fiona Apple and scraping paint.
Flappers to Rappers. Call the cops. Climb up my balcony. Shots shots shots
shotsshotsshots. Cacophony. Splattered walls. Best friends. Going to class
hungover. He told me he was sad and I was the only person who would understand.
Falling in love with the wrong person. Writing songs. Running away. Smoking
weed and listening to Jeff Buckley. Food poisoning stoned. I need him. Breaking
down over the sink because I felt ugly. Hooking up with a freshman. Making art
and graduating. New York City.
Is this still home? Sublet in Brooklyn. Unemployment saga #1. Soliciting for
the North Shore Animal League for two weeks. Iced coffee with half and half and
sugar. 12 hour days on my feet outside in August. Quitting. 23 interviews in 4
months. Chinese food for lunch and dinner. Living on Luna bars. Dripping sweat
under a skylight. Watching Starting Over
with Iyanla Vanzant and Garden State.
Bleeding out money. Storms, dripping ceiling, fly infestation. Soho loft.
Commuting on the F train. East 66thStreet and York Avenue. Filing for
hours and ordering pizza for office lunches. Reading blogs. Mom leaving 2nd husband. Sobbing on a train platform. Frequenting
Off the Wagon near NYU specifically to make out with boys in corners. None called.
Smoking cigarettes on lunch breaks and my commute. Convinced I needed to go to
a mental institution. First and only black out on New Year's Eve. Apartment in
Park Slope. Bar up the street. Within walking distance of childhood home but
feeling a world away. Starting a blog. Heavy heart. Self-hate. Feeling lost and
alone. Writing to soothe. Crying on the train home from a bar. Deciding to
leave New York. There is nothing for me here. Grad school? Revelation of
future. Volunteering with kids, and I can breathe. Quitting my job. Moving
across the country. Again. San Luis
Obispo. No money. Living with mom. White wine and American Idol. Three
productions in eight months. Fast and furious connections. Becoming a gym rat.
Feeling hot. Grad school! Boston! Is this home? Apartment down the street from
my cousin. Who are your people? Why are you here? What is your work? Joining
Facebook. Breakdowns in class; I don't know if I can do this. Debilitating
anxiety. Talks about race and age and sex. Letting go. Teaching at camp, which
fulfills a decade-long dream. Teachers drink. Student teachers drink more.
Writing a play. Revealing a wish to be myself. Crying in despair and grief over
chicken nuggets. Champagne and cookies to console me. Graduation and tattoos.
Another summer at camp. The room changes when I am in it. Unemployment
saga #2. Hours-long interviews. Commiserating at McDonald’s. Chin hairs and
lactose intolerance. Elle is born. Defending my work experience. Feeling proud
but frustrated. Writing a novel. Fighting for a dream job and getting it.
Online dating. Falling for an alcoholic. Redhead. Gaining confidence in my
work. Getting a smartphone. Heartbreak and heart full of kids. Discovering and
gaining pride in my body. Hooking up with a cheater. And then another one.
Living with an alcoholic. Kicking both alcoholics out of my life. Brunette.
Trampolining. Yoga. Excelling in my work. Finding my voice. Always learning. Feet
on the ground and head up. Moving forward steadily.
This was the first week in over a month where I felt like I could breathe for part of it. I got a lot done but also spent a lot of time with the kiddoes.
Even though it's currently under 60 degrees out and raining, we are beginning to plan summer in earnest. Too weird that it is almost June.
Also, I was chosen to chaperone a trip to Disney World with seven teens at the end of August.
NO BIG DEAL!
11-year-old girl: What's kudos? Is that a kind of booger?
8-year-old boy: I can't use the phone. It keeps making distraction noises!
10-year-old boy: LOOK, ANNIE! *sniffs* I'm sick!
Me: What are you doing?
16-year-old boy: Standing on a chair. Acting like George Bush.
14-year-old girl, to 12-year-old friend: You know what ROD stands for?
12-year-old girl: Ride or Die.
14-year-old girl: You know what SOS means?
(silence)
16-year-old boy, to his friend, who was complaining about not getting chosen to go to Florida: You need some bricks to build a bridge and get over it.
Colleage, about me: She will find what ever problem is happening in my brain with her eyes.
All I want after this week is to run away for a weekend, hide in a hotel in a town I've never been, turn my phone off, and have quiet time.
I didn't expect it to be such a breakneck-speed week AT ALL, and that's the hardest kind of week to get through. The unexpectedly busy one.
It was a week of long meetings, frantic phone calls, catching up on paper work, planning final projects, and one special event.
Fewf.
My 11-year-old twin wrote a story this week:
"The Amazing Life of Annie Kee"
(In yellow marker) On a warm summer day, Annie likes to cuddle with friends.
(In green marker) On a cool winter night, Annie likes to sing Christmas songs.
(In red marker) On a warm spring day, Annie loves to sing Backstreet Boys.
(In purple marker) On cold falls, Annie likes to eat chow mein.
Me, commenting on a colleague's relationship status: I don't think he's ready for marriage.
11-year-old girl: I'm not either.
11-year-old girl: I don't want to turn 12! I want to be 11-teen.
9-year-old boy, as I made faces at him on the bus: You look like you're getting beat up by an elephant...You look like you're beating up an elephant...Just with your face...Strong enough to fight a lion!
It was actually remarkably quiet and relaxed. I spent most of it reconnecting with my office mates and spending time with the teenagers, as they prepared their applications for summer employment.
That's right.
I said SUMMER.
Itissoclose.
12-year-old boy: OW! My kidneys! (as he falls on the stairs)
Me: Your kidneys are in your back.
8-year-old boy: I got kidneys in my back. (flops onto the floor)
Me, to a 7-year-old girl, who was throwing her body around the office: What's wrong with you?
Girl: I like to dance!
8-year-old boy: (after an epically long story about bugs) I had to stay calm so the bee wouldn't smell me.
8-year-old boy: (quietly and to himself) I'm a buttface.
16-year-old boy: Who's Franklin Duh-LEE-no?
Me: Franklin Delano? He was President of the United States?
Boy: Oh! I thought it was some Spanish dude!
Me, as we were discussing (jokingly) whether a 16-year-old boy (who was present) was autistic: He has everything else neurologically wrong with him.
Boy: And everything else neurologically RIGHT!
Tomorrow is our annual fundraising event, which we hold on-site, featuring all our programs, a cocktail hour, video program honoring two students, live ask, auction, and dancing.
The week of the event is always difficult, since we're all scrambling and working extra hours at the same time that we're still serving all the kids in the building all week. The day before the event, though, is a straight work day, no kids.
Today was a 13-hour day, in which I cleaned chalkboards, staged an art room, hung a gallery of artwork, set chairs, cleaned, and set up a store of stuff designed by our kids.
It's like tech week in a day.
But it's all worth it FOR THE KIDS!
Me, to 14-year-old boy: You're sweaty!
Boy: No, I'm not. I'm human.
Colleague, announcing the start of structured programming: PICK IT AND STICK IT! LIKE YOUR BOOGERS!
12-year-old girl, while playing Life: Can I buy a baby?
10-year-old girl: It's hot, and I'm sweating in...places.
Elated that the
19-year-old 2nd suspect in the Boston Marathon Bombings has been
captured and that he’s alive.
But I don’t know. I
just feel heavy-hearted.
Having a day off of
work on Monday felt like a great, little gift, as we’re ramping up for our
annual fundraiser and I have a 6-day-work week next week. So I slept late and
got up to clean and do laundry and was getting ready to leave my house to go
shopping downtown when I saw a tweet about Boston.
There were barely any
details posted at that point, though I did quickly discover that explosions had
occurred at the finish line of the Boston marathon.
Messages, texts, and
tweets poured in the rest of the day, and I came to learn that everyone I knew
was somehow safe, some by the skin of their teeth, some because they had
straight dumb luck.
Everyone seemed to have
stories of very close calls.
I spent most of Monday
afternoon sitting in front of the news, clutching my phone, shocked that this has
had happened here. Violated and stunned that the square I walk through twice a
day on my route to and from work had become a “killing zone.”
This was way too close
to home.
This was home.
I was disheartened to
see that by the end of the day, Twitter had seemed to forget about Boston. And
I was even more upset at myself for thinking, “Oh, I’ve already seen this
footage,” after viewing the same harrowing scenes over and over on the news.
This was the definition
of desensitization.
I was surprised that
work was open the very next day and braced myself to field tons of questions
from all the little inquisitive minds I encounter at work, but we were all
strangely reticent about Monday.
Like we didn’t want to
think about it. And if the kids didn’t ask any questions (and even if they did),
we weren’t going to press it.
By Thursday morning,
and the news of an (unrelated) death in my circle, I was overwhelmed and angry.
Uncertain that I’d make it through another day of pasting on a smile and
pushing through whatever confusion and anger I was feeling.
It turns out we were
all operating under a tenuous sense of hope because we woke up this morning to
a totally different city.
After checking my phone
as soon as I woke up (before 7:30 all this week because of April vacation hours
at work), I jumped out of bed to watch the news with my roommate.
Men in bomb suits were
detonating bombs near the Park and a suspect was on the loose.
Boston was on lockdown,
residents were urged to stay barricaded in their houses.
The story unfolded slowly
over the course of a very strange day.
15 hours later, after a
stand-off in Watertown and the suspect taken into custody after being on the
run for 28 hours, I have peeled myself away from the TV to reflect in silence.
It feels like the world
will never be the same.
9/11 happened in my
hometown when I had already lived across the country for 4 years, and watching
NYC pick up the pieces from so far away was difficult and impressive.
Boston is my adopted
home, and its resilience and spirit and feeling of community have been
astounding.
I feel proud of all of
the acts of kindness and bravery that were performed all week.
But I also feel like I have
truly lost my innocence. Explaining the situation this morning to my mother,
using terms like “IED strapped to his chest,” “homemade bombs thrown out of the
car,” “dead suspect run over by his brother,” I said as much to her.
I couldn’t believe I
was saying such phrases with moderate emotion.
And besides that, when
everyone sees a terrorist, I can’t help but see a boy.
A boy who had such a
good reputation with his friends and coworkers and colleagues that all we heard
all day was how shocked everyone is that he was the man on the run. A boy who
ended up bleeding and hiding in a boat in a Watertown backyard.
I know only he has the
answers to some of our terrorized city’s questions, and I know that him being
taken alive means we might get them.
But I can’t celebrate
tonight.
I’m too tired.
And the world feels way
too big and bad right now.
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