what are little girls made of?

So like a total weirdo, I am currently obsessed with weddings. Partly I blame Etsy, because they sent me an email containing the single most beautiful (and custom... and afforable!) wedding dress I have ever seen. Partly I blame my recent intense unhappiness, because what is better when you are unhappy than fantasizing about a day when you won't be unhappy, when ostensibly you'll be as far from unhappy as few people ever are? Or whatever. I'm bored therefore I want to get married.

Actually, it makes perfect sense. I am not one to run off to Vegas with the first meathead who would have me, so the idea of a wedding or marriage encapsulates a lot of what I want and where I want to be. If I am getting married it'll be because one, I am in a functional and strong relationship and madly in love, and two, because financially and materially, I am at a point in my life where having a nice wedding and a marriage and being a real person are achievable, tangible realities. Does that even make sense? Like, if I can afford a wedding, if I have found someone who wants to marry me despite my readily apparent insanity, if I am secure enough in my own accomplishments and financial situation to join my life- like, mentally and economically- with another person in an equal partnership... well, that would be an awesome place to be, I think.

My friends look down on me for loving weddings and the idea of marriage. They think it is hopelessly naive and old fashioned and a real character flaw that I look forward to getting and being married. My friends are generally cynical assholes though, so who cares what they think anyway. I think it's sad to expect all marriages to end in divorce- not that I am unaware of the current state of the institution, but just because the grimness is real doesn't make it any less pitiable. I don't think I have unrealistic, Disney-fied expectations of love and marriage. I have seen what marriage looks like on a day-to-day, stressed-over-money, no-sex-having, failure-to-communicate-on-a-regular-basis-basis. Yes, I too have parents, and their marriage is dysfunctional as hell. What's funny is that apparently, miserable as they are most of the time, their marriage is the one outlasting all of their peers, so maybe it isn't as miserable as all that? Parents, who knows man.

Marriage seems like a great adventure to me. Like, there's this person, and he thinks you are so great that he wants to be a part of the day to day shenanigans of your life, and for a long time. And you are partners, and you're there for each other, and even when it's a slog, it's still kind of fun because this person is your best friend and you get to see him and talk to him every day. And you can grow together and change together, and see the world together, and what's so terrible about that? About having someone to depend on, someone who cares about how you feel and wants you to be happy and you want him to be happy? Ok so getting a little cornball there, but at the same time it's all true. And I am totally in the Laura Kipnis school of thought that says marriage and love should not be work, that these beautiful and transcendent connections we forge with other people should not be hijacked by the lingo of the industrial revolution. It should be play, not that I don't imagine it's at time challenging and painful play.

I would like to believe that love can last a lifetime. I don't see why not. I am going to love my sisters for the rest of my life. Even when I hate them I love them, I don't have a choice. They are as much a part of me as my lungs, or my spleen, and only in part because we share blood. Marce and I share no blood, but she is my sister as much as the other two. Because we grew up together, and we are growing up together, and even when I thought we had gone our separate ways, the ties weren't quite severed all the way and today I doubt they ever will be. Sure it sounds kinda like a curse, this incurable love. And maybe that's what it is, and that's how it should be. I am cursed to love them and so I do and will. Why can't the same kind of thinking apply to romantic love? I will love you, husband, for ever, because I do and I must and I have no choice. Two people with their eyes wide open, knowing the perils of it all and still choosing to live their lives together and try against all odds to be happy- that is damned romantic.

I mean, to an extent anyway. If you think about it too hard you start to realize that marriage is like children in that any idiot can have one, and many idiots often do. On somewhat of a sidenote, a friend of a friend of mine recently got married and stuck her pictures all over facebook, and you gotta realize too that really ugly people get married all the time. Which sounds shallow and horrible, but goddamn man. You shouldn't wear blue eyeshadow up to your eyebrows just in general, but especially not on your wedding day. And it's like, why bother making the effort to look nice if any ugly old schlub out there can get married and you can't? Or just haven't, I guess. Not that I want to right now necessarily. It's just that seeing so many people I know- people my same age and all- get engaged and get married, it always throws me.

Hmm. So what was the point again? Oh yes. I am bored with my stupid life, can't wait to fix it, and I love that dress. Also, I think it's funny that Chris talks about us getting married even though we've been together for all of ten minutes. Knowing that he also planned to marry a certain ex of his, whom I know from close experience to be insane and also ugly, I can't take him seriously, as much fun as it is to talk hypotheticals. And, I wouldn't marry him anyway because there's no point in marrying a lawyer; they never have time for you anyway.

rage, rage against the dying of the light

i will be first to admit, and with little remorse, that i am a savage and i speak like one too. last week, on a rant about useless pseudo-celebrities, i referred to kim kardashian and her sisters as walking, well-shaped holes who need to shut up and get fucked, and stay out of the public eye. because, well, let's face it, it's the truth. these past couple of weeks, i've been referring to our class as "those retards"- not the autistic kids i work with closely, but the other kids, the "normal" kids in our mainstream class who act like a.d.d.-addled monkeys. i'm on this fairly intense "hating children" kick, truth be told. they're all stupid and i can't believe i ever wanted one at any point. proof that i too am stupid.

well, so anyway, i am oviri and i fucking well like it like that.

judith warner's blog in the new york times today, titled "i feel it coming together" is about watching her kids come into their own and the passing of the flame. the flame of life, know what i mean? because she's forty-something, because her kids are hitting the teenage years, because she's... well, because she is a fucking idiot she sits around sniffling about how beautiful it is that she's done with longing and intensity and how sweetly nostalgic it is to see her daughter so full of potential, blah blah blah. seriously? is this what we aspire to as human beings? to have kids and drop out of the flow of things? to have kids and be done with longing? to have kids and "hit a plateau- not so bad after all that"- except it is bad! a plateau?? to stop growing and changing and wanting and fighting and raving and screaming and thinking and being conflicted and being exhilarated etc etc? never. never ever ever. i never ever ever want to be THAT person. sitting around, fat and content, waiting for the grave. not in way that denies aging- i will be old someday, someday not too far away, really, because our lives are short and our bodies deteriorate, whatever modern attitudes and science say about the matter- but i will never be old and decrepit and without longing in my head, where it matters. may i drop dead before that happens.

since i have known myself, i have been a conflicted, questioning, seeking, writhing mass of doubts and pieces that don't quite fit and passions that don't make sense, and yeah, sometimes i am unhappy. sometimes i have the luxury of being the unhappiest person IN THE WORLD. sometimes i am full of rage and i want to hit things and curse the universe at the top of my lungs and bleed. sometimes i am sadder beyond the depth of the ocean, hurt unto feeling it like physical pain. sometimes i am deathly afraid of the future and all the things i don't know and all the paths i might take that are wrong and stupid or right and stupid. sometimes, i feel like the stupidest, most worthless person in the world, and even when i am feeling at the top of the world, i know that i will feel that other way again and not too far off. since i have known myself, i have been the type of passionate person whose hackles are up in an instant at a whiff of injustice- a starving, beaten dog, a homeless person, war and famine in some distant part of the world- however cushy and sweet my own life may be at the moment, there's enough going on in this marvelously shitty world of ours to feel angry, discontent, driven about SOMETHING at any given point in time. does having kids mean not feeling this way, being this person anymore? i don't see why it has to, and yet it so often DOES.

having kids makes you conventional. having kids makes you boring, it makes you stupid, it makes you unhappy. having kids makes you OLD. like, in a bad way. because, ok, children are magical and fantastical and watching them grow is like, a miracle of nature and divinity, right? only like, not. maybe if they're your own. working with kids has made me feel that our species would be better off petering slowly into the void, but then i am a terrible over-reactor, so who knows. i mean, a lot of it is probably just that only stupid people are breeding, and no one seems to be big on actually parenting their offspring anymore, and half of the kids in the world are autistic because of vaccines or milk or the way we kill chickens, or whatever, but still. what if those people are only stupid because they had kids and not the other way around? nnnngh. i don't know. sometimes, like when i'm driving, i am convinced that 99% of the human race is retarded, while at other less harrowing times i think that i am just a conceited, self-centered shit and that by sheer strength of probability, most people are smarter than anyone gives them credit for being.

i guess what it comes down to is this, which may be naive, and it may be cliche, and it may also be the only true thing that i know: i don't want THAT. i don't want a normal life, i don't want to be a normal person, i don't want to grow up and get married and have kids and let that be that because whatever emerson may have said well, contributing a healthy child to the world is not the same pinnacle of achievement as a redeemed social condition or even a healthy garden patch. having a healthy child, especially nowadays, is a miracle unto itself, but it's also the most normal and mundane thing in the world, something that idiots do all the time BY ACCIDENT. while i am not one to deny my animal status and slavery to genetics and the machinations of nature and design, i also refuse to bow down and deny that everything about us that doesn't matter is precisely what is best about us and what i want to glorify with my entire life and not just my heated, chocolate-scented words. my children, should i ever have them, will not define me, will not be the end of what i contribute to the world, they won't be the best i contribute to the world, even, though maybe they'll tie with whatever else i do, because if i have kids, i will want them to be amazing and good people too.

i guess this is working up so much because i'm like, frustrated with life and myself, and also with what feels like pressure to do what i "should" do, even just a simple, "don't say that, who knows where you'll be in ten years, you may want kids before then" is like an icepick in my skull lately. having kids done right takes time, people, time i'd rather be using to figure out my own life first. have kids too young, you'll just fuck 'em all up is what i always say, and i know this from experience because my own mother was practically a child when i was born. because while i happen to like myself, mostly, i'm also aware that yeah, i'm kind of fucked up. that's alright though, i like having stuff to work on.

in any case, now that my heart rate has slowed a bit, i will admit too that the prospect of having kids is terrifying in a thousand different ways besides just making you a zombie. pregnancy? miraculous and GROSS and terrifying. childbirth? gag me, please, i love my vagina just the way it is now. will the kid have a tail? will he be... you know, healthy and sane and normal? will he look like my inbred-looking cousin (who talks and thinks like someone whose mom and dad were related, in addition to being hideous- though my parents assure me that i'm just an asshole and his parents were not, in fact, brother and sister)?? what if the little fucker gets all of my bad stuff and none of my good stuff and then i can't stand him despite the fact that i'll be compelled to love him because he came out of me? god, what if he's ANYTHING like those little fucking beasts i teach! perish the thought. it's unfortunate that i love babies so much, because babies grow into, you know, children and people and stuff. i think, though, that IF i ever decide to give in and do the damn thing, WHEN i have lived a lot more and feel prepared to balance everything and not be a boring zombie creature, BECAUSE i am a wild thing, i will make a damn fine mother, and be nothing at all like poopy judith warner and her pathetic, infuriating resignation in the face of life. life, i roar my terrible roar and gnash my terrible teeth in your fucking face.

see my heart, i decorate it like a grave

i have hit, officially, definitively, with a skull-crunching thud, the wall. The Wall, that is. the wall against which all is sound and fury, every motion a study in the futility of existence, every sigh and convulsively clenching fist a tragedy on a grand and minor scale simultaneously.

my life, my twenty four year old life, is like a hobo in tatters on the street corner, begging with tears in his eyes for change. while i have never been one to deny a hobo change, in fact being the sort of person who, if ever a hobo directed his tear-filled eyes at me, would give him every penny i had on me and maybe some jewelry too, despite the fact that costume jewelry and sterling silver probably wouldn't be too much help to a hobo, it is much, much harder to provide change for my own sad annoying little life.

in many ways, it has been like this ever since graduation. life after college is like hitting pause during a movie just as it was getting good- if you're anything like me, anyway. i studied history, i wrote a lot of papers, i enjoyed the hell out of learning stuff, and only occasionally, in moments of existential panic, worried about finding a career, much less a job, when the inevitable end came. history! no wonder my parents glower accusingly at me whenever talk of my college days come up. if it were up to them, i'd be in law school, having done pre-law, or med school, having done pre-med, or engineering, or computer science, or something ANYTHING useful and applicable to the real world. bastards. instead, here i am, 24, a smart kid, no doubt about it, lacking any useful knowledge or experience, incapable of imagining a day when going to work doesn't feel like a march towards the gallows, living at home again, suffocating.

i'm pretty sure that i'm actually chock-full of useful skills that have just never really had cause to see the light of day. i'm a good writer, this whiny, depressive blog aside, i am a terribly quick learner. being a virgo, i am in possession of an attention to detail that is almost a medical illness, it's so intense. being a hideously impatient person (except for when it counts, natch), i am efficient in whatever task i am assigned. i have customer service skills oozing out of every orifice, practically, i worked so long in retail (customer service skills being the ability to grin and bear it, and to say "have a nice day" in such a way that the recipient of this cheerful phrase understands it only subconsciously as "die in a thousand flaming fires"). i can talk to almost anyone, and be jovial, and make friends, to which my unlikely friendship with the jehova's witness girl at work can attest. i like to be busy, do well in high-stress situations, can speak three different languages, type reasonably fast, am ridiculously well-read for my age group, anyway, have opinions about almost everything, and a brain like a rusty steel trap, that gleans and synthesizes information from every angle. so what exactly is the problem here??

shitty economy aside, that is. useless degree aside also, that is. i should be working at something that involves brainpower and creativity. i should spend my days if not improving the human condition then at least feeling useful, like i contribute something good to the world, something amusing or informative or inspiring in some way. i should be surrounded by people with whom i have things in common! god, the idea of a job where i get to talk to adults all day long seems so far-off and unreachable. where would i like to work? i don't even know. yes, that is a lie. for started anyway, to get experience and contribute to something i enjoy fiercely, i would like to write. like for an independent newspaper, something like the l.a. weekly or something. i'd kill- KILL- to work at pixar. because, ok, they make children's movies. but they are children's movies that i LOVE love love love with a love that is more than love. pixar studios makes art, beautiful, accessible, art that makes me- and lots of other people- happy. if it meant i spent the day sharpening pencils for john lasseter, i would work at pixar and be happy as a clam in delicious delicious chowder. i would love to work in a library, the whole no library-science degree having aspect of myself aside, because i love libraries, love books, love people who read, and can spend a day happily wandering around organizing books, ordering books, recommending books, pointing a shotgun at conservatives who want to burn books, etc. etc. hmmm. that's starters, anyway.

i could spend the day running around some shitty paper's offices, the daily breeze, say, writing copy for local cake bakers, and still feel more fulfilled than i do now. i am too young for this shit. and too old, really. it's like julie powell wrote in 'julie/julia', about how for someone like her, and me, the options were either to spend her twenties working ridiculous hours at some soulless bigshot corporation, snorting coke and explosively fucking a variety of rich men, or living in a loft somewhere, making self-centered bullshit, calling it art, making lots of money, getting high, and explosively fucking a variety of slightly smellier rich men, but somehow she ended up married at 24, working as a temp til she was thirty, waiting for her ship to come the fuck in. jesus. i get no big-shot or artistic job and no explosive fucking. i may not be a temp, yet, but by golly do i relate to that girl.

why, life, do we only get answers once we no longer have need of them? what good is it going to do me to look back at my life in ten years and go, duhhhh, clearly that's what i needed to do (and hopefully i'll have done the right thing)? le sigh. it's back to craigslist for me, looking for a new job when what i need is a goddamned clue.