Excuses, Excuses

Odds are you have heard – if not been given – the excuse “I was drunk” at some point in your adult life. Odds are on some level you thought to yourself, “What a bullshit excuse,” and I would be right there with you.

Now that doesn’t mean that once or twice in my life my mindset has not been more like this:

There is a certain amount of flattery in knowing that you’re on someone’s mind, especially at his or her most vulnerable state. I admit it.

However in the past few months, I have heard this excuse a few too many times for that to still be the case 100% of the time. It came from a couple people in different scenarios and through different mediums. Essentially, they contacted me and then blamed it on the alcohol (cue music).  When I asked them why they contacted me, they said, “Sorry, I was drunk.” That’s it. And it got me thinking because that really didn’t answer my question. Judging by the hour and the content of the messages (not to mention, the fact that there had been contact made at all), I had already deduced that alcohol had been a key element to them reaching out to me. However, that still did not answer my question of why.

Alcohol answers the question of how. It can do a lot of things and make a lot of things seem like a good idea –Brad Paisley sings about a few of them. Brad’s point and mine is that alcohol effects our judgment and lowers our inhibitions, making it entirely possible for us to say…get naked or drunk dial our boss to tell him or her exactly what we think of him or her when we would normally either go great lengths to not do these things in public…or not do them at all. Ever. 

So while alcohol very likely acted as the agent that lowered their inhibitions enough to allow them to break a long-term silence, it was not the reason they thought of me or sent me a message in the first place. I am sure they had been drunk countless times before in that span of silence and had managed to restrain themselves from making contact. Therefore, there is a reason that was not the case this time. So what changed?

Being drunk is not a valid excuse or reason for doing something. So many people try to use this as if it were and I think, 1) if you’re conscious enough to think of me, look into why I popped into your head in the first place, 2) if you’re lucid enough to type in your passwords, get to my contact information, and type a message or press a button, you know exactly what you’re doing and why in that moment, so 3) don’t insult me by using some lame excuse to justify and/or dismiss your actions. Don’t be a coward. Own up to what you said or did, or just don’t say or do it at all, ya know? What’s the point if you don’t? You haven’t saved any face by making excuses; you’ve already made a fool of yourself by waiting until you’re drunk to reach out to me.

Now I understand that everyone has moments of weakness. I understand that in the moments after you wake up and realize what you did you will feel like the Plain White T’s and wish you had just gone to bed. Perhaps you should have, but you didn’t and here we are. So wouldn’t it be better to just get the truth out instead of trying to sweep it under the rug? I will respect you more for it. Hell, even if you take the route of the Eli YoungBand and admit it could’ve been anything – a girl that looked like me, a fluke, a full moon, or a song on the radio. At least they are more creative and added reasons along with “I got a little drunk last night” before they offer the truth: “It's off my chest, but never off my mind.” I could accept that but, again, that’s not what I got.

It seems to me that all this technology we have literally at our fingertips– texting, Facebook, Twitter – has allowed people to pretend they’re not accountable for their words or actions. It has removed the reality of the effect their words or actions have on the other person (in this case, me) because they don’t have to hear my voice or look me in the eye and face what they did. Instead, they can volley some lame excuse up into the ether such as, “Sorry, I was drunk” and believe that it’s enough.

It’s not. It’s insulting. And all it does is leave me wondering, “What do you want from me?” 

Part 2: The Impact

We were stopped again. Half in the lane, half not.

Adrenaline coursed through my veins as I tried to look around and take stock of the situation. I had to find my phone. We needed the cops and probably ambulances. I wasn’t sure if everyone was okay. I looked for it frantically as my Dad and I both asked if everyone was all right. My Mom and I both said yes and he was out of the car like a shot.

“Oh shit!” came out of my mouth before I’d even thought it completely. I know my Dad well enough to know that he was going to be dangerously livid with whoever hit us and put us in danger. It will always be his first instinct to protect us. Knowing this, seeing his face, the fury in it, and the way he strode the distance between the two vehicles only proved me right. I threw myself across the backseat and all the clutter, opened the door only to realize I’d lost my shoes somewhere in the car during the crash. No time to look. I was afraid of stepping on glass should there be any and causing more problems, but I was prepared to walk over broken glass to keep my Dad from killing this guy. He had no idea what was coming his way.

My Dad ripped open the man’s truck door, pointed at him, and yelled a few choice words, which I approved of somewhere in the back of my mind.

I screamed to my Dad from the door of our truck. I knew he didn’t hear me over the roar in his ears or see anything but the red in his eyes.

“Daddy! Don’t!” I screamed, and – whether he heard me or not – I saw his mind instantly start to operate normally again. He said a few more words to the guy and strode back to us.

He moved the truck to the side of the road as two construction workers sprinted to clear the path in the cones for us and check on us.

All of this, every thought, every decision, every action took place in under 90 seconds at most. My Mom called the cops and seemed a little foggy and confused about it all. I just thought she was in a bit of shock. I was talking to her as my Dad talked to the construction workers, assessed the damage, and handled things with the cops once they arrived.

“Stay in the car,” he told us.

Of course, my Mom didn’t listen. She got out and walked to see the damage. He told her to get back in the car and I saw her coming back to get in. I was trying to straighten things up in the truck and find where everything had landed. I looked up as my Mom started to pass my window. My Dad and the two construction workers were standing just a couple steps away.

“Tony,” that’s all she said, quietly. Just his name. Then her body loosened. Her knees buckled and all three men dove to catch her. She seemed semi-conscious for about 2 seconds before her whole body went completely limp and her eyes closed.

“Tina!” my Dad yelled as they lifted her into the truck.

“Tina!”

“Mom!”

“Tina! Wake up! Tina!”

I choked back sobs as I grabbed her head to steady her neck in case it was hurt. I contorted my body to reach the button to lay her seat back.

“Tina!”

I was fighting to stay in control, to help one of the construction workers call for an ambulance, and the other and my dad to wake her up.

To hear my Dad put so much love into one word – her name tore me apart. I knew, as if I had ever doubted, how much he loved her and that if anything were ever to happen to her his world would be wrecked – completely.

Through the fear of losing her, my mind registered what I was seeing, processed and analyzed it in a way that I do, and all I could think was, “Damn, to be loved like that.”

She came-to within two minutes or so. She put her hand on her head immediately and asked what happened, then said she felt sick. I grabbed the first thing I could think of and reach (Cooper’s food bowl, which I dumped out), and thrust it in front of her face, grabbed her hair and let her throw up.

All of this took about 3 minutes. Those 3 minutes changed my life. To be honest, the less than 10 minutes all of this took changed my life, but those last few – they put everything into perspective.

They were hands down the most terrifying moments of my life. To see my mom go so limp, like the life had literally just been sucked right out of her was horrifying. To hear my Dad, screaming her name with all the terror and love in his soul, to see it in his face just ripped my heart to pieces. I was terrified that my mom was going to die, that we were going to be one of those stories where everyone is fine until they’re not and pass out and they never wake up.

The minutes and hours after were spent contacting family and friends, keeping them updated, giving medical personnel every piece of information they needed and I had at my disposal.

I had to take care of my family. Nothing else mattered. All the melodramas of my life, the sucker punch I’d been hit with earlier that morning didn’t matter. What did matter was my family. We were alive and okay. Bumped, bruised, sprained, and concussed, but alive.

There are a handful of moments in our lives that change its course.  In an instant, this wreck most certainly changed mine. It put into perspective all the little things I’d been sweating lately and reminded me what really matters: family, love, and living life to the fullest extent in the best I can. I cannot express to you the countless ways in which this wreck has impacted my thoughts, my priorities, and my life as a whole, but if I can tell you one – it is that I tell those I love and care about exactly what they mean to me, regardless of time, space, or circumstance because who knows what life is going to hit us with next?

Part 1: The Wreck

There are a handful of moments in our lives that change its course. Most times these are positive events – in retrospect, if not at the time of their occurrence. If we’re lucky enough, we are cognizant of them in the midst of their happening or in the moments immediately following.

I had one such event occur a little over a month ago on Saturday June 8^th in the middle of really one of the worst weeks of my life.

Wednesday, my family got word that our 12 year old cousin had passed away. The next day as we waited to hear about the funeral arrangements, my aunt called to tell us that our Granny (my dad’s grandma) had taken a turn for the worse. Friday, she called again and said they didn’t think Granny was going to make it through the night. She did. By then, the funeral arrangements had been made, and we were heading to Georgia and stopping by to say our goodbyes to Granny on the way.

Well…we didn’t get too far. About 3 miles South of Paducah, Kentucky to be exact. This is where we got hit with something else. I had just been dealt a personal sucker punch and was crying and talking about that with my parents when everything got thrown into a weird mix of fast-forward and slow motion.

I had been reading and stopped for a few minutes to check my Facebook (cue sucker punch) so I hadn’t been paying much attention to where we were or what was going on. However, somewhere in the back of my mind, it registered that we had slowed down. I figured construction and/or a traffic jam. It was both. Traffic stopped suddenly and my dad had to slam on the breaks, even though we were already going pretty slowly, to avoid rear-ending the car in front of us.

We stopped in time and had a second to breathe a sign of relief. My Dad and I both looked back to make sure no one was coming up behind us; he in his rearview mirror, and I by physically turning my upper body to see out of the back window. I always do this, as both a drive and a passenger because I like to know what’s coming.

The relief we experienced didn’t last long.

We looked back at the same time and saw a huge black truck coming in hot – straight at us at about 60 mph. I saw when he realized traffic was stopped and slam on his breaks before I quickly turned back around to face forward and my dad hollered out to us, “Brace yourselves. He’s gonna hit us!”

But it was already too late. He hit us at about 55 mph with us at a complete stop.

Everything happened so quickly. From the time we stopped to the moment of impact probably only lasted 10-15 seconds.

The sound of any crash is awful, but I’ve never heard anything like this one. Maybe because I was in it and so close to it since the truck bed was crunching and smashing directly behind me from the force of the GMC that rammed into us.

Stuff flew everywhere in the cab of our Ford F150. You know those scenes in movies or TV shows when the hero or heroine is involved in an accident and flip their car? They always let the other car be seen in real time, coming in fast toward the hero/heroine’s car, but they slow down the impact, the flip. The things, including and especially the people are floating weightlessly through the car for a few seconds in slow motion before they are put back in real time and are snapped back by their seat belts or are thrown from the car. Reality snaps into focus with the blink of an eye and then things move into fast -forward because people are rushing, rushing to see what happened and if everyone is all right. That is exactly how those few seconds happened for me.

I saw my dog Cooper laying on the center console between my parents in the front seat one second and the next – he wasn’t there anymore. Books, phones, cookies and donuts we had stopped to get from the bakery in West Frankfort: everything was suspended in the air until it smashed into something to stop its flight.

I saw my mom shoot forward at the impact, jerk as her seat belt caught, swing to the side, and smash her head against the window of her door. I’m not sure if I really heard her head hit the window or if I only imagined how it sounded, but I saw it – that much I know for sure. There was too much noise and chaos to know for sure. Real or imagined though, it was a horrifying sound I hope to never hear again.

I saw my Dad brace both hands on the wheel and concentrate on avoiding, once again, hitting the car in front of us. I didn’t spend much time worrying about this because 1) I trust him and his judgment implicitly, without question, and 2) it was out of our control at that point.

I fisted my hands, tucked my elbows, and put my body in a quasi-fetal position. The thought that crossed my mind in those seconds of impact were that if we were going to die I was glad I had written and given them letters telling them how much I love them, and how grateful I am for everything they’ve done and do for me, everything they’ve taught me. If we were or I was going to die, at least they’d know how much I love them.

I screamed as we were hit. Then it was over.

Call Me Old-Fashioned

I have spent a considerable amount of time over the past year pondering this, particularly over the last few months. So when I was asked recently what my top priorities in life were, my answer was immediate.

Love. Marriage. Family.

These have always been my priorities as well as my answers to that question, but as I grew - as I imagine is natural - they changed with the influence of the time I was growing up in, of friends, of family. In fact, when I was little, I remember people asking me what I wanted to be when I grew up, and my answer was always the same. A Mom.

Well as years went by, that answer changed - not in my heart, but in my words. It seems that saying what I really wanted out of life was no longer an acceptable answer in the eyes of the majority of our society. No siree. I was supposed to want to have a career of my own, make my own money, be "independent." and then settle down and have a family at the acceptable age (28-30). According to this way of thinking, I am to either want the sophisticated life of a businesswoman or that of a working mom. To say that a career came in lower than the first, second, or even third slot in my list of priorties was something to be balked at, pitied, and looked down on as if to say, "Oh you poor, simple girl" or better yet, "What's wrong with you? You have the priorities of a woman in the 1950s."

 

Call me old-fashioned, call me backwards, call me what you will, but when I am asked at the ripe old age of 85 what the greatest accomplishments of my life were, I can guarantee you that my answer will be finding the love of my life, having and raising my kids, and fostering the relationships that mean the most to me. If I accomplish something fantastic in my career, it will still come after these.

The relationships I have with my family and friends, with the man who I will one day marry and the kids we will have- these are my top priorities in life, but that does not mean I do not have lofty goals for myself in addition to these, I do. However, these are the things that matter to me the most and make me who I am, because without them I would not be who or where I am now, and I know they will continue to help shape me in the years to come. Everything else is extra. I will never look back and regret having fostered these relationships, loved the people I loved, or had the experiences I had because of them.

So if society or people I know pity me for wanting to share the tremendous amount of love in my heart with the people I care most about, for being "simple" in this way, I say go for it. To each his/her own. If you asked to give you an honest, true answer to what I want to be when I grow up, I'll tell you. It hasn't changed much. A wife and a mom.

By all means call me old-fashioned, I'll take it as a compliment. I'll be happy living my life the way I feel is right for me, loving the people in my life, and growing in ways I can't even yet imagine.  

If He's not Dating You...

It was the weekend after my birthday, and I went out with a group of my friends to celebrate.

Nicki, of course, had a plan for the night. It was the night before a home Rams game and she knew from her connections that the players, coaches, and staff always stay the night…and drink at the Hilton. This led us to 360 Bar on the roof of the hotel.

We started out outside (brrr) and then made the rounds of the bar to see who all was there. Sure enough, Nicki knew a guy on the Rams’ staff who was there drinking and our whole group was led into the VIP section where we drank for free the rest of the night. (Thank you, Nicki and the Rams! Happy Birthday to me!)

However – free drinks, VIP, and the Rams aren’t the main attraction of this story, a former NFL player turned staff/front office member La’roi Glover 

and love and dating are.

Now, you may look at this impressively sized man and think all we had in common was a love of football.

You’d be wrong.

I routinely get into conversations about what I find the most intriguing topic – how that person met their significant other – and the various topics that fall under its umbrella.

I spent the better part of two hours listening to how he met, wooed, and proposed to his wife, to his beliefs on how women (specifically a woman a man truly cares about) should be treated, and to what all of that looks like before he turned the tables on me.

“You just grilled me for the past two hours about my story. It’s your turn. So what is it, because I know you’ve got one!”

And, boy, did he have me pegged. He had me pegged well. I had a story. A particularly sad and pathetic one, but a story nonetheless, and it when a little something like this.

Boy and long-standing crush calls girl to come to visit since he just moved back to the Midwest. A tentative visit was discussed, “I’ll let you know when I’m coming into town.”

Girl goes to city, meets up with boy; they hit it off, and crush resurfaces with a vengeance. Girl keeps going back to the city to see friends…and crush.

Boy sporadically texts and calls girl. They see each other when she’s in town. But – dun dun dun – they’re not dating because boy has his reasons (and is still not quite over his last heartbreak/relationship she gathers). Blah, blah, blah.

You get the gist, just as I know you get that the overwhelming sensation of a long-standing crush coming to fruition can be intoxicating and debilitating to the senses.

Girl hung around and fell for nearly every line the boy strung out.

Lines were exactly what La’roi called them, among a few other choice words. He called bullshit on this kid’s whole story, his actions, and his intentions.

We had a come-to-Jesus moment right there in the middle of 360 Bar when he told me nearly verbatim more than one line from He’s Just Not That into You: “Run, don’t walk, away from this guy;” “He’s just not that into you;” “If he wanted to date you, he’d be dating you” were just a few…. And in true Gigi form, I made excuses: “But, he said this…” and “But, he did that…”

I knew he was right. He was a completely unbiased third party with absolutely nothing invested in how things did or did not work out. Therefore, his words hit me like a ton of bricks, which I tried to blissfully ignore.

It didn’t work.

His words were in the back of my mind, and, as time went by, they weighed on it:

“You are not going to be happy with this situation long-term. Hell, you’re already unhappy and miserable with it. You’re just trying to convince yourself you’re not. You’re lying to yourself, but you can’t lie to me, girl. I know you’re a hopeless romantic and you need all that other stuff that goes with likin’ and havin’ a man. I know you want and need those hearts and flowers, so why the hell are you wasting your time with this guy when you and I both know he’s not gonna give you what you need and want?”

Others just made me laugh:

“On the other hand, give this cat a taste of his own medicine and use him until someone better comes along who’s gonna treat you right, ‘cause someone’s gonna.”

(I opted to just stop speaking to him altogether, immediately.)

La’roi was the Alex to my Gigi (except we didn’t fall in love and start dating, obviously). He was the reality check I needed – from someone who could not care less or have less invested than a perfect stranger.

It took a couple weeks of mulling it over that looked somewhat like this


before the truth surfaced right as I came to the brilliant realization that La’roi and, okay, Nicki – I admit – were both right. The guy was full of shit.

As it turns out, boy had at least one other girl beside myself to whom he was undoubtedly dishing out the same lines.

Lucky for him, I was a few states away when my suspicions (which he had previously addressed and mostly squelched – by lying through his teeth straight to my face) were confirmed by a trusted and reliable source.

Lucky for me, I have great friends who
1) warn me when they see red flags from a guy,
2) give me facts and confirmation when they find out information on said guy, and
3) support and listen to me while I bitch that I fell for his string of lies (even partly).

But that’s not the only stroke of luck I had.

I learned my lesson (the hard way, yes, but I learned it) and cut my losses.

He is still oblivious to the fact that I know, and I let him believe I got bored and stopped talking to him, which of course, I did. I got bored with choking down lies and putting up with his lackluster attempts to create even a semblance of a quasi-relationship and still look like a good guy.

Well, buddy ole boy, your cover was blown – and thank goodness!

If my life and the four months I spent in graduate school taught me anything, it was to know when to say enough is enough and cut my losses.

So I did, without a second thought or any regrets, and I have only looked back to tell this story in the hopes that it helps another girl from repeating my experience and also because it all led me to where I am today – happy and in love with a great guy who treats me better than anyone ever has.

Thank you to my family, my friends, and La’roi Glover for listening, for giving me the reality check(s) I needed, and for pointing me toward the right dating pool (whether you knew or remembered it later or not).

**Spoiler: Don’t worry, there will be more to come on him and other related topics later!

The Rules Have Changed...and Left Us All Confused

Friday morning, I woke up after only pressing the snooze button twice, got ready, and rushed out the door to make it to work just in the nick of time. I got in the car, turned it on, backed out of the garage, and by the time the car was free of its home, I had changed the radio station from - YUCK - talk radio to the first FM station I could find. The Party.

Mornings on this station usually contain a lot of commercials and talk about celebrity scandals, hookups and breakups. However, this morning, unlike so many others, the conversation between the DJs grabbed me by the ears.

I didn't know it until later when my mom forwarded me the link to the New York Times article "The End of Courtship" that they had not come up with this topic of discussion all on their own.

All the same, I was hooked; even more so considering the fact that I had just gone on only the 7th real live date of my life. (I'm 23, so that gives me about 7 years of real dating time. That means I could have averaged one date per year since I was 16 and old enough to ride in cars with boys. Yes, that was a rule in my home, so that is where I start my "real" dating life.) 

Unfortunately for my generation as well as those up-and-coming generations, this is a tradition that is making its way to the highest shelves along with those of days gone by. Fortunately, I am not the only one to have noticed this, or to have experienced a lack of real dating in their life. Apparently, at least Alex Williams, among countless women sitting around with their girlfriends on countless Saturday nights bitching about men, dating, and their considerable lack of a love life have noticed, too.

The question of why dating habits and traditions are changing has been chalked up to the ever-increasing technological factor of our lives. The Internet. Cell phones. Text messaging. Email. Facebook. All of these conveniences are taking away the need for a “first date” and giving those entering the dating pool a false sense of intimacy.

I do it all the time. Just read my “Super Stalkers” post and you will see just how easy it is to find out information about a person from the internet. It’s crazy. I can look up a guy’s favorite bands, TV shows, movies, and who his friends and relatives are. I can see how he interacts with those people…specifically other girls.

What does that leave us to talk about? What if it’s a blind date? What does he have left to ask me or talk to me about because we both know that one or both of us has looked the other one up and already knows the answer to the question we’re asking (a personal pet peeve of mine). So why even ask?

Unless you have already known each other for a while and have established some sort of relationship or common ground whether that is a mutual friend or hobby or interest or background, these things can get pretty awkward. And that is a huge understatement.

If you’re anything like me, your lack of dating experience makes you mildly insecure, nervous, and unsure of how you’re supposed to act, what you’re supposed to do or say or talk about. I always struggle with letting new people (men or women, dates or friends) see certain sides of my personality in the beginning. It definitely depends on the comfort level and the environment.

Let’s face it. I’m weird. In fact, my sister tells me everyday – in the most loving way older siblings have. But it’s all about finding the weird that matches yours. With some men, my flirtatious, outgoing side is the first to be seen, with others, my sincere, quieter side. With still others, I am a complete and total goof ball. The man of my dreams can handle all of these sides of me and many more because, believe me, there are more. However, he must not merely be able to handle my countless quirks, and me but he must also embrace them and match me quirk for quirk.

Now finding this dream man is a herculean task in itself, and as my friends and family can attest to I have put serious effort into a lot of different types of men to find the right one for me. I don’t know if I have found him yet or if he’s still out there waiting somewhere wondering where I am, but what can be said about making our way to one another is that the dating game has different rules and standards.

In today’s world, men are not the only ones who make the first move. Some women, a lot of women even, ask men out before they are asked (just see my “There's a Reason Why Girls Don't Do This” post for the alternative outcome of that situation). Women are not stuck to the phone awaiting the call that may or may not come, though some are. Kissing on the first date is a personal preference to do or not do.

So many things are different from the way they once were that it seems as if all caution were thrown to the wind the minute the flower children entered the world and brought the children of the 90s to life. Oh, what has become of us?

Things are so confusing now! As someone who is routinely told by those who know me well that I am an “old soul”, yet who is also very much a product of the times I grew up in, it is even more confusing.

I am traditional at heart. I want to be courted. I want romance. I want thought to be put into a relationship with me. I want the effort to be made to seek me out, not as just another girl because his usual Thursday night booty call wasn’t available and he thought he’d see where I stood on that matter. (Here’s your answer: Call someone else.)

On the other hand, a traditional first date can be and is intimidating to me, especially if I don’t know the guy very well. I am very much a girl when it comes to these things. I agonize over what I am going to wear and what that outfit portrays about me and whether it is the message I am trying to send. I wonder if he’s going to like me, or my style, or my personality – not necessarily in that order. I wonder what we are going to talk about and what happens if we run out of things to say. I think about the end of the night – to kiss or not to kiss.

So, with all that said, group outings on the first “date” are definitely not on my list of “don’ts” for dating. Seeing a guy interact with other people, his friends, my friends, mutual friends, strangers, waiters, etc. gives me time to observe, to gauge his personality, his likes and dislikes and to decide if further exploration is worth the nerves of a first one-on-one date.

If in this stream-of-consciousness post you have not reached a conclusion about me, let me give it to you straight. I am just as confused as every other man or woman navigating the waters of the dating pool. There are plenty of fish in the sea, so they say. Yet, the way in which we catch the right one with just the right kind of weird as us is so different from ten, twenty, thirty, fifty years ago that we are left to doggy paddle our way through, hoping and praying like hell that we can keep our heads above water and not drown.

I have no idea what I am doing or how I will meet the man of my dreams.

If I believe my dad, I am going to have an unconventional relationship.

If I believe my favorite teacher, I will meet the guy, fall in love, and be engaged in six months.

Whoever is or isn’t right about how my love story will go, one thing is for sure – my dating experience has been and will be vastly different from the generations before me.

My question is: will things and people turn around at some point in the future, perhaps in my lifetime, and see the value in dating more traditionally?

A Sniff Down Memory Lane

“I just got back to work, sat down, and got a huge whiff of Water Baby.”

This is the email I sent to my sister after returning from the gym. We had just taken what we termed, The Insanity Class (not to be confused with the actual Insanity workout. I just found it insane and extremely difficult not to do the “easy” exercise options just to make it through the entire 30 minutes).

“You’re so weird,” she laughed at me.

“I know, but it really does. There’s a hint of My Little Pony, too, but mostly Water Baby.”

The same smell came wafting to my nose the next day. I thought it might have been one of my co-workers putting on some lotion, but there was no telltale rubbing of the hands.

I certainly wasn’t going to ask, which would only lead to me explaining, “No, it does not bother me. It just happens to smell exactly like my childhood doll, the Water Baby,” who was named - depending on the day – Julie, Sarah, Mary Kate, or Ashley. (Yes, all four of those names refer to the Olsen twins. The two former names were from a movie called To Grandmother’s House We Go. I was obsessed – with the movie, with Full House, with the Olsen twins. It was a phase. Who could blame me though, really? They were awesome when I was 5).

Anyway, the smell came again to my nose and I started sniffing around. Turns out, it was my deodorant (read: my sister’s deodorant that I used 15 minutes before). Mystery solved. Mary Kate and Ashley would be so proud.

So I emailed my sister to tell her that I figured out where the Water Baby smell had come from.

All she did was laugh.

However, the point of this little story is not that my sister owns and uses deodorant that smells like my Water Baby. The point is that this happens to me quite often, and, I am convinced, to others as well. The difference between said other people and me: I verbalize the smell and the correlation it made with a memory of a person, place, or thing in my mind as can be seen from the aforementioned anecdote.

I routinely walk unsuspecting down a street, into a room, past a store or a person, and am met with an onslaught of odors and fragrances that bring about just as many memories – most good, some not-so-good.

Just for fun I’ll give you some examples.

The classics: freshly cut grass, cupcakes just out of the oven, and the metallic smell of blood (okay, the last one may be odd, but anyone who has ever had a bloody nose knows exactly what I’m talking about).

The oddities: the smell of my childhood friend’s house; the natural musk mixed with the fabric softener of my ex; the cologne of my high school crush or grandpa; the play-dough and finger paints of pre-school;  the crayons and construction paper of kindergarten; the perfumes of my pre-school teacher, mom, and sister; the fishy smell of the Jack-and-Jill bathroom of my college dorm which I shared with two Asians (Don’t ask, I choose to believe it was the food they cooked in their room.); and rain coming on a summer evening.

There are undoubtedly more, but these are the scented memories that come to mind at a moment’s notice.

They – whoever they are – say that smell is one of the last senses we lose. I find this a comforting thought because so many of these smells are associated with fond memories I hold in my heart.

So next time you walk into a room or past someone and your nose leads you back down memory lane, follow it, and maybe share the story. You never know what good or laughter could come from doing so.

Good Little Girls Make Some Mighty Wild Women

There are times when I hear a song on the radio or my iPod and I wonder what situation, event or conversation inspired it to be written. Similarly, I am then inspired to make up a story in my head about how it came to be. Hours of entertainment can be and have been gleaned from this; And it’s exactly how I came up with the idea for this blog. As I listened to my iPod at work, I weaved a connection between the songs as they shuffled along.

            There come times in life when we are given more freedom than we’ve ever had before and the least amount of responsibilities than we ever will have. There are no parents, no curfews. No one cares if we stick to our commitments or not. It comes down to what we feel inclined to do or not do.

            This time for many of us comes in the form of college, for others it comes merely in the time post-high school graduation. It presents many opportunities and experiences to learn both inside and outside the classroom, to…experiment with our style, with our major, with alcohol and with sex. The combination of all this freedom and the lack of anything more than basic responsibilities to ourselves or anyone else is intoxicating. It leads to many new experiences, a lot of mistakes, and even more memories as we fumble our ways into adulthood - some of which look a little something like this…

            In many cases, this phase of our lives comes after years of strict self-discipline and a serious amount of repressed impulses. So when given the heady cocktail of freedom, opportunity and what may seem to be few repercussions for our actions, it is no wonder that Blue County can so aptly sing how “good little girls make some mighty wild women.” It’s all about these good, innocent, young girls who are their “momma’s baby” and their “daddy’s pride and joy” who then grow up and want to “take it to the limit”, giving into many, if not all of those previously repressed impulses.

            That is…until one day a certain boy walks into the picture and the lyrics to Carly Rae Jepsen’s “Call Me Maybe” start dancing in our minds as we run around for the next days and weeks with cartoon hearts floating out of our eyes. We will do everything the relationship bible, He’s Just Not That into You, says we should never do - like waiting by the phone for him to call. Because it is nearly impossible to not think that we are the exception when our hearts are so full of hope , we decide that we have to “keep on dreamin, even if it breaks your heart” just like the Eli Young Band tells us to. We believe that our lives have been put on some kind of serendipitous path to finding this person. We know, like Brian McComas and so many others before us, that we are “99% sure I’ve never been here before.” 

           How we can go from the freedom-intoxicated, sex-crazed coeds to the starry-eyed lovebirds looking for our first jobs and hearing wedding bells is beyond any other period of growth (mental, physical and emotional) we’ve experienced thus far and maybe ever will. We develop in leaps and bounds and realize in retrospect just how crazy, irresponsible and dangerous our behavior once was. It makes us wonder how we ever survived (relatively) unscathed, let alone made it out alive. Yet, it is always a good time to share and laugh about all the stories and memories we have of all those stunts and shenanigans we pulled back in the glory days when we had more freedom and less responsibility than we ever would again.

Gestures

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It was 360 days ago today that I sat in Fr. John Kavanaugh’s Philosophy of the Human Person class. Since that day I have been mulling over the subject of his lecture, always knowing that at the right moment I would write about it. That time has apparently come, so here goes!

I sat in the middle of the middle of the room – my favorite place to sit in nearly every class – listening to Fr. Kavanaugh start his lecture with a story of a boy and a girl. A natural storyteller and a wise man of 70 years or so, he drew us in to the tale of a pair of former students of his.

Unbeknownst to the other, both came to see Father to talk and get some advice within days of each other.

“Now this young man and woman had been seeing each other for a few months – and don’t think I don’t know what that entailed. I’ve worked on a college campus long enough and was young once, too. I know exactly how they were “seeing each other” and that’s just fine,” he explains as we all chuckle in our desks.

“Anyway, these two did everything together. They were friends outside of just seeing each other and they did what friends do: they went to lunch and dinner; they went to concerts and bars. Everything. This went on for months until the young man realized that he wasn’t doing this with any of his other friends that were girls and he didn’t want to. So, he came to me and told me what was going on, how he felt, and asked my advice.”

The young man didn’t want to be just friends anymore. He wanted to be her boyfriend, but also didn’t want to lose her as his friend by trying to change their dynamic. So, he kept his feelings to himself – against father’s advice – until one day, he couldn’t, anymore.

This was my favorite part of the story.

One day the two “friends” were walking and talking after class, the young man reaches over and grabs the young woman’s hand to hold.

She freezes, “What are you doing?”

“Holding your hand,” he replies.

“Why? You never hold my hand. We never act like this.”

She is freaking out because the dynamic of their relationship just changed, but why and how?

This is when she goes to Father to talk, asking what it means and what she should do. He tells her to take a look at why that one gesture was more intimate than anything else in the months they’d been “seeing each other,” and it’s also the point where the story and the lecture come together.

Gestures mean something. They can be misunderstood because no words accompany them to give an explanation. In the same vein, though, they can also give away our human intentionality. We speak all the time with only our bodies; from crossing our arms in anger or defense to holding one another’s hand or spontaneously  kissing someone – our emotions and intentions are revealed much more obviously than saying, “I’m mad” or “I like you.”

This is why the young woman was so freaked out by the man whom she’d been seeing, hanging out and doing everything that entails with grabbing her hand just to hold it on their way back from class.

It meant something.

This is something I’d known my entire life. A hand holding mine had never just been a hand. A kiss had never been just a kiss. And someone flipping me the bird had always conveyed more than words ever could. Yet, it wasn’t something I’d ever spent too much time examining – until this lecture. It was then that I realized I’d always guarded my own gestures for this very reason. A kiss meant, “I really like you.” Holding your hand meant, “I’m happy and comfortable with you and want to be close to you.” Flipping you the bird meant, “You’ve seriously ticked me off.”

And then came my wild year. My happiest year to date. The one where I sowed my wild oats…and then some. I was in the midst of that wonderful year when I sat, listening to Father talk about gestures and meaning and human intentionality, about how we can’t help but reveal how we are feeling in some way. And it’s true.

Even when I had the mindset of Avril Lavigne’s “What the Hell?" or Martin Solveig's “Hello,” 

I was still giving myself away through my actions and inside hoping that someone would come along like the young man in Father’s story who would give himself away by reaching out and holding my hand…or just grabbing me and kissing me soundly on the mouth to get me to see, “Hey, silly girl, I like you!”

After this lecture, I began paying even more attention to body language, gestures and interpersonal interaction. It’s been an interesting study and, although, I may have read more into some of these things than was there in some cases; I still found that the general statement held true.

Now as I’ve mentioned in my last post, my mindset has changed, my intentions are purer and my goals more wholesome. I’m no longer thinking “What the Hell?” (Okay, sometimes when I have a lot of pent up energy – flirtatious or otherwise – and am feeling a little reckless, but it’s fewer and farther between). Those profound and life-altering moments set me straight and now I’m back to a kiss being more than just a kiss, holding hands is more than a friendly, flirtatious way to stroll down the street and a look giving away the fact that I really like you.

So pay attention. You’ll know how I feel about you. I never have had much of a poker face.

Profound & Life-Altering Moments

It's been a long while since I put pen to paper, or fingertips to keyboard. I apologize both to you and to myself, but don't mistake the lack of writing for an inactive mind or life. In fact, take it as the exact opposite. I've spent the past six months in a state of deep introspection. I've done some serious soul-searching and what follows is some of my journey, some of my realizations and some of what will be written about next...

Life-altering events have a way of putting our lives into perspective, of making us take a look at who and where we are, how we got there and then asking ourselves if we're satisfied with our answers. Some life-changing moments happen decades apart and form who we're going to be for the next chapter of our lives: mine happened in the same week. In fact, they were 5 days apart and then a few months later.

Profound, life-altering moment #1: The Birth of Little Miss Sawyer Lynn.

People say that the birth of a baby changes you.  The assumption behind this statement is that said baby is your child. Well, you know what they say happens when you assume…Despite the fact that Sawyer is not my daughter, but my niece it did not stop my world from shifting the night she was born. What this precious bundle brought into the world by my sister and brother-in-law could never know upon her birth that she was forever changing her aunt’s life. No, I can’t just say changing. Sawyer set my life back on the track it was meant to be on. She saved me from myself and set my world to rights again. From the moment my sister told me she was pregnant to the first ultrasound picture to the day she blessed the world with her presence, I felt something in me begin to shift. Then came that text at 2:34 am – the one I missed because I’d passed out reading four hours earlier – and the phone call I answered while still asleep at just around 5 o’clock. She was coming! Finally, we were going to meet the newest member of our growing family!

What I didn’t know was that four the next 19 hours I would be having a revelation that started with the question, “What the hell am I doing with my life!” and ended with, “Nothing as important as this” shortly after I saw my sister and her husband held the first addition to their own little family.

I walked out of that hospital a changed woman.

And for the next few days all I could do was think about my life, where it was, where it was heading, and where I wanted it to go. All the while, I was packing up my campus apartment where I’d lived for the past year and a half (the first 12 months of which were the happiest to date). And here is where my second revelation came.

Profound, life-altering moment #2: Graduation

Also known as, “Holy Crap! I’m not ready to be an adult! How did this happen? I still don’t know what I want to do with my life! ….or at least that was what was going through my mind before, during, and after the big ceremony. I graduated from Saint Louis University in 3 ½ years, partially by accident, partially by design. Surprise, surprise to me the day I discovered I’d actually pulled it off.

So, hey big world here I come. Please be nice to me. And so far, it has been. I have a good paying job, a place to stay (rent free), a loving and supportive family, friends who ask me to visit with an open invitation to come and go as I please when I need to get outta dodge. I am blessed to say the least.

Blessed, yes. A saint, no. I am deeply human and all that entails. I want things to happen in my life. Big, splashy (to me, at least), exciting things like getting a great job I love, finding the man of my dreams, settling down, having lots of babies, getting published and becoming a world renowned, best-selling author.

Are these things happening, I asked myself as Fr. Biondi talked about our bright, successful futures as SLU alumni (because it is stated, not implied, that we will be nothing by successful as a result of our fine, well-rounded Jesuit education. Failure is not an option.). I answer myself no as I sit next to two people I’ve never seen on campus in my 2 ½ years at SLU. They aren’t happening because I don’t know what I want. At all. From anything or anyone. Especially myself.

Fast forward to months down the road. Yes, months. I am a slow brooder. My thoughts and feelings needed to brew and simmer for a while, that while equals months. Anyway, months later while sitting at lunch with my Dad in Royal International Buffet I crack open my fortune cookie – we have long ago accepted that I should live my life by the writing found between this sweet cookie-cracker – and I read, “No one can walk backwards into the future.” WOWIE!

Profound, life-altering moment #3: Is this like Freaky Friday when the wise Asian woman picks the perfect fortune for her customers or is the universe trying to tell me something?

I went with the universe. It seemed more plausible. In other words, it was trying to tell me, “Forget all the stupid crap you’ve done in the past 22 years, pick yourself up, dust yourself off, take what you’ve learned and use it to make your future look the way you want it to, Kaylin.” Like that picture of my sister’s family in the hospital, except it will be mine. Like Biondi’s graduation speech, except it will be fact, not hope or wishful thinking.

In light of these 3 profound, life-altering moments of clarity, I’ve decided:

1)     Family is the most important thing to me.

2)     I’m going to get my master’s and PhD then become a college professor whose class everyone wants to take.

3)     Love will come when it comes, but I am and I will be ready for it, even though I know it will probably knock me on my sweet little patootie.

In short, the world is my oyster.

Bring it on because I’m going to fill it with love and babies and books!

Self-Administered Therapy

Lately, I’ve had a lot of things on my mind and I’ve spent a lot of time thinking (and pretending not to think by means of distraction). I have spent this time taking stock of my life. From the things I have accomplished and the things I have done and seen and experienced to the people I have met, been friends with, learned to hate, and those I left in a trail of dust in the past.

I think it’s yet another one of those phases of life (one of the first and, undoubtedly, not the last) where I stand at a crossroads looking down all these different avenues I could start down and not having a clue in the world as to which is the right one or even what one is even remotely appealing…Hence, the stock taking.

It seems as though everyone I know is either,

a) finding the person of their dreams/getting engaged or married,

b) having a baby, or

c) already has a job/just found out they got a job.

Every time I log onto Facebook or talk to someone it’s, “Oh did you hear about so-and-so’s (fill in great life achievement here)?”

Me (even if I haven’t): “Yes, yes I did. Good for them.”

Me (what I’m really thinking):  I hate them on an elemental level for the next five seconds to fifteen minutes for getting something I want in life.

Nonetheless, what I’m ultimately trying to get at is this: I have been struggling.

Now, I am a relatively proud person so this doesn’t exactly taste good to admit, but it doesn’t make it any less true.

This is my confession:

I look around me and I see my friends and family happy, safe, healthy, and getting their just desserts. I look around me and I see people whom I love and admire accomplishing HUGE feats in their lives after overcoming immense obstacles and are better for it.

I look around me and I think, What in the hell have I been doing with my life? Partying? Wasting time thinking about boys who don’t matter and never will? Sleeping? Watching TV? Nothing?

I look around me and…I’m jealous. And I hate myself for it because I have prayed every night before I fall asleep that these things would happen for the people I love and care about. I pray that they would be “happy, safe and healthy. That they get everything they want, desire, need, deserve and so much more. That they meet and keep the person who is going to love, honor, respect, cherish, protect, defend, support, encourage, and balance them out” in the best possible ways.

God has answered my prayers. So what is my problem?

The answer: I’m human and I want more. I’m selfish and I can’t help but think, What about ME? What about all the good, great, grand, fabulous things that are supposed to happen to me and the person who will walk into my life and do that? Haven’t I hurdled enough obstacles yet to get just one of these things?

My response to myself: “Get over yourself because you have a good life, good friends and good family. You have your health, a great education, a part-time job and people who love and support you no matter what.”

And yet…I’m still not satisfied. Even with all these wonderful things in my life I still feel…less than.

On two occasions, I have attempted to express my thoughts and feelings on this subject to someone else: once to my mom on the drive back to the school I’ll be graduating from in exactly five weeks and once drunkenly to Nicki after one of my “distractions”...worked well, huh?

And here is the true confession:

I don’t feel as if I have accomplished as much in my life thus far as much as those around me or as I thought I would/could have. I have not had any flashy internships with a big corporation or a big name celebrity. I have not been published at the age of 18 like S.E. Hinton. I have not, in essence, done much – or at least that’s how I feel however accurate or inaccurate that may be.

The truth is I sell myself a bit short. I have come a long way from Little Rock, Arkansas where I was born or from Decatur, Illinois where I was raised. I have held a job(s) every year/summer/break since the summer before I turned 15. I have gotten good grades, taken honors, AP and higher level courses than were meant for my age, held multiple leadership positions and participated in sports throughout the majority of my education. I have maintained deep, meaningful, loving relationships with the people who matter to me most and add some new ones to that list. I have, also, managed to graduate college in three and a half years with a Bachelor’s degree, a minor and a certificate.

All of this and I’m still not satisfied. All of this and I don’t know how to fix the way I feel. I don’t know what to do and not knowing (anything) has always been hard for me. I like to know. I like to have a direction and a purpose. I like to know my place in the world and feeling like that place is somewhere doing something good for me and those around me. I like to know who I think I am and what I stand for and how that can help me know the things I’ve listed before them.

I have been struggling. I have been struggling because I don’t know any of these things.

I’m standing at a crossroads. And I’m thinking. I’m listening. I’m watching. I’m waiting for some sign as I go through the motions of “making things happen” for myself (as much as any of us can)…

And then it comes. I’m sitting in class, listening to a writing of Rift Fornier, a friend of my teacher, being read aloud about David Milch’s Problems of the Spirit, a lecture series of five giving advice to writers about living, writing, and living as a writer.

BAM!! Like a ton of bricks, it hits me square in the chest. It warms my heart and makes me feel comforted in a way that no one I know has managed to in the past few months, possibly years.

This is what I hear:

“When you are not writing, you’re going to be sad. You are going to feel inadequate. You are going to feel untalented. You are going to feel incompetent. It’s crucially important to understand that the impulse to write is a reaching out to God.

Words are symbols of reality, but they are symbols that partake of the reality they represent. That paradoxical doubleness is the explanation of how writing is a reaching out to our fellow human beings but also a reaching out to a larger spirit.”`

***

“But the first thing to take away with you is the absolute certainty that nothing you have ever thought about your capacities as an artist is true. This is a fresh beginning.”

Comfort from a stranger who seems to know me from the inside out, who reaches down to my very core to pull out my deepest, darkest feelings that I’ve been feeling for too long. Hope that I will not always feel this way nor am I the only one who does or ever has. You mean I’m not the only person in the world to ever 

feel this way? No, get over yourself.

This is God’s honest truth. When I don’t write, I am sad; I do feel inadequate; I do feel untalented; I do feel incompetent. Just as when I don’t go to church or pray or have some sort of connection with God in whatever means it takes to get through the wires to Him, I do not do well.

Writing is my prayer. Writing is my therapy. Writing is my release, my sanctuary, and my passion.

When I have stepped away for too long to “get things done” and “be productive”  and “do what needs to be done”, I neglect a huge part of myself. I shut out the part of myself that makes me feel good about myself, that makes me happy and satisfied, that makes me me.

It is my happy place. Whenever, wherever. It is home. It is the place where I know.  It is the avenue that gives me direction and purpose. It is my place in the world and the feeling that what I’ve created is something good for me and those around me. It is the way in which I know who I am and what I stand for.

This post, as long as it is, was the exercise I needed to do to reach this conclusion. It is part of the process that points me in the right direction and gives me an avenue to look toward going down as I stand at this crossroads. So really, this was more for me than for you. I honestly just needed the self-administered therapy. Although, I hope you enjoyed it in some way.