The Ghost and Me

Things that happen:

My boyfriend tries to break up with me because he is afraid I am going to break up with him.

My landlord sees my butt.

I get a new job because I believe it will be better than my old job and it turns out that I am only working two days a week.

My boyfriend, after having failed to break up with me but instilling the fear of loss and solitude upon me, escapes to New Mexico for work and will not come back for two months.

I fart in the middle of a circle of people at dance rehearsal.

I interview for a position at an art gallery to supplement my suddenly minute weekly income.

I don't get the job.

And finally, the ghost in my apartment steals my remote control.

That's right. I said it. I live by myself. One day I come home and where's my remote? Nowhere to be found. I look underneath everything. I tear the entire couch apart. Nothing. I look in the fridge, the freezer, closets I haven't been in since I moved in. I look in purses. I look outside. I look in the damn fireplace. It's gone.

And the kicker is I have a new Comcast box. You can't even change the channel without the remote. So I am now paying $60 a month for internet access and the Lifetime Movie Network. David Hasselhoff and I become aquainted. A week passes. Two weeks pass.

With my new job, I am broke. I can't afford a new remote right now. The girl who lived here before me used to tell me that there was a ghost in the apartment. I'd never bought into it, but I'm stressed from lack of work and money, I'm lonely, I'm embarassed. It's been a rough couple of months. All I want is the damn remote. It's become my lost ark, my holy grail. I talk to me friend Brit.

"Just ask the ghost for your remote back," she says.

"I am not standing in the middle of my living room and asking the air to please give me back my remote," I say.

"Just a suggestion," she says.

We hang up and I stand in the middle of my living room. It's silent. My cat's staring at me. I take a step forward and:

"Excuse me," I say. "I'm sick of the Lifetime Movie Network. I know you must be, too." I pause. I look around. My cat's head is cocked to the side. He's worried I have finally lost it. Maybe I have. "I was wondering if you could please give me back the remote. Or at least, you know, gimme a hint as to where it might be."

....

Nothing happens. No remote flies through the air. Hey, it was worth a try. I sit on the couch, put my feet up, and suddenly feel the urge to search the couch one more time, just in case. I resist said urge. I've looked in the couch forty-seven times. I sit for a second longer, take a walk around the apartment. Sit. I stand up, pull up one seat cushion, and there is that remote, wedged right between two pieces of the couch. I dig it out, sit back down, and change the channel. I say, "Thank you."

Eeghad...

The most important relationship in your life is the relationship that you have with yourself -- DVF

I am struggling with this relationship so hard right now. My check book is bouncing and I have this room full of all of this crap, this STUFF. Pictures, brushes, books, movies, shoes, pens, and I like all of my stuff, I really do. I look around at all of it and I dont want to give anything up, but what is it for? I see dust on so much of it. It's like the radiohead lyric "I'm not living; I'm just killing time." I feel empty. And it's fear, and I'm conscious of it. I'm insecure, I'm afraid that I can NOT do something if I put my mind to it. I am my own worst enemy. I mean, call this the blog of cliches, but fuck. I'm terrified over here and I need some damned guidance. I havent met a single person in my life who knows what the hell is going on. HELLO!! Little help over here. I'm drowning and the only buoy i have is myself. 

i guess people would tell you to leap. just leap at some opportunity. try something, anything, to get the blood flowing again. to jump start everything that ever made you smile or wince or jump up and down. 

massage therapy

mfa - fiction

ma - professional writing

teaching certificate

so obviously teaching is most likely to provide job opportunities. professional writing would be second place, but the jobs would be scarce. and the MFA, while it might be what i think i want to do, would more than likely be a bunch of money down the john. 

next step??

in your 20's, you have your youth, but shit if it's not scary. but hey, maybe i just need to take a xanex and cool the fuck out. i'm 24, and i DONT have it all worked out. go figure.

The Birthday

If you want to know what a birthday party full of half strangers and people who don't really care about you all that much looks like, come on over to Ryan's pub in Regent Square. What have I been doing all these years?

Grumbleshanks

People let themselves go in different ways. I feel, in the two years I've been out of college, I've given up on my mind. I've worked in food service since the day I threw my cap into the air with a thousand other brand new baby graduates. The hang over I experienced on that day was the precursor to the next 24 months of debauchery, sex, lies, intrigue and alcohol. And the beginning of the careful disintegration of the very thing I worked so hard to build through all of those classes. The old mind canal. 

Leaving the academic womb thrusts you into this world, so wide open it leaves you more than dumbfounded. For those lucky few who had a plan, an internship, a grad school appy in the works, the transition was perhaps less threatening, less cold. I'm not blaming anyone but myself for this absent stepping stone. I could absolutely have taken on some internships, gotten some 'real' work experience. Let's just be honest with each other. I think honestly is important (unless there's a chance that it could get me into some very real trouble, in which case the 'fraidy cat in me would lie every time). I wasn't ready to grow up.

But I'm realizing that waitressing and bartending are actually difficult jobs to survive on, and at 50 hours of brain flattening service a week for two years, I've become a bitch. I'm bitter, I think my customers are the stupidest people alive (okay okay, not ALL of them...only about 68-74%) and my new management team may as well be wearing tutus and rainbow suspenders for how seriously I'm about to take them. It's bad. I'm afraid I've traded my mind for a series of hilariously delightful stories, most including some kind of alcohol and some kind of 'antic' or 'situation'. I turn 24 on Monday, and while I'm sure karaoke with 15 of my closest friends will be amazing, there's a part of me that wishes I just had too much very important work to do.