My Rediscovery of Me

So hi.

It’s June and all that. It’s warm out. I’m considerably happier and much more OK with this living thing. That’s been good to witness.

I didn’t sleep too great last week. I kind of had too much of a social life. That has been, for me, hard to accept a bit. I’m used to doing stuff, of course. I think I’m curious and cautiously adventurous and explorative (?). But I tend to be those things by myself. It’s nice to have people around, though. Specific people.

Last week: I went to a 4-hour workshop on street harassment; I volunteered with RightRides; I played foosball and ping pong for a few hours, ate lunch with three friends, walked around the Lower East Side and hit three bookstores one day; I went out after work a couple of times; I had a one-hour-long phone conversation, a one-and-a-half-hour-long conversation, a two-hour conversation and then a three-hour long conversation (these are with three people in all); I accompanied a friend as she got a tattoo; I worked and stuff; I slept for 17 hours on Saturday.

Relatedly, I’m supposed to go stargazing with someone Tuesday night. I hope that works out.

Unrelatedly, or not actually, oh wait super *relatedly*, one of my sisters is now also my roommate. She moved in Sunday. We’re adjusting OK. She rearranged my room some today while I was at work. It looks nice. I have a writing nook!

I wanted to write more and about more things, but my back is hurting and I’m a lot more tired than I expected to be.

Goodnight, world.

(Haven’t done this in a while.)

Things are so thingy.

I bought bras yesterday. Four. Two black, one beige, one white. Two each of these sizes: L and XL. That’s right.

After walking through the aisles a few times, I was standing next to this woman when she said, “Man, I wish I had small titties.”

I laughed, understanding.

“We always have to get these ugly bras,” she said.

She was so right. There were no polka dot bras, no striped bras, no lace, nothing fancy in 36D or up. (I’ve never really wished for smaller titties, though. I mean, what?)

I tried on about a dozen bras. 36D, 38D, 38DD, 36C, 40D, 40DD. They were either too small or too big. They pinched my chest and back or there was nothing but air when I pinched where my nipples should have been.

Last time I was going through this process, the woman who gave me a fitting told me I was “in between.” I guess I still am.

So I tried on those sports-bra-looking-but-not-quite bras. They aren’t too sexy. The XL fit well but then so did the L. I bought two of each. My bra size: somewhere between 38D and 40DD.

Fantastic.

I wore one of the larges today when I went off to buy that bike. I didn’t once think about my breasts.

Success!(?)

(I bought the bike. It’s a blue Schwinn Breeze, with a basket. This chart tells me it’s from June 1977. It’s got a good bit of rust, but a good rubdown with steel wool should help. Then maybe I’ll take it in for a tuneup. I got the price dropped to where I was comfortable with it and then I rode it home. Happy!)

1. I joined another online dating site recently. For relationship status, it gave me four options: Never married; Divorced; Widowed; Separated. I’m not listed as “Divorced.” That feels weird, and inaccurate. But it’s the most true.

2. I’ve been eating lots of Indian food lately. (I’m waiting on a delivery as I write this.) It’s all I’ve craved: spicy, flavorful, hearty food. I want it forever.

3. BJ and I went to the Botanic Garden yesterday. I took a lot of photos. We talked and laughed for a couple of hours. Great friends are great.

4. I’ve been writing a little.

5. I’m planning a trip to Wichita.

6. I have a whole week off coming up, and my oldest brother is (supposed to be) coming to visit!

7. Tomorrow, I’m meeting up with my game friends to play Scrabble and then we might go to a park, I think.

8. Things are good.

9. Today I got home at 5:30 a.m., slept until about 12:30, meditated, made breakfast (eggs, breakfast potatoes with broccoli), watched a lot of television (Scandal, Parks & Rec, Community, Modern Family, Happy Endings, The Office, Revenge), had some tea, had lunch (yogurt, hummus), continued the watching, burned some incense. Quiet day. Liked it a lot.

10. I need to go bra shopping again. I keep putting that off.

11. I was sure this was going to be more than another list.

I had a three-day weekend. I took a trip home. Here are some things that happened or were observed.

1. I met an actor on an airplane.

2. I met a woman who was moving back to Mississippi after 20 years away. She’d come into town for her father’s funeral.

3. My oldest brother picked me up from the airport.

4. There was a barbecue.

5. I drove down back roads listening to rap music with one arm out the window.

6. I drove down back roads listening to Arabic music with my hair blowing in the wind.

7. Chickens in a front yard, roaming freely.

8. Geese crossing the road. Stopping for them.

9. Fields of cotton.

10. Fields of yellow wildflowers.

11. Tossing around a football with my younger brothers.

12. Going through family pictures and family history with my dad.

13. Games of basketball.

14. Good Mexican food.

15. Good sleep.

16. Watching a meteor shower. I saw the two brightest meteors I have ever seen.

17. Stargazing. Remembering what it’s like to stargaze in Mississippi.

18. Falafel. So much tea. A lot of coffee. Pecan pie. Apple cobbler. Shrimp po’boy. Gonglaiz. Nabug. Lots of chicken.

19. Seeing someone I’ve been friends with since the fifth grade. Falling in love with her son.

20. I bought a book on tree identification. One pamphlet on it too, and another on birds of Mississippi.

21. Lots of hugs.

22. Other stuff.

23. Great stuff.

I’ve been out having fun, and not, and thinking so much I can’t identify or classify my thoughts, and making new friends, and flirting via text messages, and being angry sometimes and voicing it, and being unfulfilled and owning up to my role in that, and telling my parents I love them, and reading. Seriously there has been a good deal of reading. (I’m currently on this.)

Yesterday, after work, I went to a seder a friend was hosting. On Sunday, I went to an Andrea Gibson and Shira E. show with T. I cried during this poem. The day before, I went out with three friends to celebrate the upcoming wedding of one of them. Two Sundays ago, I played Scrabble for five hours with two new friends. The Sunday before that, my college roommate was in town and we spent five hours sharing our lives. The day before that, I ice skated with a dozen kids (and fell flat on my face only once), went to a show on hip hop in the Middle East and North Africa (and danced on stage in front of 2,000 people), had coffee with a new friend, met a cute person, volunteered with an organization that I care about by driving people home in Manhattan and Brooklyn until 6 a.m.

I’m doin’ stuff.

Because I need people. I need my people.

I’ve been sad and grieving my aunts who died within days of each other, within days of my 27th birthday.

I’ve grown up in some ways, accepting responsibilities that are just mine, and holding on to immaturity in other ways, like my unrealistic expectations of romance.

I’ve been terrifyingly lonely and surrounded by love. I’ve been feeling devoid of creativity and energy, but expecting more of myself.

I haven’t really been writing, outside of trying to keep track of what I do every day in my journal/planner. I have been doing this Possible Titles thing, where I write the titles of stories I want to someday tell but the titles end up being their own little stories sometimes. (The most recent one: What We Say When We Don’t Talk About Suicide. One before that: The End Should Have Been the Beginning.) I also start letters over and over. I’ve started one to my friend Talia like five times. I started an email to my friend Kristen more times than that (and then I ended up sending a really weird email that she understood so beautifully).

I’ve been feeling sick, and weak, and unmotivated because of that. And also because I am sick. I forget that sometimes and end up yelling at myself for not being able.

But I’ve also been kinda happier, like my priorities are correct (at least for now) and my dedication is not wasted.

I’ve been regretting stuff and doing stuff and laughing and learning into myself and hugging folks and complaining too much and being so damn cold all the damn time.

The scale says I’ve gained a few pounds, and I’m cool with that. I sometimes walk on the treadmill. Sometimes, I run.

I’m wearing dresses and then button-downs, boots and Converse, tights and cardigans. And my hair has been everything.

I’m always thinking about love, about being it. One day I’ll get there. Until then, there will be so much feeling. And, god, I cry so often. There is, sometimes, so much pressure.

So: More Andrea. And more hugs. And more smiling, I hope. Adventure and honesty and development.

I’m planning to write more. Here, I mean. And I’ll finish those letters. And I’ll start more. I’ve said “and” a lot. This and this and this and more of that. Because life.

This month is over now. I’ve wanted to say plenty and nothing.

I’ve been writing in my journal/planner almost daily. Things like “today, I stopped at a coffee shop before work” or “today, I volunteered at this place” or “nothing but work today,” “saw a movie and then had Ethiopian food,” “played shuffleboard with strangers today,” “went on a date, I think,” “today, I turned 27,” “today, my aunt died,” “today, I went to a poetry thing with an ex, maybe it was a date, too,” “today, another aunt died.”

It’s been a tough month. It’s been a growing month. It’s been a pretty bad week, though, especially.

Friends are good to have. Family, too.

Hug-deficient. Too much negative energy. Really need to burn that off.

I’m reading Wild Seed by Octavia Butler.

Regarding the time I googled loneliness to find that the internet was making me lonely

look, I asked for this
this hole in my everything
I guided myself here with my
explorations of self love and my morning meditations
my journal entries, they point me to right here
I asked for this
this whole in my everything
this lacking
this solitude
this search for myself
it was this embrace, this search for home within myself,
that led to this undoing of me

look, I needed this

I seek neither the cure nor the cause

I know how I got here
it was through holding myself to the transparency I deserved
it was through feeling beauty, through an accepting of my imperfect perception
I deserved this

This vision of universality

I got myself to this place
and I love this place

I just

I see the bars

When it is all unquestionable, and I am my most vulnerable, my most self-like, I move as to not be observed, for I have seen the expanse and I seek not to participate in its evergoing neglect.

This is what I mean by this. By all this.
This is why I cry and scream and love and love and love.
This is where I work, where solitude is not therapy, not sociopathy, but scientific discovery.
This is how I tolerate the crowds of isolation, how I accept the reality of we seven billion being so terrifyingly alone together, how I imagine the expanse that grows and grows and ferments a disillusionment in the part of our minds that says

Look, we asked for this
This hole in our everything.

Look
we just

see
sometimes

this is
who we
will never
not be

–

I wrote the title before I wrote anything else. They don’t really go together.

So I’m not as angry. Still frustrated and still recognize things in my life that should not be as they are, but I guess it’s not an anger so much as a “that shouldn’t be in my life; fuck that thing.” There are many things, but whatever I have a cat cuddling and purring in my life lap. Shit’s fine.

–

I’ve identified two volunteer things I’d like to pursue. I’ll start on that now.