reputation is something people with courage can do without

I had a dream last night that for whatever reason has lingered in the recesses of my pillows.

I won't bore you with the extraneous details, those little side streets that betray logic and reason that dreams tend to take freely, but needless to say this dream centered around a wedding. A couple I know in real life played a part, but in my dream the boy was marrying someone other than his girlfriend (the bride had brown hair- a detail that seemed quite important) for religious and cultural reasons. His girlfriend is real life was forced to attend and watch the whole thing. I, being the observer (and perpetrator), half expected the girlfriend to drink and smash her champagne glass, make a big ill-advised speech, at least do something to voice her displeasure. Instead, she had a calm conversation with her boyfriend, conveyed her respect for his decision, and exited. End dream.

Though it's painful to admit, I've judged this couple largely because the girlfriend is a type that I can't abide. The boyfriend is a kind rarely found in Los Angeles- tall, handsome, charismatic, straight. Yet when I met his girlfriend, I couldn't understand what he found so fascinating. She was and is quiet- a mortal sin in my book. Being quiet is a slippery slope toward being boring.

She, my holier-than-thou brain rationalized, was the archetypal passive female, content to let her mate revel in the spotlight rather than challenge it. Her boyfriend, I thought, didn't want to be challenged by his significant other- he wanted someone simple (another mortal sin). At least I, my smug thoughts grew even smugger, speak my mind, let my presence be known.

However, once you peel away the arrogance and the judgement, you'll find my greatest fear. That my attributes on which I hang my hat- my passion, my opinions, my voice- are my worst attribute. Take for instance, that woman that you inevitably encounter at any party. The loud girl who blathers on stupidly. The obnoxious one who won't just shut the fuck up. The quiet one at least, you'll never know quite what she's thinking. Whereas the loud girl invades your space, the quiet one pulls you into her orbit.

My way isn't always the right way. There is a grace in politeness, in not speaking your mind whenever the thoughts pop into your head. There is a mystery in the unsaid. There is something to be said about withholding.

Does the beginning foreshadow the end of things?

"So yeah, we broke up." I notice she isn't clutching a drink in her hand and find it odd.
"Oh really...I didn't realize that you guys were together", I reply and immediately remember that it isn't true. There was this one time at a ladies night at Dominicks on Beverly ("Ladies night" are nine times out of ten held at Italian restaurants for the excuse to order carbs and cheese. Sushi spots are the second choice if we're feeling especially virtuous but then we get crispy rice and spicy tuna and that really isn't low calorie now is it ladies) when she walked by us on her way out with his beefy self following close behind. The lack of hand holding was immediately obvious to everyone and after a brief hello she sauntered away, him following her dutifully like a bodyguard.
"Yeah it was a couple of months", she sighed and raised a perfectly arched eyebrow and brushed aside a few honey colored strands. I get distracted by her perfectly colored hair (or heaven's is it REAL?) and then remember to focus, she's probably still feeling a little bruised.
She continues, "It's funny. Last Saturday night? After the party? We ended up in the same group that went to a strip club."
"A strip club?"
"Yeah, Crazy Girls. An asshole was this far from my face", she measures a six inch space from her eye for effect.
"Jesus."
"Yeah, the funny thing is...is that that's how we started...we both ended up at a strip club and afterwards I went for it."
Turns out beautiful women get their heart broken too. The ex in question runs with a notorious circle that seem to revel in fraternity/Ari Gold cliches- measuring their worth by the circumference of their bicep and the prestige of their client list.The sad reality is that just the facade of alpha masculinity is enough to fool most.
"Those guys are the worst", I reply. I can just see them now, flipping off dollar bills from their latest bonuses at naked women thinking that because they pay they have the power.
"Yeah, the funny thing is that is they are so loyal to each other. It's their ladies that get screwed over."
"They're probably secretly fucking each other."
We share a mournful laugh. I look into the bottom of my vodka-cranberry-soda for answers. Finding none, we avoid eye contact and look at everyone else, having fun.

deprived

My body is betraying me. Saturday night sleeps are always an unreliable lot- they're either disrupted by too many glasses of Sauvignon Blanc drying out my bloodstream or other festivities extending way past  my normal knock out time leaving me fitful and restless once I hit the pillow. But not this time. There's something that's unsettling me and as much as I crave an escape of a couple of hours of unconsciousness, my body clearly sees fit to remind me.

It's not the ring. It's not him. He's fantastic- my curly haired, rap-loving, cradle of support. He pushes me to be the best version of myself and let's be honest, I've always been a book in desperate need of a thorough edit. Maybe gold stars are to blame. Maybe the trophies that accompanied every minor accomplishment in childhood built up this lofty gnawing need for recognition. I still want my purple "Good Effort" ribbon.

Maybe this is a humbling spoon of reality. Maybe it's good not to have everything I want, to allow an area of my life leaving me wanting. Maybe I need to not want. Maybe I should become a Buddhist.

beached

Every morning I wake up, brush my teeth, slip into something gauzy, and walk downstairs.

Even though all the doors are closed and the air conditioning is blasting something fierce, you can still hear the cacophony of insects and birds clamoring to be heard from their tree podiums. I've always been unnerved by complete silence so this tropical symphony rocks me into a gentle state of constant calm.

I pour Costa Rican coffee which is slightly sour but enters my bloodstream at breakneck speed and sip it until my body is humming. I crack and cook eggs which are carrot orange and slip them on top of pillowy pieces of buttered toast. Once fed, I pull open the sliding door and feel the thick, rich, perfumed air seep in.

Our view overlooks a cove where even from our perch on top of a hill,  we can still hear the waves roar as they smash into the sand. Once in a while, Squirrel Monkeys or Capuchin Monkeys will jump onto our balcony from the surrounding palm trees and we reward them with a banana or two for their inquisitive nature and cartoonish pratfalls. Lizards are everywhere but you don't realize it until you walk in their direction and they scurry away like little children caught eavesdropping. One of our guides once told us, "You have no idea how many eyes are watching you from the jungle". You get the sense that this is true and wonder how many silent witnesses are watching you from amongst the palm fronds.
 

I just thought I would be in a different place.

Everything else is great. And not in the way where I overly post on my various social media accounts to assure the world that I'm sure cares that everything in wonderful, really, honestly, in that desperate, pained way that just reeks of the opposite. I actually do mean it.

But it's human nature, isn't it, to focus on what isn't. Someone in college once told me about how life is like a stovetop with four burners- one representing family, one friends, one love, and one career. Three can only be burning at the same time. See if you can guess which one I'm fixated on.

It's hard because this burner dominates my thoughts, my energies, my survival as an adult person. For a majority of my time, I feel invisible, inconsequential, unrecognized. The skills that I think I have, the skills that people I love assure me that I have, maybe they are just apart of this elaborate delusion.

Yet I perserve. This delusion, this idea of what I want to do, as ridiculous as it is, is all I have to hang onto. There isn't really a plan B. There's shades of a plan C, D, or E but those plans are shades of pleasures that I indulge myself in, not actual pursuits. There's nothing but this. I can't let my upbringing, my fear, my insecurity swallow me whole.

domestic bliss

how appropriate it is that the emblem of adulthood is owning a house.

adulthood is about finding the one. adulthood is about creating a family and home with that one. adulthood is about introducing new ones into the world. adulthood is about the process of segregating oneself. letting go of the party friends, letting go of the hierarchal social structure that dominated our energies and minds from middle school onward. the people on the peripheral who always could hand you a glass of wine but not the type to pick up the phone past 3:00 AM on a Tuesday night. it's about the drifting away and the moving forward, the desire for satiety and fulfillment on all fronts and the letting go of the frothy, the trivial, the fleeting.
as i get older, i realize that we might die alone but our fantasy is dying with the other holding our hand.

how appropriate it is that the emblem of young adulthood is renting an apartment.

there's always someone within the vicinity. the lack of the plan didn't always result in the death of a night. the nighttime was a blossoming opportunity, a malleable thing that could either result in your greatest triumph or monumental tragedy. you're in love with wanting to change the worst in people; correction- be the one that changes the worst in people. you get off on that period of transience. everything is now, everything is magnificent, everything is terrible, whyisthishappening, ohmygodthisfeelsfantastic, don'tstopdon'tstop.
when i was young, i realized the value of living in the present.

dissolving into a million pieces in a billion places

her own self is betraying her but she lets it.

what must it be like not to trust your own mind? what happens to a person when their memories so precise in chronological order are shaken up like a bingo wheel and you are left to sort through the broken pieces?

truthfully we've never been close. blood bonds us but little else. i'm too outspoken, too inappropriate, eating with my elbow on the table and knife raised almost like i'm ready for any unseen combat, an obtuse reminder of the schism between ladylike gentility of her time and the abhorrent modern rejection of those values.

yet we've always harbored an affection. i was the first grandchild, a boon to her good genes with her ski-jump nose leaping generations to my face and her translucent skin on my back. however, that deep-seated understanding between generations has eluded us for reasons i can only speculate.

seeing her now, during the only time of year that i have had in the past seven years, breaks my heart in ever increasing unique ways. only the disease crafted by the cruelest hand could possibly create one that lets the infected's mind crumble while those who love them watch the person they knew disintegrate.

of course now, at the likely end of her days, is the time when i want to know her most, to understand her. how typical of the human condition to only want that which is increasingly out of their reach. i'm going to interview her. to sit her down with a cup of herbal tea and some recording device and ask her questions not through the lens of the family member but as someone who just wants to know about her. i'm afraid if i don't do this, she's going to slip away through my fingertips like sand. i want her to be known. i want her to have an impact. i want her life to have meaning.