If I am Pandora's Box, do you still want to open it?

I realized I had severe trust issues the day a stranger offered me shelter from the pouring rain. It was a simple, kind gesture that I was so doubtful of, I chose to walk in the rain instead, soaking me from head to toe.

I have stopped giving the benefit of the doubt to anyone since god knows when, and it’s starting to eat me inside because I keep pushing away the only people whom I truly ever care about.

I do not know when I started building a wall so that no one will ever be able to come in. I am cold on the exterior, but it is not an act or a pretense to be so aloof to increase my allure. I’m not doing it on purpose. It’s like an innate defense mechanism that I can’t seem to override.

I have watched a loved one attempting to take her life for an unrequited love, and it was not romantic at all. The pain which I felt when I came to know what she did and the emotional turmoil the family had to go through was indescribable, and it got me questioning the necessity of being in love. Don’t get me wrong; it’s not that I don’t want to be in love. It’s that I’m too afraid to trust it.

I’m harsh, defensive, and have a seemingly impenetrable barrier, but it is not meant to keep you at bay. I’m only being careful. The fact that I lashed words out at you does not mean I do not care.

Please don't misconstrue my need for freedom and a life alone as me pushing you away. I've been alone for a very long time, anything else is a change I'm not sure I can handle. I'm not running away because I dislike you, but I need to be certain before there are plans for anything past the weekend.

It takes a while for me to let my guard down. Each time you feel discouraged and don’t know how else to get me to open up, don’t give up. I don't know how to get myself to open up either. Perhaps this is the only way I can tell you how I honestly feel, since it is so difficult for me to open up to you.

Whenever I try to open up, I have a strong urge to run away.

That “wall” which I have built was not only to protect people from coming in, but to protect them from me, from the hurt which I can cause because of what I’ve done in the past. I can be sweet and caring and full of love, but that also comes with the anger, distrust, and snarkiness that is so ingrained in my nature.

So tell me: If I am Pandora's Box, do you still want to open it?

Light Summers and Dark Summers

There are two types of summer; light summers and dark summers.

Light summers are those full of lawn and linen, the sea and soft sunshine. They are cherries and children’s smiles, wherein you feel disconnected and light, almost floating. Life is dreamy and distant in a haze of white dandelion fluff.

Dark summers are honeyed and sulky, full of pomegranates, thunderstorms, magnolias and unkept promises. Pandora opens the box, and lightening fills the sky. Sudden realization that this moment you can finally be happy when you are alone with your thoughts.

Light summers are potential and hope, ice cream cones in the park. The sunshine shining flooding the dashboard with music turned up, wind tussling your hair as you drive everywhere and nowhere. Condensation that gathers and slides down the can and gathers on a picnic table of every barbecue that lasted longer than intended. Promises of weekends spent together exploring your city, exploring each other.

Dark summers are stealing kisses in movie theatres and hiding away from everyone with a good book. Crowding into loud bars after longer days of work, you tossing back drinks with long lost friends. Walking hand in hand under the stars as you share hidden memories and find yourself making new ones.

Light summers are false cheer. Smiles will light up rooms, eyes that sparkle with unwept tears. Watching the sun slip below the horizon after a day of solitude on the sand. Carefree and easy, coasting through life. You don’t ever want to land. Finding the person you have lost only to realize they are not who they once were, they are better for everything they have been through.

Dark summers are driving down dirt roads before dawn. Cinematic and shadowy, you exist in a trance of melancholy, and feel passionately, though feign detachment. Realizing that the person you have idolized as the sun has only cast you into shadow; you are more than this. 

The road to recovery

Some days, you’ll wake up feeling thinner and it will be thrilling. You might barely eat and feel like you’ve finally had a Perfect day and go to bed with a slight sense of hunger and a strong sense of satisfaction. Or you might eat a lot or something bad because you finally felt like one of those shiny-haired girls with Bambi legs who just have “a crazy metabolism” and have a zillion Instagram photos of them holding pizza and baking Nutella brownies and eating Ben and Jerry’s out of the tub with a massive spoon. Then later, you’ll panic and feel like you’ve eaten too much and you’ll kick yourself for having screwed up. You’ll just have to remind yourself that you’ve only screwed up if you allow yourself to think that eating more than usual, or eating with enthusiasm, is screwing up. A meal isn’t a binge. Dessert isn’t a sin.

Some days, you’ll wake up feeling bloated and you’ll want to skip breakfast or breakfast and lunch or only have liquids that day. Then you’ll get hungry around lunchtime and you’ll have to remember that you promised yourself you were through with this bullshit. You'll have to remember you won't do this to yourself anymore.

Sometimes you’ll be faced with decisions such as, "Should I get regular or skim, normal coke or diet, buttered toast or plain, anything I want for lunch or just salad, and with the light dressing?" And you’ll have to remember that it honestly doesn’t matter. Recovery doesn’t mean choosing the full-fat, full-sugar option. It means understanding that there is no ‘good’ option, and that whichever option you choose does not define you as a person – no food allegiance will make you daintier or more endearing.

Sometimes you’ll see girls who remind you of the girl you were when you were sick. They’ll have thick black tights over their thin legs and big sweaters over their small frames. They’ll be pushing their food around on their plate and gulping water. They’ll be brushing their brittle hair out of their eyes with bony fingers. They’ll look wistful and delicate and you’ll have to try extra hard to remember how miserable you felt when you were just like them. You’ll have to try extra hard to remember that you were always cold and that your insides were constantly gnawing at each other and that you weren’t able to sleep or go to the bathroom properly and that you lived in constant of fear of an inanimate fucking object.

Sometimes people will mention that you look “so much better” and “so much healthier” than before. Which just means you will have to fight back tears and say “Thank you” with a brave smile because to you, those words will always feel like “You’ve gained weight” and sometimes "You've failed." Try to remember that your eating disorder was not keeping you strong. It was making you weak and choosing to get over it was choosing to live.

Sometimes you’ll binge; it will feel horrible. And not only physically. Accept it. Try to understand why it happened. Then find something comforting to do, like taking a bath, talking with a close friend or watching a movie. Maybe drink some tea. Don’t purge – as unpleasant as waking up bloated and heavier the next day will be, you can’t let yourself fall back into old habits. Because you’ll do it “just this once,” and then the next time will be “one last time” and before you know it, everything will be back out of control.

Sometimes you’ll get nostalgic and look back at the neatness and simplicity of those days. Days when it was a good day if you were “x pounds less than you were the day before,” if you’d eaten “x amount of calories less than the amount you’d allotted yourself,” if you’d burned “x amount of calories doing y minutes of exercise.” Whatever the mode of persecution, it felt structured and familiar and almost soothing. It was safe. It was routine. It was predictable. Now try to remember what most days were like – the hollow feeling in your stomach, the dull aches, the drowsiness, the insomnia, the frustration, the cavities, the loneliness. And then the bad days – clawing at your throat after dinner with the water running, crying into your pillow, eating teaspoons of Tabasco, drinking tablespoons of vinegar and slicing up your thighs.

You’ll be awkward and touchy about the subject around other people. You might try to pretend that none of it ever happened because you’re past that now and you don’t want to be treated like a special case. You don’t want to admit that you used to be the person they’re all implicitly judging – the saddo with no friends other than the scale and the toilet bowl. You might also be afraid that they’d look at you condescendingly and tell you that you didn’t have real eating disorder. I mean, after all, it’s not like you were 80 pounds soaking wet and, like, dying. However, every once in a while, you’ll subconsciously draw attention to how long you can go without eating and how little you once used to weigh.

After a while, you will feel inordinately proud of being able to do normal human things. Like not looking at the calorie content on a packet of chips and eating it as you walk down the street. Like going for a run simply to feel your feet on the pavement. Like wearing a bikini and not giving a flying fuck.

You’ll learn that one of your friends went through the same thing you did and it will make your friendship stronger.

You’ll learn that one of your close friends is beginning to struggle with an eating disorder and it will be absolutely devastating. You’ll cry a lot, for her and for your own memories. You’ll be tempted to relapse. You’ll have to try and find the right words to express how well you understand what she’s going through. She’ll need to hear that she looks thinner; you’ll need to tell her she’s wasting away and needs to get help. You’ll have to be there for her without encouraging her. You’ll have to sit with her and listen when she tells you how much weight she’s lost and how little she’s eaten all day and how she puked last night and how she almost fainted on the stairway, because you’re the only one she can tell these things to. You’ll need to just listen, without giving advice, and then hug her and remind her of how much she means to you. 

What is Fandom?

Fandom is focus. Fandom is obsession. Fandom is insatiable consumption. Fandom is sitting for hours in front of a TV screen a movie screen a computer screen with a comic book or a novel in your lap. Fandom is eyestrain and carpal tunnel syndrome and not enough exercise and staying up way, way past your bedtime.

Fandom is people you don’t tell your mother you’re meeting. Fandom is people in the closet, people out and proud, people in costumes, people in T-shirts with slogans only fifty others would understand. Fandom is a loud dinner conversation scaring the waiter and every table nearby.

Fandom is you in Germany and me in the US and him in Australia and her in Japan. Fandom is a sofabed in New York, a roadtrip to Oxnard, a friend behind a face in London. Fandom talks past timezones and accents and backgrounds. Fandom is conversation. Communication. Contact.

Fandom is drama. Fandom is melodrama. Fandom is high school. Fandom is Snacky’s law and Godwin’s law and Murphy’s law. Fandom is smarter than you. Fandom is stupider than you. Fandom is five arguments over and over and over again. Fandom is the first time you’ve ever had them.

Fandom is female. Fandom is male. Fandom lets female play at being male. Fandom bends gender, straight, gay, prude, promiscuous. Fandom is fantasy. Fandom doesn’t care about norms or taboos or boundaries. Fandom cares too much about norms and taboos and boundaries. Fandom is not real life. Fandom is closer than real life. Fandom knows what you’re really like in the bedroom. Fandom is how you would never, could never, be in the bedroom.

Fandom is shipping, never shipping, het, slash, gen, none of the above, more than the above. Fandom is love for characters you didn’t create. Fandom is recreating the characters you didn’t create. Fandom is appropriation, subversion, dissention. Fandom is adoration, extrapolation, imitation. Fandom is dissection, criticism, interpretation. Fandom is changing, experimenting, attempting.

Fandom is creating. Fandom is drawing, painting, vidding: nine seasons in four minutes of love. Fandom is words, language, authoring. Fandom is essays, stories, betas, parodies, filks, zines, usenet posts, blog posts, message board posts, emails, chats, petitions, wank, concrit, feedback, recs. Fandom is writing for the first time since you were twelve. Fandom is finally calling yourself a writer.

Fandom is signal and response. Fandom is a stranger moving you to tears, anger, laughter. Fandom is you moving a stranger to speak.

Fandom is distraction. Fandom is endangering your job, your grades, your relationships, your bank account. Fandom gets no work done. Fandom is too much work. Fandom was/is just a phase. Fandom could never be just a phase. Fandom is where you found a friend, a sister, a kindred spirit. Fandom is where you found a talent, a love, a reason.

Fandom is where you found yourself.

The First You

The first you was hopeful. Not in the hesitant way that understands the real possibility of failure yet continues to spitefully reach and claw and bite and grab. You hoped in a way that was effortless. A way that required little thought and minimal reserve. A way that reminded you of breathing or chewing or digesting. You inhaled plans and chewed through probabilities and digested inevitable outcomes painlessly.

The first you was curious. Not in the vindictive way that craves insider information or whispered secrets or confidential collusion. You were curious about simplistic beauties and subtle mysteries. You wanted to know why colors exploded in the morning and how stars winked at night and when existence started to matter. You inhaled theories and chewed through novels and digested the intelligent guesses of old.

The first you was eager. Not in the panicked way that pushes you to try winning an invisible race or chasing a fabricated block of cheese or comparing your fleeting successes to others’. You were eager to run for no reason and laugh inappropriately and smile regardless of crooked teeth. You inhaled moments and chewed through memories and digested every outcome that could possibly come your way.

The first you was sure. Not in the exhausting way that leaves you convincing yourself or repeating affirmations or silently debating with overworked synopses. You were sure about feelings and flailing limbs and answers to questions that had yet to be asked. You were sure about the spaces you filled and the words you spoke because who you were in an instant was all that mattered. You inhaled promises  and chewed through insecurities and digested your ever-growing confidence.

The first you was trusting. Not in the apprehensive way that has you sleeping with one eye open and dipping your toes in a cold relationship pool, looking behind your shoulder for nearby lifeguards and safety equipment. You fell because you trusted you’d be caught and you cried because you trusted tears would be wiped away and you divulged because you trusted mouths would stay closed. You inhaled intimacy and chewed through confidentiality and digested affection until it was all you could comprehend.

But the second you felt your hopes crumble and now you spitefully reach and claw and bite and grab.

The third you felt the stings of curiosity and now you vindictively crave insider information or whispered secrets or confidential collusion.

The fourth you felt the exhaustion of eagerness and now you’re trying to win an invisible race or chase a fabricated block of cheese or compare your fleeting successes to others’.

The fifth you felt the embarrassment of being sure so now you’re busy convincing yourself or repeating affirmations or silently debating with overworked synopses.

The sixth you felt the pain of trust so now you sleep with one eye open and dip your toes in a cold relationship pool, constantly looking behind your shoulder.

And you’re left wondering when, if ever, the next you will be anything like the first

I am not mad at you, I’m just a shitty friend.

I used to be the friend who would sit up on the phone all night listening to your relationship woes, the unabridged account of your day and your endless yet amusing ideas. Now, I hardly pick-up the phone, we text and I send you Google invites. I’m sorry.

No, I am not mad, I’m just a shitty friend.

I don’t know what happened between the 5 hour conversations and the 5 minute coffee dates, but I’m just not the same friend I used to be. Maybe we're growing apart or maybe we're just growing up. I'm not surprised if it was a bit of both. Once upon a time, it was you who had the life. I would wait for you to be finished with whatever kept you busy throughout the day and be ready and, most importantly, available to be your vent bucket. Even if I had a busy day, I would make it my duty to be present for your need to flush your casual musings, feelings and dirty secrets. I guess I stopped being just a warm-body and became a person with her own issues. I’m sorry for that.

I developed a persona I can’t shake. I’m secretive. That’s who I am, a secretive type of girl. I date without telling you. I make life decisions without consulting with you and make new friends without introducing you. Because of this secret life unbeknownst to you, my energy which has been used up in my own affairs are now on E as soon as I get to you. When you tell me great news or awful news and I don't react, it’s not that I don’t care. I’ve just turned into a shitty friend. See my apologies to you below:

To the childhood friend(s): We grow apart but I still love you. I know I said I’d call you but you promised the same. You didn’t call and I’m not worried. But I get it. I was the one to keep us all together. I’m sorry I’m not as dependable anymore. Let’s hang soon.

To the best friend(s): We don’t talk as much as we used to. You jokingly say I’m different lately but I know it’s true. You're different, too. I was always available to you and you viewed me as your sidekick. Sorry I am not fulfilling sidekick duties. Maybe you can see me as just an equal now. If you want..

To the guy I’m sort of dating: Hey. Sorry I never responded to that text. I just got busy. Then I forgot. Are we dating? I'm not really sure what’s going on.

To the friends I made at the games: We had great conversations. We took each other’s phone numbers and twitter handles and we said we would hang and travel together. Thanks for the text invites for drinks and other events. Sorry I never made it. See, I have serious introvert problems. You’re really gonna have to be the one to plan something. I know that’s not fair. Hopefully we can meetup again.

To my fellow shitty friends: You’re never around when I need you. You’ve always been a shitty friend but now that I am one too, I understand. You won't take the time to read this but sorry for not being a good friend anymore. I guess we’ll just be shitty together.

Weekends with Jess are the best

This weekend was pretty amazing. Not just because I got to see the Doctor Who 50th anniversary special or watch the Stars, but because one of my closest friends, Jessica, was in town. And I got to take her to her first hockey game.

 

She got into town Friday night and she was actually really excited to "go hockey-ing." Despite having no idea what was going on, she was a great sport about the whole experience and got into giving some of the Rangers fans around us a hard time for rooting for the wrong team. Jess might have had absolutely no idea what icing was or why people were "put in time out" or even what the "Standing Cock" was, but she had a great time.

 

And then we met a couple guys that had two extra seats. Behind the Stars bench. So she got to get really close to the action.

Saturday we spent the day at the Kimbell Museum and got to go through their brand new Piano Pavilion (which opens to the public this weekend). We also went through the Picasso and Matisse exhibit that is on loan from the Chicago Museum of Art. Both of us were really excited to see the exhibit but we were totally blown away by the extensiveness of the entire show. It was art that spanned almost a hundred years and at least fifty different artists. If you all haven't seen it, I highly recommend you do because it was just amazing. After a stop at the always amazing Museum of Modern Art, we did end up parting ways so she could spend some time with her family here in Dallas.

It was great to see Jess again and be able to catch up on the past few months. Sometimes, its nice to be able to just spend some time with a friend that has stood by you through so much without judgement and not even have to talk about some of the major changes in your life. Sometimes its nice to just watch movies, drink wine, "go hockey-ing" and look at art.

Its also good to know that the next time she's in town I'll have someone to keep me company when I finally go get my first tattoo.

I am a terrible friend

I am a terrible friend.

I frequently leave a text message unanswered for hours, maybe even weeks, before I remember to respond. I would much rather stay home and watch a Doctor Who marathon than go out to a club and have to deal with other people. If I see someone that a stranger looks interesting, I might think about starting a conversation with them but in all actuality I would be too worried about bothering them. Actually, that's not just strangers, that's anyone. I generally don't initiate conversations because I don't want to bother someone. And this makes me seem a bit cold and standoffish. I know that if I make plans and I realize other people are coming that I don't know, I will probably leave really early or make up an excuse not to go at all.

But I'm not. Really, I would like to be the person that can start a conversation with anyone. I would like to be the person that you could call at any time and be willing to talk for hours instead of hitting "ignore" and checking my voice-mail months later. I think it would be nice to be able to text someone first instead of worrying whether the other person is going to think I'm rude for responding to their message five hours later. I think it would be a lovely experience to be willing to talk with people rather than try to avoid eye contact and check tumblr and twitter constantly. I would like to be the person that would actually talk to you rather than tweet at you when we're in the same room.

But, as Augustus and Hazel say in The Fault in our Stars, "The world is not a wish granting factory." I cannot simply wish to be a better friend to people I deal with in life. Life does not work like that.

I do try make up for me being a terrible friend in other ways. Like sending out cards. I love to send out birthday cards, thank you cards, congratulatory cards, thinking of you cards, any sort of card possible. Because cards are nice. I'm also willing to actually mail people a book that I've enjoyed that I think they will too. Because I think its important to spread around good literature. And while I will most likely never answer a phone call from someone I've known for years, I have been more than happy to talk to random strangers on tumblr and twitter for hours about a problem either of us is having. And maybe I don't want to go out and do stuff with people, I'm more than happy to open up my home if anyone (stranger or friend alike) is ever in need of a place to stay. I'm willing to bake and cook for anyone and even ship stuff out to people that I deal with 90% of the time online. I just probably won't want to go out to dinner with you.

Maybe my problem is that I'm a terrible in-person-real-life friend. Because I would much rather deal with people online than in person. I don't want to have to deal with coworkers and strangers and meeting new people when the people I meet online are all perfectly wonderful. Really, I've made some amazing friends online. But if we were to actually try to do something in real life, it would fail miserably. Maybe because a lot of the people I become friends with online have the same problem as me.

The real world is a terrible place. Can't we all just stay online and be friends there instead of having to go outside and deal with terrible people and terrible weather and terrible bars and terrible traffic and terrible accidents and having to wear terrible clothes?

Actually, having to actually wear regular clothes might be 50% of why I hate leaving my house and attempting to be social.

And I think it might be kinda okay that I don't want to interact with people in real life. I can still be a friend and help a person out from behind a computer screen.

Just don't expect me to ever answer your phone calls.