Something About Grey's

Something about Grey’s Anatomy makes me want to write. I guess it’s the drama. I guess it’s how bad things happen and good things happen in such a way that you know exactly whether they’re bad or good. You know how all the characters feel. You know, while you’re watching Grey’s Anatomy, that whatever happens this week will be resolved in some grand, heart-melting way a week or two from now… or that everything will fall apart and an episode will end with a beloved character in tears on the floor in a dimly lit room (or in a well-lit, cheery room; that happens sometimes too, but there are always tears).

Why doesn’t real life make me want to write? I guess it’s because I don’t have a job. I don’t have work-related stress or work friends or a bar named Joe’s to go to after work. 

My life is happy.… I’m engaged! But my engagement is so slow and normal. Found the venue; hired the caterer; yada yada. I don’t get to be the character of the bride. My back story has taken place over 24 years and my relationship with my husband-to-be has evolved over the past 4 or 5. He didn’t woosh into my life through emergency room doors, holding together the chest of some bloody victim. He showed up across the sanctuary from me at church. And then he kept showing up across the sanctuary from me for years and… eventually we fell in love. Don’t get me wrong. He is a dreamy character. He’s got these sexy dimples and these green eyes and broad shoulders. He’s intelligent and ambitious and even deliver’s sweet lines to me like a staff of writers came up with them over coffee and donuts.

I think the problem is that I’m 24. No great character is 24. In community college I was a character. I was a kind of quirky girl who made jokes to strangers who surprisingly often wouldn't laugh. I’d brush off people’s opinions of me and carry on in my usually light-hearted way. I’d notice flowers on campus and thank God. I’d walk from my house, through the woods, to an evening poetry class once a week clutching a notebook of thoughts that I’d then share with a hodge podge of other community college characters. I knew then, that I was interesting.

I think I’ll be interesting again if you give me a few years… How old is Meredith Grey? Like early thirties, right? Yeah—give me 6 years and I’ll be interesting again.

Behavioral Targeting

Thanks to the way the internet tracks online activity and presents advertisements accordingly… I feel like a total loon!

When a girlfriend of mine came to visit two weeks ago, we talked about what every set of twenty something females in committed relationships does: marriage. More accurately— weddings and engagements (the less important but more glamorous things).

My friend is one of those girls who has been planning her wedding since she was a flower girl for the first time. Before her last hard drive got fried, she had a wedding folder with pictures of bridal gowns, bridesmaids’ dresses, centerpieces, bouquets, rings, venues; you know the type.

Anyway, it’s not uncommon for me and my boyfriend to muse about “when we’re married.” (“When we’re married, let’s not have a leather couch; they’re too cold.” “When we’re married, let’s drink coffee in bed and watch cartoons on Saturday mornings.”) Still, I don’t make a habit of planning my wedding. No—not even in my mind. As much as I love my boyfriend and as certain as I am that I want to marry him and that he wants to marry me, it’s always just seemed too weird to plan a wedding with a naked left hand.

At least… too weird to do that alone in my room like it's a secret.

When my love and wedding-loving friend came for a visit though, we spent hours surfing from bridal fashion websites to florist’s homepages and even to online jewelry stores to scope different stones, shapes and settings. Sure, it was fun while it lasted, but I’d hoped to put the fantasy behind me until I had such a reality to plan for.

Unfortunately, my browser is now haunted by the ghosts of searches past. The other day—Cyber Monday—I spent a considerable amount of time scouring the internet for the best deals (I’m almost done Christmas shopping!) and with each newly loaded page came a new set of obnoxious wedding-related advertisements flashing in my periphery.

They all think they have my number but they don’t! They have my friend’s number!

…Right? 

*clicks on bridal advertisement*

The Sluffington Post, cycle 85, part 2

Thank goodness for the sloughing of my uterine lining and the accompanying hormonal fluctuation that on this particular evening has rendered me completely unsentimental to the perfect gushiness of my romantic relationship.

Finally, I have cleared my cell phone’s inbox of all the adorable text messages that I had previously locked. The hyperbolic compliments and the heartfelt mush that have been accessible little reminders of the magnitude of Kevin’s love for me are no more… and I’m glad! And I believe I will be even when cycle 85 (or so) has ended and I’ve returned to my typical, even-keel nature. It’s stupid to cling to text messages, typed up in a few short moments, as if they are some kind of proof of the way things are.

I’ve actually thought before, that if my phone is ever lost by me and found by a stranger, that stranger could read those locked texts and know that I am loved. (For a similar reason, my mom is called Mum in my contacts. Figure I’ll trick ‘im into thinking I’m British.) But I don’t actually care what the hypothetical stranger thinks; I’ve treasured those texts because they remind me that I’m loved. How ridiculous.

Really, the locked texts that have crowded my inbox for too long probably do more to diminish our relationship in my mind than anything else. I know Kevin loves me. He loves me every day by being patient, forgiving, honest, silly, humble, hard-working, grateful, faithful, encouraging, whatever—and he is going to keep on loving me and he is going to keep on sending me text messages that will speed up my heart. I’ll look forward now to the ones to come, not back. I’ll look forward.

…my phone feels lighter.

The Sluffington Post, cycle 85

So, last night, we’re on Pidgin (an instant messenger program) hardly talking and Kevin sends me a link. I try to follow it but it’s a picture on Facebook that I can’t see because I’m not friends with whoever posted it. He tells me then to sign onto hisFacebook to see the picture. Must be pretty good, I think, if it's worth all this. I sign myself out, type in his email and password, and try the link again, expecting a funny picture of one of his buddies or something. To my dismay, when it loads, it’s a picture of two girls.

He tells me the one on the right (the pretty one) says hi to him “all the time” and that she’s “really nice” and that he just looked her up on Facebook to double check her name. He did this, he explains, to avoid any potential awkward moments in which she'd realize that he didn't know her name.

Seriously?! I silently fume, no angry words spewing from my fingertips. (I’ve been cold all day. He hasn’t noticed.)  I had just told him a few days before (with no ulterior motive, only because I felt it and I’m in the business of encouraging the man I love) that I greatly appreciate his loyalty and the way he makes me feel so safe. I told him then that I know he loves me and I know I’d never have any reason to worry about him being unfaithful, which I think is getting rarer in this day and age. My confidence in him was not only about physical faithfulness, but that he'd never even entertain the thought of another woman. How naive! Now he feels guilty for noticing this girl’s cute smile, perfect hair, and big boobs and he figures that showing her to me makes it okay—'cause at least he’s not keeping secrets.

>:-|

To be Part of a Broken Body

I get why so many people I talk to are disenchanted with church and Christians. I’ve been to a handful and have heard of countless churches that were filled with veneered, holier than though types. Where pastors recite extreme, outermost feather on the right wing poetry and read from newspapers instead of opening the Word of God.

Last week, I went to coffee with one of my favorite people, Kelsey. We snagged the only outdoor table at this little café so we could enjoy the subtle crispness in the air and the freedom to become boisterous if the occasion called for it.

Kelsey is a senior at a public high school in Harford County. The age gap is six years between us. I used to babysit her and her sister way back when. Then, after graduating high school, I got involved helping with the middle school youth group at my church which Kelsey was a part of. After a couple years hanging out with the young’ns and hearing all about… everything (boy, middle school girls can talk!) I aged up with them when they moved to the high school youth group. So yeah, for a while I was a contracted mentor of sorts, but Kelsey has become this wise, beautiful, interesting woman and one of my best friends.

Anyway, there we were, perched on cast iron stools at the matching pedestal table, talking about school, work, friends, faith, boys—the usual. One anecdote she shared was about a recent conversation she had at school with several peers. Somehow religion came up and Kelsey and another girl identified themselves as Christians.

“You’re a Christian?” one boy asked Kelsey incredulously. “You don’t act like one,” he added. At that point Kelsey’s mind whirled, Oh no! Why is that so unbelievable? What am I doing wrong?

     “What do you mean?” Kelsey asked, casually.

     “I don’t know. You’re cool.”

     Fwoo! What a relief!

The relief didn’t last long though. Sure, she can feel good about herself—she is representing Christ in a way He’d be proud of. But Kelsey and I ended up solemnly sipping coffee amidst this realization that hung like a cloud of smelly green smoke around our table. The title of Christian has come to be this awful thing in our culture. Something I’d never volunteer to be a part of: goody two shoes, legalistic, feeble-minded, “God hates fags” sign-toting hypocrites. But…

I am a Christian! I mean—I wear the name of Christ; “It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.” I wish there was some way to separate what we’ve let Christianity become from the life, love and sacrifice of Christ; or that we could throw Christianity like a dirty towel into some cosmic washing machine and that it’d come out all Bounty fresh. Even if that was possible though, we’d mess it up again—just give us a little while.

The reality is that we are a bunch of sinful people and that we’re completely imperfect and that there is no way we can represent Christ in the way that He deserves, especially when it comes to the large scale stuff—the media and all that. ‘Course we’ll always look bad. (Everyone looks bad.) Kelsey and I will just close our eyes to all that stuff though, and live our normal, boring, ordinary lives trying our best to make friends and love everyone and stand up for the weak and lonely and be responsible and praise God for all the ways He has blessed us.

Yes—rainbows and butterflies. Cupcakes and sunshine… cookies… and milk. There’s plenty of hurt and sorrow and death in the world; I’m glad to be the smiling fool who remembers every day that I don’t have to worry about that stuff anymore because Christ did. He suffered all and conquered death and now--we live.

The Little Sonata that Could

I visited my Kevin last weekend. He goes to school in Grove City, Pennsylvania, which is a five hour drive from home on a perfectly clear, trafficless day. Of course, on Friday, the day I drove up, it was pouring rain the entire way. So I spent six hours en route, letting my mind wander and carefully rationing pieces of candy. Kevin’s brother is a sophomore at the same school, so their mom sent with me little goodie bags for each of ‘em. I snagged a peppermint patty from Kevin’s bag and a Reeses’ from his brother’s. (Yeah, I know—I was impressed with my self control too.)

I’m not someone who particularly minds driving long distances or driving in the rain or in the snow or at night or whatever, especially when I have a handsome stud waiting for me at the end of my journey, but there were definitely some white knuckle moments. You know, when you’re driving through the rain and you end up behind a Mac truck that creates a persistent flume-like wall of water splashing on your windshield? Yeah—there was lots of that. There were moments when the rain was falling so heavily that people were pulling over, hazards flashing, for the stillness and comparative safety of the roadside. Not me though. I was focused. I hadn’t seen Kevin in nearly three weeks! I felt like I was—or my car, rather—was the hero of some child’s storybook as my little car drove steadily along, slowly passing 18-wheelers and SUVs and other small cars who’d given up the ghost. (She’d have to be a brightly colored car though to have such a starring role. Her dingy silver paint would blend right into an illustration of the Pennsylvania Turnpike on a rainy day.) With the radio off, the splashing under tires and percussion of the downpour on the roof seemed amplified. We chugged along though, with no coffee break for me and no gas break for her.

Around the time that my GPS, informed me that I was ten minutes from my destination, I heard a loud bang at the windshield, like the sound of a rock making contact. I was confused for a moment. Added to the rhythmic swoosh and thump of my windshield-wipers was a terrible SKREEETCH… SKREEETCH… SKREEETCH.

The windshield-wiper blade on the driver’s side had broken and flown off as I drove down that large, unfamiliar highway. I could see nothing but blobs of light through the thick, flowing coat of rain that the driver’s side of my windshield wore. I had to keep the wipers going though, and continued driving, leaning across the center console to look through the other half of the windshield. I turned on my radio for the first time in hours in an attempt to drown out the terrible, sharp sound of metal rubbing glass. (Paired with the stream of profanity and noises of frustration, it was quite successful.)

I drove ten under the speed limit for that last bit of the trip, but I made it! And after rubbing and rolling the crick out of my neck and getting a new wiper blade at a near-by auto shop, I had a wonderful weekend with Kevin. So worth the drive.

Here Goes Nothin'

For years now, I’ve toyed with the idea of starting a blog. I imagine it could turn out to be an excellent creative outlet, but I’ve always resisted. Do I really want to release all my genius into the blogosphere? What if someone steals my words, calling them their own and using them for a greater, higher paying purpose? Don’t people only blog because they think they’re just oh so special? I don’t want to seem narcissistic.

     Well, this semester I’m taking a Creative Non-fiction course and a portion of my grade will be based on the creation and up-keep of this, my very own blog. What a gift!

     I’ll be able to practice a kind of writing which is completely new to me, and for an actual (albeit small) audience. I expect I’ll learn a lot; not only about writing, but I’ll learn about myself. In this, my first entry, I’ve already realized how foolish my thinking was in resisting to blog in the past. I didn’t want to seem full of myself, but my “reasons” not to blog were more outlandishly conceited than any post I could publish.

     So anyway, I’m pretty excited to see what it’s like to write (vaguely) publishable work on a regular basis. A preview of what life could be like after capturing one of those magazine dream jobs—you know, one of those jobs that the realist within seems to try so hard to push from consciousness...