The unspoken agreement fostered by our relationship here, gentle, sweet-ass readers, is such that sometimes I'm going to have to ask you to look or listen to things to get you in the mindset for my ramblings...in this particular moment, I'm going to need you to watch this video.
(Two sidenotes....1) This video still warms my heart like Christmas morning and puppies and imagining a different ending to The Notebook and 2) I'm pretty sure the opening sequence is how I learned to dance...yeah.)
Okay so for most of you taking precious time to read this, my humble, homely, awkward beginnings are no secret (especially thanks to the photographic blackmail tendencies of Mrs. Laffey...). In my neurotic selfhood, I’ve spent the last few weeks trying to figure out exactly how to start this blog. I'm no stranger to this problem-I faced it in my days as a pre-teen aspiring journalist. Every-time I got a new notebook, I would gape at the first blank page for days, overwhelmed by the sheer task of a clever beginning. Should I lead-off with the fool-proof but unoriginal “Dear Diary?” AND did I want it to be a diary or….a JOURNAL? Did "Dear Journal" belong in the running as well? Was I cool enough to skip the introductions altogether and just write? Did I want to chronicle the events of my days (busy as they were when I wore a bra a little less than I do now) or did I want to express my thoughts stream of consciousness style? (Had I gone this route, I could have been the next James Joyce. Damn.) Eventually the stress of the whole deal led me to abandon diary-writing altogether and instead live inside my beginning-less and endless head. Sometimes I lose sleep imagining the pure genius of my mind that I’ve abandoned recording over the years because of my neuroses. Examining this process now, I realize that I probably should have been in therapy: the inception of my life as a chronic over-thinker…a trait that manifests itself into over-speaking as well…see numerously unnecessary sentences above and below. Anyway, knowing that I wanted to start this blog before I went away, I’ve been searching the last few weeks for an inspirational opening, a tone-setter for writerly magnificence, a prologue to literary orgasm, if you will. With that I give you….the bumblebee girl.
The bumblebee girl is my personal hero because her role in the video explains the way that I would chart the history of my relationship with myself. She rocks steady on her own awkwardness in the beginning of the video, and what does the infinite wisdom of Blind Melon show us is the reward for rocking steady on your own awkwardness? You discover a bunch of other life-loving weirdos that rock steady on your AND their awkwardness. Forget Mr. Rogers, and the teachings of the big JC-I’m raising my kids in the neighborhood and church of Blind Melon. I’ll find a way to get around the lead singer’s drug-induced death. Small matter. People KNOW this girl. She is an icon. We could all take a lesson. Ask anyone alive and cognizant in the 90s about the bumblebee girl: at the very least, you get a smile and a nod. They may not know remember the band or the song, but that little woman holds a place in everyone’s heart. Why? Because we've all been there, awkward in our heads or bodies, searching for a little understanding and maybe some drag queens to dance with. She's the ultimate expression of total self-comfort, a status that I failed to understand for quite some time. There are a few reasons for this, but enmeshed in all of them is my relationship with the idea of home.
In my pre-college departure naivete, I struggled with the meaning of home. I loved my family and friends, of course, but the idea of home in my mind was a growth-stifling vise to be overcome or escaped. When I actually left for college, my attitude toward home was a big old mental middle finger….and I quickly experienced a mental crash and burn. Boom. Emotional cataclysm, check. I recoiled from the harshness of my original ideals, felt a little guilty for my disloyalty, and used home to rebuild the parts of myself I had lost in the crash. In my final year of college, I felt the tremors of that same defiance…a wanderlust geared toward proving to myself that I could exist separate from the familiarity and comfort of home. Security blanket be damned, I’m woman hear me roar, blah blah blah, so bing bang boom, let’s teach English in Thailand for a year! It’s amazing to me how even now, I can look at myself and the way my brain worked in February and say, “Damn Mis of February past, grow up,” but alas, I am the most work ever of a work in progress human being. (Ask my mom-she will readily concur.)
The Thailand thing, as it turned out but remains to be seen, was a great idea that I approached in the wrong way and for the wrong reasons. The visceral second guessing that eventually got a strangle hold on my heart is proof of that. Here is what I’ve come to realize, and I pride myself on this as what is possibly my most mature life outlook to date…there ain’t no harm in needing to refuel your tank of self at the home pump. I’m LUCKY to have the kind of home that I don’t want to be away from for a year. (It’s taking all my willpower and desire for some shred of decency to not reference a household or two that might have engendered more of a desire for escape…the Menendezes, the Bobbitts….oops, did it anyway…)
I’m LUCKY to know the kind of people that I don’t want to be away from for a year. I have the world’s (Thailand included, and I know this with certainty having yet to set foot there) GREATEST family and friends, and I sure as hell don’t need a year to prove to myself that I can live without these people, because while I’m sure I can, that’s a year of memories and life-loving that I’ll never get back. Limited as life already is, that’s not a chunk of time I can put my heart into. So I am going to Thailand for a six month adventure, the most ballsy thing I’ve done in my life thus far (so says the lady with good faith BEFORE she contracts malaria). Why can I do it? Well, I could wax Cosmo about learning to be my own best friend and blah blah, but we’ve all heard that and it doesn’t quite illuminate the truth. The reason that I am so psyched on going away, the reason that I’m so stoked to spend six months as my own security blanket, is because I have the kind of home (and remember, home for me equals all of you fools taking the time to read this baby) that has made me a person that I love to be around, a person I’m comfortable being alone with, a person I love. So thank you in advance to everyone to whom I refer, be you internet savvy enough to read this or otherwise. I love love love love you and I’ll do my best to make you proud (and in the meantime, I’ll be making the bumblebee girl proud. Man, I would love to meet and be friends with her…)
