By Morning, You'll Be Gone

"Please let me keep this memory, just this one."

Clearly, I've been watching Eternal Sunshine of The Spotless Mind too much lately, but it's impossible to watch the film without asking yourself the same question going through the character's minds:

If you could erase someone from your memory, and therefore your life, would you?

For me, the answer is a resounding no. Perhaps it's because I've never experienced anything awful enough. Or maybe it's just that I cherish the happy memories too much to banish the darkest pains. It could be that it's simply because I'd need a full on lobotomy to truly forget certain people, because anything and everything makes me think of them. But maybe, it's because deep down, I know it wouldn't really work.

Have you ever noticed, upon meeting someone, that you're inherently drawn to them for no logical reason? A total stranger with whom you have an instant connection. You can't explain it, or rationalize it, you just feel it. And maybe later, you try to get them out of your life. You try to forget them completely. But it's not quite so simple.

In fact, it's downright strange. Chance meetings turn into unexpectedly meaningful affairs, and there are events and people you think are going to have a huge impact on your life that all of a sudden, you can't remember. In conversation with my mother recently, I came to the startling realization that I couldn't remember all of my teachers in high school, and had done things I don't remember doing. And yet, someone I meet purely by chance manages to lodge themselves immovably in my memory.

In the opening scenes of the film Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, we watch the two main characters coincidentally wind up mindlessly wandering the same beach. Later, they wind up on the same train, and, as if by pure magnetics, shift closer and closer to each other as the ride progresses, engaging in the casual conversation of two people who seem to be strangers. It's not until later that we realize this is actually a repeat experience for them both.

They go to all the trouble of erasing each other from their lives only to run into each other again and fall into the same bond they had before. Even when placed together as strangers, there's something in their natures that draws them to each other. I think it would be the same for any of us. We're drawn to people, often for no reason that we can understand. And for better or worse, they break into our lives and rearrange our furniture and change our perspectives and sometimes turn things entirely on their head. But would we even know who we were if that was suddenly taken away? Every experience we have in our lives shapes us. Could the person I am today even function if all of those middle bits were suddenly ripped out? Is forgetting the pain worth the risk of destroying progress?

Do I think that we would be destined to meet these people we long to forget? No. Do I think we're doomed to relive our mistakes if we don't make them, and learn from them? Yes.

Every horrible thing that has happened to me has taught me something. Every person who has hurt me has made me stronger. I don't assume that things would happen the same way twice. Perhaps, if I erased someone, I'd never run into them again in my life. But if I did run into them, perhaps there's something that's simply inherent in both of us that would draw us together again. And perhaps, without realizing that we'd made the same mistakes already, we'd make them again, and things would continue on in an endless loop. Maybe, with so many things I've lived and learned taken out, my personality would revert back to the way it was, and repeating would be inevitable. And as I watched the end of the film, I knew even if I erased you, I'd fall in love with you all over again.

So I turn the question now to you: If you could erase someone from your memory, and therefore your life, would you?

~Jessica

No Apologies

"I'm not a concept, Joel. I'm just a fucked-up girl who's looking for my own peace of mind." -Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

I could say that this blog was inspired by something that was said to me a few nights ago, but that wouldn't be entirely true. But I don't really have a better starting point, so I'm jumping off from there, and we'll see how far I get.

The conversation was about the idea of being "corrupted", and how I thought that I was, but how I didn't think that was a bad thing. The person I was talking to implied that I could always go back to the way things were, and get back what I had lost, and cover up my past and go on to live a perfectly happy life.

But I would never want that.

Sure, I'm "corrupted". I've experienced life. I've been educated - by books, by people, by experiences. I'm realistic. But I'm not damaged goods. I don't regret any of the experiences I've had in my life, even if other people would frown on them. I have loved. I have had my heart broken. I have had my heart swell with happiness beyond reckoning. I have laughed until I thought my stomach would burst. I have cried until it hurt. I have lost everything that I thought mattered to me, and gained everything I thought I wanted. I have thought that I would live forever, and I have honestly believed I would die. These experiences make me who I am, and I'm not trying to cover any of that up. I'm not proud of everything I've ever done, but it's all a part of me. I'm a package deal, and I'm not apologizing for it.

I told a story about someone I knew who couldn't handle me the way I was. He said he loved me, but he was always angry at me for some reason or another, or complaining about some trait that he didn't like. Often, these traits were a result of something I'd experienced earlier in my life. I told him that if he loved me, and wanted me, it was an all or nothing deal. I am not going to lobotomize myself so that people can take the bits and pieces of my personality that they like, and leave me with the rest. You don't get to pick and choose. If you can't handle all of me, you don't deserve all of me.

I am passionate.
I am neurotic.
I am motivated.
I am kind.
I am sensual.
I am nonsensical.
I am creative.
I am driven.
I am caring.
I am intimidating.
I am intelligent.
I am thoughtful.
I am insecure.
I am beautiful.
I have a hunger for all the brilliance of life, and above all, I put all of my heart into the things and people I love.

This is who I am, and I'm not apologizing. You take me as I am, or you leave me. I'm not here to fit your mold, or change myself into what you want me to be. I'm not a concept, or an idea, or a theory. I am a living, breathing, loving person, and I'm not leaving bits out to make anyone feel better.

~Jessica

Capturing A Moment

I was writing (or, rather, attempting to write) a piece of music this evening. Don't get excited or anything, it isn't showing up here. But it got me thinking (as I tend to do at any and all inappropriate moments) about exactly what I was trying to do.

You see, I had a feeling. It was a feeling I was trying to itemize and pin down with dozens of tiny noteheads on a piece of staff paper. It was the feeling of a moment. The memory of a moment, really. And I was trying to capture it. And as I shifted from chord to chord piecing notes together, I realized that somehow, the moment wasn't there.

How the hell do you capture a moment?

Is it in the photograph of a happy smiling couple? Is it in a sonnet, strung out in clever rhymes? Is it in a song with a soft, wandering piano solo? Is it in a book, pressed like a flower between the pages? Is it in a diary, hidden away with all the other secrets?

I am always trying in vain to hang onto moments of my life that matter to me, but as I look back through the photos and the poems and the writing, the feeling behind it just isn't there anymore.

It finally struck me that nearly all of the most important and most meaningful moments of my life were never captured in any sort of song, or photograph, or diary. The memories I cling to the most exist only in my mind. It's the memories that I conjure up that still make my heart swell, or make me laugh or cry. I can play the moments back in my head exactly as they happened, if only as shadows of what they once were. But they're fleeting.

I wish that I could pull snapshots from my memories, or write down the soundtrack I hear playing in my head in these moments. I wish that I could find words that adequately describe the feelings of those moments in all their complicated, but delightful glory.

But I can't.

And maybe I'm not supposed to. Maybe I'm supposed to cherish those moments, not immortalize them. Maybe I'm supposed to live in those moments when they come. Maybe if I focus too much on trying to capture the moment, I'm actually missing it.

Do you have a moment you wish you could recreate? Do you have a memory you wish you could immortalize?

~Jessica

Standing Up For Myself

I wrote a while back about how I am constantly doing things for others, and not myself. And as anyone who has read my blog for a while knows, I am not overly quick at learning from my mistakes.

I constantly find myself begging the universe for second chances. And honestly, I feel like I am generally given more than I deserve. And something that I have learned from that is that, to miss an opportunity once is human. To miss it again is just STUPID.

So here I sit, after what probably could count as chance number three at a given situation terrifically bitter that I have once more missed out.

Why would I do such a thing, you ask? It seems as though it would be quite complicated to explain, but it really isn't. The situation was one that everyone in my life has an extremely tough and thorough opinion about just in general, if not speaking specifically of this particular thing. And after months, and even years of letting the weight of their opinions bear down on me, I finally gave in to it. I gave in to what everyone else thought I should do, and how everyone else thought I should behave.

Let's be perfectly clear. I didn't do something I wanted to because I was afraid of what everyone would say if they knew.

Stupid, right? But we've all done it, haven't we?

I'm so angry at myself now, because all I can think about is what could have been, and what I had wanted it, and how scared I'd been of everyone else's opinion and how much I cared about what other people thought of me. Why in god's name should that have mattered AT ALL!? I hesitated when I should have stepped up and gone for what I wanted. And I did it because, as usual, I stopped thinking about what I wanted and started thinking about what everyone else wanted.

So I missed out on something I wanted, because I "didn't" want it, and I "wasn't supposed to" want it. But you know something?
THIS IS YOUR LIFE

You don't get a rebate when you mess up, and you don't always get a second chance when you don't take it the first time. So you'd better do it right the first time, because we never know what's going to happen next.

So from now on, I'm standing up for myself. I'm not letting what other people think of me keep me from going after what I want. I'm not letting anyone else's idea of who I should be keep me down.

Is there anything you wish you could have a second chance at? Is there an opportunity you're really glad you took? Have you ever not done something because you were afraid of what people would say about you? Have you ever done something in spite of the fact that everyone told you not to? What happened?

~Jessica

College Cafeteria's: Diet Disasters

I've learned from past mistakes and on my most recent road to self improvement, I've decided I'm not taking the heavy-handed hardcore diet approach. (I mean, the last time I was in bed with That Man he ran his hand over my stomach and told me to go back to the kitchen and down a few more slices of pizza. What more motivation does a girl need to NOT diet quite so fiercely?) However, after subsequently falling off the wagon completely, I am definitely interested in being a little less mushy, and definitely more healthy.

I've been shopping for healthier food, and cooking a lot more, which is all well and good. I've tried to go back to drinking more water and tea, and not overdosing on snack foods. This works out pretty well for me, with one giant exception - my school's cafeteria.

For anyone who has ever tried to diet, or at least maintain healthy eating habits, you probably know that making healthy choices that taste good is enough of a challenge when you've got a wide variety of foods at your disposal. In a school cafeteria, this becomes nearly impossible.

One of the first issues comes in with the food served from behind the counters. For starters, there is no such thing as portion control. You get whatever the person behind the counter scoops onto your plate, even if it's more or less than the suggested serving size - and more often than not, it's more. I watch them heap pasta onto plates, slather rolls with mayonnaise and pile cheese and turkey high on sandwiches - which, for how much they charge us for this food, is probably good, but as far as eating healthy portions, is a disaster.

As if it's not bad enough that you have no idea how much you're eating (most people do not know how to approximate a proper serving size), none of the food is marked with any sort of nutritional information. I'm sure that the information could be provided to you if requested, but if you've seen my cafeteria during peak eating hours, you'd know that waiting around until someone is free to get you that information is pretty pointless.

Based on the food that they serve, I'd guess that the food in my cafeteria has high sodium and fat contents, and a pretty poor balance of carbs, proteins, and vegetables. They always have vegetarian options, but rarely are they an option that has any nutritional value (pasta and marinara sauce, baked ziti, etc.), and vegetables that are served as sides are often not the best from a dietary perspective (corn, potatoes) or are something that too few students will even bother with (brussel sprouts). Not exactly helpful. I'm not even going to mention what comes out of the grill (though they finally, FINALLY serve veggie burgers on a consistent basis - thank goodness!).

Perhaps worse than the food behind the counter though, are the prepackaged foods available. First off, if you want a snack, prepare to throw 200 of your daily calories down the tube at the very least, because that's the lowest I've seen on any bag of chips or cereal or candy bar offered. The fat content is even worse. They stopped carrying Special K bars in favor of Cinnabon's line of cereal bars. The breakfast pastries are so full of sugar that I don't know how you can eat them and not crash shortly after. Refrigerators are filled with fake fruit juices and energy drinks. You can even purchase a pint of Ben & Jerry's ice cream out of the freezer. And yet, finding a bag of pretzels, or a piece of fresh fruit that is actually ripe, and not bruised beyond belief is nearly impossible. We do have a selection of salads, but sadly, no healthy dressing options.

I know I sound like I'm taking a totality elitist and holier-than-thou look at my cafeteria, but really, with obesity rates on the rise, I look at an environment like that and all I can say is "Do you really wonder WHY?" I mean, really, we're not even giving our young people a CHANCE. It's such a challenge to make the healthier choice in a place that has limited your options so much, and when you're on the run in between classes, you're going to grab whatever you can down the fastest, regardless of the calories involved. I know, I've been there. It's ten times easier for me to grab a fruit juice and a cereal bar than it is for me to sit down, make a cup of tea, and scoop my fat free yogurt into one of their to-go bowls of Cheerios, but I think we all know which one is the healthier breakfast.

Grabbing a fat free yogurt and an English Muffin with peanut butter or light cream cheese is getting extremely redundant to me and I'm going nuts, but having so many textbooks to carry, I am reluctant to bring more food than I already do. (I generally bring my own oatmeal to make in a coffee cup, and some sort of snack).

Is your cafeteria a diet disaster? Do you find eating right harder when you're subject to the selection of a college or high school cafeteria? Does your cafeteria have loads of healthy choices for you to choose from? Do you think that the meals that children and young adults are getting at school are having a serious effect on their eating habits?

~Jessica

Generation Obnoxious, Entitled, Helpless

Throughout my trip to London, I was always frustrated by the behavior of a lot of the people who were on the trip with me. However, as I started breaking away from the group and traveling on my own, and even as I got back home, I came to the sad realization, that it isn't a couple of brats on my trip, it's a generation-wide epidemic.

I don't really know at what point proper conduct and behavior deteriorated, but it has. I remember as my grade was coming up through the public school system, teachers were shocked and appalled by the slew of behavioral issues they were forced to address. We were quickly dubbed the worst grade the school had seen. And it only got worse when the next few years came up behind us.

I look around today, and I realize something very sad: we haven't gotten any better. We haven't grown up. We're in our 20's now, and we're still the obnoxious, bratty, entitled, irresponsible, helpless behavioral disasters we were back in school. We are loud, and we are rude, and we think the world revolves around us.

When I was in London, a lot of the people I was with would just walk up to people on the street, interrupt their conversations, and ask for directions without so much as an "Excuse me", "Please", or "Thank you". On a train ride back from Oxford, there was a group of people who looked to be about my age spread out along one side of the train car who spent the entire trip shouting over people to their friends across the car. This kind of behavior just shows such a disregard for the people around you, like your conversation and well-being is more important than theirs.

I have no problem calling out the next set of behavioral disasters specifically by school, because I think their high-and-mighty demeanor deserves to be taken down a peg. Now, I thought the behavior of MY classmates left a lot to be desired. However, we were NOTHING compared to the group of students who came in towards the end of our trip from NYU. Rude doesn't even begin to cover it. Within the first 2 days of them being there, all of the common areas had been trashed. Every single table in the cafe and lounge area was covered with trash, from empty McDonald's bags and wrappers to cans of beer and bottles of wine, and every other sort of food garbage you could imagine. I could not believe how poorly they treated the space, and how they have absolutely NO respect for the rest of us that they had to share the space with. I was so disgusted.

Now I know this doesn't apply to all of us, all of the time, but I think if you look around at your peers, you'll see the people I'm talking about.

There's also this overwhelming sense of entitlement. We act like we deserve to have everything given to us. I think this goes hand in hand with viewing our well-being as more important than anyone else's. And I'll say something here that is something I know I struggle with - we don't have any sort of automatic respect for authority. I will call out a professor on their mistakes or botch-ups regardless of the fact that they are an authority figure - if they have not earned my respect, I will not give it to them. The most recent example is a professor I have who yells, snaps, and claps at us as if we were dogs needing to be trained. I do not respect her, despite the fact that I am supposed to because she's my professor.

We're struck by this cloud of apathy that seems to hover over us at all times. For many of us, we haven't ever had to fight for anything, or believe in anything, or strive for anything, because there's nothing for us to fight for or believe in or strive for. The fact that the world is at war means so little to so many of us, because it's such a distant threat that on a good day, we can forget about it, if we're not there. We seem to have so little passion.

And yet, at the end of the day, I can almost start to feel bad for us. I look at the problems my generation is inheriting, and I almost don't blame people for acting out. Many of us are going to graduate college with a huge amount of debt already, and be thrust into a job market that is floundering. We aren't being adequately prepared for life, and so we're being thrown out into the world, helpless, and now with bad manners and poor attitudes on top of everything else. We're getting screwed over by governments, and the mistakes of generations before us that are leaving us in more and more debt, and with more things we are responsible to fix. But does that excuse our behavior? I don't think so.

What do you think of the generation that you are a part of? Does it embarrass you to be a part of your generation, or are you proud of them? Do you wish you had grown up in a different generation? How do you think you would be different if you had?

~Jessica

Finding Something Beautiful

After being choked in the dark and cold city streets of Manhattan for so long, and floundering in the artificial, fabricated lifestyle of it all, I have been dying to find something beautiful. I ran away out of the country at the end of last month, seeking reprieve from the problems that plagued me, and the ghosts that haunted me in that city. However, I arrived in London to find that I had run away to someplace very much like the place I had run from. Far too close for comfort.

On J.R.R. Tolkien's birthday, I took a trip out to Oxford to pay my respects at his grave site, and explore the city where he lived for so long. As my train finally sped away from the twisted metal and smoke of the city and out onto the rolling countryside, my heart swelled. At long last, the spires of the Oxford skyline came into view, and it was so beautiful, I nearly wept. I ran off the train and through the dirty station until I reached the main street that lead into town. An uncontrollable smile spread across my face.



It was beautiful. Undeniably so. The rolling countryside seemed to seamlessly melt into this beautiful town. And it was the perfect balance of city and country. The streets were full of people, but not so thick you could not walk, and so busy they seemed dead inside. There were buildings, and businesses that thrived, but not so tall that they shielded you from the skies, and blotted out the sun. There were trees, and greenery. There was calm, and peace, and quiet, but there was life too. And it was beautiful.



It was as if a weight had at last been lifted off my shoulders. For the entire day, I didn't think about my problems from back home. I didn't think about whether or not I'd get into FIT. I didn't think about next semester at school. I didn't think about That Man. I didn't think about the man fighting to replace That Man, or any of the other men in my life who I wished would. And most importantly, I didn't feel lonely. I was alone, and I was content. I wasn't wishing anyone else was there with me, I was happy to be by myself. At long last, I had come to terms with that. My mind was as bright and clear as the sky over the countryside.



As all good things, the feeling faded as I drifted in and out of consciousness on the train ride home. The countryside was dark, and I was being whisked back to the city. I have nothing against London, really, except that it's too much like New York. And I have nothing against New York, except that it's slowly rotting my soul. But for a day, I found something beautiful. And I was happy. And perhaps that was even more beautiful.

~Jessica