I'm Thankful

Alright, I'll admit it. This post has been future-posted. I'm writing this the night before Thanksgiving as I wait for the pumpkin pie to finish baking so that I can hit the hay at least 7 hours before the alarm goes off at 3:45am. This year, I'm working the Thanksgiving Day Parade on the costume crew, so when the Hess float goes by, look at the people on it, marvel at how well they're dressed, and think of me. 

In the spirit of Thanksgiving, I'm doing what everyone else is doing on their blogs; I'm talking about all the things I'm thankful for. 

I'm thankful for a lot of things, even if the circumstances surrounding them are not what I wanted. I'm trying to look on the bright side and appreciate what I have instead of bemoaning all the things that I've lost. I'm trying to take the triumphs for what they are, and not get so caught up in the ongoing struggles.

So I'm thankful for my family, and how supportive they always are, even when I say I'm not coming home for Thanksgiving because I can't handle it right now. I'm thankful that they're able to give me what I need, even when what I need is time and space to sort through the things going on in my life on my own. 

I'm thankful for my friends, the true ones that are out there. The ones that have been sitting at bars with me as I down copious amounts of gin. The ones who talk me off ledges at three in the morning. The ones who always leave loving, insightful, and helpful advice on my blogs. The ones who do the goofy things we're all embarrassed of but do anyway with me. The ones who listen to my bitching. The one who stole my iPod when I wasn't looking to write a note about how beautiful I was, and leave it for me to find the next day. The ones who invited me to spend Thanksgiving with them when they found out I wasn't going home. The ones who actually care about me. I'm so thankful that you're here for me. 

I'm thankful for the opportunities that I have been afforded in my life. I'm thankful that I am gainfully employed, and that one of those jobs is in my desired field. I'm thankful that people have had faith in my abilities and entrusted me with important responsibilities. I'm thankful that I'm getting the chance to prove myself, and do what I want to do. I'm thankful that I'm getting a chance. 

I'm thankful that my apartment smells like pumpkin pie right now, and I'm even thankful for the fact that I had to wake up at 3:45am, because I'm on a costume crew, dammit! 

~Jessica

You're Not Seeing, I'm Not Waiting

So I've spent a lot of time getting down on myself lately. Be it because of the heartache, or the disappointment of my job turning out to be rather short-lived, I've been moping. But in talking to a friend today, I realized that I actually have a lot to be proud of. 

I spend a lot of time not tooting my own horn, and just hoping that people see how intelligent, and hard working, and kind I am. Someone told me recently that I could have anything I wanted, and I quickly blew off the remark as a blatant falsehood. 

But you know what? I didn't end up where I was standing out of sheer luck, or happenstance. 

I was a mediocre high school student. This is not me getting down on myself, this is me being honest. I had a 3.0 GPA in high school. I went on from that to college. I graduated college early, in 3 years, with honors. I held down a job for that entire period of time, and I still work for that company now. Within a couple of weeks of graduating college, I was working as a wardrobe supervisor, albeit on a small non-profit production. From that point, I have never been without a job in my field for more than a few weeks. In fact, if you look at my resume, it would appear that there were no breaks in my wardrobe career at all, because it just so happens that my jobs have gone July-August, September-October, November, and November-January. If all goes accordingly, I'll qualify to enter the union by January. 

Yes, during a lot of those in between periods, I was going crazy. 

But you know what? I'm doing pretty damn good for myself. 

I'm intelligent, I'm motivated, I'm passionate, and I am getting what I want. 

I don't have anything to prove to anyone, because I am proud of what I've accomplished, and where I'm standing right now - I've got the whole world and the whole life ahead of me, and I'm not waiting for anything, I'm going out to get it. 

~Jessica

Heart To Hearts Over Gin and Tonic

I will openly admit to drinking more than I should be lately. In the past weeks, I've had a lot of trouble sleeping, but if I stumble in the door with a head heavy with liquor, it's really not difficult. And I don't dream. 

Well, not at first anyway. Something I've noticed is that when I come home after drinking, I crash into a nice, relaxing dreamless sleep. Then I wake up, which happens regardless of whether or not I've been drinking, simply because my bladder is the size of a peanut, sometime between 6 and 8 in the morning. I then go back to sleep and have the craziest dreams ever. No, really, this morning I was watching people swim around with fishing poles and comparing condoms with Cameron Diaz. It's like everything the alcohol stops me from dreaming earlier crashes into each other. 

I get off track rather easily, don't I? Anyway...

I generally avoid drinking alone. Because if I'm hanging out with a friend and drinking socially it doesn't feel like I'm doing anything wrong. So as a compromise, I've been doing a lot of hanging out with people and drinking. One person in particular, who I'm sure is growing rather sick of me, has spent a good deal of time drinking with me in the past couple of weeks, both distracting me from my issues and helping me work through them. 

He's smarter than I am, this much is apparent. Though I generally hate to admit that people older than me do often know better simply on the grounds that they have more experience. What's interesting is that we're looking for a lot of the same things in our lives, but going about it in completely opposite ways. At any rate, he's helping me recognize the things that I do need in my life, and the things that I don't. 

And with that in mind, a little bit of the heartache I've been feeling has begun to fade. 

The pain exploded, initially. It caught me by surprise, like a jarring blow to the side of the head that makes you see stars. And it burned so brightly that it was impossible to see past how much it hurt. All the things that I was losing - the time and energy and love I'd poured out - were gone forever. And the pain of that realization was blinding. And perhaps it was even blown out of proportion by the feeling of repetition, the voice in my head screaming "No, this can't happen again, not again, I can't stand to go through this again." 

But at last, when I can look back honestly at the things I was glossing over, the shit I put up with, and the things I was giving up, I can almost hear my friend when he says that I'm going to be okay, and that it's better that I knew this now, instead of further down the road, and that I don't need someone like him in my life, and that it's his loss, that he didn't realize what he had in someone like me. 

And I know that's the stuff your friends are supposed to say anyway. And I'm still waiting for the smoke to clear, I can't deny that. But at least, with every little heart to heart, I'm able to acknowledge that the smoke is going to clear. And that it hurts a little less. 

~Jessica

The Colors Won't Last, They Bleed And They Burn

I've decided that I want to start featuring more of my photography on my blog. So from now on, I'm going to post a photo with all of my entries. I'm going to try to keep the photos related to the content, in some way shape or form, but my train of thought usually takes the scenic route so I'm not sure if it will always be apparent why I chose it. No matter. 

After reading Ali's blog on running away, I was inspired to share my own story, and thoughts on the matter. 


When I was 10, I packed my little pink roller suitcase. A few outfits, t-shirts, jeans, underwear. A few non-perishable snacks, a bottle of water, at least $100 in cash, and a few personal items I'd want to bring with me. I pushed the suitcase under my bed, and that's where it sat, until I was at least 13. It was always ready, should I decide to leave in the middle of the night. 


There are a couple of things people think when I tell them this. That I was a drama queen, or that it's "cute". It wasn't actually cute. I was having an extremely hard time emotionally at that point in my life, which people also brush off because "ten year olds can't be depressed". I would argue that they very much can be. At the time I was packing this suitcase, I had also cut off all my hair, stopped eating, lost 10 pounds (which is a rather significant drop when you haven't broken 100 pounds yet), and wore oversized shirts to try to disguise the fact that I was skeletal and pale. There's a 2 or 3 year period where there are just no photos of me. They literally don't exist. I can show you a photo from right before this happened, and from after I finally started to get better, but the photos from in between don't exist. 


I hated my school. I was frightened of it because the cops had to be around so often because kids were violent. I had already had some trouble with my anxiety in elementary school, especially social anxiety, but it only got worse as I grew older. I didn't have very many friends, and people made fun of me because of what I looked like. I sometimes think that the self esteem issues I suffer from today are leftover from that point in my life. 


So I packed my suitcase, and planned to run away. And of course, I was 10, so running away literally meant running (well, walking), and not the slightly smarter option of, you know, taking a bus or a train. My plan was to go down to Cape May, where my family lived in the summer, and my plan was to walk. I had actually figured out how long it would take me to walk down the Garden State Parkway based on how fast I could run and walk a mile according to gym class. Never mind the fact that it's not actually legal to walk down the Garden State Parkway as a pedestrian. Also never mind the fact that if I'd mastered use of the internet back in those days, I could have learned that it would have been far more practical to take a 163 bus into Port Authority, and transfer to a 319 down to Atlantic City and Cape May. No, I was going to walk. I forget how long I thought it was going to take me, but definitely a couple of days. It's 160 miles worth of parkway. And I was going to walk it, all the way to the end. I mean, they had rest stations every 30 miles, I could do 30 miles in a day, or so I thought. And when I got to the end, I was going to live on the beach. They have tents there on the beach, and my idea was to go there, and live in one of the tents on the beach. Yup, that was the whole plan. 


The farthest I ever got was the end of the driveway. I snuck out a couple times, in the middle of the night when things were really bad, and I dragged my little roller suitcase all the way to the end of the driveway. But I always found a reason to stay. I always found something, however small, to look forward to. It could be something simple, something small, but there was always some small light in the darkness that kept me from going. I don't think I ever stopped because afraid. In the worst of these years, I wished myself dead many times with no actual fear of death. I don't think it was ever fear that stopped me, just that something to look forward to. 


The ironic part is that when I was a little older, I actually did run away, and it was completely spontaneous. I got in a huge fight with my parents, turned on me heel, walked out the door, and didn't stop. Needless to say, you don't get very far when you do that right in front of everybody, because both my parents got in their cars, called my aunt and uncle and they got in their cars, and there were four people combing the streets for me. I lasted about an hour. I fail at running away. 


I don't keep a packed suitcase anymore. I don't keep travel plans set up to escape when things get tough. Because I'm an adult now, and as such, I have obligations. I can't pick up my suitcase, head to the airport, and just go somewhere. And yet...


Right now, I am in the best position in my life that I have ever been to make such a leap. 


I have enough money in my savings account that I could afford a plane ticket and living expenses for quite a while. I'm finished with school. My job in my field is ending soon, and it would give me no great grief to quit my dead-end retail job. But most importantly, there is no one here that I'm staying for. 


Ah, the bitter truth of it comes out at last. Apart from my extreme dedication to my education, the one thing that has always kept me from running away in my adult years has been a man. Not the same man, mind you. For a long time, it was That Man. He was all kinds of wonderful, and I never wanted to be away when he was around. Which was ironic, because he spent a good deal of time away. But I always made sure that I was here waiting for him when he came back. I was reluctant to so much as go on vacation when he was around - I didn't want to miss any opportunity to spend time with him. 


And then came Prince Charming. Into my life rode this gorgeous man who I believed to be perfect. (Funny how I keep making that mistake, isn't it?) We had everything in common, and he was fun and interesting and funny and kind. I immediately stopped looking for touring positions, and started looking for local work, so that I could stay here. 


In both cases, I wound up crushed and heartbroken.


So here I am. 


And once again, I'm itching to run. I have no reason to stay. But I don't know where I want to go.


~Jessica

Stereotype Me

As part of the trend started by thegirlwiththecamera, and in light of GreekPhysique's post about how his initial idea of who I was wound up being pretty off, I am asking you to stereotype me. 



Make assumptions about me based on this picture. How old you think I am, what you think I do for a living, what kind of hobbies you think I enjoy. Anything. 

If you didn't know me, who would you think I am?

~Jessica

What Is A Journey?

Being that I work evenings, I never actually watch TV on my TV. I don't even have cable. Because of this, I am a frequent (ab)user of Hulu. The commercial above, which is actually for Louis Vuitton (which I didn't pick up on the first time I saw it because I was too focused on how much I was enjoying the commercial) is one that comes up every once in a while when I'm watching my weekly episodes of Castle or The Office or Grey's Anatomy online. 

Now that I got some silly and sappy YouTube clips out of my system... back to the matter at hand.  

I actually really love this commercial. Because apart from the part where it's trying to sell you a ridiculously expensive handbag with an ugly designer pattern all over it, it actually has a really good point. 

The journey is life itself.

Our lives, and everything in them, are our journeys. You don't actually need a Louis Vuitton handbag to go on that journey. (That's the part I'm sure the commercial doesn't want me to say) Because we're all on that journey, whether we want to be or not. And that journey is only ever going to be what you make of it. You can either be an active part of your world, and find your place in it, or sit on your couch and accept that your place is on your ass. Now come on, who is honestly going to pick the latter option? 

We could sit here for days theorizing and hypothesizing and philosophizing (spell check tells me I have yet to make up a word in this sentence) about the meaning of life, and the point of the journey we all take in our lives, but we might, in fact, be missing the point.

Because what if there is no point? What if the point is the journey? You know, "Happiness is a journey, not a destination", "Half the fun is getting there" and all that jazz. 

None of us know what the point is. So if we spend all our time trying to get to the point, or find the point, or identify the point, what are we actually doing? 

This hits me especially hard, simply because I find myself constantly living for the unreachable tomorrow, which will obviously be better than today. I treat things in my life as a process. Every job is a stepping stone to another job. A notch on the belt. A line on the resume. I'm building up and adding on so that tomorrow will be better, because I'm better - I'm a better, more qualified, more experienced employee who is capable of getting a better job. I'm obsessed with making myself more prepared and more qualified for whatever comes next. 

And I'm not saying that being prepared is a bad thing. Because it's not. But at some point I do have to step back and realize that sometimes I don't actually know what I'm preparing for. And I'm missing out on all the steps in between because I'm so focused on the future. 

I felt like I had my heart physically wrenched from my chest when the guy that I'd been seeing told me he was calling it quits to go and pursue someone else. Because I was so focused on developing the relationship, and working on achieving things that would make us happier that I was unable to look at the wonderful time we spent together and just appreciate that for what it was. I was too busy being shattered that it didn't have a "tomorrow". 

So basically, what I'm saying is, there has to be a happy medium with the journey. There has to be a way to enjoy the journey without neglecting the destination, and enjoying the destination without blowing off the journey.

I just, ya know, haven't figured that part out yet.

~Jessica

Being Thankful For A Little Space

So my family is a bit displeased right now, because I just told them that I'm not coming home for Thanksgiving. 


There's a myriad of reasons behind this, honestly. The first simply being a matter of convenience. I'm working on the costume crew for the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade this year. That's all fine, and dandy, and great on the resume. However, it does require me to wake up at around 3:45 on Thanksgiving morning. After that I have to go to a hotel where thousands of people are going to get dressed and made up, take care of the people on my rack, and clear up the costumes at the end of the parade. By the time all this is said and done, it's going to be sometime after 1:00 in the afternoon. By the time I've hightailed it to a bus stop, gotten on, sat through the influx of traffic from the post-parade mass exodus, and made it to my parent's house (or my aunt's house, or whoever is responsible for Thanksgiving this year, I don't even know), I'll be lucky if I manage to be there before 3 or 4. 


At which point I'll scarf down some mashed potatoes because that's the only vegetarian food there ever is, not get to watch football because I have to socialize with my family, and then turn around and get on a bus back into the city because I have to work the following day. 


It really just doesn't seem worth all the stress. Especially when you factor in that middle bit there. You know, the part about not watching football because I'm socializing with my family. 


It's not really about the football. (Though I'm pleased that my plans involve football). 


Over the summer, I wrote a post entitled Family Barbecues: Answering THOSE Questions about all of the things that family gatherings force me to talk about that I frankly cannot stand talking about. 


This is really only magnified by everything going on in my life right now. 


I don't want to go home only to have all my aunts and uncles ask how my boyfriend is, because I can't actually tackle that discussion yet without a rather swift onset of tears. I don't want to talk about school because no one wants to hear about how many offices I've been in and out of and how many rude assistants I've had to talk to, and how even though I finished classes in July, the huge mess of paperwork has still not been completely solved yet. I don't want to have everybody asking about the new job that I just got, because not only does no one in my family have a clear concept of what I do, but the job that was supposed to be a solid position for 3 months has been cut drastically short due to a closing notice that was posted the day I got there. This of course means that I return to retail servitude with no other prospects as of mid-January. (Which leaves me, as I joked to a friend, in a perfect position to be alone and unemployed just in time for my next birthday. How delightful.) 


I don't want to talk about it. Any of it. Because my family is not known for being particularly... tactful at dealing with any of the above. I get ripped a new one for some reason or another, or are made fun of, or mocked, or some other such thing at basically every holiday dinner. I don't claim that everyone gangs up on me - my sisters get it too, as do various other relatives. While my dad has insisted that none of it is ever malicious and that people would be respectful of me, I just don't have the heart to deal with it right now. Any conversation that my family could possibly start with me at Thanksgiving dinner would have me on the brink of tears, and I'm not putting myself in that position. 


So this Thanksgiving, I am thankful that I am going to take a little space. I'm thankful that I'm going to hang out with one of my friends, we're going to eat turkey sandwiches and pumpkin pie and mashed potatoes and maybe cranberry sauce. I'm thankful that we're going to sit on her couch and watch football and then we're going to walk around the city and look at all the Christmas decorations. But most of all, I'm thankful that we're not going to talk about any of the things I don't want to talk about, because I know that if I don't bring it up, she won't ask. 


~Jessica