Sarah Marie V

Love: l,l,l and then an “uh,” then that soft v resting on your lips and then you’ve said it; but what have you said? My love for each and every thing deserves its own name. I love him like a mumble or a stutter or a stumble when I want to be loving him like a force of nature or a pair of wings. But really it's a selfish need, to burrow under his skin and steal his heartbeat.

Sometimes I am at peace on a highway at sunset listening to a song say “goodbye” and suddenly I’m open and he lies gentle in my heart, not tugging, and that I think is when I truly love him.

What if I'm meant to write but have nothing to say? I should sit down every morning and put down two pages, but I'm afraid I'll be sucked dry. What's the worst that could happen, really? I'm boring? What else is new? My spectacularly ordinary life is devoted to what the less enlightened deem dull. I enjoy little things, small comforts, and best of all I shall never run out of those. If I force myself to sit down with a pen daily, I'll become a better and better translator of the petite beauty that strikes me daily.

I love my cluttered room, for example, my tumultuous sanctuary. True I hate not being able to find things, but I wonder if there isn't comfort in having some chaos of my very own. I am like God, master of a mess that seems without purpose. In daily life I am ordered and in control (or so it would seem), but without the freedom to sprawl and clutter sans reproach I chafe and then wither. I do value simplicity and every time I tidy I purge. But to me perfect cleanliness, the obsessive kind that comforts some people, is just a pristine lie. Nothing will stay that way. What's the point? To feel efficient for a few days but not remember where anything is? Probably also to a degree because I'm lazy, I'll admit. There are all different species of people in the world, however, and the ones who think me lazy I find neurotic. I'd say I'm casual, easily satisfied, someone who doesn't buy into the frantic and ambitious. My room is dirty and I am content.

Him. The best friend, the only boy I’ve ever loved. My feelings for him are knotted. I honestly adore him, though he is not perfect. He loves me too, though I don’t know that he can love me in the way I love him. What if he had never met her? Would there have been an us? Potentiality gnaws at me. I wonder about the margins of love, the borders and restrictions and definitions. I wish that the English language had more synonyms for the word, so he could know exactly how I love him. I love how he smiles when he sees me, and I him. I love how comfortable we are despite the past. Most of all I love the moments. The time when we were driving home and he pulled over because a spider attacked me. When we watched “Monty Python” while layered on my couch. And the night when he offered to lead me home even though I knew I could find my own way. He dutifully drove 55 in the slow lane, calling me whenever a car got between us or we merged onto another freeway. This from the boy who usually flies down the highway at 80, this from the boy who had work in the morning, but added a half hour to his trip just so he knew I’d get home.

I love his floppy hair (sometimes). I love his long musician fingers. I love his strong arms, goofy smile and mismatched nose. I love how tall he is. I love his stupid band t-shirts and baseball caps that make him look like he's 12. I love how he laughs. I love his insecurity and how easy it is for him to show affection. I love his old person car. I love how good his heart is and how innocent and fragile he is in so many ways. I love that he loves his family, and his dog. I love how he softly and earnestly sings along to songs in the car. I love how good he looks in blue and I love his mustache. I love our philosophical conversations and dirty jokes and even the awkward silences. I love when he teases me. I love how common his name sounds. I love the way he stands with his hands in his pockets. I love that he can dance but he never does. Maybe someday someone will convince him to waltz under streetlights with them.

I wish I knew one thing he loved about me.

Some of us just want to live quaint little lives, magnificently plain and of no great consequence. Is that so much to ask, to not be required to aspire to matter? Constantly I condemn myself for my lack of ambition. Is there something so wrong with being still, being simple, being satisfied? I suppose for some there is. A life without frantic going is no life at all to them. A pulse proves your aliveness, but I feel such an exquisite, subtle rhythm in the quiet places. I don't need power, don't need fame or success. I will never be cool or hip or important and that is a blessed thing. My greatest gift is my shabby sincerity. I am that I am and I fail utterly when I try otherwise. Why strive for different? A better me is a worthy aim to be sure, but life will hone me if I am open and do my best. This I must always remember, for the loud, the clamorous, the eternally dynamic who demand that I shape myself into their image are in fact unknowingly in pursuit of my own happiness.

Today I spent scouring a house. I was atoning for something, trying to scrub away my uselessness and the reasons why I’m so ultimately flawed and non-essential. But I am still so lonely. I take shelter in my claustrophobic, unkempt room and pray that no one will invade its easy space and judge me. That’s why I cleaned today, maniacally wiping away every speck from everything for hours, like I never do. I was trying not to be discarded, trying to abrade myself into a safe, clean oblivion. I haven’t spoken to anyone today, except for the terrible, critical phone call that woke me up and started this whole thing, and the tiny angry words that I had sought to avoid, that drove me in here so that no trace of me would be left out there. If I disappear, they cannot take hold of me, cannot disapprove or reproach. Even if it is cold and terrible, alone and forgotten, I am safe in here; I can comprehend myself. No one will ever know me really, and no one will ever love me because I am not the kind of person that people are accustomed to loving. I am not glorious in any way, I am not assured or talented, my flaws are not commendable (I am inert and timid and too sensitive). The world has no place for me and so I must make do in being untouched and alone, with only my observations and longings for company. I will watch others dance through life, moving without the self-consciousness that so paralyzes me. I will feel as if, for a second, I could be one of them, productive and valuable, but ultimately I will fight myself to do anything and I will wish for sleep, where in dreams I am dynamic and free.

It’s that time of year again, time to reevaluate. This year has been rather quiet. Last birthday I peered out over the next year and hoped that something spectacular was waiting. Instead my life has slowly, patiently been gestating. There is a time for everything, and my 20th year was one for contemplation, wondering, unfolding. I’m learning, and the most important thing I’ve learned is acceptance. I might never be patient, but if I can be gentle and kind to myself I can find the courage to become.

So this year I’ll still wish for excitement and romance and happiness. I’ll hope that this will be the year, but I’ll also pray for the grace to do what it’ll take to make this year the year.

May I enjoy a whimsical, tender, vibrant, spontaneous, daring 21st year full of fulfilling projects, good friends, simple pleasures and adventures worth recounting to my future children.

Nobody lives here anymore. This is what feels like sitting in my pristine room, taking in the boxes and the nervous feeling I get when I leave home for a long time. It's like acknowledging I belong elsewhere now and it leaves my heart as empty as the desk, the shelves, the bed. I'm here watching myself already gone, forgotten.

I love the act of writing, the way the pen loops across the page or the words appear on the screen. I love the way the world pulses when my eyes and words come together and render it remarkably alive.

I have this burning need to be a writer. They say you should choose an occupation that engages your skills and passions. If I were left to my own devices I would read, watch, think, discuss, investigate and record. Isn't that what writers do? But then there is this fear in me that stems from my love of both the world and the work that describes it: what if I am not skilled enough? What if I don't do its beauty justice? I know eventually hard work and error will polish me, experience wearing down the terror of my imperfection. And in the meanwhile I have my quirky observations and beloved words to gode me on.

Wanting. Isn't life always wanting? But maybe the wanting is wise, always hurtling us towards a vision of ourselves that we could never hope to fathom. The wanting will always be there, urging us as we stumble towards the only happiness there ever is: the unexpected, the serendipitous, the accidental. Wanting hurts, but it's a growing pain and without it we would cease. As for my wants...I want vibrancy, tenderness, ache. I want my heart to brim with wonder, my eyes and fingers grateful for everything they touch. I want simple contentedness, like a dear song or a delicious book or a real laugh, as much as possible. I want to love and not worry or try too hard. I want to be able to hear my heart always, to stay in the beautiful present and never be scared; to be filled with the effortless music of the cosmos, its peace and chaos and energy and hope. I want to trust and never forget to trust, ever, because there is a golden light that never leaves us. I want to be an empty shell all replete with thou, someone whose actions are graceful and sure. I want to consecrate and celebrate, to dance and feel life, to be where I’m supposed to be and know it. I think I’m cluttering this longing with words that mean nothing, but my words are how I struggle to make sense, to build myself and my world, to feel real. I want to learn to write better, to translate and transcribe the poetry I experience every day, to make every fiber of your being sing with my joy and poignancy. Sometimes I’m stranded and can’t feel or express anything. Sometimes I feel dull, insignificant, inferior and isolated. Sometimes I betray myself and I don’t know what to do with the fear. Helplessness slays me, turns my soul into a cold, heavy, static thing that refuses to move, to live, to hope or grasp or try. I get tired and all I see is darkness and hardship and never-ending failure. But underneath it all I find something throbbing, humming with something essential: love, home, Tao, God. Maybe nothingness. Maybe everything.

San Bernardino. My home. Not a glamorous place, but beautiful in a way. And who can help but love their home? No matter what we say, we take the place we were born in our bones and leave a bit of our heart. San Bernardino. A blip on the map, due east of Los Angeles. One if its main virtues is being near everything interesting: an hour or two from the desert, the river, the beach, the mountains, the forest, Mexico; four hours to Las Vegas; eight to San Fran. In other words, a perfect place to escape from. Many parts of the city are poor, ghetto and dangerous. The parts that aren't are dilapidated, dusty and dull. But San Bernardino has a funny way of making you miss it when you leave, even if you're living across the street from the beach or in an Alpine villa.

My favorite part is the hills. They surround you, they orient you; you know those mountains point north and that way to the beach. There's an art to all the crags and crevices in the face of the foothills, especially during the brief spring when it's green with wildflowers and you can almost imagine you're in Ireland or the wilderness. Hills that God himself pinched and shaped out of the plain, smoothing out a valley below for us to nestle in. And the sunsets! I'd always watch them in my backyard, the sun dropping behind the mountains and the city lights coming out. The sunlight plays hide and go seek with the shadows, the big houses gleam with gold and the smog turns the sky such colors.

The seasons, too, I love. Our calendar is a peculiar thing. My mother mourns the lack of New England autumns and white Christmases, but this is all I've ever known. Summer lasts from mid-April to October and sometimes rears its head in December. Above 90 is the norm then, often 100, and it's dry like an oven. Mid-day you sleep or take refuge in a theatre or mall and at dusk emerge to swim or run through sprinklers or go the drive-in or do other summer things. I prefer leaving in July or August because the heat does funny things to me, but I love summer nights just about anywhere. September still swelters, but by the end of the month the Santa Anas come, the strong off-shore winds that suck the moisture our of everything and start fires. This is our fall, like summer only noisier. You can still swim until November and I've surfed on Thanksgiving. But then, usually around December, our winter comes. It's the strange bastard season that we don't know quite what to do with. The leaves start changing and quickly fall off. It gets cooler, down in the 60s. Sometimes it gets icy and one time it snowed, but usually it's cool and clear or it rains. Rain here is different than elsewhere. It's scarce and welcome, an excuse to wear a coat and boots or to stay home and pretend you're snowed in. Of course it snows in the mountains, so after a storm, as the wind blows again, you can enjoy the white majesty from afar. This is also when the hills turn, from brown to green. At some point in March there comes a storm you know will be the last and suddenly summer's racing back. Spring is nice, all three weeks of it, and everyone dons their California uniform of shorts, sandals and tanktops.

I never particularly liked sun or summery weather, and this is why, because I was surrounded by it half the year. And I will always be a valley-dweller, missing the comforting contours when I'm living in the flatland. Who I am was shaped by this here, and if I had grown up elsewhere I might very well not be me.

So...fail. Just, fail. I haven't written on here since December and that's unacceptable. It assuages my self-disappointment somewhat to mention that I've been in the midst of an intense existential crisis these past couple of months. Also, my life is just plain boring.

Anyway.

Second quarter just ended Friday and now I'm on spring break (hurray!). Tim, the guy who lives downstairs from me in Newport gave me a homework assignment for this week: do something inappropriate. Specifically he wanted me to have sex with someone inappropriate, but when I made clear that that was impossible, he broadened the requirements. Problem is, I don't have an inappropriate bone in my body. What the hell am I gonna do? *Sigh*

This past quarter I shadowed a roller derby league (I'll have to put up the link to the article on here soon). I'm considering joining, so that could be fun. But first I have to find skates and a back bone.

I'm also applying for internships. I can't apply for any journalism ones until I have clips, which means I have to find a publication that wants to publish my stuff. Although they want to see my clips too. It seems that in this profession you're required to emerge from the womb with examples of your writing proficiency. I am so behind the game. Maybe I'll just become a librarian.

On all other fronts, nothing. So far today I woke up at noon (I blame the two antihistamines I took last night. and the chamomile. Never underestimate the chamomile). Luckily the house smelled like a Subway. A Subway meatball sub, that is. Lunch was baked raviolis and Italian sausage, which was delicious and I didn't have to make it. Later we're going to get Thai, so basically my happiness today is tightly bound with food. It could be worse, I guess. Later this week I'm going to Disneyland with my sister's school. Funness.

I promise I will be more intriguing next time.

Love,
Sarah Marie

Damn opaqueness and politeness and mess. Damn the heart’s wanton ways. Damn bad timing and impatience. Damn all the ways we hide who we are and how feel and damn how hard it is to want something you shouldn’t want, to be so helplessly imprisoned by complication and impossibility. I wish loyalties never got crossed. I wish time weren’t so linear and I could see something heartening waiting for me in the future instead of being held captive in the static present. But mostly I wish the truth weren’t so hard to tell. Everyone fears knowing what is real because ignorance is possibility. If I don’t know how he feels he might love me. And sometimes things are best left unsaid because then there is no responsibility, no wounded feelings, no blame if you change your mind, no rejection. It’s safe and it’s suffocating. How I hate the veiled, festering feelings that will never be more than phantoms. If only we had the courage to give and receive everything hidden in our hearts. It might be shocking, devastating even, but think of all the affection wasted, all the bitterness never remedied, all the knotty, heavy secrets that lie between everyone. Lying about how much we care. Watching in silent agony as someone we want falls for a friend. Feigning forgiveness while harboring deep, poisonous anger. Wouldn’t it be nice if there were a fairy godmother who could say what no one else dares to? Or a day when no one could lie? Or mind-reading capabilities?

Santa,

Here’s my heart’s desire: give me heart-wrenching, deep, passionate, pure love. The kind they show in movies. The kind people can’t stop singing about. The kind every teen girl dreams of and most adults dismiss. The kind that promises hard times but enough steadfastness to see it through to old age and death do you part. The kind that makes you want to cry it cuts so deep, but that makes life worth its misery and mess.
Yeah it’s a tall order, a useless prayer. I remember the boundless hope of youth, the way I thought that if I wanted something enough, believed and wished intensely enough, that of course it would somehow find a way to come true. I was special and life was full of joy and potential. I am overly romantic. But I really want magic and if I can’t ask for it at Christmas, then I don’t know when else.


Cheers,
Sarah

I am afraid so often and I'm not sure what function it serves. Why should I let such irrational fear stop me from doing so much that could be good for me? Sometimes the fear pretends to be laziness or worry or other things. Shame and inadequacy are its bedfellows. The most sinister thing about fear is its ability not only to cripple you but to make you blame and hate yourself in the process. Deep down you know you're being lied to and taken advantage of, but there's no way to totally get rid of this feeling, one that is so primal and powerful that when you're in its grip it's difficult to imagine knowing anything else. Fear has the peculiar quality of making one forget all the times fear has been proven wrong. It's like a default mode, like gravity or inertia. Of course it has a service to provide, a reason for being, but we give it more power that we should. The worst thing fear does is not hurting us, but stopping us from reaching out to others. Some people happen to be more afraid of being by themselves than being with others, but most of us are afraid of judgment or rejection, so we don't put our feeling on the line. How many people have I loved from afar but been too afraid to tell how much I cared because I thought they'd think less of me in some way or that I'd get hurt? I need to learn how to acknowledge and accept my limitations, such as fear, so I can utilize my strengths and love the best I can.

The smell of cold night air. An unexpected touch or acknowledgment from someone I think I might be in love with. Poetry. Discovering a new favorite song. Spiked hot drinks. Partiers yelling silly things as they stumble down the street at 1 AM. Movies that make me cry every single time. Christmas lights. Comfortable silence. Laughter and merriment and no pressure to be anything other than what I am. Fond memories. Knowing that there's more than one person in this world willing to take a hysteric phone call from me at any time, day or night. That feeling of relief after accomplishing something difficult. Late mornings in between toasty sheets. Romantic daydreams. Fresh laundry.

Even though I'm lonely tonight, even though sometimes I'm sad and I forget all that I have, I can always count my blessings. And for that I am grateful.

One of my high school friends died yesterday. Isn't it weird how death of anyone in your stratosphere, even people you're not extremely close to, shakes you up and makes you see the world differently? You never know quite how to react. There are, of course, the stages of grief and denial always comes first. How do you wrap your head around something like that? How do you reconcile with the idea that someone who was real and concrete has disappeared forever, that they will never grow or become, that they have ceased existing? And someday you will be gone forever and nothing will be left of you but memory. It's mortality slapping you in the face and it's hard. No matter how much violence is on tv, no matter how much we believe in the immortality of spirit, we are never quite prepared for it when it happens. Death makes things awkward, too. What do you say? A cliche, no matter how sincere, still rings hollow. You never how bad you should feel, how sad is too sad. Your sadness does nothing to help anything, but you can't just go on as if nothing happened. Also, I for one almost feel guilty mourning someone I didn't know well because I feel like the grief belongs to their family and best friends so much more. Maybe I'm just appreciating this person because they're gone and it's appropriate, because death makes someone famous and more precious. People don't speak ill of the dead because the dead become glorified and preserved, become somehow unreal as they are memorialized. But I mourn nonetheless, the loss of potential the most. What could have been? It's not fair. But death is never fair. Youth and goodness and innocence are harder to lose, especially without warning, but does anyone ever want or deserve to die? It's just as tragic when someone dies forgotten and their dying makes no difference. Regardless, all I know is that today I am sad because this person was kind and made me laugh, because I love the people who will miss him most and because I know it could just as easily happen to anyone. Maybe I should have gotten to know him better and maybe there's no real reason for me to be sad other than because of how senseless and shocking this is, but regardless, I will remember him today and hope that when I die I too will be missed.

Rest in peace Eric. You were loved and you'll be missed.

What's with that feeling, when you're supposed to make a wish but you don't know what for, when you make it to the top or the end or whathaveyou and you don't know what to make of it, when you get what you wanted but it's not at all what it seemed? It's stupid really, not nice, but I guess it's rather important. It's at that moment when you pause, wonder, question. That emptiness you feel, it spurs you to stop, which is always something we forget and often loath to do. Time is money. Busy-ness is next to godliness. All those daft and wicked beliefs we hold to distract ourselves make it seem like we're living and working for something when really we're just living and working. That something we're striving to gain, whether it be money, love, meaning, beauty, success--it's all a sham. I don't know who put it in place, who thinks they benefit from this, but we are being robbed of our chance for joy with every day we spend wishing and trying to be productive. I am tired, in so many ways, of worrying and making things happen. Life is not for doing, but for being: being helpless, being surprised, being grateful, being devastated. Sure we do things, many things, but not because we have to, not because we are measured by them. I have aspirations, and I have very strong wants and fears that govern my thoughts and actions, but I am not the want or the fear or the results. I just am, and I'm trying to let it be as best I can.

Some days I’m not afraid of being defective. Some days I’m afraid of not having scars, of being safe and trapped and boring. I know I am not cool and I will never succeed in becoming cool because for some reason coolness is a characteristic of the other and I am too familiar to myself to be interesting, but I think that I wish I were cool because I admire cool people so much and that just makes me even less cool than before. I feel like I am too lucky, that I have lived a life with few bumps and as a result I am formless, I am evanescent and uninteresting. I am certainly grateful for everything I’ve been blessed with, but I can’t help but wish I were grittier, more damaged. Maybe it’s because when I feel inexplicably sad it is so inexplicable as to be inconsequential. Who cares if you cry if there is no reason for you to cry? It’s worthless suffering, the kind of thing people wallow in and demand pills for. The kind people get easily annoyed with. The kind that doesn’t get fixed because nothing bad has really happened and maybe you’re only miserable because your life is so empty that there’s nothing really painful there and that is the saddest thing. That breaks my heart. That is what is bringing me down now. I guess sadness is better than nothing, than days of sitting on the couch absorbing other people’s stories and being numb. Let’s put it this way: life is feeling. If you don’t feel anything or don’t have any real reason for feeling anything, what’s the fucking point? Why have skin and a heart if you’re not going to utilize them? I want to feel alive today and instead I feel demolished and hopeless. I want to have a goddamn reason for my fear and anger and apathy because if not, I will begin to turn on myself and hate myself for my weakness.

Story of my life: all dressed up and nowhere to go. I’m always expecting something that never happens, waiting and wondering what’s wrong with me. What IS wrong with me? Why is there so much stubborn, stupid hope fighting inside me and sabotaging my happiness? But I guess the expectation keeps me alive sometimes, holds me up when all my heart can do is fall. Because if I didn’t anticipate being seen and appreciated by somebody, I think I would cease being, fade into oblivion, fade like mist in the sunlight.

Sadness. It weighs so heavy and yet you're not there. The edges are blurred; you have been erased. Perfect sadness is a delicate balance of blame, honing your suffering into a masterpiece. There is a certain amount of fault that is yours and a portion for others. Just enough of each so you can wallow both in self-loathing and self-pity. It is beautiful and deep. You can get lost. Except, you're trying to survive for some reason, passing as normal. Thus, you must cope instead. Coping hurts a little more, but it gives you dignity. You learn when the waves and stinging come to cup sadness neatly in the palm of your hand. That way you keep it close, but hidden. That way you can manage. Sometimes there are heart attacks. It feels like a knife is being twisted inside. Like nothing can breathe. I don't understand why, but it happens. Deal. When it happens, I stand perfectly still. In this state of inexplicable, unexplainable sorrow, joy sounds like the spinning, shrieking laughter in a nightmare from a movie. Mocking, dreadful. You pity happy people. They're distracting, fooling themselves. No one can keep it up forever. Everyone falls victim sometimes. We're all alone together. That's comforting, at least. That's all sadness is, a comfort. An easy way out. A choice.



But sometimes all you can do is drown.

O my. I am filled with…longing. A sacred, vital, earth-shattering longing. I feel so ready for something. I want to make a connection, I want to pour some of my soul into someone. I want to live like it's all or nothing, wildly and surely. I want to give and take. I want to have such energetic love for life that I am completely full and empty and heart-broken. I want to make everything spontaneous and quirky and beautiful. I can't even express this in words. I wonder if I could ever dance it, paint it, sing it, act it. All I can do is compose it, write it, say it. Words aren't enough and I can never give them at the right time, to the right people. I feel like no one knows how I feel, truly. I am a dreamy, shy girl to them, awkward and uptight and maybe a little intimidating or haughty. If only I could give them my eyes, my heart. I think you'd be surprised. Now that would be art. My self and experiences literally on display. I feel so much for so many, and they do not know it. I laugh, I watch, I cry, I share and yet feel all alone. It surprises me how much love has to do with transparency, truth. Everyone puts on a face, tones it down, tries so hard. And they're all dying. Get busy living or get busy dying, they say. It's the simple things that make your heart burn. I get so excited for monumental moments and they always let me down, but when I least expect it I am so touched I could melt. May I feel everything, every day til I die. May I expect nothing and find it anyway. May I touch and spread and never ever forget how much everybody needs someone to care about them. May I do and play and not worry. May I be vital and happy, and may everyone find their happiness, too.

A boy. He is tall, skinny but strong in all the right places. Dark hair, curly or wavy. Deft, slim fingers. Chuck sneakers are a must. An adorable smile, one that has a way of making people (i.e. me) do stupid things. Irrepressible sense of humor.
Deep, deep eyes that hold mirth and sadness and love. Quick to smile, easy laughter. Make that easy everything. Lips that distract and demand kissing. Perceptive. Tender. Happy-go-lucky and fun. Calm, but has a restless soul like me. Must be open with me and direct. Not afraid of taking what he wants. Enjoys the simple things and not overly ambitious. Dorky and suave at the same time. I want to be able to take care of him sometimes but I want to feel safe in his arms. Spontaneous and creative and silly and thoughtful. Mischievous. Can defuse my worrying and bring out my happiest, most Zen self. Thinks everything I do is fantastic. Clever, bold. Likes surprises and presents. Kind to children and old people. Takes me on adventures and makes big romantic gestures. Has the magical ability to make me feel beautiful around him, always. Comfortable with me and understands without anyone having to say a word. Able to bring me new joy everyday. Loyal and willing to help me grow.


If you find the person fitting this description, please
contact me immediately.

I’m hurting, aching, burning, yearning and crying out for something. I am a yin without a yang, a hole that needs a patch, music lacking melody, an amputee. These days I am a hollow, scooped out melon, heavy and yet empty, looking normal on the outside while desire resounds inside. It’s not so much sadness as a subterranean, weary discontent. I’m exhausted by all the wanting and not getting, the struggling to be satisfied with what I have but knowing that I’m not complete. Sometimes it’s nice to be lulled into thinking that the odds must be with me, that bad things can only happen for so long. That is wrong. That is a naïve remnant from childhood, the belief in the inevitably of your dreams if you beg enough. This stubborn hope, romanticized as it is, hurts us more than the despair ever could because it makes acceptance impossible. I have learned that no amount of wanting will make anything happen. Letting go makes things happen, but of course the irony then is that you only get what you need once you feel you don’t need it anymore. Kind of like manna falling from heaven after you’ve starved to death. There are indeed two kinds of waiting: the patient, voluntary sort and the type that bristles under the oppression of time. I am always at the mercy of the latter. I have no choice but to endure, to continue wishing and hoping and thinking and praying.

This is from a character sketch I wrote for my journalism class:

“Aw hell, we'll give you reality,” promises Laura Fortune-Wanamaker, “Artistic Hair Designer and Cosmetologist” according to her business card. Laura is a walking paradox: a raucous wild child who goes on motorcycle runs down the coast and drunkenly dances with paraplegics, and a single mother who spent five grueling years in Milwaukee training to become a stylist.
Laura’s room is at the back of Strandz Salon, next door to G & L salon, in a shoddy plaza with cracked adobe walls, turquoise awnings and a dinky fountain. She shares her room with Nicole, a small girl riddled with tattoos and sporting a rockabilly ’do. The black mats, mirror frames, chairs, tiles and fan are brightened by a pink blow dryer, family photos and a leopard print broom against the wall. Light filters in through a dirty, cracked skylight and a long window looking out on the street.
It’s ten A.M. and Laura’s waiting for her first client. She sits in the chair, sips a cheap coffee, fiddles with her cell phone and peeks out the window. In her mid-thirties, Laura is youthful but not hip. She’s slightly pudgy, dressed in all black with an unfashionable haircut. Her contagious energy though, apparent in her boisterous voice and colorful stories, is what people remember about her. When she spies Jasmine, a twenty-something blond, she rushes out to the reception desk.
“Hey girl!” Laura cries. “How you doin?” Jasmine is seated and offered coffee, water, a magazine, even tequila (with a wink), all declined.
“You’re the one with the Virgo birthday, right?” Laura asks, feeling Jasmine’s hair.
“No, Sagittarius,” Jasmine answers.
“Are you dating now?”
“Yeah.”
“You’re all, ‘Stop asking me questions!’” Laura says grinning.
Comfortable silence ensues as Laura comes in and out of the room, concocting Jasmine’s new chocolate hue. She snaps on black gloves and starts applying the color. As the opening notes of “Step by Step” by New Kids on the Block waft through the room, Laura starts dancing and Jasmine brightens.
“O my god, this takes me back!”
“The eighties were a rough time for me,” Laura says. “O wait, this was the nineties, huh.”
The conversation wanders from boy bands to Hugh Hefner to the inexplicable motherlessness of Disney heroines. Laura weaves yarns about her phone’s tragic demise by minivan despite her heroic efforts, a stranger she greeted in Vegas who threatened to slit her throat and the time she once befriended a homeless surfer and tried to fix him up with her mother. Finally they discuss men. Laura’s giddy about her new fiancé, Harley, a biker she met six months ago.
“I don’t like pretty guys, I like manly men,” she says. “If he’s looking at himself more than me, if he’s using my damn hair flattener, there’s gonna be a problem.” When asked about her ideal guy, she pauses a minute and admits her attraction to Handy Manny, a character from one of her two-year-old son’s favorite shows.
“What does that say about me?” she muses.
“At least he’s nice. I mean he talks to his tools, but hey,” teases Jasmine.
Laura deftly paints in highlights, makes sure the color is even and goes to rinse out the dye. She selects a lavender mint shampoo and her strong hands go to work massaging Jasmine’s scalp. Laura wants to include hand and scalp massages as one of her services. “That’s what people appreciate, the above and beyond,” she says. “Time is money, but I’d rather give each client their time.”
Next is the haircut. “We’re going from a graduated bob, right? But you want to grow it out to here?” Laura frowns in concentration, mouth slightly open as she measures, calculates, snips and arranges. She periodically stops to clarify Jasmine’s wishes and explain what she’s doing.
Laura’s expertise was borne from five lonely winters in Wisconsin. She endured forty hour work weeks on top of technical training, begging people on the street to be her models and suffering under a crazy teacher who would throw combs across the room and scream “this isn’t rocket science dammit!” But she accepts it as part of the process. “You have to hustle in this business” she maintains, “or you end up working at Fantastic Sams.”
Jasmine’s hair is done at one o’clock. The total is one hundred and twenty dollars, but she doesn’t have cash or a check. Laura lets her drive to the ATM down the street to retrieve the money.
“I have a pretty kickback job,” she admits. “Have you heard the riddle about the good hairstylist?”
She lays down the premise: there are two hairdressers. One has spectacular hair, but the other looks atrocious. Who do you choose to do your own hair?
“The one with the bad hair, of course,” Laura says, “because she did the other one’s hair! Or something like that.” She laughs.
“I’m a bad story teller,” Laura claims, settling back into her chair, “but I have fun. And I do damn good hair.”