I meeeeeeeeannnnn...damn.

I was stuck in traffic today and I saw New Jersey license plates. I just about cried. New Jersey is a wasteland, yeah, but really it was seeing someone that was so far from home, too. It was seeing something so familiar in a place that really isn't. I really miss New York. I miss you. (yes, you)

It's going to be easier once the boys get here. They begin their road trip tomorrow morning in the AM- two weeks of driving cross country to make it to mecca, where I already am. (waiting)

When I look back on this time I'm going to remember the music I was listening to mostly. I'm feelin' music like never before, like, it's breaking my heart and waking me up and stopping the gap- I heard Jose Gonzales' "Heartbeats" recently, and oh, hell, it just took my breath away. I had to turn the damn song off to catch my breath! Hearing that song felt like a pain in my chest.

That's the most defining part of my new life. Music. I feel like the people that are coming in and out of my life right now are static. And I feel that way because you spoiled me.

I got so used to being myself, unfiltered and uncensored, that I forgot what it was like outside our little Brooklyn bubble. I can't do that here. I can't say what's on my mind because I get blank looks. I can't say how I feel (or voice the lack) because people are scared of how I live. Meeting tons of new people, building up that rolodex, yeah, but it's like flipping through a deck of cards to figure out how to present myself. I'm good at being charming. I'm not good at being myself. How long did it take with you? Awhile. And we lived together.

So many new people. But I don't know them and they don't know me. I can't wait until the boys are here. I feel like my anchors are road trippin'. My kite strings are coming! I need reminders of who I am. I don't want this place to change me. I'd rather evolve, first. Let the city morph to fit my needs. So far, so good, but I'm feelin' that strain of survival adaptation, that pull of self-preservation. I keep having to remind myself of who I am because I get lost in the shattered parts of who I think people want me to be. Remember who you are.

This is a love letter.

I wrote this song for you: (not really)

villianess

c'mon now

Would someone like to inform me of the exact percentage that my adult life will be spent sifting and sorting through disappointment? I would like to schedule around it. Thank you.

Parents- stop teaching us that if we work for anything, we will get it. Stop teaching us this. Stop coddling us. You baby-boomers, man. You brought us up softened and sorted into neat piles of self-esteem and self-worth so we enter out into the work force thinking we are necessary for something (see HERE. and you know that shit is legit because it's the mathafucking ny times.) and that we might even be overqualified for whatever it is we are approaching. It sucks. We're stunted.

Not that I dislike work. I love work. Working. Having a job to exhaust me. I think its marvelous. Being employed out of college is just splendid.

I dislike the ebb and flow of false hope. This, I find, is supplementary to pretending to be grown up. The parking garage that is $60 a month and a 10 minute walk away. The coffee that I spill in my car. The DIMINUITIVE paychecks. The friend who is angry with me. The boy that didn't call. The Ikea bed that did not come with all its parts. The cockroaches. The mac'n cheese nights. The clothing on the floor.

I'm requesting a time table, plz. I would like very much to know when I can expect the pieces of my life to fit together nicely, like they are supposed to. Like I was taught they would. When everything will fall into place, because I was told that they would. Well, I'm working, world. Hard. Exhaustively.

ATTN KARMA: cut me a deal.

I don't fear that things won't get better, because things always do, eventually. I fear that they might get worse before this happens though.

I'm feelin' like an unencumbered embittered heathen these days. Dazed like an antebellum dream. Sleepin' like a creepy mummy.

I got a tattoo months ago that says "Wake Up." Apparently this permanent reminder is not enough.