I stopped believing in romance somewhere between mile marker 121 and 123. It sounds so flippant, I love it. I wish I could be that cool, nonchalant girl who is simply all right with the fact that she doesn't believe in love anymore. But I'm not. I used to be the most hopeless of romantics. The girl who searched through page after page of dumb love quotes or who spent hours creating mushy play lists for her ipod. Oh, and the daydreams. I would rather not even get into those. I had the most lavish, sickeningly sweet dreams possible. Please believe white picket fences were just the tip of the iceberg. So for me to have something that used to be such a fundamental part of my being, simply decide it doesn't want to live in me anymore and just fly away.... was upsetting, to say the least.

I blame it on a little kid in a minivan, to tell you the truth. Speeding down the interstate, I came eye to eye with this tiny boy screaming about something in the backseat of a van. His mother was trying to appease him and looked so tired. Not the kind of tired that you get after pulling an all-nighter or tripping into work with a raging hangover. But the kind of tired that takes years to cultivate. The tired that seeps into your bones, your soul, and makes itself a permanent resident. Is this what I am going to be reduced to? Is this what I have been dreaming my whole life for? To look like a battered soldier with no medals to show for, except a rattling van, whiny children, and a husband who looks at his twenty-something-year-old secretary a little too long? I cannot do that. I will not do that. I am tired of trying to squeeze myself into this impractical mold society has carved out for me. Maybe I don’t want a man to define my other half. I am a whole, thank you, and plan to stay that way. I can’t image telling half of my being to just die, only to replace it with a male who leaves his dirty socks on the floor, gets off without worrying himself about my orgasm, and doesn’t know my favorite flower.

I loathe the fact that because of societal norms I feel guilty for not wanting the life I’m supposed to want.
I want to live in as many countries as possible, hopping borders like a frantic fugitive.
I actually do want a child, two in fact. One of my own, to see if my stubbornness and unruly curls are hereditary, and one that I have adopted.
A husband really isn’t necessary, but I would like a man that shares my dreams, tells me when I’m being a bitch, and lifts me up when my legs forget how to stand.
I want to see things I didn’t know existed, feel things I didn’t think were possible, and grow so rich in knowledge, even the gurus would envy me if they had the ability to envy.
I want so much, more than I think I will ever fully be able to obtain.

So I quickly exited the Interstate. My dreams seemed to be dying with each passing car and jadedness was starting to set up camp in my bones. I wasn’t quite ready for my hopes to start peeling away like the paint on my old car.

The world was, is, still too beautiful to me.

crossed my fingers, but didn't beg

For a girl of, what I like to believe to be an above average intelligence quotient, I am depressingly stupid. Stupid to the point it’s almost amusing. Except it’s not, not really at all. How could I have gotten it so wrong? Why did I allow you be an exception to my ironclad rules? My heart is the most guarded of all my internal pieces and Fort Knox has got nothing on my invisible walls. I typically trust no one, and doubt most things that come out of people’s mouths. So for the life of me, I cannot understand why I opened up so quickly and so completely to you. After one meal of smoked salmon and a 4 AM half-asleep kiss, I neatly reached into my chest, scooped my heart out and pinned it onto my sleeve, leaving it loosely hanging by a few threads. I was like a flower who, sensing some warmth and being anxious for spring, bursts open, spreading its colorful blossoms for all to see…only to realize much too late it’s still icy winter. And instead of being careful with everything I had gingerly placed before you with the solemn innocence of a child spreading out her most prized shell collection, you backed away. Muttering a feeble and barely audible, "Sorry" you left to get back to life before my inconvenient arrival. I'm glad I can be the punch-line of a few jokes, the reason you get a high-five from your guys, or an ego boost to ensure yourself, "yep....I'm still hot". Because you weren't just another scratch on the side of my bedpost.
You were a little more.
And I was more than a little stupid.

window pain

My room was beautiful and bright. There was light flooding everywhere and I could dance around in it for hours and hours, wearing the biggest smile my face would permit. I even sang, and I do not sing. But then he came and flipped the light switch. In one swift movement, with the casualty of one starting their car or sneezing, my room was plunged into darkness. Abruptly I stopped singing, dancing, and smiling. Blindly I stood there, letting my eyes adjust to the sudden dark. He was gone, along with the light and I was alone, as normal. For a while I sat there, numb and without sight.
A window.
I remembered I had a window. I stood up slowly and with child-like caution felt my way towards the small square of glass that was hidden behind a curtain. I pushed back the fabric and light came streaming onto my face. It wasn’t as bright as the overhead light, but it was pure and real and there was no one that could turn it off. From that moment on, I decided I was never closing my curtains again. I may not always have the buzzing glow of a fluorescent bulb looking down on me, but I will always have my light. And you can’t take it. Go ahead and come flying into my room with the breeze, I’ll welcome the extra light. But when you leave just as quickly as you came, I’ll still have light. And I won’t need yours.

EPIPHANY/Liza/5pm

VO (:30)
How in the world am I going to be a journalist? Our job is to condense “just the facts” into cold, impersonal little snippets that even the most simple minded of people can comprehend. Our job is to tell people about the world, without really telling them about the world. Our job is to check our opinions, compassion, and sometimes morals at the door. Just the facts. The cold, hard facts that the public needs. But that is not me. No. I am too full of passion, verbose sentences, love, and sprawling adjectives. [I get off on alliterations and pathetic fallacy, for God’s sake.] “The accident on I-40, just west of mile marker 218, resulted in the death of one Greensboro man, James Talbert. Authorities are still determining whether alcohol was a factor in the crash.”

No. No.

James Talbert isn’t just a name scrolling across the teleprompter. That wreck isn’t just a 20 second story on the six o’clock news. The viewers will never know that James Talbert had greenish blue eyes that his fiancé adored or that he cooked the best lasagna ever, or that he hated his job at the bank and secretly dreamed of being a pilot. They will never know that those strategic camera angles of a mangled car they just saw on the television forever changed so many lives. That wreck wasn’t just a filler story the producer threw in out of desperation when the new school story didn’t pan out; it was the end of a life. The viewers won’t know a brother sobs himself to sleep every night or that a broken hearted girl is sitting on her bed with a bottle of pills shaking in her hand.

I cannot be a part of this madness. I cannot paint my face into a mask of camera appropriate makeup and fluff my hair to epic proportions. I cannot take out the faint southern drawl that emerges when I drink or flirt and turn my voice into a non-regional robotic one that reads sentence after sentence of meaningless phrases. I cannot watch as the power hungry higher-ups in the network force me to twist and tweak the truth into stories that our advertisers will be satisfied with. I cannot watch as the world around me is quite literally falling to pieces and all I am doing is telling people about it with a thirty second VO.

Actually, I can. I can do all of that. And I hate myself for it.

I hate myself for seeing an ambulance and wanting to follow it in hopes of a juicy wreck. I hate myself for secretly praying the mother whose son just left for Iraq breaks down into sobs in the middle of the interview because that would make an awesome sound-bite in my package. I hate myself for mindlessly reading headline after headline and not really absorbing any of what I’m saying. Oh, the AIDS rate is up in Africa? Should I put my enunciation on ‘epidemic’ or ‘government’? Hmm, an office building collapsed in Russia? Should I say ‘close to 2,000 people were killed’ or ‘more than 1900 people were killed’?

But that’s what I am supposed to do. Deliver the facts. Just the facts.

Keep your opinions, compassion, and morals tucked safely away in your pocket. Only let them out in the safety of your home, when you’re watching a foreign version of yourself droning away on the screen.

Only then you’re allowed to feel.
(# # #)

It was inevitable. He was my best friend for the majority of my formative years. He knew me like the back of his calloused hand and I knew him inside and out, piece by crazybeautiful piece. I could tell you where every mole on his body was, how he smelled sweetest in the morning, and the intricate way in which his green eyes told stories. So that early summer night in the back of his dusty red pickup truck, it was inevitable. From the moment we crossed that terrifying threshold from friends to lovers, I knew this was a defining moment in my life and I would never really be the same. The passion and love that was ignited in my veins over the course of the following two years is what epic love stories are made of. It wasn’t the kind of relationship you settle into, slowly putting your feet up and stretching out on the sofa while becoming comfortable. No. It was me teetering on the edge of a jagged cliff, losing my balance, and plunging headfirst into the unknown.
It was the kind of love that keeps you on your toes and out of your mind.
Never before had someone had the power to twist me into a messy rubber band ball of emotions, only to gently straighten me out into flowing musical notes moments later. No mind-altering drug could ever compare to the highs I experienced with him. At times I felt inebriated with giddiness and floated around on puffy, rose-colored clouds, all because of one text message or kiss. I smiled when alone in my room and daydreamed of our curly, golden haired children with moss colored eyes. I melted at his touch, felt sparkles when he broke into his mile-wide grin, and cried when he was hurting.
But Newton wasn't kidding. What goes up must come down. The lows I experienced were the most dismal, dark places I have ever ventured in my life.
It. Was. So. Messed. Up.
But in the most perfect, brilliant, shining way messed up can be. I don’t think I have fully recovered from that burn. It was a white-hot scalding one that reached down into my inner self and seared it all the colors of the rainbow. And you know what? I am glad that burn will never go away. People go their whole lives and never experience that kind of beautiful intensity. I am thankful beyond all reason that I carry such an exquisite battle wound. Sometimes I just want to rip myself open and show it to the world, smiling at people’s horror and jealousy. Maybe one day I will play with that kind of fire again and again I will ride the tidal waves of this boy, this boy who is my mirror image.
I think it’s inevitable.

excessive speed was a factor

The obnoxious yellow lights on a stop light make me light-headed. They just look so smug, confident I will stop in timid obedience to their powerful color. Truthfully, I think they're just pathetic, like a dog who's all bark and no bite. I have no patience for them. My real competitor is the awe-inspiring red light. When I am approaching one, a sick yet delicious thought bursts into my head and sends an adrenaline rush soaring through my system. What if I didn't stop? What if, instead of putting on the breaks, I floored the gas pedal? I get almost drunk with the thrill of that prospect and always spend the next few moments coming down off my psychotic high. Sometimes when I'm soaring through intersections, I think about another car sailing straight into mine and this horrible beautiful catastrophic explosion of metal, rubber, and other things even I dare not say aloud. It even has a soundtrack [mafia movie opera music] and would undoubtedly happen in slow motion. I would fly up and away, watching everything happen with the most curious interest. And then I would keep floating away, maybe getting caught with the breeze, like bits of Earth. Because that's all we are anyway.

"Sunburn"

Again and again
we grease our supple skins,
spread ourselves on the earth
that wants us back,
think we'll go slow
but evening finds us sick
feverish and weak
in our baths of tepid tea.

Here's where I try to say
this might be like love:
turning ourselves 'til
no single cell is spared,
beneath our lids,
"I'll stop before anyone knows
what a fool I've been,
I'll rise from this
just as soon as I'm beautiful."
-Catherine Doty

PSA

Attention members of the male species:
Women were not placed on this planet for your boyish amusement. We are not your disposable playthings. We are not a moist pink mouth, a round ass, soft skin, a pair of tits, or lavender smelling hair. We are not here at your convenience for when you want to nut, impress your friends, or talk about something over than video games and sports. We are more than that magical place between our thighs, more than dainty little things in dresses, more than something to do when bored.
What about all of this is so inherently difficult for creatures with two dangling appendages to comprehend?
Whether it’s a whore to screw or a damsel to rescue, women are always an object to men, an activity to pass the time, something to validate their own self worth. Here, in the year 2008, is this really how little progress we’ve made?
Let me stop there. This is not an impassioned commentary of current societal gender roles or a feministic, frenzied man bashing.
This is a plea, a simple plea from one human heart to another.

Prove me wrong. I am begging you.

"YOU'RE ON A BEACH," my logic hissed at me through what I just know were clenched teeth. The kind your mother does when you're misbehaving in public and she's embarrassed and doesn't want others to know the real you. I was on a beach. And I was having a panic attack. I don't really know the technical definition of a panic attack and it probably wouldn't even qualify as one. But to me, it was very real and very intense and very much happening at that mostly inappropriate moment.There were little kids to the left of me building stupid sand castles. I don't think I'll ever let my children build sand castles. Or maybe I will, but insist they knock the sand creations over before the waves do. Just because. [Hello control issues, do you want to come out to play as well?] To my right, my family was laughing and chatting away as usual. About what? I have no idea, but that's no real surprise. Also as usual, the conversation was lucidly flowing in one of my ears and out the other as quickly and calmly as the breeze lifting up from the sea. The sun was hot and the lifeguard dutifully watching over all of us was even hotter. And I was having a panic attack. Something about looking at the sea just really does a number on me and my already astoundingly absurd imagination. Life, love, what's the point, brevity, love, passion, dreams, love, death, human nature, love blahblahblah, all of those things just came at me like the kind of waves surfers cream themselves about. The book in my lap, The Bell Jar--admittedly not the wisest choice of reading material for a budding Esther Greenwood, fell to the sand as I let my brain explode. I let myself get so worked up into a mental frenzy that I was fairly confident it would take a lot of pills or a quick dive off the end of the pier to silence it.
That is, until I saw The Couple.
My mind shut off and focused on this young couple walking down the beach. Probably in their late 20's, average in appearance, but that really does not matter. They were laughing and smiling and looked so in love it almost hurt me. But when they reached the point where they were directly in front of me, their demeanor's changed rapidly. Clearly there was some sort of conflict going on that I was unaware of and the nosy journalist in me was just dying to find out. So I sat up, squinted, and basically gawked at them. They stood there arguing for at least five minutes about, what I finally discerned, how far they would walk. She wanted to keep walking, he wanted to turn around. I assumed surely one will compromise, because that's what people in love do, right? No. He promptly turned his back and began walking back. She turned on her heels and began walker further the opposite way. Still, I thought, at least one of them will turn back around to look at the other one.
No.
They kept walking. Never once did the other stop to turn around. I watched them until my eyes got blurry and the sand swallowed them whole. I had just placed my entire belief in love on this one couple's shoulders and love had let me down yet again. So I picked my book back up and began reading again, because that was the only thing I could think of to do.