The Frenemy.

It’s becoming summer, y’all. It’s sweaty weather. So sweaty, I’ll even write things like y’all, just BECAUSE.

• Take a shower
• Take eight million showers
• Take a shower that starts out vaguely cold, but then it was too cold so it ends up being hot, and oh god, isn’t there a button to push to get the perfect shower temperature?
• Spend some time enjoying watching what your hair might do when it fights underneath the sun or the Eye of Sauron. Answer: fluffs out and murders your look!
• Try buying the kind of makeup that doesn’t roll down your face like a high schooler trying to get a track scholarship
• Point a fan directly at your face and hey, it’s not like you look like a model, you actually look like a dog sticking it’s head out of a car window
• But not like a dog that is noble, like a German Shepard, more like a dog that has an overbite and still thinks it is beautiful
• Dream of frozen yogurt. Dreams of rolling around in frozen yogurt and forgetting the whole part where it rolls down your arm and you suddenly are the stickiest adult human in the world
• Try to find a roof bar so you drink Blue Moon on a roof and feel your legs stick to the chair but who cares, it’s a Wednesday!
• Wish that you could suck in air conditioning like Kevin Bacon sucks in energy in the movie X-Men: First Class
• shaving your legs takes double the time, isn’t that exciting
• Try to remember, off in the distance, what life was like when you were cold. Decide that being cold isn’t a feeling that actually does exist
• Stand by an open fridge for 9 hours straight
• Never, ever wear pants. R.I.P. pants
• Oh good, it’s bedtime. Why don’t we spend a full hour putting the covers over our feet, then ripping our covers off, then rolling around for twenty minutes wondering if death would be sweet release from temperature.
• Covet air conditioning, wonder if you could perhaps maybe live in a Target or an Ikea where air conditioning is on 24 hours and nothing hurts
• Discover that the body sweats in ways you couldn’t imagine. The human body is such a wonder! I didn’t know that behind my ears or the backs of my knees wanted to join in the forehead sweating party!
• Have slow motion dreams where you run through fields of September leaves and got to wear leather jackets and stuff
• Have a great weekend outside at the park and be like ‘oh hot is great’ and then it’s Monday and you are becoming the blob in Ghostbusters 2 that comes through the sink and you forget all the fun you’ve ever had
• Ponytail
• Come on, put your hair in a ponytail
• If you’re going to wear flats, your feet is going to smell like a sea of homeless people eating three-day-old turkey sandwiches
• Go to the movies not just to see Jeremy Renner or Snow White or something, but it’s really cold there and it makes you feel alive again to sit and watch people cough and secretly text for two hours
• Leave the house looking nice and literally exit the door and get destroyed by your greatest enemy which is weather and you can never beat him
• Enjoy a nice cold soda on the stoop what it’s not ALL BAD
• Sprawl Sprawl Sprawl
• actually wash your hands for the normal amount of time because of all the nice cool water you can put on your hands
• make guttural noises with your mouth
• wake up at 2am in a pool of your own sweat and maybe turn your pillowcase like an egg you want to fry over easy
• have borderline sexual dreams about ice
• forget that you could look nice in an outfit and simply just put on tiny pieces of cloth that you call outfit 
• enjoy your T-Zone looking like the horror that it does
• book a trip to your parent’s house because your PARENTS have air conditioning like real folk
• roll around and cry
• go into a bar with more than ten people and develop the most intense sense of smell-o-vision
• say fuck it and eat all the barbecue
• die
• YOLO, whatev, YOLO

For the most part, I say I dig change, but for the most part, I can be a real fuckin’ liar sometimes. I get upset when my favorite show ends, and I have trouble taking different routes home from the subway. I have parted my hair in the middle for three years. I would say YOLO, but that’s a new phrase and so I won’t say it and stop trying to MAKE ME.

I was thinking about change because it was May, and that always makes me think about how eventually, I would get really hot and would have to shave my thighs and I would have to find a decent pair of sandals soon. This is the kind of change I am familiar with. Easy. Constant. Sweaty. Then I thought about it again because one of my closest friends decided to up and move from New York to Los Angeles, and I liked her for it because it wasn’t easy, and I was jealous of her for that too. There are things I could use in Los Angeles—I thought of at least two specific beards, of double doubles and tacos, and palm trees I’ve never seen. I said no goodbyes and I ate a bite of her cookie and I sat in her empty apartment and I missed her already and I thought

“I wouldn’t be able to do this”

I don’t think I could. There comes a point in your life where you realize how willing you would be to change your life, and for many, that probably isn’t much. For me? I don’t think I could switch cream cheese brands. 

Anyway, shouldn’t you want to change when you’re older? Guess what. You’re OLDER. You should want to do something now.

There is a routine I am comfortable with. Two Splendas and some skim milk. I take my socks off with my feet not my hands. I drink a beer and I stick my sticky hands in some bags of chips and I watch the television. If it’s Friday, I’ll stare off in the corner of a bar I won’t like but will always go to. I’ll decide I’m getting a cold. I text with one finger. I remind myself to buy eggs. I live a life that is always in forward motion but little shift.

There are dreams, vaguely in the distance, that I think about as if they couldn’t happen. As if going left instead of right, or moving to Los Angeles, or taking a deep breath and taking a plunge are the kinds of things fantasy dramas are made of. “I’M 22 I CAN’T CHANGE MY LIFE WHAT AM I SALLY FIELD IN A MELODRAMA?” As if being young suddenly became impossible, like if getting on planes or telling people how I feel or changing my life is the new kind of daydream. Why? Because we get in a place and we wanna stay in a place. Change is difficult. Change isn not what sloths do, or people who want to nap do, or sloths that take naps do.

It take courage. Some people might say it take balls, but fuck that it takes heart, and heart is the hardest. 

I blame my unhappiness or my routine or my disdain on life itself, like everything that happens to me is just baseballs being thrown at me and I don’t have a glove. However, change will come anyway. It’s happening, and it’s gross, and it’s hurtling towards you and you’ve got to get some of it. I remember how comfort and complacency, even if your life is shit, sometimes works as a substitute for “doing fucking SOMETHING.” I just want to say you can always change, and it will suck and also, you can still do it.

What I’m really saying is that change doesn’t always have to be big. It has to be little, and then you’ll get some courage, and then you won’t be 25 and wonder “if only.” You should never have to wonder that, because that’s not fair to you. 

Here’s what I think. I think you should take a different route home. I think you should step out of the box and do something for this one stupid life. I believe you have it in you, and I believe being scared shitless is appropriate. Life is big and stupid and always, always yours. Do something about that.

Remember this: Time will always move on. People will always miss you. People will always be proud of you. 

It’s time to step over to the other side, whatever that means to you.

September will always, always come.

• a week of good hair every month
• nail polish that never chips but removes easily
• a faucet that produces, when you want it to, Snapple
• a tub of hummus the size of my body
• gay marriage legal, celebrity marriage a state by state kind of thing
• the ability to make my favorite television characters exist, and so Ron Swanson might suddenly be my uncle or something, and that bar in True Blood is actually real
• the ability to make your favorite television characters come back to life on that show
• a phone that floats to you when you are drunk and it has disappeared under the sofa or something
• a time when I get up at 830 and do my laundry and don’t just sit in my filth and feel like death
• an argument on the Internet that is well thought out and even shows its work
• a couple that met on the subway and not on OKCupid and isn’t annoying
• an umbrella I haven’t lost 
• a field of puppies
• flats that don’t make your feet smell
• a guy who wears hoodies under a denim jacket and is nice and stuff
• okay, so this one is complicated but people are like ‘yeah, so a woman is allowed to choose what happens to her own body and that’s not what politics is about’ and everybody is all ‘sure, of course.’
• so the Easy Mac is still bought for a 1.25 at the bodega but somebody is required to make it for you and season it correctly with hot sauce and feeds it to you THAT IS EASY
• a makeover montage
• necklaces you can put away and won’t tangle
• a gel pen that never runs out of ink
• American Girl dolls an acceptable toy to play with at 23
• a reality show about all the people from my high school that do townie stuff or have kids or something
• no more weird hair in places you don’t respect them to be at
• Wifi for everybody
• a waterproof computer, just spill shit on that and it only gets stronger
• a really good first kiss
• you can no longer say ‘i hate drama’ when you clearly love drama
• a card that allows you forever shotgun in cars
• complimentary guac in burritos or death
• people pay you to travel to Thailand and meet attractive people and eat noodles
• everybody you love on the Internet is actually in your town now
• meeting your celeb crush at a bar and he’s like ‘yeah I search your tags on Tumblr all the time’
• you can electrocute people at a bar who are grossly making out in front of you
• unlimited ice cubes in your freezer
• Crocs and Ed Hardy go out of business
• more food trucks than people
• Frozen food is actually pretty delicious and not just settling
• people walk faster and stop lingering when I am trying to GET SOMEWHERE
• I have the ability to make text messages from people I want to hear from appear
• clothes always fit, like the sisterhood of the traveling pants, but only for me and not just dirty jeans people write on
• feet can no longer fall asleep it’s the LAW
• drunk no longer has consequences
• Facebook doesn’t make you want to blow out your brains
• You can’t start work until you have brunch
• Disney World in every state
• Goosebumps books come back and everybody reads them
• Doritos 3D are back, okay, perfect food
• light jacket weather forever
• headbands worn across the forehead are illegal
• annoying teenagers live on a different planet
• pizza is national food
• cats begin to slightly, almost undetectably, respect you
• memes die when appropriate and no dead horses are kicked, people just know when to bow out at the right time
• American Idol finally realizes, no, the title of the show is not what happens
• Ludacris releases an album of fifty 30 second guest verses
• ATMs are free no fee
• People finally agree that yes, Zac Efron is attractive, and we should all just live with this
• People give Ryan Gosling a much needed break
• Everybody who decides to ‘become a singer’ goes through a serious screening process
• Nobody can talk at the movies unless it’s a legitimately funny opinion and not just some annoying comment on cinematography
• my singing in the shower is beautiful
• Forever 21 becomes a manageable store to shop in
• baby dolls aren’t so creepy
• egg yolks never break
• Romantic comedies become realistic, like maybe you can’t meet a guy by falling into a puddle and he’s engaged and you’re Kate Hudson
• NO MORE COSMOPOLITAN SEX TIPS ABOUT WHAT TO DO WITH GENITALS
• people are cool with all types of body types because love handles are FINE, OKAY
• ex-boyfriends pine for you then blow up
• people stop saying stupid shit THIS IS TOO MUCH TO HOPE FOR
• no humidity, only thunderstorm kind of rain
• everybody you like is happy and so are you

ELECT ME FOR PRESIDENT I HAVE GREAT IDEAS

For a little while, there was all the things we talked about and all of those things were love.

There was a restlessness we equated to lack of love, to missing love, and oh, god, I am so tired of talking about love. I am not here to talk about love because I don’t know what it is and I don’t know where to find it and I am tired of making up solutions to answer these questions.

I want to talk about dreams, I want to talk about the real things that might make you happy that are also things you can control. I want to talk about the core of you, the bones and muscle and insides of you. 

If you’re lucky, which I think you are, you have a passion. You never call it your passion because that sounds pretentious and difficult, but that’s what it really is. For me, it’s sitting in front of my computer and trying to find all the little words I have in my head that want to be big nice words. For others, it’s television or paint or numbers or putting their hands in the dirt or some shit. It’s the REAL GOOD you found between being a child who wanted to be a princess and an adult who just wanted to pay their bills. It’s the burn in your stomach you forget about when you think too hard about your heart, or your brain, or why you should maybe go to the dentist. Gut! It’s the something you are on this earth for, not the somebody.

Remember you were put here, maybe, to make an impression—a billion particles that have the chance to make something of all of it. Remember you are a billion particles and not a missed chance with an idiot boy or a paycheck or anything else that happens again and again. Really, it’s kind of like eating breakfast on a Wednesday—it’s forgotten until it isn’t and only then you remember how damn good it is.

Today, I had a cup of coffee and I walked around in the daylight and I realized how important it was to choose a piece of fruit in the sun and smell the char of the hot dog stands and to simply be out in the afternoon—without the short skirts of night, without the walks to work of Monday, just a lazy lull. I think I wrote an entire something in my head about the subway grates and the bite of egg yolk and the confused calm I always feel at 2pm on a weekend when I have the chance to.I write a lot of things in my head that never make their way to paper, and I think it’s funny and also terrible that these things float around somewhere I can’t find them 2 hours later. Then, I am okay with being a lot of things I put together that I can’t always remember, but always love when they happen. I also thought briefly about how much I wanted somebody to sit with while we sat in our own heads, and also how much I liked both long and clipped sentences. So.

But sometimes, oh sometimes, it is so much better to think about the real dreams. The stuff that gets your motor going, the stuff that you used to think about before you thought about love. I’ll call it passion again, although that word still kind of kicks me a bit.

What I mean by that is you have this in your hand ALREADY. It’s there, in all the times you are by yourself and you are wrongly using those times by yourself to think about the stuff you don’t have. Love is hard to find, okay, but love is simple. There is more to life than what makes hearts beating—there is what you have for yourself and what you build for yourself and what you can hold in your hand when everything else goes through like sand. 

Let all that is inside of you get you through everything else. Let it pulse through your veins like fire, let it move through you like determination and spit and all the things you want to have for other things. Let it be the moving force in you, and let the rest come later. Become the best thing you can be in a million ways other than somebody else and circumstance.

It will be the things you dream about when you remember how to dream.