Grizzly People

It's been a hard week. I didn't realize on the outset that having little sleep going into the week would negatively affect me in some way. I guess that I've come to realize that I'm not as tough or cannot accomplish as much in one day as I think that I can. I can't come home after an interview at Berkeley and confront a difficult situation, I just can't. I won't be able to meet everyone else's expectations of me. I can't not think about my life changing in some ways next year, when the lives of those around me continue to evolve and change, so much so that most of the time I feel like I can't keep up.
I don't know how to cope with my future, my present, or my past. Just being around teenagers last weekend brought up some painful memories. I know that the painful relationships that I've had have become milestones along the way in becoming the person that I am today. The hard part of that is that I still fear being hurt each day by those around me. Sometimes I think that I even seek it out, reading into a non-malicious comment.
Maybe I just should go live with the bears like Timothy Treadwill. As much as I laughed and scoffed at his person both on and off camera, I also could relate to his loneliness and isolation. I am struck by the fact that the movie struck me the same way at a free screening from the Washington and Lee Film Society as it did today in San Francisco. I never am able to connect the dots until after the fact. Maybe I was going through something in college that I didn't realize that I would experience fully until living in another country and moving to another place.
I'm scared, angry, frustrated, sad, all at the same time. Maybe it's the stress that I've been through this week, or maybe it's just the disillusionment associated with adulthood and the bleakness of our economic future in 2K9.

Seasonal Affective Disorder

Surrounded my old men who spend their retirement at the local Noe Valley coffee shop, I'm finally feeling like I'm beginning to unravel. The last few days have been packed with intensity. Accompanying middle schoolers to the slopes helped me realize my a) inadequacy as a future parent, b) selfish propensity, c) dependency on others for affirmation and d) recovery from my own traumatic middle school and high school experiences. Most of the time I think that I'm a child. I'm not ready to confront being an adult and its responsibilities. This is the first year that I have to do my own taxes and I don't even know where to begin. I have a three-hour interview on Wednesday, which could possibly determine the next two years of my life. Most days, I can only survive to live in the moment and experience the sunlight of the playground where my kids spend their recess.
I'm so thankful to experience San Francisco's warmer climate in the wintry months of January and February, when the rest of the country is struggling to stay sane. My mood seems infinitely better when the sun is shining. I feel like the world is my oyster, that I can survive my day even though I've managed to spill coffee all over my white tank top.
Maybe I was so overwhelmed by the weekend when the snow blocked my goggles and added another timely element to our trip home. I could see God in the snow, as Nathan suggested, coating everything with a pristine layer. But, as my mind tends to thoughts of self-deprecation, so does the white of the ground become muddled with the brown sludge of boots and the gray exhaust from cars.
I want to stay in the sun today, but I know that I have to enter into the tunnel of the MUNI and the florescent lights of the classroom.

Obama-rama

Hopeful. I feel hopeful about what happened today for our country. I could feel it walking the streets, the spring in my step. Maybe I felt it tonight, ranting and raving creatively and purging my true emotions. Meeting new friends and sharing a brown-bag experience with them in Dolores Park.
I walked a child to school, I learned from one of my students that Obama likes to boogey-board, I sidled up next to a first grader during the election coverage. I got chills when Obama spoke of the changes and unity he hopes to see in our country. Sitting next to French teachers, for the first time in a long while, I was proud of my country, my heritage, and what we stood for as a nation. I enjoyed Katie Couric's familiar voice and the chaos of the Washington, D.C. scene and the attention deficit of the first graders surrounding me.
I also shared my own dream of starting a school with a group of strangers, exposing myself. I know that it's a longshot, a pipe-dream if you will, but I hope for it to happen. If my friend Maggie thinks that she would potentially give $10,000 to the school, then I think that it's legitimate. I want to foster creativity, to challenge perspectives, to shower kids with affirmation and opportunity. I feel such a connection to San Francisco that I want it to happen, here, now, even though it seems vaguely outside the realm of possibility. Lately, I've had a hard time accepting my current situation and I feel propelled towards scheming about the future.
Enough of my self-deprecation, today was a day of looking outwards and upwards.

Today

Today equals feeling overwhelmed most of the time. Staring at the walls of my school and the bathroom stall, wondering how I will make it through the rest of the day.
Sitting in the sunshine and soaking in the warmth on the rooftop. Feeling like I was at my prime.
Today equals kids telling you that they have a dream... that they will have purple faces and that the sky will rain money, even though you desperately try to express to them that it's a dream that will benefit everyone like Martin Luther King's did, not just themselves.
Today equals overloading my schedule, running from place to place, feeling the unpredictable pull of the weekend as the week slows to an end.
Today equals feeling like I will never accomplish all that I have set out to do. Receiving unfinished canvases in the mail that I'm not sure that I will ever get around to. Already opened oil paints from university. Even though I'm trying to inspire creativity, I know that it's something that I cannot force. When I have the time to invest in myself, it's the last thing I feel like doing. When I have committed myself to next week and beyond, I want to run to the nearest white wall and start painting.
Today equals the fact that I'm a fully functioning adult, I can do my laundry, clean my room, and act as though for a brief moment, that I have my life together.
Today equals laughing hysterically at an amateur attempt to produce a movie, a flashback to high school, when with Teague, Trish, and Alexa, I tried to create a plausible dinosaur film. We went on location in our neighborhood and reenacted an archeological dig. We even choreographed a dance to celebrate our findings. I remember how the afternoons spent creating the films, laughing until my stomach ached, were one of my childhood contents. The actual unveiling of the film is never as grandiose as the anticipation leading up to it.
Today equals seeing myself on camera, "Do I really look like that?" and feeling the same way when I would watch home videos with my family. The translation of my face to the screen is never as I had expected.
Today equals moments when I don't know where I fit. Do I really live in San Francisco and walk its streets and ride its MUNI each day? Have I lived in the city long enough to recognize bus drivers, passengers, and run into ten parents and kids that I know on my way to work?
Today equals Thursday. As a tween, I remember relentlessly persuading my mom into watching "Friends," after making it through the academic week. As a college student, I would sit glued to the TV, knitting with others and watching the drama of "The OC" unfold. As a turbulent twenty-something, I know resist watching yet another "Grey's Anatomy," resting from the week or thrusting myself into a San Francisco cultural experience.
Today equals January 15, 2009.

Title Defined

As is the recurrent theme of my life, I get excited about one project and my enthusiasm for another wanes. In August, I had the grand idea of penning my life story, much to the amusement of those around me. I got mixed reviews from my family, who thought I was kidding, and my friends, "I'll be the first to read it!" And, of course, there were the sneaked glances from my best friend Claudia who made the process even more daunting. I couldn't meet my own expectations for the project, much less someone else's.

I don't know if I will continue the story, but I thought that the beginning was the momentum I needed to start my blog rolling. With 2009 here, I'm more compelled to take on my creativity and pursue an outlet for my abstract thoughts and concepts. Each day, I think of five things that someone says to me that I want to write down. Usually the comments come from a six-year-old who tells me he's purring inside as I stand behind him, sometimes they come from my own "Prince Charming," a gay man who lends me the quarter I need to complete my fare on the bus. I'm amazed by the diversity of my surroundings, my growth as an individual and independent, and my propensity for being loved and giving love to those around me.

Peace, love, and happiness. One of the necklaces that I used to wear in seventh grade, when I signed all of my work with a peace sign, a heart, and a smiley face. I even had a matching pendant from Limited Too that I proudly bore upon my chest each day at school. Even though I've changed into a somewhat more assertive, self-confident 24-year-old from that "Sweet Spirit" of a 13-year-old, I'm still striving to meet the same goals.

Peace because I don't want to walk a few blocks from my neighborhood en route to the library, my hands filled with books, and see a man holding a gun at the bus stop. I don't want to think that things happen but the reality of me living in a city is that they do.

Love because I'm struggling to understand the concept of God's love for me and that others can possibly love a wretch like me. I can't love 24-year-olds or even 13-year-olds the same way that I love my 6-year-olds. The former won't tell me that I look pretty, smell good, or that "Miss Gardner, I care about you" like the latter does each day.

Happiness because most of the time I can't even wrap my head around what that means. I have my own expectations for happiness, but my own ideas have evolved such that I don't even know what it means for me to be happy. For the first time, I'm able to define that for myself, unreliant on others' moods and feelings.

The Journey Westward

I sit staring at the road that I traveled on the number 24 bus one of my first days in San Francisco. I remember meeting my potential roommate on the corner of Dolores and 18th streets and going to look at potential apartments together. Her boyfriend, a blonde surfer accompanied, her. To me, he represented California. Someone who had grown up here all of his life, gone to school in SoCal, his family lived nearby. We took the bus on Spare the Air day, from the Castro winding our way to where our future lodgings would be: somewhere on the fringes between Western Addition and Pacific Heights, where an impoverished area in the city melds into one of its most affluent.

Divisadero Street. It runs the length of the city from the Castro to the Marina. Once boarded up shops have become hipster hangouts of art galleries and bars. You can feel the city’s affluence upon you as you approach the San Francisco bay. One of my earliest memories on the street involved hill-hopping in a sedan packed with friends. Just as we were about to crest the hill, we would accelerate and almost careen out of control on the way down. Seeing my life flash before my eyes with new friends seemed synonymous with my move to the West Coast. I had seen my life flash before me; I knew what I wanted to accomplish in life and didn’t feel as though there was an East Coast city that would challenge me creatively without overwhelming me completely.

I would have days and still do, where I think, “Why does this have to be so hard?” Why can’t I just interact normally with people? Why can’t I do my own laundry without dying my sheets pink, even though I had the setting of the washer on cold? Why can’t I even feign managing my finances when they seem to skid out of control? I have a liberal arts education, yet finding a job that’s full-time with benefits seems out of the question. Are things harder because I live in a city or because I am twenty-four years old and place unreasonable expectations upon myself? Somedays even getting in the shower seems too hard, let alone actually having my bus pass at arm’s length when I board MUNI in the city.

The way that my mind works I wonder if I am going to be able to make it. I can be social and engaged one moment, the next withdrawn and aloof. I allow myself to feel emotions deeply, I start projects with an unparalleled enthusiasm that typically dims with time. I don’t know how to manage my time and my relationships. I seem to be a complexity of hyperboles and* (best of times, worst of times).

Living in the present is my new mantra. I’m trying to be able to process through what’s going on, not necessarily living for a better future or dwelling on the past. I want to use what’s happened to fuel me towards what I want in the future and instilling a greater self-confidence within me. When I go to a bar or a concert or a restaurant or a park, it seems as though everyone around me is enjoying themselves to the nth degree. Will I ever be fully satisfied, able to enjoy glimpses of happiness instead of being clouded by anxious thoughts?

Take today, for instance. Being able to have the day off of work, at a job where others depend on you can be a breathe of freedom. I want to be able to enjoy my own independence without having my own expectations get in the way. I am able to function throughout the day until I see a gmail post that captures my attention the same way that a wannabe hipster did almost two years ago. His pretentious writing style and elevated vocabulary fit perfectly with the elegance of a museum. I remember the same way that he would describe some of our shared times together in his blog, describing my ratatouille as sauce over pasta instead of the chunky French stew.

Alex shaped the way that I saw the world during the year that I spent in France. I had always been one that you could put into a box; I was the all-American girl in high school who obediently submitted to her parents, who earned her grades by working hard,. He planted the seed in me to dismiss the stereotype and come into my own, to move out to California. Ever since reading The Grapes of Wrath in high school, I saw California as the Promised Land. The book chronicled the sufferings that plagued a family in search of the American Dream, and maybe my story is no different.

It was easy for me to do the same thing the year previous, to embrace being the American ex-patriot who had migrated to France in search of better fortune. To distance myself from insecurities that flared up around those I knew. To change my mind politically and not have anyone care or even notice. To test the waters of a new profession, to embrace my post-college self. I was drawn to Alex because he represented experimentation; he was everything that was different from me, yet completely alluring at the same time. Whatever I felt passionate about and cared deeply for, he dismissed apathetically. I intentionally planted myself in his life, sharing cultural experiences with him that would end up affecting me, shaking me to the core. With him, I felt like I let go of the Meg that had been hidden for twenty-three years, awaiting her violent and fearful awakening.

I let my emotions take over; I read into situations with him that didn’t need further examination. It was clear from our first time alone together walking the streets during the jazz festival in Nancy, France, that he didn’t have an interest in pursuing me. I met him on a bench near the center of town, aloof and nonchalant in an old man’s cap. When we arrived at the venue, he would proceed to buy me a glass of wine. I wanted to depend on him, searching for evidence of physical intimacy: a brush of his arm or a locked gaze.

His name appears in the Chat feature of gmail and I find myself distracted by the possibility of contacting him again. It’s easy to feed a habit that is self-destructive. I know that I will feel the same sense of disappointment after spending time with him that I usually do. I will want to make him into someone he isn’t in my mind, allowing myself to feel the rejection even more deeply.

I sit at the French café that I used to frequent in my early days of living in the city, filling my days up with things to do because I didn’t have a job to occupy my time. Being here reminds me of feeling hopeful. I had a beer here with a good friend a few months ago. I remember sitting with him as dusk fell over the city, discussing issues that had come up between our friends. I think back to cafes in France where I would feel the sun upon my face and immediately feel the anxiety subside. Moments of living abroad felt overwhelming and too bulky to unpack. Simplistic acts like sitting in the sun or wandering aimlessly through the streets would put me at ease.

The idea of drinking a beer with a friend at the end of the day would often salvage my days in the classroom. Beer became symbolic of my European adventures, trying new varieties but also remaining commited to the favorite that Alex had introduced me to, Stella Artois. We had some of our most difficult and revealing conversations over the carbonated but weighty glass of liquid.

We met at a café near his house after I wrote letter to him, defining my interest. All I had received confirming that he had received the letter was a text message. I coincidentally left it at his doorstep a few days prior to one of our school vacations. Even though I had made a bold move, it was hard to face the consequences of what I had done. I wanted the dust to settle over the matter before I had to deal with it the next time I would see him in person.

He would buy my beer that night, as was his custom. While it may have seemed trivial to him, it always felt special to me. I liked feeling that someone cared enough to spend two euros on me. Sitting at the table across from one another in the darkly lit pub, we skirted around the issue of the letter I had written. I didn’t want to confront him with my feelings; I felt that I had already done so. Being someone who thought highly of himself, Alex wanted to hear the words directly from me. Insecure and ashamed, I apologetically defended my feelings such that they seemed unwarranted and unmerited.

Because no conclusions were drawn from our meeting that night, our relationship dissolved overnight. I couldn’t look him in the eyes after what I had done. Over time, he became cowardly to me. I deserved better. I was worth more than feeling the way that I did, after sharing my vulnerability. The same pattern repeats itself throughout my life: I can’t trust others because I don’t believe that they ultimately love me or care about me, I think that they will somehow underhandedly betray me.

A beer brought us back together again in San Francisco, when I felt a false sense of self-confidence after scoring an interview that paid for my jaunt across the country. I paid for his beer this time, asserting this newfound gumption. We sat in the back of a taqueria in the Mission, me dominating the conversation by blurting out my recent interview successes. He listened halfheartedly in the way that was forgiveable. He would redeem himself by being present part of the time. Yet, the fact that he had left me waiting at the corner of 16th and Mission for almost an hour, confirmed my suspicions.

We had changed locales, but Alex had not changed. He would continue to leave me hanging, I would continue waiting until he would arrive. I would allow an image of him to remain in my mind that he did not live up to. Watching him board the bus back to his home, which he made a point of commenting was near Haight-Ashbury, I came to a concrete realization. This was someone who had come to define my European experience. Being a strong, pseudo-independent twenty-three year-old, I wasn’t going to let him color my time once more.

Nine months later, I would pursue him once again, at a point of weakness. It would be over a beer, as it always was. This time it would be a compromise, our meeting. I would arrive at the café in my neighborhood, feeling as though I possessed some stronghold in the equation. I waited outside for a few minutes, gabbing to my friend over the phone and seeking affirmation.

He would possess the upper hand, sitting there with a moleskin notebook and a battered copy of a Salman Rushdie novel. As I went to buy my beer, I would glance over at him and find him engaged in his literary pursuits. He would capture me again as he had before. I would feel the same way that I always had in our interactions, a poser, a disaster, a weakling. He works at two of the most renowned museums in the city, while I, a supposed artist, find my living working part-time at the local French school. I hadn’t broken out of the reality that we had lived in while in France. I was the one who had remained stagnant in his eyes.

I would try and reestablish my control by taking him by my apartment and introducing him to my paintings. He would oblige me with compliments, but I couldn’t discern his actual reaction. I wanted him to see that I had artistic and creative roommates, who were close friends and better company than he had been. I left the evening feeling buzzed, it was he would had purchased the second beer and manipulated the situation. I was at a loss for what to do when walking him out the door. I knew it was in my best interest not to see him again, but it was hard to watch someone who had held my emotions in the palm of his hand, walk out of my life. I wanted desperately to put myself in his grasp once more.

It is a few months since that interaction and I still feel like I am no different. True, I would be able to run into him and wiggle my way out of the situation with my social graces. But, I would be affected for hours afterwards, my stomach twisted in knots. Every time I am in the car near his house, I feel more raw and ex acerbated than normal. I watch crowds of hipsters walk in and out of my life, and sometimes I see him in and among them. I haven’t deleted him from my gmail chat box; I have deleted him from my facebook profile. I compartmentalize and allow the chance for him to re-enter.

I’m not Felicity living out the romance, in which I chase Ben Covington across the country and miraculously find myself in an intensely, powerful relationship with him. I can’t help the fact that part of the reason I was drawn to San Francisco was because of Alex Teplitzky. It represents a part of my life from last year that I am still clinging onto. There will be days when I will struggle with my decision, when I will feel incapable of stumbling through the San Francisco fogginess of my reality.

Even writing now, I think as though I am at times trying to emulate his literary genius in someway. Are my words even making sense or am I stringing sentences together that will endure intense literary criticism and fall apart at the seams? I am a wolf in sheep’s clothing most of the time, trying so hard to be someone that I’m not. One week I will try and be a hipster, formulating and calculating my look just so that I look discombobulated. Another week I will try and look the part of a teacher and actually care about how I present myself to my classroom. Other days I will look put together and buttoned up and declare my presence with a Southern accent. You will know that I went to school in the South and bought into the sorority aesthetic. Or you will know that I’m trying too hard to be artistic and creatively challenge myself. Or you will think that I’m actually fluent in French after having lived there for a year and acquiring all sorts of French clothing. Or you will think that I’m a pious Christian who surrounds herself with others like herself and doesn’t like to miss church on any given Sunday. Or that I’m the crazy, out-of-control girl who can’t handle life without a hefty dose of anti-depressants. Who pretends that she likes cigarette smoking, when all she can handle is saccharinely sweet, sugar-coated cigarettes. Who was a runner in high school and for a time in college; therefore, she can finish any half-marathon with ease. Who knows the map of MUNI like the back of her hand, but sometimes can’t figure out how to get off of the bus. She knows how to order a coffee at the local café, but doesn’t know how to judge whether or not it’s a legitimate cup of coffee.

Most of the time I feel as though I’m juggling ten different lives. The one that I had in college, the one that I had in France, the one that I have in San Francisco, the one that I would like to have in San Francisco. I find myself wishing I was somewhere else sometimes, it’s hard for me to live in the present and enjoy every moment. I’m constantly comparing myself to others and what my life would be like if it had gone another direction.

Living in San Francisco has helped me to be content with what I have, less materialistic and more realistic. The script of my life is being written here, maybe not in the way in which I expected, but in a way in which I can cope. I would like to be that artsy person that walks around with an unwavering confidence, instead of the flaky pushover that I am most of the time. I have a hard time expressing what I really want from others and from situations. I will succumb to the pressure of letting others’ expectations and feelings get in the way. Take, for instance, if I lend someone money. I have the most difficult time asking them for that back, unless they bring it up and offer the sum in return. If I do say something, I feel stingy, greedy.

All roads lead back to the person I once was, the girl that cried in seventh grade over being told that she was the girl who always apologized for things she didn’t even do. I was tried to be popular and successful based on other’s opinions of me. I wasn’t able to formulate my own cosmology because there were so many around me who were revolving in the orbit. My own ideas couldn’t survive with an abundance of distraction. I allowed my sense of self to be trampled.

I want to change and it appears to the outside world that I’m trying to do so. Is change ever possible in the face of vulnerability? When I am faced with a compromising situation, I revert to my weak, seventh grade personage. Ideally, I would like to transition from activity to activity without having a psycho-samatic break in between.
I would like for rest not to be forced and for stress to come naturally, not be imposed.

If I would be able to trust others and my instincts, I would be satisfied with my decisions. I can move miles away from home, two thousand miles in one direction or another, but not be able to find a job with benefits in the continental United States. I like telling people that I made it to the final round of Google interviews, that I was almost hired by Gap, Inc. For some reason, it makes doing what I’m doing easier for me to digest. Being a teacher seems like it is a cop-out, that anyone can do it, just so long as they can stand being around kids all day. I got that line of thinking from my parents, who always told me, “The best and brightest don’t go into teaching.” I had the idea growing up that because I was smart, I would become a doctor. Because I enjoyed babysitting and being around kids, I would become a pediatrician. A plus B equals C by the additive property. But, A plus C doesn’t equal B, according to my parents. My dad is an engineer who has a hard time comprehending artistic, abstract concepts.

When I first introduced him to propensity towards the road less traveled, we were at a café in Avignon, France. It was dimly lit, outside of a Roman-inspired cathedral in the old town. I took an architecture class during my time in Avignon, so I was attuned to the details of my surroundings.