My Own Craziness.

I watched an episode of House tonight where the patient kept a blog detailing every aspect of her life. The reason she started the blog, she explained, was because it was easier to share her feelings and thoughts when there wasn't a face attached. She asked Dr. Chase what his conversations were like with Cameron before they broke up...Was it just where they would go to dinner or how their days were or was it something meaningful? Later in the episode, her husband accused the blog of becoming like a performance and that his wife was writing to please her audience of readers.

I felt this strange mix of emotions for this fictional dying woman. And then I felt a strange mix of emotions for my dear blog here. I suppose that it is pretty apparent that I don't write about specifics here. You never really get a daily dose in the life or a complete anecdote of an incident. All of this is analysis, the story has been stripped to the morals and the themes and then bolstered with paragraphs of wordy diatribes that further obscure the details of the event that made me sit down and write. This approach to writing is nothing new and is a hallmark of many of my sophomore attempts to write a short story or memoir for creative writing class. I love details and deep thoughts but I cannot bring myself to detail an event or tell a reader what exactly happened. Perhaps I am preventing myself from being my own Holden Caulfield, the unreliable narrator English teachers warned me about in high school.

While some writers reserve their strangely analytical thought processes to remain in print format, I've earned myself the title of "delver". It's a hat I don't think I should wear as proudly as I do. I love to think aloud with people and to ask questions to get them to a revelation or myself to one. I like to think that there is a reason for everything and that that reason is influenced by a multitude of other nitty gritty things that I should be able to piece together. But this exploratory process is only done well with best friends...the kinds that doesn't judge you or look at you like your crazy, they may call you out but never tell you to stop the madness. So, yes, dying fictional patient who writes a blog but didn't die, my last conversation with my ex-nothing was indeed meaningful.

As for the writing for an audience thing, this is my Off Off Off Off Off Broadway in corn pasture Iowa way of sharing my thoughts. If I am writing solely to shed myself of the burden of my pent up psychosis, I type in this word document that is merely a collection of free writes. I pound out a page of thoughts, unfiltered words and cruise through pains and joys and whatever else told me to open that damn file. Speaking of which, I think my subconscious agrees that this should have been a free write because I have accidentally opened Word about five times since I started writing this.

I'm not sure what this entry says about me or what this blog as a whole says about me as a member of the blogging society. I'm also not sure what mind boggling thoughts are keeping me from falling asleep right now but I do know, beyond reasonable doubt that blogging is just boggling with the l moved.

Bangs, Baubles and Bumpers.

The woman who changes her hair is ready to change her life

- Coco Chanel

The night before we all left CLOC, my friend Brynn decided to cut her bangs. Embracing the wonderful state of limbo Brynny was about to find herself in as she reentered reality, measures were taken to show that she was indeed ready to face the changes ahead. Sometimes when we are faced with the possibility of change in our lives, an uncontrollable approaching switch in routine, we decide to change something that we are in control of. It's as if the process we fear the most is less scary if we are in control of some aspect of it. Brynn entered into a world of unknowns and fill in the blanks with positively fierce bangs. On a side note, for all of you non-CLOC kids, Brynn faced this monumental change with total and utter grace. She never once said that she was sure of anything but it never seemed life there was something she couldn't handle if it came her way. Brynn's strength and courage throughout the season and especially on this subject was one that I admired greatly. I hope the best for her and can't imagine anything less for such a wonderful human being.

My version of the hair transformation (I've beaten this mop up over the past months) was to clean the Batmobile inside and out. The thing that takes the most abuse and that I love so much never really gets my tender love and care. Today, impelled by some long dormant inner conscience, I decided to clean my car. If you know me and that janky mobile at all, you know the extent of this process and what a feat it was for me to clean of my own free will. With each cleaning measure it became more clear that if I could clean the Batmobile I could handle anything next year was to bring. The car, coming with me to Cincinnati for the first time, is a clean slate...she's still got all of the dents of my adolescence, the scarpes of my careless summer adventures but now she's all TLC's (with toothbrush cleaned wheels even) and ready for new shenanigans. I have no idea what's to come next year...I have no idea what I want to do as a career...I'm toying with about 800 bad ideas for both scenarios and all I know is that Brynn's bangs, my clean car and Coco Chanel say that anything is possible.

A Number.

I've decided that age is a very transient phenomenon. Our state of mind, our capacity to handle stress and change, our emotional responses to scenarios, all defining markers of a certain age, change drastically in every day life. There are so many times when I feel as though every fiber of my being is trying to be another age. I always feel so defined by my age and yet I hardly ever act 19. I suppose there are moments when I am embodying what it means to be a 19 year old, going off for her sophomore year of college but I hardly ever think to myself "You are being such a 19 year old right now." I can be five years old or twelve or fourty-two or really anywhere in between.

Age is a mental state. When you watch your best friend leave and feel alone, scared, sad and just overall want to throw a tempertantrum to get them back, you are 5 again. You're back to a time when screaming and crying either got you what you wanted or kept you amused until you forgot what hurt you and found somewhere else to focus your attention. When you send text messages to a friend in the room about another friend in the room, you are 14 again. You're back to a time when you are judgy just for the sake of being so and you are insecure enough to pick on everyone to make sure that you weren't the one getting picked on. When you're leaving childhood home and feeling a pang of lose, you are 18 again. You're back to a time when the real world was just some fantastical place that you wanted so desperately to be a part of only to realize that growing up meant leaving things and people behind.

So maybe age is a relapse into former mental states ingrained in you. Maybe its just you, the you now, deciding that the best way to handle what you are facing is to return to some familiar way of dealing. And perhaps, age is an addition formula. Each year adds to you and who you will become.

In each 19 year old, there is a five year old and a twelve year old and all those years in between.