loose change

(today is the 26th but i’m giving myself grace for not writing anything in the past week)

another christmas has come and gone! every year feels different now. i don’t think that i have any christmas rituals or traditions that i consistently practice every year aside from watching the charlie brown special. i can think of the things i used to do as a kid–the clove oranges, the organizing of our christmas stuffed animals, the ornament archive–this year is the first year that we didn’t really do anything for christmas at home. this year didn’t feel nostalgic to me, it didn’t really feel magical, it just felt like something i was hoping to get through without any breakdowns. i think i’m hoping that next year is different!

with that being said, the holiday itself was lovely. i feel lucky to have shared three different christmases with people i love this year. i panicked about gifts and whether i’d given enough, i was nervous about accommodating both families at once, i forgot to buy a pair of socks for our neighbor, and on christmas day i spent two hours trying to pack to fly to the east coast for new years, and then three driving from santa barbara to big bear. all of my concerns were proven to be unnecessary! which happens frequently these days. i’m not sure how i continue to be so concerned so often.

now it’s the 27th (this week is really a slog) and i’m at lax. it’s 6:46 pm and i’ve eaten tomato soup (it was cheap and bad) and am halfway through a beer at the stella artois bar. i’ve been in the airport for an hour and a half and have 3 hours left until i board! i got here so early because i was driving from big bear and sam went to work earlier today, so i was kind of just twiddling my thumbs waiting for the airport, and now i’m here.

it felt like such a grown-up thing to do: drive myself from my boyfriend’s house to lax and stop at the dispensary for my flight-relaxers and park at the spot on sepulveda and shuttle over to the airport and go through tsa precheck and find my gate and search for a bar, all while wearing this knitted matching pajama set that my mom got me for christmas, and these cream-colored knitted socks that annie got me for christmas underneath my uggs, and these little gold hoop earrings i bought from cvs. i might have looked like a real Natural LA Woman/Bitch! i have impostor syndrome in this outfit but it’s quite comfortable.

i felt very adult until i got through security and spent an entire hour walking through all of terminal seven with extreme decision paralysis on what to eat. i didn’t want anything greasy because i didn’t want to feel greasy on the plane, i didn’t want to pay twenty dollars for a stale salad, so i got tomato soup, which really had the essence of airport to it. i think i was with sam once and we had this bag of chips or pretzels and they were seasoned and i took one bite and instantly said these taste like the phoenix airport–this tomato soup tasted like LAX!

every time i drive through LA and come out unscathed i feel like i can do anything. today there was a dead body on the 60, covered in a white sheet on the side of the road. two CHP officers were standing nearby and talking. you could see the boots sticking out of the sheet. it was really a harrowing sight. just prior, on the 210, i’d been thinking about how little we can control, how privy anybody is to witnessing or suffering a terrible accident. the way my mom always worries about me if i’m driving on a holiday, or late at night, or in a place i’ve never been, and i always tell her it’s fine, i’m a good driver, and she always reminds me that it’s not me she’s worried about. we’re all very accustomed to death these days in terms of the media. it’s almost impossible to avoid headlines about death. but to see it with your own eyes–on what otherwise feels like a rather inconsequential day in your own life–is something different.

airports are full of people that resemble people you know, or people you’ve seen. i always think about that theory (rumor?) in which everybody you’ve ever seen in dreams are people whose faces you’ve seen before. i’m sure that at least half of my dream strangers were extrapolated from airport scenes. i wish i had the data for how much of my life i’ve spent in airports, especially as somebody who usually arrives neurotically early. the thing about it is that it isn’t neurotic to arrive early if you genuinely enjoy it. an airport is a great place to reflect, a great excuse to do nothing, a perfect scene to lose track of time and thoughts and just watch people.

covid really did a number on airports. i can’t tell if it’s because i’m older and my body is less elastic now, or if it’s because i spent so much time away from airports that i don’t really know how to act in the same way that i used to. i was really dreading coming here today. the majority of my dread was really just the hollowing feeling that occupies my body after leaving sam. the love you so much it hurts. i don’t love that sentiment but on days like today i understand why it exists! there are few feelings that occupy my entire body the way that the leaving feeling does. i’ve never experienced that with another person before. usually it’s reconcilable, when i’m feeling sane–it’s just a testament to how much i love this person, how much our time together uplifts me. sometimes, like today, on the week preceding my period, it’s all-encompassing. i don’t know what to do with myself.

we joked today that i felt like a lost dog, or a dog that is watching their owner pack a suitcase to go on vacation. i was following him around the house this morning while he got his gear together. there will always be a part of me that truly enjoys the dramatics of being Girl Saying Bye To Boyfriend (For A Short Period Of Time). i think that being dramatic about it helps me to make my feelings feel less serious. it allows me to laugh at myself a little bit about it.

speaking of laughing at oneself–i was telling my friend madi at the restaurant the other day about my embarrassing things and the way i bury them in my brain. i’ll remember them at random moments and then have to gasp out loud, or say it’s okay, and then just forget about them until they come up again. i experienced an embarrassing moment that night at work and instead of burying it i just told madi immediately, and we laughed, and i let go of it.

since then i’ve been thinking about making a list involving all of my embarrassing moments with people, namely with sam–because there are a good bit of those that i’ve held on to–and telling the person about it one day so we can laugh at it together. one of mine with S is dancing on the raft on sebago lake with a few of our friends and he tried to pick me up and we both ended up on our asses on the platform in front of said friends. to this day i’m so embarrassed! but like C reminded me a few weeks ago, embarrassment doesn’t have to come with shame.

in the process of writing all of this i’ve watched a man miss his flight to vegas at the gate across from me. it was a really emphatic moment for him, the whole hands-to-forehead, exasperated comments to the gate agents, and then the power-walk away from his gate. the funny part is that originally he ran past the gate, and then had to do a double-take and run back, and explain to them that he had to run, and some other inconvenience he experienced, and they still wouldn’t let him on. they didn’t give a fuck!

the funnier part is that this was 10 minutes ago, and the flight leaves at 7:32–it’s 7:27 right now–and the pilots didn’t get on the plane until five minutes ago, and even after the pilots got on, the gate agents let two people who’d been on standby onto the plane. it isn’t that funny and i’m sure i’d be kind of sad if it happened to me, but it was funny to observe.

one thing i’ve been really good at since high school is relinquishing control in airports. my 18 consecutive hours in the dallas airport and 24 consecutive hours between lax->dallas->lax->bdl really hardened me up. if your missed flight is your fault, you’ve just gotta swallow it and be suuuuuuper nice to the customer service agents. if your missed or delayed flight isn’t your fault, you don’t say shit and wait until you can get on a plane, or you wait w/ patience for the gate agents to reassign you. some people absolutely loathe this approach. i don’t mind it very much anymore. being stressed in the airport is one of the largest energy drains of all time, which isn’t to say that i’ll never be stressed in the airport again–i just invest a lot of energy into being calm about them. i land happier that way.

anyway. one thing i did want to write about this week was hormones. i’m heading back into the Dark Times, as we’ve aptly named them, and i’m bracing myself to feel a little sadder than usual, and to take my feelings at a little less than face value. i saw a twitter thread today from a 24 y/o about it, kind of lamenting the fact that nobody really recognizes this on a large scale. nobody quite talks about it, everybody hints at it. the replies were full of women of thirty years and older, warning this girl that the worst was yet to come. other replies commiserated with her in feeling caught off guard by the way their hormones interfered with their daily sanity and lives.

i’ve got no idea what’s going on with my hormones but from what little i’ve read and from the women in my circle i’ve spoken to about it, it’s a very normal and natural disruption. i’ve talked to moms who have a designated week where they inevitably argue with their partner over anything and everything, or just don’t speak to them at all. i have friends, myself included, who are sometimes simply unable to get out of bed due to the vortex of negative thoughts that proliferate during this awful week.

it all makes me think a whole lot about being a woman. it reminds me of the way i felt during my first WGS class at oregon, just enraged, and empathetic, and empowered, and helpless all at once. i can’t imagine how many women have been written off as crazy as a result of their hormonal patterns, especially before hormonal research existed. that narrative is still extremely prevalent, and i remember it especially around middle school and the beginning of high school–girls are crasy! they are dramatic! of course we can’t take her feelings seriously! she’s just insane! and the amount of women who have been told they are being crazy–my ex told me this–and are left to justify their intensely dark and conflicting feelings by understanding that they’re just insane. that these feelings are either irrational, or unworthy of acknowledgement and solution. i think conclusively i feel immensely lucky to have a partner who trusts me and knows me well enough to know when something is off, and who will listen to me and try to understand before acting upon my feelings.

and the next time i write here it will be a new year! i wonder if i’ll give myself a grace period again. i kind of hope not–i hope i’m able to get something out on monday the first–i’ll be in vermont and surely can set aside a time to write! i don’t have any big resolutions. i feel like my general resolve for this year and those to come was cemented at the beginning of december. the re-learning of love. i’m trying to remember how deep my well was for others when i invested time into loving and caring for myself. i got there once and there is no reason i can’t get there again!

as for Things I’ve Learned This Week:

• the holidays make everybody crazy
• christmas (and i really hope i remember this next year) is not. about. giving. gifts! and nobody will love you any less if you only get them a pair of socks
• to learn and practice talking about your feelings is so important–even if the person on the other end doesn’t quite understand where you’re coming from, you’re learning how to process them.
• to be vulnerable is to practice strength, to know more about yourself, to become more strong in your convictions
• i don’t think i’ll ever be a cardigan person–i still cannot ever imagine myself comfortably wearing a cardigan, but the bright-colored cardigan dusters at anthropologie are really fucking special and i wish i could own one
• we are unequivocally Better People the more we are able to divorce ourselves from hyperindividualism/the less we center ourselves in the lives of everybody else
• adidas superstar shoes are still some of the ugliest things i’ve ever seen
• the more i learn about love the more i understand why it underscores so much of our daily lives–the more i learn about love the less i recognize what i was taught about it

i think i’ll sign off for now and maybe do a little documenting somewhere else! this piece feels really incoherent and scattered to me, but it’s airport writing! i’m really happy i got a piece out this week, and i’m happy to not have been hard on myself about a monday deadline. it feels good to publish it regardless. if anybody’s read this much thank you! it takes a real good person to be so invested in the aimless musings of another. or it just takes somebody nosy, in which case i don’t blame, and probably would’ve read at least up until i got bored.

my FINAL THOUGHTS–i just watched the crew deplane from the gate across from me (i’m still sitting at my same bar, it’s 8:28–i’ve been writing for almost two hours) and i was reminded of my childhood obsession with planes, with airports, with flight crews–the pipe dream of becoming a pilot fading into that of becoming a flight attendant–and i think i could be really good at that job. it’s a much different path than the one i’m on now, but if anything changes for me drastically in the future, i hope i consider it. i would be a really hot flight attendant.

until next time!!

xxo, R