2 days, 2 nights.

whats the rule for when you have too much to say?
is it that you just don't say anything at all???? because i have had just soooo much going on & just not enough words, not the right words to say so i've been silent...& its been super frustrating, but trust me you didn't want to be subjected to the many posts i've started and deleted since last week.

its july 31st.
tomorrow is august 1st.
i move on august 2nd.
is this real life?


it feels like just yesterday that i had just quit my job at 4am with no backup plan. it really is amazing what can be born out of self crisis. i decided to apply to grad school, registered for the GRE ASAP, & studied my ass off for a couple weeks...
i wrote some essays, got some recommendations, and waited.

& then the news came in the most unexpected way possible...a phone call? yes. a phone call.
& that phone call that i received on the like 2nd or 3rd day of a new job changed everythingggg...

how did i go from having no plan, no direction to being 2 days away from relocating to another city?

miracles? or rather "mirables" (as phil & lil would say)

its been a really long time since i've felt really good about anything.
and im feeling great about the moves im making now.

obviously its all very overwhelming.
i am currently looking all the piles of things i have sitting in my room
&
there is a dresser that needs to be assembled & i am quite scared of it, but these things aren't easy & i can survive the assembling of a dresser! ::nods::

i think my books make up about 85% of my possessions & im not at all sure where im going to put them all
but
i'll figure this all out

i just need to get there & thats happening on thursday.

& i can hardly believe it.

i've had a pretty busy last couple of days...there a ton of "going away" events in my honor, free shots, & awesome pizza.
im going to miss my city, my friends, my fam...
def won't miss the homeless dudes that live on the E train or the pigeons at jamaica center who will defecate on your head & not care.

...until next time (when i finally have internet connetion in my apartment)

i both learned & confirmed some things today...

i'm a bit of a news junkie. if there is breaking news i want 24/7 access to it. if there is something going on in the world that is deserving of this exclusive coverage, my tv is tuned into CNN. period. i'll even watch them loop the same anderson cooper interview over & over...its a bit of a sickness really.
what sucks the most about my insatiable appetite for breaking news? the fact that something terrible has to happen...more times than not, someone has to have died. someone or someonessss.

i woke up at 5:30am...it was one of those rare days that i had to be at work at 8am & the first thing i do when i wake up that early in the morning is turn on the news. i was expecting a weather report, not live footage of a movie theater in colorado where 71 people had just been shot while they were just trying to do what i'd be trying to do hours later...watch a movie.

shock. disbelief. confusion.

is this stuff still happening???? really????
every time something like this happens you kind of think "thats it."...who would think to try something like that again?
i don't get it.
& unless you have the same mindset as some of this mass murderers you never will.

so what did i learn from everything i've seen & read today?
people are sick. & theres nothing we can do about it. nothing. gun laws or no gun laws. evil is evil & it will always find a way. based on what i've seen today i'm going to need to see some kind of miracle to think otherwise.

something i confirmed today?
nowhere is safe. i'm a pretty paranoid person. im very anxious. perpetually scared of almost everything & everyone, but for some reason i never thought i'd have to be scared of going to the movies, but tonight as i sat in the theater waiting for the very movie that the victims of this "massacre" were watching last night, i had to fight really hard to resist the urge to just run out of there.

what now? i read something online tonight & someone said like now going to the movies is ruined for future generations.
true?
i don't fly. i can't say exactly what triggered this crippling fear of flying i've developed seemingly out of nowhere, but it lives & since this fear appeared in the years after 9/11 (although it has absolutely nothing to do with that) i've been told many many times that i have nothing to worry about because its safer to fly now more than ever.
so should we say the same for the movies?

movie theaters across the country were probably the safest places to be today...but what about when this all dies down?
you don't even have to take your shoes off to go through airport security anymore (in some places)
so what happens when there aren't 2 police officers positioned in the theater lobby?
what then?

& why should we have to live with this anxiety??? how unfair...& what does this murderer get? yes, he will get prison time & we will all get justice, but right now while the police still try to de-booby-trap (O_o) his apartment he is getting all the glory he wanted.
i read a tweet today that said
"what if we treated these shooters the way we treat the people who run across baseball fields - don't release their names or pictures?"

which brings me to the other thing i confirmed today:

news people are ruthless. i used to want to be a journalist but im glad i didn't go that route because i just don't have it in me.
there was one shooting victim (grazed by a bullet...alive) who was from brooklyn, nyc. the local news here found his apartment in brooklyn & stalked his roommate trying to interview him. when they couldn't get to him they interviewed the neighbors that barely knew him. dude was alive and well & tweeting pictures of his bloody tshirt - what could you possibly want to know from his neighbors? & when it was clear that they didn't know anything about him other than that he rode a skateboard...why not scrap that story?

they are so greedy, almost desperate for news. probably to appease the people like me, but even i know when a line is crossed, when enoughs enough.
they hunted down the shooters parents, followed his father through the airport.

cnn has been interviewing this one girl ALL DAY. shes been on tv in the same twilight tshirt ALL DAY. i know its her choice to stay there & keep telling & retelling her story, but for goodness sake let her gooooo.
let her goooooo...she should be talking to a counselor, not to don lemon.

geesh.

in conclusion.
at the end of the day, being in the movies, watching the dark knight rises was actually a pretty good escape from the reality of what happened...but i couldn't help but cringe every time the bad guys starting shooting something up...
(NOT a spoiler. its batman. bad guys are always shooting something up)

-sigh-

this is our reality now.

*i don't really feel like proofreading this one. this is as rambly as rambling gets.

r.

this really could just be the heat exhaustion talking...

me: i'm watching this thing on arranged marriages. this pakistani muslim american girl who is 28 was sooooo frustrated & tired of dating that she actually went back to her parents & asked them to find her a husband...

b2: thats gonna be me

me: NO! we must NEVER get that desperate

b2: at this rate we might have to!


unfortunately, b2, you might be right.

so like most single girls my age i was home in bed watching OWN - we all know how i feel about Oprah right? - & the lisa ling show "our america" came on after dateline & the subject of this episode was "holy matrimonies"
the show followed 3 couples - devout christian, muslim, & hasidic jewish - who went the way of faith based arranged marriages.

they also followed one woman as she went backwards a bit. she is 28, muslim american, living on her own miles a way from her family. successful, independent, and she was getting to the point in her life where dating just didn't seem to make sense anymore. she started to feel like finding a spouse on her own was impossible so she decided to ditch a bit of her independence and go back to her parents to find a life partner.

was she really feeling the pressure to be married that much? at 28? yes, she was & i can obvi understand it - a good chunk of the girls i went to high school with are either engaged, married, or have a kid & we're only turning 24 this year. despite not wanting ANY of those things for a VERY LONG time, i mean it'd be nice if i had the option ya know?

but i don't & apparently if i keep going at this rate, im gonna end up 28 & alone & in search of a pakistani matchmaker.

now im pretty sure this is only because its 93 degrees in my room & my insides are boiling down to mush, but the idea of an arranged marriage doesn't seem like too bad an idea.
we know the divorce rate right? 50% or something like that?
well most arranged marriages last longer than what we consider to be conventional marriages
& based on what i saw tonight, its not just because divorce is completely unheard of in these cultures.

i think it has to do with the fact that despite having only known each other 4 months (& in the case of the muslim couple, had only met in person 2 times) or 6 months or what we all consider to be a really short period of time to know someone before we commit to spending the rest of our lives with them, they get to bond over the fact that they've only known each other for 4 months, they've never been alone with another female/male EVER, they've never touched, never experienced alllll the things they will experience together for the rest of their lives.

if that doesnt bring 2 people together, what will?

they talked a lot about how faith trumps love or how their union that is sanctioned by their faith, by their "God" can only lead to love...how there was no way they could have known love before finding the other half that their scriptures and their elders talk about so deeply. that all makes a lot of sense to me.

when you marry someone based on their faith & how it holds up against your own, there is no way that marriage can ever cease to exist because as long as you have your faith you have your love & i totally get that.

now being the girl of very litte faith that i am, im probably never going to get into a faith based arranged marriage...

but maybe as i get closer & closer to that age where my biological clock is hitting snooze way too many times & i feel the need to marry for the first thing i see, i'll keep this 1 hour documentary in mind.
it wasn't the kind of response to arranged marriage that we're all used to seeing on tv.
they were all very happy! happier than most married couple who actually spent 2 years with each other & decided that despite all their difference they'd get married anyway...

they may not have loved each other on their wedding days, but they've grown to love each other & seemingly will always love each other & i guess thats the most important thing?

i guess all im saying is that my future husband better feel exactly the same way i do about the 90s or its just not going to work. if he can't understand why i'm still slightly devastated by lance bass coming out of the closet then we just can't be together. we need to be on the same pageeeeee

no but really. when you google arranged marriage or anything like that you see a lot about couples being "forced" - none of the couples on "our america" were forced into their marriages. they all chose to go this route & they have a wayyy better chance of having their marriages last than the rest of us...
i kind of felt happy for them & lord knows "happiness" is something i NEVER feel for couples.

now please excuse me while i eat these oreos before they melt.

-this has been the late night ramblings of overheated twenty something-

a lil something on vulnerability...

"whoever you are, wherever you are...i'm starting to think we're a lot alike. human beings spinning on blackness. all wanting to be seen, touched, heard, paid attention to..."* -frank ocean

i woke up this morning to twitter news that frank ocean had "come out of the closet".

obviously i was surprised. i don't think that any of us, the ones that do not know frank ocean on any kind of personal level, would have had any idea of these truths he's been struggling with for years now.

after the surprise came this overwhelming happiness for him. he wrote at the end of his statement that he feels like a free man. i can't even begin to imagine what this must have been like for him - being a young black hip hop artist and a bi-sexual/gay man in the spotlight. he was featured so heavily on watch the throne, novacane & swim good were all you could everrr hear on the radio at one point, he has legions of females who'd give anything to be serenaded by him. what a risk he took with his new album, what bravery!

2 reason that i am extremely jealous of frank ocean:

1. have you read his "statement". it was something originally meant for the thank you's for the new album, and its one of the most beautifully written stories i have ever read. as a frank ocean fan i have obviously been privy to his writings but this is not a song. this is a piece of prose that i think rivals that of most "professional" writers. i'm not sure james patterson or one of this ghost writers could write anything so beautiful. i know snooki definitely couldn't.
so much talent in one person. its unbelievable. in enviable. i am currently green with envy.

2. what makes his words so beautiful? how honest they are, how real they are. can you imagine being so straight forward with complete strangers?**

i wish, i wish, i wish...

i've always thought that my fear of being too honest has always held me back as a writer. everything i've ever written has been so surface its nuts. even this blog only represents a small percentage of what i'm ever really thinking, feeling, or going through...
i don't like being vulnerable...EVER & i think thats something you have to sacrifice if you ever want to create something real.
even in fiction.
writers write what they know, what they've lived. even if it isn't a verbatim account of their first relationship there are bits and pieces of it spread throughout the relationships of their cast of characters.
one of my biggest fears as a writer is that everyone will read my books and then have access to every awkward or private moment in my life.

i don't plan on being a crime fiction writer, so for the most part i'll be writing about life and what life do i know better than my own? so obviously anything i write will be rife with my own feelings and as of right now thats something i'm just not comfortable with.

we all have our secrets, and while they may not be anything as heavy as frank ocean's, we are still entitled to them.
i obviously think there is nothing wrong with keeping things to yourself, but all i am saying is that as an artist i am extremely conflicted.

so what does this mean for me as a writer?
i guess i have a couple options...

i can work on that baby sitters club spinoff series i've been meaning to get around to since i was 10
or
i can get comfortable with spilling my guts to friends, family, and complete strangers.

i guess the one good thing about my fear of vulnerability is that my family won't ever have to worry about the release of some tell all memoir disguised as fiction - i wouldn't do to them, anything i wouldn't do to myself! lol

frank ocean gets it, a lot of real artists get it. channel orange is one of the most anticipated albums of the year, frank ocean was well aware of the attention it would get and im sure he just wanted to give us all something he could be proud of not only in the quality of the music, but also in its content. i think he has just gotten to a point in his life where he just couldn't be proud of this work if he wasn't entirely true to himself.

his honesty today is super commendable and i can't wait to see what happens next. i hope he continues to receive the kindness and respect he deserves. he took a hugeeeee risk today and its something i think all artist can learn from...

-r.

* one day i'm just gonna very openly plagiarize this ::nods::
** all the frank ocean is gay rumors started this week because of how honest he is in his new album, channel orange - using hims instead of hers

but...like...when can we expect the development of teleportation technology?

seriously!

I can't bus it back to nyc every 2 weeks to get my $20 mani/pedi! its just not realistic. i mean OF COURSE i know there are nail salons in boston, but i don't know what to expect. I know that when i walk into NAILS i can expect to be greeted by a unintentionally angry sounding korean lady in a cat apron asking me what i want & telling me to "pick a polish!".

Sometimes they can be a lil harsh, & almost always complain about the lack of a tip from some customers ( i always tip!...so they don't hate me), but its the treatment that comes with a $20 mani/pedi with the good nail polish - totally worth it!

is there a 50% off sushi place in boston? because there are tonssss in lower manhattan! yes, they sometimes have a B rating & sasha b. & i totally saw someones soup come from down the street but i mean its 50% off! i almost neverrr want to pay full price for sushi again!

eyebrow waxing??? NEVER!
eyebrow threading??? ALWAYS!
& its just right across the street & nipa always doesss a great job! im not entirely sure that her name is nipa but the shop is called "nipa's eyebrow threading" & shes the best one so it MUST be named after her. i loved being recognized, i love the dirty but desperate looks the other ladies give me because i alwaysss wait for her to be done threading some womans chin despite how available they are.

these are the things i will miss!
but i guess this what comes with relocating. since i plan to actually make boston my home *gags* for the next 2 years & not just the place i live during the semester, i'm going to need acceptable substitutes...

& obviously i'm going to need a lil help!

i need!

a nail salon

an eyebrow threading spot

a hair salon (i'm black! soooo lets def keep that in mind)

a yoga studio (i currently pay $0 for yoga & until yttp gets their act together & opens up a studio in boston i'll have to actually pay something now but lets try to keep the cost as low as possible)

a cheap BUT good sushi place - last time i was in boston i went to that JP seafood place with jo. it was actually really good but NOT 50% off sooooooo...

hmmm what else?

a thai restaurant --- its my favorite food!

a doctor, a dentist...a therapist? (JK!...O_o..)

i'm sure this list will continue to grow.

this is why i'm moving a month before classes start. before i start living in libraries & books, i'm going to need time to explore & get comfortable. i think once i have all my routines in place i should be aye-oh-kay!

so, boston-ers, your help is greatly appreciated!

-r.

& now all of a sudden its july 1st...

& i don't feel as prepared for this move as i should, but i know that i am currently as prepared as i can be, definitely not mentally & emotionally but the other important factors?

place to live?
check.
job?
check.
tuition paid?
check.

things definitely haven't been going smoothly, but i am surprised by how well i've been handling it all. obviously i've had some freak outs but a life with out anxiety induced freak outs is not my life.

so now i've got exactly 1 month left.

& i can go on & on & on about how bitter sweet this all feels. but i think i've done enough of that already & i've got to save something for my august blog posts ::nods::

july is going to be one heck of a whirlwind.

i've got to juggle working, planning, furniture shopping, & spending time with my friends/fam...

i'm a ball of nerves, but im focused!
95.9% of this move is on me - i'll be spending the next 4 weeks making sure i don't fail.

failure = not an option.

stay tuned!

-r.