I have been awake since 8:20am this morning, and I've had all day to come to this assortment of realizations, but for some reason it's happening to me at 1:30am when I am trying to fall asleep because I have to wake up early tomorrow. Alanis Morisette might find this ironic. I don't, I think it's irritating.
But there's good in this: the past few months have been dizzying. Well, actually, the last half a year has been dizzying. Working at Pranna has exposed me to a lot of parts of the city, and of life, that I never knew before. Adult life. Actually, a life I'm really not equipped to be living yet. A life of people five, ten years ahead of me with stable incomes and apartments and college degrees. Sometimes it feels really silly to be a nineteen year old in a crowd of people in their late twenties to mid thirties, but sometimes it's really exciting. It feels like I'm getting an insider scoop on what life is like later... what life will be like when I'm that age... and I'm tasting it now so I'll know what to expect later and be better equipped to handle it. Definitely more so than some of the people I know... I keep thinking, shit, I am going to be so much better than some of these people... And shit, some of these people, I have no clue how to ever be that successful. I hope I figure it out, because once you're up there, you're there... and yes, you can fall, but only if you let yourself. Meeting these people, they seem so normal. Not unlike my friends now, that are my age. They have the same hopes, dreams, failures, shortcomings, insecurities, but they did something different than everyone else that made them rich out of their minds. I want to figure out how to do that. I am figuring out how to do that. That's how I'm taking it now. Step by step, every day is learning something new.
I'm having my bruises along the way. Because I'm having my downfalls in judgment. Oh my god I have been SO bad with my money for the past two months. It's absolutely ridiculous. I mean, it's not like I'm making a ton of it, in fact I'm not really making enough to live MY life, needless to say I am not making enough to support the lifestyle I'm dipping my head into. It's so easy to get carried away in this city, there are options every night and a night at home seems so disappointing sometimes when you know what's out there waiting for you. A city of endless possibilities.
I looked around my room today and I thought, this isn't my room, this is a box I'm staying in right now. No wonder it's so hard to sleep sometimes. And I'm constantly worried about the roof being over my head. It's like a crippling anxiety, being home. No wonder I never clean, I don't like this place. Because I don't feel secure in it, right yet. I keep thinking of painting my room, and thinking that will probably make it feel different. I might do that sometime soon, when I get the money.
I have been slowing down my spending, though. Making a lot of cutbacks. I've been sort of giving up the constant nagging voice of judgment and consequence to the ethereal: I've been enjoying the lightness of reckless decision making, something I've never allowed myself to do before. This is a good thing and something that I am not ashamed of, because it is something I've never allowed myself before. I was watching Real Housewives of Orange County (ridiculous, I know, but these bitches have money for a reason) and someone said, "My dad told me never to spend more money than you have, and then, no matter how much money you have, you're rich. And I've never broken that rule, and it's always worked." I keep replaying that over and over again every time I look down at my Blackberry, open up my ConEd bill, and see my roommate walk through the door. I think of it at least three times a day on any number of occasions. I guess sometimes it's easier just to block it all out and go out for a drink, but I am learning that it only digs the hole deeper, as bills are amounting and I am sitting up at 1:51am now writing in a blog to get all of these thoughts out of my head and somewhere else so I can get some rest.
My Blackberry died on Sunday, so I have been phone-less for two days. It seems like an eternity. I did nothing unusual to the Blackberry, just put it in my pocket, but when I took it back out for some reason none of the buttons were responding. I think it's God's way of getting me to cut my spending back. (That would be a prime example of me throwing my life to the ethereal.) Because now I don't have money to buy a new ritzy phone, so I'm unlocking my flip phone piece of shit T-Mobile Samsung and canceling the Blackberry plan. The one I couldn't afford in the first place, but for some reason decided to commit to, and even canceled once, but replenished about two days later. Is this New York living, or am I just stupid?
I am forcing myself from here on out to spend less than I have. I am going to follow the Real Housewives doctrine. I am going to fly it like a flag, and I am going to do it, goddamnit. Even if it is not by choice, but by necessity. And I am going to do it by getting another job soon (SHHH, it's a secret... I doubt anyone at Pranna would have the patience to read through any of this anyways, and I also doubt they have any interest in me at this point because I don't provide any juicy gossip. Because that seems to be what makes people important there.) I have to wait until I come back from Florida in the middle of June to start looking around, which is the part that sucks, but the upside is that I am getting some decent hours at Pranna in the meantime. I will trudge through, I have been quieter at work lately and I think people are sensing a sort of detachment. Maybe everyone else is detaching too, I can never really tell if they were detached in the first place.
I've also discovered that my notion for the romantic has subsided significantly. I've come to believe that life comes before love, because it is life that supports love, and without a strong foundation, you have something that is merely an imitation. Something that is doomed to fail. That is what makes love so tragic... people forget that love can not survive on its own, it has to feed on something else. Life. Life is what makes it stronger: when two people come together that are full of life, success, have a reputation, have happiness, fulfillment, everything they could wish for on their own, they then have the incredible privilege of sharing it with someone irreplaceably special. But if you are searching for love to fill in that missing piece, and you go through life always acknowledging and complaining and hoping for that missing piece, you forget what life's about, and love becomes tragedy. Because at that point, why are you loving? You are not loving to share, you are loving to take.
I want to love to share. And that is why I am getting my shit together, because my life is going to be awesome. Eventually... With a lot of hard work, shitty nights, early mornings, and cheap meals... And that moment... the moment when life doesn't seem to have any way of getting better... that's the moment when you realize it's only just begun. And there is so much more... There always is. Each moment is equally important as the next.
The past two months have filled me so much with life I've become addicted. I never want to stop living it.
