The Lost Plum…

This isn’t the post that was supposed to go out today. I have the next two weeks already set (preposted) which is exciting, yes? I mean I find it exciting, although more convenient so I can do work and move (I’m moving…down the street!)

So, about 1 ½ years ago I found myself in the hospital. I guess what happened is my heart rate dropped so low (it runs really low in general, but that’s another story) that I passed out and had a seizure. The seizure part I don’t know about, but all I know was I woke up on the ground with the ambulance guys already around me and my foot hurt. Then I sorta remember being at the hospital and my foot still hurt. My mom showed up two days later to find me hooked up to a million wires in the hospital still crying about how much my foot hurt.

SIDEBAR: I was talking to my roommate when I passed out. I was in the doorway to my room and was holding onto the handle…what we think happened is I pulled the door shut on my way down closing it on my foot.

Mama Plum convinced them to x-ray my foot, which was the size of a baseball, and I couldn’t stand up on, so I would one-legged hop to the bathroom along with all my machines (cause no way in hell is this Plum is using a bed pan!)

X-rays back: They tell me it’s nothing, I just hit it and the swelling will go down in a few days. I spent about 2 months not being able to wear anything but flat shoes (and if you know me that is a travesty) and limping every once and awhile.

Fast-forward about 4 months. I went to the doctors for a check up (a new doctor) and I happen to mention my foot still bothered me now and again. He asked if I wanted to get an x-ray, I said yes.

SIDEBAR: This is the one thing I love about the American health care system. If you’re willing to pay for it you can have it. You can literally walk in be fine and say “ I want a EKG and an MRI done” and as long as you pay they do it.

X-rays back and there plain as day are 3 count them 3 hairline fractures in my right foot, and one which has healed it’s self in a not so hot kind of way!

Now my foot is pretty much better, sorta, well not really. But I get around fine on it, but every once and awhile it hurts. This I notice the most when it is cold outside. Really cold weather, or damp weather affects our joints and bones, and I’m sure if you have any type of injury such as mine you know what I’m talking about (don’t get me started on my knee when it’s raining)

So last night I wake up in pain. I’m alone, cold, and feel like my foot is broken!

My point is broken bones are kind of like broken hearts. They heal sure, but every once and awhile they pop up out of nowhere and cause you alittle pain. And it’s usually those times when you’re all alone in the dark cold room.

Then there are broken hearts like my foot. Little tiny fractures that go un reported because you don’t want to admit that maybe you are really broken hearted. Those heartbreaks that you push off as “meh it just didn’t work out” but really those breaks are the ones that maybe stay with you the most, that cut you the deepest. The ones you are silent about, that eat at you while you lay in bed, cold and alone. (with your foot propped up on a pillow)

Yeah, ok, I’m falling down on my knees (or at my keyboard) and doing the whole New Year Post.  Here we go….

So it’s 2010. Or better known as twenty-ten. So here is the thing, I think these years should be known as “the 20s”  (ie. just like the 1920, maybe better, maybe worse, but with skimpier swimwear)

So this is the dawn of our 20s! I mean who didn’t like (or is still liking) their 20s?  Come on! I think this is the best way for us to be excited about the years to come. Maybe it’s me not wanting to get older, and maybe sometimes forgetting I’m not 23 anymore. Or maybe it’s me just being crazy as usual.  But the 20s, my 20s (which technically I’m still working my way through) were pretty good. Pretty exciting, and thus, why not look at 20-10 as 2-0, aka 20! Year 20!

SIDEBAR: 2011 will be 21, 2012 will be 22, and so on…. Get it? You sure? Ok, good!

So as I look into 2010, I hope it is half as good as when I was 20.

WHEN I WAS 20:

-       I was just over 40 pounds lighter then I am now.

-       I was in love. (or thought I was)

-       I traveled Europe.

-       I had my first Gin & Tonic.

-       I was working hard, studying hard, and parting hard.

-       I got my first real ‘grown up’ job.

-       I pulled my first 4nighter (no sleep for 4 days)

-       I danced all the time.

-       I discovered avocado.

-       I got to see my dad almost every month, as he would travel to conferences near where I went to school.

-       I had great friends that I knew know matter what were there for me.

-       I laughed really hard.

-       I experimented in all sorts of maybe not so good things.

-       I drove ½ way across country on my own.

-       I started to explore and feed my love of cheese.

-       I was smoking (NOT good, but at the time it was oh soo good)

-       I saved a friends life.

I write about people here. In fact I write about people I might not know deep down (aka boys I meet) and most of these people aren’t people you know either. So who really cares right? Right!

I got a letter yesterday. A letter that has made me rethink a few things.

I used to have a blog with a friend about our job (we did the same thing but for different people) and it was completely anonymous. Problem being it started to get some attention, and we had to shut it down. Legally we may or may not have been telling stories we shouldn’t have…. even if we changed names and such.

So I get this letter from a law office representing a client and publisher.  I need to waive over my likeness for a book. Wait what?! Are you serious?

It made me think about this blog. (well it made me think of alot of things, but the blog is one) Is one day down the line one of my PULL buddies going to sue me because I shared his “genius” pickup line with the world to steal? Is that guy, or the person I thought was a friend going to one day get angry and mean. Or what is someone steals my likeness (another legal issue) I mean I am pretty hilarious; maybe someone wants to steal what I have written? (With the spelling and grammar cleaned up of course!)

I also have been thinking about people who touch my life, how everyone has shaped me in a different way. Some have made me scared, others have given me the ability to trust, some have taught me skills, and some have made me grow older. So in the huge melting pot of people who have ‘touched’ me there are those that really stand out. One of these being “mystalker”.

FACT: A full fledge real stalker! We are talking restraining order, used to break in and watch me sleep, tried to kill himself, documented my day to day with telephoto lenses, tried to kill an ex boyfriend capital S stalker!  I use the term stalker seriously and don’t throw it around like almost every girl out there.

And now he has written a book! A book that I am featured in and the character draws so much to my “likeness” that I need to sign over a waver.

We all know he’s crazy, so I’ll say this: His publisher is fucking crazy if he thinks I am signing this shit, and even crazier if he thinks this isn’t going to be a legal issue!

SIDEBAR: This is the last thing I need right now! Merry Christmas to me.

One sexy lady blogger @KB_in_NYC wrote a post last week that got me thinking.  She wrote about songs that have emotional ties to relationships, and to life, and boys making mix tapes. Now I have to be alittle honest here, as much as I remember and was around in the “mix tape” era I was more exposed to boys making mixed CDs, and let me tell you the best part about the fact that boys made me mix CDs rather then tapes (well besides my youth) is they have easily been added to my iTunes library and thus I carry these boys with me everyday. (even on those days I actually make it to the gym)

Now as KB mentions there are music has this wonderful ability to invoke memories.  Whether they are of life, family, history, and yes relationships.  She composed a list of her “life playlist” not just limited to relationships.  I have those songs too, but more so I have that with artists.  Every time I hear Frank Sinatra I think of car trips with my parents, when my brother who was maybe 5 at the time would sing Sinatra songs non stop for hours in the car (my parents thought it was cute, I at the time thought I had the worst family ever, but as long as he didn’t look out “my” window we were cool) I can’t not think of my best friend “PAL” when I hear John Lennon, or my mother when I hear The Doors, and Men at Work makes me think of Amsterdam.

Yes, There is something very wonderful about listing songs that are the soundtrack to my life, but that list is way to long, and never ending, and honestly I just really wouldn’t know where to start.

So let us stick to things I do well: talk about all the crazy boys that have come in and out of my life. So here is a list of 13 songs that will forever posses the power to make me reminisce about boys, or actually just one boy (well not all one boy but one boy per song, well there are some repeats)

FACT: the ex’s entire cannon of music could make up it’s own post. I may or may not have included one below.

Truly, Madly, Deeply – Savage Garden

(Oh silly silly high school “love”. This was also my prom theme)

Why Can’t I? – Liz Phair

(I fell “in like” hard with an Austrian Tennis Player while traveling through Europe..I know it’s so cliché I can’t deal.  I had never heard this song at the time, but he one day turned to me and said this song made him think of me, and now it makes me think of him)

So What Does It All Mean – Johnny Was

(Oh, I can’t even go there. The first boy who made an effort and pursued me….it has absolutely nothing to do with the Walk To Remember movie ..it’s on the soundtrack)

What I Got – Sublime

(It reminds me of the first time I fell for a boy and told myself I wasn’t, but also the first time I ever felt good about myself in a relationship)

Addicted – Simple Plan

(Don’t even ask)

Punk Rock Princess – Something Corporate

(Didn’t really workout. However, I’m still looking for someone to be my heroin)

Two Coins – Dispatch

(The first boy who ever played the guitar and sing for me.  It was the start of a long long road of musicians after that, but this song just makes me think of good things and good times and university)

Save Tonight – Eagle-Eye Cherry

(The last song a guy ever played and sang for me on the guitar)

Original Prankster – The Offspring

(This song makes me think of the first time I ever really enjoyed being in a relationship, the first time I just let it all go, plus rockin’ like Janet Reno is all I really want to do)

E.I.  – Nelly

(The boy who I just always had the wrong timing with. “Uh-ohhhhhhhhhhhhhh!” )

Murder the Government – NOFX

(I don’t know why, but it always makes me think of my very first ‘fuck buddy’)

As you Sleep – Something Corporate

(Yes, I am repeating bands. This song will always be attached to the last boy I loved. This is one of my all time favorite songs by one of my all time favorite bands)

You Don’t Mean Anything – Simple Plan

(This song is the one that broke my heart, and it still does)

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about life, love, relationships, and all that jazz.

SIDEBAR: I know I know an emotional post…..gawd I know I’m turning into every other stupid dating/relationship blogger.

I moved to this city almost 5 years ago. I moved here with some suitcases (well and a ton of boxes, lets be real here) and nothing else.  Now I know that is a typical story line for this city. But I do have a point here. I moved here with no one and knowing no one.  In fact the only person I “knew” in the city was @aussieinthecity who I had about a month long conversation about gradschool woes and visa junk as we both embarked on our adventures of moving from another country to attend the same program at Columbia University.

But the thing I don’t have is friends I’ve known before I moved here. I have no friends I have known since high school, no friends I went to university with.  Everyone I know in this city I know since I’ve been here.

Now there is nothing wrong with this, and I have some of the most amazing friends here in the city. Friends who I might not see all the time but are here for me whenever I need them, friends I feel like I have known forever.

In fact, when I look back at places I’ve worked, projects I’ve been involved with, I generally never think of experience and knowledge I’ve gained. I think of that one person I gained. That one friend who makes all the difference in my life.

Now I miss my friends so much that I’ve had since high school and since university. But as we all know those are the friends that when you see them it’s like you never left. You fall into a wonderful routine and the conversation flows.

And that is what I miss. I don’t miss great conversation. I get that here with lots of friends. I miss friends who know my history. To be more precise who know my dating and relationship history.  You know the friends, that know off the bat as soon as you say things like “I really like this guy” they get it, cause they have a long back story of what you like and don’t like. They know how you work in relationships, how you love, and what you need.  I have not been in a long-term exclusive relationship since moving to this city where friends here have meet the other person I was involved with.  So how do they know what I like, need, want, and react to?  The answer is they don’t and they can’t.

Yes we can have conversations about my dating life, their dating life, and what have you, but I never am satisfied by the conversation.  In fact, I want to say that the fact I run and hide and find fault in every ‘relationship’ I’ve been in over the last 4 years has been because I truly don’t have someone to gage the situation and make things real to me.  All I get is opinions based on well opinions. There is nothing based on fact or history or knowledge of me.

Relationships are dirty, complicated, and intense. I function in life (not just in relationships) based a lot of previous relationships, how I move, how I treat people, and how I let myself be treated are all based on my past.  And sometimes I simple wish I had a friend here who could look at my face and just know how I feel about a boy……