March 15, 2012

• chicken for the soul

  Slice my starry eye.
  Light his coat in turpentine.
  Kill the bitch that bats an eye,
  Elvis.

  - Alex Winston, Velvet Elvis

  -+-

  "Christa… you're an odd one."

  It gets pretty obvious when I develop a blogging bug.  It's on and off, but it's pretty chronic.  After all, this year will be my ten-year anniversary with this site.

  Ten years.

  Ten years later, and sometimes I still find myself narrating my day in my head.  Sometimes, when I'm coming down with a blogging bug, my thoughts sound not like a jumble of disconcerted thoughts like they usually do (see: i'm a spaz), but they read almost too smoothly, flourished with hooks and diverse sentence structure, speckled with literary tools, as if I was reading one of my blog posts in my head.

  This was found among those thoughts.

  -+-

  (MERCED.  The weather is windy, and the sky is overcast.   GIRL emerges.  Her hair is disheveled from the breeze.  She is clutching her hand around the strap of her bag.)

  GIRL:  That's always a strange moment, isn't it?  It's always strange when you find yourself evaluating yourself.  When you...

  (Pause. GIRL hears a familiar voice, and turns around.  No one is there. She turns back around, and continues on her daily route.)

  GIRL: …when you wonder about yourself in the same way that you wonder about a good book that you're still reading, or a good television show that you watch weekly.  You wonder about the state of the characters.  You find yourself more than intrigued, more than going with the flow.  You are sincerely invested, and you find personal stake in the foreshadowing, in the subtle hints and clues scattered throughout the plotline.  You tremble at the question: what is to come?  What is going to happen next?  Then again, I should be personally invested.  I ought to be personally invested in myself, after all.

  (Beat.)

  I found that I am not feeling at my best.  That fact irritates me.  I should be feeling at my best.  Life has been absolutely extraordinary, in spite of any and all detriments, obstacles, and inconveniences.  Because that's what those mistakes heartbreaks fears regrets have to be to me.  They have to be miniscule.  They have to be minute.  I can't let these things get to me.  Especially when so many of these things are completely out of my control.  But bad news: they get to me.  They do.

  They really shouldn't be, especially when you consider how absolutely amazing things have actually been recently.  I've exorcised my ghost.  My tirade has met a joyous standstill.  I'm crossing off more and more on my bucket list everyday.  At the same time, I'm opening more doors, more opportunities, and more ceaselessness for my future.

  I may not have Love, but I have love.  I bear witness to that everyday.  When my friends from years ago travel hours to visit me in Merced for a one-hour dinner.  When Chimichanga Mountain & Co. surprise me with a Valley of dreams, goals, and aspirations.  When my Rock takes a moment to teach me a new handshake, and then tells me in a rare moment of sincerity, "Thanks for being there for me."  To be honest, that's enough for me.  For once, my heart and mind have no ties, no loose knots to poorly built anchors.  I just looked in the mirror one evening and realized it.

  "I'm a bird."

  And that's beautiful.  Things are absolutely beautiful.  I am taking a risk everyday, yet I feel safe.  I have less stories under my belt, and that's a relief.   It's narrowed down to just one narrative, although annotated in red ink with, "For Now," but it's a welcome story indeed.  Life is picking up, yet it doesn't feel so fast anymore.  I'm relieved.

  Yet I don't feel at a high, and that's irritating.  I feel like I am stuck in the middle somewhere.  I feel like I exist between heaven and hell.  I feel like I am stuck in purgatory.  I am in this void of space that's simultaneously refreshingly comforting and worrisome in its discomfort.  I feel as if I should be at a 10, but my mind is stuck at a 5.

  Admittedly, I did need chicken this week, so that might be it.

  (FLASHBACK.  GIRL and BOY are driving away from campus.  She is sitting in passenger seat.)

  BOY: You wanna get something for dinner?

  GIRL: Sure. What do you want to get?

  BOY: (Shrugs:) I always decide.  What do you feel like?

  GIRL: I always feel like chicken.  (Laughs.)  Actually, chicken is this huge comfort food for me.  Whenever I'm sad, my friends know that I'm in a dire need for chicken.  Like back with my ex -- we got in this huge fight once, so the girls made a Chicken Night out of it.  They took me out for chicken wings and we just watched a movie together.

  BOY: Aw, that's sweet.

  GIRL: Yeah, it was really sweet.  You can tell when I'm really sad, because that's when I need chicken.  So now you know what to get me if you ever want to cheer me up.

  BOY: (Quizzically:) But we had chicken before, and you weren't sad then.

  GIRL: That's because I wanted chicken.  There's a huge difference between wanting chicken and needing chicken.

  BOY: Oh, I get it.

  GIRL: Yep. So actually, let's not get chicken, because I'm not sad.

  (TWO WEEKS LATER.  Again, GIRL is in passenger seat.)

  BOY: Do you want to get something for dinner?  I can cook something or we can go out.

  GIRL: Actually… can we get chicken because I'm sad?

  (CURRENT DAY.)

  GIRL: It's been forever since I've needed chicken.

  Like the day that my ex-boyfriend broke up with me.  I tried to run away from it all.  I was going to run away, get out of town, start life somewhere else.  Then my feet started to blister, and I realized that my geographical options were quickly narrowing down to the immediate neighborhood.  My plans to disappear were becoming steadily more unsuccessful as the sores on my feet became more painful.  So I did the next best thing: I walked to the local boba shoppe and bought popcorn chicken.

  Then some miscellaneous whatnot happened after that, but since then, I've moved on and life has been, for the most part, absolutely amazing. Clearly, it was the chicken.  Chicken primed me for amazing awesomeness in the face of crippling destruction.  But it's actually kind of disheartening to see the tally: I've needed chicken twice this week.  And it's been forever since I've needed chicken.

  (Beat.)

  I don't want to need chicken anymore.  I want to get out of this rut.  I want to get out of purgatory.  I want to see the value in every speck of dust again.

  I don't want to need chicken anymore.

  • 10:55 pm
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