I’m a very difficult person to please sometimes.  When a television show builds a storyline around a particular kind of performer, I sniff and say, “Well.  So what we’re really looking at here is an Eminem storyline,” or whatever.  Like, wow, gee, guess we couldn’t afford the real guest star.

Then when CSI:NY opens with a screaming, “MY NAME IS KIIIIIIIIIID–”  And I know that a certain celeb is guest-starring in this episode?  Hey, I’m all over their case for stunt casting.

The really stupid thing, though, is that ten minutes in I could tell that the stunt casting was likely to be about half as interesting as the storyline about Stella being attacked.  Kid Rock vs development of a character I’ve already had a couple of years to get attached to.  (And as much as CSI:NY is kind of third-down on my favorite CSI variations most of the time, I do like Stella.)  Difficult choice.  Not.  So what this really is, is an attempt to lure in new viewers with bright shinies.  I think what I dislike about it so much is how transparent the ploy is.

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In all the excitement of planning a business trip and spring cleaning and new projects and stuff, it almost slipped my mind that yesterday was an anniversary too…  Seven years since the massacre at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado.

It’s not something that gets talked about a lot anymore, I think.  There followed after it other tragedies, other crises, which overshadowed it in many ways.  A year and a half later, keeping guns out of classrooms would be the least of America’s worries.  But just then, when it was happening–that did make an impact.  And it did, in its own way, change the way America lives and thinks and reacts.

It’s one of those “where were you when” moments, I think, at least for a certain set of people.  Me, I was two years out of high school.  I was taking a day off to go shopping for wedding dresses with my maid-of-honor-to-be.  I remember the bridal shop had pulled the TV out into the showroom, so that the salespeople could keep up with what was happening.  I tried on dresses and I watched the coverage.  I don’t know that I’ll ever forget standing there wearing about a ton of tulle, with a bunch of ribbon roses on my butt, watching someone climb out of a second-story window and crawl across a first-floor roof in an attempt to get away from the violence happening inside the school.

It’s just one of those things that sticks with you, I guess, especially when you’re so close to that age yourself.  And you see it and you realize…  If it happened there, if it happened to them, it could’ve happened to me.

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I’ve heard some people allege that it’s impossible to keep the romance in a relationship past a certain point.  This point is generally cited as some relatively short period of time like five or ten years.

I don’t believe it.  I present to you Exhibit A:  my parents.  Yesterday they marked their 36th anniversary…  of going steady.  They’ve been married for most of those years, but they still take the opportunity to celebrate their relationship in April, halfway around the calendar from their wedding anniversary.  Now, come on, tell me that’s not romantic.

And because I know they’re both reading this:  Congrats on 36 years of togetherness, Mom and Dad.  I hope in 28 years when Tim and I hit the same mark we’re doing as well as you guys are. 

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IMDb: Flight 93
IMDb: United 93
IMDb: World Trade Center

In September, it will be five years. In January, Fox (I think) aired their Flight 93, a dramatic recreation of the events on the fourth hijacked plane, whose passengers rose up and prevented the plane from reaching its destination. Just a week from Friday, Universal will release United 93–same idea, different script. In August, one month before the five-year anniversary, Paramount will release World Trade Center, which appears to center around the last two survivors rescued from the Trade Center, as well as the heroic efforts of rescue workers.

People. It’s only been not-quite-five years. It’s too soon. There are some people for whom these wounds are still fresh and open and bleeding. There are still people grieving who don’t need to share those last moments of their spouses’, family’s, friends’ lives with the world.  There are still kids growing up who don’t need to see their parents die again on the silver screen.  (Or, as the case may be, the small screen.  On any screen.)  Even for the rest of us, even for those who have no ties to New York or never knew anyone who was really ever in danger, the spectre of the attack still hangs in the air, like the imprint of a firework on our retinas after its components have burnt out and the sky is dark.

There is a time and a place for movies which dramatize and commemorate extremely traumatic historical events. That time is ten, fifteen, twenty years down the road. Not five. Not when it’s still so fresh in everyone’s minds. Not when we’re still trying to move on, and largely failing. These projects need to wait until they can become thoughtful retrospectives, introducing a new generation to the events that had such an impact on their parents’ lives and reminding those who remember it of the impact of the event. Right now, what they’re going to do is stir up all the same emotions that we’ve been feeling for nearly the past five years and keep us living in that moment, in those horrific hours. We don’t need a reminder; we still remember; it only happened just under five years ago.

Too.  Soon.

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(I’ll get back to the self-interview eventually. I’m just having trouble coming up with answers right now.)

Sars, in a recent Vine response: “I think that our culture is really kind of unforgiving of ‘the blues’ and ‘having a bad time,’ and at the first sign of unhappiness, you panic, because you’ve seen those ads with the little sad rock that’s getting rained on and that’s you and obviously you have a disease because you’re bummed aiiieeeeee.” (It’s a good halfway down the page, maybe a little more than that.)

You know, it seems so obvious when she puts it that way, but I hadn’t really thought of it like that before. On bad days, I tend to do the whole “WTF is wrong with me, why can’t I be happy” thing. You’ve seen it here, if you’ve been with me for a while–every once in a while I’ll start off on that track, always conveniently forgetting that I’ve whined like this about a zillion times before. Why can’t I concentrate, why am I so down, why, why, why, what’s wrong with me, boo hoo.

Because I’ve seen the commercials with the cute-but-sad little rock getting rained on and not having fun at parties and stuff too. And despite my best efforts to resist indoctrination by pop culture generally and television specifically, it’s implanted itself in my brain somewhere. That idea that happy is normal and therefore unhappy is abnormal, and to be avoided, and indicitive of needing treatment. That unhappy is wrong.

Why is this? I think… I think depression, whether clinical or “just the blues”, makes us uncomfortable. Sometimes maybe we feel bad being happy around someone who’s sad. Sometimes maybe we feel so comfy in our happy sunshiney world that to see someone who’s obviously got a cloud blocking their sunshine is disturbing. Sometimes maybe sadness makes us feel guilty, because we’ve got roofs over our heads and clothes on our back and we worry about obesity rather than starvation, so what right do we have to be sad? Sometimes maybe it’s just that sadness doesn’t always conform to logic, doesn’t make sense, and when things don’t make sense we get all squicky.

So in order to make ourselves comfortable, we started trying to be happier. And we convinced ourselves that it was normal to be happy all the time. And we started taking every down day as a bad sign, and trying to justify our sadness when it happened. And we stopped allowing ourselves to just feel like shit sometimes, with no rhyme or reason, just because.

It’s a lesson I keep learning, over and over again, and never seem to retain it. Because every time I have a bad few days, the excuses come out. And every time I try to make myself happier, try to cheer up. And of course every time I fail and that makes me feel worse. It’s a minor paradox, I think: If I’d just let myself be sad, maybe I’d be happier overall. Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe I’d just wallow in it. Who knows.

Maybe I’ll be able to remember the lesson this time…

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How would you describe yourself as a child? Were you happy?

I would tend to describe myself as…  relatively innocent, I think.  Particularly as a young child.  I would describe myself before fifth grade or so as being without much self-awareness.  I don’t think I applied very many adjectives to myself at that point.  I mean, yes, I was happy sometimes and sad sometimes and all that, but I didn’t sit there and think, “I am happy.”  I wasn’t aware of my being happy or sad or whatever; my happiness (etc.) just was.  I existed.  What more can I say?

(I guess I can say that I just randomly remembered going to a therapist at some point, maybe fourth grade-ish, and I wonder what I said to her at the time.  Huh.  I keep forgetting about that.)

It’s odd.  I hadn’t meant to break this up into the same sections that other answers have been broken up into.  I suppose the troubles at school really kind of took over more than I’d realized up to this point.  It kind of dominates the emotional landscape of my memories from that time, though, so it’s somewhat appropriate to handle answers like this in that format.  At the same time, I feel like I’m coming across as really dwelling on it, when I really don’t do that.  It just happens to figure into several of these answers.

So.  Fifth through seventh grades, I was miserable for the most part, but it wasn’t all bad.  I did have a few friends–a very few, but those I had were close.  And we had some good times together.  And, you know, you’ll notice that the “good” memory I came up with in another question was from that time of my life.  Plus, although school was miserable, school wasn’t all of life, and the rest of life was just fine as far as I remember.  I was still going to Girls Club (now Girls Inc.) for part of this, so I was getting to learn fun things like archery and ceramics and stuff, and going on plenty of hikes and camping trips.  I wasn’t popular at Girls Club, but I wasn’t unpopular either, and again I had a couple of good friends.  I also took violin lessons briefly, which again was fun, although I didn’t continue–I can’t remember why.  There are, actually, plenty of good times in this period.  They just tend to get blotted out in my memory, I think, by the looming blackness that was school.

And then there was high school.  Well, it was high school.  That should say a lot.  I got down with the angst for a few years, including an impossible and as far as I know unrequited crush… for all four years.  (Yeah, I know.  Also, I’m obviously well over it, but still sort of embarrassed about the whole thing, so it goes without saying that anyone who tells him at this point is still totally dead.    )  So there were some down times.  But there were also a lot of up times, and I think I was in a better emotional place to appreciate and actively remember those up times here.  And really, even the bad wasn’t all bad.  It was a different kind of bad that, when I could stand back and look at it semi-objectively, had a certain kind of beauty to it.  (Do I sound morbid here?  Or just teen-angsty?)

I haven’t answered all of the question, though.  Was I happy?  I find that a kind of meaningless question, because honestly, who is happy all the time?  Whether you’re a child or an adult, absolutes like that don’t tend to apply.  I would, however, say that I was happy more than I was unhappy.  I mean, sure, I got picked on at school and stuff.  But I had a great family, and a few really good friends, and a big imagination, and a life that balanced comfort with simplicity.  If I had it to do over again, I’m not sure I could’ve asked for better.

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What is your best memory of childhood? Worst?

I’ve thought about this one for quite a while, and… I can’t answer it. Because I don’t know. I don’t have a particularly best or worst childhood memories. So, um, I guess I’ll just pick a good and a bad, just to get something out there.

Good: Remember Suzie, from the “worst thing I’ve ever done” post? She and I were really good friends in fifth and sixth grade. We played together at recess, but not generally on the actual playground equipment. Oh, no. There was this flat area off to the side of the playground which we claimed as our own. (Not that we were supposed to be playing there.) In the hands of our vivid imaginations, it became a magical wonderland. We were princesses, of course. Each of us pretty much always had a horse. I don’t remember what they were named, but I think they had very similar names to our fairy-princess names. At various times we also had other pets–always matching pairs, always with similar names. The flat area itself became a lake, which we could swim through with no effort at all. We could also breathe “underwater”, I think, since swimming wasn’t always practical. Our kingdom was on the school side, and the other side was… someplace else. We spent many a recess spinning out stories about our adventures. When we weren’t chased out of the area by a playground monitor, that is. But we always went back later. It was pure magic.

Bad: This is honestly a rough one for me. It’s not that I don’t have bad memories, it’s more that I don’t have a lot of specific bad memories. I remember being picked on, I remember being yelled at, I remember being grumpy at times or whatever. But I don’t really remember a specific incident, I just remember that it happened. Things don’t stand out as well.

Um. OK, let’s go for the scoliosis incident, I guess. This actually incorporates another “worst thing I ever did”; I keep thinking of them. (And they keep being equally lame.)

In school, every few years they would do scoliosis checks. You’d go into a room with the nurse (always female, for the girls), take off your shirt, and touch your toes. Or try to, in my case. The nurse would then check to see if your spine was showing any signs of curving the wrong way. For the most part I passed these no problem. One year, however, it seems that the nurse felt there was enough curvature to be concerned about my spine. The school mailed a notice home to my parents. Thing was, I got home first and got the mail, and when I saw a letter from the school to my parents–well, I took it upon myself to see if I could make out what it was about through the envelope. I could, I did. I was terrified. In the first place, I knew this would mean more taking off clothes to be poked and prodded, and I was painfully body-shy. But more importantly, I’d heard horror stories of people having to have steel rods inserted to keep their spines straight, and that was what really scared the hell outta me. So I hid the letter, or maybe I ripped it up. I don’t remember clearly. Another one came, and it got the same treatment. (This was the bad thing I did.) Eventually I think the school just called Mom. I don’t even remember what her reaction was, although I’m almost certain that it was her and not Dad who talked to me about it. She took me to get the x-ray done, and I did, and it turned out that I was OK after all. But the sheer terror of the thought of that steel rod needing to be put in my back–ugh. That definitely qualifies as a bad memory.

Again, not really the “best” and “worst”, but there’s a good and a bad for you.

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It’s getting warmer.

We finally have a pump that can inflate my bicycle tire.

I’m thinking it might be time. Time to air up the tire and see if the old ten-speed still works right.  And if my legs will still take it.  Maybe just take a turn or two around the block to start, and build back up to riding for real; I know last time I tried to just jump into it, my thighs just about killed me the next day.

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How has your life been different than what you’d imagined?

Before college, I never really thought marriage or kids.  Those were things that happened to other people.  Dating was something that happened to other people.  I was alone, not lonely, and that was just fine with me and I didn’t need anyone else, thank you.  Obviously that changed drastically, to which I object not one little tiny bit.

Really, though, other than that…  It would be difficult for life to be different from what I had imagined when I was younger, because I hadn’t really imagined.  I imagined other people’s lives, not my own.  I don’t know if I had no interest in my future, or if the future was just beyond my comprehension.  I think a bit of both.  I had sort of a vague “I wanna be this when I grow up”, but I didn’t have a clear idea of how I was going to get there or what specifically I was going to do or where I would live or anything like that.  I went to college close to home half because I really wanted to go there and half because I couldn’t handle the idea of the kind of drastic change going to college somewhere else would wreak on my life.  I even avoided four-year schools in the area because I was afraid I’d be forced to live in a dorm.  So…  You can see that I wasn’t real thrilled about my future being any different from my present.

Then I met Tim, and…  I don’t know even then that I was really thinking about the future.  I was happy with him and I wanted to stay that way.  That was what I knew and what drove my end of the decisions about our relationship.  And you know what?  It’s worked.  We have our rough spots (every couple does), but really it’s working out very well.  But I can’t say it’s “what I’d imagined”, because again, it’s not been until just recently that I’ve really had a vision of where I want us to go in the future.  I think there’s a difference between liking your current situation and wanting it to continue, and imagining a life for yourself.

I suppose the one thing I can say is that somewhere deep down inside I imagined I would get “better” at some point.  There is…  a flaw somewhere in my mental and/or emotional makeup, I think.  My self-esteem is…  Well, it’s better now than it had been.  For a while in school it was virtually non-existant.  (Why?  I dunno.  Not sure it matters.  However I got this way, I am now and I must deal with the present, not the past.)  It’s a little higher now, but I still (metaphorically) beat myself up over stupid shit that normal people would just shrug off and let go.  I knew, even at my worst, that this was a problem.  I think that back then I thought at some point I’d find the cure for it, some magic key that unlocked this door inside my mind and let out all the self-esteem that had been hidden away.  Now, of course, I realize that it doesn’t work like that.  There is no miracle cure for this; I just have to kind of work my way back up in stages.  And I am, and it’s working, it’s just–I have bad days, sometimes, is all.

But one thing I’ve found doesn’t help, and only feeds the whole thing, is to dwell on it.  So I won’t, any more than I have to in order to answer these questions.

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When in life have you felt most alone?

I think it might be predictable to say my teen years. I had very few friends, even fewer that I would consider close friends as opposed to just people I had fun hanging out with. I was on good terms with and accepted by a lot of people, I ate lunch with a large group… But I think in high school I perfected the art of being alone in a crowd. I felt disconnected from the people around me, I think, to some extent. From everyone. Well, that’s being a teenager. You’re either the social type or the alone-in-a-crowd type, generally speaking, and I wasn’t the social type.  I got over it.

It wasn’t quite that simple, though. I vacillated between two different states within this alone-ness.

One was just plain being alone. I think I probably really spent more time in this state. In any writing I did on the subject, I was always very clear: I was often alone, but not lonely. Alone-ness was not (and is not), in my mind, necessarily a bad thing. I sought it out quite a bit, withdrew intentionally. I liked being alone with my thoughts, having my own secrets, keeping my own counsel. There was a world inside my head that no one could get into, and I liked that.

The other was more what I think the question really means to address: lonliness. I was a teenager; of course nobody in the whole world understood me. Also, I had a humongous crush on this guy who barely knew I existed, and there’s nothing like unrequited infatuation for making a person feel like no one cares. I play it off lightly here, because looking back on it I want to either laugh or smack some sense into my younger self, but at the time it was really painful. Not just the crush, I mean, but the whole teen-angst bit. It was really lonely.

I’m better now.

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