[rewind] Drink Your Wine

I wrote the excerpt below in the spring of 2009. I recently uncovered a forgotten blog, and this piece was one work that stood out. It is now four years later and I still have these philosophical convictions about life, my life, and where it's going. For an extrovert, I am pretty closed off when it comes to dealing with my own emotions and the stressors in my life. For whatever reason, I find the easiest course of action against defeat is solitude. I think that it is easier to self-destruct and push your emotions to the extreme than it is to take pause and really reflect on your demons. But read, and develop your own opinions.

Breath taking moments, require no introduction. 
A leap of faith sends chills down the spine of an irresponsible lover. Momentary lapses in judgment have left this heart brash. Immobile. And fierce. 

Irony should be drunk like wine; appreciate the crisp bite as it transcends through your being and casts a thick fog of doubt over your beautifully correlated plan. Life is a plan, whether you choose to acknowledge the itinerary or not. Each moment breaks into the next – strung like beads: ornate. Unique. But patterned together for a larger purpose. Building blocks of the future, so cliché and generic that these moments slip into minutes, and hours that consume years. This future draws rapidly and leaves in a blink, dusting memories in its wake. Life is measured in discovery, anniversaries, and achievement. It is the girth between beads and the substance of our purpose. As young adults, we plot success. The world waits, bated, at our fingertips. Our minds are full of ideas; innovation inspires confidence, and a ‘can-do’ attitude that fuels this ego and pushes the belief that we can conquer the world. And we do. The top of the mountain blazes, and draws to it an army of creative minds. The early years fly, and the victory found in achievement creates frenzy. Having tasted the brevity of success, we feel exalted and push forward. Drive and ambition are powerful traits of a person's character, they define an individuals ideals and create a divide between those that DO, and those that DO NOT. Face it, we're not all crafted for victory. 'The road less traveled', so to speak, rears greater reward. But the journey is perilous and not all are crazy enough for the challenge. So these peers find comfort in their lack of ambition and fall into a monotonous wasteland. For them, it is easier to live in chaos than it is to try and tame it - they settle. This portrayal of the comrade and the fallen is evident in every generation. 

This journey consumes a lifetime - and in a breath, we stop. We measure our gains in losses and achievement; our life has been threaded together in beads and bracelets. The moments of the inbetween, at the time, seemed so tedious and penniless. But upon recollection, those moments come to life and curve the lips upwards into that small, private smile. To appreciate life, or to understand success, we must overcome regret and pay acknowledgement to the smaller details. Insert irony here. Years spent focused on the prize end in nostalgia, and recollection of life's more minute bringings. Drink your irony, and embrace its pithy. Paint your portrait in shades of vibrance; this is your life, Live It.

That boy's got my heart in a silver cage.

"....the answer is simple. Love is a mix tape." -Rob Sheffield, Love is a Mix Tape

I spent hours of my youth pouring over melancholy music and crying my way through teenage angst. I didn't have a "real" boyfriend until high school, but I still tortured myself with the sing-song lyrics of Tony Rich Project, Stone Temple Pilots, and Jann Arden. I longed for love, even as a pre-teen - I longed to feel the emotion that serenaded me to sleep every night. I begged God, on the rare occasions that we spoke, to deliver a boy to adore me. And love me. And make me mix tapes. I wanted to feel the brutality of love, as I had come to understand it through boombox speakers.

Now, here I am in my mid-twenties and I don't know much more than I did as a girl with tear-streaked cheeks. My relationships, the few that I have had, have all spiraled into unsuccessful paint spatters and irreparable disasters. I suppose the only common denominator in each of those scenarios is me, a fact I accepted after my last horrific breakup. And I suppose that no relationship is really "successful" until he puts a rock on your finger and coaxes you down the aisle. But is that how success, with love, is measured? I would like to think that marriage isn't the only peg tilting the abacus. There has to be more - something, anything, more.

In 20 years I have aged, but I haven't really grown up. Despite my cynicism and inner battles with dating, I still just want a boy to listen to music with. I want a boy that will listen to tracks, and in my absence, think of me. I don't know if it is the music, the idea, or the need to feel validated by song - but I think my obsession with love stems from an inability to lower my unreachable expectations. Expectations that, ironically enough, have been built on lyrics. Tony Rich taught me to keep my turmoil inside, and hide my feelings from everyone but myself. STP preached skipping town on a southern train, and Jann Arden told me to chase and change insensitive men. Conflicting? Absolutely.

For me? Say Anything. Hold a boom box over your head and stand outside of my window. Stake your claim - in my life and on my heart. Stuff vulnerability into a casette tape and hand pick your emotions, only to lay them out - track by track - in a wildly romantic demonstration of love. I am convinced that texting and tweeting and - dare I say - Facebooking has pickled the concept of bravery, especially in regards to the heart. Phone calls are replaced with sms messages, and Valentine's cards come via email. Mix tapes? Extinct. And without a viable substitute. While I am, admittedly, a social media drone I still cling to the idea that love exists beyond your laptop, iPad, or cell phone. Technology and the instant gratification of the Internet have put a hex on the already-delicate world of love, and dating. This era, or generation xxyyzz - or wherever it is that we are - has created one million more stressors and obstacles to eradicate in the quest to find love! It is exhausting.

I will close with this:

"I had this guy leave me a voice mail at work, so I called him at home. And then he emailed me to my BlackBerry, and so I texted to his cell. And then he emailed me to my home account. And the whole things just got out of control and I miss the days when you had one phone number and one answering maching - and that one answering machine had one casette tape, and that one casette tape either had a message from a guy or it didn't. And now you just have to go around checking all these different portals just to get rejected by seven different technologies. It's exhausting." -Drew Barrymore, He's Just Not That Into You

Amen sister. To be continued..