Grates

Yesterday I couldn't bring myself to do anything remotely frightening except walk on some grates on the street. If walking on grates on the street doesn't terrify you, you have a death wish and that is to plunge to your death, fall on electrified train tracks, and then get hit by a subway car and have your pulpy remains eaten by rats. You would be like Anna Karenina but less tragic and no one would write any books about you.

Moral of the story is you can't face things if you're hungover. So you are forced to do daredevil things like step on street grates.

I fell asleep with a Suze Orman book on my face last night.

I read this article a few weeks ago and was so inspired:

The New York Times: But Will It Make You Happy?

I made it its own paragraph is how much I'd recommend it. I'm very easily swayed by this type of argument against stuff: oh, I will throw out all my spoons (silver, get it, an allusion) and live a romantic bohemian lifestyle where all I need are my friends and my dog and my love and water when I go to bars and then I will kayak and hike mountains and pay off my bajillion dollar student loans in two years and live in New Zealand.

So, in those golden, hazy, few weeks ago when the world was new and I was young and New York was alive, I threw out a lot of stuff.

Then you start grad school (day two counts, okay). Then you just get all Curious George about the state of your affairs which is honestly a very stupid thing to do and go through your credit cards, your bank accounts, your student loans, and the money your wonderful parents loaned you for rent but has disappeared into groceries because you have to start a fridge all over, a metrocard, cab fares from places that look fine in the daytime but get Law and Order-y at night, laundry, a sweater, bus tickets, dog food for your beloved dog you would never regret for all the loan-debt forgiveness in the world, window blinds, notebooks, a haircut for the hair equivalent of a snaggle-tooth you keep on your head daily and textbooks, and you're like oh shit. This city has eaten all my money. There is no money.

SURPRISE!

Then you climb up to your mini-loft you use for storage for all that unnecessary stuff you threw away and have a little quiet anxiety attack.

I, and is everyone on the planet so at least we have something in common, am absolutely panic-stricken at the thought of being poor. Like beyond poor actually because you owe the Department of Education about a third of a large house. BUT. Butbutbut. I'm inviting you along on my attempt to not have hyperventilating freak outs in an empty bathtub or dusty loft (or the cold, hard, empty place of your choosing) when you have to face the fact that you have absolutely no money. And that you live in a city where "you can have anything all the time" and "it never sleeps" and "is the best city in the world" (thanks, I get it, rub it in).

This inevitably leads to the facing of other fears that subsequently are no longer scary because you are desperate, including:

-selling your beloved books you've amassed through a buyback service online for pennies on the dollar, and subsequently selling your main safety blanket for your intelligence (i.e. LOOK AT ALL MY BOOKS, I'VE READ THEM).
-not getting enough sleep in order to churn out those charming freelance articles which are your only source of income, which could logically lead to worse anxiety about everything and probably will (see the cycle there, I do).

Those are the main two. But still. At the same time, I'm not going to lie: my list-making and brain-storming has lead to a lot of -ing-ings, and generally, ing-ings (which could, I guess, be calling "being smart and doing valuable things with your life instead of mindlessly buying things and saying you owe it to yourself to not go more in debt") feel kind of satisfying.

Treadmill

I've been getting more and more paranoid every time I go the gym. Why does the girl next to me keep looking over at me puffing away on my treadmill? Is she clocking my mile? I'll go faster.
WHY IS SHE STILL LOOKING OVER is this a race? Is that what you want, a race? FINE LET'S DANCE.Five minutes later, I'm the better person cause it takes two to tango and I'm Buddha and I quit.

I was talking out my gym habits with my boyfriend, various insecurities, why people feel the need to be soooooo competitive on gym equipment when they already have firm, supple asses; how much I love the pop punk and TOP-40 channels on those little tvs in front of my treadmill and how the person who invented those tvs should be awarded a Nobel for making my life better; how sometimes I get so into those wacky Beyonce videos I want to start dancing and mumble-singing.

Matt put the pieces together quickly.
Matt: "Do you do those things?"

Me: "Yeah I guess sometimes I just get so into the musi-"

Matt: "That would explain why people stare at you then."


This only heightened my anxiety about others judging my treadmill activities. Until today.

Myself, I says, TODAY WE RUN. WE MAKE UP FOR SIX DAYS SPENT WATCHING WHEEL OF FORTUNE WHILE CRAFTING DREAMS OF $12,400 AND A NEW NISSAN. I hang my towel over the the front-part that tells me how far and fast I'm going, and I tuned into "modern contemporary" (I'm not kidding) for about five songs and just ran. Yes, okay, I put the treadmill speed like .2 slower than normal cause I was serious about not walking.

So 20 minutes later I get all cocky and am like soooo excited to see my 3.6 miles (I got fixated on that number for whatever reason, 3.6 would be acceptable and cause an easy and un-sweaty victory of the proposed 7 ).

1.6.

SHUT THE FRONT DOOR. 1.6 miles?!?! So then I'm all, YOU TRICKED ME. SCREW YOU GYM, SCREW YOU HOT CHICKS ON STAIRMASTERS FOR TWENTY MINUTES THAT IS SUPERHUMAN, SCREW YOU TREADMILL, SCREW YOU BEYONCE.

I pouted for another mile but then that Fall Out Boy song came on with the line from Closer (which makes me be all "ooooo I know where that line is from" and shiver with superiority whenever I hear it) and the monkey and Kimmy K in the music video...and I just snapped. From the humiliation inflicted upon me by my treadmill, to the judge-y chicks in really nice-looking spandex who rarely sweat which seems unfair, to the musical equivalent of black-tar heroin coursing through my veins, my brain just snapped.

From now on, Chad is me and I am Chad and no hot girl with a unnatural, and, I might add, frankly unnerving, ability to climb stairs can make me feel bad.

I should make a list before my food gets here

It seems kind of lazy to just randomly wander through potentially frightening situations. Here is a preliminary list of threatening situations, organized by category:

[NOUN]

Rabies, stinging creatures, rape, murder, bankruptcy, the X-Files, the rural south, "zombies" (the designated term for the old women who wander the Upper East Side unsure of their own existence on either side of the life spectrum i.e. "am I dead or alive I will just put on more eyeliner and this wig and find out"), terrorism, anthrax, any sort of disease in general, heroin, the wooden spoons you get from ice cream from an ice cream truck, Joe Biden, cockroaches (guughhh).

[SOCIAL]

Rabies, any group situation in which you are a loner (including but not limited to: parties, gatherings, meetings), "fun icebreaker facts" about yourself because you are either a) too shy, b) a jerk, first dates, second dates, that date where you're unsure if you're supposed to make out or not and you don't really want to but you do kind of like them, break-ups, telling someone they've made you unhappy (including but not limited to: bad friends, bad hairdressers, bad manicurists, bad graduate advisers).

[LIFE-BETTERING THAT REQUIRES YOU TO DO SHIT FIRST]

Marathons, accepting awards gracefully, telling someone they've made you unhappy, auditions, speaking up in class, attending events on your own, being aggressively kind, calling people during normal business hours so you might actually have to talk to them instead of just leaving them messages at 11:00pm and hoping when they call you back you don't have to pick up, interviews, first outings with potential new friends, first classes, standing up for something, trying new things in general, being genuine.


Yes, on some of these I cheated because I know I'm doing them tomorrow, and some I blatantly will not face either out of impossibility or pointlessness (i.e. Joe Biden or cockroaches, both of which are skeevy and I refuse to consort with). But that's a start.

Getting judged for my snazzy new template.

I'm ready.

Also, are there weird hammers everywhere?

Successful small talk makes you ugly.

The only real reward you get for facing your fear of small talk with hairdressers because you’re afraid of asking inadvertently personal and inappropriate questions (when does “so where do you live?” turn weird? Why when I’m brave enough to timidly point out a nice shoe I think is pretty in the Vogue on my lap, the universe/my new hairdresser only rewards me with “mm”?) is orange hair and three extra unwanted inches cut off?

LESSON LEARNED, UNIVERSE.

Please Like Me.

For the record, I think I’m a FANTASTIC neighbor. I’m from New England, so I promise to never bother you with friendliness or hospitality and I get paranoid every three seconds and turn the volume down on my Bravo marathons in case I’m bothering anyone but then have to alternately turn it back up again cause I’m borderline deaf thanks to pop punk.

So, I moved into this apartment in New York a few weeks ago. Since that time:

a) we may or may not have slept a bit late ONCE and then my boyfriend may or may not have tried to take him out for a walk and he may or may not have peed in the hallway cause his poor little bladder was exploding due to his inattentive and horrible parents. In his defense, my cohabitant dis-robed his upper half to wipe up the pee. Cut to three hours later when there’s a note on the FRONT DOOR OF THE BUILDING explaining how whoever let their dog “urinate” in the front hallway is a horrible person and they need to be conscious of others having to walk through “urine.” Finished with a “Thank You! “

b) My cohabitant slammed into a chair doing something I don’t remember at like midnight. Three minutes later, the Neighbors From Down Below (get it, like HELL) knock on our ceiling all like, “hey you inconsiderate f-ers with jackhammers, can you please stop dancing in your cement galoshes all night with your elephants you’ve been keeping us up for hours and we have really important jobs in the morning like ruling the United States.”

c) We got up early to walk our PTSD dog and receive a note from the N.F.D.B. on our door for all people in the apartment building to view on their way to get groceries or be good neighbors or whatever about how we’re so loud and terrible and we are no longer allowed to wear shoes in our apartment. Ever.

I scampered downstairs in tightly-laced sneakers to scrub the front hallway with Lysol crouched down in racer’s position to bolt down to the basement if I thought I heard someone coming. I was so distraught over the potential that the N.F.D.B. sit at dinner and discuss what a jerk I am that I had some wine and posted a well-crafted apology note w/ wine stain on their door. Things like this send me into tailspins that go on for hours. I mumble all the potential, horrible conversations between me and some angry neighbor in the shower.

Tonight I was making steak and braised cucumbers and once again reaffirming my competent, life-loving womanhood when I set the fire alarm off on our approximate Notre Dame height ceiling. PANIC MODE EMILY DO ALL THESE THINGS AT ONCE:

a) Screech like a harpy coming off a meth binge while waving both my arms so fast it’s like that pencil trick where you’re like “whoa, it looks bendy!” so Matt understands I need him to sprint to get on a kitchen chair and jump to hit the button because the neighbors are gathering their pitchforks;

b) Frantically wave my personal fan at the kitchen which was ill-advised because turning a fan on a lit burner leads to a lot of surprising and excess fire but at this point in my brain the neighbors are calling the rental company to demand we be kicked out of the building tomorrow at 7:30 pm to be blinded and wander the desert like Rapunzel’s prince and all our possessions burned and our dog publicly humiliated in townsquare, put in the stocks and then hanged;

c) Use my shaking un-fanned hand to grab the closest spoon and corkscrew and jab all the food to beg it to please stop smoking because I am forever The Worst Neighbor and Person Of All Time until the planet explodes in 100 years.

It’s been an hour and a half and nothing has happened. I may be the Worst Neighbor and Person Of All Time but I don’t…actually…feel…different. Which feels good. On the other hand, this could logically also mean I was already the Worst Neighbor and Person Of All Time. Which feels sucks.

Did I face a fear?