Oops

I'm 24. As I'm staring out a window so old it can never look clean, I decide that nothing that has happened within the past 2 years counts for anything. China was a vacation, a life-hack, a very fun and amazing way to prolong adulthood. I have to start over now. I have to adult. Somehow, I have to find a way to adult. I finally have my own Brita Filter, so things are looking up. I'm set up in a dusty overpriced studio apartment on the Green Line in Boston. I have a futon mattress lying on the floor. It has a sheet on it so, again, things are looking up. I miss China. I miss those friends. I miss $1 vodka shots, I miss my cleaning lady, I miss my joke of a job that everyone took really seriously. The job I did for no more than 20 hours a week yet still afforded a cleaning lady. I knew in that moment that I had started at the top and was heading downward. Down to the struggle. Down to the 9-5. Down to cleaning things myself like a slave.

I sat there, on that fucking futon mattress, basically depressed because I was going to have to take responsibility for myself, and sulked. I sat there wondering when someone was going to buy me a real bed and maybe a table, because I sure as hell wasn't going to pay for it myself.

I drank vodka alone, staring into the computer, longing to be across the world where no one judged me for drinking alone. I quietly asked myself when you went from young and stupid to being an alcoholic. I imagined that moment was coming soon. But I didn't allow myself to think about that.

I thought about a recent flight in which I cried the entire time, and the women next to me gave me a Kit-Kat. I didn't want it, but I ate it anyway. Who turns down a free full-sized candy bar? If I had said no, I am sure it would have haunted me.

I snapped out of it craving a Kit-Kat. I was mentally back in Boston, drinking vodka from the liquor store across the street, where they already knew me. I dated, blogged, exercised, drank, I did whatever i wanted. I was still the cool girl that recently got back from China. My small dusty space was full of proof of my travels- jewelry from Thailand, paintings from China, clothes from Taiwan. I felt untouchable, like I knew something that other people didn't understand. I knew what it was like to travel and feel that freedom.

Fast forward to now, 2015, and that stuff has faded. The clothes torn, the shoes broke, the jewelry rusted. The home I share with my husband no longer reflects a worldly bachelorette. Yet, until only yesterday, I still lived inside of it. I viewed them at my glory days- the traveling, the living alone, the spontaneousness of my life. Until yesterday.

Yesterday, I woke up hungover after blacking out the night before. I was sick and sleeping until 5PM. I have bruises all over my body, including on my head, from falling multiple times- although I don't remember it at all. I woke up full of regret and uncertainty. It reminded me- that's what it was really like. I had been romanticizing my past so much and allowing myself to forget all the regret and anxiety that came from a night of vodka. I allowed myself to forget all the apologies I had to make after a night like that. Every time. I woke up every weekend, if not more frequently than that, and asked myself "Who is mad at me?" "What did I do?" "Who do I need to apologize to?". That was my life.

And yesterday I had to do it again, but I knew who I had to apologize to. My husband. Who, as some people have told me to my face, I don't deserve...I don't want to assume anything about anyone, but I am 90% positive that the people who claim I don't deserve my husband, don't have a strong grasp on how on point my Brita Filter game is.

But I get it. Because he is selfless and I am selfish. Because he does what has to be done to be an adult, and I don't. Because I am still that 24 year old idiot that feels accomplished for owning a Brita Filter. Because I don't see the big picture with anything, and he does. But I do still have the Brita Filter, so maybe things are looking up. I think a girl with her own Brita deserves a guy like him.

I know I am only human, and I need to forgive myself and move on. But those are 2 things I am literally terrible at doing. Someone may as well ask me to work full-time or care about Jazz music.

PS- this meme is me. Still. 2 days later. Because I am not 24 anymore. I am almost 30, with no money, and a dog and a husband. I realized yesterday that it wouldn't kill me to act like it. But it might, actually, kill me to not. Because I did slam my head on our entertainment center. And vomited several times. And had to take care of myself all day, like a slave.

Oops,

LD