Definitely That Kind of Girl

Lena Dunham is simply lying.

[toozla-palooza]

How about unabashedly balling your eyes out?

Alanis Morissette

[toozla-palooza]

I Always Feel Sad.

I always feel sad. It’s a constant struggle to feel happy and even the things that are supposed to make me feel happy, just do not trigger those distant emotions. I guess I have never really felt I am an ultra happy person down to my core. In fact, I am definitely a glass half empty kind of person. However, this new wave of sadness is like any other I have felt. I am miserable at work, I am miserable in my relationships, I am miserable where I live. My mother and sister are basically strangers that have their own little club that I cannot join.

I guess every aspect of my life feels like a perpetuate state of high school. Will my so called loving and committed boyfriend text me back? Will my sister and mother ask me to sit with them at lunch? Will my Dad notice me?

I am constantly putting on a show eager to impress, satisfy, and fulfill expectations that honestly, no one has put on me except myself. These people are not expecting much out of me at all, yet the pressure is enormous. Why do I constantly feel I am letting so many people down when as a result, I inevitably let myself down?

I let myself down every single day at work. Every time my boss opens her mouth, she spews hate. It’s a constant battle to even look at her because I am so disgusted with how she treats me and everyone around her. However, I am her punching bag. I am the one who takes everything from her in order to have a fully functioning business that is not functioning at all. I await the day that I move on to bigger and better things, but for now, with my rent being almost 4 times what the average American pays, I take it. I let her kick me while I am down. I have a smile on my face and a fuck you in my heart.

I now ask myself almost every day why do I not quit my job, move back to Philadelphia, move in with my boyfriend, see my family whenever I want, and I don’t know, be happy? Why haven’t I done that yet? Because while New York feels like completely loneliness and isolation, the fear that Philadelphia will fulfill those exact emotions scares me even more. I worry that I will just as easily be let down amidst a solution that is supposed to make me happy.

So while I can pretend the working out, eating healthy, and yoga is helping, it doesn’t. Nothing helps. Nothing works. I strive to better my life only to be knocked down. I wish I was one of those people turned their life around with the latest fad, but I am starting to feel like I will never be that way. I think I am destined to be a sad, self destructive, and miserable person. Maybe my way of turning my life around would just be acceptance.

[toozla-palooza]

I called because I just need to feel you on the line.

John Mayer, "Split Screen Sadness"

[toozla-palooza]

[toozla-palooza]

"It Gets Better." It got better.

If you had asked me this time last year if I would feel this happy, I would have laughed in your face. Last year's holiday was spent with friends trying to mask the reality of heartbreak. It was full of "laughs" and blurred by stains of red wine on my untouched lips. While I do not have any strong emotions towards February 14th, I certainly did not find hotel cancellations or tears appealing. It had already been my daily routine for exactly 23 days. Hoping to find some kind of repairs, I would open fortune cookie after fortune cookie. Similar distractions lasted about a year with the added bonus of one night stands and comp'd gin and tonics by commercial real estate brokers and agents of B-list comedians. Looking to November, I was fortunate enough to meet Thomas Joseph Quinn. Completely different, yet welcoming, I fell for him on our fourth date. It was a Tuesday in December. I remember the moment very clearly when his lips changed into something else, something more. Despite the fact that he lived in my native city of Philadelphia, I guess I decided in that moment that it did not matter. It does not matter. Last night, he told me he loved me.

[toozla-palooza]

I get no pleasure out of saying the words, 'Ya fired.' He makes people sad, and an office can't function that way, no way. 'Ya fired.'

Michael Scott on Donald Trump, The Office, Season 1

[toozla-palooza]

I wish I were pretty. I wish I were brave. If I owned this city, then I'd make it behave. And if were fearless, then I'd speak my truth. And the world would hear this. That's what I wish, I'd do.

Sara Bareilles

[toozla-palooza]

It was about knowing you were going to be underestimated by everyone and then punishing them for those very thoughts.

Carrie Brownstein

[toozla-palooza]

He's the guy you want to want. He's the perfect one that you just aren't ready for, or simply never will be.

[toozla-palooza]

A Brainwashed Bridesmaid

I have always been a decisive person. I have always been very sure of myself.  I have always known exactly what I want and how to get it. I guess you could say that I have always been a go-getter.

I wanted to be a straight A student, I did it. I wanted to lose 20 pounds, I did it. I wanted a career in television, I did it.

There seems to be very few things that I have been unable to achieve.  Do not be mistaken; none of such things have come easily. Achieving all these goals has been insanely difficult, stressful, and fearful.  There’s nothing more terrifying than going for your dreams. They are your dreams for a reason, so when or if they get shattered, what is there left to do? After only being in my professional career for a little over a year, I now believe that I would just not be good at something else. While I think that I could expand upon my current career, I know that I am on the right path, and there is something extremely comforting about that, even if the job is not most times. It’s been my dream to create art through television, and I am lucky enough to have achieved that.

While some might say that I work too hard and too much, I do not see them sitting where I am today.  My parents are the first to say such things. While they are insanely proud of me, they have been telling me to slow down my entire life. They never pressured me to achieve perfection, but rather were satisfied with C grades and my sister’s inability to properly formulate a geometric proof.

Why then, do I feel so out of sorts with my personal relationships?  I guess that’s how it tends to go. I’m logical and a workaholic, with a suffering personal life? What a cliché.  The thing is, I HAVE a personal life: a very active one.  I have three roommates who are also three of my best friends, tons of friends, a huge and loving family, and multiple men that I am currently dating.  In fact, my high school boyfriend just professed his love for me yet again just last week despite his new girlfriend who shares the same name and hair color as me. So what’s the problem?

I think I nailed it last night. I got into a huge fight with my older sister. It was over an insanely petty and insignificant issue.  While I am usually level headed enough to find my fault in disagreements, now a day later, I am at a loss as to where I went wrong.   She just started calling me selfish and blaming the entire problem on my inability to accommodate anything but my own personal interests.

I was mind blown.

After all, specifically when it comes to my sister, I would like to think I am rather selfless.  Being her maid of honor, I have planned party after party in her honor including a wedding shower, engagement party, and bachelorette party.  Oh, and not to mention, I helped coordinate her actual engagement with her now fiancé.  Let’s not forget the 20 minute movie I created commemorating the years she and her fiancé have spent together. Then there are the countless gifts I have gotten her just because “it reminded me of you” and how I play babysitter to her whenever her fiancé travels out of town on business so that she is not lonely.  Where in this equation do I add up to selfishness?

That is my problem: in my quest for perfection, I aim to please. While my journey to perfection works in my professional life, personal lives are not as black and white.  However, it wasn’t until last night that I realized that.

When my sister decided I was selfish, I was selfish. When my brother decided I was inexperienced, I was inexperienced. My decisive nature created this mathematical equation to find some kind of concrete answer to grasp amidst their words. It’s better to accept what I am than to try to find some obscure way to disprove it, right? If they say I am something, how can I refute that? They genuinely felt I was selfish and inexperienced. Who was I to argue their emotions? It almost seems like a small cycle of brainwashing.

“Tara, you are this. Tara, you are that. I am older, so what I say just is.”

But, I am not their 9-year-old bratty little sister anymore. I am a 23-year-old adult (yes, I know) with nothing but love and admiration for my siblings. I choose to no longer just accept their facts about me. Better to be flawed with dignity than perfect without.

The funny thing is, I would give them anything, even my own life. I am incapable of being selfish with them simply because my heart won’t allow it. I could never deny them anything but pain or hurt, and that I would gladly take from them. They are my original best friends, role models, and heroes. While I know that I am not perfect in their eyes, they certainly are in mine. Flaws and all, flaws welcomed, flaws encouraged.

[toozla-palooza]

The road from then to now has been riddled with poor judgement, internal combustion, and enough self-doubt to fill Lake Powell. But I had no choice except to put one foot in front of the other and keep going. And to this day, I often feel like I'm on the outside. But what I realized along the way was that a lot of the really smart, interesting, talented, compassionate, and equally dysfunctional people sit out here with me.

Jenna Lyons

[toozla-palooza]

he wasn’t your Person, he wasn’t your Person, he wasn’t your Person.

[toozla-palooza]

The Murray downHills

I am proud to say that I work with five incredibly talented, smart, and grounded women. That’s very far and few in this business.  I not only have professional relationships with them, but personal ones. They have grown to be not only my professional mentors, but often times, my emotional mentors. I mean, I spend most of my life with them anyway. I think we would all go a little crazy if 100% of our time at our office was merely an Outlook driven conversation.

That being said, aren’t we all on the same team? Sure people stress, and the point of a team is to delegate when crisis kicks in.  However, when did it stop becoming about delegating, and start becoming about blaming?

I’m on your team. I’m here for you. We want the same thing. We have the same goal.

So why the need to knit pick and point the finger where no finger is even necessary? What would tearing down a member of your team do for you when it’s simply not necessary. Teach me, critique me, yell at me. Do not break me.

Let’s stick together. Let’s remember why we are here. Let’s remember that we are women and this industry has a lot to say about us already. Let’s remember who we entertain, and the seemingly dick covered walls of this office. Shouldn’t that fuel our fire to be better and to be better together? Let’s not walk all over each other. Let’s paint the walls pink with creativity and originality, and stick it to the Murray Hills.

[toozla-palooza]

Happy Birthday, best friend.

[toozla-palooza]

Monsters Not Under My Bed

As the girl made her way to the kitchen, she wondered if she was being haunted; being followed. She reached for the pantry door just enough that it creaked open before she slammed it shut. There were certainly monsters behind it: monsters full of wrath to be burned. Better to not get scorched; better to simply return to the comfort of bed and emptiness. Maybe one day bed’s hugs will envelope her a bit more. One day, so long as she keeps the pantry shut and the monsters out.

[mrsmediocrity]

the tunnel is the frame {snippets and stories #6}

Without the darkness, we would never appreciate the light. At least that’s what you said when you took my hand and pulled me in.

We still had to walk through all those cobwebs though, me holding my breath the whole way and you pretending not to be scared. I heard water dripping and my imagination slithered a little beneath my feet, but I kept heading for the green I could see in the pinprick of light I named Beacon.

Funny how we didn’t make it, you and I, somewhere along the way our paths split apart and there I was, alone in the tunnel of love, up the proverbial creek without a paddle. I had a feeling that you’d planned it that way, planned to leave me in the blackest of shadows so you couldn’t see my eyes when you walked away. I only called your name out once, and when you didn’t answer, I stopped moving, just for a moment. I heard a splash and then silence, and I waited as it settled down around me. I knew it was time to make my own noise, and I guess I forgot to tell you that I’ve never been afraid of the dark.

I walked for an hour and then started singing—a song my father used to sing when I was young, something about a bicycle built for two—and far away, I heard you laughing. Or maybe I heard my own echo, I’m not quite sure.

I made a choice that day, a choice you forced, but I’m the one that made it. I came out of that tunnel with my head held high, refusing to cower.

I always was good at lessons.

Every so often, I think I hear it again, that faint, faded giggle, skittering across the floor. I never think it’s you though, not anymore. I think it’s the string of strength I pulled myself out with, playing cat games with these memories. I think it’s my heart, volunteering to walk through the darkness to find maybe one or two more.

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Kelly Letky

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[toozla-palooza]

Your songs remind me of swimming, which I forgot when I started to sink. Dragged further away from the shore, and deeper into the drink.

Florence + The Machine