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Some mistakes are too good not to share

Notes in the event of my impending murder

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Alex is going out of town this week. Thankfully that means I’ll have lots of extra space in our marital bed to store my weapons. Still, there’s always a chance I’ll be murdered and you guys know I’m a planner. I tried to start a dialogue with Alex about what he should do in the aftermath of my death, but he wasn’t here for it.

I just want to make sure you guys know I didn’t quit you. All I’m asking is for him to login to Facebook and post a quick farewell.  Theoretically, he knows where to find my passwords. But realistically, he doesn’t know where to find anything. 

Even my security questions are utter bullshit, based on weird associations that have no basis in reality.

Question: What was the model of your first car?

Answer: The ginger from Downton Abby

Thought Process: The first car I ever remember was some old green plymouth that had tatty upholstery, and I’d play with legos in it. Legos make me think of Honey I Shrunk the Kids, which makes me think of giant rabbits, which makes me think of Donny Darko, which makes me think of Jake Gyllenhaal, which makes me think of being drunk on Christmas 2009, which makes me think of snow, which makes me think of Jon, who knows nothing, and I’m still upset about Ygritte.

(I just hope whoever comes for me has better grammar than this)

After five minutes of silence, Alex offered: “I’ll publish your book posthumously, like Go Set A Watchman, and I’ll make all the monies.”

As though he doesn’t stand to gain enough when I die.

I think I need a will. At last count, I have 11 nieces and nephews but there are others to consider:

1. My Old Boss At The Psych Ward: I’d like to pay for her to receive driving lessons, specifically regarding roundabouts.

2. The Guy Who Offered Ten Goats in Exchange For My Hand In Marriage: I think we should send him 10 goats, because feminism.

3. The Owners of The Hovel Where I Lived With Shleisel: Let’s send them a tutorial for how to be landlords, so future tenants don’t have to pay with cash at a dry cleaner and receive handwritten receipts from a spiral notebook.

4. All My Former Employers: Please donate my salaries back to them, because we all know I didn’t do shite to earn that money. Except for my asshole boss– please just send him links to everything I wrote about him. 

5. My Ex’s Naked Photo: This will be time-released to the public, so buy one of those big banner ads in Time’s Square. Because being the bigger person is less fun when you’re dead.

Thanks for everything we’ve shared together.  Make sure to burn my journals and drink IPA at my funeral. And just so we’re clear: I was probably murdered by a middle aged white man with a well-kempt goatee and exemplary church attendance.

Sorry this escalated so quickly.

Notes in the event of Aussa’s impending murder

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A 12 Step Program for Unfriending All Those Assholes on Facebook

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I’m going to give you the TLD;R up front: Life is too short to let toxic people remain on your Facebook friends list. I know everyone tells you “the unfollow button is your friend” but the Unfriend button is a secret lover who wants to make you feel things.

I know there are many reasons to allow garbage humans to retain Friend status:

1. They might be useful to you at some point in the future. What if they become massively successful and you need their coattails? Or they might be distantly related to Ryan Gosling, and that could be your in!

2. You’re a nice person and you don’t want to offend someone, even if they’re a hate-spewing wound to the collective body of human existence and you wouldn’t trust them to watch your goldfish while you ran errands.

3. You tell yourself “it’s just Facebook, it doesn’t matter” even though you spend more time mindlessly scrolling through it than you do reading books, talking to your parents, or spending time in nature—combined.

But let me break it to you nice and gentle-like: None of these are good reasons to avoid the unfriend. Here’s why you should go ahead and go through with it: 

1. They’re an asshole.

2. They’re an asshole.

3. They’re an asshole.

Now that we’ve cleared that up, here’s how you actually go about doing it:

Step One: Open your computer. Facebook will probably already be open and on the screen, because this is who we are now.

Step Two: Scroll past the conveniently placed ads at the top of your feed— Those $7 dresses from China and webinars on how to make a million dollars by teaching other people how to make a million dollars will have to wait.

Step Three: Indulge your impulse to like any and all photos of animals.

Step Four: Identify the asshole as soon as they come across your feed. You will know them by the asshole content they share and the asshole point of view that comes across in the words they type with their asshole fingers. They will probably also look like an asshole so even if there’s a language barrier you should be able to easily identify them.

Step Five: Click on their profile.

Step Six: Dry heave at all the hateful shite you can’t help seeing.

Step Seven: Navigate your cursor over the little button that says “Friends.”

Step Eight: Go ahead and let that feeling of guilt-by-association wash over you. Yes, you are affiliated with a swamp monster on social media. How did it come to this? I don’t know, but today you take back the power.

Step Nine: Push away the doubt you feel when you realize you still have 56 mutual friends. No, you aren’t missing anything. Those 56 people just aren’t as brave as you. Be their Mockingjay.

Step Ten: Let go of your schadenfreude-fueled desire to lurk and judge them from the periphery. You still have hundreds of other Facebook friends who are ripe for judgement.

Step Eleven: Push the button. Push.The.Button. PUSH THE BUTTON.

Step Twelve: Take a screenshot of the little box that pops up and says “Remove as Friend?” Revel in your accomplishment as you confirm the expulsion of Assholery from your life. Send the screenshot to your tribe, so they can congratulate you on the steps you’re taking towards a better life. 

That’s all it takes. Now you can be like Djimon Honsou at the end of Gladiator, and bury some little stone people in the dirt of the Colosseum.

Do you unfriend or unfollow? Are you a lurker?

Who is your favorite type of social media user to judge?

Want to keep in touch? Find me on Facebook. 

Notes on my most recent attempt to be interesting

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I’m sorry to say we did not die on our trip to Spain and Morocco. Nor did we ALMOST die. I know, super disappointing. Why even travel?

But I took a lot of amazing photos and ate a lot of tapas tapas tapas (I don’t know how to say that word only once—it exists to be chanted with a fork in your fist whilst banging a table and sloshing wine about).

I take a LOT of notes. Whether I’m hitting my 20th country (shameless brag), at a stoplight, or in line for my annual trip to Walmart (kill me) I just have a lot of thoughts. But when I pulled up my notes from this trip, most of them were not really about any of the places we visited. Go figure.

Note #1 – We had to call our bank because the ATM wouldn’t work. They asked us to verify who we are by giving an estimate of how much money we have. Sorry, robot. I can tell you what shirt I’m wearing in four days but I have no idea how much money we have. Which is probably a bad sign. I CAN tell you it will be about $10 less because I’m calling you from Madrid on my iPhone right now.

Note #7 – It’s remarkable how much Spanish I didn’t learn in school and yet how helpful In the Heights has been. Though my fifth grade Spanish teacher is entirely to thank for the fact I didn’t try to fight the woman cutting in line for the bathroom because she just needed to wash her hands.

Note #12 – Alex just ate my face and when I asked him what it tastes like he said “edits.”

Note #14 – If I had to define my ideal travel destination it would be: “stray dogs and sheep. Uneven sidewalks. Chickens in the car driving next to you.”

Note #22 – Pretty sure the #1 argument in favor of marriage is so you have someone to go through US Customs with you.

Note #23 – In my passport photo I look like I want to kill someone. In my Customs photo I look like someone else tried to kill me.

Speaking of all the ways I let you down (by not almost dying) it DID rain while we were in Morocco. Which is in Africa. I promise I blessed them, you guys, I blessed those rains down in Africa so hard. But I didn’t get a video, which means it didn’t happen.

I’ll do better next time, promise.

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Let’s sacrifice this on the altar of “Life Experience”

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I turned 31 last week. To combat my existential dread and fear of aging, we spent the week in Spain and Morocco. I’m aware of how pretentious that sounds, so I’ll immediately follow up with a list of unglamorious things that probably occurred:

  1. Someone vomited all over me on the plane
  2. I died and Alex is a rich widower now
  3. We both died and Zola is a millionaire now

I’m not sure how much I’m actually afraid of aging. I think I’m more afraid of how quickly time passes. Every Monday morning Alex and I groan and are like “ugh, is it the weekend?” and then the TV screen through which I view the world flickers and S H A Z A M it IS the weekend! How did that happen! Who cares, let’s drink a bottle of wine apiece!

Much of my life has been defined by my identity as A-Person-Who-Is-Younger-Than-The-Other-Humans. I was always younger than my friends, the youthiest of the people in my office, and the golly gee “you want to see my ID?” one of my peers.

Something tells me those days are numbered. Now I’m seeing people get book deals and I look them up on Wikipedia and I’m like “You’re 26?! What sort of wunderkind genius are you?!” And then I realize that’s not that crazy and is actually kind of normal.

I’ll hear some amazing soul-baring song and go to Spotify and the artist is just barely old enough to have gained sentience and the ability to survive outside the womb.

Am I stunted, or is everyone else just gaining on me? I am my own Master and Commander of the Maturity and Life Accomplishment spectrum, and whatever my age is = the age at which one is just on the cusp of figuring things out but still needs to percolate a bit longer. I keep pushing that future age of having it all together just a bit further down the spectrum.

I felt this way at 19. At 24. At 28. And now at 31.

That’s not to say I haven’t accomplished anything: I’ve become incredibly snarky and trigger-happy with calling out bullshit. That’s a pleasant development– see, I’ve always been judging you and thinking you’re terrible, it’s only recently that I’ve stared calling you on it though.

So in some ways I guess getting older is a good thing.

If there was ever an argument in favor of having children, this would be it. I’m told time slows to a crawl those first few months. If I just pop out a baby per year then I can live in a suspended animation of wishing time would pass.

Tell me that’s a bad idea.

I wish I could shake this lurking fear of not having done enough or become enough. Comparison is the thief of joy, and all that.

To be clear, I wouldn’t go back to my 20s for anything. They were terrible. Magical at times, full of kick-ass stories, but wrought with anxiety and that out-of-control feeling of continuously ingesting life experiences that are clearly labeled as “Toxic. Not for consumption.”

I’m curious about people who find mega-success in their 20s. Were their families perfect? Do they have supportive parents? Did someone fund their dreams/self-esteem? If I’d had all they have, would I be just as successful?

Gross.

First off, probably not. I don’t really like doing anything I’m supposed to do. I’m probably not ready for high levels of success. It looks like a lot of work. I’ve only just recently managed to start getting regular oil changes and wearing socks that match (most of the time). I think I would have imploded from the pressure of having anyone expect anything of me a decade ago.

Maybe that’s the secret to true success: take an entire decade of your life (doesn’t have to be your 20s, you can pick and choose) and sacrifice it on the altar of “life experience.” See how quickly you’re able to bounce back. Spend a couple years reflecting on the close-call that was your existence.

Then, maybe, start doing the things you’re supposed to be doing. Not the floss-daily, contribute 15% to your retirement account (though maybe that too) kind of things, but the marrow-sucking, rosebud gathering, Carpe Yolo of shirking off everyone else’s ideas of what your life is supposed to look like.

That’s what 31 feels like. It’s not that I have any clue what I’m supposed to be doing, or that I’m on the cusp of any such greatness, but that I’m less and less concerned with trying to fit into what someone else expects of me. All those other people, the ones who think I need to be anything other than what I am? They’re probably not what I’d want them to be either, so at least we’re on even ground.

Let’s sacrifice this on the altar of “Life Experience”

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How many weapons do you think I can hide on my body?

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There’s a slight chance I’m already dead by the time you read this, because I scheduled it in advance. Alex and I are (hopefully) in Spain right now and you know what Bilbo says—it’s a scary business, flying coach to Europe when the (supposed) leader of the free world is trying to start wars all over the place.

We’ve both done our due diligence to be prepared.

Alex:

… Googles the entire history of the country

… Learns the seasonal weather patterns of the region

… Signs up for State Department travel warnings and notes the nearest US Embassy

Aussa:

…Selects the most raggedy “I don’t have money I’m not worth it” clothing in her closet

… Backs up iPhone because it’s probably going to get stolen

… Hides money and weapons all over body

When it comes to travel, Alex now does most of the major planning. I only have a few basic questions:

How much safety/personal liberty/dignity must I sacrifice to save $10 a night?

Is it a bad idea to wade across crocodile infested waters? 

Should I accept rides from strangers I meet on the flight over? 

How many times do you think I can re-wear this same pair of pants before I have to throw them away?

Beyond that, the majority of my planning comes in the form of deciding which audiobooks and actual books I’ll be taking along. I’ve abstained from binging S-Town for this very reason and am waiting to start A Torch Against the Night until my seatbelt is fastened and my tray is in its upright and locked position.

I guess it’s a good thing I married someone like Alex. He buys travel insurance and forwards our itinerary to his parents. I’m not sure why his parents need to know where we are, but I assume it’s so they can start an IndieGoGo if we’re captured or imprisoned or something.

I mean, if I’m going to be held hostage then Spain seems like a good choice. I’ve seen Chocolat, I know what tapas are. 

Also. We’re spending a couple days in Morocco. Which is in Africa. Rains might get blessed. 

You can probably find out if I’m still alive by checking Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook.

Fingers crossed.

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This is the only #RelationshipGoal I’m interested in

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Alex and I have officially been married for as long as we dated, which is super weird. I’m still waiting for things to become terrible. Aren’t marriages supposed to get horrible at some point? I think I read that somewhere on the internet.

If our marriage were a baby, it would hit the following developmental milestones:

1. Bigger nastier poops

2. Bigger nastier tantrums

3. Ability to point at objects then scream when presented with requested object

Speaking of babies, we’re not having one anytime soon. Unless by “baby” you mean AWARD WINNING WORK OF FICTION THAT TAKES THE WORLD BY STORM. Then in that case, yes. That bun is in the oven. 

I could reflect on all the swooning whatever of the last 730 days, but I think I’ve covered that in plenty of previous posts. Yes, Alex slays beasts. Yes, he’s incapable of finding things in front of his face. Yes, we are both financially incentivized to kill each other. 

People talk about #RelationshipGoals. Want to know what mine is? To never ever become one of the “smug married couples” in Bridget Jones’ Diary. Gross. Why does everyone think getting married is some sort of Achievement Unlocked victory in The Game of Life? Because I’m really not sure I actually recommend it. 

A former (worst ever) college roommate told a mutual friend, who got engaged at 27, “I’m so glad you found someone, I was getting worried about you.” Really? Because I’m worried about YOU and your peel-and-stick wall décor that says “Live. Laugh. Love” over your 19,000 family portraits. The wifey doth protest too much, me thinks. 

If it weren’t for Alex and his persistent nature, I’d be fulfilling my destiny of living in a dilapidated house on top of a hill/near a swamp and casting spells on schoolkids while making art with my menstrual blood.

But I guess plans change, and that’s a good thing.

I’m too lazy to google, but I think Sheryl Sandberg said something about how the single greatest decision a woman makes is her choice of partner (or, I’ll add, whether to have one at all). That probably annoys some people– like it’s a throwback to Disney Princesses who need a man to come along and make their life matter– but I think it has more to do with all the horrible ways you can choose the wrong person.

I have a well-documented track record of choosing the wrong person. All this does is leach energy from your life force. People in general tend to steal energy from me, but having an inefficient bulb on the other end of your romantic relationship? Beyond draining.

The person you choose to spend the rest of your life with is in the perfect position to wreak havoc on your ability to do anything beyond just exist in the world.

Alex is the rare human who doesn’t steal my energy. He’s my back up battery pack, a human made of solar panels. Sometimes I just need to touch him so I can rejuvenate my will to live/get up and wash my face before bed.

So that’s why it’s exciting to hit two years of marriage. Not because Marriage = the be all and end all of a fulfilling adulty life, but because I found someone who makes me want to use clichés and listen to acoustic renditions of Sara Bareilles songs. I’m happy he has my back, does red panda impressions, and tells me when I’m viewing the world through past-shite-colored-glasses.

I recently caved to Third Love’s relentless advertising campaign and ordered a super expensive bra. They have you do this exhaustive questionnaire with all sorts of questions about your boobs. I consulted Alex, because he pays a lot more attention to them than I do, and these were his answers:

Q: What kind of boobs do you have?

A: Perfect boobs.

Q: What problems do you have with your boobs? 

A: No problems.

If that’s not the height of romance, I don’t know what is.

This is the only #RelationshipGoal I’m interested in

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I hope you get eaten by a family of bears

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The worst sort of sadness is the sadness you feel for other people—because when it’s someone else who’s hurting, you can’t do anything about it. Powerlessness is a thousand times worse than pain or rage. When it’s your own hurt, you can psychoanalyze it. Your ego can step off to the side and pull out a legal pad and take notes on the id so the super-ego can later turn it into art and/or viral articles on the internet.

But feeling someone else’s pain? That shit is emotional herpes. There’s nothing you can do to make it go away.

Here’s why I’m an arsehole: I texted Alex the other day and told him “caring for people is such a burden.” Naturally he responded with anguished emojis + “my wife thinks I’m a burden.”

It’s good to know he knows I care.

But come on, it’s true. It’s so much easier to not care about other people. In my heart of hearts I’m a crusty old hermit with a scraggly beard and a bird nest in my dreadlocks. If I could sequester myself in the wilderness, I would. But we all know I’d run out of cheezits by Day 2 and die from poisonous berries. 

Maybe I’m self-absorbed, but I’m on a constant quest to understand myself. When people say stuff like “Today I married my best friend,” I scoff because I’m like “psshhh you can’t marry yourself.”

And yet, in trying to comprehend who I am, I run into all these maddening dichotomies.

50% of Aussa = Lizard brained monster with a heart made of whatever Pluto’s made of that got it demoted from being an actual planet. I can be so cold and exacting and detached from anything that might sway my resolve.

50% of Aussa =  Network TV trauma victim, staggering through life with a head wound and a skewed-camera angle view of the world. I look at people—PEOPLE I DON’T EVEN KNOW—and worry about them. Not just the normal people you’re supposed to worry about (panhandlers, skittish women, haunted children) but people who by all appearances are probably perfectly fine: the guy at the stoplight next to me. The girl texting while walking down the sidewalk. The person who just asked if I have a Target Red Card yet.

I worry about all of those people. I want to cut myself open like that Star Wars Space Alpaca and let them crawl inside my body so they stay warm. Does it matter if this kills me? No. Because I’m not even alive right now, I’m a disembodied bubble of worry for the 7 billion other people on this planet.

10 seconds later I’ll see a picture of someone who’s been in my life for the last 15 years and all I think is: “I hope you get eaten by a family of bears.”

Honestly, though. How do you keep living when someone you care about is in pain? Point me in the direction of an IV drip and I’ll skewer myself like a bag of saline if there’s a chance it might help.

*drip drip drip*

“Here, I will literally give you my life force if it will just make you OKAY.”

I could really use some Harry Potterish type magic. Give me a wand or a timeturner so I can undo this entire situation for you. And yet– despite years of trying—I’ve yet to manifest magical abilities. I’m subject to the same laws of the universe as everyone other muggle, which means my remedy to pain is the same as yours:

T I M E 

Ugh, time. I do not understand you, I rarely appreciate you, and I do everything in my limited mental capacity to pretend you don’t exist. I want to defy you, to gain some second sight that frees me from linear perception. But if this is the way it has to be, then fine. I’ll let you do your thing. But please, hurry.

I hope you get eaten by a family of bears

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We have marital problems but Alex doesn’t know what they are because he can’t find them

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Alex and I are rounding the corner on our second year of marriage and, as expected, all sorts of deep-seated issues are starting to manifest. I accept zero responsibility for these problems because I’m pretty sure they were already lying dormant inside of Alex, just waiting to manifest.

The most persistent of these problems has a name: Male Pattern Blindness

Confession: as the youngest in a family of seven, I have been guilty MANY times of not actually looking for an item before giving up and declaring it doesn’t exist. But that’s chump change compared to Alex’s new and ever-increasing inability to locate physical objects that are right in front of his face.

I wasn’t sure how this worked until I saw it in action last night. Normally, I’m in the other room when I hear some banging cabinets and exasperated sighs. “Where’s the naproxen? It’s not where we usually keep it.”

Where Alex thinks “we usually keep it”: A location where it was seen, 7 months ago, on a single occasion.

Where we actually “usually keep it”: In a medicine bin. Where all the medicine is. On a shelf about six inches from where he thinks we usually keep it.

Pause: I’ve had a twitter account since 2013 so I know I’m about to get in huge trouble for stereotyping genders and I’ve also heard of Reddit, which means I’ll be trashed in Men’s Rights forums, but I present for you The Curious Incident of The Mug in The Kitchen:

When: Last night.

Where: The kitchen

What: Alex wanted to split a beer, but Zola wanted us to take her to the dog park.

Why: I suggested we just take the beer to the dog park, but Alex—a law-abiding citizen—was uncomfortable with the idea, so I suggested we pour it in his camping beer mug.

ENTER THE SEARCH FOR THE BEER MUG.

He gave me that look I love, the one that says “you’re a genius, and this is why I married you,” but it was immediately replaced by intense confusion and bewilderment as he swept his arms to the side, turned 360 degrees, and said “but where’s the mug?”

I’d never actually witnessed it with my own eyes– this moment of intense searching– so I basically tripped over every piece of furniture in the living room to get to him so I could loudly and repeatedly point out that he didn’t actually *look* for the mug before declaring it missing.

Questions: Did he think we were living in an enchanted two-bedroom apartment where all you had to do was state your wishes aloud and faerie magic would make it appear? And if so, am I the Beauty or the Beast in this scenario?

With nothing to say (because he knows I’m right in all things, but specifically this thing) he decided to make a show of searching for the mug– which consisted of opening the dishwasher and peering inside.

More Questions: Does he think we recently used the camping mug and therefore it had just been washed? Does he think the dishwasher is where dishes are kept? Does he think the dishwasher is the appliance equivalent of a stork, being the magical and inexplicable source of clean dishes? More importantly, does he think someone in this house is actually washing dishes?

Only after I pulled out my notes app and started dictating a narrative of this bewildering situation did it finally occur to him to look inside the cabinet, where—you guessed it—the mug was waiting.

I feel like I’ve seen behind the curtain and all the mystery in our relationship has faded. Here I thought there might actually be something terribly wrong with Alex (for which I could become a heroic Cover-of-People-Magazine sort of supportive wife), but no. His eyes are fine. His brain is fine. This is clearly a symptom of a much deeper issue: He actually thinks I’m capable of filling in the gaps in his own reasoning. Poor guy.

Does the man in your life have a hard time locating things that are directly in front of his face?

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Do you know someone who suffers from Male Pattern Blindness? How has the mystery faded from YOUR relationship? 

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I can’t wait to be famous

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I forgot what day of the week it is and what year we’re in, so I only have the shortest of updates for you. I’m putting it in a list because I’ve written so much this week that I don’t remember how paragraphs work.

1. I revised 24,694 words last week. This is a huge ass deal for me because it took all of January and February for me to get through 28,235 words. I’m not good at maths but I feel like this means I might actually hit my goal of getting this second draft done by the third week in April:

2. I’m about to go to a Matisyahu concert in Boulder and my 2005 self is super excited about this, though to be fair my 2005 self was mired in debilitating depression and despair, so that’s not really saying much.

3. Writing my book is causing me to experience very volatile mood swings:

10:21AM – “This book is the shit. I can’t wait to wow the world.”

10:26AM – “I’m wasting my life. This is embarrassing.”

10:56AM – “Oh my gosh, people half my age are so much more successful than me, I don’t even know how to write a scene that isn’t just a bunch of people nodding and smiling and walking across rooms”

11:02AM – “Can’t wait to be famous.”

4. The guy who first texted me to let me know my ex was sending my naked photos around tried to friend me on Facebook, which totally freaked me out and now he’s blocked and I hope he isn’t reading this right now, but if he is: Hey, thanks so much for starting that chain reaction of justice-serving drama but let’s please just be footnotes in each other’s lives, thanks.

5. There’s a special place in hell for people who use Bible verse memes to passive aggressively antagonize people on Facebook.

6. FREE ADVICE: Don’t steal people’s jokes off twitter and try to pretend like you/your child came up with them. People are smarter than that + there are people like me who are very intentional about not having to use their brains during the workday and therefore have a lot of energy to use in tracking your bullshit. Also, gross.

7. I saw Beauty and The Beast and it was everything I ever wanted it to be— even if it doesn’t really pass the Bechdel test and is somewhat problematic because if you’re escaping a captor and he gets attacked by wolves you don’t stop to hep him, you say “who’s a good boy, you’re a good boy”, and toss treats at the wolves while running away as fast as possible.

8. You guys are a bunch of delightful weirdos. I legit thought you’d all quit me after I blogged about my ambitious thrill-seeking hermit crab because that’s so damn random, but I got 30 new e-mail subscribers that day. I’m thinking about starting a hermit crab niche blog, because I’m nothing if not opportunistic.

9. I wore my “Of Course I Love Pygymy Goats!” shirt while hiking on Saturday (the first ever goat that was sent to me, via Jennie Saia) and a woman on the trail was like “Yeah, goats are cute!” and I forgot I was wearing the shirt so I was like “soulmate!” which abruptly ended that conversation.

10. I have things to tell you about. Let me try and re-orient myself to time and space and I’ll be back soon.

What are YOUR life updates?

Any terrible people to rant about, or existential crises to share?

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I thought this was normal until I said it out loud

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I’m happy to report that Alex and I still manage to surprise each other. Rather, I still manage to surprise him. It usually goes like this:

Me: “Blah blah Normal Childhood Thing blah blah”

Him: “No. No, that is not normal. That is not normal at all.”

While Alex doesn’t mind hearing the darker stories of my childhood, I’m generally forbidden from discussing any of my (former) pets. It’s a wonder Zola has lasted nine years, because every other creature in my possession met with the most untimely and gruesome of deaths. I won’t ruin your week by recounting these horrors, but suffice it to say the only one who made it out alive was a hermit crab.

Apparently other people’s hermit crabs like to die as soon as they get home from their beach vacation, but mine was a bonafide badass. So badass, in fact, that it was always escaping its cage and living loose in the house. We’d try to recapture him, but wild hearts can’t be broken, and this was the crustacean version of William Wallace.

Also, we were very lazy and maybe a bit deranged.

That didn’t mean we stopped caring about the wayward crab though. My Mom left little dishes of water and vegetables in the house plants and over a series of days they’d get munched away to nothing. Sometimes, when we were watching a movie as a family, we’d hear a diligent scraping and catch sight of a hermit crab scuttling its way across the baseboards.

Totally normal.

This hermit crab was basically my spirit animal, disappearing for months at a time. This made it particularly stressful to do things like move from one city to another, but never fear— he always managed to find a way. I remember my Mom saying he most likely stowed away in one of the couches– which isn’t the least bit terrifying or anything. But the last time we moved it was to a house we’d built in the countryside, and ye olde crab was nowhere to be found. It was a bit sad, and we did our best to say goodbye, but it was like having a funeral with an empty casket.

A couple weeks after we’d settled in we got a call from one of our new neighbors. They lived a quarter mile down our gravel road in a bunker-style house they’d built off the grid.

“Are you missing a hermit crab?”

Apparently one of their twenty children spotted the crab on the side of the road— despite the fact his shell was the same color as the gravel and we were hundreds of miles from an ocean. Against all odds, the crab had broken free of the house and crossed the property until it reached the street like a proper hitchhiker.

According to Alex, none of this is normal. Apparently pets are supposed to live in cages and die of old age and not have any adventures at all. But I prefer to think this was some sort of law of attraction— I was just another little girl pressing her face against the mesh cage of a touristy gift shop, but I managed to choose the most ambitious hermit crab of them all.

Maybe it’s not normal, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t make sense.

I thought this was normal until I said it out loud

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Do you have any weird memories that you thought were normal at the time? Were any of your pets escape artists? Tell me something weird about your childhood.

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I got catfished. Because you can’t trust anyone on (or off) the internet.

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When I was 24 years old I booked a one-way flight to Eat. Pray. Love. my way across China and Southeast Asia: Adventure! Self Actualization! A Journey Inward!

I also got drunk alone a lot.

China was a new kind of lonely. No longer self-imposed, but absolute. There were a million people within a six-foot radius and I could communicate with 0% of them. So I did what loners do (Hi, guys) and started a small blog to keep in touch with friends (all three of them) and family (who never read it).

But then someone started leaving comments. Her name was Renee and she’d also spent a year backpacking by herself! She was fifteen years older than me and randomly stumbled across my blog. We had so much in common and she really seemed wonderful, so I decided to take our relationship to the next level: I gave her my email address.

I know it’s hard to imagine, but I used to be really good at keeping secrets. I know I’ve told you about my sex life, the psych ward, and my ex’s naked photo, but back then I was just a dread-infested twenty-something on the 7th floor of a Chinese apartment.

Suffice it to say, I was primed to pour my heart and soul out to this person. 

We started with the usual stuff:

“Haha I can’t identify the food I’m eating this is so fun I think I have dysentery but this is what your 20s are for, YOLO”

And moved on to:

“I feel fundamentally flawed and am all alone in this world, shouting into the void.”

Our correspondence went on for several months as I opened up about all sorts of things I’d never even told my friends. Then one day I saw a new email from her and the first line, visible before I opened it, said: “Aussa, I’m afraid I haven’t been completely honest with you.”

Turns out she hadn’t just found me online, how crazy, she’d actually been sent my way for a very specific reason.

By my parents. 

TLDR; they asked her to befriend me so I would trust her when she suggested I get back in touch with them.

I’ve felt foolish at many points in my life, but nothing wounds quite as much as discovering you’ve shared something with someone but JOKES ON YOU they already knew it and that’s why they cozied up to you in the first place.

Apparently she lived with my parents when she was a little girl. They’d been foster parents and even though they only accepted boys she was somehow placed with them and it was THE BEST TIME OF HER LIFE. Listen, Crazy. I’m glad you have such great memories from 1978 but a few things have happened since then.

I never emailed her back, even though I’m sure she meant well.

As you may have guessed, I failed to achieve self-actualization by the time I returned to the States. Instead, I embarked on a whole new tour of life’s dumbest choices. I was still caught up in trying to run from things I didn’t want to think about, creating diversions for myself and everyone else and keeping my mouth shut about all the things I knew I couldn’t say.

Then at some point, I just stopped: running, keeping secrets, trying to convince anyone I was anything other than exactly what I’d always been. It was all the best sorts of cliches: a weight lifted and a clean slate and a fresh start.

But not everyone likes it when you stop being whatever they’re used to you being.

I recently received a message from someone who knew me before I started writing online. They think I should be ashamed of the things I’ve written— not the actually things I’m writing about, but the fact I shamelessly cop to it all. To them, it was better when I was grinning and bearing and keeping my mouth shut.

Again, I think they actually meant well— which is what scares me more than anything else.

We’re taught to be wary of the bogeyman or the predator with the rapey van, but sometimes the people who think they’re helping are the ones primed to inflict the most pain.

I’m not sure what to take away from all of this, other than TRUST NO ONE EVER. But that still misses the mark. I think the real task, the great mission, the one last step in this fake quest for self-actualization is not to stop trusting people, but to trust myself. I’ve done some stupid shit in the past, but I’m the only one who really has to live with it.

This is why you can’t trust anyone on (or off) the internet

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Have you ever been catfished? How do you know who you can trust?

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