i laugh… loudly. it just is.

keep your eyes open all the time and I think you’ll find, there’s no place to hide and the world is alive

there’s something fascinating, and endlessly entertaining about getting to know yourself. and then accepting yourself for everything you are.

and i encourage every single person i’ve ever met to do it. understand who you are. why you are. what you are. get rid of what was given to by others. and fill it in with who you want to be.

this entire process will take approximately… your lifetime. but in reality, the fun starts a few years in.

it’s crazy what knowing yourself, and liking all those teeny things that make up who you are will do for your ability to connect with people.

lately, i feel connected. in a way that doesn’t overwhelm me, or scare me. or lead me on. it simply feels, well, simple. we’re all human. we’re all different. we all have intricate, messy, complicated glorious stories of what got us here. right here. and those stories are no one else’s but ours. how exciting is THAT?! yea, i know, you’re thinking the SF heatwave has gone to my head, but no. it hasn’t.

recently, i read two articles (whoa, i’m just realizing that they were both from paste magazine) that really affected me. one was about a well known celebrity (of whom i’ve had a crush on since i was 11) and another a musician. both men. both amazingly, unbashedfully, and wholeheartedly affected by the human condition. by words. by connection. by people. by their stories.

so if you know me, you’ll know that i have a propensity to crush, hard, on certain artist types. some of whom happen to be well known (celebrity). but the fact that i’m so affected by these strangers spirals me into weird and crazy ‘i don’t know you, this is unhealthy’ land. so i have to seriously avoid reading about, or listening to these boys.

and the only way i can explain my craziness to others, explain my crush, my longing for connection with these boys- they get it. they get what it’s like to connect.

maybe it’s the rediscovery of my feelings, and allowing my self to love them, or something, but i just get overwhelmingly excited and hopeful when i see evidence that someone else gets it. like i do. that we’re all in this together.

and where does this leave me right now? basically, that i don’t need to explain it any more.

that i am in love with connection. that i love nothing more than to get to know someone. to connect with someone. through conversation. through music. through sharing. through being. through asking.

other things about me that just are. and i’m ok with them, because they make up who i am:
when i hear a song i love, i play it on repeat. for as long as necessary.
apples and cheese is, in fact, a perfectly acceptable dinner
i am really much worse than i thought at doing dishes, i hate them
and laundry.
when i’m channeling patience, tact and appropriateness in conversation i take short quick breaths.
i maybe like cuddling more than i thought.
i’m obsessed with words.
i’m very deliberate with them.
i have faith in the process. even if i’m not sure what process it is.
i laugh loudly.
my hair will always be… everywhere.
my coffee table cluttered.
i need to talk through things to figure them out.
i love listening to friends, and friends that listen to me.
i will never, ever, be able to quit ice cream.
and i like boys. and it can be that simple.

so for a while, i’ll focus on connecting with people that get it. maybe one of them will be romantic. maybe not. maybe it won’t matter.

there’s a song at the heart of it all and we all try hard
just to write it down but you can’t write it down

ezra furman and the harpoons. the world is alive.

crushing.

young hearts spark fire, all night. oh yea. oh yea.

i have a crush.

i don’t know him, really.

but, nonetheless, i hope to see him around.

crushes are weird. they are exciting, they give you hope, they add fun to everyday life. but having been single for so long now, and honestly, not having met many people in that so long that i would want to stop being single with, there is something scary about having a crush. like what if this goes somewhere? what would that mean? (spiral spiral spiral)

and i know it seems extreme that i’m even talking about this, especially because i don’t know said boy, but now is exactly WHEN i think about this stuff. because crushing, in and of itself, is fun. what is not fun is when something happens that is real enough to push that crush onto the 5 yrd line of the possibility zone. because then shit’s on the line. that is where something that is said or done could make or break it. ultimately, that is where rejection becomes factor. that is where a crush moves into a possibility of dating, or going on a date.

it’s kind of nice, actually having a new crush. but the thing is, i don’t know him. and when i think about getting to know him i get all weird and freaked about rejection. and this is all happening before ieven know him. because i meet so few boys that i crush on, the possible rejection that comes from a crush these days oddly holds a higher level of possible affectedness. meaning, that rejection holds more power than if i were meeting smart, handsome, funny boys all over the place every single day. it’s a numbers game. the less chances, the more value each chance acquires. therefore, just the thought of something making this crush move into the possibility zone is mildly paralyzing.

but, um, HELLO i am not going to let a chance at something good pass me by because of fear. that’s for sissy marys. but i am going to blab it all out here to get it out of me and move on.

because i don’t even know him.

but, neither does anyone i know. which is also nice for a change. avoiding the normal incest that comes with dating and my group of friends.

so i have a crush. and randomly thinking about this boy that i don’t know gives me hope that i’m not broken. i do know how to maybe be interested in someone in this city. cause it’s been a long time since that’s happened.

also, i love my neighborhood.

we used to dream, and now we worry about dying. i don’t wanna worry about dying… i just wanna worry about those sunshine [boys].

young hearts spark fire. japandroids.

the crush factor

do try it once and then you know. it’s your move. settle for less again. again.

i was thinking about the concept of crushing. you know, having a crush on someone. and, though i understand some of the psychological benefits of getting a crush on someone, i realllllly can’t get past some of the icky effects of having said crush.
so, we have all these chemicals in our brian that make us blissfully sheltered from the harsh realities of life. they allow us to ‘be happy’ and see things positively. actually, they say that, simply put, clinically depressed people see the world with more of an accurate lens. these chemicals don’t allow them to float through life thinking that there are good things where others do. now, those of us that are not depressed, or are taking supplemental chemicals for it, see things as generally good. people as generally good. life as generally good.

so, back to a crush. why is it that crushes seem to ALLOW us to blatantly ignore anything real that is not one hundred percent positive. it seems that when we crush, our crushee can do no wrong. we get dressed with the anticipation of the first time our eyes meet that night. we arrange our schedules to allow for the maximum amount of possible hang out time. maybe we see them and get butterflies. we talk to them about all the things we have in common. and sooner or later this crush becomes the next persn we want to date. and efforts move forward in that direction.

but. these feel good chemicals that incite all the previously mentioned behaviors sometimes do us a total disservice. they allow us to spiral into wanting to date someone, without ACTUALLY knowing the whole story about them. we only know the good things. s/he is cute. funny. charming. intelligent. and that is all we need to know to swoon.

so, there was this boy. and he was cute, and we had so much in common. we knew some of the same groups of people. we had similar interests. interesting conversations. and i had a full blown crush. now this crush, thank goodness, didn’t last because of one awkward dating situation or another and i was able to get a more accurate view of who this guy was. and from that awkward moment on, everything he did and said kind of annoyed me. so i immediately started beating myself up for ever crushing on such a stupid boy. and become mad about the crush induced things i did. thinking, ‘why couldn’t i have seen all these things before so i didn’t waste my time on that boy.’  (so i don’t feel the need to berate myself for NOT seeing those things.)
not to get all academic geek on you, but i get the evolutionary psychology perspective on why the tendency to ‘crush’ is a positive thing that helps us survive. relationships are hard work. and we would not actively get into them if we had a realistic vision of all the good AND bad things about a person. it’s the same as the concept of romantic love. our brains trick us into falling for someone, so that once we get into a relationship and this romance fades we are already too deep in to abandon ship. and as cognitive dissonance theory suggests, we as humans would much rather change our beliefs than our behavior when the two don’t match up. so, our brains give us a nice chemical cocktail of happy love juice so that we fall (crush) for someone that we don’t know too much about. we act like we’ve fallen (see previous list of ‘crush’ like behaviors) and then when that cocktail wears off we are in a relationship and have to deal with the hard, honest, and real parts of that relationship. and the only way to rationalize what, in retrospect, we see as something we maybe would not have gotten into (actively) if we knew these things earlier is to change our belief about the not so positive things that we are feeling. because we can’t change the behavior (it’s already done!). so we then enter round two of happy juice lies and tricks our brian plays on us to induce all those ‘crush’ like feelings again cause we were happy then. and we change our beliefs about the things we may not like, to thinking positively about them. and the cycle continues.

but here’s the thing. what we REALLY need is not a happycrush cocktail of illusions when we meet someone, but a realistic person preview. like a realistic job preview. we need to know what we are getting ourselves into. i mean, what if that awkward dating moment had not snapped me out of my crush and i started dating a guy that thinks he is way more important than he actually is?! THEN i’d be in trouble. so my request to you, brain- i want to see accurately and clearly, and if it takes a few times before accurate and clear equals actual things in common, intelligent conversation, mutual attraction, and so forth then so be it. i’ll deal with meeting some not so great guys, just don’t trick me into falling for them. please! thank you.

like a breath. take in restraint like a breath. my lungs are so numb from holding back. eh, from holding back.