Maybe the beautiful thing about living/being in bum fuck Suburbia is the compulsion to grow beyond it that such a dreary locale inspires. For me at least: there is nothing to see, therefore maybe it's easier to get productive, to save yourself from hell. In urban places full of incredible museums, parks, cultural districts, and theater, there is too much wonderful stuff to do - this is really only an issue of course, if you are a traveler passing through but simultaneously have it at the back of your mind that you should be looking for a job, finishing the statistical analysis and article writing for your research study, picking up the pen again, and applying for grad school.... Ah yes, that shit. So that was me as I enjoyed visiting friends in Boston, Connecticut, and New York - it was fun, more play than work. Then I visited my grandparents in Iowa, and I would like to send a heartfelt thanks to the boring nature of West Des Moines which at last inspired me to be more productive. And then there's here - Fort Collins, Colorado, where my nuclear (explosive) family dwell. Being around them stirs up so many emotions, issues, reactions, that every time I visit I never fail to be reminded why I started to write in the first place...at age ten or so. The pen was my emotional refuge early on, so maybe in that way I could be grateful to my family for rubbing me the wrong way, as it compelled me to sublimate, to write. (And still does!)
Now here I am, still unresolved but getting there - I BELIEVE it.
Have I stopped moving yet? Not quite. I've now added another city name to be printed on a sticky white luggage tag - Minneapolis. I'm excited to go, to see Joe, to hopefully remind him that I'm not a total nagging bitch, but also this lovely girl he loves - maybe we'll get a bit of resolution as to what to do next about the "us" question - to see if we can be for the other person what we would need to be to make happiness happen. I'd like to. But let's be realistic, though of course optimistic, because who gives anything another chance without some optimism? And mostly, lets be the best versions of ourselves.
I am definitely not the best version of myself with my family, and though this selection of best self is also dependent on others, I was definitely disappointed with myself today: I hurt my little sister. She is incredibly good at rubbing me the wrong way herself, can have a maddening, rude, I-am-the-teenage-queen-of-the-world manner of speaking, but nevertheless, I should restrain myself from reacting negatively and I didn't. I think I never agreed with my parents' parenting style - I've always felt, and still feel, that they let her get away with too much. The dinner tonight was not dinner, it was The Elana Show. Welcome viewers. If you did not subscribe to this program, too damn bad. Eat your food and deal with it, The Elana Show is on, and there will be no commercial breaks or channel changing. Bon appetit.
I could go on but for now I'll simply end it with wise words: try to keep the negativity down and the flow happy, happy, joy, joy. If you're the princess that has pearls spilling out of her mouth instead of reptiles, it'll come back atcha in the end - pearl instead of frog. With that I kiss you frogs good night and will dream of a princely metamorphosis. The best hope for changing anyone and anything around you is through changing yourself. The end.
