untitled

I don’t know why this is so hard for me. I used to be able to blubber and gush in my writing but recently I feel like I’ve got an iron rod stuck up my spine stopping me from saying all the things I’ve wanted to say. There are so many times when I’m on the edge of telling you what I feel but feel suffocated beneath the sarcasm, the eye rolls and my coy way of pretending that I’m ‘just too cool.’ What you don’t know is that I feel unworthy every time you say that you love me because I never thought anyone ever would. And that I get embarrassed when you tell me I’m beautiful because I think I have a big nose and a big forehead and no one ever asked me to prom.

I never really thought I was special and I kind of hate it when you make me feel that way (but not really). I’m not used to anyone caring and in fact it makes me feel incredibly uncomfortable. You’re kind of my perfect guy and I wish I was your perfect girl. I want to be your prefect someone but, honestly, I get exhausted because I just don’t think I can compete. Most of the time I don’t think I live up to the hype. You’re [insert name here] and I’m someone who hasn’t had a single friend come visit me in Chicago.

torture by comparison

I personally think that the worst torture is torture by comparison and yet I can't help but willingly engage in that same masochism over and over.

It was the summer between my Senior year of undergrad and my first year of grad school.

I spent that summer jealous and alone. I should have been relishing in my youth, in my beauty, in the fact that I should have been carefree. In a better world I would have had parents that congratulated me on not only graduating but also getting a scholarship to grad school. Finally, this was my moment. But I never had a graduation party or much acknowledgement that it even happened.

Instead I got a phone call forcing me home. It was the summer she tried to kill herself.

We all knew she had problems that none us could solve no matter how hard we loved her and no matter how hard we tried to be perfect. It's something that’s greater than all of us that started long before us.

I got the call and found myself in a mind numbingly drive back to Buffalo. Fucked if I knew what to do. What does a twenty-three year old do for a ten year old child who just lost a father to a drug overdose the year before and now has a mother who tried to kill herself?

Fuck.

So I made her French toast every morning. I drove her to school even though she could have taken the bus. I made sure I told her I loved her everyday even when she rolled her eyes at me. I lied to her. I told her our mother went on vacation and would be back soon. "Don't worry, it'll be ok." Even though it wasn't ok and we both knew it.

During the day when she was in school, I drove downtown to the hospital to see her. I hated her then. I hated her for stealing my summer while my classmates backpacked in Europe or interned. I hated her for making everything about her. I hated her for not knowing what I should to do. And for a minute (as awful as it sounds) I wished she had had the guts to pull it off.

She begged me for coffee while she was there. So I lied to her too. I snuck in decaf and pretended it was the real deal. "Don't worry, it'll be ok." I lied to her sister, “Don’t worry, it’ll be ok.”

I lied because I knew that as a former prom queen she’d never want anyone to know. I tried to hide it because I was embarrassed and ashamed. I lied because I couldn't bear anyone knowing.

But more importantly, I couldn't face the judgement that comes from comparison with my peers, and so I lied to myself as well.

glamorus

I've been accused of having a glamorous lifestyle - much like an obsessive compulsive is accused of being a neat freak. It's an innate falsehood. Only I'm not sure that when Fergie defined glamourous she visualized squatting above blue sludge during a turbulence patch thirty thousand feet in the air with neatly pleated pants scrunched around her ankles.

Middle seat in row 11 on Delta flight 645.

I've washed underwear in a hotel sink.

G-L-A-M-O-R-O-U-S. Glamorous.

nurse candy

At the very least I can say with almost full confidence that I have never forgotten to put pants on.

My mother has never been the Joan Cleaver type of mom I've always longed for. She never made cookies or even dinner that didn’t come in the form a combo meal straight from a drive-thru window. By the age of eight I was doing my own laundry and making my best attempts at peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. On occasion I wrote myself love notes to put into my lunches to make the other girls seep with jealousy that was barely containable within their plaid jumpers and knee socks. By then my penmanship was already at a 5th grade level and could certainly pass any handwriting analysis my classmates might employ.

Rather than ironing my socks with light starch or meticulously organizing my vast collection of nude and sometimes headless Barbie dolls, my mother was much more likely to wake us up at 6am for a game of Find the Bra. It was a regular occurrence for us to search the house and surrounding areas for the bra she was about to put on that morning and had somehow managed to misplace at some point in the time it took her to have her morning coffee and put on her makeup. On two separate occasions I found her bra in the freezer.

To describe my mother as unpredictable would be a gross understatement. In fact her eccentricities are so common it would be delusional to hope for any indication of the mundane. The problem is you just never know exactly what new adventure she has in store that day.

My mother has worked as a nurse in an assortment of pregnancy clinics, gyno offices, and breast treatment facilities and always carries with her an ample supply of inappropriate stories. But more importantly, her occupation in combination with her name has resulted in a witty yet descriptive nickname that my sister and I regularly exhaust: Nurse Candy.

Several weeks ago – against my better judgment – I invited a gentleman friend back home to experience all that is Buffalo, New York in February. Aside from the obvious excitement he had in venturing to a great cultural metropolis, he had little idea what to expect from Nurse Candy.

I gave her a solid four hour head start to primp herself and hide any of her penis and/or vagina diagrams she unapologetically leaves around the house before arriving. When we got there I’m not sure what was more embarrassing, the fact that she welcomed us into the house garbed in a bathrobe at 3pm or the fact that the bathrobe was untied exposing her bottomless nether region.

Unfazed by her appearance, Nurse Candy welcomed us into the house mid-robe fumble and with a hug.