talking 'bout my (so sad, so sorry) generation.

 The other night I watched "Reality Bites" for the first time of my twenties. I had seen the movie when I was younger, but the message was not quite as clear or relevant as it appears now that I'm older.

I know it speaks to the issues faced by those a bit older than me, but I find my own generation is not too far behind. We struggle with the same demons - inherent desire to do well, but a lack of resources, and a sense of entitlement that mismatches the opportunities available to us. We were the generation who were told that we were 'special' - special enough, it now seems, to be saddled with economic collapse, environmental catastrophe and financial ruin. The Greatest Generation cash their Social Security checks; the baby boomers sleep at night knowing they did the best they could by their children; even Generation X came out of their existential crises to own America's homes and run America's companies. We are left with astronomical student loans, a dismal job market and no chance of ever retiring.

Without going too far into detail about the logistics of my current life, things are a little tough right now. My grandmother is very ill. I received some good news about work but it has yet to come to fruition, and I am feeling somewhat disillusioned. My endlessly bright and talented husband has been forced to apply for internships, despite the fact that he just received a master's degree. The world seems like a hostile place, and I'm not sure I'm ready for the implications of real life.

I guess I perform it every day; I wake up, get myself to work on time. I perform numerous tasks, ranging from the challenging to the mundane. I go home and play the role of wife, daughter, friend. In all of this, I feel the slip of things I used to do when time wasn't so wrapped up in itself, when things weren't so dictated. I wrote poems. I made collages. I obsessed about all of my relationships. I felt, often it wasn't pure and often it was overly dramatic, but I felt, and I had the pursuit of finding myself to guide the forward motion of my life. Desperation only existed in my head. Things weren't so final. Possibilities were endless.

Now, I find myself adrift, just another Lelaina of a generation failed. We all wanted to really be something by the time we were 23. We all swore we would break out of the chains of college, an out-of-the-box sprint toward career success. We were all given the opportunities our parents sacrificed for. Now we're working as personal trainers and waitresses and cubicle rats, numbing our minds with low-calorie beers and reality television.

I know I sound jaded. It's hard not to. Nobody wants to work at the Burger-Rama (which is why we need immigrants coming into this country, but that's a rant for another day), and nobody wants to sell out. Everyone just wants to shut their eyes and their minds and pretend that none of it is happening. Stop watching the news. Drink another Coke. Go to Walmart. Spend a fortune on a wedding. Have a baby. Get a tummy tuck. Buy some Louboutins.

Or, we can act out in little ways every day. We either change the status quo, or we die this way.

"And they wonder why those of us in our twenties refuse to work an 80-hour week... just so we can afford to buy their BMWs... why we aren't interested in the counterculture that they invented... as if we did not see them disembowel their revolution for a pair of running shoes. But the question remains... what are we going to do now? How can we repair all the damage we inherited? Fellow graduates, the answer is simple.

The answer is... The answer is... I don't know."

giving up the ghost.

At least the majority of the American people don't think I'm an unqualified moron. Yet.

This morning, sleepily, after hearing extensively about my menstrual woes, my husband remarked:

"You make being a woman sound like the worst thing, ever. It seems like you're barely holding it together all the time."

He's right.

I'm quitting, you guys.

I guess you could say this is a long time coming. Since I've gotten married, my hygiene has slipped significantly. I don't wash my hair nearly as much as I used to. I cut it off for a bob, which I intend to gradually snip away at until my hair resembles Edie Sedgwick's. I only wear makeup if I'm actually going somewhere (anywhere public any time before 6 pm doesn't count as 'somewhere'). I've worn high heels two times in two months. I'm just fucking tired of being female, and I don't care anymore.

I'm tired of not being able to shit regularly. I'm tired of haranguing my breasts into a wired felt-cotton trap every morning. I'm over worrying constantly if I'm knocked up. I'm sick of concerning myself with how I look and wondering if I should censor what I say.

You see, women are in a constant pursuit of looking as attractive as possible. Always. We are told from childhood that our purpose is to decorate the earth, to light up men's faces as they leer at our chests and appreciate our delicate features. We are on display 24 hours a day, seven days a week. We're supposed to diet and keep up with trends and have huge breasts and no wrinkles and not be smarter than the men we're involved with and we should be mild and passive and motherly and cheerful and just fucking perfect. If we're not doing everything we can to impress dudes, then we're under fire for being fat, ugly, man-hating feminazi lesbian shitasses (Scott Baio's wife's words, not mine - though I wish I could take credit for such a zinger). And if we happen to be too attractive, it's our fault that we led men to rape us, because we're sluts and whores. We have to be slaves to a society and then get backhandedly fucked by said society just for doing what they tell us.

But you know what? I'm not doing it anymore. I have a nice place to live, a job that's tolerable, an awesome cat, and a man that loves me even if I have chipped nail polish and have been wearing the same bra for four days in a row. Even so - what is the point where we say enough is enough? Is that aging? Recognizing that you're not the hot chick, the ingenue, the demure doll who men bend over backwards for? Or is the recognition that you don't even care enough to try to play that game anymore?

Women deal with enough blood and shit and tears. We owe it to ourselves to be honest. And to love ourselves for that honesty alone.

reason #5,724 why I am now an old lady.

Let me tell you all about my newest hobby. It's really quite thrilling. You see, I go into grocery stores to buy butter and frozen pizza and come out with puzzle books. I am a big fan, in particular, of word searches. I spend hours on end ignoring my husband while attempting to complete word searches in which I look for words like "liege" and "whiskers." Then I go to bed, not after 11 p.m. and not before complaining about how much my feet hurt and attempting to woo my cat into sleeping on the bed beside me.

It's weird when you reach this point that you realize why adults do things, and though you're conscious of this, you don't stop yourself from doing them too. Other things on this list that I've discovered include:

1. arguing about housework
2. getting a pet and treating it like it's a child
3. having less sex
4. having a drink immediately when you get home from work
5. feeling like you should go on a diet
6. placating yourself with stupid crap you don't need (like vintage luggage and xbox games)

I mean, many of these are the consequences of... responsibility. Responsibility of keeping a house, being a good partner, being successful at work and attempting to retain your sanity without absolute exhaustion. But it's hard keeping your edge, man, and with every Dell Official Word Search booklet I buy that advertises for porcelain Yorkies sitting in teacups wearing rhinestone collars, another piece of my youthful hipness dies.

Back to the puzzles. I just completed "Mustache Bash" and had the hardest fucking time trying to find "fu manchu."

an ode to beaus of days gone by.

Ah, the good old days. When I was young, carefree. When I dated complete morons.

As I get ready to embark on this crazy journey you kids call "matrimony," I can't help but be reminded of my expansive and often frightening romantic history. I find this to be a good time to reflect and put it all behind me as I get ready to start life with the only person I've ever been in a relationship with who can actually deal with all my bullshit.

I put forth, for your examination: three of the most screwed up couplings of my 23-year-old life.


Exhibit A: Chelsea's Traveling Circus, featuring The 180 Degree Man

When I was 18, I was probably the most miserable person on the campus of Northeastern University. I was also the biggest mess. I smoked far too many cigarettes. I ate horrifyingly fattening cafeteria food every day, I wore way too much glitter for my own good, and I drank Southern Comfort religiously. after screwing around with a misguided emo kid, an actor, a software peddler, a pagan and a hipster, I fell for - you guessed it, or, actually, probably not at all - a long-haired World of Warcraft player English major who pretended to play bass. Who was a virgin. Pro-life. And a Republican.

Not a very long story short, we dated for a year and a half. He broke up with me over the phone right after my mom got out of the hospital, where she almost bled to death (not that there's any ill sentiment remaining). It appears that after we split, he cut all of his hair off and voted Obama. How charming! I like to think it was my bold, overtly feminist ramblings, but it seems to me now that he was either 1) naively under the political direction of his overbearing Catholic mother, who continued to buy him action figures for Christmas when he was 19, or 2) claiming to have voted for Bush and and against abortion simply to irritate me. I wish him all the best, regardless of the fact that I actually have no idea who he ever was to begin with.


Exhibit B: Work Relationships are a Bad Idea, Even if One of You Doesn't Work There Anymore

Fresh on the prowl in January 2008, I admitted to a former coworker that I had a crush on him following an inebriated night in the city. We had worked together as co-ops and had spent most of the 6 month period making fun of each other. He admitted the feeling was mutual. Things are supposed to progress grandly from there, are they not? We met up in Allston for drinks. Drinks turned into hanging out at my friend's friend's house until 3 am. That turned into an awkward sleepover on my parents' couch. We made out in a stairwell at Jillian's during a work party. He took me to lunch and left me on the stoop of my office building, and he didn't call me again. Until he found out I met someone else. Turns out he was "cleaning up the mess" of his psychotic meth-addict ex-girlfriend, who has her eyebrows tattooed on. Last I heard, they had a beagle together. Mazel tov.


Exhibit C: I Thought I Did a Dead Guy

I just want to preface this story by saying: when I was 17, I was an idiot.

I met a guy on the internet. I'm not going to go into my internet rant, and I'm not going to discuss how the internet has led to two engagements of people I know. Including my own. All I will say is, I met a guy on the internet. And he was a lot older than me.

Seven years older, to be exact. I invited a guy seven years older than me, who I had never met before, to come to my house. And he did. And he brought pot. And I hooked up with him.

We went for a walk around my neighborhood and he invited me to go "camping." Now, we all know about "camping." "Camping" is not cooking on an open fire, sleeping under the stars and enjoying nature's pleasures. "Camping" is going somewhere so you can have sex in a tent. Foolish me, wanting adventure and more of this guy's pot, agreed. I met him at a forest in Taunton. He regaled me in stories of jam band festivals and sleeping with a woman in her forties so he could get unlimited use of her Cape Cod beach home. He told me all about the trailer he lived in while we sat in my Jeep to avoid mosquitoes. I was bored and he was an asshole. I drove home the next morning and never saw him again.

One day, curious about the hippie douche I went "camping" with, I Googled him. Much to my surprise, I found an obituary for a person of the same name, and approximate same age, from New Bedford, where he claimed to be from, but the obituary was dated 1999. I convinced myself the loser I met assumed a dead man's name so he could screw high school chicks from the North Shore, and fell into a miserable shame-slump about it.

Recent Facebooking has refuted my initial conclusion. The guy I met from the internet did provide me with his real name. He only used his weed to bed me. His about me says it all: "you could never understand this shit." I think I do, Brian. I think I do.