I think this question is relevant to our everyday lives. Let’s look at politics; recently our country has made some decisions that created other consequences that created an atmosphere that will be difficult for the American people. Now, I know I can get political on here because well, it is my blog, but not everyone is of the same mind. But I will say this, until our country increases revenues on the upper class, we aren’t going to get much better. So I ask Speaker Boehner, was it worth it? Apparently he got what he was looking for, or “98%” he says. Our country has gone down in credit rating, my taxes have increased, my student loans have worsened regardless of what I’m paying every month, people are struggling and I assure you, we didn’t get 98% of what we want. But I digress. 

Currently, there is rioting in London and people are losing their frickin’ minds. Now it is one thing to protest the alleged wrongful death of a citizen, it is another to riot and burn down your city. Is it worth it?

I have friends who have been damn near impossible to communicate with, and not for the lack of trying. I put myself out there, and in the end, I’ve been coming back empty-handed and friendless. I’ve been made to feel guilty about my love life, my success or lack of it sometimes, my job choices, my “irresponsibility”, my money, my life….. and I’m not sure if it is self-dislike or jealousy, but either way, it hurts. And I have to cut them out of my life, and that includes some of my so-called family. When you are loved by someone, you don’t mind losing the people who don’t love you, don’t care about you, don’t even like you. People need to look at themselves more in the mirror and ask some serious questions like- is it worth it?

Moving to another country, uprooting my nearly non-existent roots, learning a new language and preparing for unemployment is scary. It’s like a fresh new puzzle only I don’t have all the pieces yet. Terrifying, yet requiring a bit of faith. Is it worth it? I’m in love with someone who makes my life better than it ever has been. I know who I’d be without him and that person would be ok, but this person I am now is much better than ok because of him. So is it worth it? Yes, because he is worth it. And how many people can you say that about in your life and actually mean it?

I can say that honestly, love has never been tough for me. Entering into a relationship where my other half is an ocean (and a few countries) apart, has a completely different culture, never expected to be with someone like me….. that is tough but it’s not complicated.  I could have been with someone else, someone close by, someone American and black, but then I would have never known this amazing great guy that I want to spend my life with. And that guy loves me, regardless of all these obstacles in our way. He could have chosen any other girl in the world and he still chose me. It was never complicated.

Complicated is the lazy person’s way of saying difficult or dysfunctional. Yes, there are difficulties, and sometimes you have to question if it is all worth it, but for me, the answer was always an uncomplicated yes. When one chapter of your life ends poorly, another chapter begins in an unexpectedly hopeful way. My story is very long already and I’m only in the first 1/3rd now, but I have the choice of making it powerful and fantastic, or lame and depressing. Which would you choose? To make it difficult and miserable because you told yourself it’s too complicated to be easy and happy, or to just give all you have and go with the best attitude you can muster? I hope you choose the latter because it’s the choice I made, and so far, the best choice I’ve made in life.

So no, love isn’t complicated- the world is and love just makes it a whole lot simpler.

1.  I know who Justin Bieber is and although I don’t like his music and think he is young whippersnapper, at least I know Baby, Baby, Baby ooooooo.

2. Although I dislocated and had hip surgery already, I’m mostly in shape and stuff.

3. Sometimes I DO find music to be too loud and it does hurt my ears but mostly I’m alright with that.

4. If I fall I can pick myself up, instead of having that Ooops I’ve fallen and I can’t get up necklace thing.

5. I can cook for myself and shower myself. Although I do like when the German does this too.

6. I never say things like: that is whack, what up homie, and other not really popular slang. Um, hello I’m black AND I’m kinda cool.

7. I’m a librarian and although that is the career choice of old white women, I rock at it and teenagers love me. In a non-perverted way.

8. Although I’m full of wisdom and crap, there are times when I don’t know a lot of things. In fact, I don’t know a lot of things but I’m willing to learn. That means I’m not old like that old lady Louise who lived across the street and thought she knew everything but couldn’t clip her own toenails and she lectured me often but all I could do was look at those nasty toenails. And of course she yelled at me for getting purple paint on her house in a disastrous room-painting experience but that’s a different story. I didn’t know paint could fly across the street like that, so see? I don’t know a lot of things.

9.  Last but not least, I still have a lot to do before I fully grow up. I still have no absolute plan but I’m going with the flow.

Love all of you, thanks for the birthday wishes, and I love you German-Pants!!!

Here’s to another year.

Everyone is on notice starting now, if I make the effort and the effort is not returned in a timely manner, consider your bridge not only burned but most likely, irreparable. I will not apologize for this. In the last year I have been making some amazing strives which I do recall writing about on this here blog that I would be less flakey, more caring and crap. Well I held up my end of the bargain, so my feelings should come as no surprise.

I’ve lost significant pieces of my life- family, friends, home, money, pride, happiness…. so I’m trying to create a new life full of love, new family, new and old friends, success that isn’t always measured in money, pride in being a good person, and happiness from all these new things. That is how a person survives, adapt or be miserable. And I’m not one for sinking into misery.

Despite my sometimes massive sometimes insignificant issues, I’m trying. And this summer is the last I will have in NYC, the US, for a possibly long time so I want to have fun and not think about my losses, the people who have hurt my feelings, couldn’t make it to the important events in my life, couldn’t find the time to say hello, couldn’t find the time to respond or to even care. I may not be the best person in the world, or even a great friend sometimes, but I always care make no mistake of that.

There will be enough bridges burning in the immediate future, so now it’s time to live with that, enjoy the summer, build new bridges and maintain the long- standing ones. You know there is a saying that it is hard in life to know which bridge to cross and which bridge to burn, but now I believe that if you burn a bridge it is best to hope that the light well help you build another.

I may have been only a few places in my life, yet I’ve met so many people. The times that were especially chaotic were often the best times of my life; being an RA at South Hall was literally insane, being a pastry chef at the Athenaeum was intense but I met some amazing- lifelong- talented friends, moving to Florida and being thrown into student housing with international students and graduates that partied every night and somehow made it to class…. these were some of the best decisions I’ve ever made.

There are still so many places to go and people to meet and I don’t know who I would be if I didn’t experience the things I have. I wouldn’t be the person writing this post or enjoying the people and places I’ve been. That wasn’t me. I had people whispering things in my ear very early on in life telling me I’m not a nice person, not a good person, not a smart person… I’m a bitch. No one likes me. For a long time I believed that, when you are seven years-old and someone tells you this is how/who you will be, you don’t know how to shape yourself. I’m ashamed of that.

Everything flipped upside down when I experienced my biggest loss; I’m not a bitch at all, in fact I’m the exact opposite, and I am smart, and I am a good person. And I’m not as strong or as self-serving as I thought I was. I am the person I want to be, and anyone who tells me different can hit the road. No one has that power anymore to make me feel guilt for pursuing my dreams or traveling across distances to make my own adventures. I have no one to answer to but myself, and that is strength. So maybe I am a strong person and I always have been, but my strength is that I can see my own weaknesses and appreciate them for what they are.

I am the strong person who will see new places, place my heart in the hands of someone else (and I trust he’ll keep it safe and intact too), learn new things because I can never stop learning, and I will be the leading lady in my life. Awesome dresses, bad singing, sobfests, crazy dance parties, and unbelievably good food. And did I mention a handsome boyfriend who I just celebrated my anniversary with just a few days ago? I think I have leading lady written all over me.

I was reading this and I was feeling pretty bored with it. You could learn all these things from movies and from actually spending time with your dude. But what about these awesome scientific signs that someone is in love with you, or rather you are in love with someone? I think it’s time I write my own signs for how you know you really love and want to be with someone. And this will not be some fluff piece unlike that stupid article. Mine will be scientific and sound. Please note the previous sarcasm.

1. You don’t want to punch them in the face when they burp right by your ear while you are watching the final episode of Top Chef. You just shrug it off. Before this would incense you to an overly irate state of violence. But now, eh, who cares?

2. You pick up their clothes on the floor, you fold it up, and put it away and you still hum this little cleaning tune in your head. Like this is a normal activity. Before you would simply throw their stuff out of the window.

3. When they grab their fork and stick it into your food, you don’t get mad that they didn’t ask and that they are eating your first and only meal of the day. No. You actually care that they are eating and you might even want to know their opinion of the myriad of flavors cascading through their senses in every bite.

4. You are never too tired to kick their ass at Wii Bowling, even if you have been at work all day and possibly rescued a puppy from a burning building.

5. On the same note, you are never too tired to perform certain things like…. back massages.

6. Even at night in your wildest dreams of being a rockstar or a badass zombie killer, he/she is there and you love them. Just to clarify, in your dreams you could be with Edgar Ramirez, but instead you are still with them. Your reality is also your fantasy. That’s frickin’ love.

7. When they are upset, you want to help in any way you can. No matter what sacrifices you have to make, no matter how much of an ass you need to make of yourself. You want them to be happy, because their happiness gives you happiness. Which is lame but true.

8. You are willing to share your chocolate bar with them. Maybe this isn’t a big deal for some people, but if I share my chocolate bar with someone, I really, really care about them.

9. Unlike with some people you see that make you hum the Darth Vader Imperial March, when you see him/her you get this warm fuzzy feeling and you have to smile.

10. You feel like you’ve won the lottery, because by some divine intervention, you have met the person you are going to (hopefully) spend your life with, and probably you shouldn’t push it by wanting to be rich and famous next. And that’s ok.

That is all.

My Random Hate List:

1. Jennifer Aniston. Yeah I said it, I just don’t like her. I’m sorry J-An fans.

2. Being late.

3. I hate that sugary sweets will never be good for you. I HATE THAT!

4. Creamed corn.

5. People posing in every picture with a peace sign.

6. When you repeatedly keep dropping your keys while trying to open the door.

7. How every girl on Vampire Diaries loves Stephen even though Damon is way cuter and definitely could use the lovin’.

8. People who stand/sit/ just physically are too close to me. I may never know you, but I hate you for intruding on my space.

9. People who keep calling you and don’t leave a message so you don’t know what they want but you don’t want to call them or answer because you just mentally don’t want to “deal” with them.

10. When people think it’s funny to slam someone’s head into a cake or have a food fight. Food ain’t cheap and someone worked on making it! This also goes for people who throw away food, or refuse to learn to cook food.

11. These movies: Dirty Dancing, Grease, American History X, the fourth Indiana Jones movie,  Avatar, and High School Musical.

12. The African-American Literature section at bookstores. We went through a whole Civil Rights movement to get integrated, can we please integrate our books?

13. Westboro Baptist Church. No one, let me repeat that, NO ONE deserves to have their funeral picketed.  Morgan Freeman doesn’t care about such things like gay marriage or transgendered people, if he did, he would not have created them that way. How many people have to be born different and chastised before idiots realize that if God creates all people, he created them to be how they want to be. But I’m pretty sure MF aka God does care about disrespect or not accepting differences among many things, so you better watch out Westboro Baptist Church.

14. I hate that after a week of intense exercise, you don’t really see a difference. Yes, I know things take time, but wouldn’t it be great that if you vehemently work out and eat properly, you should look the way you want to look?

15. I hate that shopping is so unbelievably hard when you have a very curvy body. And no I’m not saying that as a fat person, because I think I’ve surpassed those days. I’m saying this as a size 12 hourglass figure who cannot find jeans tight enough at the waist that fit over my thighs. Can you please make clothes for all shapes please? Thank you.

16. Just in case you forgot: peas.

See you next time.

It doesn’t matter if you like all these places and things, once you have this feeling you do a little inner soul-searching to find an answer to that question. If you don’t feel like you belong here, where do you think you belong? Is it the opposite of where you are now? Or is it a place you haven’t gone yet? Is it with different people or someone new? Can you belong wherever someone else belongs, and better yet, can you belong with someone else? 

It’s puzzling. We’d like to think that home is where the heart is and that wherever your heart is, that is where you belong. For me, home was….. I don’t know. Long before my mother passed away I didn’t consider home the place I belonged. It was a place to stay, a place where I lived, but as soon as I went off to college, I felt like I belonged there as intransitive as that is. I didn’t belong to one room, but I knew people needed and liked me there, and I could build a future from what I took from there. But would it be my future? No.

I’ve found nothing to which I feel an overwhelming want to cling to. My apartment is just my apartment, the city is just a place to live in and explore, but this isn’t home. Have you ever felt that way? I didn’t unpack all of my things wherever I’ve lived in the last 8 years. I was comfortable but not content. And now I’m in a completely different state of mind.

What if you don’t belong to a place but rather you find yourself belonging with someone else? What if your home is where your heart is and that home is in the love you share with someone else? You cannot get insurance on this kind of home, but you are safer from the physical elements (one can hope), but you do have to watch out for the emotional ones.

It’s been a long time for me to find a home that I feel like I can belong to and now that I have it, it’s still a long, long walk to get there. But it’s a walk I do unabashedly, happily and with a sense that he will be there on the other side. And that’s all that matters.

Allie

But as the season begins, I’ve noticed some rather strange things about crazy NYC. Thus it’s time to share my advice with everyone:

1. Just because you can doesn’t mean you should. I know we all get a little carried away with good weather but please no flip flops, sandals, tiny miniskirts and shorts. Be reasonable people.

2.  To the people working out at the gym, leotards aren’t cute. Cut that out.

3. Gnomes are not what David the Gnome would like you to believe; they don’t do good deeds and save the world. They are sinister, and I’m sure they are plotting your demise right now. So please don’t put them on your lawns. And yes, I’ve seen stoops and lawns with gnomes. Not cool.

4. Winter is over, so unless you are extremely tired, don’t order food online. Go out and pick it up, don’t miss out on the weather or the fresh air.  Or if you are staying in and cooking, open the windows and have some friends over. That way everyone has a reason to enjoy the weather and themselves.

5.  I feel it’s ok to watch scary movies that take place in a snowy landscape in the spring, so that way if you’re scared all you have to do is look out the window and go phewww, that can’t happen here. 

6. Save up and buy some new clothes. I don’t know about all of you, but winter is when you gain some weight, so those beautiful clothes you had last year aren’t fitting just right yet. Buy some dresses, work out and fit back into those tight jeggings. I’ve seen too many people trying to squeeze themselves into their clothes and believe me, just because you can get it on, doesn’t mean you should have it on.

7. Why does no one with an umbrella look where they’re going here? I’ve nearly been decapitated at least 10 times already this season.  And the next time I will take your umbrella and throw it into the street, then dance and laugh at you because there is nothing you can do while your fancy shoes and business suits get soaked.

8. And lastly, if you’ve got a reason to shake it like a Polaroid picture (throwback to the title of this blog post) then do so instead of walking around glumly. Shake it for love, for happiness, for success and for the awesome weather!

Allie

Well times have changed, which I’ve usually thought of as a strange statement for most of my life. Time always changes, they haven’t just changed now; we have changed, society has changed, things have changed. So yes time has changed but thankfully I’m getting through it. I can’t call my mom anymore when things aren’t going well, and although she never solved my problems, she listened and made me laugh. She always thought I was too serious, too sensitive and too formal. All these things are true. The little things hurt me more than I can help sometimes; and this morning/yesterday, I wrote a post about that. I was angry and needed to vent my frustrations about life.

But this isn’t the forum for that, and it detracts from my writing like one loyal friend reminded me. I can express myself so much better when I approach my issues with a sense of detachment. There are truths in life that are easier said than done, easier understood than felt.

Sometimes you lose friends no matter how hard you tried to keep them; there might just be things you just can’t talk about anymore, you aren’t just on two different pages in the same book, you are two different books in two different libraries. Sometimes people will hurt your feelings, whether they know it or not. You cannot expect everyone to understand your sensitivities, but you would hope that some people understand sensitivity. I’ve worked hard in my life to overcome things and one of those things is my weight issues. I’m always struggling but I’ve come a long way and not everyone knows me or that, and I’m not finished yet (nor do I think I ever will be) but I’m working on it. Some people don’t want to see you happy, or see that you have changed into someone who can see sky behind those rain clouds. And some people just don’t care either way.

There are people in the world who derive happiness from the misery of others. But here’s the thing, it is and must be your main job to make yourself happy. It’s a job that you will work at for the rest of your life. If you can only find happiness by standing on the backs of others, then you will be hurting a lot of backs in your lifetime. That’s neither fair nor real. True happiness comes from within, and as someone who has faked it, hoped for it, and experienced it, I know that is an honest statement.

Whether it’s love that brings out the best in you, personal and/or professional success, family, the place you live, or the friends that keep you sane, you are a lucky person that should shine with happiness. Those other people, well, maybe one day they’ll find that too, and maybe they’ll fall through the cracks in the backs of others. We can all find reasons to be miserable, but we should all know the reasons to be happy. I needed that reminding, so thank you all.

Until next time,

Allie