the half truth of a whole life

(Pictured is the corner of my living room, complete with a shelf of stuff and one of the “red chairs.”)

One of the many charming things I picked up from my mother is my absurdly irrational (and highly emotional) attachment to stuff. I harbor some resentment towards her for it because it’s not as though she herself is a keeper of things. She is a giver of things and an inventor of little stories that make me feel as though parting with anything she has ever, in the history of my lifetime, given to me is absolutely out of the question.

I will now, for the benefit of the reading public, go over a few examples of such things.

My mother sends care packages for most major holidays. I’m crazy for it because I love it when people give me things, but even more than that I love it when people give me mass quantities of useless things. There is simply nothing more fun than digging through a FedEx box of glitter and tissue for random o’bjet de merde. I can usually count on a themed pair of socks, a chocolate shaped appropriately for the season, random plastic things, and a few bags of gummy candy to keep the hubs happy.

Most recently I received (I think…) a package for Easter. Easter is, of course, a strictly fake holiday around these parts, and my mother respects that by refraining from sending me anything resembling Jesus and pretends that the holiday is, in fact, a strict celebration of the existence of bunnies. (Which, in case you didn’t know, I have tattooed on my arm, so you can imagine how exciting that is for me.) The package was exactly as I had hoped, chock full of random useless crap, socks that should get me beaten up, chocolate bunnies, a few “special sussies” (which means she either didn’t get it at WalMart or it cost more than $5), gummy candies for the hubs, and a few of those pipe cleaner looking chicks with plastic feet that dont stand up straight and wonky beaks. There was most certainly a note about not opening it until Easter, but I obviously opened it right away and then lied about it.

But here’s the trouble. Somehow– and it happens with something from every package–after the candy was eaten, the socks put away for later wear, the chocolate bunnies taken care of, I’m left standing there,  looking at those little chicks. Those little tiny chicks who are so small and helpless, their wonky beaks pointing in all directions. Those little tiny chicks who endured a four day ground shipment from Texas. I decide that I couldn’t possible throw them away. There is a pinprick sized ache in my soul. Something about childhood, a happy memory, years of therapy– I dont know–but whatever it is, I decide they must stay… so I hide them in a drawer, a drawer stuffed to the gills will the guilt of so many holidays before.

And then there was the time that my mother sent me a stuffed replica of bunny from Pat the Bunny, apparently a childhood favorite of mine. Attached was a note about the how much I loved the book as a little girl, followed by what could only be described as a momentary psychotic break caught on paper. Something about love and kisses and little tiny girls all grown up… and there I am with a goddamned stuffed bunny, a husband who is at his wits end, and no drawer big enough. (She did the same thing with Mouse from If You Give a Mouse a Cookie and then followed that up with a spell of sending me children’s books… mostly about bunnies. I have so many books about bunnies for children I dont have. And they all live under my bed.)

But I can’t get rid of them. I see them, consider giving them away, and I suddenly get a wave of guilt. I flip through the beautifully illustrated pages and think about my mother picking them out. Suddenly she is dead and I am eulogizing her through guilted sobs, praying to a God I dont believe in to forgive me and help me find those books. Those beloved and thoughtful books. Those books that meant everything to me and I was too stupid to know it.

Oh it gets worse.

When my parents parted ways a few years ago there was stuff galore. There was the dividing of Christmas ornaments, furniture, books, pictures, knick knacks. In an effort to make a clean getaway, many things were left unclaimed. In an highly, highly emotional state I accepted anything that was offered. They were, after all, the only  tokens I had of the 25 years of union. Clearly, without these things I would be no one. In the years that followed, boxes would arrive to my 450 square foot (now 650 square foot) apartment randomly, filled with various things my mother decided I needed. Limoge boxes, lamps, rugs, pans, figurines. And I found a home for everything. I bought bookshelves, hung photos, framed photos. I think I was desperate to recreate something. I think I might have been sick in the head.

Recently, though, the husband and I have been making some changes to the apartment. In the most functional way that married people can, we’ve been trying to decorate in a way that expresses our taste “as a couple.” Since I subscribe to the belief that compromise is, in fact, just two people losing, we finally settled on dividing the house into sections and each taking a room or two, rather than try to work together and end up divorced.

The process has brought about a lot of change and opportunity for declutter, but it’s also been an emotional experience. My things, the things that actually aren’t mind at all, but rather reminders of baggage I need to shake to get on with it, are slowly fading. Everyday I face a shelf, a box, a bag with something that I should get rid of. But I still stand there. I panic about what happens when those things are gone. I worry that I’m going to hurt someone or worse forget someone because my memory of people, places, and things is wrapped up in the things around me. The book that reminds me of junior lit and that hilarious professor, the Limoges that reminds me of my mom’s 40th birthday party, which reminds me of those years that my dad kept buying her topiaries because she did such a good job pretending to like them. And then I remember that’s why I had topiaries at my wedding, because they made me laugh because they reminded me of our backyard full of topiaries… dying the sweltering Texas sun.

And then and then and then.

And then I need to remember that it’s just stuff. It’s just shit on a shelf. It means nothing. It holds no value. The husband hates it, loathes it. It’s a barrier to the life I want, the style I wish I had. We’re traditional by default… because traditional decor allows for the most random crap. And now we’re trying to express a new style, one that requires I get over it.

Now fast forward to present day. The hubs and I are sitting in bed, chatting briefly about the yoga studio I have been talking about creating in our apartment for months now. The hubs has conveniently rendered the apartment in ArchiCAD or some such nonsense, as well as built to-scale models of all our stuff to place in the faux apartment. He can, with the click of a mouse rearrange an entire room without us having to move a thing.

As we’re chatting I realize it’s time for me to dig deeper and come to terms with getting rid of some more of my stuff. (To my credit, I’ve been clipping along recently.) I decide I need to go big. We should sell the club chairs, two lovely red chairs that I received in the divorce, which also happened to be a time when we had no money and they were, quite literally, the nicest thing we owned. They are truly, truly lovely, but mostly taking up space these days and not the style that we now have “as a couple.”

I pick up my cell to text my mother. I tell her that we’ll probably be selling the club chairs soon and I need for her to emotionally prepare for it. Minutes pass and the phone beeps.

“why”

I explain that we’ve had them for years now, and though we love them, they are not really our style anymore and it’s time to move on to something else. I wait. And wait. And wait. And nothing. So I send her another message.

“Are you coping?”

I wait. Get up and brush my teeth. Get into bed. Finally the phone beeps again.

“Well, I guess as long as You don’t decide tHat i’m not your style”

When I grew up I was going to eat orange juice concentrate out of the can with a spoon and eat raw cookie dough from the tube.

What amuses me about remembering this chunk of adolescent wisdom is that fifteen years later it basically defines me as a person: if someone didn’t make up all these rules, I’d be making horrifying decisions. Or so I think.

I imagine that there are children out there who don’t think twice about the foods that their parents give them. They don’t fantasize about the day that they are out from under their parents’ thumb and they can finally eat entire pizzas in one sitting, dipping each greasy slice in creamy ranch dressing– the kind you make with the packet. Using mayonnaise. Oh. Yum.

Sure, whiny six year olds refuse to eat green veggies and live exclusively on grilled cheese for a period of their lives, but I’m not talking about my six year old self. I’m referring to my sixteen-year-old self. The one who was elated to get a car on her sweet birthday because it meant she could drive to Taco Bell and eat four or five Gorditas. The one who saw college as an opportunity to eat cake for breakfast.

But here I am, a twenty five year old woman who doesn’t ever eat cake for breakfast, hasn’t had a Gordita since high school, and measures out serving sizes of cookie dough before digging in. Here’s what I didnt consider about growing up:  knowledge.

Somehow, somewhere, I acquired this all-consuming vat (for lack of a better word) of knowledge. I blame Google, social media, my job, marketing, people, The New Yorker, my own constant need to know the answers– all of it– for the fact that I can’t do anything because I know too much about everything.

I heard the snickers. Caroline just called herself a know it all.

But it’s not a grand declaration; it’s a painful confession. I know too much.

I know the calories in berries, cakes, cookies, pastries, my favorite dishes at restaurants. I know random math theorems, how to build lamps out of cookie jars and teacups, the best way to remove wine from carpet, how many push ups you’d have to do to burn off a Pringle. I have knowledge about foreign wars, foreign affairs, local affairs, and sexual affairs. I understand things medical, technical, cynical, and neurological. I know about medications and death rates, dog breeds, marathons, oxygenation, skin care, infomercials, dance moves, deadly rashes, and how to do a handstand. But not for too long. Bad for the circulatory system…

When I was 10 or 11, I was hanging out at my dad’s office. Back in the day, it was not uncommon to find an eclectic mix of famous and notables hanging out in the “Red Room” of my father’s law office. Legend has it that for decades the future of the social, political, and urban landscape of Austin, Texas was determined in that garden-level room. There was a fridge of beer and a couple cans of nuts. I grew up on all you can drink Coca Cola Classic when my mother wasn’t around and picking cashews and almonds out of the mixed nut cans, overhearing conversations about murders, sex scandals, and the occasional joke about a whore and a lawyer.

For years I was a child eating nuts, drinking Coke, and drawing pictures on legal pads, waiting for my dad to crack a cold Coors, look at his watch, and nod to me to gather my things, it was time to go to Jorge’s for enchiladas. Until that night.

That night, as I was pilfering cashews, a law partner– a woman, walked over to me.

“You like the cashews?”

(I’m sure I just nodded or something, but as I write this I wish I would have said something about how I didnt like them, I was just partially retarded and enjoyed spending time digging through an industrial-sized nut can looking for cashews…)

“Well, enjoy them. Before too long every one of those cashews is going to represent a dimple in your once taut thigh.”

To be honest with you, I dont think I knew that how severely fucked up her comment was. Had I of known, I feel certain I would have prebilled her for therapy, or at the very least slapped her for good measure. But I didn’t. I simply told her that for my height, I was actually slightly underweight.

But that was the beginning of the knowledge. It was the first moment that it truthfully occurred to me that there was an underlying reason why people made decisions, and it didn’t have a damn thing to do with want. It had to do with knowledge. More than that, it has to do with this complex brain thing wherein you weigh the knowledge you have against the variable consequences of an action and then– after taking six or seven Aleve– decide that you’ll wake up six minutes earlier to ensure that you can make your own tea so that you have enough caffeine in your system to deal with your coworkers upon entering your office, so that you don’t lose your temper and don’t hurt anyone’s feelings, in order to keep everyone happy, so that no one ends up in the bathroom crying, which delays productivity, resulting in low morale that makes your boss cranky and puts everyone in a bad mood.

Seriously. It’s that complicated.

So, children. This is the lesson here: dream of a life where people eat cake for breakfast and wear slutty outfits from Rampage that their mothers wouldnt allow. But heed this warning:

Cake is full of calories that make you fat. Couple that with the sugar that gives you carbohydrate cravings that leads to eating pizza, which gives you acne, that deters boys, which lowers your self esteem, resulting in feelings of low self worth that can only be combated through meaningless sex and you’re already batting zero. Dress that in an outfit that your mother disapproves of and you’re just a fat whore with acne…

… and that’s not worth cake at breakfast.

(Me looking artistically and thoughtfully at you as you read this highly unexpected post.)

This past week I returned to my homeland for our yearly “family reunion” (made difficult because my actual family is now permanently de-reunioned and the family that reunions all works in the same law office, making the whole thing a touch odd). I’ve found that it’s important to only return home when you’re feeling good about yourself, otherwise you get caught in the trap of revealing that all your independent decisions since leaving home have been poor and your life has turned out mediocre at best. This is ill-advised because, as I learned painfully a few years back, it takes years to regain your “responsible overachiever” status. (I was fat, miserable, and had bleached my hair white. Rather than look like the individualistic femme sophisticate that I was hoping for, I looked like a fat, miserable, confused girl… with white hair.)

The trip was mercifully uneventful and gave me a lot of time to step back from the life that I have created in Boston and compare it (in a healthy way) with all the “what ifs” that I have avoided for so long. One thing about me as a person is that I spend an inordinate amount of my free (and sometimes not so free) time pondering intensely. I think about work not only as it applies to my colleagues and clients, but also how it manifests itself in a broader sense: is what I do important to my overall understanding of life? It’s some heavy stuff, but it is what makes me uniquely capable of doing what I do. (Without killing myself.)

With this philosophical pondering comes the inevitable questions about life: the what ifs. For the most part I avoid what ifs because I have experienced how negatively they can influence your life. I’ve pondered silly what ifs before: what would I look like right now if I snapped my fingers and selectively removed all Snickers candy bars from my consumption history? What about Triscuits? (Who knows, maybe Triscuits have been a key contributor to my waistline all those years…) It’s fun, but more importantly, it’s not dangerous. Dangerous is when you start playing out the what ifs that can only end poorly. What if i would have said yes to him? What if I would have moved there? What if I would have said no?

These what ifs will (excuse my language) fuck you up. They (excuse me again) fuck you up because we as human beings are drawn to some notion that the things that didnt happen were far better and more exciting than the things that did.

I used to %#$ with myself by imagining what would happen if I didnt get married. What if I would have graduated from college, moved to New York, and lived the fabulous single life? When I imagine this scenario I am fabulous, laden with cash and opportunity, and called upon like a more sophisticated Carrie Bradshaw. Never in all my what iffing days have I ever imagined my single life in New York City as a drag. Not once did I think that I would be working as an $8/hr admin filing paperwork all day and then taking the train to my hovel in Queens. I never consider that I’d still be wondering who I was or what I wanted to be or how to become something. I don’t think about the incredible opportunities that have been presented to me here, or the relationships that I would never have made.

That girl in my what if is conveniently not me.

Because the iCaroline cannot entertain that what if because it never could have happened. I couldn’t have moved to New York City and lived the fabulous single life because I was never fabulous as a single person. I was awkward. The worst parts of my personality were on display when I was single. These days I can hide my vulnerability behind the courage that I get from the hubs. Even when I’m not good, he is. He is the half of myself that I know is right. When I was a single gal there was no half that I trusted was right. It’s no wonder I jumped from pre-med to philosophy to advertising to writing. When I met the hubs, that otherwise vulnerable girl had the courage to finally say, “this is who I am.”

And he said, “okay.”

That was all I needed. It doesn’t make me weak or sad, it makes me human. But it also gives me a reason to believe that what ifs are a dark and scary corner of the world. You, reading this, need to know that there is no such thing as a what if. The only possible existence for you is the one you have now. There are a million possiblities for the future– whatever you decide– but where you ended up –where you are now–is the product of the only possible decision: the one you made.

So I find myself at a cross roads with the Half Truth of a Whole life. The blog that I started three years ago was intended to be a place holder, a thought keeper for the many ideas that I would gather until I had the time (or the courage) to write a book. But then something strange happened: I started writing for someone other than myself. I heard the comments, watched the reactions, and what I learned was that people expected me to be funny. Humor was never intended to be the sum of the parts; humor was a device to express profound pain, understanding, joy, or concern. I am not a humorist. I am an essayist. I am a writer of things truthful and painful. When humor can help me express myself it is a necessary part of my writing, but it was never meant to be my writing.

So for my last labored what if: what if I would have remained true to myself and told the stories I wanted to tell in the way I wanted to tell them?

If I would have done that, would I be done with my book today?

No, because I made the only decision possible. The one I made.

But the possibilities for the future exist only if I decide to return to the place that this blog started all those years ago.

This blog is the Half Truth of a Whole Life. It’s the stories of my family, the truth about myself, and the beginning of what I hope is a long story about life and the people that make it worth it.

I hope that’s enough.

It is my plight in life that I have some phenomenally intelligent friends. And those who are not phenomenally intelligent are either insanely creative or have ridiculously cool jobs that make me look like a paper pushing hoo haa. The truly difficult thing about having all these friends who are better than I am is that I am constantly reminded of how intrinsically uncool I am.

For instance, one of my dearest and oldest friends, though not a hipster or a coffee shop philosopher, has all the makings of one of those annoying NYU films students. Fortunately, with none of the ambition, nor the bon vivant attitude that is absolutely necessary if you’re going to go to pay $150,000 to go to film school. What he does have is the kind of taste in film that reminds me that at my very core I am what Maslow insists we all are: a thumb sucking six year old who enjoys Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, and wishes on occasion that her husband was known only by one name, had a dark past, a rogue accent, and a mysteriously powerful job with an even more powerful bank account.

In short, I own Center Stage on DVD.  I’ve been meaning to watch no less than 5 foreign films, but I dont want to have to read the subtitles. I may or may not have thought, for a brief period, that Film Noir was a Chanel scent. Maybe.

My other dearest friend works in the entertainment industry. She is painfully cool. She has bangs. She wears skinny jeans. She likes jazz music. She has one of those mini bodies that was made for people who book talent for a living. (She can shop off the rack at American Apparel and not ask the girl wearing a unitard if they carry larger sizes in the back.) Her music taste is interesting and varied. When she is around, I pretend that my iPod battery is dead, or that I don’t know any of the local radio stations.

Sure, sure you’re thinking to yourself, who cares that Caroline doesnt have good taste in music or likes bad films? And I know that it’s not that big of a deal, but truthfully I find that music and film is what people sit around and talk about. It’s become a standard by which we measure people. God forbid you watched The Good Girl and thought that Jennifer Aniston was awkward, or see Momento and have a headache for 6-8 months*.

But even that’s not it. The reason my own taste in film bothers me is because I have a theory about these things. (Har har, I know. I have a theory about everything…)

I think that our taste in music, in movies, and in books actually comes from a part of our being that we can’t control. It is the very deepest and truest part of ourselves. It’s the part of us that no matter how much therapy we have, how many raises and promotions we get, no matter how many makeovers we go through, always outs us.

Now, I’m no psychologist. (Though I think that would be the most awesome job in the whole fucking world.) But if I were going to theorizes, I might suggest that my dear friend thrives on the confusion, the lack of plan and intention, the raw and riding emotion of these films that make my head ache. Intuition from music comes not from being music, but a deep desire to find order in what can otherwise be intensely chaotic– an ability to exist in a space that doesn’t necessary make sense to everyone.

And people like me? Well, we should have born into a royal family and then been faced with an arranged marriage that meant betraying your one true love. (But don’t worry. He’ll come for me.)

You can see how this gets a little embarrassing. Caroline– the no care girl. The “do you think she is a lesbian, wait, no, she just got married” girl. I don’t want children. I dont like small animals. The hubs and I have designated times in which I’m okay with physical contact… and yet… and yet I have read every Nora Roberts novel on the planet. I ate up the Twilight Saga.

I watched the entire first season of Secret Life of the American Teenager.

The good news is that I am nothing if not painfully, painfully self aware. I go to independent theatres and torture myself with low budget films about self discovery. I read the New Yorker. And I watch shows about historical places; it’s the kind of learning that I have to force myself to do. Because otherwise I’d be in line for the Hannah Montana movie elbowing some ten year old until she cries and gives up her seat.

Here is the thing: there are people who cannot wait to get home get back into the New Yorker. There are people who see a preview about a documentary on Darfur and feel as though opening day will never come. There are people who seek intense education every single day. They are interested in the art of being intelligent.

And then there are people like me.

Good thing I am so good looking.

*It should be mentioned that “one of my dearest friends” does not endorse, nor does he think, that either of these movies are good. They were simply examples that I, the author, used to make a point. I felt as though the reading audience would have seen these movies and understood the point I was trying to make. He likes much, much weirder shit… like… David Lynch.

My lucky bamboo died.

Fuck you. No, no, truly. I would like to express to you, as well as the geniuses who run your organization, the extreme frustration that you’ve have caused me over the last five months. Were it not for the unbelievable yoga program (coupled with my gym crush on Marc McDonald), I would have packed my bags and headed back to Equinox. (Although, the snarling facade of my former trainer does keep me a safe distance.)

First of all, let’s have a quick chat about communication. As a veritable communications genius myself, I need to tell you the first and golden rule of marketing communications: communication. No. Fucking. Way. When you have something to relay to members of your internal or external audience, the most effective way to do that is to first and foremost do that. For example, if you consistently charge a members DEBIT CARD when you have explicitly told them that you will not be doing that, you should probably communicate to the accounting department that there has been an error. Don’t force said member to call sweet Donna from accounting and tell her all about how the Member Services people are backing over her with the proverbial bus. That’s just going to get nasty. And we know you wouldnt want that.

Communication is a dirty little word that actually entails two parts listening, one part engaging, and one part action. When you decide that your establishment is worth a sign up cost of nearly $1000 and then charge an additional $165 per month to the helpless beings to are forced to join your gym due to some unparalleled locational issues, you may want to consider showing them where some of that money goes. (And, I could be wrong, but I dont think it’s into your employee on boarding process, due to the fact that an employee misunderstanding led to my washing my body with MOUTHWASH last week. Funny, funny. If the shower amenities need subtitles, you’re going to have to suck it up and get on that. ) Could you explain to me, beloved Sports Club/LA how the weights in your fitness studio are so horrifying? I am quite certain that the free weights in prison are better taken care of than the bullshit that you supply. I dont think that walking those weights down Comm Ave like an imaginary puppy could cause them the damage that a bunch of cardio princesses have seemingly caused. I was at Target this weekend. They have weights. In case you’re having trouble finding them. Better yet, give Kristi DiScipio a ring over at Equinox and ask her for the magic method by which she keeps the weights so impeccable. Wait, what is that, Kristi? You have someone come in and take care of them? What does that even mean?

Sports Club/LA, it’s no secret that you have me by the downward dog. I’m forced to remain a member because the yoga studio is beyond compare. Wait, isn’t the yoga studio managed by someone different? How enlightening! I love George and Lily, Marc, Jen, Kelly, and Dave. I love seeing my gym buddies and buying an overpriced salmon lunch on Saturdays and talking about what a shithole the gym is. Did you know that, Sports Club/LA? The members actually sit in the cafe and commiserate about what a shithole the facilities are.

Lucky for you, a run in with Seal (singer and husband to “the Heidi”) on a treadmill last week was worth at least $75, and I’m willing to admit that the yoga and Dossas is worth at least another $75, so we’re square for April.

But here is the real kicker. The coup de grace. This incredible rant could have been entirely avoided if you’d just communicate.

Who in their right fucking mind cancels a yoga class on a Monday? A Monday, no less, where every person who comes to you after 6:00 PM is pissed to high hell about the fact that their company didn’t give them the fake Massachusetts holiday, Patriots Day. A day when everyone who comes in your doors is feeling particularly poor about themselves because they aren’t good enough to have run the 26.2 miles that the Kenyans did that morning. Who cancels yoga, on Marathon Monday, of Patriots Day, and doesnt tell anyone?

And dont fucking start with me about the sign. There are so many signs on that goddamn wellness desk that I wouldnt know if one of them told me that Jesus was teaching in the Fire Studio on Saturday.

Communication, Sports Club/LA, communication.

Namaste.