"Okay."

Dear Three-Years-Ago Tara,

So you just got fired from work at the hotel, huh? That job sucked anyway. I know it hurts right now and everything feels weird, but you will be okay. I know that saying you will be okay will not be the thing that ultimately makes you okay, but know that I know you will be okay.

Still emailing your professor about that “bug that you just can’t kick”? That is also okay. I mean, it’s not exactly okay that you’re sleeping through your classes and every time your mom calls when you’re supposed to be in school you send her to voicemail so she, like you, can be convinced that you’re doing your best and that you’re above water. 

In a couple days you’ll go to Meijer at 10pm because you can’t fall asleep even with the Benadryl and the Lord of the Rings movie marathon you’ve had going all day instead of going to work at the other job, and waiting for Andy to get home like the good little wifey you are. You’ll wander the aisles of the store, ponder over some veggies you know you should buy, but settle for the Velveeta mac and cheese for the third time this week. You’ll somehow end up with an empty cart, less the mac and cheese, some Vernors, and some of that fancy chocolate that isn’t on sale, but that you put in the cart anyway.

With a foggy head, you’ll be in the cosmetics area, not really seeing anything you want or like, but you’re just kind of looking at things. Revlon. Covergirl. That Baby Lips stuff from Maybelline you’ve wanted to try, but it’s toward the bottom of the shelf and that’s just way too far and too much effort. (Still haven’t tried the stuff to this day, by the way).

Then you’ll end up in the aisle with the nail polish. You were just here the other day, doing this same nothing dance, wandering the aisles of Meijer at midnight, and you bought some purple nail polish with a glitter top coat. You even took a picture of your finished nails and posted it to Facebook, not really expecting the 10 likes you got for that dumb photo.

Anyway, there’s this blue polish that you’ll see. It’s not that cheap shit, the Meijer brand that always chips after a day. It’s the second-to-cheapest brand and the blue will catch your eye. It’s a good blue, you’ll know what I’m talking about. Anyway, buy that nail polish. It’s called “Fly Away”.

Your mom will hate the color when you go home for Thanksgiving and you tell her about your crippling depression and about how you’re starting the meds. You guys will cry on the couch and Nick will be there too. He’ll actually feed you your Thanksgiving dinner that year, one bite at a time, because you are literally too sad to pick up a fucking fork. You’ll sit at that table for hours until you’re done crying in the mashed potatoes.

Mom will take that chipped polish off your nails and paint them a pretty fall color to match her own.

I don’t know why I’m telling you all this. But this is what I remember from that time in life. This time you’re in right now. I know it’s hard, and I know things are not good.

I shouldn’t tell you this, but soon you’ll be on your own. And since you already bought your plane ticket you know you’re going to Spain soon. This trip will literally save your life. Trust that. 

I wish this letter were real and that you could have read this to prepare, but everything is about to get really awful and then really amazing. You won’t leave bed for a few weeks, and then a month will pass. Then two. You’ll move out of that stupid apartment, and I know you can’t see it now, but it’s better that way. You will leave a broken relationship, one that should have ended a long time ago, but you were too afraid and too weak to see that and admit it.

I understand this is hard to hear right now, but you will be alone for a while. That is okay, because that is what you need. You know it, I know it. 

Once you've had that alone time, you will find love again. You will fight it, you will avoid it, you will destroy anything resembling or potentially what could be love, and then one day, you will find it again and it will fit perfectly. 

Three-years-ago Tara, you are going to be okay. You will feel like you can’t move, and most days you won’t. You won’t be hungry, so you don’t eat. And you will fall back into old habits that are self-destructive and harmful and painful and that suck really, really bad.

This is all okay. Because today, I, Present-day Tara, am okay. I shouldn’t spoil the surprise, but I’m about to graduate this weekend. With my Master’s degree. Your Masters Degree, can you even believe what I’m saying right now?

I have already been to Spain, to tons of countries, meet so many amazing people there, and I’ve moved to Chicago (WHAT???) and went back to school.

Mom and Nick and Nana are coming to see me in a few days to celebrate my big day with me.

I know you can’t see it now, but things are going to turn around and be so amazing and so great and your life is so different now. Please remember this when you leave that lonely apartment and move into a hotel in Grand Rapids for a month or so. Take a dip in the hot tub on the especially hard days- it really does help. I know you’re going to do it anyway, but don’t bring Teddy to stay will you in the hotel. He’ll meow and whine all night and it will drive you even more insane than you feel at that moment.

Anyway, I’m saying all this because these are the weird memories that I have looking back three years ago on my life. These are the days that I remember were especially tough. These are the days when you will literally feel like nothing is worth it and like you are crumbling.
Remember when both Abbie and Jonathan told you about how sad the movie “Blue Valentine” is?

Go ahead, watch that movie right now. It really is gut-wrenching. But you won’t shed a single tear.

I dare you to watch a scary movie.

Go to the Redbox by Walgreens and pick the worst one.

You won’t even blink.

So after you’re done feeling sorry for yourself and feeling for months like your world is crashing down, you won’t feel anything at all. 

Complete apathy.

 Just go with it.

The nights will be long, this I won’t lie about, but it will all pass.

These will soon just be little glimmers, short, odd memories of a time in your life when nothing was okay and when you didn’t think you’d make it out alive. The darkness will not consume you, Tara.

You WILL get out of bed. I promise you.

I promise.

You will get out of bed. You will graduate undergrad in December, and everyone will be there cheering you on, the loudest in the crowd, when you walk across that stage.

Just as they will this weekend when I do it all again.

So go ahead, I know you will, buy those obnoxious gold glitter heels you’ll never wear, dye your hair pink, and for the love of God, get on that fucking plane and go to Spain. You will be okay. Keep saying your mantra, don't drink as much as you've been. Go to bed at a reasonable time. 

You will be okay three years ago, and I will be okay this weekend, Present-Day Tara.

You did it when it was impossible, and you made it when you didn't think you would. You are amazing and I am so proud of you.

Congratulations and I’ll be seeing you,
 Tara

I write as though I have more to say

To be honest, I'm aware that this blog has fizzled out since I have arrived back into my regular habit of life and goings-on since Spain (2 years ago). I still write when I am overflowing with emotions (the result of stress, lack of sleep, or hormonal changes due to yet another change in my medicine). 

So here (to no one) are some ramblings and nonsense that sit in my brain as I try to sleep before a long day or as I sit in the same clothes I've had on since 6 this morning (jeans unbuttoned, of course), unable to unravel from the day's happenings. 

Despite letting go of guilt and anger and fear and angst from my past experiences over a long and painful regrowth process, of course I know these parts of me existed and were real in my life at one point. I also know that without what I've gone through and the events of my life- good, bad, or otherwise- I wouldn't be where I am today. So, I think about and write about things have have come and gone, not because they are still functioning aspects of my life or represent my current feelings or experiences, but because I have lived some great stories and I love to share them. I write about heartbreak and loss and exes and learning and growing because those pieces have shaped me into a new person, a greater person. I write about the past because I  will not be ashamed of it and because I love it the way I love my childhood swingset- it's gone now, or being used by other kids, or overgrown with weeds and uncut grass, but I can still remember trying to drag my dog up the ladder somehow and getting stung by that fucking bee on the slide.

It's one of those "it'll all work out in the end" things or whatever. 

Thus:

9/1/14

I loved him and then I didn't. And probably by some cosmic joke of the Universe, immediately after this, I dove into the arms of another, who incidentally (and not funny, by the way, Universe) fell out of love with me in the end. 

Until I figure out this "love" thing, as I challenge my current views of it and what I have been taught it means, I vow to stay out of it. Holding aside any dramatic flashbacks of a tragic childhood or of watching relationships fall apart around me, it is suffice to say that I have yet to understand what it is to be in love. Despite this, I am fine with not ever having experienced love the way it is described in the movies. I am not a dysfunctional person because of it, I am not held back or handicapped. Really, at the end of the day, I am happy with knowing I have a lot of learning ahead of me on my path. Learning about love. 

So, just as I am preparing for my last first day of school in the foreseeable future: setting out my outfit for tomorrow, gathering my color-coded folders, and equipping my backpack, I am also readying myself for an emotional schooling of sorts. I am opening myself (back) up to the idea of love, and this is my story. 

***

2/15/15

There were a lot of those "almosts" and "could have beens" in my life. A heaping handful of opportunities that suddenly weren't. There were a few flings and plenty of crushes, but it wasn't until he came along that I ever thought a possibility could grow from a "may have been". 

And really, it wasn't until well over a year with him that I even put it together that perhaps there was no end, and interestingly enough, perhaps there didn't have to be. Up until that point in my life, as my mom finalized a second divorce that left us on our asses, and in the midst of my last year of high school, all my small town brain knew of relationships was that they don't last. And that it is probably for the better that they don't. 

I wasn't especially torn up about this knowledge, about this truth that I did hold to be self-evident, until around that one year mark. It was fine, because that is life. 

I guess I was sort of wise even then with my limited view of everything, as it turns out. 

Anyway, going into the relationship was different for me than any other before- I leapt and he said "okay, gotcha." The whole "gotcha" part was what was different with him. God knows I had leapt many times before then without being caught. 

So that was new. It was weird. It was unexpected. And it was scary. 

I thought I had to come up with a deadline. I figured one was coming, so I prepared for it. 

I packed the beginning of that little relationship up the way one prepares a bag for a mini vacation. I grabbed the shit I needed, I skipped the stuff I didn't, and I brought one cute outfit (just in case). I packed for just that many days, knowing I would have to come home to do the laundry after the trip. 

So, in accordance with this metaphor, I put in the amount of effort and care that I 1)expected to be returned to me, and 2) I knew it wouldn't last. 

It wasn't until 3, 4, and 5 years later that things did end. As I'm speaking about this In the present, it can be assumed by you, dear reader, that we are not together any longer. But eventually I did stop packing for those mini vacations, and forgot what I needed, and just sort of packed a shirt and some (probably) clean undies and hoped for the best. 

I gave a lot to that relationship. I pushed. I pulled. We fought, we loved. It was a whirlwind I suppose, whatever the hell that means. And as with any storm, it was destructive and scary, and exciting, and then devastating in the end. 

***

3/2/15

One time when I was about 5 or 6 years old I went to the drug store with my mom and while she was in the next isle over, I looked around to make sure the coast was clear, and committed my first crime. I pocketed one single stick of Bazooka bubble gum—you know, the kind that turns to flavorless stone after about 15 seconds, and has that stupid comic on the inside of the wrapper. We left the store and didn’t even make it to the car before this overwhelming guilt and impending doom of being caught by the police and getting hauled away to prison forever became too much to handle for my fragile and dramatic brain. I cracked in the most pathetic way, and babbled some incoherent and slobbery words at my mother about the gum and shoved “Exhibit A” into her direction, unable to meet her gaze. I’m sure my mother wanted to coddle her stupid child for this fantastic display of human emotion, but she put on the face of a concerned and angry parent and made me walk back into the store, admit my offense, and offer to pay for the gum. I felt like a crumpled piece of paper and sort of threw a dime at the lady behind the counter before taking off to the car, sobbing. 

If this story tells you anything about the person I am today, it is that I make an awful partner in crime, and that I experience emotions in extreme ways. I almost always ruin the punch line of jokes and I'm always hungry.

My year revolves around summertime- its slow arrival, its short stay, its goodbye party, and the time when I am absolutely, and with conviction, convinced it will never, ever return. 

My roommate has orange hair. His official name is Lord Miles of the Manor, but many commoners know him as Miles. Most nights he trains for the kitty Olympics until 3 or 4am, which is less than fantastic, considering I am not a morning person. 

I have an insatiable appetite for learning, which has lead me to explore many incredible places in the world and eat a lot of odd things.

There needs to be a good reason for me to leave my apartment when it is below 50 degrees, and I spend most of my time knitting and crocheting useless things that turn out weird and re-reading Alice in Wonderland. 

***

5/5/15

Metaphors that aren’t really true but the stuff they represent is:

There’s a dream I keep having. It has something to do with lost love I think- but that’s in this psychodynamic, uncovering the unconscious interpretation thing.

It involves pizza, diet coke, and a glass of chocolate almond milk (it’s no secret that I’m obsessed with food- although, on that thought, what living thing isn’t?... I digress). In the dream a very tall man pours a perfect glass of chocolate almond milk into a mason jar. There isn’t that weird chugging sound or those fart bubbles when you pour too quickly and the liquid comes out in squashes, it really is the perfect pour and the perfect amount of this wonderfully sweet drink. Just then, there’s a knock at the door, a patient one. It’s the type of knock of someone who isn’t sure if they got the correct apartment number and is running slightly ahead of schedule. It’s a gorgeous man holding a hot pizza box and a 2-liter of diet coke. My first thought was, “How do people drink that crap?” And then I close the door slowly. Meaning I left that stunning man standing outside the door holding that stupid pizza box in one hand and the diet coke in the other.

He probably knows now that he did, in fact, have the wrong door.

But he didn’t.

He was the guy and I was the girl and we were supposed to meet.

Without hesitation, despite being hungry and knowing that my chocolate almond milk would only satisfy some of my thirst, I shut the door on that eager guy and carried on about my business. I’m not sure what my dream self was even doing alone in her apartment- which really isn’t too far from reality, given that some evenings will go by and I won’t even have left the couch or bed and I couldn’t tell you what I was even up to for hours.

Anyway, being a Freud person myself, I can deduce what this dream represents: The chocolate almond milk symbolizes my (relatively) new taking to vegetarianism and wanting a “healthy lifestyle” and to “eat clean” and “take care of my body”, etc. etc.

Then the tall guy, I’m assuming has something to do with looming stress and towering anxiety (get it, towering?), but the stress pours my delicious milk- I don’t know, I haven’t really sorted that part out yet.

Then there’s the patient knock- the gorgeous guy at the door- that’s B. He’s holding a pizza (his favorite) and diet coke (A’s favorite).

I closed the door without even thinking twice because that is who I am. I make quick decisions after mulling over the choices for weeks and not ever coming to a conclusion, and then carry on and hope for the best- actually, I convince myself that it is the best (I’m quite confident in my decisions).

Anyway, it may be lost love because I love B and he loves me. He is my person and I’m his unicorn or whatever the fuck. But he can’t be in a committed relationship even though we’ve been “together” for over a year and that truly is fine with me because it is good and great and everything is awesome, but what does it mean to have a sort-of-future-fiancé who won’t be your boyfriend?

And because of A, my best friend, my soulmate, and how we’ve drifted apart and barely know each other anymore even after 12 years of friendship and love. It really is one of those unfortunate situations where things are fast and good and fine until they aren’t- and that really is the saddest part.

But then again, this dream isn't real, the symbols are just that, and I am an active participant in my life. 

Also, things that are lost can be found or things that wander aren't lost or being lost is fine because you find yourself that way or lost is not forever and it's always in the last place you look because why would you keep looking once you've found it?