it’s time to soften up (blog #1)

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My friend Marla says that she could be a bank robber because no one ever remembers her. Most of the time, she’s quiet. She doesn’t get in anyone’s way. Like, you could probably step on her shoe on purpose, and she’d apologize for not having a smaller foot. By her own admission, she tries to blend in, to not stand out. I guess we all develop strategies for getting by in the world, and at least for now, this one is working for Marla.

Which is too bad.

This morning I woke up at 6:45 to hear Marla speak to a group of local business leaders. She currently writes and edits for a magazine in town that I used to write for, which is how we met. So six years ago she was just my editor. Now she’s also my friend, which is the only reason I got out of bed so friggin’ early.

Getting dressed, I threw on a white t-shirt that I bought as part of a three-pack deal from TJ Maxx. I love a white t-shirt first out of the package, but as they start to shrink, I usually grow to hate them. For this reason, I’ve recently taken to not putting my t-shirts in the dryer. Well, now that I’m living with my parents, of course, my mom has started doing my laundry. Turns out, she uses fabric softener on t-shirts. Well, I guess the scent is extra strong because the shirt wasn’t put in the dryer, so every three minutes, I get huge whiff of the stuff, and it smells like a brand new teddy bear on a glorious spring morning.

It makes me want to vomit.

The event this morning was held at a local bookstore and coffee shop, and the hosts provided a free waffle bar that was so fantastic it’d make even the Holiday Inn Express jealous. So I’m in the waffle line this morning, just holding onto my coffee cup and smelling my t-shirt, hoping that no one will talk to me or stand too close. And just at that moment, the guy next to me calls me by name and strikes up a conversation. All I could think was, “Shit” because I hate it when people know my name and I don’t know theirs, especially when there’s a timer ticking away on a waffle iron two feet away. It’s like the universe hitting you over the head and saying, “You’re stuck here for another two minutes and sixteen seconds.”

And then to make matters worse, I realize whom I’m talking to. It’s a guy who’s hit on me a number of times online. On Grindr. (Grindr is essentially a hookup app, but sometimes after five days of feeling lonely and three hours of drinking margaritas, I’ll think that it’s a good way to stumble across marriage material. I could probably compare this mentality to my dad’s believing that God wants him to win the lottery.) Anyway, this guy in the waffle line has straight up asked me for sex before, something that always offends me, at least when it happens before I find out someone’s name. (Once another guy asked me for sex, and when I asked what he did for a living, he told me that information was too personal. But sex is okay. Go figure.)

I realize that my getting on a hookup app and being offended by a quick offer for sex is a bit like showing up to an orgy and sipping tea and crumpets in a three-piece suite with your pinky raised in the air (like, I’m so much better than this), but we all have our standards.

So back to the waffle line. The timer’s up, it’s my turn to make a waffle, and the guy moves on. And despite everything that was going on in my head, it was a pleasant conversation. It didn’t make me want to go on a date or have sex with him, but it did make me think that some people come off better in person than they do online.

When my waffle finished, I topped it off with hazelnut cream cheese, bananas, and maple syrup, and sat down at a table in the middle of the room to hear Marla speak. (I guess I overdid it on the sugar and coffee because I’m actually shaking as I sit here in the library.) True to form, Marla started slowly, quietly. She read from a prepared speech, and she mostly looked down. She talked about losing a former job, about all the shit things that happened in her life before she ended up working as a full-time writer at the magazine. And I can only assume that I wasn’t alone as I sat there wondering where the talk was going and how she was going to connect with everyone in the room.

But then it happened.

In a still, small voice, Marla, whose exact beautiful words I can’t recall, said something like, “We all have times in our lives when we feel like we’re up against a wall, when we feel like things will never get better.” Right then, I wanted to cry, and I guess it’s because I’m single and I’m living with my parents, and my mom’s doing my laundry, and I smell like a field full of daisies. And to make matters worse, now I’m crying into my Belgium waffle at eight in the morning. (I’ll take “Things that are not a turn-on” for a thousand, Alex.)

My therapist says that life always balances itself. Like if you swing a pendulum really far in one direction, you know it’s going to swing back in the other. She says that I’ve been burning the candle at both ends for so long that this period in my life is the universe’s way of saying, “Whoa, Trigger, slow down.” This period of time is about resting, about getting balance. And as for living with my parents, she says that she lived with her parents for a while when she was getting her Master’s Degree and that it really laid the foundation for the good relationship she has with them today.

So maybe being at home again isn’t a bad thing. Maybe it’s about building better relationships and about finding balance, even if it’s in the little things like Mom doing my laundry because she was so sick with depression when I was growing up that she wasn’t able to back then. At that time, I had to grow up pretty fast. I had to take care of myself, do my own laundry. So now it’s like there’s this chance to turn back the clock. It lets her be a mom, and it lets me be a kid. It lets me experience being taken care of.

When I think about balance, I think about how I’ve spent most my life being really hard on myself and everyone else. Like, totally judgmental. Pinky in the air–I’m better than this. It’s like, maybe a little judgment is useful now and then, but I’ve been way overdoing it, like putting too much hazelnut cream cheese on my self-judgment waffle. And I think that Marla’s words hit me this morning because that kind of thinking and judgment can really make you feel like you’re up against a wall. Things don’t go the way you want–say, you might move in with your parents–and suddenly you feel like you’re all alone, that things will never get better.

I like to think that the universe is always trying to get my attention, that it’s actually interested in what’s going on with me, that it’s wanting to spark a conversation, dropping hints here and there. And if that’s the case, I think the fabric softener on my white t-shirt is a big hint. I think it’s telling me, “Hey, you’ve been really hard on yourself for a long time now. It’s time to soften up…a lot. It’s time to swing the other way.”

Earlier I mentioned that I thought Marla’s quiet persona was too bad. What I meant by that is that I think she’s an amazing writer and an even better friend. I think more people might notice her if she spoke in a louder voice. But what I’m finding is that sometimes it’s the still, small voices that have the most to say. They slip in late. They sit on the back row. But if you listen, they disarm you. They remind you that you’re overdoing it. They tell you that you need to soften up. They say, “You may be up against a wall, but I’m right here with you.”

Quotes from CoCo (Marcus)

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One day a change will come.

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