Amazon doesn’t know me at all. Or, possibly they know me inside and out and are mocking my mopey teenage angst.

Just as I am lamenting my lot in life: to grow old alone, all the while knowing that the most important thing in this world is building a life with the one who you love and who loves you back, and that work, that next email, a new car, whether the couch matches the throw pillows – none of it matters in comparison. Just then, amazon suggests:

The Ultimate Wedding Album (Audio CD) ~ Various Artists (May 14, 2009)

Really, amazon? That’s what you think I’m looking for right now?

To their credit, they also recommended David Sedaris’s “When You Are Engulfed in Flames”, which I not only own, but think about its title often (including today) as a description of my life.

I don’t know whether to call amazon and ask them for life advice or close my account and throw my kindle in the ocean.

It’s quite likely I’m carefully making plans for mass murder. I see a future of death and destruction and carnage, all at my hands. I’ve killed before. There’s no reason to think I won’t do so again. I don’t mean to do it, yet it happens every single time.

I’m talking, of course, about my recently planted herbs. Plants look beautiful when you first plant them, and I’ve outdone myself this year by adding three flowering mini-trees. This is simple container gardening. I have no lawn, no weeds, no bugs, no squirrels. What could go wrong?

Well, the most salient point is probably that I travel too much to keep things watered. OK, it really doesn’t matter about the traveling. Even when I’m home I can’t imagine I’ll remember this watering thing. How often are you supposed to water these things anyway? Every day? Once a week? When they start to cry in agony?

Another problem is that I tend to grab plants randomly and then toss away the plastic care instructions. The little flowering tree I put outside my front door in a completely shaded area that never sees sunlight ever, not even for a few minutes? Apparently needs full sun. The herbs that are sitting in the broiling sun from 6 in the morning to 9 at night? Likely are meant to grow into their herb-like ways in the shade.

There’s a reason my house is completely devoid of plants. It’s not that I’ve never had any. Houseplants are a favorite gift of guests and coworkers. But they never last. One day, I look over and see a pot filled with vaguely brown dust and vines and think, oh look — apparently I used to have a plant! I don’t even remember seeing that before.

And so it will go with the latest horticulture experiment. But maybe I can keep it all alive long enough to make a pesto.

I have a love/hate relationship with antique stores. And by that, I mostly mean that I hate them. Every so often, in some delusional fit of desparation, I find myself in one, surrounded by teetering mannequins  that are staring vacantly at warped mirrors and hat stands fashioned from antlers.

It happens like this. I walk into a normal store, one that sells things that are new and lines them up neatly in matching rows. I almost find what I’m looking for, but nothing is quite right. And that would be OK, except that it doesn’t seem to make sense to spend $80 on a bowl that’s only almost attractive.

Today, for instance, I was looking for a small container. It didn’t have to be anything special, but as it was going to be visible for all to see, I wanted to get something a little classier than tupperware. My thought process went like this:

“That’s a pretty color blue. If only it wasn’t shaped like a fish. Why does it have to be a fish?”

“That has ducks on it.”

“See, that’s all I need. Just a ceramic bowl with a lid. Oh. That’s a dutch oven. And it’s $175.”

And at moments like that, I think of the antique store. But I’m really not thinking of the actual antique store, I’m thinking about the platonic ideal of an antique store that exists only in those folksy movies from the 60s when husbands and wives slept in separate twin beds.

I like the idea of finding something unique, with history. And I like the notion of reusing what we already have in the world, rather than adding more clutter. And I like the vastly lower prices available. Say you need a vase. (I don’t know — maybe someone brings you flowers a lot? Just go with me on this.) You could go into a fancy furniture store and see a lovely vase and think, hmm. $100 seems like a lot, but I’ll keep it forever. And it will add a spot of happy color to my living room. Or, you could go to an antique store and see an equally lovely vase, and it would be $5.

No contest, right? Why not always shop in antique stores?

Well. Here’s the thing.

First, the whole antique thing is a ruse. Antique stores rarely contain antiques. Mostly they contain leftover garage sale items that have been left out in the rain and snubbed by those people who make a living by fishing things out of the trash and selling them on the sidewalk. The store might have one antique but it’s a felt hat with a feather. And who wants a hundred year old feather? Can you imagine the spider eggs that thing has accumulated? Would you really put that on your head?

I know this not only because I have been inside an antique store, but also because for a while when I was a kid, my parents owned an antique store. Or, more accurately, they owned an “antique” store. I had to work there. Don’t you ever wonder where antique stores get all that stuff? It’s not like people are calling them up every day and saying, “hey, I have all this really old awesome stuff. Do you want it?”

No. The items in antique stores generally come from auctions. Mostly from estate sales. In other words, someone dies, the family goes through everything and takes the good stuff, and the rest of it gets put in cardboard boxes which are then offered up, in bulk fashion, at auction. “What’s the bid on this box of random broken things? How about this one?” It’s a bit like buying a box of cracker jacks. You hope you get the magic decoder ring and not the sticker of a monkey. Because really, no one needs another monkey sticker, but we all have cause to decode things magically.

But of course, the heirs are likely to keep all the magic stuff, so you have to hope they just don’t know what they have. Ever seen Antiques Road Show? People swarm a convention center with their broken lamps, assumed to be invaluable by virtue of having been in great aunt Ethel’s attic for 50 years. 98% of the time, the experts weigh in with their analysis that what they have, in fact, is a broken lamp. And so it goes with what ends up in antique stores.

But when I’m looking at a $80 bowl shaped like a fish, I forget all of these things and desperately try the antique store. I would like to think of it like a treasure hunt, with unknown surprises around every corner, but mostly it’s like that one scene in Indiana Jones where he’s like walking around in this dark cave and keeps running into spider webs and then big bugs start crawling around everywhere. I don’t find the kinds of surprises I like, is what I’m saying.

I’m also not a fan of clutter, also known as “bric-a-brac” or “knickknacks” or “decorating”. I’m pretty sure this also stems from childhood. My mom LOVES to fill her house completely to the brim with, well, just about anything she can find. You can’t tell what color her walls are because paintings and wall hangings cover every space. Randomly, a row of egg cups are lined up on a ledge. Another corner may house a set of Santas. Even when it’s not Christmas. You may find it hard to sit in a chair, because a camel saddle could be propped up on it. Decorative plates? She’s got them. An actual fire hydrant (clearly no longer hooked up to water)? Check. A working model of an old-timey bicycle? Sure, although God knows why.

One thing I like about being an adult is that I don’t have to live with all of those things. So I don’t. Sometimes, I think I should add a vase or something to liven things up a little, though I’m reluctant to add anything that doesn’t provide value. Mostly these additions don’t last long.

It’s not that I have nothing beyond furniture. I recently brought back a painting from Paris. I have lots of books. Tons. The few others items I have mostly belonged to my grandparents — a Varga girl tin poster, a bell – things I keep around because they remind me of them. Which provide lots of useful value.

And, of course, I have that blue bowl shaped like a fish.

First, I need to point out that I am not great at gardening. Because I’m egotistical and vain, I’m pretty sure this isn’t because I couldn’t be good at gardening, but because I don’t have the patience and follow up it requires. I also don’t see the point of it. Or, more accurately, I find it to be similar to crafts, which I also am not good at for the same reasons.

Intellectually, I understand why others see the point of things like gardening and crafts: that they’re creating something; that it’s satisfying to build something unique; that all the effort pays off in the form of something beautiful. But on a practical level, it is, for me, just a lot of work and effort to end up with something that you could have easily purchased a better version of.

But then, those crafters and gardeners probably feel the same way about writing. Where’s the value in that, after all? What’s the point?

The extent to which I am interested in both gardening and crafts centers on usefulness. At least I know my limitations and don’t have lofty goals of creating quilts and elaborate gardens. Such plans would only end in heartbreak. And lots of dead plants.

All of that to say that I planted an herb garden over the weekend. Absent life direction, I figured I could at the very least, watch something else grow. An herb garden appeals to my practicality on several levels. It’s very small and contained, so the time and effort are minimal. The result is something useful: I can just walk over to my balcony when I’m cooking and snip off a few leaves. And for the most part, the herbs grow themselves.

If last year’s herb garden is any indication, here how things will go. I will only very occasionally water the plants. Primarily, this will happen when I am sitting on the balcony, drinking a glass of water and notice that the basil is fatally limping. So, I’ll share my glass of water with it. The basil will, therefore, be the first to go.

The hardier herbs (the rosemary, the oregano, the sage) will manage to grow despite my best efforts to kill them (in fact, those are still growing from last year, even though I have completely neglected them for at least nine months). I will, however, have no use for sage at any point, so it will exist solely so the cat has something to snack on when outside.

I added catnip this year, which has already been met with great approval. I am pretty sure I’ll have no need to keep it watered because it will be completely eaten by the end of the day.

I did make one addition this year: a small tree with purple flowers. It looks pretty against the blue of the water. It serves no practical purpose other than to remind me to find happiness in small things. So, maybe it’s the most practical plant of them all.

At the end of 2007, I wrote that the theme of that year had been bittersweet and I thought the theme of 2008 might be balance. Of course, it was not, unless you consider the utter lack of it to be a theme. As I read through the last year and a half worth of posts, I see a shape emerge. A struggle to let go of the past and move on. I know very well how important it is to keep moving, not to bring the past with you, except as lessons and friends.

But if I outline that shape I see in my writing, as though I were tracing the path of the stars I see through a foggy window, I see something else. That what I mistook for the past was really part of me. And you can’t run from yourself. You learn how to take it with you.

I was reading the other day about how environment is secondary happiness. If you’re in emotional turmoil, it’s dificult to be cheered up by a sunny day. And that’s the other shape I see, hidden behind the first. My attempt to find happiness in small things. A sleeping cat. The way the sun reflects on the water. Writing.

Maybe struggling so hard to leave myself behind is what has made me so tired. I think I’m going to take a break from that and rest now.

I keep trying things that don’t work. I guess that’s how life is, really. Either things work or they don’t. And there’s really no way to know. Except sometimes there is, of course.

How any of us can ever judge anyone else about anything is a mystery. Life is hard. We all are doing the best we can. But instead of empathizing, remembering that we have all been in these same places, we forget. And it makes us all more alone.

It’s easy to be confused by life. We’re walking around in tunnels of darkness. No way of knowing where the turns are. We know they exist, but how many? I try to anchor to the few things I know beyond question. I always thought that list would grow, but it only gets smaller. Who are these people who are so sure of everything around them and everything that will come? Or are those people just better at faking confidence?

As I grope along that dark tunnel, I feel the shape of something and I discover, it’s this, this is what life is about. But it’s fixed in place and I can’t bring it with me. We come into this world assuming life is fair. But it’s not as though anyone told us this was so, so we can’t be too outraged when we learn it’s not.

You read between the lines and fill in the white space. But between the words that are here is what I keep in my heart. Unchangeable, like gravity. Unsaid because it goes without saying. Like the sky is always watching over our lives.

So I walk around doing ordinary things. I talk to my friends. I go through airport screening. I take my plastic bag of liquids and place it in the bin. I answer my email. I go to the grocery store and stand in the aisle and decide which brand of bread to buy. I pay my bills. And I’m surrounded by the white space. Unspoken, edited out, but always there.

She said I should follow my heart, and that made me stop and think because mostly no one has told me that. And mostly I always figured that what I should do is not follow my heart, but instead to follow my head. After all, that would be the smart thing, the logical thing, and therefore the best thing. But then again, life isn’t logical or smart, so maybe that’s why following my head hasn’t seemed to work for me so far.

Not that anything is easy as all that. I’ve read enough of the old fairy tales to know that following your heart leads you down a twisty path, strewn with rocks and crumbling walls with no clear sign of where it might lead. There’s certainly no guarantee that it will lead to all your heart desires. But then again, following your head down a path away from your heart isn’t likely to lead to that either.

So what the hell, right?

My mind is full of unfinished things. We all like things wrapped up neatly, but some things just don’t have closure. Looking over this journal, for instance, I see I have 24 unfinished drafts. The oldest is from November 2004, the newest from yesterday. My life was very different in November 2004. I could not have imagined or planned how things have gone since then. Which is why I think it’s so ridiculous that I worry about my lack of solid planning, my complete inability to have any sense of goals past “don’t cry all the time”. Even if I had a 10 point plan of success with multi-columned roadmap, I’d still end up four years in a completely different place, with no way of knowing any of it right now.

I even knew that back then, as a draft entry in August 2005 says:

“I don’t know how to say it without sounding trite and Hallmark. But there are some things the songs and poems don’t tell you. Sure, we all know that when the road forks, we should take the less-traveled option, and the highway’s endless and then you die and all that. But what about when you’re driving the 5 to LA and you thought you were being all responsible by getting a tune up before the trip only the mechanic didn’t put everything back right and your spark plug pops out of wherever spark plugs are supposed to plugged in to and then you’re stranded on some offramp that is so far from anything there’s not even any signs that say how far to the next town? Or when you set out for Sacramento but you look up and you’re coming up on Reno. Or Budapest.

I don’t know where I got the idea that you planned your life and just followed the plan. Maybe I saw Dorothy following the yellow brick road too many times or heard that “life is a journey” crap. With a journey, you know where you’re going, even if you don’t know exactly what you’re encounter along the way. Life isn’t really like that at all.

Life is a series of seemingly random events, connected only in that you are the starring player in each of them.”

Reading through those unfinished 2004 entries is like reading about an entirely different person, someone I used to know and hang out with, but rarely see anymore. I remember all those things happening, but I can’t feel them anymore. Take for instance, the note from January 2004:

“My ex-husband invited me to lunch to tell me about his new girlfriend. You think of divorce as this specific thing, when really, it’s a chain reaction of events, taking months and years of your life. Last January, I was near the emotional end, but only the paperwork beginning.”

The entry from April 2004, however, reminds me of one of the reasons I was so hesitant so try Zoloft:

“I went off Effexor. It was one of the most horrible experiences of my life. I had gone on it the year before. My therapist thought it would help with anxiety during the stressfulness of the divorce. He didn’t mention the “discontinuation symptoms” you experience even with a tapered dosage. Six weeks of vertigo, emotional turmoil, brain shocks, crying, throwing up, insomnia. It hurt to move my eyes.

I talked to the doctor. He said that I should gradually decrease my dosage to avoid what the medical industry cleverly calls “discontinuation effects”. Apparently, what he actually meant was that if I went cold turkey, I would without question throw myself off a bridge. But if I stepped down gradually, I increased my chances of just considering it seriously. I got a doctor’s note and worked from home for two weeks.”

June of 2004 was when I both ended up in the ER for chest pain (that was diagnosed as chest wall sprain) and had my first (and hopefully only) night terror in which I woke up in the middle of the night screaming. But it was also the month in which I changed my last name to something meaningful. I still think of that as one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. Identity is important.

I have incomplete entries about both my mom and my stepdad that ramble on and on. I mostly don’t spend any time thinking about either of them anymore, and I think mostly I’m better for it. I do sometimes have that lonely wish for family, but you can’t make one out of what you have just because you want one. I might wish I had parents, but I never miss these particular parents.
I wrote one particularly rambling entry in March 2005 about my crazy ex-boyfriends. Like the one who joined the marines when I broke up with him to “show me” and the one who showed up at the same party as me after we broke up and handcuffed himself to the host’s bed and said he wouldn’t leave until I stopped talking to some other guy at the party and then finally, the host got him uncuffed and he was so drunk, he fell down the stairs as he was walking to his car, the guy I had been talking to drove him home. And then I dated that guy, who after I broke up with him, would drive five hours to my house just to sit outside of it.

By 2007, I was asking philosophical questions:

“Why is time sometimes out of order and why do sometimes things just fit like they’ve always been two halves of the same whole, just temporarily misplaced? Does the universe engage in foreshadowing or just in hindsight?”

Sadly, the entry trails thusly, “I know this if nothing else. If we believe in fate, in signs, in…” Now I’ll never know what it is that I know.

My existentialism continued when I read Eat, Pray, Love.

“I feel a lot of camaraderie with the author of eat, pray, love. I understand her absolute panic at the thought that one day we will die, we can’t stop it, it’s inevitable and my God, why are we just working and driving and sleeping in the meantime? And I understand how she feels when she says she doesn’t want to let go of control and I even get the idea that wanting so much to stop everything, to grab time with your hands and wind it tight like a string and not let it go, is just another way of trying to control something that’s impossible, impossible to control.

She describes our lives as standing on two horses — one under each foot. And both horses are galloping along at top speed and all we can do is hold on to the reins. One horse is fate and the other is free will. But I don’t know. It seems to me like we are riding fate and free will is how we decide to hold on for dear life or let go.

She tells of this dream where someone points at the waves and tells her to figure out how to stop them from happening. She tries everything she can and fashions seawalls and canals and dams, but nothing works. And finally, this person in her dram says to her as he points out toward the colossal, powerful, endless, rocking ocean. “Tell me, if you would be so kind — how exactly were you planning on stopping that.”

It seems to me her search for balance and all of her meditation only means she’s stoically accepting life, although maybe she’s right and maybe that’s the way to peace. And God knows I could use some peace, but everything inside me rebels this idea of stoic acceptance. A weakness, a failing? One of many I have, no doubt. But I’d rather experience life than accept it. Later in the book, someone says, “Whatever pain happens to us in the future, I accept it already, just for the pleasure of being with you now.” And that too I understand. That’s not stoic acceptance. That’s knowing that life is all we have and we don’t know the future, so all we can do is what we can.”

Of course, these memories are near enough that I feel them as well as remember them. Like my unfinished entry called “perspective” in which I said:

“I have these moments, that mostly only I see, where all I can see are my failings. And I forget that I’m not always that way and sometimes it takes that reflection through someone else to remember. There’s more to me than my failings. Some days are harder than others.”

That entry was followed by one in which I was going to list all the great things about myself. I only got as far as #1. I made pretty good cocktails.

It’s only fitting, I think, that I end with of more recent drafts, “and then”, which is just an unfinished quote from a song lyric:

“life’s like an hourglass, glued to the table, no one can find the rewind button now…”

I just remembered what’s worse than feeling like I’m not strong enough to make it on my own.

Crying all the time.

If I’m taking Zoloft only I know that I can’t cope. When everything makes me cry, everyone knows.

When I was in college, and had never received anything other than a glowing review at anything (other than that one time in private school when I got a spanking - a spanking! - for not taking the time to grade my math papers and just giving myself 100%), during my annual review, my manager said I needed to cry less. Sure, he said it in the sexist, this is a hardware store where men work and you are a small, small girl with crazy hormones and emotions and of course you’re going to cry all the time, but  seriously, act a little more like a guy if you’re going to work here, ok? But the point still holds.

Crying at work or during a regular adult conversation doesn’t help anyone. If you’re stressed or angry or upset or sad or lonely or overwhelmed or lost, you cry it out in private like a normal person. Or possibly in the presence of a girlfriend and wine, as long as you haven’t already cried in front of said girlfriend within the previous three months. Or you get a therapist.

After the “there’s no crying in building materials” incident, I made it my LIFE’S WORK to be tear-free. And if I had to cry at work, I did so in the bathroom like a normal person.Years went by and I managed to keep the tears to a minimum. They’ve started up in full force over the last few years though, like I’ve gone back to adolescence, like those years of anti-tear training didn’t exist.

I’m back to crying when I’m angry, or sad, or stressed, or overwhelmed, or when the phone rings or when the sky’s blue. Although milk spilling doesn’t phase me.

I don’t like wearing my emotions so visibly, to be so vulnerable as to let everyone know exactly how I’m feeling. I want to be able to reveal my innermost feelings only to those I choose. Not to the cashier at the drugstore. And I want my rational brain, that knows some things aren’t worth spending time thinking about, much less crying over, to knock some sense into my runaway tear ducts that apparently are taking a vacation from rational thought.

So, drugs it is then. Because I’d like to wear mascara again some day.

1. They put cucumbers on their burgers instead of pickles.
2. You can have one packet of ketchup or one packet of mayo for your fries. You can have one of each for an extra charge.
3. Happy meals have chocolate milk in them.
4. A cup of water is carbonated.
5. A “bottle” of water is in a soft plastic package similar to a juice pack. It’s also carbonated.
6. You can only order meals, complete with a side and a drink, not individual items. Meals are around $9.
7. You can order waffle fries. But only with one packet of ketchup or one packet of mayo.
8. As with all other restaurants in Berlin, you can sit outside under sun umbrellas and smoke for hours. The difference is these umbrellas have “McCafe” written on them.
9. Competition appears to be primarily from Pizza Hut and KFC. Also with their own versions of McCafes.

Bonus McDonald’s fact: In Slovenia, all the cafe umbrellas say “I’m loving it” on them. As though they had extra from the U.S. and couldn’t be bothered to print any in Slovene. I don’t know if they also put cucumbers on their burgers.

I want to think that I don’t need a chemical substance to maintain my sanity. I want to believe that I am enough, on my own. That’s I’m strong enough, and independent enough, and smart enough, and emotionally capable enough to handle life. And maybe I’m not.

I think: but I used to be able to handle life — to thrive even. I was successful and accomplished things and didn’t feel so overwhelmed with the world that all I could do was cry. What happened to me? What’s wrong with me?

Sure, I have too much work and not enough sleep and no sense of the future, but I’ve always had too much work and not enough sleep and my sense of the future has been way more fucked in times past than now. I suppose, looking back, I’ve gone through other periods of being unable to move, unable to do anything but cry. Maybe they don’t seem so bad because I’ve gotten past them. And I can’t seem to get past this.

My doctor said maybe my body chemistry has changed as I’ve gotten older so I respond to things differently. Maybe the supposed harmless growth on my uterus is fucking with my hormone levels. Maybe things have always been this way.

I only know that I was feeling so incredibly paralyzed from the crushing weight of the world that I just couldn’t function. And then with Zoloft, I could. That’s a good thing, right? Why does it matter how I can function as long as I can?

Well, for one thing, there’s that whole, what’s wrong with me, why can’t I be strong on my own thing? And then there’s the fear that the Zoloft would take away some part of me that makes me me. And maybe not having such a heightened sense of stress would mean that I wouldn’t do as good of a job. That I would be satisified with mediocrity, with averageness. And that no one would think anything good about me anymore.

In any case, I managed to accidentally leave behind the Zoloft on my recent trip and after 10 days without it, I figured maybe I didn’t need it anymore. Only tonight, there I was again, feeling hopeless that I would ever figure out my life, feeling pointless, taking it out on people who don’t deserve it.

My doctor said I should think of taking Zoloft the same way one might take cold medicine or heart medicine. And while I think that way about anyone else who is on anti-anxiety medication or anti-depressants, I don’t think that way about myself. I just want to be me. And for that to be enough.