Don’t Call it a Comeback
So I’m going to do that hipster thing that hipsters do when they are trying to be hip and meaningful and somehow ascribe prophetic attributes to their IPods. This is my random play list for today:
Ingrid Michaelson – Breakable
Have you ever thought about/ what protects our hearts /just a cage of rib bones/ and other various parts/ so it’s fairly simple/ to cut right through the mess/ and to stop the muscle/ that makes us confess/ and we are so fragile/ and our cracking bones make noise/and we are just breakable, breakable, breakable girls and boys.
Elvis Presley – Suspicious Minds
We’re caught in a trap/ I can’t walk out/ Because I love you too much Baby.
I believe my IPod is focusing on the obnoxious and entirely pointless fight my husband and I had last night. Actually, we’ve been having those kinds of fights every night for the last million billion nights. Something about how I think he’s disrespecting my parents, and then something else about how all I do is nitpick at him and make him feel bad and then something else about how that’s fine but he’s still disrespecting my parents and then something final about how he should obviously move into the closet and NEVERSPEAK AGAIN.
Next song: Interpol – Evil
Nice.
I guess I should start from the beginning which would be the part where we were all in love and having lots and lots of sex and then we decided to get married. Why wouldn’t you want to spend the rest of your life with someone who you definitely wanted to spend the entire afternoon rolling around naked with? Why wouldn’t you think it was a good idea to continually (until death do you part) fuck yourself into a stupor of bed head and “man I could use some pizza because we haven’t eaten all day!”
And then we moved to Sacramento, which (for those who live in Sacramento and actually enjoy it, forgive me) is the hell-mouth of Central California. It quite literally sucked the life from me in the form of a job that was stressful and dramatic and dysfunctional and icky. It was an icky job in an icky city that didn’t even have a Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf.
Next song: Lauryn Hill- Ex Factor.
Cute.
It could all be so simple/but you’d rather make it hard. /Loving you is like a battle/and we both end up with scars.
And then we had a baby. Granted she was perfect and wonderful and amazing. Granted for a while it made us both proud of something that had come out of our time together. In her brown eyes and button nose and crazy kinky hair was the both of us. Look at what we did… together.
But babies require change and malieability and we both kind of liked the way it was and were unsure of how to change who we were to become who we “should be.”
No matter how I think we grow/ you always seem to let me know/ it ain’t working.
And we lived in the hell-mouth. And he was working all the time and I was taking care of a baby all the time and not washing my hair. And we had just enough money and a house with a backyard that we hated to mow. So I went back to work and Baby was left in the hands of a nanny and her father who was busy working and playing games on the internet that he “deserved” to play because he worked so much. And then I got fired.
Next song: Elvis (again) – Don’t Be Cruel
Okay, I didn’t get fired. They were very careful to explain to me that they weren’t firing me so much as “no longer continuing with my probationary period.” And standing in that stupid office that overlooked the stupid road on the way to the Capitol Building I just wanted to scream “wait I minute, I hate it here. I was just on the computer applying for a DIFFERENT JOB” but instead I said something about how I’d tried really hard and couldn’t believe… it was all for nothing.
Again with the Lauryn Hill – When It Hurts So Bad (why’s it feel so good?)
The fear set in during the car ride home, because they escorted me out of the building and I had nothing with me but my purse and needed to schedule a time to come back to get my damn stuff. In the car on the way home I thought about my Husband, I thought about our family, I thought about money and wants and needs and how worried he would be and how he had just stopped working so much so that he could spend more time with us. I thought about how he had to write a report when he was supposed to pick us up from the hospital after Baby was born; how he didn’t come to get us. I thought about how he was stressed and tired and that made him mean and terse. I thought about the last time we were both really, truly happy and that was back when we lived in San Diego and we were having lots of sex and going to the beach all the time. I thought about his stupid beach shack apartment with the crappy carpeting and the air mattress and how nice it was to wake up there.
Jack Johnson – Times Like These
In times like these/ in times like those/ what will be will be/ and so it goes
Jack Johnson actually does remind me a lot of my twenties and San Diego. The way I would sit at this outdoor restaurant with a bottle of wine and my friends and we would talk about all the somedays and onedays and pretty soons.
“Pretty soon we’ll have babies and husbands and crap like that and then we’ll all be boring.”
At the end of this song Jack Johnson says that he knows it’ll never be the same, somehow he just knows it’ll never be the same. Whatever Jack, file that under things you should have called and warned me about.
The Cure (a nice addition to the pot, considering they are all about thinky love songs) – Lovesong
San Diego represented my youth, but not the crappy youth where everyone was telling me what to do or the even crappier youth where they were telling me I was an adult but still telling me what to do. San Diego was when I moved into my own apartment, when I spent days walking through museums and nights at bars and restaurants and open mike nights, and then weekends at coffee shops and brunch. San Diego was five hours away from Las Vegas and two minutes from the beach. San Diego was that place that people couldn’t believe I actually lived in. “Oh my goodness, you LIVE there?”
Yeah, I do.
“I wish I could live there.”
I do too.
Coldplay – Talk (Apparently it’s the “Bonus Video Version” but I am not cool enough to have an IPhone nor a video IPod so it’s just the song. No Chris Martin for me today.)
San Diego was where I first got my hair highlighted and where I bought crazy platform shoes. San Diego was all sunshine and roses. San Diego is where I met my husband. San Diego is where we fell in love.
So you take a picture of something you see/In the future where will I be/You can climb a ladder up to the sun/ Or write a song nobody had sung/ or Two/ something that’s never been done
Going back made sense then right? Going back to all of that made sense. Leaving what we had become, suburban dwelling, house cleaning, garage parking, lawn mowing, husband and wife and going back to what we could have been.
I made a plan and set a time line and had some phone interviews and started packing.
Frou Frou – Let Go (from that summer when the Garden State Soundtrack was everyone’s life soundtrack)
Let go/Let go/ Jump In/ What you waiting for?/ It’s alright/cause there’s beauty in the breakdown
Husband, for lack of a better phrase, came along for the ride. Right before we were set to leave he brought something up about how it was probably a really bad idea to move with me not having a job, and us having no savings and him having no idea how his work would pan out in Southern California.
It’s alright/ because there’s beauty in the breakdown.
He suggested we wait to make any big changes.
Fiona Apple – Sleep to Dream
And this is where everything goes sour.
I tell you how I feel but you don’t care.
Because I was ready to move.
I say tell me the truth but you don’t dare.
Now.
You say love is a hell you can not bare.
And it would never be the right time or the perfect time or the best time. When you live you just live, when you do, you just do. We could spend the rest of our lives planning to try something new, we could spend the rest of our lives waiting for the “right” time.
And I say give me mine back and then go there for all I care.
We can do it if we really want to.
I got my feet on the ground and I don’t go to sleep to dream/ You got your head in the clouds you’re not at all what you seem/ this mind, this voice and this body cannot be stifiled by your deviant ways…
I’m willing to do what it takes to make it work. I’m willing to make it happen. I’m willing to sacrifice stuff and things and spend our poor ass days at the beach. I can make it happen, it’s what I do. I make things happen. And we can go back to this perfect place, and I’ll start brushing my hair again.
Piano breakdown.
At the time I could not comprehend the abyss of depression that I’d allowed to run my brain. I could not understand how far I was building up this action/ this city in preparation for the downfall. I saw nothing but blue skies and long walks and girls in short skirts and guys in board shorts. I can still close my eyes and see a perfect San Diego Day. I can see the Pier in Pacific Beach, the Tower 21 Restaurant with the waterfall fountain, the slow motion skater guy, the mound of sand next to the lifeguard station, the guy who goes to the beach every day and sets up the same radio, surfboard, chair, canopy station.
I wanted my daughter to see her parents laughing again. I wanted her to embrace sunny days and warm nights. I wanted her to eat tacos at midnight and Mission Potatoes on Sunday mornings.
It’s Britney Bitch. She sees me and she just wants to dance with me. (Tee hee)
Britney Spears – Gimme More
And guess what, San Diego was all of those things. The picture Husband sent me as he drove in (because I was flying down with Baby) was of the palm trees near down town. “Welcome Home” he wrote.
Gimme gimme more (More!)
There were dinners with friends, sunsets with strangers, comments from people about how they hardly ever see young couples with babies in Pacific Beach. Color in my cheeks, a baby with tan feet, a husband who would run out to grab dinner from just down the street.
Gimme, gimme, gimme, gimme, gimme… /You’re gonna have to remove me cause I ain’t going no where.
Baby learned to crawl there. She learned to wave bye bye there. Husband and I held hands a lot.
Jack Johnson – Wasting Time
I’m a just a waste of her energy/ and she’s just a waste of my time/ so why don’t we get together and we could waste everything tonight/ and we could waste it all tonight
Granted, the reality hit us pretty quickly, like living in a second floor apartment with a baby that was learning to crawl or having only one bedroom and a tiny living room. It was two blocks from the beach but it was in PB which was filled with loud, drunk people on any given night. And the money was tight. Then the money was non existent. Then the money was a problem.
They say money is one of the major reasons why people get divorce, up there with infidelity even.
Loves just a waste of our energy/ and this lifes just a waste of our time
But Husband handled the lot of it pretty well. Here I had to file for bankruptcy and I had a job that barely paid for the rent and we were behind on our utility bills and were borrowing money to pay for necessities like diapers. This he was okay with, but he was not okay with me.
Maroon 5- Makes Me Wonder
Because this was all my fault. He couldn’t find work in a job that was stable when we lived in the Hell-mouth. He couldn’t support or be a supporting member of the family. He was at home with the baby but couldn’t go out and do anything fun.
I still don’t have a reason/ and you don’t have the time/ and it really makes me wonder if I ever gave a fuck about you
We had a life and I wasn’t happy with it. We had a life that he worked tirelessly to give to me and I threw it all away. We had a life that made sense and worked “just fine” and I packed up that life and put most of it into storage so that we could fit into a one bedroom apartment (two blocks from the beach).
Give me something to believe in/ cause I don’t’ believe in you any more, any more/ I wonder if it even makes a difference to try/ so this is goodbye
The whole situation was fucked. From the scraping change together to buy burritos at Taco Bell to the charity donations of Pizza from my friends to the constant and never ending repeated mantra of I told you we should have waited. I told you we should have had a plan.
Fucked. Everything was fucked, fucked, fucked.
I recall this conversation with him that went something like this:
Me: I understand you can’t get work right now in (your chosen field) but if you could just get something, I think that I could make a little money with some consulting stuff and then we’d barely scrape buy. If you could just make enough to pay your half of the rent it would be such a help.”
Him: Yeah, I guess I could just go work at Taco Bell. I guess you’d have me do that. It’s not my fault I can’t get work (in my chosen profession). It’s down here. I knew it would be like this down here. I told you we should have waited. I told you we should have had a plan.
But my plan was simple and clear and made perfect sense (to me). We move, we live, we love, we make it work. We Tim Gunn it, we drape that garbage bag over our model and we send her out on the runway even if she looks like shit and we say proudly that our vision was realized and we make it work.
This plan requires hard work, guts, guile, determination and hyperventilation. This plan means that (for now) we have to want it enough that the heavens open up and tell us to shut the hell up, they are listening, they hear us, yes, we get it, this is what you want.
Me: Isn’t this what you want? ISN’T THIS WHAT YOU WANT?
I’ve been here before/ One day I wake up and it won’t hurt anymore/ you caught me in a lie/
I have no alibi/ The words you say know how to make me cry.
Him: I don’t know what I want. I can’t even provide for my family. I can’t even give you money to provide for you and our daughter.
Bush- Glycerine
When he broke down crying in the living room I knew it was over, this dream…
Don’t let the days go by/ Could have been easier on you/ I couldn’t change though I wanted to
So I called my Mom.
Don’t let the days go by…
“Mom, I think we need to pack everything up and move home. I think I have to get out of my lease, pay the extra months rent, give notice at work and come home. I think I need your help. I don’t know the plan yet but I’ll need your help because we can’t afford to move but I think we have to move. Maybe if we just move home for a little while we can work through some of these things and start again. And then we’ll see, but for right now, if it’s okay, I’d like to come home.”
Megan McCauley – Porcelain Doll
Our last night in San Diego I was standing in our empty bedroom staring at the holes in the paper thin walls wondering why I never got around to putting pictures in the frames but still hung the frames up. The frame with the word “Love” scribbled across it still had some random black and white happy couple on the beach, the waves rushing up behind them. The creation of a home with fake pictures...
Poof.
Why am I not numb to this / Why can’t I let it all outside my mind / Don’t let me sit here collecting dust / but please be careful, please be kind
And now we live with my parents. We have two rooms in the house I grew up in. We have cars outside the lawn I ran threw sprinklers on. My daughter crawls down the steps I used to sit on and talk to my little brother while he was playing Nintendo. And Husband has a job and I have a job (that I actually like) and Baby spends her days with her cousins and grandparents and she is happy.
Lauryn Hill- Tell Him
Let me be patient/ Let me be kind/ Make me unselfish cause I’ll be blind/ Though I may suffer
I’ll envy it not/ And endure what comes/ Cause he’s all that I got
I’d like to say we’re at the start of something great. I’d like to say that the last chapter ended with a bang, but it was just the start. I’d like to say that the triumphiant daughter with the graduate degree and the crazy stories about the big city comes back and leaves even more triumphiant then she was before, but I don’t know.
Living with your In-Laws is hard and Husband does it every day. A one year old Baby is hard and requires a lot of movement and motion. Family drama is constant and should mostly be taken with a grain of salt. Finances take extra time. Life sometimes overwhelms.
The title of this story isn’t “The Spectacular Fall of a Girl who Should Have Known Better” (unless it is and nobody told me).
But the current title of the story seems to be “The Spectacular Learning Curve for a Girl who Thought She Knew Better.”
And Husband…
Dramarama – Anything, Anything
Enough said.
So where does that put us? Someplace where we’re starting the big set up for a fantastic comeback. Where one day we’ll look back and tell stories about the time when we were poor, couldn’t find a place to live, declaring bankruptcy, living with the parents and people won’t really believe it. They’ll think we made it up because it sounds better when you accept an Oscar/Emmy/Nobel Prize.
I don’t know how the story ends, but I’m quite positive it’s an inspirational tale rather than a warning fable type story. I’m pretty sure the ending goes something like “and yes, Oprah, I guess you could call it a comeback.” (Because she’s Oprah and can call it anything she wants.)
Something like that.
I hope.
Iron & Winte – Such Great Heights (Oh Golden State Soundtrack, how you move me).
They will see us waving from such great heights/ Come down now, they’ll say / But everything looks perfect from far away / Come down now / But we’ll stay…
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