Hard To Swallow

It's true: One of my favorite books is now a movie. Click the quote to view the trailer for Choke.

"Those who remember the past tend to get the story really screwed up."

Sky High Expectations Take You To The Lowest Lows

I'm sure it has been made quite obvious by now that I am located in Southern California. Though I wasn't born here (the state of Texas possesses that honor), I was raised here. All over Southern California. Weekends in Santa Barbara, Saturday nights in Santa Monica, etc. You know the rest.  You're aware then, I'm sure, that Southern California is home to the city that bore impossible standards of beauty: Los Angeles, or more appropriately Hollywood. The reason I mention this is that the standards of beauty I've grown up with are almost impossible. Here we are, the young women of Generation Y and unlike the women before us whose mothers burned their bras and would die before applying a stitch of mascara, our mothers had blush painted up to their hair lines and lip gloss in big sticks applied like Magic Markers. Where does that leave us? Trying to look as naturally beautiful as possible with the help of all conceivable products available at the nearest Sephora. Long black eyelashes, fleshy pink lips, and most importantly a glowing complexion that is tan tan tan. What makes this an opportune time to reach a very low low? Well, while trying to achieve a tan one can encounter any number of problems: 

1. Skin like leather in ten years or less. 

2. Cancer. Enough said.

3. Sunburns that hurt worse than scalding hot water. 

Side effect number three is the affliction from which I am currently suffering. In fact, I think maybe "suffering" may be too tame a word for what I'm going through. My skin is hot pink and feels as though it is being simultaneously stretched out and stabbed with needles. Here I am slathering myself with Aloe and Cocoa Butter thinking "if only I could achieve normality again."  My skin is screaming at me "Why? WHY? Why!?" and I wish I had an intelligent answer for it, but the best I can do is shrug (even if it does cause a momentous amount of pain to do so) and say...

That's California, baby.

This is not a "Love" blog

I'm the kind of person that is bothered by the monotony of entries that are purely for the sake of whining about love lives. That being said, I've been pondering about my romantic future for a while now. Not in the way that some might think. The whole "Will I wind up alone?" question doesn't usually occur to me because I'm not worried about it. The thing that worries me is that I may not actually find the person that is really right for me. Some people settle. Scratch that... most people settle. In my case, the idea of finding someone who is completely right for me is pretty unlikely. This statement isn't meant to stroke my ego in any way. It's just the opposite. The thing is, I am a completely unique individual. I've never met anyone like myself and to be completely frank, that scares the shit out of me. What scares me, more specifically, is that I'm not going to be able to find someone that understands me because I don't understand myself sometimes. It's like trying to put a puzzle together. Here it is, this piece that you've found under the sofa. It's this little bit of blue and it could fit into several different puzzles maybe, but when you try to put it together it's not quite right. What I'm ultimately afraid of is that there is no puzzle. No fit for me. I'm just going to be this piece that is awkwardly forced into this place where I really don't belong.