We’re nearly halfway through November, and this means two things: Starbucks is my haven of happiness and I’m getting wicked excited for the season of carols and perfectly wrapped presents and seeing Zoë’s eyes the size of cake pedestals every time we pass a business as zany as I am with the Christmas spirit already.
Well, one more thing: I’m barely sleeping as another manic swing is starting.
Starbucks. How I love that place after November’s start. The red cups, the wishes of joy and hope, the seasonal offerings. Give me a peppermint brownie and I’ll consider licking you. Put some eggnog in my usual chai tea latte and I’ll swirl my tongue around your mouth a few times.
Or, you know, pay you $4.15. Either way.
My fondness for tall, reduced-fat eggnog chai lattés knows no bounds. They’re never bad. It’s always fanfuckingtastic in that Meg Ryan Sleepless in Seattle When Harry Met Sally way, except it’s totally not faked. But is just as loud. And prone to producing writhing. And staring. Because of the writhing, you know? Occasionally, there might be second degree burns, too. Again, because of the writhing.
So, when people ask me what’s so great about them because they’ve never tried one, like your grandmother with the forcing of the eating and the ‘you’re so skinny‘, I hand it over and demand they try it. As they take the first tentative taste, I say, “it tastes like Christmas” with a glee-filled smile.
They, of course, become an immediate convert – and assume that I’m smiling so much because I’m just so gosh darned excited about the holiday. But it goes but deeper than that. Gutter-deep.
Because when I say out loud “it tastes like Christmas,” I’m really thinking – inside my brains – “it tastes like Santa.”
And if that didn’t immediately make you mentally compare frothy eggnog to certain body fluids, I should jump right over the line by adding that I have a hunch Mrs. Clause swallows.
I put it all out here on this screen, some times to the behest of readers or the people I’ve chosen to write about. Negating Zoë’s future embarrassment over being described in such vivid (and often unflattering) detail, my father’s beratings, or The Ex’s frequent mentions in terms of his fuckingupedness, there’s been other real life characters included in these ramblings who, I think, would prefer to not be under Internet microscope.
But because of how I grew up, how many times I lied to child protective services, or withheld information about the agents and associated staff I worked with during my short modelling career, the fact that nearly every single person who knew me didn’t know what powders I was snorting and cooking up in my early teens and what I was chugging in the late ones, I’ve taken the opposite approach for the past few years.
Now, I rarely, if ever lie. I can’t do it without feeling as though another piece of my soul is being bitten off, you know?
I have my personal policy about not lying to Zoë for that reason, but also because I don’t want her to come to a point in her life where she feels as though she can’t trust me or I didn’t respect her enough to be honest. I don’t want this kid waking up and saying, “You lied to me about A through J, and now, I don’t know if K is true or if you just think I’m too dumb, naive or immature to handle the truth.”
Plus, you know, there’s factors like a) when you’re always honest with people and they come to expect it from you, they tend to return the gesture, and b) if you spend your moments being upfront about everything, whether good, bad, ugly or completely batshit crazy, people should, in theory, rarely be surprised or confused when something organically you comes about.
Even if it is completely batshit crazy.
I think NBC would call this ‘the more you know’ campaign. I just consider it a respect thing: for you, the people I care about, myself.
However, a tiny offshoot of reasoning also falls within the don’t give a shit spectrum, because to this girl who is just starting to learn how to feel and process things and what expectations might be right and which are often constructed out of isms, everything, every piece of information, is just as equal. (Now you know why they were considering a sociopathic diagnosis for some time when I was younger. Wait, you watch Dexter, right?)
I could tell you that my first sort of boyfriend died of an overdose and it was a little bit my fault and it would be as hard for me to say as explaining my new-found love for baking soda, or tell you about the time that I slept with two guys in the same day, even though I didn’t want to sleep with either of them, or describe my lack of relationship with the mom who was gone for most of my life.
I’m so practiced at what I should be portraying and not what I may have inside, you see, that it’s not the telling that’s the issue, it’s the perception of whether people will like me more or less or judge me monstrous afterward that determines how I tell what.
All of this lead in is to say one simple thing.
I tell you everything, blog reader. Except now, there’s something I’m not.
I’m holding my cards close to my chest, not letting you know if there’s a full house or bupkis for the simple reason that I want to not exploit something. It’s not that new, this unexplainable, and for that, I’m kind of sad because I sure could’ve used the ventilation of energy about it for a while.
But instead, I’m going to keep my damn mouth shut and nourish this secrecy. Because really? This kind of covertness seems a bit unique, inside of me, and not at all wrong, for once.
