"prepare for a series of comfortable miracles"

she looked like an employee from American Eagle restocking merchandise, but she was just sifting through my collection of wrestling shirts to wear to her and her brother's first ever WWE event.  her brother had gotten tickets to a wrestling house show for his birthday, which thanks to his invite ultimately ended up being a gift for me as well.  as he patiently waited for his sister to select a shirt from the array of merchandise that i toted from Manhattan to Allentown, i realized that my interest in the WWE is teetering on obsession. 

the more I apply it to real life, the more I realize that teetering is a generous verb.

one of my favorite wrestling terms is "kayfabe."  Kayfabe is basically the suspension of disbelief, or the ability to make a fictional scenario feel real. it's how well the wrestling world tinkers with/plays within the rules of the imaginary world that we're buying into. it's largely determined by a performer's ability to commit to his/her character, regardless of whether he is the "good guy" (face) or "bad guy" (heel).  even if he/she is getting kicked in the face.  for kayfabe to really show up, the characters involved have to fully uphold their beliefs, and not acknowledge whether they are applying them for "good" or for "bad."  they simply have to be them.

in a world where consequences and rewards are scripted and beliefs are laid out on a storyboard, it's still a very finicky concept to master.  in life, where character is formed, not written, and contexts are inevitable, and not predetermined, it gets even trickier.

WWE fans, marks, and haters alike are hungry to uphold kayfabe.  we want who we are and the roles that we play to be so clearly defined that we can articulate it--even boast about it--on a microphone to thousands of people, and we want to be proud of it.  we want our every and every move to be such a genuine and direct link to our character that they dismiss our need to maintain appearances and thwart inescapable looming judgements.  we want to be unaffected by whether our outcomes make us the "good guy" or the "bad guy."  we want to acknowledge that our greatest strengths and weaknesses make us vulnerable to either, but that we don't care.  we want our decisions to be born in a vacuum, and to never doubt whether or not our reactions are aligned with our character.  we want to be this unchained from hesitation, reluctance, fear, and distrust in ourselves. we want to be this certain; this connected to who we are.  we love self-discovery, but we really love the security in a script.

there's something that has always floated in the cloud of my own character. it's been coming to fruition with more and more clarity. 

relentless devotion.

i know 25 is a bit young to be feeling my mortality, so i hope this isn't as grim as it sounds, but we don't have a lot of time here.  we're blessed with this one life (that we know of) and we get one chance at it.  i'm young, but i have a lot of yesterdays in my rearview, and i know it's important to make plans, but the future is only a conversation. we only really have now.

so, i've decided that if i could define my kayfabe with anything, it would be to authentically approach every layer of my life as if it's vocational.  this is my oath to myself.  i know injecting this much zeal into my daily life, and up-keeping the areas it's already present in will be exhausting, but i also know that it makes possibilities infinite and dreams operational.  it also makes the huge volume of these desires less daunting and more opportunistic and achievable. commanding this perception makes me unmesswithable.  there isn't a lot that i can't control, but i know that if i grip what i can control with unwavering ferocity, the uncharted will fall into place or render itself inconsequential.

i will be a machine of victory, and my losses will come without regret.  nobody will defeat me because they are better, faster, stronger, more passionate, more dedicated, or more committed than i am.

to me, it'll just be luck, and luck is for losers anyway.

-k

"i can draw a line between, who i am and what i've seen"

...but it's still just as dark at night.
                                   -Bryan Fenkart, My Prayer

the other day i denied the dreaded "facebook friend request" from an ex-whatever, who for far too long was The Guy I Couldn't Get Over.  just over a year ago, i received the same request from the same Guy I Couldn't Get Over, and  a rare moment of strength spiked like an irregular heartbeat over my steady pulse of weakness for him, and i denied him then as well.

but a year ago, for whatever reason, i felt compelled to relieve him of whatever guilt he was carrying around, even though these attempts were and are born out of manipulation and mind games rather than his genuine interest in my clever status updates and WWE YouTube links. 

or maybe it is genuine.  but our virtual friendship was just a toxic crack into our immature, nonexistent real life relationship, maintaining our affinity for unhealthy habits we excuse away with the stupidity of our twenty somethings, not knowing how to navigate the uncharted Age of Technology--an age which betrayed me by unblocking him when I switched to Facebook's "Timeline" format.

regardless of virtual profiles and ethermessages, he's mostly likely reaching out to me in an attempt, consciously or subconsciously, to sabotage his relationship with his current girlfriend, who he already cheats on, so that he can drown in the deep end of the pain inflicted by his broken engagement.  and with a painful goodbye to an innocent girl who caught on too late, he will wonder why oh why he took the dive in the first place.  there was a time when I was sympathetic to this once, and for far too long, but this pain manifested itself into brief spurts of torture victimizing me and whatever cute girl may have caught his attention in his Hoboken shithome pub. my threshold has far been broken.

despite my thorough and most likely upsettingly accurate analysis of his current state, based on our 0 interactions in the past year, it is no longer my concern.   i'm done listening to whispers of his heart on his sleeve; of pretending our surface flirtations haven't seen far deeper realities; of challenging him to be a better man at the sacrifice of myself.

so, the girl that just a year ago was apologizing for her inability to resist him and wistfully singing along every Dave Matthews that my iTunes seemingly not-so-randomly shuffled now blares Lelia Broussard's finest tunes (Masquerade, Something True, You're Not Fooling Anyone), with a confident strut into her new life, no longer looking back at the guy who needed his fix and little girl who once supplied him.  the needle no longer stabs both ways, feeding my veins with poison disguised as love's complications.  my blood pumps only with positivity and strength.  he wears wounds older than my scars, picking at them with sharpened nails of nostalgia and what could have been.

the girl who was once pathetic over The Guy now finds The Guy...well, pathetic.

i'd never seen him as pathetic before, and though this term seems harsh, i mean it with it's definition, not condescension, though allowing myself the anger i deserve is cathartic.  looking at all experiences through the filters of who you've grown into reveal so much about the decisions that you made in the past.  they can color in silver linings and true colors, and even if they clash, the wisdom gained is it's own value.

i don't want to be with someone who chooses suffering over healing, who creates their own pain through mistakes that they know they are making, who won't address his Achilles heel, and creates his own tennis elbow.  it once felt so stubbornly right, and now i could not be convinced there is anything more wrong (okay, maybe like evil dictators and felons and stuff).  and for so long i thought the pieces would fit if i could just smooth out what was rough around my edges.

it's important to reexamine keystones of our lives when we can do so with understanding and compassion for who we were and shed the masochism that comes what was once such a defining pain.

Facebook is just tomorrow's MySpace anyway.  (please go like this on Facebook).

-k.

i thought it would be different the second or third time around...

"...but everything's exactly in it's place, and i'm the only thing that's changed, i'm not the same"
                    -Lelia Broussard, Something True

i ate peanutbutter and jelly sandwiches at many Thanksgiving dinners when i was younger.  i refused to try turkey. or vegetables. or hamburgers.  or seafood.  or any food that might have a texture.  or any food that wasn't on an unhealthy American menu and outside of my bagel-pasta-occasional-ballpark-hot-dog comfort zone.  i threw monumental temper tantrums as a blue-eyed toddler with angelic blonde hair but seemingly demonic intentions.  i had a lethal stubbornness that explains why i have no younger siblings.

my mom is a healthy individual, but it came to nobody's surprise that she nearly had a heart attack when i asked her to pass the broccoli at a family dinner on a college break.  a cafeteria aimed at feeding the masses (rated on par with most jails--true story) forces you into trying new things.  sometimes, those things are healthy.  my stubborn attitude had to give.

maybe it's an innate characteristic i was born with.  maybe my parents' ability to cultivate an independent child crossed the line.  maybe it's because i'm a Taurus and the stars made me this way, mannn.  but i'm REALLY stubborn.  sometimes, this is a good thing, if you stand strong in your beliefs and won't back down like Tom Petty and won't take anyone else's crap.  usually, we refer to being stubborn in these context as "strong-willed" because it sounds nicer.

sometimes i'm strong-willed.  sometimes, i'm such an infuriating, bullheaded pain in the butt that my stubbornness interferes me and my relationship with others.  lately it's robbed me of my ability to trust that everything is unfolding as if should; that those who are in and those who are out of my life belong there, respectively and currently; that i am where i'm meant to be, how i'm meant to, and that why i am makes sense on some level to someone or something somewhere, even if it doesn't quite make sense to me.  i'm not a religious person, but i do have faith.

i became obsessed with South Park a while ago and their ability to transition from fart jokes into brilliant political satire.  i started YouTubing interviews with Trey Parker and Matt Stone, the show's creators.  they comically criticize all religions (and EVERYTHING else), leading many to ask, including this particular reporter, if they are atheists. Trey Parker responded by saying he thinks the most ridiculous belief is that the whole world happened "just 'cause" and that he "believes something is going on that we don't know about, and that's as far as i can go."  this simplistic glimpse into a satirical cartoonist's religious beliefs resonated with me, and i take it with me wherever i go.  i don't know if that "something going on" is one God, multiple Gods, or is even called God, or is male or female or has a gender, or is "the Universe" or is actually a broomstick.  i do know when my stubbornness results in my straying from trusting whatever "it" is, i find myself a little lost in a sea of doubt, bobbing thru waves of questions and confusion.  the water calms when i surrender; when i forfeit control and throw the reigns over to that "something."  it is then i focus with the sharpest clarity, the kind of clarity you can't pay for and you can only earn and achieve.  i focus on the right things--on self, and what is in my control. it is then i stop hovering on the cusp of kicking life's ass, and just go and kick it's ass.

i know this. i've learned this. i've learned this again (and again).  i live with the definition and walking proof of this.  it's in my head and it's in my heart but i guess it isn't always present.  not only have i been too stubborn of late to change my lack of trust in whatever is greater, but i've been to stubborn to even see that i'm not doing so.  but the recognition of this is always a sobering self realization, and change will follow.  maybe my stubbornness is in a metamorphosis. or maybe it's just in my twelfth house by way of the Taurus.

-k.