My Life in Retail in a Nut Shell

It is astounding how negativity can spread like a virus. What is more astounding is how the small things can make or break a good day. So when I was ringing up a woman at work today, I really wasn't expecting my day to go sour when I asked for a photo ID to verify her signature. When she showed me her Costco card (that has a photo but no signature), I asked again for something with a signature. For some reason, other than the fact that her hands were full of Tiki torches (by the way, I offered to take those from her so she could root through her wallet for the ID), she flew up in a rage. She demanded her receipt, looked at my name tag for my identity, and told me with all a manner of vitriol and spite what "fabulous customer service" I had provided. On a side note, this was all in front of her seemingly eleven-year-old daughter. After hearing a profuse apology from the woman behind her, my co-worker rushed to my register, asking if I was okay. Apparently, the harpy had gone to returns to vent to my cohorts, saying "Just so you know, the cashier, Ellie, is a bitch." Obviously, being the big weenie that I am, I started crying and banished myself to the bathroom for ten minutes. The big question is: what kind of person take their anger out on someone they don't even know?

First World, First Pain

A song in my head, bluebells and twittering sparrows, and
my day is, so assuredly, sunshine, golden and warm.
Free from the nettles and spew of bitter times is my feather-heart.

But you seek to usurp my pedestal.
Acetone and tar, you blacken and corrode.
All this for your petty first-world needs.

I had done nothing to you; your words, sharp as obsidian arrows,
they spear me with confusion.
There are children in the world starving, killing for one sip of water.
There are men slaughtering their brothers
all for the chance to be someone to another who will
only seek to grant them the same oblivion.

And you think your problems are so significant.
Your minor inconvenience has done you no permanent harm,
while others are left orphaned and widowed and malnourished.
Yet you seek to darken my sky with clouds.
I have not earned the right to look into the sun because your world is
imperfect, marred, tainted with inconsequential nothings.

My fault, my punishment.
The bluebells are gone.
All that was gold is now steel and rain.
Job well done:
You've pushed my last button.
Does that make you better than me?
Or is all that spittle and venom wasted on a good day?

Oh God. It is Actually About to Happen.

My mom has a best friend who is very spiritual. She has all sorts of enlightening little phrases posted around her house, crosses and pentagrams, pictures of the Virgin Mother and Jesus and other related paraphernalia. In her guest bathroom, there's one that, in a few words, says that we do not fear failure. Instead we fear success. It really has never occurred to me how true that is. Until now. I believe the word I'd use for myself right now is "chicken". At least, that is the first half of the word...

I am leaving in a little more than a month, and I was excited. Seriously, I was so stoked about going and pursuing my dreams, to leave nothing behind but the dust I kick up. Now...I am panicking. It is actually happening. I am leaving. And there aren't any present issues that I can't handle; I know what I'm doing. But the thought of leaving some of the people I've bonded with in the last year and a half...it is killing me. And I don't want to lose them. I don't want to miss out on my little sister's seventh birthday. I don't want to leave my new kitten to bond with someone else. And I sure as hell as not crazy about the idea of becoming a memory to my friends.

It strikes me, though, that success always must come with personal sacrifice. Is moving forward worth all that I am losing? I have moved before, several times, in fact, and I have healed. I am a relatively normal human being despite all the good-byes I've said. Will a few more be that terrible?

I've reassured them all that I will return, for birthdays, for Christmas, for summer, for what have you. I'm coming back. Everyone is excited for me, though many have begged my parents to make me stay. They all want me to do well and be happy, and this is what I've been aiming for forever. I'm doing what I always said I would. So why does it feel so bittersweet?

I will be frank: I may or may not have also developed a very singular attachment to someone, someone who has brought out a very singular woman in me.  I've never felt like this with anyone before, never felt this kind of safety with someone, and we're finally starting to progress in our relationship...only to have him watch me leave. I have never, ever, hated myself so much in my entire life. The one time I feel like someone could handle the job of keeping me happy, and I am caught between my career and my love life. Do I really want to give up what I have here, with him, to further my life along? I mean, I'm really fond of the guy, almost to the point of...well...

The obvious but painful answer is, yes, I do. It hurts like a shot through the heart, but I do. I have to. Because I want to make a difference. And who knows? Maybe I will come back, to stay and rekindle old friendships, even old flames. I can't count on it, as awful as it is, but I have to make the choice with the least amount of regret behind it. And I know I will forever regret staying behind and not pursuing my dreams. Time heals, does it not? And my broken heart...it's going to need a lot of time.

Anyways. Being that I most likely will not be continuing my cooperation with the blog I have been working with for so long, due to my relocation, it looks like I'll be back on my old schedule, as best as I can manage. I will be writing poetry, along with my novel (I'm on page 71, guys!), and working towards my bachelor's. I just have to do what feels right...my only wish is that it was more black and white than this. But beggars can't be choosers, and I have to deal with what I have. God save me, I hope this is the right thing to do.

Hey, Guys!

I am on a break from my other blog right now. I am having a bad case writer's block; there's just nothing nerdy to write about right now that really catches my attention. However, I do have something I need to get off my chest, and I'm sure it has occurred to several of you what the phenomenon I'm speaking on is.

I am working on a very big transition in my life. I am moving in the fall, to (guess where) Montana. Bozeman. You guys totally saw that coming. I get it. But I'm currently working on my housing application, and it is possibly the most frustrating part out of it. It largely had to do with the tech, and they were slow to send me my password, but I finally got it all done, and that is when they asked me for $200. I am a starving college student, and they are asking for two hundred dollars. Are you crazy? I paid my application fee, I will be paying thousands of dollars in tuition, room, board, books, and other add-ons, and you want to bleed me of even more of my money?

Of course, it isn't the university's fault. No, really. I am serious. We live in a society that goes beyond encouraging our youth to pursue higher education. We demand it. And in an ideal world, we would all have degrees. But that is like saying in an ideal world, everyone has blue eyes, everyone has a high IQ, everyone are dog people. There needs to be large diversity in order for our world to function. Parents, however, don't see that. They see the failings of their lives or the lives of others, and a lot of times, the biggest theme of those failures is a lack of education. College, of course, is the obvious course of action. However, I would argue that it is not always the right one. Not everyone has the software for processing a college-style education. Not everyone can sit in a classroom and handle a full load of homework. Not everyone can take in the new lifestyle of being alone and independent, and put the expectations of three to four teachers on top of it. Are they failures because of this? Hell no! But when they flunk out or drop out, or whatever they do to escape their torment, not only have they wasted their own money (or their parents money, for that matter), they've wasted the resources of the facilities and faculties of the university. This brings me to my main frustration.

Due to this short-sighted demand that ALL high school graduates participate in collegiate activity, we see an increase in drop-outs and, with it, the increase in tuition cost, room and board, and class fees, to keep the list brief. I am paying for the mistakes of Johnny Smith's parents who couldn't be bothered to ask him what he really wanted to do with his life. I am paying for his mistake of not sticking up for himself and letting himself be prodded into an education he didn't want. Remember that kid who sat in the back of class when you were studying high school algebra? The one who carved poems about darkness and bloody faces into the desk while the teacher lectured about Napoleon and the Russian Winter? Yeah, that's the kid who was being told he had to go to college, whether he wanted to or not. And because he and millions like him were too busy moping and not figuring out an alternative to this plight, I am stuck paying way more than I'm worth to become only slightly more applicable to modern day employers and their needs.

This is my plea to society, and parents in specific: ask your children what they want to do with their life. If they don't know, get them involved in their community. Get them motivated - get them employed, get them into volunteering, get them working toward a goal to integrate themselves into polite society. There is no one-size-fits-all solution, not in any situation. And for God's sake, will someone please find a way to lower tuition rates?!

"So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish!"

Well, I thought I could juggle two blogs at once, but it seems writing for someone else takes a little more precedence over writing for myself. I am going to stop writing on this blog for a time indefinitely...maybe for good. But it this has helped me a lot, exploring myself through my writings. And I hope maybe, in the time I've done this, I've also helped someone else out there. Nothing is as important to the human experience as emotion and feeling. Emotional intellect is what makes our species so unique, for ours is the most emotionally complex.

I'd like to thank anyone out there who did take the time to read this, and I do appreciate anything you've taken away from it. For now, I will leave you with my most recent piece, one that I am very certain is one of my better poems. Please enjoy it for what it is. I hope I will return to this soon, but if not, it's been fun!


Darkness Fades

There is a life in these bones, these hollowed tubers, that sings,
And where sorrow followed me like a black nightmare, I feel the stretching, reeling presence of a smile again.
This has been your gift to me.

My few years in bitter knowing, burnt gardens, and twisted promises, made most of what they could of my fawning heart,
And while I cannot claim to be less of an aging cynic, I know from the glint in your sky streaked eyes that perhaps there is a way -
To live and let live -
Without all these shadows and deep, marring trenches formed in good company.

The irony is that you have seen more of life than I,
I, the sweet Daphne that covets the veil of mystery and prudence,
And you, the child within the warrior, the laugher with his sword held high. It seems life has not brought down a heavy hand on you as it did my soul, or perhaps
You have learned to rise above the devouring seas that have drowned weaker men, waters that leave me stranded with my echoing ideals.

O errant knight, I am sure you would not falter, if the day comes when I need saving, though arrogant and impatient you are in your brazen manner.
Of course, I ever seek to safeguard your boyish expressions and imp-like intentions; the world is cruel and never stops searching for pure hearts to blacken and taint.
Mine is close to irreparable, but you,
You are strong.
You are my calm harbor, my sanctuary.
You hold me tight in nights uncertain through the ether of misty reveries.

How can I do anything but bind my heart to your name?
How can I be expected to walk away from this?

Dickinson Again...with a Little Monroe

If I haven't already made this clear, it is becoming more and more apparent to me that I have no skill at putting myself out there. I am completely and utterly socially inept for this reason. On paper, I am a strong, confident, beautiful young woman. In practice, I'm meek and timid and very, very unsure of myself. I am in my early twenties, trying to carve an image for myself, and I can't even pluck up the courage to ask out a guy that I like, who I am almost certain likes me back. I am so afraid that I'm going to screw up. It's killing me.

And it isn't as if I have a reason to believe I won't do well. True, most of my high school infatuations were completely and totally unrequited, and it is also true that the only two boys who I ever was intimate with emotionally shredded my heart to bits, but that was their mistake, not mine, and I recovered well, for what it's worth. What is also true is that, since I've turned twenty, I've also been turning heads. I blossomed when I turned twenty. I grew out of my awkward clothes, my glasses, my nerdy hobbies (D&D should definitely be left to pubescent adolescents), and my inability to talk to people. For God's sake, I work retail. I practically had to force myself to put on a huge smile and be obscenely outgoing to connect with my customers. I used to be such a shut-in tomboy, until I got my pixie cut, and then I couldn't pull off looking like a boy anymore. Let's just face it, if I hadn't started trying to look nice, I'd have looked like I was batting for the other team, and while it works for some people, it's not exactly a look I'd like to have. So I started wearing dresses and skirts and mascara, and all of a sudden, people started noticing me. I was beautiful. I was darling. This period in time is what I silently refer to as my coming out: coming out of my small girlish shell and becoming a full-fledged woman.

But full-fledged women, in my opinion, should not let themselves be limited like I limit myself. I preach courage, faith in one's self, but I am so doubtful on how to make my way boldly. It's times like these when I feel I should be able to channel Marilyn Monroe. All of you might think, nah, not that dumb floozy from the fifties. But actually, the lady was fairly bright and despite the fact that she was always cast as the dumb blonde, she was smart enough to catch playwright Arthur Miller, who wrote plays like Death of a Traveling Salesman. Needless to say, she was a tad unstable, but she was sharp as a tack. One of her most memorable quotes is "A wise girl knows her limits. A smart girl knows that she has none." I'm not sure where I saw this quote, but it is a source of inspiration for me, daring me to be more.

Yet there's always this stigma that women have to let the men lead the chase, that people have to be pushy in order to get what they want, blah blah blah - for some reason, there has to be a set way of doing everything, and if you fall out of line, there's always someone there telling you you are doing things wrong. Emily Dickinson was an asocial shut-in, never wandered out of her house past the age of twenty, but now she's hailed as a genius, both in literature and philosophy.

But, as it stands, I have not tried the normal ways of doing things, thinking I am better, believing myself to be above these mentalities and expectations. Who knows? Maybe it's time I walked the more usual path...and that's where the scientist in me starts kicking in. Oh dear. Let's hope I figure this out sooner than later...

In all seriousness, I am who I am. I cannot be the girl who is manipulative and passive aggressive. My tolerance for immaturity is appallingly low. And I find no desire ever to lie to the people in my life. I could possibly pretend I am not this person, and turn things around, but then I am no longer Ellie. I am some chick who looks like her who is just like everyone else. Perhaps there is doubt there for a reason. Perhaps it is my instinct. But I would just like to say that I don't want to change for the benefit of someone else. So why let the status quo and the social politesse rule me? Someday, I will find the courage to let myself go, to let my hair down and free my inhibitions. For now, it is only a matter of being who I am and accepting that not everyone is going to accept me. For the people who do, they will be cherished in my life for a long time to come. For those who don't, well, they were never really worth my time anyways. And as for myself...well, I'm just going to enjoy the coming spring sunshine...and maybe channel some Norma Jean while I'm at it.

The Jiminy Cricket Effect (More to the Point, How Robert Frost Became My Conscience)

I do truly believe that Robert Frost was a genius, especially when he wrote such deep and defining poems, such as "Fire and Ice", "My November Guest", and "Design": poems that speak on the nature of us and of the world around us. Yet, and though it is very cliche, I do believe that his best work to define the human experience is "The Road Not Taken". We go through life by making choices - at every turn, we are making choices. Should I go out tonight, or stay in? If I stay in, do I eat something and go to bed, or do I stay up and watch TV, or perhaps do I open that bottle of chardonnay and mourn not going out? Do I text the man I've been thinking about and ask him to dinner, or do I watch my phone in hopes that maybe he texts me? And what about that time he drove me home, and I didn't kiss him before leaving, even though I wanted to?Do I sleep in this morning (the answer is often yes), or do I rise early and make the most out of my day? We take certain turns in our paths in life, and that is what "The Road Not Taken" discusses.

Robert Frost not only ponders the concept that we live by our decisions and that perhaps taking the less obvious choice or the less popular choice is fairer, but he also, in an almost despairing tone, remarks on the phenomenon that once a choice is made, it cannot be undone and cannot be returned to. There are few things in my life that make more sense to me than this. One does have to live with the consequences of one's actions, thus dictating how one is obligated to live: reaping what one wishes to sow. It is almost the Golden Rule. Not quite, though - there are times when we must be cruel in order to be kind, even though no one really likes being the reciprocate of that treatment, for better or for worse.

At any rate, after having read this poem, it has become quite clear to me: when I come to a fork in the road, choose the road I will not regret having taken, the one that suits me best, the one that will benefit my world more. In doing so, I do believe I will become a happier person for it.


The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads onto way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence;
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

I Say I Don't Like Cowards, But...

I really, really cannot stress enough how important it is to be up front about your feelings. That being said, I am the biggest offender when it comes to shoving my feelings in the back of the closet. No joke. If I like a guy, and instead of finding ways of slipping my hand in his or something romantic like that, I instead try to take the long way around and try every single way of beating around the bush possible. I make a point of caring and being there for him, but as soon as we get down to raw emotion, I bolt. If I'm angry at someone, I don't let them see how hurt I am, and I never yell, unless I'm pushed into it. I just cool off, and then if it's still vexing me, whatever, it is that irritated me in the first place, I sit down and I talk it out. I'm afraid of letting people see that I am as sensitive and as fragile as the rest of the human race.

It has come to the point in my life where I need to turn around and evaluate why this is and how can I make a change for the better. Why am I so afraid of letting someone see my vulnerabilities? I never had issues with trust, though I've had my share of disappointments. I have never been abandoned. I've never had to deal with any major hardships. I've been strangely fortunate in my life as far as my interactions with people have gone. Yet, still, I'm so gun-shy, so leery of what might happen if I open up. Is it instinct? Is it fear? Why have I built these walls, keeping people out? Why am I such a shut-in?

I am well practiced at giving my opinion and letting people know what I like and what I don't like. And I've grown confident enough that no one is allowed to truly dictate to me what I should or should not do. But I still can't find the strength to be the person to take charge, to truly be a leader, an example. I never step up, afraid to make mistakes. So maybe it is fear. So then perhaps I need to remember how to be brave.

Beta

Slinking through the night, dark fur harvests the moonlight,
taking in, never giving back.
Shining eyes watch her leader, then watch as her and her alpha's followers
fall in line. The hunt has begun.
I watch them through the grasses as they traipse out of thick groves,
and I know she has caught my scent. Her ears prick in my direction,
attentive, but silent.
She will not risk rebellion if she does not need to,
and it seems my musk is not one of nefarious overtones.

Prey lingers near, smell of food and adrenaline, and she forgets me
for a brief, pulsating moment. Instinct kicks like a hoof to the rear,
and she takes off, a whip snapping on the open plain.
Her questioning is seldom, her knowledge vast.
I wonder how something so exacting could be so submitting,
and my question cuts quicker when she receives a blow to the jaw from a silvered female -
the alpha as well as her mate - and instead of fighting for herself,
instead of biting back, for her teeth look deathly pearlescent,
she shrinks back, tongue held and bitter knowing rescinded.
She remembers her place.
She will not fight for higher goals, for the pack is a teetering boat not to be rocked.

Suddenly, the big male spies me lurking near.
A quick bark to the others, and suddenly, like shadows, they drag away
a few small carcasses, fit for a baron's feast.
She looks at me, my little beta female,
and I cannot help but shed a tear.
One tear for the little wolf
with the world on her shoulders,
without complaint.