I cried over an email about potatoes.

For the last three days, I've avoided my laptop.

In my last blog post, I promised that I would write about potatoes and Chris LeDoux. I'm not one to break a promise, so this blog post is me keeping my word.

This is going to be a hard one to write. Yes, it's about potatoes, but oftentimes in life, there's more to it than that.

This happened a while back. When I think about it, I cry.

I've cried every day for three days thinking about this.

We were talking at work today about being vulnerable. I am not a vulnerable person, and I put up so many walls that are made of concrete, that it's ridiculous.

But if people around me can be vulnerable, and if they can talk about hurt and pain, then maybe I can, too.

---

I've been in relationships. I've spent holidays with men, both with my family and their family. I've gotten to know their families, their friends, their hopes for the future, and their pasts. 

A few years ago, I thought I had found the one. I was pretty sure that he was ring shopping and that he was going to get down on one knee.

He didn't. 

At the time this story happened, I didn't know that. I wish I knew then what I know now, but life is cruel and doesn't work like that.

All I knew then was that there a beautiful man that I was very much in love with beside me. I was so happy that it hurt. 

Let’s start at the beginning.

—-

A few years ago, I met a guy. Our second date was a concert, and we went to the bar afterward. We had a corner table on the patio, underneath the stars on a beautiful night, and as he started to drink, his personality started coming out more.

He was nervous at the concert. But at the bar afterward, I fell absolutely head over heals in love with him. Full disclosure here: I fall hard, and I fall fast. I wear my heart on my sleeve. 

I fell for that man that night, in an instant. In a heartbeat. 

We shut the bar down that night, and from then on, I was absolutely hooked on him. He became a drug that I couldn't get enough of. 

That concert date happened over the summer. There was another concert date in one of my favorite cities. There were more bars, more dates, more alcohol, there was listening to music and late night conversations that I'll never forget.

He didn’t stick around.

But before he left, this story happened. And it's honestly what pisses me off most about this relationship.

---

The holidays were approaching, and we (which pretty much means I) decided to spend Thanksgiving with his family and Christmas with my family.

My favorite day of the year is Christmas Eve. I love that day with all my heart, and every time I date a guy around Christmastime, I get really excited that I get to share that day with someone.

I do the same thing on Christmas Eve every year. I go to church with my parents, drive around and look at the luminaries in town, and then I go home and make potatoes for my family's Christmas gathering the next day.

I don't mean to brag, but I can make a pretty mean potato dish. Whether it be scalloped or mashed, my family always looks forward to my potatoes. And there's never any left for me to take home, because that dish is always finished on Christmas day.

Potatoes are my thing.

That particular year, after church, my then-boyfriend and I went back to my house. I went into my kitchen, pulled out my potatoes, and started getting them ready.

My then-boyfriend came into the kitchen and asked me what I was doing. I told him about my potato tradition, and then he asked me if I was going to peel my potatoes.

Guys, I am the laziest person alive. I love potatoes, but I do not have the patience to stand there and peel every single one. I don't care if my family makes fun of me for my "dirty" potatoes that have the skins on them. 

I am way too lazy to peel five to seven pounds of potatoes.

My then-boyfriend asked me if I had a potato peeler. I said yes, opened the drawer to show him, and then he took it out of the drawer.

That man, that beautiful man, stood in my kitchen that night, and he peeled every single potato I had. 

I always buy a five-pound bag, plus a few more, just in case some are bad, or in case I mess something up and need more at the last minute.

I remember it took him a long time to peel them. We put them in the sink with water afterward, and I remember that he took the time to show me each potato to prove to me that there were no skins on them.

That man peeled my potatoes perfectly that night. 

Which, as I think about it, is a really, really intimate thing to do with a girl. No man I've dated had ever shown me that much intimacy as he did that night.

Yes, I'm literally talking about potatoes here. 

We stood in my kitchen for an hour, maybe more, listening to music, laughing, drinking and talking.

He told me that he liked peeling my potatoes, that he liked being with me in that moment, and that he liked doing things like this with me.

I thought he had a ring in his pocket that night.

Our relationship was over three days after Christmas. 

To this day, I can't get over the fact that he stood in my kitchen, peeled my potatoes for an hour, drank wine with me, and then decided he didn't want me.

If the story he sold me was true, his ex-girlfriend came back to Kansas for Christmas. I couldn't compete with her, and it was over, just like that.

Until that night, no one had ever peeled my potatoes for me. No one has since that night. 

He peeled my potatoes, and then he decided to go peel someone else's potatoes. I can't even describe how painful that is to me, still, to this day.

---

I got an email the other day from the U.S. Potato Board, which isn't that shocking, as I worked in agriculture for almost 10 years. When I got that email, I cried.

I cried over an email about potatoes.

Maybe one day I'll write a story about man who peels potatoes better than he did that night. As of right now, this is where the story ends.

If you have someone in your life who shows you that level of intimacy, please, for my sake, be grateful for it. Don’t take it for granted.

Anxiety, party of one.

I have a couple of topics swirling around in my head, and have been there all day, so I thought I’d take the time to write them down.

 

Let’s chase this and see where it goes.

 

The first topic I want to talk about is Ikea. We’ve also got Chris LeDoux and potatoes to write about, so be patient with me here. I’m writing as fast as I can.

 

So, Ikea first.

 

The first thing that you need to know is that I’ve been sick for going on eight weeks. I do not have COVID or pneumonia or anything serious, really, and I’m thankful for that.

 

However, I do have bronchitis, which is painful and annoying and mostly just painful. When my Dad was here, he timed my coughs. According to him, I coughed every 20 seconds. When you cough that much, your sides hurt, and I got to the point where I would just hold my ribs when I coughed.

 

There’s a ton of physical pain involved.

 

Also, I tend to get bronchitis every 2-3 years like clockwork, and have since high school, so this is something I deal with a lot. (Please note that I don’t smoke and never have.)

 

For the past 7-8 weeks, I haven’t done a whole lot in my personal life, besides cough and not sleep a whole lot. Grocery shopping is pick up because I don’t have the energy to walk into a grocery store. I switched pharmacies to a drive-thru one because walking into a store is physically exhausting.

 

For the first several weeks of it, I could sleep 2-3 hours a night. The physical exhaustion part just comes from not sleeping and your body being in so much physical pain.

 

I’ve been feeling a little better recently. Sorry for that tangent. This blog post is/was not intended to talk about bronchitis.

 

I want to talk about Ikea.

--

 

I’ve been feeling better recently. I can sleep five hours a night now, which feels like I’m staying at a luxury resort compared to the two hours I was sleeping per night a few weeks ago.

 

I woke up this morning pretty refreshed. I decided to do some errands in the morning, (including losing my dog...who ended up being in bed snoring), and then for the afternoon, I thought I’d venture off into the big city a couple of hours away.

 

I haven’t had a pedicure in eight weeks, and I really want some new lamps for my new place.

 

Kansas City and Ikea, here I come.

 

The pedicure was fine, and it was nothing to write home about. I tried out a new color, which I hate, but that can be redone after a while.

 

I noticed at the nail salon that I haven’t really been around people in public for a really long time. Eight weeks, to be exact.

 

And then I noticed that it’s kind of fun doing things in public. The group of girls around me were hilarious and it felt nice to be around people.

(They were talking about the differences between American television and British television. Their words: "America: Murder, death, sex, scandal! Darkness everywhere!" As opposed to British tv: "Oh, that's a nice looking puff pastry." It was hilarious.)

--

 

After that, I decided to go to Ikea to get some lamps.

 

I made a mistake when I walked in. Instead of going directly into the store, I screwed up and went into the parking garage instead. That isn’t actually a big deal, as you just walk through a couple extra set of doors to fix your mistake.

 

But here’s the thing about me: I have anxiety. Not only do I have anxiety, but I also have a few personality traits that are kind of weird.

 

I hate parking garages. They give me anxiety. I hate parking in them, they’re dark and scary to me, and I don’t really feel safe in them.

 

Plus, when I drive out of them, the dumb machine never takes the stupid ticket and then people behind me get inpatient and upset and honk at me.

They stress me out and I avoid them if I can. (I also got lost in one in St. Louis and had to Google Maps my way out of it. And my hotel was attached to it.)

 

So at this point in my Kansas City trip, I have really cute toes, but I’m now in a place that I hate (parking garages) and I’m kind of freaking out a little bit.

 

All throughout college and after, up until last year, really, I thought I had asthma. I kept an inhaler in my purse at all times. There are times in my life where I feel like I can’t breathe.

 

I joke about it, because of all the things to suck at in life, breathing is sometimes at the top of my list.

 

Sometimes, it just feels like I can’t get enough air. My chest will hurt. It’s hard to explain, but it feels like someone or something heavy is sitting on my chest.

 

Through the past 12-24 months of my life, which were the worst months of my life, I learned that the feeling in that situation or those situations is not asthma.

 

That feeling is anxiety.

 

That feeling is panic.

 

That feeling is a panic attack.

 

I know, now, somewhat, how to control that feeling in my chest. Stop what I’m doing, find a quiet place away from people, and just focus on breathing. I visually imaging my chest filling with air, and I stay in that space and place for a couple minutes, maybe a few minutes, until the feeling passes.

 

And then I realized today that this isn’t the first time that I’ve felt this feeling in Ikea.

 

I had a panic attack in Ikea today.

 

I almost left the store. I could see my car from where I was standing, and for a minute, I was going to just walk back to my car, admit that I got defeated by the big city, and go back home.

 

But I’m not a quitter.

 

I walked my butt up the stairs, and I went into the store.

 

I was too overwhelmed to walk through the displays, even though I really wanted to because they’re really, really cute.

 

I know that instead of going right to the displays, I can instead to left, skip to the lamps, find what I’m looking for, and then get the hell out of that big city as fast as possible.

 

I did eventually find the lamps. I really wanted three of them, including a floor lamp and two desk lamps.

 

As I stood there looking at them, it occurred to me that while I was freaking out about a parking garage that I didn’t even park in, I completely overlooked the fact that I needed a shopping cart for my lamps.

 

And because I’m weird and I have anxiety, I can’t just go get one.

 

I’m now in the middle of Ikea, and I am realizing that sometimes, I make poor life decisions. Today was one of them.

 

Going back and getting a cart was not an option, but there were some shopping bags nearby, so I grabbed one of those, got a couple of lamps and a couple of other things, and then left.

 

Guys, I’m from a small town. We don’t have parking garages or stores with escalators or elevators or weird carts that you put bags in.

 

This trip was completely overwhelming to me.

 

I was so stressed out, I didn’t even go to Trader Joes to buy weird fruit afterward, which is one of my favorite things to do.

 

I haven’t put the lamps together yet, but I will soon. That’s a project I’ll tackle tomorrow. I have an art project in mind for one of them, so I went to a craft store afterward to get some stuff.

 

I’m not thrilled about another store at that point, but I managed, and survived, and then I went and got a frozen Coke, listened to music really loud for a couple of hours, and then drove back to my little piece of the world.

 

I guess the moral of the story is that you shouldn’t venture to a big city when you’ve been a hermit for eight weeks.

 

Welcome to anxiety city.

 

Flies in

There are a couple of topics that are on my mind that I haven't touched on yet.

The first one is creativity.

There's no way to say this with class, so I'm just going to throw it out there. It's really, really hard to be creative when you're homeless.

(How's that for a sentence I never thought I'd say out loud?)

Before I sold my house in my hometown, I had ways I could be creative if I felt like it. I knew where all of my belongings were, so if I wanted to paint, I could paint. Not only could I paint, I could paint several things.

Canvas! Paint pouring! Watercolor! Pastels!

So many options!

Perhaps someone made me mad and I wanted to reach for an adult coloring book full of naughty words?

I did that often.

Or maybe if I was down, I could reach for my favorite book of all time, which always cheers me up. (The Five People You Meet in Heaven.)

I've learned through therapy that I have to have an outlet when things get bad. I can't just sit around and do nothing. When things get bad, I need to have my fingers doing some sort of art to get my mind off of things.

The thing is, though, when you don't have a permanent roof over your head, all of these creative outlets are packed away in boxes hundreds of miles away.

It sucks.

I do have some of my possessions with me right now, but I haven't found my art supplies yet. I don't know where my colored pencils or markers or paints are.

I did find my favorite book the other day, though, and I cried like a baby when I unpacked it. And then I hugged it (and its prequel) and then I cried some more.

Painting, photography, design and all of the other creative things that I like to do are all secondary loves in my life. I'm good at some of those things, all right at some of those things, and mediocre at some of them.

But those all secondary loves of mine. My first love in life will always be writing.

I never thought my writing was worthy of being in pretty journals, so I never bought them. I always just bought notebooks that kids use in school to write in.

But recently I've learned that maybe I am worthy after all. 

A few weeks ago, I bought a set of three journals. The one I'm currently writing in in black, just the right size, and has a moon and flowers on it.

My writing is worthy of being in it.

Some of the writing I can share on here, some of it can only be shared with my closest friends. (I'm so, so sorry, guys. Haha.)

It's been years since I've written with pencil and paper.

I've learned to find that creative escape and just roll with it. 

--

Every time Raven goes outside here, I hold the door open for her.

She takes her sweet time. Sometimes she gets lost and I have to pick her up and toss her outside.

I've been telling her for a few days that she's really good at letting flies in. Fyi, letting flies in means you're cute, but you're pretty much worthless.

I wrote this tonight. 

I thought you'd like it.

--

Flies in

 

I saw my brother’s kids

the other day

A red head and a curly blonde-haired kid

‘I love you 100’ they’d say

 

It’s summertime in Kansas

100 degrees in the dry summer sun

I gave those kids a flyswatter

And then I let them run

 

They screamed and ran around

started smacking things

Watching them reminds me

of the songs we used to sing

 

On the swings

On the playground

As I left to go home

I hugged them and told them I’d see them around

 

Their baby sister

Blue-eyed and dirty blonde hair

I just want to sit her down

And explain all the drama she’ll fair

 

Sometimes you meet someone

who’s only good at letting flies in

And then when that door finally shuts

Your whole world will spin

 

Three little girls,

Seven, seven and five years old

In 10 years, they’ll meet a boy

Then they’ll be whirled and twirled

 

Three little beautiful girls

I don’t know how to tell them this

In 10, 15, or 20 years

Their whole world will be amiss

 

Stay little as long as you can, girls

Don’t play with make up yet

Instead

go outside and sweat

 

Play your little heart out

Jump on the trampoline

Sing as loud as you can

Dance in the basement with Papa and a tambourine

 

Sing about rock and roll

About coconuts and chicken wings and all those times when

Do this before you fall for someone who’s only good at

Letting the flies in

 

Take a wooden spoon

Sit on my kitchen floor

Bang on the tubberware containers

While your Grandma laughs in the door

 

Please color me pictures

To hang on my fridge

If you keep painting and drawing me more

I’ll move them on the door just a smidge

 

I look at these beautiful kids

And wonder when

I’ll find someone who is good at something

Other than letting flies in

 

Girls, go fishing with Papa

Whenever he wants to

Lie about how big the fish is

It’s okay if some things are untrue

 

Please name the fish

Flower, Sparkles or Cutie Pie

And give that fish a kiss

before you meet a guy

 

I can never explain

how much I love you

Please run to me, let me spin you around

Before all the drama and boys ensue

 

Please don’t grow up too fast

And when I ask for a kiss

Go to the cabinet, pull out a chocolate one

Place it in my hand, God I’ll miss this

 

Kids, the only thing your aunt excels at

is finding men

Who are only good

At letting the flies in

 

Please hug me as hard as you can

I’ll take you swimming and sledding

And then I’ll take you home, tell you I love you so much

And tuck you in under your Spiderman bedding

 

I’ll go back to my house

Reach down deep within

And silently wonder when I’ll meet someone

Who’s good at something other than letting flies in

 

Girls, there will be a day

When your daddy will walk you down the aisle

And it might take a while

But I’ll be right beside him, with a smile

 

And I can’t wait for the day in your life

When I find out

who flies in

God is Love.

I've touched on this topic on my blog before, but I guess I need to address it again.

I write a lot about the trips that I take, the cool things that happen in my life and the concerts that I go to. But there's a pretty dark topic that I've touched on, but haven't really explored or written about yet.

There's no way to sugarcoat this, but I'm just going to throw it out there.

I was homeless for five months.

Yes, I technically did have a roof over my head the entire time, and for that I am very, very grateful, but that roof over my head (three weeks of which were AirBnBs) was not my permanent address.

I had no address to mail boxes to.

I got pulled over once, and I had a hard time explaining why my address said another city when I moved/started working in my new city months earlier. 

I was homeless for five months.

And when that happens, you don't think about the future. You aren't concerned with what happens a week or two weeks or two months from now.

You worry about today and that's it. Sometimes, I didn't even worry about the whole day. I was just concerned about getting through the current hour of my life.

Now that I have a place to live, and I have some of my things with me and am now sleeping in my own bed, there are a few things happening that I honestly wasn't prepared for.

I've been pretty emotional this week. Unpacking and seeing my stuff for the first time in five months has just been a little too much than I can handle at the moment.

Tonight, I bawled. I cried like a baby, all over my new place. As I sobbed, my dogs followed me around, and tried to kiss me and console me.

Little Pickles even kissed the tears flowing down my face.

And the reason why is going to make me cry again. 

--

I'm Catholic. 

In this religion, you get your First Communion around age 7, when you're in second grade. There's a class you take before your First Communion, and I honestly don't remember what that class is called.

It's basically a room full of second graders making kid art projects and coloring in Jesus-y coloring books, learning about Catholic stuff along the way.

During those classes when I was little, we got to make little beaded rosaries. I remember they were hard to make.

I remember I asked my teacher if I could make two rosaries, and she agreed. I really wanted to make one for my Grandma, a woman I was really close to.

My rosary was made with dark blue pony beads, and hers was made with light blue beads. I gave my Grandma the light blue rosary, and I kept the dark blue one.

I'd have to ask my parents for details on the timeline here, as I was 7 at the time and I could have things a little wrong here. My Grandma didn't live very long after that. If my memory serves me right, she passed away sometime that year.

I remember telling my parents that I really wanted my Grandma to have my rosary, which was dark blue. I was 7, and at that age, I honestly thought that if I gave my rosary to her, it'd help her get into Heaven.

I really loved her, and I really wanted her to go to Heaven.

At her funeral, I took my dark blue rosary with me, and when it came time to walk up to tell her goodbye, I put my dark blue rosary into her casket.

And now I have to take a break from writing, because I'm sobbing right now.

--

I was so young when she died, that I really only have a few memories of her.

I remember her telling me that she had a B-A-L-L for me in the garage. I was young and couldn't spell, and I had no idea what that meant (she spelled it out), but I remember going into the garage, determined to find whatever the hell a B-A-L-L was.

Also, my brother popped it on the yucca plant after I found it. 

Figures.

Mostly, I just remember feeling really loved when I went to her house. 

I don't know how to explain it, and I don't know if it will make sense to anyone who might read this. When I think about my Grandma, I just remember all of the love that I felt when I was around her.

The only thing that surrounded her was love.

--

After her funeral, I remember my parents giving me the rosary that I originally gave to my Grandma, which was the light blue one.

I remember my parents told me that Grandma would want me to have it.

I've kept that rosary on my dresser for the past 30 years. 

Every city, every state, every town. It's been with me my whole life.

--

I've been unpacking in my new place, slowly, over the last couple of weeks. Having bronchitis for seven weeks means that I can get through a couple of boxes before the coughing starts. Plus, I'm not really sleeping, so any physical movement leaves me pretty much wiped out in about 10 minutes.

Tonight, I looked on top of my dresser, and I found that light blue rosary. 

I cried like a baby. I haven't seen that rosary in five or six months, since all of my stuff has been in storage since I tried to move in April. 

I was not prepared to cry like a baby today over that rosary, because for all but the past five months of my life, I've seen it every day.

Sometimes you don't know how much sentimental things mean to you until you haven't seen them for a while. 

If my place catches on fire and I had time to save one physical item (minus my dogs), I'd probably grab that rosary. 

And honestly, I want to be buried with it. 

--

I thought about taking a photo of the rosary for my blog, but I decided that I can't.

It's too personal.

It's silly, really. It's just some light blue pony beads, a white cross that says "God is Love" and six pink heart beads. 

And there's a few dark blue beads, which are probably from the same package of dark blue beads that my Grandma got buried with when I gave her my dark blue rosary.

--

I don't know if things happen for a reason or if things happen for no reason at all.

I haven't figured that one out yet.

For right now, at least, maybe I was meant to go through a really tough time to be able to appreciate some light blue pony beads, a handful of dark blue beads, and six pink heart shaped beads.

And a white cross that says "God is Love."

Just shut the bedroom door.

I’ve been fighting a pretty bad case of bronchitis for the last six or seven weeks, meaning there hasn’t been a whole lot of sleep in Monicaland lately. 

For whatever reason, I was at a meeting the other day and I suddenly remembered this story. I could barely contain my smile and laughter, and silently was thankful that my mask was covering my face the whole time.

 

Because I’m sick, I’ve been staying away from family and friends as much as I can. My friends got together and I couldn’t join them. No one wants to be sick for seven weeks in a row, you know?

 

I’m homesick.

 

So I remembered this story. And as I’ve done before, I’m going to write it down before I go to bed and forget about it.

 

--

 

The thing that’s tricky about the place that I now live in is that my dog dishes are just outside of my bedroom door, in the hallway.

 

My dogs eat at night. I keep my bedroom door shut, and for the past two weeks, my dogs come and look at me, totally confused. I have to get up and open the bedroom door, keep it open for a few minutes while my kids chow down, and then I have to get up and close the door before we all go to bed.

 

Why do I have to do all of this, you might be wondering?

 

The story is long, but it’s worth telling. Plus, it’s hilarious.

 

--

 

I’m kind of weird.

 

There are a few personality quirks that I have that just are what they are. When I start a new relationship, if I think that relationship is going to go anywhere, there is a point pretty early on where I have to address my weirdness with the guy.

 

The first and most important rule of Monicaland and keeping me happy is this: Wherever I am, in whatever house or apartment I'm in, the bedroom door must be shut when I sleep.

 

It has to be shut and latched, but it doesn’t have to be locked. (I’m not that crazy.) It just has to be shut. 

If it’s not, I can’t sleep.

 

If my request can’t be honored in the relationship, then it’s a dealbreaker for me. The bedroom door being shut is that important to me.

 

And the reason why it’s important is the dumbest thing I’ve ever said out loud.

 

--

 

When I was little, way before I met the people who have now become my best friends, my brother and I shared a room. We had bunk beds. I slept on the bottom bunk and he slept on the top bunk.

 

If I had to guess, I was probably 5 or 6 when this happened. My brother is 3.5 years older than I am, so he’d be around 8 or 9 when this happened.

 

My brother always told me that there were alligators underneath my bed when we were little. And because I slept on the bottom bunk, the alligators could crawl up into my bed at night and eat me.

 

I’m five or six years old. At that age, when your older, wiser brother warns you about impending death right before bed, you tend to believe him.

I believed him, and one night, I asked him what I should do about these alligators underneath my bed.

 

He said that because alligators have short legs, they wouldn’t be able to climb into the top bunk, where he slept. He told me that I could always crawl up to the top bunk with him, where I’d be safe from the alligators.

 

Plus, he told me, he’d protect me if the alligators got up there.

 

I thought that was a pretty sweet deal when I was five or six. All I have to do is sleep higher up if I don’t want to be eaten at night? I thought it seemed like a simple solution.

 

So at night, after Mom and Dad turned off the light, I’d crawl up to the top bunk to sleep.

 

This went on for a while. I wish I remembered how long it was, but I don’t. Maybe a few weeks, a month, or a few months. By the way, every night before I crawled up to his bed, I checked under my bed for alligators.

 

I never found any.

 

One night, after the light switch was turned off, I told my brother that I was no longer going to crawl up to his bed. I told him that I’d been checking for alligators under my bed, and since I hadn’t found any, I thought it’d be safe to sleep in my own bed.

 

I told him that not only was I not going to sleep in the top bunk that night, but I was never going to do it again, because I thought he was lying to me.

 

Dude, I thought. There are no freaking alligators under my bed.

 

My brother came up with this response: Well, it’s technically true that there are no alligators underneath your bed right now. It’s true that when you go to sleep at night, there are no allegators underneath your bed.

 

But, he said, the reason that you don’t see them is because late at night, when Mom and Dad are sleeping and the house is dark, the alligators come into the house at night from the streets.

 

I don’t remember questioning my brother on exactly how the alligators entered the house. Through the front door? Did they ring the doorbell? Through a window?

 

I don’t know.

 

Anyway, he told me that after the alligators on the street came into our house, they would come to our bedroom, and the easiest place for them to hide was under my bed.

 

By the way, the night my brother and I had this conversation, our bedroom door was open.

 

My brother continued: And you know how the alligators get into our room, Monica?

 

They walk through the door!

 

THE OPEN BEDROOM DOOR.

 

I am probably six years old at that point, and I believe my brother. My six-year-old brain now knows that all this time, there was a simple answer for the problem in my head.

 

Alligators come into my room at night when I’m asleep because the bedroom door is open.

 

That night, I asked my brother what the solution was. I’m six, and I’m terrified. There are alligators out there, guys.

 

That’s terrifying. I was terrified.

 

This is all just so scary.

 

His solution? Well, why don’t we just shut the bedroom door? After all, alligators have short legs, no hands and they lack thumbs. Obviously, the alligators won’t be able to get in because they obviously can’t open the door handle.

 

So, there’s that, guys.

 

Now, as a grown woman with a college degree, a place of her own and a stable career and job, I honest to God can’t sleep with a bedroom door open because I’m terrified alligators are going to eat me in my sleep.

 

One time, in a relationship, I even yelled at a guy and caused a pretty big fight because that stupid bedroom door was open.

 

Sometimes, the solution to a problem is the simplest one available.

 

Just shut the bedroom door.

Alligators, guys.

 

Alligators.

If you let it.

The past few weeks have been pretty trying, but they haven’t been the most trying time of my life. 

The thing is, life isn’t always pretty. Sometimes things don’t work out the way you want them to, and sometimes, when it gets down to it, life just sucks sometimes.

 

I’ve been hiding from writing for a while now. About two weeks ago, I moved into a cute little place in my new town. I’m going to just use the words “my place” because that sounds more grown up than “my apartment.”

 

I could write about the ugly details, but I won’t. I don’t live in a house, which is weird, guys.

 

But for right now, this works. It’s cute. I have my dogs with me, and I’m getting a kick out of my blind dog earnestly trying to learn her way around our new place.

 

Things have been different for the past few months. It turns out that I pretty much suck at moving, and half of my things are still in storage. Some things are piled high in my second bedroom at my place. That bedroom door is shut, because I honestly can’t handle the mess that’s behind it.

 

I was excited to write a story about my life that had a happy ending. I was going to have a house party. I was going to blare music as loud as I wanted to, whenever I wanted to.

 

Life changed, and I think that’s okay. The one thing that this pandemic has taught me is that life doesn’t always go as planned.

 

For now, I have some of my possessions with me. My dogs are with me. We go to Starbucks on the weekends to get Puppachinos, because it’s the only way I know how to apologize to them for the shit year that they’ve had.

 

Other than that, I don’t know that I have a whole lot more to say about the current events in my life.

 

Sometimes things work out. Sometimes they don’t.

A quote from a book: "Life goes on, if you let it."