25

Life is changing.

I’m careening toward the end of my 25th year and 10 months into my first job. I get up and go to work every morning wearing heels and something semi-professional. I do my make-up and hair in the morning and undo it every night. I’m getting really sick of that already.

A few months ago, I bought a house — me.

My life has almost all the trappings of adult-hood. But, sometimes, I still get deja vu. I flash back to a day when we lived in Louisiana, so I must have been 5 or 6. I’m shuffling through my mom’s closet, picking out the prettiest jacket and skirt I’d wear if I got to go to work like she did. I put on a white suit with shoulder pads — and a pair of her high heels, too. I look at myself in the mirror. Not as pretty as my dress-up clothes, I think.

You see, I am not an adult. I am still in the throes of growing up, nagged by a mix of annoyingly existential and incredibly superficial questions — am I making a difference with my life? Is this is where I should be? What if I had become a singer instead? Should I grow out my bangs?

They are questions left over from an adolescence of insecurity coupled with a future of unending potential. Forever, the possibilities were endless and I could do anything. And I expected I would. That was my story — the one I’ve been writing for myself since I was 10 years-old.

But, at some recent point, I put down the pen. I gave up writing my never-ending draft and decided to sit back and drink a glass of wine, or something. It didn’t last long.

Now, with each question I ask myself, I’m trying to edit my life story — starting somewhere in the middle. But, with each answer, I’m closing another door. I bought a house. I picked a city to live in. I chose a career.

My life is not only already half-shaped — so am I. The possibilities are no longer endless.

I’ve been reading a lot of nonfiction lately written by not-very-old women who have gone through some kind of  transformative experience, usually involving some kind of travel, or great loss, or something. They find themselves and then they find love. It’s a coming of age tale, a common enough narrative that should inspire me. But lately, this story line has become my obsessive mantra. I repeat it to myself, find it in everyone around me and continually fail to live up to it.

I’m constantly watching the lives of other women and writing their life stories for them. There’s always a clear path and a for-now conclusion. If I commit myself to one life, I’ll be strong like my sister. If I can stop feeling sorry for myself, I’ll be content like my best friend. If I could take the risks I know I should, I’ll be more like the woman I want to be. 

But I’ve never been a risk-taker. When I was a kid at a sleep-over three blocks away from my house, I’d get homesick at 9 p.m. and call my Dad to come and get me. But, every leap I’ve taken in my life — and I’ve taken some  — has been in direct retaliation against this part of myself.

I knew my instinct was to huddle up in my bed at home, so I moved across the county to New York the first chance I got. When I was 15, I refused to risk speaking even one word in French to our exchange student from Paris the whole summer he lived with us, so I majored in the language in college and spent 6 months living in Paris. I made myself do the things that terrified me most.

It’s the central paradox of me. And it means I’ll never stop striving — to achieve, to succeed, to love, to live. And it means that I’ll be fighting myself every step of the way as I do it.

I am not an adult. I am still in the throes of growing up. But, then again, I probably always will be.

The new chain-letter: The never-ending e-mail

[On not losing friends, post-grad]

There is an e-mail that I never move out of my inbox, it’s subject title is “My girls, how I miss you,” and it dates back to June 14 — exactly 14 days after my lease ran out in the Bronx and moved back to the desert city that is Phoenix.

There are five of us who try to keep in touch using this ongoing chain of communication — on top of text messages, gmail chat, a phone call here and there and the occasional drunk dial (college reminiscence, you understand).

All in all, keeping in touch with college friends post-grad is hard. Two of us have never been so busy in our entire lives, others have never been so happy and others have never been so far away. Yes, keeping in touch is hard.

But let’s start by saying this: College was fun.

Oh how our lives have changed.

I’m not the only one living with my parents again — thank God. We have a substitute teacher, an accountant, a first-year analyst on Wall Street and a burgeoning publishing assistant in midtown.

Life post-grad isn’t exactly what we all thought it would be. It’s probably not quite as bad, actually. See, there was this mounting fear of the future toward the end of senior year at Fordham. The senior class, as a whole, decided to ignore it with all of our might (as you may be able to guess from the photos above).

Instead, we decided to throw parties with every theme imaginable (luaus, balls, high school stereotypes, etc.), to lay on the quad in the sun, to write amazing final papers and relish the fact that they had no real-world application. It was perfect.

So, now that our lives have changed so much and have gone in so many different directions; now that we don’t live two doors down from one another and share morning coffee and late-night bottles of red wine — now what? Do we lose all of that?

Luckily, I’m a bit of an expert in the moving-away-and-keeping-in-touch-while-starting-over area.

Growing up, we moved a lot. When I was 7 years-old, it was from Louisiana to Oregon; when I was 13, it was from Oregon to Phoenix. Then there was the end of high school and beginning of college in New York.

Every move means the same thing: old new friends become new old friends and new friends find you.

And then I graduated and found myself back in Phoenix again — back with old friends who became new old friends with my now old college friends scattered about, busy finding out what their lives will be.

It was a perfect storm of starting over at the beginning of the…well…old beginning.

We’re not great at this never-ending email — there are weeks when no one writes and periods when we can’t even get a hold of the one living across the world (literally) on Guam. But then one of us sends out a new message in this ongoing chain — she’s sick, or in love or she’s found a new career path she never thought she’d pursue.

So, how does this last, post-grad?

By not letting it go.

4 Days with my family

I have an interesting family. Really, we’re very out of the ordinary. And very different from one another.

And, sometimes, four days together in my sister’s 1,100-square-foot house with her new husband and her dog can be interesting as well.

I’ve told you all about my stay-at-home, do-the-laundry, amazing Dad and my Mom, who I still haven’t friended on Facebook, by the way (please be patient with me). Now, I’ll tell you about the rest of my family, in hopes that they’re something like your family — except not really at all.

First, there’s my sister, Dana.

Enough said? Probably.

Nah, just kidding. Dana is the person who raised me. I mean, my parents were there, but she was the one who dressed me (in various neon outfits with side-ponytails), taught me to love NKOTB and to play sports like my life depended on it. I told a story in my maid-of-honor speech at her  wedding last month that will explain this all perfectly:

When I was little, my mom would ask me, “Who do you love the most, Lauren?” And I would look back at her and say, “Dana.” (And then Dana would look at Mom and say, “See.”)

I will never not want to be just like my sister…(which makes her recent wedding a bit of a challenge for me). Other than the fact that she is a counselor and I could never do that.

Then, there’s my big brother. Paddy to everyone he’s ever known since college; Patrick to us.

Patrick is a Jesuit priest…(that’s Catholic). They’re the really cool ones who run colleges and all-boys high schools around the country whose students love them and tell stories about the secret kegs they have hidden in a closet somewhere on campus. And my brother is pretty cool.

He is a passionate philosopher, teacher, learner — and a passionate Brewer’s fan. He is the one who led me to journalism, actually. Not that he meant to, really. Well, he did mean to lead me to Fordham (a Jesuit university) and he did mean for the Jesuits there to instill in me a sense of duty akin to something in Star Wars. (In fact, the whole family has a theory that Patrick really became a Jesuit because he thinks he’s a Jedi. He’ll even point out that George Lucas named the Jedis after the Jesuits).

In other words, because of Patrick, I knew I had to do something for others with my life.

That’s right, this guy right here — Pabst in hand — has set the standard for morals in our family.

But family is an odd thing like that, isn’t it?

And all of the oddities come out when all five of you spend an extended weekend together over food, wine (Scotch for the Jesuit), board games and way too much football on TV. At one point when we were playing Catch Phrase — the greatest game known to mankind — I shouted “it’s like Dad’s head!” My brother yelled, “balderdash!”

Amazing.

The nicknames also come out over the holidays. According to my Dad, I am “Fork,” “Squirt” or “Little-Biggie.” I couldn’t really tell you why. Dana is “Biggie” (she loves that) and Patrick is almost inevitably “Spud.” He doesn’t seem to mind. Or notice. It has also been established that I am my mother’s doppelganger. It’s getting embarrassing.

Nobody can get to you more than family. Nobody has shaped you more. And nobody else will refrain from judging you while you scarf down the largest plate of food you’ve eaten all year…because they are too. Here’s what Patrick and my sister’s new husband, Brandon (he doesn’t normally have that stache, but he should) looked like after the big meal. Mmmmm.

Hope you enjoy the holidays with your family!

The Bridesmaid Years

It’s begun. My mid-20s. Or, as I have quickly come to understand it: The Bridesmaid Years. That time of life when, at least once a year, one of my wonderful, talented, strong, smart, gorgeous best friends will ask me to be a bridesmaid in her wedding.

Just a few days ago, it happened again. Almost exactly a week after I was honored to be the maid of honor in my big sister’s wedding, one of my best friends, Katie, called to say that he had done it! Joe had proposed. I literally shrieked and jumped up and down in my kitchen. We have been waiting for this one. (Katie and I picked the ring out at Tiffany’s at least a year ago now.)

I will help her choose flowers and colors and venues; I will squeal when she finds the dress; I will love whatever dress she picks out for me and I will hold up all of those white layers of silk when she has to pee right before walking down the aisle. (I didn’t make that up, it happened to my sister).

I will love every second of it.

Having already been maid of honor twice before my 23rd birthday (which was the day after my sister’s nuptials about two weeks ago), I am an early inductee into the 20-something post-college Bridesmaid Years.

I expect this phase to last for about 5 years, with some outliers and a congested period in the middle somewhere. (This will be a recurring segment on my blog, as you can tell).

You all know what I’m talking about, 20-somethings out there. There are movies about this phase of life. (Not very many good movies about it, but they’re there.) When I updated my Facebook status after Joe proposed on Monday, I said, “It’s wedding season again!” A high school friend commented: “Isn’t it always wedding season in your 20s?” Yes. It seems to be.

But here’s the catch: In every single one of those movies, lonely girl (whether she’s played by Jennifer Lopez or Katerine Heigl, it’s the same girl) finds that perfect guy by the end of the movie who understands and loves her even though she is a neurotic workaholic. Ah, how art imitates life.

There was this moment at my sister’s wedding — it was a moment when I found myself, somehow, standing in a bustling, pushing, pretty drunk crowd of young, unmarried women in heels ready to fight for the bouquet. The bouquet that meant you were next.

I didn’t expect to be one of the girls in that crowd. I’ve been raised by a staunch feminist mom and the least macho dad in existence. I’ve never been all that concerned about being perpetually single, which I am. I usually enjoy it, actually. But I am hopelessly romantic (blame it on a childhood full of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers).

I hate to sound like a stereotype. I really hate to actually be a stereotype. But something happens when I see that diamond ring on someone’s finger. And then there’s that look on her face. That peaceful sort of knowing — that she is settled, that she is done, that she is ready.

I have realized by now that being romantic and being a feminist are not mutually exclusive things, but part of me instinctively cringes when I think like that. I hate to feel like there’s some existential race going on, in which I’m quickly falling behind. Two weddings have gone by already and I have yet to reach the end of my own terrible romantic comedy.

So, even though I have no answers right now (except when it comes to mermaid cuts versus A-line), there is one thing that I do know: The Bridesmaid Years will be nothing but lovely, gushing, romantic fun — if I can just stop watching those movies.