Ch-ch-ch-changes

- January 6 -

“You are never loved in the same way twice.”

- January 5 -

- November 22 -

I have decided that I am going to start a fashion blog in order to push myself to dress well all the time.

We shall see how long this lasts.

- November 7 -

- October 30 -

- October 27 -

Most days, I wake up at 7 AM, take my meds, and troll the Internet for jobs. Once 9-10 AM rolls around, I doze off from exhaustion and frustration. I wake up again around 11-12 PM and I start cold calling local businesses for job openings. After a fruitless hour, I look for menial gigs on Craigslist. Most call for “busty petite girls” or some equally illegitimate and demeaning description. After sending out emails to walk dogs, make handwritten postcards, or clean houses, I get hungry.

I open the fridge and try to assemble something out of its meager contents. 3 eggs, 4 limes, hot dog buns, milk. Hm. I think I will have some cereal instead.

I try to work on a piece I’m making for the art show. At this point, I’m sick of looking at it. Progress is slow. I don’t have enough money to frame any of my work, so I’m busting my brain trying to figure out clever and tasteful ways of displaying. The art show will make or break me. I’m hoping to sell enough art work to pay some of my bills.

It’s lunch time now. I have frozen vegetables, which I warm up in a pot. I have no salt.

I slip into an existential fit where I start violently questioning myself, my decisions, and the state of my current being. I slap myself out of it and try to stay positive.

My phone rings. It’s some 800-number or some number from Columbus, Ohio. I don’t know anyone from Ohio. It’s the debt collectors. I Googled it. I check the mail. Letters from collection agencies on behalf of two hospitals, Bank of America, Barclay’s, and Gap. Oh, here is one from my student loan agency. I slink back inside and start calling all of these people. Same spiel, “I lost my job, I’m looking for one, I have no money, I can’t pay up now.”

These interactions are unbearably humiliating. It’s like a confession every time. One of them stood out, though:

“You are $350 over in penalties and late fees.”

“I know, I’m sorry. I lost my job and I can’t pay.”

“Are you receiving unemployment?”

“No, I don’t qualify. I sold my clothes so that I could buy food.”

“… Oh, Miss Kato, you have to take care of priorities. You focus on keeping yourself fed and well. There’s nothing that can be done about this bill, but what’s important is that you take care of your needs first.”

I almost cried.

I check my bank account obsessively, hoping that by some small miracle there will be money there. Nope. $0.71.

Selfishly, I wish for money so that I can go to 7-Eleven to get a bag of chips and some candy.

It’s ok. There will be money one day. I have to tell myself this to calm my heart. I know it’s true, but the in-between from the point where I don’t have money to the point where I do can sometimes be unbearable. It makes me ugly inside and out. It’s hard not to be sad or angry. But I fight. I must.

I can’t sleep at night. I seem placid and content, but inside I’m a roaring wreck. The debts, the calls, the letters— these all eat away at me. I know there’s not much I can do. I just have to trek on and keep looking. I finally wrestle my conscience into sleep around 3 AM.

I’m not complaining about my life, because I know I’m not bad off. In fact, I love my life. I love my family and friends, and the wonderfully priceless things that I have seen, felt, done, tasted.

It just sometimes feels like I have this really fantastic bike, and everything about it is perfect. It’s shiny, my favorite color, it fits me well. Except I’m missing the chain. Without it, there’s not much I can do. I do what I can with it, but the most essential functions are not possible without this chain.

And so I wait.

- September 19 -

“A true friend will treat you as if you were a part of them. No matter what happens, no matter what kind of fucked up things you do, they will find a way to forgive you as they would forgive themselves.”

-Mom

- September 7 -

There are times in your life, especially growing up, where strong currents sweep you away and you have trouble keeping your head above the water. You become lost in a sea of confusion, riddled with rash emotions, hasty decisions, and fear. You lose sight of what you have - your friendships, your goals, your simple joys, your loves, yourself - and soon your will to fight your misfortunate circumstances begins to flounder.

During those times, it is important to keep fighting the undertow of defeat- not out of your need to simply stay alive, but more so to preserve the ability to flourish and thrive amongst your friends and loved ones once again. When you are weak and discouraged, recall the glimmers of hope that you nest within the depths of your heart: the kindness of strangers, the warmth and safety of loved ones, the sublime taste of a ripe avocado, the comforting familiarity of a lover’s hand in yours, the innocence of children, the brilliance of a clear sky, the peace of sand between your toes.

Do not grieve over what has been seemingly taken or sacrificed amidst the ravaging swells. All is not lost, for the strength of hope in your heart tethers those precious things tightly to you. When your toes start to scrape the sand, when your feet are planted firmly back on the shore, all the worldly or ethereal things that you kept close to your soul will be waiting for you on land. They will welcome you, keep you safe, keep you happy, and make you feel loved.

Hopefully, if you ever find this, knowing that I love you (without the expectation to be loved back), will allow you to never have to fear the tides of change.

America sucks and it’s all Shepard Fairey’s fault.

- August 9 -

“Like most Americans, at this point, I have no idea what Barack Obama — and by extension the party he leads — believes on virtually any issue. The president tells us he prefers a “balanced” approach to deficit reduction, one that weds “revenue enhancements” (a weak way of describing popular taxes on the rich and big corporations that are evading them) with “entitlement cuts” (an equally poor choice of words that implies that people who’ve worked their whole lives are looking for handouts). But the law he just signed includes only the cuts. This pattern of presenting inconsistent positions with no apparent recognition of their incoherence is another hallmark of this president’s storytelling. He announces in a speech on energy and climate change that we need to expand offshore oil drilling and coal production — two methods of obtaining fuels that contribute to the extreme weather Americans are now seeing. He supports a health care law that will use Medicaid to insure about 15 million more Americans and then endorses a budget plan that, through cuts to state budgets, will most likely decimate Medicaid and other essential programs for children, senior citizens and people who are vulnerable by virtue of disabilities or an economy that is getting weaker by the day. He gives a major speech on immigration reform after deporting a million immigrants in two years, breaking up families at a pace George W. Bush could never rival in all his years as president.

THE real conundrum is why the president seems so compelled to take both sides of every issue, encouraging voters to project whatever they want on him, and hoping they won’t realize which hand is holding the rabbit. That a large section of the country views him as a socialist while many in his own party are concluding that he does not share their values speaks volumes — but not the volumes his advisers are selling: that if you make both the right and left mad, you must be doing something right.

As a practicing psychologist with more than 25 years of experience, I will resist the temptation to diagnose at a distance, but as a scientist and strategic consultant I will venture some hypotheses.

The most charitable explanation is that he and his advisers have succumbed to a view of electoral success to which many Democrats succumb — that “centrist” voters like “centrist” politicians. Unfortunately, reality is more complicated. Centrist voters prefer honest politicians who help them solve their problems. A second possibility is that he is simply not up to the task by virtue of his lack of experience and a character defect that might not have been so debilitating at some other time in history. Those of us who were bewitched by his eloquence on the campaign trail chose to ignore some disquieting aspects of his biography: that he had accomplished very little before he ran for president, having never run a business or a state; that he had a singularly unremarkable career as a law professor, publishing nothing in 12 years at the University of Chicago other than an autobiography; and that, before joining the United States Senate, he had voted “present” (instead of “yea” or “nay”) 130 times, sometimes dodging difficult issues. […]

But the arc of history does not bend toward justice through capitulation cast as compromise. It does not bend when 400 people control more of the wealth than 150 million of their fellow Americans. It does not bend when the average middle-class family has seen its income stagnate over the last 30 years while the richest 1 percent has seen its income rise astronomically. It does not bend when we cut the fixed incomes of our parents and grandparents so hedge fund managers can keep their 15 percent tax rates. It does not bend when only one side in negotiations between workers and their bosses is allowed representation. And it does not bend when, as political scientists have shown, it is not public opinion but the opinions of the wealthy that predict the votes of the Senate. The arc of history can bend only so far before it breaks.”

-Drew Weston

- July 7 -

“I wish it was this long, and this wide.

Like a cheese wheel.”

-B.B.