Once Upon a Time in Bexico

10 / 440 (2.3%)

I'm not doing nanowrimo, mostly because I'm pretty sure 50,000 words would just be my prologue and first two chapters, BUT Livizzle inspired me to keep track of my own novel by doing this adorable little bar I love so much!

Molly and I worked out that the novel itself will probably be more like 440,000 words -_-
So here it is!

Yesterday's cheat day wasn't much of one. I had breakfast and that was about it til like 4, when I had a lattee, a piece of candy, and a little banana pudding. So really... it wasn't too bad at all. I never plan these things out well at all.

All I know is right now I'm freezing my ass off, and I have to go work out in less than 20 minutes. I feel like I can't wake up, can't get my blood to flow--well thats not true, its flowing, its just flowing out of my crotch and not to my limbs and organs!

Today is lower body, and we're trying for 3 cardio sessions. Yesterday we were cut short to 2.

So..

Fuck my birthday.

So I've been up since five. Up until about half an hour I was still drunk as fuck from the night before. The night before being last night. Last night being the open mike comedy show Molly dragged us all to last night and I, for one, ended up having a hell of a time.

The show itself was good, but... I spent most of my time at the bar. Sometimes with Kari, sometimes with Rene... but most of it was with this 41 year old sucker I got two drinks out of before splitting all together. I snuck out a metaphorical window towards the end there, and I know that will come back to bite me in the ass.

I've had it rough these last few months. If I haven't woken up exactly as I have this morning, still kinda drunk, I've woken up still kinda drunk and generally glumy with the state of the world. My world to be more specific.

But as I went for a little joy ride this morning, windows down and a cigarette hanging out the window, I remember the 41 year old gentleman asking me how old I was. He mentioned that he thought I was jailbait, and I really should've kept that one running. But I was a dumbass, and told him I was almost 22.

So, sir, the answer to that question--how old is rebecca christa? She's a dumbass. That's it, right there. I'm dumbass years of age.

The whole idea of that had me laughing out loud in my car, and a lot of things became clear.

It's been a rough these last few months, and that was the first time I got a good laugh out of myself. Well--that's not entirely true, these last few months have gotten a lot of laughs out of me and other people, but it's that kind of a nervous laugh you get when someone pulls up an awkward reference to an event nobody is particularly proud of.

I was hurt by someone. I was hurt by a good person, and unlike the me of the old days, who would stumble, brush her knees off and keep running I fell down and let myself be trampled by everyone and everything around me.

I lost myself for a while there. Instead of getting up, brushing my knees off and getting back into the flow I hit the ground running. I guess I thought I could fly and ended up plowing into a giant tree--the petrified forrest kind, with the words "WHAT THE HELL DID I DO LAST NIGHT" written on it. When the smoke cleared I would make some declaration, some meaningful decision to stop drinking and partying so goddamn much. A few days would go by, a couple glorious weeks... and I'd find myself flat on my back in front of that fucking tree again.

This morning, when the smoke cleared so did everything else in my head. I'm twenty one years old. Yeah. That means I'm dumbass years of age, but I'm having the time of my life. I'm gonna look back on this last year, and have a really good laugh here pretty soon.

It's been a sad, hilarious, sexy, crazy lesson kind of a year. This last year has been a cheesy self discovery flick, and though at times I'd wake up and never wish any of this bullshit on anyone else, I woke up this morning and realized I wouldn't trade it for anything else in the world. A year ago I packed my shit up and moved into party central. I mastered a lot of things here. Now it's time to master something else.

In August I'll be twenty two years old, and maybe I'll straighten out a little. I know I will. I know now I can't just hit the ground running, I have to take steps. I have to climb a little bit every day, I have to do the things I love, and do the things I hate to get exactly where I want to be.

So. At twenty one years old I can look at any creep at a bar in the eyes and tell him with perfect clarity exactly who I am, and what I want to be. That means I have to go back to college, and finish. I have to work with the man, instead of fighting him tooth and nail all the way. I have to sell out. Maybe that means getting out of this town, maybe it doesn't. I suppose I'll find out.

I know that this will go unread by a lot of the people in my life. I know that this moment in time, this particular feeling of well being that inspired all of these words will be gone in about five or six hours when the fact that I got fucked up last night, and apparently got very little sleep finally hits me. This will change no one. This will change no lives, not even my own. It is simply an account of a moment in time, a documentation of euphoria that will pass me by a million times before I feel it again.

However, when I'm twenty two, twenty six, thirty four and my life is rushing by or has already passed me by, I'm going to read this. I'm going to remember how I felt right now, and remember exactly what it is to be happy.

I'm young. And I love to be young.

I have found myself in the most predictable predicament I've been in in quite a long time. I'm proving so many people right, and the people who had faith in me wrong. The choices people make, and the things that happen to us when we're young are supposed to define us. I don't like how I'm defining myself, but it seems to be in a nature I didn't know I had.

Like we all learned in that Sandra Bullock rehab movie that escapes me, to repeat the same actions over and over and expect different results is to be insane.

Hello, white room. I'm back.

I want to throw up. I want to throw up everything. The chicken, the salad, the fish, the kashi, my heart, my lungs, my intestines, my kidneys, and then my entire ribcage. I want to vomit everything that makes me human, and makes me a woman, and makes me weak.

Except my liver. I'll be needing that.

Last night was girls night. It was really great to have all the girls together again. And drinking is so much better in a pool. Thanks Kari, you're awesome!

I'm not going to say I believe the world is coming to end, because that just would not be true.

I will, however, go as far as to say that the world has not changed a single lick. It's not the world that has recently gone crazy, it's the fact that after 21 years of coming into adulthood, it is finally, finally effecting me.

The state of the economy has sent myself and many friends into a borderline state of poverty. The state of the war has sent many of my newer friends off to Iraq, possibly never to be seen again. It only occurred to me yesterday that I saw their faces for what could have been the last time.

My hometown turned into a warzone this week--most of where I grew up hasn't been leveled by hurricanes, it's been leveled by fires. Palm Bay is the ghetto, yes.. but it was my ghetto, and now a lot of it is destroyed.

When I was young--and I will even go so far as to compare it to 2004, when the hurricanes wiped out most of my life as I knew it--no matter how close these things came to home, they didn't seem to effect me personally so much.

I suppose it is at this point in my life that I actually have to acknowledge the effort on the part of my parents. They gave me and my siblings the most realistic view of this world while still protecting us from the stress of having to live through it to the very best of their abilities. And I think they did a spectacular job--because I never felt the way I did when I woke up this morning, or the for the last four mornings.

The weight of the world never really came so close to me as it has the past week. Two of my friends are in shelters with their families now, and can only sort of pick and choose their work days. Most of everything in their homes is at least still halfway there, but the homes are unliveable and are left to the mercy of looters. The rest of us are there to pick of the slack.

Monday and Tuesday Woodys spent most of the day and part of the night putting together wildly extravagent orders, sending out anyone available to deliver lunches and dinners to most of the palm bay fire fighters and FPL workers.

My district manager is concerned because if the amount of discounts this week reach corporate, we all might be standing in front of a closed restaraunt begging for our paychecks and wondering what in God's name we would do now, as a new part of the millions unemployed in this country.

This entry was titled Hell Week because for me, I've only just completed two of five 12 hour shifts this week. That's nothing compared to what our firefighters, police officers and volunteers have done so far to try and bring our city back to a liveable state, but I suppose we all have our parts to play.

This morning I was standing in my hallway, staring out the window and recalling the dreams of the night before. I dreamed my mother, and sister, were both of out jobs. MIMA had closed, for some reason, which is unrealistic, but I suppose it represented my own fear of having nowhere to work.

I regressed to my rather naiive outlook on life--the one where I'm not sure where to categorize or reference events, or distasters going on around me, so I look to a movie or book or show I used to watch. I find fictional drama, and compare it to my life, and try and see exactly how the heroes in that story managed to deal.

I don't in the least find it surprising that I managed to come up with Buffy season six, when she returns from the dead and finds that its not vampires or monsters or cheesy special effects coming to kill her and all her friends, it's bills. It's finding a job. It's taking care of a sister who depends on her, and a house, and all the rest of the weight of the world.

Giles told her that these were things her mother dealt with everyday. My parents woke up to the world I'm living in now everyday, and for thirty years now have had mornings like I have had this week every day.

I don't exactly know when the transition occurs, or how one adjusts, or how well my parents prepared me for this, but I think I am well into the process. I'm learning to take the next big trainwreck one at a time, and do my very best with it until I've managed it.

My job, my income--they have suffered the most since the economy was shot to death, and it is only going to get worse. My lifestyle has adjusted since the money stopped coming in as fast as it had before, and I suppose when I finally lose my job, I will adjust my lifestyle then as well.

I've finally accepted that I really am on an island, and there is nowhere to run to.

And tomorrow, Hell Week continues.

Clay Aiken finally looks like Barry Manilow.

What a guy.

Spring is coming to an end. Our "season" is taking its final breaths before it dies, and we're all struggling for money again. At least, that's how it is for this side of the world. The idea that this is only going to get worse keeps looming over me, and there isn't much to do about it except save and struggle. Season will be back, but not the economy. Not any time soon.

It's all right, though. I'll make it through. I'll find a way.

I really miss Chris Neel.