on pink coffin-shaped nails

I think, like horoscopes, that there is a little bit of all of this in every woman. What part of your personality do your nails highlight?

Getting your nails done gives you control, power, and a show of your individualism.

You pick the color, the shape, the length, the medium. You pick based on how you feel, what you want the world to know about you, what you want the cashier at the store to see when you hand them your payment.

What do your nails say about you?

Image courtesy of Mashable Infographics.

Let’s start at the beginning. What shape are you going for today?

Square and squoval nails are straightforward. I see them on a businesswoman with a family, someone who cares about herself but doesn’t want to sacrifice the functionality of her hands. A mom who wants to be able to play catch with her kids without breaking a nail, and types on a keyboard all day on the office without drawing too much attention to the clacking of the keys.

Round, oval, and almond nails are for old souls. A girl that wears a red lip as an accessory to any outfit. She’s refined, well-spoken, and always orders the same drink at the bar (with a straw of course). She has an animal that she’s very close to, and animals like her. She likes when things look nice, and comes off as organized and put together but her car is a mess.

Coffin nails are for women who talk with their hands. She gets excited easily, and has a few things that she is very passionate about. She likes to show off a little, can be called dramatic, but she makes the best secret keeper. This is the girl that breaks hearts but only a little bit on purpose.

Stiletto nails are for that bitch. She watches beauty tutorials on YouTube, or maybe she has her own content channel. She always smells good and gives everybody advice that she never takes herself. She’s always aware of the newest trends, but she only chooses to follow things that suit her. She definitely has a tattoo somewhere, and it probably has a cool meaning behind it.

Image courtesy of COSCELIA Nail Varnish.

Time to pick your color. There’s always a big book or key ring of plastic nails to flip through and this decision has heavy implications about who you are.

A solid red is sexy. It says everything you need it to. There’s a power behind every hand gesture, and a promise. Red reminds me of the lady from the movie Holes that painted her nails with snake venom.

A solid white is for a girl that is funny on Twitter, but pretty calm in real life. She takes a lot of pictures. White nails look good every day of the year, but they also need to be refreshed more often. It’s expensive to keep up but it’s worth the luxury.

Fun colors like teal, purple, color-changing show that you like to have fun. If you can get your nails done every two weeks you might as well try every color. You probably get the newest drink at Starbucks just to try it. Fearless.

Getting one sparkly nail evokes a little bit of fun, but it’s like a little secret. Catch me if you can. Getting a full set of sparkly nails is wild and I don’t trust you but I bet you own either two disco balls or two diamonds. The B.D.E. of a woman with a full set of sparkly nails is off the charts.

A girl that goes in with a design has anxiety. She took a screenshot of nails she spent an hour going through Pinterest choosing, but she didn’t trust the internet connection in the nail salon to pull up her picture so she screenshotted it and while waiting for her name to be called she had the picture pulled up and made sure the screen wouldn’t lock when she showed it to the nail tech.

Who are you this time? I think, like horoscopes, that there is a little bit of all of this in every woman. But what nails you choose say a lot about what part of your personality you want to highlight at that time.

This week I am medium-length, pink coffin-shaped gel acrylics. And it feels good.

sudden repulsion syndrome

Sudden Repulsion Syndrome is what happens when a small decision or behavior puts an abrupt end to a budding relationship.

I get fight or flight but for relationships.

Like I loveloveloveloved maybe one or two people in my life, and out of nowhere I’d wake up one day and be so disgusted by them. The day before I was writing them in my diary and daydreaming about their cologne, and then suddenly I would gag at the thought of one guy’s laugh, at another guy’s little moles.

I think my least favorite part about myself is how I can never decide on anything but I always know how I feel about someone because my brain sends some strong chemicals 3000% too quick. I don’t know I’m over a relationship until I’m physically repelled by the person I thought I was happy about.

Or I’m 3000% the other way, and the norepinephrine, dopamine, serotonin are like little butterflies trying to make their way out of my throat while I profess some kind of undying love.

I’ll fight so hard or I’ll run so fast, and neither of us is ever ready for that.

¿Qué más?

There are people, like me, that succeed out of spite.

Nonsense has been released post-partum to our intense liking of one another. I am not convinced that I have ever felt love, but I am certain that I have felt a strong need to attach myself to someone that loves me.

I think of you and I laugh.

Who could have predicted that I knew how to work this hard and this fast, and you knew how to run away so quickly? Your mother is my second mother and she still sends me her favorite Netflix recommendations.

Sometimes I hear music and it doesn’t remind me of you.

I only think about the one year and a couple awful months that happened when I think about how young I was and how bad everything is when you’re 20 years old. I think about how you said you never make it to seven months and I think it’s because you’re a cheater and a liar, a phony and a narcissist.

I am getting more.

My best friends and I are going on a trip this year to see something new. I am tired of seeing the same things and hearing how people fall prey to the same mistakes. I want to hear new stories and see new environments.

I always hated your singing,

Everyone is good except you. Your slight lisp is not affectionate in the slightest and you should quit immediately. It’s hard to be the bearer of bad news except when it isn’t hard at all because you belong on another continent, far away from me.

Anybody can run, but it takes guts to stay.

everyone’s a good singer

If you’re singing it usually means you’re happy and when you do anything harmless happily it is good, so you are a good singer because singing makes you feel good.

In junior year of high school I made a Great Gatsby-themed music video for extra credit, and my best friend and I modified the lyrics of Royals by Lorde, Roxanne by The Police, and another unfortunate song to be from Daisy’s perspective. It was horrible and cringe-y, my singing was not great, and it still exists somewhere on YouTube.

My friend had to rap for a music video when he was pledging his fraternity in college, and it’s the worst thing ever. Frat guys smoking cigarettes while wearing Supreme, rapping about joining their frat. Yikes.

My other friend was recorded singing Invisible by Linkin Park while he was fixing a computer. He was embarrassed after a lady recorded him and she was laughing at him.

None of us are great singers but I think we’re all good because at the end of the day we’re all going to jam out to Fireflies even though we got made fun of and embarrassed for singing.

Even if you get laughed at publicly, you’re still probably going to sing in your car when the next Adele song comes out.

I don’t know too many other things that are like that. Even if you’re “bad” at it, you’re still going to sing because it feels too damn good.

2020 better be one big cybergoth dance party

For New Years’ Eve I had two friends over and we went to a Total Wine store and bought a bunch of mini liquors, drank way too much, and played Taio Cruz, old Drake, Kanye, Jason Derulo, Evanescence, Panic! at the Disco, Fall Out Boy, that really sad song from Up, and just danced to all of it. We danced for hours and celebrated countdowns for New York, Los Angeles, Papua New Guinea, Alaska, and Hawaii. It was so much fun, and I was thinking today about how I never dance like that.

And by that I mean I totally learned how to do the goth rave dance and laughed so hard I thought I was going to collapse. Please watch the video so you too can have the best time ever with your friends while drinking mini bottles of peppermint vodka (yuck!) and limoncello (yum!).

Nothing says New Years vibes like goth dancing to the song “Married Life” from the critically-acclaimed film Up.

I wish my vision was 20/20. Please read that in every possible way you can conceive.

I guess I have some goals, and I’m not one of those people that gets upset over New Year’s Resolutions. I like holidays and events and I like that we put so much meaning on the beginning of a new year, especially since this one is the beginning of a new decade!

I was 12 in 2010, and obviously a lot has happened. But it feels like I was still doing the same steps that you’re “supposed” to do, like finish high school, graduate from college, get a big girl job, move out, blah blah.

In 2030 I’ll be 32 and it’s funny how that number seems so far away. This is the decade where all the cool stuff that wasn’t all planned out for me is going to happen. I could potentially fall in love, get married, adopt a nice 3-year-old, and who knows what else? Or I could, you know, not do any of that and that’s okay too! I could really kick it out of the ballpark touchdown goal and do really well in my career and end up a PR Goddess like Samantha Jones from Sex and the City. Who knows. Not me.

I want all of that to happen, but I think it’s best if we take it one year, month, week, day at a time.

My 2020 goals are:

  • Get more skilled at my job and move a step up in my career
  • Learn how to cook
  • Read a lot
  • Write a lot
  • Figure out a diet/exercise plan that works for me
  • More music!

I’m going to a cool training next week for media relations and they’re going to teach me how to give an on-camera interview which I am so so so excited for!! I can finally start being the C.J. Cregg of my dreams and at least have a certificate that says I can answer press questions on camera. I just hope they can teach me how to stay cool and calm like a real PR Goddess.

What’s that? Oh you need me to host a press conference? Not a problem. I keep translucent powder in my purse just for last-minute moments like this.

I can’t cook for shit, and that’s a Fact. Everything I make turns out too cold or burned, so I stick to my tried and true Trader Joe’s microwavable meals and a handy lil guy called Mr. Crock Pot. But this year, I’m going to start learning how. My kitchen is the size of my closet, which is great for my closet but not great for my kitchen. Priorities. I need to learn how to utilize the lack of space and dedicate some time into learning the craft.

I think I only read like 15 books in 2019, which for me is slacking. I need to get that library card renewed and jump back in. I love books so much, but it felt like this year reading was hard. I don’t know why, because as soon as I sit down and actually read I feel so good and zen, but getting myself to read was hard. Not this year.

I have a bunch of ideas for books, and I am the worst person ever because I will talk for hours about a really great book I’d love to write and never put down a single word. I’ve filled out seven journals in my life, and this past year I think I literally wrote maybe 30 pages. This year we are going to be Writers. Then maybe next year I can learn how to pitch a book to a publishing company! One year at a time!

I started the Warrior Diet last week, which is actually feeling pretty good. Fast for 20 hours, then eat all your day’s calories in a single four hour time period. I like that I know I can eat pretty much whatever I want and not have to worry about overdoing it. I ate a whole can of Spaghetti-O’s today, for example, and I feel great about it. I’m also pretty sure that’s not how this diet works, but when I become a great chef I’ll make balanced meals.

I had the day off from work today, so I found a beautiful park with a lake and a nice 2-mile trail that wraps around it. I think I’ll feel a lot better exercising outside and breathing Fresh Air than cooping myself inside of Planet Fitness with all of the other New Year’s Resolutioners.

I’m listening to Harry Styles’ new album Fine Line, and I just felt super inspired to play more of my own guitar and have fun singing. I need to listen to more music, go to some live shows, and dance! More dancing in 2020. 2020 better be one big cybergoth dance party.

If you’re reading this I hope you have an excellent 2020 full of lots of good moments and that you get one big surprise that you didn’t even think you wanted but it happens and it makes you so happy you get inspired to do something great.

nineteen

I felt you in my legs before I ever met you. And when you lay beside me, for the first time I told you. I feel you in my heart, and I don’t even know you.

I can’t remember the last time I heard a song that really made me feel something so strongly. When I was a teenager, I used to stay up with Panic! at the Disco albums on repeat on my iPod and I would just imagine what being in love is like. I thought if love sounded anything like Brendon Urie’s voice then I must be on the right track. Then I heard this song and it brought back everything.

I remember my first big big crush.

I remember driving home feeling so different, and I was so sure everyone could see it. I drove home and I kept touching my swollen lips and I knew that the world knew that I’d been kissing for hours. That I just had this air about me that screamed I had found the big L-O-V-E.

I was worried about the leaves on my windshield from spending the night at the boy’s house, because they weren’t the same leaves as the tree in front of my friend’s house that I told my parents I would be sleeping over at. I thought my mom would take one look at my windshield and just know.

Then summer passed and I never really felt that way again with him. And I stayed, and stayed, and stayed for way too long. Long after the maybe-love was gone, the butterflies had escaped out of my throat, and the “iloveyous” were preceded by tears and they really just meant “I’m sorry.”

Flew home, back to where we met. Stayed inside, I was so upset. Cooked up a plan, it was good except I was all alone. You were all I had.

I remember heartbreak, and I remember realizing after that it wasn’t a real heartbreak. I just didn’t want to be lonely. I didn’t want to go back to being alone.

I was so so so confused about whether any of it was worth it. The funny thing about dating a stranger (through an app, through a chance meeting) is you don’t really know the other person on the end. You don’t know who they were in high school or college, or if they ever got a detention or if they ever smoked weed.

I think I forced it because I wanted love so awfully. What was maybe supposed to just be a fling I stretched out well past its expiration date.

I think it’s too much for me to meet someone and in one or two months decide that I’m ready to be in a relationship. I don’t even make friends that fast. I definitely don’t love that fast.

But I get so excited and hopeful about love. I love love. I feel like I was meant to experience every single type of love there is and some days that puts me on a rush and other days that makes me scared.

I don’t think I am a faucet. I think it ends at some point.

I was nineteen. How could you blame me?