White Girl Bougie

As the air chills, well freefall to six degrees above freezing, I find myself drinking tea in my favorite NYC cup with fuzzy socks on and my favorite university pullover.  My hair is up in a messy bun, and since I'm not planning on washing it tonight, the said style should make it bouncy for tomorrow.  Or . . . Or it will be a dry shampoo Monday, which sets an entirely new tune for the week. 

You probably think I'm listening to rap and white girl rolling it out.  Not today, my friends.  It's late on a Sunday.  Sunday's are no place for rap.  Mondays, now, are a different story.  Instead, I've got an even whiter mix of mellow and slow songs going that I've had on repeat for two days.  I make no apologies, as sometimes we just need the same twenty songs to move us along.  Sometimes. 

This is all sounding pretty white bougie right now.  I probably shouldn't tell you I had a gluten-free blueberry bagel this morning, toasted with cultured cashew butter.  Ok, I know.  I should just cash in my cool card, but--ya know--ya gotta do what ya gotta do.  For the record, on that cashew butter: you have to get cultured, as that is what makes it good.  For dinner, there was gluten-free quinoa pasta with vegan alfredo sauce (i.e., onions and shallots, garlic salt, olive oil, walnuts, mustard, gluten-free soy sauce, and nutritional yeast.  Oh yeah, don't forget the vegan chicken broth made from ethical and sustainable sources).  I sauteed some yellow and orange peppers, baby portabella mushrooms, rainbow carrots, and English peas.  Yeah, the bougies saw me coming this week didn't they?

Really shouldn't tell you the cleaner I've been using is apple cider and pumpkin scented organic stuff, huh? I know.  Street creed is gone.  Just gone. 

That being said, life has been long as of late.  Long and numb and sleep deprived as the insomnia is awake and the drugs don't work.  Remember that old Verve song?   Just like that.  Perhaps it is this virus I have brewing.  Perhaps the Benlysta said fuck you.  Perhaps I've got an inflammation raging that needs more than the locker of drugs I'm already on.  Perhaps the new drug's side effects are outweighing everything else.  All I know is twenty-six years doesn't make this easier, and in the end, I'm still the one who has to figure out how to make it through the day, week, and moment.  Hence, these days I've been making sure I cook more. 

Cooking is an easy escape of half an hour or so, cutting and chopping, washing dishes, making something.  It's a release for the most part.  Then again, it's a good reason to run arthritis riddled hands under hot water.  Makes you forget for a moment. 

In the moments in-between I eased into a movie seat and watched A Star Is Born.  Aside from the millennial next to me who A) decided to sprawl her body into my chair and on me (um, personal space, woman!) and B) who apparently didn't like Bradley Cooper (why go see a movie of his?) and saw herself touching Lady Gaga instead (seriously, every time he touched her she uttered "Ugh, I can't stand him touching her.") it was a legit flick.  Of course, as I write this melancholy piece, I am reminded that the damned thing triggered me.  Perhaps that is what brought on the white girl haze  . . .

When you find yourself married to an alcoholic, you see flashes of your own life, or maybe that was just me.  Years past you forget how bad it was until you don't.  The passing out, the embarrassing parts in public.  The jealousy.  Hell, my now ex-husband was jealous of my doctor.  Legit.  In my youth moments of a father's drink came back, as these stories tend to parallel our own lives at times.  Add that to the drugs not working and my current state of exhaustion and what is either a sinus infection or hell in my nostrils . . . Yeah, there's a mixture of hell-fire and damnation right there. And that takes me back to the air chilling, white girl melancholy, and gluten-free quinoa spaghetti noodles. 

Life has been what is it is as of late.  I lie awake.  I remember to breathe or try to.  I spent several hours last week and this week repairing the webpage as it went down twice.  I used more hours trying to stay upright when my body is screaming that it can not.  I find ways to escape, as we all do.  Perhaps that is what it is afterall.  Escapes between the perpetual moments.  The moments that never seem to end, so we escape for a second along the way.