As a Business major (that was for you, Rosemary), I can’t tell you exactly how many Business related classes I took throughout college.  Well, I could tell you … but, I’m too lazy to do the math right now.

Throughout my courses, I would write random things down in one particular section of my notebook labeled “notes to self” …

I found where I was doodling in my Into to Marketing class and my instructor had asked, “What ratio of get/give up do you require for a purchase decision?”

He added that:  get/give up = value

And:  Value = the worth of a product based on what a customer’s subjective assessment of GET relative to the GIVE

Suddenly, it all became so clear.

Just some old stuff with which she needs to let go.

And then the other stuff will fade away, too.

And, with that, she’ll make room for the new stuff.

i said, ‘love is waiting
and better days’
she smiled and placed a kiss
on my waiting face
promise what you will
something good for me
time will take it all
and it will, you’ll see”

- Iron & Wine

Here’s the thing.  I’m not one of those “Girl Power!”  “Embrace your singleness!”  “Men suck!“ kind of girls.  I’m just not.  While I’m also not the girl shouting from the rooftops, “I’ve been dating since I was 15! I’m exhausted! Where is he?” kind of girls either.  I pride myself in my public nonchalance at my singlehood, neither embracing it nor whining about it.  I don’t rant and rave on Twitter every time I get a wedding invitation that says “Marlo and Guest.”  This is simply where I am in life.  If I drink 2 extra glasses of wine because of it while pondering my almost-thirty-ness (or if I don’t … I’m admitting to nothing), then it’s not something I’m going to rant publicly about. (Until now?)

Anyway, a friend of a friend of a friend recently invited me to be a friend on Bebo.com … and I figured What the heck? Let’s see what this Bebo has to offer a girl like me. Upon starting to fill out my profile … I am not sure if it was just because I hadn’t had my morning Coca-Cola yet or if it really, sincerely, actually annoys me that this is part of the profiling process … I mean, sure, I can overreact as well as anyone else can.

Here’s my problem, Bebo:

Bebo did what?

Really?

Again, I’m not sure why this rubbed me the wrong way.  In fact, upon finishing writing about how much it annoyed me … I’m not even that annoyed anymore.  Still, regardless, Bebo.com … you can suck it.

Some mornings I wake up and I totally get it.  I’m absolutely certain of what I want and where I am going and who I want to be.  I feel the beat of the drum and can tap right along.  I even find that I have a hint of rhythm.  Everything feels magical and colorful and possible and right.  All the things that are unfolding before me make me feel as though I’m excitedly reading a novel I can’t seem to put down.  I must know if the heroine is triumphant and I must know right now!

And then some nights I forget what I felt that very morning.  There is no order to anything.  No magic.  What I want is the “un-gettable get” and I can’t seem to get where I think I might have been going at some point but I can’t quite recall where exactly that was.  Everything feels scary and overwhelming and gray.  It’s like a book that I was told I’d love and I can’t find the umph! to get past the first chapter because it’s all a jumbled mess of a plot with lifeless characters.

This is normal, right?  This is where they get that stupid “life is like a roller coaster” analogy, right?

I caught myself staring at the moon when it would show its face from behind the cloud-covered sky and I found myself wishing with all that I am for God to show His face to me.  Then I felt a hint of fear when I realized that He just might.

The things and lessons that I learn … I tend to forget.  And sometimes I try to remind myself to remember not to forget again.  And then I remember that I forgot and I remember to remember again.

And I’ve been doing this for quite some time now.  This endless cycle.

I’m thankful for my patient friends who don’t feel it necessary to attempt to remind me to remember every time I forget … knowing that they’re remembering that I’m only going to forget again.  And, often times, I forget to thank them for remembering that I always come around when I do remember.  And then we all forget.

And sometimes we laugh about it over wine.

I think my point might be that forgetting isn’t always so bad … as long as you remember that you can’t really forget what you want to forget.

Our hearts have a way of holding on to good things like that.  Remembering, that is.

I’d like to think that they run across the street, through the puddles, and off into the drizzly day, holding hands …
But then, what happens?
Perhaps it is best not to know.
Maybe she decides she’s better off as an independent woman for a while, free to wear old sweat pants while she eats grits in the morning, to keep her television tuned to Lifetime indefinitely, free to have a cigarette when she drinks a glass of wine … you know, maybe she decides that.

But, then, maybe … just maybe … the sky clears and the sun peaks through the clouds and they look at each other and wonder how they ever made it so far before this moment.  Because no matter how bad or ugly it got … at least they had each other.

Then there are days where I find myself at a 4-way stop in my car on my way home from running some random errand and I notice the little things that I like to pretend nobody else notices.  I wonder if anyone else rolls their windows down to let the cool air in while turning their heaters on low.  I notice the cloudless sky and the hint of spring approaching for just a brief moment and I wonder what happened to the man that used to fly his kite almost daily in the field across the street from where I turn to go home.  Whenever I notice any and all of these things, I write about them in my head.  I ponder which adjective I want to use to describe the old man and his kite.  I decide on “untroubled.”  And I make up stories about him in my head about how wonderful his life is.  I have the story outlined in my head and I carry on my way home only to never write about him.  He is never a fleeting thought.  He just never makes it onto my paper or my screen.  (Until now I suppose.)

I struggle between the profound and the usual.  I struggle between the ordinary and the extraordinary.  I suppose somehow, I want what I write about to move someone and for people to read it and understand what I mean and maybe laugh or nod or scrunch their eyebrows together because they “get it.”  I want people to disagree with me and I want people to have my back.  I want to find the balance between the nothing and the everything.  I want what I write to mean so little and so much.

I suppose that’s what this is all about:  Expressing my thoughts and feelings and experiences.  I’ve been blogging for 7 years and the longer I do it, the more afraid I become to put myself out there.  What if I am making myself too vulnerable?  I think it only solidifies the inevitability that I’m never going to be that mysterious girl in the corner of the room that people wonder about.