Mind The Gap: With Bridget

Two days form today will mark the one year anniversary of my mother’s death, and while I want to be blackout drunk for the occasion, instead, I choose to spend the day with one of my friends instead of wallowing alone in my room.  Oh, there will most likely be wallowing, but under the disguise of crying while watching a Disney movie.

I’ve been going through jewelry boxes for the last hour, and during my last pass through a box I hadn’t opened in at least four years (as suggested by the amount of glitter within) and I found on the rings that I remember my mom wearing practically every day of my life.  I don’t remember her giving it to me, and I have no idea how it got in the box at all, but it’s there, and it’s dumb, but I choose to believe that she made it appear there, just before the one year mark of not having her in my life.

My mom believed in ghosts and spirits watching over us after they passed away (so much so that we were planning a trip to the famed Lilydale Collective in upstate New York in the future).  So maybe it’s her, leaving little things for me to discover in jewelry boxes along the way.

I think about her a lot lately, because of Christmas, and because I’m staying in a half decorated room that she’d been working on for the year and a half I’d been up at school.  I wonder what this place would look like had she get to finish it, because it’s not likely that I’ll ever make it look as beautiful as she did.

My mom loved to find beauty in the most unlikely places.  We’d go to an antique or thrift store and out of the corner of her eye she’d spot the most amazing chair or set of glasses.  She certainly passed that on to me.  For the last three years that I had my mother in my life, we searched out all the pieces to a set of pink pyrex bakeware from the 1960’s.   I am a young woman in posession of an ultra rare set of four nesting mixing bowls, aqua and pink glass tupperware containers, atomic looking cream and sugar set from the 1970’s, and a set of six aqua tea cups and saucers.  Oh yes, kitchen outfitting is truly my passion.  I fear for my future husband, walking into my life when I already have everything we’d need to register for.

I found the most amazing red and white sadle shoes at the Red White and Blue down the road, they only cost me three dollars and they’ve never been worn.  My mom would be so proud.

But the one thing that makes me feel worse and better with every day is that I look more and more like her whenever I look in the mirror.  It’s a little creep sometimes.  One second I’m me, getting dressed for class.  The next moment, I’m not myself, but I’m decked out in my mother’s favorite earrings, and my eyes are the same hazel as hers were.

So there you have it.  I am not doing wonderful right now, but I’m doing better then I ever thought I would.  And why shouldn’t I be, I mean, I was raised by my mother, she wouldn’t expect anything less from me.

As Florence + The Machine says, “It’s always darkest before the dawn.”

Things Are Getting Better. They Are.

I’m trying this new thing called responsibility this term.  That being said, I’ve always been a fairly responsible person.  For most of my life I’ve relied on myself for entertainment, and I kind of had to learn a lot about what it means to be responsible when my mom was diagnosed with cancer.  This term, however, I’ve been tasked with more projects than I’ve really ever had before.

I’m taking a classes in graphics, promotions, presentations, and audio.  For each class except for graphics, all of the assignments have been group work.  At the beginning of the term, I was really scared of delving into my major and finding that I hated everything about Communications.  On the contrary, I find the problem solving and creative aspects of Communications to be really fun most of the time.  For my promotions course we had to create our own radio station, and I practically did the whole thing for my group, which was terrible at the time.  Looking back on it, however, I see that my ideas for promoting the station were legitimately good.

In my other parts of student life, like at the radio station and in Ambassadors, I’m getting a lot of things accomplished.  At the radio station, I’ve taken on a really big project, and it’s moving along really well.  And I just won the election of VP of Development within Ambassadors.  I have to plan two huge events this spring, and next fall.  It’s a little scary, but also exciting.

I see now that I’m actually suited to a specific kind of work.  I really like solving problems and getting to think up new ideas for people.

Back during Freshman year, I had a crisis and wanted to leave school to go to culinary school.   I’m really happy that I made the decision to stay where I am.  I’ve made the kind of friends that I only dreamed of making before I got here, I’m more involved in something than I’d ever been before, and I’ve discovered what makes me happy.

Bars don’t make me happy, drinking doesn’t make me happy—sitting with my friend Jess and planning projects makes me happy.  Being so rushed that I hardly have time to think makes me happy.  Flitting from place to place so much that I don’t see my room until after the sun’s gone down makes me happy, though, I’d love it if I had more time to eat (That seems like the one thing I forget).

Things are going to work out.  They just will.  Enough has gone wrong, that it has to start going right.

You can quote me.

I am 21, and that letter that I was waiting for came—in the form of a scrapbook filled with pictures of me and my mom as well as a two page actual letter.  I couldn’t be happier.

The U.S. Mail is a Cruel Bitch (Birthday)

I will be 21 in a few hours when the clock strikes midnight on September 24^th.  However, it must be noted that I wasn’t born at midnight 21 years ago, I was born nearly a full 24 hours later than midnight, at 11:07 PM.  I still celebrate the 24^th as my birthday, though I spent only 53 minutes alive and separate from my mom way back when.

I think about this a lot on my birthday.  I think about which act of serendipity made it so that I was born and not a child who looks like me, but isn’t me.  I think about how difficult it must be to raise a baby into childhood, only to watch it leave home nearly two decades later.  I think about how I really should give my parents more credit for raising a level-headed (most of the time) child like me in a town where spoiled children are practically a dime a dozen.

This will be my first birthday without my mom.  I think about that all the time now.  I mark my life a lot with milestones that she’s missed, but which we still celebrate in one way or another: her birthday, my parents anniversary.  I think birthdays are different though.  She’s the reason that I’m alive and tomorrow morning, I won’t wake up to her morning phone calls.

I am not nearly as excited to begin my life as a person who can consume alcohol in the manner in which she chooses as I am to hear from my mom again.  I know, I told you she’s gone, and she is.  But she left me things.

Her words still linger.  I was promised back in January that on my birthday this year I would get a letter, that there were letters (I don’t know how many or when I will get them) floating around with my mother’s last words locked up in them.  There are pearls of wisdom locked up in envelopes somewhere that isn’t here.  I’m terrified that it won’t come, that none of them will come—that I waited for 9 months for nothing but disappointment.

So I just hold out hope that this letter is making it way slowly but surely to me through the mail.  This isn’t a movie, 13 little blue envelopes won’t tell me to run off to England to find a man (I’m not that lucky) and I doubt they’ll end with ‘P.S. I love you.’, because that’s not something my mom would tack on to the end of a conversation.  It’s something she’d start with.  The most I’m hoping for is to hear her voice one more time.  I don’t know if it will make me better, or rip me open again though.

All I want for my birthday is that letter.  It’s what I’ll wish for—probably on every one of my birthdays, ever—tonight when I blow out the candle on my cake.

I turn 21 in 3 hours.  Now I wait for that and my letter.

AND I’M BACK!

Yesterday I went to work after sleeping all night with my makeup on (because I’m just lazy). I looked terrible. Then a woman told me that I was really pretty, and asked me if people ever told me I looked like Taylor Swift.

fuck.

It’s so depressing when I think about all the crushes I have on guys in bands who wear girls jeans, because if we ever dated I wouldn’t even be able to borrow their pants, because they’re too damn skinny.

What’s the point of dating someone who wears girls pants if it doesn’t expand my wardrobe?

Dear Friends,

I’m ready to go back to school.  I miss my friends more than I thought possible. I miss bringing them snacks at midnight, hungover writers meetings, and having food forced upon me by multiple people when I have one of my patented “Low Blood Sugar Toddler Moments”.  I have a family up at school, and scores of people who act like my big brothers, keeping the creeps away from me as much as possible.  You guys make my life interesting.

I have the Ambassadors, who care about me so much and appreciate me, even though I can be totally strange.  I am surrounded by people who want me to get better, who offer to help me and who accept it when I say that I’m really doing okay (even when I just need to wallow), and who are there when I need to wallow with others.

I went from being practically friendless my freshman year, to finding these amazing people who make school fun.  I honestly don’t know what I would have done over spring term if it hadn’t been for you guys.

So I know I don’t say it nearly enough, but I love you.  I appreciate you.  It’s because of you that I’m not completely broken.  I look so forward to seeing you all in a month.  This summer has been too fucking long.  I can’t wait to be back with you.

Seriously.

Love,

Bridget

P.S. You all live way too fucking far away from me.

I know I shouldn’t take it as personally as I do—but when I lose a follower it feels like I’M IN A GLASS CASE OF EMOTION.

(Source: onelanebridget)

Facts that I would like to reiterate

I have re-evaluated my skills and I feel that the only place that they would actually come in handy would be as some sort of handler for a band on tour.  Why?  Because i’m mothering.  I’m really great at pciking up friends from parties when they’re plastered and getting them home.  I know how to convince a drunk person to just go to sleep instead of destroying a TV or running around outside.  I’ve stayed up with roomies for hours until they fall asleep after a night of shots.  Not only do I understand the importance of sleep, but I ALSO an an excellent baker.  Given access to even a bus kitchen, I would totally be able to create delicious treats for whatever band I’m with.

Also, I’ve been told multiple times that I’m “One of the Guys” because on my understanding about the kinds of gross things that guys like to talk about in code because they think I don’t understand.  I do.  It’s still gross, but whatever.  I’m also excellent at getting absentminded people on track—like herding them to and from whereever they need to go.  I’m positive that I could put these skills to use, getting whoever I’m working for to and from interviews to sound check.

I’m easily amused, and it’s usually entertaining for whoever I’m around.  My facial expressions alone would probably be funny enough to keep me employed.

So just hire me to do whatever crappy work there is to do on a tour.  I really don’t care. I’m great at organization and finding lost keys.  I give awesome hugs.  I know a lot about really nerdy things!  I wear purple eyeliner that I would totally let my band borrow if they wanted to.

Just hire me.  You won’t regret it.