Magic

Well, I suppose it’s the grown up thing to finally admit that magic doesn’t exist. So I guess I’ll have to admit that I’ll never get to Hogwarts, or fall into Wonderland, or tumble into Narnia crawling through closet doors… And sadder than my admitting it, is the fact that I don’t care. It’s a resigned admission. Magic isn’t real. Life is real. Life is hard. Magic. Is. Not. Real. 

But…

there really is nothing more magical than those stories that keep children awake all night, trembling with excitement, little eyes racing down the text, little hands shaking to turn the page, those stories read by flashlight, past bedtime, tangled under a stifling pile of blankets so that Mom won’t suspect and chastise you for breaking the rules.

I remember, in first grade, at age seven, finally having gotten a copy of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone and not being able to put it down till I finished. I remember shoving a towel under my door crack to hide the fact that I was up at two in the morning on a school night, desperate to know what happened next. And I remember, after each chapter, becoming more and more depressed that it was nearing the end, the stack of pages grasped between my left thumb and fingers were waning as the pages I’d read grew thicker and thicker. And I remember, right when I finished, clutching the closed book to my chest, desperately aware of the fact at that moment, there was nothing more important to me than getting my hands on the next one. I remember hugging it to my heart as though if I pressed against it hard enough, I would somehow fall inside and live in that magical world that left me wonderstruck for the rest of my life. God, books used to electrify me. 

Watching the opening ceremony tonight, I was really very touched, in a really oddly emotional way, by that gorgeous, gorgeous tribute to children’s literature. I screamed when I saw JK Rowling, and as Captain Hook and Cruella Deville and Voldemort blossomed out over the children’s beds, nightmares that were soon to be banished by hundreds of adorable Mary Poppinses, I couldn’t stop smiling. I am so grateful for children’s literature and I am so glad that such a wonderful tribute was paid.

But I also couldn’t help but feel a little….well, a lot….melancholy? Bittersweet? Sad, even…that I have long since left behind sitting in a closet with a flashlight staying up all night desperately wondering if Harry ever found the Sorcerer’s Stone, if Jo married Laurie, if Aslan defeated the White Witch.

It’s been so long since I’ve been overwhelmed by a fantasy world so desperately that I’ve forsaken meals just to finish a book, it’s been so long since I’ve become obsessed with something that isn’t real or useful, something fantastic or whimsical. 

Part of that is because it’s really difficult to be an adult and to be affected by whimsy like a child, having been exposed to this all but whimsical world, the other part is that as you grow up, there comes a definite calcification of your sense of wonder, you become less prone to shock, to whim, to awe.

You become hard and you stop imagining because you become rational.

You start dismissing the impossible because you stop having time for fantasy.

You stop dreaming big because you’re too afraid of failure. ‘

You stop believing you can do or be anything you want, and start settling for what is easy, what is safe.

You go to bed when you’re supposed to.

You eat healthy.

You follow the rules.

You become jaded.

Your heart breaks.

You break hearts.

You lose people.

Things change.

You stop believing that the world is beautiful.

You stop believing in laughter. 

You stop believing in magic. 

But even if you don’t believe in magic now, doesn’t mean there wasn’t a time that you did. Because there was…

Because the year you turned eleven you strained your eyes against the sky for any sign of an owl with a letter in her beak.

Because you crawled through kitchen cabinets and under bathroom sinks hoping that you might brush against a fir branch covered in snow and turn to meet a friendly faun.

Because once upon a time, anything was possible.

Everything was possible. You could be president. You could go to the moon. You could change the world. You could fall in love. 

But now impossibility is the biggest possibility.

And goodness what I wouldn’t give just to have that sense of wonder back. What I wouldn’t give to believe that all of my dreams could come true.

But, I guess this is growing up. 

It fucking sucks.

…except here’s the thing.

I know, I know, the moment I pick up a copy of Harry Potter, or Narnia or the fairy tales my mom used to read me, I’ll go tumbling back into that enchanted child that I used to be, because somewhere inside me, she still exists.  For now. 

I hope I never lose her. That magic, even an inkling, is inside me. And I think, well, I hope, that I keep it forever.

And you do, too.

For both of our sakes.

Even after the hard knocks and the rainy days, I hope that magic will always be ours……long after Voldemort is dead, long after Narnia is gone…

…long after I grow up. 

Daddy

There’s nothing more painful than hearing your father cry.

Because for your whole life, he was the one who held it together—he carried you, he fixed you, he took care of anything that needed taking care of—he bandaged the skinned knees, paid the late bills, the library book fines, drove you to your last minute appointments when your car wouldn’t start

And you’ve always taken for granted his perpetual strength, you never asked where it came from, or doubted its existence—because when you need him, he’s there, always. He would be there, no matter what.

He became the lacings that tightened your life and wrapped around you like twine that would never break or give.  He was always the most solid thing in your life, the person on whom you could lean without any fear of falling when everyone else had left.  The person who would never falter or break… Always there, a constant, a rock, steady, permanent.

But when he breaks, what do you do? When it’s midnight on Mother’s Day and he calls crying so hard he can’t get the words out properly, you can’t turn to the one person who always makes everything right because he’s the one who needs to be righted. Now it’s him. Now he’s the one who needs you. And there’s nothing you can say or do or give him that will make anything better.

So you hold the phone to your ears and cry with him. And the tears stream down your face, not for the mother that he has just lost, but for the father that you never wanted to see like this, unraveled and crumbling.

And you’re being selfish, because everyone else keeps hugging you, offering prayers and apologies because they think you’re sad you’ve lost your Grandmother.

But you’re crying because you can’t handle seeing your father this way.

You can’t handle the realization that, for your whole life, “adulthood” meant being under control, meant rationality, meant not ever being hurt like how he is hurting, but now you know that it never ends, and it reminds you that one day, like your dad who lost his mother, you’ll lose your father one day, and your mother, and everyone you’ve ever loved, you’ll watch them all fade away. You’re crying because you  think that the “overreacting” stops when you’re young, and that one day, you’ll just be mature, wise, and all of everything that makes life what it is—love and death and pain—all of that will just wash over you when it happens. Feeling is for the children. But now, more than ever, your father is a child, he won’t leave his bed, he won’t stop crying, and he won’t eat or sleep or talk. He’s broken in a way that you would give everything you’ve ever had away just to make it stop. But you can’t.

So you just watch.  And wait.

And you keep going, and hope he comes too. And you put one foot in front of the other, and move away from all of this. 

Hey, girls! Shut up!

THIS IS A PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT FOR THE YOUNG WOMEN OF COLLEGIATE AMERICA:

Maybe it’s because Valentine’s Day just galloped by on its vomitrocious high horse, or maybe it’s just cabin fever from all this cold weather, but I feel like I’ve been listening to a lot of my girl friends (even my guy friends) whine (more than usual) about their “love” lives. (It’s important for you to make air quotes while reading that, if you did not, please go back and re-read it with the appropriate gestures. –Thanks, Mgmt.)

The weird/most annoying part of all of these complaints is how many of their problems with “love” are such blatant non-problems:

Exhibit A) “We said we wouldn’t do anything for Valentine’s Day, but he really didn’t do anything.” Ok, so you said you wanted one thing and it happened in real life, and now you’re mad? Maybe, like, I don’t know, say what you mean? That seems pretty valid, right? “But he should just know!” Stop crying, no he shouldn’t. Say what you mean. Shut up.

Exhibit B) “I can’t tell if he likes me. I think he does. But I just can’t tell.” If he liked you, you would know. If he wanted to be with you, he’d be with you. Shut up.

Exhibit C) “I really like this guy I met at a bar.” um….just shut up.

As it happens every night in Athens, taxi-loads of vaguely attractive drunken young ladies in body-con mini-skirts, baggy, cropped shirts and cowboy boots are driven into that mile radius haven of 96 bars where they fall into the arms of hundreds of vaguely attractive drunken young men in polo shirts and boat shoes waving around $10 “Blackout Buckets*.” Magical!!!!!! Love!!!! Romance!!!!!!

*Sidenote: Blackout Bucket? Seriously? This is two notches short of  “Hey girl, can I buy you a tall, cold glass of Roofies ;) ?”

Anyway,  that is one big issue I have with college love. You can’t find it at 2 AM on Thirsty Thursday with someone who’s been buying you dollar shots that are 80% Powerade, 20% ethanol. You can’t expect that particular shindig to exceed the 12-hour limits of ‘one night stand-ness.’ Don’t text that guy you met at a frat party EVER AGAIN. Real conversations don’t happen in those environments. Come on, tricks, get it together!  If you want something to be real, maybe try sobriety, daylight, and face-to-face conversation? When did that become too much to ask for? If it’s that hard for you to connect with someone without the a-a-a-a-alcohol, then you seriously need to put on your big girl panties and get over your insecurities. Shut up. Guys at bars aren’t looking for girlfriends. Girls at bars shouldn’t be looking for boyfriends.

Which brings me to my next point: if you’re looking, you won’t find it. Don’t be that girl, or guy, who’s hell-bent on finding ‘the one,’ Ted Mosby. Because if you are like that, you’re life will be a huge awkward meltdown. You’re going to think any boy/girl who talks to you is interested, and you’ll be offended when they’re not, and you’ll ruin a bunch of potentially great friendships. You’ll also start seeing all males as potential boyfriends, and you’ll do this annoying thing that one of my friends does where she just molds herself into whatever she thinks said boy wants her to be. Like that’s doomed from the beginning. You can’t not be who you are, and make a guy like someone you’re not and expect that to work. Chill out, don’t worry about it, do your homework, hang out with your friends, read books, watch movies, do your thing, and some guy who digs that will fall into your path and it’ll be awesome. Don’t worry about it so much, ladies. You’re not likely to die alone. Even the dimwads on The Bachelor will find someone probably, and that show is the biggest bullshit stain on human history! Seriously, all of the great advances in technology were set back to the Paleolithic era when The Bachelor became a thing.

Like, everyone always pretends that The Bachelor is all about true love and fairy tale romance, and  that’s how they skirt around the fact that it’s actual bad-shit crazy primetime polygamy full of drunk crying and horrific makeouts. Like at least every girl spends 90% of her time on the show slobbering on about how this her chance at a fairy tale, true love, and her Prince Charming is currently HAVING SEX WITH A MODEL ON A TROPICAL BEACH IN FRONT OF MILLIONS OF PEOPLE ON NETWORK TELEVISION. Seriously, America, what are you thinking?!?!?!?!?! How can anyone take anything seriously if this stuff exists?

And people are all, “Oh man, The Notebook, you guys, The Notebook. Guys, guys, GUYS. SERIOUSLY! THE NOTEBOOK! NICHOLAS SPARKS.” I hate to break it to you, ladies, but that movie lasts like 122 minutes. Your relationship is not going to be 122 minutes. Maybe the first 122 minutes are crazy amazing like a movie, but what about the next day, and the next week, and the next month? You’re life is not a montage of scenes from a movie of you guys walking on beach, holding hands, eating ice cream, drinking one shake with two straws, feeding animals at a petting zoo, getting caught in the rain, blah blah blah. All of that stuff happens over a long period of time with lots of breaks from each other in between. Girls need their footie pajamas, and space, and chocolate in bed, and cuddles with their cats just as much as guys need their bro time and video games and Skyrim and football. So, shut up, Nicholas Sparks.

Shut up, Drew Brees.

Finally, when you’re talking to your guy but he’s not looking at your eyes you should automatically think to yourself “There’s someone with bigger boobs behind me, isn’t there?”

If your guy is looking behind you while you’re talking to him, there probably is someone hotter behind you. Sorry, you can’t always be the hottest person in the room and you can’t control what he looks at and if you try to, God, you’re crazy. If you’re allowed to drool over Ryan Gosling, he’s allowed to drool over real life hot girls. Honestly, the likelihood of you getting with Ry-Gos any time soon is equal to him getting with that girl, and if he gets with that real life hot girl, then you have got way bigger problems. So calm down, shut up.

Girls stop expecting guys to not look at other girls, stop expecting them to know what you want and how you feel all the time, stop thinking they should be with you 24/7. Stop wanting one month anniversary gifts, that's a literally idiotic anniversary! You're not married! Don't expect a gift from him having been able to put up with you for a whole month! Stop clinging, stop whining, stop crying, stop looking for “the one” stop doing all of that pop culture inspired, Hollywood bullshit, and chill out. You’ll be fine. And if you’re not, well, as my good buddy Cherith once said, “Smart, funny guys get girls. Smart, funny girls get cats. And gays.”

So,  if you still think guys have to court you and woo you and douse you with gifts and compliments then maybe you should go back to the 18^th century, give up your right to vote, and put on a fucking hoop skirt, Jane Eyre.

And if you don’t want to do that but you’ve read this seriously (the one of you) and you still think that guys are supposed to be your princes and you’re a GD-princess, that if he hasn’t texted you back within five minutes you don’t speak to him for the rest of the day, that he doesn’t surprise you for your 1-week anniversary or whatever, then I suggest you:

1.       Start day drinking (http://amzn.to/eEKSXv)
2.       Get a cat (Or 8.)
3.       Start a sad blog about how all men are pigs and you wish you were a lesbian
4.       Die alone

Don’t worry about number four too much because essentially, we all die alone HAHAHAH! 

<3<3<3

Love,

Uzma

Scenarios

I have this really desolate scenario that I fear will play out in my future one day and it goes like this:

        Well, prefacing is necessary probably…hold on:

I have a problem with “never.”

I can’t handle conclusively never seeing someone again or talking to them again or whatever. Effectively, I’m afraid of people falling out of my life if I ever cared about them at all. That’s not to say people I’ve cared about haven’t fallen out of my life, they have, it’s saying that when it’s happening in front of me—if the falling apart is happening in front of me— and I can’t stop it, that’s when I have a problem. 

Ok, back to the desolate scenario:

 So this is my desolate scenario that applies to anyone I may have once loved or something. (“Or something” is necessary because I’m incapable of making that conclusive statement)

At some point in my future, a few years hence, I’m somewhere in the north, grad school, law school whatever, for artistic purposes we’ll call it law school, and we’ll make the other player a ‘him’. 

I’m walking down the street in freezing New England weather, stacks of court briefs in my arms, bundled up, head down to avoid the wind, briskly headed toward my favorite local coffee shop to warm up while I peruse my law school homework (is there a more sophisticated term for that?)

And so I’m rushing in toward the warmth, because my breaks are few and far between, and I’m looking down to protect my tender face from the icy gusts of wind, and because of this nonobservationist stance, I suddenly run into something very warm and very solid.

Of course, it’s another head-down, brisk-walker, laden with his own school papers and as we collide, our papers fly everywhere in the wind.

It’s that typical trite trope, that nauseating romantic comedy meet-cute, and we giggle politely and offer hastened and half-hearted and haphazard apologies as we help the other gather up strewn papers, both of us chuckling in that amicable yet reserved for strangers way…

and as we’re doing this our eyes suddenly meet and for both of us, in what seems to be a fated moment (though the other does not know it), there is a brief flicker of overwhelming recognition, like maybe something from a dream, like someone from a long time ago, someone from the past, someone I might have once loved (or something)...

But the notion dances barely beyond the grasp of perception and before it condenses into a real thought, a real meaningful thought, we each shake the silly idea off, smile to ourselves at the silly little idea that we might know this stranger…

We get our coffee and go opposite ways. 

And that’s that. 

But later, much later, when we’re both miles apart, we’ll think about the incident in the hazy in-between time right before sleep. We’ll both look out the window into a black, starless sky, straining for something we once had; straining our eyes to see the stars that we know should be there. 

~fin~

That’s what I’m afraid of. I’m afraid of losing people. I’m afraid of being lost to people. I’m afraid that everything will fall apart and unravel and I’ll never know what something could have been. 

I just want to hold onto everything and everyone forever. But if life means anything at all, it means that you can’t have everything. In fact, you can hardly have anything you want. All you have is what life leaves you with, and that’s what you deal with. 

So it goes.