Teenage Dream, Zach

Sometimes the happiest songs can remind you of times in your life that were the saddest. "California Gurls" is like that for me. My relationship with my ex-girlfriend was on the rocks when I heard this song for the first time, as I took a drive from Morristown, NJ to the Catskills to go bike riding with my friend. I knew the relationship was over. I wasn't able to admit it yet. After we broke up in July, we got back together. I went through with my plan to move to Philly from NJ, even though I really wanted to move back closer to my hometown in DC. If we had gone through with the breakup, I wouldn't be writing for this blog; I can pretty much guarantee that.

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The lyrics for "Firework" are cheesy. But I love them. I don't usually feel like a waste of space, but it's been a dark time. I feel like I hit the last straw yesterday. I already have glass stuck in my foot from two weeks ago, after I went to look for a cat that went missing on my watch. I was running yesterday and I didn't see a cactus plant arranged next to the gym I go to. I ran straight into it and got a quill stuck in my right hand. I pulled most of it out, but a little piece is still in my hand (I think). I just moved a few days ago and I'm struggling with my new roommate. I had a breakup this week. It's my birthday on Saturday. One year older, and I'm still planning ways to make myself feel special on April 6. I'm so tired of it. When I try to pray lately, I can't; all I can think about are the people in the world who have it worse than me and what right do I have to ask for love or for anything else I want that feels trivial in comparison to the incredibly serious affairs of this world?

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I don't really have "one that got away." The closest thing I have is a rabbi who I dated in two installments from 2017-18. Even after we broke up, I thought about reconnecting. Things were just so easy and fun between us. She's an incredible human. But I wasn't sure I was attracted to her, and I never pulled the trigger. In the summer of 2020, I drafted an email to her asking her out again. Her mother had narrowly escaped death from COVID just a few months prior. I never sent that email, and I left the US. Now she's married and had her first kid. She lives in Philly now. I find myself imagining an alternate version of my life, where I'm married to a rabbi and giving courses at the synagogue where she works, and I have a damn good life, because it feels like she has her shit together in a way I don't, whether that's actually true or not. But that's not my life in this world. She's not really the one that got away, even if the grass is greener on the other side.

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My friend whose cat is missing has been pooped on by a bird twice in the last week. I was driving with my boss, and he noticed an eagle in the sky, flying above us in a valley. "Upon Reading That Eric Dolphy Transcribed Even the Calls of Certain Species of Birds" is a poem that we read in my poetry workshop. What is it about birds lately? Today I picked a Baltimore Orioles shirt to wear to work without realizing it. "This is the story of the birds and bees... you give me the hummingbird heartbeat."

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Purim is my favorite holiday. I was born around Purim. It's a holiday where everything feels like it's ending, only for redemption to come from an unexpected place. "So I pray for favor like Esther / I need your strength to handle the pressure." Queen Esther, who hid her Jewish identity, had to pray for her people to survive. I wish I had that kind of responsibility. Sometimes it seems to me that it's easier to redeem an entire people than to get up in the morning, put on pants, and get on the bus to work.

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"The taste of your honey is so sweet." We learn most of our words from our parents; they're our original language teachers. I'm sure Katy learned the word "honey" from her father. That same father who once told a congregation in Ohio that "the way to make the Jew jealous" is to "have some money, honey."  The father of the person who I broke up with this week is remarried to a prominent conservative and Trump-esque commentator. Should I convince myself it's better we broke up so I could be spared a lifetime of meals with a woman who I find offensive? 

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My friend is about to get engaged to a girlfriend who he started dating ten years ago. They broke up seven years ago. Now they've been back together for a few months, and he bought a ring. He was engaged to someone else four years ago. Now he's going for the storybook ending. I hope he's not just marrying her because he wants to write a clean ending to their story. Even if he's doing that, I get it. I want that same ending to my singlehood.

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I prefer female-focused content. I want to be a teenage girl, fanning myself with my hand when Katy walks out of her dressing room and straight by me. I want to hear about how I'm a pearl, even if it's not very masculine of me.

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I don't know how writers actually end their work in satisfying ways. Telling your audience "it's just the beginning" is probably the best way to do it.