Freaking out/ Trip to Austin

Last week I nearly lost my s**t about three times/day for several days in a row. I knew it was going to be tight, living in shoebox with someone with drastically different living preferences, but the actual experience is something a bit more...graphic. Oh, the passive aggression, the pent up guilt and homesickness, the humility of having the toilet within hearing distance of one's partner, God, and anything else in a mile's vicinity... I have been confronting things such as: shame, humility, acute awareness of my hygienic habits, scheduling conflicts, loss of sleep due to hours of conflict resolution (i.e. arguing), and general irregularity...if you get my drift. I have considered bailing and getting my own place, even toying with idea of being a campus R.A. (I love teens!) I have been journaling and making lists like a schizophrenic, trying to make some sense of this fantastic adventure in coupledom.

I decided against moving out, of course, because it ultimately RULES, and I love my life, and the trip I took to Austin this weekend for Poni's high school reunion helped me gain a little of that perspective. Nothing like taking a break from daily life in the smoggy veins of Los Angeles to help one see and breathe more clearly the reality of one's own fortune.

Living in this city as opposed to Seattle makes me feel as if I am in one of those houses at carnivals filled with crazy mirrors and oddly-appealing bacterial odors. It is difficult to avoid a general feeling of pressure to be ultimately thin, successful, forever young, and generally conventional. I get the feeling that even people who are SO those things will never feel as if they are good enough. While living in Seattle, tabloid magazines were a tasty, trashy treat to help me escape from daily pressures whereas here they are beginning to make me feel a little queasy to even look at. Don't get me wrong, I'm still addicted to gossip-mags, and my current educational environment enthusiastically supports my reading them, but now they hit me in a place that feels bruised, and getting more bruised by the day.

Everything about school is both exciting and overwhelming. I am feeling the pull of the downturn rush of life's roller coaster as I plummet into the speed-of-light fashion industry...and my thirties. Sigh.