She may be naive and old fashioned but this Kappa Kappa Gamma was fiercely loyal to her friends, knew how to tastefully decorate a penthouse and never was caught dead in a bland twin set--well maybe in the first season when the budget was $0. It also doesn't hurt that I've finally embraced my inner Charlotte. Without any more chatter from the peanut gallery, here are the 5 things I've learned from Mrs York-Goldenblatt aka the former Mrs. Agent Dale Cooper.
1. Never marry a man who says "okie dokie" no matter how perfect he is, how great his family's house is or how sick he looks playing tennis in his boxers. Okie dokie men are probably only okie dokie.
2. Mr Right may not look the way you want him to or have the right pedigree, as long as he makes you feel like the shiksa goddess that you are. Let's not forget she gave up Jesus for Harry. Jesus.
3. Be a lady in the street...Charlotte was no Samantha, but she did hang out with her. Enough said.
4. Relax, relate, release. After pulling all kinds of tricks to get married and have a baby, Charlotte met her man while she was going through her divorce and had her baby after adopting. In other words, the minute she let her guard down and chilled out, she got everything she spent 6 seasons stressing over.
Last month, Stefani Joanne Angelina Germonatta sat down with Oprah to discuss the past 26 years otherwise known as her life. In this chat, which aired on Oprah's Next Chapter which is nothing like the Oprah Winfrey Show (eye roll), Gaga got down and dirty with O about her creative process. She described getting in touch with her muse as a cold, lonely process where she goes into a cocoon, cutting herself off from all media, people, plants and animals until a door opens. Naturally, being the me that I am, I immediately called bullshit on this. Once again Gaga has proven to be a strange amalgam of Madonna and Holly Golightly, a pop culture phenomenon who really believes all this phony junk she claims to believe in. Honestly I would still be calling bullshit on it had a door not opened for me last night.
She's a real phony...
After another day at work calling shop owner after shop owner while fighting with a terrible sinus headache and running all over town, I was beyond exhausted when I finally got home. On top of being tired I was also terribly lonely, a feeling that has been creeping up on me all month with the hotel hopping, working with people who don't get me at all--that's a whole 'nother story--and spending 99.9% of my day alone at work and alone at home. As I burdened my family and friends with the third break down of the week, I began to feel like I was standing in a hallway with a big black "censored" bar over my face, unable to move or move it. So I got off the phone, took a shower and a nap. Somewhere in there I began to think about what it is that I want in life and realized that until then what I wanted out of life was what other people wanted for me. In other words, I had no idea what I wanted.
Why Zoe? Why not? I just threw it in.
Pre-relationship, I knew I wanted to be some kind of Carrie Bradshaw like fashion writer killing shit at Vogue for my 9-5. (More like if Carrie Bradshaw worked at Missbehave and was more like Sarah Morrison with Carrie Bradshaw's never ending stream of disposable income minus the "I'm crazy bc I'm over 35 and unmarried" thirst.) As a street wear/fashion/random shiz blogger back in 2008, I knew I was on my way. I'd made connections in NYC with fashion type people and my blog was just about to blow up. Then I met a guy who I fell in love with and while I totally loved him and he loved me for exactly who I was, I always felt ten steps behind him. This insecurity made me constantly feel as though I wasn't good enough, smart enough, pretty enough and for damn sure successful enough to be with him. I stood next to him at parties with PhD virologists who worked on the forefront of preventing the next AIDS epidemic and felt so small when I had to tell them that I worked at the mall. I have to say that all of this was in my head, the person I was dating in no way even insinuated that I was anything less than wonderful actually he encouraged me to stop playing so small when we were out.
Now I know you're all like, "What does you feeling insecure have to do with Gaga and a door?' Everything. You see last night I remembered that while my relationship was filled with many beautiful moments and experiences that I will always cherish, I also felt caged in some way. Like I was trying so hard to be the kind of person that someone else wanted me to be. Again, this person only wanted me to be the best me and not sell myself short and for that I thank him, but I have to figure out who the best me is and want to be her. And for the record, the best me does not write like Molly Lambert--mainly because I'm Anastasia and she's Molly Lambert, I also don't write like F Scott Fitzgerald--and wears ghetto gold with her chambray tops. The best me is obsessed with fashion a means of capturing the zeitgeist of a generation not as something to simply wear. The best me is an amazing story teller because she has an imagination that runs wild. The best me writer because she feels most like herself when she does. Above all, the best me is constantly changing, growing and evolving.
I got picture happy.
As I thought these things out and stopped looking on the past 3 years with rose colored glasses, I felt the blocked, fragmented feeling that had settled in my soul a few weeks ago shatter. I felt the black box in front of my face dissolve, then finally I felt a door swing open. Then I walked right through that beeyatch into a hallway of infinite possibility. Don't believe me? Ask the "coincidences" that followed me all day today, the free danish and hot tea from a guy who didn't haggle me for his number, the 3 appointments I set in an hour after struggling since last Tuesday and the amazing feeling that has settled over me despite the fact that my allergies are tying to do me in. Now that the door has swung open, there is no part of me that would choose to go back...not that I could if I wanted to.
Last October I was literally a crumpled, battered mess lying on the floor in my apartment in tears and holding myself together with tape as best I could. I lingered between having the strength to live and having the ability to leave the hurt and my body behind. (Yes that means exactly what you think it means.) Every second of every minute was torture until I could finally fall asleep and every minute of every hour was hell when I woke up and realized that my dreams had been shattered. Never in my life had I hurt like that, not even when my grandmother died, and never in my darkest of moments did I believe that in 8 short months I would be closer to normal than I ever thought I could be...well as close to what normal is these days.
Not that normal has changed, it's just what I consider normal has shifted a bit. Last May, normal was Tuesday night on the couch with my ex watching Glee or at picking out a tiki mug at Tiki Tuesdays while we chatted with friends. Now, normal is me sitting in a hotel in Baltimore blogging between commercial breaks and prepping for another day of training for my new job. It's meditating before bed every night and before I get out of bed every morning. It's passing on the chicken at a business dinners in New York, cold calling boutiques while text messaging my family and friends and above all else it's me figuring out me again. Learning, relearning and remembering what makes me happy, not what makes us happy.
Don't get me wrong, I was sublimely happy in pretty much every moment of my relationship but there is a big HUGE difference between what makes ME happy and what made US happy. There are the happy things that we shared, hanging in bookstores, spending the day at museum, falling asleep on the couch while watching whatever art house/old school/foreign/it's too late on a Friday to be watching this movie. Then, there are the things that make me happy, glitter nail polish, ghetto gold, sipping hot tea in the early morning silence, making stuff, cooking, eating chain food...every now and then and talking mad shit (I did that with my ex, he was pretty good at being a snob for all the right reasons). It means no more rolling my eyes and doing things or not doing things because they make me look cool to him. It means no more feeling like I'm stumbling to catch up to someone that I felt 20 steps behind. It also means that all of the cool stuff I discovered about myself in my relationship--like my love of NPR, Indian food and becoming even more of a nerd---isn't going anywhere, it's just going to be more me. Actually that's all that's happening, I'm becoming more me....and that's the most important thing that I could ever be.
*I should also note that in this process of me becoming more me, I'm becoming more me as an author and have ben taking all kinds of notes on a book that I'll be publishing in the next year or so. Or so being a period no longer than 2 years. That is all.
