Recently, my Dad sent me some DVD’s that he had burned from our old Video-8 tapes. There was my ’87 softball season. The time that I dressed up as gypsies with my friend Amy. Me jumping on a Pog0-ball (remember those?) as well as a rather raucous water fight with the boys next door, yours truly donned in a haute couture “Coca Cola” blue & white striped bathing suit. (I was nothing if not fashionable.) And then there was the oldest tape, the 1984 Tea Party at the neighbor’s house, where we dressed up in our Mom’s party clothes, hats included, made tissue paper flowers and ate finger sandwiches with tea.

The best part of that last tape was the ‘fashion show’, where all the 7-year olds grabbed their Cabbage Patch kid and paraded their finery down the deck, spinning and twirling and dolling for the camera. I was wearing my Mom’s blue striped shirt, belted to make it into a dress, and big clogging high heels. I had just lost my two front teeth, and remember that my Mom had painstakenly dried my wavy hair into a perfect straight coif. Everyone was laughing, having a good old time in the company of friends, pretending to be grown-ups with our lilted English accents and pinkie-finger out tea drinking. We were putting on childhood airs of importance, but basically we were just little girls having a great time playing dress-up.

Twenty years have passed since that day, but I often find myself feeling as I did then, that this life I lead is a façade, that I’m nothing more than a little girl playing grown-up. I have a job. I have bills. I have obligations and a house payment and a car payment and animals that depend on me for their nourishment and nurturing, and yet going through the motions often feels like I’m pretending to be something I’m not, someone I’m not. When life is crazy, when all I can do is get up at the break of dawn and go to bootcamp and come home and shower and run to work and work and work and work and eat lunch at my desk and take phone calls and go to meetings and work and work some more and work and rush outta there to go to karate and get home and make dinner and fold my laundry and set my alarm and go to bed, I wonder what happened to that hair-twirling little girl looking to the future, and then I realize – I’m still there.

It’s crazy. We always look ahead – I remember longing to get my ears pierced, looking to the day when I could shave my legs, wear makeup, kiss a boy, go to college, and eventually get married. We spend our days looking ahead, facing the risk that by living for the future we’re missing the present. And still, though I really do love the life I’ve created for myself, I kind of wonder how I got here, feel that I’m not qualified to be a “real” adult, feel that I’m still wearing the proverbial blue-striped dress, whistling through my missing two front teeth.

And though it’s not really the case and that somehow I DID meet all those childhood dreams and goals (minus the marriage thing, of course), I plan on spending my vacation as I did those many years ago, finding someone with which to have a water fight, forgetting my stresses and obligations for the weekend, and acting like the 7-year old that I often feel I am.

I wonder if they make Coca-Cola bathing suits for adults?

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Thinking back, I’m pretty sure I was a dork.

I got good grades.
I dated, yet didn’t have a serious boyfriend.
I studied.
I was a victim to the “I” word – INVOLVED. (In clubs like Student Council, that is.)
I was far removed from any activity that would qualify me as a slut.
I had a great group of friends, and while I was well-known, I didn’t think that many people knew me that well.

All leading up to realizing that without meaning to, without even realizing it, people that you were friends with in the “I was more acquainted to you than anything else” can know you better than you would ever believe.

Thus my evening.

I spent the majority of my night catching up with old friends. People that knew me when I went to prom. People that knew I was the discus champion of my county for a few years running. People that knew me back when I still had a crush on someone who just had his first baby (now, not then) and knew that even back in the ’90’s, I was a huge romantic, even if I denied it on a regular basis.

Makes me realize that I’m a lot more transparent than I’d like to appear. I talk about people in my life, my co-workers, my roommates, my friends & others, trying to catch everyone up on the 10 years they’ve been absent. And despite the time, despite the years, realizing they can sum up the situations in one sentence or less still amazes me.

Unsurprisingly, yet in actuality, a bit unsettling, who you were in the past defines who you are today, whether or not you want it to.

While a bit surprised by the astuteness that they portrayed, I’m not upset by it. Knowing that people WERE there for my ‘days gone by’, DO know my past (however un-sordid it may be), and DO know where I came from, well, it’s soothing in a strangely familiar way.

And while my future – and the people in it – make me optimistic, excited, and happy as can be, knowing I’ve reconnected with those who know what Poloroids before my After-Prom means just makes my entire day.

Let’s face it – I’m a bit narcissistic. And vain. And even a little self-centered. After all, I have a website/blog, and most people with these tend to either a) know that they may be described by one of the aforementioned adjectives or b) be in complete denial that they are described as such. Either way, us writers (at least us writers that bear our souls on a daily/weekly basis to a vast anonymous interent audience that may or may not contain our entire families, everyone we’ve dated and everyone we’ve ever WANTED to date) like it to be about us. Thus the website.

Going along with this train of thought (that will likely spark angry dissenting emails from those of you who refuse to believe that you’re in the least bit self-centered), one of the best parts of having a website is having VISITORS to the website. Seeing that you like what we wrote, you came back, you told your friends about it – well, for a struggling writer like myself (and by ‘struggling’ I mean ‘when the hell am I ever going to have the column that I so long for?’), that just about makes my day. Watching my stats increase, seeing my site linked on yours – seriously, my friends, it makes me feel like I just won the Spelling Bee AND got the hottest date for my 8th grade dance, all in one. Because at the very core of it all, it’s about popularity. And that triggers my inner fourth-grader who is still trying to prove herself.

Imagine: Age 10. I’m most likely dressed in head-to-toe pink, since my Mom had a bizarre obsession with color-coordination and that color, and imagine this exact haircut, just 8 years in the future. (Parted down the middle with bangs was ALSO another one of Sue’s favorite things.) I was in the Gifted program, which immediately labeled me as a huge dork, and more than anything else I just wanted to be cool. The girls in my class were starting to ‘go with’ boys, yet I was stuck in monochromatic clothing-land with straight-across bangs and unpierced ears. Trust me – guys weren’t exactly lining up to ‘go with’ me.

Many (well, 17) years have passed, and every now and again, besides feeling like a little girl playing ‘adult’, I feel like an unpopular girl playing ‘cool.’ Many times I’ve said I write this site primarily for me, but also for you. It warms my heart to know that people are going to it, people are reading it, people are relating to it. Does it make me feel ‘cool’? Ok, I’ll admit it. It does. Yet lately, my site stats have been regularly decreasing, which not only brings me a huge bout of insecurity, but causes me to wonder:

• Am I boring you?
• Have my posts become unoriginal?
• Am I saying the same thing over and over again?
  or (God forbid),

• Are you just sick of me?

Honestly, I really want to know, and feel free, I’m sure I’m over-reacting, since that’s one of my best traits, but I’m curious – has aubreysabala.com gone downhill as of late?

Seriously, tell me – I can take it. After all, I’ve come a long way from 4th grade…at least in the haircut department.

We all love a good story. There were times in college that we went out and did things (read: went to a party with a lot of random people, for example) just because we knew that, in the end, it would make for a good story. Stay in and study vs. head out & do something irresponsible? Irresponsible and crazy inevitably won out in the end; after all, if there weren’t any good stories, what would we talk about when we were procrastinating from studying? We were nothing if not logical.

This holds true for relationships. How you met is usually the first question you get when you start dating someone new, and trust me, you’d better have a good story to tell. Nobody wants to hear “we met at a bar, he asked me out, we fell in love, got married, and lived happily ever after.” We want the juicy details, the fact that he used to date your next-door neighbor while he was pining away for you, or the fact that you had a gigantic crush on him from the time you were 15 until he finally woke up and realized you two were meant to be. Maybe it was a whirlwind romance, where you met on a plane to Europe and have never looked back, or perhaps you met two years prior but don’t remember it (though he does.) Regardless, the more elaborate, the more synchronistic, the more ‘fated’ it seems, the more that you believe that perhaps it’s just ‘meant to be.’

I think it’s a bunch of hooey, though I’ve fallen under this trap in the past. I’m still ‘vascillating’ (to use the term my father prefers to use when describing whether or not I’ll eventually go to Med school) over the concepts of fate & destiny and all that’s involved with it, but I think my cynical and jaded side might win out. I’ve HAD the good stories. I’ve envisioned the future where my hubby and I tell the charming tale over a glass of wine at our dinner party, going back and forth, each adding a tidbit and smiling to each other since only WE know the entire story. I’ve pictured the storybook romance, the chick flick ending, where despite apparent tragedy, the hero and heroine end up in each others arms, waltzing off into the sunset, proving once and for all that true love will prevail. I like to think that ‘meant to be’ means something, but my heart is beginning to tell me that timing and distance and life gets in the way, that ‘meant to be’ is about as valid as ‘happily ever after.’

There’s no set equation for a successful relationship. Somehow between ‘not that easy’ and ‘shouldn’t be this hard’, sometime between ‘playing the field’ and ‘settling down’, somewhere between ‘right around the corner’ and ‘the other side of the ocean’ lies true love, or at least as close to it as we actually come. Some people try long distance; it can work, it can fail. I’ve seen, and experienced, both. Some hit the bar scene with gusto, sure that one of these nights in the midst of Jager Bombs and beer goggles they’ll find Mr. or Ms. Right, bucking the odds and finding the love they’re seeking. Others ride the technological bandwagon and use Match.com or other online dating sites to seek an amour, trusting ‘psychological assessment tests’ and basically judging a lot on looks. And then there’s me, a perplexed quasi-old fashioned gal that thinks that it’ll probably happen when you’re least expecting it (though I think you’re always expecting it a bit) and just living my life to the fullest in the meantime, good story or not.

But whatever the story, whatever the equation, I just long for the day where 1+1=2, for good.

You need to get from here to there.
Or there to here.
Or here to there to here. And back again.

That’s the concept of the catalog. Which, if you’ll look on Page 5, I have a vested interest in (if only to shamlessley self-promote, one of my better traits.)

I’m already practicing my autograph, lest my fans start beating down my door…

aubrey is sweet
aubrey is as appealing today as it was when i came in from school many years ago
aubrey is appointed commodore and given a small aquadron with which to attack mauritius
aubrey is a true master of the turntables and one of the cleanest mixers you could ever have the pleasure of listening to
aubrey is trapped in his own view of everything
aubrey is approximately 1
aubrey is approximately 204
aubrey is particularly proud of the strong team spirit and loves to arrange company activities
aubrey is a cynical prune
aubrey is devastated
aubrey is far removed from the world of glitter and glitz
aubrey is an officer in the royal navy
aubrey is without a ship
aubrey is ashore on half pay without a command
aubrey is considered the best natural product at high level natural health stores
aubrey is a breathtaking victorian wedding bride captured in all of her glory from the 1875 era
aubrey is handsome
aubrey is often puzzled by ruthven’s behaviour
aubrey is sent by whit in the imagination station to meet john the baptist
aubrey is a great outside resource
aubrey is more than a gifted musician
aubrey is in the cross timbers qv region twelve miles northeast of denton and forty miles north of dallas in northeastern denton county
aubrey is also writing songs like a pro
aubrey is every girls dream
aubrey is certainly what you would call “a sea dog”
aubrey is persuaded to sink some money into an investment scheme
aubrey is currently collecting euros from all participating eu countries
aubrey is back to school
aubrey is the stranger of the two
aubrey is quick to point out that he loves to win
aubrey is the best
aubrey is a pro
aubrey is such a fantastically anomalous creation in his own right that our irritation quickly turns to fascination
aubrey is here
aubrey is there
aubrey is moving your corpuscles
aubrey is a perfect representation of what an als angels model should be
aubrey is next week
aubrey is no comic book hero
aubrey is known for lives of eminent men
aubrey is the obvious choice

Most writers are introspective. It’s in our blood, in our nature, to look within and examine who we are, how we got there, where we’re going.

Clearly, I’m no exception.

Couple this with my tendency to over-analyze, and you end up with Aubrey, as of Late. (Which could also be titled:
Aubrey, the Sad Days
Aubrey, Whining a Bit more than Usual
Aubrey, Going through Yet Another Quarter-life Crisis
or even
Aubrey, Really, I Promise It Won’t Always Be Like This)

My coworker is absolutely flabbergasted by how much I put out there. She doesn’t understand how I could say the things I do on my site, to be that brutally honest, to air my dirty laundry in public. Sometimes I don’t either, but after doing so, I invariably feel better. Selfish? Perhaps, but it’s either that, or clean my room, since organizing makes my Type-A personality feel much more in check.

But really, I promise, it’s not as bad as it sounds.

I’m not dying. I don’t have some scary uncurable illness that is causing me to re-evaluate everything in my life. My family is healthy, as are my pets. (Have I mentioned that Sullivan has lost over a pound? Which is huge in cat-land, especially when your ‘metabolically challenged’ little lovey was told he had to lose 2 lbs. this whole year, and he’s already ahead of schedule! My little overachiever…but I digress.)

What I’m trying to say here, though, is that writers exaggerate. We embrace hyperbole, even when we’re not trying to. And while I don’t intend to make my life sound desolate, dire, and all-together horrifically depressing, I can see how it appears that I AM in the midst of something much worse than I actually am.

So I’m setting the record straight – I’m not seeking out ledges, and not looking to jump.

It’s not that bad. There’s just a lot of things changing around me, and while I tend to get excited by new situations, new people, new challenges, the culmination of so many of them has me a little lost. So I’m just trying to figure it out, lean on Friends and Darling Roommates and even Darling Boys a little bit to get their advice, hear their thoughts, and trust me, I’ll come out with shining colors.

Or at least a really, really clean house.

There are times when it all makes sense. When I know I’m doing the right thing, when I feel that, if someone were to document my life in retrospect, this chapter would be boring. I would be on track, nothing out of the ordinary would be happening, and I would be making the decisions that I hope others (besides myself) would see as the right thing.

And then there are moments when I just want to get out of my skin. I hear myself saying the things I’m saying, doing the things I’m doing, and wondering what alien took over my body and turned me into the antithesis of me, the most non-Aubrey that I could be. And I wonder what happened.

I’m a believer in fate, in destiny, but counterintuitively, I’m also a firm believer in living your own life. You have a role in what you become, where you end up. Getting walked all over? Speak up. Unhappy? End it. Now. If it’s meant to be, it will be. If you’re not acting like yourself, not being yourself, making excuses for the very actions that you would chastise your friend for doing, then, Atlanta, we have a problem.

I’m a strong woman, I really am. Despite my romanticized view on various aspects of reality, I consider myself your run-of-the-mill, jaded, young(ish) gal who’s smarter than letting herself get hurt but knows the precarious equation between like and love that serves as protection in the meantime. And yet any time something goes awry, when I find myself upset or my feelings hurt or something happens that makes me sad, I wonder what I did.

And I know better than that.

The last time I expressed myself so honestly, I got a “boo hoo, stop whining” comment that, honestly, affected me more than I’d like to admit. As a writer, I always call it the way I see it, but rarely do I let myself get to the true, unabashed core where I’m vulnerable. To have someone respond so callously, well, it made me reconsider what I write on this site, what I’m comfortable actually expressing, And yet here I am, pouring my heart out again, and hoping that within my honesty others will relate, take it for what it is, take it for what is actually going on, not some pathetic attempt for sympathy.

Because really, I don’t want advice. I have that. I just want to stop feeling like I’m not good enough.

I sat in the back seat of my father’s white 1990 four-door Camry (the same car that he continued his obsessive-compulsive cleaning tendencies with, using a small stereo brush to annihilate any speck of dust that lingered on the pristine maroon dashboard) listening to my walkman. It was standard issue for all of us 9th graders – the gray one that always confused me with whether or not it was fast-forwarding or reversing, based on that auto-reverse button that sent my logic a bit topsy-turvy. Bonnie Raitt was crooning in the background, singing her soulful, sad melody, reminding me that I couldn’t make him love me.

Bitch.

‘Why not? Why couldn’t I?’, my naïve self wondered at the time. I could win a spelling bee! I could make the All-Star team for softball every year (save one dastardly mis-vote that nearly sent me over the edge)! I had kissed my first boy, gosh darnit, and I was ready to continue. If I didn’t get to kiss Mike, well, then my life just had no meaning.

I didn’t get to kiss Mike.

What I did get, however, was a few rides in a blue Firebird, some flirting during gym class, and a mix tape that he copied from his previous girlfriend, a fact I know with certainty yet still have no idea how I figured it out.

In love, we’re near-sighted. We see only what’s directly in front of us and miss the blurry future, concentrating too often on the here and now, and not the possibilities that lie ahead. That’s normal, of course, especially in relationships, but if only the “you” of today could go back in time and tell the “you” of days past what a fool you were making of yourself, we’d save ourselves a lot of pain, and begin to really open our eyes.

I think I need corrective surgery on my love vision.

Thinking back, the “Mike” situation wasn’t the only time I thought I had found Mr. Right – after all, I was only 14. I’ve gotten a little wiser, a bit older, and a lot more jaded in my mid (not late!) twenties, inherently longing for something I’m not sure I actually believe in. I watch our couple friends swoon and stroke and adore each other publicly while I drink my vodka soda with lime, stand next to my current swoon-ie and watch with both a tinge of jealousy and a prognosis of disingenuousness. When I see these outward gestures of love, I’m always a little surprised by the overtness, and it makes me want to look away. I feel like I’m intruding upon something so private, something so personal, that I should leave them to express it alone.

I’m not scared of love, mind you, just shy in its presence. I want to believe in their love never-ending, and yet I’ve seen it fail too many times before, seen even the happiest of families break apart and have experienced first-hand what happens when you let down your guard, transforming from an everyday citizen into the sappy, mushy, love creature prone to public hand-holding and whispers of sweet nothings. (What a sweet nothing is, incidentally, is beyond me.)

And yet, despite the nay-saying tendency that permeates my every cell and directly contradicts my cynical attitude of late, I’ve also seen it work. I’ve watched couples in their late eighties reach for each other’s hands, a gesture second-nature after years and years of practice. I’ve seen people overcome even the hardest of challenges, the worst of tragedies, and live a long, happy life together. And when I see these things, I feel a softening in this shell I have, this shell I’ve erected to protect me from again going down the wrong path. Because as much as I can feign otherwise, and even in the most intimate of moments, I’m holding something back. It’s protection. It’s my armour against finding myself at the short (sighted) end of the stick.