It's kind of funny how you notice the smallest and most minute details when you like someone. The other day I looked at his long fingers as he was turning the pages of his book and silently wished they grazed lightly on my bare skin. Or the way he crossed his legs and leaned intently into the book he was reading, as if he were a scientist gazing into his microscope, intrigued and curious. Every time I picked up my glass to drink, he would then pick up his glass to drink. It was interesting to see him mirror my every movement.

I guess it was Fourth of July when I realized I liked him. It smacked me in the face, really. He had crept into my thoughts prior but either I was in denial or brushed it aside and gave no more thought to it. We had been drinking on the beach. He had a few Moscow Mules and beers, I was buzzed off a beer and Moscow Mule. He got to a point where he was drunk, and was more loose. I couldn't tell you at what point during the day this happened, but for five seconds I caught him gazing at me and it was a gaze I had seen before on other men--the gaze that says "I want you", the one that tells you that despite the fact there are 1,000 people surrounding us, I was the only person that existed on that beach. It unnerved me at first, then excited me. I haven't seen that gaze on him since but it was the moment he let his guard down and let me inside to see something that was solely for me.

A little while after that, I was in a circle of people just chit chatting. He came up and joined the conversation and I looked at his face as he was speaking and for the first time I noticed how blue and beautiful his eyes were. His sunglasses were folded into the top of his shirt, which pulled his shirt down slightly and you could see his chest hair peeking out. The mystery behind how much chest hair he actually had made me want to desperately investigate and solve it.

The moments between us have been getting more tense. More lingering when saying our goodbyes, trying to figure out if one of us should make a move or be respectful of one another's spaces. The other night when we had read our own books on a love seat. I've always viewed reading as a sexy activity. The intimacy of reading with a partner or love interest is baring. You can let go of everything and get involved in a book while having someone there to lean on to. It is an autonomous activity that you can still enjoy with someone without losing your sense of self. I've daydreamed about us reading books together, as silly as it sounds. It's a pleasure that is underrated. Having him near me made me feel comforted yet excited. I tried to inch closer to him without alerting the other people around us so I could grab one moment with him in a sea of people and feel his presence. He didn't re-shift and at one point inched closer to me. We got to the point where we touched elbows and it jolted me. It was a graze but it was electrifying and sexy. 

I'm not sure if he thinks about me as much as I do about him. But I hope I invade his thoughts and linger there like a haunting dream.

Lorde is probably one of the very few mainstream pop idols I listen to regularly or even like. I first listened to Pure Heroine three years ago and I realized I had the capability to relate to a 16 year old girl at the age of 24. I'm still not the biggest fan of "Royals". I heard it too many times on the radio when I delivered pizzas and I grew sick of the song quickly, but everything else on that album is worthy.

I like listening to her music when I'm feeling the most carnal emotions. Her lyrics hit the core of what it's like to be young and to feel so intensely. Everything is new and every thing is a fresh wound. Hormones, stress, anxiety, lust--there's nothing like being 16 and the unknown of how everything operates, especially your own psyche.

The other night I was driving home after hanging out with friends. It was almost 10 at night and I had to be in bed to get to work the next day. It was still humid and my skin felt sticky and Lorde's "400 Lux" came on. I had a smile plastered on my face and it felt like the perfect song to end the evening:

“I love these roads where the houses don’t change (and I like you)
Where we can talk like there’s something to say (and I like you)
I’m glad that we stopped kissing the tar on the highway (and I like you)
We move in the tree streets
I’d like it if you stayed”

A new crush had just developed. Or it was developed and I barely came to the realization it was a crush. It's been a slow boil but it's heating up, so to speak. It's still in the early stages where we are still sensing each other, figuring out this cluster fuck of a mess. I guess I'm waiting for bigger signs to confirm my suspicions but I have a feeling he may like me, too. It excites me, but it also makes me insecure that this may all be in my head. I never know with these things. It's the first man I've felt giddy about in a long time and I'm savoring the butterflies-in-the-pit-of-my-stomach feelings and every-time-I-think-about-him-I-smile moments. Crushes are lovely for that. Occasionally I find myself steering into the less wholesome thoughts--like me on top of him, making out on his couch. Or dirtier things. I recently went to his place for the first time so it's easier to imagine these things when I have a particular setting to reference from.

I'm not quite sure where I'm going with this, but I'm also unsure where this crush will lead. Maybe nowhere. Maybe a date. Or the reality of the situation, which rarely works in my favor. I guess that's what makes the intensity of these emotions more palpable. The potential of the situation.

Online dating and dating apps have ruined the mystery of dating, of figuring out whether or not you genuinely like someone. When you go on a date from one of these sources you already know the very least they want to do is fuck you. It takes the intrigue away, in a sense. This is probably why I feel like I'm 16 all over again, where I'm treading the water to see where I land. This isn't a random guy I met online with an innocuous screen name, but it's a person I've gotten to know the past six months with no romantic intention. Well, for the first six months at least.

Crushes are weird. Things are weird. Life is weird. I'm just trying to navigate the weirdness relatively unscathed. I'm not sure if I'll get there but I'll enjoy what is going on for right now and figure out the details at a later date.

Everything is a mess currently. 

My room is a mess. My bed hasn't been made in over a week, there are a clutter of papers on my desk. I have trash that needs to be taken out, tupperware that needs to be cleaned, sheets that need to be washed, 35mm film from my trip to Vancouver over a month ago that needs to be developed. 

My car is a mess. Old receipts that I used as tissue to spit my phlegm in when I had a cold six months ago linger in the front seat of my car. Clothing, yoga mats and other garbage are thrown into the back seat with little to no regard. The exterior hasn't been washed in a year. My dashboard is dusty and the seats could probably be vacuumed and steam cleaned.

My bathroom is a mess. It hasn't been cleaned in...I couldn't tell you how long. There's a weird film forming on the inside of my toilet bowl. Water spots and other gunk are caked on to the mirrors. The counter tops feel rough to the touch. Strands of hair can be found all over the floor, along with the bathmats that haven't been washed in...well, let's not go there.

My mind is a mess, but it's always a mess in there. My mind can't function at work because it's thinking about how much it hates work. I have grown feelings for people (or just a certain person) I probably shouldn't have feelings for. At least I think they're feelings. It's SOMETHING and I don't like it. But then I do like it. I also have feelings for someone I have only met once months ago and haven't seen since. It's a crush but when I crush, I crush HARD ("I don't want to be a player no more..."). Then I have weird feelings for people who have been out of my life for months now and I don't know how to go about dealing with that. If I go back, I risk losing all the good progress I've made. If I don't go back, I lose a good friend and have a hole in my heart for a friendship that really could have been.

I need to de-clutter, to clean, to throw things away from my past and make room for my future. But I just don't want to deal with it right now. I want to put it out of my mind, but certain things, songs, people, ideas keep bringing me back to my problems--that everything in my life is currently a fucking mess. 

I got a fish from my co-worker last week. It looked unwell, as it stayed at the bottom of the tank most of the day and didn't eat. I named him Federico after Fellini because I'm a lame-ass bitch. It was a Betta and I don't think my co-worker took well care of it. I think it was mainly because she didn't know you had to take care of it a certain way--Bettas are sensitive to their environment. When I got it, she kept it in a tiny glass bowl and would use bottled water to fill its environment which are really big no-no's for Bettas. By the time I got it, it looked like it was on the verge of dying. I still tried to take as great care of it as I possibly could, but I think the stress of the new environment was too much; it was dead by the time I got home today. I haven't had the heart to flush it down the toilet or clean the tank. 

These days I feel as if my life is an entire impasse. I have lost my confidence and find myself on unsteady footing. I'm insecure and the main cause of it is my work situation. Ever since we were bought out, things have been changing and its been for the worst. The job I originally had is really no longer the same job as before. More responsibilities have been added to my plate, which I wouldn't mind if I were properly compensated. The thing is, I'm not making enough to stress out about this job. It's slowly becoming my previous job before this--everything is based off numbers and output. I'm no longer a human doing this job, but rather another cog in this ugly machine that takes advantage of people who can't afford to fight back but rather stay at their shitty job because they have no choice. I no longer have pride in my work and this whole week I've been withdrawn--co workers are now taking notice. Mistakes i have made have been pointed out to me and I just don't give a fuck like I used to. These days I'm just trying to get through the day without walking out the door. Last week I overheard my manager talking to one of the former owners about how angry and annoyed she was by this transition. Granted, she's only been back a month since her maternity leave but it gave me comfort knowing she wasn't happy with the new arrangement. Everyone else there isn't happy either but they just accept it willingly. 

Friends have been throwing job applications at me and I've been applying ravenously. A member/chair person of my DSA chapter offered herself as a reference and told me to apply to UCI where she currently works, which was awfully sweet of her. I know I can get one of these jobs and at this point I'm aching to get the hell out of my current situation. I think that's why I'm so miserable. 

If anything, this transition has unveiled the ugliness of the previous owner's faults. There were a lot of safety issues--and I do mean A LOT that put not only the people in the office at risk, but also the men that work out in the warehouse. The men in the warehouse are minorities, and many of them don't speak English. It infuriates me as the men out in the shop were being taken advantage of under our previous owner's guidance--as if their lives didn't matter and while I have no idea how much they get paid, I can't imagine it is a living wage, especially for the kind of work they do. Before the new ownership, many didn't have papers. I'm sure those employees have been let go. It's as if I am receiving the worst of both worlds. 

I'll get another job. I'll get another fish. I'll find my groove again. I just need to be patient.

My mother always said "I love you" whenever she said goodbye on the phone, left the house or just left a room. I had grown up around it and never thought much about her saying it all the time. It wasn't till I was older I realized that a lot of people don't consider it much of a normal thing. One of my friends said his parents seldom uttered the three words to him, while another friend of mine thought it was a "white people thing" since her bro-y, white, OC boyfriend at the time used to say it constantly to his friends. It could definitely be a white people thing since it was my lily white mother who always said it and very rarely my Mexican dad. In my mother's case, there was a deeper meaning.

A couple of years before she passed I asked her this question because I was curious. Let me preface it first by giving a little background--my mother's childhood was anything but great. Her parents didn't really parent and acted resentful that she was even born. When my mother was 7 or 8, my grandmother told her the only reason why she had her was to save her failing marriage to my grandfather (They divorced not too long after my mother found out). My grandfather was often times critical of her appearance--everything from her nose to her weight was put under a microscope. This would lead her to have a form of body dysmorphia and for most of her life she would consider her tiny frame as fat and her regular sized nose as huge (My grandfather was definitely calling the kettle black in that regard, as he had a huge Italian schnoz and had no room to speak). My mother was the black sheep of the family, to put it simply. Add the fact that both of my grandparents were going through their own addictions. When my mother was 12, she had to drive from Lancaster to Palm Springs late at night to pick up my drunk grandfather so he could make it to school the next day--he was a principal. My grandmother remarried a few times and she married some huge fuckers, too. The step father that forced my mother to run away was a man by the name of Chuck. He was 6'4", 200 and somewhat odd pounds and he drop-kicked my 5'3", 110 pound mother in her ribs. He cracked two of them while her mother stood by her man. She realized she had two options--stay and endure the abuse that could kill her or try to save herself. She chose the latter. Her parents never looked for her for years after that.

It was apparent my grandparents never cared for her. I'm not even sure if they loved her, and if they did they had a fucked up way of showing it. Much of the things that happened in her childhood led her addiction, which would be the reason of her demise and untimely death. I've never gotten over that. I haven't spoken to my grandfather since her death and I don't really want to. He never was fatherly towards her, even after she was a grown adult. I don't keep any contact with that side of the family. 

So when I asked her that question as to why she always said "I love you", her answer was simple: "I never knew if my parents loved me. I questioned it regularly and I made a promise to myself that if I ever had children, I would never let them question if whether or not they were loved. They would always know, no matter what". That's the thing I love remembering most about my mother--she was one of the most loving and caring people I was privileged to know and to call my own mother, my flesh and blood. Her parents may have not been proud of her, but I was. The fact that she could still being a wonderful human being that came out of a shitty family proves that there is still hope for humanity. 

Because of this, there has never been a day I questioned my mother's love for me and my brother. I knew it. My brother knew it. I think her love and devotion has made me the woman I am today and I will forever be grateful for that.

So here's to you, Mom. On Mother's Day. You're not here on this Earth anymore, but you'll forever be in my heart. I love you.