Hipsters: New York's newest and worst Immigrant Community

I was in East Williamsburg. On Metropolitan Avenue. A young Puerto Rican mother was pushing a stroller on the sidewalk, with her boyfriend. I was behind them. A young hipster on a bike came blazing past us, on the sidewalk, ringing his bell. He bumped into the stroller and just kept going. The young mother began screaming after him, but he biked away.

This would never have happened in Park Slope. This is the difference between the Yuppies and the Hipsters. Gentrification in New York is not new and it is not always bad. 15 or 20 years ago, a group of young professionals from the Midwest or South (not all white, this isn't about race, it's about community) moved into Park Slope. When my mom was a kid, Park Slope wasn't a great neighborhood. It had beautiful homes, but it was run down. These Yuppies moved in and built a community. They had children. They stayed. They renovated their brownstones and increased the actual property value. They put in new stoops and new kitchens. They replaced windows and kept with the codes of Historic Districts. They respected the history of the neighborhood and the architecture. Now Park Slope has middleschoolers and highschoolers. The young professionals who moved in years ago are aging. They have good jobs that add something valuable to the city. They've created a community that is safe and beautiful. They put down roots. They stayed. It was about building community and commitment. Park Slope Dads don't hit young women with strollers.

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I am not against gentrification in general. But what is happening in other neighborhoods like Williamsburg and Bushwick is different. When a Hipster moves into a run down loft in Williamsburg they like that it's rundown. They come in waves and leave in waves. They rack up the prices without racking up the property value. What's scary about the gentrification of the Hipsters is that it is not guaranteed. I look at Malcom X Blvd on the edge of Bushwick and Brownsville. An area with poverty and crime. Yet the Hipsters are moving in because it's edgy and underground and cheap. They will move into rundown apartments. They will demolish old buildings, not bothering to renovate, and put in something modern and ugly. There will be no respect for the history or the architecture. They will rack up the prices. The community that is already established there will be priced out. Then, when the Hipsters get bored of the neighborhood, when they move on, what will happen?

New York is my home. I was born here. I will raise my family here. New York is a community.

Last semester in my accounting class, a Cuban girl and a first generation Bosnian boy started dating. I was talking to her, during finals week. She lived in Astoria with her family. And she was telling me that she wants to pursue music but she knows she will not be able to pursue music and stay in New York. "I can't afford to move out. I can't afford to move anywhere." She was crying, knowing that she could never rent an apartment in the neighborhood her parents moved to forty years ago.

I have heard too many of these stories. Middle class people.  The children of cops and firefighters and taxi drivers and nurses and public school teachers. A friend who was evicted from his three story walk up because the landlord was selling the whole building to be demolished. So a developer could build condos. A single girl who was being priced out because her landlord wanted "white families." I am thankful I have to take a bus to the subway. Maybe it will keep my neighborhood from changing.

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Hipsters come to New York for fun. It's a summer romance. They think it'll last forever, but once it starts getting cold, they back out. Once things get hard and ugly. Once they have children. Once their dad offers them a better job back home. They leave. There is no commitment to community. And it's not right that communities with roots generations deep are being displaced for people who don't care about the future of their neighborhood. A cool bar scene does not constitute community. Underground clubs do not make community. And I am scared for the future of my city. I am worried about my friends and their futures here. I am worried about whether I will be able to grow old here, comfortably. Whether I will be able to raise a family.

Living in New York means making sacrifices and it always has. No backyard. No washing machine of your own. I just don't understand why I am being priced out of my city for weak, short-sighted party animals who won't be able to bend under the pressure. Young people, obsessed with being cool. Selfish people. Short-sighted, slightly racist, stuck-up artists who just don't care. People who will break the first time their downstairs neighbor screams at them to shut their kid up. The first time their bike gets stolen. The first time their elevator breaks down.

I don't understand why I am being priced out of my city for these people who don't want to invest. (They might say they do, but I haven't seen the results.) These people don't want to build beautiful, elegant, flourishing communities. Hipsters have the time and the money to turn any neighborhood they touch into a Park Slope. But they don't even bother. At the very least, if outsiders are going to move in and change neighborhoods and increase the rents, they could also increase property value. They could create something beautiful. They could invest for the future of New York- their future. My future. But their children won't have to live with the consequences of their actions, because their children probably won't grow up in New York. My children will.

The whole problem here is attitude. A sense of deserving. I see two ginger bearded men, and they are sitting on the back of the bus out to Rockaway. And they are dressed like Popeye, playing on their matching iPhones, with their linen bags filled with snacks for their beach day. They have nautical tattoos. I can't tell if they're twins, best friends, or gay lovers. But the looks on their faces are clear. The bus is crowded. There are little boys being rowdy. Young teenage girls laughing. Older women with their grocery bags. This bus is theirs. It belongs to the little boys and the teenage girls and the old women. But the Hipsters are scrunching up their faces and taking up empty seats on the crowded bus with their linen tote bags and they think they own this bus. They are mildly disgusted that they have to share this bus with these "normal" people. They left their Utopian bubble of wherever they live- Greenpoint, Long Island City. And now they have to interact with normal people. I hear their snide comments. It's always the same.

I can not abide the casual racism any longer. The sense of deserving. The disregard for history, community, and culture. They are chaotic. Their actions are unpredictable. They smoke their pot and graffiti up the warehouses just like everyone else always has, but now it's cool. Now it's art.

I can not abide these people any longer.

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If you moved to New York recently, all I am asking is that you seriously think about your actions and how they are effecting the communities you live and work in. Think about what you are putting into this city. If you are not here for a long time, if New York is just a stop along the way, then leave this city better than you found it. Please. New York is not your playground or your summer camp. Your actions here matter. They have a lasting effect on other people.

Invest in your apartment. Improve your neighborhood. Support preexisting businesses. Do not ride your bike on the sidewalk, stop hitting young mothers with strollers. It's stupid and makes you look like the douchebag you really are. Respect people around you. Just think about the imprint you are leaving on New York. Invest, not in your bar scene, but in the city as a whole. Invest in the history and culture that is already here. You don't have to make your own.

I thought people moved to New York City because there was something here that called to them. If that is true, come and invest in that. You don't have to create your little Hipster Utopia in the middle of a preexisting community. You could (surprise, surprise) try and learn about that community, and adapt to it, instead of instantly feeling the need to bring in your Dairy Queen and Chick fil A or whatever you are so homesick without.

You came here. For this city. If you keep changing New York at the rate you are going, it will no longer be the city you came here for. Think about that.

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I don't have an answer, I just know my heart is breaking for this city. I know we are losing something, our originality. Our history. We are a city of immigrants, and each wave brings something new and interesting, shakes things up a bit.

But Hipsters are not an immigrant wave. They are not here desperate to succeed, invest, work, and build. They are here for fun. For a laugh. That's the difference and the problem.

If you are a Hipster, if you moved here recently, think about that. Think about the sacrifices that the Irish, Germans, Italians, Polish, Russians, Puerto Ricans, South Americans, Mexicans, Indians, Koreans, and Chinese made to come here. Think about how hard they worked, and how much they appreciated the city they were lucky enough to live in and work in and commit to. That's how you need to be behaving. Because New York is a unique, rough, and scary city. And you're not adding anything to it if you came here for an art scene and a laugh or two.

Give something meaningful. If you just moved here, be more than a Hipster. Be a Yuppie. Be an Immigrant. Give of yourself. Serve and work. And then maybe this growing, widening chasm between you and me, us and them, will be able to close and mend itself.

This One's All About Love

Disclaimers:
A. I am not a sociologist on middle child trauma.
B. I am not claiming I was actually denied affection as a child. I'm just needy.

I am a middle child. I crave affirmation. I can be babied at times, yet much is expected of me. I live in a household where I am the odd one out. Both my older and younger sister suffer from physical and mental ailments that make them often priorities. My brother, being both youngest and the only boy, enjoys the benefits such as his own room.

I don't know exactly what the stereotypes of middle children are. We can sniff one another out, that I know. We feel for one another. I read on the internet that the middle children try and find a role that is not filled by their older siblings. This is true I believe, which is why middle children can find each other. We are all different, yet unified by our overwhelming desire to be set apart.

***

But enough about stereotypes. What has birth order done to me? Naturally, I am a person who is desperate for affection. I like being told "I love you." I need you to HUG ME, damn it. A few weeks ago I was at a Bible study. I was having a hard day. And I kept waiting for someone to like, put their hand on me and bless me. No one did. But as I left the apartment, the hostess (who I'd known for two weeks) comes out behind me.

"Are you ok?" she asked. I nod and take a deep breathe. She is an incredibly discerning person and had somehow magically read my soul. Then she said, "I love you." And she hugged me. A real warm hug and a real "I love you."

(Since then she and her family has done more for me than I can conceive. I barely know them. This is a picture of Christ-like hospitality. But I digress.)

This sort of pointed attention is what middle children often get less of growing up. This is not malicious. I am not accusing anyone in my family or any of my friends of emotional negligence. I think middle children come to realize their place in the family order and begin to adjust accordingly. I think they assume they're going to get less, so when any comes their way, it's a bigger deal.

***


When Kate (the older sister, but you knew that) was finishing highschool, being the oldest grandchild, all eyes were on her. Hours were spent in my Titi's kitchens as her choices were reviewed, and her skills considered. Whether that level of attention was something Kate wanted is debatable. But nevertheless, she got it. I graduated without much drama, and lost momentum by taking a semester off. Then I impressed everyone I knew by halfheartedly starting at a community college in January of all times. The eyes were not all on me. Once again, I don't know if I particularly regretted the lack of attention I received, but I did notice the lack.

I do have an uncle, Uncle Steven. He is a middle child. He will always take me aside to discuss my life. Middle children call out to middle children. Even across the generations. But for the most part, the middle child gets less parties, less excitement, and less questions. This is ok though. I am not pitching a fit. My birth order has saved me from being the experiment. Kate, as the first, was always the experiment. What went wrong with her was mildly adjusted and tried again on me. I do not mind my placement in the family. I am just stating the facts.

***

I am also in the unique place where I am sort of all the birth orders at once. I am a middle child, because I am. But, the age difference between me and my younger sister makes me the baby of my "set." (My family, being two sets of two.) However, personality-wise, it has been a long running joke that I am Kate's "big sister" because I am generally more organized, responsible, and I emotionally coached her through N*icky, J*ke, P*rker, D*an, Ch*rlie, and all the rest.

Thusly, at times I play all roles. This makes it even more complicated and turns me into a MEGA-middle-child because now I am "all things to all people." Or something like that. According to an article I just read on the internet from a website I don't recall, middle children are more flexible than oldests and youngests. We fulfill our duties. We bend to our older siblings and bow to the younger. The internet calls this "Middle Child Syndrome." I don't really know what that means, but it sounds cool.

***

But back to "I love you." I love quickly and easily. I fall in love with everyone. If I don't love you, you might be my nemesis. I'm not in the habit of just sort of feeling ehhhh about someone. If I know you, I probably care about you, worry about you, have hopes for your future, and generally just wish you health and prosperity. In my personal experience, the middle child is often the most ready and desperate for love. (Not that we always show it. We also have the toughest skins of any birth-order. We cry on the inside, dammit.)

I think middle children seek that affirmation. (Maybe that's just me. I didn't do a survey.) We want to be liked, because our older siblings were cooler than us. We want to be indulged, because our younger siblings stole our thunder. The internet studies I read that I'm not citing all said that people keep their birth-order personalities, even when grown and miles away from their family. I believe this too.

So, if you're not a middle child, love the middle children in your life. They probably got way less for Christmas ortheir first birthday than their older sister did. They probably didn't get their first A framed. Someone probably forgot to throw them a graduation party once. They ate their big sister's leftover toast and stole their baby brother's bottle. They bore the brunt of the handmedowns. And maybe, their first swim meet or whatever was overshadowed by the birth of that ominous baby brother. I'm not asking you to randomly hug all the middle children you know. They might not all like being hugged. But ask them some questions. Show affection. Even if you've never met their family and they haven't seen their siblings in years, somewhere deep inside that person is a middle child whose second-rate exploits were being ignored at age seven. Make that kid feel loved.

A Short History of a Greek Diner

(This is very off-prompt. But it is about being alone. It's just too weird not to blog about.)

As you might have noticed by now, I am an affectionate and emotionally needy person. I would also consider myself an extrovert. I need good conversation and distraction. Yet I still appreciate being alone. A little less so now, because my life and schedule is such that I am alone all day. Often I don't have a conversation with an adult till I get home. (This is why I tweet like it's going out of style- I need to share my thoughts somehow.) Even now though, with all this alone time, after a party or an event I relish the quiet subway ride home to digest my day. Even now I'll sit in a restaurant alone, reading a book. Sometimes I just sit there and think.

***

But let's backtrack. You all need more stories of my traumatic childhood. I liked being alone as a child because I have (had) an overactive imagination. Real life and real people could harsh that buzz. Growing up one of four, then one of three, then one of four again, I didn't have a lot of time alone. I used to lock myself in the bathroom to just be by myself. I entertained myself as a child with something I called "headgaming." My imagination was so strong that I would pick a character (fictional or historical) to be, and just live in their body all day. It made the boring part of life much more interesting. Instead of doing school, I would imagine I was in a one-room school house in 1860's Wisconson. While washing dishes or cleaning, I would imagine myself to be a servant in a Downton Abbey style house. I usually had four or five scenarios at any given time, and would pick one depending on what was going on at that time. Naturally, too much outside interference would ruin the whole thing. Which is why I'd lock myself in the bathroom and sit on the floor and have incredibly detailed conversations with people who didn't exist. Because of this, sometimes I wonder if I would be a good actor, given the opportunity to try. I can cry on demand and scream bloody murder to nothing very well.

Headgaming persisted into middle school. I would seek out alone time to cultivate these games, and then, while entering back into reality, would let them sort of simmer in the back of my mind while also engaging in whatever was at hand. Of course, if I was really having fun, I forgot all about the games. They existed mainly for when I was home, bored, and alone.

It wasn't until I was 14 that I learned the art of being alone while out. It was a whole new type of freedom. It was summer and I was taking classes at FIT for what I then thought would be my future career in graphic design. I had a decent lunch budget from my dad. Despite the fact I could have found girls in class to have lunch with, I decided to eat alone for the most part. I chose a diner, Greek Corner (ironically, the same diner currently around the corner from my church). I sat at a little table alone, at 14, and ate a burger at a Greek diner. It was quiet. I had my imagination.

Suddenly I had a whole new option. I could adjust my physical reality to fit with the game. I'd spent the last ten years of my life railing against my age. I wanted to be 35. I wanted to be married. Move on. Run an immaculate household and hold business lunches and buy babyfood on the way home from the office, while toting my briefcase. I've wanted to be a harried working mother since I was a kid. So, instead of being at home, pretending I was out living an interesting life, I could actually be out! It was an incredible realization. Especially considering by 14 my imagination was dying down.

***

I wonder now how much of this was natural weird-ass kid behavior and how much was some sort of extreme escapism. During the most intense years of headgaming, life was a little messy. My best friends had moved to Florida, Pennsylvania, New Mexico and up near Orange County NY. My sister Kate and I spent a lot of time slapping each other and sitting on each other. My brother had died.

But I don't want whoever is reading this to think I was a depressed child. I was very happy, though perhaps happy for the wrong reasons. But that is beside the point, I guess.

***

So then I'm a teenager. I'm working at Moretti Bakery and having lunch at Oasis Diner, four days a week. These hours of solitude kept the headgaming alive. If you're working at a bakery, essentially by yourself apart from your bosses, from 6-9am, you need to keep yourself entertained. So of course, whoever I pretended to be worked at a bakery, but it wasn't me. It was just... someone else. And then I sat in Oasis and stared at my Fancy Man (owner of diner, early thirties at the time, love of my life) and pretended I was someone else.

During these years I had lots of friends. These friends tore me away from my imaginings. The games didn't follow my around anymore- they sat in little pockets. If I was playing Monopoly with six people on my bedroom floor, I didn't have to pretend I was not me playing Monopoly. I just was. This state of "just being" was rather pleasant. But back to the whole case of me railing against my age. When I was with my friends, I was very definitely 16. And though I liked my friends, I hated being 16. And sometimes I just wanted to forget I was 16 and pretend to be "adult" again. So I'd go and hang out and be alone. I wouldn't have to engage in some sort of crazy imaginings- just being by myself without anything bothering me or defining me was enough.

***

If you're tracking with this, you might see that eventually this whole game was going to catch up with itself and implode. It did a long time ago. Now, if I'm sitting in Veselka with a cup of borcht, reading on my Kindle, waiting to meet someone... I'm me. I am now that adult person my little eight year old self longed to be. (Minus the children, the high-pressure job. But I think you understand.) I don't really have anything left to pretend.

I still eat at diners because that's how my life is structured and because I really like two fried eggs with toast and homefries and coffee for $6. But it has also become slightly depressing sometimes. Sometimes I get lonely now, and wish someone I knew would randomly walk in. (This, though sounding ridiculous, has happened before. So I keep hoping.) Real people are better than imaginary people, and my life is finally full. I don't need all those games, and obviously, I am no longer capable of playing them. I don't have access to that imagination anymore, it died a long time ago. I still need down-time. Most people do. But I have lost the whole reason I liked being alone as a child. It's a good thing because my reasons for wanting to be alone were a little strange. I always knew I would outlive the desire to "headgame."

I still hold on to a bit of that imagination. As someone who has artistic tendencies (despite lacking an actual outlet) I think my imagination is still better than the average person's. I write angry/passionate letters to people that will never be seen. I imagine scenes before they happen, and occasionally, have been dissapointed at how they played out in comparison to reality. (I know other people do this because of that scene in 500 Days of Summer.)

Memory is important to me. It's why I kept/keep a diary. It's why I instagram. I want to document my life. In a way, headgaming brought my childhood into technicolor, and has given so much more to remember. I was never just me, I remember all the people I pretended I was too. I believe very strongly into holding on to memories. So I do.

You're Not Puerto Rican

"You're not Puerto Rican."

I've been told that. Over and over. "You're not Puerto Rican." Alright, so maybe they have a point. I'm kinda blonde. I have pale (albeit grayish-olive) skin. I don't listen to Marc Anthony. I've actually never been to Puerto Rico. And, although I definitely know how to eat pasteles, I wouldn't have the first clue when it comes to making them.

None of that really matters though. My mother is Puerto Rican, born of two Puerto Ricans. Her father, my grandfather, immigrated to Hell's Kitchen in the 60's. My family history is basically West Side Story. I am my mother's daughter. I am half Puerto Rican.

If you take a step back, family is very diverse. My mother is one of four. She married a German guy (my dad). Her three siblings married another Puerto Rican, a Cuban, and an African-American, respectively. All thirteen of the first cousins in my family have their own unique combinations of skin, hair, and features. But we do all share the same big brown eyes. If you look further we have even more going on, including a completely different branch of German via my Titi's husband, and Italian via their daughter-in-law. I have some redhead Puerto Rican cousins in Ohio. Naturally redhead. Full Hispanic.

Due to the diversity within my family, I've never thought of myself as particularly white or Hispanic. I'm part of a bigger whole. I don't look at myself in the mirror and say "I am Puerto Rican." But when someone tells me I'm not I get defensive. Because however you want to slice it, I still am.

***

So who am I? Despite the diversity that my family married themselves into, the core of my family is Puerto Rican. My dad has very little family, and even less that he is close to. It was Nana, Pop-pop, and my Titis and Uncles that defined my family life growing up. In the back of the car on a shopping trip, I'd listen to my grandparents chattering on in Spanish. If they started speaking Spanish, it was because I wasn't allowed to know what was going on. I remember standing in my Nana's kitchen, watching her fry platanos. I ate too many and threw up, and then stopped eating them for about ten years. Pernil and virgin pina coladas, arroz con pollo or arroz con gandules, and pasteles were all part of a normal diet. My mom always despaired that she couldn't cook what she so subtly called "white people food." The big family, the roudy parties, the bossy older Titis. Lots of kissing. "Ay que lindo!" I guess those are things that could be found in a Greek or Iranian family. It's a lifestyle that, even if just in little ways, clings to something of the life that was enjoyed back home. Where ever that it. It's immigrant life.

I'm not an immigrant. But I can trace both my Puerto Rican and German ancestors back to their old countries without hitting 1800s. Nana grew up in Hispanic Williamsburg. You know, before the hipsters moved in. Jacob and Katherine Diehl came over from Germany through Ellis Island. I like knowing where I came from. I think of myself as Puerto Rican because I see elements of the cultures in my life. I might not be the most Puerto Rican multiethnic person who ever lived, but I am also no stranger to my culture.

On the German side, I had almost no culture in my life. My mother would try to make sure we got a little exposure to that other side of us, so we created events to celebrate the Germanness. And she learned how to make an incredible sauerbraten. When I was in high school I started studying German as a foreign language. I fell in love with it and turned into a German Language major. I've found ways to identify with both sides of me.

***

I've never had some sort of massive ethnic identity crisis. I know what I am and where I came from. I'm proud of it, and mostly don't think on it. The problem lies in how other people see me. "You're not Puerto Rican.

Being mixed-race, but looking mostly white, I have a unique look perspective. I've had the... privilege to hear some pretty off-color things from white people about other ethnicities and races. I guess they assume I'm "one of them." I've had Hispanic people tell me I looked "too white" and therefore was "not Hispanic." I've seen how my hair color defines how someone thinks of me. Me and my cousins were all raised similarly. Educated, bright, Christian households, outer-borough New York, very American. Yet I know that to some people, I look smarter, or more upperclass. My little black-hispanic first cousin has hold me she hates her hair and wishes she looked more like me. Somehow, she already knows how it works. I don't know how to fight it.

I've had a unique perspective growing up. Everyone wants to tell you what you are. Strangers always want to tell me what I am. They'll ask me if I'm Swedish or Italian and then stare at me in disbelief when I tell them what I am. I've been told, "no, no, you're totally Jewish." I'm totally not. It's so odd that we live in a world where a stranger can just look at you and start assuming your culture and prescribe a lifestyle to you. Total strangers. Just last week a Dominican classmate told me, "you look smart, probably because you're white." I guess I'm white to her. Should I argue? At other times Puerto Ricans have asked me out of nowhere, "are you part Puerto Rican." If they see it in me, is it there?

***

It's easy to say ethnicity, race, culture, color.... that it all shouldn't matter. Everyone is the same inside! But ethnic identity does matter, on a personal level. Your food, your culture, your family, language. That's personal. What we should say instead is that it shouldn't matter to anyone else. I'm a little tired of justifying my ethnicity. Why is it so important to you? Will you have to think of me differently if I prove I am "actually Puerto Rican?"

I think it has been a great privilege, growing up mixed, whatever that means. I hope I can give my kids what I was given, in some way. I can't say I've faced challenges, being mixed, but I have observed challenges. I think in general the world would be a better, happier, smoother, more loving place if everyone came from two places.

But back to me. I like who I am and where I came from. I've never fought it. And I'm thankful for that.

I Kept a Diary & Other Foolish Moves

I'm a guarded person. I don't volunteer information. I need someone to ask me pointed, direct questions if they want answers.

Part of this is because I sometimes I don't really understand my own thoughts or emotions. (Do we ever really?) School struggles get mixed up with financial worries. Friends, family and boy problems all seems related. I'm sad because a cat I love died, but it's not until I find out how many hundreds of dollars I owe in Federal taxes that I start to cry. I think this is called "being a girl." I'm sure I'm not unique. Except I don't spill my emotional word vomit on everyone. I listen to your word vomit. Then I nod and sigh and wait for you to ask about how I am. If you don't, the discussion is over.

I hate being teased. As a middle child and the youngest of all my friends I live in fear of being seen as juvenile, or disrespected for having "lesser" problems. As I get older the age gap between me and those people I am closest to widens. As a girl, my friends were two to three years older. Now some of my closest companions are 28, 34, older even. I wasn't born guarded and I wasn't bored afraid of being teased.

***

I used to keep a diary. Lately I have stopped. I went through a rough, confusing eight months. This month has just begun to feel ok. I stopped writing in my diary because I started to lie in it. I started to lie because I was afraid to write the truth. I was afraid to write the truth because.......

When I was twelve I visited my best friend in the Pennsylvania. My whole family would go on yearly trips to visit her whole family. We all squeezed in together, did our schoolwork together, played together, did chores together. In general, these trips are some of my fondest childhood memories. A naive young me, misjudging the maturity of her friend and sister, brought a Composition notebook along with her. That notebook was my diary. The overwrought diary of a twelve year old. I mean, I said some insane stuff in there. There was, however, a level of respect I assumed my sister and friend had for me. I would never read their diary. They would not read mine.

Wrong. So damn wrong.

They read it. The whole thing. I had one of those little-girl crushes on a fictional character. I was relatively lonely at that time and suffered from an overactive imagination. I wrote about this crush in my diary. Which my best friend and sister read. I previously trusted the two of them with my life. I looked up to them like they were the sun and the moon. But they read my diary, and my naive little world came crashing down.

I think that was the first time I understood the concept of being unintentionally cruel. My sister and my best friend did not just read my diary. They talked about it nonstop. They teased me mercilessly. For years things I wrote in there would come up as the butt of a joke. I didn't cry or, looking back, let on how humiliated I was. Inside though, it was one of the worst feelings I've ever had. I felt betrayed, mocked, disrespected, unwanted, and unworthy.

I've spent the last eight years trying to fix that feeling. I will never forgive them for what they did. I never quite trusted them again the same way. (Side note: I love them both, still. Forever. Just, you know. With a grain of salt.) But I learned to be guarded. If I could be teased so much for a little-girl crush on a fictional character when I was twelve, what could I expect when the stakes got higher?  I hold my cards closer to my chest.

***

Even right now, I'm going through something similar. When my secrets wriggle themselves out of me, panic sets in. It doesn't matter if you're trying to help me. It doesn't who you are or how nice you are. I'm convinced I'm going to be teased.

***

I'm twenty. (Almost twenty-one, shut up.) I get defensive about my age. I try to prove myself. In jest, people I love are often unintentionally cruel to me. It usually has to do with my age, my position in life. Little things about "not understanding" something. Little jokes about me being "too young to remember" whatever they're talking about. I'm sick of being called cute. I don't want to be adorable. It feels like a weakness. No one is trying to hurt me, but it hurts. Yet I know I am also unintentionally cruel to others. God, I just was, barely a week ago. It's something we all do. It's one of the most depressing, gross ways to hurt someone. It's so hard to apologize for. No one wants their problems to be mitigated. No one wants their heart to be stepped on. So yes, I'm guarded. It's something I constantly carry in me, but I don't think it necessarily defines me. It only shows sometimes, when things get awkward. When I feel set upon. I get quiet when I'm afraid of being teased.

I learned through that experience that sometimes your friends are your worst enemies. I guess I also learned to stop writing my embarrassing moments down in ink where it can be found and read by anyone; to keep my mouth shut sometimes. And I learned that unintentional cruelty is the worst. It can't be battled. If someone doesn't realize what they're doing to you, they're not going to stop. They don't understand. I can cry and complain for the next twenty years, but my sister and friend will never exactly understand what they did that day. I don't think I've ever even gotten a formal apology for it. Actually, more than that, my sister still teases me about... basically everything in my life.

To be honest though, I'm probably safer not writing about my dramatic love life with a fictional character in a notebook. I wish my twelve year old self had had more discretion. So it's not all bad. I learned that there are somethings no one else ever will understand. So just... those things can be kept to yourself. Or at least, held onto till the right moment.

The Casual Male Friend

(disclaimer: use of terms "boy" "man" and "guy" are used interchangeably/stylistically in most places; not a commentary on the state of manhood or a slam on particular males I know.)

It's not my fault that none of my friends had brothers.

Somewhere between Nicky and Ryan, in those five years between 1988 and 1994, no one my mother knew gave birth to a son.

It wasn't on purpose. I don't blame anyone. But from an early age, I lacked the skill it took to talk to a boy who was the same age as me. Add on the that the natural boy-hating, anythingyoucandoIcandobetter attitude of any eight-year-old girl, and the male species did not even show up on my radar.

***

It took until I was twelve to fall into a new social circle. New families, new faces. And a select few new boys. Naturally, at the rate I was going, the first boy who spoke to me, directly, making eye contact, more than once, was going to the one to fall in love with. But I was not to be Joel's soul mate. And along with the burgeoning crush, any chance of actually befriending a nice, decent boy was gone. I could have tried to befriend his twin brother, but I didn't. So there went the middle school years, and I wasted the opportunity to get to know boys as friends, as humans, as more than (to be quite blunt) objects of potential future marriage and mating.

Through high school every boy I met still was a mystery. I did not know how they worked. I did not have first hand experience with them. They were something I was familiar with, but intensive inspection could not replace an instruction manual. At this time I started going to a church with more than a dozen boys "my age." I spoke to them casually before and after service. I went to youth group a few times. One of them, Charlie (now married), was the first boy I've ever liked for himself, independently of falling in love with him. But I could never get past the initial terror that boys were not girls and actually attempt to be their friend.

My first friend who was a boy turned into my first boyfriend, and still is my friend who is a boy.

***

But to backtrack in all of this, I was not friendless. I had girlfriends. In fact, I will go so far as to say I was quite popular as a kid, with a grand total of four girls claiming me as their "best friend" at one point. I love girls, and now, women. I love our personalities and our loyalty and our diversity and our ability to be honest and dive in. (Confession: men still confuse me.)

It puts me off to hear a girl say she is only friends with boys because she "doesn't like girls." I don't even know what that's suppose to mean. I am a girl's girl. I need to be able to make casual and slightly creepy passes about men, often. I have learned that doesn't really work while hanging with guys. I like being able to make casual and slightly gross comments about my menstrual cycle. I get the feeling casual male friends would not appreciate that. If I have 45 minutes to spare and I'm in Manhattan, I usually find a Macy's or a Bed Bath & Beyond, so I can look at crockery. I talk about babies. I talk about my eating habits. I can be a nightmarish stereotype. I am a girl's girl.

That being said, there are times when I am jealous of my girl friends with boy friends. One of my good friends is a boy's girl. She loves me, but apart from that, a vast majority of her friends are men. She hangs out at bars with guys. She is one-of-them. I am not. And will never be. "I just want a casual male friend!" This was my mantra. Even now, having somehow obtained a few of those coveted male friends, I will never be that girl at the bar with all the guys. Even now, if I mention the same (male) name more than three times in my house, my family assumes I have an ill-fated crush on him. (The problem is I usually do.)

***

My dad is famous for believing that men and women can't be friends. I don't know if that is true, but I am beginning to believe that it might be. At least, I doubt I will ever have a male friend (who I'm not married to) who will be a close companion and stay in my life for as long as some of my girl friends have been around. People grow closer together and further apart as their situations in life change. Right now I might be in a situation where I can have closer male friends, but I'm sure that will change with age.

While desperately trying to aquire casual male friends, I've learned not to not force it. I like having more men in my life, though I don't really think a male best friends is for me. But I like men. They've fun to be around, they're fun to talk to and have lunch with. They're great coworkers and classmates. I can go to the out with men and have coffee with them and talk about whatever. It doesn't feel strange anymore.

To finish this off, it has been in church where I have made most of my male friends. Single men. (Although there's not many of those left, everyone is coupling off like mad.) Guys with girlfriends. (Like Raleigh, one of the best people I've ever met just in general.) Married men. (My pastors are my friends! And Martin Fern.) These friendships are ones that are rooted in our being a family. A church family, where everyone has each other's best interests in mind. Where there is no pressure. And those are the most natural and pleasant sort of friendship I can imagine having with a man. Those friendships, I hope, are ones to last.

Something To Hold On To

I get very sentimental about inanimate objects.

(It's only two weeks to February 4th, the 14th anniversary of my brother Daniel's death.

Lately I've been grappeling with a fear of getting married- of loving someone else that much. Because most likely he would die first. And how would I watch him die?

But my parents are aging, aren't they? Don't they suffer through some new side effect of aging every year?

And didn't my little sister end up in the emergency room last year? And sometimes, don't you lie in bed and listen to her breathe?)

To go one further, I associate my loved ones with my stuffed animals.

***

Teddy was the first. A simple name for a classic teddy bear. He was my father's, from Aeropostale. Currently I own somewhere around forty stuffed animals. I don't know what to do with them. Most of them were accumulated in childhood. Some of them more recently. Two years ago I had to put a definite stop on my stuffed animal accumulation habits, because soon I would become a stuffed animal hoarder and I wouldn't be able to bring them with me when I moved out because there would be too many.

I can't get rid of them. I can't get rid of them because they are, in my mind, connected to people I love, and worse, to those who are dead, and even stranger, to those I haven't loved yet. A strange habit I got into as a child with a dying brother. Cut me some slack. The oldest are Teddy and Boudica. And Rocky, who was Daniel's. Bullet, Jack, Beary, Leona, Calum's Otter, Heath... There are more. They all have names and I remember them all.

***

I am afraid of death. I have a confidence in the next life, but I am terrified of people dying and leaving me here alone, now. I am terrified of being a widow. I am terrified of losing a child. (Of course I am, how could I not be?) I went through a time when I was convinced our apartment was going to burn down. So I packed an emergency bag and kept it at the foot of my bed. In case I woke in the middle of the night, house in flames around me, I could grab the bag and run. In the bag was Teddy, Boudica, and Rocky. Of course. My stuffed animals, in a very real way, for years, signified life for me. I truly believed that they were living things that had feelings, needed love and care, and could feel pain. I grew out of that belief, eventually, but no one as afraid of death as I am could actively get rid of her stuffed animals that she once believed to be alive. It'd be something like murder.

I own about forty stuffed animals and I don't know what to do with them. They are intricately connected to my past; a childhood I can not reclaim or remember because it is missing a prime member. They are one of the few material things that lived through my old life. They were loved by a version of myself that no longer exists.

The problem is stuffed animals don't die. And I can't kill them. Rocky and Spotty outlived Daniel. He slept with them, loved them, touched them. And they outlived him. They're living on, in a box. And I'm living on. And every year I grow further and further from the little girl who loved her brother and his stuffed dogs, but the dogs remain the same. So I can't get rid of them. Because they are still a part of me. They are what is left of my brother. They are everything I've lost- safe, in plastic storage containers.

Yet things change. People change. Life changes. The Ronald McDonald House has been renovated and Schneiders Hospital has been renamed. I am different. My family is different. The network of people who love me is different. Every day little things change. The mural in Veselka is different. They moved George Washington Crossing the Delaware. We own a different car. We painted. Every day the New York that Daniel lived in changes a little bit more, and every day I change in it. One day, neither I nor this city will be recognizable as the place where Daniel lived.

Death is scary because death is change. Death is a no-going-back difference in the world that you can't argue and fight your way out of. So, if I keep Teddy and Boudica and Rocky in a plastic storage container, if I keep them in my emergency bag at the foot of my bed, if I love them like a time capsule, if I can keep them from falling apart.... then there they are. Unchanging. Safe. Alive.

***

But what's the point? I think about Winnie-the-Pooh, sitting in a glass box in the Schwartzman branch. I think of when he lived in Donnell, before that. He has outlived A.A. Milne and Christopher Robin. What's he doing now, but slowly falling apart?

And what the hell am I going to do with Teddy and Boudica and Rocky and the others? No one's going to erect a special exhibit and put them on display. "Stuffed Animals of Girl who Lost her Brother." Because the older I get, and the more tragedy the rest of the world goes through, the less significant my loss is. When I was six, my tragedy was unique. Now almost everyone I know has lost a parent, a sibling, a grandfather, an uncle, a best friend, a neighbor. I can't expect the world will stay the same for me if it doesn't stay stagnant for anyone else.

Some things are in my control. And until I can think of some alternative option, until I can grow out of whatever this rut is, until I can accept that one day there will be nothing in this world that was seen and touched and loved by Daniel... then I'm keeping them. All forty-something of them. Even the ones Daniel never touched. Because someone else loved those- a sibling, parent, friend. And as long as that someone is alive, then the stuffed animal is an insurance. A little piece of them. Something to look in the eye and hold on to.