Hello Chicago!

            My Creative Writing professor told the class that writers should always carry a notebook with them and write down at least six observations a day. One never knows which image drawn from their life can be tied into a novel or poem. But since leaving for Chicago for a spring break trip with my mother, progressively weirder events have been occurring around us, too weird to one day be used in even the most abstract of writing. I’m just going to list them off here because I can’t string them together into any sort of narrative for you.

1.    Before our plane even took off, the pilot had to return to the gate because directly behind my mother was what the flight attendants would later describe as an “unruly passenger.” Unruly, in this case, being he wanted to lie down upon the poor strangers next to him and literally stated, “Man, you don’t even know how crazy I am.” He left orderly with the airport security, but not before saying, “I’m not even drunk. This is just who I normally am.” I mean, at least he’s self-aware.

2.    We were grabbing a late lunch in an Italian bistro, when a lady walked in with a dog in a service harness. Hey, that’s her business, but the dog proceeded to set his nose upon our table and sniff at our food before being pulled away by his owner. I caught a glimpse of the brand name on the dog’s harness and googled it. Turns out, the harness is not distributed by any sort of licensed training organization, but can instead can be purchased on the internet for $50. Still, the situation could have been completely legitimate. But keep your dog away from the alfredo please.

3.    We walked into the lobby of our hotel to find a rather large man wearing a fez standing before the front desk. I don’t even know. Do with that information what you will.

Dead Dogs & Other Phenomenon that Make You Realize Your Childhood is Over

Wow, that’s the most depressing title I’ve ever written (and I was a tween poet). Well, it’s not going to get much happier from here. You’ve been warned.

A few weeks ago, I discovered that my neighbor’s nine-year-old poodle had passed away. This wouldn’t be out of the ordinary, except Babe was a bit of a special case. She was born with a heart arrhythmia, her tiny ribcage beating in fluttery patterns when you held her. She was only supposed to live eighteen months tops. By her eighth year, we all thought she was going to live forever just to keep up the irony of it. It’s really unpoetic of God not to make this dog immortal.

“Speaking of dead dogs,” My mother transitioned on our Skype call last week, “Buster died too.”

This is less of a tragedy. I mean, I’m sorry for my longtime friend and Buster’s owner, Carolyn, but Buster was a bit wonky. And when I say a bit, I mean for the past ten years he would park his chubby, rat terrier butt in the cat tree and bark at me every time I walked into Carolyn’s living room.

Doggy death has become a bit of a pattern in the past five years. A few years earlier, Buster’s brother, Duke, discovered the answer to the black dog plus dark night plus fast car equation. A block over, my brother’s best friend’s yellow lab was put down due to one of the common big dog illnesses (hip dysplasia or bloat, I don’t really remember). My godparent’s dog chased a rabbit into the metal side of their camper. All of the dogs from my childhood are dead.

Except for Duncan, the white and brindle Shi Tzu my parents brought home one night when I was five. He’s fourteen now and comparably healthy for his age. He has some bowel problems and ruptured a disk last month, but for the most part enjoys his days napping and chewing the faces off his toys. Since leaving for college, though, he suddenly seems so much older. Maybe it’s because all my information is second hand, meaning my mother is more inclined to tell me about the ear infections and vet visits than him dashing through the hall to get a treat. Maybe it’s because all of the dogs of my childhood are dying to the tune of “Another One Bites the Dust” or the cannon sound from the Hunger Games.

I have a bit of a “dead pet” motif in my writing. My first ever completed novel, Dead Fish, began and ended with the death of goldfish (exciting, I know). Dead pets work well as metaphors for innocence encountering death. Parents purchase goldfish and gerbils so their children can learn lessons in responsibility, but also in death. It’s a stepping-stone for the harsher realities of life, the hierarchy of funerals held in the backyard going from fish to parakeets to dogs to grandparents (wow, Emma, you are just a warm mug of hot chocolate today, aren’t you?).

But how does one feel when this test of innocence is occurring at a time where they are already expected to grow up fast? I’m away from my dog and my parents and my home now, living in an 11 by 15 room with only my roommate to look after me. My days are largely unstructured except for a few hours of class and a few hours of office work, leaving me time to think about ridiculous questions like is the death of dogs in my life largely symbolic of the end of my childhood. It doesn’t have to be, of course, because the only symbolism in life is what we choose to see. I’m choosing to project meaning onto this common occurrence (all pets die, after all) because I’m feeling a bit confused about and stressed over my own maturity and responsibilities.

I’ll try not to dwell on it anymore for the time being. Spring break is in three days, so I’ll be able to go home soon and see my puppy.

I Love You, But You Need to Go: The Introvert’s Lament

I feel the need to say before I begin this post that I love college. I love that all my friends live in the same dorm, that whenever we want to see each other, the most we have to walk up is a flight of stairs. We grab lunch and dinner together. We often have the same classes.

I also hate that we all coexist so close to one another.

I understand how contradictory this can be. When I first see my friends, I am giggly and overly affectionate to the point of bemused annoyance. But progressively, I begin to become anxious and irritated with anything anyone says or does. This is completely my problem and not theirs, but that doesn’t stop me from seething with the thought, If one more person touches me, I’m going to scream.

Back home, my friends had learned a longtime ago that their little friend Emma needed to be left alone from time to time. They always invited me to hangout with them, but also understood if during that time I needed to go sit in the corner on my phone, that was a reflection upon me, not them. I got so used to this I forgot how to explain it to new people.

It doesn’t help that introverts and extroverts have always had trouble understanding each other, because we’ve only ever existed in our own heads. They can’t understand needing to be alone when there are all these great people around and I can’t understand liking any person enough to hang out with them for more than four hours straight.

Fully aware of this disconnect, trying to explain myself goes about like this:

Me: “I need to go.”

Friend: “Oh, do you have to do something?”

Me: “No, I need to-You see-I’m a-I need to not be around you.”

Friend: “What?”

Me: “I need to take a nap.”

Me: *Goes home and sits on Tumblr for the next three hours*

I’m aware that this is theoretically terrible. It’s terrible to not be excited to see your friend walk into to your room because they are interrupting your plans to watch Youtube all night. It’s terrible to get exhausted only watching a movie with your friends. It’s terrible that despite all this, I am terrified of being left out of anything. I’m aware that my friends are better than I will ever deserve. But I’m also aware that to maintain this beautiful relationship we have, from time to time, you’re going to need to go.