Survival Guide.

The Girl Scout’s Guide to Life Past Your Early Twenties: earn your way to fortune, fulfillment and true love, plus earn sensational patches for your achievements.

If only it were so easy! I’d love a simple recipe, a step-by-step guide to today’s wilderness of existence.  I’d be a sucker of a sale; they’d have my photo on powerpoint slides called TARGET AUDIENCE at marketing conferences the nation over.

In a handbook world, today I would have earned patches for Making New Friends and Surviving a Male-Inhabited Wasteland.

I’m over at J’s at the moment, but J is not in.  He left me a voicemail letting me know he’s out with a friend from work for drinks, but he’ll be back soon.  Disappointing, sure, as I’m just back from watching Sex & the City, which is putting me in a very lovey dovey, “oh just hug me and never leave me and we’ll make everything work” mood.  Also, in the mood for cookies.  And cereal, for some reason.  Both in stock in my kitchen BUT ALAS, not here.

Dear boyfriend,

Please buy groceries.  Plain pasta and tequila do not a tasty snack make.  I’m going to eat whatever I can find, in your bed, while broadcasting live to the internet.  Then I’ll do the dishes and you’ll never know!

Thanks, and love you!

Girlfriend.

I’ve made a really sub-par pasta with egg, a sad version of carbonara without any of the good stuff like bacon. Still, though, there’s something comforting about sitting here using someone else’s dishes, wearing someone else’s boxers as pajamas, siphoning off of someone else’s internet; I’m feeling quite at home despite it all.

I think I’m starting to find my place.  In life and in love and in everything, really …  some days it just comes together and it’s like, aha, this is it.  This is what I’ve been missing.  Other days, of course, everything seems grey, or falling apart at lightening speed; today’s focus is on the good, however, and really, there is so much good.

I had the rare opportunity this weekend to meet not one, not two, but three fabulous bloggers here in DC.  J and I met notsojenny and her M for drinks in the afternoon, and I really, truly could have stayed for and talked to her for hours.  Hours and hours and hours; she was every bit the amazing girl her blog anticipates. I had to jet, however, as later on I was meeting Heidi and Lexi for a superfun SATC girls night, complete with pink drinks.  The movie? Amazing.  So good, so perfect in all the right places, so exactly what I needed, a two-plus hour dose of that fabulous foursome. And new friends.

Add to this bloggy-dates with lawyerish last week and Devon before that, and I think I’ve irrevocably lost a piece of my anonymous blogger identity. No, I tell them, I’m not really named magda.  (true). Yes, everything else I write is real. (true, encore). And I intend it to stay that way. Face or no face, I’m still me, and this is still my space, and what I have to say is still going to show up here from time to time.

I’m still a bit amazed, honestly, that people read what I say here and want to meet me in real life.  Really? Truly? But I’m just, like, a voice on the internet!  I could be anyone! I could be really weird!  I think you’ve all earned your trusting patch, dear internets.

I didn’t start writing here to make real-life friends.  Writing that—“real life” friends—reminds me of a hilarious spam message I got the other day.  Yes, sometimes I read my spam folder.  It amuses me, whatever.  The spam in question was from Roberto.  He wanted me to move to Paris and be his wife; he promised love and affection and many children (oh my).  It came with but one condition:  “in your actual life only.”  Dang.  Because my alternate existences really wanted to be impregnated by a foreign man I met through the gmail spam connection.

No, I think I started writing here just as a new way to play with words: a new space to write and be unknown and just say what I want to say without inhibitions, but with more coherence and grace than my diary writings usually find.  I scribble away on the train, or while waiting for hearings and conferences to get underway; my writing there is much less censored, and would probably lead an average person to think I was raving mad insane. I just hope I’m not called as a witness in anyone’s trial.

Lawyer: so, witness, do you keep a diary?

Me: um, yes.

Lawyer: the prosecution will be subpoenaing that now, thanks.

Me: well, shoot.

Lawyer: your honor, the prosecution moves to incarcerate witness, as we believe she is a psycho. 

If life was only about surviving, about checking off accomplishments and meeting goals, I’d say it would be pretty dull.  Surviving misses the point. It’s too minimalist: it doesn’t involve chances, or risks; it instructs to stick to the straight and narrow and avoid the unknown. 

I want to do more than survive what’s left of my twenties.  I want to take them out with an almighty bang, and keep the momentum going well past that. The chances and the risks are the fabric of this story. Chances in friendship, in love, and in life depend on just getting out there and toughing it out.  It’s worth it.