Don't Cry for me Argentina (and everywhere else)

I was having a shit day today and I am not sure how it happened. I went to bed last night in a relatively gleeful mood and I woke up feeling like life was trying to kill me. I tried every preventative method to overcome these gloomy feelings but none of my go to tricks helped. I pedaled as fast as my legs could go on the bike at the gym, but instead of pushing the emotions out, they came flooding up and I had to quickly hightail it out of there before I started crying on the shoulder of the man biking next to me. (lucky bastard has no idea how close he came). I came home and worked on some acting projects hoping that being productive would make me feel empowered as opposed to helpless. Did not work. I even went through magazines trying to piece together looks that I want for my fall wardrobe knowing that clothes always make me feel better. However, my will to be a fashion icon was trumped, heavily, by my will of despair. Finally I just gave in and started to cry.

Now I am hesitant to admit this b/c my last post seemed to have left the impression that I am a bit of a loon. I mean, fine I will admit that maybe saying I had become, albeit briefly, a paranoid schizophrenic might have had something to do with those sentiments being hurled in my direction. But this cry was different. This cry led me to a revelation. Two things happened that led me to this revelation. The first was this; as I was walking/crying to the bathroom Jeff Buckley began to play and I was immediately overcome with a recognizable feeling. The second was; the reason I was heading to the bathroom was to get my braces to put in my mouth. Jeff Buckley, braces, Jeff Buckley, braces, recognizable feeling…Oh shit. I am still my teenage-self, crying and wearing braces. I am stuck in a perpetual puberty!

I am in my thirties and once a month I go to the dentist to get a new set of braces. While, yes, this time my teeth aren’t covered in metal I still can’t bite into an apple for about 3 days each month. And I have a lisp. Also, I am still using music to enable my emotional addictions.

The worse thing is that this revelation didn’t stop me. As soon as Jeff Buckley ended I manually chose the next song to play – “The Flame” by Cheap Trick. And I cried some more and it felt good! And then I kept going – “You are so Beautiful” by Joe Cocker, “Romeo and Juliet” by Dire Straits, “Thinking about You” by Radiohead, the list went on and on and so did my crying. It was like a drug and I did not want to stop.
I remember when I was younger, my friends and I would make tapes of sad songs, we called them chill tapes. Then we would lie down and cry as we listened to our chill tape, each sad song playing over our tape recorder. It was the best feeling. And to be honest, it still is.

I have to say, as I admit to the occurrences of this afternoon, I am not totally horrified. The braces part isn’t great but I enjoyed feeling like that girl again. I am glad I haven’t lost that part of myself. I hope there is a little bit of that teen-age girl in each of us because there is something about that time in my life that was magical, painful and really beautiful. And I don’t want to forget that. God, as I write this, remembering, my eyes are starting to well up again. Cue the music.