And the most she will do is throw shadows at you.

Taking a look back....

Another year, another chance to take a good hard look at yourself.

I guess I look back at this year with a kind of bittersweet fondness, like a mother watching from the family van, as her child goes off to college. All that time, effort and care that went into shaping them for the future, just to watch them walk off into the distance and make the same mistakes that you did.

For all its ups and downs, this has been an amazing year for me. I know I've changed a lot--gained back some of the self-assuredness that somehow I lost along the way. I still worry about getting hurt although I have found myself to be suprisingly unguarded. That was something I didn't expect.

I've grown closer to some people and further from others. I don't try to hold so tightly to the past anymore, instead I've traded it in for more room for my future, like an empty parking spot in a garage full of new experiences.

This year I have loved and lost so continuously that it doesn't scare me anymore. Each major heartbreak always offset by a minor victory, showing me what's important in the scheme of things. I've given up on believing in absolutes and finalities.

I still dive head first into things, falling in love with everyone I meet. But instead of looking at that as a bad thing, as something to strive to change, I've embraced it as one of my best qualities.

I look at relationships differently. It's like I've taken a baseball bat and swung blindly, shattering the perfect snow globe into millions of little pieces, exposing what's really inside; two dimensional people forced to stand in front of a fake background for eternity. Meanwhile trying to weather the storm each time life decides to flip you upside down and shake.

It turns out, you better really like who's in there with you.

I've called old friends, traveled alone, read more books, moved to a city I adore. I've realized that I know I'm alone if I am with or without you and have accepted that as an impossibility that will always haunt our pasts, presents and futures. It's changed what I see when I fast forward my life.

But not who.

I've decided not to settle down or for anything less. That without a little drama, life would be just a bunch of Tuesdays. That I'm not perfect, but I'm not sure that's what I'm looking for anymore. To always be kind and questioning. To stop sparing my feelings for your own. And most importantly, that no matter how old I get, I can always come home and feel like a kid again.

And I like that.

So here's to a year of lasts, of firsts, of in betweens and maybes. A year of warmth and discovery and forgiveness.

Here's to a present of cheap tabs and excitement, of late nights, vulnerability and impulsiveness.

And here's to a future of infinite possibilities, to the certainty of trips and stumbles along the way and the hope that when and where I do fall, the ground will always be soft and forgiving.

Happy Holidays from the Gates girls!

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

Old Habits Die Hard

Across a smoky, crowded bar you shouted that I broke your heart. I yelled something back equally sad and hurtful, maybe even found my hands reaching toward your chest to push you away. Over and over we recall the tragic story of us, like the drone of the indifferent voice coming out of a dead telephone line, "...If you'd like to make a call, please hang up and dial again..."

Because in my head there's an airport terminal that flies away those dangerous thoughts every hour on the hour. Off to destinations more habitable. Cruising at thirty-five thousand feet through the mist and fog are those unsettling thoughts. Those tempting notions that someday we'll finally forgive each other for this scar, that wound, those heartbreaks. That we will one day stop fighting the pull of something we can't control.

And I count on it every night, that vital red eye.

Because I know that on my own, I won't be able to hang up that telephone.

Wah wah wee wah!

I do my part for charity fundraisers.

WTF??

Today I walked out of my apartment building to find my car was not where I had parked it last night.

Ok, I park on a side street that is one way going east. The spot I parked in was the last spot before a small alley behind my building. When I walked out, my car was literally blocking the alley, about four or five feet from where I parked it last night.

The only viable options I can think of for why this occurred are the following:

1. I was high when I parked my car last night.

2. I did not put my car in park and it rolled backwards, somehow managing to do so even though I can't pull the keys out of the ignition if it's not in park.

3. The car in front of me attempted to push my car backward while he or she was reversing to get out of the spot in front of me.

4. A slick spot of ice formed underneath the wheels of my car causing it to slide 4-5 feet backward into the alley behind me.

5. I missed the memo on street cleaning and my car was towed, the towtruck driver was distracted by something and left halfway through the tow.

6. The towtruck driver was high when he towed my car.

7. When running to get into my car during the downpour this morning, I neglected to look at the right side of my car, which has been smashed to pieces when someone plowed into my car in the middle of the night, pushing it into the alley.

Um, I hope it's not #7. My vote is for #1.

Home is where the heart is.

It's reposting, but this is a busy time of year for me and if I can't write something original, I can at least give you something appropos.

There's a quiet in the suburbs that doesn't exist in the city.

When I stepped outside onto the snowy folds of my parents' back deck last night, I noticed it.

It's remarkable, the calm. Maybe that's why I go back so often. There's a peace of mind this place gives me that nothing else can.

When my world starts getting a little fuzzy around the edges and I feel like at any moment my heels could slip off the ledge, I pack up some stuff, take to the Kennedy and go home.

My mom always scolds me every time I leave her place and say, "I'm going home." She says,

"No. You ARE home. This is your home. THAT'S your apartment."
She's right.

I am home here.

And that's something I didn't really value until my twenty-eighth year on this Earth.

Shame on me.

Yesterday night I came home to find an empty house; no one else was there. I like it this way. I imagine having my own house one day, big and open all around me, sheltering and defining. The spaces of my parents' house are intimate and familiar. Each corner my own. Each creak of the walls and moan of the stairs predictable under my feet.

And that's a safe feeling.

Because when it comes down to it, that's what we all want. To feel safe. And accepted.

Life doesn't always give us these opportunities to fit somewhere so perfectly.

I walked out onto the back deck last night and breathed in deep. The only sound for miles, my own breath.

It's official.

I am going to live with a boy.



D-day Feb. 21st.

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow!

For the past 48 hours in Chicago it has been raining, sleeting and last night around 9 pm it finally started snowing. Now that it's here, I've officially commenced what we'll call the Season of Complaining.

I've lived in this city all my life, so I consider myself a "Chicagoan". I say "Ma" instead of "Mom" and drink Old Style like water. I know the grid system, hate the Kennedy and can tell you who has the best Italian beef in the city off the top of my head.

But no matter how many years I spend in the city, no matter how many pounds of snow I shovel off my car year after year, I still become a little whiny bitch for the first few weeks once that first snowflake hits the ground.

You'd think I'd get used to the freezing cold winds that even the warmest coat can't break, the slushy, five seconds away from spinning out of control every time I change lanes morning commutes, the slow and inefficient way in which the Chicago DOT responds to the weather report. I know all this, and yet I still complain. Why?

Because that's part of being from Chicago. We complain.

We complain about the Bears, we complain about Daley, we complain about the expressways. We complain. That's what we do.

I know that winter means I'll walk around for about two months with the cuffs of my pants soaking wet. I know that it means once Dec. 1st hits, I will have about only one 6x6 area of street that I can actually park on that's not now considered a "Snow Route". I know that it means that I will have a choice between turning on the heat in my apartment and paying the cable bill and damn it, the Food Network wins every time.

I know all this and I still choose to live here because once that first crisp, white snow falls, all the dirt and grime and muck we've become innoculated by every day is washed away and I all at once remember that I live in the greatest city in the world.

Happy first snow storm Chicago!

p.s. Happy Cyber Monday, too! I'm going to spend the rest of today happily in an electronics-induced coma. Mmmm gigahertz.