Celebrity Radar

For some reason, I've been blessed with a particularly acute celebrity radar. This often comes in handy living in Los Angeles. One day, standing outside of a restaurant, I saw a giant, old, black Cadillac (or some other car of that sort) pull up to the valet. I noticed the person getting out of the car and almost instantly recognized her as Drew Barrymore. She was with Fabrizio from The Strokes. I saw Julianna Marguilles at Coffee Bean, Jamie Lee Curtis at Blockbuster, Kristin Davis walking down the street in Santa Monica, Kobe Bryant at a hotel, and just this weekend I saw Gary Sinise at the Hotel del Coronado in San Diego. For some reason I'm always the first to spot them. I've seen celebrities at places you would expect them to be (movie premieres, parties, awards shows), but there's something disconcerting and surreal about seeing a celebrity walking down the street. I suppose seeing celebrities as normal people is always difficult. I know they are actors playing parts, but to me Drew Barrymore IS Josie Gellar with a little bit of Charlie's Angel thrown in. I mean, I knew her when she was a little towhead in pigtails. So seeing her hunched over her Italian dinner, whispering to her boyfriend just seems so odd. Perhaps this is why celebrity breakups affect me so much. I feel like I know these people. The news of Nick Lachey and Jessica Simpson's divorce bummed me out. I chose not to believe the smattering of headlines on the tabloid covers. I don't even particularly like Nick and Jessica, but for some reason I was rooting for their marriage to work. Brad and Jen. John Stamos and Rebecca Romijn. Same affect. Maybe it's just the ending of a marriage that makes me sad. It just seems like if anyone should be able to keep things together, it should be a celebrity. They have beautiful clothes, homes, bodies, and can afford excellent therapists. I guess it just makes me realize how empty those things are. Not only are celebrities real people with real problems, but no matter how perfect things look on the outside, perfection is an unattainable goal. It makes me thankful for a God who allows for failure and mistakes. Grace is one thing that no amount of money could ever supply. Knowing that fulfillment will never be found in fame, riches, beauty, or another person is, in the end, encouraging.

Beginnings and Endings

This is my first blog. The fact that I'm starting a blog seems sort of self-centered to me. I feel like, why should anyone really care what I have to say or what I'm thinking? But maybe they do. And if they don't, then at least this can be a place for me to write and think and process. Which seems to be all I've been doing lately. At least the thinking and processing part. Over the last month I feel like my stress level has reached mammoth heights. Generally, the best monitor of my stress level is the length of my nails. Over the summer, my nails were the perfect length, not too long, not to short. Now they are nubs. I hate the fact that I bite my nails. It's disgusting and ugly, but i'm not sure what to do about it.

Today is the day before Thanksgiving and I have so much to be thankful for. But right now I'm sitting in a room crying. I hope that's not too personal. See, here's where the beginnings and endings part comes in. My parents marriage is officially ending. That in itself is sad, and stressful, but I think what's really upsetting me is the fact that I am discovering the flaws in my parents, and I'm finding that difficult to overcome. It is the end of that naive, innocent view that my parents are perfect. And the beginning of trying to understand and get past that. How do you have a relationship with someone when so much of what you've believed to be true about them isn't? I love my mom. I love my dad. But right now, I don't really like them all that much. And I know that's cliche, but I feel this tension between wanting a relationship with them, and knowing how I feel when I'm trying to be around them. There's this line in "Garden State" that Zach Braff says in the swimming pool with Natalie Portman about coming home and realizing that it's not that secure place anymore and that's when you've really grown up. And I've always really related to that line.

It is also the ending of a perception of a perfect childhood. I honestly always thought that I had some fairly tale life as a little girl. I just looked back at pictures of when I was younger, and it was like I was looking at them through some crazy alteration glasses that distorted scenes that were once happy and comforting into scenes of dissension. My mom was not smiling in many of the pictures. In fact, she looked stressed and upset in several of them. The fact that most pictures were taken at high-stress times such as birthdays, holidays, and family trips could be a contributor. I also noticed that I was not a cute child. And I don't mean I had bad hair or was wearing some crazy 80s outfit, although that was a part of it. But I never, ever realized before that I was fat! I mean, really, truly honestly fat! It was like once I hit about 4th grade I became chunky, and like some well-nourished amoeba, just kept growing and growing. All the way through college. It made me surprised I had any friends at all. The fact that guys were always commenting on how hot my sister was (what about me??), suddenly made perfect sense!

Maybe it's time for some beginnings now. Because I think beginnings are times of hope, and Lord knows I need all the hope I can get right about now. I have new friends that I really really like and just adore spending time with. I am living on my own for the first time ever and loving that freedom and autonomy and the beauty of truly having my own space. So, as I mourn the ending of certain areas of my life, I take joy in the fact that beginnings cannot be far behind.