Kim Priore

So since I was kind of in a pissy mood last night when I posted, and rightfully so I still think, I thought I would post again tonight to say hey, you know what?  Today was a good day.  I’m feeling very Stuart Smalley all of the sudden, obviously I’m hoping that feeling goes away as soon as possible.  But I woke up this morning to the news that one of my great friends from college, one of the infamous Newsies, will be in the Boston area this weekend and wants to hang out at our favorite local dive bar.  Not some hip club in the city where we won’t be able to have decent conversation, not some place where I’m gonna have to dress up and be fake, but a bar right down the street with bikers and beer and great chicken wings.  And I get to go there with one of the smartest, funniest, most original people I know.  What a great thing to wake up to!

Throughout the course of the day I had great conversations with great people.  BL and I talked about happenings in the entertainment world, as well as in the lives of ourselves and our friends.  (And I got the news that she’s coming to visit in a couple months too!  Woo!)  BN and I discussed growing pains and life’s transitions and finding the courage to face them.  LT and I discussed the Sisterhood, and how some people get it and some people don’t, and how it hurts to find out who’s who the hard way.  And of course the incomparable, ever-present, ever-witty and brilliant SW and NG talked about everything.  Because that’s what they do.

And somewhere in there I managed to get some work done (although not enough sadly); go to choir practice where I almost managed not to be annoyed with church people for a whole two hours (almost); and also do some grocery shopping.  The insanity of my one-armed father and crazy mother trying to move a tv on a wheelchair and jam it into a cabinet with a crowbar (don’t ask) didn’t kill me, so ergo it must have made me stronger.  Right?  I even saw my brother today, which let’s face it, I won’t get to do on a regular basis much longer, so I want to appreciate it while I can. 

Anyways this all has a very youth-groupy, de-briefy, “10 blessings” feel to it – that’s right FCCH yg survivors in the house, holla!!!!  So let’s wrap this puppy up.  Today was a good day.  I didn’t get nearly enough done, I’m still in debt up to my eyeballs, I still feel hurt and angry, and I don’t have it all figured out.  Nevertheless, today was a good day.

I don’t know what the worst feeling in the world is.  In light of the Angelina interview last night with Anderson Cooper, I’m thinking it’s like, being an amputee in a refugee camp in Sierra Leone.  Being a victim of gang rape in the Congo.  I know that I’m not even remotely in the running for worst feeling in the world.

But the worst feeling in MY world is feeling vulnerable.  I have a really hard time trusting people, and those who are in my inner circle know that it’s a mixed blessing.  You get the die hard, passionate, almost mob-like loyalty that comes with the Priore name.  You get the 24-7 availability for Real Time Relationship Services.  You get someone who is always willing, if not eager, to drop everything and have ice cream or coffee with you.  Or ice cream.  Crap now I want ice cream.  But you also get someone for whom you are one of only a few close friends.  That means I rely on you, that means I trust you, that means you get to see a side of me that few people see.

So with these people in particular I am working on the whole vulnerability thing.  Lots of time and money sunk into therapy has taught me that being passive aggressive (and we’re talking ACTUALLY passive aggressive, not the NG version) – not always the best way of letting someone know how you feel and what you need.  It’s better, say all the books and experts and my former therapist, to let people know what’s on your mind and ask for help when you need it.

But what happens when you’re honest with someone, and you tell them what you need and what would make you feel more secure and loved, and they refuse?  For what on the surface is a good reason, and then you find out later that they went out of their way to look out for themselves and left you out to dry?  And THEN had the AUDACITY to be nice to your face and ask you how you were doing???  I keep thinking I have learned my lessons about who I can rely on and trust, but somehow people always manage to surprise me.

I said this was the Summer of Enough Cryin’ and I meant it.  I have a trip to Haiti to get ready for, oh yeah a language to learn, a work study project to salvage, classes to plan for next year at HARVARD (there Nan I dropped the H-bomb ok?) and most importantly GREAT friends and family who love me.  I will not waste time on people who are clearly not worth it.  Except to say this: a deliberate, knowing betrayal hurts more than those people who have just forgotten me and moved on.  Because I’ve done that too, and life is busy and short and we’re all human.  And maybe you think you got away with something.  Congratulations.  You’re one up on me, you’re cooler than me.  I get it.  But at the end of the day, I know who my friends are.  They are people of character: loyal, supportive, and they don’t throw it back in my face when I ask for help.

That’s what my inner circle looks like.  Take it or leave it.

Have you ever noticed how tiring it is to constantly second guess yourself?  I feel like I live in a perpetual state of second guessing, and I’m really exhausted by it.  I just came back from a weekend in the nation’s capital, spending time with some great friends and revisiting some old haunts.  And even though these friendships are as current and relevant to my life as ever, many parts of my trips were like walking down memory lane.  Or at times, glancing down the lane of what might have been.  You’d think that after 5 years back in Boston I’d have made my peace with my decision to move back home after my intern year was over.  But I still wonder what my life would be like now if I hadn’t done that.  The friends I was visiting this week chose to stay there.  They now have boyfriends, husbands, jobs, degrees, houses, and babies on the way.  In some ways, I feel like their lives have kept on going forward while I remained kind of stuck in neutral, spinning my wheels.

As I tried to remember my way around the streets of DC, I also marvelled at how I was able to strike out and move there in the first place.  It was so uncharacteristic of me, and I haven’t really done anything that brave before or since.  The period of unemployment and the loss of my Nana Mella and other family members after I came home were the first time in my life that I came to the realization that I couldn’t do everything.  I realized that the president’s charge to the graduates at my college commencement was kind of a load of crap, that I might not be able to save the world AND make millions of dollars AND have successful relationships AND achieve inner peace.  It shook my confidence in a way that I never really recovered from.  Which I suppose is good, the hubris of the young is something that’s supposed to die out and be replaced with a sense of realism.  But as I was driving around DC, I realized that’s really what I missed.  Not so much the constant construction and gridlock, not the flood of tourists, and certainly not endless housenight meetings.  Rather, I miss the sense of confidence that I took to DC with me, and that I somehow managed to lose somewhere along I-95 on the way home. 

But so now as I try to make decisions about how to move forward with my summer plans and how to structure my studies and internships and budget my time and money, I find myself missing that confidence and instead feel exhausted from the process of second-guessing decisions that haven’t even been made yet.