so last week i went to work for my big huge company in new york. i was on the clock from 7:00 am until 10:00 pm. i was making a good impression, putting in all my effort, hitting the pillow hard each night. i thought i was really doing great.

i had excellent reviews from my boss and was really kicking ass at my job. i was feeling like a superwoman. i was a mommy, a career lady, and a social mountaineer. i was going to reel in the big ones. i was going to rule the world.

on thursday we had a office lunch. my boss's second assistant ordered us in salads with pesto dressing. unlucky for my she thought a soy allergy was no big deal. unlucky for me i had a reaction.. and passed out.. and had to get a helping hand from some very loud new york paramedics.

in the series of events that followed i found out i was pregnant. it was probably the worst timing in the history of bad timing. everyone in the group knew. the head of sales. everyone.

my company has a reputation for hiring pretty girls. it's just the nature of sales. the chauvanistic bosses somehow gravitate towards employees they can flirt with. i know that half the reason i was hired was because my boss was probably sitting there in the interview, wondering what i looked like under my green suit.

i got past that fact because, despite how many times it was mentioned that part of my great negotiating ability was due to the fact that i was a "young attractive female," and despite the fact that one of my clients actually warned me that they had canned the last girl in my position for "getting too old," i really felt that in my heart i knew i was smart, and not just a pair of legs, and i believed whole heartedly that if i worked hard enough and smart enough that everyone would see that, and i would suceed. despite the fact that all the upper management was male. despite the fact that my boss made fun of any of the women in the company that he thought were getting "chunky."

i never played into thier flirting games, i always changed the subject when they mentioned my appearance. i was convinced that, sooner or later, i could dazzle them with my mind instead.

so, that last week in new york, they found out i was pregnant. big deal, i thought. i'm putting in my dues. i'm working my tail off. it'll be fine. i'll just tell my boss on monday before the company gossip-mongers get a chance and everything will be alright. 

my boss called me up the next day, asked me to cancel my appointments and meet him at a coffee shop to "discuss a variety of topics and issues." i ignored the skeptical voice in my head that questioned his motives.

i walked in, guns blazing, ready to assure him that i would not only keep working 80+ hours through my pregnancy, like i had been doing so far, but i would be back as soon as maternity leave was over and come back strong.

i never got a chance.

he fired me.

he cited these little reasons. bizarre things that almost sounded as if he made them up. the elephant in the room, i suppose, was the pregnant one.

i'm sitting there, looking at him, evaluating him for the first time. in general, i try not judge people, unless they have acted in some horrid way towards me, and i am forced to. there had been several times where he acted like a smug elitest while i was working for him, but i shrugged that off and gave the guy the benefit of the doubt.

i realized i had been working for a smug asshole of a man. the kind of man that had no idea what it was like to wonder how you were going to buy groceries for your son. the kind who married a woman they didn't really love, in hopes that one day he would aquire her parents' money. the kind that had no idea why on earth people were rallying for socialized healthcare. the kind that had never went out of his way to give change to a homeless man, but would hold the door open for any lady he met, as long as he thought she were hot, or rich. the kind who scrunched his face up when he came across a painting about the prolific sadness of the female soul because the colors didn't match the rug his wife had picked out from pottery barn.

as he sat there, firing me, i felt sorry for him. he was not a person, he was an empty shell of one. he would do whatever he needed to get ahead, and in the end, live his whole life without any sence of being or connection. he will die in the best hospital, attended by the best doctors, and be burried in an armani suit, his sould having left his body decades before his dissention.

as he finished his "good luck" speach, with only a slight hint of condescention in his well-trained voice, i knew i did not want to be like him. and while he thought he was doing himself a favor by giving himself the opportunity to offer my position to a girl who would flirt with his pompus face, smile at his cheesy jokes, compliment his ugly tie, and albeit end up giving him a blow job in the coat closet at the company christmas party, he was actually doing me a favor by allowing me to step back and realize what this really was, who he really was, and what the corperate lifestyle was all about. my desire to put my child through college might have kept me from seeing it for years.

i have been so concerned with giving my son the best life possible, that i almost lost the part of myself that can feel, that can see, that can realize when she's comprimising her soul. the best part. i refuse to become the empty shell that is required for the assention up the corperate ladder. i care about people too much. i have too much to say. i have so much to teach others. i can never play the role of an anonymus business drone.

i will find a way to provide for my family and be free. i will change the world.

little robots like my now ex-boss will do nothing but produce fake smiles and empty nods for the rest of thier life. i feel sorry for him.

so now i am a stay-at-home mother. i am also a writer.

i never made time to write during my corperate ladder phase. or psyuedo empty-shell phase, as i will now be calling it. it is time to make time for the very thing i was born to do.

and with my sword-pen, i plan to change the way people look at each other in a very short time.

al things grow, all things go..

to be continued....

So..

I happen to glance out the window. And see a tow truck, hoisting my car up onto it's tow-bed. Awesome.

I took Henry for a late night walk tonight.

I looked down at his cute little head and realized that it is shaped just like mine. His head is far too big for his body. It makes him even more endearing than the average fumbly stubby boddied two year old. When I took him in to the doctor for his 2 year old check-up, his head was in the 95th percentile while his body was only in the 50th. I keep telling myself that it is because I have given birth to a child genius and the head just needs to house his extra large brain.

It's amazing how the little things like that make you adore your kid even more. The little oddities they have inherited from you or the person you spend your life with. You find these oddities slightly annoying or barely tolerable in yourself but completely adorable in your child.

I love the way my kid says "uh-oh" when he drops something on the floor. I love the way he accidentally mixes his spanish words in to english sentences. I even love the way that he tries to get an extra cookie or cup of ice cream every night even though we've told him 400 times that he can only have one.

No one loves a child the way his mommy does. This I know is true. Henry taught me.

someone said to me the equilvalent of this once:

"people don't just stay in love forever unconditionally. when you choose someone to spend your whole life with, you will fall in and out of love with that person a million times. but if you can still best freinds during those rough times, then you will always stay together."

it's one of the most true statements uttered out of red-wine stained lips.

sometimes i want to throw something at my husband. we are as different as we could possibly be. i want to dance, sing, shout, scream, twirl, excite, explore. he cautiously waits for me to lead so that he can follow.

i will spend my last dime on a bottle of cheap champaign and a pair of hot pink leggings. he saves every penny as if his pennies were cantines full of water and he was heading out on a 3 month hike through the sahara.

i want to know everything that's happening in the world around me, i want to save everyone i can, i want to look past thier "labels" to help each person i meet be the best person they can possibly be. he categorizes them in his own mind and leaves it at that.

i get so frustrated with him on so many levels that if i were a violent girl i would have puched him out a window a long time ago.

and yet, i still fall in love with him.

he is loyal to me to a fault. while i notice every beautiful creature that walks by, he could be 5 feet away from a group of victorias secret models and still think i'm the most gorgeous thing in the room. i have absolutely no idea why.

he is calm. i flip out about the weather, my client dinner, the presidential election, the possible effects of hurricane gustav, whether or not i'm having an allergic reation to the bread i just ate, while he sits there calmly and listens to my ranting, and then gives me the simplest answer.

he is the most amazing father. henry adores him. we are 100% equal in our parenting duties.

he encourages me to suceed in my career. he is supportive of my ambitions and never tries to turn me into a "housewife" like so many men expect of thier wives once they have children. he knows i would be miserable without my own goals and income.

he is the cutest thing ever. he never even tries and he is still handsome. he says cute things without hinking about them. a few days ago i asked him what it's like to have a child that's the same gender as him. i was all pissy and sad and jealous because everyone i know is having/has had a daughter in the near future or recent past and he just said "i always think he's just like a mini little me." and then i looked at them both, he was holding henry upside down but his ankles and swinging him around, and he was right. henry is a miniature him.

i think the person your are supposed to be with forever isn't the person who is exactly like you in every way. i think, rather, it's the person that you can love and accept, and be best friends with for life. i think that it's okay to have little to no similarities in political views, spiritually, spending habits, work goals.

as long as you have humility, acceptance, and enough insight to forgive the small things, your love will last, in one form or another, forever.

who gives a shit about who pays the water bill anyway?

i woke up from a dream this morning in shock again. it happens to me every once in a while.

i had this other life once. i was wild and free and did/said/took/created whatever i wanted. there were a few beautiful people in my life. one was just like me.

he was alluring, no one could catch him. he was charming and sweet and exciting to be around. he was my best friend.

for the last 3 years, he's been residing in a box in the ground. i think it's the most bizarre thing to place the people you love in a box in the ground when they die. i personally hope to be fed to a great white shark.

the whole funeral process is bizarre too. displaying them all painted up in this pretty shiney box. walking up to the coffin, still in shock, to find that when you kiss thier cheek in a absent-minded goodbye, because you still don't believe what's happened, it's only been a fucking week for god's sake, you find that cheek is cold and hard like a rock and he doesn't smell anything like the boy you slow danced with in 7th grade.

it's like you are pretending to grieve, going through all the motions, while somehow simultaniously convincing yourself that that thing in the box is not the person you loved. the person you loved must have faked his own death and ran away to california like you two had always planned when you were kids. he must have gotten a gig on the latest hit tv, he was handsome enough, and you'd be seeing him on the air next season and then home again next christmas. that hard rock boy could not possibly be the one that hugged you when you were sad, that was so much taller than you your whole head fit beneath his chin.

the real grieving happens years later. when you have a dream in which you are sitting right next to him, driving around the curvey country roads and laughing. in that dream you are happy and young and free and so glad he's here. in that dream you have the odd feeling that you haven't seen him in a while but you put that aside because how could that be true he's your best friend you talk to him about everything and you see him every day. then you wake up from the dream to hear the sound of your sobbing toddler's voice. and you're 24, and that boy you called your best friend has been dead for three years. and you're responsible for a house payment and  the safety of a two year old and sometimes you forget what it's like to be truely happy, let alone feel the wind in your hair.

that moment is when it hits you that he is really dead. that he is gone forever and so is the you that was reflected in his eyes. then you feel the pain. the heavy load of bricks in the equilalent to the saddest song ever written are tied to your heart with a large scratchy rope. you have no knife to cut it. that's when you sob, a long, deep sob that you couldn't have been capable of when you were 21 and he spiritually left this earth.

you want to run until it hurts, until your out of breath and your heart feels like it is going to explode in your chest, but you sit and quietly sob so your husband you is sleeping in the living room after bitching to you about his poison ivy all night doesn't hear you. you sob quietly so he doesn't come in and demand what is wrong and in a moment of weakness you answer that question honestly and he snarls his lip up at you and slams the door. you hold in in when you sob so you don't frighten your two year old who is playing on the fireplace stoop with the new car set you bought him yesterday at the grocery store after he screamed and crying and threw a temper tantrum until you were ready to give in to your pending nervous breakdown. you shake a little, and silent tears roll down your cheeks. you finally know what it means to grieve.

So, it's ironic. Motherhood, I mean.

I find a small reason to love everyone I meet.

I want to teach my son to be like that, to love people first without judging them. So many people are judgemental, jealous, spiteful, competitive, hateful. Especially women towards each other. Why?

I am sitting here in the middle of the day whilest the two men in my life (my husband Robbie, and my two-year old Henry) are napping, trying to think of one person I know who loves people as much as I do. My father. That is the greatest gift he ever gave me; the ability to love others.

Even when people hurt my feelings or hurt me in some way there is still some reason to love them. They are just charcters in a play, behaving the way they've been taught by society or shitty parenting. There is no reason to act like that just because they do.

In college we were supposed to writed this essay once about our heros. One kid wrote about an author, one a painter, one kid wrote about Jesus. I wrote about the Dalai Lama. The proffessor asked me why and I couldn't come up with any answer besides, "He just loves." It was the beginning of my journey into accepting everyone, in the whole fucking world, exactly the way they are. Just loving them.

There was a boy who walked up to me after class, stood in front of me, reached out his hand to mine, and tears fell from his face. "You are inspiring." he said. "I'm a passivest too. We don't need to fight or bomb or judge or hate other people, we just need to accept them. Thank you." He turned and walked away, tears still running down his cheeks.

I was mildly freaked out at the time. I thought "Is this guy trying to hit on me?" Now I realize he was just so much farther along his spiritual path than I was. I wish I would have ran up to him and asked him his story instead of standing there dumbfounded still accessing the situation. I probably could have learned a lot from him.

I think that's what life is supposed to lead you to- acceptance. Acceptance of others, of the things that happen, of the people that hurt you and the people you hurt, of the things you said or did that you can't take back. I believe that my life will be fufilling if I keep working toward that every day. Accepting the world the way it is. Helping others when I can. Listening.

I'm only 24. I've fucked up several times. I accept that. It took me a long time to get to this point. I felt guilt and or inadequacy for one reason or another for a very long time. My number one goal is to teach my son acceptance very early on. So that he can be a happier, freer person than I have been at times. I want to give him a gift of learning to love everyone he meets.