the girl in the orange jump suit

You know that thing that you say will never happen to you?

That one thing you spend your whole life thinking will never be a part of your life?

Remember all the million thousand hundred ways you said it would never get to you; how you were stronger, bigger, cooler, and soooooo much saner than all that garbage?
Well, the good news is, you still stand a chance, the bad news? I had to learn the hard way that i am most ardently, not immune. Not even a little bit.


Rewind, just right quick-like here. Last summer, my universe FLIPPED slap out. I got hit by a car, my dad had a heart attack, the OMG-i'm-20-and-found-the-love-of-my-life-even-though-we-barely-can-stand-each-other guy in my life, happened to dump me most brutally. I lost my job, my car, my apartment,

my dog. (i wish i was kidding, really, I do.)
I was a country song.

Yeah we get it, thank you Hank Williams for writing my life for a summer, but you are unwelcome. Go back to your grave sir. This is offensive, but I like you better there.


Anyways, all this soap opera crap but me a little on the tweaker (once again, not actual drug tweaker, just the most overloaded i've ever been andthensome) side.

The details aren't really all that interesting or entertaining, but one day, I went to the local grocery store and according to the shrink I saw shortly thereafter, in an attempt to gain control of a great big giant hairy assed world which was not being very nice to me, I stole.


I took a bag of pistachios. i got caught. (ohshit)

(this time you can judge me)
The strawberry blonde, sweet and freckled security head (who honestly was probably younger than me) escorted me, willingly and shakily up to his very scary, very fluorescent office. herein lies the irony. The security guard (quickly alerted by his flawless powers of observation, or my sobbing and hyperventilation, that trouble was most definitely something I was accustomed to) didn't want to call the police. He wanted to ban me from the store for 100 years.


I'm not kidding you. 100 years. That is no kidding what the paperwork said. They took a polaroid of my pitiful little self while the clerk went to ring up my "purchases"

When the clerk came back with my total damages, shit hit the fan. They had to call the cops, my five-year old befreckled buddy informed me. Why? Well, pistachios aren't cheap. Had my theft been under five dollars I could have just gone home and been done with my crime spree, but that's not how these things work.


I should have taken the peanuts.

Cops called, arrest executed, and all my haughty belief that I would live my life without trouble from the law shattered. Court attended, scary liver spotted public defender who really didn't give a crap what happened got me 5 days of jail (which turned out to be 5 days of "day labor") and a year of unsupervised probation.


Fast forward to last month.

I am now sooooo awesome that I have therapeuticizerated myself through alllllll my life bullshit. Sort of. And am a very proud awesome work in progress. So awesome, in fact, that I am unemployed and wear a lot of sweatpants, and only hang out at a gay bar on weekends because all the other places in the world have heterosexual males, which scare me to the point of incontinence. I am obviously on my way to awesome. My (shall we call it this?) awesomeness has imbued me with a fabulous talent for sleeping for shocking lengths of time. Like, put hibernating bears to shame lengths. Like, I'm pretty sure I slept through lent. (I'm telling god I gave up being awake. :)) And when Easter came, like Jesus (or not at all, cause even though he was dead, I'm pretty sure I smelled worse) I rose from the dead, and realized I had hibernated (somewhat metaphorically, but mostly not) through my opportunity to begin my day labor program. (ohshit)
I am an angsty person. I've made that very clear. I think too much and I tend to be REALLLY nervous on the inside, and remarkably unflappable on the outside. Actually, I can't even lie, I'm a flapper. But, the angsty part is true. So, this missing your day labor stuff is what we hardened criminal types like to call a "probation violation" (i think?). When this happens, they put a warrant out for your arrest and the police can come and take you away. I have an emotional tummy. You cannot imagine the stress-poo's this induces.

So, because I am awesomely overthinky and panicky, and prone to thinking I'm the worst person in the world, I was in a constant state of anxiety. Seriously. This whole being on the lam thing, in conjunction with a lot of unnecessary friend drama, and the not-having-a-job-ness, and the I got back together with said ex-boyfriend and what if he breaks my heart again alllll came to a head on Saturday night.

Enter, jell-o shots. Full of 99 proof alcohol and sweet, sweet oblivion. I don't typically drink away my problems, but the stress poo thing was out of control. Enter, long lost friends buying you drinks. Drinks that taste like candy. I suddenly remember,I did not eat that day. Not once. Cue drunk girl, with intoxicated friends, a wallet full of cash that I cannot seem to remember after all these jell-o shots what I was saving for (uhhhh, groceries, citizen cope show, play tickets?) Money is mostly gone. Alcohol is gone. Rachel is gone. Like Mel Gibson's career. Rachel is puking in the bathroom. Rachel's friends? Gone-er. Like, as in, don't really give a flying crap what your stupid ass does. I needed to sit down. I needed food. I found my friends who showed no interest in helping me, so I said I'd meet them at Pie Hole. My phone was dead, and so was I. Pie Hole was neutral territory. A place to eat and sit and breathe.

An hour and four slices of pepperoni later, friends are nowhere to be found. Drunk, guilt ridden me, immediately ascertains that this is my fault. It is 2:30 and I am without friends, or phone, or sufficient cab fare. I am the Worst. Person. Ever. Find random strange boys, call boyfriend. I proceed walking towards boyfriend's house in a belligerent state of thinking I am the worstest worst of all the worst people ever. I bet Hitler didn't make his boyfriend come get his drunk ass in the middle of the night. I should be grown up and if I was grown up my friends wouldn't have left me, and even Mussolini had friends who did not leave him. Ohhhhh yeah.
Boyfriend fetches, eventually. But only after an epic fall. (Pretty much the entire left side of my body is the bluishyellowish color of me picking a fight with the concrete.) I picked a fight. Because I was all filled up on a big fat batch of the frownies. And alcohol. And guilt. Boyfriend person takes me home, but this is not enough. I have decided I must call the police and turn myself in.I simply cannot live this lie anymore. I cannot go on in such a fashion and even though it is nearly 4 am and I am broke, now is the time for turning myself in, for showing the world what a truly disastrous person I am.

The police came, I hyperventilated. I threw my shoes. Not at them (thankfully). I most definitely went to jail, and on the way I told the cops what a bad person I was. When I could stop hyperventilating. They breathalyzed me twice because they were all pretty effin sure I was too drunk for jail. Let me say that again. Too drunk for jail. The she-cop who booked me felt really bad for me, and she kind of loved me. Her love came from my so pathetically crying I fell of the bench behavior, and the fact that when she searched my purse she found four fake mustaches? Yeah. Win. See, I am Hitler and Moussolini. And probably Charlie Chaplin. He was a bad guy too.


Boyfriend person came to get me. I think he loves me, because I was ready for him to be mad at me, and he wasn't. When I walked outside he put his arm around me. And asked if I was done being a jailbird. Love might just be when you call the cops and have them take you away because you are so drunkly dramatic you simply cannot live a lie, not even until morning and are worse than Mussolini and someone still takes to to their house and kisses you goodnight and tells you that they need you to want to succeed at your life. Because you are amazing, but you are sucking it up a little right now.

Want to hear the moral? Pistachios will not make your life better. Thinking you are the worstest ever will not make your life better.

You have to work at it.

or something.