(The Coming Home Post I Never Posted)

I’m gonna go out on a limb here and call Juniper the pivotal moment of my life thus far. But it’s not even a limb cause it really was the most life-changing thing I’ve ever experienced. The whole live blogging idea kind of fell apart when I realized that actually living the experience was going to take every ounce of focus that I had, but I took insane amounts of notes and I’m going to work on documenting the experience over the next few weeks. Last week, I feel I earned a place in the writing community in a way that I never would have had the courage to claim otherwise. Like, I feel like a writer.

I know that sounds so lame, but there’s no other way to explain it. It was like this huge lovefest of similarly introverted weirdos supporting each other as they put themselves out there. It was also massive amounts of public transportation, the most horrendous mosquito attack I’ve ever encountered, rain and hella humidity, a little bit of the best sorority around, and much more beer than I expected. I have fallen frizzy haired head over mosquito feasted heels in love with Massachusetts, and now I’m sitting on the floor at LAX. So what kinds of thoughts does one encounter when leaving a seven-day-long epiphany of what they want to do for the rest of their life?

Hint: NOT happy thoughts.

Is it possible that I was actually jolly about buses and planes only a week ago? Because that Tab is LONG gone in comparison to this one. I woke up around 5 am Eastern Time to get to ride with my roomie to the airport (bless her heart for waking up that early for me) and got to Boston with 40 minutes to be on my plane. But, I mean, you know, it’s me so naturally every process along the way has to go wrong. My bag apparently gained 6 pounds on the trip (so I desperately piled all 8 books into my already very heavy carry on backpack and threw out anything not absolutely necessary. RIP 2 towels, my big tumbler, and all my good hangers). I got stopped in security (again) and had to wait on a search (I forgot about the half drank Dr. Pepper in my stuffed carry on). I made it to my gate minutes before the last boarding call and got my seat switched from window to middle between a lady who immediately fell asleep and stayed asleep the entire way (which irrationally made me extremely angry) and a sweet old lady whose hip problems prevented her from being able to get out without me and Sleepy getting out of our seats first. Needless to say, 6 hours later we landed in San Francisco and I was absolutely radiating rage. All of my excitement to take pictures and share my experience was completely gone. I thought to myself that I pitied the fool who tried to communicate with me before I got to food.

Now would be a good time to point out that the Pride Parade was in San Francisco this weekend, right after Supreme Court finally let love win, so not only is everything absolutely packed, it was absolutely packed with paired off and fabulously well dressed gay men. So here’s me, dragging around my million pound backpack looking for something easy to eat, incredibly annoyed because the SF airport only has weird, snooty food choices when all I want in life are McDonald’s fries, make-up less in a the real kind of messy bun, a boy tee shirt, leggings, a grandpa cardigan, and a jacket around my waist, completely seething. I finally get my TEN DOLLAR quesadilla and start to calm down just a teeny bit as I eat it (And I basically eat it like a wild animal). That’s when I start to notice the people around me. The women and gay men looked sort of pityingly when they walked by, and the straight men avoided eye contact at all cost. It turns out I’m kinda scary when I’m mentally murdering people for existing too close to me. Figures.

Anyway, the point of this pointless anecdote was that the judgement of those more fabulous than myself prompted me to go make myself slightly better looking in the beautiful airport bathrooms, and things improved greatly from there. I’ve still been pretty grumpy since I got home because spending all that time doing what I want to do is making it extremely hard to do all the things that I don’t want to do, but this is like the crunch time where I have to make both of those things fit into my reality. Moral of the story: Don’t be a grump. Find what you’re supposed to do and take it with you. And when in doubt…

xx, Tab