Part Two

The other day I was talking with someone about the discrepancy between the partial truth people project on the internet and the full truth that puts it in context.  We were talking specifically about the videos ballet dancers put on Instagram—videos that show clean quintuple pirouettes without showing the ones where they fall down or hop, or without showing that those same dancers can't do triples in time to music or aren’t great jumpers, or pictures that show incredible over-extension without showing they don't have the strength to hold it, et cetera—but the same concept could apply to almost anyone who puts anything about him- or herself on the internet.  No matter how truthful what they show is, it's only one part of them.

For example, last week I posted a blog post I was quite proud of about living on my own for the first time as an adult.  I smiled when I finished and felt like I should blast some girl-power pop music (yes please, Katy Perry) and strut off into my five-week adventure as a strong, independent woman capable of tackling anything.

So just to be fair, I feel I should balance that out by saying that I haven’t slept well once since my husband left because my cat has the energy of a whole litter of kittens (fun when there are two of you, insatiable when there’s just one) and meows asking to play every night, several times a night, plus he hates change and is convinced I have hidden my husband away and meows at doors asking me to bring him out of hiding, and then today, totally exhausted, while trying to tape up boxes to pack, I found myself sitting on the floor of my living room full-on ugly crying because some evil person who hated other human beings invented packing-tape dispensers that don't dispense tape without it twisting every which way and getting stuck to the dispenser, and then when you finally get it free it bursts forward and the whole dispenser, blade and all, jerks out of your control, and on top of that the only way to keep the bottom of the box shut as I’m taping it is to squeeze the thing with a Xenia Onatopp death grip with my thighs, so that as I was sitting there with a tangled mess of tape in my lap and a box that was thoroughly not taped, as the tears flowed, I had to wonder if I would ever finish packing or if I'd still be sitting there on the floor when my husband comes back in a few weeks, afraid that if I ever did get the tape mess sorted out and detached from the plastic thingy part (yes, isn't my vocabulary impressive?) of the dispenser, it would just come bursting out with such force that the blade would slice open my leg or cut off my finger.  And then I texted my husband that I was having trouble with it and he called me and I was unintelligibly cry-talking and he was silent on the other end, and I said "Hello?" and he said, "Yeah," in a way that clearly meant "I have no idea what I'm supposed to say here because you've obviously totally lost it."

...So I just thought I should put out there that being a strong woman doesn’t necessarily preclude packing-tape meltdowns.  (Though to be fair, there's a decent chance that my crying on the floor about the dumb, evil tape dispenser had something to do with my emotions being all "Hey!  Here's a metaphor for how we feel about leaving New York and what we're leaving behind!" and wasn't entirely about the actual tape....  But I still really passionately hate that tape dispenser.)

And I wound up taping up five boxes.  And painted my nails with glitter mood nail polish that currently says my mood is “awesome.”  Now where’s my Katy Perry CD?