Chapter 148: Witness To Your Life

One of my absolute favorite songs right now, if not ever, is “The Story” by Brandi Carlile. Anyone who is not familiar with this song should go to YouTube or iTunes or wherever else you like to find music and listen to it immediately. “The Story” is a sweeping, epic tale of love and self-acceptance – the chorus is one of the most beautiful sentiments I have ever heard. “All of these lines across my face tell you the story of who I am, so many stories of where I’ve been and how I got to where I am, but these stories don’t mean anything without someone to tell them to, it’s true, and I was made for you.” I really do believe that this is the reason why we all spend our entire lives searching for somebody to love – not because love itself is a beautiful thing but because love gives us somebody to share our story with, and that makes us feel like ours is a story worth telling. This sentiment is echoed in another favorite song of mine, “Witness To Your Life” by Lori McKenna. “All you really need is someone to be here, someone who’ll never let you disappear, and I will be that witness to your life.” Both of these songs have left me wondering many times throughout my life – who will I share my story with? Who will be the witness to my life? I don’t know the answer to these questions yet, but I have an idea. You see, I have long said that the love of a romantic partner is not the love that will be the focus of my life’s story. I have never said that this type of love wouldn’t be a part of my story but that it would not be the focus of it. I still really do believe that. It’s also not to say that the story of my life will not be a love story – it is simply a tale of a different type of love. The story of my life will be of the love I have for myself and, much more, the love that I have for music. Music will forever be the first love of my life. Yes, I am looking for that romantic type of love right now but I also recognize that no matter who I may find or fall in love with my love for them will always be secondary. I don’t think this diminishes that love in any way – it just makes it slightly different than the “normal” idea of romantic love. I’ve never really been the type of person who falls into those “normal” ideas, anyway. Whoever I do find love with will be of the utmost importance to me and will get all of the attention and love they need and deserve – they will just have to share my love. That person will not necessarily be the witness to my life. Who will be? The witness to my life will be the world. It will be people who will hear my music and see my art and be moved by it. It will be the person who feels completely alone in their life, except for that song they hear on the radio that makes them feel better about the world. It will be the person who can’t seem to find a connection to any of the people around them but can always connect to the music coming through their headphones. It will be the person who feels exactly how I feel now. Those people will be my witnesses and I will love each and every one of them as much as anybody possibly could. THAT will be my story, and I can’t imagine a better story than that.

It was a pretty good day, honestly. I woke up this morning and found my paycheck deposited into my bank account. It was considerably less than I was expecting but that is only because I suck at math and wasn’t thinking logically about what my paycheck would actually look like having missed a day of work. Still, I had $37 and some change remaining in my bank account from my last paycheck and had been anxiously awaiting my direct deposit going through before I could spend that money. So, when I saw that my direct deposit was in the first thing I did was head to Cherry Culture, a really cool online cosmetics store that sells NYX Cosmetics with free shipping on orders over $40. I figured this would be a good way to get a little more “bang” for my buck than going directly through the NYX website. After all, I would wind up spending over $40 on just the eye shadow palette I have been obsessing over and shipping on the NYX site. It seems like it would be silly of me not to go ahead and spend the same $40 on Cherry Culture and get a few other things that I have been wanting and not have to pay shipping. Aside from the NYX S104 “Every Color Imaginable” eye shadow palette, I also picked up the NYX concealer jar in Orange, which I have heard is really good for hiding dark circles under the eyes, a NYX mascara, which I don’t normally use because I have really good lashes on my own but figured it couldn’t hurt to perk them up a bit, and three NYX Jumbo Eye Shadow Pencils, in Milk, (white,) Black Bean, (black,) and Strawberry Milk, (a soft pink.) I have been kind of obsessed with the Jumbo Eye Shadow Pencils lately after seeing some really cool uses for them in makeup tutorials on YouTube. I decided on black and white because they both make really great bases for other colors to go on top of and the pink because it is always best to use a pink base when doing looks with pinks, which I like to do often. All of the reviews and tutorials and such that I have seen say that these are the greatest product NYX has because they are super creamy and will work beautifully on their own or as a base for other colors. Since they are so creamy, other colors stick to them and will really pop. I am extremely excited to get this stuff in the mail. The order already shipped today and is coming from Whittier, CA. The estimated delivery date is Thursday, April 8, 2010, so I’ve got a little bit of a wait. It will be well worth it, though, once they have arrived and it is probably good that they won’t be here until the end of the week because they will give me something to be excited about next weekend and diffuse my desire to spend money on more makeup then. That is a really good thing because after sorting out my finances for this paycheck I have figured out that I really can’t afford to spend another dime!

My check was short, which sucks. I really need to stop missing work. It’s not like I did any of it on purpose or for frivolous reasons at all – I have managed to get myself sick a few too many times recently. Enough of that! I am not going to get sick again and any time that I miss from work will be requested beforehand and I will use vacation hours in order to still get paid for it. Still, that doesn’t really help this paycheck. After paying my rent and the next month of piano lessons, which comes from this check, I am left with something like $70. Fortunately, I will only need to buy cigarettes once this pay period so as long as I don’t go around spending money during that time I should be able to maintain a comfortable balance of between $30-40 in my bank account. Sure, it’s less than I would like but it’s enough for me to stay comfortable with. I am figuring that I can diffuse any desire to spend money by focusing on the fact that I only have to pay out a minimal amount from my next paycheck because we get three paychecks in April and that is the one where I don’t have to pay rent with. I owe my Mom about $100 that needs to come out of that and I will also probably use a chunk of it to pay off the cell phone bill but that will still leave me with considerably more extra cash than I have out of any normal paycheck. I am really excited for that paycheck. I don’t have any real plans for it, although I would like to set a good piece of it aside to go towards my brother’s wedding, whether that winds up going towards a wedding gift or something along those lines or some other random cost associated with it, like paying for my outfit or something.

Speaking of my brother’s wedding, one cost that I recently found out I won’t have to cover is the bachelor party. It seems that he has already sorted out plans with some friends of his to do a weekend-long trip to Orlando to get various types of buck wild. Sounds like a fun time and I think I am invited along, which I think would be a lot of fun. I don’t know how a group of straight guys would be able to handle me for an entire weekend and, even more, I don’t know how I would be able to handle them for an entire weekend but I definitely think it could be worth a shot. I can’t say that I wasn’t a little disappointed in the fact that I don’t get to organize the whole thing but I also can’t say that I wasn’t more than a little relieved. It would definitely be a pretty big, expensive undertaking that I really probably couldn’t handle or afford at this point in my life. It sucks because I really would want to do something big for my brother before he gets married but at this point I don’t really have the ability and it makes me really sad. Again, though, I am also pretty relieved and it sounds like this excursion he’s got planned will be better and more suited to him than anything I could have managed. Still, I would like to try to do something cool for him before the wedding and whatever I come up with will surely require money and I should start setting aside for it while I do have a little extra.

Work was not bad today, although the day did feel like it passed really slowly. I spent a little more time talking with the new neighbors than I did yesterday and they aren’t bad. Some of them actually seem pretty cool. There is one woman, though, who kind of creeps me out. She is the most talkative and always seems to be trying to pop up in my conversations with my co-workers, which is weird. Overall, though, it’s not bad. I spent most of today drawing up different makeup looks I want to try once I get my new stuff in the mail. I was absolutely ready, though, when the day ended. This week has just felt really long and I have felt like I haven’t gotten enough sleep at all, so I intend to use this weekend to catch up on that a bit. When I got off work, though, I came home and immediately changed clothes and did new hair and makeup to get ready for my dinner plans with April and Devin. They picked me up shortly after 8pm and we headed downtown to this amazing little Mexican restaurant my Mom and I found a couple of weeks ago, called Cinco De Mayo Restaurant. The name is a little on the nose, the service isn’t the best in the world but the food is delicious and I love the décor in that place. It was a lot of fun and I really enjoyed catching up with April and Devin. It has been a really long time since I have hung out with them for an extended period and I can’t even remember the last time it was just the three of us. It was a lot of fun and we got to catch up on a LOT of stuff that we had missed out on in each other’s lives. I really enjoyed it. After dinner we all headed over to a Starbuck’s in town and sat on their patio drinking coffee and talking about anything and everything. It felt really good to actually be out of the house and seeing my friends again. As much as it’s been a really long time since I have hung out with April and Devin, I think it has been just as long since I have actually gone out for an extended period and really gotten the chance to connect with anybody aside from my Mom. It was the best possible thing for me right now to just be reminded that I do actually have really good friends that I can talk to. It was a really great night. April also happened to bring a few treats for me after reading the blog and seeing some of my Facebook postings talking about my makeup obsession. She brought me a couple of really good Clinique moisturizers and a sample of the concealer that she uses, since she knew I have been looking for something to cover up the dark circles under my eyes. The best thing, though, is that she brought me a NYX Jumbo Eye Shadow Pencil in Milk, just like what I had just ordered this morning, which I was really excited about because it meant that I didn’t have to wait to experiment with at least one of the things I ordered. As soon as I got home I played around with these things and am absolutely in love with the Jumbo Eye Shadow Pencil. All those reviews and stuff were absolutely correct, that thing is amazing! I experimented with it quite a bit on my hand, pairing it with different types of eyeshadow and stuff and seeing what it works well with and how well it goes on, (which is extremely smooth!) I also tried out the concealer, which made a world of difference under my eyes. I put some of that under my eyes and then used the Jumbo Eye Shadow Pencil to add a little bit of highlight to my cheekbones, forehead and nose and I looked at myself in the mirror and really thought to myself, “Wow, I look GOOD.” Silly, I know, but it really put a smile on my face!

Anyway, as I said, today was a really good day. It’s days like today that are perfect examples of why I can honestly say that I love my life, no matter how much I may get frustrated with certain parts of it. There are always moments that will pop up and remind me that life is beautiful and is really the greatest gift we can ever be given. I know it may sound cheesy or cliché but I am completely genuine in saying that. I am extremely grateful to the Universe for blessing me with the life that I lead and all of the different people in it who have helped me in so many different ways. I know that it is only going to get better from here. I know that someday in the not-too-distant future that person who is feeling alone, that person who can’t seem to make a connection and that person who feels like I have been feeling so much lately will all stand up and take notice and will have found that something they have been looking for to make them feel better about life and about the world that they live in. I will give them that something that they have been looking for and it will be my privilege to do so. I cannot wait to share everything I have with the world. I can’t wait to share my story with them. I can’t wait to find that witness to my life.