My Sunflower.

I'm a Grown Up Thirty Year Old. 

Thirty years on this planet, almost Thirtyandahalf, and I am finally a Grown Up. But, as you know, it took me a hellava time to get here. In fact, I wasn't sure if I'd ever be a Real Grown Up, but just a kid wobbling around in high heels playing the part.
(Not true, I walk really well in heels, but you get the point.)
But here I am, Thirty, up for a promotion I may not get, living in a home that actually has a mortgage (granted, its not mine) with furniture that is not a collection of hand me downs, Ikea krap & craigslist finds.
My bedside table if from... Crate and Barrel. Whatiszismadness?


Oh My Twenties.
More like Twenty Lifetimes.
My twenties felt like several lifes squished into a decade.
Twenty lifetimes, with acne and wrinkles, with roomates and with live in boyfriends and sometimes with both simultaneously.

All of these lifetimes, squished into the early part of a new century. Its funny, how when you live in a small town, with the same people roaming the streets with you over the same timeline how each and every change in your life is (however slight)  part of a greater whole.
At 21, I moved down to a new city sight unseen with my bed in the back of my dad's minivan.
Into a condo by school, where I hung my favorite Sunflower painting from back home up in the dining room. Off to college! I promptly met a stoner Frat boy who became my College Boyfriend (we all have one).

Hazy nights from party to party to Jack in Box to party to home, my roommate and his Frat Brothers in tow. This was not a good look for me. 
In the peripheral was always a pretty blonde girl, the girlfriend of a Brother. She I were not friends, but mere acquaintances  the kind that in college you inevitably end up introducing yourself to almost every weekend.
My roommate at the time went and rushed a sorority - to 'make us friends' and there too, in the peripheral, was another pretty blonde girl. I had a crush on this one's boyfriend.
After a move to my second apartment of my Twenties (this one I loved) with its interior French sliding doors, pool table and Craftsman built ins - including a diner style breakfast nook (booth seating!) into which my Sunflower painting fit perfectly - and the subsequent breakup with the Fratboy College Boyfriend, I met a bunch of girls through a pretty brunette in one of my summer school classes.
And in the peripheral was - yes - another pretty blonde girl, the roommate of one of my Best Friends from College.
Still now, I was barely 23, but felt old for my age.
In this home with the Breakfast Nook, I met the one-day-Ex of 5 Years.
Which catapulted me to the life I lived for most of my Twenties.
And my third Apartment of my Twenties: the one I shared with him.
Sunflower sitting perfectly in our kitchen, on a wall that was so perfectly suited for it, its like it had been waiting for that painting since the day it was built. Up winding stairs, and over hardwood floors, my Sunflower watched as I went from a College Wild Child, post-roaming the streets of Hollywood in glitter shoes and Wilco drenched adventures, to a Mild Mannered Twentysomething Townie Pseudo-Housewife. And in the peripheral, again, were those same three pretty blondes. At the time none of them my favorites, per se, as I knew very little of them, and saw them only when out and about in town. I was jealous of the First Pretty Blonde because I thought I could sense that the Ex of 5 was attracted to her. (I actually stormed out a dinner once because this insecurity got to me so much. Ahh, 25. Insecurity rules when you're 25.) Pretty Blonde #2, the sorority sister, and I formally met on a really bad night, and stayed aquaintances, but nothing more. Pretty Blonde #3, the roommate of my friend, I always resented because she always looked like she was having such fun, without a care in the world, while I was living a life of What Will the Neighbors Think? .

Our Roaring Twenties.

All of us in our twenties.
Living out our terrarium-like twenty lifetimes year by year, sometimes intersecting, though rarely.
Students to girlfriends to jobs to happy hour.

Within the span of a Decade, a Year, a Month or a Single Moment.
It seems as if... In your twenties, your life changes in the blink of an eye.

I believe this is true for life in general. (Um have you seen what Thirty has done to me?!?)
A pimple pops up over night, and so it seems wrinkles as well. And grays.
Your life is fluid in your twenties.
Those who were once only in the peripheral of what seems like the way life will always be, can so instantaneously move to the very forefront of Your Everything.
I always thought that the First Pretty Blonde would always be the Girl Whose Boyfriend Passed Out By My Car in College. Then she became The Girl Who My Boyfriend Flirts With.
So naturally, I assumed that she would always then be the Girl Whose Boyfriend Passed Out By My Car in College And Now Who My Boyfriend Flirts With. 
(Whether or not this was actually true is still unconfirmed by the way.)

One 4th of July, I was caught blindsided by the overwhelming dislike that the now Ex of 5 Years had for me. Dislike that had, in fact, been building up for months and months and months.
Have you ever felt like your partner just doesn't Like You? 
I'm sure that that is not a feeling exclusive to your twenties. I'm sure none of this is.

And that Sunflower painting watched as that boy came home and told me he would never be my Husband, and we would never be Us again.
It did not see when, weeks later, he told me that he'd been greatly mistaken and he missed Us and he missed Our Sunflower, because he said it in the room where there was only a shadow of where the Sunflower painting used to be but wasn't anymore. 

Where I said, silently to myself, That Sunflower was never Ours. 
Because it was hanging perfectly in my new Kitchen Attached to a Room.
Where I said, silently to myself, That Sunflower is Mine. 


It was mine and it was in the Fourth & Last Home of my Twenties: My Tiny Room with a Kitchen Attached. Where Kat & I fled after the disastrous break up with the Ex.
On August 1st, 2010, where my Ex's wonderful father hung it so perfectly in my new kitchen.

But even though I still had my Sunflower, I'd still lost the closest thing to a Home, a Husband, and Family in one slow moving swoop. In what felt like an instant. I was 28 by now, and I was broken.

But my Sunflower hung so perfectly in that kitchen, watching me navigate the lifetimes of twenty eight and twenty nine and thirty.
It watched Kat lounge in the sun, it watched me so poorly maneuver through the worst Autumn I can remember, of being alone and lost and sad. It watched me write the better part of over two hundred blog posts.
And it watched as the Pretty Blonde who was my College Best Friend's Roommate, the one I was so jealous of because she got to have all the fun, get dressed for a night out in our Tiny Town and it watched as she and I became fast friends.

I actually had this print too for a long time.

That Sunflower watched as we came up for the outline for The Story of Goldilocks, and it watched as that friendship helped me become who I am today.
Pretty Blonde Girl #3, that girl who was in the peripheral of so many of my mini-lifes of my Twenties is Goldi.
And that Sunflower watched me pluck out gray hairs with fervor that grew with even more fervor, and it watched as that tiny apartment went from Exile to Refuge to Cage.
And while that lifetime was happening, I was re-acquainted with the Second Pretty Blonde. She too, was at many of those college parties, often with that Boyfriend I had had a crush on so many years ago, and she too has made me who I am today.
Behind Pretty Blonde Door #2 is Beauty.

Now what ever became of The First Peripheral Pretty Blonde, Girl Whose Boyfriend Passed Out By My Car in College And Now Who My Ex-Boyfriend Flirted With? 
To me, this is the most interesting example of how much life changes with time, and how fluid and wonderful life can be. It is weird, Pretty Blonde Girl Number One, is the prime example. Because, for many years she was just a memory of so-n-so's girlfriend from college. Then, at a drunken dinner somewhere around 25, when we still didn't know each other and probably had to be reintroduced, and I probably relayed the story of when her then-boyfriend passed out by my Volvo in '04, a story which I doubt she even remembered, and I was so certain that my then-boyfriend was, ya know, into her that I got up and left abruptly.
Well, she is close with Goldi and with Beauty, and has been since college. At my Lifetime 28, Pretty Blonde Girl #1 and I probably went to a brunch of bottomless mimosas or something, something I barely remember,  but however it happened, we became facebook friends.
Still, not even knowing much of each other other than hearsay & hair color, when I finally got up the gall to share this project with more of a mass audience, I blindly sent her the link.
That Sunflower watched the Dutchman arrive and leave and what seemed like a Lifetime wrapped up into a single summer and it watched me get ready for Goldi's 27th Birthday Party in San Diego, being hosted by both the Del Mar Races & the First Pretty Blonde Girl  and her New Boyfriend.
Pre-races, we popped a bottle of bubbly, and that Pretty Blonde came down the stairs, I remember it so clearly, and said, 'You're a really good writer.' 
And she went on to tell me and whole kitchen about this project. It was the first time someone I didn't really know very well, barely at all, gave me feedback about this. It felt good. This project somehow connected this Pretty Blonde and I in a way that I had never experienced at that point. (Actually this blog has allowed me a closeness with people that I've never experienced before, and in turn has allowed me to be more myself in 'Real Life' as well.) She and her Nearly Perfect Boyfriend also became a Litmus of sorts for me, for some reason, with my Paper Planes and all that, because I looked at the two of them, and thought, 

'Ya know, thats what I want. Thats what I deserve.' 

I watched as she went on mini breaks and full blown vacations. I watched as her relationship had many aspects that I wanted but had never had in my own.
I watched as she got outta town, met a Man and Grew Up.
I watched and it gave me my own aspirations*

*Now, I'm not advocating comparing yourself to other's, 

I'm just saying its okay to know 

a Good Thing when you see it and work from there.

Its funny, now, because, now when I am whining about living in what was My Not My House Home but paying rent for place at the beach, she texted me with, 'I'm so glad I'm not the only one doing that!'
Its an odd yet wonderful connection she and I have.
She's no longer Pretty Blonde Girl Whose Boyfriend Passed Out By My Car in College And Now Who My Ex-Boyfriend Flirted With. 
In my Twenty Lifetimes of my Twenties, she has been an unlikely constant, like My Sunflower. She was one of the Must-Comes to my own Birthday. She is someone I am always happy to see, whether it has been a year or a month. She is someone who, though we don't speak often, when we do, its as though we've been friends for years and not a moment has passed. I am happy for her.

My last text from her reads,

We are so lucky!

Because we are.
She's the one who gave me the idea for this post; though, quite frankly, it sort of took on a Life(time) of its own.


And, at Thirty, I too, grew up, met a Man and got outta town.

October 1, 2012. Two years and two months in my studio. Time Flies.
My lease was up today on My Tiny Room with a Kitchen Attached. 
Its not my exile. Its not my refuge. Its not my cage. 
Its just not mine anymore. 

I live here in Orange County, with Jim now. 
For Realsies ya'll.

My First Home of my Thirties.
I have a home.
And so does my Sunflower.
And again, it has a wall that has been awaiting its arrival, next to my side of the bed.

It got here yesterday, after we did the final gutting of an apartment I will never return to.
I will never go to that home again. Though parts of it live on - Beauty and Goldi both have remnants of it in their homes now, but for the majority of it - the furniture I had collected so slowly in my twenties - the shabby beachy blues and whites and seafoam green pieces that I so came to love - those are gone.

It still watches Kat nap in the sun.

But not my Sunflower. 
That's Home now.

A special thanks to Les.