Since you asked...

This really funny thing happened.

My boss asked me to write sort of bullet points of like, my life events, so he could better write me a letter of recommendation for grad school.

You know what's really funny? Putting your life into a series of bullet points.

e.g.

• Here's when I fell in love with the boy that liked Creedence Clearwater Revival
• This is when we dropped acid
• Two friends from high school that I have been camping with are now dead
• I wrote a ton of poetry

I mean weird, right? I mean those aren't defining moments of my life, but like, thinking about things in terms of bullet points. Weird.

So then he asks me how I would rank my adolescence (18-22) on a scale of 1-10 for tumultuousness. 

And I was like, what?

I mean, sure I was in a really shitty abusive relationship, and I was working too much in a restaurant while also being a full time student, and I was experimenting with what type of person I was becoming, and then I got pregnant and pushed out a kid without any painkillers (baller!) but tumultuous? Really?

You know what is tumultuous? Having a crush on a jerkwad that you see at work every day and never knowing whether they are going to say hi or completely ignore you. That is tumultuous. Having a kid? that's just what you gotta do to get shit done. 

Or something. Gosh. You know what really though? Childbirth is way easier than figuring out if someone likes you. I mean one way or the other the kid comes out. In the alternative scenario, anything can fucking happen.

(I did not mention in the email to my boss my romantic woes and how that retroactively explains my undergraduate gpa.)

That's the other thing. I have a shitty undergraduate GPA. It's not really because I had a kid, although I'm sure people would love to think that. It's really because I was a shitty student. And still sort of am. I just don't study very well. Or take tests very well. Sometimes things just...are. My life wasn't tumultuous. (God I really need a synonym right about now.) It just...was. And I wouldn't do anything differently, either. (Well. Within reason.) And if I saw Lena doing the same things I was doing, I'd let her. While simultaneously telling her that she was beautiful and wonderful and loved, and for goodness-sakes-use-a-condom, but for the most part, I'd let her do her own thing.

Because you know what is not tumultuous? 9:30 PM, the pitter-patter of Lena feet coming into my room, and that cute not-quite-whiny-but-almost-there voice saying, Mommy? I'm going right back to bed, but can you unstick these two Legos for me?

AND OH MY GOD DO YOU GUYS REMEMBER HOW HARD IT IS TO PRY TWO LEGOS APART THAT ARE REALLY STUCK TOGETHE--Here you go Lena.

And then she says, thank you, and turns to walk out. She has a post-it note stuck to her butt. And I don't say anything about it. 

Tumultuous? 

More like really fucking wonderful.