I’m Just Sayin: I’m Late… For My Own Life

Here’s something new I just discovered about me: I am late!

Now please, for the love of God spare me the flinching, cringing, eyebrow raising, eye-rolling, sighing, and don’t even dare thinking of throwing me a baby shower. Unless, unbeknownst to me, I have been anointed by the Holy one and sorely miscast as the new Virgin Mary, I am not late in the “I am expecting” kind of way. I am “late” as in I don’t ever seem to methodically follow the conventional standards when it comes to the chronological order of the stereotypical life milestones traditionally expected to occur.

What I mean by that is that I have an uncanny penchant to do things backwards.
Mind you this has absolutely nothing to do with leaving things to the last minute. I’m not a procrastinator. It’s simply that I am always somehow delayed. But that’s the tragic story of my life! It’s terribly tragic because I have built a long-standing reputation for being exceedingly punctual. Perhaps I should console myself in knowing that these so called “life milestones”, essentially, are events over which I have absolutely no control because, as far as I’m concerned, if I had it my way I would never be tardy for the party – especially not when it’s my own!

Honestly, there is no principle more deeply rooted in my nature. Beyond the simple observance of the code of proper social etiquette and respect, this punctuality business has morphed into a rather obsessive mental malady. Too bad it’s not a contagious disease as obviously the (rare) art of timeliness is not a virtue honed by the majority!

Anyway, this debilitating discrepancy between my own internal clock and that, which consistently keeps on ticking for the rest of the world, has clearly created a humongous problem in my life. Besides the fact that I have become a scientific enigma to my own self, more importantly, I have disturbingly become some kind of absurd anachronism (please Google the word if you don’t know what it means).
What that has translated into is the perpetual sentiment that I never quite fit in. If and when I do show up for the decisive, Zero hour-like moments in my life, I’m always either one step-ahead or two steps behind. It’s like being neither here nor there – and barely being everywhere.

I know you’re thinking: “What’s the problem? Better late than never!” Right?
Well not really! Granted it takes a great amount of skills to do things backwards, but seriously, it’s nearly impossible to move forward when what’s coming at you next is always out of context – meaning the only thing you can safely predict is what is exactly not going to happen, if you know what I mean?
Hmm, why do I somehow sense you absolutely don’t have the faintest idea as to what I’m talking about? Alright! To put your dubious minds to rest, let me give you evidences to justify my sweeping conclusions.

First things first! Let’s go over the spectacular list of things I, at the top of my 39 years of young age, did prematurely (meaning ahead of my time): my Speedy Gonzalez ass was born a month and half before the anticipated delivery date; in my early teens, I unknowingly signed up for “emotional maturity” playing the overrated role of the “adult” – an acting part, which I definitely never auditioned for, at least not intentionally (mom stop frowning, huffing and puffing, it’s the truth!); I got my Master’s degree at 22 and was crowned the youngest graduate of my class; and, you might not know this, but I brought the concept of Starbucks to America way before Seattle had even time to wake up and smell its own coffee (evidently this was out of sheer survival necessity when my European bootie moved to LA and suffered the excruciating withdrawal symptoms of my hardcore caffeine addiction miserably inflicted by the incomprehensible absence of coffee joints…I’m just sayin!).

Conversely, very inequitably, I have also accumulated a shit load of famously impressive “late” hallmark moments in my life. For instance, I did my glamorous teenage rebellion crisis in my twenties; at twenty-eight years old, when most people finally figure out who and what they want to be when they grow up, I decided I was going to become an anonymous Rock Star living the fabulous cutting-edge Sex & Drugs and Rock’n roll lifestyle, minus the sex and the rock’n roll; At the tender age of eleven, my entire world fell apart when I horrifyingly discovered, courtesy of my brother Karim, that Santa Claus was a lie; I had my first French kiss at 18 and lost my virginity at 21 (well ok, I was two days shy of 22); and much like Jesus, I had my own sexual resurrection at 33 when it was somehow miraculously revealed to me that I was possibly, maybe, perhaps very certainly bi-sexual.

Are you gasping for air yet? How did I get into this big fat chaotic mess? Actually, in all fairness, as exhausting as it was to experience “live” all these life-changing moments, much less to enumerate them in writing, nothing compares to the total physical, emotional and mental depletion I endured in what surely qualified as the shockingly unexpected ultimate season finale episode of this drama series called “my life.”

I basically hit the fucking multi-million jackpot in the tardy milestones department. Let’s just say that I was absolutely not prepared for that bomb to drop on me. Where do I begin? How about I got my heart broken at 37! And by broken I mean crushed, demolished, massacred, stabbed, dilapidated, ripped to shreds – you get the picture!
That’s right, a la teenage overdramatic fashion, I went through my first EVER breakup at thirty-freaking-seven years old. Suffice it to say, I thought I was going to die.

And you know I’m not the sissy type! I mean, after all, since migrating to LA LA Land, I’ve successfully survived earthquakes, riots, mudslides, wildfires, a malignant back surgery, and even the culture (or lack thereof). Hey! I’ve also managed to remain immune to the epidemic plague evilly terrorizing the City of Angels: no Botox, no fitness trainer, no personal chef, no organic diet, no UGGS, no Juicy hoochie-mama Couture, no Lakers craze, no celebrity adulation, and no tabloids fascination – albeit, I did cave into a few standards namely the tattoos, the belly piercing, the rollerblades (sans the fanny pack though!), the blonde dyed hair, and I also joined the most famous Los Angeleno gang known as the Entertainment Industry.

All this to say that, clearly my tolerance level for pain is abnormally high. So I’m not one bit exaggerating when I say I was going to die – and actually I kind of did, figuratively speaking of course! Evidently, the breakup ordeal was delivered courtesy of my ex-girlfriend (ironically the only meaningful relationship I have ever been in to date). But what was I expecting? Women are not only extremely complicated and eternally in a state of utter confusion, but they’re also professional royal bitches!

What this, seemingly, end of my world episode instigated was the beginning of another (late) watershed in the history of me, myself and I, namely the auspicious commencement of my social ostracism phase. That’s when my super sexy therapist came into the picture and that’s how my library witnessed the birth of a new section called “Self-Help Books.”

You name it! Whatever sad ass loser book was written, I probably own it! And what’s perhaps more pathetic is that my extensive collection covers the entire spectrum of all imaginable disorders available to the human kind – from low self-esteem, addictive personality, co-dependency, ADD, cognitive thinking, learning to love yourself, to living in the now and all the other therapy crap….I fucking read it.
Seriously, I was devouring these books like bred and butter to the point that the sales rep at Borders was becoming concerned about my mental state, probably suspecting I was on the brink of suicide. Actually, as I was carbureting on a book a day, I was kind of expecting him to pull a bookstore intervention on my ass. But I guess he desisted when a month down the road I went on a radical tangent and bought “Eat, Pray, Love” – perhaps he figured I was now in the solution phase of whatever multiple problems I seemed to have, as in I was at last seeing the light at the end of the tunnel.

What can I say? It’s obviously not easy to be me. Even I, after months spent getting to know me, had an overdose of my own company. The good news is that I finally discovered who is I. And while I might do things backwards, clearly I do them well.

So be it! I infallibly always deviate from the original master plan, but eventually, even if accidentally, I do manage to connect the dots. And here’s the other thing: it’s never really too late to show up for your own life milestones. Sometimes doing things backwards simply means having to embrace the chaos and absolute nonsensical disorders of your own world in order to move forward.

A life unpredicted might really astonish you!
Seriously, can you honestly make all of the above shit up?