Castor Oil

Castor Oil

Main Use: Laxative

“A British bank is run with precision,

A British home requires nothing less.

Tradition, discipline, and rules

Must be the tools.

Without them: disorder, catastrophe, anarchy.

In short, you have a ghastly mess.” 

George Banks, of this crazy 'stache: 

What better to describe a month of homelessness & heartbreak on America’s most unforgiving island. 

I’m sorry; that’s being unfair. Let’s begin with, shall we say, an appetizer. One of happy tastes: 

• Costa Rica
• Homemade movie theatre
• New friends

Aw, look. That’s so pleasant. Now, have you had enough to tide you over? Great. Let’s move on.

Moving On: 4 Courses in Starting Over 

1. The Frantically Huge Apartment Search for Such a Little Girl
2. “Alaska” Is Always a Punchline
3. Living with Your Ex-Boyfriend’s Best Friend, & Other Sitcom Plots
4. 39 Dollars (and a bitch ain’t one)

Ingredients

1. The Frantically Huge Apartment Search for Such a Little Girl

• 1 lost roommate (not literally physically lost, feel the need to clarify)
• 5 days of homelessness
• 3 couches
• 2 Gypsy Housing bait-and-switch roommates
• 100 min. hours spent searching on Craigslist, Facebook, & random total rip-off sites
• 75 min. Facebook messages/emails sent to strangers, including a misogynistic meme-sender who tells you to "get a real job"
• 1 roommate lost again 
• 1 confusing but sultry-sweet Grandma renting rooms
• 1.5 hours spent talking to 1 crazy rock-'n-roll woman whom you immediately decide you can’t live with but who’s nonetheless the most interesting Ohioan in NYC
• 1 new potential roommate + her attached potential 19-year-old roommate who refuses to look outside of Brooklyn = only 1 new roommate
• Your first entirely Hassidic Brooklyn neighborhood
• The G train
• Brokers named Dino, Elvis, and Fazzi 
• Feeling more and more like the boy from Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, in that you’re meeting more new, weird New Yorkers than you ever thought possible
  

2.  "Alaska" Is Always a Punchline

• In Boyhood’s plot 
• As The Proposal’s setting
  
• As The Simpsons Movie’s plot & setting
• Even in the recent Moth podcast you listen to, where it’s the farthest place the storyteller can travel without technically leaving the country
• In telling anyone where your boyfriend is moving for 9 months

3. Living with Your Ex-Boyfriend’s Best Friend, & Other Sitcom Plots

• 1 extra room in a railroad apartment 
• where you were staying with your ex-boyfriend before he moved to Alaska
• at $480 a month
• where much of your stuff currently is
• when you have nowhere else to go
• makes for a great story
• but prohibits you from doing that thing you saw in movies where you cry your eyes out and acceptably down a pint of ice cream that you’re almost 99% sure you’re entitled to do
• 2 quarts of ice cream

4. 39 Dollars (and a bitch ain’t one)

• (Please use the remains of that ‘5 days of homelessness’ from above)
• $4 left on your Starbucks card
• $0 left on your Metrocard
• Getting your debit card declined at the Metrocard machine
• Thus, $39 in your bank account
• $0.50 on-sale Nature Valley Granola Bars-- for days
• Yogurt parfaits are still $9 on the “Sides” section of a brunch menu, which is plain absurd
• No, I know, and I’m not joking: that’s $39 total in your name. 
• An $8 special for 24oz of beer + 1 shot... Note: this should be ILLEGAL. Note: this was in the East Village; you’ll find it.
• -- No, yes-- I’m aware that you just came back from a week’s vacation in Costa Rica--
• $160 acquired by taking a 11-year-old British kid to Coney Island for a day
• -- But you must remember that you fly for free and you were visiting someone who was staying in their own house, so the whole trip cost roughly $100--
• Unlocking the art of Venmo
• Canceling your upper endoscopy in fear of extra costs (which is fine with you)
• -- Which you’d probably spend in a week in New York City anyways!

Instructions

Castor oil is a nasty tasting vegetable oil most commonly known for its unpopularity among children and treatment of constipation. Thankfully, a spoon full of sugar can help me get through just about anything, and that’s exactly how Mary Poppins got this drug to go down. However, there are some things not even sugar can remedy; not all the on-sale ice cream quarts, Nature Valley clearance bars, and vegan post-hangover milkshakes in the world could have cured me from the extreme, gut-wrenching food poisoning of the above recipe.

I’m not one to lie when someone asks “how are you?” or “what’s new in your life?”; I don’t see a purpose in hiding life’s negativities. Obviously. When I’d tell friends at home that I was in Ohio doing absolutely nothing for a month because I’d broken my foot during a tour of a show while my other foot was still in physical therapy from a stress-fracture and thus wouldn’t be able to walk around New York City on crutches, especially since my boyfriend wasn’t there to carry me on his back anymore because he’d gone to work at a non-profit in Costa Rica before moving to Alaska for 9 months, and my apartment was on the 5th floor-- more often than not, they’d respond: “wow, Anna, your life is like a movie!” 

Now, I’m sorry, but exactly what type of movie is this? Not a single thing I said was remotely positive. This sounds like a horrible movie, but, apparently, they’d want to see it. In fact, some of them would also like me to write a book about it. The newest request is short stories. 

To which I concur: people love drama.

When I was in high school, and even a little in my first year of college, I yearned for drama. I was the president of my frickin’ high school drama club and I had no idea of the actual drama going on beneath me until well after I graduated. I was immune. Yet, I desperately wanted something exciting-- anything exciting-- to happen in my life. Well, lucky me.

No, I've never read them.

If I were given the choice to go back to that naive, innocent, idealistic optimist of a small-town Ohioan who’d never fought with anyone but her sister, or to stay in my drama-filled, tenuous, complicated mess of a jobless New Yorker going through her first break-up, I’d take the obvious choice: food poisoning. Because no matter how weird and crazy stupid our lives in New York City or grad school in Kansas or leaving your corporate job in DC are, they’re something. And they’re ours. As long as we’re moving forward, even at a snail’s pace, we’re progressing. That’s something. And it’s far from boring. I’m not going to spew that bullsh*$ of “everything happens for a reason,” but I do believe we learn. No kids likes to do homework, but how else will they learn? 

These last 2 months have been arguably the most difficult in my life. I felt like everything I’d built for myself in New York City-- relearning how to walk, settling into an apartment, falling in love, gaining community and money through my jobs-- was erased, all at once. Though I’ve learned a lot about myself and relationships and have come out stronger blah blah blah, I will not lie to you by saying “I’m glad it happened”; “I’m glad I learned that.” Hell, no, am I happy I couch-surfed for a week while eating only granola bars and oatmeal! However, I’ll be damned if I do not work as hard as I possibly can to prevent anything similar from ever happening again. I’m not cured, but I survived. And that’s what I’m proud of. (In addition to the homemade movie theatre mentioned above, of which I had no hand in making but all hands in enjoying. This was in the sitcom plot apartment. Unfortunately, ironically, no romantic comedies were allowed on the big screen. Sigh.)

So, no. I’m not the same person I was when I was bored of my uneventful, cushy high school life. And I think high school Anna would really, really like that.

What do you do with castor oil? Sip it. Spit it out. Sniff it. Find ways to make it flavorful. Take out some ingredients, maybe. Drink it with a friend. Have someone tell you to drink it. Refuse to drink it. Decide to drink it on your own. Go through the process of throwing it up and being hangover-ill to make you promise to yourself that you’ll never, ever drink it again. 

(Pshyeah, good luck with that.)

“Winds in the east, mist coming in, 

Like somethin’ is brewin’ and ‘bout to begin.

Can’t put me finger on what lies in store, 

But I fear what’s to happen all happened before.”

(Oh, man, can you tell what one of the movies we watched in the apartment movie theatre was.)

WRONG:

Saving Mr. Banks