Before the Cha Cha Beat
“Keep calm and Cha Cha on,” she chants from inside me.
Over the past 15 years, I have changed my entire life. From New York City to Coastal California. From no boyfriend ever to a man that loves me too. From hating my job to quitting the job I hate.
In 2012, my parents were driving me crazy.
Dr. and Mrs. Judgmentalstein were worried about me, their head-in-the-clouds, no-direction, angry, bad-decision-making daughter. They knew what was best for me. And they panicked whenever I talked about doing anything different.
Also, after almost a decade of schlepping around New York City, I was soooooooooo over winter.
The solution was obvious. If I wanted the Judmentalsteins to stop judging me and I wanted to escape winter, I had to move away. So that’s what I did.
But that doesn’t mean it was easy.
Justin is my boyfriend. He is the first boyfriend I’ve ever had. We met in 2015 when I was 30.
Before Justin, there was the boy that kissed my sister, the so-far-normal boy who was not-so-normal, the boy I met on the Subway who changed his morning commute instead of breaking up with me, and the boy who told me “I have a girlfriend now” over Skype right after I took off my shirt.
There were a few other boys too. Sharon Jones was singing about me in the song 100 Days 100 Nights. No boy was ever my boy for more than three months— The first month they told me I was funny. The second month, they told me I was exhausting. The third month, they ignored me until I figured out that we were no longer dating.
I used to be really lonely.
My family didn’t like me. Boys didn’t like me. My friends didn’t even like me! (Looking back, I’m not sure they were ever really my friends.)
And so, with no one else to talk to, I started talking to myself. Throughout my twenties, my journals kept me company. They listened to my stories and laughed at my jokes.
The Back Beat is based on my journals.
The Blog Beat is me today. A writer, a thinker, a provocateur, an artist.
“Keep calm and Cha Cha on,” she chants from inside me.
“I love you,” I say as I start to cha cha.
“Let’s write some sh*t.” she says back.
And suddenly we’re moving to the Cha Cha Beat.
Originally from the east coast, Cha Cha lives in southern California with her fiance (he’s a plumber) and their bob-tailed cat, Copper Soup.
As a woman, Cha Cha spends her time writing, reading (though not as much as she wishes she did), watching Project Runway (way more than she wished she did—especially since the show ended in 2019), trying to exercise for at least 20 minutes a day (otherwise, she won’t leave the house because she works from home), learning how to manage her money, and talking to herself out loud.
