tugboat, pull me home

I do dear, I do

2012-01-22T00:30:00.001-05:00

now that I'm in a good relationship, I'm not supposed to reminisce about the shitty ones. I'm not supposed to miss people that hurt me and lied to me and left me. but I do anyway. I don't want them, but I think about them, and I feel sad.
because for such a brief time, Pants let me see what he was really made of. because for a while, he let me hold him and let me hear him sing and say stupid things. for a while I believed something could be there, even though I knew with the rest of me that nothing could come of what we did. nothing could come of what we did to each other, other than what has. a little bit of bitterness and a lot of melancholy.
"sometimes I cannot sleep for the greatness of my hate for you. sometimes I cannot sleep for I miss you." I wish there could have been more for us, at least for a little while. nothing could have lasted. I know that. but being with him made me feel so special. I was somewhere few people got to visit. I saw things few people were allowed to witness. I held him when he cried, and that is a memory I cherish.
I don't know what I would have done if he had loved me back. maybe I would have run as fast from him as he ran from me.
or maybe we would have burned to ashes in each other's arms before our abusiveness could undo us. what we had was not meant to last. it was built on uncertainty and desperation. we didn't know each other but pretended we did. I whipped him and bit him and he made me leave at 4 in the morning when we were done. and I did.
I was never really into the sex. I just liked feeling wanted.
I liked that he, specifically, wanted me. even if all he really wanted was my body.
I don't think I could have gotten close to him any other way.
I miss him. I do. but it's foolish. the entire thing was foolish.
the melancholy felt good sometimes.
still, I'm glad it's behind me now.

all these demons were just people after all

2011-12-02T12:35:00.002-05:00

I still struggle with the loss of the people who used to be my closest friends. They are amazing individuals who had to do what was best for themselves by cutting a selfish person from their lives. I want that person to not be me, but it is. I am self-absorbed and self-centered and my own needs come before everyone else. Always. I was much worse in high school, as people tend to be. I have always let my drama drag me down, and expected everyone else to sink with me. Very few people have had the courage to tell me this, but enough have done so that I actually started listening.

It is, and has always been, very hard for me to forgive and move on without an apology. This is a behavior that I got from my mom. It is a legacy I would like to leave behind me. It is something I have struggled with for a long time, but recently I've been thinking a lot more about it. I have been left irrevocably behind by people that I needed to keep close to me because they were the ones that would call me on my shit. But they're the ones I used so harshly that they gave up on me. So there's no going back, I suppose. And I need to stop trying to return to past relationships when it's clear those people have no wish for me to come back. If they did, I would have heard from them.
It's hard to let go. Let me use names, real names, not the myriad of aliases I've constructed here. Elley, Sharyn, Jared, Sascha, Sin, Matt, I miss you all. I have wronged you. But I can't help but feel that, even if you were on speaking terms with me, we would still be barely speaking. Because that's how it was before you dropped me, so I guess there's really not much loss over all. And Ariel, I miss you too. I regret how I treated you and it's so kind that you didn't just completely cut me from your life. I will never have a friendship like that with anyone else, and I wish I still had it with you. But like I said, there's no going back.

I have changed. Sure. It's so easy to say that. Death has changed me. It started when AJ died and only increased with my mother's death. There are a lot of people that I miss that I didn't really appreciate when I had them. Maybe they think of me. They probably don't. I don't think too often of the people that I left behind for my own sanity's sake.

I want everything. But I forget that in order to take, I must first give. And when you take too much, then there's nothing left, no matter how many times you apologize.

lost between these thoughts

2011-11-09T11:39:00.000-05:00

I dream about a new life. about a life I've wanted yet never thought possible. I'm scared to hope. I've resigned myself to accepting less for so long that I'm not sure what to do now that options have appeared. I keep expecting them to go away. I keep thinking something tragic will happen and rob me of my hope, like how it's happened in the past.
I want to be loved and taken care of. I want to make art and not worry. I want to live somewhere near the water. I want to swim all year long. I want to smile in the winter. I want my past to not hurt because of how good the present is.
I want to have problems that get resolved and do not linger on. I want to be able to talk things out. I want to not feel guilty about playing video games or watching movies. I want to not feel guilty, period.
I daydream about living with Fig in his big house and his little pool. I think about my cat roaming around and lounging on the steps. I think about Fig and I traveling. I fantasize about making papier mache masks and creatures all day long, whenever I want. I tell myself over and over that I'm almost done school. but in the back of my mind, I find myself thinking that if my mom hadn't died, I'd already be done. better yet, I'd probably be on my last year of my MSW.
but my mom did die. and so I've had a lot more time with art instead of social work, and it shows. my passion gets poured into art instead of my studies. I am bored with class and find it difficult to participate. I'm just coasting through to finish.
I hope this new internship happens. I hope that being able to actually include art in my work with people will help. otherwise I'm going to feel a little lost and all this time would have been for nothing. all this debt to repay will weigh on me even heavier than it already does.
I just want to run away with Fig, and forget everything here except for my sister, her husband, and their kids.

it's coming out

2011-10-19T23:13:00.000-04:00

sometimes it feels like I will never stop being bitter. being a social work student is the worst thing to be if you're trying to hide from your grief. one of my readings said something about how someone will avoid close relationships if they've recently suffered a loss. OH NO! THAT'S ME.
the only people I feel genuinely close to right now are fig and my sister. I am still so angry at shiny for leaving me when he did, and, more than that, for staying gone. I took the bus home today and saw someone with his build and hairstyle putting a bike on the front rack and for a moment I was terrified/excited with the thought that it might be him. then I realized that this person was far too short to be shiny. I'm sure there could be reasons for him being in Providence. there were before.
I am so angry, and sad, and I still feel so lost. and I have been avoiding these feelings for who knows how long. I hate that I miss shiny so much. I hate it. sometimes I forget his name, but I still remember the way his lips looked when he smiled, and the laugh lines around his eyes. I hate myself for it. I hate myself for missing him.
every relationship I end up in is lost in someone else's shadow. someone else's senseless shadow. shiny didn't care for me with even a fraction of the love that fig does. but shiny is so tied up in my mom's death that I can't feel the sting of one without being pricked by the other.
so when I badly miss my mom, I think I see shiny. and I get angry all over again.
her birthday is in a month from today. she would have been 61.
can't stop my heart from beating.
feels like I'm having a panic attack.
I need to sleep for a while.
I need to cry for longer.

On a train

2011-08-01T18:24:00.001-04:00

When I miss him, it feels like I'm betraying myself. I can't pinpoint the reasons he pops into my head and I can't get rid of him once he is there. I am stuck with an uneasy feeling. Or maybe I am just stuck.
I find myself wondering how he would have dealt with certain situations. People told me he was boring, but he wasn't. He never embarrassed me or himself. He was solid and steady and I hate thinking about him. We haven't talked for so long. So why does this still happen?
Fig worries that I am not happy with him. That isn't true. I'm just a different kind of happy with him. I don't look forward to things the way that I used to and I don't get excited the way that I used to. It's hard. I imagine it's because I don't want to get excited about something that might not happen. I don't trust much anymore, except that plans don't pan out and just because something is for the best that doesn't mean it feels good.

still journaling, oh therapist

2011-07-24T01:09:00.000-04:00

Death isn't something a person gets to get over. Hell, I still have trouble accepting it. I have never dealt well with change, though for a period of time I had deluded myself into believing that I did. I don't. My cat and I have a lot in common that way. We do eventually adapt, but that stuff that happens that's out of our control, well, it takes a while to get used to it.
So over a year later and it's still unthinkable to me that my mom is dead. I'm not in denial. It's just still hard for me to grasp. I feel infantile. How can she have been alive, and then not? What is it to be dead? And again I long for blind faith in something, anything, even atheism. I want to feel with conviction that she is gone, that she absolutely does not exist in any way anymore. She is dead and there is no soul, or ghost, or any such thing. Or I want to believe in some higher power, and feel that she is in some kind of after-life. But that just feels ridiculous to me. It sounds like a fairy tale. It's cute and all, but incredibly unlikely.
It's just so hard to let go. It's hard to accept that she died, that she isn't here anymore. No essence of her remains except that which we carry. When I was on the beach with my sister and her family (my family, too, but it's the family she created, not the one I was born into, which is why I refer to it as her's, just for clarification) and I asked if she was going to spread some of our mom's ashes in the ocean, she cried and said she wasn't ready to let mom go yet. And I understood. I am constantly trying to find ways to accept my mom's death, whether it's through art or therapy or writing. I don't talk about it to many people. What is there to say? I wish things had been different. Her death has fucked up my life. I'm angry about it. I'm not angry at her, but I'm angry at the circumstances. I delayed my senior year and now I can't find an internship. I have to spend another year in Providence. I don't think I would have gotten pneumonia if I hadn't been so stressed by my mom's death. I don't know that for sure, of course. A lot of things would have been different. But yeah, there's no going back. But I'm still angry.
I wish my mom had taken better care of herself. I wish she'd quit smoking when she was young, so her lungs would have been stronger and her immune system better. I wish she'd listened to her doctors. I wish a lot of things. I wish my sister would learn from our mom's mistakes, but she isn't. She's pushing herself just as hard and is smoking, too. It's difficult to watch it and not say anything. And when I do, she justifies it to herself. She's my big sister. I've never been able to stand up to her.
I want her, for all people, to quit for themselves. But what I really want is for people to quit smoking for the people that love them. Because I truly believe that, had my mom not been a smoker, she would still be alive. And I hate the thought of my nieces having to go through this in 20 years.
People don't like to face facts. Like I still can't accept my mom being dead. And I won't use terms like "passed away" because I feel like that just sugar coats it. She is dead. Dead. Cremated. She is ashes, spread across the east coast. Some of us try to forget her. Some of us want to remember. Others are caught in between. I have a lot of trouble talking about her. I don't know what to say. I wasn't close to her when I was growing up, and it took a long time for me to see her as a person. She always kept me distant. She, and everyone in my family, always tried to shield me. I still resent that. Why didn't my dad teach me how to take care of my car? Why didn't someone teach me how to take care of my money? There was a chapter in middle school math about it, and that was all. A week in seventh grade isn't enough to prepare you for college loans and all that goes with it. How do people deal with these things?
Everyone always assumes someone else will take care of everything. What about the person who actually does?
I suck at being that person, no matter how badly I want to excel.

to do?

2011-07-20T23:37:00.000-04:00

I've gained weight this summer. I hate it. I was finally at a point where I was feeling sexy and comfortable with my body, and then I went and got chubby. to me, at least. fig continues to tell me I'm attractive, as do other people. that's nice and all, and I feel sexy when I'm naked, but I just hate how all of my clothing fits me.
so what I need to do is exercise more, go to bed earlier and get enough sleep, bike in the morning and afternoon, eat small portions 5 or 6 times a day, cut down on carbs, continue to drink water constantly, and all that usual stuff.
I also need to get the rest of my shit together. you know, figure out my internship (call places, write to the person at RIC, etc), start going through all my shit, find some boxes so I can pack, pack, figure out my rent situation, magically acquire money ...
at my therapy appointment today, my therapist told me that i need to go to bed earlier, bike more, and journal. So I have journaled. Now I need to go to bed earlier. and tomorrow I will bike.
sometimes it is just so hard to take care of myself.

working through it

2011-07-10T13:48:00.000-04:00

last night I dreamed that I was in a mental ward again. it wasn't a locked one, like the one I was in when I was 18. we were sent home to be with our families every night, and had the option of staying with them over the weekend. I was immensely comforted by being in the ward and I didn't want to be released. I enjoyed seeing my family for a few hours a day, but it was always a relief to return to the ward. this is basically opposite of how things were for me in real life.
my first weekend out, I was amazed to find that we were allowed to stay overnight. shiny and his two female roommates happened to be visiting the house where I was. I bad-mouthed him and he was actually kind of a jerk back to me. we all went out to dinner but his roommate picked a place shiny and I couldn't eat, so we left. but again, his roommate kept leading us around even though she wasn't familiar with Providence. I was frustrated by her, and by shiny.
I can imagine why I had this dream. I have been feeling overwhelmed by figuring out things in my life, so of course I'd hearken back to the time in my life when everything else was decided for me (even though I was only in the ward for three days when I was 18). and I have been thinking a lot about shiny lately, as I inevitably reminisce on previous relationships as I get close to someone new. I took a long bike ride yesterday and it reminded me of last summer and all the riding shiny and I used to do together. my relationship with fig is very different. I loved being active with shiny. I loved riding around boston or providence, playing soccer or basketball or kickball or whatever. I liked that he was athletic and genius and artistically creative. but he wasn't able to care the way that fig does. it wouldn't occur to him to bring me chocolate or make something for me. he wouldn't ask me how my exam went, or remind me to call him after an important meeting. he didn't check up on me or ask how my day was.
and, when I think about it, the things I liked so much about shiny are pretty ephemeral. a couple years ago they would not have mattered that much to me. but the things I like about fig are things that have always been important to me, and I imagine always will be.
communication. affection. initiation. caring. concern. imagination. humour.
and he thinks it's funny when I harass him.
the dream I had last night initially left me unsettled. but I feel better about things now. I have been worried for my future and my inability to embrace it. but things are falling into place now. I have a place to live (I just have to pack, oh god), a possible internship at a place that I already know I love (I just have to pursue it and follow through, oh god), a loving sister and her family, and a loving partner (that lives far away, oh god). So yes, there are solutions, and those solutions bring their own breed of "oh god," but overall I feel the balance that I seek. I don't believe there can be good without bad, though I prefer for the good to be the heavier side of things.

find a rhythm

2011-06-25T23:23:00.001-04:00

the first drops of rain felt like a mistake. I thought it was the trees dripping, and I wiped them off my face with a nervous laugh of disbelief. it was beautiful out. a perfect summer night; not humid, warm enough for me to be comfortable in shorts and a tank-top but cool enough that I didn't break a sweat as I rode my bike. the spattering of wet on my face took me by surprise. for a moment I wondered if someone was spritzing me from a balcony. the drops got fatter and closer together, making me glad that I was already on my block. I pedaled faster, matching the pace of the rain. I laughed again as I jumped from my bike and onto my stoop. it wasn't raining very hard when I plopped my bike inside, so I hopped over to the house next door so I could look at their curbside couches. the cushions on the makeshift couch under my loft could use some plumping, and the ones outside on the sidewalk looked pretty good. I sniffed them, knowing I had to take action now just in case the rain got worse and made up my mind for me. I plumped some pillows and decided to just go for the largest cushions. I heard coughing from the second floor window. I looked up, laughing again, feeling foolish, as I pulled the over-sized couch cushions to my front door. up the stairs, up more stairs, and then to the landing outside my apartment. there I set the cushions to air out while I cemented my decision.
inside, I decided that bourbon and iced ginseng tea made a fine combination while I wrote about the rain now gently dancing outside my bedroom window.
it was a good night.

truth is harder than fiction

2011-06-25T13:31:00.000-04:00

here I am, back in rhode island. for a little over a week I got to trespass in another world. I got to see what it's like to live without concern. I was in a big house with amenities. I was cared for. it felt like I was a child again. the feeling was heightened when I went to stay at a resort with my sister and her family. I will always be her little sister, and in that way I become a child. I relate more to the actions of her daughters, and I build sand castles with them and make stupid jokes. it is comfortable to be young. it is always nice to have someone else take care of things, pay for things, lead me around.
it is painful to realize that I would rather have that in my life now than to take control. that I fantasize about leaving school and just curling up in fig's bed to let him take care of everything. I want to withdraw completely from the world. I want to just make papier mache masks and art all day. I don't want to have to think about anyone or anything outside of my tiny bubble of him, and me, and my cat, and my itty bitty sister-family.
everyone else is a disappointment. but these few people are the only ones I feel I can love and forgive unconditionally. I am terrified of the people outside of my little circle. and even they are given limits. I don't let any of them in too far. who can?
I want to withdraw. Sometimes I think with longing of mental wards. I think of the schedule and stability and the total lack of individual decision-making. it is so comforting. it was 12 years ago but I still remember the starkness and fear, and over top of it the people telling me what to do and what not to do. I should recoil, but instead I miss it. and because I want it so badly, I must fight it. but sometimes independence is such a struggle. I just want a break for a while. I just want to relax in reality instead of having to find stability outside of daily life.
I want my basic needs to be met. stable housing, stable job, stable school, stable friends, stable food, stable family, stable partner. I long for stability.
it is, consistently, the thing that most frequently eludes me.

I can only cry when I'm alone now

2011-06-24T22:26:00.004-04:00

dear mom,
it was over a year ago that you died. 368 days since my sister called me and told me. since then I have spread your ashes on the grave of your beloved horse and scattered them into the ocean where you got married six years ago, just as my own marriage was disintegrating. you were starting while I was ending. and when you died, you took my finally quiescent life and turned it upside down. every aspect of my life has changed since then. it has taken a year for it to start to settle down, and even that is nothing consistent.
I have no internship for fall, not sure where I'll be living, and the person that I'm dating lives over a thousand miles away. sometimes I get so angry about you dying, as though it were something anyone could have prevented. as though things would be different now if you were still alive. I just want to be angry at someone. I want there to be a reason for all of this. I want there to be a reason that you're dead, and for everything being in turmoil. for my life utterly changing. I don't see the point in going out to meet people, or in initiating plans. I don't look for as much comfort in others as I used to. People die, or they go away, and it hurts just the same. but I was finally getting to know you, and I know I've said this all before, but I just hate how much time I wasted not loving you. how much time I lived in shame or fear or guilt.
and I hate that your husband has abandoned us because we remind him of you. and I hate that he never seemed to like me. and I hate that your friends all talked to my sister, but not to me. and I hate that I just got pushed to the side because I wasn't strong enough to take everything on my shoulders like she could. and she knew you better than I did, because she was more like you. because she remembers things. there is so much I never knew about you; so much that I will never know about you. and there is so much you didn't know about me, too.
we both gave up for a while. I stopped answering your calls because I was tired of feeling guilty and you stopped calling because you were tired of me not answering. I wasn't a great daughter and you weren't a great mom but I guess we did the best with what we had.
I'm not as strong a person as I would like to be. I have a lot of trouble doing things, like paying bills on time, like handling stressful situations, like getting shit done on a deadline, like making phone calls or talking to strangers in power. I want someone to take care of me so I can just live in my blissful bubble. I think I got that from being the youngest. I think I got that because I always had someone else to do all the shit I didn't feel like handling. so yeah, you're a little to blame, but I'm the one that kept doing it. and now it's turned into some hardened anxiety that I can't seem to fully break apart.
mom, I am still angry. and I still hurt. I wonder why you gave up on me. why you didn't keep calling me. I wonder why you had to be so inconsistent. I wonder why I had to mirror that. sure, I would like to have done things differently. I would have liked to know you better. I would have liked to have called you more often, and seen you more frequently. I would have liked for you to have wanted to understand me, or shown that you did understand. or asked me questions. something deeper than what was there.
I miss you, but I think I mostly mourn the loss of what will never be. because we had finally started off to something new, and it was truncated before it could lead anywhere. I am so sad that we never got to really be friends. I am sad that we didn't get to be adults together, and I never really felt at ease in your presence. we never taught each other how to really listen and not judge. I would have liked to teach you how to meditate. I would have liked to learn it myself.
mom. the loss of inertia is painful to feel. it is running into a brick wall without slowing down. it is the slice of an axe through a watermelon. it is suddenly, alarmingly, over. the lost future aches inside my chest. my inability to connect is tangible. I don't feel you anymore. when dru died, I still felt him around me. but with your loss, all sense of spirituality fled. I want to believe that you live on in the bumble bees and elephants that I see. but I just don't. you are gone and it is like a chunk of lead in my rib cage. there is no undoing this. I am not sure what to do. I have gone through art project after art project, trying to find some peace. it has come in small bursts. but now I am stuck on the precipice, looking down into uncertainty. I miss you and I want you to tell me it will be ok, because you were my mom, and you were pretty much always right.
I wish I had done more for you. I wish I'd done more with you.
I wouldn't call these regrets. just notes for the future.
I love you, I miss you so much. I hope I didn't hurt you too badly when you were alive.
love,
me.

an even trade

2011-06-12T23:53:00.004-04:00

most of the time, I am not fully aware of my grief. but occasionally, the enormous weight of it is felt all at once and I find myself emotionally borne to the floor by it. sometimes physically. I am held still for a moment and everything inside of me tries to break all at the same time. I can't control the muscles of my face, but am simultaneously rigid. it is that weird conglomeration of too-in-control and totally out-of-control. instead of breaking down into tears, like I would have a year ago, I just feel my face crumple and I cannot cry. I am so overwhelmed by emotion for that moment, that nothing can even happen. I have gotten so used to not letting go, that even when I feel the need to, I can't. So I just walk on with this heaviness in my chest. I continue on with what I was doing, because what else can I do? My mom is dead. no amount of crying will bring her back. and I don't want to cry with no one here to comfort me.

I remember sobbing on Shiny at two in the morning. I remember his little sad sounds, and the warmth of his torso as he enveloped me. I remember how lost I felt when he left me. I remember the stillness I found in his presence. I remember the emptiness he gave. but I loved him, and for his part, he loved me. it just wasn't enough for either of us. and it always bothered me that he wasn't more affected by my mom's death. it bothered me that he didn't cry, too.

this past year has stretched me in ways I'd hoped to eventually reach, but not like this. I have become more patient. I have gotten used to solitude. I remember, years ago, how I could not be alone. now I'm not sure how to be around people. It becomes a game, where I put on my charisma and people fall for it. I'm fine with that. it makes things easier. we all get to feel good about ourselves and in the end, no one has to give away anything real or frightening. I feel hollow at the end of it, but I had a good time. I have so few people I can talk to about anything, with honesty, who listen without judgment, and will give back in return, who ask for nothing. I can think of two.
I still feel this guardedness with Fig. I can read him but he can't read me. I still keep up barriers. I still can't entirely feel what I know to be there. and I wonder if this is what it was like for shiny. I can't bear to contemplate putting Fig through that. I don't think things will happen that way. we're very different people, this is a very different situation. but I believe in balance. in my life, all that has hurt me has turned itself around so that I could understand it. or if I hurt someone, I had something like that then done to me. it doesn't mean it was the same situation, but I've had to understand so many different points of view. it hasn't stopped me hating, but it's helped me move on to other things. I still hate ex-otter. but that's because of him, not necessarily what he did to me. he hasn't learned. he just speaks the words. he doesn't feel them.
so just because I have this emptiness inside of me, that doesn't reflect on Fig. the things I say I feel for him, I do. it's just harder to completely feel it sometimes. it has been a long time since I've had someone so completely adore me. and he thinks he has baggage, but it is nothing in relation to other people I have known. he doesn't know that his inexperience is his saving grace. he doesn't know that it has made him strong in ways that I can't comprehend.
what he lacks in experience, he makes up for with an enthusiasm that I personally haven't been able to feel in years. he is able to appreciate things that other people started taking for granted a long time ago. he sees in me what others never noticed, or mentioned. and I'm not sure that would be the case if he were as jaded by love as I am.
if he were as jaded by loss as I am.
I am hoping that prolonged exposure to his adoration will help to revive the parts of me that have been withered by neglect. I am hoping he will be the rain-fall I have needed. he has already been blossoming under my attention. I have been giving him experience. can he hand me hope?

caught left-handed

2011-06-07T16:15:00.000-04:00

the most difficult part about having a journal that everyone can read is that everyone can read it. my mom used to read my old website. my sister reads this one. so do strangers. so do lovers. so do exes. so do friends. I keep track of the IP addresses of the people that visit this site but that doesn't necessarily tell me who they are. sometimes I can make a good guess. other times it stays a mystery.
the only person that regularly brings up the things I write here directly to me is Fig. people feel the things I write about are too personal to actually talk to me about. I think it's strange that someone would be willing to read all this and then not want to say anything to me about it. that makes you a voyeur. but I know that you're watching me. so if you don't want me to know, then find a better way to spy.
of course, on the flipside, I'm an exhibitionist. I know that anyone, absolutely anyone, could find this site. that is both terrifying and exhilarating. I suppose that's exhibitionism for you.

but the point that I'm getting at here is this: I actually do limit what I put on here. I didn't used to, before I knew who read this. but my readership impacts what I write, and that was not my intention when I started spying on visiting IP addresses. the reason I signed up for the service was to see if Pants was reading my page. I'm not kidding. he wasn't. I'm not surprised.
but knowing that Fig reads this has kept me from talking about how I think I'm falling in love with him, because I don't want to say it first, but he's not going to say it first because he'll think he's pressuring me or something. and because I previously said, on this site, that I didn't want to hear or say it. Oh, the dilemmas of the modern world.
knowing that my ex-girlfriend reads this keeps me aware of the heterosexual nature of my serious relationships since her. but dating dudes doesn't make me any less attracted to ladies. guys are just easier for me to approach and relate to. I know I'm not the only bisexual to feel that way. and dating men doesn't make me any less bi, no matter how guilty my lack of girl-play makes me feel. this is just the way things are going. not a hell of a lot I can do about it. maybe if guys weren't so easy and girls weren't so clingy ...
not you, von, of course.
as for my sister reading this, I feel good about that. she gives and takes. she doesn't make her private life public like I do, but she lets me know what's going on with her in her own time. that's important to me. Chick also keeps in touch with me. so it's not all a mass of silent voyeurs.
and besides, I see you looking.

I try

2011-06-02T16:24:00.001-04:00

I am waiting for the world to end. I want all my debts to be erased. I want everything that has gone before to not matter anymore. I want all the things that I have done, and that has been done to me, to become equally meaningless. I want oblivion more than I want anything else. But because I am selfish, and others are selfish, I want it to be total. I want everyone wiped out together.
I have talked to people about how I long for a pandemic to kill us, how I want an apocalypse. I want an excuse to give up without it being my fault. and if no one is around to feel the loss, then all the better.
destroy everything. Not a war, not a massacre; just a total cessation of all human life. Let us leave. But turn the reactors off, first.
I told Fig that my cat has saved my life since I had her, that there were times I didn't kill myself just because I wasn't sure who would take care of her when I was gone. Right now I am the most content I've been in a while, and it terrifies me. Luca doesn't sleep with me anymore and it saddens me. Everything changes and this is also frightening. Now I can't die because of what it would do to my family: my nieces, my sister. Before I wouldn't die because of my cat. At least I'm making progress.
It's not that I'm actively suicidal. I'm not. That changes when the spring comes. I love life right now, despite my gnawing fear, but that adoration is always tinted by the memory of winter. It is my lurking shadow, waiting to strike. The days are getting longer, and it is wonderful, but I know they will shorten again in just a few months. It is this inability to live in the present that fuels my depression. It is the knowledge that, no matter how good things are now, they will get bad again, that keeps me from fully embracing anyone. In the winter, in the throes of that darkness, I can only vaguely remember spring. Winter feels never-ending. Spring/summer feels ephemeral. Why the difference? Maybe because there's so much more to lose when the sun slips away. The winter envelops me in static and keeps me seeing beyond itself. Spring opens me back up again.
here I am, on the cusp of summer. not sure what anything means. terrified of my future, but abundantly excited at the same time. I could fall in love. I could fall apart.
there is so much promise in the world.
no wonder it's so easy to wish it away.

all the things left behind

2011-05-30T22:31:00.016-04:00

when I get introspective, I get sad. Is that the way it's supposed to be? the greatest changes come from pain. the longest-lasting ones, too. so when I think back, it's to meditate on the things that have hurt me rather than the good that has occurred.
it's the good that makes the pain so much worse. the break ups with shiny and ex-otter would not have been so painful if they hadn't been directly preceded by an intense closeness brought about by death. love does not overcome all obstacles. sometimes love is the obstacle.

it's hard not to think back over this past year and wince. it's hard not to miss shiny. it's hard not to hate him. it fades, sure, but the image remains. the dreams I had for us still haunt me but they're like a quote taken out of context. when I look at the entire picture, at the future I had planned, I can see that it would have just been me dragging him along. and he would have gone with it because it was something to do. and when what I wanted overwhelmed what he was comfortable doing, he would have left, just like he left me after my mom died. I still wonder if it would have been better for me if I'd gone to the hospital alone the second time instead of convincing him to come. I still wonder a lot of things. but these are thoughts better left to rot and die, like others before them.

I have a whole compost heap of dreams that I created with other people, or for other people, of lives that died when we parted. somewhere, I'm living those. somewhere, I'm still with my ex-husband, or buttercup, or shiny, or Pants decided to get his head out of his ass, or I never went vegan and therefore found my dating pool sufficiently enriched, or I stopped dating males completely, or I never left PA or I went to DE instead of RI or my mom never died, or any of a number of divergent paths led somewhere that I, me, this me, did not go. could not go. would not go. somewhere, I'm in CA. somewhere, I'm in Chicago. somewhere, I just stayed. somewhere, I died.

all of these options, always options. and the opportunities left behind decompose when I chose something else.
when I chose someone else.
when I chose somewhere else.

I still feel this barrier between me and the rest of the world. I am still living every life that I could have, and none of them, all at once. until I can let go of all those paths, I can't walk fully on this one.
until my feet can firmly feel where they are, I won't really be anywhere.
somewhere, somewhen, somewho, somehow.

always this has been my dilemma: how to let go of the past and focus on where I am now instead of where I could have been.

feel the fear and embrace it?

2011-05-24T15:53:00.000-04:00

scared of becoming dependent. dependent on someone over a thousand miles away? it wouldn't be the first time.
I've never been someone's fetish before. at least, no one that told me. it's a weird kind of compliment, being dissected by specific obsessions. would he still want me if I had different hair? would he still love me if my breasts were removed?
it's strange to think that ten years ago I was disgusted by having breasts. I didn't like for them to be touched, even as recently as five years ago. I felt disconnected from them. I still do, a little. I do not feel wholly female and I don't think I ever will. It wasn't until I was with Von that I felt complete. so it's strange to me that I keep dating men, when it was with a woman that I felt the most comfortable.
I can't help who I'm attracted to, and who I attract. so I just go with it. I try not to discriminate. but I still miss women. and I'm wondering where that will lead me.
Fig wants to work toward monogamy, and I do too. but how can I be monogamous when part of me always longs to be with women? when I'm with one gender, I desire the other. I can never turn it off. I want both.
I am both, to some extent. it's just that the dominance shifts. right now I feel ok being female. I like having breasts, and I like being femininely attractive. but what happens when things shift again? it wasn't that long ago that I was researching breast reduction and even removal. I was seriously considering it, to the point that I'd had discussions with my ex-husband and looked up surgeons. if I'd had the money at the time, or been backed by health insurance, maybe I'd be flat-chested by now.
probably not.
after all, I do like the attention that being curvy brings. when I choose to show it, that is. it's been fun to be an obsession and to fit a fetish. I just don't know if that kind of attraction has the ability to last.
and I am always scared of losing what I have come to cherish.
because it has happened so many times before.

like a gossamer thread

2011-05-16T13:29:00.002-04:00

I have dreams where he tells me that he loves me. or where I tell him. usually, in my dream, I am drunk or fucked up when I tell him. when he tells me, it's by text.
I'm not sure why I dream about these things. I don't need to hear it and I don't need to say it.
the more comfortable he gets with me, the more I like him. that's what I know right now.
and I am trying to let go of these barriers that have been erected by my defense mechanisms. it's hard. it's so hard. a few times I've noticed myself start to close and I put my foot in the jamb before the door can shut. it hurts, it always hurts, and it's terrifying, but I am trying.
I am so tired of feeling lonely because I stopped letting people in.
because when I let my guard down, they leave.
I want to believe that there is someone that will stay.
but I have to accept that there may never be.
it's that delicate balance between faith and reality.
it's the blurred line between want and need.

it's the distance between who I was, who I am, and who I will be.

you don't get it

2011-05-16T12:53:00.000-04:00

I still see small reminders of my mother. the bumble bees that approached us the last time I was at my sister's; the bumble bee print a fellow classmate made in our intaglio class; the sunflower poster in the break room at work; a face in a crowd; someone's hair; a smile; a way of walking. I wear her shoes and I hope that people comment and I hope that they don't. I told Fig that it was a cruel joke she played, giving me that yodeling pickle when she visited. now I'll have to keep it forever because it was the last thing she ever gave me. I know she wouldn't see it that way. But I can't get rid of it.
I don't like having extraneous things, but I wish I'd at least had the chance to go through her stuff and take some reminders of my childhood with her. It hurts that I haven't been given that opportunity because of the man she chose to marry. but maybe he's a scapegoat. Maybe the real criminal here is my malaise.

you used to look back at me, now you don't look back at all

2011-05-12T19:16:00.003-04:00

When you loved me, I was able to ignore all the other shit in my life because I knew that, eventually, I would get to see you again. but it wasn’t a mutual feeling. To me, you were an escape. To you, I was a cage. and every weekend I would trap you and disrupt you and take you away from your weight-lifting, book-reading, and biking. Every weekend you patiently waited for the week to return, so you could be alone again.
When you left me, it just shattered the rest of my life a little more solidly. It took the loss of my mom and gave it a mirror. I got lost in all the reflections of grief. I couldn’t focus on what I was seeing. but I couldn’t stop looking. you kept coming in and out of my life whenever I reached out for you, but you only stayed long enough for me to ask you to come back. Then you left again.
It’s been six months since the last time we talked. That’s longer than we were even together. It’s been ten months since you told me you wouldn’t be coming to my mom’s memorial service with me, because you felt like we should break up. you told me that you didn’t feel giddy or excited about me. I was devastated. you wrote me an email. I called you.
I don’t want to settle for someone else. I don’t know how to stop wanting you. Your communication sucked and the way you handled emotion sucked and the way you stopped loving me the way I needed you to sucked. It sucked. The whole damn situation sucked. but you are forever tied up in my mother’s death and that makes it so much harder to let go of you. you were the last person that I loved that she met and I still want you back. I wrote you a letter to say that, but you never replied. So I haven’t tried again.
because silence is an answer, and if you wanted anything to do with me, I would have heard from you.
but I liked the way you did things, and that’s what I miss about you. I miss the way you would laugh when I’d get excited about something. I miss your steady gaze and closed-mouth smile. I miss your lips. I miss kissing you, you were so good at it, you were the best. I miss your light touch and how you’d stroke the spider web on my arm. I miss your freckles and the way they draped across your chest like a cascading necklace, or like constellations. like galaxies. I miss your intelligence and love of math and science. I miss our bike rides, and watching your hips as you pedaled; watching you move your foot in the toe-cage. I miss you so much, and it gnaws my chest like hunger. it eats at me and there is nothing I can do about it but move on. and I’m trying. I’m trying. but sometimes I get stuck.
every time I meet someone new, I have to go through this. I have to slowly deconstruct the memories of the previous people I have loved. I have to justify why I am where I am. I have to trace a path from there to here, so I can feel like I am making a good decision. I have to let you go. I know this. I have known this. and I have made progress. but every so often I have to bleed you out again. I have to attach the leech and let it suck out the stagnant blood that is you before it poisons the rest of me. and someone else always ends up hurt in this process.
try to keep it quiet. there is no one else like you. try to keep it down. these memories serve no purpose. try to let it go. you are gone.
you are gone, and I don’t need you, and no matter how much I miss you, it doesn’t change a thing.

2011-05-08T14:41:00.003-04:00

happy mother's day.
I got much of my crying out of the way on thursday.
so I guess that's something.

this was one of two days a year my mom could count on hearing from me. the other one was her birthday. I am certain that there were times in my life where I didn't call her on these days. I wasn't always a very good daughter. that's ok, though, because she wasn't always the best mom. but, as mom goes, she was at least attentive and made time for me.
at some point I withdrew from much of my family and stopped hearing from them. I frequently felt bad about myself for being a college drop-out. I felt like an inconvenience for being vegan. I didn't feel like I could be open or straight-forward with my family, so I avoided them instead.
after dru died, I got closer to my mom.
after my mom died, I got closer to my sister.

with each loss, we find some kind of gain. sure, there's balance. but that doesn't add up to a mother.

remember the reminder: things can get better. things can get worse.

2011-05-05T16:18:00.003-04:00

I can't remember how he put it, just that he said I had the ability to make anyone cry with my words. I don't know how true that is, but I know that the rawness of the explanation of my emotion can still make me cry, even three years later. maybe even ten years later.
there are times when I read myself and I am overwhelmed by the sadness I express, and the confusion, and how straight-forwardly lost I am. those questions that I asked, those questions that I lived, they never got answered. I just moved onto new ones. time came and took away the old ones. they weren't answered. they were buried.
I don't feel as intensely as I used to. and I don't want to. I am so much more cautious, even though I try to push that away. A part of me has been lost through grief and I don't think it can be recovered. I'm not sure if I'd even want to. All it ever did was get me in trouble. All it did was leave me crying in a shower. but it's part of what I was, and that is enough to mourn its loss.
there are times when it feels like much of my adult life has revolved around sadness. it is a safe place to be because you can only go up. optimism is terrifying because a fall is not just possible, it's inevitable. but wallowing in sadness is also a self-fulfilling prophecy. the longer you let yourself stay there, the more likely it is that you will never leave.

the horrible thing is that it's hardest to see how depression keeps you down when you're stuck firmly within it, and that is the time when you most badly need to know.

I am always sad. I will probably always be sad. but it isn't the only thing that I feel. I have felt intense love and happiness and desire. I have been proud and excited and screamingly joyous. to think that I will ever live a depression-free life is naive, and there will be times when it completely engulfs me, but that doesn't have to be daily.
there are a lot of people that have left me that I have spent a lot of time missing. lately I've realized, though, that I don't like those people very much. maybe it's the sour grapes phenomenon, or maybe they're just not worth it.

I could use words to make them cry. but I think you have to care about someone in order for the tears to come.
and if any of those people cared about me, they would still be around.

an interlude

2011-05-03T12:07:00.000-04:00

I like
hearing him
breathe.

I like the sharp intake of breath, I like the unconscious movement. I like watching men masturbate or have sex because they don't act concerned about how they look. you can tell when it's forced. you can tell when it's just for appearance.
in my dreams, I'm with women. they're all softness and posture. they want to please. in my fantasies, I'm a man, taking what I want, acting on instinct. I know reality doesn't match these stereotypes, and I'm fine with that. it's not how I would really want things. but in my head, there are no lost erections or strange sensations. so I can pare things down to their simple components and pretend that sex is easy.

a note

2011-04-30T22:51:00.000-04:00

I know that I have said this before, but I want to mention it again. I want to talk about how severely I was changed by ex-otter. I want to talk about how much my mother's death has changed me. not necessarily the act, but by all that has followed. and I think these two things, the reason they have had such an impact on me and the reason that I associate them with each other, is because I had to figure out how to be alone. I had to be alone with myself and it wasn't necessarily by my choice initially but it became that way.
my trust issues started a long time ago. I have learned that there is no such thing as a 100% trustworthy person. there is no one that exists that will not hurt me or do something that is entirely self-centered without thought of its impact on those close to them. including me.
so it's been a rough adulthood for me. I have loved and lost so many times. and even the good times weren't that great. it's been a lot of waiting and a lot of crying and a lot of depending on other people for my happiness. I don't know where I learned this. my therapist said I have a history of falling for emotionally unavailable men, and for people that are poor communicators. for people that don't let themselves feel. but I told her, I told her, I told her that this time it's someone that is actually working on his issues. but he lives over a thousand miles away.
so I will still be alone physically.
it's the emotional stuff that's always affected me the most.
I talk like I know what's happening. like I know how things will turn out. but there is no knowing, like there is no way to plan for love.
I'm tired now, but still with more to say.
I just don't know how to say it yet.

well, that took long enough

2011-04-30T22:32:00.001-04:00

that thing again where there are words stuck just beyond my range of comprehension. I can feel them pressing on me, aching to rip through my skin and pour out of my mouth or through my finger tips. I can feel them but am too elastic. they push hard, then ricochet back and get lodged in my throat. lodged in my brain. lodged, unable to be released.
and I am not sad.
I feel content with this thing that I cannot touch. I feel content in my distance and this frequent contemplation.
we are two opposites, we are attracted to each other's eccentricities. our similarities bind us but our differences keep us coming back. I like how excited he gets about me. I like how excited I get him. and I like that he follows me.
it always bothered me that the person I was dating had direct access to my head and heart via these journals I keep, but never used them. the people now that read them, they say that the things I write about are too personal for them to discuss with me. how can you read these thoughts and then not want to talk about them?

we meander. we dance around subjects. our methods of communication vary, and the level of disclosure differs between each one.
I worry that my romanticism and his inexperience will doom us. I worry about a lot of things. the spring is making my skin itch and my awareness prickle.

I started writing this entry on april 25. it's now april 30. I can't finish it and I'm not sure why. tomorrow is the first day of may. I wonder if that's supposed to mean anything.
I saw my therapist yesterday. it had been three weeks. I told her toward the end of the session that I haven't been taking my medication because I ran out. that I tried to be responsible but it didn't work out that way. that I wanted to see what would happen. it's not that I want to stay off meds, it's that right now I feel ok because of the spring and because of my current state of affairs. I see my psychiatrist on friday, the same day that Fig is showing up. I'm nervous, not so much about seeing him, but about transportation stuff. riding a bike is fine when you're solo, but it makes having visitors a little difficult.
I hadn't told anyone that I haven't been taking my medication. usually it's something I mention, at least here. I am not off them completely, I've just been taking them infrequently. trying to stretch them out. I kind of want to start over. winter was hard. winter was so fucking hard. and I resent so many people because of that.
and I resent that resentment.
this is new, this is old, this is ... some messy mix of the two. I feel young, I feel old, I just feel like I am where I am.
there are so many contradictions in my life, even though I work so hard to smooth them out. I want to be ok with the fact that I basically lead a straight romantic life, even though I am still similarly attracted to women. It feels like I'm cheating myself by primarily dating men, but I'm not seeking them out. it's just how things go. months ago I changed my dating profile on okcupid so that I was only looking for women. Von remains one of the only exes I have that I don't carry some kind of animosity for.
I don't know where I'm going with this. I guess I'm just confused and I don't want people to think that I'm straight, and I don't want to be ordinary. I don't want to feel like I'm letting people down. I don't want Von to feel like she was just a phase for me, because she wasn't. I am still as attracted to women as I have ever been. but situations present themselves, and I am not one to deny someone based solely on gender.
maybe I worry too much about what people think of me.
even when I have no idea what it is that they are thinking.

anti-reticent

2011-04-20T10:27:00.008-04:00

I am damaged.
yes, I know, everyone is in some way. but the thing that is hard for me is letting go of the bandages and seeing how much I've healed. there's still a barrier between me and, well, everyone else. when I find someone that I think I can trust, that I think wouldn't hurt me, I begin to doubt myself.
the "what if"s start creeping into my brain. they dig holes in my reality and what I feel and I stop believing that good things can happen to me. I feel myself shrinking beneath my skin. I have to push myself not to retreat entirely. being vulnerable is terrifying.
my biggest anxiety has always been feeling like I'm making the wrong choice and people will think that I'm stupid. despite everything in my life, despite all that I have done and all that I have been through, I am still terribly concerned with how people view my choices. I don't care too much what they think about my appearance, but I care what they think about my decisions. I'm not even sure who "they" are. some nameless mass of people that are always lurking, waiting to disapprove? I don't know. I think they're just my doubt. they don't really exist.
one of my favorite bands has this song whose lyrics I occasionally quote to myself: "there are only two real extremes in any given situation: love and death." sometimes thinking that helps. sometimes it just bums me out.
but I guess what I'm getting at here is that I'm scared. I'm scared I'll fuck up, or that I'll get fucked up, or any of a number of things. I know I need to let go of the fear but sometimes it's easier to hold onto it than it is to feel nothing. right now I have an overload of emotions and when that happens, it turns into white noise and leaves me feeling empty.
try to deal with these things one at a time. try to deal with the stress of school, and my ever-changing living situation, and then some more stress of school from the incompletes I still have, and trying to keep up with my friends, and trying to keep up with my family, and just the things that I feel like other people are able to deal with without much thought at all. I talked to Bones the other day and she said that she still rewards herself for the small victories. the things that other people take for granted. when I complete an assignment ahead of time, that's a small victory. when I get to work early, that's a small victory. when I make a phone call to my psychiatrist, that's a small victory. when I remember to write back to someone, that's a small victory.
things aren't as bad as they used to be, in my head.
talking to Fig at night makes me feel better. when I wake up in the morning, I am happier. during the day I think about him and, for the most part, I am content. it's not the physical distance that makes things difficult. the older I get, the less that matters. it's the not-knowing how things will be in person. just because we spent a pleasant, albeit awkward, couple of minutes talking in person a year ago, and have spent the past year emailing each other, doesn't guarantee success. what does, though? nothing. I hate having such a peculiar attraction to small things, sometimes. because they can be what break me.
it's so strange when the world feels right and wrong for the same reasons.

stay.

2011-04-19T09:10:00.003-04:00

this is not obsession. this is not regression. it's something like infatuation, but deeper. I spoke out loud to the dark just to see if the words sounded right. I'm still not sure.
this is not falling, or flailing; it's more like opening. and I can't determine the cause of the change of my mood. if it's him, or the weather, or some combination of that and other things.
what we wanted places itself squarely on our chest once we've given up hope of finding it, right?
there is a weight there, now, that I do not want to lift.
a weight and a fullness that I'd missed.

call it like I see it, call it like it is, just call

2011-04-17T14:09:00.005-04:00

there were truths that I heard that touched me to my core. to the part of me that no one has been able to worm their way into for a long time. and he didn't make it in, he just said things that I could feel inside my chest.
he told me that I hide myself in the shadows so that people won't notice. that part didn't feel as true as everything else. I don't hide. I just don't put myself in the light like I used to.
he told me things I already know. that I'm sensitive and I feel other people. that I care, that I care deeply. as he was talking, as he was reading me, as we drove in his truck to the ocean to sit by the lighthouse and eat vegan brownies, I felt a lightness in my chest that I haven't felt in months. maybe years? I felt that part of me glow and it was strange for someone to see through me so completely. and I still kept my distance. because even with that eerie insight, I still expected him to want something more from me.
I feel cold, and closed, and I try to keep most people distant because I know eventually they will leave me. I wonder at the barriers I have constructed and I wonder how it is that I used to let myself be so vulnerable. I miss clinging onto someone in the night and sobbing against them. I miss opening myself and letting the light pour out. I miss telling the entirety of the truth.
I remember this man, this same man that described me to myself, told me after ex-otter left me that I would soon find someone to love me. but I didn't. what he told me then didn't feel true, just like some of what he said this weekend wasn't true either. but the parts that were left me speechless and close to tears. the truth burns.
it chipped away a layer I've been trying to hide from myself. it chipped away a part of me that had been making it more difficult to feel. little bits of me have withered away over the years, and they can never grow back. the last time I saw her, my therapist told me that in the years I've been with her, the greatest change in me came after ex-otter left me. I died. but people still expected me to be the person that I was. but how could I go back to that? and how can I go back to the friendships I had that left me empty after my mom died? I can't. I am too immersed in my past, even though I try to escape it. I'm getting better, I can feel it, but there's also something beautiful about being broken. there's something magical in trying to reconstruct yourself when you're missing pieces.
the spring is here. I feel as though I could blossom any day now. my thin stalk bends toward the sun. I am less cold. warmth touches me and my skin prickles in goosebumps. and I feel touched inside, too. I am frightened of distance, but feel its meaningless. I am frightened of distance, but know it isn't permanent. I can see through someone, too, you see.
and someday, they'll see through me.

look.

2011-04-13T13:11:00.005-04:00

another dream about shiny. I'll have to stop writing about them, because I think bringing attention to it only makes them multiply. last night I dreamed that I was living in the house where I grew up (or visiting? hard to say) and he came by on a tractor with a power-washer, there to blast the dirt off cars by order of the government. his hair was a washed-out blue (ie grey or green) on the tips, and he was growing a beard-no-mustache. I was shocked. "I thought you hated facial hair!" he shrugged. he offered no excuse. he told me that he'd moved back to california for a while because he'd become so poor. he'd since returned to boston, but lived in a different apartment than before. he was surprised that I didn't know. "who would have told me?" I asked. his roommates and I make it a point not to mention his name.
while he was outside, I started thinking about the letter I wrote him. maybe he never got it, since he had moved a few times. maybe he still loved me. he'd changed his appearance, maybe the rest of him was changing too.
so I asked him if he got my letter. he had. crash crash went my hopes again. and I can't remember how the dream ended, or what else happened, just that he had changed his appearance but not the way he felt about me. but he seemed touched by me but still left. and in my dream, I missed him.
I don't miss him that much when I'm awake anymore. I remember how hard it was to get him to talk about anything. I remember how dispassionate he seemed about most things. and the most telling thing, I can't forget his silence. his silence that has stretched now for four months. in my dream it had been much longer. my therapist taught me to take silence as an answer. I have been steadily killing my persistence. it's hard. but I'm doing it.
these dreams are the last-ditch effort of my psyche to hold onto something that used to comfort me. this happens. it has happened before. it will happen again. it happens more strongly when I start to get close to someone new. maybe it's my brain trying to remind me of the last person that hurt me? I don't know.
I have said it so many times... someday I'll find a love that doesn't hurt.

simplicity without remorse

2011-04-10T01:17:00.003-04:00

my ipod had it out for me tonight while I was painting. it kept playing sexy song after sexy song while I tried to concentrate on whether the color on my masonite was neutral enough or not. I found myself squirming on my stool, paintbrush in one hand, while the music creeped over my body. I cursed it and my lack of a sex partner. I cursed it and the combination of nice weather and the hormonal influx that PMS brings.
it's been a while since Spring felt like anything to me. well, it's been a while that I can remember. maybe it was only a year ago. but I wear blinders when I'm with someone, and this time last year I was with shiny. the year before that I was desperately heart-broken. the year before that? ex-otter. and on and on, back to when I was 20. ten years since the last time Spring felt worthwhile.
or at least that I can remember.
maybe I wrote about it. I don't feel like checking. that's a lot to climb through, and it's not that important.
I just want to be excited about things again. a new friend told me that I'd lost my enthusiasm, that he could tell it used to be there. he could hear it in my laugh. the word I would use was "passion," but his phrasing works too. a lot has happened to squeeze it out of me. it gets to the point that life feels grey and the bursts of color amaze me. but I've stopped looking for the color. I let it find me now. I used to make my own color, I think. even though I've always been sad.
it used to be a different kind of sad.
things change, people change, people leave, people die, nothing stays the same.
the Spring is coming, and I wish it could always be that way. that sense of standing on the edge of hope. just a nudge could send me careening either way. but over all, things have been improving. I'm trying. and I'm trying not to be quite so hard on myself. I'm working against a lifetime of conditioning, though.
things help. like family, and friends, and my cat. seriously. I love it when she sighs. it makes my chest feel like it's going to explode, but in the best of ways. maybe someday I'll get to feel that for a person that can return the sentiment.
how many times have I found peace in watching someone breathe?
at least once for every person I have loved.

I'm essentially a lazy person

2011-04-09T15:06:00.006-04:00

last night I dreamed my sister died in a car crash. but later on, I realized it was just a dream (a dream in a dream, how poetic). maybe that's my wish for my mom's death.
I remember, after ex-otter left me, I spent months in a daze. I kept thinking I would wake up and it would be october again, and dru would be alive, and ex-otter and I would still be together. nothing felt real. I remember a classmate, in the last week of school, finally convincing me to get high with her, and I spent most of the time crying because I missed ex-otter. she and I haven't talked since. that's probably just coincidence.

last night I dreamed that my teeth were falling out. but they weren't rotten, or merely loose. they were my baby teeth, and making way for new, stronger teeth. so maybe that's what I'm doing too. but one of the teeth got stuck on some skin in my mouth, and it wouldn't come out cleanly. so there's always a catch. it's never entirely easy. some of the teeth crumbled, but I still got most of the pieces out. what I couldn't remove, the new teeth would push out.
maybe I dreamed about that because I was talking about dentistry with a friend, or maybe it's because I've been thinking about getting older. maybe it's because I've been stressed (when am I not?), and I'm about to make some changes in my life. maybe it's because I've gained some weight (no more than in the past) and now I'm a little more self-conscious about my appearance. Maybe it's all of these things. but in my dreams, the teeth coming out is almost always a relief. so that is something.

last night I dreamed that I hung out with the person that's supposed to be moving in. I dreamed that he was skeevy and I didn't trust him. I dreamed of an apartment with two floors, and a boyfriend who let people walk all over him, and a group of people who decided to have a party in our apartment. I dreamt I was angry and felt unsafe and just wanted people to leave. there was somewhere I wanted to go. I didn't want these strangers in my house to steal my stuff. I didn't want them there at all.
So what does that mean?

last night, so many dreams. family and friends and weirdness and the crushingly mundane. school. riding a donkey. getting lost. missing class. pulling teeth. finding out a crush is married. how to reconcile? I can't be attracted to the attached.

When I was dreaming of my teeth, I asked my mom if I shouldn't have lost my baby teeth a long time ago. she shows up like that. on the periphery. like she was to me in the years before she died. there to answer my questions. there when I called.

I wish I'd treated her differently. I wish I'd touched her more. I wish I'd asked better questions. I've never really known how to act around people. I guess because it always felt like acting.
last night, all those dreams. and when I wake up, I'm still in the same place where I fell asleep.
mostly I wish I could be someone else's dream.
it would be so much less work than being the dreamer.

disjointed

2011-04-05T08:51:00.003-04:00

I have been writing unpublished posts lately.
last night: dreamed about shiny telling me he wants to get back together. dreamed he wrote me a letter and explained it. dreamed he came over and he was different than he used to be. he was happy. he wanted to be with me. he wanted. I guess that's the kind of dream I get, so vivid and aching, for me just repressing all my thoughts of him lately.
dreams of a desired reconciliation? and I dreamed I was in a car with ex-otter and deafgirl and I mouthed the words "I hate you" to her. she made a shocked face and when she turned around to talk to me, I hunched down in my seat and said I didn't want to talk. no one else had seen the shapes my lips made. no one else saw what she did.
dreams of getting something back, but improved. that's never happened for me and I don't think it will now. every time I find myself thinking of shiny, I drown the thought. so it surfaced when I couldn't push it down anymore. I wondered if I'd hear from him or ex-otter on my birthday. I didn't. but my brother wrote.
can't remember the last time he did that. he didn't reply to my response, but at least he wrote to me at all.
I don't know how to kill hope. I don't know why I feel like shit today, or why I'm missing spanish class again. I don't know why it's been so hard for me to do anything. yesterday I felt fantastic and I thought, "why not just feel like this every day?" because I can't maintain that high. because people don't call me or text me every day. because 50+ people don't write to me every day to say they are glad I'm alive. because that isn't normal. it isn't normal for anyone. and I forgot to take my medication all weekend, but I felt fantastic. so today I crashed.
what do I need? more sleep. friends around here that are dependable, creative, fun, and outgoing. more time to relax. better focus. something to look forward to.

ugh.
I need a better distraction.

noticing as I pass on by

2011-04-03T11:16:00.004-04:00

burnt you in effigy. in five inch, papier mache, marker-decorated effigy.
the past few weeks I have been trying to break myself of the thinking-about-shiny habit. last night was a good culmination of that. I was surrounded by people that I love and that love me, and I burnt up his memory.
symbolism has always been important to me. two years ago, I burnt my own huge effigy so that I could try to move on from ex-otter. this year it was about getting over shiny, whom I have not heard from since december.
let's learn from this. let's try. let's be bigger than our own lives.
it's so easy to forget that suffering is suffering, no matter the source. no matter the size.
I turn 30 tomorrow.
every landmark that I pass, I wish my mom was here to see it.
I hope I never burn her memory from my brain.

more moping

2011-03-30T13:02:00.003-04:00

I think that this is what I would like, in my romantic brain, though I am unlikely to receive it:

someone who likes the way I move
someone who thinks my laugh is great
someone who takes pleasure in my presence
someone that loves me for my idiosyncrasies rather than in spite of them
someone who notices the mole on my cheek
someone who adores small things
someone who wants to know me. all of me
someone who reads these entries
someone who keeps in touch with me
someone who wants to know how my day was
someone who wants to make it better
someone who lets me help
someone to be open and honest
someone that loves my cat
someone that has lost someone, too
someone that wants to hold me
someone that misses me sincerely
someone that feels
someone that talks.

I used to think these things were obvious until I started meeting people that didn't do them. our own experiences and needs are rarely apparent to other people. this surprises me. because I can tell when someone wants me to leave them alone. so I cease my interaction. and I can tell when someone wants more from me. that's when I tend to pull away. I am distance.
I have crushes on people and I don't pursue them.
there's just no point anymore. everyone is disappointing.

all this, all the time

2011-03-28T11:08:00.004-04:00

when shiny and I were first together, I spent a lot of time online so that I could talk to him. constantly. I neglected the real world for the sake of being around him. since I couldn't do it in person, due to the distance, I did it online. it wasn't healthy. I knew it wasn't. but I liked feeling desired and I liked that someone that I thought was so amazing thought I was pretty awesome, too. in time, he faded, and stopped being so responsive. my passion didn't wane, but his did.
and I have to remind myself that people change.
he is not the person he was a year ago.
neither am I.

to think about the way things were is self-defeating. to think about how he used to be is self-defeating. to think about him is self-defeating. even to write these entries is self-defeating. it just reminds me of a past I thought would be my future, but died. it died.
and I make myself sad. and I make myself remember things I'd be better off forgetting. I might hold onto these feelings just so I feel something. but maybe being empty is better. it's more honest. what I'm doing now is like eating when you're not hungry. it's a habit. my sadness is habit.
I want the spring to come.
I want to push these memories from me. they serve no purpose but to hold me back. hold me back from what? from moving on. moving on to what? I don't know. a lack of attachment would be nice.

lacking motivation

2011-03-27T21:38:00.004-04:00

curled up inside myself. found chat logs from over a year ago, when shiny and I were first falling all over each other. and I wonder what happened to him. and I wonder why it still hurts so goddamn much.
it doesn't hurt, it aches. it's a fresh scar that throbs when the rain comes. it's too many memories that play back over and over at random times. I still look for any sign of him. there is none. there is no one.
I hold onto these feelings because I don't feel much anymore. he was the last thing I felt passionate about. I make masks and art as a way to distract myself. I have a show coming up in less than a week. I'm going to be 30 a week from tomorrow. the age isn't a big deal. it's just another year gone by.
when I used to lay in bed at night, I would think about him. and before then, I would think about Pants. before then, ex-otter. before that, von. buttercup. ex-husband. various other partners. there's always been someone. I'm trying to clear out my head but when I get rid of those desires, it feels like there's nothing left. I don't know what to think about. tasks. stresses. school. throughout my life, who I love has always been the most important thing to me. it sounds fucked up, but what can I say? I'm a romantic.
my passion has always been people. it seems strange that I keep myself so separate from them now.
not that strange, actually. I realized that the bulk of the important people in my life that I have lost happened in the grieving period after ex-otter left me. I fucked up a lot and people walked. troy would say that means they weren't good friends. troy over-simplifies. they were some of the best friends. but things were strained anyway, and my inability to see beyond my own grief just exacerbated things.
I want reasons. I want logic. I believe there are reasons. I need that kind of sanity.
I don't know how much I really miss shiny. he was very sweet and open at first, then closed up. I know that I miss feeling adored and wanted and special. I really miss feeling special. I miss being in love. I miss passion. but these losses breed desperation and that is terrifying to people. I still have stupidly rigid standards, luckily. otherwise I'd be a much worse mess.
I know I should delete the chat logs. otherwise I'll just keep reading through them, and they're all over a year old, and I'm not that person anymore, and neither is he. I want to stop falling for emotionally unavailable men who aren't self-aware and don't share and won't ask for things.
and women still scare me. go figure.
there is more to me than who I love. I just feel so alone. I know that I'm not, that there are people who care, etc etc, but I don't have anyone to talk to about this stuff. no one that won't try to give me advice. I am doing what I can. it's just not enough.

oh sure, but maybe they could tell me

2011-03-24T01:42:00.002-04:00

I can't sleep. so I figure it's a combination of hunger, the chocolate I ate, the nap I had earlier, and maybe the amount of time I spent staring at a screen this evening.
I can't sleep, so I keep thinking about how I've been asking troy to come over to take care of the cat, since he moved out before the new roommate could move in. no reason for it. not that I can see. other than the aforementioned chick.
can't sleep so my mind wanders to shiny. wonder how he's doing. but not enough to call, or ask our mutual contacts. not enough to actually want to know. thinking about the silence my therapist told me could be an answer. thinking about how I hate passive aggressiveness. even more than I hate passiveness.
can't sleep so I'll probably miss spanish class in the morning. couldn't sleep last night either, thanks to cramps and the neurosis my cat now possesses. I don't blame her.
can't sleep so I started thinking about the shit I need to do. call my psychiatrist, call my doctor, call the gas and electric company, make all these calls I find impossible to make. thinking about the painting I need to work on, and the paper I need to write, and the book I need to read. trying to figure out when I'll have time for it.
can't sleep so I was considering how I could get a medical marijuana card. not so I can smoke, but so I can cook and have little treats that help calm me down. you know, help me sleep.
can't sleep so I wonder how people are doing. wonder where they are. wonder why I don't hear from them.
can't sleep. I miss everyone.
can't sleep. I wonder if sleep can't me.
I wonder if people miss me.

care about me

2011-03-22T23:29:00.004-04:00

since troy moved out, my cat won't leave my side. This is unfortunate, since I'm not home very much and when I am home, I don't necessarily want a cat attached to me thanks to the homework I'm probably doing.
troy and I have texted a little, but he's really severely distanced himself from me. this isn't much of a problem, honestly, except that I had fun hanging around him and I thought we would continue to hang out. oh well.
I am still waiting to feel something other than the usual loneliness. having him around really helped me out for a while. his way of approaching things was sometimes a little brash for me (pot, kettle, black, what?) and we are both defensive people so I think some situations ended up in places they need not have gone. it's easy for me to talk to him about things that don't have anything to do with him. you know, like missing my mom. but if it touched on him at all, it was very difficult to bring up.
I am in between things right now. I am essentially living alone, since the new roommate isn't moving in until april 1 and the other one is only home twice a week. I wish troy would just come over and hang out, just to keep my cat company. just to have someone to come home to and hug.
been wondering lately why I miss shiny. kind of a nice thing to wonder.
trying not to be bitter. it's difficult.
a lot of school things stress me out right now. but it all feels so transitory. it's hard to get too upset about it all.
after all, nothing lasts.
realized today that I have been the only constant in my cat's life for the past two years. and even I've disappeared for weeks at a time. poor kitty. but I always come back.
I miss having that sense of security.
I miss mutual love.

this is probably self-loathing

2011-03-20T21:23:00.005-04:00

lonely. alone. the words have become synonymous to me, though they weren't always. back to being alone again in my apartment. roommate moved out yesterday. guess I have to name him now. let's call him troy. good ole troy-boy.
he chose yesterday to move out because chick came to see me. last time chick and I hung out was new year's, when troy overheard us having sex. sex is a problem for me, I guess. it always has been. it's how I've gauged my self-esteem. it's stupid. I don't really do that anymore. but that's not what things were like for chick and I, nor for troy and I. so let's change that to past tense. sex is how I used to gauge my self-esteem. now I think I do it for comfort and to get out of my head for a couple minutes. it's still a little self-destructive for me. but is it as bad as drinking? is it as bad as cutting? is it as bad as sleep-deprivation? I don't think so. at least I know the people that I sleep with. it isn't strangers and one-night-stands. I've only been sleeping with friends. and with troy, it was always sober.
so troy moved out yesterday. no warning. I was relieved, actually. I feel less relieved right now, because I'm alone, and my other roommate (you know, the one I've probably never mentioned) isn't here. she's rarely here. I saw her for about 30 seconds today. when she's home, she's in her room. I hate it. if I had someone else to take her place, I'd ask her to move out. she's nice, but I hate being left alone. I hate it. I hate being left behind. I hate feeling like nothing.
but really, who likes that?
maybe not everyone has the opportunity to know how that feels. maybe people put themselves in those positions. maybe that's what I've done. I don't know. my sister thinks I think too much. I think I'm alone too much. but I'm not willing to do enough about it. I just expect someone to swoop in and save me. there is no one to save me. I know.
I still miss shiny.
I don't really miss my roommate. I just miss having someone around. and I feel really awful for my cat. she loved troy. he was home a lot, and he played with her, and she cuddled with him at night. she was so content. she was so happy. she stopped crying. she stopped being neurotic. now what?
I hate how much I can relate to that. you get used to someone, you think they're staying, and then they're just gone with a shitty explanation. and how can you explain to a cat, anyway? how can you say, "it isn't you, it's me?" so that she'll understand?
I don't know. I told her again that I would never leave her. I told her again that I will always return. I hope that I'm not lying.
my old roommate, the one that bought Luca with me, hasn't been back to see Luca once. Hasn't written. hasn't called. nothing.
I hate this horrible, stupid world. I hate how heartless people are. and I hate that I let them be that way. I hate that I let myself be heartless too.
I hate that I keep expecting things to change without my actually doing anything to change them.
I stress myself out. I wish I could just relax. I'd get more done that way.

2011-03-17T12:16:00.002-04:00

I've been worried about my lungs.
the pneumonia was back in october and I still don't feel completely recovered. it's been five months. I developed asthma at some point. the wheezing when I ride my bike is not only embarrassing, but it makes my heart's job a lot harder, too. I tire easily. I'm not sure what to do.
even before the pneumonia, my lungs weren't functioning optimally. I don't have asthma attacks, but it's definitely not easy to breathe deeply. I don't know what it means.
my heart hurts sometimes. is that related?
my well-oiled machine is lacking parts. my well-oiled machine is running dry.
I want something to feel hopeful about.
I want to function fully.

not anything

2011-03-14T11:15:00.004-04:00

shiny used to lick my wrist. I loved to watch his tongue press against my skin as much as I liked the feeling of it. my roommate rolls his Rs at me because I become transfixed by the fluttering of his tongue behind his teeth. he looks at me with heavy-lidded eyes to gauge my reaction. it is hard for me to not push him back against the couch and beg him not to leave.
but the truth is that I want him to leave. what we do, what we are doing, has only ever been temporary. and he teases me with the mention of love but I do not give in. I deny his jokes. I know the power words have. I do not want to go down that path. I'm not sure what I would do if he told me that he loved me. he's not the type to say it first, luckily.
we were lounging in the living room yesterday. he played with the cat. I worked on a paper. I called him by shiny's name. "you think about him a lot, huh," he said to me. "I guess I do."
still haven't heard from shiny. probably won't. can't kill the hope, though. not sure why it stays. I'm illogical. everyone is illogical. nothing can be predicted. say "I knew this would happen," but you didn't. if you knew, you would not have needed to do it.
I've been sad and lonely and looking for something to hold onto. I freaked out badly yesterday and tore through the cabinets in my bookshelf, desperate to find something with my mom's handwriting on it. handwriting has always been important to me. I found the card from her memorial service and the envelope with the lock of her hair in it. I was sobbing when my roommate came in and put his hands on my shoulders. I was inconsolable.

I found a birthday card she sent me several years ago. I want to get "mom" tattooed on me in her handwriting, under an elephant. I like getting other people's handwriting tattooed on me. at this point I have von and ex-otter's handwriting. I have some of buttercup's ready. I would like shiny's and ex-husband's too. I don't even know what shiny's handwriting looks like. that's bothered me for a long time now.
I left the card open on my bedroom floor. there are things that she left behind when she visited that I've been unable to get rid of. it took me months to move the book she left in the living room.
can't let go.
can't get over anything.

who's listening?

2011-03-12T01:17:00.004-05:00

two guys today that made my heart almost beat. one at whole foods. he was ringing up my food. the other one at the bike rack. he had a bike and was singing to himself. not my type, so to speak, but maybe the other guy was.
and I found myself thinking, "why let yourself get worked up over a guy? it's women you should be pursuing, not these men that will only misunderstand you and break your heart." and besides, in this town people don't make the first move with me. I have to do all the work.
so fucking frustrating.
haven't heard from shiny. oh well. big surprise there. I guess it's time I let go of that. it's hard, though, since he was with me when my mom died. since he held me at 2am when I was sobbing over her. since he was so many thing I wanted.
hard to be alone. hard to be here, alone. another friday night and I stayed at home. I could have gone out. I could have. but I didn't. so sick of people. so sick of not being around people.
tired. just tired. mostly of everything.
I need hope to come back to me. I need it to come back and stay.

I miss things

2011-03-11T21:59:00.003-05:00

a little more bitter, a little more sweet. add lemon. add maple syrup. whiskey and tea. mix it. drink it. but it doesn't fucking matter.
I've needed so badly to get out of my head. so badly. and I haven't been able to figure out why the art doesn't work any more. then tonight I realized that it's because I lost my passion. all my life it is what has sustained me. now it's gone and without it I have nothing.
not have nothing. am nothing. I don't know who I am now.
haven't known for a while.
don't know what to say anymore. the words were all there just a minute ago.
too much sweetness. too much. the whiskey helps fog me, but it doesn't take away the melancholy. the loneliness causes that.
drinking doesn't take that away.
but if I drink enough, I don't care.
usually I keep myself from getting to this position because I know it will be bad for me the next day or so.
look, I've been drinking. I'm sad. not as sad or despondent as I've been in the past, but still there. sad. I miss people but I don't miss myself too much. I just miss the passion I used to have. but isn't this where I wanted to be, anyway?
didn't I want to be more consistent?

telling myself what I already know, but now you know it too

2011-03-07T10:36:00.006-05:00

last night I invited my roommate to share my bed with me. it wasn't for sex, it was for comfort. he held me and when I sighed and started to attempt to control my breathing, he asked what was wrong. "I miss my mom," I replied, and realized I was crying.
It still feels dumb that I cry because I miss her. that I am nearly 30, and I cry over my dead mom. it feels dumb that I have so much trouble accepting that she is gone. my birthday's in a few weeks and it's going to be the first time I haven't heard from her on that day. part of me is numb. part of me is screaming.
I can't get outside of myself to see this from another perspective. I can't look outside of me to say, "it's ok that you are sad. that is expected. it's not dumb. death hurts. permanence is hard to wrap your head around. loss is devastating." I always expect myself to accept things immediately, despite the fact that I have never done that.
like this shit with shiny.
every time I hear his name, it feels like a tiny piece of me withers and dies. every time I say his name, I am emptied a little more. maybe I need to talk about him to someone that can listen, instead of just typing here. but people always want to give me advice. I don't want advice. I just want someone to listen and empathize. to say, "that sounds hard," not "you'll be fine." because you don't know that. you don't know that I'll be fine.
when my mom was in the hospital, I said to her, "you know that you'll be fine, right?" and she nodded. nodded because the tube going down her throat didn't let her talk. well, she wasn't fine. she died.
she died, and then shiny left me, and then I got poison ivy, and my step-dad doesn't like me, and my friends scattered, and I got pneumonia, and I had to go to the hospital, and I missed school, and shiny led me on, and the year ended. I let it take some of my sorrow with it. I let it take some of my self-pity and self-loathing. but it couldn't erase all of it.
it takes me a long time to process these things. my sister once told me that I shut myself off. it's true. I can't handle it all at once, so I let it out a little at a time. it took me four years to process my dad kicking me out of the house. it took me five years to get over California. I don't know how not to put things away into boxes. I don't know how my sister deals with the loss of my mom. through her kids, I think. it's different when you have people depending on you. I have my cat. she helps a little. but she didn't know my mom. and she can't commiserate.
I try to throw myself into self-realization but it can only take me so far. looking in the mirror doesn't change things, it just makes you aware of your appearance.
of course, admitting there's a problem is the first step.
I have made admission into an art form.

passengers in training

2011-03-06T14:36:00.004-05:00

Boston yesterday. lunch with one of shiny's roommates. hung out with puppy. went to the museum of science. and I missed shiny. went to the planetarium and fell asleep thinking about how once upon a time it would have been with his hand in mine, or my head on his shoulder. I missed his bigness, and his quiet, and his smile, and his warmth. I missed his presence.
on friday I went to see my therapist. "I sent a letter to shiny." she was surprised. when I tried to explain, I told her I felt foolish for wanting him back. I told her that I was trying to remember the things I didn't like about him.
"how about his communication?" she asked.
I thought that was something that could be worked on. I thought I had time. just like I thought I had time with ex-otter. I thought we had the rest of our lives to work out our problems. but that wasn't the case.
so many people I have lost. so many people gone. and I am so resentful for the absence. I am so angry.
I told my therapist that, too. that there are people that I just can't forgive for not being there for me when my mom died. I can't let go of the sense of abandonment. and I feel guilty because I know I have been unavailable when people needed me. so maybe I deserve this. maybe I should be alone. why would I have good friends when I myself am not a good friend?
see, there's that selfish thing again.
the thing about being alone is that, sure, you don't get hurt by people. but things hurt a lot more when there aren't people around to support you. so my therapist told me to think about who of my friends I would like to get close to again. To whom do I want to express my disappointment? I don't know. I can't let it go. I can't let anything go.
I tried to tell joy, once, how difficult it was for me that she tried to convince me that my mom wouldn't die. I have tried to tell people how their blind optimism makes me angry, angry, angry. how believing that things will be ok just doesn't work, because I have lived that lie. my mom didn't get better. shiny hasn't come back. my relationship with my dad is still ghostly and my brother is still absent.
I write here because I have so few people I can talk to about these things. maybe no one at all. the times when I write the least are the times when I have someone to talk to. the times when I write the least are when I'm happy or when I can't feel at all.
I am not as despondent as I was at the end of 2010, but I can feel that something in me given up. given up on people, on life, on myself. I still act like the same person, to some extent, but I wonder what I'm doing as I'm doing it. Why am I laughing? I don't really feel joy. Why am I talking? I have nothing to say.
mostly I think I'd rather sit alone in silence then be with someone and have to pretend I care.
lately I've wanted to get fucked up. then I remember that the thing I used to do to keep that feeling at bay was art. I used to make those masks. I just don't have time anymore. I don't have time, and that hurts too.

melodrama without the --

2011-03-04T11:48:00.005-05:00

against my better judgment, I sent the letter. I think I know what I hope it accomplishes. I think I want him back.
so to temper myself against disappointment, I have started thinking again of all the things I didn't like about him. the physical and emotional attributes. and this is what I mean when I say I'm stuck between letting go and hanging on. I don't know why I give him so much power over me. power he doesn't want or utilize.
sometimes I feel so young. (like the way I let this all affect me. like the way I write letters to him. like the way I write about all of this at all.)
sometimes I feel so old. (like the way I feel when I think about how much I miss my mom. it feels like my skin is hanging off my skull, like my face is sagging, like everything aches all at once. I can feel everything pressing in on me and the weight is like being hundreds of feet underwater. the weight is like walking against the wind. the weight is like laying down in the shower and wanting to never stand up again. there is timelessness at the same time as feeling the inevitable crush of age.)

and sometimes, thankfully, I don't feel anything at all.
my passion has all been bled away by living.
it's so hard to miss something that only ever caused you pain. that is a thing for younger, less lived-in people to do.
I am not old by years. oh no. I will be thirty a month from today. that is barely any time at all. I have not lived as much as some people, but certainly more than others. and I have felt more than some will in a lifetime. and it has made me tired, and cold, and it has killed parts of me, and it has made me entirely the person that I am today.
sometimes I am thankful for that.
other times I wish I could have been more evenly tempered those years ago when I was screaming out my passion.
it's too late. all I have to work with now is what is left. and I still wish for pills to take the feeling away. I still wish to be numb. just to get through the next few years. until I can move away and start everything all over again.
I cannot stand the new england life.
it only furthers the death of who I used to be.

2011-03-03T19:55:00.001-05:00

when I think about you, it hurts like a dream.
like a dream does when I first wake up.

letter in limbo

2011-02-27T23:50:00.002-05:00

caught hard between letting go and hanging on. type-type-typed a letter to shiny but I haven't mailed it yet. it's all stamped and addressed and ready to go. it's in my bag, with my bills and my rent. it's waiting for me to drop it in the slot. I don't know if I'll do it.
it says "I love you and I want you." it accuses and soothes and bounces from here to there. it infers and asks. it wants to know why why why I wasn't enough.
I hate that I even want to know.
It says "because someone else fell in love with me and I couldn't love him back the same way, I understand better what happened with you and me." paraphrased. that this gives me hope in some ways.
other parts of me know that this is pointless. know that nothing will come of it. but I can't help but hope for more than that.
if I send the letter.
in the mean time, I've taken males off my menu.
of course, the past three times I've done that, I've ended up dating men.

ha. ha. ha.

I love you but I've got to leave

2011-02-25T14:48:00.005-05:00

had a dream about my mom last night. she was tall, young, slender, and calm. she didn't look like my mom all the time but I knew it was her. we were talking on the phone at first and we were in the country where she raised me. I walked along the road and asked her if she wanted me to play my trombone. she was so patient. finally we caught up to each other and walked to a park where she was going to be having a party for a friend. she needed to weed some gardens and set up some kind of picnic. but when we got to the gazebo she wanted to use, there was a homeless man there sleeping. as we approached, he woke up, farted, belched, and stretched. for some reason we were both very alarmed by him. stepping into the gazebo felt unsafe. In my dream, I knew I was being ridiculous. I knew I was being discriminatory. but this man ... it felt like he was going to hurt us.
so we stood on the edge of safety, there beside each other, and we watched this man and hoped he would leave. my mom was patient, like she rarely was in life. she was content to wait while I fretted.
I don't know why I woke up. it was an unresolved dream. but what dream isn't?
I made my way into the living room where my roommate was playing a spy video game. I pawed at him until he moved back and let me put my head in his lap. I cried, but he must not have noticed because he didn't say anything. I left tears on his shorts. I wanted to tell him about my mom. I wanted to tell him how initially it was so nice to have had this dream of her, to have spent such mundane time with her, to see her in a different light. but then the grief hit me. it took me over. it made me something else.
I couldn't talk to him like I used to, because he started wanting me more than I wanted him.
because he started touching me in a way I wanted to be touched, just not by him. and I remembered how it felt to be wanted. and I remembered how gentle someone can be. and it has felt so good over these lonely months to have someone to soften the pain. but he's leaving.
and he and I aren't right for each other. because I want something more from life that what I have right here. I crave stability and progress. he didn't finish the ninth grade. neither of his parents graduated high school. he is unemployed and the only job he wants is to be a bike messenger. he can't look ahead of himself outside of the immediate. today he asked me if I would be going to south county with him over the summer to hang out with him and his friends and go to the beach and ride bikes. "I'll have school," I said, and he was shocked. "I have school and work. I take classes in the summer." "but you'll still have the weekends, right?"
I feel so critical of him, but at the same time I do love him. I am beginning to understand what happened with shiny. I feel like this is how life works. it keeps giving me impossible shit to deal with, and then shows me the other side of the situation. like dru's death, and then scant years later, my mom's death. so that I would understand.
sometimes it's comforting to think there's a reason for things, but mostly it feels like there can't possibly be some thread that ties this all together. it is maddening to think it's all random, but it's just as maddening to believe it's all connected.
my roommate wanted to have sex with me, and I told him no. he asked why. so I said, " because I think it means more to you than it does to me." and it's not that it's because sex means less to me. it's because it's so clear that he is in love with me and I am not in love with him. I care about him. I love him as a friend. but I absolutely can't see myself being in a serious relationship with him. I told him that I would have been really into him four or five years ago. before I went to college. before I found purpose, basically. when I wasn't looking for forever. "we are on very different paths." and he agreed.
I want. I used to want with greater passion, but I suspect that time has tempered me. The most important thing I've learned over the past few years is how to be alone and be ok with spending time by myself. that's been the hardest thing. that and, of course, all the grieving.
but the understanding that has come to me lately about these different kinds of loves has further cemented in my brain that I shouldn't contact shiny. it would continue to not accomplish anything. and yet I still want to contact him, because I want us to be together. maybe I should just accept that I feel that way instead of trying to shame myself out of it. I still keep my eyes open to potential others, but he is my default desire. he is the one I continue to want, and the one that I hope someday comes around.
I wonder if I'll ever hear from him again.
I wonder if, at the end of everything, any of this will have felt worth all the pain.
lately I feel so much older.
another half-wasted day.

a sudden burst of verbosity

2011-02-23T22:15:00.004-05:00

I have been struggling over what to say if I were to write to shiny. I could copy/paste some entries from here. or I could just write and say, "I miss you." I have thought about letters I would type, or pictures I would draw, or any number of things. but I haven't done any of it.
the thing that stops me is realizing that I'm not sure what I hope to accomplish by writing to him. it just seems like some kind of stupid melodramatic ploy to talk to him again, and I can't see much good coming out of that. it would just end the same way it did before. we would start to talk again, and I would be simultaneously comforted and tortured, and then we would hang out, and I'd spend the whole time pretending that I didn't want to be with him all the while knowing that he felt nothing for me.
it just seems self-defeating. we haven't talked at all in over two months. why should I break that now?
I think I'm probably just lonely and he was the closest to my ideal person that I've ever met.
I know I'm not as damaged as I used to be.
but I still have so far to go.

I just want everything

2011-02-23T21:59:00.006-05:00

There isn't much to say that I haven't already said. yet I feel compelled to write.
each person that I get close to further refines my view of myself and what I need and want. I wish I could create some kind of amalgamation of these people. it would be nice to pick and choose. someone with foresight. someone with goals. someone with morals. someone who chews with their mouth shut. I wish that wasn't as important to me as it is.
someone who is actively interested in self-improvement. someone who can communicate without resorting to passive-aggressiveness. someone that is willing to teach and learn and listen and talk.
someone to comfort me and who will ask to be comforted.
someone where our fights feel productive rather than a peek at our inevitable break-up.
someone that is willing to accept me as I am, but is also willing to help me affect change in my life if I so desire. and lets me do the same for them.
man, woman, transperson ... I don't care.
someone with self-awareness.
someone who can see and who wants me to see and wants me to help them see.
I don't think this exists. I have to tell myself that. but I won't settle, either.
I've done that too many times already.

I lost my words

2011-02-22T23:55:00.005-05:00

I miss reciprocated romance.
I miss wanting someone as badly as they want me.
I miss not holding back.
I miss being in love versus just feeling love for someone.
I miss shiny.
I miss not missing shiny.
I guess I want all that fantasy shit, with being happily pursued then whispering secrets in the dark and making myself tired just so I can cram more hours in with the person of my desire. I miss feeling like I'm on an even level with someone. I miss learning from someone's example. I miss feeling accepted, no matter what. and I miss open honesty and trust. I miss trusting someone so very very much.
I am so tired of how things are. this not-relationship with my roommate needs to end. I feel like I'm holding off until he moves out. it's easier that way. It's a logical break. but I can't keep doing things the way I have been. he's getting attached and I'm beginning to go the opposite direction. I'm starting to resent him.
I miss women.
I think about von a lot, and how different my relationship with her was from any of the men I've dated. I think about the other women I've been with, too. they've all been nurturing, and soft, and understanding. they've been patient. all the men I've loved have had similar qualities. ex-husband did. so did ex-otter and, to some extent, shiny. but ex-otter and shiny also had selfish, self-serving qualities that ex-husband and the women lacked.
it's such a different dynamic, being with a woman.
I want things to feel equal.
I want to settle down with someone.
I am so tired of playing around.

so much more than this

2011-02-14T11:32:00.003-05:00

I have been heavy with memories, but not in the way I usually am. I miss shiny. Somewhere, in my brain, we are still together. and other parts of my brain are embarrassed by the part that refuses to move on. He had many qualities that I admire and desire, and others that I was willing to overlook. It's so rare that I meet someone that I feel like I can actually accept. but maybe I didn't really accept him. I just accepted what I thought he was.
I don't know why I can't shake this. I want to pull this need out of my brain. I want to poke a hole in my head and yank it out like a magician pulls a scarf from a sleeve. I know this is wrapped up in so much more than just one person, or two people. I know this goes back further than I can see. and I know, and have been told, that I can't be happy with someone until I'm happy with myself. I wonder what it would be like to be truly single and unencumbered by the needs of someone else. it feels like I never last that long. even now, I am in some kind of not-really-pseudo-relationship with my roommate. we aren't together but allow our decisions to be tempered by each other.
I don't want him. I just want to feel someone's arms around me. I want to feel nurtured and loved and wanted. I want and want and want and it gets me nowhere.
I want to stop wanting.
or at least stop wanting people that don't want me.

wants in a river that you can't stop flowing

2011-02-13T15:13:00.006-05:00

I don't feel as confused as I think I should.
I keep having dreams about people that have left me.
I keep kissing my roommate.
I keep composing letters in my head that I want to send shiny, or emails I want to send buttercup. but I don't. I can't write them or type them or see the words in front of me. I think of perfect, simple things to say and then I do not say them.
I don't want to be rejected again.
and when it comes down to it, if they wanted to hear from me ... well .. they would call. or write. or initiate some kind of contact. right?
I want to scream out to everyone: I AM DIFFERENT NOW. but maybe I'm not. I could still be the selfish, self-centered dramatic person that I've always been. or maybe I've never really been that bad. or maybe it's a combination of many things.
I still am envious of people who can be stable and consistently do things. I am envious of those who for whom life is steady. I am not one of those people. I have never been. I will never be, no matter how badly I want that.
there are deep cracks that run through me and separate the "want" from the "is." I guess that's common. but I actively feel them, and I don't think that's something everyone can do.
I hate hate hate that people don't make sense.
I hate hate hate that most don't even try.
and I hate hate hate how, despite it all, I am still desperately in love with shiny.
and I still want to hear from buttercup so badly.
I still miss them so much.
but some people never come back.
I wish that I could turn off this desire.
I want to make peace with my past.
I want to be silent.
but the past never shuts up.

it's a wish that can't be granted

2011-02-05T22:48:00.005-05:00

There are times when I feel empty, but not the way I used to. I don't feel incomplete. I've gotten used to being single. I feel empty the way an air bubble in a sticker is empty. There is nothing in it, but it still remains solid.
like the tattoo on the back of my neck. the circle that is broken but remains whole.
I used to like telling people what my tattoos meant. now I feel silly, probably because I've had some of them for over ten years now. the meaning hasn't changed, and I still believe in them strongly, but they've become more deeply personal than before. My first tattoo, the one that depicts a connection of mind-body-spirit, wisdom through change, and eternity; I always feel silly trying to explain it. Maybe because it feels trite but to me it has so many old things wrapped up in it. my suicide attempt, my decision to stop cutting, all the feelings surrounding those events, and my desire to do what that girl told me the night I spent at LAX -- "be whole."
That has resonated with me over the past 11 years. Be whole.
I don't know if I'll ever get there. I am trying. I have been trying for a long time, and I'm not convinced it's a journey that has an end. Maybe that's what I mean by empty. There is a layer of me with nothing in it. Like a scar that feels the pressure but not the pain. There is that dead part of me, where I place the things that I cannot deal with. My mom's death, all the loss of people I love and have loved, the way I've had to redefine myself throughout my struggle with medication. I hate dependence. I hate addiction. but aren't I addicted to prozac? Haven't I been addicted to other things?
All my addictions have been prescribed and carefully regulated.
I don't like who I am without them.
I want to feel like me without medical intervention.
I want to be stable without help.

or at least terribly unlikely

2011-02-03T19:56:00.005-05:00

still think about you. think about him. still think about him. still.
oh, seven months, right? he broke up with me almost seven months ago. it's been almost a year since our first date. our first date. that wonderful date. dressed as zombies, valentine's day, wandering around and shivering in the cold. I held his hands and asked if he believed in energy. in a person's energy. I tried to help him feel it but he couldn't. maybe I should have guessed then that he was empty, but I had high hopes. I thought I could help him understand.
I thought there was more there than there really was.
his smile. beguiled.
I took a chance even trying.
and I kept taking chances.
but the thing about trying is that sometimes you fail.
I have been through this over and over. I have done this before. but never to this extent. never like this. but I guess no two people are the same so no two relationships can be the same.
I remember going crazy over people before. I didn't go crazy over shiny. I just got sad, so sad, and it won't go away.
I miss the summer.
pivotal. that's what that time was.
pivotal.

it seems ridiculous to me that someone I was with for such a short period of time should have such an impact. it seems ridiculous to me that I should count him among those that I have truly loved.
it seems ridiculous that I still hope I'll hear from him and that he'll want to try again.
more than ridiculous.

possibly insane.

let's talk about feelings

2011-01-30T13:21:00.005-05:00

my roommate told me yesterday that he's moving out. "why are you crying?" he asked me. I don't know, let me think ...
because, other than the two days when we didn't talk, I've really loved living with him. he's fun and thoughtful and shares a mutual love with my cat. he makes me laugh and laughs with me, too. he's vegan and conserves energy and water and rides bikes and helps me fix mine. he's affectionate and doesn't stay up late. and until this happened, I thought he was pretty considerate.
but I know I felt this coming practically since he moved in. he never took his things out of the boxes. he talked of us moving to a different, cheaper place. he said that this place was too expensive for what it was. but he had no concrete proof of it. there was nothing to show the landlord. roommate is like that with a lot of things. he takes his opinion and presents it as truth. but it isn't true. for the area, our apartment is reasonably priced. maybe it could be a little less expensive, but I can't imagine it would be enough to change his mind.
because it's clear that this is something he decided a while ago. so I have not tried to convince him to stay. I don't want him to stay because I want him to. I want him to stay because he wants to. but he doesn't want to sign a lease. he said it scares him. he has commitment issues, I guess. he doesn't want to be tied to one place.
and I hate this. I hate that having him around has made me happier than I've been since before my mom died. since I was with shiny, and even that was only on the weekends.
I could talk to roommate, and he would talk to me, and we shared each other as freely as we shared our food and body warmth.
"are you mad at me?" "I don't know what to tell you. mad isn't the word." and that was the last conversation we had.
I don't think I have anything else to say.
things were getting better, and then they stopped. and every time I start to hope for a better life, it begins to fall apart. I can only hold onto so many things at once. I still have a paper to write to make up for last semester's illnesses, and I have reading to do for classes now, and I have bills to pay, and things to remember, and I guess it's up to me all the time to visit the people that want to see me instead of the other way around ...
why the fuck can't things be simple?
why the fuck can't things work out, and then STAY that way?
I am so tired of this.
the only thing I can depend on is that people will only ever do what is best for themselves, no matter who it hurts.
that is what the past few years have taught me.

a memory or three

2011-01-29T00:04:00.004-05:00

the people that I used to miss; I don't hate them the way that I once did. they are gone, gone, gone, so gone that I can't remember what it was like to watch them talk. they are gone and the shape of their upper lip doesn't kill me the way it used to.
but I wonder, I mean, do you wonder? do you wonder if something of that still remains?
I think it does, because the times when I glimpse them, this person, these people, I still feel that shock to my chest like a defibrillator gone astray. and I hope that they go somewhere else. and I hope I never see them again. because too much of that kind of reaction could probably short me out for good.
sometimes I think I should only fall for people that live out of state.
that way I don't have to run the risk of a heart attack just from some chance meeting.
that way I don't have to die just because someone didn't want me the way I wanted them.

didn't mean it, never meant to

2011-01-27T21:41:00.004-05:00

I have been dreaming and I wish I could forget. dreams about my mom's husband acting as though everything were fine between us. a dream where my mom is dead one minute, then alive and buying me thrift store trombones the next. a familiar pool (familiar in my dreams, not in the waking world) where I take my niece and her friend to swim. I dream of my family and half-family and I wish I could wake up to someone that would listen as I recount these images.
I had a fight with my roommate and I'm not sure how it all happened. I thought he was acting possessive and jealous and it got all blown out of proportion. and he talked to me in a way to which I've become unaccustomed. He used "should" and made accusations. I forgot that people do that. he told me I was too sensitive. I told him he was rigid. I got pissed and slammed my door and we've barely talked for over 24 hours. I think we've made eye contact twice.
this is so dumb. it reminds me of the fights I'd have with ex-otter. it makes me miss shiny a lot. he was so damn logical. he would listen to what I had to say, consider it carefully, and then respond dispassionately. but he never offered anything more than that.
I cried last night because I missed shiny. and because I know that things with my roommate have now irrevocably changed. we have stopped being kind to each other. we have stopped sharing.
we have another roommate moving in this weekend. what is going to happen?
I know I should feel more about this than I do. I'm just not sure how to go about knocking out the numbness.
and in other news, ex-otter texted me by accident today. awesome.

whisper my name

2011-01-24T16:48:00.003-05:00

yesterday I wore my teapot shirt and told my roommate of its origin. as I mentioned the woman who gave it to me, someone older than my mother was, I got a little teary. I found a logical stopping point and I retreated to my bedroom and began to cry.
he asked me if I was ok. "yes. are you ok?" "yeah. are you crying?" "yes." and he came in and held me.
"why are you crying?"
"I miss my mom."
and I felt stupid for crying, for being 29 and crying, like tears are something you get to stop leaking after a while. but it doesn't end. you're never too old for sobbing and honestly, 29 still sounds awfully young to me.
I didn't tell him that I missed shiny, and that was part of crying too. I'm not sure how much I really miss him and how much is just wrapped up in my mom. "sometimes I just can't believe she's dead." and I felt stupid. stupid for not being able to accept death. sudden death.
this just feels so wrong. it always feels wrong. there is no order or logic or anything. for so long, I have wanted to believe that there were reasons behind things. I needed that kind of strained faith to continue. but it's all in tatters now.
I still look for reasons, but the attempt rings hollow.
I still look for reasons, but I can't make myself believe them anymore.

no more short cuts

2011-01-20T12:46:00.003-05:00

lately every day feels like sunday. like I'm on the verge of something getting ready to start. not start, like I'm waiting for something to end. like something is about to end.
things are going to change soon. everything will be different. whatever "everything" is.
melancholy like a blanket. I don't want to cover myself in it, but I'm so cold and it's the only thing around. dreams last night outlining my anxiety and reminding me of stress. being late, being lost, relying on other people, missing shiny, missing my mom, missing my family. the threat of turning into something else. gifts that I wasn't expecting and can't just toss aside. guilt.
I don't know why I get myself into these things. just to feel, I suspect.
sure beats cutting.

don't

2011-01-15T00:47:00.003-05:00

summer seems so long ago. so simple and naive. I had all my plans laid out before me. love was in my hands. my future was clear.
I
knew
everything.

and then my mom died.

and then everything else died, too.

I am so angry. I'm angry at my mom for not trying harder with me. I'm angry at her friends and her husband for only seeing a narrow-sighted view of the situation. I'm angry with my sister because every time I want to tell her that I miss our mom, it feels like some kind of competition. I know she doesn't view it that way. but this is why I relate so well to her younger daughter. I know how she feels.
oh yes, I have always been sensitive. I know the long road ahead of my niece. I wish I could save her from it. but I can't. I just hope I can be there when she needs someone.
but ...

I remember the summer, and how it felt to feel like I was where I was supposed to be. things have shifted pretty badly since then. lately I've been missing my mom so much that it's been hard not to cry all the time. and I doubt everything that I feel. is it the medication? is this real?
it's hard not having her to call anymore.
angry.

angry at my friends for not being what I needed. angry at myself for not being stronger. angry at myself for feeling. for not feeling. sad and sad. confused. I miss shiny, and I know again that it's wound tightly in missing my mom. it will be a relief when I can separate the two. it will be a relief when I can miss one without thinking of the other.

don't lie to me.
just tell me you never really cared.

not it

2011-01-14T00:06:00.005-05:00

feel my
heart beat
like a panic attack slowly sneaking up on me.
taste this staleness in my mouth. a hunger I won't feed.
and in my head, your memory ricochets. it bruises my brain and makes my head ache. it won't slow down. it just goes until it breaks.
or until I can numb the pain with someone else.
you don't call or write. you left me. you left me so completely and I let you leave this time. I let you stay gone. no matter how I seemed to run the show, it was always you making all the choices. lowest common denominator. you were the one with the power.
I was just fooling myself. you let me make the decisions about what we did, but you always decided where the relationship was going.
apparently, no where.
I cannot contain this bitterness.
I cannot forget your face.

less disjointed than it sounds

2011-01-13T23:55:00.003-05:00

I want to feel like something matters. like I matter. like someone matters to me. like I matter to someone.
I am reasonably content for now. but I don't feel much for anyone. I ache for shiny, and I despise it because I know the feeling isn't mutual. I miss his gentle smile. I miss his tenderness, even if it was just a show for me and not really felt by him.
I don't feel much of anything anymore.
I miss my mom. sometimes I cry. I cuddle with my roommate and I stretch to feel his fingers slide across my skin, but I don't feel much beyond the topical. I enjoy the time I spend with him, but it isn't love. I knew I loved shiny two weeks into us being together. that's usually how things work for me. I have been in love many times. and I love other people, but they are only friends. there is a distinction for me, and it's not just physical.
that's something I never understood about shiny. it seemed like all love was the same for him, just with different layers. but I can't be emotionally intimate until I've been physically intimate. shiny I don't think can be emotionally intimate ever.
why does it matter?
why do I miss him so much?
I'm not alone or lonely. I've been social the past few weeks. I've had my roommate's company. why do I long for a partner?
I want to be content while single. I want to not need that connection.
I want to be complete.
fuck.
I really miss my mom.
I don't think I would have talked to her about this, but honestly, I really don't know.

2011-01-11T00:11:00.001-05:00

it's time.
time to sleep. time to let go.
time to move on.
but mostly, it's time to sleep.

hey, it's just how I do it

2011-01-10T22:12:00.004-05:00

last night I had a dream that I saw shiny. he was dating some new girl. someone he knew from CA. I could see that happening. seems like he's stuck there and in those people. it's funny, considering how loathe he is to think about the past (or the present or the future).
I hadn't been missing him much until today. I would rather not have dreamed about him. did you know that it's been nearly a year since I first met him? I can't believe it.
this year has already been better than 2010. I don't have a painful illness. I have a roommate that's around. the weather has been manageable (so far). I remembered to call for my niece's birthday. a lot of people have been wanting to hang out with me. I've been making things. I'm not stressed, though there is plenty to stress about.
but a part of me craves the quiet happiness I felt with shiny. it wasn't as good as I remember it to be. I know that much. I didn't like his inability to initiate communication. and I hated how beautiful things were that last weekend he came to see me. the weekend before thanksgiving, when he felt open and comfortable and exciting in ways he hadn't been before.
sometimes I hate him with a ferocity that makes my heart feel as though it's going to stop beating.
he restricted me on facebook. so I unfriended him. no word from him, just a sudden lack of access. not that I can blame him, really. but I hate how he loved me and then left. I hate so many people for having done that. it gets hard to forgive when the wound is still so fresh.
and he gets to pretend like I didn't exist, right?
oh, my ache of self-pity.
oh, woe is me, and my misery.
what a load of shit.

nights are the worst. they always have been. they are when I am alone and give myself time to think of these things. the time before I fall asleep, when it's just the darkness and me and all my thoughts to keep me company. this is the time when shiny used to call. this exact time. right now.
and I hate him for not calling now. and I hate him for everything he did and didn't do. there is no winning now. there is only loss.

shrug it off.
knock it off.
I trade kisses with my new roommate now. how much does that mean? I don't know. I take a different kind of comfort there. we have scant weeks before a third moves in, before my schedule is suddenly crushed by school and work, before all the stress comes hammering in on me. before everything changes.
how do we weather the weather we've never seen before?
there is no advice that can be given.
oh, take it one day at a time?
how the hell else can you take it?

shiny, if you're listening -- an apology would do nicely.

but only if it's done with understanding.

another suitable mental image

2011-01-04T02:42:00.005-05:00

ever feel like taking a rusted corkscrew and spiraling it into your chest so you can impale your heart on its point and rip it out, leaving only a blood-spattered gaping hole behind? all arteries and veins dangling, fragmented bone poking out, and the lungs heavily panting as you examine your prize? the most scarred and broken part of your body, finally laid bare for you to see. finally you can discover what all the lamenting has been about. finally you can get some peace.
but there is no peace. the heart just keeps beating. and the hole throbs and aches in loneliness. blood pools and spills and makes a bigger mess of everything. how to react? how to reply? what to respond?
so much loss.
and there is no one to clean it up. no one to help. just you, and your dying prize, holding onto every breath. it is useless except to remind you of the pain. feels like its entire existence revolves around that. you are left with this wretched, twisted thing. left with a horrendous mess of your own doing. what were you thinking? why even bother trying to understand? why did you want to know what shape the scars made? what picture it would create? did you think the finely scattered lines could teach you something? did you think they would be like life lines, love lines, fate lines? did you want to read your heart like a palm? some scars as thick as a finger, others as delicate as spider webs. all of them painful. all with memories.

forget it. forget them. forgive? forgive. but how to forget? put the heart back, with the new future scar you gave it. the gaping, oozing wound. put it back, sew it up, pretend you never searched for something more. pretend you were content to just let it all lay where it fell. pretend you had some say in every thing that happened, and all the pain it caused.
because no one will ever understand why it was so important that you tried to understand. least of all you.
all that mess. just to understand.
you're all you've got.
you and that messy, useless, bleeding thing inside your chest.
you are alone.
don't ever forget that.

moving right along

2011-01-02T00:42:00.002-05:00

another night alone in my bed. par for the course. though last night chick was here and we were drunk and loud and in the morning I saw my new roommate (yet unnamed!) and asked if we had woken him up the previous night. "you didn't wake me up, but I did wake up and hear you." and it was awkward. and I asked him why he felt uncomfortable. "I don't know."
sure, he couldn't verbalize it, but I know why.
look, there's this intense mutual attraction. and we both suck at keeping it under wraps. I think it will be easier now that he heard chick and I having sex. I think he'll distance himself more. but I want him. chick is my friend and sometimes we have sex. but it doesn't really mean anything. our friendship supersedes the sex, which is something I've never had with anyone before. but I'm not going to cease having sex just because my roommate gets uncomfortable. not if the reason he's uncomfortable is because he wants to be the one fucking me.
if the reason is because he finds loud sex to be distasteful, then I will be happy to give him some earplugs.
I have plenty.
I hope he and I get to talk about this. I was hoping he'd be home tonight, but apparently he's staying at someone else's house tonight. I wonder if he did it because he thought chick would be here again.
last thing I need in my life is another guy that sucks at talking about his feelings and who is lacks assertion when it comes to problem resolution.
but, well, I'll still have a roommate. so there is that.
I'd just rather have him be more than that.

a new year stalks me

2010-12-31T00:30:00.002-05:00

once upon a time, I had a five year plan. I would finish school, marry ex-otter, and we would move to oregon. roughly in that order. but things change, and people die, and some move on, and others linger. resolutions are made, and when followed through, can hurt.
and that's how I found out ex-otter and deafgirl got married.
I think back on my predictions and I just don't care. they should be happy, right? they aren't bad people just because I got hurt two years ago. if every person that hurt someone else was "bad," then this world would be populated by monsters.
huh.
I'm a monster, too.
I made a resolution to forgive the people that I felt had abandoned me. ex-otter is one of those people. I feel like I should be more sad than I am, but what's the point? holding a grudge is exhausting and self-defeating. it's so hard for me to let go; to let go of people, to let go of pain, to let go of anger, to let go of anything. but I'm so tired. tired of carrying this around with me.
in the end, it's all just people doing what's best for themselves. it's just that sometimes other people get in the way of the battering ram. hearts get broken. heads get muddled. insanity ensues.
I don't think he ever realized how much he hurt me, and to him it's all in the past. it's old news. but I still feel it. I remember.
to everyone that said they'd stay, then left, I forgive you.
to everyone that I left behind, for whatever reason, I forgive you.
to everyone that wouldn't fight for me, I forgive you.
to everyone that lied, I forgive you.
to everyone that left without explanation, I forgive you.
to everyone that felt too uncomfortable to talk to me, I forgive you.
to everyone, everywhere, I forgive you.

I want to start this year out right. There are a lot of people that won't let me reach out to them, and I forgive them too. I've done what I can do. I've made mistakes. I can't do anything but move on.
no matter how wronged I feel.
no matter how much I hurt.
life continues.
I must continue with it.

just getting it together

2010-12-27T23:15:00.005-05:00

my friends always try to put shiny down, and I don't know why I continue to defend him. he isn't a bad person. he isn't malicious. he's one of the most intelligent people I know. seeing pictures of him or having him randomly mentioned still sends a twinge through my gut. I feel ragingly jealous when I think about him being happy without me, or having fun with someone else, or other such things. petty on my part.
but other than that, I don't feel much of anything anymore.
for anyone.
I have a crush on my new roommate, which is awkward but manageable. nobody knows. well, now you do. but I haven't actually talked to anyone about it. the sudden influx of interest people were showing in me died out as quickly as it came, and every one of those people was a flop. so yeah, it makes me miss shiny, but I wouldn't miss him as much if there was someone else to take his place.
that's what I tell myself. and sometimes it's true. and sometimes it's because of stupid shit: like how he was intuitively good at playing lego star wars. or his smile. or how he'd stroke my arm. or just how goddamn clever he was.
but it also feels like I make myself miss him, just for something to feel. an explanation for my emptiness, when really it's just always been there. I've never been happy solo. let's be honest here; I've never been happy at all.
I miss our bike rides. so what? I don't miss how shitty he was at communication, or starting conversation. I don't miss wondering the emotional walls he built all around himself. I don't miss the slump of his shoulders (especially when we were having sex) or how passionless he was about everything.
but ... how much does this matter anymore?
he hasn't initiated any contact with me since the last time I saw him. he hasn't responded to my last few attempts. he uses his interpretation of my words as an excuse to not talk to me. claims it's what he thinks I want, even though I haven't said that (and have, in fact, said the total opposite). and I wonder why I waste time thinking about this. and I wonder why it matters so much.
I guess because I really enjoyed the time I spent with him. and when we were together, there was no where else I wanted to be. in the past, that has been hard for me to find.
but things change, right?
I get angry at people for acting like people don't change, but here I am acting like I haven't changed. like because I used to let my eye wander, my devotion to shiny will never be found with someone else. but it happened once. it can happen again.
maybe I have changed.
I guess that's what I wanted. mutual devotion.
adoration.
joy.

I want right place, right person, right time.
I want the planets to align.

I want to find my little piece of forever.
I want faith.
I want love.

or lacking that, I want to be content with myself and being single.

just sayin'

2010-12-25T00:55:00.004-05:00

miss you more than it makes sense
and I'm ashamed, I'm ashamed.
got my guts all twisted up
can't undo this mess.
now there's someone new that I can't touch
and it's painful every day.
I miss the quiet that you brought,
the stillness to my heart,
the way the beating ceased
for anyone but you.

you kept me safe
and have no idea
how deep your disservice runs.

and I have no idea
what it has been like for you
to love and not love me,
to be loved and hated
by me.

I am sorry, too.

it still hurts

2010-12-24T22:34:00.002-05:00

if I was gonna be honest, I'd have to say that I still wish I'd hear from shiny.
I still feel sick from missing him. I still don't understand. and some part of me still wants him to call me and woo me and want me. some part of me still wants him more than anyone else.
and I want him to apologize, and explain that he realizes his behavior was fucked up and hurtful. I want to know what he was thinking and I want to know what he thinks now. but I know it doesn't matter and I should just let go again. I should forget about him.
it's so hard, though, when everyone else is even more disappointing than he was.
the fact remains that I love him.
but other facts remain, too.
you know, all the ones that keep him away from me.
the ones that are doing it now.
I get so melancholy.
I wish he was everything he seemed like he'd be.
I wish he was everything he let me believe.

when the changes cancel each other out, is that spectrum analysis too?

2010-12-20T03:10:00.004-05:00

I know I should go to sleep but I just don't want to yet.
I scrubbed the ink from my fingers with a nail brush. I didn't need to, I just wanted to see if I could. I kept finding residue amid the lines of my hands. every time I thought I'd got it all, I would find more. small stamps of the passage of black. tiny memories in my cuticle bed. still nothing compared to the mess I left on the plastic over the table. a whole swampland of india ink.
for some reason, I have really been missing shiny this evening. this morning. it's always worst at night, in my bed, alone. the day is fine. but I still find myself bringing him up.
"I'm done with him," I told anu. "you've said that before."
"but this time is different. I've probably said that before, too. but I mean it."
how different is different?
well, I have a date tomorrow.
that's pretty different.
I want someone who thinks I'm more than cute and will tell me. I want someone who feels inspired by me. and will tell me. I want someone who loves to look at me (and will tell me). I want someone who likes my brain and how it works [and will tell me]. Do you see what I'm getting at? communicate the adoration, not just feel it.
I still miss him, and I hate it, but it gets easier the longer I go without hearing from him. The longer it goes with no response.
I'm simultaneously angry and sad. complacent and rebellious.
I don't chase people anymore, right?
it just ... I guess it stopped being worth it.
and there is so much more to love than the pursuit.
there is so much more to a relationship than waiting to see not when, but if the other person will call.
he was such a jerk to me.
he was such a jerk, and I knew it, and I just hoped it would change.
but I need to accept that what he could give me is not what I need.
I know what I was thinking by getting into all of it.
What I still don't understand
is what was he thinking?

that's the cruelest part of all:
why'd he have to drag me down, too?
and why the hell did I let him?

I let hope run me into the ground. Now I have to ride it back up.
how can good things turn out to be so bad?
how can bad things lead to such good?
I don't know, I don't know, but they do.

just sayin'

2010-12-18T01:51:00.002-05:00

life has improved by leaps and bounds since I gave up on him.
I wish I'd done it sooner.

just some observations

2010-12-16T02:19:00.005-05:00

when it came to sex, shiny and I fit together well. it felt nice. but it was rarely passionate on his side and it wasn't the best I'd ever had. it could have been. it is what I think I about when I want to get off, but that's because I loved him.
what makes sex really exceptional is how comfortable a person is with their own body, with the other person's body, and how excited they are about having sex. shiny had the comfort but not the excitement. he touched me the way I wanted to be touched, he moved against me well, and inside of me well, but he lacked excitement.
seems like his life, really. at least his life since I've known him. he has the actions down, but lacks all the emotion necessary to make it all worthwhile.
I meditate on this because it is my bane.
furthermore, it is no longer my problem ...
if it ever really was my problem at all.

those who seek the easy way are rarely satisfied with the result.
but good luck making them see that.

hey, who knows?

2010-12-16T00:47:00.003-05:00

feels like another one of those nights where sleep will elude me. I'll just lay in bed and stare at the dark and wonder why the fuck I can't sleep ...
and I'll think about shiny
and I'll think about every other man that has hurt me
and I'll think about my friends that are no longer friends
and every mistake that I have made
and every action I wish I could take back
and it won't matter.
I won't sleep.
and when I finally do, it will last for twelve hours
and feel like only two.

Or maybe I'll just fall asleep immediately and it will be awesome.

it is in my brain now, can't take it out

2010-12-15T14:06:00.004-05:00

it's the end of days and I wonder "how much do you miss me?"
each day that goes by without your name makes it easier and easier to let go. some said that it takes half the time you were together to get over someone. but that's such bullshit. we have been apart as long as we were together and only now do I feel ready to say goodbye.
and my exes, the other exes, it's pretty much the same for them. so those years I spent trying to forgive myself for all my transgressions ... I guess they do eventually pay off.
cat on my lap and did I mention that I think you might be a robot? yeah, I want to say hurtful things but as soon as they come to my brain now I wonder "why bother." so I don't bother. I don't bother anymore. not today, at least. there's not much to miss about you anymore that I couldn't just dream about anyway.
I don't feel much of anything right now.
your freckles, eyes, and lips. your hands, smile, and kiss. it doesn't matter that much anymore. they don't matter like they used to. I found them once and I suppose I can find it all in someone else, if that's something I feel like doing.
never trust anything sudden.
I'm sure I'll want you badly again in a couple of days, but right now I'm just glad to think you're a jerk that has no idea how to love.

bury me

2010-12-12T22:05:00.004-05:00

I don't know why I twist myself around like this. I feel so lost and alone so much of the time. today I finally sold some masks. today i started the finishing process of the one that was going to be my halloween mask. today I watched a show on my laptop and paint-paint-painted and I felt the sense of comfort that I used to revel in when school had first started and I had weird breaks in my days that let me come home in between classes and work. I would come home and hang out with my cat and work on masks and eat food and be alone in a way that I liked.
I don't remember anymore what it's like to have close friends. I don't remember what it's like to spend a platonic day with someone that doesn't ever get on my nerves.
I can still remember what it's like to love without hurt, even though that's not my situation anymore.
I liked things being uncomplicated.
well, I guess things aren't very complicated anymore, anyway.
I just hate how, for a brief period, I thought things would be good again. and I was imagining how my life would be, how I'd be seeing shiny again and he and chick would get to meet and I dunno. I was figuring out how it would all work. now I don't have to worry about that or anything, really. I don't have to worry about anyone.
chick spent the weekend in my bed and we didn't touch and I liked it that way. we cuddled a little. he made me food. he took care of me and it was nice to have the company but it somehow made me miss shiny more. I wish I could combine the two of them. all chick's compassion and all shiny's calm.
I don't know. I don't know anymore. I don't know anything anymore.

the sky is falling

2010-12-08T22:45:00.003-05:00

"end love" by okgo is my latest obsession. the lyrics speak too perfectly for me to ignore. it's all so relevant. shiny's not calling and he hasn't replied to my email (you know ... the one where I called him a failure. I wasn't expecting a reply, but I still hoped) but I still posted the song to his facebook, along with the lyrics.
I don't think I have anything else to say to him. I don't miss him like I used to. all I want to do all the time is tell him how much he's hurt me and how sad I am.
because the way he treated me wasn't fair. how he extended his hand to me at the stop lights, like I used to do to him when we were together? the way he held me and how he bought me ice cream? why did he cuddle up to me if all we are is friends? I don't treat my friends like that. I don't think he does either.
I want to smash his head against a brick wall until he breaks and sees what it is that he was doing. until his own wall breaks and he finally understands.
until he actually feels, you know?
until he knows what it is to want. he wants to want. and I want to make him. I want him to want me to stop hurting. and I want him to do something about it.
and I don't think he will.
and I don't think there's much left to say.

a letter I can't send

2010-12-06T23:18:00.005-05:00

dear mom,
I bet you would be surprised to find out how often I think about you and how much I miss you, considering how little we talked previous to dru dying two years ago. even after that, I still wasn't consistent with my calling. to be fair, though, you gave up on me too. I don't think people ever got to hear that side of things. people look at me as the negligent daughter, but not you as the negligent mother. after all, you called my sister every day. you rarely called me.
but mom, I don't hold it against you too much. you were always closer to her. I've always been a little distant from everyone, I guess. I always felt a little out of place no matter where I was. and I hated feeling guilty and calling you always reminded me of how long it had been since last we'd talked. and things had been so bad with me for so long ... I just didn't want to call until I had something good to say. and when I did, I would call, and I would tell you.
the thing is, I thought about you a lot before you died, too. you have never been far from me. there have always been daily reminders. I wish that I had told you that when you could have appreciated it. I wish I would have touched you more, and told you more, and been a more attentive daughter. but I wasn't. and now it's too late.
that isn't what I wanted to say, though. I wanted to say that there are times in my head that I wish I was still in the hospital with you, just so I could talk to you. so I could soothe you. I wasn't there enough either. all my life, I've always felt like I was lacking and like I wasn't doing enough. it confuses me when people tell me that I push myself too hard or I expect too much of myself because to me, I'm never doing enough. I'm never at the peak of my potential.
I wish I'd been more patient with you.
I wish I could be more patient with myself. with everyone.
for so many years I didn't feel like I could have a real relationship with you. I am so glad that I was eventually able to, even if it wasn't long enough. I really needed you right before you died, but I never got the chance to talk to you about it. I never got to tell you about my old boss that had died. because then you died, less than a month later.
I think about you being in the hospital. I think about being there with you. I think about how much things have changed in the six months since then. this is still so hard to handle. I have withdrawn more from everyone than I have ever done before in my life. mom, why?
every time I left, I thought you would be getting better. I thought I'd come back to improvement. but no. I think it's better this way for you, but it fucking sucks for the rest of us.
I guess what I wanted to do was say that I miss you and I wish I was still around you and I'm sorry I wasn't a better daughter.
I love you, so very very much.
I wish I'd worked harder at making that clear.

it isn't poetry, just disjointed like it was in my brain

2010-12-05T14:52:00.005-05:00

I can be cruel
but my cruelty is intentional
unlike some people
who lead me on
because they felt inspired
by a comic book.

inspired to believe in love
that they cannot actually feel
just because it seemed
like a good idea
at the time.

I used the phrase:
"miserable and alone and basically a failure"
and felt bad about it
but not bad enough
to not hit send.

everyone that hurts me
gets hurt in return.
sometimes I get to do the hurting.
sometimes they do it themselves.
and sometimes,
just sometimes,
it's a combination of the two.

the worst part about hurting someone is not knowing the pain you have caused.
I bleed from every wound I've ever inflected on someone else.
I punish myself more soundly than anyone could ever punish me.
and in the end, it still doesn't matter.

I would have made a great martyr.

sometimes I wonder if he doesn't have it right by doing the coward thing, the emotionless thing, the alone thing. sometimes I wonder if his way of living isn't better. never looking ahead, never looking behind, just being where you are. making the same mistakes over and over and over ... I can do that anyway, even with the fore- and hind-sight.
I just want to grow into someone better. be part of something bigger.
I can't seem to stop getting hung up on these little stupid things.

sometimes I hate myself so much that it's tangible.

tired of being clever

2010-12-05T00:10:00.004-05:00

I guess what surprises me most
is how surprised I was.
I let my guard down. because he fucked me, I thought that meant he wanted me. every man I have been with has somehow managed to disappoint me by thinking with his dick. I always think they're different, that this will be the one to break the mold. I always end up wrong.

I wrote this in the art center, just before my bike ride home: I brought you presents
you broke my heart
I said "I love you"
you said "I know"
you once consumed me
now I dribble down your chin
unnoticed
unwanted
unsure.

He bought me a movie ticket. he bought me food. I told him that I hated him. he actually looked hurt.
I am doing that thing my sister said I do. I have put up a wall and have cut myself off from my emotions until I'm in a place where I can deal with them. Sometimes that's minutes. sometimes it's years.
"your inability to think ahead never ceases to amaze me." I was so mean to him, almost every chance I could get. but they were true things. they were all true things.
he takes it. he always takes it, with that mona lisa expression. never can tell what he's thinking. hard to know when he doesn't, either.
so angry. so hurt.
I feel my brain's blockade go up.
I need better than this. I need passion, and foresight, and initiatory openness. someone who will talk about sex. someone who notices the freckles on my eyelids. he told me that I'm not pretty. I'm cute. and I resent that.
I hate his eyes because I loved to look at them. I hate his stupid sooty eyelashes and how soft they were. I hate the lines in his irises and how they bisected each other and how distracted I would get by them. I hate his lips and their fullness. his slightly meso-american features. I hate them. I hate his long thin fingers and the way they'd dance across me. I hate his playfulness. I hate his obedience. I hate his goddamn freckles and the way they lay across him like galaxies. I hate his strong legs and his ribcage and everything else I'll never touch again. I hate the way he kissed me because it was better than everyone else, ever.

but really I hate that he wasn't willing to do as much for me as I was for him.
I hate that he didn't want to share everything with me like I wanted to with him. every inconsequential event of my life. every drawing, every dream, every drama. and I wanted him by my side for everything.
I hate him for not wanting me the way that I wanted him.
I hate him for letting me think, even for the briefest of moments, that he could.
I hate him for being close to, but not quite, perfect.

and behind it all, I know it's not that I hate him. I hate me. I hate that I need someone to share myself with. I hate that nobody that I want, wants me. I hate all my self-pity and how little good it does. it's gotten me nowhere good.
and I don't do what I say I'll do
and I just disappoint myself
and I'm unreliable
and mostly I just wish I could die and leave the water un-rippled.

but I can't.

twisted like knotted rags

2010-12-01T20:18:00.002-05:00

I try to hide how stuck on him I am. I don't try very hard, but it's definite that no one knows how often I really think about him.
here's the answer: all the time.
everything I want to do, I want to do with him beside me. it's been a long time since I've felt so cemented to someone, especially when it's not expressed to be mutual. it's been a while since I've wanted to be around someone more than they seem to want to be around me.
I use these indefinite terms because I'm still not sure how he feels. the depths of me maintain that he does want me and all of me. but I can't ever listen fully to that voice. I can't give up my skepticism. if I do, then I'll be lost completely. if I do, then I open myself up again to so much hurt.
and we're not together anyway.
I'm not just a friend to him.
no matter how hard he tries to believe that.

someday you'll remember

2010-11-28T01:09:00.002-05:00

I can't fucking sleep. thinking about just staying up all night and sleeping on my little train/bus hops. we'll see.
I'm not wracked with worries. not consciously, at least. sure, I have them. money (always money, doesn't matter how much I have, I'm always worried about it), finding roommates, my health, my back, getting my meds, my attitude, how much I've changed since my mom died (and how it hasn't all been for the better), my brother's increasing emotional distance from me and how much it sucks, shiny ... of course.
and there's food and my bike and my cat and my room and my apartment and and and and and...
a lot of things. people things. normal things. things that will work out, or won't, but it will pass at some point. right?
no, that's not what's keeping me up.
want to know what is? of course you do. you're reading this journal. if you didn't want to know shit like this, you wouldn't keep reading. who are you, anyway? I can see everyone's location and IP address so I can already infer who you are. why not just tell me?

I'm currently being kept up by the thought of making stencils so I can make shirts with words on them. I want to have squares of stencils and keep the cut outs so I can do two layers of letters. One of the outline, one of the inside (inside? whatever, it's past 1am, leave me alone). The shirt that I want to make first would say "I WON'T REMEMBER YOU" because that will at least kill the expectation people have of my memory. I will use mylar, and make squares of letters about 3" high. I will make multiples of some letters. It will be great. So I've been thinking about the logistics of that. How it would look. How to make the stencils work (negative space in the O .. I generally put a break in the O so that the center piece will stay in for the stencil. but when it's cut out, I'll need to tape the breaks back together. same with the A, etc). The process of making them, and then making the shirts. that sort of thing.
and yes, that is consuming my brain.
Of course, that came on the end of a train of thought that was leaping from track to track faster than I could follow. I won't even try to explain it.

switch.
trying to have a serious conversation with shiny is like trying to get a cat to do something. sometimes they do it, but only if THEY want to. and it has very little to do with you.
so I told him "stop using silliness as a way to avoid thinking or talking about real things." And now I'm thinking that this is a race to see whether he'll relent or I'll crack and stop caring.
he doesn't deny these observations I make. he agrees that he does these things. sometimes he tries to change. does it happen? I don't know.
my sister says he reminds her too much of our brother. I understand what she means. but at least shiny is trying to change. and he doesn't resent people.
I guess she just doesn't want me saddled to someone who will, ultimately, never make me happy. but I think he could. if he wanted to.
cats again.

oh, my stupid, noisy, smart, over-thinking, over-analyzing brain. please just shut up and let me sleep. there are things I have to do in the morning.

like get back to reality.

I want to know where this is going but am scared to find the answer

2010-11-22T01:51:00.007-05:00

on friday he came to see me like he used to. met me at 3:30 at my apartment. we hugged and went inside and we so nicely behaved.
dinner. and then to see some music.
I touched him, but I tried to not do it too much. it's hard for me to be near him and not touch. it was .. you know .. nothing sexual. I poked his leg. his arm. thumb-wrestled. leaned on his shoulder. he played back a little.
that night he beckoned me to lay beside him on the couch under my bed. I did. he put his arms around me. he held me. I tried to think nothing of it. I tried not to analyze his every movement. tried not to determine what it meant.
we kept cuddling. so close. so warm. playful. I kept my brain at neutral. I wanted more but wouldn't pursue it. self-control. a rarity. but I wanted to keep him near and knew I couldn't let go if I wanted him to stay.
we went to bed. he said he was cold and held me tightly, curled his body around mine. something happened. it was a slow progression. it was movement and warmth. it was fingers and palms. it was a delicious tension that I hadn't felt since the first time we ever connected physically.
it started happening again, and I stopped him, and I said, "what are you doing?"

and we talked a little.
and we tried to calm our breathing.
but I felt his heart beating so heavily against me.
the warmth of his mouth.
his alternating soft and hardness pressed against and around me.
I suppose we must have slept at some point. but I woke up only a few hours later and took back all of my convictions.

he said, "sometimes it feels like I have a different brain."
he said, "sometimes I love you and sometimes my brain doesn't love you."
and I said that you can't predict emotions.
I said, "most of the time I love you but sometimes I think I hate you. maybe sometimes I do hate you."
because it's true. sometimes I do.

the polar opposites. one extreme blends into another. so cold it burns. but does heat ever freeze? can hate turn into love anywhere outside of hollywood?
I don't know. one passionate moment leads to another.
and I love him. and I told him. and for the first time it felt like he was talking about himself, saying things that he hadn't told anyone else. telling me things about how he felt.
in the morning, he pulled me to him, he did things to me that he didn't used to initiate quite so forcefully. it felt so good to be held by him.
and all weekend it was almost like we were together again. but I couldn't let go completely. I couldn't give in to the feeling because at the end of it I knew sunday would come and he would take the train home and uncertainty would set back in.

we've been apart for almost as long as we were together.
puppy once asked me how shiny managed to make such an impression in such a short amount of time.
there are more reasons than I have time for answers.
I think I'd start the explanation with my mother. he was there when no one else was. then I'd follow that up with an examination of how he manages not to trigger any of my delicately balanced neuroses. there are things about him that seem to have been custom-formed for me. other things, not so much, but they're so minor they don't matter.
my mom said she liked him.
when she first got sick and I broke up with shiny, I didn't tell her what happened. I didn't want her to feel responsible.
so much has happened.
it felt so good to be back with him this weekend.
sometimes I think that if I can keep a careful distance, then he will come back to me. he is stubborn and has to figure things out on his own. because even if he's right for me, that doesn't mean I'm right for him.
but I want him, I want him, I want him so badly.

for the first time in a long time, it felt like he wanted me too.

hope
is terrifying
when you don't know where it will take you.

"cautiously optimistic."
I want to scream it out at nothing.

my monkey's paw

2010-11-17T22:30:00.003-05:00

maybe all I'll ever be is some cat who wants everything without having to give anything
maybe I'll only ever be some selfish ass who blames external forces for their misery instead of their own self-destructive spiral
maybe I'll never find someone to suit me because I will only ever want what I do not have
but I don't think that's true
and this has been a hellish year
and I started it sick
and my mom died
and I had my heart broken
and I realized how alone I have made myself
and I missed three weeks of school
and I delayed my graduation
and I keep trying to take care of myself but somehow it's never enough
I am never well
and I swear that after this malady, after this ache is gone, then things will be ok, no matter what
because how can it be any other way?
sometimes the only way I can muster hope is through the thought that this will end
this will pass
and I remember stories of people who have been reunited with lost loves or friends tens of years after a fight
and I hope that happens to me.
that all these people that are missing from my life will somehow return
but I don't know.
maybe I'm better off without them.
I don't think so.
maybe it's more that they're better off without me.
I get sick of my own instability. I imagine it's ever worse from the outside.
but I still dream about them
and about reconciliation
sometimes complete, but usually partial
and I dream about my mother
asking her for advice I don't really need
and I think back on this year, this horrible year,
with more bad days than good
and I realize that the majority of the good days came in those few months that I was with shiny
that he was the only glimmer in this year of darkness
and without him I don't know if it would have been better or worse
because what is a hole without the comparison of the ground?
but how would I have handled anything without the support I found in his presence?
there's no way to know now.
no way to know anything.

my mom's birthday is in two days.
she would have been 60.
eleven years ago, without a phone call, I would have been dead on the same day.
these wicked deaths.
last year I said that I looked forward to the day when I thought of november 19 as my mom's birthday rather than the anniversary of my suicide attempt.
well, that day has come.
I wish I could take it all back.

I wish the universe had found another way to change that day for me.

quoting myself

2010-11-16T00:02:00.003-05:00

there are a lot of things I'd like to talk about. the physical pain, emotional pain, mental pain. I get so sick of all the pain. I am so sick of this year. but january 1 is only symbolic. it doesn't really mean anything. just a measurement of time.
I want to believe that there will be some end to the ridiculousness that is my life. an end that doesn't require me ending it. I want to believe that I'll be able to talk about my mom to someone some day. that I will find someone who loves me like I love them. that I will finish school and get a meaningful job. I will have a routine and it will be good for a while. I will have friends. I will make things. I will not have unreasonable financial burdens and my insurance will actually cover my medications.
I would like to go a year without tragedy. some year where things don't have to be stupifyingly amazing and everything's-going-my-way, but just where nothing overly bad happens. there are so many people out there that already have that. they don't even realize it. there are things I have that I don't think about, either. there are people that would gladly trade their trauma for my stupid life.
but, you know, this isn't about them.
I have dreams that I am scared to articulate. hopes I can't share in case my words break them. shiny called me tonight and it's a struggle not to start a "real" conversation with him. you know, about feelings.
I wrote him a long email a few days ago. he never replied, but I keep hearing from him like nothing happened. like I wasn't trying to turn his head inside out. like I wasn't trying to make him run away.
of course, the reason I don't talk about feeling is because I don't want to scare him off. I feel like I'm holding paper thin ice and it's a race to see which happens first: the breaking or the melting.
if I could find someone to run to, I would.
if I could leave him, I would do it in a heart beat.
but you don't understand. I can't let him go, and no one that I want wants me. he was with me in the hospital when my mom was sick. he was with me when she died. on the weekends, for weeks afterwards, he held me at 2am when I randomly started sobbing. you can't understand that connection until you've felt it. I don't think he feels it. I felt it with ex-otter when dru died, even if ex-otter didn't feel it with me. or maybe it was because I reminded him of that death that he left.
I feel so mixed up all the time. I don't want my mom to be dead. I don't know how to accept it. I want to call her to say that I miss her, but she isn't there to call anymore. it's as simple as that.
so much depends on a telephone call. didn't you know that?
sure, shiny broke up with me. but he has never left me.

you don't know what to make of it

2010-11-15T21:44:00.003-05:00

I wonder if he'll call me tonight. it's been days. couldn't say for sure. sometimes he texts me, but it's just not enough. and I told him. he apologizes so much now, but it hasn't changed his behavior.
back ache like I was taken apart and put back together wrong. the pieces don't mesh. there's a scraping between the parts, bulges where there weren't before. I have knots that won't go away. and it feels like my muscle has been replaced with something denser and less forgiving. I feel heavier from the pain.
when anu dug his knuckles into the hard parts, I felt nothing. "it will feel better in 20 minutes," he said. but it doesn't. it's just sore and aching and red. it feels red.
when chick rubbed my back and left me with my heating pad, I awoke feeling so much better. today, that didn't work. I wince to think what tomorrow will be like.
muscle spasms. maybe that's what my chest does sometimes. it can't be massaged away. nothing breaks these knots apart. I'm not sure what to do.
ibuprofen every 6 hours. a heating pad. carry less on my back. how am I supposed to do that?
I wonder if he still loves me.
all this weight, all this weight.
I don't know what to do.

of course I know what I'm doing

2010-11-11T16:21:00.002-05:00

I'm leaning on him until he pushes me away.
I'm not very observant with that sort of thing, though, so he'll have to be pretty fucking clear.

insomnia again

2010-11-10T03:23:00.003-05:00

text message conversation between shiny and myself:

"I was hoping you'd check up on me today. Why didn't you?"
"I was planning on calling you. I was lifting weights and then helping move furniture and then stuff. I didn't realize it had gotten so late."
*calls me, I don't answer*
"I don't really know if there's any point in talking to you tonight. I am disappointed."
"Okay, sorry, Little Face."
"Please don't call me pet names anymore, shiny. You know they don't mean anything to you and they just hurt me."
"Okay. Sorry, Tugboat."
"I just wish you would think, you know?"
"I know. Sorry."

how many times can I expect different results from the same situation? it doesn't happen. he's like a metronome. steady and unwavering so why do I expect him to suddenly change tempo?
it gets worse at night. I lay in bed and try to focus on my breathing and slow my racing heart, but nothing helps. I find myself concocting suicide plans. I think I have a pretty good one. But I have to wait, you know? I have to see my sister and her family and my dad again first. I have to remind them how much I love them.
I find the thought of dying to be a comfort. the absolute darkness is soothing. not soothing enough to lull me to sleep, apparently, but soothing enough to slow my crazy thoughts. I guess what I would want is for people to understand that I'm deeply sad and have been for a long time. I can't remember a time in my life when I wasn't depressed and I can't imagine it ever being otherwise. I am not in love with this world. I am so sick of being scared all the time and worried and alone. Change is full of little deaths but after a while you can't change anymore so the death just takes you instead.
yeah, angsty and high-schoolish, but true for me.
it feels like I don't belong. I have never belonged. I was just able to ignore it a little better before. but since this year .. since all this shit .. it is so clear to me that I can't hide it anymore.
I feel closer to death than I have since I was 18 and swallowed all those pills. that was almost 11 years ago. on my mom's birthday.
november 19.
I just want to finish this year.
I wonder if I can finish this year.

overwhelmed and underworked

2010-11-09T01:55:00.004-05:00

just around midnight, I texted shiny to see if he was still awake. "yes sir" was his reply. I asked him if we could talk and he called me immediately.
"I just need someone that doesn't lie to me to tell me things will be ok." He did so. but I didn't believe it.
I told him that I want to die. that I've been trying to figure out the way to do it so as to inconvenience the least amount of people. "my mom died and life kept going. the same thing would happen if I died." I told him that right now the only reason I'm not dead is because of my cat. and I don't want my roommate to find me dead. that goes with the whole "inconveniencing people" thing. I told him that I don't know what I'm doing. that I have no effect on anyone. That I'm alone and have been my entire life. that my life has been bad punctuated with good instead of the other way around.
and I'm tired, so tired, and dreams are the only thing that feel real to me. no matter how crazy they get, they still feel more honest than the waking world.
people have such strange images of me. I'd like to meet someone who sees them all and sees through it and knows who I am. I'd like for someone to know me like I know me, and to love me for it. but I don't think that person exists, and I can't keep looking anymore. there just isn't any point.
I'm so tired of being sick. I'm so tired of getting sick. I'm tired of the winter. I don't think I can take another one in this town. I can't take the darkness at 4pm or the cold so bitter that it makes my eyes water when I step outside. I can't take these sleepless nights or the heating pad on my feet. I can't take the hibernation and the potholes and the skidding tires of my bike.
the people I need, bones and buttercup and ex-husband and the like, don't call or contact me. only the desperate do. I only hear from shiny in response, not from initiation. bear is gone. wizard is gone. beard is gone. everyone everyone everyone except chick and puppy and those are just complicated in simplistic ways. situationally complicated, not emotionally complicated. there is no one in providence that I hear from every day. no one my age that cares and makes the effort. sometimes I reach out and try and it just dies out. friendship is a two way street. I fall into old habits. I can't get close to anyone without being in love with them. shiny keeps me raw and doesn't even know it.
he doesn't know what to say or how to comfort me.
I don't know either.
sometimes there just aren't any words.
I guess "please don't die" would have been a good start.
but all he gives me is silence.

stating the brain-case

2010-11-07T22:56:00.002-05:00

there's a sound outside my window and I'm not sure what it is. the wind softly blowing something against the glass. and I worry that I've missed autumn because of pneumonia. and I worry that I'll go straight into snow without getting to winterize my bike. and I worry that I'll never catch up in school. and I worry that I'll never find someone with whom to share mutual love. I don't have new roommates yet, and mine is moving out soon. no prospects. nowhere to go.
sometimes I feel so hopeless. I am so far behind.
I'm going to be 30 in five months. it sounds so much older than I am. so much older than I live. but then I think of friends that I have that are older than I am and still live young and I feel a little relieved. when I was 25, it was strange to realize that at that age, my sister already had three kids. married. a cat. a house.
I have a loft in a rented apartment with a roommate I met on craigslist. and she's leaving and I don't have anyone to replace her.

I have high standards and I'm not currently meeting them. there is so much going on that my brain seizes up and doesn't let me process it. I am left with a blankness in my mind. and sometimes I forget to break it down and pursue the things I need to do. and sometimes I just shut down completely.
in the face of all these stressors, I do something else completely unrelated.
whenever I am faced with options I cannot choose between, I pick one that wasn't even initially on the radar.
I wonder where that will leave me.
Hell, I don't even know what my options are right now.
I'm just holding on with my eyes closed, hoping that when my grip finally gives out there will be something to catch me.
not sure if there's anything else to do.

maybe someday my lungs will work again

2010-11-04T22:52:00.004-04:00

I feel like I should be upset or care more than I do that I haven't heard from him. Last night I sent him a text saying, "Meow? I don't think we're going to get back together, fyi. I just like being around you and cuddling. You're comforting. Goodnight." I wonder what he thought I meant by it. I wonder if he felt anything.
I suppose I'm coming to terms with things being over. He doesn't want me. I saw that this past weekend. There was a distance there, a wall between us. It's a barrier he created. I wonder if he used to lie to me when he said that he was excited about me. I wonder if he just made himself believe those things because he thought that he should. I wonder what he was thinking.
I think the problem is that he didn't think. Once he did, he knew he had to leave. And he hasn't thought again since. Not much, anyway.
I miss a lot of things about him, sure. I miss a lot of things about a lot of people, but here I am, continuing on. I had such a good time with him. Why couldn't it have lasted?
Maybe I'll find someone someday. Maybe I won't. I don't feel much for anyone these days. I don't feel much at all.
This summer, a part of me went away. I don't think it's ever coming back. This year has systematically dismantled me. From the PID to Pants to finally falling in love to my mom dying to losing that love and now finally to pneumonia. and through it all, feeling that I'm gradually losing everyone. I'm closer to my sister now. Further from my brother. I feel so much older. Sadder. Beaten down, in a deeper, more lasting way than ever before.
Everything hurts. And nothing touches me.
I just want this to be over.

it wasn't where I left it

2010-10-31T16:59:00.007-04:00

"you came to me like a dream, the kind that always leaves. just as the best part starts, it ends so abruptly and leaves you stunned and naked, in your bedroom all alone. funny how something so soothing gets interrupted by the ring of a telephone."
I slept better last night than I have in weeks. shiny was beside me in the bed, curled against the wall. I reached out and touched the soft fabric of his shirt. "that's my back," he said. "I know."
he made me tea and heated up soup and rubbed my head. it seems like I should feel more conflicted than I am. as we walked through the park, a friendship distance between us, I thought, "so this is how it's going to be."
it's going to be him visiting and us cuddling and me wanting him so badly that I can't talk because I'm afraid I'll say that magic phrase that will push him away. the phrase that will make him think this is a bad idea. I don't know if what I feel means I'm missing him. it's more like longing. or abject complacency.
I will never have what I want because what I want is him. and every time he rubbed his foot against mine or put his hand on my arm, I had to remind myself that it meant nothing. I had to remember him saying, "I don't want you."
I can't look into his eyes and ask him to say that. it would hurt too much.
in my little fantasy world, we begin to hang out again on some weekends. he would let himself feel again. he would kiss me. he would kiss me and hold me and we would be together again and this fucking hollowness would go away. and I wouldn't hurt or want to hurt anyone. I just ... I want to be ok. and I want him to be ok. and I want him to want the way that I do. want until it feels like nothing else matters; want until it consumes everything but the object of attention; want until it feels like there's no other possible outcome but to obtain the point of desire, and to have anything less would be giving up or death.
it had never occurred to me before that everyone doesn't feel that way.
change, any change, is death. I've known that since high school,before I could understand what I was feeling. I would lay in bed in agony and wish that I would die because the change hurt so badly.
but it would come, and it would pass, and I would still live.
live to see another change, when all I wanted was to die.
and in my fantasy world I finally reach the point where I can either die or be happy because those are the only two options. I'd rather live and be happy. content. reach that magic spot that doesn't exist. the place where things level out and I find my rhythm. I get my routine. and I love it.
but no, that doesn't exist.
instead I get these shades of grey. I get shiny coming to my house and letting me hold him like he was still mine. I get him calling me when I'm in the hospital. I get him singing to me. but it doesn't mean anything more than friendship to him. and I have to remind myself over and over that he doesn't want me. he cares, he loves, but he doesn't desire.
I just can't imagine living like that. I guess I'll have to, if I want to keep him in my life.[and isn't that the way chick and I are? but we never dated and we were never in love. so the mutuality matters? apparently so.]
I see my life unfold like a mottled grey quilt stretching over and covering obstacles. I see the bumps and valleys. I see this colorless mass and I read the story within it. I will be in love with him. we will see each other until one of us stumbles onto someone else. and I will always wonder why things didn't work. and I will always wish it was him, and not whoever I was with instead.
and maybe I've felt this way about everyone that I have loved. but I don't think so.
and I wonder if anyone's ever felt that way about me.
I wonder if anyone's ever been entirely taken by my elbows. if anyone has ever had a crush on the arch of my foot. if anyone has ever missed me so much that their arms tingled. I don't know. but that's what love is to me.
the entire time I was with ex-husband, I never got tired of watching him breathe.
four years of witnessing the expansion and deflation of a person's ribcage. it would make me ache.
always hands. always lips. always teeth. worn, full, weird. slender fingers with deep creased palms. softness to make me sigh. jagged points that I could run my finger across.
ex-otter used to bite me like he was eating. it wasn't sexual. ex-husband, too. I would let him chew on my finger. I liked the way it felt and I liked the trust involved. I would bite too hard, though. I've never had the same level of self-constraint as the people I have dated.
it's autumn.
I feel the grey skies keenly. I feel the trees baring themselves to winter. I feel it and I lock it inside of myself to deal with later. that's what this year has brought me. it opened up the boxes I used to keep hidden in my chest. I have been dealing and dealing and dealing and no wonder I am so emotionally exhausted.
being honest is such hard work.

starting before ending

2010-10-28T15:55:00.004-04:00

dryness in my lungs. I cough and it does nothing. burning sensation in my chest. I get winded. I am defeated.
last night I dreamed that I saw ex-otter at a punk rock show. he was wearing clothes that were mine. I kicked him in the shins and told him to give me back what he was wearing. he did. later, sitting on some bleachers, I tried on the clothes. they didn't fit me like they used to. I didn't really want them anymore. I just didn't want him to have them.
my roommate said, "that sounds so symbolic!" and it is. we are different people now. the things that once worked, don't anymore. and you can't go back. old habits don't feel right. the way we were has changed.
every time I see him in a dream, I think "there he is. how am I going to react?" as though I'm watching from outside of me. I'm always relieved that I'll finally see. I have punched him, kissed him, hugged him, ignored him, yelled at him, and now kicked him. I'm sure there have been other actions, too. I don't think any of them will be true. I've cried. I've screamed. I've accused. I had a dream a week or so ago that deafgirl called me with some problem. like because it was ex-otter's birthday it was ok for her to contact me. I let her finish talking, then I told her that I hated her. I said it plainly, and calmly, and with utter conviction. I told her that I hated her and I explained exactly why.
Talking to a friend today, I told him that sometimes I hold grudges. but I'm also very forgiving, if a person asks for forgiveness. if a person will own up to what they have done and ask that I forgive them, then I will. I do. small things I will overlook. things that were done accidentally, I will overlook. but I cannot forgive ex-otter and deafgirl. I cannot. they have never admitted fault. they have never asked for forgiveness. they hurt me terribly and I'll have those scars forever. whenever I think about getting back in touch with ex-otter, I think about deafgirl, and I feel blinding anger and I know that I can't do it yet. when I can think of her and feel nothing, then I will be ready.
I know that someday I will have to forgive them. I'll have to do it for myself, not for them. I can't let go of that anger yet. I don't know when I'll be able to. maybe when I have someone of my own to hold me and protect me. or maybe when I'm strong enough to feel secure without that.
these days. these stupid, worthless days. I miss shiny like an arrow in my sternum. spontaneously started sobbing today when I remembered that this was the weekend that I'd originally asked him to visit. I keep wanting to call him and ask him if he'll come. but we already had that talk. he doesn't think and I can't stop wanting.
I think if he asked to come see me, I would say yes. but I can't keep calling the shots. and I can't expect things of him unless I specifically ask. and I don't want to ask anything of him. these circles, these loops, these stupid worthless days.

when I was in the hospital, chick brought me the tiger that has been sleeping with me since my mom gave her to me on my 7th birthday. one night I dreamed that I saw my mom. I was sad, and she hugged me tightly. I woke up crying, momentarily confused because the dream seemed to have followed me awake. but it was just my tiger in my arms. and my mom was still dead.
two years since dru died.
things didn't feel solid then anyway. doesn't mean getting knocked off the boat into turbulent waters is any easier. because there's always the hope that maybe it won't happen. yes, things are horribly unsteady but there's the chance they'll calm down. clinging to that glimmer in the face of facts to the contrary makes the final fall so much worse.
maybe that's why ex-otter leaving me hurt so fucking much. shiny broad-sided me. there was no time to prepare or hope it wouldn't happen. but ex-otter gave me plenty of time.
like dru's death. didn't even know he was back on drugs. one day he was fine. the next he was dead. mom gave us a little chance, time to listen to the people around us comforting us with anecdotes of miraculous recovery. holding onto the most hopeless of hopes crushes you even harder.
rooting for the underdog only to be defeated.
and this is the difference between real life and fantasy. this is why I hate happy endings and romantic movies. it never, ever, ever ever works out that way. the two people that hate each other don't end up in love. there are no secret love notes to find or convenient coincidences. the people that are supposed to miraculously recover die. the people that are supposed to stand beside you no matter what, leave. couples break up and they don't go on to happy new relationships. sometimes they don't go anywhere. progress is lost. friends you thought would love you forever, stop. everything concrete ceases to be and it doesn't come back.
oh sure, anything can have a happy ending if you know where to stop. but life doesn't do that. we don't get to stop our stories.
when I was laying in bed, wracked with fever and coughing fits, feeling my heart flutter, I thought, "please just let me die." it seemed right. it was an out. all I had to do was not go to the hospital. all I had to do was just stay in my apartment.
but I didn't.
and now I have to deal with the consequences.

life.
how fucking typical.

coughing up the excess

2010-10-27T22:42:00.002-04:00

he called me and sang to me when I asked him to. sang, then I said goodbye, and hung up the phone. he called me when I was in the hospital. I had to go, he said, "should I call you later?" and I told him that I wouldn't think any less of him if he didn't call again that night. but I did.
like treating pneumonia with cough drops. we walk around the symptoms, never rooting out the cause. what is it about him that keeps me latched so tightly? how can I feel so emotionally faithful to someone that feels only slightly more than nothing for me? five months we were together, almost four we've been apart. how do I get so attached to such smooth surfaces?
those that try, I push away. more than push. I ignore them, abuse them, take them for granted. I don't know how to reciprocate. I can only initiate. I feel untrustworthy and ashamed. how could anyone ever depend on me? I am so inconstant. Inconsistent. emotionally incapacitated.
I offer surface value, just enough so people stay. but the important parts of me I save for the people that leave. and then I have another reason not to trust. self-defeating. self-defacing. self-destructive.
I want to do the things that I say I will do, and I want to do them when I say I will.
I want to care about other people as much as I care about myself. I have wanted this for years. Why do I still fall so short? What do I need to do? self-sacrifice? be my own martyr? fuck martyrdom. I just want to feel human.

winded from a long journey nowhere

2010-10-21T15:50:00.002-04:00

think about you and my heart wants to run away. think about you and I want to give up.
"tell me you don't want me," I told you. "Ok. I don't want you." "Do you mean that?" in tears. "Yes. I don't want anyone." oh, it was painful to hear but I guess it was what I needed. "you were going to come visit and what? I was going to have to pretend like I didn't want to fuck you, like I didn't want you to touch me. did you even think that far?" "no."
no, you didn't think that far. like you said to me before, you don't think ahead. it's not that you're the spontaneous sort. you're not. you just don't look beyond your feet to see what's in front of you. you only look down and see where you are immediately going.
I told you all the things I loved about you and I asked if you had loved me like that. "no." you sounded bewildered and sad. I asked if you'd ever loved anyone like that and you said "I think so." stop thinking and start knowing, please.
think about you and it pushes my head further under the water. "I thought that maybe if you came to see me, and you saw me, it would change your mind." and he made those sad noises at me. he doesn't want to have to think of anyone but himself, but he's not a naturally selfish person. that's why he has to shut off part of his brain in order to get by. that's why he can't see ahead. because he doesn't want to take anyone else into account. he doesn't want to have an effect.
I told him that's he's right back where he was before me. same routine, same way of doing things. but me, everything has changed. everything. and I collapse to say it, and I cry when I realize it. some of it's for the better and some of it isn't, but I can't really tell you what is what.
I loved someone and they loved me and I thought it could be that simple and easy. Just like I have done before. but there weren't fights and he fit me so perfectly.
How can one person be both so right and so wrong for me at the same time?
he said I helped him realize how fucked up he is. but what is he doing with that knowledge? I don't know. nothing, from what I can tell.
as for me, sometimes I want to slide back to where I was before. slide back into sex just to feel and feel wanted. so that for a little while, I am someone's world. even if it's just for an hour. to feel desired. to forget the hurt. but it's another form of self-destruction and I've been trying so hard to get rid of all of those. the whiskey and the pot and sleep deprivation and the not eating and then the cutting that I ruled out long ago. years. I don't even think of that as an option these days.
and everyone that I have ever loved has gone away.
and I have so few close friends.
and I can't blame it on anyone.
I wish it was someone's fault. I do. but it's mine. these past months show me how sheltered I have made myself and how little I trust anyone. because when I needed people, there was no one for me to grasp. and now I've been sick these past few days and no one has come to help me. anu drove me home from school. ome said she'd stop by but never did. joy is too busy. I leave passive-aggressive status updates lamenting my loneliness. that isn't the way to get people to come close to me. maybe I know that and I just don't care anymore. because at first I try to be nice, and I ask for help, and when there is no response I get angry and use guilt.
I probably focus too much on what I don't have. The truth is that there are people that love and care about. it's not that I don't have anyone, it's that I don't have everyone. what I have isn't enough for me. but what is enough? how is that defined?
I don't know. the eternal struggle. how can I learn to be happy with just what I have instead of wanting more?
oh, these headaches.

I am not convinced that any of this matters

2010-10-18T10:31:00.004-04:00

I still resent ex-otter. His birthday is tomorrow. I can't remember what we did for it when we were together. It was only a week before his brother died. Then he shoved me away, and broke my heart at the beginning of December. I think it was the 7th.
I still resent him because I've had a hellish time with no one to take care of me. Because I was sick with PID or bi-lateral kidney infection, or whatever the fuck, and I used up my friendships trying to get well. Because when he left me, he immediately had someone else. So they hadn't had sex yet. So what? There are other ways to cheat. Other ways to be together. He should know. He dated a girl that he didn't get to penetrate.
I resent him because he left me so easily and stayed gone so willingly. Because he was cold, then tried to say it was my choice. Because he acted surprised at my devastation. Because my life is a wreck and I miss stupid things like his ankles and the arch of his foot. When he left me, I cried because I knew I wouldn't find anyone else who could make me believe his fingers were alive. He wove pictures with them when he talked, and acted out puppetry for me without disguise. I loved to watch his hands. I tried to emulate the movements, but never got it right.
It is the small things that kill me. Those small things.
So many miniscule parts add up to a whole. There is no big picture without the pixels. I should have been a scientist, studying smaller and smaller particles, making up explanations for what is made of what. String theory is appealing. So small. So significant. Right now entirely impossible to prove.
I wonder if this is how my exes felt when I moved on from them? Is this how buttercup felt when von came in? how ex-husband felt? from relationship to relationship for my entire adult life until ex-otter left me. no wonder I fell apart. Who am I when I'm alone?
I'm alone a lot these days.
I'm unmotivated but creative. Despondent but hopeful. Angry and helpless. Sad, always sad, so sad. I usually cry at some point. And I miss the smell of people that I haven't seen in over ten years. I miss the feeling I had around them. I miss California and I hate it.
I called shiny useless. But what use am I, these days?
pot calling the kettle shiny? no, no, no. kettle doesn't call shiny anymore, and he doesn't call either.

don't know

2010-10-17T13:28:00.002-04:00

cried in the kitchen, my hand-knit blanket pulled around my shoulders. leaned back in my chair against the wall and sobbed. and I missed my mom. and I missed shiny. and I missed so many other people, but mostly my mom.
I don't want to be alone anymore and I don't want to be scared. I don't want to fear the touch of strangers in a crowd or wonder what they think of me. so many things that I do not want. so many things that I want that I do not have.
like people and hope and the desire to live. like love and affection from someone that stays. someone that's utterly honest with their own self and with me.

still bitter, so bitter, always bitter

2010-10-16T00:14:00.004-04:00

I want to take care of myself but I think I've forgotten how. This feeling of disbelief and loss doesn't leave me. It coats me like salt left from an ocean swim. It's invisible yet tangible, and I can't get rid of it.
Reality lays heavily on my mind. Heavy. It weighs me down. I went to bed at 10:30 because I couldn't think of anything else to do. I stayed up reading until midnight. Now here I am, writing it down.
Just added the names of old friends to my blocked users list. Old friends who cut me from their lives without explanation years ago. People that it hurts to see mentioned. Now I won't have to worry about that. Do you see? I can ignore things that hurt, too.
I cannot stop being bitter. And it pains me.
I am so frightened to hope for anything. I am so sick of being alone. I put myself here, I know. I put myself here and now I'm not sure how to get out. Every time I reach for something, I get pushed back.
Dreams last night about my ex-husband and his cruelty.
Cruelty that never existed while we were together.
So much has changed in 5 years, except that I love him.
I love him and everyone that has left me.
I wonder what it's like to let these things go?

I am so angry, and confused, and lost, and ashamed.
So tired of these dreams in my empty bed. Tired of my empty heart. Tired of my empty future. Tired of this empty hope. I still think about dying. I still find comfort in its thought, even though I doubt that I would do it. Right now it's just my sister that keeps me hanging on. And even if I did die, she could handle it.
After so many people leave you, you put the pieces together and the only common factor is you. Is me. If there wasn't something wrong with me, then someone would have stayed. Someone would have fought for me. Someone would still be here.
But no one has and no one is and I miss feeling wanted by someone that I want.
Shiny might have loved me, but it was only because he thought it was what he was supposed to do. My legacy is making him realize how fucked up he is. But who's he hurting other than himself? As long as he remains single, it's only his life that he ruins. Now that he's let me go, there's no one else to hurt. So go ahead, Shiny. Ignore me and ignore this and forget about the things I've said and what you've felt. Forget about all of it. You're better off being numb. Believe me.

I fucking hate how pathetic my life has become. Or at least the way I treat it is.

just pain, what of it?

2010-10-15T21:38:00.002-04:00

ride it. I rode it. I rode it until it bucked me off. left me naked in the dust. left me bruised and bleeding. never even noticed I had fallen. never even noticed I'd been there.
I can eat now. the poison's gone. my gut feels empty instead of queasy and the shaking feels natural. eat it. eat it up. forget about me and everything. forget about all the things I said.
the small things. how everything mattered. you never told me I was beautiful. you never said it and for months I wondered why. how many other things did you say that you didn't mean? what was the harm of one more?
I hate how much I miss your upper lip and the crinkles around your eyes when you laughed. I hate how much I loved to see your hands on me, anywhere, it didn't matter. how lightly you would stroke my arm, in just the right place, the spot where my spiderweb lives. your smile your smile your smile and the way you held me against your chest. I hate the memories and I hate how badly I ache for them.
for you. for you. for you for you for you.
maybe you've felt this way about someone before. but I remember so many things about my exes. so many things about everyone that I have loved. how could you forget? what makes you so numb? what's your goddamn excuse?
here, a list, without names:
his weird grin
his turtle neck, giggle, the little jump he did
the serious playfulness in her eyes, the grace of her wrist
the tiny kisses he would plant on my neck
tortured gazes and how he hid with lust when I took off my shirt
the way his fingers looked when he played bass
her little smile and moans and the softness of her body as we rocked against each other
the way he'd pull me into his lap and rock me when I was sad, his arms encircling me, his head leaning down against mine. so many things about him. so many years
eyes. always eyes. and smiles.
laughter
the freckles on his knuckles and his mock-surprised face
the way his upper lip looked when he shaved off the mustache of his goatee
her warm breath and sighs
the way her hair brushed the shining water as she leaned out off the pier
the mole on her cheek
tiny noises
how he'd step out of his clothing and snuggle into bed with me
long, work-worn fingers
lips
how she tasted
the feeling of warmth on my back
sweat dripping onto me
eyes, always eyes, the shape and color and intensity
lips, sucking on them, chewing, staring, touching, analyzing, wanting
how can anyone not remember these things?
gasps, the intake of air
eyes closed at orgasm
strange noises
hands on the back of my head
his nails
slapping my face
the look in his eyes as he chained me up
half-fear, half-desire
how can anyone forget? I remember all the way back to pre-school. I remember them all. ask me any name, any time, and I can tell you. I will describe it. the letter I wrote, sealed with tape over a lipstick kiss. licking behind his ear. being pressed against a foggy window in the backseat of his father's car. her hand creeping up my thigh. his weight on top of me.
loss.
and loss and loss and loss.
all these people gone from me. just like you. like you are gone. like I want you to be gone. like I am from you. like you made me.
I hate you sometimes.
that sharp, strange pain in my chest. the place I used to rub after ex-otter left me. the place I rub now so it doesn't feel so empty.
you never asked me personal questions.
wasn't there anything you wanted to know?
I could see so much about you.
why didn't you want to know?