LaurieWrites

This is stupid long and no one has to read it

How is everyone? 

I appear to be writing here again, an event I blame solely on last week's super moon, because I've been overrun with thoughts and the desire to type them out ever since.

I've launched back in with the usual love letters to my people and random other things, but I feel like I should say something more specific about what's going on with me lately.

"But I don't give a damn what you've been up to," you say. 

Fair enough, but bringing things into chronological order is just another of my compulsions. I'm on Twitter so much the virtual world is choking on my words, but that's different.

Let's see. Let's take this back to last fall, shall we? That's where I want to go. 

I went to Ojai for Creative Alliance, courtesy of Lee Vandeman and a team of awesome women who led me to a California canyon, one of the most truly beautiful places I've ever been.

We were filled up with good food and laughter and talk of creativity and business and late night readings of McSweeney's comedy that still make me cry. I got to stay in the coolest m/hotel, I got to see a part of California I hope that I can go back to so soon, and I made some friends I know that I never would have met otherwise. Everyone is listed here, so I don't forget anyone. (I love you, Ann, Jess and Kristen. You're everything good.) Plus I got to spend time with Deb and Sue and that is always so good for me. We spent a fun day at the end wandering Ojai then up Ventura Highway (in the suuuuuun-shiiiiiiiine) to see Sue's town and then on to visit Erin and her family before I went home. It was such a great trip, and I'm so glad I went. Ask me about the yurt sometime.

Hey, remember when I got that big ass sandwich last summer?

 Oh my God. I already told you about that a long time ago, but I was just going back through Sarah's pictures to try to find a shot or two of us in Asheville in September because I LOST MY MEMORY CARD ON THE WAY HOME from that trip, and I count on her to back me up in these tragic situations. And of course this is what I come across. 

I just realized I have some horn action going on there. The rock never stops, stupid sandwich or no. You want to get with this. Anyway, moving on.

This is the Biltmore, in Asheville. Sarah took this too. I loved my shots of that staircase so much that I can't really think about them or I get sad. Oh well. Also it's a good thing that I trust her not to push me down stairs. 

The Biltmore people were very nice and took us on a tour of which I have no photographs and let us sample sparkling wine that I tried to con the man into giving me more of but he wasn't down and there were gargoyles and that was that. Let's pretend that every shot I took on that whole trip sucked, because they're gone, okay? Thanks! 

Asheville is a great town with good restaurants and lots to see, so we had fun. I got to drink habanero margaritas (reminding myself to try to make them at home) with Laurie and Deb and Penny and other various blog friends. We drove by a huge guitar and a NASCAR track in Tennessee, and through relatively terrifying foggy mountain passes very early in the morning, and got to do the talky thing we do so terrifyingly well, which is always nice. A friend you can be trapped in a car for hours with and not get sick of...at all, ever? Dude. I strongly recommend acquiring this. We spent an excellent afternoon at the end of the trip in a brew pub with good beer and approximately 17 televisions with football games visible from every angle, something I know ranked as a highlight for at least one person in my party. 

The holidays were...eh. I deal worse with winter coming on every year. I hate hate hate cold weather, and last year's ridiculous snow totals in our underprepared area left me with some kind of strange winter PTSD and I apparently mentally resisted it coming back again as hard as I possibly could. I was supposed to move in November and then that fell apart due to sad circumstances beyond my control, and for the rest of 2010 I thought too much about how I was going to turn 40 in December.

I'm listening to this right now, by the way. You don't wish you were me at all, but just know that I rock exceedingly hard. 

We went to Pittsburgh on New Year's Day to watch the Caps play the Penguins in the Winter Classic. It was a quick, awesome trip and we had fun just being there, although I have to admit that the Caps win was a huge bonus. I love my hockey, oh do I love my hockey, and someone may have to wheel me into wherever they're playing when I'm old to see them finally win a Cup, but this was a nice second to that. We stayed with Kim, who is one of the greatest people I know, and was the reason we were able to get into the game in the first place. She is also very gracious when her team loses, and such a good friend in all ways having nothing to do with sports. She is also writing more, and you should read her blog. She's been saying since I met her that she's not a writer. I always knew it was bs, because anyone with that many stories and her prodigious brain has the ability, and I'm proud of her for committing to the practice. It sucks a lot of the time but when it brings joy it's among the realest out there, and...yeah. I can go on about that for a long time. 

We were also able to get in a little bit of time with Kelly and Andrea, which was so nice, in a pub with a bunch of soccer games on Sunday morning television. I like Pittsburgh. I could get used to it. 

We were kind of happy about the whole thing. 

We are so silly but whatever. Oh! We also went to a women's hockey event at the Capitals' practice facility in November, and I met Peter Bondra and he guided me through shooting a goal. Bondra is such a highlight of Caps hockey and this was truly a fun life highlight for me. Plus he's genuinely nice. And cute. This is our Christmas card. 

As you can tell from the relative absence of my eyes in that photo, I'd gained a lot of weight. By the time I turned 40 on December 27, I was at the highest weight I'd hit since college. I spent the week of Christmas and my birthday pouring Bailey's in my coffee and eating food I don't allow myself to have most of the time. I spent a wonderful actual birthday with my family and friends, and my sister gave me the sweetest book  full of words and photos from my friends from all over. It made me cry two pages in and was such a highlight of my year and my life. She and Sarah both got me hockey jerseys, and in general I felt very loved and that was nice.

But I felt like hell and I knew I looked it. Right after I got back from Pittsburgh, I started a 40-day yoga challenge, a process that included daily yoga practice of some sort, meditation, and more attention to clean eating. "Clean eating" is one of those phrases that makes me want to punch myself in the face, but it's the best description I've got of what I'm trying to do. I limit processed stuff and I do not keep junk in my house, for the most part. If I ever stop drinking beer and wine that would probably help, but I'm not interested in that now.

The 40-Day program was intense and I really felt I should write about it while it was happening, but it was such a heavy thing I just couldn't. I went to the yoga studio near my house and office almost every day between the second week in January and the third week in February. I've tried yoga before, even keeping it up for months in other times of my life, but this particular process was life-altering.

The Thrive studio is owned by people who have good attitudes about people in general and what they can get out of practicing yoga. I was also ready to physically challenge myself even when I feel stupid or weak, which is often. But all I know is that after 30 years of consciously hating my body, this experience has allowed me to step off of my usual track of measuring exercise value strictly in minutes of hell on this machine or that at the gym. My body and mind came together in a way that seems to make me a better and also healthier person, I think. I can also do Wheel pose now, for like 30 seconds. 

I don't look like that when I do it, but you can pretend I do if it makes you feel better. I just did it fully for the first time on Saturday, in a class that also had me bracing my feet halfway up a wall while I stood on my hands. No really. I did that. I lifted this weight on my hands, with my legs up the wall BEHIND ME in an "L" shape. For real. Multiple times. And as much as I'm horrified at the thought of people who know me seeing me in this configuration, a part of me still wishes they could look at a picture of it long enough to know that it's definitely me, so they can be all WHAT THE HELL? 

And no, it isn't very yogi-like to stroll around saying I CAN DO WHEEL I DO WHEEL NOW AND STAND ON MY HANDS WITH MY LEGS BEHIND ME UP THE WALL, pretty much because as soon as you do that successfully you'll bust your ass in a simple down dog, karma being what it is. But I admit that it feels pretty good to be in my body in this powerful way. I also really like my studio. I can have a terrible day and without fail, by the time I get there and do a class and leave, my head is fixed for a little while. I wish it were practical to spend three hours there a day, every day.  

I also started running, with the plan to run the Broad Street Run in Philadelphia on May 1. This is a huge deal for me. I've never run anywhere except after a plane or from pain and scandal in my 40 years. I was terrified to try it, especially at the size I was in January, but I did it. I'm up to a max of four miles at a time now, and I'm hoping I can be in good enough shape to at least finish out the race without dying. I visited my friend Greg, who sells running shoes, and got new ones Saturday, which I understand will imbue me with the powers of flight, or my money back. My next step is to actually run outside now that Maryland is deciding it really doesn't want to be winter anymore, a process that always takes its adolescent self about three weeks. He claims he is going to come and run with me, and I'm hoping he's not lying. 

Running is hard, man. It's the hardest thing I've ever had to physically do, but somehow I keep doing it. I really need some new playlists, though. I'm so sick of mine. Please send me new music, but know that mine jump from Cinderella to Kid Rock to Pink, Kenny Chesney and Christopher Cross.

No, I'm not kidding.  No I, will never be the same without you here. 

Somewhere in the middle of all of this, I moved into a condo that I love. I really, really do. I have so much to do to get it fixed to the point where I'm really comfortable and it feels like home, but it's a good place for me to be, in an excellent location near a metro and the Beltway. I've had a little bit of trouble adjusting to the silence, but I'm relaxing into it and seeing where it takes me. 

What else did I miss? Elisa, who makes my world infinitely better, bought me a ticket to see Billie Joe Armstrong appear in American Idiot on Broadway, so I went to New York in a snowstorm to make that happen. This coincided with Renate, one of my best friends, moving there, so I drove up with her on that adventure. 

I could explain to you how I feel about Green Day, Elisa, New York and Renate, but that's its own post that should be written. It was amazing. Billie Joe is my boyfriend, we had an amazing time at the show, and on the moments when I realize that I'm a lucky girl, this is one of the experiences that makes that happen. 

Sarah and I went to Bon Jovi in February and had so much fun, I think.

This is what I'll remember forever from that night, and if they come back here, I'll make sure we go, because it was entirely fucking worth it for this.

I'll have us do this until we're old ladies. It's just how it should be. 

(I love my Sarah. You've got that, right? If you were me, with the experiences I've had and the way I came up through my life into now, you would too, I swear. You'd get it.)

I'm looking forward to spring so much. I'm going to New Orleans to do a photo workshop at the Mom2.0 conference in April, and I'll be so happy to see some of my good friends who live in the computer. The internet has been very good to me. Sometimes I can't even believe it. These people send me housewarming presents and look for me when I'm not around, so I like to go and visit them in person when I can. I can't wait to be back in the Quarter and show Sarah my favorite parts of Magazine and Rocky's house in the Garden District and and and...New Orleans is just, it's everything. It's my soul city. New York is my heart. New Orleans is my soul. New York is my soul. New Orleans is my heart. Interchangeable. 

My sister's wedding shower is in Philadelphia next weekend, and she gets married in June. I'm headed to BlogHer Food in Atlanta in May, and have a few other trips planned, some to places I've never been before. I think I see beaches in my future, too. Have I mentioned lately how much I like it when life warms up and we can all get outside again? 

I haven't been shooting enough, at all, and I hate that. I also have to get a website done for the photography and writing. There are lots of things I need to do. My only sources of sadness and upset are some things in my daily life and routine that only I can remedy, and I feel pretty sure that I can handle those too, this year. It's more difficult to figure that out than I was expecting, but I'm trying. 

It still makes me a little bit sad that I was in such a strange place on my birthday, and really didn't mark that time consciously in the way that I hoped to do. I'm not sure if it's a bullshit move to extend the celebration and do that now, or if that's something I have the license to do for the entire year. What do you think? If I throw myself a belated party, would people come? 

 

The way that light attaches

Disclaimer to you among the Google-hit masses (you know, all tens of them) who love me and read this stuff: This is where it's working for me to put this right now. And I thank you for everything, as always, especially for making me feel less like a misfit toy than I otherwise would. Now let's just have a drink, shall we?

One night a couple of weeks ago I was standing in the kitchen of an old friend's house in a southern state, looking out the window into darkness, pretty much. She wasn't there. She and her kids were still on a trip and I had come in early to hang out for a few days by the water and it is the benefit of having old friends who trust you that they'll leave the code to their gated community in your e-mail, the key to the house in the fern on the porch and a lasagna in the refrigerator. 

And standing by her sink that night I realized that here I was in the space where someone else lived her life, a beautiful house, a place where I felt really comfortable moving through the rooms. And I soaked up knowing that someone with whom I'd sucked down many beers in parking lots had a house that could be featured in Southern Living, that had more than one hammock and neighbors who waved and a little spit of sand you could sit on by the marsh. 

But it wasn't mine. I could walk around in it, borrow it for a bit, feel as comfortable sleeping and eating there as I really did. 

It just didn't belong to me. And if I was honest, I knew so distinctly at that moment that I didn't really have that place that did. 

And let's not talk about the space I do have. It meets the baseline on Maslow's hierarchy and for that I am grateful but beyond that it's...unsatisfying. 

A few days later I was in one of the warmest homes I've ever visited - both in the way it looked from the curb and from the corners of every room and the way it felt. Again, the doors were opened to me and I found friends inside who if they weren't happy to see me are incredibly good liars. Sunday morning amazing light streamed through so many windows, and there was Elton John on the stereo, kids with serious plans and engaging conversation and an incredible homemade breakfast in the kitchen. 

On my way home to my own life later I started ugly crying about 20 miles outside of Durham after a loud rendition of Last Christmas segued into some bs like Home for the Holidays and I lost my toehold in stability.

It turns out the line about the fool who goes all the way to Pennsylvania from Tennessee for a homemade pumpkin pie can be quite the little bitch of a trigger there, friends.

Anyway, there was something in that last place in particular that I knew I needed and I lacked, something I quite believed I ought not to lack at this juncture, something I tried to believe simultaneously in the car that I would be okay without if it never came my way while knowing that I absolutely would not. I knew that I would die, or might as well, if this is all there is.

It wasn't fair, it wasn't fair, it wasn't fair. 

But it gives you something to aspire to shut up. 

It wasn't fair, it wasn't fair, it wasn't fair. 

You're not dead yet. Shut. Up. 

It gets harder to repeat these things to myself the harder I'm pushing 40.  And it turns out that it's tough for me sometimes to live on the fringes of other peoples' lives, although without other people I'm kind of screwed, and when I'm with the right people I don't feel fringey at all. This is all very difficult to describe.

I kept thinking this all the miles it took me to settle down between there and the huge I-95 discount store, that it wasn't fair, that I wasn't as good at this alone thing as I've appeared to be for a long time and I didn't understand why this had happened to me, that as much as I've traveled and as much as I've run and as much as I've tried to make things better for a very long time, that I really didn't know what to do anymore if I ever did know. That as long as this existential loneliness sticks that I would remain in this weird life I've been living for a very long time now. 

Ten years, to be exact. 

That I would always be unhappy. 

I blamed the universe. I blamed my ex-boyfriend for the ancient things that always come up from the ether when I get like this. I blamed the media. (That's a lie but I really should, I mean they get blamed for everything else anyway.) I thought judging thoughts about just about every human being I know even vaguely who didn't deserve the surely blessed life of domestic bliss that they were living if I couldn't have this too. 

I never said this was right or made good sense. I never said I had any. 

I blamed myself. Most of all I blamed myself. I blame myself, for being broken, for not being the kind of person who can be connected to anyone but friends for the long haul, for not just hitching myself to someone decent even though I knew that wasn't what I wanted from them at all because it just wouldn't be right. I blamed myself for not being willing to pack up the next day and move to a place where I could maybe afford property more easily, because oh, wait, maybe I don't have a job there? And at least I have a job. I blamed myself for not being financially stable enough to have a house, a child that so many people seem to think I can just afford on my own in all the ways a child must be afforded (and I am not talking about money entirely here.) 

I blamed myself. I blame myself. 

And I blame myself for thinking these things, for not being content with what I've got and who I am and what I've accomplished, for not being happy for other people and accepting of what has gone down in my life at the same time. I blame myself for not knowing what to do, ever, although my job is essentially to tell other people what to do. I blame myself for faltering in hope and optimism. I blame myself for being afraid.

In truth I don't know what happened in my life to make this all happen. I don't know how I got here. I don't know what I did or didn't do, what other people did or didn't do, what way the stars aligned to make it pan out this way. I mean, I know. I know. It's just not like I knew in the moment, or even in the months and years when choices were being made, roads chosen and discarded. 

I only knew what I was doing at the time. I only knew to follow my heart and to wish and to hope and to do the daily things we all do to get by. I trusted and believed and then I didn't. And that is how I got here, the short of it anyway.

I came home from this trip more unhinged than when I started and I was really hoping for the opposite outcome. I am completely untethered right now and I'm scared shitless. I am running out of coping skills and rationalizations and ideas and solutions. I am working too hard and not getting anywhere. 

I don't know how this will change or when or what succession of steps I'll take to make it happen, although every day I still do some things that feel like they might be the right things to do. I reach out, although I probably will not answer the phone or call, and I'm sorry but that's just my own weirdness not talking. 

At the same time it's ridiculous, really, how rich I am in friends. Quite specifically, several people have offered their homes to me while I figure stuff out and that has been amazing to me and so appreciated. And as an aside, two of these people are people I met on the INTERNET, and then became friends with in real life, so suck it, Internet haters. 

It's embarrassing, almost, to think about it. It's awesome and nice but it's embarrassing, and that is another issue of mine entirely.

It's like I can't trust myself to be in anyone else's environment. I can't be around another family, another couple, another situation. I need to be in this limbo. I need to be uncomfortable. Because I think that's what motivates me. I think that's what will make the changes happen if they are to happen at all.

I told you I have no idea how I got here. I don't like it either. It is an unpalatable to describe it and it's awkward and disappointing to live it, particularly when I'm supposed to have a tinsel-like glow at the moment.

Sorry. Holiday fail.

So all of this is to say that this current whatever this is is why it's so hard for me to write right now. This is why I'm not living, either, as effectively as I ought to be. And that's maybe because I don't know what I'm doing it for. I honestly don't know. And once again, because I'm thinking there must be some reason why I'm here, I came back from that trip knowing that I have to tear everything down and rebuild it so I can figure it out in the process. 

And I'm trying to figure out how to do some good at the same time, I really am. I am sick of myself, honestly and truly sick.

So every day I have to keep finding a reason to do this, even if it's just a self that I don't have a whole lot confidence in right now. And I really do have to keep trying to write it down, even though quite frankly it's the last thing I want to do. It's still really the only thing that helps.   

It's back. A little bit. Maybe. Damn.

So. I've been in a good mood for months. Months. Happy shiny months of months.

I went to BlogHer. I came home. I started writing again. I went to the beach, for a fabulous week. I came home. People like me in a good mood. I like me in a good mood.

And then I crashed. It kind of started at the end of vacation, the weird way I get when things are just a little off, the frequency starts humming just a little too loud and nothing helps. I'm owning it here because I don't know what else to do with it anymore, honestly, but also because I figure if I can go back to making this a daily practice when nothing else is happening with any consistency, at least that's something. 

And what I do when this happens is I isolate. I go back to my literal and figurative basement. I do not want to talk about it. I want to sit and not talk. I don't want to tell anyone what really goes on in here, because really? It's not interesting and it's not engaging and time is limited for even interesting and engaging things.

Maybe not writing about things keeps them buried. Maybe that was the purpose of keeping myself on lockdown for a year. Or it's like a conference hangover, you know, you're surrounded by all of this positive reinforcement and "you can do it", it's all Amway and Mary Kay but it's not, it's the epically cooler versions of those. And you start to think - I'm doing it again, writing in the "you" speak when really I mean me, I hate when I do that - I start to think of all the things I want and need and maybe should do to bring some order to these proceedings.

I knew things were building up. Old patterns started repeating (Addicts to any kind of behavior or substance will likely recognize this statement.) When I start listening to August and Everything After on repeat and the "I should never have left Ohio" mental tape starts playing I know I'm screwed, which, as true as it may be, and lord knows I have so much love in my heart for Dayton, it's not useful thinking because it didn't happen, and I needed to get out of that place when I did because if I hadn't I wouldn't have left and I'd be divorced with 2.5 children and driving around Centerville drinking wine out of a sippy cup, no question. (But property values? Could totally own my own house to be drunk in.) August 9 was my tenth anniversary back in Maryland. Maybe I can blame it on that.

Everything started triggering tears again, and I hadn't been doing that shit for MONTHS. It's not like I set out to do it on purpose, it just happens and I get so ANGRY when I feel it happening again, because it just doesn't seem fair that it happens when I'm just cruising along minding my own business and trying to do good things and really when I'm in that place I am super. Even I can cop to that at this point. In any event I'm the opposite of sitting there going, "Oh, thanks, this has been great, could I please have a MOTHERFUCKING MENTAL AND EMOTIONAL END OF SUMMER SALE???? THANKS DUDE! GOT IT COVERED THANKS."And as always happens, something stupid triggered it.

Saturday I went to see Julie and Julia, which I didn't really hate although I thought I would, and it plunged me into a ridiculous horrible pit of depression because I don't have my own kitchen (I'm not kidding. This is huge right now for some reason. It's like I want to make pot roast every night or start a cupcake of the week club. I. Am. Insane.) This is also no one's fault but mine. These are life choices writ large. And also my blog sucks and no one loves me as much as that little man loved Julia Child even though she talked like that all damn day and I didn't come up with the idea to cook 365 days of recipes that I stole from someone in order to get a book and then a movie deal and everything just sucks it sucks it sucks, are you going to eat that meatball? No? Thanks. And perhaps more wine? 

I had an embarrassing episode immediately following the movie based on the confluence of these factors and my entire weekend tanked, miserably. See how fast that happens? I am a phenom with the overanalysis and the crazy.

Speaking of wine and meatballs, I've also been off the regular exercise routine that had been going so well and really went down the drain between BlogHer and the beach, because you know what? I was TIRED. I did a few crazy long walks on the beach which probably helped keep me stable for the amount of beer I drank while I was there and I think I may have needed a break from the almost daily literal beating I was taking at the gym. It's just so easy to spiral out of control if I let it go even for a little while. Even a week is too long. It also turns out that workouts are essential to my mental wellbeing, and without them, I end up here again, where I do not want to be. And it's really easy to go down in a hole about this particular issue, especially when once I've broken the workout cycle it's SO hard to get back in the groove. All the head games start again and these games are complex and difficult to win.

Oh, read Devra's post about body image while we're on the subject. I've gone on about it almost everywhere else so I may as well do it here too. Her comments about this particular issue are important.

ISSUES, I have issues. I'm trying honesty around here. It may or may not be working.

And yet. And yet. I am trying. I'm thinking of the lists of things to be thankful for, which makes me stabby more than it helps sometimes, because I kind of like my gratitude to be natural and not forced, but maybe I need to get over myself where that's concerned too. I am trying to be forgiving and understand why people intrude upon your personal physical and psychic space with weird comments and invasive behavior, why they won't pick up on social cues to behave just a little bit differently, please stay behind the yellow line until your number is called, that sort of thing. I am trying not to say mean things to my students. I am trying not to purposefully seek out things that will upset me. (This is a big one that will make no sense to anyone but maybe two people but it's here for the record and let's just say I need to let the past stay in the past. The poorly dressed, overly critical past.)

I haven't been very much fun to be around for the past two weeks, and I don't like it either. Knowing that action cures anxiety, I have assignments for myself, the life management shit I hate, and I'm trying very hard to take an action every day. I know what to do, the ass-kicking I need to give myself to avoid the bad places. The long-term goal list needs to be revisited. And as for the short-term, I'm going to try to go back to kickboxing, because if there's anything I need right now it's aggressive physical activity. Listening to a lot of pissed off screamy music is helping too. And I need to communicate even when I don't feel like it with people I know are good influences, because at times like this I'm editing myself before I open my mouth or type a word and that's part of the problem.

And it turns out that due to the muscle deterioration that quickly occurs when one stops working out in a concentrated fashion for almost a month, I've lost two more pounds. So you know, there's that. 

Counteracting the bad place:

Karen is amazing. Her pictures are amazing. These are amazing. 

Schmutzie shared this recording of Virginia Woolf on her linkblog and as much as I love most of the stuff that Schmutzie does, I particularly enjoyed this. 

I spent some good time at last year's San Francisco BlogHer with Jenna at the Word Cellar and this post on turning envy into inspiration is getting some good attention today, for good reason.

Margaret and Helen are awesome too.

Noblopomo

So I failed NaBloPoMo, after acing the last two. I just couldn't do it. Things are too chaotic right now, trying to finish school and not go completely crazy in the process, along with a general disinterest in recycling any of the stuff that's cycling through my head on a daily basis. Suffice to say that this has not been a season of peace, which doesn't bode well considering my general usual lack of same during the holiday season.

My heart is not yet unbroken it seems. I am frustrated and sad. I've been crying more than I like to admit and beyond that more than I just like to do. I've been having some problems with the things that typically cause me problems, or at least that have for the past ten years. I am an up-and-down sort of girl, with a desire to be more up, and it's frustrating that I can't seem to manage it for the long haul.

I'm not ashamed of admitting the biochemical short straw I drew. It's nothing I sought out and nothing I foster because I like it or I'm proud of it. Reams of better pages have been written about depression stating the case that it's a beast, that it's unmanageable, that it can make you feel like your one relatively insignificant human existence is the nexus of suffering that no other person has ever experienced or could relate to. I'm completely unmedicated now and not in a place to afford the time or money for therapy. I've tried the drugs and they intermittently worked and didn't, and I finally found that I wasn't that much better with them so I wasn't sure what I was trying to prove. I've been to exactly one out of five helpful therapists in my life this summer who is just too expensive for me but she gave me some tools that still help. I'm making it day by day with the effort it takes to examine negative thinking and flip it around, with mostly good choices that keep me in the company of people who have a good influence on me. I know the environmental and situational things that need to and in some cases will change very soon. It's just a matter of moving through the present moment and reminding myself in general to appreciate it except when I just can't.

I got into a bad place this week because I allowed someone who has always pulled too much weight with me  to get into my head again. I suffered another short bout of imagined communion that is so, so embarrassing, always, in the aftermath - even if only I know about it. I don't really understand why this keeps happening because beyond sad it's just stupid.

I got together with a friend who has really been a godsend for listening and also talking to me about this for an obscenely long time, and I told him that in spite of my "everything happens for a reason" training I felt that this situation had had absolutely no redeeming value in my life, that I didn't feel grateful for it at all and just wished that it had never happened. I felt that I had already known and experienced the strength that It was supposed to bring me in the long run because of other things I'd experienced. Except for the fear that never entering into this relationship may have been that flapping of butterfly wings that caused an earthquake 15,000 miles away or maybe just would have meant I'd have been in the path of an oncoming car and died instead, I'm completely not grateful for it and wish beyond wishing that it had never happened. I can't imagine any purpose or any value that it has could outweigh the ridiculous amount of pain and suffering it's continued to cause for absolutely no reason at all.

My friend thought that was sad and quite frankly it is, but it's also what I know and believe to be true in this moment for me. It sucks. I don't recommend it. Here, have a beer.

See, I already knew to welcome love and be giving. I already knew to appreciate what I had, and I had already been rejected enough in my life that it just seemed cruel to have it happen on that insane level. I was ready to love someone for the long haul. I was ready to be there. And now I'm not. Now I have so little trust, so little belief in that experience for myself. It's the most significant and at the same time most glaring truth that I've gathered from the past couple of months of soul-searching. I've been told it's the wrong perspective to have. I say I can't help what I know. I say that as open as I am to life experience, which I have been for a long time and continue to be, I don't expect it to happen to me. And yes, I wish I'd turned a different corner (JUST where that's concerned. I'm glad I walked in the door of the place where I was, because it gave me other people who make my life so much better. I just wish I'd stayed away from particular departments.)

I've also been in this super-stressful daily work situation for a while now, and it's coming to a close so I'm hoping that will have a positive effect on my generally horrible state of mind. I'm also trying, really trying, not to close down socially which is what I have the urge to do lately but I know that's a guaranteed trip to the bad place. And I'm trying to be smart. To that end, I'm on the verge of booking a trip to Savannah for just after classes finally end, and I'll be spending Thanksgiving in San Diego. Other than that, I honestly have no idea where I'm going. For a long time I thought that would be freeing but for the most part it's time to reel it in a little. I don't ever want to be complacent, I don't ever want to be in a place where I'm bored with my life or thinking "this is all there is and ever will be," but I'm identifying a sense of needing to land, of needing to feel anchored with something at my center that I haven't had in a long time. It's been wearing me down progressively since I came back to Maryland in 1999, and almost ten years is long enough.

With all of the guidebooks and templates and rules of the road that exist, I wish sometimes they existed for the bigger stuff. And also that every time I wrote stuff like this I didn't feel the need to apologize for it, because if I don't have this space to store it I wouldn't have anything to look back on later when things are better and go, yeah - that time, I'm glad that time's over now.
(For instance, me a year ago - that time's over now too.)