wordsalad

A little of it must fall

I'm glad it's February, although cold is really not expressive enough for how I felt today. January was weird, and mostly El Nino warm, and involved a lot of hamster-wheel sort of work. That's my least favorite kind. Also, next year I'm skipping Christmas, because the holidays seem to be straining my brain a little bit more as each year turns.

So post-Christmas, and a chaotic New Year's, I was already beat. Then, happy fucking new year, my brain chemistry decided to delve into a place it rarely goes anymore, taking all the good vibes with it. Very much against my will, I lost my ability to completely ignore a few personal anniversaries that January brings, annual potential reminders of good things that eventually went bad, and I say "potential" because it doesn't have to be that way. I'm much better at not looking back than I've ever been, considering it used to be one of my primary activities, along with panicking about the future.  In many ways, I've buried this stuff - do not allow myself to think of it, do not enjoy thinking about it, and carry away absolutely nothing of value for myself or anyone else by thinking about it..."Where you been is good and gone/All you keep's the getting there," according to Townes van Zandt, and I do agree.

And time really does dull things, even if you never really forget. At some point you have to stop thinking about things that upset you or that you don't understand because if you don't it's like staring at an equation for years that you don't have the data to solve, and on top of it I hate math, so that's just total insanity. I think that new neural pathways form through pain, because of our survival instinct, and I totally believe in denial as a necessary shield from pain that gets a bad rap just because it can lead to such weird and destructive behavior when it goes on too long. Seven years is a long time to think about anything, especially with focused attention, and since a seven year span is supposed to cause "itches" and "aches" (hi, Rosanne) the return of Saturn and the replacement of every cell in the body (which is probably false but I read something along those lines) I'd say it's a pretty significant number.  Anyway, the holidays bring all this shit up, and the new year in particular did for me this year too. I got all sad and ridiculous and annoying to myself, and started retreading some very unfortunate ground that involves my general lack of loveability and compellingness and any other number of words I could make up at this juncture.

None of this is related to anything out of the ordinary - just the normal stuff that we do to try to find connection, I suppose, no matter how misguided that can be. Once upon a time one winter I fumbled willingly and with complete conviction (because only I can fumble with conviction) into a situation that would change my life for good, and acutely, for a time. And then several Januarys later, almost to the day, I lied that I began to let this go, although I didn't, not for a very long time, a ridiculous period of not-letting-go that lasted just about two years of what I'll always remember as a lost and painful time. I can be proud of it overall, I guess, mostly because I forced myself to survive it, and somehow managed to create something more out of it than being as ridiculous and crazed on the surface as I felt inside almost one hundred percent of the time. Ridiculous, if you couldn't tell, is one of my favorite words.

Anyway, I remembered last week that I'd mostly forgotten about the relevance of this month, or any sort of personal anniversary. I think it's come up again partially because of the wedding talk swirling all around me, the discussions of relationships and mommy status and what have you on IndieBlogger/Blogher, and the fact that after a year of almost constant travel and agitated motion, I've been sitting still with myself and nowhere to go.

The good news is that as I've gone on this little wintertime trip, I've sort of figuratively poked around in my head, and realized that I'm genuinely doing okay, after a long time of not being okay at all, for an intense variety of reasons. And I've been thinking how crazy and tenuous it's been, because for a long time, I'd honestly never thought I'd feel right again. I don't know what I thought would happen, or why I thought that way, or how I thought I could sustain unhappiness indefinitely, but I seem to have grabbed hold of that concept quite strongly. So it's an extra surprise that I do seem to have gone past it, and when I'm really NOT okay, it's generally for other reasons than heartbreak.

Heartbreak - real and genuine - sucks, by the way, and if you've never felt it (although I'm reasonably certain that you have, for one reason or another), I hope you never do. The worst part about it, for me, is its involuntary nature, and the feeling of intense stupidity that seems to naturally accompany it. I like to understand my feelings, no matter how pathetic and unattractive they are. I like to have some measure of connection to what's going on, and a sense that although I know I can't control them, I still have a knowledge of what the hell is up with me - why I'm eating the whole cheesecake when I'm really not that fond of cheesecake in the first place, or whatever - and what I can do about it if I need to.  I didn't have that for a long time. I felt like some alien force had taken me over, a force whose only interest was me feeling bad, and at the same time feeling stupid about feeling bad, because I couldn't make myself stop feeling it. It was nobody's fault. Loss just cracked open this hole in me that I hadn't figured out what to do with yet, that had opened some in previous situations that didn't mean that much to me when it came down to it. And when something finally fell apart that really did, it turned out I didn't really have the tools to handle it. I had no view of any tunnel, much less the light at the end of it. I was a hot mess, not charming, or even tolerable. I was...yeah. You didn't really want to deal with me. I know I didn't.

If this sounds overwrought or pitiful, it's because it was. Sometimes it kind of shocks me, when I look at myself from outside, which I frequently do, because the view is so different from there than it is from inside my head. There's so much I don't understand that I'd like to, so much that I'd change if I knew a long time ago what I'm pretty certain I know now. Because I'll tell you, when it comes down to it, I honestly don't see the value of how bad I felt, or the mental and emotional anguish I put myself through (because really, I don't do so well at blaming other people for things I did knowing what the consequences would be. That's a particular brand of punking out that I don't subscribe to.) I know this goes against every "it happens for a reason" with a side of "it was meant to be" and a "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger" garnish that we're all supposed to buy, but I have to say that I feel just as strong as I need to be, thanks, and since I'll eventually die anyway, back OFF! I don't understand why it happened in my mind the way it did, and why it took so long for me to stop kicking my own ass. I'm not convinced it made me a better person, or that there was a reason for it, or that it was necessary at all. In fact, I think it was just something that sucked, and that I did the best I could to have it not suck, but I couldn't get a grip on any of it. The needle on the record got stuck and it didn't get back on track for a very long time.

And the heart of that matter is that sometimes I'm admittedly afraid (blast, I hate that word) because I feel that when this multiple January thing happened to me, parts of my random, stubborn heart stayed chipped off, important parts that believed in love and a certain kind of fulfillment that only comes with feeling connected to another human being. I don't think about those ways very much anymore, because I can honestly say that the pain that's come into my life from the times I've tried to experience that is deeper than most pains I've ever felt besides the death of my relatives, and I don't want it ever again. Partnership has so little relevance to my life at this point, and I'm learning not to really miss it, which is also kind of sad because I'm pretty good at it given the chance - my personality flaws and bad habits notwithstanding. And it's not that I really don't want it, it's that maybe I don't think there's any other way to have it than the way I've had it, and I don’t want it that way again. Sometimes I feel like I didn't get the right PIN number for this relationship transaction. There's the crappy PIN number that so many seem to have and I've gotten, that spams your account and eats your ATM card. I want the PIN number that spits out extra twenties, baby, and makes you breakfast. I never had it for any sustained period of time, and I'm not quite sure I ever will.

I'm learning to come to a sort of detached acceptance of this that doesn't involve self-pity (good luck, right?) because the alternative is what? Hysteria? Obsession? No thanks. I've done that. It doesn't work, either. It just means you're even more annoying than you might be on a good day. My life is quite full, besides, and I've gotten to the point where I really don't care if anyone wants to go to a show or a movie or to the mall – if they want to, that’s great most of the time, but I take myself wherever regardless, because I refuse to limit my experiences based on who can share them. And the funny thing is that I find myself more open to my friends than ever, and I give a lot to (and receive much more from) the family relationships that are at the core of my life, too. So although I might have numbed out where the relationship thing is concerned, it didn't translate to the rest of my life, thank God. And this sounds frighteningly like the Catholic concept of the “single life as vocation” that I learned about in those old religion classes, so please excuse me while I step outside and heave. Violently. Get out of my HEAD, Sister Mary from whatever

Caribbean

island you were from! You go ‘way now!

So all this brings me to what made January better, and set me to thinking how it all would be just fine. It’s too much for this post, but it will come soon, as soon as I get a chance to sit down and share the words and pictures that made it so. Thanks for slogging through this one, if you did. It’s cold, but the sun is out indeed.

Dreaming wide awake

I had a dream last night that makes letting go of all that is bothering me seem easy, simply because it illuminated the alternative as something so horrifying that no halfway sane person would knowingly pursue it.

I woke up feeling humiliated, actually, for something I'd done in the dream, but would absolutely never do in real life. It's something that someone in a movie would do, pushed to a place where they felt a need for expression or connection or whatever it is that keeps us from offing ourselves. I guess that's where our subconscious comes into play - filtering out all of those "things we'd never do" so we never, actually, have to do them.

I collided with several people I know, last night in my sleep. They weren't nice to me, and I was definitely in a weakened position, for some reason. This is especially odd because in real life, I don't have this kind of relationship with these people. It's egalitarian all the way. It's interesting to be reminded that it hurts almost as much to be humiliated when you're sleeping by yourself as it does when you're wide awake in front of other people. 

I'm not even sure where I was, but obviously I wasn't invited. A friend I trust very much found me there, and very cruelly (in tone and words), let me know that I needed to leave immediately. There were other people there who I didn't recognize. Of course I left wherever this was, as a fear of intruding is one of my basic anxieties, along with staying somewhere where my presence isn't wanted. I don't know where I went, because if there's one thing consistent about even the dreams I do remember, it's that they never have an ending. They tend to drift on until morning, making it hard to wake up, especially when it's a weekend and I'm not motivated by an alarm. I sort of lay there, forcing myself into sleep, trying to catch the end, or some resolution, but not quite being able to...It's elusive. And the more fragmented and lighter sleep becomes, the more the pictures change, and become something else entirely - I'm shopping in Target instead of having that intense conversation my mind was trying to finish.

This is like my life in a way, come to think of it. Scary.

No matter what I can't remember from last night, I can just sense, still, a feeling of such loss and  sadness that it's colored my morning. I think it's because I rarely remember my dreams that when I do they have such an impact. I know I dream, but almost as soon as I wake up, someone turns the kaleidoscope in my brain, and discrete, specific images splinter into a million different colors and shapes, most of it blurry. Occasionally I'll grab onto a face, or a location. More rarely, I'll remember a few words that someone said, but that's it.

I've had people close to me tell me their dreams off and on over the years, and I think I've been sort of jealous that they can remember them in such detail - that somehow I lack the mental clarity that allows one to track internal dialogue to the letter, and locations down to street signs and paint colors. I just don't have it. And I don't understand enough about the neurological processes of dreaming to know what makes the pictures sharper, the retention better, or the meaning more clear. I don't think there is a scientific means of explaining that last bit, but I could be wrong.

Anyway, this morning is cloudy. And although I went to sleep feeling good, I didn't consent to the ticket to wherever that horror show was I attended involuntarily last night. I really didn't need it. But I guess it's better that it's out of wherever it was trapped in my brain, and it's been released.

Tired and contemplative

It's funny, how you can live in one place one day, and in another the next. It occurred to me the other day, as I was getting out of the shower (if it weren't for the shower, what genius thoughts would pass me by), that all the places I'd lived were still there, and life continued there as it had when I was breathing its air - I just wasn't there anymore. The comings and goings only affect the people coming and going, and anyone left behind who may particularly care about them, and how few of those types there are, when it comes down to it. The place itself basically remains unaltered. There were still people walking up and down the sidewalk in my Centerville neighborhood, going to class in the building where I worked at UD, driving by the Riggs Road house. 

I'm not sure why this strikes me as particularly profound today, considering that when I had the original thought, I looked at myself in the steamy mirror and thought, "Pretentious, existential git. Go find a problem worth solving. Suck it." because I annoy myself when I start thinking like this. But maybe I'm just suddenly struck by the concept of our ephemeral impact on the world, because my physical space has been shifting so rapidly. It alternately makes me feel free and desperate to grasp onto some railing or an arm or someONE, for God's sake, who cares. I don't know. It's what drives us to take photographs, I imagine, or to save ticket stubs or shells or magazines or concert programs or restaurant napkins - to make things and experiences more permanent. But what good is a shell without the ocean?

Having moved both my home and work life this month (the longest month in my existence, I swear), I've touched literally every physical belonging that I have, and realized that none of it really means much, and some of it I just couldn't abide and had to discard. I was able to take carloads of stuff to the Salvation Army, dump it off, and almost skip back to the car with happiness, lighter, somehow. When your life comes down to the manipulatives, the towels and bedsheets, the Christmas cards and colanders, it does remind you of what scant few of these things really matter all that much. I've found:

*Many, many cards I should have sent, including one today in the back of my drawer here at work that's no longer appropriate but so awesome. Kicked myself for that one. 

*Pictures of myself in an apartment, with a person I barely remember, much less can believe having lived with. In other photos of myself with Ohio friends as I was getting ready to leave town, I look like a different woman entirely. I purely loved those people. Now, all have scattered to the winds as well, across the country, into the fray (and occasional rubble) of relationships and jobs and homes from which we fashion a modern life. Some I don't talk to any more. A few are part of my occasional electronic universe. Only one is physically present in my life on a regular basis. But they were so important at the time. It bewildered me, as I put them in the new photo boxes I bought for this occasion, to think of them that way. I wasn't sure where to file it in my mind or in my heart. There aren't files for people. "Sometimes we cut a wide swath," one of those friends, Cindy, said to me when I was moving, and bemoaning leaving my state, quitting my job and my boyfriend at the time. Then she took a drag of her cigarette (people in Ohio actually have cigarette CASES, still...) and repeated, "a WIDE swath."

*Several hundred pens. I apparently do not like to throw away pens, no pens of any kind.

*Many reminders of my planful, hopeful spirit. I own hundreds of dollars worth of craft supplies just waiting to make the pretty things I envisioned when I snatched them up, not to mention hundreds of torn out recipes that I fully intended to make at the time I tore them out, guitar tabs, flyers and brochures for programs I knew would change my life, event calendars, gardening guides for the apartment dweller, and yes, more craft supplies.

*A couple of pairs of earrings Ithought I lost, and lots of single earrings, whose partner was long gone.

*Several songs I'd forgotten about.

*Some things that I made myself throw away, that I never dreamed I could ever make myself throw away. You reach a point sometimes where you realize that certain things only exist as talismans of pain, as reminders of impossible dreams, and who needs that kind of trouble?

*Two fortunes from cookies - "You have an active mind and a keen imagination", and "You will have a pleasant trip."

*A lot of really bad poetry, reams of e-mails that made me laugh out loud and made me cry, eulogies for my friend Bruce and my grandfather, notes to myself about things I've forgotten, letters I never finished, essays and article drafts - a million words, at least.

I've found all kinds of - too much - stuff. I'm exhausted from it. And today, I'm especially exhausted, cause I'm feeling a little bit jerked around by life and by people, but I know I'll get over it. More time will pass and the disorientation and occasional emptiness will cycle back around to centeredness, and fullness, and clarity. The inner reserves just need to get built up a little more, because they're running low. It'd be nice if there were more short cuts to this, but I know there aren't any, really. You just have to sit back and let it roll.

dinner with the fam

BLANCA24: how is dinner going?
BLANCA24 signed on at 8:18:09 PM.
LWhite2756: jimmy just called me mark twain.
BLANCA24: for what?
LWhite2756: beats me
BLANCA24: although I am happy to hear he has heard of mark twain
LWhite2756: perhaps it's the only author he remembers
LWhite2756: which i suppose is getting off
BLANCA24: how were the shish kabobs?
LWhite2756: easy
LWhite2756: considering how he used to read those louis l'amour joints.
LWhite2756: know what i'm saying
BLANCA24: huh?
LWhite2756: i got cut off
LWhite2756: i was telling you i got off easy with mark twain
LWhite2756: i need to go eat now.
BLANCA24: oh I thought you had eaten
BLANCA24: ok
LWhite2756: no
LWhite2756: should be so lucky
LWhite2756: he just called the plum
LWhite2756: tomatoes
LWhite2756: pear tomatoes.
BLANCA24: good luck
BLANCA24: he's so sweet
LWhite2756: there is no luck involved.
LWhite2756: somebody.
LWhite2756: save.
LWhite2756: me.
BLANCA24: no luck, no luck of any kind
LWhite2756: SOMEBODY SAAAAAAAAAAAVE ME
LWhite2756: that's a cinderella song.
LWhite2756: oh lord make me into a bird so i can fly far far away from here.
LWhite2756: any parting words of wisdom?
LWhite2756: oh, btw i had a great book idea
LWhite2756: danielle and i thought of it today
BLANCA24: I know, you were singing it the night of kelly's bachelorette party
LWhite2756: was i? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
LWhite2756: I WAS!
LWhite2756: wwksd
LWhite2756: what would kelli stewart do?
LWhite2756: okay i have been absent long enough.
LWhite2756: will tell about book genius idea later.

Would you spend the time with me, she said, some good time...Nothing remaining of the other, unfortunate, uncomfortable, unnecessary stuff?

I don't know, you know? I don't know what's good from bad anymore, it seems. It's too hard to distinguish. Life seems like a dart game, lately, where the bullseye keeps moving, there's no power in my throw, and when I try to point and shoot, my line of vision is even more unclear than usual. You know how it is with darts - and I don't even like darts, necessarily - when you don't throw them right. They don't go far, and even if they do, they wobble and fall in this sad spiral, to the ground. It's all in the wrist, I'm told. That's too bad.

I don't care about darts. I was just talking about taking a walk somewhere, maybe, by the water. You know, it's gotten nicer out. There's nothing too hard about walking, not thinking, necessarily, not feeling compelled to talk. You know, the way it was before it got complicated.

Honestly, if I thought there was a way to reduce it to that, maybe I'd try. But I don't trust it. I'm surprised you do.

Yes, I am too. But really, I'm not sure there's an alternative. Or, at least, that I'm satisfied with what they are.

The truth is, I don't want to think anymore, or do anything about anything, to be quite honest. I dream of water, and easier times, and sand, and wind. There are splashes of color, moments of happiness. I think of those, mostly. I dream quite practically, not fantastically at all, because you can't really dream about things that were real. It's just retracing steps...going back over lines that were apparently written first in pencil, however etched it may have felt. Not so much. Now your heart, like a chisel, makes itself own the memory, again, against your conscious will. The heart lacks sense. So you've always been told. It grabs everything - unbidden, uninvited - close to itself...talks nice to it, tells it it's welcome, when it's not. It's really not. It would be better to go away. It would be better to have a drink and watch a movie. But it's not ever satisfied that way. It wants blood. It wants whatever it wants when it wants it, like the infant that it is.

Stop it. It's easy enough to say. "I'd like very much to erase it from my memory," he said, last night. "to go back to how I was before. But I can't. Actually, I don't know how." He said it more simply than he says most things, a flatter tone, a weakened resolve. He'd never before reached that place of responding involuntarily to things that his conscious, intellectual mind had no interest in, the impulses that scratch at the door. They pace the floor like a latenight mother, waiting for the child who has no interest, no earthly plan, to call. It makes you YOU, and for that reason alone it's sacred. But it's evil. And insidious. And it has nothing of your best interests at heart. If it were your friend it would take you out for coffee and then leave you to an afternoon of meandering through shops with a blank check.