Emotionally exhausted

Today is a heavy heart day. Today, six years ago, a woman who was loved by everyone who ever met her overdosed on heroin. She wasn't found for four days. On top of heartbreak, missing Chris, the stress of not enough money and being at a crossroads with what to do for money in the future, my grandmother dying (she was moved to Sioux City for more tests, the likelihood is she'll never leave the hospital), and a host of other small issues, I'm kind of at my limit here, emotionally.

My friend Johnny is going to come over in a bit and we're going to take my dog for a walk, go see Searching for Sugar Man, and then have a drink. His treat. I need all of that. I'm sad and too in my head today.

I can't remember a time where I felt this emotionally spent and wasn't a wreck. I'm proud of myself, of the technical grace I am taking on these problems with, but there's so much comfort in just letting yourself fall apart. This is so much harder. Curiously, I am almost completely without anxiety.

I am leaving for Chicago on Monday to visit friends, and then I'll be traveling with one of those friends down to Louisville. I hope to have some jewelry made for a potential money-making venture, and I'll see if I can't get my stuff implemented in a couple of shops while I'm gone. I also want to see Louisville because it seems it might be a good place to live in the winter. Or hell, a friend is trying to get me to move to LA. He made a very valid point, that to be a successful artist or any stripe, there are only a few cities in the US that make this truly feasible. NYC, Austin, Nashville and LA. I'd never live in NYC, Austin is far too isolated from anything else that's not-Texas, and Nashville, while in my favorite state in the union, is not a city I have found any attachment to. I've never really been to LA (a layover in the Greyhound station on the way to San Diego doesn't really count) and maybe I would like it.

In any case, I am so excited to leave the city for a week. Right now I haven't got a dime to fund the trip, but fingers crossed, I'll have about $800 coming in this weekend. Otherwise, I'll see my parents on Sunday, and will ask to borrow some money, much as I'd rather not do that. Canceling the trip is not an option, for my emotional well-being. Every spring, I've taken a trip that's reset my brains, for the last three years. Memphis April 2011, New Orleans March 2012, now Louisville.

Uff.

Hole Spackle

My grandma has been very ill. Not quite immediate deathbed ill, but she may not recover, long term, and could be looking at a move to a nursing home if she does pull out of it. Best case scenario is it takes a month or more for her to recover from the pneumonia she's got after aspirating into her lungs last week. Aspirating into her lungs because, even though she'd been in the hospital for three days, weak from wracking coughs and needing several blood transfusions, but had pulled out of it and had been released, she decided to clean her assisted living apartment for FOUR HOURS and then treat herself to a freaking BURRITO afterward. So she went to bed, completely exhausted, and then woke in the middle of the night coughing, went to the bathroom, fell down, aspirated, and couldn't get back up. She was found in the morning lying in her body's refuse, weak and very cold. I mean, fuck yeah, I've got a ballsy, brassy, sarcastic, stubborn as all hell, 96 pound grandmother who gets out of the hospital and decides she's gonna clean and then treat herself to a flippin' burrito, but FUCK YOU grandma for not taking some fucking time to chill the fuck out and watch some tv instead of cleaning and eating a burrito when you've got serious acid reflux and shouldn't be eating that shit ever again.

So, as a result of this, most of my family made the trip to Iowa this weekend to see her, as it's possible this may be the last time we can see her. She's determined to get better, but she's also a stubborn asshole who wasn't eating the food the hospital gave her because it's tepid, unseasoned and gross. Of course you don't wanna eat it, grandma, but you have to. No one wants to eat pureed baked chicken, but you can't even put your dentures in because your bones are wearing through your gums, so just suck it the fuck up and eat for chrissakes so you can get the eff outta there. We basically sat around her bed and bullied her into eating.

Even more unfortunate than dealing with a dying grandmother (my last living grandparent), this weekend I also had to deal with seeing the uncle who did something untoward to me when I was very small, and definitely did many completely inappropriate things to and around me my entire childhood and early adulthood, until finally, I refused to be around him anymore after my cousin's wedding in 2006. That was the last time he was allowed to hug me and touch my ass. That was the last time he was able to sit across a room and take dozens of photos of me, only me, over and over again. With a year of therapy and a lot of work, I haven't had a nightmare about him in over two years.

On the way to Iowa, I found out he'd be down there.

Now, anyone who knows me knows I don't really freeze up. I may get emotional, I may break down, I may get anxious and over-communicate, but for me to become very still and shut down is incredibly rare. And that's what happened when I had to be around him, for years. He'd come near me to hug me, but I wouldn't be able to say a word, I wouldn't be able to move away, I'd just become very still, my throat would go dry, and tears would well up in my eyes and I'd just wait for it to be over. This is pretty common in the sexually abused, I know, and I resent it in myself. I want to fight, to scream, to throw things, but I can't. I want to yell at him, but I just shut down. Maybe this is why I was so angry for so many years, because I couldn't let it out on him.

So, the second I heard he'd be there, I got very still. Tears welled up. My throat went dry. Sitting in the back seat of my parents' car. My mother assured me she wouldn't let him near me. That I'd be safe. But that kind of safety isn't possible when he's there. In fact, the only time I'll ever be truly safe is after he's dead. But, he's an incredibly unhealthy, alcoholic cockroach of a man. He'll never die. At the least, he'll be around another twenty years.

We arrived at my uncle's house in Iowa, and bad uncle wasn't there yet. He was at the hospital, seeing my grandma. I was so worried about seeing him, it was hard to enjoy seeing the family I'd missed. My other uncle piped up immediately to the uncle whose home it was, "What are we going to do to about sleeping arrangements to keep ___ away from Sarah?" I may have audibly sucked in my breath. It was the FIRST time anyone had ever said, in front of anyone else in my family, that there was a problem. Granted, it was also the first time bad uncle and I had been in the same space in over six years. I became very still. My throat went dry. My eyes welled up with tears, and spilled down my cheeks. My mom, dad, two uncles and two aunts discussed what could be done. My mother suggested getting a hotel. Everyone looked at me, asked what I wanted. I spoke in a meek voice that didn't feel like me. "A hotel would make me more comfortable," and tears ran down my face. My aunt came over to me and put her arms around me. It was decided we'd stay in a hotel.

I stood on my guard for over an hour. Afraid to sit down, lest I'd be trapped if he came in suddenly, afraid to wander too far away from my mom and dad. I kept watching the windows, and when he came up the sidewalk, I braced myself for the worst, that he'd go around and hug everyone, and he'd find his way to me, and no one would be able to stop him, and he'd touch me, he'd hug me, he'd touch my ass, and all I'd be able to do was stand there, very still, my throat dry, tears welling up in my eyes.

But he actually stayed far away. From everyone. He said his hellos, hugged a couple of people, but mostly he wandered away and stayed away. Didn't even make eye contact with me. The second he was out of sight and my aunt thought he might be coming around a corner nearer to me, she stiffened and made eye contact, clearly ready to leap in between us if it came to that. I assured her he'd gone away, and we shared a laugh about her vigilance.

And it went this way all weekend, and he even accidentally bumped into me at one point, but by then, even though it was a constantly stressful thing to be around him, I wasn't really affected by it. He was as surprised as I was. And so, I got through it, minute by minute, deep breaths, calming thoughts, and staying very near my mother or my aunt at all times.

The scariest thing about my grandma dying has been the thought that at her funeral, and the family time surrounding that, that I would have to spend more time focused on keeping him away from me than grieving, especially since everyone else would be grieving, and it would be easy for everyone else to not be on their guard for me. But that's just not the way it went this weekend, and I think, when the funeral comes, it won't be easy, I'll still be stressed being near him, but I know I'll have my family to support me.

This is so enormously huge. I have always felt loved by my family, but "love" in my family is always tough, never soft, never tender, and my parents have never been supportive of any aspect of my lifestyle, from my art, writing and music, to my drinking and inability to stay in a relationship for too long. Suddenly, just in the last couple of months, since Chris and I broke up, I feel supported. I feel a love that is soft and tender. I feel like my choices are respected, even if they're not understood.

I feel like a giant fucking hole in me has been filled and I just could not have imagined how incredible it feels.

It did all make me miss Chris enormously, though. He's the first man I've dated who took a very aggressive, masculine stance toward the abuse from my uncle, saying he'd love to kill him for me, to get rid of him, and make the world safer for me. Typically, the response is tenderness and love and apologies for my having gone through it, but wanting to actively do something to make things better for me isn't the response as a general rule. Not in my boyfriends, at least. And Chris was so perfectly wonderful about saying just the right thing to ease my upsets, to soothe me and make me laugh, and make me feel completely loved and safe. I mean, in the last month, he rarely did that, but in the beginning, it was something I'd never known. I wanted so much to contact him, but I resisted it. I keep telling myself, if he and I are to ever have any kind of relationship, even friendship, it's him that needs to come to me. I can't chase him, I can't poke him and convince him that I should be in his life.

In the meantime, that's a hole that'll slowly get smaller and heal on its own. Even though I'm still resisting it, because I worry time is going to let it get so small and so repaired, there's not even room for him to get back in.

Anxiety, the fickle cunt.

Yesterday was good, anxiety wise. I had what I have long called a "creamy" feeling all day, in that my brain chemicals were easy, mellow, I had the beginnings of a smile on my face all day (despite being hungover and physically tired from having walked 8 miles and danced two hours the day before), and things like listening to sad songs just made me wistful, not upset in any way. Creamy has always been what I call this because it's like the feeling of sour cream with something spicy; the spicy is there, still, but the milky kindness of the sour cream tempers it, soothes it, renders the potential ass-kicking of the spicy inert. It feels so very, very nice. Days like that, in the midst of a tumultuous time, are rare, and I treasure every moment. I relish the softness of my heart's beating, the ease in my belly, the lack of racing thoughts in my brain. I walk gently through the day and I may even turn a pirouette or two in the kitchen in the midst of cooking or washing dishes.

Today, I've awakened with a different feeling, and it's just as simple as that. A different feeling. It's nothing I've done, nothing anyone else has done, and there's little to be done to effectively change it but to be aware and vigilant about not letting it get worse. Today, I can tell I shouldn't have too much caffeine (just enough to stave off the headache from withdrawal), and that it's going to be a day of intermittent little pep talks to not let the heart start racing, or get into bad thinking, and that I'll have to listen to bouncy music to ensure my mood doesn't crash. I'm not upset in any way, I'm actually quite fine. It's a purely physical sensation. My heart is primed for battle. My limbs feel slightly tingly. To say I'm "on edge" would make the feeling sound altogether too aggressive, but it's definitely the feeling of waiting for something to happen. Something baaaaaad. Is this dread? It may be best defined as existential dread. hm. Funny, I'd not considered that before.

And, on days like this, it's likely nothing will happen. It's easy, when I feel this way, to feel like somehow I knew it was going to be a sucky day if something shitty happens, but it really is more so that because of the chemicals my brain is pumping, unfairly, out to me, my reactions are going to be shittier, thereby casting a pall of shit over it all should something go awry. Yesterday, I could have taken things in stride without much effort. Today, it will be a consortium of minutiae gathering to ensure that IF something that could upset me happens, that I react as calmly as I would have yesterday.

It's fucking hard to deal with chronic anxiety. Even on a good day, even on a great day, when I'm calm as fuck and I don't feel a whit of heart thumping panic on the horizon, it's still something I've learned to to do constant checks for a hint of, because things could flip flop at any time. On one hand, it does make me relish, as I did yesterday, each moment where things are easy. On the other, it means that not a minute goes by that I'm not making sure things are still okay.

I work hard on this. All the time. I've gotten myself to a point where, though the anxiety is still ever present, I can fairly easily react as if the anxiety isn't there. It might take me a few moments to pause, assess, and find the right words, but I have learned to be measured instead of impulsive, for the most part. I spoke to my therapist the other day about how hard I work on diplomatic responses to situations I feel emotionally about. He asked for an example, and I gave him the most recent one I could think of, which was my response to a male friend I've shared an emotional, romantic relationship with the past year, who is now single and pursuing one of my best friends. When I confronted him about this, he neither denied nor confirmed his interest in her by saying, "Would you be mad if I had a crush on her?" I didn't have an immediate, non-emotional answer (for the record, the emotional answer would have been, "Fuck you, of course I would be"), so I took a few moments, discussed things with my roommate, and responded, "I think, given our history, that that would be an inappropriate course of action." When I said this, my therapist near to guffawed. He said it sounded like something Kissinger would have said, a reference I don't understand as I haven't much knowledge of the man, but my therapist went on to say, still laughing, that that was, indeed, a terrifically diplomatic way of saying what I mean.

Five years ago, such a response would have been almost impossible for me. Three years ago, I would have put on my Fuckit™boots and chosen the emotional answer 75% of the time. Now, unless I'm just completely ready to throw down with someone, emotional answers be damned, I will almost always choose the measured, diplomatic response. In some ways, it makes me feel trapped inside myself, but that's the burden I've got to bear to be functional. Daily, exhausting work, dealing with a mental illness.

Writing this has eased the heart a bit, and with some jaunty tunes and a proper stove scrubbing, I may find this day is not entirely lost to brain management. Alrighty then. To the kitchen I go.

Sweet Dreams

I haven't dreamed about Chris in a while. A couple of weeks, at least. Last night, my brain blessed me with three. I say blessed because each one was really, really nice. After I woke, I laid in bed for another half an hour in a liminal state, relishing warm sensations that happily stayed with me in waking and didn't dissolve into sadness that it was a reality that cannot and very likely will not ever again be attained.

The first was an easy 50/50 combination of an ad in a magazine that I saw yesterday, a couple, sitting on the edge of a sailboat or other sailing vessel, her in a stark white bikini, him sitting behind her, holding her tightly against him, plus one of my favorite Chris memories, which was the last time I was at his place in early January. I was reorganizing my suitcase, sitting on the floor in his bedroom, when a wave of sad came over me and I poutily said something to him (he was in the living room) about how I just felt like crying. He stopped whatever he was doing and basically came rushing in to wrap his long limbs around me (we are the man and woman version of the same body; long arms, long legs, short torso) from behind, sitting on the floor with me, and he just squeezed me, his arms wrapped around my stomach and chest, and I wept a little, and then started laughing, and then kissed him, and thanked him. I remember even in that moment, I thanked him for being him, that that was the kind of thing he would do, and that I loved him for it. Had he not been so sweet to do so, it's likely the sadness would have lingered for an hour or two. He was always good at diffusing those feelings.

So in the dream, I was wearing white cotton panties and a white bra, nothing else, and he squeezed me like that from behind. It was a reunion moment, and as he wistfully laughed into my ear and my body tingled at his touch, he said, "I missed about 70% of you." I thought that seemed a fair enough amount to miss.

The next dream found us in college, and I received a phone call from the Dr. Seuss Foundation (yes, my brain made up a foundation that carries out the continuing publication of children's stories in a similar vein as Seuss) asking me if I had any completed work or ideas that would fit into their publishing schematic, as they'd seen some of my other work (?) and thought I'd be good in their company. I hung up the phone (a landline, like I seriously was in college), and came slinking into the dorm room (which I apparently lived in alone, as there was a single queen sized bed in there, with a man in it). I leapt on top of the half-sleeping man (the sheets, the comforter, were all notably white, as my bra and panties had been white, and the room was full of sunshine), and told him what had happened through the comforter that was draped over his face. I mentioned the book I'd always wanted to write, based on the first story I ever wrote at the age of four, called Robbie the Hummingbird (true story, and Chris and I had talked about working on this together), and I snuzzled into his ear, through his long hair (it wasn't exactly *Chris* in the dream, he was somewhere between Chris and Andy), and said, "But I'll need an artist to do the book with me. And where, would I find someone like that? I don't know any artists!" and we both giggled and pulled back the covers and started kissing. I remember thinking that something was off, that I didn't know this man in my bed, that his features weren't quite right, that he didn't seem connected to me, nor I to him. And then the hair shortened, the nose became smaller, and it was Chris. We attacked one another with love freshly renewed, and my lord, it was the sweetest, most sensual kissing and touching (but not exactly sexual). It was the sort of making out where you somehow feel clean afterward and almost feel you might never need to bathe again.

The third dream, a lady I've met recently who must vaguely remind me of one of Chris's exes (the only one I actually have met, who is a friend of Lindsay's), was courting Chris. I found a notebook with her musings on this (again, notable whiteness in the paper), and I was a bit hurt. This dream is fuzzy at that point. I know I confronted her, and she apologized and said she didn't know how much I cared for Chris. There wasn't much resolution other than that.

Still, I woke up refreshed, and that liminal half hour was like a milk bath. Would that there was a goddamned thing I could do to facilitate any of that feeling between us again...

Crazy Cat Lady

Those fucking words.

Those reductive, mean, idiotic words.

I have four cats. To my mind, four cats is a reasonable number of pets in the grand scheme of things. People have four kids pretty regularly, and kids are a helluva lot crazier to invest time in than cats. People also have multiple dogs who all bark at you the second you walk in the door, but no one calls someone with four pekinese a crazy dog man. Of those three creatures you can choose to populate your home with, cats are the quietest, cleanest, lowest maintenance of the bunch. So, before I would start casually tossing off words like "crazy," you'd have to be in the double digits of cats. And also be crazy.

Crazy is just not a word to be thrown around lightly.

I mean, you can say, "Hey, last night was crayyyyzeeee!" and that's fine. But you don't call a person crazy. Not casually, and certainly not the second they cordially let you into their home.

"Holy shit! That's a lot of cats! You're a crazy cat lady, yuk yuk yuk!!!"

Well, at least I'm not an asshole. Like you.

Seriously, this phrase has been so thoroughly accepted in our culture, it's seen as perfectly fine to make that statement the second you're being let into someone's home. Into my home. Where the floors are free of cat hair, where the litter box is cleaned regularly, where my cats are always loving, loved, and well-behaved. Where there is not a whiff of crazy. The home, need I remind you yet again, where I have just invited you over for coffee, or drinks, or a full fucking homemade meal.

And yet, about 70% of the time I let someone new into my home, despite the fact that they know I have cats, they feel the need to make very offensive note of that fact by calling me a crazy cat lady.

In the words of the great Michelle Tanner, "How rude!"

Just. Don't. It's not okay.

Science vs. Romance

Part of the constant frustration of being me is that, when given enough information to go on, I can easily argue, and believe, both sides of any story or situation, even in the context of my own relationships. Oftentimes, the biggest part of the "fight" is that the other party isn't actually telling me how they feel and why, they're blocking me out, they're resisting communication, they're projecting anger or resentment instead of efficiently addressing the issue. Then, when the true, bare bones of the scenario are revealed, most of the time, that's the end of things, and it's usually met with some frustration by me since what has sometimes been weeks of misunderstandings could have been avoided entirely by just saying what you mean to begin with. I can be shockingly logical when it's clear that someone isn't just spitting evasive emotion at me. I do not have a prevaricating nature, and my hackles cannot be more quickly raised than by having to deal with it in others. I understand that sometimes, it's a process, and the other party honestly doesn't know how they feel or why and can't articulate things, but there's still the projection dance that's really hard to not react super emotionally to, which always exacerbates things. And I'm sure, from time to time, I do the same thing without realizing it. Unfortunately.

There's also the split of science vs. well, not science.

I can think about palm reading and know that there's no way looking at the lines on my hand mean diddly squat. And yet, the two times I've had my palm read, things were said to me that rang so true, I'm still nearly daily pondering them, years and years later.

And what of ghosts? Logic says there's no evidence of any soul or spirit that powers the body other than the simple (not simple) mechanics of a living thing. And yet, I've experienced visits from dead family members, seen things that shouldn't be there, had things go missing only to be found in conspicuous places months later, etc. I can reason that there is a "rational" explanation for all of this, but my heart also tells me to believe in ghosts is rational.

Or astrology, which has been painfully accurate to my life thus far. Or, well, a dozen other things. I feel like a hypocrite, but I don't think that's the word for it. Is there a label that can be applied here? I've always been at a loss to find one.

Words People Have Used Lately To Describe Me, Words I Would Use To Describe MySelf

Exhausting
Strong
Amazing
Beautiful
Stunning
Gorgeous
Stubborn
Articulate
Absent

Intense
Inscrutable
Misunderstood
Empathetic
Neurotic
Anxious
Thoughtful
Sensual
Stubborn
Hopeful
Positive

False alarm! I'm not moving to Uptown in two months.

Once March 1st drew near and I knew I had to make a decision about leaving this place, it made me more and more emotional to think about leaving. I sincerely got choked up at the very thought of packing up this beautiful place and trying to stuff me and my cats in a space that would easily be 500 square feet smaller, with no porches, and no back yard. Plus, I had my parents' dog Riley for a week around that time, and it became pretty clear to me that having a dog in the house helps my brains quite a lot.

My parents have wanted to give me one of their breeding dogs, Emma, for about a year, but it didn't seem feasible. After having Riley, I realize how easy it is to have an adult, super relaxed dog in the house, and how much it does for my well being.

So, this means a ton of bike rides to and from Uptown, through less than savory territory, but at least when I'm home, I'll be, truly, at home.

And, I won't have to move twice in one year, when I pack up for warmer climes in November.

The Letter I Wrote Today

In conjunction with not hearing from Lindsay for more than three weeks now, I've received a couple messages from a woman I used to consider a pretty close friend. She has, over the past two and a half years, tried several times to learn why I had stopped speaking to her. The thing is, by the time I officially ceased all communication with her, I'd been pulling away for months, and I feel like the reasons I was doing that should have been all too obvious to her. The message she wrote me today inspired me to respond, since it seemed clear that at the very least, she was in denial about any reasons I had to stop having her in my life.

Because the lack of communication from Lindsay is happening at the same time as this woman trying to pull me back in, I've been examining whether there are similarities I should be making note of. I'm not seeing anything notable. The breakup with Chris, despite being painful, has been very adult, all things considered. No one is writing mean, drunken text messages or leaving 4 a.m. voicemails, and there hasn't really been anything posted online intentionally aimed at maiming the other party (Chris's "I did whippits and made out with people at a party and it was the best time I've ever had!!!" post notwithstanding, and I'm trying to hold onto the slim hope that he was really being a dumb boy and didn't consider that I'd see it, but it seems fairly impossible that he wasn't trying to get me to 'go away' in a passive aggressive manner. Just the same, the incident gave me a good reason to delete and block him on fb, as that kind of shit just isn't something I want to see. And, for fuck's sake, dude. You're turning 36 soon. You were too old to write a poem to your girlfriend on your two month-aversary, but you're cool with doing whippits? 

In any case, looking back, there were several passive aggressive instances that I didn't pay much mind to, now I'm seeing that that is, unfortunately, an aspect of his personality when he feels cornered or can't articulate himself in a positive, adult manner [sorry for the lengthy aside]), so I'm hard pressed to feel like that's the whole of it. Someone suggested that it's possible he asked her to not speak to me, which would be... weird.

Anyway. This is the response I gave her, and I'm pretty happy with the diplomacy of it, considering that I really don't like her and have no intention of having her in my life. This is about the level of shit it takes for me to oust someone from my life.

Xxxxxx,

I haven't spoken to you in about three and a half years for several reasons. It started when I was dating D. You wanted us to get together, and then you pretty constantly shit-talked him when we did. It wasn't very respectful to your friendship with him, and it made me very uncomfortable that you'd want that for me. Then, as B and I became better friends, I was really not impressed with the way you treated him. I know that things are different inside of a relationship, and he could have been blowing things out of proportion, but from the outside, it seemed like you were using him and abusing his love so that you would have a safe place to hang your hat. This only became more obvious as you continued to be involved with other people (J, namely) and string them along as well. Then, when B acted on your "open" relationship for the first time, you flipped out. Yes, he did it in your bed, and I understand that was a violation, but it really seemed like you were telling him he couldn't do what you'd been doing the whole while.

So by this point, I had already backed off from you, and was more or less avoiding communicating with you. The last (several) straws were the summer of 2009 when you became involved with S, L, and finally P.

That made four people you'd dated/had sex with who were people I had recently been involved with, in the course of just over a year. P in particular was deeply upsetting to me, as everyone in my sphere was perfectly aware of how deeply I felt for him. I found it enormously distasteful, and it hurt quite a bit. I felt betrayed by both of you; that was the third time I'd caught P in a lie about sleeping with someone I was friends with. [Editorial note lest it sound like I was obsessed with P; he and I had an on again, off again but never committed "thing" for three  and a half years, which finally ended in 2011, though we have now overcome all that mess and are good friends now]

While I think you are a woman with a great many interesting things to say, and I know you're a lot of fun to be around, these are things I won't over look. I think they speak altogether too much about your character, and that is why I do not consider you a friend, and why you shouldn't continue to spend time trying to get back in my good graces.

Take Care,
-Sarah.

Heart Tests

Some might call this torture, but it's a simple way for me to remind myself that I can, and do, move on.

I'll listen to a mix cd/playlist an ex made me, usually the one prior to the one that's hurting now. Or that I made for them. Or I'll listen to an ex's band. In this case, Andy's music, and the (really fucking awesome) mix cds he made for me. (Seriously, the guy was amazing at making a mix cd. Best I've ever gotten by a long shot, and the sort of mixes that you throw them on in mixed company and everyone loves them. Plus, the "love" mix he made me once, entitled "I'm Still Your Fag" after the Broken Social Scene song of the same name included on the disc, is quite possibly the best love mix ever made in the history of love mixes. So good I've made copies of it for other people who then mine it for their own mix cd making uses.) (And, notably, I don't listen to anything Thor related for this exercise; he didn't have a band, and he never made me a mix, and the mix I made him is something I play at work almost daily. The guy upset me so deeply in the moment and now it's just all okay.)

And sometimes, it still hurts, even on top of the current heart hurt. But most of the time, I feel nothing but enjoyment of the music.

Feeling Impotent

A sure sign my brains are rotting:

Bad dream about bad touch uncle. Haven't had one in years. And it wasn't that bad, but he was there, at a family gathering, and the air was hot and damp with summer, the lighting was bad, everything was shadowy and uncertain, and I could see him, sitting there in a recliner. It may have been the 80s, I felt young. He was wearing a ringer shirt; red around the collar and sleeves.

I wondered why he was there, and why no one was doing anything about it.

So I slunk around, afraid to be seen by him, afraid to engage with anyone because I didn't want to upset anybody.

I don't remember if the dream would have been before or after I woke at 5 a.m., panicking a bit and fretting over the fact that I've not heard a word from Chris's sister, my friend of nearly nine years, despite a couple of emails and two texts, in the three weeks since I wrote the first email.

But it seems to work either way. In general, I'm feeling pretty impotent. She avoids conflict (though I'm not even sure what the conflict would be here, so that compounds my impotence), and I've done as much as I should without being pushy.

I'm a doer and a planner. I like to take an active role. There's nothing to be done, and nothing to plan for but two vacations that seem altogether too far off. A month away. I'm too sad to do things at home so I just sit on the couch. I've lost momentum, I am mostly coping with loss, doping myself with Friday Night Lights and Downton Abbey and numbing movies because there isn't the energy in my limbs to do anything else.

I should clean out my juicer. Take out the garbage. But today is not a day where those things will get done. It's taken about all I've got to convince myself to sit down for a bit and start a painting, which I'm all ready for, the tools are in front of me...

So, paint.

In Love

I fall in love easily, but I also stay in love for a long time, typically well after the relationship is over. If I make a decision like that about someone, it's because it's true and it stays true. It took me over six years to move on from my first love, Jared, who I'd only been with for a month and a half (with periodic make out sessions every couple of years after). The end of love came abruptly, a thought, out of nowhere, when I woke up one morning in Paris in 2001.

"His kisses are too soft."

And that was it. If I don't enjoy kissing you, it doesn't make much sense to be in love with you.

That realization won't ever come toward Chris. His kisses were exactly what twenty years of kissing has taught me is perfection. And we had a perfect rhythm from the first instant.

My high school "Psychology" teacher (in quotes because she was mostly there as volleyball coach) once said, "You can't be in love with more than one person at a time." For the longest time, I regurgitated that pabulum as if it were gospel. It's been years since I thought that were true, and yesterday, as I sat at the intersection of Hennepin and Franklin after my therapy session, thinking about love and my longing for a "true," lasting love, I considered, again, that statement.

Love, being a chemical reaction to a battery of things, pheromone, timing, proximity, and hundreds of other things that you just know you "like" or "love" about someone, it makes not one iota of flipping sense that you can only be "in love" with one person at a time.

I say this because there are people I know I will always be in love with, on some level. It's not sexual, though it is romantic, in a way, and comes from a place of bonding that just can't be broken. 

My therapist asked me why I love Chris, when he's done several things that are a bit fucked up and could be grounds for moving on. After thinking about it, I made this statement:

"When Chris is trying, when he's in it, he's everything I want, he's the one for me. But he isn't trying, he doesn't want to try, he's 'done,' so he's not the one for me."

It's just a matter of reconciling the disconnect between the two versions of Chris. He is ugly and immature in his darkness, anger and distance. But when he is focused and in it, he is, as I've always told him, a magickal fucking unicorn.

Time will tell how my feelings play out, and whether he and I will ever reconnect on any level, but at this moment, I just need to take everything day by day and not let my fears or hurt dictate my behavior. Right now, at least, it's not time to let go of being in love.