Futile.

I feel like I must keep writing as there is so much I want to say to Andy. About my day. About observations. About life. About the food I ate. About how loving Gaia's been lately, even asking for belly kisses when I get home, her little black furry body writhing about on my bed simply desperate for belly kisses from mommmy. As I wrote that, she lept on my lap, and oh, how she looks at me with pure love.

I miss lighthearted Andy, who even though since day one he's freaked out about the intensity of what's gone on between us, was full of adoration and certainty that I was to be his lady. "I want to spend as much time with you as possible." "I want you all to myself."

The latter when I was combatting residual feelings for The Mexican Who Don't Want Me and continued, probably eternal love/in love for the lad who has been making my life nothing but complicated since April 2008. I didn't feel it was unfair, I knew I was dealing with it and I knew they had and have no influence on my feelings for Andy, but his particular ghost, having throwing him into a tailspinspinspin, well, his love's been reawakened and confusion emotion bears down hard. He thinks it's unfair to deal with this and be with me, or he feels he needs to work it out by himself. And I fucking GET IT. Exes are god damn hurricanes and they don't give two shits about the new relationship. I wonder if I'm the only lady who thinks about that; if someone is dating someone, I don't fuck with that, no matter the circumstances. NEVER. My feelings take a back seat. My needs are put on hold. I know if it's meant to work, it will, when there aren't brain and heart exploding complications afoot. And when it's from the other direction, and I know someone has feelings for me, or I want to pay attention to someone while I'm in a relationship, I continue the situation I am in to its logical end and I put the other feelings away as much as I can. I don't try to fuck myself or anyone else up in the scenario, and it's probably because I'm so often in the position I am in right now.

I need to ramble and ramble because my brain is running at high speed with all these thoughts and my fingers have a case of sober TMT and I've already sent an email today to him on the topic of how he can combat panic attacks, and I promised I'd leave him be this weekend and I know there is no try, only do (thanks, Yoda), so I'm just muscling through all these urges and sating them by writing these meandering blogs. Thanks be to Jesus that I think there are only about four people who are reading them regularly.

I miss him. I hate this current him, whiny, sweeping dramatics, flailing gestures, and it looks like he's having an aneurysm when he tells me he loves me. Pull it together man, none of this is anywhere near as big a deal as you're making it, the "what if" thought process is bullshit and will only make you crazy. You have me. Enjoy me. It'll work out or it won't.

Pleas into the ether, he doesn't read this. Quaintly, he doesn't even have a computer right now.

Honestly, and I feel like somehow I should whisper this in text form (smaller font?): I don't think it's going to work. Not for me and him, not for she and him. Not for any of us.

I Told You So (Panic Attack)

The poem came immediately after stating that poetry was coming. That's two poems now in a month, and several art pieces. This, for me, is highly productive. The previous poem written on a page of Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury, while on the curvaceous, scenic road from Ely to Duluth that always makes me have a bit of a panic, despite it's loveliness, if I am not constantly sipping water and/or singing. When I was younger, when the particular problem first began, I remember Celine Dion on the radio. Then it was my Tori's Under the Pink on cassette, foisted upon my parents lest they have to deal with a freaking out teenager. It should be noted that I had no idea I was having a panic attack, something that had begun intermittently before puberty that my mother would hand me a paper bag for and send me outside to breathe. In late teen years, she resorted to giving me Xanax (while also telling me to go outside and breathe). It was always very matter of fact. I never understood why she failed to inform me that what was happening to me, the I can't breathe feeling, the overwhelming head-maelstrom, the sense of total doom, that it was something silly that I could plainly understand; my body producing too much epinephrine. This being a facet, evolutionarily speaking, of the "flight or flight" ha "FIGHT or flight" response. Which, it's been argued in some of the things I've read, is not the accurate interpretation as invariably, when someone experiences such a rush of epinephrine, they are somewhat immobilised by their panic. So what purpose, exactly, does a panic attack have?

I don't know. Writing this has put that old familiar feeling in my chest, a firm grip in a negative way, on the old blood pumper. I will get the fuck out of this house once I'm done with this blog (and a shower). Sarah needs some Cheerios and the dishes won't get done if there ain't no dishwasher detergent.

But the poem(s). Without further ado, poem one is about Andy, written on the road.

He wears his neurosis on his sleeve,
by an invention of his heart.
With a tug on one,
the other falls apart.
It is not foolproof,
this failsafe he's set;
He's already told me he loves me,
He just hasn't said the words yet.

10.18.09

And last night's, with a first couplet that's been in my head since Andy chose to take the route he has with us:

Any who run from love
be hung from the rafters
Any who stifle love
crucified on the mantle
Any who lie to love
dragged behind a truck
Any who "deserve" love
a shard of broken mirror
Any who ignore love
murder murder murder

11.14.09

Aquí, Viernes.

I laid in bed til nearly 1 p.m.
Donned red plaid dress, red hoop earrings, red lipstick.
All are talismans.
Lunch with the lovely Alexis McKinnis at Bryant Lake Bowl(despite numerous email conversations of some intensity, not once had we enjoyed one another's company one on one). She had a breakfast sandwich, I the cream of asparagus...with peas...soup. The soup appears to have contained no actual asparagus. It may have been hiding, knowing already of my voracious affection for it.
A nervous belly (quelled somewhat by one glass of malbec with lunch) awaited phone call from Andy.
A trip to NE (that's northeast, not Nebraska).
He was, by comparison, perhaps an entire solar system calmer.
Love expressed. Panic expressed. Confusion expressed.
No resolutions, but I didn't come for those; I came to understand, to feel safer, to be able to put myself in a position to set my needs aside and allow him the space he needs to put his head together.
Sex was had and it was physically satisfying, emotionally confusing. I would like to not do that again while things are as they stand. But I do feel it had to happen as it did.
It was raining when I left his place.
Rented Doubt at Blockbuster. The cashier, a handsome fellow named Jason according to his nametag, shared a cute moment with me over a strange-acting child which was communicated almost entirely non-verbally. My favourite sort of casual interaction, most especially when it involves a heart-squeezing sort of smile like the kind Jason and I exchanged. These things make me remember that I am wholly married to the joy of living.
Jason provided me with some sort of promotional coupon that will get me half off a new release in the coming week. Win.
Made a pesto cheddar duck confit grilled sandwich thing, as well as a cup of tea. All was delicious.
Doubt was less stirring than I'd expected, but acting by Meryl, Amy Adams, Velma Davis and PSH were unerringly top notch. I marvel, sometimes, when viewing such things, at how in command an actor can be, doling out facial expressions that with the slightest tic convey much more than can possibly be expressed verbally. This was one of those films, throughout.
Ate some pot roast my housemate, Russ, prepared. He used Mountain Crest as a "moistener". It was, despite being soaked in beer that costs $9 a 24-pack, quite delicious.
Downloaded albums by Dirty Projectors and Mount Eerie. I am immediately fond of both upon first listen, and I was about to say that the former will likely root itself more firmly in my oft-played discs, but that seems like a lie. Mount Eerie has qualities of Bon Iver. Dirty Projectors makes me feel that can't-wipe-smile-off-my-face feeling that comes from the first day of spring, or new love. Except without the actual smiling, if that makes sense. There is too much going on to simply smile; it must be paid attention to.
Made some art, or rather, began a piece while listening to Dirty Projectors, for now involving a window pane, tea from tea bags I saved for a year, and my best friend, Mod Podge. Piece will later involve polyurethane and fox fur.
Lamented having not seen Dirty Projectors this past Wednesday, which might have been surprisingly easy, given it may have been possible to be guest listed through a small series of connections. Further night time marveling at the random coterie of art rock and Pitchfork darlings I seem to be finding myself associating with these days.
Plans to read a bit of The God Delusion before retiring put on hold by blogging.
But I'll do that now.

All in all, a productive, beneficial, positive day. Let's hope the forward motion does not sway.

I feel poetry coming.

Oh god, I didn't even realise when I typed that sentence that the previous two rhymed.

I'm ridiculous.

And now I'm just pissed.

I cried for hours. Hours today. Hour after hour, tears just welled up and tumbled out my eyeballs. I'm sure it'll change shortly, but around seven o' clock, I realised he's just being a fucking drama queen.

I understand the need to be alone and sort out the bullshit that's causing a quagmire.

But we are in love. He is the best thing that's ever happened to me, and he's told me the same thing. With him, I am a better person, the best person I've ever been. I've wrestled with some weighty heart-issues since we first got together, muddling through them knowing he's the right man for me to be with, knowing I needed to settle these things in order to continue being this better, higher quality version of myself, the one that doesn't hold onto lust and love in others just in case the current doesn't work out. I know what I want from him, and that is, very simply, him. I've never been with someone who is both good for me and doesn't bore me. Nor have I been with anyone that causes no anxiety in me whatsoever; I trusted him from day one and have received no input that makes me believe I should act otherwise. I do not feel that I need him, only that I enjoy having him around. I know I have responded in kind and that I've been a loving, trustworthy girlfriend.

But he's let this lovely thing get all fouled up. He works himself into an absolute fit and can't see a way out of it. So he's pushed me away and somehow this is supposed to be less drama for him, and better for me cuz he's freaked out about dealing with an ex girlfriend who only has to text him about an outstanding vet bill to put him into a tailspin.

Just fucking get over it already, move on with your life. Yeah, it's fucking scary to be in love. Oh no! It's way scarier to drive a fucking car; that can actually kill you. And yeah, exes popping up out of the blue frequently cause a general collapse of whatever happiness you've put together for yourself. The point is you see this and you give that chaos the finger and enjoy what you've got. The best thing that's ever happened to you. The woman you think is beautiful and incredible who gives you amazing blow jobs. You get over it, or at least take productive steps to do so, and you celebrate the wonderful things you have. You don't work your own personal feedback loop until you're brittle and wild-eyed.

Unless, of course, with your fascination with ruin and with death, and your admitted interest in craving drama, you wish to make things worse for yourself so you can spout out bullshit like, "Oh, there's that familiar feeling; the feeling of hurting people." And you can avoid eye contact because it just "makes it harder". You can let chaos win and revel in the misery of it all. Maybe you'll get a song out of it, this paralyzing emotional intensity you're feeling that you want to "calm down" by breaking up with ME.

And that's something close to the conclusion I've come to, after crying myself dry today (lying in a puddle of tears, wet tear slicked neck, while watching All That Jazz is a bit surreal). He responded to one of my frantic texts, on the general topic of WTF, ANDY, and he told me, knowing he could offer no solace, to "take care of [my] beautiful self" and I responded that taking care of myself means loving him.

I wish in all of this I weren't feeling that he's coming off as total emo douchebag. I know how beautiful he is, how strong, how elegant and magickal. Where did that Andy go?

Wherever he is, I want to wring his god damn drama queen neck.

Ex Implosion.

And as quickly as I was pulled in, and he was pulled in, the feedback loop gained fever pitch and now the whole damn thing's ex/imploded.

Ex-Imploded.

That is one thing I should definitely know better about. The ex always wins.

I lose.

Which isn't to say he's gone back to her. That's what she'd like, but it hasn't happened...yet. He wants to be alone to be upset about the aftermath of her, he doesn't feel it's fair for me to be around when he's got to deal with it. She cropped up on Halloween, wearing no costume, but she may well have been sporting some mask with warts and her long red hair filled with bats and spiders; she continues to bewitch him. Double, double, toil and trouble...

My head hurts trying to wrap itself around this, which shouldn't be hard since I've been through this half a dozen times already. "I'm over it" becomes "I don't want to be with her" once she's appeared somewhere out of the blue--and in this case, began texting/calling/emailing and finally lured him to their old place, a place of comfort and nostalgia and memory to tell him she loves him dearly and would do anything to get him back--and despite insisting no interest in returning to that past, it always turns into some level of not being able to handle it, "it" being my relationship with them, or their scattered, damaged feelings for that now proverbial...her.

And it's galling because I go through that constantly. I'm always muddling through the leftovers for an ex, to varying degrees, and it's often the new, differently loving relationship that makes it possible for me to sort those feelings out. There's safety in the walls of an embrace that lets my brain seek out the dark corners where some as of yet unrifled memory lies. I know the panic, and the torturous detritus, I know that it doesn't mean I want them back.

But I lose.

He and I haven't been as connected the past two weeks. Shortly after we got back from our magickal Ely weekend playing Scrabble in the woods, I went a bit dead. Got all distance-y, felt little more than the concept of feelings other than a general sickness in the gut. It is telling that the ex showed up just a few days after this feeling set in; it seems to me a bit of pre-cognition was on the wind and the universe was letting me know something was shortly to become amiss. But, I was also, somewhere deep in the subconscious layers of this love, freaking the fuck out. We began so hard and fast, I told him I loved him on the third date, I spoke of marriage and babies and life forever. I got so excited because it seemed...possible. For once. Really, truly possible. We get excited about the same houses, the same neighborhoods, the same way of living, the same home decor; old things, dead things, weird things, dilapidated things. Walking or driving about is a homey adventure with him; calling out houses we're going to take over and make our own. I've thought I was bound to marry a couple other people, but in hindsight, and even in the course of the relationship, I could have given you a hundred reasons why it shouldn't happen. One didn't believe in love; wanted to raise his children without the word. The other found very little more than a passing interest in all things sexual (a champion snuggler, though). Both of those should have been known deal breakers from the start, but I'm stubborn, and I was deeply heartbroken by the dissolution of both of those relationships, which were both my decision to end. The only red flag in this current love has been the ex, which is always a red flag, but again, I'm stubborn, and I fell for him, with all his Sarah-Manual reading/knowing/intuiting ways. And neither of us has been much like anyone else we've ever been with, which adds a sparkle to it--New! Improved! love. But I did freak out, and I felt myself reigning in previous Big Statements of Marriage, Kids, and Forever. Of course, this was happening simultaneous to the ex wreaking emotional havoc on him, and the past couple days he and I have been working a disastrous feedback loop, which feels like a sort of heaven in comparison to the dead, distanced feelings I've had the past couple weeks, but I don't much like this opera either.

A walk down by Minnehaha Creek, discussing how rad it would be to come across a dead body down there but how it would be unlikely given the fact that the hoi polloi would be unlikely to dump a body in the land of the bourgeoisie. That was ideal, that was Andy n me, that was Friday. Hot chocolate, snuggled under a blanket, reading our respective books (2666-his, the God Delusion-mine) was lovely too. That was only Sunday. Monday night we had a fight over the phone, due mostly to my menstrual state, which led me to get my panties in a bunch quite a lot more than I likely would have; I just wanted to fight. Well, it sent him into another tailspin.

Too much can happen in a day.

An Onerous Blog

I struggle with issues of intellect constantly. It becomes quite bare each time I get involved with someone, as unless I truly believe them to be idiots, I feel they believe my smarts to be lacking. It gets worse the more I respect my lover's brain, though I have been with a person I considered my equal despite also believing them to be the most brilliant mind I'd yet come across. This neurosis is complex, of course, and the tic again came to the fore after a dinner party last night when conversation veered enormously toward a decidedly academic ken. I sat, mostly quietly, feeling envious of knowledge I will never have, listening to a way of speaking that will never be mine. These are good friends Andy and I broke bread with, people I love and trust, and whom I knew would immediately find much common ground with him. But it is this common ground that separates me from them. I barely catalogue where I learned something, only that I learned it. Philosophers are of little interest in name and I find myself withering a bit to know or have to listen to people name-drop when what's important to me are the philosophies themselves. I almost never describe a situation in terms of a writer's work; for instance, I've read a lot of work on the history of Christianity--not once, nor likely ever, have I said something like, "Elaine Pagels says of the Gnostic Gospels...." because it's just not in my brain that way. It's filed under Gnostic Gospels and includes texts and postulates by many writers whose names have long been forgotten. The facts remain. Life and its situations are generally judged, described and catalogued of their own merit, in an increasingly complex file that mostly draws off of experience vs. academia.

Which leaves me feeling wanting. Experiential discussions inherently seem less intellectual than academic ones. Which does also make me feel a bit indignant. It should not be so. Each person has a different brand of smarts, but we all know how we are subtly and not so subtly told to feel about "street smarts" or "he's really good with his hands". INFERIORITY. Except I don't feel that way. Not at all. The aforementioned intellectual equal excelled in physical intellect (an oxymoron?), in the most carnal, base knowledge of survival (trust no one, lash out 'til they're all bleeding and you stand, alone, unscathed), in how-to handiness, in mathematical/money and understanding/manipulation of others skill unlike anyone I've ever seen. In Twin Peaks, Agent Cooper says of Windom Earle, "his mind is like a diamond; hard, cold, and brilliant." This was/is David. (Quoting/referencing pop culture, on the other hand, I do constantly--another strike against me.) And I'm not saying he couldn't hold his own in an academic discussion, but that's just not where his excellence was couched. No, he floored me daily with these other things, these other things I don't possess, but which I didn't envy, did not feel inferior by, just took in and relished, admired, and above all, respected. He is a survivor of some of the most horrifying life-experiences I've ever been privvy to hear first hand, and because of this, or to spite it, he makes it through every single day a warrior. All of this said, by necessity, he is a genuinely terrible person. As a survivor, he fails at human connection on every level. Damaged beyond repair, he seems hard wired to fuck over or fuck up any healthy, beneficial human situation he comes into contact with. Which, of course, is why he is no longer a part of my life. I will always love him unconditionally and weep for his circumstance, but he is responsible for how he's responded to what's happened to him, and that response, despite being smart on a survival level, is sheer idiocy in a dozen other ways which would leave him vulnerable but would save him otherwise. Sooo, in a discussion of his brilliance, I've also demonstrated that he's a fucking retard.

The pendulum swings both ways.

I had felt intellectually vindicated over the weekend, when Andy pointed to a word in his book, unsure of the meaning. Certainly, I thought, he'd not ask me this if he felt I was not his equal. Oneiric was the word. The closest like-term I could come up with was onerous, which fit into the context of his book, so we were both satisfied. Turns out I was wrong; oneiric means dreamlike, onerous refers to something heavy and taxing. Not the same, but I did my best.

I wish I consistently did not feel as if my best was secretly derided in some quiet closet of the more academic minds around me. My skills are with language, street smarts, emotional fortitude in the presence of the sorts of threats which are made to emotional fortitude, lovemaking, and general skill understanding why people do what they do.

I might already know the philosophical stance of Kierkegaard, but I'd never know that that belief system was Kierkegaardian (now there's a band name, kids). I've been told my way of thinking is "very James Joyce", but fuck-all if I know what that means. If I name-drop any writers, it's Daniel Quinn and Leonard Cohen and that's pretty much it.

Sigh. Should I be sighing? I don't know. I can't tell if this neurosis is confidence or culture. Or straight up bullshit.

Like sands through the hourglass...

I'm so in love with this man. And I'm not afraid. I'm not confused. I'm not overwhelmed, I'm not searching, I'm not looking for a way out. I'm just in it, in the thick of it, enjoying the lengthy conversations about music, the games of Scrabble, the sips of whiskey and puffs of smoke, the reading together and sharing favourite sentences, the gazing, the intimate lovemaking, the dinners we each make for the other to enjoy, the silly voices, the mutual love of mounted deer skulls and pelts, the taking in a view over a cup of coffee, the disagreements over Tom Cruise, the agreements over all the right parts of everything that is everything else. What I'm hoping is that eventually, looking back, there is aggregate data of all these things, constituting, canonically, Our Lives Together.