hot

It continues to be a most fantastic weekend-or week, really, starting with Wednesday night and going until I get to play beach vball tomorrow! Reunion with college buddies Friday night-man we are getting up there-but we had a blast until 4am-Saturday day was real cool-went to lunch with a new friend and then we visited Corrine True's grave and went to the DuSable. Then, at night-I saw a very close friend and former roommate from a couple of years ago perform with her girlfriend-her voice is seriously one of the most amazing things on this earth and she is one of the best writers I know. So this was their debut-an electric and acoustic guitar-and the songs they wrote-fricking awesome. Then-the band trichotic played-last night in Chicago because all the members are moving to LA-BUT BUT BUT-accordian, violin, and drums? Words can't describe how chilling and beautiful and rockin' it was.....Then last night I hung out with three, yes three itty bitty babies and three munchkins and some family. Desi, the two year old, decided I was likeable and gave me lots of butterfly kisses and kept insisting I hold her or play the monster game with her. Now I am off to my second bbq of the weekend. Love the sunshine, love the people in my life. Yah.
ps-do i really have to go to work tomorrow?

Coming Home

So I have just returned from Minnesota for my sister's graduation. It was my first time home since my parents announced that they were getting a divorce. In the weeks since their announcement there has been some drama, mostly trauma experienced by all involved. The trip home was....good, but some of it was not good. Yesterday I feel like I almost set off a bomb...and there was a span of minutes where I thought I was going to have to be involved in something that would be irreparable. It was just plain shitty. It's fine of course, but there is something heartbreaking about trying to go about your daily life when the people around you are falling apart. And it's hard not to want to be totally selfish about what you want-I don't know if I have the emotional strength to go home for Christmas. As can be expected, all my four siblings are reacting differently and my youngest brother's bitter sarcasm and unaffectedness is sharp and agonizing.

There is something, too, about being home, a mixture of fondness and anxiety, that I always feel when crossing the St. Croix bridge...there was a lotta crap that I experienced there as a child and going home I fear my past will overtake me-it haunts me, certainly. I always leave feeling like I just dodged a bullet. But I suspect if I did move back there, I could create new memories that squash the old ones, but I am not so sure. Last night I started dialing my friends, hoping someone would answer that could talk me through things in general, after a few calls, I finally spoke with someone for an hour who made me feel better-THANK YOU, you know who you are-I am so glad you were home. It meant a lot to me-you are so awesome you don't even know.

In other news, I took the MEGABUS. I love the MEGABUS. Got me there and back for $23.50. HOORAY for cheapness. And the bus was empty, and I read a good book and watched some good shows on my laptop. That was nice and relaxing. And speaking of money, I don't really have any. I keep not being able to pay bills on time because the lack of money-I determined this week that I need about $600 to magically fall into my lap in order for me to catch up....and when I got home this evening, I had a letter from the IRS.....uh oh, you say, but no! It was a letter informing me that instead of the measly $74 tax refund I thought I was getting, I am actually getting $791!!!!!Yes, thank GOD. Answered a prayer I hadn't even uttered yet. I knew it was whack when I did my calculations but I did my calculations like ten times and kept coming up with the same measly $74.......Of course, the next few weeks will still be a bit hard until I actually get that check, but still.

the nature of grief

We played a game the other night and it reminded me of you, the way you died and I longed to hear your voice. I had wanted you to be my friend more at the end and you were in the best way you could. It hurt me to need you so much but I know how much you loved me. I wanted you to get well but I guess it wasn't in the cards. I miss you so much sometimes but it's a strange ache because I felt such a void when you were here. You were a void really, an empty space where emotions went to get lost. But at one point being with you was home. It was comfortable-it was a piece of me that no longer has a place to go. Did you think I would miss you? Did you think I would cry but not too much? Did you think that my pain and everyone else's would somehow be less than your was? Did you know we'd be angry and relieved and guilty and grieved? At the end tears visited your face more often than kisses, and sorrow was at the surface of your demeanor. Your brilliant mind brilliantly took you through the madness to find this deadly solution to your problem. I knew I couldn't help you and you knew it too so you pushed me away. Each call those last few months pacified me. Suicide-and your attraction to it, was the furthest from my mind. So when I got that call I was.....stupefied.

But why couldn't we have had
one last hug
one last laugh
one last conversation
one last good feeling?
Last are never lasts when you think they are.

I find myself searching for our friendship again-in other souls, other conversations. Sometimes I don't even know that I'm looking for it and it's not until days later I realize I can never have just that again, not that way.
It's funny how even when things are going badly you're still surprised when it's over.

Will these memories grow fonder with time or will the end stain them, the memories, a dark blue, so that laughter becomes morose and sad? My parents are getting divorced and my mom says that her past has been re-written. Have you re-written our past? Maybe just a little, and I may have to edit your part, just a little so that the memories are clear as can be somewhere down the line.

let's get back to it

So rather than re-read my last post, add to it or expound on it, let me just say bleh. Moving on.....

Gen is in town this weekend. I love her.

She has a baby in her tummy.

I love him.

I am really busy and my cat hates me right now.

I am so going home to eat spaghetti, yum.

Summer is trying to get away from me right now, but I'm not gonna let it.

I feel like going to the Chocolate Factory.

I finally got hit in the face with a volleyball the other day. It bent my glasses out of shape. Funny thing is, it was TOTALLY my fault. I went up to spike the ball and I miscalculated and hit it into the net, then it bounced into my face. Later I got hit in the arm with someone's vicious spike, and I still have a bruise.

I like to think of it as a token of my toughness. I love to play, you know. I am also really competitive. This summer I am going to be playing competitive fours and the truth is we're not ready for it, but what better way to get ready than to throw yourself into it?

Off to the dreary weekend.....

sooooo.....

I spend all this time away from sufficient access to the internet and the whole time I am thinking, oh I gotta get connected, all these emails I gotta send, things I wanna write, sites I gotta visit and yet here I am-all the access in the world and my mind is blank as a white sheet of paper. Or is it? Is my mind in fact, so muddled and thoughts so numerous that they are merely swirling around so fast, so fast that I can barely see them? I think this may be closer to the truth.

Gotta begin somewhere right? Do I want to be vulnerable? Not really. Do I want to talk about how someone called me fat the other day and while the moment it happened I felt distant and detached now that the moment keeps surging up--hinting that I am not as detached as I wanna be? Why is the weight of an insult so much more than the weight of a compliment? Is it because so many of the people I have been romantically interested in have inevitably fallen for a skinnier woman and not me? Is it because Express clothes no longer fit me? Is it because my last boyfriend used to say the same things a stranger so flippantly muttered as he passed my way? Is it because weight loss commercials dominate the airwaves? I DO think I am beautiful. I really do.

A concerned friend took me aside not too many months ago and told me she was concerned for my well-being. It was because every time I went out with her (to the clubs) I felt miserable and hateful. I told her it was because I felt self-conscious in the semi-ill fitting club clothes I was wearing and the because I couldn't afford to buy 'cuter' clothes. I told her I hated how many guys came up and spoke to her and none of them gave me a second glance, unless it was to ask me about her. But what I also told her was that I didn't find it fulfilling to go out just to have people 'notice' me and ask me out, and have semi-sincere conversations about nothing at all. I didn't find it interesting standing in a bar around people who drink a lot and smoked a lot more. I didn't find it interesting to waste half a months' salary on cab rides and entry fares. But what I hated most of all was I wasn't sure whether it bothered me that people didn't find me intriguing and beautiful or whether I was more bothered by the scene in and of itself. She told me I had a low self-esteem and I told her-but I think I'm hot, and I think I'm pretty damn funny, and I also think I am smart....so what is self-esteem because I esteem myself pretty well. I wish I had more money true, some of the previously mentioned issues would not be issues if I could pay my bills AND have a bit left over...but that is not the issue today.

Dr. Joy Degruy Leary said it well when she said "It's not how I see me, it's not how you see me, it's how I think you see me..." or something like that. Is self-esteem inevitably tied with how we think others are seeing us? How rigidly do we each refuse to believe it when someone says something nice and how much does it matter when as soon as it is spoken the person receiving the compliment immediately brings to mind the nameless void of 'other' humans who think the opposite. "Sure you think I am (pretty/skinny/beautiful/smart/funny/attractive) but EVERYONE ELSE does not." I don't know. I know I am pretty tired of being told I am fat/not cute/ugly or worse-being told I am fuckable. That happens on the street all the time. Two months ago someone asked me to have threesome with him and yelled to the entire bus full of people about my ass......

It's a pretty crappy catch-22 if you ask me.

Common human reaction to the phrase "i'm fat" is generally "no you're not" or "you are beautiful" well, I am. I don't need the people who would normally say it to say it though....I need the world to stop being so obsessed with imposssible images. I need the world to change. I also need to wrap it up. More to say later? I swear I am not as bitter as I sound, I just needed to expound a little bit, you know?

almost there

so i have this suspicion that i am almost there. almost. where? you ask... not sure, just get this sense it's right around the corner. transformations to come. through the trials and tribulations to the triumph....i have this one thing, just one strong residual side effect from a traumatic childhood amplified/magnified/personified by the ensuing events that solidified within me without my permission. i have been asked twice in as many days what i plan to do to get over it. i have identified the setback. it keeps me from pursuing some important things within my power. i am fearful of falling over the edge but the truth is that objects in the mirror are FURTHER than they appear and the edge is just a ways back from where i thought it was. now i have to dissolve the permanence that has become me. i been chipping away at the concrete block but it is time to destroy it. i found the FAITH now I gotta let it carry me through, you see.

pray for me a little, ok?