Can I get a witness?

So, last week I covered the whole 1st runner up issue. (and if I took the time to figure it out, I'd know how to hyperlink to "name that ex-boyfriend"). but seriously, can someone verify for me that if you break up with someone (and crush their heart) over 10 months ago, even if that someone is still trying to maintain a friendship for whatever f-ed up reason with you, you aren't allow to leave voicemails that start with "hey babe. I'll be in town in 3 weeks. hope to see you."?
do boy brains not intake as much oxygen as girl's?

p.s. not the ex-boyfriend from previously mentioned post.

p.p.s. I no longer feel any anger at above behavior. I just find it ludicrous.

p.p.p.s. I swear I will write about something/anything than boys the next post!

Haiti

A year ago today, I returned from an orphanage on the coast of Haiti. I'm hopefully going back in December. I can't believe I ever feel sorry for myself, but it is so easy to forget.

my journal then:

"we've had two full days at the orphanage. So many children. So many names. And I know that I do not have enough lap space, hands, fingers. To touch, comfort and hold these children. I had a gaggle of children following me, just contented to be in my presence, to sit in my lap, to tell me stories in a language that I do not understand. And yet, completely understand. They are children. Doing kid things, saying kid things. Speaking the language of children".

I'm gonna need a montage

I'm thinking of all the things I need/wish to change in my life.
fuck.
where the hell is the john hughes's 3 minute scene that gets me from pathetic point a. to awesome point b.?

every year, we pick a theme for the new year. This one has been a struggle to define.
so, i decided to steal kwam jamal's 2005 line:
"get awesome".
i'm 5 months behind...
I'd do better biting on his theme this year, "no fat chicks".

Name that ex-boyfriend

This was in my inbox a few days ago:

"just so you know i do think about you everyday. i wonder if you are gonna be the girl i always wonder about. sigh."

I could provide a list of suspects, but those of you who know, know that the answer would be

e. all of the above

one might feel flattered by such a sentiment, but all I feel is resignation. I have been hearing this for over ten years. I'm over being the 1st runner up. Either crown me with a tiara or vote me off before the talent competition.

I wanna rock right now

This time last year, I received a rejection from a small grad program. On the next day, my boyfriend moved away and decided long distance wasn't his thing.
Today, I was accepted to a program that I am really excited about.
I am taking a financial leap and quitting my job.
I get to think during the day!
I just hope my new intake of knowledge doesn't supplant the brain space that remembers all the lyrics to "It takes two" and "Joy and pain".
Which, if you doubt my ability to recite the lyrics, you can either schedule an appointment or I can provide a recent reference.

I sing the body electric

For context:

I am 33.
I have a BA in English Literature.
I lived within 25 miles of the Walt Whitman Bridge for 26 years.

Me to Dorothy circa 3 years ago: “Do you know how old I was when I realized that the Walt Whitman Bridge was named for Walt Whitman?”

Dot: “huh?”

Me: “I was like 16.”

Dot: giggle, escalating

Me: “And by 16, I mean last year. After reading it in the newspaper.”

Me: “Are you even able to breathe right now?”

Collateral Damage

I have a tendency to check out. Sometimes, I don't even recognize that it has happened. But, a calendar tells me that a month has gone by and I have no clean underwear. It is something that I'm working on, the ability to stay engaged and present in my day to day life, but it's hard.
I checked out pretty hard this past Fall. I was broken and sad. Unfortunately, I was also selfish and disrespectful. And I am not proud of some of my actions, or situations that I put myself in. And I was a terrible friend. And for that, I wholeheartedly apologize. I have no excuse. I hate to admit that I am fallible when it comes to friendships. But I do unintentionally hurt others sometimes.
I'm sorry.

for Zo, Teen, Mimicakes and Bear

The weather today is gorgeous. The right amount of high 80s, with no humidity. Something to be said for the Pacific Northwest sometimes. And all day, I was struck by how this is one of those days that adventure calls. Blue skies and fluffy Simpsons’ clouds beg you to succumb to them.
If it was still 1989, I’d have declared today a Ferris Bueller holiday. (benefits of a crazy mom, I was always allowed to skip school to work on my tan). I’d have been sitting in my 1972 green convertible VW bug, outside of my friends’ high school. Pony-tailed blonde hair, bikini and sunscreen already on, waiting for the girls to get out of class early for their respective doctor and dentist appointments, On-lookers would be hanging out the window of history class, jealous of our plan. 90 minutes of the Wonder Stuff, the Cure, the Godfathers and Shinehead later, we’d be mixing the vodka and crystal lite lemonade on the beach.
My penchant for nostalgia isn’t all bad.

shiny objects

I think too much. and I think too much about thinking too much. And I am constantly trying to figure out an acid test to determine whether I am just generally blah or if I need to worry about heading to the dark side of my brain again.

So, it's good to know that a day of feeling lost, schlitz cute, untalented, lazy and anxious can be erased by the following:

"sweet, I forgot I owned that wig."

on the day that glitter, wigs and boas fail to make me smile, I'll know I'm in a bad way.

With friends like these...

If you haven't figured it out, I have the most awesome friends in the world. Peeps that are there for me at every turn. For my most recent heartbreak, I was given a mix CD.

The first song was titled, "The rejection".
Here's the refrain:
"Stop crying, I don't want you.
You don't want to stop crying.
You want me, well --
I want to dance."

other songs included "you're crazy" and "promiscuous girl".

I fucking love my friends! all hail irreverence!

time heals, blah, blah, blah...

The last time I saw Smith, he was in town for work and we went record shopping. As we stood, flipping through albums, I asked him about past friends. We caught up on most peeps, and then I asked if he still spoke to his most recent ex-girlfriend.

Smith: "you know once I stop talking to someone it's final."

Me: "well, you eventually started talking to me again."

Smith: "i broke a rule for you. most people aren't as persistent as you."

Me smiling: "uh. huh. you call me every Sunday night like you call your mom. you're hanging out with me 3000 miles away. admit it, i'm your favorite. you love me. you can't live without me." (all of this is, of course, said in the voice of an annoying kid sister.)

Smith: "don't make me regret my decision."

Me making kissy face: "you love me."

Smith laughing: "wanna know why I stopped talking to you before?"

Benefits of silence

I learned a lot from Smith over the years. For example:

When playing trivial pursuit and the question regards occupation, answer prostitute, “because you can never go wrong with a hooker”.

Jamieson can not be substituted for the milk portion of ovaltine.

You can throw a sheet cake at someone in public and have them speak to you again.

But mostly, he taught me that sometimes you don’t get to know the answer. You don’t always get to know why someone loves you, no longer loves you, no longer talks to you, talks to you again You have to trust in what is/was and recognize that you may never understand the reasons, but that’s ok. You don’t get to ask the sun what it is thinking. Or you can, but it won’t answer. It will, however, keep shining just the same.

A laundry list

of seemingly random things that will make me sad for a while:

1. whiteboards
2. the cheat and light switch raves
3. birds (um, good thing they're not everywhere)
4. calvinball
5. orange
6. setting goals and achieving them
7. kitty chum

There are more. and time will heal, blah,blah,blah...
Saying goodbye to someone you want the very best for is never easy. I'm going to go feel the rain on my skin, because no one else can feel it for me.

I'm just sayin'

I have realized that my life can often be summed up by the phrase, "in retrospect, that probably wasn't a good idea."

or, stealing from despair.com

"It could be that the purpose of your life is only to serve as a warning to others."

If you're really listening
If you're awake to the poignant beauty of the world,
your heart breaks regularly.
In fact, your heart is made to break,
it's purpose is to burst open again and again
so that it can hold evermore wonder.
-Andrew Harvey


Julie sent this to me this morning (thanks Julie!) and it comes at a perfect time. Like I said earlier, I'm reflective in May, sometimes to my detriment. See, the problem is that often times, I miss the old me. Now, I'm certainly happy that I am not lying on the bathroom floor in the fetal position unable to go outside. But, I know that I don't FEEL as passionately as I once did. I used to be amazed. I miss the euphoria that comes with truly knowing beauty and pain. It's hard to say which came first, depression or being hyper-attune to the world. But the two went hand in hand for me. And now, for preservation, I hide behind walls and partitions, trying to protect my heart and my mind. Until I can learn to stay awake without killing myself.

One time, at crazy camp

The summer I was sixteen, a boy I had a crush on, leaned over and ran his hand up my leg. “Smooth. I like that.” From that point on, I have been vigilant to shave every day. I have been known to run into the bathroom in the middle of a date and ghetto shave in the sink if I even thought I was about to get naked with someone. I have also been known to do this when alone. I can’t handle having hairy anything. So imagine my horror when I discovered you can’t shave your legs in a psychiatric hospital. Apparently, when you are suicide watch, they don’t trust you with sharp objects, even if they are wrapped in pink plastic.

“When can I shave my legs?”

“You can’t.”

“Why not? It’s been over 7 days. I am going even more insane.”

“Well, you must not have really wanted to die if you are so caught up in your personal appearance.”

“Are you fucking kidding me? Just because I want to be clean, I’m not suicidally depressed? Do you even have a degree? Um, not dead. So, therefore, would like to not be hairy. You at least owe me that. You really think I’m going to kill myself with a daisy razor? I’m not McGuyver. Hell, I can’t stand pain. I don’t even have scars from when I tried to slit my wrists. It hurt too much and I couldn’t cut deep enough. I am a wimp!”

“Well, you aren’t allowed to do anything unsupervised.”

“Fine, sit in the shower with me.”

“We can’t do that because it’s an invasion of your personal privacy.”

I’m the insane one? “Listen, I am by far the most cooperative and quiet patient you have in this lock-up. Wouldn’t it just be easier to let me shave and shut me up, rather than have me hound you incessantly until I’m released? Because seriously, I don’t have much else to do here.

10 minutes later, I am gloriously showering and shaving, occasionally sticking a limb outside of the curtain for inspection by the woman who was forced to sit outside the stall.

I may have been crazy, but I was silky smooth.

May Day

More cheating will occur in this post. May is a hard month for me. It marks my most serious suicide attempt. And no matter how far I get past it, I always get caught in nostalgia the beginning of May. In recent years, it's been a good time to assess where I currently see myself. This is an excerpt from a letter I wrote to the Philly Girls in 2004, on my 10 year anniversary. I think it is applicable to all of my friends, old and new, because it is because of you that I function.


"Essentially, I just wanted to tell you all how much I love you. This coming May is a pretty big deal for me for several reasons. Mostly, it would seem for my long awaited graduation from college. But, it's actually alot bigger than that. May 3rd will mark 10 years since my last suicide attempt. 10 years....it seems like a movie ago. This May also marks 10 years since I was supposed to have graduated from college. I like that it is such an even anniversary.

Anyway, I know that you all know that I have been doing really well. But, for those of you that want to play along at home, it's now been four years* since I have had a suicidal thought. That pretty much marks the longest I can ever remember going. In addition, I feel different inside. I feel ultimately calm at my center. I may have brushes with depression again, but I am no longer waiting for the other shoe to drop. Previously, when I was "good", I knew in my heart that it was only a matter of time. But now, it is totally different. And, I've tested it. Moving to Portland and then adding school has left me at my wit's ends on many days...but it hasn't left me devastated. It leaves me very hopeful for the future.

So, my upcoming graduation is even more special because I feel like it is the last remnant to be cleaned up from my depression. It has haunted me for years that if not for my conspiratorial brain, I would have graduated like everyone else. It felt like an even larger stigma and it was a constant reminder of where I once was in my life. And while I learned many things from my depressive periods, I'm certainly ready to get past them...they may contribute to who I am, but they no longer define me. I'm so excited, it's like paying off an abused credit card that reminds you of foolish choices.

Which brings me to all of you. I just need you to know that I am not sure I would have been able to do all this if not for your endless support and love. I know it has been less than easy at times, but you all stuck it out with me, constantly challenging and showing me alternatives. And while I may have seemed a stubborn bitch at times, I did absorb your lessons, your words of advice. Mostly however, I was constantly awed by your love. I don't honestly know why the chemicals in my brain decided to leave me alone, but I can't help think that it was in part to my fighting them with the knowledge that I was loved by my friends and that must be important (yes, I'm crying now).

I am reminded almost daily that what we have with one another and with our other friends is not common. It is admirable and wonderful and about as miraculous as anything we're ever going to get. so, I just want to thank you for being you. I'm looking forward to the new roads we will go down together. hopefully, it won't take me another ten years to get through a grad program!

I love you!"

*6 years and counting