a weekend alone to ponder

he has travelled and I love him, fuck I love him

but. Yes, there is always one of those.

I feel guilty for saying this but I'm glad he's gone.

I never realized how much I liked living alone. No one to chide. No one to question. No one to wonder about. A freedom from worrying about people.

Anyone who knows me fairly well has noticed I like to take care of people. Some might say I have a insatiable urge to take care of people. A select few might have some psycho babble as to why.

I used to hate to be alone, probably because I needed to feel needed. My entire existence was contingent on someone else's feelings. If someone didn't like me, it might be the end of my world.

I guess I didn't realize that aspect of me has changed. I saw the effects of it, being less angry with people, feeling less fear of others, cutting off people who always needed me. I never imagined that my true angst was never being happy with being alone. I used to be guilty; who I am ignoring now? What friend have I not called in a while? How can I opt out of this Halloween party two years in a row? Now, I don't care. Very often the best days I have involve no humans at all. Except for television humans, who are in a different class of "people" from those you might "see" on your day off. After all, they don't demand your complete attention; just the television stations do.

Spending time alone feels like a long ago memory. The kind you might still retain that heavy physical memory of. Or as they say, "It's like riding a bike." As a kid, I loved to read. Some of my fondest memories are tied into books. In a house with four other people, people who were needy and wanted attention, reading was seen as anti-social behavior. But you know, not said that way, more like, "You always have your nose stuck in a book." And then the eye rolling, to let me know that wasn't as cool as I seemed to pretend it might be.

Once, since I've lived here with him, I read a book in his presence. It was the sort of book that demanded to be read, that lured as I walked past, that I did not resist. I wonder if he knows that he has his own versions of this, diluted so that his attentions can oscillate toward me after my repetition of the question. Lately, I've begun to enjoy our together/alone time. Sometimes we both sit here with laptops in each lap and something better to do, but we futz around, I play sudoku on my dashboard, he surfs the message boards of some geekboy review site. And we get to pretend that no one else needs us and no one is going to bother us. Maybe someday we will funnel our energies into something collaborative. For now, we are still feeling out the mine field and wondering where to step next.

Today it was the out of sight beauty routines women should avoid sharing with their mate. That whole face mask stuff. I mean, seriously do you think the goo on your face is cute? At all? Not so much. Plucking the eyebrows. Another thing that cannot be fun to watch. Hairs pulled. Pain. Ice. Numbness. Redness. Eww. Clipping your toenails. I still can hardly stand when he does it in front of me. I try not to do it when he's around because I hate that noise and imposing it one someone else seems horrrible. (Once I was on the bus and someone was clipping their nails. On the bus. Shudder.)

And I then I spent a long time zoning out to television that he would never let me watch, even though I watch tons of his dumb shit just because it's his tv and he's more pushy like it matters and I know they rerun my shows all the time and a week from now it'll be on again; hell half of the reruns I've seen already. In fact I avoided watching anything he would want to watch that I've become used to and half enjoy and watched horrible things instead, like: What Not To Wear, The Oprah Show, and recent emmy winner (they'll give any one emmy these days, won't they?) The Tyra Banks Show. I like to imagine I'm watching the part that will end up as a clip on The Soup. But I digress.

Sometimes I spend my days spinning like a top from person to person. Even when I wasn't dating him, there was that feeling. Sometimes I forget to slow down, I forget to let my limbs out, and then I lose myself in trying to keep everyone else in focus while I spin. So here's to stretching out in the bed, taking up the couch, and leaving my stuff laying all around. In a few days he'll come back to a refreshed me. Then I'll be glad he's back.

further entanglements

So it is finally official. After receiving my lease under my door (how fancy and professional of them) I have been forced to finally make a decision regarding moving in with Eric. My general decision making process usually involves me putting it off until the last minute or carefully avoiding the subject as long as possible.

Imagine my surprise when I drunkenly stumbled into my apartment after traversing the city with a large red duffel I'd packed to remove all evidence that I'd ever been to Eric's place and finding two paper clipped copies of my lease and the demand that I make a decision on the heels of the one I'd just made. I was just angry enough and just stunned enough to sign them both and throw them under the office door (at two a.m.) but something in me could not close the door on him (again), so I put them on my dresser and went to bed.

In the light of day things looked different, of course. After ten hours of sleeping it off, things seemed different. But still I wondered: Can I spend the rest of my life trying to convince this guy that I'm not a fucking asshole, and can I stop acting like a fucking asshole (on the rare occasions when his idiocy rears its ugly head), and can I just accept that we bring out the fucking assholes in each other, but we also do bring out good things too?

The truth is, we make each other crazy, but we're crazy about each other.

So I will move in with him and we will add another layer of commitment to quell the deep sense of pride we have in needing no one, but desperately wanting someone, and perhaps this will do something, this will break something inside me that attempts to ruin every good thing I have in my life.

Sometimes I wonder what our relationship would've been had I moved in with him when he'd first wanted to, when we were fresh and new and my many opionated older friends warned that moving in with him would be a complete diaster. I'm sure I would have found a way to destroy that scenario anyway.

For now, it sort of feels like I'm on a high cliff and climbing and if I look down it's scary, but if I keep thinking about the up, the journey, the adventure then it's exciting, but not in a happy way, if that makes sense. And if I can just keep my mouth shut about the bad parts, maybe I'll get somewhere.

stuff afflictions.

I have tried to take this space and fill it with things. They look different this time. Last time it was an accumulation of things that I came across, this time, I chose things that comfort me.

It's hard to believe I've been here for almost two years. Even harder to believe that I've had a growing pile of crap in my kitchen for two years. Most of it is stuff from Marilyn that I never wanted in the first place, but I feel bad about throwing it away (every gift given had a declared actual value followed by its much lower purchased cost). Among those items are bits and pieces that I've grown out of, lost interest in, or just generally don't need anymore.

The last time I moved in with Eric after living alone, I had to pare down most of my life. It settled into nine large garbage bags that made their way to the Salvation Army (via a very helpful Jill who was thrilled to drive there with my boyfriend). A lot of it, of course, was the elimination of duplicate items that a household of three people was sure to have. And even then I still had a lot of stuff. I would have never admitted it before helping Val move yesterday, but I have waaaaaaay too much stuff.

Due to recent events (the uber commitment of the family plan), I've thought about moving in with Eric. As I contemplate what might stay and what might go (using "might" just as a paranoid, precautionary measure to avoid jinxes and the like) I find that much of my decor is probably considered "girly" and won't do at Eric's place. Yet, I like many of the things that are girly, like my curtains, comforter, and large silk wall panels. Of course, much of what I like and don't want to part with I bought on the cheap at Urban Outfitters. But those purchases were my triumphs into my own sense of style and I don't want to give that up. Enter compromise, which neither of us are very good at doing...

There are a few things that will be welcomed. My strange array of dressers. My printer, I suspect will come in handy. My few pieces of "real" furniture and not the shaky ikea items he has from five years ago. My few random baking items will supplement his. His heart will soar at the arrival of the big palm tree I hijacked from a friend of Marilyn's under the guise that I would give it a good home. I said this with the full knowledge that in the past, I had a plant death care facility. I think he likes it because it is the biggest living thing you can have in your home that doesn't move. He would also love to watch me fawn over Dustin's plant, which turned the tide of my black thumb.

Then there is the problem of the bed. It has been with me for almost six years now. But I don't think it will fit in his place. He already has a bed (a mostly land locked sea of memory foam). The idea of giving it to someone I know seems fitting, and yet, I've, um, you know, done a lot of things on this bed. Aside from the obvious, it's been my version of a couch, and it's been with me during some good times. I would love to give it to my mother, who purchased it for me, but it just seems a little icky.

Otherwise, what I know I must do is get rid of all the little items people tend to accumulate through the years, either from sentimentality or inability to toss lame last minute gifts out of fear the giver will notice its absence. Eric has plenty of these sort of items, they occasionally commit kamikaze style leaps off of the top of the fridge and I suppose I will have a surface area to cover with my own assortment, but I don't think I'll get to have too much room to place random items I love.

In a way, I guess the cleansing of unnecessary items from one's life is a good thing. Perhaps it just means I'll have more space to fill up eventually with things that we accquire together. And I hope to report that this might be my last move for some time, at least long enough to best my recent pattern of two years here, two years there....

slaying the villain

All it took was a phone call. It helped that I was a little drunk. I picked up the phone and I called them and asked them to go to dinner with us, which turned into a grill out at their place. He could have done it, but I did it instead.

This is significant because I spent a good deal of time trying to hate these people. I actually went out of my way to loathe them on the sly--while living with them, which is probably one of the most stressful things I've ever done to myself. I can't say if I was successful at the attempt, but they still seem to have some fondness towards me or perhaps they have the better poker face.

In my tyranny, liking them was not allowable because they were just so awful to live with. Now that I don't live with them and neither does he, dealing with them isn't so bad and I've actually discovered that I don't mind them too much.

Mind you, she is still a drooling cesspool of desire around him and I hate her for the way she captivates him. I hate him for being captivated. My cover was almost blown in one disgusting moment in which they exchanged their completely out-of-place platitudes and another friend of theirs bore witness to the emotional tsunami brewing inside me.

As I grow more and more comfortable in my own skin, I am finding that I stand my ground and interrupt her attempts at captivation. I assert my place next to him, after she somehow manages the feat of sitting down right beside him; several times I've asked her to move over or switch places with me.

And maybe it is that I realize that my anger and fear were so irrational, so illogical that I needn't worry anymore. She can throw herself at his feet as much as she likes, for that matter, any of them can, because he is mine and I am his and everything else is just what happens until we are together again.

hear this:

It is one thing to say what I say here. It is another to have it facing me. I can't say that I hate them. They didn't know that they were so important to me, that I spent so much time wailing about their weirdness, wondering what their problem was, deciding that I just simply couldn't deal with them. I also can't say that I like them. For the most part, there is nothing wrong with them. The only thing I could say was that they just were not my kind of people.

At my birthday, my glorious friend Annie had the exact phrase for her, the precise term to describe her nature, the thing that I couldn't find to explain her.

She took three years of my grappling and came up with it in less than ten minutes. I had not told her one bad thing about them, about her, I left that in the past. I did nothing to preface my introduction, I simply let them exist and gave them a chance to be themselves. And that was my friend's assessment and she could not have gotten it any more clear.

The problem is, the problem was, they are his best friends, his kind of people, and I know that they come with him, they are part of his list of people to give xmas presents to, they are part of his life. If I want him, I get them. If I want to spend the rest of my life with him, I will have this relationship to contend with.

Ten minutes in her presence and I get gripped by irrational anger. How this dowdy, unpleasant, unattractive woman manages it is through her flaunting of her intimacy with him. She has always done it, perhaps to reassure herself that he cares for her, to publicly mark her territory, or maybe, just to get on my nerves.

I smile secretly with the knowledge that my friend has pegged her just with one penetrating glance.

Her meddling, her siding with him constantly, her absolute doggedness to be with him is odd, but it is a fleeting thing. He is mine and I am his and there is nothing she can do, no bragging she can claim, and his smile is just for me and she sees that.

She is my nemesis, my enemy, she is someone that I will never trust. She is a fun sponge.

five years ago

Looking back;

It was nearly perfect and yet, I found the imperfections. Under the glare of my gaze he cowered. We spent three months in total bliss, then it took only three months to erode the love we made until it was nothing more than a routine we could barely justify continuing.

And yet, we are still here, standing together. We are more casual about it now, to save face, to keep rejection at bay, to avoid feelings getting hurt. In recent weeks, it is almost like none of the bad stuff ever happened: his sour roommates are married and in their own place, his lines more pronounced in the sand, his annoying habits tailored and tended to. In short, he is the man I should have had, the man I wanted all along, he is becoming a grown-up finally, but there was no end to the suffering he caused me until I left.

For my part: I am out of school which was an exhausting, all-consuming breach of our time, I am working stress free stable jobs, I have eaten a lot of crow and apologized for taking it all so personally, being unforgiving, being unaccepting of so much. Leaving gave me what I needed. Finishing school gave me a newfound sense of confidence. Finding him again was more than I could ask for. Every man that has loved me has become a sacrifice for the better person I could be and he was willing to meet that better me despite how I ravaged his heart. That he could still love me is how I finally realized after being incapable of accepting it for so long; his heart had always been for me. I simply could not receive his love.

I wish that it could have been better, different, but that is the way it went. I am totally complete with this and have been able to put it all behind me. Perhaps because I can look back at the many entries I wrote, I can consider it behind me. One of the things that I realize is that I needed to learn how to love and be loved and I am glad that we were able to do that for each other. He is still angry about how things went, how unfair I was, how bitter I was. I wish I could make him understand that everything I did I was certain I was right about it, and even when I knew I was wrong, I found it very difficult to stop.

We are sharing a television series together, we are cooking and baking together, we are working things out together. I love his ways, but I also have a creative energy that I lose in my contented bliss because I know there is no room for my passion between us, because I know it makes him feel bad about his lack of creating, but I cannot hold myself back for him, and I will not.

For me, even though there is a sourness, a tinge of sadness to our time together, what I see most are those shiny moments that the love between us was evident and genuine and enough.

disposable disappointments

the breath of (once fresh) stale air came to the cafe today. his beady eyes found me instantly and he pretended not to see me at first. then I had to say hello and he complimented me in that weird weighty way he does, and instead of saying thanks, which I was never good at doing, I deflected and said something about having a shower. the rest of the time he was there I busied myself with the newspaper and basically ignored him, though not to be rude, I just had nothing to say and no longer felt the need to be pretend to be interested in what he had to say.

betsy's owner is either really very insecure and unable to gather my interest like a bouquet of flowers or he is simply not interested. sound familiar? He is my new man of the year, I suppose, but I had such hopes for him. I thought he was different somehow, and yet, he has not done anything with my efforts and my interest has withered over this expanse of time.

to realize that the trader joe's guy did not even recognize me, that my face and smile had been erased from his beaches by time, well, it seemed alright, and yet, not right. His eyes still caught mine, he still had that wonder for me, that curiousity, that glimmer. Over a year ago now, he made my visits to the store a welcome treat and we even managed to have our paths cross outside that store once. that night I learned that no matter how much he stoked a giddiness in me, a sheer delight in being next to his body, his thoughts were just not...right. and now, being here, I see the error of my one sided affections with such embarassment that I am glad nothing happened.

those that I do share delightful conversations with are closed to me. they love my ways but have no room for my love. they evoke such a passion in me and I leave them wondering why the ones who love me leave me wanting and the ones I love leave me wanting and why am I always in such a state of wanting and so rarely fulfilled? I suffer from an unending loop of disappointment that leaves me numb to being happy.

I wonder if I can stop exerting myself up and down this avenue of one sided and half felt affections and truly enjoy the meal I chose instead of languishing over the menu I could have had?

for it is with the burnham that my heart lives. I am happier after he calls, gladder after his company, settled and content after his love reaches me. I just feel like it is so hard to struggle for what should come naturally, what did come naturally. It is like loving something you have to wrestle into submission and then wonder if you did the right thing in trying to contain such a beast. And I also know that there are appreciations of me that he cannot provide, a vast array of areas unknown to him that he will never be able to reach, a chasm of my Self that he cannot traverse. I love him and he loves me. He is mine and I am his. his love will always leave me wanting.

loss

I miss waking up early to go to work at the cafe. Sometimes it is the lingering night sky I most miss. Prior to dawn it sits dark blue and quiet, its dome dotted with half constellations that the city lights cannot completely hide. In his neighborhood the view is the best I have ever seen: humboldt park provides a respite from light and structures that gives an unobstructed view of the sky. Each time I have seen it, my breath catches in my chest and I wonder how it might be somewhere where the view is clearer and wider. I want that sky and that view. I want that night. I had it once on the cape, and there was nothing more perfect than that first time I saw the Milky Way.

The sky can change so much in a half hour, from dark to light and what I see above the buildings are glimpses of true beauty. Never the same dawn twice, I have seen the gradual lighting of a clear sky, one with clouds that looked like garland, one with clouds that held the light of the sun behind them. I once saw the sun rise on the one day of the year that it points due west, where it lined up precisely with the street the bus was travelling down so that it blinded us all and filled the bus with light.

I miss that sense of secret reverence between me and the day, as if I could be the one person alive in the world, as if I can feel the beating of the few things awake at that moment, a sense of calm and control, a sense that I have witnessed something few have.

In his arms, I tumble through wild dreams and tangled sheets and wake long after the sun has crept past the horizon.

I suppose that raw sensation of tiredness, that complete and ravaged feeling of being rundown is gone, but in its place I have lost some connection I had to the world, some intangible lie that kept purporting I was somehow special for bearing witness to the beginning of each day.

Do you know what pink is for?

Do you know what pink is for?

fish tacos

The meal of a lifetime, the sort you never forget, the painstaking attempts to getting everything right, and we are wanting to each contribute to this, despite ourselves and our past.

Ralph is home here. Ralph is a conifer, a japanese cypress, petite, green, cheer-bringing, and he looks fuller already, having let his branches fall in relaxation.

I feel at home here.

And yet,

On the bus, a dozen black kids stoked a fear in me that has been dormant since high school: a creeping panic that nearly had me fainting. I was so disoriented that I don't even know for sure what happened, just that I was scrutinized by so many judgmental eyes, which is one of my least favorite things.

His visit was the buoy of my day; and my smile gave me away.

The things that threaten to sabotage my life with him and I don't feel strong enough to resist.

left to flower/gone to seed

A walk through the park revealed a european garden that reminded me of the most beautiful place I've ever been (madrid, spain), but that I was there with him and there was sadness between us; another memory spoiled and tainted.

in the peach colored gravel lay a broken bud, a beautiful magenta flower made up of hundreds of small petals that converged on its center. it looked like the flowers that happen when chives are left unharvested, but this was smaller, more tight, petals so severe that they resisted opening from my fingernail. It was there waiting to be discovered, longing to communicate something, wanting to live on past its stalk and roots and I reached down and plucked it from the ground and held it in my fingers while we tried to make sense of us.

in the lagoon, I tossed that tiny bud, and it created a ripple so large that it seemed impossible. I threw it out of frustration, thinking to myself that I wanted nothing to remember that walk or today. it stayed beautiful despite me.

too bad there is no gardener for my memories.

small gestures keep us together while we pretend not to notice everything else...

in that place

I am in that scary-ish place where life seems to be making sense and yet it feels awfully hollow, like I've got it all figured out but there's no satisfaction in having it be comfortable. I am fine. Things are good. I am paying my bills. My apartment is nice. I have a good family that loves me. I have great friends who care for me. My jobs are fulfilling (what's more amazing than contributing to the growth and development of another living being?). Nothing is wrong here.

and yet,

the love of my lifetime is a slippery being who eyes me with distrust and distances himself away from me in ways that hurt more than a month of his self-proposed exile. we are as good as we can be and I have even managed to find a way into his blackened heart, but he is holding himself tightly for someone that is not me. And as much as I know that, I cannot turn away from him and his defective version of love. I love him so much that even the toned down carefully scripted version of him is worth it.

there is the feeling that there is always something I could be doing that I should have done that I'm not doing because I'm a selfish jerk with attention deficit disorder thanks to that shithole job I can't stop working in.

there are those few people whose attentions I could do without, whose flavor digusts me, whose turns of phrases make me want for the friends whose eloquence far surpasses the slugs I sit across from, and when the opportunity comes to brush them away, I don't.

and get this, I am stubbornly reading a terrible first novel just because someone gave it to me to read which I promptly dirtied up in my typical way (it spent one week in my jungle of a purse) and now have to buy the person a new unfilthy copy of a book I didn't even really want to read anyway.

see the pattern? I do. And part of me is afraid that moving to a new state for a new school is a fancy grown up version of discarding the half lived life I've had here and try and make it somewhere newly, as a butterfly instead of an uncharming cocoon with some potential for something greater, full of promise and nothing more.

I have a great fear of failure and somewhere in this pattern is the set up for what feels like the inevitable rejection letter from Iowa, a place I have arbitrarily chosen as the place for me without any research into it whatsoever (which has not done me wrong in the past, and served Cher pretty well in Kiss the Girls).

Luckily, I have sabotaged my old self that persists in many lizard brain ways and the things that are a shock to me, the things that I now accomplish with ease, the fact that anything I put my mind to gets done means I will fail (if I do get rejected) in a different way than before: At least I did something else. And then, I kept doing something else.

the storm

the next day left us with the evidence of the storm, the kind of destruction so unbelievable, so widespread, so complete that it was amazing each time it was viewed: whole huge trees uprooted from the earth, limbs and trunks of trees fallen to the ground, huge branches lying across things like cars and sidewalks, stories after stories of nearly missed falling branches, power outages, and the where we were when it happened.

and little things too, like leaves splattered to the ground so hard it seems they've become part of the cement, soggy twigs scattered everywhere, garbages filled to the brim with leaves jutting out of them, reminders everywhere that nature can still wreak havoc and who it hurt most that time was trees, so many trees.

in the middle of it all, where was I when it happened when hurricane caliber winds were sweeping through the city, when driving rains soaked the city and flooded train stations and sewers all at once? I was on my way to him, ignoring any signs of danger (huge bolts of lightning that made my umbrella fearsome) and all the while wondering how long it would take to be in his arms and recover from our own stormy morning.

"what?!"

in a drunken rage I broke my cell phone. not enough to deem a new one necessary, but enough to render my communications via text message useless. I don't know why I did this. I also broke a small mirror in my purse. instead of seven years bad luck, I had seven days bad luck and went through the week like a coma refugee.

[today is the end of day seven.]

I haven't wanted to write in a while, long since before the week of bad luck. I don't know why. I tried to figure a reason, but even that would not come.

Sometimes I hate my life. Everything is a series of dominoes so complicated and precarious that even one breath can alter and affect the next. it becomes so frustrating to try and retrace my steps, discover the origin of this mistake and that issue, and to what end? for justification of what? the withdrawal of my love.

as it always was. but now, not always, just a habit now.

to approach myself from what makes me happy, feel good, and fuck the rest, it's really different. to see my life through the words of an eight year old (who knows more than you'd imagine) is startling. and yet, why is it that I am constantly surprised by just how very amazing I am?

She smiled and in her grin was a significance I did not understand. I said hello. I met her bemused smile, with its reaching cloying mirth and asked what she would like. She said in the most joyful way, that she would like one of my delicious cappuccinos. Then I knew her. A week ago I made her a cappuccino, and she presented me with the order that I love best of all, one that makes the most sense to me, one that shows that she is someone who really understands coffee.

She ordered a small cappuccino with three shots of espresso. that the cup is twelve ounces means she has created the perfect and correct ratio of coffee to milk to foam. No one else could ever appreciate such a thing except for me and I relish in the opportunity to make this drink. When I present it to her, I say, "Making cappuccinos is my specialty." She seems unimpressed by my boastfulness, but today she says that I was right, that later that night she had gone to starbucks and they had made her a terrible cappuccino which she requested the same way and she even told her husband that the little shop down the street has a better cappuccino made by this woman. and I was that woman.

my new job is great. not only do I get to hang out with a sarcastic kid who loves video games and cartoons and the disney channel and eating all the things I like to eat and doing all the things I like to do (so far we have seen a movie, gone to a ballgame, searched the zoo for dippin dots and gone to millennium park), I don't work as much at the coffeeshop and that is good.

I just completed my taxes about two weeks ago. I am playing an endless round of catch-up and the carousel only stops periodically, at which point I would much rather find my breath and stop the spins than clean my bathroom. I am always constantly regaining ground: reading the book, fixing the old problems which clears the way for new ones, doing laundry, finding time to shower and tweeze my eyebrows, go to therapy, dye my hair, paint my toes, shave my legs, wash the dishes, check the mail, read that pile of magazines, call those people, email my friends, it is always the same list I find each week/month, waiting for me, a continual agony of things I must do and lately there has been nothing to stop that turnstile; for a while there was school, then drinking, then him and then the love of my lifetime and now, nothing but the constant juggle of things I must do.

I am reading Light in August by William Faulkner. The writing is dense and gritty, layered, subtle; it makes me ashamed to even desire to write. and yet, there is something familiar there, like a chilly goosebumpy feeling of recognition, and this is only the second book of his I've read, but I feel like my tangle of words will be best compared to his someday and there is something eerie and scary about that feeling.

I am waiting again, a series of successive climbs, plateaus, all abstract: the application is due in November, I will hear back in March (happy fucking birthday), I will prepare to leave by July, I will be in school again next September. That is all I know, the rest are just empty blanks that I have to fill in but I have neither the time nor gumption nor desire to do any of it, except that I want so desperately to escape this husk of a life that I will fill in those blanks as best I can.

I don't remember anymore which truths are lies and what I convinced myself was true. I don't know where I'm going. I have no faith in anything except the magic of children and their ability to stop time and enjoy what is right in front of their faces. When I am with them, they teach me that lesson/over and over again I am surprised at how easy it is to let go and just be.

In all of this, there is the love of my lifetime, like flame, and each time I try to resist on the grounds of logic and doubts, I succumb and I feel no shame, just confusion, just worry that I must've gotten it all wrong at some point, but I don't know how to get back to what feels right.

that elusive point

on the bus, the open mouths, the quiet hum, the shuffle of bodies pressed against everything but flesh, the avoidance of dirt and all things human

on my way to him, my friend, with his unwashed self and his breath and I love it that he's human around me and we have no shame.

over and over again I see the world recoiling from each other, pretending we don't exist, only to seek out that affirmed company we are familar with

defiant, I smile at them all, I nod hello in the most pleasant way, I even sometimes exchange waves with complete and total strangers who meet my eyes and search for something in them.

there is no end to the people I cannot love and the love I have to give.

he loves me through food:

he loves me through food:

open

three mesh screens and the urge to climb are all that keep me safe in my apartment. The voices of people on the sidewalks come inside. Their conversations float up to me as they pass. I hate them and I love them.

I could close the windows.

but it reminds me that I'm alive, that I'm not alone, that something else exists out there outside of myself. even if it is the beep of a cop's walkie talkie, and the voices scream expletives, and sometimes I wonder how long it will take the gentrification wave to absorb the ghetto building, and if anyone else cares.

in the morning, the birds slowly begin a constant chattering, a conversation brought closer by tree branches outside my window, and it is a steady chatter that pauses only for the lawn mowing equipment noises.

tonight, the windows gave me a group of people singing and playing the guitar. I hated them for singing so loudly so late, but I loved them for being together, walking down the street, singing a song.

when he is here I feel safe and content and sleepy and when he is gone it is impossible to find sleep, the voices outside scare me and I long for the quiet streets I knew.

taste

not so happy camper

As I endeavor to make nice nice with one Mr. Burnham, I find it hard to maintain my shiny veneer, the shellacked version of myself that I trot out for mostly everyone (except for family, in which I feel it is fine to be myself in all my bitter glory). I incorrectly assumed that since I'd been working hard at being this upgraded happier version of me for the better part of a year, I'd have no problem giving him this new improved glossy me.

For a while, I blamed him, feeling that when he takes a seat next to me, I become a console of buttons that he freely and gladly pushes. I branded him a button pusher, a finger pointer, an instigator of angst, and tried to go along on my merry way.

The hardest thing to admit is that I am simply not happy. Sure, I'd like to be. I see other people being happy and it looks like a good time. I've always wondered what it would take for me to be happy. I had it like I had to have all my ducks in order, everything perfect and then I could be happy. It never occurred to me that it had nothing to do with what I had or didn't have, or if all was right with the world, or if my immediate safety wasn't threatened.

I don't like feeling miserable all the time. Being happy is an effort for me. Being unhappy is like breathing. Thankfully, I'm not much of a complainer (probably because I work out a lot of my grievances here), and I'm pretty diplomatic, so spending time with me isn't so awful, but I'll admit it, if you're looking for cheery, delighted-by-life company, you won't find it here.

A lot of things bring me joy, a lot of circumstances illicit gladness, and the friends I spend time with are good ones, people who stoke conversations and model the ability to find happiness in a fucked up world. Externally, if the things I deem as pleasurable surround me, only then can I be content.

What I've come to understand is that part of the reason I'm not happy is because I'm not happy with myself. All of the things I thought I'd be by this time in my life haven't happened. I got stuck somewhere along the way and now I feel like I am constantly excavating myself and retracing my steps, and searching for that fork in road where I got lost. In doing so, I've regained some semblance of normalcy and recovered some confidence in myself that brings me some happiness.

The work of being happy involves many ducks: ace-ing the GRE, editing my manuscript, applying to grad schools, getting my apartment in order, maintaining my physical appearance (a grueling chore) and having a job I don't hate doing. I realize that this approach is almost like the guy pushing the rock up the hill. I can't disagree. I do these things because I know that they are external things that bring me some sense of relief, some sense of duty, some sense that I am trying to do something with my life. This is the blueprint of happy I was given and it is all I know, and I know that this approach seems to work some of the time.

And then, there are some moments when I let go, when my smile comes freely and I am happy, when being happy is just something I slip on, like a pair of sunglasses with a pink tint and the world appears not so harsh and blinding.

burns

black bean soup, cafe con leche, swirled espresso, the egg pan, sunshine, no umbrella, new suede shoes in the rain, them so happy together, his absence, his endless parade of plans with others, fuck, fuck, fuck me.

,

the cuban restuarant we ambled into was perfect. free of hustle and bustle, we ate european style. the minutes stretched into hours and there was no where we had to be, which I love, and we enjoyed everything. my friend smelled the cigar smoke from the back, and we thought that was perfect. the flan was cold and smooth and it relieved some of the flash burning that my tongue endured from the cafe con leche.

;

I have hated for so long. I wonder what it will take for me to love again. I don't trust them, the men. They can tell. I look like a frightened animal in a stand-off, stuck between running and wondering if I don't move long enough they'll go away. He doesn't mean to hurt me, but he's too selfish not to, so we tousle and in the end, it will be a devastation that I gave myself away one more time. I wish that it could be different, but he's not different, neither am I.

[the cat]

I enter through the back door, that I know will be open, so I don't have to ring the bell at the front door, so I won't scare him under the bed and into fervent unapproachable hiding. He sleeps during the day, so I expect I might rouse him from the couch cushions, but before I can find him, he wanders into the kitchen from somewhere at the sound of my voice.

I wonder, can it be, does he recognize my voice, does he know me? he leaps onto the table to get a closer view and smell my purse, and he seems to be watching me, his ears seem to be straining to listen to my voice, and I love him. Seeing him again reminded me how very much I loved him. Sometimes when there was no one I could relate to, he was there for me and I would pet him, he would purr and there was love between us.

it was like no time had passed, and we two were in our own world of enjoyment and pleasure, me from his timid exploration of my feet and him for the scratching along his spine which I know he loves. Every time I see him I wonder if I will ever see him again. Yet, I have no right to ask to see him more.

[the man I love]

ditto.

"

if only it was as simple as with the cat. if only I could be so understanding when it came to him.