Wednesday, November 29, 2006

love this song

http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=1469122187">Bruce Springsteen - I'm On Fire

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Asking for a favor

There has been another factor in all this:
a friend of mine was injured recently in the war; he is still overseas having difficulty fighting internal infections and could use some extra good wishes and prayers. Thank you :)

The Longest Trip I Never Took

And in the end, after the cleansing cries and the soul searching, the heart to heart talks, the hypothetical circumstances reassured to the maximum, I did not fly to Washington because:
because I realized while emailing my emergency contact list that I have many friends who have proved they would drop everything and find a way to rescue me anywhere, any time.

because I hadn't even left for the airport yet and friends, family, and coworkers are already worrying about my traveling, about my safety in Washington, about my return; a coworker who has known me only six months said,"You have my number; if anything happens, anything at all, call me and I will figure out something."

because my friends and family welcomed my emotionally shocked self back from Maine open armed, cleaned me up, set me back on my feet, and never uttered one peep about the inconveniences I know were caused by my return and by me cancelling my wedding three months before the date.

because they have held my hand, taken my every distraught phone call, waded through my suicidal thoughts in late spring and my withdrawl from them all summer to contemplate executing said thoughts, and still drove 1 to 3 hours to celebrate my birthday with me.

because even though they were all worried about me flying to Washington, they still offered their support wanting me to be happy.

because it would be extremely selfish of me to cause them more worry, or to consider moving far away on them again the same year I ran home to them;

and I feel happily responsible about that.

It is 3AM and I have some unpacking to do. Maybe even sleep.

Tuesday, November 28, 2006

Finishing what I started...

Last night I finally broke down; the sobbing, the laughing, the covering my head and wanting to punch something forcefully; the 'thank goodness I have shriveled up unused wet-wipes in the car because if I don't blow my nose my head is going to explode and what will I use to clean that up?
Sometimes grief feels to me like a well dug in my center- apparently I haven't finished grieving for Nate and I, nor dealt with all of the guilt. The good news is I am getting closer to excavating the bottom.
Last May,I asked a great friend of mine to allow me one full year-or until April 2007- to whine about leaving my fiance. She felt that was more than fair. One year's permission to grieve granted.
However, I have not yet ever given myself that long. I am impatient. I want the pain over because it was so severe at first I feared living it for any longer; because I have feared never recovering from this, never again being capable of sustaining a relationship.
A few times since I've felt ready to date. Although each experience has moved me a little further along, each has also been unsuccessful- I go along gloriously until... and I can't go farther.
This year have been full of self-medicating platitudes: don't look back, just look ahead; life goes on, whether you like it or not; life is messy; time heals all wounds. There is a 1970's (?) song I like to hear that although most unrelated to caucasian heartbreak does help carry me along when I need that little extra something-

Ooh, Child, things are gonna' get easier,
Ooh Child things'll get brighter

Monday, November 27, 2006

The things I am trying to learn

(addendum to insanity)

I am still finding my way and I am going to have helloes and goodbyes in the process.
I am going to get hurt, and I am going to cause hurt.
I am going to keep making mistakes, and sometimes I will be someone else's mistake.
It is okay to be scared.
It is okay to have limits.
It is okay to change from what I always thought I was to what I thought I would never be- it is okay to want to sink roots.
I may need to give up what I want to have what I want.
I do want to be a parent.

Psst: I'm Insane

(AKA Giving myself headaches again, AKA Neal was right; if I don't change how I am, I will be alone forever; AKA Why is this shit so hard for me to do and why does it keep getting harder every time?)

It should be a simple decision: fly to WA or don't.
A. I promised to go and it isn't acceptable to break plans.
B. It would be great to meet this person I've been speaking with for two months.

For lots of people this decision would be simple.
For me, every single romantic decision any more leaves me feeling twisted and nauseous and wondering if I am truly mentally ill.

For me, the decision has become:
A. It isn't nice to break plans.
a. He will be disappointed but will understand.
1. I will still berate myself for being an evil, no good, down and dirty dog for cancelling plans.
B. I don't want to lead him on.
b. He has been forewarned.
1. I will have a very difficult time following through if I want to walk away after seeing him.
C. I am afraid to fly so far away.
c. People fly on planes every day.
1. Is it my gut telling me not to fly or am I just being a wuss?
2. I used to be so adventurous, now I'm a stick in the mud.
3. I could use an adventure and some new sights.
4 I have plenty to take care of here like finding a second job, getting back in shape, getting some groceries in the cupboard come pay day.
5. I feel guilty leaving my cats for several days (oh boy-)
D. I have a friend in the army who is now in the ICU in Germany and if he comes back to the states I want/ need to be here. (he has strongly expressed his need for my current support.
d. He has let me down in the past, but I've let him down too.
1. In the end I'd rather be here for him now and risk being without later, than not be there for him so I can get something for me now.
2. I would want and need to check for email from him while visiting in WA and that doesn't seem fair to WA.
E. I still hurt for leaving my ex- I still miss him.
e. The pain is gradually less and less and it is harder to get to now and much less violent, really not violent at all anymore, when I get there; but deep down I still actively hurt.


F. I think I need a glass of wine and a therapeutic SCREAM.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!

Ahh.

Sunday, November 26, 2006

Of beans and men...

Last month on one of my meandering beach walks I made a mental discovery (half my marbles have been missing for years- it wasn't that; if you find a stray marble please mail it to... . I think I just discovered the source of all those lone, used screws strewn along the sides of any road... .)
Refocusing-
In the seven full years I have successfully been out of my mother's house, this is the very first time I have been 'un-boyfriended'. At the age of 32 this is my very first time living as a single adult.
Hmm.
Your thoughts?

My soup making that dropped the cabbage in my sleeve also made a pot of Yum!~
(unlike chum and scum and... I bet Dr Seuss never ended a sentence with Yum.)
One bag of soup mix beans
One head of cabbage chopped into 1.5in pieces all over the counter (be sure to tuck some in your sweater for a bedtime snack)
One very large Vidalia onion, strong enough to roll the tears, chopped into your bite size preference
2 lbs baby carrots-each carrot cut in thirds (I'm usually too lazy now to peel carrots)
4 to 6 tablespoons of natural peanut butter
all the fresh garlic I had in the drawer, sliced very thin
sea salt and ground black peppercorns to taste
For medium, I prefer water or Emeril's Organic Vegetable Broth

I made mine vegetarian, but I bet bacon or ham would be good in here!

Saturday, November 25, 2006

Chia Head

I have been growing out my hair again. Remember my super-hero wish to have that doll arm that when flexed at the shoulder grew my hair ultra-long in under seven arm pumps?
Umm, hasn't come true yet so still growin' out the hair- the good news is my shag long ago reached out-of-the-eyes-in-a-barrette length. And the top-most stuff is getting long enough to reach the bottom-most stuff: seyonora, mullett days!
I peeked in the bathroom mirror quite recently to tell myself, Your hair dried looking pretty nice today- It would look even nicer if you brushed it.

I opened my top dresser drawer to get ye olde hairbrush; when I lifted my arm to reach in for it, a hunk of cabbage fell out of my rolled up sweater sleeve.
Don't fear- I am not saving vegetables in my sleeves the way your grandmother (both mine did, anyway) saves tissues like she is going to get the world's worst nosebleed ever the very second that world runs out of Kleenex.
I made soup today- It's so recently 'done', the apartment windows are still fogged.
Making soup meant whining that I had to cut the baby carrots in pieces (that lazy), being impressed the onion was strong enough to shoot tears down my cheeks, and teeny bits of chopped cabbage all over the counter- and apparently in my sleeves.

Thursday, November 23, 2006

Sing a Tale of Turkey

A very happy, healthy, warm, and safe day of Thanksgiving to everyone!

May your lives be each touched today by some nugget of love, joy, inner peace, whatever you hope to find.

(that was meant to be published Thanksgiving morning,but I was late getting ready, rushing out the door---)

In retrospect, how was your day of Thanksgiving? Tell me your favorite part!

Sometimes my favorite part of a holiday spent with loved ones is simply soaking it all in, leaning back and watching my late-in-life cousins and my cousins' children chase one another through the house and yard so intent on their imagined adventures, simultaneously appreciating their individuality while imagining that is how it was when my peer-group cousins and I were that young, and my aunts and uncles and parents our ages;
missing our grandparents, blessed and enriched by the addition of cousins' spouses and babies;
aunts reminiscing the years when their adult children were small, uncles full of tryptophan and red wine still falling asleep on the couch;
enjoying the ability to know my aunts and uncles adult-to-adult and old enough to know they have wisdom to impart.

Happy holiday season to you~!

Before I go today, I want to share one more thing:
At 3:30AM this after-Thanksgiving morning, as I read blogs like bedtime stories preparing to tuck myself in for the night, I stumbled onto a link at 'mom on a wire'-

A link to http://ashesandsnow.org/


In that near-sleep state of opened-soul, with headphones on in a sleeping house, my soul was re-energized, my core of peace and dreams enlivened.
Very recently in watching my younger sister, I've begun to remember the energy I once had, the dreams and drive to find my truest place and fix the world; and began to wonder what happened to my plans, began to see how unbeknownst to myself I am settling into blind comfort.
Thank you mom on a wire for sharing this- Inspiration is an understatement.

Go, look, listen; Experience.

Monday, November 20, 2006

I 've been Poison'ed

Strolling my slippered feet onto the bathroom tile several minutes ago, I quietly sung, "UN- Ski-knee Bop-BOP!"
And stopped dead to quietly sing, "What the F**k?"

Thursday, November 16, 2006

Tuesday, November 14, 2006

quietly missing Nate

Perhaps it is something in the November air, or simply the first November we have been apart since before we came together.
Last night I found myself unexpectedly transported to our old apartment, our home.
I know it was winter because I welcomed the heated air that wrapped itself around my body as I stepped into the kitchen from outdoors, and it was night- the lights were all on inside; this is also how I knew he was home.
I called Hello loudly down to the living room and he instantly rose from his chair and came out to greet me with a hug, ask me how my day had been- more than twice my size, his warm body wrapped me up entirely.

Retrieving things from my storage units I have opened boxes containing the smell of that home, the smell that will never be exactly created anywhere else ever. At first it was painful, grinding my self-made loss in deeper; now that the pain has become something smaller and gentler and part of me, I sink my nose into those sheets and clothes and bath towels- bury my face and do my best to breathe up every last molecule.

Sometimes, when we are emotionally strong enough, it is nice to visit these places we will never ever get to be any more.

Ass attack

I slipped into my workout pants a half hour ago. Yes my body was quite shocked! Did you buy us new pants? it asked. I don't remember ever wearing these before.
To which I said, Oh just shut up!
And then I said, Why does my new underwear suddenly feel so snug on my butt? It fit fine two days ago!
I don't get my period, ever, but I get some of the other stuff like gaining nine pounds over night, like needing a box of Kleenex and a hug to get through a grass seed commercial- and I am really hoping my butt is answering the call of the end of the month.
Because a girl who cut back on the sugar in her Light Soy Milk coffee, doesn't eat dinner any more, and stopped her cookie treats altogether should not be growing out of her underpants!
If it isn't the hormones after all I'll blame it on the wall squats- my glutes are just getting bigger!
But that doesn't explain my top set of cheeks looking chubbier now does it?
Damn!

Friday, November 03, 2006

Fat raindrop, deep pond

It ended in the same place it began, in the place she hired me, in the place where I met her son: where I confessed my crush one Saturday when I'd been called into work and there he was picking up his sister who was then but a sophomore in high school; and there in the whirlpool room that cold November morning he asked me to the movies that night and gave me a hug. Around the corner, one Thursday morning nearly three years later, I surprised his mother with my engagement ring- nearly as much a surprise to me. I had known for two years I wanted to marry him, but then there it was. I told my mother by calling to say, I am engaged, I think, whilst staring at the ring on my finger with incredulity and disbelief.
And we were off and running; engagement changes life in ways I wouldn't ever have known without being there.

In that same building, three months before our wedding, three days after we'd supped at her home, and three before she was to dine at ours, she found out I was gone- No wedding, no shower to throw, no family coming from Belgium; no mother of the groom, no in-laws to be gained; no rehearsal dinner, no photographs for the hall.
I knew as cold feet grew that leaving would cause great upheavals, would create a giant mess, but it is only now I am beginning to comprehend the ripples of my decision.

Thursday, November 02, 2006

Sweet tired

Tonight I am the tired with the constant weight of a yawn in the back of my throat; the tired with so warm they nearly itch eyelid edges; cheeks feeling weighty, gravity too heavy on me tonight; and my body knows the bed will take it tonight the way a tub of maple syrup accepts a lump of pancake- soaked down, down, down into enveloping velvety warmth.