10/20/13

My friend died yesterday.

He's not the first friend, and he wont be the last friend. Maybe he didnt even think we were friends. Maybe we werent. Maybe it doesnt matter. Theres a part of you that feels weirdly defensive when someone dies, protective. Its not a competition, and it is weird to feel that way. Its weird to sort of judge someones emotions. Are they valid? Did they know him well enough to feel this way? Do I? None of the answers matter, but the questions are there. Then what do you do, go eat a sandwich? It makes everything you do feel so unimportant. Then sometimes you forget it even happened. You do some online shopping, you joke with someone. You forget youre supposed to be sad. Youre an asshole for not feeling the weight of it. Your memories of this person are bullshit. You never called him, you avoided it even at times. You didnt share anything really besides this time that is gone. Then its this realization that you cant fall apart and it would be crap if you did. People die. Sometimes people just die. Your job doesnt care, your kids dont care, things need to be done. Cycle restart.

I dont know where Im going with any of this. I dont know if Im just trying to kill time.

When another friend of mine died a couple of months ago I felt similarly. I had loved him. I had spent many childhood days with him. I remember his weird laugh. I remember his awkwardness. But we didnt talk. We hadnt talked in years. The way he died was gruesome. It was self inflicted. I didnt cry. I didnt do anything. I just absorbed it. It happened.

You think this big thing is going to happen. You think youll hit this point or get this time. As if having a designated week only for sadness would let it well up and pour out. You could lay around for days unable to move and just feel it all on top of you, but it just doesnt. It just happens and periodically you feel it. These little pin pricks. These 30 seconds of weird memories and then youre turning on your blinker and the light is green. This recognition and then youre flipping a grilled cheese or having sex or washing your hair.

Life keeps happening. It will always keep happening, and so will you until you dont.

Middletown

I'm finding, with this dating trial and error, that I think my calibration is off. Every guy I enjoy seems to have life crisis written all over him. If you're funny and interesting and artistic, you're actually broke, addicted to some substance, and ready to woo me into taking care of you potentially forever. If you are a stand up guy with a good job, family-minded and future forward, you're actually overcompensating for your crappy personality, male insecurity masked in false masculinity, and controlling, needy, obsessive, overbearing behavior. Fuck. I know I go on and on about how much the dating world is ready to steamroll me, but its my life and you bitches will just skim some shit you don't want to read anyways.

Its hilarious to me that I didn't realize I had a type until this moment. It's incredibly obvious, but I just never thought about it. What I know I'm supposed to want, and what I'm naturally attracted to are so far away from each other. I want family. I want a home some day, I want a car that runs, and to know that there is always money in the bank. But I also want excitement. I want an element of surprise. I don't want to come home to a man on the couch everyday. I don't want to listen to John Mayer for the rest of my life. I want punk rock, I want passion, I want paint on your jeans and callouses on your hands. Its just hard to find that combination. It may not really exist and I'm just weirdly in love with some Ryan Gosling character. Is nature getting in the way? Is it even nature? Is it just some dysfunction, some daddy issue? I don't feel that way. I don't feel like I'm looking for my terribly brilliant drug addict father, though he is exactly that. And as we all know feelings aren't facts.I never really felt badly about my father not being around. I never craved that. I don't remember being a kid and being terribly effected by it. Then after I met him I admired him, but I was glad he didn't raise me. Maybe its more about my mother. Maybe I'm like her, or have an appreciation for her values so Ive ended up falling in love with the same characteristics. So, even if that is the case, is that fucked up? See what happens when you let a girl talk herself into a hole. Regardless of the why behind my desires, they are mine now. I don't know if you can combat them and still be happy. I don't know if you can deny your nature for someone who fits neatly into your life.

I was talking to my son's grandmother the other day and she was talking about her ex-husbands. She said the first one she was with for 13 years, hers sons' father. He was a drunk, couldnt write a check on his own or keep a job. Finally after trying to make that work for over a decade she divorced and later met Number 2. He was wealthy. He was the opposite. Structure, stability, security. She absolutely hated him. I think that it has to do with realizing who you actually are. You cant go too far in either direction. You cant get into one relationship to somehow counteract the previous. I dont want a three-piece suit wearing, beige carpet of a man. I think I do sometimes, but I have to accept that Im crazy too. I can be a wildcard. I am irresponsible sometimes, I like to stay up too late and my focus is not always what's best for tomorrow instead of today. But I also need someone who can anchor me. Someone who isnt running a muck with my money and my life. I need stability, I need structure, but I also need to lay around all day painting. I need a path that you can't see the end of, but isn't always a hike and slide.

Where are you middle ground?

Ships

Things are just different now. We don't get to know each other, we don't talk. We share statistics. We exchange numbers, codes, movie catch phrases. We keep our judgements, our feelings internal. Don't say too much, don't put it all out there. Hell I don't want someone unleashing their real feelings on me. If you are really excited after one date, please don't tell me. Ill probably think you are a clingy stalker. Its fucked up that we cant ever be ourselves, not that anyone knows what that means. I never know when I'm supposed to feel things. When enough time has passed to like someone. What is infatuation, what is love? I don't know. Apparently its all a part of this time frame I know nothing about. They don't teach people these things. We know them, probably from humiliation and rejection, but I was never told how to avoid it. Even further I have no idea when my feelings of rejection are valid or if I'm simply shooting myself in the foot. Avoiding the rejection before someone gets the opportunity. I hate it. I hate that we cant just be sewn up with another person from the get go. We'd hate it if we were I know, but god all of this choice doesn't help anything. I can see myself with just about anyone. Its too hard to decipher what feelings I have are even real much less reciprocated. With all the screen names and beauty shots and bullshit profiles I don't even know who I'm talking to anymore. No one wants to say anything real because then who is going to like your status or send you a wink, show you their tits on Skype. Its just gotten too hard to get involved and stay involved. Especially with this generation of endless options the grass is forever greener. There is always competition and honestly I'm not down to fight. Dating is just literally the worst. I like meeting people regardless of whether it works out, but I hate wondering. Its like an obstacle course out there. Weaving emotional land mines, scaling defensive walls. That Love is a Battlefield line is no joke. We are getting blown up and shot down right and left. And I know, I know if I wanted it to be that easy Id marry the next weirdie who showed up. I have my own restrictions to what I'm willing to be happy with. I don't want anyone, I want that one or maybe this one. I want to pick my life partner like my last meal. Picky, choosy, and then finally settling for whatever will agree with me until its lights out. Maybe we like it this way. Maybe it helps you appreciate the person who does finally decide to sit down and take it on with you. Im sure at the end of the day it doesn't matter what you call that lump of caring as long as you trust the other person is carrying around a knot themselves. Who knows. Its all a mystery to me. Relationships have always been the biggest turning screw in my mind. I don't understand them, Ive never had a really good one. Though if I did Id probably be in a grocery store with them instead of writing a blog about it. Oh the woes of ever-changing single life. Almost as equal to the woes of relationship regularity.

Found it, Love it, Sharing it

http://www.frankstockton.com/

Go look at the rest. Love, love, love it.

Communication Breakdown

I hate communication boundaries. I put a lot into communication, I want it to be effective. I also do not like to hold off talking about anything. I want to get any issue out there as quickly and directly as possible, fix it, and move on. I do not like to avoid things. I do not like to side step issues. Though this, to me, seems like a very effective way to resolve problems, dear god it rarely works. The issue is that it takes the second party's cooperation to resolve issues. It doesn't matter how efficiently you voice your point if the other party doesn't care, or chooses to react to what you said in a brash manner. This is the greatest frustration of my life.

I got into an argument with my child's father yesterday over something minor. He had left the house with our son, and I didnt know where they were. That somehow turned into a 30 minute argument. By the end I had no idea what we were even talking about, and apparently everything would be fine if I would just not feel anxious. I could have come out of my skin. It's a conversation, Im not here trying to convince you that this is all your fault. It's like people cant hear a problem without their initial reaction being to figure out who is to blame. When we were together I wouldn't even want to bring things up. The hopeless feelings I had about the issue being resolved made me depressed and exhausted before the issue was ever voiced. It got to a point where I just wouldn't say anything at all. I knew there were serious issues with our relationship. I knew he was probably cheating on me quite a few times, but what was the point? What was the point of saying anything when it was just going to get turned on its head and then dropped. I couldn't handle all of the bottled up frustration so eventually I would explode. I would cry and completely loose my mind. He would sit there looking at me like I was insane, which I was. This is why we are not together. This is why I do not want to be in another relationship.

Come to find out, unfortunately, even if you are not in a relationship you still have to put up with these situations. Basically the only thing you can do is not care how or what anyone is doing. You have to be completely and totally self reliant. You have to be neutral. If you haven't noticed at this point, this is completely impossible for me. My need to be around other humans makes me care about our involvement. It makes me need them to understand me. Sometimes I feel like I am just running my head into a wall. I feel like it should come standard in a person to be conscious of other people's feelings. When I do things I think about how this will effect people I am in close contact with or care for. I don't just run around doing whatever I feel like. Some people might disagree, but those are probably people that I don't care very much about. There lies the small fact that results in hurt feelings. I feel like when people cannot communicate with me effectively it means they do not care to. Why else would they disregard me? Why would they argue and push back on the feelings I am having unless they simply didn't want to hear about it? I understand that this is probably not true a lot of the time, but in the moment that is the only thing I can focus on.

Defensiveness is fucking ineffective. Fear fucking sucks.

These two things are the only things that have ruined relationships for me apart from drug addiction and death. I do not fear how I feel. I am not afraid to tell people if they want to know. I am open to things both working and not working out. I am not an emotional zombie, but at the end of the day I try to be understanding and rational. Feeling defensive, is feeling shame. I am very rarely ashamed, and when I am it is generally because I am wrong. When I am wrong I like to admit it to the person effected by it. Resolution is the game I like to play. Whatever the issue, whatever the resolve, lets do it. I cannot understand people who lets these factors run their relationships. I am sure it is the same way that I cannot get over OCD or remember where my car keys are every morning. People say, "why don't you just put them on the hook?" I say, "if I could remember to put them on the hook, then this wouldn't be an issue." As my wise mother has always said, "if people could do better, they would." Seems logical to me, doesn't fix anything.

I guess sometimes you just have to accept that no matter what you do, things may not have resolution. Some things are just broken. I just try to remain calm with it all. It infuriates me, but I am sure I drive some people out there fucking crazy with my tardiness and inability to remember anything 15 seconds after you tell me. We are some flawed animals. Socially strange and ineffective, which is hilarious considering we took all this time to make a language. We spent centuries trying to communicate better, and now we are just left with a bunch of words that no one wants to use. How will we make it out alive dear diary? I suppose with much love and aggravation and by the skin of our teeth.

Dancing with Downers

Dugan was someone that everyone knew. Not a lot of people knew how incredibly lame he was growing up. Especially looking at him now all dolled up and dyed you wouldn't really guess that he wore bottle cap glasses and was trying to bang my sister when he was a freshman. By the time I was in high school his glam was in full swing. He was good at it too. He consistently wore a mid drift and skinny jeans. Wild hair and make up, always. He drew on his eyebrows and wore a gay pride bottle cap necklace. The god of glitter. He was an elitist, or at least he made you feel like he was. I don't know how we met, and I dont know how we became friends. I just know it happened, and it was horrifying and bliss all at the same time. I really hung out with him daily after I graduated. I kinda dipped my toes in the drug scene so thats probably how we met. In high school I was pretty against drugs. I wouldn't talk to people who had done acid. I drank Everclear two nights a week, but somehow I felt that was different.

When I was 19 I had this apartment in Warwood. It was the third floor, one bedroom, with cherry wallpaper in the kitchen. I loved it. My childhood friend Misa and I lived there and we worked down the street. When we;d get out around midnight we;d always walk home together, feeling like grown ups. We never had money even though the job we had paid well. All there ever was in the fridge was beer, and there were many nights of Easy Mac. Sometimes we would go into town and go out to the bar, bring a band home. There were always people living with us. At one point Dugan was sleeping on our couch or bed. He never worked the entire time I knew him. He always got away with smoking your cigarettes and crashing at your place. Misa's boyfriend at the time was this ultra redneck named Ben. One night I was at work and he came over with a friend of his BJ. We lovingly called him Blow Job for a very very long time. BJ was sweet and hilarious. He would come over with his stars and bars belt buckle, get drunk, and sing Karaoke Revolution for hours. Of course Dugan hated him immediately. I remember coming home and he was all up in arms dragging me upstairs saying "I fucking hate these people." I went upstairs and there was the most awkward union of people sitting in the living room. Dugan and Snow (I will save that intro, she needs a post of her own) extreme to every sense of the word, blaring M.S.I. and three hillbillies drinking Bud. Snow and I got wasted and were telling them that M.S.I. was really sending subconscious messages to their brains. I said in attempts to fuck with them, "One day you're gonna wake up with a drag queens dick in your mouth, and you're gonna like it!" It was ironic because maybe a month later Dugan and BJ were banging. Yes, the good ol' Blow Job, boy from Florida, was in love with the biggest fag in town.

Slowly Dugan destroyed him. He found out about his trust fund, and blew it in no time. Hair dye, barbiturates, opiates, pot, blow, hallucinogens, and grub. Thousands of dollars completely wasted on bullshit. I lived four houses down from them at the time so I got in on it quite a lot. BJ got a tramp stamp and a mohawk and his own little mid drift. Soon we were just carbon copies of each other. After the money ran out things got desperate. Dugan had an abscess tooth for years to get pills. He never got it taken care of and I'm sure it hurt like hell. After awhile hospitals started shutting him down. Instead of tabs he got a business card for a therapist. We'd have to drive out of state to get anything. We'd sit in the parking lot bitching and waiting for him to come out. Once he tried to get me to run over his foot so he could go to the hospital. I did it. I mean after awhile of hanging out with him you would have hit him with a car too. Another time he wanted up to break his hand with a crow bar. Even then I felt like somehow this was all laughable. It was all a part of the dance.

He was down right cruel a lot of the time. He could manipulate you into anything and then berate you when you couldn't follow through. Like moving into your house and getting you loaded everyday. Then when there wasn't any food, or your boyfriend got tired of his crap he would lose it on you and completely ostracize you from all of your friends. Which really, all of the "friends" you had were just his followers. He would put you up on his pedestal and you never realized how high the fall was. I didn't talk to anyone besides him and his toadies for probably near a year. They did my make up and showed me how to sew my jeans into skinnys. I always wore a fur coat like Snow. I was loud like them, and cruel like them, and I disregarded anyone in my life that tried to make me see that. We'd drive around in BJ's car blaring the Party Monster album. I swear we had our own language. Everything was an inside joke. The crazier you acted, the funnier it was, the more desperate you seemed, and the more you fit in. I liked feeling wild. I liked feeling like I was doing something wrong. I wore fishnets and guarders, and had an edgy haircut. A new color every week. It was fun to feel like you were a part of something even if it was really fucked up. I liked being invited to parties and Dugan clinging to me at a show. Dugan needed people to have this perception of him. I know he never felt that way about himself, but after I left Wheeling and watched it all happening from the outside I couldn't believe I was ever a part of it.

Everyone blamed Dugan when Anthony died, even me. Though now, I can't imagine putting that on a single person. I remember Autumn, a close friend of mine from high school calling me. She had fallen in with Dugan for quite a few years and she was pretty unrecognizable at the time. She told me Anthony died of an overdose. Anthony was younger than us. I think he was a freshman when I was a junior. He was gay I guess, everyone always just seemed to sleep with everyone in Wheeling. He was tall and thin with these big doe eyes. He was incredibly lovable. I remember there was a drag party at a friends house in high school. We all had to dress up as the opposite sex. Anthony was running around in a bustier with the bust cut out and electrical tape over his nipples in an "x". With his short hair he looked like Ann Hathaway in Les Misérables. Smeared eyeliner and a cigarette hanging out of his mouth. There was a guy there hitting on underage girls and I was telling him he needed to leave. This guy was drunk and started yelling about how "he ran shit around here". Anthony came stumbling in heels with a serrated knife saying calmly in his raspy voice, "Ahem, who runs shit when they have a knife?" He told the guy to look around him at these kids who were covered in scars and piercings saying " This is what they do willingly to themselves, what do you think they'd do to you?" I've never seen someone so afraid of a boy in a dress before.

By the time I left Wheeling I hadn't seen him in awhile. Again he attached himself to Dugan, and when people got deep into that life you had to keep your distance. He was always trying to get high. It started out with huffing paint and ended up shooting oxycotin, suffocating in his sleep. His friends found him blue in the morning. He was 18, it was October 11, 2008. I don't think as a group we had ever been more devastated.  He had gotten the drugs off of Dugan and Autumn. Not that he wouldn't have killed himself anyway. The boy wanted to die probably long before I knew him. He was determined about it. But there was just something about the way it happened, and how you could tell how much Dugan had effected these people. The people who created the life he had gave him the means to end it. The people who said they were his friends, took the money out of his hands when he asked for a full script. I have no doubt now that Dugan would have stopped it if he could. In fact I can't rationally blame him for any of it, but I know how I felt being in that world after awhile. You never got anywhere. You never had anything besides these people, and you knew they would turn on you at any moment. I have this Fear and Loathing like image in my head of a car full of hyenas. All of them decked out and wearing make up, their heads thrown back and mouths wide, laughing. That is the perfect image for it. That is exactly what it is like. Scavengers, cold scavengers driving themselves to madness.

I haven't talked to Dugan in years, but I hope he has at least attempted to undo the damage he has done to himself and others. I used to call him a virus. He infects people, and if it were for anything good I'm sure he would excel. He made me really aware of how dangerous things can become so quickly. One day he's putting on your eyeliner, the next you are hiding from your parents in your dark house, fucked up, feeling like you'll never be like the people you see walking by on the sidewalk. Some people want to take you down with them. I now know that it's not a party if it happens everyday, and I remind myself of that regularly. Its truly unfortunate the evil shit that can come from people, especially out of self-hate.  I have definitely learned that I am always responsible for my own life. He has given me that. I will never be a person who destroys themselves just to prove that they can. For that, I suppose I can thank him.

Anthony: his caption read "when Im alone, all alone with a thousand downers."

Autumn

Dugan and Autumn going to an M.S.I show

BJ

Dugan

Anthony

Near the end

Sex, Drugs, and Kelly Edwards

I used to go dancing twice a week. I lived with a girl named Kelly who was never someone you would think I would talk to. She was about 5'6" and maybe 100 pounds dripping wet. Blonde, she drove a drop top, she was everything I avoided most of my life. We would go to my bar on Wednesdays where there was a dj, and then on Saturdays we would go to the club. Now understand that I am 6 feet tall. It was not always the most comfortable things to grind in a club with a tiny little prep chick, but we had fun. She was a nut. We met at a telejoke job working for xm radio. I was wearing this torn up Misfits t-shirt and she walked in and sat next to me all Abercrombied out. The combination of her and the early hour made me pretty sure this was going to be the worst experience of my life. We took a break and I went to smoke. She came outside and lit a cigarette.  She said " I know you look at me and hate me right off the bat, but don't assume I'm doing the same thing to you." It made me realize I was being just as much of an ostracizing bitch as the cheerleaders in high school. I fell in love with her at that moment, and we were pretty inseparable for about a year.

We would drive around in her Seabring and get fucked up together. Actually getting fucked up was our main event. For the first three months I knew her she carried a 1/5 of 100 proof vodka in her purse, Smirnoff blue label. Then she would get wasted somewhere and have some horrible experience. She would show up puking and crying and swear she'd never drink again. Then she'd do pills for 3 months.  Percocets, tabs, the occasional roxy later on. We would sit in the bathroom, blow a blue football, and gab for hours. It was kind of a blast for awhile. Then she'd do too much or have some pharmaceutical cocktail and swear off it for a bit. She could be a real bitch about it sometimes. She's get into these fits if she couldn't find drugs for a bit and tell me we weren't really friends. She'd go on and on about how we had nothing in common besides getting high, which was true, and drop me off somewhere. I wouldn't see her for a few days and then we'd get back together somehow.

We lived in this purple house, lovingly called The Purple House. It was set back from the street and had a huge back yard that flooded constantly. It was a neat house with this wrap around mantel and all hardwood floors. We actually ended up passing down that house for years, and a friend of ours still lives there 5 years later. It was a party house. We'd go to work, come home, eat Taco Bell in our little kitchen and get blown for the rest of the night. Sometimes people would come over and we'd play Donkey Kong on the Super Nintendo and drink. She surprisingly interacted with my friends really well. Everyone kinda loved her. She was funny and had an attitude to be reckoned with. She was always getting into fights which was hilarious due to her size.
One night Kelly, Gwinn, and I went down to the local gay bar. She was wearing this red bra with a black vest over top and a mini skirt which was standard attire for nights out. We had downed a half a bottle of vodka in the car and went in to dance. Kelly got attention. Everywhere we went she demanded it, and it got us into trouble a lot of the time. We were outside at one point and these girls started running their mouths about us. I made a comment to one of them with a shaved head and pissy expression that they were just mad that we looked like girls. Of course that started more shit. All of a sudden I have this 5 foot 4 lesbian whose shirt I'd pulled over her head attacking me in a parking lot. Kelly's fumbling about after the chicks girlfriend with a broken off beer bottle. I thought that part was in particularly hilarious. What was this a Western? Gwinn comes out just in time to see this huge dude punch me square in the face. He comes out of no where and has this guy up against a fence, and then all of a sudden everyone was screaming. We were wasted as I said and I had just been struck in the face so it wasn't clear at first. When I started to make it out I was even more confused. They were saying "That's a girl!" "That dude's beating up a girl!" The bouncer came out and separated us. The man who had hit me pulled his pants down to prove his womanhood. I swear to god it was one of the most hilarious and confusing moments of my life. We all went home hysterical. I was sitting in the tub with my clothes on drunkenly taping my broken finger to the other. Kelly was vomiting and all I could keep saying was "Do you know how fucked up this night was?" "Josh beat a woman in the face!" In our defense there was absolutely no way we could have known. I will never be able to erase that woman flopping (yes that word is appropriate) out her business right there in the parking lot.

We had a lot of fun together, some of it probably shouldn't have happened, but it was ignorant bliss. We fell off after awhile. I stopped getting loaded, and she moved on to other things. I am glad I knew her though and the adventures we had together I can't compare with anyone else. She still is an incredibly unique person and I am glad I had that piece of time in my life to love her.

The original caption for this was "we put on our fuck em' dresses"

Definitely used that guy for drugs. He thought he was getting laid. If you can tell by our expressions it did not go down the way he thought it would.

No pants party

Kelly punching my 6'4" boyfriend

Kelly and Gwinn makin sad faces

The back yard of The Purple House

I Am Momma - Hear Me Roar: Refashionista - I'm bringing muumuus back.

I Am Momma - Hear Me Roar: Refashionista - I'm bringing muumuus back.: Alright.  Today's our last day of Refashoinista and it's my turn.   Have you ever had a project that failed five hundred times ove...

Individually Equal

A friend of mine was telling me my problem with men is that I do not know my individual worth. She said that the difference between women who get what they want and women who don't is the realization that they have something to offer over other women. That concept completely blows my mind. I do not feel like individualism is something that is all that real. The idea that no one in the world is like you is ridiculous to me. I mean, yes, physically we are all just slightly different than one another, and there are no exact matches. But in terms of meeting and knowing people I do not feel like there is something I can gives someone that they cant get anywhere else. I am not a special snowflake so to speak. I have always felt that way. Maybe that is self-deprecating, but I really don't feel like it is. I don't feel unattractive or ignorant, but I know not everyone is attracted to me. I know there are hundreds of thousands of people that have experienced more and are more aware than I am. I don't feel like there is any characteristic about me that is unique to me and only me.

I also don't feel like you get with people because of some unique factor. I think a lot of it is chemical unbalance and primal signals firing off in your brain. You have no control over any of that. Then on top of it you have your good and bad experiences, your relationship with your parents, and several other possible dysfunctions added to the mix. I think maybe the experiences with that person makes it unique, but not the person in general. I am decent looking, I am reasonably intelligent, and I have a good sense of humor. I have nice hair and decent legs, and I can be supportive. I cook alright, I mean what is so unique about each person? I feel like a lot of the men I have experienced gave me similar things. Comfort, contentment, intimacy, and security. Maybe they delivered those things in different ways or in different quantities, but it was the same give and take. I also don't mean to say that we are all beige. I'm just saying if I went out with 4 different guys of similar age and area they would probably be similar.

Maybe I just don't believe in fated love or the idea of soul mates. It is a lovely thought and I do think you can have a closeness with someone that is truly spiritual. I just don't think you have one designated person to feel that way with. I think you can feel that way with a lot of people. I also don't think that everyone will find that person. So where does that fit into this cosmic coupling? If one person can't find the other are they both lost? It's just not realistic. People marry or don't marry people for all kinds of reasons. One reason doesn't make you happier than another. I think people stay together because they get to a point in their lives where they can accept they want to stay with someone. They want to pick up your dirty socks because at the end of the day they have the security of you being there. You grow to love people. I cant help feeling like I am no better than anyone else. I cant help feeling like regardless of who I am, this is a choice. They have other options. They can get what they get from me from someone else and they have.

I think it is almost conceited to imagine yourself as this original star of sorts. I like being a humble person. I like realizing my flaws and understanding how that affects other people. I think it is romantic that people stay together even though they have better options. That the excitement and infatuation goes away and you still go to the grocery store together and listen to the same stories over and over. I think that is unique. Above all things I think everyone is pretty confused about love and what that is. I don't doubt that I could be wrong, or my views are askew. Absolution in anything is rarely correct especially when it comes to concepts of the heart and mind.

ytipidnereS

I feel like people are never understanding the words coming out of my mouth. I have always put a lot of value in communication. I was the daughter of a therapist so I always feel this need to talk shit out. I never thought about the fact that because my mother was a therapist I was deluded into believing that people would respond to me like her. People do not want to talk about things. In fact most people want to do the exact opposite. Its just not me. I'm just not someone who can hide things from myself or anyone else. I have to voice my feelings, and I need a response. I cannot stand these games we are supposed to play. I know I talk about relationships a lot, and people believe that I do so because I am obsessed about being in one. That isn't really the case. I am obsessed with relationships. The whole spectrum. I am obsessed with human involvement. I just hate going through the motions to get to the real stuff. I feel like people should be able to speak freely without worrying about what they are tying themselves into. Honesty is such a difficult thing to come by when it comes to relationships. Which is odd because isn't that we have relationships? Don't we get into relationships so we can find someone to share ourselves with?

The reason I am even ranting about this right now is because I am in a frustrating situation romantically. When I have attempted to explain my frustrations both to the people I am frustrated with or my compadres, they cannot seem to understand. They want to make it about all of these other things and blow it up. Basically the gist is that the series of events that have happened recently are basically unfair and unfortunate and there is nothing I can do about it. There is a lot of wrong place, wrong time. I am aggravated with the fact that somehow I managed to be consumed in a relationship with a person I didn't even like for four years. The father of my child and I never got along. We had absolutely nothing in common. We came from different places, and wanted different things. I always used to say it proved those things didn't really matter, but they did. We weren't compatible and in the end, were forced by the animosity we had for each other, to separate. It was unpleasant and unfair and neither one of us wanted to do it. We loved each other, though that word is becoming more elusive to me everyday, but we could not and will not ever work. So, I accepted that. I wished him no ill will and tried to maintain any resemblance of normalcy. After awhile it worked out and I was starting to want to go out and see what was out there for me. Let me state this up front, I am not looking for a relationship. I know what I am capable of and it is not that. I wanted a casual relationship. Someone to hang out with and share some affection, but who will go home the next day. So, I picked this person that I knew would want the same thing. He is a great person and I always really enjoyed him, but I never wanted to date him. Its something that I can't really explain. We had the  opportunity, but I just never felt that way about him. None the less I called him up one day and made the situation available to him.

It started out fantastic which is generally how it starts. We have a similar sense of humor and physically we are a match. I was surprised how all of the things that had bothered me about him were things I almost found intriguing. It opened me up to things that I didn't think I would enjoy. This is the reason I am obsessed with relationships. You learn so much about yourself when you get involved with someone new. Everything is surprising and exciting, however, that always wears off. At some point you start to get comfortable. You start to make these categories. Like I mentioned before these pros and cons. You start to think about where they fit in your life or if they fit at all. Then it starts being less and less honest. There starts to be this hesitation. Every question begins to mean more than it did before. You cant be free anymore because you could start filling up that cons column and not even know its happening. And why all of a sudden do you care anyways? Its irritating, it is unfortunate, and it is inevitable. He brought up quite a few times that he felt I was looking for a relationship with him. He is still under the impression that I want more from him than a once a week companion, which honestly I really don't. Well that made me wonder. Why don't I? Why don't I want to be with this guy? He comes from a good family, he is intelligent. Good god he is sexy and sweet and strong and there is no relationship. It isn't going to happen and I couldn't figure out why. I couldn't understand why two people that mix so well, and have admitted that they like each other, for whatever reason cannot fit together.

Sometimes I think that maybe he is right, maybe I do want these things from him. I was looking at him the other night and he was just so handsome. I thought "this guy is a really is a catch." But honestly I think it is because that man can wear a baseball cap like nobody's business. I know there is no way to explain that and you fully understand. I am completely aware of how ridiculous it sounds, but that boy can wear one. He calls me gorgeous. Which actually makes me cringe a bit. A friend and I have a joke about women who ask you questions so that you will lie to them, such as; " If I got really fat would you still love me?" We always make this reference in conversation "Some girls just want to be called gorgeous." Every time he says it I wonder if he is saying it for that reason. Another word he uses is sexy, which is hilarious to me. I am so uncoordinated and strange my friends. I never know what I'm doing. I don't have game in that regard. It is nice that he thinks so and I enjoy our interaction even though at times it is a little bittersweet. I guess there is just a time and place for everyone. In reality there are a lot of reasons why we would never be together on both sides. When you are in it though, filling up your folder, it can be so fun that you don't know why you don't want more than some snap shots and sound bites. It can be frustrating that things are not black and white, and sometimes I do wish that things were boring and simple. When I really think about it though, all of the people I have experienced, I don't think I'd ever give up the gray.

What Women Can Do

I grew up in a family of women. A small family of women. There were no brothers, or uncles, or husbands. Just this group of overbearing, overweight sturdy women. They have given me a lot of strength, but there is a lot of weakness there as well. On one hand, I tell myself constantly that I have no excuses. My mother mined coal and smoked cigarettes simultaneously. She also managed to raise me and my sister alone, and put herself through college, and woke up at 5am to run miles through the back hills of Wheeling. So, I feel like if she could do that at 40, that I should be able to do twice that at 25. My grandmother has survived diabetes and cancer, and I don't think that woman has ever taken shit from anyone in her life. My great- grandmother had two children 16 years apart. She spent most of her adult life as a house keeper sharing one room and one bed with my grandmother. That woman lived well into her 90's and still put rouge on before she went to the grocery store. I mean, I'm from some pretty rough stock. They all have lost more than they ever gained. Typical West Virginia women. It wasn't fair, in fact it is disgustingly unfair, but you'd never hear them say it.

Although I feel it made me an independent person, it also made me very skeptical of anything that made me happy. It has been proven to me too many times that nothing is a sure thing. Nothing, especially relationships, are permanent. I know that even if you find someone out there. Even if you get married and stay together for a decade, he can very well die of a brain aneurysm in the night. Even if you drag yourself through addiction and recovery. If you manage to get out of it, and start over, and find someone to accept you, he very well could run off one day with someone else. And even if you take a risk. Even if against all odds you plan your life with this person, he could instantly die in a car accident. That is a break down of my grandmother, mother, and aunt's last relationship. Which by the was was about 35 years ago. They have literally been alone ever since, and it was by choice.What do you do with that? How do you just accept the rug being ripped out from underneath you, and there is nothing you can do about it? I felt for awhile that it was this curse. My great grandmother was a single parent who had two daughters. My grandmother, single parent, had two daughters. My mother, single parent, had two daughters. I thought we were just destined to be this fatherless family, and maybe we still are. That's the fear though, you are never done. You can't ever be comfortable because things without a doubt will change. I'm not saying you cant enjoy the good, or that you have to focus on the end constantly. I'm just saying it doesn't surprise me that I am afraid of the "how" in terms of the end. I am always bracing myself for some unforeseen disaster.

Another thing it taught me was that I do not like women very much. They expect so much out of a person. All women are analyzing you, all of us. When you come to my grandmothers house for dinner, you have basically walked into a lion's den. When you are talking we are not really thinking about what you are saying. We are thinking about how that relates to our pros and cons list of you. It is fucked up, but we cant help it. Some women embrace that shit, thats why we have shows like Atlanta Housewives. They know they are judgmental shit-talkers, but fuck it, lets just roll with this and make money doing so. I cant blame them because you cant take it out of yourself. I spend a lot of time contradicting myself and trying desperately not to be such a gossiping bitch, but that's the way my mind works. I had a dream once that I walked up to my ex's prostitute girlfriend with a bunch of people, and drunkenly told her I'd pay her for sex. She didn't want to, but I kept raising the price laughing because I knew at some point she would take the money and humiliate herself in front of all of these people. That my friends is my uncontrolled psyche. I don't want to think this shit. Hell, I woke up in a cold sweat going "God damn, there is something really wrong with me." But that is women. We are controlling, tedious, plotting bitches and if you are sitting back saying, "oh my girls not that way" you sir have just been figured out, caught, tamed, and trapped. Its a lot of energy too. When all the women in my family are in the same room I feel like the hair on the back of my neck rises. Its like you can feel the electricity coming off of there always spinning minds.

I'm the baby in my family. Its a shitty position, but it has its advantages. I think my family always liked me more than my sister. It wasn't a good thing. She definitely never took it well, and blamed me for every injustice she experienced. My sister is a good person, and I love her, but I definitely didn't always feel that way. I just thought that we were treated the same and my sister was just a bitch. Looking back, it truly was not that way. My sister did everything right and she just never got her parade. She graduated college with honors, and she was never without a job. She owned her home before she was 25. Married a great guy, and had a son in the correct order. I was the fuck up, which probably increased the hatred she had for me. I was an underachiever. I never got straight A's, I dropped out of college after a month. I never had money to pay my rent, I lied about working. I had a child out of wedlock with a 19 year old which I thought was really going to end my babied existence. They still give me excuses they would never give her. Its fucked up, but I think it is more of an insult to me than her. I think that they don't give her excuses because they know she can do it on her own. They don't believe in me really. They think any emotional inconvenience is going to send me over a cliff. My mother is constantly concerned that I will not be able to handle my life which makes me believe it. It makes me think that things are just so out of control, when really this is pretty standard for the time period. I have walked into a lot of things on my own, and feel like I have to take responsibility for my life. These aren't things that are just happening to me. I always have my hand in it.

Overall I have a great family. They are dysfunctional, yes, but they are loving. They will help me if I need it, and they will accept my life even when it opposes what they feel is right. You have to cherish your family even if you don't know who they are. They shaped you, at least genetically. They gave you a way into this world, so everything that you experience and love and hate comes down to them. Regardless of how you look at the world you should be grateful you can see it at all.

My grandmother and Lucas

My aunt is center left. That is her daughter to the right of her.

My sister and her husband with our sons.

My mother after Lucas was born

Me, my mother, and my sister

Judgement Call

I grew up thinking it was bad to judge people. My mother had been a drug addict in her past, and pretty much every adult I knew had been as well. Plus we were poor and when you are poor you either go one of two ways. You either grow to hate poor people or you learn to love the value system they give you. Then growing up people didn't like me very much. I was too tall, and too poor, and overall just pretty weird so I didn't fit easily. I befriended other ineffective people. In middle school two of my friends were deaf and one was definitely breaching little person status. In high school I was friends with any weirdo with a leather jacket. They all did drugs and came from shitty homes. No ones mom drove a new car, no one was going to college. They were the left behinds, and I liked it there. I liked it because no one judged me, well at least not for things I couldn't help. Don't get me wrong there was a lot of high school bullshit, but it wasn't about me really.  Well it may have been about me, but I just don't take things that way. I am not all that competitive, but I am an alpha female. I'm  insecure on my own, but in a group  I assume the position of the leader over a period of time and I never question it. If I am in a bar I'm not scouting the room for who I need to take down. I naturally gravitate towards the intellectually fucking odd and secure myself with that person specifically. Somehow I end up with all of these people who wouldn't really hang out together, but have a common thread. So when someone attacks my personality or the way I dress, something shallow in nature, I just find that person undesirable. I don't take it personally. I don't sit back and think, is this person right? I think, that person obviously thinks differently than I, and we must share different values. Plus, I just am not fond of people who are out to hurt other people. Regardless I think it is just a shitty way to interact with people.

In my life the more defective (emotionally or otherwise) you were, the more I probably wanted to be around you. I take people in a lot. I don't think I've had an apartment where someone wasn't sleeping on my couch for an extended period of time. Even in high school several friends of mine were abandoned by their own families and they just lived with me. There wasn't a big discussion about it, they just slept there one night and never left. Not a lot of boundaries with me. I'm not a private person, either is my mother which is where a lot of this stems from I'm sure. It gets me into trouble a lot. Especially now that I am an adult and a parent, I'm realizing that who I am, yet again, does not fit into this life. You have to protect yourself. You have to protect your family, which means you can't let just anyone into that family. You can't feed everyone when you are a single parent. You can't pay everyone's heat bill while they sit in your house trying to figure their life out. Also, I'm becoming a lot less inclined to accept these defective attributes the older they get. At some point I think you have to suck it up and get with the program. There isn't another option, but to work. Even though there is this chance that you can make it, you will just be living off of other people who do work. When you are 19 that can pan out for awhile. When you are almost thirty this shit is not cute anymore. I still think people who are introspective and a bit damaged have the broader perspective a lot of the time, but when you stop progressing you are just immature.. literally.

I have come into some situations lately where maybe I should have judged people. Maybe I should have gone along with the general consensus. It made me realize that you cannot hold everyone to the same standard. That is what seems fair, but it's not. Not all people are equal. What I am capable of, my morals, and obligations are not equal to everyone else's. The fair thing to do is understand that we are all different, and work with those differences. Judgment in that aspect does not seem like such an awful thing. I'm not saying that one person is necessarily better than another. But there are people who I can leave my wallet around and people who I cannot. There are people who I am going to trust with my family and those who I am not. Judgement does not always mean that you are throwing someone out because you don't approve of them. It can mean that you are taking them for what they are. Sometimes a liar is a liar. Sometimes, even if they want to and say they will, people cannot commit to what you are asking of them. That doesn't mean you cant be in my life, but it isn't all black and white. There has to be levels of our involvement. I cannot rely on everyone to be what I want them to be. Dear god, I hope no one would expect that of me. The more I think about it, it is a terrible way to be. Blindly wandering around under the impression that everyone will work the same way as you. Not judging people has made me loose touch with the difference between fairness and equality. All this time I thought I was being fair, but I was truly giving people expectations they could never live up to. I don't think you can get more unfair than that.

I Don't Like You That Much Either

I feel like a lot of men in my life wanted me to want them a lot more than I ever intended to. Men have this way with me, its pretty consistent really. They show up out of no where and express that they want me in some regard. As soon as I start to even understand what is happening they are back pedaling. I always get into these conversations where they are telling me they don't want a relationship, and I haven't even decided whether or not I like anything about them yet. Maybe I just come off that way. I am a curious person, and I am pretty open with affection. That doesn't mean I'm not terribly aware of people's flaws. Most of the relationships I've had I knew they would end. Really all of them. It isn't being negative, its just understanding what people are capable of. It's what happens when you are raised by a therapist. You understand that feelings are great and you should have them, but that doesn't mean that what you feel is real. None of the men I have dated were down with commitment. They always wanted to be around and if I wavered then they were on me. However, if I ever got comfortable they were immediately telling me they didn't think they felt the same way. I don't know what that is. I can understand when I was young because I know I got attached quickly, and could probably smother a person. I wasn't deluded about what things were though. I just do that with people. It's the same with all of my relationships regardless of whether or not they are romantic. I meet them and spend the next three months with them exclusively. I am impatient and I want to absorb everything about that person as quickly as possible. I guess that isn't how other people work. I guess it comes off like I am in love, and maybe I am, but not hallmark card love. I am in love with seeing people in this different light. I am in love with these memories I have and these things I have experienced. It's so amazing to meet a person, it's like this empty folder. Then all of a sudden you have all of these snap shots, all of these recordings of conversations. They affect me so strongly. I remember laying in bed with my friend Beth shortly after I met her. It was so hot and we were drunk as hell in our underwear. I remember the light and the room, and the way her skin looked. It's beautiful. It's a beautiful memory. I love her now, but then it was just this folder I was filling. It was just something to experience. I remember everyone thought we were going to have sex, which now seems ridiculous. If we would have, we would have and that would be something else I remember and pop on to the mind projector from time to time. I know these things aren't forever. I know that feelings are not facts. I can experience a persons body and their thoughts, and not need them for the rest of my life. I just pack them away like an old suitcase, and then go through it later on down the road.  Even when I am sad over a person, even when I really wished things would have worked out, I accept the end relatively well. 

Watching things fall away is what really kills me. When things are over, they are done. There is nothing to do about it so you just accept it and move on to something else. But watching it slip away, watching someones face slowly change. Seeing that love behind their eyes go away when they look at you. Remembering all of the colors and the way their hands feel on your body, and the way it was when you first grabbed them by their jacket collar and kissed them. It is painful to have these vivid memories of moments before you even opened your eyes and just hearing them breathe. Then knowing that it is all going away and you cant do anything about it. You have to watch them fall out of love with you, and try to retain everything you can before they are gone. Maybe that is why I am so impatient. Maybe that is why I want to know people as fully and quickly as I can. I know eventually they will leave, well not leave but change. People never actually seem to leave. They always seem to be skirting around years later. Crawling out around New Years remembering when we knew each other. Its hilarious. Non-committal men who darted at the first sign of any want to be their companion. Definitely still coming around 6 years later hoping I will think they are as cool as they thought they were in their twenties. I can understand the restlessness of staying with someone. After awhile you feel like your folder is full. I just don't understand being afraid of that. Accepting the end is not scary, its what happens when people refuse to accept it that is really terrifying. None the less I feel like honesty would correct all of this business. I feel like just admitting that yes I like you or no I don't want to do this would be awesome. I hate this worry that each person gets. Its like, you both don't want anything more than what you have, so instead of enjoying it you are constantly worried the other person is going to want to change it. In the end don't assume my feelings. Don't assume anyone's feelings actually. If you want to know, ask them as directly and bluntly as you can. It cannot be worse than ruining some awesome shit because you cant accept that sometimes things are just alright.