It's A Beautiful Morning

I don't know how I let this slip by. I was reading through my recent blogs last night just out of curiousity. I have a terrible memory so even I forget what's going on with me or when the last time I felt this or that was. I guess it's a damn good thing it's all written down. So I read Extraordinary Machine from December 31 and was shocked at what I read. I cited RC's theory of two year cycles to support my feeling that I am now ready to move on with my life, that the journey of the past two years is over. That I can finally see through the mist that had been surrounding me. It's true. And that's huge. It's ridonculous; that's how huge it is. My life can start moving forward. I can start progressing instead of maintaining, trying to stay afloat. I can start painting again instead of staring at the blank canvas paralyzed because I have no inspiration. I am no longer locked in hell.

I have arrived on the bank of another island. I've swam through rough waters, salt water burning my throat, legs so tired I thought they'd give out on me. I navigated the water on a boat through storms so thick I couldn't see a finger in front of me and definitely couldn't see the land I was headed for. My only goal was to stay alive. It wasn't quality. It wasn't making it to the new island. That was far beyond anything I could conceive. My goal was always to make it through the night. And I was grateful for every night I did make it through. I was too grateful to ask for anything more.

I remember writing,"It's funny how it's almost been a year (since the break-up with Illinois). I have spent this entire year trying to will time to pass; learning instantly that the only thing that would enable me to strengthen was the passage of time. Tunnel vision. I missed out on a lot this year in furtherance of that goal. I missed the first snow. I missed seeing my name in print for the first time, a life long goal. I missed starting my new job. I missed making new friends and starting life after Illinois. I missed Valentine's Day and New Year's Eve and Thanksgiving and St. Patrick's Day and Christmas and Labor Day and July 4 th. I missed A moving to L.A.. I missed reconnecting with D in L.A. and celebrating J's 30th Birthday with her in Vegas. I missed participating in my first federal trial. I missed that I made all sorts of new friends at my new job. I missed tasting all of the different flavors of muffins that I baked every weekend all winter to pass the time. I missed the many crazy nights I had the recklessness I haven't known since I was in law school. I missed countless movies and countless books. I missed the pride I should have felt that I was finally able to sleep through the night without taking some sleep aid or getting drunk or smoking weed or all of the above. Or that I was able to sleep with my phone off. Or that I was able to acknowledge that I didn't want Illinois to come over and sleep next to me. I didn't allow myself to stop and take anything in. I couldn't. It was full speed ahead all the time. The alternative was too scary. The alternative was too dangerous. I am not able to dwell yet but I can go to certain places in my mind with a lot more ease than I had even one month ago. How do I get the time to stop now? That's what I need to do. I want it to slow back down again. I want to take it all in. I want to savor this growth I am experiencing."

And "[N]ow. Life has been a freefall for months. It feels like the world finally stopped spinning and I landed here. I am like Dorothy was spinning and spinning in the tornado. I hope my house didn't land and kill any wicked witches. Nothing is familiar. I feel like I am in an alternate universe. Everything is brand new. I have all of these choices. I have a new life with new friends. I have a new apartment (with AC). I have a new job (the criminal defense firm). What must the people at work think of me when they have only known me as this girl. They didn't know me before. I spent many months crying in my office with the door closed after a sleepless night. How did I work? How am I still there? It feels like I just started but I have been there for close to a year. It feels new because I haven't really been there for close to a year. My body has been there taking up space but I have been all over the map, not stopping anywhere for more than a few minutes. My mind unable to focus on anything but survival for more than a few minutes. How did I do it. How did I not fuck up my life? How did I preserve so many good things for myself without even trying? That's just beautiful. It may as well be somewhere over the window in emerald city for as weird as it feels. And like the rainbow, there is an entire universe of colors and understanding and new feelings that I have now that I have never had before. All of this new information about myself and my life and what I want and what I care about and what's important and how to be happy and how to quiet my inside. It's unreal. A whole other universe of colors. I am somewhere over the rainbow. I am walking around checking things out, seeing if I like this new life, this new me. It is why I am so exhausted. It is why I am so in my head. Part of me is shocked that the world stopped spinning finally. Part of me is shocked that I am no longer despondent. Part of me is shocked that it's okay over here where I am. A year later. A year to the day after my D&C where I was crying like the baby that I was losing. Life has a luster I have never known."

I had the feeling every time I miraculously felt better after being deathly ill this past summer and fall. It's so weird. But now it's different because I know I am in Emerald City for good. I live here now. I am never going back to Kansas and the tornadoes they get there.

I love it love it love it. It's miraculous. I am not a slave to my circumstances or a victim of fate. I am in control. I am at the new job today, the one I risked losing my (surprisingly) good reputation for at two agencies. I am finally starting to hook up my apartment that I have lived in since July. Besides what my mother did when she was over, I had made no self improvements. It looked like I just moved in. There were still boxes. I still didn't have certain necessary items and was making do as if I was only visiting. I could barely wash a dish throughout most of the time I lived there; that's how weak I was with sickness. Meanwhile, yesterday I used a toothbrush to scrub in between the tiles in the shower. I put up new curtains in my bedroom. I washed a bunch of my sweaters. I cleaned all the floors and changed the sheets. I washed my yoga mat. I bought sheets to tie-dye for the lovely yoga angels who saved me when I passed out aeons ago in October in yoga. I was going to take it a step further and go through my clothes. I have all the new clothing from my massive shopping spree then I have all of the old clothing that is now too big. I don't know how long the weight's going to stay off so I don't want to get rid of my fatty girl apparel but I would like to get it out of my apartment. I am making concrete changes, taking concrete risks, putting myself out there in the world again, settling in to my apartment and life and making myself comfortable there. For the next two years at least.

Hollaback Girl

I remember being a little kid and hearing my older cousins or friend's older siblings tell of their crazy stories about sex and dating and I remember wishing I had stories. Well now I got some stories. The blog from the other day about faux pas and deal-breakers was a lesson that I learned from being out on the field all these years; if someone likes you they like you despite you eating to much or saying too much. I think women try to attach a reason for why a guy didn't call in making up these rules. Well it must be because I was wearing granny underwear or I hadn't shaved my legs or I finished his meal and got dessert. No! That's not it at all. He just isn't into you. Those stories were embarassing but they were all me being me. Unfortunately as much as I sometimes wish I was quiet and small and demure and ladylike and neat, the brash, rash, loud me always forces itself out; usually at the most inoportune times.

Anyway, the real faux pas women committ are none of those surface offenses. I have lived the real ones too, the embarassing, not funny, sad ones ones. In doing so I learned how to protect myself and when to put myself out there, when not to, not to ever get ahead of myself, never to assume, always to take relationships slow and to separate the rejection from how I feel about myself. Obviously, I am a work in progress but trusting your gut and doing what you want and not trying to dissect what someone else is feeling from their tone or by listening 10 times to a voicemail they left you is paramount.

I remember waiting for a call from Brooklyn that never came and literally falling asleep with the phone on my pillow. Now if I am in that bad place, I turn off the phone. I remember driving Brooklyn to a wedding he was going to with someone else. I thought by driving him to Long Island for the wedding, he'd see that I was the better girl and he'd want to be with me officially and monogamously. Brooklyn's no dummy. If he could sleep with me and get me to take him to Long Island in my parents' car to go to a wedding as another girl's date, why wouldn't he. I was afraid to give him an ultimatum that it was me or her, that he couldn't have me when he wanted me and then do his own thing when he wanted to because I was afraid he wouldn't chose me. So I played these games and tried to make myself so ingrained in his life that he would be lost without me and realize how great I was and only want to be with me. It eventually happened. But not soon enough. He used me for a long, long time. And I allowed him to. Brooklyn didn't have enough integrity to tell me that given how I felt about him, I should probably keep my distance because he did not feel the same way or give it to me straight so I could make a decision. Despite that, I know I would have fought hard to be with him in whatever way he would have me. I had no pride when it came to Brooklyn. Integrity is part of my list now after realizing how different I would be and my relationship with Brooklyn would have been if he had taken responsibility and been honest sooner, before I had one foot out the door.

Staten Island was plain old psycho. He and I had insane sex. He called me his sexual soul mate. I think I mistook our sexual connection for a real connection. How could someone who knows how to please me so well not be my soulmate. In retrospect, I think I was addicted and obsessed with the sex, not with him. I know now that the two must be evaluated separately. He was ridiculously paranoid and over the top jealous. He'd pout when he didn't get his way. He had no qualms calling me 20 times in a row when I was out with my friends. He had the gall to accuse me of lying to him when on the Sunday after my grandfather died, I told him I had to be with my family to send cards out to people who had attended the funeral. I listened when he called me 'the girl that fucked up my world,' and satan, when he ranted and raved about how insensitive I was and how awful I treated him and how he blamed me for his failing the bar exam the first time he took it. As soon as we were having sex, our communication was flawless. We were loving, we anticipated each other's needs and wants, we laughed, we were giving; our sex life contained all of the elements that made a good relationship. Good sex is great but it doesn't translate into a good relationship.

And I will never let anyone talk to me the way he did. Ever again. First of all it was unwarranted. I wasn't doing any of the things he was constantly accusing me of. Secondly, even if I had been, there are better, more appropriate, more mature ways to handle a situation like that without berating someone you supposedly love. Then he had the gall to cheat on me and use the old Ross excuse from Friends that we were on a break. He was always breaking up with me and then wanting me back so I can't recall if we were actually on a break then and if so whether it was to gain perspective or whether it was official and we could see other people. He was the guy who broke up with me on my 24th birthday in the same phone conversation (I can picture myself sitting on the floor in the bathroom in my parent's house at 2:00am crying on the phone with him) in which he first told me he loved me. Have you ever? And when I asked why he couldn't have waited until after my birthday, he snidely responded, "you'll have other birthdays." Unfortunately that was neither the first or last time he broke up with me. What an asshole. Actually I was the asshole for allowing him to constantly pull that shit. For two years I put up with the Staten Island show, never knowing which personality I was going to get when I picked up the phone.

Interestingly, on a trip to the beach one summer when we acknowledged that we were doomed as a couple, we created who we envisioned the other's perfect mate was. The guy he sculpted for me was Illinois. Out-of-the-box, unorthodox, creative career, gets off on cooking and watching me eat what he made for me, from the midwest, tall, broad shouldered and lean, tawny in coloring, handy around the house, someone who'd dance with me and be spontaneous with me. Sadly, respect was nowhere on that list. Needless to say I learned a lot from my relationship with Illinois. I will never compromise like I did for him. I will never do all the work in the relationship. I will never be with someone who feels free leaning on me but whom I can't lean on.

You have to respect yourself to command respect. I guess that's the true lesson.