Saturday, January 01, 2005
New Year's Day - Inside the Heart-Shaped Box
Arrrg. I am thinking thinking thinking about a year end post. I have a cute little idea but that requires a little more effort and a little more time, which will become the other kind of reflection I wanted this year. I still owe you the Thanksgiving post - I haven't wanted to end the year without it, but it still needs some editing.It is however, fitting, to officially end 2004 / formally welcome 2005 in some way. Last year, it was Perseverance, which I think is just as important this year.
(in part, from 'The Meaning of Things, Applying Philosophy to Life' by A.C. Grayling, Reader of Philosophy, U of London, whom you are going to meet again today)
I'm not far enough away from this year to see what it will come down to in regards to who I've become or what I've learned. I'm loathe to natter on about the difficult things that were borne this year because, let's face it, all of our lives are difficult at times and I'm the first to admit that almost every valley had a sky-high peak, so dwelling on the bad somehow negates the inclusion of the good. Which is just not acceptable in the way it used to be for me. I am no different from you and you are no different from me. It is all just one big mixing pot and the trick is, of course, to stir it all up, contemplate the lovely moments, acknowledge the ugly bits and then absorb it all - the good and the bad - before picking oneself up and continuing to stagger along this path.
But, I pulled that book from last year out again a few minutes ago because this thing that I am struggling with has been looking like this the last couple of days......
...If this is what being in love feels like, if this awesome and sweeping and terrible thing that lives in my heart engenders these feelings in everyone - beginning or ending, that how I'm feeling is NORMAL, that my heart didn't find or recognize in Matt anything other than some sort of chemical / biological reaction and I'm struggling with it for the simple fact that I've never experienced it before, then, in a way, well, what a fucking rip-off.
I guess we all want OUR pain to be different, OUR hearts to be sure and right, OUR perceptions to be crystal clear and better than everyone else's. When maybe, in truth, I felt this way because that's what one is supposed to feel when they fall in love....
Jesus, if that's the case, then I think I'm good with just this once and I can just go back to being content with plain, solid love. No, really. Thanks though.
I want to believe that my heart recognized it's complementary other half and maybe I'm just overthinking (you think?) but one can never be sure about anything if one doesn't consider the other sides. Seeing things from one angle will only succeed in a one dimensional understanding and eventually, a skewed and narrow-minded belief that, I think, would be almost impossible to shake.
I've never been happy with only one dimension.
I've been through a lot of emotions in the last month and am convinced hourly, daily, weekly of something other than what I was convinced of the hour, day, week before. I mention the one above because it just happens to be the current one I'm working through. And so, in a way, it's the one I'm writing my New Year's post about.
Over to you, A.C.....
...despite appearances, the kinds of love that are most significant to us are not those that fill novels and cinema screens. They are instead those we have for family, friends and comrades; for these are the loves that endure through the greater part of our lives, and give us our sense of self-worth, our stability, and the framework for our other relationships.
Romantic love, by contrast, is an episodic, usually short-lived, and often scorchingly vivid turbulence in our emtional histories. To judge by the attention it receives - not least in poetry and song, our parliaments for discussing the heart's essentials - it is one of life's profoundest experiences. Yet, paradoxically, the official line is that apart from a few experimental feints in early adulthood, love's true heights should only be experienced once, with lifelong bonding as the appropriate outcome. Anyone who claims to fall in love frequently is deemed irresponsible, and with some justification: for it is such a time-consuming, exhausting, ecstatic, painful, transforming business that it requires a long recovery - in some cases, indeed, whole lifetimes.
Sober folk claim that falling romantically in love is not a good way to get to know someone, for Stendhal's reason that we cloak the beloved in layers of crystal, and see a vision rather than a person for the whole period of our entrancement. On this view it is a delusional state, and the fact that it is short-lived is therefore good. Others think that that romantic love is the only thing that allows us to burn through the layers that conventionally insulate people from one another, baring the soul of each to each, making true communication possible - the kind that speaks the language of intimacy, not in words but in pleasures and desires.
This is far from the only difference of opinion about romantic love. Another debate rages over the question whether a propensity for romance is an essential human trait, or whether it is a social and historical construction, present in some periods and societies but absent from others......
The Greeks had different words for love's different manifestations. They spoke of agape, altruistic love (in Latin caritas, which gives us -but with what a cold ring - our word 'charity'). They spoke of ludus, the playful affection of children and of casual lovers, and pragma, the understanding that exists between a long-established married couple. They spoke of storge, the love that grows between siblings or comrades-in-arms who have been through much together, and of mania, which is obsession. And they allied the latter with eros or sexual passion. They thought that love in all its forms was divinely inspired.... But divine inspiration was not always welcome; manic eroticism, they said, was often inflicted as a punishment by the gods, and it's unreasoning and distracting character interfered with what they most valued, namely intellect and courage....
In making these distinctions the Greeks showed an alertness to the fact that close relationships subserve a variety of ends. ..
...In Hardy's prophecy of the newly emerging pattern, romance is not an end in itself but a step toward love of the other kinds - it becomes the porch to friendship, comradeship, the equal or near-equal partnership in life's adventure....
In opposition to the view that romantic love was invented by the troubadours, some argue that it is a unversal phenomenon. To claim this is to take sides in the debate between 'essentialists' and 'constructionists'. The former claim that romantic love is one of the four, great intrinsic, inescapable upheavals which define the human condition (the others are: being born, having children and dying). ....
It is both a pun and a truth to say that the subject of love has always been left to amateurs to explain. There is no science of love because it is too various and protean to fit a theory. People attempt love as climbers attempt Everest; they scramble along, and end by camping in the foothills, or half-way up, wherever their compromises leave them. Some get high enough to see the view, which we know is magnificent, for we have all glimpsed it in dreams. And that is what the feast of St. Valentine is about: the dream of love. Life would be bitter indeed if the dream never became reality, or if the main experiences of love in our lives - storge, pragma, ludus, agape - were not enduring and stabilising enough to save us when the storms of eros and mania sweep over us - bringing bliss, and leaving havoc in their wake.
And so what conclusion does that leave me with? I could go through it point by point, and I have, in my own way (and much more in my mind than I have here - I'm sure you're happy to know) but, when all is said and done ....
...there is no conclusion. In another week or another month or another year, my heart will be clear and it will tell me what it was trying to show me or teach me, and, in the meantime, I just have to let all the rest of it in to drive a few blocks on my mental highway before hitting the next set of lights and taking the exit.
This isn't about what is normal. It isn't about anyone else's experiences or viewpoints or feelings, nor to be honest, does it have anything at all to do with Matt's - it is about mine. And mine alone.
And I? I trust in my heart. Then. And now. Still.
Friday, December 31, 2004
Just Can't Shut the Hell Up.
All over the world, 95 percent of the people I care for, although they may not hold the key to my heart, certainly have held all-access passes for the last fourteen months or so - are already in 2005.I'm here freshly out of the shower, using hot water to wash away warm tears, having subjected my batblogger to an unexpected bout of inclement weather and thinking that, even while we weather my storms, together we can somehow say all that needs to be said.
I believe (and this does not reflect Jen,also's views) that what we say about one blogger encompasses some of what we feel for all of them and our Jen,also is right when she says that all we have are words.
Words are powerful. Words will change your life, if you let them....
37. Who was the best new person you met?
The whole blog world. I can't possibly list all you people here. I'd be here all night. There are a handful of you who I hold in my heart, care and worry about, adore and think of as family. But there is only one first one. Hers was the first blog I ever read, the one that inspired me to start my own. She was the first blog friend who became a real friend. And besides, I'm her BatBlogger. What else is there to say?
Neil and I and all those that I love and miss desperately in the prairies have between 1 and 3 hours left of 2004.
How's it looking from that side, guys?
Is it safe for the rest of us to step over and into?
lyric at post:
..I could lead my life man or I could be led
I could be anything I put my mind to boy
All I gotta do is give myself a half-a chance..
Time Present and Time Past
I've been backtracking the last year to pull up posts about T3 so I can finish writing the Thanksgiving post.Whew. Wow. So many things.
And because I was asked to explain the trip a little better ...... this may help the rest of you - otherwise I shall see you all in 2005.
The plan so far is to fly into Perth with my friend Wade in January of 2006, spend a week on Rottnest Island, then three weeks in Sydney so he can introduce me to his entire family of 853 cousins, who would hopefully just take me in and love me. He'd come back to Canada but I would stay either in Sydney for a while or head up to the Daintree for 3 weeks. Then work my way either a) around the bottom of Australia as far as a jumping off point to New Zealand to spend time in Nelson with my Aunt and Uncle doing some kayaking and stuff before continuing on around to Perth to stay at T3's farm for a few months or b) fly to Perth to stay at T3's and then work my way east to New Zealand.
I can stay in New Zealand and Aus for a year each - I'd like to do some more volunteering stuff - I am better with a loose plan - left to my own I tend to just find a place and sit on my ass for long periods of time so I need things to keep me moving. I'd like to go to Bali and stay in a hut on the beach for a while.
I won't be able to work in NZ or Aus (although this job is good for some seriously rocking universal telecom skills so it is always a possibility) but with the British citizenship I can at least do some stuff in the EU so unless there's some compelling reason to stop in London on the way to Aus (ie: all the bloggers in one place for one night!) I probably won't come there until I begin to run out of money. It's so expensive with the exchange rate.
Plus I'm not knowing about the ticket yet - if I get an around the world ticket, there's a time limit and changes are a complete bitch so......step by step may be the best.
And, I have no definite plans to return to Canada nor any obligation to. I'm remortgaging the condo and pulling out the equity for some of the financing but I won't sell it unless I have to.
It's a year away though and although that seems like forever it's really just the blink of a giant eye.
Any and all suggestions would be appreciated and/or shot down with impunity. Suggestions of things to do and things to skip (and yes J,A, Sal and Pob - I have yours written down so no need to repeat).
And...at the end of a year in which I thought my heart would never be alone again and the beginning of a new year caught up in learning how to carry the sorrow of that very thing .... this post and that Leonard Cohen poem that I found they had made a song of the other day...
lyric at post:
..TRUE LOVE LEAVES NO TRACES
(from the album 'DEATH OF A LADIES' MAN')
As the mist leaves no scar
On the dark green hill
So my body leaves no scar
On you and never will
Through windows in the dark
The children come, the children go
Like arrows with no targets
Like shackles made of snow
True love leaves no traces
If you and I are one
It's lost in our embraces
Like stars against the sun
As a falling leaf may rest
A moment on the air
So your head upon my breast
So my hand upon your hair
And many nights endure
Without a moon or star
So we will endure
When one is gone and far
True love leaves no traces
If you and I are one
It's lost in our embraces
Like stars against the sun..
Playing Doctor
When I left here in 1996, I had this great doctor. In fact, three of the people I had the hardest time leaving were my hairdresser, my doctor and my acupuncturist. (I'll be you guys couldn't never have guessed one was my hairdresser. ha)Much like the doctor I finally ended up with in Calgary, he figured I knew my body better than anyone and he would basically leave it up to me to tell him what I needed. Which, let's face it, if you're an intelligent and informed person, isn't such a bad thing. (I only went on the internet, looked up symptoms and, convinced I was dying - hightailed it to an emerg clinic ONCE, before I learned that as much as I love the internet, it just wasn't a smart thing to do. And embarrassing to boot.) But that's another story.
I was in for my yearly physical with this doctor once, and during the breast exam (or, the 'boobage feeling' if you're queasy about the other 'b' word) he stops and says, "Hmm, *that* wasn't there last year."
I'm thinking, "Oh COME ON, no one's that good."
He was.
When I left, he just gave me my chart to take with me. I've never heard of that ever happening.
Great guy, much like LFD hugging me when I left Calgary, yanno? You'd think they'd get tired of me and my weird health things pretty quick.
Anyways, I don't know what doctor stuff is like where you are but here, it's impossible to get one and the only ones accepting patients are either new graduates or BAD BAD BAD doctors.
I figure a little begging is in order and called up his office on Wednesday. I explained to the lovely lady who takes care of him that they no longer had my records, had probably expunged me from the computer and he'd given me my charts but I had missed him and it would make my year to be able to return as his patient. I gave her a couple of key points that he may remember about me and she called me yesterday afternoon.
I get to go back.
Now, I don't know if he remembered me or not but oh, man, it really is great news because I'm sure you understand that a good doctor for most people isn't really an issue but for some of us, it may have just saved our sorry little lives at one time or another.
lyric at post:
..so here we lie against each other
these four walls can never hold us..
Thursday, December 30, 2004
That Old Black Magic
New Years Eve 2004. It looms. A little.Okay, a lot.
I had briefly considered (VERY briefly) going out before realizing I was completely insane for even thinking the thought. I usually stay home and I think 5 out of the 9 New Year's I was in Calgary were spent at home with the dog, some movies and a couple bottles o' plonk.
This year, in a city that, really, we should just imagine I've never lived in before due to the amount of people I have no desire to contact or, for that matter, *haven't* contacted since I got here two months ago - well, there's not a whole lot to do. I live out in the boonies and if the last couple weeks have taught me anything it's that alcohol is bad. As I get older, it's not so shit hot anyways but right now it's like the hand of God shoving me down the well of despair and poking me in the forehead over and over and over. For two days.
So, the choice comes down to either going to Lester's or staying home. There's some big thing going on in Lester's town that I'm sure they're going to but if I go with the "does this choice go away or towards what I want" formula, then the breakdown looks like this:
Twoish hours of travelling time, say 15 bucks in gas (Miss Betsy LaRu is very good with the gases). Ticket for whatever is going on, say 20 bucks (it's a small town); my portion of the cab, 4 bucks; the five or ten drinks I'd have before collapsing into hysterical drunken tears for the rest of the night, say 20 bucks (Lesley always buys what usually seems like every round but two). Let's not even itemize the frustration of my friends and the exhaustion and depression of the next day and the day after that. But we should mention the McDonald's I would have to eat in an attempt to deflect some of the hangover, say 6 bucks.
OR. Stay home, read a book, watch Dick Clark (oh wait, didn't he stroke out? It's Regis? *shudder*), rent a movie, kiss the cat at midnight, get a good night's sleep. Say, 7 bucks for the movie.
$65 - $7 = $58
Convert to US dinero = $47.95
$47.95 translates into three point two days in the Daintree/Cape Tribulation next year. So, I'll toss in enough CDN to make up 12.05 US and BANG! Four more days.
Six down. Fifteen to go.
It's so easy when you do it in teeny chunks like this. One baby step at a time will get me across the planet.
But seriously, when I drop by for a visit to 'take you out for a beer because you are a blogger and I love you', it's really just a 'no, really, I couldn't, ohhhh, alllright' gesture - you're paying.
Just so you know.
lyric at post:
..there's a song on the air with a love-you-line
and a face in a glass and it looks like mine..
Wednesday, December 29, 2004
Must.Sit.Down...Breathe!
And yup, another long one.
But at least it's a Happy one.
No, not HaRPy, HaPPy
Okay, I can admit it, I've become bitter and cynical. The universe dangles shit in my face and then juuuuust as my fingertips toooouch....whooosh! ha! just kidding! sucker! you fall for that one every time! nyah nyah nyah!So, I'm just going to take it for granted that that Mr. Mighty Geek understands that it's not personal when I say I was shocked and amazed to actually receive the prize money!
It's not you, honey. It's me, I swear!
Shocked, I say!
Mr. Mighty NICE Geek, I say!
But, holy, $25 US dollars actually becomes $23.97 once paypal takes their honking big CUT. Now, my math skills are shit but it seems like that cut is just a little more than 4% but a little more less than 5%. Weird. Paypal bastards.
I say that because I *could* have invested and now I'd be rich. But no, I never invest in the right things. Oh wait a sec, I'm POOR! I don't invest in SWEET FUCK ALL!
(man, I'm loud! TODAY! It's all the excitement! must.calm.down! SORRY!!!)
Anyhow, that $23.97 actually translates into $29.00 whopping perpetually undervalued (and very upset about it but just too polite to mention it) Canadian dollars.
I was going to put it towards my Airborne Pathojen 2006™ tour ticket but it's less than errrr..... point0083 and that just sounds so drop-in-the-bucket-ish and not at all what I want to reflect as the meaning of winning the first thing I've ever won.
I'm measuring things as I save up so I'm officially starting **NOW** with a relatively small goal - 21 days at the Cape Tribulation Tropical Research Station as a volunteer with the bats (ahh, bats smats, they're just little cutie furry things who like a tummy rub as much as the next errr, rodent - suck it up, you sissies) but it's in the Daintree/Cape Tribulation! Helloooo?!
I'm going to 'take a moment' here as I just naturally assume all 30 or so of you have been following along for MONTHS & MONTHS and have an idea of what I'm on about. So, maybe not. (explaining post 1) I'm going (post two)around the world. It's got nothing to do with Matt, plans were in place before I even met him. Since I am not a 20-something anymore, I'd like to plan cheap travel to places I can actually 'settle' in for a week or two at a time, ease the old bones, take it easy. Of course I'm hoping T3 knew I was serious when I told him to have my bedroom on the Station in Brookton ready for a few months.
...and fucking hell, I know I haven't written that Thanksgiving post yet but give me a break - it's been a busy few months and during this last one, I haven't been in a thankful mood. But I will write it before the 4th of January. 2007. What? Oh, fine. 2005. You people are so demanding...
Regardless, I have to say that I think (a post about..) volunteer conservationism is the way to go. You pay basic costs, they let your work your ass off doing nice things for the environment and you get a day or two off a week. Win win, yeah?
Here's a f'rintance, strangely enough, in the Daintree - I took a quick boo at a hotel there - 3 star - $240 a night. What? I'll get three weeks for .....$315. And suuuure, I'll have to clean and feed bats and shovel guano but the point is - the same bed for three weeks, in an amazing incredible place with people who know their way around and can show me the crocodiles!, free transport in/out and three days off to muck about. Okay, back to the story.
Now because all over this sad world, everything must be paid in filthy American lucre, we now have to convert $29 CDN back to pffffft $23.97 US (it feels like losing money, so sad). A day in the Daintree costs $15 so I'll throw in $6.03 more from my savings and voila! shazaaam! 2 days down. 19 to go.
That rocks.
My nicer, lovelier and far more emotionally stable name Twin and I are cooking up merchandising for the Tour, so watch for that soon, and I'll make some sort of page for those of you who might actually want to track how I'm doing - maybe over New Years (shush, it keeps me distracted and gives me visual goals).
Logistically and financially - the ticket, enough money for a year abroad plus enough money to cover condo costs etc here (now you latecomers understand why I live in an RV - cheap rent) - it's gonna be a nightmare so I may just add goals one at a time. No sense in getting ahead of myself.
I think the next goal will be my British citizenship cause man, you guys are asking A LOT! Bastards! Waaait a minute, do you own Paypal? Damn British.
I can say that cause I'm not officially one of you jolly good fellows yet.
If I were, I would have just offended myself and the Canadian in me would have been horrified and shamefaced.
But, tis TV time and I must away!
lyric at post:
..time means nothing, time can't touch you
it's nowhere to the start and nowhere to end
but tomorrow somehow finds it's way to us again..
Key Point
On the way home yesterday I realized that my life now involves only one key.I don't have office keys nor house keys. Or to be more specific - keys to the fifth wheel since I have no house. I don't pick up my own mail at that rural mailbox down the street and so I have no mailbox key. I don't need keys to my condo in Calgary anymore, I own it but I no longer live there. I sold the luggage before I left, locks intact, and I haven't yet bought my travelling pack. I think working out in a group at a "gym" is not only a heinous sin but an unconscious desire to behave like the lab rats we are and so I have no locker key. I'm an idiot and so all the important papers I have are not in a safety deposit box.
I requested a Google API licence key but never received it. I've never played basketball and if I did, I'm too uncoordinated to make the free throw anyway. I'm tone deaf. No one's ever given me the key to a city. I've lost the key to my heart. Sometimes I think I have not a hope in hell of a glimmer of an inkling as to the key concept in my life. Nor anyone else's, for that matter. As much as I feel like an island these days, I am not, although I have been to Florida - just not that part of it.
I did, however, leave two additional pointless keys on Betsy's key chain. M2 took the key fob (a gift from a friend of mine) with him and that Subaru key looked so lonely on that plain and rusty ring, I couldn't bring myself to leave it that way. Matt said they were the ones for his apartment in North Vancouver. For all intents and purposes they're just added decoration.
One key. It starts the car. Which I haven't paid for yet so it's not really my key and, as a stretch, you could actually say I live a keyless life. I don't even take it out of the car at night, I just leave it in the ignition.
There's that saying that the more keys you have on your key ring, the more important you are. Rather than insisting on a dab more self-pity and dropping a little farther down the well of tears, I've been choosing to see it as a shining testament to the simplification of my life.
All the rest of you more important people should just be ashamed of your materialistic ways.
lyric at post:
..and I'm high enough from all the waiting
to ride a wave on your inhaling..
Tuesday, December 28, 2004
There are moments in life free from worry
They call them utter blind panic
The email says he's travelling for a week or two. I'm quite sure that nausea is not a good reaction.
I'm not ready yet for this. I'm not.
And could someone have bloody well warned me not to go anywhere near Annie Lennox and 'Bare'?
Wankers. You should have known.
lyric at post:
..there I spent my dreams with you
now I've hid them all away..
Trail Systems, Hidden Pathways, A Bench Along the Way
My sleep last night was full of terrible dreams. Not a whisper of an inkling of Matt's existence but people from childhood lurked in every corner and fed upon my deepest fears and insecurities.I woke 8 hours later in the exact same position I went to sleep in which is virtually unheard of for me.
In Victoria there is a trail called The Galloping Goose, it is 60 km long and follows the old railway lines, ending at the ferry to Vancouver. The trail systems that support it in my area of town have all been walked by Matt and I and I know that I cannot go walking on them now, if ever, during the time I will live here.
There is a short one at the end of my driveway that we never walked and it doesn't seem to exist anywhere on the internet. It ends up on one of the greens at the local golf club and it seems like my very own private stroll through the forest. It was a sunny day yesterday, rare enough in Victoria in the winter that the parking lots to all the trails were jammed full. But not mine. If it even had parking. Pacing it out yesterday, although a bit goopy right now for my taste, it turns to be that one circuit equal roughly what I walked to and from work every day in Calgary.
I've been feeling the absence of exercise, my headaches are coming back and I feel logy and puffy. I know that getting out and moving around will help me feel better in so many ways right now so yesterday I made myself go out and walk the trail. I made a promise to myself that as the days get longer, I will try and walk it every night I get home early enough to beat the dark.
Strange that, when there are no streetlights and nothing but the moon, how difficult it becomes to walk in the forest.
I came home energized and cleaned the 'house', went out grocery shopping and washed Betsy. I have no idea when the last time Matt washed her, if ever, but the power spray didn't completely get her clean.
Anyhow, boring daily things.
I downloaded a bunch of music yesterday, Ozzy Osbourne and Dweezil Zappa doing 'Staying Alive' - it is absolutely priceless, especially if you saw Saturday Night Fever in the theatre (although I was just 8 years old, my brother took me with him and I remember thinking I was so adult because it was a 'dirty movie') and actually listened to Black Sabbath albums as they were released, or in real time as the kids say these days. Shocking to admit, I know.
My favorite song back then, me being a girl and it being a slow, sad song, was Changes. Although I must point out that it came out in 1972, when I was three. So, it was actually one I listened to later.
The only other one I want to mention was the little ditty Matt used to chant that I mentioned at the bottom of this post. Letssingit.com (beware: popups) tells me that the song is from the Bring It On soundtrack and is called U.G.L.Y. You can listed to a snippet - a verse and the chorus near the bottom of this page. You should, it only takes a second.
To actually hear this song made me giggle. Really heartfelt giggles and a few guffaws. I even wiggled my way around the 8 feet of actual floor space I have. I emailed Matt to tell him I'd downloaded it because I couldn't get it out of my head and it was a little embarrassing. To my surprise, he didn't even know there was a recording of it because he'd never heard it. Who knows where he picked up the chorus but he had the cadence down perfectly. Which is good, since I was wondering why he'd admit by singing a song from the soundtrack that he'd watched such a girly movie.
It feels good to be able to tell him things like that, because one of the worst things about being so involved in anothers life is that when they're gone, no one ever knows what you are talking about and no one ever gets the joke. It hasn't felt very fair to lose that along with the rest of it.
It is another nice day and the last one before I have to go back to work so I am going to check the blogroll, drink my coffee and then have a shower, meet maJen for lunch and then get to that walk.
I'll try to make the posts shorter and snappier from now on but I can't promise.
And although I am fully aware that these, as well as the driving 'breaktrough' are all indications that I am feeling a little better day by day, please don't take this opportunity to say things like "I told you it would!" or "See! You just have to give it time." That request may seem a little harsh but the simple truth is I knew it would get better and I knew I needed the time and I have said and maintained that position all along. I've taken the time and I've dragged you along with me but that kind of stuff sounds smug to me. I don't think any of you are.
I hope that makes sense.
The steps that I am taking have sped up a little partly due to being able to talk to Matt again and I do feel a little sad and a little betrayed by my own heart that I am doing so well. Maybe the full on month of sobbing seems like a long time - it's felt contradictory to me, years and then sometimes only seconds - and I wouldn't want it back but I still don't want this to be okay. It still feels so wrong and now that the last year has taught me to listen to my heart, it's still shouting, albeit a little more quietly but with no less conviction, that this is just not how it supposed to be.
I know that sounds likes a heartbroken and foolish heart flapping it's gums but I cannot argue with this belief inside of me. Does it seem strange that Matt feels it too? No, because that's just another part of it.
I cried yesterday and I've already had a few tears this morning just writing this. It just gets a little less with every step forward.
And on that note, my horoscope for the day....
lyric at post:
..what goes up
they say is coming down
I got my head in the sky
and my roots in the ground..
Monday, December 27, 2004
Time
Today was the first day since the 4th of December that I didn't cry while being in or driving Matt's car.Soon, I think, will come the day that I don't reach for the waterproof mascara rather than my own kind in the morning. I have come to appreciate it's tenacity and staying power but it really is a bitch to get off at the end of the day.
lyric at post:
..she knocks a hole in my front door
she's the one I can't ignore
she tries to paint a hole in time,
she puts her face right next to mine..
Checking in with myself
I didn't mean that I wouldn't be back, just that now, trying to help each other, we are getting into some things that are private to Matt that would have to be included for our continuing struggle to make sense. And I can't do that here. I think that in the end we will both do each other a lot of good, and it really is easier to deal with this if we can still talk about it. As fucked up as that may seem.This is harder for me than it is for him - I'm in an environment created in part by Matt and surrounded by the things we did together. He's at home and I know that when I return home from a big trip, that trip and the things that happened take on an unreality. They feel a bit like a dream and so they are easier memories to put away while you go about the business of getting on with 'real life'.
I'm discouraged, Matt has even said it's despair and maybe he's right. The truth of the matter is that the person I want to be and the person I believe in sometimes can't stand up to the day to day reality of this loneliness and sadness. You believe that when you meet the person you think you've been waiting for, then everything else just falls into place. And it did. But in the fairy tale we've all grown up believing in, it's supposed to never end for no good reason. And it did.
Matt tells me he thinks that one reason he was in my life was to show me how this rightness feels and help me to understand that I could sustain it alone. Maybe he's right about that too, but at this moment, I can't see that. I can't see how feeling safe and secure can be completely provided to myself BY myself, I can't see how I can fall back on myself if I take a risk, I can't see how to reflect myself back to me so I can see how I'm doing, I can't see how I can provide my own support.
I think that you need other people in your life to help you do that and let's face it, when we're younger we do - but as we grow older and our friends marry and move away and become involved in the lives of their children - the people that we trust to do that for us just naturally become less and less. In my case, I've been through a lot in the last couple years and I've removed some of those people in my life. Who never actually should have been in it the first place really, but still, their absence leaves a space where there used to be a warm body. There are a couple of people I trust to provide some of that support. Sadly, they are not here but in the place I left. The people I mostly trust now to reflect me back to myself are intangible, because they are you.
To hear Matt say that he doesn't think he'll ever meet anyone else like me and may always question this decision, sparks so many conflicting feelings in me. In one sense it's a validation of our relationship. But on the other hand, it's so sad that life doesn't get to be that easy. It makes me angry because I don't want someone "like" Matt. Why the hell do I have to go out and find someone "like" Matt? I had already found him and he had already found me. And why is he then just walking away? Asshole.
One of the things I need to believe is that he IS doing what's right for himself but I am starting to feel that what he needs to learn can't be learned alone the way he thinks it can. I even think that the things he thinks he has to learn are not the things he needs to learn. And maybe it's vanity or maybe it's arrogance to think that he can learn those things from me. And I know it's dangerous for me to see things this way because the cornerstone of me dealing with this is that very trust that he knows best. I know I can't do anything about it except try to gently point him in a different direction or a different way of looking at things rather than the cut and dried way such an otherwise open-minded person is seeing. Maybe that's my role in his life. Maybe for once, me being the 'emotional' one is the required ability while his 'rational' side is the one that's holding him down.
He is trying to do that for me too, except that what he sees as despair is really just a tantrum, even though I say it's not. I'd like to say he is trying to help me with the wrong things but the fundamental thing I need help with is the simple fact that he is gone. He can't help with that but I do think that his understanding of me will help in it's own way and it may even help with things I don't know I need help with. After all, if I think I'm providing that to him, it shouldn't seem such a stretch that he will provide that to me.
So, what I have left is doing what I need to do. That is putting into words what I feel. It doesn't mean that I feel that way all the time, I have bad days and good days, bad hours and good hours. But I understand that for these things to heal and these things to pass they must be taken out and allowed to run free. Because if you listen to your heart, all the things it has to say are not always light and cheery. Matt chooses to believe that he can make himself see only good things and in the end all that he has done is take away his heart's ability to speak to him.
And so we try to sustain our gentleness and respect for each other and, at the same time, try to help each other to heal.
Well, that's the recap of where I am now. There's a shift that needs to happen in me, not to put Matt behind me because I don't want that but a shift to help with the rest of the reason I'm living in isolation in a fifth wheel. The goal. The trip. For this to come into being I need to look at life in a different way and that way primarily involves this statement, "Does this choice go towards what I want or away from it?" Because if I make too many choices with the wrong intent behind them, with fear as their guide, I may end up here forever while the only reason I'm here in the first place falls into oblivion.
Below, as promised, are the pictures of my new "home". All 24 feet of it.
I apologize for all the *thinking* in this post, it seems a bit hard to read. :)
Sunday, December 26, 2004
I Just Came By to Drop Off....
To follow up on this post, here I am to do....After we'd agreed that there would be no contact, I received a chatty little email. I made it about 1/2 way through my reply before (editing heavily)....
It feels like it's leaving us in a little frozen space where we are the people we were last week and we will be forever - suddenly it's a warped frame of reference and I don't know if it's possible to move on from that. Do you know what I mean? I'm not asking you to stop but I think I'm asking if we should rethink this and how you're feeling about it.
I woke up this morning feeling much better and on the way to work I put some thought into why that might be. It's not about losing your love, because I haven't. It's not about making the wrong decision, I still trust that you are doing what you feel is best for you and I want that and I stand by that. It's not about hoping that you'll change your mind. It's not about stopping or avoiding the pain but trying to figure out if the pain I'm causing myself is unnecessary. All of the tears over the last few weeks have been directly related to the thought of never having the things I treasure about you in my life. I can't bear the thought of the loss of your perspective, your understanding of me, your gentleness and and and....all those things that are part of the reason you have become my best friend along with everything else.
Maybe that can't be reconciled and I don't know if I can be your friend, Matt, but maybe that's something we need to figure out together as we go rather than just trying to shut everything off. I think that maybe it has to naturally work itself out, no matter how that might be. I fear that being cut off from you and living in that little bubble will end with me resenting you or being angry or hanging on to something that doesn't exist and I don't ever want that to happen.
Apart from it being terrible and sad, it's felt very wrong all week for there to just be a void where you were and this morning things felt a little bit righter. (yes, that is too a word. now.) I wish I knew the answers but in the absence of knowing anything at all, maybe the best I can do is recognize that my decision may have not been the best one and see if we can work this out together because, as I said before, whatever the reasons we met and why we are a part of each other's lives, it just doesn't feel like this is supposed to be this way right now.
I may be analyzing this a little too much but I do want you to understand where the endless tears came from and that the email last night wasn't some unbalanced attempt to metaphorically throw my arms around your legs and cry some more.
Yanno?
And right at the moment i don't have all the answers. The past week Itoo have often caught myself thinking, I can't wait to tell Jen this or I wish Jen was hear to see this, she would be giggling like a school girl. I could spend the next hour or two telling you all sorts of stuff that i know you would love. But right aboot now I don't think that is the right thing to do.......I guess it would be like dropping back into our old way and I would feel like I was stringing you along and not letting go myself. So in that respect I feel I must restrain myself.
However, I too feel that there is this void that exists and that we have left ourselves in this little bubble, and that isn't right either. I guess it comes down to wether we are supposed to go cold turkey on each other or kind of ween off........ and I guess I am more of a weener.
OK, you can stop laughing now.
The short and curlies of what I have been thinking the last few days is........hell, the short and curlies is that I don't have the answers. As always with you Jen I am tracking new territory, I can't fall back on old experiences for direction. I guess we just go with what has always worked....go with what feels right. I think that the mutual love and respect that we have shared will ensure that we will end up where we need to be.
As you have probably figured out, I have varying internet accesss, so emails will come in fits and spurts.....which is probably a good thing........like telling you all the stories I have, emailing back and forth every day would just take us back to where we were before I left, which I know would feel great (I really do have to restrain myself) but in the long run may or may not be the best thing for one or both of us. I hope that came out right.
And don't worry, I didn't think that you last email was unbalanced or whatever.
Yanno?
And now, I guess the last few posts make a little more sense. I'm going to make an effort to pretty much just leave it there unless I have something big to say. Over and out.
lyric at post:
..and I can't really tell you what I'm gonna do,
there are so many thoughts in my head
there are two roads to walk down and one road to choose..
