April to July

I left here to deal with a bunch of crap: mainly physical issues (meaning I was not enjoying sex much) and to deal with the breakup of me & one of my best friends....Francis. In a nutshell here is what has been going on: I changed birth controls and have been fighting my biochemistry like hell. I've also been VERY immersed in a fight to keep my assistantship at school - meaning I need to show them the research ASAP. I'm almost there - that has been HUGELY important.

Things are slowly getting better and I'll talk more about it soon.... for the few and far between who will actually find their way here - just in case what I have gone through could help someone else. Until then - much love to this little corner of the blogosphere.

Biochemistry is a BITCH

My body is such a bitch sometimes. I pretty much have to be on birth control - and have been since shortly after I even started having a cycle.

I've been on over 10 different brands in 12 years. They all have side effects.

Yes, being on them is better than not for a lot of icky reasons. Mainly that I am physically functional when on them - and don't lose so much blood that I could end up being hospitalized... (my genetics were designed to kill me, I swear).

I am grateful there is a 'treatment' for me... but I just can't help being so SICK of the side effects. If I take any with androgens I have bad acne and my hair thins out. If I take estrogen I have mini periods all the time, still have acne- just less, and often lose my sex drive and sometimes my ability to be stimulated in the same ways. Oh, and they all make it more difficult to keep my weight where I like it.

I'm currently on an estrogen one. My ability to be stimulated has been majorly affected - which sucks because I still have a drive but my body doesn't react much. It's very difficult to orgasm. That is intensely frustrating.

I had a cancer scare recently with my cervix.... there was a part of me that hoped I had it....

Sure, it was a very small part of me - but it was there. I would LOVE to just have my frickin' parts removed and get to BE MYSELF FOR ONCE without all these synthetic hormonal ridiculous issues.

Sorry for the rant but it's a part of why I haven't been around here much. It's hard to read sex blogs and enjoy them right now. It's impossible to write anything sexual.

The worst part is I don't know what I want to do. I don't want to lose my hair anymore or be in my late twenties with a teenager's face and back and chest. I can't go off BC. They won't take my parts out - I'm "too young" and I "might want kids one day" (AS IF I DON'T KNOW WHAT I WANT). For now that means staying on the estrogen, staying on a pill that takes a part of my identity... a part of my life... and tamps it down no matter what I want.

What's in a name??

3 posts in one day! :D

Ok - I have one other random issue I'd like some opinions about....

I hate my name. I always have. I can't tell you what it is of course, sadface, but it's a combination of two generic names you hear everywhere that start with the same letter. My mother and father had the same initials, so they decided it would be so CUTE if my brother and I had their initials too. After my brother's passing and the break up of my family my mom left me with my father's last name and I kept it even after she remarried (I did NOT want to be adopted by my step dad). She chose to return to it when her second marriage dissolved, because it was the name I have.

Still... to me it's always felt like this leftover piece of junk from a family who never loved me. I need to pick a name and stick with it before I start getting published. For a long time I didn't worry about this (7 years) because I assumed I would marry my HS sweetheart eventually and just take his name and the stain would be removed.

That clearly didn't happen, haha, and I couldn't be happier. However, I'm left with this NAME I hate and the date I get published keeps drawing closer and closer... if I'm going to change my name I need to do it now and forever hold my peace. I just want to change my last name - and everyone I know is opposed to the idea. My name is 'cute' or 'they can't imagine me as anyone else' or 'it just suits you' are the reasons I get. My first and last name together have a sort of cutesy newscaster feel I've been told numerous times. Yeah, that suits me.

What do you think off hand?
Should I go through with paying to have it changed (it's not too much $, less than $100) but will take some time and effort... or just live with it? I have started proceedings to change it before but I get so much opposition from family/friends I have dropped the issue in the past. Why does it really matter? Am I just being a drama queen not wanting his family name on all of my accomplisments for the rest of my life? (I want to change it to a family name from pre-my father.) I can't see the forest for the trees on this one - so feel free to offer an opinion!

My number one reason I haven't done it yet is I don't want to deal with everyone asking me about it. It's a personal issue and I just know I'll have to explain it to everyone under the sun, ew.

Self Sabotage

Ok. I remembered something recently about myself.... I'll try to make some sense out of it.... ugh, here goes. This is going to be long.

I have a terrible memory. I don't remember my childhood, except for photos I've seen over and over since then and some painted in memories of random things. The few memories I do have are more like extremely old polaroids or very vague imprints of emotions and events that have no visuals attached. I usually only retain less than 5 of these snapshots and some separate imprints for each YEAR of my life before high school. Since I realized this was happening to me in middle school I started sort of telling myself a story of my life - creating my narrative if you will. (I actually sort of want to write a book of my life because it would be fictional even with a basis in truth.) It's helped to improve my memory of my life, but it's extremely difficult to remember lots of little things with this method and there is so much bias in remembering this way. I feel like it's contributed to making it so much harder to get to know myself as well as with learning life lessons... I feel like I have to relearn certain things 5 or 6 times before it sticks per se. What a pain in the ass.

Since I've started reading so much on training and memory retention and learning... I've actually begun to suspect that all of this is attached to what is likely a REM disorder (my sleep issue). Research is showing that without REM sleep things you learn and experiences very rarely make it into long term memory, and that without that REM sleep we retain very little and what we do retain doesn't always get properly connected so that we can retrieve the information later. Awesome huh? So maybe it's less a pain in the ass and more of a freeing way to live? I wish it felt that way.

Alright so now that you know this important issue I have.... it hit me recently that I had forgotten an important pattern in my first relationship. I was constantly creating escape hatches in the first 4 years of that relationship, out of words, constructed issues that I decided should break us up, by talking up all the negatives, convincing myself not to love him, etc.

Hmmm, sound familiar?

I remember one day in particular (vaguely) where A got exasperated with me (something he rarely did) and asked me angrily/tearfully: "Why are you always trying to run away from us?" or something similiar. What I remember clearly is that the sentiment slammed into me. I was always - ALWAYS - less in it than he was and maintained that vigilantly. Always looking for the out, making sure it was there. I didn't use it until he forced me to, but I had it.

This was.... poisonous in a lot of ways. In order to construct an out when the relationship is primarily good meant I had to do it with words - because he rarely gave me much ammunition. So I would go to my mother (my best friend at the time) and my sister and talk all about what I was concerned about and I would constantly sound on the brink of a break up with him. By the time we broke up they both hated him, with lots of good reasons. We were together 7 years. I think I did this almost the entire time. Poor A. He managed to fight me off on a regular basis and by the end of our relationship it was a running joke between us. He could say something about it, I would realize that's what I was doing, and I would stop. That's part of why breaking up with him sucked so hard - I had finally gotten IN after years of fighting it and then I was forced to leave.

So. I vowed not to do that with K. And I didn't, though I had built in the escape hatch of graduate school. I did give him the option of going with me to it though - which in light of our problems we decided not to go with (haha, I make it all sound like it was done rationally and painlessly.... it wasn't rational or painless at all - he wasn't mature enough for that and I was dying in agony from feeling forced to abandon his daughter). Lesson here: Didn't build in appropriate escapes and I devastated myself.

Add these two experiences to a lifetime of inability to trust and my history of being abandoned....
and I sincerely doubt my ability to be the least bit honest with myself in a relationship situation. I don't think I know how. And I have to admit that terrifies me.

I think this is part of why I like E so much and always keep him in the wings. He tells me what I feel - and that works for me on a lot of levels. I'm fine with believing him and it's much easier than trying to figure it out for myself. Still - I stay away from getting involved with him because he's not stable and that seems to be the #1 thing I crave in my secret heart.

Alright - so what does this have to do with now? SP. Smart, an active listener (now anyway), a good foil for my neurotic and dramatic moments, sexy, and someone I was very excited about dating before we put a title on things. As soon as that happened... not as much excitement, because I needed an escape hatch. So I built a GOOD one: well he thinks he wants his own children, I don't - so for sure we won't last. Then when he seemed a little malleable on that issue I grabbed another one: Well, when he's done with grad school he'll leave and that'll be that.
During this time I've also built lots of little ones: We're both too selfish so we must not be right because if we were then we'd immediately just be perfect and put the other first every minute of every day (even though we're both rabidly opposed to codependence) and it would be a fairy tale (but I hate clear shoes, they're ugly, and he'd know that so he'd have been sure to buy me the perfect knee high black leather boot instead) and we'd never ever get the least bit annoyed with the other person (even though we're both critical and smart and speak our minds) or be too tired to have sex (even though we both have medical level sleep issues and I'm constantly on medications that fuck with my libido and so is he). Right.

I took it steps further this time. I just kept parts of myself, large ones, put away into little boxes and over on one side of my mind, the side marked with: not pertinent to SP. Doing this ensured I would never feel like he really knew me or that he was close enough to me to devastate me. I told myself it was to make sure we weren't one of THOSE couples I hate who can't breathe without talking about it together. I told myself I did it to retain my sense of self. I shared enough that he would think I was open, and in it, etc. I'm VERY good at that, but in reality I kept the deep stuff, the important stuff, to myself. On purpose.

Laid out like that... well. I am the partner I would never want. How sad is that?? My mother is beginning to dislike him. My best friend is too good to do that, but she's so cautious about us now too because she holds my ammunition for a break up. I constantly make her new arrows to hold for me, just in case I need them.

What I'm having a really rough time with right now is deciding if those arrows are justified, or if all of them are shit because I haven't allowed myself to really participate in this relationship as one. I've made it a fauxtionship - almost entirely by myself too. I'm leaning towards the shit option. (And Sasha - when you read this - isn't it funny how you asked me questions about all of this right before I got slammed with a revelation about it from within that basically answered what you were asking?! We're mental twins.) If nothing else I feel that this relationship has more to teach me - if I will but let it.

I came home from my conference and had a 3 hour conversation with SP. I laid it all out there how I've felt - and asked what his plans were when he graduated. He said his plans have been for a long time to take me into account in whatever his decisions are at that time, but that he never talks about because he has no idea what the options will be and it seems silly to think ahead when you can't plan anything. He's so practical sometimes, he doesn't want to waste energy thinking about an uncertain future. But he wasn't the least bit uncertain about me. He loves our relationship, and he loves me, a lot. It really hurt him and made him very sad to hear how I had been handling things. He has never pressured for more because your future is inherently uncertain at the completion of graduate school, and because he was afraid I would bolt. To me it says a lot that he chose not to even get angry, but instead asked me what else he could do to make me feel more secure in the relationship.... He asked a lot of questions, made sure he really understood what I meant and where my little unhappinesses are occurring - then he told me what he thinks is great about us and suggested some ways we could make it even better for both of us based on this and other previous conversations. He also told me how vulnerable this made him feel because he had no idea and asked for some reassurances from me that I believed in things over the course of the next few weeks... if I did.

Then he went and has been doing these things we talked about since then (not to mention his past track record of changing his listening style, methods of dealing with annoyance, etc.). He isn't the guy who says he will change something to shut me up. He only says it if he means it, and then he does. I'm pretty impressed and I only hope I can do the same - because the changes we want are only the type that make you a better person - not the kind I hate where someone wants you to change to suit THEM better.

It makes me cautious now that my best friend is cautious. When he's with me though - and I'm not overanalyzing everything - maybe that's the place I can find the truth of my feelings? (I have to say there on the couch with my head in his lap looking into his eyes while we talked about all of this stuff I felt so calm and secure but even here I hesitate to say I love him - though I know I do and I tell him so regularly without qualms). I don't know what to do. I don't want to only notice the positive, that's dangerous. I don't want to keep building my hatches, I'm already sad and angry with myself for realizing how I do this and am dying to figure out how to stop.... but I don't know if I have the capacity to look at my relationship clearly. Fuck.

I guess a little part of me always hoped it would be like a fairy tale. Someone would show up and manage to get past all my barriers and I would just FALL and that would be it forever. I think my walls are much too strong for that. I told him all of this in order to force myself to make a decision, and I decided to stay in. So now what do I do? I wish I knew.

Up-to-the-minute....

Oh blog, dear blog, how I have missed you!!! It's Thursday again, supposed to be an HNT day... but it's not going to happen - at least no physical revelations... though there's about to be some other ones. I'll make it a goal for next week.

Quick update:
- It's that time of the semester again, and during this one I'm also about to propose my thesis and begin piloting a research study. I am so busy I find myself here, avoiding the to do list that is crushing me, because I need some mental peace to get back to tackling it.

- My conference went... amazing! I wish I could go into tons of detail and gush for a while, but it would just bore you anyway. I'll summarize....
It helped revitalize me in many ways - from my passion for my degree and what I do to my own confidence in my abilities, intelligence, and in the people I have at my fingertips to work with (Officechick E is the exception, not the rule - and just because I'm constantly exposed to a selfish brat who has a negative image of me doesn't mean everyone else has that image of me... no matter if she tells me they do or not). It also spurred some involvement in some new projects, which is super exciting, but means my already extremely limited time is going to be further stretched.

- Medical issues are back rearing their ugly heads.
None of the testing I had to have done was covered - though I was told it would be. Of course I elected to purchase glasses before that with the 'credit' I get to put toward medical expenses every year (since every doctor always tells me how healthy I am I figured that was a safe bet, damned hindsight)... and I did need them for when I exhaust my eyes... but considering I am going to have to pay for school and my living situation for 3 months out of pocket this summer.... this could be a very bad situation soon.
My sleep issues have never gone away - I just stopped whining about them. They affect me less sometimes, more others. I wish anything seemed to work, but it doesn't.... so yeah. Whatever. I guess I just keep to try dealing with it as it comes. Roll with the punches. What I wonder though is just how AWESOME I would be (how much smarter, how much better my memory would be, how much less I would have to fight to stay thin, how much more energy I would have, etc.) if I actually could sleep the right way even once a week.... I'm having very short odd dreams and some sleep paralysis pretty regularly. I dreamed of Sasha the other night, of twitter, of my closet, and then of much more oddball unimaginable things.

I have a couple other pending things/relationship updates I'm about to do other posts about... so here goes wiping the slate clean....

Busyness.

Oh, life.

So E has been in and out of late - he maintains a huge passion for me. It... both reassures me of my lovability and attractiveness in times of doubt (mental and physical), but also bothers me. I am in a monogamous relationship - no matter if I believe it to have a fairly proximate expiration date or not. I refuse to cheat in this situation. I also refuse to lead someone on or not be honest with them. Whenever I don't maintain honesty I get into trouble, often friendship sours, and everything gets messed up - sometimes beyond redemption. Friendship with him is difficult to maintain with his constant communication of his attraction, so we'll see how long our period of being in the in and out phase of talking to one another lasts.

I am going out of town next week for close to a week, and things are going kind of crazy in my professional/personal life. The boyfriend returned unscathed from his long trip to India.... but my underwater digital camera stayed behind on the bottom of the Ganges River. He ordered me a new one, haha. Our passion for one another was/is incredibly strong on his return, but our past sexual dissapointments soon returned as well.

Sex when I have any kind of ick going on down below (and my genetics ensure that even on birth control I regularly have what they call 'breakthrough bleeding' ) is not his cup of tea no matter what. BUT when that's why we aren't doing it he doesn't really want to touch me directly - just through fabric. Well... that's not enough to do a thing but leave me wanting more. I don't usually get off externally either without a vibrator - for me it's all about gspot sex not clitoral stuff. I used to... but the birth controls that work best also seem to lower both my sensitivity and my libido. Sadface. I can't get upset with him about this stuff though - I've never stepped up to the plate and solved the problem by requiring that I orgasm during these usually short times (I have a period only once every 3 months, and breakthroughs usually only last a day or two) or introduced buzzy things into our bedroom or anything else. Usually we're so busy it doesn't matter I just stick to my own schedule when he wouldn't want to have sex with me anyway - and the Hitachi keeps me happy enough until I can get what really satisfies again. This time it didn't quite work that way thanks to his jet lag. He awoke wanting sexual activity and I was also awake but groggy and knew sex wasn't on the menu that day.... We argued about it around 4 am when I didn't respond well to his fingers. However - we got past it. I was too annoyed to use that opportunity to explain my sexual take on things. I really should just requre what I want - but this leads to the next issue I have....

The word love has gotten very intense too of late, abscences can do that. I'm not really sure what I want to do about either - this relationship is clearly not my first priority and never has been. It's not for him either. We're ok with that - but that clearly is not entirely comfortable for me or I wouldn't talk about it so often and be so preoccupied with it on occasion....

Knowing that this relationship was somewhat transient from the start has really tainted it in many ways. Such as in my sexual satisfaction with him specifically (though not overall)- I never really bothered making it partly his responsibility or concern. Honestly, that was pretty short-sighted. If nothing else I'd have been doing a helluva favor for whomever comes next. He's very good at sex, but only ok at foreplay and for me definitely not so good at non-sex orgasms. He occasionally has lovely bursts of dominance, which I have been careful to nurture, but again they had nothing to do with knowing physically what I or most women would love (though he has learned more in that regard).

This is mostly just a bit of personal ramble for the moment... my school life has been absorbing all of my attention lately. There may not be HNT's for the next two weeks, but at least I'll be having some fun while getting some work done on my life, schoolwork, and career.

See you again soon, space cowboys.

Your Circle.

My lovely somewhat divine friend sent me the world's most timely little thing today, and I wanted to share it. I love this idea, though I am not their average. I do think those closest to us influence us in many ways though.

Quote for Contemplation

My thanks to Carrie Wilkerson for providing me with this quote:

"You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with. "

- Jim Rohn

Think about the five people you spend the most time with. Look at their careers, their finances, their marriage, their level of contentment, their health, their outlook on life. Where do you fall in relationship to them? Spooky isn't it? Are surrounding yourself with the best possible influences on your life? Who do you know that you admire in any one of these areas? Figure out how to spend more time with THESE people. Who are the folks who are holding you back? You MUST reduce their influence. That's not always a comfortable thing to consider, since sometimes it's those dearest to us who have become the anchors around our necks.

Can't see a way to change your immediate circle of friends? Get new ones! Join a club, a church, a gym, or a volunteer organization. Seek employment elsewhere or get a part-time job. Ask for an introduction to someone you feel would be a good role-model. You owe it to yourself to provide your mind and your spirit with support and encouragement in order to grow to your full potential!

- From The Average Goddess

Someday over the rainbow...

One day, perhaps, this place won't be full of so much angsty crap. Soon would be nice. But don't worry about me, I'm actually feeling pretty fine. Painting helps so much, so do the wonderful comments I have gotten (you know who you are!) and the general knowledge that life goes on (and then you die). Maybe the next HNT (since I have missed so many now) will feature both the latest painting and me? I'll try.

Recent research has shown (I read this in a Psych pub) that knowing when an experience will end - that it is a finite experience - makes us value it more. Oh my, what does that say about relationships?

I have noticed in re-reading my posts that I am the queen of run on sentences. What can I say, I think in them. That makes avoiding writing them in personal narratives so damn hard. I apologize both for my grammar and my disjointed sometimes jumbly blather. I am apologizing both to you - and to me.

The End.

Ouch.

8 days?? Oh my. Well... let's just say I needed/required the escape. My BFF lost another family member, I've had a fever, and Spring Break officially started - though for me that's meant lots of time alone with the pets. I haven't turned my computer on in several of those days... and only thought to come here tonight when I missed connecting with/checking in on those I've come to feel close to from the blogosphere (the lovely Sasha & Wilhemina most notably - but I also missed the wit of Roland & AAG, and the thought-provoking posts of Essen Em quite a lot as well). How quickly this place has almost become another friend - one who inspires me, comforts me, makes me laugh, and provokes me to new lines of thought. I did however find myself avoiding Merlin's blog... because I didn't want to think about love. No fault of those two - but I can't even seem to masturbate lately without getting mired in my own worries about my relationship.

SP being gone for 20+ days has set my mind on this odd tangent. I think normally I would have not thought much about him and would have reveled in my time alone - but having his dog here has made thoughts of him a very regular occurrence. I didn't want to think about US like this - I think I've very carefully avoided it for a long time. His and my relationship is one of potential - lots of unfulfilled potential (and it was a year in October - another thing I studiously avoid thinking about). Lots of not sharing our innermost desires, dreams, etc. Why? I'm not entirely sure... but I do know without doubt it's been a choice we both made. Perhaps this is one of those cases where the past hinders your future.

That train of thought always makes me crazy. The tracks go two ways: hope and recrimination. Hope that we're right for one another, that we want a future together, that if we confronted that all these trappings would fall away and we would really live that dream out fully together. Recrimination because I know in reality we probably are not right (the whole kid debate we stand on different sides of is a dealbreaker... and then there's a list of things including the ever-important: do I want to be with someone forever who clearly sort of finds it icky to finger me, one of my fave things ever?). I think it's kind of ridiculously hard on me to consider leaving someone who is so GOOD. He's a great person - someone I admire, respect, and sort of love. The passion hasn't been present of late - but I still can't see the forest for the trees with that. It could have been my scary physical concerns and other stressors as easily as it could be us. See what I just did there? I made another excuse to hope. DAMN IT. I wish I was the strong one who could point to the not-good-enough-for-me stuff and walk the fuck away. I'm not though - see the last post for more evidence of that. The little girl in me who is always dying to be loved just can't. She's so afraid no one else will... and she feels that if no one else ever could love her... well then she'd rather have mediocre with someone she really admires and respects than nothing at all.... How do I come to terms with this when there is so much good stuff here? It just hasn't materialized into anything like what I really want... or even some of what I have had before and know I am capable of....I already know I have to talk to him soon after he gets back. Ugh.

So yeah, the postsecret doesn't fit this post yet, but it will in a second. Today I hit a point of alone I didn't like. It wasn't happy anymore, I kind of wanted to kill the dog. And looking at the canvas I want and don't want to paint for SP was defeating me. So I gathered up my paints... and decided to watch The Tudors and paint. Just to get out of my head again (I read Duma Key by Stephen King in its entirety the day before to accomplish that goal) as fast as possible. Lo and behold I get an IM! I had sort of been waiting by the phone and computer for something from the BFF - she has been MIA and needing some space - however, it wasn't her. It was E.

All my character list says about E is that he was a fling from years ago. Well... he might have been a bit more than that - and we've always been the kind of friends who can pick up where they left off. He was my rebound from my 7 year relationship with my so-called soulmate. He was the 2nd person I have ever had sex with. My first sexual experience with a woman was actually a 3some involving him. His penis is almost beautiful, and we all know that's rare. I've never understood it but I have always liked him - first as a person, and then as a sexual partner. No one else ever thinks he's good enough for me or seems to like him very much... but I do. I always have, and yet I've never taken him seriously as a possible partner either. He's never been ambitious enough beyond wanting to get me naked. I don't want to drag someone through life - the first boyfriend would have required that and I learned my lesson well. However, I know very well that E views me in near-soulmate territory. The guy gets me, and is highly capable of getting me off too.

I haven't talked to him on the phone in 2 years, though we IM regularly. But today... I did. I have to say in the past my willingness to talk to him on the phone has been a precursor to the death knell of my relationships. It's weird the patterns we create for ourselves. I made the excuse that it was because I can't type and paint (I can't, but still) and that I was sick of being alone with my thoughts. I don't lead him on, because I'd hate myself if I did. Yet I know he really and truly thinks that one day I'll be single again and I'll think of him first.

Will I? I don't know.

All I know is that I let him back in a little bit more because... it is so nice to have a champion. He is my champion. He's smart, funny, calls me out on my BS, sexy, and more than that he never seems to think a bad thought about me - even when he's calling me out... it's kind of scary actually... Support, unconditional love, intellectual and sexual stimulation, humor, creativity, etc.? I also know that as of tonight I can't get off if I'm thinking of SP at all, but when E crept into the brain there was no problem. That's probably what made me write this post - and what will have me sticking to porn rather than my imagination for the next 10 or so days.

Chicken?

My last post was a bit disjointed (and that was after edits)... like my thoughts often seem to be. They jump and twist and move and ramble around one another in bright ribbons that in no way resemble the 'train' of thought I have been taught I am supposed to have. They're unruly and mercurial and rarely end up where I expect them to.... much like me.

One of my best friends, the BMF aka Frances, broke up with me yesterday. Or did I break up with him? I really don't know. Hey, at least this time I didn't inherit a cat - that's a first.

What I wish could have happened - that we could have scaled back the friendship and let it grow in a different way... didn't happen. I didn't ask for that though- the words failed me. It hurts, and it hurts to know I hurt someone I care for. The worst part is that in trying to get what I did want but in not communicating it - I ended up with nothing and he got to sort of say the final things you would say in these moments.... but I didn't get that chance. I didn't get to say I hope his mother is ok, that he finds the happiness he's looking for, that he gets that job he wants, etc. All the nice things you wish for those you love but may not get the chance to see them succeed once you burn the bridge that connects you to them.

...all I see in your response are excuses. Don't have time? That's bullshit and you know it. You just don't want to deal with something that is somewhat uncomfortable. And I don't agree that you respect me. This whole process has shown that you respect me so little that you can't be the least bit honest with me or yourself...I've watched you dismantle friendships with everyone and outwardly I thought I was immune, but I always knew it would happen to me. I gave you an opportunity to redeem yourself in a respectful manner, but instead you have chosen the easy way out...I hope you succeed and someday have enough confidence in yourself that you stop looking to others to provide it for you. I hope you someday realize that what you want and what you need are two different things. I hope someday you stop using the bad things you do to gain attention.

Mostly, though, I hope you find love and leave your cynicism for the dreamless.

Goodbye and good luck.

I only included the parts that stung a bit, or puzzled me in some way. It's also hard to not explain yourself to someone who has always understood you when you did. There are things in his good-bye e-mail I'd like to respond to, but it feels like egoist posturing to do so - and I'm not going to do that.

This is another pattern of mine in a way - it seems like when things end where I am involved it's often messy. After the end with my first ex which was a pretty clean break, all the rest of my friendships and relationships have ended more messily than I would like. Many were unnatural endings. I am not sure if it's due to my inability to communicate in these situations or due to the fact that I have changed a lot over this time - which means patterns of learning and painful growth. It could be because I do choose the easy way, or because I have become more indecisive in these situations. In any case this is not something I want to continue.

I'm an agnatheist - meaning I don't really care right now how we got here or where we go when we die. It's just not important to me right now. Maybe it will be again, but considering it's unfathomable... meh. So I don't know if I believe in the above in THOSE terms... but I do believe that maybe I haven't earned my own rewards yet.

This week was full of fail. FULL OF IT. However, now.... it's more than fine, it's lovely! So let's play a little game of catch-up. (I'm sorry I didn't get in here sooner - life refused to give me the opportunity.)

Monday... it snowed here. Which is not normal, trust me. Soooo when I went to the doctor to my appointment - they were closed. They didn't bother to call - so I braved the ice, downed power lines and trees, and was PISSED to have done so. They remained unreachable until Tuesday afternoon when they then informed me it would be FRIDAY before I could see the doctor and that she had not yet reviewed my results. Which of course they could only tell me in the middle of my teaching a class. Sometimes I get so annoyed at the complete lack of professionalism present in some small-town businesses. I grew up in the big city - I liked it.

Friday rolls around - I had to rearrange my entire schedule to make the appointment - but I had the best possible results! My cells are stage 1 - meaning 70% chance of no further negative developments and all I currently need is a check up in 6 months. The longer I had to wait the harder it was getting to believe things would actually be ok for some reason. So this was more than good news.

Other funny fails of this week: I fell off the bus rather than stepping off of it properly, I threw a bowling ball behind me rather than down the lane, I put on a pair of pants that had a bug in them and subsequently killed it with them on, removed the bug, and then was forced to wear them for the rest of the day, the cold made my car radio turn the volume off by itself repeatedly one day further adding to the insanity that was everything I touched this week, and subsequently well... yeah.

So now that we've gotten all of that out of the way you can see why there was no HNT this week, haha.

Snapshot of this moment: The sun is out, it's 72 degrees and breezy (yes, after snow on monday and hell yes I plan on debuting a bikini top for hiking tomorrow!!! SCORE!) . All of my windows are open, and the main doors, letting in as much light and breeziness as possible. I have an orange kitten on my lap, a black one laying next to me with her paw over her face, and a medium-sized cute black mutt on the floor at my feet. There's a massive canvas leaned against the far wall with canvas on the floor... all ready for me to paint on it. All in all, it's a beautiful day.

- My thesis draft is out and it should only be 3 weeks or so until I get my proposal date set. It's really happening this time!! I'm so happy and excited! This is my focus at the moment - getting it done by August to ensure my future.
- SP, the boyfriend, got out of town to India for 3 weeks a-ok. He had some help from me on that one, and of course the mutt on the floor is his. Or I should say mine for almost a month! Luckily she's a wonderful dog. She and I are going hiking tomorrow! I'm interested to see how his being gone is going to feel for me. Our relationship has been such a different one ... one of initial attraction and liking but then a slow, hesistant progression to a deep connection. Now we regularly tell each other we love each other. I've gotten pretty used to his place in my life and talking to him daily (a habit he started that I didn't even realize I got used to until lately), sleeping wrapped up completely in each other, and our 3 nights in a row seeing each other (2 with friends, 1 just the two of us) every week. Still - we never talk about the future and I think we both feel that next December when he graduates we'll part ways. Even though we've never talked about it, and I don't think I want to. My being willing to paint something on that canvas meant for him is a bigger deal than anyone could understand. I have never done that for anyone but my mother without payment involved. It's odd - and it has had me thinking more about what I bring to the table and about working on what it is I really want to give and to get. Does this even make sense? Not in terms of SP per se, just in terms of life. I want/like certain things in a partner and in my friends... do I give those things? Am I a good partner? Or is it me that limits my relationships? Something to ponder while I do some much-needed spring cleaning around here and perfect questions to have swirling between my ears while I'm painting. There's nothing better for that besides emotions and wonder.
- One of my TA assignments has been completed for the semester, I won't have much more to do for it in the future. Which is insanely exciting - hooray for putting in almost 60 hours on it in the last week so I don't have to deal with it hardly at all for the rest of the semester! (It's only supposed to be 10 hours a week.)
- I finally have a little time and space to get some sleep. I had a bought of sleep paralysis yesterday - so clearly I need it!

And that's my life in all it's glorious inconsistency.

Well, the waiting for the letter is over. My first official thesis draft is written and turned in, and until I get notes back - I'm actually caught up in everything grad school related. For the first time in 2.5 years, yay! Now I just have to get myself through to tomorrow and go to my appointment to find out what the results of my biopsies are.

My BFF Anne's father died this week. She's dealing with a horrible mess. SP is heading out of town for 3 weeks on Friday and is swamped in general. And I feel like I'm being silly by feeling so restless and antsy and on edge today - I feel like I need them but I don't know what I even want from them. Thank goodness for fluffy cuddly kitties. And maybe ice cream later..... :)

All of this is just making me think about choices. I dreamed about them all night last night. I think one of the odd side effects of living the life I did was that growing up I always felt like I was on the outside... looking in at a different world. I never really got to do the things all the other kids were doing, I rarely got to indulge my own whims - except for reading. My mom found ways to be sure I had books, yay libraries!! I sought a secure, well-paying career that was based solely on individual effort... I chose to get a PhD because it's something that to me gauranteed security in this world. Once I have it, I can never UNhave it.

My childhood has also left me with this almost desperate need to indulge my desires now. I hate being left out when my friends/loved ones are having amazing experiences. I always want to be a part of them - to see them happy and to share in it rather than just doing things alone all the time. I constantly worry that I'm not doing enough - having enough experiences. I want them NOW. I like to be alone, but the really amazing things I'd prefer to share. 'Experiences' bring you closer to people, help deepen your bond, and I think it's sad I have few of those with the people who matter most to me... the people I would most like to share them with. (I am not downgrading the value of just being able to exist with those closest to you though - to sit and understand one another without saying a word - that's invaluable as well.) I hope this is the good kind of crazy - the kind that just spurs you to be more and better and to 'follow your bliss' per se.

I wish I had chosen a job that allowed me to have more of the types of experiences I crave - but I didn't even know there were jobs like that until it was much too late and my feet were too far down this path to turn back. Now I just want this job to allow me options to make/have the experiences I want: time and gifts/care for those I love and value in this world, travel, animal conservation/experiences, the chance to see/feel different things and places.

I've actually started evaluating what I want to do with my degree based on the opportunities it will give me to fulfill this idea.
Teaching: More time off, flexible schedules, more eternal impact with students, more intellectual pursuits, etc.
Consulting: My money, possibly travel involved, more variety of projects and people.

I think all of this babble is really just a result of me wondering if tomorrow I will be asked to make a choice that affects the rest of my life. Or if I will be presented with something straightforward, or if my body has already made choices about my future for me. I'll find out soon enough.

The letter.

You look down and see an old envelope, with a yellow rose of Texas stamp on it that cost $.32 cents. The envelope has a little splash of gold glitter on it, like it's been stored in a junk drawer somewhere. As you flip it over, you see the flap hasn't been sealed. Inside is a self-sticking mailing label - so old that the glue is a deep antique gold color and has become useless. On the front is an address - your address from years upon years and moves upon moves ago. The handwriting is distinctive... but feels oddly childlike to you. Oddly large letters, mostly capitals... and yet you'd swear you write your own N's just like that.

You put the label back in the envelope and remove the letter hiding behind it. One piece of paper, removed from a legal-sized pad. Folded 6 times longways, and once down the middle. It's dated clearly on the top right... 2/15/98, Sun. You start to read...

Hi [Your Name],
This is your long lost DAD, a... father a.... or whatever you want to call me; Hey watch it, you know what the Bible says about that. Watch your tongue, oh well! OOPS!
I certainly am looking forward to meeting you. I've always loved you and sensed a longing for all the things I missed ^experiencing & seeing as you've grown up. I just recently acquired a photo of you when you were 13, it looks like a school picture. My my you have gotten big. The other or last picture I had of you was of a snaggle-toothed 4 yr. old. A tiny little thing!
Thanks to ^Aunt Cindy I also got some pictures of summer 96 when that you and [your mother's name] came to the Ganty House. Thank God for small favors! Also Brooke & Cindy, and Ashley's feet are in the photo too!
It appears to me that [your mother's name] has done a good job of raising you and that God has had his hand on you too; or maybe their in unison. Anyway you look like a million to me and my hopes for you span the universe. That's just the way us daddies think! You were a delight as a child and I'll bet you always will be.

A true friend forever,
Daddy [Your father's name]!

You feel... nothing as you read the words. And that spurs a rush of relief. As you refold the letter some other emotions begin to trickle down. A little bit of grief over the fact that he never understood you, and clearly did not want to - no matter what he thought he wanted. A little bit of thankfulness surfaces - that he stayed out of your life when you would have let him in. A bit of wonder for if the drugs forced him into what seems to you like an oddly surface and childlike response to what you wrote... but in all honesty deep down the main idea running through the back of your mind while you read was: BULLSHIT. Every line felt like one a salesman would tell you as he tried to convince you that his snake oil was different - it would finally do what you had been promised all the others would do. You begin to refold the letter, placing it back behind the label, in the glittery envelope with a stamp that will never be used. As you walk into the room where you keep your important papers and mementos in a filing cabinet, you ponder just where to put this one. You don't want to put it with the cards you get - you like to look at those when you have a bad week. As you open the file drawer you decide to just put it in a blank folder in the back behind the other memento folders. Once that's done, you head back into the rest of your little apartment - back to your life.

***

When I was 14, I wrote my father a very deeply thought out letter, that I drafted over and over. I labored over it longer and with more thought and care than I have any paper I've written up until my thesis. It did begin with me saying I felt that the title Daddy needed to be earned. He spat on that idea twice in this letter. I knew that might hurt his feelings... but I can't say I cared then or do now. I was only interested in getting to know someone who would accept the truth of my life without him, and choose to overcome it or start fresh. This man took all of my mother's money and all of their things in the divorce (he was quite the charmer from everything I hear... silver-tongued, charismatic, etc.), he even went back and took the money given to the funeral home so my baby brother would have a headstone. I understand that was an addiction thing... but I honestly don't care. He chose to try a drug known to be that addictive - heroin. He was clearly dumber than I am. He never paid child support - not once in my entire life. I have lived in someone's garage before, suffered verbal and emotional abuse at the hands of family members we've been forced to live with (not talking about my mother - she's a different story and she never abandoned me). There were times we only had donated food to eat, and donated clothes to wear, and donated roofs over our heads, but we had them and we had one another. I had a stress related ulcer in the 3rd grade. He made sure the one thing he did have when he killed himself (which I strongly believe is the coward's way out... it's much harder to live than to die) - a house my mother paid for - went to his mother and my aunt. I didn't want it - but it was sneakily done to make sure his only living child would get nothing from him.

I know that he got photos of me, I saw them when I was in the Ganty House. So... he also lied... or he was such a ruin of a person from the years of hard living and substance abuse that he didn't even know. From the sounds of things he was really only clean when he was in prison - though I can't be sure of that. My only real information source about him are his mother and sister... and his mother regularly crafts her reality out of smoke and mirrors (she blamed my father not being in my life on my mother... there's not a thimble of truth in that). My aunt I just don't know well enough to know.... but she went along with the stories my grandmother told the two times I spent any time with her.... and well, I'm not one who likes to deal with that. If my life taught me one thing - it's that trust must be earned. Liars don't tend to do very well at that one - no matter how well meaning the lie is... I have no desire to embrace a false reality and won't put up with one just to humor them either.

I don't blame him for anything negative that has happened in my life, and I am extremely grateful for the experiences that I have had (now that they're in the past)... but once upon a time there was a creative imaginative little girl who truly believed she was lovable. Who never had a shadow of a doubt about it - and he killed her... he killed her every time she tried to come back to life. He ruined my belief that anyone can provide me with security, that anyone will ever actually love me above others - like I would like to do for someone else someday. Combine him with my mother - and I am not sure I can ever believe in relying on someone else. It's sad in a lot of ways.

The final part of all this is that my aunt got my mother's e-mail hoping to get my e-mail from her later. But she hasn't used it. I told my mom if she asked to talk to me, I'd be happy to talk to her. I'm not trying to make them work to get to know me... I'm just looking for proof that they're not using me to make themselves feel better. That entire family seems to be all talk. My aunt has reached out twice... but even when she does it always feels like they want something. They wanted me to come to the funeral... why? To remind me that they have a fantasy of my life? To give me the blanket my father had on his lap when he shot himself in the chest, what was the purpose of that? To parade me in front of all his friends and family who never knew me? To make me wander the house I was born into, where my room still looked the same and my mother's handwriting was still on the walls in the laundry room.... why?? What was the point?

THIS is why children are so important to me. I've been the eternally unwanted. That sounds so dramatic, but it's pretty true. I kept looking for a good male figure as I grew up... I don't know if that was instinct, reaction to my mom's sometimes abusive ways, or what. I wish I had found one.
- The man my mother was with that raised me (he had a huge impact on me and was always the man who was my mental father)... eventually left her, but not me for a while... but then he also left me, because his new girlfriend didn't like me.
- After that she eventually married my stepfather. He and I hated one another.... openly. He openly disliked me. Very pleasant 5 years of my life there. His 3 kids moved in, I got to share my mother and my home with them, and the man hated me. I gave as good as I got.... but he was a nasty loud fighter. When he and my mother would fight I would sneak out or hide. I can't say he did anything good for my ideas of men.
- My grandfather verbally and emotionally abused me when we lived with him to the point that it was years before we could talk again. I watched him physically assault my mother. He took everything we had including our current home, and he made sure we lost everything we had in storage when he left too- bye bye childhood. That was the 2nd time I had to give away my pet because we lost our home too - because of him.
- I've had not 1 but 2 pastors turn on me. I trusted my youth pastors, I was a girl in trouble looking for guidance who was too serious for her peers. One ended up being a wonderful figure in my life for a while.... then he began to embezzle money.... and things got weird both with me and in the church. The other did much the same thing. He used me as a poster child to bring people into the church, tried to convince me my 'gift' was hands-on healing (I was a praise singer) and then when one of the older boys tried to molest me at a function and I told him about it - he told me to stop being so welcoming of attention.
- There are lesser incidents, many actually, but yeah. It's all a pattern. A bit of a sad messy history. And all through it there were moments where I saw real dads around me, and wanted, but it's just not something I'll ever have.

Reading this letter made me feel so much better in a way though - I didn't short him by not trying harder. In fact, I probably saved myself from just being more disappointed and crushed than I ever was before.

Double ewe tee eff.

My mother didn't bother to send me the letter until Saturday - and then she sent it regular mail. How nice. So I'll just continue waiting....

Isn't it nice when people in your life remind you that what matters to you doesn't make much difference to them? /sarcasm

(I'm not as bitter as this reads, I've known for years how I am not a high priority for her... she is, then her boyfriend, then me. At least I'm in the top 3 right? This does play into why I'm not super interested in having my own children though - if I ever do even adopt or foster I want to be sure I can give them as much of myself as they deserve. I mean, I matter to her... but it's in a distant way. She takes care of me some monetarily - now anyway - and does what she thinks she should - but all I really ever wanted was love, consideration, and emotional support. Those are the hardest things for me to get, and always have been.)

Reinforcements.

I called them in this week, and I cannot tell you just how much it means to me that I have them to call in. My life has become infinitely better as the caliber of my friends has improved. I think that's a really unsurprising but important thing to notice.

Life itself reminded what is really important and what is just noise. My place in my graduate program was threatened this week - because I was not standing up for myself with my adviser and committee enough. It was a very scary thing that had me in a near panic for a few days. However, at this point I think it will all be ok. I'll be poorer this summer than I have been in a long time, and I really have to be forceful in pressuring for people to get my thesis done with me, but it will all turn out alright in the end. It was touch and go for a few days... and it was an incredible reminder of what my #1 concern is right now. Me and this dream of a degree. As soon as I get out of here I can concentrate on others again and the other passions I have, but this degree has got to be first.

Cami helped me out by telling me to calm the drama and just pull a professional shut out of Officechick E. IF she forces me to deal with her, do it verbally and at the office like I would with any coworker, nothing more. Anything more will feed her need to have something dramatic to drop from the sky. :) The chicken little analogy helps too because it makes me smile and relax anytime she comes in and the world is around her ears. So when I hit a stress point I just took myself out of her range this week - and it helped.

Through all of this my BFF was a text message, IM, and phone call away. She's been in my department, so she was invaluable as a tool for advice with specific people and situations. She kept me even so I could functionally deal with things. She reminded me that I am better than this - what is happening to me is a product of outside forces, unforeseeable circumstances, and my own dislike of making waves. Well, it's time to make more of them.

SP helped give me the drive to do the wave making, and reminded me that I prefer to have all my blood, sweat, and tears out in private. In this case that is not helping my situation. My professors need to see me bleeding, sweating, and crying. At first I kind of wanted to kill him, but then the sense started getting through. Most of all when I needed someone he was here and he shut up when I needed him to and just held me. Which at that point was what I needed most.

And this place.... it was here for me to get all of my tangled distracting thoughts and emotions out of the way - when this happened I was as mentally clean as I could have been. The letter still hasn't arrived from my father - I'm starting to wonder why and what my mother did with it. I still have a week until I know what the deal is medically - and now I have a $400 bill to sort out as well. Thankfully, I worked through those things here in this blog and in my mind and no longer need concern myself with them until the waiting is over (even when it is, I know my priorities and will stick by them). I'm almost done with an incredible draft of my thesis, if I do say so myself, which I will forcefully require to get feedback on tomorrow. I should be proposed within the month and have no trouble defending by August (the unofficial things-will-be-ok-if-you-get-this-done-by-this-date deadline). Funny how life has a way of reminding us of 'our' priorities.

The Mistress of Diversion.

I've let E back into my life just a little bit, and I realized today that it's because I have total control over him and I. For every action there's a reaction. That's me. That's what all these long, rambling, overfull, over-sharing blogs have been about this week. I am overthinking what I can/cannot do in the only situations I have any control over at the moment. The blathering is to keep me from thinking about all the waiting and uncertainty that plagues my existence this week. I'm about to go edit and clean up those posts a bit - if you read them, wow, I hope they didn't annoy you as much as they're annoying me right now.

I'm feeling extremely STUCK and I can't get into my work. Hence the daily visits around here, and the purging of just about anything that's bugging me. Waiting does not suit me. Waiting for results. Waiting for a letter from my father who abandoned me - from beyond the grave. Waiting to find out what in the hell I am doing for Spring Break - and deciding I definitely will not be able to see Sasha like she and I had dreamed about recently once upon some IM's (damn it all to motherfucking hell). Waiting to feel like having sex again, since I got some gorgeous sexy things for myself with a gift card, finally got them in the mail, and wham haven't felt like wearing them... Waiting for my boyfriend to leave for 3+ weeks to go on an amazing adventure I'm jealous of -to work on tiger conservation in India (which I am more passionate about than he is)-, haha, right when I just might be willing to lean on someone. Granted I probably only feel like I'd be ready to because I know he won't be here for me to lean on.

In some ways, I miss being a bottler. I feel like it would be so comfortable to be in complete control of every minute of my feelings... For most of my life I was like many others and I took everything and smashed it up small and bottled it. Then for good measure I threw it behind an internal cellar door and locked it all up tight with several locks. I was nicknamed the Ice Queen in high school. I was a virtual unknown to most people who knew me for a lot of my life, by my choice. It was safer....

Then I painted for the first time (college). I also had my first serious relationship developing. I learned that maybe someday someone will actually really love me, for me, unconditionally (besides the kitties of course). Somewhere in my 2 years getting my art degree I broke the habit of bottling. I still do it some, but not nearly so much. It feels healthier to me (I am in NO WAY condemning those who do so, whatever works for everyone is fine with me), and while it can be inconvenient to feel things on a regular basis.... I usually revel in the honesty. I like emotions. I sort of think my rebounds after my breakup with A (my first real boyfriend) had a lot more to do with exploring allowing myself to feel deeply than anything else, my sexuality emerging was just a part of that. I think I only want to be a bottler again today because I'm feeling forced into numbness against my own choice. I do think it speaks to the improved state my life is in (funny how that happened once it was primarily in my control not my mother's) that now I can afford to feel 90% of the time.

Today I need to do some schoolwork, but I think I'm going to take a mental health day from it. I'm going to paint some furniture, work on a canvas I've been pondering working on for a long time, watch some really dumb movies, and eventually go bowling. I'm only going to do the one assignment that is due tomorrow. I'm also going to clean the house and use that time to think. All in all, that should be a prescription for some mental balance.

Why is it so hard to be nice....

to yourself?? It's so ridiculous sometimes just how mean our internal voices can be. I have no idea what it's like to be in a man's head, but I live in a woman's.... and the voices are brutal. Fucking brutal.

Sometimes it's words my mother said about being polite, my grandmother about being appropriate and never talking about feelings or anything else unseemly (like having an original thought), but the worst ones are definitely from me. I'm very hard on myself, always have been. Those who believe in astrology would say it's my Virgo showing - the trademark crazy perfectionism streak. Or if you're more into Chinese Astrology it would be more about my Water Dog personality - which is also prone to being very critical and judgmental. I take in every judgment I hear and even those I just imagine and internalize them. It's horrible. Can you imagine what that does to your self esteem? Confidence is so important, and so damned sexy. It's become increasingly important to me as I've gotten older to learn to only accept the blame I deserve and to learn how to protect my confidence - even from myself.

How do you do that??

When it gets to the point where I'm leaving mental bruises on myself from the internal flagellation I wake up to the futility of it all. I've started using the following tactics to fight it....

• Asking myself if my best friend came to me with the same situation how I would respond to her, and reminding myself that I deserve no less from myself. I am only human.
• I've also started labeling those voices in my mind.... there's the one who hates my body (let's call her Alessandra), the one who always feels stupid and like she has to prove her intelligence (Allison) , the selfish one (Brandi), and a few others in there.... While it made me feel a little crazy at first, it helped to note these voices and identify them as NOT ME. Not who I choose to be. I'm the tolerant, accepting, realistically hopeful one. Not all those other bitches. Some people take this further and journal what those voices say and it helps them realize how often they tear themselves down.
• Forcing myself to note something positive when I prod myself with the sharp-edged negative thoughts.

It helps. It all helps. It's part of that stable ground I've rebuilt for myself when it all threatened to turn to sand on me. The silliest thing that undermines it all is this: I worry that I'll be too forgiving and accepting of myself and become delusional and self-indulgent.

The Sky is Falling!

Have you ever met a Chicken Little? Do you even know what I'm talking about? When I was a little girl, I was a voracious reader. I knew how to read by the time I was 3, and was reading upside down to my class in Kindergarten just to keep me occupied. My teachers said it was the only time I wasn't a handful. They wanted to skip me straight to third grade... I was just too far ahead to be engaged in class, but I was so physically small... and already had loner tendencies (I related to adults, not children) with my social group - so my mother wouldn't allow it. I hated reading books on my level, but every once in a while one would get to me. One story that did was the story of Chicken Little. (I swear all of this will come together eventually.) There's a pretty good entry on Wikipedia about this story too, I read it as one of the fables. Here's an excerpt from the wiki:

There are many versions of the story, but the basic premise is that a chicken eats lunch one day, and believes the sky is falling down because an acorn falls on her head. She decides to tell the King, and on her journey meets other animals who join her in the quest. In most retellings, the animals all have rhyming names such as Henny Penny, Cocky Lockey and Goosey Loosey. Finally, they come across Foxy Loxy, a fox who offers the chicken and her friends his help.

After this point, there are many endings. In the most famous one, Foxy Loxy eats the chicken's friends, but the last one, usually Cocky Lockey, survives long enough to warn the chicken and she escapes. Other endings include Foxy eating them all; the characters being saved by a squirrel or an owl and getting to speak to the King; the characters being saved by the King's hunting dogs; even one version in which the sky actually falls and kills Foxy Loxy.

Depending on the version, the moral changes. In the "happy ending" version, the moral is not to be a "Chicken", but to have courage. In other versions the moral is usually interpreted to mean "do not believe everything you are told". In the latter case, it could well be a cautionary political tale: The Chicken jumps to a conclusion and whips the populace into mass hysteria, which the unscrupulous fox uses to manipulate them for his own benefit, some times as supper.

In my office there is a girl who you've read me complaining about much too many times before. Officechick E, who should have always been referred to as Chicken Little. Her sky is ALWAYS falling, and she constantly wishes to get all of those around her to believe along with her and join in her hysteria. The self centeredness is palpable when she enters a room. She's someone who reminds me anytime she's around that she's just waiting for her turn to speak 95% of her life. (And makes me revow to not be like that! In this way, it's nice having her around.)

I've vented to others when I need to, written some e-mails I never intended to send to ward off any sniping I might have done, explained to Favorite Officemate what the deal was and cleaned up any ugliness with a minimum of fuss and bother. My feathers haven't appeared ruffled once. However, while I think superficially this resembles taking the high road.... I'm just allowing it to draw out because it gives me somewhere else to look and something I technically control (because it's unfinished business) and I'm using the situation to distract myself from much more important things in my life. I'm also in violation of my own resolution to Be True. I will address this with her, tomorrow, in a casual friendly way - face to face. That's the real high road in this situation - the moral of courage.

For the love of Francis.

Oh Francis.... he's been my best friend for years now - and closer to me than anyone else. Somewhere around 3 or 4 years... but I'm not sure he is anymore and that's why there's been no word of him for a long time on here. Our friendship has had it's issues, some of which I caused, some caused by circumstances, and some caused just by the combustible nature he and I have when together. I miss him a lot right now. I'm putting this out there partially for me, but also because I keep hearing others struggling with this same issue and I want to be sure I work through it as best I can. How do you know to let go? Should you? When is a friendship more harmful than helpful?

Once upon a time Francis and I slept together after watching each other get beaten down and broken up with by others, we tried the relationship sort of thing, and nearly destroyed our friendship in the process. But we recovered, or I thought we had. Maybe it's not the sort of thing you can come back from.... I was trying so hard to work through my own issues with his and my relationship so I made some space. I took some time and distance - thinking all the while that if he really needed me he'd let me know, but... apparently I messed that up to. I made it seem like I wanted space even from his needing me, which I didn't. There are months where my mouth tastes of foot even when I didn't say a word, I swear. The worst part was that I think he figured it out by coming here, I'm not really sure. Still, it felt bad. I didn't realize he'd been avoiding telling me that he did need me.... it was too late by then. He e-mailed me asking me to tell him why... so I finally did. I wrote out every concern, worry, and fear of what our friendship might be doing to the both of us. He reacted, responded, and did the same with me. All of a sudden the distance between us no longer felt murky and possibly treacherous. I don't understand why I have to relearn the same stupid lessons over and over again: If you value someone, be honest with them, even if it hurts. Why had we stopped doing that?

We went back and forth e-mailing for a little while....

What surprised me most about all of that was the misconceptions and concerns on both sides that we didn't share with one another when they came up. Two people who know one another so well, who talk to one another so much, and yet we still didn't say some of the most important things we were feeling. Some of that stemmed from not wanting to hurt the other by telling them they hurt us - but a lot of it stemmed from fear and self-interest. Fear of losing what we had or changing it. Self-interest and pride that got in the way of allowing the friendship to change and grow as needed - because we both have.

Playing off of a cliche - the reason, season, lifetime friend idea: I wanted him to be a lifetime friend, not a season friend. BFF is a lifetime friend. SP is likely a reason and a season. I heard from Francis just the other day in text message, though he's no longer my Facebook friend and is no longer showing up on my chat list. Somehow on the day I went in and found out I needed biopsies (and had them done, owwwww) he felt he should text me. I'm glad he did, and he did again today. He told me he felt we have a place to start from when we can again (life gets in the way so often).... if we can again, but only time will tell if he feels it's worth pursuing and trying or not. I led us to this place, and here we are. In friendship stasis. A lot has changed since we wrote these things to one another too... so quickly. So strange to move through life without him.

Being your own primary partner....

So.... yeah. I've been thinking way too much lately. I've had some issues with Officechick E again - but she's constantly in total crisis mode lately (She's such a natural drama queen, I'm beginning to think part of our not being friends was that I was always telling her to calm down and talking her down from the ledge. I think she likes being on the ledge.) I've had some on campus concerns with team members, my thesis adviser, etc., the politics of my graduate life have felt complex of later in general.

Operating out of insanity....

"Some times I think we're born into something, and it can be dysfunctional as hell, and without logic or reason, and because it is all we know, we consider it the epicenter of normalcy. We do what we have to do, initially, to survive inside of it, and that becomes a pattern of behavior that's, to put it frankly, fuckin' insane. Then we're operating out of insanity, and so that's just what we do. It's all we know. Insanity." - Bunny from TheBunnyBlog.com.

In the waiting line...

So... life is interesting. Today, February 15th, my mother happened to be in the city I was born in with her SO. He had never seen any of the places there which were important parts of her life, they had never had the time, so they decided to take a little tour of her past. Her past, and as it turns out, my past too.

As they neared the house where I was raised for the first 3 years of my life, where my brother died... they noticed a little old woman in the yard. She looked at them and waved, it was my grandmother. So they debated, and chose to stop. My aunt was inside. I remember seeing my aunt a total of three times in my life, my grandmother I only remember seeing twice. (I don't remember anything from my time in that house.)

My grandmother is experiencing some dementia now at 85, but she was adamant about how much she had been praying for this and how she knew it would be today. (She's a woman who believes very strongly in particular versions of events, in all honesty I wish my imagination or conviction or delusion - whatever it is - could be that strong, she lives in a charmed world where everything is as it was meant to be and only as it was meant to be.) They looked at old photos throughout the house that will never go to me but my mother feels should have - which my father also died in and now it seems my grandmother likely will too. My grandmother talked of me incessantly, and finally insisted my mother do her a favor. She led her to a table and told a final story: she said when I was just 3 years old she took me to a garage sale looking for a nightstand. I insisted that THIS was the right nightstand for her, she had to get it and keep it and put secrets in it. This nightstand (I have no idea what it looks like) has a removable top, but apparently you'd never notice just looking at it. My grandmother removed the top, and gave my mother a letter. A letter to me, from my father, written on February 15th, 1998. They couldn't understand what my grandmother had to say about it, she broke down and became incoherent at this point. Something about my father being somewhere when he wrote it, likely prison. It was unclear whether he gave it to her to send to me, or wrote it and hid it away himself rather than sending it. It only took me moments to place that date - shortly after I wrote him a painstaking letter I labored over for hours, thought about for weeks, etc. asking to meet him... when I would remember him. He sent me a birthday present that year, a bible... with a card suitable for a small child. I was 14 going on 40, like always. I remember how hurt I was that he didn't send me a letter in response... and I chose not to reach out again in any way.

My grandmother made them fit that table into the Corvette they take their road trips in (my mother is not wealthy, but her SO is doing just fine for himself), and my mother is mailing the letter to me tomorrow. I didn't ask her to read it to me. I just don't know what to think until I get it. My aunt got my mother's e-mail. My mother and her SO finished off the trip by finally buying my brother a marker when they visited the cemetery - something I was going to do for her 50th birthday this coming year - but I am so glad she finally got to do (my father went and canceled the marker purchase to get the money back after my brother's funeral many years ago - and he's gone unmarked in Babyland 5 *shudder* ever since). I don't really believe in graves in any way, I think they're very unenvironmentally friendly and unpleasant... but it means something to her. As The Militant Ginger said in an incredible post on tolerance: "Tolerance is the subtle art of not getting up off your arse to meddle in somebody else's business.... Maybe you should leave them to do whatever they want to do and confine your opinions to how you live your life." That's where I'm trying to get with every part of my life, and I certainly am there when it comes to this issue with my mother and her son's gravestone. All that matters is that it's important to her....

Being abandoned by your parent is the sort of thing no one can understand unless they have been through it or something very similiar... which sounds cliche but I promise it isn't. I have found that I have this affinity for those who have experienced similar things, we're drawn to one another like moths to the flame, while there always seems to be some undefinable quality that the rest of the population (the un-abandoned) possess that forever keeps a gap between us, no matter how close we become. It's one of the things that hold SP and I apart, and brings me so close to my BFF.

I'm so lost in thoughts about this letter, so curious what it will reveal, all I've ever wanted is an explanation. I forgave my father years upon years ago for everything, what's the point in not? I went through my anger phase, I still occasionally go through my sad phase (I don't watch movies involving parental relationships much to avoid invoking one), but all in all it's a-ok with me. I can see I'll be writing more about this later... like when I get that letter I feel like I'm going to need to reprocess my entire life experience with my father. I guess we'll find out soon enough.

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In other news, I will know the results of some biopsies I had done last week on March 2nd - I'll be finding out if I just have precancer or actual cancer... and then what we can do about which one it is.

I feel like I'm in a holding pattern in many areas of my life right now. For some reason it's made me very introspective. /sarcasm

So for those of you who were here because this was a sexy blog, haha, good luck with that. I never started this to be in a class of sex bloggers, I just happen to get along with them and find them interesting. I also just usually happen to be very sexual (and like being artsy and naked), but this blog is more about all the private sides of me - not just that. There's going to be a lot less sex until I get the ok to land, and a lot more of the pure me working through my own private nonsense.

Singles Awareness Day! (a.k.a. Valentine's Day)

Have I told you lately how much I love A Softer World? Probably not, but you may have noticed anyway.

I'm spending today in another city, with my BFF. It's horrible not to be spending it with the other loves of my life - my cats - but I'll just lie to them and tell them it's the actual holiday on Monday. Shhh!! I hope everyone can really enjoy today in any way they choose - alone, in a group, with a loved one of any kind, or just with your pets. I dislike how a day has so much potential to breed angst, but all holidays have that potential in all honesty. I do like how people who are truly in love and of a naturally romantic bent use it as an excuse to show each other again how they feel. So while I personally choose not to participate (I did get the boyfriend rechargable batteries and a recharger - because he needed them -, some caffeine additives to try out since he can't get soda on the international trip he's going on soon and he's afraid caffeine withdrawal is going to ruin it for him, and a heart of reese's miniatures. All of which will be waiting with a handwritten note next to the cats' brush and pooper scooper when he arrives to take care of them while I'm gone this weekend. See - the commitmentphobe can play the romantic too!) all that much, I just hope you all use the day as an excuse to make yourselves happy!

(Honestly, I prefer the Maxim alternative holiday on the 15th: Steak and BJ Day. Feel free to adopt it!)

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I must say, before I left on Christmas break I was listening to a song by Brandi Carlisle called "The Heartache Can Wait" to convince myself NOT to leave my relationship right before the holidays - for both of our sakes. Lately I've been listening to "Be Ok" by Ingrid Michaelson - more for grad school and personal non-relationship issues - and Jay Brannan because his voice is incredible and Sasha tipped me off to him. I came back from Wisconsin unsure if I had just pretended things were ok well enough that our relationship looked pretty again - I'm quite good at that. I did that my entire life growing up in my mother's house. It seems though that my feet are finally on some kind of solid ground with my relationship, I'm not sure how they got there.

Perhaps it was the tears that fell silently down my face, maybe this time he saw how much it hurt me to fight for us, that it hurt too much, that I was giving up.
Perhaps he finally heard me, or I finally said the right words. What a myth the right words are!

Whatever it was, it worked. My SP has finally begun to listen and really hear me. He still doesn't always say the right thing, but now that is tempered by his listening to what I say in response. What an amazing difference it makes, it sounds so stupid and simple - but it changes EVERYTHING. It's all I really need in this world. To be heard, loved, touched, and for someone to even attempt to understand me. To want to help every once in a while - even though it's unlikely I'll let them. So now here we stand, together and happily so. I'm not worried about tomorrow, in fact we've joked about how neither of us cares about that right now. We've basically agreed to it. We'll jump that hurdle when it comes, and I'm quite sure we'll both decide to remain friends and go our separate ways. But I don't care - in fact, that makes me happy. So does the idea that he might want more - and that I don't according to what I know so far. I feel so content with him right now. It certainly took much too long to hit a stride (2 years), but this is what I always saw the potential for. I just can't do the FWB thing in this town, though it would have been my preference. So this mutually respectful relationship where two commitmentphobes come together for sex on tap works for me.

I don't want sex as much right now - thanks to health stuff and school focus. That works well for him, and he's been very amenable to doing it more when I do want to. He's listening with more than just his ears. He's also finally opening up a bit about what he likes, doesn't like, etc. Now, we're finally good for each other 90% of the time like I just knew we could be. Isn't that wonderful? It feels pretty wonderful, I must say.