In the beginning
BT (8/27/2008 4:30:06 AM): no, I have already admited that I had not been truthful to you in the past, but I have been since then
Later
BT (8/27/2008 5:34:27 AM): like last night when you accused me of talking to [name redacted, we'll call her Ex-Fiancee], then flat out saying you don't believe me?
Me (8/27/2008 5:34:52 AM): That was because there were parts of convo's that didn't belong to our conversation
BT (8/27/2008 5:34:57 AM): I swear to you that I have not been talking to her
Me (8/27/2008 5:35:02 AM): Which had happened before when you were talking to her.
BT (8/27/2008 5:36:56 AM): yes, some conversations I have had have been about sex, but it has been about sex in the past, with a couple of my ex's or are still friends of mine, and who have moved on as I have, and are now either married, or engaged, or have boyfriends, but that is how we have always talked with each other, we know that we did not work out, but we still give each other shit, and play around talking about shit like that
Later still
BT (8/27/2008 5:41:52 AM): and in that new honesty, have to be honest that the other day, yes, I did lie to you, it was one of them that had the cam on, but she was letting me see her kids, and one of them was the boy that I had to be tested before, that wasn't mine
[During a previous conversation he'd typed "hmmmm, your cam went off", or something to that effect, and I knew it wasn't a part of our conversation. He said that it was the cam his Grandma and his neice were using to talk to him on, but I didn't really believe that. Turns out I was right.]
Am I going crazy? Does any of that actually add up? I know BT will be mad as hell that I"m airing our dirty laundry but.... when you put those parts of the conversation together, it just doesn't add up to me. (And just so he doesn't think that I'm being entirely unfair, there are other bits of the conversation that don't make either of us look good and that point to various other bad things that both of us have done lately. I'm not trying to avoid those things and if BT wants to post those on his blog, he can. I'm just focusing on the part of the conversation that blows my mind and confuses the fuck out of me.)
And, I'm sorry, I just couldn't find a good song about lying to go with it.
Thursday, August 28, 2008
Angry All the Time
"Angry All The Time"
(best known as sung by Tim McGraw & Faith Hill
but written by Bruce Robison and sung by him and Kelly Willis)
Here we are
What is left of a husband and a wife
four good kids who have a way of gettin on with their lives
I'm not old but I'm getting a whole lot older every day
It's too late to keep from goin' crazy
I got to get away
The reasons that I can't stay
don't have a thing to do with being in love
And I understand that lovin a man
shouldn't have to be this rough
You ain't the only one
Who feels like this world left you far behind
I don't know why you gotta be
Angry All The Time
Our boys are strong
the spittin image of you when you were young
I hope someday they can see past what you have become
I remember every time I said I'd never leave
What I can't live with is memories of the way you used to be
The reasons that I can't stay
don't have a thing to do with being in love
And I understand that lovin a man
shouldn't have to be this rough
You ain't the only one
Who feels like this world left you far behind
I don't know why you gotta be
Angry All The Time
Twenty years have came and went
since I walked out of your door
I never quite made it back to the one I was before
And God it hurts me to think of you
Before the light in your eyes was gone
sometimes I don't know why this old world
can't leave well enough alone
The reasons that I can't stay
don't have a thing to do with being in love
And I understand that lovin a man
shouldn't have to be this rough
You ain't the only one
Who feels like this world left you far behind
I don't know why you gotta be
Angry All The Time
You tube:
Bruce Robison and Kelly Willis
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_tUe8xJpK8E
can't find a good one of Tim McGraw & Faith Hill
When this song first came out, I really thought it was probably one of the saddest songs about a couple breaking up ever. It's weird because it's sung by men (with women adding the harmony in both versions) but it obviously isn't from the man's point of view, or at least it isn't all from the man's point of view. I think it probably harkens back to an earlier time in musical story telling where males did all the singing and sung songs that were stories told from whatever point of view the story was. In the comments on Youtube for the video, someone asks who it is who is angry. The response was that they both are. Even if you think that the song is all from the point of view of the woman, I'm pretty sure that she's angry too, at least alittle.
But I think that sometimes we don't know how to get out of our anger. Especially those of us who have so much of it, those of us who's first and primary response in any situation is go get angry. And when one person is angry, it's hard for the other to stop and step back, to not get angry themselves. I also think that our first response is to defend ourselves, to defend our position, but that really does nothing to diffuse the situation. As Dr. Phil would say, "Would you rather be right or would you rather be happy?" Then again, sometimes there is nothing you can do to diffuse the anger. Sometimes nothing you do is going to be right. And then I don't know what you do.
(best known as sung by Tim McGraw & Faith Hill
but written by Bruce Robison and sung by him and Kelly Willis)
Here we are
What is left of a husband and a wife
four good kids who have a way of gettin on with their lives
I'm not old but I'm getting a whole lot older every day
It's too late to keep from goin' crazy
I got to get away
The reasons that I can't stay
don't have a thing to do with being in love
And I understand that lovin a man
shouldn't have to be this rough
You ain't the only one
Who feels like this world left you far behind
I don't know why you gotta be
Angry All The Time
Our boys are strong
the spittin image of you when you were young
I hope someday they can see past what you have become
I remember every time I said I'd never leave
What I can't live with is memories of the way you used to be
The reasons that I can't stay
don't have a thing to do with being in love
And I understand that lovin a man
shouldn't have to be this rough
You ain't the only one
Who feels like this world left you far behind
I don't know why you gotta be
Angry All The Time
Twenty years have came and went
since I walked out of your door
I never quite made it back to the one I was before
And God it hurts me to think of you
Before the light in your eyes was gone
sometimes I don't know why this old world
can't leave well enough alone
The reasons that I can't stay
don't have a thing to do with being in love
And I understand that lovin a man
shouldn't have to be this rough
You ain't the only one
Who feels like this world left you far behind
I don't know why you gotta be
Angry All The Time
You tube:
Bruce Robison and Kelly Willis
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_tUe8xJpK8E
can't find a good one of Tim McGraw & Faith Hill
When this song first came out, I really thought it was probably one of the saddest songs about a couple breaking up ever. It's weird because it's sung by men (with women adding the harmony in both versions) but it obviously isn't from the man's point of view, or at least it isn't all from the man's point of view. I think it probably harkens back to an earlier time in musical story telling where males did all the singing and sung songs that were stories told from whatever point of view the story was. In the comments on Youtube for the video, someone asks who it is who is angry. The response was that they both are. Even if you think that the song is all from the point of view of the woman, I'm pretty sure that she's angry too, at least alittle.
But I think that sometimes we don't know how to get out of our anger. Especially those of us who have so much of it, those of us who's first and primary response in any situation is go get angry. And when one person is angry, it's hard for the other to stop and step back, to not get angry themselves. I also think that our first response is to defend ourselves, to defend our position, but that really does nothing to diffuse the situation. As Dr. Phil would say, "Would you rather be right or would you rather be happy?" Then again, sometimes there is nothing you can do to diffuse the anger. Sometimes nothing you do is going to be right. And then I don't know what you do.
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
You Should Have Seen It In Color- Jamey Johnson
I said "Grandpa what's this picture here?
It's all black and white. It ain't real clear.
Is that you there?" He said, "Yeah. I was 11.
Times were tough back in '35.
Thats me and Uncle Joe, just tryin to survive
a cotton farm in the Great Depression.
If it looks like we were scared to death
like a couple of kids just trying to save each other
You should've seen it in color.
Ohh and this one here was taken over seas
in the middle of hell in 1943 in the winter time
You can almost see my breath
That was my tail gunner, ole Johnny Magee
He was a high school teacher from New Orleans
and he had my back right through the day we left.
If it looks like we were scared to death
like a couple of kids just trying to save each other
You should've seen it in color.
A pictures worth a thousand words
But you cant see what those shades of gray keep covered
You should've seen it in color
This one is my favorite one.
This is me and grandma in the summer sun
All dressed up the day we said our vows.
You can't tell it here but it was hot that June
and that rose was red and her eyes were blue
and just look at that smile, I was so proud.
Thats the story of my life, right there in black and white
And if it looks like we were scared to death
like a couple of kids just trying to save each other
You should've seen it in color.
A pictures worth a thousand words
but you cant see what those shades of gray keep covered
You should have seen it in color.
You should have seen it in color
Yeah a pictures worth a thousand words
but you cant see what those shades of gray keep covered
You should have seen it in color
You tube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBk07l2aKrE
When I first heard this song, it made me think of my own grandpa. Not that we ever had a conversation so in depth, but I remember us going through the pictures before his funeral that we'd lay out for the viewing. I think it might just have been something for my uncle to do to keep himself even busier than he already was. But we now all have pictures of him in our living spaces. One of my favorite ones, the one that is hanging by my bedroom door and came with me when I lived at TyRoys is one of him and my grandma sitting at a kitchen table, with my mom, aged probably six, squirming in between them. Even though I'm sure I'm not a great judge of how I look, I know that I can see myself in all those faces. And in my grandfather's James Dean-y handsomeness and charm, I can see BT as well. (No, we aren't related.)
My grandma's grief conselor told her that it was a good idea to put of pictures of my grandpa around the house, partly as a good reminder and probably so that it wouldn't catch her off guard and hurt her more when she did see those things. At the house, I always sleep in "the guest room" and, since it became the guest room, the head of the bed has been surrounded by beautifully framed pictures of our family at different fancy family functions (weddings, parties, etc, not alot of them in my family). (Sidenote: You'd think this would get in the way of having sex in that bed, what with being surrounded by pictures of my family and all. But it doesn't seem to.) No one had warned me about the grief conselor's advice, but I wasn't freaked out by the fact that there were more pictures of my grandpa around. What did freak me out was the quilt on the bed. I don't think I had ever seen the quilt before. It was a quilt handmade by my grandma, on their 38th anniversary, with embroidery about their wedding date and their children. I lost it right there and then. This last visit I was looking at the picture of my uncle and my grandfather, at my grandparent's 50th wedding anniversary party and I almost lost it again.
But I heard this song twice today. And what stood out was that he uses the same chorus to describe him and his wife on their wedding day- "And if it looks like we were scared to death, like a couple of kids just trying to save each other." Reminded me of BT and I. A couple of kids just trying to save each other. I could sure use some saving now.
It's all black and white. It ain't real clear.
Is that you there?" He said, "Yeah. I was 11.
Times were tough back in '35.
Thats me and Uncle Joe, just tryin to survive
a cotton farm in the Great Depression.
If it looks like we were scared to death
like a couple of kids just trying to save each other
You should've seen it in color.
Ohh and this one here was taken over seas
in the middle of hell in 1943 in the winter time
You can almost see my breath
That was my tail gunner, ole Johnny Magee
He was a high school teacher from New Orleans
and he had my back right through the day we left.
If it looks like we were scared to death
like a couple of kids just trying to save each other
You should've seen it in color.
A pictures worth a thousand words
But you cant see what those shades of gray keep covered
You should've seen it in color
This one is my favorite one.
This is me and grandma in the summer sun
All dressed up the day we said our vows.
You can't tell it here but it was hot that June
and that rose was red and her eyes were blue
and just look at that smile, I was so proud.
Thats the story of my life, right there in black and white
And if it looks like we were scared to death
like a couple of kids just trying to save each other
You should've seen it in color.
A pictures worth a thousand words
but you cant see what those shades of gray keep covered
You should have seen it in color.
You should have seen it in color
Yeah a pictures worth a thousand words
but you cant see what those shades of gray keep covered
You should have seen it in color
You tube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBk07l2aKrE
When I first heard this song, it made me think of my own grandpa. Not that we ever had a conversation so in depth, but I remember us going through the pictures before his funeral that we'd lay out for the viewing. I think it might just have been something for my uncle to do to keep himself even busier than he already was. But we now all have pictures of him in our living spaces. One of my favorite ones, the one that is hanging by my bedroom door and came with me when I lived at TyRoys is one of him and my grandma sitting at a kitchen table, with my mom, aged probably six, squirming in between them. Even though I'm sure I'm not a great judge of how I look, I know that I can see myself in all those faces. And in my grandfather's James Dean-y handsomeness and charm, I can see BT as well. (No, we aren't related.)
My grandma's grief conselor told her that it was a good idea to put of pictures of my grandpa around the house, partly as a good reminder and probably so that it wouldn't catch her off guard and hurt her more when she did see those things. At the house, I always sleep in "the guest room" and, since it became the guest room, the head of the bed has been surrounded by beautifully framed pictures of our family at different fancy family functions (weddings, parties, etc, not alot of them in my family). (Sidenote: You'd think this would get in the way of having sex in that bed, what with being surrounded by pictures of my family and all. But it doesn't seem to.) No one had warned me about the grief conselor's advice, but I wasn't freaked out by the fact that there were more pictures of my grandpa around. What did freak me out was the quilt on the bed. I don't think I had ever seen the quilt before. It was a quilt handmade by my grandma, on their 38th anniversary, with embroidery about their wedding date and their children. I lost it right there and then. This last visit I was looking at the picture of my uncle and my grandfather, at my grandparent's 50th wedding anniversary party and I almost lost it again.
But I heard this song twice today. And what stood out was that he uses the same chorus to describe him and his wife on their wedding day- "And if it looks like we were scared to death, like a couple of kids just trying to save each other." Reminded me of BT and I. A couple of kids just trying to save each other. I could sure use some saving now.
Saturday, August 16, 2008
Angel Quote
This is one of my favorite quotes from a TV show of all time and I try to think of it when I feel like nothing I'm doing is amounting to anything and no one appreciates anything I do. (I know, Wah, wah, wah.)
Spoken by Angel in "Epiphany" Angel
In the greater scheme or the big plan, nothing we do matters. There's no grand
plan, no big win...all that matter is what we do, cause that's all there is.
What we do now, today. I fought for so long, for redemption, for a reward,
finally just to beat the other guy, but I never got it... I want to help because
people shouldn't suffer as they do. Because, if there isn't any bigger meaning,
then the smallest act of kindness is the greatest thing in the world.
Spoken by Angel in "Epiphany" Angel
A Different Kind of Freedom
So I'm kinda stuck right now. Thankfully, this time it isn't because I don't know what I should do. What I should do is pretty easy and laid out there easy as pie for me. It's more getting off my ass and doing it that has been the hard part.
I guess I've done this enough times that I should know what to do. And I know that making certain commitments will get me moving, which is why I start by doing that. For example: Even though I wasn't ready to actually go back to school, I knew back in July that I needed to go back to classes in the fall, so I did the easy part of it. I enrolled in the classes. I filled out the FAFSA. By the time I had to go up to school to sort this and that out, I had already gotten the ball rolling, so I figured I might as well do the crappy stuff too, so I could get to the fun stuff (the learning, yeah, I'm a dork). So why haven't I gone to get my books yet? Classes start Monday. And I ended up going out of town at the last minute, so getting my books has been permanently postponed until Monday after my first class.
The easy answer to why I haven't gotten my school books yet is just that I'm lazy. And that my sleep schedule is very messed up right now and I'm sleeping all day, awake all night. (I blame talking to BT, who is +8 hours from me. ;) ) But the real answer has alot more to do with being scared than anything else.
If things go even partially as planned, I'm going to be entering the real, grown-up, sink or swim world here in the next couple months. It won't be terribly well-planned. And it won't be like some sitcom dream. When BT comes back to the States, I'm only really hoping for us to have enough money to get a place and to get him a vehicle, mostly because circumstances have been such that we haven't started saving until just now. (My parents aren't too keen on us living in their basement and, frankly, neither am I.) I will have a part-time job, but I will also be going to school. While I know that I am perfectly capable of doing that, I also know that I don't have a good track record of doing it consistently enough to support myself. Also, BT will have earned leave days which he will take the pay for, but he'll need to find a job soon after he gets home. While I don't anticipate him having a hard time finding a job, I do know that many returning from "over there" often do have trouble finding and keeping jobs. This doesn't even take into account that money is just tight all around these days. I am constantly reminded that, for most Americans, us included, all it takes is one thing to go wrong for them to be completely fucked. Getting ill or being injured for an extended period of time, or even just having your vehicle break down and not having the savings to repair it can lead to loss of job which can lead to loss of home. Just the economics are scary as hell.
But that isn't what I want my life to be about. Last night I was reading the 2005 commencement speech at Kenyon University by David Foster Wallace in the Best American Nonrequired Reading 2005. Here's a link if you want to read it through, which I suggest because it's really good: http://www.marginalia.org/dfw_kenyon_commencement.html His basic argument in the speech is that liberal arts educations don't actually teach you how to think, which is a cliche that many commencement speakers repeat, but what to think about:
But in all this, in wanting to take care of my family, in wanting to build an economically and emotionally stable household with my husband, in wanting to finish my degree, in all this I fear that I just won't have the strength. That's I'll start it but never continue with it (as there really is no finish in most of these things.) That if I put forward a little but can't put forward enough, I'll disappoint everyone, because that little I put forward was just a down payment on what is expected. So I'm stuck because I'm scared of failing. How completely ordinary, huh?
I guess the only thing I can do, what I am planning on doing, what I started planning on re-committing myself to doing after I read that speech, is to put one foot in front of the other and do what I can. No one realistically expects me to be perfect (except for me and I don't have realistic expectations). I have a great family who will support me when I slip, most especially when they know I am trying hard in my own right. And things that seem to big to tackle just need to be broken down into managable peices, what needs to handled first and second and so on. There's another quote that I need to remember now. (I'm sure I don't have it exactly and I'll have to come back and edit it and attribute it like a good English student.) "Don't do nothing because you can't do it all. Do something."
I guess I've done this enough times that I should know what to do. And I know that making certain commitments will get me moving, which is why I start by doing that. For example: Even though I wasn't ready to actually go back to school, I knew back in July that I needed to go back to classes in the fall, so I did the easy part of it. I enrolled in the classes. I filled out the FAFSA. By the time I had to go up to school to sort this and that out, I had already gotten the ball rolling, so I figured I might as well do the crappy stuff too, so I could get to the fun stuff (the learning, yeah, I'm a dork). So why haven't I gone to get my books yet? Classes start Monday. And I ended up going out of town at the last minute, so getting my books has been permanently postponed until Monday after my first class.
The easy answer to why I haven't gotten my school books yet is just that I'm lazy. And that my sleep schedule is very messed up right now and I'm sleeping all day, awake all night. (I blame talking to BT, who is +8 hours from me. ;) ) But the real answer has alot more to do with being scared than anything else.
If things go even partially as planned, I'm going to be entering the real, grown-up, sink or swim world here in the next couple months. It won't be terribly well-planned. And it won't be like some sitcom dream. When BT comes back to the States, I'm only really hoping for us to have enough money to get a place and to get him a vehicle, mostly because circumstances have been such that we haven't started saving until just now. (My parents aren't too keen on us living in their basement and, frankly, neither am I.) I will have a part-time job, but I will also be going to school. While I know that I am perfectly capable of doing that, I also know that I don't have a good track record of doing it consistently enough to support myself. Also, BT will have earned leave days which he will take the pay for, but he'll need to find a job soon after he gets home. While I don't anticipate him having a hard time finding a job, I do know that many returning from "over there" often do have trouble finding and keeping jobs. This doesn't even take into account that money is just tight all around these days. I am constantly reminded that, for most Americans, us included, all it takes is one thing to go wrong for them to be completely fucked. Getting ill or being injured for an extended period of time, or even just having your vehicle break down and not having the savings to repair it can lead to loss of job which can lead to loss of home. Just the economics are scary as hell.
But that isn't what I want my life to be about. Last night I was reading the 2005 commencement speech at Kenyon University by David Foster Wallace in the Best American Nonrequired Reading 2005. Here's a link if you want to read it through, which I suggest because it's really good: http://www.marginalia.org/dfw_kenyon_commencement.html His basic argument in the speech is that liberal arts educations don't actually teach you how to think, which is a cliche that many commencement speakers repeat, but what to think about:
"And I submit that this is what the real, no bullshit value of your liberal artsI am well aware that I have always feared that real, non-crazy, non-bohemian, adult life meant that you had to go through everday like the above because I've always feared all of that life is what Wallace only admits to one part involving- "boredom, routine, and petty frustration." I know that I've talked in this blog before about a temp job I had a couple years ago, where I did data entry in a cave for 40 hours a week over a couple winter months before I quit. After that job, I was scared to death that, if I ever allowed myself to live an adult life, it would be just like that. I hated how little energy I had at the end of the day to do anything more. All I felt I could do was veg out in front of the TV. Here recently, in large part because of what my family is going through and also because of being with BT, I realize how fulfilling other parts of adult life can be, parts I had also shied away from before. When I read the speech by Wallace, this section made me cry: (emphasis mine)
education is supposed to be about: how to keep from going through your
comfortable, prosperous, respectable adult life dead, unconscious, a slave to
your head and to your natural default setting of being uniquely, completely,
imperially alone day in and day out."
"But of course there are all different kinds of freedom, and the kind that isWhile at this point, I really have no desire to be a mother, I do have a huge desire to take care of my family, especially as we go through such a difficult time. And while I have reservations that this is 'woman's work' and thus tend to steer away from it the way I do cooking, I have wonderful male role models who have taught me that this just isn't true. That it is not only everyone's responsibility to do what they can for their family, it can also be something that everyone can take pride and comfort in having done.
most precious you will not hear much talk about much in the great outside world
of wanting and achieving and [unintelligible -- sounds like "displayal"]. The
really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and
discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice
for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day."
But in all this, in wanting to take care of my family, in wanting to build an economically and emotionally stable household with my husband, in wanting to finish my degree, in all this I fear that I just won't have the strength. That's I'll start it but never continue with it (as there really is no finish in most of these things.) That if I put forward a little but can't put forward enough, I'll disappoint everyone, because that little I put forward was just a down payment on what is expected. So I'm stuck because I'm scared of failing. How completely ordinary, huh?
I guess the only thing I can do, what I am planning on doing, what I started planning on re-committing myself to doing after I read that speech, is to put one foot in front of the other and do what I can. No one realistically expects me to be perfect (except for me and I don't have realistic expectations). I have a great family who will support me when I slip, most especially when they know I am trying hard in my own right. And things that seem to big to tackle just need to be broken down into managable peices, what needs to handled first and second and so on. There's another quote that I need to remember now. (I'm sure I don't have it exactly and I'll have to come back and edit it and attribute it like a good English student.) "Don't do nothing because you can't do it all. Do something."
Thursday, August 14, 2008
Trashy Vampire Novels
So last night I finished Narcissus in Chains by Laurell K. Hamilton. I had bought it several months ago at the request of BT, because he said that a particular relationship between characters mirrored something he wanted. I've had the book for months and haven't read it, mostly just because I haven't read anything. Last week I finished the first novel that I'd read since...... damn, I don't know when. Probably since I re-read Time Traveller's Wife so that I could highlight it and just refresh my mind before I sent it to BT, because it is one of my favorite novels of all time and because it reminded me of being without him. I guess lately I've been content to lay around and veg out in front of the TV, maybe catching a movie I want to see, though more likely just a movie that I'd already seen and kinda liked. (This is a very VERY good reason not to have a cable TV with all the HBOs in your bedroom. Damn you HBO, showing V for Vendetta a hundred times!!!!) But I digress......
So, especially now that BT and I are back together and working on all aspects of that, I read the book so that I could get an idea of what he was talking about. Now, I had read quite a few of the Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter, series 4 years ago, when I was still living in the Bigger Midwestern City. At the time, I had read a review of the latest book in the series and my interest was piqued. But the series was already quite long at the time and I didn't want to have to buy all the books. I was in luck because a co-worker of mine at the time owned the first 5 or 6 of them and the first book of Hamilton's other series. I read them all, in succession, during a very depressing and boring winter break.
I guess I should go back a bit. I've always loved horror novels. When I was younger, I read way ahead of my age group. If I remember right, I was reading Christopher Pike's young adult horror books by the time I was in the 4th grade. (Dad had tried to get me into fantasy series, but it just didn't work. I think because we were too cheap to buy the series from the beginning and the YA section at our library didn't have them either. On the other hand, one of my good female friends had alot of Christopher Pike books and an older brother with more advanced tastes, Koontz, Rice, that he'd loan to us.) By 5th grade, I was starting to read the Stephen King and Dean Koontz, though my mom had to approve which books I read. I couldn't read King's Gerald's Game, for instance, because of it's sexual content. When I was in 6th grade, I bought Anne Rice's Witching Hour. It was widely known among my family that I couldn't read Rice's vampire series, but no one had said anything about the witch series. I loved the book. Sometime during 7th grade, I finally managed to get my friend's brother to let me borrow the vampire series. But, in my opinion, I've found that alot of genre writers (hell, writers in general) tend to tread over the same turf. The problem is that when a genre writer does it within that same genre, most especially within the same series, it gets old pretty fast. That's why I haven't read any of Anne Rice's latest work.
And it's why I haven't read any Hamilton books since my last go round. While reading Narcissus I noticed several places within the same book where she reuses the same phrases, etc. Also, she goes against the writer's rule that countless fiction writing teachers have drilled into my head: "Show don't tell." And, while I may be nitpicking about this, while Hamilton as a writer treats gay/bi men very well in the books, if not with a bit of airbrushing so that it's more sexy to female readers, Anita as a character gets on my last nerve because she won't accept homosexual activity from any of her lovers, though she continues to have several male lovers of her own. I guess because I've had bisexual male lovers in non-monogamous relationships and they've been with other men, with my knowledge and approval (hell, I've even gotten to watch!) her insistance that her male bi lovers be with only her (and I guess other women???) makes me kinda pissed off at her hypocrisy.
So why did I finish Narcissus in 3 sittings? Why did I buy the next one in the series while I was out tonight looking for the first novel in another vampire series? Why am I not reading "real" literature, great historical literature, non-genre literature? The most likely answer is that I'm just lazy. Narcissus was an easy read, the pages kept turning, and I really wanted to know what would happen at the end. Also, there was alot of sex. Granted, alot of what is now considered new classic literary novels (guess I'm thinking of novelists like Phillip Roth) have sex in them. Maybe even good sex. But this book...... well, maybe it was the combination of the supernatural with the sex, maybe it's just that I'm really horny right now, but the sex in this book was awesome!!!!!! Which kinda didn't help alleviate the horniness, but.... well, you can't ask for everything.
Of course, all this has me thinking about my own writing. While all my fiction teachers look down on genre fiction and push the "show don't tell" rule, Hamilton has published 10 times as many books as they have combined and probably makes quite a comfortable living off of her "little" "genre" books. In my last fiction writing class, I think I wrote two of the best stories that I ever have. Because I know that fiction teachers frown on genre fiction, so I wrote stories of everyday people in slightly more than ordinary situations. On the other hand, several of my fellow students wrote stories with aspects of genre fiction in them- apocolypse, vampires, murder. These stories stood on their own merit as a piece of fiction, not as a piece of genre fiction. Which begs the question of how I should write and what I should write. Do I want to approach my writing based on what I can write decently and what will sell the most? Or do I approach it based on higher literary fiction principles? Is there maybe something wrong with looking down on genre fiction while propping up "literary" fiction? And what separates the two? Is it maybe a class thing? That genres are supposed to be for the lower class who don't want to think as much about the literature that they are reading? Wait- doesn't that describe how Charles Dicken's novels were first read? On the other hand, just how many radical ideas could you put into a literary novel, since most of them are set in a real world context? Even with all of what I see as Anita's hypocrisy, the books still have fairly non-mainstream views on sex, sexual relationships, and non-monogamy. And, while this isn't literature, I remember how shocked I was the first couple times I heard the characters in (SciFi channel's) Battlestar Galactica refer to their female superiors as "Sir". Just that little word used to refer to females as well as males went a long way to show the ways in which this society had more equality between the sexes. When you take your story out of the real world, you can do quite a few things that you couldn't get away with in a real world context- whether that be having an alternate universe where the vampire district is Laclede's Landing (the area just around the Arch) or having one in which males and females are so equal that they all use the same bathrooms and shower areas. So should a writer just cut themselves off to that, if that is a way in which they would like to write?
So, what do you all think?
So, especially now that BT and I are back together and working on all aspects of that, I read the book so that I could get an idea of what he was talking about. Now, I had read quite a few of the Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter, series 4 years ago, when I was still living in the Bigger Midwestern City. At the time, I had read a review of the latest book in the series and my interest was piqued. But the series was already quite long at the time and I didn't want to have to buy all the books. I was in luck because a co-worker of mine at the time owned the first 5 or 6 of them and the first book of Hamilton's other series. I read them all, in succession, during a very depressing and boring winter break.
I guess I should go back a bit. I've always loved horror novels. When I was younger, I read way ahead of my age group. If I remember right, I was reading Christopher Pike's young adult horror books by the time I was in the 4th grade. (Dad had tried to get me into fantasy series, but it just didn't work. I think because we were too cheap to buy the series from the beginning and the YA section at our library didn't have them either. On the other hand, one of my good female friends had alot of Christopher Pike books and an older brother with more advanced tastes, Koontz, Rice, that he'd loan to us.) By 5th grade, I was starting to read the Stephen King and Dean Koontz, though my mom had to approve which books I read. I couldn't read King's Gerald's Game, for instance, because of it's sexual content. When I was in 6th grade, I bought Anne Rice's Witching Hour. It was widely known among my family that I couldn't read Rice's vampire series, but no one had said anything about the witch series. I loved the book. Sometime during 7th grade, I finally managed to get my friend's brother to let me borrow the vampire series. But, in my opinion, I've found that alot of genre writers (hell, writers in general) tend to tread over the same turf. The problem is that when a genre writer does it within that same genre, most especially within the same series, it gets old pretty fast. That's why I haven't read any of Anne Rice's latest work.
And it's why I haven't read any Hamilton books since my last go round. While reading Narcissus I noticed several places within the same book where she reuses the same phrases, etc. Also, she goes against the writer's rule that countless fiction writing teachers have drilled into my head: "Show don't tell." And, while I may be nitpicking about this, while Hamilton as a writer treats gay/bi men very well in the books, if not with a bit of airbrushing so that it's more sexy to female readers, Anita as a character gets on my last nerve because she won't accept homosexual activity from any of her lovers, though she continues to have several male lovers of her own. I guess because I've had bisexual male lovers in non-monogamous relationships and they've been with other men, with my knowledge and approval (hell, I've even gotten to watch!) her insistance that her male bi lovers be with only her (and I guess other women???) makes me kinda pissed off at her hypocrisy.
So why did I finish Narcissus in 3 sittings? Why did I buy the next one in the series while I was out tonight looking for the first novel in another vampire series? Why am I not reading "real" literature, great historical literature, non-genre literature? The most likely answer is that I'm just lazy. Narcissus was an easy read, the pages kept turning, and I really wanted to know what would happen at the end. Also, there was alot of sex. Granted, alot of what is now considered new classic literary novels (guess I'm thinking of novelists like Phillip Roth) have sex in them. Maybe even good sex. But this book...... well, maybe it was the combination of the supernatural with the sex, maybe it's just that I'm really horny right now, but the sex in this book was awesome!!!!!! Which kinda didn't help alleviate the horniness, but.... well, you can't ask for everything.
Of course, all this has me thinking about my own writing. While all my fiction teachers look down on genre fiction and push the "show don't tell" rule, Hamilton has published 10 times as many books as they have combined and probably makes quite a comfortable living off of her "little" "genre" books. In my last fiction writing class, I think I wrote two of the best stories that I ever have. Because I know that fiction teachers frown on genre fiction, so I wrote stories of everyday people in slightly more than ordinary situations. On the other hand, several of my fellow students wrote stories with aspects of genre fiction in them- apocolypse, vampires, murder. These stories stood on their own merit as a piece of fiction, not as a piece of genre fiction. Which begs the question of how I should write and what I should write. Do I want to approach my writing based on what I can write decently and what will sell the most? Or do I approach it based on higher literary fiction principles? Is there maybe something wrong with looking down on genre fiction while propping up "literary" fiction? And what separates the two? Is it maybe a class thing? That genres are supposed to be for the lower class who don't want to think as much about the literature that they are reading? Wait- doesn't that describe how Charles Dicken's novels were first read? On the other hand, just how many radical ideas could you put into a literary novel, since most of them are set in a real world context? Even with all of what I see as Anita's hypocrisy, the books still have fairly non-mainstream views on sex, sexual relationships, and non-monogamy. And, while this isn't literature, I remember how shocked I was the first couple times I heard the characters in (SciFi channel's) Battlestar Galactica refer to their female superiors as "Sir". Just that little word used to refer to females as well as males went a long way to show the ways in which this society had more equality between the sexes. When you take your story out of the real world, you can do quite a few things that you couldn't get away with in a real world context- whether that be having an alternate universe where the vampire district is Laclede's Landing (the area just around the Arch) or having one in which males and females are so equal that they all use the same bathrooms and shower areas. So should a writer just cut themselves off to that, if that is a way in which they would like to write?
So, what do you all think?
Friday, August 08, 2008
You Look Good In My Shirt- Keith Urban
You Look Good In My Shirt- Keith Urban
When you walked up behind me and covered my eyes
And whispered in my ear, guess who
I rattled off names like I really didn’t know
But all along I knew it was you
And, the longer we talked, the more we laughed
And wondered why we didn’t last
It had been a long time, but later last night
Baby, we caught up real fast
And maybe it’s a little too early
To know if this is gonna work
All I know is you’re sure looking
Good in my shirt
That’s right
You look good in my shirt
Well now I’m not saying that we solved overnight
Every way that we went wrong
Oh, but what I’m seeing I’d sure love seeing
Every morning from now on
And maybe it’s a little too early
To know if this is gonna work
All I know is you’re sure looking
Good in my shirt
C’mon now
Aww that’s right
Oh you look so fine
And maybe it’s a little too early
To know if this is gonna work
All I know is you’re sure looking
Good in my shirt
And maybe it’s a little too early
To know if this is gonna work
All I know is you’re sure looking
Good in my shirt
You look good in my shirt
You look good in my shirt
When you walked up behind me and covered my eyes
And whispered in my ear, guess who
I rattled off names like I really didn’t know
But all along I knew it was you
And, the longer we talked, the more we laughed
And wondered why we didn’t last
It had been a long time, but later last night
Baby, we caught up real fast
And maybe it’s a little too early
To know if this is gonna work
All I know is you’re sure looking
Good in my shirt
That’s right
You look good in my shirt
Well now I’m not saying that we solved overnight
Every way that we went wrong
Oh, but what I’m seeing I’d sure love seeing
Every morning from now on
And maybe it’s a little too early
To know if this is gonna work
All I know is you’re sure looking
Good in my shirt
C’mon now
Aww that’s right
Oh you look so fine
And maybe it’s a little too early
To know if this is gonna work
All I know is you’re sure looking
Good in my shirt
And maybe it’s a little too early
To know if this is gonna work
All I know is you’re sure looking
Good in my shirt
You look good in my shirt
You look good in my shirt
Monday, August 04, 2008
You Used To Love To Dance- Melissa Ethridge
You Used to Love to Dance- Melissa Ethridge
Lying in a city night
A million fingers tingling my skin
Out there in the sea tonight
I thought I saw you clutching your sin
You rolled me over long ago
And told me you were strong enough to go
You needed more than this lover's dream
You need the steel and the concrete beams in your life
In your life
We laughed and drank in the jukebox light
And we tore the rug in that downtown dive
Every Saturday night
For fifty cents we'd dance all night long
And each new tune we said that's our song
Oh it felt so right
Well ecstasy ain't free
But compromise is chance
I remember how
You used to love to dance
They told me you have found your love
You moved in locked up and put out your blues
Well all God's children got to grow up
And play house make vows to hang up their shoes
Do you sit and talk over coffee cups
Do headline mornings satisfy and fill you up
I kept your eyes and your cigarette kiss
You couldn't keep the lies the adrenalin bliss in your life
In your life
We laughed and drank in the jukebox light
And we tore the rug in that downtown dive
Every Saturday night
For fifty cents we'd dance all night long
And each new tune we said that's our song
Oh it felt so right
Well ecstasy ain't free
But compromise is chance
I remember how
You used to love to dance
I'm gonna go out tonight
I'm gonna drive up to the hill
I'm gonna dive on into those city lights
And I'm gonna dance, dance
Dance till I get my fill
We laughed and drank in the jukebox light
And we tore the rug in that downtown dive
Every Saturday night
For fifty cents we'd dance all night long
And each new tune we said that's our song
Lord it felt so right
But ecstasy ain't free
And compromise is chance
I remember how
You used to love to dance
As anyone who knows me knows, I tend to live my life in a weird parellel to the art I consume, though I'm going to be using the word "art" quite loosely here. While I'm not quite sure if this is the real reason, I'm going to blame it on being a relatviely smart kid with lots of ideas and more access to books, movies, music, and televison than I even did my peers. While in some ways the art I consume does tend to mirror my views on life, it also tends to point out to me and make more concrete in me ideas that were only half-formed before. And I have to credit this art with sometimes getting me out of funks and leaving me with that nugget of inspiration to help with later funks as well.
This song is one of my favorite songs by Melissa Ethridge. I was not quite a teenager when she came out of the closet and it was quite a big deal at the time. For a young, rock-loving, wanna-be musician like myself, who was also starting to realize that she might be not-straight as well, she was a huge inspiration. I remember taping her MTV Unplugged when I was 12 on the spare tv and our beta VCR. (When we sold our 3 bedroom house before we bought another home, we moved into a 2 bedroom apartment. Because my mother didn't allow me to have a television in my bedroom, I could only watch something other than what my parents did on a different tv in our living room. Needless to say, it cut down drastically on me watching things I shouldn't.) I was reading a couple books on Bruce Springsteen and his early career at the time for a school project and I was overjoyed when he was on her Unplugged special, singing "Born To Run" with her. Within the next year, I bought all her CDs prior to Yes I Am, which I already had.
I think I always liked this song because it spoke to something I had always felt. I never wanted to "settle down". I wanted to be wild and crazy and live an unexpected life. At the time when I got this CD, we had just moved to the suburbs of this Small City and I was surrounded by this suburban dream of a nice house and nice job and nice family. While I knew several girls in high school who had big career-oriented dreams and ambitions for their lives, I didn't know any of these girls, or at least was not aquainted with them and their dreams, in the middle school where I started out. This was the place where, in the first class of my first day, my partner on a class exercise said that she was happy that we were done with it with time to spare to talk about the really important things like guys and make-up. Needless to say, even though I knew we had moved here so that i would get a better education and live in a better neighborhood, I despised it. In fact, I dreamed of the day when I turned 16 and got my first car so that I could disappear again into the Big City we had previously lived in, where I would live a precarious existence, having to finish high school and work enough to live on my own. But even in high school, where I knew some very ambitious college and career-oriented girls, I don't think I ever really knew anyone, male or female, who wanted to embrace the messy, not well-off but comfortable, and full of artistic integrity life that I wanted. That I still want to this day, though I knew now more of how hard it is to have that.
I also liked this song so much because I already felt betrayed by this time by people in my life who I thought would want that kind of life but didn't. I guess you grow up assuming that the people who instill certain values in you are consciously instilling those values in you and that they themselves will live by those values. Also that you assume that the way of life that you adore when you see it in someone else and that you aspire to in the future really makes the person living it happy and will always make them happy. None of that is really true and I think now that feeling that way largely comes from being a kid and not realize that the people you put on a pedestal are up their because you put them there not because they should be. Because really no one should be as we are all human, with all the messy, illogical, contridictory desires, flaws, hopes, dreams, and mind-changing that comes along with that. But at the time, I felt betrayed by this. (To be honest, still do sometimes.) For so much of my life, my godfather, who was one of the closest males to me during my young life, lived in the city proper and dated multiple women at the same time. I loved his freedom and the life that he had. When I was 8 though, he met and fell in love with a woman who he would marry and settle down with over the next 2 years or so. It probably didn't help that she had a daughter who was just a year older than me. When they started living together, he moved into her house in the suburbs. After a disasterous vacation two family vacation, we all kinda lost touch. So, at 13, even though I knew Ethridge probably wrote this song about a female lover who left Ethridge to settle down properly with a man, I felt like it was about my godfather settling down, giving up what I thought of as a privileged life just to settle down and have a family. I kinda had similar feelings in regard to my uncle marrying and staying in the same town as my grandparents over the course of my high school years.
Recently, as I've been trying to decide how to proceed in my life, I 'rediscovered' this song while listening to an MP3 disk with lots of different albums on it. It still strikes a cord with me, though for different reasons.
I guess it was the love of that non-settled down lifestyle that made me agree to marry BT, the fact that being with him seemed to promise that I wouldn't be "settling" or "settling down." While it was that craziness and chaos that led to so many of our problems, I have to admit that it was also what brought us together. And, to compliment what my grandmother said about how he and I are both dreamers and don't always live in the real world, I never felt like I would have to "grow up, play house, make vows to hang up [my] shoes" with him. In addition to just having an open relationship, I felt like I had found someone who I could share all my dreams and fantasies with, that I wouldn't have to compromise who I really was, even though I knew we'd both have to compromise on other things. While he wasn't the first to want to marry me (or the last, as it's turned out), every other man who wanted to marry me wanted to "settle down", to have that sort of very stable household and family. And, in some ways, I know now that played a role in BT wanting to get married as well. But he was happy with the ways in which it would be crazy and messy and unstable, if for no other reason than I am all those things. But I think he was, and still is, one of the few guys who didn't see me as a project, as something to be fixed, even though, on the other hand, he never thought I'd be "like this" forever. And when he was around, I wasn't, which only reminds me of another song lyric, "Yes, and thanks, for the trouble you took from her eyes/I thought it was there for good so I never tried." (Leonard Cohen's "Famous Blue Raincoat")
I think that "settling down" part was probably a large part of why I couldn't have stayed with TyRoy. MP recently said to me that he thought TyRoy had been giving me something which he thought he had to give me in order to keep me but that, in truth, I wasn't ready for at all. I think that's probably true. There was this big house and this comfortable life there but, whether this is true or not, I always felt like that came hand in hand with being a dutiful wife, even if we weren't married at the time. As TyRoy pointed out to me last week when I said that I never felt like he chose me but just chose to be with someone, I wasn't the only woman who wanted to live in that house. That might be true. But I would have been just as happy to not live in that house, to have stayed with my folks'. I only moved in for the period of time I was there because it was easier for us to see each other and because I thought he wanted, needed, a person living there with him. And though I might not have conveyed this as much as I wanted to, I wasn't trying to get with him, wasn't trying to be his girlfriend/wife, wasn't trying to get a commitment out of him, though I was happy, if hesitant because of experience, to take it when he offered, when the "other women who wanted to move in there" were actively working to get a commitment out of him and were actively trying to move in there. And I guess, in the begginning when things are all shiny, and after my ordeals with lies and ommision with BT, I thought I had found someone with whom I wouldn't have to "hang up my shoes" either because he wanted the openness but wasn't jealous and had shown himself not to be a liar (even by ommission), so I ignored the trade-off. "Compromise is chance", right?
And the final thing about this song, right now, that gets me, is about the jukebox. Even though I'm quite a horrible dancer and have yet to be broken of the tendency to lead, I still love to do it and don't get to do it often enough. But I love the image of two people dancing. And two people dancing to a jukebox just seems to be this terribly romantic image that I can never get out of my head. The kinda messed up thing is that I can only think of a handful of times that I've danced with my male romantic partners or a person I had a romantic interest in of either sex. I know that I've probably danced more with my uncle than I have all my romantic partners or potentials combined. I actually can't think of a single time I danced with BT. And while I'll never forget the night I met BT just because it was the night I met him, I'd always remember it for another reason if he and I had never gotten together. As in the song, the place was a dive, a little bar overlooking the highway and the river, where you had to be buzzed in. And they had a jukebox, though I doubt you probably got 3 songs out of fifty cents. But someone, probably my uncle or his boyfriend, did put some money in it and played some songs. And I danced with my uncle to Patsy Cline, who both he and my mother love. And whenever I see a couple dancing to a jukebox, I think of that.
Lying in a city night
A million fingers tingling my skin
Out there in the sea tonight
I thought I saw you clutching your sin
You rolled me over long ago
And told me you were strong enough to go
You needed more than this lover's dream
You need the steel and the concrete beams in your life
In your life
We laughed and drank in the jukebox light
And we tore the rug in that downtown dive
Every Saturday night
For fifty cents we'd dance all night long
And each new tune we said that's our song
Oh it felt so right
Well ecstasy ain't free
But compromise is chance
I remember how
You used to love to dance
They told me you have found your love
You moved in locked up and put out your blues
Well all God's children got to grow up
And play house make vows to hang up their shoes
Do you sit and talk over coffee cups
Do headline mornings satisfy and fill you up
I kept your eyes and your cigarette kiss
You couldn't keep the lies the adrenalin bliss in your life
In your life
We laughed and drank in the jukebox light
And we tore the rug in that downtown dive
Every Saturday night
For fifty cents we'd dance all night long
And each new tune we said that's our song
Oh it felt so right
Well ecstasy ain't free
But compromise is chance
I remember how
You used to love to dance
I'm gonna go out tonight
I'm gonna drive up to the hill
I'm gonna dive on into those city lights
And I'm gonna dance, dance
Dance till I get my fill
We laughed and drank in the jukebox light
And we tore the rug in that downtown dive
Every Saturday night
For fifty cents we'd dance all night long
And each new tune we said that's our song
Lord it felt so right
But ecstasy ain't free
And compromise is chance
I remember how
You used to love to dance
As anyone who knows me knows, I tend to live my life in a weird parellel to the art I consume, though I'm going to be using the word "art" quite loosely here. While I'm not quite sure if this is the real reason, I'm going to blame it on being a relatviely smart kid with lots of ideas and more access to books, movies, music, and televison than I even did my peers. While in some ways the art I consume does tend to mirror my views on life, it also tends to point out to me and make more concrete in me ideas that were only half-formed before. And I have to credit this art with sometimes getting me out of funks and leaving me with that nugget of inspiration to help with later funks as well.
This song is one of my favorite songs by Melissa Ethridge. I was not quite a teenager when she came out of the closet and it was quite a big deal at the time. For a young, rock-loving, wanna-be musician like myself, who was also starting to realize that she might be not-straight as well, she was a huge inspiration. I remember taping her MTV Unplugged when I was 12 on the spare tv and our beta VCR. (When we sold our 3 bedroom house before we bought another home, we moved into a 2 bedroom apartment. Because my mother didn't allow me to have a television in my bedroom, I could only watch something other than what my parents did on a different tv in our living room. Needless to say, it cut down drastically on me watching things I shouldn't.) I was reading a couple books on Bruce Springsteen and his early career at the time for a school project and I was overjoyed when he was on her Unplugged special, singing "Born To Run" with her. Within the next year, I bought all her CDs prior to Yes I Am, which I already had.
I think I always liked this song because it spoke to something I had always felt. I never wanted to "settle down". I wanted to be wild and crazy and live an unexpected life. At the time when I got this CD, we had just moved to the suburbs of this Small City and I was surrounded by this suburban dream of a nice house and nice job and nice family. While I knew several girls in high school who had big career-oriented dreams and ambitions for their lives, I didn't know any of these girls, or at least was not aquainted with them and their dreams, in the middle school where I started out. This was the place where, in the first class of my first day, my partner on a class exercise said that she was happy that we were done with it with time to spare to talk about the really important things like guys and make-up. Needless to say, even though I knew we had moved here so that i would get a better education and live in a better neighborhood, I despised it. In fact, I dreamed of the day when I turned 16 and got my first car so that I could disappear again into the Big City we had previously lived in, where I would live a precarious existence, having to finish high school and work enough to live on my own. But even in high school, where I knew some very ambitious college and career-oriented girls, I don't think I ever really knew anyone, male or female, who wanted to embrace the messy, not well-off but comfortable, and full of artistic integrity life that I wanted. That I still want to this day, though I knew now more of how hard it is to have that.
I also liked this song so much because I already felt betrayed by this time by people in my life who I thought would want that kind of life but didn't. I guess you grow up assuming that the people who instill certain values in you are consciously instilling those values in you and that they themselves will live by those values. Also that you assume that the way of life that you adore when you see it in someone else and that you aspire to in the future really makes the person living it happy and will always make them happy. None of that is really true and I think now that feeling that way largely comes from being a kid and not realize that the people you put on a pedestal are up their because you put them there not because they should be. Because really no one should be as we are all human, with all the messy, illogical, contridictory desires, flaws, hopes, dreams, and mind-changing that comes along with that. But at the time, I felt betrayed by this. (To be honest, still do sometimes.) For so much of my life, my godfather, who was one of the closest males to me during my young life, lived in the city proper and dated multiple women at the same time. I loved his freedom and the life that he had. When I was 8 though, he met and fell in love with a woman who he would marry and settle down with over the next 2 years or so. It probably didn't help that she had a daughter who was just a year older than me. When they started living together, he moved into her house in the suburbs. After a disasterous vacation two family vacation, we all kinda lost touch. So, at 13, even though I knew Ethridge probably wrote this song about a female lover who left Ethridge to settle down properly with a man, I felt like it was about my godfather settling down, giving up what I thought of as a privileged life just to settle down and have a family. I kinda had similar feelings in regard to my uncle marrying and staying in the same town as my grandparents over the course of my high school years.
Recently, as I've been trying to decide how to proceed in my life, I 'rediscovered' this song while listening to an MP3 disk with lots of different albums on it. It still strikes a cord with me, though for different reasons.
I guess it was the love of that non-settled down lifestyle that made me agree to marry BT, the fact that being with him seemed to promise that I wouldn't be "settling" or "settling down." While it was that craziness and chaos that led to so many of our problems, I have to admit that it was also what brought us together. And, to compliment what my grandmother said about how he and I are both dreamers and don't always live in the real world, I never felt like I would have to "grow up, play house, make vows to hang up [my] shoes" with him. In addition to just having an open relationship, I felt like I had found someone who I could share all my dreams and fantasies with, that I wouldn't have to compromise who I really was, even though I knew we'd both have to compromise on other things. While he wasn't the first to want to marry me (or the last, as it's turned out), every other man who wanted to marry me wanted to "settle down", to have that sort of very stable household and family. And, in some ways, I know now that played a role in BT wanting to get married as well. But he was happy with the ways in which it would be crazy and messy and unstable, if for no other reason than I am all those things. But I think he was, and still is, one of the few guys who didn't see me as a project, as something to be fixed, even though, on the other hand, he never thought I'd be "like this" forever. And when he was around, I wasn't, which only reminds me of another song lyric, "Yes, and thanks, for the trouble you took from her eyes/I thought it was there for good so I never tried." (Leonard Cohen's "Famous Blue Raincoat")
I think that "settling down" part was probably a large part of why I couldn't have stayed with TyRoy. MP recently said to me that he thought TyRoy had been giving me something which he thought he had to give me in order to keep me but that, in truth, I wasn't ready for at all. I think that's probably true. There was this big house and this comfortable life there but, whether this is true or not, I always felt like that came hand in hand with being a dutiful wife, even if we weren't married at the time. As TyRoy pointed out to me last week when I said that I never felt like he chose me but just chose to be with someone, I wasn't the only woman who wanted to live in that house. That might be true. But I would have been just as happy to not live in that house, to have stayed with my folks'. I only moved in for the period of time I was there because it was easier for us to see each other and because I thought he wanted, needed, a person living there with him. And though I might not have conveyed this as much as I wanted to, I wasn't trying to get with him, wasn't trying to be his girlfriend/wife, wasn't trying to get a commitment out of him, though I was happy, if hesitant because of experience, to take it when he offered, when the "other women who wanted to move in there" were actively working to get a commitment out of him and were actively trying to move in there. And I guess, in the begginning when things are all shiny, and after my ordeals with lies and ommision with BT, I thought I had found someone with whom I wouldn't have to "hang up my shoes" either because he wanted the openness but wasn't jealous and had shown himself not to be a liar (even by ommission), so I ignored the trade-off. "Compromise is chance", right?
And the final thing about this song, right now, that gets me, is about the jukebox. Even though I'm quite a horrible dancer and have yet to be broken of the tendency to lead, I still love to do it and don't get to do it often enough. But I love the image of two people dancing. And two people dancing to a jukebox just seems to be this terribly romantic image that I can never get out of my head. The kinda messed up thing is that I can only think of a handful of times that I've danced with my male romantic partners or a person I had a romantic interest in of either sex. I know that I've probably danced more with my uncle than I have all my romantic partners or potentials combined. I actually can't think of a single time I danced with BT. And while I'll never forget the night I met BT just because it was the night I met him, I'd always remember it for another reason if he and I had never gotten together. As in the song, the place was a dive, a little bar overlooking the highway and the river, where you had to be buzzed in. And they had a jukebox, though I doubt you probably got 3 songs out of fifty cents. But someone, probably my uncle or his boyfriend, did put some money in it and played some songs. And I danced with my uncle to Patsy Cline, who both he and my mother love. And whenever I see a couple dancing to a jukebox, I think of that.
Friday, July 18, 2008
My Own Health Scare
http://women.webmd.com/tc/abnormal-pap-test-topic-overview
The nurse who called me had already made an appointment for the beginning of August with a proper gyn for a colposcopy and cervical biopsy. No asking me about it or letting me find my own doctor or make my own appointment. Eek.
http://www.webmd.com/cancer/tc/cervical-cancer-exams-and-tests
Well, let's just keep our fingers crossed.
Oh, and I have HPV and could have given everyone that I've had any kind of sex with HPV as well, so that they could have given it to other women who could now get cervical cancer as well.
The nurse who called me had already made an appointment for the beginning of August with a proper gyn for a colposcopy and cervical biopsy. No asking me about it or letting me find my own doctor or make my own appointment. Eek.
http://www.webmd.com/cancer/tc/cervical-cancer-exams-and-tests
Well, let's just keep our fingers crossed.
Oh, and I have HPV and could have given everyone that I've had any kind of sex with HPV as well, so that they could have given it to other women who could now get cervical cancer as well.
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
IM Conversation Today
Names changed to site pseudonyms, not really to protect the innocent because I don't really believe anyone is innocent in this case.
Stewart (7/16/2008 12:22:13 PM): hey
Ava (7/16/2008 12:29:08 PM): hey
Stewart (7/16/2008 12:29:14 PM): hey
Stewart (7/16/2008 12:30:56 PM): stopped by your house monday to see if you were around
Ava (7/16/2008 12:31:18 PM): you know, some people might think that was creepy
Stewart (7/16/2008 12:31:39 PM): what do you mean
Stewart (7/16/2008 12:31:43 PM): we are friends arent we
Stewart (7/16/2008 12:31:49 PM): just saying hi is not creepy
Ava (7/16/2008 12:32:51 PM): Except that I've told you time and again not to just stop by my house. Also, at this point, I don't live there anymore.
Ava (7/16/2008 12:33:55 PM): And you don't stop by just to say. You stop by because you are hoping that you are going to get laid. Which you aren't. Even if I was there, if you don't call first, you aren't going to get laid because I'm probably not in a state in which I'd have sex with you, even if I ever was to have sex with you again.
Stewart (7/16/2008 12:34:26 PM): what is your problem
Stewart (7/16/2008 12:34:36 PM): you sound like you have gone crazy
Ava (7/16/2008 12:35:27 PM): No. It's just that from that start I told you not to just stop by, without calling.
Ava (7/16/2008 12:35:51 PM): But you keep doing it. And you keep finding me not there and I don't seem upset that I'm not there at all.
Ava (7/16/2008 12:35:58 PM): Doesn't that make you wonder????
Ava (7/16/2008 12:36:27 PM): Isn't it obvious by now that I'm trying to get rid of you but I don't want to seem too mean and bitchy but I guess I have to be.
Ava (7/16/2008 12:36:42 PM): The crazy part is that I didn't just tell you earlier to get lost.
Ava (7/16/2008 12:36:58 PM): I have NO interest in fucking you ever again.
Stewart (7/16/2008 12:38:10 PM): are you still married
Ava (7/16/2008 12:38:53 PM): why does it matter? Whether I am married or not, seeing someone or not, whether no one in the world but you will fuck me, I still don't want to fuck you.
Stewart (7/16/2008 12:39:18 PM): that is good, because to be quite honest, and I was not trying to be mean, you are way below my level of attraction. You are fat, extremely unattractive and was just a piece of ass, and not a very good one at that.
Ava (7/16/2008 12:40:20 PM): That's fine. I quite obviously didn't know why you wanted to fuck me anyway because of all the things you just said. So bye. Never contact me again and I'll never contact you again.
Stewart (7/16/2008 12:40:33 PM): You should of been lucky that someone like me would even look at you, more less fuck you.
Stewart (7/16/2008 12:40:40 PM): sounds like a deal
[yet he still continues to talk......]Stewart (7/16/2008 12:41:19 PM): some people just amaze me why they act the way they do, when thet have things right in front of them and dont take advantage of the, but I cant teach people to be smart [guess he means that I should have taken advantage of having such a hot wonderful male lover who would stoop to my level to fuck me. Actually, I do, when they are good. In fact I married one of them. Just because I don't understand how a guy could possibly be attracted to me doesn't mean I will pass it up. I usually won't.]
Stewart (7/16/2008 12:41:24 PM): so good luck there
Now I'm not really so insulted by anything he said. He was just sex in a box, a married man who was not planning on leaving his wife, just someone to fuck. We had lunch the first time we met so that we could meet in person in a public place. But other than that, we never went out and I never expected we would. It's not like I wanted some kind of relationship with him and he didn't come through on that. But, to be generous, we weren't very good in bed together and he also pushed me for things that I wasn't comfortable doing with him. Granted, they were things that I definately wanted to do and probably will do in the future, but I honestly didn't want to do them with him, mostly because I could tell that he had no respect for me and just viewed me as a "piece of ass". So I contacted him less, dropped obvious hints of my unavailability, hoped that he'd get it, but he never did, so finally I just told him today. I didn't want to have to be mean and I suppose I could have been a good deal meaner, as he chose to be.
But what I don't understand is why people can't just get it and nicely walk away? I have a couple of sex in a boxes that I have chosen not to continue for one reason or another. If there is a specific reason, for instance "I really like messing around with you but you have this rule against kissing and I'm just not ok with that, so we'll be friends if you want, or more if you change your mind," I'll tell you the specific reason and we'll see if it can be worked on or if it can't. Either way, I wish you the best and that's it. In that particular case, that partner checks up on me as a friend every once in a while and we talk about life, but that's it. I had another sex in the box that who got a different job and neither of us were available the hours that the other could hang out and also I sorta demand some kind of planning because I'm usually not "sex-ready" at a moment's notice. Maybe he saw that as me not being interested in sex with him anymore or maybe he just isn't online anymore. Either way, there were no hard feelings expressed and none felt on my end. One of my few forays into the sex in the box with a female didn't work out because, while I think I explained myself fully as to what it was and wasn't, I don't think she thought I'd be with other people at the same time in real life, even though that was part of the theory. There was a day or two of weirdness and some hurt feelings, for which I took full responsibility for and I tried to explain everything again, but, obviously, I knew that the sex in the box couldn't continue, nor would I have attempted to continue it once the hurt feelings and misunderstandings were smoothed over. We are still friends now though. I wonder why they can't all go like that?
My funniest, in my opinion, though possibly scariest experience, was a guy who I had a FWB (friends with benefits) relationship with for almost a year. While I was pretty good about keeping it friendly and being obvious in the fact that I knew he was probably dating other women (asking him if he'd had recent dates and how they went in a genuinely caring manner, not a jealous way), I would also ask about when we might hang out and do something other than sex. Not even really as a couple but just as friends, because the relationship was mostly the benefits, very little friendship, and, while he kept saying that he wanted to date me when his work schedule calmed down, it never did. Over this year, I went on dates with a few women, but nothing really came of it. He knew about these dates with women and he seemed ok with me dating other people while we were having sex. Except that I later found out it was really only that he was ok with me dating WOMEN, possibly fucking women, but not men, because when I hooked up with a man, in a very unexpected situation, he hit the roof. Of course, he also said then that he wanted a relationship and that he was going to tell me the next time we got together. *eye roll* I bet. Even though I didn't want to see him again and I told him I wasn't really interested in anything with him because of how he had reacted and because I didn't want to be with just one person, I agreed to let him come over, at which point he didn't know the meaning of the word "no" anymore. For a while after that, as a sort of vengence on my part, I acted, on IM and over the phone, like I wanted to be with him, like he was the only one I wanted to be with, like I wasn't with anyone else, but I was just too busy to see him when he could see me. It was all bullshit though as I had several sex in boxes. When I finally came clean and told him the truth, he called me crazy, said I'd been crazy the whole time, said he knew I could never be monogamous and that I never really wanted a relationship with him, etc, etc, etc. He was pissed and I don't blame him. Actually, him being pissed and hurt was the whole point. But it should have ended right there, right? He should have just moved on and stayed moved on. But, after accidentally running into him at a local convenience store where we didn't talk to each other or even act like we knew each other, he IM'd me, told me that he was often in my area (he lives way North but works in my area of the metro), told me that his relationship with his girlfriend was open (I'll believe that when she tells me), and told me that he wanted to hook up again. But wait.... I thought I was a crazy bitch? Oh, he still thought I was a crazy bitch but the sex was always good and he wanted more. OMFG!!!!!!!!!!!! I just don't get it. Obviously, that's a no as well.
It's nice to know that no matter how REAL and full of really hard decisions one's life can become, stupid drama still shows up. Even when one thought they were free of it. And I think we should take bets to see how long it is before Stewart comes around again, asking for some inferior piece of my ass. I say less than 6 months but more than 3.
Stewart (7/16/2008 12:22:13 PM): hey
Ava (7/16/2008 12:29:08 PM): hey
Stewart (7/16/2008 12:29:14 PM): hey
Stewart (7/16/2008 12:30:56 PM): stopped by your house monday to see if you were around
Ava (7/16/2008 12:31:18 PM): you know, some people might think that was creepy
Stewart (7/16/2008 12:31:39 PM): what do you mean
Stewart (7/16/2008 12:31:43 PM): we are friends arent we
Stewart (7/16/2008 12:31:49 PM): just saying hi is not creepy
Ava (7/16/2008 12:32:51 PM): Except that I've told you time and again not to just stop by my house. Also, at this point, I don't live there anymore.
Ava (7/16/2008 12:33:55 PM): And you don't stop by just to say. You stop by because you are hoping that you are going to get laid. Which you aren't. Even if I was there, if you don't call first, you aren't going to get laid because I'm probably not in a state in which I'd have sex with you, even if I ever was to have sex with you again.
Stewart (7/16/2008 12:34:26 PM): what is your problem
Stewart (7/16/2008 12:34:36 PM): you sound like you have gone crazy
Ava (7/16/2008 12:35:27 PM): No. It's just that from that start I told you not to just stop by, without calling.
Ava (7/16/2008 12:35:51 PM): But you keep doing it. And you keep finding me not there and I don't seem upset that I'm not there at all.
Ava (7/16/2008 12:35:58 PM): Doesn't that make you wonder????
Ava (7/16/2008 12:36:27 PM): Isn't it obvious by now that I'm trying to get rid of you but I don't want to seem too mean and bitchy but I guess I have to be.
Ava (7/16/2008 12:36:42 PM): The crazy part is that I didn't just tell you earlier to get lost.
Ava (7/16/2008 12:36:58 PM): I have NO interest in fucking you ever again.
Stewart (7/16/2008 12:38:10 PM): are you still married
Ava (7/16/2008 12:38:53 PM): why does it matter? Whether I am married or not, seeing someone or not, whether no one in the world but you will fuck me, I still don't want to fuck you.
Stewart (7/16/2008 12:39:18 PM): that is good, because to be quite honest, and I was not trying to be mean, you are way below my level of attraction. You are fat, extremely unattractive and was just a piece of ass, and not a very good one at that.
Ava (7/16/2008 12:40:20 PM): That's fine. I quite obviously didn't know why you wanted to fuck me anyway because of all the things you just said. So bye. Never contact me again and I'll never contact you again.
Stewart (7/16/2008 12:40:33 PM): You should of been lucky that someone like me would even look at you, more less fuck you.
Stewart (7/16/2008 12:40:40 PM): sounds like a deal
[yet he still continues to talk......]Stewart (7/16/2008 12:41:19 PM): some people just amaze me why they act the way they do, when thet have things right in front of them and dont take advantage of the, but I cant teach people to be smart [guess he means that I should have taken advantage of having such a hot wonderful male lover who would stoop to my level to fuck me. Actually, I do, when they are good. In fact I married one of them. Just because I don't understand how a guy could possibly be attracted to me doesn't mean I will pass it up. I usually won't.]
Stewart (7/16/2008 12:41:24 PM): so good luck there
Now I'm not really so insulted by anything he said. He was just sex in a box, a married man who was not planning on leaving his wife, just someone to fuck. We had lunch the first time we met so that we could meet in person in a public place. But other than that, we never went out and I never expected we would. It's not like I wanted some kind of relationship with him and he didn't come through on that. But, to be generous, we weren't very good in bed together and he also pushed me for things that I wasn't comfortable doing with him. Granted, they were things that I definately wanted to do and probably will do in the future, but I honestly didn't want to do them with him, mostly because I could tell that he had no respect for me and just viewed me as a "piece of ass". So I contacted him less, dropped obvious hints of my unavailability, hoped that he'd get it, but he never did, so finally I just told him today. I didn't want to have to be mean and I suppose I could have been a good deal meaner, as he chose to be.
But what I don't understand is why people can't just get it and nicely walk away? I have a couple of sex in a boxes that I have chosen not to continue for one reason or another. If there is a specific reason, for instance "I really like messing around with you but you have this rule against kissing and I'm just not ok with that, so we'll be friends if you want, or more if you change your mind," I'll tell you the specific reason and we'll see if it can be worked on or if it can't. Either way, I wish you the best and that's it. In that particular case, that partner checks up on me as a friend every once in a while and we talk about life, but that's it. I had another sex in the box that who got a different job and neither of us were available the hours that the other could hang out and also I sorta demand some kind of planning because I'm usually not "sex-ready" at a moment's notice. Maybe he saw that as me not being interested in sex with him anymore or maybe he just isn't online anymore. Either way, there were no hard feelings expressed and none felt on my end. One of my few forays into the sex in the box with a female didn't work out because, while I think I explained myself fully as to what it was and wasn't, I don't think she thought I'd be with other people at the same time in real life, even though that was part of the theory. There was a day or two of weirdness and some hurt feelings, for which I took full responsibility for and I tried to explain everything again, but, obviously, I knew that the sex in the box couldn't continue, nor would I have attempted to continue it once the hurt feelings and misunderstandings were smoothed over. We are still friends now though. I wonder why they can't all go like that?
My funniest, in my opinion, though possibly scariest experience, was a guy who I had a FWB (friends with benefits) relationship with for almost a year. While I was pretty good about keeping it friendly and being obvious in the fact that I knew he was probably dating other women (asking him if he'd had recent dates and how they went in a genuinely caring manner, not a jealous way), I would also ask about when we might hang out and do something other than sex. Not even really as a couple but just as friends, because the relationship was mostly the benefits, very little friendship, and, while he kept saying that he wanted to date me when his work schedule calmed down, it never did. Over this year, I went on dates with a few women, but nothing really came of it. He knew about these dates with women and he seemed ok with me dating other people while we were having sex. Except that I later found out it was really only that he was ok with me dating WOMEN, possibly fucking women, but not men, because when I hooked up with a man, in a very unexpected situation, he hit the roof. Of course, he also said then that he wanted a relationship and that he was going to tell me the next time we got together. *eye roll* I bet. Even though I didn't want to see him again and I told him I wasn't really interested in anything with him because of how he had reacted and because I didn't want to be with just one person, I agreed to let him come over, at which point he didn't know the meaning of the word "no" anymore. For a while after that, as a sort of vengence on my part, I acted, on IM and over the phone, like I wanted to be with him, like he was the only one I wanted to be with, like I wasn't with anyone else, but I was just too busy to see him when he could see me. It was all bullshit though as I had several sex in boxes. When I finally came clean and told him the truth, he called me crazy, said I'd been crazy the whole time, said he knew I could never be monogamous and that I never really wanted a relationship with him, etc, etc, etc. He was pissed and I don't blame him. Actually, him being pissed and hurt was the whole point. But it should have ended right there, right? He should have just moved on and stayed moved on. But, after accidentally running into him at a local convenience store where we didn't talk to each other or even act like we knew each other, he IM'd me, told me that he was often in my area (he lives way North but works in my area of the metro), told me that his relationship with his girlfriend was open (I'll believe that when she tells me), and told me that he wanted to hook up again. But wait.... I thought I was a crazy bitch? Oh, he still thought I was a crazy bitch but the sex was always good and he wanted more. OMFG!!!!!!!!!!!! I just don't get it. Obviously, that's a no as well.
It's nice to know that no matter how REAL and full of really hard decisions one's life can become, stupid drama still shows up. Even when one thought they were free of it. And I think we should take bets to see how long it is before Stewart comes around again, asking for some inferior piece of my ass. I say less than 6 months but more than 3.
Monday, July 14, 2008
Moving On- Vol. 3
Yep, Vol 3 is coming quite soon after Vol 2 but I thought it best to deal with the issues separately. Vol 2 was about talking to people about the decision, namely my grandmother because I didn't want to be the one to reveal one of the driving factors behind this decision and a part of its timeline when she didn't know. Vol. 3 is about the doubts that come creeping in and how ultimately people make the decisions about how to decide how to live their lives in the first place.
For those of you who haven't noticed, I'm an all or nothing kind of a person. I go to extremes. While I am aware of this and I have made some efforts to change it, I must admit that, for the most part, I like that I am like this. I don't always like the results or the situations I put myself in because I take extreme action but I do like this quality in myself. If nothing else, I will at least readily admit to it, to its influences in my life and my decision making, and that it isn't something I really feel like changing at this particular point in my life. Maybe someday. Probably someday. But not today.
I'll be the first to admit that the life course decisions I made last week were made on a sort of whim, during a very VERY stressful time, when I had way too much time alone with music to think about the grand scheme of my life. (Art in general, as it usually has a short period of time in which to make a large statement, tends to exaggerate things so while an artist might advocate radical change in their work, such as leaving someone at the drop of the hat in a song, in real life, even if they did leave that person, they probably put quite a bit more thought and time into it than the song implies. As Ani sings, "I just write about what I should have done/Sing what I wish I could say".) Don't get me wrong here: I'm not changing my mind or my decision. But I'm feeling more philosophical now about how people decide how to decide how to live their lives. The more time that passes since my decision, the more I can see the possibilities of the life paths I'm choosing not to take. I can see the value in each one of them and I also know that lots of people take those life paths everyday. I wonder not only how they decide which path to take, but I wonder how they decide how to decide. (Maybe it's too late for this but I'm gonna try.)
While I've never quite had the courage of my convictions, I've always thought that people should live in extreme ways: follow their hearts and their goals and their loves and put it all on the line. They shouldn't follow some pre-determined path for their lives. They shouldn't be meek little sheep. They shouldn't do something JUST because it is what is expected of them by family or friends or society. All that romantic bullshit crap. And I've gotten into lots of arguments with friends and family members as to why one should follow their heart/goals/dreams/love/whatever or they were just sell-outs and would always be unhappy. I still believe that to be true in many ways. If you have a strong desire to do something and you don't do it or you can't do it, then I do think you will always regret it and, depending on how you deal with that regret in your life, you might make yourself or your family miserable with that regret. Sometimes even just a little desire for something can haunt you until the day you die. Something you wish you'd taken the chance to do or say.
But I also know that loving blindly and blindingly isn't always best. When I look at the possibilities of where choosing a life with BT could take me, there are alot of horrible possibilities down that road. I'm not naive enough nor do I trust enough in his desire to change that I can see it going how I once did---- He pursues an Army or law enforcement career while I finish school and then write or edit or whatever from wherever we end up because of his job choice while raising a couple cute little kids that he dotes on. With him, just as with ex-T really, I see distrust, horrible fighting over money and other women and men, possibly addiction on either side of the relationship, and ultimately mutually assured destruction (or self-destruction, or both.)
But that doesn't mean that I don't want the real big true LOVE. I want to be someone's first and only choice just because they love me so much they can't stand to be without me, not just someone that I can put up with and who can put up with me while we both just work 9-5 to pay the bills and have nothing beyond that. I think every hopeless romantic artist type hates that idea of yuppie suburban hell, or what they think would be hell in any case. But it's not like I can't advocate for the positives of that lifestyle as well. When I look down that road of a possible life with TyRoy, I can see all that wonderful stability. But there is freedom there as well, as we have an open relationship, both in being with other people but also in exploring together. That possible life isn't as restrictive as it would seem on the surface either, especially because he may retire soon-ish from the career that currently dictates where he lives and for how long thus opening up the possible lives even more. Also, he doesn't want and cannot have children, so any children we would raise together would be no accident but both well-thought out and part of a time consuming adoption process. I can see that the possibilities of a life with TyRoy would be both stable and free, routine but also open to...spicyness (?). Don't know what to put there. But, at least not right now, it doesn't afford me the ability to just decide for myself where and how and when to live. Right now, I don't believe that I could commit to even the very open commitment that even this relationship with TyRoy would require.
Also, ultimately, I don't think I'm anybody's first and only and penultimate choice in a LOVE relationship. Definately not ex-T, who could never go without a girlfriend and who has always only really wanted a family and right now just wants someone because he is so desperately alone that he knows he will (hell, is) self-destruct (-ing). Not BT, despite the fact that I know he thinks he is in love with me, that I'm the love of his life, that he'll never stop loving me and that he would always chose to be with me if I wanted him no matter what his life situation. I admit that, especially right now, I think he'll probably be the love of my life because I can't imagine ever loving anyone the way that I loved him, but then again, I'm not sure I want to and I'm not sure I can. I'm not pretty sure that LOVE I want won't feel like that love did/does. And despite how I know BT feels and/or thinks he feels, I don't think I'll ever feel like I was his first, only, and penultimate choice. As for TyRoy, well, he's a tough read and, because of the heartache of his very recent divorce, I'm not sure even he knows how he feels right now. I'm probably really the same way- Even if we were each others' first, only, and penultimate choice, I don't think either of us would know it or could be sure of its truth because of what we have just gone through and/or am going through.
Fuck me. I've just spent all this time talking about how deciding your life possibilities is only about romantic entanglements and where those take you and how your life is in part decided by those. MP would say that is part of my problem- that I ONLY see my life possibilities in terms of where a romantic relationship will allow me to go and/or will take me. And that brings up the point of using your romantic relationships to decide your life's possibilities. I think that for many woman for much of history that is how we made our life decisions, if we had the luxury of being able to make decisions at all, whether just because our family told us what to do and we did it or because our class and/or economic status dictated that life was a certain way. Recently, my grandma told me that when she was 13, she had a short story published in a pulp romance magazine. She got $35 for it. (She said that it would have been $50, the real prize but they had to edit it some because of her grammar and spelling, but she was still really proud. $35 was a big deal in 1948, especially for a family as large and as poor as hers was.) But when she showed it to her mom, her mom punished her for writing that filth. She became really ashamed. Grandma told me that my mom and uncles didn't even know about that story. She only told me, I think, because she really wants me to not give up on my dreams of being a published, supported by my work author. On the other hand, while I know she must have had dreams of writing (or she wouldn't have wrote the story) or at least dreams of romance and sex (or she couldn't have written the story), her life was largely decided by marrying my grandfather and having children with him. The times when she did move far from home were to be closer to him when he was in the Army and training. While I'm not sure about this, I would bet that they moved to the city they did because their was work their for him and they could by land in the developing suburbs nearby and it was the closest city to their families. My mom's life decisions were largely lead by her romantic life, or at least by her male romantic partners as well. I think that my mom sees my generation as really the first that could make these life decisions based on what we wanted, not on who we married and what they wanted or what they did, so we should stay on birth control and make the most of our ability to have a Sex and the City lifestyle if we wanted it, or whatever lifestyle we wanted. (Yes, I know those women are quite a bit older than I am but they live in NY. It's different here in the midwest.)
But I know that it can't be that simple for men either, even though I know that men are hemmed in my different things than women. Some men really do have the wealth or the privelege or just the sheer confidence and intelligence to pursue whatever life they want- whatever career they want, whatever love they want, live in whatever part of the world they want to live in, etc. But those men really are few and far between. I'd love to be able to ask MP, and have him be able to tell me honestly, how he decided his life path, what made him chose career over the possibility of having a family, or a regular normal family. Was it just personality or family background or just that he grew to love one thing so much so that he never really found room for the other at the same time? I honestly think that most men get hemmed in by the expectations of their family on their lives, whether that be for them to fulfill (or rebel against) their father's unfilfilled dreams or to carry on a family tradition or to be the first one to really get the family out of that gutter. Sometimes it was just marrying the girl that they knocked up (or marrying the girl that they wanted to be able to have sex with, if either the girl, the boy, or both wouldn't have sex before marriage.) But I look at TyRoy and I wonder how he got to where he is and if he's happy with the life decisions he chosen or how he would change them if he could. While he seems to have been all around athletic, he focused on one sport, to the point that I think he went to Olympic trials and in the past competed against guys who are going to the Olympics. He chose the military and a specific branch, over his parents objections. What made him feel the need to serve his country in that specific branch when he could have gone to any number of prestigious civilian universities and probably had a sucessful career with more stability and probably less risk of death? I know that sometimes people just make choices because they are handed circumstances in life and they really only have one viable option or really only one best option. I understand how those decisions get made. (I also do understand that sometimes those decisions aren't REALLY well, there's only one thing you can do, but that they are usually times when doing the other thing is so incredibly difficult that very very VERY few people take the "un-viable" option.)
Once again, it might all be too late at night to really get this point accross but I want to know how people decide what they are going to use as their way to decide. How do they decide they they are going to use whatever they use (love, money, the easiest way possible, the hardest way possible, the way no one has ever done before) as their barameter for making decisions? Maybe it's just the writer in me, wanting to get into everyone's head. Maybe it's that I want humans to make sense. Maybe it's just that I want to be able to find and define my own barameter thus making it easier for me to assert that I am making the right decisions here.
Post answers if you have them.
For those of you who haven't noticed, I'm an all or nothing kind of a person. I go to extremes. While I am aware of this and I have made some efforts to change it, I must admit that, for the most part, I like that I am like this. I don't always like the results or the situations I put myself in because I take extreme action but I do like this quality in myself. If nothing else, I will at least readily admit to it, to its influences in my life and my decision making, and that it isn't something I really feel like changing at this particular point in my life. Maybe someday. Probably someday. But not today.
I'll be the first to admit that the life course decisions I made last week were made on a sort of whim, during a very VERY stressful time, when I had way too much time alone with music to think about the grand scheme of my life. (Art in general, as it usually has a short period of time in which to make a large statement, tends to exaggerate things so while an artist might advocate radical change in their work, such as leaving someone at the drop of the hat in a song, in real life, even if they did leave that person, they probably put quite a bit more thought and time into it than the song implies. As Ani sings, "I just write about what I should have done/Sing what I wish I could say".) Don't get me wrong here: I'm not changing my mind or my decision. But I'm feeling more philosophical now about how people decide how to decide how to live their lives. The more time that passes since my decision, the more I can see the possibilities of the life paths I'm choosing not to take. I can see the value in each one of them and I also know that lots of people take those life paths everyday. I wonder not only how they decide which path to take, but I wonder how they decide how to decide. (Maybe it's too late for this but I'm gonna try.)
While I've never quite had the courage of my convictions, I've always thought that people should live in extreme ways: follow their hearts and their goals and their loves and put it all on the line. They shouldn't follow some pre-determined path for their lives. They shouldn't be meek little sheep. They shouldn't do something JUST because it is what is expected of them by family or friends or society. All that romantic bullshit crap. And I've gotten into lots of arguments with friends and family members as to why one should follow their heart/goals/dreams/love/whatever or they were just sell-outs and would always be unhappy. I still believe that to be true in many ways. If you have a strong desire to do something and you don't do it or you can't do it, then I do think you will always regret it and, depending on how you deal with that regret in your life, you might make yourself or your family miserable with that regret. Sometimes even just a little desire for something can haunt you until the day you die. Something you wish you'd taken the chance to do or say.
But I also know that loving blindly and blindingly isn't always best. When I look at the possibilities of where choosing a life with BT could take me, there are alot of horrible possibilities down that road. I'm not naive enough nor do I trust enough in his desire to change that I can see it going how I once did---- He pursues an Army or law enforcement career while I finish school and then write or edit or whatever from wherever we end up because of his job choice while raising a couple cute little kids that he dotes on. With him, just as with ex-T really, I see distrust, horrible fighting over money and other women and men, possibly addiction on either side of the relationship, and ultimately mutually assured destruction (or self-destruction, or both.)
But that doesn't mean that I don't want the real big true LOVE. I want to be someone's first and only choice just because they love me so much they can't stand to be without me, not just someone that I can put up with and who can put up with me while we both just work 9-5 to pay the bills and have nothing beyond that. I think every hopeless romantic artist type hates that idea of yuppie suburban hell, or what they think would be hell in any case. But it's not like I can't advocate for the positives of that lifestyle as well. When I look down that road of a possible life with TyRoy, I can see all that wonderful stability. But there is freedom there as well, as we have an open relationship, both in being with other people but also in exploring together. That possible life isn't as restrictive as it would seem on the surface either, especially because he may retire soon-ish from the career that currently dictates where he lives and for how long thus opening up the possible lives even more. Also, he doesn't want and cannot have children, so any children we would raise together would be no accident but both well-thought out and part of a time consuming adoption process. I can see that the possibilities of a life with TyRoy would be both stable and free, routine but also open to...spicyness (?). Don't know what to put there. But, at least not right now, it doesn't afford me the ability to just decide for myself where and how and when to live. Right now, I don't believe that I could commit to even the very open commitment that even this relationship with TyRoy would require.
Also, ultimately, I don't think I'm anybody's first and only and penultimate choice in a LOVE relationship. Definately not ex-T, who could never go without a girlfriend and who has always only really wanted a family and right now just wants someone because he is so desperately alone that he knows he will (hell, is) self-destruct (-ing). Not BT, despite the fact that I know he thinks he is in love with me, that I'm the love of his life, that he'll never stop loving me and that he would always chose to be with me if I wanted him no matter what his life situation. I admit that, especially right now, I think he'll probably be the love of my life because I can't imagine ever loving anyone the way that I loved him, but then again, I'm not sure I want to and I'm not sure I can. I'm not pretty sure that LOVE I want won't feel like that love did/does. And despite how I know BT feels and/or thinks he feels, I don't think I'll ever feel like I was his first, only, and penultimate choice. As for TyRoy, well, he's a tough read and, because of the heartache of his very recent divorce, I'm not sure even he knows how he feels right now. I'm probably really the same way- Even if we were each others' first, only, and penultimate choice, I don't think either of us would know it or could be sure of its truth because of what we have just gone through and/or am going through.
Fuck me. I've just spent all this time talking about how deciding your life possibilities is only about romantic entanglements and where those take you and how your life is in part decided by those. MP would say that is part of my problem- that I ONLY see my life possibilities in terms of where a romantic relationship will allow me to go and/or will take me. And that brings up the point of using your romantic relationships to decide your life's possibilities. I think that for many woman for much of history that is how we made our life decisions, if we had the luxury of being able to make decisions at all, whether just because our family told us what to do and we did it or because our class and/or economic status dictated that life was a certain way. Recently, my grandma told me that when she was 13, she had a short story published in a pulp romance magazine. She got $35 for it. (She said that it would have been $50, the real prize but they had to edit it some because of her grammar and spelling, but she was still really proud. $35 was a big deal in 1948, especially for a family as large and as poor as hers was.) But when she showed it to her mom, her mom punished her for writing that filth. She became really ashamed. Grandma told me that my mom and uncles didn't even know about that story. She only told me, I think, because she really wants me to not give up on my dreams of being a published, supported by my work author. On the other hand, while I know she must have had dreams of writing (or she wouldn't have wrote the story) or at least dreams of romance and sex (or she couldn't have written the story), her life was largely decided by marrying my grandfather and having children with him. The times when she did move far from home were to be closer to him when he was in the Army and training. While I'm not sure about this, I would bet that they moved to the city they did because their was work their for him and they could by land in the developing suburbs nearby and it was the closest city to their families. My mom's life decisions were largely lead by her romantic life, or at least by her male romantic partners as well. I think that my mom sees my generation as really the first that could make these life decisions based on what we wanted, not on who we married and what they wanted or what they did, so we should stay on birth control and make the most of our ability to have a Sex and the City lifestyle if we wanted it, or whatever lifestyle we wanted. (Yes, I know those women are quite a bit older than I am but they live in NY. It's different here in the midwest.)
But I know that it can't be that simple for men either, even though I know that men are hemmed in my different things than women. Some men really do have the wealth or the privelege or just the sheer confidence and intelligence to pursue whatever life they want- whatever career they want, whatever love they want, live in whatever part of the world they want to live in, etc. But those men really are few and far between. I'd love to be able to ask MP, and have him be able to tell me honestly, how he decided his life path, what made him chose career over the possibility of having a family, or a regular normal family. Was it just personality or family background or just that he grew to love one thing so much so that he never really found room for the other at the same time? I honestly think that most men get hemmed in by the expectations of their family on their lives, whether that be for them to fulfill (or rebel against) their father's unfilfilled dreams or to carry on a family tradition or to be the first one to really get the family out of that gutter. Sometimes it was just marrying the girl that they knocked up (or marrying the girl that they wanted to be able to have sex with, if either the girl, the boy, or both wouldn't have sex before marriage.) But I look at TyRoy and I wonder how he got to where he is and if he's happy with the life decisions he chosen or how he would change them if he could. While he seems to have been all around athletic, he focused on one sport, to the point that I think he went to Olympic trials and in the past competed against guys who are going to the Olympics. He chose the military and a specific branch, over his parents objections. What made him feel the need to serve his country in that specific branch when he could have gone to any number of prestigious civilian universities and probably had a sucessful career with more stability and probably less risk of death? I know that sometimes people just make choices because they are handed circumstances in life and they really only have one viable option or really only one best option. I understand how those decisions get made. (I also do understand that sometimes those decisions aren't REALLY well, there's only one thing you can do, but that they are usually times when doing the other thing is so incredibly difficult that very very VERY few people take the "un-viable" option.)
Once again, it might all be too late at night to really get this point accross but I want to know how people decide what they are going to use as their way to decide. How do they decide they they are going to use whatever they use (love, money, the easiest way possible, the hardest way possible, the way no one has ever done before) as their barameter for making decisions? Maybe it's just the writer in me, wanting to get into everyone's head. Maybe it's that I want humans to make sense. Maybe it's just that I want to be able to find and define my own barameter thus making it easier for me to assert that I am making the right decisions here.
Post answers if you have them.
Moving On- Vol. 2
I've been wanting to talk to my grandma about the things that I've decided in the last week or so. My bestfriends tend to always be the men in my life that I'm romantically-linked to and, while the three men that I mentioned in the post are all outwardly supportive, I can't really trust their opinion on this decision because they all want me to make the decision that most benefits them. That's quite understandable. Their biggest critique is just that I shouldn't close myself off to possibilities at happiness just to follow some notion that I should go out on my own and that I MUST make it on my own. (And I'll address my issues with all that stuff in another post, but right now I kinda want to focus on my family.)
I told my mom about it and she is very supportive. She said that she's always thought that I should do something like this and that, while it sucks that this is the impetious behind it, I should still go for it. When I had made the decision a few months ago to try living with TyRoy, she was supportive of ME but she also wanted me to work at getting to a place where I could move out on my own if I ever needed to at any point. She also thought that I should cover my ass with some kind of roommate contract, so he couldn't just kick me out in the street in the middle of the night with nothing and no way to get at my stuff. I understood all of this and she's been a big proponent of stuff like this my whole life. It isn't anything new that started with TyRoy or started after the issues with BT. She went through too much shit with my bio father and money- not having enough to leave, then even after she left both having to pay his back bills because they negatively effected her credit and work a full-time job which only afforded for us to live with my grandparents. Also, while she'll never say it, I think that she regets that she never lived on her own, properly. She moved from her parents' house to living with my bio father after they were married, back to living at my grandparents' until she got married again. That isn't to say that she hasn't always worked or that she doesn't know how to pay the bills (in fact, she takes care of that so much so that my step-father can't really get along when she's gone for more than a week without some prior planning on her part because she has control and knowledge of all the money and bills.) But she's just never lived on her own. While I'm not sure she really feels that I MUST live on my own, all alone, for some set period of time, so that I can assure myself that I can do it, she does think that everyone, especially every woman, should have enough money in his/her power and enough confidence and knowledge to know that s/he can leave whatever situation s/he is in, especially if that is a romantic living situation, at any point that s/he decides.
But telling my mother was both easy and predictable. I knew what she would say and why she would say it. I guess I want to hear my grandmother's opinion because she's had a different life experience, especially with men/husbands and money than my mom has, but also because of the difference her experiences in this past year, since my grandfather's first stroke and especially since his death, might have on her opinion. Alot of it has to do with what I wonder her opinions are on me passing by "opportunities at happiness", as they all like to say, with 3 men who I do love each in their own way and who all do love me, who I could have very different lives with, to live a life on my own, hoping to find that LOVE that also doesn't bankrupt me, to take the financial and career opportunities offered to me on their own merits not based on my partner's life choices, etc, etc, hell- just to fucking prove to myself that I can make it out there, sink or swim, even if I end up finding out that I can't survive on my own, well, at least I'll know. (More on all that later though.) But, while I've talked to people and thought about it and blogged about it in hopes of getting the opinions of my reallife realworld friends who I hope also read my blog and only getting the opinions of online "friends" and the men involved, I haven't called my grandma. In fact, I haven't called her at all, about anything- because I know that I'll feel compelled to talk about this. And why can't I talk about this?, you might ask. Because no one has told her. In fact, no one really told me. I knew something was up when my uncle and my mom were up seeing the doctors because my mom wouldn't tell me anything. So when I went to see my uncle, I finally got drunk enough to ask him and just asked. But I still had to go to my mom and ask for a time frame because my uncle wouldn't really give me that.
Let me explain, if I haven't before---My uncle has the middle-child, peace-keeper attitude, so it's often really difficult for him to come out and tell unpleasant truths to those who need to hear it. Unfortunately, there is usually someone around him, namely my mother or I, who know that truth and are burdened with either hiding it or revealing it. I usually end up revealling it because I have NEVER felt the need to keep peace, in fact I usually feel quite the opposite need, so I can't keep my mouth shut, even if I really try very hard. This is how I "out"-ed my uncle. Both my grandmother and my uncle will gladly tell you that it was me who told my grandmother that my uncle was gay and that was the reason that he and his wife were divorcing. But no one ever feels the need to explain that I tried really hard for several weeks not to reveal what I knew. See, my uncle never really told me that he was gay. I told him. Actually, for years, my boyfriends (ex-J and Sir) and several gay male friends had been telling me that my happily married uncle was really gay. Even before ex-J said something about it, my godfather, who I hadn't seen or spoken to in years, upon finding out during our first reunion conversation that my uncle had married 2 years prior, said, "Huh. I always thought he was gay. Guess not." So, finally, nearly 5 years after this conversation with my godfather, and almost 4 years since I'd come out to my family as bisexual, when my uncle moved out of the house he and his wife owned and started talking about divorce, my uncle and I had the stilted conversation in which I tried to pull out of him why they were separated and he tried to not really tell me the whole truth until finally I said, "So it's just because you're gay, right?" I don't even think he ever said, "I am gay," during the whole conversation, just agreed that was the heart of the matter. At the time I was living with my grandparents, working a 3rd shift data entry job until I could save up enough money to get an apartment in the city closer to the university I'd be attending in the fall. By the time I came home in the mornings, dead tired but unable to sleep the way you are when you work 3rd shift, my grandmother had already been up for an hour and was on her 2nd or 3rd cup of coffee and her 10th cigarette. Every morning, she'd grill me for information about whatever was going on in the family, mostly about my uncle. She was certain that my uncle's wife was having this affair with a fellow (male) co-worker whom she saw quite frequently outside of work. It seemed like every morning I was having to defend my uncle's wife, who really was, all things considered, handling things quite well from everything I understood. She really was, and still is, so much more amazingly graceful about the situation than anyone has a right to expect and than I think anyone gives her credit for, including me really. When my grandmother would say, "Well what is it then?", I would just repeat that Dan was going through things and that I was sure that he would tell her when he was ready to talk about. After what seemed like weeks, she finally said, "He's gay, isn't he? That's why they're getting divorced, isn't it?" I didn't negate what she said, which is probably the nail in my coffin on this issue, but only once again told her that she would have to talk to Dan about all of this. But by not saying that he wasn't gay, I had just told her that he was and thus I had out-ed my uncle. As someone who was moderately well-read on the issue of coming out as LGBT and having done it myself, I knew that what I had done was horrible but there was really no way around it. Except to lie, which, in this case, I didn't want to do. But, as you see, dear reader who I assume is always on MY side, my hand was sorta forced by the fact that my uncle wouldn't tell my grandmother what I already knew and by my grandmother never letting anything like that go.
Thus, I did not want to talk to my grandmother about my big life decisions, in which I will go whichever way the wind takes me after I get my BA and after my uncle passes, whichever comes last, because I would naturally end up revealling that my uncle was told he only had 12-18 months, which my grandmother had not been told.
Then, tonight, after BT's mother called me to make sure that no men in dress uniforms had shown up to tell me that my (still at least for now) husband was dead, I called my mom to confirm just that, which of course they hadn't or she would have told me, and Mom said that Grandma knew. Kinda. See, my family on my grandmother's side seems to have this sixth sense kinda thing, if you believe in that kinda stuff, which I do. It's strongest with my grandmother, but my uncle and my mom and even me alittle I think have it. My mom told me that she was talking to my grandmother the other day and my grandmother said, "Do you think he [meaning my uncle] knows how serious this is?" My mom thinks this was my grandmother's way of asking my mom if my mom thought my uncle knew that he was going to die from this and probably kinda soon-ish. My mom said that she did think he knew, but asked how my grandmother knew that. My grandmother said that she'd been having dreams of my grandfather lately. They weren't the nightmare and/or grief dreams that she'd had after he first died. And while my grandmother never said that my grandfather said it outright in the dreams, my grandmother did tell my mom that she thought he was coming to tell her that my uncle was dying. My grandmother asked if my mother had been dreaming of my grandfather. My mom admitted that she hadn't but that, even before the doctors really told my uncle, my mom knew that it was gravely serious because my uncle was having dreams of my grandfather, mostly of the two of them walking around the cancer clinic where my uncle was being treated, talking. Even if my uncle didn't know that the dreams meant what they did, my mom said that she did. Apparently, I was left to figure it out on my own. Or maybe Grandpa just knows that Grandma and my uncle needed him more than I did. Even if you are astrally projecting, I'm sure that you can only do so much at one time. ;) My mom admitted that she didn't know if Grandma knew that I knew, so here she and I both are thinking that the other doesn't know, so we can't talk to the other because neither of us can keep our mouths shut, when we really both know. The most I'll be doing is possibly giving her the timeline that the doctors gave my uncle, knowledge which is both a blessing and a curse.
So, I plan on talking to my grandmother soon about all this. I'll let you know her opinion on the matter. I'm sure it will be as unique as she is. But, I also have to deal with moving BT's stuff back to the place where he used to live before we got married/before he left for training, dealing with money issues, and dealing with finding another job. Oh, yeah, did I mention that I quit my job Friday night? It's kinda funny story and it will be a bit of a rant later, I'm sure. Needless to say, I probably should have know that I couldn't put up with what I viewed as BS management and found another job and given two weeks, instead of quitting the way I did, but I did it and I have to own up to the fact that, other than the fact that I hate not having a job/dependable source of income, I only regret not being a bigger bitch in how I quit. Hell, anything worth doing is worth overdoing. Wish me luck this week, kiddoes, and I wish you the best as well.
I told my mom about it and she is very supportive. She said that she's always thought that I should do something like this and that, while it sucks that this is the impetious behind it, I should still go for it. When I had made the decision a few months ago to try living with TyRoy, she was supportive of ME but she also wanted me to work at getting to a place where I could move out on my own if I ever needed to at any point. She also thought that I should cover my ass with some kind of roommate contract, so he couldn't just kick me out in the street in the middle of the night with nothing and no way to get at my stuff. I understood all of this and she's been a big proponent of stuff like this my whole life. It isn't anything new that started with TyRoy or started after the issues with BT. She went through too much shit with my bio father and money- not having enough to leave, then even after she left both having to pay his back bills because they negatively effected her credit and work a full-time job which only afforded for us to live with my grandparents. Also, while she'll never say it, I think that she regets that she never lived on her own, properly. She moved from her parents' house to living with my bio father after they were married, back to living at my grandparents' until she got married again. That isn't to say that she hasn't always worked or that she doesn't know how to pay the bills (in fact, she takes care of that so much so that my step-father can't really get along when she's gone for more than a week without some prior planning on her part because she has control and knowledge of all the money and bills.) But she's just never lived on her own. While I'm not sure she really feels that I MUST live on my own, all alone, for some set period of time, so that I can assure myself that I can do it, she does think that everyone, especially every woman, should have enough money in his/her power and enough confidence and knowledge to know that s/he can leave whatever situation s/he is in, especially if that is a romantic living situation, at any point that s/he decides.
But telling my mother was both easy and predictable. I knew what she would say and why she would say it. I guess I want to hear my grandmother's opinion because she's had a different life experience, especially with men/husbands and money than my mom has, but also because of the difference her experiences in this past year, since my grandfather's first stroke and especially since his death, might have on her opinion. Alot of it has to do with what I wonder her opinions are on me passing by "opportunities at happiness", as they all like to say, with 3 men who I do love each in their own way and who all do love me, who I could have very different lives with, to live a life on my own, hoping to find that LOVE that also doesn't bankrupt me, to take the financial and career opportunities offered to me on their own merits not based on my partner's life choices, etc, etc, hell- just to fucking prove to myself that I can make it out there, sink or swim, even if I end up finding out that I can't survive on my own, well, at least I'll know. (More on all that later though.) But, while I've talked to people and thought about it and blogged about it in hopes of getting the opinions of my reallife realworld friends who I hope also read my blog and only getting the opinions of online "friends" and the men involved, I haven't called my grandma. In fact, I haven't called her at all, about anything- because I know that I'll feel compelled to talk about this. And why can't I talk about this?, you might ask. Because no one has told her. In fact, no one really told me. I knew something was up when my uncle and my mom were up seeing the doctors because my mom wouldn't tell me anything. So when I went to see my uncle, I finally got drunk enough to ask him and just asked. But I still had to go to my mom and ask for a time frame because my uncle wouldn't really give me that.
Let me explain, if I haven't before---My uncle has the middle-child, peace-keeper attitude, so it's often really difficult for him to come out and tell unpleasant truths to those who need to hear it. Unfortunately, there is usually someone around him, namely my mother or I, who know that truth and are burdened with either hiding it or revealing it. I usually end up revealling it because I have NEVER felt the need to keep peace, in fact I usually feel quite the opposite need, so I can't keep my mouth shut, even if I really try very hard. This is how I "out"-ed my uncle. Both my grandmother and my uncle will gladly tell you that it was me who told my grandmother that my uncle was gay and that was the reason that he and his wife were divorcing. But no one ever feels the need to explain that I tried really hard for several weeks not to reveal what I knew. See, my uncle never really told me that he was gay. I told him. Actually, for years, my boyfriends (ex-J and Sir) and several gay male friends had been telling me that my happily married uncle was really gay. Even before ex-J said something about it, my godfather, who I hadn't seen or spoken to in years, upon finding out during our first reunion conversation that my uncle had married 2 years prior, said, "Huh. I always thought he was gay. Guess not." So, finally, nearly 5 years after this conversation with my godfather, and almost 4 years since I'd come out to my family as bisexual, when my uncle moved out of the house he and his wife owned and started talking about divorce, my uncle and I had the stilted conversation in which I tried to pull out of him why they were separated and he tried to not really tell me the whole truth until finally I said, "So it's just because you're gay, right?" I don't even think he ever said, "I am gay," during the whole conversation, just agreed that was the heart of the matter. At the time I was living with my grandparents, working a 3rd shift data entry job until I could save up enough money to get an apartment in the city closer to the university I'd be attending in the fall. By the time I came home in the mornings, dead tired but unable to sleep the way you are when you work 3rd shift, my grandmother had already been up for an hour and was on her 2nd or 3rd cup of coffee and her 10th cigarette. Every morning, she'd grill me for information about whatever was going on in the family, mostly about my uncle. She was certain that my uncle's wife was having this affair with a fellow (male) co-worker whom she saw quite frequently outside of work. It seemed like every morning I was having to defend my uncle's wife, who really was, all things considered, handling things quite well from everything I understood. She really was, and still is, so much more amazingly graceful about the situation than anyone has a right to expect and than I think anyone gives her credit for, including me really. When my grandmother would say, "Well what is it then?", I would just repeat that Dan was going through things and that I was sure that he would tell her when he was ready to talk about. After what seemed like weeks, she finally said, "He's gay, isn't he? That's why they're getting divorced, isn't it?" I didn't negate what she said, which is probably the nail in my coffin on this issue, but only once again told her that she would have to talk to Dan about all of this. But by not saying that he wasn't gay, I had just told her that he was and thus I had out-ed my uncle. As someone who was moderately well-read on the issue of coming out as LGBT and having done it myself, I knew that what I had done was horrible but there was really no way around it. Except to lie, which, in this case, I didn't want to do. But, as you see, dear reader who I assume is always on MY side, my hand was sorta forced by the fact that my uncle wouldn't tell my grandmother what I already knew and by my grandmother never letting anything like that go.
Thus, I did not want to talk to my grandmother about my big life decisions, in which I will go whichever way the wind takes me after I get my BA and after my uncle passes, whichever comes last, because I would naturally end up revealling that my uncle was told he only had 12-18 months, which my grandmother had not been told.
Then, tonight, after BT's mother called me to make sure that no men in dress uniforms had shown up to tell me that my (still at least for now) husband was dead, I called my mom to confirm just that, which of course they hadn't or she would have told me, and Mom said that Grandma knew. Kinda. See, my family on my grandmother's side seems to have this sixth sense kinda thing, if you believe in that kinda stuff, which I do. It's strongest with my grandmother, but my uncle and my mom and even me alittle I think have it. My mom told me that she was talking to my grandmother the other day and my grandmother said, "Do you think he [meaning my uncle] knows how serious this is?" My mom thinks this was my grandmother's way of asking my mom if my mom thought my uncle knew that he was going to die from this and probably kinda soon-ish. My mom said that she did think he knew, but asked how my grandmother knew that. My grandmother said that she'd been having dreams of my grandfather lately. They weren't the nightmare and/or grief dreams that she'd had after he first died. And while my grandmother never said that my grandfather said it outright in the dreams, my grandmother did tell my mom that she thought he was coming to tell her that my uncle was dying. My grandmother asked if my mother had been dreaming of my grandfather. My mom admitted that she hadn't but that, even before the doctors really told my uncle, my mom knew that it was gravely serious because my uncle was having dreams of my grandfather, mostly of the two of them walking around the cancer clinic where my uncle was being treated, talking. Even if my uncle didn't know that the dreams meant what they did, my mom said that she did. Apparently, I was left to figure it out on my own. Or maybe Grandpa just knows that Grandma and my uncle needed him more than I did. Even if you are astrally projecting, I'm sure that you can only do so much at one time. ;) My mom admitted that she didn't know if Grandma knew that I knew, so here she and I both are thinking that the other doesn't know, so we can't talk to the other because neither of us can keep our mouths shut, when we really both know. The most I'll be doing is possibly giving her the timeline that the doctors gave my uncle, knowledge which is both a blessing and a curse.
So, I plan on talking to my grandmother soon about all this. I'll let you know her opinion on the matter. I'm sure it will be as unique as she is. But, I also have to deal with moving BT's stuff back to the place where he used to live before we got married/before he left for training, dealing with money issues, and dealing with finding another job. Oh, yeah, did I mention that I quit my job Friday night? It's kinda funny story and it will be a bit of a rant later, I'm sure. Needless to say, I probably should have know that I couldn't put up with what I viewed as BS management and found another job and given two weeks, instead of quitting the way I did, but I did it and I have to own up to the fact that, other than the fact that I hate not having a job/dependable source of income, I only regret not being a bigger bitch in how I quit. Hell, anything worth doing is worth overdoing. Wish me luck this week, kiddoes, and I wish you the best as well.
Grief Calls Us to the Things of This World by Sherman Alexie
This was the poem of the week on another blog a while ago. Fuck, I just realized that I hope I didn't post this before. Oh, well. If I did, then you should all read it again because that's how fucking amazing it is and how much it speaks to me. I have tons of moments like this with my Grandfather now. There are more moments like this the longer he's been gone, I guess because we tend to forget and then we remember that we've forgotten and we feel kinda terrible. But I guess at least we are remember that we've forgotten rather than never remembering at all. And I hope that Ms. Kee sees this because 1)because of her father and 2) because it's by the writer of The Art of Fancy Dancing.
Grief Calls Us to the Things of This World
by Sherman Alexie
The eyes open to a blue telephone
In the bathroom of this five-star hotel.
I wonder whom I should call? A plumber,
Proctologist, urologist, or priest?
Who is most among us and most deserves
The first call? I choose my father because
He's astounded by bathroom telephones.
I dial home. My mother answers. "Hey, Ma,
I say, "Can I talk to Poppa?" She gasps,
And then I remember that my father
Has been dead for nearly a year. "Shit, Mom,"I say.
"I forgot he’s dead. I’m sorry—
How did I forget?" "It’s okay," she says.
"I made him a cup of instant coffee
This morning and left it on the table—
Like I have for, what, twenty-seven years—
And I didn't realize my mistake
Until this afternoon." My mother laughs
At the angels who wait for us to pause
During the most ordinary of days
And sing our praise to forgetfulness
Before they slap our souls with their cold wings.
Those angels burden and unbalance us.
Those fucking angels ride us piggyback.
Grief Calls Us to the Things of This World
by Sherman Alexie
The eyes open to a blue telephone
In the bathroom of this five-star hotel.
I wonder whom I should call? A plumber,
Proctologist, urologist, or priest?
Who is most among us and most deserves
The first call? I choose my father because
He's astounded by bathroom telephones.
I dial home. My mother answers. "Hey, Ma,
I say, "Can I talk to Poppa?" She gasps,
And then I remember that my father
Has been dead for nearly a year. "Shit, Mom,"I say.
"I forgot he’s dead. I’m sorry—
How did I forget?" "It’s okay," she says.
"I made him a cup of instant coffee
This morning and left it on the table—
Like I have for, what, twenty-seven years—
And I didn't realize my mistake
Until this afternoon." My mother laughs
At the angels who wait for us to pause
During the most ordinary of days
And sing our praise to forgetfulness
Before they slap our souls with their cold wings.
Those angels burden and unbalance us.
Those fucking angels ride us piggyback.
Thursday, July 10, 2008
Moving On- Vol 1
I'm Moving On- Rascal Flats
I've dealt with my ghosts
and I've faced all my demons
Finally content with a past I regret
I've found you find strength in your moments of weakness
For once I'm at peace with myself
I have been burdened with blame,
trapped in the past for too long
I'm movin' on
I've lived in this place and I know all the faces
Each one is different but they're always the same
They mean me no harm but it's time that I face it
They'll never allow me to change
But I never dreamed home would end up where I don't belong
I'm movin' on
I'm movin' on
At last I can see life has been patiently waiting for me
And I know there's no guarantees, but I'm not alone
There comes a time in everyone's life
When all you can see are the years passing by
And I have made up my mind that those days aren't gone
I sold what I could and packed what I couldn't
Stopped to fill up on my way out of town
I've loved like I should but lived like I shouldn't
I had to lose everything to find out
Maybe forgiveness will find me somewhere down this road
I'm movin' on
I'm movin' on
I'm movin' on
A couple years ago, I was in the car with my mom when this song came on. I told her that it always made me cry because it made me think about how I always felt I had to leave to really find myself, though I never really had done it. My mom said that it made her cry because it made her thing about my uncle and how he had to leave "home" to really be the person that he needed to become. As the years have gone by, that has become more and more true for my uncle. Because of strange job circumstances, he moved around a bit and ended up settling in this po-dunk town where his (at the time) brand-new boyfriend had grown up and was also moving back to. While his boyfriend has moved a couple hours away for a much better job, my uncle decided to move even further into the boonies, living in a (very nice) mobile home on alot of acres of land, his portion of which he rents from his neighbors (the female of the couple is a co-worker). While I never would have thought when I was growing up that he would end up where he has, I can completely understand why he is so happy there. I also think that he is more himself there than he has ever been anyplace else that he's ever lived. I think that he found what so very few people find in their lives, a place where he really feels like he belongs.
When someone is seriously ill or dies, you start to think about your own mortality. We as a society seem to deal with illness and death so little and also so.... so much at a distance that it is hard to really keep that in mind. When my uncle was first diagnosed with the sarcoma last May, I remember talking to Sir about all the things that I wanted to do with my life that I never got to do, things that I always thought I had time for but that I might not. (My uncle is young, only 11 years older than me. He'll probably die before he turns 40.) Sir encouraged me to make a list (I'm a big list maker) and to do those things. But, as these things usually go, I quickly forgot and all those things fell by the wayside. Also, shortly thereafter my grandfather had a stroke and I spent my summer with my grandparents. But now I'm faced with it again. When my grandfather died, well, while I wish he hadn't, he'd also had a full life and, as they say, "it was his time." But it isn't my uncle's time and I'm damn sure that I'm going to try to make up for the time that he is going to miss out on. So, I made some decisions about what I want to do and what I don't want to do.
The first thing is something that I said to Sir and that he was going to go with me to do. Then BT was going to go. Now I don't know who will go with me. Hell, it might be more fulfilling to go alone. But I want to see my father. My biological father. I know that I want to see him. I don't know yet if I want to confront him or actually talk to him or anything but I know that I at least want to see him. I do know, however, that, even if I did confront him, I don't think that there would ever be a good enough answer for what he's done/not done. But I'm not sure that matters as much as just never having any answer at all.
Another thing I realized is that I am tired of being the girl that everyone goes to when they have no one left to go to. When I was a teenager, I was the friend that everyone called when they were in trouble. Don't get me wrong, we'd hang out but usually I'd initiate it and it would be low key (shopping at the mall, meal out, lay out by the pool), but it wasn't like these friends invited me to any of the parties that they went to with all the cool kids. But they certainly called me when their boyfriends dumped them, or their boyfriend locked them out of their own apartment while their baby was still inside with the boyfriend, or when they needed someone to drive them home from the abortion they got because their boyfriend was abusive. This trend seemed to continue with my male romantic relationships as well. Ex-J never had a girlfriend or even kissed a girl and he was 19. Granted, I'm not saying that I didn't get something out of it, mostly a very easily manipulatable boyfriend, but I'm sure I wouldn't have been his first choice either. BT had a girlfriend for over a year but they broke up just a month or so before we met. They were going to get married before he left on the deployment at first, until he decided he couldn't stand her and wanted out of the relationship without the guilt of doing the dumping. Then, low and behold, he meets me, we fall madly in love, and get married right before he leaves. Two nights ago, Ex-T, my first real boyfriend who I'm still friends with, texts me and asks me to move back to where he lives and marry him (once my divorce is final). Of course, his last girlfriend just left for jail for 3 months because of a very old drunk driving accident and some guy he owes money to is going to kill him if he doesn't pay up, so I'm sure he's re-evaluating his life as well. BUT I DON"T WANT TO BE THAT GIRL!!!!!!!!!!! I don't want to be someone's project, someone's "she'll be good enough when she changes into X". I don't want to be someone's 2nd, 3rd, or last choice. And if that means sex and friendship but no romantic relationships, well, I guess that is what it means. The last time I did get to talk to MP (after a very long absense and only because I was in a real bind) he mentioned that the same situation I was in would keep happening while I was still defining my life by the men in it. (I'm sure that the same would also hold true for a female romantic relationship.) And I know that is a big reason why he isn't currently active in my life. So, big decision 2 is to try to break that cycle.
Another big decision I've made is that I want to, quite literally, move on. Let me go back a second. When I was growing up, I idolized my uncle and I thought he was the HEIGHT of cosmopolitan style. He always had mid-priced, newish cars in good condition. He was the first one of us to go to college. He had a good paying job. He listened to good pop and college rock music. And he shopped at Jeans West, which was the epitomy of high mall fashion at the time. (Think The Fashionable Male in Mallrats.) So I always thought that he would get out of the suburb that my grandparents built their house in and where we all grew up. But as I grew older, I noticed that he never really left. Once he got married, they moved about 15 minutes away from my grandparents' house but they were still in the same suburb. One night while talking on the phone, my uncle told me that he had resigned himself to the fact that he was stay there in that suburb until my grandparents both passed (so that he could be sure they were well taken care of) and then he would start his real life. All I could think of was this song:
Everywhere- Tim McGraw
We were born in this little town
Growin' up I was counting down
Every single day till we made our get-away
But you said you could never see yourself
Trying to make a life anywhere else
This would be your home and I was on my own
But ever since we said good-bye
I've been out here on the wind
Baby you would be surprised
All the places you have been
I've seen you in
Albuquerque waitin' out a blizzard
Arizona dancin' 'cross the desert
Watchin' the sun set in Monterey
Girl I swear just the other day you were
Down in Georgia pickin' them peaches
In Carolina barefoot on the beaches
No matter where you choose to be
In my heart I'll always see you
Everywhere
Now days
When I'm passin' through
The conversation always turns to you
I hear you're doin' fine
Livin' out by the county line
Got a man that's home every night
a couple of kids and the kind of life
That you want to lead
Guess you could say the same for me
Cause you and I made our choices
All those years ago
Still I know I'll hear your voice
And see you down the road
Maybe in Oklahoma drivin' 'cross the prairie
In Dallas, Texas isn't that where we
Always said we would like to try
Never did so maybe that's why you're on
Every highway just beyond the high-beams
Right beside me in all of my sweet dreams
No matter where you choose to be
In my heart I'll always see you in
Albuquerque waitin' out a blizzard
Arizona dancin' 'cross the desert
Watchin' the sun set in Monterey
Girl I swear just the other day you were
Down in Georgia pickin' them peaches
In Carolina barefoot on the beaches
No matter where you choose to be
In my heart I'll always see you
Everywhere
At that point in my life, I was certain that I was going to be the next (female) Kevin Smith, making my own indie movies. I was going to go to college up in Chicago at an art school. But things didn't quite turn out the way either my uncle or I planned. He moved sooner than he planned and I haven't left the Midwest yet. YET. That's part of the decision. I have a year left of school to get my BA. And my uncle has 12-18 months. After he's gone, I'm gone too. On my own. I have a feeling that BT and/or Ex-T would gladly follow me wherever I wanted to go. And TyRoy will probably be leaving at that same time for another military posting or to get a further degree to get a higher rank. But I seriously doubt that I'll be going with any of them. I want to see places, LIVE places, move places where I don't really know anyone all by myself. And I want to see all the places that my uncle didn't get to, even if they weren't places that he particularly wanted to see. Until then, I'm going to work my ass off to finish school, save money for all this moving, and spend as much time as I can with my family.
I've dealt with my ghosts
and I've faced all my demons
Finally content with a past I regret
I've found you find strength in your moments of weakness
For once I'm at peace with myself
I have been burdened with blame,
trapped in the past for too long
I'm movin' on
I've lived in this place and I know all the faces
Each one is different but they're always the same
They mean me no harm but it's time that I face it
They'll never allow me to change
But I never dreamed home would end up where I don't belong
I'm movin' on
I'm movin' on
At last I can see life has been patiently waiting for me
And I know there's no guarantees, but I'm not alone
There comes a time in everyone's life
When all you can see are the years passing by
And I have made up my mind that those days aren't gone
I sold what I could and packed what I couldn't
Stopped to fill up on my way out of town
I've loved like I should but lived like I shouldn't
I had to lose everything to find out
Maybe forgiveness will find me somewhere down this road
I'm movin' on
I'm movin' on
I'm movin' on
A couple years ago, I was in the car with my mom when this song came on. I told her that it always made me cry because it made me think about how I always felt I had to leave to really find myself, though I never really had done it. My mom said that it made her cry because it made her thing about my uncle and how he had to leave "home" to really be the person that he needed to become. As the years have gone by, that has become more and more true for my uncle. Because of strange job circumstances, he moved around a bit and ended up settling in this po-dunk town where his (at the time) brand-new boyfriend had grown up and was also moving back to. While his boyfriend has moved a couple hours away for a much better job, my uncle decided to move even further into the boonies, living in a (very nice) mobile home on alot of acres of land, his portion of which he rents from his neighbors (the female of the couple is a co-worker). While I never would have thought when I was growing up that he would end up where he has, I can completely understand why he is so happy there. I also think that he is more himself there than he has ever been anyplace else that he's ever lived. I think that he found what so very few people find in their lives, a place where he really feels like he belongs.
When someone is seriously ill or dies, you start to think about your own mortality. We as a society seem to deal with illness and death so little and also so.... so much at a distance that it is hard to really keep that in mind. When my uncle was first diagnosed with the sarcoma last May, I remember talking to Sir about all the things that I wanted to do with my life that I never got to do, things that I always thought I had time for but that I might not. (My uncle is young, only 11 years older than me. He'll probably die before he turns 40.) Sir encouraged me to make a list (I'm a big list maker) and to do those things. But, as these things usually go, I quickly forgot and all those things fell by the wayside. Also, shortly thereafter my grandfather had a stroke and I spent my summer with my grandparents. But now I'm faced with it again. When my grandfather died, well, while I wish he hadn't, he'd also had a full life and, as they say, "it was his time." But it isn't my uncle's time and I'm damn sure that I'm going to try to make up for the time that he is going to miss out on. So, I made some decisions about what I want to do and what I don't want to do.
The first thing is something that I said to Sir and that he was going to go with me to do. Then BT was going to go. Now I don't know who will go with me. Hell, it might be more fulfilling to go alone. But I want to see my father. My biological father. I know that I want to see him. I don't know yet if I want to confront him or actually talk to him or anything but I know that I at least want to see him. I do know, however, that, even if I did confront him, I don't think that there would ever be a good enough answer for what he's done/not done. But I'm not sure that matters as much as just never having any answer at all.
Another thing I realized is that I am tired of being the girl that everyone goes to when they have no one left to go to. When I was a teenager, I was the friend that everyone called when they were in trouble. Don't get me wrong, we'd hang out but usually I'd initiate it and it would be low key (shopping at the mall, meal out, lay out by the pool), but it wasn't like these friends invited me to any of the parties that they went to with all the cool kids. But they certainly called me when their boyfriends dumped them, or their boyfriend locked them out of their own apartment while their baby was still inside with the boyfriend, or when they needed someone to drive them home from the abortion they got because their boyfriend was abusive. This trend seemed to continue with my male romantic relationships as well. Ex-J never had a girlfriend or even kissed a girl and he was 19. Granted, I'm not saying that I didn't get something out of it, mostly a very easily manipulatable boyfriend, but I'm sure I wouldn't have been his first choice either. BT had a girlfriend for over a year but they broke up just a month or so before we met. They were going to get married before he left on the deployment at first, until he decided he couldn't stand her and wanted out of the relationship without the guilt of doing the dumping. Then, low and behold, he meets me, we fall madly in love, and get married right before he leaves. Two nights ago, Ex-T, my first real boyfriend who I'm still friends with, texts me and asks me to move back to where he lives and marry him (once my divorce is final). Of course, his last girlfriend just left for jail for 3 months because of a very old drunk driving accident and some guy he owes money to is going to kill him if he doesn't pay up, so I'm sure he's re-evaluating his life as well. BUT I DON"T WANT TO BE THAT GIRL!!!!!!!!!!! I don't want to be someone's project, someone's "she'll be good enough when she changes into X". I don't want to be someone's 2nd, 3rd, or last choice. And if that means sex and friendship but no romantic relationships, well, I guess that is what it means. The last time I did get to talk to MP (after a very long absense and only because I was in a real bind) he mentioned that the same situation I was in would keep happening while I was still defining my life by the men in it. (I'm sure that the same would also hold true for a female romantic relationship.) And I know that is a big reason why he isn't currently active in my life. So, big decision 2 is to try to break that cycle.
Another big decision I've made is that I want to, quite literally, move on. Let me go back a second. When I was growing up, I idolized my uncle and I thought he was the HEIGHT of cosmopolitan style. He always had mid-priced, newish cars in good condition. He was the first one of us to go to college. He had a good paying job. He listened to good pop and college rock music. And he shopped at Jeans West, which was the epitomy of high mall fashion at the time. (Think The Fashionable Male in Mallrats.) So I always thought that he would get out of the suburb that my grandparents built their house in and where we all grew up. But as I grew older, I noticed that he never really left. Once he got married, they moved about 15 minutes away from my grandparents' house but they were still in the same suburb. One night while talking on the phone, my uncle told me that he had resigned himself to the fact that he was stay there in that suburb until my grandparents both passed (so that he could be sure they were well taken care of) and then he would start his real life. All I could think of was this song:
Everywhere- Tim McGraw
We were born in this little town
Growin' up I was counting down
Every single day till we made our get-away
But you said you could never see yourself
Trying to make a life anywhere else
This would be your home and I was on my own
But ever since we said good-bye
I've been out here on the wind
Baby you would be surprised
All the places you have been
I've seen you in
Albuquerque waitin' out a blizzard
Arizona dancin' 'cross the desert
Watchin' the sun set in Monterey
Girl I swear just the other day you were
Down in Georgia pickin' them peaches
In Carolina barefoot on the beaches
No matter where you choose to be
In my heart I'll always see you
Everywhere
Now days
When I'm passin' through
The conversation always turns to you
I hear you're doin' fine
Livin' out by the county line
Got a man that's home every night
a couple of kids and the kind of life
That you want to lead
Guess you could say the same for me
Cause you and I made our choices
All those years ago
Still I know I'll hear your voice
And see you down the road
Maybe in Oklahoma drivin' 'cross the prairie
In Dallas, Texas isn't that where we
Always said we would like to try
Never did so maybe that's why you're on
Every highway just beyond the high-beams
Right beside me in all of my sweet dreams
No matter where you choose to be
In my heart I'll always see you in
Albuquerque waitin' out a blizzard
Arizona dancin' 'cross the desert
Watchin' the sun set in Monterey
Girl I swear just the other day you were
Down in Georgia pickin' them peaches
In Carolina barefoot on the beaches
No matter where you choose to be
In my heart I'll always see you
Everywhere
At that point in my life, I was certain that I was going to be the next (female) Kevin Smith, making my own indie movies. I was going to go to college up in Chicago at an art school. But things didn't quite turn out the way either my uncle or I planned. He moved sooner than he planned and I haven't left the Midwest yet. YET. That's part of the decision. I have a year left of school to get my BA. And my uncle has 12-18 months. After he's gone, I'm gone too. On my own. I have a feeling that BT and/or Ex-T would gladly follow me wherever I wanted to go. And TyRoy will probably be leaving at that same time for another military posting or to get a further degree to get a higher rank. But I seriously doubt that I'll be going with any of them. I want to see places, LIVE places, move places where I don't really know anyone all by myself. And I want to see all the places that my uncle didn't get to, even if they weren't places that he particularly wanted to see. Until then, I'm going to work my ass off to finish school, save money for all this moving, and spend as much time as I can with my family.
Wednesday, July 09, 2008
Well I Feel Like An Ass
Damn.
All the bitching that I did about all those things that seem so petty right now.
My uncle is probably going to die. And he's probably going to die soon.
Not soon like tomorrow. But soon like less than a year. I don't have numbers or dates. Just that the doctors tell him that he's not a good candidate for more surgery or any chemo.
I don't know what to do.
PS---- MP, if you are out there, consider this the bat signal. Please come out.
All the bitching that I did about all those things that seem so petty right now.
My uncle is probably going to die. And he's probably going to die soon.
Not soon like tomorrow. But soon like less than a year. I don't have numbers or dates. Just that the doctors tell him that he's not a good candidate for more surgery or any chemo.
I don't know what to do.
PS---- MP, if you are out there, consider this the bat signal. Please come out.
Tuesday, July 08, 2008
Medical Bills
Medical bills suck ass. Just when you think that you are done with one of them, the damn hospital gives the money back to the insurance company because the insurance company paid them too much. Then, when you call to find out how much you really owe, first they tell you that you can't go by the cheaper monthly payment that you were going by. Then, the next time that you call, they tell you really only a tenth of what they told you the last time. Finally, you go online to look it up yourself and guess what??? Not only do you owe the big amount but you also the owe the little amount too! FUCK! I'm never going to get out from under these bills! And, in about 2 months time, I get to go back to that same fucking health insurance company that is currently dicking me around because I lose the GREAT health insurance that I currently have being married to a deployed soldier and I have to go back to the shitty plan that my college offers. Can I just move to Canada??? Or Europe? Maybe I'll meet that ONE British guy or girl who just LOVES women with American accents. I just hope that he isn't a serial killer like Hugh Jackman in Scoop.
Sunday, July 06, 2008
Another Try- Josh Turner featuring Trisha Yearwood
I heard this on my way home from not-working tonight. Mostly, everytime I hear it, it really makes me want to work harder on making my relationship with TyRoy work. And, if for some reason it doesn't work, it makes me want to make my relationship after this one work, as best as I can. But after the "fight that wasn't a fight" over the last couple days, I thought that the italized lines might be important for TyRoy to hear.
Another Try- Josh Turner (featuring Trisha Yearwood)
All the things I felt and never shared
All the times that she was lonely with me there
The tears I wouldn't let fall from my eyes
And how I let her go without a fight
Chorus: The reasons I'm alone I know by heart
But I don't want to spend forever in the dark
I swear next time I'll hang on for dear life
If love ever gives me another try
There's no changing things that we regret
The best that we can hope for is one more chance
If the hands of time could just move in reverse
I wouldn't make the same mistake again with her
Chorus: The reasons I'm alone I know by heart
But I don't want to spend forever in the dark
I swear next time I'll hang on for dear life
If love ever gives me another try
The reasons I'm alone I know by heart
But I don't want to spend forever in the dark
I swear next time I'll hang on for dear life
If love ever gives me another try
http://youtube.com/watch?v=XZxd-xV4pbE
I hope that this also reaches BT. I hope that the next time he falls in love, that it is is forever and that he makes the most of it. I do wish him the best, always.
Another Try- Josh Turner (featuring Trisha Yearwood)
All the things I felt and never shared
All the times that she was lonely with me there
The tears I wouldn't let fall from my eyes
And how I let her go without a fight
Chorus: The reasons I'm alone I know by heart
But I don't want to spend forever in the dark
I swear next time I'll hang on for dear life
If love ever gives me another try
There's no changing things that we regret
The best that we can hope for is one more chance
If the hands of time could just move in reverse
I wouldn't make the same mistake again with her
Chorus: The reasons I'm alone I know by heart
But I don't want to spend forever in the dark
I swear next time I'll hang on for dear life
If love ever gives me another try
The reasons I'm alone I know by heart
But I don't want to spend forever in the dark
I swear next time I'll hang on for dear life
If love ever gives me another try
http://youtube.com/watch?v=XZxd-xV4pbE
I hope that this also reaches BT. I hope that the next time he falls in love, that it is is forever and that he makes the most of it. I do wish him the best, always.
From June 11 To July 6
I guess I don't even know where to start right now. It's been quite a while since I've blogged and my life has been a weird series of ups and downs, some that I expected and many that I didn't.
One of the hardest things but also the thing that I'm most ambivalent about is the reoccurance of my uncle's cancer. He was diagnosed with a rare type of sarcoma (tumor) May 2007 and had radical surgery June 2007. My mom and my uncle's boyfriend went with him while he got his surgery and recovered. (He went up to the Mayo Clinic in MN, which is about 10 hours away from where we live because they have the best program for that type of cancer.) At the time, I stayed with my grandparents because my grandfather had just had a stroke and I was the only one able to really stay with them, so I was useless to my uncle but I was useful to my grandparents. They thought they got all the tumor but apparently not because he had to get another surgery THIS June and then radiation (which is tiring but not too bad). But he was having a great deal of pain in his back. (The original sarcoma was in his chest so they expected it to say in that area. Apparently they were wrong.) The pain in his chest was from another sarcoma. Now they want to do chemo. Nothing has been decided yet but....I just feel useless. All I want to do when I think about it is cry, so I'm probably not much use in talking to him. Everyone in my family went to see him last weekend but I couldn't go because I had bronchitis and I didn't want to spread it to all the other cancer patients there. I'm hoping to get to visit him sometime this week when I'm not working but.... He's so young!!!!!!!!!!!!!! How can he be so sick!
My health isn't going so great either. Just after my birthday, I got a really REALLY bad stomach bug. I had to go to the ER because I couldn't stop puking and everytime I puked, I shit too, so I was pretty sure I was getting dehydrated. After the stomach flu stopped, I got the head cold that TyRoy and my mom both had because my immune system was weak. That turned into bronchitis. Which was a lot of fun. At least I have to give props to TyRoy because he didn't turn away from he gross stuff and he took care of me as best as he could. While I know that BT doesn't like him (and BT would have done an even more subservient job), TyRoy really did take care of me.
The other health problem is even more gross and I'm not even sure I want to talk about it here, but maybe it will help others feel not so bad about it when it happens to them. Well, as most of you know, I got my gallbladder taken out in September 2007. I was really happy with that for a while. I didn't have the pain or the thowing up or the diarehea. But what your gallbladder does is store extra bile, which helps to break down extra fat that your liver can't handle all by itself. I was warned by the doctors and by other people that had their gallbladders taken out that for 3-6 months I would experience pretty quick diarehea when I ate really greasy or really really rich food. Well, I didn't have too much trouble those first 6 months. But in the last 3 months, well, I can't eat anything without getting rid off it right away. Even when I don't eat ANYTHING, I sometimes get rid of something. Last Tuesday was the final straw. I was running errands and I almost didn't make it to the bathroom at my first stop (a bookstore). But I did make it and I thought it was over. All done. NOPE!!!!!!!!!!! Twenty minutes later, I'm in the middle of the local Walmart and it hits me that I realize I have to go to the bathroom. RIGHT NOW. Needless to say, I didn't make it and I shit myself in the middle of the Walmart store. I went to the bathroom and cleaned up as best as I could before I left the store. It was the most embarrassing moment I can remember ever. Luckily, I had my yearly physical Thursday and my doctor said that it was a lack of fiber and that I'm going to have to take fiber supplements for the rest of my life and eat lots of fruits and veggies for the rest of my life. Now, I don't know about you but I always thought that fiber supplements were for people who were constipated and that too many fruits and veggies would lead to diarrehea. But I guess not. I guess I'll just listen to my doctor for now. If it doesn't work, I'll go back to their morning walk-in clinic and crap myself there.
Then, there is the divorce. I filed the papers the day before my birthday and mailed them ON my birthday. Yes, another lovely birthday for Ava. I got the papers in the mail earlier this month saying that our court date is set for August 20th. It's pretty amicable and everything was agreed on before I filled out the papers so it should be pretty easy. The saddest part of it all is that I still love him very much and I know that he still loves me very much, even though we are trying to move on with our lives. I'm living with TyRoy and he's seriously talking to a woman he met on the internet. They are even talking about getting married when he gets back. I hope that everything works out well for them and that they don't have the same money problems that we did. Actually, in a weird bit of irony, the first paycheck he DIDN'T overdraw since we've been together was the first one AFTER I filed for divorce. Oh well.
Things with TyRoy are going pretty well. Most of the time, we are just kinda an old married couple. Especially since my latest birth control has robbed me of my sex drive and my wetness. (I just got a new one. I hope it works better.) The biggest thing about me living here was that I had to have a job or be working on finding a job. I have done that. I worked a temp job for a couple weeks. After that, I was sick but I got a job RIGHT after I got better. It will even work with school, which I have signed up for. I haven't asked him for any money, even though he pays the bills at the house. (Bills that he would pay whether I was here or not. I try to pitch in on the groceries but he doesn't really accept it. But at least I try.) BUT I still haven't figured out how to fight with him though. He didn't just shuts down and I can't get anything out of him and he says that nothing is wrong, though there obviously is, at least in my opinion. I felt so useless between the job (managers suck and make you feel bad) and not being able to help with the family and not being able to do anything with TyRoy that I just gave up. I called in with a family emergency (everyone knows that my uncle is sick) and I took a bunch of pills. Let me tell you though--- 120 .5 Clonazepam doesn't do anything! I could still fucking drive!. Next time I'm jumping off an overpass!
Well, I guess I'll end on a happy note. My job right now is as the cashier for the valet parking. I work Wednesday through Saturday nights. Today, I got up early, dressed, ran errands so that I would have a cooler, cold drinks, some protein, a personal cash tray, etc, etc, and get to work early so that I could park where they wanted me to (they keep changing where I"m supposed to park-assholes). I got there 30 minutes early. None of my valets were there or my managers. Finally I called my boss. Me: "Hey, where is everyone?" Boss:"We don't work on Sundays." Me: "Yeah, but it's Saturday." Boss: "No, it's Sunday." Only Valet there: "No, it's Sunday." Me: "Fuck. Sorry." Working these crazy hours has me all fucked up. BUT at least I have a job.
Thanks for listening. Comment if you want.
One of the hardest things but also the thing that I'm most ambivalent about is the reoccurance of my uncle's cancer. He was diagnosed with a rare type of sarcoma (tumor) May 2007 and had radical surgery June 2007. My mom and my uncle's boyfriend went with him while he got his surgery and recovered. (He went up to the Mayo Clinic in MN, which is about 10 hours away from where we live because they have the best program for that type of cancer.) At the time, I stayed with my grandparents because my grandfather had just had a stroke and I was the only one able to really stay with them, so I was useless to my uncle but I was useful to my grandparents. They thought they got all the tumor but apparently not because he had to get another surgery THIS June and then radiation (which is tiring but not too bad). But he was having a great deal of pain in his back. (The original sarcoma was in his chest so they expected it to say in that area. Apparently they were wrong.) The pain in his chest was from another sarcoma. Now they want to do chemo. Nothing has been decided yet but....I just feel useless. All I want to do when I think about it is cry, so I'm probably not much use in talking to him. Everyone in my family went to see him last weekend but I couldn't go because I had bronchitis and I didn't want to spread it to all the other cancer patients there. I'm hoping to get to visit him sometime this week when I'm not working but.... He's so young!!!!!!!!!!!!!! How can he be so sick!
My health isn't going so great either. Just after my birthday, I got a really REALLY bad stomach bug. I had to go to the ER because I couldn't stop puking and everytime I puked, I shit too, so I was pretty sure I was getting dehydrated. After the stomach flu stopped, I got the head cold that TyRoy and my mom both had because my immune system was weak. That turned into bronchitis. Which was a lot of fun. At least I have to give props to TyRoy because he didn't turn away from he gross stuff and he took care of me as best as he could. While I know that BT doesn't like him (and BT would have done an even more subservient job), TyRoy really did take care of me.
The other health problem is even more gross and I'm not even sure I want to talk about it here, but maybe it will help others feel not so bad about it when it happens to them. Well, as most of you know, I got my gallbladder taken out in September 2007. I was really happy with that for a while. I didn't have the pain or the thowing up or the diarehea. But what your gallbladder does is store extra bile, which helps to break down extra fat that your liver can't handle all by itself. I was warned by the doctors and by other people that had their gallbladders taken out that for 3-6 months I would experience pretty quick diarehea when I ate really greasy or really really rich food. Well, I didn't have too much trouble those first 6 months. But in the last 3 months, well, I can't eat anything without getting rid off it right away. Even when I don't eat ANYTHING, I sometimes get rid of something. Last Tuesday was the final straw. I was running errands and I almost didn't make it to the bathroom at my first stop (a bookstore). But I did make it and I thought it was over. All done. NOPE!!!!!!!!!!! Twenty minutes later, I'm in the middle of the local Walmart and it hits me that I realize I have to go to the bathroom. RIGHT NOW. Needless to say, I didn't make it and I shit myself in the middle of the Walmart store. I went to the bathroom and cleaned up as best as I could before I left the store. It was the most embarrassing moment I can remember ever. Luckily, I had my yearly physical Thursday and my doctor said that it was a lack of fiber and that I'm going to have to take fiber supplements for the rest of my life and eat lots of fruits and veggies for the rest of my life. Now, I don't know about you but I always thought that fiber supplements were for people who were constipated and that too many fruits and veggies would lead to diarrehea. But I guess not. I guess I'll just listen to my doctor for now. If it doesn't work, I'll go back to their morning walk-in clinic and crap myself there.
Then, there is the divorce. I filed the papers the day before my birthday and mailed them ON my birthday. Yes, another lovely birthday for Ava. I got the papers in the mail earlier this month saying that our court date is set for August 20th. It's pretty amicable and everything was agreed on before I filled out the papers so it should be pretty easy. The saddest part of it all is that I still love him very much and I know that he still loves me very much, even though we are trying to move on with our lives. I'm living with TyRoy and he's seriously talking to a woman he met on the internet. They are even talking about getting married when he gets back. I hope that everything works out well for them and that they don't have the same money problems that we did. Actually, in a weird bit of irony, the first paycheck he DIDN'T overdraw since we've been together was the first one AFTER I filed for divorce. Oh well.
Things with TyRoy are going pretty well. Most of the time, we are just kinda an old married couple. Especially since my latest birth control has robbed me of my sex drive and my wetness. (I just got a new one. I hope it works better.) The biggest thing about me living here was that I had to have a job or be working on finding a job. I have done that. I worked a temp job for a couple weeks. After that, I was sick but I got a job RIGHT after I got better. It will even work with school, which I have signed up for. I haven't asked him for any money, even though he pays the bills at the house. (Bills that he would pay whether I was here or not. I try to pitch in on the groceries but he doesn't really accept it. But at least I try.) BUT I still haven't figured out how to fight with him though. He didn't just shuts down and I can't get anything out of him and he says that nothing is wrong, though there obviously is, at least in my opinion. I felt so useless between the job (managers suck and make you feel bad) and not being able to help with the family and not being able to do anything with TyRoy that I just gave up. I called in with a family emergency (everyone knows that my uncle is sick) and I took a bunch of pills. Let me tell you though--- 120 .5 Clonazepam doesn't do anything! I could still fucking drive!. Next time I'm jumping off an overpass!
Well, I guess I'll end on a happy note. My job right now is as the cashier for the valet parking. I work Wednesday through Saturday nights. Today, I got up early, dressed, ran errands so that I would have a cooler, cold drinks, some protein, a personal cash tray, etc, etc, and get to work early so that I could park where they wanted me to (they keep changing where I"m supposed to park-assholes). I got there 30 minutes early. None of my valets were there or my managers. Finally I called my boss. Me: "Hey, where is everyone?" Boss:"We don't work on Sundays." Me: "Yeah, but it's Saturday." Boss: "No, it's Sunday." Only Valet there: "No, it's Sunday." Me: "Fuck. Sorry." Working these crazy hours has me all fucked up. BUT at least I have a job.
Thanks for listening. Comment if you want.
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