jesus

jon sometimes i miss you so much it feels like i am going to fall apart

yesterday

certain situations revealed my class roots like a bad dye job.

first, i was probably too ebullient at the fundraiser; second, I was probably overdressed for the fundraiser (i LOVE my flashy heels, betch!); third, i suggested that our staff go to a chain restaurant in Florida while we are working on the Amex project (I was rebuked by my ED). Argh. I am feeling a bit sheepish today, for a million reasons, not just those above.

It wasn't until my portland friends arrived that I realized how much of a struggle this transition has been. In particular, this job has infused a sense of an essential fight for survival (read: recognition & respect) into my life that I do not enjoy. I spent some time last night speaking-- a bit intensely, I think-- about how the city requires your attention to basic inequality and that to expect things to come easy here is a self-delusion. I surprised at my vehemence, and was pleased again to have revealed another aspect of my life to look at.

No, I'm not being sarcastic. Self examination is key in personal liberation, right?

i was just struck

by the memory of a scent
the deep lingering loam of a rainy place
dark in the night damp from a day of rain

me safe in that cloying texture of air

sometimes

vulnerability makes me feel sick to my stomach.

i vascillate

between wanting to everything i can to end this fucking depression and wanting to just wallow in it completely, go there with everything i have and see what happens. i have been slowly descending in fits and starts, propelled by a growing understanding of the inevitable and a disaffection with the present

my co-counseling side says LOVE YOUR SELF HATE!!! LOOK AT IT!!! GIVE IT A BIG FUCKING HUG!! THERE'S NOTHING WRONG WITH YOU!! then the practical, wide-world side says --you can't function like this, you can't be a full woman like this, you can't be loved like this, you have to get better before you go to a place you can never get back from, a fat-ugly-hopeless place where you are utterly alone, stupid and self-indulgent.--

well, that's fun, right? i keep thinking i've found the answer, and keep coming back to the same damn feelings. greant.

also

my mother criticized the list i created regarding a partner.

in the spirit of being more grounded and practical, I am looking for a relationship wherein we can:

- live together and create a home that we both enjoy; a place where we both feel comfortable and taken care of, a place where our friends feel welcome, where we can challenge each other in a healthy way
- get in the car/on our bikes and go places together
- laugh at each other's foibles and flaws
- occasionally have a knockdowndragout fight and have great makeup sex/cuddling/mutual affirmation
- get drunk and laugh at each other
- make food for each other, collaborate on whats going to taste the best and how it should be presented, experiment
- go shopping together
- talk about our days when they are done
- read together in bed before we go to sleep and discuss our books
- sleep in the same bed at night, hold each other
- wake up together and have coffee/tea/breakfast, see each other off
- fantasize about our future, our children, our community.

i think that's it.

ok so

in order to be present here today i have to move some things within me-- process a little-- get clearer.

send me your position
getting lonely down here

this is the time in my life that i can use, i can really mine for the artinpain that i have been craving for so long, the reason that i left portland, i'm looking for that struggle that will force me to create art to write to be poetic with my life to see the beauty in the difficulty

i have to end some things and start some things very soon, today in fact. it's time to start believing again, being the fully powerful person that i have grown to be, to exercise my willpower-- i want to reign in my desires run rampant, they are causing suffering i can't manage right now. Can I do the things that truly ground me on a daily basis? I have been looking for satisfaction in pursuing base impulses and finding only fleeting fulfillment. Sex, food, drink, television-- I have always known that I would not find what i needed in those things.

i have to get used

to not being 22 anymore. here i am, five years later, not dating very much, not putting myself out there very much, sitting at home on a saturday night watching ghostbusters. i am eventually going to do my hair. it's going to look good, too, damnit, before pride.

so what does it mean? what does this all mean? I have some sense of failure here-- like I am not living up to my full capacity as a 20something. then again, i need to calm the fuck down and have a good time. i'm not getting any younger...

i am gonna

make it
through this year
if it kills me

what an intense day. i made all these powerful decisions and it all crashed down around me this morning, my carefully constructed castle of self-protection crumbling sadly at my feet. Today I was the subject of a meeting, and no one told me what happened in it. The director of the SF office engaged in her usual subtle undercutting-- walked into the office and barely acknowledged me, sent emails to the staff and ED that suggested we do things that I was clearly unprepared for, talked about me loud enough for me to hear in front of other staff.

Meanwhile, i looked up abuse in the workplace-- and found definitions of "workplace bully" and psychological abuse in the workplace. I am being bullied, and there are no laws to protect me. http://www.bullyinginstitute.org/bbstudies/youknowwhen.html

this realization that i am being abused hit hard. it's kinda like when i realized that what had happened to me was rape. the new understanding that what is going on is ABUSE incurs its own trauma.

it all went downhill from when david and i got in a little spat in the morning and he asked me what was really going on-- NOTHING! i said, lying and knowing it-- and i broke down crying. It all seems like too much, everything these people do, and my tolerance level for being constantly underestimated, undercut and unacknowledged is nonexistent.

The question is: can I use this anger, sadness and depression towards positive ends? Today I have written more than I have any other day in recent history-- wonderful. More blog entries than ever in an attempt to blow off this steam, figure out my struggle. For the first time in my life I am distinctly not enjoying my depression-- i'm unsure why. it seems particularly difficult.

my coworker jamie

told me to never try to go to bed after 11pm. I remember her caution but pay little attention.

i had a great session today. really, all sessions are great right now. my mind was occupied with a few overarching themes: hopelessness, loneliness, fear. The last week or so I have been blessed with a change of direction in these thought patterns; I made a decision that work will not depress me, that it has no control over me, and that I do not want to be in a relationship right now. Dating, sure, relationship, no. There is too much desperation there for me. I do not want to be in a relationship because it is the "least awful alternative," I want to choose a person as a primary partner who embodies characteristics I value and lives a life I admire while encouraging me to live the fullest life possible. (Just to be fair, Laura and David do this for me. Lucky me.)

I suppose it is a worthwhile effort to list what I think these characteristics might be. My next long term, primary relationship will be with a person who is:
- Deeply compassionate and forgiving of self and others
- Political and committed to building the movement
- Committed to self reflection and in turn, radical self transformation on a regular basis
- Absolutely adoring of me and supportive
- Able to see where I struggle and offer help
- Able to notice when they are struggling and ask for help
- Generally knowledgable of their material and patterns, able to acknowledge those things to me
- Engaged in a self help process
- Engaged in community that is intergenerational, multicultural, multiclassed, multigendered
- Living in the Bay Area
- Self-sufficient, emotionally and financially
- Socially adept
- Surrounded by supportive friends and family
- Terrifically crass and inappropriate in the most fun ways
- Adventurous, physical
- Sexy and adventurous in the bedroom-- ostensibly a top
- Bike rider
- Book lover, intellectual

I have to say that politically and personally i do not believe that I am alone, persay; these structures of disconnection are strictly products of a society divided by oppression and capitalism. It makes sense, then, that in this first post-college phase wherein I have re-entered capitalism-- like sudden cold-water immersion-- i would be shocked and pissed at what I found here. And that I would seek a person to contradict my sense of abandonment and isolation.

I do not want to move forward with dating in a state of desperation. Instead, I am looking closely at my life and where I can decide to be more fulfilled and self-actualized.

Have I mentioned that I love my bike? I should have, because I do. :)

there are a few

things that need to be written about. I will put them under separate headings to represent them distinctly.

on mondays its

depression, on fridays its elation... is this the way of the working world?

the great thing about today is that I am feeling much more excited about building community and putting myself out there. Unfortunately, I have not been laying the groundwork for success in that area... and of all people, I know that it takes consistent attention to build a solid community of folks that will come out and play and support you when you need it.

Let's see if I can pull it out tonight. Good thing I am also good at not beating myself up if things don't go exactly my way.

all my love...