last night

i had the most interesting dream. in it i was with a family; there was me and the mom and two kids, and i was closely connected to them, i was family too i think. Everyone was brown except for me. we walked up to a gymnastics studio, the children were going to take gymnastics, and after we walked in a very short old man greeted us. it was a dark and calming studio, no artificial light, with plants and open windows and yoga mats, dark wood walls and floor. the children began their gymnastics, but then so did the adults. there was something eerily intimate about the way the adults moved, the instructor moving in tandem, leading them, shouting encouragement and pushing them to be focused and connected. there was something deeply spiritual happening and it made me squirm.

i made an excuse and left. i went to a restaurant and drank beer and ate lots of food. i paid with a credit card that was declined. i returned to the gymnastics studio.

the instructor offered to engage in the movements with me, and I accepted, feeling sheepish. i moved, but not very gracefully, making fun of myself the entire time. the instructor stopped and looked at me. it was clear that i had a choice to make. he pulled out a deck of cards and asked me to choose. i chose a card, and it made me cry. i forget what it said. everyone was quiet while i cried.

i woke up this morning in a rush. my alarm has not been going off, and it upsets my daily workplan when i'm an hour late to the facility. i cursed and rushed to the shower, upset. i looked at myself in the mirror and scolded myself for being so out-of-shape. then i remembered the old man of my dream, and it jolted me. after my shower i dressed and came into the living room, turned on this computer, and looked for a meditation center close to me. it turns out that there is one 3 blocks away. and that the drop-in intro is tonight.

there has to be a dividing line, a defining moment that separates the me of then to the me of now, the me that rushed and criticized and wished and craved, the me that still is, and the me that will bring me to enlightenment in whatever way i am supposed to achieve it. i wonder if a dream could be that for me.

my days now

are full, each of them, with repetitive and unique tasks, each step down the same hallway brings me to that same person, and our conversation each time changes, they move forward and i move forward, they move back and i move back, we together struggle toward a goal that we both are aware of and cage around. i walk away to step down different hallways toward different people that i have had countless conversations with before, we engage in a similar process with unique challenges, and i step away again.

in the end i cannot actually be there with them. i can only hope to somewhat understand, and i am not sure that they know how much i depend on them for everything, how much i admire them for their fortitude, how i never would stand for this for 30+ years in a blue collar job, but then i am reminded that it hasnt been 30 years of this, that with the rise of a corporate economy a more caustic management has overtaken them, i often hear stories of supervisors past who offered aid and advice, not disciplinary actions and disrespect, but here we are in the heart of the beast i suppose.

i wander the halls with my white skin and my long hair and my pretty face and i confront a population of immigrant people of color who have struggled hard just to get here. its an interesting and moving life to lead, being confronted with your privilege constantly, and being compelled to struggle for the rights of less privileged people each day. really, my job is about constant confrontation. fight the boss. fight the boss. fight the boss. fight the boss. fight the boss.

i guess

that my problem is that i have too much to write and i can't get any of it out anymore. the words push hard against my fingertips and clog like so many cars on a narrow san francisco freeway, engines running but getting nowhere fast.

so many metaphors strike me, they all reflect urban themes: streets, cars, buildings, smog, bridges, cables, phonebooths, parking lots, meters, cops, old women trailing rolling groceries, ipods&phones&minigamemachines, busses and munis and subway entrances, fluorescent lights, blue faces unsmiling, staring forward to some unknown destination, hurrying no matter what there is another place to be as soon as possible. smoking dirty people in doorways, empty cups asking for anything, trees poking up lonely out of concrete mouths

what am

I? This year has changed me, turned me almost unrecognizable. Looking into the mirror I find a woman deeply cut, and a woman confronted with change, a woman, finally. No longer a girl, foolishly believing in her righteousness, investing in false senses of good through pleasure and instant gratification.

Practically speaking, I'm not an alcoholic anymore. I'm not the sex addict I was. I'm not looking for that feeling anylonger, partially because my search for it humiliated me in the end.

To be honest, in this new strange phase of commitment, I still miss the one who got all caught up in himself. And the one that pretended that what we had was insignificant. And the freedom to find possibility in any person I came across. I still have that feedom, yes, in some senses, but no longer in the one big romantic way.

Who am I? I remember the brash woman I was when I left Portland. I was a woman on a quest for big things. Looking to fulfill big aspirations. Instead, I found reality in its most gritty and humbling form. Economic, relationship, personal- I've been hit every damn way you could imagine. I hit myself, and I got hit by others.

Along the way, somehow, I managed to find some truth. I found out what love really is. I heard the worst a woman can hear and survived it.

I am here, still. I am more aware than I ever have been before. I am. I suppose for right now that has to be enough.

i just realized

that i am not as nice a person as i want to be. and that I have alienated ppl with my distress.

and mostly, that i want that to change. and that j sees me for the person that i really am-- past the insecurity and elitism.

i feel so

damn irritated with the political people in my life. everyone besides my housemates.

you: STOP BEING SO FUCKING HOLIER THAN THOU. Who the hell gave you the right to shove your righteous fucking self in everyone's face? i'm so fucking unhappy that you are the only political and queer person i have been connected to here. i thought you would do what it took to introduce me to the political scene, but no, you only seem fucking committed to parading your damn politics. over and over again you are condescending and irritating. i wanted to be close to you, but you hold me at arm's length-- and I realize now that most of your friends also do that. I am fucking done. i don't care if you never call me again. i don't care if i never see you again.

you: i feel less vehemently angry at you. you have tried to be helpful and you are never condescending. I just wish you were less successful. That way I wouldn't feel like such a damn failure. Then again, you have been here for five years, and put in the requisite time. argh

and then

he said,
"can i be completely honest?" my stomach jumped, preparing.
"yeah." i responded. "of course."
"i was going to ask you something selfish," he said slowly, the memory of prior harsh words from me likely causing him to weigh his more carefully. i used to be very critical of him. "I was going to ask you to wait for me."
i felt confused. wait for what? while the last weekend without him had been unexpectedly difficult, but he wasn't going anywhere, was he? i became suddenly worried at the possibility. "what do you mean?" i asked.
"i wanted to be selfish. i want you to wait... i want to be the next one."
it hit me what he meant. i was startlingly pleased, and I wanted-- for my own hedonistic pleasure-- for him to spell it out, say it all. "the next one?" i played dumb.
his voice was thick, low timbered with his request. "i want to be the next person you have sex with."
ah. that's what i wanted. i melted. or to be more precise, a certain lovely part of me melted-- both conceptual and physical lovely parts. "of course," i responded. "of course. there's no one else for me right now. you will be the next."

and now

after the telling and the acknowledging i am dreaming of you but not of you--
in my heaven there is a place like that we kept together for that short period of time
and you are there but it is not the you that broke me so completely
it is the you that fit inside me forcefully frightfully
wonderfully

an open letter

to you. not so open in the end, considering that it is directed at those people in my life committed to distance and trepidation in their relationships with me... and finally to you, who is not confused at all, and who hates the distance between us.

first, I suppose, is you; you whom i loved from the beginning, whom i adored like a shining brother, with the exception that i wished to kiss you and hold you close and keep you warm in bed beside me forever. your melancholy impressed me with its depth and conviction, the artistry that flowed from it so thoughtlessly I envied. i was never so genuinely creative, and have not grown into such a person, either. i deeply craved my nights with you, after long train rides to meet your chaste embraces at beachside stations, and afternoons laughing with friends in the ardor and mania of adolescence.

those nights in your bed, our bodies matched in the blankets of flannel and desire, were what i waited for, what i imagined when I lay alone. your hands the soft parts of me, heat from you radiating, penetrating me, my love for you allowing this unspoken violation, hopinghopinghoping that in the morning your attention towards me would have changed, that our public embraces at beachside stations would become less chaste in the context of a shared love...

but years passed and your gaze never shifted. more beautiful women warranted your attentions, my friends in fact, but you never saw me as you saw them. in our young adulthood you found shame in the way you treated me and apologized, yet my adoring attention still allowed you to exploit my desire for your love. you were the beginning of all this, the start of my obsession with the unrequited.

much later you came along. strong jawed and cynical, your figure solid against the wood of the bar, your smile easy and winning; you stood strong at the center of your community, amongst others transcending categories so easily applied. you were powerful, in both personal and actual ways; established, political, respected.

one evening on the wharf with our mutual friends we sat around a table, impressing each other carefully with language and analysis and eye contact, i felt you keenly next to me, watching me. we spoke of our families, shared characteristics between us; politics and friends, and sometimes of sports (which i spurned for its violence yet you loved for its competition). we left the restaurant and you grabbed me, kissed me, held me close to your chest tight with its bindings, your hands firmly on my back is a feeling i will never forget. i ran, you chased me, we insisted on each other.

after two weeks i had ended all other dating endeavors and fallen deep into the well of you. we spent hours and hours in my bedroom on the hill, our harsh and fervent fucking making paper of the rest of the world, easily crumpled and thrown into the corner. i was warm and safe in your embrace, and there i forgot about time, i forgot about my friends, i forgot about work and writing and activism, all i knew was you. i fell in love with you in a way i had never loved before. you, however, did not love me; or perhaps you were not willing to love me.

when you left me it was as if my clothes were taken and burnt, i was left naked and shocked in the scathing truth of your absence. it was not real, it felt as if there was no way it was true, that it was impossible for reality to shift so radically, so decidedly, so quickly. your power and presence in the community made me avoid it, i shunned myself in order to avoid you and the pain the sight of you would bring. I studied the marks you left and quietly decided to never love a woman in the same way again.

now, we come to you. it seemed casual to me, at first, your interest in me both odd and obvious in its strategy, your intoxicated escapades of rhetoric compelling, boring and predicable all at once. it was as if you were both trying to impress me and ignore me in the same interaction, and in this it was as if i had returned to a high school context-- where the boys try to pretend that they have no feelings, and that their affections don't exist, and instead go to extended lengths to disguise their attraction with disinterest, if not outright disdain. funny that your mantra, in the beginning, was "we're all adults here." it contradicted the other statement, which was "i don't want anyone to know," which thrust us-- me, unwilling-- back into that place of adolescent dramatics.

for all that awkward fits-and-starts of ours, however, i began to have feelings for you i didn't expect. in those afternoons on top of covers in both of our rooms, quietly endorsing each other with wrapped arms and covert kisses, marked with extended forays into discussions both deeply personal and deeply political both at once and distinct, amidst statements both careful and rash about our possible future together, our connection became clear to me, at least. you pulled back, after a time, afraid and preoccupied, and still i am compelled toward you and confused by your confusion. i know you want me-- you say it, occasionally, for me to hear and remember, perhaps to make sure i still care, they are easy comments requiring no real commitment on your part-- and that you do not know how to move toward me. in that i cannot remove you from my thoughts, and you plague me. i know you think about me, contemplate our connection, and it infuriates me that you cannot acknowledge it.

here and now there is yet another person, this one carrying a theme of my life with him as he steps through my existence with intention and objective: me, my love and his intertwined, our lives together. he is striving to be my love for the rest of our lives, and presents himself completely; there is no hiding, no trepidation, the complete person, obfuscated only by his own pain and history-- like the rest of us.

well

here i am. weeks later.

i don't really know what i'm doing. I kind-of do, i suppose, but i am less committed to actually being deeply committed to knowing.

i do know that i need to make more money.

i do know that i have to buy a new dress for zack's premiere
and that his movie is ridiculously racist and sexist
and my face will be seen there and it makes me feel crazycrazy

aaarrrgggh

i do know that i'm not going to invest in halfassed, judgemental relationships anymore
and that i'm done being worried about that shit
essentially, i'm done being worried about YOU and YOU

this weekend

i spent most of my time on date-like excursions. it was fun and interesting, also difficult in some ways; i found myself noticing that I was hiding a little in these interactions. i wasn't hiding myself while in them, but from myself in the enacting of them; instead of doing my laundry, budgets and bills, I spent time being romantic with folks in my life. No sex, just connecting; without alcohol I spend much more time thinking about people rather than my lust.

The most consuming interaction of the last three days, however, was definitely my evening with Jon. (my love, my heart) We met in in the Embarcadero in front of the Ferry Building and as he strode toward me I felt my heart lean toward explosion like i couldn't hold it in my chest any longer the way he holds his lower lip between his teeth when he's nervous and swings his arm at his side looking at me out from under his heavy lashes i had forgotten these details and it drove me a little insane

we picked a spot at on the water near some statues that attracted picture taking tourists like flies to honey and we talked about why and how we had come to this predicament, after so many years of dancing around each other and trying to figure it out, after finally being able to be together had i left so unceremoniously, the reasoning, whether there was someone else (there was not), talking crying being there next to each other

when i looked at him it was like i needed to drink him in again, say prayers to the place we had shared, remember that night in the candlelight where i had promised myself to never forget the sanctity of our connection, a promise i so conveniently forgot

what has occurred to me recently is that my alcoholism deserves a large part of the blame. once again sabotaging a close, loving, stable, supportive relationship for alcohol and its social trappings (read: slutty dating and other such rique encounters).

the rest of our evening was more than pleasant, it was comfortable and joyful and really about us. i practiced humility, he practiced asserting himself, we rode the bus and ate sushi and sat at my house with my housemates talking politics of liberation, listening to the coup and all i could think was

this is the life i have been striving for

and this is a person i could choose to love for the rest of my life

yeah

ok. see the following posts to get an idea of what i'm feeling right now:
http://lovelyone.blogspot.com/2007/02/i-cant-handle.html
http://lovelyone.blogspot.com/2006/01/sigh.html

Clearly, I have had a problem the whole time. No one likes a stupid, dramatic drunk. It's time for a real decision, no more talk, no more bullshit.

I really don't want to lose E. I hope that he can forgive me someday. I don't need it to be today, just soon in our lives.

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...