Out with the Old...

The trouble with getting a Brazilian wax is that it leaves me feeling like I have a fresh new haircut and I want to show it off but I can't without getting arrested.

I dumped Corvus. He had been gone for over two months and wasn't calling me, even when he had a phone, and wasn't contacting me any other way when he didn't. We'd talk for a little while on Facebook Chat about once a week and invariably it would be all about him no matter how much I tried for a share of the conversation. I got sick of it. I moved on emotionally. I read The Wizard of Oz and Other Narcissists and couldn't believe how well the DSM's diagnostic criteria for Narcissistic Personality Disorder fit Corvus.

When I made it clear to Corvus that I was sick of it, he started calling and texting me constantly, but it was too late. We broke up in what I thought was a fairly mutual conversation, saying we'd still be good friends when he came back (oh, his constant promise that he's coming back!) and then chatting for awhile longer about nothing. Then he kept calling and texting me to say how much he loved and missed me. I couldn't tell if he didn't understand that we'd broken up or what, so I was very direct with him. Yes, he'd understood. But he still loved and missed me. The next thing I knew, he was heartbroken and crying and calling me at 12:30 at night. I wasn't happy or particularly empathetic. The last time he called was Friday while I was with my work-from-home-together buddies at a cafe so I didn't answer and he didn't leave a message. That was four days ago. I think he may have finally figured out that we're broken up for real.

Meanwhile, I met someone else. We'll call him O'Snarky. Aural Girl's dog befriended O'Snarky's friend at the bar the Wednesday before Halloween and as Aural Girl and the friend got to talking, so did O'Snarky and I. He was cute and Irish and (you guessed it) snarky as hell so I reluctantly gave him my number, even though I hadn't officially ended things with Corvus. I refused to go on an actual date until after the actual break-up, but those two events happened only a day apart. So much for time to think between Boys. O'Snarky and I have been on a few dates since.

It's hard for me not to directly compare O'Snarky to Corvus--the way they treat me, the way they kiss, how they look (::cough:: naked ::cough::), who they are and how I felt or feel. I will miss Corvus mechanically, I will miss feeling head-over-heals and irrational. But I won't miss the anxiety or the way he acted like I was just an object in his universe or the way I could never actually rely on him for much of anything--emotional or otherwise. O'Snarky has a job and takes care of his mother, two good signs of the responsibility I crave. And there's genuine empathy seeping out just below the snark. Right now it seems those qualities and getting laid are all I need.

So ends my longest relationship to date and begins...who knows what.

It's almost 6 AM and I've been up for hours. Migraine. Nasty one. I was supposed to go to my knitting group yesterday but my vision was all messed up from aura with whirling in my periphery and sparkles of dark matter straight ahead. That meant no driving, and the idea of getting on the noisy el sounded like puke in my face. I slept much of the day, occasionally waking up and being bored enough to take the blinding light of the computer over the empty total nothingness I felt. The computer provided enough distraction, while reading a book didn't zone me out enough to cover the pain. I had to give myself a shot again and it didn't really work. I hate that the most--coping with the needle and the blood for nothing. I'm out of the pill form of the ketorolac and Walgreens had to call it into my doctor and then it was pouring so I didn't feel like walking over and, once again, driving wasn't an option. I'll hopefully pick it up tomorrow and then I can be more aggressive with it. I just can't be aggressive with the shots, they wig me out too much to do two in a row or be dutiful about following up eight hours later when the first one did nothing.

I need to go back to biofeedback. I can't get my hands to warm up by relaxing anymore, which means my circulation is sucking and I'm not fully relaxing and that can't be helping the migraines.

I need to eat something more than cereal and bananas. I have plenty of frozen entrees and ingredients for nearly instant quesadillas and a pound of ground beef: all things I stock with being a migraine house prisoner in mind. I just don't feel like eating anything besides cereal. The nausea isn't as bad as it was a few years ago when I'd actually throw up with the headaches, but I have no appetite, just an awareness that I'm hungry and need to eat. Oddly, the one thing I feel like eating is Indian food but I don't have any of my instant Indian packets at the moment and I lack the ingredients and energy to make something from scratch. If I feel like shit tomorrow, I can walk over to the Pakistani-serving-mostly-Indian place around the corner from my house. It's not cheap, but my body really needs real food.

I need to clean my house. There isn't a tidy room in the whole fucking place. My living room is desperate for shelves. I think I want staggered floating shelves along my big blank wall.

I'm thinking of HDS, her mom, and her entire family.

Can't Sleep, Haven't Written

So I haven't written in here in ages.

I went to Denmark with my mom and sister. It was fabulous. Viking ships and castles and cobblestone streets everywhere and a beach where two seas flowing in opposite directions meet and crash into eachother. We spent two nights on the island of Aero which was charming as hell and my mom drove everywhere which was impressive as hell and we did too much shopping on account of the other two people I was with and my mom's search for a raincoat (it was cold and rained half the time we were there, even though it was the end of August). Maybe later I'll go through my notes and write more about the trip, but right now it's 6-something AM and I just can't sleep so I'm writing.

The most amazing thing about the trip, I think, was that a year ago my mom was going through her breast cancer and now we were running around a foreign country from 8 AM until we passed out, usually long after 10, for ten days straight. I often felt like I had to keep up with her. Just one year after the cancer summer.

When we got back, she went to work two days later and, jet lagged as hell, her leg fell asleep and she fell wrong on her foot and fractured it. It was just a hairline fracture, but a fracture nonetheless. No cast, but one of those giant boots she has to wear for at least another week.

In other news of the bad health of beings I love, my dog got scary bloody-eye glaucoma. It was not fabulous. After months of eye drops and specialist visits, he ended up having his eye removed because it just kept getting worse and was clearly very painful. Turned out there was a benign tumor growing in there. The real fear was a malignant tumor, but tumor was definitely expected, so having the eye removed was clearly the right thing to do. He's still healing--the surgery was only a week ago and he gets his stitches removed on Monday. It looks like one eye is just closed all the time, but right now he's stuck in a cone and keeps bumping into things. Otherwise he's pretty much back to normal, going on regular-length walks and huffing and puffing at the world as he tromples about the house. I think he's still adorable.

Then there's Corvus. He's in Colorado with his mom. He left the same time we left for Denmark (end of August) and still hasn't come back. He had a recording project out there that, when almost finished, went awry as the guy he was recording assaulted Corvus's mom and Corvus (long story, but Corvus pissed him off...doesn't justify assault but Corvus did something that was, in my opinion, really rash and dumb). The guy being recorded ended up mouthing off to the judge (speaking of rash and dumb...) and landed himself a double felony conviction. With his father vouching to make sure to get him to all his hearings and whatnot, he's on probation and back in his home state, project unfinished. Now Corvus is trying to get paid for his time engineering and everything else on an unfinished record and seems to think he can't return to Chicago until he sees his money. So it's about to be seven weeks since I've seen him with no concrete sense of when he's actually coming back.

When I first got back from Denmark I missed Corvus painfully, but the longer it's been the more I feel ok on my own and just see how unreliable he is. I still love him, I still miss him, but I don't see spending the rest of my life with him, and I'm not sure how I feel about that. I'm 29 and I'm happy to be with him if he gets his ass back here but I wonder about finding a Forever. I also wonder if I'm not being fair; he's only 26 and still getting his own life in order. Was I reliable three years ago? It's not much time, but for some people it can be huge. Is he just immature? Or am I making excuses for him now? I wish I knew. Either way, absence is not making the heart grow fonder, it's making the heart ask all kinds of questions and get all kinds of annoyed and impatient.

Great. It's barely after 7 AM and the workers across the street are making beeping noises with their trucks. I was hoping to get back to sleep at some point...

How lonely we are to find validations of ourselves.

Thinking about college

Nameless Liberal Arts College was the wrong college for me in so many ways.

I was even more bull-headed then than I am now.

I wish I was consistently well enough to go back to school. Maybe one class this fall as a trial. I miss the awesome Chicago college I started attending right when I got sick.

I want to be one of those people who can overcome shit, and I want to be one of those people who can accept shit, and I don't want to be so frustrated and saddened by my version of life. They say to write down goals and then achieve them. Can that be my goal? I'd like to get my BA and support myself, but the real all-important pie-in-the-mother-fucking-sky is to be accepting of and happy with myself. Be good to myself. Love myself in a real way for once and for good.

Corvus and Aural Girl walked my dog while I was away this weekend at my brother's college graduation. Corvus cleaned my house as a birthday present surprise. He really cleaned my house. He organized my closets and did the laundry in my hamper and everything. And he said beautiful things about me I didn't believe. He can be quite incredible. I should have gone over there tonight but I'm so tired and have to have my car jumped in the morning (booooo) and I didn't. Now it's 1:30 and I'm still awake and I'm all upset and I feel like an ass for not running over there as soon as I got home. I'll call him in the morning once my car is running and we can drive off into the sun(wrongtimeofdayforset).

So many of my Nameless College regrets surround a Boy I let treat me like garbage. I loved this shit out of him, maybe more because I could taste the blood on his lips. Corvus treats me well and I'm holding myself to holding him to it.

My own voice is still so loud in my head, it makes for better writing* than personality or happiness.

*and sometimes not even that.

I'm anxious. In general. About everything. I think the assault was more damaging than I gave it credit for. Not that it's so terrible, and not that I'm afraid to leave the house or anything. I'm just on edge. My safety and general well-being were fundamentally threatened and it rattled me. No wonder I felt no great relief the next day when the US offed Bin Laden- I'd just been reminded how many more dangerous people lurk around every fucking corner who have nothing to do with Al Qaeda.

Sorry. I don't mean to freak you out too, readers. I'm just jumpy because one asshole decided to be an asshole and had to remind me I'm mortal. Ugh.

Bin Laden's Death to One 28-Year-Old

When we heard Bin Laden was dead, Corvus spontaneously ran outside to shout with joy. "It's over. It's finally over." Tears dripped down his face.

I wasn't quite sure what ended with Bin Laden's death. I wasn't complaining, but I wasn't feeling the overwhelming relief or joy that seemed to take over my boyfriend. He's three years younger than I am, and it didn't occur to me at the time, but we were in different places in our lives on September 11th and I may be five minutes too old for the jubilance. Or maybe I'm just too skeptical to place my feelings of safety in the mortality of one human. Still, I envy the death revelers.

On September 11, 2001, I had just begun my sophomore year at Nameless Liberal Arts College. When someone in my statistics lab stood up that morning and announced an airplane had flown into the World Trade Center and another into the Pentagon, I thought they were doing an experiment for psych class. But no, Google quickly confirmed that the world had gone to shit. Class let out early. Some classes were canceled for the day, others went on with optional attendance. The dorm lounges were packed with students staring at the news, horrific images, and the first time I ever heard the name "Osama Bin Laden."
My most hawkish (and incidentally, at the time, only Republican friend) wanted, to bomb someone. Blow up something in revenge. But being a self-centered 19-yer-old, that was my biggest fear: war. We were in the middle of a middle state, nice and safe. I already knew my family was safe, so my next concern was my of-drafting-age male friend pool. We'd just elected The Bad President and there was no way he was keeping us out of war. I assumed at that point it would at least be the "logical" war, but my peers were the ones who'd have to fight it and I didn't like that. We sat in that lounge and I wanted to be held by the Boy I was pining over at the time as well as every single boy I gave a marginal crap about before they all had to go die for the country.

I had friends in school in New York too close to Ground Zero. One still has PTSD.
I had friends help clean up at Ground Zero.
Then somehow we ended up in Iraq and no one I really cared about at the time had to fight.
But the threat of Terror never felt like it was the threat of Osama Bin Laden. I remember Oklahoma City (though I was quite young) and that was American extremists. There will always be a small percentage of the human population that likes to screw things up for the rest of us, and that is terrifying. I'm glad there's one less ultra-asshole, but he was never the focal point of my fear or pain and therefor doesn't get to be a trigger for great relief.

Maybe if I was just a bit younger, or a bit someone else, I'd need a face for the abstraction of fear. I wouldn't have such concrete non-Bin Laden things from September 11th and he would hold status as the threat of my youth. Maybe he would have been my childhood's boogieman. But he was only a piece of my fear and feels like just one piece of the puzzle, not full closure on a hole in my soul.

I joined my friends for a post-Obama speech tequila shot. Obama is so presidential and doing a shot seemed somehow the most appropriate response to Bin Laden's death, anyway; we drink to life, death, joy and pain, to numb the feelings that are too alive and  to remind ourselves we're alive when we're too damn numb.