BadMormon

nothing better

than a day where the campaign to remove an new friend seems to have a worked, a different friend that the ex demanded you drop is calling and now that is all awkward, and you’re sorta sick cause you are not in a good head space to go to bed and stay well, and of course, after the old fling shows up to let you know that he hadn’t thought about it at the time (when he decided you weren’t the one for him) but he misses you, (you wonderful old fantasy broad you), nothing is better than a day which you get to go on the facebook and see a tender photo of your ex, (the one you actually believed the words from, and thought you had something with that was gonna last the rest of your life, and of course that would make so much of it better cause you had help and friendship etc,) in a tender photo totem pole, head above head, his on top resting gently on hers, the other heads being the two women he ditched you for – due to rockstar hot pants and limited self-esteem. Funny how once thinking you were the most important person in someone’s life makes you feel like shit when you realize he doesn’t want you. And you’re spose to chock it up to a learning experience, and move on, and etc. Of course that will probably help as he keeps quitting everything we once did together, as well as find excuses to not speak to me, you know, so I can have my space not cause he’s so busy being popular finding an hour in the week for us to talk, like we agreed, well it’s just too much. An effort towards me is just too much to fit in with the drinking, and hanging with the women who make him feel like a hero, something I used to think he was.

Neat thing about it is that it certainly confirms all the brainwashing schemes I’ve been deeply considering, how to change my own mind into something that doesn’t ever go through this again. There has just been too much loss in my life. Apparently I simply don’t get over it.

life, art and what I asked for

man oh man Internet, Do you know what I’ve been up too? Have your webeyes peeked out of the laptops that surround my days and snagged photographic proof of the twists and turns life has taken?

I’ve written a hundred of blogs in my head as I ran from place to place or sat and relaxed and slept in the past weeks. But wasn’t able to sit down and get it out of my fingers.

part of that reason is that, well, sometimes things feel delicate. Like the smallest drop will do a ripple no one wants and the things that are hopefully repairing and growing will become to delicate to survive.

so the ex and I are recovering the knowledge of each other as friends and partners in an art collective and remembering how we have fun together.

it’s weird

I don’t know that i’ve ever managed to truly rebuild a trusting relationship with someone I’ve run aground with.

i’ve def regained communication and contact but i don’t tend to hang out with exes or pursue friendships I’ve dropped. This is probably my failing. I see it as a smart defense. I don’t need to be nice just so things are nice. This is because it has bit me in the ass soooooooooooooo many times I finally was pavlovian responsed right out of it.

now I have this person in my life who seems determined to keep working on things between us whether I want too or not. And I do, to a point.

My problem is simple. When people get close and then leave it hurts. The most difficult part of it is that this happened in the largest sense to me as a child so it’s more of a primal response than decisions at the time. And when there is one pain trigger I usually slam the door. I reverberate the pain, only now understanding where all the hurt lives and breathes and feeds on the next one to be bigger than warranted.

sigh

it’s tough but not hard this learning to rebuild. Figuring out where the boundries are, what you do and do not want from each other, learning to say words to faces that listen, all skills I’ve not had, the things I am very bad at after my walls are raised.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s going well:) I feel I have my friend back, that guy I loved hanging out with when we first met. There is in someways a deeper trust between us but i think it comes from the fact we trust our knowledge of who each other is AND we know each other better now.

He’s almost convinced me he’s not gonna ever really leave. I have my hesitations. I’ve learned time tells it all over again and again and again. Most people grow slowly, retreat, inch, go a bit more, sometimes never make it. Me included.

I have no idea how “we” will turn out. but for once I’m enjoying learning my lesson. I hope this missive satisfies dear Internet, to keep up the run of giving me what I ask for. I know the tribute is my heart poured out in as artistic a merit way as I can. I am grateful for this time in my life. While the daily grind is still pulverizing me, as it does so many, i have the life I wanted! ART! Sleep, sunny days, basic necessities, love, expression and I’m relaxing a little, enjoying the respite, breathing and trying to find ways to keep it going on.

It comes down to an equation

As I continue to work and write and help with a show my mind is always churning over the trust issues. How to decide what I want next?

The two questions I have are “what do you want from me” and “what can you give back?”

I have spent far too many years of my life drained by people who have no resources to give back. I am aware that this is probably the case now.

I do the cold calculations because the part of me that is feeling it all will not come out of it well if listened too. She is ready for any thing, any extreme, any fight and any connection. RAW RAW RAW I can’t get it through enough, when the word vulnerable is used it is meant.

I do have the resources, the friendships, the people who I never have had to think of the equation with, here to get me through this. Or to just keep holding me if it never leaves.

But I can not give out anything more than what is returned. Life has unstitched the wound and I work everyday, with my friends help, to keep going and I know they are walking with their own wounds too that I try to be good about helping and always worry I am not there enough, and hate it when I say the wrong thing, and know that i am forgiven and we will make up as we look each other in an honest eye.

I’m not prepared to keep adding to my circle. I’ve got many, plenty, etc. There are several on the wobbly line that I still have in wait and see territory. Will we become great for each other or will I find myself drained to much to keep speaking.

There is also that one. Well. I just have to see if it’s gonna be healthy for me.

And now a poem I wrote last night:

What are you going to do when I stop loving you?
When my eyes stop seeking you across a crowded room?
When my head turns to the sound of another’s step?
When my laughter explodes in time to someone else’s grin?
What will you do?

People like my attention. I try not to waste it because it is a piece of my time, my day, my energy. And that goes, as someone mentioned recently, to my kid and my job and my art and my inner demons. The remains are left for my friends:D (Ok, sometime job loses out.)

In conclusion:

Haven’t got one, have to run, work calls. Thank god, at least I’m paying the rent in the midst of all the fuckin shit!

Sitting and typing in a library

For the past week I’ve been running around like a crazy person. A very good friend of mine has a one man show coming up and it has been a last minute push to get everything done.

A group of us, the crazy artist friends from whence I come, have started the formation of our own art collective, which means that when one of us has a show we all have a show. Everyone shows up, helps how they can, makes him crazy with feedback and all in all have a great old time figuring out how to get work done.

This has led to a lot of daily time with my ex. You know, the one I keep typing at you about.

It’s been weird.

First because there is this thing between the two of us that when we are ourselves, no baggage in play, is sweet, funny and good. Two people whose brains communicate well on the daily crap. “Kindred Spirits!” as my childhood self, reading too much of Anne of Green Gables, would declare regularly.

But it had been a surface thing.

Last night I found myself walking several avenues to the train with him.

And we talked a bit about real things.

It was good but it threw back into my conscious mind my fragile bits. I had started a new character at the mics, and as I said we’ve had this show, and I’ve been getting a little work, and like we do as humans I once again hid my pain from myself. You can’t live in it 24 hours a day.

Whoooboy is it still there.

And really the ending of what we were saying to each other left me wondering how DO you rebuild trust? How do you know when it’s real? When actual change has happened?

Still mulling it over, no pithy summation of life here. It’s a big one and needed for more than just the ex. There a few people around that I have trust breaks with. Or with whom it was never there in the first place.

And as strong and sensible as I can be this one just wears me out with the thinking of it. My brain keeps flipping to the many many times I have been fooled into trusting again and again and then getting tromped on.

I guess it’s time to Google! Luckily all the answers are on the internet – somewhere.

Drunk conversations are not satisfying

If there has been one thing that caught me unawares as an adult it was how to hang out with drunks.

I grew up with sober people, and mostly not too mentally ill, and if they said something one night it would have some validity the next day.

Drunks are NOT like that. I don’t necessarily mean alcoholics. But drinking removes inhibitions and I’ve run into a lot of fun drunks that know, after a 6 pack, that love solves all problems, life is grand and they can rule the world! Or at least go have more fun than everyone is having right now!

And they can say things, serious things, pretty things, charming things.

But it is the feast of dust because even if the words are remembered the next day the impact they have on real life usually is nothing. Drunk talk is the whispering of wishes. Life takes doing the work.

I have finally learned this. It’s not that I won’t be happy to have those shots of whiskey and give you enough shit to make you snatch me up and haul me off to bed.

BUT

I’m not gonna believe the crap the falls into my ear as it happens.

And

if you want to have a real relationship with me, friendship or otherwise, you have to find a way to talk sober.

And

If we already have beef between us it’s gonna be as bad as building a house. There’s foundation to be laid, a frame to raise, etc. I’m fine with being acquaintances, truly, if the work is too much.

Until then…”you must not know ’bout me…”

It was a year ago

give or take a week or a day, depending on your counting of what matters

I don’t know where I stand

it may seem ok

it isn’t

but what that means is undecided

as the eightball whistles

murky, but clear in the center

suspended behind mudgulped windows

here I am

still

writing because I feel like I have to

not just because I said I would but because I don’t want to lose the practice of it.

But once again, the ideas for writing have slipped away, sliding out of my fingers into nothing and my brain can only think one word at a time.

It helps to do things, accomplish things. I did manage to clean all that needed to be clean and make a train with two early teens who have know each other since birth. Good lord 13 and 14 year olds don’t shut up.

But they feel what I always feel and have mentioned before when we come out here, this knowing that we get to just relax and talk and sleep and help and be ourselves and accepted and loved.

Family.

I did not realize how much I missed that.

GuyDude is a man I met in 1994 and had a hand in me and my Bdiddy hookin up. He was there as it started and when his daughter was born we realized I was knocked up. There was a group of us, all around 20something just hanging out, waiting tables, determined to make it somehow in the big city.

I can’t think of any of us that are living the life we figured on. That is pretty normal for dreamers and artists I think.

The atrition rate of those we knew then has been high for me. Start with baby daddy, the friend he married, another friend I was too depressed to maintain a relationship with, a best friend I had to say goodbye too as he grew harder and harder to be a force of good in my life. There’s a few left, and they are the most solid people in my life and have lead me to meeting more of the most solid people in my life.

I was just thinking the other night I know this one guy that would be the guy I would call for the REALLY BIG FAVOR! Like needing a cleaner. Not that I know if he knows anyone in that vein but he will be the guy who will know what to do, think clearly about it, give you the right advice/help/bail and get it right.

I’m ok if people aren’t my friends. I demand a lot from friends. Or not. I don’t know, I just know that I’m there for them and they are there for me and I can relax around them and just be who I am. But that’s is just not everybody in the world. I simply don’t need to have everyone know and get along with me. Simply not something people can do, some people are not worth holding on to. I’m not worth holding onto for others. I won’t be trustworthy or kind to them. Simply how life is as far as I can tell.

Why this point? Oh I don’t know. A friend’s mother is truly dying and getting ready to enjoy her last summer. i was privileged to share in this knowledge. She is holding up. And is still concerned about me and the feeding of my son.

Also because it is the other side of the single life. The fighting against the myth of singleness being a bad thing. I mean, there aren’t many Murphy Browns on the tube these days.

it’s a struggle for intimacy.

It’s a struggle to feel cared for. Even as everyone around you proves how much they do care. It’s a struggle because every moment in this culture is a moment selling the idea that a woman just wants, needs, goes crazy for a man simply because that is what makes her human. A husband.

Translate that into “equal partner” for me, marriage being something that simply feels irrelevant now, at this age, with this many men under my belt.

But i’m what gives me all that I have. My single life has supported me, entertained me, kept me going towards the things i want.

I am tired of thinking that there is anything I can do to have the relationship I wanted. Because while I had to make up a wedding fantasy out of thin air to please my elementary school friends, never really caring about the ceremony, the dress, the flowers, I have always seen a great love affair that would span decades. Seen it in a million different ways as I grew and life changed but always it was something I thought I would have, or would imagine to comfort me or people will sell you to make you feel better when you are heartbroken and lonely.

That is what I am trying to give up now. The belief in that ideal, that it matters at all, that it is anything other than simply something that happens to some people.

Give up not only the idea that it had happened with “you know who” but also give up the idea that it will ever happen. Because I think it is crippling to a woman. It is crippling to me. I am stronger alone. It’s what I know.

sigh – why do I immediately go to CAT LADY JOKES! It’s not alone because anything is horribly wrong with me. It’s because men don’t want to do anything. That was spelled out for me by my friend as he fell asleep on the living room floor.

That’s what makes me craziest. He has an understanding of the issue but he is still a pig. Will admit it. What the hell? And these are my friends! The men I date are not in general pigs, ok, some are pigs, but mostly they just are weird. Which is how you avoid the pig issue but then you have the weird issue.

And once again I am back at the equal sign. NEVER DO THIS AGAIN!

(I will probably rewrite this a little once I wake up and read. xoxo)

where i’m stuck

There’s a lot of things swirling around these days in my brain. Like that video? i’m cross-dressing in that, one thing maybe not fully obvious? I don’t mean playing like i’m a cross dresser. I mean in real life I identify with tough and strong and getting things done, and honor and resolve and I like wearing comfy serviceable clothes and sensible shoes. It’s not that I identify as male or want to be a guy or anything but I have always liked boy things. And barbie dolls. I wanted to learn to use tools and fix the car. But I already had a brother.

Thank god he gave me dream puppies or I might be angry with him right now.

I was also timid about it. In boyland timid is left behind, I’ve learned.

As an adult and a parent I do know my father loved me. But he was a father of the hands off variety, hung out with our brother more than us, my mother was a hard mom in some ways, yelled and spanked, terrorized at times.

BUT Mom and I have gotten to have our conversations about this and made peace and still make peace and I get to know her as a grown up. And it didn’t last forever. And things happened and we got to keep being alive together and dealing with the issues, even if it means avoiding the subject, and it all adds up to the fact that I’m not frozen as a child inside waiting for my mother to tell me why I can’t get her attention. We did and do talk.

It’s not that it’s an irregular tragedy, this father thing. I know many women who share it with me and their fathers lived. I don’t know that everybody gets to settle with their parents the damage done in childhood. I see a lot of adults not able to be anything but the kid with their parents.

I do know that the parents I know of my age group, in general, seem to be doing more hands on father and mother parenting, more remembering of what it’s like to be a kid and not listened too. Or maybe just not noticed. More concern and fiddling with raising cared for children. To me. I don’t know. maybe not. maybe I’ve breathed in too many fumes and am rambling about nothing.

OH and I’ve read books and books and books and books on parenting and emotions and the inner needs of a child. I’ve learned that there is in inherent need in each human being to feel they are being seen for who they really are. I think we truly crave it from our parents.

I’m running with the theory of if i have enough friends, blogs and stagetime it’ll be equal.

Although, like I said, Mom and me, we’re solid, well until she reads this maybe, but she does see and know me.

And love me.

But I’m not dating my mother. usually.

Or at least I don’t think so. Maybe trying to recreate my mother as me now at this age where time stopped. Or maybe I have the age wrong. maybe mom was 37 or 39 or 35. Dad was 42. Mom was younger – 4 years I think.

but whatever.

it isn’t that I’m really trying to heal anything. it’s just that I like to talk about myself.

This is why people stay in therapy for 20 years. You can tangle and untangle all of it like a ball of yarn. We’re not cause and effect creatures. We want to be but it all winds up and around itself.

I’m sure birth order has it’s effect as well as that my brother’s memories or experiences of all of this will be completely different than mine. Memory is referential not exact.

But i haven’t had a live person to settle the issue of “NOTICE ME” still stuck in that 10 year old girl that’s still stuck inside of me.

It’s also not the only thing going on. I just want to concentrate on it because there is a peace of inaction there I’m delighted to find.

Does the understanding he had unconditional love help? Not really because even though it’s part of the conversation it’s not the focus. The issue is the actual practice of having that relationship. Of settling that relationship. Honestly, looking at some of my friends and their father issues I may have it easy.

Then there’s just the grief and loneliness of the loss of your dad. No matter what the relationship was like. The normal everyday pain of death. One that we all feel at some point.

Then throw a heartedly lived life on top of that.

again, I don’t know what i’m trying to say in this. I’m sure it’s very scattered. I’m tired, not much sleep last night/today, need to rest so I can get up and do more tomorrow. i do know that walking into my dark and in need of so much attention apartment I felt that discouragement again, that gosh darn it boy, why do I even care at all?

I blame the mormons. They brainwashed me into being lonely when alone. Right?

Oh fuck it. I’ll cry tomorrow. I have to sleep before I die now. Good night bugs! Try not to take too much. not so much left to give today.

so I know the thing you’re spose to do

again…

obviously my issues of talking with my father have translated into the crazy freak out points on the end of this last relationship as well.

And I think the standard idea is that if I learn to solve that basic abandonment issue, possibly with safe roleplaying in a group setting? I can find a peace that will allow me to have a well-rounded and fulfilling relationship with a man in the future.

sounds fuckin boring.

my exes have in general been complimentary about me as a woman. I think my learning to talk to them in a real way would not have helped. I’m a sarcastic, mean, bitch on the inside. Unless I trust you completely. And then I am rainbows and a bowl of kittens, in the sarcastic and mean bitchy fashion.

so I’ve started hooking up on a random, and never for sure, basis with an old friend of mine. I’ve known him forever and we both understand we are not in any way suited to each other in a romantic situation. But for once we are both single and we occasionally have time to scratch le itch. And while there is no perfect we do have a good time getting drunk at the bar, hitting on other people and thinking about how it all may turn out. That is beginning to be us teasing the gay men who hit on him with the possibility maybe get in his pants, if they are up for a threesome that pleases me, and then going home together deuce, sans third, due to logistics of housing and etc. My friend likes my evil side, we share compatibility there.

I predict it will end in a few weeks/ maaaaybe months depending, as he grows more relaxed and cocky because he knows that no matter what he’s getting some, and he’ll attract the woman he really sees himself with, whatever that looks like in the Pavlovian male mind, and I’ll get the speech of how we can’t do this anymore. It’s similar to the “Just don’t fall for me speech” they like to give at the beginning of these things. Yeah dude, you don’t fall for me either bucko. There’s no chance of me falling for anyone ever again, but I do find I often have the men I’ve held stay or show up in my life again and again. Usually in good ways. I guess that’s something.

And to be fair neither one of us wants to lose the friendship. It’s grounded in vast tracts of time together, a history of both our adult lives right after school and living in nyc and where that went.

So what?

you thought this post was gonna go somewhere?

no. Dreaming of the comfort of a warm body, looking forward to the not having to care too much once the night is over.

weird having the point of healing in your mental understanding.

I mean, here’s the deal. I have started to really get pissed at the way the entire world says that a single woman is nothing. That somehow if You are single it is because you must do something different to not be ‘needy” or broken.

most relationships I see that work are normal people with issues who happen to be compatible and caring in them. Not rocket science.

And say I do find a way to heal the dear daddy do you love me crap. (and no I don’t date older men) So then what? If i started listing the things I have run into with men, that they have hidden deep down, well, my god, how much communication do you need? Personalities -the extra kinds, abuse, incest, fetishes of every sort, standard homosexual in denial. It’s seems pretty silly to think that I can know all this about men and still have issues about them talking to me.

i guess the issue is how much they talk bout me, get me to talk to them about me?

I am probably just a whiner at this point. I can think of all of the above at different times. Not every boy has been a jerk. A couple have been very much there for me.

The relaxed “talk about anything” closeness is what I guess I had hoped for in a long term “love me adoringly because I’m amazing” relationship.

Even if I fix ALL ONE of my issues. And stop being all sad all the time on the inside. And you know become completely and totally perfect, because I’m pretty sure that’s the next step on my internal personality evolution, I still can not believe that I will meet a guy who can do it, with me, for years. I have just known too many of them. And there is a lot of me to deal with.

oh gak

back to work

back to navel gazing
back to doing something beside wonder how long it takes to actually believe the crap you tell yourself about how happy you are that you’re single? (I do like being messy and run around naked I have to say. Knowing that if I say I’m gonna do something to myself and then I don’t do it well nobody else GIVES A SHIT! IT’S ALL ME!!! MWAHAHAHAHAHAAAA!!!!!!!)

and goodnight.

more imaginings

It’s the trains. clunk clunk clink clunk clink…ratttle shake roll. I’m not sure what the real sound of a subway is, there are shrieks and a constant loose holding of my body frame while I snooze or just think with eyes closed. You tune the noise out.

The armor of the modern day warrior is iPod and izClosed. (see what i did there.)

The cherry seat is the one in the corner with a wall to lean your head against to the side, backpack on lap, arms held across in the closest approximation I can get to fetal position while staying upright.

And I usually snooze.

Sometimes I am too awake, or I have a coffee in my hand and I listen to the music, think, try to figure out everything, reverting to 10 as much as needed?

Today I was myself with myself. Old and young. Floating. Told her to stay there. The sucking was coming, life was gonna change, don’t rush it, just float, let some one come to you, it’s better so wait, wait wait wait wait wait .wait ..wait …wait

Stay. Here. Then.

Oh my vey

These are mental fantasies, I understand that.

I should probably pick up a book, “how to grieve for dummies.”

Not good at denying reality for very long, however it may have looked to others recently. Hence my fairly harmless addictions. I can tell when something has made my life suck.

Or better.

Tv is on, as usual, a distraction and friend, and there are tender daddy with kid moments. I am crying.

And on the train I remembered another thing, that I remember again now, I said on stage the other night, about my Dad buying us marathon bars on the way to the lake to where he had a heart attack while water skiing. UP on the skies, drifted down, letting go of the rope…

He bought chocolate stars and let me eat as much as I wanted as he worked on building the new house in the twilight. I remember chocolate melting on the tongue as I lay on concrete staring through 2×4’s at the stars popping out in the summer sky.

I remember naps after work, hobbies in the den, laying in bed watching HBO, first HBO in the neighborhood and being gone – not home, Bishop and Businessman. But saying good night was a hug and kiss, the smell of old spice and a handful of m&m’s in the dish on his side table.

Sunday nights were pizza, popcorn and ice cream when he was home. Monday night was family home evening with a moral mormon lesson, a different family member planned the lesson each time. Usually ending with something fun, like dinner of Kraft Macaroni and Cheese and Campbell’s Cream of Mushroom Soup. (Mom cooked from scratch, literally, grinding her own wheat from our 2 year supply. Grinder was electric however. And not all the time. But that meal above was my favorite. And a special treat.)

What is it that I missed so much from him, besides his life? I felt abandoned by him before he was gone forever.

The answer that popped into my head, and tied into everything else, is that I wanted him to talk to me.

hmmmmmmmmmm

I hate that psychology is so fuckin obvious when you start playing with it.

I just wanted him to talk to me.

Get it.

That is where the crazy is.