“i’m selfish, impatient, and a little insecure. i make mistakes, i am out of control, and at times hard to handle, but if you can’t handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don’t deserve me at my best”
-marilyn monroe
on a scale of one to ten, i am kind of depressed today.
despite having done many of the things i love.
despite the fact that it was nearly 60 degrees outside, and i passed several hours with the sunshine on my back.
and so life has gone on, generally moving in the forward direction, minus an occasional lost day or two in bed.
this is the first time in my adult life i have been attached to no one, nothing that is keeping me in one place or life situation — a fact that is on alternate days liberating and crushing.
i went to visit portland and it was nice. i felt slightly covered in fuzz for the entire weekend, in that way that is only possible when you are the company of good people for long stretches at a time.
in between booking my ticket and my arrival, adams was offered an amazing job in st. petersburg. he’ll return to russia the day after my birthday. i am obviously very proud of him, but a little disappointed too, that i am now left to my own devices as a the sole freewheeling 20-something in the family.
and zach, it was good to see his face. i still have a significant crush on him, i guess. and i wonder if i will ever be able to expose my weirdness to anyone else in the same way, and whether being able to do so is even a good thing. i mean, we broke up, so maybe it’s not. but i was a kid then, so it’s hard to say.
i was more judgmental of portland this time around. it just seems to easy, white, to the point that it’s a little boring and repetitive. we did do some fun stuff, though, like go to the weirdo kidd toy museum and explore the attic of your nightmares at a place called city liquidators.
i slept on a normal schedule during the trip, which was surprising. it was much harder to adjust when i came back. the worst part about my schedule is not having to stay up all night — it’s switching back and forth when i have days off, and sometimes getting off at a reasonably late hour of night, other times when it’s morning.
i had last night off but stayed up anyway. i went to a party at cody’s house, kissed a boy who lived in my tiny dorm building when i was a freshman in college, acted generally like a stupid drunk person. i brought scott to the party, though it was the first time we had seen each other in almost a month (yeah, when will i ever learn that part two never works out?). it was nice to patch things up, but he wasn’t pleased with my behavior. still, i think we can be friends, eventually, probably, in some sort of messy way.
i’ve been talking to toby a lot, and i think he is a good friend for me, with possible mentor potential. i kind of wish i had spent more time talking to him last night instead of locking lips with bad santa, but oh well. oh well oh well.
i think about men lately, and dating. i seem to swing back and forth between wanting everything and nothing. i spend a lot more time on okcupid and i go on dumb dates with people from the internet and the real world, then i feel progressively more and more like the pickiest girl on earth. i sense that i would be a lot happier if there was a person supporting me, loving me, pushing me to finally crawl out of this phase in life. but i also don’t think i can be with someone successfully until i get out it.
i sense that i have a strong craving for intimacy, familiarity, though i don’t even know if i want it to come from a romantic relationship. i think a lot about getting roommates. i think a lot about living in nashville, maybe even with my parents for a while.
chachington’s friend charles is going on a date with my dad on monday morning so he can go on a date with me when i go home in january. that should be interesting.
i don’t know what else to say. well, there was thanksgiving, and it was a little hard. being away from my family and thinking about that time last year, when david and i decided to get married on our trip back from california. we also had our first major fight.
i haven’t talked to david, or even seen him from afar, in over a month. i don’t know how i feel about that. sometimes i don’t care, and sometimes i count the days and i’m sad.
i took the MAT. i did well. i’m almost done with grad school stuff and i applied for denver teaching fellows, which would maybe be even better.
i want to go everywhere lately, or stay here. i don’t know. adams gave me a free plane ticket and i guess i’ll go to new york in february. i miss the days when i could just hop on the bus.
justin s. gets home in about a week. now i am going to call justin k. and get my weekly dose of reality check.
Filed under: dear diary | Tags: (i still don't believe in luck), i feel my luck could change
best weekend/days off in a long effing time.
yay.
it’s time for a swift kick in the ass, and i’m the one who has to do the kicking. JUST KNOW THAT NEXT YEAR CAN BE 100 TIMES BETTER IF I COMMIT TO MAKING IT THAT WAY.
i am going to find
love
happiness
a different job
peace with myself
a path to my future
just gotta look around.
my first goal is to start asking for exactly what i want.
i have a feeling about 2010.
youth and beauty don’t guarantee happiness, no.
-katie holmes (three times in the past 48 hours, once by a dude claiming that people think he looks like tom cruise)
-liv tyler (the usual)
-michelle monaghan (have been getting this one all the time lately… who the fuck is she?)
-lauren graham (argh.)
-bjork (seems to only happen when i do insane things with my hair)
also gay men keep thinking my eye color is fake, which is fucked up and hilarious because in college i wore ridiculous aquamarine contacts despite the fact that my eyes are some shade of green or sometimes blue.
i think i’m just not going to sleep today. it isn’t working.
Filed under: dear diary | Tags: then what could i say that would sound right?
tonight at 10 p.m. i begin another 8-day (night?) stretch of work. then, just as i’m about to go crazy, i will have next saturday and sunday off. i’m also taking the MAT at 1 p.m. on friday at DU, and i’m weirdly excited about it. i didn’t show up for the GRE. even if i am capable of scoring decently on it, i had anxiety because (of course) i couldn’t sleep… and that part about not studying.
instead i began the day by catching up scott, lying supine on his couch, where i spent so much time just weeks ago. i guess we’re going to try for a round II. being messed up about david interrupted the nice thing we had going in october, but there were other problems, too. i’m not ready to be super serious with someone (hence my earlier comment about needing to be in a totally different life situation), but i think i am capable of growing close to another person in this time of transition. i hope so.
i went home, took a shower, and did productive things in the whole foods coffee bar, like drink green juice and take care of grad school things. i got in touch with some people from whom i would like recommendations. i thought about the things that make me happy and decided being productive is one of them.
sunshine is another. it’s nice to be awake all day.
coffee and chatting and friends is another. i went to the new hooked on colfax to meet jason, and that was nice, though i prefer the old location next door. i generally spend a lot of time alone during the day and need to make myself get out there, laugh with people more often. i’m happy about the circumstances that allowed us to get in touch — technology and my somewhat stalker-ish tendencies.
after that i did one of the weirdest things i’ve done in a while. i drove down west colfax to the lake steam baths. i’ve wanted to go inside since last winter, after i spotted it and did some online research to determine it wasn’t a hand job whirlpool spa. despite the creepy sign, it’s probably the closest thing denver has to a schvitz. monday and thursday are ladies days, and it’s open till 10 pm, with unlimited use for $15. (five bucks off if you mention yelp!)
other than a few yelp reviews, i didn’t really know what to expect. you walk into this little wood paneled front desk area and are given a draping sheet, a tiny hand towel, and a locker key. past that room there is a hallway that leads to a large locker room and a “cafe” that sells (amont other things) hot dogs, salad, greek yogurt, seltzer and extremely cheap beer. i wanted some seltzer after my first round of sweating, but unfortunately their machine was broken yesterday.
anyway, i had been instructed to find lena to check in for my massage. i did that and she kind of showed me around. i was told that the draping sheet was just for the locker room. you walk in to the steam area nude, and inside there is a naked old woman who tells you what to do. she will also scrub you with salt, if you wish. the first step is to take a shower. then you sit in the eucalyptus-scented steam room until you feel like you’re going to die. then you go into the dry sauna and splash cold water from buckets onto your body. when you’re really sure you’re going to die, you go back to the big room with the naked salt scrub lady and lie on a tiled platform/bench until your heart rate goes down. then you sit in the hot tub in the corner, and finally (well, this was my own decision), you go back to the shower area and stand under cold water for as long as you can stand it.
i completed that process twice, sat in the locker room and read an oprah magazine from summer 2008, and then got a pretty good hour-long massage for $30. the only quality control issue was that my massage therapist wanted to talk about her life the entire time. but i was in the mood to chat, so i didn’t mind. she’s 28 and divorced with three kids, which made me feel a little more at peace with the things i was complaining about the other day.
after that i drove home feeling very relaxed, and though i had planned to do yoga, i decided a run in the cold would be nice. it was.
the day ended with l’arrivée du beaujolais nouveau at le central, and a belated celebration of scott’s birthday. i drank a little too much but it helped me go to bed at a normal time. i fell asleep with good thoughts in my head and felt somehow renewed.
i thought i would have another productive day today, but instead i wasted basically all of it sleeping more and lounging around with gonzo — an activity i’ve determined is not good for my overall well-being, even if it feels nice at the time. i’m going to read for a little bit now to prepare my brain for the drunken clusterfuck i will inevitably encounter in a couple hours.
oh, i had the weirdest dream about a party, d.c., portland, gardens, those draping sheets, cats (namely gonzo and an anonymous kitten), and pete’s kitchen as a high school sorority meeting at my parents’ house. i’ll have to write about that later.
from dad:
Today I had strawberries, pineapple, grapes, orange melon, broccoli, tomatoes, a little cottage cheese, and mushrooms.
I was sitting across from a coed and I told her that she looked like Taylor Swift, and she said that she was surprised that I even knew who Taylor Swift was so I sang Fifteen and gave her the finger! Just kidding (about the finger).
I love you,
Your Old Fart Dad
i keep consulting the internet like an oracle, thinking it’s going to tell me something about myself i don’t already know.
it doesn’t help my insomnia, anyway.
so, i’m up at 6:30, but i only slept from 2 till 5. i still haven’t even decided if i’m going to show up for the test. that’s a bad sign, eh? i’m lounging around in a fleece-lined bathrobe i got the other day, and it’s funny how those things can immediately cause a person to develop lebowski-esque tendencies.
i don’t feel like writing, or actually like doing anything. but i’ve had words swimming around my head for days and i figure this is the best way to get them out: admit i’m feeling lazy but keep typing until the logorrhea flows.
i’m supposed to take the GRE in the morning. i think i’m going to show up and make an attempt, but i doubt i will perform well. the foremost problem is that i did not prepare as much as i should have. however, this is a fact related to the second problem, which is that my fucked up schedule prevents me from functioning like a normal human being most of the time. i have no idea how i’m going to get to bed tonight and wake up at 6:30 tomorrow morning. i hopped out of bed at noon yesterday, which was wonderful — but as a result, i needed to sleep till it was dark outside this evening.
also, i realized earlier tonight that i can take the miller analogies test instead. unlike the GRE (which requires a 4-hour time commitment, a $140 registration fee, registration a month in advance, and actual math skills), it is a brief, inexpensive test composed entirely of analogies. it’s also a mensa qualifying exam, heh. one only needs to register a week beforehand, so it’s likely that i will be taking it soon, in lieu of another attempt at the GRE.
really, though, i’m questioning once again how much i want to go back to school — whether it’s just a mental trick i’m playing on myself so i don’t feel like such a loser for serving drunk people food at 3 in the morning. i do want to be a teacher; i mean, i think i would be good at it. but i’m not sure i have the drive to fill out all these forms, to acquire the student loans, or to skip grad school all together and do it the other way.
serda was in town last friday for one of those biology teacher conferences we used to attend for awi. we went to dinner at watercourse and talked about things, like graduate school and ambivalence, and like how your late 20s is a scary place full of confusing thoughts about marriage and babies and careers. it’s not that everyone else has their shit together or anything, but it sure seems like it sometimes.
i don’t know why i am so reticent to admit that the typical female role appeals to me. or rather, with the internal knowledge that my desires are genuine and not simply out of convention, i don’t know why it’s difficult to talk freely about wanting to be in a loving relationship that leads to marriage and children, and knowing it would be more satisfying for me than any kind of career i could conceive of falling into. maybe it’s because when i was younger i didn’t relate to normal girls and their desires for these things — desires that seemed shallow and conventional.
as i’ve gotten older, and particularly in the aftermath of my relationship with david, the opportunity for a family of my own has seemed more elusive than a good job (though, i’m not going to lie, i am still occasionally terrified that i will not be able to dig myself out of this hole, that i will continue to be greedy for the decent income and lack of responsibility my job provides). i want to have children, but i don’t just want to have children. i want to build a relationship with my ideal partner, and that takes time. it also requires finding such a partner, and essentially being in a totally different life situation.
so in the meantime i displace my desires into this half-effort to become a teacher: a career in which i can influence young minds and have an immediately gratifying effect on the universe.
if i decide to do that, anyway.
for a couple days i was having trouble sleeping, getting home at 4:30 but not falling asleep till 7 or 8. there were two incidents recently, two days in a row when i found myself crying at 6 in the morning over nothing and everything, what i have and what i don’t. my life could be a lot harder, but there are still some things that are hard.
mostly i am uncomfortable with not knowing the next step, or the last sentence in the next chapter. i’ve always been like that. though, as i was getting out of my car in the parking lot at work the other night, a new mantra came to me: wait and see.
i guess that’s all i’m going to write for now. i sort of wish i’d gone to the movies this evening. oh well.
god for an ugly dude nick cave really effing turns me on. he needs a haircut these days, tho.
often i feel like i’m not good at much else besides being pretty, and sometimes i feel like i’m not even very good at that.
i began writing on sunday night:
i went for a run to clear my thoughts, slowing to a flaneur’s pace to enjoy the scenery quite regularly. i passed st. marks and it looked inviting in the afternoon light. the clink-clank of coffee cups nearly drew me in, but i decided to abstain until later in the evening (i am here now, waiting to go to work at a ridiculously late hour of the night — all the more ridiculous with the time change last night).
on york street wet leaves were matted to the ground. i reached colfax, the corner that houses the salvation army, and remembered something that happened half a decade ago around this time of year: ness, david and i drove to the thrift store so i could examine a pair of green pumps i’d seen in the window. david got upset for some reason and walked all the way back to his house.
i thought about last year, leaving the banya with my brother, clean with sweat. the day before, we crunched leaves in city park on the way home from science museum. and i thought about how a quarter of a year has passed since he was last here, walking back from the thin man with me and leslie, the day before i was supposed to get married.
back in november 2009 a girl crossed the street, heading in the direction of the bus stop in front of 7-11. shocking violet bra straps stood out against her ebony skin and she looked back when she heard me breathing heavily a few steps behind her — visibly relieved i was a slightly out of shape female jogger and not someone more threatening, i would imagine.
i went to the tattered cover and read magazines while the sun set behind those lovely windows. i considered going inside twist & shout, but i don’t need any albums. i did note from the partially open front door that it smells exactly like the old location, despite looking somewhat like the sad little sister of a virgin megastore.
i ran home in the dark feeling much better about my situation in life, and that’s pretty much all i have to say about that.
***
i am going home to see my family from january 4-10.
[post truncated]
it seems like every really good time in my life is touched with some kind of sadness. i can’t deal with this right now and am hoping for a happy surprise ending.
victoria and i went to the gym and then hung out in the steam room after work. then i slept for four hours and made a salad with leftovers. now i will go do some tasks to make myself feel like a more productive and responsible adult.
on saturday night i went to work at 9:45, served stupid drunk people food and milkshakes, then headed home around 4:30 on sunday morning… at which point i purchased a clif bar, banana and spike energy drink from 7-11 in preparation for running a half-marathon on no sleep and basically no training. oh, and maybe a quarter pack of cigarettes on friday night (though, i did also go for an evening run at cheesman).
about an hour later i ran down to civic center park and looked around for chris. miraculously, i found him about ten minutes before the race started, and before i knew it we were off. it was pretty easy till mile 5 or 6, then by miles 8-9, i was pretty sure i was going to die. but somehow we made it to 13.1, and though my quads are not thanking me for this particular whim, i feel like a certain part of my core being has been restored.
i wanted to do a full marathon this year — you know, a mile for every year of my age — but considering everything else that’s gone on, i’ll take a half.
***
i take the GRE exactly one month from today.
gonzo and i have been snuggling like hell lately, making cuddlenests in my fucking freezing bed ‘cuz my radiators suck and my landlord is out of town. and i’ve been thinking a lot about the progression of our relationship, wondering whether it mirrors the course i expected my relationship with david to take.
when i found gonzo at the shelter, i felt like he was right for me. for some reason he seemed like the cat i was supposed to have. then i brought him home and that seemed to be true. i nurtured him back to health and he was perfect. and then one day he started annoying the shit out of me. i would have never given him away, but i started fantasizing about it a lot. i don’t know how we moved past that period, and perhaps that’s what i’m trying to meditate on. for the past month and a half or so, gonzo has pretty much been attached to my armpit whenever i’m home, purring his little pigeon purr into my happy ears.
of course, gonzo is a cat, and as far as i know, david is a human being. there were no words in my late summer battles with gonzo (well, not on his part, anyway), and maybe i just grew on him because he realized i was the one filling up his food dish and scooping the shit out of his toilet.
the thing is, gonzo wasn’t the cat i was supposed to have. he’s just a cat i picked for one reason or another. i stuck it out past the annoying phase, and now i am going to love him till i have to put him in the ground.
it’s really easy to get that feeling about a lover, like fate brought you together. david and i actually talked about this a few times during out relationship. despite claiming not to buy into that belief in the past, it was hard at times not to feel like my whole life had brought me to him. and that was a big part of the reason it was so hard to break up.
but now, nearly half a year removed from the situation, i’m back to a more pragmatic version of myself. and i kind of feel that if you like someone, making a commitment to stick with said person is more important than whimsical notions of fate and the like. i think almost any two people can be together if they try.
just some thoughts.
there are really two people i need to be choosing from to make that commitment right now, and i’m having a hard time doing so. i am also wondering why i am the kind of girl that makes men think they are in love. i am especially thinking about the fact that it seems to mostly happen not because they think i am pretty, not because they think i am smart, but because they think i am thoughtful and kind. and maybe in the aftermath of being told by david that i am abusive and mean, i sort of get off on that.
incidentally, i saw david walk into the whole foods as ish and i were paying for coffee the other night. it made my heart start racing in a disturbing way, perhaps because it was one of the first times i’ve spotted him randomly, and not at some place like the thin man where it’s half-expected.
i’m not really worrying about it much anymore, i mean that situation, but this seems like a good enough place to put my thoughts.
oh, yo la tengo was pretty good.
i don’t want to break any more hearts. i never meant to break them in the first place. i just want to be with someone with whom i can share my love, take naps, and become a better person. i don’t think that is really so weird.
tracklist for a mix i made but did not give to david approximately two months ago:
sleep all summer – st. vincent and the national
wedding dance – slow dazzle
tennessee – silver jews
the idea of growing old – the features
laid – james
100,000 fireflies – the magnetic fields
again & again – the bird and the bee
good things – sleater-kinney
books written for girls – camera obscura
please, please, please, let me get what i want – she & him
Filed under: dear diary | Tags: all the boys in the neighborhood would love you if they could
things are getting weird around here. i’m not sure i’ve ever been in such high demand.
i is convinced i emit psychotropic drugs and wrote the dates of our first all-night conversation in giant magic marker letters on cardboard.
the freakishly beautiful s keeps telling me he’s had a secret crush on me since he arrived in denver last fall, and now he’s making me hold on to the spare keys for his apartment.
over brunch on sunday morning, ch told me he was just going to put all his marbles on the table and ask me on a date, because last year he never thought he’d get the chance.
m dances around me in the whole foods, sends text messages about kissing, implies i am making him a little sad.
e is still sending one-liner postcards from switzerland — two yesterday — and telling me he would be the best boyfriend.
i don’t even know about d anymore, so i guess that’s good.
on a mostly unrelated note, i am missing j terribly. i guess at least now i have an excuse to go to paris.
some day i will look back at this time in my life and be nostalgic for it, too. i mean, isn’t that always how it goes?
my brain has been all over the place lately and as a result i am finding it difficult to express myself.
the end. i mean, it’s the end of this for now.
pretty much don’t care about the pavement reunion now that it is nowhere close to the 90s anymore. i have seen mr. malkmus play several times and i mean oh well. does that make me weird? maybe i just don’t like reunions. that would explain why i still like yo la tengo i guess. i have seen them play about a million times since the 90s and i am pretty psyched to see them again next month.
this is an excellent song, anyhow.
what do i say about life right now?
i did go out with bachelor number two again, not knowing much more than the fact that he’s a designer with a penchant for pynchon and kundera. over coffee last week he was cute but shy, and i felt like we were just trying to out-anti-hipster each other.
on friday night we met up at potager and he brought me a deck of mexican playing cards. we drank wine at the bar and then went next door to my house, where we drank more wine and played uno on my floor. we went for a walk and ended up at his house, a huge weird place right next to the bail bond district. he made coffee and we talked for a long time, a little nervously, until it was late.
he offered to walk me home and as our feet hit the sidewalk he apologized for coming off as aloof. he said he wanted to see me again and maybe talk about having some kind of relationship, which i told him struck me as pretty direct. we talked about being shy and when we got to my house i said maybe we should kiss to see if we liked it. we did. and we did.
for some reason when i got in my bed i couldn’t go to sleep. too many thoughts swimming around in my head. from the second i walked into his house of art and artifacts, i knew everything was going to change for me, and that was a lot to process without warning.
at 8 in the morning on saturday i sent him a text message contemplating whether i should shower and pretend sleep happened or just stay in bed. he had just woken up and we decided to get breakfast, which led to a trip to the jewish bagel store in little russia and the illegal use of plastic cutlery and cafe tables at the colorado blvd. whole foods.
eventually we went back to his house and he showed me its upstairs, which i liked even better than the first level — it’s all secret nooks and strange things. and then we kissed and kissed and kissed until it got late enough that i had to go home and make myself crash if there was any way in hell i was going to be able to go to work and stay up till 4.
last night we met again. he gave me a necklace his sister made, though he didn’t tell me she made it until later. the evening involved a bike ride and drinks with a neighbor and other things that aren’t particularly interesting to recount, but eventually we got in his bed and it seemed impossible that i haven’t known him for much longer. at the same time there are a million things i want to know about him, and a million things to say, and a million kisses to kiss.
on friday when i couldn’t sleep, i thought about whether i’m ready for this. i’ve been single for a solid four months, and the situation with david is no closer to working itself out than it was in the beginning of may. in most ways, in fact, it has become more impossible. i’ve been on some dates this summer and they were basically horrible, and it’s hard to say whether it was because i wasn’t ready to move on, to be anything but single, or because the men just weren’t my type. but this interaction is clearly different, and i don’t really see the point in holding back because i had expected to mourn longer.
what i am certain about is that i have a much more clear idea of what i am looking for, who i am looking for, and how to deal with certain nuances that don’t meet my picture perfect ideal. i am pretty excited to see how this goes.
his name is ishmael.
***
my father went to the emergency room last week and went through heart surgery without telling me. rather, i called home on friday afternoon and my mom told me he was hiding it from me, but she had already told my brother earlier that day and figured i would find out anyway. this was pretty terrifying to me. i don’t know whether my dad was hiding his problems because they’re clear evidence that everything we say to him is true, or because they’re more serious than he wants us to know about.
my mom and i talked about relationships for a while and it made me realize how my parent’s courtship and marriage shaped my views about what should be. i don’t think they’re bad views, but they are particular and suddenly a lot of things made sense to me. maybe i will write more about that later. this summer i also figured out that much of my desire to have children in the next few years is a clear reaction to the fact that my parents, especially my father, were older when i was conceived. i can explain that better but i’m not ready to write about it quite yet.
so that’s kind of what’s going on in my head today.
what i have learned since the sun came up:
riding your bike home at 7 a.m. after staying up all night with the boy who will inevitably be your next boyfriend is kind of a rush.
a search for “naked russian kids boys videos online” somehow brought someone to my blog.
my cat eats crayons.
my mom thinks my zombie facebook avatar is insensitive to deformed people.
peanut butter is the most efficient calories-into-body delivery method after biking and running many miles and forgetting to eat for 16 hours.
if you don’t go to bed, you don’t really get morning breath.
gossip girl started again last night!!!
that’s pretty much it so far.
Filed under: dear diary | Tags: i'd like to fly but my wings have been so denied
dudes at the halfway house next door are having a weirdly touching alice in chains sing-a-long on the porch.
wow.
well,
that was unexpected. i feel like i just walked into a new denver.
i still don’t know what is up with this website, but whenever i happen to click on it, i feel like my fortune is being told.
4:49 a.m., can’t sleep. really missing evan at this moment. even gonzo seems to want him back in my bed.
a polaroid evan took of me during the first week of his stay, right before i barfed at the zoo:
another he took when we went to the mountains last week:
i recently learned that there is some iphone camera setting that allows you to take polaroid-esque pictures. this annoyed me for some reason.
Filed under: dear diary | Tags: where love that traveled far had found me
i can’t stop listening to erlend oye stuff lately, especially this and this
…
and this.
in other news, my mom gave me advice on how to use the internet yesterday.
Filed under: dear diary | Tags: well i thought it was already as heavy as can be
about a year ago, i was running or maybe walking in the general direction of the cherry creek mall. i don’t really remember what i was doing, just that i hadn’t been here long and that i was making an effort to explore the city without a car. it was raining a little bit, like it always was when i first moved here.
just as i reached the intersection of university and 1st, a crazy old woman approached me and started babbling as we waited for the light to change. there was something about winter coats on sale and how i should buy one. whatever she told me made me think she thought i was a teenage runaway.
as we started to cross the street, she flipped out and went off on me. she said, “oh you think you’re cinderella, you think someone’s going to come and save you.” i maybe said something rude in response as i ran off. i was offended because i realized for a second that she might be right.
still, i didn’t think much about that interaction until months later, when david and i broke up and i felt completely out of sorts in this city. i had always painted a picture of my cross-country move as an act of independence, a spontaneous uprooting of a life that was no longer making me happy. but seeing how things played out, i started to wonder if i was just jumping from one pot into another, thinking david could rescue me from myself. i realized how much i leaned on him, and how little my life existed outside of greektown, the yoga studio and our bed.
meanwhile, i stopped working at greektown, stopped doing yoga, and moved back into my apartment. the distraction of finding my way in denver, getting used to a new job, picking up running again, all of these new routines — they actually kept me feeling pretty happy with the way my life was playing out. but i still wanted to get back together with david, and the feeling haunted me all the time.
at some point toward the end of the summer, reality set in and my feelings started to change. coincidentally or not, it was around the time i felt completely settled in. i thought for a second that i had finally started to appreciate true independence, but then all of my late summer guests departed. i was craving a little solitude, but now i can feeling my cinderella complex rearing its ugly head again.
i just don’t know who can save me, besides myself, and that’s a lot of work.
david and i are still interacting sort of, but it’s become a bad habit, something i have to hide from my friends and even my parents. the latter is a big deal because my parents have a tendency to love my ex-boyfriends. my father was thrilled when i told him evan was visiting, and my mother practically encouraged me to bone zach when we were in portland for my brother’s graduation. news that i stayed with john while visiting d.c. was met with similar approval. but at the very mention of david’s name, my parents start talking to me like i am a kid who isn’t allowed to date yet.
it’s a mess.
i would say at this point that i have moved on but not really enough that i am over david. rather, i am over him but not enough to be into anyone else. david mentioned to me today that someone told me i have an okcupid profile, which annoyed me because i don’t like being spied on. but it was kind of funny because i was actually supposed to have an internet date tonight. i’ve had that thing since the days of zach, but i updated it on a whim while i was in d.c., and john and i had fun making fun of all the lame guys who wrote me for a couple days. since then, i have oddly used it mostly as a way to communicate with zach, who is perhaps my highest match on the entire site. i’ve also sort of made it a justification for being down on men, because the picture it paints of my potential dating pool in denver is not pretty.
recently, however, i was contacted by two moderately interesting people, and we have been talking a little. i was going to see one of them tonight and i still might see the other tomorrow. unfortunately for bachelor number one, i had a little anxiety attack about the lack of depth to our interactions, and i sent him an awkward email to cancel. from a brief meeting over coffee the other day, the second candidate seems a little more intellectually acute, but perhaps a little too annoying hipster for my taste.
sometimes it’s hard to tell if i’m still too damaged to date or if i’m just ridiculously picky these days. what i want is some amalgam of all my ex-boyfriends: the romance and whimsy of my relationship with evan, the particular and somewhat deranged rapport i had with zach, the mutual sense of alienation/aesthetics (and morning coffee) with john, the plans i made with david.
it would probably be easier on the east coast (like, hello, if this guy lived in denver and was five years younger…). at least i have gonzo/garbanzo the fuckhead cat. he won’t let me have gentlemen callers, anyway.
***
i played pretend bartender for half a shift at greektown on monday night. it was pretty fun and i wouldn’t mind doing it regularly if i didn’t have so much else going on. i miss doing the crossword every day, you know.
and did i tell you i got a new bike, finally? i’ve been riding the shit out of it. i got a basket too and maybe justin will install it for me this weekend. i’m going to miss the hell out of him when he goes to paris next month. maybe when he leaves i will finally ditch st. marks — it’s becoming a pathetic extension of my house, except more convenient because it’s two blocks from work and serves up an endless supply of coffee and beer. earlier tonight i realized my apartment even kind of looks the same.
louder than bombs
i woke up at 8:30 this morning to the sound of my roommate on the phone. minutes later i found out it was rip, calling to tell me that the world trade center and the pentagon had been hit with airplanes. you know when someone wakes you up with bad news, and you aren’t quite all there yet…and it casts a bad shadow on the rest of your day? well, that’s how i felt for a while.
i laid there talking to him, not wanting to be alone…so i just stayed motionless, in a daze, and we listened to the news unfold. what the hell? this isn’t supposed to happen in america. in my last entry i said that sometimes i feel like life here is a movie…because it’s so beautiful and everything is beyond my expectations. today was the exact opposite of that, and i learned that different means certainly can yield the same results…
this cannot be real. this only happens in big budget hollywood movies. but it is real…and it’s fucked up.
right now i wish i was still in high school that i had woken up at 7:00, nashville time, and arrived at school at 7:45, and that i could have found out about this with my friends around me and i could have had more people to talk to. i wish that my teachers that i knew so well and loved were here and that i could talk to them…and my parents, and my little brother. i wonder if everyone i know in new york is okay…
this afternoon things were getting better but then tonight we had a hall meeting which got me down again.
thank you adam for sending me mail.
i miss my bed and i miss my room. i miss cafe coco, i miss nashville streets. i miss harpeth hall, and all my friends now spread around the country. i miss my family, i miss my cat…i miss everything that is familiar and everyone who knows me all too well.
8:01 pm – 2001-09-11
at 4:30 this morning, the bar crowd had cleared out and three doctors came into the restaurant. one of them pulled me aside just after i dropped off their food, handed me his credit card and said he was covering the bill. and then he added, “i just want to tell you that you are so beautiful. i hope you aren’t offended by that.” and then he left me a $50 tip.
working at the kitchen is a lot different than working at greektown. there, old men (and old women) would tell me i was precious. the greeks would call me “baby” but it was just how it was.
at the kitchen sometimes i feel like i work at hooters or a strip club. there seems to be a tacit understanding that on the graveyard shift, you will use your sexuality and wholesome young girl-ness to get large tips from drunk dudes and doctors and cops who like to show off. men will stuff cash into your apron. you will wear your uniform the way we did in high school. a short skirt, loud jewelry, knee socks and pigtails, perhaps.
i am more distrustful of men these days.
five o’clock is the ideal time to do work. it’s too bad i have to go to work at 8:00 tonight, because i’m in a groove. i feel like the most coffee shop person in the coffee shop. gio hands me free coffee and i go outside to smoke an esoteric cigarette. i come inside and my fingers pitter patter on my macbook. i am wearing my reading glasses which mean i am getting old, but they do seem to prevent eyestrain. john says i am dressed up for a “day at the office.”
i wish justin was here but he left for idaho today.
evan left my bed at 7:30 this morning, leaving two mostly full cartons of cigarettes in his place (he is a scientist for philip morris international these days, ha ha). he woke me up at 6:30, crying.
i am sad he is gone but also happier. i mean not happier that he is gone but happier about life. we checked off a lot of things i should have been doing with my time this summer. went stomping around the mountains, played the slot machines at blackhawk, went to first friday and ditched out because it was kind of dumb.
something i have realized is that i hate when colorado pretends to be cultured instead of just being colorado. give me the sundance lodge and mountain sun anytime, santa fe art district not so much.
oh who cares.
and then we starting making out, and it was actually pretty fun.
this morning was the first time in many months that i’ve come home to someone who’s been sharing my bed (incidentally we have shared more beds than i have with anyone else, by a lot for some reason). i’m gonna miss him. i already miss that.
i began writing this post on a monday night, over a week ago:
i had the day off today and i spent it alone, mostly lounging in bed, perusing various reading materials. i am working on summaries of awi quarterly articles for the annual report and realizing that this was a much quicker task when i was the one who wrote the articles in the first place. i am also starting to think that my replacement was not a very good writer. maybe that is why she got canned. i never noticed before because no one put the magazines and things online after i left. well until about a month ago anyway. they had the website redone and it does look a lot better now.
i need a lot of time by myself lately, it seems. probably has something to do with finally getting used to the single lifestyle and then having a lot of house guests and additional job responsibilities all at once. plus the internet at my apartment thing, and the getting a cat thing. and summer is almost over, you know.
i finally went outside a little after eight tonight and it was already dark. yesterday was the hottest day of summer, i hear, a record. today there was rain and it seems to have washed away some of the heat — i am at st. marks and able to drink warm coffee, though i also have a glass of ice water beside me.
what i wanted to write about is evan visiting this weekend, and how that was good for me, but now i don’t remember what i wanted to say. i don’t remember because my head is distracted by david; i guess we had plans to watch mad men together tonight / i decided it was a bad idea and didn’t show. he called and says he really wants to see me. he says tonight there was supposed to be some normalcy, and that we have not had a neutral meeting ever. well of course.
the only time i have come close to being so fucked up over a guy is during the months after i broke up with evan spontaneously on the new year’s eve a week before my 21st birthday. i don’t know why i did this. i was home during the holidays for two weeks maybe, then he flew to nashville to meet my parents for the first time. we drove to chicago to see the flaming lips play, and it was supposed to be this big fun trip. it really should have been. i found us a cheap but awesome hotel room right in the middle of things, and chicago was one of my favorite cities. charles had moved back there only a few months earlier and by visiting him i was starting to know the city as well as i know new york.
instead i think i broke up with evan like, as the show ended. maybe an hour after the clock struck midnight. breaking someone’s heart is a terrible start to a year.
but as i have spent the past several months lamenting all the fighting i did with david last spring, telling him i wanted to leave when i didn’t really mean it, i suffered through the four months or so that passed before evan and i got back together. funny enough, this is when david and i started spending time together. we had met the previous spring and didn’t really hit it off, but ran into each other at a bar during one of allison’s going-back-to-sweden send-offs. david was the one working graveyards back then, and he had to leave pretty early to make it to work by midnight. that was before the regretting of my decision had set in, and i was flirty and familiar with him.
***
what i was going to say next, i think, is that when it all played out, i couldn’t really give myself over to david emotionally because i was so torn up over evan. that spring, the night that i graduated from college, i went to denver to attend justin’s art opening with david and dave craig. afterward we went to sputnik, and eventually david dropped dave and me off at lost lake, where belle and sebastian was rumored to be making a post-show appearance.
sure enough, as soon as i walked in, i spotted evan chatting with stevie himself. i don’t know exactly what happened, but all of a sudden evan was interested in me again. we talked until he had to leave, and as i was driving home that night (the long way, down federal), i got a phone call from him. thirty minutes later i was in his bed.
a few months after that we were in switzerland.
and then we broke up, and i moved to d.c.
by the time evan and i got back together, it was only something i wanted to happen because i had invested so much emotional energy pining for him and regretting my original decision. despite the fact that i knew it was a bad idea as soon as i realized it was actually going to happen, we managed to string each other along for about eight more months — during which time we lived in four apartments (six between us if you count the ones we started in, and that’s not even including a month i spent at my parents’ house), got quasi-married so i could obtain a swiss visa, and moved to switzerland.
it’s not that we weren’t getting along, per se. it’s just that you can’t go back, most of the time. there were too many things that were awkward to talk about, that space in between the first time and the second time. it wasn’t the same.
evan was my first real boyfriend, and it was quite serious, in that way that the academic lifestyle fosters intense relationships. we were stuck on the same campus all day and had a lot of time to spend together. and we were innocent as hell, with no ideas about what a relationship should and shouldn’t be. when we broke up the first time, i thought i would be damaged forever. when we broke up the second time, i just took an eight-hour plane ride and spent a week in new york decompressing with the aid of cigarettes, bagels, and giant ice-filled cups of diet coke. after that, i was okay.
when david and i broke up, i was nearly half a decade removed from being damaged about evan. and yet there was that feeling again, except this time it was a million times worse, because i was convinced david was the only person i would ever want to marry. (and fuck, look at me now, i’m diving into my late twenties and all alone. blah blah blah.)
***
the reason i didn’t get to say that, or anything i plan on writing next, is because first i started chatting with justin, and then it was late so i left. except instead of going home i went to david’s house, and i spent the night — and the next night as well. it was the first time since we broke up that made me think getting back together was a possibility (and by that i mean something he was amenable to, not necessarily something that would work out or be a good idea).
i worked during the rest of the week, and we didn’t talk much, giving me time to question myself and over-think the things i was thinking. by the time friday night arrived, we were able to see each other again, and i told him some things. they didn’t come out as sensical as it sounded in my head, or to anyone else with whom i have discussed the situation, but essentially the point is this: i know i said terrible things to david when we were fighting. i know i made him feel terrible, and i know the way we fought throughout our entire relationship was something that needed to change. i have known these things, rather, been willing to admit them, since the week before we broke up, when i wrote him a very long letter saying as much. i also understand the way he felt when he decided he couldn’t be with me, but that decision means that i cannot be with him now, or ever.
it might be different if we had not already made plans to spend the rest of our lives together. i don’t know. all i know is that i can’t shake that feeling of abandonment, and that i can’t properly explain to him the way i felt when i was being terrible to him in the first place. i never wanted to leave him, and i never wanted any other version of him than the one i already had. i just wanted him to take my opinions into account, and when i felt like he wasn’t, it made me insecure and even more pushy. and then my stubbornness kicked in. i just couldn’t make it stop, until one day, mid-sun salutation, i realized i was doing exactly what my nutritionist pointed out when i was first trying to get over my food issues: harming my quality of life through same methods by which i trying to improve it. except in this case it wasn’t just my quality of life — it was a person, two people, and our relationship together.
maybe it was too late by then. i still think we could have worked it out at that point. but i am certain that it is over now. additional events this summer, things i probably won’t be able to write about until i am truly “over” david, further cemented my sense of insecurity about his capacity for relating to me emotionally in the way that a life partner should.
this is veering into logorrhea territory, but i’ve had other thoughts since then. evan came back from the mountains and is staying with me again. i am amazed at how well we get along, and how much fun it is to be around him even with the romantic aspect removed. we’ve spent a lot of time with old friends, and it reminded me that i have not always been one to become a hermit when i enter a relationship. i sense that behavior started when i was dating zach, mostly because i didn’t know anyone else in d.c., and he didn’t really have friends back then.
david frequently commented that i was more introverted than him, and it became somewhat of a problem toward the end. i have come to realize this summer that i am not very introverted at all. while i enjoy spending time alone and have no trouble filling up my time without other people around, i do prefer to be in the company of others. i meet people easily, and as soon as i made the effort this summer, i acquired a lot of friends. but what happens eventually is that i feel like i am spreading myself thin, trying to be social with too many people. so i pick the one i like best and i give our relationship my best effort.
it just so happened that david was the one i liked best in a time when i was also making a major life transition. and our year together happened to intersect with that moment in peoples’ lives when it is suddenly normal to be thinking about getting married and having children and making the sort of plans that have permanent consequences.
that doesn’t make it any easier for me to deal with emotionally right now, but it does keep me from thinking we could salvage anything by getting back together, or that we should just because i spent so much time wanting to be with him, because he is “the one” or something.
i’m glad evan is here. it has been nice to just have someone around, someone to sleep in my bed and have galaxie 500 sing-a-longs with me, to sneak booze into the movie theater and talk about old times. i know i’m not ready to start seeing anyone any time soon, but i can already sense that i will be okay, and that some day i will be able to do those things with someone new.
my next post is going to be about plans and goals. i have some, these days.
but youtube is the big exception of my adult life thus far. i really held out. not so much anymore.
shithead symphony
a recidivist’s exit strategy
leaves of crass
my sadness has a new dimension
the cat fancier’s association
if i still lived in d.c., i would be here today:
it’s my favorite spot, and it spits me out new.
in march i was here, in the basement of my high school theater, standing next to a mural i painted nine years ago.
i keep forgetting that in between giving up on this blog and picking it up again, i did a little navel-gazing over the winter, mostly about finally getting over my eating disorder, doing yoga, and being fucking head over heels for david.
i read some of it this morning and i think i’m happier now, or perhaps more well-adjusted anyway. but what i really miss is being that close to someone. i miss our house, our cat, our plans. and while i rarely feel lonely these days, i am still sad that those things no longer exist.
