tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31119432024-03-12T23:54:42.365-04:00My Cavalier Approach to Human DecencyElle Emaitch (A pseudonym-- first name is Linda)http://www.blogger.com/profile/10440343897500915951noreply@blogger.comBlogger759125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111943.post-26061101944665318782020-08-07T01:04:00.005-04:002020-08-07T01:10:15.724-04:00From the Pages of my Notes App...<p> </p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s2">Write a blog post about how I plan to soon begin Ketamine-Assisted Psychotherapy.</span></p><p class="p3" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 20.3px;"><span class="s2"></span><br /></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s2">About writing C the email about how I’m afraid of this therapy being so effective that I get over him, my unhealthy fixation on him. Afraid of what redefining our relationship in a “healthy” new light will mean for both of us. </span></p><p class="p3" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 20.3px;"><span class="s2"></span><br /></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s2">About how I lay awake every night and imagine a version of us together where we experience intimacy. How I’ve been doing that for years. </span></p><p class="p3" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 20.3px;"><span class="s2"></span><br /></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s2">About how it becomes it’s own alternate reality, the versions of us spring to life in their own world. And now, when I lay awake, I just imagine them talking about how it’s all about to end— they don’t have much more time together.</span></p><p class="p3" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 20.3px;"><span class="s2"></span><br /></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s2">Whether they confide in each other that they believe they’ll get through this— that the love that they have for each other is more than my sickness, more than my delusion. That the feelings I have for him that make them possible aren’t some illness to be pathologized— that it’s not addiction. That it’s real love.</span></p><p class="p3" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 20.3px;"><span class="s2"></span><br /></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s2">About listening to the song “Death Bed” by Powfu. How I have been listening to it for weeks now and couldn’t understand why I related so closely to it— the story of a young man laying on his death bed, lamenting the future he’ll never have with his lover. </span></p><p class="p3" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 20.3px;"><span class="s2"></span><br /></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s2">How suddenly it becomes the story of the versions of me and C that live in my head— one of them knows they are about to be fumigated from existence— which one is it? <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Which one is on their death bed? Won’t they both die together?</span></p><p class="p3" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 20.3px;"><span class="s2"></span><br /></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s2">God, I wish I could pitch this whole concept to C as a musical. But this might be a bridge too far, even for us. </span></p><p class="p3" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 20.3px;"><span class="s2"></span><br /></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s2">I think this has somehow just become the blog post in itself. Too bad, I could write it better. Maybe I will. Who is keeping track, really? Who is to stop me?</span></p><p class="p3" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 20.3px;"><span class="s2"></span><br /></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s2">There’s a lot more to explore about Ketamine Therapy— about what it is, about what it could do for me. I’ll probably quote the email I sent to C when I explore this further, as that was kind of a blog post in itself.</span></p><p class="p3" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 20.3px;"><span class="s2"></span><br /></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s2">Except, he will read it. I haven’t told him about any of these posts lately, and for good reason. But any of you out there who have begun to form an opinion of him, based entirely on the craziness that pours out of me— remember. You have no control about how other people might see you, what they might do with your image, how they might distort you. None of this is his fault.</span></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">And I wrote him and email tonight, full of honesty and bluster, about how sick I am over him. And how afraid I am to lose that sickness. It was a fucking tidal wave of honesty. And he will read it. And we will be okay.</p><p class="p3" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 20.3px;"><br /><span class="s2"></span></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s2">Any of you out there who believe that he is the bad guy: he will read my words, and they will matter to him. And we will be okay.</span></p><p class="p3" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 20.3px;"><span class="s2"></span><br /></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s2">He will accept me. So fuck anyone who believes that I need to simply move on from him, as if he is nothing. As if he isn’t one of the precious few that take me as I am.</span></p><p class="p3" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 20.3px;"><span class="s2"></span><br /></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s2">And fuck me for still not being able to internalize that he loves me. Fuck how hard that sentence is even to type.</span></p><p class="p3" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 20.3px;"><span class="s2"></span><br /></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s2">There’s a lot more to explore about Ketamine therapy, and what it could mean for me, and all of the many reasons that I am afraid.</span></p><p class="p3" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 20.3px;"><span class="s2"></span><br /></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s2">But it is late.</span></p><p class="p3" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 20.3px;"><span class="s2"></span><br /></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s2">And I am tired.</span></p><p class="p3" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 20.3px;"><span class="s2"></span><br /></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s2">And I have date with myself in another reality. And she has a date with him. And they have a lot to talk about.</span></p><p class="p3" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 20.3px;"><span class="s2"></span><br /></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s2">And so little time left to do it.</span></p><p class="p3" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 20.3px;"><span class="s2"></span><br /></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s2">On with it.</span></p><div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href="www.suedecaramel.blogspot.com">My Cavalier Approach to Human Decency</a></div>Elle Emaitch (A pseudonym-- first name is Linda)http://www.blogger.com/profile/10440343897500915951noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111943.post-77558821528022628822020-08-03T04:14:00.011-04:002020-08-03T04:15:50.789-04:00Eponine and "The Middle Place"<div><br /></div><div>I'm listening to "On My Own" from Les Miserables. It's such a beautiful song, and I've known it for years now. It must have felt just as potent for me back when I first heard it in High School as it does for me now, if not moreso by virtue of the youthful lack of callous surrounding my heart. </div><div><br /></div><div>I must have been thinking of someone specific every time I listened to it-- who was that someone? How many someones have their been over the years? I know who it is now, and it feels so real and so immediate and so much like today's someone is exactly who it was written for; or rather, that it was written for me, about him. </div><div><br /></div><div>But it wasn't always him. It was always me, though-- that much has stayed consistent. Somehow, I need to keep that in mind: I am me, I am here, and I do not fundamentally change no matter who I pine for. I am the constant Eponine to a rotating cast of Mariuses. However it is that you would pluralize Marius.</div><div><br /></div><div>I had this conversation with his name, his real name, last week with an ensemble member, if you will. His name became this stand-in for an idea-- the faceless person who is wanted. The bitter dream of someone you can't have, whom you revere and hate in equal measure, for how much they inflate you with intoxicating smoke and then never, ever let the tension release from the balloon. </div><div><br /></div><div>His name became a code for that person, and all at once, it needed to pluralized. Because so many of us have our Mariuses. </div><div><br /></div><div>And it's sick how dehumanizing that is. That I would take his name, the name of this person that I truly cherish, and strip away the fullness of who he is, and make it into a hollow receptacle for an idea, the idea of what unfulfilled people try to fill themselves with. It's sick how casually I can take this name that is holy to me for what I feel when I am with him, what I can do when we're together, and the totality of this beautiful friendship and partnership that we have, and I can, in a moment of anger, reduce him to cliché and loan him out to others like me. </div><div><br /></div><div>But that anger is what I wrote about last week. C is obviously the common thread here, C is the name so holy it shall not be typed, C is Marius if anyone is bothering to keep up. So before we go too far back into that very well-explored theme all because I had the bad judgment to choose to play "On My Own" and then start writing a blog post, let's keep moving. I have this whole piece of paper where I wrote down the things that were running through my mind, things I was certain would best be worked out in the form of a blog post. Things I didn't want to lose track of while I took a short break from my angst to eat turkey bacon while watching twenty minutes of "The West Wing" before continuing to this site. They are as follows:</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div> <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNzxwXX5ufcVEphavcG08ROTw5xirh_cZXwluODupHc4hJB6Xo5f53-2lhIcC7z6OAyRGwh9GkWfKm415cHbiA2IcsGMRU80JASe4nQJZt9qwRnQt-MotlLS-vjR36nIZbYjoCkg/s640/IMG_0645.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="640" data-original-width="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNzxwXX5ufcVEphavcG08ROTw5xirh_cZXwluODupHc4hJB6Xo5f53-2lhIcC7z6OAyRGwh9GkWfKm415cHbiA2IcsGMRU80JASe4nQJZt9qwRnQt-MotlLS-vjR36nIZbYjoCkg/s0/IMG_0645.jpg" /></a></div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">As I understand that it would be the height of hubris to assume that anyone actually cared enough to make it work trying to decipher my chicken scratch, I will transcribe, faithfully, here:<br /><br />Write a blog post about<br /><span> - "the middle place"</span><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span><span> -sexual dysfunction and wanting to give up sex as a force in my life</span><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span> -C wanting to stop talking about sex & feelings of rejection that come from that</span><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span><span> -Last night. B. Acceptance. The healing nature of a woman's touch.</span><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span><span><br /></span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span><span><br /></span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span><span>Well, this is awkward. Now I have to hold to all that. All because I've become weirdly dedicated to the "meta" style of referencing my writing in my writing, much the way a weirdly high number of Cher's songs mention in the lyrics that it is a song. That always annoyed me.</span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span><span><br /></span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">If I work backwards-- and I'm not fully committing to that yet, I have a feeling this could, in fact, be quite the byzantine path-- it actually provides me with a tricky transition back to my opening thought, which I was worried would go unfinished: "B" is the reason I am listening to "On My Own." A female friend of mine who I have been spending increasing amounts of time with, B was here last night when I invited her and C to come hang out with myself and my husband. (Who I guess is "D?" If I'm going to be posting more often, I'm going to have to come up with some better naming conventions.) </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">B is an excellent singer. I am working tirelessly, of late, towards the goal of also becoming an excellent singer...no. "Tirelessly" is wrong there-- it's exhausting. But it's this huge part of what I've always wanted-- the earliest goal I ever remember feeling rejected by: my father was a singer, and I desperately wanted to be, but I was told often and by multiple people that I was "tone deaf." I wasn't. People suck.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">I mention all of that because, somehow, it's relevant. It's going to be relevant. The psychological weight of that initial moment of becoming convinced I wasn't good enough to be worthy of something. My first real memory of being ashamed of myself.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">It makes more and more sense as I type it. To me. I'll get around to it.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Before I do, though, I should mention that Google Play music has transitioned off of the movie version "On My Own", which it played several times, onto, I think, the Original Broadway cast, and it's clearly the version I had downloaded off of Napster all those years ago. The familiar voice, sung with more compression, a higher larynx than the movie actresses voice-- this woman is less classically skilled and probably the technically inferior singer, but she sounds more like I would have back then. I've learned a lot recently about how to open my throat more completely, but back then, this kind of singer would have been a revelation to me, a rare kindred spirit in a world of open-throated songbirds who mocked us.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"> This is a lot. I get it. My whole point is: I have the feels for this version of the song in a sentimental way. Also, the movie soundtrack version cuts off before the final "own" if you're not listening to it in the context of the entire act, and that's just the biggest, shittiest cocktease I can imagine. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Oh wait, no. <i>I </i>am the biggest, shittiest cocktease I can imagine. But we're not at that bullet point yet.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">B, C, D and me (I guess I write as "Elle" on here, so there's a weird coincidence happening right now) were all in my new inflatable hot tub last night. We'd all been drinking, we'd all been smoking, and at some point, she asked us to guess what her all-time favorite "Les Mis" song was. "On My Own, " I said without hesitation. I wasn't guessing. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">"Yesssss!" she exclaimed, excitedly.<br /><br />"The greatest anthem of all-time for the friend-zoned chick in love with a guy who doesn't notice her." I said in B's general direction, except everyone there knew-- and kindly ignored my drunken humiliation of-- who exactly I was talking to. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">She began to sing the song but struggled a bit with the lyrics, and so it happened that I began to feed her the lines, one by one, spoken in the moments before she would deliver them. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">D told me today that it made for a impressive performance from the both of us, that there was something the collaboration. The reality is, she likely didn't need me for more than a line or two. The reality is, I needed her for her voice.<br /><br />Because I can't yet sing well enough to do it so freely. I can't yet sing well enough to be over the embarrassment of that young girl, not tone-deaf but forever scarred by the accusation.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">...this metaphor goes so much deeper when you know that, I mean. It's going to be tough to parse in a throwaway paragraph....and it probably deserves a more in-depth explanation someday soon. But B has been brought brought on board a project where her job will be to sing my words. And those words are largely about being rejected by C.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">It was a good moment. Her singing. Me feeding her the lines. Her letting me feel like I was really a part of it-- I wasn't. But it was a good moment, and an equally terrible one.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">"I am large. I contain multitudes." I quote Walt Whitman a lot for someone who has only ever read one line of his writing. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">I am overwhelmed of the enormity of the job I have given myself here-- to make it through this checklist and, in doing so, deconstruct the nature of my relationship with sex, the nature of my depression, the nature of the poison I pour into every relationship that I manage to cobble together. I am overwhelmed by the fact that it is nearly two AM, and I have been writing all day-- I HAVE been writing all day, remind me to get back to that-- and that I have given myself the task of pushing out the cacophony in my head, like air through a tuba, so that I might arrive at some whittled down understanding, some pearl of wisdom...so many battling metaphors and I can't come up with what I'm looking for. Some phrasing that means that chip away at the layers and complexities and tangents, until I have this one, clean, important concept that I can share with other people. I put this up here and rant away all of the asides until I find the essence of what it is I need to tell the people in my life-- and then I can tell them without feeling so much like I am a freight train and they are tied to the tracks.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">It reminds me of these files C sends me when we write music together. Used to be, he'd only send me finished tracks. As the years went on, and our partnership deepened, he began to send me these files-- audio tracks where he just hits record and works his way through an idea, repeating the same riff over and over again, clarifying it every time. Sculpting it away as DaVinci did with the stone, to reveal the statue inside-- that's how he likes to talk about it. Like he's letting the music of the universe come to him.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">I suppose my metaphor is a bit less delicate. My point is, I would like to relegate my crazy to this blog for a while, and give him and everyone else the highly edited version of me. Anyone who is interested can opt in to the director's cut here-- but I think we both know that they won't.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">"So Big, So Small" from Dear Evan Hansen just came on. NOPE. NOT RIGHT NOW. Music off.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">I spent all day writing: or, a lot of it. I am currently enrolled in one of the two final classes required to complete my Bachelor's degree. I only need the credits to meet the residence requirements, so it's a total accident that my advisor signed me up for creative writing without even checking with me-- though it's possible I mentioned it to her on a list of "easy classes" that I would be okay with, as I was looking to finish with the least effort possible. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">The first draft of our "final project" was due today, and I had committed in earlier assignments to writing a humorous personal essay in an attempt to get back to my roots blog-writing roots. I hadn't fully committed to the direction the whole thing, all two-thousand words of it, would go when I opened with the following line: "Lately, I have taken to contextualizing my eccentricities with the following confession: I seem to be having a midlife crisis."</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Because THAT'S how you start an essay to turn into a stranger for a online creative writing class. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">The whole thing ended up being a somewhat meandering walk through my feelings regarding the intersection of being a mother and being a sexual being, though FAR more straightforward than anything I've written here for a while. I actually continually went back and checked in on what I had written earlier, to be sure I stayed on point and made sure things I referenced earlier actually paid off. Speaking of which...</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">I'm not quite finished with the initial bullet point, except to explain who "B" was, but I feel like there may be some themes there that are worthy of a separate post, and, anyway, at this point I'll be here until the son comes up if I don't make some headway on cataloging my psychological torment, as I command myself do on the paper.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">And resistance to that is futile. It is, after all, ON the piece of paper.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">So, onto the next bullet point up, which I think will rather quickly give way to the next up still. We'll get there, dear reader, dear psyche, deer in the headlights. We'll get there yet.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">"C doesn't want to talk about sex." This happened recently. A week or so before my birthday, I guess. I had been feeling, prior this, closer than ever to him, somehow. This is BEFORE my last post, clearly. At any rate, I said something to him that was sexual in nature-- I don't think a come on, really, but something that made him uncomfortable, nonetheless. He didn't respond for a long time, but moved on when I did-- then, when I brought up sex again in a relatively short period of time, he responded to tell me he didn't think we should talk about sex anymore.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">My heart sank. I tried to play it off, but it was an emotional blow to the stomach-- a wall between us, where I wanted there to be none. An off-limits subject of far and wide-reaching consequence in both of our lives. And, more obliquely, yet another rejection of me as a sexual being.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Earlier this evening, it occurred to me why it had strung so deeply for yet another reason: C is aware, had been made aware, that I am currently seeking a radical treatment for my PTSD in the form of Ketamine-Assisted therapy. Before arriving on this more widely-available option, I had, at great length, sought out the more extreme version, currently only available in clinical trials: MDMA-assisted therapy. The latter is known to be an extremely forthright but painful way to get to the heart of trauma: the chemicals involved allow you to feel safe enough to approach the trauma in ways that you'd never been able to before, but as they leave your system in the next few days, they leave you alone with it, exposed, and needing to push back against the weight of the reality that your mind had once chosen to shield you from. At least, that was what I read on forums devoted to the subject on Reddit.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Ketamine-assisted therapy is said to be a similar, if gentler, process. I'm not sure that I fully understand the difference, but I suspect it's that Ketamine infusions are also used to treat depression for several months at a time. By which I mean, it's possible that the initial process of retrieving the trauma through a delivery of chemicals that allows you to feel safe is the same, but that the Ketamine's effects shelter you from the pain of the trauma for longer after the initial retrieval. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">I don't know. I don't know if any of this is accurate. All I know is, moving forward with any of it is frightening-- and something about the Ketamine's reportedly reliable treatment of depression is the scariest part of all: I want to face the PTSD head-on, but I feel as though I wanted to use that as a starting push on a journey to <i>earn</i> my way out of depression. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Or rather, to navigate to a place where my brain could heal, physically, enough from the trauma that I began to sleep more and relax more and ultimately feel less depression as s result. I assumed I'd still be depressed-- just, let so, and with fewer debilitating side effects that were really from the PTSD.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">That's what I wanted...but this...false-feeling infusion of ketamine and contentment-- that I don't trust. If all of my other reasons stem from a very suspect "impostor syndrome" that I should absolutely pay no attention to for all the sense it makes, then one reason that feels legitimate is this: I don't want to know what it's like not to be depressed for several months, just to lose it again when the ketamine wears off.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">But back to C-- he knew that I was going down this path, because I made it clear to him that I was frightened and would be in need of support. So it occurs to me today that what I felt must have been feelings of betrayal that he would cut off my ability to talk about sex write now, in this crucial moment. Except...</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Except, that how could I really expect him to understand what I've so plainly internalized about myself as to think that it required no explanation at all: that sex is at the root of literally everything that is wrong with me, everything that I hope to exorcise from my psyche during this process. Every single demon that might come screeching forward from my helplessly agape jaw to fill the room in a loud, swirling cyclone of fear...that is sex. That is where all of my pain comes from.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">So I feel like we're pretty well on the "sexual dysfunction" bullet point now.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">If it sounds as straightforward as "I don't enjoy sex," well, then you missed the point where I compared it to a whirlwind of poltergeist. And I'm not sure how to get this across in any kind of...I don't know, I'm worried that if I start typing it, well. It won't stop.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">But it's not just about not enjoying sex enough. It's not just about the fact that I have to be drunk or stoned to initiate sex. It's not just about how my fixation on C may well be the result of a lifetime spent scarred by every person she I did touch, until my only safe option for sexual expression was for people that I couldn't touch, people who could be trusted to reject me, until that strategy became a pathology, until it developed into full love addiction.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">It's not just about how the person I felt safest thinking about, who I spent most of my life fixated on for that reason, is suddenly no longer available to me in that way. When I imagined writing this earlier, I tripped on the fact that he is, in fact, another "C", and I can't believe that that didn't occur to me when I first decided that this "one initial only" thing would suffice for the very few people who feel emotionally relevant to me. This other C-- the O.G.C., if you will-- would be familiar to my loyal readers (if they weren't entirely comprised of my poltergeist) as having been mentioned here for the full nineteen-year run of this blog-- and eighteen years ago, was, in fact, when I first fell for him. So he's not exactly in the ensemble.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Except that he will be, from now on. He's met someone, and...I want him to be happy, no matter what I want him happy. So I'm forced to sterilize whatever connection we have left....</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">I'm forced to lose the memory of the one person with whom sexual touch ever felt truly safe.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">...that's right. I hadn't thought of it before. It wasn't part of my original concept of why I've been breaking down so much lately, making so many bad decisions. But while O.G.C. and regular C may have, until recently, been switching off in the place of honor in my brain of "the man that I feel safe wanting because I cannot touch him," there is one key distinction between them: I have touched O.G.C.. I've been with him. Eighteen years ago, to be exact, and this whole thing started when I realized that I felt safer with him than I ever had with anyone who had ever touch me. "Baptized by his touch", to crib a line from the Indigo Girls.<br /><br />He and I kissed, and he put his hands on me, and instantly I felt cleansed and renewed and reborn into an understanding of the beauty of sex and intimacy that I would spend the rest of my life...chasing.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">And then he told me he didn't want me. And <a href="https://suedecaramel.blogspot.com/2002/07/last-night-i-couldnt-sleep-so-i.html" target="_blank">eighteen years, one month and one day ago</a>, I wrote this line in a post:<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><i>"<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: georgia, serif; font-size: 13px;">Ever been humbled before the eyes of heaven?"</span></i></div></div><div><br /></div><div>He read it relatively soon, and I remember him reacting to it, concerned and slightly affronted by how over-the-top it sounded. We've referenced it since then, I think, as something of a punchline about how youthfully dramatic I was...but I wasn't. If anything, I was underplaying it.</div><div><br /></div><div>Take it from me, Linda from July 2nd, 2002: you had it right. </div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>...Now I only hope he doesn't read this one, too. But I mean, the chances are WAY lower.</div><div><br /></div><div>So O.G.C. is gone, more or less, and with him, the only hope I ever really had of being, again, with a man who made me feel that sex could be a pure and righteous expression of love. And everything that is leftover is demons. Swirling, howling demons.</div><div><br /></div><div>It's not just my addictive feelings for C, and shame as to how that undermines my genuine love for him. It's not just my inconsistent and always inebriated sexual connection to D. It's not just my recent desperate attempts to use online dating to tape over a wound that continues to bleed-- it's not just my shame at having been with someone I didn't know well enough, who turned out later to be drunk during the experience, and who regretted it.</div><div><br /></div><div>It's not just the use of Instagram to farm validation because I feel like, if I am not sexually viable, I am nothing. It's not just the sudden fascination with new male friends, followed by an almost clockwork ruin of those friendships by my compulsive need to sexualize everything. It's not just being triggered by my son touching my feet because the one only clear example of sexual abuse that I do remember-- although it's obviously not the inciting incident for the trauma-- began with rubbing our feet together while we laid in bed until it became overly profane. It's not just the whole of my pained and beautiful sexual relationship with my ex-husband, all the damage we did to each other, the shame of it.</div><div><br /></div><div>The shame all of it.</div><div><br /></div><div>Shame, shame, shame.<br /><br />THAT is what my poltergeist are made of: sound, and fury, and sexual shame.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>...But, like I said. C didn't know that. So now, maybe, I can find a much, much shorter and saner way to explain it to him.</div><div><br /></div><div>Last bullet point. "The Middle Place." </div><div><br /></div><div>This post now is about to break 4,000 words. Lotta words today. I'm gonna break and grab a snack before I commit to this.</div><div><br /></div><div>Okay. Back.</div><div><br /></div><div>I texted a friend of mine earlier tonight-- the guy from Tinder that I hooked up with only to find out later that he likely would not have done it sober, except that I missed that he was drunk (and if you out there in TV Land didn't know yet that I was in an open relationship, congratulations, now you do)-- to ask him if he could relate to this concept that I was stuck thinking about, "the middle place." <br /><br />Like me, he suffers from depression, so I expected he'd have a better frame of reference to understand what I was saying and possibly relate to it. He's also very recently sober, which I wanted to check in with. </div><div><br /></div><div>The poltergeist,, by the way, interpret this very positive change for him as "sex with you is so shameful that it makes somebody re-evaluate their mistakes. You are rock bottom." My poltergeist are narcissistic dickwads.</div><div><br /></div><div>I told him that, when I was younger, my depression would make me fantasize about suicide. My strategy for preventing myself from acting on it then wasn't much different than it is now, just less absolute than it has become over the years: I would simply think about the effect it would have on my mother, and resolve to keep going for her. </div><div><br /></div><div>Nowadays, when the days get dark enough for the thought to arise, it is that same basic premise, but stronger: I have children of my own now, and my parents are still alive, and the friends I still have, after decades of losing them, have been elevated to a new level of importance.<br /><br />What this all adds up to is, I don't think about it much in those same terms anymore. Not never, but not as over.<br /><br />Now, when I am low enough to feel the urge to give up, I think about something different-- a way to give up on myself without punishing others. A "middle place" where I could go-- metaphysically, I suppose-- such that the parts of me that would be needed to live in service to my children and family would be preserved, but that my own sense of self would be stripped away. No more ambitions, no more desires, no more selfishness at all-- a husk of me filled enough emotion that I could still raise my children and do my family duties, and my absence would not be noticed.</div><div><br /></div><div>I know it's impractical-- any version of me full enough an un-suspicious life would surely be me enough that the wants and dreams and hopes would slip through. But it occurs to me, rather bitterly, that the only thing that has ever really made me suffer is the ambition of happiness.</div><div><br /></div><div>The guy I texted this to couldn't fully get behind the idea, but I'm still compelled to write some kind of...work of fiction about it. A story or a play. Maybe even a song. There's something here-- I don't know if, in a plot, it makes more sense as a pharmaceutical solution or a literal, metaphysical place where you can retreat to and leave just enough behind. But the idea of giving without hurting anyone-- the idea of unselfish suicide. Surely, that must hold some weight for more people than just me.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>It's impracticality weighs on me for the purpose of writing it somehow-- and I suppose that would be the thrust behind the plot-- someone attempted to undo their decision, perhaps, when they realize that, against their only meaningful wishes, they've somehow managed to leave their family as betrayed by their exist as they had given everything to avoid.</div><div><br /></div><div>...sub-vocalizing the words as I wrote them, I found my way to that inevitable plot twist and began to cry the words I typed out in anguish. Of course, of course this place can't exist. Of course, if I want to live in service to others, I have to do the work of trying to happier, no matter how much it hurts, no matter how often I fall, no matter how much I wish I could simply lay down.</div><div><br /></div><div>And so I will. As I've declared I have. I'd been e-mailing with a therapist who practices Ketamine-assisted psychotherapy for weeks and had just gotten to the point where a call was more practical.</div><div><br /></div><div>...but then a lot of things happened. I don't know. I don't know. </div><div><br /></div><div>C told me he didn't want to talk about sex, anymore.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>I can't imagine it's that clean. I can't imagine it's that obvious. If I look back at the dates of the emails and the dates of that text, I'll find that I am magnifying, intensely, a connection that was minor at best. </div><div><br /></div><div>...but for the purpose of this writing, it's a damn good circular reference.</div><div><br /></div><div>My face is wet from howling out those words. Sometimes, when you do this, you hit upon a revelation of some kind...something you never knew was coming.</div><div><br /></div><div>That's why you do it. That's why you write yourself a note about the points you want to hit, and then just keep smoking pot and forcing yourself to stay at the keyboard. You can get this out of you, you can get this out of you yet. You ARE strong enough.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>The most straightforward translation of "The Middle Place" is wholly impractical. But it was not but a few hours later that, having had a fight with D that seemed perhaps mildly motivated by his frustration that we haven't been intimate recently, I arrived at a more focused version that, if somehow within my reach, I think I might be able to live with: if the ambition of happiness is the only thing that has ever made me suffer, than the ambition of sexual satisfaction, as a subset of happiness, surely accounted for at least 65% of the suffering in my life.</div><div><br /></div><div>Remove that, I say. Remove that forever. It's clear to me that I'll never get any closer than this to any level of satisfaction that would make me understand how sex is a net positive in some-- most?-- people's lives.</div><div><br /></div><div>There would be causalities. Relationships that would suffer. D and I may or may not make it through, depending on how we adapted to have his remaining needs met, and whether he could keep them far enough away from me to not infect me, anew, with shame. </div><div><br /></div><div>The good news is, my relationships with my children and my parents would be fine. Changed maybe, but I can't imagine any way in which it would be for the worst.</div><div><br /></div><div>Many of my older friendships have evolved past the point where sex is an important element of the energy between us. Anyone who was mentioned in this blog in it's hey day would be fine.</div><div><br /></div><div>And no one else really matter all that much...except C.</div><div><br /></div><div>So, so, SO much of our relationship is informed by, or tainted by sex. And so much of our work is made better, made possible by my harnessing of the endless energy I get from being near him, from wanting to be near him. </div><div><br /></div><div>I think, at first glance, he might say it was a welcome change. But I'm not sure he could easily stomach the absolute loss of his most verbal fan. And...I love him, I swear him for what he is...but how much of my perception of what he is has been through the lenses of addiction and desire?</div><div><br /></div><div>I would never stop loving him...that's what I want to say, that I'd never stop loving him. But as we explored, at length, last week...I'm still not really sure that he loves me at all. And if I lost my sex drive...in one way, or every way, I suspect I'd stop being useful to him.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>So, in this version of "The Middle Place", I lose C. Forever. Every other relationship I have is saved or even strengthened, and I live a life of significantly less pain.</div><div><br /></div><div>But he and I can't do our work. The work...I live for. The one truly bright spot in my life.</div><div><br /></div><div>And I don't want him anymore, and maybe our friendship can't take that.</div><div><br /></div><div>...do I take the deal?<br /><br />"Without me<br />His world will go on turning<br />A world that's full of happiness</div><div>That I have never known."</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>On with it.</div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href="www.suedecaramel.blogspot.com">My Cavalier Approach to Human Decency</a></div>Elle Emaitch (A pseudonym-- first name is Linda)http://www.blogger.com/profile/10440343897500915951noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111943.post-65129480755660957782020-07-23T01:13:00.001-04:002020-07-23T01:33:30.693-04:00"Do You?"I'm unsettled lately. Deeply. And it keeps coming out as a need to express itself to some specific person, someone I end up longing for. Maybe that person changes as I find someone new to distract myself with. Maybe, when that new person loses interest, or I do, it reverts back to the same old, same old. Maybe I'm just terrified that, one day, everyone will have had their fill of me.<br />
<br />
None of these are maybes.<br />
<br />
But I didn't used to be this dependent on other people. I didn't need to spill my words out onto someone else's lap to express myself. I'd come here. I'd spill it all for an audience, that, over the years, became less and less of an audience, and more of an imaginary friend. Every time I write now, I reference that-- that no one will read this.<br />
<br />
It's getting old. Write some new jokes. But the reality is, I am preserving today for tomorrow. And I am reaching out to the people I really trust the most-- the future versions of myself that will look back.<br />
<br />
They, too, will get sick of me, I have every confidence of that. But they have less choice in the matter. I am a part of them whether they like or or not.<br />
<br />
I've been spending a lot of time talking to old friends lately-- Jeff and Elorza, in particular. Two people whom have been unfathomably important to me, their names on hundreds of pages in my story. Two people with whom I've had...equivalent contact with in the last five years as posts on this page-- a few conversations a year, maybe. The entropy of it all is somehow both inevitable and entirely subject to change. It's somehow both deeply sad, and a weird point of pride: we're set now. Me and Jeff. Me and Elorza. (Separately, I don't believe they ever met). But the point is-- if we go five years from today without speaking again, it will be waiting for us where we left it.<br />
<br />
Until, of course, it's not. It's very important to understand that sometimes life goes ahead and changes things in ways you simply can't get back.<br />
<br />
I tell them I love them without hesitation. They say it back. In the case of Elorza, it took years and years and years for him to be capable of that. When we were in high school, and onto the years after, I very much struggled with that. Telling him. Knowing he felt something in the same family but-- he couldn't say it. And I, therefore, could not believe it.<br />
<br />
As a...child, basically, I created a lot of drama around that. I tried to be accepting for a while, but ultimately, I cried and yelled and made a fuss, and it became this bigger thing than either of us was mature enough to manage. It drove a wedge between us and made everything more tense than it needed to be. I didn't handle it well.<br />
<br />
<br />
I'm an adult now. My...functional best friend-- I have so many of them through the years, I hesitate to even mention the concept of the rank at this point, but, well, the person who is to me now basically what Elorza was to me then-- also cannot say the words.<br />
<br />
I handle it differently. When I can. But then I can't again. And I do not handle it well.<br />
<br />
I know he loves me. Logically. It's important to me that I understand that-- and I've made it clear that it helps me to hear it, but his affliction doesn't change. It's important to me that, as an adult, I make allowances for the fact that whatever his reasons are, they are not lack of love. Whatever his reasons are, they are about him, and not me.<br />
<br />
I need to assign him a name. Jeff and Elorza are really named Jeff and Elorza, but I was just a kid when I started calling them by their real names here, and, you know. They're set. They're not going to be upset that their real names are back. But this guy, he needs a name for this space, and even though he's been referenced here before, he does not yet have one. And I am an adult now, and I don't write people's real names on websites. We'll call him "C."<br />
<br />
I came up with the idea that at the end of the night, every time I'm with C, I would just ask him, outright. If he can't muster three words, then maybe he can muster two-- "I do." Or one, "Yes." I made a deal with myself that I would simply ask him-- afford myself the opportunity to get what I need from him-- what I, for some reason, so desperately need. Afford him the opportunity to give it to me. Afford us both the opportunity to release this tension between us, this anger I have over not feeling loved, no matter how I try.<br />
<br />
I was going to ask every time I saw him. Over and over again, simply and patiently, until it became a shorthand-- we would cut it down. "Do you?" "I do." "Good."<br />
<br />
That would be it. He wouldn't have to worry about the word itself: we'd have our code, and I would know. I would know. And no one else would ever have to-- if that was his reason, if he was worried about what they would think...no one would know. It would be our secret.<br />
<br />
I asked him once. I forced myself to be brave and look him in the eye. I reasoned with myself that I knew what the answer would be. And I could just do it. Just tell him what I needed. Just let him give it to me. No more anger.<br />
<br />
I asked him once, and he said what I needed him to say. And I felt, in that moment, like it was resolved. Like I had fixed it all with my...forthrightness, my communication, my understanding, and my confidence that if I could just ask, he would tell me.<br />
<br />
I asked him once, and he said what I needed him to say. And it was fixed, and I was happy. And I felt, I felt....I felt like all those years of fighting with Elorza, of going in and out with Jeff, of going in an out with everyone else not mentioned here by name, and losing everyone else whose names I try not to type anymore...it felt <i>over.</i> My quest for it was through. And everyone who still loved me still loved me, and he loved me, and I, I in that moment loved myself. I felt so loved that I thought...I would never need to be loved anyone new.<br />
<br />
But I never asked again.<br />
<br />
The next time I saw him, something was just slightly different about the air around us. He didn't...move to hug me at the end, the way he usually does. And I felt like it was my job to initiate that and...I did, but. That took enough out of me-- this compulsion to make sure that we kept that one simple....the acceptance of my body into his space, him into mine, the physical touch that assures the other person that...they aren't....repulsive...it was gone. And I....I had the confidence to reach out for that, but...how could I ask?<br />
<br />
I didn't want it to go away, what I'd worked for, what I'd established last time. I was working towards a shorthand, I had to be consistent. So I made myself text him on the way home. I told him I promised myself I would ask.<br />
<br />
And he answered. And I exhaled. And I promised myself that I'd do it for real next time.<br />
<br />
And I never asked again.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
In the past few nights, I've been working through much of this in conversations with a new person, who will get tired of m. A new person who has, by my calculations, like a .0001% chance of ever being "set" the way Jeff and Elorza are set. As I work through it with that person-- whom I won't even assign a name here because I just can't muster the optimism to believe his name will ever matter again, will matter by the time I get around to coming back to write here again in six months or a year-- I realize that I have been punishing C, I've been angry at him and taking it out on him behind his back every bit as often as I do it to his face.<br />
<br />
I'm angry because, well...it feels like it's supposed to be because I feel things for him that he cannot feel for me-- not just things he can't say, but things he literally doesn't feel. Yes, he loves me-- as oddly hard as it is to type-- but my feelings for him are deeper and stranger and less convenient than just that. And he won't feel those back, and he can't feel those back, and that strips something from my confidence, and it makes me lash out.<br />
<br />
That, that is what my anger is supposed to be about. But...<br />
<br />
He and I were talking the other night, and I mentioned to him that he and I are the same in one regard: we both have a sickness insomuch as we equate our attractiveness with our worth as a person. I mentioned to him that not everyone does that. He said that he knows.<br />
<br />
If attractiveness is deeply intertwined for me with my sense of self-worth, then it would make sense that wanting him the way I do, and not having him want me, has been slowly (or not so slowly) driving me crazy. It would make sense that that is what all of my anger is about. That is why I am punishing him to his face and behind his back.<br />
<br />
And it's not his fault. And I have to stop. And I have find a way to change the narrative so that I don't think so goddamn much about him. So that I don't need to spout off to strangers about how his indifference is ruining my poor, pathetically single-minded psyche.<br />
<br />
This inferiority complex of mine is not his fault. Not wanting me is not his fault. The fact that I feel unattractive is not his fault.<br />
<br />
But...<br />
<br />
<br />
But if I really equate my attractiveness with self-worth, then surely, what I am really lamenting is not my subjective lack of attractiveness, but my subjective lack of worth. Surely, if someone could find a way to make it clear and unambiguous to me that I do have worth to them-- make it so I felt secure about that, and never questioned it-- surely that might cool the sting of the rest of it.<br />
<br />
Surely, it would all be okay if I could just believe-- as I did that night, as I long to again-- that he loves me, he loves me.<br />
<br />
What, what, WHAT is wrong with me that I need so badly for him to say it? Does this go back to Elorza, is it his fault? Should I transfer the anger to him?<br />
<br />
I can. He'll take it. We're set, he and I. Because<br />
<br />
He<br />
Loves<br />
Me.<br />
<br />
<br />
Elorza loves me, and he says it, he says it now. And I'm not afraid of what will happen if we don't talk for the next five years. And Jeff, Jeff loves me. And we have fought, and we have stopped talking, and we have always, always come back. And I am confident that we always will. Because<br />
<br />
He<br />
Loves<br />
Me.<br />
<br />
<br />
But there's one person in my life that now fills my days in the way both of them used to. And as much as it means to me that I can go five years without them and be okay, I can't go those five years alone.<br />
<br />
And C, C is with me. And we have goals together. And we've been through so much. And I want to believe...that we'll get through so much more. That I have worth to him, whatever form it comes in, whatever specifically he does and does not want-- that I have <i>worth</i> to him. I want to internalize that. I don't want to question it. I want to let go of the anger. And, to do that, I need to believe that<br />
<br />
He<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
...but do you, C? Do you?<br />
<br />
On with it.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br /><div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href="www.suedecaramel.blogspot.com">My Cavalier Approach to Human Decency</a></div>Elle Emaitch (A pseudonym-- first name is Linda)http://www.blogger.com/profile/10440343897500915951noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111943.post-56475896199410417412019-12-16T16:31:00.003-05:002020-07-23T00:23:56.926-04:00Tension and Release<br />
There's a lot on my mind right now, and it's going fast. And all the thoughts are tumbling around and bumping into each other, and that tends to render me pretty useless. Let's see if I can let a few of them off here. Maybe it won't be good reading, but as this has become my own pseudo-private space where only my future stalkers will go, I may as well go for it. Being my best self was always the goal anyway, right? If not always my most witty.<br />
<br />
I am thinking a lot right now about the tension in my body. I am thinking about the time I tried yoga at work (a wellness seminar) and it began to trigger anxiety in a way I suspect was a PTSD reaction, so I had to leave.<br />
<br />
I am thinking about my goals in life, and how so many of them revolve around music, and how badly I want to be a truly good singer. And I am thinking about the tension in my body, and how that may be holding back my singing voice. I am thinking I carry much of my tension in my thighs, my quads that have been painfully tight all my life. How I can stretch everywhere else, but never really there.<br />
<br />
I am wondering if that could cause tension in my singing voice, or whether it is several steps down the causation ladder, if related at all-- if tension in my legs leads to tension up my back which leads to tension in my shoulders and neck. If all of that causes my singing voice to be tighter and unable to loosen itself.<br />
<br />
But then I am thinking of that tension, and how scary it is to release it, and how it is only scary because my PTSD is my brain rewired to protect myself. I am thinking of the repressed memories, the moments in my life I am caught in-- both known to me and the unknown seed of the problem. I am thinking about trying to release some of them, maybe through yoga. Go until it makes me uncomfortable, emotionally, and then confront the discomfort.<br />
<br />
I am wondering what I have to gain from that. I am wondering if this is the time-- now, when I am writing a musical and I want to be able to sing the demos, and that's why I was thinking about all of this anyway. Now, when I am looking for a new job. Now, when I am finishing my degree. Now, when I am raising my children. Now, when I am raising a child who somehow caught my PTSD.<br />
<br />
I am thinking of the podcast I listened to about epigenetics-- how PTSD can flip a switch for people at a genetic level, and change the way your genes express themselves. How the theory is that that is why some people pass on their PTSD to their children. I am thinking of Ezra, how anxious he is. I am thinking it is my fault.<br />
<br />
I am wondering, if I had faced this all, to completion, when I was younger, whether he might have been born differently, whether I might have switched the flip back in time to make a better version of him. A version of him who did not have to suffer, needlessly, the way I had to suffer.<br />
<br />
I am wondering if the switch was flipped still before me. If my father's trauma passed on to me. And I am thinking of how strange it is that I am willing to accept that my father had trauma. How it seems obvious and natural that he did, even though it's never been discussed. Even though I'm not supposed to know what it was. Even though there are parts of it I'm fairly sure that I know.<br />
<br />
I'm thinking of what I'd be like now if I hadn't had to spend my life decoding the mystery of who I am, of why I am the way I am. Of the trauma, and the tension, and the sleeplessness and the ADHD. Of my father. Of my ex-husband, whom I believe more every day is also hiding memories somewhere within his mind. Of all these pasts that I seem to have some unnatural understanding of-- psychic empathy.<br />
<br />
I am thinking that I grow more certain every day that the ability to feel the energy that radiates from people is a real thing, that somewhere behind the mystical sounding words of it there's some scientific explanation that we will not yet know for thousands of years, maybe. I am wondering if we will live that long, as a species.<br />
<br />
I am wondering, again, what I would be like if I hadn't had this trauma on my mind, all of my life. Would I have put my mind to a different use, a better one? Would I have reached my full potential? Or is it the desperate, speeding overwork of my mind that has driven me to the intelligence that I now possess? Like Alexander Hamilton, transformed by a childhood of tragedy into a genius who writes his way out-- can greatness only come from adversity? Would I have otherwise been an Aaron Burr?<br />
<br />
And why is it that part of me is so certain that I am great? Why am I so desperate to speed up the improvement of my singing voice so that they can be featured on the demos for this musical so that some superfans, someday, will find them somewhere? Why do I believe--- really believe-- that if we can only finish it, this musical will succeed? Why am I so certain that I am exceptional, that I will be the one to rise out of the mediocrity if only I can focus long enough to find the thing to devote my full talents and attention to? To release myself upon, as the tension escapes me the way it escapes my fingers right now, all the while building as I think and type and speak each subsequent word?<br />
<br />
Attention. Do I have ADHD, or a trauma-riddled brain? Are they separate things? Is it sleep apnea? My inability to ever truly give my mind a rest? Should I get a CPAP? Should I get a therapist? Should I just do yoga until I find the tension and then push through it with some of the Herculean will that drives me to do everything in life except the day-to-day things that need doing.<br />
<br />
The rug I'm sitting on, I noticed as I was stretching, it needs to be vacuumed. Badly. But here I am, typing into the computer on a dirty floor. Because, why? Because greatness can only come from....some blind willfulness that blocks out all except that which will make me great. Dirty rugs needs not apply.<br />
<br />
<br />
I don't want to go on like this. I guess I mean that in two ways. I don't want to keep this stream-of-consciousness diatribe, and I don't want to....continue to let my brain run itself ragged in the race to untangle myself. Surely, whatever brilliance that my trauma allowed me to develop is fully formed by now. Surely, I could be better now with rest, and the accompanying ability to focus.<br />
<br />
But genuinely, what do I do? I want singing lessons, but would be better serving myself with yoga classes or therapy? I certainly can't do all three while I balance everything else in my life. What matters? What will help? What can I afford to cut?<br />
<br />
I know, instinctively, that this part is important. Work it out here. Or on a notepad. Or somewhere in words. I know that, I've always known that. Writing this musical has it's own therapeutic rewards, but not enough. Not for this. I need to remind myself, yet again, to keep this up.<br />
<br />
There are no answers for now. Except that it's time to stretch.<br />
<br />
<br />
On with it.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br /><div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href="www.suedecaramel.blogspot.com">My Cavalier Approach to Human Decency</a></div>Elle Emaitch (A pseudonym-- first name is Linda)http://www.blogger.com/profile/10440343897500915951noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111943.post-66460624520561229612019-04-21T14:25:00.001-04:002020-07-23T00:24:59.912-04:00A Preview of Things to Come...I wanted to start this post with an explanation as to how I don't know how to start a post anymore. About how I don't write here often enough anymore, and I've lost the touch, and it feels awkward and stilted, but there's something that needs to come out, so I just need to power through.<br />
<br />
I wanted to start it with an apology that so many posts, in the past few years, have started with such an apology-- that every time I brush the dust of this medium, I feel compelled to establish to the loyal reading audience that I don't do this as much as I need to, as much as I should. I feel compelled to make some joke about how the loyal reading audience is comprised, nearly in its entirety, of future versions of myself. Ha ha, get it? You aren't reading this.<br />
<br />
I mean YOU are. But they aren't. The people you picture reading it, the people you feel compelled to share with. They aren't out there. You're alone.<br />
<br />
I wanted to start this post pointing out how all the recent posts-- you know, the dozen or so of them over the last five years or so, where once I wrote a dozen over the course of a week-- all start this way, because I am a shred of my former self. But, shred though I may be, it is a shred of integrity, and I like to approach these posts as a quest for for some kind of deeper truth. And truth, it would seem, requires accuracy-- or maybe it doesn't. Maybe we find deeper truth by figuring out which facts we've chosen to ignore. And figuring out why.<br />
<br />
Nonetheless, I thought it best to go back and check. As it turns out, there was a cluster of posts-- if you can call it that, I think there's three of them-- that happened about this time last year. There's less dust on that mantle than I had imagined.<br />
<br />
And none of them, it would seem, started like this. So I guess it's okay that this one does. One way or another, it would not have felt genuine to leave it out. And I like to approach these posts as a quest for some kind of deeper truth.<br />
<br />
So here it is, the awkward opener, complaining about how I haven't written often enough, based on a dearth of content that's less dearth-y than I suspected, and the ever-present refrain of my awkward explanations of that. Which has apparently only been repeating in my head. It's new to you.<br />
<br />
I mean...not to YOU. But to them. The ones that won't read this.<br />
<br />
I wasn't going to write about how, in order to even get this far, I had to stick headphones in to drown out the sound of my two children, both in the room, in the background. I wasn't going to write about that, because one of them was supposed to be napping, and one of them was supposed to be neutralized by the alluring hypnotism of screens downstairs-- a strategy I relent to using too often, in my growing and all-encompassing guilt, when I want to accomplish things.<br />
<br />
But not THESE things. Who has time for these things? Because if I'm going to let my oldest son become a zombie in front the television, then I'd better be doing it so I can get cleaning done. Perhaps paying bills. If it's writing, it had better be a play or a song or a press release, because I don't have time for self-involved bullshit, and I don't have time to even END this sentence, because my son hit his brother and then his brother-- my other son-- was crying, and I had to go to him, and I had to send the eldest downstairs and pick up the youngest and now this has become some giant run-on sentence about how I can't end a fucking sentence because I'm too busy to end a sentence.<br />
<br />
Okay. That one is over now. But I'm still holding my son, the other one, the crying one, but he's not crying anymore. He's pointing at the screen, not being at all unpleasant, really, except that he's keeping me from my life's work and he almost just deleted the last two paragraphs. As if <i>that</i> would have been such a tragedy.<br />
<br />
And that's what the post was originally supposed to be about. The post that this was just supposed to be an intro for. The fact that I don't think of <i>him</i> as my life's work. The growing and all-encompassing guilt of spending all my time regretting that I'm not writing on this more often, that I'm not spending more time on my creativity, on my mental health. On these pages that I have been filling up with self-involved bullshit for most of my life now, maybe as a proving ground for ideas to grow into something greater, maybe as much-needed therapy, maybe as a simply a way to hone my craft.<br />
<br />
Or maybe, just maybe, because there's something in the sharing. All these years, I've felt shallow because I couldn't just write it in a diary, couldn't write for the love of the words on the page, but I had to reach out to you, loyal readers, because I must think I'm <i>so</i> important.<br />
<br />
Maybe it's therapy, putting it out there for you to love or hate, convinced you're all indifferent to it, hoping against hope that some of you out there are not. Reaching out to the rest of the world with everything you have because all you want in life is to be loved, genuinely and without reservation, by the people who cared enough to take the time to find your secrets. By the loyal reader.<br />
<br />
And I am. Because it's all future versions of me. And when I took the time to go back and re-read the dearth of entries...I still love her.<br />
<br />
But I'm alone. Because you're not out there. I mean...YOU are. But they're not.<br />
<br />
And maybe they would be if you had time to write it. And now you're going to trade the guilt of NOT parenting enough, not cleaning enough, not doing of anything you should be doing enough with the guilt of not doing THIS enough, because <i>this</i> is what you need to do, because this is the therapy and self-love and the human connection that you've been lacking for so many years, since the dearth first started. Things changed and become more private and more high-stakes and you couldn't take their judgment and you started hiding it all in song lyrics and vague hints at who you really are, because you're a mother and a wife and a professional now, and you can't risk being found out for what you really are.<br />
<br />
But YOU still love you. Even when you hate you. Maybe they're not out there, but YOU are.<br />
<br />
So, fuck it. Who cares if you're a wife and a mother and a professional? More than any of that, you're a writer. And yes, we'll be exploring the guilt that comes with that, of thinking of yourself as one thing more than another, and what that means for you and your children and all the people who judge you. But you're not going to come to any conclusions if you don't try.<br />
<br />
I know well enough to know now this post will never be what it was meant to be when I first started. I know well enough to know that it will not morph into any of the posts I've meant to make over the last few months. But I am promising, here and now, to write those, and write them soon. The post that this should have been-- or, was going to be-- about why Sara Bareille's Waitress is not my favorite musical even though I so desperately want it to be. A post about the book "Where The Wild Things Are", and about grief. A post about living in the closet, against all odds, and taking steps to a more authentic expression of who I am, and what I am, and what that means.<br />
<br />
So there's a preview for you, loyal reader, of the great and good and self-interested bullshit to come. Not that there's anyone here.<br />
<br />
But <i>I</i> am.<br />
<br />
On with it.<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
<div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href="www.suedecaramel.blogspot.com">My Cavalier Approach to Human Decency</a></div>Elle Emaitch (A pseudonym-- first name is Linda)http://www.blogger.com/profile/10440343897500915951noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111943.post-15329432223514088472018-07-16T11:27:00.002-04:002018-07-16T11:27:32.917-04:00Stoneacre, Beauport, and the Nature of WantLast night, I found myself looking through multi-million dollar real estate listings. The kind that are so fancy that they need their own, special website, as they are clearly too good to be mixed in with all those "normal people" homes. I was comparing and contrasting the different properties-- their locations, amenities, size-- with careful intent, determined to select the perfect one for my own. Waterfront seemed to be a priority for me, as well as a large number of bedrooms-- at LEAST four, because I'd be damned if I was going to spend millions of dollars on a home and not have a guest room-- but balanced by having a reasonable overall square footage. Anything over 4,000 seemed a bit much for my needs.<br /><br />It was also important to keep the price somewhat reasonable-- I didn't give any thought at all to anything over five million, giving special preference to those in the 1.25 to 3 million dollar range. And this is an important point: for anyone who might be confused, I am not looking, in any actual way, to buy a multi-million dollar home. I am no where near in the income or wealth range to be able to afford it. I was, in fact, selecting a home for my fantasy life.<br /><br />But, and here's the kicker: it's my<i> attainable-feeling </i>fantasy life. It's the fantasy life where I do something great, make several million dollars, and can afford a home in the one to three million dollar range. Maybe four or five. Anything more than that, however, kills the illusion.<br /><br />It would seem that, at the age of 33 and 363 days, I still believe I will be a great, creative success. I still believe I will one day soon be able to afford the luxury home of my choosing. So long as I don't choose *too* much luxury.<br /><br />
<br />
In real life, Dan and I will soon be taking over my parent's house. We will be selling the house in Greene that we bought extremely cheaply-- a repo-- with most of the money from Dan's inheritance and former graduate school fund. We are hoping to make enough from the sale to pay back the loans we took out to fix it up, as well as giving my parent's a lump sum towards their home. The idea is that we will then only need to pay them back for a small portion of the value of the house, and then we will own it, mortgage-free. This is a huge deal for a millennial couple, nearly unheard of. This goal, this life, this one-day accomplishment is not something that deserves to be buried however many paragraphs down in a post about my picking my dream house off of a luxury homes website. This is the thing that I have been working towards for most of my adult life. Owning that home is what I wanted since I was a kid.<br /><br />But it needs to be said that, when I was a child, I wanted only to own it, not live in it. I had assumed, all along, that given my clear intelligence and obvious future fame that I'd be able to buy it, and protect my memories, and visit it when I felt the need. Maybe let someone I cared about live in it and keep it up. But it would be one of the many houses I would own, in addition to, at the very least, a house that resembled one of the houses on the website.<br /><br /><br />Life goes on, and it beats you down, and it puts you in your place. And you see people around you who you respect, struggling just to get by, no hopes of anything so grand as home ownership on the horizon. And you see yourself, working day after day, making barely enough. And you manage to afford a few vacations, and you manage to have decent cars. You manage to afford a lot of the things you want if you buy a lot of them used on craigslist, and you manage to pay most of your bills on time. And the goal starts to shift, and now you're just more concerned with getting to a point where maybe you could set all of your bills on autopay and not have to think about them. Maybe you could pay off your credit cards and your medical debt. Maybe you could stay afloat until one of the kids isn't in day care anymore, and, hot damn, won't that be something? Won't it be something to NOT be paying a quarter of your income towards childcare just so you can work?<br />
<br />
That'll be the year you plan TWO vacations. That'll be the year you go out to eat without guilt.<br /><br /><br />For a long time, that kind of life was really all I thought about. For a long time, that kind of life felt like, maybe, enough.<br />
<br />
But things change. For me, they changed. They changed back.<br /><br />I met a guy a few years ago who woke me up creatively. A guy who believes in big things, and my ability to do big things, and OUR ability to do even bigger things, together. And I bought into it. And I believe. I believe we can do these big things, together.<br /><br />Maybe I just have to believe. Maybe I'm heaving from the marathon drudgery that is modern life-- two parents working full-time jobs, and a one kid who just can't seem to be normal, and a baby taking up any spare attention. A house that can never really get clean and pets that are behind for their vaccinations and don't get played with a lot. And a bank account that never seems to grow, and the tiny things on the horizon to look forward to that are never enough-- the long weekend that's over before it begins, the vacation you look forward to and leaves you feeling empty when it's done.<br /><br /><br />So, alright. My real life is tough, and I need a fantasy house to buy with the income from my great, creative breakthrough. And yes, my time would be better spent making progress on that great, creative breakthrough. But you do what you're capable of doing, I suppose.<br /><br /><br />So I find this house, right, and it's damn near perfect. 2.7 million. Four bedrooms. On the water. Has a dock. Roof access with a helicopter pad that I'll clearly never use, because my fantasy gets real hard to believe in around the time that I can afford a helicopter. Frankly, it kinda seemed like too small a house to have one, but I let it go. The exterior is stone, so it has a castle quality to it-- that's a plus. But, there again, it's only 3,500 square feet. It's smallish. Practical-ish. It feels right.<br /><br />
I can't find any good shots of the entire exterior, however, and that bugs me. So I go looking for the home on google maps.<br /><br />What I find it that the home itself is nestled between two much larger estates-- both of which have fancy names. It shares a wall with one of them, Beauport. Beauport is no longer a private home, but a historic home designed by a famous architect that operates as something of a museum. On the Beauport home-museum website, where you can look an hours and prices for tours, I find a shot of the two properties taken from the ocean: they look, in this shot, like the same building, separated by and build up to a stone wall that separates the Beauport Estates with the neighboring estate, equal in splendor.<br />
<br />
As it turns out, MY house, MY fantasy, MY 2.7 million dollar dreamhouse on the water is, in it's entirety, actually a former gate house to the much larger estate that neighbors Beauport. Stoneacre.<br /><br />Stoneacre itself-- the main house, that is-- is also for sale. 8.5 million. I didn't find it listed because it has it's own, seperate, branded website. It is, in fact, too fancy to be mixed in with all those "only kind of rich people" luxury homes.<br />
<br />
The Stoneacre site is insane. The house is insane. Nearly 10,000 square feet. 9 PLUS bedrooms, whatever the plus means. 6 full baths and 3 half baths.<br /><br /><br />Here's the thing. I don't WANT Stoneacre. Even fantasy me doesn't want Stoneacre. I said it before-- I wasn't even looking at anything above five million. Who the fuck is going to keep 10,000 square feet clean for me? My fantasy servants? What am I, a fantasy elitist?<br />
<br />
And, for all of that, it doesn't even have it's own helicopter pad anymore-- my neighbors would have have to get my permission to use it, because some short-sighted bazillionaire put it on the gatehouse, not thinking about the day in the future when some <i>cheapskate</i> would separate the two properties.<br />
<br />
I don't want Beauport, either. It's a fucking a museum. But here's the thing: somehow, these two...monuments to decadence ruin my perfect "little" dream home for me.<br /><br />Somehow, I don't want to be the person living in the quaint little multi-million dollar home between the museum and the main house of the Stoneacre Estate. On the one side, your neighbors are the people who own the home that used to be lived in by the people who built your house as...honestly, I don't even know what a gatehouse is? I assume that some manner of servants lived there. Me and my billionaire neighbors would be separated by this bizarre, super-rich casque system that was set in stone, literally, a hundred years before.<br /><br />On the other side, we're practically attached to a fucking museum. Tourists on their way to Beauport would get lost and then be disappointed when they ended up at my place. And I, in turn, would develop a complex about all the camera-carrying New Yorkers frowning up at my beautiful home as I walked out to explain that they needed to be on the other side of the fence.<br /><br />The fact that no one shows up to take a tour of my home is not something I ever felt the need to feel bad about before. Why would I want to add that to my list of insecurities in a fantasy future? Who needs it?<br />
<br />
But this whole thing speaks volumes about the nature of....want, I suppose. There is no doubt whatsoever that the home I like-- the "little", unnamed former gatehouse-- is far beyond the home I am working towards moving into in nearly every way. It's larger, better located, in better condition. If I compare my fantasy home to the real home I will move into soon, the fantasy home beats it in nearly every category, with the exception of, like, tax burden. It is beautiful and luxurious and all I could ever want in so many ways.<br /><br />But when I find myself comparing it to the neighboring properties, suddenly it is flawed. Through no fault of it's own, it falls in ranking. It comes with an inferiority complex. It makes me uncomfortable.<br /><br /><br />My parent's house, which will soon by mine, is superior to the home I am in now in many ways. The location is better: closer to town, on a nice street, no insane neighbors. It is larger, and it is, mostly, in better shape. There is work to be done, and we are doing it. We are doing it as part of the marathon drudgery of our modern life. We are making a house we can live in, and be comfortable in, and call home, perhaps for the rest of our lives. And I am happy to call it home.<br /><br />Except that I am readying myself to leave it, one day. I am readying myself for the creative success, and the riches, and the dream home. I am readying myself for a better future, because, somehow, I can't stop and spend any time wanting what's laying right before me. Somehow, I must dream of more, lest I drown in what I have already.<br /><br />Such is the nature of want, I suppose.<br /><br />On with it.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br /><div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href="www.suedecaramel.blogspot.com">My Cavalier Approach to Human Decency</a></div>Elle Emaitch (A pseudonym-- first name is Linda)http://www.blogger.com/profile/10440343897500915951noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111943.post-3086188678591888982018-05-17T23:26:00.001-04:002018-05-18T10:47:17.457-04:00Bukowski Cool.<!--[if !mso]>
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<br />
<span style="color: #454545; font-size: 10.0pt;">There’s that moment. When
you’re outside, digging around in your car, looking for your lost keys, and
you’re stoned. Because you’re always stoned, now. There’s work, then there’s
stoned. But that’s an aside— to be addressed later. And you’re digging around
your car, trying to find your keys so for once, you can just be the person who
has their shit together, you can just be the person who knows where their keys
are and makes the time to look for them when they’re lost, and everything is
always lost, including this sentence, because, apparently, this is going to be
some stream of consciousness shit?</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #454545; font-size: 10.0pt;">No. You’re better than that.
Get your shit together.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #454545; font-size: 10.0pt;">So you’re in your car, digging
around for the keys, and you’re wearing headphones. You’re wearing headphones
because the little list you made for yourself told you to put on headphones.</span><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3111943" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3111943" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3111943" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3111943" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3111943" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3111943" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a><a href="https://i.imgur.com/PgK4xx3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="450" height="320" src="https://i.imgur.com/PgK4xx3.jpg" width="179" /></a></div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<span style="color: #454545; font-size: 10.0pt;">And, all at once, onto those
headphones comes the sound of the song. The song that perfectly encapsulates
everything you’re trying not to think about in this moment. Except you can’t be
avoiding it entirely because, come to think of it, you chose that song. It
feels like divine intervention because, have I mentioned? You’re stoned. You’re
always stoned.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #454545; font-size: 10.0pt;">But it’s not divine
intervention. (What is this? Beat poetry? Who do you think you are, Charles
Fucking Bukowski?) It’s you, it’s a gift from you to you, letting you feel this
moment. Letting you take a moment to stop denying everything you’ve been
denying.</span><br />
<br />
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3111943" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3111943" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a><span style="color: #454545; font-size: 10.0pt;">But, I mean...not for, like, a
long time. It’s not like you’ve been getting all headshots in this war to
pretend you’re better than this shit. The last time you let yourself think
about it was all of maybe four hours ago. So maybe don’t pat yourself on the
back too much. You’re pitiful, you’re never going to find your keys, and you’re
stoned. You’re always stoned.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #454545; font-size: 10.0pt;">And you’re listening to this
same song on repeat to preserve the mood, even though it keeps wanting to go to
the next song in this playlist.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #454545; font-size: 10.0pt;">The “Not Pretty Enough”
playlist. I shit you not. This is how fucking pitiful I am, for any of you out
there who were about to mistake me for Bukowski. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #454545; font-size: 10.0pt;">I mean, maybe that's not the
right comparison, to demonstrate that I'm not cool. Maybe "cool" is a
guy reading a book of Bukowski through this Ferris Bueller sunglasses at a coffee
shop on a San Diego beach. That’s...that’s what’s cool about Bukowski, you
know. But I get the sense that the guy himself was probably pretty fucking
pitiful in his own way, just not in the Kasey Chambers way. Which, honestly,
her expression of pain, however pop-y, is just as valid. Honestly, this
assumption that Bukowski is necessarily cooler just feels like sexism.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #454545; font-size: 10.0pt;">Fuck you, Bukowski. You fucking
misogynist.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #454545; font-size: 10.0pt;">For the record, the first song,
the song that started it all, was <i>not </i>“Not Pretty Enough.” That is
actually the second song in the playlist of the same name. The third, which is
currently playing, is “Silver Spring” by Fleetwood Mac.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #454545; font-size: 10.0pt;">Which is fantastic. But I’m
never gonna get this shit written if I don’t go back to looping that first
song. </span><br />
<br />
<i><span style="color: #454545; font-size: 10.0pt;">When you were here before...</span></i><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #454545; font-size: 10.0pt;">And god, now it’s on again, now
you’re falling back into that moment. That moment when, from the driver’s seat
of your car, you listen to the song and stare out towards your house, past the
spot in the driveway where you and he sat last week. </span><br />
<br />
<i><span style="color: #454545; font-size: 10.0pt;">Couldn’t look you in the
eye...</span></i><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #454545; font-size: 10.0pt;">You sat in his car, stoned
(you’re always stoned) and listened to music. It was the middle of the night,
and he was driving you home, and now he was singing. </span><br />
<br />
<i><span style="color: #454545; font-size: 10.0pt;">You’re just like an angel...</span></i><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #454545; font-size: 10.0pt;">He asked you to come out and
last minute on a Saturday night, and you dropped everything to meet him. And
you stayed out too late even though he wasn’t in a great mood, and you drank
too much, and he offered to drive you home. </span><br />
<br />
<i><span style="color: #454545; font-size: 10.0pt;">Your skin makes me cry...</span></i><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #454545; font-size: 10.0pt;">And now you’re sitting
together, stoned, listening to music, and he starts to sing, and he’s so self
conscious, and he’s so beautiful, and you can’t remember the last time you felt
like this. Except that was then, not now. <i>Now </i>you’re sitting in a dirty
car, which may or may not contain your keys, and you’re staring over at the
spot where the car was parked Saturday night. Sunday morning. </span><br />
<br />
<i><span style="color: #454545; font-size: 10.0pt;">You float like a feather...</span></i><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #454545; font-size: 10.0pt;">You’re staring at that spot,
and you’re listening to that song, and you’re in that moment. And on one level,
you can’t stop thinking about him, you never stop thinking about him, you’re
always stoned. But on another level, you’re just thinking of how you, in this
moment, would be the perfect character for a female-directed indie movie with vaguely
coming-of-age themes.</span><br />
<br />
<i><span style="color: #454545; font-size: 10.0pt;">In a beautiful world...</span></i><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #454545; font-size: 10.0pt;">Will our heroine come to accept
herself? Will she triumph over her crippling self-doubt and addiction to love
and rejection? Or will the plot swerve towards some weird, meta resolution?</span><br />
<br />
<i><span style="color: #454545; font-size: 10.0pt;">I wish I were special...</span></i><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #454545; font-size: 10.0pt;">Will she realize that for all
her doubt, for all her self-consciousness, for all her need to vindicate
herself by getting him to look at her, finally, to look at <i>her</i>, she was
finding her way through out all along? Will she realize that for all the fake,
desperate charade she puts on for him— the pounds lost, the lines written, the
show staged— it is <i>here </i>where she finds her true self?</span><br />
<br />
<i><span style="color: #454545; font-size: 10.0pt;">You’re so fucking special...</span></i><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #454545; font-size: 10.0pt;">Is it here, where she lays
herself bare to the world, where she opens up and looks you dead in the eye and
says, this, THIS is what I am...is is here that she finds redemption? Is it
you, the reader, the anonymous masses who can delve into this and never have to
admit that you did...are you the ones who will accept me fully for what I am,
and finally, <i>finally </i>let me believe in myself, and stop getting stoned
all the time, and find my keys, and stop looping to this damn song?</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #454545; font-size: 10.0pt;">Maybe...</span><br />
<br />
<i><span style="color: #454545; font-size: 10.0pt;">But I’m a creep.</span></i><span style="color: #454545; font-size: 10.0pt;"><br />
<i>I’m a weirdo.</i><br />
<i>What the hell am I doing here?</i><br />
<i>I don’t belong here.</i></span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #454545; font-size: 10.0pt;">...on the other hand, I didn’t
fucking plan that, but that worked out crazy well. It’s Bukowski-level cool, at
least. Whatever that is.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #454545; font-size: 10.0pt;">It’s time to stop this looping.
It’s time to get my shit together. It’s time to find my keys and do the other
shit on my list, and stop picturing this whole thing in my head some kind of
pretentious but endearing (?) short film, with every word I write as a
voiceover to the image of the disaffected face, staring out of the car window.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #454545; font-size: 10.0pt;">Weird, though. I don’t think
it’s even my voice.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #454545; font-size: 10.0pt;">In the film version, in the
story where I fight this moment, and this song, and the stone bearing down on
top of me— I’m always stoned— will I play myself? </span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #454545; font-size: 10.0pt;">No. But why not?</span><br />
<br />
<i><span style="color: #454545; font-size: 10.0pt;">Am I not pretty enough?</span></i><span style="color: #454545; font-size: 10.0pt;"><br />
<i>Is my heart too broken?</i><br />
<i>Do I cry too much?</i><br />
<i>Am I too outspoken?</i></span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #454545; font-size: 10.0pt;">On with it. </span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href="www.suedecaramel.blogspot.com">My Cavalier Approach to Human Decency</a></div>Elle Emaitch (A pseudonym-- first name is Linda)http://www.blogger.com/profile/10440343897500915951noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111943.post-20077159553191730922018-04-25T22:15:00.000-04:002018-05-24T17:41:20.696-04:00Just Stand Up<div style="color: #454545; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 17pt;">You have to decide.</span></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 17pt;">Do you want to live your life?</span></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 17pt;">Do you want to lay here?</span></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 20.3px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext"; font-size: 17pt;"></span><br /></span></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 17pt;">Do you want to overcome, or do you want to be overcome?</span></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 20.3px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext"; font-size: 17pt;"></span><br /></span></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 17pt;">Your first step is to decide.</span></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 20.3px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext"; font-size: 17pt;"></span><br /></span></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 17pt;">I know part of you only wants to drown. I know that. I know how peaceful it sounds.</span></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 20.3px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext"; font-size: 17pt;"></span><br /></span></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 17pt;">But it’s not peaceful for the ones you left on shore. It’s not peaceful for the families of those who get swept away.</span></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 20.3px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext"; font-size: 17pt;"></span><br /></span></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 17pt;">There are people who would form search parties for you. There are people who would drag the river praying not to find your body.</span></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 20.3px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext"; font-size: 17pt;"></span><br /></span></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 17pt;">You want to drown for you. But you have to fight the current for them. </span></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 20.3px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext"; font-size: 17pt;"></span><br /></span></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 17pt;">There are bodies that are never found. There are people who lost the fight. There is a child in the Androscoggin River tonight who will never make it back to his family, because he was not strong enough to fight.</span></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 20.3px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext"; font-size: 17pt;"></span><br /></span></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 17pt;">But you, you are stronger than this. And you have your own children. And they have a mother. </span></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 20.3px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext"; font-size: 17pt;"></span><br /></span></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 17pt;">And she is broken. And she does not want to swim. Not for herself.</span></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 20.3px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext"; font-size: 17pt;"></span><br /></span></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 17pt;">But she owes it to them.</span></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 20.3px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext"; font-size: 17pt;"></span><br /></span></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 17pt;">You’ve decided before that you weren’t living for yourself. You can do it again. You’ve made commitments. There are people on the shore.</span></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 20.3px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext"; font-size: 17pt;"></span><br /></span></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 17pt;">Swim back to them. </span></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 20.3px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext"; font-size: 17pt;"></span><br /></span></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 17pt;">Your first step is to decide. </span></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 20.3px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext"; font-size: 17pt;"></span><br /></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<br />
<div style="color: #454545; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 17pt;">On with it. </span></div>
<div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href="www.suedecaramel.blogspot.com">My Cavalier Approach to Human Decency</a></div>Elle Emaitch (A pseudonym-- first name is Linda)http://www.blogger.com/profile/10440343897500915951noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111943.post-88022363227133495032018-04-19T00:32:00.003-04:002018-05-24T17:42:35.712-04:00Food, Sex, and the Changing Tide of Self-Destruction.The problem with being smart and self-destructive is that you know what your doing is self-destructive. You know your reasons are bad. You know you should change your course. You know that what you're doing is ruining you, and that you could, at any moment, totally combust.<br />
<br />
But your reasons are still your reasons. So you stay the course.<br />
<br />
We're all motivated by the same basic factors: Food. Money. Sex. Maybe love, if you're some kind of fucking idealist.<br />
<br />
Me, right now? I'm not.<br />
<br />
So it's basically food, money and sex. And the things that facilitate food, money and sex.<br />
<br />
But when those things are in direct competition, which one wins?<br />
<br />
It seems like I have the ability to starve myself for weeks on end to feel attractive. It seems like I have the ability to put on airs to strangers about the great, health-conscious reasons that I have for the decisions that I've made. And when it comes to fat and health, people will eat that bullshit right up, while they applaud you for not eating anything.<br />
<br />
The truth is, I do not believe that hype that everyone else seems to buy into that being overweight is the worst thing you can do for your health. That being overweight or even mildly or moderately obese is all that bad for you. The reality is that the studies are unclear on this: for some things, there are clear negative correlations. For other factors, it may be healthier to be heavier.<br />
<br />
What's not unclear is that it's bad for one's body to have a constantly fluctuating weight, and that some fucking enormous percentage of people who lose significant weight will gain it all back within 3-5 years. So there's a good argument to be made for making healthier decisions while staying fat.<br />
<br />
When I started the diet program I'm in now, it was discovered that I am (was?) pre-diabetic. This diet-- a medically supervised "Very Low Calorie Diet"-- is supposed to be a very effective way to derail diabetes, maybe permanently. Maybe, because I made this choice, I will never become diabetic, like my father and his mother before him. And my other grandmother. And several cousins. And a second cousin who died of it, which is, like, something you NEVER hear about.<br />
<br />
Maybe something genuinely healthy will come from my decision, and on some level, I won't have been bullshitting everyone around me. But the truth, when you get right down to this, is that that is not my reason.<br />
<br />
I'm doing this because I wanted someone who didn't want me back.<br />
<br />
The truth is, I didn't have the wherewithal to be body positive in the face of abject rejection. The truth is, I looked in the mirror, and I didn't find myself attractive anymore, either. And without that, I can't find anything in life sexy at all.<br />
<br />
So sex trumped food for me, this time. And it's been trumping it for like ten weeks straight, now.<br />
<br />
And that would be FINE. My reasons are my reasons. If all this was was an poorly motivated crash diet, well, at least I'm doing it the right way. At least I'm going through a doctor. At least I'm not popping random pills.<br />
<br />
But that's not the whole story.<br />
<br />
See, there's something about this fucking diet that's messing with my head. Badly. Something about blood sugar lows and highs, and not being able to keep it steady because I'm not eating enough in the course of the day. I thought it was lows, but in the midst of one of my episodes-- a moment where I feel suddenly, inconsolably self-destructive to the point of fearing for my own safety-- I happened to be near my parent's house. I had Dan, who was with me at the time, drop me off so I could test my sugar.<br />
<br />
It wasn't low. It was high. I hadn't had more than 10 carbs in a meal for weeks on end, and I hadn't had any at all that day so far. But my blood sugar was high.<br />
<br />
I obviously should have called my doctor pretty soon after that. But I've been overwhelmed by the complicated nature of my life, being all the more complicated by scheduling doctors visits and paying for labs and trying to figure out what it and is not covered by my insurance. Trying to figure out how to afford all of this while paying some huge portion of our income every week towards two kids in day care. Trying to figure out how to make time for it when I have none. And the feeling of...overwhelm? (There's a word a need, but, god, this blood sugar shit makes me stupid some times. I'm getting, like, REALLY bad at word searches, and this deeply disturbs me somehow.) The feeling is compounded by the fact that...oh. I just made this point. The blood sugar stuff makes me stupid, therefore it's all harder.<br />
<br />
See? I can't even write. I mean, I can write. I can write better than you fucking can, whoever you are. But I should be able to write MUCH better than you. So now you see the problem.<br />
<br />
So I'm on a diet for bad reasons, and I can't get off of it for bad reasons which I am still smart enough to be aware are bad reasons, but not I'm not smart enough to just get off the diet. And maybe I would be-- smart enough that is-- if the diet didn't make me so stupid.<br />
<br />
But probably not. Because we're motivated by food, and money, and sex. And maybe hate, if you're not an idealist.<br />
<br />
And me? Right now? I'm not.<br />
<br />
I think I might just hate myself.<br />
<br />
I think I might just hate the fat bitch who looks back at me in the mirror with her bulbous nose and her soon-to-be-sagging skin. Her tiny eyes that sit back in her head like she's, I don't know, a cartoon rendered by an artist who draws all his characters as kind of fat and plain-looking. <br />
<br />
The Far Side seems too mean, even for me, even for now. But is there a female equivalent of Ziggy? But less happy?<br />
<br />
I think I might hate the woman who goes to work every day and despairs that she's going to have to keep going to work every day, forever, for the rest of her life with no real end in sight. I think I might hate the woman who comes home from the job she hates to her two children, and can't muster any joy from being with them. I think I might hate the person who lost her dog, god, almost two years ago now, and never sat down to write a post here to grieve him. And went out to replace him too quickly, and now can't bring herself to love the new one. And now-- whether it's the cause or effect-- no longer finds dogs cute, or endearing, or appealing. Or babies. Or...anything, really.<br />
<br />
When you stop taking joy in the things you once took joy in, when you stop having any reaction to things that are supposed to invoke some basic, instinctual human emotion, that's when you know it's getting bad. And, truth be told, that particular light started dimming for me a long time before I ever started this diet.<br />
<br />
I think I might hate the person who doesn't want to speak to her friends because they wouldn't understand, who resents them for being happy and doesn't want to be in their space. I think I might hate the person who makes calculated decisions about her self-destruction-- texting some near-stranger in the middle of the night, for instance, confessing that she's out of her fucking mind and sitting in the parking lot of a newly-opened Dominos for no apparent reason except because she just had to leave her house and her husband with no explanation and go (a totally random example, I swear)-- because that's the best she can do. Because having some guy who knows me from The Thread Theater think I'm crazy is better than ramming my car into a tree or going for a walk at night on a dark path with no lights and risk being mugged or beaten or worse.<br />
<br />
I told him, maybe I'll just go into Dominos and get some fucking cheesy bread, because that was just self-defeating, as opposed to dangerous. And because, fuck this diet, anyway. He told me that was a good idea.<br />
<br />
So I went into the Dominos. It had just opened today, I think, and it was going to be open till midnight. And I smelled that delicious pizza smell, and I let myself imagine what it would be like to just say screw it all and get the cheesy bread I so desperately wanted.<br />
<br />
And then I ordered wings. Plain wings. The sauce would have too many carbs.<br />
<br />
It was the choice that was just self-flagellating enough. Just enough punishment for the fat bitch in the mirror. But calculated, nonetheless: I needed to eat something I needed to even out my blood sugar.<br />
<br />
Somewhere, somewhere in there, I'm there. I'm fighting for myself. I'm fighting for what's left of me.<br />
<br />
All 200 fucking pounds of it.<br />
<br />
You know what? Scratch that. I'm clearly only fighting for about 170 of that.<br />
<br />
<br />
It occurs to me now that maybe, somehow, that's the problem. I have declared war on part of myself. I want part of myself to stop existing. I have defeated something like 25 pounds of it so far, and I'm waging war on the rest, despite the civilian causalities piling up.<br />
<br />
This is getting too meandering, even for my taste. I left the Dominos ten minutes before it closed because there's enough of me left to feel like it's not right to inconvenience the employees as I sit plucking away on the laptop I somehow happened to have with me while picking at the two wings I had left. I am sitting, now, in a nearby laundromat. It's open twenty-four hours a day, and I've found myself here often over the course of my life, when things were bad and I couldn't sleep and there was no where else to go. There's something comforting about it, I guess.<br />
<br />
And I'm here. In this space in my mind where I am when I'm situated in front of a computer. I'm plucking away at my laptop trying to find what's left of me in the one place that's always somehow safe, the one place where I find myself when I am no where to be found. I'm here, on suedecaramel.blogspot.com, because this is the work of my life, no matter how far I wander from it. I'm here because <i>this</i> is all I really am.<br />
<br />
Sooooo....that's super.<br />
<br />
I put on headphones to drown out the sound of Jimmy Fallon's show, which the other patron of the laundromat seemed to by watching. Maybe he works here. I don't know. I bought a box of tide from the machine so I could claim to be a paying customer, just in case.<br />
<br />
Matchbox Twenty has come on the google play station that I am listening to, and that's as close to home as I'm likely going to get. So maybe it's time to actually go home.<br />
<br />
Dan has not texted to see where I went, and he's likely in bed by now. He does this thing, sometimes, where he just doesn't worry. I don't love it. Worry is the way so many of the people in my life express caring, from my parents to my chosen obsessions to the Thread Theater guy who recommended the cheesey bread. He may be more worried than Dan.<br />
<br />
There's a post that needs to happen where I start to break down my motivations, my compulsions, the way I use love and rejection like a drug, and the way I've started to use drugs like a drug, as well. There's a post that needs to happen where I put the effort into coming back to visit myself here. In this space, in this place where I always somehow find myself.<br />
<br />
Not the laundromat, though. Homey though it may be.<br />
<br />
There are posts that need to happen where I reconnect with the pieces I've lost, where I draw the lines between the love and the hate and the self-preservation and the poor decisions. The diets and the reasons and Matchbox Twenty songs, and now it's Counting Crows and MY GOD I love these songs, this emo shit from the nineties.<br />
<br />
Where did she go? That girl who always wrote, and listened to stuff like this? Has she just been waiting here for me the whole time?<br />
<br />
She must have bought a lot of Tide.<br />
<br />
On with it.<br />
<br /><div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href="www.suedecaramel.blogspot.com">My Cavalier Approach to Human Decency</a></div>Elle Emaitch (A pseudonym-- first name is Linda)http://www.blogger.com/profile/10440343897500915951noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111943.post-18718929114891283012017-12-24T14:21:00.000-05:002017-12-24T14:47:36.974-05:00Moon River Frozen Over<br />
The anniversary effect.<br />
<br />
A psychological phenomena wherein a person remembers a trauma or other upsetting event more powerfully on the same day each year on which it originally happened-- no.<br />
<br />
That's not accurate. It's not about remembering, per se. Sometimes, you don't remember at all. Sometimes, it's not about your mind actively thinking of a thing. It's about your body knowing it. It's about the imprint that the events of our lives leave on our whole selves, our bodies and our minds and our spirits, all as one. It's about the physical reality of the seasons and the instinctual connection we have to the rhythms of the world.<br />
<br />
Something happened. It happened in a particular time and space. And that time was marked by the length of the day and the temperature in the air and the smells of the plants. That time was marked by the spot in space where the earth spun at that moment. There was a physical reality enveloping that event, and your body was aware of it on some level that your conscious mind never was. But it will get close to the same every year, once a year. And your body will be aware of that, again.<br />
<br />
And that moment will come back to you--whether you know it or not, whether or not you're thinking about it-- that moment will come back, and affect you again and again.<br />
<br />
I suppose that it only requires that metaphysical an explanation if you don't actually remember it, though. If you do, it's all so pedestrian in nature: you just feel sad because of the memory. It's interesting to think of, I guess, that these two separate responses aren't actually separate at all-- they are just the before and after of our brain's egocentric distortion. The universe creates this magic connection between the energy of the world and the energy of our bodies, and the moment we realize it's happening, our conscious mind reduces it to something wholly self-involved and unremarkable: We aren't feeling the rhythms of the universe with the incalculably sensitive instrument that is our body. We are just remembering our own petty, tragic lives.<br />
<br />
But enough with the commentary about the nature of life and existence itself. This was supposed to be about <i>me</i>.<br />
<br />
It's Christmas Eve. On a broad, cultural level, it's the anniversary the night that Joseph and Mary went from inn to inn looking for a room to house Mary as she gave birth to the savior king. As a society, however, we're so removed from that story that it doesn't even matter that it never actually happened in December, even if you do believe it happened at all. Broadly and culturally, that's merely the origin story of oft-commercialized superhero in a big red suit. Nevertheless, whether it's the manger scene that pulls at your heart strings, or the vision of Santa Claus, or that one scene in the Peanuts Christmas special where Linus recites a bible verse in humble explanation of what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown-- nevertheless, it is a time of year that unites us all, somehow, in a shared reverence for something, <i>something.</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
I think many of us, if not most, grow up to share the experience of the loss of the joy of Christmas. When you are a child, it's special and magic. Then, little by little, as the myths become exposed and the garish, physical realities become more undeniable, it fades away. By the time you're in your twenties and shopping for presents with a handful of too-hard-earned cash, it's usually gone, replaced by a melancholy at the hollowness and some impotent desire to find it again. The mythos goes, however, that it is revived anew when we grow to have our own children, and are able to experience it once more through their eyes.<br />
<br />
Four years and five days ago, I had a child of my own. And he's in the other room now, with his father, and his new brother. And I desperately want to be with them, to be feeling what I am meant to feel this time of year-- what I was <i>promised</i> I would feel. But I am not.<br />
<br />
I am not, because there is another anniversary. An anniversary that, against all of my will, seems to supersede that of Mary and Joseph and the inn, supersedes those of Santa's countless flights. Supersedes the memory of all those idyllic childhood Christmases, the nativity scene set up in my grandmother's stone fireplace and last-minute tree decorating my father insisted upon.<br />
<br />
<br />
I remember the day the envelope came in the mail, sometime in October. I remember me, seven months pregnant or so, sitting on the couch, seeing that it was from the court, opening it. I remember the gasp and shouting "No!" with sheer horror. I remember my family asking what was wrong.<br />
<br />
"The divorce," I said, tearfully. "They set the divorce hearing for Christmas Eve."<br />
<br />
<br />
I can count so easily the exact amount of time it's been since I divorced my best friend. I know how old my son is-- he turned four last week-- and I know that it's Christmas Eve. Mine and Zack's marriage was officially dissolved four years ago today.<br />
<br />
I want not to put undo emphasis on that day. As must be true of every divorce, our marriage had fallen apart well before that. Long enough that, if you don't know, the son born five days earlier was not his, nor were we in any way still functionally together when I first became pregnant. We had separated, if I am remembering my timeline accurately, nearly two full years before, and made the final decision to end the marriage fully eighteen months prior. So it should have been that I was thoroughly ready by the time December 24th, 2013 came around.<br />
<br />
The reality is that very little of that final eighteen months was blessed with the clarity of the moment where we first made the excruciating decision to take off our rings. The reality is that almost none of my life has ever been blessed with such sureness, and for good reason, I suppose: the harder something is to do, the more certain you must be to make yourself do it. And I don't know that anything has ever been harder for me than making the decision to end my marriage to Zack.<br />
<br />
There's much I could say here about the reasons we broke up, and how they never once undermined our love for each other. There's much I could say here about two people just not being able to make it work, two people who only want to stop hurting each other before the damage becomes too great. There's so much to be said about everything we were, and so much to be grateful for, in spite of it all, for everything we still are.<br />
<br />
But I've said that all before, and I'll say it all again when the moment demands it. That moment is not right now.<br />
<br />
Right now is the time that I need to write through this grief at it's most basic level, so that I can get back to my children on Christmas Eve. Right now is the time that I need to let my fingers on the keyboard release the pain and regret that my children are not his children. Right now is the time I need to let go of the guilt of even thinking that, and let myself think it, so it can be thought, so it can be written, so it can be <i>out. </i>Right now, I need to listen to my own breaking voice as I read this out loud as I type it while tears stream down my face; I need to hear myself declare the truth: that I miss him so, so much.<br />
<br />
Right now, I need to let the seasons and the length of the day and the smell in the air bring me back to that courthouse, to our final, tearful kiss just before we signed the paper that somehow ended the last ten years of our lives. Right now, I need to balance how enormous that was-- the official end of our marriage-- with how insignificant it was: we are <i>not</i> a paper to be signed and notarized and made official. We are <i>not</i> a marriage that can be disolved. We are honesty, and intimacy, and love. And we love each other, still.<br />
<br />
The full truth is that there was more than that happening for me on that day-- the sun was shining a particular way and there were other sounds and other people, and I was suffering deeply from the pain of a traumatic birth experience just five days prior. The full truth is that there is more than just the ghost of my marriage haunting me this time of year. The full truth is that there's context upon top of context, and not everything that makes me sad on Christmas Eve has to do with Zack.<br />
<br />
Yet, somehow, that's both more and less true. Sometimes, you have to be true to a moment in time, and let yourself feel what feel's relevant, and ignore the context and the history and the smell of the plants in the air. Sometimes you must trust yourself to forget all that, knowing your body will remember it for you.<br />
<br />
Right now, the only memories that feel relevant are those of him, and I, and Christmas-- Christmas Eve. The Christmas Eve where we were given the gift of just enough certainty, in a moment, to sign the papers that we needed to sign.<br />
<br />
<br />
Every year, it leaves me feeling hollow. Ever year, it supersedes all else, despite all I do to fight that. So today, an hour or so ago, I decided not to fight it anymore. The pain is so great, so omnipresent. All that's really left to do is lean into it.<br />
<br />
An hour or so again, I put on headphones and made the choice to listen to Joni Mitchell's <i>River</i>. It's coming on Christmas, they're cutting down trees. I'm putting on headphones and listening to songs to help me find peace.<br />
<br />
<i>I made my baby cry.</i><br />
<br />
I'm listening now, but now it's time to switch. To another river, a Moon River. We danced on our wedding day, and it was our song, and it was always our song. It's really the most melancholy and beautiful song ever written, and so were we. Melancholy and beautiful.<br />
<br />
<i>We're after the same rainbow's end.</i><br />
<br />
I lean my head back and close my eyes. I let it wash over me. I breath deeply, and I exhale. I let it out.<br />
<br />
Zack is my origin story. Zack is the thing that pulls at my heartstrings. And Zack will come back to me, whether or not I know it, and effect me again and again. He is part of my connection to the universe, and he is part of the story of my petty, tragic life.<br />
<br />
But today is not December 24th, 2013. Today is December 24th, 2017. And those words from the song-- <i>I made my baby cry</i>-- have more literal echoes coming from the next room, so it's time to get up and go to him, the newest and littlest him of my life.<br />
<br />
I've done my remembering for today. Let's see if I can manage to make another memory, a happier one to look back on another year. Not a better one, but happier.<br />
<br />
On with it.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href="www.suedecaramel.blogspot.com">My Cavalier Approach to Human Decency</a></div>Elle Emaitch (A pseudonym-- first name is Linda)http://www.blogger.com/profile/10440343897500915951noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111943.post-16595733524403343242017-12-11T15:37:00.002-05:002017-12-11T16:14:03.490-05:00I Am a Great Writer, But...<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;">This year has been an eventful one, a notable one, an extraordinary one. I have been a part of the creation of things, two things, that will last and matter and change the rest of my life. One, an independent film that I helped to write, and shaped in numerous ways beyond that. The other, a child, an infant who I hold now, feeding with one arm as I write this with another.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">It feels important to point that out; the simultaneous feeding and writing. Because as much as anything else, it is the balance that is impressive: being part of this movie while dealing with a particularly harsh pregnancy, all while maintaining a job and my maternal duties to my first son, and my marriage and all the day-to-day drudgery that one must slog through undeterred while trying to achieve greatness with what’s left of their energy. Juggling, overcoming and prioritizing; that feels like a very female thing. Feeling guilty about those priorities at the end of the day feels even more like one.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">On Friday, the film opened at a black tie gala in a beautiful venue. Despite an untenable level of stress and confusion leading up to it, the evening went off almost without a hitch. It’s worth noting that the film itself was only finished (to the extent it is now, it still requires some editing before the film festival circuit) perilously soon before its first-ever screening. It’s worth noting that while the director was losing sleep getting it finished in time, I was losing sleep helping with details of the night— programs and drink vouchers and gift bags and more— as well as giving him much needed emotional support on a daily, sometimes hourly, basis.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Indeed, the night was a celebration not only of the accomplishments of the cast and crew and all of us in creating the film, but also of a smaller, tighter knit group within the group working to make the night itself a success. I was a part of it at every level. It was my night, mine and those beautiful few who have come to mean so much to me.</span></span></div>
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<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></b></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">And it’s fitting, I think, that I should start this post about that night, about those accomplishments and the value of them and how truly and deeply I was a part of them. Because, sadly, that’s not what this post is about.</span></span></div>
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<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></b></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">This post is about being fat.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">This is a post about being fat, and having that somehow matter more than everything else, and having that derail one’s feelings of accomplishment and pride with embarrassment and shame.</span></span></div>
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<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></b></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">There are pictures of that night, many pictures. In them, I am wearing the dress that I hunted for for months, anticipating that this would be easily among the biggest nights of my life. In them, you can see the makeup that I arranged to have done by the brilliant makeup artist who worked on the movie, and got to the venue three hours ahead of time to have done, though I never wear makeup. In them, you can see all the effort I put forth to look beautiful, because it felt so important to be.</span></span></div>
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<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></b></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">These are pictures of me, in a beautiful dress, in a beautiful place. These are pictures of me celebrating one of the greatest accomplishments of my life, standing next to the people I shared it with so intimately, being celebrated by hundreds of people around us. These are pictures I should cherish forever.</span></span></div>
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<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></b></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">And I can’t stand to look at them.</span></span></div>
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<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></b></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">There's a lot here to be said about all of this, a lot to unpack and process. It feels important to mention the double standards in this issue: while I understand that there are a great many men out there who struggle with body image, I can't help but fundamentally believe that it this is simply and demonstrably worse for women: that men can be great and powerful and do important work without anyone ever commenting on their appearance. (And, not irrelevantly, on their priorities. It's happened many times that while I was off working on this film, people wanted to know who was taking care of my children. I doubt that would have happened to my husband.)</span></span></div>
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<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></b></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Still, that's not at the core of it for me, right now. At the core if it, right now, is this sense everything I did leading up to that night was invalidated, for me, by the fact that I didn't look good. I've felt this way dozens of times: planning my first trip to Europe, a lifelong dream of mine, and being terrified to the point of distraction that I would look heavy in the pictures. Worrying about the way my arms would look in my dress for my wedding, rather than being able to simply relish the reality that I was marrying someone who found me beautiful inside and out.</span></span></div>
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<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></b></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Then there's the fact that, in none of these circumstances, did I actually look bad. I looked overweight. It's not that I never have insecurities about my hair or my face or my skin-- I do. But they pale in comparison. I can look back at photos from all of these things and appreciate that </span></span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;">I have a pretty smile and sparkling eyes, and usually fair skin. There are people in my life who are dear to me who do not have that, who have very significant insecurities over things that I try not to take for granted-- I think I have a pretty face most of the time, and I try to be grateful for thats. But, there again, when I see a roll of fat captured on film, I lose my ability to keep perspective.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Those things are all part of looking good- the hair, the skin, and the figure. So why is it that one trumps the others so entirely for me?</span></span></div>
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<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></b></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">I think-- I know-- that the society we live in still shames people for their weight in a way that we don't find it acceptable to shame them for other things. There is this clear sense of fault that we don't associate with someone being short or having poor skin or just being too plain. There has been, of late, some very real progress made in this arena: people fighting for body acceptance for all, and, more importantly, for themselves. It's a movement, and it's gaining speed. There are now pop singers and swimsuit models who are heavier-- maybe not heavy enough, in general, to make the whole world feel included, but for someone like me, who is, I suppose, on the thin side of fat, it makes beauty feel attainable. No matter what I do, I will never be a size two. But with some effort and toning, I could stand alongside the likes of Meghan Trainor and Ashley Graham and not feel out of place.</span></span></div>
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<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></b></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Yet, for all the progress made in people embracing themselves, their is an ever more bitter backlash. Every fat person knows of someone judgmental who claims to be looking out for their health. We have all read hateful comments from people who believe that self-acceptance is a slippery slope to a society full of slovenly behemoths in wheelchairs who eschew any desire for health in exchange for the comparative “ease” of self-acceptance. We've all met people who believe that weight is the very simple exchange of burning more calories than one takes in, and there's nothing more complicated than that-- not genetics. not metabolisms, not a full host of genuine barriers to healthy eating and exercise.</span></span></div>
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<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></b></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">There are points I've fought to make-- largely on the behalf of others-- that there's compelling scientific evidence coming out now that shows that losing weight, and maintaining weight loss, is much more challenging than we've ever understood as a society. There is evidence showing that being overweight is not as fundamentally unhealthy as the world would have you believe, and that in many of the markers with which we measure health, overweight people often score higher than thin people. But again, none of these feel like the emotional point that I'm trying to find my way to making. somehow.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">I suppose the point has something to do with how this movement is important, because, whatever I chose to do with my body, it shouldn't invalidate the way I feel about totally unrelated accomplishments. I co-wrote a movie. I made it great, because I am a great writer. I shouldn't have to qualify that. I should never have to write the sentence, "I am a great writer, but I am fat."</span></span></div>
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<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></b></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">I have not always been fat, though I have nearly always been afraid of it. Most of my life, I've been inching slowly towards it, and, due to the genetics of my family, I've been terrified in feeling that it's unavoidable. But I've hovered in that area where I was neither truly fat nor thin for most of my adult life. It wasn't until this latest pregnancy that things took a turn for the unambiguous. Before the pregnancy, I was on ADHD medication that, while helping dramatically with my focus and energy, had the added bonus of controlling my appetite and boosting my metabolism. When I became pregnant and stopped taking the pills, I gained 15 pounds or so almost immediately, well before I normally would have with the growth of the baby. I wasn't able to go back to the medication while pumping breast milk, which I have only recently stopped doing. It's likely that when I get back on this medication, I will lose some weight very quickly. But, since I've also put my body through the rigors of giving birth yet again since then, I suspect it will not be enough to revert to a place of being occasionally mistaken for a thin person.</span></span></div>
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<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></b></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">The biggest emotional toll in all of this, for me, is that my self-perception has not adjusted to my outward reality, and I don't think it easily can. When I look in the mirror, I'm able to hold myself in such a way that it hides my biggest insecurities. This is not to say that I feel good looking at myself; I often do not. But nothing can match the gut-wrenching punch of seeing a picture that was a taken from a bad angle, which I suspect many of my angles are. And I have to remind myself, though I wish I didn't, that other people see me from those angles every day. That I have no idea what they're seeing.</span></span></div>
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<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></b></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">This is the thing I'm struggling with the most: I do not know what I look like to other people.</span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">I'm realizing now that so much of my shame comes from the fact that I continue to act like a thin person, oblivious. The dress I wore was slinky and contoured to my body, which in turn, contoured in ways I quite simply couldn't detect in a mirror. I had every intention of wearing some very powerful shapewear with it, for what's it's worth, but in the hectic struggle of the day, I forgot it at home before getting dressed at the venue. If I'd known what I looked like, I would have made a point to go get it.</span></span></div>
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<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></b></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">There's a picture of me standing next to the makeup artist, a girl who has become a close friend. She's heavier than I am. She chose a different style of dress, a gown, and she did so, I presume, because she's used to being heavy. I look at pictures of her and I can only think that she looks amazing. This leads me to the startling conclusion that, at least in part, what I am ashamed of here is not that I am fat, but that I haven't learned to conceal it, to communicate to others that I know that I should. I realize, as I am writing this, that it's not simply that I look fat that bothers me, it's that other people must perceive that I don't realize it-- like the long-term equivalent of having spinach in my teeth-- or that I have instead, chosen to accept it. I have to ask myself, with horror, whether that's the real problem: that I ashamed that I forgot to be adequately ashamed.</span></span></div>
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<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></b></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">I believe I should be ashamed of my body, as it is now. I am humiliated when I forget what I look like, and then exhibit confidence that I shouldn't have. I shouldn't have worn a dress that said "look at me." I should have worn a dress that said, "I am a great writer, but I am fat." Which is kind of a lot to ask from a dress.</span></span></div>
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<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></b></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">The writer Lindy West, who is well-known in the body acceptance movement, wrote a piece once about coming out as being fat, the way others come out as being gay. Her point was that, for all her life, people acted like it was something too delicate to acknowledge, or a temporary state she was sure to overcome. She wanted to make the point that she'd been fat her whole life, and it wasn't going to change, and maybe it wasn't useful to pretend that it wasn't there. Maybe acknowledging it, and asking her friends and family to acknowledge it, could help with the perception held by herself and others that, despite being wholly obvious, it's something she should try to hide.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;">Part of body acceptance is, well, literally accepting your body. I'm not ready to do that. I'm not ready to call myself beautiful and decide to not be ashamed. I do want to lose weight. I will call my doctor and get my prescription for ADHD meds going again. I will go hungry. I will push myself to exercise too hard, and in moments when that time might be better served on cleaning my house, or writing the next film, or being with my children. But in the interest of coming out as fat-- and, to a lesser degree, in trying to find the value in the night the movie opened, despite my shame-- I will include a picture or two here. For those of you who don't know me, I'm the one in the black.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 20px; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></span></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZGoYOkZsNd728LzcJl5KLJO_I3oZgeKwsvRXHMRbOqG1jomWaKv-0ZDpNUAe30ihMSYMUPIz2CKu9OSGoH8TFAWYtKQDKJicSNNgKC1W9aTPMNCCWEFYgEPXUahLg7uU112dZHw/s1600/butIamfat3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="960" data-original-width="640" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZGoYOkZsNd728LzcJl5KLJO_I3oZgeKwsvRXHMRbOqG1jomWaKv-0ZDpNUAe30ihMSYMUPIz2CKu9OSGoH8TFAWYtKQDKJicSNNgKC1W9aTPMNCCWEFYgEPXUahLg7uU112dZHw/s320/butIamfat3.jpg" width="213" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">This is a picture of me with two amazing ladies who probably also have body insecurities, but I'm the only one who felt the need to write a damn treatise about it.</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCwTVabtjbhkbjwP6rlc7ofW8c4frCAymEjaEFU-mjICaCoLa0ulEp3mC4pzuWQKl286VM9ivqDyduQ-OEU25WY9bqKbGNKR0FWPj7DJKYBMSUhBHQDCkncugfFtxxnBLLaH9Tig/s1600/butIamfatone.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1067" data-original-width="1600" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCwTVabtjbhkbjwP6rlc7ofW8c4frCAymEjaEFU-mjICaCoLa0ulEp3mC4pzuWQKl286VM9ivqDyduQ-OEU25WY9bqKbGNKR0FWPj7DJKYBMSUhBHQDCkncugfFtxxnBLLaH9Tig/s320/butIamfatone.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">Here is a picture of me giving an insightful and witty answer to a question in front of hundreds of people, but I am fat.</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;">For those of you out there who may have read this, and may be someone who has not struggled with weight, and maybe someone who still has some amount of judgment around overweight people, there are some points I'd like to get across. Number one, I assure you, it is NOT EASIER to just accept yourself than it is to lose weight, though, to be fair, keeping it off may be damn near impossible. But when I look at these pictures and try to imagine a future where I embrace my size and live with confidence and feel good about the tight, revealing dress despite the rolls-- I assure you, I could much more easily go without ever eating another roll in my life, though probably not through healthy means.</span></div>
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<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></b></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Number two, and this is a big one: whenever you encourage someone to lose weight, or judge them for it, or make them feel like they're more valuable as a thin person, what you're doing is telling them to reprioritize. You're telling them that the way they look to the world is more important than the things that they're putting their effort into when they're not putting effort into being thin, whether that be their job, their passion, or their family. No one has an infinite amount of energy or time: if you look at someone and determine that the state their body is in is bad for their health, you may very well be discounting the importance to their overall health-- including mental health-- of the things they've chosen over being thin.</span></span></div>
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<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></b></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">I like to look at it this way: if someone came up to you and told you that you HAD to learn Chinese you might tell them you're not interested. They might counter with the fact that there's a enormous number of Chinese people in the world, that the future of international business demands it, that we'd live in a more peaceful world if everyone could communicate. And all of their points may be true, but the reality is that learning another language is a huge investment of time and energy. Maybe you'd rather use that time and energy on learning Spanish. Maybe you'd rather use it building a boat. But your priorities are your own, even if that one person judges you.</span></span></div>
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<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></b></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Making the effort to be thin is just one choice people make. There's no moral weight behind the choice either way.</span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 1.38;">
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></b></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">My priorities, in the past year, have been largely about this film. They've also been about carrying a healthy baby, and doing a job that helps to support my family, and maintaining my relationships. And I had a baby, and I made a film, and I sacrificed for those things. And I should be proud of them. I should be proud of being a woman who has learned the feminine art of juggling and overcoming. I should fight off the guilt that I have at the end of the day about the choices I made, and realize that my own priorities are valid, whether it's letting my husband watch the kids so that I go and create art, or whether it's having a Little Debbie Brownie at 2 am when I'm woken up for a feeding so that I don't lose my mind from exhaustion and frustration. My choices have reasons behind them, I should embrace them. I should be able to say, I am a worthwhile person.</span></span></div>
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<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></b></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">But all I can say right now is "I am a worthwhile person, but I am fat."</span></span></div>
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<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></b></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">On with it.</span></span></div>
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<div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href="www.suedecaramel.blogspot.com">My Cavalier Approach to Human Decency</a></div>Elle Emaitch (A pseudonym-- first name is Linda)http://www.blogger.com/profile/10440343897500915951noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111943.post-89252345953338532712017-01-11T23:07:00.004-05:002017-02-07T12:26:59.651-05:00Only Gonna Say This OnceThe perfect mix tape is an art form. When I've finished one, I feel as satisfied with that accomplishment as I feel with any art that I endeavor to create. Though I've forgotten it for many years, pushed it to the back of my consciousness while struggling to deal with the rest of life's realities, writing is like lifeblood for me. These posts, when they're done well. A poem. A song. And a mix tape, done right, gives me that same feeling of meaning, and accomplishment.<br />
<br />
The one I'm listening to today, which I put together three or four weeks ago, is entitled "Only Gonna Say This Once." I designed cover art for it, but the whole thing never actually came to much of a physical reality. I never printed the art, or burned the mix to a CD, and I certainly never made it into a tape-- this isn't the early 90's. I use the term "Mix Tape" in the sense that Rob Sheffield, author of "Love is a Mix Tape", legitimized for me, as an homage to the first ones ever created, slowly and painstakingly pressing those mechanical buttons on one's cassette player.<br />
<br />
This mix, which is really just a playlist, for now, was composed for someone that you, dear reader, know nothing of, because the entire overlap of his life on mine has happened in the months-- nearly a year-- since the last time I wrote an entry here. Given that, it's not so much the reader who has never heard of him, since the reader, at this point, is probably overwhelmingly likely to be either Emily or Jeff, or no one at all. More accurately, it's the character in my mind who doesn't know about him, the sentient version of the blog itself. Somewhere in my mind, I have personified the recipient of each and every key stroke, the reader of every word, ever since this whole damn thing began. Is it some amalgamation of everyone who has ever roamed these hallowed hallways of my mind? Is it some long lost friend, a sympathetic character who has some kind of imagined form, totally independent of the readers? Or is it just some strange reflection of myself? <br />
<br />
Maybe all of the above. All I know is, I miss him. Her. It.<br />
<br />
I miss <i>him</i>, too. The person I made this mix for. I made it as a means of mourning what I thought was the end of our relationship, determined to hand the physical version-- yet to exist-- to him as we said our final goodbyes. Shortly after it was finished, he showed up to tell me everything was fine, all my fears were just imagined. The mix didn't need to be made.<br />
<br />
He showed up, one last time, to tell me that. And I felt like a fool for making the mix that I listen to now, alone in a room he'll likely never walk into, with him absent, once again, from my life.<br />
<br />
Just goes to show you, kids. Always trust your instincts.<br />
<br />
I knew at the time I strung the songs together that my reaction was premature. I know now it likely still is-- he may well be back. But, having lost him, temporarily, before, and seeing what the did to me the first time, I made the mix as a way to condense my mourning for the loss. I dove into missing him like an immersion course, hoping to come out on the other side quickly. Scars healed over, fluent in the language of heartbreak once again, and ready to move on.<br />
<br />
I'm sure this all probably sounds super dramatic and a little overbearing. Full disclosure: I have been drinking. Whatever it takes to write, I guess. Whatever it takes to be ready to talk about it.<br />
<br />
The mix, and the mourning, they did their job. When, after that brief moment of coming back into the light and making me feel stupid for having doubted him, he never reappeared, I didn't fall apart. I was frustrated, of course, and angry at the deception, but I couldn't really give into sadness again. Who was this person, playing such childish games, and why should I weep for him anew? I'd done it all before, and very recently, so I mostly got on with my life.<br />
<br />
He may well be back, even still. But that doesn't matter much. The next time he comes back, I will not be so starry-eyed, this time around, as to love him the way I did before. And I do love him. And I know that I will, when he comes back again, if he comes back again. So many things have changed about me, but that much remains the same, so far: when I love someone, I love them for good. In one way or another.<br />
<br />
But the way I love him will have changed. I will not be so naive, not be so eager and innocent and childlike. I will not, I think, love him in such a way that I'll ever need to make a mix for him ever again, in his many comings and goings in my life. And many, I suspect, there will be.<br />
<br />
The song now is "A Case of You" by Joni Mitchell...or it was, until just now, when it switched to a number by Bright Eyes. I was hoping to make some poetic parallel from the shots of Captain Morgan Cannonball I've recently ingested to the titular "case of you" that she sings of: "I could drink a case of you, and still be on my feet." But the moment has passed, as all moments do.<br />
<br />
And in that way, the mix is doing it's job, yet again: I'll never love
him the way I did then, but I can go back to it, now, listening to this.
I can feel what I felt. I have captured some trace my younger self's
heart, through a series of songs sung by a chorus of unrelated artists. And I capture this trace of my heart
today, for an older version of myself. Maybe that's who the mysterious
"reader" is. <br />
<br />
So, whether he comes back or not, I will never have that moment again. This is all that is left of feelings I felt when I committed these songs to the memory of him, of us, of all that we were for such a brief, brief time. There was a lot to it, but, having aged and changed and matured-- no longer being someone who plays childish games or loves in starry-eyed ways, no longer someone who mourns every loss with a mix tape-- I haven't felt like I could talk about it here. Talk about who he is, and what we were, and what we could have been. There are consequences to that kind of honesty, and these would not have been mine alone.<br />
<br />
Beyond that, so much time has passed, dear imagined friend. How could you possibly understand it all with so little context?<br />
<br />
There's not a lot I'm at liberty to say about how I felt about him, how I felt spending time with him and what I tried to make him feel, in return. There's not a lot I'm at liberty to say about the time we spent together, and what we hoped to accomplish, and the connection that brewed between us that made him, so quickly, the type of person I wrote songs for, and, so quickly, someone that I wrote songs with. And, most importantly in the context of this post, the type of person I wanted to share songs with, such that they became a perfect mix.<br />
<br />
But if there's not a lot I'm at liberty to say, let me define him thusly: he was my partner. He was a creative who drew me out with his talent and believed in mine. He was someone I was determined to conquer the world with, me and him and our total brilliance. And, most importantly in the context of this post, he was the person who forced me to remember what writing and art really is to me. My lifeblood, whether it's a post like this, a song, a poem.<br />
<br />
Or a mix tape, done right.<br />
<br />
On with it.<br />
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<br /><div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href="www.suedecaramel.blogspot.com">My Cavalier Approach to Human Decency</a></div>Elle Emaitch (A pseudonym-- first name is Linda)http://www.blogger.com/profile/10440343897500915951noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111943.post-53957196077268487932016-02-26T22:44:00.001-05:002016-08-29T13:07:41.451-04:00The Saddest Place I KnowI can't muster the will to be sad about you anymore, not in any real way. I reason that you're just a different person than you were: the one who was my friend would not have acted this way. But people change, you've changed.<br />
<br />
Pain does that to people. And if you're getting along well enough without me now, then I can't blame you for doing what works. But I question if I would want to be the friend of someone who would write me off so easily, over so little, and I think, no. I think, that's not the person I loved.<br />
<br />
So I've gotten past the sadness, for the most part. It doesn't really make me sad to think of you, the way it used to.<br />
<br />
But sometimes, sometimes when something else has happened, I will get sad. I will get sad after an argument with somebody else. I will get sad when I have no one to call to talk about it, and no where to go.<br />
<br />
And the sadness from that will bleed into all the other sadness in my life: the people that have died, the people that will. Sickness and age and disagreements that are no one's fault, but can never be resolved. The feeling of mortality, the feeling of loss. A profound mourning for everything, and nothing.<br />
<br />
It'll all mix together and settle into my bones, and I'll want to go to the saddest place I know.<br />
<br />
That's when I come here.<br />
<br />
I drive across the river and down the road, and I turn up the hill and onto your street. I drive until I see the place you used to live; the place where we used to spend our time together.<br />
<br />
I park my car, and I stare at it, and I sit.<br />
<br />
Sometimes, you come here still. I'll see your car in the driveway. I'll see the light in the room we used to hang our in for hours. I'll think of how close I am to you, and I'm tempted to reach out for you: for the person who could understand my sadness. In that moment, I'll wonder if maybe you still are who you were. I'll wonder, and ill miss you.<br />
<br />
Pain does that to people.<br />
<br />
I don't know that I'll go inside again, see you again. But when things like they do now, when it settles in my bones, this is where I end up.<br />
<br />
This is the saddest place I know.<br />
<br />
On with it.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href="www.suedecaramel.blogspot.com">My Cavalier Approach to Human Decency</a></div>Elle Emaitch (A pseudonym-- first name is Linda)http://www.blogger.com/profile/10440343897500915951noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111943.post-49498172801406936742015-12-27T15:43:00.002-05:002015-12-27T15:44:40.832-05:00Life in RerunsI've gotten off-track.<br />
<br />
I don't even know specifically what I'm referring to as I say that. My lack of friends. My growing stress about my job. Or the goals I set in July-- like writing in this blog more-- and how long it's been since I've worked on them.<br />
<br />
I'm not sure what I mean when I say it, but I feel like it's true, and the crux of the issue. I've gotten off track. Somewhere, somehow, I need to get back on.<br />
<br />
Today, I decided to write the first draft of an essay I plan to pitch to <a href="http://xojane.com/">xoJane</a>, a website that features writing from expressive, emotionally vulnerable female writers who want to share their experiences. It seems like a good fit for me, because, at my deepest levels, at my selfie-est self, writing is important to me. I don't do it much anymore, and I guess that's because, well, sometimes it seems like a luxury. Taking time out of my day to write about my thoughts and feelings and experiences. About ME and MY point of view, and not about my son, and not about my job. That feels like something I could afford when I was younger. That feels like something I don't really have time for now.<br />
<br />
Except that I can't afford not to do it not. My life keeps whizzing by me, my feelings and experiences, but I don't remember anything from the last five years as clearly as I remember the things that happened when I took the time to set put them down in words, to process them and work with them. And I'm falling, I think, into a pattern where what I am, what I want to be, seems secondary to...I don't know, the things I think I should want, maybe. Things that are other people's values, I guess.<br />
<br />
I don't know. I'm all mixed up. But I guess, once you get to motherhood, life is so much about guilt. When you don't spend enough time with the baby, when the kitchen isn't cleaned. When you're more the breadwinner than you are the active parent, but you go to work too exhausted to really do a good job.<br />
<br />
The point is, this site-- xo Jane-- and the idea of getting published to it, gives me a good excuse to write: some money here and there that can be used to pay for things that my family needs, and therefore makes the act of writing less selfish. Because I need writing. I always have. To get through my day, and then to remember it well. To internalize the lessons I learned. Or at least, when I don't, to look back them and realize that I'm repeating history.<br />
<br />
And I am. I decided, after writing a draft for xo Jane, to flip randomly through some posts and try to find something that might be fodder for another essay, if they accept this one. <a href="http://suedecaramel.blogspot.com/2007_01_28_archive.html">And I found this post.</a><br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11px; line-height: 20.799999237060547px;">"Take a friendship, one that's seen better days. Two people. A connection. Maybe one or both of them has gotten off the track. Maybe one of them seems to have stopped trying to find it again. And maybe the other says some things that she can't frankly remember whether or not she was right to say.</span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11px; line-height: 20.799999237060547px;">What he needs to understand is the way it feels to watch from the sidelines as something you care about lets go. What he needs to understand is that not putting forth that effort is like spitting in <em>her</em> face, telling her that something <em>she</em> loves isn't worth his time.</span> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11px; line-height: 20.799999237060547px;">"Tough Love" is kind of the ugly stepchild of love. It's underappreciated, it looks different, and people act like it's not even a part of the family. There's this criteria to love that we, the media-minded, have put in play. It's gotta be soft yet supportive. It's gotta be intense but joyful. It's gotta be Barbie Dreamhouse pink and in frilly cursive lettering. It's gotta be a hallmark card or a teddy bear or a hug.</span> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11px; line-height: 20.799999237060547px;">Whatever it is, it's certainly got nothing to do with concepts like "the truth hurts" or "it takes someone who cares about you to tell you what you don't want to hear." It's not about making someone take their medicine when they're sick, even if it tastes bad; making them clean up a mess when it's theirs. It's about politely ignoring someone's faults, even if they're more like fault lines. Whatever it is, it's definitely can't be looking someone straight in the eye and telling them they not only can do better, it's <em>their responsibility</em> to.</span> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11px; line-height: 20.799999237060547px;">Later, if she is alone, she will wonder about all the things </span><em style="color: #666666; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11px; line-height: 20.799999237060547px;">she</em><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11px; line-height: 20.799999237060547px;"> was supposed to understand: how much he was hurting, how lost he felt. She'll have plenty of time to think about all the years between them and plenty of reminders in case she's not inclined: christmas songs they used to dance in the street to; phrases they used to use with each other over and over again, movies they watch, plans they made. Promises they made. She'll have plenty of time to think about those, and, without him there to force her to be defensive, she'll wonder. How much of what she said was below the belt, how much of what she did was in his best interest. How much of what she felt was really about him.</span> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11px; line-height: 20.799999237060547px;">She won't have answers. Without him there, all she has is the questions."</span></blockquote>
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11px; line-height: 20.799999237060547px;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11px; line-height: 20.799999237060547px;"><br /></span>
<br />
It's a post about Jeff and I, about a fight that we got into a long time ago-- more than eight years, apparently. The thing about it is, I purposely wrote it in very general terms, so appeal to my audience, to make it relatable to an experience they might be having.<br />
<br />
I did a good job: today, I am my audience. Today, Jeff and I are once again not talking. And today, that post relates to us exactly.<br />
<br />
There is absolutely nothing in those words that I couldn't have written today, or six months ago. There's absolutely nothing that isn't precisely how I would explain the situation, right now.<br />
<br />
Maybe it's time to go back and looked at how it resolved all those years ago. Things have been...so caustic this time, the way he acted makes me feel so angry. Like he's not the person he was, like maybe he's not someone worth going back for.<br />
<br />
Maybe it's time to read more posts. About he and I. About what we were when we were at our best. About the things I reference in that post-- the dancing the streets, the plans and the promises. Maybe if I can find that, and remind myself of it, I can find the will to really be sorry, because I can't tell if I am, right now. I can't tell if I'm more sorry than I am angry.<br />
<br />
Maybe if I go back and read the years and years of our friendship that this blog immortalized, I'll find the thing that is stronger than both my anger and his. Tougher than the "tough love" I talk about in that post and deeper than that hallmark card stuff.<br />
<br />
Maybe if I go back, I can find the person who had more concern than she had anger, and more love than she had pride. Maybe, if I can go back, I can find myself.<br />
<br />
<br />
Maybe that's the reason I need writing. The reason I've needed it all along.<br />
<br />
On with it.<br />
<br />
<br /><div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href="www.suedecaramel.blogspot.com">My Cavalier Approach to Human Decency</a></div>Elle Emaitch (A pseudonym-- first name is Linda)http://www.blogger.com/profile/10440343897500915951noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111943.post-34016082219034128662015-09-28T01:43:00.003-04:002015-09-28T01:43:35.776-04:00The Years Things Might Not Get Better for Me<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">The post before last, I informed you all (read: maybe like three people, total) of my lofty goals for my thirty-first years. The list, which you can easily go back and see, included goals of varying kinds: personal, professional (though none specifically related to my current job, except for keeping my desk cleaner), health and fitness-related, and a few interpersonal/familial/world-at-large kinds of things, for good measure.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">There's a lot I can say to update you all (read: a handful of semi-interested Facebook friends) as to how it's been going. Some things I've made considerable progress on:</span><br />
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<br />
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Of the 3,000 pieces of liter I vowed to pick up, I have currently finished 1,357. (Cigarette butts count as 1/2 or a 1/3, depending on how many times I have to bend down for them)</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I did a very thorough cleaning of my car, and since then, though it has gotten dirty again with a quickness that I think anyone would have to agree was impressive, I've kept up with some basic cleaning to the extent that it hasn't gotten nearly as bad, therefore, I think, earning the title of "cleaner-ish" so far.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">In taking the first step of improving my credit score, which was getting my credit score, I realized that somewhere in the last ten years, I had already mostly accomplished what I set out to do this year: I now once again have good credit! I have thusly decided that, while there is room for improvement, I will be shooting to improve it by something close to 35 points, as opposed to 75.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I have been running quite a bit in my training for a 5k, and I can now definitively say that I can run quite a bit farther now without stopping than I ever have been before. Or...could before I got this cold. It's been maybe a week. I feel like I shouldn't be too hard on myself. I got a cold.</span></li>
</ul>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">There are also things I haven't even started yet:</span><br />
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<br />
<ul>
<li><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 20.799999237060547px;">"</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="color: #222222;"><span style="line-height: 20.799999237060547px;">Switch to capsule wardrobe." Ugh. I guess I sort of started this. It didn't go well. You're supposed to do it seasonally and summer was half over already. The goal is to start in October with my "fall capsule." Wish my luck. My closet is a wreck. I'm half-expecting to find some Korean aircraft in there.</span></span></span></li>
<li><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 20.799999237060547px;">"Learn Six Dance Songs Well." Oh boy. Yeah. On top of all my extra writing, running, cleaning and litter-picking-up-ing, I definitely have time to get my groove back. Thanks, July Linda. I'm sure I'll really enjoy your funky, spunky playfulness come April, when I've gotten through enough of these REAL goals to even start thinking about this. (Okay, this is judgmental. I get what you're trying to do here. It's about fitness and developing skill with a fun-loving, self-confident twist. But like...seriously. Maybe when it's too cold outside to run.)</span></li>
<li><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 20.799999237060547px;">"</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 20.799999237060547px;">Read Le Petit Prince in French</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="color: #222222;"><span style="line-height: 20.799999237060547px;">" - Well. I got the book out of my parent's basement. Seriously, it's on the coffee table right in front of me. But...no, I haven't been working on French. Which was clearly the point of this goal, to be a quantifiable measure of my having improved my french skills. Le soon.</span></span></span></li>
</ul>
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<br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #222222;"><span style="line-height: 20.799999237060547px;">Obviously, that brief overview didn't hit on all, or even most, of my goals. There is a lot more to say, but, damn, how these entries do get long. So let's see if I can get around to some of the bigger points.</span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #222222;"><span style="line-height: 20.799999237060547px;"><br /></span></span></span></span>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #222222;"><span style="line-height: 20.799999237060547px;">In the first entry about my goals, I mentioned the two things that I hoped would prove to be the catalysts of the enhanced state of wellness that made these goals possible: tonsil reduction and Accelerated Response Therapy. I have now, to a certain extent, experienced both. Let's...talk a bit more about that.</span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #222222;"><span style="line-height: 20.799999237060547px;"><br /></span></span></span></span>
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #222222;"><span style="line-height: 20.799999237060547px;">-I flew down to Dallas about ten days ago to have my tonsils reduced via laser. The actual procedure was only slightly more unpleasant than I had imagined, but I'm not sure yet how I feel about the results. There may yet be some residual swelling, and the aforementioned cold isn't helping things any, but I just have this sense that the doctor didn't reduce my tonsils as much as he said that he likely could. The marketing for the procedure led me to expect something along the lines of a 70% reduction; when I arrived in the office, the doctor told me he suspected he could do 50%. Seeing the results, my best guess is that it was closer to 30%.</span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #222222;"><span style="line-height: 20.799999237060547px;"><br /></span></span></span></span>
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #222222;"><span style="line-height: 20.799999237060547px;">What does that mean? I don't yet know. I believe that my sleep quality has been slightly better, though it's very hard to quantify and one never knows what sorts of placebo effect may be in play. As for the other effects I was hoping for-- a better quality singing voice, less sniffling and nasal congestion, and more energy through increased airflow-- they've been a bit hard to quantify so far, due to the initial swelling, and now the cold. I'll keep you updated as to how this turns out.</span></span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #222222;"><span style="line-height: 20.799999237060547px;"><br /></span></span></span></span>
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #222222;"><span style="line-height: 20.799999237060547px;">-I've been to several sessions of ART. I believe that there was some benefit when it came to addressing the trauma I remembered-- IE, the birth-- but when we started to attempt to address some other, less immediate traumas from my life, the benefit petered out. I took a break from therapy and will be going back early next week, to give it another try.</span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #222222;"><span style="line-height: 20.799999237060547px;"><br /></span></span></span></span>
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #222222;"><span style="line-height: 20.799999237060547px;">I would have expected that addressing the trauma from the birth would have been enough of a benefit to make a real difference in my life, but in the months since I had that session, many things have only gotten worse for me. I don't believe I still have a strong, traumatic reaction to memories directly related to the birth, but it does seem that discomfort when it comes to sexual issues is back and stronger than ever. I won't choose now to go into the details, but I will say that things are very nearly as bad now as they were at the height of my vaginismus, and this leads me to wonder if I somehow, in my therapeutic process, opened up something and then left it there, out and vulnerable. </span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #222222;"><span style="line-height: 20.799999237060547px;"><br /></span></span></span></span>
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #222222;"><span style="line-height: 20.799999237060547px;">If I can accomplish nothing else when I go back to therapy, I hope that I can go back in stick in the oven that which has been left half-baked. Or, you know. Insert some better way of saying that here.</span></span></span></span><br />
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In my last blog post, as opposed to my second-to-last, I mentioned how I don't feel like anyone in my core group of friends has made significant gains in their lives in the last ten years. Not wanting that to just be "out there," I ended up having a conversation of that nature with Emily.<br />
<br />
Emily was quite incredulous about my assessment. She said that I must not see things the way she does if I believe she has made no progress, and she went on to enumerate the many ways in which her life has vastly improved over the past decade or so.<br />
<br />
The points she made were very good. She is in a better place professionally, in a more stable, loving relationship, and she's done a great deal of work in therapy that has helped her to address many of the problems that, once upon a time, defined her. On a very objective level, she is better off than she was.<br />
<br />
She also made the point that it's possible my negative view of her life has been effected by her hesitation to share good things with me. She says that she feels she can't, much of the time, and I believe the implication was that it's based on my own depression, and occasional resulting bitterness.<br />
<br />
This hurt, of course. Emily is, as I mentioned in my last post, my closest friend at this point; still, I keep her far more sheltered from the storms of my depression than I think she'll ever really know, mostly because I suspect-- based on her past behaviors-- that there's only so much misery she'll put up with before she will simply tire of me. I am as honest as I can be with her about what's going on in my life, but...I guess I don't feel like that's very honest, overall. I don't lie to her, certainly. But I don't feel like she has much use for me, the way I usually feel, and so I keep much of that hidden.<br />
<br />
Probably what hurt more was the idea that she doesn't feel like she can share the good things in her life with me. Emily is the type of person who is honest-- often unpleasantly so-- about her feelings, and doesn't rank "niceness" very high on her list of desirable qualities. As such, she can be quite blunt about things, and I have, in turn, felt fairly comfortable being blunt with her about when I have, on occasion, resented her life. Most of this has everything do with her having money (access to her partner's money) and not having the burden of a child. That being said, I do think I've gone out of my way, for more than a decade now, to be incredibly supportive of everything in Emily's life. I have cheered on her relationship (though perhaps not as loudly as I often as I have acted as a sounding board when she needed to rail against its flaws), and even celebrated her previous relationship in appropriate moments, as much as I understood it to be a mistake. I have given gifts to celebrate academic tests and college acceptances. I have tried to take an interest in every job prospect, followed up on every interview, asked about every trip. I make a due diligence effort to keep straight the tertiary characters, whether they're co-workers or her girlfriend's friends or the husbands of her old high school friends.<br />
<br />
I guess this was bothering me more than I thought.<br />
<br />
The truth is, when her life is so glaringly better than mine in so many ways, it hurts. I resent that I can't be the one traveling all over the world, having extravagant birthday celebrations paid for by other people, and living in a vibrant city with all the time in the world to make the best of it's vibrance. I can't deny that.<br />
<br />
But the biggest reason these things hurt is that it the distance between us-- both in the physical world and in the circumstantial realities-- leaves me lacking the best friend that I need right now. The hometown girl, always just a few minutes away, who can come over, even just for a few minutes, and sit with me and talk while the baby plays. Someone to run errands with. Someone I can go see when Dan's at his parents. Someone who could babysit for a few hours when I'm at my wit's end.<br />
<br />
Someone who will actually be there if I start to slip, the way I feel like I might start to slip. And I would't have to minimize my depression for her, because I wouldn't be afraid she'd get bored. And I wouldn't have to minimize my depression for her, because, if she existed, things wouldn't be so bad.<br />
<br />
<br />
Emily is my best friend, my family, and she means the world to me. And she's been there with me in as many ways as she can. But, the life she lives now, it's not just far away, geographically. It's also circumstantially in a completely different universe, and maybe not a parallel one, at that.<br />
<br />
The thing is, she's not wrong when she says she feels like she can't share "the good things" with me, I guess. But I think it's because she feels like she is leaving me behind. In truth, the reason that all of this is so sad is that, for my own good, I may need to leave her behind.<br />
<br />
I mean, not really, not totally. I just...I need someone in my life who can be more to me than what she is now. Not emotionally more-- but someone who is just more physically there. I need a real best friend.<br />
<br />
<br />
So, jumping back 10.5 paragraphs or so: Emily made her points that she is, objectively, better off than she was ten years ago. And as I sorted through all the various emotional reactions I had to everything she said, I found that I was still...not unconvinced, but unsettled. I told her, all of these things are very positive, but I guess I still don't get the sense that her life has improved, as measured by the fact that, overall, I don't believe her ratio of positive feelings to negative feels has changed.<br />
<br />
She said that she supposed I was right about that, but that that's not what's important.<br />
<br />
The thing about that is, well, it's what I've always known, right? The whole hedonc treadmill thing. People's happiness levels really don't shift that much over the course of their lives, no matter how much their circumstances change. I've more or less always known it, and psychological studies have more or less proven it. And here is Emily, with her life so much better in so many ways than it was ten years ago, living it.<br />
<br />
So that leads me to wonder, what's the point of all of these goals? Do any of them have any shot at all at really affecting my level of happiness? And if not, what purpose do they serve?<br />
<br />
Is life satisfaction different than happiness? I suspect that Emily believes it is. She's more satisfied with her life now than she was ten years ago, even though she's not really any happier. As someone who doesn't value "happiness" significantly more than she does "niceness," that seems, to her, to be a perfectly okay way to be.<br />
<br />
But what about me, am I okay with that? Am I okay with the fact that I could accomplish all of the goals I set forth for myself this year-- every single one of them-- and I'd still be unlikely to be any happier than I am?<br />
<br />
I guess that I suspect that the point of goals, if that's the case, is so that, when you're depressed, when your feelings are either too heavy or too absent to steer you out of bed every morning, your logical mind kicks in, and in that moment, you can count the things you did, and have some shallow, hedonic pride. You can, without actually experiencing any joy, count your accomplishments one by one and come to the conclusion that you are a worthwhile person who has done the things that they said they were going to, and you can believe in yourself that you will do more. Joylessly, in that moment, but hopefully you can feel a little something about it, from time to time.<br />
<br />
Is that enough for me? No, I suspect it's not. But there's a difference between Emily and I, when it comes to these things: she is making it. I am not.<br />
<br />
Herein lies the reason that the goals I have are so based on these two, fundamental changes, both of which relate directly to the overall health of my brain. I do not believe a change of job makes someone significantly happier in the course of their every day lives. Nor a change of relationship, nor a change of access to money and trips and travel, nor most circumstantial realities at all. I do not believe that these things make a significant difference, and both science and anecdote appear to back me up.<br />
<br />
But I suppose I do believe that a healthy brain could make the difference. That, were my brain more rested, healed, and less addled, that it could change the very chemical foundation that my happiness is built upon.<br />
<br />
It's not the goals that are going to change my life, and it never was. Go back and read for yourself, that's not what I said back then, and it's not what I meant. It was the things I was going to do to treat my brain that were going to make way for these goals to happen.<br />
<br />
The goals were aspirational. The goals were a blueprint for the kind of person I want to be. But the healthier brain-- via better sleep and some resolution to the trauma-- that was going to lay the footprint.<br />
<br />
So, okay. I've been writing a lot, and for a long time. And I guess this post is mostly just for me, because it's meandering in the extreme, and I doubt you could really follow my train of thought. But, okay. I know what I'm shooting for.<br />
<br />
Will this be the year that things get better for me, or just another year when they don't, not really?<br />
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It's yet to be seen, so let's get on with it.<br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #222222;"><span style="line-height: 20.799999237060547px;"><br /></span></span></span></span><div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href="www.suedecaramel.blogspot.com">My Cavalier Approach to Human Decency</a></div>Elle Emaitch (A pseudonym-- first name is Linda)http://www.blogger.com/profile/10440343897500915951noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111943.post-56968877314834850702015-09-22T22:03:00.002-04:002015-09-22T22:03:28.886-04:00We've Got to Hold On to What We've Got<br />
Reading old blog posts has the dual effect A) of making me nostalgic for a period of my life when I had the time, drive, and emotional energy to regularly express my feelings in a way that was actively reaching out to the people around me, and B) making me realize how discouragingly similar my problems now are to my problems of yesteryear. It seems that nothing is changing, except for my youthful willingness to fight for change.<br />
<br />
Or, I guess, that's not true. I am fighting for change: the last post about my goals for my thirty-first year is a testament to that. I'm just not fighting in the same ways that I used to.<br />
<br />
But I regret that. I regret that writing, and reaching out to people, and this blog aren't a bigger part of my plan. They aren't NOT a part of my plan, as you may recall: Writing twenty-five blog posts is one of the goals, as is writing fifteen letters to people from my life. It's all about getting back in touch with language, and expression, and letting the people I care about know something about where I am in the world now.<br />
<br />
But, come on. Though twenty-five posts in one year's time will be far more than most previous years (with the exception of the last, being that I made a goal one month out of posting every day), it would have been nothing to me for the first eight or so years of this blog's existence.<br />
<br />
I envy that girl. She was so driven, so raw, and she somehow really saw the benefit of writing every single day about whatever self-interested garbage came through her head. It's this youthfully indulgent attitude, the kind we look down on as adults. But there was, I don't know, just something about her, about the process.<br />
<br />
I can't say that writing every day actually made me happier: read the posts, and you'll see that that's not true. I suffered from the same breed of misery then as I do today, though my more practiced voice made my self-pitying rhetoric more bearable and, somehow, even charismatic. I was not happier, and, with the exception of having hours more to write every day and years more left to live, my circumstances were not better. There are some shockingly horrible feelings spelled out on those pages, some events that left very real scars on my psyche.<br />
<br />
But I made it through.<br />
<br />
That, I think, it was I envy about her: I know she's going to make it. I can't say the same about me.<br />
<br />
Clicking randomly through the archives, I land on <a href="http://suedecaramel.blogspot.com/2006/09/i-read-conversations-saved-on-my.html">this post</a>: aftermath of a conversation that a suicidal former me had with a sympathetic former friend.<br />
<br />
I typed that sentence that way for the meter of it, but I find it uncomfortable. It's mostly true: Elorza and I rarely speak anymore. We're friends in the way that many of me and my old confidantes are: Facebook friends. It's such a concise way to explain what I mean, but I cringe just thinking about it as a definition.<br />
<br />
In my heart of hearts, I believe that Elorza and I would still be there for each other, that the heyday of our friendship was so strong and so long-lasting that it's reached a kind of immortality. I used to say that there were some friends that I was so close to that our friendship could go into a kind of hibernation, with us not talking for months on end, but that it could wake up just as easily, and things would be as strong as they were.<br />
<br />
But in my mind of minds, I understand that this isn't really the case anymore. This hibernation has lasted too long, and too many things have changed. Do I believe that he would be there for me if my circumstances got so that I really needed him, even after all these years? Yes. But I also know that I'd have to spend days, or hours, or weeks explaining everything that had happened to me before he could offer meaningful help.<br />
<br />
I would say that it's this way with a lot of people, but...there weren't a lot of people who meant as much to me as Elorza. There weren't a lot of friendships that were that embedded in so many of the days that made up so much of my life.<br />
<br />
Five, it seems like there were. Go back to the beginning of this blog, and you'll find five. The Fab Five.<br />
<br />
(Or, uhm, don't actually go back. Having recently read the first entry which mentioned The Fab Five in any detail, I realize that it was smug teen-aged crap obsessed with honesty at the expense of everything else. The point of the post was to "make examples" of my best friends by pulling no punches in pointing out their flaws to the <strike>thousands</strike> <strike>hundreds</strike> dozen<strike>s of</strike> readers that would come. I appreciate, in a distant, academic way that that post truly set the tone for the years of honest writing that would help me to navigate the rocky shores of my late teens and early adulthood. Still, it's cringe-worthy in it's naive self-satisfaction, and none of the five deserved my laying them out like that without their input or consent.)<br />
<br />
<br />
The Fab Five consisted of Elorza, Emily, Andrew L., Jeremey, and Jeff.<br />
<br />
Taking stock of my relationships with all of them over the years, it's...it's really not as bad as it could be. These must have been quality friendships, as the survival rate of some kind of relationship is uncharacteristically high for me.<br />
<br />
And they were. Of the Five, the only one that really doesn't belong on the "best friends of all time" list is Andrew, who-- not to belittle the importance of our relationship-- more or less made the cut because he was my boyfriend at the time. Even so, in the past year or so, I've been making some attempts to re-establish a friendship with him, and though I can't say that it yet surpasses the "Facebook" prefix, we've had some pleasant conversations. He is, above all, a character, and while I can see where the endless show amusing pretense that he uses in lieu of deeper emotional connection could-- and, in fact, did once-- get old, I do still enjoy him.<br />
<br />
My relationship with Jeremey is not unlike my relationship with Elorza, with the notable difference that, geographically, it's easier to occasionally actually see him. His mother, whom he visits on holidays, lives mere minutes from where I live now, and so we've made a point of getting together a couple of times a year. He attended my recent wedding reception and was really a very big highlight for me in an otherwise stressful and overwhelming event: in fact, he sensed my stress and offered this genuine, adult concern that made me feel better, in that moment and, ultimately, about our friendship.<br />
<br />
In fact, it was partially his maturity and concern that day that lead me to the surprising realization that, of all the people who have been in my life for anywhere near as long as Jeremey has, he is the only one who seems to have grown in a meaningful and indisputably positive way. Everyone else, it seems, has done some variation on stagnating or going backwards, or improving their lives in certain ways while regressing in others. But Jeremey...he seems to have just...grown up.<br />
<br />
Emily is now my closest friend, a possible tie with Zack, who I had not yet met at the time of the writing. Still, having been married to Zack for so long and still, in some capacity, thinking of him as more or less the love of my life (As opposed to the stronger, stabler partnership I experience with my current husband), I have trouble thinking of him as a "friend." So, that leaves Emily.<br />
<br />
I don't think that it's a coincidence that the sole female of the bunch is the one who has proven best able to navigate the complications of the kinds of relationships I tend to foster. All of my close friendships have some degree of both familial and romantic feelings, either at some point or as an ongoing theme. For many, this has proven far too confusing to deal with. Emily, on the other hand, seems to understand that complexity in love does not tarnish it's value. One must put up boundaries and try to live by them, but these boundaries shift, and change, and crossing them does not make for a disaster that's any more bad than it is good.<br />
<br />
I don't know if that makes sense, as the more I write, the more oddly, unintentionally poetic I get. But Emily and I are good, and we have been for a long time, with little interruption.<br />
<br />
<br />
Still, a friendship such as this one can survive an interruption. Mine and Emily's did, a few years back. And one hopes that mine and Jeff's will survive the one we're currently experiencing.<br />
<br />
Things are not good between us now. I don't know to what extent "things" between us still are, at all.<br />
<br />
I won't go into it now: another day, perhaps. All I can say is, I still love him. That much won't change.<br />
<br />
<br />
I'm fighting for change, and I'm fighting for things to stay the same. If that girl, who wrote all that came before this can make it, so can I.<br />
<br />
To borrow a habit from her, I'll end the post on a corny song quote:<br />
<br />
<i>"You live for the fight when that's all that you've got."</i><br />
-Bon Jovi, Livin' on a Prayer<br />
<br />
<br />
On with it.<br />
<br /><div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href="www.suedecaramel.blogspot.com">My Cavalier Approach to Human Decency</a></div>Elle Emaitch (A pseudonym-- first name is Linda)http://www.blogger.com/profile/10440343897500915951noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111943.post-85931559798608788282015-07-21T00:18:00.000-04:002015-07-21T00:18:24.558-04:00The Year Things Get Better For Me<br />
It's nearly midnight on a work night, so I don't have time to write the post that this deserves, but one thing I have to learn to do to be a better adult is to just do things. Whether or not these things can be done to the ridiculous standards of my aspirational (but, as of yet, in no way actual) self, just do them, so that some version of the thing you wanted exists, instead of a just a big pile of nothing that slowly rots away until not even a hint of what you originally intended exists.<br />
<br />
Or something. I'm not at my most eloquent tonight. But moving past that is sort of the theme of that last paragraph, whether you can tell that or not. And look, I did.<br />
<br />
Things have been very hard for me for a while now. There are a lot of reasons for that. More than the two big ones I'm about to highlight now, and, in fact, more big ones just than just those two. But those two are kinda the point of this paragraph, so let's get there. 1) The birth of my son, 19 months ago, was super traumatic for me, in a way that has given me legit PTSD symptoms since then. (To be clear, I had been diagnosed with PTSD from earlier issues even before that, but I found out, the hard way, in the past year and a half the difference between a sort of latent, distant trauma that haunts you occasionally and at the least opportune time, and the kind that makes your whole life the least opportune time. Number 2) My whole life, as many of you have known, I have been very, very tired.<br />
<br />
I have a chance, I think, to finally address both of these. For the trauma, I am experimenting with a new therapy, Accelerated Resolution Therapy (ART), which is promisingly like EMDR, and is practiced by a therapist very geographically near to me. I'll get into the details at a later date, but if it is what it's cracked up to be, it's possible that I am already well on my way to recovery from this issue, and, maybe, from issues that have haunted me in the past.<br />
<br />
For the tiredness, I have stumbled upon a hypothesis: I am in no way medically or scientifically sure, but I have reason to suspect that I may suffer from obstructive sleep apnea as a result of my shockingly large tonsils. Even if this is not the case, there is a very large possibility that the resulting restricted air flow is a big part of my rather consistent torpor. (Googled it: I used that word correctly! Awesome!) In support of my feelings of wanting to resolve this, Dan has agreed to allow me to use a large portion of the money we received as gift for our recent wedding (Yay, us!) to have my tonsils reduced in a relatively painless laser procedure called a Laser Tonsil Ablation.<br />
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It is my feeling that IF both of these two treatments have even half of the effect that I hope that they do, I will be, very suddenly, in possession of a great deal of energy, both emotional and physical. To have a well-rested and relatively relaxed brain for the first time in my life...it's something to think about.<br />
<br />
This could be the year things get better for me.<br />
<br />
I have a strong desire not to waste this potential energy: not to let the years of dreams and aspirations that I have always pushed off until things were better turn to the proverbial pile of nothing, rotting away. As such, I have made a list of very specific goals for the next year of my life: convenient timing, as my birthday was a mere three days ago. Maybe I'll accomplish all of before I turn 32. Maybe they will be forgotten in two months time. For better or worse, herein lies, at least, the hint of what I intend, today. In no particular order:<br />
<br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">Train for and run 5k with Dan</span><br style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">Be able to do one chin-up</span><br style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">Learn 6 Dance songs Well</span><br style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">Record 5 Original Songs</span><br style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">Finish Editing Zack's First Book</span><br style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">First Draft of Screenplay</span><br style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">2 College Courses</span><br style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">Keep Car Cleaner-ish</span><br style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">Keep Office Cleaner-ish</span><br style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">Switch to capsule wardrobe</span><br style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">Therapy for trauma</span><br style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">Learn to play 5 songs on the uke</span><br style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">Reduce tonsils</span><br style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">Put 500 in IRA</span><br style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">Improve credit score 75 points</span><br style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">Complete 3 large art projects</span><br style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">Pick up 3000 pieces of litter</span><br style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">Maintain nails/eyebrows/teeth/skin</span><br style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">Write/mail letters to 15 people from my life</span><br style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">25 blog posts</span><br style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">Put together Ezra's baby book</span><br style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">6 books (at least 3 non-audiobooks)</span><br style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">Read Le Petit Prince in French</span><br style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">Get Ezra caught up with speech</span><br style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">Be able to touch my toes</span><br />
<br />
<br />
This list was written on my phone yesterday, though I added that last one just now, as it's absence on the list was an oversight.<br />
<br />
I hope to have the time to explain my choices a bit better in the future, in some of the upcoming twenty-five (make that twenty-four) blog posts. For now, let me just state that I intend to share my journey here, and hopefully on Imgur, the goal of the latter being that it has the same feeling as a weight loss post, but with a more holistic (and less judgmental of fat people) vibe.<br />
<br />
Today, I worked on the following:<br />
<br />
-I had a very productive therapy session.<br />
-I went for a walk and picked up forty-five pieces of litter, then cleaned a decent amount of trash out of my car (by no means enough to consider it clean) before coming inside.<br />
-I used my Clairisonic and moisturized, then followed up with frownies on my forehead wrinkles (this is skincare-related)<br />
-I did a few quick arm exercises before bed, some "girl-style" push-ups (soon enough, I will be back to the respectable ones) just so the day wouldn't be a total fitness loss.<br />
-I wrote this blog post. Almost. It'll be done in a sec.<br />
<br />
<br />
So...more to come. If you intend to join me on this journey, I thank you for being more interested than I have really warranted with this post. If you're checking back on this many months in the future to see how far I've come...well, good for me, I guess that means I'm still at it.<br />
<br />
On with it.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href="www.suedecaramel.blogspot.com">My Cavalier Approach to Human Decency</a></div>Elle Emaitch (A pseudonym-- first name is Linda)http://www.blogger.com/profile/10440343897500915951noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111943.post-9544538223981348542015-01-19T23:39:00.000-05:002015-12-27T15:57:37.986-05:00Bare Branches and Stray Cats<div>
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A few doors down from our house, there is a building. It houses an elementary school, but it looks like no elementary school I've ever seen: certainly not the modern, unimposing, kid-friendly architecture you see nowadays. I believe it used to be a high school, back when high schools were something more institutional than they are today, and it shows: it's got a old, classic academic edifice with pillars in the front. It's set back on it's lawn with a path leading up to it, lined with lamps and mature trees which, nowadays, are bare. It was beautiful in the summer, with the leafy green canopy, and the autumn colors were especially fitting, with that changing-season back-to-school charm straight out of a college brochure. But there's something just right about the wispy, naked fingers, barely obfuscating your view of the place, and the snow on the ground. Something about the coldness that suits it.</div>
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I'm sure it's older than most of the homes that surround it, but even as the defining characteristic of the neighborhood, it's somehow so garishly out-of-place I can never help but stare at it. For me, it's beauty inspires only sad nostalgia of a life I didn't have. I think it reminds me of walking around the campuses of liberal arts colleges and feeling this sense of being where I belonged, but only as a fleeting visitor.</div>
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I was smart and artistic and I cared about learning; I would have done a thousand times better in college than I did in High School. Instead, with undiagnosed ADHD and terrible grades, I was rejected from the few colleges I thought to apply to, and I lived the first part of my adult life in the confusion that comes from being separated from your peers when they all go one way and you go another. I got a job, got married, and lived a humble life trying to convince myself that I'd done what was right for me. I don't remember if I did a good job at that or a poor one: it probably went back and forth. But when I walked around the campus at Bowdoin or took a day trip to Cambridge, I knew the truth.</div>
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It's not clear if my early marriage suffered from the longing of the life I should have had, as it was suffering from too many things to keep track of. Still, eventually, I somehow learned to commit to marriage, to define myself as a part of a couple, and to think of that as my life's most important goal. This dedication served me well, right up until the divorce. After that, having my sense of self wrapped up in my marriage was...less convenient.<br />
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There's something about this, the way I'm writing this, that really isn't working for me: it's hard, it's not coming out naturally, and it's not satisfying. Earlier tonight, I went out for a walk, as it was a very bearable 32 degrees: I like to make the point to people who use the term "freezing" to describe the winters in Maine that when the temperature is actually at freezing, that's a really pleasant change.</div>
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I started out with a practice called "mindful walking," part of my attempt to make meditation a regular routine once again. The idea is, as you might guess, to be present and in the moment, noticing sights, sound, smells, and the feeling of your feet on the pavement, one step after another, and giving your attention to the here and now. I did alright for a while, but found myself fighting off the narrator in my head that so often begins a post like this long before I ever reach a keyboard. It's something I've always done, since I was a very small child-- write in my head when I'm alone.</div>
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In the past few years, it's not clear to me how long, that has somehow happened less and less for me, less automatically, less often. I guess it's not clear to me why: is it because I have so little alone time now? Is my mind too crammed with anxious to-do lists to wander into essays and stories and monologues from imaginary films that have only the sparsest plot supporting them? Or has my head been narrating to me just as much all along, but I forgot to listen?</div>
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Regardless, as it always has, walking alone at night sparked it right up. Richly worded allusions to Counting Crows lyrics, and deeply complex metaphors about a cat that I stopped to pet, and how it symbolized the many ex-loves of my life with whom my relationship was ruined because I couldn't let my time with them be simply what it was. Full paragraphs about the building, and the trees, and the life I could have had, and what it is to always be living a life you feel is not your own: to always feel as out of place in your own life as that damned building is on my street.</div>
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And then finally, as I walked back to my house, the realization that while I might always feel unfamiliar in my life-- either as a wife that should have instead been a student, or a mother to the wrong man's child-- there is a way to find my way back to the one thing that does feel like me, at my very essence, to my very core: the voice of melancholy narrator, carefully crafting the story of my signature sadness.</div>
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I think, perhaps, it will always be there, it has always been there. I think, perhaps, it is really just for me-- the writing is in my head, is working it's way through me, even if I never make it as far as I've made it tonight. The feeling of my fingers on my keyboard is about communing with the voice of the narrator. Posting these words for all to see is my plea for the world to love her, because she is me, because she is all I really am.<br />
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But the voice, the words, the stories and symbols and stray cats...that's the part I really need, whether it comes out on paper or not. That's the part of me that is a writer in a way that no college could have ever made me one.</div>
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I hope that it's enough.</div>
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On with it.<br />
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<div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href="www.suedecaramel.blogspot.com">My Cavalier Approach to Human Decency</a></div>Elle Emaitch (A pseudonym-- first name is Linda)http://www.blogger.com/profile/10440343897500915951noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111943.post-67060365898846558212014-11-20T18:04:00.002-05:002014-11-20T18:04:52.579-05:00The Rub(ble)<br />
In the office, editing a spreadsheet, I'm listening to a podcast to make the days tolerable, as I have most days since my favorite coworker left. It's an old This American Life, as I've listened to all the recent ones: this one, from 1996. An episode called "Get Over it." It's about people getting over things, break-ups and deaths so far in the episode. Ira said something in the beginning about how you can't will it to happen, you can't know when it's going to happen. He related it to a passage in the bible about how the date of Jesus' return will not be known until it happens.<br />
<br />
Then, there's this really sad story by George Saunders, about a man trying to get over his wife's death, doing so by throwing himself into the caretaking of an old widow. I won't get too much into it--<a href="http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/42/get-over-it"> you should listen to it if you find yourself with the time</a>-- but it's a somewhat sci-fi/futuristic story (except evidently written in and set in 1992, so think "alternative reality" futuristic rather than actual futuristic), so the method that he eventually uses to get over his wife's death and help provide for the old woman is a little...Eternal Sunshine of The Spotless Mind.<br />
<br />
There's so many directions I want to go in reaction to this piece, all interelated, all could be part of the same "This American Life" episode: they all have the same theme. But, like in "This American Life", they are all different stories.<br />
<br />
My first reaction, the one that inspiried me to write this, was to the little clip of song they played after the story. My ears perked as I realized I knew the song, but not well: something I'd heard many times, but in a relatively short period of my life. As I tried to place it, the irony dawned on me: the song was from a mix tape given to me by someone that I cared very much for at the time, who I forced myself to get over by not letting myself think of him or what we had.<br />
<br />
The idea of forcing myself to get over someone-- of not just openly and vulnerably letting myself feel whatever I feel-- is generally so foreign to me that the whole process of doing it was not entirely unlike a real-life version of this story: I had a life to save, or a way of life: not just mine, not just mine and Zack's, but his, and his family's. I had the greater good to consider. So I, in the only time in my life I ever mustered the will to do this, forced myself just to not think about him or acknowledge any lingering feelings.<br />
<br />
It worked to the extent that I don't even know how accurate what I'm typing is. I know that I was much more strict about the process than I'd ever been before or since, but I don't know if that's truly what I can attribute the success to. I look back now, and, I know full well that I had deep feelings for him, but it's not clear to me the exacts of how or why. It seems to foreign to me now. Would I have been able to shut him out had I not already been fairly far into the process of getting over him? Or was it the process of shutting him out that makes me feel like I was over him, I must have been, I don't even know how strong my feelings were in the first place?<br />
<br />
The reality of this, like the memories of the man in the story, is now lost to the ether.<br />
<br />
<br />
There was a point I wanted to make about how Dan and I used to argue over how good a movie "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" was. I think, in the end, I made the point that there were far too many parallels to mine and Zack's relationship for me to find the movie anything but disturbing and sad. I forget my exact points...maybe I'll find and post the piece of conversation, sometime. I think it was mostly online.<br />
<br />
I tried to write a post last night that somewhat related to all of this, but then, Dan came into the room. He was making a good-faith effort to check in with me before bed time, something I've asked him to do in order to help me to feel like we're really a couple, and not just a pair of co-parents who live together. I wasn't really in a good place to appreciate his effort though-- I'd been in a bad mood all day, and it felt, often, like he was oblivious to that.<br />
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The conversation we had, as is so often the pattern, started out benign, but quickly became a tour of all the different ways we fail each other as a couple: he often feels unappreciated, which is hard to combat, because, I often don't appreciate him. I often feel like he's disappointed in me, which is hard for him to combat because, in his words, "I think you try, I think you do the best you can. But I don't think that'll ever be enough to meet my standards."<br />
<br />
So, there's the rub: I don't appreciate him, he's disappointed in me.<br />
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At least, it's part of the rub. I don't know how much of the rub it is. I don't even know if it's most of the rub, or the biggest piece of the rub. And I've said "rub" one too many times.<br />
<br />
I'll end with what I managed to write last night before he came in and interrupted:<br />
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"I find neuroscience fascinating, and it's a fascinating time for it. They're doing all these image studies now-- using an FMRI to track the way a brain will actually physically change in response to events in a person's life. Actual, scientific evidence of the way a traumatized person's brain will respond to therapy, showing how parts that are overactive gradually become calmed overtime. Visual evidence to show that meditation strengthens pathways that allow one to access serenity. And whatever the third thing in my list would be if I were more well-versed on the topic. (I tried to look something up figuring, hey, a rhetorically satisfying list should have three examples. But then I got really bored, really fast. Evidently, I don't actually find neuroscience <i>THAT</i> fascinating.)<br />
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So, any neuroscientists out there, here's my suggestion for an experiment. Prove or disprove the following hypothesis: the brain changes after great heartbreak, making it actually, physically impossible to love the next person as much as you loved the first. Prove or disprove the idea that you'll never again feel anything like your first love."<br />
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So. A whole different piece of the rub. On with it.<br />
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<div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href="www.suedecaramel.blogspot.com">My Cavalier Approach to Human Decency</a></div>Elle Emaitch (A pseudonym-- first name is Linda)http://www.blogger.com/profile/10440343897500915951noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111943.post-31909007522532202312014-11-12T22:12:00.000-05:002014-11-12T22:12:25.081-05:00Day ThirtyThe last day of my thirty day writing challenge. I'm not going to miss it. Still, if I manage at least a paragraph here, and hit "publish", I'll have seen it through. A few of the entries were even not terrible.<br />
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I remember somewhere in there, I said that I'd feel some kind of satisfaction when I finished. Something about it not being super gratifying, but still, some since of satisfaction that I saw it through.<br />
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Actually, I think I just implied that satisfaction, in this case, would not really be satisfaction at all, but the avoidance of whatever negative feeling I would have if I didn't do what I said I would. Yeah, that seems about right.<br />
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It's a pretty empty feeling.<br />
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Writing isn't going to ever be what it was to me, all of my life, if I do it like this. If I try to fit it into some tiny chunk of time I have before I go to bed, knowing full well that every extra word adds to my growing sleep debt. If I have to keep myself level because I don't have the time an energy to get upset. If I have to avoid really getting into anything, really having any chance to process anything, because of that.<br />
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Dan and I got into something the other day-- I was pretty sure it was yesterday but now I'm thinking maybe the day before-- and sometime in the processing between that fight and the next (it must have been the day before, because I remember writing yesterday that we weren't actually fighting), I explained to him that I need for him to try to read my signals a little better, so that we can avoid me crossing a line of emotion after which I become useless for a while, after which all I can do is try to process that emotion.<br />
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That can be a very time-consuming thing. I suppose it feels like my posts are going to be subpar so long as I'm trying to avoid getting into this long, winding diatribe where I figure out some kernel of truth inside of my emotions. I'm not the type of person who can just open something up and then close it off again: once it's out there, it's staying out there. Until I've gotten something out of it.<br />
<br />
Dan and I are fighting again. You may have been able to tell from my cheery tone. I suspect he thinks we're fighting because he disagreed with me. I suspect he thinks I'm mad that he disagreed, and that he's mad that I didn't react well to that.<br />
<br />
It's true, I didn't react well. It was one of those disagreements where the other person's position is so shocking and offensive to you, but only because they're you're partner. It's not that you couldn't respect the opinion coming out of a stranger or a friend or whatever. It's that, you can't see how you managed to find yourself in a relationship with someone who feels that way.<br />
<br />
And yeah, I don't like that feeling. But I'm not MAD at him for it. That's not what I'm fighting about.<br />
<br />
I'm fighting because, as I could tell that the conversation was getting me upset, I started to try to give him clues that it was, to prompt him to remember the conversation we had-- just two short days ago-- where I asked him to be aware if I'm getting agitated and pull back. I even said to him that I needed him to tread lightly.<br />
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I don't know if he tried. I suspect he would argue that he did. I don't know if I'd believe him if he said that.<br />
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Our fight the other day ruined the whole night, and then, last night was also bad, though not in a fighting way. So it was in this really desperate feeling that I couldn't possibly take it a third night in a row that I lost it and just interrupted him before the conversation could continue to upset me.<br />
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I wasn't tactful, I was just trying to get out of it before it escalated and farther. But then he snapped at me for disrespecting him or something like that. I don't know. Either way, he was demanding something out of me I couldn't give-- an apology or something like that. I can't do that when I'm not sorry, and I really, really wasn't. I don't think I am now.<br />
<br />
There was something else I asked him to do, the night before last, something else he ignored tonight: I <i>am</i> sensitive. I <i>do</i> get upset. I am emotional where he is unemotional. I get triggered easily, very possibly a side-effect of the PTSD we both know I am suffering from, and when that happens, it can be hard to control my emotions, and his lack of ability to see that happening makes everything worse. So I asked him, the other night, to try, in the future, to cut me some slack when it happens. Let some things slide. Not take everything to heart.<br />
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The night I asked, he seemed to think it was a perfectly reasonable request. This evening, it seemed like he seemed to ignore it.<br />
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I walked away because there was nothing else to do. He wasn't going to get me to say "I'm sorry" because I genuinely wasn't, and I wasn't willing to let another night get lost in another fight.<br />
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Now we don't seem to be talking. A lot of times, I just think it's better that way.<br />
<br />
<br />
Things were going...slightly better for a while. I don't know if it's that I was mediating for a while there, or if it had something to do with the fact that things were going really well with my job and I was happier than I had been, at least in that regard. Maybe it's something hormonal, maybe it's that I haven't been sleeping. Or maybe, just maybe, the difference <i>him. </i>It's not like he's going to be the one to volunteer that this could be something to do with his moods and state of mind, so I guess I'm going to have to.<br />
<br />
He's down the hall and I can hear him typing on his computer, and it's going to make it impossible to sleep. When I fight with my partner, I can't really deal with the tension their presence brings me; I need to be as far away as physically possible. I can't live with someone I fight with this much.<br />
<br />
We've tried fighting less. It's not clear that that's working. I don't know when the next phase happens.<br />
<br />
<br />
Day 30. It's not pretty, but there it is.<br />
<br />
Alright, people. I'll see you the next time I have something of interest to say. Hopefully in a few days or so.<br />
<br />
On with it.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br /><div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href="www.suedecaramel.blogspot.com">My Cavalier Approach to Human Decency</a></div>Elle Emaitch (A pseudonym-- first name is Linda)http://www.blogger.com/profile/10440343897500915951noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111943.post-60357092264641340842014-11-11T22:59:00.000-05:002014-11-11T22:59:04.823-05:00Day 29<br />
Today is the penultimate day of my 30-day blogging challenge. "Penultimate" is one of those big vocabulary words that Dan likes to throw around whenever possible, which is a trait I find super annoying. It seems to be a family trait: I remember his brother once used the word "disaggregated" in some sort of casual, non-scientific, non-data-set conversation. A conversation where "separated" would have made a lot more sense, if I remember correctly.<br />
<br />
His brother is a graduate of Yale Law. Really smart, really successful person. Clearly knows a lot of big words. But I think theres a little more to be said for knowing when not to use them.<br />
<br />
Opening this entry with an attack on Dan's curious and pretentious vocabulary choices, however, is a misleading choice on my part, especially where yesterday's entry somehow meandered into rant territory about an argument we'd had. Dan and I are not arguing tonight. Tonight, I am suffering from a general malaise.<br />
<br />
Or rather, I am suffering from a malaise most closely associated with some changes at work that I don't feel at liberty to write about freely in any context that might be tracked back to me, pseudonym or not. I don't think anyone's looking, but it wouldn't be particularly hard to figure out who I really am from this, or to find this if you were looking for things about who I really am. If that makes sense. Regardless, my work life has changed, very suddenly, and has become significantly less enjoyable and fulfilling for me.<br />
<br />
I can live with this, except that enjoying my work life was a really important distraction from the fact that I don't really enjoy my home life.<br />
<br />
I don't do well on any day where I don't get a good chunk of time sitting in front of the TV while eating: most nights it's dinner. Tonight, dinner got rushed and was sub-par and we ended up watching a particularly disappointed episode of the daily show: two of three, well, thirds of it were really disappointing, so, assuming the first, Jon-Stewart-covers-headlines-directly-to-the-audience part was fine, I probably got all of seven minutes of my rejuvenative food-TV ritual in, and it was heavily interrupted by both the baby and the dog. So maybe that's the real source of my dourness.<br />
<br />
I suspect, as I so often do, a hybrid of things.<br />
<br />
To salvage what's left of the very little time before I <i>really should be asleep,</i> I'll probably curl up with my phone and search the internet for some way to feel more interactive with Serial, the new spinoff podcast from This American Life. Are you listening to it, imaginary reader? It's so good, so addictive.<br />
<br />
I don't want to waste my time explaining it. Just google it. Or better yet, just download the first 7 episodes, which are currently available. You have to listen to them in order, it's an ongoing story. I'm too tired to give you a hyperlink, maybe I'll edit in later.<br />
<br />
Day 29. The penultimate day. If you were to disaggregate this body of work, you'd get 29 separate posts so far.<br />
<br />
On with it.<br />
<br /><div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href="www.suedecaramel.blogspot.com">My Cavalier Approach to Human Decency</a></div>Elle Emaitch (A pseudonym-- first name is Linda)http://www.blogger.com/profile/10440343897500915951noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111943.post-63051022278112318282014-11-11T00:31:00.002-05:002014-11-11T00:31:36.320-05:00Alchemy and Pretention<br />
Having gotten a terribly piddling amount of sleep last night, I intended to go to bed nice and early tonight.<br />
<br />
Then Dan and I got into an argument about something that wasn't really an argument, but activated all of my argument-nerves or whatever, and then spent an hour processing and discussing that, which then, inevitably, moved into another argument. And now, at midnight, here I am, with a post still to write.<br />
<br />
Sleep. The first casualty of an unhappy relationship.<br />
<br />
Part of me wants to go off in this direction: talking about how strange it is that Dan and I are this bad even when we're not that bad at all, and you, figuring out what the hell I mean by that. Talking about the point I was making about how he writes off a lot of my behaviors as abnormal when they're really just female, and then talking about how he gets frustrated by my use of "stereotypes" and "generalizations." Talking about how I honestly can't stand people who play the "stereotypes" and "generalizations" card: there are legitimate differences between (most) men and (most) women. These differences evolved from having very separate biological functions and everything that goes along with that.<br />
<br />
By and large, the men in my life understand this and accept it as fact. There are many women in my life that don't. (I'm sure I'm misrepresenting them here. So, blah blah blah, sociology, socialization, insert their whole argument here. It's not an invalid argument. But it's my blog, and I'm the one who has to get to sleep, so I don't want to spend twenty minutes here playing devil's advocate in full, fair representation of a whole group of feminists who will never read this.)<br />
<br />
My point, I guess, the point I was trying to get around to NOT making, is this: women and men are biologically different, for very important reasons. That biology is incredibly powerful. In this, and in all things, it frustrates me when people put on airs and think that we have somehow transcended our biology. We have not. We are animals. We are the sum of our animal parts, and we our driven by our chemicals and hormones and the instincts they create. Don't be pretentious: we are just mammals that wear fancy clothes and walk upright.<br />
<br />
I am a feminist in so much as I don't think there is any moral righteousness in acting one way because you were born that way. But I do think that some things are fundamentally more feminine, and some things are fundamentally more masculine. Large emotional range? That's a pretty feminine trait, in my mind.<br />
<br />
<br />
This is all totally separate from the only thing I actually meant to come on here to write, which was this interesting point I made about economics. Dan and I were in an argument-- or actually, in a post-argument discussion-- about money. He was making the point (roughly, and this wasn't the whole thing) that money is math, and that math has a right and wrong answer.<br />
<br />
I made the counter point that money isn't math: money is economics. And then I made the point that I've tried to make to many people, many times, since I stumbled upon an understanding of it, somewhere during the first hundred episodes of NPR's Planet Money Podcast: Economics isn't solely about money. Economics isn't solely about math.<br />
<br />
Economics it about worth, it's about value. It's about what one will trade on one side to gain on the other side. I remember once that my uncle was saying that he would be willing to buy a hybrid if his company would give him an economic incentive for doing so. I told him that he already had plenty of economic incentive, beyond the financial, if he cares about the other benefits of driving a hybrid: namely cleaner air and water and earth and blah blah blah. (And yes, for the rare reader who might quibble here, I get that the environmental benefits of a hybrid are highly controversial when considering the production of the battery, etc.. Not my point here: stay on task, imaginary, haughty environmentalist reader!)<br />
<br />
My point to my uncle was that economic benefit is not the same as financial benefit, because any and all positive effects of driving a hybrid might help to equal out the equation where he decides to spend more on buying one. Little to know, I was barking up the wrong tree-hugger: my uncle, it seems, votes Republican, and all the stunning environmental polices that go along with it.<br />
<br />
But back to what I said earlier. I was explaining to him that money is not math, money is economics. It's not about numbers as much as it is about obtaining balance. It's about equivalent exchange.<br />
<br />
Economics isn't math. Economics is <i>alchemy.</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i><br /></i>
I'm sure any future economists who wander into this post equally likely to nod in thoughtful agreement or vomit. But any Full Metal fans who stop by will probably be so excited they squirt their juice boxes all over their Pokemon cards, so I got that going for me. (Someone remind me to make a mash-up illustration of John Maynard Keynes with an automail arm. That level of obscurity would gain me some serious points with like, one Econ major in a suburb of Cincinatti.)<br />
<br />
Either way, as I said it, it occurred to me it sounded a little profound. So I thought I'd write a post about it.<br />
<br />
I, too, wear fancy clothes and walk upright. So sue me.<br />
<br />
Day 28. On with it.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href="www.suedecaramel.blogspot.com">My Cavalier Approach to Human Decency</a></div>Elle Emaitch (A pseudonym-- first name is Linda)http://www.blogger.com/profile/10440343897500915951noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111943.post-25804472081796202792014-11-09T23:20:00.002-05:002014-11-09T23:20:42.518-05:00The Old Team<br />
Tomorrow, I am meeting with my ex-coworker from my current job. I'm excited to see her, as she was the one person I managed to get very close to in my first three months of the job, and it would be good to make a go at being friends in earnest. But I fear what happens all too often: that the longer separated professionally, the less we will have to talk about. Ex-work relationships tend to happen that way.<br />
<br />
I still hold a very dear place in my heart for everyone I worked at Borders with: it was, by far, my longest-lasting job, and I worked their from before the store opened till after the store closed. We had our fair share of scary-crazy types, and I had one too many run-ins with them. But overall, I felt that we forged a kind of family. Somehow, all of these years later, I still feel like that.<br />
<br />
I wondered, the other day, what would happen if someone miraculously re-opened the store and everyone who worked their before worked their again-- like the way Nathan Fillion describes how quickly all of the actors from Firefly would go back if someone bought the rights to the show and rebooted it. Would I take the job back?<br />
<br />
The short answer is that I couldn't possibly afford to, in the way I worked their before, and I suspect most of my co-workers on the same page. I like to think most of us are making at least a little more than we were then, though I know that's not necessarily the case for the salaried management. When I was a supervisor there, I believe I was making $10.45 an hour. When I quit management to go back to school and worked as a Bookseller, I think it got knocked down about a dollar-fifty. It's really sad to think of how many of my coworkers were making way less than that fairly miserable amount.<br />
<br />
I make a living wage now-- nothing spectacular, but enough that I could support myself, modestly, if Dan and I were no longer together. (There's this whole rant about how frustrating it would be for me that Dan, who makes about the same amount that I do, would have it so much easier because he has no debts or bills thanks to parental intervention, but it's neither here nor there.) It probably won't be long before I begin to itch for more, but it's a decent living, or what passes for one nowadays.<br />
<br />
If the fantasy Borders team got back together, I would definitely be on-board as a part-timer, though. At least one day a week, even if I did have to commute all the way back to Brunswick. It would honestly be so good for my social life just to be there again, with that group of people.<br />
<br />
<br />
I had every intention of staying in contact with the old crew, and I guess I've maybe done better than most. I've gone out of my way to drop in on people like Holly and Jasmine, and stayed, albeit sparsely, in contact with Andrea and Bill on Facebook. Jim and I manage to get together for an hour or so every couple of months.<br />
<br />
But, even still, we talk almost exclusively about the old days. How much we miss people. How great it would be to go back. If we're still getting together a few times a year in ten years, will we still be talking about this one job we once had?<br />
<br />
<br />
In my perfect world, Jim, Andrea and I would form a team to meet at a bar in Topsham or something for a weekly Trivia night. We'd invite everyone who worked at the old place and they'd show up whenever they could, fleshing out our team with a Tara one week and a Bill the next. A few good friends, a couple of drinks, and the weird amalgam of knowledge that one gains in working at a book store for years. <br />
<br />
We'd be unstoppable.<br />
<br />
<br />
Day 27. On with it.<br />
<br />
<br /><div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href="www.suedecaramel.blogspot.com">My Cavalier Approach to Human Decency</a></div>Elle Emaitch (A pseudonym-- first name is Linda)http://www.blogger.com/profile/10440343897500915951noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111943.post-33521950386981353632014-11-08T21:39:00.001-05:002014-11-08T21:39:28.956-05:00Day 26<br />
<br />
Apparently, November is NaBloPoMo, which stands for "National Blog Posting Month" or some such nonsense. The idea is that people who are participating are supposed to write a blog post every day in November.<br />
<br />
Well, that's bad timing.<br />
<br />
My final day of my thirty days of posting is slated to be over on the twelfth. Under different circumstances, I'd be tempted to keep going until the end of November in order to participate, but, honestly, this has been a truly frustrating journey. Yesterday's post is a prime example of what happens when you make yourself write when you have nothing to say and no desire to, which is fine if it's merely for the writerly practice of writing a little every day. But if I were going to buy into that "great writers write every day" garbage, I wouldn't do it publicly. I don't want people who wander onto this website to think I'm some insipid moron. Yesterday's post, and many others I've produced like it, are the blogging equivalent to instagramming pictures of your breakfast. And, I mean if your breakfast were really mundane.<br />
<br />
And for the record, I don't think great writers (or anything else) necessarily do anything. I think different people achieve greatness different ways. And most people don't at all, I suspect.<br />
<br />
As I write this, I am sick in bed and very much want to attempt sleep. I had just cozied myself and was shutting off the light when I realized that there was a considerable chance that my attempt at sleep would lead to actual sleep, given that I've spent the last 18 hours refraining from eating anything that might bother my stomach and running back and forth the bathroom, and then my streak would be ruined. So I forced my shaky, achy, hot-and-cold self to pick up the laptop.<br />
<br />
The reality is, for me, forcing myself to do <i>anything</i> every day is doomed to eventual failure. I guess the question I need to ask myself is whether that's okay, something I can just accept about myself, or if it's a shortcoming stemming from my lack of self-discipline, that I should attempt to overcome for the good of, well, everything.<br />
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A question for another day, I suppose, when the threat of throwing up on my keyboard isn't quite so clear.<br />
<br />
Day 26. On with it.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href="www.suedecaramel.blogspot.com">My Cavalier Approach to Human Decency</a></div>Elle Emaitch (A pseudonym-- first name is Linda)http://www.blogger.com/profile/10440343897500915951noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111943.post-42736647417975628102014-11-07T23:53:00.001-05:002014-11-07T23:53:44.632-05:00Uninspired Writing. I Wouldn't Bother, If I Were You. <br />
I am not drunk. The Jolly Rancher infused vodka was not good.<br />
<br />
There is some speculation that it would be improved by more Jolly Ranchers, since it seemed to suffer from insufficient sweetness.<br />
<br />
Either way, I am once again suffering from insufficient sex.<br />
<br />
Or, rather, not really tonight. This week has been such a clusterfuck that I am not really let down by the last of sex tonight. But, still, the pressure continues to build.<br />
<br />
I've gained a couple pounds back of the weight I had lost when I was focusing more on exercise and less on everything else. I feel really badly about my body again, which I guess is good, since self-hatred seems to be the only motivation that really works for me.<br />
<br />
Meditation has also gone, more or less, by the way side. I have been incorporating some of the mindfulness practices I've learned here or there, but I haven't really been sustained. I'm thinking more seriously now about combining the two goals and working with walking mediation. I guess the idea would be, 10 minutes of walking mediation, and then, after that, keep walking for another 45 minutes or so with an audiobook or something. The key is to let myself off the hook a little about the unsustainable exercise that I can't possibly do every single day. But I would like to start getting to the gym again, at least a few times a week.<br />
<br />
My fear is that walking will only get me as far as maintaining my weight, and that I won't be able to lose anymore. What I want to do is lose five pounds at a time, then take lengthy maintaining breaks in between. I'd rather not deal too much with the frustration of plateauing.<br />
<br />
This whole post feels useless. No one will want to read this, and, more importantly, future me will not find this interesting, either. I'm going to end this one short. Let it just be what it is: day 25.<br />
<br />
On with it.<br />
<br />
<br /><div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href="www.suedecaramel.blogspot.com">My Cavalier Approach to Human Decency</a></div>Elle Emaitch (A pseudonym-- first name is Linda)http://www.blogger.com/profile/10440343897500915951noreply@blogger.com