My toenails have grown long. They tend to. I don't take very good care of them, or my fingernails. I say it's because of the time that my sister was cutting my fingernails for me and made a mistake, cutting into my skin. More likely than not, it's only because I'm lazy when it comes to matters of hygiene, but, hell, I can get away with blaming it on my sister. Nobody ever calls me on it.

This all has very little to do with why I can't sleep. But whatever comes out, I guess. Better than nothing.

Four years, four months, as we go into may. That's how long this damn disease has lasted. I know it's not a disease. But "disorder" makes it sound so...benign. Disorder. The lack of order. The opposite of order.

The natural order of life. Man and woman, together. Birth, then maturity, then love, then sex, then birth. Order.

Man and woman, falling apart. Birth, then maturity, then love, then pain, then confusion, then clarity. Then hope, then determination. Then pain. Then disappointment, then willfulness, then pain. Then desperation, then doubt, then pain. Then frigidity, then rejection, then pain. Then hopelessness, then hate, then pain.

Disorder. Yeah, I guess that covers it.


This is the fifth month of 2007, the year I said I would overcome. The year I said there were no other options, none but one, and I put it out there, I pushed on with that unfailing tenacity, refused to let myself become what I knew it would kill me to be. Asked for your support. Maybe even got it. Who knows?


Determination, then relapse, then pain.


Stand, then fall, then pain.


I was putting a lot of eggs in the EFT basket, EFT being a therapy that's so new age and ridiculous that I was too embarassed to even mention it here. Everyone I explained it to was skeptical, but me, I couldn't afford to be. It was my last hope.

Is my last hope. And I don't have the strength to hope for it, really. This ridiculous, hookah-lighting, meridian-groping, touchy-feely west-coast voodoo. "Your subconscious is your soul, you understand." Said the man who's time I rented to the tune of $125 dollars and hour, and what insurance company is going to pay for this stoner-scented sermon? "Everything is an energy field, there is no solid matter."

"Oh, I understand." I heard myself say. I heard myself say this, because I have to buy whatever this hippie has to sell. He's the only one left who claims to have an answer.


"You say you never compromise
With the mystery tramp, but now you realize
He ain't selling any alibis
As you stare into the vacuum of his eyes
And says 'Do you wanna make a deal?'
How does it feel?"
~Bob Dylan, Like a Rolling Stone

This whole last ditch effort is based on an effort on my part to believe. That I can still be helped. That there is still a way. That there is still hope. If only in attached to some naturopathic nonsense that the girl I was raised to be would laugh her ass off. I'm not going to go anywhere with it if I can't have a little faith, and so I'm crossing my fingers, aligning my chakras, watching out for black cats and praying to the heavens, swearing, promising, pledging to believe. It's about faith, pure and simple. Faith, that most gracious of virtues. Faith, the willingness to put your whole self into something that can't be proven, can't be touched. There's only one problem.

I

HAVE

NO

FAITH.

And I never fucking have.

I'm a catholic girl who grew up to realize that, no matter how they wanted me to believe, none of what they were saying it made sense. I'm a coward who would love nothing more than to believe that an afterlife is waiting out there, like an eternal safety net, but it just seems so goddamned implausible. I'm a hopeless romantic that wants to believe that, against all odds, my husband really is the one person on Earth who I'm the most compatible with, and somehow, somehow we were meant to be, willed to be. But I can't, for the life of me, figure who it could have been that was willing it.

And yeah, I can consider the possibility that a mind-body connection that western medicine can't explain is out there. Maybe meridians and pressure points and the fucking tooth fairy all have great potential. But not for me. And I lose a little bit of the self that I lived most of my life being every time I try to convince myself otherwise.

And for what? So I can become more and more then person who believes, truly believes, that my marriage was the will of the heavens, that stars aligned, that we'll make it to forever, one way or another. So I can become more and more the person who's going to turn out fucking wrong.

"Why are you scared to believe in god
When it's salvation that you want?"
~Bright Eyes, We are Nowhere, and it's Now

It doesn't help that, when I have lost track of whatever faith I had for myself, and need it, I turn to the people who are supposed to carry an endless supply for me, just in case, and find out they've dropped the ball. Asking "Will I make it through this?" I get back equal parts apathy and indignation.

This angers me, because throughout all my shit, I never stopped believing in these people. The people I love, they are the only alter that I pray at. No matter what mistakes they've made, I believe in the worth and potential of these people. And if something means something to them, is to them what overcoming vaginismus would be to me, I would never fucking dream of letting them question whether or not they'll make it there, not if there was anything I could do to stop it. If their life depended on having faith in something, I'd give it to them when they had none of their own, I just would, I'd just have to. It angers me that they don't know to do the same for me.

But it's downright satisfying to know that I'll have my revenge, when there's no one left to believe in them the way I needed them to believe in me.


"For all you know, this could be
The difference between what you need
And what you want to be."
~Matchbox Twenty, The Difference



Friendship, then love, then reciprocity, then disappointment, then pain. That's pretty much the order I'm used to.

Maybe I make up too many rules for my friendships, I've noticed myself doing this a lot lately. Thou shalt have faith in me commensurate to that which I have in you. Thou shalt recognize and celebrate my pain. Thou shalt not recognize and celebrate your own.

It was working pretty well, till someone called me on it. I owe him an e-mail.


On with it.

When I was young, I didn't believe in wearing makeup, not for myself. I told people that it didn't make sense, because if someone called you beautiful, they'd really only be saying that the makeup was beautiful. It spoke to my what I now feel is one of the most fundamental truths about me: if someone tells me I am beautiful, I want it to be for real.

Lately, the desire to feel attractive has gone beyond this stipulation. Perhaps it's out of desperation, or perhaps the motivation has merely shifted. Once wanted, ever so badly, to find the person who would see beyond the clumsy stringy awkwardness that was the whole of my youth to the beauty that after school specials assured me was waiting inside. Now that I have that, what I'm looking for, perhaps, is the reassurance that I am desirable; or, rather, that I possess the lures to convince people to desire me.

Where once I longed to be thought of as beautiful, it seems now that I am driven to by the desire to seem, well, fuckable. Ironically enough.


Whatever the reason for this shift, my actions tell me things have changed. I still don't wear makeup; lip gloss, occasionally, and, mascara very rarely and, sometimes-- for pictures-- eye liner. In my day to day to day life, I wear no makeup, that hasn't changed. But I have been, as of late, more hesitant to show what I am made up of: vaginismus.

For a woman who has very negative feelings about the contents of her heart and soul (in my case, black and absent, respectively.), having passable feelings about her body, if only from time to time, may be what she falls back on. As I've mentioned before here, the probable cause for my preference of males as friends probably comes from the feeling that, all else failing, I'd have one last thing I could offer them, from a biological standpoint. For a woman who has critically low self-esteem, sex, or at least the promise and implication of sex, feels like a bargaining chip.

For a woman who has critically low self-esteem and vaginismus, well, it gets a little tricky from there. But somewhere down the line it ends up with her, sitting in a bedroom next to a beautiful, desirable man who finds her attractive on one level and, more importantly, loves her on a different level, wondering why they can't seem to avoid the inevitable biological draw that is fucking up their friendship, and hearing the sentence come out of her mouth: "I understand why I'm attracted to you, but why do you keep falling into this? All I am is the possibility of a blow job. That's my worth as a person."

And then realizing that she believes it.


It's a rather growthful turn of events, it seems, that my latest male friend is not someone I will likely ever be alone in a bedroom with. 42 and married, with one kid out and another on the way, he is, I hope, a silent partner in the agreement that while the occasional flirtation might get us through the day, our loyalties lie strictly elsewhere. Still, my desire to be desirable to him-- if even in a purely hypothetical way-- caused me to hold out far longer than normal with the information that even if he could have me, he couldn't have me.

Still, though, talking about vaginismus is too important to hold out on forever, and as our relationship slowly moved from conquest to caring, I was more compelled to tell him the truth. I told him today.


It was the standard converstaion, I guess. Answering the questions, clarifying the confusion. I took him from the beginning to the end, highlighting all the anguish and frustration with a professional, rehearsed detachment. At one point I thought of the words I was saying and smiled, saying to him, "I've gotten pretty good at discussing all of this kind of stuff easily."

"I guess so." He said. "I probably feel a lot more awkward than you do right now."

I smiled, thinking, Well, duh. I didn't point out the obvious, which was that he was a grown man listening to a girl young enough to be his daughter-- with whom he has no intimate connection and who is, like him, married to someone else-- talk about the process of learning, through trial and error, that her vagina was unable of accepting penetration. Me, I said the sentence "Even in high school, when I'd first try to insert tampons, it would upset me so much that I felt as though I was raping myself." as if I was talking about a problem with my carburetor. He's a first-timer who's probably never had any reason to be more than loosely aware of the concept of female sexual dysfunction. Me?

Among my friends, my vagina is just as often a punchline as it is a source of supportive conversation: did you see that episode of Arrested Development? Silas was painted up bluer than your husband's balls! I blog weekly about every aspect of my sex life, not because I am, as I have said, an emotional exhibitionist, but because I feel it's my duty to spread the knowledge of the condition, and it's just as important for people not to underestimate the riptide effect it has on every aspect of a woman's life as it is for them to just know of it's existence. I've lain, bottomless, on the examination tables of a family practitioner, a gynecologist, and a physical therapist-- all seperately-- and willed myself to stay calm as long as I could stand it, until, all at once, I've errupted in tears and begged them to please, please please please stop it, please god, stop touching me. I've given a presentation on vaginismus to over twenty students in my public speaking class and the male professor , fielding questions about my personal experiences and leading a round of applause in honor of my patient, virgin husband. I dream of writing or editing a book about it, and, more recently, writing and appearing in a documentary with interviews of myself and others and-- so people understand the intensity of the reaction-- a segment wherein I try to succumb to penetration until I can no longer stand it; albeit, with the camera recording only my face.


I loved the way he listened. Quiet, interested. Feeling, as he said, a bit awkward, but not giving me the impression that I should stop or feel embarrassed. He offered some unique feedback that, while not entirely helpful, was far from the parade of stupid that I regularly encounter.

I kept it factual, distant. After it was over, I felt the need to take him further-- I'd told him the facts, but had I impressed upon him the feelings, the impact? He'd seen the girl without the makeup, but been spared the one with mascara streaming down her face.

I survived showing him that I am not, in actuality, fuckable. Now I wanted to bear it all, and take my shot that he might find it beautiful.


That's just a gut reaction, I guess. The young me, coming through. In reality, that would be too much of a connection for our purposes, or, at the very least, too fast. Still, I'm glad I told him what I told him. That I'm not the nymphomaniac I seem to be. That my sex life, is, at best, flawed. That I have a weakness, a problem, a roadblock. That I am human.

And that I'm really, really good at giving head.

"Well," He said, nodding. "That's certainly something, on it's own."


On with it.

That last post was number 666. Interesting.

Number 667 will be a survey in which you can only post one word in answer to questions, taken from Emily's myspace blog. I kinda like the way it turned out, and since I've been lacking appropriate, non-incriminating subject matter for this fine site, I thought I'd use it here. Because, really, how much trouble can I possibly get myself in one word at a time?

One-word answer: Lots.

--
1. Where is your cell phone? Somewhere.
2. Your boyfriend/girlfriend? Husband.
3. Your hair? Poof.
4. Your grandpa? Dead.
5. Your father? Guitarist.
6. Your favorite item? Vibrator.
7. Your dream last night?
8. Your favorite drink? Tequila.
9. Your dream car? Scion.
10. The room you are in? Bedroom.
11. Your ex? Missed.
12. Your fear? Abandonment.
13. What do you want to be in 10 years? Better.
14. Who did you hang out with last night? Scott.
15. What you're not? Satisfied.
16. Muffin? Blueberry.
17: One of your wish list items? MacBook.
19. The last thing you did? Tae Bo.
20. What are you wearing? Sneakers.
22. Your favorite book? Jurassic.
23. The last thing you ate? Food.
24. Your life? Sexless.
25. Your mood? Eh.
26. Your friends? Distant.
27. What are you thinking about right now? Fourteen.
28. Your car? Focus.
29. What are you doing at the moment? This.
30. Last summer? Sam.
31. Your relationship status? Sexless.
32. What is on your tv? Oblongs.
33. When is the last time you laughed? Moons.
34. Reason you last cried? Sexless.
35. Last song you danced to? Jeff.

--

I guess it'd be cheating if I qualified any of those answers, however, I do have to credit Emily with her #26.


I'm listening, right now, to Lisa Loeb's Sandalwood, as featured on a CD burned for number 30 himself. The last time I saw him, we realized that the CD no longer worked, which was a bit heartbreaking. That CD, our CD, was burned as a tribute to everything we were, weren't, could and couldn't have been. I told him he must not have valued it very much to let it get scratched up like that.

He said it got ruined because he played it over and over again. He always did know the right thing to say.

"Your hand, so hot, burns a hole in my hand.
I wanted to show you."

I told him I'd burn him another one. That I didn't have a copy, per se, but that I did have a playlist of it. I'm listening to it now. Robbie Williams' If it's Hurting You.

Great song. Jenn went to England one year, one of those years where she left me all alone for Christmas break, and came back obsessed with Robbie Williams. She identified this song as being one of those that is perfect for driving down a dark road at night, and she was right, perfectly right. Now I can't hear it without picturing the exact road we were driving down when she said that; or, some road I was driving down alone when I remembered her saying that. Who knows anymore?

That summer, the song was on a playlist I had loaded onto my old MP3 player called "Infidelity", created so I, the eternal Emo, could purify and intensify the conflicted feelings I was having over cheating on Jeff with Chad. The week I was in Gloucester with Jeff and Jenn for the Saint Peter's fiesta-- and the last week of my life in which I was still immune to and unaware of the fear of having your heartbroken-- I would lay awake at night and listen the playlist, and sometimes that song over and over again.

The next one that is cued up-- randomly, not in the order the CD was actually in-- is Matchbox Twenty's Disease, which I sang last night at Karaoke. I try to skip past and, for some reason, the goddamn randomizer on WinAmp fails to work-- number 17, baby, I'll take a computer that works over this "compatibility" bullshit anyday-- so I close my eyes and click. "Name" by the Goo Goo Dolls.

This song is special to me-- there is something in the arrangement, the resonance that speaks to a part of me that other songs I love don't; the only other one that does that I can think of is Push, by Matchbox Twenty. Maybe it comes from the memories I've associated with it, listening to it over and over again in the middle of the night as Elorza and I stayed up way past our bed times for each other-- back before I knew his name was Elorza, and that was part of the reason it was special to me. "Push" was my favorite song, originally, because I associated it so completely with my favorite person, Jeremey, and as I moved away from him, the song moved with me, and became about myself. Still, if I had to pick one other person that "Push" is about for me, it's him, and if I had to pick one other person that "Name" is about, it's Elorza.

Jeremey and Elorza have proven to be the only two men in my life who have that kind of tenure, that unconditional feeling. And "Name" and "Push" are the only songs that I feel in the back of my neck when I breathe; I feel them in the notes, perhaps. I listen, misty-eyed, to our history, which is not made up of reruns as the song says.

"A tired song keeps playing on a tired radio,
And I won't no one your name.
And I won't tell them your name."



I can't write an entry about, or partially about, our CD without mentioning our song, that sacred hymn that we-- Sam and I-- listen to in silence, listen to with a reverent wordlessness meant to express everything in the world that we are when alone and lonely, everything we can't be when we are together, and together. The room, the space, the cab of his truck are silent, the holy dark was moving, too, and every breath we drew...

"It's not a cry you can hear at night,
It's not somebody whose seen the light.
It's a cold, and it's a broken hallelujah."



One of these days, I'm going to have to stop and count the alternate realities I spend the better part of my day in. One of these days, I'm going to have to commit some more time to this one, that anchors me.


On with it.

I know his job is such that now and then, he has an unannounced late night. That when these things happen, he has no real way of contacting me and letting me know. I know these nights happen periodically, and I even know that he mentioned the other day that they'd been doing some work lately that might involve one of these nights. I know this. I know this.

But the reality in my mind, as it gets farther and farther past the time he would normally get out, is not that he is at work. It was at first, then slowly the doubts crept in. A doubt at first, then a suspiscion. Eventually, a worry. Soon enough, a complete distraction.

Now, it barely even seems like a possibility that he is at work, and not banging the blonde from his past in some alleyway, thinking "god, is this what I've been missing. Now, it barely even seems like a possibility that he is not 5,000 miles away, having jumped on the private jet of his rich mistress earlier today, now lounging on a beach on some remote island in the south pacific, batting her two-inch-long labia with his tongue as she crouches over his face-- he never knew he was into freakishly disproportionate female genetalia until he met her.

Now, it seems the best I can really hope for is that, maybe, just maybe he was in a horrible car accident and has left me a rich widow. Though, it was probably on the way back from getting a blow job from a Belgium Supermodel who would weighs only 82 pounds if it weren't for her six ample breasts.


The phone rings. I answer.
"Hello!" He says."You coming home?" I ask.
"Yep."
"Where were you?" Can't help. Have to ask.
A slight pause-- though, not so much a "formulating my answer" kind of pause, more of an "isn't it obvious?" kind. Cocky. "At work." He says. Then, jokingly, "Where were you?"
"Here.""Suuure. I'll see you soon?"
"Yep. Better wipe the lipstick off your collar, first." I tell him, my voice all casual, self-assured.
"Mmm-hmmm. Bye."


I hope I pulled off the confident, trusting wife persona. I hope I meant some fraction of it came from somewhere genuine. I hope I really do have that woman somewhere inside me, the one that thinks of myself as too smart, beautiful and funny for him to really consider cheating on, and if does, so what, there are others waiting in line, maybe hundreds.


I hope her fifth nipple poked him in the eye. On with it.

When I was very young, my father sat me down and explained to me the best he could.

"Son," He said. "There's a secret that adults hide from kids. Always have, always will. They hide it from them because they think it's protecting them, keeping them happy. But I don't think that's true, I think it does more harm than good. So I'm going to tell you."

I leaned forward, with wide, curious eyes.

"Life is unfair." He told me. I was disappointed, because I'd heard this before, from a snarky cousin, or from a frustrated adult. He saw that I looked let down, and went on. "I know people have told you that before, and most of the time, they don't say it right. They say it like they're scolding you for being angry when something unfair happens to you, right?" I nodded. "Well, they shouldn't say it like that, but what I'm telling you isn't me scolding you. This is an important lesson, and I'll explain why. Okay?"

"Okay." I told him.

"Life is unfair. Good things happen to bad people. A person can spend their whole life doing great things, and then suddenly get very hurt or die for no good reason. And that's very sad. And it is unfair. And when anything unfair happens, little or big, it's okay to have some feelings about it, but it's also important not to let those feelings get out of control, and stop you from going on with your life. It's important that you understand, right from the start, that no matter what bad things might happen to you, no matter whose fault they are, it's your responsibility to keep trying, to keep living your life the way you want to live it, or as close to it as you can get. Because of all the bad things that can happen to person, one of the worst is to become someone who is angry at the things that are unfair, and who lets that get in the way of their life."

I nodded. I didn't quite understand, but I could tell that one day I would.

"Bad things do happen to people, but there are people who live their whole life like they're waiting for an apology from the world. And you know what? If they ever did get one, they'd find out they were no better off. Get it?"

"Sort of." I told him.

"As long as you're listening. You'll get it one day." He told me. He sighed for a minute, looking thoughtful, then looked down at me again. "I don't mean to say that you can't fight against injustice. Some injustice, you're supposed to fight against. Sometimes, when things are unfair, it's your duty to try and make them as fair as possible. But sometimes-- most of the time, even-- you have to make the decision that something that's only a little unfair isn't worth the fight. And some of the things that are the most unfair of all simply aren't guided by rules of any kind. They just happen. Those things, you just have to accept, and keep going."

"Oh." I said.



I never did thank him.


---


On with it.

It seems to me that my biggest mistake lately, and probably for the past several years, has been making the goals that I have into conditions of the happiness I supposedly aspire to. Get someone stable and satisfying in my "career". Write a book. Overcome Vaginismus. Lose ten more pounds. Get up to a respectable Standard level on DDR. These things are prerequisites to happiness. Why do I treat them like this?

Maybe the reason is this: standing from my soapbox and professing at the top of my lungs that happiness is a choice followed up with a commitment, proclaiming to all that it's your responsibility to make the most of your life, your responsibility to grab happiness and have the courage to hold on, maybe the reality of what I believe is this: there are happy people, and there are unhappy people. And one group will never really understand the other.


Sounds a bit closer to the heart of me. But I'm not going to settle on it.


Today, on my ten-minute break at work, I was thinking about how little energy I constantly have, save when I'm hopped up on diet pills, and I decided that, more likely than not, this is completely the fault of my absolutely shit diet. Lunches during most work days consist of some deep-fried chicked and a side of fries, and when I get home, I generally sit down to something microwavable. Conflicting schedules pretty much mean that Zack and I don't eat together, and when we do, it's late at night, meaning we want something quick. Meaning something hyper-processed, frozen and completley full of preservatives.

Even just a cursory look at the diet and nutrition section of our store leaves one confused as to what it is they really need; futher research, and you'll end up snorting oreos from the stress of it all. These days, we really are suffering from an information overload, with everyone's professional opinion just as credible and incredible as everyone else's; this is especially true of issues of the body. The more I know about these things, the more I realize: I know nothing.

In a situation where you can't tell up from down, left from right, progesterone from testosterone, it's best to go back to the basics. I made of list of what kind of foods I need to be focused on getting more of: Calcium, lean protein, Iron and Omega 3's. Then I followed up with a list of foods I need to work on getting significantly less of, which basically boils down to highly processed foods, and foods that are deep-fried.

So.

This, I guess, leaves me starving, and desperately in need of a trip to the grocery store...well, and a whole new lifestyle really. If I'm going to commit to ditching the microwavebles, that requires learning how to cook, and keeping the kitchen clean enough to do so, which is really going to cut into my watching-and-rewatching-episodes-of-the-Gilmore-Girls-and-Scrubs time. I'll have to keep our George Forman Knock-off grill clean. I'll have to keep lean, uncooked meats in the refridgerator for easy access. Have to find some sort of healthy marinade I can live with.

This is all scary stuff. And not stuff that's particularly interesting to read about.


The stuff I want to be writing about lately is stuff I can't be writing about, stuff I think about writing, and then re-think-- things have been weird lately, in regards to privacy and consequences and all that stuff. You'll have to excuse me if what I post, for a while, tends to be a little less hard-hitting, or more of the fiction variety.


Blah. More when I can figure out just exactly what it is.

On with it.

The party on Friday was going perfectly. A lot of happy, liquored up people, laughing, getting along, and he-- the one she had invited to come in from Chicago-- was making a great impression. When he got up to do his Karaoke song, her coworker leaned over to her, "Where'd you find this one?" He said, pointing to her best friend with a grin on his face.

"On the internet." She smiled.

"Really?"

"Yeah. We started talking when we were fourteen, and just never stopped. We've only seen each other four times in person, but we've kept it going. Eight years."

The singing out-of-towner sent a meaningful glance over from the floor in the midst of his song, and her head swelled with happiness. Her coworker looked at her and smiled. "A success story."

"Indeed." She smiled back.

Back at the table, he talked intelligently about music to the others, coached her through her first tequila shot and cheered her through her second and third. He argued with her coworker-- the birthday boy-- when he tried to buy his own drinks, and got along swimmingly with her husband. Another round of shots, and she was feeling comfortable and contended, forgetting the inhibitions that would normally leave her sitting quietly at the table. Her husband was delighted to see her enjoying herself so much, knowing the sickening blasé she felt in her daily life. Everyone-- everyone-- was having a good time. The best she could remember having in months, really.

A woman will waste a lifetime trying to recreate one moment; one of those was about to happen to her again. Sometime in all the light-hearted joviality, she stood up too fast, lost her balance, and fell into his lap. He caught her, and they all laughed at her tipsiness, and it was all completely innocent. Without meaning to, she had to tell herself, his hands lingered on her for one moment too long-- one on her side, the other on the silk of her skirt, moving slightly on her thigh-- he hadn't meant it, wouldn't have under the best of circumstances, and certainly not within two feet of her husband and everyone; she knew that, and all too quickly, she was on her feet. It was innocent, thoughtless, and gone. It was delicious.

The next night, she couldn't stop thinking about it, and she stopped on her way home from work to pick up a bottle of tequila. That was when the trouble started.

---

I don't understand why I seem to be the only person on the goddamned earth with the kinds of feelings that I have. When you get down to the deep and honest version of me, I'm just...god, I'm just not very nice. Perhaps in the basest versions of ourselves, we're all selfish, whining ids, and what makes us a good person or not is how much courtesy, dignity and distance we put between that pure asshole force and our day-to-day selves. Maybe I shouldn't be so hard on myself. But I'll tell you this much: I've never really gotten over anyone I've been in love with. I don't really want anyone who's ever been in love with me to move on. As much as I value witty, fun conversation, there's an enormous part of me that just wants to talk about feelings, specifically feelings that apply to the two people involved in the conversation, and when those conversations happen-- say, in a drunken state of anger and sadness- I find it endlessly satisfying, no matter how uncomfortable it is for the other party. That is, unless the other party is my husband: in this case, I tell him I want to know about his feelings, beg and pine for it and act like the absence of it is ruining our relationship, but should he get drunk enough to actually say anything, it fucking haunts me, and I can't get over it. And I haven't distanced myself from my id enough to not throw that in his face.

What else? The more hurt that I experience at the hands at those closest to me-- normally my fault, normally something I prod at and provoke-- the more I distance myself from people who I could potentially care about, which as far as I'm concerned, is wise. What's not wise about it is that the ensuing absence of those other people makes me feel more alone, and I open myself up wider to the people closest to me, which leaves me open for more hurt, and drives me to ask for it more loudly, and they get disgusted with me, and I get disgusted with myself, and that speeds the cycle-- eventually, I'm quite sure I'll have no one. Being sure of this, by the way, is a self-fulfilling prophecy. The lower my self-esteem, the lower the reality, as, the way it is right now, I function around the average person only with the help of a veneer of confidence that is purely false; around people I trust, that veneer falls off, leaving me naked and completely unable to act comfortable in my own skin, completely unable to believe that anyone could accept my flaws as they see them before me.

God, it's such a bitch, and I can go on. All I really know is this, and I've been on both sides of this lately, so take it to heart: it's your responsibility to fight to be happy, because your sadness makes the people who really care about you feel inadequate.

If you were at my house this weekend, my id spoiled a lot of the time I could have spent fucking treasuring having you here. In defense of myself, of a part of myself that this part doesn't really even believe deserves defense, the stress about work, the sadness about my grandmother (who is dying, for the record), the daily strife of vaginismus and the particularly poignant feelings of self-doubt over my apperance have all been wearing on my last nerve lately; a nerve that burst into a bloody menstrual meltdown right about the time your plane touched ground. I wish to hell I'd been able to spend less time fearing the way I'd feel when the one thing I'd been looking forward to-- you-- was gone.

But it was one of the best times of my life, despite everything. I don't know if I told you that, and it deserves to be said one more time that your willingness to cross mountains and rivers and valleys when I need you-- when I need you-- means everything to me.

I love you so goddamned much.

On with it.

"It's not what you thought
When you first began it.
You got what you want,
Now you can hardly stand it, though.
By now you know.

It's not going to stop.
It's not going to stop.
It's not going to stop,
Till you wise up."
~Aimee Mann, Wise Up

Only one thing I know for sure: I am one goddamned ridiculous waste of human life.


On with it.

Recently, I've been thinking about the men in my life-- the ones that have gone, the few that remain. The bridges I've burned recently, and the bridges I've burned very recently, in a self-inflicted drunken stupor designed to break through my inhibitions and loosen the stranglehold that my insecurity has gained over my true feelings.

Linda's life lessons learned the hard way number 467: You never appreciate a stranglehold until you're crying at a moniter at three in the morning, typing violently to two seperate people that they never cared about you, those bastards.

Clearly, things have been rocky between me and certain people-- particularly, with the guy I've felt the closest too as of late, Elorza. Our conversations lately, drunken and sober alike, have alerted me to the fact that I've become too focused on him, missing him like crazy, calling him in desperation whenever something goes wrong, giving a level of caring I simply can't ask to have reciprocated, not anymore, not at this distance.

Tonight, after my workout, I started working on the song I intend to perform at two of my coworker's Karaoke birthday, and somewhere in the midst of it, I slipped into a fantasy involving my performing a duet with my hypothetical perfect best friend. An imaginary man that I who's attributes I will now discuss at length. First of all, I should qualify the male thing: I value my friendships with females just as much as I do those with males, but it's very simply two different roles-- the male best friend, the female best friend. These two people have never had very much overlap. But before we spend all our time apologizing for that, we'll move on to the meat of this entry, which is piecing together my favorite things about the other men in my life to create him, perfect platonic partner-in-crime extraordinaire. This theoretical Karaoke partner would have to have the following:

• Casey's intelligence and quick-thinking wit. And his surprising, if seldom witnessed, capacity for empathy.
• Chad's superb listening skills and incredible kindness.
• Dan's enthusiasm, for his music and my writing, and, occasionally, for crazy silly bullshit questions like "Who would win? A Ninja, or a pirate?"
• Jeff's willingness to make an ass of himself, and his appreciation for private jokes.
• Jeremey's singular knowledge of the inner-workings of crippling insecurity, and his sense of humor, and his ability to leave fucking wonderful answering machine messages.
• Mike's dependability.
• Sam's sense of adventure-- his genuine willingness to get in a car in the middle of the night and drive to New York, or whever, while others just talk about it. The side of himself he shows when we sit together and listen to "Hallelujah", that soft quality of his voice when we both know how much we mean to each other.
• Elorza's egotistical humility-- the effort he puts into crazy arguments about insanely idealistic principles. The fact that he has, so recently that I cannot yet let go of the dizzying gratitude of it, saved me from myself. The way he never lets me feel like a burden on him.

It's important for me to be clear that my mind reels, even as a I write this, with a list of the things about these people that my ideal best friend could not have, but that's not really the spirit of this post. Each and everyone of those people has faults that I am glaringly aware of: some I have accepted, some, I continue to forge useless battles against. Still, it's undeniable that I love them all, though that probably comes as news to a few of them. (It should be said that there are qualities of people I've met and come to respect or care about more recently that belong on the list, that had to be left off so that I could make that blanket "love" statement, which I feel needed to be said. However, without having lifted the following people to an L-word status, and with no intention to, I find myself more and more drawn to Scott's good-hearted personability, (s) Bill M's confident but unobtrusive charm, and (m) Bill M's endless patience and uncanny knowledge of the Gilmore Girls.)

While I'm able to point out the very seperate things I love about each of these people, any one of them can tell you that the amount of overlap for the things I feel for them is nauseatingly large. I got into putting in terms of music, earlier: My residual feelings for Casey can best be summed up in Fiona Apple's "Shadowboxer", a song I first fell in love with while I was going through a rocky patch with Chad. Last summer, I made a mix CD for Sam, which included Matchbox Twenty's "Disease", a song I have, in the past, associated heavily with Jeremey, "Name" by the Goo Goo Dolls, which I used to listen to every time a conversation between Elorza and I got deep, and "The Weakness in Me", another one that conjures memories of Chad. "Caramel", by Suzanne Vega, and also on the CD, was completely about Sam until a conversation between Elorza and I the other night had me playing it on repeat. And Sondre Lerche's "Things you Call Fate", well, that's a little bit of all of them.

A lot of overlap with each other-- suprisingly little overlap with the conspicuously unmentioned man in my life, the man in my life, really. Zack is the only person in my life with a balance of all the desirable characteristics that condusive to being able to spend my whole life with him, on a full-time basis. So, what if this hypothetical man did exist, this collaboration of all the other loves of my life? What would be there, then, to elevate Zack to the soul-strung status at which he now resides? The easiest answer is simply this his Zackness, the ineffable quality that makes him him, and makes me in love with him. Put more eloquently, by Justin Huntly McCarthy:

"If you were to die to-morrow, I might tell you this much to-night. A woman may love a man because he is brave, or because he is comely,or because he is wise, or gentle-- for a thousand thousand reasons. But the best of all reasons for a woman loving a man is just because she loves him, without rhyme and without reason, because heaven wills it, because earth fulfils it, because his hand is of the right size to hold her heart in its hollow."
~Excerpt from If I Were King

Zack has his own music, too. Our song, "Moon River", and, as mentioned a few posts ago, Death Cab's "I Will Follow You into the Dark". But in this same vein, of love for love's sake, I'd say "It Had To Be You" is also quite appropriate.


Zack can't be my best friend, though, except in that saccharin "giving lip service to your husband at in an award-acceptance speech" sort of way. He can't fake quick-witted intellect, doesn't have that drive for adventure, and his listening skills are sub-part. And, worst of all, he'd never do Karaoke with me. And that's what this is really all about.

FieryGwenivere: if we were going to do a duet for karaoke, what would it be?
xKxOx: hah, that's a good question
xKxOx: i'm a huge fan of ain't no mountain high enough, but that's way too cliche for me
xKxOx: i dunno tho, i've never been vury good at picking karaoke songs
FieryGwenivere: I was so thinking about that earlier, Ain't No Mountain High Enough
FieryGwenivere: Like, that was the one I would have chosen
FieryGwenivere: That or "Something Stupid"
FieryGwenivere: but you wrote me that e-mail all those years ago about how you were listening to "Ain't No Mountain High Enough", and suddenly you couldn't bear to leave me as upset as I was when I ended our conversation. It was the first e-mail you ever wrote me, actually
xKxOx: oh yea?
xKxOx: i don't remember much, but that's always been a pretty prominent song for me, despite it's popularity
xKxOx: i dunno what somethign stupid is tho
FieryGwenivere: Heh.
FieryGwenivere: The title line just fucking fits us, that's all
xKxOx: hahaha. I can run wit dat
FieryGwenivere: "Then I go and spoil it all by saying something stupid like 'I love you'."
xKxOx: that is pretty perfect
xKxOx: kind of
FieryGwenivere: Plus, in the episode of the Simpsons where Sideshow Bob marries Selma (Patty?), they totally do a duet of it at Karaoke
xKxOx: haha, hehehe, i like that
FieryGwenivere: :-) I do, too.
FieryGwenivere: But here's the critical question
FieryGwenivere: Would you ever actually sing a Karaoke duet with me?
xKxOx: I'm selma, no question. hah!
xKxOx: you kidding, i do anything like that
xKxOx: dance in front of a crowd alone
.xKxOx: sing at the top of my lungs despite my horrible voice
FieryGwenivere: :-) Ah, dip
xKxOx: i'm all about that



Then again, maybe I've just misjudged the situation.

On with it.

"Well, hellhounds on your tail now, once again, Boy.
It's groping on your leg until it sleeps.
The emptiness will fill your heart with sorrow.
'Cause it's not what you make, it's what you leave."


In these words from the song "Misery", Green Day demonstrates an unsettlingly insightful knowledge of one of those fundamental truths of life that so many people lose sight of: too often, the circumstances of your life will not be driven by the effort you put in, day after day, to foster relationships, shape careers, and make what you want of your life. Too often, they will be determined by the moments where you think, feel, or pretend that these things aren't important to you.

Take a relationship that's had it's ups and downs, one that has proven it can weather frustration, anger and sorrow. But sprinkle in a dash of indignation, and you have a recipe for disaster. Take a lifelong goal, one that's driven you around every curve of your life, and see what happens when you let go of the wheel.

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.


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 her face, telling her that something she loves isn't worth his time.


"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.

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 their responsibility to.


"Step one, you say 'We need to talk.'
He walks; you say 'Sit down. It's just a talk.'
He smiles politely back at you,
You stare politely right on through.
Some sort of window to your right
As he goes left and you stay right
Between the lines of fear and blame.
You begin to wonder why you came."


Later, if she is alone, she will wonder about all the things she 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.

She won't have answers. Without him there, all she has is the questions.


"Where did I go wrong?
I lost a friend somewhere along in the bitterness."


There are no answers, probably, just a hundred different sides to the story and too many feelings too remember. His, hers, the poor unwanted stepchild's, and the seemingly absent viewpoint of Hallmark card love. In the end, there are only two things floating around her mind at night, when she's alone, that really ring true. It was both of our responsibility to do better. And this, this is what happens if you go too long letting yourself believe you don't care.


"I would have stayed up with you all night,
Had I known how to save a life."
~The Fray, How to Save a Life

On with it.