Fake it 'til you make it

But real gangsta-ass niggas don't flex nuts
Cuz real gangsta-ass niggas know they got 'em.
And everything's cool in the mind of a gangsta
Cuz gangsta-ass niggas think deep.
Up three-sixty-five a year 24/7
Cuz real gangsta ass niggas don't sleep.

For that fearful leap into the dark

Tell me...what did you do?
What did you do the last time?
Why don't you do that?
Go on ahead and take this the wrong way
Time's not your friend

Well I fell in love
With your sailor's mouth and your wounded eyes
You better get down on the floor
Don't you know this is war?

- Tom Waits

Cheap motel pants

Alternative title to this blog: Don't you find it infuriating when someone you love ignores your messages?

Wasted and wounded,
it ain't what the moon did,
I've got what I paid for now

I think one of the most difficult things about growing up involves losing your belief in the just-world phenomenon. This is the idea that good things happen to good people, and bad things happen to bad people. Because they deserve them. I still frequently find myself subscribing to this fallacy even though as I get older I find more and more evidence against it being true. It just doesn’t work that way, and it sucks.

Another thing I’m struggling with: I’ve always had this mental soundtrack to my life playing in my head. This soundtrack plays as an invisible, omniscient audience watches my life unfold and cheers me on as I travel life’s treacherous terrain, navigating the pitfalls and dangerous curves. They see that good things are just around the corner for me and they are saying, “Hang in there girl! Just a little longer!”

I am finding it incredibly disheartening to realize it doesn’t actually work this way.

I'm an innocent victim of a blinded alley
And I'm tired of all these soldiers here
No one speaks English, and everything's broken, and my Stacys are soaking wet

Take my friend Rannie, for example. She passed away on Sunday from cancer at age 33. That is so fucking unfair. It was clear that she was on her deathbed, and she and her fiancé got married in bed in their pajamas shortly before she died. She was lovely and sweet and smart and loved. And so fucking young. And she’s gone.

Now the dogs are barking and the taxi cab's parking
A lot they can do for me
I begged you to stay with me, you tore my shirt open,
And I'm down on my knees tonight

Take my uncle Mike, the second one of my uncles to die in the last couple of months. He was dirt poor all of his life. He worked shit jobs or had a hard time finding work at all. His daughter was killed when someone slipped methadone in her drink when she was 21. He stepson died after being trapped in a fire in his college dorm. His son has been in prison for nearly all his adult life. My uncle just didn’t care about his life anymore after all this, and drank himself to death. When I look at his life and the fact that he just never seemed to get any fucking breaks it makes me furious.

And you can ask any sailor, and the keys from the jailor,
And the old men in wheelchairs know

I’ve long been under the impression that everyone gets their happy ending at some point. That all the time and effort and getting by LEAD to something. Like getting out of prison for good behavior.

I’ve also been under the impression that I was destined for great things. I can remember being in college and feeling with every fiber of my being that I would go on to do something important. I still often feel it. I feel like great love is in store for me, as well as joy and friendship and financial security and happiness. But there’s actually no reason to think that I am any different. There’s no reason to think there is some larger meaning, that I am impossibly unique and deserving of good fortune. Maybe the best has already happened, and from here on out it’s just putting in the time.

And it's a battered old suitcase to a hotel someplace,
And a wound that will never heal
No prima donna, the perfume is on an
Old shirt that is stained with blood and whiskey
And goodnight to the street sweepers, the night watchmen flame keepers
And goodnight to Mathilda, too

Sadness

Today I am crying.

Another one of my uncles died this morning.
My 33 year old friend succumbed to cancer on Sunday and I just found out.
C. is leaving the west coast.

Where the wild things are...

Anniversary

Alternative title to this blog: To you

Seventeen years ago today I fell in love with you. Doesn't that seem unbelievable? And how did I know so fast? Was I really that intuitive? Or was I just young and naive and hopeful?

I remember every inch of you: the smell of your hair, the particular shade of brown of your eyes, your long eyelashes, the feel of your hands, the shape of your feet, your impatience in traffic.

I dream of you when I am anxious and afraid. Cricket no longer calls your name, but I imagine that sometimes I still must in my sleep.

I still think of things that I want to tell you and show you, and then I remember that I can't. And even if I could, you probably wouldn't want to hear or see them.

You told me once that you didn't know what to say to me that didn't involve writing a book. And then you never told me any of them.

I can remember an evening in Richmond so clearly. We had come back from dinner, and were walking up the stairs to my apartment. You were 2-3 steps in front of me. At that moment I loved you so much I wanted to bury my face in your neck and steal your warmth and bite you to make sure you were real and living and breathing.

I don't know where you are or what you are doing or how to get in touch with you, and I never dreamed that I would say those words. I don't know how to wrap my head around the fact that I will probably never lay eyes on you again.

I want you to know that if you needed something I would do whatever I could to give it to you. And I want you to know that I take you with me everywhere I go, and that some part of each and every day is still trying to figure out how to be without you.

The end

...and another one down
and another one down
and another one bites the dust!

"...and separate's always better when there's feelings involved..."

Alternative title to this blog: Two truths, one lie

Once, in a fit of curiosity (and, I don't know, a brief bout of self-loathing?) around two and a half years ago I took a look at C's blog. After reading just a few moments I felt utterly destroyed, so I never looked again.

Tonight I looked at E's blog after a few days' hiatus. In reading the last couple of entries I had missed, I ended up going to bed tearful and filled with dread and anxiety. This was an extreme change from such a lovely weekend. I told myself that--in the interest of self-protection--I could no longer read this blog. No more, no more, no more.

I am thick-skinned.