Twenty nineteen

How is it 2019? In my head it is around 1999–I can’t keep track of all these damn years.

I decided to set a few coking goals this year: things I have always wanted to make, things I haven’t made in a long time. I would like to spend more time cooking for fun as opposed to daily survival.

The list so far (in no particular order):

• Strawberry & raspberry pie
• Key lime pie
• French onion soup
• 1 loaf of bread of any kind
• Shaking beef from Slanted Door in San Francisco
• Baked lemon pudding with wild blueberry sauce
• Fresh spring rolls
• Pork and pineapple fried rice
• 1 cheese cake of any kind
• Hold the 2nd annual Christmas Cookie Baking Extravaganza with Jen
• Use my kitchen mandolin for ANYthing

My family on Earth is so good to me.

[From a letter to a friend nearly a year ago--reflections on relocation.]

I don't know where to begin.

For the past couple weeks, in particular, I keep looking around thinking, "What the fuck has happened to my life?"  The first two days back in WV I cried constantly.  My mother settled into a chair with a tall glass of wine (with ice) and a bunch of cats on her lap to watch some nameless legal show and ignored me.  It was like being 14 all over again.

I feel homesick, although for what or where I really can't say.  Most likely I just feel homesick for one of my grandparents' front porches in the early 80s, when I had seen or experienced very little of the world and when all I needed was an extra five minutes to play outside before dinner or to finally distract my grandpa from his baseball game so he would talk to me instead ("Papaw, have you ever had a mustache?  How old were you?  How long did you have it?  Would you ever have one again?").  Obviously, I can't go back there.

And that leaves me here.

My friend came to see me.  Judith.  She lived in an identical apartment above me when I lived at 3333 W. Grace Street in Richmond, VA.  23221.  I met her shortly after I moved in.  One weekend morning I was unpacking and cleaning and whatnot, and waiting for my landlord to come and unclog my kitchen sink so I could move on with my day.  Suddenly my upstairs neighbor drained the dishwater in HER sink and my kitchen began flooding.  I threw on my flowery bathrobe and ran upstairs to plead with her to please, PLEASE plug her sink!  Just for now.  Her large dog (a boxer mix named Jojo to whom I would later sing, "Jojo left his home in Tuscon, Arizona for some California grass...") came charging and barking to the door.  After some delay, she cautiously peered out through her cracked front door.  She seemed nice but a bit reserved and more than a little startled by my dramatic, breathless appearance at her front door on a Saturday morning.

When she wanted to visit me upon my unceremonious return to the area, I warned her that I was staying at my father's and he lived a little off the beaten bath.  She said adamantly, "I will find you."  And she did, thank god.  Spending a couple days with her and watching her play with my daughter made me feel normal--like my old self for awhile.

This morning at 6am I stood at my father's kitchen sink eating a half sandwich with last night's slow roasted pork and surveying the landscape, and it felt good.

I can't say much for the events that have taken place in between Judith's visit and that sandwich.

I had a job interview on Friday.  At [a local mental health facility] in Clarksburg, WV.  It is located just feet away from the old hospital in which I was born, and it was a completely baffling experience.  The two women who interviewed me were as sweet as could be and incredibly informal.  Mary Sue and Peggy.  They stared at my resume and then up at me and said, "What brings you here from San Francisco?"

Oh, ladies.  If only I could succinctly answer that question.

The were puzzled as to why I had a PhD in psychology but no license to practice therapy.  At one point, one of them asked the other, "Did you see on her resume that...." The other one cut her off:  "I read it," she said.  "I read every bit of it."

They seemed to want to try to fit me in SOMEwhere in the organization and promised to talk to their HR to see what they could offer me.  "Honey, you might not even want the job after you see the salary," Mary Sue warned.  Possibly as much as $40,000/year less than I made at my last position.

Oh, Mary Sue, I want it.

I heard them talking about me before I was even down the hall.  "She's so nice!" was the main thing I heard.

I am nice.

My mother was dogging San Francisco as a place to raise a child.  "I hear frogs outside every night!" she bragged, as if that fact alone were enough to sufficiently make her point.

"Yes, but I could count every person of color in my high school on one hand and I can still remember all their names!" I countered.  "Because there were so few of them."

"We have the Mexicans and the Orientals here now," she offered.

Yes, it's true.  And if they're not picking our produce, they've opened a restaurant.  My friend Shannon tells me there is a popular Chinese restaurant here that keeps a large bowl of Doritos on the food buffet.  And they're very popular.  And everyone still finds it hilarious to joke that the chicken is actually cat.

To be continued.  Sorry.  I didn't even bother to edit this for typos as I usually try to do.  Stream-of-consciousness.  My household is starting to wake up.  Send.

I can smell October on the east coast

October is my favorite month.

I suddenly had weird deja vu of reading T.S. Eliot. I digress. I have no particularly strong feelings about April.

Anyway, there is just nothing like fall from, say, the mid-Atlantic states up through New England. ("They are so a state! They have a football team!") October days--no matter where I am--make me think of leaves and wood smoke and homecoming parades and Monument Ave. and driving through the mountains. They make me think of still new school years and crisp sheets of notebook paper and fresh starts and good intentions.

While San Francisco has some pretty spectacular days in October, it will always belong to the east coast in my heart.

I can remember one October, in particular. 2003? 2004? I was so filled with joy and hope that I pledged to my friend Kelli that I would do something new and strange every day. Paint my nails blue! Shout sweeping proclamations off my balcony! Howl at the moon! Now that I think about it, my pledges involved mostly me being loud. But I wanted to share my ecstasy!

Actually, I am feeling that way now. But it is far too soon to spill any beans. I'm workin' on some changes. Comin' up with a plan. And I get more excited with each passing hour.

P.S. My friend Mary is far away and going through a rough time right now, and I want her to know I love her. 

What it's like

In September of 2008, I was raped on a date. I never told anyone. I mean I never told ANYONE. Not a doctor, or a therapist, or a best friend. No one. I was so embarrassed and ashamed this had happened to me, and I felt so stupid that I had not kept myself safe. I felt like all that money for all those fucking degrees ought to have been good for something, and here I couldn't even take care of myself. Normally so forthcoming and expansive, I kept my mouth shut. I didn't want to be told what to do or who to talk to. I didn't want to be asked any questions. I didn't want to explain. I just wanted to forget. Up until that point I felt like I'd been a fairly healthy woman with a fairly healthy sex life, and I was convinced I could maintain that through sheer will.

By the end of the same month, I had started to completely fall apart.

Anxiety seemed to ooze from my pores. I couldn't relax. I had recently started my first job and bought a car and suddenly I felt like I was losing control of everything. I couldn't sleep. I would be awake for three days straight. Not just awake, really, but AWAKE! I needed to talk, I needed to write, I needed to make things. Things to say were erupting out of me and I was unable to control them. I made greeting cards and little boxes. I started writing. I wrote all over my walls, in fact, and pounded out long missives on my computer in ALL CAPS because I WAS RUNNING OUT OF SPACE INSIDE TO PUT ALL OF THIS SHIT.

The lack of sleep made me wild-eyed and crazed, and the long commute to work (not to mention actual work) because impossible. The panic attacks started in earnest around this time, and they made me feel desperate and doomed and frantic. I had them everywhere--in my office, in my car, alone in my bed, in the shower. No place was safe.

I can remember driving home from work, my fingers clutching the steering wheel for dear life. I rocked back and forth furiously chanting:

"I'm sorry," she said, "I have nothing left to give."
"I'm sorry," she said, "I have nothing left to give."
"I'm sorry," she said, "I have nothing left to give."

One day on the drive home I felt so terrified to go home and be alone that I phoned ahead to Nannette and pleaded for her to let me come over as soon as I was back in the city. She told me I was welcome to come, and I fiercely held onto that as I drove. But by the time I got back to San Francisco, I was frantic again and couldn't bear to be around anyone. To her confusion, I told her I couldn't come.

Some nights she let me sleep on her couch because I didn't want to be alone.

I became obsessed with the Golden Gate Bridge. I needed to look at that bridge! I needed to see it, to drive on it, to read about it, and watch videos of people jumping off of it. I needed to know just how deep it was in the bay underneath. It felt important to know just how far down there was to go. I read, "San Francisco Bay is relatively shallow but reaches depths of 100 feet in some places." I had dreams about it. I dreamed of what it felt like when my feet left the side, and I dreamed of what I saw on the way down. I dreamed of the sound my back made when it broke upon hitting the water, and I dreamed of the light disappearing above me. I decided that the exact point at which I would jump off would be 98 feet deep, and I needed to keep that number in my head constantly. I wrote the number 98. I cut the corners out of books that showed page 98. I made a box I called "98 feet deep."

The awful part about it was that I didn't WANT to jump off. I didn't want to! It terrified and horrified me to think about it. But I was obsessed with it. My brain wouldn't leave it alone.

The days without sleep were punctuated by complete crashes. Depression and sobbing and apathy, days I called off work because I just could not function. After Nannette pleaded with me to see someone, I sent my doctor an email. All I could think to say was, "I'm going down fast." On my 32nd birthday, she had me come in for an appointment.

My doctor is wonderful, and she urged me to apply for disability and to see a psychiatrist as well as a therapist. I was getting in deeper and deeper shit at work, but I insisted to her that I could still work--didn't need the time off. I regret deeply that I didn't take her advice, but I was determined to hold on to the balls I was trying to juggle by the skin of my teeth.

Eventually, I got fired. I lost a lot of friends when they didn't understand what was going on or the decisions I made. I made a mess of relationships. I lost my baby.

These days I struggle with leaving the house, with seeing people. It feels like the only place I can be remotely safe is in my apartment, because the outside world is much too scary and unpredictable. The last time I tried to have brunch with a friend, I had to force myself to go. I threatened and begged and cajoled myself to go, and when I got home, my beloved bird was dead. A voice inside of me whispered, "I knew this would happen." It is a lonely existence.

I am taking medication now--slowly--and I have told exactly four people what happened to me. It honestly didn't occur to me until a couple months ago how all these things might be tied together. I'm sure I've told portions of my story in this venue before as I recounted my struggles with mental illness, but it has never been told in this complete fashion. I feel somewhat horrified as I type these words that now it will be OUT THERE and PEOPLE WILL KNOW and I CAN'T TAKE IT BACK.

But I needed to tell my story.

Awash in the post-taco glow

I know. I'm off living my life and not writing about it. Crazy, huh?

A bus hit me in my car. Still dealing with insurance and, as TK said, some of the organge-y goodness has been squished out of Julius.

On July 3 I passed the five year mark of living in San Francisco. It filled my mind with nostalgia and memories of the day that Chris and I arrived with the moving truck feeling exhausted and wary and anxious. So many things have happened since then. I have fallen into and out of love, gotten jobs, gotten fired, made new friends, lost one friend, lost my two beloved grandparents, traveled, has emotional breakdowns, got help, got lost, got found...and so on.

I have some decisions to make. I keep putting them off, hoping they will get easier.

"Hello, beautiful!"

Alright. I admit it, okay? I bought a pack of cigarettes today. The stress and transition of last couple of weeks have done my months of hard work in--temporarily, I would like to emphasize--and I broke down. So this morning on my way to work I stopped at the old tobacco shop that I used to frequent in order to purchase them.

Some of you already know part of this story.

There is a 60 year old Indian man (no idea what his name is) who owns the place and--for years now and for unfathomable reasons--has seemed to really like me. I would walk into his shop and he would cry out, "Hello, beautiful!" For a long time I have assumed he does this to many female customers, as he is a bit of a flirt. He would always ask me if I had a boyfriend and why did he never see me with him? Then he started asking me out for coffee.

I had learned bits and pieces about him over my years of visiting his store. He commutes to and from Vacaville, has two college-age sons, likes to play soccer with his friends on the weekends and (are you ready?) is single. His interest in taking me on a date began to get uncomfortable, so when I moved further away from his shop I didn't bother stopping there anymore.

When I came in this morning he was so surprised. He ran out to hug me and kiss my cheek and ask me where I had been? How was I doing? Where was I working now? He renewed his request to take me out for coffee and I laughed to put him off. Getting very serious, he said, "No, really. When are you going to let me take you out?"

Apparently I need to continue to stay away.

If I weren't 99.9% sure that he had romantic intentions, I might consider having coffee with this strange man, but I have no interest in encouraging him further. I can't even begin to imagine what we would talk about. I have a few ideas about where he would like to take the conversation and it creeps me out to think about it.

Jealousy (cubed)

My female parent has been visiting the past few days. While we've had a surprisingly nice visit, I've come to really loathe her boyfriend. He is insecure and jealous and can be rather vicious. He calls while the two of us are hanging around in my apartment and says things like, "Who's there with you? Do you have guys there?" While we were spending Mother's Day in wine country, he would call and text constantly. She wanted to get off the phone so we could continue our day, and he assumed she was in the middle of fucking someone and wanted to finish. The rest of our day was spent getting phone calls and text messages from him saying, "What the hell's going on out there? You've been out there for days. Who are you seeing?"

She defends him at every turn: "He has a good heart." This afternoon I officially got fed up and I'm spending a couple hours in my room so I don't have to listen to her reassure him over and over that she's not fucking anyone while she's here visiting me.

On one hand, I am jealous that she has someone who seems to miss her. But that's exactly where that ends. I am exhausted from dealing with him vicariously through her, and don't know how she can stand his constant accusations. My insistence that she deserves better--someone who can trust her for more than 5 minutes at a time, at least--falls on deaf ears.

Do you like fire? Are you free Saturday night?

So last night, my friend Roberta and I were talking before going to bed and were making plans to do something this weekend. She likes dance clubs (I hate them); I like bars (not really her deal). So I was throwing out ideas for activities on which we might be able to agree:

Bowling!
Roller skating!
Ice skating!
Bonfire!

At the mention of "bonfire," she said, "Oooh!" From the time I first learned of people having bonfires at Ocean Beach I have wanted to do this. We're each inviting friends. She's taking care of s'mores supplies, and I'm working on the fire bit. (A little bit daunting!)

I don't actually care who shows up--nothing sounds nicer than a fire on the beach under the stars.

It will also help occupy my restless, wandering brain that is my curse these days.

Once there was a girl

This has been a long time coming. I just didn't have the courage to tell the story before.

*********************

Once there was a girl who didn’t think she was worth very much.

She was a shy, introspective, and melancholy girl by nature, and probably destined to have self-esteem problems even without the things that happened to her. She had a very young, single mom. Her mom was lost and lonely and didn’t think she was worth very much, either. So she did things to make herself feel worth something—all the things that made her feel worth something involved men and drugs. The girl’s mom loved her very much, but when she was on drugs she didn’t care what her daughter witnessed. Even when it involved men. And more drugs.

When our girl was five, her mom got married. This is when the girl’s problems began in earnest.

Her shiny new stepfather tarnished very quickly. (If you ever want a nice case study of brainwashing and pure, unadulterated physical and psychological torture, you should study this man. He still remains the cruelest human being the girl has ever personally known.)

The girl and her mom were stuck. They were broke. They were powerless against him. Other people knew he was not a nice man. No one ever knew the things they went through. He was very creative and sly.

The girl wanted to ask for help, but she didn’t know the right words. She didn’t know how to say:

“My stepfather makes me feed myself cat shit while he watches and laughs.”

Or what about, “He grabs me by the hair and beats my head against the wall if I don’t pick everything up off the floor. And even when I pick everything up off the floor, he pretends it’s still there laying in front of me and beats my head against the wall because I say I don’t see anything there. So I pretend to see what he sees, and gather up imaginary pieces of what he sees in my arms while looking at him, hoping I have pleased him.”

How was she to explain that he made it a game to see how hard of a hit she could take without falling down? She was only a little girl, and it was impossible to withstand the full force of a grown man. So she was destined to be knocked down. And to get back up. Over and over again.

When you are little, it’s not easy to tell people your stepfather held a gun to your head while the police surrounded the house and your mother screamed. He wanted to be sure she wouldn’t leave, you see. Sometimes he even hurt their pets in front of them. (This was especially hard for the girl. She loved all creatures. Except locusts. Their sounds and shells terrorized her.)

The girl and her mother were required to recite specific sentences regularly in order to ensure their powerlessness: “I am a bitch. I am a whore. I am ugly. I am stupid. I am fat. No one loves me. No one will help me. I am a bitch. I am a whore….” When the girl started off saying these things, she knew in her heart that they weren’t true and that she was just saying them to appease him. But after saying them regularly, over and over, these words started floating through her head even when she was not being forced to say them.

The girl did the only things she could think of to cope. In kindergarten, she went to school with bruises under her clothes and locked herself in the bathroom and screamed hysterically when it was time to go home. She escaped to her grandparents’ houses whenever she could. She played outside from morning to night with the neighborhood kids as often as she could. When the neighborhood kids weren’t around, she found places to hide and explore with imaginary friends created for that very occasion. She took long rides on her bicycle and ate green apples from other people's yards. She gave names and personalities to everything around her—the trees, the flowers, the animals, the broom—to make her feel surrounded by familiar faces and friends.

Unfortunately, her stepfather was not the only one who made the girl think she wasn’t worth very much. There was more than one man, in her family and otherwise, who were more than willing to let her know she was only good for one thing.

One of them was an uncle who had his own cross to bear. He did things that no little girl should ever have to experience. She was five. She wore Care-Bear pajamas. While it happened, sometimes she would stare at a picture of the devil whose iridescent paint gleamed at her in the moonlight; other times she stared out the window and directly at the moon itself. The girl felt so dirty and was so ashamed that she wanted to curl up and die.

But she did not.

She got really good at picking up the pieces of love and acceptance she could find and curling herself around them like a cat.

Years later, when the girl and her mom (and now two brand new baby brothers) finally got away from the stepfather by going into hiding for awhile, the girl’s mother fell apart. And rightfully so. But then the girl’s one constant ally through those times, her mother, felt more than ever like she wasn’t worth very much. And she tried to make the girl and her brothers feel as bad as she felt because she didn’t have anything else left to give them.

…Fast forward…

Our girl is 15. Her physical situation is much more stable now, but she is confused, hurting, and lonely inside. She is mortally self-conscious and shy and terrified of every move she makes—what if she makes someone mad? She gets better at hiding these things and at doing the things a normal girl should. She is positive, however, that if anyone really knew all of the things that made her up they would be horrified and disgusted and not want to be around her. They would discover for themselves what she’d always felt inside—that she wasn’t worth very much.

At that young age the girl fell in love with a shy, introspective, and melancholy boy. He didn’t have the deep, dark secrets that she had, but he listened to her secrets and didn’t make her feel ashamed. This boy gave her the courage to try for things she never thought she could do. She left home when she was 16 and set about trying to make those things happen.

She actually did some cool things.

She went to college and she was very, very serious. Others around her had the liberty to fuck around, but the girl knew she had one shot and she had to make it happen. She didn’t fuck around at all—not even one little bit.

She started to explore the world. Every chance she got to do so, she took it.

She didn’t know what she wanted to do when she got out of school, so she went to school some more. She wanted to know things and to feel she had some power and control over her life. She used to laugh when she thought of herself with any kind of high-falutin' graduate degree. It seemed terrifying and unattainable and ridiculous to her. So she decided to shoot for it. She eventually pulled it off.

The boy was there through it all--even when she tried to test him by pushing him away. (She was still very afraid, you see, of everything and everyone.) She warned the boy, “If you ever lay a hand on me, I will set you on fire.” She was pretty sure he wouldn’t hurt her, but she also knew a thing or two about self-preservation.

When the girl was 24, she started to honestly look around at her life for the first time. She started to look deep inside herself, too. She started to realize that she needed more—that what she had was not enough. She even started to admit to herself that the boy was not enough. This was terrifying to her. He had loved her and given her strength and courage when she needed it most.

She realized she had been in survival mode for a very long time.

Upon these realizations, she felt lost and lonely inside. She knew what her instincts told her but she hadn’t yet really learned to trust them. She was uncertain of who she was, what she needed, and how to go about finding out either of those things. (It was a tough time.)

Once again, she didn’t know the right words. She was now an adult and had a much wider vocabulary at her disposal, but she didn’t know how to tell the boy, “Thank you for loving me even when I couldn’t love myself. Now I need to move beyond these fences we’ve built; they are pinning me in and I am dying inside. You loved me as a child, and now, should I be lucky enough to love and be loved back again, it needs to be as the woman I am.”

When she was 28, the girl did another thing she never imagined she could do and that was very terrifying to her. She left everything and everyone she loved behind and moved far, far away to try to make a completely different kind of life for herself. It was very painful. It actually took her a couple of years to make it all come together, but she made it happen. At the last minute, the boy decided he wanted to come, too. The girl thought it wasn’t the right thing, but she felt like it was worth one last try. (She was still afraid, you see.)

It was a disaster from the start. The girl knew that living with anyone would never be easy, but this move proved to her once and for all that she loved him, but her relationship with him was not enough. She was honest with him from a very early point that it wasn’t working for her. He kept trying. It broke her heart, but it wasn’t enough. The girl finally told the boy she was moving out, that it might take some time to put the pieces in place, but that it was going to happen and he needed to make plans for himself. It was terrible, of course, and still continues to be very, very difficult. Her friends, both near and far, have helped her find the courage to move forward.

It took a very long time and seemed like a simple lesson to learn, but she finally started to realize that she is worth something. She also realized that she deserves something more. (The girl’s mother has not yet put these pieces together for herself. The girl has no idea how to help her.)

There are days, of course, when the doubts creep in and when “moving forward” seems to be at a glacial pace, but there it is.

This was that girl, a long time ago:



And this was the first postcard secret she sent out in the world to try to be set free:



(She still has work to do, but she has been fighting for years now with everything she has. She will make it.)

THE END

On surprise

Every once in awhile it's nice to remember that I still can be surprised. I was surprised last night, and it was a beautiful feeling.

Musings

This blog has generated a bit of a stir.

A couple things before I go on:

1. This is my journal. You don't have to read it.
2. When I said I was thinking about moving I meant what I said. Thinking about it.
3. If you work with me and we are not friends and you read this I think it's really inappropriate. Especially if you are management. Ahem.

Anyway.

I'm trying to remember how it felt when I knew it was time to leave Richmond and come to San Francisco. I had been there for 6 years and I was itching for change. It felt like I had learned the things that I needed to learn there and I wanted to move on. I was restless and pent up and pacing. It's weird, because that's not really what I'm feeling right now.

I feel defeated and tired. Really fucking tired.

People have asked me where I would go. I'd probably start with North Carolina, but I think realistically I would end up in Richmond again. I know. That sounds weird after I described being ready to leave, huh? It's just that the times I have returned to Richmond since I have been here, I have felt absolute joy. When I feel homesick, it is for Richmond. When I hear a weather report or a news story about Richmond, I feel a pang. When a friend mentions traveling to or being in Richmond, I am incredibly jealous. I miss it. I miss Judith and Amber and Dave and the folks I used to work with. I think it's the closest thing to "home" I ever felt.

I don't know.

The last time I made this decision it was a natural transition period in my life. Plus, I had someone to go with. This time I have neither going for me. Can I do it again? I don't know. I am considering it seriously enough that I told my friends here. I promised Nannette that before I made the decision I would work on getting to a mentally healthier place.

I am working on that.

Thinkin' 'bout leavin'

Last night the Golden Gate Bridge had my number again. I'm terrified of that thing. There's something about it that draws my brain to it in times of despair.

I'm thinking about leaving San Francisco. Like, for real.

I used to feel optimistic. I used to have a feeling that things were going to work out for me--somehow, some way. I felt that good things were in store for me. That all ended a couple of years ago. I've struggled to figure out how to get it back, and I keep coming up short.

Things have gotten bad again, and it wasn't until last night when I told anyone just how bad they had gotten. I barely do the things I need to do to take care of myself, and this has to change. I deserve a lot more.

I'm giving some serious thought about moving to North Carolina, at least as a temporary stop en route to somewhere else, to be with my aunt for awhile. I need to leave the job that makes me want to slit my throat. I need some mental and emotional support. I can stay with her awhile while I look for a job. I can focus on myself and stop struggling so much just to survive. I need to sit with the idea a bit. If I do it, I need to seriously save some money, so it probably wouldn't be until after my summer class is over.

I'm scared. But I feel like there might be away out of this mental prison I'm living in.

You in?

I find myself in a strange position tonight: I have no one to go out with. Everyone is part of a fucking couple, and it's getting on my nerves. Plus, I feel lonely. I'd kill for a beer and a good conversation right now.

I decided to be proactive.

Back in 2005--when I first moved here--I found most of my friends (and all manner of other possibilities) via Craigslist. I decided to try it again. I spent some time this evening looking in the "activity partners" and "groups" sections in which I looked the first time. I didn't really find anything I was looking for, so I posted an ad of my own. It was short and sweet:

Try new restaurants and bars with me (San Francisco)

Some of my friends have recently moved away, and I'm looking for some new and interesting peeps of all stripes to try out bars, restaurants, and anything else we may see fit to get into.

Good: wit, sarcasm, curiosity, macaroni and cheese appreciation

Bad: closed-mindedness, dogma, bad breath, spitting on sidewalks

You in?

I've gotten one response so far, and I'm totally excited. We're waiting to see if we get a couple more before we make any plans. In the meantime, I'm putting together a wish list of places I want to try.

Three three

I'm a little late with this post. I think it is a good thing.

So I just turned 33 yesterday, and usually I am feeling quite nostalgic and write a rather reflective blog post. You can read those from years past by searching the tag "feliz cumpleanos a tu" if you're looking for some type of self-flagellation aside from reading this blog, in general. And who am I kidding anyway: almost ALL of my blogs are nostalgic and reflective. This year felt different. (Although it started off as par for the course.)

To begin with, I dreamed** about C. Now I should say that anytime I go on a date--irrespective of how good, bad, dull, or uneventful it is--my dreams take me to him. This one was particularly affecting.

**Brief dream aside: I came home to an apartment that was somewhere in the middle. It was a combination of all the apartments I've ever had in Richmond and San Francisco. He was waiting at the door for me with quiet brown eyes. I felt a rush of relief and said, "I knew you'd come." I unlocked the door and let us inside, and we sat down and looked at each other. The years apart left us unsure of how to interact, of how familiar it was acceptable to be. I started by asking him questions. "What have been your favorite movies that came out in the last three years?" We described our favorites to each other and I saw his favorites through his eyes and he saw mine through my eyes. I didn't want to know who he'd been with, who he'd loved or cried over; I was just so happy he was there. I hugged him and he said, "This feels so natural."

I woke grateful to have dreamed of him, and happy that I had taken the day off and allowed myself to sleep in. I decided to buy myself a birthday present.

I got a pedicure. I also decided at the last minute to get my eyebrows waxed. As I lay down on the table, my Vietnamese waxer lady said, "Why you neva wax mustache?"

I got some kind of crazy fancy new phone that I can use as a camera and video camera, and can use to access the internet as well as other regular phone things. (Look out Twitter and Facebook! Now I can write status updates and tweets all the time.)

I had Vietnamese spring rolls.

I had a brief nap, and I lay thinking about birthdays past**.

**Brief birthdays past aside: I remember on my 3rd birthday, my mom and I lived in our apartment on Broadway--the one with the cockroaches. My two major impressions of that birthday are, 1) I got roller skates that clamped on over my shoes, and 2) my grandpa and uncle taught me how to rub a balloon against my hair and make it stick to the wall. (My hair thus ended the night in particularly rare form.) I remembered my 13th birthday when I cried because I felt like I was leaving my childhood behind. (Yes, melodramatic and emotional from the start--that is yours truly.) I remembered my 23rd birthday in 2000 when I talked to my father for the last time for the following three years.

When I woke, the mail had come. Danita, C's mom, had sent me a beautiful card, and my old friend from Shepherd, Sally, had sent me a package that she put an awful lot of thought and effort into. I held them both and sat a cried with the emotion of being thought of and remembered by these two wonderful women.

I went out to The Orbit Room and to Pauline's pizza with four dear friends and had a lovely time. As one should on her birthday, I completely overindulged and ended up ill and in bed, being sung to over the phone by Miss Mary Smucker.

I felt loved.

Gobble

After all of my weird obsessing and reading/comparing of, like, 500 cornbread stuffing recipes, it turned out awesome. I was so pleased.

Yesterday I spent my fifth Thanksgiving at Nannette's house. Fifth! How is it possible I've been here so long? This year Jenny and Scott were missing, and there were several people I don't really know there. It just wasn't the same. I mean, our food was lovely. Everyone was in good spirits. But many of the people there didn't feel like MY people, and it made me feel a little sad. The best part by far was spending the morning and afternoon cooking and drinking mimosas with Angie and Nannette and periodically sending and receiving texts of Thanksgiving wishes. I am still wondering about the mystery texter, though.

In the late afternoon hours, someone from a 650 number texted me and said, "Goble, goble, goble!" Goble? I returned the text with, "Hi! Gobble to you, too! I'm sorry, but who is this?" The person responded, "Is this amy?" (Obviously it is not someone who knows me very well.) I texted, "This is Amie! Who's this?" and never heard anything again.

I find that my cell phone book fills up with names of people I don't remember. They come from dates I've gone on--times that I was meeting someone for a drink or coffee and we exchanged cell numbers in case anything happened. Because those times are generally the first and last date, the phone number stays in there and I promptly forget who it is. Last night in my food-induced coma, I sat down and deleted all the numbers I didn't recognize: Daniel, Kevin, Paul, Jon, Jon, etc. It makes it sound like my life is much more exciting than it actually is, I think.

Last night I got home around 10pm, and it was a relief to have quiet. My dreams were vivid and specific, and one of those times when I woke up to realize they weren't true and I burst into tears.

Today I will go back to Nannettes for a leftover dinner. You can bet I'm gonna rock that stuffing's world.

My dear friend Beau and his new wife are in town, and during the next two days I will show them around San Francisco sites, views, and restaurants. (Because more eating is exactly what I will need.)

Yesterday would have been my Papaw's 80th birthday. He loved Thanksgiving and I always loved when his birthday fell on Thanksgiving. I miss him terribly.

It looks like I will only be buying one Christmas present this year, and I'm trying to decide how I feel about that.

I will be 33 soon.

All this grateful (and ungrateful) business

Several people I know are naming something they're grateful for on Facebook every day until Thanksgiving. Even though these are friends of mine and very lovely people, this practice makes me a little nauseous. Probably because I am cranky and cantankerous and bitter and jaded.

Still.

I thought I'd do my own version here. I wanted my version to include a lament about the things I am ungrateful for, too.

Please excuse any sap that may follow, and if you think it will nauseate you too much, you might want to take a rain check on this blog entry.

Things I am grateful for:

- Friends I can call when I’m sitting in my car for hours because I don’t know where to go.

- Little birdie belly feathers.

- Getting a teaching job for the spring semester because I will be much less broke in the months to come.

- My grandparents and my aunt, without whom I would probably be dead, in prison, or on crack. Possibly all three.

- Nannette. For being my friend during the most challenging years of my life thus far, even when it was hard for her, and for talking sense into me on one very dark evening. Without her I would have left San Francisco behind already.

- Cindy. For knowing me almost better than I know myself; for being insane in nearly identical ways to myself (and I say that with love), for listening to me at times when I am nearly incoherent, and for being my first grown up best friend.

- Christopher. For loving me when I was unable to love myself.

- My many friends at work who make each day Monday through Friday more bearable, who put up with me dropping into their offices when I need a break, and without whom I would have taken a bazooka to the joint. Ruben, Shayna, Wendi, Laurie, Tamara, Jodi, John, Peggy, and Diana: I love you to pieces.

- For a free washer and dryer in my building. SCORE!

- For Yan, Patrick, Scott, Brian, Amber & Suzie, Judith, Amber, Shannon, Dave, Kelli, Jenny, Tony, Lauren, and Cyrano for taking me out, getting me drunk, calling me, texting me, sending me sweet packages, going to dinner with me, inviting me to their parties, visiting me in the hospital, and letting me crash at their houses even if I was far away (mentally or physically), drank too much, didn't call back, was doped up on morphine, and/or didn't show up.

- Danita and Nan, for treating me as part of the family no matter what.

- The color green for adorning my walls, pants, shoes, umbrellas, and coats and for cheering me up in the most ridiculous and random ways.

- The funniest, weirdest, and most thoughtful book club in the history of the world.


Things I am not grateful for:

- Several days without antidepressants because I am totally broke.

- Four parking tickets waiting to be paid.

- E. for making up his mind, J.H. for not being in the right mental space at the right time, P. for breaking my heart, and J.T. for what amounted to persistent booty calls.

- A very specific person whom I see five days a week who makes me distinctly unhappy, treats me like I am stupid and incompetent, has unreasonable expectations, seems to always suspect that I have or am about to screw her over, and blames me for what feels like everything.

- C.J.B. for leaving without saying goodbye and re-smashing my heart into itty bitty pieces.

- The raccoon fight club that meets nightly behind my house.

Fail

Tonight I had the second failed movie attempt of my life.

I felt good today. I slept well. I had my morning coffee and listened to "The Star Report" (astronomy news) at 6:37am on the radio. Saturday is my normal sleeping and relaxing day, but this morning I felt restless and yearning to get out of the house. Fortunately, Nannette was game for lunch and a walk, but even that did not completely satisfy me. So I decided to take myself to an 8:50pm movie: "Precious."

As the time to leave approached, I dragged my feet a bit. It was cold outside and my home was warm and cozy. I told myself to stop being ridiculous and got my butt out the door. As I drove toward the Daly City theater, I came close to turning around. Everything suddenly seemed so sad, and my bed seemed safer.

I thought of everyone that I miss intensely, and wanted to cry. A truck with an attached trailer full of cows pulled up next to me on 19th Avenue--seeing chickens and cows in the backs of trucks always breaks my heart. The cows peered out of the narrow slats that served as windows, wide-eyed and anxious. They blinked against the glare of the street lights, and their breath steamed out in puffs. I wanted to turn around again.

I was listening to NPR on the radio, and a portion of Rose Tremain's The Road Home. It was beautiful and sad and careful in its observations of struggle and loneliness and, once again, I wanted to turn around.

I made myself keep going. I was determined to go to a movie tonight.

I parked in the crowded garage full of teenagers laughing and cars honking, so I turned up my radio and closed my eyes to finish listening to the story about Lev the widowed, Russian immigrant trying to make his way in a new world. When the story ended, I thought briefly of starting the car and going home, but I got out of the car and plodded toward the theater.

Standing impatiently in the long line of young couples holding hands, bubble gum-popping adolescents, and kids weaving between and around legs, I shifted my weight from foot to foot and promised myself that I would be so happy I came once I sat in the darkened theater, warm and among fellow humans with their eyes fixed on the screen. When I finally made my way to the front of the line, a bored Vietnamese girl behind the glass flatly informed me that my movie was sold out and the next one was in an hour and a half.

I stood for a few seconds with my mouth open to say something, and then mumbled, "nevermind" and turned to make my way back to the garage. I tried to keep it a secret from myself that I was relieved.

To love you back

Him: When I was a boy, there was a girl about 4 years younger than me named Amber who had been in love with me since before she could talk. I always thought she was a shy girl but she was not shy. She was heartstricken with me, and I was too young to love her back.

Her: When I was leaving Richmond and moving to San Francisco, there was a guy I hardly knew who showed up to my going away party 3 nights before I was to leave. I'd only been introduced to him once, and the other times I'd seen him he was a silent presence at a table full of noisy friends. He showed up alone to my party and sat down next to me. I was startled to see him, and said tactlessly, "Maki! What are you doing here?" He said simply, "I came to find you. I thought you might want someone to move to San Francisco with you. I'll go whenever you're ready." I was completely taken aback. I kissed his cheek and told him gently, "I have someone that I'm going with," because at the time I did. His face fell, and after that night I never saw him again.

Celestial disappointments

Events in the sky had a way of eluding me for the longest time.

The first experience I can remember clearly was the approach of Haley’s Comet in 1986. I was terribly excited. I was 9 years old and relished thinking about what I’d be like in 76 more years. A grandma? Rich? Bones in a grave?

On the night it was supposed to be seen, my friends and I were outside waiting eagerly. It was incredibly cloudy, but this did little to diminish my optimism. This was a big deal. Something incredibly important was about to happen; my life was about to change.

We didn’t see a thing.

We were all disappointed, but I was the most upset. My friend Beau’s dad took pity on us and set off some Roman candles in the middle of the street as a consolation prize. This was only the first of many disappointments.

My grandpa bought me a telescope, and much to my embarrassment I could never see anything through it.

I wished earnestly on the first star I saw every night. I said the little chant and everything, “Star light, star bright…” Those stars never gave me anything.

Everyone I knew had seen shooting stars. While playing outside at night, friends would regularly say, “Oh, look! A shooting star! Oh, you missed it.” I would train my eyes on the sky for long stretches of time and never did I get to see a shooting star.

One night when I lived in Richmond, there was a meteor shower in the middle of the winter. It was supposed to be at its brightest around 4am when it was twenty degrees. I was eager to see the meteors, and dutifully bundled up and stood outside behind my apartment building watching the sky. After a half an hour of freezing and not seeing even a single meteor, I went back inside. This was pretty much my luck until I moved to San Francisco.

I moved in here in July 2005, and from a bench with a friend in Noe Valley one night in November, I about fell over when I saw a shooting star. I got so excited that he was a little alarmed, believing that my standards for entertainment were very, very low.

Since then I have seen hundreds of them. I catch them randomly all the time, and in October of 2007 I lay on a blanket in the backyard watching for shooting stars and contemplating constellations with someone I loved. One night last summer while on a midnight drive down Highway 1 with a friend, we saw a gargantuan flaming blue meteor, hurtling toward the ocean and we screamed with shock and delight.

Last night I lay in bed feeling desperately like I wanted to move away. I contemplated the things and the people and the memories I would have to leave behind, and I wondered if celestial events were included in those.

Haiku

On the way home tonight, I saw a hippie dude with a guitar in front of the DeLano's grocery store singing what he described as a haiku:

"Please don't murder me.
I hope you don't murder me.
Please don't murder me."