dear life / dear self

more glitter, more bowie.

fall and winter projects

It's raining today but when I started this post a week ago it was unseasonably sunny and warm.

Summer used to be my favorite season and before I moved north I dreaded the cold.

But soon fall became transfigured for me; I discovered a love of fresh, chilly air. Fall became associated with soft sweater tights, scarves knitted by friends, pretty hats, football games, caramel apples, hot chocolate, cuddling, blankets, and being cozy. Opportunities to open myself up to the possibility of different kinds of warmth.

But. I still dread the short days. When the sun sets early, my heart sinks with it. The day is over too soon. I go into hibernation.

But. Maybe this is an opportunity to transfigure darkness and shorter days. To open myself up to the possibility of experiencing different kinds of light. So maybe instead of resisting and dreading and kicking my feet about the winter I will use this time to refigure the winter sun, to find new things to love in dark evenings and short days.

i hate the psychiatrist

It's like going to a doctor and describing your symptoms except where your symptoms are all your most closely guarded and emotionally painful personal things summed up in a ten minute questionnaire. But it is ok because I watched this video like seven times on the way home, took a xanax, and completely forgot how to care about the fact that I have never met a psychiatrist with any kind of bedside manner, at least not one who has had any openings on short notice. I wish that Jason Seigl was my best friend though.

it takes an ocean not to break

untitled

When my dad was little the flap of tissue under his tongue was overgrown so that until it was discovered and corrected his speech was "messed up."

During that time apparently his dad constantly told him that he was a "retard" and would get in screaming fights with my grandmother about how she "gave him a retarded child."

I only learned this a couple years ago when I happened to be presenting at a conference near where my paternal aunt lives. I was able to spend an afternoon with her, and this was the first time I'd had an opportunity to spend time with her one on one as an adult. In this afternoon I really got to see the breadth of my aunt's strength, generosity, openness, and love. And I also learned a lot about my family.

When my aunt told me that story I vaguely remembered my dad once telling me about the thing with his tongue. And then I remembered that he did once ask me if the tissue under my tongue was ok and let me know that if it got messed up we would know what the problem was because he'd already been through it and it could easily be fixed.

The home where I spent the first seven years of my life was unsafe. When my parents were married my dad was volatile and unpredictable. But my dad always, always told me that I was smart and could do anything I wanted to. He started teaching me to read before I could even form full sentences. He bought me paints and sketchbooks when I wanted to be an artist. He wanted to, but couldn't, buy me a laptop when I wanted to be a writer. He wanted so much for me to believe in Santa Claus when I didn't. He made sure that I did not have an overgrown flap of tissue under my tongue.

My dad did not want me to be trapped in a life where I was unhappy. He has spent his life building houses and he does not love it. But he sometimes took my brother and me to construction sites to see the wooden outline of houses he was building, houses with open skies like the one my mom and stepdad would later buy. He has spent his life building magic houses that he will never live in.

I haven't maintained consistent contact with my dad in awhile, and I told my partner yesterday that it's hard because I've blocked so much of it that I can't imagine my dad hitting my mom or throwing plates against the dining room wall. The few times that I have seen my dad over the past ten years or so he seems increasingly numb, withdrawn, and isolated. My partner has only met my dad once; a few years ago we met him for lunch at a Wendy's. My partner puts it best when he says that he cannot imagine my dad doing those things either, because he has only ever known my dad as a shell of a person.

I wish he could have known him.

the view from home

This picture was taken from my parents' front yard, looking out. My old bedroom looks out this way, from the second floor.

I remember standing on the floor of my old room when it was not yet a room. When it was plywood and empty framing and open sky. There were no other houses yet around, just empty streets and lots for sale. That was a magic time.

I was in high school when this house was built. And I recognize now more than then just how lucky we were to have the resources to build a house like this, in a brand new, "safe" neighborhood. But I also see now how lucky we were to have parents who took my brother and stepsisters and me along to look at houses, who involved us in the process, who took our input seriously, who gave us some agency in shaping this new house, who used those resources to give each of us a space of our own.

When I moved to New City for graduate school five years ago, I did not want to live torn between spaces, between homes. But this is part of venturing out and exploring and creating new spaces and new homes, right?

I feel pulled toward (old) home more and more lately. I miss my brother and my mom. Maybe even my stepdad and stepsisters. I spent three weeks there over the summer, and it has never been harder to leave than it was when I had to say goodbye to my brother again just one week after he lost his best friend. I know there is not much I can do for him there, but it is hard not to be in physical space with them right now.

It is not just that. I feel the urge to pick up and leave. To romanticize home state skies, and to forget that all those rooms have roofs on them now.

I have been picking at my cuticles, not breathing well, and I have been spending time thinking about once kindred spirits with whom I know I can only ever have relationships that are destructive. Willing them to think of me, willing the universe to put us in each others' paths again. I just don't know how to stop feeling sad sometimes about all the loss that is inevitable, all the paths not taken or closed, everything necessary to creating spaces for new experiences, new skies, new joys.

lovelier light

Take all the things that I've said that he stole
Put 'em in a sack
Swing 'em over my shoulder
Turn on my heels
Step out of this sight
Try to live in a lovelier light

this post is depressing

I have the next four hours blocked out to sit in a coffee shop to do my own work. To read and write on my dissertation, to drink coffee, and to not lesson plan or respond to student e-mails, etc. These four hours are a gift, but I am having trouble feeling that. Outside it is wet and gray and the atmosphere feels thick and heavy. I feel down, I feel weighed down.

My partner woke me up around one this morning, hugging me in tears, after waking up from a dream that he had lost me. Not just that he had lost me but that I had been murdered and the dream seemed to last for weeks, he tells me after awhile of holding each other in that early pre-dawn haze. We are both, I think, remembering to be amazed by each other's being here, by waking up to find that we are both still here.

We've talked about the reality of someday losing each other, not frequently, but we have thought and talked about it, usually with lots of tears. I know that depression changes for many of us our relationship to our own lives. I understood this better when coming out of my deepest period of depression. I think I was maybe more at peace with death then than now. Because I had spent so much time deciding the decision to continue living over and over, I could somehow see the possibility of death as a blessing. I no longer understand this truth as fully, and it is strange to remember crying so much about life and death for such different reasons.

I suppose that is a pretty obvious part of why I feel down today. The other part is that two unremarkable things happened this morning to remind me that outside our home, I feel fairly alone. I feel disconnected from the people in my life, in overt and in subtle ways. I have felt like this for awhile now, and I sometimes feel like I am not really here, like I died along time ago and am now just going through the motions, like a zombie. I know that this is probably another kind of depression, which v confirms. I just don't really know completely the way out of it. How to find my way back to my own body, to feel attached to, connected to, invested in, the life of this woman who is typing on a keyboard, tugging at her sleeves, pausing to lean on her fist, staring alternatively at the screen and out the window.

I feel the heaviness in my chest, and I smell the coffee coming out of my pores, so I know I must still be here. I cry when my partner and I talk about dying, so I know that I must still feel things. I don't remember if the heaviness was in my chest when I woke up this morning. I know the heaviness is not always here or it would not be remarkable. I know that I did not feel like this two days ago or the day before that but I remember feeling it around yesterday afternoon when I revisited the facebook page of someone who died in June.

This morning in the shower I ask my partner how I died, in his dream. And he says that someone shot me at  Bed, Beth, and Beyond. Like most real things, it is so strange and unusual and mundane and ordinary that I can see why it upset him so much.

movement

Got together with a friend and colleague yesterday to talk about our current writing goals, and yes, consume some whiskey. She tells me that she hopes to finish her current chapter by the end of the semester, and I tell her that I hope to do aerobic exercise three times a week, yoga twice a week, and to write something, even a few sentences, everyday. Sentences unrelated to my dissertation. Just to get my fingers moving. Just to get my body moving, to clear my mind, to begin creating a calm and vibrant space in which I can begin to trace the contours of This Stupid Project (title in progress). My friend understands and approves of these as appropriate writing goals.

I am nearly, nearly ABD, so naturally my real goal is to just forfuckssake write a draft of my proposal, finally. I am so close, you see, I just need to figure out the whole shape of my project and write it up to the different likings of three or five different faculty members and in the process continue. reading. so much shit. But I am also so very stuck. I have been stuck for so long that it is hard to even imagine the way to becoming unstuck.

I wrote these words down yesterday:

I do not sit down at my desk to put into verse something that is already clear in my mind. If it were clear in my mind, I should have no incentive or need to think about it . . . We do not write in order to be understood, we write in order to understand. - C. Day Lewis

To remind myself that I don't need to have everything figured out when I sit down to write. To remind myself that in the act of writing I will discover the areas that need more thought and exploration, to remind myself that I am not yet meant to be An Expert.

missing

In a journal, newly purchased, I write that I need to start writing again, that I need to get back into the habit of observing in words. I read this phrase in Writing Fiction by Janet Burroway. I am on page four of this book. I am on page four or ten or fifteen of so many books, discarded in stacks on tables and shelves and floors around my apartment.

I have an afternoon free. I do not write my dissertation. I do not read more on x and y and c topics in philosophy. I do not even read about how to write a dissertation, or how to find the motivation to write a dissertation. I read a book on narrative craft in hopes of finding some motivation or inspiration to write anything at all today. I stop reading on page four. I write down that I need to get back into the habit of observing in words, that I need to start writing again. I open this page. I type that I need to get back into the habit of observing in words.

There was a time when I thought in prose, in narrative language, and poetry. When I was a storyteller. When my inner voice was at heart that of a writer.

She is gone, but before I can write that the question is there, Where did she go?

I hear this question in v's voice because it is a question that she asks me all the time: If you are not fully here, if you are not in your body, where are you? Where do you go?

I never have an answer to this question; it is always nowhere or I don't know.

dear jordan, there's bars out here for miles

not everyone survives. (you know this.) sometimes I wish I could ask you how we did it. not because I need reasons or ways. and not even because I need to understand the difference between you and me and someone who dies alone in a truck in a field.

I need to know that you still saw something in me when I was at my worst. I don't mean some kind of strength to pull through, or that sort of thing, but I need to know that you saw me. that I was not, am not, unknown. that I am not as ordinary as you later made me feel and as I have been feeling lately. that I wasn't always expendable.

I don't even know if I have faith anymore that you understood or would understand. you are so far away. but if not you, who, really.

so, have you figured it all out yet, how to be happy, how to be sad and kind, how to be.

m

if you can't say anything nice

7 was magnetic.
4 had a charming smile.
15 taught me how to read.
9 forgives.
5 was unbelievably witty.
10 was easy to talk to.
26 was a kindred spirit.
8 is adorable when he's happy.
14 has accomplished great things.
11 has great taste in books.
12 is dedicated and hard-working.
16 really tries sometimes.
6 taught me some of what it takes to be in a healthy relationship.
13 has survived under toxic conditions.
22 was a great friend.

facts

I made a list of people who have hurt me in some significant way. Here are some facts about that list.

There are 31 people on the list.
26 of the people on the list are men.
11 of the men have first names that begin with the letter J.
7 of the men have last names that begin with the letter W.
1 last name is unknown to me.
6 people share a name with someone else on the list.
2 more share the same name with different spellings.
There are 9 people whose middle names I know.
4 are people that I met in the last 5 years.
8 have done things that hurt me in the last 3 years.

I estimate that 1/2 of the people on the list are taller than me.
Around 18 are older (or probably older) than me.
4 have served in some branch of the military.
4 have talked to me about being suicidal.
I have seen 1 of the people on the list in the hospital.
Everyone on the list is alive.
2 are invited to my wedding.
3 were once on the guest list but were removed.
3 are probably reading this.
There are 8 people on the list I would describe as gross.
There is only 1 person on the list I would describe as ugly.
There is only 1 person on the list who I think probably does not have any redeemable qualities.
To my knowledge only 1 person on the list actually fucks horses.

11 lied about things I can remember off the top of my head.
7 have told me they love me.
1 person on the list probably does not know that he hurt me at all.
2 still owe me a breakup phone call.
9 know that I am a survivor.
1 relationship has been repaired.
I would say that I am completely over 20 of these people and/or whatever happened between us.
The other 11 still hurt sometimes.

It's hard to stay mad at number 15 because I feel sorry for him.
It's hard to stay mad at 9 for the same reason.
I am still the most utterly confused by 21.
8 seems completely unnecessary.
7 hurts the worst.
5 and I did the most damage to each other.
6 did not mean to hurt me.