Checking back in

It has been the kind of summer that did not punish us with long stretches of unpleasant close days of stilted mugginess.  It has been so relatively mild that I have pushed off taking a medication because it has as a side effect photo sensitivity and I'll not let anything keep me from sitting in the sun on a bright crisp day.  I regret nothing.  

Time did what time does, it doesn't heal wounds necessarily.  More like a music collection where the songs that were in heavy rotation during a certain time don't come up on the playlist as often.  I was getting tired of my writing, I was writing the same things in the same way, and I didn't like it anymore.  I wasn't rushing to get to a keyboard to write something down.  I didn't want to communicate at all really.  I did not have anything new to say.  I probably still don't have anything new to say, but I think I might be coming back around to taking some kind of pleasure in the process.

Speaking of not having anything new to say, Facebook....ugh.  Am I right?  It's terrible right?  Instagram, Snapchat...whatever it is, I think it's less terrible if something is actually happening in your life.  Like you're doing adventure, or making humans, or joining other humans in the contractual bonds of relationship, building houses, creating something...something that indicates in some substantive way that your life is not the same as it was a year ago, 10 years ago, 20 years ago.  Social media reminds me, like it reminds parents sending their first born off to the first day of school, that time has passed.  I reflexively compare myself--what have I done since that child entered the world that seems equivalent to keeping a human alive long enough to buy it a backpack?  I have not put anything into the world that has the potential to last, to carry on.  It is the height of narcissim to regret that, to lament the terminal nature of (my) existence.  Writing is very unoriginally, my baby.  It is leaving a note, leaving some evidence I was here, of what I was like, to have a voice, an expression that makes such an impression that someone else is like me, not the other way around.    

Speaking of the pitter-patter of little feet, they definitely do not pitter or patter, they stomp and jump and scream a lot.  They shake things on your wall and make you the person who angrily knocks the celing with a broom handle to alert an adult that it sounds like a WWE match over my head that is wholly unacceptable, especially for it to continue non-stop for over an hour.  I imagine the adults are happy the child is keeping themselves entertained, running in concrete sneakers the entire length of my condo, and then pile-driving themselves into the floor, their screams somehow audible through my walls as well.  Probably sleep the bricks their shoes are made of.  There isn't normally a child living above me.  It's a special occasion of some sort and I think that occasion may be that my neighbor is moving.  As long as this isn't a trade of my single, never home neigbhor with a barking dog and concrete-sneaker kid, I'm okay with it.  It's kind of half of a dream come true.  If my other neighbor moved and two awesome people moved in to replace them, it would be a fairytale and those aren't real.

So unoriginal

When a guy doesn't text me back, doesn't write me back, doesn't call me back, I know, I'm not enough.  Pretty enough, sexy enough, thin enough, funny enough, not enough of something because there is a type of woman that every guy would jump through hoops to be with and I've never been that woman.  And you know, I would trade being any of those women, sexy, beautiful, for just being a confident woman.  It hurts to be treated poorly but even more to allow myself to be treated poorly, to debate accepting it as a condition of being accepted.  To consider that I'm not all that great after all, so am I really in a position to insist on courtesy or consideration?  I mean, I am human and perhaps that is what we should be to everyone, but is it weird that I think that's something that should happen with a guy who wants to sleep with me?  With a guy who wants to say we're friends?  It confuses me when I even find myself entertaining these thoughts.  This is when the wisdom of Lodo is particularly apt; 'Fuck everyone, all the time.'

Men are an antidote to men.

My best friend

We are now circling back to anniversaries of the past year, which was especially tough by most standards.  It seemed that a lot of what I looked to for security, health, contentment/complacency, or love/companionship was shaken or taken with a level of intensity that seemed very personal if the universe can be accused of such a thing.  It was a ravaging year.  I still miss her intensely.  I'm glad I can see her in this space that finally looks like a home; sitting near the back door waiting for errant dear and rabbit to molest with her barking, sitting in her yard on a hot day, catching smells with her nose, staring inside the house like a creepy boyfriend trying to determine where I was, knocking open the bathroom door to check on me and then flopping on the tile floor to keep me company while I was in there.  Animals are far better companions than people.  They are a chore but they are worth it.  They give far more than they require.  The accept you as is, their agenda is wholly transparent, and they bring untiring joy.  Every day I found joy or comfort in her.  Just watching her sleep, or the noise she made when you got that ear rub just right...  I marveled in how I never tired of her.  I didn't know I could love like that.  Every single day she made me laugh or smile.  No human has a track record like that.

Imagine

Imagine

Me and you, I do. I think about you every night. It's only right. To think about the one you love, and hold them tight, so happy together.

I was in the middle of beating myself for letting my imagination get the best of me (again), crushing on this guy that is clearly making a go of it without me and managing well enough. I was telling myself what he's not doing, namely thinking about me in any way, and how guys in general don't do such things. It's true, they don't usually indulge in daydreaming, but every relationship starts in the other's imagination. Whether he's imagining you naked, or imagining you as his wife, both of us are imagining something that makes us want to see if we can turn the pictures in our heads into something in our hands.

So it's okay Ava. You can daydream. He's not daydreaming about you, but maybe one day a guy will imagine you too.

Daytime Pictures

My brother is tagged in a lot of pictures with pretty girls on Facebook. His life as a photostream would have a youthful soundtrack and invoke all the beer commercials and fond-misspent-days-of-youth reminiscing one could handle. He's always at a bar or a party, he's usually making a goofy face, and the girl always looks like she's having a ball.

What my brother doesn't have are pictures with any girl outside of a bar or party, or any photos with girls during the day. I don't know who doesn't want to be with whom during the day, but I know something interesting will be going on the day I see my baby brother tagged in some daytime pictures.

The solstice with the mol-stice

All's well that ends well. I've been thinking about my life in the context of that somewhat trite saying. I started out a few days ago marveling at how much this year has managed to pack in; 2 cancer scares, labs on a plane, me on the same plane dehydrated from crying about the lab on the plane and the general upheaval of moving twice in the same year, attempting to learn a new language, confirming that I had not chosen wisely in following through with this assignment with every hurdle and shitty circumstance that followed, the usual inventory of a misspent year.

Still here I am at the end of the year in the same place I always am; sitting in front of a computer to tell you all about it. In the past I've taken stock, made proclamations and determinations in lieu of resolutions, tried to set goals that might create a momentum towards the person I want to be. Not this year. This year I concede the match. Life wins. Reconciliation between what could be and what is--never going to happen. This place isn't so different than the last place was and with every move and increasing professional demand my circles get tighter, not wider. I'm less and less engaged with anything that would resemble a life outside of my obligations and less and less interested in doing anything about it. Not because the part of me that gets tamped down in this existence is mute but because I just don't have the energy for it all. I don't even have the energy to try because I don't have the mental cushion for disappointment. My best energies are spent now in my imagination where everything is still possible, life's surprises are magical, my skin is the best to be in. Light, laughter, and love. Cameos from all my favorite people, nice well fitting clothes, free from pain, never any bad breath or gas, fabulous hair, comfortable but somehow still fabulous shoes. Better that way I think. The happiest people I know don't even have it as good as I do in my imagination.

Happy New Year and Merry Christmas to you (internet).

Living Single

At some point it stops being a show of sassy classy women and starts being eating dinner right from the pot and giving more than a passing consideration to not bathing 2 days in a row.

In a little vignette I like to call 'This is why God smiteth You' I misplaced an important envelope of receipts from my move which if not found, would have put me hundreds if not thousands of dollars out of pocket. Naturally I was keen to find the envelope but in all the shuffling and moving of my first few months here, it was nowhere to be found. One early pre-dawn morning I woke up restless thinking of that damn envelope and consumed with worry about where it could be, not only for the loss of money for the personal information on the receipts. There was a sigh upon my soul and I pleaded that God just please tell me where the envelope was. I think when people say they heard God's voice, it was something like what happened moments after I implored God for my FedEx envelope of receipts. Into my mind popped an instruction; look in the overhead of one of the temporary desks you sat at when you first arrived. I found it there the next day.

I was impressed, amazed, and thankful, for about 53 seconds and then I thought, 'This, Lord? *this* is the prayer you answer? Granted, I would have been all kinds of hurt to lose that money but if I get only one desperate call from the Lord answered, I'd want to use that turn on something like a good husband, healthy kids or healing of unhealthy ones, the lottery... And this is why God smiteth me; because I fill out the 'tell us how we're doing card' after a blessing.