Monday, May 27, 2013

#JustBeSatisfied

.

In the rush I wish for rest.
Sitting still, I long to go.
"Grass is greener," so they say,
but I have my own lawn to mow.

.

Thursday, May 23, 2013

V8

First it was the Dido CD(s) a few weeks ago, and now it's V8...

My mom bought a six pack of V8 for Wesley to get him through the week until she could get to Sam's Club and buy in bulk like she usually does. She bought it on Saturday and says she left it in front of the black chair by his computer. He was out of town, in Baltimore, and when he got back Monday night he says the V8 wasn't there.

I didn't even know about it until tonight. Dad didn't move it. Wesley wasn't here to have moved it, and didn't even know of its existence until Mom asked if he had gotten it.

There are two options here. The first option: there is something or someone in the house without our knowledge, who is moving or taking our stuff. The horror-story-writer part of me subscribes to this theory. In fact, after Mom had said goodnight and gone into her room, closing the door behind her, I stood for a moment on the silent upstairs landing and whispered: "I know you're there. I'm going to find you. I will."

(Yeah, melodrama. I know.)

But I would rather believe that creepy thought than the alternative: that my mother is slowly losing her memory or her mind...

:(

Saturday, May 18, 2013

Pep Talk

Let me make it abundantly clear to you:
No one is searching for your heart.
No one is hoping that the tides will change,
That the clouds will part.

No one wants the empty seat beside you.
No one's lips seek out your syllable or sound.
You're as alone now as you will always be
Until you're buried underground.

Wednesday, May 8, 2013

First Move

When I was eleven I wrote a book where the two main characters eventually fell in love. It happened gradually. They really disliked each other at first but were forced by necessity and circumstance to travel together for a long distance. Over time they became grudging friends, and toward the end of the adventure they each started looking at the other person in a new, rather surprising way, though neither had the courage to say anything about it quite yet. Then came drama - imprisonment, escape, literally fighting for their lives against a giant monster - and they were separated from each other. When they were eventually reunited, all that emotion bubbled up to the surface, and they both just knew - you're alive, you're okay, you're here. I love you. I want to be with you. It didn't need to be said; it was just so obvious.

This is why I love fiction. It all works out so neat and tidy. Real life sucks. Real life is nothing like that.

Instead you get people who have feelings about other people but never take the risk to make them known, whether out of fear or pride or self doubt... so many reasons, really, and none of them all that good.

I never realized this about myself, but apparently I am an old-fashioned girl. I was just watching a TV show ("Pramface") where a love interest says to the girl he's flirting with, "You've got princess syndrome. You're waiting for the guy to come and kiss you. And while I'd like that quite a bit, I'm not going to." (The obvious hint being that she should... and she did.) I'm not trying to buy into some patriarchal oppressive mindset or anything; for some reason it just seemed like common sense to me. If someone was interested, they'd say something. If they're not I'd save both of us a lot of embarrassment by just not saying anything.

I guess that's not fair though. Because the guy could be going through the exact same thought process.

But in the end, I think I know my answer to that "who makes the first move?" debate: it doesn't matter. Because I'll know. When I meet someone that's so amazing that it would be more painful being without them than to risk the embarrassment of rejection, I'll know. Or if they come to that same realization before I do and ask me first. Really, the timing doesn't matter. What matters is that something is there to make you want to risk it all. Not how they look or what they say, necessarily, but them, who they are as a person. At least, so far as you can tell.

See, that's one thing that a lot of the blog posts and forum discussions were taking as a given that I'm not so huge a fan of: walking up to strangers in bars, or cozying up to acquaintances at parties seemed to be two popular contexts for the "first move." But I prefer my eleven-year-old brain's dating model. Okay, so being thrown into a magical adventure together isn't very likely, but I'm still a fan of that other part of my story: the friends that gradually realize they feel something more for each other.

I don't think I'd be very good at dating. I suck at playing games and pussyfooting around the issue. I'm all for just saying whatever the hell you think, laying it out there in the open. But I don't know that I'd do that with some stranger in a bar. I'd go way too slow for the stranger in the bar, because they'd probably be looking for a hook-up, while I'd be all like, "Hey, let's hang out for a while and get to know each other..." Well. Unless he kissed me, and then all the thoughts in my head would bumper-car into each other and ricochet around, so I'd abandon logic and reason and thinking and just kiss him back instead.

I'm not making any sense.

So there's a person. I don't think it's anything but my overactive imagination, but I haven't exactly been helping things. I freeze up when they're around. I go quiet, almost glacial, which is not at all my intent. I need to remember to smile more. Eye contact, all the articles said stuff about that. But again, this isn't fitting with my ideal relationship model... I don't know the guy outside of work directives, so I don't even know that we'd get along.

So. Forget that last paragraph. The point is, I'm thinking about all this stuff. It's really confusing and annoying, but I guess everyone has to put up with the confusing and annoying stuff before they find the person they end up with.

God, I hope I end up with someone. (And I say that both in a taking-the-Lord's-name-in-vain kind of way and in a fervent-and-sincere-prayer kind of way.)

Preferably someone who doesn't have a tail and whiskers.

Tuesday, May 7, 2013

Hug

I got my hug.

I was at the library today. It was crazy busy. Not only were the crying babies and A.D.D. tweens out in abundance, but the computers kept freezing, and I had 4 days of emails to sort through, most of which were about meetings I needed to attend, powerpoints or flyers or posters I needed to make, deadlines I needed to be aware of, etc. Eeeek!

So I'm wading through all of this while trying to be patient librarian-lady with the children camped out on all six of the computers, playing some sort of make-your-own-movie-star game where they could chat with each other from their different screens if they used a password and username (I swear that's what was making most of the computers crash, but whatever). And one of the girls - I've seen her in here before but I can't remember her name, and I know I didn't do anything particularly helpful or nice for her today - just walks up to the desk where I'm sitting, squinting at an email like I do sometimes when I get tunnel vision, and she grabs me into a sideways hug.

"I love you, Miss Grace," she says, and I am surprised, and touched, and at a loss for words. Finally I manage a sunny (if befuddled), "Did you have fun today?" and when she nods I add, "I'm glad." And with that she leaves, and I turn back to my email, but I don't really "turn back to my email." Because my eyes are on the screen but my mind is still on the hug.

I think about yesterday, and that big, ugly, angry, sad, confusing lava of loneliness roiling inside of me, erupting out in the form of that blog post. Like a wish. Well, today it came back to me, transformed into something beautiful, totally unexpected and unearned.

Remember, children - no, actually, remember, adults; the children seem to have no problem with this - WISHES COME TRUE. Sometimes. And sometimes is enough.

Monday, May 6, 2013

Oh Silly Little Wild Thing...

...roar your terrible roars and gnash your terrible teeth and roll your terrible eyes and show your terrible claws...

"And Max, the king of all Wild Things, was lonely and wanted to be where someone loved him best of all."

Loneliness isn't weakness. And all my diluted references to Biblical proverbs ("a cord of three strands is not easily broken" or "as far as the east is from the west") are a little too obvious, but still right.

I'm a 27-year-old but I still think like a child. Or like a monster on an island, all raw emotion and eager earnestness.

A long walk and a clearer head, and I'm back here again to amend that last post. Oh, not all of it. I could still use a hug, but then couldn't we all?

The leaves outside my window are no longer golden. The sun's too low now in the sky for that.

I will meet true friends. I will tell my stories. I will find a way, or make one.

We can choose to be better. If I don't like something, maybe I can change it.

I'm reclaiming this day.

Lonely

I used to think it meant you were weak to admit when you're lonely. Maybe I still think it, but I'm admitting it anyway. I am weak. I am one strand. A good strong rope needs two or three strands, maybe more. I can do things on my own, but I'd like to not be alone for once.

I'd like a hug.

I'd like someone to notice or care when I'm gone.

I'd like someone who wants to share their life with me, and would like me to share mine with them.

I'd like someone who would fight for me, even if sometimes the thing they're fighting is me. Does that make sense? Like, I put up walls and barriers. I'm not just the princess in this fairy tale; I'm also the forest of briars and the big scary dragon, and it would be nice if someone realized I was in there and even after seeing the obstacles went to the trouble to go through all the defenses I put up anyway. I'd like someone to maybe think I was worth the trouble.

Part of this is me just being emotional because I'm on my period. (Sorry if that's TMI, but this is my blog, so I'm going to say whatever the hell I want.) Part of this is because I just saw on facebook that a former acquaintance of mine, a childhood friend, has just gotten engaged. Part of this was waking up and realizing that I can count my close friends on one hand, and that a good half of those friends don't really care about me; I'm just a diversion, a something-to-do to pencil in on the calendar, a sounding board for ideas, opinions, and complaints, a yes man to provide validation.

I feel very lonely. I feel very alone. I really, really want a hug.

Does that sound needy? I don't really care. I don't even care about romance, not really. I just want a friend, a real friend. I just want to know that there are nice, genuine, caring people out there in the world, that not everybody is a selfish asshole.

But that's a lot to ask. I mean, I'm a selfish asshole. Maybe we're all selfish assholes and just terrible, small people. Broken and twisted and strange.

As I'm writing this the sun is shining through the leaves on the branches outside my window, and it's this beautiful gold filtering through the green, and it's the kind of light I remember from my childhood. It's the kind of light I associate with wonder and adventure, with innocence and endless possibility. And it is so very strange to see that light and to feel what I am feeling now. It's like, those two things can't possibly exist together. They are as far apart as the east is from the west. This despair, and that golden, aching, brilliant sort of promise.

It's not a hug, and it's not a friend, and it's not someone who cares. But I've stopped crying, so that's something.

Saturday, May 4, 2013

Dido

My dad's birthday was last week, and he's a very hard person to buy gifts for. Usually he's happiest (and we're least offended) when he gives us a list and we just buy him stuff from it, because then he gets what he wants and doesn't insult our choices or turn right around and return them when it's stuff he wasn't planning on and doesn't like. (He doesn't do well with surprises). So... I got him a Moe's gift card, and my Mom ordered him a bunch of stuff offline, including the new Dido CD since he's a big fan of hers.

Well.

My Mom ordered 2 CDs in the same shipment, one for him and one for Oma (her mom) for Mother's Day. She was so preoccupied with getting Oma's CD packaged and shipped that she has no idea what became of the Dido one. She turned over all her normal hiding spots to no avail. And knowing how he is about wasting money, she didn't want to just turn around and buy him another one then have the hidden one show up months from now. So she told him what had happened and we all had a massive hunt, and still nothing.

Well, I was at Target on Wednesday and they were having a sale on the CD, so I figured why not? I got it and hid it in this copper container that Mom got from some catalogue and uses as a magazine holder on the table next to her chair in the den. I slipped her a note telling her where it was, figuring she would know the best way to "stumble upon" it and let him know we'd "found" it. I was thinking she was going to do it immediately, like, that night, but no... a couple days go by and we still haven't had the big Dido unveil.

I asked her today if she'd given it to him and she said she couldn't find it. That she'd emptied the whole container, went through magazine by magazine (which was unnecessary; she should have been able to see it looking down from above), and that it wasn't there. While she'd been going through the container she found a bunch of stuff she didn't want anymore so she tossed that out. We even pulled that stuff out of the trash and it wasn't there either.

We were hoping Dad had found it and just hadn't mentioned it to us. But he just got home from reffing and seemed confused when Mom asked. "Don't you think I would have told you if I'd found it?"

I am so pissed off. And a little frightened. Because to my mind this means one of two things: either my memory's completely messed up and I didn't do what I said I did (because I can literally see it there. I even went back and double-checked it was still there. I know I put it there!), or Mom's memory is messed up. Maybe she went and moved it somewhere else and now can't even remember she did that? I don't know.

I'm considering going to the store and buying a third Dido CD and putting it directly in his hands. Or waiting until he's at home, and walking into the room with it in my hands, and just lying and saying I found it somewhere.

Bloody fucking hell.

I have a migraine, and I'm pretty sure my period's about to start, so neither of those things is helping my mood right now, and then this? Seriously? Somebody just find the fucking CD already and get this over with!