I’ve got people who see straight through me.  I was starting to think that my robot armor needed work.  Turns out I’ve just got good people.  People who see my flaws, point them out, and then we laugh about them.  People who get to see the wicked inner workings because I let them, and they don’t run.  People who tell me that sarcasm is awesome, that I’m not “bitching,” I’m “talking,”  and that think it’s endlessly amusing when I lose my temper and stomp around because they know it’s going to end with a snort.  People that fill every box of my calendar with laughter, love and liquor, who feed me when they know I’m too busy to take care of myself, and who don’t shut down when the robot goes offline.

Who ever would have thought I could look at so many people and say “You are my person.”

I think there are only two reasons to write:  To work out shit in your head or to document.  I used to do both.  I currently do neither.

Working out your head space seems a terrifying, daunting task when most of what’s in your head space is painful and sad.  I used to be able to keep the lid on the box but lately I feel like it’s overflowing and I have no control.

There is no documentation of the last few years of my life.  There are scatters of pictures here and there, saved emails and text messages, facebook status updates that are mostly in code and have been ruthlessly edited.

I’m trying so hard to forget everything that has gone wrong.  Believing that some day I’ll wake up and not be astounded that things could turn out this way.  Waiting for the day that it doesn’t seem novel that there are still people that exist that want nothing but the best from you when the people that you loved want only the worst.

I was reminded of this website and spent a few hours cruising around only to realize that I have felt this way before.  Why does it seem so insurmountable this time?  If history repeats itself shouldn’t it be easier to file it away each time?

When does getting hurt get easier?

That’s all I’m at liberty to say about *that* situation.

how to blog by tony pierce

Yes, absolutely, and fuck yeah I agree.

Except that post every day part.  I can’t even manage to eat or shower every day.

I talk to my friend Mikey via Skype every few weeks.  We always start the conversation the same way, “HI!  What have you been doing?!”  Despite the fact that I talk to him more then some of my in-town friends something about the distance, he’s in Kazakhstan, means he gets away with that question.  I always answer the question the same way, “Same old, work, study, drink, sleep.  Repeat.”  Even when I remind myself that next time I will say something different it always comes out the same.  Work.  Study.  Drink.  Sleep.  I suppose that I could add in I also eat a large quantity of wings and develop crushes on many inappropriate boys, but that’s just the spice of life.  You take that out and I’m still happy with what’s left.  There’s nothing about that rut that makes me worry.  I could sleep more and drink less, but that wouldn’t be any fun.  I could study more, and work less, but then I couldn’t afford any fun.  I seem to have reached some sort of rut-sweet-spot where until I’ve heard it fly out of my own mouth repeatedly I don’t realize I’m in it.

I like it.   A++ Would recommend.

1 - THE List is sadly out of date and needs a refresher.  But I already sleep 6 hours a night and my couch is feeling neglected so we’ll see when that occurs.  So much has been crossed off and so many more adventures have been dreamed up.  The fact that I have no memory of writing that last post is evidence of why I have to keep a list on the internet to keep my life moving forward.

2 - A friend reminded me today that NaBloPoMo is around the corner.  (For us November is around the corner because we are currently booking activities deep into October due to busy schedules.)  I shall be setting myself up to fail for the 4th year in a row!  Where’s the prize for that?!  The NaBloPoMo badge from last year is still up, THAT’S how on top of this I am.

3 - The syllabus for my Anthropology class has made it clear that quality writing in the form of essays will be expected.  I can’t even write on my own website about my own life!  Facebook status updates and Twitter have combined to pump my ADD to the max and make anything longer then 2 sentences feel like drudgery.  Yes, I went back to school.  Because clearly sleeping 6 hours a night and never having time to clean the bathroom demands more activities!

Every time I hear the song “No, It Isn’t” by +44 I know I made the right decision.  All three manipulative, controlling and selfish scumbags that I have kicked out of my life in the last few years are the reason this song hits me in the chest.  I could write a paragraph on why every line describes exactly how I’ve felt.  Except in our cases “foreign dressing rooms” are my bedroom, a cheap motel room, and a sidewalk in downtown Phoenix, respectively.

Lucky for me, that sound you make that feels like pain?  I don’t have to put up with it any more.

___________________________________________________________________________

Please understand
This isn’t just goodbye
This is I can’t stand you
This is where the road crashed into the ocean
It rises all around me
And now we’re barely breathing
A thousand faces we’ll choose to ignore

Curse my enemies forever
Let’s slit our wrists and burn down something beautiful
This desperation leaves me overjoyed
With fading lights that lead us past the lives that we destroy

I listen to you cry
A cry for less attention
But both my hands are tied
And I’m pushed into the deep end
I listen to you talk but talk is cheap
And my mouth is filled with blood
From trying not to speak
So search for an excuse
And someone to believe you
In foreign dressing rooms
I’m empty with the need to

Curse my enemies forever
Let’s slit our wrists and burn down something beautiful
This desperation leaves me overjoyed
With fading lights that lead us past the lives that we destroy

Curse my enemies forever
Let’s slit our wrists and burn down something beautiful
This desperation is leaving me overjoyed
With fading lights that lead us past the lives that we destroy

Please understand

Lay rotting where I fall
I’m dead from bad intentions
Suffocated and embalmed
And now all our dreams are cashed in
You swore you wouldn’t lose then lost your brain
You make a sound that feels like pain

So please understand
This isn’t just goodbye
This is I can’t stand you

I never took that Solo Road Trip I spoke of in the last entry.  And maybe it’s just as well.  There wasn’t love to return to, that’s just what I had to tell myself to justify the nightmare I lived in.

After everything I went through growing up, after the pain of cutting off a relative, I can only look at myself in disbelief that I allowed a man to treat me that way.  Who the fuck was that girl?  And how do I make sure she never gets to make the decisions again?

I’m too good for this.  I was too good for him.  I’m too good for the people taking his side and putting me in jeopardy again because they refuse to see evil in a friend.  But what does being good get you in this world?  Being the better person really just isn’t as much fun as hurting people as badly as they have hurt you.  Does the fact that I still won’t hurt people, even when they have hurt me, make up for any of this?

What makes it stop?

I was searching for something on this site today and was reminded how much fun I used to have writing it.  It’s always been a place for me to get out the bad stuff, remind myself of the good stuff, just declutter my brain so I could enjoy life.  The ability to use this place as a tool got away from me some where.  I feel like I’ve been in Survival Mode for too long.   And now I can look back and see that I did it, I survived.  I beat the anxiety brought on by my Uncle and Mom having cancer.  I survived a stroke and 9 months of probing doctors testing for all sorts of other horrendous health problems.  And hell, I’ve almost paid off all that probing!

Last year as soon as I was strong enough I left this town for a weekend of alone time.  I needed to fix my head, plan for the future I hoped I would be given, and remember how to have fun again.  I needed to prove to myself that I could survive on my own in the most basic way.  I took off to San Diego and ran myself ragged soaking up new sights and the familiar ocean.

I look at this picture now and I don’t recognize that person.  I remember wasting away from the medications and the bed rest, but I don’t ever remember looking that sickly.  I don’t remember why being near the ocean, and driving up Pacific Coast Highway wasn’t enough to make me crack a smile.  I vaguely remember having to cut my hair off because it was falling out, but I don’t remember how short it is under that hat.

I’m ok with not remembering.  If giving up this site, if ignoring this outlet, has helped me heal from the last two years in a way that the pain feels far away, then it did it’s job even in it’s absence.  I know that there is a years worth of pictures to go through, and I put it off.  Today I don’t look anything like the girl in that picture, but I don’t look anything like the girl I was before the stroke.  I’m not sure I’m ready to see a year of transformation.   I also know there is a year’s worth of writing directed at people in my life that is extremely raw and painful.  Sometimes I think of transferring that here, to keep the history intact.  But I wonder if maybe the fuzzy memory of this time is best left just that, fuzzy.  What I need to do to keep it in the past and yet rectify the historian in me will work itself out in time, I trust that.

In a few weeks I take my Annual Solo Road trip, and I’m returning to San Diego.  I’m excited to go knowing how much progress has been made, and that I don’t have to worry about my physical ability to go alone.  And most of all I’m blessed enough now to have a life and a love that I know I will be anxious to get back to.

I’m doing my annual cleaning.  I have this thing (Some people call it mania, whatever.) where I can’t just clean a little.  I have to clean a lot.  I have to scrub things.  So I generally avoid cleaning if at all possible.  Hosting two parties in the next two weeks necessitates cleaning.  So I’ve spent the last three hours cleaning my bedroom.  Which is ridiculous because all I do in there is sleep.  How could it have possibly taken three hours?  I have no idea.  And I still have the office and the bathroom to do this weekend.  These will be a nightmare as they are where I spend most of my waking time and holy god is that bathroom gross.  But in the mean time I thought I would keep track of some things I’ve learned about myself during this process.

- For a girl who lives in Phoenix and wears flip flops 98% of the time I own a SHITLOAD of socks.

- Also, a completely ridiculous amount of hats, scarves, and gloves.

- I think I skipped the blinds last time I cleaned.  At least I hope I did.  With the amount of dust they had on them it is amazing that they had not crumpled to the ground under the weight of all the filth by now.

- Even when the cleaning beast grabs me I am still way too afraid to sort through my craft supplies.  That thing is not being opened until I have a week to kill.

- That is also true for the scrapbooking/photo closet.  I am so not going there.  What a wreck.

- It is completely possible to derail my cleaning efforts for hours if presented with Indiana Jones movies.   Oops.