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.

Due to migraine induced narcolepsy I have failed NaBloPoMo.  Third year in a row!  Woot!

In celebration of not feeling like ass today I have:

-Watched One Tree Hill and Eli Stone.

-Caught up on some blog reading.

-Organized part of my bookmarks folder.

I think next I might clean off my desktop.

Once again, jenallday.com, proving that 86 year olds who are actually 27 lead the most exciting lives ever.

Woot.

I’ve been pretty busy this week, so I guess to counteract this I have spent this entire Sunday either sleeping or watching TV.  I’ve barely left the couch.  And it is awesome.

Unfortunately tomorrow starts what promises to be something of a hell week, kicked off bright and early with some blood work.  I don’t mind needles at all, it’s the fact that I’m only allowed to eat for twenty more minutes that is annoying me.  Fasting blows.

So, if you need me I will be stuffing my face in the kitchen, or on the couch.

I’m pretty sure I’m allergic to beer.  This is upsetting.

I’ve been living a pretty busy life lately.  I’m waiting for this to catch up to me.  Which is sad.  I’m tired of being old.

I hiked this morning.  It hurts.

That is all.

No really.  I was  a mile down the road and had to come back to write this jewel.

Hi.

This is out of hand.

Bye.

It’s just past midnight and I should have been in bed hours ago.  These days in order to avoid getting to run down I have to stay on a schedule, just like a baby.  Or the elderly.  Neither of these is a fun, or appropriate, category for someone my age. I’ve kept myself awake too long reading things I’d written years ago.  Is it weird that reading my own writing can make me cry?

I’m pretty sure that I’m in a hole, surrounded by the walls, all snuggled up in hermitville.  It’s weird, I didn’t quite notice that I was here until I read some old writing and saw myself in what I used to consider the dark times.  I’m alone in my house a lot, but most of that is out of my control.  But shouldn’t I be more miserable about it?  I don’t want to reach the point that I’m comfortable shutting out the people in my life and this feels like the slippery slope.  I’m not unhappy, but maybe I’m just used to it.

When we were kids I wore two watches, one stopped on the date of your birth. You kept the pocket watch hanging from your rear view mirror set to mine.

Neither one of us has a watch anymore, but last night I saw your special time on the clock and thought of you.