measured in verticle inches

Do you ever have those mornings where once you get out of bed nothing else is easy? Not having trouble getting out of bed, but upon leaving your bedroom being suddenly sapped for energy and ready to return and stay? I'm currently having one of those. Oh yeah.
So easily distracted and uninterested in it all.
Oh and did I mention theboy called from NZ? Do I even have to mention? It was really good to talk to him blah blah blah but then after that I didn't even have to get drunk to feel like I have a hangover/got hit by a truck in my sleep last night.
well, I'm a dipshit, what can I say. And also this is officially the world's weirdest "breakup" (yes it deserves quotes. it is not all in my head. I swear. I hope) I mean. why does every conversation end with "I love you"? whats up with that? I keep making ultimatums to myself about moving on or (how stupid is this?!) what to say to him when he comes back (oh yeah. in a year? or more. I'm such an ass)
Do you ever do that (I say that like other people read this thing. I have some ego today, let me tell you) ? I mean, plan a conversation, or plan responses to imaginary questions? Sort of get your story straight or provide your own imaginary witty banter as you get ready for your day (imagine: putting on your socks and having this conversation "what? oh these socks, hah, my mother made them. they are very fuzzy but quite warm. yes yes so funny" as if anyone is ever going to ask you who made your socks--but if you, too have stupid imaginary dialog, you too should try blogging!)
But anyway, yeah. I have this list of things I want to do, and indicators that I am generally an ass when it comes to making decisions that relate to men (case in point: mr.goodbye-i-don't-owe-you-anything, whose cell phone I paid for for three months after our breakup, who I loaned money to so he could break our lease (losing me the security deposit, which of course I had paid in full for us both) and who owes me money to this day--I try to forget about that one most days, but he certainly was a series of lessons learned).
I don't even know if any of the plans are worth it--am I just trying vainly to make myself worthwhile? How lame is that? I wish a dinosaur would eat me.
But the conversation I like to pretend I would have with Theboy goes a little like this
(him): I missed you! I want you back!
(me, all calm-cool-collected): oh i don't know, I've grown so accustomed to not having you around.
(him, obviously frantic and repentant): oh no! please take me back!
(me, kind and sad): well you see, there are things i would like to do before i get seriously involved with someone again. i need time for myself.
(him, dropping to the ground in despair): is there anything i can do?
...yeah, i know. fantastic isn't it? my imagination is rather trite today. maybe after that last bit he should get eaten by a dinosaur. put him out of his misery.
too bad i am too vengeful to be "kind and sad" like the script calls for up there.
also i've never been referred to as "calm cool and collected" either, save for in my little fantasy- mind-scripts. I'm more likely to attack someone with a spoon or cry uncontrollably. oh well.

whipped up

Okay, hi there, sorry.
Its been a long little while. I have been lazy and introspective and reading too much shameful genre fiction. But I get like that sometimes. Some weird combination of sudden (long-planned) abandonment and the cold of winter are making me want to hibernate, huddle under covers and not move much, possibly for a month or more.
However, I am trying to resist the urge. Besides all the delectable genre fiction I've been reading (and ordering from amazon and waiting with baited breath for) I have also signed up for a new activity (Karate) and gone to dinner at a friend of a friends house (generally when offers like this come my way I say "no" with very little pause, but I figured I really ought to make some sort of effort not to hermit myself forever). So I think I'm doing alright, thank you very much. And so far Karate is very cool. I have almost no skill whatsoever, but I am going back tonight in the hopes of learning more. Soon I will be kickass. Or something.
On the missing/ leaving frontier, he left and I miss him--but it has been suddenly nice to see / know that he is going to miss me too, and that he was ultimately sad to go (there was a whole lot more crying than I expected at that final farewell--not all of it mine, for a change). I've actually gotten several updates from him since, which I hadn't really expected--I mean, the lack of communication was one of his reasons for not wanting to be together during all of his travels, and yet he hasn't been gone a week yet and I've already gotten both a phone call and email from him. Its nice. But we're still "broken up" or whatever, so its not that nice I guess.
Why can't things be less complex? I don't want to be the wait around girl who is all faithful in the manner of a puppy dog until he gets his crap together and comes back. But I don't really want to not either. Grrr.
Enough about the boy--all I can really worry about right now is me.
I have this problem, you see, with being insanely early for things.
I get out of work at 4. I have Karate at 6 about 1/2 way home. So it doesn't really make sense to drive by it and go all the way home for the scant hour I would actually have there before I had to leave again to go back, right? But it doesn't really make any sense to get there an hour early either. I'm still working on how this one will work out. I think I might go to the gym on this campus before I leave today--only I took the bus in from a satellite lot, so I need to first figure out how late that bus runs so I don't have to walk the five miles to the parking lot in freezing weather. I guess the walk would definitely ensure I wasn't super ridiculously early any way.

woops

amazing how lazy i can get sometimes.
Thanksgiving was good--lots of food and just my little family.
Well, my sister's boyfriend came, but they're pretty much attached at the hip these days so it wasn't unexpected. Also he's kind of a blender--he just sort of sits back and doesn't say too much so it is easy to imagine he's just part of the woodwork I guess. He's supposed to spend christmas with us too this year.
I told the boy (my boy, who is so not my boy, obviously, since he is leaving me and not looking back in a little over a month now, but who I persist on still thinking of and treating as though everything were hunky dory and we were totally going to be together longer than six weeks. I'm such an ass) about how Mr. woodwork is going to come to christmas and he was sort of amazed--probably because in the recent past its seemed like our relationships (my sister and her bf and the boy and mine) have been rather parallel, but obviously they are not at this point--I'd like to think maybe he was feeling a little left out but I think he was really just thinking "what is Mr. Woodwork doing breaking in on their christmas?"
It was a weird weekend because of our whole odd dynamic--I didn't hear from the boy until late in the day on Saturday (I don't call him anymore--its a rule of mine that I doubt he knows about--so I hadn't heard from him since thanksgiving). He was hung over but we were supposed to be having dinner with a bunch of friends of his. I suppose they are my friends too--but honestly this time around it didn't really feel like it. Maybe it was just the state of mind I was in, but it felt like a lot of pulling back, a lot of "she's walking the plank there boys watch out"--I didn't say much and kept contemplating getting completely blitzed, but I didn't really have the guts to do it. He stayed in town with me and hung out on Sunday and maybe he got the hint that I was feeling like I had the plague--he kept trying to be comforting and at the same time avoiding the subject.
I kept wondering, all day--did we have things in common? Were there things that I thought were indispensable about us? Not about him, but about the combination of the two of us? I know he is singular and unique and wonderful (in his special special-ness...haha but really) but why do I think that he belongs with me? Do I even think that any more?
I can't figure it out. I feel like I've been through my stages of grief on this--bargained and made lists and cried a hell of a lot for so many different reasons--and he is still here and I can't quite figure out where to go from here. sometimes I just wish he would leave already I guess so I can get on with what is next. And all the time part of me is scared about what is next because I know him and I don't want him to go, even if I can't figure out what it was about us that I used to think was worth mourning.

I have a thing for reference books

I’m starting to wonder if I am going about things in the right way.

I did things pretty quick early on: I went straight from high school to college, straight from college to graduate school, mostly on the urgings of my parents--both of whom dropped out of college at least once and were concerned that if I didn’t get it all done quickly I would never finish even a single degree.

My four years of college were done at a state school fairly inexpensively--except for a semester exchange to England, which was expensive (but not something I’ll ever regret--I loved the traveling, learned a lot from it, and the study abroad was a great way to get out and do it). But my graduate degree (which I finished in 10 months because I was terrified of how much it would cost me to do in the recommended two years) cost about three times what my undergraduate degree did, and I am going to be paying back those loans for quite some time.

I think, if I had it do to over again I might not have jumped so quickly into a graduate program--with a little more looking around I probably could have found some way to not foot quite so much of the cost (I got a couple of small scholarships, but the rest of the money came in the form of loans).

When I finished my graduate program I had two months of being unemployed and worried about it during which I immediately refinanced my loans (and thank goodness I did--I managed to lock in a 2.6% interest rate for the lot of them, which dropped a full percentage point this year with my 36^th on-time payment). I went on three interviews and took the first job that was offered to me--making slightly less (before taxes even, gah) than I held in loans for the first year, and getting a 4% raise the year after to make about what I held in loans the second year.

When I got the job I had a pretty serious boyfriend who was a pretty serious waste of time. We had been together in college and somehow I never noticed that he didn’t have much of a work ethic or moral compass--we didn’t have many classes together and he was just so cute and different from me that I sort of glazed over the bad things for the first year we were together. When I went to graduate school he went to work at a private school, as a coach, and got himself fired just before the end of his first season. I was shocked and horrified, emotions that deepened when he went on to blame his behavior and sacking on everyone around him and take none of the blame for himself. We had fight after fight about petty little things that I’d never noticed before, but ultimately we managed to keep it together for the year we were apart.

Which turned out to be a mistake when I got a job and we moved in together.

We had lived together for our last year of college, so I knew what I was getting into, but I had hopes that things would be better--because we weren’t in college anymore, and I wanted to believe that we could be adults now, and clean up after ourselves among other things. Our apartment was decently sized--we got a cheap two bedroom and so had a whole room to use as “storage” --I wanted it to be an office eventually but it was really nice to just have a room to throw stuff in when I didn’t want to look at clutter. It was furnished with a combination of things we had had in college, thrift store finds and things my parents had given me. He never seemed to be able to close a cabinet door or actually throw away any of the packaging for things he ate--and he ate a lot of pre-packaged crap, all of a sudden. He would eat a bag of chips for lunch, or buy those gas station cinnamon buns and eat one for dinner and the other for dessert. I had no idea who he was. I was a vegetarian and pretty serious about health and health-conscious living--before, in college he had at least made an attempt, but now there was something seriously wrong.

While I was working my first professional post-graduate gig, he had gone back a step and gotten a job doing some seasonal work at a local ski hill. Although I wasn’t making much, he was making considerably less than I was, and he knew that his job had a definite expiration date. I started writing all the rent- and living- related checks so that he could build up a savings--only he didn’t, he just bought more crap: videogames, top shelf alcohol, pizza and other food that would be delivered, and several different controlled substances.

When I confronted him about the lack of savings--when he asked me to cover a couple of months bills it was so that he could save up and start looking at graduate school for himself--he raged at me that since I made so much more than he did (kind of an exaggeration, actually, but it was at least a steady pay check) I should be supporting him, it was only fair.

And then I kind of lost it. Even though he was still cute (though at this point a little pudgy), without the filter of college we didn’t really have all that much in common, and it occurred to me that this wasn’t really a relationship I had to be in, or wanted to be in.

I started writing lists; its what I do when I need to clear my mind and think seriously about a decision. He found one such list--I think he may have been poking through my stuff at the time, since most all of my writing was in a single notebook--and a couple of days later we had a huge fight followed by several days of tense silence and then his announcing that he was leaving me, had found a new apartment and would be gone by the end of the week.

I think he expected me to protest somehow, but I didn’t. it was a huge relief.

Then he asked if he could borrow $200 for the security deposit.

I loaned it to him--I should say gave it to him, since to date he still owes me somewhere in the neighborhood of $500 for covered rent, security deposit and a cell phone plan that included both of us.

It was quite a learning experience.

Anyhow, when I got that first job, our “plan” was that I would work at it for three years--long enough for that interest rate to drop, and for the two of us to save some money (I have a feeling he still hasn’t saved any money, but I haven’t talked to him in something more than two years at this point--mutual friends say he just had to drop out of graduate school because he owed the school too much money) and then I would quit, or take a leave of absence if they would let me, and we would travel for a year. Because I loved to travel, and he had never been out of the country. With our break up I decided I still wanted to stick to the plan--that I would work for three years, save as much as I could, and then take off for a year of well-deserved rest and travel.

But then I started actively hating my job. I didn’t really realize right off that I was being taken advantage of--I was working 6 days most weeks, sometimes until midnight or one in the morning, I was the office “snow policy” because when the breakup had happened I had left the 2 bedroom apartment behind for one that was ¼ of a mile from my job. After a couple of months of keeping this schedule I started to sort of look around and realize I’d put myself in a hell of a position. So I started using my late-night stints at work to look for new opportunities. I found one and applied for it, but when I did my second interview (the first was a phone interview, so I didn’t get to see the place until the second time around) I realized that the office culture was much like the place I was already working, so I decided to stick it out.

Then, as often happens, I met a guy. A good one this time: he was a vegetarian, health conscious, interested in a lot of the same things I was: organic agriculture, sustainability, zombie movies and post-apocalyptic fiction. And he was working in a similar field…two states away.

We started spending the weekends I wasn’t working together, and I started looking for jobs in the same state he was in.

I found one, and when I interviewed, mid-way through my second year at my first job, I discovered that it was perfect. So much more laid back, so much more time-flexible, so much better paid. I interviewed three times and then the manager called to tell me they had decided to go with someone else.

I was heartbroken. I called the boy and sobbed. He tried to consol me, wrote a very nice email about how he planned to be with me a long time--even though I was still two states away--and that he had started looking at jobs in my state as well.

It was so sweet and gave me renewed hope.

Then two days later the manager called again, to ask me if I might still be interested in the job. Something had happened with the first choice candidate, and she said if I didn’t take it they were going to re-open the search and get a new batch of applicants. I accepted on the spot.

I let my old manager know he was about to be my old manager and he took it really well and gave me a really decent time table for the transition.

I didn’t take any time off between jobs, I finished on a Friday, moved over the weekend and started the new one on Monday. And it was good. The people were nice, the pay was decent and the hours were fantastic.

It occurred to me at this point that I wasn’t going to be able to stick to my timetable: it would be almost impossible--I liked it and I had only just started. I couldn’t give it up after only a year, it just seemed unthinkable.

Plus it felt a little like things falling into place: a great guy, a great job, a great new apartment, though not with the guy--we had agreed that that was too far too fast--but everything was pointing toward our continuing to be serious, moving toward having a future together.

But then of course, nothing ever stays that way for long.

The boy in question has let me know he is planning on moving on--going to New Zealand for awhile, then traveling around a bit after that possibly. He’s not sure when he is coming back so he thinks we should break things off. He thinks we’re in different places right now: that I am settled and have a career, and that he just wants to travel for awhile.

I want to scream and shake him sometimes.

But part of it is right, I have sort of fallen into a career--and I’m wondering--am I going to feel like I’ve been trapped here? Am I going to regret not chucking it all and seeing the world while I’m still in my 20s and all my joints work properly?

Its just hard to know right now.

soft shoe

Okay so I suck. When I am not making some inane attempt, I am generally cracking wise to all and sundry, thinking I should really be writing this shit down because I am secretly brilliant. And then I go to write it down and the Big Fat Sads hit me and all I can write about is how some stupid guy is leaving me and blah blah blah. For chrissakes--do you think I’m going to get over this anytime soon? I hate the Big Fat Sads. I used to indulge in them a fair amount as a teenager--I was anti-color in clothing (shades were fine: black, white and grey. No color though. Not on my watch) and would have been wearing the big black eye makeup and such were it not for the fact that I grew up in rural Maine and I never learned how to put on makeup at all (seriously--I am a no-makeup person. I had friends who tried to teach me in college, but they would put it on and 15 minutes later I would have smeared it off--I’m really bad at most of the grown-up-girl-stuff). And I thought sad was probably the best of all the emotions. I was always sad about something.

So I think I may have wasted all my sad back then. Or possibly the summer after my freshman year in college, when I indulged in clinical depression (don’t worry, I think it was mostly situational) for a couple of months. So now I am all “sad sad sad” flailing myself around and then in mid-flail I suddenly realize how ridiculous I am and how stupid it all is: to be sad over a boy? Wtf? Okay so he is leaving me, okay so it isn’t going to work out in typical fairytale fashion. Did I really think I was that person? I mean, yeah today I wore khakis to work, but I am generally just about a half-step above streetcrazy as far as appearance goes, so how in the hell did I expect to “normalize” and participate in the mating games of civilized society anyway? Because that’s the thing: he totally made me feel like we were doing the “normal” thing, that there was a flow and we were following it, that everything was as it seemed and that that was a good thing. And so I’m all romanticizing life and imagining continuing normalcy and it turns out I was some sort of diversionary tactic prior to his world tour. Shit. And its one of those things that starts to freak you out, not in and of itself, but because you’ve been building your little romanticized worldview and as it gets pulled down around your ankles you suddenly realize that its cold out there without it and you can’t figure out how to keep warm anymore.

It reminds me, very pointedly of the most worrying part of my ramble around Europe in college--my aunt and uncle came to visit me in England, and we palled around for a weekend--did all the expensive London stuff I couldn’t afford to do on my own, went to visit some friends of theirs in Kent, that sort of thing, and then the time came for us to go our separate ways--and I had been traveling for over two months already at that point--I knew my deal, knew what I was doing and how to go about it, but when I left them at the train station I was suddenly terrified and uncertain about anything and everything--I felt abandoned and alone, because I’d been a kid again--a part of a group, a follower--for that whole weekend, and then I was jumping back into being in charge of myself again and it felt so totally foreign in that moment I wasn’t sure I could do it. But of course I did: when you haven’t got any other options it makes things pretty easy I’ve found. You do something because you have to and its just that simple. Which is where I am right now I guess. He is leaving me and I am all wrapped up in my Big Fat Sad but I’ll get over it because I have to: I just don’t have that kind of tragedy in me anymore. And I never did learn the proper way to do that eye makeup (I would still like to learn that I think--I do think it is fabulous still, to this day).

slack attack

Okay so I totally slacked off this weekend on the writing side of things: I lounged on Saturday--well, I did the bare minimum necessary to keep up; the usual round of bank-post office-bookstore (okay so usually that’s grocery store, but I had paperbacks to get rid of and there was a Nor’easter going on so I needed new reading material). And then I made a bunch of stuff out of apples (I had a shopping bag full of apples in the basement that was about to be unusable, so I made applesauce and apple dumplings and finished them off).

I did a fair amount of laying around feeling sorry for myself, which isn’t really a good thing. I had a ticket to go to an event at the Expo--a sort of showcase of locally brewed beers that had sounded good at one point, and at the last minute (Saturday afternoon, for an event that was Saturday night) I decided I really didn’t feel like going and looked on Craigslist to see if I could get rid of it--and I did manage to make a little profit above getting my money back, which was something anyway.

Obviously I need a specific time dedicated to this little practice if I want it to continue, but I am (as always) having trouble setting aside the time or finding the time to set aside or whatever else I can blame it on.

And now I am kind of “eh” on it, because I haven’t done anything in two days--so why start now, right?

Heh. Yeah, I’m in trouble.

There has got to be something I can do to get this under control, right? It doesn’t seem like anything is totally under my control lately: my boyfriend is leaving me (breaking up with me) to go be Mr. Adventure because a) it “doesn’t seem fair” to him for me to wait around and b) he is not sure he will still want to be with me when he gets back. And its horrible, terrible awful because I loved him before but now I am all hyped on his unavailability on top of everything else and so angry that he is doing this to me: that he can’t see any other future for us than breaking up, that he can’t love me enough to try and make a long distance relationship work for the time he is gone when I am having trouble figuring out what a future without him is going to look like. I feel helpless and tragic and hate it. But I can’t seem to hate him, which is a bad thing. Since he is in the process of getting ready to leave me--cut me out of his life, replace me with something and someone new and all that jazz. Bastard.

And somehow I keep trying to find the funny--find some other stuff to hold my attention and help me deal and instead I keep coming back to this: I can’t understand why he doesn’t love me. What is wrong with me? It’s a horrible place to be and I can’t seem to get out of it.

down down down into the cake of eternal glory

Doorways archways, openings. These things give an idea of movement, of natural forward progression that I can almost feel. I will move beyond this: I will get out of this room safely and easily and move into the light space outside that opening.

Only not today. There is a drag on my movement today, a mental pause that precludes movement and may in fact make it impossible.

I don’t want to see anyone, talk to anyone, be with anyone.

I don’t want to have to explain.

I feel so unlovable, so bereft, so alone. You would think I had been abandoned already, only it hasn’t happened yet. Maybe it is the worse for all that: to see and to know that there is a person who claims to love you, only not enough. Not enough to stay, not enough to even make an attempt at keeping in touch at backing up what he says: if he loves me then how can he just be leaving? He can’t prove he loves me because he doesn’t. it’s the only conclusion I can come to. The only way it makes sense.

How do I prove so unworthy? How can I still be alive and be so unloved? What did I do wrong?

I want to cultivate a broad sense of the ridiculous, if only to attempt to keep a flame of humor alive in my skull. The darkness is blinding, isolating. I don’t want to know or speak to anyone. But maybe I can look, maybe image can sustain me.

There is a man outside striding around in the parking lot wearing a tall chef’s hat. It’s a peculiar thing to see, and he looks quite proud, I imagine him listing his credentials in his head as he walks, shoulders squared to some imagined chef’s convention or get together at 10am on a Friday morning.
And this makes me smile. I personally would love to have the nickname “Tripsy McStumble” for my very own some days.

I am, sadly, coming to the realization that I am rather accident prone. I’ve gone decades without knowing this, but it seems that lately whatever it is that can happen in a bad-news-bears fashion, it happens to me: a broken wrist, a fender-bender, a slip on the stairs, a fractured heart and ego, a spilt bowl of batter for cake or banana bread or pancakes. I don’t know how it happens, or why, but it just seems to keep happening to me.

I’m trying not to dwell on it, I really am, but it keeps coming up.

Despair just keeps finding me--I am trying to see the good, the absurd the life around me, but my mind just wants to go back to bed and listen to Tool for the rest of the day.

I really thought I could be more upbeat than this. This is not really turning out the way I had planned at all.

Such is life, as my father would say

I guess it can't all be fun and games, but why does that part have to come first?

Day one. Start at the beginning.

There is no beginning. This is an obvious middle, or even potentially an ending, for some things. But it’s the first day of a new month. That is new, that is beginning-like. So that’s where we are.

I want to get up early but I can’t seem to actually do it. I have this idea that waking early is a morally responsible thing to do, that it is the kind of thing that will eventually turn me into a good person.

I want to be a good person.

But I can’t seem to get up early. My alarm goes off three times and then I lay there and think about how much sick time I have, or think about how much financial responsibility it will take to put me into the independently wealthy category of life.

It is going to take a very long time, and is a depressing thing to think about first thing in the morning.

These are my personal roadblocks. I seem to be totally unmotivated from the get go, from the beginning. This beginning, this first day.

Add to this a need and craving for human comfort and you have someone ready to slide into sloth, to climb under the covers of cozy mediocrity and rest on the laurels of work already done and hide her head in the pillow of self aggrandizement until late afternoon or middle life.

But there is a seed of me, a piece of me, that rebels. That begs for difference, for change, for progress. For writing. And getting up early in the morning.

So I set my alarms, all three, require wakefulness even if I cannot require uprightness first thing in the morning, and I hope that it will engender other things, other changes, other pieces of potential motivation.

I can only hope.

Its November first, and things haven’t changed very much so far. I was late for work this morning, I did not get up early and write or run first thing like I had hoped to do last night, but I am writing now, and I’m out at the desk which is a new something as well.

Little changes, baby steps. Maybe tomorrow I will make it in on time. Maybe tonight I’ll go running.

He’s still coming over tonight. He’s still leaving me in December. He’s still going down to Boston to visit an ex (roommate of mine, old fling of his. She is married. They are friends. We are friends. This should be fine. Why isn’t it fine?) tomorrow. Too much of me is still emotionally tied to him. Too much of what he does still matters, still hurts. I had a fond few minutes the other day, when I had partially gotten over my anger at his sudden need to see her, where I daydreamed that he was going down to see her so they could go ring shopping. So he could say “surprise! I am not really leaving you to go adventuring, instead I have decided I do really care about you and want to spend my life with you!” this is sad and delusional I know, and also is not happening. I do not live in a romantic comedy. Sometimes I may wish I did, but I do not. The best I can hope for is that the movie of my life isn’t a tragedy, as much as I don’t want to get out of bed some days.