diary – Page 9 – A Most Unreliable Narrator

a music historiography of boyfriends past

Dear Internet,
Sirius/XM 1st Wave was rocking out today with their hour long Halloween mix, which I then was pumping through my stereo and singing along badly. Somehow this pushed me down the rabbit hole to generate a Spotify holiday playlist of (mostly) punk, pop, rap, ska, and other non Michael Buble artists. Tada! So below is 12.5 hours of holiday music to get you in the mood.

When TheExHusband and I returned to the cabin from our errand running this afternoon, and I had finished building the holiday playlist, this seemed like a damn fine time to import 100g (not including new stuff I’ve picked up recently) into iTunes so I can play my own shit at home without necessarily relying on Spotify or Amazon. It’s been so long since I’ve looked into this dark corner of my nas, I was truly clueless to what was hiding in there.
The lack of playing music at home has nothing to do with not wanting to listen but the relative ease of using Spotify, Pandora, YouTube, and buying mp3s from Amazon/iTunes. Why should I pull up my mp3s of Elbow when I can stream all of their albums in Spotify? Why should I track down a CD when I can buy the digital album via Amazon?
Long live physical media. Physical media is dead. (Except for vinyl. Shaun Cassidy for the win!)
When I was packing my stuff within the recent years, I found one of my old mix tapes (yes, on cassette), from 1992 or so? I would have been driving at that point (I got my license at 19) and more than likely driving the inherited mumsy’s old Cadillac Cimarron. So about ’92 or ’94ish? One side of the tape was “Manic” and the other was “Depressive.” Aren’t I clever? The tape is packed somewhere amongst the ruins of my material life thus the track listing is escaping me. That is probably the only physical evidence I have of my early music mixing youth.

Making mixed tapes, from cassette to CD to Spotify playlists, is part of my DNA. If I love you, platonically or romantically, you’re getting a mixed tape. I became more active in making said tapes when I made one for TheBassist in ’05:

(TheBassist confessed when we started dating last year that over time, as he swapped from computer to computer, he made sure a copy of that mix was always with him and he played it constantly during the last 10 years. You can imagine I was flattered like hell.)
TheEx and I would exchange mix tapes during the course of our relationship:

For the first holiday with TheEx, I created a holiday mix, which I also gave to people who wanted a copy:

I know I’m definitely not alone in using music to convey my feelings. I once read somewhere those who use music to pontificate their emotions was due to their inability to vocally articulate said feelings themselves. Articulating feelings is not a problem for me as I have nearly 20 years of my life on the internet, but I use music to manage those feelings and it’s freeing. It’s much more satisfying to dance manically in one’s living room to a pounding beat over chewing thoughtfully on a pen after you scribe. Amirite?
Roping back to listening to 1stWave (or any station really), it’s been particularly hard these last few weeks and years. While I’m driving, I often find it difficult to listen to a particular tune without wanting to flip everything off or pound the steering wheel in fury or having tears well up. It’s not necessarily just the recent string of my lovers but how I associate music with people, places, and times.
(It doesn’t help TheEx and TheBassist are the same age so of course I bonded with them on the music of our youths, which is primarily played on 1stWave. The dicks.)

I was just outside. The stars are shining bright and the gods are talking to me through the tree tops again. I thought writing this would exorcise some of the feelings associated with these songs and I think I was wrong. It’s hard when nearly every memory is easily accessible via music and it all feels like yesterday. It’s been nearly 20 years when TheExHusband and I first dated, 10 years since I met TheBassist. Nine years since I met TheEx. Those three were, in various incarnations, my heart for a very long time. And now, now, all of that music is just a burning bright reminder of where I’m at now. I feel like I’ve been handed a big bag of memories and it’s up to me to sort through it all, donate some to charity and keep others. I forget at times they may be going through the same thing themselves, but fuck’em.

For the last ten years, I’ve been banging on about my life is High Fidelity. I am the female Rob, something I had in my dating profile long ago and what wooed TheEx to contact me. The following fourth wall monologue by Rob resonates how I often feel:

What came first, the music or the misery? People worry about kids playing with guns, or watching violent videos, that some sort of culture of violence will take them over. Nobody worries about kids listening to thousands, literally thousands of songs about heartbreak, rejection, pain, misery and loss. Did I listen to pop music because I was miserable? Or was I miserable because I listened to pop music?

This post has been sitting in my drafts for a while I thought it would interesting to pull up the music from my exes and talk about the influence the songs (and them) had on my life. Memories at the push of a button.
TheExHusband (1997-1999, 2008-2014)
TheExHusband and I reconnected earlier in 2008 right after TheEx and I broke up. Seven to eight months later, we planned a get away weekend which we refer to as The Great Bang of 2008. We were glued to each other’s hip for nearly seven years and it’s hard to narrow just a few songs to encapsulate our relationship.
After we got married, I created a wedding mixtape and here is why those songs still resonate with me, about him, today:

Every couple has an “official” song, usually some Michael Buble remix or regurgitated emo bullshit. We have Edward Sharpe and The Magnetic Zeros, a band we both gravitated to after hearing them on All Songs Considered. Lyrics can be found here and YouTube is here.

Granted, this is not a typical love song by a long shot but Idiot Wind is off of TheExHusband’s favorite Dylan album, Blood on the Tracks. This album was one we listened to on repeat on one of our second first dates back in 2008 and it is also one of our mutual favorite tracks.

“Intergalactic,” the single off of Hello Nasty by the Beastie Boys, was released in the summer of 1998, right when TheExHusband and I started dating the first time. According to him, I listened to Beastie Boys, Lords of Acid, Sarah Mclachlan, and Afghan Whigs nonstop during that period. Since I was not, for the sake of the story, sober for most of that period, I’ll take his word. In 2009, Justin bequeathed me an art poster based off of “Intergalactic.” I knew based on the first few lines of the song, and the history behind it in regards to us, had to go into the mix. Video is available here.

In the world of pop and rock music, one of the definitive albums that is still seen as the holy grail of influence is the Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds. Any kind of music critic, if apparently worth his or her salt, will name check this album in their review at least ONCE, regardless of the song/album/band/genre they are reviewing. Most of my die-hard music friends also name check this album and agreed that yes, one should at least have Pet Sounds in their repertoire. For Christmas 2008, I indeed received Pet Sounds as a present from TheExHusband. “God Only Knows,” in stereo not analog, is included in the mix. Again, with the stupid still photos with musical background only available on YouTube or terribly edited live version, there is only lyrics, which are available here.

“The Sausage” is an obscure track sung by an obscure calypso artist, Baldhead Growler. It’s become an in-joke of sorts, where one of us will randomly start singing this song for no particular reason other than it’s fun and raunchy.
TheBassist (2004-2005, 2014-2015)
When TheBassist and I got back together, he gave me a run down of all the songs he had compiled over the years to express how he felt for me. This seemed like a good time to put together a playlist of songs that resonated and represented how we presently felt about the other.

Interpol’s second album, Antics, had just been released and we were both ga-ga for the band. We quickly proclaimed a particular Interpol song for the other. Mine is Slow Hands about him, his is Obstacle 1 about me. I once had a t-shirt that said, “She can read, she’s bad.” Both songs come up, still, frequently on alternative stations and it should be no surprise they drag up a lot of feelings.
We thought the ultimate pinnacle of our relationship would be to see Interpol live. We never did go.

This song, by Elbow, is the tale of a female drug addict, but to me the song represents/ed what a twat TheBassist had been when he dumped me back in 2005. It still resonates today.

This song, and another one that is not on the list and is escaping my memory right now, is the best description of how he felt about me during all of those years. The yearning, the love, the everything broke my damned heart when I heard them for the first time.

Doves was/is a band that came along the same time as Elbow (they know each other in Madchester) and this song, which is apparently about nothing, was heavily played when TheBassist and I met the first go-round. It was also included on his 2005 mix tape.
TheEx (2006-2008)

If Interpol was TheBassist’s and I band, Bloc Party was mine and TheEx’s. We traveled often to see shows across Michigan and to Chicago. A Weekend In The City came out a month or two after we started dating and we caught their tour that summer and I still stand by my declaration it is one of the best concerts I have ever been to.
This particular song was chosen because there is a Brighton, MI, a city you pass on I-96 as you travel to Detroit. We would crank this song up on high as we roared past because we were, more often than not, driving to Brighton for the weekend.

I’m a big fan of shoegaze and apparently I missed out on a lot of American bands who were the forefront of the movement during the early ’90s. The American Analog Set is one such band and this song was on one of the first CDs he made for me.

Snowden is a relatively little known indie band comprising of one guy but who has a backing band when he tours. TheEx got me hooked on him and when I was one of two up for a gig at AMG, I interviewed Snowden as my assignment for my interview. As you may have noticed, I did not get the job.

Another single TheEx put on of his earlier mix tapes. He must have known one day I was going to become a librarian.
Derrick (2004ish)
Derrick was an old co-worker of mine at UUNet, who I found out a few years after I left, had a big crush on me. That crush turned into a romance that didn’t last terribly long (six months or so?), but we parted on good terms. Within the last year or so, Derrick got in touch and mentioned he thought of me fondly and has been slightly kicking himself for letting me go after he was diagnosed with MS. We are super friendly with the other, BFFs on Facebook and all that rot.

Derrick is a huge ska/punk fan and every time I hear this song, I think of him.
Patrick (1996ish-2004ish)

Patrick and I knew each other forever (hence the 1996ish start date) but didn’t really start to date until around 2003 or so. We split for a number of reasons but still remain(ed) friendly. He’s married now. Within the last few years he said something along the lines that while he still loved me, he found it too hard to be friends. I get a happy birthday from him every year and that’s about it.
ExFiance #2 (1999-2002)

ExFiance #2 and I parted on good terms and were friendly for a number of years after the breakup. BUT since he’s been married (and has a family of his own), he’s been talking shit about me across the Internet. Why? I have no reason but I’ve had several of our mutual friends confess that what he was saying didn’t match up with how I actually was. Men.

Relationships may come and go, but I will always have my music. Just press play.
xoxo,
Lisa

This Day in Lisa-Universe: 2013, 2001, 2001

hapax legomenon

Dear Internet,
I’m procrastinating terribly. I have to finish (well, to be truthful, start) my homework for How Writers Write Fiction 2015, I have a review to write for Nerd Underground, I have a few reviews I need to get up for No Flying, No Tights. PLUS! I have to possibly do some homework for a coding project I’ve been working on (waiting to find out if I’m in the group needing to complete this or not), prep for NaNoWriMo, Plus look for jobs, do yoga¹, shower, and god knows what else I need to do today.
It doesn’t help I didn’t wake up until nearly 13:00.
My sleep has been off kilter these last two weeks and it shouldn’t come as any big surprise. I go to bed at a reasonable hour but getting up seems awful and terrible. I want to cozy down with Teddy² and sleep the day away. But I get up eventually and do my things.
But today I procrastinate.

Monday I received a phone call from a local university if my references check out, they will be scheduling a phone interview. An email showed up today with the available times. I whooped and hollered about said email. I’ll be back in Louisville sometime this weekend and fingers crossed (and other appendages) I get this gig. The tuition remission is amazing: Up to 18 credit hours a semester. This could mean I could go for a third masters in Art History, or Writing, or something else completely. I can get a third bachelors in Italian or French. I am salivating at the thought.
Obviously, I need another degree.
Leaving my last position was of my own making, which isn’t really a determent on how I feel about the last 18 months. Really. But if I get this gig, that app would have been 160th CV I’ve sent this year. If I don’t get this gig, I’ll start applying in January when the academic cycle starts again.
I’m more thrilled at the thought of living on my own! Paying my own bills again! Having money to buy things! You know, all the good stuff.

Several of TheBassist’s friends got in touch with me in the last few days and well, it’s been good for my soul to sort things out. Some things were confirmed about what I assumed and made a small tear in my heart. But he has been adamant with them, and with me, I was his one and only and I take small pleasures with that information. I’m not so angry as I thought I should be because as I said, I was also party to this game. I can’t fault him too much, though I have tried.
I said to one of his friends:

I love him and I’ll always be in love with him. But I fell apart (not because of him, but it didn’t help) and I need to gain my whole self back. If he comes back, he does. If he doesn’t, well, he doesn’t. And I’m ok with that.

At the crux of it all will remain true for a very long time.
Meditation and yoga has been helping, which is a big part of the reason I’m not flying around on my broom stick wanting to physically eviscerate him. I feel pretty good actually! Not the, “I will say I’m feeling good and I don’t,” kind but the, “You know life is pretty okay at the moment. This was a temporary set-back and I will recover from it” kind.
What is bothering to me, and I think is worthy to be bothered about, was his direct request to tell him when I disappear from his life (which I took to assume he meant off of Facebook — because you know, it’s my “preferred method of communication”). So I told him. And the way Facebook works, much like texting, you can see if someone read your message or not. He hasn’t. I’ve been banished to the otherworld, much as he did to me before, much as he did to the women pre-me. As I mentioned this in previous posts, I get the radio silence — I’m his “kryptonite.” He often reiterated he could quit a lot of things but he couldn’t quit me. He even alluded and remarked on the break-up call he’s not too bright when it comes to leaving me alone and we very well could pick up future endeavors.
I write to understand, to look for patterns, to soothe my feelings. I will have to accept it is what it is and not anything more. There are a million and one reasons he said what he did (to break it gently, to be cruel). I hope not to continue on this path of naval gazing in regards to him. Not much more can be said or done at this point. I’ve aired my dirty laundry, I’ve done what I can to soothe myself on the past, present, and future.
Plus, I promised Krazy Kate I wouldn’t turn this from a post here or there to a fucking book.
So there’s that.

I’ve started to get excited for the Louisville move. It will be nice to see my things again, have my clothes in drawers and hung up in the closet. To unpack my books, put together my Lego MINI, to have a desk again and not sitting on these hard ass barstools as I’ve been wont to do these last two months. (Two months! Jesus.)
Louisville is becoming a lovely city, everything Grand Rapids is slowly becoming. There are a lot of active groups around town, a great music scene, bourbon, and great food. There is, of course, my requisite Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s (someone has to keep me up to cookie and cocoa swirl cookie butter. Delicious with pretzels).
TheExHusband lives in a condo downtown, which makes getting to a lot of things by foot. He’s around the corner from the soccer stadium, we caught a few games this summer, which also cheers me up. Plus the food. Did I mention the food? One of my favorite breakfast places ever is located on the first floor of his building.
So while I like Louisville but not really love it, it will be a good chance to kickstart my life. Which is more than I could ask for.

NaNoWriMo kicks off on Sunday and I’m going to wholeheartedly do it this year. (Ignore the 13 years, according to my profile, I have tried to “win” and never did.) I’ve been working on my Edwardian mystery during the Writer How To class and I’ve learned quite a bit on writing, structuring, and plotting. The first chapter, or so, sounds loads better than the first draft I started all those months ago. I’ve been plotting, in my head, how I want this story to flow and I think, hopefully, possibly, I can get it kicked off again.

I stretched a truth, more about TheBassist:
He attempted to argue, and I disagreed, he’s not a factor in my life. He’s holding me back. But knowing him, as I know him, if he check’s up on me, and see’s everything is going swell in my new locale, it will cement his desire not to contact me. He would be a determent to my life, he’d think, and I vehemently disagree on, even with his bad faults I swung around like a bat, there is so much he has given me; he IS a part of my life and I’d want him to share my success with him and hopefully we could work out the downsides.
Wishful thinking.
xoxo,
lisa
P.S. 1. Yoga circuit is as follows: Circuit 1: Greeting post, mountain pose (30 seconds each, rotated through 3 reps). Circuit 2: Superman, cobra, hare, diamond, and dancing shiva poses (15 seconds each, rotate through until completed 3 reps). Circuit 3: Shoulder/pec stretch (30 seconds each, 3 reps) and calf stretches, each leg, 30 seconds each, 3 reps.
2. Yes, I am a 43 year old woman who sleeps with her 40 year old teddy.

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This Day in Lisa-Universe: 2013, 1998

one is called love, the other is spain

Dear Internet,
Happy St. Crispian’s Day!

I’ve been obsessed with Eurovision since I was first devirginized by its gloriousness, in 2010, in Amsterdam. I try to catch it every year and if you follow me on Twitter, I give great commentary.
In 2013, Lithuania had a great entry:

The song makes absolutely no sense:

If you don’t know I’m in love with you
When summertime falls It becomes untrue
Because of my shoes I’m wearing today
One is called Love the other is Pain

When I first heard the song, I conflated “pain” for “Spain” which to me sounds a whole lot better.
(It’s been brought to my attention the shoes reference means he walking away from his love or walking towards her. Still doesn’t make sense, which means I enjoy it even more.)

Sitting in my drafts is an entry I worked on all of Saturday night. Prior to writing that, I had read and re-read my paper diary entries and they were all repetitive of the same thoughts:

I had lost my self-esteem
I had lost my self-worth
I had lost my dignity
I had lost my confidence
I had given up my own power, willingly

What is interesting is what i’ve lost had no bearing on me going forward. Yes, I was emotionally exhausted and tapped out, but! I got up everyday determined, but struggling, to make it through the day. I take showers, I yoga, I meditate, I apply for jobs, I do my homework. Nothing externally is slacking, but internally I was dying. I was dying for a long time.
The realization of how much I gave up or lost is sobering. How did I get here? Why did I let things happen the way they did? Why wasn’t I control of my own life? It was far easier, I thought, to let others make decisions for me rather than making my own decisions. I let the world dictate who and what I was nary a thought this was harmful to me, to others, but especially to me.
Back to that draft.
I tried to be angry like I was all those years ago, because the end result was the same: He made a unilateral decision to break it off with me on the pretense he was not a factor in my life. Just as he did in 2005 when he broke it off the second time after I told him my mother was just diagnosed with cancer and we were in the midst of chemo, he broke it off when i needed him the most.
That part stung.
But what made me so angry was at myself for not tossing him into the wind when he did the breaking up this time around. No. No, I cried. I cried and held his shirt, that smelled of him, close to will him to come back. I cried, when there were no messages in the morning, willing him to come back. I cried when certain songs came on the radio because I was willing him to come back.
I cried a lot.
And talked to myself a lot in addition to writing in my paper journals. Working shit out of my head. That’s when I started coming to realizations I posited at the beginning of this piece: I was soo fucking angry at myself more so than him breaking it off with me. I stomped around for awhile and silently screamed to get the aggression out. This lack of everything was not me. This was certainly not me. I willed the anger to come thick and fast so I could erase him out of my blood. I cried to TheExHusband every day – how fucked is it another person who proclaims I’m the love of his life is comforting his ex-wife who is still in love with someone else? Who walks her through the stages of denial and grief as they happen? He’s either a saint or a madman, I haven’t decided which.
I needed to get my dignity back.
TheBassist said I could spin this anyway I wanted to make myself feel better; I could vilify him because it “always happens” (I don’t know if he meant me in particular or his ex-loves). I cried I could not vilify him or spin this anyway but all of this was my fault and he was not in the wrong. He couldn’t trust me to save his life because “the plan” kept changing. He didn’t know what was going on from one minute to the next. Which is a lie in itself: the plan never changed and I told him everything as I knew it.
Hoo boy. Was I ever deluding myself.
To sum: He’s a man child who wants the “big love” (as he calls it), he wants “the one” (as he calls it), and he wants all the trappings and delightful things that come with that love. He will tell you women always dump him and he’s never the dumper. He will tell you he doesn’t want anyone who doesn’t resonate. He will tell you a lot of things to paint him into a pretty corner of his own making.
What he won’t tell you is he can never be single too long, he always needs a partner, and I’m betting it won’t be long before he’s on a dating service, despite the fact he told me, “if I can’t have you, I don’t want anyone else.” What he won’t tell you is a lot of those relationships overlap and I know as I was one of them, twice, as he was spinning these tales of great big love to me while he was involved with someone else. What he won’t tell you is that he spun those tales to other women I’ve known about during the years and I was not the only one. What he won’t tell you is that he vilifies his exes, even the rare ones he’s friendly with. What he won’t tell you is one of his best friends convinced me he was cheating on me this time around. TheBassist threw that back in my face about the cheating comment I had said all those months ago. I just — don’t get how you can throw “love” around so easily. I’m the love of your life but you can never be single or not “fall in love” with every woman you sleep with?
He will tell you he, “did his best.” He will tell you, “I kept breaking his heart every time I left and he never knew when I was coming back.” He would tell you, “we were on pause, we’re always on pause. I wait for you, it’s what I do.” He will tell you, “I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop and for you break it off with me.”
What he won’t tell you is I worked my ass off to get to him when I could but lack of money and no job was the hold up. I had to cut my visits short because I ran out of money and had to go either back to TheExHusband (as a friend, not a lover) or when I had my own apartment (pre-paid for a year when I got my divorce settlement. It was decided by everyone involved it was cheaper, and mentally easier for me to live on my own rather than try and find a place in CT), which made me even more depressed about not being with him and I choose him over making myself whole.
What he won’t do, when the shit hits the floor, is stick around, like an adult, and work on the couple problems. What he won’t do is take criticism about him seriously or even try to defend himself. He locks down and shuts up so the problems, the arguments, the pain, the shit that comes with the other side of relationships is placed in a box and you look like an asshole.
What he won’t do is stop accepting handouts from his family, and me, and get a fucking job; he uses his depression as a crutch which drove me insane. You can go to school full time, play 3-4 gigs a month, but you can’t get a piddly part-time job to pay for gas and coffee when you don’t have any gigs? He’s all about “taking care of his business” but he spends any random cash he has on toys, not thinking about he may need gas or coffee in the future and gets angry when you point this out to him.
e.g. On my birthday we were out at the mall. He bought his children (two of whom have jobs) a video game. He bought me — nothing. Not even a card, handmade or otherwise, but when his children didn’t make him a card for any holiday, he was “devastated” and “heartbroken.” When I brought up the hypocrisy between how they treated him and how he treated me, he would muse that he “thought about it later about the awfulness” of the way he treated me but he never rectified the situation.
What he didn’t do was defend me. In the beginning, I was the “Michigan girl” the one who everyone knew about, even his exes. None of them were me, none of them loved him like I loved him. None of them got him. But when I started breaking down, when I was a hot mess and I kept leaving and WHY I was leaving he never told them; his friends started turning away from me. I saw burgeoning friendships disappear. When I pointed out what was going on, he said he didn’t need to explain anything to anyone as it was his business and not theirs. I saw the look in their eyes when we did hang out with some of them. I was a terrible person for doing what I did and how dare I break the heart of a man so beloved by many, but hardly, if any, knew what was going on because it was easier for them to disparage me rather than understand me. I felt awful and even more of an outsider. I felt on guard. I felt like a pawn in his game.
His friends will tell you he is a great guy. He’s one in a million. His friends will tell you he will do anything for them. They will tell you all these great qualities about him. They believe in this guy, they do. He praises them constantly when he was down himself. When all was said and done, they were there for him.
I understand that but I don’t/didn’t understand is why he kept throwing me under the bus.
They were never in a relationship with him. Their perception of him and their knowledge of him is vastly different than mine of him.
He dumped me over Facebook. A year together and I get dumped over FB. When I called begging to be taken back, a moment of weakness on my part, he was contrite but then said, “Well it’s your preferred method of communication.” No? No. I’m a phone girl. I am an old. We used to Skype every night and if not, phone calls. We used messenger and texting as a method of touching base during the day. Not for deep conversations. Are you fucking kidding me? I sniffled through “I couldn’t bear it you date someone else!,” and his reply was, “Then stop following me on Facebook.”
It seemed wholly unfair he could follow me or check on my life, unbeknownst to me, on how and what I’m doing, but I could not interact with his or had to take what he was doing, “going on with his life.”
To that end, I unfriended him on Facebook, archived our conversations so I don’t have to see them, and deleted all of his texts. I am in the process of moving the zillion of pictures of us/him to a folder far far down in my NAS so I can forget about it.
To be fair, there were a few lines of “to be fair” about him; but not today. Today I don’t want to think about his random positive and good things he has done. Or my own fair shake in this. No. This needed to get out, to be said.
Last night, I unfriended him, but sent him a message he know how to find me. Today I am angry. Tomorrow this may all change. Tomorrow I may be contrite and wish I had never said these things. Tomorrow, I may feel the repercussions on what I said. Tomorrow I will love him with the light of a thousand suns and yearn for him to come back. Tomorrow I may hear from him he’s never coming back. I may be angry or relived or sad.
Love is like that; I will, of course, be devastated, hurt, confused, and pissed off. But that is how life rolls and that is what you work towards: happiness, wholeness, togetherness. You don’t throw that away because your life is “too stressful” or because you don’t want to deal with the problems.
But today! I will be angry. I will take a shower, yoga, meditate, and I will apply for jobs.
But right now, I will angrily use a leaf blower, use a hack/chain saw on wood, and throw the wood into the wood chipper.
Now I will start to get my dignity back.
xoxo,
Lisa

This Day in Lisa Universe: 2001

Who we are but memories that we create with others and memories that we create within ourselves

February 5, 2016: Another piece I started and never finished for — reasons? I can’t finish it as I have no idea where my brain was going when I was writing it.

Dear Internet,
When I got back from Rome in 2005, I wrote the following:

I’ve always talked about the fact that there are two Lisas — one that harbors the home and hearth fantasy while the other sees herself as jet setting across the globe. It’s difficult to reconcile the two, finding a place where I fit in without feeling claustrophobic. Someone once said that my own pre-determined destinies would only come true if I let them — as I had often remarked that I was going to end up being the old hag at the end of a bar, wearing my faux fur and jewels while slugging back vodkas and chain smoking, while regaling of all my love affairs with men that got progressively younger. On the other hand, there is the aging Lisa bouncing my grandchildren on my knee while regaling of all my adventures around the world.

At the Caffe Accademica, near the Piazza di Spagna, inside the putrid smelling bathrooms, graffiti was written by women from all over the world. I had wished I had a pen with me, to leave my mark on that bathroom wall, to note that “Lisa was here.” Who we are but memories that we create with others and memories that we create within ourselves.

Life is about ambience and adventure. Even when we got detoured from the metro the other day, our walk to Termini through Chinatown was an adventure. Our getting lost was an adventure. Life is nothing more than a series of getting lost from location to location and hoping to hell you can find your way back. It’s not just about the tourist sites and the souvenirs collected on your travels, but the impressions that you impart and take with you as you go. I wish that I had the photography training to capture the images of the people as we walked, because I wanted to remember the look of the lovers who were snogging besides us the restaurant or the old couple who walked happily down Via ottavio towards the Vatican, hand in hand.

xoxo,
Lisa
This Day in Lisa-Universe:

who knew, after all this time , what drew us together once could still be axiomatic

Dear Internet,
A more of Lisa, less her feelings, update:
I’m still taking my drugs but have added 1 5000 IUs vitamin D pill which is the highest dose over the counter. It’s long been thought insufficient vitamin D in the body relates to or compounds depression. TheExHusband, and TheBassist, both reported feeling better, especially in the winter months taking OTC vitamin D, so I’ve added that to my regime. TheExHusband’s mom, who has a degree in everything (and has the papers to prove it), reports vitamin A is needed to activate the vitamin D benefits, so a chewy multi-vitamin has also been added to my daily pill taking.
I see an APRN the second week of November in Louisville to help manage the crazy meds. Abilify has been in my regime since the beginning, and it’s been the cause of the slow weight gain I’ve been experiencing and prone to heightening anxiety so I want to swap it for something else. On the upside, I breathed a sigh of relief about the later as my anxiety HAS gone through the roof in the last year. Especially with my fear of driving. I’ve been dosing myself with Klonopin (all hail the makers of clonazepam) on a regular basis to help with anxiety, chaotic thoughts, and general impulsiveness. I haven’t used my credit cards and my driving fear has gotten a lot better as I’ve been roaring along the country roads with nary a thought. My rage has subsided significantly in the last year or so as evident that I’m not lashing out to people when I’m aflutter. I wrote four or five notes to one person, each one wildly different than the last but never sent them and probably never will. I’ve kept them away from any kind of sending mechanism so they are not accidentally sent via email to the intended recipient. They are a good reminder of control that a few years ago I did not have.
I’m still meditating and today marks day 108. I’ve worked through the anxiety pack, twice, and on to the self-esteem pack. I dig using headspace as after your finish the month long beginning packs, you can pick and choose what you want to work on next. I slipped in taking it seriously when I hit around day 80 so I didn’t feel like meditation was working, but I’ve doing it consciously and diligently the last few weeks. I feel calmer and slightly better.
During sex with TheBassist, I kept noting my flexibility was out of whack. He works out a few times a week, so of course his body is tight and gorgeous. (His health regime fed into my, “How is he with me? I’m all fat and flabby!” self-doubt. See meditation comment above to work on that particular aspect of my brain.) I tried bringing more exercise conscious when I was with him in CT but I failed to get anything going. That’s my own doing, not his. I was having hard time walking up and down hills (he lives in a very hilly area) as my back would get out of whack and start to spasm. Legs and ankle were doing fine but my back caused a lot of problems, even with our athletic active snuggling. The spasming started up again since I’ve been at the cabin where I’ve been taking long walks around the woods. I don’t want to have a cane so I’ve started doing yoga / stretching daily, and I’ve been at that a week. I yoga for roughly 30 minutes and then I meditate for 15 and I feel proud for having made that small accomplishment.
Speaking of TheBassist, I haven’t spoken to him since the break-up. A couple of things have come up that he needed to know about, so I’ve shot him emails but no response. His birthday also came and went during this period, so I wished him a happy birthday. I have no idea what the protocol is for such things these days as we supposedly left on good terms, but he hasn’t made a move to contact me so… I have no idea. But what is different this time around is I understand the radio silence on this end. He was exhausted from putting up with me and cutting me off at the quick is the best way to get rid of the stress. Maybe it is for the best, I am not terribly sure as I keep vacillating on my feelings. Grieving is natural and a part of what transpires when the love of your life leaves, but, so I give myself credit for not going into a massive manic/depressive mode. TheExHusband commented this morning I’ve been doing well in keeping my shit together.
What I do worry about, and this is quite often, is if i get my shit together – he won’t come back. (He could not come back, period, but go along with my train of thought here.) In one of his love notes across the universe not terribly long ago, he saw how great my life supposedly was without him and he did not want to interfere. I have no idea what he read or where, but he now knows about this journal and I’m not even sure he reads it. The point I’m ambling towards is on places like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, or any social network, it’s all, in a way, a facade. We just curate the best parts of our lives and show the world how awesome we are without the pain and suffering. But it is here, in this place I curate, I let it all hang out. My readership is small but I feel as if I’m talking to my best friends. It’s how I work things out with in my head.
It’s where I feel safe.
Thursday night I posted to Facebook,

I just went outside and the moon is amazing tonight. If you’re up, you should go check it out.
On a more sombre note, while I was outside dancing under the moon (truly), I noticed a little bird was dead on the deck. The west facing wall of the cabin is all glass, so it must have flown into it and died instantly. Little bits of blood was spilled under his teeny tiny head.
People are falling in love right this very second; dying this very second; being born this very second. I think about this a lot. Life is too fucking short to be angry or sad, it could end justlikethat. So tell someone you love them, hug someone close, and be kind to each other. Have compassion. Humanity. You owe it to yourself and to the world around you.
I love you all. Good night.

I’m afraid he won’t come back if I get my shit together and I’m afraid he won’t come back period. In that space, it is best to let him go and keep on moving forward for me and not for him. Memories of our time together are stop lights in my brain. I wonder if I did love him hard, if he loved me hard enough. If only I had not been sick all those weeks ago and we would have left at the beginning of the month as we had hoped. Or if he hadn’t ended it those weeks ago, I would see him tomorrow. I wonder what he’s doing and how his day is going. I have a calendar of his gigs and I know how he’s feeling on those nights and after the shows themselves. I wonder if he thinks he made a mistake after all that time he’s been in love with me (10 years!) and decided the dream was better than the real thing. I once commented to him he loved the idea of me and not really me as a person as I’m flawed just like the rest of humanity. What he got all that years ago was the good and never the bad or the ugly or the fucked up. Then it slithers on over to if he did love me truly all those years, why did he leave me at my most worst?
People of the internet, I have a lot of feels.
It’s pretty clear reading this over (and over again for clarity, grammar, and spellcheck), letting him go was the best thing ever. How could you want to be with someone who won’t hold you at your worst? There were a lot of things about him that were not, to put it mildly, awesome. But love is not rational ™. The heart wants what it wants. And it’s pretty damned clear I’m not at the best of choosing a good partner for myself.
Even though the stress of our relationship was heartbreaking, we’ve seen each other through a lot of things that would have broken up most couples months ago.
And yes, I hope he does come back.
In other TheBassist news, I thought I was pregnant. My period is nearly two months late. So, I do what came next: I bought a pregnancy test.
The test was negative. But for that split second of a millisecond, I misread the test results since this particular brand uses a control window next to the window where your result is shown. TheExHusband calmed my panic by reading the instructions more throughly than I apparently had and noted how very wrong I was. TheBassist, obviously, would have been the father.
The feels from that little episode were all over the place. TheBassist and I discussed once we were settled down and life was stable that we could consider having a child together. I want(ed) a little girl, as dictated by the generations of first borns in my family are biologically female. It seemed like a pretty good dream to have. I’m not so old I couldn’t carry to full term with zero issues (though the term “geriatric pregnancy” makes me snarl). But now? When I’m so broken and he is half-broken and full of student loan debt? We weren’t even on speaking terms. “Hi. I’m pregnant. Bye.” That would not have gone over well. I did not want to be forced into a relationship with someone because of a child.
I was/am 75% positive I would have aborted. (TheExHusband commented on the clusterfuck of a fuck this would have been. Did I not tell you he was the best ex-husband girlfriend ever?) That was sobering. Probably the once chance I would have had with getting pregnant and I would have to give it up.
xoxo,
Lisa

This Day in Lisa-Universe:

heavy like a loaded gun

Dear Internet,
First, one of my pieces, “Devil’s Advocate: Just Because I Divorced Him Doesn’t Mean He’s Not My Best Friend”, was published today at A Practical Wedding. I’m proud of this piece and as an update, after reading this, TEH said, “When you get married again, let me know so I can send you a gift.”
We may not get along romantically, and we’ve made those lines very clear recently, but I don’t know what I would do without him.

It’s a truth universally acknowledged when I start dragging out Elbow, some emotional shit has gone down. I’m not sure how much I’m going to reveal at this juncture (you can wipe your computer screen now), but it has hit me to the core. Just — when I’m now at my lowest point, things never do change, do they? I guess I can believe what I want, as it was reiterated to me, to make myself feel better but when the same thing said now as in the past to erase one’s own pain, well, despite all of my faults, you can’t argue the same thing was not done thrice.

Star Wars: VII trailer dropped yesterday and in honor of that, I wrote up my first experience with Star Wars:
“Ex-Fiance #1 and I met in 1994, I was working at a video store. He later told me he hemmed and hawed for months before asking me out, which lead to one of first dates watching Star Wars on laser disc because I was 22 and never saw the damned thing. Yes, the first time I saw SW, I was an old lady and it was on laser.
Over the years, we went from being together to not being together for a variety of reasons that I won’t go into now. As the relationship petered out, as they always do, we remained just plain old fuck buddies. Somewhere in between, he found a woman we referred to as Lisa-lite. She could have been my twin, the resemblance was that uncanny, down to some of her interests. I met her when my then boyfriend and I double dated with them. My then boyfriend looked liked Ex-Fiance #1. AWKWARD.
The midnight romance ends at some point and a few years go by. I’m working at a bookstore, putting myself through my first Master’s degree. Who but shows up one day is ex-Fiance #1 with a big smile on his face. He and Lisa-lite had gotten engaged and he tracked me down to tell me that. I was selfish sleeping with him for a very long time, but this was downright cruel. Almost unbearably so.
He then suggested since he bought her a black diamond engagement ring, I should buy matching earrings. He then left while I ran to the break room and cried for a solid half an hour.
Every time I hear the opening music to SW or read the opening scenes to episode IV, I start crying like a maniac. It’s slowed down considerably over the years, and I’m no longer (as much) of a crying mess. Whoever I’m going to see VII with, I come with tissues.”

Please watch your step, naval gazing ahead:
As I was writing this, it got me thinking about how I handled my romantic relationships of yore. First Miguel, who I had a thing on and off with for years, when beginning when I was 19 and he 20. He is living in Guam due to family business. He calls me one night, drunk, to tell me he has been fucking someone twice his age. To gain experience, he said. I was still the love of his life, he said. I went back and forth with him in-between other exes — always him telling me I was the one for him, me falling for it, and then him doing something awful. And as time went on, he stopped calling and I stopped having to defend my no’s. He contacted me in 2012 and again last year, which lead to an interesting conversation. (If he’s anything, he’s at least predictable. I’ll probably hear from him next year, as he will then be due to profess his love.)
Next Alan, who dumped me for another woman but kept coming back for more until that faithful night when I, at a bar, she and I got into a fist fight and I had to be dragged off and out by bouncers. He’s living somewhere in Detroit, married, has kids. He once got in touch with me back in the early naughts, about a decade after we had last spoken, to see how I was. “I think about you a lot,” he says. “I miss you,” he says. But then I never heard from him again. Of course.
Then Danny a few years later. We date for six months, I have a massive panic attack about being stuck in suburbia so I cut and run. I come back. I cut again. I come back. At some point we went down to just fuck buddies (see above) and he marries Lisa-lite.
TheExHusband. We date for 18 months. I run. He tracks me down nearly a decade later. We get married. He stops treating me like a wife and more like a roommate. I threaten divorce. Nothing happens. I leave him after nearly seven years. After the divorce, he’s been contrite as to why he was hurting me. We’re slowly building our friendship back together. We’re not dating, just very close friends.
I split up with TheExHusband.
TheBassist tells me he’s got me.
TheBassist. Hoo boy. We date in 2005. He cuts and runs and goes back to his ex-wife. He contacts me six months later, they have separated again. He leaves me again. Flash forward to nearly a decade. He’s been leaving me love notes across the Internet during that entire time. Everyone in his circle knows about the Michigan Girl. Even his girlfriends know during that decade of silence. I am a force to be reckoned with, he says. No one has loved him like I loved him, he says. He was wrong, he says. He made a mistake, he says. I am the love of his life and if he can’t have me, he doesn’t want anyone else, he says.
“I know she doesn’t remember me, since it was about nine years ago now, but in Grand Rapids I made a very large mistake with someone else’s very important organ. I chose what was safe over what made me happy, and I proceeded to reprogram myself. Grand Rapids became my codeword for not choosing love over security, a monument to my own cowardice.”
My life is shit. I’m no mentally stable. I have no job. I’m essentially homeless. I never not believed in us, I just never believed in me. I cut and run. I come back. I cut and run. I come back. In between all of this, I run out of money. Then he cuts and runs with the same reasoning as 2005: He made a unilateral decision on what was best for me rather than letting me make that decision myself on what was best for me. (And trust me, I begged and pleaded for him to not do this again. “It’s like 2005 all over again,” I cried hysterically into the phone. “It is and it isn’t,” he says.)
“Are you going to love me always?” I ask later. “You’re a piece of my heart,” he responds.
(This time, unlike other times, all of this is verbatim from texts and comments spanning the Internet. Memories are rotten bastards but at least this time around I have primary sources to back me up.)
I’m as equal as anyone in what went down, but, when I’m at the lowest point of my life, to leave? Again? (To be brutally fair, despite my anger at him leaving, he couldn’t take the back and forth. “We’re always on pause,” he says. “I wait for you. It’s what I do,” he says. But it just hurts beyond human reasoning he leaves when I am at rock bottom. I am no angle in this world of ours, and I get that. But that doesn’t make it any less painful when he said goodbye on the phone.)
I’m a hot mess and also human. In the past I’ve bent the truth, I’ve blown things out of proportions, I’ve been a bitch. I’ve had my share of moments. Life is a fucking chaotic mess. Nothing is black and white. There are blurred lines everywhere. I’m constantly at war with my own self-esteem.
There is never someone who isn’t as in touch with their foils, foibles, and feelings like yours truly. Jesus fuck, I’ve been examining the human psyche via my own life for years.
It’s intoxicating being told you are the love of someone’s life and in the case of TheBassist, to reply that was true from me as well. But what does that mean in the long run? Do you cut your losses when shit hits the fan? Do you work through the shit? Why aren’t there any concrete answers?
I’m in love with love, and I freely admit it. Who doesn’t want that kind of intoxication? And I’m more in love with TheBassist than in love itself. Fucking bastard. He of the big words, lightening intelligence, and fabulous hair.
(I am not terribly surprised my comment from above, “I’m not sure how much I’m going to reveal at this juncture,” turned out not to be true.)
I want to take responsibility for my own actions. I want to see clear-eyed for the future to really think about what it means to be in love, whether TheBassist and I end up working shit out or not. Because if he asked me to, I would do it all over again.
I want to feel to be the center of someone’s world. I want them to be there when shit hits the fan and when I laugh as they drive around cloverleafs because that simple act makes me happy. I want my own life and be the part of someone’s life. And even when I am at my lowest, I won’t stop believing that such a love exists.
And if it’s not him, and someone else comes along (much) later on, I will still take that chance, foolish me, to give it 1000% and to love big. Love large. And when my heart gets broken, again, I’ll pick myself up and do it all over again.
Here are my mediations on love. Die trying.
I still believe in love, so fuck you.
xoxo,
Lisa

This Day in Lisa-Universe: 2013, 2010, 2003, 2003, 2001, 1998

in flagrante

Dear Internet,
For nearly a year now, I’ve had a PLAN. The plan is an over haul of my person: mind, body, soul. Truthfully, there has been some form of the plan in existence for so long, I’ve lost count of the years. It’s always resolved around: lose weight, fix the brain, be a better person. To be the best Lisa that I can be.
Sounds like a thing for a person of reasonable intelligence to strive for. Enlightenment of the self. A soul not in torment. A mind not turboized. A body, at any weight and shape, I could feel comfortable in.

Saturday night, I had the most vivid sexy times dream. I cannot remember the last time I had a sexy dream; I’ve had a lover for over a year, I was with TEH for six years before that — it didn’t seem necessary when someone’s cock, tongue, and hands were at the ready for my pleasure to self-pleasure except when my lover and I were in flagrante.
I’ve shied away from my own sexual pleasures for fuck knows how long, that even with my lover I struggled to tell them what I wanted. A stark contrast to my youth where everything turned me on and I had no problems announcing what I wanted; fuck you if you couldn’t please me. I once joked I could flirt with a flower and get aroused. There is something to be had for enjoying the sensuality of the material world and of your own (and lover’s) body.
(I told my lover we were destined to be together because they’ve been the only person to ever manually get me off. Twenty odd years of being sexually active and only one who knew how to take me to my knees.)
But things change, as they often do. What used to turn me on, not so much anymore. What I found attractive seemed like I was supposed to be attracted to that thing rather than actually desire it. When TheExHusband and I lived at Throbbing Manor, I would silently cry when watching passion on the screen: I never thought that could ever happen to me. Again. A 1000 times. A million ways. It was/is frustrating when you know that you CAN do and be that person, but you’re paralyzed by what exactly? Sometimes I have all the answers and others, no.
I’m straying from the point.
So sexy dream. It was so intense I woke up, thoughts of my lover in my head as I remembered everything about them from the breadth of their shoulders, the feel of their hair beneath my touch, the grip of their hands on me. Their scent holding me close.
So I would do what any reasonable person would do: I masturbated.
The orgasm was quick and powerful, after all I had created a dream scenario with my lover in my head of such extreme, it was hard not to touch myself. It was hard to not want to feel their phantom body over mine. I caught my breath.
Then I rolled over and went to sleep. (What did you expect? I was alone.)
(I loved the part this morning when I got up and there was my cum all over my panties still. It verified I can be a sexual being when I was alone and not a dried husk.)
I cannot say that I felt like my sins being washed away via masturbation, but I can say something resonated in me, alone and fingers engaged, for the very first time in a long time. My body reacted to someone I did want, that I did desire. It reacted to me desiring me.
Something buried so deep began to breathe, little by little.
I was told recently I am extraordinarily beautiful. I rolled my eyes. In the not too distant past, I was told my body was so primed for my lover’s, they could get an erection sleeping next to me. “Just look at your beautiful body!,” husky words pushing me closer to them so I could indeed feel their physical truth. (We always slept naked. We would joke as we got ready for bed about our 2AM meetings as one or both of us would reach for the other in our sleep at that time every night. It didn’t matter how much sex we had before bed.) Yet another person unrelated to my sex life told me I was classically beautiful. Another eye rolling.
(I’ve also been told I have amazing skin for touch. At least I have that going for me.)
Is it my self-esteem that doubts these words? Yes. There is the confidence that for a fat girl, I can get much desire from many. On the flip, it was always down to, “But WHY do they want me? What could possibly make them want to fuck me, let alone hold my hand?
Silently, over the years the self-doubt grows. I’m too fat for clothes. My bras are beginning to strain. My flexibility is lessening. My hair is getting too grey. My skin is getting blotchy thanks to too much dairy eating, early life sun damage, and age. I worry that as I grow older, I will never feel body love, that if I end up truly single, finding a stable relationship would be near impossible and I would just have a rotating cast of lovers over the years of half-hearted satiation. You can always find someone to fuck, but real body love? Rarely.
I worry the AARP is going to be knocking down my door.
I live too much in the past, I live too much in a future that has yet to happen. I need to live in the present.
I worry about losing the now fragile desire of me.

After that erotic break, back to the plan. The image above is of the notes I took this evening after I meditated. It was typical the plan would live in bullet pointed Times New Roman, 12pt; but I wanted to engrave it on the memory rather than type it out and have it in purgatory on my hard drive.
So I wrote it out, making notes a long the way. Some of it is platitudes, others are sketches. No step by step, just be. Here are the things I want to do. In pen. More has come since I snapped that pic, the red brick covering what is not for public consumption.
Maybe this time it will finally sink in. Maybe this time I can move forward past the pain, the guilt, the self-flagellation for my crimes.
Maybe.
xoxo,
Lisa
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This Day in Lisa-Universe: 2010, 2003, 2001

home is where the…i have no bloody idea

(This piece is longer than I had intended so grab a cup of coffee or beverage of choice.)
Dear Internet,
I’m taking a break from working on the “How To Write Fiction” MOOC, and oh boy aren’t I in for a treat.
In the pre-week comments I stated I wanted to strip everything I knew about fiction and if the critiques I’ve received on my first draft are any indication, I’ve got a long way to go. (However the general underlying response was my first draft was intriguing, so I’ve got that going for me.) If I would have taken this class even a year ago, I would huff my work was perfect and the cleansing was not necessary. This time, I am not so angry that I’m throwing insults about “how dare they” around the cabin.
(Or maybe I’m still sedated from the Klonopin I took the night before.)
This is all prep work for NaNoWriMo, which I’m hoping will allow me jump start my novel, get a rough draft done, and so I can feel accomplished. I have plotted out some of the work, wrung my way through other; fingers crossed I’ve not created a hot mess.

I’ve started using marginalia from the British Library’s collection again in the featured image as it is in the public domain, it’s pretty, and because I can.

I’m still sick because my body is an asshole and has nothing better to do. I’ve started week three of a cough I can’t shake, which I think has more to do with quitting smoking and getting rid of the crap in my lungs than being actually sick. Whatever the case I sound like death’s rattle when the coughing fit starts with the bonus of learning how to spit like a man.
Sexy.

We’re now inching towards the end of week two of TheExHusband’s jeep still indisposed. It’s sitting in a parking lot of the local mechanic who, it turns out, is the only mechanic on duty. TEH is adamant of giving the guy business since the shop recently did super minor work for free. It’s frustrating and endearing at the same time, with the lean towards frustrating than endearing. All plans have been canceled as we wait to find out the status of the damned thing, so goodbye East Coast, I still love you.
I’m championing selling the piece of shit for scrap and buying a new/used car from a dealership in Louisville rather than some shady garage (as he did this money hole a few summers ago). It’s a good shot I’ll be driving him down to Louisville once we find out the status of the Jeep (which I’m betting is a goner. If I’m repeating myself it is because it is my every desire the thing is beyond repair).
In the meantime I’ve had TheBassist ship me my winter things because it’s dropping into the low 40s and high 30s. There is a good chance if I’m still here by the end of the month or early November, there will be snow. Literally, winter is coming.

I’m 80% doing okay, taking into factor the most recent meltdown (that was three weeks ago? Fuck. It felt like yesterday.), the sickness, the Jeep bullshit, and other maladies. I’m anxious about the right things instead of jumping off the ledge about others.
It’s lovely to be at Throbbing Cabin in the summer and early fall for a week or two. I could handle a month, but we’re now closing in on two months in late fall and we’re getting close to becoming batshit crazy. The nearest villages are 10-12 miles away and the big city of Traverse City takes 30-40 minutes to get to. Three of the closest villages are tourist traps and after a while you get tired of $15 burgers and trunk slammers from Florida. I often go walking around our area but without a proper coat it gets a little chilly and I can only walk in certain areas thanks to the big hills and little valleys (and the goddamned golf courses).
I’ve completed 98 straight days of meditation. Tada!
Throbbing Cabin is 1000 sqft and surprisingly we’re not killing each other or fighting (just crazy from lack of things to do), which I consider with all the circumstances to be a small victory. TheExHusband turned on internet the first week I was up here, brought up a TV from the old house; which coupled with my Roku means we’ve got loads of things to keeps us entertained. He works all day in the second bedroom which we flipped into an office for him in the summer of 2014 while I work on the breakfast bar in the kitchen. We are more or less out of the other’s hair.
It’s cozy and we do not lack for anything. I have my coffee maker, there is a working regular stove and apartment sized fridge. The closest of all the villages has an all in one gas station / deli / pizza place/ grocery / video store. They even sell Lisa-milk and GF food stuffs. The village also has a post office, two resturants, a free library inside the bank, a meat shop, a knitting store, and a local art gallery. For laundry and weekly groceries, out to TC we go. The area is pretty much perfect except for the location and the so dark you can slice it with a light saber which does not make even a dent into the denseness. However, lack of light pollution does make for a pretty sky.
The cabin is well heated from several space heaters. While there is baseboard heat, the first winter we were here, and only for 2.5 weeks, the electric bill was $500. For 2.5 weeks. Two space heaters heating up this entire place will run TEH, for a month, around $150. The baseboard heat will only come on when it dips below freezing so the pipes don’t freeze, which if the weather is any indicator is going to be end of this week, early next.
(And my rush to get the fuck out of here is compounded by the storms of 2013-14 bought 240″ of snow to the area. That is not a typo.)
(I know I keep flipping between “we” and “his” when discussing about Throbbing Cabin because of all the work I’ve put in to it, it still feels like “mine” even though TEH got it in the divorce. I declined his offer of ownership as so much work needs to be done, such as $15-20K for a new septic tank and drain field. It’s lovely to visit but I don’t want to own this place. At all.)

I’m 1100 words in and I haven’t even touched the main point of this piece which is “home,” what it means, and how I want to achieve it. (This is inspired by Theodora Goss’ piece on a similar topic on crafting a life.)
Which is a very good question and the apex of my problems since I was born and one I keep struggling with it often takes over my life.
The original plan was to move to the East Coast, retreat for a few months, look for a job, and get a place of my own, preferably with TheBassist. The plan changed. Then it was to Grand Rapids for six months while I healed emotionally and mentally which turned out didn’t happen and it was suggested I couldn’t, shouldn’t, live alone. Then it was to Louisville, then CT. Now it’s at the cabin, then more than likely Louisville, then who the fuck nows. If I end up in Louisville longer than two months, it’ll be the first time I’ve stayed anywhere longer than 1/6th of a year since October 2014.
For all intents and purposes, I am homeless. My possessions, what is left, are at TheExHusband’s house. Some of my things are at TheBassist’s. I’ve pared down my car goods to between 1/3 – 1/2 of what I took to The East Coast last October. I’ve been living out of two small bags and a bag full of toiletries since the first week of September when I arrived at the cabin.
During all of this whiplashing around, the goal and my greatest desire has been a job, financial independence, and a place to call my own.
I’ve applied for, between writing and librarian career tracks, 150 jobs since February of 2015. I’ve made a grand total of $150 off my writing since August. My day to day living funds ran out in July (TEH has been supplementing me since August). My mental health, while mostly stable now, still has it’s downsides (mostly brought on by pre-menstrual hormones these days). I’ve taken my crazy pills daily since November 2014. I’ve racked up (and half way pared down) nearly $40K in credit card debt within the last year.
These are the facts.
I’m not revealing the minute details for sympathy, understanding, or a handout. This is what it is. This has been the apex of my life since forever and a time ago.
What am I running from or who or why?
I’ve been moving house every two to three years since I was 13. Throbbing Manor, where I lived for four years, has been longest place I’ve lived on my own since I was 24. Prior to that, my mother changed our living locations every 2-3 years from ages 13 – 24. So insofar as actual living space, I do not know what home means.
(When I’ve been at TheBassist’s or TheExHusband’s, even if room was made for me in their space, it still feel like “their” space, not mine. I was just a temporary boarder who happened to be cute. (It should be noted that was never their intent to make me feel uncomfortable, they went above and beyond to make me comfortable, but that is how I often felt.))
It’s been remarked numerous times over the last 20 years I’m running from something because of the shifting or it’s a pathos of my disease. I’ve never known physical space as mine, it was always someone else’s, even when I’ve had roommates. I’ve always felt like a visitor instead of a primary occupant.
(Which is why if you’ve ever visited me at any of the places I’ve lived, there has hardly, if any, decoration to showcase my personality. Decoration was in the form of my clothes, which are cheap and easily disposable.)
I know I’ve romanticized where I want to live. Do I want an adorable apartment in a big city? A home of my own in a quaint little village? A flat somewhere in Europe? This parallels the kind of life I also romanticize. Jet set traveler? Famous writer? Raconteur around town?
I want to be everything, live every place, and be every person.
This, obviously, throws a wrench into daily life plan and reality, most which seems to blur together into one grey line.
If home cannot be about a place, then what about being with a person? If i could not feel at home with the two most important relationships in my life, TheBassist and TEH, then how does that bode for me? What does that say about me? I’m too frightened to forge a relationship with anyone, romantic or platonic? Why do I destroy everything that should be the best of my life?
If home is not about a place, or a person, what about the material things? I have my cases and cases of books, 50-60% I’ve now donated. My clothes, shoes, and accessories which I’ve significantly pared down and donated the rest. Personal objects or things I’ve picked up over the years, donated.
I’m cast adrift with no thing, person, or place to call my home.
If it’s not a place, or a person, or things. Then what is home and how do I get there?
xoxo,
Lisa
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This Day in Lisa-Universe: 2010, 2001

scrabble

Dear Internet,
Ever play the timed word scramble game, Word Crack? Pretty easy concept: You have two minutes to find words out of 16 random letters. Like Scrabble, some letters have double or triple points and words can have the same point advantage. You can play against friends or random strangers. Lately I’ve been playing against random opponents and always losing. I get, do to the fire of my brain, picking up GRE words was difficult enough but I was consistently losing by 200-300 points. Per game. Are my opponents Rhodes scholars or winners of the local spelling bee? What gives?
What gives is you can spend a few bucks and get coins and you use these coins to get boosters. One of the boosters is “wisdom” which will show you three possible words per wisdom card. These word are, of course, big money words. So I spent a few bucks, used my wisdom cards, and sure enough I was beating people by a few hundred points.
So this is legit cheating. We’re not encouraged to actually use our brains but use short cuts to make win the game. Once i figured out the accepted cheat process, I have lost interest in the game.
This is a metaphor for something and when I get that figured out, I’ll get back to you.

I had another round of loss today and I’m in the midst of processing it. I cried my hiccuping, nearly wetting myself, big sobbing tears; which lasted on and off for better part of the night. But through all of that, what kept me from having a complete breakdown was hope.
Sometimes the only thing keeping me going is hope, even if the percentage of that thing occurring is a tenth of a percent, there is still that chance. I play the lotto ever week on the hopes that I will win the Powerball or the Megamillions, dreaming daily of how I’m going to spend that money. Do I believe I will actually win that prize? Logically? No. Emotionally? As long as there is a chance to get my castle in Scotland, I’ll keep playing, no matter how minute.
When the waterworks slowed to a trickle, I went through and momentarily romanticized the loss. If only I had done things differently. If only I didn’t say those things or intoned those words or or or. If only a million times now and a million times over.
If I’m honest, I could see this coming and I shouldn’t be terribly surprised. Recounting recent events, I see how the loss broke down and went the way that it did. The crying jag, the gulping of air, the deep groves of scratches in my heart, I did some deep breathing exercises, got up and took a shower. I may be extremely sad and heartbroken, but at least my legs are shaved and my hair clean.
But not all is destroyed for after all, tomorrow is another day. And as long as that sun rises, there will be hope.
xoxo,
Lisa
P.S. Don’t want near daily emails or can’t make it here everyday but want to keep up with what’s going in my world? Subscribe to A Most Unreliable Narrator, a monthly-ish newsletter roundup of what’s happening. Bonus! Comes with GIFs!

This Day in Lisa-Universe: 2013, 2013, 2003

giving birth to the world

Dear Internet,
When I gave birth to my first self-published book, The Lisa Chronicles: Vol 1: 1998, in January, I experienced a divine feeling, for that is the only way I can describe it, when I hit “publish.” Here was something many years in the making in which I was able to clean up, organize, and present as my baby.I knew it wasn’t going to be a big seller as the singular goal was to give it life.
Sales have not been spectacular but I want more of that feeling. I want to give birth to writing things and even for just a little while, feel like I am queen of the world.

I want to say the last year has been one for self discovery and I want to believe I’ve learned a thing or two along the way. I want to believe all of this is worth it, all the pain, the smearing of my reputation and name, the rejection from several communities has been worth it. I swore to anyone who would listen that I had to sleep with me at night and as long as my conscious is clear, that’s all that mattered.
But at what price does “doing the right thing” come?
I keep talking about my exhaustion levels. I keep mentioning how this lifestyle I’ve jumbled together from bits and pieces is tiring. I harp on how this is effecting me. Underneath it all, all I feel is I must do something with this life of mine. I must take what has happened and create some kind of purpose or meaning. If this doesn’t happen, I feel, then I beat myself up over and over and over again for being a failure. A loser.

I stare at my screen, that taunting cursor winking at me. A million and a half ideas and nothing is coming forward from my brain to my mouth to my hand. My sketch book is a mockery. I cannot get it out of my head if I cannot make a living at doing this, wha then will I do? This thing, this writing, chasing that dream that so many have gone before me and so many of them magnificently failing. When editors tell me they love my voice and my writing, I am convinced they tell everyone the exact same thing. How is my voice unique and how can it make matter?
What if everything I’ve been telling myself is a lie? What if this is all there is?
xoxo,
Lisa
P.S. Don’t want near daily emails or can’t make it here everyday but want to keep up with what’s going in my world? Subscribe to A Most Unreliable Narrator, a monthly-ish newsletter roundup of what’s happening. Bonus! Comes with GIFs!

This Day in Lisa-Universe: 2014, 2013