earlier this evening, after speaking to my mom for about a half an hour, i hit the “end” button on my cell with a heavy heart. this has become a common occurrence when speaking to her as of late.
>it seems that earlier this week, when she was visiting my brother in Peoria for his basketball game, she had awoken up the morning after the game with a burst blood vessel in her eye. This was due, i find out from her, to her diabetes and this was not the first time this has occurred. When she arrived home back to grand rapids, she had emergency laser surgery done on her eye to repair the damage.
it was then she dropped the ball to me that she had wanted to up our plans and move in with us this year.
paul and i had talked about this previously prior to the bombshell this evening, and while i accept my mother is getting old and sick with her diabetes, i don’t know if i can accept the responsibility of her issues. i know, that the guilt deep down inside of me is pushing to do this out of fear and out of the fact that it feels like (to me) i neglected my father during his last few years on this earth. i know i know, everyone says it is not my fault and things work out the way they are, but i feel that the longer i fight to save my mother from herself and from killing herself (she was on suicide watch mid-last year), i find myself sitting in my car alone going, “I’m too fucking young to handle this”.
please don’t get me wrong, i love my mother. and i will admit that my fathers death was a blessing in disguise as we have been working on being close as a mother/daughter for the first time in years, i feel like i can’t breathe and i feel like I’m being suffocated every time something close to commitment of anything comes on. it doesn’t matter if it’s taking care of her, or paul or the goddamn dogs, i just want to break free and be alone.
on Friday afternoon, i drove to my shrink’s office with a heavy heart. after my conversation with Dr. B the previous week, i have been more silent than usual. not silent in writing but silent in communicating verbally to those around me. she and i had talked about this all the previous week about how when I’m asked what is ‘wrong’ i say nothing. the perfect example is when i walked into her office that afternoon and she and i sat there doing the “stare” for a good five minutes before i opened my mouth.
in all honesty, when I’m talking to her or to paul, or hell to anyone that cares, when asked what is wrong i always say ‘nothing’ because it is true — there is nothing wrong. my mind is often blank (so i think) and i just stare off into outer space. this has become more apparent as of late and those around me say they want to know what’s up and why I’m not communicating with them.
i don’t have an answer and i don’t have one major issue that if i talk about it, it suddenly becomes this catharsis of “wow, don’t i feel just fucking better”. it just simply, to me, isn’t that easy to discuss.
i had said to paul in many ways i was angry at my shrink for talking about things in the past — because it brought them up to light and it was issues i didn’t want to revel. things that are in the past and better left unsaid. however, my own behavior in the last year or two has shown that keeping it down deep inside is not the best solution, no matter how much i try and say it is. i often tout that I’ve worked past all those previous issues when I know i haven’t. it’s like, as paul pointed out, there are two me’s. the one that is angry and the one that is calm.
this got further discussed between Dr. B and I as I had told her that the words “hurt” “kill” and “stab” often pepper my vocabulary more often than I like. When I don’t like something or feel intimated, i often say “I’ll hurt you” and most particularly to paul “I’ll stab you”. I’ve often had thoughts of hurting people when I was angry and in the past I used to hurt myself. I remember when I was a child I used to sit there with needle and thread and only going through the first few layers of my skin, sew my hands together. I used to pull out big chunks of my hair (often from behind my ears where it wasn’t noticeable) by twisting and pulling. Dr. B. said I sound like a bully and she was right. But why was I acting like a bully?
In my younger years, I was often intimidated by those physically and mentally stronger than me (so i thought). I wanted to be liked so bad that hell, when I lost my virginity, it was due to peer pressure and not due to the fact that i had actually wanted to fuck that guy. Of course, years of beating myself up over it coupled with what I truly wanted were used to punish myself for what i had done.
Dr. B. says that having a vivid imagination or fantasy life is sometimes very healthy. If you do not act out in that fantasy life (you know, like i wouldn’t really stab paul even though I keep using it as a line of defense) it can help deal with anger. Many people say there is a fine line between fantasy and reality — and while often I feel that I often cross that path, acting it out inside my head is often a good release for whatever I’m feeling.
i never understood people who are ashamed or afraid to admit hey are seeing a shrink or are on drugs of any sort to make their lives easier. I have not qualms about facing reality and knowing that i have “issues”.
definitely something to think about.
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lisa
Tag: Family Issues
pre-honeymoon
do you know the sudden bliss of being able to sit in front of your computer in your undies and not having to worry about a 14yo pubescent boy looking at you? Of course not. But NOW I DO! thank god!
paul’s parents have long come and gone today, taking brian with them for the evening. they probably felt it was best that paul and i were alone since we had not been alone for nearly 6 weeks. we had the usual hot passionate sex in the living room that left us both breathless and while i love brian dearly, i am DEFINITELY not ready to have someone else in this household.
things went really really really well with mommy and daddy sullivan today. so well, i got to drive their brand new 2k durango (it’s in chili pepper red damnit, same color paul and i had chosen) and damn can that baby VROOM VROOM. so it seems i’m in with the sullivan family. i get this weird feeling that they are currently torturing brian all about me, but you know, being paranoid would sort of precedes that. tomorrow (or shall i say today) mommy daddy and brian and i are going to DC for some fun and excitement (while paul sits home and works *winkwinkwink*).
apparently from paul the jury is still out with me. but i mean COME ON here. i’ve got their son being amazingly respectful and polite (training — the lisa way).
i’m a shoe in.
newsies
this is just some quick updates. first off, there has been another rash of non-subscribers to the mailing list (a freaking lull really). but i had to clean it out with some of the bounced messages i got from non-working accounts. please remember there are TWO mailing lists: one where you can *discuss* me or one where you can just get this damn thing by email ever ytime i update. you choose. it’s that simple. no really, i’m not kidding. it’s that simple. and i know the damn forms work because i DID have someone subscribe to it recently :b and hey, if you want off, you need to email me and let me know.
secondly, in case you haven’t figured it out yet, i do own my own webring called indie diary and i have actually gotten submissions for it (big surprise there). since i finally cleaned up everything out of my inbox, the ring is working and ready to go. so go join you idiots!
thirdly, lately i’ve been obsessed with referrers (how people find my site). and i gotta tell you, its damn scary to see how often i come up in serach engines for sex related questions, but not just about vanilla sex, some sick ass shit. since i won’t bother putting those down here (i mean, really, we are talking a few extra thousand hits a month from these damn things — ben is right: i do talk about sex a lot. or enough of something considering one of the bounced email messages i was getting was because one of my subscribers email was being scanned for specific words before relaying on to her. VEDDY INTERESTING). but what i did do, is start linking back to sites that link to me. i have removed search engine referrers, referrers from my other domains, referrers from wired.com and commercial websites and anything internal from modgirl.org. the list is small right now, however, i do know that there were other sites that had me linked that i can’t find now. so if you are linking back to me, let me know and i’ll add back to you. i’m feeling generosity ooze out of my bones today, lemme tell ya. but no seriously. you can see the small list here.
However, this is something pretty cool:
i had gotten added to yahoo.com a few days after i submitted my site to their directory (which from what i heard from some friends of mine is damn quick!). and apparently, if you do searches for lisa diary OR lisa chronicles not only do i come up BUT i come up in the top position. someone asked me whose ass i kissed at yahoo, but to be honest, no ones and i have no affiliation to yahoo whatsover. it’s just kinda neat.
and lastly
i’ve been updating my book enteries as promised. Since i haven’t gotten any feedback from anyone, i’ve been back to buying the same old trash day in and day out and adding it as i go. yes, those books are read one after the other. and yes, i’ve been good on doing reviews for them at epinion.com. i WAS doing them at amazon.com, however, jeff bezos and his cohorts ARE NOT UPDATING THE REVIEWER PAGE. *ahem*. so yah, i thought about doing stuff locally but that’s too much fucking work for me being lazy and all. but i’m also reading cleopatras tome (1500 pages) and its one of those books i read inbetween books. so really, my mind isn’t always in the gutter. so please go search for any of the books listed and read my reviews. i’m just all cool like that.
sub hatched open.
all 118 are believed dead.
aren’t i just full of love this morning?
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lisa
the in-laws
in a scant few hours (less than 12 at this rate), paul and brian’s parents will be descending into the NoVa area. In the same vein that I am comfortable in being me on the other hand, I’m completely freaked out. Generally, as with parents — I haven’t had to meet any for quite some time, I can be quite confident in being “me.” But i’ve been noticing lately, with the changes my body has been taking (yanno — stress) subconsciously i’ve been totally on the wire about meeting mommy and daddy Sullivan.
I don’t know what it is — by all accounts (brian and paul reassuring me) I’m much better suited for paul than his previous girlfriends but if the plan is to marry this man (which, last count I am) then I should feel fine in meeting them. But as the hour grows later and sunlight will be peeking shortly, i’m scared as hell. maybe it’s my own lack of parental influence in my life (as i was saying to jen tonight, i was brought up by my mother to be self-assured and independent. this simple fact, my independence, has been chronicled throughout my life: my mothers journal when i was a mere child and my own chronicles of my life starting when I was still in grade school up till now). the recent death of my father and the new role i’m now playing in my mothers life (as erma bombeck had once said — how does the role of parent to child and child to parent shift so quickly in our life?), i’m finding there is more out there i’m missing on that I hadn’t known. partly due to my own stubbornness and my own quest to be solo in a lot of my adventures that I have taken.
i’ve had several conversations with friends recently about their own lives (me becoming more aware of these people — bad lisa for not being up to date on everything) and they keep telling me “you don’t know what you have till its gone” (about me asserting that maybe i should be living alone for some time) and i recognize that they are right. i don’t know what kind of life i had envisioned for myself but i *know* that without Paul in it, i wouldn’t t be who i was right *now*. I’d be completely different. And realizing sitting on the couch with him just how important he is makes it all worthwhile. Thanks Jen for tonight and for allowing me to recognize what everyone else already knows.
i’ve been doing a lot of reading lately (and I’m currently scarfing down the 1500 page tome on Cleopatra — ugh) and not writing. I’ve always had all these excuses about WHY i haven’t written and with my updating about once a week now (and always on a saturday/sunday — funny that), i keep putting off these projects that sounds so good in my head and i keep using the excuse of “well, brian is in town and i don’t want to start anything with him here as it’s hard enough to keep things together having to worry about him and paul” and yadda yadda yadda.
the last few days, i’ve been feeling more stressed out than ever — not in my body but in my brain (thank you to the makers of klonopin and buspar for making me not so erotic) and my whole sudden attitude of “caretaker” has been taking over with definite scariness. suddenly i was not just responsible for *me* but for paul, brian, my brother and my mother. and here i am at 28, screaming, “what about me!! godammit”. my mother had mentioned a few conversations back that i had changed so much within the time i had left Michigan (a scant 3 years ago — and so much that has happened in that 3 years) and how grown up i’ve become. and it’s true. i have become more grownup in ways i never thought possible. i don’t know when the roles had shifted, but it’s true. and i think that it’s not just a “me” thing but subtle changes that everyone else sees and recognizes in themselves.
so i was thinking today, that today would be a good day to say thank yous, apologies and what not to various people. and while this may sound mushy or cruel and maybe mean, it seemed appropriate with everything going on:
dad:
while you are no longer on this earth, and while i’m still working out the details of your death in my head, i want to tell you as i had on the phone so many times before, how much i did love you and wished i had gotten the chance to know you. i want to tell you that you were important to me as a person and i’m so very sorry i never took the time out to get to know you as i had. i know that you are still with me, as i wear the charm around my neck of your ashes, but i want you to know that your belief in my own abilities and allowing me to explore those possibilities as an adult means more to me than you’ll ever know. i miss you dearly and while i wish you were here on earth for me to say this to you personally, i know that you are at rest and at peace.
mom:
i love you more now then i did when i was teenager (big surprise there). I want to thank you for helping me becoming assertive, independent and being able to voice what i say without being afraid to speak my mind. i want to thank you for being an incredible role model to me for showing me that being a woman of strength doesn’t mean you have to be a bitch. i also want to thank you for allowing me to make my mistakes and recognizing them later on while knowing that i would see the right way later down the road. I want to also tell you that I love you and that I’m sorry for not being more in your life when you needed me and that I’m glad I finally stopped being stubborn and got over the past issues to make the first contact with you. i have realized the importance of family and want to make sure that you are there for me as i plan on being for you for the rest of your life.
jeff:
my big “little” brother. you know me more indepth than most people will ever know and would ever WANT to know. i want you to know that i believe you have the talent and the charisma to do anything that you set your mind to and that while sometimes i may be harsh or “mean” to you, it IS for your best interest 😉 All i want for you to be is successful in whatever you choose to do and that I’ll support you both emotionally (and obviously financially) in all the endeavors that you choose to do.
paul:
my black knight in shining armour. in the short time we’ve been together (going on almost two years now — geez!) we’ve been through A LOT. more so than probably most people go in a lifetime. and through it all, despite our threats that one of us is leaving (its scary when your fights with your SO become the local joke yanno?) people keep saying that there is something about our relationship that makes them want to have one too. we have something very special that you don’t find everyday and i know that beneath it all, it is what keeps us together. I know, that even when you are being a self-centered little prick and I am being a fucking bitch, that we love each other very much. Thank you for being there for me emotionally and physically through all our rough times, for encouraging me to do things other people wouldn’t have the tenacity to survive through and for putting up with all my shit. I love you with each growing day and will always love you with just as much intensity till the day I die.
keffkeff:
probably one of closest female friends i’ve had in a long long time. you’ve become my sounding board in all things men, gossip and general chitchat. i love your vivaciousness, your strength and your quiet charm. your levelheadedness, your ability to relate to me on many different levels often is the strength *i* need to keep me going. I love you like a sister and hope that our friendship remains this close through our lives.
michael:
my non-blood-related brother. i thought of you tonight and because of that spurned this memoir of sorts. i wanted to tell you, mint aside, that i love you and even though we haven’t kept as close contact in recent months as we used to, that you are always in my thoughts. you supported me through so much in the last four years that so many people would not, and like my mother, allowed me to make my own mistakes and to live by them. thank you, from the bottom of my heart for your generosity, your kindness, your humour and your ability to show me what love was really like. i miss you dearly and hope to see you soon.
jen j.:
you’ve become the second female person in my later years that i grew close to. i admire you for your independentness, your cool-headed objectivness and your ablity to let down your hair when needed. you were one of the driving forces for me to get through my day and the sanctuary i needed when i needed someone to talk to. i want you to know that i will be there for you when needed and that i hope we grow closer with time.
moe:
thank you for being you. you are god and the keeper of my domain (literally!). thank you for also being there when i needed someone to talk to and for allowing me to vent when needed. i’m so very glad you moved to NoVa.
rynsey:
you have the best intentions and the best heart. i know that sometimes things seem really hard when they really are quite simple. i think you have the ablity to do whatever you choose to do and i want you to promise me that you will act on those talents and go with it. i believe in you and you will always remain my special lovah!
and now, to say things to people i’m having “conflicts” with:
sillz:
while my words may have stung and i apologize for hurting you, i don’t apologize for the words i had stated. i know that there was probably a nicer way of saying them, but sometimes i’m not a nice person and i recognize this in my own self. taken with what i had said with a grain of salt, we all want you to succeed however what you say to anyone and how you act are two completely different things. we want you to be indpendent and self-serving and i’m worried that you are falling down the trap that most women do. i want you to be happy (i honestly do) but at the rate and path you are continuing on, your true heart desires just don’t seem to be what you say they are. i applaud you for taking the chances that you have on many aspects but while i don’t agree with what you are doing in many areas, the simple chance of coming to a new country with literally nothing in and of itself is extraordinary.
ciannait:
i went to your website today and read something you had posted on the loss of a friend whom you had known that many people loved while you yourself had not gotten along with that person. i thought about our past and while we don’t see eye to eye on many things, i have realised that it seemed silly to continue on with this polite anomosity we have towards each other instead of just putting down the walls and being sincerly honest with each other. I recognize that we may have many things to learn from each other and if i extend the laurel branch, are you willing to accept it?
brendan/sam:
i still have not figured out, in all these months, why sam is so heated against me. in all honesty, i cannot think of one singular thing that i could have said or done that could have pissed her off. this also seems to be a mystery to many others whom you have been friends with in the past so now i’ll ask publically: why? to be honest, i’m tired of all the bickering and gossip that goes on in the circle of people we are friends with. but there has never been a direct conversation as to why. and if one of you can tell me, i’d be greatly appreciated.
FirstWorld/Slip.Net:
I’m still trying to figure out, after nearly a YEAR, why you keep coming to my website. I don’t know exactly what you’ll think you’ll find or simply you find this amusing but it is frightening to me to have the same employers who fired me for “hacking their nt server” (what a fucking joke) has the audacity to keep visiting my site. maybe it’s not the same people but someone else within the company who likes reading this. if that is so, then so be it. but here in lies the irony: i now work for the company you are purchasing your circuits from. In fact, the cheap ass gear you gave to your employees, i handed to the engineer you’ve been working with as a “gift” (he thought it was amusing). You also know, very well, that I had grounds for suite for unlawful termination. However, that would have required me to stay in Cali, which like the horrid two years i put in with your shitty company, was not worth it. Your business ethics, your choice of hiring AND firing procedures (amusing how my exit interview consisted of THEM telling me i was hacking their servers and that i was lowering their morale — how trite can you get without a shred of proof). And it’s also amusing that I was able to confirm your firing decisions from within the company prior to said firing. It is with sheer joy, that I’m happy that tech stocks have gone down.
And lastly to my readers:
I want to thank each and everyone of you for coming here. for reading. for offering advice even when it wasn’t asked for and for simply being there for me as a general consensus. TLC has turned 2 in July, and while it’s birthday has gone without fanfare and digging up archives of the old crap, it is with happiness and some sadness that i am able to be me. thank you all so much. you’ve been part of the family i never thought i had.
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lisa
as to why this was written:
jen and i had gone out tonight for a much needed girls night out. my almost total seculision in the rabey-sullivan household was driving me batty and i had not spent time with jen in quite some time. sitting with her at the table tonight over dinner (and both of us being hit on by the waiter and the gm was amusing to be sure) and telling her for the first time in a long time how i felt on differnet subjects i realised most of my conversations have been taken over email/irc/icq/aim or this journal. i had not told, someone face to face other than paul, how i really felt. after the breakdown of LWE, keth and i had spent some considerable time discussing the weeks events and i realised that most of my information was political: in the sense that everyday when i speak to someone it was with an agenda — no matter how minute. the poltical skills i thought i never had were becoming abundently clear as time progressed. and i really realised sitting with Jen that i really didn’t like the person i was slowly becoming. I was becoming someone who I had never liked — and this realization was becoming more clear with recent events both at home and at work. While i know that i can be incredible hard on people and hit them when i’m feeling defensive (that is one of my more “popular” traits it would seem) a lot of the anomosity that was being stirred up both on irc and in real life was being dumb. i never tell people what i really think of them or what i want to say unless it comes to the breaking point (as danny and paul both say to me quite often: you simply don’t talk). there were questions i had been wanting an answer to and had simply wanted to asked but never did. Paul, in particular, thought it stupid (and i can see why) to keep digging up the past. But the thing is, to most of the people I addressed in conflicts, i am in contact with them in some form or manner — even indirectly. and seeing them, even in a virtual format, brings to minds said thoughts and questions that i never address because it is the past and we should all move on right?
there is no hidden agenda on my part this time. the receipitants can choose to ignore this, which is their right and fine by me if they so choose (and i would not disagree with in being such a public matter) or they can address me privately. i have addressed them publically because i know they either a: visit my website or b: are subscribed to the email version of the journal. i know it will be read at some point or time while this is up. now that i have finally stated what should have been said so very long ago, my conscious is clear and i can move on knowing that i was willing to take the first step. even if none of my questions are ever answered i at least feel better letting them know, in my own way, that this was worth it to write.
and now i slumber.
nini.
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twilight as seen by me
the last few weeks have been a surreal experience. suddenly i’m seeing myself in positions and places and acting in this strange netherworld that i didn’t think belonged to me.
i’m in this very strange place and it’s called being 28.
the rock and the hard place — the times i told paul i was leaving and today i come home and he prepares a bath for me, makes me a screwdriver (75% oj, 25% absolut), and lets me soak away the stress with harry potter (cause for divorce? she reads harry potter your honour). exes swinging back into your life and everything else in between.
brian’s leaving here in a few weeks. both paul and brian have been bugging me for “what do you want” as their mom wants to buy me something for taking care of brian and of course of pauly. taking care of someone is second nature to me. it feels that way. its like all those times i never asked for help and now i’m giving it and asking for it.
jeff and i have been going through some rather intense conversations lately on the status of my mother. the other day he and i spent an hour on the phone while i flipped around my sparc at work doing stuff. it was so much easier with a headset on to work and to talk. and my mom. at 58 she’s struggling with things i’m going through now and i want to reach to her and say it’s okay because i’ve been there. and she says to me “i cannot ask for help.” and before when she did ask for help, i ignored her because it was what i did best. and i kept coming home from work this week thinking about her and calling my brother. she’s broke. her job screwed her over. and i said JEFF! i buried one parent this year, I can’t go through another one. I just can’t.
sometimes i want to be free. i’ve always felt like a bird. relationships were temporary, measured by months and years invested and shuffled away to another spot where i couldn’t access them. and i think about all of them all the time. alan. danny. justin. and i wonder what they are doing right now at this very point in time and i wonder if they are happy? and i wonder why i care so much.
andrew said to me tonight ‘it always amazes when people think it’s so hard to find me.” and i said “get over it, i’m in my happy place” someone remind me, if i ever meet him, to bring him a box of crayolas.
love is blind.
love is good.
i had always envisioned that when *I* got married and had kids, i would have a family i never had. i wouldn’t have the bs and the bullcrap i had gone through. and i would create this stable environment where they could feel like they could belong. when i’m trapped i keep giving myself this out. jeff told me to set up seperate bank account and start saving money and if paul pissed me off, i would have enough to leave. and i’m thinking “yanno, it can’t be like that. we are in a relationship and yah things can get horrid but that is normal” but i run run run run run run when things get horrid and here i am.
um. yep.
i’m trying to think of a good excuse as to why i haven’t written in over a month.
none are forthcoming.
actually, everything everyone said would happen would: i handled things way too well. the move cross country, moving to a state i’ve never even BEEN before, starting a new job, getting an apartment, living with Paul. it all came crashing down in an instant.
at first everything seemed perfect when Paul moved in. NYE was a blast, got so drunk I have no idea what happened that night (except Paul tells me that I kept begging for sex in front of everyone all night and then finally passed out around 2am). work schedules, Paul ‘s job at thinkgeeks, the list goes on.
then it started slowly started falling apart. I don’t know what was going on exactly, that except Paul and i just found ourselves sniping at each other for no reason — and every reason. then it came out that we were going to NYC for LWE 2K. It was like one problem after another to get ready for this show. First it was *I* had no place to stay (andover (parent company to thinkgeek) had already gotten Paul’s rooms with a roommate), then i found a place to stay, then i didn’t know if i could go (was going to use all my vacation time and then found out UUNet was now allowing employees to go to cons on company time), then it was how to get there (i had opted for the train, Paul wanted to drive, guess who won?) and finally when i drove up in front of the Fitzpatrick Manhattan on Lexington Ave in NYC, i just started bawling. That got cured with a major gossip session with Kethryvis and rynsey. God, I had not realised how much i missed having “girl friends” (not special friends) around. you know, girl chat. Paul is wonderful, but it’s not like having girl time where we can dish about everything in general for hours at a time.
But the strange thing, and i’m not sure what happened, is that since we’ve been back home (after driving in a near blizzard via NJ and getting lost in DC) is that things have been better. being away from each other maybe? i don’t know. i do know, with long in-depth talks with keth every nights, things felt better between us. maybe because we had time to be away from each other? i thought i could find a reason, but i can’t. i just know that now that we are back suddenly things feel more relaxed. okay, our fish digital died, BUT OTHER THAN THAT, everything is falling into place. Paul has been chirping for the last few days because he feels he finally got the respect due to him (at his age, it’s hard to gain respect for his work because no one believes he is *only* 19 (yesh, the song “Mrs. Robinson” is played in our household) and that he’s come a long way baby). now i’m his good luck charm and *I* feel like it’s more me now.
i’ve been sitting here for the last few hours tonight, thinking about stuff in general, just wondering where my life is going , and the last month, the one thing I’ve realised is that how often i let depression (and panic attacks and paranoia) run my life. and i know I’ve stressed that before. too many freaking times. i know, thinking about it now, that one of the reasons i’ve refused to write is that i didn’t want to divulge all the same crap over and over again. it just seemed — pathetic? is that an excuse? probably not. i have no idea. i’m letting thoughts wander around right now.
looking back over everything as objectively as i can (and having this same conversation with my friend Graham) and realizing that on my own part, I expected way too much way too soon. I never let things fall into place — i just have been running at this speed of wanting things to be “perfect” and finding that they weren’t what I had thought — and that was my mistake. All of my bitching of wanting things to “be” and i was too worried about being like my mother. which is scary. because i haven’t spoken to my mother in almost a year.
another thing i realised this past month was how much i miss not having a family. i could argue, and rightly so, that i never had a family (other than my beloved brother, Jeff). but it was like hearing all this stuff that Paul’s family does (scary they have been to Disney world more times than i could count on fingers and toes) as well as listening to other friends talk about their families and i have — nothing. Christmas sucked major ass (as well as was told by my five line dialogue i sent out) and i just feel so damn alone half the time. Paul keeps talking about how his family is my family (i’ve met his uncle and aunt already) and i’m meeting his mom, dad and brother and sister soon. along with grandparents. will the madness never end?
i’m hitting the sack.
it’s good to be back.
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moi
non sequitur
this has been one hell of a weekend. well, it’s been one hell of a week. so much has happened within the space of a few days, plus my own thoughts and feelings, i have a feeling I’m going to be all over the place — more so than usual.
from the what’s new front:
12.12.99
87 people on the mailing list (geez, can’t i eve break a 100?). Did some more comestic work on the website. Added filez, pictures, pr0n and really put up the obligatory webrings, awards and links page.
family fun
yanno, another reason i don’t get the holidays is mainly because my own family is fsck’d in a definite loony way. for instance, now that I’m all settled in Fairfax and basically living with paul (meaning he doesn’t show up until the 30th perm), i decided to start calling my aunts and stuff to let them know i was alive and living. and basically i got to hear for an hour about how horrible of a daughter i am (because i haven’t spoken to my mother in about 6 months), about how everyone is a son of a bitch and Canadian currency is basically crap and how one aunt married her drug and alcoholic bf and moved to Kentucky and that my other aunt and her husband moved to Florida.
you know, its the Christmas season. and I’m trying to make the best of it. i thought by calling my Aunt Jackie and letting her know I was okay and that I was sending them a Xmas card with my and Pauls address that it would be okay. But it wasn’t. My Aunt Roberta (her younger sister and sidekick) basically grilled me about paul. When she asked me if paul had a big family and I said “yah, he’s half Spaniard and Irish and catholic”, she drops her voice and whispers “is he dark?” Like jesus christ people. This is 1999. His coloring shouldn’t matter to anyone. (But the boy is pretty goddamn pale.) And when I told her that we were getting married she said “Well, I won’t tell anyone that you aren’t married now (due to the fact that paul and I are living together)”.
They always make me feel so goddamn rotten when I speak to them. I don’t know why I do it. Maybe it was because of seeing how Paul interacts with his family and this was something he and I had discussed that I could shed some light into my own family problems.
Turned out I was wrong.
My father had a stroke two weeks ago, and I got the phone call from my cousin James in Toronto. I’m a okay.
this is the part when i start deconstructing myself and feeling like shit. bah.
how i spent my saturday (December 11, 1999)
Editors Note: as we all know, when people start talking about a ‘friend’ and not naming names, it is generally presumed that it is really about the person who is telling the story. fortunately in this case, it really is not about me. it’s about a long time friend of mine who choose to get an abortion. since she has been mentioned in TLC in the past, she was afraid she would start getting hate mail because of her choice. so we decided that it was okay for me to talk about it, just not to mention her name. I’ve never been pregnant and paul and i are not expecting devils spawn. really.
when i found out that one of my oldest friends was pregnant, i wasn’t happy. i knew that she hadn’t been practicing birth control and knowing that she had been pregnant in the past due to ‘carelessness’ really irritated me. you see, out of the group of close friends i grew up with (high school/college), I’m the only one in the bunch who has never been pregnant and thusly was lucky enough never to have to make a decision on whether or not i was going to keep a child.
I’ve had my shares of scares, true, but I’ve always been ultra paranoid about my sexual health. when Alan and i were dating in the early 90s, we had went and gotten checked together so that we could practice monogamous safe sex without using condoms (i was on the pill at the time and told that i was possibly not going to be able to have kids as it was). so, like any other young couple in love, we got checked and tossed away the condoms. then i found out that he had been cheating on me. and then i found out that he had NOT been practicing safe sex with this other girl. my own paranoia (aids had just started to ravage the country and people were on the war path about safe sex) plus common sense prompted me to to get checked and make sure that i was okay. i was. but that set in motion a passion about sexual awareness and practicing safe sex that is almost cult like.
I’ve had many discussions with lots of people about practicing safe sex. I cannot believe that in this day and age people are so fucking stupid about not using protection. the most common excuses I’ve heard are “i don’t like condoms” and “i can’t remember to take the pill” — okay fine, but there are other options for you to use. not all of the guaranteed (nothing in life is) and not all of them protect you from disease but something is better than nothing. sex to me is a very adult thing — meaning you have to take the responsibly along with your actions. i cannot tolerate excuses about why people are not practicing safe sex. and yesh, i practice what i preach. I’m on the pill and paul and i use condoms.
so when my friend told me she was pregnant, i felt sad for her. she was taking it all in stride though — I’ll grant you that. but when she went to get checked and was scheduling a time to have the procedure, they refused to do it telling her that she was much farther along than she thought she was. which was wrong. her boyfriend didn’t move in till late august and she got pregnant early September. they told her the time of the conception was middle of august — which is fricken impossible since she was only sleeping with him — and he wasn’t event here yet. and she was also pregnant with twins. and since the clinic claimed she was above the date for an abortion (she found out that babies were just bigger than normal) — state of Virginia will not do anything past the first trimester (up to 12 weeks). she could go to Philly, DC or North Carolina to have the procedure done.
She choose DC.
I didn’t find out until nearly her appointment that she was coming up. i rescheduled work and plans to help her out. it was a two day procedure. on the first day (Friday) she was going in for what she calls the ‘seaweed stick’ procedure. what this is, is that they stick sticks up your vagina wrapped in iodine to dilate the cervix. this is (according to the paperwork she was given) the beginning of the abortion. the second day (saturday) visit is when the actual abortion would take place, which would last about 1/2 hour with an additional 2-3 hours for resting. she was then free to leave as long as someone was driving her home. — and that person would have been me.
she arrived late Friday night in some discomfort. the babies had been kicking and she was also having mild cramping. she was having a hard time even going to the bathroom because she was afraid the sticks might fall out. after taking a nap that evening, she and i stayed up and talked until 2 am — when we had to be up at 6 am to get up for the appointment.
and as we talked, she kept telling me how she was feeling the babies kick — and she said it such a non-chalant way that it was almost scary.
we woke up early saturday morning and both forwent showers to get to the appointment on time. we arrived a few minutes past 7:30 to see that there were protesters already out front. well duh. planned parenthood. Washington DC. hello here. we walked quickly by them, went through the security guards and were let into the clinic. other girls soon followed in and at 8am, the nurse started calling peoples names to go back for the procedure.
she gave me the option of going back to the apartment and getting rest and then coming to pick her up. i decided to hang out for awhile and just kill time. i read magazines, i watched the waiting room swell up with people. all types of girls came in — i couldn’t tell who was there for what. but there were all races and social classes. some came in alone, others came in with bf’s/spouses/partners. finally around 9:30am, i went outside and chain smoked for awhile.
i met up with two volunteers for the clinic and talked with for awhile. the protesters had grown in numbers but it was still a small motley group of people. one man had a huge (about 3’x2′) sign that showed a dead fetus with “32 million babies killed since Roe vs Wade”. there were young and old people, chanting Holy Marys and giving away rosaries. The volunteers were friendly and a bit passionate about their work. we talked about the protesters and i asked them what it was like doing this. i was truly curious. i mean, I’ve heard and read all the stories about what was going down at these clinics. when i went to PP in Oakland for my own checkup, we were forced to check in with a security guard and go through auto-locked doors. this place in DC was more secure — and the protesters, man, it was like something out of CNN. they approached everyone walking near the clinic and gave them roasiers and told them they would pray for their sins. one young Hispanic girl came in with her bf. i watched her staring up at the sign above the entrance and watched her eyes water as she tightly clutched her bf’s hand. i felt so sorry for her, i wanted to do something but i didn’t know what to do. hell, for all i know she could be there for a pap smear.
the volunteers job was to make sure the protesters didn’t harass the patients as they walked into the clinic. they spoke softly to the women walking up and comforted them if they didn’t look so hot. i stood outside for nearly an hour watching this take place in 35 degree weather. i had my scarf wrapped around my neck and my gloves on as i chain smoked just watching the scene. i chatted some more with the volunteers and walked back in. by this time, it was going on 10am and the waiting room was packed. i settled down in a very uncomfortable chair and read newsweek waiting for my friend to leave.
she walked out at 12:15pm and just seemed as snappy as she ever was. she wasn’t feeling sick or upset. she just wanted a cigarette and food. we went to safeway to grab some maxi-pads for her and some advil and drove to TGI Fridays for lunch. Both of us acted like nothing had happened. sure we spoke about her abortion but i was as if nothing had happened. she felt well enough a few hours later and drove back home.
——
Pauls been on this kick lately about not letting me have a dog that he PROMISED i would get for Christmas. you see, his aunt raises pure breed pugs and we were going to get one out of the next litter. but some moron told him that if i asked for a dog now, within 6 months i would be asking for a kid. a: paul wanted the dog first and b: I’m not planning on getting pregnant for quite some time.
——
Abortion is a touchy subject. There is, I believe no right way or wrong way to go about it. Me personally? I’m pro-choice. I like having the option that if an unwanted pregnancy came up that there was an option for me to terminate it. but it’s the people who ABUSE it that irritate me. It’s the constant stupidity people use towards sex and their own health that drives me insane. I don’t begrudge my friend for having the abortion — i begrudge her for not taking care of herself first in the first place. This is why, in so many ways, volunteering for a PP or for a rape crisis center is something that really speaks to me. I’ve seen too many women waste their lives by having kids they did not love because they were pregnant or abuse the system that was given to them. There are WAY too many people running around in this world who think AIDS/HIV/STDs and pregnancy won’t happen to them because they don’t fall into the criteria for the demographics.
If you are in a relationship with someone or are sleeping with someone, do yourself a favor. respect yourself and use protection. i don’t want another person going through what my friend did.
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home is where the heart is
My birthday is in four days.
Gifts of luv, money, new life, geeky men can be sent here.
home is where the heart is
My friend Jenni from back home, sent me an email with this in it:
you need to come home before it goes…….
for old time sake, we could have a sleep over and I can snap your bra into the ceiling fan.
My mother, it seems is going through the toughest parts of her life. My step-father Robert is finally filing for divorce after being married for nearly 8 years (they have only lived together for aproximently 2 of those 8 years) and my mother has decided to file for bankruptcy. Along the lines of bankruptcy, she’s giving up the house on Paris Ave in Grand Rapids along with all the furniture inside of it.
Danny is making arrangements to have my mothers four poster cherrywood bed, cherry wood desk, my grandmothers rocking chair and the living room couch put in storage for me.
my brother Jeff got accepted to Bradley University, my mother is moving into a mansion outside of Grand Rapids with friends and I’m in SF. Any resemblance of family is now gone.
I remember back in early days, when I was a child growing up in Port Huron, MI, the big family get togethers held for every holiday. My mother is the oldest of seven children, I’m the third oldest grandchild. Now, everything is gone. My older cousins are married with kids of their own. My younger cousins Kevin, Shelly, Chris, and Paul are god knows where. My aunts are all retreated into some sort of weird lifestyle that makes them forever unmarriageable (three of my mothers sisters never did get married and all hang out together in some sort of weird lesbianism way. but they aren’t lesbians. maybe just crotchety old aunts?). My grandmother died in 1972, my grandfather passed away in 1996. My fathers side I have never had any contact with to begin with – and my father is now 72 and holed up in a nursing home in Toronto.
I am, completely alone.
And it’s been coming for years. When my mother in 1985 got the killer job offer in Grand Rapids and moved our little family of three there, all the family get togethers died. Even living just 2.25 hours away from them, I never saw them for months if not years at a time. The last time I made any effort to see my family was back in 1996 when my grandfather passed away, and I stood like an outsider at my grandfathers funeral. I knew nothing of these people anymore. My older cousins Doug and Denise who used to torture me when i was a kid had nothing to say to me. My younger cousins Kevin and Shelly were grown up — and I stood there feeling lonely than ever because I never had what I have always dreamed about: family. And I remember crying on my way back to my apartment that I shared with Danny then, because I had nothing. My relationship with my mother had been lukewarm at best, my father I never lived with save one year when I went to school in toronto, and my cousins never made an effort to contact me.
I remember sitting at my computer the day after I got back from his funeral, drinking down a fifth of absolute and paging my brother to get a bag of pot so that I didn’t have to think. No one could quite understand what was wrong with me. I never drank at home and Lisa buy pot? Oh yeah right — hell must have frozen over. I drove to the funeral on Christmas Eve, came back the day after Christmas and drunk myself into a stupor between the 26th and New Years Day.
Many people don’t understand why I feel so damn down about this — primarily because I’ve always regarded myself as an orphan in all aspects. My mother even said it herself that when I moved to SF that I had cut off all ties to family and never called, wrote or even came home. I tried going back home and making things right last Christmas, but things between me and my mom never changed and while I was happy to be back at my old stomping grounds I found that nothing was the same — and that any life for me in GR was over. I tried telling myself that I wanted to go back — and I still do — but it’s not the same. Everything has changed and I am no longer that scared little girl any more that used to sit in her bedroom crying anymore.
it’s several hours since i wrote the above, and I’m at work now. i hate when i break up a chronicle like this: writing half at home and the other half somewhere else. i lose my train of thought — and the somberness i had earlier this morning isn’t as prevalent as it is now. A good shower, shaving my legs, lots of cawfee, talking to cartoon boy, I can’t feel depressed right now.
But then again, maybe i don’t want to think about it.
it always ends up this way.