Tag: Miguel

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

year in review: 2014

Dear Internet,
Working at home today and getting supremely in the groove. Re-discovered that I used to do a round up, by month, of things that went on in the previous year as a year in review. This seems like a good idea to continue insofar as giving me a perspective for the year and helping me figure out what I need to improve or cut back on.
Previous years: 2000, 1997, 1996

Neil Gaiman’s New Year’s wish for 2015:

Be kind to yourself in the year ahead.

Remember to forgive yourself, and to forgive others. It’s too easy to be outraged these days, so much harder to change things, to reach out, to understand.

Try to make your time matter: minutes and hours and days and weeks can blow away like dead leaves, with nothing to show but time you spent not quite ever doing things, or time you spent waiting to begin.

Meet new people and talk to them. Make new things and show them to people who might enjoy them.

Hug too much. Smile too much. And, when you can, love.

It’s been a helluva a year. Here’s to 2015 being boring and slow.
xoxo,
Lisa

This Day in Lisa-Universe: 2014, 2013, 1999

In Case You Missed It: Top Posts for 2014

Dear Internet,
2014 was a banner year with my dog dying, my marriage busting up, finding new love, getting sued for defamation, getting back on the bipolar drugs, and losing my job. But the big question is, what did you favor on my site in 2014. Below is a breakdown of the top posts written and viewed in 2014.

  • About That Job Description In which I reveal that my position at GRCC was announced in January and my decision not to reapply. Add in the Internet getting my back for this line in the posting, “Ability to demonstrate the mental health necessary to safely engage in the librarian discipline as determined by professional standards of practice,” and you now know why I decided to move forward with my career.
  • I am the bitter fat chick who told you “no” In which I reveal an ex-high school boyfriend who kept sending me Facebook messages every couple of years in some fucked up attempt to “win me back” and his responses each time I said “no.”  Also explained my decision to change my name across various social networks only to be forced to change it back on Facebook due to “valid name” concerns.
  • For The Case of Humanity In which I reveal why I will not shut up about my feelings in regards to the $1.25M defamation lawsuit, job hunting, and other unpleasant topics.
  • About my article in American Libraries on libraries, technology, and gender  In which I reveal the background on an article I wrote for American Libraries Magazine, a publication of the American Library Association.
  • Librarian How To: Graphic Novel Collection Development in Academia In which I reveal my process on collection development, promotion, use, social media (and more) of graphic novels in community colleges.
  • into which the cosmos will collapse once again In which I reveal the break up of TSTBEH and myself.
  • #teamharpy tweet clarification In which I reveal that no, we’re not deleting online content in regards to the lawsuit.

Thanks for a wonderful year, dear readers.
xoxo,
Lisa

This Day in Lisa-Universe: 2013, 2012, 2012, 2012, 2002

Howard Roarke Laughed. Again.

Laughing Fool. Netherlandish (possibly Jacob Cornelisz. van Oostsanen), circa 1500.
Via Wikipedia Commons.

Dear Internet,
The one major hiccup while working on getting my archives back online is I read almost all  of what I put up to check for errors, broken links, broken images and the like which makes the process longer. In the beginning of this project, I was also checking for grammar, but I decided to leave the earlier work alone in its pure form. (AKA, I’m lazy.)
Some years are terrible to read, like 2003, in which I was an emotional wreck of doom and other years are just nostalgic of, “Oh. I did/read/eat/fucked that?” Sometimes I’m not so bright, and others, I am goddamn fucking brilliant.
What always trips me up the most when working on this project is the relationships that died either in a fiery passion of destruction or the ones that could have been, but never kicked off for whatever reason. I get to relive each train wreck, line by line, in slow, agonizing detail.
A few weeks ago while doing some public clean up on various social sites, I came across messages for me from an ex, TheBassist, which were left on his blogs over the course of several years.  One was from 2011 and the other from earlier this year. Finding his messages was happenstance and at first, I could not place who they were from, but then once I saw the message itself I knew exactly who it was. I checked his main blog and saw the 2011 post in which he had apparently stalked me on Facebook but didn’t attempt to contact me.
Not quite sure what I’m supposed to do with this information for:

  1. He splintered my heart the first time that when he came sniffing around the second time,  about six months after our first tussle, I showed him my partially fixed heart which he took a sledgehammer to. Again.
  2. While the connection between us when we were together was insane, he routinely lied to me on just about everything
  3. I could never trust him again, even in a platonic manner

So if he’s wondering if I read them, yes. Yes, I did.
As I skip through most of the naughts, some exes keep coming up over and over. Miguel, who in 2011 decided to Facebook me to find out where I was so we could get married. And if you all recall, I already am married. Happily. What transpired out of that conversation of nearly 20 years of missed connections and opportunities, was finding out he was ALREADY living with a woman who happened to be nearly half his age. So yes, he was attempting to marry his high school sweetheart (who is married to someone else) while still living with his sweetheart who just out of  high school as this is how this man rolls.
A bullet dodged.
I’ve started dipping into some time periods when Patrick and I were together, which if I had not married TheHusband, and the stars were aligned and unicorn blood had not been spilt, he and I might have ended up Mr. and Mrs. Patrick related to me a few years ago the thought process of if he had gotten his emotional shit together, at the time my emotional shit was together, I would be Mrs. Patrick on this day. Instead, he’s now married in Texas and has a step-daughter whom he adores. No animosity between us, we were never one of those couples, but the best recourse for our sanity is to just remain distant friends instead of the half dreaming of what could have beens. Our over protection of the other, truthfully him more so than me, coupled with our long, long interwoven past makes it difficult not to be forever linked.
TheEx occupied most of my thoughts from 2006 – 08, and makes appearances in my brain every six months or so now, basically in the realm of, “Am I still angry enough to want to rip his nuts out and shove them down his throat? Y/N?”. Just as working through the time in 2003 when Miguel and I were plotting to save the world is painful to read, so is the content I’m recovering about TheEx is painful. What’s up right now is just glimpses of what I have, and that pain is as fresh as if you have poured salt on an open wound.
Recently I was hanging out in 1999, where TheHusband and Jeff (known as Lucid) are prominently figured. I mention that,

Of course as I started writing this, I had to google stalk him. Well, let’s not be surprised he has a Twitter account and I made frowny faces as I read back his timeline because – this is not someone I would have ever dated in a million years.  But it should be noted his first wife had emailed me oh five or six years ago because apparently he spent most of his first marriage comparing her to me and wife #2 looks suspiciously like me circa when we were dating.

After the entry that quote came from had been published, I started thinking about what Jeff would have thought of if he did the same (and let us presume at some point he had Google stalked me) – would he have thought he dodged a bullet with me? Would have have thought I had grown and evolved, or was I just peddling the same shit, just a different decade?
Tough, but much needed, questions to ask as I often wonder the same of myself. I think most who know me, and know me well, would have argued that I have moved and expanded my worldview in the last 20 years. That was one of the first things TheHusband remarked on as we started dating again – I maintained all the good things about my youth and seemingly smoothed out all the trouble spots. As I was saying to someone recently, this public naval gazing of the soul is becoming antiquated. I espouse so much, and at the same time so little, I am not entirely sure how to answer my own question.
Here is what I do know: Being here in this space, either alone or with you, has filled me with great joy this last month. There was a long time when I never thought I would write even privately again, and to know that I can do this still gives me so much.
Today is December 2, which means I’ve written AND posted an entry every day for the entire month of November. Crazy. I seriously can’t believe I have pulled that off! Will I continue doing it? Yes. I’m in a groove now and it seems as unusual now to not write something and post it to the world.
Let’s talk stats!

  • November total posts: 31 (Two posts on November 27)
  • November total word count: 28,036
  • November longest entry: I have a vagina, watch me use a computer (1987)
  • November shortest entry: scary house with the wild front yard (175)
  • Site total posts: 611 (including this one)
  • Site total word count: 412,066 (not including this one)

Taking into consideration how much isn’t up yet, whole years missing, there is a very real chance I’ll hit a million words once the archive project is completed.
Astonishing.
x0x0,
Lisa

This day in Lisa-Universe: 2010, 1998

Collectioun of Cunnynge Curioustes: October 5, 2013

Johann Georg Hainz’s Cabinet of Curiosities, circa 1666. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

During the Renaissance, cabinet of curiosities came into fashion as a collection of objects that would often defy classification. As a precursor to the modern museum, the cabinet referred to room(s), not actual furniture, of things that piqued the owners interest and would be collected and displayed in an aesthetically pleasing manner. Collectioun of Cunnynge Curioustes is my 21st century interpretation of that idea.
 
Dear Internet,

Writing

The Lisa Chronicles

Watching

Weekly watching: Sleepy Hollow, Survivor, Downton Abbey, Boardwalk Empire, Doc Martin, QI, Peaky Blinders, The Bridge (US), Project Runway, The Newsroom, Sons of Anarchy, DaVinci’s Demons,  The Vampire Diaries

Links

x0x0,
lisa

This day in Lisa-Universe in: 1998

la princesa de los Ingenios

Dear Internet,
It’s the 272nd day of the year or the end of September, whichever is easier to remember. As I quipped to TheHusband today, my favorite time of year for it’s one of the few months we’re not running our boiler or the central air, ergo the electric and gas bills are down.
And here I bet you thought I was all seriousness and no fun.
I’ve been purposely withdrawing from a semblance of social life as I meter down on the Lithium. I’m currently taking 900mg a day (I started out at 1500mg), and have found that this particular dose is working well for me. At the advice of Dr. H., who suggested if I found a level that worked for me to stay there so I’m heeding his request.
Most of the problematic side-effects from the higher doses have gone, which has been a tremendous amount of relief. As I don’t know how I am going to respond on the lower doses, I thought it best to curtail anything I don’t need to be actively involved in. This includes but was not limited to withdrawing my volunteer work with a few local comic cons happening this fall, my application for a part-time job at a new local comic book store, a few classes I was going to take, sponsored by Grand Rapids recreational department, and a few more things.
If my absence around town before was due to mobility, before that to some sort of depression, this time for a fairly sensible reason: my mental health. Some of the scariest moments this year was going on a new ADHD drug and having it take over my life. When I sampled Adderall and Focalin, I was living in emotional hell and the strain of being “normal” for everyday things took its toll.
I became a sketch of a person who only seemed to exist in novels or on a television show.
This is always the part that never seems to get discussed: the ramifications of going on/off controlled substances and how if done wrong, can fuck with your life in many serious ways. This is the reason why I write about because I want others to know they are not the only ones going through this particular hell. I also noted to my small support circle of those who also were gifted with being Bipolar my tactics and plan and they also agreed what I was doing was sensible.
This entire year has been exhausting. And I feel incredibly vulnerable, tender, and weary of the world at large.
My session with my talking therapist, Dr. P., have been ramping up pretty well. A year into our therapy and I’m finally revealing more about the inner core of me than before. I’m realising more so than ever talk therapy may be one of the few drugs I have left in my arsenal and I don’t want to waste it on discussing stupid things. I need to get rid of the burned husks and lay it bare.
I’m still solidly working on my archives, bouncing through different back-ups to add back in here at EPbaB. TheHusband often reminds me the back-ups I pulled from former SQL tables, still chock full of injected code, can easily be cleaned up by him. I then explained there is something Zen in the grabbing the data I need and cleaning it up myself. It can be so automatic but at the same time, soothing. There is sense of accomplishment to the act his fancy scripts cannot give me.
I’ve been spending a lot of time in 2003, mainly working through the entries where I found my high school sweetheart when I moved back to GR and what happened after. In 2008, he would track me down to my place of work to try to rekindle something, and follow up with the same move in 2011.
Reliving that extremely short period of 2003 has been much more painful than I would have imagined even a decade removed. I was so absolute and sure about our relationship even though he failed me over and over again. I was smart enough in 2008 and again in 2011 to recognize the bridge he was trying to sell me was never, ever going to materialize. It also didn’t help matters after 2011 connection, I found out he was still living with his girlfriend of many years and has a long rap sheet for various offenses. Politically, we’re so far apart it’s laughable and his various social media streams indicate he’s one step away from writing a manifesto while solitary living on the mountain.
In 1989 we were not an ocean apart. By 2003, no matter how much our hearts begged to be joined, our differences outweighed us. By 2008, I had no idea who this man calling on me was for he was not the man I had fallen in love with 20 years prior. By 2011, I was just tired of the ping ponging and the lies.
It is like a bullet has been dodged multiple times. The 17 year old me weeps for the death of someone she had loved, who had died many, many years ago and instead now sees just the shell of a person she used to know.
But it is finding those lost moments of time, which are ripe in their honesty and candor, so appealing as I go through my archives. They remind me I would not be here today without these events happening, the decisions and sometimes the regrets I have chosen. My personal history may not have world changing moments, but there is a richness to the layers of my struggles, pain, and happiness that helped define me as a person and charted the course of my life.
And it helps to remind me, as I come off the drugs, all of that is inside of me. That life, no matter how monochrome it may feel, can always randomly burst into technicolor.
x0x0,
Lisa

This day in Lisa-Universe in:

Collectioun of Cunnynge Curioustes: September 28, 2013

Johann Georg Hainz’s Cabinet of Curiosities, circa 1666. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

During the Renaissance, cabinet of curiosities came into fashion as a collection of objects that would often defy classification. As a precursor to the modern museum, the cabinet referred to room(s), not actual furniture, of things that piqued the owners interest and would be collected and displayed in an aesthetically pleasing manner. Collectioun of Cunnynge Curioustes is my 21st century interpretation of that idea.
 
Dear Internet,

Writing

The Lisa Chronicles

Watching

  • Hit & Miss
    Hit & Miss showed up randomly on Netflix and we decided to give it a whirl. Chloë Sevigny plays Mia, a pre-op transsexual contract killer who finds out she has a son when the mother dies from cancer, naming Mia guardian. The setup is that Mia, yearning for a better life than the one she grew up with, decides to take on the role of caring not only for her son, but also the rest of her ex-girlfriends’ kids while juggling her day job and romantic interests, as well as all the complications of being true to herself.While the set-up sounds schlocky and alarm bells in terms of handling should be going off, Sevingy surprisingly pulls this off with grace and dignity. The character development was deft and felt honest, and I felt like I could care about these characters, deeply.The show was shot in/around Manchester, UK and theoretically takes place in Manchester and also possibly Leeds, but it could be anywhere UK. Mia’s accent has been likend to that of someone who comes from Irish traveller background (which she hints at as she grew up on the fairgrounds), but her accent keeps dropping in/out; it’s never consistent.The last episode is left wide open for a second season to begin, but SKY tv, one of Britain’s main networks, have announced there will be no second season of Hit & Miss. This is upsetting because there is no closure from the end of season one, which left the viewers with a Mexican standoff between Mia, her son Ryan, and Mia’s boss Eddie. And what happens to Liam?
  • Downton Abbey
    Fall means the return of pumpkin spiced ALL THE THINGS, changing of leaves, and of course the return of my beloved Downton Abbey.For American viewers, Downton Abbey season starts in January on PBS, but I am me and there are reasons why the Internet was invented. This is one of them. I promised ages ago that I would not reveal spoilers anywhere publicly for those without access until January, but I will say season four is shaping up to be as drama filled and nail biting as the previous three.
  • Survivor
    There are only two reality shows I watch, this one and Project Runway. Survivor is more of the influence by TheHusband who loves the strategy and unexpectedness of the show rather character development, so by osmosis, I watch this show too.
  • Sleepy Hollow
    New offering this fall, based on the idea that Ichabod Crane (played by a dreamy Brit, Tom Mison) is not left alone to sleep under a tree for 250 years, but rather he is called awake to help save the world from evil in 2013. The reason? Horsemen from the apocalypse are back, looking to finalize the beginning of the end, witches are also involved, and lawd knows who else.Two episodes in, while not brilliant material, it’s not bad. It doesn’t cater to the obvious and there is some surprisingly good dialogue written. This is definitely on the rotation for weekly viewing.

Weekly watching: Boardwalk Empire, Doc Martin, QI, Peaky Blinders, The Bridge (US), Project Runway, The Newsroom, Sons of Anarchy, DaVinci’s Demons,  The Vampire Diaries

Links

x0x0,
lisa

This day in Lisa-Universe in: 2010, 2003, 1998

Happy Anniversary: Downpour on My Soul 17 Years Later

Dear Internet,
In April of 1996, I wrote downpour on my soul in feverish moments that physically lasted days but mentally felt like hours. I still remember my bedroom set-up, the empty bottles of diet Coke around me, and the towering ash trays. When completed, the piece spanned 47 hand written pages, single spaced. downpour on my soul is a stream of consciousness I put together about my internet relationships that had existed up to that point and the one that I was starting with a crazy South African boy named Andrew.
I was 23.
This was the first piece I had written specifically for the internet. This is what started my online confessions.
Nearly two decades later, I’m Facebook friends with Matt, Chad, and Andrew. I still talk to Mark pretty regularly. Summer of 2011, Miguel tracked me down (third time in last six years) and wanted to finally get married over 20 years after we had begun. The fact I was already married had never entered his mind. Bryan and I would meet  the summer of 1996, when Patrick and I road tripped to Toronto. Bryan and I would end up dating, and one night he would fuck me while I slept. The breadth of vocabulary for rape would not exist then, but I remember the  unease of being around him and the eventual breaking off. Bryan would continue maintaining up until 2000 or so I was the woman for him. He later married and had a family.
These are the now capsules of the lives of the men I loved.
In a lot of ways, not a lot has changed.
Through the many server, URL, and CMS moves over the years, most of my archives are no longer alive on my server space but all of them can be accessed via the Wayback Machine. While I’ve been working steadily for the last few months getting the old content back up, it’s slow process. I cannot remember the last time downpour on my soul was freely available online on any of my sites until now.
I left the piece in its original state – grammar, spelling, and other atrocities alike. While I had thought of moving some of this content into book form after the import was complete, for now everything in its chaos remains.
I love 23 year old Lisa.
I’m not saying that just because she was me, but because of her fearlessness, restlessness, strength, intensity, and tenacity. 23 year old Lisa would have done anything to carve out a better life for herself, or at least, carving out a life that made her happy. She was also crazy enough to try anything at least once but not crazy to the point that would have put her in harms way. When I’ve stumbled upon pieces written from that period, I marvel at her ability to land almost always land at her feet no matter what is thrown at her.
A lot of 23 year old Lisa has passed down through the years, even if it’s in milder forms. She would have been pleased as punch to know she went on to finish her bachelors and then two master degrees, get a well paying job, and have a decent life. Her anger at lack of creativity in our world would be tantamount in my current state of well being, but I already know that and that is something I am aiming to fix.
I am honored to have been 23 year old Lisa and the choices she has made that shaped her life. I hope you like her too.
xoxo,
Lisa
 

This day in Lisa-Universe in:  1996

The Fragility of All Things

Someone who had been an integral part of my past (I’ve known him for more then half my life!) has come back to me again, through the ultra convenience of Facebook. It was a struggle and a challenge this spring when he contacted me, working through what I was feeling as our last few encounters were fairly messy. I was pretty brutal to him the last time, he was brutal to me the time before. The pattern was always the same, whenever we met.
What has been most intriguing about these textual encounters is how much my own perception of myself was sharpened from the presence of a simple Facebook message in my inbox and the conversations that followed. Things I said to M. nearly a decade ago, explanations of my then life choices, are now crystallized. What’s striking is that I knew then, superficially, why I did things the way I did but it was only now, nearly a decade later, that the full realization of those actions are finally being fully understood.
Rationally, I know that I have always understood the reasoning, but it is obvious with a decade long follow up that I was perhaps afraid to vocalize the truth. I will also shamefully admit that I have not had big thinks in a really long time, most of the what goes in and out of my brain has been fluff and candy these last few years. In my youth, I used to write about my big thinks, streams of unconsciousness that would flow unencumbered but in the last few years, it has been far too painful. I wonder, now, if much of my world would have changed if I had not become so afraid?
The surprising thing about this textual relationship is that it challenged me in ways I did not expect. I knew, for example, why I married TheHusband: I love him, he makes me laugh, he challenges me to be a better person, he knows when to let me be fanciful and when I need to be grounded.
But what I did not really realise until that week just how clearly the TheHusband sees the inner me, the one that hardly anyone ever sees; that at the core of it all, really, is my extreme fragility. That my purity of heart, nobleness, and honesty is covered by the wrapping of obnoxiousness and brassiness to the rest of the world, shines like a beacon to TheHusband. He knows that I bruise easily and this is not a strong thing or a weak thing, and it is not a taking care of yourself thing, it’s a soul who’s a little too not of this planet kind of thing.
M. also saw that side of me, but the key difference is that TheHusband lets me grow and contract, whereas M. still sees me as a 17 year old and he would never let me get beyond that and could not accept the beyond that. This is why M. and I would never work, why we’ll never work, and why we’ll always remain a fond memory of a story and never a temptation of beginning, but always the heartbreak of the end.
There will always be a story of M. and I, that will never change, but that is the has been, while with TheHusband, it will always be the will be.

Another one for the the “WTF?” file

katishna had said to me recently that it’s clear that I do not go and seek drama, it comes to me. Which, is true. Not only did Miguel call today (I dumped his VM after hearing him going “hello? hello?” and the part about me needing to “grow up.” He left one other message after that one, which got dumped immediately). But I come home, stuffed from movie popcorn to receive an email from HGFH (houseguestfromhell), to inform me that her dad is dead. Now, we have not spoken since October and I recently found out she’s keeping tabs on me via my brother (whom she also sent a $50 dollar gift cert from Amazon for Xmas) and she’s asking about me.
She wrote to inform me that her dad is dead, but here is the parts I like best:
“I’m not sure what I am expecting to happen from this email, but again, I did feel the urge to tell you of this event in my life.”
“As you know, my relationship with my dad was far more distant and strained than yours with your dad… so this news for me is actually good.”
I wrote about this back when it happened. LIke with Miguel, I bear her no ill will and I certainly don’t hate her. She’s just not a positive influence in my life and to be honest, I don’t miss her. I wish her well, but, apparently she doesn’t get “it” either.
I must be missing something. I mean, I really must.

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