I was lying on my stomach this morning and thought I heard an angel calling my name. “Lisa…..Lisa…..Lisa”
It suddenly dawns on me that Cat is here. I jump up and throw open the bathroom window. It’s 7:25am. I check the alarm and it’s turned off. Shit! Cat calls Scott and goes to pick him up. I make cawfee. I get this idea in my head and decide that being late for work isn’t that bad of a thing.
irony
i’m sitting crosslegged in my chair, thinking about delicious irony. See, yesterday afternoon I had scheduled an appointment with planned parenthood. my appointment was at 3pm. Since the appointment was short notice, i had to reschedule a lot of things around it. no biggie. i run the hell out of the office, go to the parking lot to grab my car gasp! it’s boxed in! car attendant moves said vehicle out of my way, jump on the highway, drive over the bridge — and get stuck in the traffic jam from hell. Usually, the 580 exchange getting off the bridge is fine — it’s clear and i can zip through. It took me over 20 minutes to drive what would take me 2 minutes. I whip out the cellular phone, call PP and make another appointment for next week.
Once I get home, I realized something.
I had started my period.
First time in over 6 1/2 months.
I start laughing and say out loud “Only Lisa can make this happen. She makes an appointment to PP, can’t make it, and gets her freaking period.”
I talk to myself a lot. Nothing to worry about. 😉
cocktails for two
the big thing that has been going on with me lately is pimpin’ cupid. It started out as a joke and now i’m getting emails to all my weird accounts that i never thought anyone would use, telling me that someone likes me. but the jist of it is, is that i’ve listed all those i like back and it’s not making any matches. (Well, okay it made a few matches — but not all of them!) And now, someone sent me a virtual cocktail to my work account — not even signed! ARGH! I hate barcardi. and whiskey. the smell reminds me of my father who is an alcoholic. when i drink, i drink only Absolut or Skyy vodka OR hefeweisen beer. Remember that. 🙂
time enough for love
emails have been rolling in about my discussion yesterday about love, relationships and cheating. hell, the article has only been up for less than 12 hours and i’m already making a new one. regardless though, this is on my mind and if nothing, i am intent on making sure that i drive the point home.
yesterday i had spoken about polyamory and never really got into my thoughts on this. see, for a long time i believed that polyamory was the way to go because by default humans were not monogamous. i will save you the argument i have prepared for that reasoning but one of the reasons that i had for this thinking was that i knew it was not impossible to love more than one person at a time.
i’ve been down that road, being in love with two people at once, and let me tell you, it’s’ hard. it’s hard when both of them love you back. it’s not a matter of indecision — quite the contrary — it’s the matter of that both offer you something that the other cannot.
and for awhile, polyamory served in many ways monogamy cannot.
now, just because i was in love with them doesn’t mean that i’m sleeping with them. I need to drive this point home. It bothers me that people assume that if you are dating someone or whatever that you are automatically fucking them. Not true. I’ve been “in love” with people and never had sex with them. I’ve had sex with people I wasn’t in love with. The two are not mutually exclusive.
i am not, by any means, going to start preaching family values. nor am i, by any means, going to start telling people how to run their life (Uh, Lisa, you do that already. Shuddup!). But I will not discount polyamory as being “weird” or “normal” because it’s both. just as monogamy is both. i think that too often, people place themselves in relationships that they do not want to have and are not strong enough to break off. hence lies in cheating. hence lies in lying. hence lies betrayal.
the truth of the matter is, that the inner core of ME (that makes up me — we won’t go on about other personalities) is that i’m monogamous at heart. really. i had gone through too many times of jealousy and obsession because i could never understand why someone would want something else if they were dating me. Meaning that if i’m in a mutually exclusive relationship, that persons attention should be focused on ME not on someone else. I’m egotistical enough to know there is no one like me (there isn’t. cheap imitations, obviously). i should be able to fulfill their needs, desires and wants. and vice versa. if i’m not, then WHY are they with me (and vice versa). it goes back to me saying that people often get involved out of relationships because they are lonely. and i can understand that. but i don’t want someone being with me because they are lonely, i want someone to be with me because they think that i’m the hottest trick in shoe leather to grace this earth (Gone With The Wind reference).
When I was a mealy-mouth brat growing up, i never thought i would get a bf. ever. i had my life all planned out in front of me. graduate from HS at 17, go to college, get my masters. write the great American novel. be rich and famous by the time i was 25.
at the age of 27 (cringe), i realize that while ones dreams aren’t always as easy as one thinks they are. looking back on my life these last 10 years and of everything that has happened, i often bemoan all the damn mistakes i’ve made. i’ve sat in funks for months because i didn’t have the courage (or the strength) to pick myself up and say “to hell with you, i’ve got my own thing now”. truth of the matter is, i’ve been damned frightened of everything and anything around me. fear of love, fear of rejection, fear of betrayal and non-sense. many many people who know me personally and intimately have often said that this doesn’t jib with what they know of me. but it is me. it’s all of me.
as i said yesterday, i know my faults. i know why i do what i do and i know where in the problems came from. justin used to say he thought i was the sanest person alive because i could recognize these faults. i feel like a caged animal and the whole world is my audience. and when provoked i bite. i know that my sarcasm and indifference is a destructive method of protecting myself. my string of mens were ego boosters because i still get in shock when someone likes me. i don’t understand why they do. i remember what it was like letting go, when i was 19 and i remember the ramifications of that letting go.
friends have suggested that i take a year off, don’t date anyone at all. get myself together. the trials and tribulations of the last few years have taken it’s toll and that i need to find myself for awhile. i agreed with them, and in many aspects i still do. no more living in sin, no more stringing along men. put myself first instead of others, no matter how much it hurts.
falling in love with someone is a big gamble. we all have “issues, matters and concerns” about how we are going to be. we are, in a sense, all frightened of the things we are and do. and no one wants to be alone.
i have this silly dream where i would be sitting in a cawfee shop/bookstore reading. sipping on a frappichino. the man of my dreams would walk over to me and start talking and we would know. that very instant we would know.
i believe that all the relationships i have had in the past have built me up for that moment. the ideal and perfect person. perfect for me that is. i believe that you can have soul mates. and i believe that true love never stops. i believe that there is only one person for you. everything else in your life was nothing but a dress rehearsal. i believe that love does conquer all and i believe that if you love someone, are really in love with someone, you are not afraid of going to extremes for that person, sharing your soul or showing the world that you care.
“Anything less than extraordinary is a waste of my time.” – from Dream for an Insomniac.
I used to say (and still believe) that I would never settle. If the person wasn’t for me, I wouldn’t be with them. All of our past relationships are failures. And I’ve left people for the dumbest reasons, but the reasoning made sense to me because if they didn’t jib with the ideal thing I had in my head then I didn’t want to be with them. Sometimes I projected these ideals onto other people and got kicked to the curb with shock when the person wasn’t i wanted to be. I think that, while I have a long an glorious past with me (and my joking there of), that it taught me more getting in the ring. I wanted to save myself, remain a virgin, until my wedding day. But my own sexual and romantic history has shown (and I have learned from) that while I could never take back what I have done, I can move on and learn from it. I know exactly what i want and this time I won’t stop till I get it. And if this means I’m going to end up a crothity old lesbian with 10 cats — so be it. But I would rather save myself for the right person then to throw myself at the wrong person.
Ya dig?
Tag: Period
404 Not Found
From Greg: “OK, either you’re being subtle, or you have a bad link. Either way, you have to admit that the answer to “what do you want” being “Not Found” is kinda funny in a Janeane Garofalo-ish web-savvy kind of way. :)”
Uh, well, I went to upload the file what i want and my connection died last night. I dialed into three ISPs and I couldn’t route for the life of me. However, amusingly enough I could route in Linux. But the file is in winders. I’ll fix it tonight. 🙂
99% accurate
I’m not pregnant.
you are probably wondering “what?” but for the last few weeks, the only thing on my mind has been the fact that I “may” or “may not” be carrying another life within me. i was conscious of this as i sat drinking all day Sunday and i was conscious of this every time i lit up a cigarette and smoked.
but I’m jumping ahead.
As many of you who know me fairly intimately know that I haven’t been “right” with menstruation since, well, forever. I was one of those weird kids that got their period at the age of 8 (and had to deal with Mrs. Bruntrock (real name) calling me a liar and forcing my mother to come down to St. Josephs to verify my claims of having to change my damn pad) and got it again at the tender age of 13. I was regular for like a minute and then I stopped getting it. I got examined at the age of 15 where the doctor proclaimed I “may” or “may not” have juvenile endometriosis. he suggested however that i start taking the pill to regulate my periods and take things from there on in.
i think i was the only virgin who has ever been on the pill.
this worked well on and off for the last 11 years, but there has been times where the choice between getting my prescription refilled and eating and eating came out to be a winner.
when i moved to SF, I had my doctor write out a prescription for me for a years worth and diligently took the pill with no problems, however my prescription ran out last July and I haven’t been back to get it refilled since.
In the interim, I was sleeping with Justin, who was by far the only person I was sleeping with, and we were double bagging condoms on top of the pill. When the prescription ran out, I didn’t really think anything about it and just kept screwing Justin and using those damn condoms but kicking myself internally for being too lazy to get the prescription refilled. there has never been any worry of me getting pregnant as we were taking extra caution since i went off the pill.
i haven’t had my period since January.
living with another alpha she bitch (ie: Cathleen) in the house has caused, when even on the pill, disruption in my cycle. Cathleen and i would joke about who was “large and in charge” based on who was forcing the other person to go with their others cycle. it was damn annoying. then i went off the pill. and I didn’t have my period for a few months and then i got cramps from hell and got it in December and January. and i took out my Dilbert planner and marked the days so that i could finally start tracking my period to see who really was large and in charge.
for months I would get “symptoms” that i was all too familiar with: some cramping, craving of chocolate/salt for a day or so. moodiness. and then Cathleen would tell me that she just finished her cycle and it suddenly make sense. so I started jotting down my moods and they completely corresponded with when she was on her cycle.
but no blood.
I kept telling myself that it was just my fucked up body doing it’s thing, but then march turned into April turned into may turned into June.
and then I started feeling “funny”.
Ever since James went back to England a week or so back, my stomach has been acting weird. a combination of cramps and acid and major gas. i felt like someone had shoved an air pump up my butt and just filled me with 10lbs of air. my stomach hurt, i couldn’t drink anything more than milk and sometimes even that was too hard. and i couldn’t take it anymore. i hadn’t told anyone what had been going on. i was in complete denial about what was going on. and when James and I talked about it the other day, found out that both of us were having the exact same symptoms for the exact same of time (since he left). and if i was “maybe” pregnant, did that mean james was too?
so i told Justin what i was feeling.
and he said “you’re not pregnant” and i asked him how did he know? and he said that he had been through this with his ex and he did research on getting pregnant and turns out it’s harder than it seems. yeah sure, i mean if you have real respect for your body, you’ll always use protection, but even so, he kept telling me that there was like a zillion and one chance that i was pregnant (go back to the: ALWAYS using protection and double bagging at that). He said he wasn’t worried. I was worried. I kept talking about going and buying a pregnancy test and never got around to it. I kept putting it off and putting it off. and i had gotten my horoscope on Saturday for Sunday and it said something like “the news you have to tell people will be taken with more sense then you have” or some shit and i freaked out. I had planned, on Sunday to go and get the test and interpreted THAT to mean that if I WAS pregnant that people would be cool with it. So i skipped out buying the test.
But i couldn’t deal with NOT knowing absolutely for sure.
So last night, after dropping Cat off at my house, I screwed up the nerve and drove to longs. I lit up a cigarette even though I knew that it was a 2 minute drive. I parked the car and walked right in with determination in my back and my head held high.
I was so scared.
I walked down the baby aisle and just stared at all that BABY crap and a million things went through my head about abortions and having kids and my friends who had all been done this path before me. i thought about my immaturity (i can’t even take care of a damn cat hello!) and the fact that if i ever got pregnant i wanted to be married or at least very much in love with someone.
and then i couldn’t find the damn tests.
i looked to my right and saw something that said “early testing”
But of course.
Pregnancy tests are located next to the condoms. How silly of me not to have thought of that.
I grabbed the first package and read the instructions. It sounded simple enough and walked towards the cash register. I sat there, shoving the box underneath my armpit. I felt ashamed as i watched the people ahead of me buying Mt. Dew and their damn dr scholls foot deodorant. I stood there with my mind running in a million different directions. I twitched and put the box face down on the conveyor belt and started reading the Enquirer. I kept telling myself “there is ABSOLUTELY nothing to be ashamed of. No one is going to make fun of me for buying a pregnancy test.” But I couldn’t help swallowing hard as Tariq the counter guy asked me how i was doing as he examined the box a little more closely. I said fine thanks and kept my head held high and attempting not to look scared..
I drove home and read the instructions. Now all I had to do was wait to pee.
And I waited.
And I waited.
By the time i went to bed some 6 hours later (and drank enough water to kill a horse), i still couldn’t pee.
I went to bed after working out determined that regardless of what, i was taking the test the next morning even if it killed me.
as par usual, i woke up late.
I had the most delicious dream that I was dating Henry Rollins and had been screwing him in an apartment we shared. I heard the alarm go off and looked at the clock. i was determined to do this. i grabbed a plastic cub and went to the bathroom. ripped open both packages (two tests came in one package). dipped the sticks into the urine. jumped in the shower for five minutes (test takes 1-3 minutes), jumped back out. pulled the sticks out. looked that the information sheet. looked at the sticks. looked at the package. looked back at the sticks.
went out and said “hey Justin!”
got a muffled “wha?” from under the covers.
“I’m not pregnant.”
a “woohoo!” comes through loud and clear. then a “i told you so.”
As to be expected, i can’t but help feeling a tad bit disappointed. i had it all in my head that if i was pregnant i was going to have an abortion. i wasn’t in love with Justin, i was single, i wasn’t making enough money, i wasn’t in love, i wasn’t married. a thousand different thoughts went through my head of the reason “why” i wouldn’t have a child right now. but as i grow older, I’ve noticed that the more i look at some little girl with big brown eyes and dark hair and think “she could be mine”. and i can’t help feeling that all the promises i made in my head to a god i didn’t believe in were not only empty but somewhat full of some meaning. i start stressing out about how now that I’m getting older I’ll soon be too old to have kids.
the irony is that five years ago, i thought i was pregnant with Alan’s child (another “oh shit haven’t had my period in 5 months deal). and i had thought THEN there was no problems in my head with being young and having a baby. now five years later, i found that my expectations of what i want from life are completely different then they were then. i always thought i was strong then, but i was so immature. and i realize now that if i sat here and think about it, i could have handled having a little girl (or boy) NOW as I’m older than when i was young and stupid. maybe I’m not in the right situation right now, and i know there is a lot i want to do before i get married or live in sin again or whatever, but just thinking about the reasons then of wanting to have a child and now —
please god.
let me not turn into Ally McBeal.
dropping eggs
When I was about 8 or 9, I was in a convenience store (too high falutin to say 7-11) with my mom, when I started feeling sudden sharp pains going across my belly. I bended over in pain and my mother, worried, gave me keys to her car so that i could go lie down
once we rushed home (and i was obviously feeling a bit better), I went right into the bathroom and pulled down my pants. Splattered on my panties and thighs was dark red blood stains. My mother, a nurse, said not to worry. It wasn’t that uncommon and helped clean me up. She gave me a maxi-pad and showed me how to take care of it myself.
My mother was pretty liberal in those days and when the bleeding didn’t stop after the first day, she defended me in school when the teacher assumed I had been lying as to why i had to go to the bathroom. The probability in 1980 that an 8 year old girl could have her period just didn’t jive with her. The old bat died from alcoholism sometime after that, so again proof that karma works.
Anyway, my own body has been growing significantly since I was 8 years old (and anyone who declares that childhood is a wonderful time is full of crap and needs to stop seeing new age therapists) and just as my friends bodies have also changed. We have grown hips (or not), grown breasts (or not) and gotten taller (or not) and our faces have matured. when i look at pictures of me at the ages of 8, 14, 17, 21 and now 26; i still see the same “face” but i’ve also seen how it’s grown.
however my body has grown in different ways. I’ve gained and lost close to a few hundred pounds since I was about 15. My hair has changed color so many times that even I can’t remember what it was originally. My bra size has grown from a 34b to a 36d. My period, however, has been the only constant thing since I was 8 years old.
It has always been fucked up, and this is why it’s been constant.
After that incident when I was 8, I never was regular again until I was 13. My body, mature enough to have children, started dropping eggs once a month like clockwork. Then I started getting bad cramps, thrown in with severe depression before my period, and then stopped getting my period for months at a time. I wasn’t sexual active and knew I wasn’t pregnant. I wasn’t under any real stress other than “normal”, yet for some reason I wasn’t having my period.
We went to the doctors and found out I had some version of juvenile edometriosis and further testing from the “doctor” showed I “may” not be able to have children in the future. He put me on birth control pills and left me be.
Over the years, I’ve been on birth control as if it were life saving medicine. Without taking the birth control, the cramping would start, the heavy bleeding would begin and I would sink into a pms-induced depression that made no rhyme or reason. And! If I even so much as skipped a week or two because of I had forgotten to…
Okay, it’s now 11.12.98. This is one of the lamest and most tooth pulling chronicle.
The point being:
I got my period. I haven’t gotten it in three months. Now I feel all squeaky clean.