Tag: TheBassist

Mental Illness, Shame, and the Art of Asking – 2016 Edition

#LisMentalHealth week is an initiative started by my good friend Cecily Walker and Kelly McElroy. You can follow along on Twitter, add resources to the Google doc, or check out the Storify of Monday’s chat.
Dear Internet,
If you’ve been reading (or following me on social media), it’s no surprise I’m open about my mental health. I talk pretty extensively on being bipolar (especially since I’m bipolar one which means I creep towards mania than depression), mental health in general, borderline personality disorder, adhd, depression when I get it, anxiety, and about my drugs, shrink, and fuck, probably a lot more I’m forgetting.
While I try not let me be these diseases, so much of what they do is an integral part of my life, it’s very hard to talk about them in some sort of context, “I’m being cray today. Ugh!”
So here is a week where I can talk freely and abundantly about my brain with professionals in my chosen career only to find as I opened up this editor to write — I am stumped on what exactly to say.
Three years ago (!), spurned by a TED Talk by Amanda Fucking Palmer, I wrote this piece: “Mental Illness, Shame, and The Art of Asking.”
In case you missed it, here is Amanda’s talk:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=xMj_P_6H69g%26w%3D640%26h%3D360
What I said three years ago

Yesterday, I was part of a panel at MSU Comics Forum where we gave a presentation on Golden Age: Comics and Graphic Novel Resources in Libraries. Our schtick is to present on this topic at non-library conferences because we knew it was important for artists, writers, creators, educators, and comic book lovers to be aware of what/how libraries are doing with comics and graphic novels. Within the library world, it is a given. Outside the library world, not so much.
 
While prepping for my talk, I was debating on whether or not to mention I was bipolar and relate that to graphic novels available on the topic. If part of my argument is graphic novels should be in libraries is because they help broach difficult topics, is this not a difficult topic and ergo a perfect example? The other question that would be asked is what kind of obligation do I have in mentioning I am bipolar to anyone about anything? Why does the onus fall on me?
 
This debate went on in my head up until I took the podium.
 
When the slide came up I had earmarked to mention being bipolar, I found myself just saying it as naturally if you please:
 
“I’m bipolar. I’ve had several friends who’ve read Marbles: Mania, Depression, Michelangelo, and Me and say to me, ‘Okay. I understand what you’re going through. It was eye opening.’ And this is perfectly illustrates how graphic novels and comics can help broach difficult topics.”
 
Several heads in the audience nodded with agreement.
 
In the space of a few minutes, I had negotiated in my head the trust relationship between myself and the audience. I gave myself permission to be candid. The floor did not open up and swallow me nor did fire come reigning down the heavens.
 
While I was feeling manic up until that moment, and then the world shifted into focus. When my 15 minutes was done, I felt my body relax for the first time in weeks.
 
Before watching AFP’s talk last night, I had not realized the mental negotiations taking place in my head about having a mental illness were about exchanges in trust with whomever. Oh, not you Internet, but with those in contact of my daily life, who don’t follow me across the social sphere or read this blog. There is a price tag on honesty, and on revealing, one that was too high in the past to contemplate, and one that is constantly always under scrutinizing but is becoming easier to negotiate.
 
AFP rationalized it is not about taking a risk, rather it is trust. Shame comes in when those not part of the negotiation attempt to criticize it. I am currying trust with my readership by telling them about my crazy, but someone who doesn’t read my blog, or know me, starts to make judgements on the already established link between me and my readership, they are installing shame on the affair. Anything different is open to criticism and this needs to change.
 
My name is Lisa and I am bipolar.
It needs to be said, it has to be said, I will continue to say it.

That piece still sums up what I feel today, except when it’s not.
Bipolar can be controlled with drugs and therapy. I’ve been on the same cocktail for over a year now and 9 times out of 10, life is pretty even keel. Now Borderline Personality Disorder is taking center stage, rearing its ugly head and that has been running my life for the last year+.
BPD has ruined a lot of things with the most current such as TheBassist1 breaking up with me not because he didn’t love and want me, but because I was a flight risk2 and will always be a flight risk until I got my shit together.
BPD has ruined not only romantic relationships, but platonic relationships; it’s distorted my world view; it’s fucked a lot of things for me and sometimes I feel utterly and completely out of control. “I hate you, don’t leave me!” “Everyone hates me; I’m the greatest thing since sliced bread.” “I have made a mistake somewhere and now I will be shunned/fired/etc.”
Coupled with being bipolar, I’m often surprised I’ve made it past 40. Hell, past 30.
I talk a lot about the domino effect which has plagued me these last few years. But what I haven’t discussed is exactly how that affected me on a much more personal level:

  • The #teamharpy case has made me a leper in the library world
  • nina and I racked up $15K in legal fees
  • I ran myself into $40K credit card debt between September 2014 and June 2015
  • On paper I’ve been homeless, on and off, since October 2014
  • I’ve had several breakdowns, starting with a long period of mania that lasted for about six months, then a bout of depression, back to mania, which finally came to a head in October when TheBassist broke it off with me.
  • From October to mid-December I rarely left TheExHusband’s condo or got out of my jimjams or did any kind of self-care. I ugly cried nearly every day
  • I’ve rarely smoked more than a couple of cigarettes a month until this past summer where I’m coming up to half a pack a day
  • While not suicidal, I’ve been in crisis at least twice in the last year

I’m probably missing a few things but this is the laundry list of ills that have been the albatross in my life for the last 18 months. A lot of these are my own choices, “If only I had…”

  • …used the word ‘alleged’ in that fucking tweet
  • …stop spending money on useless shit since I don’t have a job
  • …stopped denying everything was great and I was sick
  • …listened to what my loved ones said instead of thinking I could go at this alone

There are a lot of “If onlys.” Aren’t there always?
Being mentally ill is a goddamned highway with lots of on and off ramps. You make decisions based on your illness, it backfires, and you lose something important. You make a decision based on your illness, it comes up smelling of roses. You just never know how the die is going to roll and we keep taking the chance that what we decided was right.
We’re gamblers, we are. We worry by not telling anyone, we’ll not be able to get help when we need it. We worry if we do tell someone, we’ll lose out on life/partners/jobs. We worry how drugs will affect us or if self-care will actually work. We worry about the stigma, the pain, the anguish, the shame. We make ourselves sicker because we cannot disclose our sickness without fear something terrible is going to happen.
And the most painful thing? No one trusts you. TheBassist doesn’t trust me. TheExHusband doesn’t trust me. I’ve lost a lot of friends who can no longer trust me. What comes out of my mouth today can and has been either half-way true or another variation tomorrow3. It’s hard to ask for help when no one trusts you, even if they love you.
A lot of hard questions are coming up in the #lismentalhealth chat. Questions I want to be the queen of all that is mentally ill and bestow my wisdom to everyone as I have all the answers (“I am the greatest thing since sliced bread.”). I’m afraid to post because I don’t want to be seen as a scene stealer (“Everyone hates me.”). I don’t want to seem “weak” (“I can control this thing no matter what you say”), whatever that means, and I don’t want people to take pity on me even though I crave their adoration (“Don’t leave me.”). I’m a raging, sarcastic asshole towards people (“I hate you.”)
Being mentally ill is goddamned exhausting. I think this is one thing we can all agree upon.
One of the questions that did come up I can, somewhat, safely answer is about disclosing your illness to current and future employers. Right now I’m of the mindset of “No.” In my last position, because I was hell bent on being open and honest, I told my immediate boss. Within a few months, they used my illnesses against me. See the revised job description they put up when they did a call after my contact was about to expire. Look particularly at 12. They also would use verbiage such as, “Go take more drugs,” and “have you seen your therapist lately” out of spite. (Yes, I did try to get them reprimanded for such impertinence but since no one heard them, I had no physical proof…you get the idea where this going, right?) Despite the disability act/equal opportunity form you can volunteer to answer when you apply for a job, I choose “no response” to the question or I don’t fill out the damned thing at all. I cannot take the chance if someone sees I’m bipolar they will automatically disqualify me from getting a job. While this is illegal, I’ll never know since I will just get your standard rejection.
I have nothing to say. I have everything to say. I have a zillion answers. I have no answers.
I wish I did.
xoxo,
Lisa

1. One day there will be a day when I don’t mention him in a piece but today is not that day.
2. I can’t blame him for this part of why our relationship failed this time around. When the love of you life is leaving you every couple of months and then calls you ugly crying, you’d probably cut ties off too. But that’s a post for another time.
3. Pinky swear, on my grandmother’s grave, everything I’ve written in here, my world, has been true. It may have been fucked up, crazy sounding, or depressing as fuck, but this is the only place I have always felt like my safe space and thus can be completely honest.

This Day in Lisa-Universe: 2013, 2011, 2011, 1997

doctrine of signatures

Dear Internet,
It’s late Saturday evening closing in on early Sunday morning and as of Thursday (the day, not the dog) I’m now 0/2 on the job front. Connecticut let me know this past week they were moving forward with another candidate and surprisingly? I was okay with it. Truly. Disappointed? Absolutely but right now this is turning out to be a good thing™ for a variety of reasons. Honestly.
And for now? On ward and upward. I’ve pulled out all my old job haunt websites, found 10 jobs near immediately to apply for and will work on those applications this week. I’ve got linux server admin to learn, websites to redesign, kickstarting my librarian website, and enough things to do to last someone a life time.
I am the queen of moving forward. I’m also tenacious. I’m very tenacious, sometimes scarily so.

Discovered recently a Kickstarter package was sent to my old address in Connecticut when I swore I had updated everything to the L-Ville address. 95% sure I had updated Kickstarter. 95%.
The 5% was enough to prove me wrong.
I contacted TheBassist about the package that was delivered to him in early December, not expecting much of a response as I have not heard a peep from him in three months. I don’t stalk him on the facebooks, the mutual friends and I are on collegial terms. It’s life. You break up, you mourn, and you move on.
As the days blended into another, I resolved to accept the package was a lost cause. I wasn’t terribly worried, really, as I have a digital copy of the book. It would have been nice to have the physical media but if not? It’s okay.
A week later he got in touch to let me know the package had been shipped and here was the cost (I offered to pay for postage). I was a bit apprehensive in regards to the thank you card I sent his family was in the package — and I asked. He responded absolutely not. I was thrilled to hear it had been opened, they knew of my gratitude, and it laid with the rest of the holiday cards in their kitchen.
This was a relief. His family are great people, how the last year went down was of no fault of their own, and I wanted to make sure they knew my gratitude and thankfulness for their kindness, hospitality, and generosity.
Truth be told, I’m aghast at my behaviour in the last year — especially in accordance with his family. If I were me now meeting me of the then, I would be appalled that someone was so — foolish? Careless? Something. I’m being too hard on myself, and as I well know, but as someone whose so fucking self-aware (as told to me by my current (and past) shrinks, TheExHusband, and close friends), it bears thinking about. If I were in that same situation now as I was then, I would be too proud to accept their kindness.
(Pride? Not sure how I would describe the feeling other than that’s the closest approximation I can give. I can’t help but think if the domino effect had not happened, I’d be in a wholly different frame and mired life of mine. As I mentioned to someone recently, it was around late 2013 when I lamented how stale my life had become and I only needed some kind of excitement to get it remotely interesting. Last time I ever say that again, I must point out.)
I waited for the box with much trepidation. I had zero idea what he would put in it. I admit I worked myself up in a near froth about the whole thing but by mid-week I was back in control of my emotions. I have a TheBassist box started (things that are of/remind of him) and agreed with myself whatever was in the box winging its way to me was to painful to view/use would go immediately into TheBassist box to be stored indefinitely.
He said the box was arriving on Saturday and I waited as the morning slowly made its way towards the afternoon. (Rip the bandaid off and all that rot.) I checked the mail around noon and nothing had arrived but 15-30 minutes later, I was awash of impending dread. I knew the box had arrived and sure enough, there it was. Almost taunting me.
(Yes, I am being overly dramatic.)
I slit the butcher paper and tape, slit the tape securing the box, pull out the plastic air bags, and there was my stuff. Not all of it, some of it. My favorite JoyDiv shirt I left for him, the last love letter I gave him, a copy of THE PLAN I had sketched out in December 2014 and was pinned to the bulletin board in his room. My personal coffee cup (that looked used?). Some random knick knacks I used to give my personality in his bedroom. The package and mail that had not been passed on to me.
(I can still recall the location of the shirt and the letter I left on his pillow before I left that early September morning. Time moved so quickly, I realized the last time I was intimate with anyone was with him and I have no plans to be intimate with anyone else for a very long time. (See: hot mess. See: swearing off relationships for at least a year.))
It was a strange, sad, and depressing affair, those items.
I refused to let myself read too much into the box — it’s just stuff after all. In my paper journal I wrote I would be terribly upset if he sent back the JoyDiv shirt, and here was the shirt, rolled up neatly, snuggling against the cardboard side. Here I am, heart broken, but not terribly surprised, not in hysterics, not really anything.
(I’ve prepared myself to accept he may send further boxes along with other things and into TheBassist box they will go.)
I’ve been ruminating on the choice of things he sent. I would have been gobsmacked if he sent along the Grand Rapids shirt I gave him all that time ago. The other love letters. The silly signs. The random gifts (Pops! Toys and other things).
I put the things he sent into my TheBassist box. The coffee cup is getting washed and it too will find its new home. The mail was sorted and the junk mail (most of the mail packed) was recycled. The unpacking, the sorting, and the questioning was over in less than five minutes.
Lunch was beckoning. I closed the front door, turned the lock, and that, as they say, was that.

You may have heard, Alan Rickman died this week, and like his cancer predecessors (Lemmy from Motorhead, David Bowie), the world has been mourning. It’s been a very good week for DEATH on all accounts and for various reasons.
I’ve been thinking about what tattoo #18 will be when I get some cash to get fresh ink. I knew I wanted it to be text of some kind, picking a phrase you absolutely love to carry on with you always is hard work.
I think I have found the answer.
Those of us who are Harry Potter fans remember all too well (and cried) when Dumbledore is gently surprised of Snape’s still in love with Lily Potter after all those years:

And this will be tattoo #18, more than likely around my right wrist / forearm.
“After all this time?”
“Always,” said Snape.
xoxo,
Lisa
P.S. Krazy Kate tisked me into agreeing when the box arrived to not contact TheBassist to let him know the eagle had landed. Don’t hand over power, etc. I coughed up the excuse I needed to contact him: Mail from the Connecticut institution had not made its way to me yet even though they had my updated address. Could you please forward the mail on? Thank you. I also thanked him for the box, but I had to make a correction. Several of his friends informed me when TheBassist made his year end review on the facebooks, he had a line that went along the lines of, “And I broke up with the girl who loved me.” That wording has been plaguing me for months — it’s not past tense, it’s present. So the last line I wrote was, “Correction: It is not ‘a girl who loved me,’ rather it’s, ‘a girl who loves me.’ Always has been and so it should always be.”

This Day in Lisa-Universe: 2015, 1999

happy holidays

Me, 1975. I was three.

Dear Internet,
Five days. I lasted five days. I won’t promise that I’ll be updating on a super frequent basis as I’m massively writing in my paper diary these days but I’ll try to keep the world abreast of what’s going on.
My paper diary is an interesting read. I’ve been writing in it steadily for the last few months and you can follow the ups and downs of my emotions. I can not even begin to explain the swathe of emotions thrown about like a salad BUT it’s a good touchstone to figure out HOW things are getting there and how to be mindful of them in the future.

I was outside tonight having a smoke and the moon was so clear and bright, the valleys and mountains stains against the white of the surface. I stood staring at the moon as I smoked (I know, I KNOW!) and thought about the last few years and how my life profoundly changed.

I chronicle the last several years of my life as a chain of events beginning in February 2014. Wednesday died on February 1. I was served papers for the #teamharpy case in early June. I left my job to write a book on June 30. I left TheExHusband on August 24. I moved in with TheBassist on October 14. My book stalled in early November. Staring in mid-November, I started a whirlwind trip across these united states land that seemed to never stop. I’ve been living with TheExHusband since the first week of September 2015 when I went up to the cabin to close it down for him (and following him to Louisville after). In October 2015, TheBassist and I split.
In these last four months, this is the longest time I’ve lived at once location in the last yearish as I’ve been crisscrossing the US looking for work.
Coming up two years since the domino effect started and but I was internally dying before the domino started (job stress, marriage stress, etc). Yet, I would never have seen this massive amount of change coming from a million miles away. I could see maybe one or two things happening but the succession of each event turned my life into a country song.
Things have started to get better. The #teamharpy case settled on March 25, 2015. The divorce was granted on April 1. My interview rate has gone up (though no job offers – yet), I’ve been living in the same location for the last fourish months. Thursday came into my life.
The uptick has been slow, but it’s happening and I’m hoping the events that led me up today will start reversing itself, starting with the pug. That’s how it all started, right? In that vein, I (hopefully) will find out if I’m employed or not within the next few weeks. Once employed, then my own place, and so on and so forth.

There I am staring the moon and my thoughts turn to the things I am grateful for. I am grateful to TheExHusband and TheBassist for taking me in. I’m grateful for my friends. I’m grateful for TheExHusband letting me live with him while I wait for my life to straighten out. I’m grateful I have clothes on my back, food in my stomach, and my car paid off. My credit score is stable. I’m grateful that my health is good, I have a therapist, and a medication regime is keeping me on track.
No matter how fucked up my life is and has been, I am just thankful and grateful for being here, in this now.
I’m also grateful for TheBassist for breaking up with me, which is something I would never have admitted even a week ago.

One of his friends got in touch with me while I was in CT and joked as TheBassist had two extra tickets for the premier of Star Wars, I should go. I said sure, ask him. I’m curious about his response. The friend warned me TheBassist’s response to him was often slow. Time ticks on that night and as nothing has come back about a “yay” or “nay,” I accept it’s not going to happen. I will not lie and say I was not ready to leave at a moment’s notice, and I was. I will also not leave out I called TheBassist a day before my trip to see if he wanted to get together for dinner (no expectations, truly!) while I was in town and I was sent immediately to voicemail.
There I am, ready to rock if the answer comes back “yay” and if “nay”, I would accept this was okay, because it really was. Hope for the best, expect the worse and all that rot.
I fly back home on Friday and the friend gets in touch with me that night saying he heard from TheBassist. He then gives me the run down: TheBassist loves me and he always will, but I was a 24/7 flight risk. TheBassist broke down Borderline Personality Disorder and how I was sabotaging my life. He would never say never, but now? No.
It was in that moment when a switch flipped in my brain and everything changed. Something about the explanation of BPD TheBassist gave to the friend was that click. TheBassist knew, he’s always known. I ignored his advice and pleas to work on myself. He tried to save me, I wouldn’t let him or he couldn’t, and he had to let me go to figure it out myself.
Only I could save me and I’m no where near where I need to be in a relationship with TheBassist, let alone anyone else.
You’d think these chain of events would send me into a tizzy. But it didn’t. Two days prior when I flew into Hartford, I started sniffling. The sniffling turned into ugly crying as I walked the length of the airport. The ugly crying sent me running into the ladies’ where I let myself cry to get it all out. As I came out of the ladies’, I started doing deep breathing meditations as I walked towards the exit and tried not to look at the usual spot where TheBassist would be standing with a silly sign in his hand. With the deep breathing, I was able to make it through. I won’t lie and say I didn’t chain smoke outside while waiting for the rental car shuttle. I won’t lie that I didn’t take Klonopin to settle my nerves so I could drive 1.5 hours to my hotel. I will not leave out I wasn’t looking for his car in the pick-up lanes.
But Friday? I was fine. The world sharpened as it came into focus. I did deep breathing as the friend talked, asking if the response from TheBassist made sense. I said it did.
And I was happy. Fucking finally I was getting some peace.
This was not a manic happiness or a forced happiness. The last two months has been emotional pain. I could put a brave face to the world, doing my thing, letting the outside world think I was charming and personable (because really, I am). But home was a whole ‘nother story. I would cry for days. I would write disparaging things about TheBassist, what I would later call my “half-truths.” (Which one day, when I’m brave enough to write about it, I will give it a proper explanation.) But the pain in my heart was engulfing me and I begged TheExHusband and my friends to tell me how to get rid of it. I was willing to do almost anything put that flame out and no one had the answer.
For years, I was painting everyone who had remotely (or imagined) slighted me (especially TheBassist) as the bad guy when I only had myself to blame. I was trying to control things I could not control and nor should I have been. I put myself into situations that I could temper but didn’t. I could have ended those conversations, those thoughts, those feelings.
Only I could control myself. Only I could make the decision on what I wanted to do, something I evaded for the last 18 months. I wanted TheExHusband, TheBassist, and anyone close to me to make those decisions for me. No one would, of course, it was my life. But I didn’t understand that then my lack of decision was a decision.
(Please note I was never suicidal during this process. TheExHusband, my therapist, and I think someone else asked in a matter of days apart, if I had thoughts of ending my life. The answer is a resounding, “No!”. I want to be here on this planet and make my life meaningful and with purpose. Suicide were the farthest thing from my mind.)
The switch that flipped changed everything about my outlook. I accepted the emotional pain and rationalized it was not necessarily the end of a love affair with the man I knew to be the one, but the end of the affair was the breaking point. I was finally grieving for everything I had lost up to that moment. Oh, I said I was grieving, but remember the brave face and the half-truths? It was far easier to paint me as the wronged one rather than accept that if I had not sent that tweet, I would not have been sued. If I could have really tried, I could have saved my marriage. The only fault here was mine.
I began to, finally, accept the good things. I was steadily losing weight. I was keeping up with the exercising and the meditation. I was excite about my job interviews and the potentialy to have my own space. The pug helps ground me. I’m writing daily. I’ve been knitting like a fiend and the projects are getting complete. I savor going out in the world.
I am trying to be present and mindful.
BDP cannot be cured or control with drugs, but it can be lessened or recovery can happen via talk therapy (which I’m in now) and Dialectical Behaviour Therapy. I did DBT years and years ago, using some of the techniques to manage my emotions but I’ve let those tools rust and I need to get them back in rotation again. The writing and meditation help, but there is more. I’ve bought two books to work through the DBT alone (finding a good therapist, which I have, is difficult enough. Finding a DBT group is nearly impossible). I have done this before and I can do it again.
No one is ever really stable. Life is messy, but we can control how we messy we make life. I’m done with having chow mein existance and I strive to be more like a medium rare filet mignon. please.
And all the things, the plans I kept raving about, are finally solidifying. The sands are starting to turn into earth and one day will they will become mountains.

I sat out to write this as a “the holidays tend to suck, but I am grateful for these things (list things) and my life,” but has turned out to be more confessional then planned. Isn’t that always the case?

TheBassist is never far from my thoughts, but the worst of the pain has passed. I can stop boycotting Target, Barnes and Noble, Five Below or flinch when I see a Guitar Center. I have not cried when grocery shopping at a local store simply because it was the same layout as the grocery store TheBassist and I used to shop at. (I mean, really. A fucking crying jag in the produce aisle because it was designed similar to every other fucking grocery store on the planet but yet I associate it with ONE particular store? COME ON.) I’m okay when I pull out clothes that still smell of him and etc.

I cannot write this without thinking of e.e. cummings’ [i carry your heart with me(i carry it in], because that poem sings of my feelings for TheBassist. I have reconciled we may never see each other again, let alone get back together. I do know if/when I see him again, I will cry. Tears of relief, happiness, and everything in-between. Even if that is the only time I ever see him, I will cry. I better remember to not wear make-up.
Together we were not toxic, but I was toxic and in that toxicity I changed the pattern of the relationship. Love, faith, and want, at times, are simply not enough no matter how badly we want them to be.
Happy holidays.
xoxo,
Lisa

Today in Lisa-Universe: 2014, 2013, 2011,  2002, 2001

indefatigable

And I’ve been looking for my truth
Since God was a boy Guy Garvey

Dear Internet,
I’m taking a break from making holiday cards as there is only so many pithy messages one can write before the hand gets tired. The breakfast bar looks as if Michael’s has thrown up glitter and paper everywhere. I’ve received so many responses for the cards I closed down the form because a girl can only make so many damned cards. What is surprising me the most is I have not sliced a finger with the Exacto knife or glued things together that are not paper.
Edit: I’ve made all the damned cards and have loads of extras. If you want a card, go to bit.ly/HolidayCards2015.
I’ve been getting back into crafting again to help quell my brain and the satisfaction having a finished product made by oneself. I started with coloring this summer, moved on to knitting again when I found my knitting supplies. This, of course, meant I had a ton of projects started and no idea now who or what said projects are for. I tore each project back to a ball of yarn, using said yarn to knit myself a long scarf. Nothing fancy, just a garter stitch back and forth. I forgot how to fucking purl, cast on, and cast off. These are all simple stitches and if it were not for kind friends on Facebook and YouTube, L-ville would hear the brunt of my swearing on why I could not do what I had mastered so long ago.
A million and half years ago (2010 –  2012) I ran an Etsy shop, Excessively Diverting. I sold handcrafted holiday bulbs, pins, bookmarks, and other trinket specializing in out of copyright books and authors such as Jane Austen, the Bronte’s, Charles Dickens, and so forth and so on.
The shop was successful but the time & cost could not justify keeping the shop open as the majority of sales came during October, November, and December. When breaking down the wholesale cost of making the items and I was paying myself $0 per hour to keep prices competitive, meant I was barely breaking even. I kept all of the templates and other similar items in a box for said store re-opening sometime in the future, but I don’t even have a permanent place to live so that’s not happening anytime soon.
Back to crafting! I also do cross-stitch, which has been slow going. I started a project of matryoshka doll style Avengers ages ago as gift for someone I now have no idea who for. Captain America and the Hulk were finished before I realized I had fucked up the dimensions. That project is just hanging out in one of my craft boxes for something as I do not want to waste what I have already completed.
Then there is the holiday cards, which I’ve been steadily working on for the last week. I was perusing Etsy, Amazon, and other sites for cards to send this year, as you do, when TheExHusband suggested I make the cards instead. This is marvelous idea as I owned most of the major supplies required and all I needed to purchase was paper and a few colored glitter gel pens to finish the cards. Buying office supplies? Oh twist my arm. I have a large vintage tackle box chock full of pens of all sorts (gel, glitter, fountain), colored art pencils for the coloring, nibs and ink for said fountain pens, highlighters for paper and otherwise, drawing marks, and disposable calligraphy pens. Then there is my notebook collection which has grown so large, I have at least on packing box filled to the brim.
One could say I have a fetish for office supplies.

It’s been a couple of days since I started this entry, not finishing it as I didn’t really haven’t the heart. TheSads are again attacking, which probably amounts for and while TEH has been great on cheerleading me on to not dwell, but when you hurt, everything hurts: brain, body, emotions, feelings. Every change in inflection from whoever sends a cavalcade of feels from my brain to my toes.
It’s in that particular space I don’t want to be touched or spoken to. I want to do my thing (crafting, reading, watching TV, whatever) because I don’t have to think when I do these things. This is where I can not worry about my actions, my words, my being intrusive to someone else. It’s where the crying jags come, less frequently now but still appear nevertheless.
The non-touching part can be problematic when you’re around people who simply care about you and want you to feel better.
A friend on the Facebooks shared a mantra, of sorts,

Which has been a gods-send for me to remember that TheSads are a part of life, are not permanent and will leave at some point.

Yet a couple more days have passed since the above update. TheSads lasted all of one day, where I soaked TheExHusband’s shirt with tears. The following day I was feeling slightly right as rain and the day after that only got better.
For about a week I’ve been walking 17 minute miles on the treadmill since I wrote the above and the endorphin high has been awesome at keeping sad feelings at bay. I get up in the morning, throw on my workout clothes, eat breakfast, and head down to the in-house gym with a bottle of water and workout for about 40 minutes. The workout is two minutes to warm up, walk two miles at 17 minutes a mile and then cool down. With my Spotify “get fit” mix in my ears, the time passes quickly.
I haven’t done yoga since we’ve returned back to Louisville and while one could point out I was being lazy, I will retort there was no space in the condo for me to lay my yoga mat down. True facts.
The lack of space has much to do with my stuff taking up all the available space. Over the past weekend we moved all of the boxes down to TheExHusband’s storage unit and now the condo looks huge. After some furniture shifting, there is now space for my yoga mat and the condo doesn’t seem as claustrophobic as it once was. I joked to TheExHusband that as we’ve shifted all of my things into the storage, I will now get a job.
You can bet on it.

Speaking of such, my Louisville job interview went really well as they are bringing me in for a two day in-person interview in a few weeks. My Connecticut interview, via Skype, is tomorrow. I’m nervous but I feel pretty confident about both situations. I need to get a mutha-fucking job. Full stop. I’m doing research on both positions and living in both locations. If by some grace of the gods I get two offers, it’s going to be a really hard call. The bennies for both are nearly identical but the pay is wildly disparate: $20K between the two at their minimum pay rate. Taking into account the cost of living for both cities, the Connecticut job will allow me to pay down my $20K credit card debt that much sooner. (Which is crazy to think about when the cost of living is a bit on the high side.)
You might be thinking, “Okay. Get through the damned interviews first” and I get that. I do. But I have to think about these things so I’m not making half-assed jumps for one over the other. Both positions are awesome and I can do a lot of good at both institutions, so if I come to this crossroads, I’ve got a lot to think about.
It should go without saying if only one position offers me the job, that is the one I’m taking. A girl cannot be picky.
If neither offer me a position, I’m starting the search again in January when the academic job search reopens.
It should be no surprise I’m exhausted from the amount of job hunting I’ve done over the last 11 months. But it will get better soon, this I do know.

One of the last things I said to TheBassist before the break-up was I’m emotionally exhausted and that is still true. The idea of dating right now makes me nauseous and compounded with reading OkStupid, just ugh. (I would implore you to not read OkStupid for the simple fact it will depress you on the state of humanity.)
I’ve resigned for not dating for year but I will be open to finding new friends in the area I’m living in permanently. In Louisville it would be super awesome to go out with other people not TheExHusband and it would be super cool to meet new people on the East Coast. Friends are good. Dick pics are not.
I dragged TheExHusband out to a social event last week and that went…not so well. It was run by one of the larger social groups in Louisville and the crowd was mainly yuppies and other ilk; not my scene at all. TheExHusband and I met a few people, mainly creeper guys who were there to pick up women and “get free shit” (as told to us by one such individual). I was feeling anti-social, part of TheSads, and TheExHusband was amazed he was the one making introductions rather than myself. I’m a pretty outgoing person when I need to be but I just wasn’t feeling the vibe of this particular group of people. TheExHusband mused we need to find our own people, geeks and such, and there are socials for them so that will be on our agenda in the upcoming weeks.

I’m leaving the house on a daily basis, I’ve cut sugar out of my diet and eating as little dairy I can get away with, I’m exercising, and meditating (131 days in a row and counting), — you know, all the things that I need to live a life and that I should be doing anyway. But I loathe to talk about ThePlan, in this space, right now because I always have good intentions and then they peter out. I want to make these changes permanent — and I think this time they are sticking. I don’t feel rushed about doing these things, I just do them. I may not be talking about such matters in-depth as I am wont to do but I will at least give some kind of update every now and then
A big part of my feeling better will be when I get a damned job. That’s a certainty that cannot be denied. When that happens, everything else will fall into place.

Finally, it is a mere 209 days to Lisa-mas.
xoxo,
Lisa

This Day in Lisa-Universe: 2014, 2013, 1998

dickensian scenes

.Dear Internet,
I started this a few weeks ago with intent on having it auto-post when I got back to Louisville and of course I never got around to finishing the damned thing; think of this as a catcher-up.

re: The featured image: I’m being mindful of not taking over TheExHusband’s condo but I was allowed to put up my Pop! collection “as long as they are gone when you move out.” Charming guy, that ExHusband.
From left to right: Oswald Cobblepot, Groot, Agent Carter, Kal Drogo, Drogon, Ragnar, Lagertha, Alcide, Darth Maul, and Thor.

I’m doing holiday cards for the first time in ages this year. If you want in on the action, sign up here.
And to step up the game, I’m making the cards this year and some will be pop-ups.

Currently I’m in the kitchen area of TheExHusband’s condo putting together a play list of work out music. Which lead me to continue with my favorite obsession. musing on mix-tapes. To wit: I was cleaning off my hard drive recently and found an unnamed mix tape I made probably in the 2006-2008 range based on the music. It was probably for TheEx as the songs are, from a listening point of view, from that period. I renamed the mix, “Music For Old Flames” (there are also songs reminiscent of TheExHusband and TheBassist), and added only one additional song, GMF (Greatest Mother Fucker) by John Grant, which came out last year.
(Because I am the greatest mother fucker that you’ll ever meet.)
I won’t pretend to be a genius at making mix-tapes but I have my favorites which tend to show up on a regular basis (Ahem. JoyDiv’s “Love Will Tear Us Apart”). Yet sometimes I even surprise myself. Last year I made “The Gods Were Listening” mix with nary a thought of JoyDiv!
As Spotify seems to be one of the best places to make mix tapes, it hasn’t deterred me of plowing through my digital music collection (currently over 100gigs and 20K songs) to find treasure. One conclusion screaming out is the most obvious: I like a lot of depressing shit. I come of age in the late ’80s, early ’90s and my taste greatly reflects the period. I used to say, to anyone who would listen, great music stopped in ’94. ’96 tops. That is not necessarily true – a lot of my new favorite bands came up through the ’00s and ’10s. But I gravitate towards UK bands (specifically Madchester and moody Scottish bastards), chill, and dancey pop songs.
Yet it’s getting harder and harder to connect to new music as I tend to listen to only retro channels in Jeeves or one of the pre-fab lists from Spotify, mainly chill stations so my on fire brain can slow the fuck down. I keep a wish list of bands I’ve heard over the years, on Amazon, whose music I wish to collect but to be truthful, going through those track listings today does not hit the remembrance area at all.
I stopped listening to music for a long time as there was too many feelings (FEELINGS) associated with a lot of the songs/bands that it became almost too painful to listen to any music.
I’ve slowly reacclimatizing myself back into the music world and as I’ve mentioned, it’s slow going. My brain flips through a thousand images and memory sparks of where I heard this song or that band. I can never listen to Elbow’s “Newborn” without recalling listening to it on the metro in Rome. “GMF” recalls John Grant, who opened for Elbow in 2014ish in Chicago. Any Bloc Party = TheEx. Interpol = TheBassist. New Order = High School Sweetheart. Bob Dylan = TheExHusband. 50 Cent = my brother. And so forth and so on. It’s not just people but also places, things, happenings. “Head On” by Jesus and Mary Chain = early ’20s clubbing. Morissey/Siouxie/The Cure = Slit Your Wrist hour at a local to GR radio station. Atari Teenage Riot = ExFiance #2. Tool = ExFiance #1.
(TheEx is/was heavily into Stereolab and I still get stabby when I hear the intro to any of their songs.)
The list goes on and on.
As emotionally painful this has been as of late, I’m forcing myself to continue on to reclaim these songs for me. I’ve done this before, and it’s hard, but it must be done.

TheExHusband and I left the cabin last week and I’ve never been more thrilled to leave a place in my entire life. We spent the weekend and that morning finishing up the little things to get us out of here, things we should have done (or I should have done) before the first week of October as originally planned. But life happens, you move on or you get rolled over. I’m a fan of moving on.
But hey! I don’t have to drive 22 miles to do laundry. I can have food at a zillion different places within walking distance. I can go do things without having to plot out the distance and last but not least, there is cement beneath my feet.
I’ll miss the trees, the silence, and the unobstructed sky, but once a city girl, always a city girl.

Once we got back to the condo I’ve been unpacking, repacking, and organizing what is mine for what seems like the 100th time. I’ve been donating loads of stuff again but It’s nice to have access to all of my things and being able to get to items in need. It’s been like fucking christmas up in here with “Hey! I forgot I had that!” happening once every 15 minutes.
While I will always been grateful to TheExHusband and TheBassist for opening up their homes to me, it was still their spaces and I did not, honestly, feel terribly comfortable putting my mark in case I overstepped my bounds. I’ve gotten so used to living within my small physical means, it’s difficult to understand what is mine anymore. TheExHusband has plainly stated he doesn’t care what I put up to make the space more “mine” as long as those things are gone when I move out. The Pop! figurines, so far, are the only items that are showcased in his space.
With the unpacking, repacking, and sorting of things I’ve started the arduous process of packing up TheBassist’s stuff and things that remind me of him, putting them in storage. Two months+ on his shirts still smell heavily of his scent. I was planning on burning the flammable things when I was at the cabin but got frightened on losing his tactile memory. Instead, I buried those items deep in one of my suitcases as we were packing up to leave and then into a box of their own.
(Burning the flammables would have been the easy way out and if there is anything true about me is I do not do easy.)
It’s especially hard as TheBassist and I lived together long enough for our laundry to be intertwined. No special soaps were used but the combination of daily household products smells distinctly of his house and more pointedly of him. I’ve refrained from wearing the clothes I had with me when I was in CT as much as I can from those far away laundry days. At one point I may have to just do a load of all those items to purge my olfactory senses from continually going into overdrive.
Some items, like my Pops! and mini MINIs, will not get stored. Those are my things, things I would have bought on my own. The memory that he was the one purchased them will soon pass.
The love letters and the goofy signs he would make for me when I would arrive at the airport will remain in my travel file cabinet. Surprisingly I haven’t read them over and over again (remember I purged his texts and FB messages. Email is archived. His digital footprint will be deeply buried in my NAS), which may surprise some. I may be in pain but I’m not an idiot.
Purging TheBassist has been easier than would have thought. Yes, I have tangible things and yes, I often think of him, and yes, my heart is still broken BUT!, and this is important, I’m not letting this keep me paralyzed from having a life. I’m fucking determined to do for me rather than do for him with the hopes he will come back. I’ve been doing for him (and TheExHusband) to some extent for far too long. I tried to be the girl they wanted me to be.
Time to get selfish.
Of course a week or two after the break-up my thoughts meandered to, “I AM GOING TO REVENGE DATE. FUCK THEBASSIST.” I’m only human after all and a girl has needs. But the thought of starting the process all fucking over again of meeting someone (how classy would it be to hook up with someone while still living with TheExHusband?), starting the life story business, and all the trappings of dating life makes me ill. Watching my friends, most in their 30s, dancing on the dating floor is pushing me to swear I WILL NEVER DATE AGAIN. I once reasoned if the whole TheBassist/TheExHusband blew up in my face (which it did), I wanted a dog, my books, and a cup of hot chocolate (with marshmallows, natch) for my nights. Fuck the world. Fuck love. Fuck everything.
But I’m human. I need to remind myself of my own humanity and I’m not built for being alone. (Not really.) Own space? Sure. Independent? Absolutely. But alone? Never.
When searching for some posts about music, I came across my old profile I used on dating sites nearly a decade ago: Sassy Skirt Seeks Alliterative Ally. I chuckled because 80% of that profile is still true and one I would probably use again.
Dating, however, scares me. I don’t want dick pics. I don’t want to be with someone whose sole communication is digital. I don’t want a burned out, twice divorced 50 year old who couldn’t rock out at a concert. (Christ. I could date a 50 year old without nary a thought to age difference. Gross.)
I want the male version of me.
I’m a jeans and tshirt kind of girl. I swap hair color with the wisp of the wind. I read comics and Jane Austen. I like opera and Icelandic indie. I’m a dichotomy and just like everyone else. You won’t catch me in heels, suits, or my hair in a chignon. I won’t do Jamberry parties or live in the suburbs. I won’t obsess about having a blow out or catching sales at Nordstrom. My nail polish will always be black or a similar hue. I’m always going to get more tattoos. I’m always going to want to travel the world, make snow angles, and marathon watch period pieces AND Harry Potter. I’m always going to collect toys, watch Doctor Who, and wear something with a skull on it. I
I just, in fact, bought a sweater with a Union Jack giant skull on the front.
I sleep with a teddy bear I’ve had since I was 3.
I also want want to argue the critical analysis of late Baroque painters. I want to have conversations about Romantic poets. I want to be swayed why the Bronte’s are the shit. The influences of Romans in classical architecture.
I’m just not your average 43 year old.
Some, it has been said, want me to act my age and stop being an overgrown teenage boy. Look, I can adult. I can hold down a professional job, live on my own, pay my bills, and get shit done. This may not seem OBVIOUS right now as I’m broke, living with my ex-husband, and my mental brain has been all over the place, but before the last 18 months happened? It was all true.
Back to the dating thing. I can’t remember the last time I’ve been single for longer than a few months. TheExHusband and I first dated from 1998-99. ExFiance #2 from 1999-2002. ExFiance #1 (again) from 2003-04. Patrick and Derrick in 2004. TheBassist from 2004-05. TheEx from 2006-08. TheExHusband from 2008-14. TheBassist from 2014-15.
My heart is tired.
And this kind of serial monogamy is what I called TheBassist on when I’m just as guilty of the same thing.
No more. If I want to break the cycle, and I have to break the cycle, I need to take a year off of having my heart trampled. I’m not a casual sex person so that’s easy. Just no jumping into relationships this very second, which shouldn’t be a problem since the dating tap dance makes me queasy.
Pinky swear.
(Plus neither of TheBassist or TheExHusband were fliters, and I used to flirt a lot, so I have no idea how to flirt anymore.)
To sum: Boys have cooties; Lisa has her chastity belt on.

In other painful things, I interviewed for a librarian position based in Louisville last week. I have an interview next week with a CT college. I, of course, sent myself into tizzy if I had to come out to CT for the second interview and should I contact TheBassist and OMGHERD. What would I do?! First, calm the fuck down Lisa and get through the Skype interview. If you have to come out to CT for the in-person interview, so what? It’s a job. You need money. You’ve wanted this position for a year (it’s a repost). The money, even with the higher cost of living, is fabulous. The area is lovely. You’re close to NYC and Boston. The social plans you’re putting in motion in KY can be applied to CT. You’re 43 years old, buck it up lady.
That quelled my panic. Situation under control. You’ve got this.
I talk to myself. A lot.

Speaking of social, I’ve joined loads of MeetUp groups in the Louisville area and tomorrow I’m heading to a open social. I know, I know, I’m putting pants on and leaving the house. And I’m dragging TheExHusband with me so he can get aired out.

And finally! My fucking brain.
I made an appointment with an APRN to manage my drugs. Intakes are always a delight as you recount your entire sexual and medical history to a stranger for an hour. At least this one did not ask me to roll up my sleeves to verify I was not using needles.
My new APRN and I get along well, which is a relief. We talked about my goals and the big one is to
TURN MY FUCKING BRAIN OFF WHEN IT GOES INTO OVERDRIVE ONCE A MONTH.
So there’s that.
It has mostly to do with hormones when I start ovulating, but it’s disrupting my life and it’s making me feel like I’m crazy. The crying jags and the irrational decisions are making my life harder. I just cannot deal with that aspect of my brain anymore.
Other than that, I feel pretty stable, clear headed, and in control.
He’s taking me off of Abilify (thank fuck) and putting me on Risperidone since it’s not a weight gainer (I’ve gained 20-25 lbs on Abilify) and what is one of the first side effects of Risperidone? Weight gain! Jesus fuck!
So that’s me. How are you?
xoxo,
Lisa

This Day in Lisa-Universe: 2013

a music historiography of boyfriends past

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

hapax legomenon

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

P.P.S. Don’t want near daily emails or can’t make it here everyday but want to keep up with what’s going in my world? Subscribe to A Most Unreliable Narrator, a monthly-ish newsletter roundup of what’s happening. Bonus! Comes with GIFs!

This Day in Lisa-Universe: 2013, 1998

one is called love, the other is spain

Dear Internet,
Happy St. Crispian’s Day!

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

The song makes absolutely no sense:

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

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

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

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

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

This Day in Lisa Universe: 2001

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

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

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

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

This Day in Lisa-Universe:

heavy like a loaded gun


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

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

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

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

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

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