in a scant few hours (less than 12 at this rate), paul and brian’s parents will be descending into the NoVa area. In the same vein that I am comfortable in being me on the other hand, I’m completely freaked out. Generally, as with parents — I haven’t had to meet any for quite some time, I can be quite confident in being “me.” But i’ve been noticing lately, with the changes my body has been taking (yanno — stress) subconsciously i’ve been totally on the wire about meeting mommy and daddy Sullivan.
I don’t know what it is — by all accounts (brian and paul reassuring me) I’m much better suited for paul than his previous girlfriends but if the plan is to marry this man (which, last count I am) then I should feel fine in meeting them. But as the hour grows later and sunlight will be peeking shortly, i’m scared as hell. maybe it’s my own lack of parental influence in my life (as i was saying to jen tonight, i was brought up by my mother to be self-assured and independent. this simple fact, my independence, has been chronicled throughout my life: my mothers journal when i was a mere child and my own chronicles of my life starting when I was still in grade school up till now). the recent death of my father and the new role i’m now playing in my mothers life (as erma bombeck had once said — how does the role of parent to child and child to parent shift so quickly in our life?), i’m finding there is more out there i’m missing on that I hadn’t known. partly due to my own stubbornness and my own quest to be solo in a lot of my adventures that I have taken.
i’ve had several conversations with friends recently about their own lives (me becoming more aware of these people — bad lisa for not being up to date on everything) and they keep telling me “you don’t know what you have till its gone” (about me asserting that maybe i should be living alone for some time) and i recognize that they are right. i don’t know what kind of life i had envisioned for myself but i *know* that without Paul in it, i wouldn’t t be who i was right *now*. I’d be completely different. And realizing sitting on the couch with him just how important he is makes it all worthwhile. Thanks Jen for tonight and for allowing me to recognize what everyone else already knows.
i’ve been doing a lot of reading lately (and I’m currently scarfing down the 1500 page tome on Cleopatra — ugh) and not writing. I’ve always had all these excuses about WHY i haven’t written and with my updating about once a week now (and always on a saturday/sunday — funny that), i keep putting off these projects that sounds so good in my head and i keep using the excuse of “well, brian is in town and i don’t want to start anything with him here as it’s hard enough to keep things together having to worry about him and paul” and yadda yadda yadda.
the last few days, i’ve been feeling more stressed out than ever — not in my body but in my brain (thank you to the makers of klonopin and buspar for making me not so erotic) and my whole sudden attitude of “caretaker” has been taking over with definite scariness. suddenly i was not just responsible for *me* but for paul, brian, my brother and my mother. and here i am at 28, screaming, “what about me!! godammit”. my mother had mentioned a few conversations back that i had changed so much within the time i had left Michigan (a scant 3 years ago — and so much that has happened in that 3 years) and how grown up i’ve become. and it’s true. i have become more grownup in ways i never thought possible. i don’t know when the roles had shifted, but it’s true. and i think that it’s not just a “me” thing but subtle changes that everyone else sees and recognizes in themselves.
so i was thinking today, that today would be a good day to say thank yous, apologies and what not to various people. and while this may sound mushy or cruel and maybe mean, it seemed appropriate with everything going on:
dad:
while you are no longer on this earth, and while i’m still working out the details of your death in my head, i want to tell you as i had on the phone so many times before, how much i did love you and wished i had gotten the chance to know you. i want to tell you that you were important to me as a person and i’m so very sorry i never took the time out to get to know you as i had. i know that you are still with me, as i wear the charm around my neck of your ashes, but i want you to know that your belief in my own abilities and allowing me to explore those possibilities as an adult means more to me than you’ll ever know. i miss you dearly and while i wish you were here on earth for me to say this to you personally, i know that you are at rest and at peace.
mom:
i love you more now then i did when i was teenager (big surprise there). I want to thank you for helping me becoming assertive, independent and being able to voice what i say without being afraid to speak my mind. i want to thank you for being an incredible role model to me for showing me that being a woman of strength doesn’t mean you have to be a bitch. i also want to thank you for allowing me to make my mistakes and recognizing them later on while knowing that i would see the right way later down the road. I want to also tell you that I love you and that I’m sorry for not being more in your life when you needed me and that I’m glad I finally stopped being stubborn and got over the past issues to make the first contact with you. i have realized the importance of family and want to make sure that you are there for me as i plan on being for you for the rest of your life.
jeff:
my big “little” brother. you know me more indepth than most people will ever know and would ever WANT to know. i want you to know that i believe you have the talent and the charisma to do anything that you set your mind to and that while sometimes i may be harsh or “mean” to you, it IS for your best interest 😉 All i want for you to be is successful in whatever you choose to do and that I’ll support you both emotionally (and obviously financially) in all the endeavors that you choose to do.
paul:
my black knight in shining armour. in the short time we’ve been together (going on almost two years now — geez!) we’ve been through A LOT. more so than probably most people go in a lifetime. and through it all, despite our threats that one of us is leaving (its scary when your fights with your SO become the local joke yanno?) people keep saying that there is something about our relationship that makes them want to have one too. we have something very special that you don’t find everyday and i know that beneath it all, it is what keeps us together. I know, that even when you are being a self-centered little prick and I am being a fucking bitch, that we love each other very much. Thank you for being there for me emotionally and physically through all our rough times, for encouraging me to do things other people wouldn’t have the tenacity to survive through and for putting up with all my shit. I love you with each growing day and will always love you with just as much intensity till the day I die.
keffkeff:
probably one of closest female friends i’ve had in a long long time. you’ve become my sounding board in all things men, gossip and general chitchat. i love your vivaciousness, your strength and your quiet charm. your levelheadedness, your ability to relate to me on many different levels often is the strength *i* need to keep me going. I love you like a sister and hope that our friendship remains this close through our lives.
michael:
my non-blood-related brother. i thought of you tonight and because of that spurned this memoir of sorts. i wanted to tell you, mint aside, that i love you and even though we haven’t kept as close contact in recent months as we used to, that you are always in my thoughts. you supported me through so much in the last four years that so many people would not, and like my mother, allowed me to make my own mistakes and to live by them. thank you, from the bottom of my heart for your generosity, your kindness, your humour and your ability to show me what love was really like. i miss you dearly and hope to see you soon.
jen j.:
you’ve become the second female person in my later years that i grew close to. i admire you for your independentness, your cool-headed objectivness and your ablity to let down your hair when needed. you were one of the driving forces for me to get through my day and the sanctuary i needed when i needed someone to talk to. i want you to know that i will be there for you when needed and that i hope we grow closer with time.
moe:
thank you for being you. you are god and the keeper of my domain (literally!). thank you for also being there when i needed someone to talk to and for allowing me to vent when needed. i’m so very glad you moved to NoVa.
rynsey:
you have the best intentions and the best heart. i know that sometimes things seem really hard when they really are quite simple. i think you have the ablity to do whatever you choose to do and i want you to promise me that you will act on those talents and go with it. i believe in you and you will always remain my special lovah!
and now, to say things to people i’m having “conflicts” with:
sillz:
while my words may have stung and i apologize for hurting you, i don’t apologize for the words i had stated. i know that there was probably a nicer way of saying them, but sometimes i’m not a nice person and i recognize this in my own self. taken with what i had said with a grain of salt, we all want you to succeed however what you say to anyone and how you act are two completely different things. we want you to be indpendent and self-serving and i’m worried that you are falling down the trap that most women do. i want you to be happy (i honestly do) but at the rate and path you are continuing on, your true heart desires just don’t seem to be what you say they are. i applaud you for taking the chances that you have on many aspects but while i don’t agree with what you are doing in many areas, the simple chance of coming to a new country with literally nothing in and of itself is extraordinary.
ciannait:
i went to your website today and read something you had posted on the loss of a friend whom you had known that many people loved while you yourself had not gotten along with that person. i thought about our past and while we don’t see eye to eye on many things, i have realised that it seemed silly to continue on with this polite anomosity we have towards each other instead of just putting down the walls and being sincerly honest with each other. I recognize that we may have many things to learn from each other and if i extend the laurel branch, are you willing to accept it?
brendan/sam:
i still have not figured out, in all these months, why sam is so heated against me. in all honesty, i cannot think of one singular thing that i could have said or done that could have pissed her off. this also seems to be a mystery to many others whom you have been friends with in the past so now i’ll ask publically: why? to be honest, i’m tired of all the bickering and gossip that goes on in the circle of people we are friends with. but there has never been a direct conversation as to why. and if one of you can tell me, i’d be greatly appreciated.
FirstWorld/Slip.Net:
I’m still trying to figure out, after nearly a YEAR, why you keep coming to my website. I don’t know exactly what you’ll think you’ll find or simply you find this amusing but it is frightening to me to have the same employers who fired me for “hacking their nt server” (what a fucking joke) has the audacity to keep visiting my site. maybe it’s not the same people but someone else within the company who likes reading this. if that is so, then so be it. but here in lies the irony: i now work for the company you are purchasing your circuits from. In fact, the cheap ass gear you gave to your employees, i handed to the engineer you’ve been working with as a “gift” (he thought it was amusing). You also know, very well, that I had grounds for suite for unlawful termination. However, that would have required me to stay in Cali, which like the horrid two years i put in with your shitty company, was not worth it. Your business ethics, your choice of hiring AND firing procedures (amusing how my exit interview consisted of THEM telling me i was hacking their servers and that i was lowering their morale — how trite can you get without a shred of proof). And it’s also amusing that I was able to confirm your firing decisions from within the company prior to said firing. It is with sheer joy, that I’m happy that tech stocks have gone down.
And lastly to my readers:
I want to thank each and everyone of you for coming here. for reading. for offering advice even when it wasn’t asked for and for simply being there for me as a general consensus. TLC has turned 2 in July, and while it’s birthday has gone without fanfare and digging up archives of the old crap, it is with happiness and some sadness that i am able to be me. thank you all so much. you’ve been part of the family i never thought i had.
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lisa
as to why this was written:
jen and i had gone out tonight for a much needed girls night out. my almost total seculision in the rabey-sullivan household was driving me batty and i had not spent time with jen in quite some time. sitting with her at the table tonight over dinner (and both of us being hit on by the waiter and the gm was amusing to be sure) and telling her for the first time in a long time how i felt on differnet subjects i realised most of my conversations have been taken over email/irc/icq/aim or this journal. i had not told, someone face to face other than paul, how i really felt. after the breakdown of LWE, keth and i had spent some considerable time discussing the weeks events and i realised that most of my information was political: in the sense that everyday when i speak to someone it was with an agenda — no matter how minute. the poltical skills i thought i never had were becoming abundently clear as time progressed. and i really realised sitting with Jen that i really didn’t like the person i was slowly becoming. I was becoming someone who I had never liked — and this realization was becoming more clear with recent events both at home and at work. While i know that i can be incredible hard on people and hit them when i’m feeling defensive (that is one of my more “popular” traits it would seem) a lot of the anomosity that was being stirred up both on irc and in real life was being dumb. i never tell people what i really think of them or what i want to say unless it comes to the breaking point (as danny and paul both say to me quite often: you simply don’t talk). there were questions i had been wanting an answer to and had simply wanted to asked but never did. Paul, in particular, thought it stupid (and i can see why) to keep digging up the past. But the thing is, to most of the people I addressed in conflicts, i am in contact with them in some form or manner — even indirectly. and seeing them, even in a virtual format, brings to minds said thoughts and questions that i never address because it is the past and we should all move on right?
there is no hidden agenda on my part this time. the receipitants can choose to ignore this, which is their right and fine by me if they so choose (and i would not disagree with in being such a public matter) or they can address me privately. i have addressed them publically because i know they either a: visit my website or b: are subscribed to the email version of the journal. i know it will be read at some point or time while this is up. now that i have finally stated what should have been said so very long ago, my conscious is clear and i can move on knowing that i was willing to take the first step. even if none of my questions are ever answered i at least feel better letting them know, in my own way, that this was worth it to write.
and now i slumber.
nini.
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