My boyfriend made a suggestion to me this past Friday while we were out.
Actually, he made a couple of suggestions, “I’ve been thinking about this a lot.”
This secretly thrills me.
I love that he was thinking about it a lot.
A. I like being thought about (a lot)
B. It is flattering to be considered (as a writer)
C. That he wants things for me
The first thing he’s been thinking about, at least in so far as this conversation went, is that I need a new chair.
It’s true.
I do.
My “desk” chair aka what I call my “therapy chair” needs to be replaced.
While it is, or was prior to my cats destroying it, an exceptionally stylish chair, it is not the best for writing or working from.
And I do a lot of both from this chair, hell I’m sitting in it now.
I’ve balked at getting a new chair for a while, scarcity mindset, why replace something when what I have is working?
But.
It’s not working well.
My body gets very tight after being in it a while and though I have not admitted this to anyone, barely to myself, there have been days when I have avoided sitting down to write because my hips hurt from the chair or I’ve been in it all day long and I can’t stand the thought of continuing to use it.
By the end of a day of seeing clients I am stiff and achy.
Not great.
I haven’t done long sessions in my chair at all this past week as I was on vacation.
I just got my legs back underneath me and I am already loath to be back in the chair.
So, his suggestion to get a better office chair does not fall on deaf ears, or dead legs.
Hell.
I wasn’t sure I wanted to sit down to write this blog, but it’s been needling at me all day to be written, so write I am.
I will be getting a new chair in the next week or two.
I’m just waiting to replenish the coffers in my bank account.
Being in private practice has a lot of benefits, but some drawbacks.
I pay all my insurances (oh, how many types I have to pay, seven…..good grief) and I have no paid days off.
No sick days.
No vacation days.
I have to save money to go on vacation and I have to have money set aside to live on when I return from said vacation as I have had no revenue coming in.
So, just a week of putting back into the account should cover it.
New desk chair coming soon.
I’ll actually be getting something similar to what my boyfriend has, a Branch desk chair.
I really like his chair.
And this will help the writing.
That’s the other suggestion he had, sit down once a week and not work on my blog or my “morning pages” (quotations because they happen at all times of the day. I do try to make them a part of my morning routine, but sometimes they float to the afternoon and once in a brief while, into the early part of the evening) but work on my keyboard.
I.E. write on my computer.
Compile my writings and before you know it I will have a book.
Or a collection of writing.
Goodness.
I have so much writing.
His point was multi-fold.
One that no one wants to transcribe writing from a journal.
Two, that before long I would have enough material for a book.
I like these points.
And then I ran with it in my head.
We talk about it at dinner.
Dinner was sweet and romantic and felt a little like our time in the beginning of the relationship.
It’s been a year!
Give or take that month that we were broken up.
I will not diminish how hard that month was, but I can clearly see that the break up was a part of the relationship that needed to happen and that coming out the other side of it a few months back into being with one another, an opportunity to work and deepen the relationship.
Granted.
I do not want to go through that again.
And we are doing the work, good work, hard work, to be together and grow the relationship.
Grateful.
Anything worth having does not come easy.
And things fought for, I believe, will stick.
I am fighting for this, for him, for us.
Anyway.
I am not here to write about the arc of the relationship repair, but of the writing, the popcorn of ideas that bloomed in my head after our conversation at dinner, during a walk around Lake Merrit in the moonlight, after dancing at Days Like This, a community dance space in Oakland, I want to go back.
“Let me lead,” he said once while we were dancing.
I’m not used to that, but boy do I want to get better at that.
I’m not used to couples dancing, I’m usually out there on my own.
I’m not on my own anymore.
I remember back to my first long term boyfriend, who I broke up with right after we had “celebrated” our fifth year anniversary.
It did not feel celebratory, I had tried to break up with him the week before and he chased me down and begged me to come back, howled at the sky with heartbreak when I ended it, went to every place he could think of and found me in a booth smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee at Nick’s (Home of Good Food) where I had once been a waitress.
J. came in, wild eyed and red faced, the cold of the winter day brightening his high, tight cheekbones, and walked right up to the “waitress” booth (it was the one that all the waitresses used to take breaks in on their shifts, eating our shift meal and smoking cigarettes (back in the days when you could still smoke in a restaurant and no one batted an eye) in and drinking cup after cup after cup of coffee) and demanded to talk with me.
“I knew I’d find you here, please, please, please, talk to me, don’t do this to me, please come home,” he begged, in front of the owner who was behind the bar and my friends who were squeezed around me.
“You don’t have to go,” one of my friends said.
But I had to, or at least I thought I did.
I couldn’t stand him making a scene in front of my friends, in front of people that I used to work for, who were always kind and sweet to me, even long after I had stopped working there and transitioned to working at the Essen Haus and later the Angelic Brewing Company (both places my soon to be ex had gone looking for me first).
So I got up and went home with him.
In the twilight gloaming, in the grey falling light, in the dining room of that one bedroom house, with our cats nervously prowling around us, he begged me to stay, to not leave, “I’ll do anything,” he said, “I’ll learn how to dance, I’ll take dance lessons with you.”
Something I had asked him to do with me from the earliest days of that five year relationship.
“Let me lead,” my boyfriend said. He knows how to partner dance, I not so much, turns out I am the one who needs lessons.
How to not be a single lady, how to be in a relationship, how to be vulnerable and not lead and not be overly independent.
I quietly hatched plans in my head to work on dancing with my boyfriend, instead of around him.
And afterwards, after the dancing, the intimacy, the kissing and the falling asleep, I thought about what he had said about the writing.
I kept coming back to the same line in my head, “Stories for Charles.”
I told him about it the next day at breakfast, Mama’s Cafe, in Oakland.
“I didn’t tell you to write stories,” he said.
Nope.
He did not.
But that is what came to me, a compilation of stories.
I’m a story teller.
I like to tell tales.
And I have a lot of them.
“Carmen,” Alan Kaufman told me once, “writers kill to have the life experiences you have had.”
And that was eighteen years ago that he said that, I have had scads more experiences since then.
But specifically, what I was thinking about was the awe in the voice of my boyfriend, not sure it was awe, reverence, curiosity, wonder, that I can remember details from my past so clearly.
So clearly, that once he stopped me mid story and said that he didn’t think he could listen to my story anymore as I was talking about being in love with someone and we were early in our relationship, before he said I love you to me.
I wasn’t talking about someone I was in love with in that moment, in fact, I hadn’t been in love with that boy for decades, but in the story about my high school crush, I remembered so many details that it sounded present moment, as though it were actually unfolding in that very moment, in my Jeep as we drove up to go hiking in Tahoe last year.
I was a little miffed, I wanted to finish the story, there was a great climax to it.
But, also, sweetly touched, in that moment my boyfriend was disclosing to me how uncomfortable it was to hear about me loving someone else.
I almost told him that weekend that I was in love with him, we were on a hike up by Echo Lake, and I was dizzy with altitude and the beauty of the lake the mountains and he had just filtered water from a stream full of snow melt and I felt lightheaded and breathless and the taste of the sweet, cold water from the stream filled me I caught my breath looking up into his hazel brown eyes and almost said, “I love you,” it was just there, on the tip of my tongue, in my eyes, written all over my face, I am sure of it, but I stopped and kissed him instead and we kept hiking.
I am very much in love with him.
And walking back from Mama’s Cafe and getting ready to go climbing, my first outdoor rock climbing experience (!), I told him that I wanted to write down some of the stories that I have told him, and many that I have not.
Sometimes I get bashful, almost ashamed, of the way I tell stories, they become something way beyond me and I feel that I am rambling and the story is no longer interesting and I’m boring the person.
But I can’t stop telling it.
And maybe.
Maybe.
There is some truth to that.
But also.
They are good stories.
The boy I had a crush on.
The time I was homeless in Florida.
That other time I was homeless in Northern Wisconsin, in the Upper Peninsula.
The drive across country to move to San Francisco.
Getting my black belt in Kung Fu.
Getting pulled up on stage by Michael Franti of Spear Head at a concert in Madison, years and years ago.
Climbing trees as a child, and that one time I got stuck and literally the fire department was called to fetch me out like a kitten stuck on a high branch.
So many stories.
Oh.
Goodness.
That one about my dad when he was dating a woman, a girl really, younger than me, and the father of the child that the woman was raising found out and chased my dad around the dining room table at the house of the girl’s mother (how to even get into the details of this…there once was an alcoholic woman that my father drank alcoholically with, who lived in a house on Mifflin Street in Madison, WI, who had a daughter (the one a year younger than me) who had a baby who was under a year old (said daughter was nineteen to my twenty) and an older son, who was a budding alcoholic that I ended up having a one night stand with, who scammed money and cigarettes off anyone who would spare them to him, the mother of the two drank with my dad and I’m pretty sure had a semi-crush on my father–this woman drank her wine out of a baby’s sippy cup, fyi–and she let me move in with them all, on my father’s word that I would pay rent, no one else was, and I was sleeping on the couch and woke up to the daughter’s ex, the baby daddy, chasing my father, who was naked, around the dining room table because he was irate having found him, my dad, in his ex’s, the girl younger than I, bed).
It was a scene.
And just one scene amongst many.
There are so many stories.
So many.
Thus.
I hereby commit to.
First.
Get a new desk chair.
A nice, ergonomic one.
And.
Second.
Sit at my table and write.
Once a week, not my journal, not my morning pages, not my blog, not the book from my dissertation, just write and see what comes up.
And what I want to write is all the stories that are archived just so in my head.
All the details.
Like how the daughter was barefoot running after her ex who was chasing my naked father around the dinging table, the table covered with an old lace cloth, the candles on the table, a brass candelabra, the time of day, early morning, too early to be watching my father’s naked ass running around a table a few feet away from my sleepy self on the couch in the living room of the woman who lived on Mifflin Street, down the road from the IGA grocery store that my dad liked to go to because the soda vending machine in the front of the store sold Brach’s Rootbeer for 35 cents a can.
But then again, those that know me, care about me, love me.
Are not judging me.
At least to my face.
My friends know.
My important people know.
Why do I need to do anything with social media?
Because.
God damn it.
We look adorable.
Happy.
In love.
Which is what we are.
I love him.
He loves me.
The break up happened not because there was a lack of love.
Then the un-breaking up happened.
We’ve been back together for a month’ish or so.
Tomorrow will be eleven months from our first date.
We’re sneaking up on a year of being in each other’s lives.
Part of me wants to post pictures from our latest trip.
Especially the one of us at a Justine’s in Austin.
This hip French restaurant that a friend tipped me off to.
It was romantic and cool and hipster and fantastical.
We looked cool and handsome and beautiful.
The light was perfect.
The food, so French.
Made me yearn for Paris.
I will be there in about three weeks.
Currently my man is not able to come with me, but he’s looking into it.
It could happen.
He’s got work travel and work responsibilities.
But maybe.
He might be able to do it.
That would be beyond wonderful.
It would be dreamy to be in Paris a year after we started dating.
Especially as the first time we kissed we made out in front of my house for twenty minutes, more?
I said it was like being in Paris.
Where public displays of affection are the norm.
Kiss him in the streets.
Walk hand in hand through the Marais.
Make out in the Pompidou.
Or the Palais de Tokyo.
On the banks of the Seine.
In the Tuilleries.
On one of the pedestrian bridges over the Canal St. Martin.
Or on the pont de Bir-Hakeim just after the Passy Metro stop next to the art Deco apartments where they filmed Last Tango in Paris.
I would detour us down to walk the Isle aux Cynges.
The Isle of Swans.
The little man made island in the Seine.
Just off the beaten path.
Where swans swim.
Trees line the paths.
The Seine sparkles in the sun, the Eiffel Tower is off in the not so near distance, and at the end of the isle is a replica of the Statue of Liberty.
It is uber romantice.
Not swarmed with tourists.
I know.
I know.
When I go to Paris, I am a tourist.
But having lived there for a spell and this being my 9th trip there, I don’t like the heavily touristed areas of Paris.
I get too overwhelmed with the crowds and like most places that have a lot of tourists one gets the junk restaurants and cafes, overpriced tacky gee gaws, and those that prey on tourists, pick pockets galore.
No.
I like the less traveled places.
So I would take him there.
Amongst other spots.
Sit on a bench.
Watch the bateaux go by.
Make out.
Then walk over the pont de Bir-Hakeim and into the 15th arrondisement down Boulevarde de Grenelle to Cafe Cantine du Troquet Dupleix.
Oh.
So, so, so good.
Basque influenced.
One of the best steaks I have ever had.
Also a plancha of shrimp that made me crazy.
Un plat du fromage that was so divine I can still taste it.
I accidentally discovered it on a trip in 2017.
I was staying at an acquaintances home that I had met when I lived there in the winter/spring of 2012-2013.
She had heard I was looking to come to Paris for Christmas that year and she was planning on being in New York, she offered me her spot in the 15th for a tuppance.
I later realized she shouldn’t have charged me at all.
The place was a hole.
But.
I was there and it was my first time back since I had lived there and I was a graduate student on a graduate student budget.
Beggars don’t get to be choosers.
Anyway.
The closest metro was Bir-Hakeim.
And I would walk down the boulevard and pass Cantine du Troquet.
FYI–the resto is named after the top of the Eiffel Tower–the very top of the tower is called a “troquet”.
I would walk past and be completely taken by the smells wafting out into the air.
I resolved to take my friend there for dinner.
My nose is usually pretty spot on.
I can tell when it’s worth it.
And this place was so worth it.
I’ve been back twice since 2017.
Once for my birthday dinner in 2019 right before the pandemic.
I’m not sure why I didn’t go the last time I was in Paris.
Probably because of all the drama with my lost luggage.
Anyway.
I will go there this trip.
I would love my love to come with.
If not.
I will take my mentor who is the reason I am going.
When the break up happened.
Before the made up happened.
My mentor, who had already booked a trip to Europe, said, “Doll, come with me to Paris.”
I had miles.
So I booked the trip.
My mentor will be in Florence and then headed to Paris.
Bookshop, small press publisher, film maker, gallery space, and teeny tiny line of ridiculously hip clothes, like tiny, tiny, maybe three, four cargo overhauls, bandanas, and some knit beanie hats.
I have a skull and cross bones bandana and a rose hipster beanie that I got there.
Plus a couple of magazines that I have never seen anywhere else.
I always want to buy much more than I could possibly carry back.
Last time I went my checked bag actually was too heavy, books and notebooks, oops, and I had to take stuff out and figure out how to carry more stuff in my carry one and purse.
I would take my love there.
If he were to come.
And if not this trip.
Then the next.
I love the Marais as well for the tiny, narrow streets, how close it is to the Pompidou, that I can walk to the Seine and cross over to Ile Saint Louis or Ile de la Cite very easily.
There’s great shopping.
There’s great markets.
And really great street art.
Anyway.
As I perseverate on whether or not to go public on social about the relationship, really all I want is to hustle my boyfriend away to Paris and steal kisses from him in the streets.
I don’t really care what y’all think.
It’s not my business.
I do care about impacting him though.
We do have mutual people and some of those folks A.) Don’t know we broke up or B.) Only know that we broke up.
Again.
My important people all know we’re back together and therefor what goes on social really doesn’t matter.
I just like posting sexy, beautiful photos of us because it brings me joy.
And I like sharing things with people.
I sense that like most things on social it would be a tiny little blip, a few hits, a few odd comments from people who aren’t all the close to me and then in two days it would go the way of all social media posts.
But.
At this moment.
I am keeping it, him, just a little close to the heart.
He’s mine.
I’m his.
And that is enough.
You can hit me up for the photo the next time you see me out in the world.
Except that it unfolded in this beautiful, gentle, organic way.
He reached out to me the Monday after I had gotten my new tattoo.
He was in the city.
Did I want him to come over?
I did.
Except, well, I didn’t see the message.
I missed it.
I had already turned off my phone for the night and did not see it until the next morning.
I responded that I would have, that I wished I had seen it earlier and asked if there was a different time we could meet up.
None of the times work.
I was sad, but not devastated.
I was feeling a lot of neutrality.
And.
There was this small shift, a door opening.
We started messaging one another.
Not a lot.
But enough.
He showed me some photos of where he was traveling.
I sent him some messages.
We slowly, quietly were connecting.
Then.
The day before yesterday he reached out and asked if he moved up his flight to come back early, would I be available?
I did not miss that message.
I responded immediately, “Yes.”
And then proceeded to clear my calendar to give us space.
He changed his flight and came back yesterday.
We saw each other.
It was magnificent.
It was magic.
There was no hesitancy.
We were just right back in each other’s arms.
He spent the night.
We talked a ton this morning.
We worked things out.
We made the repair.
I am astounded and grateful.
I am also very aware that I had already done so much of my own work, so much writing, blogging, journaling, thinking, crying, leaning into friends, prayer, meditation, went to get a massage, went to acupuncture, did chiropractic sessions, went on long walks, did more writing, more crying, went out dancing.
I moved through it.
I got a “break up” tattoo.
And now.
It’s a breakthrough tattoo.
I was net neutral.
The worst had already happened.
He had broken up with me.
What worse could happen?
I had no agenda.
Sure.
I had some hopes.
But I had no agenda.
I was just there to experiment and see what would come of it.
Magic.
Connection.
Re-connection.
Profound love.
And, please, don’t get me wrong.
There are things I am going to have to work on and therapy that will still need to happen for me to be in awareness of how I am in relationship, but as my therapist said in my last session, “I really think the two of you belong together, you are going to heal through this relationship, experience tremendous growth if you can show up for one another, and if it doesn’t work out you will have done the work to be in a better relationship afterwards.”
But.
I don’t have to think about another relationship.
I am in the one I want.
He is my person.
And.
Yeah.
I know, it’s not been easy to get here, but I have to say that when folks demonized him, it did not help.
The voices that got through were judicious, kind, thoughtful, looked at the situation from many different perspectives and gave me insights that were invaluable
If it’s meant to be you can’t fuck it up.
If it’s not meant to be you can’t manipulate it into happening.
I didn’t try to fuck it up and I didn’t try to manipulate it either.
It just unfolded in this really sweet, beautiful, organic way.
I cannot tell you the bliss of being back in his arms.
I sense it will be odd and potentially awkward for some folks to read what I am writing about his, and I don’t care.
With the exception of I won’t link this blog to my social media.
I could stand a break from that.
I love how people, unexpected, wonderful, caring folks reached out to me, but I also don’t feel like talking about it on social media.
It is too fresh.
Too special to share.
This blog is anonymous, ostentatiously, I don’t have it linked to anything, unless I do it manually.
I almost didn’t sit down to write this, but I felt compelled to process it.
To celebrate.
To reflect, soft and dreamy, of kissing his sweet mouth and all the ways we fell seamlessly back together.
It was something else.
And not something that I feel like I need 1,500 “friends” to put in their two cents.
The people that I need to know, know.
And for the rest of it, it will come out when it comes out, or not.
I am not worried about it.
I do wish I had not deleted our social media posts, the pictures are gone, but not all.
I found a stash on my hard drive.
I also know that I shared a lot of photos with him and that I can ask for them to be shared back.
And we will make new photos on new adventures.
I asked him to come to Paris with me in April.
Probably too short notice for it to work, but I asked.
And.
I asked him to come to Barcelona in August.
And that he can do.
He wants to take me back to Mexico City.
or Hawaii.
Yes please to both.
I am so struck by how natural and kind the reconnection was.
Passionate too.
Let me not go into details.
But yes.
Passionate.
We had a few moments of breathing deeply, talking about tender things this morning, I did anyway, but what needed to be said was said, we both saw our parts, we both amended them, and we moved forward.
There will always be work to do.
We are busy people.
Life will happen.
Conflict will happen.
Conflict will happen in all relationships.
But we discussed a strategy to how to navigate it when it gets into old triggers and traumas and I feel hopeful that we will be able to walk into conflict, make repair, and walk out the other side.
And.
I believe we will grow.
Closer together.
And.
Stronger.
I cannot believe all that went into doing the work, but I can say, without a doubt that I am beyond grateful for showing up and doing it.
Even when it meant crying with my head on my desk.
Which is about as much as my body can take before I’m kaput.
During that time I spent a lot of time saying good bye to my ex-boyfriend.
Over the weekend I did a lot of reclamation of self.
Reclaiming my heart by doing deep self-care, loads of writing, and going out dancing.
Not once.
But twice.
And Friday.
I was home.
Home in my body, moving freely about the dance floor.
Completely non-pulsed to be “first on the floor”.
Meaning, literally, the first person on the dance floor.
I danced from 10p.m. until 2:30a.m.
By midnight I had done 12,500 steps.
By the time I got home I had done another 17,500.
My workout is to move to music.
I have always loved dancing.
And I love, love, love, house music.
I also went to 80s night at the Cat Club on Thursday with an old friend, so good to reconnect, and hopeful for more of that too.
We danced around to 80s music, most specifically from 1984, I think that club night was even called 1984, and then we took a break to re-hydrate and sit and I dished on the break up and it was good.
Probably need to do that over coffee and not in a club, but that was where it happened and I’m grateful.
So grateful for all the folks near and far who have reached out, given me love, opened their hearts to me, their kinds words, their experiences, helped me process and work it out.
The writing too, works it out.
The tattoos work it out as well.
Originally the tattoos were going to be just one tattoo–a sobriety commemorative tattoo for 19 years.
And that was definitely gotten.
But.
Because of the break up and how I have processed heart ache before I decided to also get a “break up” tattoo, as one lady I work with termed it.
They are more than “break up” tattoos, my tattoos are ways of marking change, transition, transformation, reclamation of body, working through emotional pain with the healing of the piece and the sitting through chosen pain.
I did not choose the pain of the break up.
I would not have broken up.
I would have chosen communicating and collaborating and working on it.
That choice was taken away.
Sitting still through the chosen pain gives me some autonomy back and pulls me from the ambivalent, ambiguous not knowing of the silence on the other end.
The deep, cold pain of being not spoken too, iced out, silence like being stabbed with icicles.
Oh, yeah, and he never got back to me, never replied to that email, I sent him in response to the one he sent me to see each other.
(I do want to see you)
I haven’t heard a peep.
I sent that out one week ago.
(No response is a response).
So I moved it forward.
I did have a moment or two on Friday thinking, well, maybe he’s going to reach out, I did say come see me Friday or Saturday.
But there was nothing.
Instead I met an old acquaintance from Paris for a meeting and then after that we went and got Thai food in the Haight.
I gave him a ride home and felt really good about having done some service, but more importantly just to talk through the relationship ending and his experience with the worst break up he had and how he said, “later, now, I can laugh about it or my friends will say, remember when…and laugh with me.”
“But at the time it was the worst pain imaginable.”
Yup.
I get it.
It is extraordinary pain.
But it is waning.
The heat in my leg from the tattoo assures me of that.
Emotional pain can be, is amorphous, it moves, it floats around you, it is like a constantly raining cloud of pain.
Anchoring my pain in the body with getting a tattoo also anchors the emotions and helps me process.
Lying on the table looking out the window at the dark rain clouds and the passing cars, the lights moving reflected wetly white, red over the pavement, the various framed flash art in the studio, the tattoo sign in red and purple glowing in the background, the sound of honky tonk heartbreak on the stereo system.
“Good bye _______” I said over and over and over again.
Good bye.
And I meant it.
I also reflected often on the night before, Friday night, when I was dancing at Monarch.
I saw New York House legend Tony Humphries.
So fucking good.
So powerful.
He took me to church.
House is home.
House is love.
House music is in my soul.
House brings me joy and happiness and helps me transcend.
House is where I go to church.
And as I danced and smiled and twirled and clapped, warm and safe in the underground belly of a club in the SOMA I reflected with joy that I was home.
That I was love.
“You are beautiful.”
“You are stunning.”
“You must be from New York, I’m from the Bronx.”
“You know Tony from way back don’t you?”
“You are not 51!”
“I feel seen by you.”
“I see you.”
Some many mini and macro conversations while moving, constantly moving and joyfully being washed in the music.
It set the stage for the long, rainy drive to Petaluma the next day to see my artist and also catch up with a friend at Sol Food, oh my God, Puerto Rican soul food, so good, and connect and have her love and time, she drove up from San Rafael.
I was ready for the tattoo.
I was ready to say goodbye.
My artist and I, DannyBoy Smith, collaborated on the piece, changing the art up a little to help it be a better tattoo.
The original art is by Fernanda “Lady” Guedes, a Brazilian artist that is part of a book called “Frida Obsession”.
All the artists in the book did their interpretation of Frida Kahlo in their own way.
I really resonated with Lady’s piece.
It felt like me.
I got the book from an art/zine/underground bookstore on a meander with my ex through Mexico City.
I love art book stores.
I got a couple of art zines and the Frida Kahlo book and a notebook.
We sat in an outdoor cafe after the book shopping, that I had talked the owner into serving us coffees even though they were closing.
We sat and looked at our art books and I wrote.
I took sly photos of my ex while he was reading, the hanging ferns framing his face as he read, the sound of the warm light misty rain softly drizzling, the pulse of the street, the owner and the staff transitioning from lunch to dinner service, the laughter of the man and woman at another table talking rapidly to each other in Spanish.
I look at the Frida book and I did think then that there were a few Frida portraits that I might want as a tattoo.
I was not expecting that I would get a tattoo five and a half months later to cope with the break up.
But there it is.
And here I am.
Still standing.
Walking through the pain.
Letting go of the story.
“If you cut out the story,” a friend of mine said the Friday before last, after I had told him the whole story while we wandered around China Town and North Beach, “this is what I hear,” he paused.
“He broke up with you because you didn’t offer to drive back from Tahoe.”
Jesus fuck.
I mean it was more than that.
But to some degree, it’s great short hand.
And there is more than a modicum of truth in it.
My friend also said, “take back your power.”
I felt like I did that this Friday night at the club, dancing to House music, surrounded by love and community.
I felt seen and appreciated for just being myself.
And I said goodbye to the relationship the next day and let it go.
I literally said, “I’m leaving you here now,” as I exited the tattoo parlour, “I’m letting you go.”
Good bye love.
Hello what ever comes next.
And I know there will likely still be twinges of pain, as the tattoo heals, so does my heart.
Who the hell is emailing my professional email account, “thinking of you”?!
A few folks flashed in my head.
The man I briefly hooked up with when I moved back from Paris, only to find out that he was cheating on his girlfriend and live in partner, who reached out to me over the years here and there whenever he was in San Francisco, trying to reconnect, trying to clamber back into my bed.
No thanks honey.
Although, once, in a spate of deep loneliness during the lock down of the pandemic, I did entertain the idea and I agreed to see him on his next business trip, being assured (who really knows if it’s true) that he was single.
I am not going through getting another Facebook message from a hurt, angry girlfriend again, that was a fucking shock.
Then.
I realized.
Fuck.
Once a liar, always a liar.
I don’t trust him.
I don’t care how much skin hunger I have, I don’t need that kind of drama.
I messaged him back, I said, hey, thanks for the offer, but I am not going to be available and deleted the messages and went on with my life.
Only to have every single way of bombarding me with messages employed.
He did not have my number, thank God, but he messaged me on all the social platforms, demanding explanations and why nots and how he needed to see me.
Good grief man.
I don’t trust you.
I quietly, quickly blocked him everywhere.
Then a few days later, there it was, an email through my professional website.
HOLY SHIT.
Are you out of your mind?
Demanding the why of why I was not seeing him.
You are out of your mind.
I blocked him.
Anyway.
Back to this morning’s message.
I clicked on the gmail message with great curiosity.
And.
Oh.
Oh, too sweet for words, it was my therapist checking in on me.
He’s been away.
He was out of town the ghostly scared week when my ex first emailed me, the email that broke me, and broke us, the help I wanted, the guidance, it wasn’t there, I was on my own, flailing, and boy did I get messy, and so did my ex, I really think we were both trying to connect with one another and all we did was push each other away.
I started to tear up reading my therapist’s kind words and I was like, no, no, no, it’s too early in the damn day to cry.
I have to go to work.
I have clients.
My makeup is done.
I have battened the hatches on my heart, it’s Valentines Day, I have not looked at the card I got for my ex weeks ago, the last time I went grocery shopping at Rainbow so that I would have good snacks for snowboarding in Tahoe, sigh, snowboarding in Tahoe, I got him a Valentines Day card.
And now.
Here’s some more tears.
I almost didn’t want to write tonight because I knew I would cry.
Grieve and cry and keep carrying this heavy pain in my body.
My heart hurts.
My chest hurts.
My shoulders ache.
I do not have COVID.
I have heartache.
And heartache is a real, legitimate body feeling.
“Have you lost weight?” My chiropractor asked the last time I saw her.
I have very little appetite.
But.
Because I work a food program and know how precarious deep felt emotional content can smash me, I eat three meals a day.
Regardless of my appetite.
Tonight for dinner I had homemade pumpkin and truffle risotto with tarragon chicken.
My first time making risotto.
Not bad.
Could use a little more acid, maybe I will put a dash of balsamic vinegar over the next bowl I have.
But honestly, I probably have still eaten less.
I just don’t feel like it.
Anyway.
Heartache.
Pain.
Hurt.
Silence.
The silence like thick soft snow that falls from the sky and gathers in my hair, melting later like tears down my cheeks.
Snow in Banff.
Snow in my hair in the hot tub, snow falling on his face, steam rising up to the clouds.
Because.
You know, you see, after that voicemail message I left him, he did eventually email me back.
Not my therapist, but my ex boyfriend.
He did respond to my phone call.
A firestorm of hope in my chest.
He told me he was sorry I was hurting.
Where he was, away, climbing, in Vegas, of all places, well outside of Vegas, I’m assuming, unless he was scaling the Mirage.
Vegas during the Super Bowl, that must have been crazy pants.
He told me other things, tiny pieces of things and then said that he did want to see me.
“I do want to see you.”
But he didn’t know what we could do, that he still didn’t think he had time for the relationship, the work, the school, the stuff and things.
“And other things”.
But.
He could see me Monday, after he flew back from Vegas, a 6p.m. flight, drive back to his house, drop off his climbing gear, then drive over to me.
If he wasn’t too tired.
Oh God.
I cannot tell you the conundrum I was in.
Still feel faintly in, the pain in my chest a staccato of rain on the windows, the flowers, the rain, the hearts, the old fallow memories of school, high school hopes, on Valentines Day, walking past the open air glass window office at my high school in DeForest, the piles of pastel teddy bears with heart shaped balloons tied to them drifting back and forth under the front office’s fluorescent lights, the flowers in all manners and sizes in vases big and small.
Mostly roses.
The carnations sent to the classrooms right before lunch and the announcements made over the speakers of who should make their way to the office to pick up their Valentines Day gifts.
Back to the email response I sent.
It took me a long time.
I spoke to a girlfriend and two sponsors.
Every one pointed out the red flag, the “if I’m not tired” part of the email.
I know, I know, I know, he’s going to be tired, he’s going to be exhausted, climbing at altitude in the mountains, returning from Vegas, driving at night to his home and then to mine.
I could envision him getting into his house and changing his mind.
Too tired.
And I.
Oh tearful heart, please relax and just let me write this out.
Please.
I would have spent the entire day anticipating him coming over Monday after my clients.
I would get up early and shower and wash my hair and what would I wear and when to have him over, client’s end at 8p.m. and if he spent the night, (it might be make up sex she said, or it might be break up sex) should I run over to the bodega and grab some oatmilk for his coffee?
I was ready to do it, despite the red flag of potential cancellation.
I wanted to.
I want to.
Still.
See him.
Damn it.
My fodder for pain.
Move through it.
Write through it.
All the poetry in my head, the words, floods, torrents, the smash of my heart, the cold pavement under my feet, my name in his mouth, in his book, the words upon words upon worlds, the love, the air in Mexico City, the high altitude in Tahoe, the snow drifting down on my head, a shower of shame and forewarning of loss, the sharp bite of cold air, the fire he built me in the fireplace, the ashes in my mouth, the rose garden, always the rose garden, the preludes, the French in my mouth kissed into his mouth, the skin, the tattoos pressed side to side, the hazel green and brown eyes, the smile when he laughed with abandoned, when he lost his words with me in conversation, “I lost my train of thought looking at you, how can I carry on a conversation in front of your beauty.”
The crush of mouth on mouth on body on breast on heart, the pelvic bone, the leg over my leg, the press, the cool air, the soft warm lush starling of song floating from my speaker in the kitchen, the pink and white lights and the globe stars yellow gold from the nightlight next to your face, all the ways, the coffee at the last cafe we went to in Mexico City, how this time, was all time, that we were always going to be sitting across from one another in the city at that cafe drinking coffee and talking for eternity, always.
Oh.
God.
The.
Pain.
The flood of words across the page the only way through is through is through is through is through.
So I sat and crafted a thought out response.
An email that I have not gotten a reply to.
(No response is a response)
Which is why when I got the sweet email from my therapist my heart leapt in my chest, finally, on Valentines Day, too much symbolism there, but hey, thank god, he’s finally replying.
See.
You see.
I am so sorry little girl, sweet heart, tender little one dying to be attached and held and loved and made love to, I had to set some boundaries.
They hurt like fuck though.
I told him, I replied to his email, I am really glad you reached out.
Light fluffy filler.
Then.
I don’t think tomorrow is a good idea.
Come see me Friday or Saturday.
I said No.
I did not want to.
(When oh god yes I wanted to, so fucking bad)
But.
Sometimes, all the time, too many fucking times, I did what I did not want to do, under counsel, under tender love and guidance and sweet, kind, my best interests at heart, doll, don’t do that, don’t say Monday is ok.
It’s not.
He will, may likely, who knows, but, probably will, cancel.
And you will be dis-regulated all day long waiting for his plane to land, for him to drive home, drop his things off, drink a coffee, and drive to you.
Unless he’s too tired.
And where will my broken heat be then?
Just broken more.
Although, tonight when I came home and unlocked my door and stooped to gather my mail, I did again look to see if there were keys in the mail slot, I thought, god damn it, I should have just said yes.
Why didn’t I just say yes?
And I know.
I know with my adult self, the truth.
I knew how hard it would be if he was too tired, that the anticipation of connecting and then not seeing him would floor me. That seeing him when he was tired would also be hard. That the relationship and the love and him and myself, we all deserved more time and consideration and space, not crammed between me finishing work late and him flying home exhausted and me getting up early to go to work and he too, I’m sure.
It deserved time.
(I don’t have time for you)
So I set a boundary.
And no response.
Is a response.
There’s been nothing.
It’s Wednesday.
It’s Valentines Day.
And here I sit with my words and my poetry and music, listening to mash ups of techno, psychedelic rock, disco, house, garage, postpunk (Red Axes), music that I never listened to with him so I can stand it, play it loud and when I’m not crying I dance really fucking hard.
Which might also explain slight loss of weight.
Here I sit.
Alone.
Waiting for the email that never comes.
The keys to drop through the mail slot.
The ache of my heart to ease.
The regret of not having him over Monday, even with the high probability of cancellation.
Vegas odds anyone?
Because.
One last thing.
It’s not just Valentines Day, which I am pretty sure he is having just kicking it with his kid, I probably wouldn’t have seen him today anyway, although there would have been exchanges, text messages, photos, plans for the weekend.
“Will you go with me to see Lords of Acid?” He asked me back in Vegas for his birthday.
Um, yes! I said with glee.
Today, I see a post that Lords of Acid will be here in June.
Ugh.
I would have bought us tickets to that.
Or The Empire Strikes back when it is at the SF Symphony.
I would have written him poetry instead of just vomiting my grief here.
Made him homemade gluten free chocolate chip cookies.
All the things.
But no, no plans for the weekend.
It’s a long weekend.
Oh my god, it’s a long weekend.
And that was the last little straw that broke my heart as I left my office tonight, on the pheromone trail of a couple who have had “a great week!” my last session of the day.
I forgot.
It’s a long weekend.
He won’t come see me Friday or Saturday.
He will go to the snow.
He will go to the mountains.
He will go snowboarding over the long weekend.
He will leave Friday and come back Monday.
He will not come to me.
He will go to the snow.
And judge me if you will, tell me to get over it, move on, blah, blah, blah.
I am doing the best I can.
The fucking best I can.
And when you lose the person who you thought was your person, talk to me then.
I lost my way trying to sound like I had it together and not lose it crying and just beg.
See.
I found my ex’s number in my missed call log in my phone.
I had not, until today, reach out by phone to connect.
Because.
I had deleted and blocked his number two weeks ago tonight around 10:45p.m.’ish.
Whenever I got of the phone after he broke up with me and I started crying and called my sponsor and then talked to a girlfriend who walked me through blocking him on the phone and social.
“You have to block him,” she said.
So I did.
And I regretted that at times over the past week, which is what led me to unblock him on Gmail and get that message, “You doing ok?” from him.
REALLY?
Did you think I was doing ok?
Anyway.
The number I found was not the number we normally talked to each other through—it was his work number.
He had two cells, a personal cell and one for work.
I must have blocked and deleted his personal.
Which makes sense, that’s the primary number we messaged each other through, sent pictures through, made calls through.
I don’t know exactly what came up for me last night.
I made it through most of the day pretty well.
But at the end of the night, defenses down, I was walloped with pain and tears and bent over crying in my bed.
Cried hard for awhile, got up to brush my teeth and wash my face.
Happened again.
This time bent over the sink.
Calmed down a little and then I thought, good God I just need to talk to him.
We did not really talk when he broke up with me.
It was just all shock.
I think I just parroted back to him what I heard him say.
I wanted to make an effort.
I wanted to fucking try.
I wanted to fight for the relationship.
I thought he was going to actually talk to me when he reached out via email this past week.
But he didn’t.
He said “sorry I had a really rough Monday.”
And never sent me his number to talk.
I responded “ok darling, take gentle care.”
But it’s been so upsetting to feel momentarily like there was going to be a conversation, a check in, something, just the barest promise of connection.
He reached out to me.
Maybe he was just trying to feel better about himself.
Maybe he was trying to make an amend and thought better of it.
I really can’t tell.
I don’t know why and I don’t think I ever well.
But when I felt the way I felt last night and looked one more time through my phone and I had completely forgot about the missed call log and I found his number I just could not help thinking that I had to try.
Because Thursday I emailed him to ask him to return my keys, “Hey you, would you please return my keys?”
And yesterday early afternoon he emailed back, “Yes, I will.”
Not when.
Or how.
Only that he will.
I wasn’t using my keys as a manipulation to see him, fyi.
I didn’t ask to go over to his house and pick them up in person.
I didn’t say, why don’t you bring them over tonight.
I expect that he’ll just mail them to me.
I think the finality must have hit me last night, the idea of him returning my keys, there’s nothing left there, hurt so much.
I think that is where the hurt and sadness caught me.
I almost called him last night when I discovered his number in my phone.
He stays up late pretty often.
I couldn’t bring myself to reach out at midnight though, I do not want to come across as that crazy person in the break up who can’t help themselves from reaching out.
I slept on it.
Sort of.
I ran 1800 different ways of saying what I said today, except instead of being polished I said it in the messiest way possible, I assure you it sounded a lot better last night in my head.
I really thought I had something decent to say, a script of sorts, that stated all my feelings and my desire to talk to each other and not throw away the relationship.
But it was gone in the morning.
And I don’t remember what I said except that I made it clear I wanted him back.
I am sure my people will roll their eyes at that.
A couple of the people I work with were so angry on my behalf about the silent treatment that I went through before the break up actually happened that they were secretly rooting for me to break up with him first.
I couldn’t do that, it crossed my mind that the break up might be coming, there were signs, but I also was hoping, hoping so hard that we would talk and find our way through.
I feel like he gave up.
And now I’m crying again.
God damn it.
I’m supposed to go out dancing tonight and one of my girlfriend’s canceled and although there’s another friend going, I don’t feel like it any more.
I just want to put my head down and cry.
It feels really over now.
Not responding to my voicemail feels like the ultimate end.
Or.
Just more of the same.
Ignoring me.
Shrouded in silence.
Nothing to talk to.
No one to connect with.
A blank silent wall that I keep battering myself against.
He’s gone.
I just have to accept that and move on.
I will be kind to myself and proud of myself for at least trying.
I tried.
Take your power back, a friend of mine said yesterday.
I don’t even know what the fuck that means.
Although I sense it does mean not reaching out again.
No phone call.
No texting.
No emailing.
Just wait for the keys to fall through the mail slot.
Walk around with my heart exposed and raw and hope that eventually, with time and distraction, the pain will pass.
The pain has been horrendous.
I wonder what he has felt.
Has he cried?
Has he felt any twinge of remorse or desire to reunite?
I know it doesn’t really matter.
The actions of ignoring me and not responding are all the information I really need.
It’s been two weeks since he broke up with me.
I threw my hail Mary up today and it wasn’t caught.
At least I tried.
There is that.
Now.
Now I have to just walk away and let him go.
I’m not going to pursue it past the effort I made today to connect.
He gets to have the dignity of his own experience and the choices he made.
I don’t think he’s going to find someone else like me.
Is the relationship asking to deepen, the pastor said from her pulpit at the Universalist Unitarian church.
I didn’t catch much more of the service because I was drowning in old religious trauma.
Dissociated.
Disoriented.
Collapsed.
Openly crying.
Eyes closed.
Tears streaming down my face.
I did not even realize that I had childhood religious trauma.
But there it was, on full display, in this church in Oakland that my ex had taken me to.
I had a lot of reservations about going and I can articulate many of them, but that if for another time.
The reason I am thinking of this particular sentence is that I have adopted it as an intervention tool with couples who are in conflict but afraid of talking about it.
Also, Esther Perel, who I have trained with, talks a great deal about how conflict avoidant we are as a society and the harm that it does to us.
I used the phrase tonight with a couple in deep conflict and extreme fear of walking into it.
And.
Lo.
There was a repair.
I am so grateful for getting to be a therapist.
I watched the couple move from being at either end of the couch at the beginning of the session to being tearfully in each others’ arms by the end of session.
There were a lot more interventions aside from that one, but that’s where it started, by walking into the conflict instead of avoiding it.
I am a very good therapist.
I am not always a very good partner.
But I am also human.
It is so very easy to see it from the other side of the room, or couch, if you may.
I couldn’t see it so clearly with my ex.
It hurts that I couldn’t always get out of my own painful past and shame with him in our dynamic.
My therapist was like, you got shamed, you shamed him, you both kept trying to talk to the other person and you only kept triggering each other.
I wish I had been able to pause.
God.
I wish I had.
But if wishes were horses beggars would ride.
And I would have a stable full of prancing ponies right about now.
It’s been such a wild ride.
Not comfortable.
Uncomfortable as fuck.
But I’m still on the ride.
Today’s ride is more about anger than it is about tears.
Yesterday I had my first, almost, so close, nearly, day without crying.
I made it to bed.
I knelt down, said grace, prayed for direction and guidance and had a picture of my ex float up behind my eyes that nearly floored me.
I was not expecting it and the tears came immediately.
Well, god damn it.
I thought I was going to make it through one day without crying.
But no.
I found myself today not so much sad but mad.
Mad at him for taking down his relationship status on Facebook before talking to me, days before talking to me, days of ugly anticipation.
Mad at him for being at his art studio in Potrero Hill, being in San Francisco when he lives across the Bay, the Saturday prior to this last, when he broke up with me in the evening, from Oakland.
Dude.
Why?
What the fucking hell?
Come over to my house.
Why am I seeing you post on Instagram about being at the studio and you won’t get in your car, drive over to my house, see me in person and do the deal face to face.
I suppose I will never know why.
Why is not a spiritual question.
But fuck, it rankled.
Rankled is not the right word.
It was like getting knifed in the heart.
It hurt so badly to see that.
I envisioned driving my car over and demanding, what the fuck?
Talk to me please.
Please, baby, please talk to me.
But I had never been over to his studio, I just know it’s in Potrero Hill, oh, I have a sneaking suspicion I could figure it out, there are only so many, but I’m not a fucking stalker.
I felt a moment of anger tonight too, saying those words to the couple in distress in front of me without having had the oppportuinity to deepen the relationship with him.
Fight for the relationship.
He gets the right to do whatever he wants, he decided to withdraw, he has his reasons.
“I don’t have time for you.”
But you have time to post to Instagram.
ARGHHHHHHH.
Anyway.
The anger is also a path forward, a light, a fire under my fucking ass.
I have been writing.
I have been reaching out.
And I have had people reach out to me over and over and over again.
Unexpectedly.
People I had no clue were concerned.
Messages on Instagram, Facebook, text messages, phone calls.
One friend even sent me a meme today via text that he made from my blog including a fake algorithm of me being offered “singles over 70” ads.
Motherfucker I am only 51.
And I dance like I’m 35.
Anyway.
I feel seen and loved.
Not necessarily loved by the man I want to love me.
Hmmm.
That’s not fair.
He did love me.
He just doesn’t have the time to commit to the relationship that it needs.
I think it’s the last that is unfair.
(If life was fair I would be dead)
He didn’t try.
(And maybe that’s unfair too, he just didn’t try with me in the way I wanted)
And that fucking hurts and makes me angry too.
I am worth the time.
Anyway.
I can’t convince him, or I would have already.
I have pretty much left him alone.
I will admit I have continued to leave him unblocked on Gmail, some small hopes that he will reach out and work towards repair, but the longer there is silence the more smashed that fantasy becomes.
One fantasy that has finally left is him being on my bed when I get home from the office.
He still has my keys.
I wonder if he is going to return them, I’ll come home one day with an anonymous envelope pushed through the mail slot, or if they’ve just been tossed in the recycling bin behind his house.
Enough repeated unlocking of the door to see my empty apartment, well, the cats are here, but empty of him, has quashed that fantasy.
I unblocked him on social too.
Maybe he’ll reach out there, he’s comfortable on it, uses it a lot.
Maybe….
Staying off that shit though, I can’t imagine seeing his handsome face, it would hurt too much.
I know this because I did look momentarily to still see some pictures of the two of us on his social.
It broke me all over again.
And.
Gave me what I now think is false hope, if he’s still got photos of us on his page maybe there’s a chance.
Anyway.
I expect that will change and I don’t know that I can stand to see that.
I may still go back and block him on social to avoid that pain.
But so far, the blog has given me the platform to process and process and process.
And the anger, like I said a moment ago has fueled the fire.
It has also fueled the fire for other writing projects.
I finally went through the steps to secure the right photographer for my tattoo book project and I am so fucking excited for it.
I have mapped out things I need to do before I connect with the photographer who is coming up from Los Angeles to work with me.
I am beyond excited to collaborate.
He is someone I know from my earliest sobriety.
I love and admire his work.
I cannot wait.
We will be doing the photo shoot the third weekend in March.
In the meantime I will be formatting the book and integrating the photos I do like from the previous photographer I worked will.
I will also be doing as much freaking self-care as I can.
I have been busy breathing and staying connected to people.
Breathing is work, especially when the pain was so bad I couldn’t draw breath without folding over and collapsing.
I have shared and cried and breathed and went grocery shopping and done food prep and written volumes in my journal, I have gone out dancing and will go out again in a couple of weeks.
I am listening to music that has no affiliation with our relationship and dancing in my kitchen in the meantime.
Anger is a part of grief.
And I know that at some point it will fade.
It will soften and I will accept and move gently forward into whatever unknown landscape there is in front of me.
I will forgive myself and him.
I will not shame myself for being messy, most of the time, and I will do my therapy work—with my clients and with myself.
I have to say my therapist being away has been really hard, but I have not come completely unhinged because of the sweet love and support I have had from my community.
And the anger is a little less now too.
Thank God for writing.
It is saving my fucking life.
So much so.
Thank God for the words, which are their own reflection love for me.
My heart needed so to process.
Here, now, in this way, I will show up for myself.
If it’s not meant to be, you can’t manipulate it into happening.
Sage words.
A reminder from a dear friend and former mentor in my early years of recovery.
She reached out after seeing my distress on social media and I sense maybe reading some of the blogs I have written lately.
Nothing like experiencing the emotional duress of a breakup to get me writing.
You should see my notebook.
Pages and pages and pages.
So much writing.
Thank God for the writing, the inventorying, the constant processing.
Saves my life, the writing.
And so did she, this friend, she saved my life countless times, walked me through early recovery, talked me off many a limb, modeled for me things that I had never had modeled.
Helped me when I had, finally, admitted that I was having suicidal ideation.
That was terrifying for me.
I had self-medicated away my depression and anxiety and PTSD and ACA (adult child of an alcoholic) issues, but without the drugs and alcohol putting a warm blanket over the pain, it all came forward and had to be addressed.
Panic attacks that she talked me down from.
I didn’t even know what panic attacks were.
And boy howdy, I was having them.
Yesterday, in the midst of so many tears, so much crying, so much grief.
My God.
The grief.
She reached out to me via text and asked if there was anything that she could do.
I said a phone call would help, although I’d likely just cry through it.
I had already been on the phone with three other people and one FaceTime.
I was emotionally beat down.
I was exhausted.
I was beyond exhaustion.
The rain and storms and hurricane gale force winds swirling through the city gave me the excuse to stay put, get cozy with my grief, continuing to cry, letting it out.
I lit candles.
I made phone calls.
I wrote in my journal.
I would get calm and then I would be flooded again.
By the time I spoke with her I had done a great deal of internal and external processing.
I also was so glad to hear her voice.
Brought back so many memories.
And.
I literally had told a woman I was sitting and having our weekly meeting with over tea at my kitchen table (also known as my desk) some of the same things this wonderful woman had shared with me early on.
Almost, if not, verbatim.
It was like coming home to hear her voice.
And her laugh.
Her kindness and awareness.
I told her the story.
I cried.
She gave me a different perspective.
I cannot tell you how good it was to get a different perspective.
It gave me spaciousness to look back on all the love in my relationship with my ex.
I love him.
Obviously.
I still love him.
I will always love him, the love hasn’t gone anywhere.
I think that the grief, I believe that, is a testament to the depth of love.
Space was made for me to tell the tale.
To share the origin of the love story, how we started dating, all the exquisite synchronicities, the ways the Universe had conspired towards us to be together.
He was my person.
I still think he is my person, writing that in past tense brought up a pretty big twinge of emotions, but no tears yet as I write, for which I am grateful for.
A reprieve in a storm of tears.
Yesterday’s storm seemed to mirror the cacophony in my heart.
Tears do threaten, but have not fallen.
His laugh.
His smile.
His bad dad jokes.
His silliness.
His seriousness.
The way he said I love you into my neck.
His face the first time he said I love you.
Mexico City.
When the night clerk at the hotel checked us into the hotel said, “honeymoon!?” I said no and he said, softly, under his breath, “maybe next year.”
His hand in my hand.
The way he kissed me in front of the whole world on Hayes Street on our third date meeting for lunch at Souvla on a quick break from his job. How my manicurist walked by and smiled at me. And how he complimented my dress and said how pretty I was. That he would have to tell his manager that he was late because he was distracted by a pretty girl’s eyes.
The way he said my pigtails made him weak in the knees.
The way he held me at the Nils Frahm concert, his arms wrapped around me while I leaked tears of awe and joy at the music that was being played, how held I felt.
How sometimes when he was falling asleep he would hold me even tighter against him.
The way he woke me up from nightmares and let me know I was ok.
How my cats loved him.
How much he said that he loved my curves and my beautiful tattoos.
How much he loved my hair.
How he said I was sweet and caring and empathetic and sensitive.
The first time his knee touched mine in the park at Patricia’s Green drinking coffee from Ritual–a mocha with oatmilk for him, a whole milk latte for me.
Our inside joke about going to see the cats.
The way he brought me pleasure, so much pleasure, mind bending.
His hands in my hair.
The David Bowie notebook he gave me.
The candle he brought back to me from a business trip to Vegas that had a lid, which when revealed had the message, “I have a crush on you.”
The flowers he gave me on our fourth date.
When he told me that he would give me anthing if I spoke French to him, “Carmen, when you speak French to me you could ask me for anything, you could say, _______I want a yacht and I would say, what color?
When he read me poetry.
When I would come home from my office and he was sitting on my bed reading or scrolling on his phone waiting for me.
The way our tattoos looked together when he held me as we fell asleep after making love, the lights still and low, the music in the background and his breath heavy and soft as he fell asleep, I would look at our tattoos pressed against each other and I would marvel at the beauty of it, our skin against skin.
When we went to the MOMA, the Berkeley Museum of Art, the Legion of Honor, SF Jazz, the Fillmore, the Warfield, the Orb in Vegas to see U2, the amazing Cirque de Soleil show, the movies, the Parkway Theater, hikes in the Berkeley hills, concerts, Tahoe, even when it was hard, it was beautiful.
How dizzy I was with the altitude hiking way up high in Tahoe and having this moment of swimming in my body and his face against the blue sky and I almost blurted out I love you.
How he would squeeze my shoulders.
Or.
When he would put his head against my belly and let me stroke his hair.
All the silly cat memes he sent me.
Watching his face at concerts when he was moved to tears and singing along to the music.
How he would grab me and kiss me in the midst of crowds, not giving a damn.
It felt really good to have someone not give a damn and kiss me in public.
The kissy face emojis he would send me.
The “I love you” texts.
The last one I got was in Tahoe when I messaged him that I was doing “one last run” with my instructor before I would meet him for lunch.
I was so proud of that sentence.
He texted back, “I love you!”
Of course I face planted on that last run and burnt myself out trying to get down the hill and then tumbled down the precipice and straight into our break up.
The way he built a fire for me.
Oh hey there, tears.
When he told me he could listen to my stories for hours.
Meeting his family.
Monarchs in Santa Cruz.
When he told me that he followed my blog when I was living in Paris.
When he told me that I need to publish my poetry, because the world needs my poetry.
How well we traveled together.
When he said that I “make traveling easier.”
Pool side in Miami at the Fountainbleau.
The club he took me too with the open air roof deck.
Sitting next to him on a plane holding his hand.
Reading his books.
Taking me out to plays, taking me to Yoshi’s for my first time and saying that my intelligence was a turn on.
“What is that word when you find someone’s intelligence a turn on?” He asked me.
“Sapiosexual,” I replied.
The Shotgun theater and seeing Yema with him.
How he taught me to climb at the climbing gym and told me how strong I am.
How beautiful he looked when he climbed, so graceful and strong, it would take my breath away.
Seeing Maxwell play with the SF Symphony.
Seeing Underworld with him.
How he held me at the Portola Festival when I was swaying and singing along to Polo & Pan.
Lake Louise in Banff, Canada.
The hot springs in Upper Banff.
The beauty of the snow.
Sigh.
Tears again.
Here they are.
But I really needed to honor the story of the relationship and the love and not vilify him.
I think we both got scared and shamed and triggered and I can’t go back and change any of that.
I would if I could.
I can only move forward with as much grace as I can muster.
I can remember the hard conversations we had and miscommunications too and struggling to figure out schedules and routines and needs.
I can honor that it was a rich, full, emotional experience and I got angry and so did he.
We are human.
But what I am hoping, as I am now openly crying, is that I can remember more the love and how wonderful it was to be with him.
I miss him like crazy and it hurts and if it is meant to be I can’t fuck it up.
And if it isn’t I can’t manipulate it into happening.
I am so powerless over all of this.
I can only practice love and kindness to myself.
Forgive myself for being messy.
Forgive him for turning away.
And let him go.
He said once that I was looking at him like I was “looking at baby otters.”
It’s true.
I did.
I still would.
May you be gentle and held and loved by your community and hopefully remember me with some modicum of love.
You are imprinted on my body and I don’t know anyone else that I would rather look at like baby otters than you.
I love you.
I wish we could repair.
Kiss and make up.
Be with each other again.
I love you.
Even your silly impersonation of Dan Fogelberg playing a flugel horn.
Let me preface this with I had just gotten off the phone with a girlfriend who has been saving my life, like for the past week and a half.
I do not know what I would do without her.
And a lot of very sweet friends who have checked in on me, texted me, made me steak dinners after meetings, made me stay over and watch videos, even though I was secretly crying when they weren’t looking, or gone out dancing with me.
FYI.
Social media is a big pile of poo.
I look like I had a fabulous time out dancing tonight.
And I won’t lie, there were moments of joy, getting lost in the music, forgetting how heartbroken I am.
But there was also me checking my email account waiting for a response.
See.
I did something today because I could feel him, I felt him I did.
I was sad.
I have been so, so, so sad.
Doing all the things, trying so hard to not isolate, calling all the people, doing the work, having the feelings, grieving.
I’ve been told that grief is a testament to the love you have for someone when you have lost them.
I very much love my ex-boyfriend.
It is still so hard to write that, think that, say that.
It makes me want to stop writing and put my head down on my table and weep.
I have done that a lot this past week.
The grief catches me and smashes me down.
I think I have a pretty good front when I am out in the world, but the sadness floods me at times.
More times than I want it to, let me tell you.
Sometimes it causes me to dry sob and the tears don’t come, it’s like my face crumples and the breath catches in my throat and I had a dry heave sob, but no tears.
Then it catches me, most often at the end of the night when I have no defense left, then I find myself bent over weeping and putting my head on the table where I sit and write or work from—my kitchen table is also my work desk.
My cats circle anxiously around me and frequently jump into my lap.
They are very concerned.
Circling back to the email.
And the night, last week, Saturday, at 10:38p.m.’ish, when he finally called and broke up with me.
Recap.
After calling my people crying so hard I am not sure they understood what I was saying once I choked out, “he broke up with me,” I was told to block his number, block his email, delete his social media and block him on all social platforms.
I’m a good girl.
I did what I was told.
Though later I regretted it.
What if he reached out to me?
What if he had changed his mind?
I know how pathetic that sounds.
So I did what I was told and I blocked and deleted his phone number.
Fast forward to today.
I do not know why, but I felt him out there in the ether.
I called my girlfriend and cried that I felt bad about blocking him and what if he had reached out to me and wanted to connect or make up or I don’t know, at least talk to me.
She said, “he knows how to get a hold of you, he can email you.”
I lost it.
“I blocked him on email.”
She said, “you can always unblock him.”
I couldn’t on my phone because I had deleted his number.
I tried to, but I couldn’t figure out which blocked number was his—I block spam calls, and I had deleted his number so I wouldn’t try and call him.
So.
After some writing.
I decided to unblock him on Gmail.
And holy shit.
He emailed me.
Twenty minutes after I had unblocked him!
Checking in, are you doing ok?
Cue my response.
And.
Sigh.
When I didn’t hear back.
I emailed him a longer email.
I basically told him how hard it’s been, all the ways I have been in pain, how hurt and sad and awful it’s been and I told him I had blocked his number and deleted it.
I asked him to send me his number if he wanted to talk.
That was six hours ago.
I guess he doesn’t want to talk.
My friend suggested just giving him more time.
She also suggested I email her instead of him.
Why is it so easy to tell another person what to do, but not do it yourself?
I would have said the same thing.
I wanted to email him again.
Beg.
Prostrate myself.
I still do.
I still want to be with him.
I am a fool.
I feel very stupid.
“You’re not stupid,” she said, “you love him.”
I do.
I still do.
Fuck.
Cue another fit of crying.
Not like you can tell from reading this.
I just had to stop and sob some more.
Fuck.
I have gone through a lot of Kleenex this past week.
So much.
I walked home from dancing tonight, I went to a day party today, and started dry heave sobbing in the rain.
Cue Mike Doughty’s “Sad girl walking in the rain” song.
Very sad girl walking in the rain.
I still have this fantasy he will be waiting for me in my house, sitting on my bed, when I get home from where ever I have been, he has my key still.
I can’t help either, I walk in, look at my bed, he’s not sitting there waiting for me and I just feel worse.
Maybe he threw the keys away.
I forgot to ask for my keys back when he broke up with me last week, I was in so much shock.
My best friend said, just go make another set.
But.
I don’t want to.
I want to see him sitting on my bed reading and waiting for me to come home.
I want to curl up in his arms.
I want to fall asleep on his chest again.
(more crying)
I keep remembering when I got back from Burning Man last year and we were making love, it felt spiritual and emotional and so passionate and full of love and reconnection that I can’t touch into the memory too long with out falling back apart, and he buried his face in my neck and said, “I miss you too much when you are gone.”
I resigned from Burning Man that moment.
I knew, I think I wrote about this already, but I knew when I left playa, right before the rains came, that it was my last one—thirteen burns—I wanted to be with him and travel together elsewhere.
There was also that really awful allergic reaction to the sun to account for, but it was really about wanting to be with him instead of the burn.
And though he broke up with me and for a moment I did contemplate it, I am not going back.
I’m going to Barcelona instead.
I got pretty busy this week trying super hard to move through the feelings.
I booked a trip with my sponsor to Paris in April and I booked another trip to Barcelona at the end of August, beginning of September.
I have always wanted to go and I had a lot of miles.
I had been saving my miles to book him with me on a trip.
He had taken me to Banff and Mexico City and Vegas and I wanted to repay the gift.
So many things I wanted to repay him.
Shame.
The shame of fucking up.
The shame of pushing him away when I was trying to communicate with him.
My therapist said, Thursday of this week when I finally got to meet with him, he’d been gone last week—I could have used it last week so bad—“shaming yourself is not helping.”
He also said, after hearing me tell the story, “it sounds like you were both trying to connect, I just hear two people trying really hard to connect.”
And that.
That.
That made it worse.
He was trying to connect with me and I with him and somehow we both kept missing the other person.
So much so that he decided that he didn’t have the time to do the work to be in the relationship with me.
I have to be aware of that.
He was very clear.
Although, when he said it, he sounded like he was in a tomb, there was no emotion, it sounded like he was dead or dissociating.
My therapist said I was in dissociation two weeks ago when I went snowboarding.
I have a small young part of me that was so desperate to stay connected with him that I agreed when I was tired and needed to rest, to go up again, on the lift. And I had another part of me that was like, no I do not want to get up on that lift and I dissociated right away and let the part of me that wanted desperately to stay attached to my boyfriend talk me up on the chair lift.
Which was my first time.
And I panicked and cried on the ski lift and fell off and hit my head on the chair and then I got up and tried to snowboard down, but I just kept falling and pretty much tumbled down the mountain and then I fell really bad and hit my head.
Hard.
So hard a woman who saw me fall as she was skiing past me, stopped, un did her skis and walked back up to me, “oh my god, are you ok? Do you need a medic?”
I said no.
“Do you want me to carry your board down for you?”
I said, no.
I’ve go it.
I mean.
I sort of had it.
I unstrapped and wobbled down the mountain.
I was pretty discombobulated.
I had bonked so hard.
Thank god for the helmet I was wearing.
I realized with hindsight and my therapist, that I was also in shock later.
I was so cold that night, it took forever for me to warm up.
There’s more about the snowboarding that I won’t get into, although suffice to say I almost titled this blog “The $1100 break up” because that’s how much I spent on gear to go.
Gear I traded in to Sports Basement yesterday.
I couldn’t return it, since it was used, once, ugh, and I will only get a fraction of the money back, and not cash, but store credit, but I had to get it out of the house, I felt so sad every time I thought of it.
I couldn’t get rid of my climbing gear though.
I tried.
I cried instead and put it back in my closet.
I can’t also go to the climbing gym, I’m afraid I’ll walk in, see the climbing walls and just lose it.
I loved climbing with him, he was beautiful when he climbed.
He’s handsome, but when he was climbing it eclipsed his handsomeness and it was pure grace and beauty, and it awed me to watch him.
I can’t go to the climbing gym right now.
I just can’t.
Sigh.
I don’t know where I am going with this writing except to say.
I am still heartbroken.
Writing helps.
My god have I written a lot in my notebooks this past two weeks.
So much.
This blog helps.
I hope.
I think I have just been writing it to stop myself from sending out another beseeching email to him.
I don’t have a pithy ending today.
So.
I’m just going to stop.
I have a table that I need to put my head down on and cry some more on.
Instead of emailing him again.
I will cry and watch old episodes of Six Feet Under.
I will wash my face, brush my teeth, get into bed and fall asleep crying.
I have not known how exactly to go about writing this blog, but I have been thinking about it for a couple of days now.
My boyfriend broke up with me Saturday night.
It was rough.
It was a fucking awful week last week.
It began last Monday.
I got an email from him.
It pressed all sorts of buttons.
It hit my shame button hard and it confused me and confounded me and though I paused.
I did, I really did.
I found my fingers flying across the keyboard and I emailed him right back.
I think, and I have had more than one person corroborate this, that I was expressing myself with kindness and care, but I was also upset and my emotions were enflamed and I expressed myself from a volatile emotional place.
As my sponsor has said, “doll you were human.”
As in, stop judging yourself so harshly.
I was human, I was messy, I was hurt.
He was not emotional.
It felt distant and I panicked.
Ultimately, when I look back at those emails, and they are no longer around to be looked at, they have been deleted, I see that he was trying to figure out how to be with me, but I missed that in the conversation that seemed to veer towards resentments and things that had been stewing but had not been articulated.
I didn’t feel attacked.
I just felt scared and very confused.
I also felt misunderstood and that there had been a lot of misunderstandings over the weekend prior that had not had room and air to be expressed and worked out.
In some way, I am being vague.
I don’t think the details are actually that important and I don’t want to quibble about right or wrong.
Neither of us was right and neither of us was wrong.
But what happened was a lot of miscommunication that only panicked me further and hurt and when I set a boundary about needing to talk and not keep emailing, I got another email and that pushed me so hard.
I said stop and he did.
He said he would call, though he was tired and overwhelmed at work, later “tonight”.
God damn.
So was I, tired and scared, and I had to get regulated to go hold space for my therapy clients.
I spent the entire day feeling dread.
I got through my clients, made scared phone calls to my people went to a meeting of the minds, shared the emails with my best friend.
Who pointed out some of the miscommunications points and also that we really needed a face to face more so than even a phone call.
I said, I got to go right after the end of the meeting and my friend convinced me to drop him off at the Thai restaurant folks were going to, at least give me a few more moments to process and connect.
When I parked he said, you know, you gotta eat.
So I went in with the caveat that I would get up and leave as soon as my boyfriend called.
He never did.
He didn’t call until Saturday.
I spent the entire week expecting that call and every second that went by I was further upset, scared, agitated.
He did text two days later, saying he knew I was upset but that he was talking to his people and trying to figure it out.
Figure it out he did.
But he left me out of the loop.
And being out of the loop led me down the trail of despair and fear and extreme heart ache at the misunderstandings and the lack of connection.
Sometimes I yelled at him, had screaming onesided fights in my bathroom.
Then I would burst into tears and collapse and sob and sob and sob until I couldn’t breath.
I slept for shit.
I mean so bad.
My hot flashes, yeah, I’m in perio-menapause, which had abated for years, the hot flashes part, let me not cry on your shoulder about hair loss, came back in full force, woke me up, threw firebombs at me every time I looked at my phone, waiting, hoping, dying for contact.
Every one said give him space.
Space I gave.
I had commented on something on his social at one point and then went back and deleted it, give him space probably meant also staying off his socials.
But that was super hard as, well, boyfriend posts take prerogative and the algorithm happily supplied me with all the latest updates and doings.
I was advised to stop looking and for the most part I did ok with that.
Except when I didn’t.
The worst.
The absolute worst, was Wednesday night, right before bed, damn you brain, when something poked me, I really don’t’ know what, but something said, oh, just go look at his Facebook.
That was bad news bears.
He had changed his relationship status.
He was no longer “in a relationship.”
I was in shock.
I almost threw up.
I stopped breathing.
I started this hiccupping cry that had me bent over, I fell on my bed and sobbed.
I texted a dear girlfriend who walked me through most of the entirety of the week, especially after my mentor told me to reach out to my girlfriends, I hadn’t, I was walking through it pretty much alone.
She saved my life.
I cried so much.
Torrents.
I couldn’t believe what was happening.
It was so surreal.
What was going on?
Thursday, I think, I can’t remember any more.
He sent me another text saying he needed more time, he was overwhelmed with work and other things.
I am being vague again.
I am not going to malign him.
We have a lot of mutual people in common.
I am not going to speak for him, but only of my experience of what happened.
And believe you me.
I am leaving stuff out on my side too, trying to stick with how it felt, how devastated I was, dis-regulated and grief filled.
I wanted so badly to talk.
My friend said, 48 hours.
He knows you’re hurt and upset, give him more time.
I waited until Saturday.
Feeling so beat up and lost.
I got my nails done.
I anxiously looked at my phone hoping for some sort of text, call, indication of anything, I have never enjoyed a manicure less.
I got home and called my other mentor.
She suggested that I just call, just reach out, the texting and emails were not working. She literally walked me time and time again through a script of what to say, I was so discombobulated I couldn’t hear what she was saying long enough to hold it in my head.
I literally had to write it down.
She said, there’s this tender little girl part that got so scared about not connecting and having your attachment threatened that you ended up doing something you did not want to do.
If you know me, you know what it was, my people know what I did that I did not want to do and how that impacted the things that domino’ed me to the inevitable conclusion.
Maybe another time I will articulate what the activity was, but suffice to say, she was right, I pushed myself to do something I didn’t want to do when I was exhausted out of fear of being abandoned.
And voila.
I got abandoned anyway.
Sigh.
But after much handholding, I made that call.
It went straight to voicemail and half way through it cut otf.
Oh fuck my life, did he hang up on me?
I called my mentor in tears, she assured me that she didn’t think that had happened, but just go ahead and text the message and explain that you were cut off.
I did.
And two hours later he texted me back.
We can talk tonight.
I did my things, I went to the places I was supposed to go, I skipped going to dinner with friends and I came home.
Oh.
One thing.
I knew he was in the city.
I live in San Francisco and he lives across the Bay Bridge.
I cannot tell you how hard it was to see him posting updates on Instagram about what he was doing in the city, just on the other side of the Mission, instead of talking with me or meeting me in person.
I was devastated anew.
He was avoiding seeing me in person.
I knew that he wasn’t going to reach out, he would have if he intended to see me, so I knew.
I knew all along what was coming.
But I was still caught unawares at it when we finally did talk.
I want to say exactly what the conversation was, but I am not going to, it feels too horrible, hurt too much to hear and I don’t want to break down crying right now.
I’ve only cried a little today and the tears they do threaten.
The gist of it was that he did not have time to do the work that the relationship needed.
I was so confused.
I thought he loved me.
I did press on that point.
He said, “I do love you, but I don’t have time for you.”
Dead inside.
I just died.
And now more tears.
Anyway.
I had somethings to say but it doesn’t matter.
I said them and he was silent.
He doesn’t have time for me.
Someone I used to work with said to me last night at a spot on Dorland and Dolores, “Well he has clarity.”
I was like, damn, bitch, that was harsh.
But she was right.
He has clarity about what he can do and cannot do.
He doesn’t have time for me.
Nine months in, he has no more time for me.
I thought he was it, I really did.
I thought he was my person.
There were things said to me in front of family, friends, and mutual connections that gave me that indication about our future together.
There were thing said to me about the work that needed to be done and the conversations that needed to be said, but we didn’t do that this time.
Because.
He doesn’t have time for me.
And that’s his choice.
I said somethings, gracefully I think, I can’t remember (and there were things I thought about later that I wish I had said but I was in such shock they didn’t come) and said goodbye and hung up the phone and cried until I couldn’t breathe.
Then I called my main person and sobbed.
Then I called my girlfriend who also said similar things and then while I sobbed on the phone she walked me through deleting us on social media.
God damn do I hate social media.
She walked me through blocking him.
I did it all.
Deleted pictures and cried and blocked and cried and deleted nine months of texts and cried and cried and cried and cried.
Ad infinitum.
I got out of the house Sunday to attend an event that I would have taken him to, but well, we were no longer together, so I went solo.
I told one of two folks, but I didn’t want my sadness to dilute the joy of the event or pull any focus from it.
So when one of the few people who questioned me about my sad demeanor, I said very simply that I couldn’t talk about it, because he knew my ex-boyfriend.
Jesus fuck that’s hard to write.
I have to get used to it.
Ex-boyfriend.
He just looked at me and hugged me then said, “in this situation I am Team Carmen.”
And I burst into tears.
So.
That’s what I have been up to.
Grieving.
And booking a trip to Paris with my mentor.
He invited me months ago, but when I asked my ex about it, if he wanted to come, he said, “I would rather go with you than your sponsor and you.”
He wanted to be alone with me in Paris.
And I wanted to be alone with him.
The first time he kissed me we made out in front of my house on the sidewalk outside my apartment for a half hour.
Just like you would do in Paris.
And I dreamt of that and wrote a poem about that.
Oh, sweet fantasy.
I won’t be kissing him in the streets of Paris.
I won’t be kissing him ever again.
And that is reality.
The fantasy is dead.
Like my broken heart.
And lest I despair too long, I know this will pass and my heart broken heart has just been broke open.
I just took this huge breath of air, my shoulders just dropped.
Back in the groove, back in the writing space, the writing place, the blank page, the unfurling of words across the page.
I do this for me, for my sanity, or insanity, your call, either way, it is a need that has had me itching all day.
Partially because I have been asked to be a participant, performer, poet, artist, spoken word presenter at Burning Man.
I am working with my dear friend who is the creator of The Museum of No Spectators to help facilitate a performance space for poets in one of the galleries of the museum.
Last year my poems, ten sonnets, hung on the walls of the museum.
There was a day, Tuesday of the event, when I got turned around in a furious dust storm and ended up taking shelter at a camp that was having one hell of a party.
There were a lot of beautifully cosmetically altered, air brushed bodies and a lot of high end drugs and air conditioning, famous DJs and did I mention A/C?
It was an oasis, an oasis, I tell you, in the desert, in the hottest, dustiest, part of the day.
I was there dancing for about three, maybe four hours, before the storm finally abated and I was able to thank one of the hosts for donating many Gatorades to me (I normally do NOT drink Gatorade, but when your water bottle goes dry, you drink the damn Gatorade) and I hopped on my playa bike and headed back to where I was camped, once I figured out where the hell I was on the playa.
As it turns out I was on the side of the playa that MONS was located.
I pedaled over to see if my friend was there.
It was empty.
Not a soul.
I parked my bike, yeah, that’s my destroyed bike in this photo, and I walked in.
I wandered through the galleries and looked at the art.
And.
I read my own poetry, exhibited there, sonnets I-X, of a sonnet chain I had written for my friend, which he just told me he is including in his memoir.
What a thing, to be written about in someone’s memoir.
I was so blown away to hear that.
I have my small modicum of fame.
Here and there in the motes of dust scattered across the sky, you might catch my smile, or a fragment of poetry.
He and I had a “small snack” after attending an amazing play at the Young Performers Theatre at Fort Mason Center.
In The Evening By The Moonlight.
A play about conversations between Lorraine Hansberry, James Baldwin, and Nina Simone.
It was beautifully done and I found myself with tears on my face in the last few minutes.
Art, theater, poetry.
Magic.
Sigh.
I am so lucky.
Anyway, while we were sitting at a little outside table at Fort Mason having sparkling water and our snack, we talked about the museum and poetry and what we wanted to do and how many poets we needed and what needed to be hung in the gallery and logistics and timelines and stuff and things; he also mentioned a woman, unnamed who apparently spent hours in the museum reading the poetry.
My ego hollered loudly for a moment.
God damn it.
As per Burning Man standards, art is not attributed at the art installations.
My name was not on any of the poems hanging in their black wood frames.
“Your frames did not make it through the event, my dear,” my friend said, “the playa eats up wood out there.”
I wasn’t surprised or upset.
I have the poems.
They are mine and there are also photos out there of my work hanging in the museum.
That is enough.
And to hear that my words moved someone so much that they spent hours with the poetry brought me such a welling of joy in my chest.
I am smiling as I write these words.
My friend and I talked about what we would each contribute and I talked about running a workshop on how to do an Exquisite Corpse, a French Surrealist poem that I have taught how to do before.
Truly, it is easy, simple, can be very amusing, often surprising, and lots of people can do it together.
Burning Man is surreal, seems a good fit.
I also have written a grand exquisite corpse of my own in my Arts Based Research class for my PhD.
I wrote a 176 page paper on the method I was going to use for my dissertation.
Relax.
That is not really that many pages when most of them were poems.
Poems take up space, it was not prose, although there was a distinct amount of writing about my method and a lot of research and a distinct bibliography of work that I was drawing from, I’m not going to belittle the paper either.
Regardless, I am getting lost in the weeds of my own work, I put together an exquisite corpse by printing off poems I had written that I was collecting as part of my research, cutting up the poems, mixing them in a big pile on the floor of my studio, listening to a soundtrack I had compiled, then taking lines and arranging them into a gigantic poem on my floor.
I looked insane.
Crawling around on the floor and singing and placing all these poetic fragments together to make a super poem of my own surrealist moment.
It was very meta.
Here’s a poorly taken photo I just dug up.
Then I typed it up and analyzed it in my paper.
Suffice to say I got an “A.”
Heh.
I had also forgotten the work until my friend was talking about wanting more of my poems to hang in the museum, but new poems, not the ones, the ten sonnets from last year.
And I was like, oh damn, I have a huge exquisite corpse.
I went hunting through my papers and found it.
I am still struck by how much sense it makes.
It’s my language and images and I know the narratives that I was writing about, but it still stands as a really solid piece.
I’m going to lift it from the paper, my friend does not need to be bored my my academic writing, and send it to him, along with the poems that the lines came from.
He’s going to print it off on some heavy fine art paper and hang them in the gallery along with his work and other poets.
I reached out to a darling poet friend in New York to see if she might be able to join us on playa.
And then it really struck me.
I have to keep writing.
I have to.
It doesn’t matter where it goes.
But I need to write and I need to get it out there.
This is the year I figure out the publishing piece.
And.
I acknowledge, a promise to self, if I don’t get picked up by an agent or a publisher, I self publish.
Even just to have a few copies of my works on my own bookshelf.
I am proud of my academic work. I am proud of being a psychotherapist.
But there is something so profound about being a writer.
A poet.
An essayist.
A creative.
It just lights me up.
Blows open the doors of my heart, pulls me to the table, to let the flow of words fall, to write, to keep on creating more.
Then there is la petite mort, the little death that I succumb to in your arms, the death that causes me to speak in tongues and splay myself before you squalid in lust and lost in your embrace.
There are many kinds of death.
Sweet sweat and pushed up against a wall in the hallows of the night.
The death of fantasy for the reality of you.
The swallow of pride and the obeyance of surrender, not abeyance, but there is that too.
The arm pressed to my cheek.
The music pressed to my ears.
The French I falter reading to you wishing to impress upon you my eruditeness.
See above.
Ego.
The flicker in your eyes across the table in the noisy restaurant.
The grabbing for my hand, my body, my heat in a sea of people underneath the summer sky in Detroit and the falling away of everyone except you, in the moment, and the death of caring what other people think or feel or say or see.
The death of belief that I am anyone other than the exact, perfectly imperfect person I am.
The dying of the light and the crowing glory of it all again in the morning as you grab my hand and place it on your body.
The falter of my head against your chest.
The death of ideation of poesie.
The picture of daisies in my heart, burgundy Gerber daisies from the garden that I still wish I had not forgotten on the table in your kitchen, I would have pressed their sweet, soft, blood petals in between the pages of Rimbaud and stumbled over them while reaching for the proper pronunciation of that one French verb so illusive and slippery on my tongue.
The death of breath of my name in your mouth.
The passing of the light, the expiration of time, the roundness, the cantos singing to me in the rose garden.
A garden I frequent in different iterations at different times in my life.
How could I have known the profundity, even then, as a girl child, naive to love and sorrowed by the life I had been led on, the unknown, the hallway in the memorial landscape, the burial mounds, the skeletons of tree branches against the brazen frozen lake.
Yet.
I knew.
I know I knew.
The death of the woman child is still within me, within the circle of your arms, the hand calloused in mine, the Proustian moment, collapsed upon me.
And I have not even read Proust.
Yet.
It is there.
I have searched for you in lost time and found you now is this moment, though I know not where it will take me.
Dreamily I will search for you in the winding streets of Paris and perchance I will find you under the Metro lights on the Passy stop or in the Bellville, or in some cafe, somewhere I once wandered by footsore, tender hearted, broke and starving, broken hearted, only by being broke open, an aspirational artist killing myself to live out a country girlhood phantasmagoria.
Mayhap I will find you there.
And we will wander through Pere La Chaise and I will take you to my favorite bookstore, Le Merle Moqueur, and we will kiss with absolute abandon in the streets.
Perhaps this does not resonate for you, but for this sparkle pony, it meant the world.
And, ahem, I was drenched in glitter.
Like.
A lot.
I went to the Detroit Movement Festival last weekend.
In no particular order I saw:
Moodyman, Basement Jaxx, Ash Lauryn, DJ Harvey, Underworld, Seth Troxler, Lauren Flax, Maceo Plex, Skrillex (actually I did not really see Skrillex, but I could not help but be assaulted with the noise of the show, it was easily the loudest of all the shows and I was overwhelmed with both the crowds and also having just witnessed some one in dire need of help and though I was not a first responder, but I did get to have some flashbacks to last summer when I was, I did get the medics to the person who desperately needed help and wend them through a crowd that was wild and chaotic. I did not panic, but I could feel it in my body wanting to come out. I DID ask for a hug. That helped a lot. Hugs are good for anxiety and panic, get yours) Bonobo, Ricardo Villalobos, Ben UFO, and a glorious set by Derrick Carter b2b with Mark Farina who homaged Tina Turner in a way that made me well up with emotions and dance like no one was looking.
I danced a lot like no one is looking.
Except him.
The glorious glitter aficionado.
Ok, maybe not an aficionado, but definitely an appreciator of the stuff.
Which is good, since I was, like I said, covered in it.
He kissed me and I knew it to be true.
He glittered all weekend.
As you do.
When kissing raver girls at festivals.
I am not a raver girl, far too old for that status, but I apparently play one at festivals.
I am also not a festival girl, but I pretended to be at this one.
I wore fun outfits that I do not normally attire myself in, except perhaps at Burning Man.
I wore the aforementioned glitter, biodegradable, I am not unaware of glitter tends to not ever die.
I am sure if I searched I could still find some hiding out behind my elbow or other obscure body part.
Anyway.
I knew he was there, just to my side, or just behind me.
Watching me flail around.
He was very flattering about my dancing.
I was flattered.
I was there in Detroit a few days before he landed, sharing a room with the gal who turned me onto the Movement Festival and encouraged me to go and get the VIP passes for the whole weekend.
I was askance.
VIP sounds hella expensive.
But.
It was Detroit, not San Francisco, and the VIP was worth the few extra bucks.
It saved my ass.
Better bathrooms with short to no lines, water refill stations, I drank a lot of water.
I had to.
I danced a lot of steps.
33,000 my first day.
44,000 my second day.
44, 000, I’m just going to write that again, and give it proper credence, it was 44,258.
A record.
My legs were rubber and my heart was full, full, full.
I don’t recall tracking the next day but it was over 30,000.
I did over 100,000 steps in a three day weekend.
I moved a lot.
Some of it was just walking stage to stage, but a lot of it was dancing.
So much.
I had some pretty transcendent moments.
Including being up front for Underworld, which was the last show of the last night in the big stadium space I was down in front.
I wasn’t sure my guy was going to make it, it’s a lot being down in front, a lot of people, a lot of noise, but he stuck and I was a maniac.
I think if anyone watches you dance to your favorite group of all time and still wants to hang with you, note that.
He’s a keeper.
There are many reasons why he’s a keeper and I could tally them all up, but I’m still trying to keep things to myself, in my heart, in my head, although when I smile at him I think I am wide open transparent.
Ok, I’ll share one other tiny thing he said, I smile a lot and when I smile at him, he said I look like I am smiling “at baby otters.”
Good grief that’s cute.
Kill me.
Anyway.
He didn’t see me dancing at the clubs, which I think would have been really sweet to go to, especially the Ash Lauryn show, it was in this amazing underground somewhere out in a neighborhood way far away from the festival that I went to the night before he got in.
The space, it was astounding, perfect, a record shop, a dance floor, art gallery, coffee shop, indoor, outdoor, great sound system and I saw DJ Harvey and danced to disco.
He would have appreciated the disco and I want to dance like that again with him.
I danced a lot by myself.
But I don’t mind that.
However.
It is nice to dance with someone who appreciates me and my glitter.
Once upon a time I had an affair.
You know this if you read my work.
It’s there in the corners of the blog, sometimes oblique, sometimes wide out in the open.
And he, the paramour, the illicit lover, hated.
I mean, HATED, glitter.
I suppose if you’re having an affair it might be a give away.
And by the way, I’m not downplaying my part, I have written a book on it, I have, I have processed and grieved and therapized and done inventory and prayed and cried, I’m not writing about that.
But I am writing about the glitter and the reparative experience of being with someone who does not care if I wear glitter, who actually fucking likes it.
It was the most beautiful, astounding thing.
It brought tears to my already sparkly eyes.
Once, on a dark, cold, foggy night at a church in the inner Sunset I spoke my piece and did the deal and shared all that experience, strength and hope that I could with my paramour in a chair in front of me.
We were “on a break.”
Sigh.
Trying to “be friends.”
After my speaking engagement he convinced me to sit and talk with him in his car.
I don’t remember what we talked about.
I just remember crying.
He hated me crying and wiped them, the tears, from my face and then he kissed me.
I was wearing, shocker, lipgloss with glitter in it.
He pulled away, reached into the side door pocket and fished out a white folded fast food napkin, wiped his mouth, grimaced, balled up the napkin and shoved it back into the door pocket.
I felt dead.
Like I had just been erased.
Discarded.
Tossed in the trash.
I was nothing.
He wiped me away.
The reality is that I allowed myself to be with someone who would discard me, abandon me, pay lip service to being in love with me and then constantly leave me, alone, ashamed, hurt.
Not the kind of lip service I am interested in anymore.
I did my work.
I cried.
I did my therapy.
And when I felt shame recently I shared it with my therapist and he worked with me on it.
There is always more work to be done.
(FYI, I feel like this blog, I date myself, ahem, this essay, is rocky, my cadence is off, my keyboard is not keeping up with my keystrokes and I keep having to slow down my writing pace to catch it up with what I am typing, hella obnoxious. I type fast. Almost as fast as I think. It’s fucking with my flow. I feel like it shows in the writing, but hopefully it’s not too bad)
The glitter comment was not the only one that got me, there were more than a few that were said, but I will mention just one more, since it feels sweet to think about it.
I asked the new beau, when he arrived in Detroit, who did he want to see, what acts, what DJs?
His answer.
I came to see you.
Smilling like I’m looking at baby otters.
And listening to French music dreaming about one day making out in Paris with him.
Not the time to write that I take for myself, the daily journal, the morning pages, that fill notebook after notebook, after notebook.
I have a stockpile of bins in my office closet.
I slowly fill a notebook and then quietly transport it to my office, place it in a file box, or an old leftover plastic bin retired from Burning Man.
I look at them and reflect on the past 18 years that I have been assiduously putting pen to paper.
I wonder what to do with them.
They are precious.
And they are markers of passing time.
And they are just words.
Words that help me process the world that I walk through.
Words that, to few others mean very little.
They are both everything and nothing.
I could go to the office and make a few trips up and down the steps and load the boxes up in the back of my car, drive out to Ocean Beach, find a fire pit, and have myself a little bonfire (of vanity) of my words and I would be ok with that.
I am attached and detached to both the idea of keeping the notebooks and letting them all go in a whoosh of flames.
I don’t have anyone to leave those words to.
Perhaps to my younger self, see here, girl, look what you have wrought.
I reflect on this as I think about this past week and the travel that I took.
I was in Florida.
First to see my mother and make an amends for having to cancel a trip over Thanksgiving.
I saw her for Mother’s Day.
Made good on being a daughter.
Traveled across the country to a land that seems so far away and different to me than San Francisco.
Then I met my beau in Miami.
And no.
I won’t be writing about him.
I long to in some ways, there is much to process, but that goes in the notebooks.
That is for my eyes, my heart only.
Suffice to say I was not alone in Miami and what I did and felt and saw was so vastly different than the last time I was in Miami, that it stirred within me the urge to write my blog today.
Aside.
I wonder about taking this elsewhere, this blog.
Am I loyal to the platform?
Is it just a historical document, my millions of words, my thousands of blog, my endless ego, that keeps me here?
I don’t often write, as I used to, once a day, every day.
A kind of hiding in plain sight I think.
A way to be seen and of the world, but also away from the world, away from socializing, dating, going out, making friends.
The blog has been a protector, a glimpse into my life, my psyche, who I am, the places I have gone, the things I have seen, felt, touched, heard–a way of mirroring who I am and also, frankly, not who I am.
This is just a part of me.
Not the biggest part of me either.
It is me.
And.
It is not me.
I don’t know exactly how to formulate it, how to describe it, the words they come out of my head, they flow through my fingers, I am just dictating my thoughts as they move around my brain.
This is not me in entirety, it’s a thread, a gossamer, a glowing line of words that meander around some segment of my brain.
I just follow the trail, like a silver snail, and pick up the words and put them here.
I know it is me.
It is not me.
Something else.
Something divine.
Something that has its way with me, through me, in me.
There is more me than this me.
Like all the levels of death, the small deaths, the ego deaths, the different manifestations of death, le petit mort.
A conversation that rattles around in a part of my brain that writes the poetry.
There is a line from a conversation on a couch in a hotel in Miami that has a poem waiting to be breathed into life.
But it is not here yet.
I am here still.
Writing.
Thinking about writing.
How it feels.
Fuck me.
It feels.
So.
Good.
And I am a pleasure seeking missile and this is what I think about.
This flow, this ease, it is so luxurious.
I don’t have to do much and the words just flow like jazz scat scattered on my skin, kissed with music and words.
It is a drug this.
Such pleasure.
The writing that I am thinking about is the writing that both scares me and pulls me along.
Write the book.
Write the book.
Write the book.
I have written tens of books, if you layer all the blogs together, there are books, upon books, upon books. The dissertation, the three memoir manuscripts, the boxes of notebooks.
The proliferation of words is not hard for me.
I think you have gotten the gist of that.
It is in the crafting and the vulnerability of really looking at what I have.
31 years ago I was an unhoused, terrified (I wouldn’t have said that, I would have said, “curious” or “adventurous” or something that belied the obvious dissociation I must have been in to do the things I did) living in Homestead, Florida.
Aside, I just Googled Homestead, Florida.
I have never done that before.
I won’t do it again.
Gave me ugly goosebumps.
Anyway.
I wrote a memoir about that time.
One of the things that I reworked and worked on more and I think took into five drafts?
But still I think is shit.
And I spent a lot of time on the fifth draft when I lived in Paris.
I sent it out to a lot of agents.
I queried almost daily.
I got almost nowhere.
Very few responses.
Very few interested people.
But I did it.
And I think now, I think, do I unearth it?
Do I rewrite it, fictionalize it perhaps.
Very few people in there that would be affected by my writing it, very few people that I even remember the names of.
Leon.
E.
Billy Ray.
Myself.
Three major players.
One bit player.
One love triangle.
And a lot of crack cocaine.
Under the table construction.
Living in shacks on the edge of the destroyed Fort Andrews Air Force base, sometimes cars, sometimes tents.
Trips to the Circle K for roller hots dogs, generic cigarettes and wine coolers.
When there was money.
And when there wasn’t, stealing from the gas station a couple miles away.
I never stole, I was a patsy to a couple of different thefts though.
Sigh.
So much fodder.
Alligators.
Moldy hotel rooms.
Cold showers in the dark at construction sites when I had not showered in days.
The smell of wood lath after being smashed by a sledgehammer–I did demolition at some of the house sites the boys worked on.
Sonic Burger drive in when we were flush.
Dine and dashes, my first one at a Keg South bar and grill with Billy Ray.
The taste of really bad Rose in a cheap wine glass.
Coral rock.
The sunset that I will never forget, 31 years later, it is still seared there on my brain like a still in a movie that I can’t quite shake.
And this girl, me, this woman, young, brash and brazen and running, who just kept surviving and putting that next foot in front of the one in front of the one in front of the one in front of the other.
Going blistered footed ever forward.
She is there too, in the cracks and crevices of me.
Maybe.
Just maybe.
I go back and I write a epilouge.
I write framing it in this now.
In this moment of my life.
Aged fifty.
Aged with lines around my eyes that crinkle far too deeply.
Aged and achy for the heart of that girl/woman/child.
Oh am I ever just a child, adrift in the stars over the dark water of the Lake, the warm nights, the sparkle of Miami that was so far away, so unatainable.
Little did I know where I would go, where life would take me, and that one day, many, oh so many years later, I would make my return.
And the sun on the face of the man in the car is not the sun on the face of the man in the car.
It is there bright and washed pink golden orange red burnished in the sun setting behind the Miami skyline, promising me something more than I had thought possible.
I had decided I would try to do a little light marketing using the social platform for bringing in new clients.
I had met with a colleague this past week and talked about what happens when therapy works–your clients leave and go live their lives.
Which is fucking beautiful and awesome.
And oh shit!
I have to bring in more clients.
I told my colleague that I had been thinking about marketing and what that might look like and I decided to start a professional Instagram account.
I have been on Instagram from the very beginning of the app as I had worked at a hipster bicycle shop that insisted that all the employees use the platform.
I literally have thousands of photos on the app.
I’ve just had it that damn long.
So, I thought, I’ve got plenty of experience posting, I’ll give it a go for my therapy business.
My colleague said, “be careful what you wish for,” when I told her I wanted to bring in more clients.
She predicted a deluge.
I would like that.
I have had a fairly substantial turn over of clients and found myself in a touch of financial scarcity fear.
I understand that there really is nothing to be afraid of, it’s just my first time having this experience.
It will continue to happen.
I will have clients who leave, or drop down in frequency of sessions.
I’m not a therapist who thinks you have to do therapy for life.
I have seen marked, amazing changes in my clients and I’m happy for them and I’ve had some really beautiful things reflected back to me in closing sessions.
Therapy is pretty fucking awesome.
My own included.
I have been doing some pretty big work on early childhood abuse and trauma.
Realizing when I dissociate.
Good grief, I do it more than I think I even realized.
And I tend to do it when someone who is available for dating romantically is interested in me.
Cue today’s former lover reach out.
I got a text this morning from a number I didn’t know and a question about my practice.
I was like, um, who is this?
I knew it wasn’t a spam bot, but I didn’t have the number in my phone.
And something about the tone of the text, tone is very tongue and cheek, how does one gauge the “tone” of a text?
Something nudged me to respond.
He gave me some particulars and it came cascading back.
He was someone that I had talked myself out of at the time.
We had a spectacular date, in fact, even while it was happening I was telling myself that he wasn’t interested in me.
My brain, sigh, parts of my psyche that I am doing a hell of a lot of work around, thanks early childhood trauma, that keep getting pulled into the light of day, talked me out of pursuing something with him.
He was gorgeous, genius level smart and thought I was beautiful.
He told me on the call, I did agree to a call, mostly out of curiosity, but also, not going to lie, he was the best date I’d ever had on an app.
Side bar.
Awful second date tonight on a Hinge date earlier.
Last date off that app, not a great experience with the app or the dates.
I was kind and I know the guy was interested, but I felt deadened and half energy and he repeated the exact same stores, almost verboten that he had told me the first date.
The only difference in the date was the food eaten.
There will not be a third date.
Anyway.
So back to other dude.
We had a great connection, sex that was fire, he introduced me to an amazing album of music, we talked about God, spirituality, Burning Man, natch, I always talk about Burning Man, but this time it was because I was getting ready to head out to playa for a nanny gig. I like dude so much I almost talked him into coming with me, but he couldn’t, he had a crazy intense high powered science job.
Dude was smart.
So we were going to reconnect when I got back from the burn.
Except two things happened.
One, I talked my way out of a second date.
Yes, if you read the big paragraph just a few sentences up, I did have sex on the first date, but it was a Tinder date and that’s what I wanted. I did not know I was going to have in my top five best experiences or have rapport with someone that was mind bending good looking or super smart and introduced me to amazing new music.
So, yeah, first I talked myself out of a second date.
He had reached out to me to say, hey I’m a tiny bit under the weather and would I mind coming over to his place and having soup and just chilling and snuggling?
I remember getting the text, and I have such a vivid memory of it that I can even replay the scenario in my head of what I thought as I read the text, which basically went, oof, he’s not really that interested, he doesn’t think I’m beautiful, even thought the text started with, “Hey beautiful,” this isn’t going any where and I’m just in from riding my scooter across town, it’s cold I don’t want to bundle back up and head over to Nob Hill where he lived.
So.
Ugh.
I turned him down.
Gorgeous, big brown eyes, beautiful mouth, genius smart, funny, amazing sex.
Did I mention tall?
Because, he’s not really that interested in me, blah, blah, blah, brain, blah, blah, blah.
Side bar.
I spend a lot of time helping client unravel maladaptive thinking, this was such classic maladaptive thinking, ugh.
Anyway.
He spent the night by himself, I left the day after to Burning Man.
Now.
I tell myself stupid ass stories, but I was not a complete idiot, and when I got back from the event, I messaged him.
Second thing that happened.
He met someone else.
He responded, “Hey Gorgeous, glad you made it back, bad good news, I met someone, I think I’m just going to explore connecting with her. I’m really glad we met though, take care.” Or something close to that effect.
Years later, they are happily married, have a child, and are living in a big house with huge yard and two dogs in the Midwest.
He’s put on some weight, the Midwest will do that to you, but he was still handsome, we FaceTimed, funny, and whip smart.
I helped him out with the questions he had for a client and we caught up.
We even did touch on the timing of our original connection.
And it was literally timing.
He ran into his now wife, three times in the same day, it was meant to be.
But there was a little part of me that felt for a good few moments, heartbroken.
How many times have I missed something like this?
Too many I sense.
I asked him if he had known I was going to become a therapist, I couldn’t remember if I had already started my program.
In hindsight, I did realize I had, and that likely played a part in me not wanting to leave my house when had gotten home, I was working full time as a nanny and going to school full time, I was exhausted.
He couldn’t remember, but he said, “Maybe, but I do know that when I left I remember being really excited to have connected with you, the things we talked about, it was profound, I felt like you had healed my soul.”
Do you know that the psycho part of psychotherapist stands for “psyche,” which is Greek for soul?
I mean.
Good grief.
We were a great match.
I got off the call with him and actually did cry a little bit.
There is still a part of me that has grief for not being in a relationship that could have meant having a child, a piece of grief I have done, but it is tender sometimes, and here was this opportunity.
But.
I also knew better than to beat myself up in the moment.
I had to be gentle with that part of me that was just doing what it does, protecting me.
Relationships are dangerous, was what I had intuited growing up, violent, and scary. Plus, add on top of that the sexual violence I experienced as a child, and well, one can see how a part of me might act up to protect me from getting into a romantic relationship.
Part of me has placed blinders on my eyes and told me stories that have kept me out of relationships.
Like the former lover.
I couldn’t see it.
I am seeing things now.
And I don’t regret what happened.
In a different universe, we were together.
Just like some of the other loves I have had that did not go anywhere, romantic love that I had for my first high school crush, the bartender who’s sister was a room mate of mine in Madison, the friend who introduced me to the electronic music scene in San Francisco, my ex.
All men I loved.
Lucky me.
I have known love.
And now.
Now I am ready to experience it in a sustainable way.
So when I tell myself the story, that “he’s just not that interested” I will fact check that.
Because, it’s probably not true.
It’s just a defense to protect myself, but it’s not a defense I want anymore.
It might be scary to let myself be vulnerable and open my eyes and see and be seen.
“You’re not my type. I’d rather just be friends and go out dancing with you.”
Gotcha.
He also said he was blushing.
I asked him out over the phone.
So.
First.
Props to me.
It stung, still stings a little, but frankly, I’m glad I killed the fantasy.
And.
I think, regardless of whether or not I was his type, he was interested, just ambivalent.
I’m not down for ambivalent.
I want to be someone’s all in.
I deserve that.
So, truly, I am grateful for having gotten it out of the way instead of having myself perseverate on it and be an idiot around him.
Hell fire.
I went to a sports ball thing today only to socialize.
I am trying to be out there, doing things, dancing, connecting–I went to a game night last night and played Cards Against Humanity.
I’m not going to get asked out in my apartment.
Unless I do the apps.
I don’t like the apps much though.
It’s been a minute since I’ve had sex and it’s tempting to get on the apps, but I’m just going to sit with the discomfort and keep asking guys out.
I think.
I do like the idea of being asked out too.
I know that this is just a part of life, dating is easier for some, harder for others.
I mean, I got my reasons why it’s been hard and I have been doing some life changing work with my therapist, so I have hope.
I also blocked and deleted my ex’s number in my phone, so removing the possibility of reconnecting there.
I’m living in a faith based world and not responding from a place of scarcity.
At least, not at this moment.
I will say.
It was fun to have a crush for a couple of weeks.
And in the long scheme of things, I have had a crush on someone for years and found out, I wasn’t his type when I finally got up the courage to ask, years later, yikes.
This guy was two weeks and I pulled the asking out trigger.
Much better.
Quicker.
I sense I’ll connect with the person I’m supposed to connect with soon enouch.
And there is a gentleman out there in the world that I am interested in too, that is not available for a relationship, but might be for fun and we’ll see if anything comes of that.
Maybe it will.
Maybe it won’t.
I messaged him recently too.
He’s out of town.
What I do have to say is, for fucking being 50 years old, I’m grateful to still have a sex drive and a willingness to date and seek and be alive.
It’s all a practice, right?
Just living, doing, breathing, eating nice food, going out dancing, making new friends.
I mean the dude I asked out tonight still wants to be my friend and I’m pretty certain he was flattered, it is flattering, I think, to be asked out. He said he still wants to go out dancing and being a part of the crew that has been going out to the clubs.
So, I have another friend.
That is not a loss.
It’s just life.
And I get to be alive.
Grateful for that.
Grateful for making it through the pandemic, through watching fellows in my circle over dose and die or commit suicide, or just die from things that happen, heart attacks and cancer, and all the other things that are out there.
I am alive.
So I got rejected tonight.
So what.
It just means, the guy was not the right person for me.
I have also said no to guys that didn’t feel like a fit.
Though, the other night, I was lamenting to my best guy friend that I really did let a good one get away in between a break my ex and I were on, and I was distressed in hindsight, but if it was meant to be, it would have happened.
Like I said earlier, I’m doing a lot of therapy work around relationships and dating.
I am so grateful for my therapist.
In fact, I was angry in my last session when I think about the three years prior to him when I was with a different therapist and we never got into the things I am walking through with my current therapist.
I was like, literally, I want that fucking money back.
Granted, that former therapist got me through my Master’s program, so I can’t hate on her, we just weren’t a good fit.
My current therapist is a fucking fantastic fit.
Being able to work with him has been mind blowing.
Fucking hard.
But so worth it.
So.
Here’s to striking out.
But also recognizing that I got off the bench, up to plate and I swung.
I was not expecting that I would get my suitcase back today.
On Christmas.
ON CHRISTMAS!
Come on.
That’s like a stupid rom/com movie trope.
I mean, I can just envision the script, tired American in Paris for the holidays wears outfit four days in a row and cries in tepid bathtub after multiple delays and flight cancellations, losing baggage at Charles de Gaulle, battling with weary agents at Lufthansa who don’t give a fuck and just keep handing over a piece of paper with directions as to how to file a claim, buys wrong toiletries at Franprix (damn it I know better French than to buy sugar scrub instead of face wash), finally understands that French je ne sais crois of messy updo (fuck my hair is trashed after cheap toiletries and not being able to use a real blowdryer), no makeup (cuz was in suitcase that was lost) and world weary look-tres chic, tres sexy. Meets cute in a cafe when the regular notices same outfit on the third day in a row and falls in love when he takes her out clothes shopping in the Marais.
Well.
All of that was true except the last sentence.
I just took me out clothes shopping in the Marais.
But back to movie.
I mean, my life.
I mean.
Hmmm, what if my life were a movie?
What if the love of my life is just me?
What if I just keep falling in love with my own damn self?
An ex reached out to wish me Merry Christmas this morning.
Signal perfect teardrop rolling down face.
I am tired of this particular Christmas tradition, frankly, time for a new one.
I am ok with being alone on Christmas.
Not always, not for every moment of the day.
Not for the seven hours I waited for my bag, but you know, I wrote a lot, I watched Lady Chatterly’s Lover, I paced a bit.
I gave up the ghost around 4:30p.m.
I remember looking at my watch and thinking, well damn, there goes the day as it started to get dark and the suitcase had not arrived.
I sighed, thought about what I would make for dinner–I had planned ahead and grabbed a poulet roti, rotisserie chicken, from the frou frou boucherie on the block, so I would have a nice meal, yesterday.
So I was shocked and delighted when just after 5p.m. Paris time, my phone rang and it was the delivery driver!
I ran out the door (thankfully I had the keys in my pocket, I had a nightmare thought about running out the door and locking myself out, another movie trope, no?) and down the steps, opening the door to the courtyard just as the delivery service pulled up.
I have never been happier to see a suitcase in my life.
It looked like it had been dropped out the plane and dragged down the runway, but it was closed, and upon opening, all was there.
Thank goodness.
Makeup!
Bras and underwear!
My blowdryer!
My new boots!
My jean jacket I had just bought a month ago.
My favorite sweatshirt.
Note to self.
I over packed.
Of course.
I didn’t know I was going to wear the same outfit four days in a row, so there is that.
I put on some makeup, swept my hair up into a messy up do, I mean, I will fix that tomorrow with proper products and a good blow dryer, and bustled out the door.
Christmas night in Paris is not a real big night out, but I needed a walk after staying inside all day.
It was a lovely night, I caught the sliver of the new moon climbing over the rooftops of the Marais, walked by Hotel de Ville and smiled at the kiddos riding the carousel, I walked over the Pont Notre Dame and circled Ile Saint Louis, remembering all the many times I have crossed that bridge.
I have crossed quite a few bridges in Paris.
I have lived here poorer than a tit mouse.
I have cried in cafes here.
I have struggled.
Even with a little money in my wallet and my Air France credit card, Paris is not easy, the bureaucracy, the time it takes to get things done, it wears you, I mean, me, down.
My time in Paris has never been easy.
But.
It has always been beautiful, and perhaps those things most beautiful are not the things that are most easy.
I thought I was going to have an idyllic return, a victorious, sexy return to Paris, ten years later, turning 50, and eating at some fancy restaurant with my Parisian friends.
I was sitting in SFO instead waiting for yet another delayed flight to load.
I thought I was going to wear chic shoes and pretty clothes.
Not my Vans sneakers all week long, but hey, I still have two days to rock some heels (fyi, how the fuck does Emily in Paris totter around in those heels all day long? No fucking way) and will perhaps tomorrow night when I take myself out for a fancy dinner.
I did, however, master the messy bun, the scarf (grabbed at COS in the Marais), and the side bag swagger, and the no makeup look, except a red lip–the only makeup I had in my possession, a red lip crayon.
It’s been a trip.
Things I have figured out.
-How to turn up the hot water heater in the flat, sorry Air BnB person trying to save on utilities, I paid an arm and a leg for this place and I deserve a hot bath, I’ll return it to its lukewarm setting when I leave.
-I speak better French than I give myself credit for. Many, many compliments and looks of surprise when I say I am from the US.
-I still don’t speak French as well as I want, like, um, hahahaha when I told the delivery driver he was tres jolie (smacks forehead) and then quickly changed it to tres gentile (jolie is pretty, gentile is nice).
-I love the Metro, well, most of the time, there were some strikes and driver shortages, so it was rather packed, but it is simply an amazing train system, and off all the places I have been, probably the easiest to use.
-I don’t need to do the Louvre again, this time I skipped it, I went to the Palais de Tokyo, the Centre de Pompidou, Musee D’Orsay, and Musee de l’Orangerie. Those are my favorites, I don’t need to kill myself drowning in tourists trying to take a selfie with the Mona Lisa.
-Palais de Tokyo has the best book store and cafe hands down, of any museum I have been in anywhere.
-Saying please and thank you and have a good day and using manners gets you really quite far, I sort of already knew this, but I find it rather comforting the little formalities, the have a good day, have a good night, Bonnes Fetes, et al, makes things a little more human.
-I don’t like how much time people spend on their phones here, I was surprised, phone culture here has caught up with America, and in some ways, seems worse. Maybe it was the pandemic. It made me a little sad to see it, but there are still people on the Metro reading books.
-I don’t want to come back to Paris alone.
Yeah.
Your read that last one correct.
In my many times of traveling here I have not done it with a true partner and though I am my own good company, I am a little tired of being the solo lady traveler in Paris.
I’m not going to quit traveling, but after time number eight, I think I want a different experience with the city.
And with myself and with someone else.
I had an ex reach out prior to my trip on WhatsApp, a different ex than the one who caused the tears, (the only platform he’s not blocked on, but is now, thanks) and wish me a happy birthday and hopefully I’ll be enjoying a romantic time in Paris, and how I deserve to be with someone who loves me–can’t argue that, but please, stop.
I am my romantic time.
I’ll draw a bubble bath, watch a movie, have a snack.
And plan my last couple of days as a single lady in Paris.
The rom/com trope is that I am happy and ok single.
And that I can have complex emotional feelings and experiences and long for a partner too.
I have had some very intense dating experiences this year.
And I forgive myself for that.
The change now is to surrender, like I did my lost luggage, not look for it on apps, or dating sites, to not project myself as larger than life, to be vulnerable and let myself be approached.
I tend to have men project (and some former female friends) on me a certain fantasy of who I am.
Because I live grand, I write this blog (though, honestly, not always the best reflection of me it is sometimes taken to be a completely accurate picture of my life, when it is just a montage of snapshots) and I live with my heart of my sleeve.
I want to be gentle, be approachable, and maybe soften up the makeup and glitter (a little, not doing away with it all), wear my hair up messy, and be ok with being human and older and still not having it quite altogether.
I think it’s tres chic this.
Thanks for the lesson Paris.
I am not sure when I will see you again, but until then, thanks for teaching me all the things vulnerable and how to turn up the hot water heater in French.
But for the moment, go out dancing is my current fave.
I have made a new friend and she has gotten me out twice now in the past week.
We went out to the Polyglamorous party “Left Overs” last week, Thanksgiving weekend, with Dee Diggs from Brooklyn at The Great Northern, and to date myself, I hadn’t been there since it was Mighty, so, like, um, fifteen or sixteen years?
A very good friend and I used to go there in early recovery.
The sound system there was out of this world.
I don’t even remember who I saw.
Once I went there with a room mate to see a famous rapper, who, I really didn’t know, I had never heard of the guy before, but my room mate had a hard on for him and an extra ticket and so I went.
Much to her chagrin, I got pulled up on the stage at the club to dance with him.
I don’t remember the artist’s name, but I do remember my room mates look of incredulity as I was on stage.
Heh.
Sometimes when I went with my good friend and the acts weren’t that great and we’d just go hang out by his car.
He had a ridiculous sound system in his car, a convertible Mercedes Benz that I don’t even want to know how much it cost, and he’d pop the trunk and we’d just dance around the car.
I can remember more than a few times when the best party was not what was going on in the club, but what was going on out in the street.
We weren’t alone dancing around the car.
Last night I went with my new friend to Public Works and saw John Digweed and his opening set DJ Kora with Set Underground.
Kora was beautiful.
It felt like a glorious sound bath.
There was this gorgeous alter with disco ball lights and lanterns and incense that the DJ was playing behind.
Now.
Normally.
I’m not into this kind of spiritual hoo ha.
But.
His music was lovely, deep, soft trancelike house with some Middle Eastern Influence.
The crowd was diverse, older, dreamy, community.
I saw people I knew from years and years ago.
In fact, I told my new friend last night that I recognized the way that she danced, she has a unique style, that I know I must have seen her on various dance floors and clubs in San Francisco back in the early 2000s.
And later when Digweed came on and the floor got too crowded for her, she bounced out to the Mezzanine, and I found her dancing with an old acquaintance, that I knew from back in the day.
In fact, I used to be in awe of this man.
He was the best club dancer I have ever seen, and twenty (fuck my life, really?) years later, he is still a marvel on the floor.
I remember being in the back room at 1015 for Tiesto? Donald Glaude? Scumfrog? Jonathan Ojeda?
God, only knows, I wasn’t sober then, but I had danced like a crazed person and was taking a break with a drink and my friend who had come up from San Jose to dance that night with me, also a very accomplished dancer, and I saw this gorgeous African American man and a white guy with dreads dancing across the club room.
They were dancing so hard.
Enthralled I watched for a while and then got up the nerve to join.
It was magic.
And I was blown away by their beauty and prowess and grace.
I think I held my own for twenty minutes, they were going so, so, so hard, before I had to bow out.
Literally.
I bowed out.
And they both smiled, and bowed back.
Every time I have seen said gentleman since, his dark eyes always smile at me, and he bows.
And sometimes, still, we dance, before my knees give out.
He is tall and slim, almost slight, well dressed, in his own glorious interpretation of club clothes, and last night he had an afro mohawk.
Seeing him and my new friend dancing behind the sound booth in the mezzanine, I knew, I knew I had seen her before.
She was surprised when she realized that I knew him.
Ah, the club world.
So big and sometimes so, so small.
And I don’t know how it’s twenty years later and I’m suddenly back in the scene and dancing.
Granted, I go much earlier than I used to.
I gobble Ibuprofen.
I only drink water.
I’m completely sober, spiritually centered, and drowned in the ecstasy of dance.
I get lost.
It’s exquisite.
It doesn’t always happen, but more often than not, it does.
I love music.
I listen to music all day long.
When my ex in my twenties and I broke up we discovered something interesting–he owned the tv, stereo, VCR, and most of the cds (mostly because for five years when I didn’t know what to gift him, I gave him stacks of cds for birthdays, anniversaries, and holidays, which bit me in the ass when I realized he owned most of the music).
I owned the furniture, bed, and all the kitchen ware.
He moved out.
And I had no audio visual.
I was a broke student working at a brewing company getting by on student loans and suddenly faced with paying double the rent I had the previous month.
I had enough to either buy a tv or a stereo.
There was no debate.
I bought the stereo.
I have not owned a television since.
(“I just realized something!” A friend said to me recently as we were hanging out and drinking tea in my living room. “You don’t own a tv, your living room is arranged so that people can see each other when they talk, not a tv!”)
23 years now.
Oh, don’t get me wrong, I have HBO Max (pandemic buy) and Netflix–I do watch videos on my laptop, but music, music is where it is at for me.
I dance every day.
Not always for very long, but every day, mostly in my kitchen.
I was dancing before writing this.
And I will go out dancing again this upcoming Friday.
Dimitri from Paris at the Great Northern.
I could even go out Saturday night too, a friend offered to gift me a ticket to a show at the MidWay.
I’m not sure I can do that, but I am tempted.
Go out dancing more, I tell myself.
Between six and a half years of graduate school (three years in my Master’s program and three and a half in my PhD–yeah, I got that faster than the average bear) and the pandemic, it’s been a long while.
I am happy to be back.
My knees are sore.
And I’m a lot older.
But that’s ok.
I plan on dancing until I die.
Music is one of the many ways I connect to God.
And thus, it is paramount to keep listening, keep dancing, keep drowning in the love.
“I love you,” he shouted in my ear, “I saw you up there, you kept it moving, you didn’t stop, you are beautiful.”
He hugged me.
Some stranger in a sweaty t-shirt with a happy glow on his face last night at the club who grabbed me before I left the dance floor.
Grateful to be seen.
Grateful for music.
Grateful for dancing.
Grateful for this rich, full life.
Even when my knees hurt and I rue the nights I danced for hours in platform heels for six, seven, eight hours, when I was young and anesthetized on cocaine, even when I can’t drop it like it’s hot, or even like it’s lukewarm, even when I can’t stay out late or all night long like I used to, or that I have all sorts of laugh wrinkles around my eyes, even when my hips hurt (gah), and I can’t believe I’m weeks away from turning 50, even then.
I am so grateful
So, I’ll continue to go out dancing.
And if you want.
You should come.
I’d love to see you on the dance floor.
Although Imight not see you right away as I will be standing in front of the DJ with my hands raised to the heavens and my eyes closed shut in my own private ecstatic moment communing with God as I understand God.
I have been sitting with this topic for a little over a week now and really contemplating what I long for.
Last Friday, not this weekend, but the one prior, I had a pretty revelatory session with my own therapist.
Who clearly stated something that I have never been able to articulate.
That I am afraid of my longings.
As soon as he said it, it threw light on so much of my life.
He asked me, “what happened to you when you were younger when you longed for something?”
“I was shamed, humiliated, made fun of,” I answered immediately, there was no pause to think.
My therapist went further, “you were striped naked, you were beaten,” he introjected. “If you longed for something you were going to get hurt.”
Tears filled my eyes.
Fuck.
Of course I am afraid of my longings.
I was also taught a lot of other not so great things.
I’m not enough, I’m ugly, I’m fat, I’ll be alone forever, I’m not lovable was basically the message I got.
I had to earn love, achieve love, work for love.
And so often, I still did not receive it in a way that was healthful for me.
I was eviscerated for my achievements as well.
Mortified by achieving, yet also pushed to achieve.
I have to do everything myself, take care of myself, and defend myself.
Things I learned to do well.
I also have to take care of everyone around me.
I am not allowed desires, dreams, hopes, longings, and if I should voice them I’ll just be ridiculed for those longings.
One of my longings is for romantic intimacy.
Partnership.
Shit.
I just teared up.
That old story, here, right now, I’m not even allowed to talk about that.
Or write about it.
Dare I even post this blog about it?
I think so.
Because.
I am trying something different.
First, that re-engaging with a former ex this past September, a few weeks after Burning Man, was me falling back into the pattern of not letting myself long.
It didn’t work and I extricated myself.
With a lot of help from my people, sitting quietly, listening in to my body–all the reflux flair up that I hadn’t had for years came right back with a fucking vengeance.
And of course, my therapist, “the question is, why do you want to be with someone who is not honest?”
Ouch.
And why?
So I stopped and it ended as it was going to anyway, I knew it wasn’t good for me.
Moving on.
Doing work.
Doing the therapy.
Writing a lot.
Letting go.
Surrendering.
And when I said no to making myself small, all these kinetic, beautiful little miracles started happening.
I got my diploma in the mail the next morning.
I got unstuck with my book project and started a process journal.
I reached out to a photographer and asked to collaborate and got a “I’m very interested!” response and a “let’s meet for coffee.”
I saw a friend I haven’t seen in nearly two years and took her out on her birthday to breakfast.
I started writing the epilogue to my book.
I started blogging again.
I started, trying, I’m not always great at it, but trying, to lean into my longings.
I shifted my schedule a bit to open up my Friday nights so I can socialize more.
I’m digging into really old, deep, entrenched stuff with my therapist.
He said some very interesting things, he usually does, thank god for him, he’s the best therapist I have ever worked with, receently.
Like in my session this Friday.
He reflected that people are drawn to me, but that I project an image and instead of that, what would it look like if I was a magnet instead?
I knew what he meant.
I can have a big personality, I have presence.
For instance.
Dating.
I usually do the asking out, I think I have to, that no one is going to be drawn to me and that my longings will go unseen and that I have to ask, so I do.
A friend told me about this recently, “you come across as boss lady, soften it a bit, no body is going to ask boss lady out.”
Ok then.
Soften.
Draw to me rather than push away.
No more asking out guys.
Wait.
Let myself be asked out.
Actually, I have always, always, longed for this.
I have so infrequently had it happen, it seems a dream to have someone ask me out.
But, I think that it’s because I come across as unapproachable.
And I pine for that which is unavailable–not so much anymore, I am leaning, thank you–which is to say that my action is to focus on what is not really there so not to be hurt if I long for something.
Remember, I was shamed for having desire.
And I’m not talking erotic desire, I’m talking desire for affection, love, conviviality, joy, awe, wonder, laughter, closeness, honesty, play.
And.
I won’t sneeze at erotic desire either.
I am a sensuous being.
I long for touch.
The pandemic was rough yo.
Plus, the surgeries I had last year made it tough too, hard to feel sexy when you’re in pain.
Anyway.
Dating.
It’s back on my plate.
But this time no apps, no asking people out, no projecting out to the world.
Just a softening into the longing, articulating vulnerability, being ok with being messy, messy hair, no make up, well, not all the time, I do love me some lipstick, letting go of the crazy hair (hell my hair is crazy enough on its own) and going back to my natural color and yes, letting it go gray. I am of a certain age, it’s ok.
Just leaning in.
Soft, warm, sweet, longing, Coleman Hawkins on a rainy November night, with misty fog encapsulating street lamps, the heat turned on, the cats cozy curled up next to me, hot, homemade soup in a bowl, and looking out the windows at the darkening sky with longing that soon, yes please, there will be someone sitting next to me, who will put his arm around me and listen to the music with me, kiss the top of my head, and be absolutely ok with just me.
No striving to prove myself or be different, bigger, brighter, shinier, faster, more fabulous.
I was on the cusp of turning 40 when I moved to Paris.
I am on the cusp of turning 50 now.
If you had told me that I wouldn’t really be looking at being published for a decade after moving to Paris.
Well.
Fuck.
I would burst into tears and likely thrown myself off the cutest nearest bridge.
Good thing I didn’t know.
Hell.
I had no idea ten years ago that instead of becoming a published writer, which, by the way, I am published–my dissertation was published on ProQuest on August 8th–I was to become a therapist.
I had no idea what Paris was going to hold for me.
It was terrifying, cold, heart breaking, wet–it rained a lot, and it snowed!
I got lost all the time–sometimes literally, often figuratively.
I spent a lot of time in churches–they are heated to a nice toasty warm that I would often find myself seeking reprieve from the weather in.
I wrote.
All the fucking time.
I wrote three, sometimes four, times a day.
I edited and re-hashed and re-organized a memoir.
I wrote short stories, poemss, blogs.
I wrote in my journal (s).
There ended up being many, many, many journals–all of which I still have.
I wrote in the morning.
I wrote in the afternoon–in cafes, my favorite being Odette & Aime.
Which was just around the corner on 46 Rue Maubege, I lived at 18 Rue Bellefond.
I would sit for hours in the cafe and sip at tap water and a cafe Allonge–which is basically a black coffee.
I was so poor.
Tit mouse poor.
Starving artist poor.
Hemingway in A Moveable Feast poor.
But like, Hemingway made it sexy.
I was not sexy.
I couldn’t often afford a cafe creme–thus the Allonge–I would eat lunch from the Monoprix–basically a Walgreens with a bit of a supermarket in it.
Lunch would be a single serving piece of cheese and a packet of peanuts.
Often accompanied by an apple I would buy from the Friday market around Square D’Anvers.
Once I treated myself to sausages, heaven, at the Friday market but only once–they were rabbit and to die for.
Breakfast was apple in oatmeal and milk.
Dinners were often from the roti chicken place down the street by the Metro entrance for the Cadet stop.
Not the fancy place up the road that was Monsieur Dufrense.
But the Halal place, the owner was sweet, the chicken was cheap.
I could make one of those last a good four days, sometimes five.
I worked under the table, nanny, dog walker, baby sitter, English tutor.
I took French classes that a friend in Chicago wired me money to go and do.
I walked everywhere, when I wasn’t on the Metro, which I used frequently as I had a Navigo monthly pass.
There were times, especially when I was doing baby sitting outside the periphery, that I realized, no one, not a single person, not a soul, knew where I was.
I was baby sitting in the ghetto, the low income housing, taking three trains to do an under table gig that basically paid 8 Euro an hour.
I walked past drug deals, prostitution, gambling places.
I walked briskly like I knew where I was going.
Irony.
The place was located on Rue Victor Hugo.
Sounds hella romantic.
Was hella sketchy.
I remember once taking a picture of the street lights reflecting in the rain, once, on a very early morning commute from my place in the 9th arrondisement to outside the periphery, at like 7a.m.
It was a gorgeous shot, the light, the reflection on the sidewalk, the darkness, the sheen.
I got so many comments on social media after I posted it….so pretty, so Paris, so exciting, lucky you, living the dream!
Sure.
The dream.
Which was actually a nightmare.
Scary, cold, intense, broke as fuck.
Taking an elevator up 9 floors in a tenement in the ghetto outside of Paris.
The kids were sweet, but they didn’t have books, they like to watch the Mickey Mouse Club.
The tv was their babysitter, except when I was there, I insisted on taking them outside.
The park in the middle of the low income houses.
I would watch them race around on their cheap plastic little scooters and stare at the clouds in the sky.
What the hell was I doing with my life?
Query another agent, send off another book proposal, watch my thin stash of Euros in my wallet slowly get a tiny bit bigger, after baby sitting, or tutoring, or house sitting, quietly buying my apples and peanuts and Halal chicken, and then have to pay a week’s rent where I was staying–in a one bedroom lofted apartment where I slept in the living room on a fold out futon that must have been 25 years old, it was so hard.
I didn’t usually have the month’s rent.
But I would pay week to week to week.
Living on peanuts and apples.
Like I said.
Hemingway made it much sexier.
So.
Ten years later.
Many adventures since.
So many adventures.
I am sitting in my very cozy, very pretty, one bedroom apartment in Hayes Valley in San Francisco.
I have a successful private practice therapy business.
I own a car.
A new one.
I have traveled back to Paris, and will do so again in December to celebrate my 50th birthday with a new tattoo from my favorite tattoo shop–Abraxas on Rue Beauborg in the Marais, where I will also be staying a beautiful and hip Air BnB, also in the Marais.
I will buy myself dresses this time instead of packets of peanuts.
I will buy notebooks from Claire Fontaine.
I will go to many museums.
And not on the free days.
I will have a lot of cafe cremes, and not a single Allonge.
I will eat a chicken from Monsieur Dufrense and an actual meal at Odette & Aime.
Also.
I will eat my birthday dinner at my favorite restaurant La Cantine du Troquet on Rue de Grenelle.
I will celebrate a dear friend’s wedding anniversary the day before–having become amazing friends in my Master’s in Psychology program, I have stayed at her family home in the Marais and as she will be celebrating, I will be at my Air BnB just a five minute walk from her home.
I will go to my favorite cafe, Cafe Charlot, which is open on Christmas.
I will be there for Christmas as well as my birthday.
I will take photographs and write, like I always do.
Although.
Hopefully I will not be writing agents to query them about a memoir, just writing in general, after scoring a few of my favorite notebooks, a small stack, at least five, maybe more.
I will instead be querying agents now about my book proposal.
Not exactly a memoir, but in a sense very much so, but with a different scope, seen through the lens of my dissertation, with beautiful photographs not take by me on my phone, but by the professional photographer I am meeting with next week for coffee in Petaluma–Sarah Deragon with Portraits to the People.
She did my headshots for my website and I adore her work.
I queried her if she would be interested in collaborating with me and I got a yes.
I’ve got some work to do before I see her.
Sketch out the book better, mock something up.
Cut and paste and write.
See.
I keep coming back to the writing.
Which is what I am doing, here, now.
Practicing.
I’m not exactly out of practice, I still journal every day, did it today, I’ll do it tomorrow.
But.
I haven’t been blogging in a while.
Time to polish the chops and sit at the keyboard and see where my meandering brain takes me.
I had not thought that it would be a time travel back to Paris ten years ago, I don’t often know where this page is going to take me, but take me it does.
I figured that the best way to put together my book proposal and manuscript was to open my blog and write my intentions and start from here.
I don’t know how exactly to get an agent.
But there’s Google for that.
I do know my dissertation is a mighty fine academic piece, but it’s not a book ready piece.
No one, well, my dissertation committee did, wants to read my Method and very few people are going to be interested in my Lit review, but there’s some juicy stuff in there.
Dramatic.
Traumatic.
Sexy.
Sad.
Transformative.
Pain.
Story.
There’s story and it’s good story and it’s got scandal.
And who doesn’t like scandal?
I’m going to risk it all and put it all out there with transparency and honesty and integrity.
And hopefully, someone will bite.
I want to do a kind of coffee table art house photography book with my poems, essays, blogs, memoir excerpts, and pictures of my transformation alongside the story of what I discovered with my research in my dissertation.
This Burning Man was the best and the hardest and the most magical and connected and hottest and Jesus fucking christ on a pogo stick, the worst entry and exodus I have had.
And.
I can’t wait to do it again.
Next year I will have all the things.
And do many of the things differently.
First.
No more tenting.
I’m figuring out a better way.
I just can’t do the dust coffin again.
I’m too old, and frankly, for the first time, truly ever, I can afford better accomodations.
I’m not saying I’m about to go out and buy an Airstream.
But I think I can swing a little camper trailer.
This burn I literally put up and took down my camp three times.
It was a disaster.
Fortunately.
I had a lot of lovely neighbors at my camp help me out.
And that was a learning lesson in humility.
I do not like asking for help.
I like helping.
I am really fucking good at helping others.
But asking for help?
Not so much.
I had to ask.
And ask a lot more than I was comfortable with.
I also had no choice.
Like.
When I got sick and had to go to the medics.
I had severe heat exhaustion, vomited, had hideous stomach cramps, dizziness and lightheadedness.
I knew I wasn’t doing well, but until I threw up I thought I was muddling along ok.
This literally happened my first day.
I still can’t believe I wound up in the medical tents on the first day I was there.
And thank god I let myself be taken.
I joked that my first “gift” on playa was a bag of fluids.
But really, thank God.
I didn’t realize how sick I was until I was in the tents.
And the beautiful, sweet people who took me there and sat with me there and helped me get back to camp were angels.
The next day I got to experience a playa miracle when a person who I barely knew magically provided a new tent for me.
Oh, wait, I left that part out.
In a nutshell, I land on playa Friday night at midnight, in a white out dust storm, Gate is closed, I sit for four hours before I finally get to Will Call to pick up my ticket and vehicle pass.
Then I spend an hour finding camp because none of the signs are up and I keep missing it.
Find camp around 5a.m., sit on the corner waiting for anyone to stir to find out where I am located, around 6:30a.m. some folks start getting up, figure out where I’m supposed to be camp, get somewhat situated, connect with the friend I’m setting up camp with, help him get settled and get shade structure up, start to get worried around noon as I haven’t gotten my own tent set up and it’s getting hot and I feel a dust storm coming (enough time on playa you can sometimes sense that shit in the wind), unravel may tent and start crying.
The “upgraded” new tent I had splurged on was a mesh top.
OHMYFUCKINGGOD kill me know.
I bought a dust coffin.
But with no other options.
I set up said dust coffin.
Storm sets in.
Sequester in dust coffin, try to nap, in a my dust mask and goggles and basically I could have just been on the open playa, there was so much dust, I was covered.
I might have slept an hour.
Maybe.
Which is why when I got sick, I got so sick, I had’t really slept in 36 hours, that and not enough food (I actually had been drinking a lot of water) led to the heat exhaustion, plus, well, duh, the heat.
So.
I’m telling my story about the multiple vans I had cancel on me, three separate reservations that all canceled on me and how I had to take my tiny Fiat and make the drive and basically halve the things I was bringing and I didn’t stage my tent and fuck my life, dust coffin, and the folks I was sitting with the next day commiserate, they’d had van cancellations too, and then.
HOLY SHIT.
My friend’s boyfriend goes behind the magic curtain and comes back with a tent, the same tent I used to use, so I know how to set it up, and it’s weather proof–no mesh top, no dust sifting down from the ceiling, “I’ve got a spare, you can use it,” he says.
So, I tore down dust coffin, and set up a new tent.
Two camp set ups in two days, extreme heat exhaustion, long wait to get in, not even on playa a day and a half and I thought, wow, this is really intense.
And it got wierder.
Harder.
Dustier.
And, as always, more magical in ways I could never expect.
I met and connected with new friends.
I reconnected with old friends.
I missed seeing a bunch of folks I for sure thought I was going to see.
I randomly bumped into someone I hadn’t seen in 8 years as I was pulling out on my bicycle from one art piece to head to another.
I got to go on an art car I have always dreamed of getting onto and rode one of the amazing mechanical carousel horses on it.
I danced.
One day, lost in a dust storm, shocker, I know, dust storms, I found myself so far beyond the area I was looking for that I just tried to find shelter to ride it out and stumbled upon a very, very, very lavish camp.
They had amazing music, and, holy shit, A/C.
I mean.
Fuck.
A huge common tent with A/C being piped into it.
There was also a lot and I do mean, A LOT, of drugs being very openly consumed.
I did not give a fuck.
I was sheltered in A/C dancing to amazing music.
I was never offered anything and I didn’t want anything and I didn’t care that there was so much wealth on display, all I did was, every once in a while, stop someone who was cavorting to ask for a water.
I was kept well hydrated and I danced for over three hours until the storm passed.
Then merrily took my tired knees back across playa on my bicycle.
I got to see my original poems hung up in the Museum of No Spectators, that brought big walloping tears to my eyes.
I had secret dream when I was young to see my art in a museum.
I was blown away by that.
Later in the week, with friends and family-an uncle on my father’s side of the family, I walked in my cap and gown and had a dear friend and the architect who designed the art piece, hood me in a graduation ceremony.
It was profound and moving and it meant an awful lot to me.
I also, promptly, got lost on the way back and wound up taking over an hour to find my way back.
Surreal to get lost in a place that I have been to so many times.
I star gazed in deep playa.
I cried in the middle of an art piece that moved me beyond words.
I danced in line waiting for ice.
I met a lot of international folks.
I got to know folks at my camp on a deeper more meaningful and intimate manner than I have ever experienced.
I don’t know how to write about one of the things that happened at camp that profoundly affected me without making it about me and I have been wondering for days about whether I would even write about it, or write a blog at all about Burning Man this year, though I have wanted to process it (my damn therapist had to cancel this week) but I do want to mention it lightly with respect and grace over drama.
I witnessed a death.
I was a first responder and performed CPR.
I was not a hero, but I was present and I am so very grateful that I was of service in the moments I was there.
I was also in shock at what had happened.
I leaned into people at my camp.
And I let myself cry when I could.
I only told a few people about what had happened.
Most of what I talked about was very minimal.
There was one person who heard the whole story, had been there when I walked out of the trailer stunned, held me as I shook with silent sobs and took very kind care of me.
I witnessed the camp come together in a way that stays with me, and I suspect, will always stay with me, to honor that person who passed and hold space for all those affected.
I told a woman who was there in the depths of the experience with me that this camp, which I had camped with twice prior, was now my camp for good, I was a member and I wanted a service position, I would be attending the business meeting and picking one up, commit to coming back, camp with them and be of service.
She welcomed me and suggested something to me and the next day I was elected to that position.
So.
I am going back next year, and every foreseeable year I can.
And I stayed, of course, I stayed, for the Temple burn.
Man burn was amazing and fun and I love me some pyro, yes, yes I do.
Temple was sweet, a touch sad, but not as forlorn as I have experienced it the few times I had been prior.
Honestly, I have only seen two Temple burns.
This burn was soft and sweet and though tears slid down my face a few times, it was not the horrendous vomiting of grief that I experienced after putting my best friends ashes in the Temple my first year.
Sidebar.
Yes. I do, now, know, that ashes are not welcomed there, but I was not aware of that at the time I went in 2007 for my first burn.
I can’t take those back.
And my best friend is always out there for me.
As I packed up my tiny car and got ready to sit in exodus for 6.5 hours, had I fucking known, ugh, I heard music from the camp next to me and I burst into tears.
You always get me at the end Burning Man, don’t you?
It was my friend’s favorite song playing.
It was like getting a soft kiss on my forehead, like he used to do, as I left the burn and headed home.
Tears wet on my face.
Gratitude for the intensity and the humility and the deep connections I made.
Shit.
I didn’t even tell you about the sauna in an Airstream I got to have, but I’ll save that for another day.
I was reflecting on one of the nice turns of events that happened for me yesterday–I went from owing taxes to getting a tax return–and I thought, hmmm.
How interesting that I was in deep acceptance about paying the unexpected tax bill after an enlightening couple of conversations with a friend and work on my scarcity mentality.
And then.
Yesterday, when meeting with the final accountant before my 2021 taxes were filed, did it finally come clear.
I was right!
Fuck.
I mean.
I don’t often dance about going, I was right, I was right, but when one is unexpectedly looking at dropping another 5k towards taxes, when inside you’d been secretly hoping you’d get a return, well.
I WAS RIGHT!
Ugh.
It was a slogging walk through a lot of discomfort though.
Last week, after a bit of prompting with the accounting firm I use, I finally got a set time to go over the return, sign it and file.
When I got the draft of the taxes I was aghast, upset, angry, and in tears.
How was it possible that I owed money?
Ugh.
Again.
Here I was being really diligent about making my quarterly payments and being on time with it all, and aside, doll, it is your first time doing taxes as a private practice and there’s so much to learn about being a business owner, but still.
Fuck.
I really had been crossing all the “t’s” and dotting all the “i’s” but I still owed.
It was baffling.
Especially because in April the accounting firm had dropped a bomb on me and said, oops, hahahaha, looks like you have to pay more in then we realized, and you only have three days to do it before penalty this and penalty that.
It was $9,302.
I wanted to vomit on my laptop when saw that.
I was beyond aghast.
I emailed the accountant and I asked for clarification and I expressed what a devastating thing it was to have just made the quarterly tax payment, and then less the twelve hours later I was being told I owed another 9k.
I was flummoxed.
I got a sincere apology from the co-founder of the firm, who I had cc’d on the message back to the accountant, an explanation for why it happened and they refunded the $900 I had paid for the service.
Great.
And, I still had to pay the money.
So I basically emptied my savings and did that.
Which was why I had turned down the original Burning Man ticket I was going to get.
I can’t go to the event and be there for two weeks and work on playa and help out and miss two weeks of work after taking that kind of hit.
So.
I gave up the commitment, gave up the ticket, and resigned myself to not going.
Things changed over the next few months.
I had a really stellar month in May and a strong month in June.
July, not so great since COVID happened to me and I had to take a week off, but I had secured a new ticket and gotten my gear sourced and I was ready to go.
Then the tax bill arrived.
I was so upset.
Fuck.
I thought I was going to have to bow out completely from going to the event.
I spent some time thinking about it and decided to just pause, lean into the discomfort, think about what I wanted and act like I had the money to pay the bill.
Which I did.
Even if it meant wiping out the savings I had just rebuilt after the April tax kerfuffle.
I even asked the CPA who had drafted my tax filing about the April payment and got a brush off.
So.
I had done a bit of inventory, a lot of breathing, and got very into acceptance, I’ll meet with the accountant with the firm and just fucking sign and pay the fucking taxes.
And.
Oh.
This is good.
I was right.
The firm had missed the payment.
The IRS had not.
The IRS had a record of it and I accessed it, shared it with the accountant and I went from having to pay in $5,761 to getting back $4,340.
Fuck yes!
I was over the moon.
And the week of work I missed with being sick was now made up for and I’m ok to go to the event and.
Woohoo!
Then.
Today.
I got back the final dissertation draft with all the edits properly executed and accepted.
There was only one.
One fucking edit I could not fix myself and I had to chase after help, but I got it and it was returned complete and done and perfect this morning.
So.
I logged into the ProQuest portion of the publication process and I fucking finished the deal.
I chose how I wanted to publish, Traditional versus Open Source, which means I could actually get royalties (though I will not bank on it), my dissertation.
I filled in all the blanks.
I paid for my own hard cover copy to be sent to me.
And I hit the upload button.
It does not immediately get published, the school will gate keep it one more time and make sure all the edits are correct, then once those final edits are affirmed, they will publish it an I will get a link to a copy of the dissertation on ProQuest.
Holy fucking shit.
This last piece has finally fallen into place.
And it was a harrowing last piece of work.
I cannot even begin to talk about how intense it was to deal with the lapse in holding the administration at my school had.
I will tell you what I did get, however.
First, I got an apology from the head of the Writing Center, then my dean, followed by a profound apology from the Provost, in a 45 minute Zoom call where I went over everything that happened and how the program and the school dropped me and publishing my dissertation.
I contacted the provost when things were fucking falling apart in a bewildering way and she helped push through some admin bullshit that was once again damaging to have to walk through.
She also affirmed what I had experienced, did not gaslight what happened, and noted what I had accomplished, the depth of the work I had done and gave me a beautiful, “Congratulations Doctor _______________”.
She promised to make sure that I would matriculate.
And, once the publication happens I will be matriculated at the end of the summer semester.
Considering how batshit the administration of the school is, I won’t expect my diploma until this fall, but for now, all the things that I needed to do are done.
I just need the manager of the dissertation portion of the Writing Center to confirm I did the final edit and send to ProQuest.
I did follow up with an email, although he gets an automatic email from the upload. I saved it anyway, which I have learned, I needed to do with the school.
Which is how I was able to show where they had dropped the ball and how, I hope, they will not for future cohorts.
I really am ready to be done with the institution.
And.
I am ready for my own damn version of graduation.
Back in May when I walked, when I had gotten the approval to graduate, despite the fact of finding out later that there were things missing, I was also missing part of my regalia–the god damn hood.
The one piece of the graduation outfit for doctors that signifies the degree.
The way it works is that your committee chair hoods you at the graduation ceremony.
My graduation was virtual and though we had a little in person reception at the school, it was weak sauce.
And the outfit responsible for getting my regalia to me never sent me my hood.
I got my hood in the mail this Monday.
Two months after my “graduation.”
The Universe is funny.
So.
I am going to have a graduation ceremony on playa, at Burning Man, at my friend’s art piece, the Museum of No Spectators.
I think Wednesday or Thursday of the event.
The art piece has a stage.
I’m not sure how I’m going to organize it, but a little hooding ceremony, a walk out to the Temple in my regalia, and then laying it at rest there.
It feels right.
I had a kind of dark night of the soul on playa in 2014 that led to me applying to graduate school to get my Master’s in Psychology.
This feels like the closing of a circle and a celebration of all the freaking hard work I did to get here.
I felt so much better today than the last five days.
And then this afternoon, it kind of bitch slapped me back down.
I got really tired.
Napped a little on the couch.
I was like, wait, why am I in shoes, put on the bunny slippers now girl.
Bunny slippers, Ziggy the cat and read the last pages of Mike Doughty’s memoir I Die Each Time I Hear the Sound.
Which had fan girl bought like, um, two years ago and never read.
Oops.
Sorry dude.
(by the way, read this, it’s very good and it was pleasing to think about where I was in my life listening to Soul Coughing, or when Mike went out on solo tour and a bunch of us from the Angelic Brewing Company went to see him at Cafe Montmarte in Madison, and one of my girlfriend’s, fucking high as shit, announced to the crowd how much she was in love with Mike and that she was “high on mushrooms” and then he heckled her. Fuck that was great.)
I got busy with a dissertation and living through a pandemic.
I mean.
I managed to get pretty far when it comes down to it, two years, four months, but it still got me.
Ugh.
I have slowly been catching up on the reading, pleasure reading that is.
I finished Jennifer Egan’s The Candy House right before the plague drop kicked me.
Creepy good.
Also, was before the back and forth bullshit with my institute of higher learning.
Aside.
Aside to the aside, there’s going to be a lot of asides, there will be asides to the asides ad infinitum.
I mean.
COVID.
Anyway.
I got an email from the dude at the Writing Center with the final edits to my dissertation that needed to be done and it took me a minute to look at them really today.
But I did.
And I made progress.
And fingers, crossed, now I really am in the final stretch.
I bounced out of bed.
I felt GREAT.
Holy shit.
The headache finally fucking went away.
I took the trash out, the recycling, the compost, I got dressed, like in clothes that don’t scream lounging around the house, I put on sneakers, not my bunny slippers.
I ate breakfast at the table, not in bed watching Atlanta on Hulu.
ASIDE.
Like what the fuck HULU?
Here’s this glorious, witty, sarcastic, pointed, intellectual, insightful, amazing and painful, sad, deeply poignant look at the black experience in America and y’all keep playing that hideous Amazon Prime video with a black man crooning about “coco butter” (or is it cold, cold butter?) and dancing around in a bad 70s disco throw back. I mean, WTF? It was like this very meta, hella meta, am I just woozy with COVID fever? frame to watch Atlanta through. Black man dancing around encouraging everyone to go buy some camping gear?
Hello.
What?
WHATTHEFUCKINGHELL?
I’m sure there’s a Reddit somewhere about this, but it made me sick.
It reminded me of being in undergrad at UW Madison and watching Spike Lee’s Bamboozled in the theater and how people kept laughing at really creepy ass shit and it got more and more uncomfortable and people started walking out.
I think I’m one of thirty people that saw that movie come out in the theaters.
Anyway.
Next time, note to self, if I get Hulu, buy it without the commercials, I think I just back doored this shit to skip paying and get “one month free”.
Now that I wrapped Atlanta, I’m out.
Until Handmaid’s Tale comes back.
FUCK.
Hits a little close to home doesn’t it?
I’m very apolitical on my social, but I can’t get away from it at work, everyone, every single one of my clients, male, female, straight, bi, queer, trans, BI-POC, every one, has been talking the politics.
I can’t get away from it.
And sometimes I get a little paranoid, like, yeah, I got some views, but if you can pointedly target me with cat litter ads.
STOP THAT SHIT PLEASE. IT’S BAD ENOUGH I GOT TO LOOK AT THAT SHIT ONCE A DAY, WHEN I CLEAN THE DAMN BOX. LITERALLY. STOP IT IN MY FEED MOTHERFUCKERS. I KEEP THE CATBOX CLEAN I DON’T NEED THE AUTOMATED ONE, IT WOULD LIKE SCARE MY CATS AND THEY WILL SHIT ON MY BED.
STOP.
Maybe, you can, like figure out my political leanings and be noting that data somewhere.
Like, if you can target me with Cynthia Rowley frocks, yes, I bought one in New York, motherfuckers, you can probably reverse engineer that shit and figure out which way I lean.
HELLA LIBERAL BITCHES.
Maybe I should write from a COVID standpoint more often, I can just be like, I was hallucinating, listening to Big Freedia, and blogging, what?
I also.
I didn’t.
I swear, I did not do it.
But, fuck, I really wanted to.
I, um, donned a double mask, KN95, yo, and washed my hands, and sanitized and went outside to move my car for street parking and on way way back there was like a gaggle of teens in front of the fancy ass boba shop around the corner from my house and there was like a herd of them and I was like, fuck, move, move, move.
I almost yelled, “I HAVE COVID, MOVE BITCHES”.
I didn’t.
But, the temptation.
Fierce.
They must have sensed I was not fucking around though, cuz the tweenage waters parted and I thought, oh, that does smell kind of good, is that creme brulee? Do they make creme brulee boba?
Side note.
Yesterday I kept smelling something weird and I was like, did someone burn something cooking in one of the apartments, though I’ve never had cooking smells before.
Did the cafe next door burn something?
Wait, it’s Tuesday, I think, yeah, Tuesday, it’s closed.
What is that smell?
Oh.
That’s what it is.
This morning when I felt better and blew my nose, I realized it was blood, I was smelling my own damn blood when I was blowing my nose so hard so I could breathe through one of my nostrils.
MOTHERFUCKING GROSS.
Aside.
I used to do a lot of cocaine.
ALOT.
I totes forgot how bad my nose used to get stuffed up from it.
Good grief.
Thank fucking god I’m sober.
Also.
Do you know you have to show an ID to get Mucinex?
I had a wee panic attack, hahahahahahahahaha, fucking freak out, on Saturday when I went from mild symptoms, to oh shit, this got serious and I can’t breathe and my nose is so stuffed up and I can’t breathe and shit god damn.
I tried to InstaCart Mucinex and it was too late to order.
I got some off brand knock off Walgreens that probably only had a placebo effect for all the good it seemed to do on my symptoms.
But I took it and felt “better”.
I got the Mucinex delivered the next morning.
Aside.
WHAT THE FUCKING HELL INSTACART?
HOLY GOD DAMN.
A BAG OF GROCERIES SHOULD NOT BE $94.
AND WHO THE FUCK THOUGHT THIS WAS A GOOD IDEA TO GIVE ME THIS AVOCADO?
SADDEST FUCKING AVOCADO IN THE WHOLE GOD DAMN WORLD.
My buyer must have took pity on this vegetable, cuz there is no reason why I paid $7 for this sad thing.
SERIOUSLY.
When my Mucinex got delivered, and that cost a tidy $40, remember when coke was $50 a gram and my dealer would deliver to me and it was in less than 20 minutes anywhere I was in the city, mostly the Mission, like let me be honest, but shit, he didn’t ID me for the bag.
I told the lady, “I have COVID.”
SHE HAD TO SEE MY ID AND MATCH THE DATE OF BIRTH TO THE INFO ON MY INSTACART ACCOUNT.
Lady, look at my wrinkles.
I put the card down on the step and walked six feet back whilst she gingerly picked it up and compared it to the info on her phone.
Fuck lady.
I’m 49.
50 this year.
Just like say I’m of age and don’t touch my COVID covered ID.
SORRY.
Other random COVID thoughts.
I should start an Instagram page of my cats.
Because.
They are cute.
And because, cats.
But then I had a thought, like what if my clients found my cat page?
And saw that I wear bunny slippers and have a pink couch.
Psychoanalyze that shit.
Nah.
I’ll just annoy my close friends with my cute cat pix.
They are cute.
Also.
Thank goodness for Zoom meetings.
I mean.
I was hella tired and super stoked to see people in person.
Until the person secretary’ing up at the spot had COVID and did I get it from you dude?
Anyway.
I am toggling through day six.
Watching B movies.
Hustlers yo, damn JLo.
And Better Call Saul.
Dragging that one out slow though, it is so good.
And keeping myself up at night planning what to wear to Burning Man.
Aside.
FUCK YOU KEEPING MY BURNING MAN GEAR.
ahem.
My gear is in the garage of guy I had gone on a few dates with who wanted to date me, but well, um, I was not having the passive communication, drove me fucking bats and I broke it off and I wasn’t interested in poly anyhow, not that there’s anything wrong, get your love on people, I don’t judge, just not for me and no I am not going to a sex party, I have hella tattoos and prolly someone’s fucking metamour of a client is gonna be there and yikes, and hey, yeah, thanks for storing my Burning Man gear.
Can I um, get that shit back?
One of my friends said.
How much will it cost to replace?
I threw out a number.
Sounds worth it to avoid the drama.
But.
Uh, shit.
I like drama?
So I reached out and was treated to the same passive communication that drove me crazy last time and then I was like, dude is avoiding me and I hurt some feelings and cool, cool, cool.
Keep my dusty ass shit.
I wanted to buy new boots anyway.
So.
YESSSS MAMA.
I upgraded my tent.
Aside.
One day I will upgrade to a trailer but I ain’t got that kind of cash yet.
I upgraded to a six man black out tent.
Yeah.
Six-man.
I mean, I like some space.
And a new queen size blow up mattress, cuz girl likes her sleep.
And yes.
l did get new boots.
Heh.
I almost don’t know if I can, but fuck, fuck it, why not.
They are platform, reflective, purple blue leather (vegan).
BWAHAHAHAHAAHA.
I’m already kind of tall.
I’m gonna tower.
And since I can rock a platform I will have no problem stomping all over the playa.
So.
Yeah.
After a little written inventory about the last cryptic text I got from dude I realized I did not indeed want the drama, and as per my person’s suggestions, I blocked him and I have wrote off my playa gear.
So.
I’ve been a little like a feverish kid in a candy store stalking the inter webs for all things Burning Man.
And honestly, I am pretty set.
I’ve been eleven times, twelve?
Eleven, this is time number twleve.
I know how to do the deal.
I gots a new tent, new cooler, new parasol, new boots, new googles.
I already have closets with out there clothes, what I wear to Burning Man is basically what ever is in the closet and dresser, with my funky playa boots and maybe some fishnets.
I already have a makeup kit.
I already have the crazy hair.
Hella aside.
My stylist posted in her Insta that she would give anyone 5% discount next time they came in if they tagged her in their post with a pix of colored hair/style she’d done.
I was like, hells yes, cuz expensive and give me discount.
Except.
I’ve never posted a story before.
Yeah.
I know.
Shaddup.
I have never been on Tik Tok or Snap either.
Yes. I have seen a TIK TOK, I don’t live in a fucking cave people.
So, I post this photo I took like three weeks ago, but not realizing how to do it and it gets out and I didn’t tag her, she saw it anyway, picked it up, re-posted and hey, girl, discount, and like now it’s on all the social spots and everybody be like
FUCK YOU LOOK AMAZE!
ALLHEALEDFROMCOVIDANDHELLASASSY!
Um.
No.
I took a selfie I was sending to a guy I went on one date with three and a half weeks ago, lying on my bed with full makeup on.
I haven’t put makeup on since last Thursday, my hair is in messy buns like a six year old girl, I’m in fur covered leggings cuz one of my cat’s is white and likes snuggling and I’m in bunny slippers.
There is no sexy going on over here.
And aside.
Why didn’t we have a second date?
Oh wait, you’re still living with your ex.
I got to stop trying the apps, they fucking suck.
I’m down to like, seriously, just get picked up in a grocery store right now, cuz you now I won’t be instacarting any more avocados yo, whilst perusing the produce.
Or.
Maybe, when I’m at the park reading a book.
When I’m not contagious, I won’t be out in the public till I test negative, save the lecture.
I have been excitedly waiting for the diploma in the mail.
Thinking, in the back of my head, when is it a good time to reach out to my university and ask, “hey, when’s that paper gonna drop?”
Mindful of the continuing weirdness that is the pandemic.
Oh.
Yeah.
Hey.
I got COVID.
CONGRATULATIONS!
What a weird ass virus this is.
First, thank fucking God I was vaccinated and boosted.
It was not a fun time.
And it was kind of fun at the same time.
At least the first couple of days.
It started with some ennui, which honestly I thought, oh, this is classic countertransference, exhaustion whilst working with a narcissist.
Look it up, I’m not kidding.
But in hind sight, I think that’s when things were starting to cook.
My brain, that is.
Later that night, last Thursday, my voice was scratchy, but I chalked that up to screaming in my kitchen.
Like, at the top of my lungs, hurt my throat, scare my cats, kind of screaming.
Why?
Well, like I opened with, I haven’t actually graduated.
Let me back pedal a moment here.
Cue June 22nd.
I am in session with a client on video, wrapping up my morning sessions and thinking about a walk and a lunch break, when my dissertation budding sends me a photo of himself holding his PUBLISHED DISSERTATION.
WTF?
I mean, seriously, I felt like I was in a nasty Twilight Zone episode.
My colleague had defended his dissertation in March, I defended last year, mid-October.
I knew that it was too late in the semester to graduate with the fall cohort and that was fine, Spring is a fine time to walk, if you can call the wierdo hybrid video and reception my school had a graduation.
I did it anyway.
I applied to graduate, turned in all my forms, did all my things, or so I thought.
Yeah.
Ha.
It turns out that there was a missing piece.
The writing center, had not received my dissertation.
I did not know this.
I had somehow, don’t get me started on that, I know exactly how I slipped through the cracks, cue a very emotional conversation I had with the Provost this past Friday, yeah, that’s right, when I was on day two of COVID, but hadn’t tested positive yet (albeit enjoying the mildly delightful low grade fever I was running and doing online shopping for Burning Man. Yes! I am going, but that is another blog), my dissertation, had somehow not gotten turned in.
In essence, the last thing that needed to be done, was not done.
I lost my shit when I saw my friend’s photo.
I texted him immediately, how did you do that?
He told me.
He told me information I had never been given despite asking, oh so many times, for information on what are the next steps, please let me know.
Please.
I have a folder of emails, back and forth and back and forth, of weird little lapses that I kept catching and sending back out to the department, hey what next? Hey, did this go through? Hey, what now?
My friend called me and listened to me angry cry and then sent me a bunch of people to contact.
I contacted them all.
I won’t go into detail all the ways I continued to be dropped, but I did, when I met with the Provost last Friday (after reaching out to them whilst continuing to be demeaned, humiliated, and shamed by the administration–amazing how cc’ing the provost finally got me somewhere), who issued me a formal apology and listened with some disgust at what happened, she also congratulated me on graduating and officially pushed through a lot of paperwork to rectify what happened.
Suffice to say.
This morning I received the final step process to get my dissertation published.
Ironically, this morning is when I turned my COVID corner.
I am feeling better.
It was mild and mellow the first two days, but day three, Saturday, it got scary.
It got scary fast.
I was suddenly congested in a way that spooked me.
I realized that I needed some sort of decongestant ASAP and I couldn’t go out, I mean, I tested positive Saturday morning, so quarantining had to continue, and what to do?
I could Instacart, but it wouldn’t get to me until Sunday morning.
And frankly, when my lips started to tingle and I could barely draw a breath, I thought, I ain’t got that kind of time.
I made a couple of phone calls and a dear heart hopped on a scooter and ran over to the Walgreens in the Castro and picked me up some stuff.
I also had a friend, very gently, suggest that if it got worse I go to the ER, and er, that you might be having a panic attack.
I did recognize that.
I was panicked.
And taking big calming deep breaths was out of the question, I was way too stuffed up, and when I panic, I cry, and when I cry I get more stuffed up.
Suffice to say, I did calm down, and it sucked, and it was scary, but I got some strong decongestant in my system, got some scary Mucinex delivered the next day–had to show ID to delivery person, how weird is that? And between Saturday night and Sunday I slept.
I mean.
All I did was sleep.
And sleep.
And sleep.
I had strange dreams.
I drank tons of water.
I would get one nostril slightly clear and breathe through one side of my nose.
My cats cuddled with me, as they are now.
I slept more on than off for 48 hours.
The last couple of days really were dream like and hallucinatory.
I canceled all my clients this week.
I was holding out that maybe, maybe, I could possibly see clients tomorrow and Thursday.
Not like in person, duh, but via video.
But I have little voice quality and I also know better and though it hurt financially, sigh, I have no COVID grant or loan or buffer with the city or state, all those ships sailed long ago, I knew it would be better to take the time off and really heal and rest.
Model for my clients too, give yourself permission to slow down.
Rest is a radical act.
And then this morning, I got back the final email from the Center for Writing and Scholarship.
They blasted through my dissertation (the one they had “never received” even though I have emails in my dissertation file with the addresses of the head of the department, my dean, the registrar, and the head admin with all the forms and things and what have you, and the head of the writing center) and got it back to me with the final check list edits done and the directions to how to upload it to ProQuest.
I am leaving out a huge chunk of what happened.
Mostly, because I don’t have the energy to replay it. It was a nasty, heart wrenching experience and if you want to know about it we can talk in person, suffice to say when this is done I will be distancing myself from the institution for a while.
And that brings me to today.
The dissertation with the email with very detailed instructions on how to proceed.
I read them a bunch.
They don’t make sense, but so much of academia doesn’t make sense.
And sometimes, a lot actually, I have to read and re-read these kinds of academic instructions, they do not come to me intuitively.
Sufficed to say, I’m finally, now, in the final leg of the journey.
And I have COVID.
But, as I mentioned, it has turned and I think I’m through to the other side.
I still sound like Lauren Bacall after a half bottle of whiskey and a pack of cigarettes.
And I don’t have my normal amount of energy, but I haven’t been compelled to just drop everything and nap for four hours.
I read the email a bunch of times and decided, I’ll open it tomorrow.
I texted a friend who has been witnessing this whole thing and he said something interesting and I realized, am I just here at the very end of the longest mile and not pushing through?
Am I scared?
I suppose.
Perhaps it is perfectionism, I was sent a message this morning that stated perfectionism is “fear dressed up in heels and a mink coat,” and, well, I had to laugh; I do love a good dressing up.
So.
I opened it.
I opened the dissertation and I found an error that needs correcting, on page 52 of 267, and I thought, wow, that’s not bad. One little error.
And I tried to correct it and realized I had only opened it in a way that could be read but not edited.
And I paused.
Not because I want to be perfect.
But because I recognized that is enough for today.
I took the whole week off from clients.
Maybe the Universe had plans for me that I didn’t even know I needed to attend to.
I am going to be gentle and mindful, again not perfect, but also, not procrastinating.
Which means that I have done enough today.
I have begun the end.
And I can get one more night’s rest before sitting down at my desk and doing the final steps.
Tomorrow I do the deal.
The damn thing has waited this long.
It can wait one more day.
I’ll keep you posted.
And.
I’m not going to bother to beat myself up about this, I already played that story out, I’m not going to judge myself, I’m just going to be grateful that I have gotten this far and there is not much left to do. I’m not going to have false humility and not talk about what happened and pretend that I graduated with smooth sailing. It’s been a hideous, bumpy, tumultuous experience, and in some way, I am very well aware that I will walk through this so that I can turn around and say to someone going through the same thing, “see I’ve been there, I got you, you can do this too.”
And as the brain fog starts to settle back down and I’m getting a little fuzzy, I’m going to stop here as well.
I have nothing pithy to add.
Just that there might still be time to take a nap.
I was beginning to feel anxiety about client’s cancelling and am I bringing in enough and how much is a mortgage payment going to be?
OH.
That’s a lot.
And fuck.
I better secure some more clients.
And shit.
I need to publish a book and can someone bequeath me some money.
I don’t really play the lotto, but maybe I better start.
Fun things the brain likes to cook up.
But, as it turns out, I am not in a position to buy anything.
This year.
I had a meeting, phone meeting, with the mortgage broker my real estate agent suggested.
And he was very clear.
Nothing to do here.
No bank is going to touch me.
I’m self-employed.
I need two years of stable income.
It’s not that I’m a risk per se, but that banks are very hesitant to loan money to the person who doesn’t have a proven track record of making money.
Cool.
I get that.
So the agent said, you appear to make enough and continue to make this much and you should be fine to get a loan.
Next year.
So.
The project is on hold and I’m not going anywhere.
Unless, yeah, some long lost relative has some money for me.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.
That’s so not happening.
Anyway.
I actually felt a lot of relief when that happened, the mortgage broker saying, not this year and I’ll contact you about this time next year and then we’ll talk.
Gave me a reprieve.
Gave me some relief.
It’s not off the radar, but it’s some ways out.
And of course, time moves quick at my age, next year will be here before I know it.
Still.
Being able to take my foot off the gas and recognize that I don’t have to suddenly work more when I already work a lot, was a relief.
And.
Summer’s tough.
Folks travel.
I’ve had a lot of cancellations with people traveling.
And I’m ok with that.
There are still new clients coming in, I have a consultation tomorrow.
I picked up a new client last week.
Turn over happens.
That’s a part of my business.
Faith that things will move and taking the necessary actions and letting go, gently, of the results, is the best way forward with me.
I also hit up the MOHCD first time buyers program zoom.
Mayors Office of Housing and Community Development.
I had thought I had a chance at some of the loan programs they offer first time buyers.
And nope.
I don’t.
The city counts gross income.
EVEN for someone who is self-employed.
So it doesn’t matter that my business eats about half of what I make, the city will count all of what the business brings in.
Sigh.
So.
I make too much money.
Funny that.
Not quite enough money in some eyes and too much in others.
I did at least save a little time and exited the zoom early when I learned that piece of information.
I looked about my apartment, it’s a sweet little space, and I realized, hmm, I have plenty, I have more than enough.
I live a lovely life.
I have two cute cats.
I have a business that I run and own.
Literally.
I am an SCorp.
Well, my business is an SCorp.
I actually have 1,000 shares if you are interested in investing.
Not that I would ever go public.
Not that I even know if that’s an option.
Totally no clue, but yeah, my accountant filed the paper work for me, my business, to become a corporation rather than a sole proprietor.
Cool.
I have no idea what it means, except, that ultimately it’s supposed to save me some tax dollars.
Ok.
A lot of this is over my head.
I don’t know anyone in my family that is a business owner.
This is all unfamiliar territory.
But there are perks, so many.
I call my shots.
I schedule myself.
I still am loving the off on Fridays gig.
I love my job, that helps so much.
I am grateful for all the other jobs I’ve had as well, they have all served in one way or another–taught me how to listen, how to care take of others, how to watch for cues in the environment, having an open door policy when I was management in the service industry, all the confidences I have held over the years.
It all added up.
I shared with someone recently, that I have been groomed to be a therapist, I was built to be one.
I am grateful for it all.
It hasn’t been easy.
No.
Not at all.
But.
It has been beautiful.
And for that I am grateful.
And that house that I have built to reside in, the corporeal one this soul inhabits.
I would say, with some glee, as I forked over a spate of pastel colored pieces of Monopoly money. I liked to slowly developed my prime real estate, keeping a few dollars back in case I landed on someone else’s quick built up into hotels.
I preferred the green properties on the Monopoly board.
Not quite the same high end prices as Boardwalk, but nice places, chi chi.
“You’re just like San Francisco,” I was told once in passing, “you used to be hipster and now you’re bougie.”
Ahem.
I was both annoyed and flattered.
It’s kind of true.
I can’t tell you when the last time I went out for a ride on my flip flop one speed Mission Bicycle, although I could if I looked at my social a bit, I do tend to document when I go for rides now.
I call them “bike’ies” instead of “selfies”.
Just my bike leaned up against some cool street art.
I have a lot of those from when I lived in Paris in 2012 and 2013.
These days, not as many.
I tend to walk everywhere.
Yes, I do have a car, but, um, when you score a good spot in your hood and don’t have to move it for street parking until Friday, you, I mean, I, walk everywhere.
I did take the car out today, early this afternoon.
I went to an open house.
I guess this is when the bougie piece comes in.
Sort of.
I do actually want to buy a house.
I always have, but I never really thought that it would be possible.
Until recently.
I had a talk a few years back with a woman I know who is a realtor and helped a mutual friend buy a house.
I knew how much said mutual friend was making and thought, huh, I wonder, when I get into my private practice, I might be able to swing that.
So I had coffee with the realtor and told her my deal and that I was years out, but intrigued.
She told me to get a credit card.
Which I did not want to do, but build up your credit was the advice I was given.
Before I got sober I burned my credit to the ground and it was bad news bears getting out of that financial hole.
But I did.
And I swore, no more credit cards, ever.
NO.
But, the realtor was convincing, and I knew a few folks who used their cards wisely, paid them off immediately, and built credit whilst also getting airline miles.
Huh.
I could do that.
And, do that I did.
In fact, that’s how I flew to Hawaii in February.
Airline miles on a credit card.
I actually flew first class, I had a lot of miles accrued.
It was so worth it and my credit score has gone up significantly.
I don’t keep a balance, ever on my cards, yeah, cards, I now have two.
One is Alaska Airlines for flying to Hawaii and the other is Air France, for flying to Paris.
I’ll be able to fly free the next time I go to Paris, well, not the trip I have booked December, I already bought that, but the next time.
You know there will always be a next time I fly to Paris.
Anyway.
I have great credit.
My car is payed off, I have no credit card debt, and though, yes, I do have a ton of student loan debt, I have started paying it down.
So.
Yeah.
757 is my score and that’s considered “good” to “excellent.”
Rewind a few weeks back to hearing from a couple of people about their house buying adventures and I thought, huh, you know, I wonder.
I texted that realtor from a few years a go and we had coffee last Friday.
She thinks I can.
We started mapping things out.
I have done some research.
I have looked at a lot of things on Zillow and Bay Area Modern Homes.
A LOT.
My eyes are kind of bugged out from looking.
I’m awaiting a call back from a mortgage broker to discuss my situation and I talked with my accountant this past week.
I don’t make an enormous amount of money, but my business is doing well and as my accountant noted, my income is very stable.
I don’t personally make what my business makes, basically I take home about half of what I make.
But that’s enough.
And it’s also not a lot, by San Francisco standards, and as it turns out I make under the cut off for the Below Housing Market in the city.
I’m not interested in a ton of those homes, but I am interested in some of the first time buyer loan programs the city has.
So next Saturday I’m going to sit through a two hour Zoom workshop and take the next steps to move forward to do the work and paperwork for the city to help with a loan.
I’m excited.
Today I went to my first open house!
It was perfect.
And not quite.
The view made me super happy, but it didn’t have much closet space and it had some dingy ass carpet in the bedroom, not my style, carpet.
But oh, the view.
Stunning.
And lots and lots of light.
Which is what I really want.
Give me light!
I’m looking at industrial lofts in the city.
I like how they look.
I always have.
Polished cement floors, exposed beams, concrete, big warehouse windows.
Something Southern and/or Western facing, a corner unit please.
Which is what this loft was.
The view of Twin Peaks was fantastic.
I want to stay on “this side” of Twin Peaks.
I served my time out in the fog and I want to be on the “sunny side” of the city.
The loft was on Bryant Street in the Mission.
18th and Bryant.
A neighborhood I know very well.
I lived just a few blocks over when I first moved to San Francisco, at 20th and York.
I would day dream about a loft conversion that was happening down the block, not the one I saw today, but actually quite close, and imagine one day living there.
I told the realtor I’m working with, maybe it’s crazy.
But.
I’d love to move on Labor Day weekend.
It will mark my 20 year anniversary of moving from Madison, Wisconsin, to the Mission District in San Francisco.
When I had a two month sublet, no job lined up, about 2k in savings, and a used two door Honda Accord (that I donated two weeks later after accruing six parking tickets) with my life packed into it.
How smashingly cool would it be to land myself in a loft, in the Mission, 20 years later?
Pretty fucking cool.
I can’t know what’s going to happen.
I’m not sitting on a big nest egg–I spent that on my surgeries last year, thinking I was giving up on the idea of buying a house.
But, I do feel like it’s possible.
Anything’s possible.
Right?
I got a PhD, my own psycho-therapy business, a car, I mean.
Fuck.
I have come a long, long, long way from juggling three to four to five jobs, and riding all over the city on my one speed to get from one gig to the next.
Standing a few steps above me, holding his room mate’s cat.
Said cat had darted out from his apartment when he opened the door after I had been incessantly ringing the doorbell. It was my second time trying to get the music to stop last night–the first time one of his friends had pulled back the curtain on the window in the door and waved at me, then went back upstairs–and snuck past me to say hello to my cats.
Ziggy hissed at him, Bunny looked like she was seeing the Creature From the Black Lagoon–every hair on her was at attention, she looked like a gigantic white puffer fish.
I shooed the cat out of my apartment and he scooped her up.
I think holding the cat was helpful for DJ Douche Bag.
Who, in times of feeling generous I now call DJ Bob to my friends.
(I mean, I was young and stupid once too)
Or clients.
“Is that music coming from your house?” A client asked me last week on a video call.
“Nope. That,” I said, “is from the neighbor upstairs, DJ Bob, likes to play a lot bass heavy music.”
“Wow,” my client replied, “that must be really loud.”
Yeah.
REALLY fucking loud.
Last week was kind of terrorizing for me, as far as DJ Bob goes, he was day time retaliating for me calling the cops on his party.
Let me back track a little.
Last week I ran into the master tenant, who I rarely see, and who has assiduously avoided me, only castigating me to the landlord and accusing me to the landlord of making false claims–the landlord has forwarded her emails and his responses to me to see, that there is in fact no music.
There is no there there.
Which made me livid.
I mean.
I am not hearing things.
Nor are all of the many guests that have come over and been agog at how loud it is.
I don’t like being gas lit.
And gas lighting was what she was doing.
So when I saw her come in I opened my door, and said, “hey S_______________, “hey! S_____________” we need to talk about DJ Bob (not his name, duh).
And I explained to her that once again the music was being played quite late, had been despite my best efforts to get it to stop, ringing the door bell, etc. continuing to be played well past the 10p.m. noise ordinance cut off.
And the master tenant looked at me and said, “I was home last night and there was no music being played.”
I was a-fucking-ghast.
What the fuckity fuck bitch?
I replied, yes there was, I heard it, it kept me up, I rang the bell, numerous times. You didn’t hear me ringing the bell?
No, master tenant replied.
Well, I rang it a lot last night. DJ Bob was playing quite late.
Master tenant replied, no he didn’t, he’s not here. There was no music being played last night.
OMG.
Fuck you hooker.
You are gas lighting me.
I replied, well, perhaps DJ Bob wasn’t there, but someone was in his room, someone was playing music, there were loads of people in and out and when I rang the bell I could here the music from the side walk and saw someone standing in front of the window (they are big bay windows) wearing headphones and there were people dancing behind him.
Master tenant said again, DJ Bob’s not here, there was no music being played.
I repeated that there was and that it respectfully needed to be turned off at 10p.m. as per the noise ordinance, please tell DJ Bob to adhere to that.
He’s not here, master tenant said and went inside.
I cannot even begin to tell you how mad I was.
MAD, mad I tell you!
I heard her go upstairs and bang on a door but that’s it.
Then I heard the music, faint, but just there.
And I thought, huh, DJ Bob’s not home, eh?
I went out the back door to my apartment and up the back stairs and every step I took up the music got louder.
Until I was at the roof.
By the way.
I’ve never been on the roof.
But guess what?
DJ Bob has.
There he was, headphones on, back to me wearing his purple sweatshirt, bobbing his head, surrounded by folks drinking and smoking and dancing.
Fuck my life.
This is an Art Deco historic building with a god damn tar paper roof, that managed to not get razed in the earthquake and subsequent fire of 1851 here in San Francisco.
You’re gonna set the damn building on fire.
Or one of your intoxicated friends is going to stumble off the top of a three story building and fall into the street.
I started taking pictures-DJ Bob, the table with the turntables and mixers, the chairs, the liquor bottles lined up on the edge of the roof, the speakers, the people smoking.
All of it.
I was going to take a video but someone gave me a weird look and I got spooked and headed back down stairs.
I went to my silver glitter folder on my desk and pulled out my lease.
(of course I keep my lease in a silver glitter folder)
Wasn’t there something about the roof mentioned in the lease?
Ah.
Indeed.
There it is.
I sent the landlord an email:
Dear (redacted–landlord)
There’s a party occurring at this moment on the roof of the building. Smoking, drinking, DJ sound system. Last night I was once again put in the position of requesting the music be turned down in unit ____. First at 11:30p.m. and then upon being woken up by the music in unit ___ at 1:30a.m. I rang the bell multiple times until the music stopped.
I just spoke with (redacted) who denied that there was any music being played last night (as she was home) and that once again,(redacted) is not at home. This may be true, however, there is high foot traffic in and out of the room, especially on the weekends–some one and oftentimes, multitudes of people are in the room. Last weekend at 3:30a.m. Sunday morning I rang the bell and a man who was not (redacted) or (redacted) came down and peered out the window curtain after I’d rang the bell and without opening it said he’d turn off the music. I’m not hallucinating being woken up by music and I am furious at being put in the position of defending myself and my experience.
Today is not the first time there’s been music and partying on the roof, but it is the first time I have investigated it. This party is in direct violation of item number 14.) on the lease regarding Nuisance; number 17.) Regarding smoking in common spaces; and most especially number 21.) Roof/Fire escape (Use of roof and/or the fire escapes by Tenant, tenant’s guests, or tenant’s ivitess is limited to emergency egress only. No other use is permitted, including but not limited to , the placement of personal property.) You can see from the photos that there is alcohol, alcohol bottles, a table set up, speakers, and other property on the roof. There are people dancing, smoking, and drinking.
Please address these matters. I am bewildered by how long this has been going on.
Warm regards,
(Redacted, PhD, LMFT)
Within minutes I got the following response:
“Please call the cops! NO one is allowed on the roof.”
So.
I called the cops.
Cops came.
Party ended.
Sort of.
Party went to DJ Bob’s room with a fucking vengance.
Fucking hell, this is exhausting I thought to myself.
But I was on a tear.
I went outside and I took some photos.
Then I sent the master tenant an email:
Dear (redacted–master tenant)
I thought I would reach out after our conversation today and let you know that there are a number of folks currently in (Redacted)’s room, there’s a dj spinning in the front window, folks dancing, there’s a lot of foot traffic coming into the apartment, I just ran into a couple of girls now heading into the apartment. There’s quite loud music being played. I’m sending this message now in the hopes that you will address your flatmate and stop the music at 10p.m.
I’m again requesting that you and your flatmates adhere to the noise ordinance. Attached you will find some photos of an active DJ in the front window of (Redacted)’s room and a great deal of musical equipment set up. These are photos I just took moments ago.
I am dismayed to always have my experience challenged in regards to the noise. It feels like I am being gas lit when I am told there is no music being played. I would like to invite you to check in with your flatmates about the frequency of people coming through the apartment and again ask that the music be turned off at 10p.m. and not resumed later in the evenings or early mornings.
I will be cc’ing (redacted–the landlord) this message as well as the photos.
Please let me know if you have any questions or would like to have a chat in person. I would like to resolve this amicably and I am more than willing to do a mediation with you, (redacted), and (redacted); either with (redacted–the landlord) or the SF Community Boards.
Warm regards,
(redacted, PhD, LMFT)
The music stopped at 10:01pm
Fucking thank Christ.
And though it’s been rough during the day all this past week, the music has ended at 10p.m. every night.
Until.
Last night.
Cue DJ Bob on the stairs sweating and holding master tenant’s cat.
I realized pretty quick that he was high and that I was likely not going to get anywhere.
But.
I tried.
Basically, without going word for word, DJ Bob yelled over my calm voice that no one else complained, that when he goes to his friends house and plays til 7a.m. (!!) no one complains, that it is Saturday and he has friends visiting (from Italy, DJ Bob is Italian) and he’s going to play until 11 p.m. when they are going out.
I tried to reason and mentioned the noise ordinance was every day of the week and Saturday was no exception, but got ran over and he kept babbling at me about cops and no one else complains and the street noise.
I raised my voice a little and said, the street noise is not the issue, this is an old building and I feel like I am inside a bass drum, I can’t get away from it, I can hear it in every room of my apartment.
And.
That he was risking the master tenants lease with violating the noise ordinance.
And he shot back that I was threatening the master tenant and that anyway,
I’M MOVING IN JUNE!
Well, fucking thank God.
And.
I’M NOT TURNING OFF THE MUSIC AND MY FRIENDS ARE VISITING FROM OUT OF TOWN AND I’M ONLY PLAYING IT UNTIL 11P.M. AND NO ONE ELSE IS COMPLAINING.
And he ran up the steps in his dirty jeans and sweatshirt with the cat and slammed the door.
And he played the music until 11:30p.m.
Fucker.
So I emailed the landlord again.
Dear (redacted–landlord)
I have just spoken with (redacted) directly and he refuses to turn down the music–“I have friends in from out of town and I will be playing the music until we leave at 11p.m.” I have called the police on multiple occasions now and they either get here well after the music has abated or he sees them coming from the room and stops; thereby triggering a “false complaint.”
I am beyond exhausted by this. I cannot spend my time trying to constantly rationalize with this young man. I can only appeal at this point to you as the landlord.
I need this to cease or I will be leaving the apartment. I pay my rent early, I am quiet, I am respectful and I am an adult trying to explain to a young man who is often intoxicated why this behavior is intolerable. My email to (redacted–master tenant) regarding mediation was unaddressed and I received no response.
I am not a conflictual person but after the interaction I just had with him and his refusal to turn off the music at 10p.m. I am pretty much done. Either this behavior is dealt with or I will be giving my notice.
Sincerely,
(redacted, PhD, LMFT)
Then I called a dear friend to talk to until the music stopped and I could go to bed.
It’s been exhausting dealing with this.
And.
Please, God.
Hopefully it will be done soon as DJ Bob moves out in June.
Fingers crossed, out to a large, abandoned warehouse in the East Bay in a deserted light industrial neighborhood.
I didn’t express to the landlord the DJ Bob was moving in June as I wanted to convey my need for his intervention as soon as possible.
My worry is that DJ Bob will relentlessly spin his records at full volume until June and I don’t know that I can handle two more months of it.
So, fingers crossed.
I haven’t heard from my landlord, but I am hoping that the master tenant and DJ Bob have.
So far, at 8:09 p.m…..
All is quiet.
Maybe DJ Bob is still recovering from last night, he came in at 5:30a.m., slammed the gate, slammed the door to his apartment and stomped up the stairs.
I, of course, was awakened by the noise as my apartment is on the first floor right by the gate.
I waited with bated breath to hear if the music would go on.
Please God let me sleep.
And I did.
Until 7a.m. when my brain woke me up cheerfully and said, let’s go for a swim.
Which I did.
But not before quietly contemplating turning on my music full blast and leaving it on.
I didn’t.
I just thought about it.
There’s been no music so far today, outside of my own, and I do hope that continues.
I had another post op appointment with my surgeon this morning.
He checked out my belt lipectomy, “it looks beautiful,” he said, very pleased.
I told him that I have been doing the scar massage twice a day and he applauded that and told me to continue, pointing out that the scarring on my back would fade with time.
The scar there is a bit wider from bending over, stretching, etc.
Basically I was told, keep up the good work and I’ll see you in six months.
“Any questions,” he asked?
“Actually, yes, what is this?” I asked, pointing to a bump I’ve noticed for a few weeks and that frankly spooked me a tiny bit, what is that thing?
My surgeon felt it and said, “nothing to worry about,” he could tell I’d been worrying.
(It’s some surgical instrument he left in there and he’ll need to go back in and retrieve it! Thanks brain, thanks for sharing.)
“It’s a surgical knot, it’s a stitch, it will dissolve with time, it’s fine,” he said, then, “anything else?”
“Yes, actually,” I said. “When can I stop wearing the binder?”
My surgeon smiled at me, “now, you don’t have to wear it anymore.”
Holy shit.
I was over the moon.
Really?
Yes, really.
“I’ll see you in six months,” and off he went on his busy surgeon way.
I looked at my binder, I folded it up and almost left it in the trash in the examine room, but part of me was like, slow your roll, you might want that later.
So I put it in my purse and put on my leggings and dress and cardigan and left the examination room to make an appointment with the receptionist.
“What days are good for you,” she asked.
“Fridays,” I said.
“Ok, that puts us into September, how about the 16th?”
I asked for an earlier spot and she got me in the week prior on the 9th.
I walked out the door, got gingerly in my car and drove home to get ready for my clients.
I shared excitedly with a few friends about not having to wear the binder.
I mean.
It’s been on 24 hours a day for just under five months.
I was so fucking excited to not wear it.
The only times I take it off are when I’m taking a shower.
Otherwise, all day long, all night long.
I ate breakfast without it, went into sessions without it on, checked in a lot with my body, it certainly feels much more vulnerable without the binder on, I can start with that.
Then.
I began to notice swelling happening.
Ugh.
I sort of sensed that would happen, I mean, even with the binder on I swell during the day, by the end of the day the binder is quite tight.
My belly is always the least swollen in the morning after I have slept.
So I didn’t fret too much.
But, boy oh boy, has my attention been there all day, especially as the swelling continued, to well, swell.
By 5:30p.m. I was like, great, this sucks.
Same at 6:30p.m.
My belly felt and looked to me like how it looked pre surgery. I felt scared and tender and I thought, fuck, I haven’t had dinner yet. And some wonderful part of my brain shared, “what the fuck was the point of getting the surgery if it looks the same as before?”
Fuck you brain.
Also.
It does not look the same, the surgeon always shows me the before photos, even swollen it looks different so stop being so damn mean to me.
Then I thought.
Ugh.
I can’t imagine eating like this.
What if it swells up even more?!
I can’t do it.
But.
I also know better than to not eat dinner.
I have an eating disorder, being mindful about eating my dinner and all my meals is really important to me.
So, with some chagrin, I went and put the binder back on.
Sigh.
Fuck.
Tears.
Resignation.
And.
Relief.
Ugh.
It feels better.
And yeah, maybe it is purely psychological, but after being a therapist holding my clients trauma all day, I’m ok with being gentle with myself and being ok with sure, maybe it’s a placebo, but whatever it feels better.
So just do it.
Listen to what your body is saying.
My body is also saying, get a god damn shoulder massage.
But I can’t get a back rub yet, well, I suppose I could have someone work on my shoulders in a chair, but I don’t think lying down on a massage table is quite an option for me yet.
Gotta wait, back.
Anyway.
I have it, the binder on now, and I reached out to a friend for support and it’s ok that I’m a little sad about it and I can realistically understand that it’s just been under 5 months, the full healing arc of the surgery is 9 months to a year.
And fuck.
My arms that I had done in July, still hurt at the end of the day.
They hurt now.
Not so much that I am overly distracted by it, but they hurt and that surgery was done 8 months ago.
So patience brain.
The body is in charge, not you.
Feel your feelings and be ok with process.
Soon you won’t be in a binder.
My friend suggested I take it in small steps, work up to wearing it less and less.
And really, I got to give myself props, I went from 10a.m. to 7:45p.m. not wearing it.
My God. I really have had a lot of dreams about you recently.
I used to not dream so much about you.
I don’t know why now.
But there it is.
Maybe it’s because I was in Hawaii recently.
I wore the necklace that you gave to me, the little glass heart, the one that you handed to me that day we drove to Sonoma to have a picnic.
The day I gave you cuff links, out in the high grass while we picnicked and made out and I was shy about showing you the tattoo I had gotten for you.
You told me a story about having bought the glass heart with a little fold of yellow ribbon in the glass, from a jewelry vendor somewhere in Maui and how it pulled you to buy it and you didn’t know why you were buying it.
For someone you had not met yet.
I wear that heart a lot.
I wear the bracelet with the infinity sign on it, every day.
Every day.
I’m still in love with you, likely always will be, and that’s ok.
You in the ether, ephemeral and close and then far away.
In my dreams, in my thoughts.
I sometimes still think that I will end up back in your arms, years later, run into you and be once more with you.
Hopeless, die hard, romantic here.
I don’t cry as much over you as I used to and I try to date and I’m not always so upturned over you, I can say I’ve moved on, a little, but I “pray, every day, that you’ll be back in my arms once again.“
That just spun out into the air from my speaker.
It’s from one of the songs on one of your playlists that you made for me.
I haven’t listened to it in a very long time.
But.
I have been thinking about it.
Because.
Analytics.
What does that mean exactly, you ask?
Well.
Lover.
I could be wrong, maybe I am, but I also wonder, could he, is he, “it was not so long ago that you broke my heart, tears on my pillow, pain in my heart, caused by you, if we could start anew, I would take you back and tempt the hand of fate” is he out there reading my blogs?
Also.
Side bar.
Wow.
This playlist seems a little too prescient.
You made this for me for our six month anniversary, I asked you to make me a playlist for slow dancing with you.
I wanted love songs to dance to and these are love songs, but they’re also predicting heart break.
Did you know, even back then, that we would cause each other so much heartbreak?
So, so, so much.
Someday, someway, you’ll realize that you’ve been blind, yes darling, you’re going to need me again, it’s just a matter of time.
Fuck.
You knew this was going to happen, didn’t you, we would bash our hearts out on each other and hurt each other and try again and again, so many times.
GAH.
Maybe I should stop playing this.
That was like a side bar to the side bar.
Back to the analytics.
So, my blog lets me know a few things on the back end of the platform that no one except me can see.
I can’t see who reads my blogs.
But I can see where in the world my readers are coming in from.
I can see how many reads a day I get.
I can see if someone is in the archives.
And.
I can see what particular blogs are being read.
And.
Well.
I’ve been seeing something recently that makes me think a lot about you darling.
And maybe it’s not you.
But someone, once a week, on Thursdays, which are actually Fridays for me I think (WordPress is on a different time zone so I don’t know if it’s actually Thursdays when the blogs are read), reads a bunch of my blogs.
And two of them constantly pop up.
“Love Songs and Nail Salons.”
And.
“Hello, Stranger.”
It feels like you’re out there, quietly waving to me.
You haven’t called me or texted me or emailed me.
You did connect with me briefly, oh so damn briefly back in October, just days before my dissertation defense, and we could have talked, you called after receiving a card from me, but when I had to go into a client session you left a voice mail and that was it, not another call or text.
Despite telling you I could talk, I sent you a text later after my session ended, but you said you were on “East Coast time” and going to bed and you never reached out again.
I got damn angry.
That riled me up for a while.
Then I had my surgery and had to finish my dissertation and then it’s the holidays and my birthday and that’s when I wrote Love Songs and Nail Salons.
You are intertwined with my birthday and you might always be.
I’m not sure how long this person, you or someone else, I like to pretend it’s you, I like to pretend you’re reading this now.
Fantasy.
Hope.
Idiocy.
You pick.
I don’t care if you don’t want me, I’m here right now, I put a spell on you, because you’re mine.
Boy howdy, you put together one hell of playlist darling.
Shoo bop, shoo bop,
Hello stranger, it seems so good to see you back again, how long has it been?
Seems like a mighty long time.
Oh fuck.
Wow.
That pulled some tears up.
Hmmm.
Yeah.
I still have all the feels.
I am grateful to be writing this though.
You’re not going to read it.
Someone will though.
And maybe that’s ok.
When the love is this strong it doesn’t go away, the grief, the pain, the sorrow, time doesn’t heal all the wounds, the arrows of love from Cupid’s bow, my container to hold it all just got bigger.
You know.
What I used to tell you to make the hurt less, um, hurt”y”.
Sometimes God breaks your heart to break it open and make it bigger, all the better to hold more love.
Can what you’re thinking bring happiness, or will it bring misery?
Honey bunny.
You knew.
You knew we were doomed.
You don’t have to tell me pretty baby, you want me to try and forget you, I’ll do the best I can.
I should have listened to this closer.
I think I was just so damn enamored with you at the time. So fucking in love with you.
I remember when I was told, people will tell you all the time who they are and what they can offer, believe them.
Yeah.
“I want to fuck you,” someone told me recently. He’s not available for anything else, and I heard it loud and clear and expect nothing else from him.
Should that come to pass.
Repeat to self.
When someone tells you who they are, believe them.
I wanted so bad to believe that you would get out of your situation.
But you told me all along, you couldn’t, that you wouldn’t.
And here I am, still, wondering, but maybe….
Ah.
Big, deep breath.
I had a revery once, last March, and I can’t even believe I am going to write this, but I am, because that’s what I do.
(“I could never write a blog,” an ex-lover once told me, “you wear your heart on your sleeve, you tell things about your life I never could.”)
While I was in Joshua Tree being all woo woo with a bunch of girls in the desert doing a guided mediation and a sound bath, how much more woo can you get?
But once I stopped having contempt prior to investigation.
Something happened.
I had a vision of the two of us.
I‘m a fool to want you, I’m a fool to want you, to want a love that can’t be true, a love that’s there, for others too. I’m a fool to hold you, such a fool to hold you, to seek a kiss that’s mine a lone, to share a kissthe devil has known. Time and time again, I said I’d leave you. Time and time again. I went away.
I had a vision of us in Hawaii, living together at the end of our lives, on a lanai, or a porch, you had me in your arms, I had long, long, long hair, threaded with gray and I was so frail, and I died in your arms while the moon set over the ocean.
I can’t get along without you.
Oh love.
Maybe that’s all there is to this love, this exquisite pain that lets me know I have loved and lived and still have so much life yet to go.
I don’t know who’s reading those blogs of mine so assiduously for the last stretch of time, but it’s put you in my mind.
If you ever go, darling, I’ll be oh so lonely, I’ll be sad and blue, crying over you, dear only.
By the way.
I had that vision far before I was even thinking about Hawaii or going to Hawaii, and now having been and knowing how much I resonated with the islands and how much you do too, oh Maui baby, I do wonder.
Maybe one day, some day, far away in the future, in another life, in some other dream, I will see you on a beach somewhere and be once more in your arms.
Unforgettable, that is what is what you are…like a song of love that clings to me, ooh, how the thought of you does things to me. Never before has someone been more unforgettable.
Until then, sweet heart.
Be kind to you.
Love yourself.
Take care of yourself.
And I will do the same.
Are you lonesome tonight, do you miss me tonight, are you sorry we drifted apart?
You gave me something no one else ever has and I will never forget it.
It was also good to actually meet this client in person as we have never met in person before.
They started with me during the first shelter in place lock down.
I am coming up on the anniversary of that event.
And having some anniversary feelings.
I remember well the week prior, two years ago, things were playing out in the on again off again relationship I had been desperately trying to figure out for years.
Not playing out well, in the end, that relationship ended.
I still have pangs over that.
Why didn’t he figure it out?
Why couldn’t we make it work?
Why?
Why, I am always reminded is not a spiritual question.
It doesn’t help and knowing why is some sort of balm my brain wants to have to explain away the inexplicable.
It just was.
It just couldn’t work.
I just didn’t work.
And no matter how hard I tried I only got hurt.
I have been thinking a lot about relationships, dating, who I am, what I want.
In some persistent way I have always stowed away this thought of marriage, commitment, partnership.
Yet.
I have never really gotten close.
Despite a former “semi” proposal when I was in my mid-twenties from my one and only really “long term” relationship.
Is five years a long term relationship?
Anyway.
Why marriage?
Why partnership?
Wearing a dress, having a ceremony?
Societal expectations?
Family expectations?
My expectations?
Expectations typically lead to resentments.
I do crave company and touch and physical connection, I’m not going to deny that; but historically marriage is actually not great for women.
In a heteronormative marriage that is.
They work more, care take more, do more of the household labor.
Men actually statistically reap huge benefits being married.
Women not so much.
So why do I want it?
When I think about what I want I think about the physical connection of being with a man, I like closeness and, I hate the fucking wording of this, one of my “love languages” is non-sexual physical touch.
I’m cuddly.
Which the last guy I dated did not provide.
I love sex.
Don’t get me wrong, sex is definitely still a need, that drive is still there at 49, and may it be for some time thank you very much, although a touch softer of a demand then it used to be.
But affection.
I crave affection.
Hand holding, massage, leaning into someone, having my head rubbed.
Sigh.
But does that have to preclude being married?
I mean.
I might be putting the cart before the horse.
Am I shutting myself down from potential connection thinking better do it for the long haul?
Also.
What do I need from a partnership that I’m not already giving myself?
I love to travel, I love my home, I have a great space (when it’s not being invaded by the sonic intrusion of DJ Douche Bag upstairs), I don’t share it with anyone.
Well.
My cats.
They do think they own everything.
I keep my space the way I like it.
I have my schedule the way I like it.
I do my own thing.
What do I think I am missing out on?
What if I wasn’t missing out on anything?
I think some of this is just being really comfortable with my life and starting to find a nicer balance now that I’m not in the PhD mode all the time and have gotten a modicum of space from the last surgery I had and some decent recovery in my body.
Also.
Thank God.
My back is feeling much better.
A very easy weekend, lots of rest, lots of heating pad.
I’m actually using the heating pad right now too.
It is just nice after my day at the office.
I still need to dial a few things in there.
I’m going to pop over to Black & Gold on Valencia and pick up a vintage coat rack I’ve been eye-balling for months.
I could use an alternative set up chargers for my MacBook and a small extension cord by my desk for all the things I need plugged in–not all of my sessions are in person, I still am doing plenty, the majority of my session via video.
And one more hanging plant for my office.
But other than that, it’s such a sweet, welcoming space and I was happy to be there in my sessions today.
I ran five, only one was in person, from my office and one from home this morning.
Tomorrow I will be at home fully, all my sessions are remote.
I will be going in again on Thursday as I have a client that wants to be coming back in person.
This client was one of the last, although not the last, clients I saw in person prior to lock down.
It will have been two years.
I’m so grateful for this small baby step into a different experience with therapy and seeing my clients.
It’s not “back to normal”.
I don’t know if it’s the new normal.
It’s just nice to be getting a little more engagement with the world.
And maybe that’s how I look at dating, partnership, relationships.
Just with some curiosity and lightness and that I don’t have to figure it out.
Figure it out is a shit slogan.
For now.
Everything is exactly the way it’s supposed to be.
It always is, truthfully.
I just sometimes get stuck in thinking it would be better if….
My upstairs neighbor has been playing horrid music all day.
All damn day.
Since 11a.m.
It is now 8:15p.m.
Non-stop, no rest, no break, hardcore electronic, thump, thump, thump bass music.
It is like living inside a headache.
How’s that meth treating you dude?
I’m pretty sure the kid is using, the hours he keeps, the loud music, the people in and out partying, banging the gate, the music that is non-stop.
He’s a DJ.
He’s actually a bagger at Whole Foods, not to disparage anyone in any service industry, but he’s a hobbyist.
Not a real DJ.
Or, not a DJ with any fucking talent.
Then again, even the best DJ on the planet might stress me out if I was listening to it non-stop without being able to turn it off for nine hours.
I’ll get a reprieve at 10p.m. when we play our nightly routine of chicken when I give him a few minutes to shut down the damn system, noise ordinance, and then go out and stridently ring the door bell.
He never answers, but the music does tend to stop.
Not always.
But a few complaints to the landlord–seven emails documenting time of day and levels of noise (anywhere from 12:30p.m. to once at 4:30a.m.) including me recording how loud it was with my phone and sending that in–a complaint filed with the city and calling the cops three times, has helped a bit to get him to comply with turning off the system.
Normally I’m not in my damn house all day, except when I’m in my home office seeing clients during the work week on video, and there are a few weekdays he obviously is not working–Tuesdays and Thursdays, when it’s going off all day long.
But today.
Ugh.
Today I was in the house all day long.
Not my happy place for a weekend day.
But I hurt my back a couple of days ago.
Fuck me.
I am getting old.
I pulled a muscle in my back and it has been a screaming nightmare.
I mean.
Ok.
I exaggerate a little but it has been really painful.
I got it, sigh, hopping around putting on a pair of leggings.
Ugh.
It just went out and I screamed and said, “no!” really loudly.
It was also, wait for it, the first day I was going back into office to see clients in person.
Fuck my life.
I hobbled to my office.
I have hurt my back in this same place before and know that the muscles there are not great.
The first time I injured it was back in 2005 and it was a dozy.
Like super fucking bad.
I didn’t pull a muscle then, I tore a muscle and it took so long to heal.
I couldn’t bend over, I couldn’t lift anything more than 5lbs for literally six or seven months.
I walked with a fucking cane for five months.
It was horrendous.
This was not that, but it spooked me, it was too close for comfort.
So I knew I had to take it easy the last few days and fortunately there has been some recovering, I certainly did not tear a muscle, I have been able to lift things and move around, although watching me put groceries away would have been a hoot if you had seen me trying to get things in the fridge.
Lift with your legs!
I got down too low at one point and just threw things in the fridge.
I also couldn’t load the bottom part of my dishwasher, so doing all the dishes by hand, luxury problem.
And let me not forget the agony of changing the cat box out.
Good grief.
Today I tried to go out for a walk and realized that I had been over compensating with other parts of my back and now the middle part and my shoulders are fucked up.
Gah.
So I just did a very slow mosey around a few blocks and came back home.
I got nestled on the couch with lunch, a heating pad, a book, a cup of tea and just stayed there the whole day.
Around 5p.m. I had had it with the music.
Remember the part about being inside a head ache?
Yeah.
I tried to nap and I couldn’t.
The music was just too much.
So.
I thought, well, hmm, maybe it is time to move.
All my requests about lowering the music have been pretty snubbed and I have kept telling myself, you’ll wait him out, he’s a kid, he’ll move soon, I have invested a lot in my home and it’s lovely and cozy and I don’t really want to move.
Although I could stand a little more natural light and a little less street noise to be honest and my utilities here are pretty high–it’s not really an energy efficient apartment.
But.
It’s a five minute walk to my office.
And I just started going back into my office.
And I like the location.
But.
Headache.
Pounding headache listening to this crap all day long.
(UPDATED EDIT: I just went back to Craigslist after listening to more horrible music and thinking, yeah, maybe it is time to get the hell out of here and the ad changed! The ad fucking changed. It was listed for $2600, after I emailed my landlord the ad changed to $2750. I’m being gaslit, this happened to me when I saw my apartment when I moved in, I believe my landlord did a bait and switch putting an ad on Craigslist for $2750 which is what I had my filters set to on the site and when I came to see it, he showed me the ad for $2850, which is what my rent is, I was seriously confused but I also needed a place so I took it. And fuck, I should have taken a screen shot. GRRRR. I imagine there’s going to be a very interesting email tomorrow from my landlord.)
It’s the apartment across the way from me.
Which is literally the same size square footage as mine.
FOR $250 LESS!
Now it wasn’t always $250 less a month then my place.
No.
When it first went on the market they were asking pre-pandemic San Francisco rent: $3300/month.
They never got it.
The apartment has been empty now for about a year.
The rent dropped to $3100.
Then to $2950.
Then to $2850 about four, maybe five months ago.
How do I know this?
Because I have gone on Craigslist more than once in frustration around the noise of the music.
And the apartment always pops up in my search.
So when I saw it today I was livid.
What the fucking hell?
I furiously texted a friend, I perseverated on it, I pulled out my SF Tenant Handbook and I looked up negotiating a rent decrease. I Googled some articles.
I debated inside my head.
All the while listening to DJ Douche Bag.
My fond moniker for my upstairs neighbor–who fyi is not the master tenant, he moved in last May and has been a freaking nuisance since then.
I know he certainly doesn’t pay as much rent as I do.
And I decided.
Fuck it.
I’m writing the landlord.
I let him know that I needed a few maintenance things done at the apartment and then I made the request.
I let him know I wanted to renegotiate the rent (I had tried once last year in August and he shut me down but said he wouldn’t raise the rent this year).
I reminded him of the obvious, I’m quiet, amiable, pay my rent on time–actually early I literally pay the rent every month on the fifteenth for the upcoming month as this is when I get paid.
I’m a solid tenant.
I also said that it was unreasonable for me to be paying substantially higher rent than that which was being offered to a new tenant to the building and I asked for my rent to be lowered to reflect the rent being offered in the ad.
I also offered to sign a longer lease, 2-3 years, if that would help.
I actually don’t want to move, it’s a fucking hassle, but if the apartment across the way is being rented for way less then what I am paying and the noise upstairs continues.
I’m out.
Despite what I hear on the street about rents going up it doesn’t seem to be that way and the fact that a one bedroom in Hayes Valley in a rent controlled building has been on the market for over a year tells me all I need to know.
It’s time to lower the rent.
Right damn now.
I don’t believe the house party is going to stop upstairs, but if I was paying $250 a month less in rent I do believe I could tolerate it a little better.
Bumble has informed me I have run out of matches, “that’s all for now!” and change your profile filters if you want to find more folks.
Nah.
I’m a bit over it.
Especially as I didn’t match with all that many guys.
And that’s ok.
I have gone back in with a more discriminating eye and frankly if any one even mentions smoking weed, I’m out.
I can handle the occasional cocktail drinker, but the weed just grosses me out.
And I’m pretty set on my age range, five years younger, five years older.
That makes for a nice span.
Except when the person lies.
There are some guys that lie right from the start and put up a fake age so they will pop up in your search and then the first thing they say is, “I lied about my age, I’m really, blah, blah, blah”.
Fuck off.
I didn’t lie about my age.
I’m 49.
You don’t like kicking it with a 49 year old woman I want you to swipe left.
Swipe away motherfucker.
And frankly if you lie about your age, what else are you lying about?
I found out in a recent phone call.
Not to self, gave out my number a little too fast.
I was getting discouraged with all the not matching.
When I did match with a guy and we chatted a bit and then he asked to move to our phones and we texted a bit and then he called.
Holy shit.
I was on the call maybe fifteen minutes.
He did most of the talking.
And he lied about his age.
He wasn’t 44, he is 51.
And he gave some bullshit excuse why he lied and how women don’t want men his age and he’s actually got all this energy and he does’t look 51, blah, blah, blah.
Without letting me get in a word.
I would have told him if he had taken a moment to catch his damn breath, that I was actually more interested in a guy who is 51 versus 44.
See I figure, 44/45’ish with guys, they still might want kids and I’m out of that ball park.
Oh.
The other thing the guy lied about, he has kids.
Two.
And!
He wants more.
I was like, ok, you’re 51 and you want more kids, cool.
But.
Um.
I don’t.
And I said that really clearly, if that’s what you’re looking for, I am the wrong person for you, I don’t want kids.
I nannied for 13 years, I got my fix of babies (I do still miss a warm baby napping on my chest though, so good).
Plus, at 49, do you know what they call that at the hospital?
A geriatric pregnancy.
No thank you.
Dude rolled right over me, oh, you’ll have lots of babies with me (really, cuz I’m not thinking that at all), a whole bunch, you got time, women having babies into their 70s.
Jesus.
I want to retire when I’m 70, not be having a baby.
I repeated myself, nope, no kids, no thanks, you want kids, you better look elswehere.
And he ran me over again and said we’d have loads of kids and more word vomit.
I was like, I need to get the fuck off this call.
Then he asked where I was in San Francisco and he was telling me how well he knew the city and when I said, “Hayes Valley” he had no idea where that is.
Um, ok, I’m sorry, but Hayes is a super popular little hood and most people that “know San Francisco like the back of their hand” know where Hayes Valley is.
But you know.
Fuck, I’m glad he doesn’t know.
Cuz stalker vibe.
And then he told me his last lie, he’d lied about where he lived so that, again, he would get picked up by a wider range of women.
Not cool dude.
I want someone who is geographically desirable.
I don’t want to date a guy in Martinez.
Or where ever the fuck you actually live.
I told him I had to go and I got off the phone real fast and immediately blocked him.
Then I went back on Bumble, messaged him, thanks for the call but I don’t feel a connection, and I unmatched with him.
So imagine my surprise when he sent me a video message the next day.
WTF?!
Then he texted me twice the following day.
Hello, Iphone, it says blocked, why aren’t you blocking?!
Then yesterday while I’m in a client session he calls, now my phone’s off, but I see the call come through, not once, but twice, later when I’m out of the session.
Fuck you Iphone, block this guy.
I google it.
Restart my Iphone, block again.
Nothing today.
So hopefully he’s gone.
So yeah, just yuck.
I matched with four guys.
One responded with all emoji’s.
I didn’t message him back.
Grow the fuck up.
The other was persistent guy who wants me pregnant into my 70s, like who are you, Hugh Hefner?
The other guy was hot and I thought, jackpot, cool, went back into his profile and shit, I saw the red flag, the little marijuana leaf symbol had “frequently” next to it.
I hadn’t caught it on the first round.
So.
I didn’t message frequently smokes pot guy.
Leaving me with one match.
We have a date on Friday.
For tea.
That is hopeful.
I have not expectations at all.
The meeting for tea and/or coffee, the way I look at it, is a dry run for an actual date.
And maybe I go back on Hinge.
Who knows.
But.
I’m out there trying.
But, damn, it is tiring swiping left all the time.
No, nope, nope, cute dog, nope, NO, is that a picture from your wedding? NO. Next, nope, nope, nope, ew, why are you wearing a mask in the photo? We are not socially distancing on the app, I can’t catch COVID through my phone. No, No thank you, yikes, no to you, sir, smoking that fat blunt, no, to you friend–drinking straight from a margarita pitcher, um, no thanks. PLEASE STOP POSTING PICTURES OF THE FISH YOU CAUGHT, or your kids–does the other parent know you’re putting your kids pix on a dating app? No pictures of you and your ex, especially if you “x’ed” out their face, noooo, no to “love to laugh,” who the fuck doesn’t. Me, I hate laughing, next.
I had a few moments of wondering if I would run across dude’s profile, but so far nada.
Which is nice.
Also, ran across a former client.
Eek.
Swipe Left! Swipe left!
And.
An ex from five’ish years ago.
Also.
Swipe left.
And, when you match with a lady and she reaches out, I’m on Bumble, and sends a messages, don’t reply in all emoji’s.
Unless you don’t want to go on a date.
WTF?
Folks have some strange behaviors.
I’m not going straight up sober only guys, but I am looking more closely at the whole frequency of smoking weed thing.
And.
I do recognize quite clearly that I have to be direct about my needs.
I am not here to diminish my needs.
I am also proud of myself for the things that I did do with the last guy that I dated.
I clearly stated my sexual needs.
I said when I hadn’t an orgasm.
Albeit.
l did not appreciate the response.
“I didn’t know you were keeping score.”
No.
But, you didn’t check in with me either.
I mean.
I know you came.
But just because I’m a little vocal does not mean I did.
Anywho.
It’s not about taking anyone’s inventory but my own, thanks.
So, I spoke up about my sexual desires and what I like, and that was cool. Probably the most direct and transparent I have ever been.
Also, apparently my drive is still quite high.
I mean, I’m 49, but I still have some very clear needs here.
I also spoke up for non-sexual physical intimacy.
Something I have modeled to a person I’m dating, but never really spoke up for.
I’ll give dude credit, he did articulate that he’d noticed, but he was not able to give what I was looking for.
I am a cuddle bug.
I also recognized that I get excited about dating and connecting.
In this excitement, I down played when was good for me to be hanging out.
Monday nights after a long day of client sessions and driving cross town at 8:30p.m. when I have an early client session on Tuesday morning and then I drive back and can’t find parking where I live.
No good.
That happened the second week we were hanging out.
I ended up circling and circling and nearly crying at 1 a.m. trying to find a place to park.
I did not let that happen again.
So.
Yeah.
I learned.
I learned I can’t down play my needs, dim my voice, or do for another when I’m not taking care of myself.
Basic ass shit.
But.
As my therapist has stated this past week, I did not have healthy romantic models in my childhood.
Um.
No.
And I learned, at a very young age, that when I asked for my needs to be met I would be met with violence.
So I tend to down play them or try to figure them out of my own and I never, ever let the other person know I’m disappointed or sad or whatever “negative” emotion I am having.
Those aren’t allowed.
But.
It’s ok to let another person know how I feel, actually really important, I was disappointed a number of times and didn’t say anything.
Somewhere inside me is a little girl who thinks she doesn’t deserve to have her needs met.
I had someone ask me recently what I need and I was able to articulate it quite clearly.
I mean.
I know what I want.
Now, it’s just a matter of continuing to speak up for it and if the person can’t meet the need, that’s ok.
Dating is going to be about curiosity and exploration.
I’m not trying to find the one to complete me.
I’m complete, thanks.
But.
I am looking for a compliment.
Someone who wants to travel with me–you better have a passport, have fucking awesome sex, make out a bunch, drink a lot of coffee, make me laugh, cuddle, be taller than me, wants to be in a committed, monogamous romantic relationship, and eats their steak rare.
You brought over a bottle with you the first time I cooked a meal for you, a little weird, but I was trying to be a good hostess and you wanted a cocktail with dinner.
So, sure.
But you procure it, I’m not buying booze for anyone.
You left it on the counter when you left and I did think, hmm, do I really want this in my house?
But, I figured, well, I have neutrality and I’m certainly not tempted, so I put it in the cupboard over the stove behind the bottle of Bragg’s Amino’s and the bottle of balsamic vinegar.
And mostly forgot it.
Until recently.
I threw your toothbrush in the trash.
Granted. It wasn’t your toothbrush, it was an extra one from the dentist that I asked you to use when you asked me, “Can I kiss you,” and I said, “only if you brush your teeth.”
The combo smell of dinner at Absinthe with a client and three whiskey Manhattan’s on your breath was just too much for me to entertain kissing.
I composted your homemade raisin oatmeal cookie vanilla ice cream sandwich.
Yeah.
That went away too.
I’m not exactly mad.
Although I am a touch flummoxed.
What happened?
I mean, on one hand I have a pretty good sense, we weren’t quite as compatible as perhaps we were both pretending to be.
I’m sober.
You’re not.
It’s been a long time since I dated anyone who drank.
So there’s that.
But it was some other things too.
Not taking me out last Friday was definitely a disappointment.
Especially when I showed up at your house dressed to the nines, because as you told me last Wednesday night, “we’ll do something fun on Friday and have sex.”
Excellent.
Something “fun” on Friday turned out to be a well done steak on a plate in your house while you drank whiskey and smoked weed.
I can handle the booze to a point, but the weed, man, I don’t like it.
Especially when I asked from the beginning, literally I said it on our first date, I am allergic and I hate the way it smells, you can’t smoke weed around me, I can handle you drinking, but pot is too much–you also can’t snort cocaine off my boobs–to not have it smoked around me.
But I suppose when one is in their home, doing their thing, smoking their weed is par for the course.
I didn’t say anything when you lit up while we watched a movie, which, fyi, 1917 is fucking phenomenal, but I did pull away from you on the couch.
I just super hate the way it smells.
I recognized, from working with my therapist in a session earlier that day, that I wasn’t letting you know when I was disappointed.
I was also really disappointed to find out that you were going to go away for the weekend.
I guess you forgot that you had offered to help me move things into storage over the weekend too.
Sigh.
I mean, I understood, you had to go spend the weekend with a client in Tahoe.
Awesome.
Get your client on.
“Do you ski?” I asked.
“No, we’re just going to drink whiskey, smoke weed, and hang out in the hot tub.”
Ok, then.
You wanted me to spend the night, and that had been the plan, and Tahoe meant up early and hitting the road, so we compromised and I said I wouldn’t spend the night, but I would still come over.
But you know, I still thought we were going out.
And I did at least manage to say I was disappointed that we had to change up our plans.
I can see, however, that I was diminishing my feelings.
We had the sex.
Thanks.
I left and let you get sleep for getting up early to go drink whiskey and smoke weed and hot tub.
Aside.
WTF?
Maybe it’s just me, but my choice would have been hang out with a hot woman who’s fun and smart and creative and hella good in bed.
So, maybe I don’t drink whiskey.
So, maybe I don’t smoke pot.
But.
Fuck.
I have moves, and I have energy.
I am also five years older than you and have a lot more energy.
But this is not about you, I’m making this about me.
Meanwhile, I figured that like the other time you went out of town and didn’t text me while you were away, you’d do the same this time.
I also, honestly, didn’t feel like fishing for attention.
So I didn’t text you either.
But then when Monday came, when you told me you’d be back from Tahoe, I thought you’d check in with me.
Nope.
Nothing.
Crickets.
Zilch.
Five days with absolutely no contact.
Five.
I thought about texting, but truly, I think I’d already came to the conclusion that there were things that just weren’t working for me.
And.
In your actions, to not reach out, you spoke mighty loud.
You made a choice, which is your right, but it was a disappointment.
And.
It’s been fucking weird as hell, as each day has drifted by, that you didn’t text or call.
Not once.
Not after 11 times hanging out.
No phone calls.
No text messages.
I have questioned it, a lot, but I figure this is God doing for me what I couldn’t do for myself.
Ultimately you were saying it loud and clear, before the lack of connection, when you decided to Tahoe it up.
You don’t want to hang out with me.
And after this week, and the disappointment of last week.
I don’t want to hang out with you either.
I also have plenty to process with my therapist tomorrow.
Plenty.
Until then.
I hope you’re ok, like you didn’t drown in the hot tub or anything.
And I guess it means I’m still single.
I think I’ll pause for a moment before I jump back in.
Give it another day, but I do figure I’ll try the damn dating apps again.
And I’ll keep practicing speaking up when I feel something and not diminish it.
The guy I’ve been seeing helped me double check that my transcripts showed the full credits for my program earlier this week.
Like, super fast, I’m all fumbling around on my phone, don’t know what I’m looking for, can’t find it.
“Here,” he said, “I’m good at stuff like this,” after he watched me bemusedly for a few minutes.
I handed him my phone.
30 seconds late, “here you go.”
And there it was.
My unofficial transcript.
Showing, oh quite clearly, that yes, I do have all the credits needed to graduate.
Fuck yes.
Good god damn.
I’m fucking going to graduate.
With my PhD.
I’m a doctor baby.
It’s still so surreal.
It’s been months since I defended my dissertation, and was named doctor at the defense, but because of the lateness in the semester and all things pandemic, the paperwork did not go through until the second week of January.
And then I was twiddling my thumbs.
What now?
What next?
Let’s go people.
Then I got an excited and gushing text from a former TA saying, hey it looks like school is going to do graduation in person!
“Are you going to be there?”
Um yes.
Hello.
But am I?
Because there were some wonky administration/tech issues with the website and I couldn’t use the graduation application portal.
It didn’t work.
Fucking technology.
So, I follow up with admin at the school and I’m told, go check and make sure that you have enough credits on your transcripts and then when you find out, email such and such person.
Which is what I was doing in the kitchen at the man’s house.
In fact.
It was he who encouraged me to check it via my phone.
I’m so phone adverse when it comes to certain things.
I have all my passwords on my laptop and sometimes I would just rather look at the larger screen and see the big words and images and not be scrolling my tiny phone screen.
Well.
It’s an Iphone, so not that tiny.
But still.
I like doing the computer.
But he was like, just do it now.
So I did, and I drop the transcript ball–why is the registrar page so challenging to navigate!? And then he gently intervened, and there it was. All the glorious credits with all the accompanying “A’s” and I saw I had enough and I emailed the tech person and then I did a happy dance around his kitchen.
And then he fed me steak.
Thank you.
Then.
I’ve waited all week to hear back.
And I thought tonight, well, what the fuck am I waiting for, go back into my student account and just check to see what’s happnening.
AND!
BOOM.
There it was.
The portal was blue.
The screen showed that I was allowed to apply to graduate!
Holy shit.
It is actually happening.
It also asked me to verify my name and how I want it to look on my diploma.
Bring that bitch to me.
Hundreds of thousands of dollars in student loans later, give me that damn piece of paper.
I have so fucking earned it.
I am over the moon.
My best friend from Wisconsin may even come out and watch me walk.
And my mom.
And my people in my recovery community.
Y’all come on by now.
I don’t yet know if it will be in person, pandemic fingers crossed please, but if it is I am also hoping that they do it at the same theater that they did my Master’s program graduation.
That would be hella swell.
Because, ha, it’s a ten minute walk from my house!
He said, underneath the heat lamp at the outdoor cafe.
On our first date.
There have now been four dates.
Tomorrow will be number five.
And that is all you need to know about him.
I would like to spill all the words and looks and the synchronicities and the eyes, oh, the eyes.
But.
I am not going to.
I spill so much of my heart on these pages.
“You wear your heart on your sleeve,” an old lover once told me, “I could never write about the things you do, share the things you do, it’s what makes you a good writer.”
I don’t know about that necessarily.
I think a good writer is just one that writes.
I still write every day.
In the mornings.
Three to four pages, sometimes just one or two, but I always write.
I don’t show up here as often, sometimes I think it might be time to hang up the blog, but I just keep holding onto it.
There is something here still for me. I am not sure that there is anything here for you though.
I just keep letting you go.
I don’t know who shows up to read these ramblings any more.
I don’t know who you are.
I do know that you still read the words.
Sometimes you search me out.
Sometimes you find me on some old social media post I thought I had scrubbed away.
Sometimes you find me with esoteric search engine terms.
You keep finding me.
And I keep writing for ghosts.
This time.
This time though, I am writing for me.
About a month ago I sat down in front of my computer with too much eye make up on and a bushel of glitter and my hair wild and I did my dissertation presentation for a friend who is a film maker.
It was not as good as when I defended my dissertation and was awarded my PhD, that feeling of being so in the moment and not even realizing the camera was on was not with me when I did it for my friend.
But.
He got the gist of it and he liked it and he said, yeah, we can make this into a film.
It had been suggested to me by one of my former supervisor’s that I make the dissertation into something, a one woman show, a documentary, a film.
He said I had it, that he could watch me present the work all over again, would pay for it and that it was better than a lot of what he’s seen on Netflix.
I mean.
Fuck.
What a great compliment.
And also.
Fuck.
Scary and wonderful and am I really going to do this?
I mean.
I just finished my PhD.
I have a full time therapy practice.
Shouldn’t I just be taking long walks on my days off?
Just looking at the sky and the city and breathing without the pressure of a writing project on my shoulders.
Just walking around and watching the birds wheel in the sky.
Just listening to music on my Airpods and smiling that I don’t have to go anywhere, don’t have a deadline, don’t have to do another draft or edit or more research.
I can put away the research.
I have shelved the books.
I can let it go.
Or can I?
There is something here.
There is a story and I do think there is a movie and so does my friend.
When I started writing my blog, twelve years ago now, I would sometimes get a line of words in my head or a phrase and I would know, that’s my blog.
That’s the line.
That’s my way in.
I don’t actually need anything more than that.
Just the line.
What follows after that line I never know.
I just have a feeling for what has to be written in the next moment, the next breath, the next beat of time.
And I kept thinking about how my friend sent me the info about how to write a screen play and how it should be a certain kind of way and I was like, well, damn, I don’t have the “ending” you’re supposed to have.
But who ever does have the ending that they’re supposed to have?
What if it wasn’t bad timing lover, friend, soul mate, what if it was just that we weren’t meant to be, not really, not ever and we stole something, took away light from the moon and carved out a tiny moment in the soul of the world and hid our love.
But it couldn’t stay.
We weren’t meant to be together.
We never were.
Because we aren’t.
So I let it go again.
Let you go again and choose something else, I look up at the stars, the moon be damned, and find a new way forward.
It is dark and it is new and I don’t know where it’s going.
But when I put my hand on his back last night I thought I might just find a new way through.
And I might just have an ending to my story that has hope.
It may not be the fairy tale ending.
I have had my heart broken too many times by the fairy tale.
It will be a different story.
A new story.
And yes.
It will be a love story.
My love story, though.
My way through.
My way out.
When I chose to walk out the door to my apartment and take a right and not a left and meet him at the corner of the street and take a deep breath and say.
I remember dancing to this song from Masters of Reality in a red and blue gingham check skirt that I had made from one of my mother’s old house dresses.
I was wearing a navy blue leotard body suit with long arms and had a black sweater or cardigan tied around my waist.
I remember the sun shone through the windows of my bedroom on Franklin Street in Madison.
The light dappled through the trees and I was wearing blue stained glass earrings in the shape of elongated tear drops.
My boyfriend of two years, at the time, had hung them in the window from the screen so they caught the light and put me in front of the window with his hands over my eyes.
It was likely the best gift he ever gave me.
I felt beautiful wearing those earrings with my hair down and long and curling.
I was twenty one.
He had introduced me to a lot of music that I had no clue about.
I also introduced him to a lot of music he had no clue of–jazz and blues mostly and some classical.
The music I had grown up with, my step-father’s much played genres.
My boyfriend at the time, the blue stained glass earrings boyfriend, turned me onto what I would now consider classic alternative music.
Jody Sings is from an album called Sunrise on the Surfer Bus by Masters of Reality.
I had never heard anything quite like it and I loved the album.
He also introduced me to Soul Coughing, Jeff Buckley, Beck, Cake, Morphine, Annie DiFranco, Tori Amos–all of whom we saw in various concerts.
To this day I get some kind of sneaky cred for having seen Jeff Buckley live in concert on his Grace album tour.
I will never forget his rendition of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” it blew my soul open.
I broke down into tears when I heard of Buckley’s death weeks after he had passed.
He introduced me to Phish as well, not that I ever became of big fan of them, and a lot of heavy metal, Pantera, Sepultera, and the like, as well as Primus, who I wouldn’t call metal, but I was fucking blown away by when I saw them in concert.
I don’t know why this week I thought of Master’s of Reality, it just popped into my head.
Listening now, fyi.
And I suddenly remember that girl dancing barefoot on the warm summer sun wood floors in my bedroom.
I didn’t know that my boyfriend was in the doorway watching me dance.
I spun around with my skirt flaring out and caught him staring at me in the doorway.
The look of love in his green eyes still haunts me if I think about it too long.
He loved me, more than I think he even understood, especially after I broke up with him five years into the relationship.
He never really knew me though.
I was nascent.
I was incandescent in my beauty and I never knew it either.
And as the relationship went on, painfully, unhappily, co-dependently on years after I should have left him, I gained weight and gained weight and suffered deeper and deeper depressions.
I had no idea I was depressed.
That 21 year old girl had no idea how dark life was going to get.
My boyfriend cheated on me, twice.
He got caught growing marijuana in our house.
We both wound up with felony charges.
Mine got dropped.
He went on probation.
He went bonkers when he had to stop smoking pot.
He started drinking really heavily.
I realized I was in love with another man.
Who, now I can see, oh can I see, quite clearly, was unavailable and the love was always going to be unrequited (though he told me once quite drunk how much he was in love with me), which was my way of staying safe.
The love of the unavailable man.
My music, blue stained glass earring boyfriend, lost it when I broke up with him.
Lost it.
Hit me.
Spit on me.
I ran off into the night.
One very cold January, Wisconsin night, dark as sin, snow piled so high, no cars driving down East Washington at that late hour.
I ran out of the house in my flannel nightgown and made a phone call to the police from the payphone in front of the grocery store a block away.
I was terrified.
It was a long, scary night, and a story for another night of blogging.
He stalked me for a few years.
I got a restraining order.
He broke it and because he was on probation for growing pot he went to prison.
He’s married now.
Two kids, wife–former classmate of mine in high school, my how the world is small.
House in Sun Prairie, I looked him up a few times years ago.
I don’t wish him harm, he was in a terrifying place and lost his mind.
I grew.
And I also stopped being available to available men.
There are many other reasons why.
I needn’t list them to underscore how the things I did to protect myself came back to haunt me later.
Oh siren song of unavailable men.
It’s been one year today, one year since I saw you last, my love.
My former lover.
And things.
Well.
They are a changing.
New therapist.
New year.
New PhD.
New dating attitudes.
New healing.
I’ve had three dates with three separate men this past week.
I have a second date with one of them tomorrow.
I don’t know where any of it’s going to go, but I do know, that I am moving on.
So when I hear this album, it’s still playing, but we’re almost to the end.
It’s only 45 minutes long.
I can still be that beautiful barefoot girl with the long hair in the long skirt dancing on the warm wood floor, my hips swaying, my arms in the air, ecstacy.
I’m 28 years older.
28 years wiser.
I have been to hell and back.
I have put myself there.
I have rescued myself.
I have had so much help.
I will never repay it no matter how much service I do.
I feel like I am breathing again.
And the grief that once choked me has finally lessened it’s grip.
Maybe it was the warm green eyes of the man on the date last night who said, “I would follow you to Wisconsin,” maybe it’s just God, maybe it’s the music.
Maybe it’s love.
The love I have chosen for myself and the realization that I can hold space for that beautiful girl because I finally belive.
Lucky one I am too Lucky three The one for me One, two, three I’m on my knees Jody sings I get high When she rings Clouds roll by Jody sings I get high When she rings Clouds roll by yeah Lucky one I am too, yes I am Lucky three The one for me One, two, three I’m on my knees Yeah, yeah, yeah On my knees On my knees On my knees On my knees Jody sings I get high When she rings Clouds roll by Jody sings I get high When she rings Clouds roll by Yeah
I haven’t been to the nail salon since a few days prior to my surgery.
Now.
That’s been approximately 7 1/2 weeks.
A long time for this lady.
I love getting my nails done.
It has been a splurge of mine and also a bit of a living amends that I have been making for a while now.
So to go nearly two months without is saying something.
I don’t indulge in much.
No alcohol.
No sugar.
No drugs.
No flour.
I mean.
Let a girl get her nail salon on.
However.
Nail salons are also emotionally intense.
First.
One is held hostage for an hour to an hour and a half while the toes get painted and the finger nails are polished up.
And one, I mean I, I am forced to sit still and feel all the feelings that wish to flit through my mind.
And then there are the love songs.
I mean.
Is it just some romantic comedy trope, but do all nail salons have some sort of love song loop or playlist?
My salon does.
So I spend the entire time listening to love songs and trying to stay out of the dangerous neighborhood of my mind that is you.
You, my darling, you.
I seem to get more and more space from my heart ache and loss and longing for that old unrequited love siren song.
But get in me in a nail salon and I get teary.
Sigh.
I really am trying to more on, but I did seem to get walloped by it today.
Maybe it was just that I haven’t gotten my nails done for a while.
Maybe it’s that my birthday is next weekend.
49.
I am going to be 49 years old.
How the fuck did that happen?
My birthday last year was basically in lock down.
But we managed to spend most of the day together.
You cleared your calendar and I felt pretty damn special.
I won’t go into the details of the morning, although I can remember it very, very well.
We were supposed to go to a fancy French restaurant…..
Aside!
I’m going to Paris next year for my birthday and Christmas!
I figure, 50 years old is a milestone year and since I celebrated my 40th in Paris, why not my 50th?
I booked myself a pretty Air BnB in the Marais District.
My favorite neighborhood to stay in.
And it turns out to be a five minute walk to my best friends home!
I was in Paris for my 48th birthday too.
Missing you, although I was dating someone else.
A very short lived relationship.
I keep fucking hoping that one of these days I will actually be in Paris with a partner, not longing for unrequited love to come swoop me off to Cafe Charlot.
I mean.
The cheeseburgers there.
Divine.
Anyway.
We were supposed to go to a fancy French restaurant, but shelter in place happened again literally the day before my birthday.
So you scrambled and found a sushi place that was doing take out in Half Moon Bay.
We drove to Half Moon Bay and held hands and listened to our various playlists and I sat next to you, while you drove, intoxicated once again with you.
Trying.
Really trying.
To stay present and in the moment.
And I did pretty good, in hindsight, I know I was just compartmentalizing like a mad woman, but for that afternoon I managed ok.
Although, you caught me looking out at the ocean once and you knew, you always did, that I was sad.
We parked in Half Moon Bay’s cute little downtown and walked around and went to a florist shop and I got a painting that I just looked up at and a Christmas ornament–currently in a place of honor in my bedroom.
We walked past this ridiculously cute bed and breakfast and fantasized about going there next year.
“Let’s take a whole weekend next year for your birthday,” you said.
Which would be this year.
Except.
I broke up with you again.
I’ll never forget you saying, “I am so tired of breaking up with you,” the last time I saw you in person.
I’m tired of it too.
So.
I wasn’t too thrilled to be in the nail salon listening to love songs.
But.
I didn’t die.
I didn’t burst into tears.
I’ve definitely done that before.
Although.
One did slide down my face.
See.
The story goes.
I’ll be single forever and I’m getting old and you were the one and I can’t have you and I’m going to wither and die on the fucking vine.
But.
The thing is.
That is just a sad story my brain tells me.
Yes, baby, I miss you.
And baby, it’s cold outside.
And baby, I’ll always love you.
But I don’t have to be held to some cross of martyrdom and sadness alone and lost in my fantasy world of you, pining for some day, some day.
I’m allowed to be with someone.
And love will find me.
I know it will.
Even if I am haunted at the nail salon with love songs that make me think of you, it doesn’t mean that there aren’t other love songs out there for me.
Someone is singing one for me right now.
Maybe I’ll hang some mistletoe in my doorway and wait for the caroler’s to come.
I’ll be waiting.
Patiently.
By my pink Christmas tree.
Yeah.
I did that too.
heh.
I figure that I couldn’t go out and get a live one this year, too soon since the surgery, too much lifting and even thinking about getting one on the roof of my car was too overwhelming.
So I ordered a fake one.
And since, I mean, it’s fake, why not just fucking embrace it and really go fake.
I got a 7’5″ pink glitter Christmas tree.
I know.
I am not fucking around.
And today I decorated it.
It is beautiful.
And though, I thought, wouldn’t it be sweet to have you over, it would always be sweet to have you over, I can’t imagine that after 11 months of not seeing each other, you want to come over and look at my Christmas tree.
Even though the two ornaments you’ve given me are hanging up.
After nearly four weeks off, I went back to work today.
I started out this morning by guest lecturing (remotely via Zoom) at CIIS in the Clinical Relationship class on erotic countertransference in the clinical dyad.
That was fun.
I did that for about an hour then transitioned to my first client of the day.
Fortunately for me, a phone session.
Followed by another phone session.
Followed by a video session.
Then a break.
Phew.
Break much needed and yes, yes I did, I took my first unaccompanied walk!
It was just a block, don’t freak out.
And I went super duper slow.
Like.
Ridiculously slow.
I walked to the mailbox and mailed my rent check for December.
It felt great to be outside.
Though intense, and I walked back much slower than I had walked to the mailbox.
Then I had lunch in bed.
Now.
I will say that was my only meal in bed and for that I feel pretty happy.
I had breakfast at my “desk”, aka, my kitchen table and tonight I had dinner in my living room sitting in my reading chair.
Normally I like to sit on my pink velvet couch and enjoy the view of the night sky out the window framed in soft yellow string bulb lights.
However.
My couch is too low to sit on comfortably and get back up from.
By the end of my sessions tonight I was definitely feeling stiff and I had gotten a bit swollen up, but I really didn’t want to eat dinner in bed.
Although, I will say that I did not force myself to write this blog at my desk.
I’m writing from bed, propped up on pillows, three behind my back, two underneath my knees.
I can push myself a little, but I’m not a masochist.
And I know that going too hard back into things is not good for my healing.
Gratefully I am in a profession that is not too active.
Granted prior to my surgery I have a times found this challenging–being so sedentary.
Before becoming a psychotherapist I was a nanny, in fact, I nannied a good way into being a therapist–nothing says good times like juggling full time work with full time school and getting my hours to become a therapist.
In a sense, until very, very, very recently, I was working six to seven days a week.
So this down time I’ve had recovering from the surgery has also been surreal.
Lying in bed watching a lot of videos.
I did some reading too, but mostly I think I just slept and watched videos and tried to not be in self-pity when the weather was screaming gorgeous out.
I literally missed the best weather of the year indoors for three and a half weeks recuperating.
That being said.
Once I am fully healed up I will be outside and moving and doing all the things.
My next post-op appointment is December 10th.
At which point my surgeon will let me know when I can start exercising again–more than just walking.
I sense it will still be a slow journey towards being as active again as I was prior.
I cannot wait to get back into the swimming pool.
Or!
To go out dancing.
My, oh my.
I have missed dancing.
I mean, pandemic quashed that in a major way, though I definitely had a lot of private dance parties by myself in my kitchen.
Then I had a burst appendix in February, followed by my first surgery, the brachioplasty, followed by the belt lipectomy.
My dance moves have been severely restrained.
I have a friend who is all about the dancing and keeps sending me invites and I’ve had to turn them all down.
I had a teensy narrow window of opportunity when I was feeling better resourced after the brachioplasty and able to move my arms without feeling like they were going to rip apart, and I had just defended my dissertation, that I could have possibly gone out.
But.
My friend was out of town and I spent that weekend getting my household prepped for the next surgery.
Considering how slow the healing process takes, it will likely be March, April, May of next year before I’m really able to hit a dance floor again.
But it’s there, just on the horizon.
And today gave me just a tiny glimpse of hope for that.
In a sense, I had a full eight hour work day.
I lectured for an hour, then had three sessions, had a break and then did four more sessions.
That was a pretty big day to start back in.
I’m tired.
And also.
Just a smidgeon exhilerated.
It was so good to see my clients again!
I missed them.
And I missed my morning routine.
It felt really nice to make my breakfast this morning, make a coffee, sit at my desk, read my emails, eat, drink my latte, write my morning pages in my journal. Rather than get up, make breakfast, bring it back to bed and crawl back into bed for the majority of the day.
Sure.
I was stiff sitting at my desk and had to keep my core still, but fuck, it felt so damn good to be back to a semblance of my normal routine.
I am also grateful that I have a late start tomorrow morning.
I will let myself sleep in and I will take it very slow in the morning.
I also normally have a late session on Mondays, but not today, and that helped.
I checked in with my person at lunch too and let him know how my day was going and said out loud that if I felt like it was too much I would cancel on my evening sessions.
I did not have to do that.
I did have to be careful to sit still and be really gentle getting up and out of my chair in between sessions and taking bathroom breaks.
It’s interesting what a little down time and sitting in my bed for, what now, twelve days?
What it will do to your mind.
I’ve been bed bound recovering from a surgery.
Third surgery this year.
Kind of crazy.
I have not had any surgeries in sobriety until this year.
I am no longer afraid of the pain pills or of becoming addicted to that shit.
I do not like them.
No.
I do not.
Ugh.
Gross, wonky thoughts, horrible nightmares, weird mind meanderings, drugged sleep.
Not for me.
When I was out there using and drinking and smoking and fucking around I liked the up all night kind of drugs.
Cocaine was my spirit animal.
This girl liked to party all the time, party all the time, party all the time.
I didn’t like the slow track.
Never have.
Likely never will.
I have a good girl friend who tells me I drive like her step mother.
Now in some vernacular circles that might come across as an insult, not in this case.
Her stepmother was a rally race car driver.
What my friend doesn’t know is that I slow down when I have folks in the car with me.
heh.
Anyway.
I will also add that pain killers, they do work you know.
I have found myself asking for them.
But only right after the surgery.
The first surgery this year happened in early February.
Burst appendix.
Well, it wasn’t burst until I was actually in the ER.
Then it burst.
Guess that’s a lucky place to be if you’re appendix is going to pop, might as well be where it will be taken care of.
I eschewed the pain meds, I said, no thanks, I’m sober, don’t want any, no way, no how.
Except.
Well fuck.
It was surgery.
And coming out of it was excruciating.
Apparently when I came out I still said no to the pain meds on offer, I have no memory of this.
However, after about twenty minutes or so, maybe more, maybe less, it’s hazy, I couldn’t take it.
The nurse who was typing up a note looked at me and said, “honey, you’re dying, let me give you something.”
Tear leaked down my face and I nodded yes.
Oh sweet God.
Was the relief immediate and welcome.
That was the only time I took anything.
I refused the rest.
But after having gone through that experience I realized I could handle surgery.
And not relapse.
Thank fucking God.
I also realized I was tired of my belly.
The loose skin from the weight loss.
Weight loss I’ve sustained for years and years and years now, twelve I think.
I was too old when I lost the weight for my skin to bounce back.
It just sagged.
I have always been self-conscious about it and it was disarming to lose all that weight and then be left with a body I still had to come to terms with.
I think that’s why a lot of folks actually gain the weight back.
The skin is depressing.
I did a lot of work.
I did a lot of praying.
I did a lot of acceptance.
And I had beautiful body experiences.
I have dated men who were stunning.
My ex for sure.
Gorgeous and hyper fit.
And I still felt self-conscious.
Not as much as I used to.
But it would happen.
No matter how many, “thank you God for this beautiful body” prayers I said, I still felt something.
Sometimes is was dismay, like if I hadn’t been messed with as a kid would I have drown myself in a sea of sugar to cope with the feelings that wouldn’t ever leave me.
Add weight to protect myself from the world, from the predatory gaze of men in my family or on the street on in school.
Would I have been just a normal size kid?
A beautiful body to match my beautiful face.
I used to wish that I could just cut off my head and put it on another body.
And yeah.
The work has worked and the acceptance has worked and I’m hella grateful for this body that I have been given to walk around in and ultimately, that it saved me, it took the brunt of the mental and emotional pain I was in and held it for me.
Thanks body.
And.
I also wanted something more.
Something transformative.
Like all my tattoos.
A new story for this body.
A new experience.
The appendectomy and the healing that happened and the focus on that part of my body pushed me to inquire about skin reduction surgery.
I have talked about it for years with my therapist.
I have dreamt about it, if I win the lotto type dreams.
So.
I talked to my GP.
And she agreed.
And she referred me to a plastic surgeon at Kaiser.
And I stood naked in front of a mirror and took 365 degree photos of my body and the sagging skin on my stomach and upper arms and sent a stranger photos.
My first naked selfies.
Probably my last.
And I met with the surgeon and he asked me why I wanted the surgery and I told him my reasons and I told him about all the work I have done and how long I’ve been abstinent and how much I wanted to do it, with tears on my face.
And he said.
“You’re the perfect candidate for this surgery, you really are, you deserve to have this surgery done.”
And he said.
“But your insurance won’t cover it, Kaiser won’t cover a dime of it, believe me, I have fought for this for many a patient.”
He asked me one other question, “does the skin on your belly prevent you from walking?”
Um, no.
And he said unless it was so much skin that it prevented my mobility my insurance wouldn’t cover it.
And he ended with, but I still think you should do it and I’m going to refer you some numbers of colleagues in the Bay, as Kaiser in San Francisco is not doing any cosmetic surgery at the moment due to the pandemic.
I took naked selfies for no good reason.
Ugh.
And for all the right reasons.
I called all the numbers and I got no after no because pandemic, because booked up, because on vacation, blah, blah, blah.
He was amazing to meet and he’s been a dream to work with.
He was not cheap.
I blew all my savings.
I’ve been saving to buy a house.
But instead I decided to remodel the one I live in.
I also used student loans.
I ain’t gonna lie.
I figure I’ve become a great therapist, I have a full client load, I have a lovely business that I have built and worked on and put my heart into creating.
I can afford it.
I will make the money back.
So we set a date, July 16th, to do a brachioplasty, belt lipectomy, and butt lift.
There were some complications which meant that I had to derail the surgery a bit, turns out I was anemic and the surgeon wouldn’t due the full surgery.
But we compromised.
He did the brachioplasty.
And I’ve been recovering from that, pretty well, too I think.
It’s been rather extraordinary to not have the wings of skin hanging off my upper arms.
My arms are still healing and it was painful to go through the process, but man, it was worth it.
After a month and a half of healing I got an iron transfusion to accompany the plethora of iron supplements I had started taking in July.
And my surgeon set my date for the belt lipectomy for October 26th.
hahahahahahahaha.
Right after my PhD dissertation defense.
Can I just say that whole thing was stressful as fuck.
I successfully defended.
I am a doctor.
Huzzah!
And I pretty much turned right around and started getting myself prepped for the belt lipectomy.
Big ass surgery.
And in hindsight I am grateful that there were complications with the first surgery, I don’t think I could have dealt with both my trunk and my arms being inoperable.
It would have been too much.
So I went in 12 days ago and got it done.
He removed 7lbs.
7lbs!!
Of loose skin and tissue.
Fucking amazing.
I’m still too swollen to see much of a change, but I am excited for getting healed up enough to see the difference.
And wear clothes and buy new clothes.
And walk outside of my house.
I’ve been pretty bed bound for the last twelve days.
But.
I am happy to say.
That once again, I got off the pain meds really quick.
I was on Percocet, which is basically Oxycodone.
I hated it.
I mean.
In the beginning I took it without thought because I was in so much pain.
And I slept a lot, a lot, a lot.
But after my six day post-op follow up appointment I felt ready to titrate off the shit.
I went one more full day on the meds, going longer in between taking the pills.
And I had a plan to wean down and cut the pills in half and be off of them by this past Friday.
But.
Ack.
I remember one night, Tuesday it was, one week after the surgery, where I realized that I didn’t need them and that I didn’t want to continue taking them and I was afraid I would become bodily addicted.
So I stopped cold turkey.
And yeah, it wasn’t fabulous, the first night, Wednesday, was hard to sleep and I stayed up until 3 a.m. watching videos, but I got it out of my system and I haven’t had anything since this past Tuesday.
Four and a half days now.
Just Extra Strength Tylenol, lots of bubbly water, and videos.
Movies, series, cooking shows.
And for some reason.
An awful lot of what I have watched has been set in New York.
I have always wanted to live in New York.
And in some ways I sense it’s a good thing I didn’t when I was till actively drinking.
I think New York might have been the death of me, San Francisco nearly was.
So I never made it there.
I never moved there.
But I have thought of it often.
A brown stone in Brooklyn.
A therapy practice.
Seasons.
Granted.
I know winter there is not the bucolic cinematic scene that I watch cozied up with my fuzzy blankent.
Winters are brutal.
But spring, summer, fall.
Oh, wouldn’t it be nice?
I am nostalgic for a place I have never lived in, though I have visited three times.
And I fit in.
I fit in quite well.
I love the characters, and the character of the city.
I also know it can grind a person down and I know a lot of folks that have moved away.
But there is something about it.
Even now, on the cusp of turning 49 I think about moving to New York.
Though I sense you have to be young to make it in New York and really get established.
I am too old.
I have my one bedroom rent control apartment in Hayes Valley and my office is a five minute walk away.
I have the fog and the cable cars and the trolleys, the ocean, the multitude of beautiful hills and vistas, the Victorians.
Sure.
Yeah.
There’s homelessness and rampant drug use and shit on the sidewalk and some guy in the neighborhood who walks around with a super huge sound system strapped to a rolling cart, but there is still beauty.
So much beauty.
And just like I fit in New York.
I fit in San Francisco.
I’m in year twenty of living here.
So.
I don’t think I’m moving to New York anytime soon.
But there is something there.
A life maybe, running parallel to the one I am in now.
That once in a while I can just see out of the corner of my eye.
So when I’m ready and fully healed up I think it might be time for another trip back.
Which might be a bit yet, I do have to heal and I am going to Hawaii in February for a conference.
Maybe in the summer.
A four day weekend.
A stay at some swank hotel or a cute Air BnB in Brooklyn.
It also feels weird because WordPress has once again changed some things on the site and the layout I’m used to using has changed. But so far, well, so freaking good.
It is nice to be home.
I have missed you!
I have been busy, I won’t lie.
So busy that it makes me wonder how it is that I can even take the time to be sitting here in front of my computer not working on homework.
My God.
The amount of homework.
It is horrendous.
There is literally not a day.
Ok.
There was a day.
That I don’t do homework.
I didn’t do homework on Thanksgiving.
I almost did, but then I just cut myself some slack and said, no, take the day off or you’re going to be pissed.
And the day was taken off.
I went to a movie!
In fact, heh, I went to two movies!
I cannot remember the last time I saw a movie in the theater, probably last Christmas? And to see not one, but two in the same day was crazy.
I went with my people to a matinée at the Embarcadero Cinemas, which I love. I do adore a good art house space, plus, there is just something pretty about that part of town when it is emptied out, as it was being a holiday. The view of the city, the Embarcadero, the bay, the Bay Bridge, the downtown skyscrapers and plenty of parking, which in and of itself is a miracle.
We saw At Eternity’s Gate, the Vincent Van Gough movie with William DaFoe.
First of all, DaFoe is a fucking genius, he’s got the Oscar on this one.
Second.
Horrendously sad.
But I mean, you know it’s not going to end well, the man cuts off his ear for fucks sake, it’s not like this is going to be a happy movie.
Yet.
It was a gorgeous movie, Julian Schnabel did amazing work.
It’s filmed on site where Van Gough did his paintings, Paris first, than the South of France in Arles, and the light he manages to capture is just exquisite.
It felt like being in one of Van Gough’s paintings.
So much beauty.
So much grief too.
I was in tears and the ending just had me with tears pouring down my face, but ultimately, it was such an extraordinary work of beauty that I was grateful to be able to see it.
And I was grateful to reflect that I have gotten to see a number of Van Gough paintings in person.
Although I have never been to the Van Gough museum, I have seen his works in the Louvre, the MOMA New York and the MOMA San Francisco, and The National Gallery in London.
That’s pretty damn good if I think about it.
I am blessed with having gotten to see the amount of art I have seen in my life.
There is so much more to see.
So much more.
Speaking of art, I had hoped that during my down time from work with the holiday I would get to the MOMA, but I did not, too many other things were happening.
Lots of homework, internship work, seeing clients, seeing friends, running errands that needed desperately to be run, clothes shopping–I hadn’t been clothes shopping in so long it felt kind of crazy.
I’ve lost a little weight the last few months and really had to get new jeans.
And I’m not complaining about that at all, it just took forever for me to have the time to get to it.
You may see a theme here.
Busy.
The new internship is going well and I feel like it will grow me into a very healthy private practice therapy business.
Which is also part of the reason why I haven’t been blogging here for some time.
I’m not much of a tech person, not really, not at all, and for my internship I needed to build a website.
Now if I had the money I’d just hire a friend to do it, in fact, when I do have the money I will most likely do just that, but in the mean time.
Well.
Shoot.
I already have a blog on WordPress, I’ll just use WordPress.
Except.
Ugh.
I didn’t realize that I had inadvertently connected the two, my professional website with my, very private, thank you very much, blog.
I mean.
Some of you out there know who I am.
But most of the people reading my blog don’t know who I am.
I am anonymous here and I always have been, since it allows me to pretty freely write about what ever I want to write about.
Oh.
Sure.
There are things y’all don’t know and that will stay like that for ever, thank you.
But.
I am really transparent here.
I write about all sorts of things.
All sorts of things that no therapist wants their clients to know about.
So you may imagine my horror when I realized that you could access this blog through my professional site.
I don’t believe I let that oversight go more than a few days.
The horror I felt though when I realized that the website I’d worked on so hard was linked to my personal blog was no bueno.
I mean.
Yuck.
I don’t believe any of my clients found it.
In fact, I do wonder if anyone actually did figure it out.
It wasn’t very obvious, but for a couple of days the “About Me” was my “About Me” blog from this site, which isn’t exactly scandalous, but it is sassy and certainly not anything I would want a therapy client to read.
NO.
So once I fixed that I spent too much time trying to figure out how to separate the two entities.
I spent too many precious minutes and hours away from my homework on the help chat.
And then WordPress went down, well, it didn’t go do per se, but the administrative support did and really, the couple of chats I did have done nothing for me, except taunt me with the fact that there was a way to separate the two from each other, but I couldn’t figure it out.
Like.
My understanding of technology is a five-year olds.
So for a while, like a petulant five-year old, I just stopped trying.
Then I started reaching out to friends.
I have had three-hour long sessions with friends and nothing was accomplished, except for me to get more frustrated.
I wanted to blow up the site.
I wanted to pull my website, but I’d fucking bought the domain and paid for two years of hosting.
I wanted to delete my blog, my baby, this guy, but really?
No way.
l have over 2,500 blogs on this site and they are valuable to me.
More about that later.
So.
My best idea was to lay as low as possible and not write any blogs while I was getting it all sorted.
And yesterday.
I think.
I hope.
Fingers fucking crossed, I figured it out.
Well.
Not the real solution.
But something that would allow me to be anonymous here and not have any tie to my professional site’s identity.
For now it seems to be working, so I’m not going to jinx it.
And hey.
Look at that.
I got to run.
It’s time for me to get ready to go to bed.
I have early supervision now before work and I’ve got a six am start.
Auntiebubba 