Driven

I did not fuck around today.

This happens when one, and I mean, me, is up at 6 a.m.

I actually woke up at 4 a.m. to use the bathroom and my brain attacked me.

I couldn’t fall right back to sleep.

So many thoughts in my head.

So many places I wanted to be.

I had a rough time getting back to sleep, so when the alarm went off at 6 a.m. I was not happy, but I bounded out of bed and jumped right into my day.

I was up early to do my morning routine and because I had to be in Berkeley this morning to set up my account with Wells Fargo.

Grateful Heart uses Wells Fargo and thus, now, so do I.

I also was up early so that I could get across town and pick up another associate who I have known for years who happened to get hired the week before I did.

She knew I had a car from doing orientation with me a few weeks ago and had asked if she could get a lift to and from the city.

I was happy to oblige.

I was thinking earlier of all the people who have given me rides here and there in the city and how nice it was to finally be playing that gift forward.

So yeah, I could have used an extra half hour of sleep, but it was really quite nice to be of service to a fellow.

We chatted and caught up on the way there and I think I may be developing a new friendship.

With a woman!

With a woman my age in recovery.

So freaking nice.

I have had some dear, amazing, special friends over the years, but San Francisco can be a bit transient, especially with the rents being what they have become and the cost of living going higher and higher.

We talked a lot about that.

I told her about my buyout and she told me how she negotiated down a rent raise at her current place.

A place that although she does not have rent control, but because she’s been there so long and it was in an area of the city that was previously not a delicious place to live in the city, is still relatively cheap.

When she told me what her new rent was I was astounded, it was $100 less than what I spend her on my studio and I’m paying below market.

I told her she could not move, that there really was nothing at all out there in the price range that she described.

In fact.

There is little in the price range that I was hoping for, for myself.

But.

The buy out.

And having taken a bit extra out in student loans for this semester, I have enough to get me into a place comfortably.

And I can spend a little more than I want, should I need.

I started doing some bigger price searches.

I’ve raised my rent to $2300 a month in my searches.

Part of me cringes at that.

That’s basically a thousand more than what I spend now.

But I can do ten months of that kind of increase with the money from the buyout and with the student loan disbursement after I paid tuition, I can cover a few more months of that and be in someplace much more expensive.

Because, fingers crossed, I will be making substantially more money as I go about setting up my private practice internship office.

I got the small business loan monies, that I have to pay back to Grateful Heart, either through fundraising, which I will shortly be setting up a GoFundMe account, or through the accrual of fees from my clients.

It wasn’t a huge loan, $1500, but that’s enough for three months of rent at my office space.

It doesn’t cover three months of administrative costs, or the cost of getting a Square account, setting up a website or doing GSuite, which I have to set up all of that as well, plus business cards, but it gets me started.

I can’t withdraw any money from the account, I can only deposit to it.

So now that I have the account number I can set up the GoFundMe and it goes directly to Grateful Heart.

I can be transparent about where the money is going, that it’s not lining my pockets, but setting up a base for my practice so that I can get started.

So that happened.

Then I headed back to the city, dropped my new friend/old acquaintance, and headed to my first open house of the day.

I had four that I wanted to make before I got to supervision, for my other internship.

Between the two internships, I put in four hours of work on my “day off.”

I didn’t know if I was going to make all four, but the one I wanted to see the most was the one with the earliest open house.

And in the end, it was also the only one that I applied to.

Fingers crossed people.

I was ready to drop all the money I could on it, but the manager had very strict directions for how the process was going to go and I couldn’t get into the conversation with him without it getting misunderstood really quickly.

Language barrier.

So.

I just made it very clear that I wanted the place, I filled out the application, turned over my credit report, my letter of reference from my job, and gave him all the information he needed.

If I get it, move in would be next Thursday.

If I get it, I’m moving in next weekend.

Like I said, fingers crossed.

The only thing it didn’t have that I wanted was laundry on site, but there’s a laundry mat a 1/4 block away, so I wasn’t too upset about that.

It was big, the main studio part wasn’t that big, really just a touch bigger than my main room currently, but the kitchen.

OOOOH.

So big.

I mean.

Really big.

I could have a huge table, which I have always wanted, I have always envisioned a great big farm kitchen table to spread out all my books and school work and papers on.

I once housesat for a man in East Oakland who had this magnificent huge dining table and I would spread out all my work on it, it was just lovely.

I could see myself in this studio, with a great big table, a couple of chairs and just acres of room to write and work and do homework.

The kitchen also had a full size fridge, a full size gas range, lots of shelves, two windows, and a pantry!

The bathroom was no great shakes, no bathtub, but a good clean space, and a decent shower stall, plus again, lots of shelves, including shelves outside of the bathroom.

I mean.

Really I want the place.

I did all the actions I could do, now I have to let go of the results.

And I really made an effort to get to all the open houses.

From the one I saw at 11 a.m. on Guerrero and 18th (location!!!!) then over across town, like literally all the way across town, to a one bedroom in-law in the Outer Sunset on 45th and Taraval by noon.

To a studio on the Haight, literally on Haight street, just in the lower part, not the upper.

To another studio on Fell Street.

All three were poor fits for me.

The in-law was cramped, dirty, and ill lit, low ceilings, bad light, I was like, no more goddamn caves for me.

I said thank you, no thank you and left.

Which was what happened at the next one on the Lower Haight, much smaller than the place on Guerrero and $150 more expensive.

No thanks.

Then when I zipped over to Fell Street, the studio was already taken and was no longer being shown.

I mean, literally some one did what I was trying to do at the Guerrero studio, but they managed to drop the cash to the landlord and get it.

There was an agitated man on the porch angrily texting a friend when I arrived who informed me.

Oh well.

So then I drove back over to the Mission and made group supervision with enough time to grab a salad from Guss’s Market and do twenty minutes of reading for school.

And that’s not counting the driving I did later.

I think I drove more today than I normally do in a week.

I am very, very, very grateful to my best friend for talking me into that car.

It has been such a gift.

So I took care of her too, my little marshmallow, and drove her to the car wash as well.

Before I did my evenings derring do’s.

Grateful for that car does not begin to even cover it.

Seriously.

Look At You

Beautiful!

“I miss you and your flowers,” she finished and gave me a big hug, “make sure and spread your love around we need it.”

That was a very nice way to end the first day of my three-day weekend of classes.

A big love hug from one of my favorite professors.

It was really good to see her and also to just take a moment to reflect on how far I have come.

It was about two years ago this month that I found out I had been accepted into the Masters program where I am at.

So much has changed for me from making that decision and following it up with some actions.

Actions that often felt tiny, small, inconsequential but ended up leading me here, now, in my second semester of my second year of a three-year Masters of Psychology program.

Not too bad.

Not too bad at all.

And so much of the work has been showing up with faith in the process.

I’m still not 100% sure what I am going to do, but I have so much more clarity and I have direction and I have, now,  a couple of years of doing the work under my belt and I know that I can do the work, which is huge.

It’s also exhausting.

I am tired.

I mean.

Tired.

Sometimes the transition is a challenge, the one where I am getting up an hour and a half earlier than I do on the weekdays, the one in which I skip having a weekend off, the one in which I have to show up, suit up, and participate, instead of sleeping in.

I got an adorable text from a friend in regards to it being the weekend and Friday and I laughed.

Which is better than bursting into tears, my Friday is more like a hard-core 11 hour Monday after working a full week of work.

Followed by another eleven hour day and then a seven hour day and then it’s Monday again and I get to go back to work.

Fuck.

I’m tired thinking about it.

I always make it through.

Some of that time I am more caffeinated, but I had to cut it out after a certain point today otherwise my brain would be up half the night attempting to process all the stuff that I went through during the day in class.

And I went through a lot of stuff.

I’m actually doing work now.

Sigh.

Ugh.

Turns out I missed a podcast that I needed to listen to for my Trauma class.

So.

Yeah.

Homework on the weekend I thought I had it all done.

Oh well.

So it goes.

It’s an interesting podcast, there is that.

I just want to finish my tea and watch an episode of America’s Next Top Model.

Shh.

Don’t tell.

I mean I would like to wind down, but I also know that I am trying to balance it all out and be present and have done the work and yada, yada, yada.

I am glad though, to be in class, to see my cohort, see my friend, have an impromptu lunch at a sushi spot with a friend in the program.

Good to connect and reconnect.

I got to see people I care about and love.

To know that I have another community of people to connect with is a great deal to me that I was never expecting to get out of the program.

An extra unexpected gift.

The friendships, the hugs, the conversations, the people who have expressed their affection for me and for my journey.

It is a blessing.

I’m excited for all of us, for the path being travelled that we are on, oh, I know, our paths will fork and people will change and go on their different ways, but we have this time together, these three years and it is an incredible experience.

Nope.

I don’t always want to be vulnerable, I don’t want to process, but I do, I grow, I change, and as I turned down a few invitations to do things this evening, I know that I was doing the thing that was going to best take care of me in my person and show up for class as rested and as ready to participate and share my experiences.

The relevant ones.

Sometimes I don’t share, sometimes the gory details are shined up a bit, but really I am pretty clear about who I am and where I have been and, now, where I hope to move towards.

It’s been an opening of a new part of me.

I am appreciative and honored and sometimes.

Well.

Yes.

Tired.

But.

Here’s to working a little extra, doing a tiny bit more, taking one more little step towards that goal.

I don’t need to know where the end goal is.

Oh.

And look at that.

Podcast done.

Blog almost done.

Ready for a spot of tea and then.

Yes.

Some rest.

So I can get up and do it all over again tomorrow.

See you on the flip.

Where.

I will be.

Ready to teeter totter a few more baby, albeit tired, steps down the road.

 

Don’t Give Up On Men

Who says I have?

“Don’t give up,” another friend said to me in person last night after seeing my post about being done with Ok Cupid and online dating.

I haven’t given up on anything.

Well.

I have given up on shame.

Shame–a painful feeling of humiliation or distress caused by the consciousness of wrong or foolish behavior.

I have believed for so long that the longing to be in a relationship was wrong and foolish.

That I have to be somehow above this basic human craving, that I don’t deserve it, that I am mistaken or stupid or that, I like how Wikipedia puts it: to have shame, means to maintain a sense of restraint against offending others.

That’s it in a nutshell.

I have to restrain myself from offending others.

I can’t tell you what I want, I don’t want to offend.

Well fuck you and fuck off and I’m fucking done with that.

I haven’t given up on the capital “M” men in my life.

I love men.

Men are awesome.

So are women, fyi, I don’t want to become a man, I just want to hang out with one and have a relationship.

I love the way men smell and look and swagger, and talk and guffaw, and they way they open doors or give preference, I like having my bags carried and having the man walk on the outside, the one closest to the road, I know that’s old-fashioned, but I like that when  man does it.

I like ginger men and blond men and dark-haired men, brown-eyed, blue-eyed, green-eyed, hazel eyed, I like how a man sometimes cannot mask when he is struck by my beauty.

THere’s a man I know, a friend who is happily married and I know and adore his wife, they are really an amazing package and I admire the relationship they have.

At one point I was attracted to him (years before he met his wife) and wondered about pursuing something, but there was never really a spark or indication of attraction from him.

Then one night I was up in Noe Valley heading into the basement at St. Phillips and he turned and saw me walk in and did a double take, it was like he was seeing me for the first time, or as it were, seeing a different side of me.

Instead of jeans and a baseball jersey, which I think I lived in for the first year I was sober, I mean I wore that baseball jersey the fuck out, I was in a long A-line vintage swing coat in forest green with a silver fox fur collar and my hair was up and I was in makeup, I don’t know where I was heading, but I will always remember his reaction.

I could hear him intake his breath and I saw his eyes widen before he could drop the neutrality mask back into place.

I have an affect.

It was one of the nicest unspoken compliments I have ever received.

I’m not looking for adulation, adoration, or admiration from the male of the species either.

It almost has nothing to do with men, even though ostentatiously I am looking to date a man.

It has more to do with the act of desire, the want, the eros of something.

The Greek word eros denotes “want,” “lack,” “desire for that which is missing.”

I recall when I learned that in my Comparative Literature class in college.

I remember thinking, Jesus, that’s it, I don’t have it and I want and want and want and am in shame for the wanting.

I want to cover myself from this most basic of human needs, because to want like this must be wrong.

And of course, patterning, predilection, the art of taking on without realizing it, those desires of those that I was closet to and repeating their acts and actions as my own.

I kept chasing after those who were unavailable, completely beholden to the man who wouldn’t have me and aloof from the men who were available.

I don’t give up on men.

I give up on the idea of needing to be ashamed.

I cannot even express the freedom.

I have felt lighter, happier, more settled in my person.

I have felt more love.

For myself, for my circumstances, for the relationships that I am in, with family, friends, my fellowship, my employers, the little guys I take care of, for community, for San Francisco, for the world.

An easing of lightness in my limbs and a firmer ground underneath me.

It reminds me of the promises I have heard so much over these past ten years and often don’t pay attention to anymore, they’ve come true, then I forget, then I have to do some more work, and then, lo, they come true again.

….and economic insecurity will leave us.…

It does not say that I won’t be economically insecure, I have been,  may be again, but the fear of being economically insecure has left me.

With the shame leaving me, flying off into the wind on the backs of wild geese, I can feel that same sense of promise and change in perspective.

I don’t expect that because I have a new-found attitude and awareness that my situation, being single, is going to change.

I just feel so much more comfortable for it.

“We’re experiential learners, and we can be told how it feels or feel it for ourselves,” he said to me tonight over a cup of tea at the Church Street Cafe, “I wish sometimes it were different, but that’s just how it is.”

I get it.

I want the experience of being in a couple or yes, being married (I don’t necessarily need the experience of having children, I have gotten to work with some amazing children, and I suspect that will continue), although I don’t expect either experience to fulfill me or make me a better person.

They will just make me a person with that experience.

That’s all.

And I am an experience junkie.

I want to feel all the feels.

I want to see all the sights.

I want to go to Paris with my boyfriend and hold hands in the Tuileries and go for a ride on the ferris wheel and kiss on the top of the orbit, the gondola swaying the Paris dusk in summer.

Yup.

I wrote that.

I want that.

And I am not fucking ashamed of it anymore.

It doesn’t mean it’s going to happen or has to happen.

I just get to let go of my own idea that I have to please you by denying myself this human experience.

I’m done denying myself for you.

I am my own woman.

Who needs a man?

hahaha.

Ah.

I kill myself.

I Let You Stick Your

Dick in my_______?

Fill in the blank.

I mean, use your own imagination as I am already going way too graphic to start the blog, and sex, though a topic I skate around, is not one that I go into details.

Some things are best left in the bedroom.

Or the kitchen.

Or.

Well, what ever room you prefer.

I ran into an ex today after work, I almost did not recognize him, and that was the first thought I had, “I really let you….”

Ahem.

I don’t apologize for my brain, that’s the way it goes, I just do the reporting.

We caught up for a few minutes.

He has not done much.

I have done a fuck load of things.

Just to break down the basic gist of things, in no particular order since I dated him I uh, moved to Paris for six months, went to Burning Man a few times, rode the AidsLife Cycle ride from San Francisco to LA, went to London and Rome, moved around a few places in the city, took French classes, wrote a lot of blogs, finished a book, learned how I prefer to eat persimmons, got a few tattoos, and made a bag load of friends and acquaintances around the world.

“You know, same old, same old, still living in San Bruno, working for Cisco, keeping out of trouble,” he said eyes torn between my messy fog hair and my cleavage.

Stop staring dude.

Most of the time when I run into someone I used to date or sleep with there is no awkwardness.

There are only two men in San Francisco that I run into that are a little uncomfortable and awkward and I wonder who side it is on, mine or theirs, but it is there.

The one thing that the two have in common, aside from they both slept with me, is that they both slept with me around the same time.

“How’s Shadrach’s mom,” he said, “do you still spend Christmas with his family?”

He remembered.

“I haven’t in a while, but I am still in contact with his family, spoke with his mom fairly recently, she’s retired from teaching, his brother has a two boys now, his dad’s good,” I paused.

“Memory like an elephant,” he said, “nothing escaping this.”

I shivered.

REALLY?

I slept with you.

Nothing physically unattractive, in fact, he’s a very handsome man.

A little heavier set then I recall and a lot more grey hair, and I noted how he compulsively shoved four pieced of gum in his mouth during the conversation which led me to believe he was trying to quit smoking for the umpteenth time.

Just, not really a personality match.

I have a lot.

Him, well, not so much.

There’s nothing wrong with this, we just were not a match and it is really interesting to look at that time and see it right in front of my face at the corner of 7th and Irving.

I hooked up with Mister Gum Popper less than three months after my best friend died.

“Oh, look at you, how cute are you!”  My room-mate at the house said, poking her head into the room, seeing the two of us inclined on the love seat in my room tucked into the huge dormer window of the old Victorian at 23rd and Capp Street.

That was about all the excitement in the relationship.

We looked cute together.

We talked about doing things.

Rather, after a few weeks, I talked about doing things.

He used to surf and had a board in his garage and lived by the ocean and I wanted to learn how.

“I went out surfing!” I told him, remembering suddenly the numerous times I tried to get him to take me out.

“You did not!  Good for you, I haven’t been, well, I haven’t been in, awhile, I guess.” He frowned trying to figure out the last time he went, “we never went out, did we?”

I smiled and shook my head negative sir.

“You are surfing and you went to Paris, just like you said you would,” he finished.

That startled me.

I don’t remember telling him that.

“You really did it, I knew you would, no doubt in my mind at all.” He shrugged deeper into his coat, “well, uh, nice to see you, you, uh, you look amazing, welcome back to the city.”

“‘Night,” I said and turned toward my destination, steering my bicycle up the small incline of 7th at Irving.

I locked my bicycle up and took off the lights.

“I don’t doubt that you are going to,” my friend said to me the other night over a cup of tea.

He was referring to my taking up of the write a novel in a month challenge.

I said I would.

So I am going to do so.

I don’t know exactly where this stick-to-itness comes from, some times I think it is a characteristic failing of people pleasing, but hey, whatever, it is fucking working.

I am going to do it.

I walked around the Irving area scoping out coffee shops and cafes.

I have an idea where I will be doing a lot of the writing and went there later this evening and had tea with a ladybug and did some reading with her as the fog swirled in from the ocean and the temperature dropped another few degrees.

They have a good tea selection and just the right amount of anonymity, I’ll blend in and be left alone, I think.

My thoughts then went to the other man, the other man I slept with around the same time as my ex-when Shadrach died, he had once lived across the street from Tart to Tart on Irving and as I sat in the window sipping my tea I looked over and realized his apartment, where I first met him, was across the train tracks, directly in my line of sight.

I worked with his room-mate for a while and knew him through her.

I ran into him the Saturday before Shadrach was pulled from the life support.

He came up to me and said, “you look amazing, your hair,” he gestured at my head, “wow.  And you are like the incredible shrinking woman, you are smaller every time I see you.”

News flash, friend, I dropped more weight.

But that is neither here nor there.

He was a bright spot in my week, the only bright spot in a week drowning in tears barely hid beneath the fog I would watch out the window on the third floor; it ceaseleesly billowed over the tops of Twin Peaks and rolled heavy, somnolent, and drear toward General Hospital.

He invited me to a movie with friends and we went to the AMC on Van Ess and watched some stupid comedy and I leaned on his shoulder the whole time.

Afterward he tried to flag me a cab and none would come.

“I would invite you home, but I don’t think that’s a good idea,” he said as another taxi with its car full zoomed by.

“I know what you mean, but I could use some not a good idea,” I replied.

I think sometimes had I not slept with him, we might have dated, I sort of blew it.

But I didn’t.

I wanted to be comforted.

I was.

The ex was also a comfort.

All we did was watch movies and lie in bed.

And unfortunately, not have as much sex as I thought we would at first, it petered out.

He was depressed, living at the edge of the ocean, anxious, on Antabuse, not my way to stay sober and I don’t recommend it, heavily smoking, working a job he hated, getting money regularly from his parents, eating out on coupons.

The best he could do to comfort me was wrap up under an old quilt in the basement in-law studio he was living in and sleep with me.

I watched a lot of movies and broke up with him a couple of months later.

“You needed the comfort,” a confidant said when I asked what the hell I was doing.

I suppose I did.

What I have found since, is that action is my comfort.

I like to sleep in, who doesn’t, but I have to do things too.

I have to get out there and be remarkable.

I want to live.

Even if that means walking cold through the streets of Paris lost.

Or riding my bicycle through the heavy wet fog of the Outer Sunset.

I want to do.

And be.

And grow.

Compassionate.

Kind.

Generous.

Sexy.

Abundant.

Travelled.

Well read.

Well written.

And loved.

Yes, that.

Always that, the love thing.

But you know.

Loving can stop your fear.

That’s the true comfort for me now.

 

But it’s not always that clear.