dream.

i have a vague memory of my dreams from last night. ray and i, living together and laughing, his arms around me in a kitchen, not unlike balter's house. i got the sense that i was out west. there was a mountain there. and then, i am at school, carrying books. i am wearing a pencil skirt and a nice sweater and i am having a discussion with my teacher about something political. its important. i have written a paper that is really good... or a book or something? i walk outside, i am happy.

ray is gone, he's working in chicago. i left him the other day, he got on the train. i miss taking trains to the city. he goes to work and i stay here, and while he's gone i always deal with wynn and i can hear the anger and disappointment in his voice when i tell him that i've done it. i don't want him to be upset with me, i want him to understand that i deal with wynn because of my fear of death, and to remind myself of how strong i am. i deal with wynn because he needs a friend. i deal with wynn also because i am weak and i don't know how to cut ties from a person who is bad for me. that is also true.

.....and.... i guess i shouldn't have just left this entry. prolly should have finished it.

darkness visible.

 I first saw a review for the book "history of a suicide - my sister's unfinished life" in what must have been time magazine, or maybe perhaps it was the nation. it must have been time, the nation's review of books is always very wordy - sometimes so much so that i feel like i need to have a phd in order to understand just what the hell the author of the essay is talking about.

"history of a suicide" interested me, in part because i am still not over greg's death & i want to understand more why he did what he did, and partly because i myself, have been suicidal. it sounds illogical, to write that sentence, when i read it over again. like i do not understand why a person would want to die - when i understand, all too well, why life would make a person want to die. i understand all too well how life can batter a person down, how it can make you just want for it to fucking stop. and, in fact, up until greg's death, i believed that suicide was a viable option for me. a last ditch effort when life got too shitty and i just couldn't deal with it any more. when, in the throes of my depression - which, often gets unbearable, in the worst moments of my self hatred, ending it all by my own hand had always seemed like a decent way to go. in fact, i recall that those who had known me (i do not speak to them anymore) believed very strongly that if i did not die from an accidental or mostly intentional drug overdose, then, it would most definitely be by suicide by age 27.

perhaps this notion would have become true if not for a few factors -

1. i moved back home & in doing so, watched my father, a once brilliant man turn into the simple minded never without morphine always high man that he is now. i do not blame him because he is in pain, but it became obvious that his pain medications were doing more than just getting rid of his pain, they were also obliterating his mental capacity for conversation, high minded dialog, and in general participation with the world & his family. he was and is content to sit or lay in bed & have the world pass him by. i realized that, i too, was on a rather fast path to becoming like this - a zombie in my bed, numbed out and high most of the time.
2. i watched my then best friend's little brother die from cancer. it was horrible, and what was not lost on me was that a person who so desperately wanted to live, was not going to get that chance, and i, at the time, did not, at all want to be on this planet. i regret a lot of the choices i made during this period of time. i feel a lot of shame, a lot of regret, and a lot of anger towards myself because i should have known better. i know that my friend is so phenomenally fucked up from that experience, and instead of being a better friend & kicking her ass for being stupid, i let her make stupid choices, and i made stupid choices with her. while i quit making those dumb choices, i don't think she did - i suspect she continued to fuck up and hid it from me. we never talked about it, and when i did try to get her to be honest with me, it was met with an uncomfortable silence. i wasn't the person she wanted to talk to about any of that. i hope one day that she is able to forgive me for participating in ... being such a huge mess, with her. i wish i had known then what i know now.
3. i did not die, from the huge amount of drug use that went on during the five years that i attempted to numb my pain. the fact that i didn't, although i came close a few times, is still a mystery to me. the fact that i never ended up in a rehab, that i was able to come out of all of it, and quit my destructive habits on my own, with simply my own force of will, is something i still don't understand. why is it that i can regulate the amount of pills i take? how is it that i can keep from being tempted and not want to get high anymore? perhaps it is because i finally stopped running. i finally took a good look in the mirror and i worked out what was wrong with me. i forgave myself as much as i could for everything i hated about who i had become, and i slowly worked on changing into the person i am now. at the time it really didn't seem like i would ever make it - i figured quite honestly, that i would fail, and more than likely, that i would end up like a lot of the people i know - on the streets, involved in some shady relationship where i trade my body for drugs, and in order to deal with the fact that i have sunk that low, i would do more drugs and the cycle would repeat until i finally died. and when i died i would be lucky. truly, this was how i saw my life. it is not lost on me that i must be a strong person, to be able to look at wynn, to be near him, and know i can ask for heroin, to know that he wanted me to - that he was hoping & praying i would just ask him, just please ask him for it because he would have given it to me, and we could have had a glorious downfall together. that a big part of him was banking on that, was banking on my will power not being strong enough to say no. but, it was. it is and it was and all i saw was what i used to be and god, it was pathetic and i felt sad for her, i felt so sad for her.
4. but most important - i lost greg. greg's death has had as much of a profound impact on me as robb's did, if not more. because robb's was, in some ways, expected. when you play with fire, you expect to get burned.

but i never, in my wildest dreams expected that greg, my best friend, my quirky socially anxious little brother that i wasn't born with but thank the gods i got to have, would, kill himself.

and so, i picked up this book, in some ways, because, i want, and will always want to know, why he did it. why did he decide that life was so unbearable? why didn't he tell me? he told me everything. i was the person he came to with his problems. if he couldn't tell me he felt like dying - then, i failed him as a friend, as a sister. i miss him so much. with ray in my life, that sting just hurts all the more, because greg would have loved ray & they would have become such good friends. greg would be proud of me too, for finally being with someone who i am equal with, for dating someone i deserve. i always wanted greg to be part of my wedding, and, when ray and i talk about marriage and kids, which we do, talk about - more often than ive ever talked about it with anyone else - it becomes bittersweet because there are so many people that won't be there, but most of all, greg won't be there, and it sucks.

and so i am reading this book, and i keep writing down other books it references, all about suicide - as if i can somehow understand and connect the dots. i used to think that greg had just lost it - that it was this momentary lapse of insanity, but, i know that isn't true. because when he came over to my house, the day before he died, he looked at my mother & i, in a way, that said he was saying goodbye. in the book, it said that most suicides privately say goodbye to those they love & care about before they commit the act. it was only in retrospect that the look he gave both of us made sense. i tell myself it was a momentary lapse of insanity, but i know it wasn't. there was no note. i used to think it was because of nina & he had broken up, that she had left him for matthew. but i don't really even know the full story of that. all i know is that the last place he went was to her work, that he watched her or something before he went into his car, shut the garage door, ran the engine, and died. the next door neighbor found him, and it was too late.

the book has now become highlighted, sticky tabbed, marked up. i keep looking for answers in it.
but i know even when i reach the last pages, the answers i am looking for, aren't going to be there.

my righteous anger

Perhaps as a way to distract myself from what i have actually been feeling, that listless feeling of depression, i have been reading a lot lately. i have been doing things, being active in my community, politically active, always, wanting to make a change for the better - as much as i can, attempting to stay engaged.

i read koren zalankas' book on anger, titled 'fury' in the span of two days. i devoured it. i didn't relate that much to her, i have never had a problem with being angry. if anything, i have always shown my anger. she came from a house where it wasn't okay to show her anger - she shoved it down. she was alienated from her emotions. i remember what zak once said to me on a summer day, when i was fired up about something political, he told me that he wished he had what he called my 'righteous anger' - that i get angry and seem to believe i have that right to be angry. and once i am, i believe i have to do something about it. and i go about finding ways to fix it. whatever indignation it is - whoever has slighted me, or the individual i care for - i usually don't stop until i feel that i have gotten justice. it's fitting that my tarot card is justice. i seek it for those who don't have a voice. it is important to me. i don't understand how people can become so apathetic. how they can just sit there and take it. it astonishes me every day that americans just let their government treat them like shit. that they don't want the systems that beat them up to be fixed, punished, changed. because i sure as hell do. and i won't stop until they are. zak, got that much about me right. i do have 'righteous anger' - i also just get pissed off. i sometimes hold it in. and then i explode. usually at someone who doesn't deserve it. and i tend to keep track of every little thing someone has done to slight me, i don't always hold it against them, but i never forget. so, i read this memoir on anger - by this girl who was this break out author, who had written the book 'smashed' about binge drinking - which, i couldn't relate to, binge drinking, because i can't drink much, it makes me sick. but i could relate to binging on drugs, so i replaced the drinking with drugs and it was like i had written the book. i wish i had written a memoir but i don't even know where to start with my fucked up life, so i just keep reading them, hoping one day i will know what story i want to tell.

i wish i wrote more in here. i keep telling myself that every day i will write, and every day i tend to fail at this miserably, and then i get angry and upset with myself. ray uses my laptop a lot, and i use that as an excuse to not write. it's not that i lack material or things to write about either. i have a lot going on, a lot of things to keep track of, to talk about, that i want to have written down. i am afraid to show this blog to those who want to read it, because i don't want everyone to know my inner thoughts - i learned from the myspace debacle but, i also want to open myself up to those who want to know me better. i have become so closed off and i don't like that. it is as if i don't even know myself half of the time. i used to be such an extrovert. and now i am so quiet, when in the company of others. i watch and i listen more than i talk. i think this has a lot more to do with the fact that i am older now, and i don't need to show off who i am, or tell stories to get attention, but also i wonder if, loosing so many friends hasn't had some big affect on me. i am sure that it has.

i finally cut off all contact with wynn, it took me forever - but i did it. how many months did it take? 4. i am surprised by the fact that ray let me ride that roller coaster and never got angry with me for trying to work it out on my own, trying to be his friend. i am also surprised by the fact that wynn in the end, turned out to be way more manipulative than i ever, ever gave him credit for. i guess i always saw him as a dumb, lovable guy. i could never see him as a person who would want to hurt me, stab me because i had found love with someone else, someone who was not him, and that i was happy with that person. so wynn did what wynn knows how to do, he hit me where it hurt the most - he self destructed and started to shoot up heroin, and in doing so, i got to re-live what happened with robb, but differently. i can not begin to explain, how robb's death has altered me as a person. it has fundamentally changed me. in some ways, robb's death allowed me to live. because after i got over his dying - after i got over the 5 years of nonstop drug use - which was how i dealt with both him and his brother dying - and i came out of that fog - i realized how lucky i was to be alive. in avoiding his death, i went through hell - i lost a huge group of friends - i put myself in horrible, dangerous situations, i was trying to kill myself because i didnt want to be alive anymore - and i was doing a damn good job of it - but, afterwards, i learned so much, much more than i think most people will ever learn in a whole lifetime. i am grateful for that experience.
when i told wynn about all of these experiences, and of course it didn't make a dent in his thinking. so i spent the past four months trying to get him to stop shooting up heroin, fearing that he would accidentally overdose, like robb did. i rarely slept. i pulled out my hair. i was anxious all the time. i had headaches. i looked like shit. i was crying constantly.  he would say he was quitting, and i would believe him. then days later, i would go over and find him fucked up, nodding out, and drinking on top of it. i drove in epic snowstorms trying to take care of him, trying to right some wrong that i felt i had done by leaving him. of course, i had completely forgotten that i was beyond miserable while i was with him - that he had done nothing to help me as a person, that he weighed me down. that he was life sucking, like a leech. that our relationship was always about him, about me taking care of him, about his needs over mine. he reminded me a lot of my father. someone who was always high, who required me to babysit him, someone who couldn't take care of himself at all - someone who when left to his own devices would steal from me, would drink himself into a vomit induced stupor, who would harm himself in order to harm me. who had no motivation to make a better life for himself.

i had given him suboxine after i had talked to his mom, after i had told his family how bad things had gotten. he was angry with me, for telling them, he told his friends & anyone who would listen about how i had betrayed him by telling his parents that he was shooting up - i am such a horrible person because i wanted him to get help, but i could not, and i would not, just sit there and idly watch him self distruct in his parents home without them knowing. a vision kept returning to my head, where he would be dead, pale, all life gone, with a needle lying next to him, on the couch in the basement. it would come into my head at the most random moments, when i least expected it. i don't know if this was a premonition or if i was just sick with worry, but i knew i couldn't do that to his mother - couldn't let her find him like that. i wouldn't let him end up like robb. so i met with her, and i told her what was going on. i do not regret it. i do know that he tried to shift the blame onto me, like a child, a teenager, what a joke. i learned later that he had taken the liquid morphine that i give my dad at night when he can not sleep. we had noticed that it was going down a lot quicker. i swore that he would never steal from us. how wrong i was.

the last time i saw wynn, he had told me he wasn't using. i had met with him while ray was out of town, to see if he was okay, to see if he was lying to me, to check up on him. i met him at his work. he told me this story about a girl we both know, and how he saw her in a crack house, and how she was sucking dick for crack, how she has been doing this since our friend shannon had died. he told me how he wanted to take her with him, how she shouldn't have been with such awful people. i said that sometimes, its what happens when someone you love dies, and you are a girl. you become exploited. you are exploited, in the name of drugs, in the name of numbing your pain, and those who exploit you will pass you around. i could hear what they say about her in my head. it disgusted me. i asked what he was doing there. he looked at me and he said without a beat 'smoking crack.' i hit him. hard. he tried to tell me that he hated it, but it didn't look like he did. he didn't see the connection, that he could and would become just like the girl he was telling the story about. the one he wanted to save. i should have left then, but i didn't. we went to eat and had a really good conversation. it was only later that i found out he was high the whole time on heroin. i honestly didn't notice. he didn't seem any different. i should have checked his eyes. was i supposed to check his arms?

days later and i am off in south bend, desperately needing some alone time. my parents had been fighting, and ray was working on my computer. i just needed to get the fuck out. wynn calls me on my phone, and somehow, our conversation turns to his drug use, and i find out he had never stopped using. oh, right - he had gotten kicked out of his house. perminately. he had called me wanting sympathy, or help, or something. he had sent me messages saying that he is still in love with me, that, all he needs is my love. you see, he will stop using heroin, stop destroying himself if i just get back together with him. we can start a family then, get married, buy a house. live an ordinary life. these are his words, not mine. he is living in a delusional world. the terror those words fill me with is overwhelming. i answer the phone, and, for once, finally, after dealing with all of wynn's childishness and bullshit in a relationship that lasted 5 months and god knows what for 9 months, i start to scream. i start yelling. i am filled with a fury i didn't know i could have. it has become all too clear to me how he has been manipulating me, manipulating my fear of death, manipulating my emotions & what has happened to me and my scars, in order to fuck with me, in order to get back at me, for not loving him in the way he wanted me to. all those nights of crying. i only wanted him to be okay. i only wanted the best for him, i really did. but i couldn't love him because he was not what i wanted, nor needed. i lash out. i tell him he is sick, that he is fucked up, that i can not believe he would manipulate me in this way. i tell him that all i wanted to do was to help him, was to be his friend, was to be a part of his life in a positive way. i tell him that he has fucked up, and fucked up good, and when he wakes up and realizes what he has done, it will be too late, and no matter what, no amount of begging will help him. he has crossed the line - he has pushed me too far. and when i have been pushed too far,

when,
you finally cross the line with me, when, in my personal relationships, you finally anger me to the point where i yell at you (i do not, anger easily in my personal life. i used to get angry easily, i used to eviscerate people to no end. i used to be such a ruthless bitch. i thought this was a good thing about me. i would find the weakest part of a person, and then i would prod it, relentlessly, and then, in front of people, i would tell everyone what said person's weakness was. i told myself i was being 'truthful,' i told myself i was being 'honest,' i told myself that it was a good quality. it wasn't a good quality at all. it was mean, it was being a bully, and i did it as a defense - i struck before anyone could strike me. i did it because i hated myself and who i was, although i didn't know this at the time. when i quit using drugs massively, when i came back home & worked on myself as a person & really went about changing all of the qualities about myself that i hated, this was one of the ones i changed first. so, i rarely, if ever, get angry at my friends, get angry with people in my personal life. i get angry about principles, but rarely do i get angry with people) - where, i see red, where my voice raises and i actually want to harm you, where, i know and you know that i am beyond pissed - then, chances are we won't be talking ever again.
because i will take a lot of shit. humans are flawed. we have so many things that fuck with us, moods affect us, and i give people the benefit of the doubt, but cross the line, and

i cross you off.

he crossed the line.
he actually got a kick out of it. saying that he had been lying to me for weeks on end, knowing that it would hurt me. and, he thought i would be okay with this. that's what i am baffled about. he told me that he knew he couldn't hurt me by dating someone else so he decided to hurt me by destroying himself. what a brilliant guy. i told him i didn't ever want to talk to him again. that, if he could lie to my face again and again, i didn't think he was worth a shit. later that night he sent me a text message saying he 'felt it was for the best that he didn't talk to me because he would only hurt me later.' ok, whatever. the next day i received a message saying that he 'needed to be in my life, but that, he would, always lie to me.' um, wtf. i have received messages off and on since then, but i have ignored all of them.


i can say that i am relieved by all of this. that, once i finally made up my mind to get the fuck off the roller coaster, i feel so much better. i don't feel confused, i don't feel like my loyalties are being tested, and  i feel like my relationship with ray is much better. i only wish that i had made up my mind about all of this sooner.

i need a life.

its one of those days where i begin to question what little is left of the sanity that i do have. i found myself staring at my face in the mirror. for the last five days or so i have been under an insane amount of stress. i used to handle stress ok. i say used to, because i was on a decent amount of drugs. i handled stress by getting wasted. i handled it by sleeping until whatever problem that had arisen had taken care of itself. i checked out mentally & physically. i wasn't ever really aware that i was doing this on purpose, i don't think i ever really thought about it. i don't think i put two & two together. i just simply didn't fucking deal with my life because i didn't want to.

my father has been in the hospital for the past week. i spent that past week picking at my face, and pulling out my hair. i rarely pick at my face, and i hardly ever pull out my hair. i realized i was having severe stress issues when i woke up one morning to find masses of hair strewn about my pillow. i was totally unaware that i had pulled out my hair. i did this while i was asleep. i did this after taking a rather large dose of atavan & flexerol so i could sleep. by all means, i should have been calm enough that i shouldn't have pulled my hair out. i should have been stable. there are a lot of should's in this equation. 

about two days later, after this episode, i got up in a fog to notice that i had REALLY pulled out a ton of hair. that i had significant bald spots on my head. no one would be able to tell other than me, i do a pretty decent job of hiding my trich affliction, but i was none the less mortified that my father's stint in the hospital was causing me to loose it this much. it wasn't just my father, it was also what was going on with wynn, and worrying about whether or not i should tell his family that he has been using & when and where i should do that. it was ray leaving & my wondering if he was ever even going to come back. it was my mother taking every chance she had to belittle me and remind me that i am a rotten horrible person and an epic failure in her book.

all of this came to a head as i stared at myself this morning in the mirror. my face has those marks that people on meth get from picking at their skin incessantly. my eyes are sunken in & have circles under them. i had perviously been up for four days straight with no sleep due to mania (to which i got the usual from my family "well if you are going to be up at all hours of the night why the fuck can't you do something useful?" my mother can admit that i am depressed & crazy but not bipolar and crazy). my roots are showing & i need to dye my hair. put simply, i look like i fucking feel -

like shit.

staring at the mirror, i started to get the image in my head of what it would be like to put a gun in my mouth and pull the trigger. i stared back at my eye balls as i thought about this. i didn't feel even remotely bad for thinking the thought. i felt, to be honest, relief. relief because it would all be fucking over. but such a violent and final way to die. and not, by any means, my preferred method of death. i wondered why on earth that had come into my mind at that moment, but i didn't really wonder. i have been struggling with suicidal thoughts for months now, as i often do every winter. i don't talk about it with anyone, i don't say anything, because there is no point. i thought about what i would do if i did, actually start to plan my own suicide.

because the truth is, not all that much has changed since the last time i attempted to get help. since the last time i spent a week staring obsessively at the pills i wanted to eat to end my life. if i am honest with myself, nothing has changed. i am pretty much in the same fucking position. my life hasn't gone anywhere, my depression is just as dismal as it was back then, and i am about as motivated as a fucking corpse. i am still making crappy choices. i still don't have a fucking job. i know i need one. but i so sucked in by my dismal family life, so sucked in by my father and his guilt trips, that i just... i don't even try. i haven't even bothered to try to fix the situation with school because frankly it is a disaster and a loosing battle. the only way to save my situation there is to move & go somewhere else. and i am fucking up the chances of getting a loan monthly because i can't pay off my other loan. 

i don't even know who i am anymore. i don't even know what it is i want. if i am truthfully honest with myself, i am somewhat jealous of wynn & his fuck it attitude & the fact that he just gave up and decided to do drugs. for some dumbass reason, i have this thing inside me - self preservation or guilt, which one i am not sure - that won't let me go that far. i do not believe i could ever get to that point, get to that point where i would ever use again, ever go back down that road that i was once on. i am just over it. but there are days, days like today, where i really want to kick back & fucking destroy myself.

if a person is a culmination of all of their life experiences, then who does that make me? i have a lot of stories, and i never lack for something to write about. but i am serious when i say that i have no idea who i am anymore. one day i just woke up and i was no longer angry. it took so much effort to be mean, to be upset with the world. to dislike everyone who ever disliked me. to hold a grudge against the friends who hurt my feelings. i had to get the fuck over it. so i did. and in the process of doing that, i mellowed out, and i grew up. i found that i valued my family a lot more than i ever thought i did. i valued them because through everything, they stood by me. i also realized that a lot of the reason why i am so damaged has to do with them. they did the best they could, and it is only me who can fix me, but it's going to take years to undo that damage. and its also going to take leaving them, cutting the cord, distance, if you will.

how do i even begin to figure out who i am? i am 30 years old and i don't have a clue as to how to begin the self actualization process. most people do this at 19 years of age when they go away to college. i started that process when i left home for the first time, but, i had to come back. i started it again when i left again, but i came back. and i needed to come back. i needed to get my shit together. but in the process of getting my shit together, i have also become a glorified teenager who never has to worry about anything because mommy & daddy will take care of it. i have no idea what it is like to be independent. i desperately need to learn this. 

what i am afraid of, is that, if i leave, i will feel guilty that everything with my dad & grandmother will get shifted onto my mother. i am afraid my dad will want to die because he will be left alone. i am afraid my dad will die & i will feel an enormous amount of guilt because of that. i am afraid that if i leave, i won't know what to do when i am by myself. i am afraid that if i leave with ray (and thats a big fucking if) he will proceed to destroy what little self esteem i do have (which i am coming to find out i don't have all that much to begin with.) I am afraid that if i stay here, i will kill myself, because there is nothing here for me. even on good days i know there is nothing here for me. i am afraid that if i leave, change won't do me any good & i will still flip out and want to kill myself & i will still be as lonely as i have ever been and because i will be away from my family, it will be easier because i won't feel the guilt. what it comes down to, seriously, is that the older i get, the worse my disease gets, and the more crazy i feel. the more i find myself wanting to die because i can't live up to my own expectations & i don't even know how to fucking begin to love myself & forgive myself. i can't live up to my own expectations because i can't get a goddamn do-over card. there are no do-overs. i fucked up, and i fucked up epically, royally, really goddamn good, and i have to live with that, and so now i am a 30 year old fuck up without a college degree who has an interesting life story and nothing to show for the fact that she knows a ton of people who also fucked up their lives and who are all dead. and, you don't get a pat on the fucking back or a congratulations for knowing that information. the world doesn't reward people who have made epic mistakes. 

i am my own worst enemy. 

i don't even know how to begin to fucking fix that.

twitter is made for vultures

when you took to the skies
leaving on a jet plane
you promised to be back,
within the blink of an eye

before i knew it,
before my heart could
ever begin to miss you
you promised to be back

so i wouldn't have to
contemplate the thought of loss
or how i would begin to live
without you -

but our plans for a life came undone,
and you never dialed my phone
i found myself sleeping all alone
with a broken heart i couldn't mend





the last time things went to shit with ray, i remember it all crystal clear. he went to boston. he said he would be back. he said, 'don't worry, babe, i'll be back soon.' the plan was to go to vancouver to see muse and spend the weekend there, because he really liked the city & wanted me to experience it. although i am not a huge fan of muse's new music, i liked their old stuff and i was game to go along. i have always wanted to go to vancouver - i had heard great things about the city, and about it's weed alone. a little get away for the two of us sounded really awesome. i was excited. i really was. i downplayed how much i was looking forward to it, because i didn't want to get my hopes up & have them crushed. i also knew that with ray, nothing is as it seems. he had told me that he didn't know what would happen between us, because of what was going on with his career - blah fucking blah - and i understood, it involved being god knows where, and working 15 hour days, sometimes longer. i knew that ray's ambition & drive would always be the first priority. that his career would take precident over me, and that i would never be the most important thing in his life. i understood that, and to a certain extent, i envied that - to be so passionate about something - to know -

to know what one wants... so badly that, you are willing to sacrifice love, friendship, relationships of all sorts in order for greatness - i respect that. i am jealous of that. i can not think of one thing i really want badly enough that i would sacrifice everything for. perhaps, love. but, i mean, not a career. i am not that driven. i love politics, it's a passion, but, it's not THAT much of a passion.

so, when he said that, i guess i understood, and i respected that. i didn't expect, at that point in time, to become his girlfriend. but the problem, the huge motherfucking problem with ray holycross was that he had me the minute he said hello. i was clay in his hands. weak in the knees. i knew i loved from that first date on. and, god save me, i never gave up on him.

did i ever really know him? i don't know if i did. all i know is that, after a few weeks of staying with me, and sleeping in my bed, he started to refer to me as his girlfriend. i found this to be strange, but i also thought that it was flattering, so i took it to heart. i more than likely shouldn't have. he could charm the skin off of a fucking snake, ray, could. and so, when he left, saying, 'ill be back, i promise, we'll go to vancouver, it'll be fine...' i should have just shut down internally. my insides were ringing alarm bells. they were screaming. i knew something wasn't right. i knew i was being lied to. somewhere, in there, was a lie, but i just wasn't sure where.

so what happened? he never called. he never called like he said he would. he never wrote me, he never text messaged me. he got angry at me for even asking if he was okay. he had this amazing ability to make me feel insane & insecure. mostly because before he left he rarely touched me physically, which led me to feel like i was undesirable & disgusting. i have issues, ok. a lot of issues. issues which i never ever told him about. it didn't seem like there was much of a point in opening up to him about how deeply fucked up i was, because, he had abandoned me once. i had learned the hard way.

i don't even remember what our fight was about. when pressed, he says he doesn't remember either, but i suspect that he remembers all too well. he's not the type to forget. i just know that he was supposed to come pick me up. i was waiting. he said he would be there at my house. and he never showed up. he just flat out stood me up. i had bought a new dress & everything. i was so looking forward to leaving town & going somewhere nice with him. why? because i loved him. why? because i wanted to spend time with him. i called him. he refused to answer. i left voice mails. i cried. i left emails. i asked what it was that i did that was so horrible. i asked if there was someone else. i asked for him to at the very least, be honest with me.

what i got in return was nothing. nothing but white, blank, utter deafening silence. do you know how loud silence can be? silence can be the loudest sound in the world when someone refuses to acknowledge your existence. it can be the cruelest sound in the world, too.

during this time, i had turned to his twitter to try to figure out just what the hell was going on with him. let me begin to say that i can not, can not, put into words how much i hate twitter. let me also say that, when in a 'relationship' with someone where that person is actively not telling you the whole truth but also keeping up a whole online persona, it makes it really really fucking hard to figure out just who the hell it is who you actually know. i mean, what person you actually know. i began to suspect that every single person he talked to on twitter was someone he was also seeing behind my back. and the worst part is, i am not this suspicious jealous person. i have come to realize i have some serious self esteem issues, but, i've never had issues so bad that i get jealous of what my significant other does over the damned internet. why? because that would be goddamned insane of me. but there i was, basically being froze out of my supposed boyfriend's life, all the while watching his life go by on his goddamn twitter account, wondering what the hell was so wrong with me that i couldn't even warrant a text message.

i never found out what was actually going on, why he did what he did, if he had been cheating on me or what. i suppose i should more than likely ask for my own sanity, if i am going to continue to be with him. my major problem with my relationship with him, back then, was that there was no foundation of trust. i didn't trust him what so ever. sure, he told me all these facts about his life, and i suppose i believed him, more or less, but i never really knew if i did or not. he seemed like a moral upstanding person, but my judgement in people is pretty, uh... well, its pretty shitty. i'm a pretty shit judge of character.

in the end we quit talking. he went his way, i went mine. i never asked why, he never explained why.

& then,

then we started talking again. its my fault. it's always my fault. because.... he got under my skin. and once he got under there, he has stayed there. and i was curious. i wanted to know how he was doing. so when i saw him online, i would ask. i would ask and i would wonder & i would talk to him. the conversations were usually short at best. i had a boyfriend & i didn't want to get emotionally involved with an x while being in a relationship. i just, i couldn't do that. at one point he had messaged me about a vacation - thats what we did together, he & i - we were vacations from each other's reality. i ignored him. admittedly, i was still pissed. hell, to this day i am still pissed. but, you have to forgive. the short of it is we began talking. and we talked every night. he was in a bad situation. i was in a loveless crappy relationship. it was nice to just talk to someone about the things i am passionate about. in the end, i helped him out of his situation. he came up here. he said he loves me. i said i love him. we've been together since.

well, today he went into chicago for a job interview. i don't know if he actually had a job interview or not. i really hope he did, seeing as my mother paid for him to go into the city. he was supposed to get in touch with me to tell me he made it there okay. it was 11 at night and i still hadn't heard from him. he said he would call or email me. i had heard nothing. so, i made the mistake of going on his twitter. now, i know better. i know that going to his twitter feed is opening a can of worms that i do not want to see. i know that it will only make me unhappy, make me feel insecure, and more than likely make me dislike him. but i did it before i had thought about all of that. it was too late. and, it was there that i found him talking to a girl from la. talking to a girl from la who had just moved to chicago. who had just moved to chicago yesterday or the day before. talking to her about how he wanted her to move to chicago. talking about the two of them seeing one another. in chicago. she 'makes' movies. they talked about seeing muse. strange, because, you know he & i were supposed to go, and well, he just bailed. i don't know. he spends so much time on his phone, on the goddamn twitter and doing whatever else & i don't ask to read or see what he does because like, im supposed to trust him.

the thing is....

i sent him a letter a while ago, a few days ago, saying that i loved him and i gave him all the reasons why i loved him. he read it & after wards, he said, 'i read your letter, its cute.' that was hardly the response i was looking for.

i don't know. sometimes i fear that i love him far more than he loves me. so i've cut back on telling him that i love him. i don't try to kiss him. its not like we have sex, we can't because of his heart. which is like, well it sucks.

and i don't want to think that i can't trust him, that, he doesn't love me, and that worst of all he is taking advantage of me, and worst of all of that taking advantage of my family. he prides himself on his morals and i really thought he had/has them. but i don't know. it looks fishy, and it feels fishy. if it looks fishy & it smells fishy, and it feels scaly,

its prolly because it's a goddamn fish.



& i don't,

i so don't want

my goddamn heart
to be broken.

i don't want to go back to being alone
all alone, in this shit hole town
with my crazy family
and my x boyfriend who has taken to shooting up heroin
and blaming it all on me

i want my boyfriend to fucking love me
not someone else
i want him to love me

is that so much to ask?
is it?

fuck you blogger for eating my whole fucking entry.
fuck you fuck you fuck you

we'll start a war (needs to be edited)

she was a way for me to do penance for my every horrible thing. a way for me to punish myself - continually, for being, what i thought, was a bad person.

she was all too happy to play along in this, all too happy to assign me the blame for her mistakes, all to happy to shove the guilt my way for when she couldn't deal with the actions that she had made. it was easier to blame it all on me, the perpetual 'bad friend, bad influence' because, well everyone in chicago had blamed her downfall on me. they made it easy for her. all she had to do was play along.

the problem with this whole thesis was that often, i wasn't even around for when she made her catastrophic life altering mistakes. i was usually the one who bailed her out of trouble, as i am wont to do for everyone i know, but i was never the one who was right next to her encouraging her to become the laundry list of mistakes that i now think of when i think of her. i participated in those mistakes early in the game when i was busy trying to obliterate myself off of the face of the earth in anyway possible, but once i came to my senses, i tried rather hard to not be around when she did these things. the problem was, she was always, always doing these things. 

female friendships are hard - they are complex and strange things. i often do not understand them. my friendships with my male friends have never been complicated. they have always been friendships that are not full of mixed messages. they are straight and to the point for the most part. female friendships, on the other hand, are not. 

i was raised by a feminist mother. i was taught to value other females, to respect them, and most importantly; i have never viewed my female friends as competition. i have never understood why it is that we, as girls are forced, more or less, to view one another not as sisters, but as road blocks and speed traps on the highway to catching the most important thing in life - a man. my eyes are rolling as i type this, just so you know. i have always desired close female friends, i suppose because i have always wanted a sister, an older sister, a younger one. i have grown up watching my mother's extremely close relationship with her sister, and have longed for that myself. i have watched my friends who have sisters grow closer as they have grown older. and i am jealous. i wish i had that. i have female friends but they are few and far between - i love them all, and they are all very important to me, they are all sisters to me, but they all live very far from me. i rarely get to see them, and if i do spend time with them, it is for a few days at most. 

she was someone i considered a sister. more than that, even. i loved her and i would have done anything for her. over and over i did what she needed me to do. and over and over she took advantage of that. somehow, the friendship became one that was not about supporting one another, and instead became one where the modus operandi was to make each other feel bad. this was never discussed outright. we both had been through so much together that it was impossible to let go of the other one. it was impossible to break up. i don't know if i ever purposefully set out to make her feel bad about herself, that was never my intention. i never wanted her to feel bad about who she was - that is not who i am as a person. but she had been my friend when who i was as a person was, well, to put it mildly, pretty rotten. i was a selfish, angry, miserable, dark, black hole of depression and everyone who came into contact with me during that time can agree with that statement. i wasn't always like that - and, i had some pretty good reasons for why i was that way, but none the less it is an accurate statement regarding who i was. during that period of time, she defended me like a good trial lawyer & she didn't have to. i didn't hire her. i didn't even know she was defending me, half the time. that's what a good friend does. and i felt indebted to her for that, for years. so, when we switched places, when she became the angry, miserable, selfish, dark suck hole of depression who only wanted to drag people down with her i felt like i should stay by her side. and i dutifully stayed. i forgave her, and i forgave her, and i FORGAVE her. over things that, looking back, i truly should have ended the friendship over. things that a therapist would have given me the okay over, over things any normal person would have freaked over.

and yet - i remained friends with her. because i loved her. because our friendship was dysfunctional, yes, but who's wasn't? what i had failed to see was that while i had grown and changed as a person, she had, too, and neither of us could meet in the middle. the person that i had known her as was no longer there, and while i feel i have grown & come out of everything as a better person and have to thank because of it, i can't say she has come out of everything to be a better person. i don't even know who she is anymore. she never believed in sisterhood, she never believed in 'girl code.' she believed that it's every girl for herself. she takes what she wants from whomever she wants without regard for what it does to others. i didn't realize until the other day, when i was standing in the kitchen doing the dishes while listening to underworld that in some fucked up way, she was my penance. she was my penance for being  such a horrible person when i lived in chicago. and i don't even know if i was all that horrible of a person when i lived there. i only have a mild recollection of who i was back then, i don't really remember because the memories are gone, they went away when i was in my last car accident. i just hear the echo of the pumpkin's voice calling me names, saying that i more or less didn't deserve to be living at the walton house, then at the other apartment, basically that i didn't deserve to breathe. and if someone who i unconditionally loved as much as i loved that kid, could turn around and hate me as much as he ended up hating me & do it while making most of my friends dislike me too, i am going to assume i wasn't all that great to be around. i'm going to go out on a limb and say we all were a bit hard to be around. the point, however, is that she was my way of doing penance for both being a horrible person & a way to make myself feel horrible. she had a wonderful ability to make me feel like shit about myself. your best friend should not, i repeat, should not, make you feel horrible about yourself. towards the end there, she made me feel just god fucking awful about who i am. she would say, too, i should add, that SHE didn't make me feel anything, that i felt that all on my own & she is innocent of whatever she did or didn't do. i remember bringing up the fact that i felt horrible about myself & that she was playing a big part in that, and, as my friend, why the hell would she want to make me feel like shit? she dodged the question & answered that i am the one who is in control of my emotions & that she did not, and does not, make me feel anything. 

i have this problem, i do, with keeping people around who are bad for me, who make me feel horrible about myself, because i feel like i need to be punished. i never figured it out until this past summer, that i had this, complex about how i need to be punished for being a bad person. once i figured out that i kept bad people around me, as a form of punishment, well - i ditched the bad people. it wasn't hard, they gave me a multitude of reasons for why i shouldn't have them around. and once i realized that i am way too understanding, way too apt to give people 2nd, 3rd, 4th chances because in my past i wasn't given a second chance nor any understanding, so i give everyone the benefit of the doubt and much more, well, it was much easier to see how i was being manipulated. 

when i was younger, my mother once told me that i would be lucky, if i had three or four good friends when i turned 30. i remember recoiling in horror, thinking she was insane. 3? 4? good friends? I am now 30, and i find myself with just about that. My best friend inevitably ends up being whomever i am dating at the time, because that is the person i spend all of my time with. My other good friends are friends from childhood, and a few scattered from other periods of my life, all of them are girls, but none of them are people i see regularly. it is amazing though how quickly you loose friends in your late 20's. they scatter like ashes. people who you swore you would never loose touch with you can't bare to talk to now. people who you never thought would be different from you rapidly morph from your buddies into friends that are married, into the dreaded married 'with kids.' if you are not part of the married & with kids bubble, suddenly you find yourself unable to relate to two thirds of your age group. and where the hell does one go to find new friends? do i put an ad on craigslist? seriously, i am involved in a decent amount of things in my little area & still.... i have yet to find anyone who is friend material.

its a daunting prospect. and i guess that's another reason why i didn't want to let her go. and why, if i am perfectly honest with myself - i miss her. i will always miss her, and i will always love her. and, when, you love someone you will always want the best for them, despite all that has happened between you. i do hope & want the best for her, even if i have no idea who the hell she is anymore.