November 2006 Archives

WAIT: Before reading this, get a cup of English breakfast tea, a cigarette, Jon's tape, and sit by the window cause... that's how it was written.

11/19/94
Sunday 2:15 pm

Victoria

It's weird sitting here in your house - without you and Ugly is playing and Luke has gone to buy me coffee. It's all quiet and I've just been thinking how all of life's best moments are so short-lived but you can store them in that little paisley box in your head and take them out and wear them on cold rainy days when life's not being fair or you're just feeling sorts of lonely.

I want to thank you so much Vicki (!!!) for everything. Not just for feeding me and giving me a warm, lumpy place to sleep - but for being a fucking awesome person, too. You make me feel proud - and on the chance of sounding like your mother (I'm sorry) but I see you doing wonderful things with your life and your personhood. I was really worried about you over the summer - I didn't want to see you throw your life out the window. But you've grown up so much, grown away from Kristy to become your own. I'm so glad to see you being something. I've always sensed that bit of magic in you from the start. You take people in so readily and love them and take care of them. That's such a beautiful thing.

It's so hard for me to be wanting everyone here - to want to be with them and bask in their love and wonderfulness - but to know that I have to make myself something. I need college, I need purpose and direction even though it's tempting to just drift on other's goals and float on the everyday, but I know I must make my everyday. And then others can float with me.

I just hope everything will be good still when I come back to visit again. I can't even say when I come home - my home now is Boston even though those I love most dearly are here. Someday I'll go somewhere where I don't have to worry about leaving and I'll give myself without remorse.

Without being "superfluous" (ask Adrian what it means, and "vestigal", too...) verbose, long winded, and boring - I'll say good bye Victoria. I love you I love you I love you and always will. Keep the faith, keep loving, keep your feet on the ground but don't stop reaching for the sky 'cause you're a star and that's where you belong. Keep smiling.

LOVE FOH-EVAH,
Kristin Renee

*****

I found that, and black and white pictures of me that I can't figure out where they came from, and letters and set lists and photographs and notes my father wrote me in fourth grade and later on when life got hard and everything smelled like basement and I sat around on the living room floor at my mom's house and got lost in it. Scraps of paper and things I had taped to the walls and entire eras of my being, stuffed into Xerox boxes and blue and red folders. So that's what Kristin wrote to me - and here's the crux of what I was going through at the time, in between aching unrequited love letters and shows and blind-drunkeness (there's some good stuff in there too, really). It's from the other side of the looking glass, it seems:

WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU EXPECT I ATE ALL THIS ACID
WHAT IS MY SOMETHING ELSE?

What do I do who am I

seems all big and important

I

like a dancing chick

WHO?

There always has to be someone or something else to go back to in the end.

For the first time I'm not doing something for anyone else I'm doing it for me so why am I sitting here talking to myself I'm becoming
a
complete
vegetable!

And do what?
Figure shit out?

I need to hear someone else's praise to motivate me to do it why don't I just do it for MYSELF
I have to be me
Well, go ahead!
who's there telling me
I can't do it just BECAUSE
this is my mind ME
in the raw

can I handle it
because who do you really have in
the end of it NOBODY
you're in your own mind
(warp)

Constantly answering questions means you hear somebody asking... talking to yourself can really do you in!

My senses are so fucked up I can't hear the music
straight it's all so warped

don't know if I can handle it myself alone
who's down one me all the time I need to hear
about ME me me me

if me is so important why do i
I can't even finish a thought
melt into everything instead

look to everyone else all the time?
Why do I always hear someone asking
Why do I do everything I do
Crazy how the music sets the mood.
I'm sitting here thrying to figure out
what makes me ME and why and I
have no clue. And everybody else seems to
know what the fuck they're doing with
themselves why don't I? I think too much!

everything in life is for something/one else

like who am I writing this for and who's
going to read it and think what about me
Sometimes I can talk but what
is on inside my head?

Words mean so much to me
Why do I hear everybody else in my head
probably because when you're not on acid you don't

I sat here all day and waited and
I feel like everyone passes through
me going onto whatever they're doing and I'm
wa part of what went on in their whole
scene for the minute and then everyone
left to do soemthing else not just sit
and feel
my godddamn
BRAIN MELT.

Everything I start just trails off...
into what? Look at me from someone
else's point of view must be ok

Dammit why am I never me for ME?
(What do you mean by that? I don't know.
I am trying to figure out myself and I keep melting.

*****

Wow. Right. Do we see a pattern there? How about I drop acid in the midst of mental disarray and try to figure out my whole life? See, that's why I stopped taking acid all by myself before I turned nineteen, because I needed to be loaded to stop all of that, not make it worse.

Such a difference, from what I put out to what others saw.

And I talked about that last night when I spoke - constantly just trying to be what I thought everyone else wanted me to be, and winding up so frustrated and so confused. When you're doing that all the time, there's nothing really left to you when you're alone except for this impending sense of calamity that somehow, in some very crucial way, everything is All Kinds Of Wrong.

I could go on forever. But I have to go back to work.

I made a pumpkin pie today. It was a little too cinnamon-y.

I feel like an alien. Awkward, out of place, the temperature doesn't match the season, alienated (for lack of a better term) from a few of the people around me - I don't have a lot of delay in saying what's on my mind lately - and just all around not fitting. Funny, because of everything I just posted about and read the other day - it's all true, still - what I want to type right now is that I feel like a square peg. Every time I feel great, I want to not be on medication, so I start taking it every other day, and I'm fine for a while, and then my world collapses. What the fuck? I mean, really. This is twice now. Somebody remind me next time, okay?

Oh, and my back hurts. Because during the week I work my balls off. It's a means to an end, and I see my paycheck (about $400.00 net for 55 hours) and I forget that. I mean, five shifts is another $100 at least weekly, but still, it's less money than I've made in a long, long time.

I'm looking up classes online - I know I can't just jack up a bunch of electives, but I want to take photography (this semester it's Monday & Wednesday nights) and Basic Baking (Tuesday nights) but something is telling me I should do one elective and one core class. I can always take photography in the summer when work is slow and I'll have more time to dick around with it. So, baking on Tuesdays? Why not.

Okay, so I just searched some more and I have to figure out which electives are which - what the fuck is quantitative literacy? What's a social science elective? I need help.

Yeah, so, my head is melting a little bit. And on top of that, I found two legal-size file boxes of my sordid youth in my mom's basement yesterday. More to follow on that one.

I guess I should sleep now.

see? it works. when things ran through my head today, I wrote them down. and here we sit.

just so you're all aware, it is so hot in our apartment right now - it's back up to like, almost sixty degrees during the day, and the heat in my apartment is controlled by the landlords. so the first time it got cold, they turned it on, and now, it's ninety in here. I have all the windows open and the fans on like it's june or something.

so we've got these eco-containers at work. we use all kinds of recycled stuff, our cups are biodegradable, our plastic cups are made of corn (really) and every night we put out all the milk jugs and the cardboard to recycle it. but then we got the eco-containers. now the large cups are these pretty green and white jobs, and I told troy that we should get all of them like that. he said that eventually we would, but because they're so much more environmentally friendly, they're also much more expensive. to replace all of the cups would be about an additional eight hundred dollars a month more than what the cups already cost now. I looked at him and asked him then, if the other cups are alright, then why do it?

he looked me in the eye and said simply, "because we should."

I almost cried. in that moment, I wished I could just give him everything, and dedicate my life to the coffee shop, just to create more of that feeling. and then of course, work flared back up, and the moment went away, but I remembered.

I wish everyone thought like that. just to do things because we should. be nice. be patient. let each other merge onto the highway. because you don't get like, money for this stuff or anything, but you do get so much - so much. the step book calls it "the satisfactions of right living" or something, we were reading it last night. let me see if it's already typed up someplace. fuck. I can't find it. I'll post it when I have time, it's a lot to type. but it talks about just that, about how living usefully and doing things the right way doesn't get you fame or fortune or a big bank account. it gets you peace of mind and a comfort in your own skin, among other things. and I sat there last night, reading, then talking, and realizing that this is how things are for me now. each day is about how much better can I be, how much less of the crap I pulled yesterday can I omit... another line in that section talks about just simply doing the best we can with the cards we're dealt. it just really struck me, between that and the should-ing.

another coffee shop kind of microcosm experience today was the realization that people balk against change, and that there's a comfort in ordering things in medium. the change experiment happened when we got a delivery of our lids, and they were white instead of black, because there weren't any black ones for that order. so, there's the plastic thing full of lids down on the service bar, six little stacks: two stacks of the white lids, front left and second spot left; flat lids and cold drink lids making up the spaces on the right, and the usual black lids in the very back left spot. I went down to restock mid-morning, and I noticed that people had actually reached around the white lids to get to the black ones. the white lid stacks were pretty much untouched, and there were almost no black ones. it reminded me of this thing I saw on tv once, about bees or ants or something, and they had built a little nest, and then went off for a while to do whatever they do, and the nature channel people made a replica of the nest exactly the same about a foot away, and then surrounded the original nest with a circle of spaced out pinecones. not like, a fortress or anything, like six of them all spread out. so the bees or whatever they were come back, and they don't even hesitate - they just go into the nest that didn't have the pinecones around it. I think that makes a profound statement about the human condition, only I'm so tired right now that I can't word it other than telling the lid story and then telling the bee story and telling you that somehow, they are the same.

I can't even tell you how many times people order medium, and those types always do it in the form of a question. there are the regulars, and even people who have never been there, that know what they want exactly.

"small coffee in a medium cup, and can you put the soymilk out please?"
"two large half-cafs with french, one with a little room, one with a lot of room."
"small latte with one-third the milk."

that last guy I like. he's the one-third-the-milk latte guy. I guess no one was getting it how he wanted it, and so one day he orders a double with steamed milk on the side. I call him over and ask him if he's planning on combining them himself. he goes, yes ma'am. so funny. I go, okay. so when you order a latte with one-third the milk, because it's a latte, we're going to assume to fill the rest of the space up with foam. like a wet cappucinno. so I made the espresso and steamed the milk, and had him show me how he wanted it. turns out he wants a macchiato, only with milk and no foam. good for him, because it's like, half the price of a latte, too. so, then there's the people who will occasionally complain, and when we reinforce to them, look, you're paying like, four dollars for a coffee, so you'd better be getting it the way you want it. but it seems like they like to just complain about it a little and then insist it's really no big deal. which, if it wasn't, for real, then they wouldn't be saying anything. seriously.

so, back to the medium people. they look at the sizes, and look at you, and go, "medium?" which is far different than the way the people who really want a medium go "medium." it's a non-issue for them. it's so strange, it's almost like they want permission, like in that moment, it's like, I really don't know myself, please don't make me decide, because then I'm going to have to figure out who I am and what I really want, and I don't know if I can handle that. so they go, "medium?" and you smile to yourself a little bit, knowing really, that most of them wish they were able to be the soy hot chocolate woman or the hot wet & skinny capp lover. I guess some people have to be cattle, so that the rest of us have something to compare everything to - not in a better than / worse than way, but more like in "conversations with god" where god's all talking to the guy and going, how can you know what you are, if you don't know what you aren't? if there wasn't hurt, we might not know joy or freedom, you know? there would be no measure of how things felt, no perspective on differences. so I guess we need the medium (?) people.

who decided how to lay out a keyboard, anyway? why is the question mark over there?

all this, and nary a stitch of caffiene today, besides the shitty cup of office coffee this morning.

another loaded day tomorrow, work-bank-eyedoctor-gym-eat-meeting, and then the morning shift again at work. but then it starts to settle down. like kristin put it, I love my weekends like a fat kid love cake. mine. if I had a label maker, I'd make a "mine" label for it.

medium.

should-ing.

love you.

~vvb

so I'm writing in my head, like, all the time. titles and paragraphs and moments, and I'm always like, oh, I'll remember that. I'll write that down later. and sometimes I get some of it back, but usually not.

right. hi. so here I sit, with a head full of great intentions, and nothing at my fingertips. I don't want to sit and write a bunch of blah blah blah and this happened and that happened, but I guess that will have to do. dammit.

so it's christmastime everywhere in all the stores. and I'm brimming with great ideas, from photographs to jarred brownie mixes and spicy breads and homemade soaps. martha stewart had this magazine at the checkout that I picked up the other day, seven dollars (!) but it was so worth it. how do you wrap a loaf of bread? she knows. it all started walking home from work the other day, and I stopped into this chinese herbs and teas and whatnot place, and they had these little soaps up at the counter in pretty papers that smelled all good... and I was like, dude. I can make that. I can totally make that. so I sat and did a list the other night, and the nice thing about it is all the people you really can't afford to by for but would love to give a little something to - well, now I can. a few scarves, a few loafs, these killer looking merengues in clear jars, rice paper, a bunch of thread, and we're in business.

raf and I have put a limit on our shopping, seventy five dollars, and my mom and sister and brother-in-law are all twenty. I found some great little things already - it just makes you get so creative. while they're great and everything, there's not a lot of thought behind going into the gap or circuit city or something and dropping a few hundred dollars. don't get me wrong - all that stuff is plenty nice - but there's something about handing someone cool homemade stuff and going, here, I took the time to make this for you. really. I have a few ideas for raf, which I can't quite go into detail about here... but I'm sure we'll come up with some good stuff. it's all about listening. ask kristin about the year I sent her the joni mitchell cd.

so, yeah. I made no-pudge brownies today, we're going to the gym together tomorrow, and I feel good about it. I've been donating about twenty dollars a month to planet fitness without attendance since spring... before that, I was there all the time. oops. I've managed to maintain my weight, but without working out, and you really just can't eat a whole lot. and I love to eat. so off to the gym we go.

see what I mean? this is all great and everything, but it's not all the writing in my head. well, it is, but still.

there's a girl that put her photos up at the coffee shop that has showed me exactly what not to do. 8x10 minimum, wide mats, chunky frames, matte finish. not like I didn't know that already... but yeah. she has about thirty photos up, there should be about half of them, twice as big as they are. I'm so grateful I can send shots to kristin and go, okay: which of these are good pictures, and which ones are just good memories? my eye, in that respect, is increasing ever so slightly.

I'm getting tired. we got a lot of errands done this morning, and I almost feel like dropping out for a nap for a little while...

I'm learning a lot of lessons lately. you know, like when to hold 'em, and when to fold 'em... it's so helpful to have been sober for a while and to be coherent enough for this much time to be able to draw back on my prior experiences. I've had a series of events happen in the last few weeks that are almost identical to what happened at this time last year, and I can really, really see how much I've changed. and how then, I really meant what I said, and how now, it really is different. it's brought me to a few conclusions: mostly that I made the most progress in sobriety early on, not only because there was such a massive amount of change, but because I was going to some really good meetings. and I had fallen into a bunch of young people's meetings, over the last year or two, and finally - finally I changed my meetings up and there was an earth shattering difference in a matter of days. days! and as those last few meetings still linger around that I have yet to change, it's almost like I'm getting pushed away - in a good way - to go do more and better things for my recovery. life is short, and there's much too much important stuff to do to get caught up in all the bullshit. I love my life, I love raf - I'm in a partnership, moreso than just a relationship - I love my family and I'm really feeding the things that are furthering who I am: education, creativity, hard work, and self love.

it's amazing the space that's been freed up from not wondering what I should be doing all the time and second guessing my every everything. and on top of that, to sit with friends and sponsees, to listen to my words come out of their mouths, and to be able to say, but that happened to me, and it got better. and I don't know what exactly will happen to you, but I know what it feels like to feel like nothing is ever going to feel different, and to feel like you can't remember what it was like to not have whatever it is going on... and then to wake up one day to find out you really and truly have changed. things really do pass. things really do change.

another thing I've noticed is how much less of a doormat I am. it's amazing. I don't have to get walked on - I have a voice, and I can use it. I also have some sorts of restraint that allow me to not go psychotic on people who have wronged me, while it does process and manifest out in other ways (like, normal getting upset, etc.) it's definitely not the full-force freakouts of times past.

there was something else I wanted to add but my mind has gone blank...

oh, and on top of all that, my mom is buying the timeshare off me. go figure.

I'm hitting too many walls in my head, so I'm going to get moving. we're having dinner at my mom's around 3.

kisses,

v.