Plugging along

Back in Tucson, and fairly well adjusted. Thankfully even though I was gone for about the same amount of time, it isn't going to take 2 months to come back down to "real life" the way it did after the cruise. Visiting mom was more restful and enjoyable, as opposed to the cruise which was adventure and too much of a taste of the old world-unexplored high to be able to return to the 9-5 (er, 6a-12:30p) with any kind of enthusiasm.

Things are good. Ray and I had a nice talk today about things upcoming which was nice, and took advantage of the last day ever that we'll be able to cash in our old books for store credit at Borders. They changed their policy along with Barnes and Noble a few weeks back that store receipts are now required for a return. Gee, ya think! I'd be bummed except I was already amazed that I was still able to do that for so long, and plus we were able to swap out a whooooooole lot more years-old books for brand new ones than I'd ever have thought possible. Score one for keeping your property in like-new condition.

I'd say which books I got in exchange, but...not yet. Hopefully someday soon. I can see the end of that tunnel now, at least...

Esteban and Monica got married last night, and I had a lot of fun at the reception with Ray and his friends. Not as much fun this morning, but...well, it was worth it. :) It was sure a neat feeling though even in the throes of the open bar and its according inhibitions, to see a guy you want to be flirting with and have him already be all yours, before, during, and long after. He was gorgeous as ever, and a few times I caught myself thinking I'm sure glad I got so lucky as to get a guy with such beautiful eyes. I felt like I did that night at dinner for Prom, when I looked at him and felt both such familiarity, and awe...

One other big thing (huge, gargantuan, mind-blowing?). Sjoerd's now the holder of an Amsterdam-Phoenix roundtrip airline ticket, and in just over two months I will be seeing one of my very best friends again for the first time in two years, since we hugged each other goodbye in another fateful airport farewell, where you never know if or when you'll see each other again, or how things will have changed. Boy I can sure say for all the open-ended things I might have thought would come to pass in the ensuing days, I definitely NEVER could have predicted THIS. Ray, living together, the cruise job, still being in Arizona, racking up some monster savings and some matching plans. But life's life, and here we are, and you roll with the punches and do your best to maintain the ties that mean the most to you, and Soj and I have done a DAMNED good job of doing so. And Ray and I have done a DAMNED good job of building a relationship that is so solid that it is in no way threatened by the presence of someone I have, and do, love so dearly as I do Sjoerd. I feel pretty grateful for those two gifts in my life, that have come in the form of these two incredible examples of how strong, and loving, people can truly be.

It is liberating to be able to love so freely, without being held back or stifled or stunted or made to feel badly for it.

All in all, I couldn't be happier with this stage of the game.

I hate Duality

Well, tonight is almost my last night in Idaho with mom. I hate this shit. I hate that to move forward means moving away from where you were. Doesn't matter where, or whom, or when, it's always the same. To go to New Zealand meant to leave NAU, to adventure on with Sjoerd meant to leave Queenstown, to meet Ray meant to leave Sjoerd, to have my life in Tucson means to not have life with mom. To go to Asia means to not have any of it, anything else. It means deepest enrichment of the newest kinds but complete isolation from all that was.

Most pertinently at the moment, to go back to Ray, and the ratties, and my room, and hockey, and enjoying a wonderful relationship, means to give up the fun days exploring and hanging out and doing lots but doing little, and getting to see my cousins, and hanging out with mom. Life can be so unfair. It's like it throws these lessons in your face, and I'm cognizant about how I should be making the most of it, but how do you really? I mean you reach a saturation point where there's just not much to do in the minute to minute, but watch the sand trickle through, until at the end of it you're left holding the top empty and the bottom full, and then it's time to pick up and move on and say goodbye again.

I know there's no real option but to hunker down and never move again, and maybe that's why so many people do that. But for better or worse, I wasn't born with that option instilled, and it never did get grilled into me. How could it, I'm the product of a nomadic mother. It's done me great good that those same people who hunker will never know, but damned if it doesn't give me wrenchings that they'll never know either.

Anyways, I'm not feeling sorry for myself, I'm just feeling the bummer of it all. I've had fun, and I can't entirely say I want to leave, and I can't entirely say I don't want to go home. I'm stuck in the middle, and I hate it. Well. I'M not stuck in the middle. Life will carry me on regardless of my feelings about it, so I guess it's just my feelings that are stuck on it. And in the end oh the fuck well about that. It's back to work on Wednesday anyway and then this and that and this and that and on and on and on.

Ugh I know I'm working towards something with great payoff down the road but it's getting harder to see that. The travel seems just as daunting as the work to earn the travel. I don't want to go back to the grind and I don't want to be out on the limb either. But I don't want to kill myself either so where does that leave a person?

One foot in front of the other, I suppose. One day at a time, with a deep breath, or a try at it anyway which is usually the best I can muster, and knowing that even though at the moment it doesn't feel like this feeling will ever pass...it will, and probably it won't take too long after all. It's always been the moment of change anyway that was the hardest. I didn't even want to remove myself from that grind all that much to begin with, right, so why should it be so hard to go back. I guess it won't be so hard to BE back (so I'm telling myself emptily at the moment), it's just the GOING back. So much work...so much faith...and on what? I've never been these places, I don't speak the language, I don't know the people, I don't know that it will all be worthwhile....

But, well, even as I speak the words I know they are untrue. Well, they are true, most of them. But I do know that it will be worthwhile.

It always has been.

But still.

And on the subject of love...

Ok, my love, this one's for you.
I felt bad, tonight, and hesitated as to whether I should even tell you
the Truth
But I never want to sacrifice the Truth, even if it's to preserve your Feelings
Not because I don't care
Infinitely
More than anything
About you...
But,
Because I do.

So I don't ever want a moment, even a special moment
One of those warm fuzzy ones
To be based on a farce
To be based on something
That wasn't true, and
Play you like a fool
For letting you go on believing
As though it were.

So no, Ray, that last one, it wasn't about you.
Notice how I didn't mention the name, before
There was a reason for that, because
Yours is the only name on my lips

And I know that lately
My thoughts have been with others
Maybe seemingly any others
Besides you, but
Once again
That's not true.

It's because you're always there
Behind me,
[figuratively]
For you are always there...
Beside me
[I will never look upon you as anything but my Equal]

And it's because of your steadfastness
And because of my faith in us
And my feelings for you
That I dare to let my heart expand
AS IT'S MEANT TO
Without feeling fear
Or hesitancy
To love
Others
Sometimes even as much
As I love you.

[This does not change the fact
That you
Are the only one
I want to BE with.]

[ever.]

Ray I don't know who came up with the notion
That if you love someone completely
You can only love That person
That much.
Me, I reject that notion.
Completely.

Because Ray, I have found that with Love
When I Love
The more I love - the more I have known love,
The more I have been able to give and share and grow Love...
The more I have to give.
The more I have to share.
And the more it is able to Grow.

Whose twisted idea was it that to do so,
Is to detract from your love with That person?
Whose idiocy dictated that if you are committed,
Then you stay between the lines,
Period.

Whose friggin backwards logic
Says that
"Here is one person,
Who accepts your love
And you
For all you are
And all it can be,
And gives it back tenfold,
Always...
So
STOP THERE."
As in,
Do not look for others to love
Do not share what you have in you
With others,
Gasp, not like that, certainly.

Because I have found you, and you have found me
Does that aid the ailing heart
Who has never been asked to feel?
Who has never been told by fingertips who speak from the cosmos
That it is ok to let go, and
What it can feel like
When they do?

Imagine not knowing how to love...
I know you can.

How much sense does it make that if we can learn these things
And expound upon them with each other,
Then as our revelations grow...
We keep them between only ourselves
We
Who already know them.
Who already enjoy them.
When others, especially my FRIENDS,
Go to sleep aching inside?

And I'm to walk away and say "sorry, it's not my problem now, because
I've got a Permanent love now"?

Good luck with that?

Hope you can find someone who understands?
The way I know that I do?

I'll tell you who came up with this frightened law,
A frightened person.
A person too scared to hold their Love with an open palm.
A person too scared that their love
Wouldn't withstand the tests of unconventionality
Or the tests of when you say you'll love someone forever
STAYING true to them
Even when circumstances change
Or even because circumstances with others
Are challenging.
Especially then.

I am not afraid.

And so I say again,
When I Love
The more I love - the more I have known love
The more I have been able to give and share and grow Love...
The more I have to give.
The more I have to share.
And the more it is able to Grow.
ALL loves.
With That person, and with every other person
That I have ever known.

That is why I am in touch with so many people from my past
That is why it matters
SO MUCH
to me.
That is why I always hold on
Even when they don't hold on back.
Like you didn't...
Once.

I hold on, because I can
Because I have that love to spare
And I never learned to stop caring about them because
I never felt I had to.
You don't make me feel I have to, because
You
Are wonderful.
Because you
Are amazing,
Just like I always knew you would be
As we were growing up.

I still remember that night, stealing glances at you in the candlelight...
Prom night, at dinner...

I knew you would be this incredible.

And I know you understand these things, but
I know your heart
And I know that knowing things, doesn't it always make it easy
To Share.
But you can share me, and my love Ray, with the rest of the world
And never feel like you're being left behind, or relegated to the background,
Because you're not
And you never will be.
You will never get less of me for it,
I promise you,
I will only be all the greater for you
Because I will be a soul who is fulfilling what they were meant to do
On this earth.
To Love,
And love much.

As much as possible.

So just know, dear Ray, that
Just because that one piece
Wasn't about you
And that just because my heart has learned the secrets to know how to expand
And encompass
And embrace
Infinitely
[and because I know I must have a voice]
[and because I know what I need to speak]
[like a touch]
[like a hand upon a shoulder]
[or a catching of the eye]
[When they know that I know
And that I can see
Straight through them
And that I still Care
To the core of my soul]
Just because I can make room for a hundred others
That I may choose to love
With all my heart
Until the day I die

Ray

That will NEVER
Mean
That you will suffer for it
That you will be pushed aside
Or sacrificed
Or forgotten
Or mean any less
Than if they were never there.

You were my Original, Ray
You have always been my Original
I only got to have one of those in my life, and
It was you.

And I came back to you,
Time and time again
And...
Now.

As we have discussed, this would have gone on permanently
You were always the one
You were always mine
I was always yours
In that way that you know that
Even through all the years
That I loved others,
I never loved you any less
My love for you only grew with time
And History
Just as it does today.
Nothing has changed, really

I always loved You infinitely...
First.

Oh. My. God.

What in the HELL was I thinking??!

I have to mark a momentous occasion here...I have just deleted - completely - my LiveJournal account. My Real one, from 2002. May I repeat, what in the HELL was I thinking, having that stuff on there??!

I'm all about honesty and openness but MY GOD. When I saw what was on there it had to be deleted THAT INSTANT. I looked through to see if there were any comments I wanted to keep, there were a few from Douche Bag Thom (which is different than regular Thom...or are they one in the same?...Nah...I'll never believe it.), but I can't deny that it was because of said Thom that I was able to get that stuff OFF OF THE INTERNET, NOW!!!, because he'd put all of it in Word format for me already, long ago. Thank god.

-DELETE-

One good thing about seeing the comments he did leave (those were almost the only times he did leave them, when he was being passive aggressive and we were fighting), it made it easier to say "piss off, jerk" and good riddance.

Yeah right.

Nothing changes. I'm never happy to see a relationship turn to ash like that and blow away. He still wants to pretend I don't exist. I still want to be good friends again. It will never go away.

Anyway, before I wax all melancholic on water that's evaporated under the bridge, I just had to get this out somewhere that the Delete has been done. I'd be sad, but...I'm too relieved, second only to my shell-shock that it was ever there to begin with.

Crazy teenagers/20 years olds.

You.

How do you still have this crazy command over my mind...
There have been others, but there have been no others like You.
Nearly inexplicable,
But completely inextricable
From my heart.
When a dream becomes a nightmare
That drops me to my knees, because
It was about you Not really Loving me.
One simple conversation, the first one in a long time
in Real Time
And my heart is pounding like I cannot believe
Why
Can you do this
To me?

I miss you.

Because being away makes me see life almost as clearly as I can when I travel
Because I had an experience last weekend that still hasn't left me
Because I still miss him from it, and I haven't known him a fraction as well as I've known you
Because right now, I actually know him better than I know you now
And that's just not right.

Because I love you.
Because I swore I'd always love you, and I know I always will.
Because we don't avoid the ones we love, to falsely protect the ones we love more.
Or at least, we shouldn't.
Because my True love protects him more than any superficial insulation,
Because he doesn't need protecting, and neither does our Love
And because there is no such thing as loving him "more"
Because he is me and I am you.

Because you believe in Real Things, and yet you had to go just now
Because oh Soj, I love you so much.
It's been almost two years, and two years is too long,
Far too long for us.

Because I knew when we said goodbye that it could be forever
But I didn't know it would be forever like this
And I'm thinking now that I'm thinking about it
It could be forever like That.

I don't want to die, but I could.
You're not meant to go, but you might.
Anything can happen at anytime and we know it
A few of the seemingly only people who grasp the concept
For all that it is and
All that it Means.

Because I think this means that I don't want to take that chance
That the last time I saw you,
When I knew that it could be forever
That it could be Forever.
Not when I miss you this much
Not when I love you this much
Not when there's nothing to hide from, really
But him who is me and I am who am you,
And Love.

Because this is our Life,
And life is so big
And yet life is so short
And I will Love you forever,
And I'm starting to see very little reason to not take you in my arms
To tell you that

To show you that.

Because...since last weekend I've been feeling that old spark
And maybe it was because I was walking in the footprints of our old selves
And because maybe they were still laced with magic.
But whatever the case, since last weekend,
I've been feeling Love
Overflowing, overcoming
My heart has been palpitating since Thursday
And it's kind of scaring me, but
Oh it feels good to feel that
It hurt so bad and felt so good to walk in our footprints
And feel the passion again, for the people I love, on the fringes
(I Never forget him)
To remember,
To feel,
...to Care.

And none do I care for more than you
(remember..."more")

Because two years is too many.

Are you friggin kidding me?

Can someone please explain to me why this Caylee Anthony case is still going on? Why her mother is still labeled as a "person of interest"?? For FUCK'S sake! She had a DECOMPOSING BODY in her trunk, and wow the hairs match Caylee's, big shocker, what could that possibly MEAN everybody?!, could it be Caylee after all? - HMMM!!! The mother never even reported her "missing", the grandmother did, she never reacted, she borrows a shovel and steals gas cans, she goes out partying while her daughter is "missing", she didn't want the daughter in the first place, the babysitter's (name) exists but had never seen or heard of the mother, the apartment she supposedly dropped her daughter off had been empty for months and said babysitter had never lived there...why the HELL is this still in the news and why the HELL is it some kind of bizarre mystery??! It's called MURDER. Fry the bitch and let's be done with it. GOD.

Exhale

What a life.

I'm still reeling from this past weekend; I should have written yesterday about it but I was too exhausted to give it justice after only two hours of sleep and then a regular workday. Going to Flag was everything I'd feared and more. There were definite tears and heartbreak.

But through that, a silver lining, and thankfully for all the pain, that's what I remember best. One conversation with a person that I really care about and a moment that has stayed long with me.

I saw Mark too, it was ok, nothing to write home about but it's good to stay in touch. And Peter, my old photo professor. But above all else I know the "reason" I was to go up there, the reason I was being pulled up there by some higher calling beyond just my genuine desire to see it once more before summer leaves and who knows when I can see it again the same...never again this way, I realize now...one perfect summer evening in the perfect haunted town, with the best company that night that I ever could have asked for.

All in all, a great reminder of why I do actually listen to those little voices of intuition that tell me to GO...NOW....

I am quite grateful.

I did it!

I woke today to find an email in my inbox that was as exciting as one's first paycheck when you're 16. Less than one month ago I started this blog as a definitive step towards becoming a writer. When I started it, I *finally* started researching actual writing opportunities on the internet that would actually pay. With a little bit of uncertainty and a dose of skepticism I think deep inside I believed it wasn't actually possible to get paid to write, especially for things on the internet (scam city right?). I think I believed that it had to be a big pain in the rear, finding editors and publishers, sweating through queries and drafts and changes *they* want to make to your writing and your life. And who knows, maybe in the bigger world it still is.

But all I know is that today I got a $50 deposit made to my paypal account, for writing three small articles which did ME the good of having to exercise my mind to try to find that humorous side of me again, work on my brevity, and entertain enough to qualify to be published on this site. $50!! The things I'm willing to do for $50! Short of sleeping til noon, there's pretty much nothing that's easier for me to do for fifty bucks than write.

Technically, I did make my first pay-for-writing a few weeks ago, doing five 500 word articles for an SEO. Took me about an hour writing anything I could come up with on the topic of "Automotive" and an hour later I'd made 25 bucks. That was a really random, super easy job and I hope to get more this month. I guess it didn't seem as gratifying as an accomplishment since it was basically BS stuff just to incorporate the word tags for them, whereas upmyownass.com, despite the unfortunate name, actually required more thought and wit and skill on my part.

I gotta say, although it's not like a novel concept and one that I didn't know would come whenever I did actually put my nose to it, the feeling of getting paid for doing what I do probably second-best (second only to Love, but for that I started getting dividends looooong ago :)) is pretty cool, possibly even addicting. I'd meant to get around to it eventually, and now I guess here we are! Why, I think I'll keep going. :)