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Sunday, December 1st, 2002
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I have decided that this journal no longer speaks to me or for me... I have a new journal. And you can find me there...
As always, I will be there when thedeadawaken...
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Comments: Add Your Own.
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Thursday, October 31st, 2002
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I just heard a rumor from a fairly reliable source (and loads of unreliable ones) that Jordan Ezra Hanson has been born!! I heard that in the last couple of days that Natalie had her baby. So, my boy Tay is now a father.
I guess, that she was much more pregnant at the wedding than anyone guessed. He got lucky on Valentines Day. This could still turn out to be a total fabrication... As most rumors do.
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Wednesday, October 30th, 2002
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Wednesday, October 23rd, 2002
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Wow, I am so down. I hate being this down. I hate feeling I have to remind myself to breathe. I hate it feels like my bones are slowly being ground to dust inside my skin. But mostly I hate no matter how hard I try I can't make myself feel better.
I guess it all started on Saturday...
Saturday after work, I stopped at Barnes & Noble. I know, I know, corporate bookstores are evil, but they also have the largest selection, so... I wandered through the lovely new 2-story B&N on the corner of 21st South and 13th East. I moved in and out of the stacks looking for the book Many Lives, Many Masters by Dr. Brian Weiss., when I noticed the new Chris Van Allsburg book. Now, Mr. Van Allsburg is the writer of the most amazing and gorgeous childrens books ever. In fact, I think everyone's library should have a copy of The Mysteries of Harris Burdick. It is just beautiful and quite possibly the most imaginative childrens book ever. I've collected his books for years now. In fact, I have almost every one of his books. I picked up a copy of his new book and began to thumb through it. I closed it after seeing how gorgeous the art was and clutched the book to my chest. I would get it... I wanted this book. I wanted to share this book with... Who? Who did I want to share it with?
That is when it hit me.
I have no one to share it with. I will never be a mother. Never. That option is forever closed to me. And the sad thing is that I only ever wanted to be a mother. I was born to be a mother... So, I am sad. Sad to the point I don't want to even get up out of my bed... I hope this passes quickly, but it feels like it has settled in for the winter...
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Monday, October 14th, 2002
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...I know this is stupid, but when someone totally shits on me, I often say that I forgive them. But, I find it hard to forget. And often, when someone hurts me, I pretend I don't care. But you know what? I do care. Then, eventually, I totally withdraw from this person. I guess what I'm saying is that someone hurt me, horribly. And I've never really admitted it until now. But this person cut me to the core, I cried about it to someone that I loved (and still love) and he told me to forget that person. He told me that anyone who would hurt me that much wasn't worth my time or my trouble.
And the way that this person hurt me was at the very base of my biggest insecurity. And I think she knew it. I don't think the people that joined her knew how badly they were hurting me. In fact, the person who gave her away didn't and probably doesn't to this day know how badly this situation killed me. I came within centimeters of completely cutting all of these people out of my life... And in the end, I did. Whether by default or by choice... I still like some of these people, in fact, I would count the person who gave me away as one of my best friends.
And as part of my fierce Capricorn loyalty, if I know that someone has hurt someone I love... I will not have anything to do with the person who hurt my friend. I don't ask my friends to do that... But in my heart, I wish they would. And this new pain brings up a lot of stuff I thought I was over... But apparently I'm not.
I guess what it comes down to is that I feel like hell. And I'm feeling very blue and depressed. And the final straw is seeing that I am still on the outside. No matter how in I think I am, I am still the girl on the outside looking in. The girl who will never fit in.
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Friday, October 11th, 2002
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Okay, for years this has been one of my all time favorite poems. Especially the stanza I italicized. This poem was always extremely powerful to me and it always spoke to me. And then this last January when I was in the hospital for surgery under the pall of cancer. My co-workers brought me a dozen of the most beautiful long-stem red roses... Of course, I did tell them that I wanted that for my birthday, which took place the day after I came home from the hospital. In fact, my nurse laughed saying she hadn't seen that many flowers in a long time. By the time I left, I had 18 baby red roses, 18 baby pink roses, a wildflower bouquet, a huge bouquet of Gerber daisies and my gorgeous red roses... Not to mention the flowers I got at my house... It was just an amazing experince... I didn't know I was so loved.
But as I lay in my room, completely unable to sleep or even get comfortable, I sat and watched the tight, tight buds slowly loosen and eventually open. I remember thinking I could literally see the petals slowly opening. Then, this poem came to mind. She felt like the flowers were conspiring to kill her, to steal her oxygen. And mine, they made me feel so happy. They made me want to get better and to see the world again...
Still, this is a beautiful poem.
Tulips
The tulips are too excitable, it is winter here
Look how white everything is, how quiet, how snowed-in
I am learning peacefulness, lying by myself quietly
As the light lies on these white walls, this bed, these hands.
I am nobody; I have nothing to do with explosions.
I have given my name and my day-clothes up to the nurses
And my history to the anaesthetist and my body to surgeons.
They have propped my head between the pillow and and the sheet-cuff
Like an eye between two white lids that will not shut.
Stupid pupil, it has to take everything in.
The nurses pass and pass, they are no trouble,
They pass the way gulls pass inland in their white caps,
Doing things things with their hands, one just the same as another,
So it is impossible to tell how many there are.
My body is a pebble to them, they tend it as water
Tends to the pebbles it must run over, smoothing them gently.
They bring me numbness in their bright needles, they bring me sleep
Now I have lost myself I am sick of baggage -
My patent leather overnight case like a black pillbox,
My husband and child smiling out of the family photo;
Their smiles catch onto my skin, little smiling hooks.
I have let things slip, a thirty-year-old cargo boat
Stubbornly hanging on to my name and address.
They have swabbed me clear of my loving associations.
Scared and bare on the green plastic-pillowed trolley
I watched my teaset, my bureaus of linen, my books
Sink out of sight, and the water went over my head.
I am a nun now, I have never been so pure.
I didn't want any flowers, I only wanted
To lie with my hands turned up and be utterly empty.
How free it is, you have no idea how free -
The peacefulness is so big it dazes you,
And it asks nothing, a name tag, a few trinkets.
It is what the dead close on, finally; I imagine them
Shutting their mouths on it, like a Communion tablet.
The tulips are too red in their first place, they hurt me.
Even through the gift paper I could hear them breathe
Lightly, through their white swaddlings, like an awful baby.
Their redness talks to my wound, it corresponds.
They are subtle: they seem to float, though they weigh me down,
Upsetting me with their sudden tongues and their colour,
A dozen red lead sinkers round my neck.
Nobody watched me before, now I am watched.
The tulips turn to me, and the window behind me
Where once a day the light slowly widens and slowly thins,
And I see myself, flat, ridiculous, a cut-paper shadow
Between the eye of the sun and the eye of the tulips,
And I have no face, I have wanted to efface myself.
The vivid tulips eat my oxygen.
Before they came the air was calm enough,
Coming and going, breath by breath, without any fuss.
Then the tulips filled it up like a loud noise.
Now the air snags and eddies round them the way a river
Snags and eddies round a sunken rust-red engine.
They concentrate my attention, that was happy
Playing and resting without committing itself.
The walls, also seem to be warming themselves.
The tulips should be behind bars like dangerous animals;
They are opening like the mouth of some great African cat,
And I am aware of my heart: it opens and closes
Its bowl of red blooms out of sheer love fo me.
The water I taste is warm and salt, like the sea,
And comes from a country far away as health.
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Thursday, October 10th, 2002
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Friday, October 4th, 2002
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I haven't written any poetry for so long it's almost criminal... But here is a little thing I cooked up.
The sea cannot make up her mind.
She yearns for the shore,
rushing up,
up,
up to where I stand.
She laps at my toes,
tentatively,
waiting for an invitation to stay.
I wish I could take her home
with me.
She could stay in my backyard.
I would dress her in
satin green perfection
and let her wear her white hair
as wild as she like.
I call out to her,
but she cannot hear me
over the song she sings.
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...there has been an error somewhere. For some reason, I am the fan of the week over at h.net. I realize it pretty much means nothing, but... Still very, very weird and surreal.
Stephanie
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This a response to a post by Laura (I don't know how to make links or I would, sorry!!) that was too long to post as a response!
It seems that of late I've been wondering why I'm writing fanfic. Why am I tenaciously hanging onto these characters? Why don't I create a world populated with people who aren't named Taylor and Zac and Isaac? And really, why do I feel the need to defend and justify my position and my choice of topic? It's not like you are attacking or saying that writing fanfic is bad... Still, I feel there are issues to address, questions to answer. But are these unanswerable questions?
Not really.
You see, I spent all of my life writing. I wrote on everything. In fact, if you open up my trusty filing cabinet (or any of my college textbooks) you will find words spilling out of me in multiple colors. I have the beginnings of poems written on napkins and receipts from the ATM, an entire chapter to a long-ago-story written on the back of a paper placemat from the Mexican restaurant where I worked, a poem started and completed in the margins of my Riverside Chaucer book... Hell, I even have the beginning of a poem written on a wooden stir stick from a cafe on Haight Street in San Francisco. It reads: "This is a city that doesn't know my name..."
I wrote.
That is what I did. I wrote. I was almost never without a pen stuck in my hair, either holding it up or my hair was a convenient place to store it since I wear glasses and pens won't stay behind my ear. My friends teased me constantly for the dirtiness of my hands from ink, the grubbiness of my notebook from constant handling. In fact, one friend gave me one of those micro-recorders for Christmas, so I could write while driving...
And then one day, I stopped.
One day I thought to myself: Why am I always writing? What do these words mean? Do they even mean anything to me, let alone anyone else? It was then I came to the shocking realization that my life's passion was a sham. I am only a fair to middling poet and an even worse fiction writer. Sure, I got into every MFA program I applied to. But they were all deluded. I was the ultimate pretender to the throne. I believed my talent was something built on reputation alone. I was vocal in class, which my professors loved. I can write a mean essay; I mean, I wrote an essay about why I DIDN'T read a book and got an "A" on it. I had a fairly easy time reading a selection and picking out the theme, the symbolism, etc.
And, I had written one fairly brilliant short story and one marginally acceptable poem... But they were far and away better than anything anyone at the college had written in such a long time that I was suddenly the Golden Child. I was the one the professors gave an "A" whether I earned it or not. Cause I was the Great and Powerful Stephanie. I don't think any of them wanted to be the first professor in the English department to NOT give me an "A."
So, I decided that the answer was to just stop writing.
Then one powerfully hot August afternoon in Phoenix, AZ something changed. I had promised my most beloved niece that I would take her to see her favorite band, even if it meant I had to drive her all the way to LA or NYC. The LA show sold out, but we got tickets to see them in Phoenix. When we arrived at the venue to pick up our tickets at will-call, the temperature on the bank across the street read 118 degrees. I thought I was going to die of heat prostration before the show even started. But as I walked up to get the tickets, suddenly the wilted crowd came to life. Three boys all of the blonde persuasion came zooming up to them in a golf cart. I noticed right away how shiny and hot they all looked. Then the pretty one (and I pegged him as the pretty one right away, cause damn...) stepped out from behind the steering wheel of the golf cart and said, "I can’t believe they are waiting out here just to see us, it’s so fucking hot.” Or something to that effect and I was smitten. I thought he was adorable and so blissfully unaware of how beautiful he was and modest.
I guess as background I need to tell you that I teased my niece constantly about her love of Hanson, Zac specifically. I teased her in all the usual ways… Ways that those of you who have been fans from the beginning probably know by rote. I said they looked like girls. I said there was no way they really wrote their own songs. I said they were just faking the playing, they were really lip-syncing. I was only teasing, but I also meant it in a way. It was kind of disturbing to see 3 such young boys with so much talent. Maybe it was just old-fashioned jealousy… I don’t know. So you see, I just took her to the concert cause it was so important to her, not because I like them.
But then the concert started. And I found myself totally and completely entertained. I found myself astounded by the strength of their voices, the musicality, the talent, the way they captured their audience. I loved them for what they were giving us as an audience. I was taken by their talent as a whole; but the middle brother, the pretty one, he just was so huge a presence. His talent was so huge he practically glowed with it. I couldn’t take my eyes off of him. He touched me even as far away from him as I was sitting.
And something from that night sparked in me a desire to write. A desire to explain what it was in him, in his creative force, that touched me, awakened the sleeping creativity inside of me. So, in the car on the way home from Phoenix, I started my magnum opus. I started what would eventually become So, there was this boy… But in the end, Boy became more about Cleo and Thad and their tragic and twisted relationship than about Hanson. Cleo became someone I loved, someone I created, someone who could be me.
Then by some weird quirk, some weird twist of fate, I met him (which is another story all together). I met my muse the person who started all of this insanity just by his presence in a dark and crowded theater. And I found that he was so much more real than anything I could write. He loves and hates his life. He loves that he is doing something he finds so completely satisfied. He hates the fact he hasn’t gone ANYWHERE by himself ever… He hates that he is away from the people he loves for such long periods of time. He told me once that he feels like a beautiful bird in a gilded cage. The cage is enormous and amazing, filled with everything he could ever need or want, even with things he didn’t know he needs or wants, but it is a cage nonetheless. He loves his life and doesn’t regret any of the choices he’s made, but… I guess every silver lining comes with a cloud.
The fiction then became just that, fiction. Not my telling of a supposed history, but a story where I was creating out of thin air a character. Sure, he looks a lot like someone we all know and he shares a name, but really, he is my creation. The sad boy I had the good fortune of knowing for a short while is the reality and I could never write his life. And really, my love for Cleo is what keeps me writing.
And that in a nutshell is why I still write fanfic, because these amazing boys gave me back something I thought I'd lost forever the will to write and the confidence that maybe it didn't suck!!
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Okay, today was supposed to be my day to do nothing and yet... Well, it didn't turn out that way. But then again, not many things do...
I mean, if life worked out the way it's supposed to, I would be a brilliant English professor at some small university on the eastern seaboard with my equally brilliant history professor husband. I would turn a blind eye as my handsome, vital husband dallied with the beautiful, coltish girls in his classes, because he always came home to me. I would pretend that I didn't notice how intimately they touched each other at the intramural soccer games. I would smile and nod at her youth and beauty, but I would know that soon he would find her lack of intellect to be tiring. And of course, I had my graduate assistant to keep me company. We would have the obligatory 1.9 children (a boy and a girl, both named something appropriately literary and historical), a dog and a cat, possibly a parrot. I would drive something sturdy and European in a deep jewel tone. I would wear my long hair pulled up, seldom if ever, would I let the soft, sensual curls frame my face. I would wear cothing that made me seem scholarly. I would hide behind my glasses even more than I do now, using the stern, over-the-top look to even greater effect. The skin around my lips would be developing lines showing the groves that came as a result of disappointment and disapproval. I would look as learned and superior and put upon as I felt. Cause, in the end, isn't it all about appearances? I would leave my children with the nanny far too often for it to be healthy. Still, I would show up at their soccer games and cheer for them, trying desperately to not act hurt when they ran to the nanny in celebration after the game. I would smoke expensive European cigarettes, wreathing myself in their strong, sweet aroma. And in the evening, I would probably drink too much wine. I would have published my book, an esoteric study of the link between madness and genius. And in all likelihood, I would be desperately unhappy, but afraid that if I left I would find there never really was a me at all.
So, instead, I exist in a sort of mad half life that I adore. My life a truly messy and wondorous thing. I have no ties to hold me to where I am or what I am doing. I can travel at will. I move from thing to thing without apprehension, desperately scrawling down words no one will ever read. And finding that I don't care if anyone ever reads one word I wrote, because I wrote it for the joy of simply creating. Still, sometimes I find myself worrying that maybe, just maybe, that was the life I was supposed to lead instead of this messy celebration.
Because, if I had lived that other life, the planned life, would days like today, where all the things I wanted to do were thrown over, have been possible?
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Okay, so my alarm is set to go off at 5:17 am. Why 5:17? Really, I have no clue, it's just where it's set. But for some reason unbeknowst to me, I have been waking up every morning sometime between 3:30 and 4:30.
ARGH!!!
Why, oh why can't I just sleep? I mean, I go to bed tired, I wake up tired, I walk around all day tired. Seriously, I thought after my surgery, I wasn't supposed to be tired all the time. Because, I wasn't supposed to bleed all the time anymore(which I don't), so I wouldn't be anemic anymore. But damn, I'm still tired.
Maybe I just taught myself to not sleep. I mean, I spent years and years forcing myself to stay up. While I was still at USU, I would go to bed at around 2 am and get up every morning at 6 am. Drinking ungodly amounts of coffee and Dr. Pepper everyday just to stay awake. Eventually, 4 hours became all I needed to sleep. But now, I want more. Please, just let me sleep...
Oooh!! Did you hear that lovely whine? Wow!! I haven't whined that much in a long time. See what happens when I don't get enough sleep?? Well, hell, I need to go to work eventually... And I guess this is the time. *sigh* Today is gonna suck!
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Wednesday, April 3rd, 2002
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Today was a banner day... It was so gorgeous. The newly green trees were dancing in the light breeze. Seriously, it was the perfect day. The sky was perfectly blue. The air was perfectly fresh. The temperature was perfect. I went and ate lunch on the front bench at work, I would usually go sit on the front lawn, but the lanscapers were there. They mowed the lawns around my office. They took the heads off of all the brilliant yellow dandelions, sending the seeds of the mature ones floating up into the air. It was actually quite beautiful. Watching all the cotton light seeds floating on the breeze. The air was fairly swimming in them, moving lazily as if they were in no hurry to get where they were going. I sat on the bench, my tuna fish sandwich forgotten and watched them transfixed for about 15 minutes.
Afterwards, I just couldn't concentrate on work.
I wanted to climb into my car and drive west on I-15. I would cruise along the highway listening to my favorite CD's, drinking Chai's and eating beef jerky. Maybe, I'd even stop in at Ye Olde Hitchin' Poste, to reminisce about my long ago wedding. Once I was in California, I would take the 10 freeway until it simply ended. The 10 ends at Lincoln Boulevard, right in the heart of Venice Beach. I've been wanting to swim in the ocean, to feel the water so teaming with life surround me, float me, cradle me. I'd swim out, straight out, fully dressed wearing my tights, my sweater and my skirt, swim so far out that land was just a suggestion on the horizon. So far out, I would never be able to swim back to shore, I would simply drown in the ocean.
But who wouldn't be happy to drown like that?
To become a part of the beautiful ocean. I would be swimming along one moment and then the next, I would simply slip beneath the surface of the water. Simply a memory, that would soon be forgotten.
Really, I'm not suicidal. I've just always had this fantasy that one day, I would just turn a corner and be gone. That I would step through a doorway into nothingness. This fantasy actually was born in New York. One day, I was walking from my friends apartment on the corner of 77th street and 2nd Avenue to my little apartment on the corner of 10th Avenue and 47th Street, right across from Hell's Kitchen Park. And it occurred to me, how easily I could simply turn a corner and just keep walking. Walk away from the pathetic life I was living and directly into a new life. My new life would probably be very hard and brutal. I would have to start from scratch with nothing. But would that be so bad? Dump my current baggage, for a whole new set of baggage. I could just drop out of life and into the land of the disappeared. Become a prostitute, perhaps... A junkie? Most likely... I would just no longer be. I would cease to exist. I would be able to close my eyes and know that no one would care if I woke up or not.
But then again, isn't the fact that there are those out there who care if I wake that makes my life worth living?
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Thursday, March 28th, 2002
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Jason called again this evening. He wanted to go out again this weekend, but I told him no. For so many reasons and probably all the reasons you think. I am scared, terrified of actually liking him and having him break my heart.
A heart is such a fragile thing. Even though it is made of pure muscle and can make your blood chase itself around your body... It is also fragile in the extreme. Okay, another old journal entry, but this has been on my mind for a long time. In fact, this is how "Boy" was originally going to end...
I'll never forget how that afternoon began. I was sitting on the floor of our apartment sorting laundry. I was sorting it to take with me to work the next day, so I could use my employers washer. The boy was at school. He attended LIU out on Long Island (obviously). I had picked up some pizza and a bottle of wine for dinner. He got off work about an hour before me, but his commute was about 45 minutes longer than mine, so I usually beat him home. I had opened all the windows and had lit candles to try and chase out the moldy smell that this apartment had on that late October afternoon. The date was October 20th... 2 days before his birthday. So, I was using the time alone to clean the apartment, to quickly wrap the presents I had gotten him, to squirt on an extra squirt of his favorite perfume... I was probably humming the song from "West Side Story," you know the one... Anita's gonna get her kicks tonight... I ate my pizza alone and put the rest in the fridge... I picked up the bottle of wine to get myself another glass and the bottle was almost empty... Where was he? What was he doing? Why hadn't he called me?
And as time passed, I began to worry. We had been in the city a little over 3 months. Nothing bad had happened to either of us, but really, we didn't live in a very good neighborhood and he did have to walk through Times Square. This was the pre-Disney/pre-MTV Times Square. It was still full of hookers and drug dealers. I called my friend Wendy who lived across town to see if maybe he had stopped in to see her and had just forgotten to call. She assured me that he loved me and that nothing short of death would keep him from me. As she blathered on about her latest conquest, my call waiting beeped. I quickly said goodbye and hit the button.
"Hello?" I said, hoping that it was him.
"Hey..." He said, his voice unnaturally quiet.
"Where are you?" I asked hoping my voice sounded concerned, not bitchy.
"Umm... yeah, I need to talk to you about that..." He said.
In retrospect, at that moment, my heart should have jumped into my throat, my body should have been bathed in a cold sweat, my legs should have lost their strength. But instead I just said, "Oh yeah, what's up?" as I sat in the chair in front of the window. I remember picking up a dogeared copy of Interview. I remember looking out and seeing someone standing at the payphone on the corner across the street. I remember that a car horn blasted somewhere nearby.
"Stephanie, I'm not coming home tonight..." He said.
"Okay, are you staying with Alex?" I asked. Alex was on the soccer team with him and they had become pretty good friends.
"No, I'm not."
"...what's going on?" I asked, a light flicking on over my head.
"It's just..." He said and stopped. I could hear rustling through the phone... In my mind's eye, I could see him running his fingers through his semi-long, white blonde hair. He took a deep breath and let it out in a long sigh. "Stephanie..."
"Oh my God." I said.
"I... I'm just..." He stammered. Suddenly, I found his stammering to be the most annoying habit in the world. "I'm sorry."
"You do realize that I moved 2,000 miles to be with you... I dropped out of college, to come with you so you wouldn't be alone..." I said as the magazine slid from my lap onto the floor. Suddenly, I couldn't feel my fingers and I was seeing big black dots in front of my eyes. I was sure I was about to pass out.
"I know..." He said. "But, you have to understand..."
"Understand what?" I demanded. I was getting pissed. "That you are an asshole?"
"Stephanie," he said his voice filled with rage, "there are too many other girls out there that I want to fuck."
Okay, you may well ask yourself how you would respond to that tidbit of information... Well, let me tell you how I responded... I hung up the phone. I didn't slam it into it's cradle. I didn't throw it across the room. I just gently set the phone back into it's cradle and then set it on the table. I felt my body go boneless as I slid out of the chair and onto the floor. And I didn't cry... then... I just laid on the floor in a boneless heap. I couldn't move. I couldn't think. I could barely breathe. Honestly, I don't know how long I laid there, but I do remember that the phone didn't ring. He didn't try to call back.
Finally around 3:00 am, I dragged myself off the floor and into our bedroom. I was so cold with all the windows open, but the cold was real. I crawled onto our bed and wrapped myself around the pillow that smelled like him and began to sob. That was the last time I was ever going to let a man bring me to tears... The next morning I dragged my ass out of bed and went to work... I took our laundry and washed our clothing together for the last time. When I got home, all of his stuff was gone... I neatly set all of his clothes that I had just washed on the kitchen counter... And went to bed at 7:30. I slept until the next morning when my alarm went off and I left again for work. That night when I got home, there was an envelope in the mailbox with his keys in it. And there was no physical trace of him anywhere in our apartment.
So, now, when I hear the song Oblivious by Aztec Camera, I wonder how different my life would be if he hadn't made that phone call. He used to sing this song to me all the time. He told me that I was too sensitive, too easily hurt. He told me that he wanted to spend the rest of our lives protecting me from those who would hurt me. Isn't it ironic that he was the one who hurt me the most?
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Okay, so today I was talking to one of my friends and telling her about my "date" on Friday night. And she asked me a very, very pertinent question. She asked, "do you think your reluctance to love him comes from who he reminds you of?" Who does he remind me of? He will always and forever remind me of my first true and complete love. And then I thought of a journal entry that I wrote in a long ago deleted journal. So, I dragged it out and found the emotions I describe still boil just under the skin. Perhaps, this is why I will never be able to be with Jason in any sort of significant way....
Today, I tried to think of the last time I was truly and completely in love with someone... A time when I would have gladly given my life for someone... A time when the world did not exist except for when I was with that someone... And even though I adored Ruben with all that I was, it isn't him. No, I have to go even further back. To my first true love. To the boy I forsook my homeland for. The boy who was the first to break my heart. The boy who I loved complete.
I loved him so much that I moved with him to New York City... I followed him 2,000 miles just to be able to breathe in his boy scent, to feel his corn silk blonde hair between my fingers, to hear his breath close to my ear, ragged and labored with passion, to taste his kisses flavored with strong coffee and cigarettes, to see his eyes as they went from distant and melancholy to alert and happy when I walked in the room. I loved him. And him? Well, I was pretty sure that he loved me...
We were living in a dive. The rat and cockroach infested hallway of an apartment on the corner of 47th St and 10th Avenue. The actual address was: 666 10th Avenue. It overlooked Hell's Kitchen Park... A very fitting name. We lived on the 6th floor of a 6 floor walk-up. And when it was hot outside, it was hot!! Truly hellish... I remember one night, it was so hot and sticky. It was humid in a way that only New York can be humid. The air was stale and close. I needed to be outside... I was homesick for my home in the mountains... It was the kind of night where I would have taken my blanket and pillow and gone outside and slept on the deck looking at the stars through a canopy of trees. I began to cry out of discomfort, homesickness and exhaustion. My boy grabbed my hand and pulled me off the bed. He pulled the wet and sweaty sheet off the mattress that rested on the floor and led me to the doorway. He kissed me gently on each cheek and promised me that it would all work out. He told me he loved me. He pulled me out into the stairwell and over to the door that led to the roof...
When we reached the roof of our building. He slowly stripped both of us... Until we stood together in the hot, close New York City night, naked... He spread the sheet out on the still soft tar roof and then we laid on the hot roof. He told me stories about our life together. He told me beautiful lies about the future. He whispered the names of our unborn children into my ear. He kissed me and filled me with hope that the world was as he promised me it was. I looked at the building surrounding us and wondered how many of the occupants were looking out there windows at the beautiful, blonde boy and his long legged dark haired beauty... Watching us as we held hands and tried to find the stars... In the not too far off distance, I could hear the sounds of the shipbuilders working and I caught occasional flashes of light as their torches touched the sides of the enormous ships they were building. Spectacular fireworks just for us. An ambulance sped by on 10th Avenue. My boy smoked another of his Dunhill Blue cigarettes as I sucked on a sour candy. He would complain that my kisses were bitter and laugh. I could see his chest rise and fall next to me. His hands felt too warm as they explored my body. A pigeon landed on the pole that held the laundry line just over our heads.... But, because of all the light around us, we couldn't find the stars....
And it was then that I realized that sometimes, the stars hide. Although it is rumored that they are the vain angels that love to show off, sometimes, they don't want to be seen. So, now, whenever I see them, I know they want to be known. That night, my star was the boy laying next to me... But, he was a shooting star and quickly burned out. Shooting stars are the most beautiful and the most fleeting... But, that night, I thought I'd love his light forever... I thought he'd love mine as well... But now, I just love the memory of us... Of our light. We really were each others stars for that time. And for that perfect moment, we truly loved one another... Truly...
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Saturday, March 23rd, 2002
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I have been so out of it lately. I feel like everytime the phone rings it's going to be someone I don't want to talk to. Everytime a car pulls into my driveway it's going to be someone I don't want to see. So, I hide in my grotto under the stairs and don't go outside to see if the day is nice cause I just don't want to see anyone at all... I think I'm turning into an anti-social paranoid schizophrenic. Or, I am just so tired that all I want to do is sleep.
I went out last night, with a random friend from high school. BUT, I emphasis, it was not a date, even if he did buy me dinner. He was cute in high school, but I was too in love with Paul to even notice... It was just one of those things. Paul made me melt and Jason made me laugh. Now, Jason is very, very good looking. He is a lawyer with a pretty big firm here in Slick City. He picked me up in his big ass truck (this of course had me wondering all through dinner if maybe the size of the truck was to make up for another "shortcoming"). He was wearing an outfit he'd obviously run to A&F that day to wear. He had on baggy shorts, a oversized t-shirt, an old and hammered looking Levi jacket and a pair of thongs. It was all new and crisp and very young looking. He even had one of those "distressed" baseball caps. But he looked cute. And DAMN!! He smelled like heaven. Let's see if I can add the pics of his outfit to this entry... Oh well, I can't. Actually, I was dressed very similarly, only instead of thongs I had my Doc's on and a hooded zip-up cardigan.
So, he picked me up and took me out to dinner. We went to this funky sports bar type place. We both ordered burgers (mine was a garden burger of course) and had a beer with our meal. We talked and talked and talked and laughed a lot. In fact, I didn't realize I had been so funny in high school (since I was kind of a goth kid, this was 1983, long before the horrible stereotype existed). But as he reminisced, I found tears sliding down my face from laughter. The whole time we talked we kep moving our chairs closer and closer and closer... Until finally we were sitting right next to each other, I went to hook my leg around the leg of the chairs and found his was already hooked there. Thank God I thought to shave.
Suddenly, his face got all serious. He started to lean in for a kiss and I backed away from him. I jumped up and said I needed to use the bathroom. Now why on earth would I do such an assinine thing? Probably because I don't know if I want that from him. Probably because, I'm afraid that I will fall in love with him and well, love inevitably ends badly. Probably because he was far too real. When I wandered back to the table, he was leaning back in his chair (which he'd moved back to where it was before) and was smoking a cigar. He looked at me and smiled. Then he said (and this is as accurate as I can get), "you have no idea how pretty you are, do you?"
"Pfft." I said rolling my eyes. "I am hardly pretty."
"Stephanie you are a fool." He said shaking his head.
"I am?"
"Yes, all through high school I followed you around like a puppy dog. I watched you date guy after guy and it killed me. Everytime I'd ask you to go do something it was always as friends."
"Well, we were friends." I said watching him blow terrible smoke rings.
"I never wanted to be your friend." He said sitting forward.
"Oh, okay..." I said, as he signalled for the check. He then paid and as we walked out to his big ass truck neither one of us could think of one thing to say. The drive back to my house was similarly silent.
Finally as he pulled into my driveway he turned to me and smiled again. "We'll have to go do this again sometime."
"Okay, sounds fun." I said definitely thinking it DID not sound fun in the least. I hopped out of his truck and was inside my house before he could say anything else. I feel like such a loser today, but I've never even thought about Jason in that way. Ever.
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Thursday, March 21st, 2002
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as a consequence, I can't breathe. Not even a little bit. This just sucks. So, pretty much from now until it snows next fall, I am going to be stuffed up...
But hey, at least I'll be warm.
I know this is short and lame, but dang. I am a waste of space. OH!! This random guy from my past came into the clinic the other day and talked to me for a really, really long time. We're going to go do something this weekend, maybe. But let me stress this, it is not a date. Seriously, it was cool to have a good looking guy ask me out, but there is no possible way in hell that I would "go" out with him.
AND!! Another MAJORLY stressful moment in my life. I'm at work on Monday, minding my own darn business, when the phone rings. I pick it up and say my speil: First floor check-in, this is Stephanie. And on the other end of the line I hear a voice say, "Stephanie, this is Wendy."
Okay, as a bit of background. At one point in my life, I had two best friends. Wendy and Trinette. I loved them dearly, more than life itself it seemed. I hung out with them pretty much constantly. In fact, many people thought we just came as a threesome. We were ALWAYS together. We talked alike, we thought alike, hell, we were alike. One of our mutual friends was sure that the 3 of us were withches cause we could finish each others sentences and I could be sitting on the couch singing some song and Trinette or Wendy would walk in from a totally different place and be singing the same song. We were close. I honestly think that the 3 of us thought each others thoughts. Trinette was the beautiful, brilliant one. I was the smart and sassy one with a snotty comeback for every comment. And Wendy, well, Wendy was kind of a legend. Everyone knew her. She was one of those people that by knowing her, you raise your social status. Everyone wanted to hang with her, but only a few of us did. Wendy was the general. She was daring and outspoken and outrageous and sexual and all of the things Trinette and I weren't. But that was okay, cause I didn't want to be everything to everyone. I just wanted to be myself.
But things change.
Trinette and I got(what our friends called) a divorce. She moved to San Francisco, I moved back to New York and well, Wendy stayed in Utah cause she was a mom. But eventually, I came back. And being the person that I am (and constantly being with Ruben), I was thrown back in with Wendy. Cause really, old friends are like comfortable shoes. Why torture yourself wearing the uncomfortable 6 inch spike heels when your broken in Doc's will do just as well?
Wendy is a very smart person, but she hates to not be the smartest person in the room. When I went back to college and started to come home each weekend with my head filled with new and exciting stuff, she began to grow jealous. But she wasn't overt about her jealousy, she was very, very covert. She did things that were subtle, things that were sneaky, things, I know she wasn't aware she was doing.
She knew that she was important to me and yet, she still seemed to delight in making me feel completely incompetent. She made me feel like a fool. She made me feel like my experiences weren't as valuable as hers cause my weren't in the "arena of real life." She would challenge my every statement. Tear down every last one of my beliefs, until I started wondering what was right. I became very defensive about my opinion, because EVERY conversation became an argument or "discussion" of my beleifs. This is one of the reasons why I hate to constantly "debate" every issue. She didn't give me enough respect to form my own ideas and opinions. She was constantly trying to make me into a carbon copy of her. She chipped away at my self-confidence and my self worth, until finally, I was convinced I was the person she saw me as.
Yes, folks, it's true. I became one of those horrible people who are always looking for validation.
Then, one morning as I lay in bed. I suddenly saw what she was doing to me. I saw that she was constantly undermining me. She wanted me to be weak and frail, so I would have to rely on her. She wanted to be able to say, "well, Stephanie may be the smartest among our friends, but look at how weak she is." And it was on that very morning, I decided I was leaving Utah again. So, I applied to all out-of-state schools for graduate school. I left and planned on never coming back.
But then a minor miracle happened. She moved too. She took her daughter and moved to Seattle. Once there she realized she wasn't everything to everyone. In fact, she wasn't really anything to anyone. But being someone who was too proud to ever admit she was wrong, she didn't move home. She stayed in Seattle and eventually was transferred to Dallas. It has been 9 years since she moved and I moved back. And now, she's back. And she thinks things will go back to the way they were. She thinks I'll become dependent on her again. That I will begin to search for validation from her. That I will allow my beliefs to be torn down and reshaped by her.
But she is wrong. Dead wrong.
I am so different than I was 10 years ago. I am a whole new person. I think she'll be surprised to see just how much I've changed. Trinette can see it, but will she? I honestly think she will just want everything to be the same. She will want me to go to parties with her. She will want me to stay up all night playing cards with her. She will want me to be at her beck and call. But that is so not going to happen. I don't even want to see her. Not cause I'm afraid she will break me again, but because I have no interest in anything she has to offer. Do I sound bitter and bitchy? Well, good, cause I am.
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So, this past week at work, Jenn brought in some CD's of 80's music. And it totally reminded me why the 80's were such a horrible decade!! Don't get me wrong, some of the music was great, but damn... How many synthesizers and drum machines can one song have? And really, the clothes and hair... *shudder* All I can say is there is no power on earth or in heaven that can make me EVER show pictures of that era of my life to anyone.
As an aside, I went to a psychic on Friday. It was very cool!! I went just cause I wanted to know if this year was gonna get better, if my health concerns were taken care of, it I'd ever talk to my boy again... Well, what she had to say was very, very interesting.
As I sat down, she shook my hand and asked my name. I told her my name was Stephanie and she smiled while shuffling the cards. She asked me a few more questions, before placing the cards in front of me. She said, "Catherine, cut the cards... Wait your name isn't Catherine, it's Stephanie. Why am I getting such a strong impression of that name from you?" I explained that Catherine was a very good friend of mine and that I had been thinking about her a lot because she has some big stuff coming up. And she nodded and said, "well, everyhting may not turn out exactly as she'd like, but she will be pleased with the results." So, yeah, Catherine!!
Then, she laid the cards out and she said "the guides" were telling her that I am very, very smart. And that even though I appear to be an emotional person to those around me, I'm actually really, really logical and like to be in control of things. I am emotional, but hate to respond emotionally. She told me that the beginning of this year had seemed so bad to me because it required me to respond with my heart and my gut. My logic was no help to me. And that this was going to continue for the rest of this year, but she told me that I had to learn that emotional response weren't bad. The guides are trying to help me to release a little control, to relax and to realize I don't control everything.
Then she said she saw a man, a young man. Someone who is very special, not to just me, but to the world. She told me that there was a lot of love surrounding the man, in fact, the cards on either side of him were both love cards. Strong love cards. As she looked at them, she stopped and just looked at the cards for a long time. Then she said, "there is so much love here, more love than you can even imagine. He shines with first love, but there is someone, a woman who will never allow him to be with you." She then asked me his name. I told her. She asked me if he was significanly younger than me. I answered yes. She looked at the cards and then shook her head. "You will not have contact with him again in the future. The woman has too much of a hold over him." But really, I knew that. But, she did assure me that I hadn't been deluded, she said that my boy and I were soulmates, but to remember that all soulmates are meant to be together forever. There had been love there and more from him than from me. Damn my age!! If I were only 10 years younger, it wouldn't be an issue.
Then she told me that within 8 months, she sees another man coming into my life. She didn't know if it was a romance or just a friendship, but she said it would make me happy. And that this person would help me to accept that sometimes you just have to respond with your heart and not always with your brain. All in all, she was very cool. She knew a lot about me. She actually guessed my birthday, very impressive.
*sigh*
Maybe it was better for me to just not know if I'd ever hear from him again....
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hadabadday's journal
thoughtful.
sad.
tired.
happy.
aggravated.
confused.
quixotic.