Life's Tattoo

Both my mother and my father gave me tons of advice about life.  Many times they did not chose the right words and so their message was heard as nagging instead.  I know they just wanted to help me avoid the vast suffering they had already gone thru in life, but when the audience is a young person who thinks he knows everything... I just don't know how much filters into that innocent immature brain.   To parents, it must be hard to sit back and watch their child suffer the same nonsense they went through - it must make them wonder why they had to go through all the suffering to begin with, if they could not pass on their knowledge to their younglings.

My parents told me so.  And I even told others too.   But what it all comes down to is that life's experiences cannot be learned from a book, or downloaded from the internet, or from listening to advice, nagging or warnings.  Life becomes life only after you have experience it.  Kind of like a tattoo:  Life doesn't become part of you until you have gone thru the pain and then healed.  Life must be learned.  Life must be earned.

So get out there and suffer and earn your own life.  You'll look back one day and be proud of all you've done.   And, on that same token, allow others to live their own lives; you cannot take away this from anyone... that is probably the biggest crime possible:  Taking away someone's chance to experience the bittersweetness that is life.

Amen.

Our House

NOTE:   Imported from my myspace.com blog.  Posted originally on 1/3/13.  Minor edits.  


Last time I posted a blog in here (myspace.com) was sometime in September of 2008. Then life changed I guess. In more ways than I can think. And then it changed again. And then some.

So, him and I bought a house some 30 miles away from the city. At the time, it was something that I felt we both needed. A break away from the city and all the chaos that comes with living there. I thought we needed sometime to not just be "city gays in a relationship", but to be a couple building a future and thinking ahead. I mean, who buys a house if not thinking ahead?

Initially when I started the search, I was hoping that we would buy in Oakland - close to the city, urban, diverse and that when the housing market bounced right back up, that we would have some nice equity in case we needed to sell and move elsewhere. Well, we lost track of that vision and ended up in Concord.

And so don't get me wrong; Concord is awesome. It is not an urban environment for sure, but it is close enough that I am a train ride away from the city and the craziness that I love and miss dearly. And it is quiet enough that I can unwind if I allow myself to.

But suburbia does something to city folk. It really challenges you. It challenges relationships. It tests bonds and connections. Many fail, but many succeed. It just so happened that we failed. I mean; a year later after having moved into this wonderful house, we barely talked and we barely spent any time together - our discontent with each-other was hidden behind the pretext of our "busy" schedules:  appointments, yoga, over-time, happy-hours with friends; etcetera.  

I left the city looking for change and an opportunity to solidify what we had. I don't know if I was in denial, or hoping for a change to convert our quasi-dysfunctional romance into something stronger? I don't know.

So, him and I ended up separating back in July. Or was it earlier? I can't even remember what day it was. It's someplace blurry in the back of my head because it was an unreal event; although to be honest, I never expected us to last this long... we did, and I grew to love, count, depend and support my partner. And so that when he wasn't there... the void was immense!! The person who drove me absolutely fucking crazy, but who I could simply not live without... had left.

Everything in the house reminded me of him. His finger prints and his footsteps were everywhere. There was no place where I could go where I would not see him and visions would cut at me as I went by. It was such a painful experience. Being left behind with a house full of memories to sort out and scents and apparitions to expel.

I loved this house. Because it was ours. I know I bitched and moaned about him not helping me with the house projects and such; but those that I did myself I did them with pride and love. Because I did it for us both. There was a certain level of passion and commitment to working on something that belongs to you and your love.

And so now that he has left, the house changed. It became no more than a cold box that houses my cats and I. A box still packed with jabbing reminders of the places that were his as well:  the bench on the deck where he smoked, his ashes still stain the spot where he used t sit; the black sofa chair where he sat to play his video games by the window, etc.  The front door's keyhole laughs at me each day when I get home; it finds it funny the sadness that strikes me as i climb up the cement stairs to open the door. "What a fool!", it thinks. I think it too. I think what a fool because: 1) I didn't fight for it hard enough. and 2) because I am aching for a love that had become so overwhelming and demanding that I felt I was going to lose my mind, and I only make reference to "my mind" because I had already lost everything else? No? That was part of the problem I guess, when you begin to think of the things you gave to your love as things you lost.  The giving versus the losing.  

It's been nearly six months since we called it quits. Surprisingly; for me, the ache has escalated. For a while I had felt secure and positive and so ready to move on. For some reason; probably courtesy of the holidays, it has been exceptionally hard on me. My heart be nagging often. And the funny thing is when you reach out to those dear beings that support you and they can't simply listen - they always throw back on your face the vomit of what was your bitching about your partner. You can't really talk to anyone. Talking is like a boomerang, it always comes back around. I guess this is why people go to therapists; because therapist don't give a fuck - they just want to get paid. Come in. Sit down. Talk. Cry. Bitch. Pay. Now get the fuck out. I know because I tried a therapist for a while expecting him to help me secure my sanity before I "lost" that too. LOL LOL. Well, if anything came out of that... was the shock of hearing myself say these things out loud to a stranger. It's one thing to write in a book, or to blog... or to boomerang to a friend your guts out. Really, vocalizing your aches and worries to a stranger is highly liberating and eye-opening. I realized that I was being childish and selfish and I wanted Mr "Pay and get the fuck out" to just give me the answers to my problems. Isn't there an iPhone App for that?

He left a couple months after "Mr Pay and get the fuck out". We agreed to it. Part of me had agreed to the separation hoping that it would trigger better discussion and resolution of our challenges. That didn't happen. Two weeks after he was already back in the city on his own. Well, this is good for him. He needed it. Everyone needs to experience life and live it. It wasn't fair for him to live his life thru my experience. You know?

Was the separation good for me? I don't know. I am broke as church mice. But I am thankful to God for being provided with the income to hold it together, at least for the time being. Sometimes I debate between being alone and being lonely; it's a discussion I often have with myself. I am glad the cats are here to drive me crazy and keep me moving. One could easily fall into a sedentary lifestyle fueled by emptiness and vacancy. You know?

Well, I guess i could go on and on and on. Lots of things that i want to discuss that I need to sort out that were triggered by his leaving. Well, it's part of growing. Guess I'll get to it when it's time.

And so here I am, in our house... making the best of it. Dreaming everyday of returning to the city and being a lounge singer. I'll wake up eventually.

A Decade Of Love Searching

Note:   Imported from my myspace.dot.com blog.  Posted on 1/6/13.  Minor edits.  

I had my heart broken by my first love after a short romance of some six months. I can't say that I blame him entirely because I was one needy bitch with an unrealistic definition of what love was supposed to be.  Having an unrealistic idea or definition of what love is supposed to be has always been my problem - as I assume it is for a lot of people.  

After I got my heart "broken" in 1996, I spent the next decade searching for "love". And when i say 'searching" I mean "DESPERATELY" searching. I was desperate because society had led me to believe that in order for me to be complete, to be validated, that I needed to have a boyfriend. Who are you in the world if you don't have a boyfriend?  Because having someone in your life translated to "being wanted and desired".  Right?  

For an entire decade, I fell "in love" with so many men that either: 1) were not interested, or 2) just wanted access to the goodies and then goodbye.  In the past six months since I separated, I've looked thru my journals and found page after page of heart-ache and disillusion. It was a bit hard to swallow.  Now, I've grown a lot in the past fifteen years, and i was able to admit to myself that there was only one person to be blamed for all that ache i experienced and it was me.

It's really sad to admit it, but in all honestly, I was searching for someone to complete me and make me feel whole.  (When I think of it, the other me-half that was meant to complete me was out busy drinking and fooling around; one fourth was busy with school and the other fourth was obsessing over love.  LOL)

A decade went by searching for something unnecessary, and that doesn't exist.  Then I met Michael when i was least expecting it, and our friendship turned to dating and that turned to a relationship which in turn turned to a marriage and then... five years later a divorce.

So, 15 years had gone by and I was now a totally different person. I was on BART on my way into the city from Concord for work. I saw a gorgeous man standing by the exit door. I thought to myself "Oh. He's so hot. He looks well established. I have nothing to offer to him!".

I HAVE NOTHING TO OFFER TO HIM.

'I have nothing to offer him" was underlined and highlighted and bolded by my emotional editor.  It hit me right then and there, that I had almost slipped back into that mindset of that hideous decade wasted not celebrating who I was and loving myself. I stopped myself right there and then and asked myself:  "What are you saying? You have nothing to offer to him?".

And so why do we have to have something to offer to anyone? When did a list of "must-meets" and criteria become part of the love game? Or part of relationships, period?   It might be true, you know?, that I do not have what he is looking for or is expecting out of his "ideal partner", but you know... it was at this moment that i realized that I am an amazing, wonderful person, and that everything and anything amazing that I had to offer... it was for no one, but to myself.  Anything and everything that I have to offer; good or bad, I can only offer to myself.  

I deserve ME, damn it.  Nothing more and nothing less.  My beauty, my gifts, my flaws, my weaknesses and my strengths were for no one. Only for me. Even if I was to enter another relationship, I would enter it aware that everything that I am, I am for me and only me. And that this person who would be entering a relationship would love me and appreciate me for the mess that I am.

Or else, how can it be love or romance when we find ourselves going thru changes to become someone else for that other person?  

And so here I am. I am now an old queen; yes old... but not bitter. Just wiser. And as I inch my way to my 40's, there is no better place to be than in making peace with all those demons that reeked havoc in my head and heart during that decade known as my 20's.  

Amen.

My Roommate

I have a roommate.  Ever since my ex left I have had a roommate.  Her name is Melancholy.  She moved in as soon as Michael set his foot outside with his suitcase and his excitement for his new life.  She laughed at the look that took over my face as soon as I got back to the newly empty house.  What a bitch.

She's very quiet.  Never makes a loud sound.  She didn't bring much other than her heavy presence into the house.  She is almost like a ghost.  She never leaves the house, and she quietly follows me everywhere when i am here.  At every step I take in the house, she whispers in my ear small reminders of my relationship with Michael.  Points out things about him that I miss.  His hands.  His laughter.  His little walk.  She simply doesn't see that I am working on moving on and letting my heart heal, but the bitch has made it a task to attach little memories about what is no longer into every crevice and crack in the house.

I like having her around because now I can say that I am not alone, but her presence makes me feel rather lonely - she sucks the joy out of me.  Thank God for the cats or I would simply be miserable.  She's a lazy broad - never helps me with the cats:  never cleans the poopers, never feeds them, never pets them.  They are solely my job.   I guess her job is to keep on pouring booze into the cut that was made by dude's departure, and to ensure that it doesn't heal.  I've seen the dried blood under her fingernails from when she has plucked the stitches right out of the wound; just when you think that you are healing, there she goes and does her thing:  some plucking, some pouring, some reminding and a whisper.

She is a liar too.  Her reminders and her whispers are only of the good things about what was; she never reminds me of the bad; and so it is now that what was is nothing but goodness and that aches me because it makes me ask myself "Why?" or "Where did we go wrong?".  The bitch never whispers to me a word of encouragement or truth to help me see that maybe this is good?  No, she doesn't.  She just sits there patiently awaiting for the moment when I will get up and move about to say:  Michael touched that switch with his little finger.   Michael turned that nob with his hand.  Michael sat on that cough and laughed his ass off at the TV.  That big empty space on the bed was Michael.  And so on.

I going to ask her to move out.  I'll start working on a way to rid her presence and her negative input in my life.  Who needs that?   There is another woman waiting to move in and her name is Felicity; I think she'll be a much better roommate than Melancholy.