2001-08-15
feeling kinda
birthday countdown: 4 days.
i've been thinking about relationships of all sorts recently. there have been conversations, meetings, thoughts rambling around in my head...
the interesting thing for me is that i haven't worked myself into my usual state of panic. yes, of course, i've been analyzing everything about my life to the nth degree, because that's just how my brain works. but i'm not feeling as if my emotional underpinnings have gone wacky. ChicaBean and i were talking about this sort of thing, tangentially, over the weekend up at the cabin. now, at 34, i have no patience for any kind of shit. i know who i am, i know what my boundaries are, i'm better at communicating them, i'm better at respecting other's boundaries, and there's less fear. who i am is far less tied to the presence of Another than it ever has been. i'm comfortable in my own skin. and this is good.
i'm also making peace with the fact that i may be solo for the rest of my life. you know, the crazy lady who lives on the corner of the street with 57 cats and two housedresses and scares all the kids because she talks to her cats like people? yeah. that might be me. and i'm okay with that. because the thing is - solo doesn't mean alone. and it doesn't mean lonely. your friends and your family are your network. that's what gets you thru life.
this doesn't mean that i rule out the possibility or hope of finding someone to share my life with. it just means that i don't need it to survive.
of course, family and friends bring their own sets of issues. i've been worrying about my mom again. it seems that she's afraid to call me. i've told her it's fine, and if i'm busy, i'll tell her, but not to worry about intruding or interrupting. but it still seems to worry her most days, so by extension, it worries me. am i being too hard, too focused on my own life that i'm not looking out for her or letting her in? am i becoming my dad? is that why he and i can talk so much more easily now, with this shared silent bond of not being her?
and i've been thinking a lot about my dad recently. the stories he told me about his family when i was down last and we were looking at photographs opened up a side of him that i'd never seen. his geneaology is very important to him, for a whole slew of complicated reasons. when am i going to get off my ass and start doing the research for him? and when will i stop posing questions and just write?
in a whole 'nother sphere, i met ruby recently - in real life for the first time. i caught her off guard, i think, because plans hadn't really been firmed up. it was fun to talk with her, hanging out in the Someday. her friend shaun (pick a spelling, any spelling) came by too, as they had been planning on meeting up. i was the surprise guest, i suppose. *wry grin* he's in Helicopter, Helicopter, and they know each other, among other things, thru Food Not Bombs. i felt the need to scale it back a bit on the computer front, as 'the movement' is a tad suspicious of technology (their words, not mine). goddess forbid that you meet someone online. and let's not even get into the Cult of Pamie, which is how ruby and i met each other.
god, i'm making it sound like some sort of twisted dating service... it's just that we both read pamie's journal while it was up, and both hung out in the forums quite a bit. it took a while, but we finally got a chance to meet. and it was interesting to see how differently we present ourselves in person and online. not so much that there was a contradiction, but that we choose such a select bit of ourselves to put out there.
gah. relationships. can't live with 'em, can't hide the bodies. perhaps it's the sarcasm that does me in, you think?
