2001-06-03
feeling kinda
Grib is watching over me from the top of the monitor, as i sit here muddling thru my thoughts. Grib is my new gargoyle, very kindly gifted to me by Dark Angel. he has one little clawed paw waving in the air, and a grin on his face (the gargoyle, not Dark Angel *g*). Grib is there to watch over me, and bring me luck.
and i could certainly use some of that these days. the last stretch has been by turns embarrassing, painful, difficult, distracting and unsettling. it's also been enlightening, peaceful, and happy. (a neck rub and a quiet nap on the couch helped.) but it seems the first part weighs a little more heavily on my mind.
oh, where to start... you ever have so much happen in your life that your brain just turns to butterscotch pudding?
on the CD player right now: Michael Franti's brilliant new concept album Stay Human.
Sometimes, I feel like I can do anything and
sometimes, I'm so alive
sometimes, I feel like I can zoom cross the sky and
sometimes I want to cry.
i've been struggling with some tough realizations this week. as i'm stepping back from the last few years, trying to figure out where my ex boyfriend fits in my personal history, how to work out when and if i can be friends with him... i'm seeing some harsh facts. ChicaBeanie pointed out that the way to get back to being friends is to think about what was good and positive before things went downhill. and like a sledgehammer smacking me upside the head, it donned on me that everything he and i enjoyed doing together involved alcohol. Every. Thing. We. Did. every night out, most nights in, there was alcohol, often in unhealthy quantities. i missed appointments, stood up friends, lost entire days to hangovers, and nearly got myself fired because of the amount i chose to drink. being with him fed an unhealthy addiction in my life. it's only being apart from him and watching his patterns, from the outside, that i see how close i came to going the same path.
i had the great good fortune to get some clear wake up calls from a few people. and i chose to change. yes, i still drink. and yes, i still go overboard once in a while. but my social life doesn't revolve around it anymore. i get to work on time every day. i follow thru on my commitments. and i choose not to be friends with him right now. i can't, because i don't want to get drawn back into that place. and i won't, because it's far too painful to watch his choices.
i bumped into him today, due to poor planning on my part. mr. p and i went for coffee at a place in Davis, right around the corner from the ex's house. stands to reason, the odds would be good on running into him, although i was only thinking about coffee at that point. and of course, he was there. we snagged a table up front; i didn't go over to say anything. there wasn't anything i could say, without getting upset. it's still too raw; i haven't processed everything yet. and a recent note from him indicates that he's wilfully mishearing my reasons. he tried to say hi on his way out, and all i could choke out was an angry 'hi' before going back to my conversation. :sigh:
even that felt wrong. why can't i just bite back all the emotion and be civil? why? is it so hard to have manners? well, yes. actually, it appears to be just that hard right now. we talked about it for a while, mr. p and i, and i couldn't do any more after a while. it's all lovely to have a sympathetic ear and all, but sometimes even that's too much. so we went to see a movie instead.
talk about bad fuckin' choices. we went to see Blow, which, while an excellent movie, is a tearjerker about the cost of addiction. fortuitous subject, no? eh. i turned to mr. p as the credits were rolling and whimpered 'could we see a comedy next time? please?' he agreed as that might be a better option.
there was also a fair amount of disconnect in terms of communication this weekend. i was caught off guard by a few things, and it left me feeling unbalanced. unbalanced = not much talking, lots of writing. :deep sigh:
here's where i am in my life: centering down, reaching out, and caring for myself. there's a lot that i've worked thru. if you've read much of the journal, you've hit some of the high points. the disconnect came, i think, from talking with someone who is in a very different place than me. the more i thought about it, i can see where it comes from, or i think i do. when i was going thru my divorce... well, let's just say it was ugly. if i could have crawled out of my own skin and slithered under a rock, i would have. the alternative was to spend a *lot* of time late at work, and hanging out at a local dive, and many many nights sleeping on sonia's couch. i did whatever it took to get out of a bad setting.
thinking about it today, i can get in touch with what that was like. and i'm sure there was a lot i said or did then that didn't connect with other people. i couldn't connect. there was far too much going on in my head for me to pay much attention to what anyone else was dealing with. getting back in touch with that time gives me a better perspective now.
but this weekend, it was all about buttons being pushed. i wasn't quite ready to give that kind of support, to have someone in my space. i don't know quite what i was expecting, but it wasn't that. we did talk thru it a bit, and mr. p said what he could to apologize. it's not really about apologizing, tho. he is where he is, and i'm somewhere else. it's just a disconnect. for now, tho, the 'proceed with caution' red flags are up in my emotional landscape. will it change? i don't know. i hope so. i really do. we'll just have to keep talking, and trying to figure this out, to see where it will go.
