cupid. four twenty.

'think about stars. the night sky, and how if you time-lapse it over a night, you see so much of the world moving. spin, little earth, spin.'

those are nina's words, not mine. it was a perfect analogy for what i was thinking about at the time. but it is just too poetic to not preserve for posterity.

it so perfectly sums it up. because days in my life are sometimes little glimpses. through windows. into other worlds. other really pretty worlds that are new and different.

i've written a lot about global consciousness. how sometimes things are eerily fitting. and i'm always glad i mention them, because later when it recurs, i've got a witness. but i usually fail to mention it to the person who would appreciate it most.


it's funny. i had a lot i wanted to write down. but fought it, in an effort to go to sleep two whole hours ago.

and here i am, awake at 1130. writing. because i was only halfway awake. and now i'm totally awake.


earlier, i was really incensed.

i was fuming about ever. and it's the first time i've been really angry with him since i was so angry with him, before i became numb to the anger, that i left him.

because apparently, he is ready to begin dating. and that part is awesome. i have encouraged him to go out and get laid. i think it would do him some good. i know it would make me feel less guilty. because i have zero intentions of ever doing that with him again.

but the thing is, he is on this dating website that he knows my friends use. and after that weepy sunday cryfest, or rather in the middle of it, i got a text saying that he was on it. and that it was discovered because he was a match for my friend.

none of this is what is upsetting to me. my initial reaction was definitely 'what???'. and the second immediate reaction was, 'he's just doing this because he knows they're on there and will tell me. he's trying to upset me.' and the second slower reaction was, 'wow. he must be really hungry, and sick of doing all the chores.'

because that is how i feel. he is just looking for the next sucker to take care of his lazy ass.

i cried during my session on monday at the shrink. and i knew about this then.

i almost canceled the appointment, but forgot. and was so glad that i kept it. it was the best i've felt leaving the office, after the worst i've felt going in.

but nothing had anything to do with ever at all. i mentioned this dating site thing in passing, right before i walked out of the door. i was crying about other things.

i really could give a flying fuck. it's a little unsettling. i feel like i should be really upset about it. or even hurt. but i really honestly am not. i am just angry. i worry that this reaction is dangerous and abnormal.

but who does he think he is, qualifying himself to these poor unsuspecting people?

all i know, because i absolutely refuse to look for myself, or pry for more information, is that under 'things i'm good at', his response was 'paying the mortgage early and on time'

ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?

you have done it once. ONCE. in your whole fucking life. and that makes you good at it? really? who are you trying to convince?

i've been trying to come up with the list of things i'm good at all day. things that i've only done once. that could possibly be as ridiculous as this.

and i cannot come up with a single one.

if i had ever gone skydiving like i've always wanted, i'd put that i'm really good at that.

but i haven't.

and i am at a total loss for a single thing i have only done once. driving from florida to california once, in a beat up k car?

i'm really good at driving from florida to california.

it also pisses me off that somewhere, i don't know where, he put that he is 'self sufficient'.

really, fucker? because i'm pretty sure that every single reason i left you is related to the fact that you're a codependent piece of shit who can't do anything for yourself, and isn't willing to so much as fucking try. you are a child. a thirty five year old CHILD. you need a mommy. not a fucking girlfriend, or wife.

and i'm not trying to be mean to anyone else, and i hope to not offend, but if you're so fucking self sufficient, then why the fuck are you on a dating website when your wife left you SIX WEEKS ago?

goddammit.

that wasn't nice. i'm self sufficient. it doesn't mean that i don't want to be in a relationship, or that i don't need one. but come ON.

i am so glad that i have my wits about me enough, at this point in time, to think clearly. to know that i am not, nor will i be for a while, in any place that i should be subjecting any boy to the mess that is a post-leaving me. it wouldn't be fair.

to me or to him, whoever he is.

and i guess that leaving is what made it clear.

because on a daily basis, i am tempted. and it's hard as shit to not cave in and light little fires all over this city, after moving backward through time down my laundry list of regrets i made before i met ever, setting those aflame.

but i need time. i need to get over the fact that i made a very bad decision. i need to be alone.

i need to celebrate the fact that i stopped believing that it was a permanent decision. for fuck's sake, i could have been out of that marriage in the very beginning when i already felt that it was doomed. and not wasted the last seven years of my life doing all of the work, all of the trying, going to work everyday.

but i was trying to stick it out. honor my commitment. what a fucking waste of my life.

my shrink commended me for seeing myself in an honest light. for knowing myself and my tendencies and habits well enough to prevent myself from doing things that will put me squarely back onto the path that i was stumbling along, the one that landed in a shit marriage.

and i am happy for that. i don't want to be who i was, making the decisions i was making before. i don't want to get carried away. i don't want to transfer feelings from person to person anymore, and i certainly don't want to put anyone on a pedestal who doesn't deserve to be there. because i can not, i WILL NOT, go through this again.

i will not let myself.

but my head still works the same way it always has. i don't know if there's any hope for me, ultimately. i don't think i'll ever get it on straight.

she did however point out that i'm in an instant gratification mode, and to be aware of it. because i am thinking about things that i want right now, and saying aloud/on paper that i know there is nothing permanent/lasting that will come from it. and maybe i'm only kidding myself when i say that i don't want a long term payoff. that i just want one night of cuddling. one night of making out.

because i can think more than anyone else i know. if someone said to me, 'you look nice today,' i'd be thinking about it all day. and probably tomorrow, too. i'd think about everything it does mean, everything it doesn't mean. everything that they might have been thinking at the time. wondering if i look good today only in comparison to how i looked yesterday. and trying to figure out if they're making fun of me, at my own unsuspecting expense.

dissecting. maybe it's not thinking as much as it is dissecting.


i'm still stuck in dream for an insomniac mode. thinking of lines all day every day.

it started with 'settle for anything... and you're doomed.'

then, 'i don't want another fish. i want the little blue eyed david schrader fish.'

and, 'it's just... that's IT. that's everything i've written.'

and finally, 'you live in a dream world, frankie.'


i live in a dream world. my dreams, for years now, have meant more to me than my waking life. sometimes i wonder, if i didn't dream, and couldn't daydream, or daydream at night, if i could have survived so long in that marriage.

i am so grateful for anonymity with this blog, that there is no way to trace it to who i am, except for the people who read it, who aren't accurately named.

because i have been dreaming for years. and it used to be so hard to be so in love in my sleep, and to wake up and see ever. and be so disappointed. every fucking time. to be so alone. god, i cried myself to sleep so many times.

i have been holding a pillow and pretending for so many years. it's never been him in my mind. never. never ever.

it was never ever.

when i wake up from a dream that is a good dream, i don't want to get out of bed. i float through the beginning of my day, until i'm walking around with only the tiniest shred of a memory about what it was all even about. until i can't remember it at all. i just want it to continue on how it was in my sleep. and i hate that my dreams effect my waking life. affect? i always forget...

because, for example, when i wake up from a dream about coffee, i want to initiate contact. i want to say, 'hey. wanna grab a drink?'

and sometimes that desire will swell inside for days at a time. until it fades slowly, and until the next dream.

it is where the novel came from, specifically, the ghost dreams.

all i know how to write is what i know.

nothing else makes sense to me. and it's like i'm dying to find people who relate to my writing, as some kind of validation.

and i feel like i will never succeed at a male perspective, because i'm so heady and emotional. and i think my male characters will always read as girls who are disguised as boys. when i try to write in a way that isn't like that, they aren't believable. or so i think.

nate said that my whole entire novel is just me, me, me. and that it is common in a first novel to do that.

and i don't see a problem with it. because if someone didn't know me, i don't know if they'd know that. luckily i'm really good at criticism. so if it legitimately sucks, i can handle knowing. and what i'm hearing so far is that it needs a total re-write.

but the problem is that now i've written the first one. and i don't know where to go from there. i want to write the next novel. and i can't figure out where to start. i feel the words swimming inside of me. but i don't know what to do with them. i can't find a voice. i can't find a subject. i just think about how bummed i am that i can't seem to get started.

the problem is that i feel trapped by it. that i cannot think outside of myself. my experiences. my life. my head. my heart.

this is an incredibly scattered post. but i'm incredibly scattered right now.

nate and i went to walk around the city the other day, the concentrated, historical parts. and we came to pass this cemetery.

and after the novel, and all the cemetery dwelling there, and a conversation from saturday night with the writer, we stopped dead in our tracks in front of a wrought iron fence surrounding a cemetery in center city. and paid two dollars to go walk around the place where benjamin franklin has been sleeping for the last three hundred years.

and since, that regina spektor song has been stuck in my head. 'crispy, crispy benjamin franklin'. i don't know what it's called. that's the line. (later remembered that it's called chemo limo...)

nate wanted to lay on graves and have his picture taken. i swear, that boy laid in front of thirty headstones. six feet above thirty dead bodies. all poses, all theatrical. and i humored him, and took a shit ton of pictures for him.

i wanted to lay on graves, to see if i could see what it would feel like to be dead.

just for a minute. to lay on the cold wet ground, and stare up at fluttering leaves. and close my eyes. and just be dead.

but i was too afraid of having another ghost attach itself to me and follow me home to live with me. so i didn't tempt them. one is more than enough.


it was a beautiful day. it was crisp. super windy. i felt like death warmed over. it was only fitting. and also, in a way, i think i was grieving.

i feel like cemeteries aren't meant to be photographed in color. all that contrast of stone in sunshine is deserving of black and white. i so wish i had a way to take pictures that way.

when i'm looking at a place where everything is dead inside, i don't want to see it in vibrant color. i don't want to see the blue of the sky and the green of the trees. i want to see it in deadened shades of grey.

when i dumped the pictures, i was disappointed. because there were some where i really nailed the composition. and there were some where i made decisions about the headstones to take, and made the right choice. only they were bright, and somehow cheerful. and very disappointing.

it was really interesting. i've never spent any amount of time in a cemetery. i wrote a lot about specifically avoiding them in the room to write exercises. which is why i made charlie go to them in the novel. because i always wondered what it would have been like to deal with death that way. but i just never did.

i used to smoke pot in cemeteries in high school. but would get so incredibly freaked out and paranoid after smoking that i only did it a few times. i was scared shitless. i really hate cemeteries. which is a shame. because they're incredibly beautiful.

the thing that stood out to me most that day, was this sadness of being anonymous. some of the stones were so old, so weather-worn, that you could tell something had once been carved into them. a name. a date. but they were merely slivers of what they once were, maybe half the thickness. and all of the print was gone.

and i just kept thinking, how awful to be completely forgotten. how awful that someone made an effort to remember. and that rain washed it away over the course of hundreds of years. and now you're just someone. anyone. dead and buried. and anonymous. and forgotten.

i don't want to be forgotten. i don't think i want to be buried either, despite the fact that my family plot has a space all cut out just for me, next to my baby brother, my uncle, and my great grandmother. i don't want to waste the space. just burn me up and send me to the moon.

i think i'd like to be remembered as the girl whose ashes are floating out there, somewhere. among the stars she stared at all of her life. among her wasted wishes.

and now i've circled back, again. and now i'm going to be really tired tomorrow. now i'm crying again. and now i'm going to sleep.