Tag Archives: life

Bitches, boundaries, and dirty little secrets.

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When I was a kid my mother was fond of telling me: “We keep our dirty laundry in the closet” meaning that we do not discuss the horrible things that happen behind closed doors. I internalized this message and didn’t tell anyone I was abused for years. When I was 15 and had a series of breakdowns I came to the conclusion that I could not live by her directive. Instead I decided that I would have no secrets. I would do absolutely nothing I was ashamed to talk about generally. And if I ever did find I had something I was ashamed of I would talk about it as publicly as possible because then there would be nothing that could be held over my head. I can never have someone emotionally blackmail me with something I have done. I have accepted a small change in this policy in the past couple of years as I have slightly gone into the closet for my job. This has been incredibly emotionally stressful for me and paved the road for me to start keeping other things private. I recently had to look at myself and my life and what I am doing and I realized that I have a dirty little secret. I have something I am deeply ashamed of and that I am hiding from people. When your behavior is at odds with how you claim your behavior is that means that either your opinion of yourself/your ethics is out of date or you need to change your behavior. Given that I am still proud of my basic code of ethics that means that I need to undertake the very difficult and painful task of living up to it.

So here I am. This is my confession. This journal entry is not really filtered for a variety of reasons. I need to say these things about myself in a basically public way because that is how I operate when it comes to things that are bad. I cannot hide them. I debated with Noah long and hard the merits of doing this in a public way and essentially this is something that I need for me. So a lot of people who read this journal are not really used to my harsh self-analyzing posts so this one may be really hard for you. I invite you to skip it if you feel that the messy inner workings of my mind are things that do not need to be part of your life. And given the nature of gossip, if anyone chooses to break the basic confidentiality implied by my journal please at least have the respect for me to tell me that you are sharing this entry with other people. I feel I deserve that.

So here we go–a rather unhappy and dark picture of me.

Progress.

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So we’re up to 8 days of suck. It’s been exciting. But we’ve also been steadily making progress. We’ve figured out how to work around my, “I don’t announce in a group that I am upset–EVER” thing in order to usefully communicate. That was good. We’ve talked more about how time should be spent in general at group events. We have talked a lot about what we each want from play and how to get there. And last night we made up an Actual Rule. We modeled it off a friend. His rule is that he can’t date anyone crazier than him cause HE is the psycho in the relationship. We modified that a bit. Noah isn’t allowed to date anyone crazier than me. I’m the psycho in his life. This pleases me, because as much as I am crazy–I don’t deny this–I’m a fairly low drama crazy. Other crazy chicks are very high drama and they make my life suck. No more. 🙂

And you know, the best part? That as we are going through some conversations that are not fun and not easy to have, well they are getting easier. I’m feeling less defensive and hostile before we even begin cause he is actually listening to me and responding to my concerns on an ongoing basis, so why get hostile? And boy my throat is happy about the lower volumes. I think I’m picking the right boy.

Oh, and Angela, Joe, and Ali–thank you. Thank you more than I can ever express. I love you all soooo much. I’m grateful that you are my friends. Thank you for listening to my angst and hurt and helping me get through them to the useful parts.

Brain gurggling.

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The tat seems to be doing much better than expected. It isn’t painful anymore but it is INCREDIBLY sensitive. It’s kind of nifty.

Thanks to a fabulous girl in the city I am reading, The Devil Wears Prada and loving it greatly. Yay.

Tonight I get to introduce one of my oldest friends to my boys and that should be fun. Hell, it will be great to see her. I think it has been a year this time. (She works on a cruise ship so I don’t see her much.)

I am having a real hard time making nice in a few places and I want to scream and punch people. Not necessarily the people I don’t want to deal with, just someone as a stand in to let out frustration. I’m not actually angry at the people I don’t want to deal with it’s just… complicated.

I am so angry with the city-centrists that I would like to say fuck you to all of them and stop going to anything in the city, ever. If you are so fucking selfish that ONE GOD DAMN TIME you won’t come to my house then fuck all of you fucking fucks. saljid;ljksdfljk;sdflj;kdsfljk;

Damn me and my unrealistic expectations. I need to stop looking at someone and saying, “I want you to do ‘x'” when I know they only signed up for ‘y’. *sigh*

I keep having nightmares about showing up on the first day of school without a syllabus. I feel so woefully unprepared for my whole life right now.

I have procrastinated the shit out of about a dozen things right now and I don’t know why. Normally I would be unpacked already, even with my busy schedule. I can’t seem to force myself to do it. I don’t know where the block is coming from. I haven’t sat down and made a budget. I haven’t started looking for a contractor. I haven’t dealt with my car. Just the thought of what I need to do makes me want to break down in tears.

I need to find some vicodin before my next tat appointment. Uhm… anyone?

Is it unreasonable for me to hide in my room and cry all day just out of anxiety and frustration? I don’t want to do all the things I need to do. I don’t want to think about having do deal with all of the people I have to deal with. I’m really tired of thinking about the people. Why can’t I just declare that I don’t like someone and not deal with them? Oh yeah. Social groups don’t work that way. *sigh*

The pretty, the spiritual, and the ouchie.

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All in one. Isn’t that convenient. So a while back I started talking about how I thought that I was moving towards being ready to get a tattoo and because I had in my head a picture of what I wanted. Well, here is the start of it: http://people.tribe.net/justsomegirl/photos/0984ce8e-c235-4542-b889-1d77d41e4c57

Ok, the story:
It’s a girl standing in front of a willow tree that happens to be bearing apples. Stay with me for a bit. The willow tree is meant to represent one that grew in front of the house my family lived in when I was about 9. That is when my brother had just been released from the hospital after being in a coma for a long time and going through minimal rehabilitation before he was shunted off to permanent live-in facilities. During this period my brother spent a lot of his time trying to kill me because he hated me for being normal. He had a traumatic brain injury the likes of which rarely manages to survive at all, let alone recover to the degree he did. But he was never “normal”. He had ataxia (spel?) which means that his entire body shook at all times and due to the trachiotamy (spel?) he didn’t speak in anything resembling a normal fashion. He really hated me. So I would climb into that tree and cry. My mother was rarely home because she worked long hours trying her very best to keep a roof over our heads. My sister was about 22 and had a very young child (

So there is a girl standing in front of a tree. A tree that has all the meaning in the world to me. A tree that in many ways saved my soul, and maybe even my life some days as Tommy chased me with knives. The girl in the picture is me, but specifically also not me. She is just a girl. She is someone who is also searching. Around her legs are brambles that have cut her legs. In the brambles are the things she has had to work through: hate, anger, and self-doubt. In the tree, attached to the apples (I actually didn’t 100% intend the Garden of Eden imagery it just kind of happened) are banners that will show what she is working so hard to get to. She is reaching for a fruit that bears the word, “forgive”. Others in the tree are: hope, love, trust, faith, and lust because these are all things I want in my life more than I can say. They aren’t things that are easy to reach for. In fact, I have to work very hard but it is worth all the pain and discomfort the process entails. She is naked because she no longer has shame. There is nothing behind her that she is going to hide herself from in any way.

There is hope ahead.

So that’s the story behind this tattoo. Today while I was getting it I discovered that I had no fucking clue how much such a thing was going to hurt. OHMYGOD. And I process pain in two basic ways, I make noise or I move around a lot. Guess what I can’t do while getting a tattoo? Yeah, no moving. So this left crying and yelling out my agony. This was fine for the first part as my artist had wanted me to come in before shop hours because he is leaving town this afternoon. When people started arriving for their day their hostility and irritation were palpable in the air. They yelled back more than once, “When are you going to be done with this one?” and one woman when walking by stated, “No one else would put up with this crap.” It is my nightmare come true to have people be angry with me for processing pain in the only way I know how. This is something I have some serious baggage about. So I started crying nearly hysterically because I had to be silent and that lead to some really deep emotional pain on top of the physical pain. We stopped early. That is why there is no ink on the top part of my back. I couldn’t work through the pain in such a hostile environment. We have agreed that all of my future work will start hours before the shop opens so that there will be no disapproval in the air. He is a fabulous artist and I am really glad I chose him, but his co-workers kind of suck. When we were done and I was crying and crying he held me close and stroked my hair and told me that it’s ok to cry. It’s ok to let out pain. I really like him. He sees my fight against being honest with my pain. I’m glad that if I am going to have continued agony it will be with him guiding me through it.

Evil speaketh its name

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And it is… Procrastination.

I swear to god I have made a lot of progress today. It’s just not super easy to see because I am a dork and I get stuck in small details. *sigh* I went over to Ikea today looking for a few specific things and then realized that I didn’t know what sizes/colors I needed so the trip was kind of silly. But I wandered around and got ideas. Then I went to Target for big plastic containers. I didn’t buy too many because I wasn’t sure how things were going to shake out. I came home and realized I need a bunch more. S’ok. Buying more is easier than returning stuff I don’t need.

Cleaning house is a pain when I don’t want to do much with Noah’s stuff without him around. I don’t yet actually feel comfortable just going through his stuff without him present. I’m sure I’ll get over it. 🙂 But at Target, in honor of telling Noah that I would actually marry him (so far I’ve been saying maybe) I bought a wedding organizer and promptly almost had a panic attack. Jesus Christ. Am I actually doing this?! Looks like I am. Alright. Suck it up and get through it. (For the record: the scary part is the wedding, I’m looking forward to being married.) So now I am procrastinating mightily because I just pissed off my back by trying to move the monstrous filing cabinet without help. Sometimes my impatience is counter productive.

Things to deal with in the next few months:
Start actual wedding plans.
Remodel the house.
Put together at least two more unit plans before the start of school so that I walk in with a full year plan for juniors and a good start on… whatever else they give me. (WHOO HOOO! Just checked work email. I have three classes of Juniors and two classes of comp/lit. They are the low performing/behavior problem kids. I’m really excited! No really–I asked for them. 🙂
Get ready for Burning Man.
Am I helping organize TNG4?! Scary thought. It’s been brought up and discussions are starting… that will be decided in the next month probably.
Oh dear lord. I think that is going to be enough to eat my brain for the next year. Good thing I’m plucky!

(Travel stuff coming soon… I swear.)

Just thought I would say

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Today is Independence Day. Probably the most impact that has on me is simply that Thomas Jefferson was an amazing writer and I am thinking about the fact that I want to go find a few more books with essays by him. I may or may not watch fireworks; I don’t really care one way or another.

This last weekend was very interesting. I went to a con and took a lot of classes that really made me think. I didn’t play much, but what play I did was SOOPER HAWT!!! Very exciting. Even more exciting was calling my Noah right before the second bit of play and having him laugh and tell me to go have fun. I really love my boy.

So after the conference and the lots of thinking I started being all insecure and off-kilter. I got to talk to my Spot for a long time and I felt a bit better about that interaction but my Noah was off being all social like and for a little bit I had a hard time with that. But me being me when he asked if I was ok I said I was fine. Him being him he called me when he got home even though it was massively late cause he seems to be able to smell it when I lie.

We had a hard and scary conversation. We talked about feeling vulnerable and afraid to trust one another with some big things that are close to our hearts. It was really really hard. I’m having to look at the fact that even though I trust him more than anyone else in the world I don’t know if I trust him enough yet. This weekend I had to look at how much a few things with Tom really hurt my self-worth and ability to trust someone in some very specific ways. I hadn’t really been aware of how bad that trust damage was until this weekend when I tried to talk about that stuff. But I told him that he had to shut up for a while (dude, it’s Noah) and I let out this outpouring of scary stuff about what I want versus stuff that I’m afraid are needs and how scared I am to really go after things that I think may be needs. He listened, and more importantly: I think he heard me.

I’m still scared. And I miss him so much I ache inside. I don’t get to see him for seven more days and those days feel like they will last 3,000 years. I told someone about seven months ago, “If anything like this would ever work for me it would work with Noah” thinking that I would never get this shot. But I have it.

Please God, let me not fuck this up.

Postcards and phone calls and mess, oh my!

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Ok, if you see this post you need to send me your address today in an email. PLEASE assume I don’t have it. (Hard drive crashes, rebuilds not happening… all suck.) If you have an email, use whatever you have. If you haven’t got one: this nick @ livejournal DOT com works. 🙂

And a request: I’m going to be sending little pieces of travelogue to different people in postcards. It would be really cool if people would copy that portion onto their lj with a tag: Krissy’s travelogue. 😀 How’s that for a meme? When I get back I will cut’n’paste the stuff I sent to everyone and put it all in a big nifty piece for me to keep. 🙂 Perty please!

Yay!

*bounce*

Oh, and I plan to be off-line for the next three weeks. I plan to check email no more than once a week (it will mean I actually go do things) so even when I do check it I probably won’t respond. I won’t be checking lj or anything at all so if you want me to see something eventually shoot me an email with the link and I’ll make sure I check it when I get home.

Additional note: this whole going offline thing is hard and scary for me. For the first 9 days I really am going to be on my own as the NY people I know may not really be up for much. Phone calls would be great. If you think of me and want to say hi: just call and say that. I would really appreciate feeling loved sporadically throughout the trip. In case you don’t have it, my number is: 408-202-4083. If you call I will give you a suuuuuuper detailed description of what I am looking at so that you can feel like you are with me. 🙂

Oh! And! If you come over to the house to see Noah, please ignore the mess. I have had about three days to unpack and I just haven’t been able to get much done. 🙁

A quick babble

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I had a lovely weekend. I got to spend some time with multiple really awesome people. Snuggly time. Time walking and talking with a really terrific girl. Time driving around admiring houses with another spiffy girl. Lots and lots of Noah time–not enough, but that is the state of my life right now.

This weekend it was pointed out to me that my level of social connectedness is highly unusual. What a strange thought. Me? Have lots of friends? Whatever happened to the prophesy that no one would ever like me because I am such an awful person? Guess mom was wrong again. 🙂

I’m looking at a beautiful bouquet of roses. I’m glancing around my messy living room and deciding how I want to clean it today. How I want to paint it next month. What I think it will look like in 5 years.

I am so very happy.

Busy busy busy

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The last couple weeks have involved many a deviation from my plans, but such is life.

I now own a really spiffy Prius. Yay! I walked onto a lot and said, “I want!” And he went and got it for me. How cool is that? No waiting for me.
I moved in with Noah. It happened faster than we planned, but my life works like that. I now get the daunting task of making this house somewhere I am happy living. 🙂 I forsee lots of painting and fixing up in my future. Not till July though. It has to wait until after New York.
Oh, I leave for New York in seven days. *squeel*

Today I need to:
Unpack more and start getting settled.
Get the last load from my apartment.
Turn in my keys.
Have dinner with a friend.
Stress over weird drama with a boy I’m having a date with on Friday. (Ok, I don’t need to do this–but I will.)
Oh, and I need to go see the jeweler to see if I like the mock up of the ring. You know–the ring.

No rest for the wicked

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Still sick.
Need to buy a car before Monday
I’m really upset about not knowing about my job. I cried when I left.
I leave for New York in 11 days and I’m still not sure what I’m doing/where I’m sleeping.
There are bugs of some sort infestingmy couch. I’m thinking that it needs to just *go* today.
I have to start thinking about moving.
Toooooooooooo much else to think about
Shit. looks like the bugs are not just in the couch. fuck fuck fuck.

Schmoop

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I was informed that I don’t talk enough about Noah. Ok, so that isn’t exactly how that information was conveyed–but close enough so I am going to call it that.

Noah rocks my world. He is supportive and caring and he sees me. He thinks I am the right kind of bitchy. 🙂 He loves me so much that it amazes and delights me. How did I get so lucky? I believe he is the best man for me. That said there are some things coming up which I am not ready to talk about quite yet. But those of you who are totally shocked that stuff is happening with Noah–get over it. 😛

And Noah, I still won’t wear red then. 😛

Stress

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After lots of talk about all the crap I have going on in my life I have come to the conclusion that much of my stress is self-imposed. I feel like should be doing something or other. Well, I need to cut it out.

So I have decided that dancing is the first thing to go. I love dancing, but I haven’t been able to go and I am beating myself up over it. I need to stop being upset. I will make it again eventually, but until then I need to not put myself down for it. I don’t think I will actually do faire or fair this year as anything other than a customer. 🙁

I’m not going to Portland in June. Until I leave for New York I will be hanging out at my house reading and swimming and just generally catching up on rest. If you would like to come over, feel free to ask but I’m not really going to be making any social events. Saturday the 10th I have a mellow pool party during the afternoon/evening and Sunday the 11th is a family bbq (please god let my mother be civil) and Saturday the 17th I have some super secret plans and other than that I am free. I don’t really want to go out. I need a break.

The people who have been waiting to pounce on me for a date–I’m sorry but I just don’t think I can do it. If I’m not up for it by now I probably won’t be anytime in the forseeable future. Eventually I will want to go hunting again and I know who is interested. I’m really content with Noah and Spot for the forseeable future. 🙂 Yay. Marcie may have it totally right–two relationships are all that are really sustainable.

Moving is hanging over my head like the sword of Damocles. Must figure that out soon. The idea of moving stresses me out almost more than actually moving does. It’ll be ok though. 🙂 Somehow.

I think that is all that I can let go of right now.

Fighting for optimism

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Well good grief. I’ve had more than enough crap dumped on me this week. Oh–did I mention my mom called wanting to process yesterday? Oy.

I have decided that even though the universe had dumped a lot of crap on me (literally–did I mention that the waterfall was from a busted toilet? Good grief.) I’m not going to get super upset. The pipe problem can be fixed and will be really quickly because the apartment complex doesn’t want to deal with long-term damage from it. I wanted to buy a new car in September and I guess that will just be moved up a bit. And for the next 10 days I have the usage of a friend’s car because I am house sitting for him anyway and he is a super-spiffy-sweet-guy. Did I mention that the house has a hot tub? It won’t suck for the next 10 days.

I have a huge mountain of grading to do, but I also have lots of in-class time and out-of-class time to do it. I will definitely finish. I’m confident. And of course my Noah will fix the stupid cell phone issue. 🙂 (I need my charger back.)

My summer will be a little more expensive than planned. This definitely knocks Spain off the calendar despite my secret hopes that I would still make it despite ridiculous air fare.

Oh! And last night I got to beat the stuffing out of a hot, wonderful, sweet girl. And I had a good meeting with the guy who is probably doing my tat. I’m excited all the way around. Speaking of more expensive stuff… But it’s ok.

Everything will be ok. I sent an apology to the guy I was a nasty bitch to on Monday. My conscious feels a little better. I know I still need to work on figuring out why I have that reaction, but I feel marginally less shitty about it.

Ok. On to grading. Maybe now people will stop thinking I am on the verge of tears. 😉

A bad night.

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I very consciously didn’t ask myself what else could go wrong before I fell asleep two hours ago. I was just woken up to the sound of lots of water rushing.

So, after my car died violently and awfully tonight (no, don’t ask me how. If I knew what it was I would volunteer that information and you wouldn’t have to ask and so by asking you are just taunting me with how stupid I am for not knowing) my bathroom just got flooded from the light fixture from someone upstairs apparently flushing a toilet. Oh, and my cell phone is totally dead and the charger is not with me through the vagaries of airport bullshit.

Right now it feels like the next few weeks are going to be very expensive. 🙁 I think karma is getting back at me and I hope it stops soon.