I never have anything to write about.
Never have anything to say.
Damage
This is not my usual post. But it’s something I had to share. As you read this, imagine how your reaction would differ if this story were being told by a woman, talking about how her husband treated her.
I have been separated from my wife for over a year, though we continue to share a house. We live on separate floors. We share the house because we need to parent our son together, and because we can’t afford to maintain two households.
I’d like to tell you a story, illustrating one reason why I am divorcing her. This is an example of the treatment I have received over the past fourteen years.
This evening, while she was drinking her wine, my estranged wife took exception to the fact that I wanted to talk about how tense she’s been. She said she didn’t want to talk about it.
I left the room (so as to comply with her request).
I went upstairs to use our tiny guest bathroom. She began to yell and throw things around the kitchen, then eventually charged up the stairs and into the bathroom, just as I was finishing and getting ready to leave. She confronted me there, holding her half-full wine glass in her hand. Her voice got louder, her gestures wilder.
She complained that I had upset her by wanting to talk when she had told me she didn’t want to talk. As I began to feel uncomfortable, I said, “You’re saying it’s my fault you can’t express your emotions responsibly like an adult?”
She said, “Yes!! It’s because you want to go off and take a vacation with your girlfriend!” Then she threw the contents of her glass in my face and smashed it against my bare chest.
The results are pictured here.
I stood there, with shattered glass at my feet, glass shards sticking in my skin, bleeding, for five minutes or so. I asked her to move so that I could leave. She waved the broken stem of the glass in the air and said, “Leave!! Who’s stopping you?”
I told her she was standing between me and the door. I felt threatened.
She laughed and said, “You’re 6 foot 3 and 250 pounds! You can’t feel threatened by me!”
I said, “You just broke a glass on my chest and cut me. You’re standing there with the stem in your hands. Yes. I feel threatened.”
She said, “No, you don’t.”
I asked her to move out of the way and let me pass. I didn’t want her to think I was pushing her or threatening her.
She held her ground, waved the broken stem and shouted, “Go on! Leave! I’m not stopping you!”
After I asked her repeatedly, she finally moved a bit and I left, carefully stepping over the broken glass.
I have posted this here as evidence, and to help those who may think that size and gender make a difference when abuse is concerned. People who, like my estranged, think some have permission to feel threatened and some don’t.
Abusers come in all sizes and genders.
She and I went to a half dozen therapists over the years. At each initial session, every therapist took a look at me, then at her (5’4” 150 lbs.). Then he or she would gravely ask my wife, “Do you feel safe?”
None ever thought to ask me.
Thanks for listening.
This heat is killing me
It’s so hot right now and I know it’s only getting worse. I can’t afford air conditioning. I can’t afford to buy a fan. I probably can’t afford to keep the ceiling fan going. I don’t know how I’m going to survive the summer in these conditions or with so little money. I can’t think in this heat. I have finals to study for, but I just keep sweating all over the pages of my notebook. It’s disgusting.
In this heat, I can’t help but fantasize a little. I wanna be one of those fashionable college kids who study in air conditioned coffee shops, sipping on iced mochas and lattes. So delicious. But I can’t afford that. It sucks.
I wanna go on a vacation, just Raymond and I. Somewhere in the mountains, where it’s still cold. Where I can wear sweaters and boots and drink hot tea, Where I can hold hands with my love and not get that slimy feeling in my palm. It’s times like this that I miss Flagstaff. I miss those snow days where I romped a mile through falling snow just to be in the warmth of Raymond’s home and his presence. I miss it all.
But god damn it, it’s so hot. It’s 9:00 at night. Why is it still 100 degrees in here?!
So, here’s where I stand today.
I haven’t used this thing in a long time. There are a few reasons for that; primarily because at the time I started this blog I was at an unpleasant place in my life and this was the place for me to record all of my emo whimpers and to feed my ravenous loneliness. I stopped the blog after realizing how idiotic I was being, and shortly after, my life improved radically and it’s never been the same since.
I met Raymond, fell in love, and we set off to improve our lives together. And so I haven’t had much room to weep tears of angst into my morning cereal since then. Life is good but hard now. I’m a grown-up, it seems. I do things like order books of checks, floss my teeth, make doctors appointments by myself, buy my own groceries, pay rent and fret about money.
Up until recently I worked basically full time at Walmart while being a full time student. I swear, that was one of the hardest times for me, if only because I never slept, panicked when I didn’t have time to study, ate like shit because there was no time to cook and I was constantly gasping for breath in an endless sea of responsibility.
I remember, one morning I woke up for school at 7am as usual. The night before I had worked until 1am and didn’t get home until 2. I sat up in bed and just started crying because of how tired I was and how I just wanted one day off. That’s pretty much when I decided to quit my job.
Now things are more easy going, even though money is extremely limited. I need a new job before the summer, but otherwise I’m concentrating on my education and trying to create a good home life for Raymond and I. I love him very much and I wouldn’t be the newly independent person, happy person I am without him. Life is beautiful and I am an extremely lucky person to have been blessed with all of the wonderful things and people in my life.
I don’t know where this blog is going to go from here, or if it’ll even get going again. But I just thought I should let you know, that I’m happy and pretty much all the shit that you see below this post is now irrelevant to me.
Adventures in Solipsism 1: Wendy
There is a girl, twenty-something, with boney shoulders resting against the glass barrier of a bus stop. She is thin, rail thin, but retains generous female proportions. Hot pink sweatpants ride low on her abdomen, allowing a single, forest green thong strap to peek through. A T-shirt, loose and flattering, billows silently in the fresh autumn breeze. Black, low-cut, displaying a xylophone of ribs jutting though an otherwise elegant torso. She doesn’t bother to adjust the sleeves; they slump around her shoulders to reveal zebra-print bra straps. The plunging neckline exposes subtle lumps of cleavage; and as the wind flows past, I might catch a glimpse of those black-and-white patterned bra cups.
Brown-blonde hair is sloppily tied back. Her collar bone rises and falls with her breathing. Defined cheek bones rise from her face, aging it. Perfect nose, oddly shaped lips. A lipstick-smeared Camel Lite bobs in her limp grin. From what I can tell, the girl doesn’t wear perfume; she stinks of of cigarettes.
As prestinely model-like as the girl seems, she possesses one unsightly flaw.
She has no eyes.
She disguises her empty eye-sockes behind massive, bug-eyed sunglasses. The entire world lies slanted on their surface.
Her name is Wendy Lereau.
“Honey, I’m just a distortion.” Wendy tells me.
A distortion. A distortion of me.
Like Pangea
It is well believed and thorougly established by evidence that once, very long ago, all the land on earth was lumped together on a super-continent we now call Pangea. Life formed and evolved on this massive land mass, completely oblivious to plate tectonics and the inevitable fact that one day, Pangea would be ripped apart (very slowly) and spread between bodies of water.
We think of continents as very rigidly established things: North America, South America, Eurasia, Australia, Antarctica and Africa; throughout the course of human history these land masses have never changed. The ground beneath our feet is a constant. I doubt you’ve ever worried that the earth beneath you would ever rend itself in two (albeit slowly), giving brith to a new continental drift.
To me, this speaks volumes. “Everything is made to be broken,” comes to mind whenever I think about Pangea. All things, regardless of their seeming stability and constance, will eventually be torn apart by an undercurrent of violent “plate-tectonics”. Nothing is forever, nothing is granted. Not even the ground you stand on.
And we all want a strong foundation. A strong plot of dirt to ground ourselves on. But remember, this is an unpredictable world. An earthquake lasting less than 30 seconds can level all of that into a pretty pile of rubble and freshly destitute people. To reference current events, take a look at Haiti.
And so, where do you stand when the very earth you depended on has siezed up in tremors and is dragged apart?
I’m trying to figure that out for myself.
I think that I simply end up drowning in a newly created ocean…
Blackened Sea
When the headache siezes me, it takes me beneath the sea. Bricks tied to my ankles, it drags me down down down to a place where light does not reach. Swimming in inky blue, fish swirl around me, all with the face of you. And they whisper to me sounds of broken memories of swingsets and near-sex and cigarettes and all the times I almost said “I love you”. But things go black and sightless creatures glow like thousands of shimmering stars with fanged apendages that grip and pierce. And soon enough, I’ve lost my breath — beneath the blackened sea.
(So don’t wake me.)
horrorvaccuihorrorvaccuihorrorvaccui
I started this collection of sorts a few months back. Slithering through entry to entry, I found that with each new cluster of information I surmised to drudgingly slather onto the page for other people’s enjoyment, I felt more hollow about the state of my little curio cabinet of a blog. Although every individual character had been typed out by my scarred dumpy fingers, gazed upon by accepting auburn orbs, and relinquished to the winding, loud humming expanse known as the internet, I still felt as if what I was pouring into the soup-bowl of life didn’t nearly have the strength I wanted it to. Rather it was like a purely superficial color of paint. Every word was the wrong shade of sepia plastered half assed, a russet so off-hue that it didn’t matter how colorblind a person was, they could’ve tasted that it was wrong just by listening to the tedious static bounce off of the revolting lack of texture. A painting so ugly it would have been better off hung in a gallery as a still-blank canvas, with all of her purity intact. An ugly so disgusting that even the romanticism corresponding to individuality is torn to ribbons, a shattering dust covered window, cliché even in its interest, and bad news no matter how it’s viewed.
I tried to toss the whole canvas into a wire waste basket. When it didn’t fit I tossed it into a mold ridden dumpster. Then I decided to set the thing on fire. There is probably no better way to keep homeless winos and pungent bums warm for the winter months. Might as well make use of manure and plant a garden with a ton of shit. This time, inspiration from a certain little notebook toting bird and her horror vacui has made me decide to make some rules. Simple, easy on the eyes, logical, but for anyone who reads this they will remain a secret until a later date.
You make me smile <3
Ever have one of those nights…?
Where you start out searching for a glimmer of clarity and all you find at every turn is absurdity staring you in the face, ready to eat you alive? And it does.
Yeah.
It’s one of those nights. I really don’t think I should bother searching for clarity anymore.
A Cheap Purple Notebook [6-8]
six
Truth #1: There is no truth.
Truth #2: “It’s all bullshit and it’s bad for ya.” “Bullshit is the glue that holds us together.”
Truth #3: omitted
Truth #4: omitted
Truth #5: omitted
Truth #6: Raptors are awesome.
Truth #7: No one will ever perceive things in the same way or completely understand. All we have is approximations.
Truth #8: omitted
Truth #9: omitted
Truth #10: “Everything is fleeting and everything is tragic.” (So don’t believe in magic)
Truth #11: Solipsism is really fucking lonely.
Truth #12: omitted
Truth #13: love makes you ill. It is a terminal disease with no cure or treatment. Symptoms include irrational thinking, desperation, moments of fleeting happiness, jealousy obsession, saying and doing really stupid shit among other things. If you exhibit any of these symptoms, please contact your cardiologist immediately, or remove your heart by hand. Bowie knives and hammers are recommended for such a procedure.
seven
Holy shit, it’s a song! —
wind-up girls and wind-up boys
all just toys
going over the table
we live in a broken world
like a cracked pearl
no longer precious
and we’re all broken people
selling our souls beneath a steaple
praying to an empty sky
you can ask him the question but he won’t tell you why
because its a wind-up world
and I’m wind-up girl
so grab my crank
and pull
eight
A list of oddly wonderful shit, poisoned by my own strange idealism —
-Slow dancing to “Tango till they’re Sore” by Tom Waits in a dark kitchen at three in the morning.
-Arguing about the merits of blue verses yellow without any particular context.
-Claiming to be able to understand me in 10 minutes.
-Eating shitty fast food cheeseburgers and crappy coffee on the hood of a car on a clear, starry night.
-Star gazing in general.
-Mutual bitching about how fucked up the world is.
-Sneaking books onto bookshelves with messages highlighted and written in.
-Being compared to just about any literary character.
-Borrowing books.
-Not sleeping.
-Confetti in inappropriate situations
-Being called a “Tuesday girl/woman”.
-Fire.
-Long drives sans destination.
You know what the most satisfying thing in the world is?
When you close a notebook you’ve been writing in, and can feel the difference in weight from the time you bought the thing.
Happy Thanksgiving, everyone. Hope you all have a good holiday with the people you’re thankful for. I’m thankful for you all <3
