morte206

Anna -
I am sure you don't recall who I am but nonetheless please accept these best wishes for you on the wonderful occasion of your birth. May this year find you graced with the best of laughter, love and health.

Affectionately yours,
Carla

My darling Deb,

I wish I could give you everything but the only thing I can really give you is love and adoration. 

Q?  Is it perhaps totally unrealistic of me to hope that my ex, who is graduating this weekend, and her family fricking acknowledge all that I have done for her so that she might achieve this illustrious goal?  In the face of hearing her family rave about how wonderful S is and how lucky H is that she has been so supportive of H's education etc. etc.. is it any wonder that I who actually paid the bills when she couldn't, who bought her books every semester, her art supplies etc.. Who spent lord knows how much on art show entry fees, went to all of the showings (though to be fair S does live in another state and H and I still actually live together) escorted the old aunts that know one wants to listen or talk to at every event and every family gathering for the last five fucking years...

Seriously is there any reason why I shouldn't be pissed to habve to hear therm go on and on about her without even an acknowledgement of my input.   Of my place, of the sacrifices I made for the bigger picture of helping her achieve her goals .. Shouldn;t it count even more to some extent given that we haven't been a couple for two years now and she was a cheating wench.   But no instead what I get is everyone raving about how wonderful she is.  Her sister has even had the nerve to insinuate that I wasn't supportive enough of H in the first place and that that combined with my own 'lack of goals and direction" is why H is better off without me. 


ARRRGGGHHHHH 

What I want more than anything is to belong, to belong to something greater than myself, a family.  To nurture and cultivate the personal growth of my chosen family. And i want  to be appreciated. 

1) Even if your boss is a douche bag it's probably not a good idea to actually say so in front of the company snitch.

2) When you make an illegal left  U-turn after signalling right and hit the car behind you it is probably best not to lean over the other car's driver and say "Oh God I can't believe this is happening, AGAIN!"  
           This is particularly true if you are the driver that happened to hit me last summer.

3) When you are accused of sexual harrassment, even when the claim is found to be baseless and motivated solely by malice, more often than not people will still treat you as if you had actually done it.  You never get your friends back, rather you never get them back the same way.  Everything is tainted.

4) If your accused of being a snitch, even if later it comes to light that you are no such thing, see above.  In fact it's worse than above because trust and honesty, particularly in the work setting of labor vs management, is so harder to quantify and reclaim. 

5) When you still live with your ex and her new SO comes to visit it's probably a good idea to vacate the house because when you slip and call her She-man you really have no one but yourself to blame for the ensueing fight.

6) Asking a girl you started spending time with in a dating context for her mother's number is probably not the smartest idea you've ever had.  Sadly this is still true even if you and the girl in question agree on the fact that there will never be more than friendship between you. 

7) The heart wants what it wants.  Sadly mine tends to want what it cannot have.

8) The sense of belonging, of purpose, that comes with being part of a family unit is a vital and life sustaining one.  Family doesn't have to be blood.  Family doesn't even have to have romantic conotations.  Family doesn't have to include children. 
           Family just is.  And I am not.   I want to be.   I need to be.

9) Possessive, irrational controlling bitches are in high demand.  Being a nice, supportive, patient giving person means you don't get the time of day.

10) My continued existence on this planet is probably due more to my cat than any real desire to live on my part.   Fuck resistance, existence is futile.  

I would have to say that there have been two things I've found in the trash that I treasured amongst all other collected detritus in / of my life: a gorgeous glass pipe that is shaped like a cat.  Lots of swirling shades of blue and green with just a hint of a reddish-orange hue.  The other is the entire collected works of Charles Dickens , leather bound with gold leaf pages and vivid color thumbnail sketches thru out.  I found them in the wreckage of a building that had burned down in my neighborhood when I was about 10.  I've even gone so far as to have them appraised and much to my delight learned that they are in fact quite rare.

Funny thing though...I met one of my exes while taking out the trash so I suppose one could say that I found her there but nonetheless I do not include her amongst those found items I would never return.   I cherish her, don't get me wrong, but in the end it's for the best that we aren't together.    Of course I'm still in the bitter phase so one should take the above with a huge grain of salt.

The question of the day, perhaps of the year mayhap even the century:  Am I worthy?

Worthy of whtat I don't know. 

Am I worthy of love?  Of respect?  What about happiness, don't I deserve that as well?

What do women want?  Certainly a classic question, or perhaps more accurately, the conundrum of the millenia.  I've asked so many women that; what are you looking for in a partner?  The overwhelming majority say they want a partner who will support their goals, someone to help them achieve those goals.  Someone who encourages them to maintain friendships with exes, to develop new friendships independent of the relationship, someone who doesn't stifle them socially.   Someone smart and funny who can still be serious.   Someone considerate and devoted to them.  Someone who doesn't cheat and doesn't lie.  Someone who shares their interests but also has their own.

So here is another question.  Why is it that when they have that person so many women throw them away? 

Why was I thrown away?   Wasn't I good enough, supportive enough...just enough you know.   I welcomed all her friends, her exes, her flirtations into our home, into my life.  I encouraged her to develop and maintain new friendships.  I moved to Mobile because she wanted to take care of her mom and go back to school.  I helped take care of her mom.   I bought textbooks, school supplies and new computers because she needed them for school even when I didn't really have the money.   I held dinner when she had to work late and had early lunches when she had to go in to work in the early evenings.   I got up in the wee hours of the morning to drive her to the airport even when I knew she was meeting with the other woman.

She says nothing happened between them until New Orleans but she went to New Orleans in late April / early May and she started that stupid All About Us book April 9th, a mere 6 days from our 3rd anniversary.  She hadn't gone to New Orleans yet.

I want to believe her but I have a hard time doing so.

I want to have a relationship with a  woman who appreciates all those qualities that I possess and women say they want.   I want something, someone I can't have.  I want my heart back.   I want to trust my feelings, my instincts again.   I want to trust and be trusted.  I want intelligent conversations and mindless rambling wandering ones.   I want to laugh and cry,  I want to explore someone new till they're not so new anymore and then discover alltogether new things about them.  I want celebrations and sorrows.  Heat and passion.  I want life, a life filled with love and devotion for one person.

Will I ever get that?  Am I even worthy.

Am I a total masochist for welcoming H's new girlfriend (and I use the term girl loosely) into the house this past Thanksgiving weekend, even going so far as to make breakfast for her Sunday morning. 

I want H to be happy and she wants S and even though I don't understand why she would want to be with someone who openly states that she will not consider moving in order for H to achieve her educational and proffessional goals.  Who will financially support a child but wants nothing to do with the actual day to day physical care of one. Who says that is something that she, H, will have to do entirely on her own.   Who has a history of cheating on their gf, who from the moment H and I started our relationship constantly tried to undermine it .  Why would she want someone like that?  What does S offer her that I didn't, I don't?  

But what do I know?

Apparently nothing, except that the heart wants what it wants, regardless of logic, regardless of everything.

Maybe oneday someone will want me like that.

What have I done to deserve this.   The Pet Shop Boys certainly had today's question down pat.

I really don't think that I would have ever moved to Mobile , Al. if it wasn't for Heidi.  I like it here but now that our relationship is over why should I stay?  What keeps me here?  And more importantly, why the hell am I still living with her?

Sure money is probably the greatest issue, I can't afford to live anywhere else thanks to crushing student loan debt, but nothing is impossible and I am sure that I would manage.

Did I really deserve the way things ended with Heidi.  Sure things are relatively cordial, the transition hasn't actually been that hard we have always been good friends.  But she's the one who moved on emotionally months ago and never said anything.  At least nothing concrete.   Was it unreasonable of me to come away with the idea that our relationship was in trouble but still fixable when, in December, she casually dropped the idea that perhaps we weren't going to be together forever into a conversation, but then in February when I took her around to meet all my new co-workers and introed her to them as my wife she said nothing to correct me.  I mean wouldn't it have been a good time to perhaps speak to me that evening and point out that in her mind we had broken up months before.  Why was she talking about having a baby with me, why were we moving forward on that with my friend Michael (amongst others we were checking out).  Why was she talking about where we would live when she went to graduate school in 2 or 3 years? 

Why did she make me be the one to end things between us, to force me to name what was going on?  Why does this always seem to happen to me, that I end up with women who don't have enough strength to do their own dirty work so to speak.  I think if you want out of a relationship it should be up to you to do the breaking up, not the person you want to break up with.   Is that to much to ask?

Committment:  it means so many things to different people.  To me committment means following through on something, a project, until the end, until completion.  Committment means honesty and trust and empathy, even sympathy.   Committment I made to Heidi when we exchanged our rings was total and complete for me.  It meant that her goals were my goals as well.  It meant that I would do whatever it took to help her accomplish those goals.  It meant that if she was ill or if she was healthy I would be there.  It meant that when she money and when she didn't that I would be there.  It meant that I would share myself completely from the depths of my very being with her and revel in her sharing of herself  with me.

Cartainly it meant that if things had changed for me, if my affections had turned towrds another that I would not act on it until free to do so.  And being free to do so means leaving someone cleanly before starting up with a new lover.   I have not always done this but as I have grown older I see the importance of doing so, the importance of showing this person that I supposedly love and care for the respect theey deserve.  And it is about respect, not saying anything because you don't want to hurt someone's feelings is a cop out because in the end it shows little regard for the other persons feelings.  I would rather not have had my feelings spared these last 9 months, I would rahter that Heidi had thought enough of me to be honest and brutal.  That she had believed me capable of a strength she was not ascribing to me at all with her silence.  I wish I didn't feel so disrespected right now.

I wish I couldn't recall in such wretched detail the last time we were intimate, the last time I tasted her skin and reveled in her scent.   I wish I could forget, at least for a little while, that in the end she betrayed me.

 Please God could you maybe make it stop raining.   The interior of my car is starting to mildew and every time I leave the windows open on a bright sun shiny day it starts to rain.  Yes I realize that I chose to live in Mobile and that Mobile is the wettest city in the US.  But I already did time in Seattle where it rains more days than any other city in the US and I am beginning to tire of rain period. 

Seeing as how my life as I knew it when I moved her is circling the drain perhaps you could take pity on me.   At least pity long enough for me to dry out my car.   Think on it. Please.

SO yesterday was my birthday which would have been all well and good if it wasn't for the fact that I feel like I am fucking falling apart physically.  Thank God it's only physically though given that I have more of a tendency to go to hell in a hand basket emotionally.

At any rate on Sunday I felt fine, nothing more than the usual aches and pains but when I woke up Monday morning I could barely stand from the pain in my left leg, which I can only attribute to a pinched sciatic nerve.  So here I am on Wednesday and while it has gotten somewhat better, I can now lie down with a minimum of pain and eventually find a comfortable position from which to fall asleep, it continues to be especially painful to sit down for any length of time.  This is a problem since all I do at work is sit in front of a computer bank and dispatch policemen all day. 

I guess I am really more pissed about the fact that this has happened when it has.  It's like my body is taunting me with all the physical ailments that go with age to some extent.  And well I don't like it.

Things I want to do this year of life:

(1)  Bowl a 125 average.
                             I anticipate that this will be harder than it used to be since after my stroke bowling has become harder for me to do well.  My arm doesn't seem to be able to carry as much weight as it was did and my grip has definitely slackened.  Also my legs, the right more than the left, get really tired easily and so it is pretty hard to get through the three games that are bowled on league night.

(2) Visit New York for 2 weeks.
                           Realistically I probably won't be able to go for more than a week but a girl can hope.  And of course when I am in NYC I want to reconnect with old friends like Jennifer, Mark, Scott, Tommy all the people I used to hang out with in GLYNY.

(3) Get back into the habit of writing.
                          Okay so I really only write fanfic but I really enjoy it so why shouldn't I continue to do it.  Well the horrid case of writer's block that I have been living with for the last 2-3 years might explain it quite a bit. 

(4) Buy an IPod.
                          Hey everyone else has one so why shouldn't I.  Also it will put me that much closer to actually getting a cell phone, something I have steadfastly refused to do since my ex-girlfriend cancelled our contract more than 2 years ago. 

(5) Try to lose some weight.
                          This has less to do with body image and more to do with my health.  The stroke scared me.  Maybe not enough to make me completely stop smoking (I can easily give up cigarettes but weed has proven to be more difficult though in my defense on that issue I have only really fallen off the proverbial wagon less than a handful of times in the past year).  I have however begun to eat a somewhat healthier diet than I have in ages.  More grains, nuts and fruits and less pasta, bread and potatoes.   I never really cooked with salt nor do I salt my food to often.   I have discovered that I like grits too with just a hint of jelly in them or with melted cheese.  Never thought I would care for them actually but my mother in law has managed to overcome my inate mistrust of them . 

God knows there are other things but they are just not coming to my head right now.   No doubt once I sign off my brain will refuse to shut off.  Such is life.

I'm still in training in my new job, I've dispatched ambulances before but police dispatching is another ball of wax all together.   I find it frustrating trying to remember all the different codes and signals to use over the radio and am forced to wonder if all that use of herbal essences back in my not so youthful youth has indeed killed my brain cells.  I suppose it could be that damn stroke a few weeks back but I can't be altoghether sure. 

Folly to wonder though but since I managed to do so well in college while under the influence 24/7 I can't help but feel inadequate and somewhat stupid.   I've been sans MJ for the majority of the past year, there was that brief 2 week period when I slipped back into the habit, and I must say that I am proud of that but the truth is that I miss it very much.  And if I didn't fear the possibilty of having to pee in a cup for work I would be tempted to indulge every now and then since I can really afford it money-wise now. 

Ah well no sense in wishing for what must be denied out of necessity.   Sometimes though I wonder if the lack of it is one of the reasons  I seem incapable of writing anything more coherent than a sentence.  Frankly I am not sure that these very sentences are coherent anyways. 

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It' s a one time thing -- It just happens a lot
Suzanne Vega, Cracking