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My mind has been all over the place this past week, which has made it hard to write. I open Notepad and stare at the blinking cursor and feel overwhelmed. There have been more tears in the past seven days than in the previous seven weeks combined and a lot of the tears aren’t traceable. I’m just touchy right now.
***
The program in San Francisco that I’m considering, in addition to the Public Policy program at UCLA, is a Master’s program in Cultural Anthropology and Social Transformation at CIIS. The two programs are like sun and moon, land and sea, light and dark. They’re so different. And each one of them speaks to a different part of me and it feels like having to choose sides of my own soul. And, yes, UCLA is offering me money, but also I can pay for graduate school. I have the money, and while yes I could use that money to buy a house or pay for my non-existent children’s college education in the future, as my mother so practically pointed out, I don’t want this to be a decision about money. I want it to be a decision about me.
***
Today has been a lazy day, after losing an hour. Stumbled out of bed at 10:30, ate a simple breakfast, and drank black tea while Lady Love* worked on her music editing. My roommate is out of town, and this is a little preview of what living together might be like. Our own space, our own pace. I like it, and the weather today–air is light, sky is blue, and this is the time of year when San Francisco flora is most colorful–matches my sense of still. I sat by the window and watched a father and child (four years old?) playing soccer in the park across the street. Nearly half an hour I watched them. The father was clearly teaching the child some strategies for making a goal (“aim to kick the ball above or to the left or right of the goalie or between his feet,” said his gestures) and the child would kick from 8 feet away and the ball would amble towards the goal, through the father’s feet, and the father would open his arms out wide and the child would run into them, throw his arms around his father’s neck in simple ecstasy. The ball itself was half the size of the child, and occasionally the sheer strength required to kick it would knock the child down, but he always scrambled right back up again. As so many other things this week, being witness to this scene made me cry. “What are you doing, pookie?” “Just people-watching.” “You’re such a funny little thing.”
***
I have some friends coming round this evening for chocolate and wine and a movie. Not sure yet what we’ll watch, but I’ve got High Noon and Joan of Arc on loan from a local movie store and Sunset Boulevard from Netflix, so it looks like it’ll be an oldie (“but goodie,” as they say). They’re coming in half an hour, so I need to go whip together a batch of brownies. (Click on that link and make this recipe. I promise you, you won’t regret it.)
***
Neighbors’ cats are in a stare-off right now. It’s a toss-up which one will win, but the winner will inevitably be my other house guest this evening. Some things, you see, are entirely predictable.
*Genna, a commenter, used “Lady Love” to refer to my lady love on my previous post. And I like that. So for now, that’s what she’ll be called.
I stopped at home yesterday afternoon for 10 minutes before my grad school interview, just to fill up my water bottle and change my shoes. But I got distracted, because I had two conspicuous pieces of mail waiting for me, one big and fat, one small and thin.
I got rejected by Berkeley. I got into UCLA.
And UCLA offered me money. A lot of money. FREE money.
And then with all of this swirling around in my head — disappointment about Berkeley, relief at getting accepted somewhere, realization that YAY! I CAN LEAVE MY JOB, that all of everything I’ve been thinking about hypothetically is now something that can really happen, and then of course feeling flattered that UCLA wants me so much that they will *pay me* to go there, which is unusual for a master’s program — all of this swirling around in my head, I still had to go to my interview at the remaining grad program here in San Francisco. So off I went, had the interview, and then at the end of the interview the faculty I interviewed with informed me that they were extending me an offer of admission as well.
So. Two offers, one rejection. All in the same day. And my whole world feels thrown off. I get to leave my job and now it feels real — May 14th will be my last day. That’s in two months. Two months left of this and then I move on, my life goes forward and it’s strange, because although for now my life is still exactly the same as it was on Friday, and I’ll have to continue going through the motions for the next few months, it all feels so different.
And, of course, the big question: do I follow the money, move to LA? I don’t know a soul in LA, and to me, the city seems huge and unforgiving. It’s a sprawling car city, very unlike San Francisco, all crammed onto a thumb jutting into the sea. It’s a city of actors and producers and entertainment and swimming pools and palm trees. I would live by myself, probably, and I’d have to get a car and wouldn’t have any friends (but of course I would make friends, I know that, but do I have to start over? again?) and I’d be going to school, sure, but what about everything else? Starting from scratch, in a place I don’t even really want to call home. And mi’lady wouldn’t be there. She’d stay here, in San Francisco. And right after we’ve been talking about living together, to do exactly the opposite, move away, live entirely separately seems so devastating.
San Francisco a city of books and hardwood floors and queers and streetcars and fog and hills and creative activism. San Francisco is my city. It’s my self-made home. And today was gorgeously sunny and warm so that it didn’t even make me half-lust after balmy SoCal. Was the universe trying to tell me to stay? “See? San Francisco can shape up and be perfect, give her a chance, don’t leave!”
I have a few weeks to make this decision, luckily. But it’s not one I’m really looking forward to having to make. I know there’s no wrong choice here, I can’t mess up. But I do so badly want to do what’s right.
It seems I’m down to just about one really substantial post per week here, which is too bad, because I actually have a lot to write about and I love doing it. I guess working a more-than-full-time job, plus taking a statistics class, plus staffing a rape crisis hotline 32 hours a month, plus having a girlfriend, plus trying to have other friends aside from my girlfriend all sort of adds up. And, while I love the thoughtful substantial posts, I think it might be time for me to expand beyond just a once-a-week post. So, I might start introducing some lighter fare to this here blog-o-mine. I can’t handle the pressure of a regular feature, or anything like that, but you might start seeing around here stuff like fashion snapshots (I’m not the most fashionable person you know, but I’ve been having a lot of fun working on my style lately), cocktail recipes, music/youtube clips (I’m a pianist, you know! maybe I’ll play something for you!), and little sex vignettes. Or, who knows, maybe I’ll just start posting substantial stuff more regularly again. Theoretically, I should have more time now that my grad school applications are in. Theoretically.
Anyway, discussing this blog was not actually supposed to be the topic of this post. I was going to write about burlesque. Last night, I and some friends had free tickets to Teatro Zinzanni, a famous cabaret and cirque show that resides along San Francisco’s Embarcadero at Pier 29. The show was splendid, and while I enjoyed the cabaret and the acrobatics and the live music, I was completely captivated by this one character, played by Rachel DeShon:
And I realized that this captivation was of the “I want to be her” variety. I don’t actually want to be Rachel DeShon. I don’t want to be an opera singer and perform cabaret and all that. But, somehow, I just watched her the entire time, thinking to myself “THAT.” It just sorta clicked. I have a similar body type to her, short hair like that, and LOVE CORSETS. But watching her perform I had this urge—no, it was more than an urge, it was more like a longing—to glam it up sometimes. Strut around, feel utterly confident in my sex appeal, pull off dark purple sparkly lipstick and huge plumes! Yes! I want that!
And so I went home and signed up for a burlesque class. I’ve had pretty healthy body positivity in the past few years, and my confidence issues aren’t because I think I don’t look good. It’s more that I’m somewhat reserved and a tiny bit introverted and so I don’t much like being the center of attention. I tend to sort of shrink into myself. In the past few years, so many people have told me that I’m tiny, and I think a large part of the impression I leave is not actually physical tininess but metaphysical tininess, if you will. I’m sort of ephemeral. I’m very good at not being noticed.
There’s a whole history there, a complicated history of sexual violence and family patterns and all that that I won’t go into right now, though I probably will eventually. And so while I think that some of my metaphysical tininess is my personality—I’m just not the life of the party type—which I’m not worried about changing, I think a lot of it is also a sort of unwillingness on my part to take up space. This certainly isn’t the case all the time; if I’m around people I know and love and trust, I fully take up my space, and am the master of my body. But in new situations, when meeting new people, or when I feel out of place and noticed, I freeze up. Sometimes I panic. Sometimes I withdraw. Sometimes I muster through. But whatever happens, my tendency is to get really small.
So when this intense urge to be like her came up for me, and I realized that it’s not, in fact, because I want to do her but because I want to be her, I decided to run with it. My first class is next Wednesday, it’s a 12-week class, and there will be a performance at the end. Gulp. So scared. But also so. excited. In fact I think I may be more excited about this than I’ve been about anything in a long, long time.
And so, on this Friday night when mi’lady is out of town and the plans I had with my good friend fell through due to a crisis in her family, I am sitting at home, on my computer, drooling over websites like this.
I’m a few days late (hello 2010!), but, well, as they say: better late than never.
(Funny aside: when I was visiting visiting my family for Christmas, my brother and sister and I one day decided somehow (don’t remember why) that we would talk to each other only in cliches, idioms, and proverbs. Easier said than done! Ha. Ha. But certainly provided some entertainment.)
Anyway. I’m not usually a fan of reviews and resolutions, but I figure I’ll do one this year because (1) this has been quite an eventful year for me, and some of it’s made it on my blog and some of it hasn’t, so this will be a good way for y’all to come up to speed on my life where it’s at (Cliff notes, if you will), and (2) I’m hoping that 2010 will also be eventful and transforming for me, and so I’d like to make note of some of the changes that I’d like to see. Not so much resolutions as goals.
So, in 2009, I:
- fell in love with mi’lady. We started dating in November of 2008, but I definitely consider the falling in love part to have happened in 2009. It’s been my best relationship yet, without a doubt, and the sex has been the best sex I’ve had too. With her I feel safe to be my best and also sometimes (unfortunately) my worst, with the confidence that we’ll come out on top. With her I can communicate better than I’ve ever been able to communicate, and she inspires and motivates me to be the best person and lover I can be. There are ups and downs, of course, as there always are in any relationship, but I am deeply content and very, very excited about what’s to come for us this year.
- moved out of my former flat in the Outer Sunset in San Francisco, where I was living with a friend from college (a rocky situation at its worst, but absolutely lovely at its best), when she left SF to go to medical school in July. I moved into a tiny flat in the Mission with a wonderful roommate who has become one of my best friends here. Living with roommates I think can be very tricky, and our roommate relationship has its sources of tension and frustration, but we communicate through them pretty well, and I feel very lucky to be here.
- started taking anti-depressants for my PMDD (pre-menstrual dysphoria disorder), which was diagnosed in July after a particularly scary episode during which I was afraid I would actually do something really dangerous. I’ve had an interesting time with the medication, which I’ve discussed a bit on here, and I’ve actually stopped taking it temporarily because it was interfering with my orgasms (!!), but it was a really important step in my self-care regiment and in my acknowledgement that sometimes, it is really, really important to seek outside help.
- learned that my parents are getting divorced. Still processing this one, and I imagine I will be for quite some time.
- started coming to terms with my identity as femme. This has been thrilling! I don’t think I need to elaborate on this here at all, because I’ve expounded on it quite a bit on this blog already — just check out the archives.
- have been at the same job all year, and have become increasingly dissatisfied with it. I almost decided to leave it recently, and then realized that even acknowledging to myself that it is in fact my choice to be there (and that there are major advantages to being there, such as: the income, the fact that it’s a job I can leave behind when I leave the office) was enough to help me feel un-stuck for now.
- applied to several graduate programs in both public policy and cultural anthropology. I’ve yet to hear back from any of them, and don’t expect to hear anything until March at the earliest, but this is exciting for me and has also helped me feel more direction and purpose in my life.
- started working as a volunteer crisis counselor at a local rape crisis center, which has been deeply gratifying (while certainly not cheerful), has helped me feel more rooted here, and has been the catalyst for several new friendships. I haven’t written here too much about the processing I’ve been doing surrounding my own sexual assault(s), but I do plan to do so in the (near?) future, as it’s been a pretty profound influence on my life and my thinking and my sense of direction. It’s hard to write about, but it’s so so so important to me that I can’t imagine not doing so at some point.
- erased most of this blog and more or less started over! Writing here in the latter half of this year has been a source of comfort, comradery, introspection and motivation for me. Thanks y’all so much for reading!
And in 2010, I hope to:
- continue to fall in love and deepen my relationship with mi’lady. I’m looking forward to more great sex, more power play, even better communication as we learn each other through and through and more and more, mini-retreats (that hopefully won’t be too expensive), accompanying her to her sister’s wedding where she’ll be outing herself to all of her extended family and family friends, and maybe even moving in together (!) (but we’ll wait to see what my grad school plans are before we really talk about that seriously).
- start graduate school (speaking of).
- leave my job (which should be concurrent with grad school, but in case I don’t get into any of the programs I’m hoping to enroll in, I STILL would like to leave my job).
- continue to take care of myself and be strong enough to seek help in taking care of myself, from medication and therapy, but also from intellectual, spiritual, and physical mentors, as well as friends and family.
- come out to my grandparents. There. I said it. I made it a goal.
- continue to write here and use it as a platform for airing my relationship-, life-, and self-processing, and continue to strengthen my internet bonds.
Happy new year! In German, they say “guten Rutsch ins neue Jahr,” which means “good slip into the new year” and I love that, it makes the actual moment, the ball-drop at midnight, seem less critical and stretches it out, makes it seem softer and more gradual and a little whimsical, whoopsydaisical, and allows for some glitches and mess-ups. So, I hope you all have a good slip into 2010!
Thank you all for your comments, both on this post wishing me and mi’lady happiness together after one year, and on this one, offering suggestions and advice and sympathy on my work and life situation. All of those comments were really helpful, and helped me see my situation a bit more clearly. Having folks listen and getting their input, especially folks who are in or who have been in similar situations (isn’t that everyone, though?), is so, so meaningful.
I think you’re all right. You’re right that I need to figure out what’s right for me, and do it. You’re right that I need to carefully weigh my options and have a plan. You’re right that I should decide what’s most important to me right now. You’re right that I should know that whatever decision I make isn’t wrong or right, it’s just a decision, and it’s not ultimately determinative.
So here’s the thinking I’ve been doing since reading all your comments.
- I’m not very good with money. This is for many reasons: (1) San Francisco is friggin expensive. (2) Mi’lady and I don’t live together, but we do spend many evenings together, and we haven’t yet mastered the skills involved in planning ahead meal-wise in the most cost-efficient way (i.e., we’ve found it’s oftentimes more cost-efficient to get cheap take-out than it is to buy ingredients necessary for cooking, but with a lot more planning and kitchen resourcefulness, this shouldn’t be the case). I spend WAY too much money on food. (3) Cabs, Zipcar, and Caltrain. While, yes, San Francisco has public transportation, it (a) isn’t terribly reliable if I need to be somewhere by a specific time and can’t afford to miss 3 hours of work to be there (e.g. for a doctor’s appointment); and (b) doesn’t extend in a cohesive fashion beyond SF, so that whenever I visit my grandparents in Palo Alto I spend $12 round-trip on Caltrain PLUS cab fare to/from the Caltrain station (because, hullo this is really dumb planning, the Caltrain station in SF is off in bumfuck and it takes me a good hour by public transit to get there when it’s only a 6 minute cab ride), OR I just take Zipcar, which isn’t cheap either. So I end up spending $70/month on my Muni pass and at least $150/month on cabs, Zipcar, and Caltrain, but probably more like $200. You tell me: is this reasonable?
Okay, I’ve gone on waaaaay too long about money. Next item.
- In addition to being bad with money, I’ve got excellent benefits at my job, and since I’m on prescription meds, and am currently undergoing an expensive but insured orthodontic treatment (straightening my bottom teeth, which were not-very-noticeably crooked but which were exposing my gums to decay) I’m loathe to give this up.
- I’ve got three applications pending for graduate school. This means that within a few months, hopefully, I’ll know whether and where I’m going to graduate school. This is a pretty major consideration, since it will give me a much clearer idea of what the next few years of my life will look like, and will give me a natural out of my current job.
- There’s this nagging question, though: if I don’t do it now, then when? I would love–LOVE–to have time to work on my projects I’ve been wanting to work on. One of them is getting back to playing piano much more consistently, and finding some other (queer?) folks to play chamber music with. Maybe do something fun/eclectic with it, who knows. Another is writing about this thing I’ve had in the back of my mind for years, and it’s sort of gasping for air now while I’m holding its head underwater. But what time do I have now to work on this? I don’t. What time will I have while in grad school? I won’t.
So, all these considerations in mind, here’s what I’m thinking.
Before I do anything, I need to know whether I’m capable of living on a shoestring budget. This means I need to design one, and implement it. Preemptively. While I’m still employed, all the extra money can go straight into savings. And this will take some tinkering, I’m sure. I’ll start cutting back bit by bit. Can’t cut back on rent, but I can certainly do my darndest to cut back on food and cab rides. I’ll figure out what the least I can live on is, and then I’ll plan around that.
And then I’ll make sure I know what the health and wellness resources are in San Francisco, should I be uninsured. Would I still be able to get my prescription at an affordable price? Are there therapy clinics for the uninsured/unemployed? Could I learn how to find alternative methods of therapy, like reading or doing meditation or something like that? Or at least make sure I have enough cost-free self-care and wellness initiatives to counterbalance that need?
And then I’ll think about alternative (part-time?) sources of income. Can’t rely on writing or activism, at least not yet, but there’s the substitute teaching option, and I could nanny (LOVE small children) but would need references (start off small by babysitting?), or I could bartend (anyone know of good/cheap bartending classes around SF?), or I could temp, or I could … ?
And then I’ll wait and see what happens with graduate school. I wouldn’t leave my job before early in the spring anyway, mostly because I’d need to give my employers a great deal of advance notice (out of courtesy, not legal necessity), and hopefully by then I’ll have heard back from the graduate programs. And if I know, okay, this is 5 months of living unemployed, then that seems very manageable. If I don’t get into graduate school, then I’ll have to start figuring out how I can leave my job and have a backup financial plan in place, so that I don’t find myself just indefinitely unemployed and getting increasingly depressed because of it.
But, however it turns out with regard to graduate school, I’m going to start planning now for at least a 4-month “sabbatical” either this summer (in the case of grad school) or next fall/winter (in the case of no grad school). Which means first and foremost: budgeting. Maybe I’ll start after Christmas? Turns out Christmas with divorced/-ing parents is mightily expensive. My sister and I realized that if we want them to get any gifts at all, we’ve got to be responsible for them. Sigh.
Oh! And I have the MOST amazing Christmas present to mi’lady, hence the title of this post (she now has the link to this website and reads it occasionally): a vocal effects pedal! She’s been talking about wanting one for months, in that way you talk about things you lust after but know you can’t have. They’re, gulp, pricey, but I can afford it while still living within my income and she’ll be SO happy. I’m a bit apprehensive, just because I’m not sure if it’s a model she’ll be excited about (I know nothing about such things, and only picked the model based on doing some internet research), but we’ll see… I’m giddy with excitement about giving it to her!!
I love the holidays, starting around Thanksgiving and ending after Christmas. I’m one of those people who re-reads A Christmas Carol every year, who listens to Handel’s Messiah on repeat, who plays all the traditional Christmas carols on my piano and sings along, and who bakes more batches of holidays cookies and cakes than everyone I know together can eat. I realized this year, in light of all the introspection surrounding my parents’ divorce, that much of what I’m doing when I throw myself into the so-called “spirit of Christmas” is trying to re-capture some sort of intangible magic. I’m always seeking, somehow, to find that thing that makes me catch my breath in wonder, that thing that makes everything seem warm and cozy and perfect and exciting. I want to believe in Santa Claus again. I don’t know that I’ll ever actually succeed in re-capturing that, because the normal daily non-magic always interferes — it’s exhausting, it requires constant vigilance not to slip back into mundanity. I haven’t been successful yet. (Maybe when I have my own children some day?)
But, this year, especially in the knowledge that Christmas will be hard with my family, I do have some goals. I want to try my absolute darndest to make it special. Maybe it’s grasping at straws, but if I actually encourage that childlike excitement by allowing myself to indulge in many of the childishly exciting things, then I’m hoping that this holiday season will be special, and wonderful, and delightful.
Here are my plans:
- Thursday morning, mi’lady and I leave for what our friends have been calling our “Lesbithanksgiving”! We’re renting a tiny little studio cabin on the Russian River a few hours north of here. It has a hot tub. And that’s all we care about. We’re staying two nights, leaving on Saturday, and our plans for the 48 hours we’ll be there include nothing but bathing in the hot tub, sleeping, giving each other massages (we even bought massage oil for the occasion), reading, watching Mad Men, talking, and oh yeah FUCKING. We got a new toy that will get its debut! And we’ve been talking about all the sexy things we want to do to each other for days. After that rejuvenating mini-vacation, away from the stressful obligations of family that are so often present at Thanksgiving (at least in my family), I’ll be golden for embarking on the month of December.
- In the first week of December, mi’lady and I are (hopefully, assuming a certain stressful situation which I won’t bother going into here because it’s boring doesn’t interfere) going to go see Ovo, a Cirque du Soleil show, here in San Francisco. Granted, this isn’t Christmas-themed, but any spectacular show like that is bound to feel festive.
- The following week, we’re going to see the Nutcracker ballet performed by the SF Ballet! I haven’t seen this performed live, ever. As a little girl my sister and I had a video tape of the American Ballet Theatre’s version starring Gelsey Kirkland as Clara (she was one of my favorite dancers, back in the day), and we watched it every year (multiple times!), but I’ve never actually seen it live. I’m really excited about this, and these tickets were quite reasonably priced!
- And THEN, that same week on Friday, mi’lady and I are going to host a holiday party! Last year, when we’d just started dating, she had one at her house, and that was when her best friend walked in on us hooking up. Fun times. This year, we’ll co-host! Maybe even at my house, since it’s cleaner and much homier than her place (my roommate and I are much better decoraters, what can I say), and I’m going to bake lots of cookies and make mulled wine and hot toddies and roasted vegetables and any other ideas for vegetarian holiday party fare? And she’s in charge of the playlist :)
- Sometime in December we’re going to amble up to Union Street for their annual Fantasy of Lights. Lots and lots of pretty lights, candy canes, and general merriment.
- We’re going to watch Christmas movies! We probably won’t have time to watch that many — I mean, how many movies can two busy people actually watch together in one month? — but even if we just get one or two! I really don’t like It’s a Wonderful Life, she really doesn’t like Love, Actually, so any other ideas on Christmas classics? Last year we watched Home Alone, haha. And my favorite, The Snowman:
Other ideas?
- Just in case this needs to be said again, although I’m sure it doesn’t, I’m going to bake lots of COOKIES!
- AND, I want to decorate. Last year, my roommate and I got a tree! We took it home with us on Muni, since we didn’t have cars. We definitely got some funny looks and smiles. This year, I’m with a new roommate, and our place is way too tiny for a tree. But I’m thinking maybe a wreath, or at the very least some candles and some holly and ivy.
- I’m going to make sure that I have an infinite supply of cookies (have I mentioned that already?), Christmas teas, mulled wine and cider, and Christmas music. Just so that whenever I, or anyone else who’s around, need a good dose of Christmas, I can get it.
I have about eight thousand drafts of posts waiting for my attention. There’s been so much going on, so much I want to write about. Sometimes having too much to write about gives me greater writer’s block than having too little.
I started writing about my thoughts on the Maine election, and the repeat of last fall. I started writing a post in response to G’s post on femme invisibility. I started writing about the changes that are going on in my life, the big things I’ve been doing and thinking about. I started writing about illicit sex, the sex I have when I’m not supposed to be having it, and why that’s so hot. And now I’ve started writing so much that I’m overwhelmed and can’t finish any of it! Ahhhh!
So, instead, I’m just going to spew verbosity all over this post, and maybe that will help clear out the “clutter” in my head. If I were a self-conscious writer, I would spew the clutter, and then trash it, but I’m not, so I’m going to post it anyway. Hehehehe.
1) One of my best friends from college was here last week, arriving Wednesday and leaving yesterday. We had so much fun, and I felt more San Franciscan than I have in a long time. Having visitors who’ve never been here before always does that to me. We went to the Academy of Sciences on Thursday for their weekly NightLife — so amazing, seeing the aquarium and the planetarium and the live roof at night, with music and drinks, without little kids running around. (Love little kids, but I can also certainly appreciate their absence!) We went to the Japanese Tea Garden and then walked all the way out to Ocean Beach — her first time seeing the Pacific. We went to the Lexington (duh), but then realized we shoul’ve gone to the Rickshaw because it was Rebel Girl. Oh well, we had fun anyway! We walked all through Chinatown and North Beahc and then took a cable car (MY first time on a cable car since my childhood!) back, and as it was passing by Union Square, with the ice-skating rink in the process of being set up and holiday lights starting to go up, I just felt so happy. The holiday season tends to do that to me anyway, but this time it just felt so magical. I don’t know. I felt like I was in a movie. I find myself looking forward to winter this year, to cups of cocoa and baking cookies and cuddling in the evenings when it’s dark so early, to going ice-skating and making mulled wine and escaping to the Russian River for Thanksgiving…
2) Friday evening, my friend and I went down to Palo Alto with mi’lady to meet up with another friend from college who lives in San Jose. It was the most fun I’ve had in a long time, I don’t think I’ve laughed that hard since I left college. I have friends here, and I have a lot of fun here, and I’m happy here in San Francisco, but it was such a reminder to me that I have friends who know me inside and out, friends who make me feel at home no matter where I am, and friends where being around them isn’t socializing, it’s being, and it’s being in the fullest sense imaginable. And of course having mi’lady there made it even fuller, because I had it all in the same place. I can’t wait for my college reunion in May. Cannot WAIT. I also can’t wait until I have those kinds of friends here. It’ll happen, and it’s actually already happening now, slowly but surely.
3) Things with mi’lady feel so good and are so right right now. We’ve had some conversations about things like my relative introversion compared to her relative extroversion, and how we can balance that and make sure each other’s needs are met. We’ve had conversations about my relative planning compared to her relative spontaneity, and how to balance that as well. And I’ve had some internal conversations about learning how to let little things go. For example: She is working on recording with one of her bandmates, and tells me she’ll be over at my place around 9pm. 9pm comes and goes, no sign of her. She calls at 9:30, still in Oakland, happily making her way over to my place. I get frustrated. She gets defensive. We’ve had conversation after conversation about this. And I think my wanting her to be punctual is a control thing. It’s about sticking with plans and being meticulous, everything needing to be just so. But we didn’t actually have plans for 9. She’d just said that’s when she would be there. So… I let it go. Because really, it’s not that important. And because we’ve talked about it, I know she’s not disrespecting me. She’s just not so great at managing time. So is it worth arguing about? Again? No. It’s not. I was fully occupied the whole time anyway. Maybe a different time, if it has a bigger effect on me, if it feels like a breach of plans or a lack of respect or standing me up, then I’ll bring it up again. But this time, it just wasn’t important. And when she got to my place and I saw her, it was so much better that I’d let it go.
I’m such a meticulous person, I do things very particularly and have very specific ideas about things. I’m very organized and a bit of a control freak, and while a lot of that is good in my personal life because it keeps me functioning (and because I enjoy it! I love organizing!), it can be not-so-good when it spills over into trying to control her life. I don’t do that much, but sometimes in little ways I lose track. I’m learning, though, and it feels liberating to allow myself to let things go.
The point is, things are good. We haven’t had as much alone time as I’d like, but when we are alone, we make good of it.
**
So, for the moment, I’m in a good place. So much more I could write about, but at least I’ve tidied up a bit, and gotten rid of a bit of head clutter. Now there’s more room for writing about what I actually want to write about. Problem is I’m taking the GRE on Saturday and have a lot of work this week besides, so it remains a question whether I’ll have much time to write. If you don’t hear from me again, you’ll know why — but hopefully you will!
1) It’s at El Rio. And with winter looming up ahead, everyone and their mothers should be at El Rio on a Friday night to enjoy the patio.
2) It’s for ArtXX magazine, and the cover is only $5. ArtXX is seriously sweet, if you don’t know anything about it, please go to its website, and buy the issue. The art is radical and by/for queer/trans/artists of color/seriously awesome people.
3) The music will be sweet. I know one of the bands is Elle Nino, bay-area based queer/synth funk band — the lead is a dyke, and she’s got 3 guys backing her up. (I love it when guys back up girls in music. Pretty rare in the music industry.) Their music is amazing and they’ve got great chemistry and stage presence.
4) Big Moves will be coming through!! In their words, “Big Moves is the only producing, training, and service organization in the world dedicated to getting more people of all sizes into the dance studio and up on stage.” AWESOME.
Basically, pass the word along to anyone you know in SF to come support this magazine and the awesome work they’re doing on getting underrepresented art out there. And pass the word along to anyone not in SF that they should either:
1) Move to SF and go to this party, or
2) Go to artxxmagazine.com and BUY THIS ISSUE!
If I’d posted last night at 10pm, which I almost did, here’s what I would have written:
This isn’t working. This isn’t fucking working. This isn’t FUCKING working. This isn’t FUCKING WORKING. THIS ISN’T FUCKING WORKING.
If I’d posted last night at midnight, here’s what I would have written:
Breathe in 1-2-3-4, hold 1-2-3-4-5-6-7, breathe out 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8. Breathe in 1-2-3-4, hold 1-2-3-4-5-6-7, breathe out 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8.
If I’d posted last night at 1:30am, I would have posted one of my favorite poems of all time, “The Telephone” by Robert Frost. I was reading it aloud to myself, keeping my voice steady and rocking myself with its words.
If I’d posted this morning at 10am, I would’ve written:
Taking the day off today. Need to clear my head. I need to make sure I’m okay. I need to keep in motion, because when I was learning about vicarious trauma as part of the rape crisis counseling training, I was taught that one of the best ways to move emotions in and out of us is to move our physical bodies. If I go to work, I’ll be sitting still all day. So I’m taking the day off.
And now it’s 3pm, and now I really am writing. I have been keeping moving — I got up and showered, I fixed myself a cup of tea and a grilled cheese and tomato sandwich and read while the morning sun streamed into my flat. I did the laundry I had as a goal for last week. I don’t use a dryer, so when it was done I went outside on our back balcony to hang it up and Fish, a neighbor’s cat, came by for a visit. He’s gotten in the habit of visiting every day for hours, and I love it. He’s standoffish a little bit, but also at times incredibly sweet. Today he was being sweet. I felt so peaceful, hanging up my laundry in the San Francisco Indian summer sun, with the cat curled up at my feet. Then I went out for a walk, and came back to bake another batch of vegan red velvet cupcakes. (I baked a batch on Thursday to bring to my training on Saturday, and had all these leftover ingredients so wanted to bake up another batch to send to my dad and brother and sister… and some to keep for myself and my roommate and mi’lady as well. They are DElicious, taste no different from ovo-lacto cupcakes, and maybe I’ll post the recipe…) And now I’m sitting here writing, dishes drying in the sun, Fish stretched out in a patch of sunlight, purring, cupcakes cooling on the counter, and I’m getting ready to go to yoga in an hour. I’m calm, and quiet. And the devastating emotion of the past days has, indeed, started to move. With every exhale I visualize it leaving me, dispersing into thin air.
Clearly, then, my experiment with discontinuing Prozac didn’t work. My period should start any day now, probably even today, and the past few days have been a nightmare. Wild and dramatic peaks and slumps, unbearable darkness and despair, hours of crying in a heap on my bed. I don’t know how to survive at times like those. It’s just not sustainable. It has to change.
It’s made worse, right now, by the recent knowledge that my parents are getting divorced. I found out from my sister about a month ago that she thought it was going to happen (to my complete shock), and then a little less than two weeks ago, my mom told me herself. Until then I hadn’t really believed it. And then, less than a week after that — last Saturday — my dad moved out. My parents, my mother whom I was born out of and my father who held me in his arms when I was moments old, mesmerized, my parents who are equal parts of me no longer live together. Are no longer family. What?
I haven’t really been able to process it yet. It just doesn’t compute. My parents have been married for 27 years. I’ve always known their marriage has had its bad moments, but doesn’t every marriage? And I’ve always known my dad is, well, abusive. He’s abusive. I’m coming to terms with that. But 27 years of marriage and I know they’re best friends, despite my dad’s illness. That’s what it is, an illness. So why now? After 27 fucking years?
Well, I know. My little brother is finally out of the house, and my mother can finally, after 27 years, contemplate her own wishes, desires, hopes, and plans for the future. And I guess they don’t any longer involve my dad. It’s so, so hard to swallow. I love my father fiercely, although my relationship with him has been immensely complicated, fraught, and even damaging. And I love my mother too, differently from my dad but just as much. She’s been my mentor and my friend and a confidante, and it hurts me so much to see her hurting.
I haven’t been able to access any sort of emotion about this at all, unless I experience some sort of emotion from something else first. A gateway emotion, if you will. For example, Fish will do something hilariously cat-like, and then he’ll look at me like “what? I didn’t do anything” and I burst out laughing, and then somehow before I realize it I’m crying, sobbing even, crushed under the lack of comprehension of what’s happening to my family.
And here I am, typing away in the afternoon sunlight, and I think it’s time for motion again. I think I’ll go frost the cupcakes and then get ready for yoga.
I haven’t written about this here, yet, but part of why I’ve been so busy lately has been that I applied for, was accepted, and am now participating in an intensive rape crisis and peer counseling training at a local women-of-color-led, volunteer-based organization against sexual violence. Sixteen hours a week now I spend in their gorgeous mural-covered building in the heart of San Francisco’s Mission District (actually, it’s a block away from where I live), with 20 other women, learning how to be crisis hotline volunteers and one-on-one counselors. The training is amazing, and beautiful, and hard, and brings up so, so much for me. Surprisingly, it hasn’t so far been that triggering — it doesn’t bring up stuff about my own sexual assault. Rather, it brings up all the ways I am in general a scarred, flawed human being, how that’s okay, and how I need to work on healing myself in order to be able to start helping others heal.
And it’s liberating. It might seem like being reminded that you’re a scarred, flawed being would be nerve-wracking, or defeating, or would break your sense of self-worth. For me, though, it’s been so, so healing. (I’ll probably be using that word a lot…) It’s so good for me to acknowledge to myself that yes, I’m flawed. I’m hurt. And it’s okay. I’m allowed to be imperfect. And each imperfection just gives me a beautiful opportunity to take care of myself and work on myself.
I forget that the best way to heal and the best way to be the person I really strive to be is to love myself and take care of myself. I oh so often do exactly the reverse — I make a mistake, and I berate myself for it. I get frustrated with my weaknesses, angry that I mess up. I feel powerless against my deficiencies. But I forget that it is in my power to forgive myself for messing up. I’m my own harshest critic, and I’d do well to lighten up. I watch my dad growing older, in his 60s now, terribly, terribly unhappy, all because he believes he lacks the power to help himself. I DO NOT WANT TO BE THAT PERSON. It is his belief that he is helpless and powerless in the face of his own failures that makes him so miserable. And I want to be in charge of my own happiness.
A while back, I posted a list of things I can do to care for myself. I go to that list often, when I’m feeling down and want to feel better, or when I’m facing an evening of solitude and don’t want to wallow. It’s a great list, and it was a good first step for me in focusing inward, being aware of my own needs. But I realized today that I have the wrong attitude about that list. I treat it as a resource I can use to fill a void. Lonely? Call a friend. Tired? Take a bath. Sad? Watch a funny movie. Stressed? Go to yoga. Focusing too much outward? Journal, or blog. In fact, though, self-care is not just something I need to do to fill a void. It’s not just a way to re-fill my tank when it’s on empty. I also need to take care of myself pre-emptively. I need to make a habit of taking care of myself all of the time. As a first priority. Take a bath when I’m not tired. Call my friends just to chat. Go to yoga regularly, to preempt stress.
If I can learn how to do that effectively, then my life might be able to stop looking like a seismograph during an earthquake, and might instead look like a healthy state of equilibrium. Rather than wild ups and downs, where self-care brings me up and then I run out and fall down down down and need to bring myself back up, I need to consistently be aware of taking care of my own body and my own mind, consciously checking in with myself about how I’m doing, so that I can maintain a relative balance.
This will also help me be a better person for others, to bring this post back around to the beginning, when I was talking about learning how to be able to help others. I’m going to refer here quickly, though, to a quote from Lilla Watson, a Murri aboriginal activist:
“If you have come here to help me, then you are wasting your time…But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.”
This is to say, I can only help others as much as I can be helped along the way. That doesn’t mean “I’ll only help if I get something back.” Rather, it means that (or I take it to mean that) the only way for me to heal and be whole again is for others to heal and be whole again too. And vice versa — so that others can only heal and be whole again if I make sure that I am also healing and becoming whole. So when I say that I’m learning how to help others… what I’m realizing now is that if I’m going to do this work, this so-important work of intervening in sexual violence and supporting survivors, then I need also to be wholly and completely willing to surrender myself to the healing process.
And here’s where I take a deep breath, and feel my height and width and depth, feel my past extending behind me along with everyone who has my back all lined up to catch me if I fall, and feel my whole future spread out in front of me ready for me to take it in my hands. And I can fill up all that space and feel my power and know that I will not fall off the earth because I take up space and am firmly planted here. And the healing begins.
I haven’t written about this here, yet, but part of why I’ve been so busy lately has been that I applied for, was accepted, and am now participating in an intensive rape crisis and peer counseling training at a local women-of-color-led, volunteer-based organization against sexual violence. Sixteen hours a week now I spend in their gorgeous mural-covered building in the heart of San Francisco’s Mission District (actually, it’s a block away from where I live), with 20 other women, learning how to be crisis hotline volunteers and one-on-one counselors. The training is amazing, and beautiful, and hard, and brings up so, so much for me. Surprisingly, it hasn’t so far been that triggering — it doesn’t bring up stuff about my own sexual assault. Rather, it brings up all the ways I am in general a scarred, flawed human being, how that’s okay, and how I need to work on healing myself in order to be able to start helping others heal.
And it’s liberating. It might seem like being reminded that you’re a scarred, flawed being would be nerve-wracking, or defeating, or would break your sense of self-worth. For me, though, it’s been so, so healing. (I’ll probably be using that word a lot…) It’s so good for me to acknowledge to myself that yes, I’m flawed. I’m hurt. And it’s okay. I’m allowed to be imperfect. And each imperfection just gives me a beautiful opportunity to take care of myself and work on myself.
I forget that the best way to heal and the best way to be the person I really strive to be is to love myself and take care of myself. I oh so often do exactly the reverse — I make a mistake, and I berate myself for it. I get frustrated with my weaknesses, angry that I mess up. I feel powerless against my deficiencies. But I forget that it is in my power to forgive myself for messing up. I’m my own harshest critic, and I’d do well to lighten up. I watch my dad growing older, in his 60s now, terribly, terribly unhappy, all because he believes he lacks the power to help himself. I DO NOT WANT TO BE THAT PERSON. It is his belief that he is helpless and powerless in the face of his own failures that makes him so miserable. And I want to be in charge of my own happiness.
A while back, I posted a list of things I can do to care for myself. I go to that list often, when I’m feeling down and want to feel better, or when I’m facing an evening of solitude and don’t want to wallow. It’s a great list, and it was a good first step for me in focusing inward, being aware of my own needs. But I realized today that I have the wrong attitude about that list. I treat it as a resource I can use to fill a void. Lonely? Call a friend. Tired? Take a bath. Sad? Watch a funny movie. Stressed? Go to yoga. Focusing too much outward? Journal, or blog. In fact, though, self-care is not just something I need to do to fill a void. It’s not just a way to re-fill my tank when it’s on empty. I also need to take care of myself pre-emptively. I need to make a habit of taking care of myself all of the time. As a first priority. Take a bath when I’m not tired. Call my friends just to chat. Go to yoga regularly, to preempt stress.
If I can learn how to do that effectively, then my life might be able to stop looking like a seismograph during an earthquake, and might instead look like a healthy state of equilibrium. Rather than wild ups and downs, where self-care brings me up and then I run out and fall down down down and need to bring myself back up, I need to consistently be aware of taking care of my own body and my own mind, consciously checking in with myself about how I’m doing, so that I can maintain a relative balance.
This will also help me be a better person for others, to bring this post back around to the beginning, when I was talking about learning how to be able to help others. I’m going to refer here quickly, though, to a quote from Lilla Watson, a Murri aboriginal activist:
“If you have come here to help me, then you are wasting your time…But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.”
This is to say, I can only help others as much as I can be helped along the way. That doesn’t mean “I’ll only help if I get something back.” Rather, it means that (or I take it to mean that) the only way for me to heal and be whole again is for others to heal and be whole again too. And vice versa — so that others can only heal and be whole again if I make sure that I am also healing and becoming whole. So when I say that I’m learning how to help others… what I’m realizing now is that if I’m going to do this work, this so-important work of intervening in sexual violence and supporting survivors, then I need also to be wholly and completely willing to surrender myself to the healing process as well. And together, we all work on healing each other.
And here’s where I take a deep breath, and feel my height and width and depth, feel my past extending behind me along with everyone who has my back all lined up to catch me if I fall, and feel my whole future spread out in front of me ready for me to take it in my hands. And I can fill up all that space and feel my power and know that I will not fall off the earth because I take up space and am firmly planted here. And the healing begins.
