Right now i am working on unlearning a lot of what i have been taught about myself. On undoing a lot of the damage that has been done.
I am finally able to see how destructive my relationship with sean was for me. At a time where i was beginning to be able to accept myself he sort of swept me up in this sort of shame net. I mean, i allowed this to happen.
I allowed him to mute me, to pretend that many of the things that define me werent there because he was threatened by them.
Mike mentioned this when i saw him. He said i seemed really different. Like, much quieter. Like,only part of myself.
And i thought, you know, this guy is an idiot. He just wants party liz back.
But he just wanted ME back. He wanted all my parts. My loud and crazy and impulsive parts in additon to my quiet domestic parts. Even though all of my parts have hurt him incredibly, he wanted them all.
Sean never saw that in me. He saw the potential for out-of-controlness. Which is definitely there. That is part of me. I dont need the itenerary or road map. I will get there somehow. But if i dont, then i dont! I have a sense of adventure that sean saw as recklessness. And it manifests that way sometimes. But i have so much fun!
In the last year or so i have been working in korean restuarants where the native English speakers are scarce. I find myself speaking a weird mix of Spanish, Korean and pigeon English. My landlord barely.speaks English as well. Sean one time expressed that my desire to be in these situations was an expression of some personality disorder. I mentioned this to my mom on thanksgiving and she was utterly taken aback.
She said i did it because it was stimulating. That it was interesting and challenging. I traveled all over Europe. I lived in foreign countries. I have experienced extraordinary things, simply by stepping outside.of my comfort zone. She said that that was just the way i am. That i was too smart to be boring.
Yes, i am unpredictable. I am not a safe bet. But i am beginning to realize that those are some of my best traits.
I am going to continue getting into things over my head because I CAN FUCKING SWIM.
A lot of this is coming from a new body confidence i am finding. I am getting strong and lean and defined. I have MUSCLES. I used to really mistrust my body. But now i know that i can push and push and it will push back. I know that my hard work is paying off and that i look good for it. Not rail thin. But strong. I have definition in my arms and back. My legs are fucking works of art. My body is a machine. As i am typing this every bit of me aches. But not that sharp tearing ache. The deeper ache. The one that screams DO THAT AGAIN. I HAVE MORE IN ME.
I am back. And for every guy that said to me "we don't have anything in common" but meant "you scare the living hell out of me," your loss dudes.

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Trying not to let my heart fly into a million pieces today.
Trying to hold my shit together.

I haven't gone grocery shopping in weeks because wegmans feels like a couples only club. I have no one to cook for so who fucking cares?
I realized today while i was at the gym that i am a 25 year old weirdo with absolutely no prospects. Life, friends, partners or otherwise.
I want to start an "it does not get better" project. It hasn't. It is harder. I am juggling a dozen things, none of which i care about. But if i drop them, then what? There is no one here with me to share the load.
I was falling in love with someone only to find that he did not feel the same way. But i am expected to be okay with that. I am supposed to still be his friend.
Fuck my fuck.

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What do you do when your persona takes over your personality?

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I was just reading this article on juice "cleanses" and the woman writing it admitted that it did nothing and was probably terrible but that it made her feel incredible and that she would probably do it again.
She described a sense of euphoria at overcoming sensuality.
I find this strange and interesting on several levels.
As a hedonist on a diet, i understand this in a very intimate way.
I keep the Kate Moss quote "nothing tastes as good as skinny feels" at the forefront of my mind because that is the only way I can convince myself to continue.
The only way to over come the sensuality of eating... Of flavor and savoriness is to understand the intrinsic sensuality of feeling sexy.
This is what struck me about this woman's report. Is withholding truly denying oneself sensuality? Can the denial (and also in many cases the end result) not be in and of itself a sensual act?

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What the fuck kind of life do you have to lead to not have a single person who could just give you a hug when you need one?
All i want in the world right now is for someone to hold me by the shoulders and tell me that i am not, in fact, flying apart.

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Getting your head fucked with is THE WORST. I was doing well with my break up for a few weeks (it had been a loooong time coming).
Then some stuff came up with a good friend and i quit my job and life was feeling really chaotic. It is easy to want to fall back into a comfortable pattern...
Around that time Sean started texting me long messages that alternated between how much he loves and misses me and how i am a filthy lying whore with no soul.
That fucked my shit up. In the last few days i have come to realize that his issues are separate from me. That i am not causing this, that desperation is NOT the equivalent of love. That our relationship was awful before and it would be again.
That Sean is fucking with my head.
Thankfully, in ny new -found maturity, i am choosing to express my overwhelming rage at the gym rather than at the bar.
Perhaps i will one day be able to add temperance to my virtues. But probably not!
Anyway, i have a new job that i am much happier with. I am establishing new friendships that exist outside the framework of a relationship for the first time. My aforementioned friend issue has come to a head and i think resolved.
I have lost 10 lbs and am working hard to continue losing... Have a training regime in the gym that leaves me sore and satisfied every day.
The business is making good progress. Life is fucking solid right now.

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I am realizing today that i will never get Sean back. It is fucking devastating. Our relationship was shit. We were bad for each other. But we truly were best friends. Two people that love the other more than anything in the world.
So much so that we consumed and.destroyed each other.
I want him back. I know he had a big day today and all i wanted in the entire world was to be able to bring him lunch and have dinner waiting for him when he got home and to listen to him complain and feel him breathing next to me. I wanted to be able to the care of the dog and get whatever groceries he needed. I wanted to be able to kiss his face.
I have never felt like this about anyone before. I didn't deserve him but i had him somehow and i tried my hardest to not be me. To not be this monstrous me who destroys everything she touches. But i was.
I want to go back and be honest.
I would give up 10 years of my life if it meant i could spend all of the rest of them in his arms.

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I fell in love with the wrong person again. Not even that, i failed to be in love with the right person.
Broken heart.
I miss Sean.

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Sean.

I keep finding myself doing things based on other people.
No. Specifically Sean. I really loved him. I realize that the problems we had came from me believing that i was not good enough (which is true). I started out hoping he would never find out who i was so that he would never leave me.
He has strict rules regarding what is and is not appropriate. About how to act and be.
He was very controlling. I saw it in everything. He treated the dog and i the same. A tight leash and nervous as hell.
But we shared everything. We had rituals. I miss him terribly. Subconsciously. There are so many things i would just rather do with him than without him.
For instance, i went to the store last night to buy toilet paper. Instead of buying the kind i like, which he always hated, i bought his kind.
I make these cosmic apologies to him everyday. We ran our relationship right into the ground.

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This morning i woke up in a twin bed to the sound of children. I am not great at being in other people's homes or apartments in the first place so i already felt like a giant alien groping my way down hallways in the dark into a bathroom with an unfamiliar light switch location.

I want a job. Sometimes i do this as a test to myself. A few years ago i was going through 6 jobs a year. Moving every 3 months. I have been stable and i felt myself getting too comfortable. I was racking up bills to a point i would never be able to support if i wanted to go back to school.
So i destroyed it.
I'm sure in a couple weeks i will be back on track. But hopefully these weeks will give me the time to set up my vintage business that i have recently abandoned. It will motivate me to get my shit done to get back to school this year.

I want to find something part time with benefits and then use my time to fucking do something with myself.

Also i should probably decide how i feel about waking up to the sound of children.
Probably.

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other people

I have found that cruelty has been coming more easily to me as I get older. Maybe cruelty is the wrong word... I mean something less malicious. I don't go into things with cruel intentions, but my exit strategies have been yielding more cruel consequences.
I am still in a transition phase, between putting my feelings first and second... And i am finding this is leading to the worst situations of all.

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the cats are playing pool, a constant clack clacking of all the balls together,

 in that world outside my own now,

outside the door.

Dan Tickner, the muse. My muse, he walked inside my room today while I was laying here I tore the fabric of space time jumping up.

What is it like to drink whiskey with ghosts? The same as it is always, to read lost words of lovers or, to relive past lives every 5 years just in case you've missed something.

and the relentless clack clacking of the pool balls in my ears is enough to drive me mad, and the buzzing of a new love and the snoring of an old love are melding together seamlessly with the fucking

RAGE

that is engulfing me.

I gave my whole life to one man and he threw it away,

like nothing.

I've been chasing this my whole life

and now all I can hope to ask for is

something that's funny or

something that rhymes... 

good byes

I think it may be a sign of age that I no longer see the obvious poetry in torment.

Or maybe, that the torment doesn't last as long anymore. 

That inside this constant disaster I have dug the un-ending trench.

Shielded always from the pounding artillery shells all around me, tufts of dirt or debris raining down the only remaining evidence of the fall.

The relationship I have been nurturing slowly since last summer has dissolved and I think I'm okay with it.

I have lingering doubts and loneliness. I have brief fantasies of vengeance, misplaced of course.

Maybe it is a sign of age that I understand the fault lies with both parties. That we both did this wrong and could not right it.

Love is such a strange fantasy, and one that is very easy to get caught in. It is a vicious beast who will hold you unrelentingly for months or years just to let you go again, out into the wild. 

I wish in some ways I could say I was devastated. In fact, I have said just those words, but with a straight face.

I cried, yes. But I cried more for my own failure than for that of a lost love.

There will be more love. 

That is the only thing you can count on. That your most recent love will not be the last. That the guarantee of "the big love" comes over and over. 

The question is which battles to fight.

This, this would have been a war, and I don't have my fightin' shoes on.

personal-ities

my personal "feelings" blog is quickly catching up with my "poetry" blog in terms of actual entries... that means I've been either having an awful lot of feelings, OR, lack of words.
Either way, here go some feelings put into words in a less than artful manner and paragraph form.

ta-da.

So, it's summer time. Or, at least, it feels like summer time.
I'm missing (I'm always missing, does that mean I'm always without? ) I'm missing other summer nights I've had sitting out with friends on porches for hours and hours. Camaraderie. Since when is a porch not enough?

I was thinking about dedicating this post to talking about other dimensions, both time and space, that I often find myself living in when I should be living in the now. But I think I'm going to just dedicate it to porches.

I have my favorite porch, which I'm mourning deeply tonight for some reason even though it is many years past. I suppose because I'm on a different porch with the same cat today. I miss that porch and the people that filtered through it. I miss watching the sun rise over the rooftops of the houses across the street. I miss that hazy feeling when you've been talking or laughing or dancing with the people you love for so many hours that the next day has already started. Exultation.

Does the fact that those days are over mean that i'm old? or that I've let too much get away from me?

Is the fact that I so worship those simple days even though they were are the very depths of my alcohol and drug problems, even though they were the darkest days - is that so fucking bad?

I feel very far away from myself here, in this sterilized world of accomplishment and scheduling (even though that's not even really my world!). I feel like I belong in the place where the sun rises as well, over beer cans scattered and eyelids drooping and legs asleep. In friends faces.

I guess I just morn the fact that any of those possibilities seem far gone now, that all the options are lost.

Even though we were a mess, we were a fucking beautiful mess.

I started this blog when I was in a relationship that I had a nagging idea wasn't right. I had this idea that the person I should be with would share my convictions, would have the same passions as I do, would create a partnership for me that was rewarding and fulfilling for both of us.
I wonder if this bar is too high, if one must "settle" eventually. Maybe part of this is the grand notion of romantic love... Maybe I've been brainwashed to think that there is going to be this perfect person to come in and be a part of me and my life.
But I don't think I do believe that. I'm not sure. But, I'm not satisfied now and I seem to find small things to keep me dissatisfied all the time. Like, this person isn't smart enough or political enough or something.
Is that crazy?
I'm a fucking mess. I look around and I just see these remnants of lives I've lived before and nothing really indicating what I am now. Just pieces of things I used to be.
How do you build from that?
The man I'm with now I adore. I love him dearly. We have a lot of fun together and we have great sex.
But I am the kind of person who is very heavy on self examination.
He's a very simple man. I'm not sure that he has an introspective bone in his body. So, everytime I bring up something that I've thought about or some small adjustment I'd like to make in our relationship he sees it as an affront and it becomes an argument. I'm not really sure how to deal with this. We don't have the same vocabulary.
So every time this happens, it adds up for him. Every negative encounter goes into this holding container that he accesses for the next one. Every single thing I bring up gets put in this tank and I feel myself running out of room.
It's creating a panic in me. That this simple man who I love for being easy has this simple solution. Once this tank fills up with my bullshit, he will get rid of me.
And that terrifies me.
So I go over and over everything in my head. Just over and over and over. And I come up with more things that could be tweaked so we could be happier and THOSE things go in the tank and it's just EATING ME ALIVE. I told him a few weeks ago that I really wanted a partner, someone who would just naturally think of me, that we would just be a team. And he adjusted! This miraculous man just BECAME that. And I realized that though I love him, he is just not exactly what I want, in total, and I don't think I'm what he wants either. But we love each other and we get along really well most of the time and we have great sex. And we talked about this last night, in the first really rational conversation we've ever had. And we decided that we've never really built anything, relationship wise. We got together as a hook up and just... kept hooking up. That's all we've ever really been. And since before we were together we were both in long term relationships, we just settled into this weird serious relationship rut, which isn't suited to where we actually are with eachother.
so what is the solution to this problem?
I don't know, and I'm working it over and over in my head. Over and over and over and this problem now is eating me alive. and I know I'm going to need to talk to him about it more, and then THAT's going to go into the tank and THEN WHAT??
Is this terrible? This just seems like the worst relationship ever, right?
But I want to be around him. I want him to love me.
I can't imagine nights without him, his body feels like home to me.
WHEN when do you know when things are just played out?
When you have done everything you could do together?
Or, when are you at a revelatory period, that this is going to inform the rest of our relationship together, that if we can stick this out, the good stuff will come?
I don't know. I DON'T KNOW and I can't stand that.
And that, that is also going in the tank.
Fuck.
I need someone who can just deal with my neurosis, that will just fucking know what to do. and I'm sure I'll resent that person also.
I love mike, he's a wonderful man and I'm not sure I'll ever do better so what can I do to make myself happy with him?
How? How do I let go of everything and just enjoy him?

musings

I'm looking for a new apartment again. I don't think I can handle living in my current place anymore.
I'm cruising through craigslist looking for new places and realizing how little interest I have in weird roommate situations and room sharing and splitting utilities and all that nonsense.
I'm ready to GROW UP.
Be in a place of my own, or with my partner.
But no roommates. No bullshit.

nightmares

I have sets of recurring nightmares, places that I keep coming back to even though the people change, or weird in between states that are like sleep but aren't sleep.
Sometimes my dreams take place around me while I'm laying in bed. Like I'm a detective but my bed is in the precinct and I conduct all of my business from it. Things like that.
My roommate is the single most social person I have ever met in my life. She can not go an hour sitting by herself being quiet. I'm the complete opposite of that. She calls me a "loner." I have gone out with her a few times but it is always a strange situation. She creates drama for herself and I don't have the stomach for that kind of thing. She likes to create drama around me as well. For instance, she is trying to make me into a "lesbian." I am dating a man and it seems like that offends her. I love my boyfriend more than I ever knew possible and we have an amazing partnership together.
Today he is out of town, and I had planned on meeting some friends at the local gay watering hole to grab drinks and hang out. She keeps trying to get me to pick up girls with her. She said tonight I could be a lesbian. I was like, look tonight just like all other night's I'm Mike's girlfriend. She keeps insisting that I come out and pick up chicks and it leaves me a foul taste in my mouth.
So, I declined to go with her.
She was upset, I guess. I don't really care, I should be able to make my own decisions. We're not very close friends. Whenever she gets drunk she always says "I don't even know you."
So I just lay in bed watching The L Word and hung out with the cats. Ironically a much more "les" thing to do!
To tie this all back to the dream (pardon my rambling - I hardly ever blog any more and I don't have a good structure that I'm used to), I'm laying in my bed right now listening through uninsulated walls to a party going on outside my room.
There is music and pot smoke and loud nonsensical conversations pouring in through the two inch gap under my door.
She talks about me, when she's drunk.
It's like I'm just sitting out there in the middle of the party, under my covers in bed.
I am living my own nightmare.

GWAR on ice.

Looking backwards at abject failure.
Why is that always how I feel when I sit down to write here?
These past six years have been really hard on me, and now I'm hardened. I have a spectacular sense of perspective now, there is nothing left to happen that hasn't anymore.
The very worst thing I could have imagined has happened, and passed. I did survive and I did make the right choice.
There are of course, people in the wake of this.
All my disasters are littered with good people who at one point loved me or thought they did.
New boyfriend, whom I worship. I can see all the points that we don't line up and I cherish them. It's funny because I find myself in this constant back and forth, wanting to want to marry this man, just to prove something. You all did it and I can do it to. But I don't think I do. Want to marry him. Really. I think this is the first relationship that I can appreciate for what it is. I do take him seriously and I can't wait to see what happens between us. I am so excited for all the plans we have. I love him so much, that just holding his hand is pure joy...
I wake up in the middle of the night and look over at him and cannot imagine anything else.
None of the usual revulsion that I find normally accompanies "love."
Gross, this is getting gross. Ok.
I have a lot of joy in my life right now, actually. I HAVE passed through the storm.