only in dreams

I know that dreams are the products of random electrical firing in your brain. I do, I'm aware of this. Your dreams are your brain's way of cleaning itself out, rehashing everything that passed through it that day, occasionally bringing realizations up from your subconscious up to the light, etc.

That doesn't change the fact that dreaming about Jake always throws me for a loop. Dreams featuring him always seem like so much more than just brain-vomit. Sometimes, when I'm feeling ridiculous, I think that maybe he, or what is left of him, his energy or whatever, contacts me through my dreams, hangs out in my head, as if to say, 'remember me? I miss you too, invisible cloud of particles though I may be.'

I had the loveliest dream about him last night, accurate down to the particular inflections of his voice and idiosyncracies of speech. I dreamt I went to visit him, and they'd gotten a dog, and she'd just had puppies. I hung out with him and his mom and puppies- three things I love entirely too much, Jake, his mom, and baby dogs- and then I came home, went to work, where I laid the smack down on Ricardo, and came back to my little apartment to find him waiting for me. I dreamt of the way he kissed me, and the way he held me, and the way he talked to me, and about other things too, things we never did but probably should have. I know it's stupid to be so strongly affected by a dream, but it was so REAL. I could feel the stubble on his face and smell his breath and even see, up close and personal, every little expression that crossed his face. It was weird too because in this dream, his cancer had happened but he'd recovered fully, and all the things that went unspoken between us before were out, and it was all very comfortable and exciting and so, so real. It was a dream of how things should have been, or would have been, maybe? God I miss that kid.

It's funny how quickly life changes, and how little you notice the changes while they happen. Jake and I were supposed to live in San Francisco and be neighbors and best friends and hang out all the time. He'd work at a non-profit and I'd be a teacher, and Friday nights we would get high and watch 'Planet Earth,' and it would be just like it used to be. Now, he's been dead a year and a half, I'm moving to the Bay in June, I'm in love with someone else... Weird, weird, weird all around. I don't know how things would have gone, had he not died, but I'm fairly certain that life right now would not be anything like it is. Not that that's good, or bad... mostly just weird. Hmph.

what are little girls made of?

So like a total weirdo, I am currently obsessed with weddings. Partly I blame Etsy, because they sent me an email containing the single most beautiful (and custom... and afforable!) wedding dress I have ever seen. Partly I blame my recent intense unhappiness, because what is better when you are unhappy than fantasizing about a day when you won't be unhappy, when ostensibly you'll be as far from unhappy as few people ever are? Or whatever. I'm bored therefore I want to get married.

Actually, it makes perfect sense. I am not one to run off to Vegas with the first meathead who would have me, so the idea of a wedding or marriage encapsulates a lot of what I want and where I want to be. If I am getting married it'll be because one, I am in a functional and strong relationship and madly in love, and two, because financially and materially, I am at a point in my life where having a nice wedding and a marriage and being a real person are achievable, tangible realities. Does that even make sense? Like, if I can afford a wedding, if I have found someone who wants to marry me despite my readily apparent insanity, if I am secure enough in my own accomplishments and financial situation to join my life- like, mentally and economically- with another person in an equal partnership... well, that would be an awesome place to be, I think.

My friends look down on me for loving weddings and the idea of marriage. They think it is hopelessly naive and old fashioned and a real character flaw that I look forward to getting and being married. My friends are generally cynical assholes though, so who cares what they think anyway. I think it's sad to expect all marriages to end in divorce- not that I am unaware of the current state of the institution, but just because the grimness is real doesn't make it any less pitiable. I don't think I have unrealistic, Disney-fied expectations of love and marriage. I have seen what marriage looks like on a day-to-day, stressed-over-money, no-sex-having, failure-to-communicate-on-a-regular-basis-basis. Yes, I too have parents, and their marriage is dysfunctional as hell. What's funny is that apparently, miserable as they are most of the time, their marriage is the one outlasting all of their peers, so maybe it isn't as miserable as all that? Parents, who knows man.

Marriage seems like a great adventure to me. Like, there's this person, and he thinks you are so great that he wants to be a part of the day to day shenanigans of your life, and for a long time. And you are partners, and you're there for each other, and even when it's a slog, it's still kind of fun because this person is your best friend and you get to see him and talk to him every day. And you can grow together and change together, and see the world together, and what's so terrible about that? About having someone to depend on, someone who cares about how you feel and wants you to be happy and you want him to be happy? Ok so getting a little cornball there, but at the same time it's all true. And I am totally in the Laura Kipnis school of thought that says marriage and love should not be work, that these beautiful and transcendent connections we forge with other people should not be hijacked by the lingo of the industrial revolution. It should be play, not that I don't imagine it's at time challenging and painful play.

I would like to believe that love can last a lifetime. I don't see why not. I am going to love my sisters for the rest of my life. Even when I hate them I love them, I don't have a choice. They are as much a part of me as my lungs, or my spleen, and only in part because we share blood. Marce and I share no blood, but she is my sister as much as the other two. Because we grew up together, and we are growing up together, and even when I thought we had gone our separate ways, the ties weren't quite severed all the way and today I doubt they ever will be. Sure it sounds kinda like a curse, this incurable love. And maybe that's what it is, and that's how it should be. I am cursed to love them and so I do and will. Why can't the same kind of thinking apply to romantic love? I will love you, husband, for ever, because I do and I must and I have no choice. Two people with their eyes wide open, knowing the perils of it all and still choosing to live their lives together and try against all odds to be happy- that is damned romantic.

I mean, to an extent anyway. If you think about it too hard you start to realize that marriage is like children in that any idiot can have one, and many idiots often do. On somewhat of a sidenote, a friend of a friend of mine recently got married and stuck her pictures all over facebook, and you gotta realize too that really ugly people get married all the time. Which sounds shallow and horrible, but goddamn man. You shouldn't wear blue eyeshadow up to your eyebrows just in general, but especially not on your wedding day. And it's like, why bother making the effort to look nice if any ugly old schlub out there can get married and you can't? Or just haven't, I guess. Not that I want to right now necessarily. It's just that seeing so many people I know- people my same age and all- get engaged and get married, it always throws me.

Hmm. So what was the point again? Oh yes. I am bored with my stupid life, can't wait to fix it, and I love that dress. Also, I think it's funny that Chris talks about us getting married even though we've been together for all of ten minutes. Knowing that he also planned to marry a certain ex of his, whom I know from close experience to be insane and also ugly, I can't take him seriously, as much fun as it is to talk hypotheticals. And, I wouldn't marry him anyway because there's no point in marrying a lawyer; they never have time for you anyway.

SO THIS IS THE NEW YEAR

and already it is so much better than the old! already i feel different, more secure. it feels as though i learned a lot in the past year, but what and pertaining to what i couldn't really say. mostly pertaining to myself, i imagine. ahh the self-centeredness of youth.

this year is already unlike any other because i am starting it off in love and i am loved in return. (sidebar: love is pretty great and a lot less painful than i'd always felt it to be). this year is already unlike the past couple because already i am taking steps to do what i mean to do instead of sitting around waiting for things to magically just sort of happen to me. this year, 2010, i will do things that are going to scare the shit out of me. and i will be anxious, and i will chew my nails off, and i will find several more snow white hairs in my bangs. and i'll lose sleep, and i'll be wracked with uncertainty, and i'll have bigger things at stake than ever before. and it will be GREAT. it's going to be fantastic and marvelous and a year like no other, and i look forward to all of it. i look forward to working hard and letting off a lot of steam and making plans and making plans come through and really especially i look forward to sharing it all with him. i can't wait to share a life with him. the mundane realities of dirty dishes and bills to be paid and building a home out of scratch all seem fairy-tale-like and beautiful from over here, because they'll be done in cahoots with him. we are going to wash dishes and become real people together and it will be lovely. i am and was going to be a real person with or without him, but for whatever reason, everything is a gladder prospect now that he's in the picture.

i'm not making resolutions this year, because they are cliched and destined for failure, but naturally and inevitably, i have a list of things i mean to work on in order to become more like who i'd like to be. also i love making lists! so here goes:

2010

• move out/up north/in with chris
• read more nonfiction, especially history, and less crap
• sleep more at night and less during the day
• learn a whole new skill, like archery or some type of dance
• improve my cooking skills beyond eggs and pancakes. successfully cook beef.
• pay off some debts (2 can be reasonably paid off this year) and improve my credit score
• learn to tell a couple of really good jokes and not fuck them up
• volunteer with real dedication for something i care about a lot
• stop leaving banana peels to rot in my car
• put real effort into writing something and trying to get it published
• learn to take a really fast shower
• get a real job
• take more pictures!!!
• go somewhere i've never gone before
• write more on a daily basis. even if it's just lists.

and so, ok, the new year started a week ago, but like, i was on vacation! haha