super sad true love story

generally, i am a far happier person than i used to be. it's like i thought it was romantic to be so damn gloomy all the time.

but today, and for the past few days, moreso than ever before, the world makes me sad. and a little scared.

in part, it may be because i just finished 'sstls', gary shteyngart's latest novel about the depredations of modern life on the individual and on love. but mostly it's because i have eyes and can read, and ears and can hear, and a somewhat 0veractive mind that likes to ponder things that most people would rather ignore. i think that's called masochism. but anyway. i worry. i worry a lot about things that are happening and things that might happen and decisions i might make and how they will be affected by things that are happening or might happen. i worry about plastic in the ocean, and plastic in the microwave at home. i worry about chemicals in drinking water and the continued non-cancerous nature of the cells in my fairly-young-but-not-immune uterus. i worry about the slightly toxic air we breathe in l.a. and non-smokers who are dying of lung-cancer. i worry about cruelty-free eggs and the delicious nature of a rare steak versus the horribleness and suffering currently required for that steak to end up on my dinner plate. i worry about poor people living in places soon to be affected by the projected global warming droughts that are going to overtake the world. i worry about these goddamned republicans and their insistence on taking away women's rights as the world goes to shit around them. i worry about women who are republicans and insist on taking away the rights of other women to make decisions for themselves. i worry about people like these short-sighted women reproducing, bringing other short-sighted people into the world. i worry about the fact that my boyfriend doesn't get enough sleep at night or food during the day, and that he stresses himself out a lot, and that stress is a job requirement for him. i worry about my ability to find full time employment, then worry that that doesn't matter because pretty soon money won't mean anything because currently it means too much to some people. i worry that people don't read books, then i worry that reading books doesn't do any good. i worry about my own worrying because what if it's simply being brought on by the pills i take to control my reproduction, which is the scariest thing of all because if i'm not in control of my own personality, then what am i in control of? nothing. and so i worry.

and i think, i will never bring a child into this world, this beautiful world we are shitting all over. and my mother will never stop nagging me for grandchildren, taunting me about my age and continued childlessness despite the fact that i'm only 25. and i will never stop tearing up whenever i see a particularly cute baby, because how can anyone in the world have enough confidence in the future or in themselves to bring a baby into this beautiful fucked up world? and now i am getting overwrought. so i'll stop. and though i worry this is rather silly of me, i will say that it feels good to have written that all down and gotten it off my chest. i'm slightly less worried already!

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

rage, rage against the dying of the light

i will be first to admit, and with little remorse, that i am a savage and i speak like one too. last week, on a rant about useless pseudo-celebrities, i referred to kim kardashian and her sisters as walking, well-shaped holes who need to shut up and get fucked, and stay out of the public eye. because, well, let's face it, it's the truth. these past couple of weeks, i've been referring to our class as "those retards"- not the autistic kids i work with closely, but the other kids, the "normal" kids in our mainstream class who act like a.d.d.-addled monkeys. i'm on this fairly intense "hating children" kick, truth be told. they're all stupid and i can't believe i ever wanted one at any point. proof that i too am stupid.

well, so anyway, i am oviri and i fucking well like it like that.

judith warner's blog in the new york times today, titled "i feel it coming together" is about watching her kids come into their own and the passing of the flame. the flame of life, know what i mean? because she's forty-something, because her kids are hitting the teenage years, because she's... well, because she is a fucking idiot she sits around sniffling about how beautiful it is that she's done with longing and intensity and how sweetly nostalgic it is to see her daughter so full of potential, blah blah blah. seriously? is this what we aspire to as human beings? to have kids and drop out of the flow of things? to have kids and be done with longing? to have kids and "hit a plateau- not so bad after all that"- except it is bad! a plateau?? to stop growing and changing and wanting and fighting and raving and screaming and thinking and being conflicted and being exhilarated etc etc? never. never ever ever. i never ever ever want to be THAT person. sitting around, fat and content, waiting for the grave. not in way that denies aging- i will be old someday, someday not too far away, really, because our lives are short and our bodies deteriorate, whatever modern attitudes and science say about the matter- but i will never be old and decrepit and without longing in my head, where it matters. may i drop dead before that happens.

since i have known myself, i have been a conflicted, questioning, seeking, writhing mass of doubts and pieces that don't quite fit and passions that don't make sense, and yeah, sometimes i am unhappy. sometimes i have the luxury of being the unhappiest person IN THE WORLD. sometimes i am full of rage and i want to hit things and curse the universe at the top of my lungs and bleed. sometimes i am sadder beyond the depth of the ocean, hurt unto feeling it like physical pain. sometimes i am deathly afraid of the future and all the things i don't know and all the paths i might take that are wrong and stupid or right and stupid. sometimes, i feel like the stupidest, most worthless person in the world, and even when i am feeling at the top of the world, i know that i will feel that other way again and not too far off. since i have known myself, i have been the type of passionate person whose hackles are up in an instant at a whiff of injustice- a starving, beaten dog, a homeless person, war and famine in some distant part of the world- however cushy and sweet my own life may be at the moment, there's enough going on in this marvelously shitty world of ours to feel angry, discontent, driven about SOMETHING at any given point in time. does having kids mean not feeling this way, being this person anymore? i don't see why it has to, and yet it so often DOES.

having kids makes you conventional. having kids makes you boring, it makes you stupid, it makes you unhappy. having kids makes you OLD. like, in a bad way. because, ok, children are magical and fantastical and watching them grow is like, a miracle of nature and divinity, right? only like, not. maybe if they're your own. working with kids has made me feel that our species would be better off petering slowly into the void, but then i am a terrible over-reactor, so who knows. i mean, a lot of it is probably just that only stupid people are breeding, and no one seems to be big on actually parenting their offspring anymore, and half of the kids in the world are autistic because of vaccines or milk or the way we kill chickens, or whatever, but still. what if those people are only stupid because they had kids and not the other way around? nnnngh. i don't know. sometimes, like when i'm driving, i am convinced that 99% of the human race is retarded, while at other less harrowing times i think that i am just a conceited, self-centered shit and that by sheer strength of probability, most people are smarter than anyone gives them credit for being.

i guess what it comes down to is this, which may be naive, and it may be cliche, and it may also be the only true thing that i know: i don't want THAT. i don't want a normal life, i don't want to be a normal person, i don't want to grow up and get married and have kids and let that be that because whatever emerson may have said well, contributing a healthy child to the world is not the same pinnacle of achievement as a redeemed social condition or even a healthy garden patch. having a healthy child, especially nowadays, is a miracle unto itself, but it's also the most normal and mundane thing in the world, something that idiots do all the time BY ACCIDENT. while i am not one to deny my animal status and slavery to genetics and the machinations of nature and design, i also refuse to bow down and deny that everything about us that doesn't matter is precisely what is best about us and what i want to glorify with my entire life and not just my heated, chocolate-scented words. my children, should i ever have them, will not define me, will not be the end of what i contribute to the world, they won't be the best i contribute to the world, even, though maybe they'll tie with whatever else i do, because if i have kids, i will want them to be amazing and good people too.

i guess this is working up so much because i'm like, frustrated with life and myself, and also with what feels like pressure to do what i "should" do, even just a simple, "don't say that, who knows where you'll be in ten years, you may want kids before then" is like an icepick in my skull lately. having kids done right takes time, people, time i'd rather be using to figure out my own life first. have kids too young, you'll just fuck 'em all up is what i always say, and i know this from experience because my own mother was practically a child when i was born. because while i happen to like myself, mostly, i'm also aware that yeah, i'm kind of fucked up. that's alright though, i like having stuff to work on.

in any case, now that my heart rate has slowed a bit, i will admit too that the prospect of having kids is terrifying in a thousand different ways besides just making you a zombie. pregnancy? miraculous and GROSS and terrifying. childbirth? gag me, please, i love my vagina just the way it is now. will the kid have a tail? will he be... you know, healthy and sane and normal? will he look like my inbred-looking cousin (who talks and thinks like someone whose mom and dad were related, in addition to being hideous- though my parents assure me that i'm just an asshole and his parents were not, in fact, brother and sister)?? what if the little fucker gets all of my bad stuff and none of my good stuff and then i can't stand him despite the fact that i'll be compelled to love him because he came out of me? god, what if he's ANYTHING like those little fucking beasts i teach! perish the thought. it's unfortunate that i love babies so much, because babies grow into, you know, children and people and stuff. i think, though, that IF i ever decide to give in and do the damn thing, WHEN i have lived a lot more and feel prepared to balance everything and not be a boring zombie creature, BECAUSE i am a wild thing, i will make a damn fine mother, and be nothing at all like poopy judith warner and her pathetic, infuriating resignation in the face of life. life, i roar my terrible roar and gnash my terrible teeth in your fucking face.

so long, my luckless romance

schopenhauer and i, we are definitely onto something with this whole "worst of all possible worlds" thing- developed independently from each other, via convergent evolution, just to be clear. and should anyone require proof, all i would have to do is brandish the letter i wrote last night, that i will never mail, but will post here for my own records:

dear chris,

i don't know what to say or how to say it, so i will write instead. it's always easier this way. how do i feel? i feel like, "wow, this is really really shitty. so this is how it feels to be cheated on. hmmm.' except you didn't cheat on me, because you aren't actually my boyfriend. i should have known what that meant, your unwillingness to say anything more concrete than ' i love you'. and that mainly over text.

i feel like the stupidest person in the world. for believing you when you said you loved me, that you wanted me around, that i'm the most amazing girl you've ever met. i have a feeling that when a man thinks he's met the greatest girl in the world, he doesn't go out and fool around with some older woman friend he rejected the month before. i have a feeling that even if he did fool around with mrs. robinson, he wouldn't then tell the most amazing girl in the world about it with a nonchalance bordering on sociopathy. i could be wrong though, clearly i suck at the whole having feelings thing.

it really sucks that i'm only psychic for bad things. i spent the whole day telling my sister that the reason you never called was that you slept with your coworker and were avoiding me. ok, so, not the coworker this time, but still- someone who is distinctly Not Me. it occurred to me this morning, in a flash of insight, and instantly made me uneasy. my sisters called me paranoid and said you would never do a thing like that, not that they know you at all, except apocryphally, through me. i pushed it aside, mostly, though i worried about it enough that i brought it up a thousand times, half-jokingly.

to think that you not only slept with someone else, you lay in bed with her all morning, into the afternoon, while i fought off the urge to call you or message you, not because i had anything of importance to say but because just being in contact with you makes me happy. ow. you spent the night kissing her, holding her, not thinking about me at all, while i text you to see what was up, missing you, waiting for your reply. did you laugh when you saw my pathetic little message? did she look over your shoulder in her bed and roll her eyes at it? i thought i wouldn't care about cheating, when it happened. i still suspect it would have been better if you drunkenly fucked your assistant. this, this is something else entirely. you feel "caught between the two of us", she is unsure of how to proceed because you are not religious. the fact that you have to think about it- and that she gets a say- says it all.

i should have listened to you when you said you were a bad person. i should have listened when you worried that you would hurt my feelings. i should have known better, period. love. three hundred miles away. ' i just want you around all the time.' hey i know! let's move in together! what a great idea! to think i thrilled at the sweet things you said, that i read them over and over again like a lovestruck schoolgirl and showed them to friends and strangers alike. how could i be so incredibly fucking stupid, again? and again and again. a man who is constantly breaking up with you, even though you're not together, even though he follows it up with an i love you, is not a man who cares about you or wants to be with you.

and i know... you're so sorry. so sorry that you can't say it, you have to message it. so sorry that you go into detail about how you 'didn't sleep AT ALL last night' and you're 'so exhausted from not sleeping last night and getting home at four p.m. today' because you were so busy hooking up all night and morning. and how you thought i should know, 'for whatever reason.' not because we're involved in some vague way. not because you love me and i love you and when two people love each other and one of them sleeps with someone else and then doesn't know how he feels, it's kind of a big fucking deal. you're not sorry and you don't care about me and i know that because you did what you did. and hey, i see the appeal, you know. totally. she's there, i'm not. what's love when you can get some action instead, right? i'd thought you incapable of doing something like that, you who blush and stall when i say something sexual, you who don't see the point of sex without feelings. unless you love her too and just didn't know it. wouldn't that be wacky and amazing!

i can only imagine how it would have gone if the situation were reversed. the shouting, the crying, the crushing disappointment and guilt and misery. i can only imagine because i never would have done anything like that because i love you and because i love you i don't do things to cause you pain. though i might be overestimating myself here, you did say you weren't afraid i'd hurt you. someone you don't love can't hurt you, which is how i understood it, but brushed it aside as you being stupid and saying the wrong thing unintentionally. hah.

i can't even bring myself to shout or curse, in part because i don't have the right to, and in part because i'm more full of pain than of anger. 'it's so weird.' damn right it's fucking weird. i woke up this morning aching to see you, to talk to you, and i'm going to sleep now wondering if i'll ever be able to talk to you again, if i'll ever want to. you woke up this morning naked, holding Not-Me, feeling so little guilt or remorse that you kept on doing that for the larger part of the day. but don't worry. you won't have to deal with any of that shit from me. however long it takes me to stop being a jellyfish, you won't have to know about it. i'm a grown up and i take full responsibility for my own feelings. it was my own fault i got so caught up and carried away, whatever you said. i should have known better than to believe. i hope you and brenda are very, very happy together, i know i will be when i finally learn from my mistakes.

sincerely,
trina

p.s. that you did this to me, of all the wonderful people you've been involved with, is the most major burn in the history of the world.

how can i get better once i've had the best?

just got through uploading some pictures of jake to facebook. i think people "in the know" will think that all i do is sit around and cry and think about him, but actually i've been past that stage for a while now. i'm in this space where it's really hard to wrap my mind around the fact of the matter, sometimes, but also really easy to think back on the good times with a lot of love and feel happy about them without immediately collapsing into tears the next moment.

i haven't actually cried about it since earlier this summer, just before i left for big sur, when i was telling chris the short long version of our story. and hello, talk about weird! i felt like a traitor for a while, for thinking about someone else with a warmth that is so much more than friendly when jake died just a year ago. but now i think, if i love someone else does that mean i stop loving him? and the answer is of course, never. ever. even if i tried. so there's that.

these are pointless ruminations, of course. i just hate that i can't bring him up without getting a pitying sad face in return. as if a few pictures or mentions on the internet could begin to convey the depth of feeling behind that issue. i miss that kid every day, but also i am ok, and when i wasn't, you weren't there for me, you sad-face-pulling little finky bastard.