i guess i’m doing this now…

i automatically re-upped my hosting for a site i lost the domain control, so i re-started a .org version. so, you know…here…

there is one less person in the world who loves me.

one of the only people left who knew me at my best and brightest and most broken and how will i remember those times with her gone?

we met in class at humboldt state–i made her cry with an essay about my dad’s death and seeing his grave marker for the first time. i was so raw with my grief, then, and my writing was so unfiltered. i can’t imagine being that open now–i don’t think i’m capable of knowing and understanding my feelings that deeply anymore, let alone describing them to a room of strangers, or the world on the internet. later in the year, i remember sitting on the steps of founder’s hall and our teacher came out and called us his “two favorites” and we were still talking about that up to last year. we loved being smart, talking about books, working through the boys in our classes. grief brought us together and now i’m left alone with my grief.

the worst.

i was just thinking that, when obama was elected, i expected the worst.

i was thrilled, but i expected him to be assassinated, honestly.  it took me a long time to settle in to the fact that he was actually going to be president.  that he actually was my president for eight years is amazing to me, and i am thankful.  he wasn’t perfect, but i think he tried to do what he could to make the world better, and i think he’s still doing that, which is awesome.

but it’s sort of like he is being…erased by this horrible man who somehow is now the president of this country.  he started in office by deleting every obama rule he could and he continues to abuse this country and the progress we made and it makes me sick.  i don’t know what to do about it.

i was expecting the worst, but not that it would really be this bad.

another trip around the sun…

it’s funny how quickly they go, sometimes.  of course, some years seem to take a little longer than others, too.

my mother’s health is doing okay.  she’s stable and she’s home and she’s fine as long as she doesn’t fall down.  it’s a lot to hope that she won’t fall down, but that’s what we’re hoping, and we’re waiting for more doctor stuff.  always more doctor stuff.

school is good.  of course, i’ve been on vacation a week and a half, so it always seems pretty good if i’m not right there, picking up random crap off the floor and trying to figure out how to convince the students that, yes, i am actually there to help them and i prefer doing that to just sneering at them, or whatever it is they think i am doing.  sometimes that’s a straight mystery.

my life has gotten kind of small, but it’s not bad.

i made it to another year.

so it goes.

i have a lot going on right now.  everyone does, i know, but i feel like…i got too much goin’ on right now.

most stressful, of course, is my mom and her health and me trying to balance what she wants, how she can have quality of life and be at home as long as possible, but still be safe and not fall down and hurt herself.  i don’t have a clue what to do in the big picture or the small picture and i have no one to help me make these decisions or figure these things out.  i mean, i have friends who are supportive and my cousin is supportive, but i don’t have anyone to really help–my sister does not seem interested in being involved either to help me or to help my mom, and i don’t even know what that’s all about, really.  it’s just another thing i have going on.

my own health is also not awesome.  things are looking better, for some of it, but the stress is not helping, i can say with certainty.  splitting with the boy is hard, but was probably good, too.  one less thing to worry about.

school is good, though.  some really nice kids.  also some super jerky asshole kids, but at least enough nice ones to balance it out.  good new faculty.  just better, in general.  it’s nice.

so…all that, and a side of jury duty.  oh, and rent increases over increases and a horrible president and a disheartening lack of ethics in the senate.

so it goes.

bold.

tonight i met a friend of mine at the embarcadero cinemas to see sorry to bother you, which was brilliant.  i got there a little early to buy our tickets, and i was sitting outside, with my popcorn and my cherry icee, my monkey pipe, a litRPG book, my purple hair and my general joie de vivre.  a handsome young man comes around the corner and says,

“bold.  bold!  i like it!”

salutes me and continues on…and the very best part was that there were so many things about me that he could have been talking about, and i have no idea what it was.

in which i’m a fancy girl.

so, tonight i went down to the great american music hall to see culture abuse and the hold steady play.  david kelling, the singer for culture abuse, is my cousin’s kid and just basically all-around great, so i both genuinely like the person and enjoy the music–win-win!

the last show was a really young crowd–they were playing with a band whose name i can no longer recall and i was, like, grandma if not mom age to most of the attendees, but i had fun.  i planted myself middle right, as i like to be, and took pride in the fact that i was punk rock before they were born.

this show was an older crowd, mostly there for the hold steady, i imagine, though i know a few of us were there supporting culture abuse.  the new album is a lot more poppy than the last and the writing is really good, so i’m sure they made some new converts tonight!  in any case, i was planted pretty close to the front, right side, bouncing along and enjoying myself.  dave has developed some adorable little punctuation barking noises that were cracking me up and he’s really got a good sense of patter and connection with the audience.  he often mentions that the band “has family” there and all that and, as mentioned, he’s just a generally sweet kid, but i don’t expect a specific “shout out” or whatever.

tonight, however, there was a magical moment.

i can’t remember what they were playing, but we were all bouncing along and david spotted me in the crowd and waved at me and i waved back and then this funny little guy who was very very excited right in front of me waved to dave and dave waved again and i had this full-body, geez, did i just make a fool of myself waving, and he wasn’t waving at me?  and then, no, of course he was waving at me and how fucking adorkable and sweet that this kid in front of me thought, hey!  rock star guy just waved at me!  that is so cool!  and it just melted my heart and made me laugh.

i asked david if he knew the kid, but he didn’t–it was funny to mention it to him later, because i think we have sort of similar sensibilities in ways and he also thought it was funny.  i saw the kid and his friend talking to david later and i thought, good on you, kid!  meet your rockstars and live your fucking dream.  you rock and this world can be pretty fucking awesome.

(also i got free culture abuse swag in the form of a cool keychain and a free after dinner mint and spent the whole hold steady set in the “band area” to the side of the stage.  very fancy lady!  and then i cheated muni out of seventy-five cents fare because i lost a dollar on the way to catch the 49.)

what is not okay.

the problem is not that you put your dick in me way back then, so much as that you told me afterwards that if i told your girlfriend, one of my best friends, she would blame me and not you.

well, that’s not the only problem.  there are other problems.

one of the problems is that i was, and probably am, stupidly naiive and it never in a million years occurred to me what was going to happen, even though the entire world tells me that i should have known better.  and i should have known better!  how could i have been so stupid as to trust the boyfriend of one of my best friends, someone i’d known for years as a “good guy”?  yeah.  stupid.

and the drinking–obviously that wasn’t good.  but i was in my own home!  in my own bed!  i figure, we were probably both super drunk, and that’s why you somehow thought the whole thing was a good idea in the first place, but that doesn’t explain the second place or the manipulation.

it’s so easy to make mistakes and i know this.  i have made mistakes and done lots of things that i regret.  you can’t go back in time and undo things, you can just try to learn from your mistakes and not make them again.  you can be sorry, but you can’t take away the sickness in my stomach at the thought of what happened and the never-ending self-doubt and the bitter feeling of betrayal that someone i trusted used me in that way.

i don’t bear you ill will, but i don’t ever want to see or speak to you again and i don’t think i owe you any other reason than that it wasn’t the penetration, it was the betrayal and manipulation that makes me sick to this day.  i don’t know what you think happened and i don’t want to hear about it.  i hope you’re doing well in life, honestly, but please just leave me alone.

notes

i used to read liner notes obsessively when i bought a new record–and the use of that word is intentional here, though i still tend to say an artist has a new “record” even when it doesn’t appear in that format.  i would study they lyrics and the people involved the way i would watch credits at the movies and see the same names and make connections.  one of my favorite moments when i was a teen was when the damned put out “light at the end of the tunnel” and the inner sleeves included all the other band members were in and i already had so many in my collection, even though they were obscure, particularly to americans at the time, i think…and it’s not like i could really share all this special information and impress anyone with it, because no one i knew cared, but i liked knowing.

these days trivia is so cheap and no one needs to know anything because everything can be looked up instantly. at the same time, it’s like you can never know enough to prove that you’re a big enough fan to someone else, and it’s exhausting to try.  even though i never really managed to use the information i gleaned in the past for winning friends or influencing people, i got pleasure from it and sometimes it was a hell of a bonding moment with someone…but these days, it rarely seems worth it.  in a way, it’s liberating to just let it all wash over me and like what i like and ignore what i don’t like, but it’s kind of isolating, too.

this has been quite a year…and then some.

i’m disgusted by the state of national and local politics, but that’s just background stress to the personal.  my mother’s health has been quite bad and i spent all my summer and most of my free time–and not free time that i had to free up–up in petaluma, at various hospitals, rehab facilities and my mom’s apartment.  it’s stressful and physically exhausting and i am not getting any outside support–it’s just me to figure things out.  the lack of communication from my sister is also hurtful and confusing, but i can’t even unpack that one–i can just do what i can for my mom.

my own health has also suffered, and i had a very scary TIA at work last month–one of those “mini-strokes”.  i felt like a bright light was shining in my eye and things just didn’t feel right…then i realized that i couldn’t remember my address.  then i realized that i couldn’t read–that i knew what letters were, but i couldn’t sound out simple words.

it was terrifying.

of course i didn’t go to the doctor, but stayed at school until 9pm because it was “open house” and the only people who came to see me were my assistant’s wife and daughter.  the next day, after my doctor freaked out on me, i am still at school because my assistant is out with a bad cold–i’m getting more and more anxious about everything, so finally decide i have to leave school early.  i’m in my office and students are outside the library door screaming, “i see her!  she’s in there!” which didn’t do a lot of good toward me NOT having a stroke.  thankfully CT scan and MRI show no permanent damage or bleeding in the brain and i just finished a month of heart monitoring yesterday, so we’ll see what they say about that.  as i’m dealing with all this stress and stress-induced illness, my school basically set me up to have so much additional, unnecessary stress that was based solely on other people not planning that i spent two weeks constantly on the verge of tears, feeling so betrayed that no one in that school or district has my back, though i was almost literally killing myself for them.

i’m going to try not to do that anymore.

this is the end of spring break now and we have about six more weeks of school.  i am incredibly relieved to have the heart monitor off and i hope that the nasty burned-looking abrasions from the electrodes will heal soon and i can forget all about it.  my mom’s health is doing better and i hope we can have a summer of enjoying things instead of all the awfulness of last summer…though i know it’s just a matter of time before we have to think about how we can move her to the “next step” of whatever keeps us going.  it’s going to be difficult, no matter what it is.

i am disturbed that i feel so adrift and betrayed by my school–i’ve been there twenty years and i’ve always loved that school, even in the bad times, but the bad times are getting so bad and it is so clear that they don’t really value me, even with all i try to do there.  i should try to think practically and look for another library, another place less ridiculous to live than san francisco, a school less intent on killing me–or at least willing to pay me a little more for the opportunity.  i should do these things, but i’m not sure i will.  i love my library, and it takes a lot to give up something i made for something so uncertain…though is it going to be less scary when i’m even older and more broken?

anyway, that’s the update, in a nutshell.

i’m still alive.