If we fall, we don’t need self-recrimination or blame or anger – we need a reawakening of our intention and a willingness to recommit, to be whole-hearted once again.

– Sharon Salzberg

I wrote to Argo, and she did exactly what I thought she’d do… which is reach through the Internet and make me feel like a badass for surviving.

So there’s that.

I am so lucky. Tears came to my eyes, but there was a napkin on my desk and it was good to feel like I could exhale again for real.

She’s my motherfuckin’ badass out there.

Not yours.

😛

Today was a weird day all around. When I went to my psych appt., they told me they’d tried to get in touch with me to tell me that Leighton had to miss and could we reschedule?  They probably did, but I generally don’t pick up if I don’t recognize the number, and they did not leave a message. So, I show up and they say they’ll relay to Leighton that I’m out of Lexapro and Neurontin, but they don’t, so when I get to the pharmacy, there’s only my sleeping medication to pick up- one that Leighton doesn’t want me taking anymore, anyway, so I have almost six months’ worth in my top dresser drawer. Now I have seven. I wasn’t taking it all that much to begin with, because it was the same drug they gave me at the hospital that JUST. WOULD. NOT. WEAR. OFF. I could function ok, but when it came to actually wanting to leave the house, I’d run out of spoons before I’d even finished getting dressed and getting on the bus to go anywhere sounded less appealing than a root canal. Root canals are awesome. You can feel like you got something taken care of and you can sleep through it the whole time. #winning

The spoon theory is why I think I need a housekeeper, and why it was so important to me back in the day that Dana agreed to take care of me while I was working at Alert Logic… or get a housekeeper to take care of us both if she wanted to go back to work. Commuting an hour and a half each way and trying to prove myself at my job, thus working far more than forty hours a week, has all my spoons up. Today I worked from home, and from 1300-1400 I set an alarm and napped, I was so tired. The Lamictal and the Klonopin are helping until I can get the Lexapro refilled, but they’re just not the same. I’ve put a call in, but no one has called me back and I haven’t had the time to hound them. And even that is partly bullshit because there are no amount of things with which I will get busy in order to not have to make a phone call.

We all worked from home today, so it was especially annoying that I actually did reach out, and they didn’t get back to me, so I didn’t get to go to the pharmacy at lunch.

Which brings me to yet another point as to why the day was weird. I thought I’d be ok with it, but I was not. I thought that having an extra hour and a half to my day would be awesome, but it just interrupted my routine and my mood was terrible. It reminded me of all the days I spent unemployed at my own computer in the silence of the house, coding instead of writing, but still with the complete isolation. My office is silent as well, but hearing my office mate type and just knowing she’s there is a different situation entirely.

The flip side is that I got even more done than I usually do, because of course I type faster on my own keyboard in my own room.

After that, my day got even weirder. I was asked by the church to take a course on identifying abusers within the church. I know you cannot imagine why that would be hard for me. Lines from The Cost of Shame kept running through my head as if my teenage years were happening all over again, because the inappropriateness jumped out at me in a way that it hadn’t before. All the signs I could have recognized had I not been a teenager in the first place, a fact I could do nothing about. All I wanted was for Argo to be right there so I could bury my face in her neck and sob afterward. To be angry with me. To be sad with me. But she was on my shoulder the whole time, and we’d have these little conversations in my head because I wanted to write to her and didn’t know what to say all at the same time. We’re good enough that I could have. I was just speechless, shaking with rage and disgust at the times I could have told, but didn’t to protect Diane….. just like the course said I would. People fall all over themselves when they hear her sing, and they love her as a person outside of that. I learned that abused kids are less likely to tell when their abusers are well-liked because they don’t think anyone will believe them, anyway… and that they don’t report abuse because they think they’re going to be in trouble for whatever it is they think they’ve done, which is nothing, but at the same time, always seems like something. In my case, it was that I wasn’t supposed to be talking to her at all. How could I go back to my parents and admit  I was freaked out when the relationship was supposedly ended for good, anyway? Besides, we weren’t actually having sex, so how could it be abuse (in my 14 year old mind)?

The course also said that one in four girls are molested, and one in eight boys. You know how many abusers get caught?

Three percent.

 

 

Last night I took the train and the bus home, listening to the Diane Rehm show. The entire hour was dedicated to George Takei, Captain Sulu on the Enterprise and basic Japanese badass. He talked about Star Trek, of course, and about (as Wil Wheaton calls him) WILLIAM FUCKING SHATNER, but he also talked about Allegiance, his Broadway musical detailing his years in the Japanese internment camps from the time he was five until he was eight. The camp itself was in the mountains of Arkansas, and when they were released, he and his family moved to Skid Row in Los Angeles, with only $25 in their pockets that the government had given them. Because of this, young George was frightened out of his mind and wanted to go back to the camp, because at least there, they were in a Japanese community and were fed meals. George’s father found work at a washateria in a heavily Hispanic neighborhood, and George was lavished upon with food by all his adopted abuelitas. All’s well that ended well, but the beginning of the story was every bit as unsettling as the birth and toddlerhood of Jesus… the difference being that the Holy Family were refugees in Egypt, and George’s family was rounded up by his own government. There is no such thing as competitive suffering, but if there was, George and Jesus would be right up there.

As I am listening to this funny and heart-wrenching podcast, snow began to fall, sticking to the windows of the bus and just blowing everywhere, rendering an umbrella completely useless. I know this because when we got to CCC, the landmark for my bus stop, I got out my umbrella and within 60 seconds it had turned inside out. No matter, though, for it was a great walk, watching the snow as I remembered my first winter in DC. As I told Kathleen, it was like driving through a ticker-tape parade. Additionally, there is a quiet that snow brings with it that other weather doesn’t, especially the first snowfall of the year. There is almost complete silence, because the snowflakes do not make noise as they hit the pavement. It is ethereal and beautiful, especially when it doesn’t pile up, because then you get these mounds of white that do not turn dirty from car exhaust and whatever else the environment thrusts upon it. There isn’t a word in the English language, to me, anyway, that fits snow better than “awe.”

As I was walking, I noticed that one of our neighbors still had their Christmas decorations in their yard, and one of them was a huge inflated Frosty the Snowman. I thought to myself, “well, they can just leave that one up.” I’ll always be cool, but I’ll never be “inflatable Frosty the Snowman covered in real snow” cool. The only thing I’ve ever wondered about Frosty is why he needed a pipe. You would think that smoking would melt his face in, but who am I to judge? Suspension of disbelief is the only possible explanation, and I am okay with that.

After I passed that house, I realized that I hadn’t brought my work laptop home, and I hadn’t set up my VPN yet, anyway, so if the snow was planning on sticking around, I was, in a word, screwed. I was lucky that when I woke up, the snow was gone, and I made it here just fine……….. well, kind of. I had two Uber drivers cancel on me until it was so late that I couldn’t make my train. I finally had the driver bring me all the way to work, not realizing that I would get here a full 20 minutes before everyone else, and I shivered in the cold until the CEO showed up with bagels and donuts. If there is any reward for being here first, it’s getting to open the donut boxes and choose while they’re all pristine.

Because I made incredibly strong coffee, I had a plain cake donut- the most perfect breakfast I could have imagined. Last time, I had a jelly donut, and powdered sugar went EVERYWHERE… on my face, on my clothes, on my desk, on my keyboard…. it was a hashtag notworthit moment if ever I’ve had one. Yes, it was delicious. Yes, there is still powdered sugar on my keyboard.

It looks like snow.

 

I managed to get out of the house this morning looking decent, but I am not wrong about that whole haircut thing. Bedhead has turned into rat’s nest, so this morning it’s Rice baseball cap and huge headphones, which double as excellent earmuffs. It’s cold… very cold… but the sun will be out, which helps. It’s the reason I like DC so much better than Portland in terms of weather. My vitamin D level doesn’t plunge into nothing (six) in the winter. Trying to decide when I’m going to do the haircut thing… not enough hours in the day…. ever. Perhaps I will alternate between Rice and the CIA all week. Although, truth be told, my CIA baseball cap looks like crap because it’s black and everything sticks to it. There are little pieces of paper and dust bunnies all over it. It’s a good look. It’s hard to underestimate how much my headphones help in terms of keeping me warm, though. I listen to Opie and Jimmy, just like the old days (remember that, Randy? 😛 ) except they have a podcast now instead of broadcasting on terrestrial from New York. With the sound coming through, my headphones are even warmer.

Opie and Jimmy are doing a bang-up job talking about “Making a Murderer.” There are several times I’ve doubled over in the Metro laughing so hard that people wonder what’s wrong with me. It is completely NSFW and totally offensive, so if you are offended easily, please don’t download the podcast and blame me because you don’t think it’s as funny as I do.

When I’m actually at work, I skip between jazz, classical, and EDM without words. The EDM makes me type faster, and so does jazz. It’s the Mozart Effect, just without Mozart (some of the time). I had a boss day yesterday. I finished up around 6:30, and remembered to write down where I stopped so that I could pick up this AM without missing a beat. I still didn’t get home until 2100, but I didn’t care. I was still high on kicking coder ass. It’s a beautiful feeling when you hit Execute and nothing goes wrong. In fact, it’s kind of like a natural 5-Hour Energy Shot…. in Sour Apple.

Speaking of Sour Apple 5-Hour Energy, I am wearing a camo t-shirt under the navy Henley that Lindsay got me for Christmas (the Sour Apple bottle is camo). I love my camo t-shirt, but I am divided when I wear it, which is why I always wear something over it. The first is that I was never in the military, and I don’t mean any disrespect. The second is that I am so butch anyway that when I wear it I get thanked for my service A LOT. I always tell the truth, that I was never in the military, but I will pass their thanks along to my friends that were. I think of Stephanie and Volfe every time it happens, and silently say a prayer that they got home safe and sound.

The “so butch anyway” is cute with make-up. Seriously. As I used to quip, “I’m more man than you’ll ever be and more woman than you’ll ever get” when good ol boys used to torment me in high school.

It worked, because there are just no good comebacks when you’re not smart enough to think of them…. and they weren’t. I don’t even remember how I came up with it in the first place, just that the first time I did, I was met with stunned silence and a satisfying feeling as they skulked away wordless.

The femme in me says that I need to go by a piercing studio on Saturday, because I don’t need anything pierced, but I want to go back to titanium ball enclosures for the four holes in my ears. They match anything and everything, and they never rust. I have had one in my cartilege since 1999…. the same one. Oh, no. Wait. I had to replace it in 2001 after a CT scan. The ER didn’t have the special tool to take it out, so they sawed it off.

Good times.

And on that note, my cappucino is done and it’s time to run for the train.

xoL

Every once in a while, a news article scrolls across my feed and I get sick to my stomach about it. When that happens, I try to switch the music to something upbeat, or reach out to a friend, or take a walk. Today, it was reaching out to a friend and becoming so engrossed in work that I haven’t gotten up from my desk in almost five hours. I should really set a reminder, because this project needs to be done quickly, and yet no one expecting that I am actually chained here.

But sometimes, just sometimes, when I am caught in “don’t want to think about it,” coding is a refuge. I love it, except now I have a headache from staring at the screen. I made myself a small cup of coffee and took some ibuprofen to keep going. I don’t have much longer in the day, and I have a goal for what I want to get accomplished, and I have to accept that it may not be possible. I’m not so good at that. I will just keep working until they tell me they’re locking up and then I drag ass in the morning. It’s not that I can’t make it here on time, it’s that I haven’t had enough time away from the office to feel like I ever left.

But did I mention I’m working on a project?

Also trying to overhaul myself. Made the commitment to wear make-up every day because I have a real job now. I know that sounds weird, but it’s really not. As I’ve mentioned before, I kind of look like a fifteen-year-old boy without it. With it, I at least look like I’ve achieved puberty.

Plus, if I make a mistake with my eyes, my glasses cover it.

It’s not just that, though. It changes my attitude, one that I desperately need. It makes me walk a little taller because I know I look good. My face has started to even out a little bit due to the weather, but it’s not there yet. With make-up, I can at least be a smooth poser. I need to get a lighter shade of eyeliner, though, because every morning I look like I’m dressed for black tie. Evening makeup in the daytime. Hilarious.

I also need a haircut. Now that I wear it in a crew cut with the ends shattered to make it look like bedhead on purpose, I have to get it cut more often to keep it looking that way. If not, I just look like I live in Portland. Can’t look like that anymore…. lost my brown hoodie.

The one thing I need to buy that I haven’t gotten already is cordovan polish for my Docs. I might do a layer of black first to develop a patina, but I need the cordovan regardless. I’ll stop for it on the way home, if I leave before the stores close. It will be a miracle if I get out of here on time, because I cannot get up in the middle. I have to come to a good stopping place, or when I get here in the AM, I will have no idea where I am.

Where do I work again? Who are you people?

Yeah, that.

I have spent the last year being broke as fuck with my family helping me make ends meet, and now after my rent has been paid, I have a little over a thousand dollars in the bank. I find myself hiding under the covers this morning, just wanting to hoard it, even though there are things I desperately need. For instance, at some point today I need to go to the pharmacy and get my meds, and I need light bulbs and toilet paper. I will get over it, but right now, spending even a cent feels like giving up a part of myself, as if there’s never going to be any money ever again. In two weeks, there will be, but after the year I’ve had, I am insecure and anxious about it. I know I have job security because I am proving myself every single day, getting better and better at my job because I don’t have to multitask quite so much. I can focus on being a better coder and that takes a single-minded type of endurance. In fact, I feel guilty for being home today, because first of all, I don’t like weekends.

People like me just don’t. An interruption in my schedule for two whole days makes me feel a little bit lost. Church helps with that, of course, but it starts later than my job, so it’s still a routine change that tilts my world a bit. Plus, what I’m working on is fucking interesting, and being away from it is driving me crazy. It’s actually a project, and every minute I’m not making forward progress on it is one more thing I inherently feel guilty about leaving alone until Monday, as if it’s waiting for my touch.

I would also like a maid, and I may look into getting one. With my commute, there are just not enough hours in the day to keep my life at home running smoothly. It would be nice to come home to the laundry already being done and the clothes put away and everything in its place. And surely cleaning one room once or twice a week would be cheap. Let me explain why I feel the way I feel. I leave the house at 0645 and 90% of the time I don’t get home until 2100. I stagger in the door exhausted, laundry piling up because I can’t start laundry that late and or that early. If I lived in an apartment complex where the laundry was separate from my living quarters, it would be a different thing. But the laundry is in the basement, where Samantha and Dom live.

The long and short of it is that I don’t need to justify to anyone why I want anything, but after having Dana keep my life together when she was home and I was at work, I realized how important it was to me. I told Dana that if she got a job, we’d hire someone to take care of both of us. I didn’t want her to think that she was stuck- if she got tired of it, all the better. We’d have someone to take care of the house so we could spend time on each other.

It never happened, of course. As Dana became more and more depressed, the house was a wreck and she didn’t want to get a job. Just slammed in both directions. And by slammed, not placing blame, just an all-around clusterfuck. Neither one of us were getting our needs met and we were both spectacularly unhappy because of it. It is true that I asked her to hold off on getting a job and take care of me while I was working nights, but that’s because I thought if she was working I’d never see her at all. But once I was off nights, I didn’t care what she did. I just wanted her to be happy. And I hope she is.

She agreed with me in terms of working nights, and it was such a blessing right up until it wasn’t. We had this great 1950’s throwback relationship except that Dana never wore pearls while she vacumed… that I’m aware of. 😛

But all good things must come to an end, and the blessing of having a wife that stayed home to take care of me began to feel isolated and yet, didn’t want to do anything about it, either. I thought making her in control of everything, the house manager, would make her feel like I made the money, but she made all the choices about how to spend it. It wasn’t my money. It was ours. The only time I ever thought that was unfair was when she said we didn’t have the money for something I wanted and I found all sorts of fast-food bags in her car. It was clear she wasn’t happy, and it was clear I couldn’t fix it. I couldn’t make her get a job, and I couldn’t make her happy being a stay-at-home wife. Dana had to make Dana happy. Dana’s depression, I believe, was the root of her territorial attitude toward Argo, and neither of us could help that, either. The “I need a sounding board other than you” line didn’t work, even though it was the truest thing in the whole world, and not just something you say when you’re trying to leave a relationship.

In that sense, I’m glad Dana is gone for good, because one of the biggest reasons we got together is that we realized that neither one of us could watch the other with someone else. Dana couldn’t let me love someone else in front of her, and my girlfriends always felt like they were second fiddle to my best friend, because we had so many inside jokes where “you just had to be there” that my girlfriends became territorial and hated Dana, too.

It was a turf war, especially with Katharin, who suspected that we were in love and Dana was the whole reason I wanted to move to Portland, when it was Katharin that originally wanted to move there and I was overjoyed to be along for the ride. When we got there, it was a flaming disaster, because the turf war was intense and I hated every moment of it.

The more I think of it, the more I like being single without Dana in my life because I don’t have a girlfriend with whom I have to compromise and I don’t have a best friend determined not to like her. It was the worst with my ex-boyfriend, Matt, because they really liked each other, and yet every time the three of them were in a room together, it was the ultimate pissing contest from beginning to end over who knew me better, and I was just caught in the middle.

They were both so insecure about my love for them that they couldn’t make room for each other in my life, either, when I had the ability to love Matt like a brother and Dana like a wife without crossing wires… most of the time. I was a real asshole because of my abuse and treated Matt like a “dick in a glass case.” As Chris Rock says, “in case of emergency, break glass.” I didn’t with my actions, but I did with my words. I flirted too much, and I ruined a good relationship with him because of it…. because as we’ve discussed, I am not very good at not “being over the line, Smokey.” Another reaon I’m glad I’m single. I don’t have the ability to hurt anyone in that way ever again. As I work through these myriad issues, I see how grossly inappropriate those actions and reactions were, and I get disappointed in myself for committing them at all. My drive to have my skeletons out in the open and my soul clean is fierce, and I am dedicated to it, because the truth is the only thing that sets you free.

Just in case you’re wondering, I don’t think I’ll ever date a man again. It was too hard, because my wiring is bisexual in terms of a lot of things, but communication is not one of them. I didn’t have the type communication with Matt than I’d ever had with any of my girlfriends, and it bothered me. I wasn’t in my comfort zone. Heterosexuality is wonderful……. for other people.

As an old friend told me, and read this with dripping NE Texas drawl, “there’s nothing wrong with a good hard dick…. it’s just a shame there’s a man attached.” My sentiments exactly. Maybe a little shocking, but #truth….. at least for me. I enjoy men, but in dating them, a piece of me feels missing, especially in public, because I got a taste of heterosexual privilege and it sucked and I cried…. Keep in mind this was further than a decade ago. People felt free to make gay jokes in front of me, and I am such a dirty motherfucker sometimes I laughed because they were truly funny, but mostly I felt that when they were coming from that audience, with the sneer of second-class citizenship, they weren’t all that funny. For instance, if a fey gay man had said, “did you hear about the new gay cereal? It’s called Queerios. You pour milk on them and they eat themselves!” I would have laughed my ass off. Coming from a good ol’ boy, not so much.

Matt accepted my bisexuality without question. I didn’t change the way I dressed to look girlier. He looked like he was dating a dyke, and that was okay with him. He didn’t want me to be anything less than who I was, and it meant the world to me. But that didn’t translate to the rest of the world.

And as I shut the rest of the world out, learning more about myself, I know more about who I want to be. Argo shined a light into the darkness of my soul, and when I truly saw it, I wanted to change. Not for her. For me.

For instance, I have never been more into hoarding money than I am now. My financial security means more to me than a new bottle of whiskey or a case of Cheerwine. I don’t want to party. I want to ponder. I’ll give you a for-instance. Yesterday my dad sent me a link to a cheap minivan, and for a moment, I really wanted it. And then I looked on Craig’s List and found the car I’ve wanted for fifteen years at a price I could easily afford if my dad would front me the money, and he said he would. It’s a four-banger Saturn Vue, deep orange and a stick shift. And then I thought about paying an insurance bill every month and I folded. I didn’t even want to borrow money from my dad in the first place, because I was afraid I’d never be able to pay it back, even though that was an unwarranted fear. I would rather wait until I have money in the bank of my own, padding enough to have an emergency fund so that nothing ever bounces, and I can pay cash for everything. However, I let myself dream for a moment, putting expensive speakers in the Vue because the cavern makes the sound MARVELOUS. And then I realized that Craig’s List always has a ton of cars and I can buy one whenever I want. There’s nothing wrong with taking the bus, Metro, and Uber for a few more months. I have debts I need to pay off, almost entirely medical and dental. I want to be debt-free and secure before I start thinking about big expenses like Saturns…. although as my dad quipped, I could put one together in my sleep.

It’s true. I remember everything Volfe taught me, but it’s a bitch not having him here to go look at cars with me. I would give everything I own just to have one more day with him on the driveway.

And through writing, I’ve managed to procrastinate leaving for the pharmacy. It’s time to put on some Mike Jones and get shit handled. Because I have the money.

Yesterday I had a meeting with the CEO to discuss possible social media outreach projects, and it went well. He told me that they’d never had anyone on board truly capable of crafting words. It was a compliment of gargantuan proportions, and I am taking it for all its worth….. which is enormous. At the same time, I am converting databases from one format to another, and having fun with it. Some of it is coding, and some of it is a drag-and-drop interface similar to Access, where you can create joins using a visual relationship.

A join is basically being able to make one report with input from multiple tables…. for instance, what if the name, date, address, etc. is in one table, and what they bought is in another? It’s a lot of fun, both using the software and learning to code, which for me, is nothing more than doing something like learning Spanish. It’s a language, with its own syntax, punctuation, etc…. without the necessity to conjugate verbs. 😛

I’m taking my writing time now because I got to the office before everyone else. I made coffee despite the fact that I picked up a short cappucino on the way over. A little more coffee on Friday morning never hurt anybody. Oh, and right now “Ugly Sweater” cookies are 40% off, so I grabbed two of those. For the uninitiated, they are gingerbread with icing (the kind where the cookie is baked hard and crispy), one of my favorite cookies in the entire world. It was a weird trip in, and having coffee and sugar before I got on the train helped immensely.

I was so out of it that there were people sitting next to me on the Metro wearing these knee length wool coats- one on the red line, and one on the orange. I briefly thought about asking if I could lean on them…. and then I thought, “nah. That’s creepy.” I wish I had a friend with my same commute, one that that would let me lean into his/her coat and sleep until I change trains. Maybe I do. I should send out an office memorandum. “Does anybody ride to Silver Spring who doesn’t mind me leaning into them for warmth?” It would be the weirdest office memo on record, but hopefully some “weirdmaste” would come back my way.

Because I can be weird, please know that I’m joking. My office memos are a grand total of “thanks for letting me know” and “I’ll be there.” I haven’t gotten into the meat and potatoes of creating the company blog, but the first step is to get a static IP at our office for one of the servers and run the web site from here. I know more about WordPress than anyone in the office, having set it up on my own servers and played around with it since it was in beta. We’ve got a ton of old desktops lying around that would make excellent web servers, whether we were running IIS or Apache. My preference would be to set up a Linux box and run Apache because it’s open source, but we’re a Microsoft shop, so I’ll do whatever they need. I have experience in both. Using a content management system like WordPress with its infinite scalability and plugins make life so much easier. WordPress.com is where you can set up a blog for free. The link I posted is to WordPress.org, where you can download the software and put it on your own server. It’s literally a one minute install if you have the necessary dependencies in place first.

I’m advocating for it, because I believe every person and every business should get a web site. You don’t have to turn it into a blog, like I do. You can put up all sorts of stuff, like photo galleries, video galleries, etc. Plus, the WordPress community is awesome. I’ve gotten a lot of support from people finding my blog in the directory, and there’s nothing better than getting likes from other writers.

The thing that’s the most important, though, is that a web site is like a tattoo. Everything you say is for posterity. Future generations will be able to know us, which is much more fun than mere genealogical records. For instance, even if I don’t have kids, Wi-Phi’s children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren will still know who I am…. and not in a surface way.

They’ll know my victories and losses, even the great Waterloo that has consumed me over the past two years. My anniversary with Dana is Feb. 4th, and even though it’s not our anniversary anymore, I’ve spent lots of time thinking about how I’m going to celebrate that day. I do not want to celebrate the fact that we got away from each other. I want to celebrate the years we had each other, and how much joy she brought into my life during those years. It wouldn’t be me to focus on all my anger and hurt, but the joy of our relationship happening at all…. because who says our relationship wasn’t a success? Yes, there were terrible things, but there are terrible things in every relationship if you look hard enough. The fact that we have no contact now does not erase how I feel about her, and shouldn’t. Letting her go is sending her away in peace, and not boiling anger… because what’s the old saying? Being angry at someone is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die? Yeah, that’s it. The more I release the bad feelings I have about her, the more I am at peace with myself and ready to move into a new relationship down the road. It is making peace with her pieces.

I thank God for all the years our relationship was a success, and for delivering me from that amount of distress. The more I reach out to God to bless and release this relationship, the more I reach out to myself in terms of having and keeping peace. Plus, I learned a great lesson in my fights with Argo. I don’t want to burn this bridge to the ground, even though I probably already have. But there is such a thing as not making it worse.

There’s still no one here, which means the coffee I made is still sitting there, waiting for me. I’m going to reach out for another cup.

Happy Friday, everyone….. because you know that later, we’ll be celebrating “fuck this shit o’clock.”

#kermitarms

 

 

 

 

Yesterday ended with me kicking some coder ass, and I felt like I earned some tape on my glasses as a badge of pride and honor. With my office quiet, I focused intently on what I wanted to say, and wrote out the logic to it. Then, I wrote the code to match my logic, which for once, was right. 😛

I’m at home for a little longer, and then I have to head out to my psych meds appointment. I’m not out of anything, so I can go straight to work afterward, and I’m looking forward to it. I hope there are more coding assignments, because now that I’ve done one, I can’t wait for the next. It’s kind of like binging Netflix. I’m not satisfied with one piece of code- I have to hit play on the next one…. which is apt, because in my coding environment, “execute” IS a play button.

This new learning is exciting, because it gets into a part of my brain I’ve never used before. I’m not a math person, and coding isn’t math, exactly, but it’s not the touchyfeelycreative stuff I generally go for. Even computer support is more creative than coding, because in interfacing with users, it takes creative analogies to get non-technical people to understand what’s going on. I think it’s a good balance, coding and writing, because I am lost in a different part of my brain at different times every day.

I’m trying to prove Aaron wrong, who told me I could either be a good coder or a good writer, but I couldn’t be both. And if there is anything that gets me motivated, it’s trying to prove someone wrong (apologies to those who won’t immediately see that I am joking). So far, so good AARON! 😛 Of course, it would be just like me to debug one piece of code and decide that I’ve got this thing wired. So maybe I’ll hang on until I get a little deeper into coding before I definitively say whether he was right or not. But at the same time, I had success yesterday. REAL success, the kind where I self-fived.

The thing I want to work hard on is something that Chason taught me, which is that code should always be efficient. He was the first one to teach me about separating content from code with web sites, and that no web site should take more than five seconds to load, because people will click away from it if it takes any longer than that. With SQL, that means making database searches where they can pull up exactly what you need quickly so that searches don’t take all day to run. With our databases, we are talking millions and millions of rows, so the more efficient, the better.

I actually love coding my own web sites, but I made the executive decision to go with WordPress.com so that I was never distracted by code- it would all be about writing, all the time. I do not regret that decision, and it makes me happy that I am using a product made by a student from High School for the Performing and Visual Arts, just like me. In fact, he was also in the jazz band, just not at the same time I was. Beat that with a stick. For those who were in Jazz at the time, his name is Matt Mullenweg. Any stories you have about him should be sent to me immediately. 😛

Although just to keep my skills sharp, sometimes I’ll write in Notepad++ and do my own tags and copy things over. It makes me feel smart, anyway. Whether or not I actually am is debatable at times. WordPress makes it where you can flip between WYSIWYG and HTML quickly, but it doesn’t color code to separate tags from content, which is why I tend to use an outside editor. However, I have to look at the code before I publish in WordPress, anyway, because if I don’t, it will often include non-breaking spaces in weird places and leave them out in others. That’s why on some of my entries, paragraph spacing is weird. I don’t tend to go back over my entries and fix mistakes, which is probably a bad thing, but I want everything about this web site to feel stream-of-consciousness, and to me, going back to fix things is antithetical to it. I try to get everything right the first time, because typos drive me ntus [sic].

I’m getting excited about seeing Leighton at 9:30, and it’s only 7:55. It’s been a month, and I have so much to tell him. The last time I saw him, I wasn’t eating or sleeping well, and I was jobless and depressed about it. Now I feel like I’m on top of the world, but not in a manic way. Just in that way that all people deserve to be happy. I am still in the honeymoon period of my job where nothing is ever wrong, and I intend to keep it that way. There has been no one that hasn’t been kind and patient as they’ve explained things, especially when I don’t get it the first time. I really love my company and all they’re willing to invest in me. Speaking of which, we need an IT guy. If you’re local, send me a resume and I’ll pass it on. Or, if you’re willing to just pack up the car so you can be local, even better. I miss my friends from both Portland and Houston. Having you around would be great. I don’t know how much it pays, but I was able to negotiate my own salary, so perhaps it is dependent upon experience, as well. Being an IT guy at my company is not about working with customers, though. Just keeping the network running. We’re a Microsoft shop, and I think most of the servers are 2003. Just a heads up. I’d offer to move in that direction myself, but I just don’t want to. I am learning that it is reason enough.

One exciting thing coming up is that on the 14th, we’re testing our inclement weather contingency plan, so I will be able to remote in from home. That means no commute, and an extra hour and a half added to my day in both directions. We have all the tools we need- VPN, Skype for Business, etc. so that we could actually have face to face meetings from wherever we are. That being said, my own desk in my own room is where I want to be, because I need absolute quiet.

It is in the quiet where my brain thrives, because I cannot think and do anything else simultaneously. Sometimes I listen to music, but most of the time, if I really need to concentrate, I will just use my headphones to block out what’s going on around me- nothing is actually coming through them. Although when I get to my office, most days I turn on one or two of my favorite songs and jam out to get my energy up. She’s So Mean by Matchbox Twenty is my favorite, followed closely by Praying for Daylight by Rascal Flatts and Gin and Juice by Snoop Dogg… mostly because it’s one of the few raps where I know all the words thanks to Twisted Whistle. Dana, Shaun, Dan, and I made it our personal mission to be the loudest mofos on the floor during “my mind on my money and my money on my mind” when they brought the house down at Biddy McGraw’s. God, what I wouldn’t give to have that time in my life back for one day. My perfect day would be working brunch with Dana and Drew, dancing our asses off to Aqua, then having a shift drink and listening to Twisted Whistle and playing darts. In my perfect fantasy, I win.

But one day is all I want, because I believe that overall, everything worked out the way it was supposed to go, except for the fact that I lost my best friend in the process. It fucks me up. Seriously. In no way did I expect grief to hit me this hard all the time. ALL. THE. TIME. What makes things better is that I am now damn near straight edge. The last time I had a beer was a Snakebite at an Irish pub when my dad came to visit, and even though weed is legal in DC, I don’t partake. The closest I get to it is smelling it in the Metro station, and even that makes me a little nauseous. It’s weird when I’m just talking on the phone and I have a coughing fit because I’ve just walked through a cloud of smoke.

Being straight edge makes my actual medications work so much better, and because I feel better, I don’t want to go backward. I don’t want to do anything to derail progress, and my favorite, whiskey, will do it to me if I let it. And I’m not talking about being drunk. One shot and I’m good. I’m such a lightweight that I have no tolerance anymore, and I’d like to keep it that way.

Plus, I’m older now. Any drink I have and the effects are multiplied exponentially, because my acid reflux is through the roof. I even avoid pizza because of it, except on Friday nights. It makes me feel closer to Dana, Aaron, and Argo even when they’re not physically present. I go to a place where you can order a small and a drink for ten bucks, or to a place where they still sell by the slice, because my refrigerator space is not big enough to hold the box if I get extra. Plus, the more I eat of it, the more it is akin to drinking- tomatoes and/or tomato sauce rip up my esophagus in equal measure to alcohol.

Again, all of this new learning. It’s been great getting to know myself, even though 2015 was a new low in learning how much my mental state affects me when my medication isn’t right and I’m not eating well. I need to put myself on a special diet, once I figure out what that might be. There are tons of web sites on controlling hosts of mental issues through diet, and even though I will never be in a space to go off meds, anything I can do to supplement them is good in my book.

There is a lot of trauma in my past, both starting as a teenager and continuing to pick out those relationships as an adult. Those things can be talked away. A chemical imbalance cannot. No amount of therapy is going to create the right levels of neurotransmitters. As my freshman psych professor, Victoria Schultz-Swahr, taught me, medication and therapy are inextricably interrelated. One goes hand-in-hand with the other in terms of true mental illness… not the “I’m having temporary problems” kind, but the kind where there are chemicals missing from your brain.

I continue to feel wrecked that Dana and Argo and my parents went through the brunt of all of it, because I know I caused problems for them that went beyond what any human being should have to tolerate…. particularly Argo, because there was a lot of misdirected anger that never should have been put on her plate to begin with. I am forgiven, but I am not over it… and in some sense, I never will be. Those memories will always be “grievous unto me,” so I have to find a way to move past them without forgetting where I’ve come from. I don’t want to run away from my problems, just find a way to move on so that those memories are on the back burner instead of the front.

For instance, getting lost in work and having no social life outside of it keeps me focused on what I need to do to get myself truly established in a place of joy and gratitude. Learning new things is helping me put one foot in front of the other, not to hide from the skeletons in my closet, but to work through them.

It is a lesson in self-soothing, and I’m getting good at it. External validation is not a need anymore, because I know within myself that I am perfect in all of my flaws and failures, just like everyone else.

 

 

There’s no heat in my room, and no easy way to fix it. I’m going to have to buy my own space heater, because the heater that we already have is located in the basement and doesn’t rise all the way upstairs. I say this because it just illustrates how hard it is to get out of bed in the morning, because the temperature without the electric blanket and the moment I throw it off is drastic. I am so cold that I tend to actively avoid taking my clothes off to change into pajamas. I just fall asleep in whatever I wore to work because those moments when I have to change or pee are just intolerable, and I put them off as long as possible. Perhaps I will get a space heater for the bathroom as well… or at the very least, some jar candles to warm up the room when I take a bath or shower. Jar candles are highly effective, and perhaps that’s all I need for my room, as well. Plus, I have the chance to make my room smell like cookies. That can’t suck, right? And then I realized that there was more to the story.

This morning, I severely overslept and had to Uber in, although once I did, I was at the office so early there was no one to let me in, and I stood in the cold and thought about why I overslept. My alarm went off, and I snoozed for an hour, foregoing my normal writing time to sleep in. I forgot that once you hit the snooze button for a certain number of times, the alarm shuts off altogether… and therefore, I had no way of knowing that I’d actually slept until 0745, when I normally wake up at 0600. I was coding in my head like a madman, because when I left last night, there was a piece of SQL making me tear my hair out, and I was trying to work it out in my sleep (it really works…. most of the time). It was then that I realized part of oversleeping was fear. I didn’t have this code snippet worked out, and I didn’t want to get vulnerable enough to admit it.

When I was standing outside the office, I had a severe talk with myself, because I got in trouble with myself and I needed to open my own can of whoopass. I had to tell myself that it was okay to be frightened at a new job, but that didn’t mean I needed to give up my writing time just to put off the point at which I needed to wake up and face that fear head on. I missed the window at which I could have gotten on the train by a mere 10 minutes, but that ten minutes is the difference between being on time and 30 minutes late. While that wouldn’t have ever been a thing (we often come in late and stay late), my north star is to be early every day. I tend to beat my office mates by a ton, and it makes me happy. The only thing is that it’s frustrating to beat them by so much that I have to wait for someone to let me in.

But being cold is motivating. When the office opened, I went straight to my computer and opened my coding environment and started knocking things out. I still haven’t solved the problem, but the main point is that when I kicked my own ass, I got results. I was no longer afraid, just determined. Then, when I came to another point at which I wanted to slam my head against my desk, my office mate told me that she would teach me how to use software to make the SQL easier instead of coding it all by hand. When I got vulnerable, so did she. It was a watershed moment, knowing that I didn’t have to know everything, just the right person to ask. There is nothing more frustrating than pushing the “execute” button and having the code error out, because the errors it points out are rarely what’s actually wrong, so they are spectacularly unhelpful.

For instance, if it says the error is on line X, it’s usually not. It’s usually several lines up, which is just a #facepalm all the way around. The good thing is that I am such a grammar nazi that I rarely get errors from something as simple as a missed colon; it’s usually that what I want to say is not what I actually said. As Mark Twain once quipped the difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug. I am slowly learning the right words, and I’m not a bad coder, just a relatively inexperienced one… and this job is what is going to teach me if I let it. Programmers are inherently collaborative. I’m just the jackass that wants to know everything and make it seem like everything is within my control.

Guess what? Very little is.

I’ve realized that I am on par with my office mates, which makes me happy. I don’t need to be God’s gift to coding on the first day I start. For instance, yesterday one of my office mates taught me how to use a function to make my life so much easier, and if I hadn’t reached out, I would have spent at least an extra hour trying to figure out what to do. I do have experience in SQL coding, but at the same time, I didn’t realize that what I’ve done before is so different than what I am doing now. Databases are all different in their own way, especially in terms of handling operators. This may not make sense to 99.9% of you, but those that get it will understand why something that worked previously has me chain-drinking coffee now.

The part that you will understand is that this morning, I was afraid. Now, I’m not.

Good talk.

I’ve been trying to write an Epiphany sermon for three years now, and I still can’t get it “write.” The title is called “Two Ex-fil Ops,” and the further I dig into it, the more I realize I don’t know what I’m talking about. One of these days, I’ll get it right, and you’ll have the Epiphany sermon to end all Epiphany sermons…. but yesterday, you didn’t.

The main idea is that the angel talking to the Magi and the angel talking to Joseph are the ex-fil ops needed to get the Magi away from Herod and Jesus into Egypt and avoid the Massacre of the Innocents. The longer I wrote, the more it meandered into nothing. So, I had that goin’ for me.

So, stay tuned. One of these days……………..

I have three years to ruminate on that one scripture. So far, I think I’m going to need them.

I think I need to watch Covert Affairs again.

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In other news, it’s still cold.

I took Uber to the Metro this morning, and the driver told me that when he first signed in, there were a few snow flurries. I bought the right coat and I am warm enough, but I need one of those hipster hats, because a baseball cap just doesn’t cut it. Plus, my office is like a meat freezer, so I’d feel comfortable in a toque all day… maybe a wool porkpie, as is my usual. I used to have one that I bought at Roots, with the Canadian winter Olympics logos on it, but one of the cats peed on it and it was never the same afterward, despite washing it and spraying it with 91% alcohol. The long and short of it is that it’s time to go shopping.

I don’t know when I’ll get my first paycheck, but it will be very, very soon… and despite the time I took off when my driver’s license was on it’s way, I’ll still have two weeks and some change on it. I’ll have enough to put away money and get the few things I need to make life comfortable. I have decided that after I get my emergency fund in place, it’s time to start saving for a cheap car. It’s not getting to work that’s killing me. It’s getting home. I am generally perky in the morning, because I go to bed very early, but it is killing me to get home an hour before bed and never making it to choir on time EVER.

But the car can wait. I can put it off as long as necessary, because my financial security has to come first. My hospitalization last year wasn’t cheap, and I need to pay it off myself, but not after the thousand dollars Dave Ramsey recommends to get myself out of trouble if I need it. I don’t believe what Ramsey does in terms of theology, but I follow his financial advice as if it were Egg McMuffins, if that gives you any indication of how much I like it.

So, you start with the thousand dollar emergency fund, and then as you pay off debt, you start to accrue three to six months worth of living expenses as well. That’s why it’s so important to me to buy a car instead of leasing or financing one. I don’t want a car payment in addition to everything else I need to pay. I also want to put some money into one of those medical savings accounts so that I can pay for my doctor’s visits and medication with it. I won’t worry about extra for emergency room co-pays, because I hardly ever need them. I don’t want to take a chance on putting too much in, because that’s money I’ll never get back if I don’t use it. Right now, I don’t know how much my doctor’s visits and medication will cost since I am switching over from Medicaid to an HMO provided by DSI.

We’ll just have to see. The main idea in this essay is to be financially responsible for what’s coming in, and to bless my bank account like I bless everything else. How you feel about money is just as important as how you spend it. I have an incredible road ahead of me financially, because I’m not responsible for anything I don’t want to be… although truth be told, Medicaid was so excellent that I am wary about switching plans, but at the same time, Medicaid is for people without income, and it needs to stay that way. I am so thankful that my safety net remained intact, and I will never be able to repay my gratitude except in what I do from here on out. Giving back to my community in Silver Spring is so important, with the exception that after grad school, I don’t want to locate my church here, because CCC is such an important part of my life that I do not want to “compete” with it.

It’s about my own journey now, the one where I am ultimately responsible for everything that happens in my life, because I do not have a partner to share it with. This is not a problem, this is just reality.

Reality is fun. I think. I’ll keep you posted. 😛

I am not ready for Monday. I spent yesterday cleaning out my room, but it’s not completely done yet. I haven’t started the laundry, and it’s just sitting in baskets along the wall, taunting me. I’m at a Starbucks close by, drinking coffee until I feel I have enough energy to start, because generally, writing puts me in the mood to get shit handled. I’ve put away everything that’s been weighing me down, and I can move on. It’s definitely a win-win situation. I also don’t think I’m preaching today, but we’ll see. It’s Epiphany, which is a loaded Sunday for me that I would rather forget exists because I’m not at Bridgeport getting my star from SarahAnne, inside information that I absolutely will not give you because it’s far more worth it to show up and see what I mean, since some of you may read this before Bridgeport starts this morning. The only thing I *will* tell you is that one year, Dana and I had just been to the OB/GYN the week before, and my word was “expect.”

I miss Dana and our journey so much that sometimes I cannot breathe, and the best advice I’ve gotten so far since I sent her the e-mail asking if she wanted to get together and Counselor replied was, “you were trying to be a big person. Fuck them. Time to let her go.” Easier said than done as I see our baby in my dreams, wondering what he or she would have looked like if we’d managed to get past all of my abuse issues and how they changed me. It is so true that I am not the same person she fell in love with- not even close- and yet, I wanted her to be able to love that woman, too. It’s never going to happen, especially if Argo continues to be a part of my life, and she might. We’ll see. Nothing in life is certain, but our apologies to each other seem to have taken and I can only hope they will continue to bring us into a new light, one not tainted with anything, but light so bright that we’re blinded by it. Even if we never meet in person, I like being the person that e-mails to check in. We don’t live that far from each other, but as predicted, we don’t treat each other any differently. We’re still just those friends living in the sacrament of writing, and that is so okay with me. So. Okay. Writing to each other is a good thing, a way to establish new boundaries and to see what will take in the future and what will not.

All I can say is “God of the Universe, protect my precious Argo…” as I have said for many years now. That being said, a big part of my divorce from Dana is that she just would not make room for Argo and I to be friends on our own…. not that I didn’t deserve that level of scrutiny when I was in the middle of the mess, but at the same time, I kept saying that it would settle and it did…. However, what did not settle was Argo being my friend. There were things that Argo told me that she didn’t want shared with anyone, and when I broke that rule, there was hell to pay. I didn’t think there was anything she was telling me that couldn’t go to Dana as well, but I was so wrong it hurt. That being said, nothing that Argo wanted to share with me would have isolated me from Dana. It was that secrecy deserves honesty, but always respect. That’s a line from the Outlander series, just in case you’re wondering. In a way, sharing what Argo was telling me was disrespectful of our friendship, but I am a verbal processor, and in my need to talk about what was going on between Argo and me, I justified breaking our pact. And, to be honest, there was a point at which Argo told me that she was going to pull back on talking with me because she didn’t want to say anything that I couldn’t share with Dana, so some of the things I shared I thought fell under that agreement, and they didn’t. For that, I will always be sorry, because of course there are things that you share with friends that don’t automatically go to your partner. We weren’t sharing anything that couldn’t be compartmentalized into “Argo’s space” and “Dana’s space.”

If I was Dana, I would have been threatened, too, but surely there were things that she shared with friends that she wouldn’t have wanted to get back to me, either…. or secrets shared by her friends that they didn’t necessarily want passed on. It’s a two-way street. There are friends you have severally, and there are friends you have jointly, but that doesn’t mean there is threat involved. For instance, if Counselor was having a problem, I seriously doubt that she would have wanted Dana to discuss it with me, because Counselor’s secrecy deserved respect, as well.

When I crushed out on Argo, it was nothing more serious than the mark Diane left on me, and if you know Diane well, you know that I came by it honestly. I can think of several friendships over the years where Diane struggled with the same ideas I did, ideas passed on to the next generation without malice, just example. Being in therapy has totally changed the direction of how I feel about friendship, and what it is supposed to offer rather than the mistakes I’ve made with them. I am ready to be close to another woman in that women friendship we all hope for… sometimes with the same person for a lifetime, and sometimes different people at different times. For instance, I think Samantha and I will continue to grow together, because we live in the same house (sort of- I live in a multi-family home). Even though I make enough that I could have my own place if I wanted, I don’t. I enjoy that there are people around me that really care, that watch out for me, that listen when I am sad. I feel adopted, and that feeling isn’t going to go away easily.

I had that friendship with Dana, and that is what I miss the most. That I felt adopted into her family long before we became lovers instead of just friends. I had to take a long time to process that idea, because I didn’t know if my feelings were also a mark that Diane left on me, or what I felt for Dana was truly genuine. It took three and a half years to know the truth, that I loved her more than air. It eats away at me that I lost that love for good, but we have been so close over the years that I hope once Dana is done being angry, that this will not be the end of our movie. I have a lot to process before I’m ready for a friendship with her, too, because when we got married in 2008, my ovaries exploded and I wanted nothing more than for her to be my “baby daddy.” As it turns out, though, her sperm count is really, REALLY low.

I have to get rid of the feelings I have that we belong together, because while on a surface level, I have completely given up the idea that we’ll get back together, it hasn’t gone deep into my soul, the true knowing of it. Honestly, I believe that I am still in shock, even though we broke up almost a year ago now. Even that feels shocking, that it’s been almost a year since our ugly blowout and picking up our toys and going home. I’m not ready for a new relationship, and I won’t be for a long time, but I know for sure that my approach won’t be any different. I want to be friends for a long time before I decide whether I want to commit to someone. I want to know what contract I’m signing. And, God willing and the creek don’t rise, I want that person to give me my space with Argo, make room for her in their lives, because I don’t want her to go away just because I’m dating someone else that feels threatened by her presence in my life…. because there is no threat. Argo will be thrilled beyond belief when I find that person that truly ignites my soul, and I hope that person will know that they cannot be my entire world. I need my friends, both on the ground and in the cloud, so that if something happens and the relationship doesn’t work out, it doesn’t feel like my whole world has just crumbled into nothing.

I felt that way with Dana because I thought that we were interdependent, and after months to think about it, codependency reared its ugly head. My thought process changed the longer we were apart, because you can always recognize these things easier once you’re out of a relationship than you can when you’re in them. I realized how much we were responsible for bailing each other out of our problems, and how much we took on of each other’s lives until they weren’t separate anymore. We became DanaandLeslie rather than Dana and Leslie, if that makes any sense at all. People used to call us by the other’s name, and I used to joke that it was because we looked so much alike.

I want a relationship where my girlfriend/wife isn’t threatened by me saying I need my space. I’ll see you in a few hours without having to tell her where I’m going, because sometimes I don’t know. It doesn’t mean turning off my phone. I’m generally reachable. It’s just that sometimes I want to do specific things, and sometimes I just want to wander around DC with my camera and my notepad alone, without knowing where I’ll end up. I also want a girlfriend who isn’t threatened by me wanting my own bedroom, or even my own apartment, because I am solitary to a fault, and I want to invite her in, rather than so much togetherness that I give up my independence. It doesn’t mean that I don’t want to sleep together at any time, but it does mean that I want my own place to go when we fight, because fighting is just unavoidable. I also want my freedom in terms of making my own writing schedule, and not having to worry if I’m keeping her up with the click and clack of the keys.

In the words of an article I saw recently, I want to be single…. with you.

And on that note, it’s time to get back to work. There’s laundry to be done. Day off is now over.

Depression always lies, but it always knows the very best lies to use against you.

-Paul Serna

Paul is a friend from high school, and this was his Facebook status today. I told him it was poetry. Depression uses lies so insidious that you tell yourself they must be true, and they feel true in the moment, when you can’t see what’s real around you, even though it is truly right around you.

Hold on. I need some tea for this one.

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Steeping.

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Better. I realized that the one I drug I normally have on board, caffeine, wasn’t. It helps, as does ibuprofen, when I get a headache from not taking my meds at the same time each day. Last night I treated myself to a sleeping pill and no alarm this morning. I didn’t just wake up. I eased into my day by watching television. However, this is the first time I’ve actually been out of bed all day, because going to work really takes it out of me. I leave the house two and a half hours before I need to get to work 9:00 AM), and I don’t get home until almost 8:30 PM, at which time I take a sleeping pill, watch some TV, and get ready to do it all over again. I take a sleeping pill when I get home because if I do not, I will stay up until all hours of the night, ruminating on both lies and the truth, sometimes without being able to tell which is which. Then, the next day, I can’t focus because I haven’t slept. I would rather be knocked on my ass with a sleeping pill than take a chance I won’t do well at work. I love my job, and the CEO needs me to get up to speed quickly because he wants me to fire him. 😛

In fact, he has his laptop with him on vacation in the mountains. I can see why he wants a break.

But this entry is not about work. It is about readiness to work, and my commitment to it. I don’t care that I don’t have a social life. It’s not what I want at this time. What I want is to be lost in my own little world, coding and writing and (fingers crossed) going back to school. I have given up on Howard for undergrad, because their distance learning is not up to speed and there aren’t enough hours in the day for me to be on campus and at work simultaneously.  Plus, I am still enrolled (just not registered) at University of Houston. I don’t know how much they charge per online class, but I make enough that within a few months, I should have enough for at least one, possibly two…. especially if I keep living the way I’m living, which is buying enough groceries to keep me alive and leaving the rest in the bank.

I pay for everything else, like Starbucks runs, with gift cards, which I mete out judiciously by only ordering coffee or tea… for two reasons. The first is that it’s cheap, and the second is that the fancy drinks do nothing for me. They’re sweet to the point of cloying and more calories than you should have in an entire meal. More than once I have fascinated other people by them saying, “have whatever you want,” and I still just order coffee. To me, those fancy drinks can be equated to when MTV stopped playing music videos. Starbucks used to sell coffee. Now they sell candy. The coffee is just a side business.

I don’t drink coffee at home anymore because I don’t want to get up even earlier just to drink it. I can’t take my coffee on the bus, and I can’t drink it fast enough if I Uber to the train, because I can’t take coffee on the Metro, either. And if I stay home to drink coffee, I will not write. I need Starbucks to act as my personal office, because I will take up all the time allowed with getting ready if I don’t get my ass out the door. I’ll play with my hair, I’ll experiment with make-up (my face is breaking out, plus make-up keeps the looking like a 15-year-old boy at bay), I’ll pack and re-pack my backpack. In short, instead of writing, I’ll just putter around until it’s time to call for the car or walk to the bus. Writing keeps the lies at bay, therefore I would rather call for the car and get everything ready in a hurry because someone is coming to get me (in a good way ;)).

Speaking of make-up, my dad mailed me my foundation, but I had to go and buy eyeliner, mascara, and lipstick (well, tinted Burt’s Bees) when Samantha traded driving me around for a pack of cigarettes again and since I didn’t have my wallet, they wouldn’t sell to me. My inner thought process was, Jesus God, I don’t even look 18? High school was 20 years ago! I bought her a large apple juice instead, and a Cheerwine for me, which made it tolerable to both of us. It was flattering, in a weird way, but also depressing. The clerk said, well, I’m just using my own judgment, and I thought, clearly he cannot see the crow’s feet on both sides of my face and the silver hair slowly coming in at my temples and eyebrows. At the same time, I am less than two years away from 40 and I got carded for cigarettes. #winning

…And speaking of grey hair, I have been letting my hair grow out naturally without dyeing it red, and I was shocked at how much grey was cut off in the back. SHOCKED. It’s time to start dyeing it again, I just can’t decide what color. The red has looked good on me for a long time, but I’m ready for my natural color with blonde highlights, courtesy of the benzoyl peroxide in my acne cream. When I figured it out, I started putting that bitch in my bangs on purpose. I have to watch out, though. I’ve accidentally customized some of my t-shirts as well.

The point in all of this is that make-up or no, I am beautiful. The lies are when I tell myself I’m not. When I get depressed, I remember that Meetup I went to for Women in Their 30’s, and just how many women wanted to go home with me that night (I didn’t indulge, I just let my ego be stroked until I was tired and ready for bed). I wasn’t wearing anything special, as you’ll see from the picture if you click the link. I was just me.

I just read that link again and laughed when I saw the line, I’m too polite and Southern just to put it all out there, because it just illustrated to me how different my online and offline personalities truly are. Really must work on that. Either I need to be more aggressive in dating offline, or more reserved online, and perhaps both. The wall of not really knowing what’s waiting for me on the other end of an e-mail or instant message gives me a bravery I could never have face-to-face.

One woman in particular read me the riot act over it, and I’ll never forget it. She stopped being my friend immediately, just butt-quick, with no chance of reconciliation even though I meant no harm by it. I was just being snarky, outrageous me. I knew she was happily married and had no illusions about it. There was no there there. She’s just hot, and as far as I can tell, she knows it. I didn’t think I was telling her anything she hadn’t already noticed herself. 😉

I was so embarrassed that I hurt her, and that’s probably what I’ll remember the most. I was embarrassed that I couldn’t apologize enough to make things right again, and one of the reasons I’m trying so hard to live in peace now. I don’t want to be someone capable of hurting another like that. I don’t want to live my life always wishing I could take something back.

I was brave with Argo for very different reasons. Very different. She had become my soulmate, not in the classic definition, but in the Elizabeth Gilbert definition; she was someone who came into my life in order to shake me into a different reality, and those people are not always designed to be permanent. She defined I wish I could take it back, and at the same time, after Dana and I broke up, I had to know the truth. Dana told me that she thought Argo was in love with me, too, she just wouldn’t tell me because I was married. I had to know whether Dana was right or not. Her ruminations on Argo’s threat got to me, and to me, to not ask the question was foolish.

As it turns out, Argo is consistent in her heterosexuality, and that’s fine with me. I hope whomever she chooses is fantastic, and I can let go of Dana’s insistence and my own confusion because of it. Plus, if our friendship has been any indication, I have no interest in doing any worse a number on each other than we already have.

First children fight to the death in a race to be right. It would be a thermonuclear war of a relationship, and I have had enough of that to last my whole life. If Argo wants to be my friend, that is enough for me. I don’t want to ever take a chance of fucking that up again. She is so precious to me as is, and always will be, whether we are in communication or not.

I focus on the small chance that we will move onward and upward, and not the ugly fights that blew us apart, unnecessarily in my own race to be right. When I am depressed, I think to myself that there’s no way someone like that could love someone like me, and when I am not, I know for sure that I am someone worth getting to know. Depression is full of lies. Of course I am interesting and funny and clever, but I would never think that when I’m sad.

Depression lies to you by taking your own insecurities and multiplying them until you cannot move, paralyzed by analysis. Bipolar depression makes it where you feel great about yourself, and then you just wilt. It’s a never-ending cycle, but with medication, it is manageable. I am not one of those people who starts to feel better and stops taking their meds, common in bipolar patients, because I am smart enough to know that I am not miraculously cured. It’s the meds that are making me feel better.

It keeps the lies at bay.

Most of the time.