I can’t believe it didn’t occur to me until now. I get free refills on coffee and tea. Therefore, I have decided that Venti is Italian for “too lazy to get up.” I’m not cheap, just practical. Any money I save at SBUX is money I can spend on something else. I mean, for God’s sakes… it’s coffee. Good coffee, but water and beans nonetheless. I was going to stay home and have a Bulletproof, but I decided I wanted a protein box instead. It’s fruit, cheese, peanut butter, a hard-boiled egg, and a raisin roll. Sometimes I spread the peanut butter on the roll, and sometimes I dip my apples in it. It’s all about options, people. The dark roast is caramelly and sweet even without cream, called Kopelanai. I don’t know the origin, but I might find out when I get up for a refill.
There is a baby sitting across from me wearing aviator sunglasses, and it’s about the cutest thing I’ve seen in weeks. Nothing like a baby to get my day going, because BABIES ARE AWESOME… especially with sunglasses that make her look like Tom Cruise in Top Gun. The music is hopping today, too. Kind of lounge with a beat, reminicent of an album series that Kathleen fell in love with called “Cocktail Hour” or similar…
I have so much to do when I get to the office. I got bogged down in a project for my non-profit that I didn’t have time to work on anything else. It was production work, so I couldn’t help but put the other things off, but I wish I’d been able to stay late last night and get a little further ahead… but we work from 9:00-600. The doors don’t open before then, and I don’t want to get locked in… although there’s a couch in the waiting room that is infinitely comfortable. 😛
I also have to carve out some time to look at my notes and take my HIPAA exam, which will probably happen Wednesday, because my Tuesday is booked. I am eager to get it over with, because if I don’t get 75% of the material right, it’s another $3-400 to re-take. I know enough about HIPAA that I shouldn’t be too worried, but I am by nature a worrier. If I pass, however, and keep up my certification, it will allow me to command a higher salary should I ever leave the job I’m in now. This is not an option now, and won’t be for a long time because I really enjoy where I landed, but it’s comforting nonetheless. The cert is renewed every two years, because the laws keep getting changed and molded to fit the new realities of hardcore hacking, and just how valuable medical information is, especially credit card and social security numbers.
I personally don’t worry about security in the slightest. I know I’ve been hacked, am sure of it, and once Dana accidentally gave my passport to Goodwill. I don’t have private information. I just have information now. And especially since I use Linux, I’m already on some sort of watch list, as if using linux is a gateway drug to hacking… because most people don’t know the difference between hacking and cracking, anyway. Hacking is in the same vein as “life hacks,” engineering software to make it better. Cracking is breaking into a system just to fuck shit up for the joy of it… mostly 13-year-old script kiddies who have nothing better to do than to see if they can bring down the DoD or Bank of America just for “fun.” Although, to be fair, nine times out of ten it is incredibly easy… and not because I’ve tried. It’s because people choose passwords that are easy to break and security measures that take no more than a day or two to break. Your best defense against cracking is a very long and involved password… not that people can’t get past it, but to make it where encryption programs take so long to break it that crackers just give up and move on to someone else.
Use passphrases instead of passwords. For instance, D0nald Trump 1s a j@ackass! works quite nicely. You’re welcome.
In terms of Windows passwords, I’m not sure you can use a passphrase, so I tend to take people’s names and put them into hacker-speak, like L3sl!eL!. That’s not my password for anything, just an example. I was born on a Saturday, but it wasn’t last Saturday.
Last night I slept without dreaming, because I was playing games on my phone and realized I was ruminating about Argo and Dana and didn’t want to keep that up all fucking night. As I have said before, grief is so weird. Losing them at my own hand does not make this any easier, and in fact, makes it harder, because I have so many sins for which to atone. I think I have made progress, though, because as I was drifting off, I got a letter from Argo and my response was, “I love you dearly, but no.” Of course, if I got a real e-mail from Argo and it was genuine, I probably wouldn’t say that, but what I do know is that the way I thought about her months ago is gone. I see her differently now, probably in the same way that she sees me differently, too. She told me once that she’d “lost the faith,” and I can say the same… Perhaps because even though I try every day to be the person that God wants me to be, that does not mean I don’t have my human, fallible moments that take me further away from God instead of closer, because there are some moments when I don’t want to face God with my iniquities, either. I want to pretend that everything is fine, and it just isn’t.
There’s nothing I can do to resolve the situation except pray for her every day, because it doesn’t change her, but it changes me. She is not my enemy, nor is she my cheerleader. When she is, it’s the face I make up for her and not in any way connected to reality. It’s just comforting in the face of enormous grief. I cannot even begin to tell you how awful I feel, and in time, I hope to accept myself in the face of being unacceptable, again to quote Paul Tillich. The bottom line is that we fucked each other up, but I cannot own her half… and actually, I’ll own way more than half. But the bottom line is that we both scared each other for different reasons, and it caused both of us to fight, flight, and freeze. I can only hope that not communicating is giving us both the peace we need, but if there is anything I wish I had back, it’s that chord between us that is able to send her my prayers and attaboys, because she truly is the badass I’ve always wanted in my life and never thought I’d get. It doesn’t matter to me what form that love takes, only that I used to have it and now I don’t.
But the main thing is that I am not lonely for her words anymore. I have a tapestry to look back on, and when I feel bad about myself, I go back to the beginning and look at all of our laughter. Nothing more needs to be said because I don’t want to create more pain in which we each have to get over. I am having a hard enough time with the actions we’ve both taken already. I don’t know when my feelings stopped mattering, but it can’t matter to me. I can only hang on to the friends I’ve made since I’ve been here, especially since Pri-Diddy and Elena have moved away.
Danni just sent me a text with her Moscow e-mail address, and I can’t wait to use it. And she will, in fact, be back for my birthday, which rocks like a geologist. I wish I could bring Bryn out as well, but her sister is getting married that weekend, and guess who’s doing the wedding?
Fuck me running. And that’s all I have to say about that.
Bryn, I assume she reads my blog. That’s enough. Don’t let her in. I know you know that already. But it never hurts to say it out loud, because saying it out loud makes it real. Susan is doing the wedding, of course, but that doesn’t mean that Diane won’t try to get information out of you if she can. She has a history of it, like going to visit Dana at work trying to get my contact information and being surprised when Dana wouldn’t give it to her without asking me if it was okay. I am very okay with loving her from waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay over here. She doesn’t deserve me, but I won’t put away the rich tapestry of our past. That’s just crazymaking for me, like throwing away all the good stuff with the bad. If I focus on the bad, it’s just a rumination… stuck in a moment I can’t get out of.
We’ve had our Bloody Sunday. It’s over, and it will never go back together. But again, I don’t love her because it changes her, I love her because it changes me. More love, more forgiveness, more releasing of the past because then I can’t let it torture me.
I am stronger than I ever thought I would be, getting away from all the women that for me have divided time, both for evil and for awesome.
Though Argo is under my skin, shallow and subcutaneous, Dana runs much deeper, this river of emotion that isn’t ready to bubble up because I need more time to think, more time to remember, more time to focus on all of our laughter instead of our tears. Because if I can do that, divorce doesn’t torture me, either.
It’s how I am taking my pain and turning it into promise, no matter how long it takes.
Stories That Are All True 