it's up to the universe...

partly thanks to my friend Adam's breezy return to Chicago for The Bird Carnival (check it out at birdcarnival.com), I've been checking my horoscope ritualistically for the last week or so. Usually the first thing Adam does, after arriving at the coffeeshop, is flip open the Sun-Times to the horoscope section and read his. Sometimes he offers to read mine to me.

I'm not fond of the Sun-Times 'scopes. I turned against them after reading mine once a while ago and the woman suggested going shopping as a way to enjoy the day and feel better. I also liked the male to woman ratio before the man died (I'm resisting a bad joke there), and now with two women, the 'scopes just seem plain trite and silly. As opposed to being trite and mostly harmless.

I quite enjoy the Tribune's version, if only for the simple fact that the day is rated on a scale of one to ten, and then a couple lines about the day are revealed. I find it interesting to compare the number from yesterday to the next day and see if it was really an eight like they said. Some parts of the day might have been an eight, but not the entirety of the day.

Anyway, I find it kind of relieving, that if I feel like it's a three, then the universe (by way of the Tribune's scopes--which are alarmingly or rather, ironically, located in the same section as the comics) dictates I have a seven that day, I feel like I should just buck up and stop being a sad sally.

and you know, this upholds my grand tradition of having someone else to blame for the day I've had.

ha ha.

all done.

I moved today. I put all my things in a storage unit and went through hell, but I have no ties anymore to Eric. I think that is going to be a good thing for a while.

I am in a strange place. I feel very unlike myself today. I feel like there is nothing worth doing. I know it is probably the weather, but it is also something else.

I hate this part of relationships.

I think I have to get another blogspot name because everything reeks of Eric. Everything is something I've done with him in mind and it's too much to bear.

stine

finished opposite of fate

The end of the opposite of fate by Amy Tan was kind of remarkable for a few reasons: 1) she went through the entire book without speaking about the topic in the last essay. 2) she physically couldn't write for a while. 3) it made me want to go home and write until my eyes hurt.

Basically I felt a sense of terrible guilt over having the ability to write and write well, but letting the days and weeks pass without doing so. Not in a I-owe-it-to-the-world-to-write kind of way, but more like an "I owe it to myself" way. I know it's easy to say that someday I will write a novel, and that all of this is practice and mental mulling for the final finished product, but it's really nothing without the page count to back it up.

now I just have to procure microsoft word for mac and I'll be a step closer.

stine

can I just sleepwalk through the next month?

I know I can't. It would be nice. In fact, while we're at it, I'll take it til next January when my life is really going to be at a crossroads and I'll have to decide what to do with it. This right here, this is just the beginning, this is a little bit of practice, and to tell you the truth, I've been handling it pretty well. At least on the outside.

What stings are the reminders of how little I mean to him. And the truth is, it must have been there all along, seeded, rooted, choking up all the fresh air in the room, because it should be harder to be that way to someone you loved. Oh, immaturity, sure, plays a factor. To offer forgiveness at this stage in someone's life is less full of compassion and more fully of pity. There's a certain amount of eye-rolling present when someone tells you melodramatically the one thing you don't want to hear.

Anyway.

I finished The Catcher in the Rye. I liked it, but there's a part of me that knows I would never be able to identify with Holden's rich boarding school punk ass, even if I was not nearing thirty. So I read the entire book as a writer first, noting what sort of things Salinger was doing, how he cemented even the most absurd things into your mind like the thing about where the ducks go for winter. I was curious to see that as Holden is clearly telling this story from the "recent present" there is little to no judgement for his actions, thoughts, or situations. And if there were, they were brief and served as fuel to keep the story moving along. As a reader, I found Holden hilarious. His insights into people, the way they did things and how angry it made him was hysterical and I could totally relate.

I'm finishing up reading Amy Tan's The Opposite of Fate, a non-fiction collection of essays that have to do with her life, writing, and fate. Tan is a good writer. She has a very self-assured writing style, nothing seems too quick, too reckless, yet it's easy to read and follow.

I've been sleeping more and drinking less. It has led to my feeling and looking vastly better. I think that may have had something to do with the hottie remark the other day. I've been hanging out with my friends, working, etc, to make the time go by. I'm going to have a full weekend doing amazing things, and all I can think of is how nice it would be if he was there. It'll be great anyway, but that won't stop me from thinking that.

I keep reminding myself that it's okay to feel this way. That the utter disappointment from the failure of us is a normal thing to feel. We could have been great together, but we just weren't. I keep trying to tell myself that one day I will look back on this with relief and satisfaction. That older, wiser self keeps telling me it'll all be alright. I will be better for this.

"i kinda always knew i'd end up your ex-girlfriend"*

So is it terrible to say that the best thing that happened to me today was breezing into my ex-boyfriend's place of employ (not Eric's, a different ex) and having part of our greeting be a fervently whispered, so much that I barely understood the words, "You look like a hottie today."

okay, so it's not so terrible if you consider I spent the day alone, sleeping in, enjoying the air conditioning, cruising craigslist for jobs and stopped by on my way to babysitting. Not that I didn't enjoy babysitting. I always do. But there's something completely self esteem boosting when a man who doesn't have to say anything about your appearance (it's been a long time since it was expected of him at least) to dish it up with not just a laissez faire, "looking good", but an almost insistent high compliment.

hey, I will take all the ego boosts I can get right now.

the source of the fervent whispering? everyone who works with him knows we used to go out, and he's due to be married in the Fall to the girl of his dreams (who was apparently not me). I imagine that's what it was about.

The bad thing was I'm slightly depressed over the events of the last two months that I couldn't even engage in the hot and heavy banter we usually have. he even had to make up a cute and witty response to his compliment since all I could muster up was an alarmed "thank you". Clearly it's been too long since someone spontaneously called me a hottie. Maybe because it's been about a decade since the term was steeped into the daily vernacular of boys.

Don't you mean I look this good everyday? he offered. Not bad, but that's not really my style. I don't like to go the way of cloying please-pay-me-more-compliments.

Later, I thought instead, the naughty girl in me might say, "You should have seen what I was going to wear!"

yes, that's more me. cheers,
stine

*line from a refrain to the No Doubt song "Ex-Girlfriend" that I used to sing along with while imagining he was sitting in the audience and I was spitting every word at him. I did this a lot, whenever this particular boy made me sad. I also like the lines: "hope I hold a special place with the rest of them." "i'm about to give you away for someone else to take" "we keep repeating mistakes for souvenirs" It seems I am very good at being an ex-girlfriend.

finally some good news...

The good news is I handed over a big check for a deposit on an apartment today! Hooray. I'm so happy. I think it's going to be a great place for me to live for a year, maybe more. It's a little small and far away, but the price is great. I am looking forward to being on my own and being in a neighborhood that's unlike most I've lived in before.

I was looking forward to Pilsen, but it's going to be Rogers Park. I'll be half a block away from the red line stop, the Heartland Cafe, The Red Line Tap, and merely a block away from the beach. I plan on visiting the beach as often as possible. I plan to sit in the Heartland and write on my laptop as much as possible. I plan on being my grand ol' happy self as much as possible.

cheers,
stine

like a husk

To tell you the truth, I have no idea what I'm doing. It's sort of weird because it's not like the world beneath my feet is gone, but there is a gaping hole that I always feel I'm about to fall into. That hole and what stood there before was the most phony part of my life, a place where I spent time pointing out every fallacy I could, searching out the ways that I was not loved, and eyeing the people around me with such vile suspicion that I'm shocked they could see the good in me. That I spent so much time and energy there makes the rest of my life empty somehow, in a way. I find myself mentally mulling everything from that space over and over.

I never knew how it was going to end or go away, but I knew that it was going to happen. I sensed it early on, I sensed that things would be messy and painful, sad and weird, but I didn't know I was going to be the source of all the dirty feelings. They were all perfectly happy and seemingly normal until I came around. That they did things oddly was no skin off their backs, that he was not well, that late nights and booze flowed endlessly bothered no one. In fact, the only thing that never belonged there was me. I never fit in, I just sort of adapted to them and that place and their ways.

I know that in a matter of time these feelings will dissapate and in their place will be some pangs of regret (for just how badly I handled the whole thing) and sadness (for the loss of what was the love of my lifetime). I don't think he will ever understand how much I loved him, for that matter I don't know if anyone ever will, but that is all I can think about. We met each other at a time in our lives when the world seemed like it had conspired to give us the person we were looking for, but we were not the people we wanted to be, not cemented in ourselves and we burned each other up.

However badly it went, however fucked up we both were, however, it was worthwhile.

"there's no solution but to love and to be loved."

I find myself shocked at how quickly my self has returned. Before I really wasn't a self, I was just a person, boinging around from thing to thing, person to person, and constantly avoiding any time with my self, my identity, the person inside me that comes out, exudes from me. I found her in that year or so of being on my own. I found out what kind of music I like (male singers that lament, women singers who sing in french). I experimented with all sorts of things I had been too decided about before, food, booze, school, men. I ate deluxe sushi, I drank shots in bars, I went back to school, I was dating an array of men nicknamed "the bench" (coined by my friend Kathleen to describe the number and type of men it takes to keep a woman stimulated emotionally and well, you know).

Before I found my self, I used to hate so many things. Many more than I do now. I was such a fucking pissed off bitch. But being so mad didn't make me happy, it just made it easier to explain why I wasn't doing what I wanted to do. I get it now that I really wanted to do right by my mother, be a good person, do some writing, and live a good life. I didn't know that for a long time. Not that I'm grown up, I do.

I spent time alone for the first time in twenty four years. It was the best thing for me to do for my self, but I had to give up what was probably the best relationship I ever had. I was slowly dying inside anyway so it was eventually going to go terribly badly. And now that we both know our selves, it turns out we don't have much in common after all (just the desire to have babies named after authors).

And now here I am, at the end of another relationship, except this time I don't have the excuse that I didn't know who I was, I just let the amazing girl that I had become fade away. Every missed joke, glance, conversation, point, story, piece of writing, performance, etc, made a chunk of that happy self disappear. And I let her go. I figured she wasn't getting the job done, he wasn't any more in love with me when I was happy, he just felt put upon or he just wasn't interested.

My therapist says I made it the unscalable mountain. I made it impossible for him to love me. So the solution is to be apart. to find our selves again. to be happy. to be alone. not love, like bright eyes sings so sincerely that it pierces everything and sends goosebumps up along my arms, not being loved, but being alone. I don't get that. That doesn't ring with any truth for me.

But the truth is, it's working. the more I am away from him, the more I find my self, that happy amazing girl coming back. sometimes I am her and she is me and it feels less like something I want to be and just being myself.

I started knitting again. I've been reading a book a week since graduation. I've returned to the dark hair color that so defined that year of becoming stine. I've been listening to the music I love. I've been working at the coffeeshop. I've been hanging out with so many many friends who I've lost along the way of these last two unhappy years. I'm trying to take care of myself, trying to love myself, but it's hard. I'm so used to giving myself away, loving people with all the things I can do for them, with my eyes, with my words, with my time. That makes sense to me, but it's impossible to be there for everyone. Ultimately someone feels left out, there's someone I desperately need to call, and I feel stretched to capacity with no time for myself.

I was afraid that the angry woman I had become with him was the woman I really am, and that other girl, the one I found when I was alone, wasn't really there, that she was made up with the best of my intentions and I had lost her to my deep and profound unhappiness. To my surprise, she's still here.