Today I am going to work on STARAMA - a revision is happening and it's really demanding and it has to be done, with discipline.

But it's snowing, and I was smoking a cigarette, and thinking.  So I'm blogging until I can get myself out the door to the cafe because that's where I decided I'll do revision work.  Oh man.

But just now out back I was thinking about my mother.  The link is coffee.

Now I'm really back, I am not going to the cafe.  It really snowed!  I thought it was a lot of hype but no.  So I have been drinking coffee and smoking and listening to Aretha.  I ate some raisin toast and drank two pots of coffee, and moved a houseplant inside to save its life.  It's dripping melted snow in the kitchen now. Facebook.

I went home for a night a few months ago for dinner at my mom's house with all of us and my mom's baby sister and her husband and two of their four daughters and my grandmother.  Grammy was about to leave for Florida, now to be her permanent residence, having been helped by my aunt with a General's precision to empty her house in Philadelphia. Grammy had been staying at my mom's for some matter of weeks and the story goes (per Ben) - three nights before leaving, she freaked out at my mother, upset these two sisters didn't even want to see eachother - around the corner from each other all summer.  It is confusing to me too.  It's troubling that Grammy doesn't seem to know what it is either.  Families can be mad it appears.  Anyway, my aunt is hyper intelligent and psychosexually a little - ha! funny.  One wonders what runs in one's family when it seems like a mystery to the matriarch too. I know Grammy acts grand and that's just how she describes Nanny as acting too.  We've got that quality running through us- we teach it down to the first daughter.  Around the women of the family, I think I probably get a bit hyper-analytical - frightened of the family thing... but also thrilled!  Who else can you actually tell family stories with where you, ha, tell the truth, drink a glass of wine, cry laughing that you people were allowed out in public - That is what it was like, fairly often, growing up with my mom and her, my, family.  I know there are other loud insane families out there but mine was really quite show stealing there for a while. In Boston Markets in Pennsylvania, in Malls in New Jersey, at Earnest Hemingway's historic home in Key West, in a town called Odell... Indiana?   Ridiculous scenes.

My favorite story is remembered by Amy and is called "WHERES MY COIN?!"  That's the Boston Market one. Ridiculous. 

My point is I have a great time as long as there's wine.  I do it for the kids I tell you... and myself.  If you're going to have an absurdly dysfunctional family that can't even reasonably leave the house much less go on vacation from when you're nine to seventeen, the reward is wine when you're older and your grandmother freaking out and insisting on seeing her progeny.  With all the bedbugs this summer, Grammy and I didn't even have martinis and steak, our big plan.  I'll do that for Christmas though.

So the point of this is not actually WHERES MY COIN... I told WHERES MY COIN when Ben was outside and I kept it down. I'm not a bitch.   My point was going to be something about else... I have been writing this with the loose idea of telling how when I was real little  my mother told me drinking coffee like I always wanted to do - would only drink milk with coffee in it- would stunt my growth. And took the opportunity walking in the city past a little person to tell me that's what she meant - if I kept drinking coffee, I'd would be a little person.  I told everyone that memory and my aunt, who I haven't seen in six years, since my Grandfather's funeral, turned to her daughters and said "Don't turn against me like that girls."  I just laughed.  I think that's a funny story about my mom!  

I took another break, you missed it. I'm waiting for Indian food.  The point was my mother being a weirdo and how when I tell nice stories about her, they're still weird. :-)

I watched Into the Woods last night on Netflix and that is he most psychodynamic musical ever made.  The Witch.  When she self immolates. You're all liars and thieves like his father like his son will be too oh why bother you'll just do what you do.  And the chords are ascending in some diminished seventh or do I know?  That is probably the best part of the best show.  

Oh sigh.  I have not revised my script, still today. I am listening to Into the Woods. I am considering buying a ticket to California for next weekend.  Just a hotel in Santa Barbera maybe. It's January weather in October.  Can you imagine? Stephen Sondheim. Stephen Sondheim.

So long story short, Friday, my roommate believes the small and apparently painful bites she has found on herself are bed bug bites… again.  This was the hardship of the summer and this time around, we simply have to address by removing books, and fabric to a reasonable degree, to plastic bags, and calling for a treatment – we can’t do what we did this summer again, either of us. She calls the landlord who hates us, he says we can break our lease, so tired is he of bedbug news, and I overhear her making her case that this isn’t anybody’s fault.   He, it seems, is saying the same thing he always says: “We’ve had that place for twenty-five years and we’ve never…” I yell out, “It has nothing to do with the last twenty five years!” He calls me later in the day (I am the “good cop”.  Honestly I am very kind and measured with every horrible fool I must deal with after my six years in Astoria.  It’s the easiest tactic for me.  I think I get screwed over sometimes for being “too nice” but I’d get fucked over as much trying to be “harder” and in a way I’d be fucked twice because I’d be trying to be something I’m not. I stand my ground- I don't back away from obvious sense, and reiterating it as many times as I must, but I don’t throw out the baby that I’m small and pretty and these landlords for the most part are old-country enough they can’t show me their dirty core motivations, or backtrack as soon as they do if I just make the right face. I know. I’m no fool. But I appreciate if we all stay on the social niceties page.  Without this face, I’d be a whole other person… something of a frightening idea. ) and an imbecile exterminator comes to really and truly drench our house and all our things in chemicals - “once and for all” as it were. My roomie gets the hell out to meet her guy, a new guy since the last time we went through this, but, ah not so unfamiliar. I am not fucking anyone right now so when we do these insanely toxic treatments, there’s no go-to place for me.  It’s not her responsibility.  I feel for her that she is the one experiencing these bites. But at any rate I find myself stranded in Astoria.  When I brave return to my house six hours after the treatment I find the air indoors wholly un-breathe-able, drink a bottle of wine outside and call D-------, to tell him I "actually have a big favor to ask": would he pick me up? Can I sleep at his house?  First my stepmom tells me to get a hotel room.  I appreciate the advice, but no.  “One of those websites for hostels or deals” – I mean, there must be a better way. (you know I love hotels, but to find a deal I'd have to internet search in the toxified house, take a train into manhattan- it was already 8:00pm. A hotel?)

Status updates you can’t post to facebook:  A diminished sex drive compared to say, my twenties, is a blessing and a joy.  Late in the summer I went on a “The last straw. That’s it.” okcupid date.  A lunatic whose clothes smelled musty, who I met late at night downtown, he was working the soundboard at “Under St Marks”. A group of Canadians, singers, comedians, had the place for the night. As I shimmied into the backmost aisle seat in the underground pit, I palmed my cell phone, and held it low under my chair.  He texted “Hi.”  I listened to the curly haired stand up comic on “stage” implying incest, screwing up his joke, riffing on his name, his uncle, incest again and texted my “date”, “have you seen ‘Fame?’”  He texted back, “No. Why?” I texted nothing.  He texted to come over to the booth which I did between acts. I whispered “Which dial is his monitor? I’m obsessed with monitors” He said “You just want to show off your knowledge.” I smiled.  Not the wittiest retort although true. When the show was done, I smoked out back with the Canadians. Ky, my date, commenced giving me massages (which could not relax me since I didn’t know yet if I wanted him touching me).  I spent the next few hours trying to relax, tensing to his advances, trying to relax enough to enjoy the adventures he sought for us, explaining that we wouldn’t be sleeping together over 2:00am coffee, then pressed against onlookers at a Doug E Fresh show(!) and then fleeing as Ky frowned.  The cab departs.  I realize I am not dating any more.

The realization I am not dating has yet to give me anything but pleasure in thinking it. 

Early in the summer, before I wasn’t dating, D------- took me to the beach in a rented car.  The trip was a great success, and at the time, I’d laid myself a gauntlet that a male person would bring me somewhere in a car with-God-as-my-witness-I’ll-never-go-hungry-again style.  After the beach, it was back to D-------’s house. (We dated a couple years ago but it ended when he yelled at me about his workday on the phone. There’s an old blog post about it!)  I had my period which, though bloody and messy, meant I was at least feeling like sex.  I blew his enormous penis.

Break.  That was a funny break-point. I’m in my made bed now, in my aired out bedroom, wanting to get to my point. 

That would be: that day, the idea of his huge cock and blowing it turned me on.  I know I blow his mind when I’m into it. How wouldn’t I?  As far as intercourse, well that’s oookay.  I come too fast and then have to sort of put up with the huge thing.  Sad to say, these are the facts. It’s a relief when the whole affair becomes too bloody. I’ve come and we can clean up and relax now.

So we try this again.  What a perfect thing right? He doesn’t drink, he has wheels, he loves to read, he isn’t asking for a girlfriend, he has an enormous appendage, he’s nice to women.  I travel out to his place in summer heat – an hour or more on the subway, what he calls “Prospect Heights” I insist is “Crown Heights”.  I’m hungry and upon arrival realize I don’t know what I’m doing there.  I don’t want to have sex.  Now I’m just at his house. We eat a little, he goes and buys me a bottle of wine and opens it with a drill, we eat, go to bed, and I tense to his touch, toss and turn with horrible dreams all night.  He is angry at me in my dreams for not having sex.  We have long conversations about what a confusing and unfair person I am.  When I wake up and push him away, then touch him lightly, feeling sorry for these pushes, I try to explain and he lets me dig a nonsense grave.  “It doesn’t feel natural.  It feels to me… today. It feels to me…. Now…. That I don’t know, it just isn’t right… just to be so reasonable about it – like I can’t do this. I can’t just kind of say ‘You’re here. You’re fine.  Lets have sex so we both get some’  Are you angry? Does that make sense to you?”

I think he was kind of angry or at least rejected-feeling.  I don’t know.  After I pushed him off again and explained how I was feeling, and I think told him that I wanted a boyfriend to be with, not a buddy, that I needed to feel… something, he had a Eureka moment “So none of that is my fault!” Me: That’s right. Yes.  It isn’t you at all.  We went for brunch and I played some jewel game on his iphone and it felt like being in a sexless relationship.  The kind I’ve nearly never had, always too busy having sexual connections that arrive at me feeling agonizingly in need or want, or fucked up relationships, always sexually strong, and then everything else smacks us, knocks two crazies out cold.  But I feel like an asshole who won’t touch his penis, no matter what I’ve said. And eventhough he seems totally fine having realized it’s not his fault.

Anyway, maybe you think this is a lot of writing all just to say “there’s no chemistry” or “you’re just not that into him”.  I feel like there’s an interesting thing to articulate though.

I called D------- last night and he was there for me.  He took me to a diner, he stopped at a bodega so I could get some Claritin. When we got to his house he vacuumed up all the cat hair and downloaded Real Time so we could watch it.  As we laid in bed after the show was finished, he touched my breast and I didn’t like it.  He went out to read on his couch so I could sleep and came back in around 5am and we only lightly cuddled, mostly just slept next to one another.  I was relieved. I didn’t want to have sex.  If I did, I would have felt like I was for all those reasons listed above.

I love my diminished sex drive of the past few months.  It’s serving me enormously well.  When’s the last time this blog went months without me really liking someone a.k.a, often a.k.a, having had a lot of sexual chemistry with him, and then feeling disappointed when he was pleased with that great sex time and that alone, or some other angst like that.  That last straw date and really feeling like it was the last straw was amazing.  I like how I feel.  It seems to me, yet, a shame, that if I ever was – and I think I once was, evidence suggests… - I now am not able to get myself going for someone just because, hey, that’s hot.  I especially feel a little sorry if he went out of his way to be so nice and is asking nothing of me.  Just wishes I wanted it.  Just feels me right there.  I can't fault him.  I'm the one who wants to just sleep in our separate spaces. I'm the one who feels that way.

In this long ass, poorly articulated attempt to articulate, I am saying:  oh me oh my- once I’d have sex with someone because they were nice to me.  It was not always a disaster wherein thereafter I was in love- it was sometimes but not always. But now that’s all done. 

When I have to explain how it’s all done, all my enthusiasm for your cock, I feel so defensive- as I attempt to explain I think it is as if I’m saying “Oh I have issues.   Yes I’m frigid- it’s my issues” and that is really not it at all. I just don’t want a nice man with an erection who went out of his way for me to feel rejected so it ends up couched that way.

I am so grateful that it hasn't turned out like so many told me it would (not so far) – that my thirties would be a time of aching sex drive.  That I’d just need dick DICK where ever it may be found!  Maybe it won’t last, but deprioritizing sex and particularly deprioritizing dating feels so right.  I don’t even know if I wish I’d found a great relationship instead, I am liking it so much.  All I can possibly do right now is think about myself, freak out about myself, worry about myself all the time.  I am open to love- which would be someone actually seeing and getting these machinations of my mind, and loving them.  But right now, unlike so many other times I’ve chronicled, I’m not even longing for it.  You see, I’ve given up my friends.  I’ve given up and it feels very good.

I couldn’t be a hooker for a place to sleep and I do sort of feel sad not to have given that fun and acceptance to the nice, good, kindly person who gave me that place to sleep.  But I cringe to the penis! And that feels good.  What a crazy blogpost.

I love you all so much my friends, you may not even know.  I love you more more more more more.

-Alexis

I didn't want to work on my shit

So I ordered a sushi feast.

Going to straight to hell.

Love,
Alexis

All day, all week

Please read my friend Kelly's blog post about when we went to Zucotti Park last week to see some Occupy Wall Street. Kelly, the straight bomb.

Having been last week, my contribution since has largely been talking to disapprovers while out and about, correcting their perception, media-backed, that the kids, (and Kelly, I too cannot help calling them kids.  It's something about idealism. Well I'm probably about to say it...) smell and are dirty and spoiled.  I try to appeal to the fact that I and whomever I'm speaking to live in New York so we know from horrible smells, and my olfactory was not in the least offended down there - they should really go see and smell for themselves.  I also tend to mention how much I feel for the "kids".  As with every generation, the media has consistently indulged a reduction of theirs to "they're apathetic, brainwashed by their computers, and now, if they're doing this spoiled".  But kids are supposed to be idealistic! I want to thank them. That's how I feel.  Do we want a whole country of people who, what? buckle down, buckle-down-and-you-should-too.  How ridiculous.  By how ridiculous I mean how unrealistic about humanity.

Today I have my third consultation for psychoanalysis - I guess we'll decide the schedule (at least four times a week!) and payment today.  I feel like I've had one realization already.

Let me tell you why I love New York this year, today.   NYU's free Health Clinic.  Many thoughts, share them in a sec.

Some details on my conversation with that guy Kelly talked about in her post.  He is what really worries me.  The movement itself should encounter division and problems myriad any minute now as movements must.  Their "consensus" thing is bound to, must, mutate, frighten, be frightening, etc.  But that is fine - that is natural - that is the discussion- that is the experiment.  But the gunman, the Charles Manson, the psycho who ruins everything and discredits by ruining. That's a thing.  This guy's delicate psyche gave me a real fright.

Kelly kicked off how he approached - wanting me to agree that the people near us playing some kind of game were "ridiculous".  Let me see if I can properly write our dialogue - which I'm usually so good at, but think I'll have difficulty with here because my heart was racing while I spoke to him.  It's funny because I'd been emailing with my brother and sister about OWS and Revolution before Kelly and I went down there and I had left off with them that I wanted to write them about the personal and the political. How a "movement" suddenly throws into view for you how much they do meet.  Like psychoanalysis, how it may bring a question of "who am I? How did I become me? Why do I have this ideal and not another? What do I want?"  I didn't write that email I had percolating.  But this conversation brought that thought "The political is personal. The personal is political" banging into my head- like "not only personal, the political can be psychological".  It was something about this man's psychology that made me feel in danger.

It's also hard to remember the conversation because the mode was one of cutting me off and then smugness.  It wasn't terribly sensible and I was in a decidedly defensive position - so it's hard to remember as a whole.

I suppose he was asking me why it was happening.  I think that's it.  And that was a hard one to answer cold off the top.  As he told me I couldn't answer him I managed to answer something about "the social contract."  Honestly, I was not beautifully articulate.  I think I said "That's a thing right.  There's a social contract."

"Well what's that?"

Me: Okay, let's see, well quite a few things.  Let me try an example.  Take social security.  It comes out of your paycheck your whole life.  That's a contract - that you're paying in so when you're older it'll be paid into for you.  If I live to be 65, it's worrying to think it won't be there for me.

An older woman, pretty older lady with painted nails and a warm sweater and lots of piled red hair, overheard and politely jumped in.  Apparently Social Security was exactly one of the issues that had her there.  She explained that she was older- she began to try to explain whatever her situation was with Social Security. But the man just interrupted her over and over to say "Are you finished yet?  Are you finished talking?  I'm not listening anymore- are you going to answer my question?"  This guy was so alarming I tell you. We asked him again to clarify his question. She began speaking again. He started in with "not answering my question" again.  She saw someone she knew who she had to talk to for some reason.  She seemed to be an occupier and when you see what's going on there, it is pretty obvious that one would actually need to talk to one's friends pretty often to find out - particularly this day - if you might need to move your stuff,  what the next step was to continue peaceful occupation etc.  It's a hive, you know.  So she, all politeness, excused herself to talk to her friend she had seen.  I mean, I saw her see this person and realize she needed to talk to her/him.  The man said, "She couldn't answer me. That's why she left."  And I said "No- I think she saw her friend.  Although the way you talk doesn't make people want to stay for more conversation."

This is what I'm talking about regarding psychological problems though.  What frightens me about this  person is the inability to see motivations other than that people are stupid and have no point, "can't answer my question".  I guess all I'm saying is that Kelly and I talked to a real sociopath.

The conversation we continued to have following this was wholly ridiculous so my enthusiasm to transcribe it is fading, was never very strong.  I don't have much joy in telling you how dumb this guy's questions which I kept on "not answering" were.  He made me agree that 20% of 1,000,000 is 200,000. (vis a vis the social contract.)  So, he questioned, if a person is making a million dollars and taxed at 20% and is putting in therefore 200 grand, should someone making 50,000 put in less?

I mean, no one who reads this blog is so stupid they don't know how stupid a question this is.  Me: "Well yeah, I'm fine with that.  I mean let's talk about 50,000.  Can they pay 18%?  I mean what's left over afterwards?  Capitalism isn't just taxes right?  Like, people have to be able to buy stuff?  If you tax 18% of 50,000 and leave the rest for the person to live on, can they still buy stuff after paying for wherever they live and eating regular meals, maybe going to the doctor?  You definitely want them to be able to buy some stuff."

Oh on and on we went, and on and on he scared me.  We talked about how a bad diagnosis could bankrupt you forever if you don't have insurance. Him: That's YOUR problem.  Me: Yes, yes it would be. (pause) Oh and yours.  It's actually also yours...

Obviously trying to talk about socialism was not productive. ;)

And it was when I said that what was happening seemed revolutionary to me that he was most scoffing and angry.  I asked if I could explain what I meant by that.  I tried to say something about how what it seemed people were asking was an actual re-examination of global capitalism as a system.  He said "You're delusional".  I said the conversation had to stop then.  Told him that's very disrespectful to me.  He agreed and apologized (my heart raced - frightening.)  I tried to remind him we had agreed on one thing.  He believed the banks should have been allowed to fail.  He believes recessions are a natural part of capitalism and capitalism should have been allowed to work to let the banks rebuild.

Anyay, this man is useless as a tool to understand anything about what is happening with Occupy Wall Street and what the most interesting parts of conversation are there.  I do keep thinking of him in relation to my revelation that the psyche, my own psyche, is interesting - incorporates trauma, incorporates other psyches battling I can't say what...

He's more to me an exemplar of how we live in ourselves with a past and with problems and with defenses and with reactions and with old wounds and with old joys and we can bury them or we can use them or we can do battle with them or or or.

More on the free clinic soon and how I am working unemployment my friends, working it. And how without me saying something, a person in his second month of medical school might have would up seeing my vagina, and my cervix. HILARIOUS.  My whole day at the clinic was a joy and worth telling you about, but my favorite part was telling the third year med student who was about to get her big chance to "swab 360" in my "OS",  "Thank you so much.  Cool.  But Sean can't be in here for that."

XOXO love
A

haha did you see my morning wake up poem?

haha So I am crazy.

yup my memories are like rats sent to stars.

ugh.  Well I sent a message to my college boyfriend, having been recollecting what a traumatized mess I was by the time he got to have me.  It wasn't the easiest because it's not like he wasn't sort of, well, difficult - far from a perfect love. And given just how many times I ended it, and it was always me, it makes all the sense in the world that we are not in touch at all.  After the first time I broke up with him he said he hoped I died in a car accident, and we still got back together!  College!

Not everyone's life is like this I bet.

But I'm finding a bit of a theme.

Or I at least have a few phrases.

One phrase: Living in the past.  Interesting phrase isn't it?

One theme:  Even if I hurt my ex loves only unintentionally, in reaction they've been willing to treat me with the most cruelty they could summon. I've never ended a serious realtionship, one  where we were saying "I love you" without the ending or the aftermath involving at best stark insensitivity (Jack - this was the least brutal, and me the least myself in a way - at 23?  I don't know - the early 20's elude my analysis.  I was more free/ less something, less psychicly heavy then than any other time) and at worst cruelty. My conclusion is kind of that men are weak.

One important true thing, the truest?: Love and anger and pain= the same object, the same thing.  Angry? It's another side of Love.  Hurting? Another side of Love. In Love? Be SOO Careful. And even if you are, the risk is just so huge.  I'm not saying not to go for it, young lovers whoever you are, I know your troubles are few, I know your troubles have the potential to be engulfing, and you should still try, but the odds are really stacked.

Back to living in the past.  I wrote a msg to my college boyfriend- just to say I'm thinking of him, understand from his end why we didn't keep in touch, don't expect to be in touch now and am not after that in sending him the msg, am sorry to the degree that I can be that the person I was may have, did in fact, cause him pain, and am glad we had each other when we did.  He said this in response:

Hi.

You know, I'm quite sincerely at a total loss for if, or how, to respond to this. But here I am, typing, I suppose.

I accept your words as they were intended and do genuinely appreciate the sentiment. Regardless of whatever else I've thought about you then or now, I don't believe that you ever acted with specifically hurtful intent.

And on my part, I certainly extend the blanket apology that I would to anyone I've crossed paths with for any general encounters with me between the ages 18-22 (I'll be charitable to myself here and leave the range at that).

My memory (in totality) is an absolute horror, and I've spent so long emotionally partitioning off what I did retain of that time that I don't have a lot of positive things left to reflect on. Neither do I doubt that they were there- it's just far from a deep well of pleasant or positive reminiscence for me. But for better or for worse, it has always been there. Take that for whatever you will.

As I said, I have little idea what else to share, but I do hope that doing this is in whatever way helpful for you, and also that it is unrelated to a 12-step program.

Best


So,  that's what's making me think of the phrase "living in the past".  Funny how it almost seems healthier to have the partitions up, and just be able to wholesale write off 4 years - "blanket apology" to those who knew you then, few memories of the entire time, than to remember it.

It's nice he got back to me.  I'm glad he's just trucking and there're no bad feelings and no one wants anyone's car crashing anymore.  Don't know why it matters -> maybe I live in the past.

XOXO time to make the donuts, send out a resume to Gawker to be their office assistant (how many of those are they gonna get? 60,000? Reformat this script.  I have a pretty amazing life. :-)  Later I get my second consultation and maybe we can talk about what it means to live in the past....)

XO
A

I think
twinkling red stars

I think we send our memories to them
our dreams
a globe of the Earth
with a blue whale half the size of iceland

Our heads touched by people
who touched them
literally
our hairs pressed down
our forheads brushed
our hair pressed down
our creepy parents caught in the act
our dark pursuers

send them
like rats
off to the stars

Let's do some blogging

A) I watched a movie called Lymelife and now I'm really badly in crazy love with Rory Culkin.  Those eyes, those lips.... the acting. oh, oh oh.  The character.... tortured teen.  I guess it's inappropriate but there's no denying, I dream of Rory Culkin. I want him. I love him.

B) Let's talk about crying.  I've had one therapy consultation so far but before I got there I did a little amateur delving into the past, hit a little trauma, and arrived at good old-fashioned sobbing.   This happened vis a vis my mother a couple years ago and vis a vis having my heart broken many many years ago, this time.  It's pretty complex, wasn't any old heart break, but I won't bother with the story too much here... I guess the pertinent fact is only that both things constitute what I've experienced of traumatic emotional situations.  Both times I seem to arrive at the uncontrollable crying from first thinking I can just, stylistically frankly, lay out what the trauma was, and tell the other person what it was and do so coolly, only to realize a few hours later that I'm feeling the same things I was feeling in the past which I had thought I could so cooly describe, effectively *get rid of* by remembering, laying out, sending away.

(This time as I walked home from errands at night, I was suddenly sobbing in the street, oh New York, I turned toward a building and just sobbed and sobbed and a woman - she is named Wanda, asked if I was alright. I pulled myself together.  We talked a long time.  

Wanda: Are you alright?

Me: Oh, yes. Yes I really am. (heaving breath) I really am.

Wanda:  Are you sure?

Me: Yeah, it's just a memory.  This isn't - yes, I'm really okay. I know it doesn't look like it.

Wanda: Well, where are you going? Can I walk with you?

Me: (actually composing myself somewhat) Yes.  I'm, um, well I'm sorry.  Thanks for stopping me.

Wanda: See these tears in my eyes?  I know what you're feeling.  I'm going through it too.

Me: I'm not even going though it -- this is like old stuff.  Is yours, is it a love thing? That's usually it.

Wanda commenced to tell me what she's going through, in the present [which makes her seem like less of a lunatic than me to me] which is horribly difficult. Part of her problem today involves seeing her ex's family at Church a lot so I told her I'm Jewish but maybe we can do some kind of volunteering together some time.  I hope we do it.  She suggested Thanksgiving, but I won't be around here then so, I don't know, please remind me to call Wanda. ) 

I came home to continue crying, got a hug from my roommate who is no stranger to needing therapy to deal with the past.  And thank God she was around to tell me not to drink, to just drink water, which I did and gradually stopped crying, watched some something or other and went to bed. I didn't cry myself to sleep... and YET. And yet my eyes in the morning when I had some place to be.  Puffed so they were barely possible to open.  I would like to tell my body that if it's going to be so inclined to gush tears, reduce me to sobs, and keep 'em coming, then it would really be nice if my face could fucking handle that.  But why even bother with the things you'd like to tell your body, right? Hello pine nuts? Hello pine nuts aren't poison but HISTAMINES actually might be hello? and etc. for everybody out there, and all that kind of stuff, yeah, right?

Then I go to therapy, or in this case just my consultation, and,  of course I wasn't done with this crying jag yet so at the least my therapist must think I do need the therapy... so that's good.  I told her how I almost thought in the weeks between writing my bio in order to get the consultation and the consultation that I became worried that she might think I was *too happy* to qualify.  Like just thinking about my life so much with the anticipation of therapy was making me feel so great that it would seem like I didn't really need it.  I told her this through tears. And then I told her about how I've always sort of had this problem that crying makes me feel like I'm crazy.  

I know just how this conversation goes because I've had it every time I've started therapy (not many times, but enough)  I'm always a sobbing mess by the time I've gotten myself to their office. I tell them, either "sorry" or "I have sort of a problem where crying like this makes me feel crazy."

and he/she says: What's crazy about crying?

And we could start right there if we wanted to, because I could tell her that when I'd cry growing up, my mother would say I was "emotionally disturbed" and look to psychologists for answers with what was wrong with me (which whenever I saw an actual psychologist was HER, but I'm digressing- not to mention seriously turning my blog into my issues with my mother, barf, but moving on...)

But we don't start there because I don't want to start there yet so I mention, through my tears, mopping up some more snot, that yeah yeah yeah, there are old reasons I feel that way but let's be serious- you don't want to feel out of control.   You don't want to be crying.  You're not supposed to be crying on the street.  And especially about a memory, right?  That is what we sometimes, in shorthand, call crazy behavior.  

I don't know why I'm blogging this besides that I sort of want to.

Crying has just been a thing that I don't usually do, well -- empathetically for great theater I do, totally controllably, but not usually, not since a long time ago (in high school I was often a sobbing mess), but, now, I don't usually and when I do cry for myself, it feels sudden and I do it uncontrollably, frighteningly, can't stop once it's started, start feeling crazy for doing it.  Crying.  I wanted to write about crying.

I've stopped crying and am feeling better now for what it's worth.  And it may be very worth noting that.  You know, for the next time.  It makes me feel crazy but I do stop. I can't stop it so should do it without the belaboring the feeling nuts about it.  It's sort of a one way trip, a deep dive and then a re-emergence.  I should probably eliminate to the degree that I can the part of the dive that's considering myself a total fucking lunatic but it also isn't too important to because I do stop. I guess I'm just saying that I should start to feel some safety about it.  The people you encounter don't think you're "crazy" - they just think you're crying.  You can't go out dancing or anything but you will live.  You're just crying, a lot. 

Am I saying anything here?

XOXO

C) When Hurricane Irene was coming I was doing a million things, a last push of compulsive anit bed-bug cleaning, rearranging all the furniture in the house, storm preparations, and finally sitting in bed eating bon bons, drinking Lindemans and watching Funny Face.  But I've been saving notes by my bed since then that I jotted down that I wanted to blog about the hurricane.  I was going to put them here, but I guess I'll just save them some more because, ha, there's nothing interesting about them not in the immediate.  Sort of an interesting blog writing experiment whose answer may disturb us who blog, no?

XOXO

Alexis

Yeah

God, that's the thing about remembering the worst hurts, going for it in a spirit of "getting somewhere with it" - when it really hits you, how long ago it all is makes you cry more, makes you laugh, makes you cry more. At least with me.  On the one hand you think - this is not immediate, so you're fine, phew.  Then just the fact that you're not fine, actually, clearly not, makes you feel Crazy.  What if someone asks you what's wrong?  And you have to say - it's nothing, it's fifteen years ago.  It feels like sanity would be to actually be healed.  To remember a moment you were abandoned and not fall apart.  That's why I'm going to serious therapy now. I have my first consultation tomorrow.  I suppose you're not healed ever of certain things, but there might just be an actual getting through it.  It would just feel better NOT TO HAVE TO.  I am putting a lot of faith in this therapeutic enterprise.  I hope it's wonderful and I discover some reserves of strength rather than just puddling out.  What will it be? how much puddling do you do before you're somewhere new.  I guess you appeal for support and just the presence of the therapist listening until you are at the least tired enough of torturing the wound to move on by default and that's kind of the point.  They aren't going anywhere.  Unless they die.  That's the thing.  It's unrealistic to ever expect certain pain to go away.  And it's horrible admitting that you're a person who is just always going to have to massage it and try to find some help dealing with it.

This is why I love/hate celebrity sex rehab with Dr. Drew.  I grotesquely feel sorry for those poor people who had such sexual trauma so young and are walking around in a haze of pain.  Because when they admit it, they basically have to admit it forever.  They were damaged and they always will be damaged.  Who wants to be damaged?  There's sort of not enough reward for it to be "fair".

But Life isn't fair.  They're not insane.  I'm not insane.  I'm just a stupid crazy person who can't tell my brain to stop looking for it to be fair.

I'm going to fall in love with  my female therapist about 6 minutes into treatment, I'm predicting.

Jesus Christ

You think you're so strong and the past behind you but just press it and... I don't know.  I'm always surprised.

5:40am Jolt awake with the idea I'll die and not exist.  I think in my dream it became realized that someone proposing sex with me had AIDS. In the dream I successfully avoided sex, but, instead of relief, I woke up with the sharp relief realization that I'm still going to die and death is a thing.  It was that thing where your mind says "and you won't be thinking any more.  No more of this".

Maybe that sharp relief, as in bas relief, no psychic relief at all, is why the AIDS plays of the 80's are so good.  Also being gay and theater. 

On that callous note, back to thinking about lovin' arms, not death, and sleeping some more while it's dark.

Holy God is this hilarious.

Let me just transcribe a bit here.

Classical music.
Geology professor.
He opens his ipad-shaped enough personal thing.
The avatar tells him:
Today's schedule (notably, Take Kathy to the airport by 2:00.)
3 messages: Your graduate research team in Guatemala, just checking in.
Robert Jordan a 2nd semester junior requesting a second extension on his term paper
And your mother reminding you about your father (Geology professor stops the speaking avatar/ secretary) "surprise birthday party" 

Then he gets his friend on the horn to do the lecture for him. --- "Contact Jill."
Flemson
"He was challenging Jill's projection on the amount of carbon dioxide being released to the atmosphere. I'd like to recheck his figures"
"Here's the rate"
 Guy: "MMMM hmmmm - and what happened?"

OH MY GOD. This is the funniest thing I've ever seen???? Do you remember 1987 now? hahaha oh what happened? First, (it's no longer first, but "first") let me say that I saw this of course because someone put it on facebook this morning - it was not distanced from a general sentiment that wow - the supposed year on the computer is 2011 and the new iphone and siri whatever came out today and Steve Jobs died. Steve Jobs isn't responsible for this particular projection of Apple's future though, because this is from when he wasn't there. Secondly, I don't give a good goddamn. (2001: A Space Odyssey has the most ipad-like looking thing of any pre i-pad existing representations of future technologies I've ever seen. I'm sure I'm objectively right about this) This thing this guy's got is RIDICULOUS. When it makes the joke during the conversation?!?! ("4:15pm") and THE GUY'S ATTITUDE!!!!!!!! I mean the vid is SORT OF predicting google type searching through a wireless technology. Yeah. Oh my god though. It is like an actual secretary ... and the way Herr Professor says "MMMMM hmmmmm.  And what happened?" And the classical music. I just want to repeat these things over and over. I believe you are all with me enough that I don't need to explain how hilarious this is. I'm stopping. I have work to do. But wow- I didn't know we were going to be such calm classical music listenting, geology professor consulting fools with actual 2 dimensional helper robots, flirting up "dinner" over "research" while rememebring to take our wives to the airport in our, c'mon, Rolls, now. OH MY GOD THIS THING.