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.