The Battle Of Who Could Care Less

Slowly I'm emerging back into the land of the living.  I am happier, much happier than I have been in months.  Sometimes I will crack jokes with strangers, or meekly return a smile.  Thursday it felt like everyone was looking at me.  When I have the sense that someone is watching I try my best to ignore it.  Then, on accident, when I catch the person's eye I tend to look down or away.  If it's an attractive man, I very well might blush.  ...Will liked making me turn red.  He enjoyed my paleness, thinking the flush in my cheeks to be sweet.  My students liked to give me non-stop grief for it, heckling me if they knew I would change colors.

I miss them, my class, all the time.  But what can I say?  If I said anything would it be a satisfactory explanation?  The idea of it becoming a conversation is something I abhor.  I left the school.  I had to.  There.  Done.  That wouldn't be enough.  My kids make stuff up anyways.  They have made up some outrageous stuff about me because students always gossip about their teachers when they aren't talking about one another at that age.  The teachers aren't much better.

I said "goodbye" to my single friend at the school the other day.  He ripped on me as much as he could in the brief time that we were in the same room together.  Gonna miss that son-of-a-bitch.

*sigh*

You cannot dwell on the past.  Because.. well, it's already happened.  What's the point in wallowing?  (This is something I have to remind myself.)  My future is bright.  Job prospects look good, and things are looking brighter each and every day.

...He still hasn't communicated with me.  We talked a bit last week.  I apologized.  He said he would text me later in the week... he didn't.  There have been no phone calls for over a month.  No emails for slightly over a month.  Now the texts have dropped off too.  It's been nearly two weeks since one of those.  ...It hurts my heart.  I feel like crap.  I feel like a crazy woman for caring so much too..  So I'm trying to stop, to stop caring.  It's kind of working, I can feel it.  It reminds me of that Ben Folds Five song... "The Battle of Who Could Care Less."  Guess he won.

Is an Unenlivened Life Really a Life Lived?

After William got sick, I grew increasingly more closed off.  Things were already bad, I hardly went out and rarely saw my friends, but that was because of my job.  When William fell into his coma... I didn't want to be enjoying myself, it just felt selfish.

I suppose I still feel that way, that if I'm happy it's a selfish feeling.  My mourning should be all-consuming.  ...Only fuck that noise.  Sometimes I just want to dance.  Yup, I said it.  I want to dance alone in my room, in my underwear, because I do that.  It's a thing.  I'm starting to let myself be happy again.  Thank goodness I got rid of that job.  I love teaching, don't get me wrong.  My students are my lifeblood, and missing them is driving me crazy.  But it came time to reexamine what made me happy.  With my administration trying to push me out... clearly it was no longer that job.  So now I'm a loser who is too old to be at this point in her life professionally... except I don't feel like a loser.  I feel like a damn fine woman who has gone through something traumatic.  Yes, it's shaken me up more than I had ever imagined, to the core, but it's also caused me to change my life for the better.

If William had lived I keep telling myself I would have left this job then too.  Perhaps I would have, perhaps not for the same reasons, but the milk has been spilt and I'm sick of crying over it.

First step in my reemergence, get a new and better job -- in the process.  Second, start to reconnect with friends I've distanced myself from -- coffee with Jeff, check!  Third... TBD...

Last Weekend

I babysat Poppy last weekend, she said something funny.  I meant to blog it earlier, but I forgot.  What does stick out is something her mom said.  When she asked Poppy what she wanted to be when she grew up, her daughter replied "A fashion designer or... a theoretical physicist."

Yup, that's Poppy, and that's why I love her.

They Say...

...that if you love someone, you can't stay mad at them.  Well, I apologized, and now I'm waiting for him.  I may be waiting a very long time.

Last night I told my brother about all of my recent frustrations and near breakdown.  He thinks that pushing Chris away was for the best, and agrees that there's too much going on in both of our lives.  This isn't good timing, in fact, it may never be.  His first concern though, was the same as mine.  Is it real love or just the redirection of existing feelings during a state of grief?  I didn't have any answers, just more questions.  Time seems like the only thing that will help to make sense of any of it.

If we don't talk between now and the memorial service, I would love it if one of two things happened.  I would be in heaven if he held my hand and apologized, before expressing something of a romantic nature.  The close runner-up would be going out for New York style pizza and laughing together as old friends.  Ideally, any combination of the above.  But, it'll be a time for friends, family, and reflecting on William’s life, none of which lends itself to having any time together, just the two of us.

Maybe by then my heart will dull and I'll fall out of love with him.  Perhaps in the interim I will come to the conclusion that it was never real love to begin with.  Who's to say?  Again, only time will tell.

*sigh*

Love

When the person you love dies, where does the love go?  And if, in your grief, you find another hapless soul to fall for... is it real love then?  Or did your desire simply change objects, i.e. people?  What if you suddenly find yourself deathly afraid of love?  So much so, that you flip out, go crazy, and push away that person you have developed such great affection for; can the love survive such a fuck up?  What if he is fantastic, yet you are fantastically flawed?  Can a relationship ever be realistic?  Or if you said awful things in an effort to push him away, can you attract him yet again?  Because I am a woman who is TERRIFIED of love and has just done all of this.

Not to mention, I feel INCREDIBLY guilty.  I don't fall in love often, and now I have done so twice in less than a year.  Does it mean I am simply lonely, or does it ring true?  If I can fall in love so easily, is it real?  Does it mean I am not appreciating William?  ...When will my crazy go away?

Can you genuinely love two people at the same time?

...Will he ever forgive me or have I ruined this love possibility for all-time?  Is that a good thing?  Is it better just to have him in my life as a friend instead, because then he's at least IN my life?  Is this relationship, friendship or otherwise, ultimately doomed due to our many, MANY differences?

Is falling in love with William's brother ultimately just bad form?

FUCK, FUCKING, FUCK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Wonder Woman

When I was little I didn't know who Wonder Woman was, not really.  So when I ran around the house wearing my little red and yellow camisole and bespangled panties I just knew I was a superhero.  I'd run, stand astride on something, put my fists squarely on my hips, and beam with pride.  Power seemed to surge from my chest.  (Perhaps there were wrist sweatbands too, but it's been too long ago for me to recall.)

Then there was Rainbow Brite.  Now, she was not someone I could evoke since my head and eyes were normal-sized.  Plus, I didn't have a flying horse or furry friends (our cat Socrates was not amenable to the idea of playing make believe).  It didn't stop me from wishing for super powers though.  My mother made me a blanket once, well, to be truthful she just sewed on the edging, that was Rainbow Brite themed.  To this day I can still recall anxiously awaiting her final stitch.  My precious blanket matched my sheets and pillowcase.  I suppose I dreamt of flying around on a Pegasus alongside Rainbow Brite, but who can recall dreams from so far back?  Certainly not I.

It was about this same time that a girl in my after school program decided that I was going to be the focus of her aggression.  Erin made it quite clear that she thought herself above my friendship.  In fact, she deemed it fit that I not have any friends.  My friend Emily was gawky with freckles and blonde hair.  Erin took her aside one day, and afterwards she never spoke to me again.  Others followed suit, which left me lonely.  I'd drown my pain with ice cream buckets full of crayons and reams of paper.  My parents always knew right where to find me when they came to pick me up at 5/6 p.m., at the coloring table.

Erin only allowed me to befriend the other girls she saw as unworthy.  There was Steph with a medical condition that left her permanently petite and frizzy-haired Amanda with the thick, Coke bottle glasses.  We'd play pretend outside, a slight distance from the playground, down a hill and under a tree, by the football field.  The church that offered our after school program also did a summer one, which I was subjected to as well.  During this vacation time, kids would frequently go on trips with their families and mail postcards to the class.  This I did.  We had gone on a driving trip out west and it was a postcard with a Jackalope on it.  When I returned, I found my postcard had been ripped up and shoved, piece-by-piece into my locker.  Looking down the hall, there stood Erin with her gaggle of friends.  Clearly they'd staked out my locker to catch my expression.  They were laughing hysterically.

I begged my parents to take me out of the after school program, but they did not.  Now, my mother says that she regrets not having listened to me.  It's a sentiment too late to do any good though.  When all was said and done, I spent about 7-years being bullied, aging out of the program at 13.  My sense of self was shaped by this experience, not for the better.

How is Wonder Woman related you ask?  Because in my imagination I had the ability to make waste of my foe.  In real-life I was powerless.  It was this place of make believe that I found myself in so often as a child I lost sense of the real world.  Now, I go back there, more often recently, to the land of superheroes.  It's here where William is still alive and no one from work is bullying me.  The reality is far too depressing to deal with.

Effed Up

There are too many demons in me.  Too many fears.  Too many imperfections.  Nobody knows how to accept or put up with my kind of crazy.  I hoped/thought that William could, but that's probably just the idealism speaking.

Number 1, I don't trust men.  They are either going to die on me, hurt me, or disappoint me.  Yes, that's how messed up I am.  Which means the men problem is easily avoided because one glimpse at my cray-cray, and they go a-runnin'.

Being alone is okay.  I don't disappoint myself.  I don't hurt my own feelings. If I die, I die, and if I die lonely, less people will be affected.

Right now I need a fresh start, I'm tired of being sad and depressed.  My rejuvenation is beginning by no longer working at a place where I've never been supported and have been routinely harassed.  I've only stayed as long as I have because I love those kids.  But I'm no good to anyone if I stay there.

In shedding my skin people who I don't want to harm are being hurt.  I know this.  I just don't know how to save myself from a dark and slippery slope otherwise.  Yes, I feel like an awful person, and maybe I am one, really.  But if I don't reinvent my life... I may no longer have one.