If You're Going Through Hell, Keep Going.

Hello kittens. I have a bad case of the Mondays today. In all actuality, it may just be a bad case of the early-20s. The judges are still out. Speaking of judges, are you all watching the Olympics? I caught the end of the U.S. women’s beach volleyball win against Australia. I hope you’re all playing Hannah Hart’s Olympic drinking game, because I’m not. Instead I’m working all the days and trying to be a good person. Not that drinking makes you a bad person. Well, it kind of makes me a bad person, but only most times… Anyhow! Onward and upward. My attempt to be a “good person” this week inspired me to create a list of most-likely-achievable goals. Are you ready?

            1. Exercise four whole days this week

            2. Write a short, fictional story (AKA thinly veiled autobiography)

            3. Edit one previously-written poem, to decrease the suck factor

            4. Drink 1 gallon of water per day

            5. Don’t eat anymore cookies, because I ate two today

            6. 3 blog posts! Hooray!

Seems easy enough, right? Right…

You guys, I am having all the feelings this week. And for once they aren’t all about me.

Since I apparently live in a mythical cyber land of rainbows, glitter and unicorns (AKA Tumblr), I was only recently exposed to the unfolding Chik-fil-A drama. I’ve never eaten Chik-fil-A and I think their commercials are chintzy, so I didn’t think twice about it. Obviously some part of my brain comprehends that bigotry exists, discrimination runs rampant and homosexuality is a social hot potato. Understanding this without fully comprehending it, I was floored to find public support for Chik-fil-A rearing its ugly head on my facebook. All of a sudden Those People aren’t just random, backwoods lunatics. They’re my friends. They’re people I admire. I’ve laughed and cried and attended boring Christmas dinners with them. I’ve spent the night at their houses, eaten their mothers’ cookies, shared a pillow and talked until the sun came up. These were my people.

Now somehow we’ve wound up on opposite sides of the picket line and I feel a lot of things. Namely a sizable portion of kick-in-the-teeth. 

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not interested in denying anybody the right to voice their opinion. I think everyone in this country deserves the freedom to nom a chicken sandwich in support of their moral code. And maybe most of the people who proudly eat at Chik-fil-A wouldn’t break into a woman’s house, carve anti-gay slurs into her body and leave her to burn to death. Or picket a fallen soldier’s funeral, regardless of his sexual orientation, touting his death as “God's punishment for the nation's tolerance of homosexuality”. Or bully a child to the point of taking his own life just because he didn’t fit the parameters of “acceptable” society. But maybe they would, because at some point ideologies and actions begin to overlap. 

I whole-heartedly urge each and every one of you to support your beliefs. But please always understand the impact your casual words could have on somebody else. Never handle another person’s identity flippantly.

I’m just trying to say this: we need to be gentle with each other. We are all just organs, protected by bones, lashed together with sinew and tendon, supported by muscle and covered with skin. We are human being bodies in a state of constant rebirth, dead cells being replaced by new ones every six months in an endless cycle. You are not the person you were last year. I am not the person I was in February. We are repeatedly and consistently becoming ourselves. 

To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.
       -- e. e. cummings

In the magnanimous words of Autostraddle...

I love you all. Did you see the ring around the moon tonight? Fucking lovely. 

-b

[Note: I discovered this too late, but it perfectly sums up my Chik-fil-A feelings! I enjoy feeling validated.]

Highway Lines Are the Rhythm of my Song

Hello dream weavers! I’m back in Portland, Oregon safe and sound after a whirlwind Missoula adventure. These monthly treks will either drive me crazy or keep me sane, I haven’t quite decided yet. My road trip weekends have taken on surreal predictability, unfolding as follows:

Friday: Anxiously bounce around the office. Consume an obscene amount of coffee. Bribe co-workers with fictional baked goods and promises of eternal affection, hoping they’ll let you leave early. When kindness fails, become increasingly obnoxious until you are forcibly ejected from the building. Bound to your waiting car without looking back, discarding your work uniform as you run. Commence over-caffeinated driving. Chatter merrily to yourself for the first five minutes. Spend the next 9 hours in autopilot, mouth open, eyes glazed. Arrive at sundown. Attempt to overcome isolation-induced zombification.

Saturday: Lounge about entirely too late, reading smutty books and recovering from the drive. Get coffee, eat delicious lunch. Waddle about aimlessly downtown. Make tentative plans with approximately every person you’ve ever met. Eat delicious dinner, watch the sunset. Listen to good music, dance like a weirdo, settle in for a night of movies and sweatpants. Talk until you fall asleep.

Sunday & Monday: Repeat Saturday ad infinitum. Browse the Import Market, quadruple caffeine intake. Leave phone under a pile of clothes to avoid guilt-induced deterrence from shameless dawdling. Browse Hastings without buying anything. Quadruple sugar intake. Browse the Book Exchange. Consider buying things just because they’re so cheap and you’re on vacation. Realize too late that if you still want to have friends in two days you’ll need to log some face time. Retrieve phone from under pile of clothes. Attempt to placate all the people by helplessly overcommitting. Don sweatpants, listen to music, watch mindless television. Talk until you fall asleep.

Tuesday: Wake up early. Hastily shove scattered belongings into backpack. Linger just long enough. Hastily shove scattered thoughts to the back of your mind. Don dark sunglasses to hide the fact that you always cry when it’s time to leave. Meet for coffee. Meet for breakfast. Meet for second coffee. Grab a quick sandwich. At this point you’ll be reduced to the fundamentals of Catching Up: who, where, when? Wish it was socially acceptable to take notes on small talk, since 90% of the information you attempt to absorb will be lost. Leave town later than anticipated. Spend the next 9 hours in autopilot, mouth open, eyes glazed. Arrive home at sundown. Succumb to isolation-induced zombification. Eat a can of black beans in bed. Pass out fully clothed while staring at your open computer screen.

So there you have it! Glamorous, I know. I’d say I don’t know why I do it, but that would be a lie. We all know I can’t stay away from Big Dipper Ice Cream.

Seriously though, going home produces such a strange cocktail of emotions. Every time I go back to Missoula I remember that I left for a reason. The old insecurities swell up. Old hostilities simmer just below the surface of so many interactions. Sometimes I feel like that swirling vortex of drama and confusion wants to swallow me again. The comfort of the familiar is a double-edged sword. We end up stuck in this strange limbo. Back home you aren’t who you were, but you also can’t be who you are. You’re left with this empty shadow legacy, like an outline that everybody fills in with their memories of you. Unfortunately, in my case, a lot of those memories are distinctly horrific.


I’m being hyperbolic, I know. Bear with me, please? Obvs it isn’t all bad or I wouldn’t wake up once every month to a packed bag, a full gas tank and 582 miles of driving.

True, going back home reaffirms all the reasons I left. But it also reminds me why it took so many years to do so. Reminds me why it was so hard to say goodbye when I did. Sprawling on Lucy’s couch. Catching up with Ju-bot. Hanging Morg’s welcome home sign so she knows she was missed and will always be loved. Lesbian Movie Night. Cramming four people comfortably onto a couch to eat pizza and watch documentaries about the two big G’s: Gay and God. Surprising my mom in the church aisle, realizing how much The Littles have grown since May. Smug pug puppies. A sun-drenched porch swing and chickens pecking senselessly in empty plastic pools. The Velvet Fog’s stunning displays of athleticism. Seriously you guys, I never thought a kickball game could cause so much of an uproar. [Note: No Means No, you stole third base and also my heart] Paul’s Pancake Parlor breakfast with Lo: veggie browns and hot coffee and finally having a chance to really talk. Coffee with C, verbally vomiting two months of comings and goings in her direction before packing up, hitting the road.

So I keep going back. I will keep going back, not propelled by nostalgia but something that seems somehow deeper. Like a longing for something I almost had, or something I had once in a dream. Trying to recapture an emotion I never quite possessed. 

Everything keeps changing, realities shifting and overlapping. Like a kaleidoscope, the image always snaps into focus the instant before it changes again. Some days it's all a jumbled mess. All I can do is remember the promise of Home. All I can do is keep chasing the sunshine.

Many miles of love.


-b

Tornado hopes you sleep well tonight. 

What's My Age Again?

Hello friends! I hope you all survived your Mondays. I am currently lying in my bed determining the lesser of two evils: sweltering heat or creepy moths flocking into my bedroom? Currently the moths have the upper hand because I am tired of being so sticky. Some nocturnal bird is raising a ruckus nearby, recounting all the dreams she had today. I wish I had slept all day. Mostly because I’m headed to Missoula this Friday and the anticipation may cause spontaneous implosion. Reasons to visit Missoula: baby pug puppies, sitting by the river, Taco del Sol and of course that-one-thing that I’m very excited about but don’t want to jinx or scare away (sorry guys, I promise someday you’ll know if you don’t already). Right now happiness feels like a unicorn. Something mythical and rare. Something you have to approach slowly with your eyes averted and your hand outstretched, palm up. Happiness likes sugar cubes and glitter bombs.

Well, it appears to be mid-July already. I’ve been a 23-year old for approximately eight months, and I’m finally realizing the many subtle ways this particular milestone has changed me. I vaguely remember my birthday, telling my friends at the bar/anyone within a 2 mile radius that 23 is my lucky number, so this had to be a lucky year. Around that time my life fell into shambles. Some of you know the sequence of events leading to my Missoula exodus. Those of you who don’t know will once I manage to organize those fractured memories into coherent sentences. Suffice it to say, if I could have burned the entire town down in one final act of arson I probably would have.

So this year hasn’t lived up to my shadowy, deluded expectations. But it’s definitely been a year of changing; a year of growing and learning and picking myself up. I’ve been putting all my pieces back together and hoping maybe this time the pattern will be somehow different. 

A few of the changes I’ve noticed since turning 23:

·         My definition of Friday night. Or for that matter my definition of “weekend”. Weekend used to mean pre-gaming at someone’s house, getting tanked downtown, passing out wherever you ended up and waking up to consume greasy breakfast and swap fuzzy memories. Weekends generally started on Thursday night and didn’t end until your swollen, exhausted hangover was rolling out of bed for work Monday morning. Weekends included Bloody Mary breakfasts and 2am Taco Bell dinners and minimal sleep. 23 has changed all that. For example, this past Friday Gay and I dragged her friends around searching for all the hoppin’ lesbian hangouts. But by midnight/my fourth soda water I was ready to crawl into bed. Also, we arrived at Weird Bar approximately one year too late…

·        My metabolism. Ok, to be fair 23 might not be entirely to blame for this. Post-op I went from running 15 miles a week to zero and my body took it pretty hard. But I do believe my metabolism tanked overnight on November 27^th, 2011. My old affinity for drive-thru food has fallen by the wayside. Lucy, remember the days when I could eat your breakfast and my own? No more. I feel like I gain 5lbs even looking at a chicken supreme chalupa. I get indigestion watching Food Network.

My ability/desire to drink beer. I have one particularly vivid memory of sitting at a friend’s pool party and drinking an entire 12 pack of PBR without batting an eye. Not to mention the summer Friend, TR and I drank a growler of beer every night for a week. I still enjoy a good microbrew, but they absolutely annihilate me. Even after one beer I wake up the next morning feeling as though I will give birth to a hoppy alien freakchild. My post-collegiate binge drinking days have been displaced by biology. 23 says no more.

·         My narcolepsy. Any of you who know me understand my sleep capabilities. I’ve been known to pass out anywhere and everywhere. During classes, on couches, in random hallways, airports, buses, theme parks, in the backseats of cars, occasionally even in the driver seat of cars… I’ve always been able to promptly drift into a coma approximately 7 seconds after my head touches the pillow. But since turning 23 my days of taking sleep for granted came to a screeching halt. I’ve got all of these thoughts now! Like what will I do without health insurance? How am I going to pay that bill? Is there any way I haven’t discovered to cook rice and beans? I spend an inordinate amount of time processing once I turn off my light. My bedside wolf-patterned touch-light to be more precise. 23 brought a lot of changes and a lot of upheaval. I am still sifting through the debris and feeling out the new fault lines, the places where my plans feel the most fragile.

So the first eight months of lucky #23 haven’t been exactly what I expected. But really, is anything good ever what we expect? I’m starting to believe part of this whole Growing Up thing is taking each moment at face value. Not every experience needs to be qualified as positive or negative, so long as you are experiencing it openly and honestly. Someone I adore recently told me “Happiness is not a sustainable emotion”. Which sounds uber pessimistic at face value. But she means that happiness is a catch-22. When you spend every waking moment trying to be happy, it's hard to actually experience happiness. When I’m constantly holding my life to the standard of Happiness, I forget to fully immerse myself in them. Like leaving my hometown and worrying so much about how I’ll feel that I forget to feel at all. Happiness seems to be like missing car keys. You won’t find it until you stop desperately tearing around searching for it.

You guys, it’s been a strange and tragic and wonderful and devastating and magical year. Today, lying here in my Ikea bed in my yellow room in Portland, I feel like everything will be ok. We’re all going to be ok. Lucy, only three more sleeps!

I love you all.

-b

Summertime, When the Livin's Easy

Hello friends! Did this week fly by for anybody else? Seriously, it’s been a blur. Probably because I’ve spent so many hours slaving away at the Boulevard, you know, saving lives and stuff. Recently we got a call from a research company looking for “25-50 year olds working in the medical industry” to participate in a group forum on healthcare. I’m 23 and I work as a receptionist in a veterinary office. But I totes ate their free food and accepted the $75 compensation for an hour of my valuable time.

http://theportuguesewaterblog.blogspot.com

[Note: I have absolutely no medical knowledge and none of you should ask me healthcare questions regarding your beloved pets. The majority of the answers I give you will be pulled directly from Google. The rest will probably be made up.]

In other news, the acting career that I never considered pursuing even for a minute might finally be taking off! That’s right. I applied to be an extra for the third season of Portlandia. Any day now I could get a call from a woman named Amber saying they need me to sit outside a local coffee shop pretending to read for an entire day. My qualifications include my prolific flannel collection and an ability to stomach organic soy lavender lattes. Instant stardom. I think I was born for this. Cross your fingers my big break comes soon! And remember, if you want it to be cool, put a bird on it. Watch for me January 21^st! Or don’t. Your choice.

Me: So I applied to be an extra on Portlandia...

Coworker: Oh yeah? You think you can just move to this city and get paid to mock us?

Me: Well... Yeah. You guys make it pretty easy. 

I am looking forward to a whole heap of things happening this weekend. Like leaving my bedroom! And seeing people! And not crying so much (probably)!

1. I have a [Gay] friend who will be visiting this town. I would say she’s visiting me, but that would be erroneous because really she’s coming to corrupt unborn children (AKA attend a baby shower. Not my baby. Not my shower). But! She invited me to have dinner with her and her parents tomorrow night, which means a break from eating eggs for dinner. Last time I went out with Phil and Martha we went to Wasted Wednesday. Wasted Wednesday is a skeezy weekly event at a skeezy Missoula bar and involves all-you-can-drink PBR for $5. I don’t remember much about that night, but I did fall off a trampoline and sleep on my friend’s living room floor. I imagine this visit will be considerably mellower since I’m trying not to be an alcoholic anymore, but I predict a rollicking good time nonetheless.

2. Saturday I get to do laundry. I know this doesn’t sound exciting, but let me explain. Our dryer broke down recently, but since ULOL is the gayest of the gays she obvs had a DIY solution. She strung up a clothesline in the backyard. Unfortunately, if I let my clothes dry in the great outdoors I would go into anaphylactic shock from the allergen overload. So, since ULOL is the most considerate roommate ever, she also strung a clothesline for me in the loft. Laundry day is the perfect excuse to hunker down in my Loft Fort with a good book or spend hours prowling through Tumblr.

3. Sunday I will meet people. Real life human beings. The geniuses of Autostraddle have organized an International Summer Brunch Day. This event will be spectacular for so many reasons... Top of the list: cupcakes. Also after this weekend I might have new people to hang out with. I'm hoping I come across as "awkwardly charismatic" instead of "unbearably strange". Once again, Autostraddle makes all my gayest dreams come true. Any of you Portland weirdos who care to join, let me know! We can mob down together.

Alright kittens, time for this kid to call it a night. I hope all of your dreams are coming true, wherever you might be in this mess we call Earth.

You are all beautiful. Oh yeah, and you're having a really great hair day. Don't change a thing. 

-b

Hello, my name is...

Hello you glorious weirdos! The heat wave that has been sweeping the nation finally hit Portland, Oregon. I’ve acquired a pretty decent base tan (AKA burn) thanks to today’s spontaneous 12 mile amble. Luckily the only blisters are on my poor feet. This past week Friend and I ambitiously decided to expand our circle of friends. Since this requires meeting people, we selected a handful of social events to attend. See, neither of us really understands how this whole “meeting people” thing works.

Seriously. How do people connect with other people? There used to be sports and classes and clubs. We were obligated to spend time with people in the pursuit of mutual interests. Becoming friends with those people just came with the territory, like a secondary benefit. We don’t really have that anymore. Sure I can approach a stranger in a bar, but what happens next? I don’t have the social skills to sustain a conversation without common ground. I may have majored in Bullshit back at U of M, but two years post-graduation my rhetoric skills are getting a little rusty.

  

In the spirit of complete honesty, I don’t generally like meeting people. I think small talk is tedious and I’m not the best at feigning interest. I guess I don’t want to meet people; I just want to know them. I want to skip past the “Where are you from?” and the “What do you do?” and get straight to the friendship stuff. I know it doesn’t work that way and you need to have a solid foundation and so on and so forth... but that all takes so much time and effort. Can’t somebody just do it for me?

Anyways. Friend and I started our socializing Tuesday night. Every Tuesday C.C. Slaughter’s hosts a ladies night event optimistically dubbed “Girltopia”. They’ve got a D.J. and $2 well drinks. We hopped the max down to Old Town and got to C.C.’s by 10 o’ clock, which was our first mistake of the night. There were about ten people in the whole bar: us, three girls playing pool in the back corner, the bartenders, two tech-savvy gay boys texting at a table and one girl standing at the bar drinking alone.

We sat at the bar across from Drinking Alone Girl (DAG) and spent a good 45 minutes debating on whether we should try to approach her or not. Was she there alone by choice? Was she waiting for people? What kind of beer was she drinking? We calculated our odds of being able to sustain a conversation after the preliminaries, weighed that against potential social discomfort and opted against introducing ourselves. Besides, if we talked to her we couldn’t talk about her, and then we’d have nothing. We spent the next hour or so inventing potential lives for DAG and drawing unicorns on coasters. Meanwhile, people started showing up.

Me: Did you see those girls who just came in? They kind of scare me.

Friend: You mean the one with the backwards hat and her friend in the bandana?

Me: Yeah, don’t they seem super intense or something?

Friend: You realize you could be describing us right now?

Me: Yeah. Maybe it’s time to go.

So we hit the streets. Here’s an interesting thing: Friend and I are wildly popular with the homeless population. One girl on the street corner asked us “hippie girls” if we had an extra “nug” she could bum. Apparently we look more Missoula than we actually are because it took us a good three blocks to realize she was asking us for drugs. A few blocks later an apparently homeless fella approached us with a box of Voodoo donuts. He swore there was nothing wrong with them; he just couldn’t handle any more sugar. It’s a testament to the appeal of Voodoo donuts that even dead sober I almost took them. Luckily Friend has more street sense than I do. 

We eventually stumbled into the Someday Lounge for a final round of soda waters and encountered a scene that made me wish I’d smoked a nug beforehand. Some electro-polka fusion band was on stage playing to an audience of six or seven swing dancing fiends. Sometimes real life is too strange to be entirely real. Friend and I stared open-mouthed until the set ended, then mobbed back to the Max station. Where we realized the last train of the night had come and gone. During our walk back to the Lloyd Center we witnessed a moderate-speed police chase, which was startlingly anticlimactic, and discussed how to make our friend conquests more successful.

Our next social opportunity presented itself Friday night. Deep Cuts is “a monthly queer dance party for the music enthusiast”. Also they offer free tarot readings. We decided to get there early, since getting there late meant paying a $5 cover. Same mistake, different dance party! We were literally the only people there at 9pm, so we got drinks and set up base camp on the deck. People started showing up en masse around 11. Unfortunately, it appeared everybody knew everybody else. We ended up claiming a bench in the corner assigning rugby positions based on stranger’s size and potential strengths.

Me: OK, my front row would be American Flag and Gray Dress propping… and my hooker hasn’t arrived yet. She will though, just you wait.

Friend: I think what we need is a third friend. Just the two of us sitting here is weird.

I thought free tarot was a really great idea until I realized it would require actual interaction with a stranger. A stranger wearing a romper. A stranger wearing a romper and nipple tassels which she proudly displayed after a few shots. When the dance floor was still empty at midnight we chalked it off as a loss and headed home.

http://www.creationsgalore.net/

Friend: What happens when you’re in your mid-30s and everyone you know is married with kids and you’re still alone? How do you meet people at that point? What do you do with yourself?

 Me: I think mostly you cry a lot. Alone. Or you get a hobby?

Friend: Hobbies are sad.

Last night was our final attempt at socialization. We attended the 1^st Annual Individual Super Mega Ultra Awesome Northwest Poetry Slam Death Match Championship. Or something along those lines. First I’d like to give kudos to all of the competitors. Some really great poetry happened last night and I’m glad I could witness it! Amy Everhart, I am in like with you. Second, I would like to say: who the hell was that band? Their lyricist must have been a 5 year-old hopped up on too much sugar, and most of their riffs were straight off a Blink-182 album. Luckily, the bar had Family Guy and infomercials to keep me entertained while they were on the stage.  

We didn’t even attempt conversation once we realized “cool” at the slam meant wearing a tail. Seriously you guys, this is a trend that is sweeping Portland and maybe the world. Instead of socially embarrassing ourselves, we ate about 3 lbs. of fried potato and bolted as soon as we knew who won. There was talk of going downtown again, but sunburn makes me cranky so I rained on Friend’s parade and took us home.

So, we successfully made it through an entire week of social events without making a single friend or even acquaintance. What I did learn from this: you can’t force these things. Friendships happen of their own accord. They have to, or I obvs wouldn’t know a single human being. Is it possible we’ll have to join a scrapbooking club in 12 years? Absolutely. In the meantime, I’ll take my cues from Sheila Heti’s article and enjoy my solitude. Because maybe sometimes being alone is exactly what it takes to meet people.

http://nickfalkner.wordpress.com

All my love! Happy Monday tomorrow. Do you all have big plans? I have another day off... Boom. 

-b

One Step Forward, Two Steps Back

Hey kittens.

The sun has finally come out, pouring heat into the tiniest faultlines of the sidewalk. I still feel like February on the inside. I’m still waiting for spring. I keep sitting here, keep hoping I’ll be able to close my eyes, experience warmth and the breeze on my bare skin; feel the ground under my feet and just Breathe. You told me you don’t believe in someday, but I have to. Because today feels like navigating a battle field.

I’m the only one fighting me. With each misstep I’m searching with both hands for the lost pieces of myself. I keep opening up the scar tissue, digging for bits of shrapnel that never existed. Sometimes I worry that we never existed. We both know these injuries are self-inflicted, but that doesn’t make them hurt any less.

Hangman, we played double-dutch with a hand grenade.

I keep walking up and down the same streets looking for a new perspective. I’m nostalgically looking for yesterday in tomorrow, like searching a stranger’s face for some familiar feature. Searching a strange town for some suggestion of home-- I’m looking for comfort in the everyday, like the songs our mothers sang to put us to sleep:

Inch worm, inch worm

measuring the marigolds.

Seems to me they’d stop and see

how beautiful they are.

http://www.flickriver.com/photos/tags/sheldwich/interesting/

I want to sleep. I want to wake up feeling like I haven’t missed a thing; wake up and feel like the day was created just for me. I don’t really know how to explain, but I’m guessing most of you will understand this anyways. Overwhelmingly restless exhaustion. My brain feels like a radio streaming every station at the same time. My body aches—too tight skin and creaking joints. But every time I lie in my bed I'm overwhelmed by this ridiculous guilt. Because this is the only time I’ll be 23 and single and so far from home. Because my life feels like something constantly moving, something I can never quite catch up to. Like trying to jump onto a moving merry-go-round while avoiding roundhouse kicks to the face.  

http://okaylistenhere.blogspot.com/2011/09/recess.html

I remember my mother pushing me on the playground merry-go-round. She had that thing going at least a million miles an hour. Standing still while moving so fast, a wobbly axis in my own right, I had to keep my eyes open to maintain balance. Everything seems so quiet in the center of the spin. I had to trust the circular force of my own movement to keep me from falling.

I guess I can defer to playground wisdom now. When you're moving the fastest, everything will seem still at the center. I'll just trust my own momentum to keep me from falling. 

I hope you are all having a lovely week. I started a long weekend on the wrong foot. I know the importance of honesty, but fuck. Sometimes it's hard to swallow. I promise things will turn around. We're going to be alright. Thank you guys for putting up with me. Did you all know it's a Friday night? I'm hitting up an alternative dance party with Friend. There's a $5 cover, but free tarot readings, so I think it shakes out pretty even. I'll let you know how it goes.

Until then, all my love.

-b

Let Me Sweat This Out

Hello weirdos! Did you all have a lovely weekend? Want to tell me all about it? I'll give a prize to the most interesting story. By "a prize" I mean I'll probably nod my approval and you should be around to see it. It's nearing midnight here and I'm not entirely sure how I'm still functioning because I'm very old and I need many hours of sleep to be a relatively functional human being. Anyways. 

Yesterday Friend, her little sister and I sat in a coffee shop for several hours doing Productive Things including but not limited to job applications, poetry submissions and catching up on this very entertaining rugby blog. You guys, applying for jobs while you’re comfortably employed is a luxury. Seriously, when you’re not actually banking on finding something you can apply for anything and everything. Oh, you say you want 5 years of management experience? I managed to put on pants today. That sounds comparable to me. The jobs I applied for: office manager of an architectural firm, glass melter and hypnotist trainee. The jobs I was tempted to apply for: experienced sign dancer, psychologist and auto body detailer. The world is my oyster.

About midway through our Productivity, Friend turns to me and says: Hey we’ve got a ton of booze at the house, wanna come over later? To which my only logical response was obvs yes. Mostly because my hermitage had reached an all-time low and I’d already watched every episode of Firefly. We spent the ensuring hours drinking cheap beer, playing cards and learning to play the ukulele so as to serenade our Missoula friends. Thanks to my recent non-drinking habits, three beers knocked me unconscious on Friend’s couch.

I woke up there this morning and felt like a ball python was constricting my head. My eyes hurt, my stomach ached and my hands were shaky. I ripped a hubcap off the Biscuit pulling up to my house and briefly considered leaving it where it had landed on the neighbor’s lawn. I spent the morning lying very still in my bed, sipping water and watching movies about heroin. Watching heroin addicts suffer through withdrawals makes my hangover feel less dramatic. And they always remind me of Lucy and her macabre fascination. Does anyone else think Ewan McGregor looks an awful lot like Marshall Mathers in Trainspotting? Unnerving.

Those of you who know me know I've struggled with drinking for a long time now. Only it doesn't seem so much like a struggle as an abusive relationship. Alcohol and I will get along great for awhile, and then tension starts to build. I start relying on it, self-medicating with it. I start acting like a total asshole, start disregarding relationships, start forgetting that other people exist. I start forgetting that I exist. About two years I ago I woke up one morning and realized I had been drunk for 3 months. I decided not to drink that day and experienced withdrawals. Cold sweat, dry heaving, skin crawling withdrawals. At this point I generally swear off the booze entirely for a month, two months. Then I'll have a beer with dinner. Or I'll take a shot at the bar and the downward spiral starts all over again.

Alcohol is such a normalized part of life for people my age that it's hard not to abuse it. Telling people you don't drink draws a negative reaction. Sometimes a borderline hostile reaction. Other times it just evokes a stronger peer-pressure response, reinforces the idea that they must get you drunk. Because they haven't seen you falling down in the bar, unable to get your goddamn eyes to focus, hitting your head on tables/chairs/the floor. They haven't seen you sob inconsolably, or piss yourself. Threaten to hurt yourself. Threaten to hurt other people. A friend of mine recently described me as "drunk, but not punch-your-girlfriend drunk yet".

There's nothing glamorous about binge drinking. There's nothing funny to me about losing myself to that void, to that other me. But we tell our stories like they're jokes and the only punchline is that this is real life. We laugh at the scrapes and cuts and bruises. The blown blood vessels around our eyes from the force of heaving our guts out. What do you do when it's just not funny anymore? I just don't think it's funny anymore. 

And we laughed, you know? Because sometimes you'd rather cry.

Anyhow, we’ll chalk this one off as a loss on the Self Improvement front. I guess you can’t win them all. I’m mostly glad I woke up somewhere familiar, not on a dog bed in a stranger’s house in deep North Portland. Again. See? Getting a little bit better all the days.

Other than my misadventure last night, nothing much to report on this front. The rain has resumed and appears prepared to continue indefinitely. Tomorrow kicks off another wild and wacky work week, during which I can only hope someone will be serenaded by a faux rock star. Do you all have big plans for the holiday? I think we're having a fire and grilling things and lighting things on fire. Mostly ULOL will be lighting things on fire [See previous post for my opinion on fireworks]. You weirdos better be safe... Don't blow yourselves up, or drink and drive or have unprotected sex! 

I love you.

-b