December 18, 2001
the height of patheticism(is that not a word? well, it is now...)
sunday afternoon, s and i went to her office x-mas party, at the home of this guy she works with, whom i've known (tho not well) for a few years. in fact, i had drinks with him and another colleague one night about 4 years ago, and i divulged my cybercrush on "snoodles"....and lo and behold, 3 years later (after she'd been here for more than 2), "snoodles" (aka s *grin*) accepted a job in his department!
anyway, back to the party. i met several of her co-workers whom i'd not yet met (but hear her talk about all the time), and we had a nice time (even if i was relegated for a time to the "spouses' table" with the middle-aged white guys talking about venison steaks and their kids not knowing how to change tires). the weird thing was, our host had not only banished his lover/partner/boyfriend/whateverhecallshim from the house...but he pretended that he lived there alone, and that his lover/partner/boyfriend/whateverhecallshim didn't even exist!
granted, some may feel it necessary to go to such extremes for the sake of their careers. goddess only knows that i wouldn't even want a job or career that required that. but s says that most everyone in his office knows that the guy is gay...he just doesn't think that they do. so he maintains what he thinks is this heterosexual facade, when it really just makes him look totally ridiculous and pathetic.
how completely SAD is this? i forget sometimes what an absolute bitch internalized homophobia can be. can you imagine being this guy's boyfriend? and being told that you have to leave your own house from 2-8 p.m.?? of course, it's entirely possible that the boyfriend banishes s's co-worker when he's the one having the office party...tho i think that that is even more pathetic.
i guess it just illustrates that no matter how much money you make...no matter how well you've invested...no matter how nice or new or expensive (or filled with exquisite treasures you've gathered from your global travels) your house is...in no matter how prestigious a neighborhood (the one shared by the multi-millionaire founder of the limited, victoria's secret, abercrombie & fitch, etc.)...you can still be unhappy enough with and ashamed enough of your life and how you live it that you make these choices.
3:35 PM
December 12, 2001
blah, blah, blahso much of this blog is pure drivel, written to avoid writing what i'm really feeling. i'm not in a good place right now. i thank my lucky stars for my boobala, who is as loving and supportive and sweet and silly as always....without her, i'd be in big, big trouble right now.
i finally had the appointment with my therapist this week that i'd been trying to get for the last month. let's just say that 45 minutes was not enough. as i told her, i feel like i am barely holding it all together...like the dam is gonna break at any moment, and everything inside me is gonna come rushing out...wreaking havoc and destruction upon everything in its path.
i've realized over the past week that everything i'm going through right now has been building for almost 3 years. things with my family began their downhill descent when my brother died. it was so sudden, so unexpected...and he was too young and just too "unfinished" with life to have it taken from him like that. even though (or perhaps because) we were 14 years apart, he was a great big brother. i remember riding around with him in his navy blue v.w. bug and feeling like i was the coolest girl around. i remember stopping at his apartment on my way home from school...gazing in wonderment at the piranhas in his fish tank and the love beads hung from the doorways...wondering what could possibly be funnier than naming a female cat "roger." later, he made sure that my sister and i had opportunities we probably wouldn't otherwise have had...like riding 23 hours on a greyhound bus to dallas to visit him and his wife...and flying to seattle (at his expense) and taking us to see the ocean and the mountains for the first time (when you're 12 and from the midwest, having a snowball fight on a mountain in the middle of summer is about the coolest thing ever). i wonder if he ever knew how much those experiences meant to us.
years later, when i finally came out to him, he told me (in a letter) that he was surprised...but that it really didn't matter. he loved and respected me as a person, as he always had. i held onto that letter. it is among my most cherished possessions, now that he's gone.
the christmas after he died...about 2 years ago...my older sister invited us all to spend the holiday with her and her family in canada. when i asked if s. were welcome, my sister actually said "no." i was like, wow. she said we just needed to "agree to disagree". yeah, okay. as i said to her then (and i wish i could recall who said this first), disagreeing with homosexuality is like disagreeing with the grand canyon. (think about it....) that conversation marks the end of my relationship with that sister.
so...2 siblings down, 1 to go...right? fortunately, that hasn't been the case. i think my relationship with my younger sister is stronger than ever. however, the revelation about her biological parentage (see my blog from november 8) has continued to rock my familial world. in short, i've got a whole new set of issues with my mother.
on november 4th, i trusted her. as of about 9:30 p.m. (e.s.t.) on november 5th, i no longer do. on november 4th, i was still willing to protect her feelings by not bringing up all the things she did...and said...and didn't do...and didn't say...while i was growing up...things that caused a lot of hurt and left scars that i deal with to this day, every day. some of those scars, i've only recently discovered. it's like, at the time, i didn't even know how much it hurt. now...i'm realizing that protecting her feelings for all these years by not speaking up...or standing up, as anitra would say...has caused me even more pain, and i probably should have been telling her how i felt all along.
i used to always think that my mother did the best that she could at the time...being a single mom, twice divorced (and heavily scrutinized for that by everyone in the small towns where we lived), working 2 jobs, struggling to get by, as most single moms do. but i don't think i think that anymore. she could have done better. she could have come to my games, and let me know that she cared about what i was interested in and what i enjoyed. she could have refrained from making choices that had me in 3 different towns and 3 different schools for my junior high and high school years. she could have not married the asshole who checked the mileage on the car after i'd used it (to make sure i hadn't driven more than the 20 miles to get to town and back) and scared my sister so much that she locked herself in the bathroom after school until my mom got home from work, to avoid being in the house alone with him. she could have realized that, at 16, maybe i'd gained weight because i was unhappy and missed my friends from my old school, not because i was pregnant, as she accused me of being (despite my then virginity). she could have told me that i was pretty, instead of saying that i could be, if only i were thinner.
it's no wonder that i haven't talked to her yet, after 5 weeks; i've got 30 years' worth of things to say.
2:11 PM
December 05, 2001
get smushedthere's this new show on the usa channel called smush...OMIGOD(DESS), this is like so MY game! i only caught a little of the show last night (it was late), but i love it already. you start with a string of clues, and you try to come up with the answers, which are all words that run together to form...okay, i'm not making sense, so here's an example:
a tall zoo animal + a big hairstyle = giraffro
is that cool or what?
i love word games...i love words...i love language...i love the different ways that language gets interpreted and formed. people joke about ebonics, but i like thinking about the origins of slang words...e.g., how the term "props" comes from giving someone the "proper" credit for something they've done. it fascinates me. people are so creative with words. and in the case of ebonics, at least, people don't get their props for that creativity. instead, you have teachers and parents and all kinds of other people running around, all freaked out because they think that kids are speaking some kind of foreign language. if they took 3 seconds and thought about it, maybe they'd realize that ebonics and other "slanguages" (tee hee) represent amazing use of imagination and innovation with language.
12:17 PM
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