(excerpt) "a prayer for owen meany"
by john irving





What I'm listening to:

tori stories: Disc 1

tori stories: Disc 4

happy rhodes: the keep

hooked on classics:
(bit music)





What I'm reading:

christina baker kline (ed):
Child of mine
writers talk about the first year of motherhood

(with hugs & thanks to kic)

john irving:
a prayer for owen meany

anne lamott:
operating instructions
A journal of my son's first year

(with surprise, joy & gratitude to the mighty kymm)





What I'm eating:

the fantabulous tess stir fry

sausage/green pepper/olive pizza

grilled chicken on foccacia bread

lobster burrito from rubio's

• June 10, 1998
  
  It's official: C. Morgan is a fucking fraud.

  I got a "make-my-day" email from the head of the psych department at Cambridge University (in the UK) which said (in part):

  All I can do is assure you that we have no graduate student by the name of C. Morgan in this Department, nor have we had one in the past.

  C. Morgan is such an asshole. For anyone who might have read hir letter and thought sie perhaps knew what sie was talking about, know this: sie is a liar. Sie made up credentials in order to sound important, mindfuck, and threaten and intimidate me. It was a nasty, nasty letter and C. Morgan is a nasty, nasty person.

  I am once again at the point where I question such human cruelty.

  Why do people do things like that? It is beyond my comprehension why somebody would work so hard to hurt someone. Especially someone they do not know, for reasons that are unclear. If you've got a problem with me, don't read my web page. I'm not coming into your home uninvited, I have no hidden agenda to conquer the world with my multiplicity or convince everyone that I was abused.

  If you don't like me, go away ... but please, don't attack me for who I am.

  

  I worked the late shift again last night.

  My feet still hurt. I have been standing for 4-5 hours straight while at work, and I come home with blisters and numb toes. Fortunately I dissociate, so I can pocket the pain away when I have to. Only problem is that sometimes I don't notice damage because I've "hidden" the pain so well I've forgotten it is there.

  That's really true, you know. I have been seriously betrayed and wounded by people in my life, and I consciously "forgot" what happened in order to continue being their friends. It happened in a big way with G&C -- more than once. I have felt utterly crushed under their feet, yet I still find myself confiding deep, secretive things to them.

  I'm only asking for betrayal when I do that. And whether its my sheer loneliness that drives me back into that place, or whether I actually think it might be different, I walk into the pain willingly. I hate that about myself.

  What is the fine line between trust / forgiveness and holding a grudge? How many times is "seventy times seven" and what does "turn the other cheek" really mean? How much do you decide to let go and hold on to, and what makes that decision for you?

  Somewhere in my head I realise that it is an issue of "healthy boundaries," but I'm not sure where the lines are. Sometimes I feel like the chalk drawing that they leave of the body at a crime scene; I know I've been murdered before, but I walk right back into the room and stand in front of the gun.

  

  We got a pump for our water garden this week.

  Hubby put it in with some tubing and now we have the lovely sound of trickling water on our bedroom balcony. Our fish seem to love it; they are more active than ever.

  I'm hankering for a koi; we saw some for $10 in Laguna Beach and I'm pestering hubbs to take another road trip so we can buy some. The problem is that I'm "on call" several days next week; including weekends.

  I don't know if "on call" is a normal retail thing or not, but I do know that I hate it. I am scheduled to work a certain shift, but it is not certain. I have to call in an hour before I'm supposed to work to see if they need me. If they do, I go in, if not, I don't.

  My head has a real problem with that. I don't know if it's a form of obsessive/compulsion or not, but I hate not having things cemented. I have a snit with breaking a schedule and being spontaneous. This is  completely bizarre, considering what I was like in high school. Nonetheless, it is how i am now, and so this whole "on call" thing is fucking with my head in a big way.

  

  C starts radiation next week.

  She has to have 5-6 weeks of radiation every week day (Monday - Friday), and then hopefully the cancer will be in remission. I know that when that happens I will feel a huge breath of relief. Somewhere in the back corner of my head, I'm still under the impression that C's getting sick is my fault. I know it is ludicrous, logically I know it is impossible, but emotionally I am connected to that belief. It runs through me like blood through my veins.

  

  I've been playing around with a new offspring to the tesserae site. I'm not sure what it is, really. I'm thinking of it in my head as a place to explore my multiplicity in images and words -- a place where I don't censor the intense, graphic stuff -- a place where I can be completely "out" with all the chaos in my head.

  It's over here. Like it?
  
  
  

  ---

  
  
  
  
• June 11, 1998
  
  I have a restless sadness floating around inside of me.

  Some of it is physical: I have a strong aversion to daylight today (even though it is raining and dark and stormy / cloudy outside), and my head hurts if I turn my eyes up toward the ceiling. I'm also very, very, very (insatiably) thirsty.

  And I'm tired. Exhausted ... worn out ... I feel like I can't lift a finger if I don't absolutely have to. And even if I  had to it would be a major struggle.

  The remainder of the restless sadness is emotional. I hurt way down deep -- beyond words. During the bit's morning nap, I sat in the corner of our couch huddled into myself, sobbing.

  Suicide entered into my head for the first time since the baby was born. It was a fleeting thought -- the temptation of stillness, of quiet, of no demands, no child to be responsible for, of  nothing -- but it flittered away as quickly as it had landed.  I am not suicidal. But I did actively think about it for the first time in 7 months, and that concerns me a little.

  It concerns because I made a committment to the bit, to hubby and to myself -- that I would never again attempt (nor commit) suicide. I needed to do that in order to feel like I was being the kind of mother I wanted to be. Up until now that committment has included thoughts, too ... that I wouldn't  actively think of suicide, either. I've decided to take that part of the deal out.

  The way that I've gotten to sleep for the past 29 years (at least as long as I can remember), is by killing myself. I fantasize my death, and in doing so, my body relaxes enough to let go and let me go to sleep. I can't go to sleep without doing it -- it is something Spug knows, and something that is really really shameful for me to admit.

  But that is not actively being suicidal, it's just ... hmm ... it's just ... relaxing enough to go to sleep. It is just fantasy.

  I wonder if there is a difference ... (?)

  

  I saw my pshrink on Tuesday, and took the bit with me.

  We decided that I would go back on the prozac. I think it actually was a choice for me, though now in this depressed frame of mind I wonder how on earth I thought I could manage without it.

  It is a yo-yo game with me. I despise the thought of being confined to medication the rest of my life, yet I know how badly I fall apart without it.

  Right now I feel like I am being pulled in a zillion different directions at once. I have so many roles calling out to me, and I just want to hide from them all. Yet I don't have that luxury right now.

  It frightens me to think that the only truly peaceful place for me at this moment -- the only place where I could be completely selfish and experience the meltdown my insides are on the verge of -- the only place that would allow me those things is a mental hospital.

  In a way, mental hospitals have become like institutional mothers for me. Whenever things become too crazy, I'd be admitted. I hated (DESPISED - HATED) every single ward I went to, with the exception of the 3 hospitalizations on dissociative units and an interesting experience in the Orange County mental facility.

  More often than not, though, I've run to a mental hospital when I felt like I needed a maternal form of care -- when I felt I needed to not shower for a few days and not feel guilty about it; where I knew they would remind me to eat and take my medicine. A place that would somehow, in some strange way, hold me when I was feeling fragile and alone.

  That is how I feel now.

  Excruciatingly fragile and unbearably alone despite the noisy & echoing caverns of my own mind.
  
  
  

  ---

  
  
  
  
• June 12, 1998
  
  K ymm really is mighty!!

  Yesterday I was trodding around feeling lousy -- emotionally overwhelmed and on the verge of tears, and with this huge ache in my chest, and I felt like a shirt that had been turned inside out -- all the vulnerable soft stuff was on the outside and I had no protection .... really painful, overwhelming stuff .... and hubby took the bit for a walk when he got home from work and he checked the snail mail and there was something from kymm!

  It was this book called, "Operating Instructions: a journal of my son's first year" by Anne Lemott, and it was  just exactly what I needed. Lemott is quite funny (a lot like the mighty kymm, actually) and I read the first 5 entries and groaned with empathy, laughed with amusement, and nodded my head in agreement.

  It is a wonderful book, and it came on a very appropriate day. And the amazing thing is what a complete surprise it was! The only reason she had my address was because of the mighty tape exchange ... is that cool or what? Thanks, oh mighty kymm; you rock!

  

  Lunch was different than usual today.

  Hubby's company's first employee is returning to her home country, so they had a "fare thee well" luncheon to say goodbye. It was at this restaurant  right on the pier -- the deck spread out over into the ocean. We had to eat in the little bar section because the wait for the actual restaurant was 45 minutes, so we crammed into this little area with 2 tables pushed together, and I had 3 diet cokes with limes and 2 glasses of water, mostly because I was nervous, but also because I have had this raging thirst happening for the past few days.

  The food was superb -- I had the grilled chicken on foccacia bread, with steak fries (french fries cut into  huge, hearty portions) and coleslaw. Hubby got the massive mesquite burger with fries. Everybody else (clones that they are) except for A (the women who was returning to Brazil) ordered the mahi sandwich.

  The meal was delicious, the conversation mildly boring, and the bit was utterly perfect. She sat in her car seat and played contentedly with her vanilla scented suck toy, stopping to gnaw on a biter biscuit and coo every now and then.

  After we returned home, however, she unleashed her wild spirit and I ended up calling hubby in tears to come home for a few minutes so I could get a break.

  

  The problem with the bit is that she is semi-mobile.

  She can twist her body enough to advance across the carpet, she can easily roll from her back to her tummy, she can pseudo-crawl (she makes the motions but doesn't move at all), but she can't manage to move across the floor and reach what she wants.

  This disturbs her and she ends up shouting, crying, and screaming in frustration. I have been trying to learn not to rescue her, but rather, to let her deal with how she feels and watch and evaluate when she's really had enough.

  But she really screams. Loud. A lot. It grates on my ears and I hate the fact that there isn't anything I could / should do. That helplessness is what makes me feel so despairing, so completely inadequate.

  The insecurities come raging in, the thoughts of: "I'm a lousy mother because I can't  fix everything," the frustration in my own throat, the tightness in my own chest that screams out how horrible I am for even trying to do this.

  On a brief c. morgan tangent, the most damaging thing in his/her letter was when they said: "... to have a baby simply to validate your own existence." I genuinely worry about that, sometimes. I worry that I only care about the bit because she reminds me that I'm alive.

  But then I remember a day like today where I was feeling angry at her for being difficult and taking my time, and I think of what a stupid statement that is. If anything, I am wracked with torment about not being a good enough mother. And that isn't validation; that is self-condemnation and self-hatred.

  

  Hubby is having problems with his job.

  It stems from one basic (and rather unpopular) premise: "my family is more important than my work."

  I cannot tell you the many troubles that simple conviction has gotten him into. His fellow partners are of the "give 110%" belief, which works for most of them because all but 1 (there are 6 total) of them are bachelors. And, the one married man seems to care little for his family -- at the very least, they are far down on his totem pole of priorities. The guy, of course would say (and  does say) that you gotta "make big sacrifices" -- something hubby is totally willing to do when it comes to pay and early morning overtime, but not when it comes to the baby and me.

  I could understand the co-partner's frustration if this was a new decision on hubby's part. But hubby has believed that work ethic, and lived by it, since we got married. Hubby worked with the afore-mentioned married man 4 years ago, and had a conversation with him about the priority he placed on family. Hubby said at the time that he was willing to take a pay cut to keep decent hours and keep his family his top priority. Absolutely nothing has changed.

  The problem is that people are envious hubby can say no. They are envious that he has a life to go home to; some of the other guys are complete geeks in that they don't have anything worthwhile outside of their job. They are nice, intelligent guys -- they  could easily have a "life." But they choose to make work their top priority, and as a consequence, their lives reflect that ethic.

  Hubby on the other hand, has chosen me and the baby. He has chosen his family, and in turn, his life reflects that ethic.

  Isn't that cool? Some people would say hubby is being difficult / selfish, even idealistic, but I totally appreciate it. I feel valued, loved, and important to him. I feel respected.

  ... I feel lucky.
  
  
  

  ---

  
  
  
  
• June 13, 1998
  
  I had an  awful dream last night.

  I dreamt I was having oral sex with some (nameless / faceless) woman and the taste ... the taste was very distinct and very tart, and it triggered the heck outta me in this dream ... I started freaking out and I jumped up from where I was and ran down an endless flight of stairs and into the street, and then I was near a high school and there was a field up on a hill and I ran up the hill and went through a long tunnel to a stubby narrow entrance that opened up onto the field.

  I started wandering around on this football field, in my color guard uniform, trying to find my place with the rest of the band, but I started feeling totally lost and sad, and I ultimately collapsed to the grass in a heap and started sobbing.

  The next scene dwarfed the field scene, kind of like a watercolor that hasn't fully dried, and I realised that I was on top of this very long slide and it was shaped like a tongue and it had barbs poking out of it, and the slide was in the mental hospital. I was in this small room on top of a tall tower, and I was screaming and I was thinking about the taste of the woman and all I could say was: "my mother did that to me ... my mother did that to me ... I remember that my mother did that to me ..."

  Then I woke up and I was trembling.

  

  I was really trying to be in my body today.

  We had a zillion errands to run, and it is really easy for me to just disconnect from myself when I am hot and tired. But I decided that I would try to be very zen-ish and experience everything going on with awareness and acceptance.

  Our first stop was Costco. We went in there for our developed film, but ended up wandering around awhile. I saw a digital camera that I  really want. I told hubby that I would pay for it out of my own paychecks, but at the rate I'm going, it will take me 20 weeks to get it. Besides, I have suddenly become a clothes slut, and I don't know if I can possibly stand working around all those lovely clothes and not buying any of them.

  After more perusing, we came across something that I just  had to have. It is called "Bubble Bliss," and lordie .... is it blissful. It is a wonderful foot bath / massager thing, and it has heat and massage and bubbles and it feels so exsquisite, I can't even describe it.

  I was always a real fan of those big rumbling red seats they have at carnivals and fairs -- you pop a quarter in and the entire seat shakes, but the feet just vibrate like crazy -- and when its over, you stand up, and feel like you could walk 25 miles without a bit of pain. The rejuvenation for a quarter was so entirely worth it, I would stand in line for 20 minutes for the 3 minutes of pleasure.

  This feels just as good. Actually (said in stage whisper)  it feels better!

  

  Hubby had to drag me kicking and screaming out of Costco, because after the bubble bliss purchase, I was ready to spend some money, and that was not a good thing as I was easily distracted and eager to be led astray into something I didn't possibly need.

  We went to Petsmart and saw the aquarium guy whose wife is expecting,and he oohed and aahed and did the "hi baby" thing, and if the store hadn't been so busy, I would have let him hold her again, but we ended up having just a short conversation, and leaving with 2 brand new (huge) goldfish. At this moment they are swimming contentedly in our water garden and we have increased the size of our household to 2 adults, 3 cats, and 7 fish.

  

  We returned home and I had the chance to take a quick nap while hubby took care of the baby and vaccumed. It was much better sleep -- no dreams, as far as I could remember, and I was snuggled into the flannel sheets in only my underwear. This is how I sleep every night, but this afternoon the ac was on, so the room was deliciously cool and refreshing, but I was snuggly warm and soft. It was great.

  Then we topped our evening by dinner at rubios (lobster burritos), my prozac prescription and a trip to Ralph's grocery store.

  Let it be known now: I love grocery shopping. There is something really wonderful to me about the aisles of good things, the ability to have choice in what I want to eat, and what I want to make for dinner. As an added bonus, the baby is completely entertained by all the colors, variety of packages, and logos, so she is usually pretty good.

  There is a wonderful man at the store who never fails to give the bit a "talking to" every time we go in. Tonight he told her to come in "around July 3 or so" and he would instruct her in the fine art of "conning uncle louie's hot dog away from him at the 4th of july picnic." I really like him; he talks of silly things, but he uses real words, and treats the bit like she is semi-intelligent.

  One thing I hate about myself is the way I slip into dorky speech when I'm talking to her. I understand the high voice, but the "ba-ba" stuff I catch myself (hubby is extremely bad at this) saying just makes me nauseous. The checkout guy is an inspiration.

  

  All in all it was a very nice day, and as I sit here eating a Dole strawberry popsicle and feeling the wind from the ceiling fan blow the loose strands of my hair on the back of my neck, I'm pretty happy to be alive.

  I need to spend more time in this body of mine more often. It's really not such a bad place to be.
  
  
  

  ---

  
  
  
  
• June 14, 1998
  
  Another nightmare early this morning had me reaching for hubby and shaking so hard I had to wrap the sheets tightly around my shoulders to stop trembling. I was on a ship with several other people and I watched them all die one by one. The first woman was electrocuted, and I saw her body glow from the inside out and heard the hiss of her skin as it burst from within and split open.

  Another woman was stabbed -- blood pouring out her wounds and spilling all over the wooden deck.

  It was graphic and horrible and I need a respite from these horrible things. It is getting so that I am afraid to close my eyes.

  When I was in high school I had a strange psychic experience. I was having a repetitive nightmare; it got to the point that it would come from within my emotional shadows whenever I closed my eyes to go to sleep. At the same time, I was having bizarre hallucinations with another student. I remember the first time I saw it, I thought I was losing my mind and went running to D's room (D was my english teacher my junior and senior year and ended up being the one who "gave me away" at my wedding -- the only father figure I've ever really loved and who I knew really loved me and liked me in return) in fearful hysterics.

  I was walking down the hall near the lockers and I saw a student I had never seen before, and I looked closely at her and she was crying. I looked away because it felt too intimate and awkward, and when I glanced back, she was no longer crying. After a minute of staring, I realised she hadn't been crying to begin with.

  The strange thing was that it happened with that same person on several different occasions. It was like the outward facade was peeled off her face, and I saw her emotional insides -- the part she carefully covered up with laughter and an "I could care less" attitude.

  D and I concluded that it could have been one of several different things: it could have been some kind of psychic connection, where I was actually seeing her emotionally, it could have been some kind of spiritual evil thing happening, it could have been my own stress and some hidden prejudice against the girl (though I'd never seen her before that experience). Whatever it was, it stopped completely when the repetitive nightmares stopped.

  Coincidence?

  I have no idea.

  It was one of the stranger things that has happened to me.

  

  I ended up working today.

  It was only 2 hours so it wasn't too bad, and I ended up having cool conversation with another employee, so the time whizzed by. I am getting so  sick of the music, though. It isn't bad as far as music goes, but the predictability is getting to me.

  Right now tori's "from the choirgirl hotel" is blaring because I like having a  choice of what I want to hear.

  Speaking of tori, I am pestering hubby to take me to see her plugged '98 tour at the Greek. Wanna help me? Just send him an email and tell him as my friends & faithful readers, you think that it would behoove him to take me out for an evening, sans bit. I figure if we all pester him enough, he'll take me just to get us to shut up.

  And ... for the first time in my life, I will edit an entry I read to him. Because, of course, it would spoil it if I told him this was happening, right?

  Right!

  

  We're going down to the harbor for a few hours.

  I'm looking forward to having dinner at a picnic table in the wind, watching the sailboats come in from their day-long excursion on the sea, smelling the salty air and the aroma from barbecues and bonfires.

  I like to stand on top of a rocky pier and watch the lights from house to house come on as the sun sets on the world and the glow spreads along the cliffs. I enjoy the taste of chicken salad with almonds spread on ritz crackers and the refreshing coldness of an iced soda.

  I like sitting on the grass in my purple tank dress, with my hair down, and the stinging pain as the wind whips against my face; the blush that spreads across my cheeks as the wind blows my skirt up.

  It is going to be a lovely evening.

  'night ....