As Lovers Go

   Last night I (very!) unexpectedly heard from an ex; the last on my list of favorite first kisses, which was maybe the most perfect first kiss I've ever had. I guess now he needs a name; I'll call him Dear Sergio.
  We met and walked through the streets of our silent little town, eventually settling on opposite benches in the park, catching up and reminiscing simultaneously.
   "Remember when we just walked up to those random kids and lay down next to them over there," I asked, pointing to a large cement circle that serves as a fountain in the summer months.
   "Yeah, that was... Why did we do that?" he asked, and we both laughed.
   "Remember when you used to break into my car during soccer practice and take pictures of yourself wearing my clothes and send them to me?" he asked, smirking.
   "Yeah, that was awesome." 
   "No wonder I had to start locking my doors," he said, laughing, and then added "Actually, I still don't."
   I immediately began plans to sneak back into his little red car and do it all over again, before remembering he's dating someone else. They got together three days after we broke up, almost two years ago. Ouch, right?  But I understood. I was shady and scared and secretive. We were young. I was leaving for school, moving 500 miles away at the end of the summer. Our relationship was as temperamental as the constant thunderstorms we had that summer; furious, fleeting, recurring. We spent hours in each others' arms, watching them, quietly absorbing our beautiful reflection. Until he found someone who would hold his hand in front of people. Someone willing to change her relationship status on facebook. Someone who could fall in love with him. Who did.
   "A lot of crazy stuff has happened in this place," he said, motioning around us.
   "Yeah... I think I threw up on you here somewhere," I admitted.  He laughed with his typical good nature, and pointed out the place where it had happened. (I've never understood how he had any interest in dating me after that, but he did. His libido's a champ, I guess.)
   "It all seems like it just happened, but it was so long ago. Years." Neither of us could comprehend how much time had passed.
   The time we spent on the benches stretched as slowly and sweetly as the years we'd spent together, and our subsequent years apart. We reveled in each others' company, in how easy and comfortable it still is. When we finally got too cold to ignore, he walked me home and hugged me goodnight, holding me a little too long, needing to decimate the distance silence and apartness had created.
   Lying in beds just blocks apart, we texted back and forth, him trying to admit to missing me as nonchalantly as possible. I sidestepped the issue repeatedly, not interested in making him a cheater. I've already done that. He has no impulse control and my ego is boundless. Those factors compounded with our mutual possessiveness is dangerous. It hardly occurs to us that we're wrong. Until the sun rises. And I'm sick of waking up guilty.
   I still did, this morning. I stayed in bed until noon, closing my eyes tightly to the sun's rays that peeked through my window, reminding me of the sins I've committed. For the record, we stayed in our own beds and just said goodnight. But I can't shake the guiltiness. 
   We've promised each other countless times; no matter what happens between us, we will always love each other. Because we were so blissful, so young, so volatile. And all our angst and frustration dissipated in our laughter and drawn-out embraces, our agonizing delusions. And we might. There will always be a deep current of affection and appreciation between us, I think; I hope.
   The dichotomy of night & day is hard to reconcile. The streets look so different without the sun, illuminated only by the moon and occasional streetlight. Traditionally, the night is filled with sin, but I still feel that teenage innocence under the stars.
   I'm happy for last night; the last time I saw him, it ended bitter and ugly, in heartbreak. This was sweeter. And, though I promised him the next thunderstorm, I think that's one I'm going to break. I'm not seventeen anymore, and at some point, I need to accept that he isn't mine, and hasn't been since I was. I think I'm ready to.

Same Old Thing

   Why do I torture myself? I'm knee-deep in men who are better than you. But no one compares. I miss the way your ego takes up the entire room. It leaves so little room for air that it gets hard to breathe. Sometimes your absence is more of a whirlwind than your presence. I'm falling through memories so fast it makes my head spin.

Tomorrow is a Long Time

   I'm still in the process of reading old notebooks; it's very on and off, and I have over 30 of them. Seriously, how did I have 3,000 pages worth of things to talk about in 5 years? Is this normal people?! I was out of my damn mind!
   Anyway, I found a few amusing things, although maybe only I will think they're funny. I love the awkward, biting cynicism of adolescence.
    Mr. Fantasy and I first met in June of 2006. So, I guess the four years I give us is a little bit of a stretch, but I'm only two months short, so let's just give that one to me, okay? We went to the same high school, and found out later we had both secretly been checking each other out from a distance for a year before ever speaking, but were introduced in the first weeks of the summer I was 15.
   He was a surprising and welcome distraction from my traumatic relationship with Kid A, which was still the main focus of my life (and can be read about for newcomers here and then here, if you want to be up-to-date and informed) and I was grateful for and excited about that. When summer ended, so did we- really, really badly.  It was ugly enough that we didn't speak for about the next year and a half, though I spent much of that time whining and obsessing about him and us. We started talking again in the middle of senior year and, save brief periods of estrangement, he has been in my life since.
    Here are a few things he inspired that first summer.

7/6/06

pasta & flowers

my pillow for hours

he wants to empower

before he deflowers

before he devours

stop.

stop.

stop.

stop.

stop!

you say you could thrill me

while begging to fill me

you claim that it's still me

say it always will be

at least 'til you kill me

stop.

stop.

stop.

stop.

stop!

7/29/06

there seems to be some sort of a force propelling us towards each other, daring us to touch.
so we do.
and in the sickening heat of the night, i start to shiver.
this feels so different from anything before.
this feels so different from everything before.
i love the way your whispering voice sounds in my ear.
i love the way your hand feels locked in mine,
like this is just where it belongs.
everything is becoming laughter between us,
maybe for the sole reason that we're too nervous to let it be anything else.
what a good place we're in.
everything feels like it's supposed to.
i've never felt so alive.
i've never wanted to feel so alive.
i've never wanted this before.
the night turns to tragedy when we part ways
still trying to resist the pull.


but i guess that's half the fun.

8/2/06

we trade lines like a poorly written, overly high school novel but, then again,
aren't we living one?
aren't we all living one?

   He and I don't address that summer or its aftermath, except in jokes. Some are harmless. "We were so dumb," "Yeah, we were dumb, but we were hot," Some are more misguided. "Like when I used you and then left you!" he interjects with, laughing, but retracting it quickly when he notices I wince and cannot quite laugh convincingly. "Did that... do something to you?" he has asked, in moments of quasi-sincerity, knowing I will roll my eyes and scoff before abruptly changing the subject. 

   We have a lot under the surface; a lot I don't acknowledge, a lot he doesn't accept, a lot we don't confront. Sometimes we try but, between the two of us, it's too raw somehow. It always ends with my pleading for a new conversation, and his reassurance that "the past is in the past." 

   But is it? Is progress possible when we have a time capsule of bitterness buried in the backyard? 

A Moment of Stillness

   One of my classes was cancelled today, and fortunately, it was the class I share with sister #4. Listless, we wandered through hallways in circles, eventually settling on a bench.
   What began as an analysis of our current lives; her overall contentment with the stability she's found, though perhaps lamenting a shortage of excitement, my driving need to get out, shifted towards the inevitable when discussing things I need to escape from: Mr. Fantasy.
   "I just...don't think he's a good person," she concluded.
   I really struggled with that one. Torn between so many responses, I looked away to avoid saying any of them.
   "You don't have to respond," she said.
   "I, uhm... Well. Maybe you're like Mom and I'm like Dad because... well. You know how if someone is cool in a lot of ways but they're a racist I just don't like them?"
   "Yes."
   "Well, Mom's like that with womanizers. If a guy is cool in other areas, but treats women like shit, she hates him automatically. Whereas Dad and I... We have an easier time separating someone from that. Like... 'Yeah, he treats women like shit, but he's got all this other stuff going on...'"
   "Yeah," she responded, "but all that other stuff doesn't matter if you are the woman he's treating like shit. You don't want to be his friend. You don't want to hang out with him and... whatever. It doesn't matter if he's cool otherwise, because he's treating you like shit. And maybe I'm biased because you're my sister and seeing what he does to you hurts me, but... I just don't think a good person would do the things he does."
   That was hard to hear, and even harder to formulate a response to. Eventually, I just stuttered out some form of agreement.
   "And don't you feel like... this has been how many years?"
   "Four," I mumbled.
   "Don't you feel like you've just wasted all this time and energy and four years?!"
   "Yes," I admitted, "but there develops this...desperation. For something to hold on to, to say it was worth it. To... I need proof of the last four years of my life." What I find impossible to express is the depth of the desperation for the effort and the years to add up to something, to have meant something that can be translated into some truth, something other than disillusionment and distrust; some tangible thing I can walk away with, knowing or feeling or seeing, something that could compare to the endless things he takes from me.
   She paused for a moment, inhaling the magnitude of pathos I had laid bare on the floor. I don't open up very often. No one's ever sure how to react when I do.
   "Do you think it's just going to be like this until you get over him, or do you think he's going to change?"
   Ouch. I sat breathless for a minute, almost stunned by the question. Even though I ask myself that same goddamn question all the time. And I know the answer. And I hate the answer. I hate, hate, hate the answer. 
   Visions of our future inundate me, his promises deluge my mind. I'm filled with whining, smiling whispers and reassurances of good intentions, doused with sugar-sweet affection and hopefulness.
   Until: the cataclysm of consequences, moments of brutal realization, every single promise broken, every whisper silenced by deafening actions. I realize the past four years of my life do compose something, they do combine to form a truth and that is this:
   "He's never going to change," I confessed, slowly, feeling my heart contract, pull into itself so tight and small it might explode. "He's... he will never change."
   "That sucks," she sighed,
   "Yeah," I breathed. "Yeah, it does."


   So maybe the truth I can leave with, can carry with me, is this: People don't change unless they want to. And sometimes even then, they can't. Despite possible fluctuations in maturity and hormone levels, people are the same at 17 as they will be four years later, and even forty years beyond that.
   And if I haven't been incentive enough, I never will be.
   "I will never be enough for you," I remember confessing, teary-eyed and scared. 
   "You are. Of course you are. Stop," he pleaded. "It hurts me when you say things like that."
   Well lover, it hurts me every time you leave. And I'm awfully tired of watching you walk away.

  This time this time, this time, no, this time, wait, no this time, wait really guys THIS TIME! Or next time... How can I possibly expect him, or anyone else for that matter, to take me seriously when I can barely take myself seriously? I will be stronger. I will resist. I will leave us behind me.

   Right now I carry our burdensome weight on my back. But I'm headed into the sunshine, and I'm sure I'll shed it soon.

It Takes a Lot to Laugh, it Takes a Train to Cry

   Sometimes I lose my shit. I don't mean I misplace my possessions (though I do an awful lot of that too.) I mean I lose. my. shit. I freak the fuck out, complete with full-scale stuttering and hyperventilating.
   I did this today. One minute I'm grouchy that I was woken up mid-nap to go to belly dancing, (I have a Shakira complex), the next I'm sitting alone in a parking lot, mumbling incomprehensibly through sobs to my Mother on the telephone, who is very sympathetically telling me she hasn't caught a single word.  "Nevermind!" I exclaim, frustrated, hanging up. As a car pulls up next to me, I curse the extended daylight hours I look forward to all winter long for making me vulnerable to this stranger. I'm not the type of girl who cries in public. I reach in the back seat and pretend to search through a bag, trying to look as if I'm doing anything other than having a complete mental and emotional breakdown by myself in the parking lot of a dance studio.
   Thought process: Exhausted, annoyed, apprehensive. I feel stress building. There's no other thing I can easily focus on, I'm too present in this experience. I need to remove myself mentally from this. As I swallow my grievances, I suddenly see the inside of my head.
   I'm watching every bad feeling, every negative thought I have, You don't seem to feel that my time is of any value whatsoever, falling down my throat, You will never be the man I want you to be, and softening inside me. I love you so much sometimes, and other times I think we're both selfish assholes who return to each other out of boredom and convenience. I literally see myself internalizing my fears and frustrations. But if you don't love me at all, what the hell are you doing here? And if I don't love you, why have I thought about you every day for the past four years? Even when we're apart, you're such a part of my life, of my head, of my waking up and going to sleep every day. "Do you think about me when we're not together?" I asked, fearfully, one night when I felt our relationship was secure enough to sustain honest discourse. "Sometimes," you said reassuringly, insistingly, as if that was supposed to please me. "Sometimes isn't enough," I wanted to protest. Of course I didn't. I just fought my facial features into remaining expressionless until the instinct to frown was suppressed.  I watch my bold, sharp words, vivid red with anger and passion and honesty smoothly dull at the edges, turn blue and then dissolve as I stifle them with detachment. This is my coping mechanism with bad things; I withdraw, retreat into myself and smother them until they're gone.
   Plus, today after reading an account of a toddler's mental scheme of a cat: small, warm, furry, soft, I became obsessed with adopting a kitten. (Admittedly, this is probably a pacifying replacement for my completely irrational desire to fast forward the next five years of my life, get married and have six babies.) But then my parents, who I am genuinely enjoying living with, dismissed the idea. I tried to accept the decision like the rational person I am, but hours later when my mother made a joke about it, I could barely control my absurdly emotional reaction. I know I never had him, but I feel like you're taking him away from me, I wanted to plead. I imagined him and it was like he was real, and I wanted to feed him a saucer of milk and introduce him to my niece and play in the yard with him. But I swallowed the plea, sent it inside to soften, turn cold and disappear with all the other things I want to say but never do.
   So, today was trying, from start to finish. But it's over and tomorrow, as always, is full of possibilities.

A Spoonful Weighs a Ton

   "You're a jerk."
   "Sorry, I always forget how sensitive you are. I was only joking."
   "Whatever."

   I'm doing my best not to feel bad, because you don't get to make me the bad one. You're not allowed to traipse back in at your leisure and suddenly be the victim. I'm leaving it there because it's already too far. What is with our mutual insistence on bludgeoning our relationship to death over and over and over and over again?  Can't we just let it die in peace?

Somewhere a Clock is Ticking

     As previously detailed, there has been much tension and discord lately between Me & Bobby McGee. (I'll admit it, I've been waiting on the edge of my seat- Seat? Have I ever blogged from anywhere besides my bed? Absolutely not. There has to be a better way to phrase that- since the moment I started this blog to use the last four words of that sentence in that order.)  We seem to be on opposite apology schedules, each of us forgoing stubbornness and reaching out only moments after the other's windows for sympathy and forgiveness have closed.  I don't generally think much about it- I tend to ignore things that have a possibility of painful or awkward confrontation in hopes they will miraculously solve themselves without my help- with the exception of a couple of apologetic drunk dials and random texts about Liz Lemon.
   I also told you I moved back home but haven't exactly provided an abundance of details on how it's going.  I've noticed that's a problem I have- I treat my blog like it's a personal celebration of my love of the English language that's happening inside my head.  I'm cryptic and I use way too many words.  I've been meaning to explain my tendency to phrase things as confusingly as possible for months now and haven't gotten around to it.  I will, I promise! 
     Mr. Fantasy (who, retrospectively, should maybe have been called Friend of the Devil) has naturally resumed his infamous disappearing act- his all-time favorite trick- which he proudly performs immediately upon successfully rebuilding our relationship every single fucking time.  I've mostly recovered, though I'm still occasionally overcome with the desire to slam his head into the wall, and may daydream about him having to watch me fall madly in love with a biracial, green-eyed, bearded, mountain-climbing physics major, with a cool name like Tyrese or Tafik who wears impeccably tailored jeans with suit jackets and ties and never falls asleep when he's supposed to call me or forgets my annual Christmas party he promised he'd go to that I reminded him a million times about or goes on nhl.com to check the score of the Bruins game while he's supposed to be listening dutifully to every word I say.  Like I said, that's only an occasional (though, yes, incredibly specific) idea I hardly ever think of.  Roughly every time he updates his facebook status?
     Anyway, upon the realization that our relationship bore similarities to the disaster that is Audrina Patridge and Justin Bobby I decided that enough is enough is enough!  When he reappears, his calls can go straight to voice mail.  And I'm hoping this time I mean it?
     Living with my parents is nice, although I have zero motivation to do anything except lie on the couch and eat chocolates all day and it's unfortunately starting to become obvious in the ever-expanding size of my ass.  Plus going to school part time, being unemployed, single, living with your Mom and Dad and not having a car at 19 is more fail than I'm comfortable with.  I'm working on it, people!  Right after this episode of "What Not To Wear" and this giant bag of cashews.  Nuts are healthy, right?  Hey, there are nuts in the Snickers too!  

Dress Me Like a Clown

    In bad times, I remember good times.  Through good times, I plan better times.  It's inevitable.  I'm hopelessly hopeful.  Neck-deep in cynicism, I'm still spinning sickly sweet conceptions that spiral beyond my mind's control.  Wallowing in bitter misery, I construct and reconstruct various fairy tale endings.  You grow up.  I calm my nerves.  We get it together. Whiny whispers creep back, draining my reserve, straining my (ears? heart? head?), making me desperate.  "What are you thinking about?" "Nothing. I mean... it's silly. It's stupid."  "Tell me."  "You won't laugh?" "Do I ever laugh at you?" 
     So much affection in nuances, in hushed laughter, in the closeness of our good nights.  Why do we always have to end up back together?  It's exhausting.  It's miserable.  It's exhilarating.  The way you can't hide your feelings.  The way I never let mine show with anyone else.  The easiness.  The simultaneous existence of comfort and nervousness.  Of familiarity and strangeness.  Oldness and newness.  Trust and suspicion.
     I'm so ambivalent, even though the decisions seem so obvious.  Especially to everybody else.  But they're not us.  And I'm sick of their input and their interfering and their inferences.  So my decision is this: I'm staying exactly where I am.  With you, without you, with you.  Wherever we end up, we'll see.  But I'm not any more prepared for the commitment or consequences than you are.  We stay in limbo because it's what we need from each other, and all either one of us can provide.  And some days it breaks my heart.  And some days I'm unsatisfied.  And some days I'm miserable.  But every day it's what I want.  You're what I want.  And maybe we'll grow into commitment and consequences, and maybe we'll grow apart.  I'm not placing any bets.  
     I'm just keeping us between us.  We're so much better that way.

Fickle Cycle

     Aren't we getting too old for this?  Or will you never grow up?  I'm ready for something else.  You're exhausting.
     I'm frustrated with your half-assed, half-hearted attempts to meet me halfway.  I've filled years with frantic, fumbling formulations of feeble excuses and I'm finally finished.
     (This is so easy to decide when you're not paying attention to me.  I can declare it boldly to anyone who will listen, announce it for audiences abound.  The instant you come back my resolve evaporates.  I forget every single reason you're bad for me.  And there are so many reasons.  Forgetting those reasons is gradually becoming a struggle.  They used to vanish effortlessly and now I fight to stifle them, to hide them beneath the giddiness.  Burying my reservations is becoming a burden.)
     Are we going to figure this out while it's still worth it?

This Scene is Dead

   "You're sad? How do you think I feel?"
   "I don't know."
   "Disappointed. I thought you might finally come through."

Masterfade

     It seems so different this time.  Do I say that every time?  I might.  I can't remember, but I might.  But this time it's worlds away from where we've ever been before.  It's just us.  At last.  But is it?  I love believing everything you say.
     It's such a relief for you to meet my expectations in a positive way.  Your attentiveness is validating.  A belated validation, but a validation nonetheless.  And I think that is as much as I want from you.
     I live inside daydreams.  I weave lengthy, seamless performances from the terse syllables and laughter that constitute the bulk of our dialogue.  I construct you out of your disillusionment, conceptualize you as an abstraction of my impressions and avidity, using you as a distant secondary source.  I affirm myself in a way you never have in these capricious reveries that supersede you.  I am satisfied with them.  They are enough for me.
     Your indignation at the distance is sweetly comforting.  I feel so much closer to you when I'm pulling away from you.  When I attach, you let go.  When you cling, I run.  We can't get the pieces together.   We likely never will.
     It's perhaps disheartening that I remove myself from us in our bliss.  But I'm not leaving you, lover.  I'm just putting my heart away again.  I think we fare better when I'm not addled by adulation. 
     I chose the name Mr. Fantasy for a reason, darling.  

Deadweight on Velveteen

   Tonight, an unexpected phone call from a friend.  She's crying.  She hasn't gotten out of bed in a week.  She feels the constant need to throw up.  She hasn't been to work or class.  "I have completely shut down.  I've never shut down before.  I miss him so much.  I don't know what to do.  I miss him so much.  I miss him so much."


   For the first time in years, I remember this state vividly.  Slouching lifelessly through hallways, disheveled in unlaundered pajamas.  My hair straightener cold for weeks.  My makeup drawer unopened.  Thinking I'm dead.  If I'm dead why do I still feel like this?  Sitting through classes, dejected, without energy to hide the endless, though luckily usually silent, tears.  "Do you need to go to the Guidance Office?  I can give you the notes."  Barely bothering to shake my head in response.  Can't speak, can't even manage to mumble.  What could I say?  Words seem so meaningless.
   Passing him in the halls is unbearable.  He won't even look at me.  He eases by so gracefully.  I fall limp against lockers, struggling to breathe.  I feel so abandoned.  I am

   Kid A was a dream come true.  Long blonde hair, deep blue eyes and a guitar.  And such a mind!  Littering conversation with musical, literary and political references I couldn't yet wrap my head around, he was so clearly evolved beyond the rest of us.  I was awestruck.  And he was dangerous.
   Any sixteen year old boy enjoys attention, but a skinny, awkward, lonely, manic depressive musician cosumes it. And Kid A's appetite proved insatiable.

   We stayed up all night discussing music and psychology.  I was as hungry as he was, though I fed off approval rather than devotion.  We spun our desperation into superiority complexes, dismissing the people around us as oblivious, unoriginal and worthless.  We interspersed our spiteful reproach with bouts of suicidal self-loathing, belied our jealousy with scorn and bitter self-congratulation.  We were terrified.  We had the entire world at our feet and we were terrified.  

   I am dead and he smiles sweetly, welcoming the days with a sublime serenity I used to know.  Though he is far better at pretending than I.  I'm only convincing on camera or on a stage.  Retrospectively, this reflects a fundamental difference between us; I was an actress and he is a liar.  He is the only thing I think about.  Waking up in the morning, there's a moment where I don't remember.  My mind is blank.  This is the best I will feel all day.  It ends abruptly with clips of dreams crashing through my head.  In every single one he forgives me.  In every single one he acknowledges my despair and saves me from it.  Habit and my Mother's orders get me out of bed and to school.  Getting dressed is useless.  Food is horrifying.  I am dazed.  I am hopelessly alone.

   We go through this repeatedly in the three years he spent relentlessly exploiting my feelings.  Though I spend those three years relentlessly allowing him to.  I am engulfed in brutal misery each time it happens, though never quite so tormented as the wretched first.  I learn to numb, to disengage.  I truly believe I will never feel alive again.

   But I do.  And she will.  She will wallow languidly in anguish for what feels like decades, until the grief softens.  It happens so gradually that it's nearly impossible to pinpoint.  It just slowly gets less physically painful to get out of bed in the morning.  And somewhere along the line, less psychologically so.  Until it eventually feels okay.

You Can Bring Me Flowers

   I love this part.  It's perfect.  I get so hopelessly lost in everything you say.  I keep this part to myself.  I spend days on end smiling to myself.  I walk into tables and chairs in a dizzy bliss.  I'm enamored with every single word.  This is what no one else understands.  This is why we stay together.  This is why I stay with you.  Because you make me helplessly, deliriously, trip-over-myself happy.  And we're the only people who need to get that.
   Each snowflake enchants me as it falls past my face.  Somehow, in the dark and the cold, alone, I feel so complete.  We are fools. I am so grateful for our foolishness.
   I dissolve in every single smile.  We confront our agonizing history where your unapologetic neediness meets my repressed maternity.  And we transcend it where you coerce my nurturance out from within the self-defensive bitterness.
   It's so much sweeter to let myself succumb to the moment.  It's so rare that I relinquish even an instant of control.
     Are we finally going to figure this out?

Nobody Does it Better

   One walks away from the other feeling empowered.  Invincible.  Leaving the other feeling desolate.  Deprived.  (Neither of us is ever unscathed.  And we're never both okay.  I guess that's the problem with letting someone in.  It's never going to end with both of you whole.)  "I trust you.  I promise.  I trust you one hundred percent."


   This time it was I, late at night, who confessed, as I have before, that it needs to be over.  He should have seen it coming, but he didn't.  I understand.  He drops hints too, when it's his turn and I never notice them.  Or I do, but I ignore them.  Why do we think ignoring the signs will change the future?  If anything, that will only guarantee it.


   It takes awhile for me.  I toy with the idea for too long.  I can never do it as cleanly as he can.  He's less invested.  He can so easily be absorbed in distractions.  I just focus singularly on loss.


   I come right out with it.  He laughs.  "You're really drunk, aren't you?"  I'm not.  Fortunately.  Another drink and I wouldn't have had the spine.  Another couple and my assertion would have escalated into aggression.   
   "I'm sorry."  He doesn't get angry.  "It's up to you."  "Do you think this is fair to me?"  "No."


   That night I fill page after page with the same two words.  There are filler sentences, but I can really only comprehend a single thought.  I'm devastated.

   It isn't just the present we're losing.  "I just wish you were here."  It's the past.  "I want to kiss you badly."   It's the future.  "I want our boat to have a fireplace.  And be just like the Titanic."  "You know that sank, right?"  "Well, just like it except that part."

   The next morning is positive.  I'm excited to find out what I'm going to do next.  "It's like anything is possible now.  I'm devastated, but I feel so optimistic.  Like anything can happen.  I needed to do it.  I put it off for way too long."

   We last a week.  You come back first, which surprises me, because I left.  I guess you didn't think I'd come back.  Maybe I wouldn't have.

   "I'll be there."  "I'll believe that when I see it."  "I mean it!" "Maybe someday you'll actually prove me wrong."  "I will.  I'm going to."

   My head's way too smart to believe that, but too romantic not to want to.  In any event, I'm smiling.  And tonight, that's enough.

The Naming of Things

I guess introductions are the best place to begin.  I'll start with myself because I'm the author, and I'm a narcissist.  (Just kidding!)  (Kind of.)

Lime Tree:   I have delusions of grandeur. I am way beyond a daydreamer.  I'm adventurous, goofy, and absurd.  I either talk way too much or don't say anything.  I am equally likely to be found on the middle of the dance floor as the corner of the room.  Wearing either a beautiful dress or a dirty flannel.  My belongings are either obsessively organized as in complete disrepair.  I'm not very familiar with middle ground.  I can be ambivalent because I want everything.


1, 2, 3, 4 and 5. The sisters, in birth order.

1:  33, Always available to make me laugh and able to sympathize with any plight.

2: 31, Always available to laugh, and provide direct, reasonable advice that I am more likely to need than want.

3: 29, Always available to dress up and go somewhere fancy or to lie on the couch and watch TV for unbelievable amounts of time.

4: 26, Never without a plan or a system, can always make me laugh.  Very matter of fact and easy to talk to.

5: 21, Possibly the most ridiculous person in the entire world.  Makes me laugh until I cry.

Bobby McGee:  My best friend.18, Oldest of three, Republican, Fundamentalist Christian, versatile musician, builds log cabins in forests for fun, is always prepared for an adventure, bearded, outdoorsy, shares my love of anything antique, vintage or homemade.

Mr. Fantasy: 21. The rollercoaster.  Tall, dark and handsome.  Forever on again/off again.  Will never grow up, will never settle down.  Musician, athlete.  Romantic, capable of being the sweetest person in the entire world, and then shortly thereafter the most insensitive. (Only to again be sweet!)  Bearded.  Impossible.  Infuriating.  Can always make me laugh, except when he's making me furious.  (Sometimes even then.)