It's come to this

"When you don't think your life can change, that's when you need to change your life."

This phrase popped into my head yesterday, and I keep thinking it, over and over. Not very original, I know, but hey - my brain made it up on the fly. I didn't work for it or anything, or ask it to appear. I pay attention to that kind of shit, though - the little "woowoo" magic mental phrases that appear out of seemingly NOWHERE, cause man, it kind of freaks me out when that happens. Way back in 1993 when I met my erstwhile cutiepie slacker genius pothead boyfriend, like, the minute I laid eyes on him, I heard a voice in my head. I was standing in the kitchen at the restaurant where we worked, and I saw him behind the steam table, and all of a sudden, in the recesses of my mind, I heard, or sensed, or transmitted from the Bugaloo spaceship, "I'm going to hang out with this guy for a long time." I looked around, like, "What?" and he continued to silently slice the sandwiches. So I looked at him for a minute and nothing happened. And then I went out and found my best friend who was waitressing with me that night and told her what had just happened to me, and she said, "I guess you'd better ask him out, then."

Long story short, eight months later I had packed all my crap in my teal Cavalier and moved to Ohio, and now, 13 years later, he's married to someone else and has three kids. Finis. Yes. Kind of sad. Still, I heard no voices until the last ex-boy, who I met and instantly, well, I didn't really hear any cogent phrases, exactly, I just had this sort of cataclysmic mental conniption fit. I don't even know what happened, but just know that it's hard to cover up by saying, "Hello, nice to meet you. Could you pass the register tape?" But I did it. And that little bit of tragic foreshadowing turned out to be pretty accurate as well, as now, some six years later, he's at a rave somewhere, maybe even twirling or wearing funny boots, and I'm here talking to you.

The return of the voice (and nice that it doesn't involve a man this time, huh Virginia? Refreshing.)  makes a little bit of sense, too, because I'm making some plans, finally, that don't feel like just a flailing reaction to pain, and I feel really happy about that. I've finally realized that most of what I've built things on for the past several years is shifting sand, because it's had nothing at all to do with me and who I really am and what I enjoy. It's mostly had to do with what other people were going to do or were doing or might do in five minutes if I didn't do or say the exactly right thing or play the right sport or work the right way or play an instrument or show up on time. It had to do with who they were - what their gifts and talents were - what they enjoyed...and how I felt, standing in their light. I was convinced that my happiness hung in the balance of someone else's, and since I could never make them happy because they weren't meant to be happy with me, I was always in the badlands of that particular prairie. And when that person checked out, it meant that I wasn't going to be happy, ever, just because I'd been so happy when they were there, and convinced of the absolute rightness of their presence. That's kind of scary now in retrospect, I think, but it's true - and a huge reason why I don't really bank on the absolute rightness of anything anymore, having been so wrong about a topic about which I believed I was so absolutely right. (And yes, I'm fully aware that that's kind of crazy talk. I got a kick out of it, myself.)

I've been doing some rewinding lately because I've gotten so sick of myself, and some thinking about stuff that should change, and what I can do to make that happen. I'm hesitant to say this because if I'm wrong I'll feel like even more of a fool, but I think for the first time in a very long time I can see a path beginning to emerge that doesn't suck at all, and in fact might turn out to be very cool, if not the best damned path ever invented. I'm not foolish enough to think that it'll turn out even close to the way I envision. I've lived a little too long to believe in that sort of thing, and that mostly things can turn out better if you put your best intentions and effort forward and try not to draw too many mental or worse, emotional pictures of the ideal outcome. But it's entirely possible that this time next year I'll be in an entirely different space and I think that, unless it's Baghdad, because I don't want to go there, could really be the best possible thing.

I still move forward with much pain in my heart, just to be clear. When it comes down to it, I'm less trusting now than I have ever been, and certainly maintain very little belief in the role of love in my life, especially (REALLY. ESPECIALLY.) for the long haul. I'm not bitter but I'm jaded, if a distinction can be made, and very, very wary. I over-gave, and it still kind of embarrasses me and makes me want to reach back through the pensieve of the past decade and yank me even further back, so I could turn different corners and tell people to fuck off when actually I said, "Yes, baby. Anything for you."

But in spite of this shift inside of me, the one thing that makes a difference is my refusal to succumb to inertia, because even if I'm sitting on my very own single settee for the rest of my days, I want it to be in a cool spot. And I want to say that in the process of getting to be the rotten, hilarious-to-myself, intellectually overstimulated and completely batty yet endearing old woman I know I'll be some day, that I did not stop exercising my capacity to do cool shit, or to push myself to create or to make something better out of where I've ended up. I've been lagging for the past couple years, but it's safe to say that it'll get better from here. And thank God. I'm so on my own nerves.

Comments

[marit]

Awesome post--and I look forward to seeing what you have up your sleeve.